A sobering and bleak assessment of lies in politics.
How politicians are stretching the truth more than they used to.
When Adair, founder of the Pulitzer Prize–winning PolitiFact, was bureau chief for the St. Petersburg Times, he instituted national fact-checking using his Truth-O-Meter. Recent events, he says, show that lying threatens our democracy, endangers our health, and cripples our discourse. Leaning left, the book is full of excellent examples, facts, and statistics. He begins by discussing in detail a 2022 Department of Homeland Security release about a new organization created to coordinate its efforts to combat disinformation and how it went horribly bad after right-wing media attacked it as a governmental Orwellian Ministry of Truth. Adair’s detailed taxonomy of lying differentiates its severity, type, and technique. Besides Bill Clinton, the author’s lying hall of fame includes the “nation’s most prolific and damaging liar,” Donald Trump. Adair argues that when a political lie is created, campaigns must debunk it quickly and often. With the rise of so many fact-checkers, it soon became clear that Republicans “lied more—and they lied worse.” Former Democratic Senator Al Franken of Minnesota tells Adair that, in the author’s words, “lying has been part of the Republican ethos since the early 1990s,” beginning with Newt Gingrich. Adair asserts that a “citizen movement to hold politicians accountable for lying” has some promise, concluding with some ideas for helping reduce lying, such as politicians making public pledges to stop it, as well as lowering ad rates and offering more debate time for truth tellers.
A sobering and bleak assessment of lies in politics.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668050705
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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