a naughty mudbath. Snoopy scatoscopy at its juiciest.
A cable TV gossip spills the beans about a lot, if not all, the tricks of her feline trade and, naturally, delivers plenty of old
and new dirt along with it. Clever reporter Walls fuses the story of tawdry practices by the personality industry with some prime gossip. The Hollywood flaks, the tabloid snoops, the retailers of the lubricious detritus of the news, and the researchers of the wanton behavior of famous folk are investigated in this study of an especially lively branch of journalism. Walls's study, perforce, often includes titillating tales of celebs and those who celebrate them. The sexual proclivities of Matt Drudge, Mike Wallace's acne scars, and Tina Brown's healthy bosom are all looked into in a text that sort of frowns on the excesses of commercial voyeurism. It's an old- fashioned sideshow, high-spirited, mean-spirited, and plenty of guilty fun. Harking back to Walter Winchell, Hedda Hopper, and Louella Parsons, Walls’s report on the tattle-tale industry includes the scoop on People, The Enquirer, Confidential, 60 Minutes, and the inevitable infection of the mainstream press. Players include all the old favorites: Liz Taylor, Tom Cruise, Michael Jackson, the Donald, O.J., and, of course, the late Princess Di, the late Marilyn, and the late (discounting hearsay) Elvis, among others. Roy Cohn appears throughout, as do various Kennedys. Only Fatty Arbuckle seems to be neglected. Among the less surprising revelations: Checkbook journalism is widely practiced, even by the most respected newsfolk; people known for being famous use the press for their own purposes; celebrities hire private eyes to nail enemies; wayward stars aren't capable of remorse (only anger). Shocking Revelations! Surprising Buzz About Media Buzzards! Here is a Janus-faced muckraker, one side telling how ink is spilled on keyhole revelations, the other offering some fun in
a naughty mudbath. Snoopy scatoscopy at its juiciest.Pub Date: March 7, 2000
ISBN: 0-380-97821-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2000
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
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...
A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.
Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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