Customer Reviews

Your Call Is Important to Us: The Truth About Bullshit

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This book intends to be funny and sarcastic, which it is. True, as another reviewer mentioned, it offers little by way of suggestions as to how to combat empty language (for that, see The Evasion English Dictionary by Maggie Balistreri), but the author's purpose is met and she does a fine job. The tone is an amped-up NPR commentary, maybe an underground radio rant. Perhaps some of the negative reviews here have to do with the subtitle's curse word. People, if you're scandalized by cussin', judge this book by its cover and leave it be.

Good, crisp writing- witty and acerbic at times, but an interesting read overall. The disparaging comments I read are typical American blathering hyperbole fueled by the "I-hate-anything- that-criticizes-the-United-States-of-Americorporation." Ms. Penny has done an excellent job of describing the systemic infection of greed driven lies that has eaten away the true moral** infrastructure of America.

(**I hesitate using this term because it is bandied about so much these days that it has become a political cliche')

In these times of great technological advances, the masses have the ability to knock Kings & Queens from their socialist ivory towers. Sometimes the stones deserve to be thrown, as in the case of Ward Churchill. Ms. Penny does not.

Ideologues of both stripes pop up far too often on Amazon from Free Republic & Democratic Underground, tossing meaningless 1 star reviews. Anyone that's not in a persistent vegetative state can figure out for himself or herself if something is biased. This book is & that's OK.

I actually read the book & yes, some of the information is found elsewhere & the statistics & studies mentioned (shockingly) back up her points. The book is a well-written & funny opinion piece, in the tradition of Fran Liebowitz, not Michael Moore or Naomi Klein. It's old-school. No solutions are put forward, no one is asked to march on the evil corporations & there's no recipe for papier-māché effigies inside. I look forward to her next rant.

Titles are deceiving. This book seems to promise a light-hearted spoof of corporate BS. It is indeed hilariously entertaining throughout, yet it is also a seriously scathing eviseration of the "corporate kleptocracy" we all serve. Penny wields her pen with the theatrical beauty and deadly precision of a samurai warrior, a joy, especially for those of us frustrated by the mass amnesia that seems to afflict the empire's citizens. This book is a bright torch against the impending dark age.

The author of this book should be commended for her clear grasp of historical events leading to the current state of affairs in Washington. It's sad that we're supposed to have a government of the people and for the people, but instead we have a government of the lobbyist for the corporation. I found this book highly readable, painfully honest, and depressingly realistic. Unfortunately, the people who have manipulated the affairs of this country to benefit themselves and their companies are not the type of people who will read this book. Instead the will find folks to write scathing reviews reviling it as a piece of anti-American liberal claptrap and then post them to try and influence readers away from this book. This book should be required reading for anyone who doesn't listen to the news, read a paper, or vote. On the other hand, I have no problem with an author using profanity to make a point, but it is taken far to excess in this book. It reminded me of a teenager who had just learned a truly foul word and manages to slip it in at every opportunity to shock & impress their listeners. I couldn't read sections of the book out loud to my husband because my children were in the room.

Laura Penny, Your Call Is Important to Us: The Truth About [censored for Amazon consumption] (Crown, 2005)

Laura Penny has some good ideas. Unlike most of the other conservatives reviewing this book, I'm not even going to attempt to deny this. Of course, I have more direct experience with a couple of the industries she skewers here than most probably do (I've worked in them). Where I think she goes wrong is where most books of this type go wrong-- in not considering more than one option.

It's probably not all that valid to put this book up against, say, Juliet Schor's The Overworked American, or other books of that ilk, because while they're all rants to some extent, most books of this type do propose solutions to the injustices they see, whereas Penny comes right out and tells you she's got nothin'. That, however, is a touch disingenuous, as back in the chapters where she's doing the skewering, she (quite correctly) points out that the current blend of capitalism and socialism rampant in American culture isn't working, and then usually, often within the same breath, intimates that the proper correction for the problem would be to move farther to the socialist side. (I didn't count the number of times the phrase "more regulation" appears in the book, but it was there often enough to stand out.) As with Schor and other authors who've come before her, the idea that moving farther to the capitalist side only enter her mind fleetingly, and is dismissed in one sentence (unbridled capitalism "inevitably returns to tyranny"). More telling, the idea of different regulation never seems to occur. Why is it that no one else who writes about the myriad problems of the current American culture (and even the staunchest conservatives bashing this book, I hope, will not dismiss Penny's very accurate assessment that there are, in fact, myriad problems with the current American culture) takes the idea of "reform" in any way but the current, gerrymandered definition? Too cynical, maybe.

But to excessively criticize Penny's lack of viable solutions, or to pick away at the ones she does offer, ignores the fact that the rant itself is all too often right on the money. The chapter on the idiocy of the insurance industry is dead on. If anything, it doesn't go far enough; that's understandable, however, from someone who didn't spend eight and a half miserable years examining the rot from inside the apple. (I doubt most people would believe me if I wrote such a rant. I've touched on the tip of the iceberg a few times in my blog, and the reactions to the stuff I figured people would believe were shocked enough.) Similarly her bafflement over the stupidity of the banking industry. The arguments she makes for why these things are stupid are simple common sense; I can't imagine anyone reading the book and not identifying with what she's saying. You can't tell me there's anyone who's ever had a bank account or an insurance policy who hasn't dealt with this. It's endemic-- and that's Penny's point.

So, really, I guess the best thing I can say is lower your expectations. This isn't a book about offering solutions. It's a book about complaining that everything is wrong with the world. You want solutions? Come up with them on your own. But there are many, many good starting points for thinking about solutions to be found here. ***

One of the many unarguable observations here concerns how pathetically easily "we," as what's left of a nation, are, these days, cajoled into supporting the very cause which is sinking us. Genuinely sad, if predictable, to see the one-star review folks crawl out from under their Limbaugh rocks just long enough to type their little starry-eyed drivel condemnations. Substitute "I'm right, dammit, and I won't be shown otherwise" for each of their comments, and move on to the thoughtful reviews. This is an uncommonly sharp little volume focusing on the dupers and the duped who combine with such effect and regularity these days to diminish our once great country and dangle over our--and our children's--heads the very real prospect of forever losing what was good. Ms. Penny is a terrific--and terrifically well informed--writer of great perception and delightful style, who makes me laugh out loud not infrequently. This ability and approach helps greatly when taking on a subject guaranteed to make the reader want to shriek. Five stars only because the choice of a sixth is not offered. A brilliant, clear, horrifying, funny and eminently readable book on an absolutely essential subject. Write on, Ms. Penny. I'll be waiting.

Penny's book is a great eye-opener. While works like these aren't great literature, they are great in being recent and refreshingly common-sense. Laura Penny makes no bones about being a "leftie" but she is more common sensical than hippie-dippie, and boy does Western culture need a massive dose of that.

The book just totally reinforced the world-changing words my cousin told me years and years ago: "Don't watch TV. TV is a wasteland." I realized he was right, and with this hyper consumer culture we live in today he remains right.

A great commentary on the bankrupt/vapid times we live in. I now dislike Wal-Mart even more. Great, great book!!!

Sometimes outsiders have a better perspective on our newly emerging redneck-corporate theocracy, than our own homegrown,(not to say over-fed) pundits.A well researched fun read.

"... it doesn't mean that they're not after you", the saying goes.

This seems like an appropriate sentence to go with this book, particularly considering some of the less positive reviews it received. Meaning: yes, Laura Penny might seem brash, offensive, even ideologically biased (who isn't?) - but that doesn't mean that any of her contentions and arguments are false.

Quite the opposite. Her book is a refreshing incursion into modern Western societies (with the U.S.A. in the foreground, something which seems to offend some people - though a hegemonic and imperialistic nation should hardly be expected NOT to be the centre of attention and criticism at shaky times).

Claiming that most (if not all) of the supposed information delivered to us via the media, politicians/government, big corporations, institutions and bureaucracies, is a distortion of reality - and therefore a blunt attempt to bull***t the public, - Laura Penny proposes to look at what is happening behind the glitzy appearances and fancy speeches. She succeeds to do this with elegance, wit, and a straightforward discourse that clearly contrasts with the bogus messages and ideology she is criticizing.

Penny calls our attention to the unbelievable amount of bull***t we are confronted with every day, to the point that reality tends to be obliterated by a sham surface of propaganda slogans. An important distinction is drawn between lying and bull***ting: while the first is a clear falsification, the latter is a "mere" twisting of facts - whereby unimportant bits of information get blown out of proportion and the actual relevant issues are buried under heaps of platitudes or incomprehensible verbosity. However, because this distortion is so ubiquitous these days (in fact, the author convincingly argues that never before have we been so overwhelmed by fibs and hoaxes, hypocrisy and swindles), our reactions range from annoyed incredulity to sheer indifference, but rarely ever is there an outcry of indignation. Which is understandable, since even concern and indignation have been successfully appropriated by groups or institutions with dubious interests, so that many people (particularly the young) end up simply sneering with suspicion at everyone and everything.

Penny's book goes on to show how this is connected with socio-economic developments of the past decades. She explores the causal relations between the rise of monopolistic mega-corporations, government policies supporting the interests of those corporations, and the (mostly somewhat negative) effects of this on employment, living conditions, consumption, information and entertainment in North America. In the end, we have here another depiction of the impact of globalized capitalism and neo-liberal politics on everyday life. In the several chapters of her book, Penny looks at the appearances promoted by advertisers, PRs, CEOs, broker dealers and banks, pharmaceutics and health industries, insurance companies, government officials, the so-called service industry (particularly retailers and call centres), advertinfotainers (or whatever one is supposed to call the news media these days) and even academe, - repeatedly (and very amusingly) contrasting them with the more crude reality of their actions and implicit interests. The end-result is an informative and well-founded confirmation of many people's discontents (with references to a great number of websites, articles and books to support the data and statistics).

Of course, none of this is really new - and the author is the first to recognize that her topic is all but a "revelation" to most readers. However, Penny insists on pinpointing the sheer absurdity of most current events, campaigns and slogans, not for the sake of simply complaining, but to actually prove how deeply some actions and words end up affecting people. And how much those same actions and words are in contradiction with the (really somewhat idealistic) supposed principles of democracy and enlightenment.

Ah, well. Here we go again. The point being: yes, we all know (or at least secretly suspect) that we are being misinformed and cheated more often than not - but who cares? And if someone does care, so what?

Penny certainly gets excited every now and then - but her writing talent saves her from drowning in self-pity or reprimanding. She is mostly able to overcome that with humorous remarks and endearing self-mockery. In that sense, her cynicism appears to me more rewarding than Michael Moore or Naomi Klein, who easily become boringly moralistic or idealistic. Penny promises no revolution. She doesn't even have many demands.

Sure, she doesn't make a secret of her humanistic ideals and leftish leanings, which might be to her own disadvantage in the end - after all, the world really hasn't been as "humane" as most of us would expect. Ever. Most things happening to our species (now globally, so we're all in it together - including the CEO in his neat and expensive Manhattan penthouse, breathing in all the smog and worrying about his money) are actually rather discouraging.

But we ARE constantly being promised "paradise on Earth" - at least for the past 200 years or so. In fact, now more than ever we are surrounded by millions of messages promoting bigger, better, brighter, faster, safer, nicer everything - even though unemployment or (at best) underemployment rates are shooting up in the West, millions of people and entire nations are appallingly indebted, health and living conditions in the supposedly "affluent" West are steadily declining, the planet's environment is in a shambles, and "terror" is looming from every corner of the world. No wonder some of us are beginning to feel resentful!

In the end, Penny invites her readers to openly admit the bull***t they are surrounded by, but also to laugh about it, and to become a conscious crank - which is to say: "if others can endlessly spread around so much humbug, why shouldn't YOU, friend and neighbour, go ahead and grumble about it?"

All in all, this book may become a consoling companion for those who feel disturbed enough by what they see and hear and experience - but don't necessarily have much hope or faith in overwhelming solutions. Particularly when so many "solutions" being sold to us turn out to be... just more bull***t.