Outrage, Inc.

When I was a kid, I was big into conservationism.  I thought re-using things and recycling things was pretty cool.  We had a guy on our street that worked for Reynolds Aluminum Recycling Company (as I remember it, anyway; I could be wrong), and I remember driving with my dad to a semi trailer set up in a parking lot in Layton to drop off a bag of old aluminum cans and get a few dollars in return.  It seemed like a pretty cool thing to a kid.  I watched National Geographic specials about the ozone hole with interest and once even got a book from those Scholastic catalogs they always send around in schools about things kids could do to save the planet and stave off the impending ice age.

Outrage, Inc.: How the Liberal Mob Ruined Science, Journalism, and Hollywood by Derek Hunter (ISBN: 978-0-06-283552-9) talks about that very ice age and how it never came, but the same alarmism that drove the talk about it has not abated at all.  In fact, according to Hunter, the hype about the ice age’s replacement cause, climate change, is exponentially greater and has been combined with overwrought hype about dozens of other issues.  The thesis of Hunter’s work is that that hype is lacking a foundation in reality, but has overtaken all of pop culture, a lot of the news media, and a lot of the scientific world.  He talks a lot about the Leftist bias in all of those areas that the Right so often complains about.  In each section, he provides concrete examples and then some analysis to drive home the points being made.  He digs into some things that many readers probably would not even consider on their own, such as the budgets (and sources of those same budgets) for various movies.  He found that while the movie studios and producers make their mainstream fare, they also unabashedly spend millions on agenda-driven movies that usually don’t do well at the box office.  An agenda-driven press, though, happily covers those films in great detail.  Hunter discusses the origins of some of pop culture’s environmentalist stars like Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson and why they are really only qualified to speak about certain issues, but seem to be asked for what are portrayed as authoritative statements on a variety of things.  Hunter notes that if people can be incited to anger, they do what all people do when angry: make less-effective decisions, including asking for government policy that limits liberty and voting in politicians that want to expand government control.

The book was an interesting read.  The bias argument is an old one that is not always easily provable either way.  Hunter’s myriad examples were welcome additions to this argument.  The strong connection he made between the ineffectiveness of emotion-driven decision making and the push in the media to keep people worked up about something was well made.  In the last few years, the Right in America has started paying more attention to pop culture than in the past, and they are right to do so if they want to make inroads there.  Hunter’s analysis explains why this is so key.  While I appreciated so many concrete examples of movies, newspapers, and other works that bolstered the points Hunter was making, I was disappointed that the book was so laid-back in tone and even had a few of the lame jokes that both political sides make about the other.  Leaving that out and using the same pages and ink for a few more solid examples of Hollywood spending, editorial bias, or pseudo-science would have improved the book markedly and made it applicable to a wider audience.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXIV John Pruess.

An American Life

Ronald Reagan, since he was president for two terms, was president for a significant portion of my childhood.  I was quite young for most of it, so I don’t have a lot of vivid memories associated with Reagan.  Probably the most vivid memory I have is that some of Oliver North’s testimony about the Iran-Contra affair interrupted some cartoons I was watching.  I listened to the hearing for a couple minutes, but found it intensely boring and was mostly upset that I’d miss the cartoon.  I most certainly witnessed some of the events that his policies supported, such as the fall of Communism and the end of the Cold War.  People around talked a lot about the economy’s recovery and lowered taxes, although those were less understandable to a kid than the changes on the international scene.

An American Life: The Autobiography by Ronald Reagan (ISBN: 0-671-69198-8) chronicles Reagan’s life from the time he was born to the end of his presidency.  He spends significant time on his childhood, teenage years, and college years.  These formative years provided a strong foundation that would serve as a basis for Reagan’s later success in life and in politics.  He was open about the shortcomings that both he and his family members had (such as his alcoholic father).  He chronicled his entry into the media business, first as a sportscaster and later as an actor, where he had some considerable success.  The major portion of the book, though, is dedicated to Reagan’s political pursuits.  He spends a little bit of time discussing his stint as governor of California.  He talks about political friends and foes, the problems that faced the state, and what he was able to do about them, claiming victory in some instances and admitting defeat in others.  Easily half of the book is dedicated to Regan’s time as president of the United States.  The budget, the Cold War, and foreign policy are the major themes.  In the discussion about budget, there is a major sub-current: liberal bias in the media and the inability of the Democratcs to compromise.  Reagan clearly found the Cold War and his role in it to be extremely important because the book talked about that a lot and included more journal entries quoted on that topic than any other.  He also quoted lengthy passages from correspondence between himself and Soviet leaders.  Here, it seemed, details mattered.  Iran-Contra was dealt with extensively.  Reagan wanted the U.S. to play a major role in foreign policy in Europe and South America, but strove for balance that encouraged the countries in those regions to solve their own problems, much like his economic policy at home tried to encourage the American people to do their part to pull themselves out of their economic hardships.

I thought the book was a very interesting read.  It’s an autobiography (although ghostwritten), so it’s obviously going to be slanted, but I thought that Reagan was rather honest about things.  While there were some topics that got almost no attention (his first marriage got one paragraph in a book that had over 700 pages), I found that to honest, too, and something that people nowadays could probably learn from: stuff that happened in the past, especially if there were mistakes involved, is in the past, and to become a better person, we need to focus on learning from our mistakes and improving ourselves going forward.  The book was nostalgic in some senses.  His descriptions of the work, the people, and the finished products, both in radio and on screen certainly hearkened back to a simpler time.  His entry into politics was interesting.  I liked that he first got involved by being involved in the actors’ unions.  This local involvement is still where people can make real differences.  Local politics has a very direct and very real impact on one’s daily life, and it would be to everyone’s benefit to be more involved in those processes.  Reagan talked about the Democratic Party leaving him behind, and people talk in the same way (about both major parties) today.  If that is something people fear, the solution is the same: get involved.  The book didn’t discuss his home life very much, and it seems that his children got more mentions as they became adults.  It was interesting how that was handled, but I don’t mind it.  Modern culture wants to know everything about everyone, à la the Kardashians, but respect for privacy and personal space is something modern culture could learn from Reagan, too.  The criticisms of liberalism were interesting, considering how much more moderate the Democratic party was in Reagan’s time and the fact that the media was, at least in popular opinion, less biased.  Reagan’s criticisms were likely legitimate back then, and it was disappointing to see that not much has changed.  I found the journal entries a little much.  I would’ve liked more on domestic policy (it is here where I disagree with some of Reagan’s policies and would’ve enjoyed hearing about his ideas from the horse’s mouth).

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXIV John Pruess.

This Is Serbia Calling

In all wars and under all authoritarian regimes that I have heard of, there has been an underground movement of some sort or another.  I admit that I know very little of many of them.  Whether it be the Underground Railroad of the American Civil War period or the resistance efforts during Germany’s World War II-era conquest of Europe or the people in the former Soviet Union who yearned for freedom and did what they could, the stories are spell-binding.  Some, of course, are better than others, but I find it hard to pass judgement on those who made only small contributions to resistance movements; they did what they could in an atmosphere where even the littlest action against a tyrannical government could and often did result in death, sometimes for one’s family and friends, too.  I hadn't really heard about such people when it came to the Bosnian War, but I figured there had to be some.

This Is Serbia Calling: Rock 'n' Roll Radio and Belgrade's Underground Resistance by Matthew Collin (ISBN: 1-85242-776-0), tells about a few of the people who tried to change the minds of Serbians during the war with Bosnia & Herzegovina.  I found the very idea of someone going against what Serbia's ironically-named (his first named means free) despot, Slobodan Milošević, worth reading about.  The book tells the story of how what is now Serbia's second-largest TV and radio station came to be, how it presented a constant message that went against the ultra-nationalist propaganda of the Serbian ruler.  It was often a dangerous message, one that resulted in jail time, seized property, and the constant fear of death and beatings.  Most of the radio station's personnel suffered only lightly, but others in the political opposition were murdered.  B92 struggled to present a message that would galvanize the people of Serbia against the war, and once that was over, against the government that had brought so much trouble to their land.  B92 was no great supporter of NATO or the West when they started bombing Serbia during the Serbian campaign in Kosovo, but mostly stayed on message as they continued to denounce the their corrupt president.  They brought a message of hope and freedom to the people, which ultimately resulted in the people of Serbia taking to the streets and quickly, with minimal bloodshed, throwing Milošević out of power.

The book was an interesting history told from an unusual perspective (and in the highly charged vocabulary of the Balkans).  The other resistance movements I've read about have not had such an open presence as B92, a radio station, did.  Milošević had a strategy that left those dissenting voices around that he figured didn't really matter, so there's probably an argument to be made about the real threat B92 presented the regime, but the fact that they were eventually taken over, probably means they were too effective for the regime's liking at the spreading of their pro-democratic message.  I was intrigued by their dislike for the West, even though Western governments were pumping money and manpower into keeping B92 and other anti-Milošević organizations relevant.  I liked reading about how, once Milošević was deposed, most people involved in the movements against him just returned to their everyday lives.  They weren't seeking power or fame, just freedom.  They were willing to stand up for what they believed, some at considerable risk to their physical safety or even lives.  It was great to read about people desiring freedom, taking matters into their own hands, and working to get it.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXIV John Pruess.