Laura PennyPenny’s book is not as much as a non-fiction account your current society as much as a very well-researched rant. Her premise is that our society rests on a base of bright, shiny gossamer thin bullshit. She differentiates “bullshit” and “lies” by stating the liars still know the truth and care enough about it that they are trying to obfuscate around it. Bullshitters just don’t care. Whatever works for them at the moment will do. Our economy and government are castles in the sky, created by the fuming puffs of meaningless hot-air emitted from politicians, PR firms, advertisers and CEOs. For all the words we hear, very few have any depth or real meaning.
Now, none of this is any news to me, nor I doubt to you. However, Penny’s writing style is what makes this book so delightful. No calm and journalistic phraseology here, no sirree bob. She rips into our culture with a language born of Gen-X, television and a society of distrustful cynics.
“When I was rooting around for exemplary Republicans, and began looking at DeLay, I liked him for a number of reasons. He and all the lesser Tom Delays, who share his Christ-and-Mammon creed but lack his diabolical skills, are loving proof that I am not paranoid. My most tinfoil-hatted fantasies pale in comparison to the things right-wing radical like Delay and his ilk actually say and do.”
And for you SNC grads, there’s even a chapter entitled “painting the lawn green.”