I've been doing some reading. I know, crazy. I just read Ray Anderson's "A Mid-Course Correction." Here is a guy who is the CEO of the world's largest carpet manufacturing company and he decided to convert his business (which generates huge pollution and is pretty much the worst type of business next to paper-making for the environment) into a wholly sustainable one -- eliminating all pollution and any kind of 'waste' be it particles, pollution, or energy. He was interviewed in the film "The Corporation," and he is certainly a very amicable and respectable guy. The only problem is, he's not a writer. This book reads like a 200 page email -- or worse, like a blog -- about Anderson's views on the environment, which are entirely derivative of several big writers who he has befriended. His vision came after reading Paul Hawken's "the ecology of commerce," an absolutely amazing book -- but Hawken read 25 million words before penning his book. Anderson basically repeats a lot of stuff that is common knowledge in the enviro world, and through pretty bad writing he combs through what sounds like reviews of the books he read, ideas about his company, ideas on environmental issues, and basically goes over the same 4 points about 236 times by the time you get to the end. Poor guy. I think he's the best CEO I as a consumer could hope that these awful businesses have. I just don't care for his writing.
Next we have a guy named Bob Fellows, a magician and 'mind reader'/motivational speaker who I saw perform at Hopkins during our orientation in 1998. I'm not sure how many of my classmates even remember this guy, but he was awesome and I vowed to track him down and see another of his shows nearly 5 years later. I kinda did. I tracked him down (it was hard because I didnt even know his name, so I had to look through articles from orientation that were published inthe Hopkins administrative newspaper and lists of events to figure out who the guy was.) Finally, I emailed him about 2 years ago, a very friendly email saying how awesome his show was and how I wanted to see another, and asked when his next college tour would be in NYC. He wrote back, told me a show coming up and I, of course, missed it. So recently I did the next best thing: I bought a book he wrote called "Easily Fooled," which sounded pretty much like his show from Hopkins. It was a 50 pg book with illustrations, so it was an easy read, but Fellows goes through a few cool ideas about 'the magician's choice' where you ask the person to choose something (that appears like they have control over the choice, like a deck of cards), but in reality the magician has only allowed for a particular outcome.
Finally, I'm now halfway through a Bill Orielly book "Who's looking out for you?" I figured I'd give him a shot, just to see what he's all about even though he's a scumbag and, more importantly, an idiot. What is incredible about his writing is a) how he comes across as if he is omniscient and simply knows all facts always and knows truth always, b) that he is so insanely self-righteous, self-indulgent, and obviously self-centered, c) how he believes he has some kind of connection with the common man.
That, and the fact that he doesnt have a single footnote or endnote, or reference to any of the historical 'facts' he spews. sure, he could be right, but every non-fiction book I read has footnotes or at least a bibliography. And O'rielly is supposedly a journalist, which means he should be damn certain everything he says is correct. But obviously that's not true.
Anyway, the main thing I do when I read a book (and this is the one thing I learned from j-school) is to question everything. "how do you know that?" is one line. When you read something, a fact, a statistic, a story about a historical figure, a historical event, unless it is about the person writing it, or is inside of a quote, your duty as a reader is to ask 'where's the proof.' For most books written by reasonable people, it's not so hard. They usually lay it out for you at the end or mostly right there on the page "The surgeon general said in his report in 1962 that smoking causes cancer." Ok, fair enough, easy to check.
But Oreilly and all these other idiots (on both sides) who write books and the Michael Moore's who make their 'documentaries' are really just pushing propoganda -- it tends to be highly biased but can stray to being outright lies and misinformation. mis-interpreting something can be forgiven, but mis-representing the truth is really bad. Like mis-quoting someone, or taking things out of context which moore excels at. O'reilly simply doesnt read the other side or tells them to shut up, or cuts their mic.
I just dont see how anyone could read this and think any of it is true. For some odd reason, there is zero accountability for O'reilly - he can say whatever he wants about events. The most credibility you get from this guy is on page 6 when he writes some nonsense about the Pope:
"BUT I COULD BE WRONG." he says. yes, I suppose you could, bill, but I'd rather not rely on that as your defense. I'd rather it be something like "I didn't factor in the research about birds and wind turbines when writing about how they have no effect on wildlife" or "The scientist I spoke to about this environmental issue who said global warming isn't a threat -- turns out he was getting funding from Exxon, so I should have gotten a few other opinions before committing to one." Those are the kinds of "I'm sorry"s you get from journalists.
Ok, I'm done. I'll tell you how the book ends!!
Labels: bitching, books
