Your Call Is Important To Us
The Truth About Bullshit
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Ever been left spluttering over some fatuous fib trying to pass itself off as information, even as fact? Of course you have. We all have. It's b******t, and as Laura Penny sees it, we're drowning in the stuff. Your Call Is Important to Us is Penny's brilliant take on the "all-you-can-eat buffet of phoniness" that is our lives today.
"We live in an era of unprecedented bullshit production," Penny says. While b******t is not new, more money, more media, and more people at mics have led to a bullshit pandemic. Today, we are so used to exaggeration and obfuscation we rarely notice them any more.Thank goodness we have Penny as our witty, smart-aleck guide through the phoniness of advertising and public relations, the claptrap of big pharma, the gobbledygook of the media, and the poppycock of the service industry. Along the way, Penny takes direct aim at the major culprits and the insidious ways they distort reality.
As scathing as Michael Moore, as incisive as Naomi Klein, and as funny as Al Franken, Penny's take on the bullshit factor in modern life is a page-turner. Penny has a cheeky riff on that revealing question: "If my call is so important," she asks, "why doesn't anyone answer the damn phone?"
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The odious lies of advertising and PR; "morbidly obese CEO bonuses"; news networks that are "content providers" rather than sources of journalism; "nutraceuticals," "cosmeceuticals" and lifestyle drugs; overly powerful and financially motivated insurance companies and HMOs; and, of course, the reliably unreliable politicians Penny's political and corporate targets in this everything-and-the-kitchen-sink sendup are largely American (although she reserves some ammunition for her homeland, Canada or, as she lovingly calls it, "Soviet Canuckistan"), and rest assured the U.S.A. comes off pretty badly in comparison to its neighbor to the north. Penny, 30, is a teaching fellow at King's College in Halifax. Her common-sense, ordinary-language observations are peppered throughout with historical context and riffs on current pop culture. (Some of the latter feel on the verge of being dated.) Penny's exemplars and analyses of official and corporate insincerity give an otherwise flip and insubstantial work some credible heft even with the subtitle's blatant attempt to ride Harry Frankfurt's coattails.
