![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Spent some time doing non-review reading while beached on the couch.
Father Knows Best: Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate--The Essential Guide for Progressives (Paperback) by Lakoff
Much of this book can be summed up as "Yes, I *knew* that already, I've been paying attention." When the Post is doing multi-page articles on framing and coded language, there isn't a lot of actual news when it comes to discussing manipulation of language.
Yet this is still worth the skimming because it lays out so starkly the premise behind trickle down economics, the prosperity gospel, and neocon/dominionist takeover of social issues: think of the nation as a family with the President as father.
Now shove that family into the paradigm described in Dobson's Dare to Discipline.
Suddenly, the unified neocon theory snaps into place, in a way that never had for me before. When you take it as a given that the head of the household has a moral imperative to lay down the law, no questions asked, and whallop anyone who deviates for their own moral good, then doesn't this Administration make so much more sense? And when you take it as a given that doing good financially = doing good morally, then the prosperity Gospel becomes something that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John really meant, even if they didn't say it outright. And of course people will show their benevolence by allowing their good fortunes to trickle down... even if most of recorded history consistently shows otherwise.
The last chapter is rebuttal talking points for those of us who think that Dobson is a baby-beating, animal-abusing martinet whose gospel can be summed up entirely as "I've got mine, screw you."
Fire is a Feminist Issue, pt. 1: Chicago Death Trap: The Iroquois Theatre Fire of 1903 by Brandt.
In 1903, Chicago's booming downtown advertised itself as a woman's paradise. Come to town and bring the kids! You can do a little shopping at our wonderful stores, then have a nice lunch at one of our respectable restaurants, then cap a lovely outing with a family-friendly matinee at one of our theaters! Our streets are patrolled by many fine police officers who will keep you safe!
...our fire inspectors, on the other hand...
Like the Titanic, the Iroquois was supposed to be a model of safety. Like the Titanic, complacency, a rush to open, and the failure to use several fail-safes cost hundreds of lives. Many of which were lost, once again like the Titanic, as fleeing people ran into locked gates and were trampled and smothered to death by the panicked crowd behind them. (For instance, one of the ways they kept people from sneaking from the cheap seats to the good ones was to lock grills across the stairs down into the orchestra.)
This is an unfortunately thin book at barely 150 pages, and that is my only complaint. With the amount of research that went into it (it is thoroughly end noted), I would have appreciated that there be many more quotes and newspaper articles of the day included in the main text. Other than that, it is flawlessly laid out and compellingly, if sparsely, written. The first few chapters deal with the building of the theater and the history of the show currently running ("Mr. Bluebeard," a comedy starring Eddie Foy). Most of the middle is taken up with a description of the fire, the methods of escape (or the bottlenecks that killed), the rescue efforts both successful and unsuccessful, and the horrific task of identifying the charred bodies, over 2/3 of them women and children on a post-Christmas holiday outing. The final chapters discuss the round-robin of groups blaming everyone but themselves for the tragedy - the theater said it was the fault of the the show, the show said it was the fault of the fire inspectors, the fire inspectors said it was the fault of the theater, etc. - and the fate of the building itself.
The adjectiveless writing blunts both triumph and tragedy, but even a bare just-the-facts-ma'am style cannot hide the immensity of what happened. The fire burned for only 30 minutes. 602 people died, most of fumes within the first 5 minutes. So many people were rescued this way or that way; so many other people died in this bottleneck or clawing at that locked door. Most heartbreaking of all in the bluntness are descriptions of who died and who made it out, because often only one or two people survived of entire family or school outings.
It's very interesting, in a heartbreaking CSI sort of way; CSI because it so clinically describes what happened, what went right, and what went wrong. Heartbreaking because this is not forensic fiction.
Oh, and why did I title this review "part 1"? Because Triangle is also in my TBR stack.
Father Knows Best: Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate--The Essential Guide for Progressives (Paperback) by Lakoff
Much of this book can be summed up as "Yes, I *knew* that already, I've been paying attention." When the Post is doing multi-page articles on framing and coded language, there isn't a lot of actual news when it comes to discussing manipulation of language.
Yet this is still worth the skimming because it lays out so starkly the premise behind trickle down economics, the prosperity gospel, and neocon/dominionist takeover of social issues: think of the nation as a family with the President as father.
Now shove that family into the paradigm described in Dobson's Dare to Discipline.
Suddenly, the unified neocon theory snaps into place, in a way that never had for me before. When you take it as a given that the head of the household has a moral imperative to lay down the law, no questions asked, and whallop anyone who deviates for their own moral good, then doesn't this Administration make so much more sense? And when you take it as a given that doing good financially = doing good morally, then the prosperity Gospel becomes something that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John really meant, even if they didn't say it outright. And of course people will show their benevolence by allowing their good fortunes to trickle down... even if most of recorded history consistently shows otherwise.
The last chapter is rebuttal talking points for those of us who think that Dobson is a baby-beating, animal-abusing martinet whose gospel can be summed up entirely as "I've got mine, screw you."
Fire is a Feminist Issue, pt. 1: Chicago Death Trap: The Iroquois Theatre Fire of 1903 by Brandt.
In 1903, Chicago's booming downtown advertised itself as a woman's paradise. Come to town and bring the kids! You can do a little shopping at our wonderful stores, then have a nice lunch at one of our respectable restaurants, then cap a lovely outing with a family-friendly matinee at one of our theaters! Our streets are patrolled by many fine police officers who will keep you safe!
...our fire inspectors, on the other hand...
Like the Titanic, the Iroquois was supposed to be a model of safety. Like the Titanic, complacency, a rush to open, and the failure to use several fail-safes cost hundreds of lives. Many of which were lost, once again like the Titanic, as fleeing people ran into locked gates and were trampled and smothered to death by the panicked crowd behind them. (For instance, one of the ways they kept people from sneaking from the cheap seats to the good ones was to lock grills across the stairs down into the orchestra.)
This is an unfortunately thin book at barely 150 pages, and that is my only complaint. With the amount of research that went into it (it is thoroughly end noted), I would have appreciated that there be many more quotes and newspaper articles of the day included in the main text. Other than that, it is flawlessly laid out and compellingly, if sparsely, written. The first few chapters deal with the building of the theater and the history of the show currently running ("Mr. Bluebeard," a comedy starring Eddie Foy). Most of the middle is taken up with a description of the fire, the methods of escape (or the bottlenecks that killed), the rescue efforts both successful and unsuccessful, and the horrific task of identifying the charred bodies, over 2/3 of them women and children on a post-Christmas holiday outing. The final chapters discuss the round-robin of groups blaming everyone but themselves for the tragedy - the theater said it was the fault of the the show, the show said it was the fault of the fire inspectors, the fire inspectors said it was the fault of the theater, etc. - and the fate of the building itself.
The adjectiveless writing blunts both triumph and tragedy, but even a bare just-the-facts-ma'am style cannot hide the immensity of what happened. The fire burned for only 30 minutes. 602 people died, most of fumes within the first 5 minutes. So many people were rescued this way or that way; so many other people died in this bottleneck or clawing at that locked door. Most heartbreaking of all in the bluntness are descriptions of who died and who made it out, because often only one or two people survived of entire family or school outings.
It's very interesting, in a heartbreaking CSI sort of way; CSI because it so clinically describes what happened, what went right, and what went wrong. Heartbreaking because this is not forensic fiction.
Oh, and why did I title this review "part 1"? Because Triangle is also in my TBR stack.
