Is there a more over-used pseudo-intellectual descriptor in American media and politics than "Orwellian?" It's become such a flabby term despite its origins in a mind that despised lard-butted prose. (And the passive voice as well, but there you go). Every large-scale political organization of any type is Orwellian to today's commentators, and any big media company fits the bill as well. Indeed, almost any intervention by the many (or at least, by a bunch) over the less-many can be slapped with the name of a man who died in 1950. Once "Orwellian" has been cast, the usual references to "big brother" and the "thought police" are nigh.
Can the term be made relevant sixty years after the defeat of fascism in Europe and nearly a generation after the fall of the Soviets? The answer is a resounding yes, thanks to a new volume edited by my friend and colleague Andras Szanto.
What Orwell Didn't Know: Propaganda and the New Face of American Politics is a series of essays by contributors like George Soros, Francine Prose, Drew Westen, George Lakoff, Victor Navasky, Nick Lemann, Orville Schell, Samantha Power, Mark Danner, Farnaz Fassihi, Francis Fitzgerald, Michael Massing, Aryeh Neier, David Rieff, Geoff Cowan, and Patricia Williams. The book is timed to celebate the 60th anniversary of Orwell's classic essay on propaganda, Politics and the English Language.
It's become my "train book," a volume I turn to a bit at a time; I'm about three-quarters through and I think it's the right time to recommend it unreservedly.
Conservatives may be offended because many of the essays center on the use of politial language by the Bush Administration to bring this country to war; and the authors are indisputably left-leaning in their politics. Despite those two constructs, Andras and his parter Orville Schell have still managed to build a vast canvas of contemporary media analysis - one that contains plenty of vicious brushstrokes for liberals as well, especially for our mass surrender to the language of the right over the past decade or so.
Indeed, the surrender of intellectual free will may have been the greatest of the secular sins described by Orwell - the lazy group-think we're prone to falling into, the very opening for those who use messages to control people. What Orwell Didn't Know: Propaganda and the New Face of American Politics takes on the Bush Administration for its wide use of disinformation, but it also points a finger at an uninvolved, disconnected, pleasure-obsessed public.
For anyone interested in media and politics, in the current rhetorical state of the republic, in causes and marketing and policy, it's a must read.
from Amazon.
