chrissiegfried

** spoiler alert ** I had to realize halfway through the book that the subtitle (A Journey Through the Madness Industry) was a clue that this book wasn’t entirely about psychopaths. When he seems to be rambling about a barely related topic he is actually getting into the subject in the subtitle. It is about crazy folks or just different people in general, and about the little bit of craziness that we have in us all. Ronson, quite bravely actually, delves into the ethical questions of his own career, having tracked down, interviewed, and exposed crazy people and extremists all over the world. He begins to see this crazy-people-hunting in not only his own journalistic style but on tv and in all areas of the press. He meets a woman who cruelly made a system for finding just the right kind of crazy people for their Jerry Springeresque show. Practically every prime-time program is populated by people who are just the right sort of mad, and I now knew what the formula was. The right sort of mad are people who are a bit madder than we fear we’re becoming, and in a recognizable way. We might be anxious but we aren’t as anxious as they are. We might be paranoid but we aren’t as paranoid as they are. We are entertained by them, and comforted that we’re not as mad as they are…. David Shayler’s tragedy is that his madness has spiraled into something too outlandish, too out-of-the-ball-park, and consequently useless. We don’t want obvious exploitation. We want smoke-and-mirrors … Well, as well as delving into our own, ordinary little madnesses Jon goes around to prisons that keep highly dangerous psychopaths. He talks to cold blooded killers over a table while scribbling away in his notebook. He also interviews the super rich of wall street to root out some psychopaths. His findings there ending up in a sort of gray area. Early in the book he went to Scientology for their opinion on psychiatry being evil. This immediately flew up a red flag for me in the area of trusting anything that this guy has to say for the rest of the book. But later on in other chapters he redeemed himself quite properly by pointing out all the proof that the crazy Scientologists were wrong. I was thinking to myself that he should familiarize himself with the Skeptic movement and it would help him out quite a bit. Well, at the end of the book I couldn’t help but notice this. There were four or five pages in the chapter “Night of the Living Dead” that were boring and I needed someone to tell me. Ben Goldacre was happy, maybe a little excessively happy, to do so. Adam Curtis and Rebecca Watson were brilliantly clever sounding boards… He was therefor redeemed for good and I threw out my doubts about his abilities. I can’t imagine writing a good book about 9/11 Truthers, criticism of of the DSM and drugs that are dispensed for psychological problems, and the increase in autism diagnosis without chatting with some skeptics. Well done. It lends credibility to the whole thing in my book. I found myself annoyed throughout with his weak and self-effacing personality, talking about what a nervous, paranoid and obsessive compulsive person he is. Going off to talk with his interviewees, he comes across as sort of lost, naive, and boyish, an ignorant kid asking for information for his school paper. As the book goes along though he slowly but surely shows a stronger side of himself. Like the following in a heated conversation with a truther: “She won’t look at the evidence,” interrupted David. “I’m getting the same sort of vibe off you here, Jon. A viewpoint arrived at without evidence is prejudice. To say Muslims carried out 7/7—those three guys from Leeds and one from Aylesbury—to say they did it is RACIST, Jon. It’s racist. It’s racist. You’re being RACIST to Muslims if you think they carried out that attack on the evidence there.” There was a short silence. “Oh, fuck off,” I said. As for the content and message of the book and what I was able to learn from it - it is a great book worthy of my recommendations. He took in all points of view and ended in many a gray area but rightfully so. There were many great insights into our society along the way and it was humorous, engaging, and that test of all tests! It was damn good fun.

2023-07-24 05:47