About the book, from the publisher:
Americans are as safe, well fed, securely sheltered, long-lived, free, and healthy as any human beings who have ever lived on the planet. But we are down on America. So why do we hate us? According to Dick Meyer, the following items on this (much abbreviated) list are some of the contributors to our deep disenchantment with our own culture:Among the praise for the book:
Cell-phone talkers broadcasting the intimate details of their lives in public spaces
Worship of self-awareness, self-realization, and self-fulfillment
T-shirts that read, “Eat Me”
Facebook, MySpace, and kids being taught to market themselves
High-level cheating in business and sports
Reality television and the cosmetic surgery boom
Multinational corporations that claim, “We care about you.”
The decline of organic communities
A line of cosmetics called “S.L.U.T.”
The phony red state–blue state divide
The penetration of OmniMarketing into OmniMedia and the insinuation of both into every facet of our lives
You undoubtedly could add to the list with hardly a moment’s thought. In Why We Hate Us, Meyer absolutely nails America’s early-twenty-first-century mood disorder. He points out the most widespread carriers of the why-we-hate-us germs, including the belligerence of partisan politics that perverts our democracy, the decline of once common manners, the vulgarity of Hollywood entertainment, the superficiality and untrustworthiness of the news media, the cult of celebrity, and the disappearance of authentic neighborhoods and voluntary organizations (the kind that have actual meetings where one can hobnob instead of just clicking in an online contribution).
Meyer argues—with biting wit and observations that make you want to shout, “Yes! I hate that too!”—that when the social, spiritual, and political turmoil that followed the sixties collided with the technological and media revolution at the turn of the century, something inside us hit overload. American culture no longer reflects our own values. As a result, we are now morally and existentially tired, disoriented, anchorless, and defensive. We hate us and we wonder why.
Why We Hate Us reveals why we do and also offers a thoughtful and uplifting prescription for breaking out of our current morass and learning how to hate us less. It is a penetrating but always accessible Culture of Narcissism for a new generation, and it carries forward ideas that resounded with readers in bestsellers such as On Bullshit and Bowling Alone.
"In this study of American social self-loathing Meyer addresses why Americans have come to hate themselves (and each other) at a time of national prosperity and relative peace. In compelling, wonderfully cranky and comic prose, the author contends that the radical social changes of the 1960s and the recent technological revolution have drastically altered the pace of life, leaving Americans morally and existentially tired, disoriented, anchorless, and defensive. In arguments familiar to any sociology student, Meyer describes how the rise of freedom of choice in nearly every aspect of American life has been accompanied by the enervation of traditional social institutions (Our communities have been neutered, and our traditional, inherited moral, religious, and aesthetic sensibilities have been discredited). Pointed critiques of political theater, celebrity culture, the rise of marketing and media conglomerates and the decline of manners elaborate on the growing trends of bullshit, belligerence, and boorishness. Meyer is gleefully critical and very sincere in his concern for the state of American life; his practical suggestions urging readers to turn the tide of self-hate and phoniness are a must-read for anyone fed up with modern life."Read an excerpt from Why We Hate Us, and learn more about the book at the publisher's website.
—Publishers Weekly
"Dick Meyer has done the impossible -- he diagnoses the self-loathing, moral confusion and ennui that infect supersized America without hectoring us and badgering us, and without tiresome self-righteousness or smugness. Why We Hate Us takes us on a rollicking, laugh-out-loud ride across the brittle American landscape, and by 'us' I mean all of us -- liberal and conservative, black and white, city-dwellers, suburbanites and farmers. Dick Meyer understands that our national culture is on life-support, and he has thought long and hard about how to resuscitate it. Read this book, if not for you, than for your children, and for the America they will inherit."—Jeffrey Goldberg, Atlantic Monthly national correspondent and author of Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror
“A widely respected player in national politics, Dick Meyer has transcended the game most Americans hate to describe a larger context of relentless marketing, omnipresent pseudo-events and above all the enshrinement of phoniness that pollute the public square. Mixing original research, a keen, analytic mind and mordant, wicked wit, Why We Hate Us should be the bible for the vast majority of Americans who tell pollsters the country is on the wrong track but aren't clear why.”
—Thomas Oliphant, journalist and bestselling author of Praying for Gil Hodges: A Memoir of the 1955 World Series and One Family's Love of the Brooklyn Dodgers
“This is a serious, thought provoking discourse on America in the age of instant communication and a reminder that our new ability to know everything about everybody all the time may not be all good.”
—Bob Schieffer, Chief Washington Correspondent, CBS News
“Meyer has written a deeply informed critique of those ‘toxic and menacing’ aspects of American culture in which individuals, families, and communities have suffered as ‘self-awareness, self-realization and self-actualization became the measure of emotional and existential health.’ Meyer has put into words the tensions and anxieties that grip all Americans as they go about the difficult task of achieving happiness while struggling to ‘find a compass’ to give their lives moral legitimacy and purpose. If you are aiming for one guide to the well-lived life, buy this book.”—Thomas B. Edsall, Joseph Pulitzer II and Edith Pulitzer Moore Professor at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, Political Editor of the Huffington Post, and author of Building Red America: The New Conservative Coalition and the Drive for Permanent Power
Dick Meyer was a reporter, producer, online editor, and columnist at CBS News in Washington for more than twenty-three years. He is now the editorial director of digital media at National Public Radio.
The Page 99 Test: Why We Hate Us.
--Marshal Zeringue
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