«'tis the season to be phoney»
on boxing day 2003, michael bywater brilliantly reviewed william ian miller's new book faking it. while the "holiday season" is over, valentine's day is a week away and, well, the elections are upon us...«the fundamentals of democracy, liberty and fair dealing have never been so consistently and soupily dissembled. our liberties are being constrained under the guise of increasing them; following saddam's capture we are being fed, behind the transparently phony rhetoric of high purpose, the oldest logical error of all time, the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc. in this case, that means they got hussein because the "war" was, and is, a just one.»
do have a look at the editorial reviews section at the book's amazon.com page:
«...starting with hypocrisy, which emulates and contaminates virtue, miller considers the posturing inherent in such mechanisms of civility as religious ritual, seduction, apology and praise. after a due quota of vice spotting, miller warms up to his central theme, the self-consciousness that compromises not only action but identity. the emphasis shifts from behaviour to emotion: alienation, hatred, shame, anxiety, what miller aptly calls the "vexations" behind routine fakeries like professionalism and cosmetics and high-stakes games like courtship and passing...» «...he writes with wit and wisdom about the vain anxiety of being exposed as frauds in our professions, cads in our loves, and hypocrites to our creeds...»
