| Faking It: Sentimentalization of Modern Society | 
 enlarge | Creators: Digby C. Anderson, Peter Mullen
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 769372
Media: Paperback
Edition: New Ed
Pages: 224
ISBN: 0140280731
EAN: 9780140280739
ASIN: 0140280731
Publication Date: November 26, 1998
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: Posted same day/next day from Uk - general shelf wear
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| Customer Reviews:
 Predictable neocon preaching December 16, 2007
0 out of 4 found this review helpful
Everything was better fifty, a hundred, several hundred years ago. Poverty is poor people's fault for not being like the thoroughly virtuous middle classes. Modern Christianity can be judged from one visit to one service in one town and finding it 'not like it used to be in the old days'. Iris Murdoch has 'no talent for fiction' (sour grapes from a talentless English lecturer); D.H.Lawrence on the other hand, writes 'real' emotion.Modern women (tellingly, it's definitely women who should be preparing food, and women blamed for getting that and everything else wrong: this was published in *1998*, remember, but unsurprisingly, it reeks of good old fashioned misogyny)are lazy faddists because they prefer not to spend all day in the kitchen preparing everything by hand from scratch (making your own sausages is 'good housekeeping' and avoids waste, don't you know), having either grown it themselves or spent another day scouring half a dozen 'good' specialist retailers within several miles' radius. AIDS is quite simply a gay plague you get from bath-houses and cottaging, heterosexuals only get it in the movies or on TV as a plot to elevate gayness. Black people just need to learn some self-respect, work harder and not have so many kids because racism is an invention of intellectuals.
Serious evidence for all this? Good luck, you won't find it. They even include the old canard (easily disprovable by a minimum of actual research) that Hitler was a vegetarian to demonstrate the moral vacuum of not eating good red meat (healthy eating? Another female-stupid-emotion-oriented/Marxist/immoral/arrogant fad. Pass the port and goose liver pate. Wanting to be healthy is an indulgent, sentimental delusion anyway).
I give it one star for being half right about the Princess Diana fiasco. The rest of it? Imagine a portly, red-faced ex-colonel pontificating to cronies at his club...
 The excess of sentimentality pervading British Institutions November 7, 2001
18 out of 18 found this review helpful
This book is a must-read for anyone concerned with the current cult of faddism and sentimentality that pervades Britain today, affecting issues from healthcare and education to the funeral of the Princess of Wales.The main thrust is that an orgy of self-indulgence has overtaken Britain, culminating in organisational policies based on "feelings and emotions" rather than common sense. As a nation, we frequently complain about education, social security, healthcare etc. yet we seem more and more to resort to emotional and non-scientific remedies to cure all social ills, and less and less keen to allow personal responsibility. The viewpoints put forward by the Social Affairs Unit are hard-hitting and sometimes uncomfortable, but if honest debate is opened stripped of sentimentality and political correctness, it can only be a good thing. What a shame books like this are not more widely disseminated.
An interesting viewpoint on modern society August 3, 1999
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
This book, a collection of essays, gives a thorough analysis of the sentimentalisation of modern society in different areas. Emotions take over everywhere; a typical example is the late Diana, Princess of Wales, who, in this book, is thoroughly debunked as someone who was only led by sentimentality and who was unaware of the responsibilities of her social position. This book is recommended reading for all those interested in societal values today.
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