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简介：Blowing the whistle on a job she herself did for over ten years at Ladies Home Journal as editor-in-chief, Blyth reveals the almost institutionalized selling of a liberal/do-gooders message to women through chararacterizing women themselves as victims. Playing on women's compassion and ability to be hooked into "uplifting" stories with a moral or happy ending, American media has convinced the most well-educated, rich and healthy audience in history that they are miserable. She dissects why: liberal celebrities' messages aren't scrutinized and in fact presented with a halo of approval; middle class American women have been sold stress as the new scourge of modern life; media paints a negative picture of women's lives today, at exactly the moment when women have more money, privilege and choices than ever before; the club of liberal women who run magazines and television shows have an outsize and lock-step affect on what we "know" about the major issues of the day; the incestuous relationship between celebrities and media has corrupted journalism; and: magazines rarely tell stories about the majority of women whose conservative views don't mesh with their own. - Publisher.
The liberal media is once again under attack from the right, but this time the attacker is an admitted former Spin Sister who has seen the error of her ways. Blyth, editor of Ladies' Home Journal for 20 years and founding editor in 1999 of MORE, a magazine for older women, argues that a powerful "sorority of journalists, television, publishing, and public relations executives" are having a damaging influence on American women. Effectively and insidiously, these Spin Sisters - among them Katie Couric, Diane Sawyer, Barbara Walters, and Gail Collins-have been indoctrinating the women of America with negative messages, telling them that they lead unhappy, stress-filled lives, manipulating them to see themselves as victims in need of protection by big government. Celebrities are in on it too, e.g., Susan Sarandon and Rosie O'Donnell, and politicians, e.g., Hillary Clinton, and even fictional characters, such as C.J. Cregg of TV's West Wing. These ambitious and successful women, asserts Blyth, exhibit a mix of elitism and liberalism that is not reflected in the lives of ordinary middle-class American women, who share neither their lifestyles, their concerns, nor their political and moral views. The Spin Sisters take liberal positions on issues like abortion, gun control, gay rights, and environmental protection, Blyth notes, and they assume that their readers and viewers do too. Not true, says Blyth, who has a punchy style that favors loaded terms like "pampered," "smug," "slick, "shriek," and "whine," offers a gossipy, insider's view of the world she writes about, and has a well-honed knack for talking directly to the reader. You aren't really a lot like those elitist liberal Media Queens, she explains to the reader, implying, it seems, that a better likeness is to her, a nice, honest, right-wing conservative. What's clear is not only where she stands but that she knows a sound bite when she writes one. Ann Coulter fans: This one is for you. - Kirkus Reviews.
