Toxic Sludge Is Good for You! Stauber,

Toxic Sludge is Good for You!

Stauber, John, and Sheldon Rampton. Toxic Sludge is Good For You! Madison, WI: Common Courage Press.

The title of the book Toxic Sludge is Good For You! suggests that the authors John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton are environmental activists. And in a sense they are -- activists against the sludge of disinformation so often present in American media, culture, as a result of the machinery of the public relations industry. The first chapter of this book is entitled "Burning books before they're printed," a chapter that seems particularly important in light of current media controversies today, such as the uproar over the film "The Passion," where people are tempted to judge literature before actually experiencing it on the page or on the motion picture screen. The authors extend this analysis, however, not simply to creative and individualistic works, but even to the censoring of books, where controversial topics are eliminated or edited, based not upon facts but upon fears of reactions from the public and interest groups that will react against such potentially divisive material. The second chapter of the text is more analytical, examining the techniques of media propaganda on a psychological and a rhetorical level, in the hopes of making the reader better aware of what he or she experiences on a daily basis as a media consumer, consciously and subconsciously.