My dark-horse nominee for book of the year

As everyone else starts the December look back at the year, this is my dark-horse nominee for most significant book of 2009.

[image-1]Niedzviecki looks around at all elements of what he calls Peep Culture. We have self-obsessed bloggers pontificating into the night. We have video diarists masturbating for strangers on Webcams. We have millions of  people willing to humiliate  themselves before other millions for a chance to be on reality television.

Just since the book was published, we’ve had masterpieces of assholery to further underscore Niedzviecki’s points – the Colorado morons with the balloon-boy son and the egocentric douchebags who crashed a White House state dinner. In both of those cases, all they wanted was undeserved fame.

Of course, I’d feel differently about them if they could cure cancer or feed the hungry. Then I’d have their pictures tattooed on my ass. But for now, they are publicity seeking imbeciles.

Midway through the book, Niedzviecki gives a case history of a family that did one of those wife-swap TV shows. The family was Jewish, lived in the country on a farm with seven horses, and all had a pretty good sense of humor. They were to swap wives with an urban family. They figured the entertainment would be in the city-and-country culture clash.

Instead, the television producers clearly misrepresented both families. Scenes were taken out of context and a religious conflict was invented. The whole week was falsified . . . invented . . . and yet was called “reality television.”

How did the Jewish family feel when the mother was portrayed as intolerant of her adopted Christian family?

They didn’t care. They just liked the rock-star treatment they got from the network and the flicker of fame that came with their brief moment in the sun. Truth and humiliation didn’t matter. Fame did.

Of course, beyond all of these factors, Niedzviecki recognizes the insidious uses of this knowledge we so freely divulge and the hundreds of breaches of privacy we endure each day.

The Peep Diaries is an important, deeply thoughtful book that deserves a wide audience.

William McKeen is chairman of the University of Florida’s Department of Journalism and author of several books, including the acclaimed Hunter S. Thompson biography Outlaw Journalist, now available in paperback.