The Dominant Culture Of Mediocrity: This Is EXACTLY How They Get You - But Not You!?!

"Beth Lisick's new book, 'Helping Me Help Myself: One Skeptic, Ten Self-Help Gurus, and a Year on the Brink of the Comfort Zone," manages, in its best moments, to transcend the limitations of this insidious genre. The Berkeley-based humorist has an easygoing style and a light comic touch. She's also wise to her own weakness for flattery. As she browses a book by her inaugural guru, success coach Jack Canfield, she comes across the dedication, which praises "all of those courageous men and women who have ever dared to step out of the dominant culture of mediocrity. . . .'

'My cynicism falls away,' Lisick declares. 'He means people like me, the ones taking the road less traveled. Just as I'm thinking, Why, thank you, Jack! Thanks for the kudos! it dawns on me. Reading this type of book is exactly something I've always associated with the dominant culture of mediocrity.'

- From an LA Times review of Beth Lisick's new book.

Thank goodness for women like Ayaan Hirsi Ali or, at this point, I'd be sure that tits have the potential to make humans corrosively stupid:

Since I've known Beth (from the Broun Fellinis days) I find this book's publication, personally, very depressing. Not only does Lisick go down the road of "the dominant culture of mediocrity" but - to make it clear she's one of Oprah's bitches - she admits to cheating on her husband while on a Richard Simmons cruise. (Talk about tasteless.)

And, if I have the book's time-line right, she did this right after I was blubbering about how hurtful I found my ex's foray into this nonsense. (Thanks for the belated sting, Beth: It hurt real good.) Oh well, I guess that's what happens when you've been lauded as a darling of post-modernism for so long:

Your life, and/or the feelings of those around you, simply cease to have any meaning.

Whatever. (Being familiar with SHAM, I know the viewpoint: It's all about you.) I'll see if I can dig up Gavin Newsom's phone number so y'all can hang out,...you never know, Babe:

There might be another book in it for you.