"An analysis of truth claims in contemporary U.S. political rhetoric through a series of case studies--including the PolitiFact fact-checking project, the Planned Parenthood "selling baby parts" scandal, the Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden cases, Neil DeGrasse Tyson's Cosmos, and the Black Lives Matter movement"--

Learn how to use denial to help you when you are facing tragedy and how to recognize and move past denial when it becomes counterproductive. Denial is often seen as an inability or unwillingness to face unpleasant or difficult realities--from financial losses, to illnesses like alcoholism, to larger social issues like climate change. In some instances, denial can be detrimental because it can keep you stuck in a cycle of destructive behaviors. However, denial can also be very useful for helping you get through hard times, allowing you to tap into your resiliency for emotional survival. With great insight and originality, author Holly Parker shows you how to use denial as a buffer in the face of tragedy and how to know when your use of denial has become counterproductive or detrimental. Through a fresh, comforting, and clinically-based perspective, Parker takes the shame out of denial with practical and relatable solutions to uncovering, reframing, and harnessing this very normal coping technique. Hands-on exercises and compelling personal stories help you apply this information to your situation and come to accept your need for denial when it helps, and break through it to face life’s challenges with courage when it hurts.

Gaby’s had it with “The Chelsea Show.” So she embarks on her own attention-seeking campaign, and claims the boy on a Survivor-type TV program for teens is her brother. At first this seems like the perfect getpopular- quick scheme. That is, until the boy wins the competition and is awarded the grand prize: a trip to Australia, leaving immediately, WITH HIS ENTIRE FAMILY!!! Forget popularity—unless Gaby figures out a way to convince her bunkmates that she’s on the next flight out to Australia, she’ll never be able to show her face at Lakeview again.

Nearly every night on every major network, “unscripted” (but carefully crafted) “reality” TV shows routinely glorify retrograde stereotypes that most people would assume got left behind 35 years ago. In Reality Bites Back, media critic Jennifer L. Pozner aims a critical, analytical lens at a trend most people dismiss as harmless fluff. She deconstructs reality TV’s twisted fairytales to demonstrate that far from being simple “guilty pleasures,” these programs are actually guilty of fomenting gender-war ideology and significantly affecting the intellectual and political development of this generation’s young viewers. She lays out the cultural biases promoted by reality TV about gender, race, class, sexuality, and consumerism, and explores how those biases shape and reflect our cultural perceptions of who we are, what we’re valued for, and what we should view as “our place” in society. Smart and informative, Reality Bites Back arms readers with the tools they need to understand and challenge the stereotypes reality TV reinforces and, ultimately, to demand accountability from the corporations responsible for this contemporary cultural attack on three decades of feminist progress.

Nearly every night on every major network,"unscripted" (but carefully crafted) "reality" TV shows routinely glorify retrograde stereotypes that most people would assume got left behind 35 years ago. In Reality Bites Back, media critic Jennifer L. Pozner aims a critical, analytical lens at a trend most people dismiss as harmless fluff. She deconstructs reality TV's twisted fairytales to demonstrate that far from being simple "guilty pleasures," these programs are actually guilty of fomenting gender-war ideology and significantly affecting the intellectual and political development of this generation's young viewers. She lays out the cultural biases promoted by reality TV about gender, race, class, sexuality, and consumerism, and explores how those biases shape and reflect our cultural perceptions of who we are, what we're valued for, and what we should view as "our place" in society. Smart and informative, Reality Bites Back arms readers with the tools they need to understand and challenge the stereotypes reality TV reinforces and, ultimately, to demand accountability from the corporations responsible for this contemporary cultural attack on three decades of feminist progress.

"Three small groups of people trying to stay sane and survive in a world controlled by chaos"--Cover, p. [4].