Table Of ContentExposes and Excess
PERSONAL TAKES
An occasional series of short books in which noted critics
write about the persistent hold
particular writers, artists, or cultural phenomena
have had on their imaginations.
Exposes and Excess
Muckraking in America, 1900 I 2000
CECELIA TICHI
PENN
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia
Copyright © 2004 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First paperback edition 2005
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tichi, Cecelia, 1942-
Exposes and excess : muckraking in America, 1900 I 2000 I Cecelia Tichi.
p. em.-(Personal takes)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8122-3763-3 (alk. paper).-ISBN 0-8122-1926-0 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. journalism-Social aspects-United States. 2. Social problems-Press coverage-United
States. 3. United States-Social conditions-20th century. I. Title. II. Series.
PN4888.S6T53 2004
302.23'0973-dc21
2003056363
We are now in a second Gilded Age. Instead of taking steps that would
strengthen our democracy, we're heading backward to the wealth inequali
ties of a century ago.
-Bill Gates Sr. and Chuck Collins, The Nation, january 27, 2003
We have not grown too hubristic as producers and consumers; we have
grown too timid as citizens, acquiescing to deregulation and privitization
and a growing tyranny of money over politics .... But consumers are not
citizens, and markets cannot exercise democratic sovereignty. The ascen
dant market ideology claims to free us, but it actually robs us of the civic
freedom by which we control the social consequences of our private choices.
-Benjamin Barber, New York Times, july 29, 2002
What empires lavish abroad, they cannot spend on good republican gov
ernment at home: on hospitals or roads or schools. A distended military
budget only aggravates America's continuing failure to keep its egalitarian
promise to itself
-Michael Ignatieff, New York Times Magazine, january 5, 2003
The phrase, "narrative as rhetoric," means ... that narrative is not just
story but also action, the telling of a story by someone to someone on
some occasion for some purpose.
-James Phelan, Narrative as Rhetoric, 1996
Contents
1. From The jungle to Fast Food Nation: American Deja Vu 1
2. Bulked Up and Hollowed Out: Looking Backward,
Looking Forward 18
3. Muckrakers c. 1900: Civic Passions,
"Righteous Indignation" 62
4. Muckrakers c. 2000 105
Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in
America 113
Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the
All-American Meal 129
Naomi Klein, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies 147
Laurie Garrett, Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global
Public Health 168
Joseph T. Hallinan, Going Up the River: Travels in a
Prison Nation 187
Epilogue: Tipping Point, or the Long Goodbye? 207
Bibliography 219
Index 227
Acknowledgments 233
Chapter 1
From The jungle to Fast Food Nation
American Deja Vu
In 2001, forty-five Vanderbilt University students, doubtless hoping
for a film-and-literature course, enrolled in my "Twentieth-Century
American Blockbusters."
These blockbusters were books, not movies, I explained that hot,
late August day. The titles, I emphasized, deserved the name "block
buster" according to the dictionary definition of experience so over
whelmingly forceful that it radically changes people's minds. The
books appearing on the reading list, I pointed out, had changed pub
lic opinion on a range of issues. They included Rachel Carson's Silent
Spring and Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, both engines of the
nascent environmental and feminist movements in the later twentieth
century. Our semester together would let us investigate why certain
books, both fiction and nonfiction narratives, have proved pivotal to
social change. In a multimedia era, I wanted students to examine
these narratives and their historical eras to discover how and why the
book can be a social power tool.
We began with Upton Sinclair's 1906 best-seller The jungle. The stu
dents were horrified by the disgusting Chicago packinghouse condi
tions represented in the novel. Like Sinclair's contemporary readers,
the students of 2001 overlooked the heinous workplace conditions in
favor of a self-interested focus on meat contamination, verifYing Sin
clair's wry remark that he had aimed for the public's heart and hit the
stomach instead. Yet to a point all were sympathetic with the Lithuan
ian immigrant family struggling against impossible odds to earn their
living as packinghouse workers in a socially corrupt and toxic environ
ment. I informed them that President Theodore Roosevelt had read
The jungle and dispatched two agents to Chicago to verify Sinclair's
claims, whereupon they reported "meat shovelled from filthy wooden
floors ... in all of which practices it was in the way of gathering dirt,
splinters, floor filth, and the expectoration of tuberculosis and other
diseased workers" (qtd. in Tindell and Shi 951).
