Elections & Erections
Elections & Erections

Author: Pieter-Dirk Uys

Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa

Published: 2011-03-28

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 1770201459

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At last, Pieter-Dirk Uys, South Africa’s most famous political satirist, entertainer and AIDS activist, has penned a memoir. He takes us back to his upbringing in apartheid South Africa, his early days in the theatre, and the birth of his alter ego, Evita Bezuidenhout, the ambassador to the fictitious homeland of Bapetikosweti. He revisits his political satire, which exposed the absurdities of Whites Only policies and the ridiculousness of the fear surrounding them. He also writes frankly about his sexual journeys in a conservative, Calvinistic society that forbade interracial sex and homosexuality. With the end of apartheid and the fall of the old tyrants, Uys wondered, did he still have a job to do? But a new democracy comes with its own challenges and absurdities, and the government continues to write his scripts for him. Whether he is educating voters or informing the youth about the dangers of HIV/AIDS, he goes to war against ignorance and complacency, brandishing his unique weapons: laughter, compassion ... and a plastic penis! This is a book about journeys, both geographical and personal, a document of Pieter-Dirk Uys’s love affair with South Africa and its people. Frank and controversial, hilarious and humane, Elections & Erections expresses his passion and anger towards present circumstances, and his hope and optimism for the future.

Saturday Night Live and the 1976 Presidential Election
Saturday Night Live and the 1976 Presidential Election

Author: William T. Horner

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2018-02-09

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 1476630593

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The debut of Saturday Night Live and the 1976 presidential election between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter had enduring effects on American culture. With its mix of sketch comedy and music, SNL grabbed huge ratings and several Emmys in its first season. President Ford's press secretary, Ron Nessen, was the first politician to host SNL. Ford also appeared on the show, via video tape, to offer a comic counterpunch to Chevy Chase's signature line, "I'm Chevy Chase and you're not." Since then, it has become a rite of passage for national politicians to appear on SNL, and the show's treatment of them and their platforms has a continuing impact on political discourse.

Self-Projection
Self-Projection

Author: Linda Haverty Rugg

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2014-03-01

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 1452941548

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In 1957, a decade before Roland Barthes announced the death of the author, François Truffaut called for a new era in which films would “resemble the person who made” them and be “even more personal” than an autobiographical novel. More than five decades on, it seems that Barthes has won the argument when it comes to most film critics. The cinematic author, we are told, has been dead for a long time. Yet Linda Haverty Rugg contends not only that the art cinema auteur never died, but that the films of some of the most important auteurs are intensely, if complexly, related to the lives and self-images of their directors. Self-Projection explores how nondocumentary narrative art films create alternative forms of collaborative self-representation and selfhood. The book examines the work of celebrated directors who plant autobiographical traces in their films, including Truffaut, Bergman, Fellini, Tarkovsky, Herzog, Allen, Almodóvar, and von Trier. It is not simply that these directors, and many others like them, make autobiographical references or occasionally appear in their films, but that they tie their films to their life stories and communicate that link to their audiences. Projecting a new kind of selfhood, these directors encourage identifications between themselves and their work even as they disavow such connections. And because of the collaborative and technological nature of filmmaking, the director’s self-projection involves actors, audience, and the machines and institution of the cinema as well. Lively and accessible, Self-Projection sheds new light on the films of these iconic directors and on art cinema in general, ultimately showing how film can transform not only the autobiographical act but what it means to have a self.

Random Ramblings, Vol. 2
Random Ramblings, Vol. 2

Author: Susanne Ross

Publisher: Dorrance Publishing

Published: 2023-03-03

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 1639379169

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About the Book This is the second book for author Susanne Ross. Self-described as “writing like a 9-year-old,” Ross sees poetry in EVERYTHING. Inspiration comes to her in the mundane, everyday things: people; places; events; observations; musings; nature; the weather; feelings and experiences (particularly from her dysfunctional childhood). She has a strong enthusiasm and passion for life. Within her books, she attempts to paint a vivid picture with words, as she writes spontaneously, thoughtfully, from the heart, with feeling. About the Author Susanne Ross grew up in a Navy family and has lived all over the United States, and overseas as well. Her own childhood was very rocky in that her parents divorced, remarried, and then divorced once again. She grew up in a very chaotic home, to say the least. Susanne had a long and successful work history, and now she is happily retired. She lives with her long-time fiancé, along with a special cat, in San Diego, California, her hometown. She has two adult children as well, ages 27 and 38. She is a retired civil servant, having worked for cities, counties, state, and federal governments, as well as for an elementary- and middle-school district, a community college district, in addition to having worked for a private practice (retired) dentist as one of his chairside assistants—as an RDA. Being now retired, Susanne has plenty of time to write, which she finds thoroughly enjoyable.

The Myth of Voter Fraud
The Myth of Voter Fraud

Author: Lorraine C. Minnite

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2011-03-15

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 0801457823

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Allegations that widespread voter fraud is threatening to the integrity of American elections and American democracy itself have intensified since the disputed 2000 presidential election. The claim that elections are being stolen by illegal immigrants and unscrupulous voter registration activists and vote buyers has been used to persuade the public that voter malfeasance is of greater concern than structural inequities in the ways votes are gathered and tallied, justifying ever tighter restrictions on access to the polls. Yet, that claim is a myth. In The Myth of Voter Fraud, Lorraine C. Minnite presents the results of her meticulous search for evidence of voter fraud. She concludes that while voting irregularities produced by the fragmented and complex nature of the electoral process in the United States are common, incidents of deliberate voter fraud are actually quite rare. Based on painstaking research aggregating and sifting through data from a variety of sources, including public records requests to all fifty state governments and the U.S. Justice Department, Minnite contends that voter fraud is in reality a politically constructed myth intended to further complicate the voting process and reduce voter turnout. She refutes several high-profile charges of alleged voter fraud, such as the assertion that eight of the 9/11 hijackers were registered to vote, and makes the question of voter fraud more precise by distinguishing fraud from the manifold ways in which electoral democracy can be distorted. Effectively disentangling misunderstandings and deliberate distortions from reality, The Myth of Voter Fraud provides rigorous empirical evidence for those fighting to make the electoral process more efficient, more equitable, and more democratic.