Miller, Mark Crispin 1949(?)–

PERSONAL:

Born c. 1949. Education: Northwestern University, B.A., 1971; Johns Hopkins University, M.A., 1973, Ph.D., 1977.

ADDRESSES:

Office—New York University, The Steinhardt School of Education, Culture & Communication, East Bldg., 7th Fl., 239 Greene St., New York, NY 10003. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Educator and writer. New York University, New York, NY, professor of media ecology. Also involved with directing the Project on Media Ownership (PrOMO). Has appeared on television and films, in a one-man show in New York, in the short film Exceed, 2001, and in the documentaries Orwell Rolls in His Grave, 2003, and Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire, 2004.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

Boxed In: The Culture of TV, Northwestern University Press (Evanston, IL), 1988.

(Editor and contributor) Seeing through Movies, Pantheon Books (New York, NY), 1990.

The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder, Norton (New York, NY), 2001.

Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney's New World Order, Norton (New York, NY), 2004.

Spectacle: Operation Desert Storm and the Triumph of Illusion, 2005.

Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election and Why They'll Steal the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them), Basic Books (New York, NY), 2005, updated edition, 2007.

Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy, 2000-2008, Ig Publishing (Brooklyn, NY), 2008.

Also author of A Patriot Act (video). Contributor to Conglomerates and the Media, New Press (New York, NY), 1997, and to various publications and Web sites, including BuzzFlash. Author of introduction to Propaganda by Edward Bernays, Ig Publishing (New York, NY), 2005. Also author of blog, Mark Crispin Miller Web log.

SIDELIGHTS:

Mark Crispin Miller is an expert in media and culture, and a political commentator whose wide-ranging interests include modern propaganda, the history and tactics of advertising, American film, and media ownership. Many reviewers have noted that Miller writes from an extreme left-wing political bias. Jill Ortner, writing in the Library Journal, noted that "Miller makes no effort to be unbiased and is sometimes openly contemptuous, but the analysis is thoughtful and the quotes are accurate and well documented." Nation contributor Elayne Tobin, referring to The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder, felt that "crucial parts of the book read like sour grapes and detract from the moments of sharp observation that Miller offers elsewhere." A Publishers Weekly contributor noted of the same book: "While Miller is sometimes vague in his arguments, he has produced a sharp-edged polemic questioning the wisdom of how we elect our leaders."

In his first book, Boxed In: The Culture of TV, Miller critiques the pernicious effects of television on American life and culture. One of the major problems Miller observes is that television has become a tool of marketers who seek to make people passive consumers without the ability to individually discriminate between what they really need and want and what the television commercials tell them is necessary to make them happy. Miller argues that advertisers have become quite adept at manipulating the viewer, especially those who are aware of and mock ads. Miller believes that to overcome this psychological defense against advertisements, many ads, as well as television shows, have incorporated irony to flatter the viewers as "being in the know" yet at the same time belittling them by saying they are either part of the joke or the brunt of it. Miller's book also serves as a broader cultural critique of television's pervasive hold on society, which the author demonstrates through looks at such wide-ranging television programming as game shows and political news coverage.

Writing a review of Boxed In for Nation, Jackson Lears commented that Miller has "produced the most probing critique of contemporary television that I have ever seen" and called the author "the funniest as well as the most perceptive media critic at work today." Atlantic Monthly contributor Sven Birkerts called Miller a "lucid and witty" thinker and added that the "essays are the most provocative writing on the subject since Marshall McLuhan first made it a subject."

In Seeing through Movies, Miller gathers together six essays by various writers looking at the significance and impact of mass culture films on society. In his essay, Miller focuses on the merger between advertising and cinema, from blatant product displays in the films to the insistence on feel-good, happy endings. Miller also wrote the book's introduction, which Video Age International contributor Fred Hift called "provocative." Hift noted that it "superbly summarizes the Hollywood trends … stressing the dominance of ‘marketing’ over quality." Michael Cornfield, writing in Washington Monthly, felt that when the critics "concentrate on what they find in batches of films, instead of what they think the films mean, their work shines with insight." Cornfield also noted that in his essay, "Miller excels at detailing the pernicious effects advertising divisions have had on entertainment divisions."

Miller analyzes the political arena in his next book, The Bush Dyslexicon. On the surface, the book, published in 2001 after George W. Bush's election to his first term as U.S. president, is a compendium of the president's malapropisms, grammatical gaffes, and less-than-informed comments, which the author suggests might be partially due to dyslexia. The author's deeper purpose is to contend that Bush and his colleagues mastered the political use of television to sell their ideas and decisions to the public via a sophisticated propaganda machine. Throughout the book Miller uses the candidate's campaign quotes, television interviews, and debates to show how Bush maintained a strict adherence to talking points. Nevertheless, Miller argues that a careful viewer could discover Bush's real thoughts through translating his various malapropisms and body language. Miller also accuses the general public of being too willing to pay attention only to the buzzwords and themes without thinking substantively about the issues.

Miller continues his attack on Bush and his administration with Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney's New World Order. In this critique of the Bush administration, Miller argues that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are actually outside the mainstream of American political traditions and are creating a nation that the founding fathers would have found appalling in its contempt for the democratic process, overemphasis on religion, and reckless militarism. In an interview on BuzzFlash.org, Miller noted: "I wrote Cruel and Unusual to make the case that Bush & Co. is fundamentally un-American—an order wholly alien to the spirit of our founding documents." In the book, Miller chastises both the Bush administration for manipulating the American people and the media for allowing those in charge to do it. A Publishers Weekly contributor wrote: "While such arguments are familiar, as is the indignant tone, Miller's thoroughness and clarity in tracking down the sources of the policies he decries, and the ways in which they are disseminated, set the book apart." Writing in Booklist, Alan Moores thought the "sometimes dyspeptic tone will probably not convert anyone on the other side of the aisle," but added that the book "is a critical contribution to America's internal, life-or-death debate over foreign and domestic policy." Michael A. Genovese noted in the Library Journal that Cruel and Unusual "may be too polemical for mainstream tastes," but concluded: "Lively, entertaining, and hard-hitting, this book is a searing indictment of the Bush administration."

Miller called into question the legitimacy of Bush's presidency in his book Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election and Why They'll Steal the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them). In it, he criticizes the Republicans for allegedly tampering with the 2004 presidential election, and also takes Democrats to task for failing to recognize and respond to the fraud. The media is also blamed for failing to report irregularities. Miller makes much of claimed discrepancies between exit poll results and actual vote counts and presents numerous accounts of people claiming to have been prevented from voting. A Publishers Weekly reviewer found much of the evidence presented by Miller to be "circumstantial," but still said that "anyone who cares about fair play should find this book revelatory." A Kirkus Reviews writer concurred that "Miller's argument is pitched to true believers against the vast right-wing conspiracy." The reviewer found that whether or not Miller's statements are correct, the book is "fascinating." Robert Koehler, a reviewer for Christian Century, said that Miller puts election fraud "in a psychological and religious context" and called Fooled Again "a wake-up call."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Film, November, 1990, Andy Klein, review of Seeing through Movies, p. 40.

Atlantic Monthly, September, 1988, Sven Birkerts, review of Boxed In: The Culture of TV, p. 94.

Booklist, July, 2004, Alan Moores, review of Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney's New World Order, p. 1812.

Christian Century, January 10, 2006, Robert Koehler, review of Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election and Why They'll Steal the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them), p. 36.

Entertainment Weekly, June 8, 2001, Mike Flaherty, review of The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder, p. 71.

Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 2004, review of The Bush Dyslexicon, p. 432; October 1, 2005, review of Fooled Again, p. 1066.

Library Journal, June 1, 2001, Jill Ortner, review of The Bush Dyslexicon, p. 192; July, 2004, Michael A. Genovese, review of Cruel and Unusual, p. 104.

Los Angeles Times, August 22, 2001, Mary McNamara, review of The Bush Dyslexicon, p. E1.

Nation, January 9, 1989, Jackson Lears, review of Boxed In, p. 59; August 5, 2002, Elayne Tobin, review of The Bush Dyslexicon, p. 40.

Perspectives on Political Science, summer, 2006, Burdett A. Loomis, review of Fooled Again, p. 167.

Progressive, September, 2001, Frank Fuller, review of The Bush Dyslexicon, p. 44.

Publishers Weekly, May 11, 1990, Penny Kaganoff, review of Seeing through Movies, p. 255; September 29, 1997, "Conglomerates and the Media," p. 77; May 7, 2001, review of The Bush Dyslexicon, p. 233; May 31, 2004, review of Cruel and Unusual, p. 60; September 12, 2005, review of Fooled Again, p. 55.

Video Age International, February, 1991, Fred Hift, review of Seeing through Movies, p. 11.

Washington Monthly, July-August, 1990, Michael Cornfield, review of Seeing through Movies, p. 552.

Washington Post, July 29, 2001, Trevor Butterworth, review of The Bush Dyslexicon, p. T4.

ONLINE

BuzzFlash.org, http://www.buzzflash.com/ (March 28, 2008), interview with Mark Crispin Miller, review of Fooled Again.

Guernica, http://www.guernicamag.com/ (February, 2006), interview with Mark Crispin Miller.

Internet Movie Database, http://www.imdb.com/ (April 8, 2008), biographical information about Mark Crispin Miller.

New York University Web site, http://www.education.nyu.edu/ (April 8, 2008), "Mark Crispin Miller."

Public Broadcasting Service Web site, http://www.pbs.org/ (March 23, 2005), interview with Mark Crispin Miller.

Stay Free! Web site, http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/ (February 23, 2005), Carrie McLaren, "Mark Crispin Miller on Conspiracies, Media, and Mad Scientists."

Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, New York University Web site, http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/ (April 8, 2008), biographical information about Mark Crispin Miller.