All The Worst Humans

All the Worst Humans: How I Made News for Dictators, Tycoons, and Politicians by Phil Elwood

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Wow.

I will start by saying that I was giving the side-eye to this book before I even picked it up. The guy is admitting on page one (on the cover, actually) that he has written a book about being a PR Operative—a fixer of sorts—who enables the worst people to exist, to survive and flourish. And he doesn’t even feel bad about it. He is almost bragging about what an enabler he is. How when the money is right, there is no job to dirty or out of bounds. Genocides, suppression of free speech, or sportswashing (Hello, Dubai) …all made possible by people behind the scenes who push the right stories to the media; people who move the needle on public opinions on stories, or who help the right leaders maintain a positive public persona in the face of truly awful private lives…this is the world that Mr. Elwood occupies and talks about in this book.

I gave it the side-eye…after all, why should I believe that he isn’t truly ashamed of himself? Is he really seeing the error of his ways?

“…I’m confronted by the grim reality of totalitarian power. People are murdered. Thrown into mass graves. And the truth is, nobody pulls the trigger a few million times without help. Operators like me oil the machines that prop up authoritarian power all over the world. I help those machines function by laundering the sins of dictators through the press. I attack their enemies. Provide backdoor access to Washington.” (P 78).

For the record, I believe he has. The depths he crawls out of to fix himself are truly profound. I believe his story. I believe that on some level, he is very sorry for all that he has done. I just don’t think I could forgive him.

That said…

This book is a riot. And if you want to know why the world is this way, I could think of no better place to start then by checking out this rather slight book.





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