Harold Jaffe

Terror-dot-gov Harold Jaffe 1st Pbk. Ed edition

As in Harold Jaffe?s two previous ?docufiction? collections, False Positive and 15 Serial Killers, the author of Terror-Dot-Gov selects then ?treats? his texts such that the reader is incapable of distinguishing between fact and fiction. That ambiguity permits Jaffe to cunningly tease out the contradictions and subtexts of official ?news? or ?information? and torque it into what it so often is fundamentally: jingoism, xenophobia and propaganda. Jaffe?s subject in Terror-Dot-Gov is not the everywhere-represented ?illicit? terrorism so much as ?licit,? institutionalized terrorism, and he assaults his subject from multiple angles: razor-sharp satire, precisely cadenced rhetoric, faux-reportage, and ?unsituated? dialogues (Jaffe?s term, referring to his trademark talking heads with perfect pitch). The result is virtuosic and paradoxical: a prodigious display of firepower?in the cause of peace. Blurbs As Terror-Dot-Gov vividly demonstrates: We are spiritually imperiled by illusions masked as ?news.? Omissions, slants, pallid editorials all testifying to servitude to a slavish, enslaving text. Harold Jaffe knows this by heart and has it right. He isolates the self-justifying words that demonize the enemy while cleansing the ongoing crime, the ?preventive strike.? He encourages organized terror (our very own) to emerge white as new-fallen snow. White as leprosy. Everywhere in Terror-Dot-Gov is exemplary skill, faultless tonality. And courage, don?t forget courage. In order to be healed, our illness must worsen. Thank you, Harold Jaffe.? ?Daniel Berrigan, SJ ?Kill your TV. Terror-Dot-Gov will give you all the news that?s unfit to print?reportage gone fictive (or is it vice versa?) Jaffe?s brilliantly constructed docufictions blast holes through the mediadrome to unmask the terrifying institutionalized rhetoric that passes itself off as business as usual.? ?Jan Ramjerdi ?Terror-Dot-Gov is a full frontal assault on our duct-taped minds. High velocity words fired with unerring precision, dancing feverishly on the page before zapping their target, which is nothing less than ?First World? war-mongering and the terror it invokes to validate itself.? ?Faruk Ulay