“skyrocketing spending and the explosion of govern-ment power” (530).

What emerges most tangible from Courage and

Consequence is Rove’s belief in the politics of conflict:

effective government can only be sustained by takingon and eliminating one’s opponents both inside and

outside the United States. Even though it is barely twoyears since he left office, his views seem oddly out-

moded at a time when many countries have experi-enced regime changes without American intervention,and where governments of all political persuasions

across the globe have tried and largely failed to dealwith a global economic crisis.

–-Laurence Raw

Baskent University

Cultural Diversity and Global Media:

TheMediation of DifferenceEugenia Siapera. Malden, VA, and Oxford: Blackwell

Publishing, 2010.

Eugenia Siapera’s book begins with an analysis of

the occasion in January 2010 when Barack Obamabecame the forty-fourth President of the United States.She believes, somewhat optimistically, that it proved

beyond doubt that “racism and discrimination, if theyeven exist, play only a small part in the success of an

individual” (1). On the other hand, Obama’s accessioncame at a time when the multicultural ideal came

increasingly under attack in America and elsewhere.“The veil of multiculturalism has been lifted, revealing

parallel societies where the law of the state does notapply,” declared the German newspaper Der Spiegel in

the wake of the 2004 Madrid bombings. A year later,the Danish magazine Jyllando-Posten published derog-atory cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, provoking

a major crisis both in Denmark as well as in other partsof northern Europe. Siapera believes that such occur-

rences are inevitable in the contemporary world, wherethe Internet brings members of different cultures clo-

ser together in cyberspace—hence promoting diversity—yet simultaneously encouraging greater resistance to

multiculturalism.Cultural Diversity and Social Media summarizes

familiar arguments concerning media manipulation:

television, radio, and print media in Europe and Amer-ica construct their own understandings of difference

rather than representing current debates on culturaldiversity. This is chiefly carried out for ideological

purposes, reflecting the (conservative) agenda of mostmedia producers. Siapera conflates “globalization”

with “Americanization,” in her understanding of cul-tural diversity. On the other hand, there are dissident

groups that resist dominant constructions: Siapera citesthe example of the local branch of the National Associ-

ation for the Advancement of Colored People(NAACP), which went to court in 1915 in Los Ange-

les, in the hope of preventing the screening of D. W.Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, on the grounds that thefilm invoked racial tensions that could lead to violent

confrontation. They failed—chiefly because theylacked sufficient financial or political clout to take on

the Hollywood studios.Perhaps the book’s most readable section is the

analysis of how the Internet has revised yet reinforcedprevailing notions of cultural diversity. It has created

“a smorgasbord of identity […] that harks to thedomesticated and co-modified regimes of representa-

tion” (193). On the other hand, the Internet has givenspace to sites such as Kurdish Media and New Vision,both of which “show the possibilities of unity

without a centre and the creation of new publicspaces” (192).

Although Cultural Diversity and Global Media

does not break new intellectual ground, especially

where representations of contemporary American cul-ture are concerned, it sets forth in exhaustive detail the

complexities faced by governments in sustaining themulticultural ideal in a world becoming more andmore dominated by fragmented identities.

–-Laurence Raw

Baskent University

Inventing the “AmericanWay,” The

Politics of Consensus from the NewDeal

to the Civil Rights MovementWendy L. Wall. Chapel Hill: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Americans who are old enough may remember the

“Freedom Train.” Probably even more of them arefamiliar with Superman’s fight in the 1940s and 1950sfor “truth, justice, and the American way.” Some per-

haps may even recall the 1950s project encouragingprivate parties to direct a steady flow to other coun-

tries of praise for American institutions—the projectthat came to be called the “Crusade for Freedom”

(obviously, its target was Europe, not the Middle East).

414 The Journal of American Culture � Volume 34, Number 4 � December 2011