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2010 posts
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Books
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Delayed Rebellious Phase (Cringeworthy)
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NaBloPoMo
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Self-talk
Today, I finished another Michael Crichton book. "Disclosure". Whenever I look for his books at the public library, strangely, I always overlook this book. I wasn't interested when I read the summary on the back cover.
I finally read it anyway. I thought this book is a little different compared to his other books. The events were so tense, somewhat thought-provoking & fast-paced - this is the first time I want to scream at Crichton's characters - the injustice & obvious bias made me angry.
Though there's a twist in the end, the issues at the beginning was related to a male employee (Tom Sanders) who was sexually-harassed by his female boss (Meredith Johnson). The company they're working for defended Johnson even though it became more & more apparent that she's guilty. What do you think? It's unlikely? That it must been the male's fault? There's one character (a columnist/journalist) that represented individuals who think of it that way. She condemned Sanders in her column & wanted to do more articles like that without even doing more investigation on the matter. She readily acknowledged that the male was the guilty one although she didn't know the entire story. Sander's lawyer, Louise Fernandez, said this :
"...harassment is a power issue. And power is neither male or female. Whoever is behind the desk has the opportunity to abuse power. A women will take advantage as often as men."
It's not entirely a gender question (e.g. the other should control themselves etc); sometimes the other way round can happen (female harassing male). It's all about power that a person possess that can affect the other person's life.
At the end of the book, the company's big boss talked to Fernandez (with a what's-the-big-deal attitude), in which she told him :
"The fact is, there's a category of behaviour that no one condones anymore. The supervisor who grabs genitals, who squeezes breasts in the elevator, who invites an assistant on a business trip but books only one hotel room. All that is ancient history. If you have an employee behaving like that, whether that employee is male of female, gay or straight, you are obliged to stop it."
It was interesting to read the part where Johnson still denies her wrongdoings even though her true colours had been exposed. She said to Sanders :
"But I beat you fair and square, Tom. I don't deserve this. I've been screwed by the damned system."
Tom's reply to her :
"No you haven't. You've been fucking your assistants for years. You've been taking every advantage of your position that you could. You've been living on image and every third word out of your mouth is a lie. Now you're feeling sorry for yourself. You think the system is what's wrong. But you know what, Meredith? The system didn't screw you. The system revealed you, and dumped you out. Because when you get right down to it, you're completely full of shit."
(I was so glad that Sanders told her that, because that's basically what I want to scream at her!)
Anyway. I'm not giving a book review here. It was a good read. On a side note, in the author's afterword section, he said the book is based on a true story.
I've already read most of his books since two years ago but "Disclosure" made me realise that I'm a fan. I'm going to start to collect books written by him.
p/s : This book also made me want to read more about the laws we have here. It doesn't hurt to know (in fact I think it's obligatory, you can't say you commit a crime because you don't know the law).
