Arts / Culture

Ruth Ozeki's second novel, All Over Creation, is praised today in separate reviews in both the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times. Her first novel, My Year of Meats, skewered the beef industry's PR efforts to promote its product in Japan and examined the health hazards of growth hormones. This time Ozeki again looks at food and PR, specifically the the genetic engineering of potatoes.

"The White House recently cancelled its symposium, Poetry and the American Voice, due to the first lady's anxiety that it was shaping into an anti-war forum," Rebecca Okrent writes for TomPaine.com. "Spokesperson Noelia Rodriguez explained that, 'While Mrs.

The industry trade publication PR Week has a few kind words to say about Nick Naylor, the fictional PR man who figures as the protagonist in Christopher Buckley's hilarious book, Thank You for Smoking. "He can stun a Clean Lungs conference into silence with a few words about the First Amendment rights of the poor, embattled tobacco companies.

Last year PR Watch noted that since 9/11 Hollywood is working with the White House on US global propaganda efforts. Apparently some in Hollywood see film censorship as part of their patriotic duty. The New York Times reported this October that "a cataclysmic event can change the fate of a movie. One example is The Quiet American, the ... adaptation of Graham Greene's 1955 novel. ... Miramax executives worried ... [it] ...could be seen as a searing critique of United States imperialism.