Obertone delves into a fascinating subject: the packaging of a good part of the population. The subject is wide, and the author must address many points through 10 crazy chapters: press, lobbying, television and other media, national sweetening, etc.
The style is incisive but does not at all feel like a pamphlet. Besides, in this book, it is too late for the pamphlets. Big Brother won. The book tells how we lost the game. Only erzatz pamphlet in the book: denunciation of a certain number of journalists explicitly named. At the same time, it is a little the interest and lorsquon knows that Laurent has Obertone of, as a journalist, bear caricature of right-thinking good thoughts spewing it the excuse to linger a little on the case Plenel (one of the finest specimen of this species.)
To the inevitable gossip, I want to clarify that at no time Obertone gives in the "complotisme" (Newspeak term for some discredit those who leave the ranks of the historical-socioçlogique Vulgate. To hear the Gunpowder Plot before 1605 the American Revolution before 1776, MK Ultra before the 70 and large-scale monitoring programs before Assange and Snowden have all been "conspiracy theories.") I will not spoiler which is big brother, this is the main revelation of the book.
This book reminds me (outside of Orwell's 1984) in The Revolt of the Masses Ortega Y Gasset of, published in 1930. In a way, though qu'Obertone focuses on the French case (without neglecting parallel with other countries), France The Big Brother seems to be almost a suite. In Spanish, there is a description of a modern man envious, mentally disturbed, eager not only the wealth of others, but also of moral authority. Ortega Y Gasset mention the youthful character (like spoiled child) of a segment of the population, particularly its aversion to personal responsibility, which leads her to decry private property in favor of solidarity. The Spanish philosopher is terrified by the doctrine of the complete malleability of men (the Soviets began their great experience, and Spanish Communists were about to attempt their own).
Obertone transposes the study of modern man in our postmodern contemporaries. Nevertheless the style is very different. Ortega Y Gasset wrote a book of philosophy. Obertone is more modest, remains journalist, but also more concrete. Here, there are more names, numbers, responding to a question: how the French have they done fooled by the Camp Good?