Running on empty

Still, it's a shame that the premise of "Bait and Switch" is rickety and the action dull when the analysis is mostly on target. The simple explanation for Ehrenreich's failure to find work is that her corporate persona is a poor candidate for a mid-level P.R. position, but her claim that the political influence of big business and an increasingly cutthroat corporate culture have eroded the stability and comfort of the middle class is no less valid for that.

Nor, for that matter, is the thorough demolition of the pseudoscientific logic behind self-help literature she performs along the way. Here is her treatment of Bruce Doyle's "Before You Think Another Thought":

"How do you make your dreams come true? Simply by beaming them out from your mind. 'Scientifically,' Doyle asserts -- and it hard to think of a setting in which that adverb has been more flagrantly abused -- 'one might say that focusing your attention on the energy field of consciousness, which contains the waves of all possibilities, creates the particles (events and materializations) that you experience as your reality.'"

While it's an obvious point that the particles of Doyle's reality materialized out of his ass, Ehrenreich shows why this type of effluent is particularly noxious:

"It's not the world that needs changing, is the message, it's you. No need, then, to band together to work for a saner economy or a more human-friendly corporate environment or to band together at all."

The meat of her argument, however (as Ehrenreich demonstrated recently in the New York Times), could have been packed into a short essay without losing much. The entire book for that matter -- trimmed of its considerable fat -- would fit nicely into the pages of a magazine.

Ehrenreich concludes "Bait and Switch" -- almost exactly as she did "Nickel and Dimed" -- with an exhortation to the kind of collective action that self-help books tend to undermine. America's 8 million unemployed, she suggests, represent a vast, untapped political resource. Since they have extra time on their hands, they could organize into a powerful lobby for universal healthcare, expanded unemployment benefits and secure retirement plans. (Customers who buy this heartwarming tale might also enjoy "Stone Soup" and another Howard Dean presidential run.) Eight million is a formidable number to be sure, and Ehrenreich wants the right things, but her gauge on her audience is seriously damaged.

For a reporter intent on experiencing what it means to be down and out, Ehrenreich has a curious knack for rhetoric sure to alienate working stiffs. She suffers a bad case of NPR syndrome -- a disease characterized by a tin ear for humor and by glib, sanctimonious posturing. In a passage symptomatic of the illness, Ehrenreich relates how, when an "older African-American woman and a light-skinned young man" invite her to sit with them on a couch in the hall outside a stagnant job fair, she ventures a wisecrack and everyone breaks out laughing: "I laugh too, and for some reason we can't stop laughing, pressed thigh-to-thigh there on the invisible outer border of corporate America." Wherever those two jobseekers are now, it's hard to imagine they are indulging in fond memories of being pressed thigh-to-thigh with that nice white lady.

As a confirmed atheist, Ehrenreich tends to be at her snooty worst in the presence of piety. "Bait and Switch" includes a chapter filled with cheap shots and armchair theological commentary on her experiences at evangelical job-search ministries. A gathering she attends at a church in Washington, D.C., she notes, begins with a prayer of gratitude to God "for being a great provider." "An odd reason for gratitude," Ehrenreich quips, "given the circumstances." Later, when a taxi driver in Atlanta divulges that he hopes to become a Pentecostal preacher, she professes her unbelief:

"'It's too hard to be a Christian,' I explain. 'Jesus said that as soon as you get any money, you have to sell all you have and give it to the poor.' 'Where does it say that?' he asks, genuinely curious."

These gratuitous swipes at believers are a cliché every bit as unhelpful as "the power of positive thinking." Here again the shame is that, buried as it is in disdain and aggression, her point is fair: Too often the influence between corporate and Christian culture flows in the wrong direction.

"But then what to make of the growing Christianization of business?" she asks. "Will it lead to a kinder, gentler, more reflective business culture? Or is it religion that will have to change, becoming more like the grimly utilitarian McLean Bible Church -- a realm drained of all transcendence and beauty?"

Couched as an alarm from a concerned believer or as a notice from a dispassionate observer, this question might stir thought among those in a place to do something about it. But coming as a taunt from a self-righteous disbeliever, it, like the rest of "Bait and Switch," will serve mainly to reassure Ehrenreich's fellow travelers.

If you count yourself among them, "Bait and Switch" will feel like a warm bath. If, however, it comes as news to you that "career coach" is not a real job; that self-help books tend to benefit their authors more than anyone else; that the only "networking" deserving of the word is done by fishermen; that corporate culture in general is diseased; and that the free market is not, in fact, an infallible force of justice, then "Bait and Switch" will strike you as so outrageous you'll probably just skip it. As for the rest of us, we might have expected more substance from Ehrenreich.

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