Jodee Blanco is the author of Please Stop Laughing at Me: One Woman's Inspirational Story, a book about her experience of being bullied in school.  Please Stop Laughing at Us . . .: One Survivor's Extraordinary Quest to Prevent School Bullying is the author's follow up, telling her experiences since writing her first book.  The audiobook is read by the author herself.  All these books emphasize how much bullying goes in schools, how serious a problem it is, and suggests some ways to deal with the problem.  In raising awareness about bullying, Blanco should be praised.

Unfortunately, this is one of the most annoying audiobooks I've ever heard.  After listening for a few minutes, I found myself thinking that it wasn't surprising that Blanco got bullied, because most people would find her annoying.  Immediately, I felt guilty for having such a thought, and obviously no one deserves to be bullied.  But I wondered how other readers reacted to Blanco, so I went to the readers' comments on Amazon.com, and I was relieved to find that my reaction was not unusual. 

At the start of the book, Blanco recaps her first book on bullying, and explains how just as it was going to press, she went to her high school reunion and had a wonderful experience meeting all the people who were her former bullies, and formed a romantic attachment to one of the men who used to be one of the hottest guys in school.  She explains how great she feels to get validation from the people who formerly rejected her.  It seems clear she is stuck in the past, and her whole world seems to be fixed around her high school years. 

She skips to a later time when she is on tour going around the country, feeling overwhelmed hearing about all the cases of bullying from high school students, wanting to help everyone she meets, and having her new boyfriend (from her old high school) become frustrated because she is never around and is not emotionally available to him.  The prospect of listening to a whole book about her own personal conflicts, undoubtedly traceable to her bullying experiences, is just unbearable.

Blanco persistently expresses her self-doubt and at the same time her conviction that she is a savior of the bullied.  She emphasizes how others find her an inspiration, and seems convinced that her readers will be interested in the details of her personal life.  She may well be right that some people do appreciate her story, but she doesn't mention that she inspires powerful feelings of aggravation in others. 

While bullying is a serious problem, Blanco doesn't provide evidence to support her claims that bullying damages people for their whole lives, nor does she have any evidence that her solutions and suggestions are good ones.  Readers would do much better to find a book based on scientific and educational research that is not devoted to the aggrandizing of the author. 

© 2008 Christian Perring

Link: Jodee Blanco website

Christian Perring, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Dowling College, New York.