Description:
Pablo Picasso once said, "There are only two types of women--goddesses and doormats." The ever-sassy Star Jones, watched by millions as cohost of The View, shares that opinion, and here in You Have to Stand... she aims to shake the living daylights out of the doormat in all of us. Unlike many autobiographical books these days, Jones's is truly absorbing reading. While she vividly recounts her lifetime of "rocking the boat," she imparts many nice, swift kicks in the pants. Formerly a senior district attorney in Brooklyn, New York (where stabbing someone in the chest is a misdemeanor), and a Court TV commentator, Jones is known for her singular, take-no-baloney attitude. She caused a media ruckus during the William Kennedy Smith rape trial by saying that any woman who can't remember taking off a pair of control-top pantyhose "has a credibility problem." She says she doesn't want to know that President Clinton "has a hard-on in a little cubby next to the Oval Office." Her pro-choice stance, she says, "goes against how I was raised and what I was taught, and yet at the same time I recognize that my beliefs aren't everyone's. If abortion is antithetical to your beliefs, then by all means don't have an abortion. But don't tell me what I can and cannot believe." Jones freely reveals what pisses her off in the hopes of instilling a similar stand-up-for-yourself attitude in her readers. She shares her fiesty opinions on such topics family and friends, God, television, politics, and racism. Not only does she rally against the closed-minded, but she makes a point of criticizing the wishy-washy as well, making this a roiling, rivetingly good book. --Erica Jorgensen
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