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Title: Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth by Joe Conason ISBN: 0-312-31560-0 Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books Pub. Date: 25 May, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.09 (128 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Powerful Indictment Of Right-Wing Dirty Tricks
Comment: It is impossible to deny that the majority of our news media outlets, from talk radio to periodicals to TV cable news, were corrupted and usurped many years ago by the right-wing. An assortment of ultraconservative-backed corporations have expended multi-millions of dollars making sure this insidious takeover occurred with as much ease as possible. This powerful grip on the media ensures that anti-liberal misinformation and outright lies are vomited upon the public every minute of every day, most of it erupting from the shrieking mouths of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter and many others too numerous (and odious) to mention. These pundits monotonously spew a series of well rehearsed lies in which liberals are routinely blamed for the most outrageous and immoral acts of evil imaginable.
Writer Joe Conason, like millions of Americans, has grown sick of all the Big Brother half truths. In BIG LIES, Conason examines the ten most frequently repeated ludicrous right wing lies and devotes an entire chapter to each one, debunking them with wicked efficiency. Each of these chapters opens with an infamous cliche (such as "Bill Clinton Is The Root Of All Evil") and then tears the assumption apart. Its amazing how simple, basic facts can lay waste to the most despicable fabrications. While undoubtedly an angry man, Conason is careful never to mimic the maniacal, squealing pomposity of those on the dark side. Instead, he utilizes lucid and precise language to present his well-supported documentation, all of which clearly exposes, for everyone to see, the monstrous lies and duplicity of the American right.
Rating: 5
Summary: No Partisan Spin, Just TRUTH
Comment: Joe Conason sets out to put the record straight with his book, which is basically a non-funny more intellectual version of Franken's.
Conason persistently and accurately refutes several myths that the far right likes to repeat ad nauseum (such as "Al Gore invented the internet"--not quite what he said; and "Al Gore claimed Love Story was based on him--and it was, according to its author).
Conason also tackles the issue of the so-called liberal media (how can the media be liberal when Fox News, slanted so far to the right it makes the Tower of Pisa look straight, has deeper penetration of any other news show and Rush Limbaugh is the most listened to radio persona?). The truth is that the right considers anyone left of Fox 'liberal.'
Another poster here takes issue with Consason's factual errors. There are very few here--and actually Kerry DID serve as a Navy gunboat captain. Cleland did not win the Medal of Honor, but that's not even key to the point Conason was trying to make, which is that there are a large number of democrats who served in our wars with honor and yet the right is trying to impugn them as 'soft' on terror or 'cowardly' if they question Bush's war. Meanwhile, there are a large number of Republicans gungho for war who did not serve, even in peace time (Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Hastert, Lott, Rove, Ashcroft) and despite many of them being eligible for the draft.
I believe Conason took excruciating care to get his facts right (one has to in a book called "Lies") and the very rare mistakes that he does make are insignificant. There is no deliberate attempt here to distort the truth.
Conason painstakingly details each member of the Bush family's in-bed relationship with big business and the oil industry, including the Saudis. He describes George W. Bush's ongoing failures in business and how he managed to profit financially from them anyway, as others lost significant amounts of money. Conason makes a clear convincing case that without his father, George W. Bush would never have grown up to go to Yale, join the National Guard, own a baseball team, sit on the Carlyle board, become a governor or become president. All these things were accomplished only because of the influence exerted by George Bush on his son's behalf.
Conason quotes George Soros, one of America's richest self-made men, as saying they invested in Bush Jr.'s dealings because "we were trying to buy influence with Bush" (the president).
Conason covers all the stories the media routinely ignores, like G.W. Bush's missing months from his National Guard service and his failure to show up for his physical right after the National Guard instituted Drug Testing.
He ruthlessly debunks one Bush administration lie after another as well as the propoganda spread by the right wing. Sadly, all the wrong people will buy and read this book--those who already agree with Conason. I heartily recommend this book for all those who are interested in having their eyes opened.
As for those on the left, I recommend this book as an exhaustive source of rebuttal material when debating the self-named Dittoheads (Rush Limbaugh fans). Perhaps if the truth is repeated over and over, like the Bush Administration lies, it, too, will eventually stick.
Rating: 5
Summary: ESSENTIAL READING FOR ALL AMERICANS...
Comment: ...NOT just for those who consider themselves to be 'liberals' or on the 'left'. The 'big lies' to which Conason refers in the title of his newest book are a double-edged sword. Not only has the right-wing conservative press perpetrated horrific and dangerous mistruths about the events leading up to and following the tragedies perpetrated on 11 September 2001 - they have convinced many otherwise sharp-thinking Americans that most of their countrymen adhere to the same mangled logic spewed out on a daily basis by such 'authorities' as Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, ad nauseum.
Conason's book is meticulously researched and annotated - and unlike his counterparts screaming like crazed harpies on the right, he actually uses reliable sources. One of the methods practiced by the conservative media is to allow one of their individual mouthpieces to put out a lie or half-truth, then everybody else in their camp begins to quote it as a source (usually well-aware of its initial inaccuracy), over and over, until its repeated enough that people actually begin to believe it. Another neat little trick is to answer the question they WISHED they had been asked rather than the one that was actually posed. Our President has become very adept at this - as his recent 'press conference' will attest. Those members of the press who notice the shell game eventually give up, and the miscreant story makes its way into the 'fact' column. There are notable exceptions in the press - thank heavens - such as Mr. Conason, who are determined to get the truth out there for people to read.
Those of you who might believe the line about the 'liberal media' should ask yourselves a couple of probing questions. If the media is so liberally biased, you would expect that the coverage of a small story like, say, the 2000 US Presidential elections, would have been slanted so that there were more stories concerning Gore that were positive, and more stories about Bush that were negative. The facts show just the opposite. Conservatives hammer the oft-quoted statistics that show that 'most reporters say they vote Democratic' - well guess what: the reporters don't control the content of the papers for which they write, the editors and publishers do - and the editors and publishers are mostly 'conservatives' (a word that they actually misapply to themselves, as Conason so clearly illustrates), and the endorsements of the top newspapers in the US have become increasingly conservative over the past few elections. Why is this? It's certainly not a reflection of public opinion - endorsing and electing right-wing candidates is more in the interest of the ultra-wealthy who actually CONTROL the press. They're perfectly happy to get the tax cuts that benefit the top 1% of Americans and pay little more than lip service to those who actually WORK for a living.
It's desperately important, of course, for liberals to read this book - the information contained here is invaluable in this election year. But I would suggest that those in the middle and working class who consider themselves to be conservatives, who think that the Republicans have the best ideas about managing ANYTHING, read it as well - they might begin to get an inkling of how this shell game works. Boy, are they going to get mad - and rightfully so. No one likes to be fooled, especially about things that are as important as the economy, the environment and human rights - not to mention the WAR whose purpose seems to change as each individual card in the rickety assemblage falls out.
PLEASE read this book. Conason clearly and methodically addresses the questions I've mentioned and many others. Americans need to understand HOW the information they receive through the mass media is distorted - and WHY and BY WHOM and IN WHOSE BEST INTERESTS. Also, check out John W. Dean's WORSE THAN WATERGATE, Richard A. Clark's AGAINST ALL ENEMIES, Al Franken's LIES AND THE LYING LIARS WHO TELL THEM, Michael Moore's DUDE WHERE'S MY COUNTRY, and Craig Unger's HOUSE OF BUSH - HOUSE OF SAUD. My favorite bumper sticker that I've seen lately doesn't even mention a candidate: THE MEDIA IS ONLY AS LIBERAL AS THE CONSERVATIVE CORPORATIONS WHO CONTROL IT.
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Title: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right by Al Franken ISBN: 0525947647 Publisher: E P Dutton Pub. Date: 29 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Bushwhacked : Life in George W. Bush's America by LOU DUBOSE, MOLLY IVINS ISBN: 0375507523 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 23 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century by Paul Krugman ISBN: 0393058506 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: September, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror by Richard A. Clarke ISBN: 0743260244 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 22 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $27.00 |
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Title: The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception by DAVID CORN ISBN: 1400050669 Publisher: Crown Pub. Date: 30 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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