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Title: Lies (And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them): A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right
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Manufacturer: Dutton
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| Lies (And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them): A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right by Dutton Think About This One First | | The only question I have here is: How can we believe Al Franken any more than we believe Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly? OK, so Franken doesn't agree with these guys and HE'S the one telling us the truth, not Hannity and O'Reilly. Think about it - how can a book entitled "A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right" be fair and balanced if written by someone who shares completely opposite viewpoints. Look up the word "balance" in the dictionary. It means "right down the middle". Don't you have to be fair and balanced yourself before you can express a fair and balanced opinion on something? C'mon folks. This seems to me as just another "This is my opinion" book. If you're left, you'll love it - if you're right (which conservatives usually are), you'll probably disagree. Just like Hannity and O'Reilly, this is no more than a thinly veiled attempt to voice his opinion and viewpoints on politics. Take it for what it's worth, and maybe get a few laughs out of it, but be careful not to read too much into it. | | Lies (And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them): A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right by Dutton Stays with you | I enjoyed this book, and found myself laughing out loud at some of the well-researched anecdotes. The main point of the book, obviously, is that the Bush administration, with its close ties to various conservative mouthpieces, consists of habitual liars who continue to try to pull fast ones on the American public. He gleefully tells us that he has a crack team of Harvard graduate students conducting research on the various falsehoods propagated by the far-right's puppets and thugs. One such example, drawn out at length, is the idea that Bill Clinton's staff trashed the White House right before Bush II took office. As Franken generally writes, we all sort of imagined at the time that somehow people defecated on desks, scratched graffiti all over the walls, tore up all the phone lines, that sort of thing, right? Well, as it turns out, there was absolutely no incident of vandalism at all. The right-wing media just made it up. There's a lot more, but you've just got to read it--examples of lies are far too extensive and detailed to go into here in much detail.
Franken also describes how the uber-obnoxious Bill O'Reilly (with whom Franken appears to be only half-seriously feuding) denies having made certain statements. Then O'Reilly threatens to get rough with his antagonists when challenged with the actual videotapes of him making the disputed statements.
Franken devotes a portion of the book to describing how he and one Harvard student pretend to be a step-father and step-son doing a prospective campus visit at the Christian-fundamentalist Bob Jones University. (In fairness, everyone there is described as being very very nice.)
One point I find particularly compelling is Franken's modest suggestion that G.W. Bush is, ironically, the least Christian of all our presidents, in both belief and practice.... In short, I was challenged by some of the observations in the book, and it is amusing and very entertaining.
| | Lies (And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them): A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right by Dutton Franken gets it right, er, left! | I loved the entire book, but when I got to the chapter about the infamous Bob Jones University, I knew Al had really done his homework. BJU has been in the spotlight for three decades and I've known many people there. I've even visited the campus with some of them. Al writes:
"We'd come to Bob Jones expecting to encounter racist, intolerant homophobes. Instead, we found people who were welcoming, friendly and extremely niec. A little weird, yes. And no doubt homophobic. Bute well-meaning. Kind of."
This is the most accurate portrayal anywhere in the popular media about this self-proclaimed "World's Most Unusual University." If Franken hits the nail on the head here, I imagine he did the same with all the other facts in this text.
Another book that descibes this bizarre place, from an insider's point of view is Rich Merritt's Secrets Of A Gay Marine Porn Star
(as of the time I'm writing this, the number of "1-star" reviews for Franken's book is "666". How perfect! Only Satan would give this book one star.)
| | Lies (And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them): A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right by Dutton a penny well invested | | got the book cheap......glad i did because it had lots to offer. from the lies of ann coulter, bill o'reilly and FOX news to the sorry state of the "news" media. had some funny stories also. loved the one about Barbara Bush. i laughed out loud on many occasions. buy the book. | | Lies (And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them): A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right by Dutton Tell It Like It Is! | Al Franken did a very good job on this book. It is interesting, helpful and worth the price. He is not afraid to name names and say what he thinks. Many of the ultra right wing conservatives are the choices for his book on liars. I enjoyed reading the words of someone who is not afraid to call out some of the most outspoken of the ultra conservative right.
Good read! | | Lies (And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them): A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right by Dutton Product Description | Al Franken, "one of our savviest satirists" (People), takes on the issues, the politicians, and the pundits in one of the most anticipated books of the year.
For the first time since his own classic Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations, Al Franken trains his subversive wit directly on the contemporary political scene. Now, the "master of political humor" (Washington Times) destroys the myth of liberal bias in the media, and exposes how the Right shamelessly tries to deceive the rest of us.
No one is spared as Al uses the Right's own words against them. Not the Bush administration and their rhetorical hypocrisy. Not Ann Coulter and her specious screeds. Not the new generation of talk-radio hosts, and not Bill O'Reilly, Roger Ailes, and the entire Fox network. This is the book Al Franken fans have been waiting for (and his foes have been dreading). Timely, provocative, unfailingly honest, and always funny, Lies is sure to become the most talked about book of political humor in 2003 and beyond. | | Lies (And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them): A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right by Dutton Amazon.com | | Having previously dissected the factual inaccuracies of a single bellicose talk show host in Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot, Al Franken takes his fight to a larger foe: President George W. Bush, the Bush Administration, Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, and scores of other conservatives whom, he says, are playing loose with the facts. It's a lot of ground to cover, as evidenced by the 43 chapters in Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, but the results are often entertaining and insightful. Franken occupies a unique place in the modern political dialogue as perhaps the media's only comedy writer and performer who is also a Harvard fellow as well as a liberal political commentator. This unique and vaguely lonely position lends a charming quixotic quality to adventures such as a tense encounter with the Fox News staff at the National Press Club, a challenge to fisticuffs with National Review Editor Rich Lowry, and an oddly sweet admissions visit to ultra-conservative Bob Jones University (with a young research assistant posing as his son when Franken's real-life son refuses to participate in the charade). Less useful are comic book dramatizations of "Supply Side Jesus" and a fictitious Vietnam War story featuring the numerous righties who, Franken intimates, improperly avoided service. And Franken's criticisms of conservative talk show hosts Sean Hannity, O’Reilly, and columnist Coulter, while admirable in their attention to detail, fail to shed much new light on people who have built careers on broad arguments and relentless self-aggrandizement. But Franken is at his best, and most compellingly readable, when he backs off the wackiness and the personal grudges and writes about more personal matters such as the political circus surrounding the memorial service of the late Senator Paul Wellstone. But even on these more serious topics, Franken's wit is still present and, in fact, grows sharper. In a time when much political discourse is composed of rage and shouting, it's refreshing that Al Franken is able to shout in a witty manner. --John Moe |
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