Rating: 
Summary: Al Franken has done it again!
Review: I rarely buy aa book when it is in hardcover because I don't want to invest $25 in something i may only read once or twice but I am a huge Al Franken fan and his books are always worth the investment, I had tears in my eyes because I was laughing so hard. Al exposes conservatives like Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter for what they are...and he uses their own words to do it. Al Franken is a comic genius!
Rating:
Summary: Al just tells it like it is - without the spin, or the lies
Review: I read Al's book in just over one evening - it is a real page-turner. First - it pays attention to fact, not just rhetoric. Second - Al takes a very level, even-handed approach to the distinction between 'truth' and 'spin'. Third - Al simply dismantles the Rushian empire by using truth, as opposed to over-inflated biased accusations. Lastly - Al takes the administration to task over statements that have been made repeatedly without much challenge from the mainstream media. Nice job Al! Very refreshing!
Rating:
Summary: Thank you DNC for this book!!!
Review: I read Al's first book during my long and arduous labor and subsequent childbirth. Well, the doc made me put the book down in order to actually give birth. It was very special to me, the book that is and the child too. So when the DNC sent me an email saying that for a small donation, I could get an autographed copy of Al's new book, I was thrilled. I immediately paid for the book and spent the next couple of weeks preparing for the big day. I dusted the bookcase and reorganized so that my new arrival wouldn't have any hostile neighbors. I came home last Friday to a brown package on my front porch, the big day was finally here.
Needless to say, I spent the day reading. Al did not let me down. The book is filled with his usual irreverent wit. One must have a sense of humor to appreciate Al Franken's style as it may be hard to discern fact from funny. His revelations are hilarious and I found myself laughing out loud a few times. It scares me that people with so much power are capable of telling such egregious lies and some even lie about telling lies. What's up with that? The book is not hateful as the title would suggest. It is intelligently written and, from what I gathered by reading all the footnotes, painstakingly factual. My one disappointment is that Al didn't autograph it to me personally. It's a generic signature either by Al or someone who writes like him. I still want to have Al Franken's love child. I'm kidding---on the square.
Rating:
Summary: Delightful
Review: I read Franken's Rush book many years ago as an I was an undergraduate. I loved the book then. In the years since, I have received my Bachelor's degree, started my career, and continued growing in maturity and intellect. This new Franken book, I unconsciously assumed, would fail to appeal to the older me. My assumptions were buttressed when the mainstream media portrayed this as an ribald, "angry" book, or, worse, a left-wing version of anti-intellectual polemists of Coulter, Savage, & Hannity. But I picked up the book for old time's sake. I read a random essay, then another random essay. I was hooked. I read chapter 1, and read all they way to the end.This book was simply delightful to read. My assumptions were dead wrong. I am angry at myself for falling victim to the right-wing echo chamber. I thought I was smarter than to be bamboozled, but it's hard not ignore countless messages in the media. Franken's essays concerning Hannity, Coulter, O'Reilly, and Goldberg are priceless. He debunks Coulter's "research" "methods" in his Coulter essay. For instance, Coulter cites an NYT passage that appears to blame Christians for the Holocaust. (Oh, those Christian-hating liberals!) TeamFranken checked it out. They discovered the passage originally appeared in a review of a play that posed the question to its audience. The chapter on O'Reilly lies was even stronger and damning. His lies are relatively benign when taken individually: claiming he grew up in a "working class" Irish neighborhood when he's in fact grew up in an affluent suburb, claiming to be registered independent when in fact he registered Republican, and his infamous claiming of a pair of Peabody awards (a story, by the way, that O'Reilly is constantly changing). In one part of the essay, Franken excerpts a passage from O'Reilly's novel about a former television reporter who, in revenge, murders his former co-workers (you read that right). O'Reilly's writing is so pedestrian, so bizarre, that one can't help but laugh in befuddlement. Taking together the lies, the bizarre book, and stories of O'Reilly's yelling at people and threatening bodily harm, the reader is left with a damning mosaic of a man so arrogant, so self-serving, and so full of himself, that he lacks the internal mechanism most of us possess that keeps us telling lies to prop ourselves up. There are many more wonderful essays in the book. There's also some that don't work. His chastising of Alan Colmes was a bit overboard, for one. No author's work is perfect. But these are minor points. The book is wonderful. Franken's wit reminds me of Woody Allen or James Thurber; his method reminds me a little bit of Kurt Vonnegut. The simple prose of Vonnegut and Franken produce chuckles and smiles while one reads'but minutes after one finishes the work, one becomes disturbed and angry. Most of Franken's readers will find this book fun, smart, and intelligently angry & a nice and welcome break from more demanding books of, literature like, say, Dostoevsky or Tolstoy, or serious publications, perhaps the New Republic, the Weekly Standard. Readers of Coulter, Hannity, Limbaugh, on the other hand, take their large-type, double-spaced books remarkably seriously. They creat "personality cults" ("Dittoheads"). The is so, I'm sure, because most are unsophisticated and uneducated. I would be shocked to know if many of their readers are aware of liberals like John Stuart Mill or political thinkers like Rousseau. One final compliment. The book thoroughly entertained me and made me smile. But unlike ephemeral entertainment, this one will stay with me. I am often too lenient with these O'Reillys or Coulters of ourworld. They are harmless trash, I think, much like Christina Aguilara, and not worth my attention. But books like Franken's remind me that even the trashiest of the trashy books matter & they influence our politics. Liberals, progressives, and Democrats must fight back--whether it be with sharp humor, with intelligent anger, or with our voice--no matter how inane these people are. These things matter. To use a cliche, I genuinely got something out of this book. Mr. Franken, I would bet $50 you are skimming these reviews. I apologize for unconsciously believing the right-wing spin and the ensuing echoes in the mainstream press. I loved the book. I hope we won't have to wait another seven years before the next essay collection. Wonderful job to you and to TeamFranken.
Rating:
Summary: So what is the best thing we can do about these lies?
Review: I read negative information about others when I can do something about it. When exposed to the lies of the influential in our society, what can we do? I guess we should follow a principle of Optimal Thinking by Rosalene Glickman, Ph.D. (ranked #7 in Success book category here at Amazon.com and #3 in United Arab Emirates) by accepting what is out of our control and optimizing what is within our control. Otherwise we are all wasting time and sabotaging our own lives by thinking suboptimally. Just a thought!
Rating:
Summary: Republicans JUST DON'T GET IT
Review: I read review after review of people who are to the right and don't want to listen. I admit that I'm to the left, yet i do agree with some of the right's thinking. And yes i follow politics. What many don't get is that this is to be read with a grain of salt. I disagree with some of what Franken talks about, and yes he is wrong about some facts but that is no different than President Regan who called uniforms costumes and at the 1988 conventation say "Facts are stuipd things." The book is fresh and his thinking is different than most. He is simply using what other people have said to show what were the truth lies, no pun intended. It is no different than a book by Bill O'Riley or any other person who is of the right. I really must wonder why most people are so serious and must rip into everything. Have most people have nothing better to than no be objective than closed minded. I read books by authors that i hated in college but I at least gave them a chance and find that i liked some, yet many have forgetten to do that.
Rating:
Summary: IT'S SATIRE YOU NITWITS!
Review: I read several reviews that attacked Franken as being just like Coulter, Hannity, etc by creating an environment of "attack politics". It's satire people! He's trying to get you to open your eyes, take off your blinders and realize that you can't simply take what Bill O'Reilly et al say as truth. He's trying to get people to wake up and think for themselves. He's not suggesting that you simply believe what he tells you. The point of the book is that Americans, by and large, have become too complacent and too lazy to THINK for themselves and that the Right wingers have taken advantage of this apathy and used it to spew their doctrines. Several points in the book DO point out actual lies told by various Right Wingers. He also points out, and shows his readers how to dissect those arguments and find the facts.
Rating:
Summary: Worth its weight in gold!
Review: I read the "Rush..." book when it came out a few years ago, THOUGHT THAT IT WAS GREAT, and when I heard about the "Lies..." book i knew i would read it when it came out. i read it while i was on vacation and the book was great, fantastic, supreme, funny, informative, a 377 page savage beating of the conservative commentators and the lies they shamelessly, disgracfully tell. some parts of the book were so funny that that i had to stop reading because i was laughing so hard. this book was very infomative, i learned more about what had been going on than i could learn from any news source. bottom line, THIS BOOK WAS WORTH ITS WEIGHT IN GOLD!
Rating: 
Summary: Did anyone read the book before reviewing it?
Review: I read the book on a plane trip from New York to New Orleans and it kept me entertained although I'm rather liberal and it's written for a liberal audience in mind. It won't entertain people with a conservative leaning ( as evidenced by all the one star reviews here ). Al Franken is funny when he's picking apart Ann Coulter and Bill O'Rielly. He's funny when lambasting "HANNITY and combs" and he's funny when recounting his ride on a plane with Barbara Bush. He's funny while telling the story of how he tried to get the goods on Bob Jones University but instead encountered polite and incorruptible people. He's not so funny when talking about the Wellstone memorial service and that's by design. It was a pretty serious event for him which he sees as being twisted by the right's spin doctors for their political gain. Unfortunately there are a couple of cartoons in the book that are not very funny either and that's NOT by design. Supply Side Jesus is just ascerbic and the Vietnam 'toon was just long. I hope he didn't write those. One theme that I see the One Star reviewers bringing up as a contradiction is the fact that Al Franken sent a letter to John Ashcroft et. al. on Harvard letterhead as a ruse to get their opinions about abstinance. I saw one say that it's a well documented Al Franken lie. Well, you can read all about it IN THE BOOK since that is undoubtedly where the story originates. READ THE BOOK BEFORE YOU REVIEW IT. Is it a classic? No, but it's funny and kills time on a plane.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Review: I read the whole book in one sitting. I couldn't put it down. It's angry, insightful, detailed and funny, very funny. Journalists need to step up and do their job. The liars must be exposed. A terrific book.
|
