Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right

Rating:
Summary: So true...
Review: I've never read a political book before. But when I heard Al Franken's book being trashed up and down FOX News I just had to get it. I couldn't put it down. Franken really calls people like Sean Hannity, Bill O'Riley, Ann Coulter, and even the President on their blatant lies. I wish everyone could see the truth as clearly as Franken can, because then this country would be a better place. Keep them coming, Al!

Rating:
Summary: A "Must Read" for Ann Coulter Fans
Review: I've read most of Ms. Coulter's recent books, as well as Michael Moore's and most of Al Franken's books, to try and determine for myself who to believe. I've also gone so far as to check out many of the supposed "facts" that are given by all three of these authors for myself.

My conclusion? They're all full of s**t to a certain degree, but Al Franken is by far the most accurate (albeit sometimes rather crudely so- mostly in the name of humor) in his allegations against his adversaries.

If you've ever read a book by Ann Coulter, please read this Al Franken book if for nothing else than to drag you back toward reality just a bit. The opposite is also recommended. We all need balance to retain our objectivity.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, and on target.
Review: I've read previous works of Al Franken, including "Rush Limgbaugh Is A Big Fat Idiot And Other Observations," and I'd have to conclude that this is his best work, by far. Franken takes to task the Right-wing media, exposing their deceits, lack of interest in portraying the truth or "Fair and Balanced (tm)" honesty in reporting, and political agenda as unbridled lackeys of the conservative movement. Humerous and frightening at the same time, it's hard to see the world in the same light once you read this book. In some, it may even bring about a paradigm shift in your thinking.

This book is brimming with honesty, and it's hard not to feel flabbergasted at the sheer audacity of the Right-wing media, especially when Franken speaks his mind on matters that you already knew or suspected. Buy this book: While Franken sprinkles his wit throughout the book, its content is too keen to ignore, and too important to forget. Remember this the next time you dial to the mass-media to get your "truth." If you want the truth, read "Lies."

Rating:
Summary: FINALLY some TRUE liberal media bias!
Review: I've read the book. I've also just read over two hundred of the reviews posted here, attempting to find a negative one that was thoughtful and reasoned. Unfortunately, the negative responses pretty much follow the Bill O'Reilly pattern of discourse: Spittle-spewing, fact-free, childish rage. Many of the negative reviewers seemed to be so upset they didn't notice the serious grammar and spelling errors in their posts. One reviewer didn't even understand that the 'fair and balanced' line in the book title was a joke.

Lighten up, people. The point of the book is pretty simple: The right wing has used the 'liberal media bias' bogeyman as a rallying cry for years, but the truth is the right wing controls much of the news media. Fox News, with their ludicrous 'fair and balanced' tagline, leads the pack. Clear Channel owns over a thousand radio stations. The radio waves are inundated with angry right wing talk show hosts. Most newspapers are owned by wealthy and conservative families or corporations. The only national liberal media outlet is Democracy Now (sorry right wingers: NPR is really pretty centrist).

Within the largely conservative news milieu are several media 'stars' who use lies, distortions, and bullying to sell books and get ratings. All Al Franken does here is hold these people up to the light. True conservatives should be ashamed of people like Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Roger Ailes, and Karl Rove.

Franken also covers some of the more egregious lies told by the Bush Administration. All thinking people should be more than a little worried about the Bushies arrogance, ignorance, and deceptiveness.

I gave the book four stars instead of five because Franken wanders a bit too much, trying out different ways to make his points. I would have preferred more of the serious research he presents, and less of the comic book style satires. The book is at its best when he's mostly serious, exposing the misleading statements and out and out lies propounded by Coulter, Hannity, O'Reilly, and the Bush Administration.

Ann Coulter, for example, is someone so far beyond the pale of reason I can't believe even right wingers read her stuff for anything other than laughs. Franken could have gone much further in his skewering of her. Maybe she is too easy a target. For example, in her book Treason, she states all Democrats in Congress who voted against the latest Stars Wars Missile Defense bill should be charged with, well, treason. Seriously. And here I thought conservatives were the ones opposed to huge, expensive government programs that don't work.

Franken could have spent less time on the parody material and more on the blaring idiocies and logic disconnects put forth by bizarroids such as Coulter. But then, he is first and foremost a satirist, I guess.

A high point in the book is the moving commentary on the memorial service he attended for Senator Paul Wellstone and the others who died in the plane crash that took Wellstone's life. He dissects how Limbaugh, Tucker Carlson, Peggy Noonan, and other right wing gadflies deliberately and maliciously twisted that event into something it wasn't, and felt no shame whatsoever about doing it.

To me, though, one of the most telling points Franken makes is how leading right wing pundits and politicians are willfully dishonest with their own constituency. They know the truth, but spew fabrications and lies to rile up their followers. For God's sake, all Clinton lied about was sex. These people's lies get other people killed.

This book is such a breath of clean air in the polluted atmosphere of 21st Century political discourse. As Al states in his summation, if today's right wing has to rely on lies and bullying to get their ideas across, then liberals must counter by being smart and attractive.

Rating:
Summary: Certainly full of more facts than you'd think.
Review: I've read the first hundred or so pages of Lying Liars and I went onto Amazon to find intelligent reasons that the book was bad. I think one of the best ways to judge something is to read what the people who hate it have against it.

Lying Liars is, obviously, not for the staunch supporters of the right. They have, and will, hate the book. The middle and those that are curious about what they are taking in in the media have much to gain from this book and ones like it.

Most of the one-stars on here are awfully hateful. In fact the most recent one I read basically threatened those that liked the book with Bush's reelection. Yikes. Do you wave your president around like fire on a stick?

I think the book is very readable, and that its information was entertaining and informative. It was very easy for me to check Franken's research. If you have a sense of humor and the book isn't rubbing salt in your wounds you are free to enjoy it.

Rating:
Summary: useful information. good, but could have been better.
Review: I've read the first hundred pages. What I've found is that the book is at its best when it presents false-statements by right-wing authors. The book is at its worst when it tries to be funny instead of sticking to the facts. For example, Al Franken writes that Bill O'Reilly's new book titled "Who's Looking Out for You" is titled "Living with Herpes" (page 65).

I guess Al Franken was trying to be funny by changing the title of O'Reilly's book, but by not sticking with the facts Franken diminishes the whole chapter.

Another problem with the book is that some of the quotes could be better referenced. For examples, on page 38 Franken quotes conservatives, including Bernard Goldberg, as saying the media has a liberal bias, but doesn't give the source of the quotes.

The best chapter is chapter 9, which discusses a study which found that while Washington-based journalists are more liberal on social issues than the general public, these journalists are more conservative on economic issues. The study was conducted in 1998 by Dr. David Croteau of Virginia Commonwealth University.

Rating:
Summary: Frankenlies.com
Review: I've read this book and thought it was humorous at first, but then I did my own research and found that many of Franken's claims are completely wrong and that Franken is just making shotty personal attacks and distorting the truth while hating all things Conservative and calling them liars.

If you really liked this book, before you become a Franken lachey, I strongly encourage all liberals check out the facts for yourself. Visit: Frankenlies.com

Rating:
Summary: A Fair and Balanced Review
Review: I've resolved to use the term "fair and balanced" as often as I can when in public. I'm off to a slow start as I've only done it once so far. Well, twice if you include the "fair and balanced" in the first sentence there. And three times if you include that one. See how easy it is? I encourage everyone to start using it as much as possible. With Fox fighting all these lawsuits, maybe Rupert Murdoch will eventually go broke!

Okay, let's clear up some misconceptions about "Lies (And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them) A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right" -- those misconceptions propagated mainly by the one-star reviews written by people who obviously did not read the book. The book is not about proving conclusively a conservative bias in the media as a whole. Here, Franken makes a two-pronged argument. First, that there is a well-funded portion of media that does indeed have a conservative bias and that by their repeating lies over and over again, eventually some of it seeps through to the mainstream media. Franken's second point is that ". . . there are other, far more important, biases in the mainstream media than liberal or conservative ones." Like the ". . . bias toward the Sensational, involving Scandal, and hopefully Sex or Violence. . ." or the Easy-and-Cheap-to-Cover, Get-It-First, Pack Mentality, Negativity, Soft News, Don't-Offend-the-Conglomerate-That-Owns-Us, Hoping-There's-a-War-to-Cover biases. To name a few. The poignant chapter on the Paul Wellstone memorial is a good case study of how the conservative media is able to exploit these ingrained biases in order to propagate their lies.

The point of the book is also not to be an all-encompassing catalog of the lies of the Right. Early on, Franken says he made the observation to a friend that going after Ann Coulter is like shooting fish in a barrel. To which his friend replied, "I've never shot fish in a barrel. But I could imagine that after a while it could get boring." So, Franken's goal is to illuminate with representative examples in order to reveal the bigger pattern. Take, for example, Bill O'Reilly's repeated claim that Inside Edition won two Peabody Awards which turned out to be one Polk Award the show won a year after O'Reilly left Inside Edition. "So he made a mistake! Big deal," you say. Well, aside from the fact that he repeated this misstatement (ironically, about a journalism award) several times in order to give Inside Edition -- and, by extension, O'Reilly himself -- the veneer of respectability, it was his crybaby reaction to being corrected that's so telling. Instead of simply admitting that he made a mistake, he used his own show as a soapbox and said he never made any claims about a Peabody and that, therefore, he was the victim of "attack journalism."

In addition to outright lies, Franken tackles duplicity and hypocricy found in rants from the Right. Take the following two quotes, for example.

1."They haven't prepared for anything in this. And they're running out of weapons to do it. And frankly, I don't think [the President] has the moral authority or ability to fight this war correctly."

2."You don't have to take cheap political partisan shots at the commander in chief and say to the world that he doesn't have the experience to lead when he is leading men and women into harm's way."

That second quote is from Sean Hannity on March 27, 2003, and it sounds kinda like he's refuting that first quote there, doesn't it? Except that the first quote is also Sean Hannity, on May 10, 1999, in reference to the war in Kosovo. You know, when Clinton was leading men and women into harm's way.

Perhaps I've not convinced you yet of the brilliance of Al Franken? Of the fair and balanced nature of the arguments in the book? Well then I'd like to close with one last quote from the book -- some sage words from a man even stalwarts of the Nutty Right (yes, even Ann Coulter) have no grievance with. That's right, I'm talking about Mr. Sneer himself, Dick Cheney: "A commander in chief leads the military built by those who came before him. There is little that he or his defense secretary can do to improve the force they have to deploy. It is all the work of previous administrations. Decisions made today shape the force of tomorrow. . ." Of course, Cheney made the comments in August 2000. He continues on, saying he called up Ronald Reagan to thank him personally for the military that won the first Gulf War. And that's why we've been so inundated with nonstop coverage of Cheney's public declarations of gratitude to Bill Clinton. Especially with this liberal media.

Rating:
Summary: Witty and Informative
Review: I've seen a few reviews on here from people who obviously disagree with Franken's in-depth, witty analysis of the right. One reviewer claimed that "If lying is the issue, a far richer target would be the left." Funny how this person deflects while offering nothing to back up his claims--a tactic often used by those, on the left as well as the right, who can't support their argument. Another reviewer claims all democrats are socialists, a sweeping generalization that one with even the slightest bit of common sense can debunk, and then goes on to say, in so many words, if one is not a conservative who agrees with and blindly supports the "President" (the only President in history who didn't get the most votes, by the way--if the tables were turned, you can bet the right would be crying foul, and, yes, the left would probably keep their mouths shut), he/she is then a member of a collective "Don't Support the Troops" party. This person brings up the fact that troops are dying in Iraq, failing to note that it was his precious President who sent them there in the first place.And besides, it is possible to support the troops without supporting the war or the President's foreign policy. Let me explain: one can appreciate and be proud of the military men and women who risk their lives in a cause they believe in (ostensibly, though they didn't really have a choice in the matter if they signed up pre-Iraq Occupation), who truly believe freedom is under attack and they must protect it, even if we don't happen to agree with them. Intention goes a long way, and I for one could not be prouder of our fighting men and women, despite the fact that I think our "Commander-in-Chief" sent them to die for reasons other than weapons of mass destruction (no proof whatsoever with Iraq, unlike with North Korea, who have even threatened us--but Saddam is the greater enemy?), or 9/11 connections (no proof there either, but you know who does have a proven 9/11 connection?--Osama bin Laden! That's right, and yet we seem to have forgotten all about him), and the "liberation" of the Iraqi people (even as we flaunt our close ties to countries that oppress their people, we claim we're in Iraq partly because of Saddam's atrocities, a baldfaced lie--again, intention goes a long way). But I digress. Anyway, the book is excellent, and shows Hannity, O'Reilly, Coulter and many others--who specialize and have made a career off of sweeping generalizations--for who they truly are--mere shells who spout values and mindless rhetoric without the slightest moral commitment to their claims and without the slightest ethical commitment to their followers.

Rating:
Summary: The Right of course is Wrong!
Review: I've skimmed through the first 10 pages or so of reviews. Al the one-star writers have said things like "Al lies, no facts..." blah blah blah.

There are plenty of facts and sources in this book. chicken conservatives are just too afraid to read something negative about their masters. And liberals are soft and weak? Sure. I've never read more attacks from such a group of creampuffs in my life.

you can't refute the facts, so like coulter, hannnity and the rest of your GOP frat boys in office, you lie and distort.

one reviewer said visit frankenlies.com. Please. Whomever started that web site hasn't a clue how to do a lexus nexus search. The arguments against franken fall flat on their face, and he obviously cannot tell when AL is making a joke and whe he's being serious. That in itself is hilarious enough.

So, you one star neocon reviewers who say Al lies, why don't you read the book and try to disprove what he's said?

and for before the next ignorant sacl of poop claims Al's unpatriotic, ask yourself how many USO tours have you gone on to entertain our troops.

Neocons are boring, dimwitted goons.