Rating: 
Summary: All you need to know about the plutocratic right
Review: This book does an excellent job of exposing the way conservatives disingenuously carp and whine about how nasty liberals are always unscrupulously attacking them and only care about power when in fact the conservatives are the unscrupulous attack dogs who only care about maintaining power. That "frankenlies" site that other reviewers have mentioned tries to cover up the very real removal of black voters from the voting rolls and other *very real* abuses that took place in Florida in 2000 with claims of voter fraud in Florida. There very well may have been such fraud, but all that does nothing to refute the facts of Republican abuses of power during that contested election! And while the Bush Administration may have had some successes before 9/11 in the struggle against terrorism, the fact very much remains that Clinton was more on the ball terrorism-prevention-wise than the Bush Administration ever was before or after 9/11. That it is claimed otherwise is just another good example of how the reactionary spew machine works overtime to distort and contradict the truth. All the rest of the stuff from that site are minor things at best that do little to detract from the lesson this book has to teach about how things really are.
Rating:
Summary: Industry of deceit revealed
Review: This book does an excellent job of revealing the industry the has grown by telling conservatives what they want to hear regardless of the veracity of the story. Ann, Rush, and Bill spew books and stories just to please a gullible, scared group.
Al mixes satire with historical proof and can get a little confusing at times. I am not really a Stuart Smalley fan and this book contains some similar humor. However, it is a must read for the facts mixed in with a humorous web.
Rating:
Summary: Sad but True
Review: This book does what the media should but doesn't. It documents the shameless lack of integrity of the Bush administration and those who promote it in the guise of print and broadcast journalism and commentary.Franken makes it clear how we, the American people, are victimized by political prevarication. We must figure out both how we let ourselves get there and how to force the politicos and the press to tell us the truth. Thank you, Al Franken!
Rating:
Summary: A great book!!!
Review: This book exposes the true identity of Fox News Channel and the bunch of conservative hosts who propogate extreme right wing ideas across the air. It is high time that some one exposed their true colors. Great Jon Al!!
Rating: 
Summary: More fuel for the hate machines
Review: This book failed to address any tangible, realistic issues. Speculation, and assumption, run rampant throughout the pages. Right, left, middle-left, middle-right, and left-right, all become very skewed and confused throughout the whole of the book. Another problem I found, as proved in Arnold Griffith's review above, is the lumping of all people of similarity into a whole, for example, Griffith claims after having read this book that all Christians are hypocrites. If I am not mistaken that is the same kind of illogical reasoning that puts gypsies in prison camps, and people with birth defects in gas chambers. If you want to read something, I would look in the area of positive and helpful, rather than negative and destructive, and this book has plenty of the negativity and destruction.
Rating: 
Summary: A needed voice in public discourse
Review: This book gained a lot of publicity when it was the subject of a law suit. Interestingly, the law suit brought by Fox News against this book, for violating trademark by using the phrase "fair and balanced" in the title, was judged "wholly without merit" by a judge. Al Franken said, in response, that Fox News should change its slogan to reflect that ruling: "Fox News: Wholly without merit."
Franken's book makes a case for such a judgement. His convincingly researched volume is the product of his service as a fellow at Harvard's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. In this capacity, he led Harvard students, "TeamFranken" in researching deliberate and ignorant mistruths promulgated by conservatives in the United States political process.
Obviously, Franken has a decided political position, and one has to take his assessment of the "truth" with a grain of salt, as one should of anything firmly planted inside an ideology. There were times, specifically the "Operation Chickenhawk: Episode 1" chapter, that I felt that Franken was perpetrating the wrongs that he has accused the "other side" of committing, and I didn't enjoy it. But for the most part, I laughed, was outraged and felt confident with his research.
Franken starts out and continues throughout the book addressing the idea that mainstream media leans to the left of the political spectrum. He notes instances in which general source media (network television and newspapers, like the New York Times) picked up what he believes to be right-wing reaction or language and promulgated it as accepted news. Two of these sitatutions were the Al Gore Exaggeration Story and the It Was Not a Memorial Service (for Paul Wellstone). TeamFranken explicates the history of the universally accepted truth that Al Gore lies and exaggerates his own accomplishments. For example, Gore said, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet," referring to his efforts in Congress to help fund the Internet's forerunner, a military computer network called Arpanet. "What he seemed to be doing is what members of Congress do: He was taking credit for a program he championed and funded. In this case, one that revolutionized the information infrastructure of the entire world," writes Franken. Al Gore was also falsely accused of claiming that he and Tipper were the inspiration for the characters in LOVE STORY, Oliver Barrett and Jenny Cavalleri. What actually happened was that a newspaper in Tennessee had misquoted the author of LOVE STORY, Erich Segal, as saying the above story (Segal had actually stated that Oliver Barrett was based partially on Al Gore and partly on Tommy Lee Jones, his college roommate, but not that Tipper had a part in it.) Gore, having read the article in his home state paper, told another reporter that that was what he had read, not that he was the inspiration. Another instance included the New York Times and the Washington Post misquoting Gore saying that he had been the one who started it all, in terms of the investigation of Love Canal, when what he had said was "That was the one that started it all," referring to a toxic waste dump in Tennessee that a little girl had written to his Congressional office about. Though the NYTimes and the Post issued corrections, the story took hold and furthered the idea of Gore as a congenital exaggerator (if I may be inspired by Safire here).
The issue of the Wellstone Memorial is similar. Franken, who attended the service, said that Wellstone's friend, in his speech, went over the top and was inappropriate in calling for everyone -- including Republicans present at the event -- to vote for Mondale, but that previous to that many heartfelt speeches were made, one for each casualty of the plane crash that killed Wellstone, his wife, other family members and staffers. But by the time the story had moved through the "filtering" of the right wing, it grew maintstream media legs for the accusation that the mourners were "plants" "shuttled in," that Trent Lott was booed off the stage (he never spoke, and smiled good naturedly at some teasing boos from a small contingent of people in the stands when he entered, sayeth Franken), and that they whole thing was conceived and planned as a political move against Wellstone's opponent, Coleman (who won).
I won't list all the examples in the book, but wanted to present an idea of what is written in the volume and how Franken addresses what he decries as lowering the tone of discourse in politics in America, for which he holds entities like Fox News and people like Ann Coulter responsible. He seeks to shoot down right-wing propaganda and parses data released by the White House in furtherance of its policies, with which he disagrees, to show vastly different results.
The writing is funny, and I laughed out loud often while reading LIES. Some chapter titles include: Who Created the Tone?, Did the Tone Change? Why Did Anyone Think it Would Change? and I Grow Discouraged about the Tone. He includes information about tax cuts and cuts to state funding in a witty play, and even includes a funny cartoon, "Supply Side Jesus," for which he gives credit for the idea to Bradley Whitford (yes, that Bradley Whitford, from WEST WING). He does a hysterical typographical number on Colmes's name whenever he mentions the Fox News show Hannity and Colmes, in which Colmes is supposed to represent the Left -- it made me laugh every single time I saw it.
Franken saves his deepest vitriol for George Bush, Dick Cheney, Ann Coulter and Karl Rove, not only showing another side to their presentation of policy and events, but also refuting the effectiveness of the administration's policies in humorous and convincing prose.
Franken succeeds here at making political and policy knowledge and issues entertaining, in a substantive way. He is deeply offended by what he feels is a degrading effect on political discourse in this country by some of the right-wing's most powerful people and its pundits to win at any cost. This book is a vital part of the public discourse on politics and the state of the nation, whether one agrees or not, because it presents another side to accepted truths about our country.
Rating:
Summary: satisfying
Review: this book gave me a degree of political satisfaction that has only been available from michael moore up until now. thank you so much, al franken. as you stated in your introduction, yes, god DID choose you to write this book (if there is a god) and consarn it*, he made a heck* of a choice. *i'm not sure what degree of profanity is allowed on these things, so i played it safe.
Rating:
Summary: Go Al, Go!
Review: This book gave me great pleasure. After suffering all the hype, hyperbole and downright distortion that spews from the right wing-dominated media (admit it, Fox fans!), Al Franken does a straight-forward, fact-based dissection of a sampling the lies from Coulter, Savage, et al. This book is now making the rounds to other members of my family, who are equally delighted.
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Summary: Shattering Stereotypes
Review: This book goes to prove that intelligence, wit and education are not under the exclusive purview of the extreme right. My world has been turned upside down!
Rating:
Summary: Fortunately, I'm laughing too hard too be truly terrified
Review: This book has had me and my husband laughing out loud for two days. And it'll keep us thinking for a lot longer. Aside from being incredibly funny, this book is a pretty stunning statement about what gets shoveled as "news" -- or worse yet, swallowed as "truth" -- by the people of America. As a liberal who loves this country and lives as a devout follower of Jesus, it's been painful for me to endure being called a treasonous, God-hating baby-killer by Anne Coulter and her ilk. Thank you, Al Franken, for standing up and calling conservative liars on the carpet. Wish a few Dem presidential hopefuls had the balls to do the same. Read this book, people. The truth shall set you free.
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