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

Rating:
Summary: "Come on, Al"
Review: While I did find this book to be somewhat entertaining and nowhere near as bad as O'Reilly and others claim it to be, I must say it is beyond a satire. Throwing around the term liar the way Franken does is not satyrical, it is smear. If this is the best the Left has to offer, I am glad I am on the Right.

Rating:
Summary: Major Disappointment
Review: While I don't usually read politically-based books, I decided to try this one afer a friend told me that it was funny. I was so disappointed...this book is shrill and hateful rather than funny. Maybe it's only funny to those who hate the right. But to an independent, it was offensive. I have no idea if his facts are true, but from his bitter tone, I doubt it. When he says, "God spoke to me", I think someone else was speaking to him, certainly not God.

Rating:
Summary: BRUTALLY FUNNY, REFRESHINGLY HONEST
Review: While I have enjoyed reading some of the articulate one star reviews here, I'm afraid I have to agree with everyone who have made this title Amazon's #4 seller this week. "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right" is fantastic.

Franken is always hilarious, but these books of his are brilliant, well-researched and--for his targets of opportunity--BRUTAL. The right deserves to have its lies and distortions fed back to them like this more often. Most book stores shelve this title in their humor section. And Franken IS a humorist. "Lies" is laugh out loud funny, but this book stands toe-to-toe with any strictly political screed out there.

Rating:
Summary: One must wonder
Review: While I somewhat enjoyed this book, I have read numerous reviews of people who had an obvious negative view of Al to begin with. I have yet to see a review that takes on the issues brought up. Only personal attacks and assertions that are never backed up. Come on conservatives! You guys are so strong in your opinions, at least one of you has to be able to explain them

Rating:
Summary: Well done Al - but perhaps one more draft oculd've helped
Review: While just as partisan as those he critiques, Franken' s new book succesfully illuminates the win-at-all-costs methods of the neo-con movement.

Franken's treatmens of Anne Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, and Sean Hannity are full of embarrassingly clear examples of deliberate attempts to mislead their audience. Particularly engaging is Franken's list of ways to "Lie with footnotes" that he pulls from Ms. Coulter's book "Slander".

Unfortunately, the book trails off after the first 200 pages. The points Franken makes in the last several chapters are less clearly defined and the jokes become less cutting. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the book's realease date was pushed up to take advantage of FOX NEWS' frivolous lawsuit against Franken.

I do doubt that anyone that anyone who comes to this book from a conservative background will appreciate the arguments Fraqnken presents. This is not because the argumentsd are invalid, but rather that Franken's attitude is a bit smug and superior. This is amusing to a reader with liberal leanings (like me), but I think that those ont he other side of the spectrum will turn off pretty quickly.

Rating:
Summary: Hypocritical book of the year
Review: While reading this book I couldnt help thinking that Mr. Franken adamantly defends our former president who had sex in the White house, lied about it on national TV and under oath, gave away top military technology to China, Allowed his wife to use Air Force One to do a campaign fund raiser in Nevada, yet slams Bill O'Rielly for confusing a Peabody for a Poke award??? This is a man with alot of hostility and unfortunately has to use this unchallenged media to make his weak arguments. It would be a hard choice to decide who to feel more sorry for, Mr. Franken who wrote this book or the people who actually paid money and wasted their time reading it.

Rating:
Summary: It takes one to know one.
Review: While some of Al's thoughts may have the guise of credibility with those equally delusional, as time goes on, more and more facts are coming out to show that the lies and the lying liar are all Al Franken.

A recent article in the local newspaper I read (reprinted from the NYTimes) was on the complete sham of an interview that he paraded with John Ashcroft. From the lies he told to get into the interview scenario to the twist of truth he told John in the guise of questions to the micro-quotes that he actually used in the book to make Ashcroft say exactly what Franken wanted him to say about abstinence to the misquoting of Health Department facts concerning the recent drop in high school pregnancy and STDs, Al was shown as a blatant lying liar who loves to tell lies.

If your style of humor if more Beavis & Butthead than Leno & Letterman, then Al might be a funny book to you.
If fair and balanced is to have wall-eye vision, then it's fair and balanced.
If humor is more important than truth, then read & enjoy Al Franken, but don't call me your friend.

Rating:
Summary: I had to put it down because it made me sick....
Review: While that may sound like a slam on the book, it's not. It's a tribute to the intellegent, well-thought out approach this book takes to tackling conservative accusations of "liberal bias" in the media and backs it up with examples of hypocrasy, slander, and just plain straight up lies of conservative "news" sources.

It's kind of interesting that some of the names mentioned in this book (O'Reilly, Hannity, Coulter, etc.) have decided to counter accusations (I'm not a fact finder, so I'm not going to claim that this book speaks the absolute truth) with more yelling and screaming about liberal bias than with anything else.

NOTE: I don't know much about Coulter or Hannity so I can't really comment too much on the whole truth about them, but anyone who has seen "The Factor" should know that it's all about O'Reilly and his mike being turned up enough to shout down anyone he doesn't agree with, but I digress....

Well written, humorous, and thought-provoking would be how I would describe this book. Be forewarned however, there are definately parts of the book that will cause you to question how much integrity US media as a whole really has.

Rating:
Summary: Needs a whole lot of fact checking...
Review: While the book is well written and quite witty at times, it should have been reviewed far more closely by his so called "fact checkers".

Besides some clear errors stated by other reviewers, the fact that Franken cites Internet blogs as sources to back some of his outrageous claims is not only comical, but grounds for the book to be relegated to the fiction section of any respectable book store.

Rating:
Summary: Al gets it straight and tells it like it is
Review: While the Republicans have their screeching soapbox pundits like Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity, the Democrats have finally found a salvation of sorts in Al Franken and the truths that he's discovered. This book is an essential--full of useful information uncovering the lies that the Right spews out unceasingly.

But it's not just a dry read, full of boring charts and information, though there's plenty of that for the information purist. Al interjects his commentary with hilarious anecdotes and jokes as well. I mean, how seriously can you take someone like Ann Coulter, who would like to see all liberals drawn and quartered? The viewpoint of the Right's most aggressive proponents is hilariously skewered by truth after truth, all in a sort of a can-this-really-be-happening-to-our-country? type of comedy.

The lies are amazing, and so abundant as to elicit disbelief. Was Ann Coulter born in 1960, or 1963? She says 1963 now--if so, then she voted when she was 16. That's illegal. Sean Hannity tells his viewers that poor people had the lowest taxes during Reagan. Al actually shows that no, they had huge taxes during the Reagan years. Bill O'Reilly claims to have been an independent, but no, he was actually a registered Republican. These are but a very few of the lies uncovered by Franken.

Al Franken gives me hope. Hope that the lies told by the Right will be uncovered, and this corporate-bought bureaucracy that is now the American government can someday go back to being an actual democracy. Please read it and then vote!!