Rating: 
Summary: B-O-R-I-N-G
Review: Franken should have stuck with Saturday Night Live. This book does not live up to the hype! No wonder it was #400 on the list before the court battle over Fox's tagline. It deserves to go back to #400 on the list. Zzzzzzzzz!
Rating: 
Summary: John Stuart Mill and Al Franken Are Right
Review: Franken shows in this book that John Stuart Mill was right when he said that although not "all conservatives are stupid people . . . it is true that most stupid people are conservative." And they all seem to watch Fox News and lap it up.I am growing a long beard, waiting for anyone connected with Fox to counter just one of Franken's arguments in this book. I guess Fox is still fuming after the judge spanked them for that frivolous lawsuit. Hope Franken sells a gazillion books, and writes a gazillion more (a gazillion, by the way, is exactly what the deficit is now).
Rating: 
Summary: Humor that will please any fourth grade student
Review: Franken shows that he has little to offer, most of his so called "facts" that he displays from the General Accounting Office could be interpreted in a variety of ways due to the fact that they are so vague and open to interpretation.
Anyone can take pot shots at leaders and debase their arguments by calling them pedantic childish names. It only reflects badly on the author. His humor fits a fourth grade classroom.
Rating:
Summary: irreverent, incisive, well-researched
Review: Franken skewers the holier-than-thou posturing of Fox News and Rupert Murdoch's right-wing media empire (yes, the "liberal media" is a myth) with eloquence, grace, and humor. I have not laughed this hard in a long time. What a wonderful book!
Rating:
Summary: Al is no honest broker
Review: Franken starts with a sincere sounding mission of proving the lies of the right wing media (Coulter, Limbaugh, Hannity) but then loses all of his credibility. He claims for example that Ann Coulter "lied" when she said that Norman Thomas, the socialist presidential candidate, was Evan Thomas's (the Newsweek editor) father. He even has a satirical dialogue with Evan in which Evan denies the statement as if it were preposterous, wholly without factual basis! What Franken never admits is that Norman Thomas was Evan's grandfather, not father, context which would turn Coulter's "lie" into something less, such as a mistake. Thus Franken commits the very duplicity he so earnestly complains that the right is guilty of.
Rating: 
Summary: Didn't know to laugh or to cry
Review: Franken takes a fairly straightforward approach to dissecting and refuting the right wing's attacks on moderates and centrists (c'mon, there aren't any true liberals left in washington). He exposes Hannity, Coulter and others for their blatant lack of honesty and sloppy techniques.
Thanks to Fox, he's riding this one to the bank.
BTW - If Fox is so concerned about trademark protection, how come every friday I hear Hannity say "if it's friday, it must be Miller Time...". Seems to me, the beer folks have the TM on that phrase.
Only criticism is that some of the points he makes are nitpicks. There are enough compelling arguments in the book that he could have left out the more ambiguous ones, which will just leave the right a place for their arguments.
Rating:
Summary: It's about time...
Review: Franken takes the hard right conservative press to task by holding it up to a simple standard--do they tell the truth when they make political arguments? He's not painting political conservatives as a whole with a broad brush--are you reading Anne Coulter?--but focusing on specific commentators--Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and so on and the ways in which they misrepresent some facts and outright lie about others. Anne Coulter says the NYTimes ignored the death of Dale Earnhart, Sr., for three days and then finally wrote a snobbish article about NASCAR? Franken reproduces the front page from the NYTimes the day after his death, which features a straigthforward news story about the death. Throughout the book, he does this over and over and over and over. And he throws in some pretty funny jokes along the way. A criticism of the book will inevitably be that he picks up on a few minor discrepancies and blows them out of proportion. This misses the point. In accumulating a library of lies large and small, Franken shows how cynically people of poor conscience but great resources affect our national political debate. These lies are echoed throughout the national press, which is too lazy to bother to check the facts themselves in their search for ratings or readers, another argument he makes throughout, that the press does not have a liberal bias but a corporate bias--whatever is cost-efficient and brings readers/viewers is what is printed/airs, not whatever serves a liberal bias. The danger, of course, is that like Hannity, Coulter, O'Reilly and the rest, Franken will preach to his own choir. What separates his work from the others, though, is that it is not only passionately argued but factually accurate, something people of good will have to respect. Since I got the book two days ago, I've read it late into the night after putting my 3 year old son to bed. I fear for his sake the emerging Dickensian importance on individual fortunes at the expense of the common good. It's unAmerican, as Teddy Roosevelt, last century's greatest republican president, argued many times. I really believe that if Bush thought he could get away with it, he'd repeal the 40-hour workweek (he has in part, by allowing employers to reclassify broad groups of workers to avoid paying them overtime), the minimum wage and maybe even child labor laws. Boring topics, but important to those who work, which admittedly is fewer people these days. Franken's books helps cut through the pollution of false statements and aims to reframe political debate in this country based on the simple premise that one should tell the truth. And face exposure for not doing so. This is a much mroe serious and angry book than Rush Limbaugh... It's every bit as funny too.
Rating:
Summary: funny but erroneous
Review: Franken tells his tale with plenty of wit and sarcasm, but those looking for actual facts will find few clearcut ones here. Franken's research is sloppier than those he lampoons, which makes him a bigger liar than they are.
Rating:
Summary: Exceptionally funny and fact filled!!
Review: Franken tells it like it is! Anyone with any level of high school or college level research experience will be able to see how he exposes the lies of Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly and the rest of the right wing nut press.
Rating:
Summary: At Last....lies verified!
Review: Franken through humor and wit, takes the rants and statements of record and proves them to be lies. He goes so far as to phone people quoted in Coulters book, something she should have done. He exposes the personalities of the Fox bunch including Colmes who I suspect is paid to be a straight man for Hannity. Small wonder Fox tried to keep the book off the market. The one common denominator the right wingers all have is anger. I heard someone say anger covers fear. My question is what are they all afraid of? The truth?? Not only are they all angry, they are mean, nasty, hypocritical, selfish, and self serving. And they can't take criticism. They can dish it out but what whiners they are when it comes back. They can't debate or discuss either. Try to get Coulter to answer a question and she gives you sarcasm, maybe that's why she is not on t.v. as much and is now giving speeches to boy scout rallies. If Frankens book is not truthful...let the whiners prove it. His exposure of the chicken hawks is priceless, and explaining the war was won with the Clinton military is something no one else would attest to, except Cheney. The horse and the drone was paid for by the last administration...indisputable facts. Thanks Al, it felt good to laugh again.
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