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Shut Up and Sing: How Elites from Hollywood, Politics, and the UN are Subverting America

Shut Up and Sing: How Elites from Hollywood, Politics, and the UN are Subverting America

List Price: $27.95
Your Price: $17.61
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Same Old Song and Dance
Review: ...from yet another in an endless parade of shrill, hysterical, hypocritical, flag-waving, paranoid, moralizing, hate mongering, right wing radio hosts looking to cash in. I've read a bunch of these books for a term paper I'm writing (guess that makes me an elitist...) After a while, their ass-ymetrical world views run into one another and it's difficult to distinguish them. My take is that since the cold war has ended many Republicans suffer from displaced hatred and have to direct it somewhere, so the most logical place is the Democratic party. And for whatever psychological malady they suffer from, need constant (I mean constant) reassurance of their perspective via radio talk, Fox news, and titles like this one.

Generally, all of these conservative pundits use the same formula: they take the views of the far, far left - certainly a minority, and use it to stereotype everyone in the Democratic party, thereby creating the classic strawman to be demolished chapter after chapter, book after book, author after author. Along the way, they digress to complain about media bias, which is hypocritical since their mugs are heard on the radio 24X7, make regular TV appearances (if not have their own show), and are all over the book shelves.

I read this one a little while ago. I thought of it as I was channel surfing last night to find that some talking head program dug up Pat Boone who proclaimed that the single most important issue - more than the economy, and the war in Iraq, in this election year, is the ban on gay marriages because allowing gays to marry will end our civilization(!!) Whoa - talk about homophobic moron. I thought here's a guy who should "Shut Up and Sing" but - well I think I would rather hear his asinine assertions than his singing.

Of course, the most obvious problem with this book is that entertainers with a liberal viewpoint should "shut up and sing" but old Pat Boone and those like him are largely MIA in this tome. It is these glaring gaps in logic that relegate the likes of MS Ingraham to the far, far left of the AM dial in most major markets - right next to some crazy speaking in tongues, in the part of the AM frequency spectrum the FCC years ago reserved for babbling idiots.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Shut Up and Lift Weights
Review: After reading this piece of drivel, which I did at my brother's insistence, I anxiously await her book, "Shut up and Lift Weights"...her expose' on Ahhnuld. Oh, that's right...he's a Republican, so we're not likely to see that book. It's only the Liberals she wants to shut up. That's democracy in action, Laura. You go girl! Go elsewhere that is.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Ingraham Venom
Review: Laura comes across as an intelligent radio host with a talent for acerbic wit. Sadly, her book is about as biased as she claims the media to be. I expected this book to be a masterpiece, but aborted my attempt to read it halfway through. Such unsubstantiated drivel is not worth paying for!
It is quite clear that Laura is a person filled with hatred. She presents the same scary neo-conservative dichotomy that the Bush administration indulges in.
Laura should simply shut up and practise law!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Entertaining
Review: I listen to Ingraham's radio show pretty often. Her shrill energy helps me wake up. And she's entertaining, like a high school girl with rich parents making fun of other kids' clothes... or a rich kid claiming to be the best snow skier because he can afford to go... the most. Privilege that looks downward and snaps at folks, with admittedly good fun and humor. Kudos! So I checked out the book, and it is definitely entertaining... like a highbrow National Enquirer, hyping celebrity dirt. Fun! The book raises some questions worthy of deep thought: How smart and old does someone have to get before they stop being obsessed with Hollywood types? When will Ingraham realize that her strengths are her (sometimes unintentional) entertainment value and looks? When will she get LESS serious and simply entertain us? (Cancellation of Rosie's show may have left a vacuum -- check it out). Overall, great energy, fun, cruel, and focused on Hollywood things that are barely worth laughing at... and certainly not worth getting worked up about. Lighten up and entertain! How about a calendar?

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: No sense of humor
Review: I saw a panel discussion on the subject of "media bias" in which Ingraham took part along with Tucker Carlson, Al Franken and Eric Alterman, and all I can say is that this woman doesn't seem to have any sense of humor. She sat there with a facial expression which showed nothing but contempt for the "liberals", Franken and Alterman. Every time Franken made a joke she sat there stone faced or looking away as if she didn't even hear what was said.

And let me just point out a few examples of Hollywood elites who have gone beyond mere rhetoric to influence America:

Jerry Bruckheimer - probably the most powerful producer in Hollywood at the moment and admitedly not a liberal, has worked with the Bush Administration and the Pentagon

Charlton Heston - was President of the National Rifle Association of America, the most powerful lobbying group in Washington D.C.

Ronald Reagan

Arnold Schwarzenneger - Republican, governor of California

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: shut up and pray
Review: The inferior man's reasons for hating knowledge are not hard to
discern. He hates it because it is complex--because it puts an
unbearable burden upon his meager capacity for taking in ideas.
Thus his search is always for short cuts. All superstitions are such
short cuts. Their aim is to make the unintelligible simple, and even
obvious. So on what seem to be higher levels. No man who has
not had a long and arduous education can understand even the
most elementary concepts of modern pathology. But even a hind
at the plow can grasp the theory of chiropractic in two lessons.
Hence the vast popularity of chiropractic among the submerged--
and of osteopathy, Christian Science and other such quackeries
with it. They are idiotic, but they are simple--and every man
prefers what he can understand to what puzzles and dismays him.

The popularity of Fundamentalism among the inferior orders of
men is explicable in exactly the same way. The cosmogonies that
educated men toy with are all inordinately complex. To
comprehend their veriest outlines requires an immense stock of
knowledge, and a habit of thought. It would be as vain to try to
teach to peasants or to the city proletariat as it would be to try to
teach them to streptococci. But the cosmogony of Genesis is so
simple that even a yokel can grasp it. It is set forth in a few
phrases. It offers, to the ignorant man, the irresistible
reasonableness of the nonsensical. So he accepts it with loud
hosannas, and has one more excuse for hating his betters.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: This Woman is a B!#<h!( Just Another Bush cheerleader!)
Review: I don't know why I do it!, every time I see a book with a right wing pundit(like America needs another one) on the cover, I have to torture myself and read it. I've seen this woman on Hannity and Colmes and many other talking head programs on sattelite, all I remember is how much I absolutely depised this smug B!#<h, just listening to her actually makes me physically ill!. I hated everything in this book because I couldn't get past the fact that she wrote it. She is a fame hungry right wing pundit with nothing interesting to say, with no fresh ideas or takes on the liberal bashing bandwagon. To sum it up she's just another bile belching republican spewing her acidic vitriol in real American's faces and collecting a huge paycheck for her effort. Boring, ignorant, smarmy, smug, angry, incondite, and clownish, just ignore it, hopefully it might go away on it's own.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: my opinion
Review: Anyhow, Laura's book is right on and will be a great addition to any library. I loved the chapter on "God, your fired". How true. Laura is also a hoot to listen to on the radio and she is also a frequent guest on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox.

As a general rule, this book will make a PERFECT gift for anyone who holds a job where getting fired is actually a possibility. People who will like Laura and her book will probably also tend to deal with their own problems, accept personal responsibility, not work in entertainment or government and are ...let's just say ...grown up.

This book will remain unread and is probably a BAD gift for those who work in the entertainment or perpetual "charitable" industry where the "cause" comes after the salary and the black tie fundraiser. People who hate Laura's and her books may also treat animals or plants better than people, value scented candles more than friendship, have a trust fund, own a Ernesto "Che" Guevara t-shirt, reflexively call people they disagree with "Hitler", or value intelligence more important than honesty.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: It's Twilight in America
Review: So, according to Ingraham, we're never supposed to question, to challenge or to dissent. That's bad citizenship and, worse, "elitism". Instead she wants us to follow the noble example of those Germans at the Nuremburg rallies who placed their hands over their hearts and mindlessly sang out their allegiance to Flag, Fatherland and Fuehrer.

Ingraham, Coulter, Norquist, Rove - these people so evil and dangerous, and so powerful, that my wife and I are seriously considering emigrating before it's too late.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: What?
Review: I was given this bundle of paper with scribbles on it as kind of a spoof Christmas gift. I thought it was a joke, you know, someone spoofing the Right by portraying their caricature.

But the "author" is taken seriously by some people?

Are you crazy? This is the type of personality that fostered burning of books in Germany in the early 1930s--and we all know that didn't turn out to be anything so why worry, right? She also speaks seriously of things that make Joe McCarthy turn over in his grave.

That anyone takes this seriously at all demonstrates how low the moral threshold of the Right has become. Like Coulter, Sammon, et al, they've become mirror images of those they claim to despise.


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