Book Reviews by Alan Journet, Trail of Tears Group Conservation Chairman
In “Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War”, University of Maryland researcher Steven Kull addresses the mystery of how it is that so many Americans believe falsehoods regarding the Bush invasion of Iraq. In relation to a belief in one of three critical but false ideas, Kull discovered that viewers of Fox Cable News were more likely than were those who paid attention to any other news source to agree with one or more false ideas. Furthermore, the more Fox they watch, the more wrong they tended to be.
At times such as these, it is important to have a few authors who are prepared to take on the task of exploring the source of such distortions.
In “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right” (Dutton), former Saturday Night Live Comedian Al Franken evaluates the right wing denizens of Fox News. Having dismantled Rush Limbaugh in “Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations” Franken takes aim in this tome at the likes of Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, Carson Tucker, and Shaun Hannity.
With the aid of Team Franken, a group of students from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government where Franken was serving as a fellow in the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy, Franken systematically explores the claims of these and other right wing commentators. What Franken repeatedly does is simply pick up the telephone and ask critical individuals in news stories to verify or deny reports. These calls were then oft-times followed by similar calls to the commentator(s) propounding misinformation to determine why they are spreading untruths. What Franken discovered time and again was a complete failure to check sources and facts.
Franken clearly demonstrates that the media do not exhibit the left wing or liberal bias of which they are so often accused. However, rather than arguing that the media are biased in the conservative direction, what Franken seems to suggest is that, on the whole, reporters and commentators are lazy (i.e. in not verifying stories but simply repeating errors that their colleagues have propounded). This laziness, he suggests, is accompanied by a profound lack of intellectual honesty in their failure to acknowledge and rectify errors after they have been presented.
For a refreshing and humorous look at the right wing media, Franken’s book is highly recommended.
In “Dude, Where’s My Country?” (Warner) film-maker Michael Moore, most recently known for his fine exploration of gun sickness in the U.S. (“Bowling for Columbine”), undertakes a detailed review of the threat posed to this country and the world by the current occupants of the White House.
Emulating the successful technique that he uses in his films, Moore starts with a series of critical questions addressed to George W. Bush regarding his Iraq fiasco. Moore correctly suggests that while they have barely even been covered in the media, these demand serious and genuine answers.
He subsequently explores the lies emanating from the White House that have been concocted to justify the Iraq War, and then explores the piled on lies designed to cover up the initial lies.
As a proud liberal, Moore also offers an evaluation of public opinion polls. These, he suggests, reveal that the American public is basically quite Liberal; a fact that should be exploited by the Democratic Party. It is the realization that the pubic is Liberal that, he suggests, makes Conservative commentators so perpetually angry and shrill. He also explores the conservative mentality and offers some suggestions on how to deal with it. Embedded in the book we also find a humorous letter of appreciation from Moore to W for his tax cut, where he invites readers to offer suggestions as to how he can best spend this tax rebate to remove W from office.
Reading these two books is not for the faint of heart; there is the real possibility that the reader will be lifted to the heights of anger at the way current right wing politicians, aided by the media, misrepresent issues and manipulate public opinion. There, is however, much in both that should provide fodder for the environmental and conservation-minded amongst us in our fight to reclaim the political influence that we rightly should have. These books offer a wealth of insights for those wishing to understand more fully the extent of the distortions and outright lies that have been fed to the American people and Congress by an Administration bent solely on serving the profits of corporate America. I wish that there were more such authors as these exerting a far greater influence on a gullible public.