Lies (and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them)

Lies: And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right [ Al Franken] on leondumoulin.nl *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The #1 New.
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Daddy's had a hard day of payin' the bills. Don't you have some homework to do or something? The girls explained the general Heffner line about America being hung up about sex, it's just a job, yes we have relationships outside of work, etc. Hannity couldn't believe it! It was an odd moment. Compare this with O'Reilly's indiscretions- calling up his employee and not only verbally fantasizing about her to her face, but remarking on how he happened to be following suit in the privacy of his bedroom, if you catch my drift.

Just look at this years' race for the GOP nomination! Anyway it's this kind of stuff which reading Al has inspired in me, take it for what you will. I actually was able to meet someone who worked for him an auxiliary member of the grinning "Team Franken" in the back pages and he happily reported that Al has his down sides like anyone else, but was an essentially decent, hardworking, and conscientious boss. Anyway, this book wouldn't really do much more than further any interested parties in their desire to learn, get a bit of perspective, and enjoy the process while they're at it.

Not a bad accomplishment, all things considered. Al Franken is to be commended for exposing Fox Television and its supposed news commentators in this book which might be profitably read alongside a viewing of the documentary film, Outfoxed. I read it at the request of a friend. At the time, most of it was above my head as I do not watch television. Since then, however, thanks to the aforementioned film, a Canadian Broadcasting documentary on the same subject and some study of film clips of Limbaugh, O'Reilly and others available on the Web, I Al Franken is to be commended for exposing Fox Television and its supposed news commentators in this book which might be profitably read alongside a viewing of the documentary film, Outfoxed.

Since then, however, thanks to the aforementioned film, a Canadian Broadcasting documentary on the same subject and some study of film clips of Limbaugh, O'Reilly and others available on the Web, I see his point and would now get more from the book. Still, the book did point me in the direction of checking out his allegations and discovering that they weren't as exaggerated as I had at first supposed.

Incidentally, why haven't the professional associations of editors, publishers and journalists come out against Fox and its supposed journalists? Or have they and the reports of such not gotten much press? Dec 30, TJ Burns rated it it was amazing Shelves: In a way, this book is both entertaining and really, really depressing. It's entertaining because Franken is a funny guy. He takes the same material that a hundred other writers have gone through - the hypocrisy of the media, the deliberate distortion of the truth, the greedy, grubby little schemes of the Bush Junta - and makes you laugh at them.

It's really, really depressing because, despite the laundry list of reasons why no one on FOX News should be trusted, it's still the most popular network In a way, this book is both entertaining and really, really depressing. It's really, really depressing because, despite the laundry list of reasons why no one on FOX News should be trusted, it's still the most popular network.

Despite clear and uncomplicated examples of how Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly distort, mislead and deceive, they're still considered to be beacons of reason. And despite the swaggering greed, utter contempt for the truth, and disregard for the welfare of the American people, those in the Bush administration were allowed to keep their jobs. By a narrow margin, sure, but honestly, they should have been ridden out of town on a rail.

Wrapped in barbed wire, covered in lemon juice and those little biting centipedes that you find under the dampest of rocks Sorry, I got carried away for a sec Before the elections in aught-four, I read everything. I followed web communities, I ordered books from Amazon, I picked up hardcovers and paperbacks and tried to keep up with all the latest advancements in politics.

And, by November 2nd, , I was utterly convinced that there was no way on God's green earth that Dubya could get back into office. Sure, Kerry wasn't the best we could have done, but he was demonstrably better than Bush, and many writers had demonstrated it. I trusted in the Electorate's facility for reason and common sense, and knew that they would see these men and women for the pack of jackals that they were, and promptly vote them out of office.

We all know how that turned out. So, since then I've been, what's that word, cynical. I've stayed pretty well clear of books that talk about the modern political landscape, but I finished reading the Dougill book at work and didn't have a backup, so I picked this one off the shelf in the teachers' room. And I read and I laughed and I sighed. Because nothing has changed. The people who should have been laughed off the TV set Coulter, O'Reilly, Hannity are still there, corrupting the collective subconscious. Dubya and his cronies are still in charge - no one of significance has been fired or indicted.

It is true that public opinion has done quite a downturn since Franken published this book in , which is a ray of hope, but Normally I would say that the election in November will be the turning point, that the Electorate will go to the polls and vote in the best interests of our nation. I would like to say that I believe that some of the truth has trickled down to the voters, and in spite of the barrage of misdirection, lies and shouting they will vote out the people who have supported the corruption of America. I would like to say that I believe that the utter contempt for the American people and American ideals that our lawmakers and officials, both elected and appointed, hold will be their undoing, and that November will mark a return to, or at least a good step towards, the reason, enlightenment and compassion that will make this nation a better one than it has become over the last six years.

But, then, that's what I said in So, y'know, I'm not holding my breath I learned that Al treats the right worse than he claims the right treats liberals. He takes some decent but not perfect books and authors and twists their words so he can call them liars. He pull on or two unimportant things out of their books and claims that they are wrong and therefore liars.

Just a little web research shows that many of his supposed lies, really aren't. And many of the things he accuses others of are incorrect. Very troubling after he claims to have several "researchers" he I learned that Al treats the right worse than he claims the right treats liberals. Very troubling after he claims to have several "researchers" helping him. And on one or two occasions, when confronted about incorrect items in his book, he retorts that it was a "joke. Even his obvious jokes aren't that funny.

His book is a waste of time. Jul 09, Kaethe rated it really liked it Shelves: I'd like to think that every book he sold brought Franken closer to the senate. Hey, maybe that means Jon Stewart will run for senate? Aug 10, Faction rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: Word to the wise, don't listen to the audio book while trying to get some sleep after your toddler has gotten you up for the third time in the middle of the night Oh, and also, don't try to listen to this when your toddler is awake Anyone who wants to understand the current political climate.

It really was a fair and balanced look. His modus operandi was to research the conservative talking head's claims either through Lexus Nexus or by simply calling the people involved in the story and finding out what really happened. Several events he was involved in and used his experience.

Usually there was at least some humor but it deserted him when he talked about what the Right did to smear the funeral of his friends Paul Wellstone and his wife and daughter and several a This was excellent! Usually there was at least some humor but it deserted him when he talked about what the Right did to smear the funeral of his friends Paul Wellstone and his wife and daughter and several aides and pilots who died in a tragic airplane accident.

He refuted several things that the Right came up with regarding the funeral, that it had been a politicized event by the Democrats, among other canards and that it was planned to attract attention. No, the two remaining sons realized while drowning in tributes, physical and otherwise, that they would have to have a public funeral to accommodate the grief of people of the state and many many others who knew and loved their parents. BTW there is a fascinating chapter about Barbara Bush.

So much for the mistaken view that she was a sweet grandmotherly sort! It makes sense and I had always suspected that her views and methods had to be similar to what the family used and I was right. It taught me a lot about the methods used to slime people. After reading this, I have to say I've lost even more respect for the Republican party.

It used to be that they had a political philosophy you could respect but disagree with. Now that all seems gone and rule seems to be their only goal. I can also see how trump arose in the political atmosphere that the Republicans and their right wing fanatical buddies in the media engendered. Jul 31, Andrew Breslin rated it it was amazing. As I write this, the White House Correspondents Association is deciding which news organization should get the coveted front-row center seat in the White House briefing room, recently vacated by the venerable journalistic legend, Helen Thomas.

Back in the real universe, it went directly to NPR, without any debate or hesitation. Because NPR has the distinction of actually being a news organization. In this pathetic excuse for a universe, they are actually considering giving the seat to Fox, which is not and never was, and, barring the intervention of benevolent deities or aliens, never will be, a news organization. They are, in fact, the exact opposite of a news organization. When people listen to NPR for an hour, they will know more than they did an hour earlier, unless they were listening to Car Talk.

If people listen to Fox for an hour they will actually know less than they did when they started. Because, as Al Franken's book demonstrates effectively and hilariously, Fox's mission is to ensure that people are misinformed. They are anti-journalists, at an anti-news agency. Note to Fox viewers. That was a reference to something called "science," another concept foreign to Fox, along with truth. Science is the same thing that tells people called scientists that the Earth is actually more than 6, years old and that global warming is real.

It also makes toasters work. Try praying for your bread to turn into toast. Not very effective is it? Hey now, look at that! Fox has an agenda, and the agenda is not to inform people. Some surveys conducted shortly after Bush's gulf war was launched revealed that a majority of Fox viewers believed that inspectors had found WMD's in Iraq and that Saddam Husein was linked to Al-Qaeda and the attacks on September These things are not true and not a shred of evidence has ever emerged suggesting otherwise. But somehow Fox viewers were convinced of the truth of those two demonstrably false things.

Just to keep things straight: People who watch or listen to actual news: Correctly believe that no WMDs were found. Do not know whether or not WMDs were found.

And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them

People who watch Fox: Believe that WMDs were found. Or even listening to Car Talk. Similar studies today would undoubtedly show that a majority of Fox viewers believe that there is evidence that President Obama is not an American citizen or that he is a Muslim.

This is only true in the case of one US citizen: These are not matters of reasonable people differing reasonably on matters of opinion. These are gross misrepresentations of basic facts, which is Fox's bread and butter. They don't have toast. A friend of mine suggested that the large number of people that consider Fox to be a valid source of news and information gives it journalistic legitimacy. I could not possibly disagree any more strenuously, certainly not without dynamite anyway.

Truth is truth and a lie is a lie, no matter whether one, a thousand, or a million people believe it. Fox is not news. They do not employ journalists. As noted, journalists would probably explode if they walked onto the premises. Professional liars who are very good at making people believe the world is different from the way it actually is.

Franken manages to point out this sickening state of affairs while still maintaining a sense of humor, something I try and often fail to do.

Lies by Al Franken | leondumoulin.nl

I think I need to read this book again, or I really might explode. View all 6 comments. Believe it or not I really did enjoy reading this book. The premise of it, in my opinion, is that Al Franken and his Harvard-financed rag-tag team of hand-picked Republican haters hereafter called TeamFranken set out to show that any popular political pundit who criticizes Democrats has lied, and because of this we should never believe anything they say. Along the way he smacks around Bernard Goldberg a Believe it or not I really did enjoy reading this book. Along the way he smacks around Bernard Goldberg and Fox News.

For the most part he does point out some pretty suspect behavior. Because Franken was a writer for Saturday Night Live, the book was funny, in a satirical way. Toward the end of the book though, TeamFranken breaks from their theme and starts in on why the GOP stole the election, why Clinton was the greatest President, and why all things liberal are way better than all things conservative. For me this was where he lost his credibility. While I didn't feel like fact-checking every piece of information in the book, there were some items the election and Iraq come to mind that have been hashed and re-hashed so much that even I could see that TeamFranken were the ones lying and misleading.

It was entertaining to see his attack on Bob Jones University backfire. He basically lied to them about being interested in enrolling his nephew there. He does say they were very friendly and not too threatening with their ideals.


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But that doesn't stop him from trying to tie the University's founder to Nazi Germany by way of some valuable campus art. Of course the reason he tells the Bob Jones story is to point out that to be a good liar you must be really mean and have no ethics or morals. He therefore is not a good liar. He is a liberal, and liberals are good.


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A lot of the rest of the topics included Barbara Bush, the Wellstone memorial, the tone in Washington, the environment, racism, education, and weapons of mass destruction. Franken's issues with these topics may have some truth behind them, but in my opinion, his complaints all boil down to politics.

Both sides are going to massage statistics and subtly mislead people to get votes.

See a Problem?

I didn't put much stock in these rants. As Franken himself says twice , "statistics don't lie". But, as they say, if you beat statistics long enough, they'll tell you what you want to hear. At the end of the day, though, this was a Republican bashing book in much the same vein as a Hannity or Coulter book. Read this book if you enjoy drinking the Liberal kool-aid. Jan 27, Paul rated it really liked it Shelves: Though Lies and the Lying Liars Had I read this book upon its initial release, it might have made me want to pull my hair out in anger. Franken, Daily Kos and Co. Mar 13, Becky rated it liked it Shelves: I don't know if I would necessarily call this "fair and balanced" but I get the pun.

I will say that this was interesting and I jotted down quite a few things to look into more on my own. I may lean more toward Franken's side of the debate, and I think that he did a heck of a lot more research than, say, Ann "Here Comes the Hate-Spewer" Coulter has ever done, but I'd like to read a bit more on some topics. I think he asked for us to take quite a bit of this at face value, stating that he'd done I don't know if I would necessarily call this "fair and balanced" but I get the pun.

I think he asked for us to take quite a bit of this at face value, stating that he'd done the research, and it's not that I don't trust him, but heck, the book's about liars. I'd be silly not to look into this stuff more on my own. I did think that there was quite a bit of humor in this book. Franken has never been on top of my "Favorite Comedians" list, and I can't even say I was much of a fan of his SNL stuff either, but I did find myself chuckling a few times.

But then I found that he derailed a bit and got off topic a few times, especially towards the middle-end of the book.

The right to be wrong

His anecdotes about his adventure to Bob Jones University wasn't necessary, and felt a little out of place in this book, considering that they didn't lie other than stretching the truth about their Medical program courses and weren't the focus of the book, so Kinda lost me there. But overall, I thought that this was interesting and kind of funny. Dec 02, L Hess rated it liked it Shelves: If Al Franken wanted to make a point, he failed.

Politicians in general are dishonest and obnoxious, so he could have gone that route and focused on everyone equally, but instead he tried to assert the blind premise that the conservative right is made up of individuals who are somehow worse liars than anyone with beliefs similar to his own. Further, he is hypocritical. And he swears too much. I did like reading about what was happening in early 21st century politics. I was still in high school If Al Franken wanted to make a point, he failed. I was still in high school when all of the events in this book were happening, and was only just starting to pay attention to the news.

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

I still think Al Franken is a liberal apologist and an extremely biased writer. Most of the book was dedicated to his own personal vendettas, spewing bile and vitriol in the name of doing us all the humble service of outing those mean Republicans — while evidently never pausing to question whether he was actually pretty darn mean himself. Feb 26, Michel marked it as to-read. At first, books were copied mostly in monasteries, one at a time. With the rise of universities in the 13th century, the Manuscript culture of the time led to an increase in the demand for books, and a new system for copying books appeared.

The books were divided into unbound leaves pecia , which were lent out to different copyists, so the speed of book production was considerably increased. The system was maintained by secular stationers guilds, which produced both religious and non-religious At first, books were copied mostly in monasteries, one at a time.

The system was maintained by secular stationers guilds, which produced both religious and non-religious material. According to Jewish tradition, the Torah scroll placed in a synagogue must be written by hand on parchment and a printed book would not do, though the congregation may use printed prayer books and printed copies of the Scriptures are used for study outside the synagogue. A sofer "scribe" is a highly respected member of any observant Jewish community Nov 30, Tara rated it really liked it.

As someone whose career takes in comedy and Harvard's School of Government, his speciality is the wind-up. Fox took him to court for infringement of copyright, attempting to squash him under the weight of disobliging adjectives: But Fox lost, and the tiff helped propel Franken to the top of the sales chart accompanied by the sound of the two sides still bashing each other with their handbags. This may have all the characteristics of an American domestic dispute.

Many of the characters in Lies are barely known on this side of the Atlantic: So the obvious question - despite the wicked insertion of a "Sky News" logo on the UK cover - is does this book translate to Europe? In its primary colours it's about the core political debate between conservatives and liberals - and the ideological divide between the Bush administration and Democratic opposition which, deepened by Iraq, means American politics is often more vivid than ours. But it's also about the propaganda war between left and right, and about the failings of the media.

Strip aside the ideological strictures and there are some good case studies on the way reporters report and commentators comment without bothering to find out the facts. Once something is in the electronic cuttings, it's endlessly recycled whether it's true or not; and some of the funniest passages in the book are when Franken takes columnists to task over their dodgier claims - even challenging one of them to a fight.

But the wind-up has its limits. I ended up sympathising with Barbara Bush more than with Franken when she had the bad luck to end up sitting close to him on a plane: Equally, some of the book's humorous diversions - including a cartoon and a parody novel about Chickenhawks - are just tiresome. It also means, of course, that Franken is some miles from being fair and balanced. At times he is illogical. He suggests that the failure of Al Gore's election campaign proves that the American media isn't liberal, because otherwise it would have got him into the White House.

But if the New Right is so powerful, why didn't it secure a more convincing victory for Bush?