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[Gruco]

Lord knows there's no shortage of material, and bound to be plenty more in the upcoming years.

I'm not sure how many of them are actually worth reading though.

Lefites and righties could aternate picking the topics. It'd help people see each other's side a little more maybe.

Problems would be people skipping out too much (particularly, skipping each other's side), or just not enough people having the attention span to read all that much.

But I think it would be a constructive way to direct so much of the political energy on the boards.

I dunno what the best time span would be.

So yeah. Good idea, bad idea, or superfluous idea?

 

[GG-Duo]

Yeah. I agree.

After this election, I really want to read an objective analyzation of what had happened in the last 4 years. ie. the media, the effects of fear, the use of divisive issues, attack ads, et cetera.

Perhaps something by Chomsky?

 

[Dilbert]

If you can find it, Bush's Brain by James C. Moore and Wayne Slater is an outstanding -- and quite frankly, frightening -- examination of Karl Rove and his history as a political strategist.

Hitokage gave me a link to an 87-page paper which was an outstanding read as well...though I don't know if he wants me to share it with the main board or not.

 

[Incognito]

ILL TAKE IT.

 

[Hitokage]

If you can find it, Bush's Brain by James C. Moore and Wayne Slater is an outstanding -- and quite frankly, frightening -- examination of Karl Rove and his history as a political strategist.

Hitokage gave me a link to an 87-page paper which was an outstanding read as well...though I don't know if he wants me to share it with the main board or not.

You know the reaction it'll get with some people.

 

[GG-Duo]

PM?

 

[Mandark]

My only real problem with a book of the month club is that books cost money. Also I'm lazy, but I have been reading a lot.

jinx: Shouldn't be a problem. The author wrote it for free online distribution, and I linked Hito to it back in the day (of course I didn't actually read through it myself). Bush's Brain is the one with the child-molestation smear-job on the judge, right? That's gotta be the Anecdote Of The Year.

edit: Awww, c'mon Hito. At least they'd have to read through 87 pages of fairly high-level prose before they started freaking out.

 

[Hitokage]

Oh, it has nothing to do with any legality, it's just hard to have a serious discussion about it when one or two people are flooding the rolleyes... but that's just my view. You don't have to go along with it.

 

[Incognito]

TheAtlantic had a really good piece on Karl Rove. They detailed the child-molestation smear job, too.

Spooky stuff.

 

[Jim Bowie]

Did somebody say Chomsky?

Manufacturing Consent is a fantastic read.

If you're not into buying books, check out Znet's Chomsky Archive, books that Noam wrote directly to be published to the web. And for free!

 

[Hitokage]

Oh well, here's the document in question:

http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/Rush Newspeak Fascism.pdf

 

[Hitokage]

Hah, killed the thread.

 

[Outdoor Miner]

Thanks for the link.

 

[sc0la]

saved for later reading.

 

[Dilbert]

I read the whole thing one Sunday morning -- it took a couple of hours, but it was WELL worth the time.

Yeah, it might be a thread-killer, though. I think Mandark is right -- no one is going to get far enough into the paper to be able to complain.

 

[Triumph]

Well, right now I'm reading The Good Fight, by Nader, and also The Great Unravelling, by Paul Krugman.

I also highly recommend True Lies, by Anthony Lappe and Stephen Marshall of gnn.tv fame if anyone wants to hear about how the "mainstream" media sucks a big fat donkey cock. Then I recommend that you stop getting your news from mainstream sources and check out indymedia.org if you are serious in your hatred for the way big media distorts and spins everything to death.

 

[Fragamemnon]

Regarding media bias and corruption of American Journalism, I really enjoyed Eric Alterman's "What Liberal Media" and especially David Brock's "The Republican Noise Machine"-I thought they were both well-documented and showed the path by which our media has been corrupted, and make the *extremely* important point that it is not just media bias that is the problem, but it's the media's cowering to report the truth as the truth, and instead to report the spin on both sides of our issues.

Right now I'm reading Thomas Frank's What's A Matter With Kansas in an attempt to understand why the people who live in the cracker belt and vote against their best interests are so incredibly stupid. Picked it up Wednesday, to the very long and sad look of the obviously liberal local bookstore employee whose silent-yet-piercing empathy broke me from a all-out daze, allowing me to once again be angry again. So very, very angry.

Right now I'm looking for a good investigative book on postmillenial Dominionist thought (preferably from a secular standpoint, but I can parse fundamentalist thanks to my personal history), and I'm looking into getting a good book on fundamentalist codespeak as well. Any ideas?

Oh, and I'm looking for a good duo of a conversational and grammitcal French primers. The GF is bugging me about it, and, with the exit plan in place, I need to be prepared.

 

[Gruco]

So, no conservatives are interested?

Actually, nobody really seems interested...

Complaining about money is understandable, but that's why god invented libraries. And paperbacks.

Anyways, some of the ideas I had werePeddling Prosperity (Krugman, academic stuff, rather than a collection of his columns)

What's the matter with Kansas, like Frag said.

Don't think of an elephant (Lakoff, framing debates)

meh, I guess I don't really see the idea taking off....

 

[Outdoor Miner]

So, no conservatives are interested?

Actually, nobody really seems interested...

Complaining about money is understandable, but that's why god invented libraries. And paperbacks.

Anyways, some of the ideas I had werePeddling Prosperity (Krugman, academic stuff, rather than a collection of his columns)

What's the matter with Kansas, like Frag said.

Don't think of an elephant (Lakoff, framing debates)

meh, I guess I don't really see the idea taking off....

I welcome this idea and think it can take off. Politically-minded individuals are a growing faction in this forum. I think we're all busy reading Hito's link atm (i know i am).

If there's one thing I can thank Bush for, it's for making me crave information regarding our nation's politics. I was one of many Americans prior to 2000 who didn't much care for anything inside the realm of politics, but I've taken it upon myself to go out and learn.

I learn from many here at the GA, to the point I consider many regulars here to be an inspiration (Jinx, Phoenix, Dan, Drinky, Hitokageetc.). You can bet I'm taking notes and checking out many of the books mentioned here.

So this thread is not completely pointless for you now, is it? =P

 

[Hitokage]

Some other books I should mention:

The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill, by Ron Suskind. The way the media ran with a single element in the book while ignoring the rest completely failed to do it justice.

Lies My Teacher Told Me, by Dr. James W. Loewen. Great read. A broad and deep foundation in history is utterly essential for understanding today's world and today's politics, and this book fills in a lot of the blanks in your deliberately boring high school text. I saw another book like this in my local library, but I forget both the title and author.

Blinded by the Right and The Republican Noise Machine, both by David Brock. The former is the confessional of a former conservative hatchetman who worked for the Washington Times. The latter is a broader discussion of how the media has been dragged down in a deliberate effort over the last 40 years to bend the way conservatives want it. One is enlightening, the other is depressing.

Big Lies, by Joe Conanson. Also worth a read, but not good enough to put others aside.