The front of Wednesday’s New York Times Arts section featured Dwight Garner’s review of the new book by left-wing documentary film-maker Michael Moore, “Here Comes Trouble -- Stories From My Life.”
Garner, a fan, called Moore (infamous for his anti-conservative conspiracy theories and vicious, purposely misleading mockery of Republicans) a “necessary irritant,” and in one nauseating paragraph suggested Moore’s book belonged alongside works by the revolutionary founding activist Thomas Paine.
One has to wonder if departing New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller will leave behind many friends in the newsroom. First he bothered his media-beat reporters by writing of his dislike for new media like Twitter. It turns out he’s not crazy about old media (books) either – at least when writing them take his reporters away on book leave or detracts from their reporting.
His upcoming column for the July 17 Sunday Magazine, “Let’s Ban Books, or at Least Stop Writing Them,” sounded like a sotto voce corporate policy memo, with some surprisingly mocking cracks about his news staff: “Two editors were writing books about their dogs. At the same time!”
The “Inside the List” column for the New York Times’s Sunday Book Review, compiled by Jennifer Schuessler, discussed Ann Coulter’s latest New York Times bestseller “Demonic” under the subhead “Woman In Black.”
The first paragraph of the Times’ official Topics page for Coulter describes the author as “ultraconservative,” and Schuessler’s Book Review brief is no less loaded:
Over Thanksgiving, I read Sarah Palin’s new book, America by Heart : Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag
Before getting to the guts of the tome, I would like to address one thing that irritates me: When writing about Sarah Palin, it is de rigueur for friend and foe alike to use one’s criticism (and I mean criticism in the dictionary sense; here is the definition: Criticism is the judgment of the merits and faults of the work or actions of one individual by another. To criticize does not necessarily imply to find fault, but the word is often taken to mean the simple expression of prejudice or disapproval) as either an endorsement or “hit job” of the person.
It's a weighty charge, plagiarism. But your credibility in making it tends to dissipate when you do so on a site founded and run by an alleged serial plagiarist.
Arianna Huffington has been accused of lifting portions of a number of her books from other authors, and in one case had to dole out a 5-figure settlement to put plagiarism charges to rest. Her site has also taken heat from celebrities whose names appear on bylines on the site, but who didn't actually write those posts' contents.
New York Times political reporter Kate Zernike's thin new book "Boiling Mad -- Inside Tea Party America," is among the first of what will surely be a flood of related books by journalists.
Greg Gutfeld is a rare breed. A conservative former magazine editor turned host of Fox News late night talk show "Red Eye," Gutfeld masterfully mixes keen political insight and scathing critiques of contemporary Amerian culture with a healthy dose of humor.
His new book, "The Bible of Unspeakable Truths" fits that M.O. perfectly. Gutfeld dissects thousands of "unspeakable truths" ranging from "for twenty million dollars, you'd sleep with MIchael Jackson (even now)" to "speaking truth to power means 'shouting at people who remind me of daddy'" to "squirrels are just sexier rats."
For avid "Red Eye" fans, the style of comedy will be familiar. Those who have yet to enjoy an episode will be fans by the time they put the book down. Occasionally vulgar, often provocative, and always funny, Gutfeld's absurd style has the potential to disarm even the skeptical, and then bombard them with political and cultural insights profound in their simplicity and logic.
Greg was kind enough to grant NewsBusters an interview. In it, he discusses writing for the Huffington Post, his view of "Red Eye," and his own political transformation (full audio and transcript below the fold).
When reviewing a bestselling book, it is customary to read it first. Apparently Princeton doesn't teach that tidbit in its journalism classes anymore, as Newsweek intern (and Princeton student) Isia Jasiewicz decided she would attempt a review after reading only the first 10 pages--a fact she mentions in the last paragraph.
Editor's Note: the following originally appeared at Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood.
When asked by Big Government to review Greg Gutfeld’s "The Bible of Unspeakable Truths," my response was instantaneous: “Why me, Lord?”
Alas, we mere mortals can but abide His infinite wisdom – God’s not Gutfeld’s. Resigned, I shouldered the onus of reading the late night jackanape’s scatological tome. Afterwards, I showered…alone…in a hair shirt…and then burned it to commence my decontamination and atonement.
Oddly, no matter how hard I scoured his book and myself, the indelible fact remained – Gutfeld’s Unspeakable Truths is, in his idiosyncratic idiom, “Supersexyawesome!”
Oh, it’s not because of his solipsistic obsession with his weight, nasty habits, backrubs, pool boys, unicorns, backrubs from pool boys riding unicorns, or his feigned interest in Ms. Megan Fox, whom he importunes to call him. [Ms. Fox: Do NOT call Gutfeld.] Rather, it’s because, at root, Gutfeld is a philosophical conservative mud wrestling with a chaotic world rife with inane Leftists, all of whom he endeavors to foist by their own petard (or by the trapeze set in his “rumpus room”).
One of the worst ways that the lack of ideological diversity in America's newsrooms shows forth is in the media's treatment of sensational accusations against the current president.
Oftentimes, explosive allegations against presidents are either untrue or drastically overstated: George W. Bush deliberately lying to get the U.S. to war so he can cash in or deliberately ignoring Hurricaine Katrina due to his hatred of black people (a la Kanye West), Bill Clinton's supposed involvment in the drug trade, truthers, birthers, so on and so forth.
Journalists do the public a service by rebutting absurd conspiracy theories and wacko charges. In recent memory, though, they have taken a much greater zeal toward stamping out allegations against Democrats, particularly President Obama, a stark contrast to the kidglove or even promotional attitude they took toward books by liberal authors alleging all sorts of anti-Bush absurdities.
World Net Daily-affiliated author Aaron Klein recently discovered this when he sent his new book, "The Manchurian President," to members of the media he hoped would review it. He got some very angry responses. Here are some of the more colorful ones:
Are young people completely in the tank for Barack Obama and the left? They voted for Obama over John McCain by a greater than 2-1 margin. Obama was young, cool, good looking, and well-spoken -- all the characteristics for a winning candidate in the eyes of the nation's youth.
At age 50, Bill Ayers called himself a "radical" and a "communist." As recently as 2001, Ayers had himself photographed for a magazine story trampling an American flag. But that's not good enough for the Associated Press. In an article today, AP describes Ayers as a "former radical."