I just want to drop into this discussion about Fox a hearty plug for Al
Franken's new book, Lies and the Lying Liares Who Tell Them. The book is
relentlessly researched, and is a massive indictment of some of the falsehoods
that have been perpetrated by those with a vested interest in doing so. The
section on Fox News is worth the price of admission all by itself.

jms

(jmsatb5@aol.com)
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>Coulter is the right's Carville.

Not correct. I can't think of any time when Carville has spoken of Republicans
or Conservatives in the terms that she has used, inclusive of: Liberals hate
America, Liberals hate all religions except Islam. and that even Islamic
terrorists don't hate America as much as liberals do.


jms

(jmsatb5@aol.com)
(all message content (c) 2003 by synthetic worlds, ltd.,
permission to reprint specifically denied to SFX Magazine
and don't send me story ideas)

The reaction you cite is all to common, unfortunately. And they can't refute
the facts, they just label him an asshole and dismiss him out of hand, which
makes it easier than considering another point of view.

jms

(jmsatb5@aol.com)
(all message content (c) 2003 by synthetic worlds, ltd.,
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>Might I suggest Wesley Clark? I wouldn't support him myself, but he's a fair
>sight more tolerable than most of the Democratic field... one of the only
>two of the possible democratic candidates who I believe would have a chance
>of defeating Bush (the other being Howard Dean,

I tend to agree. Dean is, frankly, the only one in the current pack who I
think can a) beat Bush and b) has the credentials to do a good job as
President. His record shows him as socially liberal in many respects, but
financially conservative, which is a good combination. His history of running
Vermont shows his strong points, and traditionally governors get nominations
and win elections, not senators.

jms

(jmsatb5@aol.com)
(all message content (c) 2003 by synthetic worlds, ltd.,
permission to reprint specifically denied to SFX Magazine
and don't send me story ideas)

>We're getting our facts from satire? How can I be sure, reading from
>that genre, that the conclusions aren't hyperbole? The emotion not
>demagoguery? (I suppose it's better to see that stuff in satire than
>in some kind of serious book, tho, and we *do* get our best
>observations from the court jester...)

Actually, though Franken is a satirist, he's also a cogent observer, and more
to the point, a relenteless researcher. He knows full well that if he got
*anything* wrong, the other side would be all over him in a second. So he (and
his graduate class of helpers) went into excruciating detail to get their facts
right...which is why they weren't able to go after the Rush book.

It doesn't take much to be able to point to a person making definitive
statement A, then to proof positive that A never happened. But it takes a
satirist to make us laugh along the way...otherwise there'd be blood in the
streets.

jms

(jmsatb5@aol.com)
(all message content (c) 2003 by synthetic worlds, ltd.,
permission to reprint specifically denied to SFX Magazine
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>Oh - but there's this: "Thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court, you'll be
>able to use public money to send yours kids to General Beauregard
>Bigot Private Academy, Fundamentalist Football and Frequent Drug
>Tests. They have these religious schools that teach these kids
>insanity like the earth is 5,000 years old, where the pope is a demon.
>I don't want my tax money going to that kind of crap. You can practice
>religion until you fall out. I don't want to pay for somebody else's
>bigotry."
>
>So Christians are bigots who want to use tax money to perpetuate that
>bigotry in their children.

See, you lose arguments when you restate something to make your point that
contradicts or flies in the face of what actuallly said.

When you say "So..." and restate it, you add things that were simply never said
nor ever intended. Carville was referring to a specific institution, for
starters, and adding that he didn't want public money to go to religious
schools, which is in line with the separation of church and state.

He didn't say "Christians are bigots who want to use tax money to perpetuate
that bigotry in their children." YOU said that in order to set up a straw-man
argument. YOU applied it on a broader scale, and YOU were the one who said
that Christians as a class were bigots, not Carville.

If you have to twist statements to make your case, you don't HAVE a case.


jms

(jmsatb5@aol.com)
(all message content (c) 2003 by synthetic worlds, ltd.,
permission to reprint specifically denied to SFX Magazine
and don't send me story ideas)