BIG LIES
Joe Conason
ISBN: 0312315600
Erich takes it further... Big Lies certainly the best of the popular political books I've reviewed for the site, although that isn't saying much. Yes, Big Lies is better than Treason, but then so are the comics of Jack T. Chick. This book is frustrating because while it is good, it could have been brilliant.
What I like most about Canason's book is its basic thesis: there exists an enormous, right wing propaganda machine that includes everything from well funded, academic think tanks to party-line pundits, and this machine has produced a spate of "big lies" that have seeped into the public consciousness. Canason goes through several of these lies and distortions, beginning with the demonizing of liberals. He reminds us that liberals are the ones who fought for the basic rights of racial minorities and women. Without liberals, you could kiss your overtime pay, the 40 hour work week and the minimum wage good bye (incidentally, please don't tell the people who work on this site about any of those things). In short, Canason argues that liberal values are, more often than not, American and human values: a fair shake for working people, environmental protection, equality of opportunity, and so on.
Although it's a well-worn fact to those who read much about politics, many will be surprised to learn that polls indicate that most Americans take the "liberal" position on most issues. They think our taxes should be more progressive, they think we need more environmental protections, they even favor universal health care. The polls also show how effective right-wing propaganda has been. Ask people if we should give more financial assistance to poor families and they'll say yes. Ask them about welfare and they'll say they oppose it. Presumably, this is because right-wingers have successfully tarnished the word 'welfare' with stories about "welfare mothers" driving Cadillacs. That, and of course because people are gullible and stupid.
I think Canason could have gone one better here. The right hasn't just unfairly portrayed liberals. It's created fictional beings called "liberals" and substituted them for the real thing. The example coming to mind is Ben Stein saying something like, "don't you hate it when you ask a liberal if a person he just met is black, and he claims not to have noticed?" Oh yeah. That happens all the time, Stein. I know tons of people who claim to not notice if someone is black. Just like I know tons of closeted commies who hate America and whose only desire in life if for everyone to become a married homosexual.
Canason and other liberals should do the same thing to their right wing adversaries. The left should invent right-wing boogiemen that think 9/11 was divine justice for America's tolerance of lesbians and who also advocate nuclear strikes against the State department for disagreeing with the President's Iraq policies. Oh wait, that's Pat Robertson and he's real. He's probably on CNN right now, thanks to the "liberal media."
Canason devotes each chapter to debunking specific lies in greater detail: the media have a liberal bias; right wing chicken hawks are great patriots; rightists exhibit great moral rectitude and so on. Among the most absurd lies is the charge of liberal elitism. It's no secret that the GOP is the party of the rich and powerful. Somehow, the Ann Coulters of the world have been able to get away with saying just the opposite. Democrats are the ones in gated communities, Republicans are the working people. Canason dispatches this lie well and easily. The most amusing part of the chapter documents the lavish, urban lifestyles of pseudo-populist, right-wing pundits. Rush Limbaugh, for example, is "a ridiculous snob" who lives in Manhattan, drinks only the most famously fine wines and smokes Cuban cigars. (The book was published before we learned of Rush's refined taste in faux-opiates). Why doesn't Rush live in Wichita? Because, he tells Cigar Afficianato, he loves the high culture of Manhattan.
This was one of several times during the book when I was grateful to see a best selling author make a neglected point, but at the same time, somewhat in awe of the fact that the point had to be made at all. It seems like Canason is attacking a straw man. The idea that the party of Jack Welch is the populist party, advocating for the common man, while the party of the UAW are bunch of pointy headed elitists is just bizarre. It's almost too easy for Canason to shred this lie. It must have been a struggle to write anything more than, "what, are you kidding?" In fact, if I had written this book each chapter would have been one sentence long or less. My chapter about the liberal media would be "oh, please." My chapter on Republicans supposedly being good for national security would have been, "pshhhhhh." But actually laying out these arguments is work that needs to be done. In this case, the straw man positions are widely advocated and even accepted, which demonstrates how serious the problem of rightist propaganda is.
One lie I would have liked for Canason to take on is that these right-wingers are conservatives. They are not. The current Republican party is in fact quite radical. Conservatism sounds like, and in my opinion is, a much better political camp to be in than "right-wing." But the GOP is not conservative. As a broader issue, I hate that the points on the political map, specifically right wing, left wing, liberal and conservative have been rendered meaningless. I'm with Rush on this one. "Words mean things," or at least they should. Even some political science textbooks now define these words more or less as corresponding to the policies of either Democrats or Republicans. But if words do mean things, then conservatives believe that social change cannot or should not be engineered and that social and political institutions are usually worth preserving. In other words, they're wary of change. A rightist is someone who favors hierarchy, concentration of power. Think about Bush's tax and spending policies, foreign policy, attitude toward the environment and pretty much anything else about the president and his party and it should be obvious which description best applies to them. So I winced every time Canason referred to "conservatives," even though it's a common misnomer, because this book is about challenging that kind of bullshit.
So, it should be clear by now that I liked this book. I recommend it. The serious flaw of Big Lies, however, is that Canason often fails to restrain his partisan tendencies. How is it possible to avoid being partisan when writing a book about right-wing lies? Actually, it wouldn't have been very difficult. Most of the lies and distortions of the right are easily exposed as such with facts and basic reasoning and this is what Canason does, most of the time.
First, I should point out that Canason is much fairer and less hostile than his typical peer, be it Al Franken or Michael Savage. Joe goes out of his way to say the average citizen with right-wing beliefs is no more or less likely to be a decent person than a liberal. He concedes that Democratic politicians make plenty of mistakes and that people on the left can be just as wacky as people on the right. None of these concessions to civility and rationality detract from the basic argument that right-wing propaganda is polluting our public discourse.
What does detract form Canason's argument is the occasional indulgence in partisan spin. He blames the entire sum S&L crisis on Reagan's deregulation, which is wrong. The bulk of the crisis was the culmination of problems that had been brewing for decades. He accuses Michael Savage of fomenting racial hatred, without offering any evidence. I've listened to and read Savage and, while always entertaining and guilty of plenty, he's never revealed any real racist tendencies. This hits upon a big lie from the other side: "Anyone who disagrees with Jesse Jackson is a racist."
Still, it's nice to read a smart, popular book about politics that bares some relation to reality. It will never be read by the hard core GOP cultists who believe most deeply in the lies this book debunks, but Big Lies is a welcome reality check for the less ideological among us, who may have allowed bits of detritus from the propaganda machine to settle into our minds.
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