Misstating the State of the Union: Right-Wing Media Distortions about the Clinton and Bush Presidencies

I'm a big fan of Media Matters.org as an indispensable resource for fighting back against right wing disinformation. The mission of the website is to highlight the lies and hypocrisy of Republican pundits and politicians. Personally I can only handle so much Conservative tripe before I feel sickened so I tend to be an infrequent visitor but when I do stop by I'm always amazed at how comprehensive, scrupulously researched and well crafted the site is. It's clearly a partisan site but as long as the researchers stay honest I don't have a problem with partisanship. `Misstating the State of the Union' is sort of an extension of Media Matters in that the author uses quotes from pundits and politicians in order to shed a spotlight on the disingenuous nature of people like Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Shawn Hannity, and Michael Savage. Misstating is a rather brief book at 146 pages that tackles a lot of different topics. It talks about economics but `Neoconomy' did it better. It talks about the culture war but `What's the Matter with Kansas' did it better. It talks about science but `The Republican War on Science' did it better. What the book does well is offer quick point by point refutations of Republican claims on just about every major issue of the last five years from global warming to gay marriage. The two sections I found most informative were the chapters on Health care and Education. The author also did a good job of disproving the theory that Republican's are tough on crime while Democrats are soft. Perhaps the biggest strength of the Right is a complete lack of shame. Shame causes you to avoid lying and when you're caught in a lie shame causes you to recant the lie or at least stop repeating it. The final chapter of the book is titled `No Sense of Shame' and this is perhaps the defining feature of this generations GOP. Republican's have become so consistent in their mendacity that it's no longer shocking or even mildly surprising to hear a Bill O'Reilly quoting studies that don't exist or Limbaugh giving out numbers on the cost of education that are plucked out of thin air. When caught in a lie they simply repeat it believing they can literally reshape reality by altering perceptions. Luckily Media Matters is there to collect and catalog the garbage. If you're a progressive who needs a quick guide for composing arguments to defend liberal values `Misstating the State of the Union' is a great place to start.

"Misstating the State of the Union" is a collection of concise, matter-of-fact articles, each presenting some claim by a right-wing figure such as Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, or Bill O'Reilly, followed by a refutation of that claim. The counter-arguments are documented with citations and endnotes, giving the reader the opportunity to decide the credibility of claim and counter-claim. The articles in this small book are grouped by topic and gathered into nine chapters. These chapters cover: the overall health of the economy, the deficit, national security policy, health care, education, the environment, senior citizens' issues, public safety, and values. The text has the same general drift as postings on the related website, mediamatters.org. For me, the book has added value compared to the website because the text is more polished and the items have been brought together as an organized whole. In this book, we have a refreshing rebuttal of the steady onslaught by conservative media on honest, intelligent debate of the issues. Reading "Misstating the State of the Union" is an excellent way to develop one's critical skills, when hearing things from either the right or the left. I recommend it highly. The reason for four instead of five stars in this review is simply that for me there are several other books in this area that rank higher on the "must read" scale. For more detail on the organized right-wing campaign of disinformation from the viewpoint of an insider, see David Brock's "The Republican Noise Machine". For an encylopedic and copiously documented account of misrepresentations from the Bush administration during its first three years, see Alterman and Green's "The Book on Bush".