Tuesday, March 06, 2012

Culture Alert: Bill Press at Books and Books ... by gimleteye

Bill Press, the progressive writer and columnist-- (and anti-Rush Limbaugh presence on talk radio)-- will be at Books and Books on Aragon Avenue, Coral Gables, Wed. March 7 at 8PM. He will be reading from his new book, "The Obama Hate Machine."

Advertised as the book the Koch Brothers don't want you to read, Bill Press exposes the ways in which the extreme right-wing media has done an end run around the American voting populace by exerting a disproportionate control over open political debate. In "The Obama Hate Machine", Press shows how the Right has taken rhetoric to slanderous new levels in attacking the nation’s forty-fourth president.

But presidents have always been attacked like this, right? Wrong. As the author shows, while presidents and presidential candidates routinely have been subject to personal attacks, the outright disdain Obama’s extremist opponents have for the facts has inspired an insidious brand of character assassination unique in contemporary politics.

Obama was born in Kenya . . . Obama sympathizes with Muslim terrorists . . . Obama is a communist who wants to institute death panels and touch off class warfare ... The extent to which these unfounded assertions have taken hold in the American mindset shows just how ruthless, destructive, and all-powerful the right-wing machine—hijacked by extremists in the media and fueled by corporate coffers—has become. The author reveals how corporate interests such as the infamous Koch Brothers continue to steer political coverage away from fact-based dialogue into the realm of hysteria. Bill Press also observes this phenomenon is not limited to the airwaves and provides an “I Hate Obama Book Club” list, calling out the scores of anti-Obama tomes—and even some from the Left—that have helped drag politics even deeper into the mud.

In his characteristic on-the-mark arguments sure to appeal to anyone on the Left or in the Center, Press shows how the peculiar nature of Obama-hating subverts issue-driven debate and threatens not only the outcome of the 2012 election but the future of the American democratic system.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just think back a few years of the hate and attacks on George W. Bush.

Anonymous said...

Oh, so this is revenge? Revenge, for objecting to spending trillions of dollars on foreign adventures and the national securitization of liberty?

Anonymous said...

Revenge? Nobody is an expert at revenge like the Democrats...They use dirty tricks whenever, in fact, that is the core of their attacks.

Even this contraception issue traveling through the airwaves. It was Stephanopoulos who first raised the issue at one of the debates. He yanked it out of the air, (which as we now know was orchestrated by the Obama White House) and would not let go. Everybody wondered what that was all about. It was too sudden to be a coincidence. Now we know where it came from. It was the start of a false issue planned and strategized by the “experts” at the DNC and the White House because Obama has no issue on which to run. Abortion is stale, so they went after contraception which is to most of us, a non-issue also.

These people are political thugs and will stop at nothing to get what they want...foul-mouth Maxine Waters...what would you call her?


They will never change. They put fear into people and then appear with clean hands. This is their MO and has been for years.

Want to know about the Democrats and their scorched-earth tradition? Ask me because I was one of them and left because I could not stomach them any longer. I may not agree with everything Republican, but at least they don't make me feel dirty.