BuzzFlash Reviews
September 16, 2005
Misuse
of Power: How the Far Right Gained and Misuses Power
by Ed Asner & Burt Hall
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Yes,
you may remember Ed Asner as "Lou Grant" on the Mary Tyler
Moore Show, but Grant also has an illustrious and life-long history as
a progressive activist. In this book, he teams up with writing partner
Burt Hall to offer an expose on how the right wing has seized control
of America.
If you are wondering about where Asner (and Hall) stand, here are some excerpts from a recent interview with Asner:
"From the moment he [Bush] was 'selected,' he hit the ground running with an agenda the right wing conservatives have been cooking up since Goldwater. What a program! The Democrats were caught fat, floored and flabbergasted. Al Gore was discounted and dismounted. And even stumbling Republicans accepted and approved. It felt like Alice in Wonderland."
"Right now, we need to go beyond Bill Clinton, beyond Hillary Clinton. Hillary is stepping backwards on abortion; Joe Biden is the great equivocator (more so than Clinton was). We need a leader who is looking at America 2050, not America 2008. We need a leader who will find the will and power to point us in the direction of the long-term future."
"I think we are a good people; but we've been duped into thinking we are a master race. We must be made to realize that we are a lot more like other people than we thought. We must go beyond that and live up to the ideal of our nation's creation and those documents we hold dearly."
"When El Salvador happened, I asked myself, if not now, when? In what was a humanistic statement, I became the spokesman for medical aid to El Salvador. When attacks were launched against me verbally for my participation, I responded in kind. I was somewhat blacklisted. My acts forestalled my going gently into that good night. I learned a savage lesson."
Okay, Ed, tell us what you REALLY think.
Obviously Ed and Burt Hall are BuzzFlashian kind of guys, feisty to their core.
"Misuse of Power" is a solid refresher course on how America has been deceived and bamboozled by right wing fanatics, who have cowed the media into submission.
Asner and Hall, like BuzzFlash, believe in the Constitution and the rights it bestows upon us as Americans.
Bush and his radical sponsors just give it lip service as they work to undermine the legacy of 1776. Asner and Hall are not going slowly into the night.
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