BuzzFlash Reviews

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

Glenn Greenwald is a treasure, a constitutional lawyer turned lacerating, outraged columnist on Salon.com, after building a loyal following on his own website.

In short, he writes with the informed passion and indignation of BuzzFlash, except he's smarter.

He wrote the incisive book, "How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values from a President Run Amok," and a couple years later, "A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency."

How can you not love a book like a "Great American Hypocrite," which sets its tone by decimating the myth of John Wayne as an American hero? Wayne was actually another GOP chickenhawk who aggressively made sure that he didn't have to be drafted into the military in WW II, thus avoiding any threat to his safety. While other Hollywood stars like Clark Gable, Henry Fonda, and Jimmy Stewart proudly entered into the Armed Services, Wayne made sure that he he risked nothing more than a falling stagelight during a shooting of a film on a Hollywood set. Of course, in typical Republican hypocratic fashion, he played war heroes, but was afraid to become one. Not to mention that Wayne was a moral values hypocritical train wreck.

Wayne is the archtype of "patriotic" packaging over reality that the Republican "communications" consultants excel at.

That chapter sets the tone for a book that decimates the GOP facade of claiming the American flag, while being personal cowards and undermining our national interests.

And Greenwald spares no quarter in his dissection of the mainstream media. If you read Greenwald's columns, you know that he has a special ear for how GOP talking points work their way into the talking head pundit shows on television and into news stories.

Greenwald doesn't try to be dispassionate. You can feel him steaming as he pens his columns, and that comes through clearly in this book of new ammunition. (It is not an anthology; it is original writing.)

Review:

�Those who ignore what Greenwald has to say act at our collective peril.�
�John W. Dean, former Nixon White House counsel and author of Conservatives Without Conscience

�There are few patriots on Capitol Hill. You can count them on your hand. . . . Glenn Greenwald, constitutional lawyer, is one such patriot.�
�BuzzFlash.com (Yes, BuzzFlash is on the back jacket of the book)

�One of the smartest and most important new voices to emerge in politics in years.�
�Markos Moulitsas Z�niga, founder of Daily Kos and coauthor of Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics

"Glenn Greenwald has done it again. He�s about to release another great book. . . . From the myth that John Wayne was a great American hero (he was a WWII draft dodger), to how the media perpetuates false images of right-wingers (so much for the �liberal media�) . . . to the falsehood that Republicans bring us smaller government, Glenn lays it out beautifully."
�Alan Colmes

"I rely on Glenn Greenwald, above all, for understanding the assaults by this administration on the Constitution, and for pointing the way toward regaining a republic. There's no one whose work has impressed me more."
�Daniel Ellsberg

"This book is written with such vicious joy that it is just really fun to read....I'm always amazed by the clarity of [Greenwald's] writing and his ability to indict the conservative mindset with well-articulated factual patterns."
�Matt Stoller, Open Left

"The peerless Glenn Greenwald."
�Josh Marshall

"One of the best political commentators out there . . .Unlike most other bloggers, Greenwald practices journalism . . . Few others are better than Greenwald at sussing out the accidental propaganda inflicted on us by the mainstream press"
�The Village Voice

"Perhaps the most influential civil-liberties writer on the Web"
�The American Prospect

"Blogosphere superstar"
�Mother Jones

"Among the most intelligent and widely read practitioners of blogging"
�GQ

From the pubisher, Random House:

Long since Americans were wooed by images of Ronald Reagan astride a horse, complete with cowboy hat and rugged good looks, the Republican Party has used a John Wayne mythology to build up its candidates and win elections. Their marketing scheme of evoking brave, courageous, heroic warriors has been so persuasive and strikes such a patriotic nerve, that many citizens have voted based on this manipulative imagery even when they�ve flat out disagreed with the GOP�s positions on key issues.

Glenn Greenwald puts this bogus GOP mythology under microscopic critique and successfully argues that none of these men is, in fact, a brave, strong moral warrior�far from it. Rather, most have dodged military duty, have strings of broken marriages and affairs, and live decadent, elitist lives, which they so ruthlessly condemn Democrats for doing. Such false archetypes�that GOP leaders are exclusively fit to command the military, represent traditional family values, and are fiscally restrained and responsible because they�re just regular folk like us�are so firmly entrenched in our culture as to allow the GOP to sit back and let their time-tested marketing ploy spin itself silly while avoiding debate on real issues. When they actually do voice opinions, it�s nothing more than a smear campaign of the supposed weakness and elitism of the Democrats.
To prevent this tired marketing scheme from succeeding again, Greenwald takes off the gloves and knocks down the hoaxes and myths, exposing the tactics the right-wing machine uses to drown out both reality and consideration of real issues. But he also calls on Democrats to shake off the defensive posture (�We love America too,� �We support the troops too,� �We also believe in God�) and start attacking the Republican candidates for the hypocrites they, in truth, are.

The first book to dissect the Republican Cult of Personality and leave it openly exposed in its unabashed, shameful depravity, Great American Hypocrites is a deeply necessary call-out to Democrats to attack the GOP with their competitor�s very own weapons.


BUZZFLASH REVIEWS