Customer Reviews

Off with Their Heads: Traitors, Crooks & Obstructionists in American Politics, Media & Business

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

I find this book very fascinating and factually-backed in many respects. Whether you agree with his analysis and conclusion(s) or not, the facts are there, and we (the reading) will draw our own conclusions. One can elude or ignore the facts of events, but that would be a disservice to oneself and is intellectually disingenuous. Again, anyone can question his motives to right such a book, but thats not issues, the facts are there and they a backed-up. Considering Dick Morris's past experiences (good and bad), this book is hardly ideologically driven of the usually liberal or conservative bashing, especially from someone who has worked for both Democratics and Republicans. Whether you like Dick Morris or not, any and every clear-thinking person(s) should applaud for exposing the "political skeletons" that our elected leaders have been hiding from the public, and in many cases, backstabbing the very people who voted for them. I applaud Dick Morris not only for exposing a lot of truths behind people of power, but also doing so without being vicious or ad homen about it.

For those who make an effort to keep abreast of the current domestic and foreign political scene, there is really not much in here that you don?t already know. Nevertheless, in that it is well-documented and written by a Clinton insider, it is a very useful resource to have around in order to continue to combat the never ending onslaught of left-wing mendacity.

The book is not really vitriolic as the title would seem to indicate, and as screaming leftist editorials will tell you that it is. There is a little anger here and there but it is mostly written in a pretty even-handed way and is often humorous. It touches on many subjects: left-wing bias in the press especially in the New York Times; the failure of the media to accurately report the Iraq conflict; the paralyzation of the Clinton administration in the face of the burgeoning terrorist threat; the loony left in Hollywood; French perfidy; and various other political issues large and small in contemporary America.

The left will also mewlingly accuse the author of sloppy research but there is no way they can refute his extremely detailed study. The New York Times chapter, for example, is primarily based on a day-to-day study of the front pages of this formerly respectable paper for an entire year or so following 9-11. Clearly, on this evidence alone, there can be no denying that the New York Times, under the leadership of editor Howell Raines, attempted to shape public opinion through the use of fraudulently weighted polling, slanted reporting, and the failure to report news unfavorable to their own political position. It is depressingly familiar.

Other chapters are as well-researched, and again, based on not much more than a careful reading of the news available to each and every one of us on a daily basis. You may disagree with the author?s conclusions, but you cannot disagree with the facts on which he bases them.

The best bits of the book, though, are the author?s personal recollections of his days as an advisor to President Clinton in the mid-nineties. Some of this is nothing less than astonishing. For example, Clinton, politically fearful and terrified of leaks, instructed the author to bring up foreign-policy issues with him only when they were alone. ?When Sandy Berger, wise to my habits, sought to stay longer to keep me away from Clinton, the president instructed me to pretend to leave the building, then wait downstairs for his all-clear signal so that we could begin our foreign-policy conversation.?

Read the above quote again. Think about it. President Clinton, the leader of the free world, felt compelled to play little hide-and-seek games with his advisors rather than simply tell them to get out of the room. Remarkable, and sadly, entirely believable.

Former Clinton advisor and current Fox News Channel political analyst, Dick Morris, doesn't let anyone "off the hook" in this very well written and thoroughly documented book. He offers detailed insights to the current events of the day that are shaping America. From the obvious left-wing major media bias to the sub-par care in America's nursing homes, Morris not only offers historical reference to the problems that faces Amercia, but also commonsense suggestions on how to correct them.

Topics he covers include:

*The ridiculous and obvious media bias so prevailent in major media today that dares to call itself real journalism.
*The media credibility gap with the Iraq War.
*How Clinton left "ticking terror time bombs" for Bush to discover and how the actions taken in Afghanastin and Iraq by the Bush Administration are very necessary and should be supported by all Amercians.
*How the Hollywood apologists' lame retorts seek to divide America and how they have no idea what they are really talking about and how political activists such as Noam Chomsky are well-meaning but very misguided.
*The history of America's relationship with France and why France has stabbed us in the back concerning our fight against terrorism and how France has for so long been in the "back pocket" of Iraq.
*How both republicans and democrats took the lead in promoting laws that protect crooked companies such as Enron to defraud its investors with imputnity.
*How both democrats and republicans are guilty of gerrymandering in their districts so they have very little competition in their re-election efforts.
*The attack on our kids by the tobacco companies and how many state governors used the settlement money to their own benefits instead of using it toward anti-smoking campaigns which is what it was for.
*The terrible care in America's nursing homes.

This is a very good book full of information and backed up with very detailed facts that everyone should read whether or not you may agree with Morris' outcomes. I, myself, don't necessarily agree with everything that Morris proposes. However, it will defninetly make you look at some things in a "different light." I especially enjoyed the section on France. I now have a much clearer understanding on why France continually "thumbs it's nose" at America and why we should no longer pay them any heed until they get their act together.

There have been many books published since the events of September 11, 2002. Most skewer the Clinton legacy and the left-wing opposition to Bush. Some are excellent (O?Reilly and Coulter), some interesting (Savage) and some in between (Hannity). But this book by Dick Morris has them all beaten and beaten by a large margin. The difference? Unlike the others, who are looking into the fishbowl, Morris has actually lived in the fishbowl as an advisor to Bill Clinton. This special insight is what fuels his book and gives it a special weight not shared by the others.

Although he begins with an attack against the left-wing bias so prevalent in our media, Morris does not stop there. He takes on all manner of sacred cows, and his chapter on the Hollywood liberals transformed by the media into America?s newest set of intellectuals is worth the price of admission alone, especially as concerns Streisand and Sarandon. His take, on the disingenuousness of France during the Iraq war, is also hilarious, and dead on target.

What also makes Morris so special from the rest is his strong reliance on facts over opinions and feelings and his refusal to play the game of demonization. Clinton may have been dead wrong in his views and actions on foreign terrorism, but he was not a traitor. The only real venom I saw from Morris was toward France, and there I couldn?t disagree with him, especially with their tasteless and racist treatment of Serena Williams at the recent French Open still reverberating in my mind.

Morris does run out of steam at the end when he begins taking on a slew of offenders (elected officials misusing tobacco settlement monies, the tobacco industry itself, and that all-round target, Congress itself), but, still, he does so with a deftness and panache that is simply not found in the other books on the subjects. Funny, informative and on-target.

Unlike Hillary, who sees the Clinton years through rose-colored glasses thick as midnight, Morris's hindsight is a stark and clear. As a pollster himself, he debunks the way supposedly objective media giants bend the numbers to get the results they want.

After reading this book, you'll understand why the New York Times was literally in-credible long before Jayson Blair. You see how entire strings of polls were weighted in favor of the liberal agenda plus being weighted against the Republican administration. The Times taught Blair how to write fiction, for Pete's sake.

Morris stumbled his way out of the Clinton administration, falling on his face, getting up, and re-earning his reputation as an astute political observer. If you think this book is merely another conservative tirade in the vein of Ann Coulter, forget it. This guy shoots straight.

And when the smoke clears, you're going to be skeptic about anything you hear on the network news and the NYT.

This book is a grad course in how to read between the lines in the press to get at the truth.

Off with their heads, Morris. Off with their heads.

Now. When are you going to write the book that debunks Hillary?

The title almost turned me off. I believe the title sells the book short. That is the only criticism I have.

Because I have little regard for former President Clinton, and knowing that the author was his close advisor, I almost didn't read it. However, the author appears to treat everyone fairly and criticizes politicians on both sides of the isle. His review of a multitude of topics sheds light on issues that need more oversight by all of us.

It was most enlightening and easy to read.

It also reinforced my low regard for Clinton.

Morris is dead on the money with this one. I highlighted so many lines 3 pens went dry. Morris is a true benefit to the Right and tells many of his secrets about Clinton and Left that he learned during his time on the campaign trail. Get this book.

I don't particularly agree with a lot of what Dick Morris has written, but I will say this: Right or wrong, he's written a specific critique that rises above the partisanship that characterizes most political books. He's more than willing to point out flaws wherever he may find them.

One thing I do find myself in strong agreement with is the specific criticism of the foreign policy of the 1990s. Morris suggests it was the neglect of foreign policy policy and the pattern of accomodating and paying off tyrants that allowed for the rise of terror in the 21st century, and I can't say I find many flaws in his argument.

I've had a hard time liking Dick Morris in the past, partly because he was a pal of Clinton and one of his most trusted advisors, and I view Clinton with utter contempt. How any honest man could talk himself into working with Clinton, I cannot understand. Now he is a commentator on the Fox network, which is the least partisan of all the networks.

In this book, however, Morris makes some specific points about the elite media--pointing out for example that the New York Times has been acting as a propaganda arm of the Democrat party, often to the detriment of the country in general, with superb documentation, and naming many Hollywood leftists:

"These icons of stage and screen,song and dance, are no longer content with making us tap our feet. They want us to change our minds. But they bring to their advocacy their old habits--they follow scripts. They are not intellectuals. They are actors, actresses, singers, and stars who are impersonating deep thinkers. The same skills they use to persuade us that their stage characters are really in love, or really locked in mortal combat, they now employ to try to convince us our country is going in the wrong direction. Their skills are formidable. But let's not forget the reality: These are human parrots, mouthing lines fed to them by the fashionable, social, trendy elite. Their information is as shallow as their conclusions are vacuous."

Lord, how long I've waited to hear someone express that truth out loud!

How could anyone take an airhead like Barbra Streisand or Sean Penn seriously about, say, foreign policy? But some do, simply because they play a good part on the screen which someone else has written, still another directed and yet another choreographed.

Morris takes on the media types that think it is their job to form public opinion, rather than report it, and governors who use the tobacco "settlement" for everything but its intended purpose, which is to discourage smoking (from which, incidentally, government makes more per pack than do the tobacco companies, in taxes) and the crooked corporate CEO's.

I am enjoying this book much more than I thought I would.

Joseph (Joe) Pierre, USN (Ret.)

author of Handguns and Freedom...their care and maintenance
and other books

Dick Morris once wrote that he was an independent-that he hated Republicans and Democrats equally. In this book, he takes aim at the liberals in the first part of the book and then hits the conservatives in the second part.

In the first part of the book, he skewers The New York Times, liberal bias in the media, Clinton's sorry record in ignoring terrorism, leftist Hollywood, and everybody's favorite target, France. I found his writing here to be very informative, enabling me to understand the historical influence of the New York Times, and how media outlets all over the country (and the Democrats) still follow its drumbeat. He also has an excellent recap of the historical forces that have made the French psyche what it is today. He helped me understand why the French are the way they are (though he does not forgive them and neither do I). I was enlightened.

However, the theme of the second part of the book is about the valuable and humanitarian service provided by courageous and altruistic tort lawyers in fighting the good fight against evil accountants and tobacco companies, and how we need to get them involved in the struggle against evil nursing home operators. (Another chapter deals with the wrongness of gerrymandering, but no lawyers get involved there). He spews anger at any person or body who would try to cap malpractice or punitive damage awards. He comes down hardest on the Big Tobacco companies, demonizing their pernicious effects by asserting fuzzy science facts like "one in three (kids who smoke) will die of the habit". (He cited the tobaccofreekids website as the source of that fact). He spends the first section of the book slamming the New York Times for being so slanted, and then uses The Times as a source numerous times to support his arguments in the second part of his book.

As a conservative, I had to roll my eyes while reading through the end of the book, but I felt the knowlege and background Morris imparts early on made the book a worthwhile read for me.