The Way Things Aren't: Rush Limbaugh's Reign of Error : Over 100 Outrageously False and Foolish Statements from America's Most Powerful Radio and TV [Paperback]

FAIR (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1995

He's America's mouth that roars: Rush Limbaugh. . . outrageous, outspoken, and some say out-to-lunch. When Limbaugh claims "I'm not making this stuff up, folks," plug in the lie detector. He is making it up, and FAIR can prove it. In The Way Things Aren't, the media watch group FAIR catches more than one hundred of Rush's wildest whoppers. From ozone to abortion, Rodney King to Reaganomics, Limbaugh has a finely honed ability to distort reality, yet his facts often go unchallenged. Some of these "truths" would be laughable if not for the millions of people who believe them.

Editorial Reviews

Review

To take a close look at Rush Hudson Limbaugh and his twenty million fans is to have one's hope in America's future restored. -- Dan Quayle

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: New Press, The (May 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 156584260X
• ISBN-13: 978-1565842601
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 6.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (84 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,476,500 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars From the Mouth of a Souce, May 22, 2007

By 

Edwin C. Pauzer (New York City) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Way Things Aren't: Rush Limbaugh's Reign of Error : Over 100 Outrageously False and Foolish Statements from America's Most Powerful Radio and TV (Paperback)

The book tells us what many of its readers already know. Rush Limbaugh appeals to our lower instincts where impulses run rampant, and the emotion of anger is the easiest to trigger and feed.

In what is almost a comic book format and coloring, the content is surprisingly serious about Mr. Limbaugh's deceit, racism, disingenuousness, fabrications and lies. Here's an example from the radio airing on March 10, 1994:

Limbaugh: "I am not calling the president names."

Caller: "You do it every day."

Limbaugh: "Give me one example of calling him a name..."

Caller: "You've called him a liar, a fool, and idiot."

Limbaugh: "Those are not names. Those are assessments of his character. They are not names."

(?)

I was most interested in Rush's background, which revealed his hypocrisy. Limbaugh the ueberpatriot claimed that Reagan was the best president this country ever had, but he never voted for him. In fact, he didn't vote until he was thirty-five.

The second was his lack of military service. Rush claimed to have failed a draft physical and thus was never called because he had a high draft number. Actually, he had a low one, was called, and then "failed" the physical. At different times claiming a knee injury from high school football, and then a pilonidal cyst, which caused him to fail. His father had the same cyst when he was a World War II fighter pilot.

The man who rails against divorce is now working on his third marriage, and the printing of this book was before Limbaugh's drug addiction.

This book also includes Limbaugh's pronouncements and then the reality check. An example of this is Limbaugh's claim that melting glacial ice is the same as ice melting in a glass. The level doesn't change. And here is where RL is flat out wrong. Most of our glacial ice is over land. Water level would rise 200 feet worldwide if it melted.

This means Limbaugh needs to be taken with a large dose of salt, but this is where the book unwittingly falters. Those who see Limbaugh as a charlatan, don't require further convincing. Those who worship at the altar of his Cuban cigars and grotesque line of ties, will discount the contents of this book without reading it.

At least now, I have identified the source for a number of neocon arguments.

This is the kind of book you read during the commute.

22 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Way Things Should Be, June 7, 2004

By 

John G. Hilliard (Toronto Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Way Things Aren't: Rush Limbaugh's Reign of Error : Over 100 Outrageously False and Foolish Statements from America's Most Powerful Radio and TV (Paperback)

This book is like going to a fast food restaurant, it is fast, cheap and tasty yet you know the nutritional value is not the best. I am not a fan of Rush, thus my book choice, so reading books like this that spell out many of his errors are just a laugh a minute to read. If you have even found this book then you are probably also an anti Rush person and regardless of the content, as long as it was somewhat negative, you are going to like the book. This book should fit that need. To be fair the book is not really negative, other then a few funny shots at Rush's ego, the book is very fair. It simply takes statements Rush has made over the years and spells out the truth. The authors list out their sources and from where the Rush comment came from. I guess my only complaint with the book is that given many of the Rush comments were simple sentences, a Rush supporter could always make the claim that the comment was taken out of context. To avoid that I would have liked the authors to add a bit more of the Rush words before and after the comments. Yet this is a small complaint on my part and does not really take away from the enjoyment of the book.

Toward the end of the book I started to appreciate a comment the authors started the book with. They stated that although they could list literally 1000's of errors, they were going to limit the book to 100 given that any more and the reader might lose interest. I certainly felt that I had hit my limit toward the end of the book. As I read the book I kept hearing Rush in my head and after about 100 pages, it was all I could stomach. Overall the book was a nice time waster, not too heavy and fast and easy to read. Did it provide any deep thought or interesting conclusions about the effect Rush has on the current Republican Party or the public as a whole, no. It just laid out many of his more bone headed comments. Would this book change any minds, again I doubt it. If you dislike Rush then you will get a kick out of the book.

21 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars very well documented and easy to verify, August 30, 2003

By 

Wolfram Bosch "Wolframinous" (Mill Valley, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Way Things Aren't: Rush Limbaugh's Reign of Error : Over 100 Outrageously False and Foolish Statements from America's Most Powerful Radio and TV (Paperback)

I read this book after reading the online reviews, and have come to the conclusion that some dismissive reviewers have not read the book but instead relied on the word of others (one can only guess whom...). Rather than "provably false" and "just plain made up," the points made in this work meticulously cite sources, which are easily found for verification, including the actual Bible which Limbaugh at one point distorts to "prove" that taxes are anti-religion (the gist of the Biblical account is that Joseph *recommended* taxes during times of plenty to insure against inevitable lean years).

Moreover, there is simply no reason to include falsehoods in a book like this, when every Limbaugh episode is a treasure trove of distorted and invented facts, proving the lie to Limbaugh's meta-lie, "We don't make this stuff up, folks."

The extent to which disinformation passes as news and ultimately affects policy should have every rational person, whatever his political leaning, running for antidotes such as this one. If you listen to Limbaugh, you *must* read this book, so you know that, as fun as it is, it is the Weekly World News of political discourse. Conservatives should in fact be even more vigilant to disparage this sort nonsense, because it could ultimately undermine the right's credibility in the same way that extreme leftist buffoonery such the mid 20th century distortion of Stalin's horrible record has undermined the left.