Customer Reviews

Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

Conservatives will probably say the book has a liberal bias. Liberals will probably be somewhat disappointed.
The author tries very hard to go after extremists on both sides. The problem, however, is that if you don't clearly take a side, everyone assumes you're biased against their side.
He tries to be a voice of sanity and goes after truthers as well as birthers (and also correctly points out that the birther movement was started by a Hillary Clinton suppoter).
I especially like the part where he examines three of the most over-the-top complaints about Obama: that he's a Communist, a Nazi and the Antichrist, talking to actual Communists and Nazis.
I doubt the book will change many minds. I've long felt that as much as people say they want civility, they really don't. They want the name-calling and demonizing of the opposition. Many of them, I'm sure, would think less of Ronald Reagan if they knew he routinely had a beer with Tip O'Neil at the end of the workday (or deny that ever happened).
Still, when all you hear from one side or the other is how the country is being destroyed and the sky is falling, it's refreshing to hear some more reasonable voices.

Avlon has his heart in the right place, but the execution misses the mark. When bookshelves are dominated by legitimate wingnuts, its refreshing to see this book, calling for what essentially amounts to a third-party, one not beholden to irrational extremists. Millions of independents are waiting for a group of intellectual leaders preaching moderation and rationality. I certainly appreciate Avlon as he attempts to lead the charge.

Content-wise, I found the first half of the book uninspired. He spends endless pages quoting the nutcases he finds at rallies and town halls. Sadly, he adds little of his own insight. The net effect is that you feel like you're at a zoo, marveling at curious creatures from a distance. Fine, but we've all been exposed to these "wing-nuts" on television (either put into positive light by Fox News or cast as morons by MSNBC). If you're politically aware enough to pick up this book, you're already aware of all of its contents. This book is essentially a series of conceits, an opportunity to look down on the Sarah Palin's and Glenn Beck's of the world in order to feel some sense of moral superiority. When Avlon DOES come up with his own hypothesis, it is merely a rehash of Paul Krugman's theory that Republicanism has devolved into racial fear-mongering (to be fair to Avlon, he only really pins this generalization on the new fringe of conservatives). I wasn't impressed when Krugman wrote his political theory, and I'm not impressed now.

Stylistically, I understand what the Daily Beast is doing. They want to translate a series of blog articles into the print world, increasing the speed of publication, allowing on-topic books to hit the shelves while they're still pertinent, while gaining some intellectual capital. This didn't work for me. The chapters FELT like blog posts, meant to generate google hits, Diggs, Facebook mentions and reTweets, but not necessarily to form air-tight arguments. Whenever Avlon threw out a half-baked conjecture, I instinctively looked for a comment box below to vent my frustation. His thoughts needed more time to develop, as well as real discussions with a series of editors.

I respect Mr. Avlon and wish him the best. Hopefully, his next effort will put more of an emphasis on a new direction the country can take, and can offer something positive, instead of taking snipes from a distance.

Mr. Avalon has parsed and dissected the lunatic fringe on both extremes of the political spectrum. The problem is that these extremes are pushing in on the center, driving out reason, logic, and objectivity. Picture the center as the scene in the first Star Wars when the characters are trapped in the giant trash compactor. Obama derangement syndrome is right on target: the financial/corporate sector continues its criminal abuse on the consumer, but almost everyone from the top to the bottom of the food chain is more worried about imaginary government death panels and Obama morphing into Hitler. No one seems to object if they even notice that the real death panels have existed in private health insurance companies for a long time. But that's capitalism at work, so it's all right. Mr. Avalon's style is lively, concise, analytical. You don't know whether to laugh or cry as you read his book.

Joseph A. Domino
Adjunct Professor
Palm Beach State College
Boca Raton FL
(...)

This book does a good job of exposing the political extremists on both sides, though it spends considerably more time addressing those from the right than from the left, because, as the author says, the right-wing extremists have been "louder" lately.

Makes some good arguments, especially against districting laws.

If you're a centrist, this book will probably confirm your beliefs. If you're not, you will probably see some arguments against the other side and ignore those against yours.

When it's all said and done, it's worth the read.

I received the book in a timely fashion, and it was in great condition. (Good work, Amazon.)

Lets be honest, this book is about wingnuts of the right. Olbermann on the cover may be advertizing trick, attempt to look balanced or whatever, the book is not about people like him. Actually, only couple of pages even mention him and the biggest "wingnutty" thing that Olbermann has done ? Writing an angry special comment against Don Rumsfeld when Rummie compared anti-war people with Nazi appeasers. Seriously ??? THAT is the biggest thing about person you put on over, in the world of millions birthers and truthers ?

This book, to me, is just the latest effort of a journalist to "cash in" on the over-the-top, even hysterical tone permeating much of contemporary American discourse. This is not to say that Avlon is wrong in his general premise, that political machines functioning in the 24 hour news cycle/YouTube age have become incresingly shrill to the derogation of measured and reasoned voices, "pushing" political parties into adopting what were once regarded as "fringe" positions as mainstream platforms. And this idea, the idea of politicians and lobbyists becoming slavishly devoted to corporate cable and radio media is indeed one that needs to be discussed at great length. The pity is, Avlon fails to really do so and favors broad-brush over what is, historically, a far more nuanced issue than he presents.

He makes is argument by taking snippits or "sound bytes" of various people, the more outre the better, and then drawing a generalized conclusion about all people even remotely associated with the most extreme views he gleefully cites. I am not saying this methodology is wrong, but it certainly requires more research than he marshals in crafting what is, essentially, a "zeitgeist" argument. Further, the book was top-heavy discussing the "wingnuttery" of the far-right. In a clear effort to create some kind of a "balance," he inserts throw away critiques of people like Keith Olbermann, for example. While I am no raving fan of Mr. Olbermann and have only seen his show a few times over the time it has aired, the lack of effort in distinguishing people like him from, say, a bomb-thrower like Glenn Beck shows a fundamental lack of intellectual curiosity in favor of the false comforts of "lumpen" generalizations. And so, what you get is a lot of citation to stock footage and websites without any meaningful analysis of the serious problem posed by incendiary and outright deceptive political rhetoric. I have honestly seen better high-school research papers. "Fairness to both sides" is too often a sham. Sometimes fairness mandates judgment, and Avlon is obviously more interested in posing as the disinterested moderator than actually being anyone who has the courage of conviction. And Avlon, further, makes no effort I can see between distinguishing between "unpleasant" people or "opinionated" people and the deranged, or, worse, those who are being richly rewarded by exploiting the perpetual crisis narrative they create and then feed in ever-ascending cycles of sensation, high-strung emotionalism, and conspiracy theory.

False equivalencies abound, and logical fallacies flower. For those interested, I would recommend "The Eliminationists" or "Suburban Warriors" for far more superior and historically grounded discussions of the roots of some of these modern phenomena. But as is, a tepid, thrown-together hash that does no service to the promise of its excellent hypothesis.

No recommendation.

This book should be required reading for every American citizen. John Avlon pulls no punches from anyone-my kind of book. Wnile he does seem to pick on the Republicans more than the Democrats, he does a very good job of nailing the truth about both of them. It is a fascinating read and amazingly difficult to put down. I have around 75% of my copy underlined. Please read it. It is a real eye opener.

Avlon is a gifted and passionate writer, but like much of the mainstream media, he goes too far in trying to create a moral equivalence and draw power equilibrium between the unattached, and laughably poorly organized left wing fringe with a very funded right wing extreme that have more or less unfettered access to well capitalized media outlets and corporate funding. He paints George W Bush as a innocent target of a vociferous and bloodthirsty left wing fringe, saying nothing of the actual activities of that Administration which provoked legitimate outrage and not just on the left, as well as a mainstream press who silent without critique, and let it all happen.

He also mischaracterizes the activities of the Democratic Congress in mid 2009 as totemic, monolithic and extremist, and pays no attention to the obstructionism and no to everything approach publicly embraced by the GOP. He also misunderstands that the spending that was done to stem the economic free-fall that year was passed under the previous administration, to say nothing of the years of waste and abuse that had preceded in the previous eight years.

This topic is near and dear to me, and is dearly needs attention. Not just to the over-the-top rhetoric spewing forth from both extremes, but the total lack of attention being paid to it by the media, as they focus on shallow, fatuous and trivial news stories, while completely avoiding in depth discussion of important issues like federal budget deficits, healthcare/insurance reform, the terrible state of the nation's infrastructure and so on.

Obama's a Nazi! Buy Gold! Who is `The Worst Person in the World?'

What has happened to the news media? It has become polarized in search of ratings, is what happened; at least according to John Avlon in his new book (and the first book from The Daily Beast) `Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America.'

Led by the radical voices of the far right wing (the `fright wing' as Avlon calls them) this largely insane polarizing of the extreme left and right is driven by two factors according to the book - the electoral rejection of the right in November of 2008 as well as the declining ratings of talk radio and its reliance on a largely older, white demographic audience. In a world where die-hard partisans are perhaps the only reliable audience (P1s), talk radio (with an incubation assist from websites like WorldNetDaily, Redstate and others) has purposely rearranged itself into a forum for self-segregated narrowcasting. The more shocking, the better - at least for ratings.

The vocabulary of the extremists, both in the media and extremist politics, includes frequent references to Marxism, socialism, death panels, Obamacare, the birthers, the truthers and of course, the bedeviled Nazism. It seems the more radical the verbiage, the more popular the pontificator becomes, (Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, etc.) at least with the base.

Avion explains both in a historical (TR, FDR, JFK) and current day context (town hall meetings, Tea Party, etc.) how these factions began and evolved but concludes with a formula for the settling of these conditions through the emergence of a more vocal populist (i.e. centrist) movement. We'll see.

I was looking forward to reading this book, because I have seen John Avlon on CNN and, while not always agreeing with him, his opinions were always common-sense based and I respect what he has to say.

I think that in this book he sets out to give a general overview of the extreme fringe politics that is driving our society and culture today. This book is easy to read and doesn't delve too far into the weeds of some of these wingnut theories. Instead, we get a good basis of knowledge for how the current polarization has occurred.

For anyone who is a political junkie, a lot of the information in the book will be old hat. I think this is a good book for someone who is not so familiar with wingnut theories or how they came about. The book is a good starter to familiarize oneself with these theories, so that one may know a wingnut when they hear or see one, or at the very least be able to critically analyze what one is hearing.