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Will Bunch will be here today at 2pm to talk about his new Kindle book, "October 1, 2011: The Battle of the Brooklyn Bridge."

Will is a senior writer at the Philadelphia Daily News, a Media Matters fellow, Pulitzer Prize winner and blogs at Attytood (which is famous among bloggers for what are quite possibly the nastiest commenters in the known universe).

He's also inspired and energized by the Occupy movement, and is happy to talk with C&L readers today about his own experience writing this book.

Be sure to drop by!

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Book Chat Tomorrow With Will Bunch

Will Bunch will be here tomorrow at 2pm to talk about his new Kindle book, "October 1, 2011: The Battle of the Brooklyn Bridge." It's only $.99 and no, you don't need a Kindle to read it - you can download it directly to your computer.

This is a fascinating development in publishing. Normally, we'd have to wait a few months to see in-depth reporting on events like this but thanks to the electronic publishing revolution, we can read shorter books like this within a few weeks of the events that inspired them.

Will is a senior writer at the Philadelphia Daily News, a Media Matters fellow, Pulitzer Prize winner and blogs at Attytood (which is famous for what are quite possibly the nastiest commenters in the known universe). Be sure to check in to our book chat tomorrow with your questions or comments.

Happy birthday to Bill Murray, and get well soon to Attytood's Will Bunch, who's in the hospital with two clogged coronary arteries. You remember he was on here a few weeks ago doing a book chat for his new book, The Backlash. Now all his book promotion events have been put on hold until he's better, and he's worried that the book on which he worked so hard will now drop off the radar.

So if you were thinking of buying the book, but haven't gotten around to it yet, this would be a really good time to order it. (And keep Will from having a heart attack, which would be an additional benefit. Yeah, Nicole says this smacks of extortion, but it's for a good cause!)

The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters, and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama
	Author: Will Bunch Price: $1.00 (As of 05/29/12 07:31 pm details)

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Will Bunch -- blogger, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of "The Backlash" will be here for a book chat today at 1 p.m.

Will Bunch is one of the best reporters I know, and his new book, "The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters, and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama" is his best work to date. I've known Will for years -- first, through his work as a senior writer at the Philadelphia Daily News, then through his blog "Attytood" and now through his work as a Media Matters fellow.

"The Backlash" is an engrossing, funny and disturbing read. Will has the rare knack of writing about people's beliefs without attacking them personally. The book reminded me favorably of Jess Walters' book about Ruby Ridge, which managed to convey the heartbreaking tragedy of Ruby Ridge -- without canonizing any of the participants.

"The Backlash", of course, is about a different kind of tragedy: An entire class of American citizens whose fear over a changing country has led them to some irrational, paranoid beliefs and made them uniquely susceptible to the sales tactics of right-wing hucksters. Will manages to make these people likable and engaging -- but without giving an inch on the glaring factual inaccuracies of their beliefs.

I especially enjoy the chronological structure of the book, because it reads like a detective novel. Who are these people? Why do they hate the President? What are they so afraid of? By the time you get done reading "The Backlash," you'll have a much better idea. Highly recommended.

You can read a Salon excerpt of the book here; reviews here, here, here and here.

Welcome, Will Bunch, to Crooks and Liars.

Tomorrow at 1 p.m., Crooks and Liars will host a book chat with blogger and Philadelphia Daily News writer Will Bunch about his new book, "The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters, and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama". Here's the press release:

They Think Obama Isn't an American Citizen.
They Think Obama Wants to Put Americans in Concentration Camps.
They Think Obama Is the Anti-Christ.
This Isn't Just the Tea Party—Welcome to the Backlash.

In November 2008, the election of Barack Obama was supposed to usher in a new age of hope, optimism, and postpartisan politics. Instead it provoked unparalleled anger on the far right that eventually twisted important national discussions and pushed ideas from the conservative fringe into the mainstream media. In the ensuing months, countless pollsters and reporters have tried to understand the heart of this mob that appeared so suddenly, but none of them has successfully accounted for the hard-right movement's rapid growth or explained the hidden connections between its parts. Until now.

In this gripping expose, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Will Bunch reveals the secrets behind the crusade against Obama, exploring how forces like radical militia groups, the Tea Party, pro-gun zealots, and Glenn Beck have combined old-fashioned populist outrage with digital-age phobias to produce a wave of resentment that many have ridden straight to the bank. Pulling back the curtain on the paranoid politics of a new generation, Bunch shows how events such as the election of America's first African-American president, the economic recession, the rise of social networking, and the phenomenon of Glenn Beck have created a dangerous political moment that poses legitimate risks to democracy in America.

From conspiracy theorists to secessionists, birthers to "independent" Tea Partiers, Bunch illuminates the ties among this new array of groups. Going beyond easy caricature, he strips away layers of rhetoric to reveal politicians like Paul Broun, who, as one of the most extreme members of Congress, works as hard for right-wing ideologues as he does for his economically battered constituents, and groups like the Oath Keepers, a fast-growing, ultraradical organization that spreads unsubstantiated fears of Obama confiscating guns and placing U.S. citizens in concentration camps. In addition, Bunch exposes the opportunists who have embraced a new brand of apocalyptic fearmongering, which has made them millions but has also led to the widespread paranoia that has helped fuel a rise in antigovernment violence.

The end result shows the true stakes of this political perfect storm, demonstrating how the anger of the far right now threatens to consume America. Powerful, shocking, and thought-provoking, The Backlash is a controversial look at where our democracy is—and where it may be heading.

I'll just add that, believe it or not, it's a pretty entertaining read -- in some parts, laugh-out-loud funny. It's also chilling, to hear the sorts of things these "citizen patriots" believe -- and why.

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A couple of weeks ago Will Bunch, our blogging friend from Philly and the proprietor of Attytood, visited with John Amato in L.A. for a bit while on the road promoting his new book, Tear Down This Myth: How the Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts Our Future.

Will has a rundown of the book's contents at Attytood, and provided an excerpt for Salon.

Of special note, I thought, was this bit about Grover Norquist's role in shaping the Reagan Legacy project:

One of the more down-to-earth tributes was written by Norquist, who said: “Every conservative knows that we will win radical tax reform and reduction as soon as we elect a president who will sign the bill. The flow of history is with us. Our victories can be delayed, but not denied. This is the change wrought by Ronald Reagan.” Norquist all but revealed one of his missions in the coming two years — finding a presidential candidate who would assume the Reagan mantle in a way that neither Bush 41 nor Dole ever could — but not the other. His second big push was practically a guerrilla marketing campaign to make sure that the less-engaged Middle America would get the message that Reagan belonged in the pantheon of all-time greats right next to Lincoln, Washington and FDR. Norquist had learned the lessons of Normandy and of the Brandenburg Gate, which was that powerful symbols can mean a lot more than words (especially in a little-read policy journal), that a motorist under the big Sunbelt sky of Ronald Reagan Boulevard will absorb the message of the Gipper’s greatness without ever pondering if ketchup should be a vegetable in federally funded school lunches or if “the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers” in Central America were drug-dealing thugs, the kind of stubborn things that popped up in those newspaper articles ranking the presidents.

I've just gotten my copy and started reading, but it's an important book -- especially if you want to have some arguments handy for dealing with your Reagan-loving brother-in-law ...

Will Bunch today writes that the Philadelphia Inquirer still won't admit they screwed up by hiring torture architect John Yoo as a columnist.

It doesn't surprise me. Let me tell you why.

The Inquirer, long a 'liberal' paper, underwent some changes a few years ago when they (and the Philadelphia Daily News, where Will blogs) were purchased by the Philadelphia Media Holdings. The new publisher was Brien Tierney, a well-known Republican media strategist. (Until then, Tierney was best known to Philadelphians for his aggressive media defense of local Catholic churches against child molestation charges.)

When his group of investors bought the paper, he made a public pledge not to interfere with the papers' editorial slant. Since then, Citizen Tierney has hired several conservative columnists, including Rick Santorum and Mike Smerconish, and has overseen (mandated?) the occasional use of opposing editorials, presumably to make sure readers don't take the one with the "wrong" (read: liberal) opinions seriously.

Last week, Will Bunch noticed that Yoo, someone who was thought to be an occasional op-ed contributor, had actually been hired as a regular staff writer, and he generated a blogswarm asking for Yoo to be fired. The NY Times covered the uproar:

Harold Jackson, The Inquirer’s editorial page editor, said he was surprised by the sudden delayed anger directed his way over Mr. Yoo. He said the decision to hire a columnist was his, but that “Mr. Yoo was suggested by the publisher,” Brian Tierney.

Big surprise there. After all, freedom of the press belongs to he who owns the press! Tierney is just as principled in all his activities:

There’s a little-publicized story that the parent company of The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News, Philadelphia Newspapers LLC allegedly sought a $10-million bailout from the state of Pennsylvania according to lawsuit filed by a Chester County, Pa. charter school. However, the Associated Press reported on April 24 that the company’s chief, Brian Tierney – received $1.175 million in salary and bonus compensation in 2008, despite being forced into bankruptcy protection in February for $395 million in debt.

“Recent court filings also show that Tierney collected $1.175 million in salary and bonuses last year, somewhat higher than previously disclosed,” Maryclaire Dale wrote for the AP. “Tierney's compensation included $650,000 in salary, a $350,000 bonus for 2008, a $175,000 bonus for 2007 and $81,000 in transportation costs.”

Recently, as The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank reported, Tierney appeared before a House committee making a plea for government help.

“The biggest request for help at the hearing was from the Philadelphia Inquirer's Brian Tierney, who wanted protection for newspapers to talk about creating a national alternative to Craigslist,” Milbank wrote in the Post on April 22.

Funny how those free-market principles go right out the window when they affect your positive cash flow, eh?

“There was a conscious effort on our part to counter some of the criticism of The Inquirer as being a knee-jerk liberal publication,” Mr. Jackson said. “We made a conscious effort to add some conservative voices to our mix.”

Asked if the release of the memos affected his view of hiring Mr. Yoo, Mr. Jackson said: “From a personal perspective, yes. We certainly know more now than we did then, but we didn’t go into that contract blindly. I’m not going to say the same decision wouldn’t have been made.”

But Mr. Tierney said the memos did not alter his opinion.

“What I liked about John Yoo is he’s a Philadelphian,” Mr. Tierney said. “He went to Episcopal Academy, where I went to school. He’s a very, very bright guy. He’s on the faculty at Berkeley, one of the most liberal universities in the country.”

To critics of the hiring, he said, “The most important speech to defend is the speech you hate,” and he said there were not all that many critics. “I’ve gotten more mail recently on our making our comics smaller than I have on John Yoo.”

So this is all about defending free speech? Hmm. If I didn't know better, I'd almost swear Tierney handed Yoo the spot to help him defend himself (and thus, BushCo officials) against war crime charges. Greg Sergeant:

On March 15, he published a long broadside against “civil libertarians” who have criticized the Bush administration’s expansion of executive powers amid the war on terror — expansions that Yoo helped author.

Needless to say, those “civil libertarians” are the same people that are demanding a probe into the Bush era torture program — one that Yoo himself helped create. At the time of Yoo’s piece, of course, it was still unclear how or whether to probe the architects of that program, as it remains today. You’d think the paper would ask Yoo to recuse himself from writing about such stuff.

It would be one thing for a paper to invite someone under scrutiny to air his side of the story in an occasional Op ed. It’s quite another for a paper to give such a person a regular platform on contract for use in attacking political opponents in an ongoing and potentially criminal governmental dispute.

Oh, don't be silly! They had to do it, Craigslist made them! I hear the next new hire will be Roman Polanski, who will be giving advice on how to cultivate relationships with underage girls and how some people are trying to legislate away his freedom.

In discussion of the revelations in Scott McClellan's new book that the media was too easy on the administration in the run of to the war, Congressional correspondent Jessica Yellin on Anderson Cooper 360 admitted that she was pressured by the network executives to frame her pieces in a way that made President Bush look positive, even editing her pieces to favor the administration.

Download | play Download | play (h/t Heather)

Cooper: Jessica, McClellan took the press to task for upholding their reputation. He writes "the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington. The choice of whether to go to war in Iraq...the 'liberal' media didn't live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served." Dan Bartlett, former Bush advisor, called the allegation “total crap.” What's your take? Did the press corps drop the ball?

Yellin: I think the press corps dropped the ball in the beginning when the lead up to war began, uh the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war that was presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the President's high approval ratings and my own experience at the White House was that the higher the President's approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives, and I was not at this network at the time, but the more pressure I had from these executives to put on positive stories about the President. I think over time....

Cooper: You had pressure from news executives to put on positive stories about the President?

Yellin: Not in that exact...they wouldn't say it in that way, but they would edit my pieces. They would push me in different directions. They would turn down stories that were more critical and try to put on pieces that were more positive. Yes. That was my experience.

In case you were curious, Yellin worked for MSNBC until July 2003 and then worked for ABC News until July 2007, when she moved to CNN.

UPDATE: Will Bunch asks who will follow up on Jessica Yellin's stunning revelations? How can we force the media to investigate itself over the manipulation of pre-way journalism? (link fixed)

John has been saying that the press has been giving McCain a pass for a long time now, as has Digby and many, many other bloggers.

Will Bunch and Jane Hamsher give their takes on EschaCon'08...

Will Bunch:

This footage of the rioting in Tibet is raw and harrowing. It's also, for the most part, not being seen in China where authorities have blocked access to YouTube.com, which has many videos on Tibet.

The Internet as a liberating force? Not always. [..]

The whole thing is a bloody mess as the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing draws near. I think a vast majority of people have no stomach for another boycott -- most Americans would rather defeat evil on the athletic field, as Jesse Owens did in Berlin in 1936, than take our ball and go home, as Jimmy Carter did in 1980. That said, I'd like to see freedom-loving people, from the U.S. and elsewhere, figure out how to make some kind of statement this August.

This is something:

PARIS (AP) - Moves to punish China over its handling of violence in Tibet gained momentum Tuesday, with a novel suggestion for a mini-boycott of the Beijing Olympics by VIPs at the opening ceremony.

Such a protest by world leaders would be a huge slap in the face for China's Communist leadership.

France's outspoken foreign minister, former humanitarian campaigner Bernard Kouchner, said the idea "is interesting."

Sadly, I can't see anyone in the Bush administration going along with that idea...especially when we owe China so much. I guess that oppressing their citizens, violence and actual weapons of mass destruction, that's not so important, when they underwrite your loans.