It's a brave new world. More than thirty-five years ago, Timothy Crouse wrote the seminal Boys On The Bus, detailing for the first time how the press--specifically types like Robert Novak and David Broder, among others--operated as a kind of hive mind, which Crouse coined as "pack journalism":

(R)ight at the outset Crouse identifies the "womblike conditions" of the bus and/or plane as giving rise to "the notorious phenomenon called 'pack journalism,' " and goes on: "They all fed off the same pool report, the same daily handout, the same speech by the candidate; the whole pack was isolated in the same mobile village. After a while, they began to believe the same rumors, subscribe to the same theories, and write the same stories."

At a precociously early age, Crouse understood some essential but little-known truths about journalists and journalism: that journalists are deathly afraid of being "wrong" and thus tend to stay within parameters set by the pack; that journalists want "to be on the Winner's Bus" because "a campaign reporter's career is linked to the fortunes of his candidate" and they don't "like to dwell on signs that their Winner [is] losing, any more than a soup manufacturer likes to admit that there is botulism in the vichyssoise"; that "journalism is probably the slowest-moving, most tradition-bound profession in America," refusing "to budge until it is shoved into the future by some irresistible external force."

Well, look out, boys, because as Media Matters Senior Fellow Eric Boehlert chronicles in his new book, Bloggers on the Bus, there is a whole new group of people on that bus, and they won't be swayed by the hive mind of the old media. In fact, they thrive on being the outsider. And to the horror and consternation of those boys so comfortably entrenched within the Beltway Bubble, these upstarts are actually grabbing their audiences....and doing their job better than the old guard.

The liberal blogosphere was birthed from the outrage of the offenses of the Bush administration and the search for sanity amid the crazy-making and incestuous relationship between the White House and the press corps. Vastly varied backgrounds and unlikely histories coalesced into a formidable force that not only cowered the administration and Congress at times, but helped carry our first African-American president into office. But not without some bumps along the way.

For every triumph like getting a clearly shaken Chris Matthews to apologize for his misogynistic statements about Hillary Clinton, or a nervous John McCain to refuse the endorsement of Rev. Hagee, or empowering Sen. Christopher Dodd to agree to filibuster retroactive immunity in the FISA bill, we've had lows like the intense bifurcation of the blogosphere over the Democratic Primary, and the disappointing arm's-length distance the Obama White House has kept his liberal supporters.

During this time, we've developed a brand new roster of go-to people for information: John Amato, Digby, Susie Madrak, Arianna Huffington, Jane Hamsher, Markos Moulitsas, Josh Marshall, Howie Klein, Marcy Wheeler, all of whom play prominent roles in Bloggers on the Bus (is it at this time that I mention the glaring omission of my work from Bloggers on the Bus? ;-P) We've adapted our approaches and focus, we've spent hours pouring over arcane and wonky reports, we've connected dots between different sources and we've uncovered a narrative that in drips and drops has been proven correct.

In Bloggers on the Bus, Eric Boehlert has talked to these new guards and chronicled the liberal blogosphere's growing pains and victories. As someone who was right in the middle of all this, blogging my little heart out, it's fascinating to read a bird's-eye view accounting of everything that was happening. Eric is here to talk about his book and take your questions.

Please join me in welcoming Eric to C&L.

(Guest blogged by NonnyMouse)

   It probably comes as no surprise to regular C&L readers to learn that I grew up in a liberal-minded household; although at the time, being a kid, I didn't especially realize just how liberal such attitudes were. Our house was filled with books, magazines and newspapers, everything from a revered set of encyclopedias (the Google of the 1960's) to stacks of ratty romance paperbacks. We had at least forty years worth of National Geographic magazines, from which I gleaned juicy facts for hundreds of school reports. I learned to read from Humpty-Dumpty magazines at the age of three and had read Ivanhoe by the time I was seven, although I have to admit I didn't understand much of it at the time.

It didn't matter. What mattered was that nothing... nothing... was off-limits in our house when it came to the written word. I read Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde and the complete works of Jonathan Swift, the back of cereal boxes, A Little Princess and Mein Kampf and Uncle Tom's Cabin and Black Beauty, Dr. Seuss and Archie comics, a huge box of pulp science-fiction novels from a garage sale, Jehovah's Witness Biblical tracts that got shoved in the letterbox, the perpetual Cherry Ames, Army Nurse novels my grandmother inevitably sent us every Christmas, every book ever written by Philip Wylie, several year's worth of a wonderful science magazine for teens to which my Aunt Ruth gave me a subscription (‘Build a Working Computer from Empty Matchboxes!), until the magazine went bust and folded. The written word, from high-brow to no-brow, was sacrosanct.

That liberal attitude toward the freedom of the written word was severely tested when at twelve I found a rather dog-eared paperback tucked behind some cans of paint in the garage - my father did a rather comical (and horrified) double-take when he found me lying on the sofa, legs dangling over one side, and puzzling over the nuances of what was an out-and-out hardcore pornographic novel. He nervously asked if I had any questions about what I was reading. ‘Do people really do this?' Um, sometimes. ‘Yuuuck! But you and Mom, you don't...?' Um, sometimes. ‘Double yuuuuuck!' Which probably did more to ease my dad's mind about my prepubescent proclivities than any euphemistic harangue on sex could ever have achieved. (My vast childhood reading habits also endowed me with this nifty erudite and comprehensive vocabulary, which comes in pretty handy now that I've grown up to be a published novelist).

So the idea that books, any book, should be banned - for any reason - is a complete anathema. Fahrenheit 451 is fiction. Censorship, unfortunately, is not.

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The Jewel of Medina is an as yet unpublished book about The Prophet Mohammed and his child bride, Aisha.   Several commenters and reviewers have indicated its quality as a novel might not be very good.  But Random House paid a $100,000 advance for the book, had arranged for foreign publication, Book of the Month Club selection, and Quality Paperback Book Club selection.  It's not like Random House deals exclusively in high fiction; they publish Danielle Steele romance novels, for crying out loud.  

Random House pulled out of publishing the book last minute, when they somehow got the idea that bad Islamic terrorists might retaliate against the publisher for the book's content.   In the meantime, at least one book prize committee has announced that they will not consider any Random House submissions until this book is published, due to the cowardice exhibited in pulling the title:

...we can not pretend that this type of cowardice will disappear without serious remonstrance. Until The Jewel of Medina is actually published, The Langum Charitable Trust will not consider submissions of any books, for any of our prizes, from Random House or any of its affiliates. We do this reluctantly, since our most recent prize in American historical fiction went to a Random House title.

Salman Rushdie, the most famous author to deal with threats and censorship due to his book's content vis-a-vis Islam, is supporting publication of the book on free-speech, rather than literary, grounds.

The Atlantic says they haven't seen "evidence that he read The Jewel of Medina or liked the excerpts."  But Rushdie is currently in the Random House stable of authors (although they didn't publish Satanic Verses):

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“I am very disappointed to hear that my publishers, Random House, have cancelled another author's novel, apparently because of their concerns about possible Islamic reprisals,” Rushdie said.  “This is censorship by fear and it sets a very bad precedent indeed.”

(click on image to purchase book)

Ever have one of those metaphysical moments where you realize you'll never look at things the same again?  For me, the first time I traveled abroad and saw life outside my heretofore sheltered existence changed me.  So did falling in love and marrying my husband.  Having children was a HUGE paradigm shift in the way I viewed the world.  None of that is particularly surprising nor singular.

However, it's not only major life milestones that can rock your world and feel like a pair of metaphoric eyeglasses have been placed on your face, allowing you to see edges just a little sharper and distances a little clearer.  Reading Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine definitely did just that for me.  Boy, did it. 

I'm a little embarrassed to admit this, but The Shock Doctrine was the hardest book for me to get through in the last couple of years that I've been blogging.  Not because of Klein's writing-far from it, her style is engaging and thorough.  No, it took me so long to finish the book because I had to keep putting it down because it got me so upset with how much sense it made.  Random puzzle pieces that I had noted on my own fell through the air and landed into place through Klein's prose to show a picture that was horrifying but undeniably true.

For those who do not know the basis of The Shock Doctrine, Klein introduces how the writings of Milton Friedman and his underlings at the Chicago School of Economics has writ large literally over all of the federal government's dealings both here and abroad.  The key concept:

(O)nly a crisis -- actual or perceived -- produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.

What does that mean?  That Friedman's free market (but not really) ideals-demanding deregulation, privatization of public services and the removal of trade barriers at a time when the populace is still reeling from some form of disaster, be it a natural one, like Katrina in the Gulf states; political upheaval, such as Chile under Pinochet, or here in the US after 9/11.  And the population, normally resistant to these changes--which benefit so few and none of the victims--are too fearful to mount a protest, much less put up a fight.  And so, taking advantage of our frayed sensibilities, we get the Patriot Act, we get unapologetic warrantless wiretapping and we get useless formaldehyde-filled trailers in a swamp for Katrina victims.

Companies such as Halliburton, Blackwater and DynCorp exist solely from the largesse granted to them through the implementation of the Shock Doctrine, "disaster capitalism," as Klein coins it.  And it continues worldwide-in Iraq, most obviously, but elsewhere as well.  Read the book and then watch stories coming out about Iran (remember, it need only be a perceived disaster), about China or even off shore oil drilling here in the States and ask yourself, who is benefiting?  What are they trying to get away with?

I promise you, you'll never watch the news the same way again.

Naomi Klein's long time colleague and collaborator Debra Levy will also be answering questions during the discussion. Debra, a trained librarian, has been Naomi's research assistant for eight years and, among other things, she is responsible for the 60 pages of incredible endnotes that do so much to bolster the book's argument. She also runs www.shockdoctrine.org where many of the source documents for the book are now online, as well as breaking news on disaster capitalism. 

So with that, please join me in welcoming Naomi Klein and Debra Levy to C&L to discuss disaster capitalism.

click to order book

One of my favorite sites for really taking a deeper look at the way information is disseminated to us is The Frameshop by Jeffrey Feldman. He quickly cuts through the spin and finds the key little phrases upon which your attitude about an event or news story is subtly couched.  Jeffrey's first book Framing the Debate looked at how presidential speeches electrified and engaged the electorate to stand behind the President's platform.  I think it's safe to say that at least someone on Obama's staff has read that book, based on the response to his speeches.

Jeffrey's latest book, Outright Barbarous: How the Violent Language of the Right Poisons American Democracy, looks at something that we have had no little amount of experience with here at C&L. Who can forget Ann Coulter calling for John Murtha's murder, Bill O'Reilly telling San Francisco that al Qaeda could attack them, Dinesh D'Souza suggesting that liberal weakness encouraged al Qaeda to attack us on 9/11, Tucker Carlson bragging about beating up a man he thought was hitting on him in a bathroom, Limbaugh encouraging riots, Michael Savage calling for the execution of Madeleine Albright? Sadly, that's just a quick list of some of the violent acts called for by the right.   It's really insidious and once you've become attuned to it, it's truly amazing how much it pervades the discussion on the right and does so for really one reason: to prevent thoughtful discourse and inject fear and the threat of violence (because we've seen only too well what happens when fear governs the electorate).   As Thom Hartmann says on the jacket blurb:

Since 9/11, America has been contaminated by the violence of right-wing language, in the speeches of Republican politicians and the rantings of the talking heads on Fox News and on conservative talk radio. Jeffrey Feldman’s insightful and important book cuts through the violence, and shows how we can restore the democratic ideals that America was founded upon.

I know that reading Outright Barbarous has changed the way I've thought about framing the posts I do here.  I don't want to contribute to the violent rhetoric and I think we've become so inured to it (War on Christmas, anyone?) that it was disconcerting to realize how easily you fall into using it.  Jeffrey does offer some proposed solutions on how to bring the dialogue back to a more honest level and to lift the discourse away from the violent rhetoric of the Right.

So please welcome Jeffrey Feldman to Crooks and Liars, and let's discuss how re-frame the debate.

Glenn Greenwald will be hosting the Book Salon over at FireDogLake to discuss Arianna Huffington's latest, Right is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution, and Made Us All Less Safe right now at 2:00 pm Pacific/ 5:00 pm Eastern. From the Amazon Editorial Review:

Huffington makes the case that America has been hijacked from within by a radical element—the “lunatic fringe” of the Right that has taken over the Republican Party. Despite holding views at odds with the majority of Americans, these zealots have given us an endless war in Iraq, a sputtering economy, a health care system on life support, a war on science and reason, and an immoral embrace of torture.

But they haven’t done it on their own: they have been enabled by a compliant media that act as if there is no such thing as truth and are more interested in cozying up to those in power than in holding them accountable, and by feckless Democrats who have allowed themselves to be intimidated into backing down again and again.

Sounds right up our alley. Go on over and say hi to Glenn and Arianna.

The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot
A Citizen’s Call To Action

By Naomi Wolf

Fascism: Fast and furious in ten historic steps.

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
2. Create a gulag
3. Develop a thug caste
4. Set up an internal surveillance system
5. Harass citizens’ groups
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
7. Target key individuals
8. Control the press
9. Dissent equals treason
10. Suspend the rule of law

Naomi Wolf says: Recent history has profound lessons for us in the U.S. today about how fascist, totalitarian, and other repressive leaders seize and maintain power, especially in what were once democracies. The secret is that these leaders all tend to take very similar, parallel steps.

In the true spirit of Thomas Paine, Wolf takes her slender pamphlet/book (155 pages) to the streets of America. Our job is to read it, write about it and Revere it. Ride through the towns across the land yelling: “The fascists are coming. The fascists are coming.”

That is, if it isn’t too late.

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I was fortunate enough Thursday to interview Glenn Greenwald about his new book, Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics. In this podcast exclusive, we discuss the major theme of his book in the context of John McCain and the press' reverence for him, as well as the successful campaign we waged to kill the AT&T bill and what it says about the emerging power of the blogosphere.

Download | play

I'll post the transcript once it's complete. In the meantime, you can find some excerpts here and here, as well as some of the other reviews from around the blogosphere:

• Digby, and another one in the context of the ABC debate
  
• Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon
• Buzzflash
• Daily Kos

And don't forget to pick up a copy and support one of our own.

So the McCain campaign is starting to pushback against Cliff Schecter and his book The Real McCain. In response to the charges first brought at Huffington Post that he got into a physical altercation with Rep. Rick Renzi, McCain appeared on Fox (naturally) to say this:

Oh, okay, McCain, if you say it didn't happen...well, then, that's all the proof the media needs.  But if you listen carefully, McCain never actually denies it...even with Renzi, he says there were witnesses and Renzi is a friend, but not that he never came to blows.  The classic non-denial denial.  But that didn't stop Jill Hazelbaker, a McCain spokesperson and professional internet concern troll, from calling Cliff's book "trash journalism" and that "The story is completely fabricated."  

And then it hit me...for all their talk about balance and bringing on Republican strategists and talking heads when a liberal appears, there's no similar inclination when it's a Republican.  The media will talk to McCain or his mouthpieces like Hazelbaker all by themselves with absolutely no balance from the other side of the aisle.  In fact, I talked to Cliff today and asked him if he had been able to land any TV appearances to promote The Real McCain, maybe to refute Hazelbaker or some other Republican strategist who wants to minimize McCain's nasty temper and disrespect of others.  Not one.  

Isn't that amazing?  A few months ago, Jonah Goldberg writes this vitriolic piece of tripe without a single fact or even a basic high school understanding of  sociology and civics and he gets on all the major networks to pimp his fact-free (and really badly written) drivel, especially since he targeted liberals generally and Hillary Clinton specifically.  That's good television, apparently.  But Cliff, who is no stranger to TV, can't find a single outlet willing to take a look at a book that may not show McCain--the Republican candidate for the highest office in the land-- in a less than glowing light.  God forbid the voters hear about McCain's negatives when the media is busy talking about Hillary's lies and Obama's ties to controversial figures. They'll put on McCain to refute a book that they won't talk about, but not bring on the actual author of the book.  That's what I call teflon, baby.

If you are of the mind to, in addition to supporting one of our progressive voices by purchasing his book, consider please using the "Spotlight" function at the bottom  this post to contact members of the media and ask them to get Cliff's book in the spotlight and stop giving McCain a pass.

And for your enjoyment, Max and the Marginalized has come up with a new song using some of the revelations that Cliff has in his book:  John McCain is a Hotheaded Coot Who is Unfit to Lead, and We Wrote a Song About It.  The lyrics are great:

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[Click image to purchase book]

Yesterday, I posted about a largely unreported incident between John and Cindy McCain that Cliff Schecter has included in his new book The Real McCain: Why Conservatives Don't Trust Him and Why Independents Shouldn't. Cliff's book, which will come out next month, is full of exhaustively researched tidbits on John McCain that his buddies in the media are loathe to bring up and which points out the lie in his carefully crafted reputation as a maverick. I spoke to Cliff yesterday and asked him if he would give C&L another incident that shows McCain's character as it truly is. I particularly liked this one, as it exemplifies how McCain's rhetoric doesn't often match up with his voting record, and moreover, how he frames the discussion in combat terms, as if to remind anyone who disagrees of his "war hero" status:

McCain made a big speech when Republicans were voting for Bush's bill to get rid of the Estate Tax. He called those who supported it "whiners" while those fighting were "sacrificing for their country" and that it should not be "eliminated during a time of war." He has now flip-flopped and wants to make it permanent (and even took the lead in May of '06 to do it!). There has been more out there on his flip-flop on Bush's taxes overall, but not much if anything on this specific statement and position. And it is important, as the Estate Tax is specifically for the rich. Voting for that bill back then, however, was "a far cry from sacrifice."

Cliff has been working on The Real McCain for quite some time and he promises there are tons of stuff (and I'm going to work on him to give us more exclusives) that show John McCain as he really is, such as his fisticuffs with *Rep. Rick Renzi after McCain repeatedly tried to humiliate him. I am going to buy a copy of the book--just $10!--not only to show my support for someone in our progressive community, but also to give to a family member who to my horror, said that they would be voting for McCain if their Democratic candidate didn't win the nomination an idea of how the maverick persona is one of media creation and bears little resemblance to the real man.

*corrected to reflect that Renzi is a member of the House, not the Senate. 

We all helped Glenn's book reach #12  today when it was #212 yesterday.  Go Blogoshere. It would be great to push him into the Top Ten list. Jane makes an excellent point: "Nobody rips the right like Glenn Greenwald. Since there's no Richard Mellon Scaife to buy boxloads of books and force it onto the New York Times bestseller list, you can help do it the democratic way by buying the book."

Pre-order your copy today.

It would be great to move it into the top ten on Amazon. And I agree on this point all the way:

In a minimally rational world, a Republican presidential candidate like John McCain who has enabled all of that would have no chance. But -- in the absence of anything changing the way this works -- the establishment press will remove those considerations from its election coverage and the GOP's exploitation of bottom-feeding personality-based psychological, cultural and gender themes will predominate. In 2008, the GOP will dedicate itself single-mindedly to these same personality-based, manipulative electoral tactics because that is their only hope for winning.

There simply cannot be any greater priority than preventing a John McCain Presidency, one which would empower the same faction and continue the same policies that have been slowly though inexorably destroying this country, its institutions and political values. Understanding and neutralizing these tactics and the enabling media behavior is a prerequisite for preventing that...read on

Update: FDL makes a good point: Jane says:

The wingnut welfare queens have their books bought onto the New York Times bestseller list, and their ideas thus are able to penetrate much further than if they had to survive on their own merits. Please help us do the same for our team's very best, Glenn Greenwald -- without whose heroic efforts I have no doubt we'd have retroactive telecom immunity today.

David Brock and Paul Walderman have written a new book called: Free Ride: John McCain and the Media about the love the press has showered John McCain with. Grab a copy...

Joe Connelly emailed this article around yesterday:

McCain is allowed to dominate any and every issue on which he chooses to cross the aisle in Congress. He is omnipresent on Sunday talk shows.

Between 1997 and 2006, McCain had 135 appearances as a guest on "Meet the Press," "This Week" and "Face the Nation," far more than runner-up Joe Biden with 91. McCain was usually able to hold forth alone rather than sharing the stage.

The favorable press coverage has airbrushed McCain's temper and remarks that would get any other politician in trouble.

It was, after all, McCain who referred to Leisure World as "Seizure World." He once joked: "The nice thing about getting Alzheimer's is you get to hide your own Easter eggs."

NPR's All Things Considered speaks to author Fred Kaplan about his latest book:

Fred Kaplan, author of Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power, says the Bush administration's world view is based on several misconceptions. For one, he says, the administration thought of freedom as a gift from God, without understanding the practical requirements of developing democracies.

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism By Naomi Klein

Men like Jonas Salk, Lenny Bruce and J. Edgar Hoover, these men thrive upon the continuance of segregation, violence, and disease. The purity they dost protest a need for, they dost feed upon. Thank You, Masked Man
Lenny Bruce

A divinely inspired work, Naomi Klein has tapped into the zeitgeist of modern day destruction capitalism. In 400-plus pages and extensive footnotes, she melts the myths surrounding the so-called global free market. Apparently, it is neither global, nor free and anything but a market. The Shock Doctrine, based on her historical research, and four years of boots-on-the-ground investigation by Klein, reveals the shocking truth that connects Pinochet’s Chile, the Falklands War, the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Asian financial crisis and Hurricane Mitch all in terms of rapid fire corporate restructuring of these societies and their economies. Along the way, we go through Poland following communism, South Africa after apartheid, Sri Lanka recovering from the tsunami, Iraq after mission accomplished and New Orleans’ privatization post Katrina.

Enjoy the feeling of avoiding the usual hurricane evacuation nightmare. Help Jet Luxury Airlines of W. Palm Beach helps you avoid the next Katrina. : Actual ad pitch for Help Jet Luxury Airlines

The Shock Doctrine reads like an economic disaster film, Die Hard With a Calculator, if you will. Its antagonist is the late economist Milton Friedman and his gang of Chicago Boys, economic free marketeers trained by the University of Chicago to spread their gospel to an unreceptive and reluctant world.

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Olbermann's got a new book coming out called "Truth and Consequences" Let's see how far up the charts we can get this one...Grab a copy...

Cali Scribe says: Keith Olbermann Thanks Us!

Keith thanked C&L for helping drive up the sales of his book “Worst Person in the World” on Countdown---back on Sept, 1st 2005:

Olbermann: And wait, look, it‘s here! The book version of the “Worst Person in the World” hits stores next week. But guess what happened after the Rumsfeld special comment, the sales ranking of the “Worst Person in the World” on Amazon.com went from No. 19,000, to No. 18. Bill-o‘s new book ranks No. 728. Our thanks to our web boosters like “Crooks and Liars” for the love.

Here's video of the Rumsfeld Special Comment: Download | play Download | play

Glenn Gleenwald wrote: "C&L’s great achievement

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