Attack Poodles and Other Media Mutants: The Looting of the News in a Time of Terror

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Beware the attack poodles-like a mutant invasion, they have taken control of America's airwaves and newspapers. Trained to spring at any foe of their radical conservative agenda, these Republican lap dogs dominate the mass media by scoring points with their masters in the White House inner circle, while simultaneously using the sorcerer's art of punditry to advance their conservative point of view. And, as James Wolcott reminds us in this blistering indictment of their bully tactics, the great canine horde has hijacked the country's media, bringing not just the tradition of an independent press, but the entire American way of democracy, to its knees. The attack poodles are at war, and they won't rest until they banish dissent in any form.

But there is hope for the rebel forces in Bushistan. With breathtaking clarity and savage wit, Wolcott has turned the tables on the punditocracy, revealing the foibles and hypocrisies of this particularly pompous breed, as well as the ignorance and arrogance of the administration it aims to protect. Targeting the big dogs in the poodle parlor-Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Robert Novak, Dennis Miller, Peggy Noonan, and dozens more-his critique is an invaluable lesson in right-wing media manipulation. He dissects the attack poodles' penchant for simplistic combativeness and their muzzling of the media for George Bush during a time of war.

With the boldness and insight that readers of Wolcott's media column in Vanity Fair have come to love, Wolcott demystifies the poodles' strategies as he points out where they are most vulnerable to attack.

"I have never been a doctrinaire lefty or righty," Wolcott writes in his author's note. "I was looking for a cause. But I can't stand bullies, and I can't stand cowardly deceivers; and in the Bush Administration and the conservative media we have the worst of both of them combined. We can't wait around for them to fall of their own dead weight, because it could be us they fall on."

This book brings an arsenal of hope just when we need it most. In James Wolcott, the attack poodles have been given something they truly deserve: a worthy opponent.

FROM THE CRITICS

Jacob Weisberg - The New York Times

Attack Poodles is irresistible political entertainment from and for the left. It is a true sadistic pleasure to watch Wolcott exact revenge for the hours he has wasted watching the likes of Joe Scarborough, Michael Savage and Chris Matthews. A skilled hit man, Wolcott sharpens his instruments and takes his time in setting up a kill.

Publishers Weekly

From cultural critic Wolcott (Vanity Fair; the New Yorker) comes an examination of the "infotainment" that he says now passes for political news. In an age brimming with 24-hour news channels, talk radio and the Internet, how is it, Wolcott asks, that Americans seem to be less informed than in the past? He points a finger at the rise of TV news personalities, or the "attack poodles," those ratings-hungry pundits, who, he says, are geared more toward quips, rants, profits and fame than to informing a democratic populace. Wolcott finds examples of the specimen in Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage, Chris Matthews, Dennis Miller and Bob Novak. Beneath Wolcott's humor and catchy prose, however, lurk some dark revelations, such as a Fox news staffer's claim that he and his colleagues are instructed to seek out stories that "cater to angry, middle-aged white men who listen to talk-radio and yell at their televisions." That strategy quickly took Fox News to the top of the heap and has left the other networks in a dizzying game of catchup that has set what Wolcott sees as a dismal, fractious tone for our national discourse. Intelligent, amusing and insightful, Wolcott's effort is still unlikely to approach sales anywhere close to those of books published recently by some of the "attack poodles" he criticizes. Agent, Elyse Cheney. (Aug.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Critics of political pundits and cable news shows will be pleased to have another book challenging the conservative side of media bias. Wolcott, the cultural critic for Vanity Fair, labels and names several opinion journalists as "attack poodles." They are "right-wing hacks and liberalish enablers" who advance the cause of those in power. Primarily conservatives, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, and Peggy Noonan are among the "alpha males" and "Malibu Barbies" accused of heightening public hysteria. Wolcott provides a 12-point program for prospective attack poodles. To become a celebrity journalist one must, among other things, abandon ideals, not let facts or truth get in the way, and learn to speak very loudly. Wolcott is a witty, passionate, and strident writer. While highly entertaining, he employs some of the same hatchet-job techniques for which he criticizes other journalists. This work joins the media bias argument on the same side as Eric Alterman's What Liberal Media? and in opposition to Bernard Goldberg's Bias and L. Brent Bozell's Weapons of Mass Distortion. Academic and public libraries should buy for journalism collections.-Judy Solberg, George Washington Univ. Libs., Washington, DC Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A bit of an attack dog himself, Vanity Fair cultural critic and novelist Wolcott (The Catsitters, 2001) hoists the gasbags of the mass media on their own petards. "Waking up with a fart after a half decade in hibernation," these standard bearers of the angry and the vexed are, in his view, the jingoists sowing the seeds of anxiety as if planting a field of wheat, the cheap melodramatists, the hacks and enablers, the sophists and Wee Willie Winkies of newsland. In other words, Limbaugh & Co., Matt Drudge and his Report (a "toxic dump site of Republican oppo research . . . where the mainstream media go to dip their bucket"), and Alan Keyes, of course, but not just such obvious targets. Wolcott also skewers the self-serving fabrications of Thomas "Give War a Chance" Friedman and his fellow New York Times star Judith Miller, leader of a one-woman crusade to wage war on Iraq. These members of the media elite have conveniently unplugged their bullshit detectors, the author notes, generously assuming that they even knew there was a socket to plug into. Wolcott casts his net so wide, it's a wonder he doesn't fall overboard. The critic likes the sound of his own voice, granted, but that voice is smart, skeptical, witty, and pugnacious in knowing that he has the facts-all neatly videotaped or preserved in print-on his side. While conducting a wicked knife job on Peggy Noonan ("God loves America, America loves God, America loves itself, Bush loves God and America, and Noonan loves God and America and Bush") and the sad case of comic scallywag turned "hipster-daddy superpatriot" Dennis Miller, Wolcott encourages an active response to the pod people. Fight the FCC, he urges; "quarantine falsifiers andplagiarists"; simply pushing a remote control button and making them disappear won't stop them. Forceful nay-saying, buttressed by a few sensible ideas on how to neutralize the nonsense-purveyers. Agent: Elyse Cheney

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