That's the subject of Alterman's new book. I thumbed through it at a bookstore a few days ago, and it looked interesting. Sure, I wanted it to fan my own personal ire at the rising ubiquity and popularity of the Sean Hannitys and Ann Coulters out there, and it does that. But it was pretty edifying to see some hard figures that point out Fox News blowhard Bill O'Reilly's distortions of fact and outright untruths. Saturday Night Live's parody of him wasn't far removed from truth, it seems. So far this year, my reading diet (aside from The Wire) has consisted of Noam Chomsky's '9-11' and the massive 'Saddam Hussein Reader' edited by Turi Munthe (the latter of which made me look at alleged dove Colin Powell in a whole new light); right now it's As'ad AbuKhalil's 'Bin Laden, Islam and America's New 'War on Terrorism.'" Meanwhile, Bush and his cabal are getting ready to roll out a sequel to the Patriot Act, with even more provisions for spying on Americans and racial profiling of non-Caucasian ethnicities: http://www.public-i.org/dtaweb/report.asp?ReportID=502 And just yesterday I received a petition forwarded by Dave Douglas that indicated local authorities here in New York, at Rumsfeld's behest, are trying to avoid granting a permit for a massive anti-war demonstration scheduled for Saturday... Steve Smith ssmith36@sprynet.com -------Original Message------- From: Robert Pleshar <rpleshar@midway.uchicago.edu> Sent: 02/11/03 02:38 PM To: zorn-list@mailman.xmission.com Subject: Re: War Eric Alterman has an excellent article in the newest issue of "The Nation" about they myth of the "liberal" media and the actualy conservative bent of most of the media.