I cashed in a gift certificate and bought Joe Conason's "Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth." It's great fun to read. Conason takes on propagandists like Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity at their own game, throwing invective back as effectively as liberals generally have to take it. The book's most notorious passage, in which Conason credits liberals with most of the nation's most positive developments -- safe workplaces, prohibitions on child labor, overtime, the 40-hour week, clean air and water, civil liberties -- has been attacked almost without comment on some websites, as if it refutes itself. Conason does take some rhetorical cheapshots, and spinsanity has subjected him to its usual fact-checking. But I don't even care anymore. I like a good brawl, and there's lots of fight in this dog. He's especially delicioius when he attacks conservatives who never served in the armed forces for questioning the patriotism of Democrats and served honorably and even heroically. The myth that conservatives have a lock on loving their country needed exploding.


"Real Time with Bill Maher," meanwhile, had Wolf Blitzer on last weekend and had some fun with the "liberal bias" label attached to CNN. Maher ran CNN clips over a fake running crawl that "exposed" CNN's bias. My favorites (quoting from memory): "Study: Not all Republicans retarded"; "Charles Bronson dead at 81 from Bush's Medicare cuts"; "Hannity, Colmes to seek gay marriage license."