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Outrage, Inc.: How the Liberal Mob Ruined Science, Journalism, and Hollywood
From Derek Hunter—one of the most entertaining political writers today—comes an insightful, alarming look at how progressives have taken over academia, pop culture, and journalism in order to declare everything liberal great, and everything great, liberal.
Progressives love to attack conservatives as anti-science, wallowing in fake news, and culturally backwards. But who are the real denialists here?
There are three institutions in American life run by gatekeepers who have stopped letting in anyone who questions their liberal script: academia, journalism, and pop culture. They use their cult-like groupthink consensus as "proof" that science, reporting, and entertainment will always back up the Democrats. They give their most political members awards, and then say the awards make their liberal beliefs true. Worse, they are using that consensus to pull the country even further to the left, by bullying and silencing dissent from even those they've allowed in.
Just a few years ago, the media pretended they were honest brokers. Now a CNN segment is seven liberals versus a sacrificial lamb. MSNBC ate their sacrificial lamb. Well, Chris Matthews did. Tired of being forced to believe or else, Derek Hunter exposes the manufactured truths and unwritten commandments of the Establishment. With research and a biting, sarcastic wit, he explains:
The growing role of celebrities in the political world, and movies with a "message" that dominate awards season, but rarely the box office.
The unquestioning reporting on "studies" that don’t prove what they say they prove.
The hidden bias of "fact-checking," when the media cherry picks which facts they check.
Celebrity scientists like Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson blending liberal activism with pretend expertise outside their fields.
Clever, controversial, and convincing, Derek Hunter's book gets to the root of America's biggest cultural war lies.
Progressives love to attack conservatives as anti-science, wallowing in fake news, and culturally backwards. But who are the real denialists here?
There are three institutions in American life run by gatekeepers who have stopped letting in anyone who questions their liberal script: academia, journalism, and pop culture. They use their cult-like groupthink consensus as "proof" that science, reporting, and entertainment will always back up the Democrats. They give their most political members awards, and then say the awards make their liberal beliefs true. Worse, they are using that consensus to pull the country even further to the left, by bullying and silencing dissent from even those they've allowed in.
Just a few years ago, the media pretended they were honest brokers. Now a CNN segment is seven liberals versus a sacrificial lamb. MSNBC ate their sacrificial lamb. Well, Chris Matthews did. Tired of being forced to believe or else, Derek Hunter exposes the manufactured truths and unwritten commandments of the Establishment. With research and a biting, sarcastic wit, he explains:
The growing role of celebrities in the political world, and movies with a "message" that dominate awards season, but rarely the box office.
The unquestioning reporting on "studies" that don’t prove what they say they prove.
The hidden bias of "fact-checking," when the media cherry picks which facts they check.
Celebrity scientists like Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson blending liberal activism with pretend expertise outside their fields.
Clever, controversial, and convincing, Derek Hunter's book gets to the root of America's biggest cultural war lies.
277 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 18, 2018
206 people are currently reading
341 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
July 1, 2018
A great book. That said, if you're not coming from a generally right of center political view point you might find it harder to enjoy. As someone who does come from that part of the spectrum I was grateful to hear some new ways of looking at things.
A challenge to those who see themselves as more liberal/progressive. Read the book and argue!
More speech for all!
A challenge to those who see themselves as more liberal/progressive. Read the book and argue!
More speech for all!
March 10, 2019
I used to read Derek Hunter’s columns quite regularly. Lately, for whatever reason, being busy, I suppose, I haven’t been doing so. This was a good reminder for me to read them once again. I enjoy his perspective and wit. Unfortunately, as is usually the case, those who need to read this sort of book won’t. Most of us are a bit guilty of reading things that reconfirm what we already believe. I know that I am!
The conclusion is an important one. He says: “It’s not my desire that you stop consuming news, it’s my hope that you will consume more of it, from as many sources as you can from all sides.”
Here are some of my favorite quotes. My apologies for including too many. Feel free to ignore or scroll down. Good Reads usually allows me to add quotes, but I haven't been able to with this one, so I'm including them all here in the body of my review.
“They’re well versed on who was the first of each configuration of human being to accomplish something without ever realizing that the accomplishment itself doesn’t need the qualifier. There are 7 billion people on the planet; only a handful have ever flown on a space shuttle. Therefore, flying on the space shuttle is an amazing accomplishment in and of itself. Yet leftist professors and students look not at the accomplishment itself as something worthy of celebration but at the race of the person.
Guion Bluford was the first African American to go into space and to fly on a space shuttle. He did so in 1983, in the early years of the program. Bluford is not remarkable because he’s a black guy who went to space or flew on the space shuttle; he’s remarkable because he went into space. You haven’t flown on a space shuttle, have you? See?
To focus on a person’s race for an accomplishment is to cheapen the accomplishment. ‘See, even a (whatever type of person) can do this’ is the mentality. Well, why wouldn’t every type of person be able to do that? Why is it extra special that one person did it? SJWs don’t realize it, but the patronizing attitude of ‘You can do it, too’ toward various configurations of people implies that they believe it is special that the others did it, as if they or the world didn’t think they could. This mentality stems from college grievance majors. Many programs started decades ago, when there were real problems to be addressed. Ironically, as the problems were solved, instead of terminating the courses or refocusing them as historical studies, the departments grew even larger and more powerful. So they needed to create new problems.”
“’TMZ’ and ‘People’ magazine are expected to be fluff, ‘Time’ is expected to be news. You’d be hard pressed to spot the difference between them now.”
“… for the love of God, have some fun. Politics is important, certainly, but living beats it in a walk.”
“Hollywood excels at presenting the rare as the norm in the name of a liberal agenda. The percentage of transgender characters on TV, for example, exceeds any reasonable estimate of the percentage in the population at large by a factor of at least ten.”
“Outrage fuels page views, and page views equal money.”
“Agenda-driven movies are churned out regularly, picturing an evil corporation planning to poison a small town or a corrupt billionaire willing to risk it all on some illegal scam to win a little more.”
“… no group has been more eager to embrace any liberal cause or agenda item than Hollywood. Actors, producers, and movie executives proudly paint themselves as champions of the average American—from their walled-off mansions in their double-gated communities.”
“Liberals like to have it both ways on matters of race. Every commercial on TV looks like a Benneton ad, but they tell us that everyone is being oppressed. Which is it? Because it can’t be both.
How many times have you seen an ad like this: five people of different races driving in a convertible, all smiling and laughing (but weirdly, no one talking), stopping to grab some fast food that not one of those professional models would eat on a dare, then sharing their food while sitting around a campfire and still laughing. They’re laughing so hard you’d think there was a gas leak.”
“There’s an amazing phenomenon that occurs in some human beings when things are going well—they actively seek something to be upset about. This is a distinctly first-world problem.
In the third world, where starvation reigns, peanut allergies are virtually nonexistent.
While the peanut is revolutionizing famine relief and saving lives, it’s being banned in schools across the United States as if it were a weapon of mass destruction.”
“Former vice president Al Gore didn’t amass a net worth of more than $200 million while hosting teleconferences from his solar-powered bunker in the woods and encouraging people to ride their bikes to work. He made it while flying in private jets to exotic locations around the world to chastise the average person driving a pickup truck to a job site about how he needs to lower his ‘carbon footprint.’”
“President Trump might have popularized the term “fake news,” but he didn’t invent the phenomenon any more than poets invented the sunrise simply because they wrote about it. Had journalists and journalistic outfits stuck to conveying facts, their credibility would still exist.”
“The most widely held liberal narrative is that most conservatives are dumb, and Republican presidents are just plain stupid. It’s been around since at least President Ronald Reagan, who was portrayed as a doddering old man, senile, playing the role of president, and has only picked up steam: Republican presidents (Reagan, W. Bush, Trump) are dumb, Democratic presidents (Carter, Clinton, Obama) are smart. The only exception was George H. W. Bush, whose résumé made it impossible to call him dumb, so he was portrayed as a ‘wimp.’”
“Making fun of presidential gaffes is fun, and it should be done. No president is perfect, and none should ever be above mockery. Media outlets had a field day with President George W. Bush’s gaffes—“Is our children learning?” But no mainstream media outlet bothered to have any fun at the expense of President Obama when, in February 2010, referred multiple times to “Navy Corpse-men,” instead of “Corpsmen.” One is a member of the US Navy; the other is, presumably, a patriotic zombie of some sort. Yet nothing about it—delivered in a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, so it wasn’t some obscure event—was mocked the way Bush’s mispronunciation of “nuclear” was. It’s almost as though the media couldn’t think of anyone who might find that funny. Weird, right? It’s not that conservatives mind being held to standards, it’s that liberals not only aren’t held to the same standards, they aren’t held to any standards at all.
Verbal gaffes happen to everyone and can be indicative of anything, but they’re portrayed very differently depending on the party affiliation of the person making them.”
“Before Barack Obama even took office, the presidential historian Michael Beschloss called him the ‘smartest guy ever to become president’ on The Don Imus Show in November 2008. When asked how he knew it to be true, Beschloss had no answer. It was just a matter of faith presented and treated as a matter of fact, and it stuck.”
“Bill Nye is not a scientist; he’s an engineer turned actor who spent a good part of his early adulthood attempting to be a comedian. In 1993, he developed his ‘science’ show for a PBS station in Seattle and from that pulled the biggest joke of his career on all of us.”
“To Democrats you are your skin color, you are your genitalia. Your vote should be determined by which bathroom you use.”
“And don’t kid yourself, there’s a lot of money in division. It’s empowered Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to avoid getting real jobs their entire adult lives while living like kings.”
“Are there still racists in this country? Of course there are. There are 330 million people; in a pool that big there will always be idiots of all flavors. But when the liberal Southern Poverty Law Center estimates that there are only between 5,000 and 8,000 members of the Ku Klux Klan left in a nation of 330 million and its peak membership was 4 million in 1920,20 with a population of only 106 million . . . well, if that’s not progress, there is no such thing as progress.”
“Justice is being treated equally, not having an equal outcome; it’s being judged for who you are and what you’ve done, not what anyone throughout history with your same skin pigment level did years or even centuries before you were born. Victories do not transfer from generation to generation—children of Super Bowl champions are not Super Bowl champions, too—neither does complicity in crimes.”
The conclusion is an important one. He says: “It’s not my desire that you stop consuming news, it’s my hope that you will consume more of it, from as many sources as you can from all sides.”
Here are some of my favorite quotes. My apologies for including too many. Feel free to ignore or scroll down. Good Reads usually allows me to add quotes, but I haven't been able to with this one, so I'm including them all here in the body of my review.
“They’re well versed on who was the first of each configuration of human being to accomplish something without ever realizing that the accomplishment itself doesn’t need the qualifier. There are 7 billion people on the planet; only a handful have ever flown on a space shuttle. Therefore, flying on the space shuttle is an amazing accomplishment in and of itself. Yet leftist professors and students look not at the accomplishment itself as something worthy of celebration but at the race of the person.
Guion Bluford was the first African American to go into space and to fly on a space shuttle. He did so in 1983, in the early years of the program. Bluford is not remarkable because he’s a black guy who went to space or flew on the space shuttle; he’s remarkable because he went into space. You haven’t flown on a space shuttle, have you? See?
To focus on a person’s race for an accomplishment is to cheapen the accomplishment. ‘See, even a (whatever type of person) can do this’ is the mentality. Well, why wouldn’t every type of person be able to do that? Why is it extra special that one person did it? SJWs don’t realize it, but the patronizing attitude of ‘You can do it, too’ toward various configurations of people implies that they believe it is special that the others did it, as if they or the world didn’t think they could. This mentality stems from college grievance majors. Many programs started decades ago, when there were real problems to be addressed. Ironically, as the problems were solved, instead of terminating the courses or refocusing them as historical studies, the departments grew even larger and more powerful. So they needed to create new problems.”
“’TMZ’ and ‘People’ magazine are expected to be fluff, ‘Time’ is expected to be news. You’d be hard pressed to spot the difference between them now.”
“… for the love of God, have some fun. Politics is important, certainly, but living beats it in a walk.”
“Hollywood excels at presenting the rare as the norm in the name of a liberal agenda. The percentage of transgender characters on TV, for example, exceeds any reasonable estimate of the percentage in the population at large by a factor of at least ten.”
“Outrage fuels page views, and page views equal money.”
“Agenda-driven movies are churned out regularly, picturing an evil corporation planning to poison a small town or a corrupt billionaire willing to risk it all on some illegal scam to win a little more.”
“… no group has been more eager to embrace any liberal cause or agenda item than Hollywood. Actors, producers, and movie executives proudly paint themselves as champions of the average American—from their walled-off mansions in their double-gated communities.”
“Liberals like to have it both ways on matters of race. Every commercial on TV looks like a Benneton ad, but they tell us that everyone is being oppressed. Which is it? Because it can’t be both.
How many times have you seen an ad like this: five people of different races driving in a convertible, all smiling and laughing (but weirdly, no one talking), stopping to grab some fast food that not one of those professional models would eat on a dare, then sharing their food while sitting around a campfire and still laughing. They’re laughing so hard you’d think there was a gas leak.”
“There’s an amazing phenomenon that occurs in some human beings when things are going well—they actively seek something to be upset about. This is a distinctly first-world problem.
In the third world, where starvation reigns, peanut allergies are virtually nonexistent.
While the peanut is revolutionizing famine relief and saving lives, it’s being banned in schools across the United States as if it were a weapon of mass destruction.”
“Former vice president Al Gore didn’t amass a net worth of more than $200 million while hosting teleconferences from his solar-powered bunker in the woods and encouraging people to ride their bikes to work. He made it while flying in private jets to exotic locations around the world to chastise the average person driving a pickup truck to a job site about how he needs to lower his ‘carbon footprint.’”
“President Trump might have popularized the term “fake news,” but he didn’t invent the phenomenon any more than poets invented the sunrise simply because they wrote about it. Had journalists and journalistic outfits stuck to conveying facts, their credibility would still exist.”
“The most widely held liberal narrative is that most conservatives are dumb, and Republican presidents are just plain stupid. It’s been around since at least President Ronald Reagan, who was portrayed as a doddering old man, senile, playing the role of president, and has only picked up steam: Republican presidents (Reagan, W. Bush, Trump) are dumb, Democratic presidents (Carter, Clinton, Obama) are smart. The only exception was George H. W. Bush, whose résumé made it impossible to call him dumb, so he was portrayed as a ‘wimp.’”
“Making fun of presidential gaffes is fun, and it should be done. No president is perfect, and none should ever be above mockery. Media outlets had a field day with President George W. Bush’s gaffes—“Is our children learning?” But no mainstream media outlet bothered to have any fun at the expense of President Obama when, in February 2010, referred multiple times to “Navy Corpse-men,” instead of “Corpsmen.” One is a member of the US Navy; the other is, presumably, a patriotic zombie of some sort. Yet nothing about it—delivered in a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, so it wasn’t some obscure event—was mocked the way Bush’s mispronunciation of “nuclear” was. It’s almost as though the media couldn’t think of anyone who might find that funny. Weird, right? It’s not that conservatives mind being held to standards, it’s that liberals not only aren’t held to the same standards, they aren’t held to any standards at all.
Verbal gaffes happen to everyone and can be indicative of anything, but they’re portrayed very differently depending on the party affiliation of the person making them.”
“Before Barack Obama even took office, the presidential historian Michael Beschloss called him the ‘smartest guy ever to become president’ on The Don Imus Show in November 2008. When asked how he knew it to be true, Beschloss had no answer. It was just a matter of faith presented and treated as a matter of fact, and it stuck.”
“Bill Nye is not a scientist; he’s an engineer turned actor who spent a good part of his early adulthood attempting to be a comedian. In 1993, he developed his ‘science’ show for a PBS station in Seattle and from that pulled the biggest joke of his career on all of us.”
“To Democrats you are your skin color, you are your genitalia. Your vote should be determined by which bathroom you use.”
“And don’t kid yourself, there’s a lot of money in division. It’s empowered Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to avoid getting real jobs their entire adult lives while living like kings.”
“Are there still racists in this country? Of course there are. There are 330 million people; in a pool that big there will always be idiots of all flavors. But when the liberal Southern Poverty Law Center estimates that there are only between 5,000 and 8,000 members of the Ku Klux Klan left in a nation of 330 million and its peak membership was 4 million in 1920,20 with a population of only 106 million . . . well, if that’s not progress, there is no such thing as progress.”
“Justice is being treated equally, not having an equal outcome; it’s being judged for who you are and what you’ve done, not what anyone throughout history with your same skin pigment level did years or even centuries before you were born. Victories do not transfer from generation to generation—children of Super Bowl champions are not Super Bowl champions, too—neither does complicity in crimes.”
July 25, 2018
Timely account of how “progressives” have damaged academia and journalism with their manufactured outrage and misguided attempts at “social justice”. The book has stories aplenty, many are quite funny, but is lacking in solutions.
September 8, 2018
Fantastic book and a must read.
Only complaint I have is where they pull out the 97% of all scientist claim on global warming...uh, climate change.
The claim actually comes from a collection of ~12,000 scientific papers. Two-thirds of the papers came to no conclusion on what caused climate change. One-third of papers concluded there was a cause. Of those papers that determined a cause (1/3) 97% found it was man.
That's 32% of the original ~12,000 papers said it was man. BUT that doesn't scare people, so we say it's 97% of scientists.
You can see this manipulation in the CNN report linked. The reporter answers it factually, with the info above, but neglects to point out the real number is 32% of the reports.
I guess it just further validates the book main theme.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/weather/20...
Only complaint I have is where they pull out the 97% of all scientist claim on global warming...uh, climate change.
The claim actually comes from a collection of ~12,000 scientific papers. Two-thirds of the papers came to no conclusion on what caused climate change. One-third of papers concluded there was a cause. Of those papers that determined a cause (1/3) 97% found it was man.
That's 32% of the original ~12,000 papers said it was man. BUT that doesn't scare people, so we say it's 97% of scientists.
You can see this manipulation in the CNN report linked. The reporter answers it factually, with the info above, but neglects to point out the real number is 32% of the reports.
I guess it just further validates the book main theme.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/weather/20...
October 26, 2018
The title is your first clue. This is a book that will primarily appeal to those who already agree with its content. I suppose that’s fine. It hits its mark, and you may pick up some useful information that hopefully you can use in a more constructive way to possibly convince the convincible. I could have done without the unnecessary sprinkling of profanity as well.
July 30, 2018
Eye opening read about how the news is a lot more opinion and a lot less of facts. While I was already cautious about where I get my news, I'll be doing a lot more source checking. If you believe what you hear because CNN or the NY Times said so - you really shouldn't.
July 17, 2018
I never heard of Hunter before but he does an outstanding job of exposing the perpetual outrage by liberals over nonissues
June 2, 2019
The thug's take on life at the beginning of the 21st century. It's about guns, wars, heroism and martyrs.
September 21, 2018
I need to pay closer attention to Hunter's columns. Yes, this book was at some level a bit over the top regarding the pit into which liberalism has thrown journalism, but not by too much. He doesn't really couch this descent into conspiracy terms, but he does make it sound as though many of the steps leading to Journalism's end are very purposeful on the part of some liberals - mostly because it serves those liberal's ends. He does demand that we should stand up to the mob when the opportunity arises. As I was finishing the book I stumbled across a video clip of Stephen Crowder confronting, in a respectful but forceful way, a leftist college professor of logic who claimed, with essentially no evidence, that Crowder had made death threats against the professor's son and called him a Nazi. This pillar of education refused to confront Crowder meaningfully, and remained insistent on his false claims. That seems to be where we are.
November 12, 2018
Just popping in my notes where the author decimates the "CONSENSUS" on Climate change. There is the idea around that "98% of scientists agree that climate change is caused by human beings." It is a FALSE STATEMENT. They ONLY took answers of 77 Scientists to get that statistic! This came from a 2 Question online survey sent to 10,257 Earth scientists. About 3,000 responded. QUESTION 1: "When Compared with previous 1800 levels do you think that mean global temperatures have risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?" QUESTION 2: "Do you think Human Activity is a Significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?" 82% responded YES. GUESS WHAT? They DROPPED 2,923 respondent answers. Only 77 responses were considered in the Survey Statistic!! So, on Question 2, 98% of all scientists was actually only 75 out of 77 scientists.
August 3, 2018
This book is well-documented and full of names, dates, actual quotes, etc. It's not just a bunch of broad vitriol hurled at the Left. My biggest problem is that the author repeatedly resorts to very juvenile sorts of insults, like "...figures can lie like Bill Clinton caught with his pants around his ankles in the intern housing". He refers repeatedly to unwashed, body-pierced drum circle types. These sorts of petty insults detract from his message, and may well have the affect of alienating open-mind liberals who might have picked up his book with the desire to learn something.
January 29, 2019
since 98 college costs double, MU decline 12%, were it not for double standards liberals would have none, when you choose the unit of measurement you can always win the question, 5 mass extinctions to date, no citing unpopularity of liberals, take back america conf of 06 and 07 Obama spoke at, propaganda spreads like, Moore hypocrisy what is a documentary and fake, don't make decisions based on lies, source from as many as possible, leave comfort zone, question the presumption assumption bias.
September 9, 2018
Very thought provoking book. The author says at the end, “It’s not my desire that you stop consuming news, it’s my hope that you will consume more of it, from as many sources as you can from all sides.”
July 4, 2018
Fun read. Lots of good quotes.
June 2, 2019
While I'm sympathetic to the cause, I found this to be a rather tiresome screed founded upon familiar examples. Hunter, a Heritage Foundation analyst, writes about the ways that the Left has taken control of journalism, entertainment (and the conflation of the two) and higher education to disseminate angry and illogical propaganda, systemic bias and "subtle indoctrination designed to manipulate an unsuspecting public." Human beings are inclined to solve problems; in their absence, we create them, magnify them and claim victimhood rather than responsibility. I hope that anyone who has paid attention will be very much aware of most of what Hunter states here, but maybe that's naive on my part. In summary, this was insulting to my intelligence.
The first chapter is a review of the intolerant leftist indoctrination in higher ed elsewhere well-documented. Chapters 2-4 have me wondering whether anyone really believed PolitiFact's claims to politically neutrality in its fact-checking. Nuance is nearly a necessary casualty of its True vs. False binary summaries. Has anyone not noticed the media routinely fail to cover Democratic scandals or dismiss them as foibles while inflating Republican ones? 24/7 news has absolutely caused part of the problem because there simply aren't enough newsworthy events to report, so opinion pieces --spouted by whoever might be available to fill a seat without any more expertise than the folks next to you in the supermarket checkout line--are broadcast filler. Hunter commits an egregious sin of omission by failing to mention The Fairness Doctrine (1949-1987) that required the holders of broadcast licenses to present honest, equitable and balanced reportage of controversial issues.
In Chapters 5-7, we have examples of science and statistics routinely used to support political aims, governmental control, and ideology of many kinds. Opposition to mandatory vaccinations can be Left or Right; adherence to the anthropocentric theory of climate change trends Right. Definitely Left: the absurd belief that male or female are categories assigned by oppressors at birth.* Chapter 8 revisits the Constitution and Bill of Rights with special focus on the Second Amendment. Chapters 9 and 10 treat inflated claims of bias and racism. "But justice is being treated equally, not having an equal outcome; it's being judged for who you are and what you've done....Victories do not transfer from generation to generation...neither does complicity in crimes" 172. Chapters 11 and 12 documents the hypocrisy of the Hollywood "cult of liberalism," with tax-sheltering foundations, agenda entertainment showcasing "the 'hot' progressive political issue of the day" 188, and manipulation. They favor gun control but make hyper-violent shoot 'em up films. They engage in blacklisting not just conservative celebs but those who refuse to reveal their political leanings.
The conclusion was a refreshing departure from postmodernist claims that no objective truth exists. Hunter recommends one leave one's comfort zone and seek out the truth, not "your truth," but THE truth. "The actual truth is not dependent upon your belief in it, it just is." Amen.
The first chapter is a review of the intolerant leftist indoctrination in higher ed elsewhere well-documented. Chapters 2-4 have me wondering whether anyone really believed PolitiFact's claims to politically neutrality in its fact-checking. Nuance is nearly a necessary casualty of its True vs. False binary summaries. Has anyone not noticed the media routinely fail to cover Democratic scandals or dismiss them as foibles while inflating Republican ones? 24/7 news has absolutely caused part of the problem because there simply aren't enough newsworthy events to report, so opinion pieces --spouted by whoever might be available to fill a seat without any more expertise than the folks next to you in the supermarket checkout line--are broadcast filler. Hunter commits an egregious sin of omission by failing to mention The Fairness Doctrine (1949-1987) that required the holders of broadcast licenses to present honest, equitable and balanced reportage of controversial issues.
In Chapters 5-7, we have examples of science and statistics routinely used to support political aims, governmental control, and ideology of many kinds. Opposition to mandatory vaccinations can be Left or Right; adherence to the anthropocentric theory of climate change trends Right. Definitely Left: the absurd belief that male or female are categories assigned by oppressors at birth.* Chapter 8 revisits the Constitution and Bill of Rights with special focus on the Second Amendment. Chapters 9 and 10 treat inflated claims of bias and racism. "But justice is being treated equally, not having an equal outcome; it's being judged for who you are and what you've done....Victories do not transfer from generation to generation...neither does complicity in crimes" 172. Chapters 11 and 12 documents the hypocrisy of the Hollywood "cult of liberalism," with tax-sheltering foundations, agenda entertainment showcasing "the 'hot' progressive political issue of the day" 188, and manipulation. They favor gun control but make hyper-violent shoot 'em up films. They engage in blacklisting not just conservative celebs but those who refuse to reveal their political leanings.
The conclusion was a refreshing departure from postmodernist claims that no objective truth exists. Hunter recommends one leave one's comfort zone and seek out the truth, not "your truth," but THE truth. "The actual truth is not dependent upon your belief in it, it just is." Amen.
August 28, 2019
This book is a mixed bag, but at times it makes compelling points. At times, it simply buys into conservative outrage, but other times it brings up really essential topics. The truth is that we have elevated people to a level of intellectual celebrity that has nothing to do with their knowledge: the lie of this book is that conservative media isn't full of that problem. This book will likely anger you if you are not a conservative, because at times it angered me, but it does have a place in modern discourse certainly.
August 5, 2018
It's amazing how quickly I read books that just reconfirm political stuff that makes me angry. I might need to start mixing some Nicholas Sparks books into my "Currently Reading" list.
Just kidding.....
Just kidding.....
June 5, 2020
Interesting Read
Some revelations were startling to me. Just the right mix of sarcasm and interesting information to make it fun. Kind of important gossip. Not overly partisan. I enjoyed it. Easy read
Some revelations were startling to me. Just the right mix of sarcasm and interesting information to make it fun. Kind of important gossip. Not overly partisan. I enjoyed it. Easy read
November 24, 2018
Good read
Good perspective on how the news and entertainment industry is used to push a one sided agenda and the effects of that push. A good read and an important conclusion.
Good perspective on how the news and entertainment industry is used to push a one sided agenda and the effects of that push. A good read and an important conclusion.
January 12, 2020
Would have given it one less star for blatant right-wing bias but it makes up for it by being funny. Get the audiobook edition read by the author for his hilarious impersonations when quoting people.
August 16, 2019
I loved this! Pretty much everything in it is quotable, so many bits I liked, these are the parts I liked most:
- “There is an amazing phenomenon that occur in some human beings when things are going well, they actively seek something to be upset about…. Something in our reptilian brains won’t let us accept how good we have it, how safe we are. We seek out threats, create problems, because it’s easier to blame something external for our difficulties than it is to accept blame for our bad decisions or realize that, for lack of a better phrase, shit happens…. The concept of intersectionality allows literally anything to blamed on someone else, didn’t get a job you wanted? intersectionality has you covered. It was because you were X, Y, or Z, got pulled over for speeding? same rules apply. There’s nothing for which blame can’t be attributed to an external force or entity under the umbrella of intersectionality…. It truly is evil to absolve people of their responsibility and assign it to an external nebulas force beyond their control. Everyone has failures and disappointments but they should serve as learning experiences, those experiences lead to improvement and better outcomes in the future. But people who are told they’re victims of society’s bias many times will be discouraged by a few simple failures.”
- “You wouldn’t accept as Gospel medical advice from a plumber nor would you take the word of a pediatrician on car maintenance, yet every single day millions of people take the advice of people who have zero experience or first hand knowledge about the subjects they’re so assertively speaking of simply because they’re on television."
- “Media bias is more than just how a story is reported, it is which stories are reported. The power to ignore, the power to pick and chose is the most pernicious power journalists have, and they exercise it regularly.”
- “There lives an incredible arrogance behind nothing but a job title, journalist. A good rule of thumb in life is always be weary of anyone who appoints himself an arbiter of truth. Truth isn’t really in need of a referee, one need only point it out and there it is, yet a trend exists in media to assign someone to be the minister of truth, the decider of what is and is not in the world of politics.
-“(John) Oliver becomes someone daring enough to “speak truth to power,” Kardashian becomes someone worth listening to because the outlets that are supposed to tell us who is worth listening to say so. The most pernicious power the media has is the power to ignore, but the second arrow in its quiver is to elevate to a level of influence and importance that which should be ignored.”
- “When celebrities act as political pundits all presses are stopped yet again and their declarations, usually in the form of tweets, are tweeted as though they were carved into stone tablets by a burning bush..... The opinions of celebrities, both real and manufactured, are as valid as your average man on the street interview, only they get attention."
- “The worst thing ever to happen to journalism wasn’t social media or cable news, though both played their part in its demise. It was Watergate, the most celebrated moment in journalistic history, celebrated again at the 2017 white house correspondents dinner, it created the concept of the reporter as celebrity, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein made an untold fortune, were played in a movie by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, were showered awards and sent many journalists running down the path of fame, rather than truth. And fame is the only thing heroine gets addicted to. The thing was Woodward and Bernstein were real journalists, they reported a real story of corruption, worked sources, uncovered information, checked their facts and got their story right. In other words they earned their accolades. Today, too many journalists aren’t interested in doing the work, they just want the rewards. For a journalist or a pundit to achieve some level of fame all he or she has to do is get on tv, and the bar for entry to that has been lowered to the point that you’d need a shovel to get under it.”
- "Study and experience are what makes them experts, and then there are people who excel at being good on TV, Neil deGrasse Tyson is undoubtedly a smart man in the field of astrophysics, if you want to know about deep space and distant planets he’s your guy. Yet his input is not limited to his area of expertise, in fact it is nearly unlimited. The media themselves so love Neil deGrasse Tyson that people magazine named him ‘sexiest astrophysicist in 2000’ quick name a second astrophysicist! but why does it have one so well known that the media seeks his input on everything from climate change to politics in the first place? Because Tyson is engaging on tv."
- “There is an amazing phenomenon that occur in some human beings when things are going well, they actively seek something to be upset about…. Something in our reptilian brains won’t let us accept how good we have it, how safe we are. We seek out threats, create problems, because it’s easier to blame something external for our difficulties than it is to accept blame for our bad decisions or realize that, for lack of a better phrase, shit happens…. The concept of intersectionality allows literally anything to blamed on someone else, didn’t get a job you wanted? intersectionality has you covered. It was because you were X, Y, or Z, got pulled over for speeding? same rules apply. There’s nothing for which blame can’t be attributed to an external force or entity under the umbrella of intersectionality…. It truly is evil to absolve people of their responsibility and assign it to an external nebulas force beyond their control. Everyone has failures and disappointments but they should serve as learning experiences, those experiences lead to improvement and better outcomes in the future. But people who are told they’re victims of society’s bias many times will be discouraged by a few simple failures.”
- “You wouldn’t accept as Gospel medical advice from a plumber nor would you take the word of a pediatrician on car maintenance, yet every single day millions of people take the advice of people who have zero experience or first hand knowledge about the subjects they’re so assertively speaking of simply because they’re on television."
- “Media bias is more than just how a story is reported, it is which stories are reported. The power to ignore, the power to pick and chose is the most pernicious power journalists have, and they exercise it regularly.”
- “There lives an incredible arrogance behind nothing but a job title, journalist. A good rule of thumb in life is always be weary of anyone who appoints himself an arbiter of truth. Truth isn’t really in need of a referee, one need only point it out and there it is, yet a trend exists in media to assign someone to be the minister of truth, the decider of what is and is not in the world of politics.
-“(John) Oliver becomes someone daring enough to “speak truth to power,” Kardashian becomes someone worth listening to because the outlets that are supposed to tell us who is worth listening to say so. The most pernicious power the media has is the power to ignore, but the second arrow in its quiver is to elevate to a level of influence and importance that which should be ignored.”
- “When celebrities act as political pundits all presses are stopped yet again and their declarations, usually in the form of tweets, are tweeted as though they were carved into stone tablets by a burning bush..... The opinions of celebrities, both real and manufactured, are as valid as your average man on the street interview, only they get attention."
- “The worst thing ever to happen to journalism wasn’t social media or cable news, though both played their part in its demise. It was Watergate, the most celebrated moment in journalistic history, celebrated again at the 2017 white house correspondents dinner, it created the concept of the reporter as celebrity, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein made an untold fortune, were played in a movie by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, were showered awards and sent many journalists running down the path of fame, rather than truth. And fame is the only thing heroine gets addicted to. The thing was Woodward and Bernstein were real journalists, they reported a real story of corruption, worked sources, uncovered information, checked their facts and got their story right. In other words they earned their accolades. Today, too many journalists aren’t interested in doing the work, they just want the rewards. For a journalist or a pundit to achieve some level of fame all he or she has to do is get on tv, and the bar for entry to that has been lowered to the point that you’d need a shovel to get under it.”
- "Study and experience are what makes them experts, and then there are people who excel at being good on TV, Neil deGrasse Tyson is undoubtedly a smart man in the field of astrophysics, if you want to know about deep space and distant planets he’s your guy. Yet his input is not limited to his area of expertise, in fact it is nearly unlimited. The media themselves so love Neil deGrasse Tyson that people magazine named him ‘sexiest astrophysicist in 2000’ quick name a second astrophysicist! but why does it have one so well known that the media seeks his input on everything from climate change to politics in the first place? Because Tyson is engaging on tv."
November 22, 2020
Intellectually insulting prose.
"Hollywood is littered with high school dropouts with net worths larger than some third-world countries’ GDP who gleefully lecture Americans on their need to live differently, to “shrink their carbon footprint,” while doing body shots off the flavor-of-the-month Victoria’s Secret model on their party yacht. Nothing against Victoria’s Secret models or party yachts—the world would be a happier place if there were more of both—but the American people are tiring of lectures on how people who don’t live in New York or Los Angeles should live by millionaires whose only interaction with the rest of the country is when their private jets discharge their chemical toilets on them from 25,000 feet."
This is the type of sentence you find in the book. We don't refer to the poorest country to "3rd world" anymore. The average GDP of the poorest 5 countries in 2019 was 173m. How rich are those Hollywood twats? A yacht is expensive, too. Not sure implying Victoria secret models are whores is helpful. Private jets don't discharge toilets in flight.
Focusing on this one paragraph is obviously purely anecdotal, but also telling. When your introduction is on that level of idiocy, you've set the stage.
Some of the points raised are very valid. What went on in Evergreen State College for eg, is telling. But it's not in this book you'll find useful insights. The logical fallacies are awful, as this reads as a rant against "the others". Such others include the Kardashians or Paris Hilton. Basically, the book depicts a world with good people, and bad people, and you know who you are. It doesn't help.
"Hollywood is littered with high school dropouts with net worths larger than some third-world countries’ GDP who gleefully lecture Americans on their need to live differently, to “shrink their carbon footprint,” while doing body shots off the flavor-of-the-month Victoria’s Secret model on their party yacht. Nothing against Victoria’s Secret models or party yachts—the world would be a happier place if there were more of both—but the American people are tiring of lectures on how people who don’t live in New York or Los Angeles should live by millionaires whose only interaction with the rest of the country is when their private jets discharge their chemical toilets on them from 25,000 feet."
This is the type of sentence you find in the book. We don't refer to the poorest country to "3rd world" anymore. The average GDP of the poorest 5 countries in 2019 was 173m. How rich are those Hollywood twats? A yacht is expensive, too. Not sure implying Victoria secret models are whores is helpful. Private jets don't discharge toilets in flight.
Focusing on this one paragraph is obviously purely anecdotal, but also telling. When your introduction is on that level of idiocy, you've set the stage.
Some of the points raised are very valid. What went on in Evergreen State College for eg, is telling. But it's not in this book you'll find useful insights. The logical fallacies are awful, as this reads as a rant against "the others". Such others include the Kardashians or Paris Hilton. Basically, the book depicts a world with good people, and bad people, and you know who you are. It doesn't help.
January 3, 2019
I checked this book out because the title and cover piqued my interest. There were some interesting points brought up, but then there was also the same lumping of all "Democrats" and/or all "liberals" together. This bothers me on both sides - political views are rarely either/or, but are a spectrum, no matter which label one chooses to identify with. Many examples of "liberal" corruption or hypocrisy were just the flip side of the same thing done by some famous and/or wealthy "conservatives". One thing that stood out to me, though, was the mention of "liberals" attacking not only "moderates" and "conservatives" but other "liberals" who weren't "liberal enough". This same thing can be seen on the "conservative" side, too, so I did enjoy the fact that the author called on people to engage, thoughtfully (my addition), with those outside of their preferred bias. This works no matter where on the political spectrum you feel you're on, I think.
Like others have said, if you're decidedly "conservative", you'll probably really enjoy this book. If you're not, you may not like it much. I am trying to learn more about politics in general, so it was in that mindset that I read this book.
Like others have said, if you're decidedly "conservative", you'll probably really enjoy this book. If you're not, you may not like it much. I am trying to learn more about politics in general, so it was in that mindset that I read this book.
December 5, 2019
If a tree falls over in the woods after a Polack joke and no one is around to be offended by it, was it really offensive?
While it advertises itself as a crusade against 'the liberal mob', Outrage, Inc (which... is the title of the book? I have no idea what this The War On Truth thing is about? Funky-unky...) is ultimately about the freedom of speech being violated, fact-checking 'fact-checkers', truth in journalism and modern America's knee-jerk reactions to things the population centers of the country don't like.
Share Hunter's opinions or don't, I certainly didn't agree with every word, Outrage, Inc is a humorously written lament for 21st century journalism, and if nothing else, it will encourage independent thoughts to form on the issues presented.
You can't win the culture war by refusing to engage in it; you can only lose it.
While it advertises itself as a crusade against 'the liberal mob', Outrage, Inc (which... is the title of the book? I have no idea what this The War On Truth thing is about? Funky-unky...) is ultimately about the freedom of speech being violated, fact-checking 'fact-checkers', truth in journalism and modern America's knee-jerk reactions to things the population centers of the country don't like.
Share Hunter's opinions or don't, I certainly didn't agree with every word, Outrage, Inc is a humorously written lament for 21st century journalism, and if nothing else, it will encourage independent thoughts to form on the issues presented.
You can't win the culture war by refusing to engage in it; you can only lose it.
November 5, 2018
The author makes some good points about the leftist agenda and tactics, going over ground already well trod. The book flows over various aspects of our society - academia, media, entertainment - presenting examples of double standards, biases, and groupthink. (His section on media needs to be updated to reflect online media).
The book disappointed me in that it missed an opportunity to be more analytical and less of a litany of complaints. For example, it would have been a better book if it dug into the history and the Why behind these policies and practices that the author detests, and searched for how to find common ground. Also, the snarky tone and language of the book detracts from the author's case.
March 5, 2019
It’s not a bad book, and it’s actually quite readable. I think it just didn’t add much to my understanding of how liberalism has infected culture. It merely presents evidence that it has done so.
The evidence is pretty damning and if anyone came to this book thinking “what? Hollywood and academia are left wing?”, they’ll see some stuff that will scorch their eyebrows off. However, if you already know that’s the case, this is more like a decent reference to all the times the left were hypocritical schmucks.
The evidence is pretty damning and if anyone came to this book thinking “what? Hollywood and academia are left wing?”, they’ll see some stuff that will scorch their eyebrows off. However, if you already know that’s the case, this is more like a decent reference to all the times the left were hypocritical schmucks.
July 9, 2020
This book is very biased. It is obvious from the title. However, what is more biased than the liberal media these days? When reading this book, it is needed to remark what is just plain exaggeration, or realize "you are right, the left does that, but so does the right/and the right does this other thing".
The author is funny, and the style is light. Sometimes he keeps picking on the same subject without nothing new to say. The last chapter is what made me give one star more.
The author is funny, and the style is light. Sometimes he keeps picking on the same subject without nothing new to say. The last chapter is what made me give one star more.
June 15, 2023
Insightful
Hunter hits the nail in the head. His writing is informative with a good dose of humor thrown in. He sights plenty of examples of liberal insanity. Unbiased journalism seems to have disappeared along with the mandate to report truth, not unfounded conjecture. Highly recommend this book.
Hunter hits the nail in the head. His writing is informative with a good dose of humor thrown in. He sights plenty of examples of liberal insanity. Unbiased journalism seems to have disappeared along with the mandate to report truth, not unfounded conjecture. Highly recommend this book.
June 22, 2019
Basically you get what you think a book detailing the way the left seeks to control and dominate the narratives in certain areas, like climate change and how they are backed up and abetted by the media and Hollywood.
September 25, 2025
Derek Hunter criticizes media news in America for being basically liberal opinions rather than news based on facts. He gives numerous examples using satirical wit to make his point. It is written in an easy to understand English. Recommended for an informative and amusing reading experience.
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