It's Getting Ugly Out There: The Frauds, Bunglers, Liars and Losers Who Are Hurting America
From Infonomics
CNN news commentator has a blistering book. Cafferty attacks the Bush administration and its deceptiveness and doubletalk on all kinds of issues. He says it is illogical to tolerate illegal aliens. He maintains we are giving bad examples for our kids in our culture, and he claims that special interests are trying to manipulate the press and media to obfuscate the truth for the obviously wealth and privileged. Pretty standard moral stuff. (He digresses with some detail about how right wing republicans get caught in sex scandals, including gay ones, and he spends some space on the downfall of Mark Foley with his ephebophilia, known for years by Hastert but with those salacious emails to bright but underage and trusting Congressional pages tolerated until a gay blogger, acting on his own, forced the issue on the media; had this gone on long enough, would he have been caught in one of Chris Hansen's Peej stings?) One question is what it means about the responsibility of the "average Joe." He does say that bloggers are starting to keep the major media honest. He also calls for mandatory national service. On page 245, he writes
"There's a vacuum in the lives of young people today that has been filled by self-absorption, music downloads, material glut, celebrity gossip, and TV junk. We enjoy a lot of benefits in this country and most of us don't have to do a hell of a lot to avail ourselves of them. It's time that we all kicked in, no exceptions. Between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, everyone should owe this country eighteen to twenty-four months of their life--Peace Corps, inner-city volunteer work, mentoring kids, painting park benches, or serving in the military. Every young person should be required to register and devote some time and energy toward the general welfare of this place while there's still something here worth salvaging."
Fighting words indeed. Why not an intermittent, life-long service requirement then? Would Mr. Cafferty himself serve then? And what about "don't ask don't tell"?
Synopses & Reviews Publisher Comments: Very little of my backstory qualifies as Hallmark Card material, but it may help you to make sense of the way I see and interpret what's going on around me. -Jack Cafferty
For the millions who watch the Cafferty File on CNN's The Situation Room, Jack Cafferty stands for common sense-the much-needed voice of reason who skewers right-wing nut jobs and liberal eggheads alike. For years, he's voiced the views, hopes, and fears of the average American in inimitable style. Now, in It's Getting Ugly Out There, he brings that level-headed wisdom to bear on the most critical issues facing us today-and explains why Americans must take our country back from those who are harming it.
It's been a target-rich seven years for someone like me who enjoys pushing people's buttons and sticking pins in things that need pricking, from rich and fatuous celebrities offering foreign policy analysis to the latest lying Beltway blowhard impaling himself on his sword of pomposity. . . . Anyone familiar with my daily 'Cafferty File' segments on CNN's The Situation Room knows I'm not exactly what you'd call the mainstream media's poster boy for feel-good news and commentary. In your face is more like it.
I'm no shrink, but I have the sense Bush has carried an angry chip on his shoulder much of his pampered life, seething just beneath the good-old-boy surface.
The bottom line is that our government no longer works for us. The government works for the lobbyists who have had a big hand in influencing (if not helping to draft) legislation favoring not the average American citizen but instead big business: health insurance, pharmaceutical and oil companies, and defense contractors, amongothers. These are the guys who can make the kinds of political contributions that are needed to finance today's multi-million-dollar political campaigns.
We want our troops home, but we also want a new army of elected officials to march into Washington and take a fresh, uncorrupted look at the needs of the vast majority of Americans. If these two parties, however 2008 breaks, can't fix what's broken, this way of life as we've known it may vanish into some deep, dark crevasse.
Review: "His deep, fatherly voice may evoke the comfort of an old-fashioned, Conkrite-era news broadcast, but newsman Cafferty has made a career of saying whatever he damn well pleases: 'I get paid to ask questions I don't know the answers to and to complain about the things that bother me.' Reading the television news correspondent's first book feels much like watching his segments on CNN's The Situation Room, in which he follows a similarly straightforward formula: denounce bad leadership, media shortcomings and government missteps with a satirical tone just above withering. From Katrina to Iraq, from immigration to terrorism, from Bush-baiting to big business, Cafferty admits to 'saying some pretty outrageous stuff' in order to get his audience riled up. Aside from skewering congress, shaming rich white guys, and repudiating Anna Nicole (the 'peroxide blonde never-was'), Cafferty sheds some light on his own life, sharing personal episodes about disrespecting his boot camp drill sergeants and letting his terrier defecate in the lobby of the Des Moines television station for which he was working. Without his rich vocal presence, Cafferty's tough talking cynicism can become grating, but also cuts through, with ease, a media climate thick with rigid ideology and tabloid excess." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Synopsis: Popular CNN commentator Jack Cafferty takes on the no-good, the bad, and the ugly in America today. From Bush to big business, from the Beltway to Baghdad, from Hurricane Katrina to House Speaker Pelosi, from Tehran to Tel Aviv, no subject is immune from Caffertys trademark sardonic, curmudgeonly, right-on scrutiny in his first bookJohn Wiley & Sons Synopsis: The popular CNN commentator takes on the no-good, the bad, and the ugly in America today Two million viewers watch Jack Cafferty’ s " The Cafferty Files" segments on CNN’ s The Situation Room every afternoon. From Bush to big business, from the Beltway to Baghdad, from Hurricane Katrina to House Speaker Pelosi, from Tehran to Tel Aviv, no subject is immune from Cafferty’ s trademark sardonic, curmudgeonly, right-on scrutiny.
Now, in his first book, the provocative and refreshingly unpredictable CNN personality goes after the overly powerful people who screw up– no matter where they may be. Whether he’ s writing about the latest outrages in Iraq or global warming– corporate scandals, constitutional crises, or lobbyist misdoings on both sides of the aisle– Cafferty tackles the frauds, felons, liars, and losers who are doing their best to harm America– and explains why they won’ t succeed. Cafferty spares nothing and no one as he lasers in on hot-button issues that will be generating debate in the news and in the 2008 election campaign, including illegal immigration and ethics reform.
Capturing Cafferty at his outspoken best, It’ s Getting Ugly Out There will be highly satisfying reading for Cafferty’ s many fans– and is certain to win him legions of new ones as well.
Jack Cafferty (New York, NY) is a host and commentator on CNN, which is seen around the world. Six " Cafferty Files" segments appear each weekday during The Situation Room. His segments provoke thousands of e-mails each week; CNN received 20,000 e-mails in the two days after Cafferty’ s segment denouncing the government’ s response tothe Katrina disaster.
Synopsis: I have the best job in the world, Jack Cafferty writes. I get paid to ask questions I don’ t know the answers to and complain about things that bug me. Between the WMDs that never turned up in Iraq and the ones that probably will turn up in Iran, that’ s lot of bugging. Cafferty is controversial and has passionate detractors as well as fans. His daily segments are highly opinionated monologues about the state of the world. His recurring theme is that the big guys – big government, big business, and so on – have the wrong motivations and interests and consistently do the wrong things. This is a strong and eloquent current affairs book including pointed, extended discussions of some of Cafferty's trademark topics, including Iraq, Iran, Katrina and the American disaster relief program, illegal immigrants, ethics reformation, and Democrats versus Republicans, to name just a few.
CONTENTS:
Prologue: This is Not the America I Know
1) The Boy in the Bubble: George W. Bush
2) Katrina: The Tipping Point
3) Iraq: Nation-Building Worked— Bush Has Created a Terror State in Iraq
4) Power Grab: These Guys Are Scary
5) Immigration: The Country Is Bordering on Insanity
6) Congress: We’ ve Been Lied to and Stolen from Enough
7) Lobbyists: K Street Owns the Country and the Politicians
8) The Vanishing Middle Class: Remember that Our Government Works for Us
9) Media Culpa: We’ re Often Complicit
10) Cowboy Diplomacy: Bush Has Saddled Us with Failed Foreign Policies
11) Epilogue: We’ re Still a Magnificent People and We Will Respond
