Lapdogs

Arf. Mannion and I are reading the same book, Eric Boehlert's Lapdogs. It’s a book about the utter failing of the press, and their obedience, during the Bush administration—a topic of much interest for many readers of this blog. I’ve already been struck by the same thing that Mannion points out in his post today:

I have yet to come across anything that I didn't already know from five years of reading blogs, but on every page I have something that I had forgotten, always something that even if I had accidentally jogged back into memory on my own I would not have been able to recall in the detail that Boehlert provides or with anything near the amount of supporting facts he provides.

He also calls the book a godsend (“Oh, all right, it's a publistsend, but I'm still awful grateful to have it.”), and I totally agree. It’s a mountain of evidence, and Boehlert is a patient and resolute sherpa.

By way of introduction, I recommend this piece at Salon, to which I linked a couple of weeks ago. If you like the article, you’ll love the book. Well, love is maybe a bit peculiar. There isn’t much to love about the content, but you will certainly admire the information amassed by Boehlert and his ability to pull it all together in some kind of cohesive narrative. I read a lot of political stuff, but don’t feel particularly compelled to recommend much of it. I’m recommending this one.

(Like Mannion, I received a copy from the publisher—for which I am ever so grateful; otherwise, I never would have been able to buy it at the moment. I wanted to let you know by way of full disclosure, although I suspect you all know me well enough by now to guess, free or not, I wouldn’t recommend it if it I didn’t mean it.)