Attack Poodles and Other Media Mutants: The Looting of the News in a Time of Terror

Beware the attack poodles — like a mutant invasion, they have taken control of America's airwaves and newspapers. Trained to spring at any foe of their radical conservative agenda, these Republican lap dogs dominate the mass media by scoring points with their masters in the White House inner circle, while simultaneously using the sorcerer's art of punditry to advance their conservative point of view. And, as James Wolcott reminds us in this blistering indictment of their bully tactics, the great canine horde has hijacked the country's media, bringing not just the tradition of an independent press, but the entire American way of democracy, to its knees. The attack poodles are at war, and they won't rest until they banish dissent in any form.

But there is hope for the rebel forces in Bushistan. With breathtaking clarity and savage wit, Wolcott has turned the tables on the punditocracy, revealing the foibles and hypocrisies of this particularly pompous breed, as well as the ignorance and arrogance of the administration it aims to protect. Targeting the big dogs in the poodle parlor — Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Robert Novak, Dennis Miller, Peggy Noonan, and dozens more — his critique is an invaluable lesson in right-wing media manipulation. He dissects the attack poodles' penchant for simplistic combativeness and their muzzling of the media for George Bush during a time of war.

With the boldness and insight that readers of Wolcott's media column in Vanity Fair have come to love, Wolcott demystifies the poodles' strategies as he points out where they are most vulnerable to attack.

"I have never been a doctrinaire lefty or righty," Wolcott writes in his author's note. "I was looking for a cause. But I can't stand bullies, and I can't stand cowardly deceivers; and in the Bush Administration and the conservative media we have the worst of both of them combined. We can't wait around for them to fall of their own dead weight, because it could be us they fall on."

This book brings an arsenal of hope just when we need it most. In James Wolcott, the attack poodles have been given something they truly deserve: a worthy opponent.

"From cultural critic Wolcott (Vanity Fair; the New Yorker) comes an examination of the 'infotainment' that he says now passes for political news. In an age brimming with 24-hour news channels, talk radio and the Internet, how is it, Wolcott asks, that Americans seem to be less informed than in the past? He points a finger at the rise of TV news personalities, or the 'attack poodles,' those ratings-hungry pundits, who, he says, are geared more toward quips, rants, profits and fame than to informing a democratic populace. Wolcott finds examples of the specimen in Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage, Chris Matthews, Dennis Miller and Bob Novak. Beneath Wolcott's humor and catchy prose, however, lurk some dark revelations, such as a Fox news staffer's claim that he and his colleagues are instructed to seek out stories that 'cater to angry, middle-aged white men who listen to talk-radio and yell at their televisions.' That strategy quickly took Fox News to the top of the heap and has left the other networks in a dizzying game of catchup that has set what Wolcott sees as a dismal, fractious tone for our national discourse. Intelligent, amusing and insightful, Wolcott's effort is still unlikely to approach sales anywhere close to those of books published recently by some of the 'attack poodles' he criticizes. Agent, Elyse Cheney. (Aug.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"Attack Poodles is irresistible political entertainment from and for the left." Jacob Weisburg, The New York Times Book Review

"[S]mart, skeptical, witty, and pugnacious....Forceful nay-saying, buttressed by a few sensible ideas on how to neutralize the nonsense-purveyers." Kirkus Reviews

Prize-winning columnist Wolcott names names and rattles cages in a samurai assault on cable news and conservative warmongers.