{"id":710,"date":"2013-08-05T21:55:03","date_gmt":"2013-08-06T05:55:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=710"},"modified":"2013-08-05T21:55:03","modified_gmt":"2013-08-06T05:55:03","slug":"review-an-atheist-in-the-foxhole-a-liberals-eight-year-odyssey-inside-the-heart-of-the-right-wing-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/05\/review-an-atheist-in-the-foxhole-a-liberals-eight-year-odyssey-inside-the-heart-of-the-right-wing-media\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: An Atheist in the FOXhole: A Liberal’s Eight-Year Odyssey Inside the Heart of the Right-Wing Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"An<\/a>
\n An Atheist in the FOXhole: A Liberal’s Eight-Year Odyssey Inside the Heart of the Right-Wing Media<\/a> by Joe Muto<\/a>
\n My rating: 2 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n

Pretty disappointing. Two stars because I\u2019m rounding up, but I can\u2019t call it one star since I didn\u2019t hate it. But there\u2019s nothing revelatory in this so-called tell-all. Should we be surprised that the people who work for and run Fox News know<\/i> they\u2019re not Fair and Balanced? This is something we figured out, accepted, and got over years ago.<\/p>\n

And to be clear, this book isn\u2019t really about Fox News, very much. Mostly it\u2019s about ‘The O\u2019Reilly Factor.’ And mostly, its apologetic, even praising Bill O\u2019Reilly more often than not. I\u2019m not saying the book should have been a hateful screed eviscerating the guy, but when Muto writes \u201cThe mere existence of this book\u2026 is going to make this next line surprising\u2026 I actually like Bill O\u2019Reilly,\u201d my reaction was a loud \u201cNo, really<\/i>?\u201d dripping with sarcasm.<\/p>\n

I suppose it\u2019s my own fault, judging a book by its cover. The cover if this one has, in caricature, pictures of O\u2019Reilly, Palin, Coulter, Susteren, Beck, Rove and Hannity. Palin gets a few paragraphs, including Muto\u2019s saying that she\u2019s a very attractive woman, that the cameras don\u2019t do her justice. Coulter is a very nice person off air. Beck is a loony, and everyone at Fox knew it. Rove is a smart guy. Hannity pulls in ratings less than O\u2019Reilly\u2019s, and Susteren is in third. Wow. That\u2019s a real foxhole you got there, Joe.<\/p>\n

The book is subtitled \u201cA Liberals\u2019 Eight-Year Odyssey Inside the Heart of the Right-Wing Media.\u201d I\u2019m afraid this is a seriously slanted description. A self-confessed ne\u2019er-do-well tosses his liberal sensibilities aside to get a job, and moves up the ranks a bit before getting bored and chucking career away on a whim. Hardly an odyssey. And \u201cthe Heart of the Right-Wing Media\u201d? Maybe, but drinks in a bar with production assistants, trying to figure out where to live in Brooklyn, breaking up with girlfriends\u2026 that\u2019s now what I\u2019d call the heart of anything.<\/p>\n

Cutesy asides, footnotes, moments of self-deprecation related ad nauseum, and the meager recounting of that laughably inconsequential and utterly pointless three days as Gawker\u2019s ‘Fox Mole’\u2026 all of it detracted from what meager bits might have made this an interesting \u201cinsider\u2019s\u201d view. But only might have. The best thing I can say about this book is that if you want to know what it\u2019s like to be a TV news producer, there\u2019s a few details here for you. Mostly it sounds dull.<\/p>\n

View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An Atheist in the FOXhole: A Liberal’s Eight-Year Odyssey Inside the Heart of the Right-Wing Media by Joe Muto My rating: 2 of 5 stars Pretty disappointing. Two stars because I\u2019m rounding up, but I can\u2019t call it one star since I didn\u2019t hate it. But there\u2019s nothing revelatory in this so-called tell-all. Should we … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Review: An Atheist in the FOXhole: A Liberal’s Eight-Year Odyssey Inside the Heart of the Right-Wing Media”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-bs","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=710"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":711,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710\/revisions\/711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}