OVER THE CLIFF

Reviewed 11/14/2011

Over the Cliff, by John Amato

Access to this book courtesy of the
San Jose, CA Public Library
OVER THE CLIFF
How Obama's Election Drove the American Right Insane
John Amato
David Neiwert
Digby (Fwd.)
Sausalito: PoliPointPress, 2010

Rating:

5.0

High

ISBN-13 978-0-9824171-7-1
ISBN-10 0-9824171-7-1 284pp. SC $16.95

Errata

Page 22: "Limbaugh began insisting that the problem for Republicans was that they weren't conservative enough. In an interview with Fox News's Sean Hannity, he explained:
The reason they [the GOP] lost huge is because in a contest of group politics, the experts are gonna always get group votes before the pretenders will. And we were pretenders trying to get the groups. We gotta get the Hispanics, we gotta be moderate, we gotta prove we can walk across the aisle, the era of Reagan is over."
  This quote does not say what the authors claim it says.
Page 128: "Fox News's role in driving these crowd sizes cannot be understated."
  S/B "overstated".
Page 136: "...when Democratic senator Claire McCaskill's staff had hastily assembled a town-hall forum..."
  Capitalization: S/B "Senator".
Page 136: "The senator herself hadn't appeared..."
  Capitalization: S/B "Senator". As twice on page 137. If they can capitalize "Tea Party," they can capitalize "Senator."
Page 137: "...the disruptions were being carefully planned and orchestrated by teabaggers."
  Word choice: S/B "Tea Partiers". "Teabagger" has bad connotations.
Page 141: "However, [Brian] Baird made clear shortly afterward that he and his office had been threatened by some of these teabaggers, who faxed death threats and made them by phone as well."
  On the other hand, maybe "teabagger" isn't so bad a choice.
Page 177: "...the biggest threats facing America were a guy named Bill Ayers and something called Acorn..."
  That something (which the Reich-wing later managed to kill) was a worthwhile organization known by the acronym ACORN.
Page 178: "Over at Fox News, it was as if someone had tossed a Baby Ruth into a swimming pool.. The shrieking and hysteria in the scramble to respond were almost comical"
  Tossing a candy bar into a swimming pool is cause for hysteria? No; this must be careless editing: S/B "Baby Ruth", meaning an infant. (Perhaps "Jon-Benet Ramsey" would have served better.)
Page 212: Quoting a speech by Anita Dunn: "In 1947, when Mao Tse-tung was being challenged within his own party on his plan to basically take China over, the Nationalist Chinese helped the cities, they had the army, they had the Air Force, they had everything o their side."
  This almost certainly S/B "held".
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