Warning: I’ve just started to read Stephen Hayes’ book on Cheney (thanks to the short line for the book at Ann Arbor’s Public Library, I didn’t have to pay Hayes a cent), so this blog will be a little propaganda-busting focused in the next few days. I haven’t even gotten beyond the intro without a post!
When I sat down to start this book, I was grumbling to myself that the traditional media had pretty much accepted Hayes was a shameless propagandist–and started treating him as such. I remember how, after I called into Diane Rehm’s show and pointed out that Hayes’ shameless pimping of Cheney’s Iraq and Al Qaeda myths made him a worse propagandist than even Judy Miller, Rehm stopped having him on anymore, until just the other day, so he could pimp his Cheney book. It disturbs me that the media will accept a book about the Vice President by an unabashed propagandist and treat it seriously, only because Cheney (who picked said propagandist to write the book) was the subject.
Well, the intro is basically Hayes’ attempt to get people to treat his book seriously (which says something about his credibility). And wouldn’t you know it–his defense of his shilliness relies on the NYT’s Bill Keller.