One of my favorite parts of Bill Adair’s new book on political lies is that he names three different people from Fox News to The Lying Hall of Fame, along with a Fox News couch. You’ll have to read the book to understand the couch. The Fox News presence in the hall of fame is right in line with my column a while back about why I think Fox News is the biggest threat to democracy in America. It lies nonstop to support its profit-above-truth agenda, purports to be real news and has an audience that believes it is credible. The result is a large part of the population believes fiction, leaving them unable to engage in fact-based conversation with the rest of us. That destroys our ability to reach consensus on important issues and move forward as a nation. Bill clearly has similar feelings and makes a strong case for Fox being in his book’s hall of fame along with Big Tobacco, Exxon, Facebook, Talk Radio, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. Bill is an authority on lies. He created PolitiFact, the Pulitzer Prize winning, fact-checking organization, and co-founded the International Fact-Checking Network. He’s the ideal person to write the definitive book on political lies in America. The book, which comes out Tuesday, is called “Beyond the Big Lie.” Its underline is “The epidemic of political lying, why Republicans do it more, and how it could burn down our democracy.” Exactly. Lies are out of control. Many people believe them. How do we get back on the same page? First, we should persuade people to stop watching Fox News. Even if it’s just for a month. If they watched reliable news sources, might they be more amenable to reasonable conversations? Bill offers a variety of possible solutions, none more important to him than more fact checking. A lot more. He suggests journalists should elevate politicians’ fact-checking scores as key elements to be discussed regularly during campaigns. He also suggests creating a pledge for politicians to sign that they won’t lie. And, how about lower ad rates and truthfulness badges on social media for politicians who don’t lie? Or bonus extra time in debates? The book is loaded with ideas. Bill makes a strong case that Republicans lie more than Democrats, based on his experience and the experience of others. He pushes back on the idea that fact checkers rig the game by seeking more false statements to fact check from Republicans than Democrats. He also analyzes the patterns of lying for people in both parties. All in all, the book is a terrific examination of how American politics have come to be dominated by lies and why that’s so harmful. It’s well worth your time. You can pre-order it on Amazon, and you can expect to see Bill make the rounds of news and talk shows talking about it. Full disclosure: I worked with Bill for a few years when he oversaw PolitiFact and our newsroom became its Ohio partner. We enjoyed working with him and on the fact checks, which we eventually had to halt because of the demand on our limited resources. I wish we had the staff to start them up again. Separate from Bill’s book, I have some other topics to discuss. We seriously erred in the Forum section of last Sunday’s Plain Dealer by running a Dana Summers cartoon that repeated the debunked claim that FEMA depleted available hurricane aid by giving millions of dollars to illegal immigrants. Readers rightly castigated me for it. We used the cartoon as a conservative view to balance the progressive slant of another cartoon we published. We should have skipped the Summers cartoon and sought another that was based on truth. I apologize for the lapse. Also in the Forum section was an op-ed by two senior fellows with the Heritage Foundation, the group connected to the Project 2025 plan that would pretty much destroy our democracy. A note at the bottom of the piece described the authors’ relationship to the foundation, but a bunch of readers found that note unsatisfying. They did not know the piece was from the Heritage Foundation until they finished reading it. They suggested we more clearly highlight that the Heritage Foundation is behind pieces, so they can know to skip them. In the future, we’ll aim to put the Heritage Foundation in the headlines of their op-eds, although I don’t see us running many Heritage Foundation pieces. It’s a credibility issue. Lastly, you’ll soon see a new comic in The Plain Dealer. Real Life Adventures ended its run last year, and we’ve been using archival strips. We’re replacing it with The Argyle Sweater, a single-panel comic that is popular nationally. The Argyle Sweater is written by Scott Garland, who says he was heavily influenced by Gary Larson’s beloved The Far Side comic strip, which ended publication in 1995. The Argyle Sweater has been in syndication since 2008. And yes, I do see the connection you might be seeing in my mentioning, in the same column, the ridiculousness of Fox news and two comic strips that find humor in the absurd. I'm at [email protected] Thanks for reading | 