Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin

Larry Beinhart

Aug 2006 · Sold by Bold Type Books

About this ebook

Everyone in the world knows what Bill Clinton did with Monica Lewinsky, or what happened to Brad and Jennifer, Katie and Tom. These factoids mysteriously capture the world's attention. But there's a flip side to this: fog facts. Fog facts are known but not known, the sort of things that journalists and political junkies know, but somehow the world does not. The "Downing Street Memo" is a fine example. This document revealed that the head of British intelligence had been informed by his Washington counterparts that the White House was cooking the books on the information it was using to justify a war in Iraq. Yet this was not big news in America. Why? In Fog Facts, Larry Beinhart tackles this question and shows how soft-core, public relations-style political lying has been raised to an art form.

About the author

Larry Beinhart is best known as the author of Wag the Dog (originally published as American Hero) on which the film starring Robert DeNiro, Dustin Hoffman, Willie Nelson and Woody Harrelson was based. His No One Rides for Free (1986) received the 1987 Edgar Award for Best First Novel. His most recent book, Fog Facts, a work of nonfiction, examines why some important, even striking, truths are overlooked by the media and the culture at large.

Beinhart spent two years in Oxford, England, where he was the Raymond Chandler Fulbright Fellow at Wadham College. He is a regularly featured blogger on Huffingtonpost.com and his articles have appeared in the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, and the Chicago Tribune. He resides in Woodstock, New York, with his wife and two children.