I’m terribly delinquent for a book review I promised months ago, that of Sharyl Attkisson’s recent The Smear: How Shady Political Operatives and Fake News Control What You See, What You Think, and How You Vote. So here’s my take on the book: everybody ought to read it.

Attkisson details the staggering machinery of how unbelievable numbers of people work together to shape the news in the mass media, and particularly how they focus their energies on specific targets of political opportunity. If you didn’t believe in conspiracy theories before reading this book, you certainly will afterwards. (It’s a laughable aside that our country has been chasing conjured-up “collusion” for two years now, while the real – and really damaging – collusion has been ever-present for decades now.)

Most egregious is the revelation of how many media people who present themselves as objective are anything but. Also, the role of public relations firms is a revelation. (This is not to be critical of PR folks in general; I’ve had the pleasure of working closely with a good number of very fine people in that industry lately. It’s a tiny percentage in their world who are part of the smear machinery.) For anyone generally paying attention, though, none of this will be big news – but the sheer scope and audacity of it is astonishing.

Attkisson makes it clear that smears have been used on both sides of the political aisle. (I was awfully surprised, though, not to see the name of Lee Atwater as an example from the conservative wing.) But that being said, today they are almost the sole province of the political left, and they seem to be coming with increasing and alarming frequency.

And it’s in that vein that I hesitated to write this review, because each time I began thinking about it in earnest, there was a new and more egregious example in the current events of the day. Then a week would go by, and another, yet more outrageous version would rear its stupendously ugly head. I’d wait some more. Lather, rinse, repeat…

So whether it was the hateful attacks on Judge Kavanaugh, or the Covington High School students, or most recently, Trump supporters in general in an invented-from-whole-cloth association with the concocted Jussie Smollett attack, the smear machine detailed by Attkisson was launched in full force.

But what finally got me off my duff to promote the book is that it’s not just the old actors as detailed by Attkisson pushing smears anymore. Lately we’ve had the advent of corporations joining forces with the smear machine, and operating in much the same way – pulling in politicians, pundits, and PR people to push an attack. So when Delta, Levi’s, and Dick’s Sporting Goods teamed up to go after the National Rifle Association in the wake of the Parkland mass shooting, it was the smear machine in action. Same with Nike’s attack on our entire nation when they sided with the ludicrous Colin Kaepernick – their ad ran, then a whole concerted effort was launched to make it stick. (It failed with almost everyone, with the exception of those true believers who never needed the prompt in the first place.) Ditto the attacks on men in general, whether by Unilever in their Axe advertising, or by P&G in their disgusting Gillette spot. Again, the ads ran, and then the true smear was launched in the mass media.

Now we’re even seeing it enacted in the private sphere as well. You probably didn’t get wind of the appalling attacks on a needlecraft merchant and blogger just recently, but suffice it to say that a whole industry (albeit a small and insular one) wound up being pulled into what were completely fabricated allegations of racism against an innocent woman, who wound up groveling and joining her vile attackers. That opens a new front in this war: the under-the-radar smear, starting with individual players and pulling in fellow-traveling companies to add fuel to the fire.

This has to stop. It will take a lot more people being educated about how these things work, and pushing back on them when they’re launched. You can start to help by reading The Smear. Arm yourself with the facts.