Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America »

John Avlon is the creator of the breakout “Wingnut of the Week” segment on CNN, and from his Daily Beast columns and commentary on cable news. He is also a regular contributor to CNN’s American Morning and Campbell Brown. He is the author of Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics. Tina Brown (foreword) is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast. She is the author of the 2007 New York Times best seller The Diana Chronicles. Brown is the former editor of Tatler, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Talk magazines and host of CNBC’s “Topic A with Tina Brown”.

A wingnut is someone on the far-right or far-left wing of the political spectrum professional partisans, unhinged activists and paranoid conspiracy theorists. Campaigning as the antidote to polarized politics, Barack Obama promised to transcend the old divides of left and right, black and white, red states and blue states. But during his first year in office, he presided over an eruption of hate and hyper-partisanship that mocks the pledge upon which millions ushered him into office.
From Revolutionary War-inspired “Tea Party” protests to the health-care town hall hijackings, principled policy opposition to government spending has taken a sharp right turn into Crazytown. Not to mention death threats to elected leaders and Sarah Palin’s ranting about administration “death panels.” For those with a vested interest in stirring the crazypot, all of this has been good for business hate is a cheap and easy recruiting tool. But it can be murder on a democracy…
As creator of CNN’s hit segment, “Wingnuts of the Week,” Daily Beast senior political columnist John Avlon has unique insight into how far-left and far-right political extremists came to dominate the country’s political dialogue and, with this audiobook, he shows the way back to a saner, smarter national conversation.