I first heard of Seth Andrews through emails from Freethought organizations and my involvement with American Atheists, ‘American Atheist’ magazine, the Freedom From Religion Foundation and more. So when the local organization Secular Houston was co-hosting Seth for a talk at Houston Oasis, I made my way into the city and discovered his multiple talents. His voice was silky smooth, just enough bravado to be masculine and approachable, his tones modulating in a way which made his voice so perfect for radio Paul Harvey would have been jealous. And to top it off — and I say this as a straight guy — not too bad in the looks department as well. Of course, I instantly hated the fucker.

His speech/lecture, topped off the show, as it was about obscure symbolism in the US government, and he received a standing ovation when it was over. I had him sign a copy of his book Christianity Made Me Talk Like an Idiot and started listening to his podcasts (yes, plural) and became what one would call a follower. During one podcast he mentioned his book about Fox News and I moved my cursor on over to Amazon to pick up a second-hand copy of Confessions of a Former Fox News Christian.

It is a more subject-oriented expansion on his Deconverted (2012), his tome about awakening to find he had held what he called “an inherited belief system” and the books he, as a former Christian radio show host pounded as literal truth were “unsustainable scientifically, historically, and morally.”

True that.

These 2 books fall into that rarified category of books I wish everyone would read, no matter what their politics or theology, as they give unique insights to help demolish monolithic ideas, challenge the mind and make for a more rounded, idealized understanding of the world.

But back to the book in review.

Although imperfect, but only in the most minute sense, Confessions… lays out the case, chapter by chapter, subject by subject. Each chapter has a long heading, such as Ch. 1: ‘The Fox Phenomenon: Roger Ailes, the GOP Playbook, and the Rise of Fox News.’ This chapter includes an analysis printed in ‘Rolling Stone’ which is a mind-opening summary of the Fox News phenom and problem, and compacts a wide expanse of history into a bite-sized morsel. This alone is worth the price of admission.

Other chapters cover Rush Limbaugh, Ronald Reagan, gun culture, strict nationalism (where anyone who disagrees with the common flag-waving narrative is automatically a traitor) and the Pledge of Allegiance, something which I’ve had trouble with all my life, and is the reason I wasn’t allowed, from my Cub Scout days, to be admitted into the Boy Scouts. That chapter misses one main point of such pledges, which Nationalists consider binding from adolescent students: their oaths of loyalty are not even worth the paper they’re not written on as they are by law unable to make such oaths or contracts until they reach the age of 18. But, as Seth points out so often here, reality is an inconvenience to most Fox News viewers and evangelicals.

His last chapter is Ch. 13: ‘The Looney Left: Liberals Aren’t Immune to Bad Ideas,’ and it earns this work the label fair and balanced better than Fox News itself could ever hope to earn. Although he rightfully points out such lunacies as the Chinese community going fucking bonkers over a white girl wearing a qipao to safe spaces and trigger warnings. Where I take issue is the way he uses the term “wokeness” on p. 194, where he seems to think it’s a bad thing to be “aware” (which is what the term means) of injustices. I sincerely think if he were to re-write that paragraph for another edition, it would be worded in a way which doesn’t point to “wokeness” itself as being bad, but set examples of — and I do admit it can happen — where it just goes too freakin’ far.

And on p. 200, while condemning extremism even on his side of the knave, he adds the odd quip “We can be anti-fascism while condemning Antifa.” That is quite odd, and is not quantified elsewhere, leaving a hanging chad, not continuing with this bizarre statement. He capitalizes antifa as if it’s an organization with a tax-exempt status and an address on K Street. It is not. Just as fascism itself is an idea, a construct, a way to grasp something bad which happens in civilizations, being against fascism is also a construct which opposes it. This is not a bad thing. What does he mean here? Yes, a few people who throw themselves into the anti-fascist or antifa crowd have fire-bombed banks in Seattle, but to lump in a loose non-coalition of ideas into something bad — when the goals are so good and righteous — just seems either undeveloped or lazy.

Also, I must admit I am befuddled by the formatting, which has an entire line space separating each paragraph, instead of an indent on the first line of each paragraph directly following the end of the previous, and on the next line. This is a fucking BOOK, Seth, not a blog. Stop hurting my eyes!

There are several formatting and spelling/grammar errors, on the following pages: 3, 81, 95, 105, 120, 129, 175, 183, and 187, and there are a few places where his notation should have used standardizations, such as “ibid.” On p. 113 he also repeats the false line of “drinking the Kool-Aid,” where the substance should, as in the example of Jonestown, Guyana, be Flavor Aid. And, bizarrely, on p. 117 is the line “Modern weapons were developed several centuries after the writing of the Second Amendment.” I think here he means “decades.”

And if you compare the numbers of US soldiers dead in Vietnam between ps. 119 and 122, where the latter is when officer John Musgrave was shot in 1967, and Seth’s year of birth, 1968, in the former, I’m not exactly good at math, but the numbers do not ‘jive.’

And on p. 28 he commits the capitol offense of using the term “meteoric rise,” as if he never learned the physical properties of meteors. Fuck, I really fucking hate that.

And on p. 11 he begins a paragraph “Returning to President Obama…” without having previously mentioned President Obama. Did anyone help the guy out by actually reading the damn manuscript before it was sent to the printer?

Yet I know I nitpick the innards of a book I’m otherwise praising.

As of this writing, it has a 4.3 on Goodreads with 339 ratings, and a 4.5 out of 5 on Amazon with 346 ratings, where you will find no 1-star reviews and 2 ratings with 2 stars, where J.Roberts calls his review ‘Mostly an Adventure in Meh’ and thinks “The overall feel is that this was written more for the author to continue working through his feelings about his past religiosity, more so than any sort of informative book for others.” This may be a fair critique as J.Roberts admits he also was an evangelical who saw through the veil, so maybe for him it was all old hat. Having never really brought in to the religious assumptions predominant in family or society, this book rings up to me as a quick read that covers a ton of ground in a compact package, well researched and referenced (despite my complaints above).

So for me I’m popping in at a 5.

Earlier I mentioned a long quote from ‘Rolling Stone’ encapsulating how “Fox News viewer indignation is often rooted in ignorance and disinformation and the embrace of belief over knowledge” [p. 17] and the “Dunning-Kruger illusion of superiority rooted in cognitive bias, defiantly declaring the supremacy of their opinion over another’s facts” [ibid.]

Then,

The result of this concerted campaign of disinformation is a viewership that knows almost nothing about what’s going on in the world. According to recent polls, Fox News viewers are the most misinformed of all news consumers. They are 12 percentage points more likely to believe the stimulus package caused job losses, 17 points more likely to believe Muslims want to establish Shariah law in America, 30 points more likely to say that scientists dispute global warming, and 31 points more likely to doubt President Obama’s citizenship. In fact, a study by the University of Maryland reveals, ignorance of Fox viewers actually increases the longer they watch the network. That’s because [Roger] Ailes isn’t interested in providing people with information, or even a balanced range of perspectives. Like his political mentor, Richard Nixon, Ailes traffics in the emotions of victimization.

And in several places, Seth illustrates the points in this pointed paragraph, enough to make this a top recommendation.