October 2003

Of Lawsuits, Lies and Number 1 Best Sellers

In the beginning was the lawsuit. You know the one—Fox News (hereinafter called Bush News Network or BNN) filed a lawsuit against Al Franken alleging trademark infringement…this exercise in futility sought an injunction to halt publication of Franken’s new book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them; a Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. Judge Denny Chin of the U.S. District Court called the motion “wholly without merit…”; furthermore, he wrote that anyone would be ‘completely dense’ not to recognize that Franken’s cover was a joke (remember that word, Murdoch?). He also wrote that they should go home and find a sense of humor…poor old BNN…and that their expectation of trademark protection was unrealistic because ‘fair and balanced’ were such common words. Talk about dumb and dumber.

Meanwhile, Al Franken is in hog heaven…all this free publicity pushed sales of Lies…off the charts. In fact, his book made the New York Times Bestseller List before the it was released, and it is number 1 on that list today.

This book is delicious in its attention to detail and its organization, and there are visual aids abounding. His charts and graphs are often funnier than the text, and Franken offers enough statistical data to back his claim that he is a statistics nut. Here is an example to prove that the Confederates were the worst traitors in U.S. history: deaths caused by the most evil of our enemies: Osama bin Laden Saddam Hussein Jefferson Davis 3,000 about 600 360,000. He also asks how anyone would want to display a flag of the most murderous, anti-American betrayers in history.

Then there is Franken’s posse…a gang of 14 Harvard undergraduates, dedicated to truth, who worked only for a weekly meal and no course credit. It was their research that uncovered so much of the slime that Al throws at us—they were fact checkers and general trollers for deceit and mendacity.

And this book is funny—outrageously funny. It reads like an extremely wicked fairy tale—with an edge. His prose is a razor that is so sharp you don’t notice until it leaves a thin trail of blood on your neck.

His chapters on the thugs at BNN are the best by far. He hammers Bill O’Reilly for his lies, innuendo and intimidation. For instance, O’Reilly maintains that he is registered as an Independent. TeamFranken produced his voter registration form…he is a registered Republican. Bill O. is proud of his working class roots in Levittown, Long
Island…in reality, he grew up in Westbury, an upper crust community about 30 miles distant. According to O’Reilly’s mom, he attended private schools throughout his educational career. He lied about receiving the prestigious Peabody Award—actually it was a Polk, and the show for which he was working won the award long after he was gone. Yet his TV ratings and book sales remain high…I guess there is no accounting for taste. Sean Hennity is part of the Hennity and Colmes team at BNN… Colmes is the token liberal at Fox, and Franken suggests that he is required to take out the trash and do the floors. Actually, Franken has great fun deconstructing this pair from Hell…saving some of his most strident remarks for Hennity, the apparent Crown Prince of Sleaze. O’Reilly and Hennity are the perfect pitchmen for the management of BNN—Rupert Murdoch and Roger Aisles. They are a stunning Goebbels to Bush’s Hitler, and their politics are to the right of Attila the Hun. In spite of this (or perhaps because of it), Fox remains the number 1 rated Cable News Network…go figure.

Al also pillories the Washington Times, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, the Wall Street Journal as well as the mainstream media for playing the stooge to Bush and his reactionary apologists. He correctly shows that there is no ‘liberal bias’ in the media, and that a vast right wing cabal is in control of the print and electronic media.

He also does a pretty thorough job of thrashing the Bush administration…revealing the truth about everything from tax cuts to No Child Left Behind (there are many) in the Bush plan. Here is a sample:

Franken (to Paul Wolfowitz): you did a pretty good job in Iraq with Clinton’s army
Wolfowitz: Fuck you

Then there is our Vice President musing that he is saddened whenever he flies over the Arlington National Cemetery, and that all those rows of crosses were sobering. Well guess what??…there are no crosses at Arlington…the crosses are in Flanders Field, the WW I memorial in Belgium. Arlington has rows of small rectangles that are rounded on top…no crosses. Mr. War Monger Cheney has obviously never visited the cemetery which honors our own war dead. That is a very big deal, and I am glad that Al Franken exposed it.

The chapter on Franken’s encounter with Barbara Bush was also illuminating. He debunks the myth…the aura … which surrounds her. His image of her was identical to mine…the benevolent matriarch…the stabilizing element in the Bush Clan… everybody’s grandmother. After a particularly nasty encounter with her on an airplane, Franken began to wonder.

B. Bush: “I’m through with you.”
Franken: “I was just kid—“
B, Bush: “I told you I was through with you.”

Swatting flies…Franken interviewed several Washington insiders who described her as ‘the enforcer’, the’Queen Bitch’, and ‘mean’. Many of the Bush acquaintances described Dubya as being just like her—‘Barbara’s favorite son and he’s just like her—mean and vicious’…so look no longer for the source of the venom coming from this administration…it is not Rove or Wolfowitz or Rumsfield or Ashcroft…it is Barbara Bush’s favorite son…that explains a lot, doesn’t it??

In addition to his virulent ad hominem attacks on these right wingers, he also confronts them on a wide range of issues … tax cuts, school vouchers, the Paul Wellstone memorial, the estate tax, the erosion of civil liberties, Bill Clinton, the American military, and foreign policy.

I do however have some problems with this book…yes, Al Franken does have some warts. First and foremost is that Franken is an unrepentant shill for the Democratic Party…spreading their message while he attacks the Right. Now I believe that Democrats are better than Republicans…I’ve voted in every general election since 1970 and still haven’t cast a vote for the GOP. Yet, I hear Michael Moore’s words resounding in my ear…the New Democrats are the same as the Republicans. Secondly, there is Franken’s temporary support of the War in Iraq…he appeared at a rally sponsored by Clear Channel to support the war effort. This pep rally included flybys by military aircraft and Franken telling Dixie Chicks jokes. This is not good. He bought into the Bush canard about WMDs and enriched uranium from Niger, and used his considerable celebrity to lend credence to this deceit. He did slip on his hair shirt and admit his mistake, but the damage was done. Al played cheerleader for this policy which cost thousands of people their lives. What was he thinking?