My Hero, Al Franken

If, in the middle of an earthquake, when everything solid around you was turning to jello and you were having trouble staying on your feet, somebody came up to you and said, "Don't worry, this isn't really an earthquake, just go stand next to that big pile of bricks and you'll be fine--but first, give me your ATM card, and tell me your pin number," you wouldn't do it, would you? You'd know the person was lying, and you'd wonder why. You'd go stand in a doorway till the shaking stopped, as you've been told to do since you were five, and while you were there, you'd check your wallet just to make sure you had your ATM card with you.

This is the basic premise of Al Franken's new book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. The people who are currently running our government (and, by extension, the world) are lying to us in order to get us to do things that will hurt us and other people, and make them (the liars) rich. Just big, fat, flat-out lies. Al and his team of Harvard researchers (TeamFranken!), all 14 of whom he names and describes and gives individual credit for their contributions to his study (unlike any other Harvard researcher I can recall), document these lies with facts and figures from multiple, unimpeachable resources--sometimes even the liars themselves, who admit they lied, and then say some equivalent of "So what? And by the way, fuck you!" (Bill O'Reilly) or just hang up the phone (Bill Giles, managing editor of the Washington Times).

Normally, we the public rely on the press to expose this kind of behavior (remember Watergate?), but the Bush administration has the White House press corps so intimidated, so cowed, the only question a reporter dares ask is, "What would you like to see in the paper tomorrow, sir?"

So we need somebody like Al to get in there and rake some muck. Al has figured out how to get the right kind of attention focused on the problem: be attractive and funny. Personally, I find brains very attractive, humor ditto, and Al has both, in cartloads. Some of his explanations are heavy going. You have to think for yourself--looking at his charts of crime rates, for instance, during the last several presidential administrations, then comparing them to the claims made by Bush's people--but sometimes you get to just sit back, watch, and laugh.

On the aftermath of 9/11, for instance:

"Desperate to support the floundering airline industry and make a few bucks on the corporate lecture circuit, I flew often in the months following September 11. Invariably, when I sat down, the guy next to me would say something like: 'I played high school football, how 'bout you?'

"'I wrestled,' I would reply.

"'Any trouble, we'll kill 'em, right?'

"'Yeah. Kill 'em.'

"Actually, and this is totally true, for the first six months after 9/11, I put three baseballs in my carry-on bag. I am blessed with an unusually accurate throwing arm, and wanted more than anything to thwart a hijacking by beaning a terrorist. How American is that?

"I imagined the New York Post headline: "Franken Beans Hijacker: Terrorist Hit in Face with More Balls than Elton John.'"

Thus does Al set a useful example for the rest of us: how to keep (and deploy!) our sense of humor in increasingly dismal and terrifying times. It's a frivolous example, true, but this is the spirit that enables us to look such monsters as Karl Rove, Ann Coulter, and Bill O'Reilly squarely in their splotchy faces and see them for what they are: a passel of craven, bloviating, self-aggrandising hypocrites, clearing the way for even more odious creeps like Ashcroft and his boss.

How they do this is sooooooooooo simple, it's breathtaking: they just lie. And they get away with it. Until Al comes along and pulls their pants down where everybody can see. And lots of folks want to see, apparently. Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them was #3 on Amazon's sales list yesterday (my current favorite novel, Hell at the Breech , is somewhere around 12,432), so fearless Al, under the cover of humor and attractiveness, does seem to be giving us some hope that dark may one day turn to light, before it's too late.

And I want to be next to him, with a whole sack of baseballs, when it does.

Comments

[Donna]

I must get this book.
I saw both Al and Bill on the View this week, on separate days of course. Love Al. Hate Bill.

[Pica]

So must I. I wish I had a throwing arm like that!

[trish]

Another humorous exposer to check in with is Molly Ivins. She lives in Texas and so she knows the history of Shrub and his cohorts. Here's the link.

[trish]

http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/columnists/molly_ivins/

[Trey]

I agree. Franken's book cut like a knife.