Book: Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them
Written by Al Franken (Dutton)
Reviewed by Rusty Pipes

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Al did a great service by writing Rush Limbaugh Is A Big Fat Idiot back in 1996, exposing the warped rhetoric of the right when Bill Clinton was running against Bob Dole. He didn't write an expose in 2000. Maybe that's why Al Gore got so savaged by the pundits that year. Maybe Franken's trying to make up for it with Lies And The Lying Liars who tell them.

Right from the first line of the introduction, "God chose me to write this book," Franken engages us with his wit. He's not always gentle, but one thing's for sure, he has gone out of his way to research his facts. And that's the point of all this. The liars he's talking about often don't check and he calls them on it. Deserving targets include Ann Coulter, author of Slander: Liberal Lies About The American Right. In contrast to Rush Limbaugh's word, "femi-Nazi," Coulter's a Nazi who is feminine and doesn't get her footnotes straight. (See footnote below)

For the most part Franken writes punchy short chapters that include plenty of one-liners amid the revelations, but there are all kinds of change-ups too. One chapter, "The Gospel of Supply Side Jesus," is done cartoon style. It's a simply devastating satire of the Right's selfish attitudes. Another chapter is a short play called "The Waitress And The Lawyer" which was actually performed earlier this year, but mostly Al's just doing his homework. He goes into extra innings to discuss the lies of President Bush's tax cuts in a long chapter entitled "By Far the Majority Of My Tax Cuts Go To Those At The Bottom." It's a tour de force of the kind of bullshit the administration expects us to swallow about our money.

Franken's book is an eye opening delight to read. In a way it's a shame that we have to get this kind of information from a comedian instead of the mainstream media, but we certainly can't rely on them to check on the rhetoric of the right wing. And that brings us to one of the biggest of the big lies that the right repeats so often-- that there is a Left Wing Bias to the media. Al shoots it down completely.

I am thankful that we have Franken's new book. Like Michael Moore's Stupid White Men, and Arianna Huffington's Pigs At The Trough, this book makes liberal-left politics respectable again.


Footnote: Actually to cop a bit of Franken's style, I admit I do not have access to the membership roles of the Nazi party, so I cannot say that as a confirmed fact. It is however accurate to say that she is a) blond like the Aryan ideal of the Nazis and b) she says things like "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." It is also accurate to say that Al Franken calls her "the reigning diva of the hysterical Right" in this book and I agree with his assessment.

© 2003 - Rusty Pipes