Bush, Etc: Lying, Spying Liars

I think that the review I wrote back in 2003 of Al Franken's Lies and Lying Liars Who Tell Them is particularly relevant during these days of extra special lyin' by the Bush administration and their oh-so-many PR flacks on Fox.

Work on the Haymaker, Al, October 12, 2003
Thank you Mr. Franken for refuting the scurrilous, anti-democratic cant of the oh-so-many assorted tools of the rich and powerful, the murderous mouthpieces Coulter, O'Reilly and Hannity, et. al. Murdoch's Molechs have gotten away their vicious innuendo, distortions, and lies for far too long. With "Liars," Mr. Franken, you, with the help of your Harvard-trained research staff, have put the lie to the hoohah of this hydra-headed beast.

But really, Al, I wonder, do you really think reason and point-by-point refutation, no matter how accurately executed, will have the slightest effect on the beast and its minions? It's a shame that it's gotten this bad, but the bought-and-paid-for rhetoric of the hydra has so polarized America, so marginalized, circumscribed, and even criminalized any other point of view that one wonders if there really is any hope for book like yours actually changing anyone's mind. Yes, it's a shame the so-called liberal media has been missing in action like in the old McCarthy days, and your valiant attempt to throw a monkey wrench into the well-oiled attack machine is laudable, but, really, maybe you should consider doing what so many Americans have already done: relax into the warm bath of slander and take the draught of diminished hope.

Think about it, Al. Maybe it's time to get your heart into the right place, if you know what I mean. Harden it. Stop the bleeding. As we have been told so many times by the Coulter O'Reilly Hannity hydra, there are only two kinds of people in the world: the deserving people who own and run everything because they deserve to, and the undeserving people who are lazy and will never have anything and therefore don't deserve to. You're successul. You deserve your fame and money. You worked hard for it. Luck had nothing to do with it. Not your family either. It was all you, you Rugged Individualist.

So why not gratefully abandon yourself to delicious knee-jerk patriotism and flag reverence of the Fox Network? Remember that war is the health of the state. Punch your fist in the air as the Fox tools toadie to the cynical oligarchy which has swallowed up the once-honorable Republican party. Shout huzzahs to the perfection of the cabalistic policies of George Jr., Cheney, Perle, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Bremer and the corporatist state. It'll feel great. Really, Al. And you deserve it, Al. You're proof that the American system works, aren't you?

Whew! Boy that feels good, that "us" and "them" stuff. The deserving and the undeserving thing. You can almost see how the Coulter's and Hannity's get carried away with that stuff. Kind of gets you all puffed up, don't it? But anyway, seriously, Al, by engaging in this dogfight, this parsing of truth and untruth, you're in mortal danger of becoming a pawn in their game of one-upmanship. This is a hard game to win.

I'm not saying you shouldn't have done it, or shouldn't continue to, but consider this, too: the best parts of your book are not the sections where you talk how the conservatives have shredded the social safety net and made off with the family silver, or the parts where you show how Americans have been sold down the trickle-down river, but rather those humane and decent parts of the book where you, for instance, talk about your long and abiding friendship with Paul Wellstone, or talk about the inspiration you find in the American government programs of the New Deal when social justice and equality were embodied in the social safety net, the one that was there for your wife's family when her father was killed in the war.

It is the language of compassion, of community and love that best refutes the devil-take-the-hindmost ethos of Supply Side Jesus. (By the way I suspect that's one of the reasons you like Clinton so much -- he knew how to strike the chord of compassion in most decent Americans, whether Democrat or Republican. This was the gift that drove his enemies wild with hatred: the common touch conservatives claim to have, but don't).

So what if Hannity doesn't have the number one show on television as he claims? Or that O'Reilly never won those two Peabody he claims he did? Until someone with similar bandwidth can get up and slap down that hydra, head by head with the human language of real compassion -- and short-circuit the sound-bite, tough-love, focus-group language of compassionate conservatism -- we're going to be forever treated to Murdoch's Manichean world of good and evil: it simply plays so much better on television.

You're right, someone has to put the lie to the liars, and this is a good start, and we appreciate it. But the other, and, perhaps the more powerful weapon you have at your disposal is your decency and humanity, especially your gift for admitting your own zealousness might sometimes have led you astray. This weapon is powerful because, as you point out, Americans prefer moral persons to scoundrels and liars. And Americans very much want to act morally toward their neighbors, their communities, their country and the world. They are beginning to awaken to the deceptions of these venal and vituperative hacks and their political puppet masters. The weapons of humility, decency and humanity are powerful too because those who have arrayed themselves against the best interests of America are people who are sorely lacking in these estimable traits. You and TeamFranken have the good left jab; use it to keep the bums off-balance while you work on the haymaker.