About this title: Former Saturday Night Live writer and popular radio host Al Franken directs his satiric skills at two large targets: the George W. Bush administration and the right-wing media embodied by Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, and others. While Franken is as outrageous here as he was in his previous RUSH LIMBAUGH IS A BIG FAT IDIOT AND OTHER OBSERVATIONS, he is scrupulous about getting his facts straight and his quotes verbatim. He was taken very seriously by Fox News Channel which initiated a lawsuit just prior to publication, claiming copyright infringement because his subtitle borrows their "fair and ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
"I definitely enjoyed this book, although I understand some of the criticism of it. Since there are a lot of jokes in here, sometimes it's hard to tell what he's joking about and what is serious. Sometimes he includes little footnotes that explain where he was joking, and he should do that a little more often. Some of this is clearly filler, like the short story about what Bush would be like in vietnam, or the supply-side jesus cartoons. But a lot of it is really good stuff. Franken and his team of researchers found a lot of flat out lies in Bill O'Reilly's transcripts, and Ann Coulter's books, and it's fun watching them debunk them. Plus they're such stupid lies too. Like Bill O'Reilly lying about Inside Edition winning two peabody awards when it hasn't won any, and then lying AGAIN and saying that he never said they won peabody awards in the first place. Or Ann Coulter lying about the New York Times not reporting Dale Earnhart's death for two days when any idiot could have looked on the front page of the paper in the archives and seen an article on the front page the day after he died. When Franken gets into the Bush tax cut lies, the book loses a little steam because really he's just calling it lies when it's just misleading phrasing, and you know that Franken himself is phrasing things in a certain way to make a point. But generally, this is a really quick, funny read. Way to call out the lying, lying liars."
"Political satire at its most biting, Al Franken has the drawn-out dead pan punch lines of Jon Stewart in a written medium more conducive to expansion on things like historical context, political backlash, and a chance to reflect on his own role in the public arena - a task he accomplishes in ways sometimes a bit too self-aggrandizing, but most often earnest and simple. His conflicts with O'Reilly and Coulter got a little too personal - there were a couple of chapters that felt like he was trying to get some free therapy out of writing out some rage - but they were always funny, and there was always a salient point to the telling, which is more than I can say for Coulter or O'Reilly. He has a sense of honest humility and tells a story about his intent to pull one over on the students and faculty of Bob Jones University that ends in him feeling shamefaced for trying to dogmatically attack another's system of beliefs. Good show, Franken."
"Hilarious and devastating. Here is a funny treatment of serious topics. I found it ironic, for example, that comedian Al Franken explains the inheritance tax better than any serious commentator I have encountered.
The title, alone, won my heart with its teasing reference to Fox News' "Fair and Balanced" tagline. Says who? Says Fox. Their smug and shameless self-promotion reminds me of the old Firesign Theater routine for George Tirebiter, political candidate. In a political ad, Tirebiter assures voters, intoning seriously: "You can believe me, because I never lie, and I'm always right."
I'd love to hear Bill O'Reilly use that line. It couldn't be any more pompous than his contention that he is "fair and balanced"."
"Al Franken - a fairly gifted writer! His genious really comes through in this examination of our current political climate, and the utterly absurd masquerading of info-manipulation as some form of journalism.
Irrefutably and exhaustively footnoted, this is a smack in the face to the convetional wisdoms of the the talking head drivel - you get 'em, AL!
Delivered with a sarcasm and pompacity that only he can deliver, Al Franken makes minced-meat of nearly every neo-conservative arguement ever foisted on the American public. One small criticism is that some of the larger issues are not examined at all, such as the role of the federal reserve and the 9-11 sham.
Overal a quick and worthwhile laugh of a book that will leave you wondering how really lame the SCLM really is."
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