Sure, have it YOUR way then.
How's this sound from a murderer: "My biggest regret is killing the dude with a letter opener from the Shorenstein Center."
Or maybe from a thief: "My biggest regret is that I stole the car while wearing a Shorenstein Center T-shirt."
The bottom line IN HIS OWN WORDS is that his "biggest regret" is merely the vehicle (stationary) he used to perpetrate his lie.
Seems to me a normal guy's biggest regret would be that he LIED.
Yet the author of "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right" doesn't consider his own LYING to be worthy of his "biggest regret".
You can dance around it all you like but the guy's own words hoist himself on his own petard.
What is the book about? Well, can we trust his publisher?
From the Publisher
Al Franken, "one of our savviest satirists" (People), takes on the issues, the politicians, and the pundits in one of the most anticipated books of the year.
For the first time since his own classic Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations, Al Franken trains his subversive wit directly on the contemporary political scene. Now, the "master of political humor" (Washington Times) destroys the myth of liberal bias in the media, and exposes how the Right shamelessly tries to deceive the rest of us. Exposing lies is his goal, right?
No one is spared as Al uses the Right's own words against them. Not the Bush administration and their rhetorical hypocrisy.Say, Al, speaking of hypocrisy... Not Ann Coulter and her specious screeds. Not the new generation of talk-radio hosts, and not Bill O'Reilly, Roger Ailes, and the entire Fox network. This is the book Al Franken fans have been waiting for (and his foes have been dreading). Timely, provocative, unfailingly honest, and always funny, Lies is sure to become the most talked about book of political humor in 2003 and beyond.
Author Biography: Al Franken is the bestselling author of Oh, the Things I Know!, Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations, Why Not Me?, and I'm Good Enough, I'm Smart Enough and Doggone It, People Like Me!
Or maybe check the NY Daily News review? That ought to tell us what it's about!
Frankly, book's funny
Comic's riff on right aims to expose 'lies'
By SHERRYL CONNELLY
DAILY NEWS BOOK EDITOR
Al Franken's latest book was judged by its cover on Friday when a federal court denied Fox News Channel's request for an injunction blocking its sale because certain words were used in the title.
Now comes the time to consider "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right" (Dutton, $24.95) for its content.
Defended as a parody against Fox's claim to the phrase "fair and balanced," which it trademarked in 1998 to describe its coverage, the book is funny.
Not everyone will be laughing, though.
As with his best seller "Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations," in "Lies" (already No.1 on Amazon.com's best-seller list) Franken launches a murderous assault on the right.
The book's purpose, in Franken's own words: "I want it to get [President] Bush out of the White House."
What Franken has over his combatants Ann Coulter and Fox talk show hosts Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity, all of whom are major targets in "Lies" as well as best-selling authors, is that as a satirist, he's free to roam from fact to fiction. ah.. that explains it! He does this all the time because he has the satirist license!
One section, for instance, is a bawdy tall tale of how former Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris was seduced into delivering the 2000 election to Bush by a Republican lobbyist with a talent for finding the erogenous zones.
But he offers as nonfiction the proposition that Coulter and company peddle malicious fiction as truth - and get away with it. Say Al.. what would you call peddling a non-existent survey and presenting it as truth to the recipent?
The chapter heading "Ann Coulter: Nutcase" only suggests the venom Franken spews at "the hysterical diva of the reigning right." Using a research team made available to him through Harvard's Shorenstein Center on the Press, where he was a fellow, he dissects her controversial best seller "Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right."
It ain't pretty. Nor is his takedown of O'Reilly, whom he brands as "O'Lie-lly." This year, the two had a large and loud verbal brawl at a publishing event. In his turn, Hannity is labeled a conservative henchman "doing the dirty work for the Bush administration."
Franken is sounding a call to battle in "Lies." "We are the country," he writes, speaking of liberals, "but they control it." He insists, "We have to fight. ... We have to fight them with the truth." And, of course, the most useful weapon in the arsenal of a truth-teller... is a lie! Al, you are SO clever!
In "Lies," Franken, who sometimes delights in referring to himself as merely a comic, stands tall and takes aim. In today's theater of acrimonious politics, he has major box-office appeal.
All of which is to say Franken's performance politics can make it hard to distinguish his vitriol from that of his enemies. Yeah, no kidding. He's BECOME what he accuses his enemies of being
I'm glad he's YOUR hero.. not mine. I also find it really entertaining how some of you can try to defend him in this instance. He screwed up royally; honest "fair and balanced" men would admit it and move on.
