Al Franken

Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right

by Al Franken

Allen Lane Press, 2003

379 pp, $35 (pb)

Review by Phil Shannon

http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/31385

It's a very old joke — "How do you tell when a politician is lying?" — but the punchline — "Their lips are moving" — still hits the mark. And illegal, resource-grabbing invasions generate epic lip-moving marathons. Al Franken was one of those deceived by the Coalition of the Lying's lies about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and terrorist links.

A liberal political satirist, Franken went on Clear Channel, the Christian right's radio station network, bagging out Hans Blix (the UN weapons inspector who was reporting the absence of any WMD in Iraq) and the Dixie Chicks (who had confessed they were ashamed that President George Bush came from the same state as them).

A year later, a chastened Franken offers a mea culpa in Lies and the Lying Liars who tell them, his scathingly funny attack on the Bush administration and its cheer-leading right-wing media. Franken is angry that he was lied to about the non-existent threat from Iraq and embarrassed that he had believed the sermons emanating from Bush and his apostles, which were based on selectively chosen intelligence they knew to be shaky or fabricated.

Much Bush humour, says Franken, portrays the president as dim-witted but likeable because of his howlers ("more and more of our imports are coming from overseas"). Franken, however, thinks that Bush is much more than a "dumb-arse goof-off" because he knowingly lies to pursue a reactionary agenda that "serves the interests of his corporate backers" at the expense of everyone else.

In the 2000 US presidential election, Bush lied about his draft-dodging, drink-driving, coke-snorting past and about how he got rich — by illegally "skirting securities law selling Harken Energy shares just before it was about to tank" whilst a member of the company's audit committee. Lying is endemic to the thief, and Bush, having stolen his wealth and then the election, touted "the vast majority" of his US$1.6 trillion tax cuts as going to the "bottom end of the spectrum" when in fact 50% of the total will go to the richest 1% of families.

The art of lying comes as easily to the capitalist politician as ocean-going to a whale. In his first Earth Day speech, Bush promised to leave the grandchildren of the USA with a legacy of "clean water, clean air and natural beauty". Bush's deputy secretary of the interior knew the real score, however, selling off public lands to oil, gas and mining industries whilst receiving money from his former employers in these oil, gas and mining industries. This racket of industry polluters now in charge of forest, water, land and environmental regulation is a hallmark of the Bush administration.

The "effluent flowing from the sewer of right-wing dishonesty" is a rich source of toxic liars for a vigilant satirist. Bush's senior political advisor Karl Rove swims into Franken's view, followed by Florida secretary of state Katherine Harris, whose political purging from the electoral rolls of thousands of Democrat-voting African-Americans in Florida, and lying about it, stole the election for Bush (Bush got only 8% of the black vote — unsurprisingly for a racist Republican Party where one of the rare black delegates at the party's national convention in 2000 was six times asked by white Republican delegates to fetch them a taxi or carry their luggage).

Cheer on Franken as he "pisses off a neo-con" (Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defence) at a White House Press Correspondents' dinner, or baits the conservative Christian Coalition and fundamentalist tele-evangelists (Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson), dangerous nuts all, who inspire much of Bush's reactionary social policy — from cutting off funding for international family planning organisations tha5t even mention abortion, to restrictions on funding stem-cell research (thus impeding the search for cures for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other diseases), whilst pushing abstinence-only sex education (which does more to prevent condom use than to prevent sex).

The lies of the Bush administration multiply in volume and virulence in the growth culture of the right-wing media. Franken, armed only with his thirst for comic material, stoically reads, listens to and debates the "nutcases" and "attack journalists" of right-wing talk radio where reign the likes of Bill O'Reilly — "get out of my studio before I tear you to fucking pieces", was O'Reilly's parting shot to the anti-war son of a 9/11 victim.

The most magic delivery of these lie-spinners is their claim that the "mainstream media" have a liberal, left-wing bias. This is really how the far, and not so far, right see much of the corporate and state media — even token radical dissent or mild departure from government-ordained ideological orthodoxy is intolerable to the right. One would think that the airwaves offer a 24/7 diet of John Pilger or Noam Chomsky whilst US politicians and military spokespersons struggle to get a word in.

Satirising the pathological crazies and Bush maniacs of the US right is tremendous fun in the hands of Franken with his vigorous wit. Only the satire-impaired could fail to be entertained. Unfortunately, Franken's crap-detector goes off-line when the pile of steaming manure being examined has been deposited by the US Democratic Party. You will wait in vain for the punchline when Franken refers to former US President, Bill Clinton, as a "champion of the war on terror" (perhaps only the people of Sudan appreciated the irony of their pharmaceutical factory being destroyed by Clinton's 'anti-terrorist' bombs in 1998), and don't bother looking for any sarcasm in Franken's assessment of the Clinton-Gore "legacy of peace and prosperity" (again the joke is on the half million Iraqi children killed by Democrat-administered sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s).

Franken, who entertains US troops overseas in US military bases and who performs corporate gigs, has no fundamental problem with US imperialism or capitalist economy — providing it's in the hands of his satire-immune Democrats. Franken proclaims his (and the Democrats') patriotism whilst internationalism takes a back seat. Putting nation before class, however, means that Franken, and the Democrats, fall for the sucker punch whenever the flag of imperialist aggression is waved. Franken fell for the lies on Iraq (and, despite his sheepish apology for being conned, still thinks the US troops occupying Iraq are "nation-building").

Franken is as funny as Michael Moore (if somewhat cruder) but, unlike Moore, he has set up a no-go area — US capitalism and its Democrat political managers. Yes, Bush and his neo-cons are mad and bad, but the problem, capitalism, is way larger than just the extremist right-wing cabal currently in the White House. Franken doesn't analyse why Bush and the capitalist media lie, because the answer would get to the heart of capitalism (whatever capitalist party governs the show) — selfish and bloodthirsty regard only for profit for the few.

Imagine Bush being slipped a truth drug and saying "My tax cuts are to benefit the rudely wealthy, not you peasants. My war against Iraq is to liberate Iraqi wealth and oil for US corporations, and to hell with you and your opinions, and here's a bunch of stuff we made up about WMD to cover our tracks." Nothing good for Bush and the US capitalist class could come from such honesty. These serial lie-pushers (in parliament and the corporate media) deserve all the ridicule they get.