Lies. Talking heads. Talking points. Push polls. Bald-faced lies. Sound bites. Guilt by association. Lies that mangle statistics. Attack politics. Lies of omission. Negative ads. Bumper sticker mentality. Lies of commission. The mouth that roared. Out-of-context quotes. Pit bulls on crack. These are some of the things that have gone wrong with political discourse in the USA today. Well, that last one is actually the name of a punk band in Denver a few years back, but everything else is real. And the greatest nation on the face of the earth suffers for it.

For the past two decades, the standard-bearers of the political right have adopted a simple strategy, a technique that has met with astounding success. It's a diabolically simple little concept, a method that shouldn't work but never fails to succeed. Want to know what it is?

If you repeat the same simple message loud enough and often enough, people forget that they were originally discussing a bigger and more complicated issue.

Want an example? Look at today's (October 30,2003) newspaper. In the face of rising public concern that troops in Iraq are in more danger than we'd been led to believe, right-wing commentators have almost unanimously declared, "We are making progress. Look at the schools we've rebuilt!" Letter after letter to the newspaper from the dittoheads... call after call to the talk shows... sound bite after sound bite, from McClellan to Bush: they all repeat the mantra, "The schools! The schools!" I've noticed, though, that they never give any numbers - just how many schools are we talking about, anyway?

Now this technique might not be counter to a spirit of democracy if that simple message were truth - but what about when it's not? Want some examples of those simple lies in the face of complicated truths? You need look no further than Al Franken's latest book, Lies (and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them): a Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.


Who's a Liar?

According to Franken, the following are liars: Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Bernie Goldberg, Richard Ailes, Jerry Falwell, Britt Hume, George Bush, Ari Fleischer, Karl Rove, Richard Scaife, Rush Limbaugh... you get the picture. And Franken takes each one of them to the woodshed and opens a can of left-wing whupass on 'em (metaphorically speaking, of course). You go, Al - it's about time!


What's a Lie?

Oooo, that's a tough one, best explained by an old joke "Q: How do you know when a lawyer is lying? A: His lips are moving." Well, Franken's compiled about 400 pages of text - plus a few pictures and charts and graphs, a matrix or two, and even some cartoons - in which he takes his targets to task. Essentially, he provides evidence that, like the lawyers of the joke, his targets can be assumed to be lying whenever they open their mouths or touch their keyboards. His method? He quotes their lies, and then rebuts them - with references. Want an example?

Ann Coulter: in her book Slander, Liberal Lies About the American Right Coulter states that the Washington bureau chief for Newsweek, Evan Thomas, is the son of a four-time Socialist Party candidate for President. He's not. You know how Franken figured this out? He didn't look him up in Who's Who and he didn't google a genealogy site. He called Thomas on the phone and asked him. Want another? Coulter also states that The New York Yimes didn't mention the death of NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt on the front page until two days after his fatal crash. You know what Franken did to debunk this? He published a copy of the front page from the day after Earnhardt's death. It's in there - on the front page. Want more?

Bill O'Reilly: He's consistently stated that he's a registered Independent. Franken published a photocopy of O'Reilly's voter registration card, which has the box for "Republican" checked. O'Reilly has since claimed that it was "an innocent mistake." Yeah. Sure. Did anyone else hear O'Reilly's Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross, in which he simply stormed out when he couldn't bully her on a transcontinental telephone call? If you missed it, it's here: http://freshair.npr.org/day_fa.jhtml?displayValue=day&todayDate=10/08/2003

Lies like these are small potatoes - merely background. It's the big lies that these same people - a reigning diva of the right, a self-proclaimed no-spin doctor and their brethren (and cistern*) - promulgate every day that are harmful to democracy. What are these lies? Here's a sample:

The average American will get almost $1100 back from the Bush tax cuts. While not actually a lie, this statement takes advantage of the public's gullibility and lack of statistical savvy. Look at it another way: if Alex Rodriguez and I were in the same room, our average annual salary would be $12.5 million, give or take - and Alex makes $25 million of the total (guess how much I make of it). If there were two people with my salary and one with Alex's, the median salary would be a far, far smaller number. The average (or "mean") is sometimes a lousy measure of central tendency.

The media have a liberal bias. Granted, reporters have a greater tendency to be liberal on social issues, but they're not the ones who decide which stories get published or get air time. The editors and publishers - those who set the tone of the media - are far more socially conservative than the people who write stories. Want evidence? In the 2000 presidential election, 56% of articles about Al Gore were negative, 13% positive. For Bush, the numbers were 49% negative and 24% positive (per the Columbia School of Journalism and Pew Charitable Trust)

The military was gutted by the Clinton administration. The US invaded and (mostly subdued) Afghanistan in a matter of weeks, beginning in fall of 2001. The first Bush administration military budget went into effect in October 2002 - and that budget, by the way, cut veteran's benefits and reduced pay increases for the military. Oh, well...


Why Franken?

A comedian and former writer for Saturday Night Live (where he was also occasional onscreen talent), Al Franken is one of a handful of liberal commentators who haven't run screaming from the country or simply hidden in fear of dittohead brickbats. With fellow travelers (I use that phrase deliberately) like Molly Ivins (author of Bushwacked) and Jim Hightower (author of Thieves in High Places), Franken has on occasion attempted to start a network of radio commentators to offset the likes of O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Colson, et al. So far, it hasn't gotten off the ground.

The Minnesota native - a friend of the late Senator Paul Wellstone - has actively campaigned for truth in the media since the dawn of the takeover of the airwaves by conservative talk show hosts. This is his fifth book - he's also the author of Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations and Why Not Me. He's also appeared on television as a political commentator.


Worth a Read?

Well, sure. I'm not a fan of Franken's brand of humor - I blame him for the current humorless state of SNL. He has always had a tendency to beat dead horses; this time it's the frequent repetition of a soft-core porn passage from O'Reilly's novel. He also includes a couple of chapters of not particularly funny satire. There's a graphic novel called the "Gospel of Supply Side Jesus" and a long passage called "Operation Chickenhawk: Episode One" that places O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Bush, Clarence Thomas, and other Vietnam-era stay-at-homes under the command of (veterans) John Kerry and Al Gore. Stupid...but it does make a point.

But humor is only the vehicle here - it's the message that's important. We can be certain that Franken and his researchers found plenty of things that Coulter, Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Hannity, and others wrote that are demonstrably true. But that's not the message here, so they cherrypick the bad stuff. The message that Franken wishes to deliver is that our society is being buried underneath snappy slogans and "solutions" that fit into sound bites and bumper stickers, "solutions" that are not necessarily the truth. And these "solutions" are being repeated ad nauseam by loudmouths and bullies until they've been drummed into the minds of their listeners. For this message, I thank Al Franken. I don't like lies, either.


Parting Shot

Fox Broadcasting threatened to sue Franken for using the phrase "fair and balanced" in his title. In case you've missed it, they use that phrase to describe their own news and commentary. Wonder if FAIR has ever threatened to sue Fox?





previously reviewed item mentioned in the text:

Thieves in High Places, by Jim Hightower


* to quote the redoubtable Foghorn Leghorn, "It's a joke, son."




Recommended: Yes