Product Description:

Having previously dissected the factual inaccuracies of a single bellicose talk show host in Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot, Al Franken takes his fight to a larger foe: President George W. Bush, the Bush Administration, Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, and scores of other conservatives whom, he says, are playing loose with the facts. It's a lot of ground to cover, as evidenced by the 43 chapters in Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, but the results are often entertaining and insightful. Franken occupies a unique place in the modern political dialogue as perhaps the media's only comedy writer and performer who is also a Harvard fellow as well as a liberal political commentator. This unique and vaguely lonely position lends a charming quixotic quality to adventures such as a tense encounter with the Fox News staff at the National Press Club, a challenge to fisticuffs with National Review Editor Rich Lowry, and an oddly sweet admissions visit to ultra-conservative Bob Jones University (with a young research assistant posing as his son when Franken's real-life son refuses to participate in the charade). Less useful are comic book dramatizations of 'Supply Side Jesus' and a fictitious Vietnam War story featuring the numerous righties who, Franken intimates, improperly avoided service. And Franken's criticisms of conservative talk show hosts Sean Hannity, O’Reilly, and columnist Coulter, while admirable in their attention to detail, fail to shed much new light on people who have built careers on broad arguments and relentless self-aggrandizement. But Franken is at his best, and most compellingly readable, when he backs off the wackiness and the personal grudges and writes about more personal matters such as the political circus surrounding the memorial service of the late Senator Paul Wellstone. But even on these more serious topics, Franken's wit is still present and, in fact, grows sharper. In a time when much political discourse is composed of rage and shouting, it's refreshing that Al Franken is able to shout in a witty manner. --John Moe

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: 3.88 out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Fox News made a big mistake
I watch almost no television, so, prior to reading this book, I had not had the pleasure of seeing much of the incendiary commentary Al Franken skewers with such deftness in this riotous and irreverent work. Like others who have reviewed it, my interest came about almost soley because of Fox News' efforts to squelch Franken. Make no mistake, this book probably won't change the mind of a single person who believes what the apologists for the Bush administration spew on these programs, but it is an amazingly fact-filled and hilarious indictment of them for anyone willing to consider that, just maybe, this administration and it's cronies aren't all that honest.

The book does stumble occasionally, like the rather vitrioloic, and in my opinion overdone, fictional story of many of Franken's ... Read More

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- Time To Take Off The Blinders
I am a conservative, I belong to the NRA, and I am quite certain that Al and I would disagree in our interpretations of the intent of the Second Amendment. And if we were to debate this topic, it might even turn into a heated discussion. But ultimately I can respect Mr. Frankin's right to his beliefs on gun control without labeling him a "commie" or a Socialist. And I feel quite certain that Mr. Frankin could respect my right to my beliefs on the right to keep and bear arms without accusing me of being a Nazi. Folks, in case anyone has forgotten, this is what America is supposed to be about.

As a conservative American, I do not want to be associated with the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, or, for that matter, George W. Bush and his cronies. Since 9/11, these demagogues ... Read More

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- It's Called S-A-T-I-R-E
I think Webster's definitions says it best..."satire 1: a literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn 2: trenchant wit, irony or sarcasm used to expose and discredit vice or folly". Al Franken shines at this form of humor.
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them is an entertaining and humorous read. One bookstore put it in it's Humor section. I think "Humor" is the best place for Al Franken's work. I think most of the 1 star reviews I've read just don't like Al Franken's politics and/or they haven't read the book.

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