Ivins, Franken roast the right
Neighborhood focus: WedgwoodMolly Ivins, Al Franken give ‘em hell over media manipulation
“I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth, and they thought it was hell.”
– Harry S Truman
And that’s just what Al Franken and Molly Ivins did. During an appearance on September 21 at McCaw Hall, site of the former Seattle Center opera house, they gave Bush and his right-wing media supporters a real roasting. It would have made Beelzebub himself proud, had he been able to attend (it seems he was out of town working in Iraq).
Ivins was introduced as “a rare beacon of truth, sanity, and common sense,” while Franken carried the title “debunker of misrepresentation and pomposity on the right.” Together, they were labeled “miraculous for finding humor in the Bush presidency.” Miraculous indeed, as the state of the American economy and foreign policy has offered more cause for tears than laughter these days.
Both Ivins and Franken were fresh off book tours promoting their respective books, Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush’s America and LIES (and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them): A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.
Franken’s book reached the top of Amazon.com’s bestseller list immediately after C-Span televised an angry confrontation between Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly and Franken. An incident in the greenroom prior to the broadcast was related by Franken: “I don’t look like that,” screamed O’Reilly, pointing to photo of himself on the cover of Franken’s book. “I look like that,” pointing to himself. Franken apologized, saying it was the only photo they could find in the public domain and that perhaps O’Reilly would be kind enough to send over a better photo. “Something of you lying… anything with your mouth open,” mused Franken.
The subsequent lawsuit, which charged Franken with infringing on Fox News’ copyrighted slogan “Fair and Balanced,” only served to increase book sales. Franken said his publisher’s letter responding to Fox should have said, “ Please, please, please sue us.” Speaking of his now celebrated confrontation with O’Reilly, Franken noted, “He couldn’t even tell me to shut up without lying. He’s an amazing, psychotic dick.” Fox’s lawsuit was quickly dismissed by the judge as wholly without merit. As Franken noted with satisfaction, “It was literally laughed out of court, not figuratively, literally, wall to wall laughter.”
Franken, who clearly couldn’t resist getting a few more laughs at O’Reilly’s expense, had the crowd in hysterics while reading from “Those Who Trespass,” a suspense thriller O’Reilly wrote in 1998. “She had signaled her desire by removing her shirt and skirt.... He gently teased her by licking the areas around her most sensitive erogenous zone,” Franken read. This got such a laugh he read the whole paragraph— twice.
Molly Ivins, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and columnist, has spent much of her career in Texas, along the way becoming America’s foremost expert on the life and times of George W. Bush (known to Ivins readers as “Shrub”).
Ivins described Bush as “not mean, not stupid,” but a man whose religiosity and anti-intellectualism are real but whose machismo is faked and who has “huge blinders of class.”
“When he had a chance to play for real he got his daddy to get him into the Air National Guard, into the notorious ‘Champagne Unit.’” There, Bush joined other sons of prominent Texas politicos like John Connally and Lloyd Benson, along with a few black people who just happened to be members of the Dallas Cowboys.
As a longtime Bush observer, Ivins claimed to have discerned a pattern in his career: “If Bush praises it, it’s the kiss of death. When he vowed to support the LIHA (Low Income Housing Account) program, if you knew Bush, you knew it was screwed.”
Addressing Bush’s propensity to call things the exact opposite of what they really are, a simple recitation of a few Bush slogans and program names brought forth howls of laughter: Compassionate Conservatism (chuckles), No Child Left Behind (laughter), Clear Skies (hilarity), the Patriot Act (near convulsions).
Lest the impression be left that the night consisted of mostly one liners and name calling, be assured, dear reader, that all charges of deception and/or stupidity were fully documented and established. (If there is any doubt, see LIES, complete with footnotes and 11 pages of endnotes.) O’Reilly’s lies about where he grew up and the economic circumstances of his upbringing were exposed by the testimony of his mother.
As hilarious as all this was, the underlying point of the Ivins-Franken show was anything but funny:
Bush and his supporters have turned shameless lying into an industry. Funded by billionaires like Richard Mellon-Scaife and Rupert Murdoch, the right wing has launched an assault on truth and decency in political discourse. As their grip on the mass media tightens, our freedom to dissent or even know the truth is diminished day by day.
Right-wing propaganda: that’s how we got into Iraq and that’s what will keep us there. And that’s not funny.