Lies & the Lying Liars Who Tell Them_ A Fair & Balanced Look at the Right - Al Franken [0]
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Published by Dutton, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First printing, September 2003
Electronic edition, September 2003
Copyright © Al Franken, Inc., 2003
“Operation Chickenhawk” and “Supply Side Jesus” illustrations © copyright 2003 by Don Simpson
TeamFranken photo © Martha Stewart
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Also by Al Franken
I’m Good Enough, I’m Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me!
Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations
Why Not Me?
The Inside Story of the Making and Unmaking of the Franken Presidency
Oh, the Things I Know!
A Guide to Success, or, Failing That, Happiness
To my wife, Franni, who’s been screaming about this stuff for years and believed in the book. I love you so much. And even more importantly, you love me.
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
Although I wrote this book in a spirit of dispassionate inquiry, I cannot expect my critics to respond in kind. My right-wing detractors will undoubtedly tell you that I’m an “obnoxious prick,” a “smug asshole,” and a “clear and present threat to our national security.” I will not stoop to dignify such calumny with a response, except to say that Condoleezza Rice should watch her mouth.
More imaginative critics might charge that, “like Newt Gingrich, [I] had an affair with a Supreme Court justice.” This kind of attack, which is totally irrelevant to the political content of this book, exposes how desperate my enemies have become. As the great Joseph Welch said to Joe McCarthy, “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
Unlike Senator McCarthy and his intellectual heirs, Ann Coulter and Howard Stern, I do have a sense of decency. And that is why I’ve decided to reveal a “dirty little secret” about this book that my critics are too lazy and stupid to figure out on their own. I acknowledge—no, I proudly acknowledge—that I did not write this book alone.
No author ever writes a book entirely by himself. That would be impossible. Just ask Dennis Rodman or John Updike. Like making a movie or building a long suspension bridge, writing a book is very much a team effort. And that is why I think it’s important to state clearly, right up front, the methodology used to research this book, and to give credit to the ragtag bunch of Harvard misfits I’ve come to affectionately call TeamFranken.
It all started when Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government asked me to serve as a fellow at its Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy. After my varied and celebrated career in television, movies,