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sor Condoleezza Rice. (I’m still hoping to hear back from the President!) I have found that kids respond best to total honesty. Don’t be afraid to share a moment when you were tempted to have sex, but were able to overcome your urges through willpower and strength of character. Be funny! Did a young woman ever think you were homosexual just because you wouldn’t have sex with her? Be serious! Were you ever taunted and made to feel bad or “uncool” because of your choice? But most of all, be real. Kids can sense a phony a mile away. I can tell by your passionate advocacy of abstinence education that you will have a lot to offer this book. Thank you for considering my project. I hope you can find time to inspire the next generation of sex-free leaders.

Sincerely,

Al Franken

34

Abstinence Heroes II

My letter went out to:

William J. Bennett

Ralph Reed

Pat Robertson

Tommy Thompson

Rod Paige

Andrew Card

Dick and Lynn Cheney

Trent Lott

Arlen Specter

President George W. Bush

Condoleezza Rice

Donald Rumsfeld

Cardinal Edward Egan

Tom DeLay

Newt Gingrich

John Ashcroft

Don Nichols

Phyllis Schlafly

Rick Santorum

Bill Frist

Roy Blunt

Dennis Hastert

Sean Hannity

James Dobson

Ari Fleischer

Karl Rove

General Norman Schwarzkopf

Although I received a few polite regrets, no one had an abstinence story to share with the readers of Savin’ It! Also, I got in trouble for using Harvard letterhead.

35

“By Far the Vast Majority of My Tax Cuts Go to Those at the Bottom”

You’ll remember from Chapter One that in the first debate with Gore then candidate Bush said of his tax cuts, “By far the vast majority of the help goes to those at the bottom end of the economic ladder.” In the South Carolina primary debate with John McCain he said, “By far the vast majority of my tax cuts go to those at the bottom end of the spectrum.” As you can see, he loved this line. He repeated versions of it everywhere.

Shall we parse this statement? Let’s start at the end and work backward. “Bottom end of the spectrum.” What’s that gotta mean? At least the bottom 50 percent, right? Otherwise, the word “bottom” in this context is meaningless. He couldn’t have meant the bottom 99 percent, could he? That would just be crazy.

How about “majority”? Well, that’s unambiguous. It means more than 50 percent. So, so far, at the very least, the bottom half of the American people are getting 50 percent, plus a dollar, of Bush’s tax cut.

Now let’s add “vast.” “Vast majority.” “Vast” is big. Huge. Like the “vast” reaches of space. Very, very big. So, what’s a “vast majority?” 90 percent? 85? It’s subjective, I admit. So let’s go with a very conservative 70 percent. At this point in our parsing, the bottom 50 percent are getting 70 (give or take) percent of Bush’s tax cut.

But wait. It’s not just a “vast majority.” It’s by far a vast majority. Okay, let’s think about that. What does “by far” mean? When you say a restaurant is “by far” the best steak house in town, you’re really saying something. When you tell your spouse that sex with her or him is “by far” the best sex you’ve ever had, you may not be telling the truth—much in the same way that Bush wasn’t in this case—but you are definitely trying to score some points. So I’m going to say that “by far the vast majority of my tax cuts go to those at the bottom” would mean that the poorest 50 percent were getting somewhere in the neighborhood of 85 to 99 percent of Bush’s tax cut.

That’s fair, right? That’s a fair parsing.

As I said before, the bottom 60 percent got 14.7 percent of that tax cut.

On the Hannity and Colmes episode immediately following the last State of the Union address, Sean Hannity described the President’s 2003 tax plan (which contained Bush’s third tax cut) in his confident, unequivocal way: “Ninety-two million Americans will get $1,100 back in their pocket.”

Of course, he was lying. Or was he? Maybe he was just confused. Sean may be evil, but he’s not smart. I don’t dispute that ninety-two million Americans