Lies & the Lying Liars Who Tell Them_ A Fair & Balanced Look at the Right - Al Franken [138]
How do we get it back? We have to fight. But we can’t fight like they do. People say that Rush and Fox and their ilk are popular because they’re entertaining. And if you can stomach that stuff, I suppose they are. But a part of their entertainment value comes from their willingness to lie and distort. They fight with lies.
We can’t do that. We have to fight them with the truth. Our added entertainment value will have to come from being funny and attractive. And passionate. And idealistic. But also smart. And not milquetoast-y. We’ve got to be willing to throw their lies in their face.
When we say, “Hey, Dr. Wolfowitz, didn’t the Clinton military do a great job in Iraq?”
And they say, “Fuck you!”
We’ve gotta come right back and say, “No. Fuck you!” That’s how we’re going to win this thing.
Truth to power, baby.
Recently, flying back from one of my widely acclaimed corporate speeches, I sat next to an avuncular Methodist minister. I told him about my book. He smiled warmly and responded with an interesting nugget from the New Testament. “Do you know what God’s punishment is for liars?” he asked me.
Guessing wildly, I tried, “They’re turned into donkeys?”
“No,” he said. “God’s punishment for liars is that they believe their own lies.”
I thought that would be a great ending for this book. They believe their own lies. How fitting. That’s just the kind of thing God would think of.
So I asked God where exactly in the Bible he said that. God told me that the Methodist minister had had his head up his ass. It doesn’t say that in the Bible.
And, in a way, that’s an even better ending. Because I don’t think they do believe their own lies. Anybody, even a Methodist minister, can make an innocent mistake and say something that isn’t true. But lying is when you intentionally deceive.
While it might not seem like I’m changing the tone when I accuse my friends on the right of being liars, my hope is that, if we keep calling them on their calculated dishonesty, their dishonesty will lose its effectiveness.
Then O’Reilly and company will have to resort to Plan B: name-calling. Which, I think, will expose them for what they are. Stupid bastards.
SOURCES AND NOTES
1—Hummus
A Nexis search for “Gore AND James Lee Witt AND lie OR mislead OR inaccurate” between 10/3/00 (the debate) and 11/5/00 (Election Day) results in sixty-eight hits. A search using the same dates for “Bush AND vast majority w/s tax cuts AND lie OR mislead OR inaccurate” results in two hits, each of which is a wire service transcript of a Gore campaign press release, and neither of which refers to Bush’s lie in the debate.
Information regarding the shape of Bush’s 2001 tax cut comes from Citizens for Tax Justice: http://www.ctj.org/html/gwbfinal.htm.
2—Ann Coulter: Nutcase
In an August 26, 2002, New York Observer article, Ann said she was “friendly with MSNBC commentator and West Wing writer Lawrence O’Donnell and Saturday Night Live political satirists Jim Downey and Al Franken.” For what it’s worth, she also said that “only two minor, irrelevant errors” had been found in Slander.
Frank Rich’s column on John Ashcroft and Planned Parenthood appeared in the October 27, 2001, New York Times under the headline, “How to Lose a War.”
The November 12, 2001, Washington Post article regarding the media consortium study was titled “Florida Recounts Would Have Favored Bush; But Study Finds Gore Might Have Won Statewide Tally of All Uncounted Ballots.” The distinction is that Bush would have won on any of the specific recount methods proposed by Gore, but had there been a full recount of all undervotes, Gore could have ended up with more votes.
The articles that Coulter claims reveal the Times’s anti-Christian bias are “The Wrong Passions,” appearing on July 9, 2000, and “John Paul’s Jewish Dilemma,” appearing on April 26, 1998.
3—You Know Who I Don’t Like? Ann Coulter
Coulter wrote the “kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity” line in her September 13, 2001, column,