Lies & the Lying Liars Who Tell Them_ A Fair & Balanced Look at the Right - Al Franken [149]
And boos to William Kristol of the Weekly Standard for not returning multiple calls even after I left the message that he might have a Jayson Blair problem with Christopher Caldwell.
Eric Alterman, thanks for writing a book on bias that I could just add jokes to.
Sidney Blumenthal, Joe Conason, Mike Pesca, David Sirota, Molly Rowley, Peter Koechley; FAIR, Ralph Neas and everyone at People for the American Way, Bob Somerby at DailyHowler.com, SpinSanity, Buzzflash, Talkingpointsmemo.com, MediaWhores online.com, and Truthout.org were all great resources. Thank you.
To Al Gore. A good man. A funny man. My friend.
To Andy Breckman and John Markus, great comedy writers and great friends who gave me moral support when I needed it. And Roger Rosenblatt, who did the same.
To Liz Topp, my personal assistant and friend. Thanks for handling my life for two years. When Franni wasn’t.
To Marie Evans, Franni’s assistant, meaning also mine. Thanks for making my life easier and brighter.
To my kids, Thomasin and Joe. Especially Joe, who bore the brunt of my semester in Cambridge. I love you both, and I’m proud of you to boot.
To Andy Barr, who was not just a key member of TeamFranken, my Bob Jones cohort, but also my assistant at Harvard. Andy also came down for the final push of the book and did heroic work.
Billy Kimball, who, as always, lent his inspiration and brilliance to this project, is a great friend and an enormous comedic talent.
And to Ben Wikler, who, thank God, took the final term off senior year—could not have done this without you. To your parents—you have a brilliant son and he will graduate.
And to all the people who helped me that I forgot to acknowledge, it’s Andy’s fault.
ENDNOTES
iEvan Thomas is the grandson of Norman Thomas. Did you find this endnote? Congratulations.
iiSee how hard it was to find?
1Bragg resigned from The New York Times after using an uncredited TeamBragg to research a story on oyster men in Apalachicola, Florida. Rick Bragg, the pride and subsequent shame of Piedmont, Alabama.
2Like this.
3Me, to my wife.
4Ibid.
5My wife, to me.
6Me, to another friend.
1Actually, a Nexis search reveals that the story was also mentioned in the Washington Post, Boston Globe, Chicago Sun Times, Buffalo News, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Baltimore Sun, Phildelphia Inquirer, Atlanta Journal and Constitution, etc. But still, William Buckley’s silence on “I Hate Israel” speaks volumes.
1That law created Superfund, which has cleaned up countless hazardous waste sites in the intervening years. Bush has drastically slashed its funding.
2Quote from February 15, 2001, debate with John McCain; repeated in various forms during debate with Gore and elsewhere.
1See Marv Albert’s excellent book, Curve Ball: An Insider Shows How Sportscasters Put a Rightward Spin on the Games You Love
1Croteau surveyed 444 Washington-based journalists, including 31 bureau chiefs. Through four attempts to collect completed questionnaires, he assembled 141 responses. There was no statistically significant difference in profile between the respondents and those who did not respond. Croteau surveyed every journalist listed in the spring 1998 News Media Yellow Book under the assignment categories “Congress,” “federal government,” “national affairs,” “politics,” “White House,” “business,” “consumer issues,” “economics,” or “labor,” and who had a Washington area code. Organizations receiving ten or more surveys included ABC News, the AP, Bloomberg News, CNN, Knight Ridder Newspapers, the Los Angeles Times, NBC News, The New York Times, Reuters, Time, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, and I’m Impressed