Lies & the Lying Liars Who Tell Them_ A Fair & Balanced Look at the Right - Al Franken [80]
It turned out that Tucker had gone on national TV October 30 and railed against Wellstone’s memorial without actually having seen it. He didn’t watch the tape until later that night, in preparation for the next day’s Crossfire.
Tucker didn’t mention to his viewers that he hadn’t seen the memorial. Instead, he said, “It makes me sick” and “It is revolting” and “Republican friends of Senator Wellstone were booed and shouted down as they tried to speak.” And, he said, “To politicize a man’s tragic death is about as low as you can go, isn’t it?” Yes, Tucker, it is.
The Republicans fell in love with the whole Lott-booing thing. Peggy Noonan said on Hannity and Colmes that “twenty thousand did it.” (The Star Tribune called the boos a “smattering.” On the TV broadcast they were almost inaudible.) Mort Kondracke said on Fox that Norm Coleman was booed. (He wasn’t.) In the Weekly Standard, Christopher Caldwell wrote that, “The crowd of 20,000 booed [italics his] a succession of people who had come to pay their respects to a dead colleague: Senate minority leader Trent Lott, Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura, and former Minnesota senators Rod Grams and Rudy Boschwitz.” (The St. Paul Pioneer Press said that “muted boos greeted the arrival of Lott, the Senate Republican leader, and Ventura.” Rudy Boschwitz was not booed.)
Yes, a couple hundred people booed Trent Lott. As the Star Tribune reported, “Scattered boos greeted Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., as he entered the arena. Lott smiled and waved.” I thought it was good-natured booing, but maybe some or all of it wasn’t. Who knows? Maybe he owed those people money.
I know this. If Newt Gingrich had died in a plane crash in early 1995, and Clinton had gone to his memorial in Marietta, Georgia, he would have been shot. I ran this theory by George Stephanopoulos, and he said, “Yeah, and then the press would have blamed him for coming.”
In fact, that’s exactly what happened when Hillary Clinton was booed at the Madison Square Garden memorial concert honoring the police and firefighters who died in 9/11. Most of the Republican talking heads who were “distraught” about the smattering of boos at Williams Arena were absolutely delighted by the deafening roar of jeers and taunts that silenced Hillary as she tried to introduce a film. “I think she got in large part what she deserved,” said Sean Hannity. Rush Limbaugh was so distraught at the booing that he had the man who led it on his program as Dittohead Hero of the Day. Bill O’Reilly blamed Hillary for having the nerve to show up considering that “Mrs. Clinton has not visited one family that has been affected by the terror. Not one. She did not go to one funeral.” Of course, this wasn’t true.3
I made some more phone calls. First to former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan, whose op-ed piece in the October 30 Wall Street Journal took the form of a memo from Paul Wellstone up in heaven criticizing his own supporters for being filled with “envy,” “poison,” “resentment,” “revenge,” and “hate.” I wanted to know where Noonan had gotten the impression that “20,000 people” had booed Trent Lott.
She seemed very surprised to hear from me, but stayed on the phone long enough to make it clear to me that she had not actually seen Trent Lott get booed. When I told her that the boos were barely audible on the broadcast, she scoffed. I said, “Peggy, I’ve studied the tape. I’ve seen it fifty times.”
“Oh, Al, we all have,” she said in that condescending, unctuous, Peggy Noonan way.
“No, you haven’t,” I said. “And you want to know why? Because no one replayed it. Because you can’t hear the booing.”
“Oh, Al, Al.”
“Tell you what. The whole memorial is on the Internet. It’s at http://shows.implex.tv/Wellstone/. Lott gets booed at 01:18:22. Do yourself a favor. Start