Republican conservatives may control the U.S Congress, the Supreme Court, the current presidential administration, and much of the national media, but political author and liberal Democrat Al Franken argued their worthlessness Sunday afternoon in front of a packed house at the Orpheum Theater.
“When President Bush said during his campaign that he was against nation-building, I didn’t realize he only meant our nation. This president has been a disaster,” Franken said.
Franken said during his presidency, George W. Bush lost three million jobs for Americans. Similarly, his father, George H.W. Bush did not create any new jobs for Americans either, Franken said.
“If the Bushes had run this country from its inception, not one American would have ever worked. We’d all be hunters and gatherers,” he said.
Speaking to a crowd largely supportive of his beliefs, the atmosphere of the theater seemed more like a rally for Democratic morale. Franken used most of his speech to expose lies perpetuated by the Bush Administration and to promote his newest political satire, “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.”
Introduced by 91-year-old Studs Terkel, author of the book “Working” and well-known radio personality, Franken’s comic speech made his targets seem as intelligent as amoeba while it seriously pointed out the problems he thinks their lies and stupidity have caused Americans.
In one of his many attempts to invalidate Fox News Channel as a biased, inaccurate news source, Franken described the recent lawsuit they filed against him for putting Fox personality Bill O’Reilly on the cover of his book.
Last May, O’Reilly and Franken were both in L.A promoting their new books, and O’Reilly asked Franken to explain why Franken was calling him a liar.
“Apparently he’s never actually seen his show,” Franken said.
Franken said he explained, using selections of transcripts from “The O’Reilly Factor” television show, why O’Reilly was in fact, not just a liar, but “kind of a pathological liar.”
Franken said he wasn’t worried when Fox News attorneys sent him a letter asking him to remove O’Reilly’s picture and part of the Fox trademark — “fair and balanced” — from the cover.
“I know that satire is protected under free speech, even if the object of the satire doesn’t know it,” Franken said.
Franken said he wasn’t worried in court either, when the federal judge heard each side.
“Fox got literally laughed out of court. I know when you say literally you really mean figuratively, but they were literally laughed out of court,” Franken said.
Madison native and writer for The Onion Ben Wikler was part of the 14-person TeamFranken — a group of Harvard students who helped Franken research his book. Wikler also spoke with Franken, gaining enthusiasm for the hope that a Democratic president will be elected next November by refuting the capabilities of several Republican figures, such as Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rush Limbaugh.
Franken is also the author of “Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations,” “Why Not Me?,” “Oh, the Things I Know!,” and “I’m Good Enough, I’m Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me!” In 2003, he served as a Fellow with Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government at the Shorenstein Center, where he found the students who researched his book. Franken was also a writer on “Saturday Night Live” sporadically between 1975 and 1995.
