Friday night live with Al Franken
We last covered Al Franken in "Saturday Night Live with Al Franken" when he spoke this past June at a Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party fundraiser. This morning we learned from Michelle Malkin and the Tax Prof Blog that Franken would be delivering the Dean's Lecture this afternoon at Yale Law School.
Franken's talk was sponsored by the American Constitution Society, the folks who brought us the Constitution in 2020 conference at the law school that we covered courtesy of our New Haven correspondent in "The $80,000 misunderstanding" and "Red dawn." John subsequently reflected on the Constitution in 2020 conference in "What liberals want."
We asked our New Haven correspondent to give it up for us again this afternoon and she has just emailed us the following notes:
· He gets there 35 minutes late.Michelle suggested that those in attendance ask Franken how the Air America panhandling is going, whether he plans to donate any of the proceeds of his next book to Gloria Wise, and what other documents he has signed without reading. I'm not sure, but I don't think it happened.· Student: ACS began with Constitution in 2020 conference—live in era of conservative legal movement, will leave people left to themselves on uneven playing field. Law students need to take steps to prevent this…begin by coming here today.
· Harold Koh: smartest funny person, funniest smart person. Franken initially a Republican, always a comedian. Rush was invited too, but never responded to the invitation (??).
· Franken: About his lawsuit: Lies and the lying liars who tell them—O’Reilly’s picture on the front, along with Bush and Cheney…O’Reilly on panel with Franken. O’Reilly saw this and was on panel with Franken, was very angry. In book, Franken proves O’Reilly is a pathological liar…O’Reilly tells him to “shut up.” On radio show, O’Reilly said if this had been in the Old West, they would’ve had a shootout and O’Reilly would’ve won the shootout.
· Next week, publisher says must take O’Reilly’s picture off front cover and lose “fair and balanced” off front cover of the book. Franken wants Fox to sue them. Gets in touch with Floyd Abrams, who’s on his side—writes back to Fox. Figures the issue is finished.
· Finds out he’s being sued by Fox. He’s happy about it. Had no doubt that Fox would lose the suit. Fox said they’d trademarked “Fair and balanced.”
· Abrams said you can use a valid trademark phrase in a title if you use one of four literary techniques: (1) wordplay, (2) irony, (3) allusion, (4) ambiguity
· They go to court…judge tells Fox their case is wholly without merit. Says highly unlikely “fair and balanced” will hold up as a valid trademark in court.
· Judge gave Fox a better trademark: “Wholly without merit.”
· Suit really helped sales of the book
· Franken wrote book b/c angry at the way things were going; country united after 9/11, Bush handed a unique opportunity to lead the world into a new century of mutual sacrifice and mutual benefit and he completely blew it. Franken couldn’t believe it...so he decided to write the book.
· Starts with the “myth of liberal media.” Something that the right has been repeating over and over again for the last forty years. There is a lot of bias in the media but it isn’t liberal. The mainstream media maybe has some biases in terms of politics but they are pack mentality biases (Gore is a serial exaggerator), but mainly what they have is a bias toward making money because they’re all owned by big corporations (profit centers). They also have biases that go toward making money: cheap and easy stories, so not much investigative journalism (get talking heads instead). Don’t do any of the kind of stuff that news corporations used to do. Laziness also a bias.
· Most national news about conflict, negativity, sex. Very cheap to cover a horse race, process. Asking whether there’s a liberal/conservative bias is beside the point.
· BUT there is a right-wing media: Fox News and talk radio. This is why Franken went into talk radio. Realized somebody needed to push back against these guys…these guys are just (you probably don’t listen to them)…they’re really pernicious and really evil. People often write that Franken and Limbaugh are equals, mirror images. Franken disputes he’s a mirror image of Rush.
· A few months ago Rush talking about the minimum wage…75% of all Americans on minimum wage are teenagers on their first job. Franken’s researcher went to Bureau of Labor statistics. 60% of Americans on minimum wage are 20 and above.
· Where did Rush get this statistic? Directly from his ass. And 21% of American gets their news from him—same people who believe Saddam had something to do with 9/11 and had weapons of mass destruction that miraculously disappeared.
· Franken gets statistics from Bureau of Labor Statistics, Rush gets his from Bureau of Rush’s Ass—this is the difference.
· Big march in Washington tomorrow—Franken is not for pulling out now. Majority of Americans feel the war was a mistake. There are a couple things to learn from this: (1) If you’re going to go to war and there are problems that might happen that you didn’t count on, you can’t lie to the people about why you’re going to war; Colin Powell said warned Bush (in Woodward’s book), “if you break it, you own it.” You’d think as President you’d take that to heart…
· You know Bush is not the most curious man in the world, but you’d think he’d suck it up and do the reading. A lot of people think there wasn’t planning for the aftermath of the war…there was planning—the State Department did it, CIA did it, Army War College—it was all there for the President to read. But he didn’t do it because he is an intellectual sloth and that’s wrong, immoral if you’re running and country.
· We went in with far too few soldiers, got to Baghdad and first thing we did was let them loot. We allowed looting (Rumsfeld said “they’re a free society, free to do what they want.”). This sent a message to the Iraqis that we didn’t care about them (they listen to every word we say). Bremer goes in and disbands the military—against the warnings of the CIA, etc. Bremer tells 400,000 Iraqis with weapons “you’re fired” because they’re Baathists. That’s moronic.
· We learned this past couple weeks with Katrina the level of cronyism in the administration (Brown). Brown appointed so that when Alba goes leaves FEMA to start consulting firm, he gets contracts for his clients, one of whom is Haliburton. Haliburton has stolen 1 million dollars, plus 8.8 unaccounted for. Every one of those dollars that didn’t go to reconstructing Iraq is killing our soldiers b/c it fuels the insurgency.
· War ruined any moral authority we might have had. Truman called war profiteering treason—this is what this is. Norm Coleman chairman of subcommittee on perm. Investigations, hasn’t investigated any of profiteering in Iraq, spent all his time on the Oil for Food program. But that program was administered in the security council and read by the American and the British.
· Our guys are dying b/c our congress sees itself as a rubber stamp and it is a sin.
· Soldiers treat Franken GREAT. Goes out there with Daryl Worley and Mark Wills...they’re all rednecks. They love each other…nothing more gratifying that doing USO trips because our men and women are great [gets choked up].
· Taranto says on Hannity and Colmes that Bush’s numbers are bouncing back. Franken writes him and e-mail asking for polls that show president is bouncing back from Katrina…Taranto writes back “Dear Mr. Franken I may have been mistaken” and corrects himself the next day…says he got lots of angry mail, that all the angry left can do is be angry.· Franken says he’s bullshitting…sometimes you have to get angry. Why shouldn’t we be angry at this malfeasance? Why shouldn’t we be angry a guy with no experience is at head of FEMA? Same with homeland security? Wasting billions going to cronies that could be used to educate people? Used to save lives in Africa? Is that not worth being angry about?
· Americans can love each other; Americans need to work together. But we’re not going to do it with these radical guys. We’re not going to find a way out of Iraq with an administration that won’t tell us the truth or admit mistakes. We have to get them out of there (lots of clapping).
In his opening remarks this afternoon, Franken claimed that he jotted down his notes in the car on the way over. Franken to the contrary notwithstanding, I would add only that this is virtually the same speech (minus riffs on the theme of homosexual marriage) that Franken gave at the DFL fundraiser this past June. Maybe he copied his Minnesota notes over in the car on the way to the talk in New Haven. He even choked up at the same point on both occasions. I think it's fair to say that it's the stump speech in his prospective campaign for Norm Coleman's senate seat in 2008.
