Rating: 
Summary: Liars beware -- Team Franken is listening!
Review: Al Franken is smart and funny, and he puts his talents to good use in this book. I found it funny and enlightening, and a good debunking of the lies of people like Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity.Most of the book is factual, like the funny chapter about Franken's USO tours in Kosovo and Afganistan. But there are a few fictional chapters too, like the comic style chapter "The Gospel of Supply Side Jesus" ("Shouldn't you feed the lepers, supply side Jesus? No, Thomas, that would just make them lazy."). Of course Franken owes much of the success of this book (so far 5 printings, 485000 copies printed) to Faux News commentator Bill O'Reilly. O'Reilly & Fox sued to halt publication of the book but lost (the judge said their complaint was "wholly without merit, both factually and legally"); and the publicity surrounding the lawsuit certainly helped sell the book. What does O'Reilly object to? Part of it may be Franken's repeated satire of a 1998 suspense novel by O'Reilly called "Those Who Trespass". But I believe most of it involves the Peabody Awards controversy. Franken tells the story of how he heard O'Reilly on CSPAN in 2001 claiming "We won two Peabodys!" Then Franken presents three transcripts (found searching Lexis/Nexis) in which O'Reilly claims his former show, Inside Edition, won either 1 or 2 Peabody journalism awards, and implies that he (O'Reilly) helped win them. Franken checked the Peabody website, found no award for inside edition, and phoned O'Reilly. O'Reilly phoned back; "It was a Polk." So far, it's just a mistake: O'Reilly says 2 Peabodys when he means one Polk. But the most damning transcript is from the O'Reilly Factor of March 13, 2001, in which O'Reilly denies ever having said he won a Peabody. Here's a quote: "Guy says about me, couple weeks ago, O'Reilly says he won a Peabody award. Never said it. You can't find a transcript where I said it. You -- there is no one on earth you could bring in that would say I said it." So Franken catches O'Reilly's mistake of Peabody for Polk, and then catches a flat-out lie, about the earlier mistake. I believe this is what has O'Reilly so upset. By the way, O'Reilly has a policy on his show: if he catches anyone lying, he tosses them off the show. Will he apply that policy to himself? Somehow I doubt it. Anyway, regardless of the O'Reilly controversy, this book is an enjoyable read. Are the claims in it reliable? I think so. At the end of the book, Franken presents his profile of "Team Franken," a group of 15 Harvard students who assisted in the research and fact-checking of the book. Given that there are 15 reputations on the line, I suspect they did a pretty good job of getting the facts right.
Rating: 
Summary: Al Franken is worse than a liar
Review: Al Franken is something worse than a liar - he's a coward. His left wing rantings are always couched as "humour" when, in fact, they are simply the same old liberal clap trap parroted by a guy whose career ended when Stuart Smalley left SNL. Franken is pretty much just what he looks like -- a puppet -- . If the press weren't dominated by left wing ideologues like the New York Times and network television news talking heads, this guy would be little more than a pimple on the underside of show biz. The review by the New York Slimes that is part of the on line sales pitch tells you all you need to know.
Rating:
Summary: Al is incredible
Review: Al Franken is such an amazing, smart, funny man. The book definitely has comic, entertainment value. But facts are facts. And unlike the blinder-wearing Right who read books by American embarrassments like Ann Coulter and Hannity and believe any of the {stuff} they spout out, Liberals can verify what TeamFranken writes about. I would definitely challenge that the people who gave this book one star either didn't read it, or are directly employed by Fox News, in which case they probably didn't read it either. This is totally Fair and Balanced. Al Franken makes me feel so proud to be a Liberal. He makes Liberal something to stand behind, not something America-hating and terroristic like FNC would have you believe. His point about how Liberals love America in a grown-up way is right on the money. I want this country to be the best I know it can be and most of all to be GOOD. I can't wait for his next book to add to my collection. And at the top of the NY Times Bestseller list, I guess FNC really did "...return Al Franken to the obscurity that he's normally accustomed to." What a joke. Al for President!!
Rating:
Summary: Franken isn't funny
Review: Al Franken is supposed to be a political satirist i guess. He's not. Dennis Miller is a political satirist!Franken just comes across as if he were spokesman for the DNC.
Rating:
Summary: Should Be Compulsory Reading!
Review: Al Franken is the best; I admit, shamelessly, that I love the man. I love him because he's funny, because he's intelligent, because he's principled, because of his humanity, and because he cares. He tears new ones for the justly deserving, here, in an incredible way, with lots of laughs. Laughs, that is, for those who aren't being plainly shown for the lying, power-mad slime they are, here, in this fine book. In stark contrast to the liars profiled within, Al Franken provides real, hard evidence for his allegations. This book would serve as a fine jumping-off place for many a discussion with these conservative zealots who lie and distort...let's see them try and wiggle out of these! Be prepared for mind-blowing revelations, Schadenfreude galore, and many a belly-laugh, all at the expense of those who belong beneath the Rock of Obscurity.
Rating:
Summary: Al Franken lied: he does not support the troops
Review: Al Franken is the biggest liar of them all. He does NOT support the troops. He tells anyone who will listen about his USO tours so he can pretend that he really supports the troops, but it's a cover. By the way, Franken planned the confrontation with O'Reilly at the LA book convention. But he lies about that, too. It's all calculated to advance his pathetic career of attacking people. He's a loser who goes on radio shows to talk about other people. By the way, his friendship with Senator Wellstone is fiction. The Wellstone family wants nothing to do with this retarded attack chipmunk. Al Franken is an embarrassment to the Wellstone family. By the way, I hear that Franni Franken resembles Triumph the Comic Insult Dog.
Rating: 
Summary: No Different than Rush Limbaugh Except He's Not Addicted
Review: Al Franken is very funny at times, but he doesn't need to call someone an idiot or a liar to make his point. I do wonder why conservatives ridicule this book, even though it is filled with reliable facts that can be checked.
Rating:
Summary: Infuriatingly Hilarious.
Review: Al Franken is what you'd call a "polarizing figure," to be sure - but not really in quite the same way as his Righty targets Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly et al. It's basically a case of offense-defense. The kind of Right-wing media epitomized by Fox News has made a veritable fine art of The Spin - and this includes O'Reilly's assertion that his is a "No Spin Zone," because the most potent spin of all is to call something the precise opposite of what it actually is, a method extremely effective on the sort of cranky half-wits that make up the "Factor" viewership. Certainly this is also the typical modus operandi employed by ole "W" - witness cleaner air by deregulation, or his assertion that he has a "mandate" and "political capital" after the narrowest win in history, with half the country hating his guts. Franken is simply writing from the point-of-view of somebody who is sick of this kind of nonsense. It's probably extremely annoying for the Right to actually be called out for their crimes, but they can rest assured that their racket is essentially safe from attack - no known form of explosive can have the smallest impact upon the extraordinarily dense brains of a majority of their constituents, who are perfectly content accepting lies and propaganda as long as it's all decked out in superficial tinsel imagery of "faith" and "morality."
No sane person can possibly take an Ann Coulter or a Sean Hannaty or a big fat idiot Rush Limbaugh seriously, or for more than 5 minutes. As Franken remarks with regard to Coulter, "you have to give me credit for being able to stomach the entire screed." Indeed. Criticizing Coulter is also likened to shooting fish in a barrell, and that's why Franken can admittedly come off a trifle petty sometimes - it's rather like "playing basketball with a retard and calling him out for double dribble." Just so, the point of (e.g.) Franken's chapter on Bill O'Reilly's misstatements with regard to Inside Edition's journalism awards is often willfully lost on conservative readers - it's not just that O'Reilly made a simple factual error, an honest, forgivable mistake; it's that he then proceeded to aggressively LIE about it in an ironic effort to preserve his reputation. Yet people DO take these Right-wing pundits seriously, buy up their books like proverbial hotcakes, and parrot their radical assertions ad nauseum until you find every Yahoo news message board congested with badly regurgitated "conservative" propaganda carried to its vulgar extremes of bigotry and hypocrisy. Franken's books represent an attempt by the Left to redress the balance in pop culture. For all the Right's continued harping about the "Liberal bias in the media," the fact remains that obviously partisan, unfair and unbalanced media outlets such as the aforementioned Fox News and anything associated with Rupert Murdoch have been insinuating themselves further and further into the mainstream, and are exerting a palpable influence on the culture at large. And in spite of the fact that probably a majority of people who are taken in by these hate-mongers and fear-pushers are incapable of sober and rational thought in the first place, and can never be converted merely by showing them how they've been deceived and manipulated, it's still extremely important for the Left to have equal shelf space, so to speak, in the marketplace of ideas.
So we may not be able to reach the Toby Keith-rocking, compensatory gun-toting, Billy Graham-supporting, abortion clinic-bombing, "W" ketchup-using, gay funeral-picketing, evolution-disputing, cross-burning, uneducated, inbred, slackjawed Walmart habitues with "Support Our Troops" stickers on the back of their gas-guzzling SUVs, who actually suppose that it's "patriotic" to laud all our worst ignorances and hypocrisies as American virtues. So these people may indeed have the final say in America - certainly they have had a good year - and this country may very well devolve into a backwards, benighted travesty of its former status as a land of freedom and opportunity and democracy and tolerance. It is truly NOT alarmist to think so - it's already happening. If you don't want to read Al Franken, go pick up "1984"! But meanwhile, as long as psychos like Coulter and Limbaugh continue to pollute the culture with their preposterous invective, it's nice to know that we have Franken, Bill Maher, Janeane Garofalo, etc. on the other side to cleanse the field of discourse with an occassional much-needed douche of comic common sense.
Rating:
Summary: Not funny
Review: Al Franken isn't funny, and, not surprisingly, this book isn't funny. Having read the book, I came to the conclusion that I don't care about what he has to say. If I could, I'd give this book no star.
Rating:
Summary: If you can't handle the truth then don't read this book
Review: Al Franken isn't shy about exposing the truth. Regardless of whether it's Sean Hannity, Fox News, G.W. Bush or numerous other right wing nuts, Franken shines the light of truth on their lies, thereby exposing their positions for what they are--baseless and without merit. Don't buy this book if you're afraid of the truth. But those with open minds will see the true agenda of the right, and they should be rightfully upset.
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