Rating: 
Summary: waste of money and time
Review: I don't care about right or left wing. I like Al Franken because he is a funny comedian. But this book is just a total junk! There is no useful material or even funny material in this book. He just writes about his experiences about different events like meeting Barbara Bush in a plane or writing to people about premarital sex.
Rating: 
Summary: Not your typical extremist blather
Review: I don't care much for the blather that comes from either extreme, most of what you get from Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity, and O'Reilly, on the right, and Carville and Moore, on the left, is varying degrees of cooked numbers and illogical conclusions. So I don't normally read books like this, even if I agree with the bias of the author. However, this book was actually fair, and the facts very well researched. I like to check the credibility of a book before I read it and my favorite resource is SpinSanity.Org. They go to the trouble to check the facts in political books, including the authors I mentioned above, and has universally criticized their work. Here's what they had to say about this book: http://www.spinsanity.org/post.html?2003_09_07_archive.html
Rating:
Summary: A fair and balanced look at Al Franken
Review: I don't consider myself to be the world's most enlightened political commentator or even partisan for that matter. However, Franken's book was truly enjoyable from the first ad hominem insult hurled to the final quiz that leaves no reader behind. I love the fact that he takes to task the people who are running the country and those who think they should be. This is the literary equivalent of "pants-ing" George dub-ya, his cronies, and all his wannabes that enable him to lie and get away with it. And I say good for Al! Should it be read with a grain of salt? SURE, every political commentary carries that warning, but should it be considered garbage because he brings to light the conservatives ugly dust-bunnies that have been shoved under the rug? No. The best thing about this book is that it forces the reader to ask, "Is this REALLY what's going on?" It motivates the intelligent reader to become informed, to seek more information--which is what every voter in America should be doing anyway. Congrats to Al and the members of Team Franken--you have made politics a dinner-table topic that's accessible to political apathetics like myself. And you completely leveled Bill O'Reilly who has been asking for it ever since he hosted the highly acclaimed political juggernaut "Inside Edition." Way to go Al! I can't wait for the next installment.
Rating: 
Summary: Limbaugh's weak attempts at damage control
Review: I don't know where "a reader" from New York gets his transcript. Did he actually watch the show in question? I did see the TV segment which contained the notorious incident. It could not have been a mistake or accident. Limbaugh's lead-in was contrived, and clearly could have had no other purpose than to set up the joke: Chelsea = dog. Limbaugh said, "We all know there's a White House cat. But did you know there's a White House dog?" Then the photo was put up on the screen behind him. I've seen the same debate elsewhere, many times. Obviously the alternate transcript--which is nothing like what actually happened during the show--is being circulated not only in an attempt to banish to the memory hole Limbaugh's cruel taunting of a young teenage girl, but also to make critics of Limbaugh appear to be liars. As if Limbaugh's defenders are concerned with truth! Franken sometimes exaggerates or embellishes in order to be more entertaining and to make his point more clear. Dittoheads frequently argue it's perfectly fine for Rush to do this, but heaven forbid a liberal should do the same.
Rating:
Summary: Dogs of the Left
Review: I don't understand why the "top" reviewers are so worked up about Chelsea Clinton being the white house dog. I'm sure many people would have "preferred" Buddy. But that seems to be the common thread echoed throughout Al Franken's book: Liberals are generally ugly people and their acts of procreation reflect the goings-on at Midwestern puppy mills. In fact, I would hire Al Franken's family and Chelsea Clinton for the Big Apple Circus just to save on makeup costs. It's why NOW and the American Kennel Club are interchangeable. It's why the "L" in LPGA doesn't stand for "Ladies", if you know what I mean. Anyhow, I recommend this book for Stepford liberals who need to redirect their self-loathing towards beautiful, rich people. The book is basically Al Franken sniping like a little schoolgirl at various conservative (i.e., smart) pundits. It's a good lesson in kindergarten humor (so-and-so is a nutcase, so-and-so is splotchy, etc.). Franken knows ugly. After all, he has to look at his wife and kids every day, not to mention that morning mirror routine. I recommend that people don't look at the cover of the book, unless you want to experience the male Medusa.
Rating:
Summary: Franken's Frankness
Review: I don't usually read books on politics, but I heard this one had a virtue beyond its attention to contemporary issues: it's funny. And I like to be entertained while I learn. The book, for me, fulfilled its promise, though people in Franken's line of fire will certainly be angered. Indeed, righteous anger, even bluster, seems their stock-in-trade. This is the kind of book people need in order to see the self-appointed, self-righteous commentators on the American political scene--like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter and their like--in some perspective. Franken describes (exposes might be a better word) their typical argumentative strategies--i.e., to lie, and then when they're called on it, to start dodging and weaving--and their plain misrepresentations of fact. Franken and his team did the research: they quote the transcripts, cite the facts, go back to the record to find what was actually said and compare it to what the subjects say they said. They cite the statistics, do the math: the record is there. And Franken is honest about his own failed attempts at jokes (e.g., the foray into Bob Jones University), and he apologizes for such missteps. Unlike the major subjects of his book--they never apologize for misleading the public and, indeed, seem to to it with relish, assuming that the most important priority of leadership is to work out favors for their major corporate supporters and chief beneficiaries. Franken puts his finger on something that resonates with me, especially with respect to Dick Cheney, but with respect to others in the administration also: their meanness, their coldness; they use rhetoric cold-heartedly and as an intentionally duplicitous strategy, like the phrase "compassionate conservative," then consciously do the opposite. They exploit people's Christian faith by appealing to it and then doing the opposite of what one would think Christians would do. Bush and his team seem actually hypocritical: after participating in a supposed salvific, year-long exploration of two books of the New Testament, he can't remember anything about them. Franken's account reminded me of an editorial I read after candidate Bush referred to Jesus as his favorite political philosopher: the writer of the editorial pointed out that Jesus's teachings would have been just the opposite of Bush's proposals. The Bush plan is to get conservative Christians on their side by appealing to their faith and making a show of sharing their beliefs; but it's really all about money and power. Nominate some conservative judges here and there, but otherwise construct a policy edifice that benefits the wealthy.
In short, for me, this was a tremendous book--provocative, factually informative, and funny. And it's a call to arms. Conservatives have hijacked the word "liberal" and turned it into something nasty. But their accusations against liberals often sound more like projections of their own mean-spiritedness. Where does that come from? Who thought of circulating the accusation that the Clinton White House staffers left grafitti, cut telephone lines, did disgusting, despicable things, so the Bush occupants had to spend $200,000 in repairs? The GAO later reported that nothing of the sort happened. But who thought of such a sleazy accusation? If nothing of the sort actually happened, the idea could only have come from somewhere within the Bush conglomerate to make the Clinton people look trashy. But it's the Bush conglomerate that gets stuck with the trashiness--it's in their minds, and the public is the beneficiary of that kind of thinking. These are ignoble people. The nobility and Christian humility are for public consumption.
Rating:
Summary: Eat this Bill O'Reilly!
Review: I doubt that Bill O'Reilly or Ann Coulter will much like this book. The book gleefully takes on the right wing and loves to focus on the Fox News Channel and Bill O'Reilly. Franken clearly is unintimidated by Coulter, Limbaugh, Ashcroft, et. al. which must be a source of incredible frustration to them. That alone justifies the price of the book. In any case, whether you like Franken or not, the best thing about this book is that it is very funny. I cannot say that this book is "Fair and Balanced" but who cares?
Rating:
Summary: Go, Al, go!
Review: I dusted this book off in a few hours and learned alot. Al practices something these right wing hacks think is beneath them, something that has become almost obsolete in modern day political discourse: Checking the facts. Whenever Al had a question, he would simply pick up the phone and ask away (no matter what side of the political fence they were on). You can put his END NOTES to the test and they'd passed. He doesn't just take the first thing he sees off of Lexis-Nexus and distort it to conform to his parallel view of the world. Through his painstaking research (and that of the 14 members of TeamFranken), Franken refrains from stating that Democrats are the "true patriots," refrains from calling Republicans and/or conservatives "idiots," and while he peppers his commentary with sarcasm, it's not "vituperative." He doesn't make baseless, childish accusations about the people who do not share his political viewpoints. I thoroughly enjoyed his chapters on Ann Coulter and his touching tribute to his friend, the late Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota. It was refreshing to get the truth about that "controversial" memorial from someone who was actually there and didn't just watch 2 minute clips on CNN and go on TV verbally assaulting everyone. I also love the chapter about the "Blame America's Ex-President First Crowd." I'm sure that touched a nerve with frothing Clinton bashers everywhere. Once again, the right and their sheep have proven that they can dish it out but they just cannot take it. We're very well aware that you people go through every positive review of a non-conservative book here at Amazon and give them negative ratings while repeatedly voting in the positive for Hannity, Coulter, O'Reilly, ad nauseum. This should be required reading for anyone who wants to know the scoop on the draft dodgers and elitists that compose "conservative" political commentators.
Rating:
Summary: Liars Exposed!
Review: I eagerly awaited Al's latest book, and was stunned to see Fox sue Al and his publisher for using the words "Fair and Balanced". This book is a fair and balanced look at the extreme right's lies and the lying liars who tell them. Brilliantly written, the book also offers the expected chuckles and giggles, mixed with devastating revelations (complete with "real" footnotes) about the extreme right wing's ten year campaign to demonize and destroy liberals, and Bill and Hillary Clinton in particular. Ann Coulter's lies are revealed as conservative rantings from a harridan disguised as Twiggy. Bill O'Reilly's many lies are exposed, as are Hannity's and Newt Gingrich's. Bush's and his administration's lies about just about everything, which literally are too many to count, are painfully detailed. Bush actually said "By far the Vast majority of my tax cuts to to those at the bottom". Lies, all lies - and Al proves it. I also was deeply saddened by this book as it distills into one volume many disturbing facts about our current adminstration, their shills in the media and that it took a comedian to expose these lies to the public. Read this book and you will never think the same again about the right wing media, the adminstration, and those who profit from them.
Rating:
Summary: Agree totally with reader from Maine.
Review: I echo the comments from the reader from Maine. The only flaw in this impressive, marvelously researched book is that the delivery could give Franken's critics an excuse to call it a left wing version of Anne Coulter-ish mud-slinging. Although it isn't, and they would say that anyway, the thing is, there are places where Franken fails to pull some punches (no matter how well deserved the target) that some may not perceive as humor. Who Franken should try to reach are not the extremists but moderates who just haven't bothered to inform themselves about the political situation in this country. His humor is a great way to do that. Despite that one small complaint I heartily recommend this book to all except right wing extremists. Moderates should definitely read this.
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