Rating: 
Summary: Franken's best book yet
Review: The guy is a comic genius, and with Team Franken working for him he comes across as a research genius too. I just love the unpredictability of his humor and his ability to hit you out of the blue with wonderful uncensored raunch. But the book devastates the right. By reading the odd vapid review posted here by right-wingers (who clearly haven't even read it) one would think they are dumbstruck. Why no substantive rebuttal's to any points made? I would love to see some substance instead of the blather.
I will be buying several copies to distribute to friends. I offered to buy a copy for an acquaintance that likes Bush and is an O'Reilly fan, but he declined by pretending that he wouldn't want to look to "a comedian" for his information. To bad. The real reason is he "doesn't like to read books" and his testes retract when he thinks about having to turn FOX (and other sources) off long enough to read a substantive response to his right wing faith. But he did inform me that I should remember that Bush is a "compasionate[sic] conservitve[sic]." Oh my.
I thought Franken's Chicken Hawk story was the weakest part humor-wise but his main point here is a good one. A surprising number of hawks on Team Bush took a pass when it came time possibly face war themselves. I loved the Supply Side Jesus cartoon. The "Waitress and the Lawyer" play was excellent. The 15 or so pages showing how Bush dropped the ball on terrorism before 9/11 are probably the most disturbing. I already knew most of it from an article in TIME mag., but Al and his team put it together in a very powerful and concise way. Not nearly enough is said about how the incredible incompetence of Bush's team left America open to the 9/11 attack. I think we don't hear much about this because people think it might appear as unpatriotic and Americans just don't want to contemplate that they might have a president that in this important area, was this incompetent. And of course, sadly, there is nothing we can do about it now. Rather depressing really but it needs to be said, and Franken knocks it out of the park. If you are going to be disgusted with the facts, you might as have a little humor along with the medicine.
And that's what this book is, medicine for a nation drunk on endless streams of blatant distortion, lies and effluent put forward by the likes of Hannity, Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Coulter and Team Bush. The humor is the sugar that helps it go down. But the right-wing faithful are still going to gag, should they read it. And with good reason. Franken takes their "geysers of liquefied pig feces" and shoves it back down their throat, and no amount of sugar can make that stuff taste good.
Rating: 
Summary: It's astonishing what makes it onto the best sellers list.
Review: The humor seemed really forced. Politically un-sophisticated.If teeth-grinding, anti-conservative humor is your thing, I highly recomend Bill Hicks over this book.
Rating:
Summary: Lies and Distortions and Ad Hominem Attacks, Oh My!
Review: The Instigator has done it again. Another ad hominem book with no substance. He consistently distorts the truth and lies in order to push his point. If you want a "fair and balanced" look, don't go to a partisan such as Al Franken, just as you wouldn't go to anyone else who's only trying to raise the ire of those whom he hates. You don't go to a drug pusher for accounting help, and you don't go to a "humorist" like Al Franken for unbiased information and education.
Rating:
Summary: Hoisted on your own petard?
Review: The irony is rich. Al Frankin is caught sending out letters on Harvard University stationary requesting personal information from the likes of John Ashcroft, claiming that he is writing a book on sexual abstinence. While actually planing to use the information for his next book. Who is the lying liar now?
Rating:
Summary: The Right continues its lies...proving Franken correct!
Review: The last three reviewers continue the tradition established by the previous reviewers here who have slagged Franken's book...their nonsensical comments betray thorough ignorance of the substance of Franken's book, revealing that they have NOT read the book they pretend to be reviewing. More lies from lying liars! And they're too ignorant to realize how pitiful this makes them appear. Grow up, dittoheads.
Rating:
Summary: Finally, a liberal bias in a medium
Review: The latest incarnation of Al Franken's genius comes in a delightfully wrapped package of truth and honesty. "The truth hurts" has never been more true than to the objects of Franken's ire. This book will leave the jaw drooping for long periods of time, making the reader wish he or she had the ability to articulate his or her anger at the current media hegemony of the right so well.
Rating:
Summary: Infantrile tantrum
Review: The Left can't bear the fact there's a news channel or commentator they can't control, or who doesn't accept their revisions of reality and mythologising as some sort of revealed truth. This book is an infantile tantrum, and one feels the author would benefit by a change of diapers and the application of a pacifier. Poor little thing! This book made me feel a lot more warmly about Bill O'Reilly, although as a trade union lawyer I didn't think of him as a natural soul-mate before. Attaboy, Bill! The adults are on your side!
Rating:
Summary: The left doesn't like opposing views
Review: The left has been upset with the erosion of their monopoly on the media. When an outlet does not impune conservative values, the call it a pupper of the "vast right wing conspiracy." Worst let, the washed up skit writers become political writers. Botton line, Limbaugh is not longer fat, but Franken is still an idiot.
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Summary: The lies of 2004 have begun - buy this book to stop them!
Review: The lies of the political right in the 2004 campaign have already begun - buy this book and then buy 10 copies to give all your friends, so that the American people can see the truth about the lies and more that are polluting the USA today. This is a great book and one that should be read by as many patriotic Americans as possible, so that the good guys can reclaim the country in 2004. Al Franken is a prophet of our times and this book proves it!
Rating:
Summary: The Humor helps get you through the Pain
Review: The moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the Right is beautifully exposed in Franken's alternantly hilarious and depressing book. Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity are high profile hate-mongers among the barely literate in this country and this requires that they be discredited at every opportunity. Franken does this well by showing that, in addition to being dishonest, Hannity and Coulter are incredibly incompetent (Coulter doesn't know how to perform a literature search well enough to find a front page article in the New York Times; Hannity is unable to understand basic arithmetic.) The Wellstone Chapter is excellent. Franken is dead-on in pinning Bush with responsibility for much of the right-wing poison being spread around. He doesn't let him off with the hook with the "he's too stupid to know what is going on" excuse. The NYT book reviewer is mostly right concerning "Supply Side Jesus" and the fictitious Vietnam War story. "Supply Side Jesus" is at least fairly short and to-the-point, the fictitious Vietnam War story just isn't funny and goes on far too long. One of the best things about the book is that when Franken uses facts, they are indeed FACTS. As I read the book, I took pleasure in the jokes, but also in knowing that it would drive the right-wing fanatics crazy trying to find errors.
Books about the Right's descent into corruption and viciousness are scary and disturbing, at least with Franken you get a good dose of genuinely funny material to keep you from getting too depressed.
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