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C-SPAN2 Smackdown!
Al Franken beats up on poor Bill O-Lie-ly

It seems there was a major, live dustup between Al Franken and Bill O'Reilly yesterday afternoon on C-SPAN2. We missed the live fireworks -- but stayed up late last night for the rerun at midnight EDT.

The setting was a book fair in Los Angeles. The hostess and moderator was former California congressperson turned publishing player Pat Schroeder -- a gracious and very charming podium hostess. The guests were Molly Ivins, Bill O'Reilly, and Al Franken -- all plugging forthcoming books. Each got a slice of time to address the attendees -- and judging by the applause, a lot of O'Reilly's partisans showed up to cheer him on. Seems Al Franken had quite the following, too.

Molly talked a little about her new book -- but said more about her previous tome, "Shrub," which, she noted, turned out to be prescient in its forecasting the many nonsuccesses of His Fraudulence and his misadministration so far.

O'Reilly followed, and spent most of his time trying to convince viewers that he is "neither conservative nor liberal" but a "true independent" -- using some frankly questionable example to "prove" his point. He talked a good game about virtues, "principles" and "discipline" -- and how awful it is to have a government that just might help make your life even one iota easier. It sounded like a retread of his overrated and completely fixed FAUX News Channel prime-time "interview" program The O'Reilly Factor, a sham "political talk show" that is nothing more than a means for Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes and their conservative cronies to communicate the spin of the day.

Up to the podium came Franken, with the draft cover for his new book, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced View of the Right". He immediately pointed out that O'Reilly was among the many liars on the preliminary cover -- which elicited an angry scowl from O'Reilly, who was the frequent subject of cutaways during Franken's hilarious monologue. Billy-Bob's visage was frozen in the most p!ssed-off look we've yet seen from anyone on any flavor of C-SPAN. O'Reilly was also leaning away from Franken -- to the point where it appeared as if he might slip out of his seat at any moment.

Before Franken previewed his book, he said that "God, um, asked me to write this book because he's so p!ssed off at Bush" -- who was not picked by God "but by Clarence Thomas." The audience was laughing, and laughing loud.

Franken then started taking shots at his book's subjects. He said "Lies..." is a response to phonied-up tomes about alleged media bias by Bernie Goldberg and Ann Coulter. He slammed the myth of the media having a pro-liberal bias, citing the magazines that did not give in to Monica mania: "Sailing, "Grocer's Monthly", "Juggs", and "Big Butt." He slammed the lie about the Bush tax cut going to the most needy -- saying that Chimp Boy hasn't clue one anyway. He slammed the record of Bush Daddy and Junior on making jobs disappear, cracking wise that if Bushes had run the country since 1776, not one person would have worked. His impersonation of Cheney uncomfortably slipping the word "evildoers" into a speech was priceless. And he needled Richard Scaife about buying up Mona Charen's latest book in quantity "to use as mulch."

Franken was on a roll. And then he pulled out the strategic nuclear weapons.

First, he hilariously nailed Ann Coulter not only for deceptive "footnotes" (that are actually backnotes and often have nothing to do with the body of her book) and outright deceptive comments in her books, but for implying that she was a friend of Franken!

Then, he slammed -- in hilarious and extensive detail -- O'Reilly's repeated claim that his old show, A Current Affair, had won two Peabody Awards. It didn't. It turns out that it won two Polk Awards. He also skewered O'Reilly for not retracting anything, using the cover of "corrections" and "mistakes."

Then came an unexpected flourish from Franken: "We have been takin' it and takin' it on the left." Franken angrily blasted the lies of the right about the memorial for his friend Paul Wellstone. I have never heard Franken so outraged, earnest and emotional. "We're NOT going to sit for this anymore, we're NOT!"

Franken wrapped up, and O'Reilly chimed in, complaining "We're only supposed to go for fifteen minutes, this idiot goes thirty-five."

O'Reilly, it turns out, had LIED. According to my time-coded tape of the event, Franken went about five minutes over -- because, unlike O'Reilly, Franken was having to stop his comments because the audience was loving his schtick and laughing. O'Reilly, who I can only assume was incensed that an audience of mixed political views had warmed to Franken, started to whine about having "misspoke" about the Peabody -- and when Franken tried to correct him...


FRANKEN: No, no, no, no, no, that's not...
O'REILLY: HEY! SHADDAP! YA HAD YER THIRDYFIVE MINUTES!
FRANKEN: No, you shut up!
O'REILLY (turning red): SHUT!!! UP!!!
FRANKEN: This isn't your show, Bill! Bill, you can't...
O'REILLY: This is what this guy does! THIS IS WHAT HE DOES!

That's right Bill: Franken exposes you and people like you as the short-tempered, spiteful, mean-spirited, thin-skinned, petty, fraudulent, pedantic shills for fascism that you all are.

And he does it with a smile, and damn well.

In a final petty and shot at Franken, O'Reilly claimed that Franken "demonized" him. But Franken got the last word and turned the tables on Mister No-Spin, reminding O'Reilly that he kept claiming that "We" won the Polk twice -- the problem being that the awards were given after O'Reilly had left the show!

Game, set and match to Franken.

-- Gene Gaudette

I thought that exchange was funny as hell! It isn't so much that O'Reilly is always wrong--as a columnist, he makes fair points at times about a variety of subjects--it's just that he's a broken record, spouting the same old shit. Franken has humor on his side, beyond his left-leaning comments, and it's the humor that saves him every time. People like to laugh, and O'Reilly came off as a grumpy stick-in-the-mud, which most political commentators and anchors are. He really looked agitated and out of control, which may come back to haunt him.

ED

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.ph ... ed&order=0

Dave Johnson: 'Sense of decency'
Contributed by activist on Wednesday, June 04 @ 09:36:34 EDT
------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Dave Johnson, of Seeing the Forest
Reading Paul Krugman's NY Times column today, and reading other news questioning whether Bush lied claiming Iraq was a threat to us, I think we might be having a "Have you no sense of decency, sir?" moment. If so, I want Al Franken to get the historical credit, for going after O'Reilly the other day. I heard about it from several blogs, and saw it on C-Span. You gotta see it, it's historic. You can watch by clicking here (scroll to where it says Franken, and click "Watch") or, if you have DSL or cable, here. (Use RealPlayer's slide bar if you want to skip to where Franken starts - about 27 or 28 minutes into it.)

Franken went after Bush and Limbaugh and O'Reilly (in person - he was sitting right next to him) for lying. I mean he really went after them. At the end of his talk he said that we're tired of the lies from the right and tired of just taking it and "we're not going to sit for it anymore, we just aren't." Franken's upcoming book is titled, "LIES, And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right" and O'Reilly is on the cover.
Then today Paul Krugman's column just got real and said it.

It's long past time for this administration to be held accountable. Over the last two years we've become accustomed to the pattern. Each time the administration comes up with another whopper, partisan supporters — a group that includes a large segment of the news media — obediently insist that black is white and up is down. Meanwhile the "liberal" media report only that some people say that black is black and up is up. And some Democratic politicians offer the administration invaluable cover by making excuses and playing down the extent of the lies.

This stuff MATTERS. We went to WAR based on their lies! Bush lied, people died. As I am hearing more and more people saying, this is a lot worse than Watergate or Iran/Contra. This might even be worse than getting a blowjob!!!!!!!

So this might be a turning point, a "Have you no sense of decency, sir?" moment that crystallizes people's thinking and helps guide them back to doing the right thing. It's hard to ignore this one. Getting us into a war is serious businesses. Many people died. We were asked to trust the President, that he knew things we didn't, that there were stockpiles of dangerous chemical, biological, even nuclear weapons -- and it's hard to reconcile that with what we have found on the ground. Now we're bogged down with at least 150,000 troops stuck there, getting shot at, for years. And if we leave there is little doubt that Iraq will become a Shiite fundamentalist country and that WILL be a threat to us. So this one is going to be very hard to slip past the public, even with the extent of control of the media they have now. They just lie and lie, and look where it gets us.

We're not going to sit for it anymore. We just aren't.

Reprinted from Seeing The Forest:
http://seetheforest.blogspot.com/2003_06_01_seetheforest_archive.html#200380341

I really can't share the author's confidence. First of all, the mainstream press, while reporting O'Reilly's meltdown, haven't really picked up the cudgel and decried his tirade as unbecoming anyone who claims to be a journalist, regardless of political persuasion. Franken did a great job tearing the rightwing a new one, but he's only one guy. Worse, he's swimming like a salmon upstream: not only is the rest of the press not following his lead, americans don't, on the main, seem very concerned about IF they've been lied to, let alone want to know the reality about the war. It will take a concerted effort from a lazy press corps to get answers to some tough questions. So far, few have made the effort, leaving the public blind to the facts, whatever they may be.

ED

Ed Bishop wrote:americans don't, on the main, seem very concerned about IF they've been lied to, let alone want to know the reality about the war.

Oh, they care. At least if it's in regard to an intern...

"But Clinton went on TV and lied to our faces!"

This is too weird: a painting based on Franken v. O'Reilly:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... gory=20135

Anyone (besides me, obviously) see Stone Phillips' interview with O'Reilly tonight? Full transcript here:

http://www.msnbc.com/news/969273.asp

Here are the parts that reference Franken:

Whether it becomes a best seller remains to be seen. But for the moment, it’s satirist Al Franken’s book that’s at the top of the best seller list. It’s called "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.”

Phillips: “Your picture’s on the cover of two books this fall.”
O’Reilly: “Yeah.”
Phillips: “Yours and Franken’s.”
Phillips: “He says you were furious when you saw...”
O’Reilly: “Oh, absolutely.”
Phillips: “Saw the book cover.”
O’Reilly: “Absolutely.”
Phillips: “And that you kind of lit into his publicist.”
O’Reilly: “Absolutely furious. There isn’t a human being on Earth with any dignity who would think that was a positive thing in any area. Look, character assassins are a dime a dozen in this country, okay? This is character assassination. Not only on me but on a lot of other famous people. Americans don’t like that.”

O’Reilly may not be buying Franken’s book, but many Americans are. It includes- a chapter which pillories the Fox News Star, part of what Franken says is his effort to set the record straight. The battle didn’t stop there. Lawyers for Fox News went to court, trying to stop Franken from using O’Reilly’s photo and the words “Fair and Balanced,” a Fox News trademark on the cover of his book. They argued that the public might get confused.

Phillips: “Do you think that anybody who saw your picture on that book, with that title, could possibly think that you were endorsing that book?”
O’Reilly: “It doesn’t matter to me what they thought.”
Phillips: “But that’s what the lawsuit was about.”
O’Reilly: “The lawsuit has nothing to do with me. I woulda —”
Phillips: “You’re you’re cited in the lawsuit repeatedly.”
O’Reilly: “They can cite whatever they want. I didn’t write the brief.”
Phillips: “Were you in favor of the lawsuit?”
O’Reilly: “I was in favor of holding him accountable. If I had been in charge of the lawsuit, I probably would have gone the defamation route. Now, I know I woulda lost, because I’m a famous guy. And famous people in America have no protection under the law.”
Phillips: “Well, the standard is, is he lying about you?”
O’Reilly: “Of course he is. It’s absurd. It’s ridiculous. He—”
Phillips: “What has he said that’s inaccurate?”
O’Reilly: “Well, I’m not gonna go over that. I’m not gonna— I mean, all I can tell you is that I don’t lie. Haven’t lied about anything. He says I lie. That’s not true.”

A judge dismissed the Fox News lawsuit. And thanks in part to Franken’s book, O’Reilly is in a running battle with his critics. One favorite target is his personal history and whether he has sought common man credibility by claiming a more modest upbringing than he actually had. O’Reilly and his detractors have even skirmished over which Long Island town he called home.

<skipping ahead>

Phillips: “Is it Fox forever?”
O’Reilly: “It’s Fox unless they misbehave. Do something. Fox has been so good. I mean, it’s like I worked with you at ABC and I liked it over there. I liked it. But it was very corporate. Here, it’s more the Wild West. I love the Wild West. I should have been in the Wild West. And let me tell you something, if the Wild West, if it were me and the guy who wrote that book, there’d only be one of us standing right now.”

"Americans don't like that"? Last I checked *I'm* an American, as are a good chunk of those who put the book on the NYT best seller list.

It's quite amazing what a bloated windbag O'Reilly really is. Rather than detail why Franken is wrong (which he doesn't seem to be), he just goes on the offensive. "Haven’t lied about anything"? Does he really take himself seriously? "If I keep saying it over and over again, it MUST be true."

That, and the bloated macho "Wild West" rhetoric is really offensive. So if someone writes a book you don't like, you'd shoot him (if it wasn't for that pesky government interference with those freedom-sapping laws against personal choices like murder)? Nice.

Ryan

He struck again on NPR last night -- went bugshit and stormed out of an interview with Terry Gross on "Fresh Air," complaining about "liberal bias" and how she was being tougher on him than she was with Franken. (Well, duh, Franken's a comedian and you're a big bad journalist who won a Peabody, er, Polk, er, never mind.) Then he highlights his "unfair treatment" on his show to show off his persecution by the liberals. (Terry led off her show, featuring the pre-recorded interview, with that clip from O'Reilly's show. It's a spin vortex!)

The Fresh Air site is unreachable for me right now (it's apparently a popular listen on the Net today), but I'm sure it'll be up soon. (I haven't heard it yet, either.)

Ryan

FYI, as you're listening to the NPR interview, here are some things mentioned during it:

Jeremy Glick on the Factor (partial transcript, link to complete audio)

Man With a Mission: Regime Change (NYT review of new Michael Moore book)

BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Franken Retorts, You Decide (NYT review of Franken's book)

BTW, O'Reilly pulls out the whole "US founded on Judeo-Christian philosophy" line again.

I saw O'Reilly bragging about the aborted interview on his show the other day. He mentioned it several times and kept telling people to check it out on his website.