I read an interview with Michael Moore today where he admits that he and Coulter and O’Reilly and the like are flip sides of the same coin, but he says that at least he and Al Franken and such are trying to make you laugh. “Even if you agree with her politically,” he says, “I’ve never seen a conservative sit there and go, ‘Hey, there’s a real knee-slapper!’.”
What? Tackled a LaRouchian? Link?
I’ve always found Al Franken to be opinionated but very honest. If nothing else, you can bet that teams of right wingers pored over Lies, and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them praying to catch him in a misstatement, because of what a hypocrite that would make him seem, and as far as I’ve ever heard, none has been found.
[QUOTE=MaxTheVool]
What? Tackled a LaRouchian? Link?
http://nypost.com/news/nationalnews/16692.htm
I know its the nypost but still its a link.
[QUOTE=bannerrefugee]
Here’s another, longer, description of what happened, this time with quotes from eyewitnesses. Link.
It drives me up the wall when people assume that just because some political commentators are shrill and dishonest self-aggrandizing harpies, they must all be.
So basically Al did nothing wrong, just got involved with controlling a rabid, out of control heckler.
How I wish the heckler had been Bill O’Reilly.
I’m warning you, Cartman!
e., dreaming of standing in Shinder’s Books magazine section, spying the Feb. issue of Crack Whore Magazine, Ann Coulter splayed across it, exotic shaving habits made obvious… And then I awoke. 20 below zero. Birds dropping from the sky and shattering on the sidewalk, a pitiless sun lavishes bright but witholds heat. Such a lovely morning, when one awakens with a smile.
What, the New York Post writes half-baked bullstuff to make a prominent liberal look bad? The horror! 
*Well…
Coulter’s a bitch
She’s a thin bad bitch
She’s the biggest bitch in the whole wide world
She’s a stupid bitch if there ever was a bitch
She’s a bitch to all the boys and girls…
*
Ann Coulter is a bimbublican conservatart stinking heartless ho bitch lying political prostitute, IMHO.
Oh, I’m not saying every political commentator that ever lived was a harpy. I admire Charles Krauthammer and George Will (in spite of that leather comment) for being restrained, honest and open-minded. I also like more of Debbie Schluessel’s columns than I dislike–She’s got brains, and she’s not afraid to use them. And I’ve admired Kinsley’s columns while disagreeing with most of his politics.
But come on . . . look at the younger pack nowadays. Is there one Sydney Hook among them? Even Debbie Schluessel sometimes comes off as being a few cans short of a six-pack when she starts ranting about how much she hates the WNBA (and these rants used to be much more frequent than they are now).
Sure, Al Franken is more honest than Ann Coulter. That’s like saying he’s taller than Danny DeVito. Regardless of the circumstances, he took the law into his own hands at the Dean rally unles he has a gold shield I don’t know about, and he still has his own fits of idiocy with people he doesn’t agree with politically. Just kind of an all-around wingnut in his own right.
So you don’t think Al Franken is actually honest in some absolute sense? Cite? (Oh, and if your cite involves the study of Limbaugh viewers and how ignorant they thought they were vs. how ignorant they actually are, the statistics that were published in Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot came from preliminary study results. It turned out that the final results did not match the preliminary results, and Al is very upfront about admitting it.)
As for whether he “took the law into his own hands”, well, neither you nor I were there, but from the description I read, I believe he acted exactly correctly.
Seriously, I don’t want to sound like some nutty-pro-Al-Franken-ra-ra person, but I really respect the passion and integrity of the stuff of his that I’ve read, as well as (for instance) the fact that he is constantly doing USO shows to entertain the troops.
And this is not just because I generally agree with his politics. I’m not crazy about Michael Moore, for instance, whereas I respect PJ O’Rourke and George Will…
Read P.J. O’Rourke. Funnier than that liar Franken will ever be.
Regards,
Shodan
Are you saying that Al Franken isn’t capable of spinning the facts to fit his own agenda? At all? I’m skeptical of the Ann Coulter’s of this world, but that doesn’t mean I like spin even when “everyone’s doing it.” From where I’m standing, Al, Ann, Savage, and Limbaugh are feeding off each other. Al Franken would be out of the political commentary business altogether if Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh were to step out of the ring. Likewise, Ann and Rush would soon find themselves unemployed if Al and his ilk decided to pack it in and find real work.
To paraphrase Franken: “Arguing whether Ann Coulter or Al Franken is more honest/right/intelligent/whatever is like complaining that Al Qaeda puts too much oil in the hummus.” It just doesn’t matter. They’re both morons.
Franken tackled a heckler at a rally who had not attacked him physically or otherwise. If you or I tried that, the only thing that would beat us to the jail cell would be the lawsuit. (On a side note, one runs into the LaRouchian’s quite a bit around here. Trust me, they’re not people you want to piss off without a lot of justification.).
If this were the only time Al did something like this, I would just lean back and say, “OK, one fuck-up doesn’t mean he’s a mess.” But Al has a history of getting into situations like this, be they with Newt Gingrich (admittedly a jerk himself), Combs (Was it Hannity or Combs? It’s been a while since I’ve read the book.), and even Barbara Bush (who handled herself pretty well, I thought.). He admits as much in his book. Hell, he brags about it in his book.
Sane people don’t do this. Sane people especially do not try to get to people they don’t like politically through their mothers. This was Bush’s mother for Chrissake. That’s something Ann Coulter would do.
Whew . . . enough of that. I don’t like thinking about these idiots more than I have to. I’ll just close with saying that I can’t believe I forgot to include Wendy Kaminer on my list of good columnists. That woman has class, and I like her more than I like most conservative columnists.
Cripple fight!!!
Franken is just another whiny liberal who doesn’t know what freedom of speech means:
Wrong. You don’t have the right not to be shouted down. The hecklers were just exercising their right to speak. This is similiar to Susan and Tim complaining about the BHoF or move.on complaining about CBS. Freedom of speech doesn’t guarantee you the right to be heard.
Did you read M the V’s link? Franken was assisting two security guards who had already been assaulted by the heckler. The NY Post failed to mention that part. Read that link and then tell me if you still think Franken’s actions were crazy. While you’re at it, why don’t you provide some cite for the other crap you’re alluding to. It’s true he was once verbally assaulted by Sean Hannity (at the time, Franken had never even heard of Hannity. Hannity came at him in a rage because Franken had punked out Limbaugh in that other book). He aslo tried to joke with Barbara Bush on an airplane, showing her a Shrub impersonation, and Babsy was a completely humorless bitch about the whole thing.
By the way, can you dig up a cite that Franken has been dishonest in any of his books? Can you find one fact he got wrong? I guarantee that Lies has been pored over and sifted for all it’s worth by conservatives who would love to show him as a hypocrite but there’s nothing there. Even Spinsanity couldn’t find anything factually wrong. That alone sets him apart from Coulter and O’Reilly and Hannity (one of the worst liars out there) and yes, Michael Moore.
Basically, your problem with Franken is that he’s a liberal who embarrasses conservatives. Just admit it.
Did you read any of my posts, guy? I listed no less than three liberal or left-leaning columnists whom I liked and admired. And they don’t feel the need to pick fights, laugh at mothers, or generally act like idiots to get across what’s on their mind. I don’t dislike Franken because I think he’s a liberal idiot. I dislike Franken because I think he’s an idiot.
I said it before and I’ll say it again. If your highest achievement in political commentary is to be set apart from Ann Coulter, Michael Moore and Hannity, you need to raise your standards.
I have no doubt he’s capable of it. He’s a pretty smart guy, and spin doctoring ain’t exactly brain surgery. Do you have a cite that shows him actually doing it, though? Shodan, do you have a cite for Al Franken being a liar?
Not what actually happened. Also, irrelevant to the question of his honesty or intelligence.
He physically tackled Barbara Bush?!
She’s not just Bush’s mother, she’s also a former first lady. She’s a public figure in her own right. That makes her fair game for pundits and satirists. If she doesn’t like it, she shouldn’t have let George Sr. run for president in the first place.
Pretty much read them all. Getting a little tired of hearing about how he used to be a hippy but wised up and got a drinking problem instead.
And I, as well, would be heartily amused to see you try to prove that “liar” slur.