I think Franken’s hilarious, outside of Stuart Smalley. He had several really funny chapters in that book: the one about Rush, the one about apocryphal (sp?) stories, and a couple of the “Adventures in Politics.”
O’Rourke’s good too, but I’ve only read a few of his columns.
On his chart that shows the richest 20% earning 15.7% more during the Reagan years and the poor earning 6-7% less, I’ve read that figure elsewhere as well, in Howard Zinn’s Declarations of Independence. That’s the only fact I can remember Franken introducing.
I own a P.J. O’Rourke book that – get this – has nothing to do with politics. (Gasp!)
It’s called The Bachelor Home Companion. The two chapters on bachelor cooking are of special historical significance, because they were written before the microwave oven became commonplace. (I particularly like the idea of making a grilled cheese sandwich by making 2 pieces of toast, putting a slice of cheap American cheese between them, wrapping the sandwich in aluminum foil, and going over both sides of the foil several times with a hot clothes iron. Grilled cheese without the grill!)
Franken also brought up the fact that the uppermost Federal income tax bracket during the Eisenhower administration was 70- or 80-something percent. (He said this because some woman at a kiosk claimed that the uppermost income tax brackets were always lower during times of great economic prosperity, and higher during recessions. The Eisenhower years were hardly a recession.)
Just FTR, Steve Martin has spent the last several years developing screenplays, penning absurdist plays, and writing for publications like The New Yorker. He also has a novel out right now. Martin is an incredibly smart guy, as well; he just knows how to play both sides.
I thought Franken’s book was hilarious. I think his ‘Stuart Smalley’ is hilarious, although you have to have been exposed to recovery to really get what it’s lampooning.
I loved his accounts of the touch-football game with the President, complete with play diagrams.
Is “gutbusting” some sort of regional slang? Why doesn’t elucidator know what it means? That’s interesting. I thought the Stuart Smalley thing was hilarious at first, kind of funny after a while, and stupid when it was eventually made into a movie. Unfortunately, that’s the way a lot of SNL spinoff movies have gone.
BTW, I was referring to Steve Martin’s comedy schtick started during his Saturday Night Live years as a comparison to Franken’s association with the show as a writer more than a performer. I didn’t mean to insult slapstick OR Steve Martin.
Ah, it refers to humor. Well, no wonder I didn’t get it!
But I gather that “gut-busting” in this context means something at least a bit different in the recovery-improvement “movement”, which was the thrust of my question. I would sorta guess it has something to do with the unbearably sincere sharing that seems to be the defining characteristic of these sort of psychic group gropes.
I think its high time Al Franken was taken as a serious prognosticator of political trends. For example, his latest book, Why Not Me? about his fictious presidential run, featured an election almost as comical and ridiculous as the one we actually got. I suspect that history will show some chilling parrallels between Franken’s impossibly stupid campaign and the one Georgey Junior ran. Plus, his pick for VP was Joseph Lieberman.
Plus, the guy is simply hilarious. (FYI, elucidator, Have you ever laughed so hard your stomach hurt? Hence the phrase “I almost bust a gut laughing so hard,” or, as Stoidela put it, "gutbusting) His Limbaugh book is very leftist, but is also as funny as anything PJ O’Rourke has written (and I’m a big fan of PJ. Have all of his stuff. He’s totally wrong about everything, of course, but he’s witty and a good writer) I took a class in Satire when I was in college, and the prof used excerpts from this book alongside Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal and Lenny Bruce’s How to Talk Dirty and Influence People. Now, its a widely know fact that any movie based on a Saturday Night Live character automatically sucks. There are only three exceptions: The Blues Brothers, mostly thanks to the music. Wayne’s World, because Mike Myers can get a laugh by reading a German telephone directory (Really! I’ve seen him do it!) And finaly, the lamentably unknown Stuart Saves His Family. Honestly, check this movie out. Franken takes a character from a handful of five minute sketches and turns him into a genuinely likeable, conflicted, caring person. I liked that Franken was willing to acknowledge that, as ridiculous as this “I’m okay, you’re okay” psycho-babble is, there are a lot of people in pain that it really helps. It’s a goddamn tragedy that Stuart Saves his Family is lumped in with trash like A Night at the Roxybury, or Superstar.
Well, tracer mentioned it first.
I was just posting an actual quote in case someone cared to dispute it.
I agree that Franken should be taken to task for any errors. He is, after all, ridiculing Limbaugh for erroneous statements.
If Franken is a hypocrite, I wanna know.
I would like to reproduce the section where Franken claims to have recorded Limbaugh’s fact checker in a telephone conversation in full, but Ed Zotti would have my ass. This, I think, has to be fictional, as I cannot attribute such silliness to someone who presumably drives to work daily. Then again, being Rush’s fact checker may not be a full-time job:
Al: Right. Well, here’s another one. It seems that on June 9th, 1994 Rush claimed on his TV show that there’s a federal regulation which says if you have a Bible at your desk at work, then you’re guilty of religious harassment.
Waylon: Okay. Turns out that was wrong. But it wasn’t my fault. See, I took off June of that year, and July.
Al: You get a lot of vacation?
Waylon: Yeah. Rush is great that way. Makes up for the low salary.
I am a believer in the absurd, but I hope to God the above never actually happened.