It is a time of freedom and fear, of Gaia and of borders, of many paths and the widening of a universal toll road, emptying country and swelling cities, of the public bought into privacy and the privacy of the public sold into invisible data banks and knowing algorithms. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection.

These are the times when maps fade and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread.

Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times.


 
Last year, Fox News took humorist Al Franken to court to prevent the publication of his book "Lies, and the Lying Liars who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right." The Fox News lawyers insisted that the phrase "fair and balanced" is now completely owned by Fox News, and suggested that the phrase can now no longer be used by any broadcasters, authors, songwriters, or other artists of the written word who do not work for Fox News. The Fox News lawyers complained that Al Franken was stealing their property by using the phrase "fair and balanced" in the title of his book. As a result, they sought to censor Al Franken, and prevent his book from ever coming to market.

United States District Court Judge Denny Chin quickly ruled that Fox News had made a case completely without merit. As the Fox News lawyers tried to make their arguments, the courtroom erupted into open laughter in response to the lawyers' increasingly silly suggestions, such as the idea that readers might make the mistake of believing that Al Franken and George W. Bush both work for Fox News. In the wake of the Fox News lawsuit, Al Franken's book shot up to number one on the best sellers lists and was released a month early with extra printings in order to keep up with public demand. If Fox News was trying to keep "Lying Liars and the Liars who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right" from the eyes of the American public, it was profoundly inept in its efforts.

We thought the whole blow-up was hilarious. But in the end, of course, it was all about a book, its suppression and ultimately its promotion. A year later, what is there to say about the book's impact on political life since? Unfortunately, I concluded after picking it up for a re-read, not much. That has as much to do with the weakness of Al Franken's content as it has to do with any stupid, ham-fisted and anti-democratic attempts to censor Al Franken's book by Fox News.

After reading Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, we're struck by the deeply personal nature of the book. It's not about idiotic Republican policies, or about the faults of George W. Bush's presidency, or even about why the ideologies spouted by conservatives are misguided. These subjects would give us something as readers to work with. No, if you look at Al Franken's book carefully, it's about three things:

1. Al Franken and the wonderful things Al Franken does,
   
2. The people Al Franken doesn't like and their foibles, and
   
3. The various ways in which Al Franken gets the goat of the people he doesn't like.
   

Time and again, we're treated to tales of Al Franken's encounters with the people he doesn't like, almost always right-wing pundits. Franken expresses his shock when the right-wing pundits call him names, then proceeds to call the same right-wing pundits names of his own. Franken recounts tales in which he plays the hero, making right-wing pundits look stupid. Franken tells of incidents in which he challenges right-wing pundits to fights and makes them look silly when they back down. Franken catches right-wing pundits in lies about such things as whether they have won awards and where they were born. When that's not enough, Franken regurgitates a chapter from a previous book of his by taking his enemies, placing them as fictional characters in Vietnam, then conveniently having them soil themselves, kill each other off and otherwise embarrass themselves. Some people say that's funny, but after the first ten pages I just couldn't bring myself to laugh.

A year later, I find I no longer give a shit about whether Bill O'Reilly didn't win an award that he says he won, or whether he was really born in Leavittown. I no longer care whether Al Franken had a smart retort handy when some pundit told him to fuck off. I don't care whether a pundit wants to fight Al Franken or not. And to be frank, Franken's fictional fantasies involving the death and bodily disgrace of his political enemies are the sort of thing best kept in a private diary and perhaps disclosed to a therapist, not a publisher.

After a re-reading, Lying Liars boils down to The Story of Al Franken, His Detractors, and How Al Won. The reason why nobody's talking about this book a year after the fact is that it has nearly nothing to do with the real problems facing the country. To a striking extent, we've all moved on to more important matters: changing the direction of our policy and the face of our presidency.

Posted by James Cook at 4:21 PM. # (permalink)




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