Frankenly Speaking

Al Franken and Rush Limbaugh are two sides to the same coin. I remember these wacky feuds from my childhood. My brother and I would accuse each other of lies, deceit, and manipulation. Like most parents, mine were wise to our claims. We never could sway parental opinion, and gave up trying at about age 10. What childish notion is it that makes Franken think he has discovered something significant about the evil opposition? Just like Limbaugh, Franken is not swaying my opinion. They can continue bleating to their own herds of sheep.
Peter Kind
St. Paul

I liked the Franken interview, despite myself. As a spokesman for the Squishy Left wing of the Democratic Party, Franken’s awfully good, and always entertaining, and he’s best when he’s debunking factual inaccuracies of right-wingers. Of course, to Franken, a right-wing commentator or politician can’t be simply wrong on a matter of fact; they’re lying liars telling lying lies—Franken uses the word “lie” more often than Paul Simon does in the chorus of “The Boxer.” And, sure enough, Franken himself doesn’t lie. His claims about the overreaching of some critics of the Paul Wellstone memorial/campaign rally are utterly true, if incomplete. Sarah Janecek did misunderstand the “applause” captions on the Jumbotron as a deliberate, scripted incitement to the crowd, rather than the accidental one it was. Rush Limbaugh did devote his next day’s show to the rally. It’s what he leaves out and minimizes that misleads. Franken suggests that the outrage only started when it was hyped up by right-wingers. No, it started immediately, during the rally. Wellstone’s campaign manager almost immediately—apparently without needing to get his instructions from Rush Limbaugh—apologized for the turn that the memorial took. Didn’t Franken notice that? He does have a point, though. Given the nature of Wellstone’s politics, it was almost inevitable that there would be elements of a rally in what was billed as a memorial service. Which made it even more important that those who wanted to have this remain a memorial take steps to do so. They didn’t.
Joel Rosenberg
Minneapolis