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Nearly a year after the presidential election of 2004, Al Franken is still checking facts, exposing lies, and trying to clear the record as he sees it. Sneering at President Bush's declaration of a mandate after a two-and-a-half percent victory, he deconstructs Bush's 2004 platform of "fear, smear, and queers," and explains how the president has done some flip-flopping of his own. He offers comment on well-known stories, including the Terri Schiavo case, and some more obscure, such as reports of forced prostitution, indentured servitude, and squalid conditions at clothing factories in Saipan (which is part of the American Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands). Franken focuses on Tom DeLay's connection to the territory and his efforts to prevent bills from being passed that would have required Saipan to follow U.S. labor laws. Iraq, too, is discussed, from its planning stages to the huge sum of money currently unaccounted for, including $8.8 billion missing from the Coalition Provisional Authority's coffers.
On the home front, Franken covers President Bush's attempt at Social Security reform, explaining how they came up with the projected shortfall figure of $11 trillion. For one thing, they adjusted life expectancy to 150 years, while leaving the retirement age at 67: "That's an eighty-three-year retirement. They're never gonna get to that without stem cell research." He also takes some wickedly funny swipes at Karl Rove, lobbyist Jack Abramoff, pundits and hosts such as Rush Limbaugh, Tim Russert, and Sean Hannity, and, of course, President Bush. The Truth succeeds in providing ammunition to liberals and others dissatisfied with the current power base in Washington, D.C.--only this time (with jokes). --Shawn Carkonen
An Exclusive Video for The Truth (with jokes) from Al Franken
We try to keep things civil in our customer review section, but Al Franken, who apparently trained at the Saturday Night Live school of conflict mediation, didn't get the message in his exclusive video for his book The Truth (with Jokes): see high bandwidth and low bandwidth versions.
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Franken is George W. Bush's worst nightmare: a savvy liberal political satirist and Harvard fellow with a massive readership. Franken and his tireless team of fact-checkers are able to spread
The Truth to people who might never pick up books by Eric Alterman (
What Liberal Media?), David Brock (
Blinded by the Right), Joe Conason (
Big Lies), Ron Suskind (
The Price of Loyalty) or Richard A. Clarke (
Against All Enemies). Debunking the lies and allegations spread by "the right-wing blogosphere, radiosphere and asshole-on-TV-osphere," Franken details how the Bush team won the 2004 election through "smears, fears and queers." Believing that the Bush regime's plan was to "divide Americans to conquer them," Franken has created a reference manual that refutes propaganda issued by an administration he believes "shouldn't be running a small town hardware store much less the world's only remaining superpower." While Franken writes with a razor-sharp wit, his intention is deadly serious: to expose how hypocrisy, bigotry, ineptitude, unchecked corruption and partisan politics have resulted in war, debt and a divided nation. Franken considers the political motives behind the Terri Schiavo case and the distortions behind Bush's campaign to privatize Social Security. Along the way he takes on the Swiftboaters, Bush's fake "mandate," Tom DeLay, Iraq and Karl Rove. Like Jon Stewart's
The Daily Show, Franken has the ability to entertain, illuminate and motivate.
(Oct. 25) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
