|
|||||||
|
|
|
|||||
|
|
|||||||
|
|||||||
|
|
|
|||||
|
|
|||||||
Al Franken's Lies [pun intended]
2004-5-3
On May the First, I got Al Franken's book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who TellTthem, or, more precisely, its British version (London: Penguin 2003). I expected a left-wing version of Ann Coulter, or a second Michael Moore; Franken turned out to be better than that, although granted, almost everyone and everything is better than Ann Coulter, so that probably doesn't count.
Al Franken explicitly mentions that his book is primarily satire - "Thanks to TeamFranken [sic], you can rest assured that almost every fact in this book is correct. Either that or it's a joke," he adds (xiii-xiv). I presume that he's right, because after all, what are a few tens of falsities and outrageous statements in a book of 357 pages, which probably contains hundreds of facts? I am probably being too harsh here, however, because a lot of falsities - I don't call them lies because I have no idea whether Franken knew they were incorrect or misleading, even though I have a hunch that he did - repeat themselves.
One such wrong fact is the figures of surplus and deficit under Clinton and Bush respectively. It ironically begins in page xvi, just two pages after Franken's grand assertion: "Bush squandered a $4.6 trillion surplus and is plunging us into deficits as far as God can see." The USA never had a 4.6-trillion-dollar surplus; even Franken admits later in the book that the surplus was projected in 2000 over ten years. And I presume that it would've remained, with Gore or Bush (what Bush gave away in tax cuts Gore would've given in increased spending; Greenspan recommended paying down the debt, but he could only say that because he didn't have the burden of winning elections), had the NASDAQ not crashed on March 28th, 2000, sending the dot-com bubble down the drain. The Republicans say that Bush inherited a recession, and they're right at least insofar as the onset of the recession was ten months prior to Bush's inauguration; the question is whether Bush helped or worsened the recession.
In general, Franken is at his worst when he credits Clinton with things he shouldn't receive credit for. He credits Clinton for the growth of the 1990s, for instance, offering no evidence whatsoever for that other than a post hoc, propter hoc fallacy (i.e. he says "Clinton was president during the growth, hence he caused it). What he says about Clinton's foreign policy is mostly wrong; ironically, the most popular refutation of that I know of comes from Michael Moore... Stupid White Men can be accused of a lot of things, but shilling for Clinton isn't one of them.
Examples of falseties concerning Clinton are:
"...Clinton presided over the longest economic expansion in the history of the United States of America" (95). The only person in the Clinton administration who can be readily credited with the growth of the late 90s is Al Gore, whose legislation created the Internet, which was integral in both the 90s' growth and the NASDAQ crash.
"[Paul] Bremer.... told the [Washington] Post that he believed the Clinton administration had 'correctly focused on Bin Laden'" (107). Bremer would be a relatively good authority here, but still, Franken relies on an argument for authority, offering no explanation as to in what way Clinton focused on Bin Laden. Further, evidence suggests that Clinton focused on several important issues, rather than just Bin Laden, this is of course a lot better than Bush's fixation on Iraq, and probably than a fixation on Bin Laden, too, but it somewhat weakens Franken's argument here.
"So who's blaming America? The left, which is blaming the terrorists? Or the right, which is blaming a twice-elected President of the United States?" (107) This is pure, unadulterated demagogy, considering that the right blames Clinton to abotu the same degree the left blames Bush. There's nothing wrong with that, as long as it's fact-based, but demagogies such as Franken's are not only false, but also idiotic.
"Ramzi Yousef, Abdul Hakim Murad, and Wali Khan Amin Shah are all currecntly behind bars [concerning Clinton's counterterrorism policy]" (109). Three fallacies here include crediting Clinton without proving that their imprisonment is a result of Clinton's policy, not saying how many terrorists were caught under Bush, and not saying how many terrorists were not caught under Clinton.
"Clinton struck targets in Sudan and Afghanistan with Tomahawk missiles in retaliation for terrorist strikes against our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania" (111). Clinton did do that, of course, but achieved nothing at all except blowing up an aspirin factory (or was that in Somalia? I forgot) and killing a few innocent civilians.
"As a senior Bush administration official told Time, [Richard] Clarke's plan [formulated under Clinton] amounted to 'everything we've done since 9/11'" (114). True, again, but the plan was far from perfect... in blunter language, it was shit: the USA killed more civilians in Afghanistan than were killed in the 9/11 attacks, failed to destroy grassroots support for terrorism, installed a government that wasn't much better than the Taliban and soon found out it couldn't rule outside Kabul, and now the Taliban is regrouping.
"President William Jefferson Clinton finally put an end to [ethnic cleansing in Kosovo]" (126). A little too late, and a little too roughly; Franken credits Clinton with doing the operation without any US military deaths (131), but fails to mention the numerous Serbian and Albanian civilian deaths, which Clinton could've tried reducing by, for instance, deploying ground forces, but he didn't. He also credits Clinton with the revolution in Serbia (131), which need not have had anything to do with American intervention.
"The Clinton military did a great job in Iraq, didn't it?" (212) Yes, it did an excellent job and lived up to the American standard of killing more civilians than the enemy did; semi-reliable information I have would put the civilian death toll in Iraq around 80,000 in the first year, enough for five and a half years of Saddam Hussein, not counting the sanctions (the responsibility for the approximately one million Iraqi deaths from it being shared by Saddam, Clinton, and Bush the First, in this order).
There's more. In page 174, there's a graph of violent crime under Reagan, Bush the First, and Clinton, showing how Clinton reversed a trend of reduction in violent crime. The only problem is, not a shred of proof is gievn that it was really Clinton's policy that caused this reduction. On the contrary, there is a ready alternative explanation, namely that the continued growth - with which Clinton had little to nothing to do - reduced crime, as always happens in times of growth. And while Reagan did oversee the largest jump in the national debt in peacetime, Franken is not content with attacking him on that; he attacks him for simply tripling the debt, whereas during each of the Civil War and World War One the debt jumped forty-fold.
A fairly obvious crime against truth that Franken commits is on page 294, where he says, "During the six-plus years that the Bushes have been president, there has not been one job created." Part of me screams in my brain, "Spurious relation!" as I'm writing this, as it did when I read Lies.
Then, there are the standard nickel-and-dime arguments: blanket accusations of lack of patriotism (right after listing the good and the bad things the USA had done, seemingly objectively... go figure); the overuse of anecdotes, whether they are personal stories or using two or three biblical parables to argue the Jesus was a liberal; the standard chickenhawk argument, which shouldn't convince anyone above the age of six; and the seeming lack of ability to criticize the Democratic party for, say, voting mostly for the Homeland Security Bill and the Iraq War (the book would give you the impression that most Congressional Democrats stood against the HSB and against the War).
This is Franken at his worst, the Franken that proves my point in Liberals vs. Conservatives. Let us now investigate Franken at his best, the one that attacks right-wing media figures such as O'Reilly and Hannity.
His picturing of Colmes as sort of a shill, who doesn't refute Hannity's arguments even when they're completely false, is especially touching. His calling off of O'Reilly's falsities, concerning everything from Peabody awards to his party registration to getting plain facts wrong. His description of his conversation with Barbara Bush is also good, albeit redundant.
Would I recommend the book to you? Probably, as long as you remain fiercely critical, because even without fact-checking, you'll see outrageous statements, misleading information, and demagogy. However, you'll also see insightful comments about the media, particularly about right-wing media such as practically everything owned by Rupert Murdoch but also about the mainstream media. I can't compare it to, say, Ann Coulter's Treason for the simply reason that I neither have read her books nor intend to do so, but he seems better than what I do know about Coulter, Hannity, et al. And as for the title, the book is as fair and balanced as Fox is.
This site has gotten
hits since 2003-12-25.