Common Ground: Liar, Liar, Rants on Fire!

March 2004 | The Political World

Liar, Liar, Rants on Fire!

by Paul Shalmy

On a recent Sunday evening three best-selling Bush-bashers — Al Franken, Paul Krugman, and Kevin Phillips — drew 3,600 persons to the sold-out Berkeley Community Theater.

The show, “Unraveling the Lying Liars of the Bush Dynasty,” a benefit for KPFA and Global Exchange, was moderated by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now.

Franken, the reigning black belt of political satire, opened in a kindly, gentle way, playing compassionate comedian to the conservative who seems to have lost his adjective. “In fairness to President Bush, there is more to being President than simply being articulate, intelligent, and knowledgeable.”

Presently, Fox Network really gets Al’s peristalsis pumping, and he gave an example why. On one of the Fox news shows, Brit Hume, torturing statistics with abandon, claimed that soldiers have less of a chance of dying in Iraq than citizens have of being murdered in California. He forgot he was comparing 130,000 troops in Iraq to 34 million people in California.

“When this was pointed out to Hume by the Washington Post he didn’t say ‘I’m embarrassed.’ He said admittedly it was a crude comparison but it was illustrative of something. And I agree,” said Franken. “It’s illustrative of what an asshole Brit Hume is. And more than that, how shameless Fox is.”

Fox’s Bill O’Reilly thinks Franken is an angry guy. To which Franken replies, “And? Yeah...there’s a lot of anger in the country.”

He ended in a stern voice, insisting that Bush’s lies about the war in Iraq raise serious questions that must be asked: “What did the president know? And, if not, why didn’t he know it? If, as may be the case, the president did not understand his intelligence briefings, did he ask to have them explained to him? And did the president know that he didn’t understand them? These are questions that must be asked repeatedly and in an accusatory tone.”

It fell to Paul Krugman, professor of economics and New York Times columnist, to follow Franken, and he continued in the same vein:

“Things are so absurd that only people who are aggressively non-serious are actually telling the truth. On January 18, 2001, The Onion, which calls itself America’s finest news source —and is — had a mock speech by the president-elect in which he said, ‘Our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over. I intend to squander our hard-won budget surplus on tax cuts for the wealthy. And on the foreign front we will find an enemy and defeat it.’ They were years ahead of anyone serious.”

As Krugman analyzed the dangers and unfairness of Bush’s economic policy, he kept using the phrase, “We live in an amazing time.”

He was amazed, for instance, that the administration tried to pitch the dividend tax cut as a populist measure when only one person in six has any taxable dividend income. He belied their contention that two-thirds of the dividend tax cut will go to seniors who need help. “The correct explanation was, yeah, most millionaires are old. That’s really all it was.”

Krugman teaches at Princeton where students either give a high percentage of correct explanations or fail the course. The rabid Right amazes him. They stay the course, determined to dismantle the Great Society and New Deal, correct explanations be damned. “I can write about budget deficits, I can write about jobs... But ultimately we know what it’s really about. It’s actually about democracy and the risks to it. It’s an amazing time which I hope will soon be over.”

If Franken is angry and Krugman amazed, Kevin Phillips is flat-out appalled by the threat that four generations of the Bush dynasty pose to our democratic traditions. So appalled that this lifetime Republican now considers himself an Independent.

“It’s hard for me to make something funny out of this,” Phillips confessed. “It’s kind of tragic.”

When Amy Goodman introduced Phillips as the political strategist of the Nixon presidency, a shiver of residual repugnance rippled through the audience that hitherto had been comfortably giddy in the presence of its own. The old Republican soon proved to be as Old Left as anyone in town.

Phillips argued that the Bushes have worked the unlit corridors of the arms trade, Wall Street, the oil patch, and the intelligence community, especially through the use of political power. His case in point was the special relationship they have forged in the Middle East with the Saudi Royal family and — bingo — the bin Ladens. These relationships have led to scandals — Iran Contra, Iraqgate — and two wars. What’s good for the Bush dynasty, Phillips said, higher oil prices and armed conflict — is not what’s good for the country. As Phillips worked his way through the dire details — crony capitalism, Enron, secrecy, Skull & Bones, CIA, and the Carlyle Group — the crowd relaxed and welcomed home to Berkeley another son of the 1960s.

So 3,600 people spilled into the night feeling good. Hell of a bash!

But here’s the rub. Energizing the base is fun; reaching NRA/NASCAR/ Christian Coalition flag-wavers is hard. I wonder how these pros would play in Peoria, much less in Knoxville, Louisville, Atlanta, or Raleigh.

This spring Al Franken will host a daily talk show which liberals hope will counter Limbaugh’s — a tough task, even though Franken is good enough, he’s smart enough, and doggone it, people like him! Satire depends on shared experiences that lead to shared perceptions. Will he be preaching to the choir or converting the heathen? A lot is riding on it.

Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.

Guest columnist Paul Shalmy is a Berkeley-based freelance journalist.

Recommend this page to a friend

Top Ten pages recommended to friends: