Needless to say, the other important part of an Al Franken book is the humor. For those of you that are remebering his time on Saturday Night Live, then let me tell you, his humor is certainly still vigilant in this book and I hope to read his others such as Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations. The analysis is somewhat unintelligent for the sake of getting a dumb joke out there, but the jokes are still great nonetheless. Like I said, the humor is quite obvious in these broken down lies, so I wasn't expecting a whole lot of deep thought as I got into the book's pattern.
All in all, if you're a fan of his comedic work and political humor (especially if the butt of the joke is the right wing), then I highly suggest this book that will have you laughing through all 354 pages.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
My Review of "Lies" Part 1/2
The reason why I'm breaking down my review of Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right into two parts is NOT because of the very long title. In fact, it's because this book isn't so much of a beginning-middle-end novel as much as it is a compilation of outright and crazy lies by the right-wing media, separated into chapters each based on a major news source, correspondent or political figure.
This half of the review consists of the choice of lies and how they were presented (outside of the humor expected from an SNL veteran). In this aspect, the book does its job very well with quite the accredited research team of Harvard students. Its sources are legitimate and serious, whether it be having a direct quote from a TV transcript or book quote or the New York Times article that debunks that quote. It doesn't take a genius to look at these lies and have a laugh outside of Franken's analysis, as a trained chimp can look at Bill O'Reilly's lie on the left page, then turn their head six inches to the right and laugh at the counteracting and far more legitimate source that might as well have printed "Bill is a LIAR" on the right.
In this, Franken and his team (TeamFranken) have done a great job on finding great material to work with, and who knows how well a sequel would've done with everything the Bush administration did from 2003-2008, let alone what Fox Media did in that period as well.
This half of the review consists of the choice of lies and how they were presented (outside of the humor expected from an SNL veteran). In this aspect, the book does its job very well with quite the accredited research team of Harvard students. Its sources are legitimate and serious, whether it be having a direct quote from a TV transcript or book quote or the New York Times article that debunks that quote. It doesn't take a genius to look at these lies and have a laugh outside of Franken's analysis, as a trained chimp can look at Bill O'Reilly's lie on the left page, then turn their head six inches to the right and laugh at the counteracting and far more legitimate source that might as well have printed "Bill is a LIAR" on the right.
In this, Franken and his team (TeamFranken) have done a great job on finding great material to work with, and who knows how well a sequel would've done with everything the Bush administration did from 2003-2008, let alone what Fox Media did in that period as well.
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