Al Franken on Sean Hannity...

For some reason, that set me off, and before long we were screaming at each other. I had never in my life hated a person more than I hated Sean Hannity at that moment. Finally, Colmes broke us up, and I left, shaking my head. Who was that asshole?

-Al Franken, from Lies...pg. 86.

Needless to say, Al Franken does not think very highly of Sean Hannity, which probably explains his disdain for Alan Colmes as well. After all, any friend of Hannity's is no friend of Al's. Considering his expressed sentiment, Al could not have written a book about the American Right without including a chapter or two on Mr. Hannity.

Al spends several pages dissecting different subjects and concepts from Hannity's book, Let Freedom Ring. He first goes through a list of such concepts which he finds to be "obnoxious." For instance, when Hannity describes the failing New York public school system, he quotes New York Education Commissioner Richard Mills. Mills, in trying to fathom the reason for the disgraceful state of the system, begins asking rhetorical questions such as "Is it teaching? Is it teaching practice? Is it the material? Is it the work students are doing?" So on and so forth. Hannity pulled the quote from a 2001 New York Post article, and responds to it by saying, "What are these people doing with our tax dollars if they don't even know the answers to these questions?"

Sounds like a perfectly legitimate question to me.

Hannity's response, however, made Al Franken very mad, or at least annoyed, since it falls under his "obnoxious" list. He responds by saying, "Hannity, full of contempt for both his readers and the truth [can you feel the hatred in his words?], was twisting this good man's words into a noose of lies...when Mills asked 'Is it teaching?' or 'What are they reading?' he didn't mean it literally. He was using what's called 'a rhetorical device.'" Okay, Al, that's very true. Unfortunately, though, his entire interview was a series of rhetorical devices! That's the problem. In the article, "City's Kids Flunk the Basic," he doesn't actually offer a single specific suggestion for how to improve the situation. He admits that a problem exists, and that something should be done about it, and even that things are improving in some respects, but when it comes to attacking the central problem of the overwhelming lack of basic proficiency in the school system, Mills has a lot more questions than answers. I've already rambled on about this for too long, so I'll conclude. The point that Sean Hannity is trying to make here is that we desperately need to stop and look these problems in the face to find clear-cut solutions. Al Franken, apparently, is opposed to that.

Jump forward to page 92 of Lies, and Al demonstrates the depths of his intelligence. Now he is rambling on about Hannity's admiration for Oliver North, particularly in regard to the Iran-Contra hearings. According to Al, "You've got to wonder about a guy [Hannity] whose interest in politics was inspired by the illegal funding of terrorists?"

What???

The illegal funding of terrorists, Al? At first I thought to myself, 'Well maybe Al is referring to the Iranians, since we did sell arms to them,' but then I thought, 'No way, the situation with Iran was based on trade. So then, these "terrorists" to whom he is referring must be the guerillas in Nicaragua, i.e. the freedom fighters who resisted the communist Sandinistas often at the expense of their own lives. They succeeded in ending the communist threat in central America, and now Al Franken shows his gratitude by likening them to Osama bin Laden. For Al Franken to casually call Oliver North a financier of terrorism is the worst kind of insult to one of this nation's greatest modern heroes. Nobody hates terrorists more than Oliver North, and it was his actions that made him the target of real terrorists (not to mention real deranged terrorists) like Abu Nidal. Al Franken is not worthy to kiss Ollie North's feet.

Al's complaint regarding Hannity and Oliver North is a hypocritical one. First, on page 90 of Lies, Al agrees with Hannity that terrorist John Walker Lindh is a traitor and should be treated as such (playing the part of Mr. Patriot), but then he goes on to denigrate Oliver North, a man who has not only spent his life fighting to keep America safe from dirtbags like Lindh, but has contributed to the freeing of several American hostages in Iran, as well as the needed assistance to the freedom-loving Nicaraguans. That's how things work on PlanetFranken.

After completing the "obnoxious" list, Al goes on with his list of "lies," or his definition thereof. The first such "lie" is in regard to Hannity's support of school vouchers. Hannity makes the argument that school vouchers are a good thing because they force schools to compete, and therefore strive for excellence. Makes sense, right? Well, it isn't good enough for Al. The "lie," so to speak, lies in the evidence that Hannity uses to support his claim. Says Al on page 94, "Hannity describes a couple of since-discredited studies..." Just to fill you in, "since-discredited" is Franken-code for "doesn't suit my agenda." Next he cites Hannity's other bit of evidence, a book called The Miracle in East Harlem: The Fight for Choice in Public Education. Al finds this to be significant proof that Hannity is a liar because, as he puts it, "...the 'Miracle in East Harlem' didn't actually involve vouchers. There were no vouchers. None. Nobody got a voucher. Vouchers? Not a part of the miracle." Sounds like Hannity is a liar, doesn't it? Apparently, Al is hoping that his readers haven't read Let Freedom Ring, because if they did they would know better, and they would know that Al Franken is (if I may use his own words against him) "full of contempt for both his readers and the truth."

On page 167 of Let Freedom Ring, Hannity legitimately uses The Miracle in East Harlem to illustrate why vouchers work. Nowhere does he say that the book itself is about vouchers. As I mentioned before, he is making the case that vouchers work because of their competitive nature. That competitive nature is the key. In The Miracle of East Harlem, the authors account how the Harlem School District was turned around by the reworking of the system, in which several small public schools were opened in the area. The parents were given the choice of which school they wanted to send their children to, and this is the cornerstone of Sean's argument! He is saying that if schools are made to compete for the students, they would have an incentive to offer the best education possible. The Miracle of East Harlem is the perfect illustration of why this concept works. Yet Al Franken ignores this obvious and profound connection to further make Sean Hannity look like a fraud. What's worse is that he launches this insult on our intelligence only a couple of pages after accusing Hannity of insulting his own readers with faulty connections. Oh, I forgot. It's "satire."

Al's "Lie #2" is pretty short. He quotes Hannity in saying, "Decades of liberal no-growth policies have seriously endangered our economic and national security." Then he mentions how Bill Clinton presided over the longest economic expansion in US history. Well, Al conveniently doesn't mention the fact that Hannity is referring to energy dependency (making Al's Clinton defense irrelevant and just plain stupid). In fact, the line right before the one Al is quoting reads, "And the danger we face from failing to become energy-independent cannot be overstated." I fail to see what this has to with Clinton's economic expansion. And here's a fun bit of trivia. Al likes to attack Bush and Reagan for tax cuts that "favor the rich" (and thus hurt the poor), and yet the "expansion" brought about by Al's beloved Bill Clinton was done so by the raising of taxes, including Social Security.

The next group of "lies" also relates to the economy. On page 223 of Let Freedom Ring, Hannity displays a chart to illustrate the difference between Reagan's proposed budgets in the 80's and the actual budgets passed by congress. In doing this, Hannity attempts to show that the Democrats in congress, and not Reagan, were responsible for the deficits of the 80's. Now I'm no economist, but I'm going to take this rare opportunity to play devil's advocate. I think that Al Franken has a good point in challenging Hannity's claim here. But wait! Don't write me off just yet. One of the few profound revelations in Al's book can be found on page 99, when he says, "...even if Hannity were correctly interpreting the table, and even if the 'cumulative' technique were something other than a laughable charade, Congress would have only passed $274 billion in extra spending in a period when the debt shot up $1,402 billion."

I agree with Al in the idea that Congress cannot be blamed entirely for the surging deficit of the Reagan administration. Congress did, however, play a very large part, which Al can't seem to come to terms with. Al loves to attack Ronald Reagan at every possible opportunity, and to suggest that Reagan may not have been fully responsible for sending this country to Hell is blasphemy in the eyes of Al Franken (unless you say that George W. Bush is also responsible).

First, Al rambles on about how the chart uses a worthless "cumulative % difference" column to give the illusion of greater impact than is actually true. Al proclaims on page 98 that "what he's doing is completely meaningless." Now here's the contradiction. Turn back to page 95 and Al writes, "During the first 190 years of our great democracy's existence, our government racked up $789 billion dollars in debt." In other words, the $789-billion-dollar debt accumulated during the first 190 years of our great democracy's existence. Al was careful not to use the word accumulated, because it would discredit his silly argument that a cumulative column is worthless. But that's what debts have a tendency of doing. They build up over time, and so it is important to consider their cumulative growth in order to understand them. How Al was able to conclude that a cumulative tally is "meaningless" is beyond me.

On page 99, Al seems to have caught Hannity in another lie. "On Kottman's original table, he included an 'average cumulative percent difference' number, 3.1 percent. The fact that Hannity chose to omit this one specific number shows that, yet again, he knew he was lying." That's a pretty profound accusation. Too bad it's worthless. If you visit the website on which Kottman's chart is available (see bottom of page), you'll see why the average cumulative difference was not reprinted in Hannity's book. Hannity specifically wants to draw our attention to the average difference of 2.8 because it holds special significance, whereas the cumulative difference of 3.1 holds little importance for the sake of the argument. Here are Kottman's own words in regard to the chart:

"On average, Congress spent 2.8% more than Reagan asked for, while the cumulative (yearly compounding rate) was a whopping 24.5% more. If the budget in 1989 had been 24.5% smaller (i.e., 280 billion dollars) there could have been a surplus of about 130 billion dollars instead of a deficit. This is equivalent to a constant compounding increase of 2.8% every year during the 8 budgets above and beyond the previous year's spending. If anyone still thinks that is not a significant amount, they should ask themselves whether a balanced budget in 1989 would have been significant."

As you can see, Kottman's emphasis is on the rate of 2.8%, which serves his point well, and the cumulative difference has little bearing on the illustration at hand. Since Hannity's readers don't have Kottman's explanation at hand, the omission of the 3.1 serves the purpose of isolating the 2.8, similarly to the way Kottman does in his text. Now why would Hannity need to deceive his readers by omitting numbers from a chart that defends Reagan's economic record? That's vintage Al Franken for you.

Lastly, in regard to the chart, Hannity is apparently a "liar" for using a chart whose "actual budgets" include spending. That argument is so ridiculous that I'm not going to spend a lot of time exposing it. Basically, it can be summed up by saying that the inclusion of spending numbers is paramount to the whole argument! Right before presenting the chart, Hannity proclaims, "No, the deficits of the 1980s were caused by the insatiable spending demands of congressional Democrats." Likewise, Kottman illustrates on his website that "despite getting concessions on taxes, congress never once cut spending, and the actual budgets were higher than what Reagan asked for 7 out of 8 years" (emphasis added). With statements like these, spending figures had to be included as part of the equation, or their arguments would have been void of visible evidence.

Next, Al goes on to defend the defense records of the Democrats and President Clinton. Pretty deep stuff, but not in any way based in fact. For the truth about Al Franken and the Clinton defense record, I refer you to another great website, frankenlies.com. Let the facts speak for themselves.

Kottman's Reagan chart: http://reagan.webteamone.com/reagan_budgets.html

Home