Al Franken

[faceless]

I don't know a huge amount of his work (I seem to remember watching one of his shows and not really getting into it as it was very localised in relation to american politics, which is fair enough), but it's interesting to see that he's been picked to run. Up against Norm Coleman (of Galloway in the Senate infamy) he'll have a battle I'm sure.

[nekokate]

I love Al Franken. His audiobook "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them" was very good - but like you say, very in-depth about American politics. He has some brilliant stories about the Right-wing talking heads that really puts them in their place. His tale about the time he met Bill O'Reilly and the fat twat completely lost his temper and went (literally) on a rampage had me laughing my arse off.

Infact, I'm in the mood to re-tell it, hehe...

Al had a book out at the same time as Bill and some other political writers, so they set up a joint press-conference to have a debate and peddle their books (much like the one in NY with Galloway and Hitchens). Anyway, Al had mocked up a book cover which wasn't intended to be the final version, but just there for the sake of illustration, and he'd decided to put a picture of O'Reilly on the cover since he discussed him extensively in the book, and it was a bad pic that made his skin look blotchy. Al had told his design team to find a better picture for the final cover just to be fair to Bill, but when Bill walked in and saw it he didn't take time to find this out - he immediately went on a huge rampage about how Al had obviously "digitally altered" the picture to make him look stupid and he's sue his ass off, etc. And he started screaming at a young woman who he assumed was responsible and made her almost cry. It turned out she had absolutely nothing to do with it and was just sat there, minding her own business.

Then later in the press conference he caught O'Reilly out in a massive lie - Bill said that his TV show had won two Peabody awards, which are apparently very prestigeous awards for excellence in journalism, and it turned out that this was utterly false. O'Reilly had never won a single Peabody. The truth was the show that O'Reilly used to host won two "Poke" awards, which are similar but nothing as grand as a Peabody, and the show won the awards TWO YEARS after Bill had stopped hosting it.

The way he told the tale was so funny. O'Reilly's head nearly exploded.

[luke]

i'll have to check out this al franken, sounds good - thanks neko

[nekokate]

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