Hah, I ran across an interview of Al Franken by The Progressive (gee, a socialist/commie paper, how fitting) which is a hoot.
Question: What are you working on right now?
Al Franken: Really, Air America is my main focus. I’m doing fifteen hours a week on air, and that’s pretty all consuming—you know, preparing for it, doing it. It’s really building Air America that I’m focused on, and for me, that almost only means doing a good show. We go on the road and see the affiliates, also, being an ambassador of goodwill.
His definition of work must be different then mine, cause Air Deadbeats ratings blow. And aren’t getting better.
Q: You do have some experienced radio veterans.
Franken: Yeah, but you need an experienced radio veteran who is a liberal advocate. And there just hadn’t been any radio that did that. And so they weren’t trained—they had developed all these bad habits of being objective and balanced and stuff like that. [Laughs.] It’s hard to get that out of a person. I mean, obviously, I value objectivity and actually caring about facts, and we do that on the show. I’m not saying we’re objective, but we’re advocates. Katherine [Lanpher, co-host of The Al Franken Show] is certainly much more objective than I am, and tries to rein me in and keep me in check, which is good.
Hmm, I wonder what Randi "shrew" Rhodes will think of that, considering she had been doing liberal radio for years before AD started.
Q: Do you see Air America as looking to attract more mainstream Democrats, or moving more toward the left? Obviously, further to the left, you’ve got many people working in community radio.
Franken: Yeah, I’m not that leftwing, which is the odd thing about this: My views on most things would jibe with most Americans’. On most issues, most Americans are certainly left of this Administration. Not necessarily left, but more common-sensical. Given a chance, they’d spend less on the military, they wouldn’t make more nuclear weapons, they would want to increase environmental regulation rather than reduce it, they would want to spend more on education and health care, they would enforce corporate-responsibility laws and make corporations pay their taxes, all those kinds of things. Crazy talk. [Laughs.]
Let me catch my breath from laughing. Al, buuuuuddy? You do realize there is a war on against terrorists, right? And maybe you should ask Bill Clinton about enforcing corporate responsibility laws. You know, his admin’s inattention led to Enron and World Comm, among others. And me, I do not believe in increasing environmental regulation. I believe in increasing environmental responsibility through development of better technology. I have never liked the "throw money at the problem" solution.
Franken: No, one thing I’ve noticed about politics is that these guys have pretty thick hides. I know a number of Republican Senators, and have had no problem socializing with them. Susan Collins, Lindsey Graham, John McCain. I’ve talked to ten or fifteen Republican Senators in the past, and I’ve even gotten along with people like Rick Santorum. I’ve never told one of them to go fuck himself, like the Vice President did with [Patrick] Leahy.
No, you just physically attack people (here against a heckler and here against a Laura Ingraham producers), Aaaallllll. And Leahy deserved it. Moonbats think that a. they can say whateverthehelltheywant, and b. there should never be any consequences for their moonbattery.
Hey, Al, you might think about putting out some feelers for a new job. Air Deadbeat is toast by April ’06.
Denver Post pushes Air America for sainthood
Through the Oh, That Liberal Media! weblog, it’s been discovered that the Denver Post, in reporting on Air America…didn’t really.