September 20, 2004
More tushies, more ethical dilemmas
I didn't ask if it was okay to take this photo either, but I figure if you let the duck hug you, you have given implicit permission.
There is, you will notice, the ubiquitous American flag in the background, which provides me with the opportunity to recommend Al Franken's book "Lies and the Lying Liars that Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right , which he read to me on tape on the way to the Hamptons.
This book was published in 2003, but it's contents are just skimming the front pages now. This book is much more than a hilarious rant. It is carefully researched by Team Franken , fourteen Harvard students who worked with Al on the project during his Shorenstein Fellowship at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. It is the clearest explanation of how the right introduces, spins and twists the truth so that decent men, like John McCain and Max Cleland, are irreparably smeared and lose elections, among other things. It is chock full of dates, facts, and quotations, that only a team of Harvard students working night and day could produce (Ann Coulter , on the other hand, only has her little old self to manufacture her vitriol, which is why her facts may sometimes be inaccurate.)
Facts don't seem to matter much anymore. I just heard this morning on NPR that W is seen as "more likeable" in the polls. What's likeable about a man who has singlehandedly taken apart the environment, and lead us into a futile, useless war, enraging the world, while depleting the treasury with monumental tax cuts for the wealthiest in a mere four years? Maybe it's the cowboy accent. It's probably too late for John Kerry to develop one. He should have started right after Yale when W did.
Posted by Dakota at September 20, 2004 05:00 PM