A Franken Tidbit

Over at The Hamster there's an entry about how some conservatives are crowing that Al Franken is a hypocrite because he allegedly sued the author of a parody of one of his earlier books. The LA Times, however, has a bit of light to shed on the subject.

Franken may indeed know something about satire; in 1996, his book "Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot" was itself parodied by J.P. Mauro (actually two Mauro brothers) in the book "Al Franken Is a Buck-Toothed Moron," which features a doctored Franken photo on the cover. The introduction to the book consists of letters purporting to be from Franken's lawyers, attempting to deny the authors the use of Franken's picture. Later in the book, the letters are described as fictitious.

In other words, Franken never actually filed a suit against the authors of the parody, nor, apparently, did he threaten to. Dr. Squid notes in the comments section at The Hamster that Franken's book "Rush Limbaugh Is A Big Fat Idiot" starts out with fictitious letters allegedly from Jeanne Kirkpatrick, so the fictitious letters from Franken at the beginning of "Al Franken is a Buck-Toothed Moron" are, essentially, a parody of Franken's own satire in the book. (I can only note this as reported by Dr. Squid, however, as I've not read the book myself.)

At any rate, the conservatives who are prattling on about Franken's hypocrisy need to make themselves a bit more aware of the facts. Franken didn't sue, and there's no indication he planned to. Just a bit more BS to shovel through....

(There's just GOT to be a pony in here SOMEWHERE!)

Posted by thorswitch at August 17, 2003 12:03 PM | TrackBack