Radio will change forever on March 31: Air America, a liberal, 24-hour talk-radio network launches in seven cities and will be broadcast via satellite and online with Al Franken's show "The O'Franken Factor," airing weekday afternoons from 12:00 to 3:00. The comedian/satirist/political raconteur -- and author of Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right -- talks about his new show, the upcoming Presidential elections, and Bill O'Reilly's harrowing death stare.
You are going to be one of the few openly liberal voices to hit mainstream radio. What's it like?
The question is, can we get people to say: "You know what? I've been listening to Rush Limbaugh for a long time, and I get mad at him, or I agree with him, or usually it's just bluster and I know it is. Let me listen to this." And then they listen to us and they go: "Oh, I see. Ohhh. Ohhhhhhhh." And then stop listening to Rush Limbaugh and start listening to me, then actually make informed decisions based on the truth and not based on bluster.
What kind of guests will you have on the show?
Our first guest will be Bob Kerrey, and our second guest is Michael Moore. And we'll have some surprise well-wishers on the first day, too.
In a recent New York Times Magazine profile, you were compared with Ann Coulter. You've also been described as the Limbaugh of the left. What do you think?
Well, it's interesting. In the Prospect, Matthew Yglesias said the difference between the liberal, anti-Bush books and the right-wing books by Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, and others is that the right-wing writers leave out the accuracy. I think there's no comparison, especially when you consider that the title of my book has the word "lies" in it. I don't think we're the mirror image of each other at all. I would say we're actually the opposite: I focus on taking what these right-wing people say and pointing out how dishonest they are, and then holding that up to scorn and ridicule, which is absolutely fair and justified. What they put out is invective that makes no sense.
It attracts a wide audience, though.
It gets listeners, but it's really dishonest.
Your show will be called The O'Franken Factor. Have you received any sort of response from O'Reilly or Fox?
The only response I got from O'Reilly came when I was at the Radio and TV Correspondents' dinner a few nights ago. I was walking by a table, and I heard someone say, "Hey, Al." I turned around and Mary Landrieu, the Senator from Louisiana, waved to me. Donald Trump was sitting next to her. He waved and said, "Hey, Al!" I said, "Hey, Mary; hey, Donald." And sitting next to Trump was Bill O'Reilly, who gave me a death stare. I was standing about 10 or 15 feet away, and Mary said, "Al, come on over." I said: "No, sorry. Can't now. Must go see other people. Bye, sorry." I did a Bob Hope back-out, a little "stay in touch." I think I have finally internalized my wife's advice, which is to stay away from incredibly awful situations.
Sounds like he won't be doing a phone-in on the show.
Well, we've invited him, but he's too afraid to come on. He doesn't want to go into the Zero Spin Zone.
In The New York Times piece, Ben Stein says, "It amazes me that a man can be in his fifties and still have such idealism."
He's from the right and I'm from the left, and we've gotten through that and have been friends for years. I really believe politics has the power to change people's lives for the better. And that's what Ben thinks is incredibly idealistic. If he thinks that is idealistic, I think that's sort of sad. (Chuckling.)
Which American politicians fulfill the idea that politics can make a difference?
I think Hubert Humphrey believed it. Paul Wellstone believed it. So did Moe Udall and Jimmy Carter. I think Lyndon Johnson believed it, but then he got mucked up in the war. He was by no means a perfect guy; he was actually a guy I probably would have personally disliked intensely. But, really, there are a lot of people who believe that: John McCain, John Kerry, Howard Dean, Joe Lieberman, Pete Domenici. I don't always agree with the way some of them act, and I think that there is some degree of cynicism in what they do. But they believe they can make people's lives better.
On the presidential campaign, what advice would you have for Kerry right now?
I would tell Kerry to run as a uniter, not a divider, as someone who will restore honesty and integrity to the White House. That may sound familiar, but it is good politics.
You quoted Richard Clarke in your book. What do you think about the Bush administration's smear campaign?
It's interesting. They can't even go out and smear him in a coordinated way, which they had months to plan for. So you have Cheney saying that Clark was out of the loop. And the first time I heard that, I said to myself, he was the head of counter-terrorism! If he was out of the loop, there was no loop. The only one in the loop was Osama bin Laden, in that case, and Mohammed Atta. They were in the loop.
In May, Cheney started to head up the counter-terrorism task force, which never met. Now, if they're going to tell us that they had terrorism as a priority, they'll have to explain the "never met" part. You see someone like Ken Adelman on Crossfire saying, "You can't throw meetings at a problem." I would love to ask General Eisenhower, "Did you have any meetings about D-Day? What were they like?"
"OK, guys, we're going to go on June 6, everyone got that? We're all going the same day."
"Hey, having this meeting was a good idea. OK, anybody have any ideas?"
"Yeah, let's let the Nazis think we're landing somewhere else."
"Hey, that's a good idea!"
"Who's in charge of that?"
"I am!"
"OK, so what'll we do?"
"Well, let's tell them were landing south of Bologna. Let 'em think that."
"OK, good idea. Where should we land?"
"Well, that's a good question, where to land. Should we land at the same time? Do we bomb the place first?"
"Yeah, let's bomb right beforehand and then land at, say, Omaha and Utah beaches. Has everyone got that clear? Because that's where we're landing. OK. But we're letting the Nazis think that we're below Bologna."
"OK, good. Good meeting. Let's meet again. You know, to coordinate things."
There are increasing signs of dissatisfaction even within the Republican Party. Recently, there was an organization founded called Republicans for Kerry. Yet Bush keeps moving to the right.
This is the most radical, conservative executive government that we have ever had, and it's combined with the most radical right-wing House of Representatives. And they are trying to make the judiciary that way, too. And they are infiltrating the bureaucracy with right-wing people. It makes Nixon look like a great president, aside from the Vietnam and spying parts. I mean, Nixon did start the EPA, OSHA, revenue sharing, and he actually read.
I mean, the arrogance and sense of entitlement you must have to think that you can be the president and not work hard, just because you say you have these principles of good and evil.
When Bush was campaigning back in 2000, though, he presented himself as a moderate.
Yeah, and then he loses by 500,000 votes and gets the presidency in a really kinky way. So you think he's at least going to try to run toward the center, a little bit, at least at the start, but no, he goes right to the right. He gets John Ashcroft. He populates the Interior Department with lobbyists, who are in the business for polluters, and they suddenly get control of the areas they lobby for. So if you lobby for timber, you're now head of timber; if you lobby for extraction industries, you oversee mining. And he keeps going. He breaks his promise about regulating CO2, completely backs out of Kyoto without offering any kind of alternative, undercuts the EPA administrator right away, and responds to utility lobbyists like Haley Barbour and Mark Roscoe so that none of these utility companies have to upgrade their environmental or anti-pollution standards. He rolls back on choice, cuts taxes on the very wealthy, goes into deficit. It's crazy! So he makes people really mad, but then September 11 happens and the country is united as never before in its history. It would take someone really divisive to divide us again. And our "uniter, not a divider," managed to do it. And now we are probably the most divided that we have ever been in our history.
Do you think that these moves are coming from Bush himself, or is it more that Bush is sort of blindly following his handlers?
I think we cut Bush too much slack. Ultimately, it's Bush.
So you see him actually as an intelligent figure despite his public persona?
No, no, that's not what I said. What I mean is that the fish rots from the head. He allows these guys to run this country and then says, "I don't read the papers; I just get my news from the people around me who give me the real news." I mean, he gets his news from Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice. How reliable is that? I absolutely believe they read to him, aloud.
What is your prediction for the upcoming presidential election?
Well, it's obviously too early to tell. But I think there is a possible scenario in which it is a landslide for the Democrats.
What sort of scenario would lead to that?
You'd see an unraveling and a meltdown of this administration. The gamble, upon gamble, upon gamble not working out.
Do you see the Paul O'Neill and Clarke testimonies as the start of that?
Part of the start of that unraveling, yes. You know, the president has not had his approval ratings go up after a speech in a long time because every speech he gives has to include things like: "You know how I said that this would cost $1.7 billion and it would pay for itself? Well, um, this is going to cost $87 billion." Then there's the State of the Union address: Mars, abstinence, and steroids.
It's all about credibility. Condi Rice says, "No one ever envisioned a plane being used as a missile to fly into a building." Actually, they did. "These aluminum tubes couldn't be used for anything else other than centrifuges." Actually, they could.
You were in Iraq, entertaining the troops. What did the soldiers say?
I was last there a few days after Saddam was captured, so I think the morale was probably better than it had been in a long time, and better than it has been since. But really it depends who you talk to. You're met at the base by the public affairs guys, then you walk around and go into the dining facility and talk to soldiers. And I don't know if they pick people to be there or not, but guys do wander in and out and you talk to them. And their morale depends on who they are. If they're National Guard or reservists, they're probably not too happy. If they're Army regular and they've got a job in the motor pool doing a fairly interesting job, then they're okay. If they're a cook in a dining facility, they're not happy, because they've got the most boring job in the world.
If they're in Iraq, they're probably scared. If they're in Iraq and their job is to flush out insurgents and kill them, they're petrified, depressed, and they want to get out of there as fast as possible. I talked to a guy who could not have been more than 20 years old, whose job that is, and he was very cynical. He had seen a guy in his unit kill himself. There is a very high suicide rate there. I think a report came out a couple days ago, something like 72% of the units reporting a low morale. The "no weapons of mass destruction" thing could not have helped, but they know Saddam was a bad guy and I think they sort of focus on that.
I think they're good guys; I like our military. I think they're focusing on trying to bring security to Iraq, and I think the guys that are doing that in positive ways are feeling good about their mission.
So I think there's a whole spectrum of how those guys feel. My goal in Kuwait and Afghanistan and Iraq and Uzbekistan was to help morale. The main thing you do when you do USO tours is provide some distraction, some entertainment, but you also show that Americans care. These guys know that the celebrities could just as easily be in Aspen skiing, but instead would rather come there and say: "Hey, we love you guys. We love you women. And thank you for being here, so that I can do the dumb job that I do."
You know, when you are in some place like Bagram, which is near the Pakistani border in Afghanistan, the day after the show, the commander always says: "I just can't tell you USO folks how much this means to our troops, and how much it helps morale. And that's going to help us do our job and capture Osama bin Laden. I guarantee that what you did here is going to help us capture him within the next several weeks." So this one time I raised my hand and I asked, "If you capture him in like the next day or so, can you credit me?" And the commander stares and says, "All right, Franken -- if we grab him in the next few days, we'll credit you." (Laughing). So I say, "just, like, in Minnesota."
There's been a lot of talk about you holding political office in the future, probably in Minnesota. Will we see a Senator Franken at some point?
It's an idea I'm seriously considering. A lot depends on the show. You know, in some ways, it might be more important to make an impact on the radio and really challenge these guys than to run for office.
Dave Kelly is an editorial intern at The American Prospect.
