Customer Reviews

Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot

5 star:		(183)
4 star:		(65)
3 star:		(23)
2 star:		(19)
1 star:		(111)

 

 

I don't see why so many people take this book so seriously. It's comedy. I only have the CD of the book so I haven't read the book, but I have to say that it is hilarious. I don't care if Franken is not exactly telling the truth, I'm not going to write a thesis based on the facts presented in the book. Franken openly admits to all the faults of the book such as: he only named it b/c it would be controversial, and he didn't really listen to the show at all b/c it got too annoying for him. People don't have a sense of humor anymore. I don't think he was attacking Limbaugh as much as he was smart enough to know that there are people that do not like Limbaugh and would appreciate the one-liners about the talk show host. I recommend getting the CD b/c you can get a better sense of what Franken's words are supposed to come across as (he reads his own book) and there's a great clip of his speech towards the end.

Let's face it: If you are conservative then you probably will agree with Rush but if you lean towards liberal then you probably can't stand him.

In my case, I've read Rush's first book "The Way Things Ought to Be" and found it to be full of inaccuracies, unsubstantiated and outrageous claims, and misinformation. That's not to say Rush is a complete moron because he does put forth some good arguments, but overall, I think Al Franken proves his case to convince me that Rush is a (big fat) idiot.

I like this book because it is hysterically funny and quite entertaining. Al's wit is dry and sometimes vicious. I laughed to tears when I read the chapter about Phil Gramm ("I own more guns than I need, but not as many as I want.")

He lampoons the right wing, and I think he does it well. If you are a conservative with no sense of humor, you will not like this book.

Franken admits that he came up with the title for this book before writing it. This is a hilarious collection of essays targeting the politicial right wing. The book kicks off with a chapter that pokes fun of Limbaugh's hypocrisy, weight, and political/social stances. He writes, "It's way too easy to quote him: 'It's time to start championing old-fashioned virtues like... self-restraint, self-discipline' and then write STOP EATING!!!" Much of the book is like this; spoofs on right-wing hypocrisy alongside exposures of some of their more asinine remarks. (e.g.- Rush Limbaugh: "Have you ever noticed how all newspaper composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?" Pat Robertson: "The feminist agenda....is not about equal rights for women. It's about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft and become lesbians." Newt Gingrich: "If combat means living in a ditch, females have biological problems staying in a ditch for 30 days because they get infections... On the other hand, if combat means being on an aegis class cruiser managing the computer controls for twelve ships, a female may be again dramatically better than a male, who gets very, very frustrated sitting in a chair all the time because males are biologically driven to go out and hunt giraffes." Franken retorts: "Two images come to mind. The first is of the grasslands of Africa. During the Neolithic Period. Rush, Newt, and Bill Bennett, all 825 pounds of them, are trying to run down a giraffe. The giraffe is thinking, 'No problem here.' The second image is of Newt, about fifteen years ago, explaining to his thirteen-year-old daughter that she just got her first 'infection.'") Subsequent essays cover a range of political figures and issues. My version, the new paperback edition, also includes a postlude of "New Dirt on the Nutcase Right". There aren't many Jay Leno-type one-liners in this one. Instead, the essays have the strange mixture of building into hilarity while enraging you.

Good: This book is a quick, funny read. The best essays are the ones that target specific characters, particularly the ones on Limbaugh, Newt Gingerich, Phil Gramm, Pat Buchanan, and Pat Robertson.

Bad: A couple of the essays drag a bit, particularly the fictitious "Operation Chickenhawk".

Opinion: This one is hysterical! I laughed out loud regularly while reading it. It's definitely nice to see someone giving Limbaugh a taste of his own medicine. Franken stops at nothing, and in my opinion has definitely established himself as one of the nation's premier political comedians.

I can remember, like it was yesterday, when I first layed eyes on this screed. First, I did not know what a screed was until I read UN Ambassador Jean Kirkpatrick's scathing review of Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot (RLBFI)that Al so graciously put in his foreward. How many folks would let a pundit from the hostile camp have that powerful a forum to shape opinion of the book? I think it is a credit to Al's fair and balanced nature that he let her.

Anyone offended by the book's title should remember that Rush made his career out of insults. That is the great irony. Look, I have two of my degrees at public institutions, and tubby (Rush) reminds his audience that we, public college graduates,
can not grasp the sublime arguments of Milton Freidman and the other apostles of Free Market ideology. Comments like"you public school and public college graduates probably cannot grasp
this" "you know, my friends, the sorry state of thinking by people who went to our public institutions is tragic." NUT JOB! YOU ARE A COMMUNITY COLLEGE DROPOUT! By your own definition you are an idiot, and Al is right. An aside, I would like to see Al take Rush and Bill O'Reilly on in a game of celebrity Jeopardy. Al would pummel them because he knows questions to answers other
than "My housekeeper." Answer in the form of a question is of course: "Who supplies my drugs illegally?" or category Awards answer: "The Peabody;" answer in the form of a question: "What award did I say I won but really lied about and then made a complete ass of myself by trying to cover it up." Rush and Bill would get those; but not much else. Although I must disclaim that Bill has two masters degrees and is much smarter than Rush,
a damnation by the feintest of all praises I suppose.

Conservatives do not know the daily sting of insults that Rush lays on us liberals. He does not best our arguments because he really has none accept weak analogies or his bloviations and prevarications. Mark Twain said that "a lie runs half way around the world before the truth even gets on its shoes." Al was like our knight in shining armor back in '95. I could never get through to Limbaugh, his jackass callscreener stopped me. But in his book Al redressed the greivance, in part anyway.

He reminds that Rush is either a liar or an idiot. Al shows how Rush tried to twist numbers on a chart displaying the effects of the Reagan tax cuts. Al shows the reader how Rush cooked the books to show that Reagans tax cuts helped the poor more than the wealthy. It is either disingenous or stupid. It is also possible that he recieved some training in accountancy at Arthur Anderson. Was Al being prophetic?

Limbaugh's past questionable history is brought to light. Rush was pretty lazy, depending on public handouts. He was, as I said, a JC dropout. Given the recent facts of his life, it can be truly said that Rush is a drug addicted drop out on the public dole. Anyway, he avoided service in Vietnam. Somewhere in the mid eighties he recieved his conservative epiphany in Sacramento, California. Like the 49ers before him he found gold out there. There was a gold mine to be had in right wing talk radio, in tickling the ears of people that wanted their prejudices confirmed and elevated.

Al exposes lists of lies that Rush tells about the environment, his asundry dissemblings on his show, in his books and on his TV show. He exposed that Limbaugh won't go on TV or be interviewed with another pundit or politico unless it is some handpicked prescreened dittohead. Rush NEVER goes up against anyone who can challenge him. He goes on Russert alone. He seldom has guests on his talk show. He will only let "a few" scared and inarticulate callers who disagree with him talk on his show--strawmen he can easily knock down. Rush is not likely to be appearing opposite Al Franken in a public debate any time soon.

He does not stop with Rush. There are the "other observations." Particularly interesting is his examination of Mr.Newt--Newt Gingrich. Newt is a real jerk with the woman in his life--making Clinton look saintly. There is the story about his cancer stricken wife that will cause all to think Newt vile. But what interested me most was a comment that Gingrich made about oral sex and why he insisted on having only oral sex with aides and lady freinds other than the current Mrs. Gingrich, whoever that was at the time. He needed plausable deniablity. If he was ever asked if he had sex with a woman, he could say "no" and not be lying because oral sex was not sexual intercourse. This is in 1994,long before Monica and the stained dress. Pretty prophetic heh!

I am English, and picking up a random satirical political book from the shelf seemed like a good idea for learning a bit about American politics. And having a good time.

I didn't like the title, because it is somewhat...confrontational. But between the covers of this aggressive book lay a very, very funny man. He combines an astute political sense with a level of indignant humanitarianism which allows him to put radical conservatives in a very bad light. Franken uses stats and figures to support his claims, but never attempts to pretend his book is any more than satire - slightly less political than P.J. O'Rourke, for example.

Radical conservatives might struggle to enjoy this, but anyone with a sense of humour should be able to appreciate most of Franken's character portraits and, even better, anecdotes - for example, when he played with the President American football and made a play which won his team the game...but the President forbore to congratulate him. The quick prose is funny and witty...

But...it does go a little far at times, and though I learned to share some of Franken's views on Rush Limbaugh, to whom I have never listened, I still thought some of the writing went too far. It reassured me tremendously to read in Franken's "Why Not Me" that Limbaugh himself had bumped into him and instead of pummelling him had yelled - "hell of a book!". This, and grudging praise to men such as Bob Dole gives Franken a bit more depth than an out-and-out liberal satirist with no punches pulled.

I loved this book--I don't know when I've laughed so hard. Maybe it helps that I'm a "liberal"--but what makes this a good book rather than just a book that says things I happen to agree with is that it's clever and well-executed. The humor runs from silly to witty, but it's pretty consistently funny.
It's too bad the satire seems to be lost on some people. The point of the book is that Franken is using the same methods that Rush Limbaugh & co. use in a _satirical_ fashion in order to expose these methods as ridiculous. Take his "interview" with Rush Limbaugh, modeled after the latter's "interview" with Hillary Clinton. Yes, obviously it's quite easy to come up with the same sort of "interview" with Al Franken, but that doesn't do much to hurt his case. The point of the Rush Limbaugh interview isn't so much to make Rush admit that he is indeed a big fat idiot by taking his words out of context as to make fun of the idea of such an interview as a cheap shot with which you can make anyone say anything. So you can't really use Franken's methods against him to make him out to be a hypocrite, because the basis of the book is a humorous refutation of those very methods. That's why it's funny.

The book was kind of funny, but somebody really screwed up the index. I couldn't find any of the actual references on the pages indicated there. I hope he got a better editor for his latest book.

Matthew writes below that Rush is entertainment, and should not be looked to for philosophical views. I've long suspected this is a view held by fans of Rush who don't want to admit that they actually agree with his overblown, blowhard rantings, and who explain their feelings away by purporting that he is only trying to amuse and entertain, and should not be taken too seriously. But in any case, I ask you, Matthew and those who hold this view of Rush as entertainment, if you can look at Limbaugh in this light, why not Al Franken? Ah, but it's not so easy to take lightly the writings of a man who attacks Rush, and by extension, is attacking some of the beliefs that you may in fact hold dearly, now is it? It's much easier to hold Franken to a standard that you don't hold Rush to, thereby letting you attack Franken while letting Rush off the hook for all his ridiculous meanderings.

Now just let me relate a Rush rant from the other day: A typical Rush tactic is to take a Democrat's or a liberal's argument, and hold it up to ridicule, but only after taking it out of context and applying it in a seemingly appropriate, but actually misleading way. In this case, he said that the argument of some Democrats that the war in Iraq is going to make the terrorists angrier at the US is ridiculous, and said that they were already angry enough to crash airplanes into our buildings BEFORE we went to war with them - how could they get any angrier than that?! Makes sense. Until you realize that the Democrat's argument is not that it's going to make already existing terrorists even more angry, but that instead the war may encourage other people to join terrorist organizations who otherwise wouldn't have joined them, if we hadn't gone to war. Very subtle, and very tricky on Rush's part. It could certainly make the Democrats argument look silly, if you're not listening closely.

Thus if the above ancecdote is enlightening in any way, might I suggest that if you don't want to pay attention when Rush is on, listen to the MUSIC radio for your entertainment, and certainly not Rush Limbaugh.

Oh, and I know the index was a joke, by the way!

Ironically, just as I was finishing Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot, I happened upon an essay by Limbaugh's niece, Julie Limbaugh,* about the ups and downs of being second cousin to a man who makes a living by (in his own words) making half the people in America hate him. She calls her cousin's long-playing farce a "self-aware self-parody," a "caricature"--in other words, a phony act (which, not incidentally, has made him a millionaire many times over).

In this book, Al Franken, who has no fear about wading into shark-infested waters, pulls no punches in lampooning Rush and his cohorts on the lunatic fringe of Republican conservatism. Franken is a very smart guy, and if his prose is often bent, he shoots accurately and straight from the hip.

After a poignant description about her conflict between love of a family member and discomfort at being judged by her name, Julie Limbaugh summarizes her current state of mind by saying, "it seems that Rush is no longer just playing the political game he plays so well. Rather, he has been attacking hope, and now it feels like there's little room for that."

That's exactly why Franken's book (first published in 1996) is still relevant. As long as Rush Limbaugh continues to be a parody of a man, an ambassador of hate, and an assassin of hope, someone out there has to call him on it.

*"Rusty and Me," Salon.com, April 1, 2009.

As a diehard conservative, I am not supposed to like this book. I am also supposed to be a raving dittohead, horrified at any implication that perhaps Rush Limbaugh is not the best representative for my idealogy. However, as a closer follower of George Will than Mr. Limbaugh, I still hold the capacity to be objective about things--and this book, despite its liberalism, is genuinely funny, and the dirty tricks employed by Franken to embarrass Rush are very clever. Only four stars because, come on, I still have my principles.

If ever there was a self-serving, egotistical, pusillanimous bag of wind that deserved skewering it's got to be El Rushbo. What's great about this book is that Franken took pains to do some research (or to have his researcher do some research) to show exactly where Limbaugh's pompous pronouncements veer rather wildly from reality. There have actually been other books devoted to pointing out specific instances of Rush inaccuracies/gross exaggerations/half truths/outright lies, but this one gives you the most yuks for your buck.