so much anger...

[Tireur]

But if they're mainstream and the people who listen believe them, then why must they lie? The whole lot of them are raving loonys. I see the existance of Franken et al. to be a neccessary reaction to O'Reilly et al.
See also http://atrios.blogspot.com

I'm not saying they don't lie. I say sometimes they're right and that makes me even madder. Because I don't really like them to begin with.

Think Franken doesn't lie? Saying that it's ok for him to do it because they do it, is just as bad as me asking how come people trash Bush for doing the same thing Clinton did.

[Tireur]

THAT'S what passes for debate these days??? wow, America is even worse off than I thought...

-m

It's certainly more of a debate than people sitting around laughing because they agree with eath other, like on Franken's show.

B-list comics should stick to stand-up.

[Tireur]

And yes, I have to turn Hannity off, I just can't stand it.

[epeemike81]

Think Franken doesn't lie?

Not that I've seen. example please?

-m

[epeemike81]

It's certainly more of a debate than people sitting around laughing because they agree with eath other, like on Franken's show.

B-list comics should stick to stand-up.

try NPR and the BBC. THAT'S meaningful talk and debate.

-m

[fencingguy]

I'd like an actual quote of Franken lying before making that accusation, Tireur. I've listened to all of the mentioned shows and I think the characterization of O'Reilly's rants as "debate" is absurd. He invites people onto his show with opposing viewpoints so that he can shout them down and badger them with meaningless, and often wrong, statistics that supposedly support his points. He has been caught in numerous lies and only manages to dig himself deeper holes when he tries to lie his way out of it. He makes me want to bang my head off the desk every time I hear him talk about his "no-spin zone." Limbaugh is a lying hypocrite, most noticeably with his hill billy heroin issues. In his own world if he were an african american he would be dragged out behind the woodshed and shot.

Franken does have people on his show with opposing viewpoints, including a daily guest "dittohead" who comes on to debate Limbaugh's latest idiocies.

As for O'Reilly and Limbaugh being mainstream, I strongly disagree. Maybe it's just because I'm in the Northeast, but very few people I know listen to them, let alone agree with much of what he says.

To answer the original question the reason people listen to these shows is similar to Howard Stern. Love them or hate them they are provocative and they espouse very strong view points that appeal to a specific demographic of the country. People listen because they want to hear what they'll say next, whether to nod in agreement or scream in astonishment.

[Sabresque]

try NPR

Here, here.

[fencingguy]

One more thing, can we please not charaterize NPR and the BBC as "liberal?"

Due to the right leaning tendencies of our own media, most noticeably FoxNews, and the sensationalism of modern news casting we have a tendency to view any reasoned debate than gives more than lipservice to a "leftist" point of view as "liberal media." Granted I'm an avid NPR listener (kills the time in the car on the way to fencing practice) so I'm sure I have some bias, but they are one of the few news outlets that I've found that did not present the news in a way that I felt was designed to sway my opinion. I'm not going to go into the numerous examples of right leaning journalism on foxnews because it has been well documented, but even the other networks have biased reporting. This is going to piss off some people on the board, but {ducking} the constant flying of american flags and the patriotic themes on supposed "unbiased news networks" is not the kind of news I'm looking for. I want reporting that looks at the issue at hand from both sides and allows me to make the judgement I feel is appropriate, not the one the government prefers. NPR, and the BBC in particular, provide me with that type of newsource and one that deals with the issues that I find important (International and domestic policies, International relations, politics, etc...).

edit: left out a word.

[Philistine]

I'd like an actual quote of Franken lying before making that accusation, Tireur.
{snip}

Look Here or Here for some examples.

Franken is the flipside of Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly. Same stuff, different viewpoint.

--Philistine

[jeff]

Hmmm. Not so sure about that frankenlies.com site. A quick look and I already found one they got wrong, about Roger Ailes. At the time of Willie Horton he, and the late Lee Atwater, were the architects of the Willy Horton smearing, something that was widely reported. The one about taxes calls Franken a liar, and then backs away from it if he based it on total $ rather than % (but ignoring the changes in what is taxable income). See Perfectly Legal for much better info on how Franken is essentially correct.

My vote added for NPR, too. They do let all views on the air, and they don't shout down the ones they disagree with. What a concept, huh? I just head Sen. McCain a week ago, and I came away tremendously impressed by him. NPR is *not* left-wing. They just portray too much reality than is appreciated by Fox News.

[fencingguy]

Just flipped through both of those websites, and I didn't find anything very impressive there.

In the first link you provided I chose the first "lie" they suggested because I assume they will put their strongest arguments first. The "lie" Franken tells is about Clinton thwarting a terrorist plot to destroy 12 airliners and kill the pope. The website claims that the actual thwarting was done by the Phillipine police. The quote is as follows:

"The truth? The plot to kill the Pope was thwarted by Philippine officials in January 1995, less than one week before the pontiff’s arrival in Manila!1"

What the website does not provide is any type of detailed information on HOW the plot was thwarted by the Phillipine officials. My suspicion is that they are the ones who made the actual arrest, while most of the leg work and research including identifying the members of the plot was done by US law enforcement or Intelligence officials who had the Phillipinos make the arrest since the terrorists were located in their own country and it would overstep US jurisdictional boundaries. If this is the case (and remember I'm ony conjecturing, but the website provides NO additional information that I saw) then I would think would lay the credit for thwarting the plot at the feet of US agencies, and indirectly with President Clinton.

On the second site, which jokingly (I think) refers to itself as the official Franken homepage, they have a number of links to supposed lies by Franken. I looked at a couple of them at random. The first one "I blame Ann Coulter for 9/11..." is just a link to a quote the says "In an odd way, I blame Linda Tripp and Ann Coulter for 9/11." They give the context below to illustrate that they are indeed not taking it out of context, but I don't see how this constitutes any sort of lie by Franken. Even within the sentence being quoted he admits that it's an odd opinion. And as I recall from his book, the main point he's making is that because of the "rights'" focus on his sexual activities and its attempts to undermine his credibility, he wasn't able to focus his full attention on being president and may have not paid enough attention to warning signs of a developing terrorist plot.

The second "lie" that I looked at was an attempt to refute Franken's claims that Ann Coulter lies through footnotes. In his book Franken claims that Ann Coulter uses endnotes instead of footnotes because it is easier to conceal the source of your quotes in the back where people aren't going to bother to look. He then cites several examples of twisted reporting in which she manipulates quotes from totally seperate articles to make them sound like they come from the same source. Rather than deal directly with the lies pointed out by Franken the author of this website decided to choose 10 endnotes at random from Ann Coulter's book and check their validity in reference to context and quotation... Do I need to point out the stupidity of this? He or she is claiming that by randomly selecting 10 endnotes, out of a probable minimum of 100 in the book that he will be providing an adequate sample size to determine if she is lying. I don't think at any point Franken suggests that she lies EVERY TIME she uses endnotes, he simply points out a few cases where she does. All this supposedly intelligent experiment did was show that Coulter didn't lie or manipulate with 10 of her endnotes. It makes no attempt to actually refute Franken's work, or show how where she is accused of lying she actually didn't. This is comparing apples to oranges. It's like me suggesting that I can prove that there are no horses by walking through a cow pasture in Wisconsin.

Please post something a little more thought out so I can have a real example of a Franken lie, so far I'm not convinced.

[Tireur]

Not that I've seen. example please?

-m

Franken lies the same way the other guys do, by omission. He chooses which side of a story to tell. The side the makes his point of view look best.

[Tireur]

Franken does have people on his show with opposing viewpoints, including a daily guest "dittohead" who comes on to debate Limbaugh's latest idiocies.

As for O'Reilly and Limbaugh being mainstream, I strongly disagree. Maybe it's just because I'm in the Northeast, but very few people I know listen to them, let alone agree with much of what he says.

The "dittohead" is a good friend of Al's who usually ends up laughing and agreeing with him.

Maybe it is because you're in the northeast.

[Tireur]

One more thing, can we please not charaterize NPR and the BBC as "liberal?"

Granted I'm an avid NPR listener (kills the time in the car on the way to fencing practice) so I'm sure I have some bias, .

Well, there you go...........

[fencingguy]

Well, there you go...........

Typical conservative... ignores the rest of the argument

Actually, it is annoying that you latch onto my attempt to acknowledge the possibility of my own bias as a refutation of my request rather than addressing the rest of my point. Since you choose not to, I assume you can't.

How's that for O'Reilly style debate

[Tireur]

Typical conservative... ignores the rest of the argument

I'm sorry, I didn't see an argument in your post, only an opinion and a preference.

I don't agree, I think NPR is extremely biased. I also think Fox, CNN, and the New York Times are. I don't see a vast right-wing media, that liberals tend to see when their candidate is not doing as well as they would like.

[Tireur]

And I never said "typical liberal" as an insult like you did.

[fencingguy]

Wasn't meant as an insult, it was meant as a joke. Thats why there was a smiley face. Sorry if you took it the wrong way, you should probably relax a little. And you're right, it was a preference, not an argument, but I guess you missed the end of my post where I facetiously referred to it as O'Reilly style debating. Either that or I'm a terrible satirist.

[Tireur]

You're right I am about to relax. But, if it was O'Reilly debate I just shut you up and if it was O'Franken debate, I'd just keep shouting LLLIIIEEEESSSSSS.

I don't think you're a terrible satirist, I just sometime fail to notice the "emoticons", I have a history of that.

[fencingguy]

I hate conciliatory posts... they take all the fun out of a debate

Maybe I should take back my explanation and start tossing insults around. Either that or make some sweeping generalizations about conservatives, liberals, Republicans, and Democrats.