A FAIR & BALANCED
REVIEW

By John Breneman

Getting America's left ear to listen to the radio will require some gimmicks, right?

Al Franken, the noted liberal pundit turned radio wrassler, plans to pummel the body politic with belligerent Democratic banter, chatter and cheerleading, demanding to be heard above the relentless Republican shout-mongers Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh. Hammer them with humor.

"Bush is going down, he is going down, he is going down!" was funny and feisty on Day One. But even the most brilliant Ann Coulter material ever conceived will not carry the day. Not even joking that the liberal-loathing Coulter said if Al Qaeda has to hit somewhere in the U.S., let it be the New York studios of Air America Radio. One of the funnier bits of Day Two was Franken whining about being forced to shill a product for people who constantly need to pee.

This is a cause that calls for hype. Steroid-fueled World Rhetoric Foundation megahype. This is Stone-Cold Al Franken vs. Stone-Stoned Limbaugh in a high-frequency smackdown! Don't touch that dial!

Next up, freak-haired boxing impresario Don King promotes the multimillion-dollar Franken-Limbaugh grudge match. "The Great Left Hope" vs. the "Great Right Dope." Franken, the former wrestler who persuaded a Dean heckler to shut up with a New Hampshire primary pile-driver, stepping to the mike against the acid-larynxed Limbaugh, the lying anti-drug liar whose appetite for OxyContin should enable him to absorb a daily flurry of left hooks, left jabs and liberal haymakers.

Al Franken is not a big fat idiot. He knows that to crush Rush and rile the vile O'Reilly he must rock the mike. Whatever that means. He's gotta come out guns blazing for his daily three-hour showdown at High Noon. (Note to Air America: Chuck D from Public Enemy is nice, but imagine 50 Cent jumping into the feud).

"A Franken balanced look at the Right" must walk the talk with smart, GOP-slapping satire. Funny stuff like diagnosing George W. Bush with a malignant fib nose, a rare Pinocchio-like condition that could leave him with as little as seven months to lead. Listeners will love scathing tirades about how Bush dropped a comic bomb, gagging on his own tasteless WMD joke.

So no more lying down and letting the lying liars get away with White House lies. The Great Liberal Radio Experiment is on.

"Good morning, Vietnam … I mean Iraq."

White House not pleased with Humor Gazette

By John Breneman

The Bush administration moved to silence yet another of its vocal critics today, mounting a smear campaign against the Humor Gazette, the influential satire newspaper that poked fun at the president's
ill-advised deployment of a comic bomb.

Donald Rumsfeld denounced the Gazette as a "subversive left-wing laugh rag" whose editor is merely trying to drum up publicity for his new book, "George W. Bush: Behind the Smirk."

Rumsfeld challenged the Gazette to produce evidence supporting its shocking allegation that the president suffers from a malignant fib-nose, a rare Pinocchio-like condition that may leave him with as little as seven months to lead.

Gazette publisher Arturo DeMaunchie declined to comment, saying he was distracted by a Blackhawk helicopter hovering outside his window. But a spokesman said the Gazette's vigilant commitment to fake journalistic integrity mandates that it painstakingly fabricate every word of its explosive investigative satire. For example, the paper pretended to interview multiple anonymous sources before printing its Feb. 13 expose "President may have evaded Boy Scout service."

Condoleezza Rice said the administration's policy of being really secretive about everything precluded her from commenting, but in an interview with Regis Philbin she said the Gazette is just angling to get Mel Gibson's people to option its script for "Lethal Weapons of Mass Destruction."

But the fledgling media conglomerate responded that it has a strict policy separating its journalistic mission from its entertainment division, and sees no conflict in pitching Hollywood screenplays for "Last Tango in Pakistan," "Allah Doesn't Live Here Anymore" and "Al Qaeda on the Western Front."

Critics contend the White House has helped blur the increasingly fuzzy line between real journalism and fake news with its disturbing record of deception and "utter fiction." In "Operation Iraqi Infoganda," Frank Rich of the New York Times says the administration "has responded to the growing national appetite for fictionalized news by producing a steady supply of its own."

Times columnist Paul Krugman says the White House policy of character assassination for high-level dissenters like former counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke "provides more evidence of something rotten in the state of our government."

Meanwhile there are unconfirmed reports of government workers being fired for reading the Humor Gazette, harsh proof the president means business when he says, "Either you are with us or you are with the satirists."

Imaginary reporters Karen Ryan and Alberto Garcia, best known for their phony White House-funded "coverage" of Medicare, contributed to this report.

A comic bomb:
Bush slays 'em with WMD gag

By John Breneman

With a comic touch as deft as a Baghdad bombing raid, President Bush reduced the side-splitting Iraq weapons of mass destruction fiasco to a punchline.

The Commander-in-Cheek laughed off the world's concern about non-existent WMDs at the 60th annual Radio & Television Correspondents' Association dinner Wednesday night.

War on Iraq
U.S. death toll: hundreds
Cost: untold billions
Bush's standup routine: priceless.

Too bad the families of soldiers killed in Iraq don't get the joke.

If you missed it, President Bush was showing funny pictures and cracking jokes about them when up popped a photo of him looking under a desk. "Those weapons of mass destruction must be somewhere," quipped the White House wagster. "Nope, no weapons over there … Maybe under here."

The bit unwittingly lampooned Bush's cluelessness that his phony weapons bluster for a war that has now claimed hundreds of U.S. lives might not be the best fodder for cornball humor from a leader regarded in much of the world as a malevolent moron.

Sources say Bush is planning followup jokes about some of his other wacky stunts, like tagging the U.S. Constitution with anti-gay grafitti, giving phony $4 billion cost estimates for the $5.5 billion Medicare bill and sporting a flightsuit for his side-splitting "Mission Accomplished" caper.

"Sheer comic genius," raved the respected comedian Carrot Top, who is helping the president build an arsenal of one-liners and witticisms of mass destruction.

John Kerry, after consulting with political humorist Al Franken, issued a statement calling Bush "a big fat idiot."

Related story:
President sends Wile E. Coyote on mission to nab bin Laden

Kerry claims proof Bush lied about Iraq

By John Breneman

A John Kerry supporter claims to have conclusive photographic evidence that President Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The picture was allegedly taken Saturday in Orlando, Fla., during a 15-minute Bush stopover to bag $200,000 each from a bunch of businessmen who want a piece of him.

As the president began fielding a question about Iraq, his nose reportedly appeared to sprout from his face, reaching nearly three inches as he continued on about the economy and the real cost of Medicare.

A leading Democratic spin doctor who analyzed an X-ray of the image said the prognosis is grim, possibly terminal, for the Bush presidency. Dr. Dawn Key said the malignant fib-nose may leave the president with as little as eight months to lead.

Democratic spin doctor says X-ray of malignant fib-nose shows Bush may have as little as eight months to lead.

But Dr. Ella Funt, a respected GOP spin doctor, dismissed that as a partisan diagnosis and said the photo was probably doctored, like the one Republican supporters were distributing of John Kerry and Jane Fonda.

Furthermore, she said, the president's tendency to fudge the truth could not possibly cause such extreme enlargement of the proboscis, unless of course the president was actually a Pinocchio-like marionette, manipulated by, say, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.

President Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland, who complained Thursday he was "misled" about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, said the hapless marionette theory would help explain why Bush seemed so oblivious to the apparent Halliburton conflict of interest fiasco.

Kerry, meanwhile, boasted that dozens of world leaders called to tell him they want Bush out, a few even mocking the president's own cowboy-speak by adding, "dead or alive."

However, a GOP political analyst said the White House is unconcerned. Bush's standing with his conservative base remains strong, especially now that he's reversed his previous position and called for an anti-gay marriage amendment to the Constitution.

The American people, he said, won't be fooled by the Democratic tactic of calling the Bush administration dishonest about everything from job projections and the deficit to WMD claims and Medicare (both the phony news video and the part about threatening to fire actuary Richard S. Foster if he told the truth about the pesky $1.5 cost overrun).

Related story:
Kerry won't apologize for calling Bush team a lying 'posse of thugs'