Franken-Lies-And-the-Lying-Liars-Who-Tell

solute sham" and accused the Democrats of "exploit[ing] Wellstone's memory totally, completely
and shamelessly for political gain."
This seemed almost surreally dishonest. I flipped to the real story and read an excerpt
from the eulogies. This one from Paul and Sheila's younger son, Mark:
The one thing that comes to mind when I think about my dad is how proud he was
of everybody around him and how he wanted to shed light on everybody's accomplishments.
It was never about him. It was never about Paul Wellstone. It was about
the ideal; it was about the dream he had. . . . More than anything I just have a message
to my dad. The message to my dad is, "Dad, we're okay. Dave and I are okay.
The thousands and thousands of people that you left behind that care about you,
we are okay. We will carry on. . . ." These are some of his favorite words that he
ever spoke . . . "Never separate the lives you live from the words you speak."
That doesn't sound like a complete, total, absolute sham. In fact, it hardly sounds like a sham
at all. That sounds like the kind of eulogy a father would love from his son. (Hear that, Joe?)
When I called Vin Weber to research this chapter, I asked him whether he had
watched the whole event and whether he had seen any of the eulogies. He said, "Yeah, there
was some very nice stuff." This candid Vin was a refreshing break from the lying Vin who
talked to the Star Tribune in 2002. But Lying Vin had planted the story line: The memorial
was a total sham, a political charade.
Going back to the lie story in the Star Tribune, I found a gem from a local Republican
apparatchik.
Republican political analyst and lobbyist Sarah Janacek said that what she found
most outrageous were the screens inside Williams Arena prompting audience reaction—when
to laugh and how loudly to clap.
Janacek was referring to the closed captioning that the memorial's organizers had thoughtfully
provided for the hearing impaired. Janacek, perhaps, was thinking impaired. Or, more
likely, honesty impaired. On radio, she said that the text on the Jumbotrons was proof positive
that the entire event had been scripted. She didn't mention that words appeared on the
screen about five seconds after they had been spoken.
Janacek's insanely stupid and/or viciously dishonest claim was repeated over and over
on local right-wing talk radio. But what's a local lie when you can have a national lie? On C-
SPAN'S Washington Journal that morning, Kellyanne Fitzpatrick Conway, one of the Repub-