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

Tucker was still stumped about why he'd said the thing about Republicans being
shouted down as they tried to speak. He said he'd think about it and call me back. He didn't.
A few weeks later I bumped into Tucker, and he promised again that he would call. A few
more weeks passed. Finally, I called him and left a message. To his credit, he called back,
and together we figured out what had happened.
It turned out that Tucker had gone on national TV October 30 and railed against
Wellstone's memorial without actually having seen it. He didn't watch the tape until later that
night, in preparation for the next day's Crossfire.
Tucker didn't mention to his viewers that he hadn't seen the memorial. Instead, he
said, "It makes me sick" and "It is revolting" and "Republican friends of Senator Wellstone
were booed and shouted down as they tried to speak." And, he said, "To politicize a man's
tragic death is about as low as you can go, isn't it?" Yes, Tucker, it is.
The Republicans fell in love with the whole Lott-booing thing. Peggy Noonan said on Hannity
and Colmes that "twenty thousand did it." (The Star Tribune called the boos a "smattering."
On the TV broadcast they were almost inaudible.) Mort Kondracke said on Fox that
Norm Coleman was booed. (He wasn't.) In the Weekly Standard, Christopher Caldwell wrote
that, "The crowd of 20,000 booed [italics his] a succession of people who had come to pay
their respects to a dead colleague: Senate minority leader Trent Lott, Minnesota governor
Jesse Ventura, and former Minnesota senators Rod Grams and Rudy Boschwitz." (The St.
Paul Pioneer Press said that "muted boos greeted the arrival of Lott, the Senate Republican
leader, and Ventura." Rudy Boschwitz was not booed.)
Yes, a couple hundred people booed Trent Lott. As the Star Tribune reported, "Scattered
boos greeted Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., as he entered the arena. Lott
smiled and waved." I thought it was good-natured booing, but maybe some or all of it wasn't.
Who knows? Maybe he owed those people money.
I know this. If Newt Gingrich had died in a plane crash in early 1995, and Clinton had
gone to his memorial in Marietta, Georgia, he would have been shot. I ran this theory by
George Stephanopoulos, and he said, "Yeah, and then the press would have blamed him for
coming."
In fact, that's exactly what happened when Hillary Clinton was booed at the Madison
Square Garden memorial concert honoring the police and firefighters who died in 9/11. Most