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

So, I, the comedian, bothered to look it up and get the transcript for the August 21,
1991, NBC Nightly News broadcast. Brokaw had asked Chancellor about Gorbachev's next
move. And what Chancellor was saying was that Gorbachev couldn't use communism as an
excuse because, by that point, he had completely dismantled communism in the Soviet Union.
Alan Greenspan would have agreed with what Chancellor was saying. And yet Goldberg
had accused John Chancellor of "liberal hate speech."
Now I'm on the satellite, asking Goldberg to respond. And he can't. So Phil turns to
another guest, a right-wing radio talk show host named Jeff Whitaker, "Now, Mr. Whitaker,
you wanted to say briefly?"
And Whitaker says, "As many examples as Al can pull out, I can pull out a lot of
leads into the nightly news." What the hell does that mean? I was talking about Goldberg's
book.
And that's when I started yelling from San Francisco, "I want to hear Bernie. This is
about accountability"
But nothing from Bernie. And as Phil goes to commercial, I'm still shouting, "Phil,
why are you letting Bernie off?" When I watched the tape a few days later, I realized I may
have appeared just a bit aggressive.
A little later in the show, Donahue took a caller.
DONAHUE: Billy from Tennessee. You waited. I thank you for your patience. What did you want to
say?
CALLER: Phil, thank you. I think the main thing I wanted to say is I'm sad that the conservatives
you have on tonight have done a poor job of articulating our conservative argument,
which I think is another bias of the press is that you always pick very smart, astute liberals,
like AI Franken, who are very articulate, and then you have conservatives who
scratch their heads and can't come back with something.
DONAHUE: Oh , well ...
(Laughter.)
Still later, Donahue turned to Bernie and said, "You know, I think you've been
wounded tonight, kid."
He had been wounded. But unfortunately, because I was three thousand miles away, I
wasn't able to shake hands with him after the show and take him out for a drink. If I'd been