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

"Don't listen to these other jerks who are only rating the book with 1 star to bring down the
average."
Whether or not Let Freedom Ring deserves one star or five depends very much on
how one judges books. If one relies on the uninformed, or "Ohendalski," approach, a five it
is! However, TeamFranken used a more sophisticated approach. We asked questions like "Is
what the book says true?" and "How could Hannity be so incredibly obnoxious?" and "Why
would any sane person buy this book?"
To arrive at our rating, TeamFranken weighted the first question, "Is what the book
says true?" 85 percent more heavily than the other two questions combined. This may seem
unfair to Mr. Hannity, who, as we will demonstrate below, does not understand percentages.
You'd think, according to our weighting system, we'd start with the lies. But instead,
for reasons too technical to be explained here, I'll just start with the incredibly obnoxious
stuff.
Here's a doozy: pages 145 to 146. Hannity is ranting about the "absolute abomination"
that is the New York City public school system. After rattling off some grim statistics about
test scores, he says:
City and state education officials didn't seem to have a clue about what was going
wrong. "Is it teaching?" asked state Education Commissioner Richard Mills. "Is it
teaching practice? Is it the material? Is it the work students are doing? What are
they reading? What are they writing? What kind of math problems are they doing?"
What are these people doing with our tax dollars if they don't even know the
answers to these questions? [Italics in original.]
You should know, dear reader, that as I read these right-wing books, I often scrawl
notes in the margins. When I reached this particular nugget, I wrote:
"Rhetorical question, asshole!"
It sure seemed like Mr. Mills was dramatically illustrating his commitment to examining
every aspect of the state's educational system in his quest for excellence and higher standards,
and that Hannity, full of contempt for both his readers and the truth, was twisting this
good man's words into a noose of lies. In fairness, however, I went back to the article Hannity
was quoting, and examined Mr. Mills's words for myself. Was he, as Hannity implied, bumbling
around, hoping that someone would tell him what the kids in his schools were doing all
day? I'll report. You decide. Here's how Mr. Mills starts: