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

so instead of driving back, I played golf. In the charity tournament for my mom's nursing
home where I had been billed as the celebrity guest. It was a very weird day for golf. Everyone
was there to support the nursing home, but we all felt funny enjoying the beautiful day
after the ugliest day in American history. At the closing ceremony, as I thanked the nurses
who take care of my mom (she can be difficult), I started to choke up.
Thursday, I got a reservation on an afternoon flight to LaGuardia. Dropped my rental
off at the airport Hertz. Just as I got to the Northwest ticket counter, they announced that the
airport was closing down because of a security threat. I did a one-eighty and ran back to the
Hertz counter, where I was told they were now charging $300 a day for cars. The world was
falling apart, and I was being bilked.
"So, let me get this straight," I said. "Hertz is taking advantage of a horrific tragedy to
jack up the price of your cars?" Yes. But the woman recognized me as the guy who had just
turned in his car rented at the pre-terrorist-attack rate. So she gave me the same rate, plus a
reasonable drop-off fee in New York. America was pulling together.
It was late afternoon. I left the Twin Cities, determined to drive straight through, listening
to local radio and NPR. On September 11, 2001, NPR had more foreign correspondents
abroad than any other network news organization in the United States. Americans, so
the other networks thought (probably correctly), had lost interest in the world.
Listening to twenty straight hours of coverage as I drove alone through the heartland,
I was overwhelmed with the enormity of what had happened. Friday afternoon, I pulled into a
truck stop in Eastern Pennsylvania to watch President Bush lead a memorial service at the
National Cathedral. For twelve bucks, I got a room with a bed, a shower, and a TV I showered,
changed into some clean underwear, and, lying in bed, watched the memorial and wept.
In times of crisis, people often respond by instinctively doing the things they find most comforting.
For many Republicans, then, it is hardly surprising that their way of coping with the
horror of 9/11 was to attack Bill Clinton.
Some attacks were more instinctive than others. A clearly rattled Orrin Hatch was all
over the news that day, blaming Clinton because he had "de-emphasized" the military. Hatch
was also the first to confirm al Qaeda's involvement by disclosing classified intercepts between
associates of Osama bin Laden about the attack. Asked about it on ABC News two
days later, a miffed Donald Rumsfeld said Hatch's leak was the kind that "compromises our