“People love being told what they already know.”
-P.J. O’Rourke, in The Onion
I’ll freely admit that I read Al Franken’s latest book, “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right” for much the same reason that righties read Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity: we both like to have our existing worldview legitimized. The difference with Franken, I think, is
a) he’s actually funny, and
b) he actually does his research.
I didn’t learn much from Franken’s book I didn’t already know, especially after all the pre-publication stories about Bill O’Reilly’s “We won two Peabodys” thing. But as a progressive waiting patiently for the pendulum to swing the other way, it was a damn entertaining diversion.