Foreword
AL FRANKEN, AMERICAN HERO
BY ANONYMOUS
When Al Franken asked me to write a foreword to this astonishing
and profoundly moving book, he had only one condition: that I remain
anonymous.
“Why?” I asked. “Having a big name like mine on your cover would be
an enormous feather in any author’s cap.”
“That’s exactly the point,” he responded.
Al, you see, is too modest to want to call attention to the fact that he
and I are such close friends. Typical Al. He always hides his light.
I reluctantly agreed to his condition, but in return I extracted one of
my own. In exchange for concealing my famous identity, I demanded total
control over the text of this foreword. I knew Al too well to give him the
chance to edit out all the well-warranted praise I intended to heap on him.
But even though this enthusiastic foreword will no doubt embarrass Al, I
believe that you, the reader, deserve to know the full truth about this great
American and about this book. I believe it to be not only the finest volume
he has written, but perhaps the Great American Nonfiction Hardcover
itself.
The Truth is a very different kind of book than the ones this multifaceted
genius has given us before. Oh, it’s funny. (How could Al Franken
not write a funny book?) But it’s more than that. Gone is the familiar cast
of villains: the psychotic Ann Coulter, the sex-addicted Bill O’Reilly, the
drug-addicted Rush Limbaugh. Consigned to their own personal hells by
their failings as human beings, Franken mercifully leaves them be. Ann
Coulter has been banned as effectively from these pages as from the intellectual
salons to which she so desperately craves admittance.
In The Truth, the fish are bigger, and the fry is deeper.
Franken’s targets this time include both people-Bush, Cheney, Rice,
Rove, DeLay-and something new: ideas. In particular, the idea that the
2004 election meant that Franken’s beloved America had moved to the
right. Al Franken ain’t buyin’ it.
Using access to confidential documents and firsthand accounts,
Franken weaves the true story of the Making of the President 2004, starring
the Three Horsemen of the Republican Apocalypse: Fear, Smears,
and Queers.
Franken shows more than how Bush won. He shows what Bush won.
(Or in the case of a mandate, what he didn’t win.)
But this story chronicles more than a rise. It chronicles a fall. And what
a fall! Was Bush like Icarus, simply a man who dared to dream-a man
who flew too close to the sun? Or like Daedalus, a man who equipped his
son with unsafe wings made of easily melted beeswax?
As Franken makes clear, the answer is both-and neither.
If you doubt that Icarus has fallen, then I say these words to you: Terri
Schiavo, Social Security, Ahmed Chalabi, Tom DeLay, and Iraq.
But this book is more than just a disconnected list of names, places,
and topics. Far more. It is something new for Franken. And, I would
argue, for literature. Here, Franken has taken a single stem cell-the English
language-and grown from it a fully functional kidney with which
to purify the blood of the body politic.
In the rarified sphere of contemporary general-audience nonfiction,
few books live up to the promise offered by their title. Fewer still, their
subtitle. But in The Truth (with jokes), the author lives up to not only his
title and his subtitle but, most important, to the name that appears on the
cover. Al Franken.
Anonymous
New York, NY
August 13, 2005
(Continues…)
Dutton Adult
ISBN: 0-525-94906-2
Excerpted from The Truth
by Al Franken Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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