CH 27. The Lying Years: Armitage “bolting” from the Senate hearing
At the beginning of Chapter 27, Franken claims that Bush and Cheney lied about the military’s readiness to report for duty at the time and uses a statement to the contrary that former Bush foreign policy adviser Richard Armitage gave to Carl Levin during n Armed Services Committee. After this, Levin said at the hearing that an “apology is appropriate” and Franken writes on page 218 (paperback, p. 227*) of Lies:
But instead of apologizing, Armitage bolted from the hearing room, knocking over veteran reporter Helen Thomas, breaking her hip and jaw.
Helen Thomas is a long time Whitehouse reporter in her 80’s reporter who used to work for UPI and now writes for the Hearst Corporation.
Did Armitage really knock over and break this elderly reporter’s hip and jaw?
According to Helen Thomas via e-mail. No.
Mixing Fact & Fiction to Dupe the Reader.
Frankens standards of what constitutes a “lie” does not excuse the fact that he may have been joking by inserting this line, but for purposes of further examination, we will assume that it was in fact meant as comedy.
There is no further explanation on this, or context that in any way suggests the line is a joke. The line is stated plainly and factually.
In a book review of Lies, Mary Lynn F. Jones of The Hill wrote that she “loved Franken’s [1996] Rush Limbaugh book; almost every page made me laugh out loud.”1 But about Lies, she wrote, “Franken’s tendency to mix fact with fiction [also] left me wondering sometimes what was true and what wasn’t.”2 Then, as her example, she specifically cites the Richard Armitage-Helen Thomas passage.3
UPDATE – FRANKEN RESPONSE: Franken addresses this point at the bottom of pages 24 and 227 of the paperback by saying that “the Helen Thomas thing is a joke” (p. 227) and is not true.
On page 24, he refers to the author of FrankenLies.com as “one enterprising, if dense, blogger” but does not ascribe the same pejorative of being ‘dense’ to Mary Lynn Jones, despite the example of her also being confused by this appearing on FrankenLies.com.
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Notes:
1 Mary Lynn F. Jones, “Franken’s Humor Overpowered by Cynical Look At the Right,” The Hill, September 9, 2003. [Online here.]
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.