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Franken Accuses Hume of "Obscene...Trivializing" of Troop Deaths
MRC ^ | Friday September 26, 2003 | BrentBaker

Posted on 09/26/2003 1:24:11 PM PDT by fight_truth_decay

Left-wing ranter Al Franken, on Thursday's The View on ABC, maintained that in contrast to how "I love our troops," he charged that FNC's Brit Hume is "trivializing the danger that our soldiers are under" in Iraq and claimed of a news item Hume read in late August: "It's obscene and it's offensive to those troops and their families."

Franken's allegation, based on misquoting, distorting and misrepresenting what Hume actually said and meant, came as he defended his mean-spirited, vulgar tirade against Hume and FNC which he leveled during a Howard Dean fundraising event last Saturday.

On FNC's O'Reilly Factor on Monday night, Bill O'Reilly showed a clip of Franken on stage at the Saturday, September 20 event in New York City, in front of a big "Dean for America" sign. The clip joined Franken mid-rant, and though FNC bleeped out the vulgarities, it was pretty clear what Franken was saying. But instead on listing the actual word, or putting in a bunch of asterisks, I thought I'd try something new, a bit of simple encryption I've seen employed by Michael Z. McIntee, Editor of the Late Show's online Wahoo Gazette, to avoid publishing offensive words: Look one letter to the left on your keyboard. So, with that code in mind, here's Franken on Hume and FNC:

"-How big an asshole Brit Hume is and how shameless, how givlomh shameless these people are. These people are so givlomh shameless. They are shameless. And I don't just say this because the Fox people sued me."

Appearing on the September 25 The View to promote his book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, Franken was asked to explain his anti-FNC outburst.

Franken contended: "I am about, at Christmas, to go on my fourth USO tour. I'm going to Afghanistan and Iraq. I love our troops. I've been to Kosovo three times, went to Bosnia three times. What I was responding to was Brit Hume went on his show, Special Report, and he said this, he said this about our troops, he says: 'Statistically speaking, U.S. soldiers have less of a chance of dying in Iraq than citizens have of being murdered in California.'"

View quad-host Joy Behar interjected: "Nasty."

Franken picked up: "And this is, and then his evidence was there are about 6.6 homicides a day in California and we're losing only 1.7 soldiers a day in Iraq. Now what he's forgetting is there are 34 million people living in California and there are one point, and there are 140,000, so you're actually 60 times more likely to die if you're a soldier in Iraq.

"And so what he was doing, the point of this was, that Fox News, and this is what I talk about in my book, is a shill for this administration and they were trying to say, 'oh, it's not so bad in Iraq. Everything's under control in Iraq and our soldiers really are' -- and anyone who's trivializing the danger that our soldiers are under there, and for every soldier that gets killed ten get wounded, for anyone who trivializes that, I think that's obscene. And I'm sorry, I don't apologize if, I don't apologize for getting angry at someone who trivializes the danger that our troops are under and that's why I'm going at Christmas and I just think that it's obscene and it's offensive to those troops and their families."

Franken quoted Hume as reporting: "Statistically speaking, U.S. soldiers have less of a chance of dying in Iraq than citizens have of being murdered in California." But for a guy so concerned about accuracy, he misstated what Hume said, though the difference did not change Hume's meaning in a significant way.

Hume stated on his August 26 show: "Statistically speaking, U.S. soldiers have less of a chance of dying from all causes in Iraq than citizens have of being murdered in California which is roughly the same geographical size."

But in order to impugn Hume as some kind of monster mocking the deaths of soldiers in Iraq, Franken clearly distorted and misrepresented Hume's point. Hume's statistical contrast may not match up on the risk of death for a U.S. soldier in Iraq versus a citizen in California, but that was not his point. He was making an observation about media priorities. Hume was trying to contrast the raw number of murders occurring in the two places in order to make a point about excessive media focus on the casualty rate in Iraq as being inordinately high and newsworthy above all other developments -- along the theme of how the media will ignore a thousand people killed during a year in car accidents one or two at a time in a metropolitan area, but then go wall-to-wall when a plane crash kills 40 people -- only in this case the media were focusing on the daily deaths and not putting them into a larger context of how many more go unnoticed when murdered in a U.S. state that is not perceived as particularly dangerous.

Here, in full, is Hume's August 26 "Grapevine" segment item on Special Report with Brit Hume:

"Two hundred seventy seven U.S. soldiers have now died in Iraq, which means that, statistically speaking, U.S. soldiers have less of a chance of dying from all causes in Iraq than citizens have of being murdered in California which is roughly the same geographical size. The most recent statistics indicate California has more than 2,300 homicides each year, which means about 6.6 murders each day. Meanwhile, U.S. troops have been in Iraq for 160 days, which means they're incurring about 1.7 deaths, including illness and accidents, each day."

Even if you somehow believe that this one short item represents some kind of terrible bias, it pales compared to the regular onslaught of liberal bias delivered night after night and morning after morning by ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC and yet the MRC has never resorted to yelling about how Dan Rather or Peter Jennings or Matt Lauer or Aaron Brown are "givlomh shameless" or to distort their real bias into a ridiculous accusation about any of them making fun of people being murdered.

Franken's media analysis is pretty pathetic.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial; Extended News; Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: franken; frankenprank; hume; leftwingranter; loonyleft; theview
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To: Old Sarge
"Someone tell me, why do I keep doing the job I do?"

Because, Old Sarge, it's the right, moral, and courageous thing to do. And few are called to do it.

Semper Fi,
Sandy
Capt, USMC, Retired
21 posted on 09/26/2003 2:01:32 PM PDT by Not A Snowbird (Tag Line Expired: Resubmit)
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To: Egregious Philbin
Looks like some fuzzy math.
22 posted on 09/26/2003 2:05:12 PM PDT by Huck
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To: Huck
The fuzzy math belongs to Hume (or whoever wrote the copy).

"Two hundred seventy seven U.S. soldiers have now died in Iraq, which means that, statistically speaking, U.S. soldiers have less of a chance of dying from all causes in Iraq than citizens have of being murdered in California which is roughly the same geographical size. The most recent statistics indicate California has more than 2,300 homicides each year, which means about 6.6 murders each day. Meanwhile, U.S. troops have been in Iraq for 160 days, which means they're incurring about 1.7 deaths, including illness and accidents, each day."

As Franken says, there are 34 million people in California. There are more than 2,300 homicides each year in California, 6.6 a day. It comes out to about 1 homicide for every 15,000 citizens. There are 140,000 troops in Iraq. 277 have died. They've been there for 160 days. That comes out to about 1 death for every 250 troops.
23 posted on 09/26/2003 2:13:17 PM PDT by Egregious Philbin
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To: MortMan
Franken is dumber than a good quality rock BUT Hume was being quite deceptive, equating geography (in California) with population (our troops). To say that our troops face less risk in Iraq than Californians do at home trivializes what our soldiers are up against, and what they do on a daily basis, and is unworthy of ANY serious news organization.
24 posted on 09/26/2003 2:14:10 PM PDT by UncleJeff
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To: Egregious Philbin
Franken's only point is to politicize the death of American fighting men.
25 posted on 09/26/2003 2:24:02 PM PDT by muawiyah
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To: Egregious Philbin
277 is total deaths. That's Car accidents, falls, construction acidents, etc.

The Rate of Service men killed in Iraq thru hostile action is actually VERY CLOSE to the Murder rate of 15-27 year old Black men in California.

Do the math.
26 posted on 09/26/2003 2:24:51 PM PDT by UNGN (I've been here since '98 but had nothing to say until now)
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To: fight_truth_decay
It's really nice of Franken to take time out of his busy schedule at Christmastime to entertain the Fedayeen and AQ troops. Wadda guy...I can't wait to see the pictures of 'ol Al holding an RPG launcher and mugging with the brave terrorists.


27 posted on 09/26/2003 2:24:54 PM PDT by AngryJawa (Just JDAM!!!)
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To: muawiyah
Franken's only point is to politicize the death of American fighting men.

Franken's point was that that was Hume's point, I think.
28 posted on 09/26/2003 2:26:32 PM PDT by Egregious Philbin
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To: UNGN
The Rate of Service men killed in Iraq thru hostile action is actually VERY CLOSE to the Murder rate of 15-27 year old Black men in California.

Hume didn't say that though, did he? If the MRC is to be a good media critic, they at least shouldn't support Hume's original statement, which is misleading and false.
29 posted on 09/26/2003 2:29:54 PM PDT by Egregious Philbin
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To: Egregious Philbin
Could be, but Franken is, in general, inarticulate. I'd heard there are people who think he's funny, but they gotta' be using dope big time or are professional drunks.

It's really difficult to tell what Franken is saying.

30 posted on 09/26/2003 2:34:05 PM PDT by muawiyah
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To: fight_truth_decay
Franken is nothing but an anti-American Leftist liar.

May he be deported to Cuba.
31 posted on 09/26/2003 3:04:48 PM PDT by Steely Glint ("Communists are just Democrats in a big hurry.")
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To: Old Sarge
"Someone tell me, why do I keep doing the job I do?"

Because someone has to

Because you took the oath

Because your country needs you

I fought in a much more upopular war than this one. What the Leftist idiots said never bothered me. It was all lies anyway.

And you can always look on the bright side. "This is great," said my optimistic buddy back then, "we're getting PAID to kill Communists."
32 posted on 09/26/2003 3:10:44 PM PDT by Steely Glint ("Communists are just Democrats in a big hurry.")
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To: fight_truth_decay
As they say "in a battle of wits, Franken is unarmed"

Especially vs Brit Hume.

33 posted on 09/26/2003 3:12:00 PM PDT by Thom Pain
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Comment #34 Removed by Moderator

To: fight_truth_decay; Steely Glint; SandyInSeattle
Thanks, FRiends. Some days I need that.
35 posted on 09/26/2003 3:32:38 PM PDT by Old Sarge (Serving You... on Operation Noble Eagle!)
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To: Steely Glint
Franken is nothing but an anti-American Leftist liar.

True. Franken is also the least successful of Saturday Night Live's writer/performers. He spent twenty-plus years on a show that was a springboard for it's people. After a few years, three or four, the performers went on to bigger and better careers, he didn't.

Comedy didn't work for him, so now he's with us, with all his anger for a lousy comedic career, as an agenda driven "commentator". He also attempts to be a bully, but a punk like him only scares the helpless.

36 posted on 09/26/2003 3:35:26 PM PDT by CharlesI (They're not liberals, they're leftists!)
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To: Egregious Philbin
As Franken says, there are 34 million people in California. There are more than 2,300 homicides each year in California, 6.6 a day. It comes out to about 1 homicide for every 15,000 citizens. There are 140,000 troops in Iraq. 277 have died. They've been there for 160 days. That comes out to about 1 death for every 250 troops.

You either count the deaths of the soliders via the ratio of troops to the number of people in Iraq - the SAME WAY the California homicide stats are counted - or else you are playing games with the numbers. (Unless every troop death in Iraq has been due to friendly fire, which it has not.)

Franken was playing games with the numbers.

37 posted on 09/26/2003 4:03:13 PM PDT by Timesink
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To: Egregious Philbin
Uh, I know. That's what I said.
38 posted on 09/26/2003 4:21:37 PM PDT by Huck
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To: fight_truth_decay
Franken Accuses Hume of "Obscene...Trivializing" of Troop Deaths

But Franken, just walking around, obscenely trivializes what it means to be human.
39 posted on 09/26/2003 4:25:12 PM PDT by aruanan
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To: fight_truth_decay
I hope Franken goes to Iraq to *entertain* the troops....Im telling my hubby to punch his lights out if he sees him...LOL
40 posted on 09/26/2003 4:30:59 PM PDT by mystery-ak (Happy Birthday, Mike...wish you were here.)
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