AL FRANKEN

'The Truth (With Jokes)'

Dutton

You think you know what's going on in the world, don't you? You've read a lot of books you found in the Barnes & Noble "occult" or "new age" section. You've visited thousands of paranoid websites. You've even subscribed to some nutty newsletters. You've heard every conspiracy theory there is to hear. And you believe them. But it's time you forget all of those spooky conspiracy theories. The hook-nosed Jewish Anti-Christ? The Bavarian Illuminati? Those secretive Freemasons? The race of Reptilian aliens that lives in the "hollow earth?" That fuzzy picture of people in a secluded grove worshiping an owl? Forget them all. Because the truth is scarier than anything dreamt of by the likes of William Cooper, David Icke or some idiot who posts a lot of bulletins on MySpace. The truth is more damning than anything "exposed" by Michael Moore in one of his documentary films. The truth is emanating from a source you never though it would...A former 'Saturday Night Live' cast-member. And as frighteningly revelatory as it is, the truth...or to be more specific...'The Truth (With Jokes),' is pretty damn funny.

Focusing on the tactics used by anti-president George W. Bush and his administration to control the nation, and the world, using "fear, smears and queers," the newest book from comedian, radio-show-host and author Al Franken examines the events of the days that lead up to, and the aftermath of the days since, Bush was "elected" to the presidency in 2004. Franken provides copious notes on how Bush and his neo-con cabal have used lies, psychological manipulation, defamation of character, cooked books and specious moral arguments to go to war, steal another presidential election, line their pockets with cash, keep the black (and red, and yellow) man down, control reproductive freedoms, erode civil rights, torture a bunch of people, deny us all universal health care and do away with the social safety net. Oh, and there's jokes.

For a funny book, it is incredibly frightening though. More frightening than any scenario involving FEMA rounding people up into concentration camps or the Illumaniti destroying organized religion. And it's more frightening because it's totally, 100% real! These are things that have actually happened! Things that have been happening for as long as 6 decades now! Things that continue to happen! There is irrefutable evidence that these atrocious deeds have been done. And much of that evidence is in the book! But what's even more frightening is that, according to Franken, the reasoning (if it can even be called "reason") behind these deeds is a willingness on the part of the people committing them to divorce themselves completely from reality. They ignore facts, ignore reality, and create their own, while leaving those of us in "the reality-based community" (their term...nolie) to attempt to rectify the facts and the real reality of our lives with the bold-faced lies and false realities that are being foisted on us in an attempt to "create history."

Does worrying about the possibility that Prince Abdul Baraba Baha may be controlling the world from within the shadowy halls of B'nai B'rith, contemplating whether or not Queen Elizabeth might be transforming into a large reptile in the privacy of a Buckingham Palace bedroom, or even fearing that Osama bin Laden might crash a plane into your apartment building make any sense when we have people like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsefeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Karl Rove and Jack Abramoff running around unopposed (well, not that last guy any more) and unquestioned? Hell to the fuck no! And if nothing else, Franken makes that abundantly clear. And he even throws in a couple of jokes.

So smarten the fuck up America! It's not that hard to check up on some of the "facts" you're being bombarded with in neat little sound-bites every day to see whether they're "the truth" or not. In fact, with folks like Franken behind the word-processor, the search for "the truth" (and jokes) has never been easier.

'THE SATANIC VERSES'

AUTHOR: Salman Rushdie

PUBLISHER: Viking

Being a child of Hip-Hop, I'm also a child of the 1980's. That's right, I came up during that accursed time of rampant Reaganomics, proliferating crack rocks, the looming specter of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, and most pertinent to this book review, the media-bred boogieman of Islamic fundamentalism. If, like me, you were also alive during the latter half of the 80's you should no-doubt remember the media circus surrounding the release of Salman Rushdie's novel 'The Satanic Verses' and the fire-storm it elicited from fundamentalist Muslim clerics the world over, not the least of which being the Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini who went so far as to put up a reward for the assassination of the author. If, like me, you were also about 9 or 10 years old at the time you probably never got around to actually reading the book since such sure-to-be boring literary fare and the socio-religious politics of its critics were far less interesting to you than the animated adventures of He-Man and The Transformers.

Well, who would've known we were all going to grow up to be twentysomething Hip-Hop heads infatuated not only with books but with politics and world religions? Surely not I! And surely none of us would've thought—even in our worst nightmares—that the idiot son of the then-vice president would one day perpetrate a bloodless coup in order to install himself as dictator-cum-President of these United States, only to resurrect that same boogieman of Islamic fundamentalism again in the form of one Osama bin Laden! Or would we? Well, regardless of what you, I, or anyone else thought, one fact remains; Salman Rushdie's once-maligned novel is damn good, even if it can have the tendency to be as literarily convoluted as the introduction I've just written for this review.

At the core of 'The Satanic Verses' are the characters Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha; both actors of Indian descent, both named after legendary personages of the Islamic world. Both characters are haunted by demons of the deeply embedded religious and cultural traditions of India, though in quite different ways. Whereas Gibreel embraces, however speciously, the hodgepodge of religions and mythologies present in the subcontinent by becoming a star of Indian "theological" movies, Saladin shuns all things Indian and moves to England, only to be typecast and looked over for work due to his not-so-popular "ethnic" appearance in a lily-white Anglo Saxon society. Despite appearances though, neither of them truly deal with their personal issues relating to their connection—or disconnection as it were—with their native culture and society. It is this which in the end proves disastrous for them in more ways than one, as they are lead down paths of confusion, desire, loneliness, anger and despair into a series of most unlikely circumstances where the primordial powers of good and evil battle for their very minds, bodies and souls.

Moving from incredible sadness to utter hilarity, sublime cultural commentary to asinine pop-culture references, Rushdie takes his characters, and readers, on quite a roller-coaster ride, where the psychological, emotional, spiritual and even supernatural combine in a vast array of pretzel-like twists and turns. Indeed, some readers may be confused by the plot, which is told in a piecemeal fashion with flashbacks, forward leaps and side-tracks aplenty, as well as the storyteller's penchant for heavily stylized dialogue, incorporating big doses of slanguage, purposeful misspellings and other nonsensical gibberish that took some getting used to even for me. With such an unusual story, and method of telling it, the book definitely requires your attention, but you will be rewarded handsomely for it as the tale is quite satisfying in both the style and substance departments.

Though often bizarre, 'The Satanic Verses' works on so many levels and should be enjoyable for anyone willing to take a more magical look at our modern world where ancient cultures and pop-iconography blend and sometimes clash in a truly unique, but completely true-to-life meeting of the sacred and profane.