As I've said here before I'm not the deep kind of political follower/analyst (or speller) that many on this board are.

One point about Jesse Ventura walking out of the memorial saying he was "offended". This is the same man who in his own book "I ain't Got Time to Bleed" proudly describes how he made money off of having sex with one of the girls from the Nevada Bunny Ranch by trading a "trick" for his belt made of machine gun shell casings and ten dollars. I sincerely hope your not looking to Jesse as a beacon of what constitutes class or to define what is offensive.

 My feelings on Bernard Goldberg…Sour grapes. That’s all I took from his book. If the media is so damn biased one simple question…why was 18 months spent on Clinton & Monica? The double standard that the right wing media applies is obvious, sad and childish.

As far as the Paul Wellstone memorial: Of all the speaker that evening...family and friends who had consciously moved to have the services quickly to avoid having it conflict or appear to conflict with the upcoming election, only one person Rick Kahn said anything even remotely political.  (For the record I did NOT see this service). He asked the crowd to continue to fight for the things that Paul Wellstone believed in.

What did the Republican pundits say occurred during the memorial?

From the Minneapolis Star Tribune - An article by Vin Weber   "Republican political analyst and lobbyist Sarah Janacek said what she found most outrageous were the screens inside Williams arena prompting audience reaction-when to laugh and how loudly to clap"

Al says - "Janacek was referring to the closed captioning that the memorial organizers had thoughtfully providied for the hearing impaired. Janacek, perhaps, was thinking impaired. Or more likely, honesty impaired. On radio she said that the text on the jumbotron was proof positive that the entire event had been scripted. She didn't mention the fact that the words appeared on the screen about five seconds after they had been spoken."

Al goes on to show how this twist was picked up by the national media (the left wing biased media) and became the following on C-Spans Washington Journal the next day, by Kellyanne Fitzpatrick Conway.   "The Star Tribune covers the fact that the people who were in attendance were told by screen when to cheer and when to jeer, and they were told to cheer when the Clintons and Ted Kennedy were displayed, and they were told to jeer when Trent Lott and Rod Grams, former senator of Minnesota who lost in 2000, were displayed."

The distortions are appalling. And they do the same thing that the republicans falsely accuse the democrats of doing, by politicizing a non-political event.

I could go on, but I’m tired and Al does this much better than I ever could hope to. He makes some excellent points and also some very good points. Go grab a cup of coffee at the local Barnes and Noble and at least read one chapter of Mr. Frankens book. For fairness sake

We all see things differently, and always will. I think Mr. Franken sums it up nicely in chapter 5 of his book:

“If you listen to a lot of conservatives, they’ll tell you the difference between them and us is that conservatives love America and liberals hate America.  That we “blame America first.” That we’re suspicious of patriotism and always think our country’s in the wrong.  As conservative radio and TV personality Sean Hannity says, we liberals “train our children to criticize America, not celebrate it.”

They don’t get it.  We love America just as much as they do. But in a different way.  You see, they love America the way a four year old loves her mommy.  Liberals love America like grown-ups.  To a four year old, everything mommy does is wonderful and anyone who criticizes mommy is bad. Grown-up love means actually understanding what you love, taking the good with the bad, and helping your loved one grow.  Love takes attention and work and is the best thing in the world. 

That is why we liberals want America to do the right thing.  We know America is the hope of the world, and we love it and want it to do well.  We also want it to do good. 

When liberals look back on history, we see things we’re very proud of.  And we also see some things, which might have seemed like good ideas at the time, but turned out to be mistakes.  And some things we did, well they were just bad.  That doesn’t keep us from loving our country - it’s part of loving our country.  It’s called honesty.  What do you think is more important to a loving relationship:  honesty or lies?