I don’t watch or read the right-wing media personalities Franken attacks in this book, so I haven’t a clue as to whether his attacks are justified or not. Well, that’s not completely true: I heard Terry Gross interview Bill O’Reilly on NPR and came away thinking that Bill O’Reilly not only has a huge (and unlikeable) ego, but that he’s a master at stuffing it down my throat even over the airwaves. Other than that, however, names like O’Reilly, Hannity, and Limbaugh exist outside my experience.

Franken is terribly funny, however, when he takes them on. I’m in no position to comment on the verity of his analyses, but I do know that I laughed early and often in his unabashedly liberal skewering.

If you tend to lean toward the right on the issues facing politicians these days, you’ll find plenty to criticize in this book. Franken goes too far, even for me, in some of his personal attacks (see the chapter on the Chickenhawks, for example). He certainly doesn’t try to present the “fair and balanced look at the right” the title of his book promises.

Still, after reading this book, I have a hard time imagining that Fox and the other right-wing media outlets can hardly be in a position of offering “fair and balanced” either. It’s rowdy partisian politics. With Franken, however, it’s good for a laugh, too.