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On June 2, former "Saturday Night Live" comedian and the progressive radio talk-show host Al Franken made a joke reference to intersex that many felt was hurtful. The comment came during his three-hour weekday show, The O'Franken Factor, in a segment titled "Fighting (conservative pundit and FOX News host Sean) Hannity's Lies With Lies About Hannity." Below is the excerpt of the transcript from the show:
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Host Al Franken: We caught [FOX News and talk radio host Sean] Hannity in another lie. The guy just will not stop... Let's play this, this is from May 26th. This is comparing... This is talking about MoveOn.org which is a group that I've done some stuff with, and... well here:
Sean Hannity (recorded): Now Al Gore, this is MoveOn.org PAC that he is now aligned himself with because of number of times he's associated with them. This is a group that had a website that featured ads that compared our President George Bush with Hitler. One of their big supporters, George Soros, also compared George Bush to the Nazis. This is the group that says we ought to have a non-military response to 9/11. Do you think it's appropriate for a former vice president to associate with a group that has ads on their website that compare the President of the United States to Hitler?
AF: Okay, now. As Hannity knows, MoveOn.org had a contest in which people submitted 30 second ads on the Bush administration. They posted over 1,200 submissions on their website and two of them compared Bush to Hitler. As soon as this was pointed out to MoveOn people, they immediately took the ads off from the website, they never featured these ads nor do they as Hannity says have these ads on their website that compare president to Hitler. This is something Republicans made huge deal out of. In fact the place you could find these was on GOP websites. They [MoveOn.org] took them down.
And Hannity knows this, and it's just tiresome. We continuously debunk Hannity's lies but it doesn't make any difference. He keeps on repeating lies we debunk and then he tells other lies that he knows are lies. And he forces us to resort to the only weapon... welcome to today's edition of Fighting Hannity's Lies With Lies About Hannity.
[...]
AF: Okay, today's lies about Hannity. Remember this isn't true. That's important--this is a lie. Not true.
Hannity was born a hermaphrodite.
Co-host Katherine Lanpher: What?
AF: It's not true. Not just a hermaphrodite, but a conjoined twin who is also hermaphrodite. They were conjoined at both sets of genitals. Remember this isn't true, it's a lie. The doctor in delivery room said he'd never seen a more hideously freakish creature in his life, Sean and Shawn, S-H-A-W-N.
They were separated at age 14 by drunk carnival barker using a [inaudible] stolen from bearded lady, who was Sean's mother and father. Remember, none of this is even remotely true, it's a lie. Anyway, Sean nearly bled to death but survived and now has a quarter of a vagina and three-quarters of a penis. Remember this isn't true.
But in a sense it is far less [inaudible] lie than the lies this three-quarter man tells everyday. And we here at The O'Franken Factor, we feel that it's our duty to keep lying about Hannity as long as he insists on lying to America. That was today's Fighting Hannity's Lies With Lies About Hannity.
KL: Al? What happened to Shawn, S-H-A-W-N, Shawn?
AF: Katherine, it's a lie, there were no twins. But your asking demonstrates how insidious these lies could be. He-she bled to death.
KL: Oh, that's terrible.
AF: But Sean didn't seem to care, he's never even mentioned her on the show as his sister.
KL: That's terrible.
*****
Concerned about the depiction of children born intersexed (or conjoined) as "hideously freakish creature," Intersex Initiative director Emi Koyama immediately sent a letter to Air America Radio, which broadcasts Franken's show. So far, we have received no direct response. However, when other activists wrote Air America (prompted by the transcript we forwarded them), many activists received sincere apologies from the show producer Ben Wikler, who said "There's no reason intersex people should be caught in the Al Franken-Sean Hannity crossfire, and they won't be again." It appears that they didn't think to respond to the first complaint they received, but changed their minds after a slew of them began flooding in. Folks, this is the power of collective action: we can do things together that we can't do alone.
Personally, I appreciate Franken's work, both his stint at the Saturday Night Live and his more recent role as the progressive talk show host. I also enjoyed his most recent bestseller, "Lies and Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right," which thoroughly documents how conservative pundits (such as Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, et al.) and media outlets (FOX News, Washington Times, Clear Channel, etc.) spread unsubstantiated stories and outright lies. But that does not mean that we need to tolerate offensive "jokes" about intersex children.
On the website of The O'Franken Factor, Wikler states: "[If] you hear something inaccurate on our show, it isn't a lie--it's an error. We want to correct it. And we need your help. If you hear a mistake, an inaccuracy, or a falsehood--no matter how boring or technical--send it to [email address deleted]." Franken insists on air that this is the difference between his show and that of Hannity and others. We hope that the same standard holds for offensive and bigoted commentary--after all, nobody expects Rush Limbaugh to publicly retract or apologize all of his racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. statements, but we want to believe that Al Franken is different.
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UPDATE on June 4
Today, Al Franken publicly apologized on air for the insensitive "joke" he made about intersex people and conjoined people. Below is the official statement of apology from Franken:
"On Wednesday's 'Fighting Hannity's Lies with Lies About Hannity' segment, I falsely claimed that Sean Hannity was born a hermaphroditic conjoined twin, and that the doctor who delivered him and his twin reacted in horror at their birth. I would like to apologize to members of the intersexed and conjoined-twin communities for furthering the unjustified stigma attached to these conditions. An estimated one in 2000 people are born with atypical genitalia, which, like conjoinment, is a naturally-occurring bodily variation. I am sorry for the ill-considered joke. - Al Franken"
We're good enough, we're smart enough, and doggone-it, people like us!
Posted by Emi on Jun 2, 2004