"Shrill and unstable" ... "deranged" ... and "a parasite," to be precise.

Right. And what was funny about that was I noticed that it said in the complaint that the press said I was this. And it wasn't until I got back to the U.S. and looked at the complaint that I saw a reference to where it came from, which was the prestigious WashingtonDispatch.com, which boasts on its homepage that if you're an amateur writer writing on a whim you have a much better chance of getting published on their Web site than on any other Web site. So that's where they got that.

So are you shrill and deranged?

I'm deranged, but I don't think I'm shrill. I think I'm the kind of deranged that's kind of cute and cuddly. Like the Danny DeVito character in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." [Laughter.]

Are you happy with the judge's decision? This has brought you so much publicity that I wonder if part of you doesn't wish Fox had appealed instead of dropping the suit.

Well, if Fox had gone on to appeal it probably would have strung out the thing and it would have probably been better for me in that sense. But you know, I was talking to our lawyers over the weekend and I said they gotta withdraw the case because it would be totally irrational to continue, and they said, 'Well, the case is irrational to begin with.' I said, 'Yeah, but it was sort of based on an infantile rage by one of their commentators and to placate him they did it, but for some reason they didn't realize how stupid they'd look.' So now that a judge has basically said -- [Salon columnist] Joe Conason e-mailed me and said -- 'I have a new trademark for Fox: Fox News Channel. Wholly without merit.'

Bill O'Reilly really made this personal, didn't he? It sounds like he really had it out for you after the Book Expo flare.

Well, I don't want to make this personal ...

But he already did ...

Just because he made it personal, I don't have to.

OK, then what does this say about the Fox conservatives' mentality that they would bring this suit on his behalf?

Well, it says a lot. The levels of irony of the suit are manifold. Either manifold or manifest.

Both, I think.

Yeah. Well anyway, using the word 'press' for WashingtonDispatch.com is very much their style. It's distortion, it's shoddy, and it's lame. So I talk about Fox, I talk about Ann Coulter, I talk about the Wall St. Journal editorial page, I talk about the Washington Times, I talk about Bernie Goldberg, and Rush -- all those people employ that sort of m.o., they all do the same thing. Also just that Fox trademarked "fair and balanced" -- that's pretty ironic in and of itself, although the judge ruled that their trademark probably wasn't valid. And then there's the bullying thing, which -- O'Reilly went on his radio show and said that the purpose of the lawsuit was to punish me for coming after Fox.

So this is the mindset of the right, that they have to punish you. Joe Wilson, the former Gabon ambassador, was sent to Niger by the CIA and came back and said the uranium claims weren't true. And when the controversy started broiling again about the 16 words in the State of the Union address and Wilson wrote the piece in New York Times, senior administration officials blew the cover on his wife, who was a covert [CIA] operative. And it jeopardized the lives not only of her contacts but every American, because she was a covert agent in weapons of mass destruction. And it's a way of intimidating other analysts who might come forward, and there's a parallel here: You will be punished if you come after us.

I really think the Wilson thing is the most disgraceful action of any White House since Iran Contra.

More than Clinton and Monica?

There's a difference between getting a blow job and lying about it, and blowing a national security asset.

Then why do you think there's this current defeatist meme among liberals that none of the current Democratic presidential candidates are capable of beating Bush? Do you agree with them?

No, because I think people are catching on -- if you look at the latest Newsweek poll the president has 44 percent reelect, the lowest since before 9/11, and you usually need 50 percent, or at least a plurality, to win. Now, Bush didn't get that in the last election, so he may be able to steal it again, who knows. In politics, a month is forever, so obviously these things will change, but in the last three months Bush's position has been eroding significantly.

Which Democratic candidates do you favor?

Well, I think Kerry, Dean, Gephardt, Edwards, Graham are all serious candidates. All of those guys could make great presidents, and each has his strengths. Dean is obviously mobilizing people, even people who haven't voted before. I think he's willing to take it to Bush. I think Kerry has incredible depth and breadth of experience and knowledge, and is sort of inoculated on national security issues by virtue of not just his experience in Vietnam but his knowledge of that stuff through his work in the Senate. The same with Graham, in terms of his depth of knowledge, as former chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee and as a governor. I mean people like governors, and he's from Florida.

What do you think about Gore having dropped out of the race?

I thought it made sense, in a way, because I think what he said -- 'If I run it's going to be a rehash of the 2000 campaign and we've got to look to the future.' So I think he took himself out more for his own good, but also for the good of the country. Although he would have made a great president, and I really think he won the election.

What about the California recall? Arianna Huffington is an old friend of yours ...

Arianna is a friend of mine, I really like Arianna, and you know I'm a Democrat, so it'd be hard for me to tell you exactly what I would do there. I would probably focus on what was going on a couple of days before the campaign, if Arianna didn't have a chance to win I'd certainly vote for Bustamante. I'm a Democrat, I think you have to do pragmatic things, and I don't want to see Schwarzenegger or another Republican take that governorship.

And your take on Arnold?

He's another guy who has entered a race for an office for which he doesn't seem particularly suited or experienced. Also, I have a few problems with his history, the fact that even after it was shown that [former U.N. Secretary-General] Kurt Waldheim participated in the massacre of Jews, Schwarzenegger still considered him a friend, and toasted him at his wedding, to the horror of the entire Kennedy family.

What is it about you in particular that gets under the skin of conservatives like O'Reilly and Limbaugh, more than other satirists?

Well, O'Reilly didn't really start hating me until the Book Expo. He came up to me after the Radio and TV Correspondents' dinner last April and said, "Oh, you did a great job." So it really was about my explaining why he was on the cover of my book at the Book Expo, which he understandably wasn't happy about ...

You know what, I have to go through airport security now, so my phone will have to go through the machine, but that's OK. You want to hear what it sounds like when it goes through?

Sure. Wait, can they do that?

Yeah, I think an on phone can go through, can't it? Yeah. So here, hold on.

[Puts the phone in the tray and it goes through the X-ray machine. It is quiet in there, with occasional sounds of mumbling. Clatter as Franken picks up the phone again.]

OK, so we were talking about why you get under the skin of ...

Well, they don't like it because I'm a liberal who's not afraid to take them on, and to take them on, on their own terms. I'm fascinated with their methods, and therefore I call them on it, and they don't like that. These guys are notorious -- they can dish it out but that can't take it.

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