How does Air America’s marquee host deal with pathetic ratings? Deny, lie, and vilify. Brian Maloney reports that in an interview with South Park Conservatives author Brian Anderson, Al Franken asserted today that Air America’s ratings are not available to the public. So I guess the radio trade industry is just making it all up?

Oooo-kay. At least Franken didn’t play the sound of gun shots when Anderson spoke.

Update: Here are links to the audio of Franken’s show today. (Ratings discussed at 43:50.) Here’s the relevant portion:

Anderson: Listen Al, it’s finally there for anybody to see. They can just check out the Arbitron ratings and uh…

Franken: Well they can’t because they’re they’re the Arbitron ratings aren’t public.

Anderson: No, they are. The quarterly ratings are public. You can look at them on this Radio Equalizer blog. He’s posting them.