Cue the violins. Get out the Kleenex. The New York Post’s John Mainelli reports that Air America host Al Franken is playing the victim card:

Al Franken says 20,000 poor kids and old people weren’t the only victims of an exec who allegedly arranged a Bronx charity’s mega-buck “loan” to Air America.

“About three weeks into the life of Air America, I became an involuntary investor — I stopped being paid,” Franken told listeners yesterday on WLIB (1190 AM).

It was the first time the all-liberal network’s biggest star addressed at length a controversial $875,000 loan from the disgraced — and now de-funded — Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club…

Haven’t listened to it yet, but yesterday’s show is available for downloading here (MP3).

Update: Brainster’s Blog has isolated the clip of Franken’s discussion of the scandal–with lots of inappropriate laughter and a reference to me as “the bottom of the barrel.”

“There’s more to talk about…But it’s boring.”

Uh-huh. Listen to the whole thing.

Update II: Leon H. at Macho Nachos…

The Post has some other information in here, and it’s difficult to determine whether Franken re-iterated these things on the air yesterday, or whether they are recapitulations of old quotes [MM note: He said them on the air]:

“I think [Evan Cohen] was robbing Peter to pay Paul,” Franken said, adding that the network’s current owners, Piquant LLC, did some “forensic accounting” and learned about the defaulted loan.

Franken said Piquant didn’t legally have to pay back the loan, “but we morally do, so they started to make arrangements to pay it back.

As we have covered in detail before, both of these statements have now been called into serious question by the DOI – which leads us to ask why Franken keeps repeating them. Most especially, we remain curious as to why, if Piquant does not legally have to repay the loan, the DOI is involved in the repayment process. I would think that if someone took me to court over some money, and it was determined that I had no legal obligation to repay the money, but I decided to go ahead and do it anyway out of the goodness of my heart, the court would not get involved in how I repay the money I don’t legally owe. Of course, I’ve never been dragged into court for defrauding a charity of close to a million dollars, so I could be way off base, here.

In the meantime, we continue our countdown to the day that the New York Times will first notice this story, in any shape, form or fashion…

RightWingDuck spoofs at IMAO: Feed Air America Radio!