Watch this video (9MB/Quicktime):

Click here. (There may be a bit of a pause before it starts.)

It’s a clip of the last few minutes of an exclusive promotional sales pitch for Al Franken’s new book, “The Truth (with jokes),” featured at Amazon.com. (Thanks to my web guy, Mark Jaquith, for the technical assist.) The video skit blurs truth and fiction as a psychotic Al Franken kicks a man potraying a conservative reader in the groin, smashes a stool over his back, and grins as another man playing one of Franken’s fans cracks a bottle over the conservative’s head.

A few video stills (that’s Franken on the right assuming the crane position):

“Ah, that feels great!” Franken gloats.

Al Franken, we know, is an angry, unstable man. He’s got temper-control issues. Remember this and this and this? He didn’t have to stretch much for his Amazon.com role. The skit, however, comes across not as self-effacing or satirical, but creepily, seriously cathartic.

There is absolutely nothing funny about the clip, though I suppose it is somewhat amusing to imagine Franken’s obsequious team of overpaid Harvard libs crowded around the set telling their boss what a comic genius he is.

Franken is, of course, baiting us to be outraged. But what you should feel for this man is pathos. The guy needs professional help.

As Brian Maloney at The Radio Equalizer noted, Franken bombed on the Letterman Show last week as he attempted to deflect questions about Air America’s finances (video at The Political Teen) and joked bizarrely about the execution of President Bush and top GOP officials. (Newsbusters has more.)

The real joke is that Franken’s staged assault inadvertently exposes and underscores the truth about the Bush-deranged Left. Over the past few years, we’ve seen frightfully Franken-esque intolerance, violence, and hatred spread from the moonbat fringes to the liberal mainstream to the top echelons of the Democrat party.

I’ll have much more on that next week. And Brian and I will have more on the sorry state of Air America (which Franken barely mentions in his new truth-telling book) soon.

In the meantime, kindly and politely send your anger management advice and referrals to Franken c/o Air America Radio.

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Dave Pierre at Newsbusters asks:

Would a Sean Hannity or Bill O’Reilly ever get away with a publicity video like this without an “outrage” in the liberal media?

Nope, because a) Hannity and O’Reilly wouldn’t dream of making such a video in the first place and b) no company in its right mind (or rather, left mind) would think of hosting such a video even if a conservative personality were nuts enough to make one.

Speaking of corporate responsibility and double standards, do let Amazon.com know what you think of its decision to host Franken’s thuggish, anti-conservative video.

It’s no laughing matter.

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Oh, and speaking of obsequious, here’s USA Today’s fawning profile of Franken and his book. No mention of the Amazon.com video. Ask ‘em why not here.