Archive » Al Franken

The subject of my latest column: Where in the world is Evan Montvel-Cohen? The former chairman of Air America Radio and disgraced development director of the Bronx-based Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club has been unavailable to the MSM. New York investigators will not comment on whether they have been able to interview him. And [...]

Despite liberals’ insistence that the Air America / Gloria Wise story is “undersourced” and “appears to be phony,” the AP article by David Caruso is being carried by dozens of MSM papers, including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Baton Rouge Times Picayune, Fort Worth Star Telegram, Myrtle Beach Sun News, Kansas [...]

As I reported here on Thursday night, New York Times reporter Alan Feuer botched the Al Franken quote in his article about the Air America loan. To its credit, the New York Times has run a correction acknowledging the error:
An article yesterday about state and city investigations of a loan made by a [...]

According to Emily Gest, a spokeswoman for the New York City Dept. of Investigation, the “transcript” of Al Franken’s remarks cited by the New York Times in this article apparently does not exist. “There is no official transcript,” Gest informed me. “You should expect to see a correction in the Times.” As I [...]

After 15 days of silence, the New York Times has filed a thin little report on the Air Scamerica/Air Enron fiasco. But you need a magnifying glass to find it. Go the the NYTimes.com homepage. Nothing there. Click over the National section. Nothing there. Find your way to the NY/Region section. Scroll way down past [...]

The New York Post reports this morning on a drastic shake-up at the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club, the Bronx non-profit charity ensnared in smelly “loan” schemes with the liberal Air America radio network:
Just days after the executive director abruptly resigned following Post reports that the club had provided $875,000 in bizarre loans [...]

Al Franken is laughing it off and the elite media is still blowing it off, but the Air America/Air Enron financial fiasco continues to unfold. Ed Morrissey and his legal consultant/reader Eric Costello shine renewed light on the Piquant buyout shell game here and here, previously explored by Leon H. at Macho Nachos.
The Washington Times [...]

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 [...]

This morning’s New York Post is reporting that New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has launched an investigation into the shady $875,000 loan from Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club to Air America.
Spitzer’s inquiry is focusing on the conduct of Gloria Wise’s board of directors. “The question is: Was their action appropriate?,” Spitzer spokesman [...]

Yesterday, on Your World with Neil Cavuto, commentator Bill Press stated repeatedly that the current managers of Air America bear no responsibility for the shady loan the network received from the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club because the money was stolen by former Air America chairman Evan Cohen. “The point I’m making is, this [...]

Well, now we know why the NYTimes hasn’t bothered to cover Air Enron/Air Scamerica. They’re too preoccupied with prying into the adoption records of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts’ young children, according to the Drudge Report.
For God’s sake.
Jeff Goldstein has a list of what’s next on the NYTimes’ dirt-digging agenda.
4: Can Judge Roberts account for [...]

Number of NY Times articles mentioning Air America since March 2004: 59
Number of NY Times articles mentioning the Air Enron scandal: 0
(Via Nexis)
It seems we’re not the only ones monitoring the MSM’s near-total blackout of Air America’s financial shenanigans. New York Times ombudsman Byron Calame (public@nytimes.com) is “closely watching” the Air America story and how [...]

David Lombino of The New York Sun continues to move the Air America story forward. According to Lombino’s latest article, Al Franken revealed that Air America’s current owners have known about the loan from Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club for some time:
Mr. Franken said he has learned details of the story only in [...]

Blogger Leon H. takes a hard look at Air America’s latest explanation for the public funding mess involving NYC non-profits. Writes Leon:
There are a couple of other rather large glaring holes in this statement. If Gloria Wise went under, was that due to the fact that they were short about half a million in cash? [...]

*scroll down for updates*
Air America is being investigated in New York for diverting federal/local funds–possibly “hundreds of thousands of dollars”–meant for inner-city kids and senior into the station’s coffers.
Um, why isn’t the New York Times, which has spilled tons of adulatory ink on the liberal radio network, covering this scandal on its front page?
Radio [...]

Via Bloomberg News:
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected appeals by reporters for the New York Times and Time magazine who face jail for refusing to disclose their sources to a prosecutor investigating the leak of a CIA operative’s identity.
The justices in Washington turned down arguments by New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Time correspondent Matthew [...]

Brian Maloney at The Radio Equalizer has the scoop on Al Franken’s painful performance at the Talkers Magazine radio hosts’ convention on Friday night. Maloney also points to this amusing account of the evening from the NY Post:
Al Franken became the guest who wouldn’t leave — at a talk-radio convention held in his honor.
The [...]

The latest Arbitron ratings (you know, the ones Al Franken says aren’t available to the public) show that Air Amerca continues to struggle.
Don’t worry about Franken though. He has back-up plans.
Related entries here.

Via AP with a hat tip to Daly Thoughts:
Radio host Al Franken, who is mulling a run against Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., in 2008, has purchased a town house on the edge of downtown Minneapolis and will establish residency in Minnesota.
“It’s one of the things I need to do if I decide to make a [...]

Pssst, did you hear? Arianna Huffington’s new celebrity/grass-roots/pundit elite/progressive/whatever blog launches today. I’m informing you because, as the Huffers tell us, those evil, corporatist media meanies don’t allow enough little voices to be heard. As Hollywood moonbat-turned-Huffington blogger Laurie David crowed: “The Huffington Post is going to balance the power out there that the media [...]

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? [...]

My new column looks at increasingly unhinged Democrat leaders, seemingly inspired by Teresa “They hacked the mother machines” Heinz Kerry.
Here’s the story on John Kerry kvetching about “trickery.” James Taranto traced the origins of the “Vote on Wednesday” joke that Kerry complains about to…Al Franken. RedState reports on “Ohio’s not-so-odd numbers.”
Trey Jackson has video highlights [...]

Brian Maloney has an interesting post up about Air America’s failure to catch fire with listeners:
- Air America’s flagship station, WLIB-AM in New York, garnered a 1.2 share in the latest quarter, down 0.1 from the year-ago period. By comparison, WABC-AM, New York’s leading conservative station, garnered a 3.8 share, up 0.1 from the year-ago [...]

Guess who said this:
Although not all Muslims are terrorists, unfortunately, in today’s world, most of the terrorists are Muslim.
It was Shohreh Aghdashloo, the lovely Iranian actress who plays a controversial role in FOX’s hit TV series, 24. The Council on American-Islamic Relations launched protests over a plot line involving a Muslim family of terrorist sleeper [...]

The bitter, twisted, unfunny skit on Saturday Night Live that’s mentioned on the Drudge Report this morning can be viewed here. In addition to cruelly mocking Rush Limbaugh, the cartoon (titled “Blue Christmas”) shows Santa and Rudolph skipping over the Red States (referred to on a map as Dumbf*ckistan), commiserating at a Chinese restaurant [...]

Wow. The irrepressible Lucianne.com has a link to an “Unfit for Command” comment board run by the Borders Books Employee Union, whose members kvetch and moan about the “rabid” people coming in to buy the book. Here’s a choice post:
You guys don’t actually HAVE to sell the thing!
Just “carelessly” hide the boxes, “accidentally” drop them [...]

Just wondering.