I promised myself that I’d try not to use pictures in my blog, because they tend to detract from the journals, but this was too much to bear. It just proves that Al Franken will use whatever tactics to get himself exposed in America…and rich.

This QuickTime is a video sales pitch from Amazon.com that shows Al with 3 fictional Amazon users who have read Al’s latest book “The Truth (with jokes).” The 3 are presumed to be giving testimonials to Al as to how they rated the book on Amazon’s website. It is assumed that the first 2 people doing the testimonial have nothing but high praise for the book. The video picks up with Al asking the final person what he felt about the book. We find out that this person is a “conservative”, and that he states to all how he rated it low and badmouthing the book without reading it on the site.

Al then proceeds to kick the “conservative” in the groin, and then smashes a stool over his back when he is doubled over.

Now Al Franken has been known in the past in his writings and antics to be irreverent and off the reservation, but this is indeed a step over the line in self promotion.

Whether or not the beaten actor was portrayed to be the most hated of Internet posters, the “Web troll”, is immaterial. The fact of the matter is that Al Franken wished to convey a portrait of beating up political enemies as being an acceptable practice. While theatrical, it is unnerving that Al uses images of felonious violence to promote himself for financial gain. This should be about as funny to normal human beings as watching Rodney King being beaten up, or watching Gestapo agents punish poor Jews in the streets. Then again, with Al Franken, nothing surprises me.

Thanks to Michelle Malkin, with help from her staff member, Mark Jaquith.