Michael Fumento

There's an interesting article in the Washington Post about Stephen Colbert's Catholicism, although one does note that he was taught by Jesuits, whose idea of Catholicism is not mainstream. But neither is it atheism.

One thing I say for both Colbert and John Stewart is that agree or disagree with them, they are truly funny. I can't say that for some of the TV and radio show hosts on the right, nor former radio show host Al Franken.

In fact, Franken wasn't even funny on SNL. I was on his show once and he was far from funny there, hardly justifying his $3 million a year contract that helped bring his entire network down. In fact, he said something about my colleague Capt. Joe ("Crazy Joe") in quoting from my article "The New Band of Brothers," that horrified me at the time.

I was writing about my first fight, video of which you can see here though I intentionally blurred it for the sake of protecting the identity of the SEALs, in which Claburn was the only soldier. The others were SEALs. As you can see and hear, it was intense.

I wrote, "As we take fire, Claburn yells: 'Hear them cracking over your head? That’ll get your peter hard, huh?'" To be clear on this, if you hear rounds whistling by it means they're fairly close. But a crackling sound means they're REALLY close. It's only luck that a chunk of lead isn't slamming you in the face. A few weeks later, one of those SEALs was shot right through the mouth and became the first to die in Iraq.

Franken read those words and sneared. But those are the things soldiers say to keep themselves and their buddies sane in what's actually an insane position to voluntarily be in.

Well, now the disparaged Crazy Joe is paralyzed from the waist down. And Al Franken is a senator. And that's how it works.