Al Franken addressed the funding scandal at Air America for the first time on the air yesterday, the New York Post reports. Fortunately for AA listeners, Franken clearly identified the real victim of the misappropriated government grants and questionable loans from Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Clubs. It wasn't the poor kids or the Alzheimer's patients -- it was ... Al Franken:

"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.

Since The Post first reported the story on July 30, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer announced an investigation into the social services agency whose development director, Evan M. Cohen, was also Air America's founder.

"He let us believe that we had enough funding to go three years before making a profit," Franken said.

"Turned out it was three weeks."

In the early days of Saturday Night Live, Franken used to perform a bit on the Weekend Update segments where he would do an on-air editorial about how an issue affected himself ... Al Franken. The first couple of times he performed it, it was pretty funny. It satirized the public-service aspects of TV and fed into our suspicions that broadcast editorials had a lot more to do with personal scores than with community outreach. It got progressively less funny with each repetition, however, and more than twenty years later, it just sounds pathetic.

We still see a shutout on Exempt Media coverage of this scandal. Now we even have Air America covering it, and still the New York Times refuses to report on it.

(via Michelle Malkin)

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