One could almost feel sorry for Al Franken. It must be difficult waking up in the morning and wondering if his paycheck will bounce. At forty thousand or so samoleans per week, according to the Wall Street Journal's report yesterday, a rubber check would cost him about what the average family makes in a year. Standing up for the little guy sure pays well for Al, if he gets paid at all, that is.

Not to worry, though. According to a New York Post article today, Al assures us that

"I am being paid now," he told listeners yesterday. "I've been paid for weeks."

Of course, the problem is that he's been working for months.

Given his Clintonian tendencies, there's no way to be sure exactly what meaning to put on this statement. Tortured language is par for the course with these guys. Maybe it really means he's getting one out of four paychecks. Who knows?

But at least we know that Al's able to put food on the table without tapping the money he's earned on his best—selling book... something to do with liars, as I dimly recall. Not the kind who claim large scale financial backing which turns out to not exist, or even the kind who claim to have higher ratings than America's number one talk show.

Al's been talking about ratings recently. Until yesterday. He was boasting last month that he'd

beaten WABC's Rush Limbaugh among the 25— to 54—year—old listeners chased by radio advertisers.

Right. I wonder if Al would like to invest some of his big bucks in a certain bridge.

Nevermind that this boast was based on an unofficial 'extrapolation' of Arbitron ratings. And don't look too closely at the tortured language of Al's bragging, because you might notice that he might have been comparing the entire broadcast day of WABC in New York (including the midnight to 5 AM hours) with his own peak hour supposed listenership, following an unprecendented barrage of publicity accompanying the launch of Air America.

It's a good thing for Al that the Geneva Convention, which the left wants to apply to illegal combatants, also doesn't cover torturing language.

However one construes the former ratings boasts, they disappeared down the memory hole, once new data became available. According to the Post, once listeners heard what Al and the rest of the Air America crew had to offer, they agreed with the critics: it stinks. So do the latest ratings projections from Arbitorn.

WLIB, the only large market station carrying the Air America lineup, has receded into the ratings obscurity it had before the Air America boys leased it airtime.

Now, ratings projections aren't the same thing as real ratings. The decline could be more apparent than real. But so could the data on which Al based his earlier claims. Live by the projection, die by the projection, right?

We'll know soon enough. The real Arbitron ratings will be out shortly. If Al is silent on the subject we'll know that the news isn't good, and Al had better not plan on spending any of his future paychecks.