'RUSH' A BIG FAT FLAWED DELIGHT.

Byline: Joseph Kahn Boston Globe

Title: "Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations"

Author: Al Franken

Data: 271 pages, Delacorte; $21.95

Our rating: Three Stars

Al Franken, the "Saturday Night Live" writer-performer (you may know him best as the smarmy self-help guru Stuart Smalley), is not the author of "Primary Colors," the foamy new novel about the 1992 Clinton campaign. At least, I think he isn't.

For one thing, Franken is a Friend of Bill (hmmm, so is George Stephanopolous), but not a close one. For another, he has not denied writing the year's dishiest inside-the-Beltway expose (as any worthy suspect must). Third, I'm afraid he isn't smart enough, connected enough or - darn it - good enough to write political satire that juicy.

Then again, the jacket cover on "Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot" does make Franken look like a cross between Elliot Richardson and Dr. Ruth Westheimer. Perhaps he's actually secretary of the Interior and Tim Russert forgot to tell us.

Anyway, what Franken has done in this collection of short essays - to mildly comic effect - is to line up the totems of modern conservatism (Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Phil Gramm, etc.) and smack them in the face with cream pies. Now, conceptually this is not a bad idea. Limbaugh has been begging for the Reddi Whip facial from liberal pundits for years. Molly Ivins deconstructed Rushspeak, hilariously, in Mother Jones recently. The lefty media group FAIR published a guidebook to Limbaugh's distortions and disinformation. Don Imus' radio show does Rush better than Rush - definitely funnier. I could go on.

Face it, the man is a fat target for satire. Whether he's also a big fat idiot depends, I suppose, on whether you think Vincent Foster was (a) clinically depressed and shot himself, or (b) whacked on Hillary's orders. Your call. Personally, I sympathize with Franken's view that Limbaugh inhabits a kind of parallel reality where "Styrofoam is biodegradable, Hillary has Vince Foster rubbed out and cigarettes stop causing cancer."

However, I'm no expert on this conspiracy stuff. If someone wants to convince me that Al Gore is the Unabomber, I'll listen. I'm no knee-jerk liberal wiseguy smarty-pants. Franken is - or at least passes himself off as one - and therein lies much of his churlish charm. When the writer makes fun of Limbaugh's girth ("It's easy to be overcome with compassion fatigue," writes Franken, "when you're carrying an extra hundred and forty pounds."), he sounds sophomoric and mean-spirited.

When Franken imagines Limbaugh, Gingrich, Gramm, Clarence Thomas and Pat Buchanan on patrol in Vietnam (none of whom actually saw war duty), the result is tasteless and possibly treasonous. Hurrah, I say. We need more trash talk in Campaign '96, not less. After all, why leave the ad hominem attacks to professional politicians?

Franken, who grew up in Minnesota in a family of Republicans, is funniest when he follows himself around the political firmament - a kind of Swiftian odyssey into the belly of the electoral beast. Thus we find the author emceeing the 1988 Dukakis election-night party, a political wake as humorless as the candidate himself. "SNL" pal Jon Lovitz, a Dukakis impersonator, joins Franken on the dais - and bombs. Flying home to New York later, Franken mourns for the Republic. Not Lovitz. "Now (expletive) Dana (Carvey) gets to play the (expletive) president for the next four years," he snarls. Exactly!

Franken later pops up at the White House Correspondents Association dinner, the 1993 Renaissance Weekend (where he plays touch football with the president) and Ross Perot's convention in Dallas, where Franken mercilessly goofs on the rich and self-righteous ("Capra on acid," he notes with a true misanthrope's touch). Unfortunately, Steve Forbes surfaced too late to make Franken's radar screen.

The more seriously Franken takes himself and "real" issues, the limper the prose and the stagier the pose. Unlike O'Rourke, say, Franken really isn't much of a reporter. He also lacks the nose for bureaucratic idiocy that makes O'Rourke so maddeningly entertaining. Schtick is more Franken's forte than satire.

It might help to think of a typical "SNL" weekend news segment. In six minutes' worth of material, you expect three or four zingers, half a dozen clunkers, one bitingly witty commentary and two that fizzle completely. In Franken's book, the ratio of hits to misses is slightly higher, though probably not enough to drive Rush to a Weight Watchers clinic. Darn it.

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Photo (1) no caption (Book cover - RUSH LIMBAUGH IS A BIG FAT IDIOT) (2) Al Franken the author is funniest when he follows himself around the political firmament.