BECKER, Minn., Dec. 17, 2007
Al Franken Gets Serious For Senate Run
Washington Post: As A Candidate In Minnesota, Comedian Seeks To Prove Gravitas
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Al Franken campaigning for the Democratic Senate nomination in Minnesota earlier this year. (Cory Ryan/Getty Images)
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Al Franken, U.S. Senate candidate, is telling a joke:
Some years ago, he tells a crowd of about 150 at a meet-the-candidates spaghetti lunch, his daughter had to write a school essay about how her parents met. So Franken told her: He spotted his future wife, Franni, across the room at a freshman mixer in college. He asked her to dance. They talked. He bought her a ginger ale. Afterward, he walked her back to her dorm, where he asked for a date. End of story.
His daughter, Franken says, wrote up the innocent tale this way: "My dad asked my mom to dance, bought her a drink and took her home."
The crowd laughs, politely.
The story isn't exactly hilarious. But as Franken's most famous "Saturday Night Live" character, self-help guru Stuart Smalley, used to say, that's . . . okay. In fact, that's the plan.
Franken doesn't want to be funny these days, not really funny. Wit has its place in politics, he says, and people always like a laugh. But funny can be a distraction from the serious stuff Franken is trying to talk about, such as veterans' health care, global warming, his opposition to the war in Iraq, etc. Besides, Franken has always had funny. What he needs, as a candidate, is gravitas.
So after a lifetime of making people laugh, Franken tries to sound deadly earnest -- even, in truth, a little ponderous at times -- as he seeks the Democratic nomination in Minnesota, his home state. Since February, when he announced his candidacy, he's been crisscrossing the state in a hybrid SUV, speaking at dozens of spaghetti dinners, picnics and meet-and-greets, all with a singular mission: To convince people that his evolution from wacky satirist to talk-radio pundit to serious statesman is real and complete.
Here in Becker, a tiny (pop. 4,048) prairie town an hour northwest of Franken's home in Minneapolis, the candidate sticks to some well-rehearsed lines as he addresses activists from Minnesota's evocatively named Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party in a barn of a restaurant called Gily's Bar and Grill. Franken tells them how he grew up as the son of a printing salesman in suburban Minneapolis, in a middle-class household -- "two bedrooms and one bath," he says. "I thought I was the luckiest kid in the world, and I was."
His tone changes, however, as he talks about his wife's childhood. Franni Franken's father died in an accident when she was 17 months old, leaving her mother, then 29, to raise five children on her own. With the help of Social Security survivor benefits, Pell college-scholarship grants and GI Bill loans, Franken says, his mother-in-law managed to keep her home and family together, and raised the children to become productive adults. "They" -- meaning conservatives -- "tell you to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and I agree with that," he tells the crowd. "But the government gave my wife's family the boots and the laces."
The crowd begins to murmur.
Franken's big windup is a riff about meeting with college students, "many of whom were too young to remember a president who was articulate." As the audience whoops, he adds, "They don't remember when America was the most respected country in the world, a country that defeated fascism and communism, rebuilt Europe after the war, sent a man to the moon, mapped the human genome, and had enough juice left over to invent the Internet and rock-and-roll."
The applause is generous. Afterward, Franken is mobbed.
It's true that actors and even pro wrestlers (see: Jesse Ventura, former governor of Minnesota) have crossed over to high office. But a comedian who once declared the 1980s "the Al Franken Decade"?
Franken says later that he decided to run because he's "worried" about the country; because he's tired of George Bush; and because he doesn't like Norm Coleman, the Republican incumbent. Franken can sound especially bitter when he's talking about the senator. Coleman won the seat in 2002 after Democrat Paul Wellstone -- Franken's political hero -- died in a plane crash 10 days before the election, and Franken and Democrats haven't quite gotten over it during the past six years. "He's George Bush's number-one enabler," Franken declares.
To those who would dismiss him as a mere comedian, Franken has a ready response. Out on the stump, he disarms audiences with an oft-used line: "Let me tell you what a satirist does," he says. "A satirist looks at a situation and sees the inconsistencies and hypocrisies and absurdities, and cuts through the baloney and gets to the truth. And I think that's pretty good training for the U.S. Senate. Don't you?"
Franken, in fact, had been considering a run for several years. He moved back to Minnesota from New York in 2005. He then set about raising and giving away money for state Democratic candidates, many of whom have repaid him by endorsing his candidacy.
Franken's political consciousness predates that, however. "Saturday Night Live" producer Lorne Michaels says Franken always harbored political passions, many of them barely disguised. Way back in "SNL's" earliest days, he remembers, he had to talk Franken out of heckling Spiro Agnew when the disgraced former vice president visited NBC.
Now, thanks to 15 seasons on "Saturday Night Live," his books (five bestsellers) and three years hosting a liberal talk show on the struggling Air America radio network, Franken has the name-recognition for a statewide run. He has money, too. He's raised some $10.4 million so far, in good part due to help from showbiz friends in New York and Hollywood such as Michaels, Tom Hanks and Paul Newman. Early polls show him running neck and neck for the Democratic nomination with Mike Ciresi, a wealthy trial lawyer. Coleman holds a slight lead over both in a head-to-head race.
© 2007 The Washington Post Company
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Best-selling author Mitch Albom on his first nonfiction work since "Tuesdays with Morrie."
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See all 35 CommentsNo problem there. He never was and never will be.
Posted by Infidel_Us
And he doesn''t know how to run his pinky across his eyebrow either like O''Reilly. It''s peculiar and it''s funny.
No problem there. He never was and never will be.
Posted by befair1265
Then maybe O''Reilly should also run for the Senate. Let the two of them rant on the Hill. Ant Hill that is.
Feliz Navidad!
Posted by realpatriot1
Likewise my friend. Bon Noel!
Feliz Navidad!
To All My Democrat Friends:
Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2008, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere. Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wish.
To My Republican Friends:
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Posted by simonsez40
Yes, bring in the clowns. We out to have clowns.
Posted by rchwel
So scared that we picked up two more.
Posted by realpatriot1 at 05:31 AM : Dec 18, 2007
I have and the style looks just as silly on him as it did on Ronny. At least he hasn''t built a phony ranch like di*ckhead Bush has to try to make himself seem more like him..........yet.
The right wing Hollywood bashers forget that their hero was Hollywood''s union boss.
Have you noticed that Romney is trying to emulate his hair?
Posted by realpatriot1 at 09:20 PM : Dec 17, 2007
I lean more toward it being Ronny Raygun that did it. I mean have you seen some of his movies? I don''t know if they were funny on purpose, but you sure couldn''t call what he did dramatic acting. Ugh!
Sonny Bono set the precedent. By the way, he''s running for Senate, not Congress.
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