Daily Irony; Al Franken, The Senate and Satire

The great state of Minnesota boasts an organized Democratic Party that calls themselves the Democratic Farmer and Labor Party, or DFL for short. Its candidates throughout the years have delivered several prominent political names to the national electorate. Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy and Walter Mondale all used their Minnesota Senate seat to create political momentum to campaign for President of the United States, each one ending with a resounding thud. And thud is putting it mildly.

So when Minnesota Democrats got together a few weeks ago at the DFL state convention to nominate a candidate that would test and potentially unseat the venerable and vulnerable Republican incumbent, Norm Coleman, one would think that this once mighty powerhouse would have a stellar, dynamic and polished array of candidates to choose from.

Then along came Stuart Smalley. He’s good enough, smart enough, and – according to a recent poll - doggonit, 47% of Minnesota voters like him.

Al Franken; comedian, writer, satirist, intellectually superior, brilliant and humble (the last three attributes lifted directly from his resume) wordsmith has now entered into a vigorously full-throttle campaign to win Coleman’s Senate seat, a job that Coleman himself slid into with dramatically tragic serendipity in 2002, when incumbent Senator Paul Wellstone died in an airplane crash two weeks before the election. Coleman ended up coasting to victory over the barely dusted off Democratic pinch-hitter Walter Mondale, rendering Mondale a nostalgic relic that is best kept in the annals of sentimentality.

Al Franken has been forced to scramble on the defensive of late, and endure a barrage of opposition attacks and scrutiny over several of his writings during his years of comedic work. Franken initially insisted that he was simply performing his job as a comedian and satirist, as if to dismiss the controversy as simply a joke. After all, it’s just satire. Indeed, it is.

Al Franken may be the ideal candidate for the job of United States Senator.

Sadly, politicians reduced themselves to satire long ago. Congress is dripping with very real character defects that are ripe for satirical commentary. We have Idaho Senator Larry Craig and his bathroom stall toe-tapping, “I’m not gay, nor have I ever been gay” episode. Louisiana Congressman William Jefferson taking bribes (allegedly) in large bills stashed in his kitchen freezer. Former Florida Congressman Mark Foley sponsored key legislation that made our laws tougher on child sex predators, only to be shamed out of his job by the revelation that he was a predator himself. Louisiana Senator David Vitter, a leading Christian Conservative, was found to have carried on a rather unsavory tryst with a prostitute that lasted for nearly a year. To clarify and save his street cred with conservatives though, it’s worth noting that Vitter chose a female prostitute. I think Dr. James Dobson calls that a “mulligan”, punctuated with a wink and a nod. And finally, we have former Prosecutor and New York Governor, Elliot Spitzer, all neatly packaged in a trifecta of hypocrisy, shame and irony. Still don’t know whether to laugh or cry over that one.

Back in Minnesota, let’s hope that current and pending attacks on Al Franken are for his ideas for Minnesotans and not for his work as a satirist. His job of lampooning public figures was made all too easy by the arsenal of material he was spoon-fed by the very body he wishes to be elected to.