A Blog of My Own

I have been, and continue to be, an ardent supporter of Al Franken for U.S. Senator from Minnesota. (As well as a financial contributor.) I hope the State Supreme Court of Minnesota will someday confirm him, just as I hope for everlasting peace on earth and the complete elimination of disease.

I have to think Franken is grateful that Tom Davis’ memoir Thirty-Nine Years of Short-Term Memory Loss didn’t come out until after the election. In fact, I think he’s more than grateful. I think there was a deal to make sure it happened that way.

While the comedy team of Franken and Davis broke up over Davis’ hard-core drug use, the two are friends. Franken contributes material to Davis’ book, and Davis writes of supporting Franken’s Senate campaign (which had been announced at the time of the book’s writing). The ticklish thing for Franken is that while Davis was certainly the harder-core partier of the two, the book portrays Franken as doing copious amounts of drugs in the seventies himself. And a bunch of other things back then he probably would have had to apologize for now, if Norm Coleman had gotten his hands on the material. It could have been fatal — especially in an election that turned on 300-some votes, as this one did.

So, I think that Al said to Tom, “Tom, go ahead and write your book, but do me one favor. Don’t publish it until after the election.” And Tom, doing what a friend would do, complied.

By the way, the book has received some pans having to do with it containing too much material that has nothing to do with comedy, Franken, or Saturday Night Live. Those pans are wrong. Granted, irrelevant material abounds, about Davis’ world travels and Grateful Dead worship and girlfriends, but there is also plenty of good stuff. More than enough of it to make the book a rewarding read for anyone interested in comedy, Franken, Davis, and their SNL cohorts. It is not particularly well-written, but at least it’s grammatical. And while the book isn’t funny (an air of melancholy and regret suffuses much of it), its reminiscences served to remind me of the unique comic genius that Tom Davis brought to the party. I devoured it, and recommend it.

Well guess what and golly gee. When I wrote on January 2, regarding the stated intention of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and senior U.S. Senator from Illinois Dick Durbin to find any nominee chosen by Gov. Rod Blagojevich “unacceptable,”

way to unnecessarily provoke a constitutional crisis and make yourselves look like asses when you lose, Democratic Senate leadership,

I was right!

Question: If I, an ordinary U.S. citizen, knew that according to our Constitution, Roland Burris, being legally appointed by a sitting state governor, had an undeniable claim on this Senate seat, why did it take the Democratic leaders of the Senate ten days to know it?

Asses.

I’m for Al Franken for U.S. Senate. I gave him money two or three months ago to help him win his race in Minnesota. As a result, of course, I get phone calls from his campaign, asking for more money. I actually plan to give him another infusion of cash in early October – but not because of the phone calls. Believe it or not, Al Franken for Senate Telemarketers, I know Al Franken is running for the Senate, and I know he can use money!

In early September, I answered the phone call from the Al Franken for Senate Campaign, and politely told the young man on the other end of the line that I did not need to receive any more phone calls. He said, “Well, what if we agree to call you only once a month?” I said, in the spirit of cooperation and consensus-building that is my trademark, “OK, I can live with that.”

Of course, they have not lived up to their end of the bargain. I’ve received a call from them about every three days since that conversation. I have not answered the phone when this happens.

But the next time, I will. And here’s what I’m going to say:

“If you call me one more time, I’m giving money to Norm Coleman.”

And I mean it. I will.

The aggressiveness of your phone marketing campaign is counterproductive, Al Franken.

Fair warning.

____________

P.S. (added 10/9): I’m happy to say that after posting this, I received no more phone calls from the Franken campaign! Coincidence, or do they read my blog? Impossible to say. In any event, in return, I kept my end of the bargain and made a second donation to the campaign on October 2.

The best way I can think to sum up last night is that the world seems a different place this morning than yesterday. Not necessarily a happier place, or a more hopeful place–but definitely a transformed place.

The last time the world changed so quickly was almost exactly seven years ago–on September 11. It took seven years for an answer to that, but it came last night. It wasn’t joyous. It was serious. Desperately serious. And frightening in its sheer scale, almost as frightening as the earlier event it seemed in answer to. There was a madness about the enormity of last night, but the hope (if there is one) is that in a world already gone mad, only a response of equal and opposite madness can lead us out.

Michelle Obama’s convention speech was a failure in one way, and a grand success in another.

As an attempt to erase the unfortunate aftertaste of that “first time I’m really proud to be an American” remark, it was too transparently calculated to be convincing. If I can see the ropes and pulleys behind last night’s “that is why I love this country”—and I can—then by definition it is unsuccessful as an act of contrition.

However, if you view her speech not as an attempt to persuade anyone of her real convictions, or to present her true self, but rather as an audition for the role of First Lady, it was a stunning success. You could see her as First Lady. She’ll be charming. She’s smart. She’s assertive. Stylish. She has a sense of humor. She’ll be an inspiring example at home, and a great ambassador abroad. You know you can enjoy her in the role for the next four years. Okay, done. The audition was an unqualified success. And the daughters she’s bringing along as part of the deal—they’re great, too.

Good auditions are what we want, not just from our potential first ladies but from our prospective presidents. This isn’t a campaign that’s happening now. It’s a quadrennial national casting session we conduct. And that doesn’t make it superficial. When you cast a movie, everything rides on your choice; will you end up with the blockbuster of the summer, or will your movie go straight to Blockbuster? 90% is in the casting.

We look at candidates and we ask ourselves, “Hmm, can I see him in the part? If I project a few months out, and envision this guy taking the oath of office, do I feel good? Does it feel right, imagining the things this guy will say in his State of the Union addresses? Most crucial of all, do I see a happy ending to America’s movie because of him, and will I want a sequel?” This is not a bad way to choose a president, and it’s a good thing that it’s not, because it’s what we do.

Since our candidates are actors in audition, we don’t ask them to believe the words they are saying. That is irrelevant. We only ask that they make a good show of believing the words they are saying.

As far as I’m concerned, Michelle Obama’s got the part. Next.

In case you find it as useful as I did, here’s a link to the nightly schedule of the Democratic National Convention this week.

I’ll be watching Michelle Obama’s speech tonight, along with Caroline Kennedy’s introduction of a film about her uncle.

(Don’t you love the stage? It reminds me of the opening of a 20th Century Fox film—in CinemaScope®!)

I’ve been grappling on this blog with how Al Franken should handle his humorous past (and his humorous talent) in his present run for the U.S. Senate from Minnesota. Now so is Michael Kinsley of Slate. Good piece.

This one takes the wrong tone. Ominous. Dark. Bitter. It has a point to make (though weakened by Franken’s own support for the war for at least two years—I well remember this from his AirAmerica radio show) but makes it in a way that is inconsistent with the witty Franken brand. He ought to be mocking his opponent Norm Coleman over this (mockery is something Franken does devastatingly well), not casting him with sincere conviction as Evil Incarnate, which only makes Coleman seem formidable. Mockery belittles; fear grants power to the object feared.

Now that I gave money to Al Franken for U.S. Senate, I’m (naturally) receiving emails from the campaign, and some of these lead to the campaign’s commercials. This one I found encouraging, because it shows that Franken isn’t hiding his wit under a bushel, even when he’s not being funny:

Al Franken received the endorsement of the Minnesota Democratic Farmer Labor Party last weekend, which means he will be the Democratic candidate this fall for the U.S. Senate seat currently occupied by Republican Norm Coleman (whom Franken will be opposing).

There are disturbing signs already that Franken is backpedaling from specific pieces of his satirical writing of the last 30 years. He must feel he has to if he is to win, but as one who has regarded Franken as a great American political and social humorist, I wish he wouldn’t throw his wit under the bus. His humor is why he should be elected.

The superficial reason he should stay funny is that it would be cool to have someone funny in the Senate for the next six years. But there’s a serious reason, too. Humor is a potent instrument. One politician can blather platitudes for hours and not move the needle of public opinion an inch. Another can distill the same argument into one funny sentence, and change the world. Franklin Roosevelt knew that. Barack Obama shows signs of knowing it. Al Franken has always known it—but is in danger of forgetting it.

It may be that Franken believes his uniquely subversive, sly-fool humor is the enemy of the orthodoxy he must espouse to win—and he may even be right about that—but the conundrum he faces is that without the freedom to be funny, he will be like Samson without his hair. Assuming he can even win in this self-neutered condition, there probably isn’t much point in electing him if he’s going to be just another ineffectual doctrinaire liberal, other than to keep Norm Coleman from re-election.

Anyway, ever the optimist, I made a contribution to Franken’s campaign, and you can, too. When you do so, you get a special YouTube video of Al giving you his thanks.