ShareThisBy JOHN HAYES
Thursday, November 09, 2006
It's the Al Franken decade. Again.
The comedian's bit from the early days of "Saturday Night Live" may have been slightly prophetic, even if he got the decade wrong.
In the 21st century, Franken is a successful author. His latest book, released last year, is "The Truth: With Jokes" (Dutton). He's a political pundit and co-founder of the liberal talk-radio network Air America. And he's a presumptive candidate for Minnesota senator next year.
Franken is also the subject of "God Spoke," a candid documentary film by the producers and director of "The War Room," which chronicled Bill Clinton's 1992 run for president.
As an Everyman comedian with a distinctive sense of irony and satire, Franken gets away with off-color jokes and the lighter side of gross exaggeration. As a pugnacious political pundit in print and on the airwaves, he challenges Republicans and their supporters to defend their every word.
"That's what I do," he says in the film. "I take what they say and use it against them."
So how do we know if Franken is stretching the truth as a comedian, nitpicking the truth as a pundit or speaking his own version of the truth on the stump? In a conversation that took place before news came of Air America's bankruptcy filing, here's what Franken had to say about it:
Q: You didn't have control over this film. Are there things in it you don't like?
A: There was actually something that I wish was in there from a debate with Ann Coulter, but I think there was a rights problem.
Q: I didn't think that sequence with Ann Coulter made you look good.
A: I didn't like the way that was edited. Here's the thing about that: You can't rely on her about anything. And I had made that point earlier in the debate, which is, when she writes something or says something, it isn't necessarily true.
Q: In the movie Jay Leno defends you, saying that you can say things like that because, "Well, he's a comedian." Can you get away with saying things that other pundits or candidates can't?
A: I think if I run, I can't use that. There is also, let's say I was kidding. I've said things like: I was at a White House Photographers Association dinner and I did a riff about John McCain, who's a friend of mine. I said something like, "I don't get everyone talking about John McCain being a war hero. Didn't he just sit out the war? I mean, isn't the job to capture the other guy?"
Q: On the first page of "The Truth" you talk about George Bush's "loser" father and about your "explosively popular radio network." Both of those things would probably be seen as polarizing by people who don't agree with you.
A: The whole thing is tongue-in-cheek.
Q: When other people say something that might not be precisely accurate, you say he's a liar. Where is that line? How do we know when you're serious and when you're not?
A: I think you can tell there. I think the first page is ... that's a joke. It's clearly a joke.
Q: As you get further into politics, have you reached the point where people are calling you on stuff? In the movie, you're talking about the Fox News people. You say, "They talk about me, like, every day." Well, technically, they don't. Ergo, are you a liar?
A: Now, that's a colloquial. I mean, come on.
Q: How do you know if other people are being colloquial?
A: You can tell when someone's being colloquial. They use a colloquialism.
Q: How can you tell when people are lying? And a lie would be, they know it's wrong at the time they say it, but they say it anyway.
A: I'll give you an example: Bush saying, I'm only going to go to war in Iraq as a last resort. That was a lie. He was fully intending to go to war. He wanted to go to war, and we know that now. We know now. You have to be blind to not know that his intention was to go to war. They were going to war from the middle of 2002 on, and they only picked the intelligence that agreed with them.
Q: You recently moved your broadcast studio from New York to Minnesota, and it's looking like you're at least leaning toward running. At what point do you have to start watching what you say and how you say it?
A: I think I already am, but it has a different level of rigor than if I actually were a candidate.
Q: Give me an example of something you may have said on the radio or elsewhere a year ago that maybe you wouldn't say in the same way now.
A: Hmm. That's a really good question. There's a story I told in (my book) "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right." It's about Barbara Bush, the president's mother, meeting her on a plane, and she was very unpleasant, like, over the top, to the point where I couldn't tell if she was kidding. And in the book I'm going around telling people the story, which is a funny story in and of itself ... because she's just evidently a queen ... Well, I probably wouldn't use that language now. But I did in the book, because that's what people said.
Q: Running for national office, every thing that you've ever said is all still out there. Aren't you going have to defend every single one of them?
A: I think it's gonna be like, people know instinctively who I am and what I do. ... I think most people will think, when you're running for the Senate, it's about their lives, it's about whether they get health care, whether their kids get health care.
Q: You talk about Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter being polarizing. Are you polarizing?
A: I don't think so. I think that I'm pushing back against bad people. I'm good.
Q: So can a good guy be polarizing and alienate people who might otherwise agree with him?
A: I think it's possible. But I think that what I'm actually going to do is bring people together, because I think what's happened is, this administration and especially the people you're talking about _ Hannity and Coulter and those people _ they're very, very dishonest and divisive and mean, and they're people who need to be pushed back against.
(John Hayes can be reached at jhayes(at)post-gazette.com.)
