Franken recounts mid-class naps during Harvard talk
.Jessica Rosin, Franken recounts mid-class naps during Harvard talk, University Wire, 6 Dec 1999.
(The Daily Free Press) (U-WIRE) BOSTON -- Before "Saturday Night Live" and his "Stewart Smalley" act, before becoming a political commentator and comedian, and before his fat jokes about Rush Limbaugh, Al Franken was a sleepy college student.
Speaking at his alma mater, Harvard University, Friday evening, in the same auditorium where he once had a class, Franken told the crowd of his battle to stay awake during a history lecture.
The combination of his late-night play practices, the 9:30 a.m. class and overheated room made it a battle for Franken to keep his eyes open. In fact, he fell asleep every morning.
With midterm time approaching, he was worried about the information he missed while napping. After talking about the problem with the class teaching assistant, Franken was told to meet with the professor, William Bell, a nationally renowned sociologist.
"I went to the TA since I was worried about passing," Franken said. "He said, that Bell is worried, he thinks you're a drug addict."
To explain that his problem was not drugs, but play practice and the early morning class, Franken made an appointment to see Bell. But while waiting for the professor in his office, Franken grew sleepy again and dozed on a couch. Finally, he was startled awake by Bell.
"I explained about the play," Franken said, his story greeted with a chorus of laughs and applause. "But, he told me he felt students were obliged to stay awake during class."
Eventually, however, Bell told him the exam would cover only the class reading. In response, Franken spent the next four weeks cramming and earned the highest grade on the final. However, he realized his this effort was worthless.
"I was taking the class pass/fail," he said. This anecdote about his days as a student was one of many jokes Franken made at the expense of himself and others during his talk.
While he did not focus on one topic, much of his humor surrounded politics and the presidential race -- subjects he lampoons in his two latest books "Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations" and "Why Not Me?"
Attacking media coverage of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, he said the press may have gone overboard but a few publications deserved credit for giving the issue excessive attention.
"Throughout the feeding frenzy, some news organizations did not focus solely on the scandal," he said. "For instance, Sailing Magazine, American Grocer Weekly and Juggs."
Shifting his commentary from scandal to the upcoming election, Franken slipped into one of his most famous acts -- "Stewart Smalley," the spacey, feel-good, self-help therapist he played on "Saturday Night Live."
When an audience member asked who Smalley would pick for president, Franken replied in the lisp of his former television character.
"First of all, I am not political at all," he said. "But, one of my heroes is Mahatma Ghandi, although I heard he had an eating disorder."
Smalley's comment, a reference to Ghandi's hunger strikes, drew chuckles from the crowd, but he got the biggest laughs for his jab at right-wing talk radio host, Rush Limbaugh.
Commenting on the title of his book, "Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations," Franken burst out with the critical and often unpredictable humor that is his trademark.
When asked to defend the name of the volume, Franken had a simple answer.
"At the time Rush was very fat," he said. "He was huge, just a fat, fat, fat, fat, fat man. He's lost some weight since, though. He hasn't thanked me."