Comedian Asks, "Why Not Me?"
Bob Minzesheimer, USA Today, 6 Jan 1999, pp. 03D.
NEW YORK -- Just when politics seem beyond parody, when headlines invite the question, ''Who could make this stuff up?'' Al Franken, a wise-ass from Harvard, is back with a new book and a revived TV series, hoping to make people laugh about politicians and the media.
''Well, we're not exactly wanting for material,'' Franken says with a laugh. ''But I think the whole Monica Lewinsky thing has impoverished comedy. It's so easy and obvious.''
And, as if on cue, the man who created Stuart Smalley on Saturday Night Live, and describes himself as a ''mushball liberal Democrat,'' laughs again.
His TV comedy, Lateline, a sendup of Nightline, returns to NBC tonight (9 ET/PT). Franken plays Al Freundlich, a disheveled reporter who longs to become another Edward R. Murrow but who's described in the production notes as ''not a threat, not good-looking, bad on camera and America doesn't like him.''
Franken's book, out next week, is Why Not Me? The Inside Story of the Making and Unmaking of the Franken Presidency (Delacorte, $23.95), an account of Franken's triumph in the 2000 presidential election, campaigning as an implacable foe of ATM fees.
It's his first book since the 1996 best seller Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations, in which Franken wrote: ''Death threats should be sent to Delacorte Press.''
Franken says he originally thought of writing a ''career-ending'' book, settling all his personal and political scores, to be titled Rush Limbaugh's Butt is Big and Smelly.
He laughs again and asks, ''How can I be so mean?''
But John Markus, co-producer of Lateline who sees Franken ''as a satirist with heart,'' talked Franken out of it. Markus, who worked with Bill Cosby as a writer and executive producer of The Cosby Show, describes Lateline as a ''workplace comedy'' and says Franken's political satire ''is the seasoning that spices the show. . . . If all we did was politics, it wouldn't be a sitcom.''
Still, Franken helped attract political guest stars -- presidential lawyer Bob Bennett; Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.; Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt; and Watergate felon G. Gordon Liddy -- all playing themselves in cameo roles.
Franken, 46, considers himself more of a comedian, influenced by Jack Benny and Woody Allen, than a political satirist.
But he has long been passionate about politics, growing up in a household where his father (a Herbert Hoover Republican until the civil rights movement) and his mother (an Eleanor Roosevelt Democrat) debated politics over dinner in suburban Minneapolis.
''There was a strong element of moral indignation behind this interest,'' he writes, ''and indignation is well and good in doses, but I noticed fairly early in life that some people live to find stuff to be indignant about. And it's pretty unattractive. That's why I decided to become a wise-ass.''
His book is about what happens when ''an idiot -- that's me -- becomes president.'' It has Clintonian overtones, but ''I'm not Clinton,'' he says. ''I'm an idiot.''
Candidate Franken tells voters ''that my responsibilities as a student prevented me from serving in the military.''
His platform consists entirely of attacks on ATM fees. ''Banks don't need the money,'' he says. ''People do.''
He forms the first all-Jewish ticket, tapping Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., as his running mate, arguing he'll ''balance the ticket, since he's Orthodox and I'm Reform.''
Franken and Lieberman win in a landslide over the Republican ticket of Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey. Franken then forms the first all-Jewish Cabinet. ''The American people don't want a cabinet that 'looks like America,' '' the president says. ''They want a Cabinet that the president is comfortable with.''
The Franken administration is quickly brought down by financial and sexual scandals.
But the book's target is as much the media as the politicians they cover.
The administration's downfall is chronicled. Only one person, Dick Morris, agreed to speak for attribution.
In the book, Morris advises Franken. In real life, Morris, the presidential adviser whose own sexual scandal preceded the president's, posed for photographs for the book, although, as Franken notes, ''he was not terribly happy with his portrayal in the actual text.''
The book is populated by some of Franken's political and media friends in real life: Newsweek's Howard Fineman, GOP pollster Frank Luntz and political scientist Norman Ornstein (a contributor to USA TODAY's editorial pages).
Both Ornstein and Luntz will play themselves (very briefly) on Franken's TV series.
Ornstein says Franken's political humor can be biting, but ''unlike someone like Jay Leno, he really cares about politics and policy issues. He's not hammering away at the easiest targets with the same six or seven jokes, without texture or depth.''
Luntz, who advises some of the Republicans Franken mocks, says Franken ''knows more about politics than any layperson I know. I wish he was on our side. We need a conservative Al Franken.''
Luntz warns that it's becoming tougher to do political humor that's popular. ''Americans don't like politics and don't like politicians, and they don't think it's a laughing matter.''
But then, there's President Franken's farewell address in which he says: ''I regret very deeply the harm that I've done both to people I care about and people I don't really care about all that much.
''I am sorry. I apologize. It was wrong. I am so, so sorry. Boy, am I sorry. . .''