Al Franken: Extended Profile
By Discover The Networks
July 2009

U.S. Senator representing Minnesota
Former comedy writer and performer with Saturday Night Live
Detests conservatives
His 2008 Senate election victory was marred by suspicions of voter fraud.

Alan Stuart Franken was born in May 1951 in New York City and was raised in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. In 1973 he graduated from Harvard College with a bachelor’s degree in political science. He went on to become a writer (and an occasional performer) on the television comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL) from 1975 to 1980 and again from 1985 to 1995. He also worked as a movie-script writer and made cameo appearances in several films, most notably Trading Places (1983) and The Manchurian Candidate (2004).

While working for SNL, Franken, still embittered by the fact that during his years at Harvard he had not been invited to join the university’s “Hasty Pudding Club” -- a humorous dramatic society -- told a Harvard Crimson interviewer: "I just don't like homosexuals. If you ask me, they're all homosexuals in the Pudding. Hey, I was glad when that Pudding homosexual got killed in Philadelphia."[1]

Franken, who objected to former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s Vietnam War policies in the 1970s, used his influence to prevent Kissinger's son from obtaining tickets to SNL years after the war had ended.[2]

Franken left SNL for good in 1995, after the show’s producers refused to let him anchor its “Weekend Update” news parody segment.[3]

Describing himself as a "proud liberal,"[4] Franken detests conservatives and Republicans, whom he views as “racists” who are hostile to “diversity.”[5] He once angrily told Tony Perkins, head of the conservative Family Research Council, that Perkins’ ideas were very dangerous.[6]

At a black-tie dinner in Washington, DC, Franken approached George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove, whom he had never met before, and told him: "I'm Al Franken. I hate you, and you hate me."[7]

Franken commonly characterizes conservatives as "liars." At the Chicago book Expo in June 2003, for instance, he walked up to TV/radio host Bill O’Reilly and called him a liar.[8] Not long after news of Rush Limbaugh’s addiction to the prescription drug OxyContin was made public that same year, Franken opined that the talk-show host lacked the honesty required to successfully complete a 12-step substance-abuse program.[9]

Franken says that conservatives use “the media apparatus” to spread “filth, sleaze, and bile” throughout the United States.[10] He depicts conservatives as an "extremely mean and nasty" demographic that seeks to appeal to people's "dark side."[11]

According to Franken, Republicans "hurt black people and help rich people, who tend, again generally, to be white."[12] The Republican Party, he elaborates, is the ideological dwelling place of “Southern bigots,” though he adds that they “aren't just racist in the South."[13]

Characterizing America at large as a racist nation, Franken says that all-too-many white employers are bigots with an aversion to hiring black workers. Notably, over the course of his involvement in the television, radio, film, and book-publishing industries between 1975 and 2005, Franken himself was directly or indirectly responsible for the hiring of at least 112 people; only one was black.[14]

Franken has been a friend and adviser to Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and Al Gore.[15] In April 1998 he said, “I'm a bit of a shill for the Clinton Administration, which has its perks. I’m invited to all the inaugural balls.” On another occasion he stated that he was in "Bill Clinton's pocket," adding that he considered Clinton the greatest president of his lifetime.

Franken has authored five books, three of which reached the #1 position on the New York Times bestseller list. One of his most popular titles was Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations (1996). This book contains a host of “fat” jokes -- 37 of them, in fact, on one page. Elsewhere in the book, Franken says that Reagan adviser Lynn Nofziger resembled a pornographer; he refers to Republican Senator Phil Gramm as “Mum Arielle fetishistic”; he references an imaginary homosexual affair between conservative writer Pat Buchanan and former Vice President Dan Quayle;[16] he describes, with an air of satisfaction, the fictional murder of conservative author William Bennett; and he portrays conservative columnist George Will, whom the author dubs “Stoner,” as a drug addict.

In 2003, while Franken was a fellow at Harvard University, he published Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. In this book, Franken derided conservative author Ann Coulter for a column in which she had observed that while the media commonly lampooned conservative women (like Katherine Harris and Linda Tripp) for some aspect of their physical appearance, they (the media) never poked fun at the appearance of such leftists as Madeleine Albright, Maxine Waters or Janet Reno. Franken used the occasion to blast Coulter for allegedly singling out some “supposedly unattractive Democratic women.” Yet a few years earlier Franken himself had remarked, before a large Washington audience, that Reno was so unattractive that she would have been unable to earn even $25 for a lap dance.[17]

In 2005 Franken published The Truth, with Jokes, wherein he made the following statements:

“During Vietnam, I was in college, enjoying my student deferment. The government wisely felt that, in my case, military service was less important than completing my studies to prepare me for my chosen career: comedian.”
“Minnesota Republican [and then-U.S. Senator] Norman Coleman is one of the [Bush] administration's leading butt boys.”
“Republicans are shameless d**ks. No, that’s not fair. Republican politicians are shameless d**ks.”

In April 2003, Franken, while serving as a fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, wrote fake letters on Harvard stationary to 29 high-profile advocates of abstinence-only sex education -- among them, Attorney General John Ashcroft, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, conservative author William Bennett, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, Cardinal Edward Egan, Senator Rick Santorum, and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice -- asking them to share their own personal “abstinence experiences” for an inspirational book for teens to be called Savin’ It! Franken’s targets saw through the ruse, however, and some complained to Harvard, leading Franken to issue a less-than-gracious apology.

Franken has similarly resorted to deception on numerous other occasions. He once telephoned former Minnesota Congressman Vin Weber, who was an acquaintance of his, to chat -- never telling Weber that their conversation was actually an interview for a book Franken was planning to publish. He then quoted some of Weber's statements, without permission or forewarning, in Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them.[18]

Franken once suggested that National Review editor Rich Lowry had dedicated his new book to his male lover, when, in fact, the “Robert” in question was Lowry’s brother. When later confronted about the matter by Lowry, Franken challenged him to a fistfight.

Further evidence of Franken's volcanic temper can been on some You Tube videos that show him confronting Republican Norm Coleman after a debate, and launching a profanity-laced tirade against Fox News at a Democratic Party fundraiser.

In early 2004 Franken was hired to host a daily talk show on Air America Radio. On that program he regularly condemned the use of "torture" against suspected terrorists, blasting President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for supposedly having authorized the prisoner-abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. But scarcely a year earlier at the National Press Club, Franken himself had explicitly advocated the use of torture against suspected terrorists:

"Here's a tool that I think we should consider keeping on the table -- torture. I'm talking a bit about the detainees. We have like 300 detainees -- not all the detainees, by the way -- just [those] like the guy who had an apartment in Paterson, New Jersey, and who was inquiring about crop-dusting. That guy knows something -- right? Now you know that he's willing to die for this perverse cause. My question is: Is he willing to take a -- poker up the butt for it? You know he wants to service the 72 virgins in paradise. Does he think he can do that after we have crushed his testicles?"[19]

In 2005 Franken became a contributing blogger at the Huffington Post.

Franken continued to host his radio program through February 14, 2007. Then, in the last segment of the final show, he announced that he would be running for a United States Senate seat (representing Minnesota) against incumbent Republican Norm Coleman. (Exactly eight years earlier, Franken, who did not yet have any serious plans to run for political office, had said: “If I put myself on the ballot and even 50 people voted for me, it'd be a travesty.”)

Once Franken became a candidate in 2007, critics and news reporters raised questions about financial scandals of his past. It was learned, for example, that from 2002 to 2005 Franken's corporation had failed to carry the required workers' compensation insurance for its employees in New York State, and that Franken had repeatedly ignored communications about the matter from New York officials. But now that he was seeking public office, Franken paid a $25,000 fine to New York State in an effort to put the issue to rest.

Then, in April 2008, after months spent dodging questions from critics and opponents about the state of his personal finances, Franken finally admitted that he owed approximately $70,000 in unpaid taxes in 17 states. Shortly thereafter, the Minnesota Workers' Compensation Board fined Franken’s corporation $25,000 for failing to pay three years' worth of workers' compensation dues. Franken blamed his accountant for the trouble.

Franken's 2008 Senate race against Coleman was hotly contested and extremely close. It was also marred by what journalist Matthew Vadum called "appalling irregularities that characterized both the initial and subsequent vote-counting." The morning after the election, Coleman led Franken by 725 votes. But Franken refused to concede, and the thin margin triggered an automatic recount.

As ACORN-aligned Secretary of State Mark Ritchie presided over the recount process, Coleman's lead gradually vanished due to a host of mysterious, newly discovered votes that almost invariably benefited Franken. A detailed account of these developments can found here and here. By the time the recount (and a court challenge by Coleman) had ended in April 2009, Franken held a 312-vote lead.

On June 30, 2009, Coleman officially conceded and Franken was declared the victor.

For an overview of Franken's positions on various key issues, click here.

NOTES:

[1] Peter Schweizer, Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy (New York: Doubleday, 2005), p.65.
[2] Ibid., p. 66.
[3] Ibid., p. 65.
[4] Ibid., p. 61.
[5] Ibid., p. 73.
[6] Ibid., p. 61.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid., p. 62.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid., p. 73.
[13] Ibid., p. 73.
[14] Ibid., pp. 74-76.
[15] Ibid., p. 60.
[16] Ibid., p. 67.
[17] Ibid., p. 69.
[18] Ibid., p. 64.
[19] Ibid., pp. 68-69.