Franken was great as Sen. Paul Simon during their Clarence Thomas confirmation hearing sketch. And the one-man uplink he did from the deserts of Saudi Arabia during Gulf War I (delerious from dehydration, died on camera, eaten by vulture) was classic as well.

And the Stuart Smalley sketch with Michael Jordan was great, too.

"Cameo" in Trading Places as the baggage handler was good stuff.

His political media work was preaching-to-the-choir stuff, and enjoyable if taken as such.


OKAY, I like Al Franken. That's it.

Woody wrote:

Bakestar wrote:

Woody wrote:Obama just gave a pretty funny answer at his press conference about what dog he's going to buy for the girls... he played it totally deadpan as though it was a most pressing issue of national importance. Good stuff

Sooo... what kind of dog is he getting?!!?

He didn't say, but he said there were many criteria including: It had to be hypo-allergenic, and it had to be from a pound or SPCA type situation. However, he said the challenge before them was difficult because most of the dogs in those types of places are mutts, like him.

CNN Headline: EVEN NEW WHITE HOUSE DOG IS CENTRIST

Franken would be great. A breath of fresh air and can't be worse than ANY republican.

SNL hasn't been funny for 20 years maybe longer.

D Miller is a douche-bag and never was funny and disgraced MNF with his pompous so-called wit which was nothing but psuedo-intellectual blather

Al Franken did a lot of bits that weren't so funny too. BUT -- he is a funny character, and he's far more credible for Senate than say Penn and Teller. or Jesse the Body, or the Terminator.

THe same blurb Dajafi quoted that made him feel better, made me feel wrose. I didn't know he was a DNC boy, and hoped he was really an air-America leftist. I'm tired of "Leftist" being some kind of bad branding.

Left --- Right
Right -- Wrong

Meanwhile, Obama is showing no early signs of innovation in his planning and thinking nor any fresh faces from the outside. Can we get a head of the Fed who is not a Wall St insider? I posted yesterday the interview with Dean Baker and his mention of republican Bair for the Fed.

Yeah, Franken is and pretty much always was way, way up Clinton and the DLC's collective butts, for better or worse.

Philly the Kid wrote:Franken would be great. A breath of fresh air and can't be worse than ANY republican.

SNL hasn't been funny for 20 years maybe longer.

D Miller is a douche-bag and never was funny and disgraced MNF with his pompous so-called wit which was nothing but psuedo-intellectual blather

Al Franken did a lot of bits that weren't so funny too. BUT -- he is a funny character, and he's far more credible for Senate than say Penn and Teller. or Jesse the Body, or the Terminator.

THe same blurb Dajafi quoted that made him feel better, made me feel wrose. I didn't know he was a DNC boy, and hoped he was really an air-America leftist. I'm tired of "Leftist" being some kind of bad branding.

Left --- Right
Right -- Wrong

Meanwhile, Obama is showing no early signs of innovation in his planning and thinking nor any fresh faces from the outside. Can we get a head of the Fed who is not a Wall St insider? I posted yesterday the interview with Dean Baker and his mention of republican Bair for the Fed.

I llove this post.

I also regret that conservative and liberal don't mean what they used to mean.

HBO recently ran a Dennis Miller comedy concert from around 1992-3, right around when Clinton was elected. I thought parts of it were hysterical and he went after both sides in his political stuff. I miss the Dennis Miller I used to find funny.

I never found Al Franken all that funny on SNL, but I have two of his books - both of which I flipped thru and read parts of - they're smile-funny often, but rarely laugh-out-loud funny.

His Air America show during the early days of the network was as amateur-hour as most of its early programming. Liberal talk radio, IMO, has gotten much better. If Franken doesn't win the Senate race, I hope he considers a return to radio. But just as he was second-tier on SNL, on radio, he's not likely to be as good all-around as Ed Schultz or Stephanie Miller, or as informative yet still likeable as Thom Hartman.

Philly the Kid wrote:Can we get a head of the Fed who is not a Wall St insider?

I'm not sure there are that many people qualified for the position that you wouldn't consider to be an insider

Philly the Kid wrote:
SNL hasn't been funny for 20 years maybe longer.

This would stretch back to the Myers/Carvey/Hartman days, so no.

BuddyGroom wrote:HBO recently ran a Dennis Miller comedy concert from around 1992-3, right around when Clinton was elected. I thought parts of it were hysterical and he went after both sides in his political stuff. I miss the Dennis Miller I used to find funny.

I never found Al Franken all that funny on SNL, but I have two of his books - both of which I flipped thru and read parts of - they're smile-funny often, but rarely laugh-out-loud funny.

His Air America show during the early days of the network was as amateur-hour as most of its early programming. Liberal talk radio, IMO, has gotten much better. If Franken doesn't win the Senate race, I hope he considers a return to radio. But just as he was second-tier on SNL, on radio, he's not likely to be as good all-around as Ed Schultz or Stephanie Miller, or as informative yet still likeable as Thom Hartman.

Good comments.

I'd still like to see a guy with a fro like that as a Senator!

Philly the Kid wrote:Meanwhile, Obama is showing no early signs of innovation in his planning and thinking nor any fresh faces from the outside. Can we get a head of the Fed who is not a Wall St insider? I posted yesterday the interview with Dean Baker and his mention of republican Bair for the Fed.

I really can't speak to Larry Summers' qualifications to be Treasury Secretary. He had the job once before, so I imagine he'd be at least adequate. But I was really disappointed not to hear the name Warren Buffett as a candidate.

But maybe Buffett is the kind of guy who has so many options that you don't float his name until/unless he tells you he wants the job.

BuddyGroom wrote:

Philly the Kid wrote:Meanwhile, Obama is showing no early signs of innovation in his planning and thinking nor any fresh faces from the outside. Can we get a head of the Fed who is not a Wall St insider? I posted yesterday the interview with Dean Baker and his mention of republican Bair for the Fed.

I really can't speak to Larry Summers' qualifications to be Treasury Secretary. He had the job once before, so I imagine he'd be at least adequate. But I was really disappointed not to hear the name Warren Buffett as a candidate.

But maybe Buffett is the kind of guy who has so many options that you don't float his name until/unless he tells you he wants the job.

There is no way Buffet would take the position. Having him as an adviser is fine.

I'm on the fence on Summers. I'd prefer Volcker. And the concept of not having an "insider" take the job is pretty ridiculous. These are not positions where you want the common man off the street taking charge. This isn't like balancing a check book, you need someone who understands the complexities of everything involved. Summers was a disaster at Harvard, but he understands Wall Street.

I think Summers was too smart/intellectual for Harvard. I'm only partially kidding.

FTN wrote:
There is no way Buffet would take the position. Having him as an adviser is fine.

Even if Obama etc. called upon his patriotism and/or his sense of duty? This is a time when we need the best of the best, and when it comes to money, I think it's Buffett.

Werthless wrote:I think Summer was too smart/intellectual for Harvard. I'm only partially kidding.

Seemed like all he did wrong was suggest that research should be considered even if we don't like the conclusions.

I ...hoped he was really an air-America leftist. I'm tired of "Leftist" being some kind of bad branding.

Left --- Right
Right -- Wrong

Yes, of course, the standard to which all reasoned arguments should take a back seat

BuddyGroom wrote:

FTN wrote:
There is no way Buffet would take the position. Having him as an adviser is fine.

Even if Obama etc. called upon his patriotism and/or his sense of duty? This is a time when we need the best of the best, and when it comes to money, I think it's Buffett.

Why do you need Buffet in the position though? Buffet doesn't have the experience in a position like that. He's very knowledgeable, I'm sure his ideas would be welcomed, but hes now 78, and I don't think he wants to give up his 175 billion dollar business to run the Treasury for 4 years.

FTN wrote:

BuddyGroom wrote:

FTN wrote:
There is no way Buffet would take the position. Having him as an adviser is fine.

Even if Obama etc. called upon his patriotism and/or his sense of duty? This is a time when we need the best of the best, and when it comes to money, I think it's Buffett.

Why do you need Buffet in the position though? Buffet doesn't have the experience in a position like that. He's very knowledgeable, I'm sure his ideas would be welcomed, but hes now 78, and I don't think he wants to give up his 175 billion dollar business to run the Treasury for 4 years.

An "advisor" doesn't actually make the decisions. I want the nation's economy in the hands of someone, like Buffett, with a record of prudent, long-term thinking.

The thing I appreciated most about Franken's show was his guests. I never learned so much about politics before I listened to his show consistently. Franken's approach was to have on knowledgeable people and pick their brains about what they know. I absolutely hate typical talk radio that has one caller after another spouting off about things they barely understand. This goes for shows on the left and right. Franken hardly ever did that and I loved listening to his show because of it.

The thing I learned most about from Franken's show is counterinsurgency warfare. He would interview experts who were not on the same page with him politically. He was praising General Petraeus's approach long before I heard anyone talk about him in the Bush administration. He also constantly banged the drum about a need for greater oversight for military spending and how much we needed a Truman commission for this war. He was also constantly highlighting corruption in congress. Usually this was Republicans, but when his guest Melanie Sloan from CREW highlighted the corruption of Democrats like Jefferson or Murtha, he caught a lot of flak from Air America audiences.

He absolutely humiliated Neil Boortz one time and it was great.

He also had some recurring funny bits that I liked, including the Hate e-mail of the day. He also did a thing where he tried an audio version of the news crawl that shows up on news shows. He would talk and someone else would mumble news stories in the background.

He had longer bits that I did not find very entertaining. I mostly enjoyed his interviews because of how much I would learn.

If he loses it would certainly be bitter sweet because I think he will return to radio. I think he was getting much much better at the medium as the years went on. He's not a Limbaugh, Hannity, Rhodes type so he won't ever be as big as they are. However, I think he had the most intelligent talk show and it fit my listening interests perfectly. The only other host that comes close for me is Sam Seder, who doesn't currently have a radio show.

gr wrote:

I ...hoped he was really an air-America leftist. I'm tired of "Leftist" being some kind of bad branding.

Left --- Right
Right -- Wrong

Yes, of course, the standard to which all reasoned arguments should take a back seat

I've come to love PtK's posts because they serve such a useful reminding/humbling function for me. Whenever I start feeling too partisan or smug, there he is...

Franken's center-left orientation is a virtue, not a bug, for me. But it wasn't so much that I thought he was a raging lefty. I consider Paul Wellstone one of two the greatest public servants of my lifetime, and he was well to my left. (Moynihan was the other, and he was probably much closer to my own views, perhaps very slightly to my right.) It was that I'd forgotten--and speaking of reminders, phdave was on the money with his post about Franken's show, which I occasionally listened to in its first year and to which I had a similar reaction--that he's a serious guy.

In a sense, we should love it when someone like that--a non-career politician--throws his hat into the ring. Citizen-officials was the original (or at least 19th century, post-universal male suffrage) idea, after all. The problem is that with a few exceptions in a few places--like Wellstone, who was a college professor in Minnesota--you have to be loaded to choose politics as a mid-life undertaking. Bloomberg, Schwarzenegger, even Reagan to a degree. I'd probably rather see some of you guys run, but taking wealth and fame as disqualifiers is as silly as jumping on them as positive qualifications.

One of the stranger Franken moments was when he had G. Gordon Liddy on his show (or maybe Franken was on Liddy's show) turns out they were both collegiate wrestlers, and they talked a lot about that.