This is the state that elected a professional wrestler for governor, remember.

Powerline has come out against, in case you were wondering.

I hate Franken--he's irritating, obnoxious, and more than a bit of a bully--and I don't think he'll win. Also, he's not funny.

Okay, I'd agree with obnoxious, but I do think he's funny.

I've been a regular listener of the AA show, and I have a long memory of comedy incarnations. I don't think he'll have any gravitas problems at all.

I hope there's a Dem primary with another challenger. If you've read the Shales (I think) about SNL in the 70s, there is a lot of material to be used against Franken. It'll be interesting to see how liberal MN is.

1.
Ditto for JM's observation. Jesse Ventura turned out to be a rather thoughtful governor; Minnesotans crossed party lines to elect a third party candidate. Why wouldn't Al Franklin at least get a fair hearing?

Jesse Ventura turned out to be a rather thoughtful governor;

?

1. "Religion is a crutch for weak-minded people".

2. He refused to spend public money on sports statiums.

Lots of bad stuff Ventura did too, but he did some other good stuff and was much better than expected.

A lot of liberals intensely dislike AA and Franken for reasons I don't understand. There were 2 or 3 of them on TPM Coffe House, too.

If he's a bully, of course, that's a good thing. Tommy Chong, Robin Williams, and the Firesign Theatre guys are funnier, of course, but they all turned down the chance to run.

re: the bully thing...

Why is this aversion to choosing candidates who are 'hard'? Bad-ass is good if you are running against utter bastards ...

why is this aversion to choosing candidates who are 'hard'? Bad-ass is good if you are running against utter bastards ...

You need to come off well; he comes off as a prick.

I know nothing about him (other than what I've read).

I don't think he comes off as a prick. I think he's smart and a smartass, and I like smartasses.

Besides, Minnesotans love Garrison Keillor. And you can't get more pricky than that.

We need some bullies on our side. We've been getting rolled for decades. Republicans may have found Jesse Helms personally repugnant, but at the end of the day, they'd rather have him on their side than against them.

Besides, Minnesotans love Garrison Keillor. And you can't get more pricky than that

I was just thinking the same thing; perhaps it's the "northern" form of folksiness, that homage to the shy from people who are in fact pretty manipulative and ruthless—B entitled to insert "of course" here.

A state that sent Rudy Boschwitz to the Senate has a taste for bullies.

Dude, who cares if he's a bully? He's our bully.

What's with the Keillor hatred? He seems corny at times, but not evil.

Bitch thinks he's unfunny to the point of pure evil. I actually like him, but if asked to defend that opinion will shuffle and mutter, because finding him funny probably means I have no critical sense.

I find Keillor annoying because, though I like the general idea of PHC, I get the sense that he's way into himself. First, he needs to stop singing. Dude, I know you enjoy it, but you have no voice, and it's lame. Second, the whole "I'm a writer" routine grates.

Hating on Garrison Keillor seems like hating on vanilla yogurt. He doesn't really entertain me, but he doesn't make me mash frantically at the radio buttons either. I recall from my adolescence that my parents found him very funny, though.

He's not without talent, neither was Arthur Godfrey. I long ago found I disliked the show without disliking the elements individually. "Too much" is part of it, so is "wornout." The movie was actually pretty clever about playing with that.

20: Isn't that the point? You can hate something for being too bland. As a Southern transplant, let me tell you about this whole "fusion" cuisine they have in CA.

That said, I don't think they're going to have an easy time demonizing him for his past, 1) because he'll own up to it and 2) because he'll make light of it. The thing about a "perfect record" in politics is that, as with W., you can always chalk it up to youthful indiscretion.

I don't listen to Keillor except when someone else is already listening, and his singing is a tired joke, but i don't feel any actual hatred. I think he gets the local color about right.

Keillor's a storytelling genius. Funny sometimes, but not especially.

Some people read him as laughing-at more than laughing-with, and that can be prickish. But I take him as usually laughing-with, or at least laughing at himself and his tribes as much as at others.

I guess I'd agree with played out -- I used to actively listen to PHC, and now I don't bother.

Yeah, for many of us who grew up in Minnesota post-baby boom, hating GK just seems weird. It would be like hating Snuffleupagus or Mean Gene Okerlund or carrot cake (as a cultural construct, rather than as a food). Using concepts like "funny" and "not funny" to describe GK elides the crucial facts about Minnesotan (and specifically liberal middle-class Twin Citian) culture and the culture of public radio in the 1970s and 1980s that allowed him to flourish. The base of PHC listeners aren't there to be "amused" or "entertained", but rather to be cossetted in their prejudices and steeled against the blandishments of SUV dealers and megachurch holy rollers.

Al Franken is completely different. Franken actually makes fun of people and ideas. For the PHC base, making fun is a bit shabby, and rather sad (unless it's done on BBC comedies, in which case, it's okay).

I kind of like Keillor's stories--it's the music on PHC that always makes me feel like someone is trying to stuff a loaf of wonderbread into my brain via the ear canal. and Keillor's singing is worse than all the rest of it.

Yes, the music is awful when it's not merely banal, and his singing is even worse. Why he would want to sing in public and not be satisfied with his amazing speaking voice is a sad comment on human vanity.

the music on PHC that always makes me feel like someone is trying to stuff a loaf of wonderbread into my brain via the ear canal.

Heh.

Is the little mute guy gonna run with him? I like the magic tricks.

Nah, Franken will make a great Senator, which shows exactly what I think of him.

I want a Dixie Chick to run in Texas. But they are too smart to be Senators.

My exposure to Franken is restricted to a couple of letterman appearances, short interviews, and listeinig to the show once, but he seems the opposite of badass.

Isn't he quite centrist, with a liberal rep, and no populist touch? Seems like you could find a better candidate.

By American standards he's quite respectably far left, although still a mainstream Democrat, which makes him a rightwing European. But he's not bad.

And he really can be quite aggressive.

I thought this takedown of Keillor was rather funny, if primarily for its sheer gratuitousness.

LB, I recall he praised Lieberman and was described as centrist when Air America started.

Praised Lieberman when, and in what terms?

"Remember, he was on Saturday Night Live" is as good a campaign slogan as any.

Everyone says that GK is a royal asshole in person.

The stuffing wonderbread into your ear is pretty much a perfect description. The entire damn show feels like that to me, with the added details that it feels like whoever's doing it is saying "Now, dear, this is really good for you. It's wholesome" through gritted teeth.

The annual Joke Show is a notable exception, however.

In fairness, he has good musical guests sometimes.

Junior Mint, thanks for the link. I don't agree entirely with the thrust of it, about how most people are basically sheep, but he's absolutely right that Keillor treats his audience as if they were.

"Be well, do good work, keep in touch." You bet, Garrison, I'm right on it.

While giving the radio the finger. Yup. Love it.

34: This surprises me, and might make me re-evaluate him, but I'd really need to look at what he said. Taken straight, it sounds really unlikely.

I liked PHC in an anodyne kind of way - pleasant, mildly funny ear-filler that doesn't suffer any from attention lapses while puttering around the house on a weekend - until I had just finally heard all the jokes and all the musical conventions enough times. Kinda like the car talk guys laughing at themselves: it's funny until it's not. "Writer's Almanac," on the other hand, is like fingernails on chalkboard. I hear 1 second of the piano opening, and I'm flying across the room to get to the radio before GK starts with all the nostril-sighing.

I think Franken will be great precisely because he's a bully - I can't wait to have him in the senate giving swirlies to the Republicans. I don't worry about his coming across as a prick - I mean, he IS sort of a prick, but he seems to have a good sense about modulating his tone to fit the occasion. Listen to him talk about his USO work, for instance.

40: True. It's too bad that one's appreciation of them is marred by the unjustified suspicion that they might only sound good by contrast.

It is a great description. I like the kind of music often featured, hymns and so on, but the whole package has irritated me for years. I think he's fine in small doses, but I've been overexposed and developed an allergic reaction. And people are genuinely taken aback by the vehemence of my feeling. A British cousin of my wife's, a smart woman well-traveled in the US, compared me—me!—to him at a family wedding a couple of years ago. She meant well, I didn't react, and I remembered that out-sized, owlish, middle-aged Midwestern raconteurs with "radio voices" is a set of one for many people.

If Franken is a Lieberman Democrat, forget him. I found some friendly things he said about Lieberman from 2000, but at that time Lieberman wasn't fully ripe yet.

I just like to see B squirm. To me PHC is bland and usually mildly boring, but also amusing at times. I like the local color, and I like seeing a way of life I'm familiar with shown in some frame other than "My unspeakable teenage sufferings at the hands of repressive philistines with no taste or style."

The first time I ever heard Fountains of Wayne was on PHC. When "Stacy's Mom" came out a couple of years later, I had a hard time believing it was the same band.

Interview. A few months old, but still relevant.

In Brock's interview (with Lindsay Beyerstein of Majikthise) didn't make any anti-war statement at all.

On the AA show he rails about the war all the time. I think he's well prepared and will do ok, although I don't know the local politics well enough to say, and always hate the judgments of out-of-staters who for instance think Smigel's "Superfan" sketches tell them what they need to know about Chicago. From where I can sit, Franken looks plausible, but Minnesotans will have to judge the context.

Hey, OT, but I have a question for the Mineshaft's legal department. Who's around to post it for me?

dudes, Franken is totally a) not into Leiberman, and b) anti-war. C'mon.

AWB, I sure hope your question doesn't involve breastfeeding and the pork industry.

I think Franken's pretty funny. At least he was funny when I saw him speak at graduation, and he's consistantly the funniest Colbert Report interview. I can't speak to AA or his books, but I'd imagine both are less funny because it's hard to be funny so long or so often.

It's a copyright question.

Once upon a time, Al Franken had an awesome little wrestler's body.

I'm here -- weak on copyright, but I can give you something which is not legal advice because we are not in an attorney client relationship and shouldn't be relied on.

This is the internets. It's all fair use anyway, and only clueless content-providing dinosaurs could possibly think otherwise. Well, them and their lawyers, maybe.

Thanks, LB. I'll send you an email. It's pretty basic and weird.

Okay LB, I sent it to you.

Lest everyone think 53 was just evidence of progressing senility, this was the reference. I've had three different people email me that today, as if there some reason I might be interested.

Hmm, tits and pork? I'm thinking you've been intercepting Apo's e-mail.

Yeah, I thought it was an Apo joke too.

If being a smartass means making fun of politicians who do things that are hypocritical and ridiculous, then Franken is a smartass.

If being a prick means using rational solutions to complex problems, then Franken is a prick.

I've been an AAR listener for 2 years, and never have heard Franken support Leiberman. He is a sensitive man with solid liberal priorities, and he seeks well thought-out solutions to the problems we face in America.

If you give him a chance before you just start the knee-jerk reactions a la Coulter and Oreilly, you would see that he might make a very good senator.

on the other, unless you live in MN, i don't give a fuck whether you like him or not.

p.s. bitch, et al, why the hate for Gary Keelor? I find him to be very humble and self-depricating in his humor and writing style. just because he is poised and articulate, it doesn't make him a jerk.

pp.s. his singing could fairly be assessed as "folksy."
in many ways this is probably a good and charming thing.

ppp.s. the musicians on the show are usually awesome. if you can't appreciate good bluegrass and americana once in a while, you are not a good citizen.

Hey, neoskeptic! Did you get the internets at home or something? Neat. But you're wrong. I've heard a couple first-hand accounts on GK being a dick in real life.

Yeah, he's humble all right. "Look at me, I'm humble! And charming! So, so, humble!"

Barf.

I like Prairie Home Companion in moderate doses. Can't stand Writer's Almanac. And I've also heard that Keillor's an asshole IRL, albeit not necessarily from anyone in a position to know.

I, too, have heard the "GK is a dick in real life" thing, though how substantiated, I know not.

bitch you may be right. look at me i'm humble could wear a bit on the cynic among us. but if you listen closely to some of the skits like Guy Noir, and the one of the two cowboys - the other characters and radio actors poke fun at Gary to balance out his megalomania. I think it's all part of the show.

but maybe some part of me just wants to be charmed. when 98% of everything i enjoy is ironic and sarcastic, PHC fills that charming little void in my heart.

I'm sure he doesn't like Lieberman now, neither does Josh Marshall.

One thing Franken has going for him is that, even though he's very liberal and against the war, he's done a lot with the USO. I think he's made something like 8 trips to Iraq and Afghanistan with them.

69: After Ned Lamont lost Franken interviewed somebody who had a pet theory (it was semi- crackpot-ish) about why Lieberman had managed to win. Franken started to say something but held his tongue. I think he was going to say something about Ned Lamont's campaign organization in the general, but then he said: a big part of the reason that Lieberman won is that nearly all of the Republicans in CT voted for him. From the tone one could tell that Franken wasn't lauding this as evidence of Lieberman's great bipartisan appeal. He was basically saying that Lieberman was really just a Republican.

Minnesota's tough - we have both Keith Ellison and Michelle Bachmann, Paul Wellstone and Tim Pawlenty. The Twin Cities are solidly Democratic, but once you get outside the metro area it's as right-wing as anywhere in Texas, and the two areas are in rough balance. I suspect that the novelty-factor increase in turnout will outweigh the incensed-right-wing-hordes from Maple Grove turnout increase.

(Jesse's not a good example, though. That he was an entertainer is only part of his appeal. He was a true MN populist; the sort of guy who looked completely at home ice fishing.)

I don't get the GK hating either. I think non-Minnesotans think he's affecting an exaggeratedly "nice" persona. He's not - that's just what old-school Minnesotans act like. It's not incompatible with him being an asshole in his personal life, either. That's how old-school Minnesota assholes act, too. If you've seen it, think John Heard in "Sweetland". (If you haven't seen it - do.)

(This is how I always picture Emerson - prickly in that polite MN way).

Why thanks.

I wouldn't say MN outside the Twin Cities is nearly as reactionary as Texas. I think Bachman's district is the worst, just because it's prosperous exurban. Out in the boonies here you have a mix of strong Democrats and strong Republicans. Unfortunately, the Democrats seem older (as in over sixty.)

The Duluth area is pretty liberal too. The heavier you weight social liberalism, the less liberal Minnesota seems.

Sure, Duluth is pretty liberal, as is Rochester. But I stand by my claim that our wingnuts are as nutty as any in America. Have you driven 35 from Mpls to Duluth lately? And counted the homemade billboards sporting batshit-crazy slogans about the UN?

Our wingnuts are plenty nutty, but they're not really dominant.

My mother's church council had at least three Pat Robertson Christians and at least two Nation-reading liberals (out of less than ten). That's a bit untypical, but there are swaths of Red America where no one ever hears a liberal speak.

I just looked it up. In the Bush / Kerry election, the whole state of Texas (including the liberal parts) voted more Republican than the three worst districts in Minnesota.

Bush got 61% in Texas as a whole and 55%, 56%, and 57% in the three worst Minnesota districts (Bachman's being the worst, and mine next). There was probably some favorite-son effect down there, but Texas is really just a much more conservative place.

"Goodness only knows which way the comedian thing will cut. "

Do we have reason to think it would be substantially different from people's attitude towards electing an actor?

Maybe. With an actor there's generally a widespread sense that he's distinct from the characters he plays, whereas with a comedian there is often a certain amount of confusion between the persona in which he does his comedy and his real personality.

"With an actor there's generally a widespread sense that he's distinct from the characters he plays"

To be quibbly, I'd say that "widespread sense" is extremely variable, depending on the actor. A Philip Seymour Hoffman, yes; a Ronald Reagan, specifically mostly no.

I don't think many of us would actually have any trouble drawing up lists of actors who exemplify the two types: those who disappear into roles, and and those whose roles seem to disappear into them. One the one hand, endless character actors; on the other, personas such as Jimmy Stewart, Gary Cooper, Clint Eastwood (never completely or always, of course).

But your point about this being muddier with comedians' personas, more than not, is a good one.

My own totally off-the-cuff thinking about Franken is that his particular publically perceived persona as a comedian is probably far more reflective of his talk show appearances, and his radio show, in recent years -- in other words, who he actually is at least as much as any politician shows -- rather than, say, Stuart Smiley, or any other persona. (Does anyone even think of any other past Franken characters that he'd been confused with, or am I just forgetting them?)

I tend to think people are going to respond simply whether they like that guy or can't stand him.

But that's just a purely off-hand subjective impression, and could be 100% wet.