Al Franken
Thompson, Stephen
THE PROGRESSIVE INTERVIEW by Stephen Thompson Al Franken Al Franken dabbled in political subject matter as a writer -and performer during two lengthy stints on Saturday Night Live, as well as on...
...Do you think that the things you've said will come back to haunt you...
...But I would have taken John Kerry in a second...
...Ray Suarez [NPR veteran and NewsHour With Jim Lehrer correspondent] is someone I'd like to see...
...But why would he...
...At fifty-four, he spends the bulk of his time touring, preparing, and performing for the sixty-seven-station network, on which he appears as co-host of The Al Franken Show...
...Franken: Well, you know, if Michael Moore did a show...
...Obviously, further to the left, you've got many people working in community radio...
...Al Franken: Really, Air America is my main focus...
...I know what you were going to say...
...It's really building Air America that I'm focused on, and for me, that almost only means doing a good show...
...Franken: Yeah, I'm not that leftwing, which is the odd thing about this: My views on most things would jibe with most Americans...
...The question is whether I'm going to do The Al Franken Sitcom soon, and the answer is probably not...
...Stephen Thompson is a writer and editor based in Madison, Wisconsin...
...For more information on Air America Radio, visit www.airamericaradio.com...
...He has also worked in film-most notably as co-writer and star of 1995's Stuart Saves His Family, a spin-off of the Stuart Smalley character he'd created for SNL...
...Franken: Yeah, we shot ourselves in the foot right out of the gate...
...I think he'd be great...
...Senate run against Norm Coleman in 2008...
...The transformation began in earnest with his 1996 book, Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot, followed by his 2003 work, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right...
...On most issues, most Americans are certainly left of this Administration...
...But his goals are more ambitious still: He recently moved from New York back to Minnesota to prepare for a U.S...
...I do USO tours, and when I do a USO tour, I don't go, "Your President lied to you and you're dying for no reason...
...That wasn't the main reason I decided not to run in 2006, but it was a factor...
...Once you're an official candidate, you can't have a radio show...
...Katherine [Lanpher, co-host of The Al Franken Show] is certainly much more objective than I am, and tries to rein me in and keep me in check, which is good...
...Our people don't...
...Q: Given that Air America is part of a larger movement to match the right's propaganda apparatus, what's next in that movement...
...The other side has funding from people who benefit financially from the policies that their think tanks espouse...
...Franken: Well, we didn't really have a problem attracting talent, because there is no talent to some degree...
...I've talked to ten or fifteen Republican Senators in the past, and I've even gotten along with people like Rick Santorum...
...Q: Who are your dream Air America contributors...
...And obviously, people know me...
...Laughs.] It's hard to get that out of a person...
...And there just hadn't been any radio that did that...
...And we did that by getting good ratings and showing that we're fulfilling a need in a business sense-that we're bringing in an audience...
...Franken: I think the liabilities will be short-lived...
...I know a number of Republican Senators, and have had no problem socializing with them...
...I would love to have a Washington bureau...
...Franken: Well, yeah, obviously...
...Susan Collins, Lindsey Graham, John McCain...
...But I've had to learn a little bit about it...
...Now Franken is one of the major players behind Air America Radio-the liberal talk-radio network introduced in March 2004 to counter rightwing domination of the medium...
...I suppose I could be a consultant, but this is far enough away that we haven't figured that out yet...
...Laughs.] The right wing has had a radio apparatus for years and years, so they've had minor leagues-they've had local rightwing guys who've become national rightwing guys, and who build slowly, and that's how it goes...
...I don't know...
...Franken: No, one thing I've noticed about politics is that these guys have pretty thick hides...
...Laughs.] Q: Do you think Bush's reelection is good for Air America...
...Now, you're essentially a political figure who does comedy...
...Q: Where is it a liability...
...I'd like [Clinton Labor Secretary] Robert Reich to do a business show for an hour every day...
...Franken: Who every once in a while is funny...
...Other than, I suppose, labor unions, which don't fund us...
...We go on the road and see the affiliates, also, being an ambassador of goodwill...
...THE PROGRESSIVE INTERVIEW by Stephen Thompson Al Franken Al Franken dabbled in political subject matter as a writer -and performer during two lengthy stints on Saturday Night Live, as well as on his short-lived NBC sitcom, LateLine...
...Franken: That's an interesting point...
...I mean, obviously, I value objectivity and actually caring about facts, and we do that on the show...
...I do, "Boy, this army grub doesn't agree with me...
...Crazy talk...
...Also, being a comedian, you're under pressure...
...Q: You do have some experienced radio veterans...
...It isn't like we have a farm team...
...It is now, but it'll have been in existence for four years, so it'll be fine...
...I've been a producer and led people...
...I've never told one of them to go fuck himself, like the Vice President did with [Patrick] Leahy...
...Q: Getting elected is one thing, but governing is another...
...Q: Did you have a difficult time attracting talent in the beginning...
...It depends on what you're talking about...
...Franken: By then, I think Air America will be on its feet and a going concern...
...Franken: Yeah, but you need an experienced radio veteran who is a liberal advocate...
...I'm not saying we're objective, but we're advocates...
...The guy who ran it at first misled pretty much everybody about how much capital we had...
...What funny people on the left do you covet...
...Well, yeah...
...I've thought about not wanting to leave the network in the lurch...
...So far, I've had five MREs and none of them seem to have an exit strategy...
...Laughs.] You have to deal with stress and pressure to perform-to deal with pressure without stress...
...Q: Is there any turning back at this point...
...Their people make money from this...
...Not necessarily left, but more common-sensical...
...We haven't had that...
...And that'll be over...
...They have a direct financial interest in changes to the tax structure...
...And so they weren't trained-they had developed all these bad habits of being objective and balanced and stuff like that...
...But today, Franken's politics overshadow his comedy at virtually every turn...
...You know, I feel like we're just starting, and people are asking us to sort of catch up in a year or two...
...Franken: Well, a lot of politics is communicating with people, and obviously comedy has something to do with that...
...I'm a comedian: I do a Saddam bit, you know what I mean...
...He said we had enough to go three years without making money, and we had enough to go three weeks...
...So there was really no growth for quite a bit after that, and what we had to do was prove that we were viable...
...Most of [rightwing radio's] funding comes from billionaires who pollute the country and put out fake research or lobby for deregulation of utilities...
...Q: How does a career as a comedian prepare you for a career in politics...
...The rightwing media are actually financed by people who get a real bang for the buck...
...Q: Five or six years ago, you were a comedian who dabbled in political subject matter...
...I've got bigger fish to fry...
...Franken: Well, I don't know, but I don't think so...
...That'd be fun to see him do...
...I'm doing fifteen hours a week on air, and that's pretty all consuming-you know, preparing for it, doing it...
...Q: Assuming you run against Norm Coleman for the Senate in 2008, what becomes of Air America...
...Franken: Well, I mean, the pieces of that movement are things like the Center for American Progress and Media Matters, the media watchdog group, and there are other think tanks that have been there for a while, and newspapers and magazines like The Progressive and The American Prospect...
...It's not rocket science: You get ratings, that's good...
...Given a chance, they'd spend less on the military, they wouldn't make more nuclear weapons, they would want to increase environmental regulation rather than reduce it, they would want to spend more on education and health care, they would enforce corporate-responsibility laws and make corporations pay their taxes, all those kinds of things...
...Laughs.] So, if I do a venue where it's only appropriate to be funny and not political, I can do that...
...Q: How is Air America doing...
...And we can't...
...You haven't had to be gentle when you're talking about Senators on the show...
...People say, "He doesn't take this stuff seriously," and I think it'll become clear that I do...
...Q: What are you working on right now...
...I still do pure comedy-I recently did Prairie Home Companion, and I told a sweet, funny story that had nothing to do with politics...
...The thing that interests me least about the radio business is the radio business...
...Q: Do you see Air America as looking to attract more mainstream Democrats, or moving more toward the left...
...So in week four, we learned that we bounced a check or two, and that we'd lose our stations in Los Angeles and Chicago, which were our second and third largest markets...
...Q: Would you still have a role in the network...
...Born in New York City, raised in a suburb of Minneapolis, and educated at Harvard, Franken has become a full-time political figure...
...We don't...
...Franken recently spoke to The Progressive about his career evolution, the network's past and future, and the political pros and cons of a comedy background...
...It was horrible, and everybody was counting us out, and you can imagine how attractive our network would be to radio stations when it looked like we were going under...
...In the beginning, the press was all about how it had gotten off to a rough start, but now it seems to be doing better...
Vol. 69 • September 2005 • No. 9
