Al Franken, Seriously - Part Two
Some of Franken's recent behind-the-scenes actions are at least as interesting as his public performances and show the depth of his seriousness. Last fall, when Dean seemed the inevitable nominee before a single primary vote had been cast, Franken was troubled that John Kerry was being written off. ''I liked Dean, but I also think Kerry is just a really smart, capable man,'' he told me. ''I'd noticed that he was very good in a small gathering, so I thought, What if I invite some opinion makers over to hear him?'' On Dec. 4, an impressive collection of the media elite and assorted other notables -- Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker, Frank Rich of The New York Times, Howard Fineman and Jonathan Alter of Newsweek, Jim Kelly of Time, Jeff Greenfield of CNN, Eric Alterman of The Nation, Richard Cohen of The Washington Post, Jacob Weisberg of Slate and others, including, as eminence grise, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. -- responded to his call and had a little powwow with Kerry at the Upper West Side apartment of Franken and his wife, Franni.
''The whole thing was odd, I would say, because people didn't know why they were there,'' Kelly said. ''But I think the idea was to put John Kerry into the belly of the beast. It may have been the actual beginning of the new approach he took -- 'I'm going to stay in this room and take every question you throw at me.''' Alterman grilled Kerry on his vote on Iraq, and he gave a long, tortured answer. Then he was asked about it a second time. ''By the third go-round, the answer was getting shorter and more relevant,'' Kelly said.
''It was a really interesting event,'' Alter said. ''A lot of these people hadn't actually met Kerry before. Al wanted them to get to know him. It was an example of him playing a sort of intermediary role in the nexus of politics, media and entertainment.''
The next time Franken saw Kerry was at the rally in Nashua, seven weeks later. Things had changed significantly; Kerry was considered a new and improved candidate and now looked almost unbeatable. The senator took Franken aside, and they talked for a few minutes. ''I told him I'm taking credit for the turnaround,'' Franken told me. ''He said, 'I knew you would.'''
Forty floors above Midtown Manhattan, Mark Walsh, the C.E.O. of Air America, stands in a conference room whose walls are covered with index cards that say things like ''Press Secretary for Terrorists'' and ''Corporate Welfare Pledge Drive'' -- comedy bits in the making. He draws a bell curve on a marker board, then makes lines dividing his curve into sections. The sections on the far left and far right are almost flat, but as you approach the middle, both sides grow. He draws an oval around the swollen area to the left of center. ''I think Al and voices like Al's really blend in here,'' he said. ''I think Michael Moore, for example, is a very talented writer and performer, but a lot of what he says starts to go out on the curve -- much like Michael Savage, who is pretty far out on the other side. Everybody is fighting over a very skinny slice of the independents, because those are the people who are persuadable.''
The chart is Walsh's way of characterizing the electorate/radio audience. Air America, he said, intends to tilt leftward, but not too far. Walsh, who is 49 with gray hair and chiseled features, was at HBO in the early 1980's, persuading people to do the unthinkable and pay for TV programming; next he was with AOL in its early days. Those two companies succeeded, he said, because they hit their respective media with a new idea at just the right time. ''And I think the timing today is just right for a progressive media business aimed at an audience that's underserved.''
The idea of a liberal radio network that would try to offset what Democrats see as the tractor beam of Fox and talk-radio franchises like Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Hannity and Savage -- which together, Democrats argue, pull the mainstream media to the right -- first came up early last year. It was initially spearheaded by the Chicago investors Sheldon and Anita Drobny, and when Franken heard about it, he was immediately interested. It languished for months until David Goodfriend, a former Clinton White House staff member, and Evan Cohen, an entrepreneur who at the time was developing a pan-Asian radio network, saw an opportunity and pulled together a group of investors to resuscitate the project. They brought in Walsh, who had been volunteering for Kerry's presidential campaign.
Jon Sinton, an Atlanta radio executive, has been with the project from the beginning. After having failed to attract an audience in Atlanta for the liberal host Mike Malloy, who was sandwiched between a sports show and Mexican programming, and seeing Jim Hightower languish between Rush Limbaugh and G. Gordon Liddy, Sinton became a believer in ''formatic purity.'' ''I'd been a radio programmer for 20 years, but it finally hit me: you don't put a Led Zeppelin record on after country.'' With conservative talkers ruling the air, Sinton figured, liberal talk-radio programs were sure to struggle in syndication. ''So I argued for a network situation, where we would never have to worry about programming conflicts.''
The term ''radio network'' is something of a throwback. The medium began with one dominant network -- NBC -- controlling stations and programming; in 1943 the government forced it to split into two entities, one of which became the ABC network. Today, in contrast, the radio landscape is largely divided into station owners and programmers. A company that owns a particular show peddles it to various stations; station owners pick and choose from the grocery shelves of available programming, discarding shows that don't perform for them. Faced with the overwhelming might of conservative talk radio, Walsh, Sinton, Cohen and their colleagues devised a plan that goes against the structure of the industry. The parent company, Progress Media, controls two linked entities: Air America Radio, which will create shows, and Equal Time Media, which buys, leases and manages radio stations in major markets. The network will start with stations in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, all of which will carry the full slate of Air America programs. (The network is also offering shows to other stations and will make its programming available via satellite and online.)
Some radio industry observers dispute the ''formatic purity'' idea. They point out that the major stations have a mix of programming -- sports, relationship counseling, investment advice, news, talk -- and suggest that earlier attempts at liberal talk failed because the shows weren't very good. On the other hand, they say, the idea of a liberal network valiantly going against an industry that's in the hands of conservatives is probably a smart fund-raising tactic. Together, Progress Media's two companies expect to have raised $60 million by the time they go on the air and hope to raise another $15 million soon after.
The networks' creative team is led by Shelley Lewis, a career broadcast news producer, and Lizz Winstead, a former stand-up comic who was co-creator of Comedy Central's ''Daily Show.'' Everyone agreed from the beginning that ''The Daily Show,'' with its mix of comedy and an aggressively bratty approach to the news, was one model for the network's programs. They want to upgrade the typical talk format -- ''a big ugly white guy giving you the answers,'' in Winstead's words -- and are banking on a ready audience for slickly produced AM-dial shows that they say will have a late-night TV feel.
Most of the network's shows are three hours long; live programming will run from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., with reruns filling in overnight and on weekends, at least initially. Each show will mix hard news, politics and pop culture as its hosts and writers see fit. Several programs will consist of a pair of hosts, like a comedian and a traditional radio news foil. Franken's co-host is Katherine Lanpher from Minnesota Public Radio. Other hosts include the comedian Janeane Garofalo, who will run the evening shift, and Winstead, who will fill the 9 a.m.-to-noon slot with, as co-host, the Public Enemy rapper Chuck D.
Though people at the network can't quite believe he means it, Franken has decided to call his show ''The O'Franken Factor'' -- ''just to drive O'Reilly nuts; I'm hoping he sues me again.'' He has wanted to get behind a mike ever since Lorne Michaels passed him over as host of the ''Weekend Update'' segment of S.N.L. in 1995 in favor of Norm MacDonald -- one of the events that finally led Franken to leave the show -- and he is taking his foray into radio seriously. It will give him a daily outlet for his politics and his comedy and a chance, he hopes, to actually have an effect on the November election. He and his team of writers have been compiling files on a range of topics that is utterly Frankenesque. The Bush tax policy will be ''a huge story for us,'' says Ben Wikler, Franken's producer. Then, too, Franken unleashes a hilarious, X-rated Strom Thurmond impersonation that has been playing in his head and that he desperately wants to make work: ''I want to do Thurmond a lot, from the grave or wherever he is. And I want him to be more honest in death than in life. I mean, here's a guy who basically said, 'I'll fight to the death for segregation' and had a daughter who was black.''
He wants to have Paul Krugman, Kevin Phillips and the Clintons as guests. Also Gary Bauer, G. Gordon Liddy, Chris Rock and Michael Moore. He wants to feature national-security experts. He wants it to be in part a homage to old-time radio. He plans to have Bob Elliot, one of his radio heroes, come on to revive an old character.
The show will likely take a more practical approach to politics than, say, ''Real Time With Bill Maher.'' ''Watch Maher, and it's like, 'Everyone's a crook,''' said James Downey, a writer who worked with Franken on S.N.L. ''Al is the least cynical political comedian I know. I'll bet there are 50 senators he admires, as opposed to zero.''
Franken's political views are more eclectic than you might imagine. He's a big booster of the military and counts John McCain as one of his heroes. ''On trade, I would have voted for Nafta,'' he said, ''but now I'd be working to fix it and get more environmental and labor standards into it.'' He supports universal health care and is warming to the idea of a single-payer system. This range of opinions, he says, fits within the scope of the word ''liberal.'' ''I want to reclaim 'liberal,''' Franken likes to say. ''I'm a liberal, and I think most Americans are liberals.'' At one point, he wanted to call his program ''The Liberal Show.'' But others at the network are less comfortable embracing the L word. ''I think it's a brand that needs some revival, because it's been demonized,'' Walsh said. ''But it's very expensive to revive a brand, and it takes a long time.'' The concern, of course, is not to scare away audience segments that might be attracted to the programming. ''I think we'll take from Howard Stern's audience and from NPR's audience,'' Winstead said. Walsh said that they want to appeal to the independents and even some Republicans.
Luntz, the Republican pollster, said that they might: ''You've got to remember that people will listen to talk-radio hosts they don't agree with. We've found this. Some people want to get agitated.'' Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers magazine and the unofficial dean of the industry, agrees that because of the tenor of the times, talk radio might begin slanting leftward, but he's dubious of Air America's network concept. ''The business of owning stations is quite different from the business of programming them. They are in danger of violating one of the laws of physics in the business: as a station, you can't get too attached to the programming -- any more than the New York Jets should become too attached to their players.''
Harrison, Luntz and everyone else I talked to on the subject, however, agreed that Al Franken has excellent prospects for success in talk radio and that he perfectly captures the mood on the left. As Luntz said: ''Most comedians and talk-show hosts do not have the brains of Al Franken. He's very smart and just happens to be funny.'' The Air America people are banking on that. They have literally made Franken the face of the network. One plan for the company's advertising campaign is to feature political-campaign-style buttons with Franken's mug in the center. ''What I think Al is going to do for us is become a show horse for other talent to develop alongside,'' Walsh said. ''Great teams have a lead dog, an A-Rod or a Jeter, and other stars develop behind them.''
It remains to be seen how much of a team player Franken will be. The network's executives see their undertaking not as a stunt to influence this year's election but as a long-term business. ''Rupert Murdoch changed the media landscape with Fox,'' said Evan Cohen, the chairman. ''That is the motivation of our investors. It's a business venture as much as a political one.'' And that takes time. Even with the current liberal anger as a springboard, the network's business plan has it showing a profit in its fourth year.
Someone might want to tell that to the lead dog. Though he says he is interested in sticking around, Franken has reportedly signed only a one-year contract. ''I'm doing this because I want to use my energies to get Bush unelected,'' he told me. ''I'd be happy if the election of a Democrat ended the show.''
Al Franken and I are standing wedged into the half-bathroom in his apartment, staring at the walls. The family calls this the Nixon Bathroom; it's covered with memorabilia associated with the 37th president. In one long frame is a copy of the five-page handwritten letter Elvis Presley sent to Nixon in 1970 asking to be made a ''federal agent at large.'' Above it are three photographs of Nixon as he's about to board the presidential helicopter after his resignation, which were taken by Franken's brother, Owen, a veteran photojournalist. Next to the toilet is a framed copy of Nixon's letter of resignation, with the tiny blue letters of Henry Kissinger's initials in the corner. Beside the sink is a copy of President Carter's commutation of the Watergate sentence of G. Gordon Liddy. (''That was a present from G. -- I get to call him G. because we're friends.'') And there is a letter from Nixon's personal secretary -- written to Franken in 1992 after Franken invited the former president to be a guest on an S.N.L. political special -- saying she's sorry Nixon can't appear on ''your special show.'' Franken said the phrase aloud, savoring its weirdness. This is the bathroom decor of a political junkie and a serious clown.
The apartment itself is elegant but lived-in: French doors, lots of old gilt-framed photos, stacks of books and newspapers. ''We're stay-at-home types,'' Franken's wife, Franni, said. ''Even back when S.N.L. was in its heyday and there were invitations to go to Hugh Hefner's and Studio 54, we were never on the celebrity circuit.'' Their daughter, Thomasin, who teaches at a public school in the Bronx, and son, Joe, who is a freshman at Princeton, troop in and out regularly with their friends; Franken does most of his writing at the dining-room table. ''I manage Al's life,'' his wife said. She is a slight, energetic woman. They met at a college mixer when she was 17 and he was 18; they've been married for 28 years, and friends say they are deeply devoted to each other. ''Al is truly unusual for an entertainer and celebrity in that he is a functional person with a functional family,'' said Norman Ornstein, whose family vacations with the Frankens.
Franken, who is 52, was born in New York City, but he was raised in the heartland of liberalism: Minnesota. He counts the Minnesotans Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy and Paul Wellstone among his political heroes. His father was a printing salesman and, during Franken's early years, a Republican. But then came the civil rights movement and scenes on TV of white Southerners inflicting violence on black protesters; the boy had already had the Holocaust imprinted on his being, so when Joe Franken likened the behavior they were watching to that event and told his son that, as Jews, they would be for civil rights and hence Democrats, Al never looked back. ''We were antiwar Minnesota radicals in the 60's,'' said Mark Luther, with whom Franken has been friends since high school.
Franken stays close with friends from every period of his life, with one notable exception. He and Tom Davis met in high school and developed a comedy act. They continued to perform intermittently after Franken was accepted at Harvard, and in 1975 Lorne Michaels signed the duo as writers on ''Saturday Night Live.'' Franken stayed until 1980 and then returned from 1985 to 1995. ''We were as close as brothers,'' both men said to me separately. But the relationship soured. Davis said one problem was that Franken's career was moving faster. Franken said he also came to believe that Davis had a drug and alcohol problem and urged him to go into a 12-step program. Davis didn't agree, and Franken tried to take on the problem himself by attending Al-Anon meetings for partners of abusers. It didn't work; Franken and Davis split up in 1989 (recently they've talked about Davis appearing on the radio show), but out of the Al-Anon experience came Stuart Smalley, the character that every audience Franken performs for asks to hear from. ''At one meeting, we had to share something about a higher power,'' Franken said. ''And I said that as a Jew, it was hard for me to think in terms of a loving God who would let the Holocaust happen. And I thought that was kind of meaningful. And right after that this guy says, 'Well, I think the higher power put an apartment into my life to give me the courage to leave my lover.' So I'm thinking, What an idiot. But then a few weeks later the same guy said something that was so helpful to me. And I remember thinking: Oh, my God. You can learn stuff from people who are stupid! It was really a revelation to me. So that's the essence of Stuart.''
Politics has always been part of Franken's humor. He and James Downey, who is politically more conservative, created many of the classic S.N.L. political pieces, including working with Dana Carvey on the material for his George H.W. Bush impersonation. ''They were the twin towers of political comedy for me,'' Carvey said, ''and I think some of the humor was because of the balance between them. Al had great political instincts. He wrote the first Ross Perot thing by himself, which was really clever and really funny. Too bad I didn't have the impression down yet. But it was something really dry about how much money he had, like, 'See, even if I gave away a hundred million dollars I'd still have one point eight billion, unnerstand?'''
Everyone who knows Franken well remarks on his incessant cheerfulness, which doesn't seem to fit with the anger he holds for those he considers politically duplicitous, but he manages to integrate the two things, toggling constantly back and forth. If there is one event that changed him in recent years -- if not dampening his cheer, then hardening his anger -- it was the 2002 memorial service for his friend Paul Wellstone. The central chapter in ''Lies,'' and one that isn't meant to be funny, is his painstaking examination of how the event became ''a sort of perfect political storm for Republican opportunists.'' Franken teared up as he talked about his friendship with Wellstone, the circumstances surrounding his death and how moving he found the memorial. But some parts of the event were overtly political, and Franken became enraged as he watched these be highlighted and then pumped up by conservatives until the memorial wound up, in the words of Christopher Caldwell in The Weekly Standard, as ''a rally devoted to a politics that was twisted, pagan, childish, inhumane and even totalitarian.''
''The bastards lied about it,'' Franken said. ''They used it to influence the election. And they got what they wanted.'' Republicans retook the Senate in 2002 and added to their margin in the House. Wellstone's seat, for which Minnesota Democrats had hastily put up Walter Mondale, went to the Republican Norm Coleman.
Franken came out of that event, among other things, with a new prospective ambition. In the aftermath of Mondale's defeat, some influential Minnesotans approached him about running against Coleman in 2008. He is seriously considering it. It would mean moving back to Minnesota and reconnecting with his roots, which attracts him now that he and his wife are empty-nesters. He has talked to Democratic consultants; party fund-raisers have offered to work for him. ''Eventually I'd go to Hillary for advice,'' he said. ''She became a senator without ever having lived in the state before.''
Paul Begala, who has offered his advice, said: ''I think he'd be a terrific candidate. But the biggest thing any politician needs is a thick skin. He'd have to develop that or perish.''
t's Sunday, Feb. 15, two and a half weeks after Al Franken put a heckler in a wrestling hold on the eve of the New Hampshire primary, and we're back at the Palace Theater in Manchester. Robert A. Baines, the mayor of Manchester, is onstage, talking to a packed house about freedom of speech. It's a different crowd this time. The Deaniacs are gone; these are people in jackets and ties and fur-collared coats. A theater crowd. Even with little advance warning, the $20 tickets sold out fast.
The story of Franken's lunge was big news here, and when the theater president and the (Democratic) mayor heard the comedian was being accused of ''body slamming'' in the media, they decided to get involved. Result: the mayor reads a proclamation naming this Al Franken Day, to thunderous applause, and hands Franken the key to the city. For his part, Franken puts on a show, the proceeds of which will go to the Palace's restoration fund. The bulk of it is material he has been performing for some time now, which gets a hearty reception from the self-selected audience as he riffs on Halliburton, ''evildoers'' and Bush's job-creation record. But the whole opening bit is new, as Franken gives his take on the events that transpired in this very theater. When he comes out, he makes a dive for the mayor's knees to peals of laughter. Then he goes into a bit of Laurel and Hardy with the theater president. ''Now, did I body-slam the guy?'' he asks, and the man obliges with a long, ''Noooo.''
''By the way,'' Franken goes on, ''the body slam is not a high-school wrestling move. At no time during my high-school wrestling career did the coach say, 'O.K., guys, today we're going to work on the body slam . . . and the pile driver.'''
The crowd loves it. And the event has come full circle: it's been Frankenized. It has gone through the media/political machine and come out the other side as a joke.
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