Al Franken's Nutritional Candy

By Terrence McNally, AlterNet. Posted February 11, 2005.

This interview originally aired on Free Forum with Terrence McNally on Los Angeles' KPFK radio.

After a wonderful career on Saturday Night Live and then debunking right-wing propaganda in his best-selling books and Grammy-winning audio books, Lies, and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them and Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot, Al Franken has taken the fight to America's airwaves on Air America. With co-host Katherine Lanpher, Franken offers three hours a day of commentary and comedy, as well as substantive interviews – last week's guests included FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmunds, former EPA head Christine Todd Whitman, The Innocence Project's Barry Scheck, David Brock, author of The Republican Noise Machine, and Jared Diamond, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse.

The fastest growing network in radio history, Air America is now on in 50 markets, including seven of the top 10, and doing very well against Rush, Hannity and the rest of the rabid right.

And while Franken isn't yet running for senator of Minnesota, could a leap into politics be too far in the future?

Welcome, Al Franken, to KPFK and Free Forum.

Terrence McNally: I always want listeners to get a sense of the personal path of my guests, to get to know the people behind the work and the ideas that we deal with ...

Al Franken: I should do that.

Yes ... We actually met in 1974 when you and your partner, Tom Davis, had just graduated college and were playing at the Garden Festival down near USC.

I remember that show. It was outdoors – it was a very nice evening and it was a beautiful event.

So you had to get from there to Saturday Night Live, and from Saturday Night Live to best-selling books and Air America. How did it happen?

Saturday Night Live we sort of got on as a fluke; we were the only writers that [SNL executive producer] Lorne [Michaels] hired who he hadn't met. When he was first putting the staff together, we submitted material through an agent, and he read it and hired us. We still believe to this day that had he met us, he wouldn't have hired us. ...

So we were there from the first day. We were very fortunate to be a big part of this groundbreaking show. I did the show for about the first five years, then left for five, and came back for ten – so I did fifteen years of that show. I did a lot of different kinds of things – mainly writing, but I did perform a little bit. One of the things I specialized in was writing political material, and I did a lot of it with other guys, including Jim Downey, Tom Davis and other people.

We never felt it was the job of Saturday Night Live to have a political point of view or axe to grind. We just felt it was inappropriate ... and besides, Jim and I didn't particularly agree politically, which was good, because we kept each other honest. So when I left SNLRush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot, which sort of launched me into what I'm doing now.

Now you're on the radio. That's a big transition, from being primarily behind-the-scenes, doing the occasional brief sketch on SNL, and then sitting in a room writing books for years, where you have complete control. ... Suddenly you're on the air three hours a day. What were the biggest challenges and what have you learned over, these first nine months?

Well you get the feeling of being jack-of-all-trades, master of none, but I think I'm getting pretty good at radio, I think my learning curve has been fairly steep in large part because of my co-host, Kathryn Lanpher, who's a radio pro. She worked on public radio for years, and before that on a commercial station, and before that worked as a journalist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, which is a really good paper. I had done her show often enough in St. Paul when I'd go back to Minnesota, that I totally felt comfortable with her. I felt like if worse comes to worse, I'll just have Kathryn interview me. (Laughs.) I could just have Kathryn be the host.

You could be the daily guest.

I never seem to have any problem being a guest, so I figured, OK, this is my little safety net, my big safety net. I did want to learn how to be a host, in case Kathryn got a cold, or wanted to take a week off because she couldn't stand me any longer, ... which happened last summer (laughs). I think I've been learning, and I think I do OK, and I enjoy it. I signed on originally for a year and stupidly allowed it to get out, that it was only for a year. People assumed, "Oh, I see, he's just doing it till the election." That wasn't why. I only signed up for a year because I didn't know if I'd like it.

Interviewer Terrence McNally hosts Free Forum on KPFK 90.7FM, Los Angeles (streaming at kpfk.org), where he interviews people he believes can help create 'a world that just might work.'

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »