Al Franken, Purveyor of Truth

By Laura Barcella, AlterNet. Posted February 9, 2006.

Al Franken, the Air America radio host and bestselling author of new-ish book "The Truth (With Jokes)" (Dutton; October 2005), may have started his career in standup comedy, but he's evolved into one of America's more astute lefty commentators.

A refreshingly normal guy in the savage world of political spin and smear, Franken is progressive, but not radical enough to alienate moderate, middle-of-the-road folks. He's intelligent and well-informed, but without a whiff of his fellow Al (Gore)'s overeducated snoot. Approachable and friendly, but moody enough to seem, well, human, Al F. emanates a likeable everyman quality. Like his archnemesis, President G.W. Bush, who snared the last two elections partly based on his "good old boy" affability, it's easy to imagine hanging out with Franken: grabbing a pint, yelling at network news, smoking a cigar.

Fortunately for progressives, Franken plans to use his everyman appeal to his political advantage. He recently moved from New York City back to his hometown of Minneapolis, and he is weighing a run for Minnesota senator (as a Dem, of course) in 2008.

Franken spoke with AlterNet from his midwestern office about his campaign plans, his shit list's "most wanted," how to fuse satire and politics, and of course, "The Truth."

Laura Barcella: A lot has happened since "The Truth" was published in October.

Al Franken: A lot has happened since I wrote the book, certainly. Katrina happened since I wrote the book. Everything that I write about in terms of Iraq is about cronyism and incompetence, and that's what the whole story of Katrina is.

LB: What would you say about Katrina if you could go back and add a chapter?

AF: Katrina showed what was happening in Iraq, which was all this cronyism and incompetence and contracting that was going to people who didn't know what they were doing. And people who were stealing. The thing about Katrina is that people said, "Why was [former FEMA Chief Michael] Brown there?"

Well, people were saying he was there because he was Joe Allbaugh's roommate, and he needed a job because he couldn't keep the horse job; that's why he was there. Well, yeah, that's why he was there, but he was really there to funnel contracts to Joe Allbaugh, who, when he left FEMA, set up his own lobbying shop. He was there to make sure that he got the contracts, and there is no oversight of this at all in Congress.

And the same thing has happened in Iraq. Except that in Iraq, instead of poor people in New Orleans, the people who are dying are soldiers and Marines, and they're dying because we didn't do the reconstruction, and because the money was stolen, and because of incompetence. And because we didn't get the water up, and electricity [running], and the sewage taken care of. The people of Iraq became alienated right away, and that fueled the insurgency, and that's killed our men and women.

LB: How do you feel about the Alito confirmation?

AF: Well, it looks like he's going to get to cast the vote real soon on "partial-birth" abortion.

Today we had a decision by a court out in your area, on the 9th Circuit, that said the new law on "partial-birth" abortion is unconstitutional -- it's vague and it doesn't protect the woman's health. So, it'll probably come before Alito, and we'll get to see what a nightmare this is.

LB: Your last book, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them," got a lot of press from both right- and left-wing pundits. Have you gotten any particularly ridiculous attacks on this book, any crazy press?

AF: No one ever actually challenges an actual, real fact. They just make these general broadsides about my book: "Oh, The Truth … it really should be called Lies. Oh, I guess that was the other book. I don't really know what to say …"

So I'm getting attacked right and left; mainly right. It's fine.

LB: Are they mainly personal or politically leveraged attacks?

AF: Well, they're both. They're personal attacks based on the fact that they don't like me politically. There are things like … there was some guy on "Bill O'Reilly" the other night saying that I go on USO tours as a publicity stunt. This guy doesn't know anything about me. I mean, it was weird to watch O'Reilly defending me. It was such an indefensible thing that O'Reilly had to say, "Well, how do you know?"

Laura Barcella is AlterNet's associate editor.

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