A narrative account of attending an Al Franken house party in St. Paul a few weeks ago, and an assessment of Franken's chances now that Ciresi is out of the race.
To live in the Macalester-Groveland neighborhood of the Twin Cities is to live in an Ann Arbor plopped down between a Memphis and a Philadelphia. I make this point to illustrate how it was possible that when Al Franken attended a house party in St. Paul not long ago, I was able to go out my door and, get this—walk to it.
Franken’s senate run caught my attention long before I moved to the Twin Cities last fall. After he announced, I saw him on a late night talk show executing a weird bit of rhetorical contortionism: a satirist was more than just a comedian, he explained, and of course he had to be funny—to be satiric—while explaining it. After that, I went to his website and watched the introductory video he had recorded for people who didn’t know that much about him. This wasn’t funny at all. In fact, it was quite a moving speech, earnest and sincere. I got a little weepy. Obama, eat your heart out. I sent in my donation.
Months later, I arrived at the house party early, and—another surprise—so did Franken. Eventually there would be about a hundred people crammed into the ground floor of the classic St. Paul house (lots of dark wood built-ins, dark wood thresholds, a sun room), but when Franken showed up, kicking off his shoes and lining them up by the door just like everyone else, there were only a couple dozen of us. I had intended to remain inconspicuous, to watch and perhaps take a note or two, but Franken started making the rounds and saying hello to everyone.
When he came to me, I shook his hand and said, "It’s an honor."
This seemed to throw Franken a bit—perhaps it wasn’t in keeping with the informal nature of the evening. He took a second look at me, and double-taked at my nametag. He would have been entirely willing to chat, except that I found I had nothing to say. How do you make small talk with the guy who wrote the political satire for Saturday Night Live for fifteen years? You can’t out-funny him. You can’t out-one-liner him. In fact, he can probably make you laugh if he just looks at you in the right way—in other words, you’ll laugh simply if he decides that it’s time for you to laugh—so instead you’re paralyzed, speechless. Actually, I was preoccupied anyway. The rumor was that Franken had just finished up a driving tour of eighteen Minnesota towns, and all I could think was: why doesn’t this guy look tired? I had just returned from Italy, where they apparently cultivate a vicious species of bronchitis, and while I’d gotten better on returning home and had spent a number of days in bed, I still looked pretty tired. Franken, a generation older than me, was fresh as a Washington apple. I was distracted by the lack of bags under his eyes. I was distracted because I’d noticed this on Clinton and Obama, too. Not McCain—he’s clearly on his last leg—but these others: where were their eyebags? If I’d had the courage to ask Franken a question, it would have had something to do with his eyes.
He moved on by to the next set of folks.
After we’d all bunched in—people standing on couches for views—Franken climbed halfway up a stairwell to give himself a view across our heads. He started his stump speech by repeating his satirist explanation, taking it a little further this time, arguing that what satirists do is parse events for the truth ("When a thing is funny, search it for a hidden truth" – Shaw), and that an ability to uncover and expose truth might not be such a bad trait in an elected official.
From there, Franken began to go negative. He was quite nimble at this. But he was also very self-effacing, and if you efface yourself, apparently, people will accept you effacing others as well. Franken’s barbs were reserved for the senator he wanted to unseat, Norm Coleman. In particular, he lashed out at Coleman for comments he’d made about Paul Wellstone, who is on the fast track to sainthood in these parts—making the whole town an exercise in ex post facto eponymism.
I felt a little sorry for Coleman—and do so even more now that Franken’s main competition for the Democratic nod has dropped out of the race. What makes Franken deadly, I think, is timing. Politicians have long known of the power of humor, but they don’t really know how to deliver the one-liners that comedians—ahem, satirists—cook up for them. Franken had a lot of one-liners, and while they might have been funny on their own ("Republicans say government is broken, get elected, and prove it"), what really made them funny was the delivery. Coleman and Franken are currently running about even in polls, but Clinton recently showed what the sensibility of Saturday Night Live can do for a campaign, and now Coleman is looking down the barrels of the guy who crafted that sensibility. If you don’t feel a bit of pity for Coleman—well, that’s just a humor of cruelty.
I hate to say it this way, but Franken’s stump speech amounted to an argument that he was good enough, smart enough, and people liked him. I know I did. And he wasn’t entirely negative. He argued that America was a corn stalk away from a police state, but Democrats—and Minnesotans in particular—could turn the tide with wind turbines, electric cars, and windows that protect against ultraviolet light ("Minnesota is the Silicon Valley of windows!"). All that might come to pass, in time—and is all the more likely with a satirist pulling the levers.
jchallman.com