Franken talks comedy and balls of steel

Al Franken knows smart, edgy, political comedy – he’s been doing it for more than 30 years…. Al Franken knows smart, edgy, political comedy – he’s been doing it for more than 30 years. From 1975 until 1980, Franken wrote for and performed on “Saturday Night Live,” winning four Emmys for writing and a fifth for producing. In 1985, he returned to SNL for another 10 years, often portraying hypersensitive self-help guru Stuart Smalley.

In 1996, his book “Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot, and Other Observations” spent five weeks at the top of the New York Times’ best-sellers list and got Limbaugh on a treadmill. He followed with 2000’s “Why Not Me,” a fictional account of his presidency and 2002’s “Oh, the Things I Know,” another poke at the self-help industry.

He is currently touring behind his latest best-seller, “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.” A Fox lawsuit and a spat with Bill O’Reilly at what may have been the most exciting book convention ever have brought it mucho recognition. He will be at Carnegie Music Hall on Saturday night for a fundraiser for Jewish life on campus.

Despite his busy schedule, Franken found time to speak with The Pitt News about politics, comedy, Judaism and John Kerry’s balls of steel.

Your comedy, especially your books, is very political. How powerful a tool is political comedy in influencing society?

I hope it is very powerful, because I want to have a lot of influence [laughter], especially this election cycle. I think we really have to get rid of this guy.

Do you have faith that we will?

I don’t have faith that we will, but I think that we can.

War, terrorism and a lot of very unfunny things have been in the national spotlight recently. How has that changed your approach to political comedy?

I’ve always believed that you can do comedy about things that are very serious, and I’ve always had trouble explaining that to certain people sometimes, like the censors at NBC [laughter]. I don’t think there is anything inherently contradictory about doing humor about serious things if you treat them right, if you have the right attitude, and if you’re honoring the seriousness about the thing you’re talking about and people know where you are coming from. Sometimes you’ll offend people who want to be offended. There are some people who will take umbrage at anything you say about anything important. They think that, by the nature of comedy, you are trivializing something, and that’s not true at all. I think that satire is very often about serious things, things that are not necessarily happy. Happy and laughing aren’t the same thing.

In your latest book, you seem pretty angry and upset about a lot of things, especially the president’s environmental policies. Is it hard to be funny when you are angry?

I don’t think so. I think that anger can be a fuel that can be sublimated into humor and often has been throughout history. Satire very often is about that. I don’t consider myself a terribly angry person or a person that hates people. I don’t hate President Bush. I just hate everything he does and everything about him, but I don’t hate him. That’s sort of a waste of energy. But I think that it is worth getting angry about. I just went on a [United Service Organizations] tour to Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. It was my fourth USO tour. I love our troops, and I’m angry that we got into this war by being misled about weapons of mass destruction. I’m angry that we didn’t get a real coalition to bear the burden with us, especially in terms of troops. And then I see our young men and women there who are my kids’ ages, and it makes me angry that they are the ones who are in harm’s way, because we failed diplomatically. I also think they are in harm’s way because [the Bush administration] did not plan for the aftermath of the invasion and for the occupation like they should have. I think they willfully ignored the planning, and that’s very well documented in a recent James Fallows article in the Atlantic Monthly. That makes me mad, because it’s life and death for these guys.

In “Lies,” you said that you initially supported the war in Iraq and spoke in favor of the war on an affiliate of Clear Channel Communications. Why did you initially support the war and what changed your mind?

Some people think I did the Clear Channel thing; I really didn’t do that. I was ambivalent about the war and very torn-up about it. I had a very difficult time a year ago trying to figure out how I felt about it. When I saw Colin Powell, at the [United Nations], lay out his evidence of mass destruction, I felt there definitely were weapons of mass destruction. I believed him, because I respected Colin Powell enormously. However, I feel in retrospect that that was probably the lowest day in his career.

Bill O’Reilly recently apologized for his statements about weapons of mass destruction and going into the war. Were you surprised?

Well, no; I think he boxed himself in. He basically said that, “if they don’t find weapons of mass destruction, I will apologize and say I will not trust the president anymore.” In fact, I think he kind of weaseled out a little bit by blaming the intelligence that the president got and blaming [CIA director] George Tenet. While, in reality, a lot of that intelligence came straight from the Pentagon and was stove-piped to the White House without going to the CIA. It was from the Office of Special Plans, and they got it directly from those guys. So I think the story was more complicated than, as usual, Bill O’Reilly lets out in terms of what this administration is doing to mislead and massage intelligence.

As someone who has taken on the right wing, what advice would you give the next Democratic candidate about going on the offensive?

Go on the offensive. Don’t back off. Don’t be divisive, but, on the other hand, don’t let them go after you. Go right after them. I think that if it is John Kerry, we got a guy who can do that. If you read about his Vietnam War record, which I did in preparing for Operation Chickenhawk in my last book [“Operation Chickenhawk: Episode One” is a chapter of “Lies” that portrays George W. Bush and other conservatives who did not fight in Vietnam as serving in Kerry’s platoon.] and in preparing for that chapter, I talked at great lengths to a guy named Wade Sanders, a fellow swift-boat commander in the Mai Con. And this guy, Kerry, has balls of steel.

What would be lost if liberals turned the other cheek to right wing detractors?

That’s been the problem. We’ve been doing that for far too long, and it is time to fight back.

You’ve been away from Saturday Night Live since 1995. Would you ever like to work for the show again?

I’ve actually come back a couple of times to do little things. It’s always been fun. I came back the week that [Al] Gore hosted the show and spent about two weeks on that show. I did a little thing recently when I went to Iraq. I brought with me a satellite dish. I did a piece with two soldiers in Iraq, [a Weekend] Update with the one-man mobile uplink unit. I really like the people at SNL.

You frequently speak in front of corporate audiences. How is it different speaking in front a bunch of kids like you’ll be doing on Saturday?

I can be looser, and I can use different language and talk about a little edgier stuff.

What kind of things will you be talking about on Saturday?

It will be politics. It will be all the stuff we’ve been talking about.

Saturday’s show is a fundraiser for Jewish groups on campus. Were you involved at Jewish campus life when you were at Harvard as an undergrad?

Only in the extent that a lot of my friends were Jewish. But in terms of going to the Hillel house or anything like that, no.

Why not?

I’m a cultural Jew. I’m not religious at all, and my son who is a freshman in college just told me he’s joining a Jewish fraternity. It just shocked the shit out of me. I couldn’t believe it. He was like, “Dad, I’m joining this Jewish fraternity,” and I went, “Why?” He said, “I like the guys, and they won’t have hazing.” Evidently, they have really obnoxious hazing at the other fraternities at the school. So his friends, by and large, are Jewish, and they are going to start this chapter of a fraternity.

Has that inspired you to perform at these kinds of events?

No, I’ve done a lot of what I call “Jew events” in my life because I’m Jewish. I’m very Jewish [laughter].

One of the mission statements of one of the groups that is putting on Saturday night’s show is to provide Jewish students with “a view of the many wonderful things being Jewish in today’s world can mean.” What are some of those things?

I’ve always believed in justice, and I think that is an important thing that Jews can do. I was brought up that my Jewish-ness meant to be ethical and to fight for justice, and that’s what I do for my work. I feel that what I do is very much in a Jewish tradition. I’m just not particularly religious. I’m not devout. I’m not observant. But I was raised in a very moral household that believed in certain ethical rules that come from a Jewish background.

Is there anything else you’d like to tell readers about Saturday’s show?

It will be fun. I’m really good, and you’ll have a great time.

Franken will perform on Saturday at Carnegie Music Hall as part of “Not Quite Kosher,” a fundraiser for Jewish campus life at Pitt, and for Table-to-Table, a group that feeds the hungry in Israel. In case you haven’t seen the millions of fliers on campus, tickets are $5 and are available at www.notquitekosher.org.