So, you may have noticed (but probably not) that I have been gone for about the past three weeks. You can read about my trip here.

And now: Al Franken.

I’ve never been too hot on Al Franken. This is a problem, because I’m not really hot on Norm Coleman, either. But, there you have it. It’s those two uninspiring partisan hyperbolists we get this year. W00t. Or something.

BUT, can we talk about the latest little Al Franken controversy?

In the 1995 New York magazine profile of “Saturday Night Live,” Franken is described among a group of show writers sounding out a possible parody of Andy Rooney centered on a sedative pill bottle found in the “60 Minutes” essayist’s desk. Franken and fellow writers Norm MacDonald and Jim Downey kick around fictional Rooney responses to the discovery of the bottle.

The article quotes Franken putting an edgy twist on the discussion, saying in a Rooney voice: “And ‘I give the pills to Lesley Stahl. Then when Lesley’s passed out, I take her to the closet and rape her.’ Or ‘That’s why you never see Lesley until February.’ Or, ‘When she passes out I put her in various positions and take pictures of her.”

I don’t know about this. First of all, let me say I don’t really find the proposed comedy situation that funny. This is not because I’m particularly offended by it; I’ve just never really found rape jokes that funny, and this one particularly falls flat with a lack of cleverness.

(As a side note, when I wrote for the Times New Roman, the comedy paper at my school , the rule we had in the senior staff when an article was offensive was this: is it more clever than it is offensive? I tend to think this is a pretty good rule. Franken’s ideas fall to the more offensive side with a total lack of cleverness, and are thus not really worth much to me. But hey, not everything we make is going to be gold.)

However, I’m not as upset by the fact that he was fleshing out these ideas in a writers’ meeting, because he was a comedian trying to be funny, and a lot of being funny is pushing against people’s comfort zones and senses of taste.

George Carlin said “I believe you can joke about anything. It all depends on how you construct the joke. What the exaggeration is.” Yeah, sure. And Al Franken was just trying to do this, I think.

But does that mean he’d be a bad senator? I will be the first to admit that it is really easy to get a group of guys around and forget that misogyny is actually offensive. Doesn’t necessarily excuse anything, but we’re all human. It seems like Al Franken was just caught being such.

Either way, I am still kind of annoyed at his candidacy, because now it’s all going to be “Well, you said this offensive thing 20 years ago,” versus “Yes, but I was joking.”

PS: Al Franken keeps talking about how all Norm Coleman wants to do is talk about his (Franken’s) past, and how the race shouldn’t be focusing on the past but on Coleman’s relationship with the (outgoing, never able to be elected again) president. Which happened… when?

Related posts:

1. Al Franken running for Senate?
2. A Grammy Nomination for Al Franken
3. Uh, Yeah. Good Question.
4. Ain’t Got Time to Not Run for Senate
5. Al Franken making news for workers comp fee fines