Thursday, Aug. 14, 2008
Not So Funny
By Joel Stein
TIME
(snip)
At $28 million and counting, this is the most expensive Senate race in the country, with most of the cash coming from out of state. Franken, who moved from New York back to his home state nearly three years ago for this election, has been on the defensive from the start, as Coleman has mined all sorts of offensive lines from thousands of jokes the comedian has told over his 57 years. "It's uncharted territory," says Franken. "They pull out a bit about a speech to Hartford Technical College, which is a made-up school. The bit was me pretending I was a jerk, but no one in their right mind would think I would actually say it. But they used it to say how much of an élitist I am." To say what a pervert Franken is, Coleman alluded to a smutty humor piece about virtual sex that Franken wrote for Playboy eight years ago. Of course, Franken has said much worse, especially if you repeat a joke in the stentorian voice of a political ad.
This month, Franken stopped arguing about how un-Hollywood his lifestyle is (he's been married to the same Minnesota woman for 32 years, and she made extra sandwiches when she heard I was spending the day with him) and instead ran ads about how he's not proud of all the jokes he's told. Amy Klobuchar, the Democratic Senator from Plymouth, Minn., applauded Franken for that. "Minnesotans, if they hear people saying things they think are inappropriate, they want an explanation. I think it's good he confronted it and talked about it." Franken has hired all kinds of staffers from other campaigns, but what he really needs, much like the New Yorker, is a staffer who explains his jokes.
Back when he was trying to be the Bill O'Reilly of the left, ranting as a host on Air America and writing books like Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations, Franken didn't have to modulate his personality. Now he has cut way back on the joking and has become a little more boring than people are used to. Which wouldn't be a big deal — he's still funnier than any other candidate in American history — but voters here are so familiar with him that a little holding back erodes his authenticity. "Occasionally, I go, 'Oh, there's a kind of joke I don't do anymore.' I used to not care if a joke could be misinterpreted. Now I do care if a joke can be misunderstood," he says. "But that doesn't take up a lot of brain space to figure that out." He won't, for instance, appear on Saturday Night Live this season. "We have to do everything so people understand that this is a real campaign and not just a conceptual-art piece," he says.
(snip)
Which is the other challenge that comes with tempering Franken's sense of humor: he can't use it to hide his aggression. Franken is that rare confrontational nerd, the tough Jew of a generation before him instead of the smoother, modern one that Coleman exemplifies. He still has the chest and disposition of a high school wrestler, and he famously took down a disruptive heckler at a Howard Dean rally in 2004. He loves obscure policy details, partly because he can use them to verbally beat up opponents. At the debate with Coleman on Aug. 5 at Farmfest in Redwood County, he seemed to win all the arguments but lose the audience with his aggressive style. Even for a potential Senator, he is relentlessly competitive. When we're riding in the back of his Ford Escape hybrid, I make the mistake of mentioning that when I interviewed Ted Nugent, he didn't know the Ten Commandments. For the next five minutes, Franken doesn't talk about anything except trying to name all the commandments. (He succeeds.) Then I make an even stupider comment about how much harder it would be to name all the constitutional amendments, and Franken is off again. "Holy mackerel," he says after rattling off the first three. "Come on, I know them! Let's do it! Let's do it together!" Luckily, we do not.
But toward the end of the day, Franken finds a way to connect. He's at the Rum River Family House Residence, a place for recovering-addict moms. And he doesn't even consider making a joke about the fact that it's the world's worst-named rehab center. Sitting around the living room, drinking coffee and eating lemon bars that the recovering meth moms have made, Franken reveals that he was "co-dependent" with someone close to him. As they tell their addiction stories, he's perfectly empathetic, nodding and using the language of recovery like someone mistakenly doing a serious, dramatic reading of his 12-step Saturday Night Live character, Stuart Smalley. After they finish, Franken looks up and says, "Thanks for inspiring me. If I'm in the Senate, I'll fight for this stuff. Because ..." And then he stops and looks away, trying not to cry. It's silent for a minute, and then one of the women quietly says, "You've got my vote." To which Franken says, "That's why I said it." And at that moment, Franken is an unbeatable politician. Not because he's funny or smart. But because all the people in the room know he understands them.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1832628,00.html
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