Breaking: Stuart Smalley Announces He's Smart Enough, He's Good Enough, And Doggonit, He's Running For Senate

Don't be too worried; it took this scary-talent 20 years of working at SNL just be elected a "featured player" there.

Comedian and radio talk show host Al Franken has begun calling Democratic members of Congress and prominent DFLers to tell them he will definitely challenge Republican Sen. Norm Coleman in 2008, the Star Tribune has learned.

...

The Star Tribune confirmed today that Franken made calls to at least two members of the Minnesota congressional delegation in Washington to break the news. The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity, not wanting to pre-empt Franken's announcement.

"From his voice to my ears, he's running," said one House member, who relayed the remark via his press secretary.

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Franken, who grew up in St. Louis Park, achieved fame in New York as a comedy writer for NBC-TV's "Saturday Night Live"...

Ummm... "fame"? Sad, but appropriate, they've forgotten he actually was a cast member for couple of years.

Coleman has had little to say about Franken, but in an interview last year he said he expected him to be "a very strong voice for the far left" and a strong fundraiser. Republicans will try to exploit Franken's ties to Hollywood: Contributors to his political action committee included Barbra Streisand, Phil Donahue, Larry Hagman and Norman Lear from the entertainment industry, former Minnesota Gov. Wendell Anderson and Minneapolis attorney Sam Kaplan.

That list of contributors prompted Coleman to say that Franken "obviously has a sense of humor" by calling his PAC Midwest Values.

It wasn't very obvious to Lorne Michaels, sadly.

One good thing about running for office: You can''t get cancelled for at least a year or so. Unlike, say, LateLine.

I dwell on his professional failures because 1, it's easy, but 2, it partly explains the man's bitterness and rage. He's watched class after class and cohort after cohort of SNL co-workers go on to have huge careers and become big honking movie stars, and yet he was the guy who... just kept working as a writer at SNL. With a bunch of straight-outta-Harvard-Lampoon 21-year-olds who were getting their sketches on a lot more frequently than he managed.

He was a bitter, vicious little jerkoff when he was 21. Imagine how that bitterness grew as he saw most of his contemporaries make it big, or at least land a movie here or there, while an endless parade of fresh-faced kids came in to do his job better than he could.

Well, perhaps he's finally found his niche. As they say, politics is just show business for ugly people.

Thanks to JackM.

posted by Ace at 07:53 PM

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