Senator Smiley: Al Franken pulls no punches, but adds a few punch lines
By Jason Horowitz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Al Franken is working on some new material.
After arriving in the Senate in July after a bitterly contested recount, the former "Saturday Night Live" satirist immediately set out to prove that he was no court jester. He pursued Hillary Clinton's expectations-defying model of bipartisan workhorse and convincingly assumed the role of diligent policy wonk.
But by so effectively suppressing the punch lines, Franken exposed an irascible, sometimes nasty side of his personality. In a chamber where goodwill helps a freshman rack up legislative achievements, that can be just as damaging.
Without humor to soften his acute observations, Franken's naked sarcasm, short fuse and sense of showmanship ran amok, leading to public blowups with Republicans, private grievances among Democrats and attacks on senior Obama administration officials. Several sources at a private meeting last month said they heard Franken tell White House senior adviser David Axelrod that the president should apologize for his stupid campaign promise to televise health-care discussions.
(More here.)
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Al Franken is working on some new material.
After arriving in the Senate in July after a bitterly contested recount, the former "Saturday Night Live" satirist immediately set out to prove that he was no court jester. He pursued Hillary Clinton's expectations-defying model of bipartisan workhorse and convincingly assumed the role of diligent policy wonk.
But by so effectively suppressing the punch lines, Franken exposed an irascible, sometimes nasty side of his personality. In a chamber where goodwill helps a freshman rack up legislative achievements, that can be just as damaging.
Without humor to soften his acute observations, Franken's naked sarcasm, short fuse and sense of showmanship ran amok, leading to public blowups with Republicans, private grievances among Democrats and attacks on senior Obama administration officials. Several sources at a private meeting last month said they heard Franken tell White House senior adviser David Axelrod that the president should apologize for his stupid campaign promise to televise health-care discussions.
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
Franken is a joke - an angry partisan who - and I quote hates 'those mother fucking Republicans'. So, he hates - not disagrees, but hates - 40% of Minnesotans who are Republicans. He is in the Senate for his own sake and being a policy wonk hardly rises to the level of Senatorial credentials. Hopefully, Minnesotans love-affair with celebrity will be short lived a la Jesse Ventura. When will we ever learn.
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