The Mirthless Senate

Timothy Egan
NYT

The United States Senate, which still flatters itself with the misnomer “the world’s greatest deliberative body,” counts a former Major League Baseball player, an organic wheat farmer, far too many lawyers and a member who describes herself as a mom in tennis shoes among its select 100.

Last year, when this club added someone with a most unlikely working background — Al Franken, the professional comedian who is the junior senator from Minnesota — I thought the upper chamber would finally get something it most lacked: a sharp sense of humor.

Like many who followed Franken’s career since his early days as a writer and performer on “Saturday Night Live,” I anticipated a flash of funny from him after he waded into the pool of poll-tested, pundit-vetted, lobbyist-cowering politicians.

Would we see a hint of the man who nailed former Senator Paul Simon’s monotone explanation for “why I wear the bow tie.” Or a bit of what inspired his mock political reporter to strap a satellite dish atop his head — “the one-man mobile uplink?” Not a chance. The author of “Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations,” the creator of the self-affirming moron Stuart Smalley, was nowhere to be found.

On the campaign trail, Franken was wonkish — understandably so. During the long recount and legal challenge of his 2008 Senate race, which resulted in Franken’s win by 312 votes, people who worked with the comedian said he was intensely disciplined and focused, with nary a snarky remark, even in private.

The satirist died when the senator took office. But just as Jon Tester did not give up his lentils and wheat on the homestead in Montana when he became a senator, Franken should not forsake his field of laughs.

(More here.)