Al Franken ... Still Not Funny



We never quite got the whole Al Franken phenomenon. "Stuart Smalley"?! He is a politically earnest man (see: above), to be sure, but how did this man ever get on SNL? He was never even remotely funny to us. We suppose he is an acquired taste, like yogurt. And although the late, greatSenator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's former goldenboy staffer Laurence O'Donnell boldly predicted on NBC's "The McLaughlin Group" that Franken would indeed be "the next Senator from the State of Minnestota," Al still has to get past that mighty campaign financing hurdle. This, from Politico's Shenanigans:

"Al Franken needs cash.

"In what some have described as 'cheesy and kitschy,' Franken's campaign is begging for dollars -- oh, the irony of a millionaire begging for chump change. The former 'SNL' star and 'O'Reilly Factor'-enemy-turned-Senate-hopeful laid out the use of campaign donations in explicit detail in an e-mail to supporters issued earlier this week.

"'$25 buys us a phone for a month. Every phone we can buy goes into our phone bank, and it means we can get one more volunteer in our office calling Minnesotans to let them know about our campaign and our events.'

"' ... $2,300 pays our rent for a month. Or, I suppose, buys us a whole lot of phones and pizza."

"He begs off by vowing, 'And, I promise, I won't ask you for money again (for at least a couple days).'"

More cringe-inducing unfunniness (Politico)