by Al Franken
A number of friends read pages as I wrote, some reading successive drafts. These include Drew, Casey, Alana, Jeff, Ed, and Stephanie. Also Norm Ornstein, Mandy Grunwald, Diane Feldman, former staffers Hannah Katch and Josh Riley, Ben Wikler, John Markus, Jess McIntosh, Franni, and Thomasin and Joe. All were extremely helpful, though Norm kept asking for “more Ornstein, less Gawande.” Thanks to them, and to Gordie Loewen, who helped with research and fact-checking.
Billy Kimball, my producer for Indecision ’92 and The Al Franken Show on Air America, also worked with me on three of my previous books. On this one, Billy provided always helpful and sometimes brutal critiques, sharpened some of the prose, and added some terrific jokes for your reading enjoyment.
I first met Andy Barr when he was a nineteen-year-old sophomore at Harvard, where he was one of the key members of TeamFranken, which researched Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. Andy has been working with me since, with some time off to finish college. After graduation, Andy joined my Air America show, then played a central role in my run for the Senate and has written with and for me during my Senate career. Andy has been indispensable in the realization of this book. Without Andy the writing in this book wouldn’t have been good.
If I left anyone out, it’s due to staff error.
Also by Al Franken
I’m Good Enough, I’m Smart Enough, and Doggone It,
People Like Me! Daily Affirmations by Stuart Smalley
Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot:
And Other Observations
Why Not Me? The Inside Story of the Making
and Unmaking of the Franken Presidency
Oh, the Things I Know! A Guide to Success, or,
Failing That, Happiness
Lies: And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them:
A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right
The Truth (with Jokes)
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*A note on style from the author: Because I’m a United States senator, I can’t use the word “bull——.” Even though Washington is indeed awash in bullshit. So throughout this volume, whenever you see a very mild oath like “Fiddlesticks!” (or some gentle name-calling like “numbskull” or “dimwit,” or some old-timey synonym for “bull——” like “poppycock” or “flim-flummery”), followed by the letters “USS” in superscript, that means I’ve replaced something far more plainspoken with a less offensive phrase or expression. The “USS” stands for “United States Senate,” the body in which I now serve. I feel I have a duty to both my colleagues and my constituents to make at least a token effort to preserve its dignity and decorum. I wish I could say the same for that dunderhead USS Ted Cruz.
*Don’t worry. Former senator Norm Coleman landed on his feet and continues to serve the people of Minnesota as a paid lobbyist for the government of Saudi Arabia.
* A quilting factory doesn’t make quilts. It makes quilted fabric that is very often used in garments. For example, in the lining of winter coats. Hence Minnesota.
† Mom’s dad, Simon Kunst, came to America in 1904 at the age of sixteen from Grodno, which is a city in Belarus or Lithuania or Poland or Russia, depending on which one was persecuting the Jews of Grodno at any given time. Simon had a quilting factory near New York City. For more about quilting, see the previous footnote.
* Those used to exist.
† On this subject, some conservative commentators will say that a higher percentage of Republican senators voted for the Civil Rights Act than Democrats. That’s true. But the Democrats who voted against it were southerners. Today, not one Democratic U.S. senator comes from the Deep South.
* Franni’s a Jr.
* First prize: a twenty-five-dollar savings bond, plus you get your picture taken with Mitch McConnell.
* You may be asking, “I thought your dad had a modest income. How are you going to a hoity-toity prep school?” Good question, reader. Here’s the deal. My grandmother, Clara Franken, Otto’s widow, continued to live in her apartment near the Polo Grounds in upper Manhattan and was an astoundingly frugal hausfrau. Every Sunday morning at nine, Grandma would call us in Minnesota. Dad would answer, “Guten Morgen, Liebschen.” The call would end abruptly when the operator informed them that three minutes were up. When we visited Grandma, she always wore the same old-lady dress, and baked us the best apple pie. She also saved everything (including, for some reason, shoeboxes full of worthless canceled postage stamps), invested wisely in the stock market, and left my parents enough money for Owen’s and my education.
* Forty years later, during my first campaign for Senate, my long, easily decontextualized history of metacomedy would turn out to be something of a problem.
* How do I remember what test I took? Because it consisted of five hundred statements, to which you answered “yes” or “no,” and I remember exactly one: “I have never had any black-tarry bowel movements.” When I recently entered “black-tarry bowel movements” into Google, the first item that popped up was an article about the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. In addition to questioning the validity of the test, the article said that this was the one question that everyone who takes the test remembers. And, sorry: I can’t tell you how I answered, because I don’t remember. I certainly haven’t had any recently.
* For younger readers, David Eisenhower was President Dwight Eisenhower’s grandson and Nixon’s son-in-law, married to Nixon’s daughter Julie. For older readers, sorry for making you dart your eyes to the bottom of the page.
* Five years later, when Franni became pregnant, Fran insisted that Franni produce the marriage certificate.
* Forty years later, as a U.S. senator, I would join forty-nine other senators on a letter to the NFL, demanding that the Washington Redskins change their name.
* And later, kids. That, of course, radically changed things for me. When he was six, my son, Joe, decided to play hockey, and as you can imagine, ice time in NYC is pretty hard to come by. So I’d take him to an indoor rink in lower Manhattan at six on Sunday mornings. Mercifully, he switched to basketball the next year.
* Example: Franni and I went on a CODEL to Africa in 2015 led by Delaware senator Chris Coons, who as a young man had been a relief worker in Kenya and as a senator has been very active on the Foreign Relati
ons Subcommittee on Africa. The bastard had us fly all night, land in Senegal in the morning, then do a full day there, inspecting a water project and other programs. The next morning we flew to Ethiopia, did a full day there. Next day to Rwanda. Next day to Gabon. Then on the way back, a half day in Cape Verde.
* This past season, the rise of Trump has brought the show back to its glory days of political satire.
* “I’m not going to do it.” As in “Nah gah dah. Wouldn’t be prudent.”
* Norm Ornstein.
* For those who got the Grindr joke back in chapter 1, Jacob Javits was a liberal Republican who represented the state of New York in the Senate from 1957 until 1981. For those who got the Jacob Javits reference without any help, Grindr is a popular gay dating app—and “app” is short for “application,” which for some reason is what you call a computer program now.
* No, of course Paul never sold uppers to other wrestlers. But there’s a rule in comedy called the Rule of Three, and he was only arrested twice. See, this is the kind of footnote you’re just not going to get in Condoleezza Rice’s memoir.
* As evidenced by the fact that I spent thirty-five years writing things like “Placenta Helper,” an unproduced Saturday Night Live commercial parody for a product that “lets you stretch your placenta into a tasty casserole. For example, Placenta Romanoff—a zesty blend of cheeses that makes for a zingy sauce that Russian czars commanded at palace feasts.” The censors cut it, depriving America of a good hearty laugh.
† Important note: That’s how I felt at the time. It doesn’t mean I currently think that Norm Coleman is a dingus. USS Norm is a loving father who dotes on his kids. And he did some really good things as mayor of St. Paul. He was, however, in my opinion, a cruddy USS senator. When Norm apologized for calling himself a 99 percent improvement over Paul Wellstone (after a couple of days of outrage from Minnesotans), he said that what he meant was that he was a 99 percent improvement over Paul in terms of supporting the Bush White House. Which was all too true.
* In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that Harvard did turn down my first proposed topic for my study group, which was “How can you build a nuclear weapon in your garage with just $100 worth of supplies from Home Depot?” Harvard felt that this would be more appropriate for the graduate school of applied science, or maybe its acclaimed business school.
* If you haven’t read Lies, go find a bookstore near you, grab a copy off the shelf, and just read that chapter. Tell ’em Al sent you, and that I said it would be fine if you hung out in the aisle for half an hour reading without buying anything. Or, hell, get a coffee or an app or whatever it is they’re selling to stay in business these days.
* I think it’s Rihanna and Justin Bieber and stuff like that?
* My daughter, Thomasin, had our first grandson, whom she named Joe, in 2013. Two years later, my son, Joe, and his wife, Stephanie, had a son, whom they refused to name Barack. I’m still hoping that a future grandchild might be named after the great mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary, one of my personal heroes.
† Which, I am told, nobody uses anymore.
* I’ve submitted this paragraph to a middle school writing contest.
† In Minnesota, the Democratic Party is known as the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, or DFL Party, for reasons that are detailed authoritatively on Wikipedia.
* A few words about farting. Thanks to Lord Byron’s famous “musical fruit” poem, when you bring up beans, most people think of flatulence. And if you’ve never been to a bean feed, you probably imagine that the speaking program that follows the meal would be punctuated by loud, outboard-motor-ish farts, as well as a pungent aroma. Well, you’re wrong. While a skeptical senior might occasionally fart loudly to indicate disapproval of something specific that was said or a speaker in general, in my experience this is always done deliberately and sparingly. And because bean gas is largely produced by cellulose and not by decayed animal matter, the odor of bean feed farts is generally inoffensive to the point of being virtually undetectable.
* Back at SNL, Jim Downey used to call me Dog Man. Partly because I was kind of a sloppy eater, I liked to roll around on the floor, and I would run after any ball. All of which are still true. Also, one time I bit Don Pardo.
* At one point during the campaign, a reporter from the Economist came out to spend a day on the trail. Later, our press team got an email from the Economist’s dogged fact-checker seeking to confirm a quote from a campaign spokesman, who had said, “You think the crust is going to collapse, but the apples go all the way to the top.” Was this right? We were happy to confirm: The apples did indeed go all the way to the top.
* I noticed that in Double Down, their narrative of the 2012 presidential campaign, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann promiscuously use the adjective “whip-smart” to describe individual staffers in both the Obama and Romney campaigns. Let’s see how many times I can use it as a crutch before it wears out its welcome.
* A “body man” on a campaign is the person (male or female) who makes sure you stay on schedule, briefs you about the people you’re about to meet and any issues you should know about, and collects business cards from supporters who want to donate money or invite you to another bean feed or give you their screenplay that’s just perfect for Eddie Murphy.
† Wow, that was fast.
* Adam, of course, played my sidekick in our very popular Wayne’s World movies.
* During the Vietnam War, there was a secret war in Laos. The Hmong, a mountain people in Laos, fought on our side during that war. Because of the Hmong, there are thousands fewer American names on the Vietnam War Memorial wall in D.C. After the war, hundreds of thousands of Hmong fled from the Communist Laotian regime, and over one hundred thousand came to the United States. Today, the thriving Minnesota Hmong community numbers over sixty thousand, the second-largest in the country after California.
* I know I promised I wouldn’t swear in this book, but I’m just quoting from a blog endorsed by the largest paper in Minnesota, so I hope this exception is okay.
* Or gained.
* Okay, in the campaign, the story was known as the “Stu the Jew” incident, not as the “Hermann the German” incident. But I didn’t want to spoil it for you.
* Oddly, it wasn’t even my joke. It came from original SNL writer Rosie Schuster and found its way into a piece that I got credit for.
* A phone book, for those of you born after 1990, is just what it sounds like: a book shaped like a phone.
* In a later focus group, a number of women expressed relief when Diane clarified that the Minnesota Institute of Titology was not, in fact, a real thing.
* You gotta hand it to the guy! And, actually, that’s exactly how it worked. Republican researchers did the actual legwork on all this fantastic “oppo” and just handed it to Brodkorb, who would dutifully write it up on his blog.
† Not kidding.
‡ I know this seems quaint, but back in 2008, Republicans did not consider “demeaning and degrading women” to be senatorial, let alone presidential.
* Delegates.
† Southern Minnesota—Tim Walz’s district.
‡ People reporting that they were “strong Franken” supporters.
§ Rural western Minnesota.
¶ No, I’m proud to say that I have never written any “child porn,” but I wasn’t going to quibble.
* I’m not telling you which consultant said what, because this was basically the same kind of thing as the writers’ room that produced the Lesley Stahl joke: people workshopping ideas with no expectation that they’d be made public.
* Or, given its use of the present tense, that writing about committing rape remains a hobby.
† It’s a reference to an incident during the 2004 New Hampshire primaries in which I stopped a Lyndon LaRouche fanatic who was charging the stage where Howard Dean was speaking. Two weeks later, the mayor of Manchester gave me the key to the city for helping to stop the guy.
* Howard Fineman.
† Eight years later, they would make an extraordinary comeback.
* Just to be clear: Norm was not on trial for murdering his wife, or anyone, for that matter. It was a civil proceeding.
* Dick Cheney was the head of the search team that, after an exhaustive search, chose Dick Cheney as George W. Bush’s running mate.
* Including, now that I’ve made this joke, my book signing at Tampa’s finest bookseller, the Hudson News at the airport. No, I’m sorry, I’ve never been to Tampa. I’m sure it’s great. I’m just cranky about the study.
* Remember, this was pre-Trump. Now, of course, I don’t have to wonder why everyone I talk to is so depressed.
* I played Senator Paul Simon in a very substantive SNL sketch about the Clarence Thomas hearings.
* “The Case of the Deadly Verdict” and “The Case of the Terrified Typist.”
* I feel like they missed an opportunity by passing up “No Joke: Franken Tells Joke.”
* I stole this line from comedian George F. Will.
† This wrinkle is my little spin on Will’s amusing (but not really funny) joke. And he calls himself a comedian!
* After more than four years of fighting to get into court, Jamie Leigh Jones finally had her case against KBR heard by a jury. Though she lost the case, she had her day in court, as have other women who have been, or claimed to have been, sexually assaulted while working for defense contractors.
* How did that guy get a meeting with a senator? Staff error.
* Nine other states are now looking at licensing midlevel oral health providers.
* This is not a good defense.
† They sit in the balcony directly behind the podium.
* After the 2010 election, I called all the winners on election night to congratulate them and welcome them to the Senate, including the Republicans. I thought that was what you do. It isn’t. I guess I was the only Democrat who called Rand, and we had a nice conversation. So Rand picked me to be his Democratic mentor (he picked Texas senator Kay Bailey Hutchison for his Republican). I hadn’t even been aware that there was a mentor program, because I had been seated so late. Long and short of it—I was a terrible mentor. I advised Rand to be a workhorse and not a showhorse, not realizing that he was planning to run for president at the first opportunity. Every once in a while, I’d ask Kay, “Is he listening to any of your advice?” “No!” she’d say, slightly bemused.
