by Molly Ivors
Break out the fainting couches and clutching pearls, people, we have a crisis on our hands. Intrepid Wingnut Asshole Boy Reporter Michael Gerson has news for all of us! Real, honest to blog news about Minnesota senatorial candidate Al Franken!
Apparently, he used to be a comedian! A political satirist, even! And sometimes, he even says Bad Words™! Probably to Al Qaeda!
Now, we here at the WhiskeyFire Institute for Profanity in Political Discourse (fellowships available, please contact me) are objectively in favor of calling out evil motherfuckers and bullshit artists alike. We realize that this keeps us off many a Moderate Safe Search results page, but that's something we've learned to live with.
Now that naughty Al Franken, he should have thought, before putting on that baggage handler's costume, of his future. Of the nation! Of the children! Of the pure hearts on Minnesotans, who would rather buy a used car and stupid war from Norm Coleman than solid policies from Al Franken, because he swore this one time!
Franken's defenders explain that his edginess is the result of being a "satirist" -- a term he embraces. "My work, dare I say, is provocative, touching and funny," Franken has explained. "It sounds immodest, but I now have a brand name in political satire."
Satire has been called "punishment for those who deserve it." Writers from Erasmus to Jonathan Swift to George Orwell have used humor, irony and ridicule to expose the follies of the powerful, the failures of blind ideology and the comic weakness of human nature
There, there, now. Are you hyperventilating? Here's a paper bag. Put your feet up. It'll all be over soon. Or not.
"Porn-O-Rama!" is a modern campaign document every voter should read -- the Federalist Papers of lifestyle liberalism. It has the literary sensibilities and moral seriousness of an awkward adolescent nerd publishing an underground newspaper to shock his way into campus popularity. But, in this case, the article was written in 2000 by a 48-year-old man.
Franken's "brand name" includes other highlights. In 2006, after a long monologue about a dog and its vomit, Franken impersonated the deceased Sen. Strom Thurmond as saying: "Yeah, I screwed a woman who was vomiting once." He once proposed a television sketch about a female CBS reporter being drugged and raped. He has suggested that his next book title might be "I F -- -- -- Hate Those Right-Wing Motherf -- -- -- !" At an event hosted by the Feminist Majority Foundation in 1999, Franken offered this thigh-slapper: "Why don't we focus on what Afghan women can do? They can cook, bear children and pray. As I recall, that was fine for our grandmothers."
Yes, Michael. Because it is objectively true that the freedom of women is a new idea, even here, and we don't have to look too far into our own past to find, if not Taliban-style government, then certainly a system designed to enforce hierarchies of gender and appropriate behavior.
Our popular culture, of course, violates even these expansive boundaries of tastelessness with regularity. We laugh at comedies featuring the C-word and at cartoons of foul-mouthed third-graders. In the cause of relevance and realism, our common life is already decorated with excrement. Why should political discourse be any different?
For at least one reason: Because vulgarity is often the opposite of civility. This is not, of course, always true. I know a brilliant and large-hearted academic with roots in south Philly who uses the F-word with the frequency of "like" or "and." But the vulgarity of "The Jerry Springer Show" or misogynous rap music -- the cultural equivalents of Franken's political "satire" -- generally expresses contempt and cruelty. Franken is not content to disagree with Karl Rove; he calls him "human filth." He is not satisfied to criticize Ari Fleischer; Franken terms him a "chimp." (Note to Gerson: Fleischer is not the chimp: generally he's speaking of George Bush when he uses that term. Welcome to Left Blogtopia. And if he doesn't want to be called a chimp, maybe he should stop flinging shit.) The objects of Franken's humor -- including political opponents and women -- are not merely mocked but dehumanized. His trashiness is also nastiness. Rather than lampooning the emptiness and viciousness of our political discourse -- a proper role for satire -- Franken has powerfully reinforced those failures.
Thers is fond of noting the civility canard, which the late and lamented Steve Gilliard raised long ago as a way to define who does and does not get to speak. You know where we as a blog stand on that. Now here's Gerson trying to define satire, which he wouldn't know if it bit him on his no-doubt hairy and bepimpled ass. (I've poked around this issue before: note the comments too. There's a special cloud in heaven for pseudonymous in nc and his "a big ol' pot of Juvenal"--a phrase I still use regularly. (and I've just been rewatching the BBC Bleak House you sent me, so kisses there too, dood.)) Satire is a powerful tool, and the reason left-leaning comedy is generally funny and right-leaning comedy is generally not is that left-leaning comedy tends to be directed at the powerful, right-leaning at the powerless. And you know, it's just not funny to laugh at the powerless. In fact, it's kind of shitty. (See Miller, Dennis.)
Gerson reveals all these things about Citizen Franken as though the news that he has been a professional comedian is going to kneecap his campaign. Umm, no. Thirty years of watching Franken's not-always-but-often funny schtick is not going to help Norm Coleman. People have known Franken, invited him into their homes regularly, for many years. If Norm Coleman came to my door, I might let him use the cordless phone on the stoop in a pinch, but he wouldn't be invited into the living room.
And Al Franken was my constant lunchtime companion back in my 50-mile-commute days: his show, the best Air America has yet managed to produce (well, there's Sam, too) happened to coincide with my drive, and so he was with me all the way.
As it happens, I am not entirely sure that Al should go to the Senate, but that has more to do with needing a good, wry liberal voice in the media than any concerns about his potty mouth. I went and saw him do his college tour in April 06 when he passed through one of the schools where I was adjuncting, and he interviewed a professor from Cornell whose name I cannot recall. He begged Al not to run, saying that we needed him too badly, and pointing out that, in the Senate, he would have to make all kinds of compromises, whereas on AAR, he had a big megaphone and did not need to compromise his principles. This got a standing ovation, which kind of pissed Franken off. "Did you just get people to cheer for me not running?" he asked. (UPDATE: I asked for help from Matt Corley, who was a student at Ithaca when I taught there. He sent me a link, and I think the professor in question was Theodore Lowi, a Professor of Government at Cornell. simels regrets, etc. Thanks Matt!)
In any case, Gerson's attempt to make this particular Wingnut Whip is assinine, but honestly, you have to feel bad for the guy. This is apparently all they've got.
Good.
