I've never been a big fan of Al Franken. He's always struck me as smug, thinking himself a lot funnier than he really is and routinely confusing drollery for comedy. His soon-to-be-defunct Air America Radio show is one of the dullest things on the airwaves, a self-regarding cavalcade of conventional liberal wisdom doled out by a rotating list of dreary guests from the Center for the American Prospect, the New York Observer, and partisan blogs. It's a sign of the show's intellectual poverty that one of its most noteworthy resident public intellectual's chief claim to political insight is his hand in helping to create The West Wing on TV.
Franken's near-lachrymal regard for "our young men and women in uniform" is also deeply off-putting. Yes, indeed, we should provide our troops with the equipment they need to survive Bush's hellish war of choice, and we certainly, as a society, owe them the finest medical and psychiatric care possible when they return home, but ... if we are ever to escape the clutches of the military-industrial-Congressional complex that, like kudzu in a flower garden, is slowly choking the bloom of republican (that's with a small "r") virtues, we are going to have to return to the healthy skepticism of militarism and a standing army that marked our nation's entire history up until World War II. Enough with "Support the Troops." Let's start bringing them home and demobilizing the whole defense establishment.
Having said all that, Franken should prove a formidable candidate in a Senate race against Norm Coleman, if for no other reason than Coleman — who recently threw his father, regularly cited by the Senator as "my personal hero" because the old man had fought at Normandy, overboard when Norm, Sr. was arrested for consorting with a prostitute in St. Paul — is a walking definition of the word "pusillanimous." But for Paul Wellstone's tragically premature death, Coleman would have long ago sunk into the private sector; today, he has all the sweaty, Willy Loman-esque hallmarks of a one-term Senator. Like GW Bush, he is a failure fallen temporarily on good times.
Easily one of the most interesting features of this match-up is the prospect that, if Franken defeats Coleman, he will be the fourth consecutive Jewish-American elected to this particular Senate seat. That's truly remarkable in a state where the Jewish population represents less than one-percent of the state's residents and a striking testimony to the the transformation of Minnesota, known as recently as the late 1940s as the one of the most anti-Semitic states in the Union. Although it is easy at times to feel as if everything in this country is going down hill, this is one change we can all feel good about, especially in light of the fall's election of Keith Ellison as the first Muslim member of Congress.
Franken's near-lachrymal regard for "our young men and women in uniform" is also deeply off-putting. Yes, indeed, we should provide our troops with the equipment they need to survive Bush's hellish war of choice, and we certainly, as a society, owe them the finest medical and psychiatric care possible when they return home, but ... if we are ever to escape the clutches of the military-industrial-Congressional complex that, like kudzu in a flower garden, is slowly choking the bloom of republican (that's with a small "r") virtues, we are going to have to return to the healthy skepticism of militarism and a standing army that marked our nation's entire history up until World War II. Enough with "Support the Troops." Let's start bringing them home and demobilizing the whole defense establishment.
Having said all that, Franken should prove a formidable candidate in a Senate race against Norm Coleman, if for no other reason than Coleman — who recently threw his father, regularly cited by the Senator as "my personal hero" because the old man had fought at Normandy, overboard when Norm, Sr. was arrested for consorting with a prostitute in St. Paul — is a walking definition of the word "pusillanimous." But for Paul Wellstone's tragically premature death, Coleman would have long ago sunk into the private sector; today, he has all the sweaty, Willy Loman-esque hallmarks of a one-term Senator. Like GW Bush, he is a failure fallen temporarily on good times.
Easily one of the most interesting features of this match-up is the prospect that, if Franken defeats Coleman, he will be the fourth consecutive Jewish-American elected to this particular Senate seat. That's truly remarkable in a state where the Jewish population represents less than one-percent of the state's residents and a striking testimony to the the transformation of Minnesota, known as recently as the late 1940s as the one of the most anti-Semitic states in the Union. Although it is easy at times to feel as if everything in this country is going down hill, this is one change we can all feel good about, especially in light of the fall's election of Keith Ellison as the first Muslim member of Congress.