Al Franken.

• Author: Thompson, Stephen
• Position: Views - Interview

Al Franken dabbled in political subject matter as a writer and performer during two lengthy stints on Saturday Night Live, as well as on his short-lived NBC sitcom, LateLine. He has also worked in film--most notably as co-writer and star of 1995's Stuart Saves His Family, a spin-off of the Stuart Smalley character he'd created for SNL. But today, Franken's politics overshadow his comedy at virtually every turn. Born in New York City, raised in a suburb of Minneapolis, and educated at Harvard, Franken has become a full-time political figure.

The transformation began in earnest with his 1996 book, Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot, followed by his 2003 work, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. Now Franken is one of the major players behind Air America Radio--the liberal talk-radio network introduced in March 2004 to counter rightwing domination of the medium. At fifty-four, he spends the bulk of his time touring, preparing, and performing for the sixty-seven-station network, on which he appears as co-host of The A1 Franken Show. But his goals are more ambitious still: He recently moved from New York back to Minnesota to prepare for a U.S. Senate run against Norm Coleman in 2008.

Franken recently spoke to The Progressive about his career evolution, the network's past and future, and the political pros and cons of a comedy background.

Q: What are you working on right now?

Al Franken: Really, Air America is my main focus. I'm doing fifteen hours a week on air, and that's pretty all consuming--you know, preparing for it, doing it. It's really building Air America that I'm focused on, and for me, that almost only means doing a good show. We go on the road and see the affiliates, also, being an ambassador of goodwill.

Q: How is Air America doing? In the beginning, the press was all about how it had gotten off to a rough start, but now it seems to be doing better.

Franken: Yeah, we shot ourselves in the foot right out of the gate. The guy who ran it at first misled pretty much everybody about how much capital we had. He said we had enough to go three years without making money, and we had enough to go three weeks. So in week four, we learned that we bounced a check or two, and that we'd lose our stations in Los Angeles and Chicago, which were our second and third largest markets. It was horrible, and everybody was counting us out, and you can imagine how attractive our network would be to radio stations when...