Al Franken gets serious.

• Author: Conniff, Ruth
• Position: Political Eye

Among the most pleasant tasks facing former comedian Al Franken, who announced on Valentine's Day that he is running for the late Paul Wellstone's Senate seat, is the prospect of spending the next year and a half explaining his jokes. As Franken hits the rubber chicken circuit to persuade Minnesota voters he's serious, his critics are digging through thousands of hours of tape from Saturday Night Live, and Air America, as well as Franken's books and speeches, to turn up all the outrageous and incendiary remarks Franken has made very publicly over the years.

They don't have to look very hard. Here are a few gems mined within the first few hours of Franken's campaign: a promotional video for his latest book on Amazon.com, in which Franken knees a "rightwing jerk" in the groin, after which a Franken fan hits the guy over the head with a bottle; a quote from the same book describing Franken's opponent, Senator Norm Coleman, as "one of the Administration's chief butt boys"; and a satirical 1976 remark that he was glad a gay man was murdered in a gay-bashing incident in Philadelphia.

Arianna Huffington, Franken's longtime friend and colleague, recently alluded to Franken's possible "macaca" troubles on her website, huffingtonpost.com, where Franken is a frequent contributor. "I wanted to come clean," she said jokingly, by releasing a video of herself and Franken covering the 1996 political conventions in their p.j.'s for a provocative SNL skit called "strange bedfellows."

Being in bed with Huffington is the least of it. The sheer volume of outrageous material on Franken could be a nightmare for any political candidate. Just look at the frenzy generated by John Kerry's remark about American kids who don't make the most of their education and "get stuck in Iraq." On the other hand, there is so much on Al Franken, it might inure voters to the whole topic of his comedic past.

One problem, as conservative columnist Amanda Carpenter tartly points out in a piece headlined "I Endorse Al Franken" in the rightwing magazine Human Events, is the sometimes puerile crudeness of Franken's jokes. Quoting Franken's "butt boy" quip, Carpenter writes, "What elegance. What wit. We can't wait for his campaign."

It's true that Franken doesn't sound exactly senatorial when he resorts to such language.

Human Events goes further, and connects this style to what conservatives see as Franken's crude leftwing politics. Making fun of his political action committee, Midwest...