Nothing funny about Star Tribune's treatment of Franken
The Minneapolis Star Tribune closed the barn door a little last week.
On Thursday, the newspaper's editor Nancy Barnes distributed a newsroom memo announcing that the paper's columnists should refrain from political commentary until November 5. She thought it was best if the paper's cadre of opinion makers "refrain[ed] from partisan political commentary in their columns ... at least until after the election." And that columnists would "'stand down' on the kind of column that's an overtly partisan take."
I always thought columnists were paid to express their opinions and to share with readers unvarnished insights on the issues of the day, electoral politics being just about at the top of that list. But if that's how the editor of the Strib (as it is known locally) wanted to handle the home stretch, to go ultra-civil, than that's certainly her right.
What raised eyebrows in the land of Minnesota Nice was that Barnes' memo landed on desks (or in inboxes) the day after newspaper columnist Katherine Kersten uncorked a sidewinder that tagged Al Franken, running for the U.S. Senate in the state, as being anti-Christian, and specifically anti-Catholic.
Cherry-picking from his three-decade career as a comedy writer and satirist, Kersten highlighted a handful of cracks and claimed he was unfit for the Senate because he was a "slanderer of Christianity." ("Vulgar mockery of Christians: Is this what we want in a U.S. senator?" read the headline.)
For instance, Kersten was deeply offended by a skit idea for Saturday Night Live, which never aired, in which Franken suggested a series of dogs, played by cast members, confessing to a priest. (I'm Catholic, and just the premise of that skit made me laugh.)
In another book, Franken described greeting a New York audience with the words, "Isn't Cardinal O'Connor an asshole?" (Trust me, in New York in the 1990s, that was not as provocative a statement as it seems today; O'Connor was an extraordinarily political and, at times, divisive figure.)
Then, in a deceptive bit of wordcraft, Kersten wrote, "In today's surreal political climate, a guy who lobs insults like these has a shot at one the highest political offices in the land."
Note the verb tense: "lobs," as in the present tense. As in, Franken's still in the comedy business and looking for punch lines at the expense of Christians, and especially Catholics. (Franken's daughter quickly reminded readers in a Star Tribune online forum that her father had been married to a Catholic for 33 years.)
In a state where just 0.9 percent of the population is Jewish (like Franken), the implications of Kersten's column -- that Christian slanderer Franken might not be able to represent Minnesota's citizens -- was likely not lost on many readers. It was a loaded and wildly unfair accusation to make.
And yet, it was only after that vicious attack had been unfurled in the Star Tribune -- and unfurled during the closing weeks of an extremely tight senatorial race -- that the newspaper's editor decided it was time to muzzle any further campaign commentary from the paper's columnists.
Adding to the irony (or the double standard; take your pick) was the fact that Please, people, no partisanship memo was distributed the very same day the Star Tribune printed a front-page article about GOP operative Jeff Larson, who found himself at the center of the Sarah Palin shopping spree scandal. (It was Larson's credit card that got burned up by Neiman Marcus to the tune of $75,000, courtesy of the Palin camp.)
Larson just happens to be one of the closest and most-connected Minnesota political allies of Franken's Republican opponent, Sen. Norm Coleman. But rather than present the story as an embarrassment to Coleman, the Strib's article about Larson was a valentine, complete with "Clark Kent" in the headline.
As the local blog MNpublius noted:
It is an unbelievable puff piece. Here's some excerpts: "smart Clark Kent," "Superman," "low-profile guru," "entrepreneur," "just the guy who arranges the phone calls," "rising star," "visionary," "nothing mysterious about him," "practices his Beltway-centered trade far outside the Beltway," "disciple of Ronald Reagan," "shoots straight," "honest," and "keeps his nose clean."
The story included only friendly quotes from Republicans, even though the operative has been tied to sleazy campaign practices in the past, including misleading robo-calls.
From the Strib:
He denies any involvement with the nationwide spate of "robo-calls" trashing Obama, although he acknowledges that FLS Connect is behind the live-operator calls Minnesota residents have received in the past week on behalf of Republican presidential candidate John McCain.
Larson denied any involvement in the robo-calls despite the fact he owns the company that been placing the robo-calls?
The role of the dailies
Even with their dwindling circulation, big-city newspapers can still exert tremendous influence during local election season, especially in a state like Minnesota that has just a handful of major newspapers. But are they being fair?
Blogger Matt Stoller recently made a compelling case that The Seattle Times had its thumb on the scale while covering the very close race between netroots candidate Darcy Burner and an established Republican Dave Reichert.
The same may be happening in Minnesota.
Like lots of major dailies, the Strib has been buffeted in recent years by staff cutbacks and accusations of a liberal bias. It seems that the effects of both are on display in the Franken/Coleman campaign.
Newsroom cutbacks make it more difficult to provide smart, in-depth election coverage. Perhaps more telling at the Strib, though, has been the long-running war conservatives have waged against the paper, led by bloggers such as Ed Morrissey, Hugh Hewitt, and those at Power Line.
Their relentless cries of liberal media bias appear to have paid off. As one Strib veteran put it last year:
The right-wing blog voices that were bashing the paper a couple of years ago, Hugh Hewitt and the rest, have gotten pretty much everything they wanted. They wanted to get rid of people like [editorial board members] Jim Boyd and Susan Albright and their editorial policy, and they've succeeded at that. Now there won't be editorials about the war and global warming; they'll write about local issues like zoning conflicts in Coon Rapids instead. They wanted the paper to hire a conservative columnist, and they got that. From here on out, it looks like the Strib becomes the conservative, suburbs-oriented paper.
Indeed, "The [editorial] page has shucked its rep as a lefty lightning rod," wrote David Brauer, a Strib-watcher at MinnPost.com. A recent Star Tribune editorial opposing the pro-labor Employee Free Choice Act signaled the sea change at the newspaper.
So did the paper's support for offshore drilling. That raised even more eyebrows because the Strib's parent, Avista Capital Partners, is heavily invested in offshore drilling, although the cheerleading drill-baby-drill editorial did not disclose that fact.
Also note that the newspaper's editorial page has not condemned the remarks of local Republican Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, who recently went on MSNBC and claimed she was concerned about Barack Obama's "anti-American views." The comments erupted into a campaign-changing controversy, with Bachmann's challenger banking nearly $1 million in donations that flooded into his coffers after Bachmann's outburst. The Strib's editorial page, though, has remained mum.
In fact, it has moved so far to the right that the debate online among Minnesota pol-watchers was whether the paper would endorse Coleman or independent candidate Dean Barkley. Franken, the conventional wisdom went, had little chance of landing the Trib nod. (And they were right; Coleman won the newspaper's endorsement.)
Unfortunately, that tilt seems to be spilling over into the Star Tribune's news coverage. There was the way the newspaper buried Hillary Clinton's recent visit on behalf of Franken on page B4 even though her rally appearance garnered huge local television coverage. The way it included a disparaging quote from Coleman's spokesperson in its article about Clinton's visit, yet when Rudy Giuliani recently came to town to rally support for Coleman, the Franken campaign was not quoted in that article.
And there was the way the daily recently published an anti-Franken letter to the editor that claimed he was not "good for the country" or good for Christians, and the letter writer lived in Tennessee. (Talk about casting a wide net from Minneapolis.)
The paper has also looked away from Coleman's woes. Over the summer, when it became known Coleman was renting an apartment in Washington, D.C. from Jeff Larson (the same guy from the Palin shopping spree story) and that Coleman's rent appeared to be well below market value, the Strib ran a front-page story about the apartment but never mentioned Larson's name or addressed the question of whether the rent represented a sweetheart deal. (Readers had to go to page B7 for a separate article that day to read those salient details.)
At the time, there were also questions about whether Coleman had paid his utility bills for the apartment or whether they had been comped by Larson. A Coleman campaign spokesman told reporters in August he would try to produce one of the bills to curious reporters who wanted to know if the bills were in the name of Larson or even his company. But three months later, no utility bill has been produced, and the Strib appears to have stopped asking.
Meanwhile, the paper pretty much ignored Coleman's embarrassing Suitgate when it popped up earlier this month. The story erupted when Harper's Ken Silverstein claimed that wealthy Coleman donor Nasser Kazeminy had, over the years, bought expensive suits for the politician at Neiman Marcus. (Again with the Neiman Marcus?) The campaign refused to respond to the report, and the story peaked when Coleman's spokesman appeared at a press conference and 12 times in three minutes refused to answer directly whether Kazeminy had ever purchased expensive suits for Coleman. The Washington Post quickly named the cringe-inducing back-and-forth with reporters "perhaps, the most awkward press conference in the history of politics."
Did the story border on the trivial? Sure. Was it the kind of story that can change a campaign? Absolutely. Polls since Suitgate broke have shown momentum moving in Franken's direction.
In fact, it quickly became a national story online and on cable TV, and one of the Strib's reporters was invited onto MSNBC to discuss the details and the campaign implications. The irony was the reporter had only mentioned the kerfuffle in two paragraphs at the very bottom on a campaign update. The Strib didn't really care about Suitgate.
To this day, those two paragraphs, 53 words in total, represents the Star Tribune's entire print news team coverage of that story -- an embarrassing tale that could cost Coleman his Senate seat.
Here's a decent article about Al from the Seattle Times. He's a decent, honest guy married to the same woman for over 30 years, loves this country, and loves comedy. Sounds ideal for the Senate to me!
You hardly ever hear about those people.
... and hey, maybe Senator Frankenstein could add some laughs to the Senate. Maybe then people might watch C-SPAN a little more often! lol
Someone who calls himself "Da Wuss" really shouldn't make fun of others' names.
We have Gov. Sarah Palin's clothes (a big deal to be sure), McCains lies about his injuries that prevent him from using a computer keyboard, and Obama being a socialist. Clearly the real story is Gov. Sarah Palin's clothes!
"But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society."
-- Barack Obama 2001 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iivL4c_3pck
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1152160/barack_obamas_redistribution_of_wealth.html http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1151942/barack_obama_on_redistribution_of_wealth.html?cat=9 You loose.
Yer boring, maxi-pad.
"Larson denied any involvement in the robo-calls despite the fact he owns the company that been placing the robo-calls?"
Um.....MaxDh,
Curious.... what say you about the painfully obvious display of "conflict of interest" with this one?
Is this no big deal as well in that glob of gray matter you call a brain?
And for the record..... the clothes bought for Sarah Palin are an issue... but not as big of one as the $21k she charged the people of Alaska to transport her kids (needlessly I might add) around the state...
You also seem to be willing to overlook the obvious as it pertains to Bush and McCain....
You complain about potential 'socialism' from Obama..... what do you call the $850 BILLION TAX PAYERS dollars given to the wealthy elite?
At least Obama wants to redistribute the wealth to everyone... not just the top 1% among us!
A decent article on Mr. Franken. Just wondering the timeline on his epiphany in political leanings. Must have been after the era of Fabus, Fulbright, Wallace, Maddox, etal and after Byrd's change of heart. Dates weren't mentioned in the article, so hard to tell.
Hey Eric - good reporting. I've been writing for awhile that Dems had better be prepared to run against the Strib. The paper has not only taken a hard turn to the right, but the quality of the writing and reporting is significantly degraded. For someone who was once a photographer there, it's hard to watch.
Great post, Eric. I'm Catholic, too, and Franken certainly does not offend me. When the police, FBI, and every other law enforcement agency in Minnesota went after the Republican convention protestors, I went to the Strib online, hoping to get more of the story. The paper covered the arrests as if they were a couple of fender benders in a church parking lot. The netroots and the alternative papers covered that story; the Strib did not. The paper has turned the corner--into weeniedom.
I think Franken's comedy act sucks to high heaven. I think his radio show sucked even worse. That being said, I think he could do just as good a job as senator as anyone else. Therefore, more power to him! I would vote for him for the simple fact that he has been married 30+ years to the same woman. That is an accomplishment in this day in age.
Come on Minnesota, give Al a chance. You are the state that elected Jesse "the Body," Ventura.
One of the great lines ever in an action flick, "You're bleeding, man"
"I ain't got time to bleed."
This makes sense. Righties think Ann Coulter is funny. Their ability to evaluate comedic acumen is seriously in doubt.
Franken is brilliantly funny and a great American. I miss his radio show. I pulling for him.
I'm a righty and I think Ann Coulter is funny. I also think Al Franken is funny. The two of them are my favorite political comedians. I think it's close-minded to assert that someone isn't funny just because you don't agree with their political views.
I also think it's racist to choose a user name like yours but I'll bet you think it's funny.
The racist call, you got any reason for it, or is that your favorite brand of throwing jello?
He has a funny streak at times, sometimes way over the top. That's why I think he needs to be on the radio (or TV) rather than in the Senate. Will Rogers had a greater impact on politics working in the private sector than he ever would have had as a politican.
Franken is an evil and and petty individual, who has attacked people of faith for years. Now, he is in a position where he actually has to be accountable for the things he has said and done over the years. Here is a man who cries about a lack of acceptance, yet shows none of that tolerance or acceptance for people of faith. I dont care how long he has been married, or to whom. He has to live with his words, and it is fair game to remind voters of what he has said.
Oh brother. He has poked fun for years at religiosity. His wife is a practicing Catholic, and he has attended Mass with her and spoken reverently of the experience. You're welcome to your opinion, of course, but that's all it is.
I understand what you are saying about being held accountable, 'Pointofview'. Franken is kind of like the liberal version of Schwarzenneggar whereas he wants everybody to forget his entertainment career and take him seriously now. I think Franken will do ok though. Besides, Catholics are very easy to make fun of, as are Jews and Muslims. :)
P.S. I have heard Franken poke fun at Jews and he IS a Jew, right? I think it is all in comedy and he isn't trying to hurt anyone.
Neiman? Marcus?
From the looks of it, that's about the extent of the republicans dedication to religious tolerance. For most of them, those are the only Jews they know.
If you you could find one instance where he has attacked "people of faith" you may have a point. But you will not find one. Al Franken was a comedy writer for many years. Of course he made fun of religion, but he never "attacked people of faith". Some "Christians" have the thinnest skin. I wonder why that is?
Christians are so unsure of their faith that they think that even the hint that someone may disagree with them could send their children directly into the clutches of atheists.
"Christians are so unsure of their faith"
Those would be the "Christianists" - true Christians are secure in their faith and are able to laugh at the foibles of their less secure brothers and sisters (who are too insecure in their faith to laugh at themselves.)
Blow it out your a**, POV. The GOP has created an industry of attacking men and women of great faith and character. I'm in no mood to listen to some internet punk who has neither, patience for or acceptance of, those who disagree with his ultra-conservative ideology. Stop being such a sniveling hypocrite, lest we remind you of all the horrible lies and smears inflicted on the body politic by the right-wing, authoritarian hit-men and women.
You talk so tough for an anonymous intellectual wannabe, Your anger gives me a good chuckle to start my day. We are not talking ultra-conservative here, we are talking mainstream America, and most of main stream America believes in God and goes to church. If dimwits like your self and Franken can understand that, then so be it.
Hmm. Read much? Franken's wife is a Catholic and he has spoken movingly about attending Mass. "Churchianity" is just as wrong-headed as in Jesus' day. Religionists always want to put themselves in the position to separate the sheep from the goats, but that's above their pay grade... You don't get to decide who is or isn't spiritual.
You must not read much. I never claimed to decide who is spiritual and who is not. It is only people like you on the left who claim to have that kind of insight. All I said was Fraken can not attack those of faith for years, as he has done, and then deny any responsibility. Your attitude to those of faith shows the lack of morals and values that have some to be the calling card of the left. Your disdain of those who do not share your view is matched only by your arrogance.
Nice. I am a Christian. Your attitude to those of faith shows the lack of humility that are the calling card of the right. Your disdain of those who do not share your view is matched only by your arrogance.
Any time I can help ya let me know. I guess you cannot come up with your own response, but never fear, I am here to help.
The worst words in the English language: I'm Pointy view, and I'm here to help.
"You talk so tough for an anonymous intellectual wannablah...blah, blah blah..."
In other words, "You're right, Roundhouse, I am a sniveling hypocrite. You cut through my bs straw man argument , again. I have no way of defending my assertion that Al Franken hates Christians beyond my own personal persecution complex And you're correct also that the GOP are disgusting and false in their attacks against steadfast patriotic liberal Americans because we have no accomplishments to speak of, other than concentrating wealth at the top and ruining the good name of our military. So, I'm going to doge the facts and attempt to project my own delusions of adequacy onto you"
Accountability, It's not just for Democrats anymore!
I agree completely. Many people will lose their seats this year, and that is fine. Many conservatives who dropped the ball will be replaced. My point is simply that Franken is accountable as well. Live by the sord, die by the sord.
sword. If someone lobs barbs, they usually get poked back. Norm Coleman has voted every time with Bush to create this economic chaos. Now, just like Gordon Smith here, he tries to pretend he's a "moderate."
Since when have Democrats ever been accountable. It's their main agenda to AVOID accountability.
Project much?
It was just noted on the local news tonight that the Minneapolis Star Tribune is endorsing Norm Coleman over Al Franken in tomorrow's edition. Nobody can remember the last time the Strib has endorsed any republican for the Senate.
The Strib has a fairly liberal editorial board, though they're pretty even-handed in their news coverage and give plenty of editorial space to conservatives. Still, the local wingnuts have frequently been known to refer to the paper as the Minneapolis Star and Sickle.
Coleman and his surrogates have conducted a horribly deceitful and slimy campaign, a fact that has been noted by the Strib. Reaction to the low levels to which they've sunk is the main reason Franken's led in the more recent polls. This endorsement is a shocker.
I like Al's schtick alright and his Air America show was decent listening; he had great guests. However, a few of his colleagues at AA thought he was inauthentic, sort of a big timer. Mike Malloy comes to mind when I think of Al's detractors. Yeah, I know, Malloy is a firebrand anyway.
What's your impression of Franken's candidacy?
Mike Malloy is almost a leftwiing Michael Savage.
Probably as emotional as anybody on the radio. He's usually worth a listen. Can't really recomend Mikey for any impressionable audience.
With the exception that Malloy isn't an authoritarian thug. Malloy is an angry populist, a classic liberal in the labor movement mold, a guy who doesn't suffer well the antics of elitist a-holes like Savage and Boortz.
Malloy isn't as deceitful as his right-wing counterparts, but his brand of rage-inflected snark and sarcasm does our cause little good. I tend to turn him off. I certainly wouldn't give his opinion of Franken much thought.
I don't know. I think in broad terms he's a good model for how not to be a pushover. I don't find his anger and snark to be as detrimental as I do his violent rhetoric. As the work of MLK proves, violence is the opposite of power
However, anger in controlled bursts, has actually been shown to focus the mind and foster original thought.
The current Star Tribune is nothing like the one that earned its reputation as being very liberal. This is a completely different product after they were bought out a few years ago. I don't even recognize it as the same paper other than the name.
The old paper would have never endorsed Coleman in a million years.
Although I will say that the poll results they published a few weeks ago showing Franken with a 9 or 10 point lead over Coleman could pass as comedy. That read like the old paper.
The article on Franken which Eric Boehlert writes about is pretty bad--I mean badly thought out. I'm a big fan of anyone who stands up to right wing radio so I'm biased, but this is a third string attempt at a hatchet job. Besides, why not Al Franken? He's good enough to be the head writer on a hugely successful TV show and write best-selling books; smart enough to have graduated cum laude from Harvard; and heck people liked him enough to give him the Democratic Party's backing for Senate.
----------------------------------
I get it -- Al Franken is a serious senatorial candidate despite his penchant for the pornographic.---Katherine Kersten
>>> Porno? Like he's trying to get people all worked up? 'Graphic', as in mostly visual and realistic or dramatic, as opposed to conceptual and comedic? I don't think so.
-----------------------------------
He's aimed some of his most offensive material at religious believers, particularly Christians.
Why hasn't this been aired in public?---KK
>>>I don't remember his work that way, but regardless, most of his work has been aired on TV to tens of millions over many years. People know his work already.
--------------------------------------
Meanwhile, Franken gets a pass for making a joke of the life and death of Jesus Christ.
Franken finds Christ's crucifixion to be a barrel of laughs. For example, in his 1999 book, "Why Not Me?" he wrote about his discovery -- as a fictional former president -- of "the complete skeleton of Jesus Christ still nailed to the cross" during an archeological dig. At the Franken Presidential Library gift shop, visitors can buy "small pieces of Jesus' skeleton.""We would like to display Jesus' skeleton at some future point," Franken went on. "It's merely a matter of designing and building an exhibition space ... . Until then he's very comfortable in a box down in our basement near the geothermal power station."
Very funny. Anybody want to try a joke like that about Mohammed?---KK
>>>First, you'd have to have read the book to get a feeling as to how bad his taste actually was or wasn't. I'm guessing not as bad as Katherine Kersten wants us to believe from her summary here. ....... Second, he WAS a professional comedian. We evaluate comedians intentions with the knowledge that they are paid to amuse us. As a Senator it's very likely his humor will be constrained. ........ Third, relic sales, including tiny bits of bones of saints and the like, is an age old trade both over and under the table. ........ Fourth, he's not a Muslim. If he was then her implied criticism of him going easier on Muslims would make sense (if he has). Similar criticism might make sense if he avoided making fun of religious figures which are sacred to Jews, but not Christians, all through his comedy career. But she doesn't say this, and I don't know myself. Anyway all the Jewish holy figures are also Christian ones so he wouldn't have had much of a chance to prove his fairness in this regard.
---------------------------------------------
Franken also wrote a Saturday Night Live monologue for Jesus Christ that appeared in a magazine. After poking fun at Christians' Belief that Jesus was both God and man, he had Christ speculate on having the hots for Mary Magdalene:
"If Mary Magdalene looked like Barbara Hershey, I might have thought twice about this celibacy thing. I mean, the real Mary Magdalene was about four foot two, 135 pounds. And with bad teeth yet."---KK
>>>We don't know what any of them looked like, so obviously he's creating an artificial situation to find humor in. ....... As to the dual nature of Jesus, it's obviously something a non-Christian would find peculiar on the face of it. But to say it was in bad taste you'd actually have to see the skit, which I didn't see or don't remember. Also whether or not it actually was funny is a factor. You can get away with a lot more---even from Christians---if it's indeed funny. If Franken was much less funny than he was, the thrust of Kerstens's article might have more credibility. That is to say, if he wrote irreligious dramas, books or articles as opposed to comedic skits etc. then his motives would have been plain. But he didn't. He made comments during his comedy career (on all manner of things unrelated to religion as well) to amuse people and he was very successful.
----------------------------------------------
In Franken's world, God has a mouth as foul as Franken's. In one book, he has God refer to books about liberal media bias as "total bulls**t---KK
>>> God is all knowing.
----------------------------------------------
Later, he describes God as having his head "up his a$$."---KK
>>>I'll bet you could count on the fingers of one hand all the times he's said that on the stump.
----------------------------------------------
But Franken saves his sharpest barbs for those weirdos, Catholics.
In 2006, he and a guest on his Air America radio show joked about Eucharistic communion wafers -- sacred to Catholics as the body of Christ -- and compared them to chips and guacamole. In "Dog Confessional," a proposed sketch for Saturday Night Live, Franken depicted "a series of dogs, played by cast members, confessing to a priest," according to the Washington Post. NBC refused to air it.---KK
>>> Again you'd have to have seen it to judge. Certainly Kerstens's description is inadequate so she's just bad at this kind of an assignment, or the skit actually was harmless, or both.
-----------------------------------------------
In another book, Franken described greeting a New York audience with the words, "Isn't Cardinal O'Connor an a**hole?"---KK
>>>You can call someone a name and not intend to insult their religion even if it's a high ranking cleric.
--------------------------------------------------
Franken's campaign did not return a phone call seeking comment.---KK
>>>Again, he graduated Harvard cum laude.
--------------------------------------------------
If a 12-year-old kid spouted this stuff in a schoolyard, he'd be hauled to the principal's office and told to grow up. But in today's surreal political climate, a guy who lobs insults like these has a shot at one the highest political offices in the land.---KK
>>> As Boehlert notes, Franken isn't engaged in the comedy business any more.
----------------------------------------------------
We're used to slanderers of Christianity getting government arts grants. But Franken wants more. He's asking us to send him to what's been called "the most exclusive club in the world" -- and to serve us there until 2014.---KK
>>> The GOP has demeaned the status of the US government so badly that anything would be an improvement over one of them.
----------------------------------------------------
Our nation's founders wanted the Senate -- as Congress' upper house -- to balance with a sober, long-term perspective the much more numerous House of Representatives, whose members serve only two-year terms and are supposed to reflect the people's shifting sentiments. Senators serve six-year terms, and were intended to be the nation's wisest councilors -- equipped to discern and protect the country's broad, enduring interests.
"The use of the Senate," explained James Madison in 1787, "is to consist in proceeding with more coolness, with more system, and with more wisdom, than the popular branch."---KK
>>>Right, and they took care of all that already with the six year term. So now all we have to do is vote, and then that will be that. ........ Or is she advocating some kind of wisdom test for the Senate? Or a religious requirement?
-----------------------------------------------------
Having said all that, if I thought Franken or any other politician was indeed anti-Christian, I personally would not want him or her to be associated with the Democratic Party. They (we) are in the big majority here and we don't want to offend them, if for no other reason than it's very bad politics.
OK Gentlemen, after Norm kicks Al in the groin, NO MORE kicks to the groin. Then the fight will begin.
Regarding the Tennessee leter-writer that was published by the Strib, could this be the same Brian MacDonald of Murfreesboro, TN that puts in several hours a day as a volunteer editor at the far-right "Conservapedia"? Check out this LA Times article.
I read that column. The writer is just a GOP thug who desperately wants to reelect Coleman. Regurgitating decades-old jokes is not germane to the 2008 campaign.
It's called satire. Get over it. If Dennis Miller was running instead of Franken, she would be slobbering with glee over his old jokes.
Who?
what are you smoking? wasn't it sarah bernhardt who attacked palin for being christian.
Was it? Anyother unsupported accusations you'd care to throw out?
Actually, guys, I wrote an entire column about Norm Coleman (no relation) and Suitgate that appeared in the Strib on Oct. 13.
Money shot: The Senator told me: "No one has EVER bought me suits, past or present."
You Could Look it Up!
Nick Coleman
Let's not dwell on Norm's apartment, suits, etc. Those aren't the real issues. They are only a distraction.
Let's talk about how Norm was Bush's toady for 4+ years and then had one of his "pragmatic" transformations when the election was on the horizon. Norm has no convictions and no backbone.
Al will follow Paul Wellstone's path and will be one of the strongest voices in Congress. We need someone like that after 8 years of Bush destroying the Republic.
Here's the letter to editor I sent the Strib in response to their endorsement of Coleman:
I strongly disagree with your endorsement of Norm Coleman for Senate.
You commend Coleman for supporting the bailout package while Franken rejected it. Many respected economists have stated that the plan passed by Congress was not well thought out. (Let's remember how often Bush has been wrong with other "urgent" proposals.) This bill should not have been passed without more thorough examination. Al had the smarts--and courage--to question the Administration's proposal.
Most of the rest of your endorsement is based on Norm's recent conversion to an "independent, pragmatic" legislator. I say it's too little, too late. And, based on Norm's many conversions over the years, I question how we can trust the latest incarnation is the real Norm and how long it will last.
But, more than anything else, I cannot support Norm because he has not stood up to the most dangerous of all threats to our country: the current Administration's disregard for the Constitution. Norm (still) has not stood up to say the war in Iraq is wrong. Norm did not speak up against illegal transfer of suspects to be tortured in secret prisons overseas. Norm has not spoken up against the (ongoing) torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay--and holding them without charges and without a right to a trial. Norm has not stood up to say that Harriet Miers and Karl Rove should be held in contempt of Congress for ignoring Congressional subpoenas. Norm has not stood up to say that the Justice Department must not be used as a political tool of the Administration. Norm has not stood up against Bush's use of the signing statement to say that the President can unilaterally rewrite the laws of the land. Norm has not stood up to say the Executive Branch must be accountable for its illegal eavesdropping on U.S. citizens and for putting honest citizens who question their policies onto terrorist watch lists.
Norm has not spoken up for me and the other citizens who have watched the erosion of the Constitution under the current Administration--the Administration which Norm endorsed so strongly until shortly before the current election season. I know Al Franken, like Paul Wellstone, will speak up for what is right no matter how unpopular that view might be. We need Al, a man of conviction, to be our voice in Washington.
Ben Horn, Business Owner, Minneapolis
Good letter. Benjamin, I share your frustration although our paper (Oregonian) has printed letters and one opinion piece from my husband and me. They look for a "diversity of opinion" which means that many well thought out and reasoned letters get tossed.
The STRIB routinely denies my opinion and editorial pieces with no response or reasoning. My submissions are always to the point and I hope worthy of print. The right wing takeover may offer a partial explanation.
As a Minnesotan, I've had to deal with all these bs ads on the air against Al. It is so obvious to me that Norm Coleman has nothing at all to say and will attack as much as he can while at the same time saying he's now running a positive campaign. Now that the StarTrib has done this which I thought was the more "liberal" of the 2 papers in the cities (the other being the St. Paul Pioneer Press) it's clear that the median in the Twin Cities is against Franken (yes, KSTP5 i'm talking about you). Al offers real solutions not just dumb comedy bits which what the Coleman campaign is trying to portray them as doing. Oh well, come election day the truth will come through.
These days, I'm short of cash, thanks to Bush-McCainonomics. But good news - it looks to me as if I could get paid by the Tribune and many other media outlets to make up any sort of lies about Democrats, and never be held accountable for them. Should I go for it?