Al Franken was in Madison Tuesday for a live broadcast of the critically acclaimed 'The Al Franken Show.' A capacity crowd greeted the former Saturday Night Live writer and political satirist at The Barrymore Theater, 2090 Atwood Ave. Franken's guests included Mayor Dave Cieslewicz and governor Jim Doyle, who spoke over the phone from New York. The Daily Cardinal sat down with Franken before the show to talk about what's wrong with America and his view from the left.
Daily Cardinal: Are the Republicans really that bad? Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, and the party was founded in Wisconsin. Are they beyond help?
Al Franken: Well, no, but what the Republican Party has become is very bad. If you look at the leadership in the administration and in Congress, it's rife with corruption and you can't trust anything they say. There is something new every day. They are buying news in Iraq, buying news here, breaking campaign finance rules, etc. The war is being waged poorly, and there is a large amount of hubris. There is corruption in contracts. People are being tortured, and by allowing looting in the beginning of the war, the continued chaos is only fueling the insurgency and killing our guys. And that's just Iraq. If you look at what they've done environmentally, their energy policies, tax policies, health care policies and education. One after the other they're just lacking.
DC: How do you feel about people that might categorize you with the likes of Bill O'Reilly, except that you're spouting liberalism instead and not getting down to the bottom line?
AF: I think people who say that probably haven't listened to my show. I'm not the mirror image of those guys. I tell the truth. People who listen to my show know that I do something different.
DC: What about radio allows you to get your message across effectively, as opposed to going on television?
AF: First of all, I don't know where I would end up on TV. For some reason, they readily give conservatives their own shows, but they don't do that for liberals. Twenty-two percent of Americans in a Gallup poll said they get the majority of their news from talk radio. I decided that someone had to do this. We had totally ceded this terrain to conservatives, and it was time someone went out there and did battle with them.
DC: What do you think of the long-term strategy for Iraq that the White House has made public? People can be quick to criticize but then claim that they don't have the answers either. Where do you fall in this?
AF: I don't feel like I have the answers. I read Wes Clark's op-ed in the Times today and he had some good things to say. He talked about enforcing the ban on militias, sealing off the Iranian and Syrian borders or at least tightening security and stopping people from coming over. Iran is the real victor of the war. They are getting a freebie and expanding their influence. He did a good job in the Balkans, I thought. He didn't lose one guy in a combat situation. They had a lot more troops per person in that situation, and that was one of the main problems we had when we went into Iraq.
DC: Will you be running for the United States Senate in 2008?
AF: I haven't decided yet. If I did, I would run in Minnesota.
DC: You've been called a communist, unpatriotic and a threat to national security. Have you been called anything else?
AF: Yeah a lot of anti-Semitic stuff, that's a good 20 percent.
DC: You've been a known Deadhead and even had Phil Lesh on your show. What kind of music have you been listening to lately?
AF: Well on my iPod, I have some Grateful Dead, of course, and some Guster that my son gave to me. REM and Bruce Springsteen. You know, the classics.
