Great job by Al Franken in responding to “Tea Party activists” protesting health care reform (video above).
Great job by Al Franken in responding to “Tea Party activists” protesting health care reform (video above).
The 2000 presidential election seemed to go on forever, but it was a short affair compared to the Minnesota Senate race this year. Like in 2000, the end came with a court decision–except this time the state’s Supreme Court’s decision prevailed, and the result was much fairer. Eight months after the election, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled in Franken’s favor and declared he was entitled to an election certificate. While some Republicans wanted him to fight on, Norm Coleman conceded.
Sunday was a good day for Al Franken as the state election board told CNN they were prepared to certify that Franken has won the recount for the Senate seat by a margin of 255 votes. Sunday was also a good day for Tim Kaine, who has been picked to head the DNC.
In addition to Norm Coleman, who is still expected to challenge the loss of his Senate seat in the courts, Sunday was also a bad day for Bill Richardson, who has withdrawn his nomination to be Secretary of Commerce as a grand jury investigates donors who won a lucrative state contract.
Back in 2000 Al Gore found out the hard way that he was fighting an uphill battle when George Bush was considered the unofficial winner and Gore had to play the role of challenger. Al Franken initially appeared to be in a similar situation in Minnesota but he ultimately managed to take a lead. While there is still fighting over absentee ballots, and other legal battles sound likely, Franken now has a lead of fifty votes.
Saturday Night Live opened for the second time this season with satire on the McCain/Palin campaign, this time concentrating on the dishonesty of John McCain’s ads (video above). Last week they had help from Tine Fey. The Politco reports that SNL alumni Al Franken, now a candidate for governor of Minnesota, had a part in the development of this skit. Being involved in a political campaign where Franken must disassociate himself from some of his previous skits, Franken has minimized his role:
“Al has been friends with Lorne Michaels for over 30 years, and Lorne thought Al’s personal experience was funny enough for a SNL skit,” Murray said in a statement, referring to the show’s executive producer and creator. “Sure, Al keeps in touch with old friends but unless the skit is about non-ferrous mining on Minnesota’s Iron Range, Al’s not in the business of developing skits anymore.”
A Franken campaign aide said the candidate had been taping an ad earlier in the week and had wondered out loud how McCain could include the disclaimer candidates are required to include in their commercials — “I’m John McCain, and I approved this message” — when his spots were so “over the top.” Later that day, Franken talked to Michaels about topics unrelated to the show and mentioned his thought but did not suggest a sketch.
However, Michaels talked to Meyers about Franken’s idea and the current writer, believing there was a funny sketch there, called his predecessor and they discussed it further.
Meyers then wrote it up.
Franken’s campaign sought to downplay the conversations, noting that the idea grew out of a discussion between old friends and that Franken had not been pitching an idea.
And a source close to the show said it was not uncommon for past “Saturday Night Live” stars to suggest ideas to current writers and cast members.
The roles of comedy writer and Senator are quite different, leading Franken to make this statement in his acceptance speech:
For 35 years I was a writer. I wrote a lot of jokes. Some of them weren’t funny. Some of them weren’t appropriate. Some of them were downright offensive. I understand that. And I understand that the people of Minnesota deserve a senator who won’t say things that will make you feel uncomfortable
Using criticism of a Republican candidate which might have come from a Democratic candidate for another office also plays into Republican criticism of NBC by conservatives who are unable to differentiate between a comedy show and news coverage. Lorne Michaels has contributed to both sides in this presidential race:
SNL executive producer and creator Lorne Michaels has a long history of donating to political candidates and various PACs on both sides of the aisle as well as independents.
Michaels has also been a longtime supporter of Sen. John McCain’s various political campaigns, donating $1,000 to him in the 2000 presidential primaries, $1,000 to his 2004 Senate reelection bid, a similar sum to his Straight Talk America PAC in 2006 and the maximum $2,300 to his presidential campaign this year.
When asked about his support for McCain last week by Politico, Michaels said he has also donated to Obama, although that donation has not been listed on the most recent available donor statements. Michaels also made a $2,300 donation to the Franken campaign in March.
While this not actually stated, I cannot help but wonder if Lorne Michaels is one of many former supporters of John McCain who have changed their view of him as a consequence of the dishonest campaign he has been running this year, as is appropriately satirized in this skit.
Sicko, Michael Moore’s new film on health care, has been shown at Cannes this week. From initial reports, it sounds like there will aspects of the film which please and displease most viewers. The attacks on heavy handed attempts to control health care decisions by HMO’s will find agreement among many liberals, as well as conservatives who may be unaware of the Republican push for establishing such a system. Moore’s love of the Canadian system will be opposed by conservatives, as well as many liberals.
The most controversial aspect of the movie, which is turning into a tremendous publicity stunt, has been going to Cuba. Moore’s original idea was to take the 9/11 workers to Guantanamo. where “US authorities claimed top medical services had been provided to the inmates.” Moore expected viewers to react by saying, “You are telling me that al-Qaeda are receiving better healthcare than those who suffered and died on 9/11.” When it turned out to be too difficult to get to Guantanamo, Moore went to Cuba instead, leading to investigation by the U.S. government.
Conservatives generally try to shout out any plans to make health care more affordable to businesses and individuals as “socialized medicine.” They are bound to try to blur the distinctions between Moore’s more radical opinions and those of most Democrats. As I previously discussed, none of the Democrats running for President actually support socialized medicine, but Dennis Kucinich comes by far the closest. Even Kucinich doesn’t go far enough for Moore, as he discussed in this interview in Time Magazine:
TIME: Of the declared presidential candidates, down to the Dennis Kucinich level, say, who do you think has the best health-care plan? Including Kucinich? We could include him.
Michael Moore: Then Kucinich, but he doesn’t go far enough. He supports what he’s calling a single-payer nonprofit plan, but from my read, it would still allow [private] entities to control things, as opposed to the government. What’s wrong with the government? The right wing and the G.O.P. have done a wonderful job brainwashing people that government doesn’t work, and then, as Al Franken says, they get elected and proceed to prove the point. [Laughs.]
What we really need is a system where neither big business or the government are making health care decisions. From what I have heard about the movie so far, it may be valuable in bringing more publicity to the failings in our health care system. There remains plenty of room for controversy over the best solutions, with virtually no Republicans, and even a minority of Democrats, likely to agree with Moore on this topic.
Update: One sign that this topic transcends much of the usual left vs. right divide comes from a review at Fox News which calls Sicko a “brilliant and uplifting new documentary” in which Moore shows “a new maturity.”
Update II: The official movie trailer.
The Huffington Post reports:
Air America Radio, in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings since October, will be rescued at the 11th hour by Manhattan real estate developer Stephen L. Green.
Al Franken, the best-known host of the liberal network, will announce his expected departure on his show later today, to explore a run for the U.S. Senate from Minnesota.
Green is the brother of Mark Green, the New York Democrat who served as the city’s public advocate in the 90s and ran for mayor against Michael Bloomberg in 2001.
As I’ve commented previously I don’t listen to Air America very often, preferring the more balanced information (and lack of commercials) from NPR, but I’m still happy to hear they will remain around.
There are a number of stories today about Air America. AP reports that it is close to being sold to an undisclosed buyer. The New York Times has a story on the business problems at Air America:
Some people at Air America assert that, under Mr. Glaser and the team he put in place, the network was top-heavy with management, inept at selling ads, unwilling to make program compromises that veered from the liberal message and overstaffed with more than 100 employees when two dozen would have sufficed.
“What they did for $45 million they could have done for $10 million,” said Sheldon Drobny, an investor with a contentious relationship with the network. Mr. Drobny and his wife, Anita, longtime Democratic activists, are credited with the idea for Air America.
The network has run through a stream of operational executives. Danny Goldberg, a music executive who served as chief for about a year before leaving in April 2006, said the problem was “a big gap between the ambitions of the company and the funding available to accomplish those ambitions.”
“There was no way to manage around that gap,” he said. “Either lower your expectations or raise more money. No one wanted to change the ambitions.”
Faced with constant money woes, the board considered a takeover by the Democracy Alliance, a loose group of moneyed progressives, including George Soros, who had pooled resources to support projects they considered worthy. But the group ultimately rejected the appeal, because “Air America needed to do certain things to make it a more attractive business,” Mr. Kreeger said.
Newsweek also outlines the poor management at Air America and quotes one source as believing that the poor management, and not the idea of liberal radio, was the problem:
As affiliates have begun pulling the plug on Air America programming, including recent announcements out of such mainstay markets as Boston and Madison, Wis., many critics are ringing the death knell of liberal talk radio. But some industry experts say that’s the wrong conclusion to draw. “This has nothing to do with the viability of liberal talk radio,” says Michael Harrison, publisher of the talk radio trade journal Talkers Magazine. “It has to do with them not running an effective business model and with people like Al Franken not living up to the hype. If they’d hired broadcasters instead of a bunch of comedians, they would have had a chance of succeeding.”
There has also been speculation that Al Franken might be leaving to run for the Senate against Norm Coleman in Minnesota.
It would be interesting to see how a liberal network does with better management. Liberal talk radio is at a disadvantage compared to conservative talk radio. Conservatives, holding views which are frequently counter to fact and having a mind set more in line with following authoritarian leadership, prefer having their own views be reinforced by conservative commentators which tell them what to think. Liberals are more likely to be interested in reliable non-biased information and many prefer a balanced source such as NPR over Air America.