Senator Al Franken Returns to Comedic Roots With New Memoir

SNL alum talks about getting comfortable with being funny while holding a Senate seat.

May 30, 2017 11:20 am
Senator Al Franken during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Going Dark and data encryption in Washington, USA on July 8, 2015. (Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
Senator Al Franken during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Going Dark and data encryption in Washington, USA on July 8, 2015. (Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Senator Al Franken isn’t going back to i, but he’s doing comedy again.

The Minnesota Senator is getting in touch with his humorous side now that he’s in his second term. After narrowly winning his Senate seat (by 300 votes), Franken made a concerted effort to restrain himself during the first six years he was in office.

“It was very important to me to prove to the people of Minnesota that I was going to be a work horse and not a show horse,” the Senator told NPR.

Cover Photo for Al Franken Giant of the Senate
(Twelve)

Franken dances on that line with Al Franken: Giant of the Senate, his new book in which he talks about having “to learn a set of weird and occasionally sociopathic politician skills.”

In it, he compares campaigning to the training montage from Rocky but “instead of jumping rope, I’m eating hotdish at an assisted living facility.”

Franken admits his recent detente with this comedic past had a hand in those viral quips during tense exchanges with Neil Gorsuch and Betsy DeVos in their Senate confirmation hearings.

“Comedians kind of get to the point in an effective way,” he said to NPR. “That’s what comedy does.”

 

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