In the latest bit of trouble in Al Franken's quest to pick up a blue-state Senate seat for the Democrats, Franken has apologized for offending anybody with his 2000 comedy essay in Playboy.
The essay, entitled "Porn-O-Rama," was hammered by state Republicans, who charged that Franken had no respect for women or family values in light of the piece's series of dirty jokes. Their condemnations were then followed by Democrats, starting with Rep. Betty McCollum and then Sen. Amy Klobuchar and the state Planned Parenthood, many of whom saw it as a political liability that Franken would have to address.
Jesus, did they just fall off a fuckin' turnip truck or something? "Forcing" political opponents to apologize for ridiculous shit is the most time-tested of campaign gambits. They just want to see if you're enough of a pussy to do it. You remember Arnold Schwarzenegger ever apologizing for smoking a fattie in Pumping Iron, much less for making Junior or Twins? Me neither. He just gives people that "what the hell is wrong with you?" look and a shit-eating grin and moves on. He doesn't give a shit what ankle-biters think, nor should he -- nor should anyone.
Franken should just look 'em dead in the eye and say, "Seriously, you people are worked up about a satirical essay from eight years ago? You have a problem with it, Planned Parenthood? Fine, then endorse a Bush butt-boy like Norm Coleman. See what that gets you, see how fucking 'planned' your 'parenthood' is then. Any questions?"
Anything else is playing the other side's game. It takes time and momentum away that might be spent on chipping away at Coleman. That's all this is, and they bought into it anyway. Now that they know that Franken and Klobuchar and the rest of the MN Dem posse are straight-up suckas, they can set a couple interns loose in the SNL archives to see if Franken ever made fun of Ronald Reagan or something. Why not?
Way to circle the wagons, folks. These bozos, to paraphrase David Mamet, could fuck up a baked potato.
4 comments:
Schwarzenegger really should apologize for not dropping Kurt Waldheim as a friend when it was discovered that Waldheim was a Nazi war criminal.
Damn, I could not agree with you more. This stuff has gotten out of hand. Seems I remember McCain demanding that Senator Obama apologize for something early on in the campaigns. I don't recall Senator Obama bowing to McCain's wishes. Nor should he.
Actually, senator Obama has already had his Al Franken Moment courtesy of the Rev. Wright 'scandal.' Think about it. What did Wright say that was so scandalous? That god perhaps does not look favorably upon America because we fail, repeatedly, to live up to our own high-flown rhetoric? big deal. Right wing preachers say stuff like that everyday, except they say god hates us because we're heathens and homos.
I appreciated that Obama talked to the electorate about race as if we were actual adults, but to republicans the only thing that mattered was that they made him apologize for nothing. He got punked.
Maybe you should have googled 'Schwarzenegger apologizes' before posting this. Politicians are forced to apologize all the time, sometimes for things for which they owe no apology. Franken resisted apologizing for a long while, but he was forced to apologize by media coverage.
My favorite "Franken must apologize" remark came from the woman who asked how she was supposed to explain what Franken wrote to her 11-year-old daughter. I couldn't help but think, "you mean if your 11-year-old daughter is paging through back issues of Playboy, skips past the centerfold, the dirty jokes, and the advice on how to get a woman to agree to anal sex, and winds up reading Franken's essay?"
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