Fraters Libertas

To the Spoiled Goes the Victory

Regarding Al Franken's nomination for a Grammy ... putting politics aside for a moment, Franken's broadcast is one of the worst radio shows I've ever heard (and I've heard them all). As an exercise in comedy it's an unqualified disaster. Given Franken's credentials in the business and the resources at his disposal, his end product is even more pathetic. A term that can also be used to describe his ratings in most markets.

Primary causes for Franken's failure include a complete lack of spontaneity in presentation, which may be the curse of having too many resources at your disposal. I suspect having a staff of writers for a daily radio show tends to make the host lazy and overly dependent on the thinking of others. And dependent on reading a prepared script, which doesn't work in the talk radio format. The Franken Show's goal, it's reason for existence - explicitly influencing voting behavior - is at odds with humor. His "hateful" rhetoric and level of hyperbole is far beyond anything you'd hear on Limbaugh, precisely because he's trying to convince people to vote certain way, at all costs. Whereas Limbaugh is first and foremost trying to put on an entertaining show. And Rush's show is more about conservative philosophy than electoral politics. His ability to influence political thinking, and behavior, is a byproduct of these other factors, not the prime directive handed down from management. It's a critical difference that Franken and the clever thinkers in charge of Radio Air America never understood.

This Amazon review of the Franken CD, from an individual predisposed to liking Franken, betrays the truth:

I was sorely disappointed in this collection. I'm not fortunate enough to live in an area where I have access to Air America Radio, so I bought this somewhat "sight unseen". But, having enjoyed Franken's political books, I decided to give this CD a try. It is, in short, not funny. Not at all. There's a few moments that gave me a brief smile, but nothing made me laugh out loud.

Franken certainly had a wealth of material to work with -- George W. Bush's lack of intelligence, lies about the war with Iraq, corporate greed, but that's the extent of the jokes: "ha ha, Bush is stupid", "ha ha, they lied about the war", "ha ha, corporations are greedy." This could have been much better. If this truly is "The Very Best of the O'Franken Factor", then I don't miss not being able to listen to it daily.

That review is a refreshing moment of clarity from a liberal. But the hyper partisan left, desperate for a response to conservative dominance of the radio medium, have blindly (deafly?) lauded Franken's performance. His receiving a Grammy nomination is evidence that whoever votes for these things are typical members of the entertainment elite, aka the hyper partisan left. (For more evidence of that, see Franken's 1997 Grammy win for a recording of "Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot" and his 2003 victory for "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.").

His winning an award for his awful performance on Radio Air America would be roughly equivalent to Michael Moore receiving an Oscar nomination for Fahrenheit 9-11. A message to the general public, and to history, that standards of excellence will be ignored when it comes to furthering this generation of artists' naive political interests and quest for power.