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Al Franken (born May 21, 1951) is an American satirist, comedian, bestselling
author, and  radio host with a predominantly
liberalism|liberal point of view.  Franken was
half of the comedy duo "Franken & Tom Davis
(comedian)|Davis" which wrote for and performed
for NBC’s Saturday Night Live.  He is
considered to be one of the more popular liberal
commentators.

He is currently the host of Air America Radio's
flagship program, The Al Franken Show.

== Personal life ==
Franken was born in New York City into a Jewish
family, and grew up in St. Louis Park, Minnesota,
a suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota|Minneapolis. 
He graduated from The Blake School in 1969, where
he was on the school sport wrestling|wrestling
team (a skill he would use years later in tackling
a heckler
http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/newswire/news2004
/0104/012804-franken.htm), and Harvard University
in 1973.  

He and his wife, Franni Franken, have a son, Joe,
and daughter, Thomasin.  They currently reside in
New York City but are in the process of moving to
Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Al Franken is a distant cousin of Cable News
Network|CNN's Bob Franken.

== Career ==
Franken's writing and performing career began at
Dudley Riggs' Brave New Workshop in Minneapolis
where he worked with Tom Davis (the comedian, not
the politician).  He and Davis then found
themselves in "a life of near-total failure on the
fringes of show business in Los Angeles."fn|1

Franken and Davis were then recruited as two of
the original writers on Saturday Night Live
(1975-1980, 1985-1995). Franken was awarded three
Emmy Awards and seven Emmy nominations for his
television writing and production.  He created
characters such as self-help guru Stuart Smalley
and schticks such as proclaiming the 1980s to be
the "Al Franken Decade"fn|2. Franken was
associated with SNL for more than 15 years and in
2002 interviewed former Vice President of the
United States|Vice President Al Gore while in
character as Smalley. Franken and Davis wrote the
script to the 1986 comedy film One More Saturday
Night and they both had roles as rock singers in a
band called "Bad Mouth."

Franken's most notorious SNL sketch may have been
"A Limo for the Lamo," a commentary delivered by
Franken near the end of the 1979–1980|80
season.  Franken mocked the controversial
president of NBC, Fred Silverman, describing him
as "a total unequivocal failure" and displayed a
chart showing the poor ratings of NBC programs. 
According to some associates of the show,
Silverman's anger over the sketch prompted him to
abandon negotiations with the show's creator Lorne
Michaels and seek a different producer for the
sixth season of SNL.

Besides having written numerous books (including
Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other
Observations), Franken co-wrote (with his former
partner Tom Davis) the screenplay for The
Coneheads TV show.  He also wrote the original
screenplay and starred in the theatrical flop,
Stuart Saves His Family. He also co-wrote the hit
film When A Man Loves A Woman.  He co-created and
starred in the NBC sitcom LateLine
(sitcom)|LateLine, but low Nielsen Ratings|ratings
led to its cancellation halfway through the second
season, with only twelve of the nineteen episodes
airing.

In 2003, Franken served as a Fellow with Harvard's
Kennedy School of Government at the Shorenstein
Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy.
He also headlined two tours for the USO,
entertaining troops stationed in Iraq.

Since May 2005 he's been a contributing blogger at
The Huffington Post.

==Conflict with the Fox News Network==

In August 2003, Penguin Books published Franken's
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, subtitled
A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.  Fox News
sued, claiming that Franken infringement|infringed
its registered trademark rights in the phrase,
"Fair and Balanced."  Fox was unsuccessful, with a
federal judge finding the lawsuit to be "wholly
without merit."  The lawsuit focussed a great deal
of media attention upon Franken's book and greatly
enhanced its sales.  Reflecting later on the
lawsuit during an interview on the National Public
Radio program Fresh Air on September 3, 2003,
Franken said that Fox's case against him was
"literally laughed out of court."

See also: Great Liberal Backlash of 2003.

==Radio show==

On January 13, 2004, it was announced that Franken
would enter the radio business.  He signed a
one-year contract to become a talk show host for
Air America Radio's flagship program, The
O'Franken Factor with co-host Katherine Lanpher. 
The inaugural Broadcasting|broadcast kicked off
the network's launch at 12 Noon EST on March 31,
2004. Franken stated that the reason why he chose
the "O'Franken" name was "to annoy and to bait"
Bill O'Reilly to sue him again, to bring publicity
to the show. O'Reilly never did, so on July 12,
2004, the program was renamed The Al Franken Show.


Franken said that one of his goals was to "get
President George W. Bush|Bush unelected" and that
he might end the show if Bush lost the 2004
election. He decided in 2005, after Bush won
reelection, that he would keep doing the show for
at least two more years.

==Political aspirations==
Franken had been a strong supporter of United
States Democratic Party|Democratic United States
Senate|Senator Paul Wellstone, who was killed
shortly before the 2002 election in a plane crash.


Franken announced in November 2003 that he was
considering moving back to Minnesota, his home
state, in order to run for the Senate seat held by
Wellstone's successor Norm Coleman|Coleman in the
2008 election.  He has also said that he'd take
lessons from Democratic New York Senator Hillary
Clinton on how to sucessfully run for U.S. Senate.
On April 28, 2005, Salon.com reported that
Franken, who had previously promised that if he
was to run for office would move to Minnesota and
broadcast from the Twin Cities, was doing just
that.  "I can tell you honestly, I don't know if
I'm going to run, but I'm doing the stuff I need
to do, in order to do it," Franken said.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/04/28/frank
en/

==Books==
*Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them|Lies and
the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced
Look at the Right (Dutton Books, 2003) ISBN
0525947647
*Oh, the Things I Know!|Oh, the Things I Know! A
Guide to Success, or Failing That, Happiness
(Plume Books, 2003) ISBN 0452284503 
*Why Not Me? (Delacorte Press, 1999) a
parody-journal of the fictional “Franken
campaign” for President ISBN 038531809X 
*Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other
Observations (Delacorte Press, 1996) ISBN
0385314744 
*I'm Good Enough, I'm Smart Enough and Doggone It,
People Like Me|I'm Good Enough, I'm Smart Enough
and Doggone It, People Like Me: Daily Affirmations
By Stuart Smalley by Al Franken, Stuart Smalley
(Dell, 1992) ISBN 0440504708

==References==
*fnb|1 Hill, Doug and Weingrad, Jeff, Saturday
Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live
(Vintage Books, 1987) ISBN 0394750535
* fnb|2
http://snltranscripts.jt.org/79/79fupdate.phtml
Weekend Update with Jane Curtin & Bill Murray. 
Air date 1979-12-08.  Retrieved 2005-02-06.

==External links==

*http://www.al-franken.com Al Franken's Official
Website
*http://www.lyingliar.com/ Website criticising
Franken's Book, "Lies and the Lying Liars who tell
them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right"
*http://www.alfrankenweb.com Al Franken's Fanpage
*http://www.airamericaradio.com Al Franken's Radio
Show
*http://www.alfrankenshow.com Al Franken's Blog
*http://alfrankenweb.com/ Unofficial Al Franken
Fan Page
*http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/frankenabs1.
html Franken's Letters to John Ashcroft
*http://www.moveleft.com/moveleft_subject_submit_a
l_franken.html MoveLeft Media articles on Al
Franken
*NPR|National Public Radio September 3, 2003 Fresh
Air -
http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=14191
91 Interview with Franken
*http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/04/28/fran
ken/index.html "Senator Franken?" - interview with
David Paul Kuhn, Salon.com, April 28, 2005
*imdb name|id=0291253|name=Al Franken
*http://www.thenationaldebate.com/blog/archives/20
05/02/franken_explode_1.html Al Franken
interaction with Michael Medved (2005)
* http://aar-irc.blogspot.com/ Independent Air
America Radio IRC Chat channel (chat room) on
Undernet