Al Franken and Arianna Huffington, Comedy Central correspondents, find love and (a few) laughs in San Diego
Midway through the Republican convention, a theme is emerging and, correct me if I'm wrong, that theme is, "Republicans are fun!" (or, as Republican hepcat/Beach Boy Mike Love sings, "Fun, fun, fun").
There is almost too much fun going on in San Diego. The Big Top, or Freak Show, or whatever that colorful circus metaphor they're using is, contains all kinds of people: motorcycle gangs, senators who sing Oak Ridge Boys' tunes, congressmen who once wore shag fur vests and used to be married to Cher, ex-football stars, action movie stars, a Speaker of the House who writes dirty historical novels on the side. Oh yes, and women, lots of smart, hip, moderate, pro-choice women, who are team players, just like the football stars, because they can totally jettison their self respect and principles for partisan politics. Yes, the convention is showing America -- or, more specifically, liberal democrat America -- that Republicans are f-u-n people and their party has not at all been co opted by right wing, gun-toting, Jew-baiting, black-hating, dead fetus-waving, nutcase evangelical religious fanatics. Yessiree, Bob! Those GOP-sters are a caution!
Alas, there is one person who does not look like he's having fun in San Diego: Al Franken. The "Saturday Night Live" star and author of the bestseller "Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations" is on assignment for Comedy Central, the all-comedy cable network, as a floor reporter for the network's "Indecision '96" convention coverage (his short reports air on the half-hour during regular prime time programming).
Now, somebody at Comedy Central must have thought it would be a scream to send Al Franken -- liberal, Democrat, East Coast showbiz personality, Jew -- into the lion's den and have him interview all the people he trashed in his book. Fortunately, someone else at Comedy Central decided to send GOP Ambassadress of Fun, Arianna Huffington, into the trenches to cover Franken's back. And, boy, has he needed her. Any minute now, the network is going to cut away to the convention and Huffington will be grimly hoisting a beaten and bloodied Franken onto her back and slogging him out of hostile fire. If he makes it through Thursday without being lynched, it will be a miracle.
Franken's assignment is to stick his microphone into the faces of Republican pols and ask them things no straight media would. It sounds great in theory but in practice it has been painful to watch. Monday, Franken cornered Pennsylvania senator and former presidential candidate Arlen Specter and tried to bond with him, Jew to Jew, in this sea of Christian Coalition-ness, asking him things like, "The first black to be elected president will have to be a four-star general. What will it take for a Jew to be elected president?" But Specter is a politician first and everything else second and artfully dodged Franken's attempts to address anti-Semitism within the party.
Franken had a sort of heroic moment Monday when he stalked Pat Robertson across the convention floor, whispering to the camera, "He's a nut," then stuck his mike out and asked Robertson about his statement that lesbians were leading the pro-choice movement because they were jealous of "feminine" women. Franken was shouldered aside by a Man in Black. Tuesday, Franken asked former GOP dirty trickster Ed Rollins point blank what it feels like to be "a sleazy liar" and Rollins shot back, "What's it like to be a liberal Democrat comedian pretending to be a journalist?" By the time a Newt-infatuated delegate from Indiana named Dee Dee sneered into his face, "What do you want?," you could tell the fight had gone out of Franken, and Huffington had to move in quickly to finish the interview. That same night, Franken was seen tooting a kazoo and shouting, "Whoopee! I'm having so much fun!"
Huffington (Franken repeatedly refers to her as "the beautiful and evil Arianna") is, of course, faring much better. These are her people. And the camera loves her, despite her fumbling interviews. She's ditched the bottle-blond Junior League 'do she sported throughout what's-his-name's California senate campaign in favor of a short, career gal cut done in a wacky shade of red. Even though politically she is possibly the scariest woman on the planet, she has that adorable accent that makes you think of hotcakes and Arnold the Pig. Dahling, I love you but give me Pennsylvania Avenue!
But back to Franken. Why is he flopping? OK, it probably sounded like a cool idea, to have somebody tell these insufferable bastards where to get off. But sending a comedian into the GOP's turf during its convention to do battle with the zombies is an exercise in futility. It carries on the network's dismal tradition of failed political humor, from its puerile State of the Union Address specials, which feature Dennis Miller and other comics ragging on the president, Beavis and Butt-head style to the Comedy Central flagship, "Politically Incorrect."
"Politically Incorrect," which was snapped up by ABC and will begin airing after "Nightline" in January, features host Bill Maher, a Miller smarty-pants type, presiding over a panel of at-odds politicians, pundits, celebrities and culture critics. "PI" amounts to people trashing each other in glib soundbites and one liners while Maher grinds out tortured double-entendres and the audience howls. The philosophy of "PI" is, as Maher said Monday in a special one-hour convention edition, that democracy gives us (or, at least, gives comedians) the right to provide a system of "ego checks and balances." Maher, like Miller, disses Clinton, Dole and Perot equally, which is to say, ineffectually. "PI" feeds on the national climate of dangerous cynicism. OK, Professor Maher, if we take your "All politicians are bozos" mantra to its logical extreme, what do we get? Militias? "PI" is bad politics and bad comedy. It's what we'd have if comedy clubs ruled the world.
The other irritating thing about "PI" -- which puts Franken and Huffington into bed together for a cute skit called "Strange Bedfellows" -- is the locker room chumminess of it all. On "PI" Monday, Republican senator and abortion foe Orrin Hatch revealed how he's best buds with Ted Kennedy. In his book, Franken goes on at length about how much fun Huffington is. In her keynote address Tuesday, pro-choice moderate New York Rep. Susan Molinari put a smiley face of feminism on the most savagely conservative and anti-choice convention ever. It's all an act, this fever-pitched political stuff, and everybody goes out to dinner and has a laugh afterwards. But somebody forgot to tell that to, say, the anti-choice zealots shooting up abortion clinics.
The best political satire -- from Mort Sahl to Richard Pryor to Harry Shearer -- takes no prisoners (on "PI" Monday, Shearer was depressingly tame). You never heard Pryor say, "Gee, despite our differences, I used to go over and play chess with George Wallace every Tuesday afternoon."
If you want politics that satirizes itself, tune into "GOP-TV," the Republicans' own coverage of the convention, which is airing at 7 a.m. on the USA network and at 6 p.m. on the Family Channel. An alternative to the "biased" coverage of ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN and CSpan, "GOP-TV" is a flat-out infomercial for the Republican party. "GOP-TV" looks as much like a real news show as those Joan Lunden news-flash commercials for hand cream. (Of course, they had to stop running those commercials because people thought they were real news flashes.)
Staffed by anchorbots in an array of lifelike skin tones, "GOP-TV" keeps you up to date on happenings at this "unconventional convention" (as they insist on calling it). Filled with rah-rah segments on the incredibly diverse sea of humanity that is the Republican party, "GOP-TV" makes NBC's Olympic coverage look like pirate signals from Castro's Cuba. That the Republicans see nothing wrong with running a scam like "GOP-TV" is hilarious in itself. That the whole thing looks like a Big Brother vision of iron-fisted repression and conformity is political satire of the highest order. It would be funny, it it weren't so terrifying.