Al Franken, Giant of the Senate Page 18

  But I never get up right away. My first thought is usually, “Oh, I wish I could sleep some more.” Then it’s, “Man, I love to sleep.” Then I think, “These covers are really nice. And warm, too. I like how it’s cool on the underside of the pillow. That’s a nice contrast.”

  Then Franni will come in and say, “C’mon, you really have got to get up. I brought you some coffee.”

  Then I think, “Mmmm, coffee. How long can I wait to get up before the coffee gets cold?”

  Then Franni comes back and says, “C’mon, Al. Really. You’re being picked up in half an hour. And I brought you another cup of coffee.”

  And then I think, “Crap! I have to pee again.” So I get up and start to tell Franni about the dream I was having about trying to get someplace but not being able to find it.

  “Everyone has that dream,” Franni will say, handing me a towel. “Now get in the shower.”

  The shower usually wakes me. That and the coffee. And as I’m getting dressed in my suit, I start thinking to myself, “It’s great to be alive. Now I get to go to the Senate and fight for the uniquely hardworking people of Minnesota!”

  Chapter 27

  The Case of Perry Mason’s Lost Case

  In the Senate, the lion’s share of your work gets done through the committees on which you serve, and you get your committee assignments from your party leader. A couple of weeks before I was sworn in, I met with Harry Reid. Harry told me he thought I’d be great on the Judiciary Committee. I pointed out that there are a lot of lawyers in the U.S. Senate and that I wasn’t one of them.

  “That’s why I want you there, Al. We need members with that perspective on Judiciary. You’ll be great!”

  Of course, Harry was just B.S.ing. I was the last senator to arrive and he had a spot to fill on Judiciary.

  During my first week in the Senate, the Judiciary Committee began the confirmation hearings of Judge Sonia Sotomayor for her nomination to the Supreme Court. As the most junior of the twenty members of the committee, I sat at the end of the dais, next to Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. Arlen had presided over the most recent Supreme Court confirmation hearing, for Samuel Alito, as the Republican chairman of the committee. But as you will recall, when he switched parties and became a Democrat, the Democratic caucus had stripped Arlen of his seniority because he had made intemperate remarks about yours truly. It had to be more than a little galling for the former chairman of the committee to have to sit next to me.

  In an attempt to lighten what must have been an uncomfortable moment, I turned to Arlen when he took his place on the first day of the hearings and said, “I’m sorry you have to sit next to a pisher like me.” Pisher is Yiddish for pisher.

  Arlen smiled graciously, appreciative of my humility and my appeal to our kinship as members of a people traumatized by centuries of persecution. At least I think that was what was going on.

  I was the last member to make my opening ten-minute statement, becoming the first person in American history to have both participated in a Supreme Court confirmation hearing and also played a senator in a sketch about a Supreme Court confirmation hearing.*

  I used the time to develop my thesis that the Roberts Court was an activist Court, making one 5–4 pro-corporate ruling after another. That’s a pretty common critique now, but I was actually the first Judiciary member to make it. Court watchers were a little startled that this was coming from the Comedian.

  As Republican members spent hour upon hour obsessing over Sotomayor’s “wise Latina” remarks, Democrats picked up on my activist Court theme. When it was time for my thirty-minute round of questioning, I was set to bring it home.

  But I began by referring back to something Amy Klobuchar had asked Judge Sotomayor about earlier in the hearing, which is why Sotomayor had chosen to become a prosecutor. Sotomayor had answered that she had been inspired by watching Perry Mason as a kid.

  I, too, had watched a lot of Perry Mason as a kid. And so I started my questioning by asking her why she was inspired to become a prosecutor by a show in which the prosecutor, Hamilton Burger, lost every case.

  And she said, “Actually, Perry Mason lost one case.”

  Now, I wanted to get to my substantive points, so I said, “Well, we’ll return to that later,” not actually intending to do so. And I went into my questions.

  But with about two minutes left, I didn’t really have the time to develop my next line of questioning, so instead I just said, “Judge Sotomayor, you said that Perry Mason lost one case.”

  “Yes,” she responded.

  “Which case was that?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  I waited a beat and said, “Didn’t the White House prepare you?” Big laugh.

  My time had now run out, which meant the committee’s questioning was over, and the senators on the committee went off to a separate room to receive a classified members-only briefing on the nominee’s FBI background check.

  Meanwhile, the Web was blowing up about my groundbreaking critique of the Roberts Court. No. It was blowing up about what case it was that Perry Mason lost.

  As we filed into the room where we were to receive the briefing, I was still sort of feeling like the new kid in school standing alone in the lunch line. I didn’t really know any of the Republicans on the committee, beyond some passing niceties with Lindsey Graham and the subway meet-cute with Chuck Grassley. And then Tom Coburn of Oklahoma walked in and announced authoritatively, “Actually, Perry Mason lost two cases.”*

  And then Jeff Sessions drawled, “You know what I liked? Dragnet!”

  Then John Cornyn of Texas chimed in, “I liked Highway Patrol.”

  So, looking for a chance to bond, I said, “I worked with Broderick Crawford.” Crawford had been the star of Highway Patrol, but was also an iconic tough-guy movie star who won the Oscar for Best Actor in All the King’s Men.

  And boom, every Republican in the room just stopped. “You worked with Broderick Crawford?!!!”

  And I said, “Yeah. He hosted during the first season of Saturday Night Live.”

  I told them about how, the Thursday of that week, I’d been assigned to mind Crawford because it was Saint Patrick’s Day and he’d started drinking very early in the day.

  Thursdays were the days we taped promos, usually around one in the afternoon, and I’d written a promo for Broderick and Gilda Radner where he had five lines and she had one. But Broderick was already really soused at this point, so I took a line away from him, and he had four lines and Gilda had two. Then I had to make it three and three. By the end, Gilda had five lines and Broderick had one. And we got the thing on tape.

  Anyway, I’m telling this story, and suddenly all my Republican colleagues are going, “You really were in show business! You worked with Broderick Crawford!”

  So this was my first big breakthrough with my Republican colleagues.

  My point is, the Senate is filled not just with lawyers, but with old white men.

  Chapter 28

  The Angel and the Devil

  Actors often claim not to read their own reviews. I don’t know much about actors, other than that they are all liars, but I can say that most senators do look closely at their press coverage. And not just out of vanity. It’s important for us to know exactly how our constituents and the general public see us. Also: vanity.

  The incisive critique of my questioning of Judge Sotomayor in Slate was particularly gratifying. Regarding my argument on the Roberts Court’s judicial activism, Mr. Slate wrote:

  Some of the only questioning along those lines came from Sen. Al Franken, who made Sotomayor very uncomfortable as he grilled her on the Roberts Court’s tendency to overreach. In this term’s Voting Rights Act case, the court came close to striking down an act of Congress, and in an age-discrimination case, it decided an issue that was never briefed. Franken politely asked Sotomayor, “How often have you decided a case on an argument or a question that the parties have not briefed?” He wond
ered whether that constituted judicial activism.

  Good question. Why was the junior senator from Minnesota—the one sworn in only a week ago—the first one asking it?

  Mainly, though, the press coverage of my performance focused on another question: what to make of my use of humor during the hearing. Was it an example of appropriate levity? Or an early indication that I was going to be the Senate’s class clown? The next day, MinnPost, Minnesota’s online newspaper dedicated to public policy, ran a think piece on just this question entitled “Franken’s Senate Debut: Appropriate Levity or Class Clown?”*

  It was, I suppose, a balanced thumb-sucker, with weighty analysis from various experts. Larry Jacobs, an oft-quoted political science professor at the University of Minnesota, asked, “So, why did he throw in the Perry Mason thing? Why did he not just go into his very reasonable questions about judicial activism? Instead there seems to be a very driven need for cleverness… That is what set alarm bells off for me.” Alarm bells!

  On the other hand, Guy-Uriel Charles, a Duke law professor with a suspicious hyphenated first name, “argued that the Perry Mason bit was a ‘positive thing’”:

  “Obviously, the risk is that he won’t be taken seriously, that he will be viewed as a clown,” Charles said. “But, oddly enough, it seems that if he played it as a straight man, without any humor, he would have been taken less seriously.”

  Quite a needle to thread, don’t you think?

  David Schultz, a political science professor from Hamline University in St. Paul, provided a secondary layer to the customary journalistic navel-gazing. “‘The danger is that the main story becomes about his discussion with [Sotomayor] on Perry Mason,’ said Schultz.”

  This was irritating—a pundit punditing about how other pundits might pundit—but it was also dead-on.

  “And indeed,” the piece continued, “the Perry Mason segment reverberated through headlines, stories and TV clips throughout the evening and into the next day.”

  My team took this all very seriously. They, too, were well aware that a lot of onlookers were waiting with bated breath for me to screw up, and they felt a lot of pressure, probably even more than I did, to stop it from happening. And in the wake of the Perry Mason incident, they became what I can only describe as hypervigilant, a concerned Paul Drake or fretful Della Street, if you will, to my cavalier Perry.

  Thus, new rules: I could be funny in the office, but only with members of the staff, not in meetings with visitors. It was also okay to be funny on the floor with my colleagues, as long as I wasn’t loud enough to be picked up by the C-SPAN microphones. And, for God’s sake, no physical humor!

  After a few months of utterly humorless behavior in public, a reporter desperate for something to write about approached Jess McIntosh, who had come with me to Washington to be my press secretary in the Senate. “Why isn’t your boss funny anymore?”

  “Because of you guys,” she replied.

  Doing a good job as a senator was important enough to me that I was willing to restrain my urge to occasionally be funny around people who didn’t work for me. But that doesn’t mean it was easy.

  In fact, after a couple of months, this was all driving me kind of nuts.

  Which brings me to a November 5, 2009, hearing of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, on which I also sit.

  We were discussing ENDA, the Employee Non-Discrimination Act, which prohibits discrimination against LGBT people in the workplace. As of this writing, there are still thirty states that don’t have laws on the books protecting lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender workers. Gay couples can now enjoy all the rights and responsibilities of marriage, but if you get married on Saturday and then you both get fired for being gay on Monday morning, that’s a pretty crummy way to start a new life together, don’t you think?

  In 1993, Minnesota became the first state to ban employment discrimination on the basis of either sexual orientation or gender identity. At the very beginning there were a few bathroom kerfuffles of the sort that might be a highlight in a Madea movie. But soon everyone figured out that everybody has to go to the bathroom occasionally at work, and, more important, that firing people because they’re gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgender is really cruel and dumb. Nothing bad has happened because of Minnesota’s law, unless you’re an employer in another state who lost a smart, hardworking, and very talented employee to a Minnesota company like 3M, or General Mills, or Target, or any of our state’s seventeen Fortune 500 companies because of your state’s intolerance and stupidity.

  The room was packed full of LGBT advocates there to observe the hearing. And of course, a number of my Democratic colleagues, including Chairman Tom Harkin, were there to talk about this important issue.

  But the Republicans on the committee didn’t seem ready to discuss ENDA that day, because no Republicans, not even ranking member Mike Enzi, had shown up. This was pretty unusual. In my four months in the Senate, I’d never been to a hearing without at least one member of the minority present.

  As Chairman Harkin gaveled the hearing to order, a thought occurred to me. Wouldn’t it be funny, I thought, if, when I was called on, I said, “I think it’s a shame that none of the gay members of the committee showed up today”?

  I knew, of course, that telling the joke was a really bad idea. It would undermine everything I had been working toward: to be seen as a workhorse and not a showhorse, and yada yada.

  The “yada yada” came from the Devil as he popped up on my right shoulder.

  “C’mon!!!” the Devil yelled. “Tell the joke! It’ll kill!!!”

  “Now, Al,” the Angel appearing on my left shoulder said calmly, if a bit sanctimoniously, “you worked way too hard for far too long to do this, and you know it.”

  “It’ll kill!!!” the Devil screamed, hopping up and down. “The room is full of LGBT activists!!! It’ll get a HUGE laugh!!!”

  I tried to ignore the Devil as Chairman Harkin gave his opening statement. A passionate champion of civil rights, Harkin had authored the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, which changed millions of lives and our nation for the better. “Qualified workers should not be turned away or have to fear losing their livelihood for reasons that have nothing to do with their capabilities, skills, or performance. Such practices are un-American, and it’s time for them to stop,” he said.

  At least that’s what the transcript says he said. The Devil was drowning him out.

  “C’mon!!! Everyone will love it!!!” The Devil was positively vibrating with excitement.

  “Al,” the Angel warned, “you remember the reaction to Perry Mason.”

  “Screw the press!!! People loved it!!! Besides, this is much funnier, with much broader appeal!!!”

  “And will be much worse,” said the Angel. “The other side will accuse you of saying that all the Republicans on the HELP Committee are gay.”

  “It’s a joke!!!” the Devil snarled at the Angel. “Everyone will know it’s a joke!”

  “Of course they will, Al. But you know how this works,” warned the Angel. “They will all pretend they’re deeply offended.”

  “Screw ’em, I tell ya!!! It’ll kill!!!”

  Now Jeff Merkley, the author of the bill we were considering, was quoting Martin Luther King Jr.: “Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable. Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle, tireless exertions, and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.”

  But the cacophony coming from my left and right trapeziuses was making it hard for me to pay attention. And, frankly, both the Angel and the Devil were making valid points.

  The Devil pointed out that this was a very different situation from the Sotomayor hearings. Everyone had been watching those. But no one was paying attention to the ENDA hearing. Wasn’t it possible that by getting an enormous laugh, I might bring more attention to this issue? And maybe help a lot of LGBT people? And hadn’t some of my most passionate sup
porters insisted that it would be refreshing for me to use my comedic talent for just this kind of thing?

  The Angel did his best not to scold, but he did point out that if I said the line, my entire staff might bolt from the Hart Senate Office Building and never be seen again.

  I started experiencing a kind of vertigo. You know that feeling you get when you’re on the balcony of a very tall building and you start to panic because you realize you could just throw yourself off? For a moment or two I had that feeling. I could just blurt, “I think it’s a shame that none of the gay members of the committee showed up today.” And then see what happens.

  Then things got worse—because, all of a sudden, the Angel and the Devil each sprouted their own Angel and Devil!

  The Angel’s Angel was talking about losing my chance to feed the hungry and house the homeless. The Devil’s Devil was talking complete nonsense about how Victoria’s Secret models love to laugh.

  Merkley was wrapping up. It was my turn in a matter of seconds.

  Fortunately, the Angel’s Devil and the Devil’s Angel were hashing things out between themselves.

  “I know what your boss is worried about,” the Devil’s Angel said to the Angel’s Devil. “But all our side is saying is that this place could use a little lightening up.”

  “Sure,” replied the Angel’s Devil. “And, believe me, I’ve been making that case on my end. But we have to pick our spots.”

  “No doubt,” agreed the Devil’s Angel. “No one over here is saying we go for the joke every single time.”

  “Well, the Devil’s Devil is.”

  “Oh, nobody listens to him.”

  “Uh-huh,” said the Angel’s Devil, not really believing that. “Well, look. Bottom line: I think we can work together, but we’ve gotta look for the right opportunity, and this ain’t it.”

  “Fair enough,” nodded the Devil’s Angel. “I’ll take it to my boss, and I guarantee you I’ll get reamed out.”