GOP women want Franken to apologize for satirical 'Porn-O-Rama!' Ron Brynaert

Published: Friday May 23, 2008



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Print This Email This A satirical column written by Al Franken over eight years ago has attracted the attention of Minnesota Republicans as the former Saturday Night Live writer/performer campaigns to face incumbent Republican Sen. Norm Coleman this fall as the Democratic nominee. The Star Tribune reports, "Minnesota Republicans are scolding DFL Senate candidate Al Franken for a campaign fundraiser hosted Monday by Playboy CEO Christie Hefner at her Chicago-area home -- and taking him to task for a sexually explicit satire he wrote for that magazine eight years ago." "The Franken article criticized Monday by Republicans, a satirical piece with the headline 'Porn-O-Rama!' describes a fantasy visit that Franken makes to a virtual sex institute, guided by a voluptuous futurist trained in Minnesota," the paper reports. "In the narrative, Franken writes that '[s]ince I've been married 23 years, I naturally chose' virtual oral sex, and he describes the experience in explicit detail." Mark Silva, writing for The Swamp observes, "This is what happens when humorists start taking the Senate seriously." The Republican Party of Minnesota web site, notes that "Rep. Laura Brod, Dr. Laura Dean, Sen. Michelle Fischbach, Mary Igo, Annette Meeks and Laura Merickel called Frankens column an 'extreme example of the kind of disrespect for the role of women in society that all of us have fought our entire lives' and called on Franken to 'denounce this article and apologize immediately.'" "While you may attempt to defend your writing as satire, we hardly find anything defensible about your finding humor in your desire to have sex with women or robots that look like women simply to give yourself a good time," the letter stated. A DC newspaper reports, "Franken told The Hill last month that hes not going to respond when Republicans bring up his past statements because 'thats all Id do'  an allusion to the amount of material out there similar to the Playboy column." Excerpts from Hill article: # Campaign spokesman Andy Barr indicated during the April interview that the campaign thought Republicans had already used their best opposition research against Franken. On Thursday, Franken spokeswoman Jess McIntosh said: Al had a long career as a satirist. But he understands the difference between what you say as a satirist and what you do as a senator. And as a senator, Norm Coleman has disrespected the people of Minnesota by putting the Exxons and Halliburtons ahead of working families. And theres nothing funny about that. Frankens history of sometimes crude and vulgar satire promises to be an issue throughout his race against Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.). Franken, a former Saturday Night Live star, is the Democratic favorite in next months state endorsing convention. # FULL HILL ARTICLE AT THIS LINK