Giant of the Senate by Al Franken: A review

I was reading a column by James Fallows in The Atlantic yesterday in which he referenced this book. He said that this is the kind of book that Will Rogers would have written if Will Rogers had been in the Senate. High praise indeed!

And probably true.

My husband and I had been listening to the audible version of the book over the last couple of months whenever we had some free time or were spending more than just a few minutes in the car. It began to seem as though we were never going to finish it. But perseverance had its reward and we finally did hear it right up to its end this week.

I don't mean to make it sound like listening to it was a chore. It wasn't. Al Franken is a very funny fellow, even though he says that, being in the Senate, he's had to learn to tone down the funny or jettison it altogether. It seems that constituents don't want a funny man as their representative; they want someone who takes them and their problems seriously and who shows that through his actions.

After a career of more than thirty years in comedy, though, it wasn't easy for Al to make that transition. His first instinct is always to see the humor in any circumstance and to handle tense situations by diffusing them with a joke. That being the case, it would seem like politics would be a very uncomfortable fit for him.

And the way he describes it, it was definitely uncomfortable at first. He ran for senator in Minnesota in 2008 after the death of his friend Paul Wellstone whom he had admired as a senator and revered as a human being. He ran against an incumbent senator who waged a pretty nasty campaign against him. When the votes were finally counted, the two were in a virtual tie and it would take eight months, the longest recount in history, to sort it out.

But, in the end, Al Franken was the new senator from Minnesota.

He applied himself to learning the ropes, learning how to be an effective senator, how to be "a workhorse, not a showhorse". To that end, he steered clear of the national press, whose main concern seemed to be leading him into saying something funny.

He made the effort to connect with his fellow senators, Republicans as well as Democrats. His portraits of some of these senators and his tales of his interactions with them are some of the most interesting and the funniest parts of the book.

He is very gentle with his fellow senators, with one exception. That one exception gets a chapter all of his own. It is, of course, Texas' very own Ted Cruz. Franken writes:

The problem with Ted isn’t that he’s humorless. It isn’t even his truly reprehensible far-right politics. No, the problem with Ted—and the reason so many senators have a problem with Ted—is simply that he is an absolutely toxic coworker. He’s the guy in your office who snitches to corporate about your March Madness pool and microwaves fish in the office kitchen. He is the Dwight Schrute of the Senate.

And elsewhere:

I like Ted Cruz more than most of my other colleagues like Ted Cruz. And I hate Ted Cruz.

It's an emotion that many of us Texans completely share.

Al's efforts to become a serious and effective senator were evidently successful in the eyes of his fellow Minnesotans. The freshman senator who had barely squeaked by in his first election won reelection in a landslide in 2014.

Al Franken is passionate about the issues that are important to him. Most importantly, he is passionate about making the lives of people better. Since I am in agreement with him on most of these issues, I found his autobiographical narrative (he narrated his own book) often uplifting and optimistic but sometimes thoroughly depressing and totally disheartening, as for example when he wrote about the presidential campaign of 2016.

Moreover, the nuts and bolts of just how government works and what it takes to get something accomplished in Congress can be mind-numbingly dull and tedious. But Al approaches it all with his sense of humor still intact. He's going to have to work a lot harder if he wants - as his staff has directed him - to eradicate it altogether. Here's hoping he never succeeds.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Poetry Sunday: Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver

How about we share another Mary Oliver poem? After all, you can never have too many of those. In this one, the poet seems to acknowledge that it is often hard to simply live in and enjoy the moment, perhaps because we are afraid it can't last. She urges us to give in to that moment and fully experience the joy. Although "much can never be redeemed, still, life has some possibility left." Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is no...

Poetry Sunday: Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney

My mother was a farm wife and a prodigious canner. She canned fruit and vegetables from the garden, even occasionally meat. But the best thing that she canned, in my opinion, was blackberry jam. Even as I type those words my mouth waters! Of course, before she could make that jam, somebody had to pick the blackberries. And that somebody was quite often named Dorothy. I think Seamus Heaney might have spent some time among the briars plucking those delicious black fruits as well, so he would have known that "Once off the bush the fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour." They don't keep; you have to get that jam made in a hurry! Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust ...

Poetry Sunday: Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman

You probably remember poet Amanda Gorman from her appearance at the inauguration of President Biden. She read her poem "The Hill We Climb" on that occasion. After the senseless slaughter in Uvalde this week, she was inspired to write another poem which was published in The New York Times. It seemed perfect for the occasion and so I stole it in order to feature it here, just in case you didn't get a chance to read it in the Times . Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman Everything hurts, Our hearts shadowed and strange, Minds made muddied and mute. We carry tragedy, terrifying and true. And yet none of it is new; We knew it as home, As horror, As heritage. Even our children Cannot be children, Cannot be. Everything hurts. It’s a hard time to be alive, And even harder to stay that way. We’re burdened to live out these days, While at the same time, blessed to outlive them. This alarm is how we know We must be altered — That we must differ or die, That we must triumph or try. ...

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