Al Franken
Al Franken
Alan Stuart "Al" Frankenis an American comedian, actor, politician, and writer. He is currently the junior United States Senator from Minnesota. He became well known in the 1970s and 1980s as a writer and performer on the television comedy show Saturday Night Live. After several decades as a comedic actor and writer, he became a prominent liberal political activist. Franken was elected to the United States Senate in 2008, narrowly defeating incumbent Republican Senator Norm Coleman. Franken is a member...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth21 May 1951
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
I had a great time working on the movies, both the major movies I've done. I've had a great time. I like the people in Hollywood a lot.
Mistakes are a part of being human. Appreciate your mistakes for what they are: precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it's a fatal mistake, which, at least, others can learn from.
We need to start by having a conversation about climate change. It would be irresponsible to avoid the issue just because it's uncomfortable to talk about.
The biases the media has are much bigger than conservative or liberal. They're about getting ratings, about making money, about doing stories that are easy to cover.
It's really building Air America that I'm focused on, and for me, that almost only means doing a good show.
In our political system, money is power. And that means a few can have a lot more power than the rest. That's bad news for everyone else - and for our democracy itself.
When people talked about protecting their privacy when I was growing up, they were talking about protecting it from the government. They talked about unreasonable searches and seizures, about keeping the government out of their bedrooms.
Whining is anger through a small opening.
Being a comedian, you're under pressure. You have to deal with stress and pressure to perform - to deal with pressure without stress.
I am a Minnesotan, and not just because I root for the Vikings and the Twins. I like the Minnesota-nice sensibility. I like the liberal tradition; I like the Hubert Humphrey tradition fighting for civil rights.
I don't consider myself an artist necessarily, but craftsmen or people in the arts, their spiritualism is sort of when you're writing well or performing well or doing whatever you do well, there's an element of that that's either God-given, a talent that you're not necessarily responsible for.
I don't think I'm an angry person. I think I'm a person who's angry. I'm angry at the Bush administration; I'm angry at the right wing media. And by that I don't mean the media is right wing. I mean, there is a part of the media that's not the mainstream media. That's Fox, that is 'The Wall Street Journal' editorial page.
One thing I've noticed about politics is that these guys have pretty thick hides.
I felt like the luckiest kid in the world. And I was. I was growing up middle-class in a time when growing up middle-class in America meant there would be jobs for my parents, good schools for me to prepare myself for a career, and, if I worked hard and played by the rules, a chance for me to do anything I wanted.