 Fame
& Fortune: Comedian Al Franken
Laughing to the bank and (maybe) the
Senate
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Talk about your sources of clean energy: Al Franken
has been letting the gas out of pompous politicians and the silver-tongued
sycophants who suck up to them since Gerald Ford stumbled into the
presidency.
"Rush Limbaugh Is a Big, Fat Idiot,"
the title of Franken's 1996 best-seller, left little doubt where
Franken stands on the matter. His 2003 political field day, "Lies
and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them," and his 2005 President
Bush-whacking followup, "The Truth (With Jokes)," gained
him serious attention as an astute liberal watchdog whose wonky
team of researchers, TeamFranken, gets the goods in cyberspace before
he gets the laughs.
In 1975, Franken, along with Minneapolis school chum
and fellow class clown Tom Davis, were recruited as writers with
a new NBC show called "Saturday Night Live." Five years
and three Emmys later, Franken and Davis followed Chevy Chase, Dan
Aykroyd and John Belushi to Hollywood, where Franken and Davis wrote
the movie "Coneheads," among others.
Franken's political acumen (he holds a degree from
Harvard in political science and served as a 2003 fellow with Harvard's
Kennedy School of Government) steered him into the spin zone of
political commentary, where right-wing politicians and pundits are
his primary targets of choice. He even imagined his own ascendancy
to the highest office in his 1999 political parody, "Why Not
Me?" in which he campaigns on a single issue: lower ATM fees.
In March 2004, Franken kicked off Air America, talk
radio's liberal counter to Limbaugh and other conservative hosts.
As his writing and commentary have become increasingly serious,
so have his political aspirations; he and wife Franni recently moved
back to Minnesota, where Franken is contemplating a Senate bid for
real in 2008.
Bankrate caught up with the fast-moving Franken by
cell phone in New York City to discuss his finances, his future
and his dream of buying just one stock.
Bankrate: Do you handle
your own finances?
Al Franken: I am not very
hands-on with my money; my wife, Franni, is much more hands-on.
She really manages our finances. We have a division of labor in
the family, and one of her jobs is money. She grew up kind of poor
and is very conservative when it comes to money. We invest like
retired school principals.
Bankrate: Did you grow
up with easy access to money?
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