 Fame
& Fortune: Comedian Al Franken Laughing to the bank
and (maybe) the Senate
| 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 moved back to Minnesota, where Franken
is currently in a Senate bid.
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? | 
