UniBrow

Well then: at this time tomorrow we should know, not only whether John McCain has to worry about keeping Vice President-elect Palin away from his food preparation for the next four to eight years, but also whether Michele Bachmann–the pride of Oral Roberts Law–will squeak back into Congress against the gales of repugnance provoked by her failure on Hardball a few weeks ago to avoid saying exactly what she thinks about how to deal with heresy in Congress. (It is in the waxing potency of the name Elwyn Tinklenberg, her suddenly well-heeled nemesis, that the recoiling fury has concentrated itself.) Soon we’ll know also whether comedian Al Franken will be shaking his cap and bells in the Senate for the next six years.

Franken is in a close race with incumbent Republican Norm Coleman, and he’s drawing support from some unlikely quarters. I would have expected, for example, the usually sharp and cogent Jonathan Chait to be slightly more hard-nosed about the idea of Senator Al Franken. The chamber that was once home to the labors of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster and the Keating Five should now open its doors to a person whose highest achievement to date is … Stuart Smalley? It pains me to conclude that Chait thinks so, on the evidence of the weirdly sympathetic piece on Franken that he posted last week at Slate. At one point in its strange course–as Chait attempts to exonerate Franken from the charge that he’s no more than a Hannity or a Coulter of the left–we come in for a close look at two of Franken’s books on politics (if that’s what they really are)–a close look at their covers, to be exact. And in what could rival Sarah Palin’s recent First Amendment theorizing for a spot in the National Special Pleading Hall of Fame, Chait writes:

Franken’s critics are aware of his political satire, but that, too, has become another count in the indictment–Al Franken, trash talker. “He lampooned Rush Limbaugh as a ‘big fat idiot,’ and he dismissed Ann Coulter as a ‘nutcase,’ “ clucked U.S. News earlier this year. Critics who take note of Franken’s political books treat them as the left’s answer to Coulter or Bill O’Reilly. But this misses the satirical point. To get the joke of Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot, you need only to look at the cover, which features Franken posing in a tweed jacket in front of a wall of musty bound volumes, clutching a pipe, looking comically pompous. Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right has the joke in the title itself. Coulter writes books with titles like Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right, whose charge is meant to be taken at face value. Franken’s title mocks the accusation itself with over-the-top redundancy and subverts its own claim to truth by appropriating the corrupted slogan “Fair and Balanced.”

I should say first that I don’t care at all what Franken has said or done as he was about his comedic errands over the years. Unless it goes to really perverse extremes–say, Borat without the refinements of taste that he’s renowned for–it shouldn’t weigh seriously in the balance, it seems to me. Franken was a comedian, and comedians must comede. No. What should disqualify Franken from serious consideration for the office he seeks is simply that he is obviously and immaculately destitute of anything resembling a real credential for it. He has his points of view on the issues of the day–as do we all–and he has the hollow and synthetic viability conferred by celebrity.

But to the extent that Franken’s political satire is believed to matter, let us by all means, if Chait insists, look at the covers of these two books for evidence that Franken is including himself in the lampooning. In the first place, regarding Franken’s Limbaugh opus, I would bet you a small fortune that the title of the book–Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot–would dominate to the point of ovewhelming the accompanying image in the bookstore browser’s perception and memory. The title is strident and emphatic, not to mention gleefully insulting. To employ a handful of marketing terms I wish I didn’t know, the title stands a decent chance of “breaking through the clutter” and becoming the “consumer take-away”–because, you see, it has “stopping power.” The image, on the other hand, carries a modest comic charge but is otherwise unremarkable. But, okay, fine: to the extent that, upon more leisured inspection, we note how the two elements complement each other rather than compete for take-away honors, the joke is entirely on Limbaugh (not that there’s anything wrong with that). The gag is that the deepest truth about Rush Limbaugh, the definitive conclusion, the fruit of exhaustive and unhurried consideration by a sober scholar, is that he is a big fat idiot. I am looking at this thing with the best will in the world and see nothing at all that is complicating Franken’s verdict on the bigness, the fatness, the idiocy of Rush Limbaugh, nothing at all that subjects Franken himself to satirical treatment. The joke in the image lies in the entirely absurd juxtaposition of Limbaugh (not Franken) with learnedness or depth.

And Chait manages to find more to Franken’s credit by doggedly excavating the title of the other book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. Yes, there might be some very gentle self-deprecation in the idea of being reduced to helpless, spluttering tautology in the face of untiring and shameless dishonesty–but on the other hand, no, not really. Again, the joke is all on them and not at all on Franken. The falling-all-over-itself redundancy seems only to enact the decent person’s natural incredulity and unpreparedness for hard-core, unceasing, take-no-prisoners mendacity. At bottom it flatters the left, indicts (aptly) the right, and answers one form of excess with another. Fair and balanced.

But enough. Cess and doom upon Al Franken’s political career. May he take Michele Bachmann and Liddy Dole down with him. Hail Tinklenberg! And long may he reign!