Al Franken

Al Franken is an Emmy-winning comedy writer and actor who found new fame in the late 1990s as a left-leaning political satirist. He's the author of several books, including Rush Limbaugh is a Big, Fat Idiot and Other Observations (1996) and Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right (2003). After graduating from Harvard, Franken started his comedy career (with partner Tom Davis) in New York in the early 1970s. He was a writer and performer for the TV comedy show Saturday Night Live (1975-80, 1985-95), where he was best known for his character Stuart Smalley, a self-help expert whose signature line was "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!" Franken then worked for CNN, doing commentary for the 1988 Democratic National Convention. He teamed with columnist Arianna Huffington in 1992 and 1996 to cover the presidential elections for cable television's Comedy Central, and had great success with his 1996 book poking fun at conservatives, by way of radio host Limbaugh. In 2003 he was a Fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, where he researched and wrote the best-selling Lies, a satirical attack on the policies of U.S. president George W. Bush and conservative media (which sparked a feud with Bill O'Reilly). Franken served as a "big name" host for the 2004 start-up of the liberal radio network Air America, a post he left in early 2007 when he declared his candidacy for the U.S. senate in Minnesota's 2008 election.