I only read Playboy for the articles

I outgrew the Playboy phase many years ago and have not seen Al Franken’s article from January 2000 titled "Porn-O-Rama!". From what has been reported in the media the last two days, it seems to have been an article of dubious literary value. However, I suspect that the literary value of the article has become largely irrelevant. The article apparently contains material which might be offensive to many, both of constituencies to which the DFL caters/panders and the “pro-family” groups that usually ignore DFL candidates, but who could use this issue to their advantage well.

In a Minnesota Monitor article posted today [Real bottom line in Franken's Playboy snafu: Mike Ciresi is making his move] Steve Perry seems to feel that the timing of this story is part of a coordinated to bring the former candidate who ethically made himself rich with money which should have belonged to the state back into the race. Doug Grow in MinnPost seems to suspect that there might be a Ciresi surprise in the primary even if Franken is endorsed.

I remember that when Ciresi was in the race that he promised to support the endorsement this time, but I guess that the former candidate is not bound by what he said when he was a candidate. [Of course, if/when he is elected he will be a former candidate again. Look out!]

Perry and Grow may be right. I really do not know.

I just wonder about some things.

Like, isn’t there one aged former adolescent in the DFL leadership who knew about the article and bothered to read it without being distracted by the visual distractions the magazine affords before the vast majority of the party leadership had signed onto the man from New York’s campaign? Late revelations hurt but this would have had to been a lot easier to know about than the GOP’s learning in 1990 that Grunseth was unsuited

And if he had had even the remotest idea of ever entering political life in this or any other state why would have Al Franken have written it?

And, of course, why was this obviously available fact withheld from the marketplace of the news until a week before the DFL state convention?

As I noted earlier, I have not seen Franken’s article and likely won't, having to settle for whatever summaries are made available in the various media by analysts who have managed to read it without the distractions for which Playboy is noted. Being in that magazine is not necessarily fatal to a candidate. Some of us remember the famous Jimmy Carter interview which came out just before the 1976 election.

But this whole deal cannot be a boon to a candidacy which was trailing Norm before this all came out and that is probably what the Ciresi people will remind us.

As David Brauer quoted Congressperson Keith Ellison in another MinnPost story today, "If you're explainin', you ain't gaining."

I mentioned earlier March 15,

[B]etween the two of them [Coleman and Ciresi], there would have been no problem for me in deciding whom [Coleman] to support. And I would like to think that I would have taken the same position, no matter what imaginary enemy Ciresi and Skippy had taken on.”

With Franken it will be different.

If the DFL expects me to vote on their line in November they will have to have somebody who is not Ciresi but who isn’t extremely flaky. It is a good trick being flaky enough to win DFL support and not turn off the general electorate.

For city people to support a suburbanite over a city resident is always a dubious enough situation anyway and Franken is not making his case well so far. I guess that still holds and we will have to see what develops.

Other earlier post http://ccmusings.blogspot.com/2008/03/ciresi-out.html [March 10]