Former Bush speech writer Michael Gerson criticizes Minnesota Senate candidate and SNL alum Al Franken in today’s Vulgarian at the Gate. Gerson’s column repeats one of the latest conservative talking points: Franken’s comic career has had vulgar moments. The WaPo should have the stature to find columnists who write thoughtful, informative op-ed pieces; instead it lends its print to Gerson who might as well be reposting a months old Newsmax piece on a second-rate blog.
The op-ed is pretty much limited to Franken’s Playboy “Porn-O-Rama,” an article Franken wrote in 2000. A comedian’s eight year old Playboy article hardly seems like a significant issue. If Gerson really wants to weed vulgarity out of society, he should target his former employer: the White House that planned out the torture techniques used at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. No matter how twisted Franken’s Playboy article may be, at least he hasn’t used S&M as a feature of public policy.
Gerson criticizes the Franken campaign’s response that the article was satire by comparing Franken to supposedly pure and gentlemanly Erasmus, Jonathan Swift, and George Orwell. Apparently Gerson couldn’t think of any satirists born within the past hundred years who didn’t write at least one lewd piece. Even Orwell’s writing wasn’t entirely G-rated. Gerson should take a closer look at Orwell’s works which had their sexual moments–albeit in stodgy British fashion–comparing a woman’s breasts to knots on trees. And Swift achieved infamy for his “Modest Proposal” that the Irish would not be hungry if they ate their own children. Instead of comparing Franken to Swift, Gerson should compare himself to the foolish readers that didn’t know how to handle satire and took Swift’s proposal seriously.
