These are just anecdotes, but it's building up into something more coherent.

I think it'd be interesting to really try to unravel what his ties.

There's this sort of country city divide for their inconvenient, and then it's not clear where it goes next.

From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production

of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour, I'm David Remnick.

Eight years into Al Franken's service as a U.S. Senator,

it's getting a little hard to remember the original.

That Al Franken was a comedy writer, one of the founding writers on Saturday Night Live,

and he put on really tight pants one night and gyrated obscenely in a killer imitation of Mick Jack.

You might want to go to YouTube and watch the whole thing.

You know, and it's also pretty hard to remember that the senator from Minnesota was also the guy who did Stuart Smalley's Daily Affirmations.

Okay, today I've decided to talk about something I really know nothing about.

Politics.

Basically, I'm very apolitical.

I guess the only politicians I've really ever admired are Martin Luther King,

although a woman in my Al-Anon group said he was a compulsive sex addict.

And Mahatma Gandhi, who a woman in my overeaters' anonymous group said had an eating disorder.

But that's okay. No one is perfect. Al Franken took a turn toward politics with books like

Rush Limbaugh is a big fat idiot. But he eventually gave up the books and the sketches to make a serious run for office and to

become a serious senator. Now he's returned to form. He's got a new book out called Al Franken,

Giant of the Senate. The cover shows him as a parody version of a distinguished senator in a sober

...