Why my take on politics is just not very sophisticated

I really, really want Al Franken to take his rightful place in the Senate. Not because he'd be the crucial 60th Democrat (now that Arlen Specter has obligingly decided to be the 59th*, whereas if he'd waited until after Franken's opponent Norm Coleman had conceded the Minnesota race, Coleman would have been a lot more likely to concede, as Franken would then have been the 59th, and Coleman would not have felt like he was bearing the weight of the entire Republican party on his back). No. But because in 1995 he wrote and starred in what is certainly one of the most heartbreakingly underrated movies in the history of American cinema: Stuart Saves His Family.

I laughed from one end of this movie to the other; moreover, I absolutely loved the characters, the dramatic arc, and the ending. It's really hard to make characters extremely funny, extremely flawed, and extremely admirable. Stuart Smalley is one of my Great Fictional Heroes. (The video gnomes at YouTube won't let me embed the trailer, but you should go watch it.) And Al Franken is a good writer, who knows how to see, and make others see, the good in even the most flawed of characters. Isn't a hunger to see nobility in people a good thing for a politician? Makes a nice change, no?

So okay, I admit it, it's not a very sophisticated reason to want someone to win a Senate seat. But there are worse reasons.



*While, yes, okay, all hail Arlen Specter for reverting to his original Democratness, I for one can't quite forget the Anita Hill hearings, and the only night I ever drank enough (spurred on by a combination of rage and the need to keep a similarly enraged friend company) to actually throw up.