Customer Reviews

Why Not Me?: The Inside Story of the Making and Unmaking of the Franken Presidency

5 star:		(62)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

As a big fan of Al Franken, perhaps I hold him to too high a standard, but I found that the first half of the book more than lived up to his previous works. The campaign trail and his combination of both clever and ridiculous commentary made the book truly a fun read. I especially loved the extra effort to put in action photos and newspaper headlines, making the whole spectacle of the Franken candidacy seem all the more outrageous.

Once in office, I found the book a little lacking. It almost seemed like Al ran out of steam and wanted to stop writing. Beyond the all Jewish cabinet, I really did not read a whole lot to laugh or at least smirk about. The wit that was present during the campaign trail really disappeared.

I plan to read the campaign trail part of the book again, since it is really good stuff. Just be warned that it goes downhill from the moment Al enters office.

Al Franken's "Why Not Me?" is a satiric account of politics documenting his fictional but successful run for the U.S. presidency in 2000. The story is presented through a pastiche of faux diary entries from the campaign trail, chapters of a Bob Woodward novel documenting the first 100 days of the Franken presidency, several magazine and newspaper stories, and transcripts, among other things. As such, the novel reads somewhat like a scrapbook--with similar ease and discordance.

There are certainly laugh-out-loud moments in the book, but it is in general flat and lacking the political insight that Franken's "Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations" had. The story is about Franken running for the Democratic nomination on a single issue, ATM fees charged by banks. When that platform does not seem to capture the nation's interest, he turns to insurance companies for funding and agrees in return to add deregulation of the banking industry (thus allowing insurers to enter the market) to his platform. Along the way, he and his staff lie, commit battery, manufacture and take drugs, and run a phone-sex line.

Ultimately, the novel portrays Franken as an oversexed moron, an image that does not work entirely well. Franken, as author, has difficulty presenting an insightful political satire about Franken, the bumbling candidate. The majority of the funniest jokes, therefore, are more often salacious than politically insightful. In the end, there is simply too little to justify the 289 pages, and the real laughs are therefore too few by comparison.

I don't know how Al Franken (whose work I usually love) stayed awake to write this. "Tedious" is the most polite word I can use to describe the diary-of-a-candidate format he's chosen this time. Typical Franken hilarity in spots...but good luck keeping your eyes open long enough to find them.

I was a great fan of Al Franken during his SNL days. I bought this book hoping for some flashes of that comic genius, however, it's not to be found in this effort. The ATM fee angle gets real tired and the whole work lacks the subtle wit that we were treated to in his glory days. Maybe his work on Newsline should have been a clue, but I recommend skipping this one. My advice: save your money and watch SNL reruns.

An extended joke that fails to sustain. The idea is funny enough, if you buy the idea of Franken as a celebrity, but he doesn't have enough to sustain much more than a five minute comedy routine. Some people find Franken terribly witty. Then again, some people find Howard Stern to be an brilliant talent. Who can explain why?

Let's consider 'Why Not Me' a trial run for Al Franken's better written follow-up 'Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.' All of Franken's work bears the hallmarks of his sketch comedy background - it's an ensemble of pieces, some of which work, some of which don't. In 'Lies,' roughly 80% or more of the pieces hit the mark (I wasn't a fan of the cartoons). In 'Why Not Me,' it's about 50%. Like the Bob Woodward parody ('The Void'), for example: funny for about the first five pages (you laugh when you see Franken's nailed Woodward's melodramatic scene-setting and habit of assembling conversations as if he were in the room). But it drags on and on. How many readers got though the whole piece? Not many I bet.

Like others, I agree that the campaign diary worked the best, followed closely by the faux Newsweek piece - the classic campaign shot of Franken chopping wood with Golden Retriever at his side is a howler. Talk about spot-on. I think the best part of the entire book is the 'one issue' campaign (elimination of ATM Fees) and how Candidate Franken steers all discussion back to that point. Watching both Bush and Kerry try to route every question back to stump speech set pieces makes you realize that there's sometimes a fine line between parody and reality.

There's a nugget of a good book here. Franken can be very funny, and there's lots of material in a fake Presidental memoir. But the few good bits--character sketches, amusing mishaps--are buried in the format. Press releases, a Time cover story, diary entries; it all gets overwhelming and repetitive. Had this been written as a straight memoir, it might have been delightful, but the jokey format brings it down.

Something is funny the first time. The second time, it loses some. By the 200th time, it's mind-numbing. Al Franken tries to make his brother's drinking, Al's frolicing with prostitues, and ATM fees funny. After twenty pages of this, it becomes mind-numbing. The only thing worse than reading about the campaign is reading about the 100 days of the Franken presidency. Luckily, his presidency is short; unfortunately, the book is about 270 pages too long.

Everytime I listen to this, I laugh till I cry - that voice of his. Al's CD's are the only ones I recommend over his books. This is the Al Franken of the SNL days humor before he became 'more mature'. He has a ton of bits on his family, his staff, the heady party years at SNL, etc. The only drawback some might find objectionable (I loved it) was his poking fun at his Drug usage during his SNL days and references to sex.

This novel of political satire by now Senator Al Franken was published in 1999. Looking back from 10 years later, it is interesting to see how things turned out. There are some politcal positions of the "fictional" candidate that still apply and could be quoted, perhaps showing some prescience, such as "...America is the world's only remaining superpower, and with that comes some responsibility. We have to remember that the world is still a very dangerous place. Even a single war is one war too many, but we have to be prepared to fight on two fronts..."

It is not necessarily a great book, but might offer a little insight into the thinking of a person who is now a senator, intermixed with the fictional satirical tale of the rise and fall of a president. Senator Franken is obviously more than just a comedian/writer.