Discover the Best Books Written by Al Franken

Alan Stuart Franken (born May 21, 1951) is an American comedian, politician, and media personality who served as a United States senator from Minnesota from 2009 to 2018. He gained fame as a writer and performer on the television comedy show Saturday Night Live, where he worked from the 1970s until the 1990s. After decades as an entertainer, he became a prominent liberal political activist, hosting The Al Franken Show on Air America Radio.

Franken was elected to the United States Senate in 2008 as the nominee of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL, an affiliate of the Democratic Party), defeating incumbent Republican Senator Norm Coleman by 312 votes out of nearly three million casts (a margin of just over 0.01%) in one of the closest elections in the history of the Senate. He was reelected in 2014 with 53.2% of the vote over Republican challenger Mike McFadden. Franken resigned on January 2, 2018, after allegations of sexual misconduct were made against him.

In September 2019, Franken announced he would be hosting The Al Franken Show Saturday mornings on SiriusXM radio. It covers global affairs, politics, the 2020 presidential election, and entertainment.[1] In September 2021, Franken began a 15-city live tour, his first since semi-retiring from comedy during his time in the Senate.

Franken was born in New York City to Joseph P. Franken (1908–1993), a printing salesman, and Phoebe Franken (née Kunst) (1918–2003), a real estate agent. His paternal grandparents emigrated from Germany; his maternal grandfather came from Grodno, Russian Empire; and his maternal grandmother's parents were also from the Russian Empire. Phoebe was from Allentown, Pennsylvania. Both of his parents were Jews, and Franken was raised in a Reform Jewish home and attended Temple Israel in Minneapolis. He has an older brother, Owen (b. circa 1946), who is a photojournalist, and his cousin Bob is a journalist for MSNBC.

The Frankens moved to Albert Lea, Minnesota, when Al was four years old. His father opened a quilting factory, but it failed after two years. The family then moved to St. Louis Park, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis. Franken graduated from The Blake School in 1969, where he was a member of the wrestling team. Franken says that he scored 800 (out of 800) on the math section of his SATs and 662 on the verbal section. He attended Harvard College, where he majored in political science, graduating cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in 1973. As a student, Franken wrote comedy and idolized comedians Dick Gregory and Lenny Bruce because they did acts about hypocrisy and corruption while making the audience laugh.

Franken began performing in high school, where he and his longtime friend and writing partner Tom Davis were known for their comedy. The duo first performed on stage at Minneapolis's Brave New Workshop theater specializing in political satire. They soon found themselves in what was described as "a life of near-total failure on the fringes of show business in Los Angeles."