As a comedian and writer for “Saturday Night Live," Al Franken was quoted in a 1995 New York Magazine article discussing a joke for the show about raping CBS reporter Lesley Stahl.
“'I give the pills to Lesley Stahl. Then when Lesley is passed out, I take her to the closet and rape her.' Or ‘That’s why you never see Lesley until February.' Or, ‘When she passes out. I put her in various positions and take pictures of her,’” Franken was quoted saying.
It’s not the first time the Democratic senator's comments have resurfaced. They were used during the 2008 Minnesota Senate race along with vulgar remarks he made in a 2000 column for Playboy.
In his Playboy romp, Franken fantasized about oral sex delivered by a machine, as well as sex with combinations of females who fit the Playboy view of women as big-breasted automatons, panting at the prospect of servicing the likes of Franken. That's why they call it fantasy, I guess.
I wonder how many DFL officials will be able to pull Porn-O-Rama through their Internet filters and read it before the party endorses its candidate for U.S. Senate this weekend. (Star Tribune)
While Franken apologized at the time for his comments, he later admitted he wasn’t sorry at all.
“To say I was sorry for writing a joke was to sell out my career, to sell out who I’d been my entire life,” he wrote in his book, “Al Franken: Giant of the Senate.” “And I wasn’t sorry that I had written Porn-o-Rama or pitched that stupid Lesley Stahl joke at 2 in the morning. I was just doing my job.”
He added: “I learned that campaigns have their own rules, their own laws of physics, and that if I wasn’t willing to accept that, I would never get to be a senator.”
Earlier Thursday Leeann Tweeden, a California sports radio broadcaster, accused the senator of kissing her without her consent and taking a photo of him grabbing her breasts on the return flight from a USO Tour in Afghanistan in 2006.
I’ve decided it’s time to tell my story. #MeToohttps://t.co/TqTgfvzkZg
— Leeann Tweeden (@LeeannTweeden) November 16, 2017
The senator has since issued an apology, according to Fox News:
“Coming from the world of comedy, I've told and written a lot of jokes that I once thought were funny but later came to realize were just plain offensive," Franken said. "But the intentions behind my actions aren't the point at all. It's the impact these jokes had on others that matters. And I'm sorry it's taken me so long to come to terms with that."