With Jon Stewart’s consistent brilliance on The Daily Show, it’s easy to take left-wing humour for granted. Enter Al Franken, who is so reliably unfunny on his new album, The Al Franken Party Show Album, it’s like the proverbial car crash: it’s so awful you can’t turn away. You must find out if Franken is able to salvage his disaster at any point. The answer is he cannot.
Much like Stewart, Franken is a liberal comedian. The problem is Franken’s comedy is so misguided you actually sympathize with the previously unsympathizable. Case in point: Franken conducts an “interview” with the pillow used to smother Yasser Arafat on his deathbed. When asked to relay Arafat’s last words, the pillow responds with a long string of muffled noises.
Once a promising Saturday Night Live star, Al Franken’s Party Show Album has turned him into something no comedian ever wants to be: a punch line.