Franken at LSU

I almost forgot that Al Franken was speaking this evening at the Assembly Center. At roughly 7 o'clock, having just finished up an early dinner, I realized that I hadn't voted (meaningless, sure, under the circumstances, but...), and I'd forgotten about the talk. Figuring it'd take about twenty minutes to walk over--of course there was no line at my polling place--I went ahead and caught the last hour and a half. Not bad--it was mostly a retelling of certain stories from his latest book, with some additional embellishments for those of us who've read it more than once.

Al wanted to have a longer Q&A--hell, at first it looked like there wouldn't even BE a questions and answer--but they found a wireless microphone and opened the floor to a limited number of queries. Most weren't all that surprising considering the speaker, although to have an audience that I'd estimate at around 3,000 here in bible country certainly is saying something. One "questioner" elicited the biggest laugh of the night when, in the midst of a long screed about the evils of the two party question, Franken interrupted with the observation that "It has to be like Jeopardy--in the form of a question." Another person who reached the microphone wasn't able to distinguish between the Clinton policy of advocating regime change in Iraq with Bush's policy of unilateral invasion--and while Al's response was easy enough for me to understand, I don't think the questioner quite got it.

Not a bad investment of a couple of hours. Unfortunately, like an idiot, I forgot to bring my copy of Lies to get signed, but that's life.