Thursday, March 29, 2007

Late Night Trivia

As you probably know, Al Franken is running in Minnesota for the U.S. Senate. Earlier in his acting career, Franken played a then sitting U.S. Senator in a Saturday Night Live skit. It was a dead-on impersonation I thought. Who was that Senator?

Update: You know, I should just start any trivia post with "Hey Russ..". Anyway, Mr. Trivia himself got it right. See the comments.

The skit I'm thinking of was a take-off on the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings in the Senate in 1991. It was one of the funniest political sketches that show has ever done. Franken as the late, great Paul Simon of Illinois was hilarious. Who else could do that voice?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

He did a pretty good Paul Simon.

Anonymous said...

He did the impersonation a number of times. Simon used to invite his classes at SIUC out to his house each semester and one thing he would show was his own appearance on SNL. If you got him to let the tape play a little longer you would see the Franken impersonation too. Its my favorite political impersonation of all time, right up there with Dan Akroyd doing the mean Bob Dole.

Anonymous said...

It is after all the Al Franken Decade.

JP