Not Al Franken 'splains all in
Big Al’s Sexatopia Saves Air America:
Okay, look. Here’s what happened. We had this guy from Guam running Air America, and he borrowed money from an organization that runs camps for underprivileged kids, and he said he needed it because he had brain cancer, but it really went to pay for Air America. It paid for air time and limos and vegan deli platters for the green room and all the other stuff we needed to keep the network running.
I had absolutely no idea. I want that to be clear from the start. I mean, why would Air America need to borrow money? Finally…FINALLY…we have a liberal voice in the media. I figured people would flock to it, after putting up with the conservatives at Fox News and The New York Times and The Washington Post and The Village Voice. I figured we’d make tons of money, selling ads to PETA and IKEA and Bubba Burgers and whatever. Because people were starving for liberal news coverage.
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There’s a problem, because apparently, we’re not selling a lot of ads. Apparently, our liberal target audience likes to talk a lot about how they want to hear liberal commentary on the radio, but when push comes to shove, they’re tuning in Rush Limbaugh and trying to get past his call screener so they can get on the air and call him a big fatass. So our ratings…they’re not good. And advertisers…these greedy corporations…I’m sorry, I know I’ll get in trouble for this, but these greedy capitalist corporations refuse to buy ads unless they think people will actually hear them and buy their products.
This is what’s wrong with the country. Everybody wants to make a profit. Nobody is willing to do stuff just because it’s the right thing to do. I mean, okay, so you buy ads on Air America, and nobody buys your product. So what? At least people get to hear Randi Rhodes connect the dots.
Er, I'll pass. But that's water down the hydroflush and Al has a solution:
Oh, God. Oh, God. How many more minutes do we have? What? A hundred and fifty-eight? Oh, God.
Look, I’ll get the money, okay? Here’s…I have an idea. I have an idea to get the money. I’m going to use the Internet. It worked for Howard Dean, right? Okay, here’s what I’ll do. I happen to have–I can’t believe I’m admitting this–I happen to have a number of provocative pictures of myself, which I took to send to Fidel Castro. I don’t want to get into a rehash of how he took advantage of me when I was a lonely bicurious college student. I don’t want to go back over that. But anyway, I thought I could rekindle his interest, so I talked to Helmut Newton, and he agreed to shoot a few pictures for me. Well, Fidel couldn’t be bothered to respond. You know, I’m a big important dictator, so, you know, I don’t have time to respond to the short boy with glasses and a broken heart who’s been carrying a torch since 1968. And the pictures are pretty good. There’s a little retouching, because I had this…this rash…anyway, they’re not bad at all.
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So what I’m thinking is, I’ll open an image site. You know, you pay a monthly fee, and I put up photo sets, and you get a password, and you go in and look. And maybe–I’m just brainstorming here–maybe I have streaming webcam sessions, and I chat with my members, and maybe if they PayPal me while I’m online, I show a little extra skin. You see what I’m saying? Strictly R-rated, you understand. You know, not like animal acts and so on. Not at first. And I call it “Big Al’s Sexatopia.” What do we owe these kids? Nine hundred grand? That ought to take a month, tops. And if we really need to, we can have Randi do some guest appearances. I’ve seen her in a bikini, and as long as we airbrush the stretchmarks, I think she’ll do great.
We'll get back to you on that, Al. In the meantime, keep your pants on! Randi too.
