Opinion: Al Franken takes over the U.S. Senate floor to explain a newspaper cartoon to the waiting nation

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

All we can say is thank goodness Minnesota’s newest Democratic U.S. senator, Al Franken, was on duty Thursday.

We were poring through one of America’s most glorious man-caused treasures -- the 31 years of C-SPAN video archives, which The Ticket detailed with effusive praise here earlier this year.

And we realized suddenly that somehow we had inexplicably missed the comedian’s detailed explanation of a newspaper editorial cartoon enlarged so that he could identify the symbols and characters in it so the elderly senators could see it. The current White House’s pedantry is apparently infectious.

Additionally, Franken takes many moments to explain the drawing and its symbols as documentation for his argument for more government regulation of yet another part of the financial industry.

No, this is not a ‘Saturday Night Live’ skit. This is the real thing from the Senate floor where the 100 members are paid $174,000 -- each -- for this work. The folks back home must be very proud of the honorable gentleman.

-- Andrew Malcolm

Why search archives when you can get Twitter alerts of each new Ticket item by clicking here? Follow us @latimestot. Or Like us over on Facebook here.

Video courtesy of C-SPAN