Lori Sturdevant: For DFL, it's going to be a bumpy ride

I've seen it a number of times in the past two weeks -- pain on the face of a prominent DFL woman upon mere mention of Al Franken's bawdy musings about the future of pornography in Playboy magazine's January 2000 issue.

The look approximates one I'd expect to follow a sharp jab in the belly.

But I've also seen women of similar age, station and status as delegates or alternates to this weekend's DFL state convention in Rochester, set their jaws in determination to stand by their man, er, candidate for the U.S. Senate.

"I'd ask the people who are offended by this: Have you ever told a dirty joke, or laughed at one?" asked Vicki Wright, a party activist from Eagan, at a gathering of Franken supporters last Sunday in Shakopee. "Did you ever think that it might come back at you later in life?

"Eight years ago, Al Franken did not know he was going to run for the Senate. If you're going to judge him for what he wrote eight years ago, then you need to look at yourself."

Ah, but a state political endorsing convention is not a setting conducive to calm introspection. Conventions are pressure cookers, and this one could get very hot.

Franken enters Mayo Civic Center as the front-running but besieged candidate. Believed to be gaining on him is University of St. Thomas Prof. Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer. In the wings, possibly to reemerge, is Mike Ciresi, the legal superstar who bowed out of the race three months ago.

Rumors abound that the field could grow -- though a juicy one, that Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak would jump in, was firmly squelched Thursday by Hizzoner himself.

Rybak is on Franken's support list. (For that matter, so are a majority of nervous DFL legislators, of both genders.) He's there, Rybak said, because he admires Franken for speaking out early and effectively against the policies of Republicans in Washington, including the senator whose seat Franken seeks, Norm Coleman.

Rybak concedes that the Playboy article is offensive. But the shrewd mayor observed that when a spotlight -- even a negative one -- falls on a candidate, opportunity arrives.

"This gives Al a chance to step up and say what he's made of," Rybak said.

That chance will come when Franken addresses the convention Saturday. With more glimpses of Franken's fun at women's expense coming almost daily this week, he's got some serious explaining to do.

He's bound to reprise what I heard Sunday -- a barrage at his Republican critics with the artillery of genuine issues. He cut loose on Coleman's votes against better veterans' health care and for "a blank check" to wage war in Iraq.

"You know what's obscene?" Franken said. "It's the mother in Fergus Falls who has to share her insulin with her 23-year-old son because they both have diabetes, and he can't afford health insurance."

My sense, though, is that going on the offensive won't be enough. Critics of Franken's raunchy writing aren't only Republicans. And asking Minnesotans to define obscenity more broadly won't take the sting out of what they already know is obscene.

Neither will DFL fears about a fall dominated by Frankenisms be eased if he says, as he did Sunday, that he doesn't intend to "explain every piece of satire I've written. It's all I'd end up doing."

In other words, there's plenty of material. Dredging it up could be all Republicans end up doing, from now until Nov. 4.

Franken's tall order on Saturday is to put all those offensive dribs and drabs into a "that-was-then" framework, a context that takes the shock out of the worst stuff Minnesotans have already read under his byline and inoculates them against more.

He needs to tell what amounts to a conversion story.

He doesn't have to make one up. Franken's decision to leave a lucrative career in adult comedy to come home and run for office is a story of personal transformation. It's about forsaking one way of life, with its lowest-common-denominator culture and standards, in favor of another, more noble one.

It's up to him to convince DFLers this weekend, and, if he's their nominee, then Minnesotans in the fall, that his conversion is complete -- that he has adopted the norms of a new job very different from his old one.

There's one thing more. He should admit that some things that once seemed funny to Al the Comedy Writer now seem outrageous to Al the Public Servant. He should say, right out loud and in so many words, "I'm sorry."

Lori Sturdevant is a Star Tribune editorial writer and columnist. She is at lsturdevant@startribune.com.