'Nip/Tuck' star has a beef with Franken over horses

"Nip/Tuck" star Kelly Carlson thought Sen. Al Franken lacked something in the sensitivity department on the issue of horse slaughtering.

Carlson was recently in D.C. with other Hollywood celebrities for a meeting on a bill that would stop horses in the United States from being sent to Mexico and Canada to be slaughtered for human consumption. Like many of us, Carlson doesn't understand dining on descendants of Trigger.

Calling from LA, Carlson wanted my take on Sen. Franken. I told her that the "Saturday Night Live" alum and satirist was busy making sure that he is taken seriously on Capitol Hill. Franken is so serious about being taken seriously that last year, when he was on local radio with Kevyn Burger, I heard the senator decline to mine a current event for its obvious humor.

"I met with him because he is one of the ones holding up [passage of the bill]," said Carlson, who was so upset with Franken that she came close to saying, "Listen, buddy, I'm from Minnesota!" Ultimately, she didn't play the state card.

Carlson told me that the abuse level experienced by horses on their way to slaughter is "really bad -- not something you ever want to see." She recalled Franken saying Minnesota farmers are going to disagree with this bill. Carlson was stunned. "I was like, 'Wait a minute, is he from Minnesota?' This has nothing to do with farmers," she said.

"First of all, Minnesotans are dignified people. None of them would be pro-horse abuse and slaughter. They are not those kinds of people. I guess I said that to his staffer. I know so many farmers and horse people in Minnesota, and they are just not people without a conscience."

I called Franken's office seeking confirmation of Carlson's recollection of what she heard. "We don't have any holds on bills, so let me check in with the people who know what's going on," said Franken's press secretary, Jess McIntosh.

Not exactly as Stuart Smalley would have said, as Carlson might have preferred, but something less than the full Alan Stuart Franken.

Fitz speeds by tickets Larry Fitzgerald Jr. has eluded some speeding tickets with the same ease that he sheds corners and safeties.

"NFL Star Beats the Rap -- 5 Times Over," states TMZ.com. The website says the Minnesota native is off the hook for five speeding tickets for offenses caught on camera by Arizona police in 2009. The four tickets from August clearly show the vehicle's driver being somebody with lighter skin than Fitz's -- possibly a white guy. The November ticket photo seems to be a black guy, but the fuzzy photo doesn't look like Jr. to me.

"Maricopa County court officials tell TMZ all five tickets have been dismissed -- which means Larry even dodged the November bullet," states the website, www.tinyurl.com/yl2e7vy.

Had a failed attempt Tuesday to get comment from the Cardinals wide receive via Twitter; Twitpix posted Wednesday by Fitz showed him in Cambodia, a country he has apparently dreamed of visiting.

"Good for Charlie, if it is, in fact, a preventative measure," Moyers said. "It is a chronic disease. There is no cure for addiction. There is a solution; it's treatment and personal responsibility and managing that chronic illness. Sometimes that means they need to go back in and get a tuneup."

GMA anchor Robin Roberts asked, "How much does environment, the people you surround yourself with, affect your ability to cope?" The shortened answer from the guy known as Cope Moyers when he wrote for the Strib -- a period when his own addiction made work very interesting for our then-newspaper editors -- was: "It can have a huge impact."

Moyers' response makes some of those invited to the Tiger Woods apology session even more problematic. As New York Daily News sports columnist Mike Lupica told ESPN viewers, Tiger's audience was filled with "enablers."