Al Franken Defends Minority Hiring Record

In a letter to the National Review posted Friday, Air America host Al Franken responded to a piece that noted the hipocrisy of Franken’s criticism of minority hiring practices yet “apparently couldn’t find any non-white research assistants for his book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them … or writers for Saturday Night Live when he was an executive producer there … or researchers and producers for Air America.” The piece, by Catherine Seipp, refers to Peter Schweizer‘s Do As I Say (Not as I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy.

Franken writes:

Let’s take these one-by-one. I do not rail against audiences for not employing more minorities. What Schweizer was referring to is a joke I tell when I give speeches at a lot of corporate events. The joke is: “First of all I want to congratulate (name of company) for not giving into that whole affirmative action nonsense.”

There was a “non-white” student who helped research Lies and the Lying Liars. I was never executive producer of SNL, but when I served as producer for the 1985-6 season, we hired Danitra Vance, who was both a writer and a cast member and was African American. (Danitra has since passed, although National Review did not give it the attention it gave to Belushi’s death, because, I assume, she was black.)

One of my researcher/producers on my Air America show is black. When we first started, the second researcher I hired was black. He left to finish Yale Law School. Our archivist is black.

Being Franken [National Review]

Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.