BREAKING NEWS – Washington, D.C. – Senator Al Franken apologized after a Los Angeles radio show anchor said that he had forcibly kissed her and later groped her on a 2006 USO tour, and amid a blizzard of criticism said that he would “gladly cooperate” with a Senate Ethics Committee investigation into his actions. Leeann Tweeden, a news anchor on KABC’s “McIntyre in the Morning,” said that Franken had written a skit for the USO tour in which they kissed, and he demanded that they rehearse the scene. “I respect women. I don’t respect men who don’t,” said Franken, a Minnesota Democrat who joined the Senate in 2009 after a career as a comedian. “And the fact that my own actions have given people a good reason to doubt that makes me feel ashamed.” His next comment is what raised some eyebrows. “I admit that I am not very attractive, and that’s probably why she turned me down. Thus, I plan to introduce a bill that will make it a form of discrimination, if really pretty women like her, knowingly, with malice and forethought, reject men that look like me, solely based on our appearance. I issued Miss Tweeden an apology, now I feel she owes me one.”
