In his Denver dining room, Mark Luther is on the phone, pacing with concentration. His bright Hawaiian shirt, ponytail and bare feet suggest the laid-back liberal his mother raised back in Minneapolis. His piano is at the ready, and his son is standing by to play some fiddle. But first, the fiddle-camp founder and University of Denver business instructor has a live radio segment to do.
“My question for you, Al, is what are you going to do about it? What are the Democrats going to do?” he asks his old friend, Al Franken. Luther accuses Franken of wanting to raise taxes, and the men who have been friends for 37 years fall into a routine that has been perfected over the past 10, since Luther became a “dittohead.”
Luther hangs up a few minutes later, having tried to defend Rush Limbaugh once again to a liberal Air America audience.
It’s an odd role, but one Luther
relishes. As the Franken show’s “resident dittohead,” he provides a right-wing take – typically on Monday, Wednesday and Friday – that seldom pops up on the liberal radio network.
Luther is also, he noted, “the only listener-approved guest.”
He’s referring to Air America’s first anniversary, in March, when listeners and some Franken staffers tried to get rid of Luther. They didn’t want to hear his right-wing views every week, he said.
Franken’s website hosted a poll and Luther squeaked by, although he believes even his mother voted against him.
“She can’t stand to listen to me. She likes Al,” he says. “Fortunately, my mother and I share a great love of music, so we get along very, very well together. Politics is forbidden.”
Luther and Franken’s friendship goes back to high school in Minnesota. “We used to go out to his grandmother’s house to water-ski,” says Franken in a recent satellite interview from Washington, D.C.
Franken went on to join “Saturday Night Live” in New York, breaking out with his Stuart Smalley character and political satire. The friends shared liberal political beliefs until the early ’90s, when Luther began listening to Rush Limbaugh.
“I’d be amazed at the things he said that I was surprised at that turned out to be true,” Luther says, recalling Bill Clinton’s sex scandal.
Luther, 53, says Franken remains stuck in his childhood beliefs, while Luther has evolved. But the friendship has stayed strong.
“First of all, he’s the smartest guy I know. And he’s the only liberal who will talk to me,” says Luther with a laugh.
For a nation divided into red and blue states, both men appreciate that they can disagree and still be close friends.
“That’s one of the reasons I have Mark on the show,” says Franken. “To demonstrate to our audience that you can be friends and have diametrically opposed political beliefs. I think it’s uplifting in a way. Mark and I love to discuss politics, and every once in a while we agree on something. And that’s when Mark realizes he’s just wrong.”
“I love Mark, and I say this all the time. I’ll yell at Mark, but I love him.”
The Al Franken show can be heard 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Monday through Friday on KKZN 760 AM.
9News anchor Kim Christiansen can be reached at 303-871-1499 or kim.christiansen@9news.com.
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To hear Mark Luther and Al Franken on the air, watch 9News at 5 p.m. today.
