Because Minnesota cannot bear not being the laughingstock of a nation with plenty of contenders to that title, they may very well elect comedian Al Franken to the United States Senate this year. Or perhaps Jesse "The Body" Ventura, the noted Predator star and former professional wrestler. And governor of the state. Great work, guys. (Well, Ventura doesn't actually seem that inclined to run. He's just threatening to because he so dislikes Franken and Norm Coleman. Which, yeah, we do too, but we'd still rather see Carl Weathers in that seat. Someday all of our elected officials will have their political resumes replayed on TBS every Saturday afternoon.) [KARE11]

Comedian Al Franken is running for Senate out in the frigid wilderness of Minnesota. He's running against Norm Coleman, an oily scumbag whose best argument for remaining a senator is that he's not comedian Al Franken. It will be a bitter and dirty race. The GOP is painting Franken as an out-of-touch Hollywood liberal, which is untrue: he's an out-of-touch New York liberal. They can't use the New York Jew line against him, though, as Norm Coleman is a real New York Jew. And Coleman's "wife" is a political prop—she lives in Hollywood, of course, where she is trying to be an "actress." So this is what they're trying on Franken now: he didn't pay his taxes once.

• Joey Ramone's mom, Charlotte Lesher, died of a heart attack on Saturday night. R.I.P. [JoeyRamone.com]
  

• The Voice turns 50. Long live independent journalism! Oh, wait. [VV]
• Old Voicers, shockingly, continue to be apprehensive about merger. [NYP]
• Four reasons regulators should block the Voice-New Times deal. [SFBG]
• Nightliners are apprehensive, too, as overhauled, Koppel-less version of the show moves toward its launch. [NYO]
• Al Franken to enter Minnesota politics. Which will require moving there. The horror. [NYO]
• New New York Press editor Harry Siegel, who used to work at the Sun, is profiled by a freelancing Sun editor, who reveals Siegel's Press ascension was engineered by the paper's founder, Russ Smith, who doesn't own it anymore. It's almost as incestuous as one of our Mediabistro-EIC posts. [Doublethink]
• James Truman's new job will be in London, not New York. And Judy Miller's car sports a "Support Our Troops" bumper sticker. We don't mean to suggest any correlation. [WWD
• Why's the Times at war with itself? Because it deserves it. [MarketWatch]