Franken is the clear front-runner for the nomination of the Democratic Farmer Labor Party (DFL) in Minnesota. If he wins, he will then take on incumbent Republican Sen. Norm Coleman.

A recently surfaced 2000 Playboy column he wrote has become an attack opportunity:

On Thursday, the Minnesota Republican Party released a letter, signed by six prominent GOP women, including a state senator and state representative, calling on Franken to apologize for his “demeaning and degrading” article.

“The words and descriptions you write about are beyond vulgar,” read the letter, circulated by the Minnesota Republican Party and posted on its Web site. “They demean and degrade women as thoroughly and disrespectfully as any article we have ever seen, and we are horrified to believe that someone running for the U.S. Senate could have written them. This column shows flagrant disregard for women, and an extreme objectification of women as sex objects for your pleasure.”

The bigger crime is that its not even funny, but then again (since when has Al Franken ever been funny?)

In his Playboy romp, Franken fantasized about oral sex delivered by a machine, as well as sex with combinations of females who fit the Playboy view of women as big-breasted automatons, panting at the prospect of servicing the likes of Franken. That’s why they call it fantasy, I guess.

I wonder how many DFL officials will be able to pull Porn-O-Rama through their Internet filters and read it before the party endorses its candidate for U.S. Senate this weekend. I wonder, too, whether folks like Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Attorney General Lori Swanson, whose campaigns took money in 2006 from Franken’s so-called Midwest Values PAC (yes, you read that right) will feel compelled to return those bucks on truth-in-advertising grounds.

Gonzo pornography is a filming style of adult video. It is characterized by a filming style that attempts to place the viewer directly into the scene. The name is a reference to gonzo journalism, in which the reporter is part of the event taking place. By analogy, gonzo pornography puts the camera right into the action — often with one or more of the participants both filming and performing sexual acts — without the usual separation characteristic of conventional porn and cinema. Influenced by amateur pornography, basic gonzo porn tends to use far fewer full-body/wide shots, and more close-ups (see Reality pornography). The loose and direct camera work often includes “tight” shots of the genitalia, unlike much of traditional porn.

Gonzo videos tend to focus far less on the plots, extended dialogue, elaborate costumes/sets, and artistic camerawork commonly found in conventional porn. However, due to the explosive growth in its popularity since the mid-1990s, gonzo has attained mainstream popularity; several individually distinct styles of no-frills, filmed pornography can be labeled gonzo porn. Today, several companies produce gonzo that has excellent lighting and sound quality, (temporary) lingerie costuming, and is shot in various rooms of luxury homes. One trait that all gonzo films share, though, is a much greater emphasis on intense (almost hyperactive) sexual performance. Regardless of camera techniques or the degree of director involvement in the scenes, a gonzo film has “more sex”, per se, than a traditional (e.g., Vivid or Adam&Eve) adult video. Gonzo scenes tend to run longer; it is common for a single boy-girl scene to run anywhere from fifteen to thirty minutes.

John Stagliano is considered to have started the Gonzo pornography genre with his Buttman series of films.