Got an e-mail from Al Franken yesterday. He said I should shut the fuck up about SOPA and that I’m a misinformed asshole that doesn’t know what I’m talking about (I’m paraphrasing). Clearly, Al and his buddies in the House and Senate are rather shocked at the large number of ignorant assholes such as myself, and this legislation is currently on hold as they try to figure out who the hell woke up the unwashed masses (they’ll probably just attach it to bill extending unemployment benefits or something). Since Al has been a supporter of Net Neutrality (one of the very few people in Congress that I think actually understands the issue), I was kind of confused. So I decided to educate myself, and looked Al up at OpenSecrets.

His top individual contributor is Time Warner, and in terms of industry contributions, the TV/Movies/Music industry is number three at almost a million dollars (lawyers are #1 at $1.4 million).

You could say that, of course, what with Al being a teevee personality and writer and whatnot, he would naturally attract money from the industry. And I’d agree with that. Plus, being as he’s earned a living from his intellectual property, I’d also understand why he’d have an interest in protecting copyrights and shit.

But SOPA and PIPA are crap bills that cede a huge amount of power to a tiny fraction of already enormously wealthy corporations and their investors who have the finances to buy politicians and write legislation for them to rubber stamp, at the expense of censoring the Internet and without actually solving the problem.

I understand why some of these idiots in Congress don’t understand, because they’re ignorant (some willfully, some genetically). But Al is smarter than that.

Hey, you get what you pay for though, right?

Before anybody chides me for pointing this out and telling me that Al is better than, say, that other guy – who was it? Pawlenty? I forget. Oh, Norm Coleman, that’s right. He of the major dental work. Lack of sleep and stress is getting to me – or Michele Bachmann (who opposes SOPA, BTW) or whatever, let me just say, yes. He is better than them and has done some good (or at least stood and spoke for things I agree with), but – much like my views on our President – I am capable of having complex (and often conflicting) feelings, and Al has been bought off, and is on the wrong side of this.

And it pisses me off. Plus, his singing used to irritate me, and his radio show was frequently boring and couldn’t hold a candle to Morning Sedition.

There – take that, Al.