Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., who has been accused of groping a female reporter in 2006, once pitched a sketch involving a joke about raping CBS News reporter Lesley Stahl while a writer for Saturday Night Live in 1995.
In a profile for New York Magazine, the writers of SNL were holding a late-night brainstorming session while working on a sketch about "60 Minutes" commentator Andy Rooney, in which Norm MacDonald plays Rooney and finds an empty bottle of sedatives.
Franken suggested that he say after finding the bottle: "'I give the pills to Lesley Stahl. Then, when Lesley's passed out, I take her to the closet and rape her.' Or, 'That's why you never see Lesley until February.' Or, 'When she passes out, I put her in various positions and take pictures of her.'"
MacDonald then suggested: "What if Rooney rapes ["60 Minutes" correspondent] Mike Wallace? And then says, 'I guess that makes me bad.' Is it funnier with a black guy? Or two old white guys?"
To which Franken replies: "What about, 'I drag Mike into my office and rape him. Right here! I guess that makes me bad.'"
On Thursday, Los Angeles radio anchor Leeann Tweeden tweeted a picture of Franken groping her while she slept during a USO tour in the Middle East in 2006, before Franken was first elected to the Senate.
Although Franken would later apologize for the jokes when he first ran for office, he later wrote in his book, "Al Franken, Giant of the Senate," that "to say I was sorry for writing a joke was to sell out my career, to sell out who I'd been my entire life. And I wasn't sorry that I had written Porn-o-Rama or pitched that stupid Lesley Stahl joke at 2 in the morning. I was just doing my job."