Things are getting dirty in Minnesota Democratic Senate candidate Al Franken's fight to unseat acidhead incumbent Norm Coleman: Franken, a former Saturday Night Live writer and humorist (to some), is being attacked by the Minnesota Republican Party for a satirical, sexually risque piece he penned for Playboy back in 2000.

The story, titled "Porn-O-Rama!," details Franken's visit to a fictional sex institute, where he proceeds to engage in intercourse with all manner of machine and human. It's obviously a joke—he even talks about recommending that his 12-year-old son download some "effective visual aids" on the Internet when researching a report on bestiality—but that hasn't stopped the state's female GOP operatives from circulating a letter demanding that he apologize. Says the laughably straight-faced press release:

"We believe there is a pattern in your writings and words that seem to suggest you believe you can continue to represent women as playthings and objects and then scurry behind the defense that it is simply 'comedy' or 'satire'. All of us enjoy a joke as much as the next person. But portraying women as robots who exist to simply to cater to your needs is not funny."

This isn't the first shot the Republican party has taken at Franken: a website sympathetic to Coleman previously called him out for not carrying worker's comp insurance for employees of his personal corporation for nearly three years.

Franken, who is in a close race, has refused to apologize. And why should he? At least the dude was attempting satire, unlike the earnest fiction put out by the likes of Newt Gingrich ("Suddenly the pouting sex kitten gave way to Diana the Huntress"), former Christian Coalition executive director Ralph Reed, and aspiring Skinemax writer Lynne Cheney.