[Updated: see below]

I think it is interesting that on the week that Al Franken spent talking about Iraq, Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) chooses to bring up his marriage to cause a distraction away from the issues. This will be the pattern of this campaign: Al will talk about an issue; Norm will deflect by trying to raise something else.

If Norm wants to bring up his marriage by using his wife as a campaign prop then gets the vapors when we actually want to talk about his marriage ... well ... you started it.

Let's review what Norm has agreed that we Democrats are allowed to talk about, according to Norm when he was on MPR's Midday with Gary Eichten:

GE: So you're record is fair game?

Norm: Absolutely. Absolutely..."
(MPR's Midday)

To be fair Norm went on to expound that we Democrats are not allowed to distort his record. Considering his subsequent complaints when we have talked about his record, when Norm talks about "not distorting the record" it's Norm-speak^TM. Allow me to translate:

Democrats are only allowed to talk about my record when it makes me look good. Anything else is distortion.

So here's the situation:

Earlier this week Al released the following video:

Al points out the we're building 810 schools, 4800 water and sewage projects and 1047 roads and bridges in Iraq. Al wants a change of coarse in Iraq and offers a clear difference to Norm who has voted 100% for President Bush's war.

Of course, Norm doesn't like this topic of conversation and tries to divert the discussion to minutae:

"There's no record, or minimal, record of public service, of giving back to the community," Coleman said of Franken. The issues, he said, will be "your record, will be your temperament, will be the ability to get things done. You just don't parachute into Minnesota and say, 'I'm going to be a senator and here's my agenda.' I will talk about the things I have gotten done."

Sheehan said Coleman has been a strong advocate for U.S. improvements and was instrumental in obtaining funding to rebuild the collapsed I-35W bridge and for the planned Central Corridor light-rail line.
(Star Tribune)

This is because Norm has mostly opposed discussing withdrawal. When he has agreed that we should possibly consider it, it has only been after a certain date in the future when a General will come before Congress to provide a overly rosy picture of how things are going in Iraq. Basically, it means he's never really been for any type of withdrawal under any circumstance other than complete victory ... whatever that might look like.

A Coleman campaign spokesman accused Franken of distorting the senator's position. Luke Friedrich said Coleman wants the Iraqis to take more responsibility for their own security and reconstruction costs. He favors keeping U.S. troops in Iraq in a secondary role, "not in the middle of a civil war," Friedrich said. Coleman opposes cutting off funding for U.S. troops and wants U.S. generals "on the ground" to set a timetable for withdrawal.
(Political Animal)

Remember what Norm really means when he says he doesn't want his record distorted? Well, Norm may use Norm-speak^TM to try and dance around Iraqi reconstruction costs, but Norm has never ever been willing to attach actual consequences to the Iraqi governments inability to achieve anything. As a result he has to resort to more Norm-speak^TM to try and scamper out from under the political spotlight.

With all this in mind, the Coleman campaign decided to release a YouTube vid featuring Norm's wife. The intent was to probably show how Norm is a family man, how he and his wife are so happy in their St. Paul home. It was also to talk about how Norm doesn't listen to those special interests, but in a really sappy way.

Unfortunately, it didn't quite work out that way for Norm. We bloggers began to speculate if Laurie wasn't actually filmed in front of a green-screen and edited into the video. The video simply looked bizarre. Laurie looks far too tall, they never actually stand next to each other and the lighting on Laurie is wrong compared to the rest of the house.

Norm hit back through the Pioneer Press:

"These left-wing, liberal, Al Franken bloggers are as goofy a bunch as I've ever seen. They've spent the entire morning concocting a conspiracy theory, wasting valuable bandwidth on the Internet. The Senator and his wife were both in the kitchen of their home where the commercial was filmed."
(Political Animal

But Norm wasn't done. He releases the following YouTube vid. I don't understand Republican humor, but this is as good as it gets. Fake Al standing in front of a Mpls skyline saying "this St. Paul skyline brings a tear to my eye" is modestly funny, but its a poor vid and Fake Al looks just about realistic as Laurie did in the earlier vid.

Norm, in the ad it doesn't say that you approve this message. Yet it appears on your campaign site and you acknowledge that you've paid for it.

They attach the vid to a post on Norm's blog.

Yesterday the Al Franken blog league of anonymous video analysts was abuzz with speculation that Norm’s wife, Laurie, was green-screened into our latest ad. Using revolutionary technology and wild speculation, the liberal blogosphere weighed in.

• “MovieFan” at MN Publius wrote, “I’ve checked with a couple people who work with film and video, including one who has done a lot of greenscreen work. Both felt the same thing: Laurie has been greenscreened in on this ad.”
• “Chickadee” at MN Blue wrote, “Eric, SOMEBODY has got to investigate this. It's so fakey. It makes my blood boil. I wonder how much he paid her?”
• “MplsDave,” who prefaced his post with “OMG,” shared Chickadee’s sense of urgency, “Chickadee is right. This does need to be investigated.”
• “skyblue” at MN Publius wrote, “oh, it’s definitely a composite. They missed the lighting and the camera angles. Oh, and yes, I’m a video guy with 30 years in the game.”
• “Big E” at MN Blue wrote, “Check out the screen captures from the ad, the lighting is completely wrong. It sure looks like she wasn’t even in the room!”
• “Joe Bodell” at MN Campaign Report, who seems to believe that this ad employed the same technology used to fake the moon landing, wrote, “Lighting and reflections are one issue, but they were issues when we landed on the moon too. However, check out the angle in that shot — it looks like Mrs. Coleman is either embedded into the counter, or wasn’t actually in this shot, especially when you consider that the height difference between the two isn’t that big.”
  Video production insider “Tim” wrote, “It’s definitely a greenscreen, or ‘chroma key’ as we say in the biz.”

Naturally, upon reading these posts the Coleman campaign flew into crisis mode. Last night we released this statement:

“These left-wing, liberal, Al Franken bloggers are as goofy a bunch as I’ve ever seen,” Coleman Communications Director Erin Rath said. “They’ve spent the entire morning concocting a conspiracy theory, wasting valuable bandwidth on the Internet. The Senator and his wife were both in the kitchen of their home where the commercial was filmed.”

Amazingly, there seems to be a real conspiracy in the making based on a video that has been found from the Franken archives!

We have released a portion of an Al Franken web video that we find suspect. There is this guy we showed the Franken video to and he said it was “obviously faked.” Another man, who has seen several movies, told us that, “Franken’s mouth doesn’t even move throughout the entire production. This is totally fake. He should drop out now to save himself embarrassment.”
(Norm for Senate)

One point, green-screen technology was revolutionary in 1960. If you and Laurie have been to the movies together recently, you probably would know that its pretty common nowadays ... oops ... guess you two don't hang out to much anymore.

Fine. You wanted to use your wife as a campaign prop and you seem to want to continue to discuss this topic. We certainly won't be discussing your stance on Iraq then.

Folks, this is your current Senator. Anyone feeling more embarrassed by him than they were yesterday?

Update

Norm released some pix and a vid from the out-takes: