cnn-kutcher-twitter-collageHere’s evidence that Minnesota’s post-election battle for U.S. Senate has permeated pop culture. Al Franken and Norm Coleman were cited this week by contestants in another competition that attracted millions of partisans: the race between movie actor Ashton Kutcher and news juggernaut CNN to be first to gain one million followers on Twitter, the social-media phenomenon.

Two leading players in the new-media stunt known as the ”Twitter War“ compared themselves to Minnesota’s Senate rivals. Kutcher tweeted “now I know how Al Franken must have felt” when the race looked tight on Thursday. After the actor bested the network today, CNN host Larry King said, “I’m not a sore loser. I’m not gonna pull a Norm Coleman and take this to the courts.” (h/t noahkunin)

King’s offhand sobriquet for the former Minnesota Senator comes only two-and-a-half weeks since a Media Matters critic took the nation’s press and commentariat to task for failing to call Coleman a “sore loser.” In the interim, however, a Minnesota court has ruled that Franken won by 312 votes, and Coleman vowed to appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court and perhaps the federal courts as well. 

Here’s a video clip of Kutcher on “Larry King Live” tonight (King’s “Norm Coleman” comment comes at the 5:00 mark):

KING: I’m not a sore loser. 

KUTCHER: No, you’re not. 

KING: I’m not gonna pull a Norm Coleman and take this to the courts. 

KUTCHER: You have been gracious, very gracious. 

And here’s the “Al Franken” Twitter message that Kutcher sent Thursday. 

kutcher-twitter

As of the time of this post late Friday, Kutcher had 1,118,658 followers on Twitter while CNN still lagged with 1,046,927 — for a combined total of more than 2.1 million — still about 800,000 shy of the 2.9 million votes cast (and then recounted by hand)  in Minnesota’s 2008 U.S. Senate election.