Is Nick Coleman Losing It-

Is Nick Coleman Losing It?- A weekly ritual at the Northern Alliance Radio Network production meetings is the race to claim our nominations for "Hack Column Of The Week".

Dibs on this week's Coleman.

Although fisking Nick Coleman is starting to lose its satisfaction. With Lori Sturdevant, there's at least a certain intellectual exercise, finding the fey slaps at the MN GOP woven into the thread of an often-reasonable-sounding column. With Steve Perry, there's the exercise of just getting to the end.

With Coleman?

His latest piece is titled "Our state's emperor is feeling a budget chill". The editorial delivers on the promise.

With all of the budget cuts Minnesota has endured over the past year or so, we may have lost a sense of what government is supposed to provide. But now, thanks to Gov. Tim Pawlenty, we have a succinct statement of the purpose of our great state:

"We've got to have some stuff for people to do."

At first glance, Pawlenty's Theorem seems a little thin as a cogent philosophical expression of the relationship between citizens and their state.

That's because it's an off-the cuff remark, not really a "philosophical expression".

In a twist on the familiar but outmoded "Cold Omaha" argument, which held that the Twin Cities would sink in esteem beneath the status of a semi-frigid Nebraska municipality if we were to lose our beloved Twins and Vikings, Pawlenty posited that we need the big leagues because Minnesota is small and cold, like the heart of a program-slashing ideologue. Then, in a brilliant phrase that conveyed a sense of urgency and a deeply felt compassion for the average man, he issued a plaintive appeal for millions of dollars in state support: "We've got to have some stuff for people to do."

No argument. No public funding for stadiums.

But when it comes to cogent displays of political philosophy, Coleman is confused. Pawlenty didn't invent the phrase "Cold Omaha". No, that was a product of the DFL, a convenient trope they'd wheel out every time anyone deigned to deny the faintest scrap of funding to [fill in DFL sacred cow].

Coleman continues:

I do not mean to sound satirical. I am in earnest, but as the great Roman writer Juvenal once observed, sometimes satire is hard not to write.

I...just...can't...go on...

You probably know him better for saying -- this was during the fall of the Roman Empire -- that the once mighty Roman people no longer were interested in greatness. They just wanted bread and circuses. I believe the Latin phrase is: "Populus wantum stuffus to duticus."

I'm sitting here, wondering where to go on. Dumping the DFL agenda - by not increasing the budget as much as the DFL wanted - is on par with the fall of the Roman Empire. Nick Coleman has slipped far past caricature.

In Minnesota's classical period, when Republicans such as Gov. Elmer Andersen believed that government should help people while providing for the common good and extending a safety net to protect against family-crushing disaster, Minnesotans had plenty to do: work, pray, raise kids, fish, hunt, chop wood.

These days, however, we have become a soft and lazy people with lots of time on our hands and boredom in our heads.

What must it be like to be Nick Coleman? Stuffing back his contempt for his fellow Minnesotan to come downtown every day, holding down the gorge of the hatred that has eaten what once a promising career, watching the rabble wander out of their bowling alleys and firing ranges and into the polls and getting all uppity.

Pawlenticus is right. We have nothing to do. Think about it:

Want to read a book? Who can remember when the library is open anymore, now that they've cut hours and staff? [Same hours they had before]

Go to the rec center and play hoops? Oops, they've cut back there, too. Plus, I think a kid needs $2 to get into "open gym."[Why shouldn't people pitch in?]

Maybe we can go to the nursing home and say hello to Grandma. Except Grandma has Alzheimer's, so she's got to pay extra now, and she's in the basement with 30 other oldsters, stacked up like cord wood.

Got pictures?

Witnesses?

Any evidence of old people "stacked like cordwood in the basement?"

Or is Nick flailing for relevance again?

Posted by Mitch at March 22, 2004 02:20 AM