Failure To Communicate

I listened, as is my occasional masochistic wont, to about a minute of the Nick Coleman "program" today on the local Air American affiliate.

Actually, it was 45 seconds in one installment, and 15 in another.

They were talking about the Taxpayers' Rally last Friday at the Capitol, with a rep from (I'm guessing here) "Billionaires for Pawlenty". More on them in a bit.

Two things jumped out at me.

First: The woman noted that Jason Lewis - former Twin Cities talk show host who was brought back to MC the event, an homage to his role in rallying the taxpayers during his annual rallies during the Carlson and Ventura administrations - noted one of the counterprotesters with a sign saying something like "Don't Take Money Away From Our Children" or some such.

Lewis, said the woman, said "But you want to take money away from my children...". Let's not ask, for the moment, whether the woman had the context correct - always a dicey assumption with these people. Her response? I'm paraphrasing closely (because, again, I don't run a recorder during Coleman's show): "In the Minnesota I grew up in, it was about our children...".

Oh, no, hon. It's not.

My children are not a communitarian project. Yes, indeed, I will watch out for your kids, and do my best to make this a safer community for them.

But when it comes to actually raising them, giving them an ethical background and sending them out into the world? Oh, hell no. My kids are not a community gig.

Her second line - during the second fifteen seconds I caught before one of "Kuhbe's" intrusive, not-really on-point sound drops sent me scurrying in cringing semi-professional horror for the presets - was funnier; "...we parody Republicans, because they're so easy to parody...".

Now, consider the scene. These dimbulbs, "Billionaires for [name GOP politician] dress up like characters from a game of Milton Bradley's Monopoly, and mince about like big bad Daddy Warbuckses from a mid-thirties Laurel and Hardy flick. It's about as on-point as dressing in wool khakis and Astrakhans and marching about DFL events as "Stalinists for Klobuchar". Apparently Republicans aren't so easy to parody that these people are able to actually do it well...

And I'd love to meet one of these people and ask "why do you suppose that the rural West and the South - with the lowest per-capita incomes in the country - voted most lopsidedly for the President in the last election, while John Kerry's highest-profile supporters were millionaires and billionaires?"

Not that I expect any answers...