Chris Steller actually touches on something useful in this piece in the Minnesoros Monitor “Independent” from last week on the overuse of the analogy “…the Saudi Arabia of [something]“:

Back in March, a Minnesota Monitor survey found the phrase becoming so commonplace it bordered on cliche. The list of places that various media outlets had recently nicknamed “The Saudi Arabia of [one alternative energy source or another]” included: Minnesota, Wisconsin, New Mexico, the Dakotas, Oklahoma, California, Nebraska, Arizona, New Jersey, Texas, Martha’s Vineyard, Quebec, Scotland, the United Kingdom, Inner Mongolia, Australia and even Saudi Arabia.

So far, so good.

Steller ties this into the fact that North Dakota’s deep oil reserves – the “Bakken Formation”, a two-mile-deep pool that is as difficult to extract from (lying beneath, sulfur-rich and thereby highly flammable lignite coal deposits, which tend to burst into unextinguishable flame from the friction of drilling) as is it huge – are being called the “Saudi Arabia of…” – well, you know.

Again – so far so good.

And then…:

Now comes a handsome spread in the June 6 Star Tribune (pictured) via Bloomberg News that puts an old spin on this new cliche, announcing that North Dakota is “the new Saudi Arabia of oil.” Billionaires from Texas, Oklahoma and other places that have oil know-how and big hats are finally finding ways to get at a thin layer of oil 10,000 feet down…Bloomberg’s story comes with a fashion-forward photo of two aspiring NoDak oil moguls from Minneapolis (pictured) in fine duds, minus the hats. Strangely, the Strib gave short shrift to hometown heroes Mike Reger and Ryan Gilbertson, chopping a Saudi Arabia-sized chunk of text from the Bloomberg copy.

The picture in question (emphasis added):

Maybe the Strib cut the material because the local boys’ colorful approach hewed a hue too close to that of some other local boys who got suspended from school this week when their fondness for “The Dukes of Hazzard” extended to waving Confederate flags in the parking lot at Bloomington Kennedy High School.

“Maybe?”

Leave aside the obvious First Amendment issues in the Bloomington Kennedy case (where a couple of yahoos got suspended from school for waving a confederate flag around the school parking lot; the display was stupid, offensive and disruptive; the school was well within its rights to suspend the lads, just as they should with every student wearing a Che Guevara shirt) (But won’t); “Maybe” the two guys in the picture are guilty, by an association too flimsy to actually make it to print anywhere but Steller’s article?

No, really…:

The missing Bloomberg money quote (from Gilbertson): “We’re both cowboy-boot-wearing, country-music-listening, gun-toting sons o’ bitches.”

So, genius Chris Steller: what part of that sentence is associated with slavery? With the Civil War? The cowboy boots? The C’nW? Guns?
Is it come combination of any two of the three that associates them with waving a symbol of slavery around? Chris – I’m a shooter, and I worked as a C’nW DJ at a slew of radio stations,and love Emmylou Harris! So am I a slavery sympathizer (“SlaveSymp?”) by association?

Or do you think everyone in a red state basically yearns for the good old days, circa 1855? 

Do you have any reason to defame Messrs. Reger and Gilbertson, other than “maybe” your own hatred for your pet red state stereotypes?

Please elaborate, Chris Steller!  Do you have some insight into the Strib’s copy editing that the rest of us know nothing about?   Spill it!

I’m starting to understand why the Monitor changed its name. It needed a clean slate.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Tuesday, June 10th, 2008 at 6:22 am and is filed under Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.