The Grade
By Mitch Berg
It’s safe to say I’m not a Peggy Flanagan fan. She was the ultimate diversity hire – an ultra progressive (by 2018 standards) “minority” woman (we’ll come back to that) to help drag “moderate” Tim Walz over the DFL’s finish line. She’s been the most visible Lieutenant Governor I can recall in Minnesota history – during Walz’s first term, I think Flanagan was listed as a co-equal, and appeared in the background of all the Governor’s social media (which ended when Flanagan started making noises about running against Walz’s third term attempt befere…well, you know).
I think the fact that the DFL is going all-in on torpedoing Angie Craig to support P-Flan is the best thing to happen to the GOP in years, in spite of itself; it gives the GOP the best chance it’s had to win a statewide race since the 2010.
But there’s one criticism she’s gotten, and has resurfaced, that I’m going to sit out:
In my freshman and sophomore years of high school, if I hadn’t had German, Civics, History and music, I’d have likely had a worse GPA. I was bored stiff. English class was always 50% literature, which I loved, and half grammar, which bored me stiff. I knew how to talk and write, for crying out loud.
In 10th grade I had Geometry. My six-weekly grades were C, D, F, F, F and F. So I musta not gotten Geometry – right?
Then I got a “B” on the final, which salvaged a “D” for the year.
Anyway – I went on to 11th and 12th grades, and had probably a 3.7 – I cared about the classes I was taking, I’d started working at the radio station and so finally had an identity outside of “greasy-haired cello-playing athletically-inept nerd”, and things just started clicking.
All by way of saying a number one acquires between ages 14-18 doesn’t define an adult.
A lifetime of being a “public service” leech does. So I’ll stick with that.
