Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of what local media outlets and Twitter-ers are gabbing about.
Ronald Reagan Is Still Dead
We don’t like to get up on our soapbox here at Racket, but sometimes an issue is so grave it’s necessary for us to take a stand. Today, Briana Rose Lee, the Chair of the Minneapolis DFL, referred to the 19th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s death in this since-deleted tweet: "19 years ago today Ronald Reagan did his one good deed for the world." We at Racket are shocked and could not disagree more.
To truly perform a good deed, Reagan would have had to die much earlier.
By 2004 the damage had been done. Look, we don’t have time to go into all the ways Reagan screwed us. He fostered the religious right, slashed the safety net, helped kneecap unions, meddled in the affairs of Central America, made the rise of far-right judges possible, delayed the release of the Iranian hostages till after the election, and failed to act on AIDS. In fact, we’d be better off it he’d died before becoming governor of California. Maybe only if Reagan had It’s a Wonderful Life-d himself would he truly have done a good deed. (Though then we'd lose his pretty terrific turn as a mob boss in The Killers.)
Anyway, as you might expect, very silly people are using this very silly incident to make themselves look Very Serious. David Hann, chair of the state GOP, issued this statement: "President Ronald Reagan was a great leader for [blah blah blah blah] …, Americans honor the memory of [blah blah blah blah] … This low-rent rhetoric from the Minneapolis DFL chair [blah blah blah blah blah].” (It’s almost enough to make you miss Jen Carnahan.) Hann called on state DFL chair Ken Martin to condemn the tweet, and Martin dutifully obliged: "[Blah blah blah blah]... do not reflect the values of the DFL Party… [blah blah blah blah]...mocking the passing of an American president is beyond the pale…[ blah blah blah blah] the high standard that Minnesotans deserve."
For the Republicans, it’s a game: They shout “civility!” at the slightest affront and Democrats set about frantically to prove what decent people they are. Never mind that a GOP elected official could say much worse than this and we’d never get an apology from the Republican party. When it comes to Reagan's death, we at Racket feel much the same way as this Scottish lady did about Margaret Thatcher dying.
Weird Tennessee News Site Supports Nasri Warsame
Last night, John Edwards at Wedge Live dropped a juicy story investigating why Tennessee Horn News, an outlet based in, yep, Tennessee, ran an article about Minneapolis Ward 10 City Council Candidate Nasri Warsame. What he found was layers of bullshit. Turns out the site, which was created three days after our DFL endorsement meetup that ended in a melee, is mostly made up of plagiarized articles from other sources. (We’re not going to link to the site or the article, because as of this morning it now forces you to add a Chrome extension to your browser in order to access it.)
The pro-Warsame piece argues that the candidate was treated unfairly post fight, and that rampant socialism will soon drive Somali candidates to run for (and win) GOP seats instead. TN Horn's founder, Bashir Gure, tells the Wedge that his site is a small, in-house publication covering Somali news across the nation (Edwards points out that the Warsame article appears to be the sole piece of original reporting). Gure also said that he doesn’t know Warsame and wasn’t paid for the article, though Edwards notes that he did refer to him as a friend on his (now scrubbed) Twitter.
Creepy MN Politician Resurfaces
The 1990 GOP-endorsed candidate for governor, Jon Grunseth, withdrew nine days before the election amid a disturbing child-sex controversy. "This campaign was so nuts and there were so many weird things," Bill Hanley, a former TPT exec, recently recalled to the Star Tribune. TPT enjoyed its highest ratings ever during the Grunseth/Arne Carlson/Rudy Perpich debate, and Carlson—who once generously gabbed about Jingle All the Way with us—would later emerge as the write-in upset winner. Grunseth? He left the damn country.
Now, thanks to an “EXCLUSIVE” from the seedy U.K. Daily Mail, we learn that the 77-year-old shamed politician currently lives inside a $1 million home on a remote Scottish island. Huh! As for the allegations that he tried getting four teen girls to swim naked with him in the '80s, Grunseth tells the Daily Mail: “There were no charges ever brought, no lawsuits, no nothing, and as soon as this was over they dropped it like a hot potato…. This whole thing was total bullshit. It was designed to knock me out of the race.” Reported the Strib at the time: "A nude Grunseth swam after one of them, a 13-year-old [Elizabeth Mulay], trapping her in a corner of the swimming pool." Mulay died in a house fire in 2011. Grunseth, whose fairytale home is only accessible by ferry, apparently runs a successful artisanal cherry business these days. Weird.
Which Racket Reader Will Adopt These Canine BFFs?
Brenda and Linda are two stray pups and close pals who recently arrived at Minneapolis Animal Care & Control. How do we know they're close pals? Well, because this adorable video from Friends of MACC, which they've titled "Mission Impawsible," shows Brenda climbing over the partition between their two kennels so they could hang out together. (Don't worry: "They are now sharing a bigger kennel together.") The video has amassed 9,000 views since Saturday, with lots of commenters begging the shelter to adopt the two furry friends together. It could be you!
