An interesting urban drama has been playing out in the Wedge neighborhood of Minneapolis, home to The Wedge co-op, arguably the Midwest’s best food co-operative, and Hum’s Liquors, for whom similar plaudits are not warranted. 

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Norm Coleman is right, Al Franken is wrong. It pains me to say this. I voted for Al Franken. I would like to see him in the Senate. Norm Coleman is a friendly man whom everyone enjoys chatting up and schmoozing with, but his finger to the wind politics is not for me. 

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This website has received an advance copy of next weekend’s column, penned by the Star Tribune’s editor-in-chief, on topics of interest regarding the newspaper’s operations. Here’s the text:

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I went to buy Yankee tickets last weekend. Some friends and I are headed out to NYC this summer to see the new ballparks there. The thinking was that if we didn’t jump on day one, we’d be at the mercy of the scalpers. Lo and behold, what showed up when I asked the computer for five “best available” seats but a quint of prime ducats in the lower deck. Booya . . . no. Face prices on these babies were $2,600. A ticket. No, I didn’t leave a decimal out. (Anything under $50 was sold out, natch.)

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One of the less-discussed aspects of the economic meltdown is that it exposed the fraudulence of how most of us are securing our futures. Whereas most first-world nations (Canada, Australia, the U.K., France, Sweden, etc.) provide for their citizens’ primary and secondary educations, lifelong health care, and retirement pensions, the U.S., in large measure, denies any responsibility thereof.

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If you’re a St. Paul public school parent, you should be angry right now. The latest in a long string of short-term inner city school superintendents, Maria Carstarphen, just decamped for Austin, Texas, after three years. We get very upset when Gopher sports coaches don’t work their full contract, but the harm is far worse here.

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The veil of anonymity that much of the world uses to pontificate over the Internet has always puzzled me. We have become a nation of exhibitionists, over-sharers, personal bloggers, self-publishers. Most do that under their own name and often include a stylish photo. But virtually all the rest of online pontificating and commenting is done under pseudonyms.

 

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Are you offended by this? I know some people surely are because we live in an age where people are offended by everything. Personally, I am not. But it’s become a news story, so let’s discuss.

 

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Sorry, took a little time off to work on that magazine we put out.

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Some of my peers have been asking me to weigh in on the Star Tribune’s columnist purge, but I’ve been having trouble with the topic because I’m of two minds on it. I agree with everyone else that columnists are often the spark and lifeblood of great newspapers. But my problem here is I don’t think much of the Strib’s columnists, and I never have, and that goes back to my arrival on this prairie in 1981.

 

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