In the interest of "letting it go" and giving credit where credit is due, let me briefly note the Minnesota Poll(s) produced by the Strib throughout the past two days, particularly Sunday's poll, which waded into the Norm Coleman drama.

Since I have snarked about how the paper's managers and deep thinkers were avoiding further embarrassment by not having an in-house Minnesota Poll of yore to throw statistics in their faces, stats proving what we all know to be a fact of life, namely, that damned near everyone thinks Coleman should concede, I must at least say . . . in the Strib's defense, "It's about time."

About time . . . that the paper provided the service of a poll (now out-sourced to New Jersey) and at long last took the risk of looking even more ineffectual with its timorous dithering over how much of this legal process is nothing more than cynical political tactics.

But the paper did pay for a poll, and the numbers are not surprising.

Before I attempt to move on though, read both the story and the poll questions closely. The story, byline by Kevin Duchschere (but heavily vetted I'm guessing), practically falls over itself addressing the issue of "fairness," which, of course, is central to Coleman's argument. (There is a graph early on with an alleged Coleman voter saying it's all part of a plan to keep one more vote away from the Democrats).

Really? Is "fairness" what this is all about? As in a perfect election? I must have been sleeping through class again when any of us was promised fairness/perfection in anything, much less government. But by all means, let's argue the need for perfection and the right of those with PAC money to litigate endlessly in search of it.

But the questions . . . somewhere amid asking the 1,000 or so Minnesotans their impressions of the two candidates, the appropriateness of Coleman pushing on to the state supreme court, and two questions about the "fairness" of the election process and recount, don't you find it odd that the committee that cooked up the poll questions didn't test public opinion on the essentials of Coleman's larger strategy?

Perhaps a multiple choice question would have been in order:

Sen. Coleman repeatedly says his only interest in pursuing the recount as long as he has is to guarantee that every Minnesotan's vote was counted.

Do you . . .
               A: Believe him.
               B: Assume he's doing whatever the Republican Party tells him to do.
               C: Think that's the lamest thing you've ever heard.
               D: Resent being taken for an idiot.

But enough of that. I also have to say a word about KFAN host Paul Allen. I hadn't caught Allen's show in a long time. (Nine to twelve weekdays.) But while driving north last week, I made a point of hanging around for three entire hours and was reminded why this guy is commercial radio gold.

Maybe you're aware that the NFL held its draft on Saturday. The aforementioned (cash-strapped and relentlessly pilloried) Strib devoted roughly six weeks, 60 percent of its sports edit hole and thousands of hours of staff time "breaking down" every conceivable facet of the draft. What I know about the driving records and laundry habits of 330-pound tackles scares me.

But they are slackers and pikers when it comes to "PA," as every get-a-life Vikings fan/KFAN rube knows him. Allen can, will, and has talked Vikings draft—with breakdowns of the possibility of outlet passes to any of a dozen possible college kids—for fifty-two weeks out of the year. I didn't check this morning, but I say with absolute certainty that Allen talked Vikings draft again today and, what's more, will begin talking the 2010 mock draft/real draft by mid-May of this year. Three months after the asteroid takes out the Northern Hemisphere, Allen will still be talking Vikings draft.

It is monomania of a high and highly entertaining order. Better yet, Allen, who is also the "voice of the Vikings," actually knows what he's talking about. (He is "a great football mind.") He had Percy Harvin, the pot-smoking wide receiver from Gainesville, penned in as the likely pick when he linked up with the PiPress's Sean Jensen last week.

A day earlier, City Pages, not exactly your go-to venue for pro football chatter, named Allen's colleague, Dan "The Common Man" Cole the cities' best sports talk host . . . for the sixth time. Common . . . talking sports? . . . do people there ever listen to Cole's show?

Allen is radio gold because he is like some fluke of DNA, a guy who appears to have an inexhaustible affinity for full immersion in spectator recreation, an affinity obviously motivated by the good living it provides (even with the ClearChannel ax forever swinging overhead) but an affinity matched with the ambition to be a "playah," as he might say, in the NFL family and among football-crazed rubes.

I took a great interest in Allen's shtick when I was doing a show for KTLK a few years back. As good as Dan Barreiro is, Allen's astounding ability to tread in shtick, grease up and squeeze information out of guests (eg. ex-Wolves coach Flip Saunders), shuck and jive with his producer, and promote himself was my idea of the model to follow . . . albeit while accusing Dick Cheney of treason. Allen's show, presuming you have high tolerance for the monomania thing, achieves a very high "entertainability" quotient day in and day out.

And the boy can fill. As his show was winding down last week and I was letting the dog do its business in Tobie's parking lot, Allen was killing the last few minutes of his three-hour shift by giving a play-by-play of the Twins' game off the TV in the studio, ripping and riffing on Scott Baker as the Red Sox pounded balls out of Fenway.

What's the old joke about reading the phone book?