Zygi’s PR Hail Mary Puts Vikings In The Game

In the political world, there is something much worse than being opposed. It’s called being ignored.

And until Vikings owner Zygi Wilf and his team showed their teeth this week, they were being roundly ignored by the Legislature. The billionaire not only couldn’t get half a billion bucks from the Legislature, he couldn’t get a hearing, a cup of coffee, or a sideways glance.

But when the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission only offered Zygi millions in post-season revenues as he waits for his much bigger taxpayer financed pay day, the wounded Wilf howled.

“Shocked, exasperated, and extremely disappointed,” the Vikings penned to the Commission.

Holy moly! Shocked, exasperated AND extremely disappointed? As every good corporate communications toady knows, the Three Adjective Smackdown (TAS) is the WMD of business communications world. And today, the Vikings unleashed another rhetorical blitz, with sly talk about the need to “move on,” which of course is just two scary letters away from “move out.”

Finally, Zygi is flashing his New Jersey for us. Though he is speaking genteel corporatese, he is making it crystal clear that he is increasingly making an offer we can’t refuse.

And it’s working. Some are hating on Zygi to be sure, but he is no longer being ignored. Zygi has led the local news, and national sports news, for two days. He has DFL Speaker of the House Margaret Anderson Keliher talking about a “purple ribbon commission” to study the issue. (Sure, it’s just her way of not taking a position during the gubernatorial campaign, but it’s more than the cold shoulder Wilf had been getting.)

And today, Wilf’s tantrum has generated follow-up stories about the mythical prospects of the LA Vikings Scenario, which has the purple face-paint types curled up in a fetal position. All that buzz has made Wilf’s well-timed whining the week’s top “talker” on local radio stations.

Wilf is a long, long way from winning. To get out of the big Teflon dome in Minneapolis, he is going to need to get a lot better at operating under the big gold dome in St. Paul. But he will eventually win, and the PR move he put on the pols this week was nearly as nifty as the move Purple Jesus put on the 49ers to find an obscure receiver in the back of the end zone. Skoal Vikings!

- Loveland

Media Misses Health Trend Story Behind Rating

We’re number six! We’re number six!

It’s not exactly the cheer proud Minnesotans are accustomed to when it comes to health. After all, for four years in a row we were the number one healthiest state in the nation, according to the United Health Foundation. Health has always been one of the centerpieces of our vaunted Minnesota quality of life, but this is the third straight year we’ve been trending downward.

If we stopped dropping at number six, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. But unfortunately, the future may not look so great either. The Minnesota news media reported on Minnesota’s sixth place rating, but none of them connected the policy dots to describe where Minnesota appears to be headed in coming years. As the liberal policy think tank Minnesota 20-20 points out:

The Governor’s cuts to GAMC (General Assistance Medical Care, a state-funded program for low-income adults who have no dependent children and who do not qualify for federally funded health care programs) will increase our number of uninsured come March 1, since not all GAMC recipients are qualified for the automatic transfer to MinnesotaCare. After the six month grace period is over, it is likely that many GAMC recipients will be unable to maintain their coverage through MinnesotaCare due to the procedural requirements and cost. The discontinuation of GAMC is part of a larger $1 billion cut to Health and Human Services and it remains to be seen just how these cuts will affect other programs.
….
Most of what Minnesota does well (in the United Health Foundation ratings measurements): low premature death rate, a low rate of deaths from cardiovascular disease, low infant mortality comes from the fact that we have a low rate of uninsured people in the state, but if this changes with the end to GAMC and overall cuts to the Department of Human Services, it is a good chance that there will be negative consequences to our low premature death rate, low cardiovascular deaths, and low infant mortality.

The once proud number one healthiest state is now envious of states in the top five. Will we soon be envious of states in the top ten or fifteen? We get a lot of news stories about the political gamesmanship aspects of unallotment. How about more stories about the quality-of-life impacts of the Governor’s unilateral cutting?

- Loveland

Siding With Sarah

Pigs must be aloft and they must be playing hockey in Hell today because I find myself in agreement with Sarah Palin regarding Newsweek’s cover photo choice.  It’s a cheap shot and one the magazine should have resisted taking.

It’d be one thing if she posed for Newsweek in this get-up, but the backstory is that magazine bought the picture from a stock agency that reps the photographer who did a photo shoot for the August, 2009 issue of Runner’s World (which seems to be asserting that it has a one-year exclusive on the photo so there may be an actual lawsuit from this).  I’m not sure I would have been smart enough, were I staffing the shoot, to have asked the photographer, “And, what’s the rights agreement for these photos between you and Runner’s World?”

And, most of the world, not being media sophisticates like your average SRC reader, will probably look at the cover and – not unreasonably – assume that Ms. Palin knew exactly what she was doing and for which publication.

Newsweek maintains that picture is entirely consistent with their regular practices.  As Editor Jon Meacham wrote:

“We chose the most interesting image available to us to illustrate the theme of the cover, which is what we always try to do. We apply the same test to photographs of any public figure, male or female: does the image convey what we are saying? That is a gender-neutral standard.”

This is the most interesting image of Sarah Palin available? I’m having trouble believing that.

- Austin

The End of Unallot?

Five months ago, we ruminated about “Unallot,” the magical fiscal fiefdom created by Governor Tim Pawlenty.

“Don’t let it be forgot
That once there was a spot,
For one brief, shining moment
That was known as Unallot.”

In the magical kingdom of Unallot, a Governor who feigns surprise about huge deficits that have been forecasted and publicly discussed for months can effectively dub himself a King who is free to unilaterally dictate budgets without involving the co-equal branch of government that is constitutionally authorized to appropriate funds.

Well, today, the Minnesota House voted along party lines to support a lawsuit that would unallow Unallot, setting up a consitutional showdown that now has national political implications. The lawsuit also impacts thousands of vulnerable Minnesotans. Finally, I’d argue, the lawsuit will also affect future Repubican legislators who could be be flattened by future DFL Governors taking up residence in Unallot.

“Unallot! Unallot!
I know it gives a person pause,
But in Unallot, Unallot
Are those really the legal laws?”

In short, the third co-equal branch of government, the judiciary, will soon decide whether the gubernatorial kingdom of Unallot is real, or make believe.

- Loveland

“Dithering” Doublespeak

One of the things that uncredentialed fake journalist Jon Stewart does on Comedy Channel that many credentialed real journalists don’t do is connect the dots of recent events. Stewart and his writers don’t just regurgitate the news of the day and look at events in isolation. They dig until they uncover the larger story, and then Stewart speaks sleuth to power.

I wish Stewart could do more of that kind of probing in Minnesota. Among many other things, Minnesota Congressman John Kline’s recent statements might be of interest.

For instance, in a recent Star Tribune commentary about Afghanistan, Congressman Kline demanded fast decisionmaking from Democrats. Like Vice President Cheney, Congressman Klein was deeply troubled by President Obama’s alleged “dithering.”

But in a news release just a few months earlier, Congressman Kline was highly critical of fast decisionmaking by Democrats on the health care reform bill.

Let me see if I have this straight. Deliberation on a life and death issue like war is traitorous, but deliberation on a life and death issue like health care is a must? In one instance pondering is due deliberation, but in another it is deadly dithering?

Politicians like Kline often want to force decisions when they think the likely decision will go their way, and slow decisions when they think the likely decision will go against them. But they frame each position in self-righteous terms.

Where is that Jon Stewart when you need him?

- Loveland

Why newspapers need copyeditors

Hell hath no fury like an AP stylist scorned.

(Click the image to see a larger version. Story here.)

“No Faith Justifies These Murderous and Craven Acts”

Yesterday’s service at Fort Hood for the soldiers murdered last week was a haunting introduction to Veterans Day. These are trying times for our country, President Obama said in Texas. He’s trying to bring the Iraq war to an end, and trying to understand what path is best in the desperate mountains of Afghanistan.

At a time when the Fort Hood massacre brings up to many the issues of Muslims’ role in the army and in this country again, as 9/11 did, Obama did an adroit job of touching on Islam — chiding those who would use Islam as an excuse to murder, while with the same language chiding those who might think of Islam as a faith that encourages murder.

“It may be hard to comprehend the twisted logic that led to this tragedy,,” the president said. “But this much we do know: No faith justifies these murderous and craven acts. No just and loving God looks upon them with favor. For what he has done, we know that the killer will be met with justice, in this world and the next.”

After 9/11, many criticized Islam as a faith that encourages violence to punish infidels, and many feared Muslims in part because of this. Islam calls for violence no more than does Christianity — both do, in passages of their holy books. Both scriptures can be quoted to justify horrible acts by zealots.

Obama encourages us to look at each case, not to condemn a whole class. That’s part of his appeal, his values, his underlying message.

Obama said, “Instead of claiming God for our side, we remember Lincoln’s words and always pray to be on the side of God.”

That’s an awfully hard thing to do — be on the side of God. Especially when weapons are drawn. I’m thankful this Veterans Day that we have a commander-in-chief who sees the world in all its complexity and doesn’t reach for simple answers where none exist.

– Bruce Benidt
(Obama’s talk begins at minute 15 in this YouTube clip)

The Wall

A wall is a symbol. Of fear. Of hope.

The Berlin Wall — and its absence — is a symbol that change is possible. Change can come. There is always hope, in the deepest dark, that the world can change. For 28 years in prison, Nelson Mandela held on to that hope. Lech Walesa, in the dark weight of the endless Soviet night, believed in his brothers. For decades, good souls crumpled into the gloomy confines of a communist totalitarian regime looked out on the Berlin Wall and, somehow, held on to hope.

And it changed. Something that, in my youth, was a fixture of the world, came loose, fell, was torn down by the joyous irrepressibility of hope.

One generation ago, behind the Iron Curtain. Imagine: You can’t travel anywhere beyond your town without government permission. You can’t leave your country, period. You’re assigned a place to live. You’re assigned a job. You dare not speak your mind. You dare not criticize the government at a restaurant, a coffee shop. Not enough food, no educational opportunity, no heat, no services? You dare not protest. No marching, no rights. Newspapers and TV tell you only what the government wants you to hear. You keep your head down. And maybe dare to hope.

In 1968 I came through Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin, through the Berlin Wall. Sixteen of us from Minnesota, just graduated from high school, had traveled in the Soviet Union for a month through the YMCA. We’d seen the lack of freedom, we’d seen the lack of color, the lack of liveliness. But there was no possibility that things would ever be different. We came back into the West through the Berlin Wall, which had been up for two decades, since just after World War II — all my life. World War II was way more than a generation ago to me then — it was forever ago, long-past history. The Soviet Union just was — and it was this huge awesome force that could annihilate us. But we found, that summer, that Soviets were humans who didn’t want war — they’d had more than their share. They loved their country, which was beautiful, but didn’t much like their government. They didn’t think much of ours either, of our chasing after dollars, of our violence. But in East Germany people wanted what we saw when we crossed into West Berlin — lights, people on the streets, laughter, choices, initiative. Freedom. Freedom.

And, 20 years ago, it came. Huge world-shaking change, proving hope should never die.

Mikhail Gorbachev, Lech Walesa, Nelson Mandela. Changed the world, brought light after long darkness. The Berlin Wall’s falling, its absence, stands for all time, for all hope.

–Bruce Benidt

(Photo from New York Times)

Pawlenty’s Secret Weapon in Iowa

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty has been busy preening Presidential in Iowa, which raises an interesting question: Where will his breakthrough political moment come in the Hawkeye State?

Will Governor Pawlenty’s breakthrough come during a spellbinding address to the Muscatine County Republican Women’s Club meeting? Will it come with a well-timed anti-evolution zinger at the all-important Dallas County Republican Steak Fry and Pie Auction? Will it come the old fashioned way, by promising the most special interest tax loopholes at the first joint appearance of all the Repbulican candidates?

Or will T-Paw’s big breakthrough happen during a less conventional event at the Iowa State Fair?

It’s no secret that Pawlenty’s napeline yo-yos with the political winds. So come Iowa State Fair time, if you see Pawlenty put the breaks on barbering out back, you might want to book your hotel room for the Inaugural.

- Loveland

“With liberty and health care for all.”

The House of Representatives is within minutes of having its members vote on the Health Care bill — H.R. 3962. As could be expected, most Republicans see the bill as a loss of freedom for citizens and too expensive ($1.2 tillion during the next decade, they claim.)

But Most Democrats see the bill as an attempt to right a longtime wrong whereby this, the greatest country in the world, has allowed a system to grow where quality health care is just for those who can afford it. To hell with everyone else.

I think of my neighbor’s 2-year-old grandson who was just diagnosed with cancer. His treatments are costing approximately $10,000 per week. How would you afford his life-saving care? Today 62% of bankruptcies are caused by health care bills.

Michele Bachman just addressed the floor wearing a Hawaiian lei around her neck..swear to God. (She also invoked God during her speech.) Which got me to thinking, which side would Jesus vote with?

We must pass this bill.

It’s the right thing to do.

And we’re going to do it.

Ten minutes and counting…