Posted on 06/19/2002 6:30:04 AM PDT by Caleb1411
The two stories that broke Tuesday morning were seemingly related. In the one, it developed that the governor's son, Tyrel, was accused by displaced staff of the official residence that he occasionally turned the old place into an Animal House weekend at Faber College. In the other, the big man himself, Gov. Turnbuckle, announced that he would not seek another term as governor, for the most part, he said, to protect his family from the media.
In the Tyrel story, just enough hints and vague references were dropped to make you think that maybe Tyrel booked Otis Day and the Knights and that everybody up and down Summit Avenue was trying to figure out the words to "Louie, Louie.'' It was a nice touch, for example, to learn that something called an antique barley twist chair was allegedly broken in one of the weekend parties.
But a fellow reading that story closely has to conclude only one thing. A staff that was unceremoniously dumped during the budget shutdown of the mansion had too conveniently remembered that Tyrel would have friends drop by the mansion and that a pool cue was broken, that a fabled chair got wrecked and some linens had to be sent out to the laundry. Analyzed more closely, the charges against Tyrel didn't seem to amount to much more than the Perpich kids getting a ride to concerts by somebody on the state clock.
Put another way, there were no allegations that anything illegal had taken place.
Meanwhile, seething as only he can, Gov. Turnbuckle sought the refuge of his favorite radio home, Minnesota Public Radio. There he announced, with some theatrical weariness, that he had been the pioneer, that he had done his duty, that he had led the way and that he needed to protect his family from the ravages of an evil media.
Well, that is nonsense, of course. I am unaware of the media ever involving the governor's family in anything untoward. And it wasn't the media who convened a press conference to cluck tongues over the supposed antics of the governor's son. It was Dan Creed, the former manager of the residence. In fact, it is most often a disagreeable prospect to make sport of a public man's wife and children; it wasn't done at this newspaper.
Besides, with Turnbuckle bigger than life itself, who needed to worry about his wife or his kids? This man was manna from heaven if you are in the ink-stained wretch business, from his twisted syntax to his climbing into a wrestling ring on the heels of somebody called Mr. Ass, to his hauling an outdoors reporter into the inner sanctum and admonishing him that until he had hunted man he hadn't hunted.
That doesn't come along very often, folks. I mean, you can pray for it, just like you can pray to win the lottery, but it doesn't happen, which is another way of saying that a governor will never be more entertaining than this large, petulant and confoundingly sensitive giant who was right about half the things about half the time and usually by accident. The governor isn't running again for the only reason that he would never run again. He might lose. That wasn't a problem in 1998. His mythology was only half-built back then. Now it is fully fleshed out: Navy Seal, wrestler, mayor, movie actor and now governor. He has the street fighter's knack for knowing when to pack it in so that he might fight another day, and he has packed it in to protect a couple of things.
Yes, his family, certainly. No one here has ever doubted his loyalty to them, as a father and as a husband. But by not running, not losing, he chiefly protects the franchise, Jesse, the one-man show.
If he has you convinced that he is stepping down to protect his family from the jackals he always wanted to run over in his Navigator, that is all right with him. All he wants to say is that he has never been beaten.
That's a frightening prospect: Jesse lets his hair grow out and becomes the revivified Samson of politics.
For whatever the reason -- good or ignominious -- that's true. Now, could you please email your comment to Paul Wellstone, who piously promised to serve only two terms if we Minnesotans would elect and re-elect him?
The lesser would definitely need the ministrations of the greater.
I know that he has a tendency to over-publicize it, but I respect him for being a SEAL (He is actually a SEAL). Many SEALs don't talk about being SEALs, but I don't think that I could blame him.
That was the only legitmate training/education that the guy got. He did a stint in community college and that was about it (not that a college education means that much...it is what you make of it). As well, the wrestling business certainly isn't the industry to prepare yourself for public service or being the executive of a state. Unless, of course, you plan on paying your state employees $15 a night and expecting them to risk permanent paralysis. I am sure that the State Employees Union would probably have something to say about that. Hmmmm...didn't Jesse basically do this a short while ago
As the article notes, this move his to protect his election record.
There is even a word for this in the word of wrestling that Jesse is probably familiar with: a paper champion.
I sure hope so! "Boasting" two guys who occupy the left-most seats in the Senate, Minnesota needs to send Paul Wellstone back to a comparatively less detrimental (to the country) occupation: indoctrinating callow students at Carleton College.
We've suffered the big trifecta of oddity, to be sure: Paul, Jesse, and -- most recently -- Mark. Time to restore a little normalcy to this state.
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