It should go without saying that if a bridge has collapsed, a Republican is responsible.
Before the last of the survivors was rescued from the massive I-35W bridge collapse, practically before the dust had settled, local Democrats were up to the old blame game, grotesquely trying to capitalize on a grim event.
It was, and is sad, I tell you, sad — the event, and political reactions to it.
Tragedies bring out the best, and the worst in people. When the bridge came down, a bridge I traversed thousands of times, the tragic event drew out, from under the rocks, what I call the “hater class” into the all-out blame game. For them the bridge became a symbol, a reason for vilifying all within reach of their political fog-shrouded minds, particularly Republicans.
Oh it is political sport, all right: Out to make political hay out of human suffering and misery. Is there any lower class in our Republic?
I am not surprised at all this. I’ve lived in Minnesota most of my three-score-plus years, took my degrees here, worked and taught here. For 25 of those years, lobbying at the State Capitol was among my duties as executive director of trade associations. So I’ve seen close-up, often quite personal, the M.O. of the local Democrat Farmer-Labor Party here — garden-variety “Ds” to the world. How that party typically operates, with guile, often with total spin (just like the other major party, come to think!), personal vilification becomes a chief weapon. When your issues fail you, attack the person?
Within a day ofthe tragedy, a wacky local columnist named Nick Coleman, Jr., started the smear campaign against Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty. Without a shred of evidence, but with a boatload of hate, Coleman held the governor’s tax-wise policies responsible for the collapse of the 40-year-old bridge I traversed so often. No nexus? Heck, no bother for Coleman. Facts don't count.
Blogger “Sharkbait,” writing at Anti-Strib, a counterpoint to Minnesota’s embarrassing left-leaning newspaper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, calls him “a pompous, stuck-up, snot-nosed twerp, a scumbag, a-hole,” among even less printable things.
More about the wholly insufferable Coleman later.
Just after the awful collapse, the Star Tribune, full of animus editorially toward Republicans, usually hysterically, runs a partisan op-ed pleading for its long-held mantra — how super-high taxes will fix all things baaad in this state, and in this nation, preventing such catastrophes in the future. Believe in taxes!
Within 24 hours of the collapse, the op-ed opens with both barrels on Gov. Pawlenty, echoing the hateful fantasies about Bush and 9/11, saying “. . . this disaster should come as no surprise to him.” The I-35W bridge going down, says op-ed writer Myles Spicer, was for Gov. Paulenty, “a self-fulfilling prophecy.” Got that? How depraved can an op-ed writer get?
Well, as they say in da Bronx, you ain’t heard nothing yet about unbridled hate asserting itself on the far Left.
The most vile of all Star Tribune writers, Mr. Coleman, weighs in heavily against the governor. (Coleman’s late dad was liberal DFL Senate Majority Leader. Son did not fall far from the left-leaning tree.) Coleman the Younger uses the bridge collapse as an occasion for oozing bile, milking it for all its worth, taking dead aim (of course) at Republicans, his sworn enemies.
For Coleman, the tragedy is jolly good sport, a reason for bashing. As with many on the rip-sawing far Left, facts don‘t matter; truth is immaterial. On his crusade singularly against “Rs,” Coleman forgets that his beloved party, that of his liberal dad, and of the late HHH, virtually controls Minnesota. Its agencies are solidly pro-DFL, pro-union. Coleman’s hate object, like a voodoo doll, is Gov. Pawlenty who, incidentally, co-chairs John McCain’s national bid for the presidency. All the more reason for his animosity?
Another target of his wrath is Minnesota Transportation Commissioner Carol Malnou. An able administrator, accomplished businessperson, she’s viewed as some sort of a co-conspirator (criminal?) in this bridge coming down. And she had the gall to be touring China when it crashed down.
In China, cheap-shot artist Coleman says, a transportation chief would lose his or her head, literally, for the bridge collapse. “The buck stops somewhere,” Coleman breathlessly adds, forgetting perhaps that road and transportation funding in the last three years in Minnesota has been at all-time record highs. Federal funding in President Bush’s multi-year transportation bill (2005-2009) grants 40% MORE than in previous years to the State of Minnesota. Facts can be denied, or ignored, but still, they matter.
About President Bush, here to visit, Coleman is equally revolting and excruciatingly inaccurate: “Now, a president who doesn’t believe that government can solve problems is . . . here because we have a big fat problem.” Come again? Doesn’t believe in What?
Even more astounding, considering both houses of Congress are ruled by Democrats, Coleman excoriates “. . . a government in the hands of government-haters who want to starve it; or in the alleged belief of presidential ally Grover Norquist, ‘drown it.’” So if you question, at all, higher taxes, you’re a ‘government-hater?‘ Humm.
“Sharkbait” at AntiStrib confronts the fact-ignorer thusly — but if past is prologue, there will be no apologies from the daft columnist, thus no redemption, it is clear:
You should be ashamed of yourself! Not only should you be ashamed of yourself for this horribly timed article, but you should also be ashamed of yourself for the misinformation and half truths you tell.
“No one knew it would fall?,” Coleman asks rhetorically. “Give us a break. What do you need? They’re talking about bolting plates on it to keep it up. What’s next, duct tape?” (Yeah, duct tape. Clever, huh?)
So the crystal balls were not clear, for a bridge scheduled for replacement in 2020. Everyone today is a structural bridge engineer. Talking heads on TV, if asked, well . . . they’d know it would fall, and when, rather God-like. And it all becomes, somehow, the fault of the current “R” governor and his able transportation commissioner, who only presided over the last three largest road and transporation budgets in state history. Go figure.
Straw man, straw woman: What would the State DFL and its mouthpieces do without them, to set afire, to inflame the base. Get the facts? Let cool heads prevail? That’d be refreshing, yes. But after 25 years elbow-to-elbow lobbying of DFLers, and some like-minded GOPers, I know it’s not to be. Facts can be elusive things — yes, inconvenient, too, for party hacks, a chunk too large for petty demagogues and party-organ newspapers to swallow. Will someone, please, get a grip on this “hater class,” cruelly and crudely out to exploit human misery, perahps preparing for that all-important next election?
outing@earthlink.net
Read more articles by Gary Larson
I hope, amid all the finger-pointing, that someone realizes that the policy of profligate use of ice-reduction chemicals (frequently sodium chloride) is the probable culprit, Republican governor notwithstanding. I lived in Southcentral Minnesota for fifteen years, and saw the policy in action. Even in Alaska, we don't use salt like that. A friend who is a metallurgist has explained the detrimental effects of salt and all its corollaries on concrete (it penetrates concrete like a sponge, dissolving any rebar that might be embedded), on structural members made of steel (with over 3,000 feet of cracks in the bridge, the salt solutions had to go somewhere…). I tend to trust his opinion.
But, as you say, it's the perfect opportunity for the Left to do what it does best, and that's to blame everybody on the Right, right down to the toddlers and pets. Minnesota politics haven't improved any since I left, I see…
Comment by Liz | August 6, 2007
As fate would have it, this very morning I was posting over on Townhall and someone who claims to be a "former republican" was busy hurling accusations that this was the fault of a political party - not an apolitical bureacracy (i.e., MDOT and the Federal DOT).
Here are individual's "enlightened" words in all their glory…
In Minneapolis this week, the chickens came home to roost. Instead of spending the needed money to fix decaying bridges like the one on I-35, the Republicans pissed away $315 million Ted Stevens' bridge to nowhere.
THE BLOOD OF THE I-35 VICTIMS IS ON REPUBLICAN HANDS.
When my head cleared, I asked the individual (hereinafter referred to as FP) how she could make this statement with such conviction. Well, actually, my exact words were a bit more pointed:
Me: "Most people would find your baseless assertion that republicans were responsible for the Minneapolis bridge disaster to be outrageous on a level approaching Ward Churchill."
FP: "Let's see, now … Republicans controlled Congress and the White House. Government officials knew or reasonably should have known that the bridge in question was dangerous. The President is charged with the task of organizing 'the common defense,' which includes proper maintenance of the interstate highway system (it's raison d'etre was to transport men and materiel, in case of invasion). President Bush failed in this task, and the bridge failed as a result. Q.E.D. "
I couldn't believe it. I pointed out that if we're going to employ that kind of logic, perhaps we should go all the way back to when problems were initially documented on many of these bridges (the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis is just one of several hundred around the country with documented problems). At that time, I observed, it was not a Republican in the Oval Office. My point, of course, was not to lay blame on any administration - it was to say this: What in the world have we come to when every disaster in this country, and indeed around the world, has to be laid at the feet of one political party or another?
I'm still disillusioned by this morning's exchange.
For an all-too-brief moment following 9/11 this country actually acted like some things were more important than party affiliation.
But that lasted all of about 1 microsecond.
It seems we haven't leaned a thing. I'm sure the next tornado, hurricane, forest fire, and heat wave will all be blamed on global warming. Has anyone found a way to link earthquakes to global warming or the politics of the environment? It surely can't be long before someone does. We just can't possibly countenance a disaster that votes independent.
Comment by Steve Sabin | August 6, 2007
Well, in the interests of fairness, accuracy and honesty (if this is possible in this ragsheet), as author referred to above, I did NOT say what is written here. I specifically said :Pawlenty is NOT responsible for the bridge collapse" And I did not say the collpase was a "self fulfilling prophecy". I did say that conservatives like to starve government of essential funding…then complain how inefficient governement is: THAT is a self fulfilling prophecy. The bottom line is, our state and country must improve and update our infrastructure, and that will take some funding. Period.
Myles Spicer
Comment by myles spicer | October 12, 2007