The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

The Mighty Ducks trilogy is easily the best movie franchise ever to come out of Minnesota (as far as I know). Still, I take issue with a few things in the movies. Specifically, twelve things.

1. Coach Bombay must have been on something if he was under the impression that he had a shot at pro hockey. Considering that the reason he started coaching the Ducks in the first place was related to community service for his drunk driving transgressions, it's safe to say that he was more than likely on something — and Disney neglected to inform viewers of this fact. (D1&2)
   
2. How many kids play hockey in Trinidad and Tobago? Are there even enough hockey-playing kids in Trinidad and Tobago for kids to scrimmage against each other in order to improve their skills? Even if there are, how the hell did Trinidad advance to the World Championships while Canada didn't? (D2)
   
3. What kind of gerrymandering put a rich kid from Edina on a team with a bunch of poor kids from Minneapolis, yet preserved the rest of the Edina team? Wait, Adam Banks lives within the poor kids' boundaries? How did no one else figure this out before Bombay? How didn't the rich parents on his team take care of this by relocating him to one of their homes? FAIL. (D1)
   
4. At the very least you'd need a helmet to be out on the ice playing; it's highly unlikely you'd be able or want to play without all the necessary equipment. And lassos and whatnot are neither necessary nor legal .(all)
   
5. The image of a fancy hockey hall loses its impact when you know that it's really the Blake Lower/Middle cafeteria. (D1)
   
6. Mickey's Diner: Not in Minneapolis. Not even on the same side of the river as south Minneapolis. Try St. Paul.
   
7. MSHSL rules would make the team ineligible for varsity for a year due to transfer rules. That means you, Adam Banks. It seems like there would be some provision banning giving out athletic scholarships too. I'm just not sure. (D3)
   
8. Anyway, why would you give athletic scholarships to a bunch of people who aren't good enough to play varsity? (D3)
   
9. Also, there really wouldn't be that big of a conflict between the Ducks and the rich hockey players of Eden Hall because, well, that many rich kids complaining would probably get their way. (D3)
   
10. Olympic/Goodwill/Global Domination Championship teams are usually made up of the best players in the country not the best team in the country. (D2)
    
11. The "Flying V" doesn't really work that well as a hockey strategy. My JV hockey team tried it in a game against South St. Paul. We won that game but failed miserably when it came to the "Flying V." (all)
    
12. Rollerblading is not allowed in the Minneapolis Skyway system. Those kids would have been sent to juvie — or at least gotten kicked out of the skyway. Wait, there were kids of color. They totally would have been sent to juvie. (D1)
    

Dane Smith is back, and he's back with the panache that only serious money can sustain. Is this a good thing? As per Rupert Murdoch's Pravda West, you decide!

When last we saw our hometown hero, March of 2007, Dane Smith was walking the plank at the Newsreel of the Twin Cities, where the new spew of hard-edged gossiping, gay-bashing, Muslim-bashing, Kersten-style investigative journalism has dragged Strib reader's average IQ down yet another 20 or 30 points. (When IQ approaches zero it's a basic math problem; check out renormalization. If you find this stuff difficult, you're reading too much Strib).

Back to our story, shouldn't we feel sorry for Smith, who coughed up a 20-plus-year career of determinedly non-partisan political reporting in favor of getting out "while a good buyout offer was available"?

No, we shouldn't. Smith quickly re-invented himself, jumping the shark onto the career path of a politician who's been around long enough to know what principles to sacrifice, and when. He followed the money.

A mere month from his Strib swanbyline, Smith was "found" for the self-identified "progressive economic think tank" Growth and Justice in a "search" conducted by DFL mover and perennial candidate Rebecca Yanisch. This hookup paired Smith with ex-Strib crony and DFL candidate (do I sense a trend?) Joel Kramer, in a deal which looks chummier than a Wild night in the penalty box.

Politicians leaving office are inclined to tap their Rolodexes, those arteries through which political influence and big money run fastest, for whatever purposes motivate them. Smith is now the poster boy for an epidemic of similar vascular incursions by exiting political journalists.

What brings this all to mind is that, on Wednesday past, Smith and his pals, self-appointed keepers of Minnesota's moral and electoral rectitude, treated us to a gloriously righteous fit of profitable indignation, the Worst Political Advertising in America Awards Ceremony. The event was, more or less, the political set's version of the Bad Sex in Fiction Awards. Or something.

Smith's pre-event spiel touted an "Academy Awards style event," but admitted the content was just the baddest stuff of a few intern-hours' search on YouTube. He proposed "marketing it as a way for people to blow off steam" in a "non-partisan, multi-partisan setting," but that's where it gets even harder to believe.

What it is, really is, is a feel good dollar hook for Growth and Justice, Smith's we're-not-very-partisan lobby. Smith's real message is "send me money!"

Growth and Justice has only one identifiable BOD Republican (Arlen Erdahl). The case makes itself that G&J is "nothing more than a front group for the DFL." Nevertheless, Smith, like most partisan Democrats, has handed over to the right the right to be openly partisan about anything. Like Dems in general, he's scared to death of the word.

Wednesday, in exchange for the paper-thin political cover of having kicked-out (Ron Erhardt) and forgotten (Charlie Weaver) Republicans, self-promoters (Mitch Pearlstein) desperate for their thoughts to be remembered, and US Senators (some guy named Coleman) desperate for their acts to be forgot, all act as award co-presenters, along with a bevy of the DFL's Kenwood elite, Smith and G&J happily conceded Democratic ads to be just as stupid, dishonest, and downright evil as Republicans'.

Irony the First is that Smith's methods, indeed his very position, are those he so recently decried. His portentously perverse parting proposition for a Strib successor: "Always pay attention to who's getting what and why. I've always liked the old saw about comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable." Today no powerful or desirous Minnesota politician is too comfortable to sit in the shade of the G&J umbrella.

And let's not mention that, as an entrenched media elitist, Smith has no trouble convincing MSM (see here, and here) to spring for free space ("earned media," in political parlance) to promote his fund raising activities.

To be fair (must I?), Smith and his cronies are emulating a right wing strategy of years' proven effectiveness. For as long as memory, the Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute and other unabashed cash laundries have ecstatically catapulted Republican candidates and causes upon us from behind the invisible shield of non-profit tax deductions. Left-wingers are finally catching on, and G&J is but one of a rapidly flocking coterie of port side dollar decoys.

But the impartiality illusion must be maintained.

G&J's complaints about Dem ads are fatuous at best. Growth and Justice cheerily Swift-boats national Democrats, declaring the DNC's smooth, smart Valentine's Day 2008 "Sweetheart Deal" to be the bad ad equal to North Carolina lunatic fringer Vernon Robinson's 2004 "Twilight Zone v. Leave It To Beaver." "Sweetheart Deal," tapped as a "guilt by association" ad, wins G&J's Daisy Award for Dems bashing Republicans, while "Twilight Zone" wins the Willie Award for the reverse. But there's a qualitative difference between the two.

Robinson, who has lost Republican primaries in multiple NC Congressional districts, takes on Islamic extremists, homosexuals, lesbians, feminists, liberal judges, burning American flags, killing a million babies, the ten commandments, God, black children born out of wedlock, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, racial quotas, aliens (with and without spaceships) and the unguarded Mexican border, in 59 seconds flat. He's an avenging angel, and there are a lot of us on his hit list. McCain and Bush may not be peas in every issue's pod, as "Sweetheart Deal" hints, but they're from adjacent rows of the same vegetable garden, and the ad uses McCain's own audio to make that point. The DNC MO isn't guilt by association; it's association by guilt. Don't bother trying to decode this one. It's tautological.

Smith's supreme intellectual insult, though, for those whose IQ numbers still require sock removal (see paragraph 2), doesn't even have a (non-)partisan point. It's a shame shame about using sex to sell politics. Smith/G&J cite a clever tongue and cheek (sic) show by porn actress and political opportunist Mary Carey, demonstrating her qualifications to command the office of Governor of California, and whatever else might arise. How opportune! Mr. Smith, to lure us to your very own fund raiser by flashing a hint of porn. C'mon, Dane, who's zoomin' who?

To entertain a rumsfeldian dialogue, is the growth of Growth and Justice justifiable? No. Is it necessary to balance the political equation? Yes. Will American politics improve, as Democrats catch up with Republicans in the Think Tank Wars? I doubt it. Is there a better way? You tell me!