Franken-Lies-And-the-Lying-Liars-Who-Tell

forward on his be half to keep his legacy alive and help us win this election for Paul
Wellstone?"
That was bizarre, I thought. You can't ask Republicans to stump for Mondale. Still,
the crowd kept cheering. This was three hours into the event, and the emotion was so intense
that everyone was responding to everything. They had just cheered for Paul's friendship for
the Republicans, and now they were cheering for the same Republicans to drop their own
candidate like a hot rock.
Kahn ended his speech by repeating his final line three times: "We are gonna win this
election for Paul Wellstone!" I looked at my brother, and he shrugged.
George Latimer, former mayor of St. Paul and emcee for the event, came back up and
tried to do a little damage control by making a joke. "I was getting a little bit worried that the
last speaker had a certain partisan tinge to his remarks," he said, "and I was glad that he concluded
that with a call for bipartisanship." Big laugh. But some people watching at home had
a sour taste in their mouths.
By one estimate, at least 630,000 people in Minnesota watched at least part of the
memorial on TV Reasonable people of goodwill were genuinely offended. And to people
who only saw the ten-second clips that were later repeated and repeated on TV, it looked like
Kahn and the crowd were just being foot-stompingly partisan—that Wellstone's death was
being used for political gain. But Kahn's speech was also full of phrases like "[our] hearts are
now shattered" and "tonight we are filled to overflowing with overwhelming grief and sorrow."
This speech was coming from someone who was crushed by the deaths of his best
friend, his best friend's wife, his best friend's daughter, and three other very close friends.
Yeah, it had some inappropriate moments. But I assumed that people would understand, and
cut the man a little slack.
Governor Jesse Ventura, who by then was deeply unpopular in Minnesota, had
chewed gum through the first three hours of the memorial. After Kahn's speech, Ventura
walked out, saying that he was offended. Now, Jesse "the Body" is not a man easily offended.
In his 1999 autobiography, I Ain't Got Time to Bleed, Ventura proudly describes his visit to
Nevada's BunnyRanch, where he fornicated with what my feminist friends refer to as a "sex
worker." In fact, he proudly wrote that he made money off the deal, by trading his belt made
of machine gun shell casings to the sex worker for a trick and ten bucks. "All the girls look