What might have been
Via Kennedy v. the Machine, handled expertly by my good friend Gary Miller (even though he incorrectly puts Polinaut under the Loathesome Lefties category) , is a transcript of Mark Kennedy's appearance on the Hugh Hewitt Show (heard locally on AM 1280, I'm told and I'll check it out).
I get the whole part about playing to the base and all that. I call it the "Don Cherry method" in honor of my favorite hockey coach who got the Boston Bruins to play well by whipping them up into "the world's against us" frenzy. It worked great until the players wised up.
This paragraph is worth analyzing. It started with a question of how many millions it'll take to take the Senate seat:
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MK: Well, we've said...you've asked before, and I've said 15. It might need to be higher than that, but when you say we're not going to get any help from mainstream media, they're just not going to tell our story. We've got to tell our own story. And yes, there'll be a lot of outside groups coming in, but they can't really say this is a guy who is...grew up sharing a bedroom with three brothers. My first job was at age 14. I did everything from washing dishes at a bakery to pumping gas at a bait shop, to be the first boy in my family to go to college. I'm going to take that same zeal to keep the American dream alive for our kids. The message we have, I think, will resonate with Minnesotans. We just have to have the resources to get it out there.
Fair enough. Mainstream media: bad. I get it.
So I decided to take another look at the Mark Kennedy page on Campaign 2006.
Here's what I see:
* Thirteen separate UNFILTERED audio tracks from the senator on specific issues.
* An unfiltered and unedited interview with Rep. Kennedy that Tom Scheck did. (Listen)
* An hour live and unedited interview with Kennedy on March 2, 2006 (Listen)
* Kennedy's complete -- and unedited -- announcement he's running for re-election (Listen)
* Kennedy on MPR's Midday in November after his trip to Iraq. (Listen).
* Full and unedited audio of the March 3 debate between Klobuchar, Bell, and Kennedy in Mounds View (Listen)
* A story on Iraq with Kennedy given every opportunity to explain "his story" (Read)
* Mark Kennedy -- and only Mark Kennedy -- reacting to the president's proposed budget (Listen)
The thing is Hewitt set Kennedy up for the answer earlier in the interview with this puffball:
HH: One of the things that strikes me when we go to the fair, and I hope we'll be at the fair this Summer so we can check in with you there, I know we're coming in September, is that Minnesota Public Radio is a real dominant media player in your state. A lot of good people working there, but it is decidedly left of center. And when you add in the Strib, the Pioneer Press,there isn't a lot of opportunity for a insurgent Republican campaign based on good government and good accounting to get much of a fair shake.
Really? What's all that stuff I just listed?
Personally, I think a good answer might have been, "Hugh, have you actually seen MPR's Campaign 2006 site? You can actually go there and listen to all sorts of information on a page devoted exclusively to me. Unfiltered. Unedited. It's really a great service and, of course, the page on me dwarfs any other resource available. I don't particularly like public radio, but I gotta admit, that's a damned good Web page and if people really want to know more about me, that's a darned good place to start. Granted they've got information about my opponent(s) too, but what can you do, eh Hugh? Democracy is funny that way."
But it wasn't. Don Cherry isn't the coach of the Bruins anymore and just look at the sad state of that team. So I'm not stupid. I get why it wasn't.
But maybe the next time Kennedy is on Hewitt's show, he'll revisit the issue. Because if he's on for the same length 4 more times, he'll equal the length of time Kennedy gets for a single appearance on MPR.
By the way -- and again for the record -- the first mainstream media to talk to Mark Kennedy way back when he was a nobody running for David Minge's seat, wasn't Hewitt. It was Minnesota Public Radio. I know. It was me. He even told the "red ribbon" story. Beat you by six years, Hugh.
"Oft expectation fails, and most oft there
Where most it promises; and oft it hits
Where hope is coldest, and despair most fits."