To the rest of the United States:
Joe Soucheray
Most of us in Minnesota didn’t want this notoriety. That isn’t us. We’ve managed to keep our head down, shun attention and remain ignored. We are comfortable with that. We never took the term flyover land as a slight. You just go off to wherever you’re off to on those big shiny planes. We’re fine.
We were founded and governed by guys named Horace and Lucius and Knute and Hjalmar and Luther and Orville. Do you think a guy named Hjalmar ever wanted flashing light bulbs and headlines? Hell no. Oh, every once in a while, one of us got loose. One of our Anderson governors, Wendy, appeared on the cover of Time magazine, back in 1973. He wore a flannel shirt and was holding up a northern pike. The headline said “The Good Life in Minnesota.” Well, we just scuffed at the dirt with our boots and said, “A northern? Too bony. Bet he threw it back.”
We also had, as governors, C. Elmer Anderson and Elmer L. Andersen, distinguished by the o and e. You’ve never heard of them and that was OK with them and us. Just keep flying over us.
Garrison Keillor got loose, too, but he kept his national celebrity ironic, writing about Lake Wobegon and biscuits and kids in school just a bit above average.
I suppose you’d have to throw in Prince and Bob Dylan and way back when Charles Lindbergh, but that’s about it. We always survived our brushes with fame by not giving it any more notice than eyeing the neighbor’s new Chevrolet.
“That’s a pretty loud color scheme on that Chev next door, that yellow and black.”
“To each his own.”
It wasn’t that we didn’t want any trouble. We just grew up with the humble belief that we didn’t deserve any recognition.
Even in sports, we’ve shunned the limelight. In graciously losing four Super Bowls, the Vikings never scored a point in the first half of those four games. That’s dedication. We haven’t caused a stir since 1991, when the Twins won the World Series. That was pretty fun, but we didn’t toot our horn the way they do in New York or Los Angeles, where they have those paparazzi people.
But now it’s like a plague of locusts has descended on us. We’re in the national news every day and don’t want to be. Fraud got the ball rolling, mostly because it turned out that we’re better at fraud than anybody else. It tends to get your attention when billions of dollars of taxpayer money is stolen and your own governor claims he didn’t know a thing about it. Why, I imagine the rest of you are at a loss and wondering how such a thing could happen. That’s what we want to know. Autism fraud, day care fraud, Medicaid fraud, food fraud. To pay for it, we’ll probably have to fork over even higher taxes.
We cruised along avoiding national attention until Memorial Day weekend in 2020 when the city damn near burned down after George Floyd succumbed. It was a one-two punch to the gut, fraud and alleged police brutality.
We’ve been going downhill ever since. In the network newsrooms, they are saying, “Well, there’s always Minnesota.”
Minnesota! Land of ice and cold and about 15,000 lakes. You fly over us. We never wanted to be found.
So, what happens next puts Immigration and Customs Enforcement on the Minnesota watch. ICE agents swooped in, ostensibly to round up illegal criminals related to fraud, and practically right off the bat, a woman was shot and killed by an ICE agent. And the two problems are unrelated. The fraud was committed mostly by Somalis, many of whom are citizens, leaving ICE trying to find and arrest just ordinary criminals here illegally, not the illicitly wealthy ones.
Controversy remains as to whether local law enforcement informs ICE of inmates who are flagged for a federal hold. Otherwise, the people who are let go return to their neighborhoods and ICE has to find them, and this bothers Minnesotans and that’s why there is chaos in the streets that makes the national news.
I don’t blame you if you are sick and tired of us. So are we.
Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com. Soucheray’s “Garage Logic” podcast can be heard at garagelogic.com.
Related Articles
Joe Soucheray: Under the deluding weight of political fealty, the center does not hold
Joe Soucheray: Ho, ho, ho, merry TIFness!
Joe Soucheray: Walz can’t — or won’t — explain the fraud under his watch
Joe Soucheray: Not exactly sure what the question is, but northern lights is the answer
Joe Soucheray: Seems Mayor-to-be Kaohly Her brings regard for detail and private success. Pinch me!
