On my way back to my car after class on Tuesday night (and in route to The Soft Boys show at First Avenue) I came across scores of middle-aged men and women, dressed in black, making their way down the streets of the University of Minnesota campus on their way to Wellstone’s memorial. It was a nice site. I was rather content that they should come and pay their respects to a politician of unwavering conviction, even though he and I rarely had consistency of view on issues.

The next day the news was a-buzz with how the Democrats commandeered Wellstone’s memorial and turned it into an event for political gain. I saw a clip on the evening news that showed Governor Ventura sitting in the stands, shaking his head, while his wife did the same and rested her head on his shoulder. They later walked out on the memorial, calling it a disgrace to Wellstone’s memory. Sometime later I saw a clip with a reporter asking Ventura whom he would name to fill the Minnesota senatorial seat in the interim. Still miffed about Tuesday nights proceedings, Ventura growled that he wasn’t sure he was going to name anyone, and that he is also thinking of appointing an average citizen — an old friend from high school (named Joe or something forgettable) who is currently a garbage man in the Cities. Apparently “Joe” had expressed interest in the job.

Ventura cracks me up. Sometimes I love the man, other times I find him reprehensible. Definitely a wild card, lowerer of the bar, least common denominator sort of bloke, and yet at other times, very admirable.

And then there is the whole GOP being angered over the media giving Mondale free campaign time. I sympathise; but then, what was the media supposed to do? I would assume they did not know what was coming. Cutting off the broadcast prematurely is sort of bad etiquette. One of the most obvious slips the local media keeps making, in regards to subliminal, unconscious liberal bias, is that they keep referring to Mondale as Vice-President Walter Mondale. My, my. They certainly don’t apply that epithet to Gore, and he is in the same boat as Mondale, a more recent boat at that.

But anyway, this whole Wellstone debacle. It makes me want to write a novel or screen play about a goodly politician, unwavering in his convictions, and affable even to his severest political adversaries, who suffers an untimely, tragic death, only to have the scum-of-the-earth self-agrandising politicians converge on his memorial like vultures and co-opt his memory for their own politician machinations. In the vein of All the King’s Men, I suppose.

Speaking of national leaders: I read this article in the Atlantic Monthly in the beginning of the year. It is just one more reason why Saddam Hussein is my favourite dictator, and ought be yours as well. Tales of the Tyrant.