Author: rakemag

I have been won over by Al Franken a little bit lately because of an interview he did on Michael Medved’s conservative talk-radio show and the Rake interview [“Al Franken Is a Big Fat Genius,” October]. Nevertheless, I think the Democratic Party is a lot like the Rake’s article: confusing and broken up! It’s heartening to see that Al has taken a more moderate tone by saying that there are good people on the other side. I believe this is a new approach for Democrats, to try to be more inclusive. Within that context I’m glad there’s a Rush Limbaugh in the world to put an integrity check on Democrats. It’s ironic that Al pointed to “conservative” media in a medium that makes no bones about being liberal. I think this is because liberals honestly believe that they are objective and don’t recognize their own bias. Also, it was humorous to see Al try to spin the Wellstone memorial in the same way that Limbaugh did by taking the best-case scenario for their particular agenda. I don’t think I was alone when I was heartbroken after Wellstone’s death and was listening to MPR and got sick to my stomach by all the propaganda being propagated at that ceremony. I had to shut the damn radio off. No one can try to tell me that that was only because of the “vast right-wing conspiracy” that I felt that way!
P.S. Al, I would love to listen to you on the radio when you get there!
Bradley Nesseth
Minneapolis

Your piece about the Paul Bunyan Trail [Good Intentions, October] overlooked something. Perhaps the State of Minnesota ignored the fact that railroad rights-of-way fit into many different categories ranging from outright ownership to easements for railroad use. Perhaps it wasn’t overlooked, and the decision was to take a chance. If the latter, it was bound to blow up some time. I’ve been a licensed attorney, specializing in real estate law, for fifty years. Since retirement, I’ve lectured to lawyers and surveyors on the ins and outs of the law relating to railroad rights-of-way and public streets. One element I’ve always stressed is that everything depends on how they were created. You’ve got to know the facts. The results of the state trail case have been widely quoted, but not the underlying facts. I’m waiting to read the court of Appeals decision. There is a decision relating to a similar trail in Washington County in which it was decided that the right-of-way was really for “transportation purposes.” I’m sure the state must have argued this decision, but the Court of Appeals decided that it didn’t apply. I suspect that the evidence may have shown that the right-of-way had been abandoned for some time before it was incorporated into the trail system. If so, both the U.S. Constitution and Minnesota’s Constitution require that the underlying owners must be compensated.
Charles L. Horn
Bloomington

Al Franken and Rush Limbaugh are two sides to the same coin. I remember these wacky feuds from my childhood. My brother and I would accuse each other of lies, deceit, and manipulation. Like most parents, mine were wise to our claims. We never could sway parental opinion, and gave up trying at about age 10. What childish notion is it that makes Franken think he has discovered something significant about the evil opposition? Just like Limbaugh, Franken is not swaying my opinion. They can continue bleating to their own herds of sheep.
Peter Kind
St. Paul

I liked the Franken interview, despite myself. As a spokesman for the Squishy Left wing of the Democratic Party, Franken’s awfully good, and always entertaining, and he’s best when he’s debunking factual inaccuracies of right-wingers. Of course, to Franken, a right-wing commentator or politician can’t be simply wrong on a matter of fact; they’re lying liars telling lying lies—Franken uses the word “lie” more often than Paul Simon does in the chorus of “The Boxer.” And, sure enough, Franken himself doesn’t lie. His claims about the overreaching of some critics of the Paul Wellstone memorial/campaign rally are utterly true, if incomplete. Sarah Janecek did misunderstand the “applause” captions on the Jumbotron as a deliberate, scripted incitement to the crowd, rather than the accidental one it was. Rush Limbaugh did devote his next day’s show to the rally. It’s what he leaves out and minimizes that misleads. Franken suggests that the outrage only started when it was hyped up by right-wingers. No, it started immediately, during the rally. Wellstone’s campaign manager almost immediately—apparently without needing to get his instructions from Rush Limbaugh—apologized for the turn that the memorial took. Didn’t Franken notice that? He does have a point, though. Given the nature of Wellstone’s politics, it was almost inevitable that there would be elements of a rally in what was billed as a memorial service. Which made it even more important that those who wanted to have this remain a memorial take steps to do so. They didn’t.
Joel Rosenberg
Minneapolis

If we want to blame someone for divorce, let’s blame the instigator and his or her attorney. I have a word of warning: The more you fight, the bigger the chance that the winner will be the attorney, who ultimately gets the money. The sad part about my recent divorce is that because of this ridiculous and long fight in court, we wasted a lot of money that could have been better spent on our kid’s needs. Money that could have been used for the kid’s education, or medical emergencies, or even to help the ex-spouse (especially if a stay-at-home parent) go back to school or rebuild a career, because that is what really makes sense. A divorce doesn’t have to be ugly and cut-throat on top of being a source of pain for everyone. Because this way everybody wins, especially the kids. The goal should be the well-being of the child, even if that means giving up on fighting for child custody. Your children know who loves them, and if you stay involved and keep on being a good parent, no court paper can take away your child’s love.
Name withheld by request

As an attorney who has practiced family law for twenty years, I agreed with the majority of Jeannine Ouellette’s article describing the marriage dissolution process in Minnesota [“Dealing From the Bottom,” September]. If our legislature had intentionally set out to create a system producing inequitable, shortsighted results inflicting the maximum degree of harm on children, it succeeded. Ouellette correctly noted that many dissolution statutes are the result of efforts by gender-based advocacy groups to advance their agenda with little thought to the children whose lives will be directly affected by the legislation. However, she perpetuated a troublesome stereotype by reprinting the claim of an unidentified attorney that while many fathers ask for joint physical custody of their children “only ten percent really want it” and, for most fathers, joint physical custody is simply a ploy to reduce child support. My experience is precisely the opposite. What most fathers object to is a legal system that ignores and devalues a father’s relationship with his children. The litigation system in our country uses an adversarial model—each side fights to “win.” This makes little sense when the custody of children is at stake. Assuming one parent should have “primary” custody of the children means the noncustodial parent’s status is diminished and rendered less meaningful. When a father sees his children on alternating weekends, he cannot function as a parent—he is more akin to an uncle. It is children who suffer as the result of this diminished role.
The Minnesota guidelines effectively assume the custodial parent has no economic responsibility for the child. This may be plausible for an unwed mother receiving public assistance but is dubious when a marriage ends. As a practical matter there is little difference in actual childcare costs between a custodial mother and noncustodial father. In this context the child support guidelines are simply a naked transfer of funds from one parent to another and have no relationship to the child’s actual needs.
Glenn P. Bruder
Edina