If you think Walter Mondale’s presidential campaign was the last time Minnesotans were considered a threat to their fellow Americans, guess again. According to fans of public radio here in California the Gopher State, and in particular Minnesota Public Radio President Bill Kling, are squandering one of our most precious intellectual resources. “The daily advertisement for the wonders of corporate socialism called ‘Marketplace’” is how Salon’s Lorenzo Milam described the Los Angeles-based program MPR purchased in 2000. “Minnesota belongs in Minnesota, not in Los Angeles,” the owner of a Santa Monica public radio station famously complained. “I view Bill Kling as a barracuda in the public-radio waters,” a Pasadena academic said in an article that labeled Kling “Public Radio’s Darth Vader.”
When elephants fight, the grass suffers. My own work history has played out entirely in the private sector, so I had barely an inkling that an innocent (if unnecessarily grueling) series of job interviews at “Marketplace” would be a window on an ugly clash of cultures.
Sure, the occupation in question-webmaster and official excitement-generator for the program’s deadly dull web site–didn’t look like anybody’s dream job. With a sense of design worthy of the DMV, Marketplace.org attracts about 2,500 page views per week. That’s fewer than any schoolboy can generate by posting a few dozen J.Lo scans on his home page. The radio show, by contrast, attracts four million listeners each week. MPR wanted my expertise in figuring out how to leverage those numbers.
For my part, I did my best to reflect what seemed to be a popular feeling around the office-that “Marketplace” host David Brancaccio is a colossal genius whose shoes I was unfit to carry. (But by God I’d try!)
All the nasty stereotypes about Minnesotans-the slow-talking, mind-numbing mannerisms, the blandly liberal, vitamin-enriched mindset-were on shocking display among these Angelenos, who seemed worried that North Star Corporate was encroaching on their wild and crazy party. Hired out of the Minnesota office, I would always be an alien presence. Worse still, job details from my Twin Cities-based supervisor hinted at a dark future as a Pacific-coast mole for my Midwestern overlords. No wonder the radio people viewed me with contempt and loathing (beyond the fact that I happen to be loathesome and contemptible, that is).
In the end, though, they went with some other candidate, one who already lived in L.A. Was it a victory for Brancaccio’s holdouts? An olive branch from Minnesota to the City of the Angels? I’ll never know. Around the “Marketplace” office, it’s hard enough to find a pulse, let alone a telling display of emotion. Perhaps this place really is an outpost of Lutheranism worthy of its Minnesota landlords.
I’ve kept tabs on Marketplace.org since getting rejected, however, which furnishes this story’s one bright spot: In the months since my rival was hired, the site hasn’t changed a pixel.
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