Paul Wellstone: Ten years ago today

[Locutus of Bored]

Well, when the memorial morphed into a campaign rally, it did strike a lot of people as horrifyingly bad, which is why the right-wing showed more clips of it than the left-wing, replaying it over and over again. It fired up the base and helped keep the House and Senate in Republican hands.

As now-Senator Franken wrote, that was a joyous event that was totally in spirit with Senator Wellstone's life and ideals. But the right-wing rage media, which treated him like dirt before he died, used their post-9/11 clout to do what they always do: treat progressivism as despicable, and borderline unpatriotic.

They played it "over and over again" because that's what they do: they create rage-fueled entertainment in order to pander to the egos of their audience, while conspiring, via international fiscal policy, to rob them blind.

I'm no expert on Senator Wellstone, but I bet he would have loved the event.

I asked him to keep the topic focused on remembering Senator Wellstone instead of making partisan complaints, and then you go and make partisan complaints from the opposite side of the aisle, which is not fair when he's been asked not to respond in kind. Stop.

 

[Satyrquaze]

I knew nothing of Senator Wellstone - I don't think I'd even heard his name, so I looked him up.

Seems to have been that rarest of things - a good politician. RIP.

Yeah, we were quite lucky to have him for as long as we did.

I recall friends mentioning even despite being out-of-state having their own experieces dealing with our Senator's passing.

A friend of mine was going to Chapman University in California at the time. She had a similar opinion of him as I do, and had gotten the news early the following morning. She had been crying before going to class and it still showed as she walked into the classroom. Her teacher wondered what was wrong and a friend mentioned that she was from Minnesota. The teacher immediately understood and excused her from class. It was as though a close family member had died. I'm sure most of her classmates were a bit incredulous over it.

Another friend was a Minnesotan transplant living in Maine. She was working when one of her customers mentioned that it had just been reported that Wellstone had died and she lost it and began crying uncontrollably right in the middle of work.

It's fair to say many of us understood what was lost the day Wellstone died.