Big swinging Nick
Nick Coleman is the third-rate columnist for Minneapolis's second-rate newspaper. He wields his Star Tribune metro column like a hatchet, performing acts of destruction that seem to fulfill some dark needs. Having myself been the subject of a Coleman column in which he speculated about my masculinity and sought to get me fired from my job, I identify with the victims of Coleman's hatchet jobs.
Earlier this month St. Paul Pioneer Press columnist Rubén Rosario called for the resignation of former (Democratic) Minnesota Attorney General Mike Hatch from the office of the Minnesota Attorney General where he was (weirdly) continuing to serve at the pleasure of his (Democratic) successor, newly elected Lori Swanson. By the end of the day Hatch was gone.
Coleman is a partisan bully. He never got around to noticing the weirdness in the office of the Minnesota Attorney General until after Hatch's resignation. After Hatch resigned Coleman piled on. He's just that kinda guy.
Coleman, however, seeks to emulate Rosario's role in the case of my friend Rachel Paulose, the United States Attorney for Minnesota. On Thursday Coleman devoted his fourth column to Rachel and called for her to be fired. Why? According to Coleman, her only qualifications for the job are her "faith and politics." Rachel is a Christian and a conservative.
Although her background has been covered by the Star Tribune, Coleman appears to be unfamiliar with it. She has a stellar academic and professional record. She's a top graduate of Yale Law School, a former law clerk to Eighth Circuit Chief Judge James Loken, a veteran of the Reno Justice Department's Honors Program, a former Assistant United States Attorney with actual prosecutorial experience. In private practice she worked at top-flight law firms including Dorsey & Whitney in Minneapolis and Williams & Connolly in Washington. Dan Browning's Star Tribune profile of Rachel quoted the chairman of Williams & Connolly (President Clinton's attorney David Kendall) speaking highly of her.
Coleman's column is full of animus in search of an argument. He never does find an argument, but what accounts for the animus? Using Occam's Razor and staying on the surface of his column, I infer that Coleman's animus derives from Rachel's putative "qualifications" for the job: her Christianity, and her conservatism. The animus, in other words, is pure bigotry -- the kind of bigotry that is indulged and practiced at the "Newspaper of the Twin Cities."
JOHN adds: Here is what I don't understand. We have talked about the deep cuts the Star Tribune is making in its staff, due to financial problems: 50 employees are being bought out or let go in the news room alone. As all the world knows, James Lileks has been reassigned as a beat reporter, and I heard yesterday that Coleman's long-time fellow local columnist Doug Grow has been bought out and will resign from the paper. Yet Coleman, astonishingly, still has a column, at which he continues to labor, apparently, for his accustomed 15 to 20 minutes a day. The only logical inference from this is that the editors of the Star Tribune believe that they have at least 50 employees who are worse than Nick Coleman! I can't think of a more searing self-indictment.
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