Minnesota Governor Tim Walz seeks to portray himself as a champion of freedom. Those of us who were subjected to his one-man rule during the Covid emergency have found him to be a petty tyrant. The Star Tribune is Walz’s handmaiden and most valuable player in Walz’s puffery, as in Brianna Bierschbach’s “Gov. Tim Walz draws contrast between Minnesota and conservative GOP-led states.” Bierschbach opened with Walz’s theatrics:
Gov. Tim Walz picked up copies of literary classics including “Lord of the Flies” and “Of Mice and Men” off a table of books Wednesday before reaching for Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” a dystopian novel about a patriarchal group that overthrows the federal government.
“We are keeping this fully in the fiction section of Minnesota,” Walz said, holding up his selections before tucking them inside a Little Free Library, a book exchange box he parked in the lobby outside his office.
“Let’s be very clear,” Minnesota’s Democratic governor said. “These books are banned in the state of Florida. That’s where freedom goes to die.”
Florida’s alleged book-banning is a lie, of course, as is well known to anyone who ventures beyond the Star Tribune for the news.
More bullshit and lies from Nebraska Fats.
Star Tribune is a bigger tool of the Walz Junta now more than ever.#TimWalzLieshttps://t.co/UVMXt9imZB
— Tim Walz Lies (@TimWalzLies) March 23, 2023
Here’s the funny thing. The archives of the Star Tribune itself document book banning in Minnesota high schools. In Duluth, they have banned Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird. The Star Tribune ran two stories on this development, one here (February 8, 2018) and one here (February 12, 2018).
A few blocks from Walz’s new residence in Sunfish Lake, Minnesota, Henry Sibley High School (now Two Rivers High School) directed teachers to stop lessons on Montana 1948 and — wait for it — Of Mice and Men. The Star Tribune reported it in this story (December 27, 2020), in year two of the Walz Era.
The underlying stories made international news, as in the Guardian story “‘Hurtful’ Harper Lee and Mark Twain dropped from Minnesota curriculum” (February 12, 2018). Perhaps Biersschbach can follow up with Governor Walz in her own version of The Handmaid’s Tale.
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