No, I'm not kidding about Mondale being unknown. He wasn't on the radar of voters under 30 at the time of Wellstone's death. Most Americans outside Minnesota didn't know who he was without being first told by the mainstream media either. Considering how long Mondale has been out of public service, that should be a surprise to no one.

As to the Republican attendees being dissed (I presume you mean booed by a handful of hecklers, which is what really happened), only a handful of Republicans, along with Minnesota's governor, were actually booed. Was it in poor taste? Yes. I, as any reasonable person would, don't argue that.

But in the big scheme of things (ie in the context of seven people's deaths) it didn't bother me, or a number of Republicans, like Jim Ramstad and Dave Durenberger, who didn't hesitate to say so publicly, though the media refused to listen to them, or give their remarks any validity. For the people who were grieving those deaths, those were totally insignificant blips on the radar, because they weren't thinking in political terms, but personal terms.

But that wasn't true for the Republican attack dogs and right wing media that despised Wellstone. They weren't grieving at all. They were too busy being morally outraged, and chasing Jesse Ventura for some colorful commentary on the (as Ventura put it so viciously) "so-called memorial rally". As if the memorial was supposed to be about the governor who hated Wellstone, and not about those who had died, and their survivors.

The whole phony moral media outrage thing was utterely incomprehensible to the people who were just trying to get through the week--reality turned on it's head as it only can be at a time of deep grieving. The grieving just couldn't comprehend, much less counter that kind of shit--they were too busy trying to plan the funerals for seven people, a public memorial, and not fall apart with their own grief. And that is precisely how the right wing attack dogs exploited the grieving, descended upon them, and ripped them to shreds. It absolutely revulsed me to the point where I couldn't stomach watching tv for weeks. It was traumitizing for me, who barely knew the Wellstones and didn't know any of the other victims of the crash. I can't even comprehend how deeply it must have wounded the grieving loved ones of those who were killed.

So, the booing and Rick Kahn's speech really weren't a big deal in the context of the entire event, but you'd never know that from listening to mainstream media reports of it. What the media and Republican attack dogs didn't tell you, is telling. They didn't bother to mention the crowd had been forced to sit in the arena FOR TWO HOURS waiting for the "dignataries" section to be seated. And that was after every person had waited for hours to get in, and was searched and harrassed by security just to get in the door. They weren't allowed to move around the arena. Wellstone's people had begged the security people NOT to do that shit, because their intention was that the memorial rally be for Paul's Minnesota constituents and guests of the families who lost loved ones in the crash who wanted to say goodbye, and NOT for the national media and dignitaries.

Highly visible dignitaries with a good reason to fear the security situation, like the Clintons, Tom Daschle, and Teddy Kennedy didn't have any trouble going along with the family & campaign's request. But for some reason, the Jesse Venturas and Rush Limbaughs couldn't go along with it? Hell, even Trent Lott, who despised Wellstone, had the class and decent Southern upbringing not to say anything to the media about being booed. But then, it is always the vulgar and tasteless who engage in that sort of thing anyway, isn't it?

That said, the memorial definitely had the feel of an old time, feel good, celebratory political rally, because that was what it was intended to be. No one except those of us who saw the whole thing remembers the moving, heartfelt, eloquent, beautiful speeches that were given that night, especially by the brother of 23 year old Will McLaughlin (a campaign intern), Paul's youngest son Mark (who is the spitting image of his father), and Tom Harkin.

There were some political villains in the audience at the Wellstone memorial, who were there only because they had to be there, not because they admired and respected Wellstone, and wanted to pay their respects. They got momentarily booed by about 20-30 people, when their pictures came up on the big screens after two hours of being held hostages in their seats before the memorial rally began. So what? You think Trent Lott and Jesse Ventura wanted to truly pay respects to Wellstone? No, they didn't, and everyone in the crowd at the memorial rally knew that.

So there was a handful of booers out of the thousands of people who were there. They shouldn't have done it, but nor should the media have held the Wellstone campaign and the DFL party responsible for a handful of jerks. That is why their fake moral outrage was just despicably phony. Their partisanship was so blatant in the news coverage, one got the sense they really were working overtime to trash the Wellstones' memory by demonizing their family, friends, and supporters as foaming at the mouth political radicals who couldn't even stop their politicking to grieve.

Would Paul Wellstone have approved of the booing or Rick Kahn's speech? Absolutely not. He absolutely wouldn't have approved, and most certainly would have intervened to stop both. But lest we forget, Paul Wellstone was dead, and was powerless to control the situation. Though you'd never know that from the right wing media coverage. The surviving family members and the Wellstone campaign did their utmost to honor all of the dead, uphold their good names, their personal legacies, and their memories. In the days following the memorial, the Republican attack dogs and the right wing media did all they could to utterly destroy them.

The media created firestorm of controversy is what put Norm Coleman in the US Senate, the same way the media created firestorm of controversy put Howard Dean out of the Democratic presidential race.

The two things that happened at the memorial rally--the booing from the audience before the memorial started (which no one could have controlled), and Rick Kahn's remarks (which could have been controlled if one of the Wellstone sons or the campaign director had vetted his speech in advance), just showed how little control the organizers of the event actually had over the circumstances. Not surprisingly given the circumstances, they were really in complete disarray.

But that didn't stop the Republicans from exploiting the few negative things that did happen, and making a mountain out of a mole hill, so their hand picked Bush boy, would win. Now there's compassionate conservatism for you, in a nutshell. Attack the survivors of a plane crash that killed seven people five days after their deaths, to win a political race. That's damn compassionate, isn't it? A lot of moral integrity there.

Actually, the only moral integrity I saw in the wake of the Wellstone memorial, outside Jim Ramstad's remarks to the press, was Mondale's concession speech. When he spoke to the young people who were the heart and soul of the Wellstone campaign, the full brunt of the horror of the Republican attacks came home to roost. Mondale showed more decency, more class, and more personal and professional integrity (not to mention family and community values) in his pinky finger than any of the attack dog Republicans, especially Norm Coleman, will ever have.

You know those cliched sayings like "I don't know how they sleep at night" or "I don't know how they can look themselves in the mirror"? That is what springs to mind about the Republican fueled media response to Wellstone's death. And I don't say that as a Democratic partisan (I'm a political independent) or a Wellstone groupie (see my remarks about him in the "Who are your heros" thread). I say that as a human being who was utterly disgusted and devastated by the Republican exploitation of the Wellstone deaths.

Those were grieving, fallible human beings who planned and carried out the memorial rally to honor all seven dead. How many sitting US senators's families do you suppose would have chosen to "share the memorial stage" of the deceased senator with the other victims families? Not many, if any, is my guess.

But the Republican attacks won the day. No one remembered the Wellstones or their legacy. The relentless, extreme, shrill, negative attack tactics (same we've seen the White House use in the past week against Richard Clarke) worked. The attack dog Republicans succeeded with their P.T. Barnum strategy of fooling enough of the people to win the election.

That is how Norm Coleman won the election. The only way he could have, because Wellstone would surely have won it had he not died. And Wellstone would have won it because he deserved to win. If ever there was an opportunistic politician whose didn't deserve to win, it is Norm Coleman.