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The entire country met Minnesota’s own Tampon Tim Walz this past August when Kamala Harris selected him as her running mate. The more the country saw him, the less it liked him. Walz thrilled Democrats in convention assembled when he called Trump running mate J.D. Vance “weird.” That proved a poor choice of words on Walz’s part. The more the country saw Walz, the weirder it thought he was. He made a poor vice presidential candidate.
Taking the path of least resistance under fire, he declared himself “a knucklehead.” He is worse than that, but it was a revealing concession. In the glare of the national spotlight Walz was exposed as a compulsive liar.
Among other things, in the 2023 “let’s go crazy” legislative session, Walz had signed and celebrated the Minnesota Democrats’ mandate of tampons in all school restrooms (grades 4-12). The Star Tribune all but celebrated the bill and its manifold good works while it worked its way through the legislature.
State representative Sandra Feist was an ardent proponent and sponsor of the bill in the legislature. In a January 2023 column published by the Star Tribune when the bill had just been introduced, Feist specified the law’s application to “all menstruators.”
In an August 2023 summary of school legislation, the Star Tribune drily recorded (link in original): “The sweeping education bill Walz signed later in the spring also included a provision that requires schools to stock bathrooms with free menstrual products.” The text of the law is posted here.
Once Harris made Walz a national candidate, however, the Star Tribune undertook to obfuscate and deny the purport of the law. I took a look at the Star Tribune’s attempted obfuscation once Walz became a candidate for national office in “Of Tim and the tampons.”
The dishonesty of the Star Tribune in general and editorial board member Jill Burcum in particular continues to rankle. Having all but celebrated the bill before and through its enactment into law, the Star Tribune sought to shield Walz from his own folly once he joined Harris on the Democrats’ ticket.
Hillary Clinton chose not to follow the line. She got on the bandwagon. Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for Tim Walz.
How nice of the Trump camp to help publicize Gov. Tim Walz’s compassionate and common-sense policy of providing free menstrual products to students in Minnesota public schools! Let’s do this everywhere. pic.twitter.com/hk6v8cs8p4
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 7, 2024
Well, that’s all ancient history. Minnesota Democrats usually lag their exemplars on the East and West Coasts. However, not entirely so in this case. Minnesota helped lead the way for the New York Times. Joe Simonson reports:
The New York Times added menstrual products to its Manhattan office’s men’s bathrooms over the summer, according to internal communications obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The paper’s decision was announced by the vice president for global real estate and facilities, Victor Liu, in a company-wide Slack message. From July 26 to July 29, Liu said, the company would begin “adding menstrual products and sanitary baskets” to the office’s men’s restrooms “to support transgender and non-binary colleagues.” The company also announced that it was “removing gendered imagery and adding language that colleagues are welcome to use the restroom in which they feel most comfortable.”
The Star Tribune never misses an opportunity to highlight the local angle on a national story or show Minnesota leading the way toward the precipice. However, I seriously doubt that the Star Tribune will report this development or claim any credit for Minnesota Democrats leading the way. It does make me wonder if the Star Tribune’s practice leads or lags the Times.