Off the Record

Get it right, Bachmann

As a native St. Paulite, I know what kind of anguish the good people of our state capital felt when Katie Couric recently referred to the city where the Republican National Convention is occurring as “Minneapolis.”

As most well-informed people know, the RNC is being held at the Excel Energy Center, which is in downtown St. Paul.

People who live in New York and see the rest of the nation as that big, backwoods space that makes it a four-hour flight to Los Angeles tend to think of the Twin Cities as mainly Minneapolis. In fact, they tend to think of most of Minnesota as Minneapolis. When the Twins and Vikings used to play outdoors at Metropolitan Stadium, sports announcers were always referring to the surrounding community as Minneapolis, instead of Bloomington, for example. St. Paul, in the national view, was on the same level as Bloomington, just another suburb of Minneapolis.

So I can understand how Katie Couric could get mixed up on her Minnesota geography. Couric apologized at the end of her show, begging the citizens of St. Paul to show the kind of patience and forgiveness that the original St. Paul used to preach about.

But then, U.S. Rep. Michelle Bachmann, from Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, went on Larry King Live Monday night. When Bachmann, who lives in Stillwater, was asked whether she thought Vice President Dick Cheney should attend the convention, she said, “I think everybody should come to Minneapolis. It’s the most beautiful city in the United States. And everybody is going to want to come here.”

Apparently, to Bachmann seems to think St. Paul is just that place she drives through on the way to Minneapolis on the way to the convention.