By Joel Thurtell
Let’s see now.
Rick Snyder was sworn in as governor how long ago?
From today’s (February 13, 2011) Detroit Free Press, you’d think he was approaching the end of his first term.
Hoo boy, time for a big job eval.
Except that no, he was only sworn in last month.
So what does the esteemed Free Press plunk down in huge type as its lead story for Page One in today’s Sunday Free Press?
“Gov learns hard way change isn’t easy”
According to a truncated story, the new governor, theoretically because of his political naivete (according to the Free Press), is having trouble accomplishing all his goals.
Gee, I didn’t realize he’d promised to finish his plate by the end of January, less than a month into his first term.
As usual with the Free Press, things are a bit more complex.
The story, with its huge headline, is not to be interpreted literally.
With the Free Press, there’s always a story behind the story.
It’s hard to fathom what motivates Michigan’s Great Morning Tradition, but I doubt all the hoopla is about the governor’s “inability” to get things done in hubba-hubba, chop-chop fashion.
The real message from the Free Press may read like this:
We don’t have any news of substance to put on the front page of our Sunday paper.
Maybe that is all there is to it: Lack of imagination.
Check out the rest of Page One: fluff about a billionaire who happens to be a family man and might — emphasis on the subjunctive, because the deal’s not done — buy the Detroit Pistons basketball team.
There, above the masthead, we learn in huge capital letters that the Free Press is offering its SPRING TRAINING PREVIEW somewhere inside the newspaper.
Still on Page One, underneath the dross about the maybe-Pistons owner, the brains at the Free Press offer us powerful insights into a burning question: “Should Barbie take Ken back?”
If you can’t write anything real, why not write about dolls?
In another shot at the governor, the Free Press worries that Snyder may cut tax incentives to one of the newspaper’s favorite sources of gossip — the film industry. Inside, the paper acts like the governor’s talking about cutting those incentives was a bad thing.
Bad for the film industry, at least, and therefore bad for the newspaper.
I smell an agenda there.
Inside, the paper goes on at more length about the governor’s failure to realize ambitions he set out sometimes right after he was inaugurated, such as building a $2 billion international bridge that has been controversial for years and seemed dead until Snyder injected new energy into the project in a surprise announcement last month.
But Freepsters have their own spin: “A plan to build a new bridge over the Detroit River proves that even $2 billion in free money doesn’t guarantee a slam dunk in Lansing.”
Snyder announced his support for the government bridge last month, and the Free Press is already passing judgment?
There are conspiracy theorists out there who will chide me for not accusing the Free Press of engineering this entire Page One screed as a subtle way of scuttling the governor’s effort to build that bridge and again subtly giving the newspaper’s support to the perennial opponent of a government bridge, Ambassador Bridge owner Manual “Matty” Moroun.
Does that explain all this Page One chaff in the Freep?
There is a more straightforward tneory:
That there was no good sex scandal or bloody shoot-’em-up tabloid trash to fuel headlines.
A thumbnail of this front page:
Special from the Free Press: We’re catching some z’s.
Great minds think alike; I was struck Sunday morning by the moronity of that story, until I remembered that it was the Free Press. I recommend always going first to the intellectual part of the paper, Pearls Before Swine. Then devote the same amount of time to the rest of it.