The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

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Photo by Jeff Lennan

It seems like only yesterday that Saint Paul was flooded with hordes of conservatives looking for nothing more than to have a swingin' good time with likeminded people and the occasional (and possibly fictitious) woman with loose morals and an eye for fine timepieces. Not to mention the roving packs of skinny white kids hell-bent on railing against the injustices of the world, some of whom spoiled the party for everyone by lobbing homemade explosives and assorted forms of human waste at police and delegates, who responded to such acts with a decidedly Republican show of force. After all, nothing kills a party like a twenty-something armed with the high explosive equivalent of flaming bags of dog crap.

But despite the sensationalistic headlines and the locust swarm of citizen journalists searching the non-Euclidean urban geometries of St. Paul for the stories that even the all-seeing eye of Jason DeRusha missed, there were stories yet to be unearthed - one of which involved profound idiocy by a candidate for higher office right here in the Twin Cities. And while idiocy and profound ignorance of the social mores the common man lives by is all too common among politicians, allowing it to go on without a rolled-up newspaper to the nose is unacceptable.

Like many, Jeff Grubler was in town to protest at the RNC. Performing skits and songs like "Insane in the McCain Brain" and "Bomb Iran" outside the cordoned off convention area while wearing cardboard McCain and Bush masks, protestors and delegates described the show as "mesmerizing." Renato D'Amico, an alternate McCain delegate from Massachusetts, called the show "nice and innocent." Of course, Ed Matthews, Republican Congressional candidate for the 4^th District, who happened to be passing by on his way to the Xcel Center, didn't see it quite the same way. The masks Grubler and his fellow actors were using were made out of one of Matthews' campaign signs.

According to Matthews, he walked up to Grubler after the performance was done and asked to see his mask, which Grubler handed over for inspection. Matthews says that Grubler then "took a swing at me and ripped off my credentials," at which point he was tackled by the assorted security forces assembled at the gate. When we asked Matthews why he didn't press charges against such an obviously dangerous and unhinged minstrel, the likes of whom the world has not seen since Sir Robin himself set bravely forth from Camelot, Matthews responded that, "I just want to let bygones be bygones. I think it's pretty big of me."

Of course, several witnesses who managed to tear their eyes away from a passing Jon Voight saw the scene differently.

D'Amico, the alternate Republican delegate from Massachusetts, and Amy Waksmonski, a local videographer on hand to document the RNC, both say that, after noticing the masks were made from his signs, Matthews started shouting, "That's mine! That's my sign," while attempting to rip the mask off Grubler's face. A titanic struggle between two middle-class white men ensued, with Matthews taking the mask and Grubler managing to take possession of Matthews' delegate credentials.

Predictably, things went south for Grubler from there, the police taking him into custody while Matthews was escorted into the Xcel with no repercussions whatsoever. Other witnesses to the incident, including the Oklahoma delegates in the video of the event's aftermath, seemed to take Matthews' free pass quite poorly -- several railing against the apparent lack of respect for free speech rights and little to no interest in what Matthews may have done to instigate the situation.

In any case, let us forget, for a moment, the fact that the police never interviewed witnesses or attempted to determine the truth of what happened before carting Grubler off in handcuffs. Let's ignore the lack of an official police report on the event, not to mention the SPPD and Capitol Police's unwillingness to discuss any of the details of the incident. Instead let us focus simply on the painful notion that, should these eyewitness accounts be true, we'll have yet another reason for the nation's profound lack of confidence in our Congress. Not to mention yet another asshat living among us.