perfidy

Minnesota has already had its turn in the barrel, and it's far enough in the past (Aug 2006) that simply appending this item to it would consign the appendage to obscurity, and spare the Gopher State the additional ridicule that it so richly deserves.

So, Minnesota gets to be our first multi-part state smackdown recipient, all for a single news story from today:

Minn. lawmaker lobbies for Tilt-A-Whirl

Fri Mar 30, 5:38 AM ET

ST. PAUL - State Rep. Patti Fritz, DFL-Faribault, has introduced a bill designating the Tilt-A-Whirl the official amusement ride in Minnesota.

Fritz said she's taking up the cause of 52 kindergarten students from her district who say it deserves special attention because it was invented in their town.

"I represent children too," Fritz said, adding, "Minnesotans like to have fun, and it's a fun thing to do."

The Tilt-A-Whirl is a platform-type ride consisting of seven freely spinning cars holding up to four riders apiece.

Herbert Sellner invented it in 1926 and the first one debuted at the Minnesota State Fair a year later. Sellner Manufacturing in Faribault still makes it.

Minnesota already has a state muffin (blueberry), a state gemstone (the Lake Superior agate), a state drink (milk), a state butterfly (monarch) and seven other official symbols.

Sorry - it's short, so I just included it all. Well, that, plus it's a Yahoo story, so it'll eventually disappear from the web on its own if I don't snatch it. Can't have the Ministry archives filled with dead links, now can we? Of course, the story itself is a bit short on important details, such as surprise vomiting attacks suffered by tilt-a-whirlers and indirectly by those to their left and right.

Another thought occurs to me, now that I've gone to all the trouble to lift that entire news story - we could just start another semi-regular series here at the Ministry, one devoted to ridiculing individual legislators also richly in need of such ridicule. The potential downside, of course, is that given the size of the list of valid editorial targets, we're woefully understaffed for such an enterprise.