Although I don’t have twenty years of beat-writing experience, I have read many newspaper articles over the years while the Jiffy Lube guys worked on the Jag. I have understood many of them and asked college educated conservatives what I should think about the ones I didn't.

Don’t guys like Doug Grow and Nick Coleman hate you?

I’ve met with both, and I’ve really enjoyed it. Nick has been especially helpful. Did you know he even knows the names of some of the state legislators?! When I get my pre-masticated opinions from my out of state handlers they like me to not just rewrite it in my charmless and inelegant style, they want me to make it seem like my own ideas by adding in the names of local Republicans, something I couldn't do without Nick. (If you're reading this Nick, you're the best!) As for Doug, well, I find a man with a beard very sexy. Oh who am I kidding, I find any man who can behold my hideous visage without turning to stone to be sexy. By the way, do you always conduct interviews using a mirror?

Why leave a conservative think tank you helped found, for the center of the belly of the liberal media beast?

For me, this is a good time personally. I had mastered all the tasks set before me by the think tank's directors and felt the Star Tribune would hold more challenges. I understand that the copiers there are made by a different company and will work totally differently. Ditto the coffee maker.

Will the people in the exurbs and the suburbs that mistrust the Strib flick off Fox News to check out your column?

The Star Tribune is making a real attempt to reach an illiterate and misinformed audience. You've got to fish where the most fish are and suburban Fox viewers are um, well kind of like illiterate fish. The editors felt I was sufficiently pink, slimy, and spineless to be a good bait for them. I'm also hermaphroditic, by the way, but I think that was just kind of a funny worm parallel, not something they really considered.

How has journalism fallen so low in the public’s esteem?

You're lookin' at her! Well, actually her reflection. Will you please put that thing down?

No. One of the recent criticisms leveled at the liberal media is that they lack a sense of humor. But I’ve read Ann Coulter, and you’re no Ann Coulter.

[sighs] You're right, there are some who can envision themselves sleeping with her. Of course many of them will endure years of painful medical treatment as a result. Hey, I do have something over her! I'm completely disease free! Won't you please look at me?

For the last time, no. You talked about the Red State–Blue State divide. How is it manifest in Minnesota?

Look at which counties [vote] red and blue. In the blue ones I'm considered to be a prudish, disingenuous, hack who lacks even a modicum of writing ability. They know I have never had an original thought, a second date, or even a point worth making. But in the red ones... Well, I guess it is the same there, but they know I hate those faggots just like they do so that's good enough for them.

What happened to the old Republican driving a Jag through her Edina neighborhood?

Edina voted Democrat last election.