An interview with Abe Sauer
My two favorite pieces from the last week — favorite because of their unexpectedness as much as their quality — happened to be written by the same guy, Abe Sauer.
First, regular readers of The Awl who live in Minneapolis might have been a bit surprised to see the lengthy write-up of Minnesota GOP candidate Tom Emmer. Sauer rustled together some tidbits from Emmer’s personal and political history to paint a very straight-forward and informative picture of our quintessential Midwestern Tea Party candidate.
Almost at the same time, on a campaign of another kind, Sauer stepped into the fever pitch of coverage about the marketing phenomenon of the “Old Spice guy”, and put out a hilarious piece for Esquire in which old guys from Wisconsin talk about their own Old Spice experiences.
Abe took some to introduce himself and to answer some questions on his Midwest street cred, his political writings, and parenting with his “North Dakota method”.
Are you currently living in North Dakota? If so, how awesome is it to be able to smoke and play black jack (it’s for charity!) while drinking $2 beers?
Not at the moment, no. I am temporarily in Wisconsin, where the last weekend to smoke and do anything in a bar just came and went. Awesome? The problem with allowing smoking in bars is that it makes it impossible to sneak out to a bar to get hammered and piss money away at charity Blackjack. You get home and the wife is all, “You smell like smoke! Have you been getting hammered and pissing all our money away at charity blackjack?!” To which you have to reply, “OUR money? I don’t see having no job!” See, a North Dakotan smoking ban would save all those marriages.
As for $2 beers? $2? What am I, a Rockefeller?
How’s you get hooked up with The Awl?
I had been reading The Awl for a couple months, having been a fan of editors Choire Sicha and Alex Balk from their Gawker stints. Then, last summer, I finally got sick of their coastal bias and emailed Choire a proposal to cover flyover country, arguing “that The Awl readers might benefit from some short, funny but insightful dispatches from Flyover Nation, where the headline ‘Twins Rock the Lumber’ isn’t a part of the DVD reviews section in the The Blade.” That was my pitch, verbatim. A week or two later I covered a midget wrestling show at Borrowed Bucks Roadhouse in Grand Forks. I’ve been filing nearly weekly ever since.
One of the great fundamentals about The Awl is that the editors are honestly open to publishing a wide variety of good content. If you have a good idea and you pitch it to Choire or Balk, they’ll give you a fair chance no matter who you know or how much of a “writer” you are.
Why would you want to write up a zany Tea Party candidate from Minnesota for an East Coast blog that runs regular posts like “Tales from Brooklyn: Short Stories About Love (Actually Sex): Part 9”?
Why WOULDN’T I? I think exactly because they run “Tales from Brooklyn: Short Stories About Love (Actually Sex): Part 9” is why I want to write about Tom Emmer. I love variety, but blogs, even really good ones, can get err on the side of “HEY! MY FEELINGS!” or on the side of abstruse meta-enabling of some pop culture phenomenon. Blog writers are excellent at chasing down details hidden in the ether, and then linking to them. They are generally less excellent at getting on the phone or even email to get input from other actual human beings. That is to say, for many bloggers, if it cannot be found online, it’s not relevant.
How have you stayed dialed in to the Emmer’s activities and his campaign?
Oh, Minnesota is filled with excellent blogs that make up for the Pioneer Press. Minnesota Independent, Minnpost, City Pages, Politics in Minnesota, MNPublius. I try to read some of the reactionary’s blogs as well, like Powerline. Then I have relatives and friends there who are all, “Get a load of THIS guy!?”
And then there are individual bloggers who often find details the big boys don’t, from your blog to More Cowbell, to Deets to Ad Astra to Big Time Attic. There are more. It’s impossible to read them all everyday but they do excellent work.
You wrote “Emmer is popular with the Tea Party and has its “official” support, as much as anything is official in the party’s terrorism-cell-like structure.” Were you aware of how Tea Baggers hijacked the Republican nominating convention?
Yes. The Tea Party is rocking the boat throughout the upper Midwest (and, from what I understand, everywhere else too). In Wisconsin, the Tea Party is having a huge impact on who and how things play out. Ditto North Dakota. And really, that’s fine for the left. Thanks to the Tea Party, the right is risking disenfranchising its moderate middle base, which, in Minnesota and Wisconsin, are the ones who sway the elections.
Do you think the average Minnesotan who may worry about taxes is going to side with a guy who wants to, essentially, declare independence from the federal government? The Tea Party is having its day in the sun, and they have some legitimate gripes (as I covered in The Awl last summer). But after this midterm, they’ll loose steam. And watch for types like Palin to take credit for tea-party-supported candidates winning in November, but then immediately start to distance themselves from the movement in anticipation for 2012 when things have calmed down.
Was the “Real America: Why Target Supports Tom Emmer” post a blatant attempt to spend an entire workday talking politics in the comments section?
Ha! God no. It started off as a two paragraph update on the earlier profile of the doofus candidate and where his support is coming from. But then I remembered how corporations are always complaining about how sensationalist blogs never seek both sides of the story and I thought I’d get Target’s side because, who knows, maybe its money made it to Emmer without its full intention, and since the full story on how much of a boob and gay-hater he is came to light later, maybe Target could use the opportunity to tell its side. Sensationalism removed. Of course, Target didn’t and I personally think that was a huge missed opportunity for it to really speak to a community confused by its actions. I mean, I’M confused by its actions. The Awl’s comments section can get heated but it is by far one of the better forums of its kind online, so if I had to spend a day in there… there are worse things.
How did your book “Raising the North Dakota Child Guide” come about?
I just started writing a joke post for my blog one day and it grew from there. And soon it was a full book. I really hope to have it in bookstores by the holiday season. Any interested bookstores can email me at abe@abramsauer.com. Also, and she doesn’t even know this yet, but I’d love to approach The Awl’s Amy Jean Porter about doing some of the artwork, if I can afford her anymore.
And, since it’s still pursuing a final publisher I can’t say it’s fully “come about” yet. I’ve been turned down by a number of houses because they “can’t see a market in it.”
My new plan is to have a bunch of plastic surgery and then pitch an updated version as a memoir. So, if you publish books and you’re interested in that kind of kink, drop me a line. Otherwise I’m going to have to publish it myself and we all know that self-published books can’t be good.
I was raised in North Dakota — which I often have to bring up when Minneapolitans threateningly say “How can you not name a single Pavement song?” — and I assume the absence of arts, high culture, and diversity is a central pillar of the method?
Pffffft. What does diversity really mean anyway? Diversity means a whole bunch of things that are neither one extreme or another. So, it means “average.” Now, you tell me, who wants to be average? Not North Dakotan children. The book has a section on film, painting by numbers, beet sugar manufacturing and the filthy, depraved art of square dancing.
Anyway, who are you hanging out with in Minneapolis who uses the ability to name a song by Pavement as a measure of anything? If they’re that into Pavement, you should’t be threatened by them. Deep down they hate themselves far more than they could ever hate you.
Are you wearing Old Spice right now?
Does a bear shit in Alex Balk’s inbox?
Update — Abe says:
Oh christ, I forgot to mention MPR as one of the greatest ways of keeping up with MN politics (or ANYTHING else MN). As you might not know, I also wrote about garrison Keillor for The Awl last year.
ANYWAY, MPR is basically the original Awl. Or, I guess I should say, The Awl aspires to be what MPR already is. And that’s why the move to eliminate all federal funding for MPR is so important and should get all the attention of any MN blog, on either side.
You can read more of Abe Sauer’s work at The Awl and on other internet webpages, and you can order his book on parenting the North Dakota by emailing him.
