Peppermint Patty and Marcie up north

You all know I love living in northern Minnesota and talk about it all the time. But why? Well, there’s the trees and lakes and history, but that’s just stuff I write books about. No, I’m a media person and I judge a place by its media. And northern Minnesota is the only place in the NATION with a mustachioed news anchor.

That’s Dennis Anderson. He’s been anchoring the top rated news program in the Duluth market on WDIO Channel 10 (and “lucky” WIRT 13 for us Rangers) since the ’70s. He doesn’t just win the time slot, he just cold bull whips the competition every year. Yes, that’s a toupee. He speaks openly of his toupee. What of it, hoss? What of it?

That’s all well and good, but then you have the WDIO morning show, “Good Morning Northland,” the prime lead in to ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

This show features news anchor Cassie Limpert (right), who kindly interviewed me awhile back for my book “Overburden,” and Charlene Malin (left), the weather reporter, who details the conditions that determine what our three boys wear outside every single day. We watch this program reliably, partly out of tradition (we’ve watched previous incarnations of GMN before) and partly out of love for a media world that would allow a morning anchor staff that so closely resembles Peppermint Patty and Marcie from “Peanuts.” I’m sorry to bring this all up, maybe it’s the elephant in the room, but look:
We just watched “The Easter Beagle” on Channel 10, so I believe this is a fair point. I ask you, where else in this fine nation would such a configuration be possible? Only in northern Minnesota, where the people are kind, smart, bold and impervious to irony.

We watch Cassie and Charley every morning so don’t take this as anything bad. They’re great fun and are good at their jobs. Wouldn’t you watch this? It’s worth moving to northern Minnesota to watch this. This is good, people. This is good.

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