Dayton Lets His Droll Out For The Dude

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Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton’s approval rating is fairly high right now, though his backing of an unpopular sales tax on a wide range of services may be eating into that a bit.

Still, the awkwardly earnest introvert has always been a difficult guy for Minnesotans to get to know, and he hasn’t been known for his sense of humor.  That’s why it was such a treat to see this 7-minute video of the Governor playing along with a gag video for Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota.

Dayton gave as good as he got with a comedic host called The Dude, an amalgam of The Dude charcter in the movie The Big Lebowsky and the Wayne character in the SNL-based  Wayne’s World movies.  The Dude tried very hard to upstage the Banterer-in-Chief, and, quiet amazingly, failed.

Well played, Governor, well played.

– Loveland

5 thoughts on “Dayton Lets His Droll Out For The Dude”

  2. If the question is “what was the purpose for making this video,” the answer is that it was made for internal TV programming that they use at the Children’s Hospitals for bored patients and families.

    If the question is “why in the world would a serious person do a goofy thing like this,” I’m not sure what Dayton’s answer would be, but I like occassionally seeing a less serious side from people who are required to be serious most of the time. I imagine I’m not alone.

  3. I was curious about the purpose. It makes much more sense now, knowing that it was intended for internal purposes. I viewed it, at first, as some sort of marketing piece, and it missed the mark there. But that wasn’t the point!

    It was cheesy, but better than I expected. Fairly well done.

    • Yeah, I can see how you would wonder about that. I should have explained that more in the post. It was for a program called Kid’s Clubhouse TV show that is broadcast in-house only at Children’s Hospitals. Children’s asked Dayton to do it, and he agreed. MPR reports:

      An official with Children’s Hospital and Clinics says the internal TV show aims to improve the care of the patients at Children’s Hospital. The hospital says a growing body of research shows that integrating the arts into health care helps improve overall patient outcomes.

      “The arts” is in the eye of the beholder, right?

  4. What do you call an alcoholic, former mental patient who inherited a large fortune and turned it into a small fortune? In Minnesota we call him Governor Dayton. In most places they call him a sock puppet for the public Unions.

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