Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy has turned his office into a bad joke
Editor’s Note: This column contains some light profanity and several examples of bad comedy writing. Consider yourself warned.
Want to hear something funny? Don’t listen to Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy.
Over the weekend the governor’s office released an anonymous letter written in the name of Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and Muhammed bin Salman and ostensibly sent as a congratulatory letter to President Joe Biden. The piece was published Saturday in the Alaska Landmine blog and labeled as satire — which I can assure you is the only way you’d know it’s supposed to be funny.
The letter hits on a loose compilation of tired talk radio digs about Biden, ranging from high oil prices and icebreaker imbalances to the Afghanistan pullout and immigration policy. But the writer hilariously flips the script by — get this! — praising Biden for some of his supposed missteps since taking office. It’s gold, Jerry.
Here’s a taste:
“Our nations are often wrongly accused of not respecting human rights. However, even as we in Russia, China and Saudi Arabia are proud of our records, we cannot compete with your policy to admit entire populations at your southern border. Your hospitality of not checking backgrounds or even testing for COVID-19 or making sure your new residents attend court hearings is most unprecedented!”
It goes pretty predictably from there….there’s a Hunter crack, a lightly veiled allusion to the “fuck you Biden” chants, a Brandon reference — all the hits. I shit you not, there’s even a “Hollywood elites” dig. It reads like something the local Young Republicans came up with after cracking some Proper №12 and staging a seance with Rush Limbaugh.
Luckily for Dunleavy, making people laugh isn’t necessary for holding public office. If it was, Anchorage would have appointed Ethan Berkowitz mayor for life.
Unfortunately cringe comedy isn’t Dunleavy’s biggest transgression with this ill-advised swing-and-miss at the president. In fact, the satire piece brings up a number of serious issues that the governor’s office should address when it comes to its communications strategy.
The first is obvious. Misinformation and propaganda are an equal-opportunity scourge, whether it’s widespread medical lies spread during the Covid-19 pandemic or the media’s uncritical embrace of the Steele dossier during the 2016 election. Although the piece is clearly labeled satire, the fact that it was produced by the governor’s office in its official capacity will surely give it an imprimatur of legitimacy that could easily have unintended consequences. It’s not hard to imagine how excerpts from the letter could be quoted or presented out of context and take on a life of their own. Why Dunleavy would want to contribute to a sea of misleading noise and confusing chatter is baffling.
Next there’s the issue of resources. Someone within the governor’s office got paid to produce this piece — a fact that should concern all Alaskans and in particular the state’s fiscal conservatives, who have long argued the government is bloated and wasteful. I can’t think of a better example of administrative waste than paying someone to sit around writing jokes — unless it’s paying someone to sit around writing shitty jokes.
That Dunleavy would choose to satirize world leaders for no apparent reason was also an odd choice and one that doesn’t appear to have much upside for the state. In the case of China in particular the satire could be problematic as that nation is both the state’s largest trading partner and notoriously prickly about criticism from abroad. While critiques of China’s human rights and free speech policies are more than appropriate, what’s unclear is why the Dunleavy administration would choose a deeply unserious and sophomoric vehicle to do so. What exactly is to be gained for the state by Dunleavy dropping Xi’s name into a Biden dis track?
Dunleavy’s administration has always had a quarrelsome relationship with the truth. Early in his tenure the governor released Photoshopped photos of himself to try and hide a facial surgery, and later on he staged an interview with an “Alaska student” who turned out to be the son of one of his commissioners. His administration also allegedly staged a sloppy cover-up of a sexual harassment case against former Dunleavy Attorney General Kevin Clarkson and was later found to have violated the Constitution by illegally trying to make state employees sign what amounted to a loyalty pledge when he took office. The governor’s most recent gaffe can only add to the administration’s reputation as unhinged, disorganized and incapable of crafting coherent policy.
I don’t know who authored the piece, but if I had to bet I’d put my money on Andrew Jensen. Jensen is the former editor of the Alaska Journal of Commerce who recently left the right-leaning business publication to join his mentor, Dunleavy communications director Dave Stieren, in the governor’s impressive stable of comedy writers.
Jensen has long parroted right-wing talking points in his AJOC editorials and the rapier wit behind the Dunleavy piece screams Jensen, a comedy master who once shared a meme featuring Xi as Winnie the Pooh on a poster for a movie called “Kung Flu Pandemic.” That the fiercely anti-government former journalist Jensen probably got paid by the government to write a piece of comic propaganda is an absolute chef’s kiss of irony and might be the only legit bit of satire contained in the whole affair.
We may never know who actually authored it — perhaps not unsurprisingly nobody has stepped forward to take credit. But that the piece was published pseudo anonymously in the Alaska Landmine creates an awkward situation for Landmine publisher Jeff Landfield, who has embarked on a high-profile crusade to try and unmask the anonymous “Blue Alaskan” blog. Landfield rages against anonymous writing in that case, but apparently has no trouble hiding the identity of whoever in Dunleavy’s office sent him the satire piece.
When I pointed this out to the totally-not-mad Landfield on Twitter, his response was to ignore the question and ask if I could read. Clearly the guy can take a joke.
Landfield however portrays himself as a purveyor of political scoops, and with people now calling for the unmasking of the identity of Dunleavy’s in-house jester, Landfield is now in the awkward position of having to shield a state employee producing state-funded propaganda. If Landfield refuses to say who authorized the piece, he’s abdicating his role as a reporter and instead acting as an asset of the Dunleavy administration — an ethical breach for a journalist far more grave than any that may have been committed by his arch nemesis, the Blue Alaskan.
So yeah, the whole thing is a shit show, and one that seems to have little to no upside for anyone except perhaps Landfield, whose brand is a mix of equal parts poor editorial judgment and pubescent bombast and who will likely gain in clicks and clout by promoting the stunt.
For his part, Dunleavy may have thought that a bit of levity would help his image and gain him some traction with the Facebook crowd. He bombed. Instead he’s once again made a mockery of his office and his state at a time when we need to be having serious conversations about Alaska’s fiscal future. Hopefully for all of our sake, the governor realizes sooner rather than later what many Alaskans have already come to understand all too well:
The joke’s on him.
This column is the opinion of Matt Tunseth, a former newspaper reporter and editor from Alaska. Write him at matthew.tunseth@gmail.com
