It's well known by anybody who pays attention to the Twin Cities talking heads that WCCO-TV's second-stringer Liz Collin is a problem for the station right now.
Comments via Twitter show how there's little love for the weekend anchorette who is married to a guy widely regarded as a white supremacist. Don't kid yourself, most people don't really care one way or another. They have no interest in any form of news reporting. We all know it's biased, so it's impossible to learn anything from it. And what is there to learn?
We form our own opinions, regardless of facts, then refer to that opinion as "our truth." It's not "the truth," it's "our truth." And it's better than anything those nasty media jackals will tell you, without question.
So we know that WCCO morning anchorette Kim Johnson was kicked to the curb because the station wants to go in a "different direction," or something lame like that. Kim doesn't dazzle the masses the way Jamie Yuccas did, inexplicably. (I don't get that one, at all.) But Kim wasn't nearly as offensive as Liz Collin, as far as I know. Maybe she is despicable, what do I know? Not much, as I have said over and over.
But Kim had to go, leaving the morning duties to the rest of the pre-dawn team, I presume. (I haven't watched in a while. I can only assume they haven't added payroll in the absence of Kim.)
Liz, however, remains immortalized on WCCO's website, a crown jewel in the station's tiara, unquestionably.
So how big of a problem is Liz for WCCO? Not big enough. Yet.
If you're reading this you probably know that Liz, in her late 30s, has daddy issues, and is on her second marriage. She married sexy Minneapolis cop Bob Kroll, who might be 55 years old at this point, and is most definitely despised by many average Joes and Janes in the Twin Cities. He's not afraid to talk the talk, when it suits his agenda, and somehow he is beloved enough by Minneapolis cops that he has been elected president of the PD's union.
Like any good Minneapolis cop, he has run afoul of standards and practices more than a few times. And he is generally regarded as a racist for his willingness to refer to non-white people and organizations as terrorists. I think he also gets dinged for not being too kind to the gay community, although I'm not sure what the basis of that is. We do know he loves Donald Trump, and happily took the stage during a Trump rally in Minneapolis to bask in the orange glow of our mentally challenged president. I'm not sure if Kroll went so far as to suckle at Trump's teat. I didn't attend that redneck rodeo.
What makes Liz so fascinating is that milfy anchorette with a dye job to die for isn't that proud of marrying a guy 15+ years her senior. Conversely, Kroll should be quite proud of his trophy, and show it off any chance he gets. Everything about his character suggests he'd be the type to gloat that he has married a news babe. And yet he doesn't want anyone to know that Liz is his little lady.
There were leaks that Liz and Bob were more than friendly with each other, but I hadn't heard anything about it until a Star Tribune interview last year, where Bob famously threatened to never speak to the newspaper again if it mentioned that he was married to a blonde TV babe who happens to read the news on the weekend.
Why would Bob be so ashamed of Liz? Well, he's not, of course. Every little boy grows up dreaming of marrying a TV babe 15+ years his junior when he hits his 50s, and Bob is one of the few boys who realized that dream. But Bob, having positioned himself as a mouthpiece for the Minneapolis PD -- with racist tendencies, it seems -- is smart enough to know that it's considered a conflict of interest if his wife reports on local news for a major market TV station and is married to a prominent member of the big city police department. Bob didn't want his trophy to be tarnished, so he and Liz seemed to downplay their nuptials publicly.
I, of course, don't care who is married, divorced or flamboyantly gay when it comes to our sacred TV people, but we tend to find out, one way or another, because they want us to know they're just like us.
So why is Liz suddenly a pain in the ass for WCCO? It could be for several reasons. Here are a bunch of possible reasons. Some are good bets. Others are more speculative.
We know that Liz use to report on police issues, but doesn't do so any more. We also know she has been married to the White Knight for a while. There's no way anybody at WCCO, from the top brass down to the interns, didn't know she was married to sexy Bob Kroll. And yet, only recently, after the death of George Floyd at the hands of former Minneapolis cops, has WCCO referenced the fact that Lizzy is married to her hunka hunka burning love by reading a disclaimer that she hasn't reported on Minneapolis PD matters in more than 2.5 years.
I have seen no evidence that WCCO made that disclaimer prior to Floyd's Memorial Day death. So why now? Why wasn't that important to note in January, or last year after the Strib outed Kroll as her life partner? That's an E4, and I'm not talking about an error on the second baseman.
WCCO loses a lot of credibility either way, but it's a really bad look when you disregarded Liz's happy homemaking with Bobby for so long, and now suddenly fess up to it. People would still criticize the station for having her on staff had they disclaimed Liz after the first date to the drive-in movie, but to remain silent for so long, only to feel obligated to fess up now, raises questions about the ethics and credibility of the station since the first moment Liz caught a twinkle in Bob's eye.
Liz went silent on Twitter after Memorial Day. Last I looked, she took a Twitter sabbatical prior to the holiday weekend. As best as I know, she conveniently hasn't turned up on WCCO's newscasts since Floyd's death. Coincidence? I don't think so.
WCCO is clearly troubled by the fact that Liz loves cuddly Bob. Otherwise they would have trotted her out like nothing happened on Memorial Day at 38th Street and Chicago Avenue.
Beyond the hesitancy of the station's honchos, you have to wonder how Liz will be able to do her job at the station.
It's no secret that being the face of the newscast is the gig most TV people covet. You're not out there in the trenches, doing live shots outside an empty city hall at 10 p.m., and you don't have to ask the unwashed masses for their mindless opinions. You sit in the comfy chair and read. And people think you're really important. And if you fool enough people, you get paid big money to read. You're trustworhty!
Liz seemed to be doing a little of both: Reading the news when called upon to do so, and filing a report when they needed her to. At this point, do you really want to send Liz out in the community to file a story? And if so, about what?
As I noted before, most people don't care about the news, so they won't know who Liz is or why the Twitter masses want her served with walking papers by WCCO, yesterday. But asking Liz to cover a story about the black community is asking for trouble if anyone associated with the story knows who she is. Send Liz to interview participants at a Black Lives Matter rally and prove me wrong. Please!
And even if it's not a story about the black community, do you really want to run the risk of sending Liz out to cover a food truck festival where she might run into angry viewers of any color who think she's as racist as her husband is believed to be?
It's unlikely, but what does WCCO do if they send any other reporter to cover a story, and somebody snubs the reporter because WCCO employs Liz? You can't rule it out. The anger over Floyd's death runs far, far deeper than any other death involving a Minnesota police department in recent years.
Does WCCO want to weather the storm of negative comments that comes every time Bob spouts his hatred toward a self-appointed terrorist group? The anger over George Floyd isn't going away any time soon, and WCCO, and its employees, will be reminded of it every time Bob speaks, so long as Liz is on the payroll. That's a tough row to hoe.
And how does Liz's marriage affect morale around WCCO these days? The station's Twitter account and, presumably, Facebook account are getting hammered for her continued employment. Social justice warriors are tweeting responses to other reporters about the fact that the station continues to employ Liz. Liz may be the least racist person in the world, but that doesn't matter if you're Frank or Amelia, and you tweet a link to a story about unemployment, only to get a response telling you that Liz is a racist by association.
I won't suggest there's a correlation between Liz's news judgment and her taste in men. But you're welcome to connect those dots.
I have no problem believing, like one diehard Twins fan on Twitter who must be Liz's father, (based upon how breathlessly he defends her,) that Liz doesn't have to be racist just because her husband is believed to be by most of the free world. Let's assume she's not. It does beg the question: What about his seemingly racist tendencies does she find so appealing?
I digress.
Here we are, mid June, and harmless Kim Johnson is searching for a PR job with an organization that would love to have her well known face as its spokesperson. And Liz is hiding with Bob, waiting for people to forget she's married so that she is safe to do her job at WCCO.
If Kim is out, and Liz is still on the payroll, you really have to question WCCO's news judgment, don't you?
I still can't get over the fact that Liz married ol' Bob. I already explained why Bob was seemingly more than happy to exchange rings with a TV babe. But I can't say I know definitively. I guess I should be open-minded enough to consider other scenarios.
What might one of those scenarios be? Glad you asked.
We know that the hunky man's man belongs to a motorcycle club and rages Republican.
Does that mean he likes wearing leather, and claims that he despises the thought of Adam and Steve, the evil counterparts to the bible's Adam and Eve?
Come to think of it, I noticed that Liz had a 5 o'clock shadow the last time I saw her on TV.
It would explain Bob's lack of pride in his marriage to Liz, wouldn't it?
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