Rolly: Wimmer blames the messenger for all the confusion

The highly entertaining former state representative and failed congressional candidate Carl Wimmer is following a familiar path for politicians: When you are in an embarrassing situation, blame it on the media.

Wimmer appeared Saturday on K-TALK's conservative Red Meat Radio, explaining how he had a job as political director of the Nevada Republican Party, then didn't have said job.

Of course, the hullabaloo was all the media's fault.

Wimmer acted surprised that reporters made such a big deal about it in the first place.

He didn't mention that the media wrote stories because he sent out a news release announcing his new employment.

Then he acted shocked when he held a news conference at the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics, and two television stations broke into their noon newscasts to cover it live.

Well, that's what television stations do. If there is a breaking news event during their noon newscasts, they like to cover it live.

But the joke here is that Wimmer chastised the media for reporting on his news release, then criticized the media further for covering his news conference.

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Caught in the middle again • Cindie Quintana, who does media relations, was the person who put out the news releases announcing Wimmer's new job and his subsequent news conference. She did it out of friendship to Wimmer and had no idea the outcome would be as bizarre as it was.

For Quintana, it was like lightning striking twice. She worked with the congressional campaign of Mia Love, who defeated Wimmer in the Republican State Convention, and believed she had been offered the job of communications director. She posted her good fortune on Facebook, only to learn later she was not the communications director. She since has left the Love campaign.

Sources inside the Love campaign had nothing but praise for Quintana and said the miscue was the unfortunate result of a miscommunication.

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Oil and water? • Democratic state Chairman Jim Dabakis debuted his own talk show on K-TALK Saturday, right after the conservative Red Meat Radio with hosts Sen. Howard Stephenson and Rep. Greg Hughes.

The idea is to provide a liberal perspective during the Saturday morning offerings of the historically conservative station.

But after listening to his program for a while Saturday, I'm not sure it's going to work out.

In fact, trying to do a liberal-leaning show for K-TALK's conservative listeners may be like putting the Wailing Wall in the Vatican.

Less than 10 minutes into the show, while Dubakis and his guest co-host John Prince were discussing health care issues, they took a call from a listener questioning their wisdom and their understanding of the U.S. Constitution.

The discussion devolved into a screaming match between Dabakis and the caller, each trying to talk over the other.

Dubakis tells me it got better later in the show, but I wasn't around to hear it. I bailed during that first call.

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Mary Poppins they're not • The Occupy Salt Lake City folks have been inhabiting, by agreement with the city, the east side of Library Square on 300 East and 400 South.

The agreement calls for them to leave the site whenever the city schedules an event there — like the Utah Arts Festival that begins Thursday.

So they dispersed Monday, but left behind two large piles of items and garbage, promising city maintenance folks they would be back to pick up the trash.

But they didn't do it in time, and by Tuesday morning the city sent its own crews to clean it up in preparation for the festival.

prolly@sltrib.com