Tell-All by ‘The Body’ Is Too Much for Some

Maybe they care that his bulldog has a flatulence problem.

Maybe they’re amused that he has “a thing” for dark-haired women.

Maybe they’re impressed that he lost his virginity on a bet at age 16, that he smoked pot, popped steroids, bought sex and once threw a ladder through a classroom window.

But do the good folks of Brooklyn Park, who made Jesse Ventura their mayor and later helped elect him governor, really need to know that he doesn’t wear underwear?

Forget boxers versus briefs. Here’s a politician proud to wear nothing at all under his jeans--and proud, too, to let the world know it. That tell-all frankness has delighted some voters in this working-class suburb, and exasperated others. Which is pretty much the reaction Ventura’s been getting all over the state since he released his autobiography last month.

With a title lifted from his signature growl in the movie “Predator,” “I Ain’t Got Time to Bleed: Reworking the Body Politic From the Bottom Up” has much of Minnesota in a tizzy.

Ventura professes not to understand why. He’s never pretended to be a blueblood; he won the governorship by being his big, bawdy self. So he can’t see why anyone would be shocked that his book contains more--much more--of the same. As he writes: “I owe it to the people who voted for me to keep on being me.”

And plenty of Minnesotans are thrilled with the autobiography. It confirms that they put a straight shooter in the governor’s mansion, a real beer-and-burgers kind of guy. As Bob Gorg, 42, said admiringly: “He tells people what he feels, rather than what they want to hear.” But critics wonder whether Ventura couldn’t have been true to himself and honest with his constituents while exercising just a bit more editorial discretion.

Did he really need to brag about snookering a clerk into selling him liquor when he was 16? Did he need to admit that he didn’t fall in love with his future wife at first sight but “definitely fell in lust”? And what about those Navy “skivvy checks” that taught him to do without “unnecessary conveniences” such as underwear?

“He’s such a kid!” moaned Gwen Josephson, a 36-year-old stay-at-home mom who would prefer that her governor focus on policy briefs.

Her friend Julie Mesenbrink put it more bluntly: “He’s stupid. . . . Anybody who’s been hit on the head that many times shouldn’t be governor.”

His fellow politicians won’t go that far. But they have made clear that they disapprove of Ventura’s bare-all brand of honesty. One lawmaker even called the governor a whore for making money off an illegal, immoral past.

Ventura acknowledges that he wouldn’t want kids copying some of the behavior he describes in his book. Still, he’s quite sure he would make an excellent role model in at least one respect: his honesty. “I believe it causes far greater damage to be a hypocrite and to tell young people what’s politically correct rather than the truth,” he said.

The truth, as he sees it, is laid out in the 208-page tale of how scrawny James George Janos, a mischievous kid from South Minneapolis, morphed into Jesse “The Body” Ventura, the only governor in the nation with a copyrighted name. (And, no doubt, the only politician to command such a crowd at his first-day book signing that folks waited 11 hours for an autograph.)

“Ain’t Got Time to Bleed” details Ventura’s evolution in macho slang studded with profanity--and no pretense of false modesty. About his military service, Ventura writes: “I had buffed out to 220 pounds of ripped, raw Navy killer.” He was a great professional wrestler, he claims, because “you had to have a talent for irritating people. I did.”

True, the book does detail Ventura’s 15-point plan for education reform. There’s a section, too, on why he thinks the income tax should be scrapped. But overall, it’s light on policy and heavy on carousing. That makes insurance adjuster Tom Heil long for a leader who would focus “on being a governor instead of a celebrity.” And it makes college student Nikki Berkowitz wonder aloud: “Is he a good role model? For a rock star, he’d be fine. For a governor, I don’t know.”

Ventura refuses to apologize for anything. “I’m certainly not perfect, but I stand tall and proud for everything I’ve done in my life.”

As for where that life might take him next? Here, a bit of coyness tinges the candor.

Ventura insists he doesn’t want to be president. Or at least, he writes, 99% of him doesn’t. But he muses in his book that fate led him to the governor’s mansion, and fate may have grander plans for him still.

Here in Brooklyn Park, some longtime Ventura watchers wonder whether he may, in fact, be prepping for a presidential bid by airing his dirty laundry now. “It’s like he’s revealing his past so no one can pull it out and use it against him later,” said Warren Hemmons, a retired teacher.

Whether he stays in politics, Ventura can promise one thing: He’ll continue to speak his mind. As he writes, “You might not always like what you hear, but you’re gonna hear it anyway.”

Point most definitely taken.