Shot In The Dark - Politics and Current Events in Minnesota and Beyond

Friday, May 30, 2003

On The Other Hand - Big shout out on Hugh Hewitt today.

OK - I'm not so bummed!
posted by Mitch Berg 5/30/2003 05:10:30 PM

More Job Hunt Update - For Friday.

Bad News - The job that I interviewed for on Wednesday that seemed to be so promising? I came in second place.
Good News - I don't have any.

This is getting very depressing.

I think I'll be taking the weekend off. Have a good, windy, semi-warm couple of days, and I'll see you all on Monday.
posted by Mitch Berg 5/30/2003 02:43:25 PM

The Sweet Smell of Desperation - While Conrad DeFiebre led the Twin Cities media market in providing actual fair coverage of the Personal Protection Act, the Star-Tribune's editorial board still lurks in the pleistocene.

Their latest editoral is - I won't mince words - craven, cowardly, and beneath contempt.
The hullabaloo that the new Minnesota Personal Protection Act has caused is just the beginning. The law is riddled with contradictions and infringements on rights that may take years to sort out. Indeed, wags have begun to call the law the "Full Employment for Lawyers Act of 2003."
"Riddled?" Indeed? I've heard one contradiction, easily settleable by changing one word.
Authors of the act say they did not intend that property owners have to both post signs banning guns and tell each person entering their establishments of the ban. The double requirement was a simple drafting error, they said, fixable with a mere change of one word. But their protestations ring hollow; they were challenged repeatedly about that provision during debate of the act, and they refused to consider amendments to fix it.
This is a lie of omission.

At no point in the debate did the DFL propose fixing the offending word. No, to the DFL, the only way to fix one word was to shunt the bill into a conference committee. This was the tactic the DFL had used to kill the bill, even though it had the votes to pass, in 2001. The GOP knew better than that - while they had the votes to pass the bill into law the moment the gavels rang down on the '03 session, they knew that the metro-DFL-controlled committee structure in the Senate was an impenetrable swamp. Knowing that the "compromise" the Strib favored was no compromise at all, but legislative suicide, they played to their strength - an open vote. This, they did. And the DFL wants everyone to forget it.
The authors of this new law meant it to say precisely what it said when they passed it and when Gov. Tim Pawlenty rushed to sign it. They were full of their power finally to enact this law. They wanted emphatically to make clear that the "right" to carry pistols trumps all other rights.
And here, the Strib careers into paranoia.

Re-read that sentence. "Trump all other rights?" Indeed?

Who writes this stuff?
The law declares that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution confers the right of individuals to bear arms -- something to which the U.S. Supreme Court has never agreed.
Because - the Strib omits mentioning - the Supreme Court has never considered the issue!

Note to the Strib Editorial Board - the Supreme Court doesn't troll the nation looking for issues to tackle; they're a Court, not the Justice League of America. People bring cases to them.

Constitutional scholars, including liberal Laurence Tribe, however, do agree that the Second Amendment is an individual right - something the Strib Editoral Board doesn't see fit to inform the readers.
And, curiously, in pursuit of a radical assertion of that "right," the folks behind this new Minnesota law trample on other rights.

Take private property rights, for example. That's something most supporters of gun rights typically feel passionate about. But this gun law prohibits the owners of a rental property, for example, from denying tenants and guests the right to carry pistols. The tenant's statutory gun right trumps the owner's constitutional property rights.
Consider the irony, here: where was all the tender concern for landlords' property rights when some wanted to deny rentals based on religious or lifestyle issues?

The "property rights" of businesses condemned by eminent domain in support of projects the Strib supported, like light rail and the Metrodome, which bordered on unlawful takings?

Where is the concern for the "property rights" of inner-city landlords who are statutorily unable to evict drug dealers from their properties?

The Strib's new "concern" for property rights is as sincere as their treatment of the Personal Protection Act is fair and balanced.
Then there are churches, which have a passel of problems with this new law. Churches are sanctuaries, places of worship, employers and, often, landlords. Many church leaders and members believe as a matter of faith that guns have no place in a church, and they also don't want signs plastered on their doors banning guns. As Bishop James Jelinek of the Episcopal Church observed, "The front door of an Episcopal Church has special meaning. Many front doors are painted red, a color which invokes the blood of Christ and signals a 'sanctuary.'"
The Strib's newfound concern for the rights of churches is commendable.

So will the Strib now leave the Catholics alone for excluding women from the pulpit, to name one example? Or are church's rights only important when they further a left-wing agenda?
The churches argue, and are going to court to prove, that their First Amendment rights to freedom of belief are greatly abridged by this law.
And the churches whose meaningfully-colored portals are defaced by, say, ADA-mandated wheelchair ramps - will they have a right to ignore or challenge the law? Will the Strib support them then?
They worry that the law prohibits them from requiring that renters ban guns from the areas of church property they use. They worry that they are unable to ban weapons from their parking lots. They worry that, as Jelinek says, "the state of Minnesota is requiring us to speak the words chosen by the state."
As, in many more politically-correct areas, they already are - without complaint.
Given the onerous signage burden, some businesses are throwing in the towel and throwing open the doors to gun carriers. But some have begun to worry, and consult attorneys, on whether they would become liable for damage caused by a gun if they don't prohibit them. That's just one of the many tangled knots this law weaves.
No, it's one of the tangled bits of spin the Star Tribune editoral board is publicizing, uncritically and without even the faintest patina of fairness.
That's because it is a really stupid law that rights no wrong, cures no ill. It was pushed by a crowd that trumped up a "need" for self-protection to push the fringe ideological belief that every law-abiding American has an absolute right to carry a pistol.
A "fringe" belief, the Strib Editors don't feel fit to tell you, that is in effect in 34 other states, in which half of the population of the United States live. Not one of them has repealed their law, despite the jeremiads of the naysayers.

But the Strib won't tell you any of this. Why? Because to borrow their turn of phrase, they are a stupid group of smug, suburban whites who tell no truth that interferes with their own, exceptionalistic, paternalistic, racist worldview.
Even if true -- and that has not been established -- the right to carry would have about as much relevance to modern life as bloodletting has to modern medicine. This has been a time-wasting debate about a bad idea.
Perhaps it has no relevance to modern life on the mean, gated streets of North Oaks, where Strib editors traditionally live. But deterring the crime that plagues the inner cities - the worthless banger scum that kill our children as they sit in our living rooms, that riddle our cars and our babies as they wait at gas stations, that pepper our neighborhoods and houses with bullet holes like the hole in the window two feet from where I'm sitting as I write this (even though - gasp - they don't have permits and never passed a background check!) is just a tad relevant. And shall issue laws do deter violent crime. Not that the Star/Tribune will tell you.
The sooner the entire law is repealed, the better.
The sooner the Star Tribune editorial board switch to more appropriate careers - say, spit-shining Matt Entenza's ass - the better the Twin Cities will be.

I hereby invite any member of the Star/Tribune editoral board to debate me on this issue, in a forum of their choice. Not that any of them has the balls to have their ignorance, lies and hypocrisy jammed back down the piehole they came from.

Yes, I'm tired and cranky. What's it to you?
posted by Mitch Berg 5/30/2003 02:39:08 AM

Thursday, May 29, 2003

The Death of One Tiny Cut - Jeff Fecke of Blog Of The Moderate Left (whose permalinks are as hosed as mine are - scroll down for the article, if needed) addressed my take earlier this week on the Dems' sniping at the Personal Protection Act (which, desperate measures aside, is now the law of the land).

He has what is probably the view of a lot of moderate DFLers (not to be mistaken for either the rabidly-anti-gun "inner city" DFLers, or the very anomalous "pro-gun, pro-life, Eastside Catholic" DFLers.

Long story short - I think rumors of a colossal GOP fargup are greatly exaggerated. Or they could be - if Pawlenty and the GOP act with genuine courage.

Fecke say s:
Just days after Mitch Berg lit up anti-gun folks for suggesting the new concealed carry law might have had a few flaws, Governor Timmy has agreed, calling on the legislature to amend the law he signed just a few weeks ago to liberalize notification requirements for private entities that wish to ban guns on their property.
And that, I think, was a mistake.

The DFL is desperate. More on this below. And dignifying their protests about the wording of the law - or, to be accurate, one word in the law - with a response, gives them excessive credbility.

The criticisms, to be blunt, were desperate spin.

Fecke continues:
But the move may open a Pandora's Box for the GOP. Once amendments to the conceal and carry law are taken up as part of the Session Revisor, Democrats are sure to start bringing up GOP-opposed (and politically popular) amendments, such as banning weapons from churches, parks, and county buildings, all places that are presumed to allow weapons now.
Which is why I think Pawlenty and the GOP need to close ranks, and keep the law exactly as it is.

Fecke goes on:
Democrats were gleeful in pointing out the rush in which Gov. Timmy signed the bill, suggesting he should have been more patient before signing it.
Let them be gleeful. It's a sucker's strategery.

Nobody - nobody - wins by going negative. The most going negative can accomplish is a rear-guard action.

By presenting a coherent vision and sticking with it come hell or high water, voters have something to remember long after the sniping and spin are forgotten. Reagan did it. Pawlenty did it throughout the session, on taxes, concealed carry, and the other key parts of his platform.

He needs to stay the course.

Fecke adds a clinker next:
Concealed carry is not a very popular measure, especially in the suburbs, but it has strong support in the rural areas of the state and among the NRA core constituency of the GOP.
That's just plain not true. The gun issue was traditionally split on the normal rural-urban lines; it's been the growth of the suburbs that's driven Minnesota's swing to the right. Rural Minnesota is pro-gun, but it's diminishing in population and poltical clout. The 'burbs are where the state has been swinging - and where the concealed-carry movement has seen its numbers booming.

More as events warrant.
posted by Mitch Berg 5/29/2003 10:26:37 PM

Job Hunt Update - Here's the rundown:

Good News - Lileks urged America to hire me. (Thanks, James!)
Bad News - America's hiring managers apparently didn't read today's Bleat. Yet.

Good News - I've apparently done a great job of marketing myself as a Human Factors person. I got no fewer than six phone calls today.
Bad News - All six phone calls were for the same job.
Good News - Everyone agrees - I'd be perfect for the job.
Bad News - The job is in West Valley City, Utah.
Good News - I have experience as a remote contractor!
Bad News - So do they. All bad. It's either move to WVCUT or pass on teh gig. Hence, I'm passing.

Good News - Great interview yesterday with a local financial services company for a great gig.
Great News - One of the people I interviewed with told my recruiter I'd be a "great fit for our company".
Back To Earth News - That was the HR person. The actual hiring manager hasn't given feedback yet.
Bad News - No news today, and none expected for two weeks.

Good News - Should be hearing about a job tomorrow.
Bad News - They've said that about every deadline so far. They've not hit one of them yet. And while I know I did great with three of the interviewers, including a co-founder, the other co-founder was a very tough nut to crack.

Good News - I got feedback today from an interview I had last week, via another recruiter. Now, the interview felt generally good when I left the building, although there were some wierd vibes from the interviewer. I chalked these up to either a) paranoia on my part, or b) the interviewer being a passive-aggressive little weasel with a bad case of LGS
Bad News - It was b.

Open Letter to Hugh Hewitt's Producers - I see that Lileks had to pass on your call for a substitute host.

So have your people call my people, k?

(Note to non-radio people: Yeah, that's what you call a long shot. But if you saw how I got my first talk show gig, you'll realize, as I do, that no shot is too long).
posted by Mitch Berg 5/29/2003 09:38:05 PM

Rosenbaum - Just got off the air with KSTP's Ron "Five of Hearts" Rosenbaum, who had some questions about the DFL Deck of Cards I did over the weekend. We had a fun discussion - Ron was plenty gracious about the whole thing. And it did spark one minor editorial change...

If you found the site via Ron's show - welcome! Leave me a comment below - always great to hear from visitors.
posted by Mitch Berg 5/29/2003 09:21:37 AM

Homework - I have a gnarly deadline for a big client due tomorrow, so blogging will likely be a bit thin today and tomorrow. But I hear I've been given an assignment.

Although I didn't hear the show, apparently Hugh Hewitt asked the Northern Alliance members to comment on this piece by Rod Dreher in NRO's "Corner" (their in-house blog, which is such an amusing concept; a National Review blog is like karaoke night at Motown Records).

The posting is, apparently, an in-house memo by LA Times editor John Carroll, dealing with trying to sand off the more obvious signs of liberal bias in the paper's coverage:
I'm concerned about the perception---and the occasional reality---that the Times is a liberal, "politically correct" newspaper. Generally speaking, this is an inaccurate view, but occasionally we prove our critics right. We did so today with the front-page story on the bill in Texas that would require abortion doctors to counsel patients that they may be risking breast cancer.

The apparent bias of the writer and/or the desk reveals itself in the third paragraph, which characterizes such bills in Texas and elsewhere as requiring "so-called counseling of patients." I don't think people on the anti-abortion side would consider it "so-called," a phrase that is loaded with derision.
I'm going to take an educated guess as to the nature of the assignment from Mr. Hewitt; what's the deal with this memo?

Two guesses:
It's an editor who's recapping some Journalism 101 lessons. Reading this clip...:
It is not until the last three paragraphs of the story that we finally surface a professor of biology and endocrinology who believes the abortion/cancer connection is valid. But do we quote him as to why he believes this? No. We quote his political views.

Apparently the scientific argument for the anti-abortion side is so absurd that we don't need to waste our readers' time with it.
...sounds just like the newspaper editor who taught my Journo 101 class, way back when. He's hectoring his charges about some slips in basic journalistic ethics - and he's right. If properly and consistently applied, these basic tenets should provide some self-filtering to bias, or at least overt bias.

Of course, the bias that really matters is more subtle and at a higher level than a reporter slipping in totenbergish editorial cracks in the midst of reportage. And that brings us to:
Maybe, as some conservatives have been predicting for a while, it's a sign of the market incrementally shifting coverage to the center. We've noted this in this space before, parts of the media are taking note. The market will drive things to the center - incrementally, eventually, and only rarely with any actual admission of any problem in the first place. We've seen some of it already - after years of coverage of the concealed carry debate that differed little from editorials, the Strib's Conrad DeFiebre led the local media in actually covering the issue fairly, two years ago. We'll see more of it.
More as events warrant.
posted by Mitch Berg 5/29/2003 08:58:49 AM

In One Basket - As I mentioned the other day, I rarely listen to Limbaugh. Part of it is my schedule - I'm usually busy from 11-2 weekdays. Part of it is Limbaugh himself; he's great at what he does, and I'm rarely in the mood for it anyway.

But when he's hot, he's hot. And yesterda, he was shooting steam out his ears.

He was talking about the FCC's ownership debate, wherein the FCC wants to further loosen rules on media ownership for companies within given markets. The Democrats oppose it, natch, saying that deregulation is concentrating too much power in too few hands.

Limbaugh hammered that notion - and called the left on some of their own hypocrisy in the bargain; while the left is squawking that the top ten radio conglomerates own 44% of the nation's radio stations, Limbaugh pointed out their silence about the parallel facts; the top ten (really top 5) movie companies own 99% of the film industry, and the top 10 record companies own a similar proportion of the music market.

The bid to re-regulate seems, more than anything, to be a bid to stifle the growth of conservative talk radio.

One of the de-regulators' main points; radio seems to have gotten more diverse, not less; the big conglomerates get 80% of the ratings, but they still own 2/5 of the stations. And that 60% of the remainder cover a wider variety of customers than they have in recent memory.

Back when I was still in radio - 13 years ago, during the twilight of the regulations that had ruled the industry since its inception - the Twin Cities had 20-odd commercial radio stations. Of them, four were country-western, and 7-8 were some combination of "classic rock" and "oldies" (the line between the two is hazy and involves picking an age out of a hat), 2-3 "CHR" stations of various flavors. You could hear the same song three times per hour if you were "lucky". When each station could only own one AM and one FM station, each had to cast the broadest net possible.

Today, the market has moved where the people are; each format has one, or at the most two, stations covering it, as the conglomerates use their many properties to narrowcast to different audiences; in the Twin Cities, one conglomerate has a classic rock station to keep the 25-54-year-old guys happy, a pseudo-"urban" station for his teenage kids, a country station for his redneck brother, an all-sports station for his not-very-bright, belligerent brother in law, an oldies station for the in-laws, and a pseudo-alternative station for his wife to listen to at work.

Another example? During the glory days of regulation, the Twin Cities' afro-American community constantly and accurately decried the market's lack of an "urban" or "R and B" station (other than an occasional foray by a weak AM station). Today, there are two.

Here's the part I find interesting; one of the biggest, albeit tacit, supporters of re-regulation has been Minnesota Public Radio, led by Bill Kling. Now, if genuine diversity is what you want, it'd seem that one would support the FCC's proposal to start licensing "low power FM" stations, little FM stations with a range of a few miles that can be bought (proponents say) for as little as $1000 - cheap enough that any non-profit community group can get into the radio business.

Who leads the opposition to LPFM, at least here in the Twin Cities?

Bill Kling.

It's hard to count the ways that further deregulation is a good idea, but I'll keep trying.
posted by Mitch Berg 5/29/2003 08:08:05 AM

Wednesday, May 28, 2003

Danger Afoot? - The guys at Powerlineintimate that things could get hairy, now that I'm in the "Northern Alliance".

On the other hand, I notice that Hugh Hewitt has blogrolled "Shot In The Dark". Minnesota bloggers are very well-represented on Hewitt's excellent blog; it must say something about our social life.

Hm. Time for that Northern Alliance Loya Jirga we've been talking about. Paddy McGovern's, anyone?
posted by Mitch Berg 5/28/2003 11:24:03 PM

Friends in High Places - Wow. Amazing what an off-the-cuff remark can do. According to the guys from Powerline, Hugh Hewitt inducted "Shot In The Dark" into the "Northern Alliance of Blogs" on last night's show. Shot joins Fraters Libertas, Powerline, Lileks and other new inductees, the SCSU Scholars (who've also achieved a spot on Instapundit's blogroll in near-record time).

For those involved - thanks!

By the way, did anyone hear the broadcast? What did Hewitt say? (between 5-8 yesterday I was busy getting ready for and taking my bagpipe test, so I missed the whole show).

For those who find this whole matter absurdly self-referential and "inside" - we'll move on now!

Mysteries of the Universe, Part MMXMLXIII - Just a few to ponder here:
After 23 years of trying, I still can't figure out the chord voicing Malcolm Young uses on AC/DC's "Highway to Hell". Not that I'm an AC/DC fan - far from it - but that chord progression is a hook you can hang a side of beef on, and as part of my musical quest for knowledge, it's important to know these things.
What keeps Larry Pogemiller's hair so poofy? The guy's coif looks like a large, supernaturally brown haymow with ears
Who on Earth or in its nether regions greenlighted "The Lizzie McGuire Movie?"
Why is "Moveable Type" so absurdly Sisyphean to install?
I don't ask much - just a few little answers, that's all.

OK. I'll get out of Larry King mode now.
posted by Mitch Berg 5/28/2003 09:52:27 AM

Life's Intrusions - I've had three job interviews in the past week, including one very good one this past Friday for which I'm crossing my fingers.

And there's another this afternoon that looks fairly promising.

In bagpipe-related news; the group I belong to offers free lessons; the caveat is, since they're free, you have to keep up. Every trimester, there's a test; flunk it, and you have to take private (and not cheap) lessons to catch up; you don't get to re-take trimesters. I passed my first trimester test last night. Two more trimesters, and they actually let me get near real bagpipes!
posted by Mitch Berg 5/28/2003 07:59:07 AM

He Don't Like Mondays - This story stuns me.

Sir Bob Geldof, of "Live Aid" and "Do They Know It's Christmas" fame, offers explicit praise...

...to George Bush.

I had to read this a few times before I believed it myself:
"You'll think I'm off my trolley when I say this, but the Bush administration is the most radical - in a positive sense - in its approach to Africa since Kennedy," Geldof told the Guardian.

The neo-conservatives and religious rightwingers who surrounded President George Bush were proving unexpectedly receptive to appeals for help, he said. "You can get the weirdest politicians on your side."

Former president Bill Clinton had not helped Africa much, despite his high-profile visits and apparent empathy with the downtrodden, the organiser of Live Aid, claimed. "Clinton was a good guy, but he did fuck all."
I'll omit the obligatory crack about how that quote sums up Clinton's approach to nearly everything during his entire eight years in office.

Aid activist Lord Alli echoed Geldof:
"Clinton talked the talk and did diddly squat, whereas Bush doesn't talk, but does deliver," Lord Alli said.
This triggers two observations:
This backs up an observation I made repeatedly during the Clinton years; the Administration was obsessed with "sending messages". These "messages" were almost invariably dressed up with all of the trappings of genuine sincerity; they were also almost invariably worthless. The Clinton Administration's policy in so many areas mirrored their approach to terrorism; focus-group approved words punctuated by a (rhetorical as well as literal) missile crashing into empty tents - and nothing more.
I wonder how long it'll be before Bob Geldof finds himself ostracized by the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) community that has treated him as a secular saint for the last twenty years?
Whatever - it's fascinating to read. Check out the article.

It occurs to me that there's an entire generation out there who knows of Sir Bob Geldof only as a humanitarian, and has no concept of The Boomtown Rats.

(Via Instapundit)
posted by Mitch Berg 5/28/2003 07:34:39 AM

No West Right Wing - An interesting clip, via Andrew Sullivan, from Howard Kurtz' "Reliable Sources". The topic was "Politics in Hollywood". Kurtz spoke with Lawrence O'Donnell, writer of "Mr. Stirling":
KURTZ: One thing these programs have in common, conservatives are practically invisible. President Bartlett is a Democrat. Martin Sheen, in fact, made anti-war ads before the invasion of Iraq. "Mr. Sterling" is a California liberal based loosely on Jerry Brown. Why aren't there any Republicans?

O'DONNELL: You will never get that TV show. You'll never, ever get the Republican TV show. the Writers Guild of America, my union, is at a minimum, 99 percent leftist liberal and, like me, socialist. And we don't know how to write it. We don't.
While that's no doubt true, that lets Hollywood off too easily.

Being unable to write from a conservative perspective - and especially to write anything that treats conservatism fairly - is a sin of omission; I could likewise probably not write anything about, say, feminism, that a feminist would consider fair or balanced or even particularly well-informed.

And yet the entertainment industry has turned out a few things that at the very least treat the conservative perspective fairly. The liberal media's behavior was, shall we say, less than stellar, when this happened. Two jump immediately to mind:

In 1987, Lionel Chetwynd's excellent Hanoi Hilton received widely-mixed reviews (many of them politically-motivated). Worse, its distributor essentially sat on the movie, under pressure from Hollywood leftists, for its treatment of Jane Fonda. The movie depicted life at North Vietnam's Hoa Lo prison accurately - but it changed the last names of the prisoners, and of their visitors, including Jane Fonda. An actress who represents Fonda ("Paula") does everything Fonda is said to have done while in the Hilton. That was one of several stories that Hollywood didn't want told (that and, of course, the moral of the story; the men survived because of their military training and warrior ethic). "Hanoi Hilton" was buried, received a tiny theatrical release, and is hard to find on video today. (Do it if you can - it's an excellent movie).

Another more recent example: A Walk To Remember was a deeply flawed but generally good movie, marred more by an unavoidable, bathetic plot turn in Nick Sparks' original book than by anything else; I remember my daughter dragging me in to see it, and thinking "what a very good movie this turned out to be" up until about 3/4 of the way through, when the story decided to kill off the protagonist (very well-played by otherwise-irritating teenypopper Mandy Moore, who apparently got all the acting talent that Britney Spears missed) in an unneeded tearjerker plot chicane.

But the movie had one deep, dark secret: the protagonist character was a committed fundamentalist Christian; furthermore, she and her father, a fundy Baptist minister (a dignified performance by Peter Coyote) were not depicted as fundamentalists almost invariably are in Hollywood, as ignorant simpletons, repressed rubes, authoritarian Falwellish cartoons, dangrous loose cannon, hypocrites (think about the evangelizing, hypocritical security guard in The Good Girl, played by the movie's writer, Mike White) or all of the above. They were depicted as real people whose faith was a vital part of their lives, a part that didn't preclude life's struggles (Coyote was a single dad, a widower grappling with raising a teenage girl; Moore's character wrestles with sexuality like any real teenager does) informed how they dealt with them nonetheless.

Furthermore, the path to the movie's solution didn't require that the protagonists compromise their beliefs. I remember walking out of the theatre amazed that the movie didn't involve the real truth appearing after the teenage couple shared a Hollywood-stylized boink, or with Coyote being exposed as a child-molesting hypocrite at the end.

And that was too much for many reviewers; while the plot's unneeded last-minute swerve into Love Story-like bathos drew some justifiable brickbats, many reviewers seemed almost offended by the notion of a fundamentalist family being shown as sympathetic, human, and still principled; like that notion violated some double-dog-secret Hollywood code.

So it's not just that someone in Hollywood couldn't produce a story that portrayed conservatives as humans; it's just that doing so would ensure they never got a table at Elaine's again.

The answer? I don't know that we need an answer. Conservatism functions just fine without acclaim in the popular entertainment media. Yet I wonder, sometimes - couldn't some conservative entrepreneur do for movies what others did for talk radio and the Fox News network? It'd seem to be a ripe market.
posted by Mitch Berg 5/28/2003 07:14:45 AM

Kerry On, My Wayward Son - I have a few Democrat friends who think John Kerry provides a mix of intelligence and courage that they feel is absent in the current administration.

But a little digging turns up some signs of what a John Kerry administration might have in store for us. This is a clip from a P.J. O'Rourke article, Guns, Goons and Gold, which appeared in Rolling Stone (and his here excerpted from Republican Party Reptile), in which Senator Kerry is involved in observing the 1986 Philippine election - the one where rampant electoral fraud led in short order to the deposing of Ferdinand Marcos:
Most of the Potomac Parakeets were a big disappointment. Massachusetts senator John Kerry was a founding member of the Vietname Veterans Against the War, but he was a bath toy in this fray.

On Sunday night, two days after the election, thirty of the computer operators from COMELEC [the Philippine election commission] walked off the job, protesting that vote figures were being juggled. Aquino supporters and NAMFREL [opposition party] volunteers took the operators, most of them young women, to a church, and hundreds of people formed a protective barrier around them.

Village Voice reporter Joe Conason and I had been tipped off about the walkout, and when we got to the church, we found Bea Zobel, one of Cory Aquino's top aies, in a tizzy. "The women are terrified," she said. "They're scared to go home. They don't know what to do. We don't know what to do." Joe and I suggested that Mrs. Zobel go to the Manila Hotel and bring back some members of the Congressional observer team. She came back with Kerry, who did nothing.

Kerry later said that he didn't talk to the COMELEC employees then because he wasn't allowed. This is ridiculous. He was ushered into an area that had been cordoned off from the press and the crowd and where the computer operators were sitting. To talk to the women, all he would have had to do was raise his voice. Why he was reluctant, I can't tell you. I can tell you what any red-blooded representative of the U.S. government should have done. He should have shouted, "If you're frightened for your safety, I'll take you to the American embassy, and damn the man who tries to stop me." But all Kerry did was walk around like a male model in a concerned and thoughtful pose.
Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Can you imagine what would have happened had Donald Rumsfeld replaced Kerry in the delegation?

Didn't we just survive eight years of that kind of leadership? Sorry, Democrat friends. Leaving aside Kerry's endless personal circumlocutions; the man doesn't have anything I want in that office.
posted by Mitch Berg 5/28/2003 06:03:40 AM

Tuesday, May 27, 2003

A Thousand Thanks - So the other day, I mentioned, more or less off the cuff, some mock disappointment about not being included in Hugh Hewitt's "Northern Alliance of Blogs".

Well, apparently the big wheels and other big wheels have taken heed.

Thanks, guys! No matter what Alliance I am or am not in, I'm certainly in great company.

And this whole flap introduced me to a great area blog, the SCSU Scholars from St. Cloud State. Read them frequently - they're mighty good! And I'll accept their offer to convene a loya jirga any time. Come to think of it, back when I was in high school, SCSU was known as a great school for loya jirgaing.

I think that's what they call it these days, anyway...
posted by Mitch Berg 5/27/2003 09:37:23 PM

Anal As Everything - It all started as a last-ditch, rear-guard effort by Senator Steve Kelley (DFL, Hopkins), during the debate over the Minnesota Personal Protection Act, last month at the Capital. After contentious debate and much grandstanding on the part of the DFL opposition, the bill passed into law by a strong majority.

But Kelley, a lawyer by trade, found what he considered a showstopper. Currently, business and other private entities have to clearly post their property as off limits to permitted hand guns, and then remind anyone caught in violation that they needed to take it to the parking lot (rather than lie in wait to call the cops).

During the Senate debate, Kelley - looking for any angle to serve as a spoiler - read the provision to mean the business owner needed to do both.

Kelley and the whole anti-carry clacque were told, rather clearly, that this wasn't the case. They couldn't let it drop.

So Pawlenty and Charlie Weaver, being good GOPers, tried to make everyone happy:
On Tuesday, Gov. Tim Pawlenty, House Speaker Steve Sviggum and the Republican sponsors of the new law called for changing the "and" to "or." They said that would address concerns of businesses and sports arenas such as the Metrodome.
Sounds fair, right?

Not to the DFL. To the party of Pappas, this is an opportunity:
"I'd just as soon leave it exactly as it is," said Sen. Don Betzold, DFL-Fridley. "I'd like to have a discussion on the whole bill . . . Let's have as bad a law on the books as possible to show the folly of it."

Betzold is the Senate sponsor of a technical corrections bill, which Republicans had proposed using to tweak the handgun law. He rejected that plan, saying his bill is "certainly not for substantive matters on controversial bills."
The DFL is mad. They're going to do anything they can to try to derail this law.

Even exploit children:
DFL legislators held a news conference Tuesday at a tot lot in a Minneapolis park -- a place from which permitted handguns cannot be barred under the new law -- to promote what they dubbed "the do-not-shoot list," a public petition in favor of Slawik's bill to repeal it.

"It frightens me," said one of more than 600 signers so far, Jennifer Lawton of Minneapolis, holding month-old daughter Josie to her breast. "I'm actually nervous about going to the State Fair this year," another place where handguns cannot be prohibited.
Unmentioned: Both locations are already home to plenty of concealed carriers, most of them utterly untrained, unpermitted and illegal.

Apparently the DFL is counting on their votes.
posted by Mitch Berg 5/27/2003 09:24:49 PM

Crushing Workload - Working on a final report for a contract gig I've been working, plus getting ready for one, possibly three interviews in the coming week.

There's lots of good blog-fodder out there today, and I'll be posting my share of it this evening.
posted by Mitch Berg 5/27/2003 03:15:18 PM

Monday, May 26, 2003

Memorial Day, Redux - An email correspondent sent me this, which sums up my whole posting below in three lines:
For those who have fought for it,
Freedom has a taste
the protected will never know.
Well, there's teh long and short of it.

May America someday get back to the point where we could forget what the day is about, if we were so inclined. And, of course, let's never get so inclined.
posted by Mitch Berg 5/26/2003 11:15:18 AM

Memorial Day - If I'd had a blog two years ago, in May of 2001 - or pretty much any year of my adult life, for that matter - I'm sure it would have been a screed that began:
Americans don't get Memorial Day any better than most Christians "get" Easter.
Back then, it felt like our society had profaned the meaning of this holiday almost beyond comprehension.

I am old enough that quite a few of my high school teachers were World War II veterans; there were also a few Korea and Vietnam veterans sprinkled throughout the faculty when I was a kid. And I remember how dead-serious they all were about Memorial Day, and about teaching us what it meant. I remember one old teacher of mine - an otherwise unmemorable teacher who, rumor had it, had been one of very few survivors of a tank-destroyer platoon in Italy - who gave the most moving elegy to Memorial Day I'd ever heard, before or since. The man had his scars from the war; when a car backfired, or when a malfeasant kid popped a loud paper bag in the hall, he'd occasionally flatten himself on the floor, just like he'd done 35 years earlier.

I don't remember the elegy, of course - I was 14 at the time. But I remember the look, and the way a roomful of very snotty high school freshmen shut up in the way that they only shut up for something that is directly in their face.

The holiday itself, of course, has long had the sort of gravity you get from Labor Day - it's a day off. A three day weekend. First shot at the lake.

Except for those, of course, whose loss was still in recent memory - as, of course, World War II is for many, still.

Now, a whole new generation has something to remember. Since last Memorial Day, we've had a terrorist attack and two major wars tacked onto the national conscience.

Does that mean Americans take the holiday more seriously than we did? I'd say yes, even if incrementally and (probably) temporarily so.

Today, I'm off to a cemetary in Crystal, to visit the grave of my kids' grandfather, who passed away a little over a year ago, lucky enough to have survived World War II to pass away in his nineties. He was in the Navy, on a destroyer that survived some near-legendary scrapes with the Japanese.

Then, it's off to the park. More blogging as time warrants, later on tonight.

Have a great Memorial Day.

Personal Status Update - I think I had a great interview on Friday. This week should tell...
posted by Mitch Berg 5/26/2003 10:07:11 AM

Berg's Law of Liberal Iraq Commentary:

In attacking the reasons for war, no liberal commentator is capable of addressing more than one of the justifications at a time; to do so would introduce a context in which their argument can not survive