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

Saturday, October 25, 2003

See No Eva, Hear No Eva, Speak No Eva - I'm a leading theorist in the area of human behavior!

No, really!

Well, according to one local activist, I'm being credited with developing a major theory of how people behave.

I participate on a few political email discussion groups (although to be perfectly honest, the rationale for these groups, and my interest in them, fades daily; they are the opposite of the libertarian blogosphere, riven with hive mentalities and groupthink; life's too short). On one, which discusses Saint Paul issues, there was a discussion of the incident at Lucy's Bar, a lesbian hangout in St. Paul's Frogtown neighborhood.

Now, in the St. Paul Issues discussion group - which is dominated by people from the left of center - quite a few participants felt that the allegations of conduct against Sgt. Loretz were enough to convict him, in their minds. The original Pioneer Press story relied heavily on quotes from patrons whose involvement in the brouhaha was never really made clear. The paper followed up with a piece about the officer's side of the story, as well as several other related pieces.

I mentioned that there were several reasons to tread lightly on this story - that while the allegations against Sgt. Loretz may well be true, we dont' know - and Lucy's DOES have a reputation, and bar patrons are the LAST people to get the "truth" from after a bar fight, and that some lesbians are by no means averse to violence.

Eva Young is a local pundit without portfolio. She's involved in the Log Cabin Republicans.

She posted this email to several local discussion list-servers - but, I need to stress, not the one that the original discussion took place on! She posted the email, below, to several email addresses, including:
Minnesota Log Cabin Republicans
the Gay Twin Cities discussion group,
The USA Queers discussion group
the Gays for Bush discussion group
Homocons - a gay conservative group
Conservative Think Tank discussion group
The "Stop The Gay Agenda" discussion group.
She also emailed it to Andrew Sullivan, the KSTP morning show, and another private party unknown to me.

Note that, as I'm not a member of any of those discussion groups, I am unable to reply - however, every member of each of those groups now has my email address.

Here's the posting - subject line, "Blogger Berg Opines with his Lesbians are Violent Theory"
Mitch's blog is at: http://www.mitchberg.com/shotindark/

This is part of the discussion on the St Paul Issues list (lists.minnesota.com), discussing the recent allegations that Police Chief Finney's son, Loretz roughed up bar patrons at Lucy's Bar (a Lesbian Bar) in St Paul.

I thought I'd give Berg's blog a bit more publicity, and hope that he opines in more detail on this theory in his blog.

The theory goes:

There is dispute on this point, but lesbians seem
to be statistically at least as disposed to violence
as any other group, and some would say more so.
This has been my experience. This is not a knock
on lesbians - but there does seem to be a physically
aggressive streak among a sizeable minority.

If you wish to send Mr. Berg comments about his theory, write him at: [snip]@mitchberg.com, or add comments to his blog.

I love it - this isn't meant to be a knock against Lesbians. Then what is it meant to be.

Eva Young
Note that Eva in fact did leave a comment - under a utterly unrelated topic, below.

Goodness, where to start with this?
Eva misrepresented me pretty completely. She calls the idea that lesbians have a higher propensity toward violence than the general population "my" theory - it's not.
She also called on the readers of those SEVEN other mailing lists to post comments on my blog - even though until this post there has been no discussion of the Loretz case on this blog. In other words, she was hoping to get a phalanx of people to bum-rush the comments section with unrelated chatter. That's not much different than spam, and will be dealt with accordingly (although now that I've posted on the topic, it's fair game)
I'm a conservative, Christian Republican. I've also been very moderate on most gay-related issues, including civil unions/marriage. Eva, however, tries to make me look like a gay bashing thug. I am quite literally the opposite.
She posted my email to a bunch of email discussion groups to which I'm not a subscriber - ergo, I have no ability to respond.
She sent my email address, as well as the pointer to this blog, to the entire membership of each list. Note that she did NOT post anything about this to the original mailing list, until I started raising a stink about it!
It'd seem that my gravest sin to Ms. Young was intimating that lesbians might possibly not be perfect, eternal victims; Here, word for word, is the point that seemed to get her so exercised, copied from my original email:
There is dispute on this point, but lesbians seem to be statistically at least as disposed to violence as any other group, and some would say more so. This has been my experience. This is not a knock on lesbians - but there does seem to be a physically aggressive streak among a sizeable minority.
Leave aside that singling out that paragraph - as Eva did, both above and in her comments on my blog - leaves out a lot of conversational context; what's the beef?

That some lesbians are violent? As I said - some of it is personal experience. Some of it is bits and scraps of different theories I've accreted in my consciousness over time. I'm apparently not alone:
Gays and lesbians seem to be no less prone to domestic violence
>A wide variety of sources echo the notion that lesbians are, at the very least, no less violent than straight males.
That violence among lesbians has some different precursors than violence among straights - but then, violence is violence, right?
Claire Renzetti's Violence in gay and lesbian domestic partnerships (New York: Harrington Park Press, 1996) claimed to find a higher statistical incidence of violence among lesbian couples than among straights or gay male couples.
Is that the definitive answer to the question? Of course not - and I never claimed that it was. In fact, in my original post, the one that has Ms. Young so exercised, I specifically said "there is some dispute on this point". No, I said merely that those who were calling for Sergeant Loretz' head based on the post-fight statements of other bar patrons, and assuming that the patrons were hapless victims of a big, bad male cop, may have been acting unfairly and prematurely.

We don't know. And by "we", I mean "you, either".

Oh, yeah - and clearly, the theory that lesbians may have violent tendencies isn't "mine".

What Eva Young seems to want is that, when lesbians are concerned, we see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil.

OK. Let the further misrepresentation begin!

UPDATE: A day late - and after I registered complaints - she posted to the original Saint Paul discussion group. If you're coming here from there - welcome!
posted by Mitch Berg 10/25/2003 06:50:35 PM

Power Roll - Powerline has been on a roll, with a great piece on the gathering appreciation of Winston Churchill - one of my personal heroes - and this piece on positive news from Iraq as well as among Native Americans.

If you're not reading Powerline daily, you may still be a good person, but I won't let you babysit my kids...
posted by Mitch Berg 10/25/2003 05:48:18 PM

Friday, October 24, 2003

Wrong - The National Review is calling for the ouster of General Boykin.

They're wrong:
During the Korean War, Douglas MacArthur wanted to attack Manchuria, and he let that be known to everyone who would listen. That was not U.S. policy, however, and President Truman promptly sacked the great man.
True enough, and...well, more later.
During the Cold War — in fact often pretty hot — NATO general Edwin Walker was instructing his troops in the theorems of the John Birch Society. That the U.S. government was 60 percent under Communist control was not the view of the Kennedy administration, and Walker was gone.
Again true, and again...well, we'll get back to that.
Flash forward to today. A three-star general, William "Jerry" Boykin, has been lecturing, in public and in uniform, to the effect that we are in a war with Islam, than whose god his God is bigger, that this is a war against Satan, of whom he has a photograph in the sky above Mogadishu.
Again, true. And again...well, again, we'll get to it.
President Bush has made it national policy that we are not in a war with global Islam. Furthermore, it is hardly good for the morale of troops to understand that their commander is a wacko who goes around photographing Satan zooming overhead. General Boykin is manifestly insubordinate, and should be sacked. Yesterday.
The comparisons to MacArthur and Walker are wrong. Boykin is not advocating any change in the government's strategic or operational policies; in fact, he is a key instrument of them.

And he is not directly instructing his troops in any "wacko" ideologies, as did Walker. Boykin's theology is not part of his troops' training.

As to the "wacko" claim - was Patton a wacko? After all, he said:
•Perpetual peace is a futile dream. Think Patton would have lasted long under Bill Clinton?
As I walk through the valley of death I fear no one, for I am the meanest mother fucker in the valley!- NOW might have had trouble with that.
It has come to my attention that a very small number of soldiers are going to the hospitals on the pretext that they are nervously incapable of combat. Such men are cowards, and they bring discredit to the Army and disgrace to their comrades, whom they heartlessly leave to endure the dangers of battle, while they, themselves, use the hospitals as a means of escape. - Can you imagine an officer saying such a thing today? Yes, of course Patton's war career was shunted aside over this incident - but not permanently.
One can only conclude that where the Eighth Army is in trouble we are to expend our lives gladly; but when the Eighth is going well, we are to halt so as not to take any glory. It is an inspiring method of making war and shows rare qualities of leadership, and Ike falls for it! Oh, for a Pershing! - Insubordinate? Beyond doubt! And yet - he was right.
But here's the most germane Patton quote of all:
•There's a great deal of talk about loyalty from the bottom to the top. Loyalty from the top down is even more necessary and is much less prevalent. One of the most frequently noted characteristics of great men who have remained great is loyalty to their subordinates.
Taken in context, Boykin said nothing that fits any definition of "insubordination". For the President or Rumsfeld to sack one of the world's leading practitioners of his art of intelligence and special operations because of the media's trumping up of bogus chargers of crusaderism would be to violate Patton's dictum, putting the dreaded "chilling effect" on officers who lead, as Patton led, by creating a larger-than-life example of the warrior ethic, especially the Christian Warrior ethic.

Don't do it.

UPDATE: Apparently the Boykin editorial was a mistake - fallout from a debate among the National Review's editorial staff. It made it into print due to a production error.

Which doesn't change my opinion about the notion of sacking Boykin one bit, whether broached from the left or the right.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/24/2003 01:08:29 PM

The Porter Incident - The City Pages are like country music; every part of it I don't love, I pretty much detest. There's not much middle ground.

Music reviews? Awful (at least where Melissa Maerz is involved). (Note to Greil Marcus: Your writing is both wonderful and wretched. Too many of your reviews rely on the comparison of polar-opposite attritutes, and yet too few do - the comparison leaves the reader at some nonspecific middle ground, and yet it doesn't. When I read your work, I'm tempted to cry, but also I want to laugh. I'm tempted to thank G-d for Anthony DeCurtis in comparison - but then...well, actually, I still do that).

Theater Reviews? Wonderful!

Local Music 'n Arts scene coverage? For most arts? Great! For music? Like a high school newspaper where the reporters write endlessly about what their friends are doing.

Movie Reviews? Fine!

Editorial and Opinion? Dreadful.

Restaurant Reviews? Excellent!

News?

Well, there are times when the Citiy Pages astounds. G.R. Anderson Jr. And Mike Mosedale have an excellent report in this week's CP about the Stephen Porter case.

The case - which involves Abner Louima-like charges by an Afro-American man that Minneapolis cops sodomized him with a toilet plunger during a drug bust.
"Stephen Porter maintains that police detained him in a separate room for a long period of time during the bust at 2519 Third Street. Witness accounts seem to support that, and the timeline of events is consistent with it. (Porter was eventually booked into the Hennepin County Jail at 6:53 p.m.) Earwitnesses from inside and outside the house say they heard blows and/or screams of pain. (Though little is known about the medical report from Porter's subsequent examination, the Star Tribune did report that 'sources familiar with the medical report filed by a doctor who examined Porter on Monday night said his injuries were consistent with his report of soreness and tenderness of the rectum,' a characterization that is consistent with Porter's story--but also consistent with his past practice of hiding drugs inside his rectal cavity.)

Here are Porter's own words about what occurred, from his Wednesday press conference: 'Officer Jindra gestured to Officer [inaudible] to go get something out of the bathroom. So when he returned, he had a plunger... Officer Jindra tried to stick it up my butt four times. I felt it twice go in. I got teared [sic] tissues in my back--my butt.'"
But wait. The story goes on from there, covering the nuances in the story - from both sides - that the major media never got around to.

Definitely worth a read.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/24/2003 11:46:41 AM

It's A Friday - I'm one of those people who should have been born in London or Aberdeen (Scotland, not South Dakota) or Seattle. Rainy days perk me up. Maybe it's because I don't feel so guilty about working indoors all day.

I'm pecking away at a number of projects right now. It's odd; while I've been doing one form or writing or another for some form of living since I was 16, this last month has been strange - the first time I think I've ever written too much. I wouldn't call it "burnout", but the whole process of trying to write...something is mentally fatigueing right now. I wonder how people like Lileks do it, sometimes.

It's felt like a slow news day today, for some reason. But I know it's not. It's just that none of the topics out there really do anything for me today. The lynching of Boykin? Well, the lines are drawn, we're right, they're wrong, next story. Another Lori Sturdevant editorial that begs fisking? Oh, there's a shock. The hubbub at Lucy's, and the confluence of stories about police brutality? Oh, what, again?

Yes. I need the weekend. I'll see you Monday!
posted by Mitch Berg 10/24/2003 11:31:56 AM

Signs Of The Times - We're coming up on the first anniversary of the death of Senator Paul Wellstone.

The signs are popping up all over Saint Paul today:
Wellstone
Don't Stop Fighting!
I saw a row of them on Summit Avenue today. It dragged me back to some of the conservative protests while the late Senator was alive; some misbegotten signs pasted Wellstone's head on Lenin's body, to low comedic effect. Wellstone was no Lenin - I never heard him advocating re-education camps. But the year since his death has seen the rise of a cult of personality among his most fervent supporters; every variety of Wellstone sign dots nearly every street in St. Paul (the tonier the neighborhood, the more signs; Wellstone was the intellectual granddad of Howard Dean's lilywhite legions), benignly reminiscent of the inescapable posters and signs found in countries ruled by other, more malignant personality cults.

Many of us local conservatives were up-front about our admiration for the man, as a person. While this blog spends a lot of time caricaturing the narrow-mindedness and even rank, hateful bigotry of many of Wellstone's more emphatic (I won't say "Fanatical") supporters, many of us on the right genuinely admired Wellstone. Not merely for the passion he brought to the job (every moonbat of every political stripe oozes passion), but for the fact that he treated political differences, by all accounts, as fodder for civil debate. Not the false civility of forced acquiescence - nobody could accuse Wellstone, the lonest wolf in the Senate, of that - but passionate disagreement that didn't extend to the personal realm. Wellstone attended Barry Goldwater's funeral; can anyone see Barbara Boxer or Charles Rangel doing that?

Here's the real point; I heard Paul Wellstone spout an endless litany of ideas I considered dumb. But I never once heard him impugn the character of those with whom he disagreed.

Which is more than I can say for many of his supporters. Paulapalooza - the Wellstone memorial turned partisan commercial that left some of us feeling nearly ill at the gall involved in hijacking Wellstone's legacy and memory - reeked with anger at those who opposed the Senator. And his followers have gone on in rare form; we've been accused of making the state a meaner, dumber, colder, uglier place, in ways big and small.

We've seen bumperstickers that ask "what would Wellstone do?" Well, we can rule that out, I suspect.

As much as we admire Paul Wellstone as a human, we need to remember this: Had Paul Wellstone's (and Maxine Waters', and Dennis Kucinich's, and Michael Moore's for tha matter) ideology prevailed over the past fifteen years:
The Berlin Wall might still stand
The people of Afghanistan would still be subject to the Taliban
The people of Iraq would still be getting fed into shredders, gang-raped, murdered and disposed in the night at the behest of the government
The concentration camps of North Korea would be excused - ignored, while waiting for the pusillanimous "international community" (how's that for an oxymoron") to decide whether to cower, or merely appease.
And that doesn't even count domestic issues.

So to paraphrase - OK, to hijack the sign that's popping up all over Saint Paul today:
Mourn Wellstone.
Keep Fighting His Politics.
With all due respect to the man's legacy - and as a human being, it was and is a great one - I'm going to keep doing just that.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/24/2003 10:31:15 AM

The Tenth Candidate - Seems plausible; Niagara Falls Survivor Jumps Into Presidential Race:
Mr. [Kirk] Jones, a former auto-parts salesman, said he's "eager to take the plunge into politics" and will meet with former President Bill Clinton over the weekend to find out where he's going to stand on the issues."
As always; is it "Ripped from the Headlines", or is it Scrappleface?
posted by Mitch Berg 10/24/2003 06:49:20 AM

May on Boykin - Clifford May discusses the Gen. Boykin flap.

The point that the media - and the left blogosphere - never seems to get:
But did Boykin actually say anything that should offend Muslims? Was he even talking about Islam — or was he speaking of terrorists who claim to act in the name of Islam? And can we not yet perceive that there is a huge difference between the two?

Start with the remark that has drawn the most ire: Boykin's reference to a "spiritual enemy...called Satan." The Washington Post suggested that reference was "inflammatory, if not illegal."

How do they figure? Boykin was clearly speaking here about mass murderers such as bin Laden. If they are not evil, then there is no such thing as evil. But if they are evil, it can hardly be outrageous to describe a war against such evil as a struggle against a "spiritual enemy." Isn't that what evil is?

As for Satan, he is the personification of evil. What's the charge, here, officer? Reckless anthropomorphism?

In fact, can't we agree that suicide terrorists who kill in the name of a jihad against infidels are — by their own definition — spiritual enemies not just of Christians and Jews but equally of moderate Muslims?
Worth a read.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/24/2003 06:41:26 AM

Accounting - Rich Lowry NRO read Hillary!'s new book, so that you don't have to:
"One of the more unpleasant parts of writing Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years was reading Hillary Clinton's Living History. But I had to do it "
He then does it. And it's good stuff.

Fascinating info to toss at your DFLer friends at parties. Assuming your DFLer friends invite you to parties.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/24/2003 06:41:00 AM

Thursday, October 23, 2003

Mistaken Identity, Misbegotten Fury - Last April, City Pages writer Brad Zellar wrote a piece about his distaste for children, and drew parallels between his dyspepsia about kids and his views of the coverage of the war in Iraq.

I blogged about it. I made no secret of it - I found his views tendentious, specious, and not the work of someone who really had a valid perspective on the topic (at least as far as children went).

He responded in his blog . He took a couple swats at me (I don't care), and at his views on my parenting (I doubt his perspectives matter much) and my kids (I do care). I wrote about it, earlier this week, commenting unfavorably about Mr. Zellar's ethics (and yes, the background and thought process of someone with attitudes like his - although not about anything that wasn't observable in his writing).

Zellar left me a couple of comments - including, to be fair, a shot at some of my readers who may or may not have acted inappropriately - and posted this on his blog on Monday - headlined "There's Nothing Like A Pissing Match With A Guy Who Has A Bum Prostate Where His Brain Ought To Be".

And it's in this post that we get to the nub of the gist of the crux:
I think it might be fair to point out that this character --if it's the same guy I'm thinking of-- has had it out for me since he falsely accused me of stealing his harmonica on a camping trip in 1979. And the sad part of it was that we were like brothers until this unfortunate misunderstanding.
Ah. There's the rub.

Bradley:You have the wrong Mitch Berg. I never went camping with you, or anyone else, in 1979. I play the harmonica very well - and have never had one stolen. I doubt you could find where I was in 1979 on a map. I certainly have no idea who are are or where you're from.

Check Your Facts, Brad.

Now, I don't care that Brad Zellar attacked my character (or some Mitch Berg's character, anyway) on his blog. I don't care that he's had fun with the little tidbits of the job-hunting life and dating fiascoes that have dotted this blog. It's bad Karma for him, but it has no effect on my life.

I do care that he riffed on my kids, though - or anyone's kids. And I care that he did it on a blog that is an official organ of the City Pages, an actual "old-media" newspaper that, as I've allowed many times in this space, is home to quite a bit of superb journalism. A publication where people should have a higher sense of simple ethics than, say, Hesiod or Aurabass.

And that is all.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/23/2003 10:32:27 AM

More on the Rummy Memo - Sullivan sums up my reaction better than I do:
It's the most reassuring statement on the terror war I've yet read. The important thing about any administration in its third year is that it not be complacent, that it not be in denial, and that it ask tough questions of itself. Rumsfeld sure is no McNamara. And if I were a terrorist, I'd be alarmed at how earnest the U.S. government now is about tackling the threat. Of course, a MoDo column ridiculing this is now inevitable. Which is more indication that it's an encouraging sign.
Exactly.

The fact that at this point a senior administration official is honestly appraising the situation - the bad and the good - is a sign that this isn't some transient political quick fix. Whether the memo was or wasn't an intentional leak - and I see good arguments favoring both - it means that this administration can be trusted to be sober, industrious and self-critical in its foreign policy, in a way that the opposition simply can't.

Let the Dems spin this any way they want (and most of the major lefty blogs seem to be silent - I've found very little comment on credible blogs outside of Josh Marshall, below); this is good news.

UPDATE: Jared Keller has an exhaustive and excellent take on this.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/23/2003 09:00:16 AM

Right There, Right Out - I remember the baby-boomers yowling in horror when Nike rented the rights to the Beatles' "Revolution" for a commercial.

"It's desecrating our religion", said some. Well, not really, but it came very close; the cult of Lennon was particularly strong among the Baby Boomers (which always confused me, but I always preferred Davies and Townsend). I rolled my eyes; "Oh, those solopsistic boomers, demanding the world revere them and their icons again".

Now, of course, the worm has turned.

K-Mart is using a pseudo-gospel cover of Jesus Jones's 1991 one hit wonder "Right Here, Right Now". And I'm a little steamed. No, not as steamed as the baby boomers were; Mike Edwards and Jesus Jones were icons to nobody. But the song - a wonderful little power-pop nugget - captured the headiness of the fall of the Berlin Wall like no other song of the era.
I saw the decade in, when it seemed
the world could change at the blink of an eye
And if anything
then there's your sign of the times

I was alive and I waited waited
I was alive and I waited for this
Right here, right now
"Big Deal", say the Boomers. Well, yes. It was.

In 1991, my daughter had just been born. And my life's most fervent prayer - that my kids would not grow up under the threat of nuclear annihilation that I did, among the missile fields of North Dakota - was answered. Seeing the Cold War end was more than just current-events fodder. The little piece of my consciousness that always kept itself ready to try to respond, somehow, to the sirens, whether by fighting for life or by trying to adjust my eyes to the incoming flashes, was freed up for other, more productive things.

And while Mike Edwards and Jesus Jones are barely footnotes in pop history, that song is the soundtrack for that epiphany in my life.

And now, it's being used to flog the Blue Light Special.

In my own defense, this doesn't horrify me in the same way that the Nike travesty gut-shot the Boomers. It's pop culture. It's inevitable. Nothing's sacred.

So excuse me while I grit my teeth quietly, and remember a better time.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/23/2003 07:57:23 AM

Airbrush - Walter Duranty wrote one of the best introductions to the history of philosophy that I've ever read. And yet even as I read it, I was keenly aware that the man was flogging an agenda.

It was about this time that the move to strip Duranty of his Pulitzer began in earnest. It's coming to a head, as aleading academic has advised the Pulitzer Committee to revoke Duranty's Pulitzer.:
"'They should take it away for the greater honor and glory of The New York Times,' [Professor Mark von Hagen of Columbia University, a leading Soviet History expert] said. 'He really was kind of a disgrace in the history of The New York Times.'

That The Times regretted the lapses in Mr. Duranty's coverage was apparent as early as 1986, in a review of Robert Conquest's 'The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine' (Oxford University Press). In the review, Craig R. Whitney, who reported for The Times from Moscow from 1977 to 1980, wrote that Mr. Duranty 'denied the existence of the famine in his dispatches until it was almost over, despite much evidence to the contrary that was published in his own paper at the time.'"
The Times' management. while not excusing Duranty's offenses, has a different tack. Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger responded:
While careful to advise the board that the newspaper would "respect" its decision on whether to rescind the award, Mr. Sulzberger asked the board to consider two things. First, he wrote, such an action might evoke the "Stalinist practice to airbrush purged figures out of official records and histories." He also wrote of his fear that "the board would be setting a precedent for revisiting its judgments over many decades."

In an interview last night, Bill Keller, the newspaper's executive editor, said he concurred with Mr. Sulzberger.

"It's absolutely true that the work Duranty did, at least as much of it as I've read, was credulous, uncritical parroting of propaganda," said Mr. Keller, who covered the Soviet Union for The Times from 1986 to 1991.

And yet, Mr. Keller added, "As someone who spent time in the Soviet Union while it still existed, the notion of airbrushing history kind of gives me the creeps."
News flash: Sulzberger and Keller are right.

To erase Duranty's Pulitzer, as some favor - to airbrush him from the record - would erase one of the great cautionary tales in the history of the media. It would remove an inconvenient tale from the story - as anathema to a real journalist as any of Duranty's abuses.

Duranty's Pulitzer should get an asterisk in the record; the tale of his Pulitzer should include, forever, the ignominy of Duranty's dishonesty. It should indict not only the long-dead Duranty and the blindness of the Pulitzer Committee that honored him and the Times that employed him, but serve as a warning to future journalists; history will not ignore your transgressions.

Just tell the whole story.

What do you think the LA Times would think about this?

(Via Instapundit)
posted by Mitch Berg 10/23/2003 07:37:38 AM

How's That? - Pioneer Press columnist Edward Lotterman may or may not know much about economics - but like most PiPress columnists, he can be expected to carry water for the DFL, as he does in this column about Gov. Pawlenty's proposal to import Canadian prescription drugs.

The hits start coming early:
Remember the Hessians, the mercenaries from Germany that King George III hired to help put down the rebellion in the 13 colonies?

The king did not want to cause domestic political problems by sending English boys off to die in a distant, unpopular war. So he got his German relatives to do the dirty work.

King George's resort to a proxy army is a good analogy for Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and U.S. Rep. Gil Gutknecht's enthusiasm for retail imports of prescription drugs from Canada.
No, it's a lousy analogy.

A better one would be Americans attending minor-league baseball games when the price of major-league baseball tickets climbs out of control; without the majors, minor league ball wouldn't be nearly as interesting to watch, but the minor-league game is a lot friendlier on the pocketbook.

Sure, the analogy is strained. But it's not as bad as Hessians...
Both officials hail from the conservative wing of a political party that historically has expressed deep opposition to any interference by government in the free enterprise economy.
True, if you assume - as I'm sure Lotterman does - that "Republican" and "conservative wing" are the same thing.

If you're a Republican? Pawlenty and Gutknecht are, and have always been, from the pragmatic center of the party; to the right of Dick Day and Sheila Kiscaiden, to the left of Brian Sullivan.
Implementing Canadian-style negotiated drug prices would violate GOP principles. So, these modern Republicans want to enlist Canada as a drug-pricing mercenary to do the dirty work that they won't do themselves.
Alternate explanation; since Canada's drug industry essentially works out a low-priced deal for the products whose development is paid for by American consumers, Pawlenty wants to draw the Canadian system into the free market - with its commensurate sales pressure. Can the strictly structured Canadian system stand up to the market pressure of providing a genuine free market with drugs?

See how well their market for surgical services has done?
Both speak favorably of the Canadian system and see it as a means of helping households that face high prescription costs. The governor, in particular, sees it as a way to mute state employee discontent over paying larger portions of their health care costs.

Neither official, however, seems willing to call for implementing Canada's system in Minnesota or in the United States as a whole. Yet both are in excellent positions to do so.
Except that's not the point.

Pawlenty would be crazy to "admire" the Canadian system beyond the verbal blandishments he currently heaps on it. The system provides inexpensive drugs - which may be its only success.

By the way, Mr. Lotterman:
As governor, Pawlenty has the right, indeed the responsibility, of proposing new measures to improve the well-being of Minnesota citizens.
No. He has the responsibility of enforcing the state's laws.

So does it violate free market principles? Or will the market naturally gravitate to the prices - as opposed to the system - that are the most attractive. The big question - will the tightly managed Canadian system be able to absorb un-managed demand?
posted by Mitch Berg 10/23/2003 06:08:12 AM

My Evil Twin - Atomizer, from Fraters, writes about fellow Frater Elder's foray to Twin Cities Public TV to watch a taping of Jesse Ventura's America.

He observes in today's installment:
"Last week, the advance team of the Elder and myself scoured the studio for signs of suspicious activity and, having found none aside from a shifty eyed audience member that we pegged as Mitch Berg's evil twin, have deemed that the coast is clear for the arrival of Saint Paul and JB Doubtless."
My evil twin?

Hm. Leave aside that I don't know that any blogger but Lileks has ever met me in person (although Plain Layne once enigmatically noted that we have a mutual friend), and the only hint of my appearance is the grainy, four-year-old pic of me and the kids on my masthead. The thought that I might have an "evil Twin" at TCPTV is disconcerting to say the least.

I've been inside TCPTV (and MPR, for that matter) and most of the men there look like:
Eskaloid caricatures,
Ponytailed young Macalester grads who think Phish "sold out"
Fiftysomething Highland Park retro-hippies who exude Volvo-driving, "What Would Wellstone Do"-ing self-righteousness like some people exude BO,
Vance Opperman.
So if that's my public image, then I clearly have some work to do.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/23/2003 06:00:17 AM

Day Late, Dollar Short - The Pioneer Press is running the "Rumsfeld Memo" story...

...roughly a day after the entire blogosphere identified and jumped on the story's spinning and inconsistency. There are enough links to this "controversy" in that link to keep you busy reading for hours.

UPDATE: Lileks, of course, has it pretty well dialed in:
The memo itself is not that surprising, given the source. I’d be more alarmed if the memos consisted of back-slaps and promises off shiny medals for all. As I wrote to Hugh Hewitt today: this is the difference between American military culture and Middle Eastern military culture. Saddam would never have wondered whether he was doing the right thing, because everyone in his chain of command would have assured him that they were 110% successful 24-7. And no one who got Rumsfeld’s memo worried that it would be followed by a bullet in the head for giving the wrong answer to question #17.
How about the left?

Some bloggers get it. Josh Marshall gets parts of it right:
There is something oddly refreshing about hearing the Sec Def think out loud...In a similar way, there’s something appealing about listening in on his brainstorming.
...and parts of it wrong:
what’s troubling about this memo is that it really does seem to be a candid appraisal meant only for his top advisors. And even in that context there’s apparently no sense that any of the key strategic decisions in the war on terror might have been flawed or misguided.
...and parts of it seem to speak from Marshall's partisan myopia:
Here’s the line: “Should we create a private foundation to entice radical madrassas to a more moderate course?”

Couldn't we just build a super-strong ladder up into space instead of using those rocket?

You’d think the madrassas backed by the America-funded Madrassa Foundation (administered, no doubt, by General Boykin) might take a bit of a hit to their legitimacy. But, you know, I’m a details man. And why quibble with a bold idea …
Like the, ahem, Marshall plan? The one so many of Marshall (Josh)'s intellectual cohorts poo-poohed sixty years ago, in the same way Josh Marshall quibbles about our current involvement?

Note to Marshall: If you're a "detail man", you certainly know that there are ways that sort of funding can be insinuated into the Arab world without having "USA!" printed all over it.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/23/2003 05:35:00 AM

Wednesday, October 22, 2003

He Was A SEAL, Ya Know - Elder, from Fraters, has this hilarious account of his visit to a taping of "Jesse Ventura's America".

Enough money quotes in there to pay off the entire Mexican police force. You owe it to yourself to read it!
posted by Mitch Berg 10/22/2003 03:32:11 PM

Writer's Cramp - I've spent the week so far plowing through a couple of very large projects, which involved about 12-14 hours a day of sitting at the computer. I'm also working on a new project that, while insanely speculative, has some potential.

My blog output suffered, as you can see below.

I've written an awful lot of stuff (and, it might be said, a lot of awful stuff) in nearly two years. At the end of September, I dumped all my archives into a Word file, and it covered nearly 1,600 pages. And in writing that much stuff, I've developed a following at least an order of magnitude greater than I'd espected when I started this blog.

I'm not under the illusion that I'm an Andrew Sullivan, who can take a month off from blogging every summer and come back to an undiminished audience. But I do need a bit of a change of pace.

So here's the plan: for the month of November, I'm going to slow down a bit. Instead of posting 5-6 articles a day, I'm probably going to stick closer to one or two, hopefully good posts.

I'm going to use the time this frees up to:
possibly, hopefully, start a job. The news is decent, if coming very slowly - and
Participate in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), a project that involves writing a novel in thirty days.
That's the current plan, anyway.

Come December, the blog will be back to its regular pace, or something close to it.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/22/2003 09:24:36 AM

Lamberted - Brian Lambert doesn't believe the media is liberal.

I just thought I'd mention that as context for those of you who aren't familiar with the work of the St. Paul Pioneer Press' broadcast critic. His own biases are evident from reading a selection of his columns.

Now that we all understand this, you can figure out what's behind his latest column, in which he almost perceptibly palpitates at a "study" that claims Fox News viewers are less-informed than NPR listeners:
Since June, PIPA has been refining data that showed disturbing misperceptions related to the following three questions:

• "Is it your impression that the U.S. has or has not found clear evidence in Iraq that Saddam Hussein was working closely with the al-Qaida terrorist organization?"

• "Since the war with Iraq ended, is it your impression that the U.S. has or has not found Iraqi weapons of mass destruction?"

• "Thinking about how all the people in the world feel about the U.S. having gone to war with Iraq, do you think the majority of people favor the U.S. having gone to war?"
Naturally, being a dead-tree columnist, Lambert doesn't link to the "PIPA" study.

I will.

So read the questionnaire. The questions, as you'd expect, gauge how closely the responants' answers hew to the mainstream media line on Iraq and foreign policy. So Fox viewers apparently don't regurgitate the expected answers. Shocking.

Here's the part I thought was interesting:
It is probably no great solace to NPR and PBS that 16 percent of listeners glued to them also believe the Saddam-Osama link. But last time I checked, 67 percent was more than four times greater than 16 percent.
Brian Lambert, a former Twin Cities Reader writer, is apparently not one for details. If he'd read the report, he'd have noticed that while of those listing a primary news source 18% cited Fox News, roughly 1% listed NPR and 2% named PBS. 3% of the people who listed a primary news source.

The study claimed about 3,300 respondents. That means the poll result behind Lambert's sweeping, smug generalization is based on the opinions of 100 respondents among over three thousand people questioned!

Note that the study results don't seem to list a margin of error. But I'd suspect that 3% iisn't too far off, wouldn't you?

So - of people listing Brian Lambert as a source of information about conservatives, 100% were misinformed.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/22/2003 09:03:45 AM

The Bovious Instalanche - Bovious turned up on Instapundit the other day with this question:
Q: "What's the quickest way to shut Noam Chomsky up?"

A: "Ask him a linguistics question."
Then, he adds:
Now, my assertion seems to have at least some validity: although I'm not qualified to comment on Chomsky's linguistics work, it would appear that at least some of his linguistics work bears remarkable similarities to his political discourse...
...Chomsky quote edited - read the post.

But if you studied linguistics in college, you probably remember Chomsky's linguistics work being at least as out on the logical limb as his politics.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/22/2003 07:58:53 AM

Denied - A fair chunk of the blogosphers - especially some of the most popular sites, including the Northern Alliance's own Powerline - were hamstrung by a Denial of Service attack yesterday. The attacks are apparently traced to Al-Quaeda-linked hacker sites, according to this series of pieces on Winds of Change..

Check out the graph here; it took a huge gouge out of Instapundit's traffic.

Small Victory posts this.

UPDATE: Brian Jones says:
Now, I considered a posting yesterday in which I referred to the hackers as "pig-fuckers," which means that Lileks & I are thinking much the same thing. However, I'm not as nervous as he is. Unlike the radar blip in Alaska, a remote outpost in a '50's sci fi movie, this is obviously aimed directly at the pro-Israeli site. This is the invasion, not a precursor.

Whoop te do.
I agree. my initial post on the subject this morning was more a way to break writer's block than a serious analsysis.

This is the sort of thing that reminds me more of a "riot" on the "Arab Street" than an "invasion". It seems to be a bunch of Islamofascist-leaning script-kiddies wielding falafel-cutter viruses, the equivalent of throwing turd-bombs at Starbucks; eventually it'sll stink the place up, but no serious damage is done.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/22/2003 06:44:03 AM

Tuesday, October 21, 2003

Points For Style - A Michigan judge dismissed a case against rapper Eminem...

...in the form of a rap:
"In her poem, excerpts of which were published in Tuesday's editions of the Detroit Free Press, Servitto said Eminem broke no laws with his song about Bailey.

'The lyrics are stories no one would take as fact/They're an exaggeration of a childish act,' she wrote.

'Any reasonable person could clearly see/That the lyrics could only be hyperbole.'"
Welcome to Karaoke Court.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/21/2003 02:50:49 PM

The General Fades - Power Line links to this piece by Dick Morris, on Wesley Clark's sputtering campaign.

Interesting piece, and you should read it all.

This part was as interesting to me as it was the Powerline gents:
"'Even with massive financial support, one cannot simply begin to run for president in the California and New York primaries in early March. Dean's financial and political momentum will be too forceful and massive for Clark to pull it off. The hill is too steep, the slope too sharp, and the king of the hill (Dean after the early victories) is too deeply entrenched for Clark's strategy to succeed.

'Indeed, Clark's failure to grasp the political reality of the Internet recalls Hubert Humphrey's failure to adjust to the primary process when it was first established in most states in 1972.'
Everything about Clark seemed like an artifice from the beginning. I'd not be at all surprised if Morris and Powerline were right about this.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/21/2003 09:09:52 AM

Busy, Busy Day - Posting will be very light until late afternoon.

After that? Stay tuned.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/21/2003 08:14:49 AM

Monday, October 20, 2003

Thanks For Your Patience - I'm blessedly swamped with work these days; it should be enough to keep the wolves from the door the rest of the year, with more potential work waiting in the wings.

Blogging will be relatively light today and tomorrow. Later in the week? Back to normal.

Cleanup time; Rachel Lucas is taking yet another hiatus from blogging (how does she keep her audience, on a diet of dog pictures for weeks on end, anyway?), and Plain Layne is history. On the other hand, it's a gross oversight that I haven't blogrolled "A Small Victory" yet.

So justice will be served!
posted by Mitch Berg 10/20/2003 04:18:19 PM

Hate Digest - Howard Kurtz of the WaPo brings together a number of currents in the Bush Hatred story.

He interviews our old friend, Jonathan Chait from the New Republic:
Has this unassuming man in a rumpled sports shirt lifted the lid on a boiling caldron of anti-Bush fury in liberal precincts across America? Or is he just an overcaffeinated, irrational liberal, venting to a minority of like-minded readers?

Ramesh Ponnuru, a soft-spoken conservative at National Review, pays Chait a backhanded compliment, writing that 'not everyone would be brave enough to recount their harrowing descent into madness so vividly.'

Ponnuru calls him 'smart, funny and completely misguided.' Since the president is so likable, he says, the outbreak of Bush hatred 'just makes you scratch your head.'

Chait, a doctor's son from suburban Detroit, obviously didn't create the Bush-bashing debate. But his recent 'Bush Hatred' cover story helped bring the subject out of the closet, where it can be dissected and diagnosed as part of the lefties-are-from-Mars, right-wingers-are-from-Venus shoutfest."
Kurtz's article exposes and dissects and digests many of the currents in this, perhaps the most important thread in American current events.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/20/2003 10:24:29 AM

The Connection? - Winds of Change's Dan Darling wonders about meaning of an undefined hole in the Iraqi Intelligence Service's organization chart:
Initially Unit 999 had five battalions of 300 men apiece, and more recently another battalion was formed to counter Iraqi opposition groups.

* 1st "Persian" Battalion [Iran]
* 2nd "Saudi Arabia" Battalion
* 3rd "Palestine" Battalion [Israel]
* 4th "Turkish" Battalion;
* 5th "Marine" Battalion [sea-borne operations, mine warfare, etc]
* "Opposition" battalion

In 1994, following the founding of the Iraqi National Congress [INC] opposition group, the Istikhabarat was assigned the role in monitoring and countering the opposition to the Saddam regime. The "Opposition" includes comprises sections dealing with Kurds in the north and Shias in the marshes of the south.

Most of these battalions can be linked up with known Iraqi-sponsored terrorist groups:

* Persian = Mujahideen-e-Khalq
* Palestine = Palestine Liberation Front/Abu Nidal Organization
* Turkish = PKK/KADEK

That accounts for all of the groups of foreign terrorists except one: the Saudis. What Saudi terrorist group was training at Salman Pak? Well, according to the testimony of an Iraqi lieutenant general and Sabah Khodada, I think that we can draw a fairly straightforward conclusion.
Remember - it's just a blank that needs filling in.

Flit, which referred me to the piece, asks the vital question:
So what about the mystery 2nd battalion, called "Saudi Arabia"? It's the only country oriented battalion not to be officially linked to any terrorist groups. The obvious conclusion is that this is the unit that maintained the elusive Iraq/Al Queda relationship. But let's say that's wrong. If it wasn't Al Queda that was being trained by the Saudi Arabia Battalion of Unit 999 then who were they training? Why is the documentation of the other units so clear and this one so murky?
Like the man says - it's a mystery; just a hole in an org chart. It's something we need to see filled in.

Will the press step up and try to fill it in?
posted by Mitch Berg 10/20/2003 06:01:32 AM

Old Buddy! - The other day I did a little vanity-Googling. I found this.

Read it. There'll be a quiz afterward:
"Berg and I aren't on the same page on a lot of issues, but that's a beautiful thing, really. That's what's great about America, as folks like to say. Berg's one of these guys who's somehow managed the miracle of procreation, to the tune of three wonderful kids. All of them, I understand, well-adjusted, possessed of a sophisticated understanding of the causes and consequences of war, and raised on William Bennett's Children's Book of Virtues. I envy Mitch, but I envy his kids even more. It must be swell hell to have such a clueless whack-job for a father. If they haven't already started breaking into his rootbeer schnaps and quaffing garfong out in the garage, I guarantee it's only a matter of time. And if sacrificing other American's kids --including apparently young men who had to die to become American citizens-- is the price we have to pay to safeguard the free speech rights of an entertainer like Mitch Berg, I'd say that's a damn fair trade-off for America."
OK. Was the author of this piece
A moonbat lefty blogger writing with lots of the courage that anonymity gives the hack, or
A moonbat who works for a mainstream alternative weekly paper in the Twin Cities?
The answer, of course, is "2" - Brad Zellar, from the Twin Cities' upmarket tabloid City Pages, home of some excellent journalism, funky personal ads, the worst music criticism this side of a dormitory bull session, and a lot of writers who mistake hipster condescension for profundity.

I'll let you be the judge. This is Zellar's little outburst, while this is my post from last April that got him so exercised, which was itself a response to this whiny, self-righteous screed.

Flip through his "blogs." Your mission: Identify the "clueless wackjob".

By the way, Bradley:
when Mitch threw me a little bone yesterday I was delighted to discover that traffic on my site experienced a bit of a bump. By midnight Berg's plug had resulted in three hits, which is a modest indication that my little stumbling donkey of a blog is quite possibly going places.
Or not. My blog got about 400 visitors that day. That "Blog By Zellar" cachet just doesn't draw 'em, I guess.

Bradley! You're not only a crummy excuse for a psychologist and the most tedious, self-indulgent local "alternative" writer since Margaret Grebe. You're also the sort of yellow, cowardly hack that "real" journalists giggle about when they snigger about bloggers.

And someday, when the City Pages decides to hire a new crop of fashionably-depressed hipster pseudojournalists, you'll be asking my kids if they want their order supersized.

Old buddy!
posted by Mitch Berg 10/20/2003 06:00:52 AM

Choice Interrupted - Planned Parenthood supports a woman's right to choose.

The ChiTrib's Steve Chapman notes:
As Planned Parenthood Federation of America president Gloria Feldt puts it, "We stand for the principle that women--in consultation with their families and their physicians--should make their own reproductive and health decisions. Not politicians and not the government."

But this week, they changed their minds.

Not about abortion. On that intimate issue of women's physical autonomy, they still believe the government should get out and stay out.
That's right. The woman's right to make their own reproductive decisions apparently has limits:
But when it comes to breast implants, they think women can't be trusted to decide for themselves. On the former question, they sound like hard-core libertarians. On the latter, they are models of intrusive paternalism.
The piece shows the dichotomy, noting:
In 1999, a committee of experts commissioned by the Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences, issued a report saying, "Some women with breast implants are indeed very ill, and the IOM panel is very sympathetic to their distress. However, it can find no evidence that these women are ill because of their implants." The only real safety problems, it found, involve ruptures, infections and hardening of breast tissue--problems that also exist for saline implants, which were not banned.

The exonerating evidence ought to satisfy reasonable people. But when the government reopened the issue, the Feminist Majority Foundation objected: "Another generation of women should not suffer because the FDA has bowed to pressure from manufacturers and plastic surgeons." The federal government, it said, "must protect women from silicone gel breast implants." The National Organization for Women raised the same alarm.

You thought medical choices should be left to patients and physicians? You thought it was a woman's body and a woman's choice? When it comes to implants, those hallowed principles are nowhere to be found among "pro-choice" activists.
It's an interesting read...
posted by Mitch Berg 10/20/2003 06:00:48 AM

One Less Blog on the Required Reading List - Plain Layne has decided to bag the blog.

It's shame. It was the only interesting diaryblog in the entire world.

Bummer.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/20/2003 12:31:08 AM

Sunday, October 19, 2003

Unconscionable - 51 Senators voted to convert aid to Iraq into a loan.

Dumb.

The vote - almost a straight party line, with a few GOP "moderates" like stealth Democrat Olympia Snowe - is a bald-faced attempt to hamstring the President's policy toward Iraq, and make it that much harder to "win the peace" that so much of the opposition claims to be so concerned about.

Norm Coleman voted against this provision, while Mark Dayton voted for it.
posted by Mitch Berg 10/19/2003 08:24:43 AM