I'm Not Sure...

...if Tom Mischke can survive this. But I'll hope he can....
Posted by Mitch on November 03, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Why Do Democrats Hate The Troops?

Everyone else is posting it. Why not me? By the way, Jeff Fecke - who gets paid to blog by a Democrat pressure group! - responded to my post about his notion that John Kerry really just doesn't matter that...
Posted by Mitch on November 02, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Strib: "Hey! There Was A Reformation!"

The Strib notes last week's media-induced farce over Michnele Bachmann's putative (and false) believe that the Pope is the antichrist:The labyrinthine doctrine of a theologically conservative Lutheran denomination has wound its way into the Sixth District congressional campaignWell, let's be...
Posted by Mitch on October 31, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Market 1, Regulation 0

Not long ago, the left was in a fine panicky froth over Clear Channel's control of thousands of radio stations. "Relax", said conservatives. "If it's a bad idea, the market will correct it". It appears we were right:The hiring of...
Posted by Mitch on October 26, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

You Are The Editor

Everything I know about being a news reporter, I learned from two guys: Bob Richardson, the owner, general manager and unquestioned president for life of KEYJ Radio in Jamestown ND, where I started out in radio in 1979, and Jim...
Posted by Mitch on October 18, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (29) | TrackBack

Picking and Choosing

I've never been comfortable with the notion of politicians using the pulpit as a stump for political speeches. So as a general rule I wish Michele Bachmann and Mac Hammond had steered a bit clearer of something that appeared (to...
Posted by Mitch on October 18, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (19) | TrackBack

Like Raaaaaiiiin, On Your Wedding Day

KSTP-AM's supernaturally-lame afternoon host "Sterling" made it into the Strib:"I'm fairly new here, but do we have to be whipped into a fervor about the snow? Here in the Twin Cities," he added, "it's going to snow." Only Sterling wasn't...
Posted by Mitch on October 16, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Strib: A Fine Case Of Bias

Nothing about Rochelle Olson and Paul McEnroe's story about Alan Fine's 1995 arrest for "domestic abuse" passed the stink test for me, from the very beginning. Men - especially in Hennepin County - don't get arrested for domestic violence and...
Posted by Mitch on October 13, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (28) | TrackBack

What's The Latin Term for "Non-Sequitur" Again?

The Strib quotes the American Prospect:"From 1997 to 2002, Republican committee chairmen issued more than 1,000 subpoenas (to the Clinton administration) and the Republican House took 140 hours of testimony on whether Clinton had abused his Christmas card list for...
Posted by Mitch on October 12, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (17) | TrackBack

Paint It Black

Hugh Hewitt interviewed the Strib's Eric Black yesterday, in a wide-ranging, hour-long donnybrook. You should read the whole transcript (or listen to it) - it's a fascinating look into the intricacies of reporting politics, as well as how the mind-set...
Posted by Mitch on October 07, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (17) | TrackBack

Wages of Greed

The first indictments in the Gloria Wise scandal came down yesterday. Don't know about the Gloria Wise scandal? Not a problem - the major media kept its mitts off the story, which involved an Air America (AKA "Frankennet") board member...
Posted by Mitch on October 06, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Meet The New Boss

Some people have a hard time accepting change. I've said it in this blog and on the show; Minnesota, as far as Republicans are concerned, is where the national party was 20 years ago. The Reagan Revolution skipped Minnesota, where...
Posted by Mitch on October 02, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (17) | TrackBack

Manic Depressive

I'm going to let y'all read a bit from the screenplay and shooting script I've written for the upcoming movie "Newspaper Newlyweds", the big Hollywood blockbuster that was optioned from the Fraters award-winning [*] series. This scene visits Nick Coleman...
Posted by Mitch on September 28, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Those Mysterious, Nonexistent Last-Minute Republicans

Earlier this week, I rhetorically questioned Rob Daves, the apparently-hapless Strib exec who runs Minnesota's favorite form of comedy, the Minnesota Poll. Today, Scott Johnson does the same, only with actual numbers and stuff (emphasis mine):Daves explains the mysteriously appearing...
Posted by Mitch on September 21, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Big Joke

How do you put lipstick on a pig? Eric Black tries. Eric Black's "The Big Question" blog is one of the Strib's better efforts. In the latest post, Black interviews Rob Daves, the Strib staffer who runs the Strib's always-comical...
Posted by Mitch on September 19, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (8) | TrackBack

I Know Stuff

Among the stuff I know is the very, very basics of investigative journalism. So I was down at the Ramsey County Registry of Deeds the other day, looking for a lead - any lead - for a story I'm trying...
Posted by Mitch on September 18, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

A Couple of Questions for Tim "Not The Author" O'Brien

"Blog House", the Strib's weekly DFL puff piece disguised as a column about blogs, pulled off a first last Friday; it quoted this blog. Which brings up all sorts of interesting questions. O'Brien was writing about the aftermath of last...
Posted by Mitch on September 17, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Not Exactly Confirming That "Journalists Are Held To A High Standard" Schtick

Tim "Not The Author" O'Brien in a Blog House post about Michael Brodkorb's role in the DFL's internecine squabbling over the fifth CD, in referring to Gary M. Miller of KvM:Miller, as you can tell by the name of his...
Posted by Mitch on September 10, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

The Patron Saint of NARN

I wasn't even aware of this guy's story - but in an era where anchors are blow-dried products of endless market research-driven selection, the 1967 tale is almost refreshing:The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists was threatening a strike,...
Posted by Mitch on September 05, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Unfiskable

I finally got a chance to listen to "Minnesota Matters", over on the local FrankenNet affiliate, AM950. The good news (if you're a leftyradio fan - and the latest ratings show that there are several dozen of you out there);...
Posted by Mitch on August 29, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

This Is Why I Love Blogs

Let's start this post at the end, with the moral of the story. To wit:Whenever anyone in a Star/Tribune editorial, letter-to-the-editor, or even news article refers to themselves as a "reformed Republican", and then spouts a stream of DFL-approved talking...
Posted by Mitch on August 25, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (22) | TrackBack

Imitation Is Flattering

The City Pages runs interference for Air America Minnesota, in an interesting but moderately puffy piece by the generally-excellent Paul Demko. I haven't paid much any attention to AAo'M since Wild Wendy hit the turnstiles. The national shows mostly stink,...
Posted by Mitch on August 24, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Listening To The Enemy

Established in advance: National Public Radio and Minnesota Public Radio should not get subsidized with taxpayer money. Both are fully capable of being self-supported (even if it means they might have to trim some of the fat from their budgets...
Posted by Mitch on August 21, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (7) | TrackBack

I Stand Corrected

I once called Kris Krok the worst talk show host working in America today. Having heard "Sterling" filling in for Mischke tonight, I realize I spoke too soon. The most dreadful twenty minutes of radio I've ever heard. Worse than...
Posted by Mitch on August 18, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Against Character?

Who wrote this?So a minister with intimate knowledge of the inner city and its gangs is not worth engaging because, after putting in a 12-hour day on the North Side, he goes home to Brooklyn Park, which is ever so...
Posted by Mitch on August 16, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Awful, Static-Free Truth

I haven't listened to KTLK much since its debut last January. But listening to Jason Lewis' opening week brought a bit of deja vu. I remember hearing Limbaugh the first time on FM. And it, like Lewis' debut, reminded me...
Posted by Mitch on August 14, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (13) | TrackBack

Doug Westerman Is A Genius

Oh, don't get me wrong. My former colleague (from KSTP-AM in the eighties) is actually a pretty regular guy (although as I recall from twenty years ago, he knows his sports backward and forward). He may, in fact, pop up...
Posted by Mitch on August 11, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Right Of The Dial

Air America moves to the New York radio equivalent of Siberia:Next month, it is switching stations - to a weaker AM station, WWRL (1600 AM). Al Franken and his lefty colleagues are leaving WLIB (1190 AM) apparently because they couldn't...
Posted by Mitch on August 03, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

If Left-Wing Bloggers Were NYTimes Photo Editors

Chuck Olson of Blogumentary and The People's Patriotic Blogging Collective New Patriot takes a swipe at conservative bloggers. Now, I've met Chuck a couple of times. Nice enough guy. His take on conservatives as photo editors is as subtle as...
Posted by Mitch on August 02, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (12) | TrackBack

Too Effective

Two weeks ago, the NARN did the annual Patriot Picnic. We drew about 200 people to Boom Island park, across the Mississippi and upstream from downtown Minneapolis. It's a beautiful park, in a beautiful place. Of course, last year we...
Posted by Mitch on August 02, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (17) | TrackBack

They Can Keep Secrets

Screenwriter Mike Armstrong has a list of the secrets the mainstream media have been able to keep - and some they weren't:Take a look at this list: • "The Crying Game." Secret not revealed. • Government phone-tapping program: Secret revealed....
Posted by Mitch on August 01, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Where Have We Heard This Before?

CNN wants in on "Citizen Journalism":The cable news network on Tuesday plans to announce it has created a new program to let users send in digital audio and video from breaking news events in their region. Users can e-mail or...
Posted by Mitch on July 31, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Unclear On The Concept

Every once in a while, while patrolling the left-wing blogosphere for material, I run across something to which I just can't resist responding. Such as this, one of about half a million articles on the leftyblogosphere about how the mainstream...
Posted by Mitch on July 28, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Department Of All-Too-Convenient Irony

Let's play a game. Earlier today, I pilloried Susan Lenfestey for her crabby, hectoring take on people daring to enjoy the one life they have, while she sits, stewing with political rage while on her "vacation". Lenfestey, along with her...
Posted by Mitch on July 27, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (17) | TrackBack

They Can Use All Those "Air America" Stations

Gloria Steinem says women want female-friendly radio:Based on conversations and surveys conducted by GreenStone, Steinem listed top radio turnoffs for females. "Women told me they don't want to hear the same top news stories that report only problems, not solutions,"...
Posted by Mitch on July 19, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Perry Runs Interference

Picture this: Your job is to be the "readers representative" of a major metro newspaper. Your job: answer reader questions about how your newspaper covers stories. Someone accuses your paper of bias; what do you do? Most likely show how...
Posted by Mitch on July 18, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Building The Beast: Mitch Builds a Liberal Talk Station That Doesn't Suck

Commenter and longtime friend Bill Haverberg left me a great question on Sunday in my ongoing retrospective on my situation twenty years ago: Has the market changed, or would liberal talk radio be successful nowadays as well if it were...
Posted by Mitch on June 26, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (12) | TrackBack

Whizzing On Yoiur Parade

As Minnesota's unemployment figure drops to 3.7 percent - 1.3 below what they used to call "full employment" - the Strib's editorial board dings Pawlenty and his tax cuts because...because unemployment apparently isn't negative:But the May employment numbers are not...
Posted by Mitch on June 15, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (10) | TrackBack

Debate for Me, Not For Thee

Star/Trib rationalization machine "Readers' Representative" Kate Parry:Efforts to silence or weaken opposing voices mire our country in a paralyzing standoff.Star/Trib "Blog House" writer Tim O'Brien:Last month, we took a look at the time of day that Michael Brodkorb of Minnesota...
Posted by Mitch on June 05, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Cheer Up, Anders Gyllenhaal

My business is booming, yours is circling the drain, says the Financial Times:The internet will this year overtake national newspapers to become the third biggest advertising medium by spend, according to authoritative forecasts. By the end of 2007, internet advertising...
Posted by Mitch on May 30, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Undue Consideration

I almost choked when I read Kate Parry's latest piece, tidying up a mess Sid Hartmann made:It's a dangerous thing for anyone to assume the motives of another person. No one can read another's mind or look into their heart....
Posted by Mitch on May 30, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Lewis

After months of rumors, it's looking official - Jason Lewis is bound for KTLK. Maybe. Probably. Nobody local has announced anything, but he's announced it on his show on WBT in Charleston:"...I guess it was a Biblical passage that said...
Posted by Mitch on May 24, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (33) | TrackBack

I've Been Waiting...

...such a long time for a White House press ecretary who could take the likes of Helen Thomas (links site with video) and make her look like the bloviating embarassment she is. Thank God for Tony Snow....
Posted by Mitch on May 18, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Counting On Ignorance

The funny part is that Nick Coleman once said, with a straight (metaphorical, printed) face, that he's better than bloggers because he "knows stuff". It's not so funny when you realize that he believes it. It's scary when you remember...
Posted by Mitch on May 17, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (13) | TrackBack

The State of Twin Cities Talk Radio, 2006

It's been two years since I did the last "State of Twin Cities Talk Radio" (a "tradition" I started in 2003). I was busy last year, certainly - and the fact was, not much had changed between 2004 and early...
Posted by Mitch on May 16, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (31) | TrackBack

Free To Decide (Based On Skewed Information)

Tim Rutten wrenches his shoulder while patting the deadtree media on the back. It starts out about the NSA "scandal":There are several indications that many — perhaps a majority of people — are unbothered by the White House's recourse to...
Posted by Mitch on May 15, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (11) | TrackBack

Strib Stories: Now with All-new "Specifics"!

The Strib - which stands to benefit from a new ballpark - is supporting the new Twins, Go-Gos and Vikings stadia. They're flogging the results of a new Minnesota Poll (and we all know how accurate those are) that shows...
Posted by Mitch on May 15, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Open Letter to Janet Robert

May 14, 2006 Janet, Mitch Berg here. I know you're not having the best year over at KTNF, Air America Minnesota; your local lineup, such as it was (the plodding, orthodox, puerile Nick Coleman and the shrill, shallow Wendy Wilde)...
Posted by Mitch on May 15, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Open Letter to Dateline

I just sent this. Let's see if I get an answer:I'm Mitch Berg. I'm a blogger (shotinthedark.info) and radio talk show host (northernallianceradio.com). I saw Chris Hansen's piece on Today this morning, plugging your "To Catch a Predator" piece. Hansen...
Posted by Mitch on May 10, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Perverted Reality

I saw a promo this morning on Today for a Dateline story, "To Catch a Predator". It's at least the second in a series, in which the show stings online predators:Decoys go to online chat rooms posing as underage girls...
Posted by Mitch on May 10, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Dollar Bill Meets Pre-written Column Nick

Nick Coleman takes a perfectly rote swipe at Bill McGuire, CEO of United Healthcare, and longtime highest-paid executive in Minnesota. Minor disclosure; I used to work at UHC, in 1994-95. Bill McGuire has been CEO at UHC for, if memory...
Posted by Mitch on May 03, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (69) | TrackBack

Press Releases

Jess sends a press release:Three bloggers today launched a joint venture to feed their shared 'American Idol' obsession. This new blog -- the American Midol Blog -- will be updated at a frenzied pace, and will feature news, gossip and...
Posted by Mitch on May 01, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (13) | TrackBack

Charlie's In The Perimeter

Today's Strib editorial unleashes lots of dramatic, pejorative imagery. Substance? Not so much: Minnesota's abortion foes are masters of strategy. Skilled at the frontal attack, they're also adept at waiting in the tall grass for a last-minute leap. What are...
Posted by Mitch on April 28, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Doltish and Unbalanced

Letter in todays' Strib:So Fox News anchor Tony Snow is set to replace Scott McClellan as White House press secretary. I'm sure his first order of business will be to decry the liberal media bias. PETE FRIED, MINNEAPOLIS Pete! Bubbie!...
Posted by Mitch on April 28, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (9) | TrackBack

Vacuable

Among Twin Cities conservative pundits, I'm not among the City Pages' harshest critics. Oh, I've torn them the occasional new one, but I've also cut them some slack over the years; they have historically done a great job of reportorial...
Posted by Mitch on April 22, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (19) | TrackBack

Note To UN: Connect The Dots

I was listening to NPR as I was driving my daughter to school today. NPR news had a story about a part of the Gaza Strip that is suffering economically since Israel shut down the main freight route to the...
Posted by Mitch on April 21, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (9) | TrackBack

Subsidizing Failure

Republicans and Democrat - well, quite a few of each - agree that "corporate welfare", the direct or indirect subsidy of business by taxpayers through direct cash payouts, tax breaks or deferments - is generally a bad idea. Of course,...
Posted by Mitch on April 20, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Bloodbath?

Rumor has it that the Pioneer Press just let its "editorial staff" go. Calls to a number of editorial staff phone numbers are met by a voice message from an anonymous woman saying "[so and so] no longer works at...
Posted by Mitch on April 14, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (12) | TrackBack

The Exile of the Maroon

I'm not sure which is funnier; that a group of fans of the cancelled Marc Maron show (formerly Frankennet's morning host) have set up their their own website...Good Morning philosopher kings and queens, working class heroes, progressive utopians with no...
Posted by Mitch on April 11, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Candid Camera

NBC says their "Candid Camera" stunt at a NASCAR race (parading "moslem-looking" men around to see if they'd, er, get discriminated against) is perfectly legit news:There is nothing new about the technique of witnessing the experience of someone who might...
Posted by Mitch on April 08, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

NBC: "Heeere, Bigot bigot bigot..."

NBC is outlooking for bigots. Rebuffed in trying to find anti-arab bigots at a NASCAR race, Dateline NBC prowls the world looking for every possible permutation of bigotry. ' Via Michelle Malkin...
Posted by Mitch on April 08, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Yeah, This Will Fix Things`

Couric leaves Today.The bold move simultaneously forces NBC to find a new team for "Today," television's most profitable news program, and gives CBS News President Sean McManus a major success in his effort to lure more stars to his beleaguered...
Posted by Mitch on April 05, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (12) | TrackBack

Giving Up The Ghost?

Speaking of which, Air America Minnesota's website has gone nearly two months without an update. Its "In The News" section has gone almost 11 months without any changes. It may seem unseemly, watching and cackling as the venture seems, to...
Posted by Mitch on March 29, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (26) | TrackBack

Franken: Gutless Wonder?

Al Franken is debating conservatives... ...as long as nobody is around to report on it. Maloney reports:Is Al Franken now avoiding potentially embarrassing debate circumstances? Between three events which began last night and extend through early April, only in media-free...
Posted by Mitch on March 29, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Lessons Gone Unlearned

Question: What's the difference between a Radio executive and a lemming? Answer: The executive takes his whole staff over the cliff with him. Radio executives from coast to coast apparently drank the same koolaid that two of the Twin Cities'...
Posted by Mitch on March 17, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (71) | TrackBack

Irrelevant?

McClatchy Media, owner of the Star Tribune, is buying Knight-Ridder, owner of the Pioneer Press, for a whole wad of money:The deal, which is expected to be announced today, throws into doubt the future of daily newspaper competition in the...
Posted by Mitch on March 13, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (14) | TrackBack

In The Interest Of Clarity

I got some linkage from a couple of my favorite all-snark local leftyblogs the other day. Now, let's bear the following in mind:If you mention two leftyblogs, you are generally, probably dealing with half a dozen bloggers, meaning your comment...
Posted by Mitch on March 10, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (9) | TrackBack

The Flak

Kate Parry, the rationalization machine "Readers Representative" at the Strib, tries to get cute...:One of my favorite pieces of research so far this year...used MRI scanners to study brains of political partisans...when the partisans rejected criticism of their favorite candidate,...
Posted by Mitch on March 09, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Death Spiral

A story from late last week - Air America is three weeks away from losing its NYC affiliate, according to Brian Maloney. Apparently WLIB has been bought by someone who wants to compete, nationally, with Air America. That's the long-term...
Posted by Mitch on March 06, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (22) | TrackBack

Collapse of Dead Tree Media Alert: MoWho?

The Memphis Flyer reports on yet another mainstream media problem; they have little traction with young people:Newspapers have to deal somehow with the loss of young readers. A former colleague, Rheta Grimsley Johnson, told me she spoke recently to college...
Posted by Mitch on March 02, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Fiendishly Clever

Observation: The Strib, when they publish a conservative's letter to the editor at all, will usually publish precisely one letter in the mail section. It has seemed to me that that letter was frequently chosen for caricaturic effect; the right-wing...
Posted by Mitch on February 24, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (36) | TrackBack

Darth Kling Is Displeased

When liberals turn on liberals, the results are... ...funny. Bill Kling is sueing Algore's cable network for trademark infringement. And as you read the story, look for the this year's nominee for Most Ominatopaeic Name Ever:A suit filed in U.S....
Posted by Mitch on February 23, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Coleman Discovers Buh-LAW-gers

Scott Johnson with an interesting point about the two columns "Non-Monkey" Nick Coleman has written about the Gold Star Families' ad campaign:And what of the Minneapolis Star Tribune? Star Tribune columnist Nick Coleman has now devoted two hysterical columns to...
Posted by Mitch on February 21, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Picking and Choosing

I haven't fisked Nick Coleman in a long time. Reading last Fridays piece - an on-cue attack on the pro-Iraq War ads that might appear to the cynical to be perfectly coordinated with the DFL's larger attack on the ads...
Posted by Mitch on February 20, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (19) | TrackBack

Note to the Mainstream Media

To: Mainstream Media From: Mitch Berg, Schmuck Re: The Upcoming Week Media, According to Drudge, you are going to be spending another week covering the Cheney Shooting non-story. If the nation's top magazines have the pulse of the country --...
Posted by Mitch on February 20, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (15) | TrackBack

Words Fail

Hugh tries to interview Helen Thomas. I listened, dumbfounded. Chad did a little better. It was like listening to a Kos komment thread. Beyond that, what can I say?...
Posted by Mitch on February 17, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (25) | TrackBack

Orthodoxy

I think we need to codify an exemption in "Godwin's Law" - the widely-misunderstood internet aphorism that claims any argument on the Internet will evenually involve someone comparing their opponents to Nazis, noting that generally that is a losing proposition....
Posted by Mitch on February 15, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Misdirected

Disclosure: I was a reporter for a while. Mostly free-lance. Not very successful. Not a career, more of a "make money now" kind of thing. I'd not call myself a journalist, and I never did, even before "journalism" had a...
Posted by Mitch on February 08, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Beneath Contempt

The Army chief of staff and a group of his generals are lining up against... ...well, we'll get to that. The flap relates to a cartoon in the WaPo: The cartoon, which was published January 29, showed a heavily bandaged...
Posted by Mitch on February 03, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (87) | TrackBack

The Story Of The Century

On Monday, as news of news anchor Bob Woodward and cameraman Doug Vogt's injury in an IED explosion swept the media, I watched as Katie Couric became - I'm not exaggerating - all choked up at the story. Two guys....
Posted by Mitch on February 01, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (22) | TrackBack

Evidence?

A commenter to an earlier thread noted something I'd missed; Al Franken has moved his show to Minneapolis. The locals are all atwitter:As you may or may not know, The Al Franken Show of Air America Radio is now broadcasting...
Posted by Mitch on January 30, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (10) | TrackBack

Pervasive Irony

Recently we noted that recent neurological research has shown that people show interesting neurological effects when discussing politics; people react with disinterest when their opponents are talking, and with pleasure when their opponents get shut down. Interestingly, the Strib notes...
Posted by Mitch on January 30, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Wilde: They Broke The Mold

Wendy Wilde is ">gone from Air America Minnesota. The reason is one of the best I've seen:For the first 8 months my office was in the same moldy basement so I was spending 8-9 hours a day in the moldy...
Posted by Mitch on January 27, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (17) | TrackBack

Adios, Fast Eddie

KFGO, the home station of liberal talk host Fast Eddie Schultz, has bagged the show:A popular local radio duo [longtime Fargo radio stalwards Jack Sunday and Sandy Buttweiler] switched stations Wednesday to replace the show it was fired to make...
Posted by Mitch on January 26, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (25) | TrackBack

The Talent Bubble

Brian Maloney has four questions for Rush Limbaugh:1) When is the guest-host pool going to finally improve, Rush? You've no doubt heard the complaints, so why must the show's quality drop so much at times while you're away? [Great question....
Posted by Mitch on January 25, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (13) | TrackBack

Morning Expulsion

Marc Maron is toast at Air America. Vacuous blowhard James Wolcott issues a "Call to Arms" that reads more like a mash note:Today I appeared on the show's final half hour, which was graced by a cameo drop-in by Tim...
Posted by Mitch on January 20, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Make My Activist Extra Crispy

Via the City Pages, PETA's (not-entirely) naked lunch; an anti-meat protester arrested for a (chilly) demonstration (photos marginally unsafe for work - or not, depending on your workplace). So let me get this straight: PETA stands for ethical treatment of...
Posted by Mitch on January 19, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (28) | TrackBack

And Hooters Could Host Graduate Seminars

The link on the Strib Online "Opinion" page said "Stern's show could be so much more". Howard Stern's show - could be so much more. I had to read more. I wasn't disappointed:You're kidding about the new Howard Stern, right?...
Posted by Mitch on January 17, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (13) | TrackBack

Did He Jump Or Was He Pushed?

As many noted yesterday, Chris Krok is apparently gone at KSTP. 12 years to the month after everyone predicted he'd be gone. In the winter of '04-'05, after Krok got into a controversial on-air argument with the relatives of someone...
Posted by Mitch on January 13, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (20) | TrackBack

Gatekeeper Alert

It's a good thing newspapers have "gatekeepers"; it keeps them from making stupid screwups:It was only online for 90 minutes, and never in print, but it was wrong enough to cause an hour-long delay Thursday morning in the trial of...
Posted by Mitch on January 13, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (12) | TrackBack

Gaping Hole

In the 1930's, farmers and ranchers and people in isolated hollers and towns in the middle of nowhere - people who had always been part of a nation, but rarely part of a society that went beyond their immediate region...
Posted by Mitch on January 09, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (14) | TrackBack

Deafening Silence

I'm a divorced parent with two kids; I'm also blessed with a good career and an education I got before I got married. Life isn't bad at all. But sometimes I ponder what a harrowing thing life must be for...
Posted by Mitch on December 26, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Dumb Idea

Consumer "activists" are pressing Congress to mandate "a la carte" pricing for cable television. Note to activists - stop "advocating" for me on this one, please. OK? Don't get me wrong - bundling is irritating. I have to buy eight...
Posted by Mitch on December 23, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Talked Out

As we've noted earlier, there's a big shake-up in the local talk radio market. From the top:Clear Channel is flipping its Cool Jazz station, 100.3 FM, to an all-talk format.As part of this, they exercised their prerogative of ownership, and...
Posted by Mitch on December 20, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (24) | TrackBack

"The Spy Wore Jammies"

"Top Secret Agent" Valerie Plame poses in her pajamas. Or perhaps it's actually a ChiCom camouflage uniform for units stationed in linenware stores, that the CIA got through classified means? Or perhaps she's been spying on a ring of Serb...
Posted by Mitch on December 19, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (52) | TrackBack

I Shall Remain Timeless

How limp were Time's choices for "Persons of the Year" - Microsoft mogul Bill Gates, his wife Melinda, and rock star/free-lance lobbyist Bono? Especially compared with the people that did change the world - the citizens of Iraq, Lebanon and...
Posted by Mitch on December 19, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (17) | TrackBack

I'm Shocked. Shocked, I Tell You!

A group of academics, after bringing their expertise to bear on the issue, have concluded... ...something every rational person has known for twenty years; the media tilts to the left:While the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is conservative,...
Posted by Mitch on December 19, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Priorities

In Iraq, the nation - including a heavy turnout of Sunni, the Iraqis we've been worrying about all along - just had a parliamentary election. It was by all rational accounts (gitouttahere, Joe Biden) a rousing success. What's on front...
Posted by Mitch on December 15, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (11) | TrackBack

Bob Grant

The legendary Bob Grant is leaving WOR in New York. Who is he, and why should you care? You likely don't know, and you needn't care. But if you've been a fan of talk radio since about 1987, you have...
Posted by Mitch on December 15, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

The New Lineup

Someone sent me a copy of KSTP's purported new lineup (apparently from the KSTP Insider newsletter, so it's nothing especially covert). (UPDATE: Duh. It's in the friggin' Strib. Blah. Although Dementee at KAR stomps all over the Strib's piece on...
Posted by Mitch on December 14, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (33) | TrackBack

Lenfestation, Part III: "We're Above All That"

The nice thing about Sue Lenfestey, Minnesota writer without portfolio, is that she's a boundless font of material. The not-so-nice thing is that she has a job in the media at all. You know - the media that takes itself...
Posted by Mitch on December 13, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Melt This Down, Sucka

Chad the Elder on the key difference between Mary "The Dragon" Mapes and John "Saint George" Hinderaker:Of course the manner in which Power Line dealt with the Schiavo memo story and the way that Mapes has dealt with the TANG...
Posted by Mitch on December 12, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Dismal

Katie on the Today show Wednesday morning, in re the Zawahiri tape: "The fact that this was produced by Al Quaeda's in-house production unit shows how sophisticated they are". I sat, dumbstruck, for a moment. Then I, the Production Unit...
Posted by Mitch on December 07, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (7) | TrackBack

"Deeply Dishonest"

You don't want to get John Hinderaker angry. Bloviations of lefty-bloggers and boutique-media pretenders aside, if Hinderaker turns the laser beam of his Harvard Law-honed research skills on your sorry tush, the smoke you smell will likely be coming from...
Posted by Mitch on November 28, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Anthropomorphism At The Strib

Mr. Cheer Or Die - a fellow Jamestown High School grad (two years ahead of me, if memory serves) better known, perhaps, for his Vikings Underground blog, one of the best sports blogs anywhere - has branched into politics, with...
Posted by Mitch on November 28, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

"I'm Shocked, Shocked To Learn..."

When broadcasting started in America, is was started purely for business; WCCO stands, for example, for "Washburn, Crosby Company", the company who started the station primarily as an advertising venue for...wait for it...the Washburn Crosby Company. Over the decades, broadcast...
Posted by Mitch on November 23, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (9) | TrackBack

If You Repeat A Lie Often Enough...

I almost laughed coffee up my nose when I read Scott Johnson's take on Bill Ardolino's dissection of excerpts of Mary Mapes' upcoming book. Mapes (emphasis added by me): On Web sites such as Powerline, INDC Journal, Allahpundit, and Spacetownusa,...
Posted by Mitch on November 10, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Let Met Get This Straight...

So Paris - capitol of France, the nation John Kerry wanted us to be more like - is is paralyzed by moslem riots - and the media is fairly silent:Rampaging youths shot at police and firefighters Thursday after burning car...
Posted by Mitch on November 03, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Deep Bench

If there's a mainstream media writer anywhere around that more completely embarasses the Twin Cities than Nick Coleman, it's Brian Lambert. Or Molly Priesmier. Or maybe Syl Jones. But if there's anyone that embarasses all of us, and perhaps all...
Posted by Mitch on November 01, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (7) | TrackBack

In This Era...

...when blogs and talk radio make the news market chaotic almost to the point of anarchy, it's good that we have the sober, responsbible mainstream media around to give us unbiased, unvarnished, opinion-free truth. Thank goodness for the MSM!...
Posted by Mitch on October 31, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

A Bullet In The Head of the First Amendment

In Washington, naturally, comes the next salvo in the war on the alternative media:In a stunning decision, a Thurston County, Washington judge forced organizers of Initiative 912 to report, as in-kind campaign contributions, favorable comments made by KVI hosts Kirby...
Posted by Mitch on October 27, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

The Puff Continues

The Pioneer Press' Hot Dish blog serves up... ...well, cold, puffy softballs re Al Franken:Lately, Air America Radio has had some ups and downs -- things are going fine in Cincinnati [Actually, they're a slightly better grade of crappy than...
Posted by Mitch on October 25, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

The Perversion That Dare Not Speak Its Name

Let's call this straight; of everyone involved in "Das Booty", the Vikings' Sex Cruise of a few weeks back, it's the bar staff - the waitresses and bartenders who were working in the bar, below decks, where most of the...
Posted by Mitch on October 24, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

The Smear Spreads

Last week, I wrote about Chris Hill, the former U of M student who was smeared in the 10/13 edition of The Nation as a "chickenhawk". We also interviewed Hill last weekend on the NARN show. CBS News has picked...
Posted by Mitch on October 18, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (19) | TrackBack

Next UN Project

Tom emails regarding this photo: "I wonder if their next ad will be Santa with Lyndie Englund..." Or maybe with the Vikings......
Posted by Mitch on October 13, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Fast Eddie Schultz: Big Talk, Little Guts

You have to figure that anyone who could say this...:I challenged this hate merchant to a debate, apparently he accepted but never contacted us about accepting. He now frames the spin saying I won't debate him. This is so typical...
Posted by Mitch on October 11, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

"World Ending: Women and Children Most Affected"

Today's Strib editorial almost reads like the classic parody of desperate social muckracking headlines:Once again the world is reminded that many of its poorest people live in areas most vulnerable to natural disasters. Damn that Halliburton. For starters, it's not...
Posted by Mitch on October 11, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Rhodes: No Scholar

Via Brian Maloney: Randi Rhodes casts the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon as a comedy bit:"Except Bush appropriates $4 billion for flu prevention, but gives it to the Pentagon. I don't get it. "I saw a bird fly into the...
Posted by Mitch on October 07, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Lewis, Redux

Two sources with knowledge of the situation say that Jason Lewis will return to KSTP-AM in the mid-day shift, basically replacing Rush Limbaugh. This of course trashes my prediction, but whatever. It seems a curious decision; mid-days don't generate all...
Posted by Mitch on October 07, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (20) | TrackBack

Over Carolla'd

Years ago, if I was up late at night, I'd flip on Loveline, a late-night talk radio show where "Doctor Drew" Pinsky and one Adam Carolla dispensed advice - amid jokes, ridicule and the occasional nugget of wisdom - about...
Posted by Mitch on October 06, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (20) | TrackBack

Implausible Deniability

Jerry Springer tries to claim he's only a little bit pregnant not really that much of an Air America personality. Brian Maloney transcribes a call between Springer and a caller that apparently snuck past Air America's screeners:Okay, uh, honestly. Uh,...
Posted by Mitch on October 03, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Sins of Omission

Zombietime hammers the SanFranChron in its wonderful analysisAnatomy of a Photograph. This is the photograph: Says the zombie:The San Francisco Chronicle featured the original photograph on its front Web page in order to convey a positive message about the rally...
Posted by Mitch on October 03, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (17) | TrackBack

Puff Dougie

Survey question: How in the bag is the media for the DFL, especially for the Chris Coleman campaign? Responses: a) Totally in the bag. b) Totally in the bag. c) On their knees and in the bag. Read Doug Grow's...
Posted by Mitch on September 30, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Exit Lanpher

Via Michelle Malkin - Cacklin' Katherine "Six Martini" Lanpher is leaving the "Drug-free" Al Franken show. The official statement from FrankenNet is a veritable feast of between-the-lines reading:It is with great regret that we write to let you know that...
Posted by Mitch on September 29, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (11) | TrackBack

Rumor Mill: Lewis Is Back

A fairly well-placed source says Jason Lewis is coming back to the Twin Cities. To which station - his alma mater, KSTP, or the new Clear Channel outlet KTLK - is not yet entirely clear. He'd be a coup for...
Posted by Mitch on September 29, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (11) | TrackBack

They Take Care Of Their Own

Scott Johnson at Powerline quips:We keep waiting for Karl Rove's minions in the media world to give us a call and offer us a book contract on the inside story story of "The Sixty-First Minute." We figure he owes us...
Posted by Mitch on September 27, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Return Of "The Republican But..."

The media has invented a new political class in the US. "The Republican But..." You see them every week in the Star/Tribune letters section:I'm a Republican, but I think the party's stances on abortion, lowering taxes, defending the nation and...
Posted by Mitch on September 25, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (26) | TrackBack

But Don't Dare Call Them Unpatriotic

Joe from Brooklyn Park wrote to (among a few other local bloggers) the Fraters and I regarding this cartoon from this morning's Strib. Joe:Regarding the cartoon on the Strib editorial page yesterday that showed Bush defending the military response to...
Posted by Mitch on September 21, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Berg's Second Law

After a disaster, whenever government and the media declare "there can not be any more survivors, and this is now a recovery operation"they will be wrong:John and Leola Lyons stayed together, locked in their neat little blue house, riding out...
Posted by Mitch on September 21, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Doug Fawn

A number of us NARN and MOB bloggers were wondering - what impact would Chris Coleman's relationship with Strib columnist Nick Coleman (he's a younger brother) have on the Strib's coverage of Saint Paul politics. If yesterday's Doug Grow column...
Posted by Mitch on September 19, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Paying for Dowd

From now on, we'll have to pay $50 a year... ...for this:Of course, it's taken Junior only five years to learn how smart his old man was. His father made the "mistake" of not conquering and occupying Iraq because he...
Posted by Mitch on September 18, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Enter Konrad, Redux

A commenter last night prompted me to check; indeed, Steve Konrad has been hired as the program director at KSTP-AM. I worked with Steve from 1990 through most of 1991 at KDWB; Steve was producer of the "Steve Cochran Show",...
Posted by Mitch on September 15, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (15) | TrackBack

Straining Credulity

Michelle Malkin hasn't forgotten about Air America. Oh, no:In one of its first statements on the matter in late July, Air America attempted to distance itself from "the allegations of mismanagement and corruption at Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club"...
Posted by Mitch on September 15, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (9) | TrackBack

Clarification

A few weeks ago, I wrote a pieceabout KSTP-AM and their imminent loss of Rush Limbaugh, Phil Hendrie and Sean Hannity. A commenter left a note:I listened to Yates back in the 80's and I remember him vilifying a guy...
Posted by Mitch on September 14, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (7) | TrackBack

The Empire Strikes Back

James Pinkerton at TCS notes that the Mainstream Media is here, it's liberal, and it's not going away. Katrina brought it out in full, flamingly lefty force....
Posted by Mitch on September 14, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Attention, Public Radio International Legal Department

To: Garrison Keillor's Lawyers. From: Mitch Berg, Everyday Schmuck. Re: Intellectually-vapid property Word has it that Garrison Keillor - he of the fortune built with the help of state and federal taxpayers and the decreasingly subtle hatred of those with...
Posted by Mitch on September 14, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Far Too Modest

Today's Strib Editorial sniffs:American popular culture has an uncanny knack for seizing a promising new technology and converting it, before long, into junk. That's an awfully broad indictment, of course, but consider the evidence:By way of evidence:Television: "Who Wants to...
Posted by Mitch on September 12, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

September 11: Things I Never Thought I'd See

I live in the Midway of Saint Paul. It's liberal - we keep electing the likes of Alice Hausman and Ellen Anderson to the legislature, and the likes of this person to Congress. Not as debilitatingly wacked-out as Highland Park,...
Posted by Mitch on September 11, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

I Read This...

...bit here and laughed for like three minutes....
Posted by Mitch on September 10, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Let Ryan Do It

I thought about Nick Coleman column...Everyone is playing the blame game on Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans, and we at the top end of the Mississippi River can join the fun by pointing fingers close to home. Part of what...
Posted by Mitch on September 10, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Not Good Enough. Not Smart Enough. And Doggone It, Now People Know You're Lying

Michelle Malkin shreds Al Franken's plea of ignorance in the Air America scam. Then Brian Maloney beats the claims with clubs. Both pieces include copious scans of actual legal documents. Al Franken, it would seem, is a big fat liar....
Posted by Mitch on September 07, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Dim Bulb

Via Kool Aid Report - one of the essential area blogs - who notes this rather dim-sounding fella in today's Strib:Imagine if the doctrine of preemption had been used for Hurricane Katrina. Imagine if all the resources of the armed...
Posted by Mitch on September 06, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Commitment

The National Review Editorial Board calls for a serious committment to New Orleans on the part of the GOP; holding the '08 national convention there (and, naturally, any rebuilding necessary to achieve that):Critics will call it a transparent attempt to...
Posted by Mitch on September 06, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (12) | TrackBack

Shallow, Shrill

While Nick Coleman is gone from the local amateur radio station (the FrankenNet affiliate), I could feel him resonating through the air on Saturday. I had the pleasure misfortune to be in the audience for one of the "station's" weekend...
Posted by Mitch on September 05, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Just How Wrong Is Coleman?

In yesterday's column, Nick Coleman said Today, many citizen soldiers are far away, their boots and bodies being used as Hamburger Helper to stretch out the ranks of the regular Army in Iraq...But with 40 percent of our troops in...
Posted by Mitch on September 05, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (11) | TrackBack

Nick Coleman's Invincible Ignorance

Nick Coleman, inevitably, holds forth on the New Orleans disaster. Is he on-target? Oops - my title sort of tipped my hand, didn't it?...
Posted by Mitch on September 04, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Harkin: Grandstanding

Tom Harkin (D, Iowa) is trying to stall the Defense Appropriations Bill with an amendment that would tinker with American Forces' Radio programming. Under Harkin's amendment, AFR would "balance" its programming by removing Rush Limbaugh and replacing it with more...
Posted by Mitch on August 31, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

The Late Great KSTP

There's an old saying: "Dance with the one that brung ya". KSTP was an ugly duckling station that was brought to the dance by a gleefully boisterous buffoon (political talk radio in general, not just Rush Limbaugh). Today, it's forgotten...
Posted by Mitch on August 31, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (29) | TrackBack

Ready For Duck Season

Neil "Red Six" Prakash, a tank platoon leader in Iraq, writes the excellent "Armor Geddon" blog. He's back in country now, and writing regularly again. The latest installment - a few of the facts of life when it comes to...
Posted by Mitch on August 28, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Ingmar Bergman: More Fun Than Nick Coleman

After the NARN show today at the Minnesota State Fair, I walked around the Great Minnesota Get-Together with Brian "Saint Paul" Ward from Fraters and Swiftee from Pair O' Dice. It was not just your typical jaunt around the fair...
Posted by Mitch on August 27, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Into The Event Hole

Apropos nothing: Air America Minnesota's "Events and News Page" has not been updated in two months. I presume that means their July 30 remote at Diamond Bluff wasn't, shall we say, the feel good hit of the summer? However, a...
Posted by Mitch on August 24, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Think Mystically, Act Disingenuously

On The Media is National Public Radio's media analysis show. It also tends to be a relentless cheerleader for the media establishment, what Captain Ed calls the "Exempt Media" in their battle against the philistines of the blogosphere. It has...
Posted by Mitch on August 24, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (9) | TrackBack

Burying the Lede - in Dung!

Sean Penn "reports" from Iran:We were sitting in Nayeb restaurant in central Tehran. I’d been holding a piss through the hours of prayer service. So after I ordered my lunch, I excused myself to the men’s room. “Men’s” was written...
Posted by Mitch on August 23, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Wishful Thinking In The Strib

Deborah Caulfield Rybak at the Strib writes about the Strib's fondest dream. Sorry to pop your bubble, though, Deb Anders. You're reading it all wrong. (Kool Aid Report also wrote on the subject)...
Posted by Mitch on August 22, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (37) | TrackBack

Sheehan: In Case You Missed It

I haven't written a whole lot about Cindy Sheehan. She's a grieving parent. My imagination stalls out at the notion of trying to comprehend the grief of a bereaved parent, especially the parent of a child killed in a war....
Posted by Mitch on August 19, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (22) | TrackBack

Addicted to Snark

Brian Maloney of Radio Equalizer has been in front of the Air America/Gloria Wise scam from the beginning. Yesterday, in writing the setup for the upcoming second part of his investigation (with Michelle Malkin) of the scam, he linked to...
Posted by Mitch on August 18, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (12) | TrackBack

Ignorance On The Warpath

I'm a pretty laid-back guy. But there are a few things that make me, for lack of a better term, angry. ArroganceHabitual IncivilityThe big kahuna, Willful Ignorance.Nick Coleman indulges in all three in yesterday's column....
Posted by Mitch on August 17, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (15) | TrackBack

FrankenNet: Circling the Drain

"Now you know why the current owners of Air America seem so disinterested in holding Cohen accountable for the Gloria Wise mess." So ends Part I of Michelle Malkin and Jim Mahoney's investigation into Air America's finances. The reason? Because...
Posted by Mitch on August 17, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Radio Station Tag Lines We Really Like

You know radio station tag lines - the ones you see on the ads, and hear in all the station sweeps between songs. I figure stations could benefit by being honest with their tag lines. I'm here to help....
Posted by Mitch on August 15, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (8) | TrackBack

FrankenNet and the MSM: Finally!

The Washington Post finally hauls off on Air America in the Gloria Wise scandal (although as the reporter notes, "Like everyone else who has paid attention - this excluded the New York Times for the first 16 days after the...
Posted by Mitch on August 15, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

All About Nick

Eva Young asked "Why not mention Flash's story on this [on Shot In The Dark]? Oh, good lord. Because in between my bouts of blogging (5AM, my lunch break and occasionally in the evening) I do things like work, do...
Posted by Mitch on August 13, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (12) | TrackBack

Monkey Vs. Bile-Merchant

Brian "Saint Paul" Ward tips us off to the City Pages' confirmation of a story that I believe I broke earlier this week: Nick Coleman's Air America Minnesota FrankenNet program is really, gone. It's really most sincerely gone. Brian points...
Posted by Mitch on August 12, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (17) | TrackBack

The NYTimes Has Always Investigated Air America, Winston

According to Michelle Malkin, the NYT is finally looking at the Air America scandal. Sort of:After 15 days of silence, the New York Times has filed a thin little report on the Air Scamerica/Air Enron fiasco. But you need a...
Posted by Mitch on August 12, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

FrankenPirate

Heard on a regional broadcasting bulletin board:Someone is rebroadcasting Air America on 105.5 [FM]. Heard this today while I was out and about. Weak signal in the Midway area, mixing with 'The River' out of St. Peter. I assume this...
Posted by Mitch on August 10, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Never Whistle On Graves

It was 25 years ago this week that I first got fired from a radio job. Now, bear in mind that you rarely if ever quit a job in radio on your own volition; I worked at eight stations in...
Posted by Mitch on August 09, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (22) | TrackBack

Name This Newspaper

Quick - to which newspaper does this excerpt refer? "Unlike the founding generation of penny press entrepreneurs, Henry Raymond ahd no links to teh Trades. He came t work for Horace Greeley straight from college, then moved to James Watson...
Posted by Mitch on August 08, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Letter To Nick Coleman

Brian, from Boviosity, writes re Nick Coleman's case of the vapors over the alleged (and apparently nonexistant) flip-off:Special for Nick C: When a real man, like President Bush, for instance, flips you the bird, YOU'LL KNOW IT. They're not the...
Posted by Mitch on August 04, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (52) | TrackBack

Finger This

Powerline covers Nick Coleman's vapid "Finger" column which I covered yesterday. Scott's piece includes one of Coleman's typically-classy email responses to a reader. The commenters who noted that it wasn't a middle finger, but rather the President's thumb, were apparently...
Posted by Mitch on August 04, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

My Apologies

To: Roger Hedgecock From: Mitch Berg Subject: Apologies Mr. Hedgecock, Please accept my sincere apologies. While I'm only very intermittently able to hear the Rush Limbaugh program due to my work schedule, I have gotten into the habit of turning...
Posted by Mitch on August 03, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (8) | TrackBack

No Stand-Ins Needed

Nick Coleman is back. In more ways than one....
Posted by Mitch on August 03, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (26) | TrackBack

No Stand-Ins Needed

Nick Coleman is back. In more ways than one....
Posted by Mitch on August 02, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Grasping At Straws

As Brian Maloney notes, the left's backlash against his story that Air America founder Evan Cohen might have pilfered nearly half a million dollars in government grant money from the Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Clubs in the Bronx is...
Posted by Mitch on July 31, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (14) | TrackBack

The Crappy Party

Kool Aid Report find evidence of a bunch of elitist, capitalist pigs throwing a party:Diamond Bluff offers the lifestyle many strive for, but seldom attain. Located on a 300-foot-high bluff overlooking the Mississippi River, you'll enjoy breathtaking views and sunsets....
Posted by Mitch on July 29, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

The Most Yost

Saint Paul at Fraters does the essential followup on the Mark Yost flap from two weeks ago. As you may recall, Mark Yost wrote a column in the PiPress a few weeks ago that shredded the media's myopia on the...
Posted by Mitch on July 29, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Climate of Hate?

I've been following the devolutions of the Air America/Gloria Wise funding flap at Michelle Malkin and Cap'n Ed's sites; allegedly, Evan Cohen - Air America's first CEO - "borrowed" a ton of money from a charity on whose board he...
Posted by Mitch on July 29, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Muddleheaded

The Star/Tribune still can't get it:The list grows: New York and Washington, Bali, Riyadh, Casablanca, Istanbul, Madrid, Taba, London, Sharm el-Sheik. This is not to mention the dozens of attacks daily in occupied Iraq. People struggle to find connections: Is...
Posted by Mitch on July 26, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (16) | TrackBack

And Jay Larson Thought HE Had A Tough Gig

Rambix at "Rambix and the Red Star" has details of Air America's new local promotional campaign. I can't wait to see Nick Coleman's new campaign....
Posted by Mitch on July 23, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Note To Reporters: Why We Hate You, Part I

Fraters has been leading the NARN on this story - you need to read their past week's posting on the subject - but I just gotta jump in. Mark Yost wrote an absolutely spot-on column last week, slamming the press...
Posted by Mitch on July 22, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (9) | TrackBack

Projects

Next week, I think, I'll do my annual "Twin Cities Talk Radio Review". It's been an annual thing for me for the last couple of years. This year, I'm going to try to add KFAN to the list - which...
Posted by Mitch on July 22, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

I Call B.S.

In this week's Time cover story on the Plame flap, the writer dithers about the minutiae of Plame's personal life - her looks, her kids, grocery lists, her car - without getting around to asking "so did you recommend your...
Posted by Mitch on July 18, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

J-Po Throws Down

I've read a lot of dissections of the Plame/Wilson crisis. None are as good as John Podhoretz' take in today's Corner....
Posted by Mitch on July 18, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

The Horror of the SUV

An emailer writes:I was heading to the Office on Friday morning. About 915 I was just coming up to the Air American studios, and the parking lot was full. In the center, was a Cadillac Escalade, The Mother, The Most...
Posted by Mitch on July 18, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

A Purpose for Erlandson

I caught about five minutes of former MN DFL chair Mike Erlandson filling in for Nick Coleman on the local amateur radio collective/Frankennet affiliate. He was interviewing Senator Mark Dayton. I now know Mark Erlandson's purpose; to make Mark Dayton...
Posted by Mitch on July 15, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (31) | TrackBack

Kuttner Corrects, Snarks

Robert Kuttner retracts his "Rove Did It, and Fitzgerald is in on it!" column last week:LAST WEEK in this space, I implied that the special counsel in the Valerie Plame leak case, Patrick Fitzgerald, might be protecting the Bush administration....
Posted by Mitch on July 13, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Show Us Your Preconceptions!

I was digging in some old (15th-century) British archives, and I found this. I think it was written by a noble of Saxon descent, about the Norman rabble:It be known that whyle mofte peoples of Saxon bloode partake of news...
Posted by Mitch on July 11, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Gross Fisks Schumer

Gary Gross at Confirmation Whoppers goes after Senator Schumer's appearance on Russert over the weekend. Check it out....
Posted by Mitch on July 11, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Location, Location, Location

The Strib notes that one of the people sueing them, has already been sued by the Strib. Paragraph One:An executive with a firm that accused the Star Tribune of dumping unsold papers in order to inflate circulation numbers was sued...
Posted by Mitch on June 30, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Chronology

We in the Northern Alliance take a goodly deal of pride in the work we do - re-afflicting the afflicted, immediating the media - and we have a lot of fun doing it. But as re: Janeane Garofalo's second-hand bleg...
Posted by Mitch on June 30, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

And Your Point, Please?

I'll admit it; Nick Coleman writes an occasional good column. He also writes, natch, some complete howlers, defamatory tripe that in a perfect world would be included in a journalism textbook under the "what not to do" section. And then...
Posted by Mitch on June 29, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Attention, Boutique Writers!

The City Pages, for those of you from out of town, is the local freebie lifestyle handout. It features some excellent reporting - at its best, as good as and sometimes better than the dailies serve up. Call that "sublime"....
Posted by Mitch on June 28, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (8) | TrackBack

The Elephant In The Newsroom

According to Ed'nPub, the NYTimes knows it has a problem: In a lengthy memo published the newspaper's Web site, Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, announced several new policies in response to a recent report by the...
Posted by Mitch on June 27, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

How To Get Printed In The Strib

Here's a primer:Dear Star-Tribune, George W. Bush killed Vince Foster. Karl Rove has the Powerline guys in a room in his basement. The earth is flat, Al Franken is funny. Halliburton owns talk radio. I am a former Carlson Republican.It's...
Posted by Mitch on June 23, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Confederacy of Dunce Editors

Fisking a Star-Tribune editorial is a lot like watching professional wrestling. The lines are all basically the same, whoever says them and whatever they're said about. One the battle starts, you pretty much see the same moves, the same grimaces,...
Posted by Mitch on June 21, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (16) | TrackBack

Rather UK?

Could we be looking at an international version of Memogate? Could be. Ed (via LGF) points us to this piece regarding the Downing Street Memos that have had the left so exercised. Emphasis is added:The eight memos — all labeled...
Posted by Mitch on June 20, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Signs One Needs A Life

Over the past three years, I've found that just about every nook and crannie in the Minneapolis Star/Tribune will veer into one extreme or another of lefty politics; the innocuous Kim Ode will occasionally uncork a Silent But Lefty that...
Posted by Mitch on June 10, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

What's In A Name...

...when the name is "Gulag"? I was listening to Hugh Hewitt on the way home from work. He was interviewing a high school teacher who claimed to believe that the American POW camp system (including Guantanamo) is the equivalent of...
Posted by Mitch on June 08, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Apropos Radio

Fraters Libertas is running a poll - who is/are the worst guest host/s on the Hugh Hewitt show? Vote early and daily....
Posted by Mitch on June 07, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Some Of The News That's Fit To Print

John Leo in USNWR on the stories that the media chose not to completely report:As distrust of the press grows, news articles are relentlessly scrutinized for bias, but almost no one is focusing on stories that are simply ignored. For...
Posted by Mitch on June 06, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Linked To Partisanship

In Nick Coleman's snide little sideswipe at bloggers yesterday, he sniffed:The guest list was dominated by self-described "new media" activists whose reliably partisan views have earned them links on the home page of the Minnesota Republican Party.Damn. Busted. Our views...
Posted by Mitch on May 26, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Clairvoyants!

Meeting celebrities - show-biz, media, especially politics - is the highlight of my life. It comes mainly from having grown up out in the boondocks. My friends and I would sit up at night, reading magazines and newspapers and watching...
Posted by Mitch on May 25, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (9) | TrackBack

Selective Indignation

Mark Yost has a pre-Memorial Day time-on-target barrage aimed at the major media....
Posted by Mitch on May 24, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (10) | TrackBack

Huh?

So one moment, Nick "DFL Monkey" Coleman calls the Northern Alliance "Pawlenty's lapdogs" or some such... ...and the next moment, he's reaching for the hand lotion because we pretty universally ripped his cigarette tax proposal. Um... I keep picturing his...
Posted by Mitch on May 24, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

While You Weren't Paying Attention

Over the past week, we've seen a number of instances of media figures, from the Strib Editorial Board to the intellectual midgets on FrankenNet to leftybloggers to, now, the WaPo take up the cry; the "fake but accurate" "Killian memos"...
Posted by Mitch on May 23, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Where's The News?

How's this for timely - the Strib, in a piece by Mark Brunswick, covered last Tuesday's reception at the Governor's Mansion. On Saturday morning. No, that's actually the best part....
Posted by Mitch on May 21, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (19) | TrackBack

Challenged

I listened to Hugh Hewitt interviewing ABC White House correspondent Terry Moran on his show on Wednesday night. Now, kudos to Moran, who's certainly a journalist of some heft, for appearing in the lion's den - not only on a...
Posted by Mitch on May 20, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Say What You Will...

...about Rathergate - but at least nobody died when Mary Mapes blew a story:Newsweek magazine said on Sunday it erred in a May 9 report that U.S. interrogators desecrated the Koran at Guantanamo Bay, and apologized to the victims of...
Posted by Mitch on May 16, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (18) | TrackBack

Mitch Berg: Scenemaker

As Molly Priesmeyer notes in "Blotter", her City Pages-owned Babelogue blog, in re the HuffPo:The Huffington Post has also garnered itself a celeb-style nickname: Huffpo.She links to this post, from the Chris Meserole's Democratic Vista blog, as the cite for...
Posted by Mitch on May 12, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Another Minnesota Poll

A Minnesota Poll that happens to support exactly what the DFL and their minions in the Twin Cities media want? Who'da thunk it?...
Posted by Mitch on May 09, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

The Noise-Machine Daisy-Chain

Certain local columnists who claim not to be monkeys of the Minnesota DFL - but who are, anyway - are constantly intoning "Cuhnuhct Thuh Duhts!" (Connect the dots) with the local NeoconWingnutHowlermonkeyNoisemachineDaisychain; they believe, and have written in their columns,...
Posted by Mitch on May 08, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Too Honest?

Laura Billings is a triple threat. In one column, she shows:Why we need bloggersWhy European newspapers are betterWhy Mattel Corporation needs to get back to work perfecting their lagging Barbie (TM) Doll technology....
Posted by Mitch on May 05, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (17) | TrackBack

And Your First Clue Was...?

From today's Coleman column:I remember when cops were too busy to be tax collectors.Huh? Cops and courts have always been tax collectors. Since the first weasel-faced bureaucrat first invented the "Fine", and since bureaucrats we called "nobles" started needing to...
Posted by Mitch on May 04, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Elephant In Your Living Room

The NYTimes cover the activity of Ken Tomlinson, a Republican who currently chairs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Tomlinson has done the unthinkable; try to convince the hear-no-bias, see-no-bias, speak-no-bias world of PTV that the mainstream of our culture considers...
Posted by Mitch on May 02, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Excerpts

John Hinderaker and I interviewed Senator Norm Coleman last night, as we filled in for Hugh Hewitt. Radioblogger has the transcript. I don't sound as dumb in print!...
Posted by Mitch on April 28, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (10) | TrackBack

American Idiots

Whenever I talk about Air America's hapless Minnesota outlet, I frequently ask "are there any radio grownups in the building?" The same question holds for the national shows; Al Franken, Janeane Garofalo and the late Lizzz Winstad are all terrible...
Posted by Mitch on April 28, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Meltdown?

Via Swiftee at Fiskwa (his hobby gig when he's not doing Pair o' Dice), I encountered this fascinating thread at Jay Rosen's Pressthink, on Nick Coleman. It started with a letter from Coleman himself. It sounds like Jay has had...
Posted by Mitch on April 25, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Agenda!

The headline on the Strib article reads:SUV crashes into car, killing at least twoThose bad SUVs! The key clinker to the story, of course, comes in the lede; I add the emphasis:At least two people died late Sunday night in...
Posted by Mitch on April 25, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Heard in Passing

I listened to - I checked - 14 seconds of the Nick Coleman "program" this morning. I'll try to transcribe what I heard as accurately as possible: COLEMAN, KUHBI, ENGINEER and SOUND EFFECTS (WOODY WOODPECKER)(simultaneously): This THONKTHONKTHONK Has I anyone...
Posted by Mitch on April 20, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (8) | TrackBack

How's That Again?

I listened to about 45 seconds of the Nick Coleman show this morning. I have no idea what they were talking about. "Kuhbey", the "producer", was talking over Coleman on every other sentence; sometimes both of them and the engineer...
Posted by Mitch on April 11, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Cry Censorship!

Watch for the left to start crying bloody murder over this storyGeneral Motors Corp. has pulled its advertising from the Los Angeles Times over what it called factual errors and misrepresentations in the newspaper, a spokesman for the automaker said....
Posted by Mitch on April 09, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Open Letter to GOP Junior Congressional Staff Weasels

You're young(ish). You're in DC - Dee-freaking-Cee, baybee, getting invited to all the cool bars, the best parties, hobnobbing with the "elite". You're at the center of things. Don't be a moron.The legal counsel to Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) admitted...
Posted by Mitch on April 07, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Uneven, Awful, Mystifying, Terrible

John Leo has an excellent retrospective covering a lot of the reservations many of us on the right have about the Schiavo case....
Posted by Mitch on April 04, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (17) | TrackBack

Bias? What Bias?

Learned Foot at Kool Aid report tripped upon an example of that non-existent bias from the media that is really conservative:CBS news last night on its mini-broadcast wedged in between the 2 Final Four games (CBS finally figured out a...
Posted by Mitch on April 04, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Phoned In

Powerline finds the Times in an amazing editing gaffe:Even as his own voice faded away, his views on the sanctity of all human life echoed unambiguously among Catholics and Christian evangelicals in the United States on issues from abortion to...
Posted by Mitch on April 02, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

She Knows Stuff

WCCO-TV (Channel 4 in the Twin Cities) is publishing a number of "blogs" on its station website. Crime-beat reporter Caroline Lowe does the best one. It's an institutional blog, with all that implies - it's upated weekly rather than several...
Posted by Mitch on March 30, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Conundrum Watch, Fact Check

I listened to Wild Wendy for a couple of minutes this morning on the local FrankenNet affiliate. Remember three months ago, after the tsunami? When the President busied himself with, oh, I dunno, practical, useful responses like diverting a navy...
Posted by Mitch on March 28, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

The Fantasy Life of "Air America Minnesota"

I checked out the (relatively) new website for the local Air America affiliate. Back on Presidents' Day, when I reviewed the Coleman "show", I asked, more or less rhetorically, if there were any radio grownups in the building. The question...
Posted by Mitch on March 25, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (13) | TrackBack

Money Money Money

Paul Demko at Babelogue reviews a David Foster Wallace piece in the Atlantic about political talk radio. Most of the piece touches on the way talk radio advertising exploits the relative intimacy of the host-audience relationship. It's true - advertisers...
Posted by Mitch on March 24, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (10) | TrackBack

Where Credit Is Due

Never let it be said I can't be objective. As much as I smack on Nick Coleman, his column on Sunday was an excellent one. It's the sort of thing a "local columnist" should be writing. Kudos to Coleman. We...
Posted by Mitch on March 23, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Jenningsgate?

Powerline has an extensive summary of the current "Talking Points Memo" controversy; a memo re the Schiavo controversy was circulated among the Senate in a form that broke Senate rules, and ABC among others are hammering the story hard. The...
Posted by Mitch on March 23, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Little Green Smackdown

As noted in Powerline yesterday, Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs has responded to last week's insipid op-ed by Tamara Baker in the Strib:In a March 19 counterpoint ("Article on blogs should have said more on political divide"), Tamara Baker...
Posted by Mitch on March 22, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (9) | TrackBack

Did you know...

...that sending your child to a charter school - a school set up with its own board, funded by a portion of each student's tax-funded allotment of education dollars - is the same as sending them to a Madrass, the...
Posted by Mitch on March 18, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (9) | TrackBack

J'Accuse!

I called on my keen investigative instincts over the weekend to try to run down this statement from Molly Priesmeyer's Babelogue hatchet piece on the Center of the American Experiment's skin tone and cooking:Michele Bachmann offered praise for blogger Mitch...
Posted by Mitch on March 16, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Half Krocked

I've long held that J.B. Doubtless of Fraters could do Chris Krok's show better than Krok could. The resemblance breaks down when it comes to writing. J.B.'s better. David Strom toasts Krok's op-ed in the Strib.Now frankly I don't mind...
Posted by Mitch on March 15, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Victimization Pages

I opened up my inbox this morning to see that Megan Cubbingford, reporter for "Fungus" magazine (a local independent 'zine about local independent rock) infiltrated the Patriot Forum with Dennis Prager last night. A little bird sent me the copy...
Posted by Mitch on March 14, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (12) | TrackBack

Whitewash

Over at the City Pages - our local freebie lifestyle handout - they seem to start young writers out on the "Facile Stereotype" beat. Molly Priesmeyer is the CP writer perhaps best known to us in the NARN. She appeared...
Posted by Mitch on March 13, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Paranoia Strikes...Shallow

I've been softpedalling the fisking of Nick Coleman's Strib column lately, partly to leave material for other local bloggers, partly because the exercise starts to feel almost ritualistic after a while. Answer the faulty facts; debunk the inflammatory statement; illuminate...
Posted by Mitch on March 11, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Rather Not

I went to the Center for the American Experiment's 61st Minute party last night. I sat at the AM1280 table with Patrick Campion, Jay Larson, Saint Paul, Sarah Janecek, and a bunch of other conservative bon vivants; I actually caught...
Posted by Mitch on March 10, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Swarm Rules

Peter Swanson, at the excellent but all-too-infrequently-updated Swanblog, has an angle on the yesterday Strib's article on bloggers....
Posted by Mitch on March 10, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Whole Lotta Facts

"Mike", commenting on my earlier post on Eric Black's piece in the Strib, asks:Black claims that Trent Lott's fall from grace came about when major media picked up the story "only after it had been promoted on liberal blogs". While...
Posted by Mitch on March 09, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Quiz for Nick Coleman

Chad the Elder notes something he heard on the Nick Coleman "show" this morning:He likes to portray himself as a bit of a history buff and was claiming that "wing-nuts" have no regard for history. He was also discussing the...
Posted by Mitch on March 09, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Let Me Elaborate

On the occasion of Dan Rather's final broadcast, Eric Black of the Strib has a piece in today's paper on the role of bloggers in regional politics. Powerline writes about it, too, and is highly critical. Black mentioned Hugh Hewitt's...
Posted by Mitch on March 09, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Flaking Away

Forty-nine weeks ago, when FrankenNet went on the air, I predicted that one of the high-profile hosts would bail within the year. Of course, I predicted it would be Chuck D, but... Lizz Winstead has apparently obliged me.Lizz Winstead, one...
Posted by Mitch on March 09, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Skates In Hell

Babelogue notes that the Strib is on the brink of hiring a conservative columnist. The field is apparently down to local Republican/center-right pundits-at-large Katherine Kersten and Sarah Janecek. Says the City Pages piece:Is the move a concession to all the...
Posted by Mitch on March 09, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

A Little Bird Told Me

On yesterday's "Nick Coleman" "Show", Coleman apparently and allegedly said that State Senator Michele Bachmann was a "lesbian". According to the little bird, this was stated as a pejorative. Little Bird, a source that makes a point of listenng to...
Posted by Mitch on March 04, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (28) | TrackBack

Statistics You Can Use

Number of lines from Shot In The Dark that appear in a "Nick Coleman Show" promo: 1 ("Gerbil of the Apocalypse") Number of lines from a Nick Coleman "Show" or "Column" that will ever appear in a NARN promo: 0....
Posted by Mitch on March 03, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Embarassment of Quotation Riches

Luke Francl of New Patriot declared this Coleman bit his "quote of the day" yesterday:Nick Coleman: "South St. Paul to Tim Pawlenty: You need to win reelection in 2006 or the right wing will dump you faster than a male...
Posted by Mitch on March 03, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Coulter on Gannon/Guckert

Democrats in Congress actually demanded that an independent prosecutor investigate how Gannon got into White House press conferences while writing under an invented name. How did Gary Hartpence, Billy Blythe and John Kohn (Gary Hart, Bill Clinton and John...
Posted by Mitch on February 25, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (41) | TrackBack

Open Letter to Air America Twin Cities

AM950 is the Twin Cities' FrankenNet affiliate. The General Manager is Janet Robert, a very wealthy woman who likes to toss the jing around in pursuit of political positioning (vide her 2002 Congressional run against Kennedy). Maam, I'd like to...
Posted by Mitch on February 25, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Nothing Good

I heard this on the Nick Coleman program this morning:"Nuthun gud cun cum uv thus dumnuble wur".Translation: Nothing good can come of this damnable war, I think. Tell it to the Iraqis that just voted, Nick. Or don't rights count...
Posted by Mitch on February 23, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Feeding The Kitty

I've been doing a little digging here; I'm on the trail of some of the money that ostensibly keeps the local Air America affiliate afloat. A commenter noted earlier today: "I heard a union worker call in to a local...
Posted by Mitch on February 21, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Revolution

Speaking of the Nick Coleman show - I noted while fisking it that he uses wall-to-wall U2 and Pogues music for bumpers and breakbeds. Now, I've always loved U2 and the Pogues. "Unforgettable Fire" and "If I Should Fall From...
Posted by Mitch on February 21, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Fisking Nick: Minute By Minute

I'd like set the stage for you. I'm going to be fisking the Coleman show on two levels. On the one hand, I'm going to be going after the content itself - the fallacies in his statements and assumptions. These...
Posted by Mitch on February 21, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (17) | TrackBack

Fisking Nick: Introduction

Today, I'll be liveblogging and audiofisking the Nick Coleman show. Why? In a famous column a few months back, Nick Coleman solemnly intoned that he "knows stuff", that he's got a "baloney detector". Fair enough. When it comes to radio,...
Posted by Mitch on February 21, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Intellectually Depraved

Depraved: Worse than dishonest. The Strib's editorial on the Gannon/Guckert affair certainly qualifies....
Posted by Mitch on February 21, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Air America Pundits: Your Show Prep Is Here

Guys and gals: I know how hard show prep can be. I'm a sympathetic, compassionate guy who's been in your shoes. Hey, a two hour show takes a lot of prep. You need shortcuts. I'm here to help.Jimmy Carter was...
Posted by Mitch on February 20, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

The Anti-Fisk

It's been a long, crazy week. Exhausting, if I say so myself. I won't say I have writer's block - but let's just say I got up this morning not entirely thrilled at the prospect of having to crank out...
Posted by Mitch on February 18, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Gannon/Guckert Redux

Kevin at Wizbang has the essential FAQ of the story. Note to all my liberal friends who - still - obsess over Guckert's alleged past as a gay hooker, and wondering how that could have possibly gotten past a background...
Posted by Mitch on February 18, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (20) | TrackBack

Unkept Promise

Last week I promised that I'd do a liveblog of the Nick Coleman show. Still haven't done it. Mornings are a very crazy time in the Berg house. However, I have a plan. There will be a liveblog/audiofisking within the...
Posted by Mitch on February 17, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Cosmic Injustice

The Guardian has RSS feeds. The Times of London does not. The terrorists have, if not "won", at least scored a major victory....
Posted by Mitch on February 16, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Creeping Slander

I read Michael Standaert's review of Hewitt's book Blog today. The review itself is the kind of thing you get when you combine a facile skimming of a book with a pre-ordained review driven by an agenda. Nothing to see...
Posted by Mitch on February 14, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

The Clinton Playbook?

As Michelle Malkin notes in a gangbuster column today, the media is reacting to last week's blogswarm... ...by changing the subject, and by insulting the messenger. I think there's more to it....
Posted by Mitch on February 14, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Lessons to the Press

Jeff Jarvis has the lessons the press should take away from Jordangate:First, journalist-priests are no longer the gatekeepers in either direction -- to authority and truth for the public, or from newsmakers to the people. Now the public can...
Posted by Mitch on February 14, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

They Still Don't Get It

Kevin Drum in the WashMonthly shows why the left really hasn't woken up yet, describing Easongate:And Eason Jordan? At a private, off-the-record meeting at Davos he made an inflammatory accusation about the military killing journalists and then backed down (literally)...
Posted by Mitch on February 12, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Gannon

I've had some comments (online and verbal) and emails asking why I've harped on Eason Jordan, but not on the Gannon "story". Several reasons:Gannon is nobody. He writes for "Talon News", a small news service with virtually no reputation at...
Posted by Mitch on February 11, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (17) | TrackBack

Thanks. No, Really, Thanks

This story is crazy enough in its own right:Jeffrey Swisher was caught using a videocamera to peer up the skirts of teenagers at a mall, and law enforcement officials were eager to put him behind bars for a long time....
Posted by Mitch on February 09, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

A Worthwhile Question

Sysyphus asks:If the military is really targeting reporters, how is it that Helen Thomas and Molly Ivins are still around?When I was younger and more impulsive, I learned that nothing good could come of asking "what journalists would you like...
Posted by Mitch on February 09, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

The Sound of Clue Being Had

As Radio Blogger's transcript of Hugh Hewitt's appearance on Kudlow and Cramer shows, Larry Kudlow understands the Eason Jordan scandal....
Posted by Mitch on February 08, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Peasants Are Restless

Johh Hinderaker gets more interesting phone calls that I do:Friday morning, I was sitting in my office when my telephone rang. On the phone was a soft-spoken man who said, "I'm calling for Mr. John Hinderaker." "Speaking," I responded, in...
Posted by Mitch on February 07, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Follow-Up

Steve Gigl at the newly-christened Gigglepundit followed up on my question from the other day; what did Nick Coleman have to say about hunger during the Clinton Adminstration. He followed up with a Lexis/Nexis search. The results were...well, read it....
Posted by Mitch on February 03, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Day Four

This is four straight days I've gone without listening to the Nick Coleman show on the local FrankenNet affiliate. Wonder if I can go the distance? And for those of you who've heard the show, what is "the distance?" Predictions?...
Posted by Mitch on February 03, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Next To Fall?

The blogs are swarming after Eason Jordon. The CNN executive, who gained transient infamy for revealing that he'd directed CNN to sit on stories of Hussein's brutaility to avoid getting the CNN Baghdad Bureau shut down, has been caught by...
Posted by Mitch on February 02, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

King 1 Coleman -1

King Banaian vs. Nick Coleman on economics? Oh, yeah. It's ugly. Like, Mike Tyson vs. Carrot Top ugly. Read it. And then ask the Strib why they foist such illiterate twaddle on their readers....
Posted by Mitch on February 02, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

The Return?

I thought about doing a full-scale fisking of Nick Coleman's latest self-righteous jeremiad - but I"m at the point where I almost feel I could re-use pieces of earlier fiskings (much as Coleman seems to re-us bits and pieces of...
Posted by Mitch on February 02, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Gerbil of the Apocalypse

Nick Coleman has a radio show. Er, whatever. Luke Francl says:This ought to raise some wingnuts' blood pressure. For that reason, if no other, I find this amusing. Hopefully, no one pops a vein...[and, in a later comment] My interest...
Posted by Mitch on February 02, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Radio For Idiots

Hinderaker reports on his appearance on FrankenNet today. "I can say without hesitation that it was the stupidest interview I have ever been involved in," says Rocket Man, and he's been involved in some very stupid radio. To be fair,...
Posted by Mitch on January 28, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (10) | TrackBack

It's Only Rock And Roll

A commenter in yesterday's thread about MPR's new Alt-pop station left me a link to this piece from yesterday's Strib about the new station, saying "It's quite sophmoric, sounding like someone who never listened to MPR's classical station before. All...
Posted by Mitch on January 28, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (12) | TrackBack

Meet the New MPR - Same As the Old MPR

WCAL - formerly the best classical station in Minnesota, by a long, long stretch - is gone, replaced by the new pop potpourri, 89.3 The Current. I have publicly lamented WCAL's demise; comparing WCAL to MPR's classical outlet, KSJN, in...
Posted by Mitch on January 27, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (12) | TrackBack

Lid Blown

Tim Blair links to Tim Cavanaugh, who has dug up the pre-and-post Iraq statements of a number of key, mostly lefty, pundits. Interesting reading....
Posted by Mitch on January 27, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Grossly Insensitive...

...but kinda funny in a sick, sick way, this Volkswagen ad has got to get the aggressively sensitive community in a tizzy - and, if legit, make me think about buying a VW. Naturally, as seems to always be the...
Posted by Mitch on January 26, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Firstest with the Yostest

Mark Yost of the PiPress wrote a piece about the NARN in today's paper. Yost was at the party on Saturday, where he gathered some of his material:In attendance was the Nihilist in Golf Pants, Chad The Elder, Saint Paul,...
Posted by Mitch on January 25, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

My Letter to On The Media

In the extended entry (click below) is the letter I wrote to OTM regarding my post below. Any bets on whether I get a response?...
Posted by Mitch on January 25, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Lipstick On A Pig

NPR's "Eye On The Media" is, purportedly, public radio's media watchdog program. More like a yapping little Jack Russell, as we see in their transcript of the Memogate fallout. Money quote:BOB GARFIELD: Well, okay. We have the answers. Or, at...
Posted by Mitch on January 25, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Noted in Passing

Powerline gets in Time Magazine. Cap'n Ed is in the NYPost (or is it the NYSun? Probably both). Me? As Atomizer over at Fraters points out, the Frats, King and I made it into the Dassel-Cokato Enterprise Dispatch, in an...
Posted by Mitch on January 20, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Throwing a Chair On the Radio Loses Something

Jerry Springer is getting a liberal talk show, in Cincinnati.Springer, who will continue to host his more raucous TV show, called the war in Iraq immoral, saying it appeared to be focused on determining whether Iraq's Shiite majority or Sunni...
Posted by Mitch on January 20, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

The Top

One question I have from my reading of the Thornburgh/Boccardi report so far; why did the firings and demanded resignations stop where they did? Business > Media & Advertising > News Analysis: Post-Mortem of a Flawed Broadcast" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/11/business/media/11network.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5094&en=1c4b4ec4dd632378&hp&ex=1105419600&oref=login&partner=homepage">Not that I...
Posted by Mitch on January 11, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Network Dead Pool

About five years ago, someone - no, I don't remember who - predicted that one of the big three networks would not survive in the news business past the next decade. This, today, from Drudge:CBS source to Tuesday NY TIMES:...
Posted by Mitch on January 11, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

The Disembodied Voice from the Edge of Sanity

I remember when I was growing up in North Dakota, in my mid-teens, starting out in the radio business. I had never really heard of "talk radio", per se - it was a very different thing in 1980. We didn't...
Posted by Mitch on January 10, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Crossfired

CNN gasses Tucker Carlson, pseudoconservative commentator from "Crossfire", which rumor has it is the first step toward cancelling the show. Good riddance to both....
Posted by Mitch on January 06, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Kennt Nichts

Of my eight great-grandparents, I think only two were born in the US (and, if memory serves, one in Canada). While all my grandparents were born in the US, I think two of them may have grown up speaking other...
Posted by Mitch on January 05, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Watch Those Heels

An acquaintance - one who is curiously antipathic toward bloggers - posted a message to an email forum this morning, titled "Bloggergate!", and gleefully linking to this Corey Pein piece in the Columbia Journalism Review, purporting to debunk the role...
Posted by Mitch on January 05, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Note to the Star/Tribune Marketing Department

I recently downgraded my cable TV service; I felt no need to pay for programming I largely considered repellent. Upside: No more MTV. Downside: No History, A&E, Discovery or Spike. So when Comcast called the other day asking if I'd...
Posted by Mitch on December 30, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (9) | TrackBack

RIP Sontag

Josh Trevino at Redstate on Sontag:Let us not pretend that Sontag was a conservative, nor on her way to being conservative; but we can at least take a moment to acknowledge some of the service she rendered to conservatism in...
Posted by Mitch on December 29, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Worried?

Dustbury asks:What happens if Nick Coleman bumps into Stribmate James Lileks in the hallway? Will there be total annihilation and the release of massive quantities of energy? Now I'm worried.You needn't worry about a matter/antimatter explosion; the earth is safe....
Posted by Mitch on December 29, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Lazy, Cowardly, Trite

Nick Coleman's latest column - his poison-pen congratualation to Powerline for appearing in Time Magazine - tells you everything you need to know about the man who is coming to be regarded as the worst major-market columnist in America today....
Posted by Mitch on December 29, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (34) | TrackBack

Bigger shares of a shrinking market

(Guest post by Steve Gigl) In other news, I see that Fox 9 (KMSP)'s ratings are getting some news. I've preferred their newscast to most of the others, but I was disappointed in the last couple of weeks with the...
Posted by on December 24, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Anatomy of a Booking

The big news in the Northern Alliance this past week is Nick Coleman's reporting on a shortage of books - textbooks? - at a school in Saint Paul, as well as his "The Schools Are Burning!" jeremiad, and the Pioneer...
Posted by Mitch on December 17, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (15) | TrackBack

Party Of The Working Man In Action

I caught a few minutes of the Wendy Wild show the other day. She and (presumably) her producer were talking about Wal-Mart's new food stores; one of them mentioned that some Wal-Marts carry wine. WENDY (or the producer - their...
Posted by Mitch on December 16, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (9) | TrackBack

Is It Scrappleface, or is it...

Technically...Bill Moyers, whose journalistic reports on PBS have been missed by most Americans for 30 years, retires this month but fails to leave the customary void, according to a journalism expert. "Normally when a veteran newsman leaves, there is that...
Posted by Mitch on December 10, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Study War Some More

Nick Coleman has been an embarassment of fisking riches this week. Or just an embarassment. You pick. His editorial earlier this week - "We don't always fight the good fight" - is one of the most cripplingy-irresponsible things I've seen,...
Posted by Mitch on December 09, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Coming Or Going?

This is a tale of two people, telling two stories. One of the people is in both stories. Do the stories add up? You be the judge....
Posted by Mitch on December 09, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Our Sordid Newspaper

We talked about this on the NARN broadcast Saturday. Captain Ed and Powerline both wrote about it - that's the tough thing about sharing an Alliance with a bunch of guys who are always writing. But I digress, because the...
Posted by Mitch on December 06, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Priorities

Red has some feedback for CNN:I wanted to let you know that I sincerely appreciate the "Breaking News" email I received about Julia Roberts' safe and healthy delivery of twins. Thank you so much. It was nice to NOT get...
Posted by Mitch on November 29, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (9) | TrackBack

On Message

Flash at Centrisity makes a key mistake; he quotes Ezra from Pandagan....
Posted by Mitch on November 29, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

His Master's Voice

Patterico notes New York Times Editors Regurgitate Democrat Talking Points -- Without Even Checking Them Out First" href="http://patterico.com/archives/003107.php">a shocking example of the NYTimes' reportage being driven by the Democratic Party (in the "I'm shocked - SHOCKED..." sense of the term):Not...
Posted by Mitch on November 29, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Crawl To The Right

Meet the New Boss. Incrementally different than the Old Boss. The Economist has an excellent piece on the evolution this election brought to the media. It's about blogs, true - but mostly, it's about options....
Posted by Mitch on November 26, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Joe Does Radio

Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost has a cogent, comprehensive critique of radio in general, and especially conservative talk radio, in a post earlier today. And, as Joe notes, my Northern Alliance Radio colleague Elder has a superb rejoinder over at...
Posted by Mitch on November 25, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Rather Not

Dan Rather retires:Rather, 73, has come under fire for his 60 Minutes report on President Bush's service in the National Guard during the Vietnam War. The report relied on documents that cast Mr. Bush's service in a negative light. Critics...
Posted by Mitch on November 24, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Exit Safire

One less reason to read the Times, coming this January;Safire is retiring. Safire's always been an inspiration to me. He's had more careers than I have, although I have 34 years to catch him. I love this bit:Safire said he...
Posted by Mitch on November 16, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Plenty of Vaccine, No Patients

Apparently, there's plenty of flu vaccine...The nurses who give flu shots in Minnesota are facing a shortage of another kind -- patients. Last Friday at a clinic at Bloomington City Hall, public health workers came armed with 800 vaccine doses...
Posted by Mitch on November 11, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Open Letter to the Star/Tribune

Dear Editors: The Star/Tribune prides itself on its ostensible cultural literacy, when it comes to little, trivial, anal-retentive things like football team names. Pity you drop the ball on the cultural literacy that really matters....
Posted by Mitch on October 26, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Jim Yuk

David Strom at the Taxpayer's League writes:Here is a shot of a bumper sticker we will begin distributing next week. It would be wonderful if they popped up on cars around the Twin Cities during the last week of the...
Posted by Mitch on October 21, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Location, Location, Location

Patterico notes the LAT Lies and Spinning" href="http://patterico.com/archives/002919.php">some serious fact-checking on some incredible LATimes spinning for Kerry. The subject? Zarquawi's presence in Iraq, and the media's and CIA's cluelessness about it....
Posted by Mitch on October 19, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

News Flash: More Liberal Tools Endorse Kerry!

Mark from New Patriot notes that morenewspapers are endorsing John Kerry, in a move that should shock the casual observer, since it's not only exactly what they have done in every election in recent memory, but it's exactly what every...
Posted by Mitch on October 18, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (21) | TrackBack

Rationality Rears Its Transient Head

Amid all the lefty howling over Sinclair Broadcasting's airing of Stolen Honor next week, Josh "ua Micah" Marshall has what amounts (in context) to a sane, responsible idea....
Posted by Mitch on October 15, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Make A Wish

I started in radio by hanging around the studio at KEYJ in Jamestown, ND when I was 15. My pal Dick Ingstad, a year ahead of me in high school, worked there (he had the genes - his oldest brother...
Posted by Mitch on October 15, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Meet the New Flap - Same as the Old Flap

In November of 1984, when I was a junior in college, ABC ran The Day After, a fictional (duh) account of a global nuclear war. Aired at the height of the Cold War, it was 14 straight hours an evening...
Posted by Mitch on October 13, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Republicans who Hate Republicans?

Nick Coleman's column today is a curious one. Apparenty he's been able to find a Vietnam veteran whose views coincide with his own. I can't comment on his interview subject's experiences in Vietnam. I have to wonder about Nick Coleman's...
Posted by Mitch on October 06, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

The Musical is the Political?

The Strib's column about local Springsteen impersonator Tim Sigler starts out interesting enough - and then digs into one of the most profound - and disturbing - cultural dynamics there is....
Posted by Mitch on October 04, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Profile of a Hobby Hack

By way of explaining why he - an apparently-boundlessly-angry and bitter columnist - is a journalist, and the likes of Ed, Rocket Man, Trunk, the Fraters, King, Lileks and I aren't, Nick Coleman relates: I covered Minneapolis City Hall, back...
Posted by Mitch on September 30, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Saint Is No Journalist

Saint Paul may not be a "journalist", but he has the best riposte yet to Nick Coleman. He checks Coleman's facts, and finds many of them sorely wanting. He also checks Coleman's pedigree, and finds it revelatory. It's Coleman's peevish...
Posted by Mitch on September 30, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Journalism 101

Little Green Footballs on CBS' latest slipshod journalism....
Posted by Mitch on September 30, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Bad Form

Remember The Caine Mutiny? When Jose Ferrer is interrogating Captain Queeg (Humphrey Bogart)? He wins the case when Queeg's injured pride flies into a tantrum on the stand. Today we saw a Queeg moment in the Strib. I've met Nick...
Posted by Mitch on September 30, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

League of Drooling Philistines

It's pretty predictable; Nick Coleman's petulant poison pen piece about bloggers touched a nerve with the Northern Alliance - but when it comes to Coleman, that nerve is virtually desensitized. We've beaten Coleman like a bongo drum, The Scholars, Lileks,...
Posted by Mitch on September 30, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Portable Coleman

Saint Paul has the essential response to Nick "Stand Aside! I'm a Journalist!" Coleman's little poison pen screed. Read it....
Posted by Mitch on September 29, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Whither Rather?

Patterico has a few notes about Dan Rather's potential future....
Posted by Mitch on September 27, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Against All Odds

Say what you will about public radio - and I've certainly said a lot about it myself - but once in a while they uncork a winner. I'm currently listening to Red Runs the Vistula: The Warsaw Uprising of 1944....
Posted by Mitch on September 26, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

In The News

The Strib's Bob Von Sternberg writes about blogs starting with a familiar face:Scott Johnson had just gotten off the phone with Tom Brokaw, even as a TV crew was camped outside his office in downtown Minneapolis, while he tried to...
Posted by Mitch on September 23, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Mapes - Too Convenient?

Allahpundit wonders:If you believe WaPo's article from earlier today, Mapes was investigating this story since mid-August; she finagled a sit-down meeting at that time between herself, the source, and Dan Rather; she later expressed absolute confidence in the source and...
Posted by Mitch on September 20, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Toss The Rafts

CBS is apparently ready to Washington > Campaign 2004 > The News Media: CBS News Concludes It Was Misled on National Guard Memos, Network Officials Say" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/20/politics/campaign/20guard.html?ei=5006&en=42f1be2f0a0efa9d&ex=1096344000&partner=ALTAVISTA1&pagewanted=print&position=">try to cut the memos loose:[CBS executives] decided yesterday that they would most likely...
Posted by Mitch on September 20, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Suspicions

http://www.theamericanmind.com/moveabletype/mt-tb.cgi/2362

Posted by Mitch on September 19, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Pay No Attention to the Stack of Fakes Behind the Curtain

Here's the part that bugs me. It's hard to talk about my reservations about Bush's Guard story without violating "Godwin's Law" - the internet convention that says any time Hitler or anything Nazi is invoked in an argument, the argument...
Posted by Mitch on September 16, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

So Apt

The new CBS News blog:Meet Marion Carr Knox, the host of CBS' new daytime talk show, Opportunity Knox! Ms. Knox, who is also known in a completely unrelated matter as secretary to President Bush's National Guard commander, will talk with...
Posted by Mitch on September 16, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Please. No Wagering

As Fraters pointed out earlier today, the Star Tribune's latest Minnesota Poll is showing John Kerry with a nine point lead over the President. The left is tittering with glee; they think they'll hold Minnesota this year. And they may...
Posted by Mitch on September 15, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Piling On?

Handwriting Analysis is a deeply soft science, a ludicrous one on which to base ones' defense of Dan Rather's "National Guard" documents... ...but just in case you were, Dn Rather's "handwriting expert" has jumped ship on Rather anyway: The lead...
Posted by Mitch on September 14, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The New Longbow

I love Wretchard's simile:The real catastrophe for CBS is that Killian incident is probably not an isolated setback so much as proof that maneuvers which worked in the past can no longer be attempted with impunity. The equivalent of the...
Posted by Mitch on September 13, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Rap Sheet

Jo directs us to an MRC piece detailing - and I do mean detailing - the relative harshness of 60 Minutes' treatment of President Bush, vs its relentless softballing of Kerry and Edwards....
Posted by Mitch on September 12, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Failing the Absurd Test

The left blogosphere has been hanging its Memogate hopes on the notion that there was a typewriter - one - in 1973 that might have been able to produce a proportional-font memo with special typesetting characters. This guy found one....
Posted by Mitch on September 12, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (7) | TrackBack

How To

Longtime reader Silver send this - Pious Agnostic's advice to would-be forgers....
Posted by Mitch on September 12, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Beat The Retreat

The Boston Glob is backing sloooowly away from their defense of CBS's report on the Bush National Guard dox:In a CBS Evening News report last week, the network aired four documents that appeared to be typed by the late Lieutenant...
Posted by Mitch on September 12, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Tiffany Lied

Ed, as usual, is at the bleeding edge of the CBS Forgery case:Starting with the latter, it appears that CBS and 60 Minutes simply lied about the sourcing of the documents to its readers. They may not have realized that...
Posted by Mitch on September 10, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

But There's No Bias

THAT LIBERAL MEDIA" href="http://www.thespoonsexperience.com/archives/002870.php#002870">Spoons asks a great question:Ever see an anonymous source from the Clinton Administration -- or from the Kerry campaign, for that matter -- identified like this?... "It's not a fear of the format," said the adviser, who...
Posted by Mitch on September 09, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Why Can't Willie Do Civics?

Will Saletan states the obvious with a big side of whine....
Posted by Mitch on September 03, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

No Show

Gutless hack Jim Boyd did not take advantage of two days worth of challenges to appear in a fair, balanced public forum at the Northern Alliance Radio Network at the fair this past weekend. That after publishing this vapid hit...
Posted by Mitch on August 30, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Public Radio

Back in the early nineties, when I was trying to resuscitate my moribund radio career, I worked as a volunteer in the news department at KFAI Radio. "Fresh Air" is an eclectic community-supported station serving Minneapolis, mainly the West Bank,...
Posted by Mitch on August 19, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Markers

The Saint from Fraters notes the deafening silence of the media on Kerry's Excellent Adventure:The mainstream press's lack of coverage of this story has verged on Sergeant Schultz "I see nothing" level comedy. Following the lead of the New York...
Posted by Mitch on August 17, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Percepton=Reality

Where has Doug Grow been? The only reason I ask is because the Strib columnist would seem to have been hiding under a barrel of ink. Today's column could only have been written by a man who doesn't get out...
Posted by Mitch on August 05, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Compelling TV

The Sundance Cable Network is going to broadcast the "highlights" of the "Al Franken Show". Radio. On TV. Who knew? Starting Sept. 7, Sundance will package the best of Franken's three-hour weekday radio program into a one-hour telecast of highlights...
Posted by Mitch on August 03, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Played

Joseph Wilson has duped a good swath of the American media. Matt Continetti says:OVER THE LAST FEW DAYS, ever since Ambassador Joseph Wilson's credibility was thrown into question by the Senate Select Committee's report on prewar Iraq intelligence, the ambassador...
Posted by Mitch on July 23, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Franken: Lying Liar

I was listening to Al Franken today. He was crowing about his "ratings victory" over Bill O'Reilly. Franken noted on the air that while O'Reilly beat him in overall listeners, Franken had better numbers in the key 25-54 age bracket...
Posted by Mitch on July 22, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

The Manchurian Columnist

In the Manchurian Candidate, Chinese Communists use anti-communist hysteria to run a communist sleeper for the presidency. It's almost as if, say, conservatives were to infiltrate someone into the news media - someone who earns lots of respect in his...
Posted by Mitch on July 20, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Strange Bedfellows

In a recent poll, Americans' bottom five least favorite, least appreciated professions were as follows, in descending order:Baby Seal ClubberFedayeen (Michael Moore fans boosted them out of the #4 slot)Staff Counsel, NAMBLATelevision Programming ExecutiveAl Quaeda senior managementMost people agree on...
Posted by Mitch on July 15, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Safety In Numbers

As Fraters noted yesterday, they were ('til today) the only remaining online repository of this photo: That's Cacklin' Katherine "Six Martini" Lanpher, the co-host of the Al Franken show, which bills itself ironically as "Drug Free Radio", in a photo...
Posted by Mitch on July 15, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Hugh Knows New Media

As Captain Ed noted earlier today, we in the Northern Alliance are much in Hugh Hewitt's debt. And I even moreso, after today's shout-out in World Net Daily, where he included me in his list of blogs that everyone should...
Posted by Mitch on July 14, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Non-Veterans For Logic

Doug Grow takes a big hit from a steamin' bong full of Nick Coleman Weed in this piece from today, about the "Veterans for Peace" rally against the Twins' "GI Joe" giveaway. Just for kicks, let's count the strawmen....
Posted by Mitch on July 13, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Let Slip The Dogs Of Spin

Psssst. Hey, buddy. Wanna know a secret? Gotta keep it on the low. Promise? Promise? OK, good. Here goes. Fox News is biased to the right. Huh? You're laughing. Why are you laughing? OK, wise guy. You've had your friggin'...
Posted by Mitch on July 10, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Musical Anchor Chairs

KSTP TV shuffles their anchors yet again. In a dramatic newsroom upheaval, anchor team Kent Ninomiya and Harris Faulkner left KSTP, Channel 5, Thursday night, and were replaced by the newly hired Cyndy Brucato.It's a good thing they mentioned "Channel...
Posted by Mitch on July 09, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

State of Twin Cities Radio, 2004

Last year, I did a long post in which I reviewed every talk show on the air in the Twin Cities. The local talk market has changed a lot in the last year; I figure it's time to give it...
Posted by Mitch on July 08, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (17) | TrackBack

Invisible Airwaves Crackle with Dreck...

I've had a bit of time to listen to FrankenNet lately, now that they've moved to new digs at AM1530 and AM740. My mission this last few days was to listen to enough of it to be able to have...
Posted by Mitch on July 08, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Skewering Ehrenreich

Barbara Ehrenreich has never been accused of being fair, balanced, accurate, or well-informed. She has, however, made high-gloss hatred of all things right of center into quite a little racket for herself. As with her hatchet job over the weekend...
Posted by Mitch on July 05, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Two Iraqs

So based on information they've gotten from the major media, a large part of the Amerian people believe that we've screwed up in Iraq. But how is the media getting their infomation?...
Posted by Mitch on July 05, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wait! Wait!

This week marked the first defection from Air America FrankenNet, as reported on the "blog" for Morning Sedition, the network's morning show. PS: In case you haven't heard us say so on the air, Sue Ellicott has indeed opted to...
Posted by Mitch on July 02, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Selective Prudity

Do you think you'd see any coverage of this story at the Democrat convention?...
Posted by Mitch on July 01, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3)

Clinton's Forensic Reconstruction of History

Jason Fodeman has a fascinating piece on Clinton's reconstruction of history....
Posted by Mitch on June 30, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1)

Memo To Strib Staff

To: Star/Tribune Staff From: The Whole World Re: Remedial Metaphor Training. It's come to management's attention that Star/Tribune staff need some remedial familiarization with basic metaphors. For example:Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who as a legislator opposed the rail line, said that...
Posted by Mitch on June 28, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1)

FrankenNet Circles the Drain

Tacitus' Thorley Winston has this piece analyzing the questionable business practices at FrankenNet....
Posted by Mitch on June 25, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4)

Oh, That Liberal Media: Sins of Omission

Yesterday, I linked to a Shawn Sarazin piece in "The American Mind" about the mincing coverage of the apprehension of a boy who'd killed his father. A small group of armed men made the collar and held the guy for...
Posted by Mitch on June 25, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Good News in Iraq

Arthur Chrenkoff covers the good news coming out of Iraq that - need it be said? - never makes it into the partisan media....
Posted by Mitch on June 24, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3)

The Rising Tide

Last week on the NARN broadcast, we spent the whole first hour upbraiding the NYTimes and the Strib for their - there is no other word - fraudulent coverage of the 9/11 commission report. We're not alone....
Posted by Mitch on June 22, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1)

The Hesiodization of the Major Media

A while ago, I ripped on moonbat blogger extraordinaire "Hesiod", who claimed that had Algore won the presidency there's have been no 9/11 because Algore was psychic and clairvoyant and would have somehow overcome his hostility to the military and...
Posted by Mitch on June 18, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Fact-Checking

My Northern Alliance pal Saint Paul tripped across some dubious fact-checking in this excellent piece on the Strib's whizzing on Ronald Reagan's grave (Strib quote italicized):"He was a good President who stood up for the people,"said hospice-care nurse Lisa Gibson,...
Posted by Mitch on June 14, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

The Dinosaur Revolt

Ron Brownstein, of the nation's most overtly liberal newspaper, the LA Times, leads this piece about a group of has-beens and representatives of discredited old policies....
Posted by Mitch on June 14, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Fact-Checking Nick

In my comment section last week, reader PJZ did some fact-checking on a Nick Coleman column I fisked....
Posted by Mitch on June 14, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Wait'll Nick Coleman Finds Out

James from California writes in regard to my post yesterday about my reservations about the design of the Ventura Trolley:Sure, maybe the body count was high when it opened, but Mitch, it is for the greater good, isn't it? Except...
Posted by Mitch on June 04, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Pick Your Marks Carefully

Laura Billings has discovered one of the key facts of life in... ...Saint Paul?...
Posted by Mitch on June 03, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (9)

Instant Gratification

I mentioned in a previous post that in the four years I've been single again, I've done a bit of dating. As in, I've had at least one date with 77 different women. I've met 'em all different kinds of...
Posted by Mitch on May 27, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (7)

A Daily Event

Jeff Jarvis - no right-wing howler monkey, he - writes about his reaction to a recent NPR piece - similar to the reaction I have at least once a day....
Posted by Mitch on May 24, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2)

Any Good News They Can Get

David Kopel writes the first decent reveiw I've seen of FrankenNet so far....
Posted by Mitch on May 24, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Public Relations

Oliver "Like Kryptonite to Batman" Willis says:Bush's response towards the mistakes of Iraq is yet another PR offensive. Expect him and his minions to continue pretending that everything is going exactly according to plan, while making the "transition" and subsequent...
Posted by Mitch on May 23, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6)

Oh, That Liberal Media

Can you imagine this argument happening if this involved Bush instead of Kerry?Kerry told reporters in front of cameras, 'Did the training wheels fall off?'... Reporters are debating whether to treat it is as on or off the record...Is there...
Posted by Mitch on May 23, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1)

More Of This

On "Meet the Press", Rep. Duncan Hunter debated Dennis Kucinich about our future course in Iraq. (Who's checking the ID's here? Dennis Kucinich? What is Russert thinking?) After listening to a few minutes of Kucinich's bloviation about there being "no...
Posted by Mitch on May 23, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Agenda

Listened to Russert on the Today show this morning (yeah, I know - I should stop). Talking about the war in Iraq, Russert said (I'm paraphrasing very closely here, but it's not quite a quote) that the Abu Ghraib scandal...
Posted by Mitch on May 21, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2)

But What's The News?

More photos from Abu Ghraib. It sure looks bad....
Posted by Mitch on May 21, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1)

Do The Math

The Strib declares "Bush fundraising edge not what it was" in an article reprinted from the LA Times this morning. Let's look this over. The lede says:President Bush's once-insurmountable cash advantage over Democrat John Kerry has dwindled in the wake...
Posted by Mitch on May 21, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

A Lie Will Travel A Thousand Miles

Even though the Boston Glob was caught passing off porn pictures as photos of GIs gang-raping Iraqi women - pictures that didn't pass the most cursory knowledgeable fact-checking by their audience - the damage is done. A Boston City Councilman...
Posted by Mitch on May 20, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1)

It Must Be For Real

For weeks, the blogophere's been up in arms about UNScam - the systematic plundering of the UN's "Oil for Food" program to the benefit of Hussein, his family, and his various benefactors overseas. It's been up in arms to the...
Posted by Mitch on May 20, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Hats Off To Randy Owen

I worked at three country stations during my radio career. I never much cared for Alabama. Now that they're on their farewell tour, I may change my mind....
Posted by Mitch on May 18, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5)

Counting Our Blessings

I've often wondered what the threshold of experience and talent is to become a columnist. Very low, I've guessed repeatedly over the years, as I and my fellow Northern Alliance members raked the likes of Nick Coleman and Lori Sturdevant...
Posted by Mitch on May 17, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Question for FrankenNet's Webmaster

Webmaster/Masterette: Two questions about the FrankenNet website:I see you've chosen to break up your station list by grography. I notice that you divide the nation into "East" and "West/Central". Is that an insight into the way the left views America...
Posted by Mitch on May 16, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (7)

Scam America

Not only is this piece another scathing review of Air America FrankenNet, we got into something potentially much deeper....
Posted by Mitch on May 13, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2)

Truer Words

Katie Couric: "It's getting to the point where people can hardly stand to tune into the TV news because of the parade of graphic images from Iraq". Well, she had the first half right. Story this morning; dealing with the...
Posted by Mitch on May 13, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1)

Hearing Their Own Drummer

On the Today show, reporter Jim Miklaszewski wrapped up a report by referring to "a growing public drumbeat" calling for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation Drumbeat? Polls are showing that the public is backing Rumsfeld. The media is the drumbeat....
Posted by Mitch on May 11, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (18)

Will To Power

George Will is a smart guy. But it's interesting; I was flipping through "The Morning After", a collection of his columns from the '80s. He's a smart guy, sure enough. But just because he's a conservative doesn't make him always...
Posted by Mitch on May 11, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2)

Counting FrankenNet's Hours II - Hurry

If I were working at FrankenNet right now, I'd be more than a little nervous. Thankfully, the little double-wide in Eagan isn't run by a bunch of left-leaning business geniuses....
Posted by Mitch on May 07, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1)

Isn't It Amazing...

...that the Abu Ghraibh scandal has erupted into full peals of demands for resignations, and a full-court press to try to tie it as high in the Administration as they can... ...the week after the WMDs turned up in Jordan...
Posted by Mitch on May 07, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6)

Question

When did the phrase "What did (someone) know, and when did he know it" become a cliche, and when did it become it?...
Posted by Mitch on May 07, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1)

FrankenNet: Counting the Hours

Go to FrankenNet's website. What's the first thing you see? "11 Stations Nationwide!" Let's take a look at that....
Posted by Mitch on May 07, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (15)

Host On Her Own Petard

Air America's FrankenNet's program "The O'Franken Factor" plugs itself as "Drug Free Radio' - a jape at Rush Limbaugh's late painkiller jones. As Elder and Saint Paul from Fraters Libertas pointed out at Keegans last night, the irony is positively...
Posted by Mitch on May 07, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6)

A Conspiracy Theory

The left is in a tizizzy over Disney's decision to bar Miramax from distributing Michael Moore's latest epic of paranoid neo-fiction movie. Disney's call - to follow through on its promist not to distribute "Fahrenheit 911" is being spun -...
Posted by Mitch on May 05, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (8)

Friends=Toast

"Friends" ends its very, very long run tonight. I've still never seen it....
Posted by Mitch on May 05, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (21)

Matthews Remembers Hardball

Watched Matthews on the Today show. Matthews, of course, has been ripped over and over this past week for his relentlessly pansylike interview of John Kerry - softball after pathetic softball. This morning, being interviewed by Matt Lauer over his...
Posted by Mitch on April 30, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2)

Priorities

Top story on the Today show this morning:Michael Jackson fires his defense team.#2 story?Tribute to Pat TillmanNice to know the media knows what's news....
Posted by Mitch on April 26, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3)

While We Argue About Coffins

While the Today show discussed the military coffin controversy, they ran a loop of the various coffin photographs. Over. And over. We wouldn't be looking for a Cronkite-like "This war is unwinnable" moment, would we?...
Posted by Mitch on April 23, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2)

Northern Alliance - Trendsetters!

Last night, lefty anonyblogger "Atrios" apparently filled in for Janeane Garofalo on Majority Report, FrankenNet's nightside show. This followed a week after the Northern Alliance's first-ever blogger-hosted national talk show (and I'll stifle a chuckle and call FrankenNet "national"). I...
Posted by Mitch on April 22, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Unbearable Dreariness of Being Nick Coleman

Elder from Fraters said it well yesterday:After my latest lengthy lambasting of Nick Coleman yesterday, I was left in a bit of a funk. What was the point anyway? How many times have I pounded on this worthless bastard in...
Posted by Mitch on April 22, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

And...Cut!

Even liberals can't get everything they want in court, according to Drudge:...
Posted by Mitch on April 21, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2)

The Hellish World of Nick Coleman

The buses are running again. Nick Coleman can stop prowling the nether regions of the cities, looking for the most disaffected bits of the thin film of people who even noticed that the buses were gone. So is he happy?...
Posted by Mitch on April 21, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2)

Why FrankenNet Is Doomed

When we first addressed FrankenNet two months ago, I predicted that the network would last - in some form or another - for perhaps a couple of years. I predicted its first major affiliate would desert in a year -...
Posted by Mitch on April 21, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (17)

Illiterate Report

I used to criticize the juvenile writing, perfunctory intellectuality and scattershot spelling of the late, unlamented Rushlimbaughtomy. After reading the show blog for FrankenNet's evening show, "Majority Report" (starring Janeane Garofalo along with Sam Seder, who is apparently the driving...
Posted by Mitch on April 20, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1)

Capturing The Base

Captain Ed tips us off to a hilarious drubbing of Air America by LATimes media crit David Shaw. Shaw is, as you read in the article, an unabashed liberal who wants very much to see Air America on the air...
Posted by Mitch on April 20, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2)

Couric's Comic Bias

Katie Couric, interviewing Deputy Attorney General James Comey about the move to renew the Patriot Act:What about people who are rounded up, imprisoned and kept for months without trial?Bless his heart, and unusually for a Bush administration appointee, Comey actually...
Posted by Mitch on April 19, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1)

All Talk

Radio has been a two-edged sword in my life. Radio was my first big passion. It is also an industry full of deeply, crushingly dysfunctional people - and I was one of them, when I was in the business. Maybe...
Posted by Mitch on April 17, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4)

The Dog Ate Our Financing

Air America FrankenNet, the liberal talk radio network that launched two weeks ago with much ballyhoo and saturation coverage from a media that desperately wants to see it succeed, seems to be having trouble. Yesterday, Drudge broke the story -...
Posted by Mitch on April 15, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Unspellchecked

Unspellchecked - I finally made it out to the Air America website - while I still can, if the news from LA and Chi is any indication. I got as far as the page for "Unfiltered" - featuring Lizzzzz Winstead,...
Posted by Mitch on April 15, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

The O'Franken Non-Factor

The O'Franken Non-Factor - I finally listened to a few segments of the O'Franken Factor - Air America's flagship show, and the only show on the lineup that can be heard in the Twin Cities, via three hours of leased...
Posted by Mitch on April 15, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

So Tune In

So Tune In - Tonight, 5-8 Central, as the Northern Alliance fills in for Hewitt....
Posted by Mitch on April 13, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Start the Sanity!

Start the Sanity! - A common feature among many lefty blogs, both big and small, is a near-maniacal obsession with the daily dip and swoop of the polls. Kos even has each of the major polls' latest results lined up...
Posted by Mitch on April 12, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Shakedown Cruise

Shakedown Cruise - Today's Northern Alliance Radio Network started kind of rough - microphone problems - but by the end of the show we were clicking on eight cylinders (and driving a four-cylinder car, ironically). Not my favorite performance, speaking...
Posted by Mitch on April 10, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

The Today Show

The Today Show - Floating In a Contextless Universe - I don't know why I do this, but here goes: On the Today show, after his context-mangling performance at the 9/11 hearings, he ranged from the sublime - "Al Quaeda...
Posted by Mitch on April 09, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Non-Factor

Non-Factor - You know your talk show is a disaster when even the choir you're supposed to be preaching to is unimpressed. Jason Zengerle of the New Republic - certainly a back-row tenor in the liberal media choir - certainly...
Posted by Mitch on April 08, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

FrankenNet

FrankenNet - I missed every single minute of it. I'll probably do the same today. Something about having a job (and no radio when I'm there, and lousy AM reception even if I did). But Steve Gigl got in a...
Posted by Mitch on April 01, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Lazy, or Biased?

Lazy, or Biased? - The Strib ran a story this morning in regard to the Clarke fiasco. They cite a phone interview with a Tom Maertens of Mankato - a long-timer in the foreign service and National Security office -...
Posted by Mitch on March 27, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Uh Oh. Now They're Really

Uh Oh. Now They're Really Mad - After years of bombings, suicide bombings, machine-gunnings, rocket attacks and ambushes, Hamas is finally going to get serious about killing Israelis, apparently: "Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians chanting 'Revenge! Revenge!' flooded Gaza's streets...
Posted by Mitch on March 22, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

The Tabby In Winter

The Tabby In Winter - Dan Barreiro writes about his resignation from the Strib today. Thinking back, it may have been the third Barreiro column I've read in 17 years. I couldn't tell you what the other two were. If...
Posted by Mitch on March 08, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

The Sound of Markers Being

The Sound of Markers Being Called In - As word of John Kerry's complete absence from voting starts to circulate, it only makes sense that his biggest supporters - the media - are closing ranks. In a prominent place on...
Posted by Mitch on March 02, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

The Hype Machine

The Hype Machine - I'm watching the "Today" Show. Katie Couric: "Who is Ed Schultz? Meet the man that some say could be the left's answer to Rush Limbaugh". I'm stunned. Is this how desperate the left is? Is this...
Posted by Mitch on March 02, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Fast Eddie

Fast Eddie - When I was a kid growing up in North Dakota, just getting started in the radio business, a new sportscaster came to Fargo's Channel 4, to backstop the legendary Jim Adelson. He was "Fast" Eddie Schultz, former...
Posted by Mitch on February 26, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Core Incompetency

In this space, I frequently advise liberals "never, ever try to write about defense, or anything military in nature. Your ignorance doesn't just harm your credibility; it makes you look like a laughingstock". We need to add "Disaster preparedness"...
Posted by Mitch on February 17, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Trying To Spin Defeat

A number of leftbloggers, overwhelmed by this week's avalanche of documentary evidence of Bush's service in the Air Guard, have resorted to punting to a screed by Calpundit that, supposedly, picks holes in the White House's doc dump. I...
Posted by Mitch on February 14, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Report On the Media

Ranting Profs present an email from an Army officer : in charge of his unit's media relations. It explains a lot about the vaccuum of news about the reconstruction:"The Fox News crew laid out what qualified as 'newsworthy: -- Women...
Posted by Mitch on February 10, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

'Splain Me Somethin'

So at the beginning of January, Mark "Revolutionary Gonad" Gisleson leaves his resume writing service to join the City Pages full-time. During that time, he pointlessly attacked Fraters Libertas, and made statements that even Steve Perry, the CP's crypto-Maoist editor,...
Posted by Mitch on February 03, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Measuring Bias?

The blog Lying in Ponds has an interesting take on measuring the "bias" in media figures. Now, LIP's vibe is that they oppose "partisanship" of all types, which is ludicrous - partisanship is how things get done. But it's an...
Posted by Mitch on January 27, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

The Ugliest American

Today, I'm ashamed to be an American. Maureen Dowd may have just written the stupidest column ever to grace the NYT - a column full of the sort of myopic provincialism that, had it been written by an Idaho Republican,...
Posted by Mitch on January 23, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Exit the Cackler

Katherine Lanpher is leaving MPR, apparently (so say Fraters) to go to New York to join Al Franken on the new Liberal Titanic talkradio network. More on that - and I do mean "more on" - later. This is from...
Posted by Mitch on January 21, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1)

What A Difference Two Days Makes

The City Pages' Steve "Don't Stop Believing" Perry on the Iowa Caucuses:There is real electoral gold in going after the Bush gang directly and lustily. It already should have been evident from the successes of Howard Dean, but these people...
Posted by Mitch on January 21, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Sublime? Meet Ridiculous

The City Pages Steve Perry straddles reality in today's Bush Wars. On the one hand:Tuesday morning’s conventional wisdom got one thing right. The biggest beneficiary of the whole pageant was Edwards, largely by virtue of his being neither of the...
Posted by Mitch on January 20, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Adios, Campbell

It's been fun, Campbell Brown. We first saw you you during the 2000 recount controversy. And oy, for a political reporter, you really were hot stuff - probably the best campaign-season eye candy any network ever put on the air....
Posted by Mitch on January 16, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

That Objective European Media

Sullivan noted last week that the BBC actually let some balance slip:How's this for a shocker? Here's how the BBC described the recent Carnegie Endowment criticism of the liberation of Iraq: The left-leaning Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said US...
Posted by Mitch on January 13, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Beyond Parody

Beyond Parody - Sometimes, a piece comes out that practically parodies itself. And as fun as that can be, the real joy is encountering media product that unconsciously parodies itself, while semi-consciously parodying itself. Such is today's Doug Grow column...
Posted by Mitch on January 08, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Bang the Krug Slowly

Powerline's piece last Saturday ended like this::"Paul Krugman is a sad case: a once-respected economist who has become a shrill, hyper-partisan pundit. He cares nothing about truth, and everything about promoting the interests of the Democratic Party. He uses his...
Posted by Mitch on January 05, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Perspective

Perspective - The media - and most left bloggers - have less sense of historical perspective than my 12 year old daughter does. Victor Davis Hanson is here to provide it.Going into the heart of Mesopotamia, American troops passed Iraqi...
Posted by Mitch on January 03, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

My Only Comment...

...on the Vikings is that now we only have to wait two months for pitchers to report for spring training. Football - at least, if the Bears are out of the running - tends to bore me stiff. So...
Posted by Mitch on December 29, 2003 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

The World is Shocked

Jesse Ventura's Americatanks after two months.: "After a two-month run, former Gov. Jesse Ventura's cable show is off the air and there are no immediate plans for MSNBC to bring it back. The news channel's president, Erik Sorenson, sent a...
Posted by Mitch on December 26, 2003 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Person Of The Year

Time has released their person of the year for 2003. But according to Tim Blair, we weren't supposed to know it yet...Time magazine is obsessively secretive over its annual Person of the Year selection. This year’s choice is due to...
Posted by Mitch on December 21, 2003 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

It's A Reflex

Other people have commented on the Padilla case in greater depth than I can manage. I'm not going to say I completely disagree with the ruling - which says that US civilians arrested on US soil are subject to constitutional...
Posted by Mitch on December 19, 2003 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Limbaugh and the New Media

Why Limbaugh doesn't "get" blogs - and some things we don't get about him.

Posted by Mitch on October 07, 2003 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Radio Daze

Brian Lambert reports on a number of shakeups at local radio stations. MPR and NPR are playing musical chairs with a their air talent - in a move whose main impact would seem to sideline the lovely Lorna Benson, MPR...
Posted by Mitch on July 26, 2003 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2)

Franken See, Franken Do

Jay Reding beat me to one story I've been chewing on for a few weeks here; efforts to kick off a liberal talk radio network. Says the Times The plan faces several business and content challenges, from finding a network...
Posted by Mitch on February 18, 2003 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

The Daschle Rant

Trying to find a non-Democrat scapegoat for the Democrat degüello of two weeks ago, lame-duck Senate Majority Leader Daschle has been lashing out at conservative-dominated Talk Radio. It's gratifying to see talk radio lashing back. Now, I've always been amazed...
Posted by Mitch on November 22, 2002 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Evil Talk Radio

Although the Dems have yet to show how "right wing" talk radio is responsible (as they claimed in 1995) for the Oklahoma City bombing (which indeed may have had Iraqi involvement - hardly a key Limbaugh audience), Yahoo! Tom Daschle...
Posted by Mitch on November 21, 2002 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Lambert on Keillor

Brian Lambert, if you're from out of town, is the Pioneer Press' media columnist. He's the quintessential critic - in several attempts to be an air personality, he's proven himself an excellent print journalist. And his left-bias is as subtle...
Posted by Mitch on November 19, 2002 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Steph Tanks

George Stephanopoulos is having some problems as host of This Week, and the ratings show it. This bit is interesting:Happily, the roundtable also is home to the show's best asset: the articulate and ever-sharp George Will. Television is overstaffed with...
Posted by Mitch on November 19, 2002 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Just a Minute...

An NPR staffer wrote to take issue with my portrayal of Keillor's funding stream. I said in my ;original screed that Keillor got where he is today using tax dollars. Apparently, it's a little murkier than that - the...
Posted by Mitch on November 14, 2002 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Can Neither Confirm Nor Deny

...that this is a genuine NYT front page. Via Andrew Sullivan......
Posted by Mitch on November 11, 2002 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Gloves are Off

This email, from a reader who describes himself as "not really a conservative, but certainly not a liberal", on the changing perspective of the Strib's coverage since the election:Have you noticed that since the election that Strib, which always pretended...
Posted by Mitch on November 11, 2002 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

The Other Coleman

Nick Coleman is not to be confused with Norm. He's a St.Paul Pioneer Press columnist who is spared the title "most obnoxiously leftist columnist in the Twin Cities" only by the existence of the Star/Tribbune's Doug Grow. His stances are...
Posted by Mitch on November 07, 2002 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Moore

It's not hard to find conservative critics of paleoleftist filmmaker and polemicist Michael Moore. Now, even some of his sympathizers are getting the picture. Steven Whitty, who describes himself as sympathetic to much of Moore's politics, writes this for the...
Posted by Mitch on October 14, 2002 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Pick Your Sources Carefully -

Pick Your Sources Carefully - The DFL website is currently leading with an article about New York Times economics pundit Paul Krugman, warning about "more Enrons". The tale, told in the DFL website's customary fratboy smirk, cautions people that noted...
Posted by Mitch on February 10, 2002 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Bias Watch!=

Bias Watch! - Amazingly, in the story linked in the previous blurb, the Star/Tribunes Dane Smith does not refer to Bill Cooper as "Conservative Bill Cooper". What's this world coming to? First, Conrad DeFiebre gives fair coverage to the Concealed...
Posted by Mitch on February 06, 2002 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)