Why, no, stupid peasants. Nobody is taking your guns.

I mean, nobody is taking your gas stoves.

Ooos. Nobody is going to convert all cars to electric.

Whoopsie. I mean nobody is going to surreptitiously convert the power grid to something that can’t sustain life in any place where the temperature gets below 40.

D’oh! I mean, nobody is…

…er, what’s nobody doing?

Oh, yeah. The bug thing. That’s what hobody ever said anything about.

Your bad.

SCENE: Mitch BERG is standing in line at a Mexican fast-food joint when Evan Micah BRYAN walks into the store. BRYAN is 23, a 2022 graduate of Macalester with a degree in Political Science, is the Senior Communications Director for the Senate DFL Caucus.

BRYAN: MeRG.

BERG: Uh, hey…

BRYAN: ZOMGConServaTiveZ aRe tEh HiCks aND ruBEz wHo aRe aFRAID of tEH ciTIes.

BERG: As a conservative who lives in the Midway, I refute you.

BRYAN: HeEre iS TeH PrOOf ZOMG!

BERG: Its a photomeme.

BRYAN: OuR pHiLoSOphY in tEh DFL CoMMUnICatION oFFiCe iS iF wE du iT inna MeMe, iT’s ReALi-T!

BERG: Which is why your entire communications strategery is to show DFL politicians in an endless stream of selfies, and lots of end-zone ball-spiking, with no substance whatsoever?

BRYAN: No cOMMeNT.

BERG: Right. So – back to the costume. Let me guess – you are, as a DFL employee, a middle class white guy…

BRYAN: tHAT’s hOw I iDenTiFY.

BERG: …who lives in a neighborhood like Marcy-Holmes or Longfellow or Merriam Park

BRYAN: RiGHt. TEH cOOl pLaCes.

BERG: which is clogged with other young-ish single non-profit-industrial complex employees with plenty of money…

BRYAN: sURe.

BERG: You take the Green Line to a concert once or twice a year…

BRYAN: HoW ELsE woUld I fINd SaINT PaUl?

BERG: Sort of a “Fifteen Minute City”, where everything you do – your coffee shop, your grocery mart, your restaurants, your coffee shop, your bars, your restaurants, your transit stop, your coffee shop, your restaurants, your coffee shops, are all within a fifteen minute walk.

BRYAN: TeH wAY tEH wHOLe worLd sHouLD bE!

BERG: Where all the workers take the bus or drive hoopties in from Richfield or New Hope or Vadnais Heights.

BRYAN: yEp…ER, wUt?

BERG: Your “fifteen minute city” is actually an “Urban Life” theme park. But, sure, by all means, progsplain me about city life, junior.

BRYAN: HeY, loOk! MaTt RoZnOwSki iS slAshinG yOuR TirEz ZOMG!

BERG: Of course he is.

And SCENE

I may be the last person in America to comment on the Jason Aldean song.

But this is right in my wheelhouse, so I’m going to do it anyway.

I grew up in what was a big city in rural North Dakota; Jamestown is around 15,000 people – sort of that awkward stage where people from big cities think they’re in Mayberry, and people from smaller towns get nervous about traffic and crime.

I don’t romanticize small towns. I left Jamestown for a reason; there was literally no opportunity for me there. IAnd as much as North Dakota has evolved, there still isn’t (although if I were 22 today, Fargo would be an option); the town managed to avoid all that unseemly oil money to the west and big tech money in Fargo. And it surprises outsiders (!), but there is no privacy in a small town; everyone knows your history, going back a couple of generations. Even when I was 20, that was claustrophobic for me.

Beyond that? Ugly things happen in small towns. Small-time hoods wind up dumped in rivers after running afoul bigger-time hoodlums. Even if you leave out opioids and meth, which have ravaged many small towns that’ve been passed by economically, the same social patterns that *can* make so many small towns such stable and accountable (and infuriating, Lake Wobegon-like) places can also make for some pretty entrenched miscreancy.

But those same social patterns that drove me so crazy as a kid help enforce something that’s absolutely mandatory for a functioning democracy – the “high trust society”. If you trust that your neighbor isn’t trying to stab you in the back (figuratively – or maybe literally), you can spend that time and effort doing something useful.

If you leave your car unlocked with the keys in the ignition and go to bed, is your car going to be there in the morning? When everyone around you knows everyone and everything they’re doing, and the peer pressure is strong enough, probably, yeah.

And if the Sheriff knows he’s going to be going back to the highway patrol if he screws too many people over? You’ll have a well-behaved, ethical, *trustworthy* sheriff.

My favorite example: during Covid, I listened to some of Governor Walz’s press conferences. He sounded like he was hectoring a bunch of kids in a gym class. It was insulting. Then, I drove across the border and caught Governor Burgum giving a similar address. The difference was night and day; he sounded like he was addressing…adults. Equals. People who he knew would be bending his ear out on the streets of Bismarck if he got too big for his britches.

That’s not *entirely* a function of smaller towns and states; Salt Lake City and Boise and Plano Texas all do really well by those measures. But all of them have social cohesion and a high trust culture in common.

So if I were to do an edit on the Aldean song, I may go with something like “Try that in a place with high-trust area with social cohesion”.

(On the claims that the song is “racist?” That’s just moronic; you presume social disorder and crime are “black” things? And as to the courthouse used in the video having been the site of a lynching 100 years ago? Take that up with the Tennesee Film Board, which markets filming locations to production companies; many videos, and 2-3 movies (including the “Hannah Montana” movie and a Lifetime Christmas film) have been shot at that same courthouse. Oddly, the Tennessee Film Board doesn’t talk about lynching history any more than Duluth’s Chamber of Commerce does…).

Modern “progressivism” could pull off something that Hitler and Stalin themselves could only do via overt means at a time when it was very hard to move your capital around the world: make it possible to destroy dissenters financial lives.

It’s called “Debanking”:

And for all of Big Left’s yappng about “Fascism”, it is in fact the real thing

Borrowed with permission from a friend on social media:

When I moved to Minnesota in May 2010, I had just graduated college and taken a job offer in Edina. In the aftermath of the Great Recession jobs were scarce, especially in Milwaukee, and a young man trying to make it on his own had to be willing to uproot his life for greater opportunities.

I joined a local Christian urban mission and moved into a neighborhood filled with violence and poverty and beautiful people who God loves. I was enthralled by the vivid colors of Minneapolis, the hustle and bustle, the natural beauty of the city combined with over a century of human gardening that created a city of lakes and parks amidst neighborhoods and skyscrapers. I loved the breweries, the neighborhood pubs nestled between homes, the intimidating importance of people striding in the skyways, the spectacular events that brought everyone together like the Basilica block party, the way strangers would become neighbors when three feet of snow forced us all to work together to dig out city buses.

I told anyone who would listen that Minneapolis was my favorite city. That there was nowhere else I’d rather live. Especially compared to Milwaukee, it was difficult to make friends here – the old adage “if you want friends in Minnesota, go to kindergarten” was spot on. But I found some spectacular people who loved Jesus and wanted to see the city face its ignored injustices and thrive together. I wanted to spend the rest of my life here.

After dedicating my entire adult life to the city working in its worst neighborhoods to right its worst wrongs, 2020 came along and the air changed. When a governor illegally mandates you stay in your home, unable to even visit your parents next door while states like Florida are totally open, something about your trust in government breaks. When you realize your neighbors are going quietly along with this fundamental break from democracy, you look at them differently. They can’t be trusted either.

Somehow, the air tastes different. It smells different. It doesn’t refresh or enliven – it loses its life-giving potency.

When citizen journalists publish story after story of someone murdered by a violent criminal who prosecutors and judges had dead to rights but refused to imprison, the air changes.

When you realize that half of abortions in Minnesota are paid for by tax dollars and the state enables elective abortion until birth, the air changes.

When the legislature, with one vote majority, declares Christian parents abusive and threatens to take custody of their kids, the air feels downright poisonous. When the Star Tribune and KARE fail to even mention this in the news, it sinks on your chest like a weight that the fix is in.

After all that, things don’t feel the same. You don’t feel like you can enjoy even nature, the trees and lakes. Surely the leaves hold no responsibility for the great evil that has become Minnesota, but they become symbols, reminders of something dark.

Every breath you draw into your lungs feels tainted somehow. If you’ve ever inhaled a gas that stopped you halfway and forced you to cough instead, you know what I mean. You feel suffocated, every day. You yearn for true air, true breath, true freedom.

You shine your light in the darkness every day, but over time, you realize your batteries are fading, and the light is dimming. There is only so much darkness a human soul can take.

This morning I woke up in our new home in Tennessee. Finally, I breathed deep, and was reminded of the example of my ancestors whose strength and determination brought them across the sea to become a political bloc whose American power ultimately put so much pressure on the UK that it had to relent and, after 700 years of tyranny, restore freedom in Ireland.

—–

“But if at last our colours should be torn from Ireland’s heart

Her sons with shame and sorrow from the dear old isle would part

I’ve heard a whisper of a land that lies beyond the sea

Where rich and poor stand equal in the light of freedom’s day

Oh Ireland, must we leave you, driven by a tyrant’s hand

And seek a mother’s blessing from a strange and distant land

Where the cruel cross of England shall never more be seen

And in that land we’ll live and die for the wearing of the green”

All reactions:

11

Oh, believe me – I understand the motivation.

I can’t imagine life without the fight – but I can imagine life elsewhere.

…that Democrats not only assume “their” voters are stupid and uncritical, but they they count on it.

If you thought MTG’s evidence show was bad, I bet a rape trial would really freak you out.

“First, they ignore you. Then they. mock you. Then they attack you. Then you win”
– Gandhi

I remember during the heyday of the Tea Party, in 2009-10, living through Gandhi’s aphorism – and, in the end, seeing how very overrated Gandhi was as a keeper of profound wisdom.

But I digress.

The Democrats, MSM (ptr) and the Mitt Romney wing of the GOP did their best to pretend it didn’t matter.

Then it turned to mockery and its idiot cousin, uninformed defamation.

Then came the attacks.

And then we won – at least, in 2010. Big Left and Big GOP still don’t want to talk about it, but the Tea Party beat both establishments like Keith Moon beating a rack tom.

Of course, in 2012 and onward, the Empire struck back. Big Left and Big GOP teamed up, in effect, to smother the insurgents. It didn’t help that, by dint of being elected to actual office, the Tea Party became “the establishment” that the Ron Paul crowd railed against in the next presidential cycle. The momentum ebbed – as it often does when grassroots movements have to get back to their day jobs.

The cycle has cycled.

“The Strib paid notice in its op-ed page that the “Mama Bears” – who’ve been sitting it out, apparently, since Sarah Palin left the stage – are back (emphasis added):

These conservative mothers and grandmothers, who in recent years have organized for ”parental rights,” including banning discussion of gender identity in schools, have been classified as extremists by the Southern Poverty Law Center. They have also been among the most coveted voters so far in the 2024 Republican presidential primary.

Donald Trump praised their work, saying organizations such as Moms for Liberty had taught the liberal left a lesson: ”Don’t mess with America’s moms.” Ron DeSantis said ”woke” policies had “awakened the most powerful political force in the country: mama bears.” His wife, Casey DeSantis, who launched ”Mamas for DeSantis” in leadoff-voting Iowa, said moms and grandmas were the ”game changer” in DeSantis’ blowout win for a second term as Florida governor. She predicted they will be again as he runs for president.

Who wants to tell columnist Sara Burnett know that nobody outside the mainstream media thinks the SPLC has any more objective down the middle credibility than ISAIAH or Moms Want Action?

Ye shall know them by their opposition:

”Republicans have decided that this is, I think, their golden ticket for the primaries to rile up their base,” said Katie Paris, who runs Red, Wine and Blue, a network of women pushing back on GOP-backed policies such as the anti-LGBTQ and anti-trans efforts of Moms for Liberty.

Leave it to Big Left to try to rally women around box wine. What next – an activist group called “Valium Girls?”

”Call it ‘parents’ rights,’ call it ‘mama bears,’ and try to make it sound like something that would be common sense. … The reality about ‘parents’ rights’ is that it’s just about the rights of a vocal minority that is trying to carry out an extreme political agenda.”

I can’t wait for the next Minnesota DFLer to try to comment on that last sentence.

Representative Walter Hudson put it best:

Much more to come

This is National Education Association primo Becky Pringle, speaking to the Red Guards in Shanghai in 1961.

Just kidding. She’s speaking – er, “Speaking” – to a teachers convention.

She walked on her applause for a solid minute. That’s just bizarre.

OK – so it’s poll time. Who does Pringle most resemble:

A: The austere Italian political wonk:

B: Dwight Schrute

C: Noted animal rights activist and social benefits champion:

Votes in the commlents.

A friend of the blog emails:

I thought the whole stupid idea to make I94 a boulevard was a dead idea. No one really wants it. If the activists get it, it won’t be what they want. Neighborhoods were destroyed when I94 was built, but tearing it out now for some fluffy grade level street, probably close to what Snelling looks like now would really destroy what’s left of the neighborhood (after it rebuilt from I94 and was subsequently destroyed by the light rail).

But, it seems there are enough activists who do not care about the neighbors that they serve, who are only looking to move up by talking the points without even understanding the points that MNDOT appears to be actually considering the stupid idea.

I wonder if anyone who votes for these crappy ideas actually commutes to work, or if they work from home? Do they think their barista at the coffee shop they walk to should work from home? Maybe the barista could be at home collecting unemployment while the robot serves lattes. Do they think the health care staff that care for their aging parents should also work from home? Maybe all the service industry workers, doctors included, should just be shocked up in work force housing next to their employer. That way, they won’t have to see any of those workers driving to work. The streets will be clean for their errands. 

Is there no end to how little those with privilege want to interact with us?

Signaling one’s virtue is a social activity – but only with the right society…

I’ve asked one of the planners to discuss this on the radio with me – a resident of the neighborhood they keep trying to destroyo. I’ve heard nothing back. I’m not going to hold my breath.

If the War on Terror had gone on a whole lot longer, I’m sure modern Hollywood would have gotten around to re-booting “MASH”. Because they literally have no new ideas [1].

And if they did? Corporal Klinger would appear via Zoom.

Mitch BERG is on the air in the bunker at AM1280. He’s interviewing Aaron ROSTON, writer at the (possibly fictional) progressive blog “MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com“.   He is a crossing guard at a school in rural southern Minnesota, and is a bullying activist – mostly focusing on promoting bullying of children of conservatives. ROSTON is talkng into microphone 3, lookng over the console at BERG.

BERG:  So you’re pro-choice? 

ROSTON:  Of course.  Abortion is a human right, 

BERG:  Let’;s define “human”.

ROSTON: That’s kind of absurd.

BERG:  Possible. Let’s see. So I have a question for you. When your mother was pregnant with and delivering you, at what point was it no longer acceptable for her to “terminate” you? Please be specific.

ROSTON:  Well, that was her choice.

BERG:  Right, Understood. So at what point in the pregnancy was it no longer her choice .

ROSTON:  Whenever she said.

BERG:  So could she terminate you now/

ROSTON:  Of course not. That’s absurd.

BERG:  Why?

ROSTON: Because I’m a human.

BERG:  Sure. So when did you become a human?

ROSTON:  When I was born.

BERG:  So two minutes after you were born, you were a human?

ROSTON:  Yes.

BERG:  And thirty seconds before you were born, when you were the exact same person you were ninety seconds later, but not quite out of your mother yet – was your life worth defending?

ROSTON:  That was up to my mother.

BERG:  So the only thing that changed about the moral value of your life in that ninety seconds was you emerging from your mother? It was entirely your mother’s call?

ROSTON: Sure.

BERG:  So could she still “terminate” you?

ROSTON:  Don’t be absurd!

BERG:  Why can’t she?

ROSTON:  You can’t murder a human.

BERG:  So thirty seconds before you were born, you weren’t human?

ROSTON:  Nope.

BERG:  And a minute later you were.

ROSTON: Yes.

BERG:  With the only difference being your mother’s choice?

ROSTON:  Yes.

BERG:  And no other reason she couldn’t terminate you today.

ROSTON:  You’re clearly a racist.

BERG:  Clearly.

(AND SCENE)

…if the city of Minneapolis’s priorities are in order.

I see your question, and raise you…:

That’ll help.

Me? I don’t want no scrubs.

Forget balancing power between the Legislative, Executive and Judicial branches. Democrats – including Kwesi Mfume, one of the most powerful people in Washington – have a view that’s more in line with the likes of…

…I dunno…

…Lavrentii Beria.

Self-governing society depends on people trusting each other, and the institutions we create.

Put a pin in that thought.

A lot of people on social media, not to mention the victim’s family as quoted in this Fox9 tweet, were a little horrified by the denouement to this horrible case, which we covered here almost two years ago:

It never went to trial:

Alexis Saborit, 42, was convicted of first-degree premeditated murder in court on May 11 in the death of 55-year-old America Thayer. However, Judge Caroline Lennon ruled on Saborit’s mental competency on Monday, citing in part psychologists determined “[Sarboit’s] mental illness prevented him from understanding his actions were morally wrong,” the order reads….

The order discusses Saborti’s history of mental illness, including his hospitalizations for “bizarre delusions” early as March 2013. He suffered a traumatic brain injury after being in a coma from a car crash in 2017 and began experiencing auditory hallucinations and paranoid delusions. 

After the crash, he was hospitalized in May 2020 for believing there was a camera in his head after the crash and everyone could hear what he was thinking, according to court records. He was also diagnosed with various mental health disorders, including manic psychosis and delusional disorder, among others. 

The defense argues since no expert testimony or evidence challenged the psychologist’s opinions he was mentally ill at the time of the crime, he should not be held criminally liable. 

Now, on one level I get the horror and revulsion. It’s a grisly, horrific crime.

But determining whether someone is incompetent to stand trial – “insanity” – is, like self-defense, an “affirmative defense”; the defense affirms “Yes, my client did what he’s accused of, but he was so out of his mind that trying him for it would be pointless; he can’t participate in his own defense”. As steep a hill as getting “self-defense” is to climb, insanity may be even harder to get past a judge.

Or so one hopes.

So let’s un-pin that first bit from way above.

Whatever the merits of the case (I don’t know), or Judge Lennon’s reasoningi – after this last five years in the Twin Cities, how many of you looked at this decision and thought “I just don’t trust that our legal system got this right”?

Philly woman comes home to burglars ransacking her apartment.

They attack her.

She attacks back:

Police say an unidentified woman returned to her apartment in Philadelphia’s Germantown neighborhood at about 1:30 a.m. Sunday and discovered four men inside. 

A struggle broke out between the woman and four suspected burglars, with the woman ultimately pulling out a firearm and shooting at the group. 

Two of the suspects were shot and injured, while the other two managed to flee the scene. It is not clear if the two who fled were also injured by the gunfire. 

In two bits of unrelated news:

• Crime in Philly is bad even by blue city standards
• Carry permit applications in Philly are up 600%.

Unexpectedly.

Attorney General Ellison compares Justice Thomas to a “house slave”:

Ellison – whose entire career is was financed by Alita Messinger and George Soros – accuses conservatives on the SCOTUS of being beholden to plutocrats.

And about 1:00 in, he says:

“Anyone who’s watched Django – Clarence Thomas is like Steven.

Ellison is being both a little more artful than Ryan Winkler’s ape-like response that Thomas is “Uncle Tom”. “Stephen” is a dog whistle reference from a Spike Lee movie – a coded reference to “someone all real black people should hold in contempt”.

Last year, with the aid of a 14:1 spending advantage, Ellison won by about a point.

He can be beaten.

It’s this blog’s considered position that DFL politicians can say pretty much anything they want; they know that the typical DFL voter, while invincibly smug about their education, is incredibly badly informed and, being a trained regurgitator of dogma, has no capacity for critical thought. They also know that the Twin Cities’ subservient news media – being mostly from that same population – won’t do anything to fix that.

Which is why Melvin Carter can write bilge like this:

Now, you know gun store owners aren’t clairvoyant. And I know it.

And so does Melvin Carter.

He knows that a “straw buyer” is someone who:

1. Uses his or her clean criminal record – with no indication they might be a probem, and
2. Knowingly sells or gives guns to criminals.

And Mayor Carter also knows that neither the Hennepin nor Ramsey County attorneys, going back decades, is especially enthusiastic about going after straw buyers. Nobody ever got elected Senator by putting a gang-banger’s girlfriend in jail.

But they typical DFL voter? Someone who learned their law enforcement from a video game or an episode of “Criminal Minds?” They likely do think there’s some way for a gun store worker to tell if the person showing their ID is one of the 99.999% of gun buyers who are legit, or that other one who’ll sell a gun to a ne’er do well who goes on to shoot up a bar in Saint Paul.

And they just don’t care that much anyway.

During the session: the DFL said that their “child tax credit” would reduce child poverty by a Third.

Now that we are waiting for the taxes to kick in:

“Good“ reduce child poverty.

Like Homer Simpson, slowly disappearing into the hedge behind him, the DFL is walking their absurd claim back, confident that nobody in the Twin Cities media will call them on it.

I’m going to check back periodically, just to see how child poverty has, well, “fallen”.

Any bets?

Here’s my series about my change of heart about public education.

Today’s music list:

Governor Klink was clearly not a writing teacher. And, for that matter, the social media interns from Macalester who apparently run his social media feed must have tested out of reading any actual good writing.

Long story short: The Governor’s social media feed is more cliché-ridden than Pointy Haired Boss, an Anthony Robbins seminar and your company’s marketing department all rolled together.

Examples:

So as a public service to the state of Minnesota, I’d like to run a contest to come up with more, better Tim Walz tweets.

I’d say “the more cliché-clogged the better”, but that goes without saying, doesn’t it.

Winners announced over the weekend.

This bit was making the rounds among the DFL repeat-bots yesterday, as evidence that Minnesota just loves them some DFL.

Unmentioned, and unpredicted during the interview: a 14:1 spending advantage, and a subservient media uncritically parroting the DFL’s messaging for it.

This is part of the DFL’s campaign to gaslight people into thinking they’re inevitable.

And – wow. The DFL just tossed their long-time messenger prof Dave Schultz under the light rail train.

There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.

Polls – and the current performance of the DeSantis campaign – shows that, whether from fatigue or bigger fish to fry, Covid just isn’t that big an issue for most people.

That’s a shame.

In the interest of making sure, to the best of my ability, that nobody forgets, here’s what Democrats were thinking…

…not one week into the pandemic, but in their unhinged hysteria 22 months later.

A third believed the unvaccinated should lose their children.

Of all the history – relevant and otherwise – that people barber on about while taking politics, the fact that this bit of the recent past is downright galling.

Minnesota DFLers are giving themselves rotor-cuff issues patting themselves on the back…

…over, uh, this:

Minnesota came in one slot of Texas. I’m old enough to remember when Minnesota was overwhelmed with New York City. Plus ca change…

But what is the rationale for this list, from always-Democrat-friendly CNBC?

I’ll add some emphasis:

To determine its rankings, CNBC factored in metrics across 10 categories, listed here in order of their weight: workforce; infrastructure; economy; life, health and inclusion; cost of doing business; technology and innovation; business friendliness; education; access to capital; and cost of living.

So – according to a list that ranks stuff HR cares about well ahead of stuff Accounting cares about, Minnesota beats Texas…

…by one.

Wheeeeeee.

Congrats, DFL.

Spanish environment minister Teresa Ribera…:

1. Took a private jet to a climate conference – her 17th private jet trip of 2023.
2. Took a limousine downtown to get to the conference
3. Stopped a block away from the conference, took out a bike…
4. And rode the last 1-200 yards, as her entourage followed in their government issue “impress the peasants” rides.

It seems to be all the rage among the “progressive” “elites” these days:

As I noted a couple weeks ago, drag bores me stiff.

So it’s a little galling that “drag” – a minstrel-show appropriation of a (to me) deadly dull art form, presented under the fairly proposterous premise that people with what people used to refer to as “alternate lifestyles” are remotely “underground” [1], especially in places like the Twin Cities these days – is one of our currently inescapable social skirmishes.

Last week, a children’s book store in Chaska – Chaska – was the subject of a viral video in which a woman castigated an employee over the store holding a “drag story time”. [2]

Well, that was a line that the increasingly “blue” far-west metro will not tolerate being crossed:

Drag shows: Meh.

Metro parents tripping over themselves to signal their virtue by, er, dragging their kids to a minstrel show? Blech.

I wish I could do a blind exit poll of the kids who got stuffed into that store, to see how many of the boys were creeped straight the hell out – or bored out of their minds and desperately wanting to do pretty much anything else in the world.

[1] One of Scott Johnson’s great contributions to the American intellectual landscape was referring to today’s LGBT movement as based around “the love that just won’t shut up”.

[2] Has the store ever done a “Blue Collar Family Story Time?” An “immigrant Story Time, or a “Veterans Story Time”? An “Intact Nuclear Family Story Time?” Why is it that men doing a female minstrel show are the only “storytellers” our extreme left wants to recognize?