So the other day, when I wrote…:

In the interview, [my interpretation of Strib reporter Eric Black’s view of the role of “object] were clear; better to keep all appearance of bias out of the mix.

Question for Eric Black; to the non-”journalist”, you’d seem to have changed your mind.  You’ve gone to work for an outlet that discloses its biases – or, to be more accurate, disclaims bias because of an unenforceable, untestable “pledge” while waving its “progressive” flag with promiscuous glee…With none of [Black’s new co-workers] is there the faintest reason to assume any of the sort of “detachment” or “objectivity” to which you seemed to aspire – which, indeed, you held up as the preferred model for journalism when you walked with Hugh.

So is this a change of heart? 

Why?

…was I being accurate or fair?

We’ll find out soon!

More to come – stay tuned.

…Eric Black, one of the Twin Cities’ most respected reporters, is apparently joining the Minnesota Monitor – a publication underwritten by the “Center for Independent Media”, an organization that used to share office space with George Soros-funded attack-PR firm “Media Matters for America”.  While we (and for that matter nobody) really knows where their money comes from, appearances count – as does the CIM and MNMon’s silence about the source of their funding.

But let’s ignore all that for a moment.  The MNMon – as a “progressive” news site – subscribes, wittingly or not, to the European model of journalism, where newspapers and other media outlets are honest and up-front about their own intrinsic biases.  For example, everyone knows before opening up the paper that the Guardian is a hard-left leaning paper, Die Zeit and the Sun lean left (by European standards), that Frankfurter Allgemeine is slightly right of center, and that the Times is sympathetic to the Tories.  One filters the news on one’s own, fully aware of any potential ideological bias that might be operating in the writing or editing process.

The American system, for over a century, has either rigorously disciplined itself to seek and maintain detachment and tried to abjure points of view or proffered an elaborate fiction based on the myth of objectivity to cover deep-seated political biases with a thin veneer of dogmatic legitimacy, depending on your view.  Pundits on both sides claim to see, and sometimes strain to advocate, one or the other or some compomise among them.

Black, in an interview on the Hugh Hewitt show last October, would seem to have been firmly in the latter camp:

EB: I don’t believe the way to improve it is to have biased coverage with the biases admitted.

HH: Well, you’ve just admitted that everyone in the newsroom has bias. Every single person has a bias, right?

EB: Right. There’s a tension in my mind. I know you don’t think this is reasonable, but I’m trying to frame this in the way it appears to me. The tension in my mind is whether it’s better to have a system in which people are attempting to overcome their biases, are striving for some sort of a definition of fairness, which I agree is largely in the eye of the beholder, and very difficult to obtain, and as a result of that strategy, let’s call it a strategy or goal or a norm…as a result of that, our not disclosing their biases, or whether it’s better to just have open bias disclosed, but filtering and coloring everything that comes through.

In the interview, Black’s sympathies were clear; better to keep all appearance of bias out of the mix.  

Question for Eric Black; to the non-“journalist”, you’d seem to have changed your mind.  You’ve gone to work for an outlet that discloses its biases – or, to be more accurate, disclaims bias because of an unenforceable, untestable “pledge” while waving its “progressive” flag with promiscuous glee.  It’s an outlet where every single one of your “co-workers” has spent a blogging career writing stuff whose bias is a matter of pride (as is my own).  With none of them is there the faintest reason to assume any of the sort of “detachment” or “objectivity” to which you seemed to aspire – which, indeed, you held up as the preferred model for journalism when you walked with Hugh.

So is this a change of heart? 

Why?

Eric Black goes to his first Minnesota Monitor editorial meeting:

[Scene:  A cluttered garrett in Northeast Minneapolis.   A group gathers around a table; twentysomething hipsters drinking Red Bull, dishevelled thirtysomethings guzzling Caribou, and one nattily-dressed fiftysomething, Eric Black]

EDITOR ROBIN MARTY:  “OK, let’s, like, come to order.  It’s my pleasure to like introduce Eric Black.”

ALL (Bored): “Hey, Eric!”

ERIC BLACK: [Standing, graciously] “Hello, and thank you.”

MARTY: “Eric used to work at the Star/Tribune…”

11th AVENUE ANDY: “…before Michele Bachmann had you fired!  Right?”

BLACK: “…er…actually, I took a buyout, and I’m not sure that Congresswoman Bachmann…

[several staffers break into loud hissing sounds]

BLACK: “…had anything to do with anything at the…er…Strib”

JOE BODELL: “HAH!  I KNEW it!  Bachmann is uninvolved in the day to day operations of the Strib!  HEADLINE!”

BLACK: “Er…she’s an elected official, not a publisher…”

MARTY: “We can, like, come back to that in like a moment or two.  What I’d like to do is get some of Eric’s ideas about some directions we can totally take, now that we are covering Minnesota, Colorado and like Iowa.  Eric?  What do you think?”

JEFF FECKE: “Thanks, Robin.  I was watching Governor Timmy at a press conference the other day, and he looked terrified…”

MARTY: “Actually, Jeff, I was asking Eric”

FECKE: “Doh!”

BLACK: “Quite all right.  I think one of the more interesting stories in the upcoming election is how changes in the demography of all three of these states, as well as their surrounding areas, are affecting the traditional alignments of these states.  Minnesota, for example, has been trending “redder” as a result of the growth of the more-conservative suburbs…”

[scattered hissing]

ANDY: “Wingnuts!  Wingnuts!  Unclean!”

BLACK: “…er, while in Colorado, it’s been sort of the opposite, as liberals from California move to…”

FECKE:  “THAT’s why Governor Timmy the Tool is terrified!  Because Minnesota is turning redder!  He’s a tool!  Why does he hate womenandchildren?”

BLACK: “…um…” [stares, nonplussed]

FECKE: [Continuing, rising from seat] “And that’s why we need fair, balanced, unbiased journalists like us!  He’s totally Pwn3d!…

BLACK:  “Er, Mr. Fecke?  A quick question.  What exactly does “Pwn3d” mean?  You write it all the time.  What is that?”

FECKE: “It’s when a tooltackular hacktool gets himself into a state of Pwnd3tude”.

BLACK: “Ah.  So, Jeff, how exactly is it that you stay detached enough to cover the news as a “journalist”?  Just curious…” 

FECKE:  “Because to show the womenandchildren what a hacktackular tool Timmy the hacktackular terrified tool is, you have to subvert the dominant paradigm!”

BLACK: “Er, right, but…” 

 FECKE: “Why does John Kline hate to admit he’s terrified of me?  Why woin’t Michael Brodkorb admit he’s on the payroll of George Soros?”

MARTY: “…er, Jeff?  That’s us…” 

FECKE: “Yeah, that’ll work!  Hah!  Why do hacktackular Rethuglican tools hate the truth!  Why does Michele Bachmann hate evangelitools!  God is a woman!  John Hinderaker eats pork – why does John Hackdertooler hate vegetables?  Hackey Pwn hack!  Tool tool toolity hackity tool!  Pwn pwn pwn pwn pwn!  Pwntackular hacktoolular pookity pookity!  Plockity pawlenty pawtucket plocktoolkit pucktunkular plockpoofitty plookity plooo ploooo plooooooooooooooooooo…

[drops to floor, convulsing, repeating gibberish, typing it into personal blog]

MARTY: “Thanks, Eric.  Next order of business…”

BLACK: “Er, wait.  The Minnesota Monitor approaches “journalism” from an entirely biased perspective, and is on the payroll of powerful left-wing partisan special interests.  Your staff is composed entirely of people with years of highly biased, partisan writing behind them.  And yet you walk into the Minnesota Monitor offices, put on your “journalist” hat, and you expect the reader to think you’re unbiased and report fairly?

MARTY: “We have a pledge”.

BLACK:  “Ah.  Never mind then”.

MARTY: “Next order of business – why Republican bloggers getting money undercuts democracy…”

Tune in for next week’s edition of “As the Soros Money Burns”.

 UPDATE:  Foot continues the thread.

“MNob” at Norwegianity tries to turn my genuine, apolitical tribute the the late Nick Mancini into a political screed.

Oh, she fails, of course, because whenever MNob (or pretty much any other leftyblogger) wants to tangle with me on any subject she always fails, and always will. 

But on this topic MNob is…well, a bit thick, as the sage might say:

what the suddenly ethic-loving right wing fails to grasp is that Mancini’s is in the middle of the bluest neighborhood in the bluest city in the bluest state. 

“Suddenly ethnic-loving”.  Hah.  That’s funny, coming from someone as screechingly myopic as Ms. Nob.  Nobster:  I am demonstrably more ethnically eclectic, in terms of personal anscestry, experience and overall fluency, than you will ever be.  We can take that to the bank.

But it’s the “bluest neighborhood” thing that’s more “interesting”, where “interesting” in this case means “removed from reality in kind of a bizarre way”.  Nob – so what?  It’s my city.   Nick Mancini was a restauranteur – one who (unlike some hypothetical MNob-owned restaurant, presuming MNob is a better cook and entertainer than lawyer) leaves his politics at the door.

Which is what MNob should do with her rhetoric, since…

Dave Thune has his election parties there, and it’s safe to assume that those GOP faithful visiting are doing so as if venturing into some odd ethnic enclave.

…she’s wrong.  Tim Pawlenty, Norm Coleman, Phil Krinkie, Joe Soucheray, Randy Kelly, Jerry Blakey and all manner of non-DFL, non-“blue blue blue” politicians and media figures have turned up at Mancini’s over the years, for all the same reasons that Dave Thune does; because Nick Mancini welcomed everyone, and, unlike MNob, didn’t let politics overcome basic human character and decency.

It’s “safe to assume” that Republicans who go there think they’re on some sort of safari?  Jeez, someone’s been marinading her brain in the cliche bucket.

It’s the West End – the part of the city Mitch Berg has labeled the semi-gritty, somewhat downmarket West End of Saint Paul. It’s the real childhood home of Nick and Chris Coleman, although Mitch seems to want to forget that part. 

“Seems to forget it?”

No, MNob, I know that the Coleman brothers – children of one of Minnesota’s most powerful politicians, stepchildren of one of its most powerful publishers – wrap themselves in the West End’s blue-collar mien at every opportunity.  But since I was paying tribute to Nick Mancini, I figured it really didn’t contribute to the original story.  Her little snif is to be expected of someone who didn’t mention even one word about Coleman’s skill on the bagpipes.   

It’s racially integrated, has small houses, and has a whole host of functioning neighborhood groups and churches – social engineering at its worst!  It’s the home of the people who defeated the state-subsideized [sic] Gopher State Ethanol plant. It’s the neighborhood that figured out how to make sure that 35E will never ever have a speed limit of more than 45 miles per hour.

All of which I’m on the record as supporting the West Enders on, by the way, not that MNob would let anything get past her Impenetrable Wall of Stereotypes.

Like… 

And as much as Mitch and Erik Hare get along, Erik lives in Irvine Park, the snooty appendage to the real West End.

The lawyer is dinging on people for being snooty!

It’s the sort of neighborhood and restaurant the average Anti-Strib and Shot in the Dark reader holds a romanticized image of, but would never actually visit, and would likely get lost in if they tried. 

 So do us all a favor and stay in Minneapolis.  I’m sure there’s some corporate chain steak place you can visit without having your sensibilities offended by the genuineness of Mancini’s.

And I repeat: …not that MNob would let anything get past her Impenetrable Wall of Stereotypes.

I know nothing about MNob’s background – but since she never lets that stop her, I’ll feel free to fill in the blanks.  MNob – while adding zilch to the discussion about Mancini – has shown that like most preening, stereotype-sodden liberal city residents, she’s terribly insecure about what must certainly have been her privileged suburban upbringing (I’m guessing Plymouth), and about the simple fact that she’s less eclectic, less tolerant, and not nearly as good a feminist as I am. 

Dave Thune, by the way, is a fellow North Dakota expat.  Say “hi” from me, wouldja?

Never send a Nob do to a Wege’s job.

Doug is back at Bogus Gold, after domain-server problems that are, ahem,  painfully familiar.

Sheila is on another of her “commonplace” rampages.

I love this one:

I have a higher and greater standard of principle [than George Washington]. Washington could not lie. I can lie but I won’t.

— Mark Twain, 1871

Oh, and this one:

He had the finest ear, perhaps, of any English poet; he was also undoubtedly the stupidest; there was little about melancholia he didn’t know; there was little else that he did.

— Auden on Tennyson

Just go and read ’em.  There’ll be thousands by the time she’s done.

A belated happy happy to Powerline, celebrated their fifth anniversary Saturday.

It’s hard to believe, sometimes, that:

• …I’ve been doing this longer than Powerline, and
• …we’ve all been doing this so long!

Happy anniversary, John, Paul, Ringo and George and Scott.

About 11 years ago – half a decade before anyone had heard of blogs – I exorcised my inner pundit on a Minnesota Politics mailing list run by E-Democracy.  The forum was dominated by orthodox and fundamentalist DFLers – indeed, I was invited to join the forum by the chairman of the Libertarian Party of Minnesota, who wanted to get some actual ideological diversity onto E-Democracy.

As you might figure, the “discussion” kicked off like most online debates; a few civil points, and then desending into heated ire; the online environment strips away a lot of social inhibitions, and it showed.

So about a year later, the list threw a party.  We met at Crosby Park in Saint Paul, with a grill and a couple of cases of beer and pop…

…and talked.  Some of the talk was about politics; most wasn’t. 

And by the end of the evening, many of the people there had a revelation; the people they were writing to, and sometimes about, weren’t cartoons; they weren’t mere collections of partisan stereotypes.  The discourse on the forum got a lot more civil; there’d be flares of ire, and newbies sometimes brought more traditional online behavior to the forum (which often subsided when they, too, attended a later party). 

It was in the news – the LATimes via Ed Morrissey, specifically – after the death of Jerry Falwell, as people began talking about the seemingly bizarre friendship between Falwell and pr0n mogul Larry Flynt. 

My mother always told me that no matter how repugnant you find a person, when you meet them face to face you will always find something about them to like. The more I got to know Falwell, the more I began to see that his public portrayals were caricatures of himself. There was a dichotomy between the real Falwell and the one he showed the public.

One of the key tenets of training, for example, a soldier, is to dehumanize the enemy; to learn (or teach someone) to regard the “enemy” as a little less human than you and the people you’re defending are.  With some enemies, of course, it’s easy; those who saw off the heads of defenseless prisoners are not really very human in any moral sense.  But the examples are everywhere of people noticing it; stories abound from World War II of GIs who’d spent months in training learning to detest the enemy (and months more in combat internalizing it) finally coming face to face with German, and finally Japanese, civilians, and realizing that while they come from very different places and in many cases had very different beliefs, they’re basically people anyway.

It’s something I’ve noticed among local blogs, as well.  Now, I’ll allow up front that people tend to be much more forgiving of gaffes and ugliness that they’re closer to agreeing with than otherwise; if we accept that Mark Gisleson and Tom Swift are opposide sides of the same coin (and in many ways, they are; both pretty much say what they want, damn the consequences), I tend to give Swiftee the benefit of a doubt that I won’t extend to Gisleson – partly because Swiftee is vastly more often right than Gisleson (1), and partly because I’m a lot more able to see whatever merit may lurk even in Swiftee’s most outrageous statements, because I’m closer to him ideologically.  And before any of you leftybloggers start sputtering and fuming and jumping up and down like I’d just declared myself the best feminist in town (though that happens to be true), remember – you all do it too.  Every one of you.

But it’s a pretty ecumenical phenomenon.  People discount those they disagree with.  But because of the way online communication works – all images you have of someone are either hyper-ideal (which is why online dating is such a minefield) or hyper-base (which is why online flame wars are so easy), and almost never real. 

I usually welcome chances to meet liberals, DFLers, whatever.  Partly because occasionally discussions pop up and I always win, but largely because it’s interesting to meet people.  Occasionally your preconceptions get popped.  Rarely are they reinforced.  Now, I’m modestly well-equipped to do that – I grew up a liberal (and yes, in case you were about to ask, it does make me a better conservative) so it’s not like I can’t maintain a conversation with most of ’em.

It’s one of the reasons we in the Northern Alliance work so hard to try to invite leftybloggers to  our various MOB parties.  Of course, some of them just don’t want to get along and would rather sit in their miserable hovels and sputter, but for the most part we’ve always had a great time getting together.

And it’s interesting; generally, I find it’s not only easier to have a decent conversation with people I’ve met, but that the interchange online becomes a lot more civilized afterwards.  Not with everyone, of course; some of the leftybloggers I’ve met have been petulant, antisocial and just plain nasty. But as a general rule, meeting people pays dividends in civility.

Not necessarily in “agreement”, of course; may the “good old days” of Republicans acting like Democrats to go along and get along rest in “Bad Idea Hell” forever (take that, Lori Sturdevant).

But sometimes it can be interesting to get past ones’ own stereotypes.

We MOB bloggers have been dinging on Susan Lenfestey for years, now; she’s got a place of (heh heh) honor in my pandaemon of frequent fisking targets.

But I’m starting to worry about here.  I’m not going to fisk anything; just show it.

Remember – it’s her “Mother’s Day” column, a “letter” to the President:

…I realize this is of no interest to you…and yet, you are the only one who can make my day…We’ve never made a big fuss over Mother’s Day at our house…This year I want my children to share with me the gift of hope — in their futures, in their children’s futures. And that’s where you come in…Mr. President, so we were lucky to grow up in the glory years…We grew up believing that we were the greatest, kindest nation in the world…Yes, we also saw our heroes — well, mine anyway, Jack and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. — murdered right in front of our eyes….we watched our classmates die in a terrible mistake of a war and vowed never again…through our self-indulgence, shortsightedness or greed, we’ve pretty much trashed things for those who follow…I am asking you to decide to give us hope, because our children are having a hard time finding much of it…For six years you’ve given us fear, and it’s taken a toll…

One wonders how she even finds the strength to wake up in the morning.

If you know Sue Lenfestey – wife of yet another ultra-liberal former Strib editor – render assistance.  Between columns like this and her ongoing venting of unrequited bile, she could apparently use a shoulder to cry on.

Or something. 

I’m gonna tell you a story about a couple of groups of people.

News people – especially newspaper people – subscribe to the American ideal of what journalism is, and what journalists are.  Part of the culture involves seeing journalism as an almost monastic calling, with a higher codes and rituals and an impenetrable argot that separates them from baser callings.  Among good reporters, it’s a mission; among lesser ones, it’s an affectation.  It’s neither good nor bad. 

I grew up with a foot in that world; I was a news reporter, on and (mostly) off from age 16 into my late twenties.  I did my level best to stay detached and stay as close to “objective” as I could (even during my stint in the news department at ulter-liberal KFAI, of all places), where I am happy to relate that nobody ever guessed from my reporting that I had any politics at all. 

And then there’s the other world; the more plebeian, less-lofty world of radio, especially the part of radio outside of the few remaining serious commercial radio newsrooms.  The world of stunts, dirty tricks, “punking” the competition with gleeful abandon; the world that spawned Howard Stern and Scott Shannon and Opie and Anthony, for better or worse.  A world where an extra couple of hundred listeners tuning in for an extra fifteen minutes can mean the difference between having a great job and filing for unemployment yet again.   It’s a nasty, brutish, deeply dysfunctional world where arrested adolescents romp and play routinely on the dark side of the ethical moon.  And damn, when it’s fun, it’s fun!

Blogs are somewhere between the two, and way outside ’em to boot.  A blog reflects its writers, pretty much; you can tell Powerline is a bunch of lawyers with scrappy streaks, that The Sheila Variations is written by an eclectic with ADD, that Captain’s Quarters’ Ed Morrissey is a mild-mannered guy with an incisive rhetorical left hook and a Rainman-like command of facts.  And you can probably tell that this blog is the product of a guy who wears a bunch of hats; diarist, would-be-eclectic, amateur pundit-via-rhetorical-pugilist.

Anyway.

Last week, when the “Punk the Monitor” scheme got hatched, I asked myself – “is this a good idea?” to mock, to “punk”, such a request?

Jeff Fecke left a comment yesterday:

Mitch–

Thank you for your interest, but I have no comment at this time.

Sincerely,

Jeff Fecke

P.S. Oh, wow, look how easy that was!

Oh, wow, but that’s not the whole story. 

If it were, say, Tim O’Brien or Nick Coleman or Lori Sturdevant writing to me, that’s what I’d do.  Because they’re biased hacks who are out to attack the politics I personally espouse, and will use any info I provide to that end – but they’re the establishment, and everyone knows what they’re about.  No surprises there.

And if Eric Black or MPR or most mainstream reporters sent an email, it’d be another story; most of them take “detachment” fairly seriously.

But the Minnesota Monitor is an inherently deceitful enterprise, a propaganda organ funded (lavishly, by blog standards) by liberals with deep pockets whose mission is to win elections and regain control of this nation.  Which would be fine – if they were open and honest about their goals, motivations and support, so that the unwitting could make up their own mind.  Nobody reads Powerline or Captain’s Quarters or this blog for that matter and comes away thinking there’s any attempt at neutrality (although I do try to be fair). 

As such, the Minnesota Monitor – like the Huffington Post or the Young Turks – deserves overt mockery – which, by the way, is the type of thing Fecke himself serves up at conservatives in non-Monitor blogging (you be the judge!), but expects everyone else to turn off when he puts on his “junior reporter” hat.  It’d be like me doing this overtly partisan blog five days a week, and then walking into the Patriot studio and demanding that everyone treat me as a non-biased, open-minded objective person – nobody would buy it, and I’d get mocked for trying (and deserve it!).

 Why, it’s almost as if, if you don’t want someone to interview you, you can decline to be interviewed. And you can even do so without being a jerk. And you don’t have to “punk” anyone.

Jerk?

Mommy?  Is that you?

Jeff is right.  “Punking” the monitor is an act of free will. 

And declining “interviews” would certainly be a good idea – I know I would.  Ignoring the Monitor completely would be a fine plan, actually.  Most people do!

But mocking, pranking, “punking” is a perfectly fine way to express a different opinion; that we do not respect The Monitor; we see the “junior journalist” badge, but we’re not buying it (for good reasons that have more to do with journalistic credibility than ideology); that we are competing for hearts, minds, funny bones, votes, and the nodding realization at the end of the day that “these guys are reliable”. 

But hey, that’s what you do when you’re an adult.

No, Jeff, it’s what you do when you respect the requestor. 

 That’s what, say, Michael Brodkorb did the two times I asked him for comment–and the two times he’s asked me for comment.

Michael works in politics, and must maintain relatinships with all sorts of people.  I do not.

You and Aplikowski are less mature than Brodkorb. I mean, if that was me, I’d be really embarrassed. But hey, whatevs.

And I’d be embarassed if I was busted passing clairvoyance off as “reporting”, and even more so if I ever used the word “whatevs” (or “Pwn3d” or “hacktacular” or “whatevah”) in a sentence.

Tomato, tomahto.

Now have your people get back to me on those 13 questions, OK? 

(more…)

…when you’ve got Foot?

It all began when noted objective internet journalist Jeff Fecke requested an interview from his long-time friend whom he had always respected and held in high regard, Andy Aplikowski (1) for an article he was writing for the online news source Minnesota Monitor (2). But instead of treating his fellow blogger with the respect and solicitude that he rightly deserved, Aplikowski replied with a series of hate-filled, racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, unhinged rants emblematic of any wingnut Republican. Like a good journalist, Mr. Fecke cleaned up the transcript, added some copy and posted the piece.

And so on.  Read it all.

And then look for Obie’s “real” “Blog House” this weekend, and see if there are any substantial differences.

Since the local bought-and-paid-for “progressive” media has taken to “interviewing” selected Republican “insurgents” (purely to help political discourse in Minnesota, naturally), I figured fair was fair. I’m sending the following interview questions to Minnesota Monitor. 

Since they can trust my motivations implicitly, I’m sure I’ll get a full, thorough, ingenuous response.

Here goes:

———-

To: Minnesota Monitor Staff

From: Mitch Berg, ace reporter

Re:  Interview

I have some questions for y’all.  Please pay no attention to my five year history of rhetorically beating you guys like a baby harp seal and my known antipathy to your party’s “magazine’s” site’s underlying worldview; please disregard everything you know, and assume that I’m being utterly sincere in saying that I seek merely knowledge and enlightenment.

1. So where does your funding come from?  Since the Center for Independent Media started out sharing offices with David Brock’s attack-PR firm “Media Matters for America”, in an arrangement that looked to anyone who’s ever worked in the world of business like an “incubator” deal (where an established company lends material assistance to a smaller spinoff), it’s a legitmate question that bears directly on your site’s “journalistic credibility”.
2. Ha ha.  A cutesy snark.  How precious.  OK, now a serious answer, if you please?
3. Where in your “code of ethics” is “clairvoyance” mentioned?  Because ascribing motivations in the midst of a “news story” absent any factual basis is the kind of thing MY first news boss would have given me a swirlie over.  How is it that Minnesota Monitor’s “ethics” allow this egregious faux pas?
4. What was the motivation for Fecke’s interview, if not to try to dig at the MNGOP?
5. Given the answer to #4 (and there really can only be one answer, no?), when your Jeff Fecke sent Andy Aplikowski the “interview questions”, can you possibly understand why Aplikowski – given Fecke’s track record – might have viewed it as a subject for derision rather than worthy of a serious response? 
6. Word has it the Strib’s Tim O’Brien is working on a puff piece on your side of the Aplikowski flap.   Does “Minnesota Monitor” have an O’Brien-lip-shaped groove in its institutional ass from the fawning he’s given you?
7. Do you think you’re giving Soros his money’s worth?
8. Doh!  It was a trick question!  I’m a silly boy.  OK, I’ll try again.  Who are the “Liberals with deep pockets” (that was the phrase one of you used in informal conversation) that are funding the “Center for Independent Media”?
9. The Monitor claimed that it posted Aplikowski’s interview fairly.  Aplikowski claims that you edited out a few things that were fairly critical to his position.  Tomato tomahto?  After sending Aplikowski a draft of the piece, Andy sent Fecke back some clarifications.  Fecke (says Aplikowski) picked and chose among the clarifications he posted.  True, or not? 
10. If true, how ethical do you believe this is?
11. You’ve hired a staff that consists to a great extent of people who’ve built their blogging “careers” out of snarking and japing at Republicans.  Now, those same snarkers and japers are coming to Republican “insurgents” bearing interview questions transparently designed to feed into your site’s institutional biases and to try to undercut the party we all support.  Exactly how is it you expect anyone not to try to yank your chains, as Andy et al did earlier this week?  Seriously – do you think pasting “Ace Journalist” on your foreheads makes you inherently trustworthy?  
12. In a larger sense – please state the case for taking Minnesota Monitor seriously, not just as “news” but especially in terms of granting actual trust and credibility to your reporters.  Especially for readers and interview subjects who are not part of the  “progressive” (bwahaha) audience.
13. The bloggers who punked Fecke (and the dolts who take him seriously) over his “Inteview with an Insurgent” bit view the Minnesota Monitor not as a bunch of fellow bloggers with whom to coexist, but (I think it’s fair to say) a foe to be undercut, screwed with, and eventually vanquished.  Are they wrong to do so?  Why?

That should get y’all started.

Please return this immediately, as I have a deadline.

Kathy from Cake Eater Chronicles was one of the best bloggers in town even before her cancer became her only topic.  Since the very beginning, she’s brought her customary, warped sense of humor – the life of many a MOB part – to the subject.

Her latest post, among many other things, goes through the way people react to women wearing the do-rags and hats in that way that says “I’m in chemo”.

And it’s a learning experience.  For example – I’ve been this guy:

First off you have the I’M NOT LOOKING AT YOU People. Theyr’e not looking at you. No, they’re not. You just thought they were looking at you. They’ll swear on a stack of bibles that they’re not looking at you. You’re wrong. Their pupils are firmly set directly in the middle of their sockets, they’re looking directly ahead, and NO they did not SEE YOU. They’d swear they didn’t. And if they did just for one fraction of a second, well, they didn’t mean to see you. They really didn’t. It was an accident and it will never happen again! EXCEPT THAT THEY JUST DID! AIEEEEEE! Oh, Holy Hell! Their eye slipped over to the corner and…they forced it by sheer will back to center. OHMYGODDIDTHEYNOTICE??? I DON’T WANT TO MAKE THEM FEEL LIKE THEY’RE IN A FREAK SHOW! I CAN’T LOOK! REALLY, I CAN’T. LOOK AT THE GROUND LOOK AT THE GROUND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD JUST LOOK AT THE GROUND!!!!

Yeah, yeah.  I know.  I’ve been working on it.

Her whole series should be required reading.

I remember when I worked as a reporter, both on the radio and as a freelance print reporter.  Now, I was nothing to shake a stick at; I was a serviceable reporter.  Nothing more.

And part of being a serviceable journalist that could get hired to write stories was making sure that what you turned in to your editor was all facts.  Especially when I did print work – my last step before walking my copy in to the office was to call back all my sources and double-check everything I’d presented as fact – names, spellings, places, numbers, who said what to whom, everything – to remove all semblance of opinion, supposition and by-guess-and-by-gosh, to say nothing of human error, that was humanly possible. 

That was back when I was working for the most benign media in the US – the small neighborhood newspapers that dot Minneapolis, Saint Paul and the suburbs, the papers that report on neighborhood business, events, crime and the daily (or more usually weekly or monthly) parade of events on their turf, the Midway Monitor, Grand Gazette, Highland Villager, East Metro Courier and a bunch of others, all of them little tabloids that depended for their existence on getting the story right in their neighborhoods.  Accuracy was a premium, since everyone in the paper’s audience knew everyone and everything that was being written about.

The editors and publishers of these little papers knew that their survival, even more than that of the big dailies, depended on their credibility with their audience.

Credibility.  It’s a big thing, if you’re in the communication business.

———-

We conservative bloggers give the Minnesota Monitor a hard time.  As has been amply observed by many local center-right bloggers, the MinMon is supported by the “Center for Independent Media”, which until fairly recently shared offices with “Media Matters for America”.  MM4A is a George Soros-funded attack PR firm associated with an awful lot of gutless attack-flakkery; in addition to carrying on a high-profile campaign of smearing conservative commentators (often swerving into overt racism, sexism, anti-semitism and a lot of other “isms” that, were MM4A a conservative organization, wouldn’t pass unnoticed and unassailed. 

The Center for Independent Media pays a group of local bloggers a fairly fat stipend, by blogging standards, to write for the Minnesota Monitor.  One must, on the surface, give the CIM and the Monitor some points for at least trying to put up a good appearance; they bandy their “Code of Ethics” about with giggly abandon.  I think it’s fair to say that some of their “journalists” make a game effort to try to meet that “code”; an examination of Minnesota Monitor’s coverage shows that the “code” gets ignored when convenient.  And while questions have been raised about CIM’s funding, they’ve never revealed anything – although the phrase “liberals with deep pockets” has slipped out in informal conversation.

To sum it up – the Minnesota Monitor and its merry band of rentabloggers has been trying to eke out some credibility as a news source.  I think it’s fair to say that outside the motivated center-to-far-left, they’re not there yet.

Which is where this story starts.

—–

One of the Minnesota Monitor’s bloggers is Jeff Fecke.  Jeff’s been writing his “Blog of the Moderate Left” for a long, long time – almost as long as I’ve been doing this blog. I’ve never met Jeff, knowing only his online persona; I’ve sympathized with him during his divorce, and read about some of his health issues, about which he’s written quite a bit over the years (he once had a side-blog about bariatric surgery that was by far the most affecting and interesting thing he’s written).  But for the most part, Fecke is a snark-blogger in the model of fellow rentablogger Duncan “Atrios” Black; the stereotypical Fecke piece actually reads like the stereotypical Black piece:

Why Does Bush Hate The Troops?

Article says administration trying to solve vets health care crisis.

Oh yeah.  That’ll work. 

After five years of that (and yes, I know – like most three-line parodies, it’s as hamfisted as…well, an Atrios analysis piece; read Fecke’s oeuvre and judge for yourself).

To be clear and fair – I don’t believe Fecke to be a bad person in any way. I’m not getting into any personal attacks here. 

But we’re talking about journalism.  It’s nothing personal – just business.

———-

I know what you’re thinking.  “Who are you to judge, Berg?”

Who, indeed.  I’ve worn a lot of hats in my life; reporter was one of them, for a while.  This blog, of course, is not journalism, for the most part (I’ve taken my shots at it, of course).  It is a combination of things – diary, soapbox, punching bag; at the end of the day, it’s really my personal comment section for the big blog of my life.  I seek to be “fair” not as a matter of journalistic ethics – this blog (generally) is not a journalistic endeavor – but out of a personal sense that fair is the right thing to be.  And like all personal senses, it’s malleable and subject to all the usual personal vicissitudes.  I am not always fair.  But I generally strive to me.  And I can say with absolute honesty that I’ve never knowingly put anything false on this blog, outside what I believed to be fairly clear satire and parody.  While my bias is one of the reasons this blog exists, I take personal integrity seriously; the only person I’ve banned from this blog in the past two years was ejected for calling me a liar (wrongly, of course).

On the radio?  I’m honest about my biases.  And I can honestly say that I’ve never done even the most highly-charged interview (last October’s interview with the Strib’s Rochelle Olson, about her hatchet-pieces on Alan Fine, was probably the most portentious of my radio career) wanting to be unfair.  Indeed I was fair to Olson; I just paid out the rope by which I think she hung herself.

On any given issue, you can figure for yourself how fair and credible I am; your decision may be informed, well or foul, by the fact that I’m honest about my biases.  On the show as on this blog, you, the listener and reader, are the judge.  

———-

Last week, Fecke – in his capacity as a “journalist” for the Minnesota Monitor – sent Andy Aplikowski an “interview” – an email with a bunch of questions. 

Andy is an outspoken Republican, a firebrand within the party, someone who has a vision and works for it with a tirelessness that the party needs a lot more of.  Like anyone with a vision and the cojones to state it, he’s developed some detractors and enemies within the party.  It’s the detractors’ loss; the perception that political parties are full of people who fret more about internal politics than about winning elections is one of the things that kills the desire of anyone who doesn’t live for that kind of thing to get and stay involved. 

Andy’s first reflex was to delete the “request”; Fecke is a writer with a five year history (on his personal blog as well as the MNMOn) of antipathy toward Republicans, working for an outlet whose mission is to serve as a propaganda organ for the regional left.  In retrospect, it may have been the right reflex.

But Andy forwarded the email to a group of other local center-right bloggers, including me.  And in a brief burst of creativity, we concocted a number of flagrancies; a fictional groundswell for John Hinderaker to lead the MN GOP, a bunch of things that’d jump right out at a typical leftyblogger as stereotypes for the snarking, to justify much gamboling about and poo-flinging.

Learned Foot – a party to the party – sums things up fairly well:

What it was, however, was an amusing diversion; an exercise in disinformation with a rather obvious play to the preconceived prejudices of you and your audience. I mean, didn’t those references to Obama and the Imus comment seem just a little extraneous and out of context?

It was like waving our arms yelling “Yoohoo! You can play the race card here!”

Not to you people. Critical thinking jumps right out the window when you hacks see the chance to slime somebody. Hell, it never even occurred to any of you that perhaps Andy didn’t write any of those answers at all (aside from inserting typos and torturing some of the syntax to make it look more authentic).

It was a half-baked hoax – because, frankly, what’s the point of fully-baking a hoax with these people? 

———-

In writing about the whole flap, Fecke asks:

So I’ll have much more on L’affaire Aplikowski later today, but I’m still left wondering how “I know!  I’ll lie in an interview and say racist and incendiary things, and then Jeff Fecke will print them in Minnesota Monitor, and that’ll show him!” makes me look bad.

If Fecke’d stopped there, it probably wouldn’t have. 

But Fecke went on to fall into our trap, and prove our point.

Remember – being a “journalist” involves clearly separating fact from opinion – and, if you ever worked for a boss like my first one, keeping your opinion the hell out of it.

Fecke seems (to my opinion) to have a habit of inserting opinion into ostensible “journalism”; remember when he wrote with no evidence one could discern from his reporting that Representative John Kline – combat veteran, one-time carrier of the nuclear “football” and survivor of several campaigns’ worth of DFL mud-mongering – was “”terrified” of his contituents at a town hall meeting?  I wanted to jump through the monitor (and the Monitor) to ask “um, based on WHAT?”

Or how he implied without any visible evidence that the Kline campaign conspired to block his liveblogging of the meeting?  His long record of jumping to unwarranted conclusions, sometimes with very embarassing results?

Not that he stands out from the Minnesota Monitor in general; last winter, when a group of Twin Cities gay activists’ van was vandalized at Dordt College in Iowa – a fairly fundamentalist Christian school that bans gay relationships on campus – the report on the subject skimped on little facts like Dordt had invited the gay activists, and that Dordt had ordered the vandalism cleaned up by their own maintenance people.  Andy Birkey, the reporter who covered the story, left a comment about my questions a few weeks later:

I wrote the piece the night before I went on vacation, based on information from my good friend Matt Comer who was a participant in the Soulforce Equality Ride. I wrote it before media reports had come out, and did not have internet access for the following week, or I would have followed it up.

While I do – sincerely – appreciate Birkey’s clarification, my inner editor wants to ask – “so you didn’t bother to get Dordt’s story before you left on vacation?  Then why did you run the story, as incomplete and thus unfair as it was?”

Minnesota Monitor has done little to earn the trust of those who aren’t fundamentally-disposed to agree with it in the first place.  Given that Minnesota Monitor’s “reporters” have a record of omitting non-prejudicial facts about Republican, Christian and right-leaning subjects (by omission or commission), while essentially making up things to fit their preconceived hypotheses, where’s the percentage in someone like Andy Aplikowski not assuming that Fecke will screw him in the final draft?

As, indeed and predictably, he did:

I’m also left wondering who the “proper GOP leaders” Aplikowski notified were.  As far as I can tell, Andy Aplikowski is saying that the Republican Party of Minnesota authorized him to lie to the newsmedia to prove–well, something.  I didn’t know the GOP of Minnesota was in the habit of authorizing its district chairs to freely lie to people, but it’s probably good to know.

From a bald-faced hoax, Fecke – with no source other than an emailed statement from a party to the hoax, presumes a conspiracy at the highest levels of the Minnesota GOP.

Satisfying to one’s inner Bob Woodward, perhaps, but getting another source would have been a better idea.  In saying the State GOP “authorized” anything, Fecke is making things up, presuming facts nowhere in evidence (nowhere in existence) to go along with his preconceived idea. 

For while Fecke says:

I regret that I did not expect him to lie in the interview, but we rarely think ill of those lied to.  Generally, it’s the liar who looks the worst.

Except the “lie” was a trick.  And it worked.

Sad to say.  But true.

———-

Fecke does bring up one point – possibly advertently. 

For now, I’m just left shaking my head sadly.  I actually wanted to write an article that was fair to Aplikowski and the GOP, one that was not a hatchet job, but simply presented his point of view.

About a month ago, Jeff Horwich from MPR approached me about appearing on a panel in front of a live audience on the MPR program “In The Loop”.  I did my due diligence, of course – but I, a conservative talk show host, could walk into Minnesota Public Radio with a reasonable expectation that I wasn’t going to get punked.  MPR – at least their news and public affairs departments – have a reputation for being fair.  I felt I could trust MPR – and my trust was amply rewarded.  As was theirs; I did nothing to jerk them around.  I respected their integrity, and with good reason; they apparently believed there was good reason to respect mine.

Likewise, when Eric Black called me a few years ago asking for background on Powerline and the other local center-right bloggers, I believed – rightly – that what I said would be reported fairly, clearly and with no words crammed into my mouth.  I didn’t assume I’d agree with any conclusions Black drew – but I believed in Black’s integrity.

With Minnesota Monitor – a propaganda organ funded by wealthy liberals in pursuit of an agenda I find largely noxious, a website that I believe to be deeply disingenuous about its funding and motives –  there is no such trust; indeed, by employing a serial would-be clairvoyant like Fecke, the Monitor shows contempt for factual, fair reporting.

And that’s assuming Fecke is sincere about his desire to be fair, which, let’s be charitable, is yet to be determined, as Andy points out in his rejoinder to the flap (which you should read):

Fecker left out a lot of very pro-Republican content, because it did not suit his needs and fit his agenda. A paid political operative is an operative all the same. What they say is tainted by the money that pays for their words and where it appears, and it can no longer be trusted as objective. I don’t care who pays who, when a blogger takes money to blog, they obviously have sold their objectivity and credibility as well.

So if you were a rock-ribbed conservative Republican, and a Jeff Fecke with all of that journalistic baggage approached you, what would you do?

The fact that Fecke needs to assure the Minnesota Monitor reader that he’s not carrying out a hatchet job is telling, whether Fecke meant it that way or not.  With Jeff Horwich, Caroline Lowe, Eric Black, Conrad DeFiebre and any number of other solid local journalists, it wouldn’t even be a question; integrity would be assumed; Eric Black never has to assure the reader he doesn’t intend to punk his subject. 

If Minnesota Monitor wants to be taken seriously as “journalists”, they have to get to the point where they can say the same thing.  With a straight face, anyway.

———-

“So why did you do it, Berg?  Why did you go along with the other center-right bloggers in this juvenile prank?”

Because I thought it would be interesting to see what cockroaches got scared out of under the rocks.  I had no expectation that Minnesota Monitor or Jeff Fecke would change their spots.

Less still did I expect the local leftysphere would disappoint.

But more on that later. 

(more…)

Gary Miller’s mother is having some serious surgery today:

I am one of those numbskulls who believes there is One who takes into account the solicitations of His people before rendering a perfect plan for the universe.

If you are like-minded, I would be grateful if you would whisper a quick prayer for Pat Miller.

So pass the word.

Jeff Kouba on the changes at the Strib:

Conservatives care about news, and bias in newsrooms, because we recognize the importance of a free press. I don’t want the Strib to disappear, I value a strong local paper. I want a local paper that isn’t the publishing arm of the DFL. I want a local paper that finds the stories I never could, and is home to quality writing.

There is much I enjoy about the Strib. I enjoy their theater and music and dance critics. I like the sports pages. In short, I value the local focus Hugh Hewitt says will be necessary for newspapers in a changing media landscape.

That’s a key point – one missed by rage-o-holics like Nick Coleman and Garrison Keillor; most of us have  nothing intrinsically against newspapers or their reporters. 

Merely the blinkered, smug political bias that all too many (but by no means all) newspaper reporters, columnists and editors have.

Some of us, indeed, roil with anger in noting that the Strib has the tools for its own salvation already on board, in the likes of Eric Black, Doug Tice, Lileks (for now) and whomever decided to hire Katherine Kersten, but chooses to ignore them in favor of an ever-more-noxious status quo.  They’re “staying” the wrong course.

But a paper that equates local focus with turning Lileks into a brand new J-school graduate doesn’t know where it’s going, and that’s not a good sign.

Jim Boyd a lousy leader?

Who’da thunk it?

Hack partisan journalism!

The “Center for Independent Media” – which until recently shared office space with George Soros’ “Media Matters for America” – is setting up another paid rentablog operation in Iowa, to “cover” the caucuses.

But have no fear!  They have a code!

Like Minnesota Monitor and Colorado Confidential, the Iowa site has hired a slate of New Journalism Fellows who are being trained in investigative reporting, follow a code of ethics based on that of the Society of Professional Journalists, and are supported by journalistic mentors and editors.

That’s right, Iowa!  Trained investigators with real mentors and everything!  Who would never hide their financial support from scrutiny to see exactly how it might affect their credibility – or, for that matter, pretend as if there’s just no rational issue!  Who follow the highest standards of journalism!  Who never mix editorializing with reporting!  With editors and all!

Let the hackery begin!

The Minnesota Monitor – as impeccable a source of journalism as George Soros’ money can buy – snarks at covers Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, quoting a piece from Radar, which would appear to be yet another bunch of John Stewart wannabees (not unlike, as it happens, the piece’s author himself).

Oh, it starts out with the usual symptoms of Bachmann Derangement Syndrome:

“Bachmann, an Evangelical Lutheran, and self-professed fool for ‘Christ,’ ran for Congress because God—and her husband—wanted her to,” the tongue-in-cheek article said.  “The representative publicly credited her campaign to her submission to her husband, who was channeling God’s wishes for her.”

(Offline note to Christians – d’ya ever think that anyone in the Sorosphere will bother to figure out that “fool for Christ” doesn’t mean what they think it means?  Or that the voluntary, theologically-based notion of “submission to one’s husband” isn’t necessarily personally disempowering, given that she is now one of the most powerful people in the United States?  No, me either)

But then it touches upon some interesting history:

It also notes, “as a Minnesota state senator, Bachmann launched a crusade to outlaw gay marriage that turned into a highly publicized spectacle replete with restroom run-ins with angry lesbians

 SCRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATCH!

“Run-in with angry lesbians”? 

Radar via their mouthpiece at Minnesota Moneyitor is referring to an incident in Scandia, Minnesota about two years ago, in which Michele Bachmann she was detained against her will in a restroom.  Bachmann claimed her visitors were upset and moved to prevent her from leaving the rest room. 

However, on the Dump Bachmann blog – your one stop shop for Bachmann derangement – reported the event as follows:

Less than a moment later, piercing
screams were heard from the ladies’ washroom. “Help!!!!
HEEEELLLLLLPPPPPP!!!!!” With everyone’s attention riveted
on the door, Senator Bachmann emerged in a crouching run,
crying, “I was being held against my will!” Two women
were seen standing behind her, one tall and elderly,
the other young and petite, both unassuming and bewildered.

So one of several things is going on here:

1. Radar knows something the “Dump Bachmann” gang aren’t telling us; that Bachmann was not casually queried by a gentle biddy and a nun!
2. Radar is lying, and Minnesota Moneyitor is blithely passing the lie on without any further checking, defaming the indefamable Dumpers.

What is the truth?

By the way, here’s an infinitesimal nod toward Radar’s credibility:

and grainy photos suggesting that Bachmann was ‘spying’ on a gay rights rally while crouching behind a bush.”

They put scare quotes around the elements of the “Bachmann spied on the gay rally” story, one of “Dump Bachmann’s” most delusional old chestnuts.

MinMoneyitor – the best “journalism” George Soros’ money can buy!

UPDATE:  Open note to a certain ethically-challenged leftyblogger who thinks puerile name-calling is “argument”:

I get twenty times the traffic you do – and I always will.  So no, I’m not trolling for traffic on your dim little site. 

Face it; your efforts helped Michele Bachmann get into Congress.  With y’all as enemies, she may be the first female president.

Now go run along and play in the little pool of  your own febrile splittle that you’ve been marinading (poaching?) in since November.

Now that I’ve successfully defended my credentials as the Twin Cities’ foremost feminist (granted, it wasn’t difficult), it’s time to move on to the next challenge. 

This orange I have in my hand here?

Tastiest.  Orange.  In the.  World.

No other orange can come close.

Feel free to find your worldviews again challenged to their very cores.

The local Sorosphere continues to huff and puff at the notion that a conservative might claim – rightly – to be not only a feminist, but the very best feminist in the Twin Cities.  George Soros’ money is being well-spent, and I for one am having a lot of fun watching the local lefties jump up and down and spatter spit all over the place and demand that I leave “their” sandbox. 

Like this woman, most famous for being enraged all the time and…well, that’s about it.  (Note to Ms. Furious; “truthiness” is so 2005).

Or George Soros’ #1 local temp, Robin, who can’t leave well-enough alone, when she stomps her feet and gets mad that I…:

1.  write a satirical poem about online dating (in the third person, nonetheless)
2. make critical and non-reverent observations about the contributions of a young woman with some deeply fascist ideas
3. point out that the fabled “women earn 3/4 of what men earn” is a misleading mangling of number (she cites an AAUW study which purports to show that women do earn less than men.  While I’m waiting on information from the AAUW on the study’s methodology, it doesn’t matter – it’s one of the reasons I am a feminist; I don’t want my daughter to get any less than she deserves!)

…which sends that message that I shouldn’t criticize any woman in any way, or claim that they’re not eternal victims – which is a pretty Victorian, paternalistic attitude for one who’d style herself a “feminist”. 

If my daughter grows up to be a whiny rage-o-holic, I’ll truly know I’ve failed, both as a father and as a feminist.

It’s been an interesting exercise, watching all these paid operatives  people hop up and down like monkeys on espresso over my simple – though utterly true – little claim.

My inner experimental psychologist is having the time of his life.

I have a black thumb; if plants talked, they’d call me “The Terminator”. 

But I try.  I’m going to the Friends’ School Plant Sale this weekend and loading up on annuals for the front flowerbed and the flower boxes along the front walkway, as well as jalapenos, tomatoes, habaneros, cilantro and onions for salsa.  I’m going to try my hand at canning the salsa in such a way as to make it not intensely poisonous. 

So it’s good to see that not only is my neighbor MidwayPete blogging about gardening stuff, but that my old college friend Jackie (who is married to my high school acquaintance Brian, formerly “Mr. Cheer Or Die” of Vikings fame) is done some writing again for her garden/lifestyle/diaryblog “Through The Garden Gate“.  Jackie has solid potential to be the next Martha Stewart – and I mean that in a good way.

My, oh my.  I seem to have stirred up a firestorm dust-devil of petulance.

It seems a conservative can’t say he supports women’s right to equal protection, access and treatment under the law and by society without having gaggles of intellectual lilliputians vex him.

Where do we start?

MNob, who writes at Cucking Stool, Norwegianity, MNob, MinBlue, MinLeft, MinVolved, MinDem, DemMin, BlueDem, MinRedWatch, RedWatch, RedWatchMN, BlueStool, Bluegianity, Blog of the Shrieking Incontinent Left, StoolWatch, RedStool, Cucking Blue, BlueVolved, Cuckegiainity, PowerBlue, Lawyers Without Constraints, BlueCuck, Stooling Knob, LeftBlueVolved, Feminixies…

Um, where were we?

Oh, yeah – MNob brings the same keen, logical, intellectual approach to my legitimate claim that she brought to dissecting Olson v. Brodkorb:

Over at Shot in the Dark (no, I won’t link there),

Didja know that’s the latest way Minnesota’s increasingly insular, increasingly paranoid, every-more-gutless leftybloggers try to get atcha these days?  By not linking to people that they’re talking about?

They’re afraid, of course, that their audience will be free to make up their own minds. 

And I tell you – I’m cut to the quick.  To the quick, I say.

But I digress:

 Mitch Berg takes on the events in Austin and domestic terrorism, trying to wrap himself in the flag of feminism to make a point that isn’t entirely clear even after reading the piece three times over.

Of course, MNob’s readers – who don’t have the benefit of a link to my original piece – won’t know that I didn’t “take on” the events in Austin at all (except to condemn them), and didn’t “wrap myself” in any “flag”.  MNob could say pretty much anything she wants to about me (which is, indeed, her usual MO anyway).

My point was pretty clear:  The original blog I linked to, “Feministe”, was a bunch of victim-mongering, hysterical dimbulbs.

…it’s pretty hard to see what the premise is beyond taking “feminists” to task for being angry that they might be exposed to violence when going in for that annual pap smear.

Remember – this woman is a lawyer.  Lawyers, supposedly, spend three years learning to be rigorously logical.  Of course, to be fair, they also spend three years learning to abuse rhetoric to try to win over the unsuspecting.

Nobody will defend people – male or female – against violence for whatever reason more staunchly than I.  And I have put my ass, physically and literally, on the line to prove it enough times in my life to be able to stand behind that claim.  So MNob’s change in subject is particularly callow and logically void.  I took “Feministe” to task for claiming (amid a lot of other hysteria)that there is a big media conspiracy to downplay violence against women. 

One might also wonder if MNob really has much respect for her audience; she giggles at me of citing a CNN report that “regurgitates” data from the BATFE.  Ms. Nob – where else does one go for information about bombs?  The National Organization of Women? 

Of course, MNob tried to stay with substantive discussion (my local leftyblogger standards) of the actual issue. She failed, but she tried. And all Robin “Rew” “Chicken to Drink Around Conservatives Any More” Marty can come up with is a bunch of quotes I’ve made about women, most of which she is apparently unequipped to address, none of which address much less attack the fact that I’m the most feminist guy in town.  It’s what passes for “journalism” among that set these days, I guess. 

And then there’s Jeff “All Snark, No Content” Fecke, one of George Soros’ human schnauzers “citizen journalists” from Minnesota Moneyitor. 

In his second leaden thwack at my claim, he writes (see, leftybloggers?  Linking to people you disagree with not only doesn’t hurt much, it shows your readers you’re not afraid to let them make up their own minds about things)…

…well, a bunch of NOW talking points about Camille Paglia and Christina Hoff Summers and the like, which amount to saying “I don’t really know much about this, but I’m faithfully reciting from the manual”. 

And then…:

The avenue to that future is feminism. Not “gender” feminism, or “equity” feminism, but feminism–full stop.

In other words, “just accept everything you’re told, and never approach any of this with a critical mind”. 

Buncombe.  “Feminism” means many things; nobody appointed Jeff Fecke (or the National Organization of Women or NARAL, for that matter) official custodian of the term, or for that matter the belief.

And as long as you continue to hem and haw about how the uppity women just keep demanding rights

Um, Jeff?  I fully support those rights.  Unless (as is likely the case) the only “rights” you’re concerned with are abortion (I reserve the legitimate right to dissent, for very good reason that anyone is free to ask me about) or institutionalizing victimhood.  If those are really the only “rights” you’re concerned about, then we either need to have a different discussion, or you’ll need to change your snark just a tad.

and keep complaining about how little things like bombing attempts fail to make the news,

And again, Fecke either misses the point, ignores it, or is unequipped to recognize it.  Let the self-styled riotgrrls from “Feministe” complain all they want about what the news covers!  That’s why they blog; also, it’s why I blog!  More power to ’em!  I’m calling them, though, on their whiny habit of finding conspiracies around every corner.  

And – lest I’d left any doubt the first several times I said it – bombing abortion clinics is wrong.  Don’t do it.  The explosives would be better used trying to blast some logic and reading comprehension into the skulls of Twin Cities leftybloggers.

you’re actively working with those who would cheerfully place your daughter and mine in the second tier of society. And that’s as far from feminism as is humanly possible.

Get that?  If I don’t buy every crazed nuance of the most deranged feminist fantasy, I’m “actively working” to harm women.  Put other way, “If you’re not with us, you’re against us” – the last great refuge of the thug, the fascist, the autocrat, intellectual or otherwise.

Bullpucks, Jeff (and all who think like him recite the same rote, intellectually-desiccated talking points); as an American, a human and someone who takes an active interest in not only the world around me but the one that my kids will inherit one of these days, I have not only the right to question things, but the obligation. 

And if the best defense y’all can mount is “If you’re not with us in every niggling particular demanded by the most dogmatic, extreme, pseudo-religious faction of ‘the movement’ then you’re against us”, then I think the discussion is over.

But if signing off with an ofay snark and declaring victory makes you feel better, by all means do what feels right.

My goodness.  The local leftybloggers are having what passes for a field day in their circles with my statement, in the previous post, that I am the foremost feminist I, or (likely) you, know.

Local rentablogger and Soros byatch talkingpointbot Jeff Fecke notes:

(Note to super-feminist Mitch Berg: this is why distinguishing between “gender” and “equity” feminism is prima facie evidence that you’re not a feminist:

No, Jeff, it’s prima facie evidence that you and I disagree, and that you got your views of “feminism” from the bottom of some fembot’s stiletto as it sank into your throat.   

My view of the difference between Equity and Gender feminism is coherent with, among many others, that of Camille Paglia – and if you want to tell her that she’s, um, prima facia not a feminist, I’ll be happy to sell tickets to people who want to watch her twist your giblets into party animal shapes (rhetorically speaking, of course).

 there’s no equity without adjusting our view of gender.) 

That’s one of those statements that’s about nine syllables too long to be a protest chant, but is usually spoken/written with about the same level of consideration – and it dodges my point (most likely without really knowing it, or why).

Views of gender change.  Doy.

But in an age when women have, for most practical purposes, achieved equity with men in the workplace and in society (yeah, yeah, there are exceptions, bla bla bla.  And I have a fifteen year old daughter who’d going to be going out into the world before too terribly long, so if anyone wants to compare how much they’re onto these exceptions with me, they’re in for a rude, smugness-cracking surprise), the current strain of “gender feminists” aren’t so much “adjusting our views of gender” as they are – to quote the Friesians – engaging in a social revolution…:

…which is essentially based on a form of Marxist theory that substitutes “gender” for Marx’s category of “class,” or simply adds the two together, usually with “race” thrown in. This sort of “race, class, and gender” theory is typically a dangerous form of political moralism, with the same totalitarian characteristics as other versions of Marxism have proven to display. One consequence of this is that the substantive content of criticism is rarely addressed but that it is considered sufficient to vilify critics as, in effect, “class enemies,” i.e. directing ad hominem arguments against them that their status, in terms of race, class, or gender, or simply in terms of their critical attitude, is sufficient to refute their arguments. Hence the convenient device of dismissing most of Western civilization as the product of “dead white males” — though for feminism the inconvenient fact remains that Eastern and Middle Eastern civilization (and every other) must also be dismissed as the products of “dead non-white males.”  

In other words, save the slogans, Jeff.  “Adjusting our view of gender” has little or nothing to do with “gender feminism”. 

SIDE NOTE:   Given that we’re dealing with Soros’ kids here, I’ll take bets on which response will come out first:

1. Rew from Powerliberal/MNMoney:  “Bwahahaha!  Mitch has a crush on me”
2. Jeff Fecke from BlogOModLeft/MNMoney:  “Why does Mitch Berg hate women?”

Place your bets now.

On the other hand, CP’s choice for best leftyblog is a real howler – “Cucking Stool”. 

Oh, the Cuck is just another lefty snarkblog, sort of like Jeff Fecke only as narrated by a fictional dog.

But this part was hilarious (emphasis added):

 The site also benefits from MNObserver’s legal background, especially when dissecting current events such as the firing of U.S. attorneys, the Blois Olson vs. Michael Brodkorb lawsuit,

“Benefits” like presenting the Olson v. Brodkorb case’s disposition completely wrong (on Norwegianity, one of the several other blogs for which she writes. Indeed, all leftybloggers seem to write for several other blogs; in fact, I wonder if there’s a leftyblogger not represented on every leftyblog).

Note to Cuck:  Hope you fare better than last year’s “best leftyblog” winner.

First things first – congratulations to MOB blog “Faithmouse” for winning City Pages “Best Right Wing Blog” award.

We hope they survive it.

I’ve been reading Faithmouse for about a year and half.  It’s good stuff. 

But I think I know what the City Pages really likes about it:

 In examining the dozens of right-wing sites on its blog roll, one can easily surmise where local cartoonist Dan Lacey’s sympathies lie. But judging the cartoons he prolifically posts will leave one scratching one’s head more times that not.

In other words, the City Pages loooves conservatism that doesn’t actually come out and say it.

Gotcha.