Category Archives: Media

Everything about the mainstream media.

Fake But…Well, Let’s Not Get Hung Up On Details

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The Texas Air National Guard memos were fakes.

There was no “Republican War on Women”.

Elizabeth Warren isn’t really Cherokee, and wasn’t fired from a teaching job for being pregnant.

Beto O’Rourke isn’t really Latino.

Alexandria “Tide Pod Evita” Ocasio Cortez isn’t really a working stiff-ette from the block.

Ilhan Omar isn’t really much of anything she claims to be.

Joe Biden’s family weren’t killed by a drunk driver:

…people are killed by drunk drivers every day in this country. Joe Biden’s wife and daughter were not among them, in spite of his libelous claims that they lost their lives in an accident involving an irresponsible truck driver who, as Biden put it, “drank his lunch.” The man who oversaw that investigation, Delaware Superior Court judge Jerome O. Herlihy, repeatedly has confirmed that there is no evidence alcohol was involved. The survivors of the driver, who has since passed away, have publicly asked Biden to stop telling this lie and besmirching the memory of their father. Investigators at the time determined that the accident was not even the other driver’s fault — Mrs. Biden seems to have driven accidentally into the path of the truck.

Putin didn’t buy the election. Brett Kavanaugh wasn’t a rapist.

“Anti-Fa” isn’t the opposite of “fascist”.

Assault rifles are a statistical blip, gun crimes in Chicago are not causally related to the availability of guns in Indiana, the Second Amendment was not written specifically to defend slave owners, gun control has no effect on criminals or crime, and good guys with guns are disproportionally effective against both street crime and mass shootings.

Democrat messaging seems to have entirely morphed into saying whatever Progs want the gullible, ill-informed and emotion-driven to believe, without regard to truth, much less punctilious accuracy.

Freedom Is Dangerous

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“Liberals”, 2004: “Question authority! Free speech is *the* most essential right!”

“Progressives”, 2019: “Free speech is too dangerous for people without tin ‘journalist’ badges to be using”

In the old Soviet Union, citizens used to joke that when a shortage of butter was anticipated, the state media would start running stories on how *bad* butter was for you.

I couldn’t help but think about this over the weekend. And not *just* because our media is resembling the old Soviet media more and more, either.

Following on the NYTimes’ op-ed on free speech being too “dangerous” for mere proles, NPR’s “On the Media” – which is to the big media what a fawning mall cop is to your local blue-and-white – took up the same refrain, giving Marantz a full hour to reiterate his claim (and in so doing giving a whole new spin on “physician, heal thyself”).

Oh, they wrap it in a dirty-sounding word, “absolutism” – but like the NYTimes piece…

…it’s all a rationalization for turning speech over to the “professionals”, to whittle that right (or “right”) down to a size that proles can handle.

And we’re seeing a *lot* of this lately; how checks and balances are just tooooo haaaaard, and the Bill of Rights is just tooooo complex for the herd to deal with.

Makes me think of Soviet Radio. Apropos nothing.

Just saying, Democrats – I liked y’all better 15 years ago.

A Thousand Times “Yep”

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While driving about yesterday during the mid-day, I caught a piece on MPR – basically a recycled “Documentary” podcast on “Education” looking at the tension between free speech and “inclusion” at the U of M, viewed in the context of a squabble over a panel on the Washington Avenue bridge in 2016, where Campus Republicans wrote “build the wall”, spawning the usual suspects’ usual performances about the need to make free speech not nearly so free.

I sat, mostly dumbfounded, as a series of academics, consultants and activists responded to the notion of the importance (to say nothing of sanctity ,and vitality to a democracy) of free speech with an ever-increasing series of “Yabbuts”.

There were too many chilling moments to pick just one pullquote; I’d read or listen to the whole thing, if you’re in the mood to feel immense forboding.

But this part here caught my attention; I’ve added some emphasis:

Over the course of [Rebecca Ropers, a vice provost for faculty and academic affairs at the University of Minnesota]’s career, she has witnessed an increasing ability for people that are marginalized on campus to articulate what is going on in their lives, but she doesn’t see administrators and other students showing a commensurate ability to hear and acknowledge those experiences. She said that the university now knows more about managing diversity and free speech, but school officials don’t always implement what they know.
“If administrators and faculty could have students’ backs and continue to articulate the importance of free speech, while also saying, ‘Yeah, and I really find that reprehensible,” I think maybe that’s a good strategy for academic leaders to take at this point,” Ropers said.

“Acknowledgment”. It’s the “bring me a rock” of modern sociology; the “acknowledgment” sought is never, ever the kind offered; there’s always a bigger, better, different form that’s really demanded, although it’s up to the acknowledgor to figure that out.

If the modern academy – at least, outside most engineering and hard science departments – expends energy in anything other than endless self-flagellation over the current view of identity politics, what is it?

Although I’ll clarify – it’s not so much self-flagellation; call it flagellation of some “other” on the part of the upper-middle-class academics and activists doing the flagellation, who are never called upon for any meaningful sacrifices as a result.

The 12th Commandment

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It’s an oldie but a goodie. And as we head toward another election sure to be driven by Big Left’s narratives and Trump’s responses to them, this bit here is worth committing to memory:

Courtesy Instapundit

Journalism is always about “asking the questions that matter” – where “matter” in this case means “furthers the narrative”.

Know How You Can Tell The Economy Is Doing Well Under A Republican President?

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The media are devoting lavish coverage to homelessness, that’s why.

And, somehow, less to this sort of thing.

Look – not only is a recession going to happen one of these days, a recession [1] is a necessary part of the business cycle. But the contortions Big Left and Big Media [2] are going through to downplay the currently good economic news are downright unseemly.

[1] In a normal, healthy economy with sound fundamentals, of course. Which we have. Of course, that’s true only if the recession kills of bad ideas and unsound enterprises, and frees up labor and capital for good ideas and sound investments – which the Fed hasn’t really allowed a recession to do since 1993.

[2] Pardon, as always, the redundancy.

Everybody’s Canceled

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Guy in Des Moines – Carson King – becomes famous for photobombing ESPN broadcasts with a “Send Me Beer Money” sign.

King turns that fame into $2 Million in donations for Iowa Childrens Hospital (less one, and only one, case of beer). Anheuser Busch matched the donations, turning the photobomb prank into a bonanza for the hospital.

Des Moines Register reporter writes profile on King. Can’t resist pointing out in the largely-laudatory profile that King wrote an objectionable tweet – a quote from the “Comedy” Central show “Tosh.0”, which is a laboratory of objectionability.

When he was 16 years old.

Anheuser Busch severs ties with King.

Public reaction explodes.

The Des Moines Register’s editor laboriously disclaims any responsibility for her and her fellow “gatekeepers'” malfeasance:

Some of you wonder why journalists think it’s necessary to look into someone’s past. It’s essential because readers depend on us to tell a complete story…In doing backgrounding for such a story, reporters talk to family, friends, colleagues or professors. We check court and arrest records as well as other pertinent public records, including social media activity. The process helps us to understand the whole person…As journalists, we have the obligation to look into matters completely, to aid the public in understanding the people we write about and in some cases to whom money is donated.

And she’s not wrong, per se; exposing scammers is the sort of thing we used to depend on the mainstream media to do.

There have been numerous cases nationally of fundraising for a person experiencing a tragedy that was revealed as a scam after media investigated the backgrounds of the organizer or purported victim.

Right.

Thing is, they found no scam. They found a sixteen year old, being a sixteen year old, quoting from a show designed for sixteen year olds, when he was sixteen. I’m gonna go out on the limb and guess the Register’s “editor” is a child-free cat lady who whose only contact with teenagers is at the drive-through at Starbucks.

And according to the Today show report on the story over the weekend, the DMR’s editorial staff when back and forth and back again, trying to decide – as a group of “gatekeepers! – whether or not to run the irrelevant, aged-out non-episode episode, before deciding, in effect, to doxx King.

Meg Fox at PJmedia isn’t buying it, either:

This is nonsense. And no one is satisfied. Readers do NOT depend on newspapers to ruin our neighbors’ lives with their intrusive doxxing. That is exactly what everyone hates about the media. Remember Don Henley’s song? “Kick ’em when they’re up, kick ’em when they’re down…we want dirty laundry.” That wasn’t a love ballad. It was a scathing review of the way the average person sees the news media, gleefully reporting murder and mayhem and doxxing people and destroying reputations. It’s not supposed to be your theme song, Ms. Hunter.

Side note to Megan Fox: listen to NPR/WNYC’s weekly show, “On The Media”, a show that serves as the exposed public id of the “elite” media, if you want to feel really depressed about the state of the institution that’s supposed to hold government accountable – but mostly just badgers people like Carson King. The problem isn’t that they do things like this public reputational lynching; the problem is that they have developed an institutional justification for it that’d do the debates at the medieval papal Curia proud.

Anyway – after all of that, it turned out that the Register reporter, Aaron Calvin, had a bit of a history himself, with a Twitter feed full of William Davis-level tasteless. The Register fired Calvin earlier this week – a fall he deserved to take, but in a just world he’s have taken every editor involved in this travesty down with him as well.

So – a non-scam fundraiser for a noble cause was, if not canceled, at least sidetracked (King is showing admirable pluck in the face of the reputational lynching, vowing to carry on; I suspect it’ll work). The “reporter” is canceled, for now – although he’ll be back; I wouldn’t rule out the City Pages, and I’m only joking a little.

Everything’s canceled but the idiot editors – serial informational predators, who will all just to on to “cancel” again.

Unless it’s a Democrat politician, natch.

Let’s Do Some Thunberging

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Steven Miller on Twitter:

Speaking of “cyberbullying”: so when a teenager smiles awkwardly at guy tacitly harassing him at a rally in DC, it’s racism – but when a teenager rants at the UN like a junior Mussolini, before taking a “green” trip to the next stop on her agenda and thence home on $10M sailing yacht? Voice of a generation!

Since “Fake News” Is All The Rage

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Yesterday I was listening to “All Things Considered” on the way to something more interesting.

The subject was “what are we doing to combat the kind of fake news that, we are told, affected the 2016 election”.

The guest – one Paul Barrett, an adjunct professor at NYU who lectures about election security for some reason or another – said that one thing that could help might be for social media companies (and, one might suppose, media companies in general) to “act more aggressively against provably false information”.

I couldn’t agree more, although I suspect that’s not the kind of cynical deception they’re thinking about.

Let’s start with sanctioning people who passed on Dakota County Attorney Jim Backstrom’s provably false claims about gun rights issues, especially proposals to reform self-defense laws – a trail of lies that continues today.

Professor Barrett also says individuals need to be more skeptical about what they read and see online. This is something no conservative in the Strib’s coverage area needs to be reminded about.

Hagiography

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I was listening to NPR on the way to work this morning when I first heard the news of Robert Mugabe’s passing.

And I listened to the story, waiting for them to get to the bits about the organized thuggery, the North Korean mercenaries, the hyperinflation, and the collapse of the economy with its attendant hypermisery.

I waited through hagiographic hosannas about his “pan-africanism” and “anti-colonial vision”.

And I waited.

And I waited.

Eventually – two minutes into the story – it popped up. For a bit.

Even the NYTimes couldn’t see fit to bury the lede on this one.

Cold

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When Ilhan Omar starts attacking the Strib – which has been rhetorically painting her toenails ever since the beginning of her state-managed-to-a-fault career – you might be forgiven for wondering if the wheels aren’t starting to fall apart over at Team Ilhan.

Scott sums up where the Omar story was as of earlier in the week.

The scandal has pushed the incredible panoply of scandals we have covered in depth on Power Line into the background: the identity fraud, the marriage fraud, the immigration fraud, the tax fraud.
In the past three weeks I have circled back to interview sources whom I have found to be highly reliable in the Omar saga. They open a window onto the scandals from the perspective of Ahmed Hirsi, her long-time partner and the father of her three children. According to sources, Hirsi is telling friends:
• that he will not go to jail for Omar;
• that while Omar did indeed marry her brother (Ahmed Elmi) for fraudulent purposes, Hirsi did not know at the time that she had married Elmi;
• that Omar is threatening Hirsi he would be in trouble along with her if the truth were to come out;
• that Omar has asked him to state publicly that all is well with their marriage even though it is completely done and finished; and
• that in fact they are living apart and have been divorced under Islamic law (although they remain legally married).
Having humiliated Ahmed Hirsi by her affair with Tim Mynett, Omar now wants Hirsi to perform public relations services for her to suppress the scandal. That is cold.

While hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, a husband tossed under the bus for a newer model can do a lot more than write country-western songs. I’m kinda rooting for Hirsi.

And without Power Line and Scott Johnson, the story – her alleged fake marriages, immigration and identity fraud, her tax problems, to say nothing of the philandering – would have stayed safely buried.

Accentuating The Obvious

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Reporter tries to exercise Big Media’s shibboleth – that it’s easier to buy a gun than get a library book.

Finds out it just ain’t so.

To be fair, the woman did a fairly honest job reporting the story.

To be honest, the notion that she thought guns were a gimme at a Walmart tells us something at little depressing about the gullibility and prejudice of Big Media.

No Reason I Can Think Of…

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Remember Hillary using a private email server for her official State Department business, emails which later went missing?
Remember President Trump suggesting we should ask the Russians to give us copies?
Wrong country.  Her emails were automatically copied to the Chinese.  Every single one.  Confirmed by the Inspector General at the Department of Justice.
Weird how I missed the headlines in all the major media.
Joe Doakes

It makes sense, as Glenn Reynolds notes, when you remember they are all Democrat operatives with bylines.

As The World’s Smallest Violin Plays The World’s Saddest Song

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According to a writer for the ever-simpering Brit Independent, no politician has ever been treated as scabrously as…

…Mitt Romney?

Brett Kavanaugh?

No, no no no!

It’s Ilhan Omar!

She’s got a sinecure seat in a district no less one-party than East Berlin in 1974. She’s politically bulletproof; she could shoot down an Israeli airliner and get 75% of the vote. Chicago ward heelers wish they were as set up as she is.

She’s got a local media that paints her toenails for her. 

She’s looking forward to a lifetime of wealth, on the public, media and non-profit dime at the very least, for her and her family. 

Someone treat me that “badly”, stat.

The Kobayashi Moron Test

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So one dares not criticize “Progressive” establishments – like all major cities, especially the failed ones, like Baltimore – because racism.

But one dare not actually put one’s skin in the game and try to fix, or even tidy up after, the mess progressivism created, because…racism.

The Baltimore Sun bags on conservatives helping clean up the mess for which they’ve been a cheerleader for generations.

And by “clean up”, that’s literally what we’re talking about:

Brandon Morse wrote Tuesday about the inspiring story of conservative activists who stepped up to the plate to help citizens in the poverty-stricken areas of Baltimore. The effort was organized in the aftermath of the uproar over President Trump’s criticisms of the city and of Rep. Elijah Cummings, whose Congressional district runs through Baltimore.
[Scott] Presler, who said he is an ardent supporter of Trump, is a grassroots conservative activist who has an enormous social media following. Presler said one tweet last week launched 1,000 trash bags in Monday’s efforts.
Presler, who also told the news outlet that the gathering was not meant to be “pro-Trump” or “anti-Elijah Cummings”, posted numerous photos and videos of the clean-up day on his Twitter page.

Not good enough for the the Democrat party’s pro bono PR firm, the Baltimore Sun:

In a condescending piece titled “We assume it was pure motives that led a Trump supporter to launch a cleanup in Cummings’ district, right?”, here’s what they wrote (bolded emphasis added by me):
The effort was organized by pro-Trump activist Scott Presler. He claimed the event was not political. Yes, he was inspired to come by tweets from President Donald Trump describing the area, represented by U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, as a “rodent infested mess.” But the visit wasn’t about showing support or animosity for either man, he said.

Call us skeptical.

Call me unsurprised.

Revelation

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I have these two jokes – which in a sense aren’t jokes at all.

First – when it comes to progressivism, yesterday’s joke is today’s proposal and tomorrow’s policy.

And the second: Babylon Bee is becoming less and less distinguishable with “real news”.

And now, the former “fact-check” site Snopes is trying to deplatform Babylon Bee because…well, apparently they think satire confuses people?

And it occurs to me – it’s all clear, and the dots all connect, now: Snopes is trying to deplatform Babylon Bee because they’re actually the real news, 2-3 years ahead of time.

No Guns, No Coverage

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When I first saw the headline for this piece on social media, I thought it was Babylon Bee spoofing big modern media:

Kyoto Animation arson killings didn’t get much attention because we couldn’t demonize guns

Sure enougb, it’s an actual USAToday editorial, about the Kyoto Animation Studio mass killing -= which involved arson, not guns, so the American media snoozed it out:

The limited attention here in the United States cannot be explained away on account of distance. Compare the coverage with that of the mosque shootings last March in Christchurch, New Zealand, a location even farther from our shores. U.S. newspapers and wire services featured the Christchurch massacre five times as much as the Kyoto mass murder.
Sure, there are some differences between the two tragedies in term of victim count and motive. Thursday’s attack involved a personal agenda rather than a political one — never raising the dreadful specter of terrorism. The Kyoto massacre may not have been an act of terror, but the young victims undoubtedly experienced tremendous terror as the flames swelled around them and smoke invaded their lungs. 
Mass shootings remain one of the most widely discussed topics here in the United States. By comparison, we just don’t seem to be as unnerved by mass killings carried out by other methods, unless of course they hint of terrorism, be it of foreign or domestic origin.

This wasn’t always the case; when over 90 were killed by an arsonist at the Happyland Social Club in the Bronx in 1990, there was media coverage…

…but it didn’t lead to “National Conversations” about mental health, since that’s a) intractable, b) involves beating on no political opponents.

And I’ll posit this right here: If an insane arsonist killed 34 black people in Chicago, there’d be a similar shrug of the media’s shoulders. Because there’s no political angle to beat on gun owners in between editorials bemoaning “tribailism” in our culture.

Kicking And Screaming

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The Star Tribune, motivated (I’d suspect) by the very real spectre of being made to look like an in-the-bag PR flak for the DFL (perish the thought) by mushrooming coverage from out-of-town and national media, finally reports on Ilhan Omar’s alleged marital “irregularities”

New investigative documents released by a state agency have given fresh life to lingering questions about the marital history of Rep. Ilhan Omar and whether she once married a man — possibly her own brother — to skirt immigration laws.
Omar has denied the allegations in the past, dismissing them as “baseless rumors” first raised in an online Somali politics forum and championed by conservative bloggers during her 2016 campaign for the Minnesota House. But she said little then or since about Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, the former husband who swept into her life in 2009 before a 2011 separation.

“But Mitch – you ascribe this to sensitivity about the Strib’s part about its reputation?”

I do – because the Strib does:

The new documents also detail the Omar campaign’s efforts to keep the story of her marriage to Elmi out of the press, arguing that detailed coverage would legitimize the accusations and invade her privacy.

“Efforts” that have been, until now, utterly effortless.






The Best Way To Get Publicity As A Republican “Candidate” In A One-Party District…

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…is to be anywhere off the mainstream. To say nothing of getting arrested.

of getting arrested.

“Danielle Stella”, of whom nearly nobody in the Fifth CD GOP has ever heard, and who has absolutely no chance of getting the nomination to run against, much less beat, Ilhan Omar, is making all sorts of international headlines:

A pro-Trump Republican candidate for Congress who is aiming to unseat Ilhan Omar in Minnesota has been charged with a felony after allegedly stealing from stores.
Danielle Stella was arrested twice this year in Minneapolis suburbs over allegations that she shoplifted items worth more than $2,300 from a Target and goods valued at $40 from a grocery store. She said she denied the allegations

And with that, Danielle Stella’s miscreancy just got more publicity than all of Ilhan Omar’s allegations have gotten in the Strib’s.

Shut Up And Report

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

There is a difference between a reporter and a journalist.
A reporter tells you what happened: who, what, when, and where.
The journalist tells you how he feels about it, and you should too, if you weren’t such a hateful, racist, sexist, misogynist hater who hates.
This is why people love reporters and hate journalists. This is why Trump is making points with people who agree with him that journalist and their fake news are actually enemies of the people who want accurate information to make informed decisions.
Joe doakes

Experience on this blog shows this not to be a bad definition.

One Day In The Star/Tribunes “Morgue”

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SCENE: It’s the “Morgue” at the Star-Tribune’s “Morgue” – a room full of file cabinets, deep underground, where no light has penetrated since the Kennedy administration.

The door opens, and the MINNESOTA DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES STORY, wherein mismanagement under two DFL administrations led to hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud, including credible allegations of welfare money being transferred to terrorists – is tossed into the room, which is crowded with other news stories.

ILHAN OMAR’S APPARENTLY FRAUDULENT-MARRIAGE STORY: Hello.

MINNESOTA DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES STORY: Hi. Where am I?

WELL-CONNECTED DEMOCRAT KIDS GET OFF WITH A WARNING FOR MASS AGGRAVATED ASSAULT AND HATE CRIMES AGAINST REPUBLICANS STORY: This is the Star-Tribune’s “morgue” file.

STEVE SIMON IS STONEWALLING THREE COURT ORDERS DEMANDING HE RELEASE INFORMATION ABOUT VOTING IRREGULARITIES STORY: It’s where news stories that the DFL establishment doesn’t want covered go to…

KEITH ELLISON’S HISTORY OF ANTISEMITISM STORY: …for a nice long break.

(The other stories chuckle)

MINNESOTA DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES STORY: So when do we get out of here?

(The question is met with a few guffaws)

ILHAN OMAR’S ANTISEMITISM STORY: When the Strib reports about Minnesota having “paradoxically” liberal gun laws and the lowest crime rate in the nation for a state with a major metro area in it.

MINNESOTA DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES STORY: So – a long time?

KEITH ELLISON’S HISTORY OF ANTISEMITISM STORY: You have no idea.

(And SCENE)

Thought Experiment

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If I walked into your store with a sawed-off shotgun, demanded you hand over all your money, turned to leave with the loot, slipped on a banana peel, and cracked my head open, gushing blood all over the floor and rating a trip to the ER, would the local newspaper say I’d “donated blood” and “brought extra income to the local hospital?”

Only if I were a “progressive” who was the vessel of all the area’s media and Big Left felt about themselves.

The Knowledge Gap

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Modern journalists are innumerate.  The numbers in this article don’t work.  270 million people world-wide were lifted out of poverty, 271 million of them in India, alone.  Huh?
But far more importantly, HOW was it done?  Taxing the rich?  Foreign aid?  Free college?  Moving to the US?  The article is conspicuously silent.
Perhaps . . . say it softly . . . capitalism works?
Joe Doakes

Typos happen – especially now that “layers and layers of gatekeepers” have gone through fifteen years of layoffs are are now just a metaphorical doorbell camera.

But altering the fundemantal principles of most journos’ lives? That capitalism has, at best, yuge problems, just like their profs used to say?

Good luck with that.

Cafeteria American

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I had the rare treat of listening to the utterly ironically named “MPR News with Keri Miller” earlier this week.  And by “treat” I meant “update of the notion that Keri Miller is the one “journalist” in the Twin Cities that’d be ill-advised to tell Esme Murphy “dial back the shilling for the DFL and Big Left, you Big Left Shill, you””.  

Anyway – she had a show on Tuesday featuring a Hindi woman talking the co-option of Yoga by non-Hindi.  Not “decrying” it, per se – just urging people to be aware of, and perhaps learn something of, its Hindi roots.  

Pull quote:  the woman, Suhag Shukla, describing the various non-Hindi permutations of Yoga, including…:

SHUKLA: “…even Christian Yoga!”

MILLER: (In the background) (Disgusted, mocking snork)

Now, Ms. Shukla has a point – part of her culture has been appropriated. Like solstice trees and Chow Mein and polyrhythm and virtually everything else about every culture in the world that hasn’t been isolated from every other culture in the world, “appropriation” is a two-way street.

As someone who’s lost eighty pounds and wants to gain some flexibility and joint resiliency, I’m interested in yoga (although I haven’t done it yet). As a Christian, I have only intellectual interest in Hinduism. You wanna talk, Ms. Shukla? We’ll talk.

But since Keri Miller – and by association, the modern progressivism for which she shills – is the venue that brought me and Ms. Shukla together, let’s talk appropriation.

Big Left, like a suburban housewife going to an agnostic Hot Yoga class in a strip mall in Minnetonka, appropriates the convenient parts of the American experiment – the fun parts, like free speech and privacy. Like that housewife, or the Cafeteria Catholic, or the Allah-carte Muslim (actor, comedian, and observant but not fundie muslim Rami Yusef’s term, and I love it), they leave out the inconvenient parts – the citizen as self-sufficient atomic political unit, with the same rights, powers and responsibilities in microcosm of actual states are. The whole “government by consent of the governed” and “Free Association of Equals” bit.

If you want to practice the fun parts of the American experiment – immigrating to a country with freedom and opportunity, getting paid to be on the radio, free speech and waving signs about? Then pay some thought to the complex stuff – the tension between order and liberty, the moral right of the free market versus the stifling moral decay of socialism.

It’s a fine day for that, isn’t it?

MyLyssa Has Questions. Mitch Has Answers.

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SCENE: Mitch BERG is walking down Grand Avenue, looking for Grand Avenue Distillery Supplies. As he looks in the storefront, MyLyssa SILBERMAN, Reporter for National Public Radio’s Saint Paul bureau, covering the “Fake News” and “Diversity” beats, gets out of a cab.

SILBERMAN: Merg!

BERG: (Nonplussed) Er, hi, MyLyssa. What’s up?

SILBERMAN: I’m curious. You continuously say, on your blog and show, that the media is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the progressive movement.

BERG: I do. And it’s true.

SILBERMAN: How can you say that? We have layers and layers and..

BERG: …and layers of gatekeepers. Right. Got that. I base my assertion on, well, reading and listening to the media, and taking what they say seriously.

SILBERMAN: Meaning…?

BERG: Well, for example, listen to this bit by NPR’s “On the Media” – supposedly their media “watchdog” show – and the train of ultra-left dogmatics and magical thinking, and tell me any part of it that wouldn’t fit right in with a Wobbly pamphlet in the 1900s.

SILBERMAN: (Puts on earphones. Listens to segment. Removes headphones). I don’t hear anything.

BERG: This is my shocked face

SILBERMAN: It might be the global warming.

BERG: Might be

(And SCEN)E