Literal

Exasperated conservatives sometimes refer to the media as “the enemy”.

It’s understandable – the media at the editorial and national level is in general a PR firm for Big Left – and accurate in terms of long-term effect.

But not since Walter Duranty has it been quite this literally true.

Five Israeli families are suing the AP and Reuters for their “journalists” obvious collusion with Hamas on October 7:

The lawsuit filed by the victims’ parents last week alleges that five photojournalists, Hassan Abdel Fattah Eslaiah, Hatem Ali, Mohammed Fayq Abu Mostafa, Ashraf Amra, and Ali Mahmoud who filed photographs in real time of the atrocities being perpetrated by Hamas terrorists were in fact a component of the attacks themselves, and were not conducting legitimate journalistic work.

The journalists were either aware ahead of time that a mass invasion and terror attack was about to be staged by Hamas or, being present from the very outset of the attacks, were culpable for doing nothing to stop the assault, including failing to warn the Israeli authorities, the suit asserts.

While the free market is having its real final say with Big ProgressiveMedia, a little economic justice would be welcome. FIngers crossed.

Modern “Journalism” In Action

For those who needed a reminder:

As we learned years ago, the Society of Professional Journalists “Code Of Ethics” isn’t a code of ethics; it’s more analogous to the flags on a slalom course; things to be avoided if possible, run over if desired.

Air Davos

George Soros and his, uh, “activist” investment operation are set to take a controlling interest in Audacy, the nations’ second-largest radio station chain:

The Soros investment firm, which is listed alongside other Audacy lenders that are members of the “ad hoc first lien group,” is poised to have its debt converted into Audacy stock as part of a restructuring of the company.

Audacy filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection earlier this year in order to reduce and restructure its $1.9 billion debt, converting most of it into stock.

“Through the restructuring, Audacy and its debtholders will undertake a deleveraging transaction to equitize approximately $1.6 billion of funded debt, a reduction of 80 percent from approximately $1.9 billion to approximately $350 million,” the company said in a Jan. 7 press release.

There were a number of critical reactions as word spread on social media that Mr. Soros’s investment firm is set to assume a major stake in America’s number two radio station chain.

There’s concern from the right that Soros might turn Audacy’s stations into a huge progressive media nexus.

I’m less convinced. Audacy’s major holdings in the Twin Cities are a couple of the bigger music stations, and the once-mighty WCCO. If progressives took complete control of ‘CCO, I’m not sure we’d notice any more than if they’d taken over the Strib.

Disappeared

SCENE: It’s a darkened back room at Minnesota DFL headquarters. Ken Martin and an attendant perp-walk a figured in handcuffs with a bag over his head into a room at the faaar back of the building. They sit him down and pull the bag off, revealing Rep. Andy SMITH (chucklehead jagoff, Rochester). DIsoriented, SMITH blinks and adjusts to the dim light as he notices the people around him.

SMITH: Er…who are you?

MAN 1: I’m former state Representative John Thompson.

MAN 2: I’m Representative Dan Wolgamott

WOMAN 1: I’m Representative Brion Curran.

MAN 3: I’m former sheriff Dave Hutchinson.

MAN 4: I’m William Davis, former communications genius.

WOMAN 2: I’m Julie Blaha, state auditor.

MAN 5: I’m Matt Roznowski, , DFL comms guy and tough tough enforcer.

SMITH: Wow. So – what are you all in for?

CURRAN: Same thing as you.

SMITH: Uh…what’s that?

HUTCHINSON: Keep you out of sight.

SMITH: Why?

BLAHA: So the media doesn’t accidentally get curious and cover any of us.

THOMPSON: RIght about now, you’ll be…

(DAVIS pulls up SMITH’s twitter account)

DAVIS: Just like they did for me.

Everyone nods, goes back to quietly passing the time.

And SCENE

Let’s Stir Up Another Republic-Threatening Hornets Nest: Part II

Since roughly the 2020 election, I’ve simultaneously:

  • Thought something was amiss about the elections; if not Chicago-style ballot stuffing, at least a world of irregularites with the “legal” changes due to Covid – mail in balloting, and the collusion between the DOJ, the Biden campaign, big media and big tech to “shape” the Hunter Biden story, among others
  • Told some of the more extreme election skeptics, especially on the air, “That’s an interesting theory, but until Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani bring an actual case with evidence to court, rather than beclowning themselves, what do you expect we’re going to do about it?”

Three points.

Imperfection

The first point? I made that a few weeks back, when I talked about why I don’t necessairly think “a judge and jury say so” is completely invariably the dispositive last word on any issue. Long story short – judges and juries make mistakes. And that’s ignoring the fact that some prosecutors play fast and loose with the rules, some defense attorneys have no idea what they’re doing, and some judges just want to make their @$%$#& tee times.

Sometimes it gets caught.

The legal system isn’t perfect, but it beats most of the alternatives.

Which may or may not be good enough.

Second: In a separate, seemingly unrelated topic: in Minnesota, most judges are elected. But the candidate pool is intensely circumscribed because, as a lawyer once told me, running a campaign against a sitting judge in front of whom one will one day have to appear in court is pretty much a one-way trip toward spending the rest of your career chasing people who bounce checks.

Judges, by inference – who are charged with being our society’s stentorian impartial guardians of justice and fairness and due process – apparently have the egos of a bunch of middle school “mean girls”.

Reading between the lines: the reputation and social standing of practitioners among other practitioners is as much a part of the judicial system as due process and gavels and the literal letter of the law.

Socially Rigged

So – did the social pressure among lawyers, judges and everyone else in the legal profession that we discussed above affect the election, or the way the courts approached questions about it?

I don’t know. But this article, among others, certainly seems to brag about the power of the Legal Mean Girl caste to bring Big Law into line. Certainly Big Media isn’t going to report on it.

Let’s just say I can be convinced.

Like It Never Happened

You will search the Strib in vain for any mention of the fallout from Ilhan Omar’s speech, in which she basically told a Somali audience that she was there to uphold their side’s interests in an ongoing squabble with Ethiopia.

Now, normally you need to go to the London Daily Mail.

So the fact that it’s in the NYPost must mean it’s serious. Tom Emmer called on her to resign:

“Ilhan Omar’s appalling, Somalia-first comments are a slap in the face to the Minnesotans she was elected to serve and a direct violation of her oath of office,” House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) wrote on X. “She should resign in disgrace.”

If you’re confused by the fracas? It does need some explaining:

Omar, the first Somali American in Congress, appeared to assure her Somali American constituents that she would do everything in her power to prevent the disputed, breakaway Republic of Somaliland from entering into a sea-access deal with landlocked Ethiopia.

A clip of the Minnesota lawmaker went viral with over 2.6 million views after it was posted on X, with a translation saying Omar had said: “As Somalis, one day we will go after our missing territories.”

The congresswoman claims her remarks were lost in translation. 

“It’s not only slanted but completely off,” Omar said of the subtitles in a video of her speech shared by Republic of Somaliland Foreign Minister Rhoda Elmi. “But I wouldn’t expect more from these propagandists.”

Of course, as we noted yesterday, the Somali deputy foreign minister – presumably a Somali speaker – felt the need to disavow the speech in no uncertain terms:

My fearless prediction: Omar will do her usual on-air slumber party with Esme Murphy this Sunday. They’ll paint each others toenails on the air as they commiserate about all the bigotry that strong powerful women face in the world today.

And then it’ll get disappeared.

We Don’t Need No Water, Let That Agenda-Driven Corrupt Mouthpiece Of Big Left Burn

The LATimes – one of our corrupt activist agenda-whore media’s worst offenders – is taking a weed-whacker to the “news” room.

The other members of the club are squirting tears:

“If you care about journalism…”

You mean, “journalism” like this?

If you care about journalism, bring a **c**n* bulldozer and some gasoline.

The Real Victims

SCENE: Mitch BERG is leaving a guitar shop on Selby Avenue after dropping off an instrument for some repairs, when MyLyssa SILBERMAN, reporter for National Public Radio’s Saint Paul bureau, covering the “Fake News” and “Diversity” beats, steps out of a chi-chi coffee shop.

SILBERMAN: Merg.

BERG: Oh, hey, MyLyssa…

SILBERMAN: Terrible, what’s going on in Gaza.

BERG: Yep. 1,300 Israelis massacred, thousands of Gazan human shields dead, hundreds of Israeli soldiers killed…

SILBERMAN: Dozens of journalists killed in Gaza by Israeli forces. It’s terribly dangerous for journalists.

BERG: er, yeah. I suppose that’s a problem too. But, as in World War II, if you’re where the action is, there are dangers.

SILBERMAN: World War II killed dozens of journalists.

BERG: Right. And between 30 and 50 million other combatants and civilians.

SILBERMAN: And dozens of journalists.

BERG: And during the New York Draft Riots of 1863, which killed thousands, especially black and immigrant New Yorkers…

SILBERMAN: Rioters besieged the New York Times building and killed several journalists.

BERG: When the Titanic sank, it was a tragedy that…

SILBERMAN: …two journalists died.

BERG: But it’s not like they were singled out. I mean, they were on a ship…

SILBERMAN: Aren’t you listening? Journalists died.

BERG: Right. So – Rwanda…

SILBERMAN: Journalists were murdered!

BERG: Hmmm. And during the Minneapolis riots, the biggest outrage was…

SILBERMAN: Journalists getting pepper-sprayed and shot with rubber bullets. And some government officials didn’t respond to our requests for interviews.

BERG: And the destruction of East Lake Street and University Avenue, the Third Precinct, and much of civil order…

SILBERMAN: (Yawns broadly). Sorry. I really have to get to the Society of Professional Journalists meeting

BERG: No doubt.

(And SCENE).

I Read Deena Winter In The “Minnesota Reformer” So You Don’t Have To

Earlier this week, the Minnesota Reformer – a news outlet financed by “progressive” plutocrats iwth deep pockets – did its review of AlphaNews’s “Minneapolis Has Fallen”.

The claims – well, I’ll let the tweet do the talking for the piece, entitled “I Watched Minneapolis Has Fallen So You Don’t Have To”.

Let’s go briefly through Winter’s claims.

Restraint

The biggest hit Winter has against Collin is that, according to her, the movie’s revelation that Chief Arredondo and his training officer lied about whether “Maximal Restraint Technique” was part of the MPD’s training and policy. Collin showed cops, and Chauvin’s mother, opening the manual to the exact section, and showed multiple current and former MPD officers saying they’d been trained in the technique. The movie also said the jurors were not allowed to see the body cam footage that showed that Chauvin did the technique correctly – with his knee on the shoulder blade, rather than on George Floyd’s neck.

Winter claims that yes, the jury saw both.

OK – so if that’s true, and the jurors saw the same training that the officers had, then could someone explain to me why Chief Arredondo still lied about it?

Neither reporter has clarified that for me, so someone else has to.

UPDATE: Danger Close

And as I wrote this in a hurry, I forgot this. But as “Bigman” noted in the comments – why the fact that Cahill failed to sequester the jury – who came to and from a courthouse that was being fortified like the Green Zone in Baghdad, and who were being told more or less directly that if they reached the “wrong verdict” that they were in huge trouble – not being discussed?

I’ll ask the question because Winter didn’t think she had to.

White Riot

Winter goes on to discuss the parts of the film dealing with the riot, most specifically the evacuation of the Third Precinct (on which. apropos nothing much, I scooped the entire Twin Cities media), I’m trying to figure out what Winter’s point is.

I’ll dispense with the fact that Winter…lacks a certain amount of empathy, or at least insight outside her own apparently narrow experience (emphasis added):

Collin also spends considerable time questioning why the MPD and local and state officials were slow to take action as protests devolved into riots and arson that destroyed hundreds of buildings across the metro.

Retired MPD officer Jason Reimer tells Collin what bothered him the most is “they let people throw rocks and bricks and firebombs and we’re supposed to just put on a helmet and take that.”

Well, helmets, but likely also bulletproof vests and eye-irritant spray, handcuffs, Tasers and semi-automatic pistols.

Bulletproof vests don’t keep you from burning to death. Spray and tasers are useful to get control one on one, not against a mob.

And I’ll let Deena Winter’s idea of shooting into a crowd of rioters hang out there, because I sure didn’t want to have to do it for her.

Winter cites some fairly wrenching scenes in the movie (that reflect what I reported in May of 2020), to which I’ll add some emphasis:

“We were in the middle of a war zone,” Herron said. “We were ordered not to do anything.”

She said the fire department wasn’t responding to calls, and officers were “wandering around aimlessly, waiting to be told what not to do next.”

They weren’t doing anything to control the riot,” she said. “They wouldn’t let us do our jobs.”

All true – but keep the emphasis in mind – the “they” that left them wandering around were the city and MPD leadership. We’ll come back to them.

Winter adds:

The city and state’s failed response and inability to quell the violence and arson are well documented, but it’s inaccurate to claim police were standing down. 

They went on joyrides, fired rubber bullets at protesters (see Jaleel Stallings); an officer, who went on to run an actual banana stand, was caught on video by a journalist macing protesters for no discernible reason; lots of cops in riot gear teargassed crowds

They shot protestors like Soren Stevenson with a rubber bullet and blinded him in one eye. They maced a journalist from Vice News in the face. They fired rubber bullets at journalists, including Reformer reporter Max Nesterak and Star Tribune reporter Andy Mannix.

Side note: anyone but me notice how journalists only get really irate about injustice and official overreach when it’s other members of the Journo Club who are affected? Lake Street – and a fair chunk of the Midway, my neighborhood – got burned. The Minneapolis Police Department was, and remains, gutted. Crime soared, and is still double what it was as recently as 2018 – enh. But journalists got attacked ZOMG!

Not that Winter’s article tells you, but the main contention of the cops in the movie was that the city and the. MPD leadership – the “they” in the emphasized text in the first round of quotes, above:

  • Had no plan to deal with the riot
  • More specifically, abandoned the Third Precinct (apparently to “give the rioters ‘space to destroy'”), without having the foggiest idea about what the officers marooned there were supposed to do.

So when Winter snarks:

To the people on the other end of a rubber bullet or tear gas or mace, the police response sure didn’t feel like “standing down.” 

Stop me if I”m wrong, but everything she cites supports the cops contention. Some cops, operating in a complete vacuum, followed the normal human inclination to fucking hit back.

Either way, there was no plan. They were left danging in the breeze.

Winter doesn’t write about that, so I have to.

Who’s The Boss?

Winter goes on (and I’ll add emphasis):

[retired MPD cop Jason] Reimer says the weak response was all a deliberate attempt by politicians to use Floyd’s police killing to their advantage.

“The elections were coming up,” he said. “They were gonna use this incident for a political narrative, and they did.” 

Let’s hope Reimer was a better cop than he is a political analyst: The riots were a political disaster for the mayor, the governor and the entire DFL establishment. DFL political operatives blamed the riots and the defund/abolish police movement for key suburban losses that prevented a 2020 DFL trifecta. 

Although both Frey and Walz won reelection, they did so in part by hitching themselves to police during their reelection campaigns and would soon be accused by partisans on the left of being too cozy with cops.

I’m tempted to get cute and “hope that WInter is a better political analyst than Jason Reimer” – because it’d be more accurate to say the riots were a disaster for one city political establishment; the one where Jacob Frey and Andrea Jenkins and Lisa Bender were the “middle” and Alondra Cano was the loony left.

And for them, the riots were a disaster. For the new establishment, the one that gained huge ground in the ’22 elections and is poised to take the city over, the one led by the Democrat Socialists of America, against which Frey and Jenkins barely survived, and Bender and Cano retired lest they be seen as “too conservative” (literally the language the DSA droogs use to refer to Jacob F*cking Frey and Andrea Jenkins – the riots, and the aftermath (including the far far far left’s well-funded and well-organized response to whatever backlash there was in the ’20 elections) were a prime organizing opportunity.

But I won’t call Winter a myopic political analyst. Someone else will have to.

A Bonus I’ll Answer So You Don’t Need To

“Minneapolis Has Fallen” refers to quite a number of former MPD cops. Winter reminds us that a number of them are living on disability pensions and workmens comp settlements.

Someone needs to explain why that’s relevant (as opposed to, frankly, kinda pointlessly bitchy) since Winter will no doubt say she doesn’t have to.

Ask And Be Answered

Last week, I asked “why all the hate for National Review?”

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, responded:

I had a subscription to National Review for decades.  I let it lapse when I realized O’Sullivan’s Law applied to his own magazine.  The writers I admired – who stated my views better than I could – were no longer welcome there.

Samuel Francis.  John Derbyshire.  Mark Steyn.  Conrad Black. Theodore Dalrymple.  Victor Davis Hanson.  Some of their names still appear on the website but they haven’t had an article published in years.  The views of the magazine have shifted.  Look at the articles in the last few issues, the most conservative guy is . . . James Lileks.  I love his writing but he’s not the successor to William F. that I would have chosen to write insightful political commentary.   I didn’t leave the magazine, the magazine left me but it’s worse than that.

“National Review is now run by a nest of never-Trumpers,” said Francis Sempa in 2021, and his comment is still on-point today. The man who is far and away the most popular candidate for the Republican nomination for President isn’t classy enough for National Review.   He’s a boor.  He doesn’t lose gracefully.  And those tweets!  He’d never get invited to one of National Review’s cruises.

Neither will I.  My views are too extreme, too conservative.  Like their former columnists and the former President, and the 80 million people who voted for Trump last time and the 120 million who will vote for him this time, I’m not good enough enough for National Review.  Which puts me in mind of Grocho Marx:  “I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of its members.”

Joe Doakes, former National Review subscriber, no longer in Como Park

Well, I do subscribe to the National Review. Some of my favorites are gone – Derb, Kevin WIlliamson – and others like Charles CW Cooke and Andrew McCarthy remain.

“Never Trump?” Some are. Some are, like me, Trump skeptics, or from the “what have you done lately?” crowd. Not sure if Trump isn’t classy enough for the NR, but I’ve never gelled with his personality, even back when he was a Democrat.

I didn’t vote for Trump in 2016. I did in 2020, although his behavior between the election and Biden’s coronation was almost as stupid as, well, the system he fought. I’ll be in Team Ron ’til the bitter end, but I won’t be voting, directly or indirectly, for a fourth Obama term. Make of that what you will.

But the Trump era is going to end – next summer, next November, or perhaps in January of 2029. And I want the GOP that picks up at the end of all that to be more like the GOP of 1994 than the Matt Gaetz clown car of 2023.

And the National Review, whatever else you say about them, is about the same thing.

I hear what Joe’s saying. I understand it. I even agree to a point. I’m also a conservative before I”m a Republican. There will be a post-Trump era, sooner or later. I’d like whatever replaces Trump to reflect beliefs I can get behind. Love Trump, hate him, or fall somewhere in the middle,

Do It Yourself

Back in high school, there were two radio stations in Jamestown. Up above White Drug was KEYJ, my station, a little 1,000 watt AM station whose boss, Bob Richardson, always made a point of hiring local kids and showing them how to do radio.

Across First Avenue, above the jewelry store, was KSJB and KSJM. KSJB was a 5,000 watt station at 600 kilocycles – which meant it covered six states and two Canadian provinces, and broadcast couintry music and lots and lots of farm market reports. It was a big station, and – at least when I was a kid – hired pretty serious air talent for the region. High school kids? Never.

KSJM, at 93.7 FM, was a little FM pop station. It was “automated”, which is the norm in radio stations today (most music radio uses computers to splice together commercials, music and “voice-tracked” dropins from “disk jockeys” who’ve never jockeyed a disk), but was not common back then, done with reel to reel tapes and carousels of cartridge machines and clunky analog computers. I rarely listened to KSJM when I was a kid – there were much better rock stations available, even in that part of North Dakota.

Also back in high school in Jamestown, everyone knew the Ebertz family. They’d gone to high school with my dad, who had in turn taught a generation of two of Ebertz kids and cousins. One of them ran a cafe that was an institution in Jamestown.

One day, sometime about my senior year of high school or freshman year of college, I heard that Pat Ebertz had finagled his way into doing some disk-jockeying on KSJM. It wasn’t much – a few hours on weekends – but it was a fun little burst of local radio. And as someone who’s done a lot of “do it yourself radio” over the years and today, the idea grabbed me.

I moved to the Twin Cities, and inadvertently slipped back into radio. And it was a few years later – probably 1991 – when I was at KDWB when the jock I was producing, “Michael Knight”, was on the phone with his old buddy, Pat Ebertz, from his old station, KNOX in Grand Forks. We talked for a bit – he’d stayed in the biz.

I was just about to leave it, actually – within a few weeks, I’d bail on KDWB, and not set foot in a radio station for another 11 years.

But Pat made the move to the Cities a few months later, latching on at KDWB, where he spent years as a producer and sidekick for Dave Ryan. Being music radio, fashions change and jobs come and go fast – but Pat had a long run at the 101.3. I heard he’d moved to Saint Cloud and was at the Top40 station there, and then recently that he’d latched on with Tom Barnard. We hadn’t talked in decades.

Someone sent me this yesterday:

My condolences to the whole Ebertz clan. From another radio do-it-yourselfer.

Mark from Saint Louis Park

One of the great lessons Don Vogel taught me when I was working as his call screener was that there are four types of callers on radio talk shows;

  • Boring callers: People whose calls, mostly agreeing with you, didn’t help the show go anywhere. Inexperienced hosts figured having someone on the air was better than nothing – but an experienced host doesn’t need callers – and can do better than the boring ones. Don wanted me to politely turn them down.
  • Average callers: Regular people making regular points. Put them on as time permits.
  • Crazy callers: They’re a crapshoot. Sometimes crazies kill the mood. Sometimes, they accelerate it. They’re a judgment call – one of the things that separates a good call screener from someone who just takes calls and types names into a computer.
    • Great callers: The ones who had great points, and made them in a way that didn’t just help the flow of the show, but improved it. “Get them on all the time, every one”, Don said. It’s harder than it sounds. Was I any good? Well, I learned to pick out Tommy Mischke’s voice when he was still “The Phantom Caller”, and got him to the front of the queue every time he called – which played a solid role in launching his career. So yeah. I was good. Sometimes.

“Mark from Saint Louis Park” was one of the great callers over the past decade or so at AM1280. How great? He’s the only regular caller I’ve ever written an obit for [1].

We got word on Saturday that Mark – real name Mark Rice – had passed away. I met only met Mar in person once, but even face to face I recognized his voice instantly. 

Mark’s incisive intelligence and keen understanding of whatever the conversation was about made him a standout caller, even when he occasionally disagreed with us. “When Mark from SLP calls, just put him on the call board”, we told our producers.  No need to screen him, having him on the air always made the show better.  

Mark was one of the few regular callers that was a subject of conversation off the air himself.  That may not sound like a big deal; trust me, it is.  

My condolences and prayers for all his friends and family, from all his radio fans.   He is missed.  

[1] I’ve long since lost track of “Steve from Roseville” of my KSTP days, who popped up as “Steve from Plymouth” once on the NARN in probably 2006. He’d be the other one to rate a full blown memorial.

Actual Journalism

Since the entire media will try to suppress it – here’s “The Fall of Minneapolis”, by Liz Collin and the Alphanews crew:

Watch it.

Pass it along.

I won’t give you any spoilers – you already know that Mayor Frey was a hapless stooge at best, a theatrical ninny at worst.

Chief Arradondo lied through his teeth. I always sensed this – the documentary shows us in black and white.

Walz? May he rot in hell.

Watch the whole thing. If you’re not outraged, you’re probably the enemy.

Mitch’s Journalism School 101, Part 2

I asked a question last week that no Twin Cities “journalist” can seem to being themselves to ask: if food shelves are running short, what could the half billion dollars embezzled by DFL-affiliated non-profiteers have done to help things?

Now, I was in the middle of a brutal week of work last week, so I missed a few other questions that were, in hindsight, begging to be asked:

  • The DFL tells us, relentlessly, that Minnesota’s economy is just humming along. So – why is demand for food shelves do high?
  • The Biden Administration tells us “Bidenomics” has the nation’s economic blender set to “puree”. So all of us who are seeing evidence like this to the contrary – are we just believing our lying eyes?
  • If we’re providing “free” breakfast and lunch to every PreK-12 student in the state, that should take an immense burden off the state’s food shelf system. But it seems it’s not.
  • And the biggest, best question of all – In a state clogged with entitled, preening people with little tin “journalist” badges, why is a schnook blogger and talk show host from Saint Paul the only person asking these questions?

If the people of Minnesota were to start asking these questions for themselves, this would be a very different place.

Compromise

Someone walks up to you with a baseball bat. They say they want to kill you.

Your response is “no, I don’t want to get beaten to death with a baseball bat”.

Looks like you have a standoff. A controversy. A conundrum.

Someone else steps in and asks “How about we compromise? Will you settle for a traumatic brain injury?”

It’s the middle way, after all. The guy with the bat might even say “sure, I just wanna hit you, hard!“

You might respond “No – in fact, I don’t want anyone hurting me in any way. At all”

And the buttinski responds “Why won’t yiou compromise?”

Who’s right?

You?

The guy with the bat?

Or the person striving to find the middle ground between the two of you?

If your response is “I’m putting my foot down; nobody is hitting me with a bat for any reason at all“, and the other to ask “why do you hate the guy with the bat?“, does that change anybody’s mind?

Point being, sometimes the middle path, the compromise, is not the most moral path forward.

Big Left’s Psyop

The latest bit of gaslighting madness from the Minnesota chapter of Big Left: “The Star/Tribune is actually conservative“:

Open Letter To The Entire Twin Cities Media

To: Twin CIties Media
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant
Re: Comforting The Confortable While Afflicting The Afflicted

Minnesota Media,

The Klink regime – in this case, politruk Flanagan – have been making this claim in various degrees ever since the election:

Questions someone might think of asking the Administration:

  1. Where do they get this 33% number?
  2. They expect this number to be measured how?
  3. And measured by when?

Given the administration’s, uh, innumeracy, it’d seem to be important.

That is all.

A Modest Proposal And A Sincere Invitation

To: Jana Shortal, KARE TV
CC: KARE TV
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant
Re: Books

Ms. Shortal,

Yesterday, you tweeted this, about a controversy currently being manufactured (indeed, wose manufacture you appear to be closely involved in) in Carver County:

I know – it’s 2023, and even the most trivial parts of civic governance can and do get blown far out of proportion. My father was on a library board during a fracas over the book “A History of Pornography”; The Battle of the Somme didn’t have more-entrenched sides to the debate than that one. And this was in the late 1980s, in a small town, where there was both the spirit and imperative toward civic compromise.

Now, I’m pretty much a free speech absolutist. I think the adult wing of the library can and should have access to pretty much everything.

For adults.

Including Mein Kampf. Not sure if you’re advocating removing Mein Kampf from libraries. Having read it in English and German, I think every high school senior should be required to read it. It’s a bad book, even if you leave out the message – Hitler was a terrible writer – but people reading it won’t trivialize the term “Fascist” anymore. Which means half of Generation Z’s political vocabulary disappears overnight. Still, Ms. Shortal, if you want Mein Kampf removed, take it up with the library board. That’s how it’s done. And the Carver County library board pretty much agreed.

Now – as far as kids go?

Tell you what: KARE should have Ms. Shortal read Gender Queer, with the book’s illustrations, on the air.

“But Mitch – why not offer the NARN’s time slot?”

Because the book would violate FCC standards for broadcast. On radio, and on TV. For adult listeners.

KARE’s management won’t allow Ms. Shortal to read it on the air. Forget about the illustrations.

Sat what you will about FCC regulations – that’s a conversation I’d love to have. But if the FCC won’t let the book on the air, is it really something a city library should be providing to children without parental approval?

That, as always, is all.

One Day In A Major Newsroom

SCENE: A group of reporters and an editor are sitting around a conference table.

EDITOR: OK. We need a story. Something to break us out of the summer doldrums.

REPORTER 1: We spent such a long time reporting on abuse of children in the Catholic Church…

REPORTER 2: I know, right? It’d be great to find another story like that.

REPORTER 3: Wonder if there’s another story out there like that…?

EDITOR: I have no idea.

REPORTER 4: Hey, look at this:

EDITOR: Did I stutter? I said – I have no idea.

And SCENE

Damning With Faint Reason

It’s been a little over a year since Liz Collin released “They LIed”, her investigation of the Derek Chauvin trial .

I’ve been on the air with Liz – and for that matter, she’s filled in for me on my show – but the book didn’t come up.

But to get on topic: I basically accept that two things can be true:

  • the death of George Floyd had many huge gray areas
  • and the Henco establishment twisted and gamboled and lied through their teeth to avoid sharing liability with Chauvin and his co-defendants.

But someone referred me to this review of the book, by one Deb Copperud, writing in “Racket”, which is one of the myriad attemepts to come up with an online replacement for the City Pages.

The article – it’s billed as a “review”, but we’ll come back to that – is sub-headed “With sources like convicted murderer Derek Chauvin and his mother, the former WCCO-TV reporter serves up red meat to Alpha News junkies in ‘They’re Lying.”.

I’m not sure the “editors” at “Racket” caught the irony of the juxtaposition of the chortle about sourcing with the article’s title: “Liz Collin’s High School Classmate Reviews Her Stupid New Book”

Just for fun, let’s keep count of the logical fallacies – ad homina, appeal to authority, etc – which will be presented in bold, and facts presented, which I’ll mark in bold and underlined.

I am not the target audience for local journalist Liz Collin’s debut book, They’re Lying: The Media, the Left, and the Death of George Floyd. I read it because I’m a longtime leftie Minneapolis resident and I take perverse enjoyment in the opinions of suburbanites who denigrate the city as a burned-up, carjacked wasteland.

As a longer-time resident of Saint Paul, I take even more perverse enjoyment watching people who live in leafy green upper middle class enclaves like Copperud’s House District 61B, which might be better described as an “urban life theme park” [1], pleading the authenticity of their urban street cred – especially as opposed to, y’know, Minneapolis cops and those who are married to them.

Ad homina: 1.

As a professionally unsuccessful former classmate of Collin, I have followed her career with interest, envy, and, most recently, schadenfreude. I wanted an explanation of how Collin’s marriage to Bob Kroll, former union president of the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis and mustachioed chthonic avatar of police brutality, downgraded her career from WCCO darling to Alpha News right-wing shill. Plus, books from low-rent vanity publishers are funny and make me feel grammatically superior to their authors. 

Copperud writes for Racket, and does a podcast. No word on the budgets for either outlet, but she apparently missed the memo that, in this online era, that self-publishing often gets you better financials than going through a “real” publisher. Ask Ed Morrissey.

Ad homina: 3.

Collin’s 261-page book begins when she and Kroll return from a weekend out of town, oblivious to the events of May 25, 2020. They are quickly gobsmacked and astounded by what they consider to be an outsized reaction to bystander video of George Floyd pinned to Chicago Avenue by Minneapolis Police Department Officer Derek Chauvin’s knee. Collin’s incredulity lingers throughout the entire book, as she cannot or will not recognize the significance of Floyd’s murder. She refuses to see Floyd as a synecdoche for victims of an unjust and brutal culture of policing. Instead, she turns him into a caricature, a dangerous, drug-addicted urban villain.

Collin does acknowledge that the video “looks bad.” But she refutes the optics with dubious arguments that accuse all of the major players, from former MPD Chief Medaria Arradondo, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman, and Attorney General Keith Ellison, of engaging in a vast left-wing conspiracy to victimize the MPD officers who were called to Cup Foods.

Let’s take a moment to point out a simple fact, inconvenient to both “sides” of this discussion: two things, sometimes more, can be true at the same time.

In this case, four things:

  • The MPD does have a long history of bad behavior.
  • George Floyd was not the sainted figure that Big Minneapolis Left turned him into. He was objectively a pretty flawed guy. Did he deserve to die? No. That was established at trial.
  • Bob Kroll’s job is to defend “his” officers – just as Denise Spect and Javier Morillo defend “their” teachers and SEIU members without a whole lot of gray area or nuance.
  • Minneapolis and Henco leadership have made being in law enforcement – and, by extension, life in neighborhoods that, unlike Copperud’s leafy green theme park of a neighborhood – very difficult.

None of those are especially controversial – are they?

Collin posits that “politicians were creating the illusion of accountability without holding themselves accountable” and that they conspired to convict Chauvin and the three other officers without due process. She tries to support this thesis with an analysis of Maximal Restraint Technique training materials and a close reading of Floyd’s autopsy and subsequent autopsy reports.

And…what about that analysis? How did, or didn’t, it support Collin’s thesis?

Don’t just leave that dangling out there, Ms. Copperud!

Ad Homina: 3
Facts Presented: I’ll call it 0.5; facts were presented, but significance was not established. Or attempted.

The most frustrating piece is Collin’s hammer-headed insistence that a “mixed race group” of police officers could not possibly engage in racist violence. This is a “but I voted for Obama!” type of racism denial, as if J. Alexander Kueng’s presence magically absolves the MPD’s well-documented history racially discriminatory practices. 

So we’ve got competing bits of illogic: “Mixed groups can’t be racist” vs. “Minneapolis cops can only be racist, and if you try to say otherwise, I’ll drop this Obama-era criticism of white liberals. That’ll show you”.

Occasionally, the timeline jumps backward 30 years to arcane MPD stories which Collin intends to connect with the 2020-21 narrative and support her conspiracy claims. But the only common thread linking these incongruous 20th century flashbacks with the rest of the book is just that “Bob was there.” In my imagination, the writing process looks like Collin clacking away at her computer with Kroll standing behind her, tapping her shoulder, spraying moist bits of spearmint Kodiak across her keyboard as he goads, “Lizzie, ya gotta tell ’em about the time I took down the Vice Lords!”

Well, at least she called it a product of her imagination.

Collin centers herself as a victim of “the media and the Left,” taking particular umbrage at her former employer, accusing WCCO’s management of having a liberal political agenda. She blasts WCCO for requiring reporters to interview racially diverse subjects, for issuing a disclaimer about her marriage on crime and policing stories, and for taking her off the anchor desk. She writes, “I was blacklisted. I went from being a familiar face on WCCO-TV down to being on the news barely a minute a day.” 

The victim narrative continues

Wait!

That list of actions does in fact sound like Collin was, in fact, dealt dirty.

Does WCCO not have a liberal agenda?

Are Collin’s assertions wrong?

“[They] started insulting me personally—for the color of my hair and skin,” Collin writes.

And is that untrue?

She portrays Kroll as a maligned target who suffers online burns from bullies like former MPD Police Chief Janee Harteau and Twitter troll @BillyAn23338604.

Or that?

After Kroll and Collin’s address is doxxed, the “cancel culture vultures” protest outside their home in Hugo, Minnesota. Activist and attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong “segregated people” and had “Blacks” (yes, that is Collin’s actual word choice) kneel in front of a flagpole on Collin’s front lawn

Now, that did happen. It’s on film – from (ahem) liberal WCCO, and at least another TV station. Does Copperud dispute that?

Chauvin, of course, positions himself yet another victim: “When Derek Chauvin heard about Arradondo’s public indictment,” Collin writes, “he said, ‘That’s when I knew they were stacking the deck against me.’”

It’s still a free country, sorta, no thanks to people like Copperud. Chauvin can say what he wants.

The reverse racism claims are gross but predictable. More troubling is Collin’s unwillingness to acknowledge racism at all. She writes “systemic police racism” just like that: ensconced in quotation marks, mocking the phrase Joey Tribbiani-style. I understand where she’s coming from because I grew up two years ahead of Collin, in Worthington, the small, southwestern Minnesota town where she started a neighborhood newspaper as a kid.

“Gross but predictable” – maybe, maybe not.

But are they wrong? It’s hard to look at future/former Rep. John Thompson’s behavior as anything but racist. Isn’t it?

Back in the 1990s, when Collin and I both exercised in the basement of the old downtown YMCA and served Tremendous Twelve and Granny’s Country Omelet breakfast orders to the Sunday morning after-church crowds at Perkins, Worthington was an ethnically diverse town. But it was also a consequence-free setting for casual racism. This was a point in time when a FUBU brand Love Sees No Color T-shirt could effectively declare its wearer to be free of bigotry. Very few words or actions were considered racist, short of calling someone an ethnic slur while punching them in the face. Incredibly, in 1998, half of the Worthington High School students cast in the spring musical performed in blackface. Even more wild? No one objected!

But just because no one got in trouble for racist stage-makeup or behaviors back then doesn’t mean that they weren’t racist. Concepts like double consciousness, code switching, cultural appropriation, unconscious bias, systemic racism—these are all nuanced distinctions that had to be picked up while fulfilling college credits, or while attending workplace sensitivity training, or just by being a literate person who’s heard about social injustice.

So to try to pick some cherry tomatoes out of the word salad:

  • Copperud and Collin grew up near each other.
  • People then didn’t practice the orthodoxy Copperud now finds indispensable.
  • Dissenting from that orthodoxy – acquired in (some varieties of) college or work or something something – is grounds for relentless, nuance-free either/or sorting. No gray area, no argument, no inquiry or intellectual disagreement need apply.

To sum it up: Copperud is tarring Collin via the behavior of other people, in another place, from decades ago.

Collin has not evolved beyond the ’90s dichotomy of racist or not-racist. For Collin, as long as there is no historical precedent and no prior consequences for racist behavior, then racism isn’t a problem.

Copperud assumes that dichotomy is wrong without saying why, beyond invoking a standard that Copperud finds absolute and certain but which must not and therefore can not be questioned.

She seems to lack the intellectual curiosity to dig in to what Floyd’s murder symbolized. Anyone who lumps people together as “Blacks” in 2022 and who thinks that a couple of police officers of color can negate a whole racist system of policing has a long way to go on their anti-racist journey. Collin is still parked in her Hugo driveway

“Anti-racism” is, of course. not to be mistaken for “not being racist”.

Ad homina: 5
Facts Presented: 2 (including the ‘anti-racist journey’ which, if you stipulate that “not being racist” is an imperfect state of mind while “anti-racism” is a bit of social logrolling, kinda straddles the categories).

But we’ve come all this way through this…er, “review” to find that Copperud seems to have buried the lede:

I have to admit that Collin’s journalism is competent, dogged, and detailed. I expected dubious research and, while Collin sometimes footnotes sources that blur the boundaries of credibility (New York Post, Alpha News, Heritage Foundation, @crimewatchmpls),

Whose “boundaries of credibility”? And why? Does the writer for that bastion of reason, “Racket.com”, have any reason beyond unvarnished ideological chauvinism?

Especially given that…

most of the citations are sound.

Screaaaaaaaatch.

One could also take serious issue with her sourcing, which includes: convicted murderer Chauvin, plus the convicted murderer’s mother Carolyn Pawlenty, imprisoned partner Thomas Lane, and failed defense attorney Eric Nelson, among other uniformly pro-cop voices.

One could?

Why?

Because of any of the facts presented? Or statements presented as facts without countervailing information?

Or just because Deb Copperud wrinkles her nose in disgust?

Overall, the book met my expectations. I hoped for grammatical idiosyncrasies and They’re Lying delivered. Collin credits Dr. JC Chaix for his proofreading work, which includes unconventional spelling, inconsistent capitalization, unnecessary commas between subjects and verbs, and a complete disregard for a uniform style guide.

Oh.

I don’t recommend buying They’re Lying, but I do recommend looking up Chaix’s bizarre author biography on Amazon.

Ad Homina: 5
Really odd, irrelevant ad hominem: 1
Facts presented: 2.5-3.5, more or less.

At times I actually enjoyed the narrative, especially when Collin skewers Mayor Frey’s vanity. She recalls how he flailed during the protests and riots and reminds the reader that Frey was, is now, and ever shall be, as long as he is in office, in sole charge of the MPD.

So…Collin was right?

Hold on.

Waaaay back in this review, didn’t Copperud call Copperud’s allegations about Minneapolis and Henco leadership “dubious?”

I shared Collin’s disgust with the leaders, past and present, who failed to reform policing before and after Floyd’s murder, who held nothingburger press conferences, who promised transformational change and then approved a new union contract and $7,000 bonuses to MPD officers.

Surprisingly, They’re Lying gave me hope! If both Collin, hawker of MAGA propaganda, and I, avowed member of “the Left,” can agree that crime and policing in Minneapolis are worse after five years of Frey’s blustery, ineffective leadership, then there is a tiny bright spot cresting over the 2024 election horizon

Huh. I did not see that coming.

So, to sum up the “Review”:

  1. Deb Copperud doesn’t like Liz Collin, Bob Kroll, the NYPost, or Alpha News.
  2. She notes – correctly and disparagingly – that Collin doesn’t bark “anti-racist” dogma on command, while not even trying to establish that makes her, or anyone, racist
  3. She can’t find fault with Collin’s actual reporting .
  4. She agrees with Collin about Minneapolis’s leadership, but not when Collin actually says it. Or something .

In restrospect, the name “Racket” makes sense now.

[1] If the person who brings you your coffee and avocado toast has to commute, by rail, bus or hooptie, to get to work in a “Fifteen Minute City” she can’t afford to work in, then your “Fifteen Minute City” is really an “Urban Life Theme Park”.

Tea Leaves

Every DFL politician’s social media feed is raving about this puff piece from HuffPo which christens Tina Smith “the Velvet Hammer”.

The Velvet Hammer?

I can think of lots of adjectives to add to Smith’s hamfistedness. Velvet ain’t one of them.

And what usually happens after you see DFLers posting “attagirls” over inexplicable media. puff pieces?

Some dirt comes out on them. .

For example – during the session, the DFL noise machine broke out into a round of praise for Rep. Finke. It went from zero to 60 in three seconds, as if the Representative had just pulled someone from a burning building Clearly something had happened.

That something was Finke had charged across the House floor at another representative over retweeting a trans-skeptic account.

So am I too cynical in asking “what dirt is coming out about Smith?”

Our Pathetic Whinging Overlords

Minnesota has developed some horrifying personality tics in recent years. Especially this past year.

But one that’s a groaner, year in, year out, is Minnesota’s crippling inferiority complex. It was manifested most plainly in the ’80s, when Minneapolis adopted the marketing hook “The MinneApple” – and continues every time the local media finds the most absurd possible local angles to every national story.

But this story which got headlines in most Twin Cities media on Tuesday – may be the most pathetic of all.

MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) – Lady Gaga dined at Café and Bar Lurcat in Minneapolis Sunday night, according to a tweet from the restaurant. 

The tweet on Monday said, “When an iconic restaurant hosts an icon. Last night, we were delighted to have Lady Gaga join us for dinner. On behalf of our staff, we thank Lady Gaga — one of the most beloved and influential singers, songwriters and performance actors — for choosing our Mpls restaurant.”

No word on whether the food was locally sourced, or from what provider; this link to someone from somewhere else should certainly rate a story of their own.