Over at the MinMon, Andy Birkey writes:
Have Michele Bachmann’s media gaffes and extreme conservative views driven her to speak mainly to conservative and Christian-right news outlets?
Leave aside that in the MNMon’s world, all conservative views would seem, judging by their copy, to be “extreme”. Never mind.
Birkey’s article introduced an interesting question.
More on Monday.
The Minnesota Monitor – the local George Soros joint – continues its spiral from “amateur left-leaning news blog” down to “irredeemable propaganda mill”.
Last week, I busted Andy Birkey uncritically passing on talking points from Citizens for a Supine “Safer” Minnesota (not to mention Jim Backstrom’s out-and-out lies).
While neither Andy Birkey nor the MNMon have respnded to my methodical destruction of the article, they have added a new layer of critical excellence to the story.
A bill to expand the self-defense definition that lets gun owners use deadly force failed a House committee vote yesterday. Rep. Tony “Stand Your Ground” Cornish, R-Good Thunder, says he still might try inserting the legislation as an amendment into another bill. Among other things, it would eliminate the requirement to retreat before firing on someone threatening.
As I noted in my earlier piece, there is no such requirement. Indeed, Minnesota law might be clearer if there were; what we have is a rather nebulous, open-to-interpretation requirement to make “reasonable” efforts to avoid using lethal force. Whether Dan Haugen’s lack of understanding is willful, or indeed irrelevant under the circumstances (if all you’re doing is passing on propaganda, really, a trained monkey can do the writing), their continued failure to understand the proposal they’re criticizing bespeaks a yawning credibilty gap.
But the job of the journalist (or “Citizen Journalist Fellow”) isn’t necessarily to know everything; it’s to explain things well – if necessary, by using “sources”, people whom the reader can reasonably expect to know something the journalist doesn’t.
And Dan Haugen does exactly that!
It could be worse. A lot worse. Last night the Colbert Report introduced us to a state senator from Tennessee who wants to legalize guns in bars.
Colbert.
Er…yeah. So – Fake news from a fake pundit, as a spinoff from a fake story using false statements from (mostly) phony authorities.
Now that’s meta!
Does Dan Haugen know that guns are “legal in bars” in Minnesota, already? That if the bar isn’t posted for “no guns”, and the legal carry permit holder’s blood alcohol level is below .04 (the legal limit to carry a firearm – which is half of the limit for driving), it’s perfectly kosher? (And that in four years there has been not one single problem with a legal permittee and his/her gun in a Minnesota bar?)
Has Dan Haugen , ace “Citizen Journalist”, done even that much research into this issue, or just gotten it all from the Colbert Report and Citizens for a Supine “Safer” Minnesota?
I’m guessing “b”.
The Minnesota Monitor further reinforces its transition from “an attempt at a left-leaning news rag” to “full-blown Soros-ass-kissing propaganda mill, albeit with the kind of traffic that Duncan “Atrios” Black picks out of his morning dump”, with the hiring of Molly Priesmeyer.
Who?
Oh, you remember Molly. She’s the woman Steve “Mr. Furious” Perry stuck on the “Facile Stereotype” beat a few years back, culminating in one of the most preeningly stupid pieces of “reporting” I’ve ever read. Indeed ,until Matt Snyders joined the City Pages, it could be fairly said Priesmeyer had written the dumbest bit of reporting in the Twin Cities media, since the departure of Margaret Grebe, anyway. (Although to be fair, a little bird tells us that her once-and-again editor Steve Perry told her to take out all the “fair” and “objective” stuff and slime Republicans more – which is, reportedly, Perry’s style).
Oh, Molly? Not much has changed in three years.
Simple fact: when Republicans run like Republicans – with a conservative vision, with lower taxes, smaller and more honest government, safer streets, less-stupid schools, secure borders, a Higher Power and family and country, we win.
We win because there are an awful lot of Democrats who vote for fiscal responsibility, for ethics, and for America, when they get the chance.
We win because there are an awful lot of people out there who don’t care about parties, but respond to vision – and visions are like food. If the other guy’s offering a box of Mike and Ikes, and all you have in response is a snark about how bad for you Mike and Ikes are, people will take the candy. If you offer them the perfectly-done London Broil that is the conservative vision, people take the beef.
We win because, underneath it all, most people are smart enough to see that the DFL way is no way to run a state.
To Lori Sturdevant – who, with Doug Grow’s retirement, is the DFL’s most reliable flak in the Twin Cities media – the ideal “compromise” is bouillon-flavored Mike and Ikes.
When Laura Hemler – a major mover behind Keith Downey’s campaign – called from the Cleanup on Aisle 41 last week to tell me Sturdevant was lurking about the convention, I started taking internal bets to see what she’s write.
My top bet: that she’d treat the conservative insurrection as a form of sickness or dysfunction. In Lori Sturdevant’s (entirely flak-focused) worldview, it seems any approach to life, politics and government that isn’t straight from the DFL Necronomicon is something to fear.
She doesn’t disappoint:
One vote was the elephant in the theater full of District 41 GOP elephants Saturday at Edina’s South View Middle School. It was the vote cast Feb. 25 by Republican Reps. Ron Erhardt of 41A and Neil Peterson of 41B to override Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s veto, and put a tax-increasing transportation bill into law.The punishment meted out to the two wayward representatives was stern. Endorsement for the fall election was not only denied them; it was bestowed with ease on their opponents, Keith Downey in 41A, Jan Schneider in 41B.
Got that? Exercising their prerogative as a political party – an organization with actual codified beliefs to which members are expected to largely subscribe – is an “elephant” (hahaha) in the room; that’s 12-step code for “addiction” or “dysfunction”.This is how the DFLMedia views principled conservatism in Minnesota.
I’ve joked about it in this space so many times, I’m running out of new ways to say it; to Lori Sturdevant, the only Republican is a 1976 Republican – back before all that pesky “conservatism” polluted all of that kowtowing to the Tics.
It shows in everything Lori Sturdevant writes:
Applying “DFL-lite” to Erhardt and his late wife Jackie would have been a local laugh line not long ago. A financial planner, Erhardt has been among the party’s most prolific fundraisers and reliable foot soldiers for more than 30 years. He’s run for the Legislature with party endorsement nine times, and has never won his seat with less than 56 percent of the vote. In 2006, he was the second-best Republican vote-getter in his district, behind only U.S. Rep. Jim Ramstad.
For years, I’ve wanted to ask Lori Sturdevant; “Lori? For years, Norm Coleman was a reliable DFL foot soldier; he even placed the sainted Paul Wellstone into nomination at the ’96 DFL convention. He was a major-city mayor! He was successful! And yet the DFL hounded him out of the party. Why?”
“For differing with the party on fiscal issues. For going against the party’s beliefs”.
“And so, after all those years of service to, and electoral success on behalf of, the DFL, the party “punished” Norm, hounded him out of the party”.
“Did you get the vapors about that? Was that an “elephant in the room?” Did you solemnly wonder why Tics weren’t the same, responsible, pro-American, fiscally-relatively-sane party they were under Kennedy or, for that matter, Hubert Humphrey?”
“No?”
“Just thought I’d ask”.
That point begs a longer look: In 2006, DFL U.S. Senate candidate Amy Klobuchar took District 41 with more than 56 percent of the vote. Pawlenty won there too, but his percent of the vote barely cracked 50 percent.
And in 2004, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry carried District 41A with 51 percent. Rumor had it that there were rumblings under old Edina gravestones for days thereafter.
You’d think that those votes — and not just the one on the transportation bill — would have been on District 41 minds Saturday. It doesn’t seem to be a propitious time for Republicans to be in purge mode.
Thanks, Lori, but if we want you to do our thinking for us, we’ll lobotomize ourselves with sporks and join the DFL.
When Republicans run as conservatives, we win. If we stand on our principles – as the party to a great extent didn’t in 2000, 2002 and 2006 – then we do just fine without your craven, upsucking advice.
The rest of it? You’re on your own.
If there’s someone who qualifies as “The Lori Sturdevant of the NYTimes” – the Gray Lady’s most reliable Tic flak – it’s Frank Rich.
So when he Mcomes out and admits the Times’ great nemesis, Rush Limbaugh, is right, conservatives would do well to keep the exits to that Trojan Horse covered with machine guns and artillery.
BEFORE they were sidetracked into a new war against The New York Times, the Rush Limbaugh posse had it right about John McCain. He is a double agent. Some Democrats do admire and like him. So does Jon Stewart, and so do many liberal editorial boards and card-carrying hacks in the mainstream American press. So, in fact, do many at The Times, including myself. As long as I don’t look too hard at the fine print.
Rich’s “fine print” must be on the contract he signed, obliging him to be a mindless flak – but I digress.
You’ve got to love a guy who said a few years ago that he regretted likening Mr. Limbaugh to “a circus clown” because of all the complaints from circus clowns insulted by the comparison. “I would like to extend my apologies to Bozo, Chuckles and Krusty,” Senator McCain told a rather startled Neil Cavuto of Fox News.
What’s more, Ann Coulter and Tom DeLay aren’t entirely wrong when they bluster that a vote for Mr. McCain amounts to a vote for Hillary Clinton (or, for that matter, Barack Obama).
Oh, puh-leeze.
When Frank Rich “agrees” with Ann Coulter or Tom DeLay, start looking for the punch line. Or the whammy.
The Arizona senator’s otherwise conservative record is closer to the Democrats on immigration, campaign-finance reform, stem-cell research, global warming, oil drilling in Alaska, waterboarding, Gitmo and, until a recent flip-flop, the Bush tax cuts.
Which are, in order; lamentable, a travesty for which conservatives will need to get their pound of flesh, an important but not critical issue, something we need a Republican Congress to countervail, not really the President’s turf, understandable, ditto, and I don’t give a rat’s ass if someone “flip flops” if they “flip flop” in the right direction.
In The New Republic, Jonathan Chait concluded that Mr. McCain’s Senate votes made him “the most effective advocate of the Democratic agenda in Washington” during the first Bush term.
If you leave out the war, spending, taxes (mostly) – y’know, the things that matter for presidents.
The good news for the Democrats so far is that whatever Mr. McCain’s sporadic overlap with liberals, he is emulating almost identically the suicidal Clinton campaign against Mr. Obama. He has mimicked Mrs. Clinton’s message and rhetorical style, her tone-deaf contempt for Mr. Obama’s cultural appeal, and her complete misreading of just how politically radioactive the war in Iraq remains despite its migration from the front page.
Frank? Slapnuts? He’s been running for the endorsement. Republican primary and caucus voters aren’t really looking for Obama’s “unicorn in every garage” message.
Hence, he won. And beats Obie and Madame Putin in hypothetical polls.
Which is why, naturally, Frank Rich is writing this noxiously disingenuous article.
Over at True North, Matt Abe notes that KTLK-FM afternoon host (and my long-time talkradio role model) Jason Lewis has built quite the one-stop shop for conservatives:
Tired and frustrated at waiting for conservative leadership elsewhere, Lewis is beginning to lead a conservative reformation in Minnesota politics, but not from where he would be subject to the slings and arrows of elected office. Instead Lewis is working from his bully pulpit of talk radio, the Internet, and a growing network of conservative activists. Overreaching by the DFL in the Legislature this session, and the crumbling of the Pawlenty veto firewall, may be adding fuel to Lewis’s fire.
Not to plug the competition, but kudos to Jason. He’s also got one of the best “blogrolls” of conservative sites in the business.
And kudos, in addition, to everyone that’s been in the online agitation game for the past six years; the MOB, my fellow NARN hosts (especially Ed and Powerline), and True North. After six years of running the most vibrant blog community in the country, it’s really impossible to be taken seriously in this market if you don’t have a solid online presence – which doesn’t just mean “a slick website” anymore.
(But note to Jason; get an RSS feed. Actually clicking on websites is so 2000).
It’s getting to be that time of year – time for the City Pages’ “Best Blogs” competition!
Now, if you’ve followed this tradition, you know it’s actually two awards:
So the handicapper’s game is to figure out:
So let’s take some nominations!
I’ll start out with my own choices:
I’ll take your nominations in the comment section, and have a runoff election later this week, followed by the grand finale early next week.
Then, we’ll wait to see how close it gets to the CP’s picks.
I’m all tingly.
UPDATED AND BUMPED: Check for the update at the bottom.
If you live in Minnesota, you know that there is nobody in the state who gets more media attention than the thin film of Republicans who pine for the “good old days”, when Republicans and Democrats “worked together” (by acting like Democrats).
But the rest of the nation might be a little newer to the phenomenon. Oh, we’ve seen bits and pieces; the odd article about fundamentalist liberals (notwithstanding that Evangelicals vote 3-1 Republican)), or the occasional liberal in the active-duty military (4-1 GOP in 2004).
But soon, the flotsam and jetsam of “Republicans for Taxes, Abortion, Gun Control and Dishonorable Peace” will soon start getting the same treatment that Minnesota’s remaining Carlson Republicans get from Lori Sturdevant; bemused fawning.
Example: This piece in the LATimes, by Mark Barabak, entitled “They’re Republican Red, and True Blue to Obama“, which (it should surprise nobody) reads like an Obama puff piece.
GOP renegades seeking a candidate capable of ending the Washington
partisanship are surfacing in the senator’s campaign in surprising numbers.
“Obamicans,” he calls them.
“Unicorns”, I calls them.
Delaware, Ohio – Chatter bounces off the bare walls and checkered
linoleum floor as Josh Pedaline and other Barack Obama supporters burn
through their call sheets.A map of Delaware County splays across a tabletop. Another table is
laden with cookies, pretzels and other snacks. Volunteers sit elbow to
elbow, pecking at cellphones and pitching the Illinois Democrat in
advance of Ohio’s March 4 primary. The scene is a typical campaign boiler
room.Except that four of the 13 dialing away are lifelong Republicans,
including Pedaline, 28, who reveres Ronald Reagan and twice voted for
President Bush.
And on, and on, and on, bla bla di bla.
Expect all fifty of the “Obama Republicans” to have their own programs on CNN by September.
UPDATE: Whenever I read stories about “Republicans for Taxes, Abortion, Gun Control and Dishonorable Peace”, my first reflex is to Google the names. Life got in the way yesterday, unfortunately – I didn’t get to do a complete search…
…but one of my commenters notes that Josh Pedaline, “lifelong Republican” at age 28, has at least one hit on the BS Search:
This Pedaline guy is a lifelong republican at age 28? Wiat, here’s his Obamasturbation page. He wrote the page two years ago & at that time he was calling bush ‘evil’. He considers himself a centrist and a moderate.
First rule of thumb; whenever the media points you to either a “Republican that’s turned Democrat”? Distrust, and verify.
…what if a certain local “media columnist” were to write a column in a local Sorosblog about…well, local media?
He’d insert huge swathes of his own opinion to bind together rumors from the few of his drinking buddies that still had jobs at newspapers, TV stations and radio operations.
And on this blog, hypothetically speaking of course, he’d “moderate” comments – and only approve (publish) the ones that basically agreed with him!
Why, we could call it “Hamster To The Slaughter”!
Nah. Dumb idea.
“Why the hell won’t Republicans or conservatives mix it up with the media? Why do Republicans always let the Tics and the media (pardon the redundancy) get away with gang-raping Republicans – see Rod Grams and Alan Fine and the 2000 ambush and the 2004 60 Minutes attacks on Bush? Why do Republicans take the proverbial “high road” and hope that the media that is the active player in the smear, every friggin’ time, will somehow turn around and get the actual truth out in the end?”
Well, merry friggin’ Chrismas; Mac fought back.
The piece about McCain’s friendly relations with a telecommunications lobbyist — long-discussed in political circles and planned for weeks by McCain operatives — was the first test of his ability to confront a public-relations crisis since becoming the GOP’s presumptive nominee.
But the reaction may have said as much about the mindset of the conservative movement on the brink of the general election as it did about McCain and his team.
And the dead-tree media are whining like shower-room nancyboys about it:
By Thursday morning, when the article appeared in the print editions of The Times, the McCain campaign had begun an aggressive attack against the newspaper, calling the article a smear campaign worthy of The National Enquirer. It was a symphony to the ears of Mr. McCain’s conservative critics.
Ed groin-kicks the Times’ whinging:
She managed to make the New York Times the victim of “an aggressive attack” by McCain over a smear — without explaining what the smear actually was! The Times piece originally led with an accusation of a sexual affair for which they offered exactly zero evidence. Calling it a smear worthy of the National Enquirer isn’t an aggressive attack, it’s a factual description.
Yeah, I’m happy.
How that the NYTimes has endorsed and slimed JMac within precisely a month (note to Brian Maloney – everyone predicted this), it’s time to sort out exactly what they were thinking.
Ed notes the Times’ response to the disintegration of their story:
John McCain then holds a very polite and rather subdued press conference to deny all of the Times’ unsubstantiated gossip. How does the New York Times report this? With unbelievable hysteria:
Later in the day, one of Mr. McCain’s senior advisers leveled harsh criticism at The New York Times in what appeared to be a deliberate campaign strategy to wage a war with the newspaper. Mr. McCain is deeply distrusted by conservatives on a number of issues, not least because of his rapport with the news media, but he could find common ground with them in attacking a newspaper that many conservatives revile as a left-wing publication.“It was something that you would see in the National Enquirer, not in The New York Times,” said Steve Schmidt, a former counselor to Vice President Dick Cheney who is now a top campaign adviser to Mr. McCain.
Oh,please! First, the Times published a scurrilous and poorly-sourced story that even gossip rags would have rejected, and they have the nerve to accuse McCain of declaring war? Has Bill Keller lost his mind?
Keller hasn’t lost his mind. He’s just started running the Times like a leftyblog!
On the bright side, all you Times subscribers – you can now switch to the Huffpo. It’s cheaper.
Second law of the major media when covering politics; the Republican that acts the most like a Democrat (and gives the best interviews) gets treated well.
First law: When that Republican actually has to compete with a Democrat, disregard the Second Law.
As I predicted the moment Mac became the front-runner, the Times has broken out the slime against McCain. Read it for yourself; past the resurrection of “The Keating Five” as an issue, it’s thin gruel as smear jobs go.
Especially given what Ed notes:
Well, you have to read past the rehash of the Keating Five scandal of the mid-1980s, past a strange accusation involving McCain’s use of direct flights from Washington to Phoenix, and past his crusade to clean up Washington through the BCRA (which I adamantly opposed and still do) to get to the Slimes’ sourcing. It turns out that they talked to two anonymous former staffers — neither of whom allege that the relationship actually became romantic — and who describe themselves as disgruntled.
Great sourcing there, guys. Way to corroborate a non-story. I guess Lucy Ramirez must have been hard to find this time around.
Gateway Pundit adds:
f there was ever a moment that clarifies the grotesque bias of the media leading New York Times it is this moment.
Their fair-haired Republican is the front runner for President. And, suddenly after years of kissie-kissie there appears a Maverick hit piece.
The love affair is over.
Done.And, there’s only one way for the Maverick to bring back that loving feeling…
…Lose in November.
That, indeed, is the Prime Directive of media coverage of Republicans; the only good one is a retired one.
UPDATE AND BUMP: Via Ed – the Times report appears to be baked wind. John Weaver – a former top Mac aide – states to the WaPo:
“The New York Times asked for a formal interview and I said no and asked for written questions. The Times knew of my meeting with Ms. Iseman, from sources they didn’t identify to me, and asked me about that meeting. I did not inform Senator McCain that I asked for a meeting with Ms. Iseman.
Her comments, which had gotten back to some of us, that she had strong ties to the Commerce Committee and his staff were wrong and harmful and I so informed her and asked her to stop with these comments and to not be involved in the campaign. Nothing more and nothing less.
I responded to the Times on the record about a meeting they already knew about. The campaign received a copy of my response to the Times the same day, which was in late December.
In other words, Ms. Iseman’s claims – the basis for the most “damning” part of the Times’ story – was a bit of influence-peddling gone awry.
Ed:
Iseman had bragged about her connections to the committee in order to expand her client list. Weaver heard about it and told her to knock it off, or she’d get frozen out. Lobbyists collect clients by making themselves appear influential, and apparently Iseman got a little too hyperbolic about her connections.
That’s the extent of the supposed “intervention” — and the Times knew it.
It’ll be interesting to see how the Times – the unofficial paper of record of the party of Marc Rich, of Harry Thomasson, of Senator and Mrs. Daschle – respond to this. To say nothing of the babbling hordes of the Sorosphere.
Paul Demko’s cover story in this week’s City Pages is the sort of stuff that the Pages do best, when they bother; cover a regional story that nobody else will bother with, and do it very, very well.
In this case, it’s a story about Saint Paul’s High Bridge over the Mississippi – its history, and its long-standing attraction to suicides:
Johnson parked her car on Cherokee Avenue and walked out onto the imposing structure, which soars some 150 feet above the roiling Mississippi River waters. At 5 a.m., the bridge was deserted—the morning commute wouldn’t start for a couple of hours yet. She could see stunning views of the city’s downtown skyline, the Cathedral of St. Paul, and the Mississippi River.
Looking down into the water, all she could see was inky blackness. It was a strangely comforting abyss. She climbed up onto the two-foot railing and clung to a lamppost. For the first time in months, her mind was empty.
Then she let go.
A great (if sobering) story, delivered with facts and humanity. Well worth a read.
On the other hand, Matt Snyders may be the only writer on the City Pages staff too shallow, agenda-addled and uninsightful to write for Mercury Rising. He may be to political “reporting” what Margaret Grebe was to the “Lifestyles of the Hip and Vapid” beat.
I didn’t even know Tourettes manifested itself in writing.
…when you wonder if Scrappleface and Iowahawk are even legally satire anymore.
Bob Collins covered the “press” conference announcing the Super Bowl halftime entertainment.
I’ll let that sink in for a moment.
Not a very promising premise. Right?
Oh, it gets worse:
This afternoon, Alicia Keyes and Jordan Sparks were announced as the pre-game entertainment, an event usually covered by the B-squad anyway, but still…
Lynne Miller (Ironstar) – “First of all, I love you. I think you’re fantastic….” It didn’t get better. She wanted to know what was in their iPods.
Amanda Jahn (Channel 3 News) – “First, you guys are so beautiful…” Why even bother with what her question was?
Yetta Gibson (Fox Phoenix) – “How ya doin? Where are your seats? And are you forced to root for the Knicks?” The what? The Knicks? I looked her up on the Internet. She’s described as “an Emmy Award-winning journalist.” That should tell you how hard it is to win a local Emmy.
Tom Petty, the halftime show, is up next. NFL Network analyst Terrel Davis says he’s never heard of Tom Petty. Ugh.
Never thought Nick Coleman would look good in comparison.
Learned Foot pounds Nick “Not a DFL Monkey” Coleman like a piece of beef.
Mmm, beef.
Do you suppose Nick’ll ever figure out that every single one of us “knows stuff”, these days, too? Like, how to fact-check him?
Dang, I hope not.
It’s a phenomenon I’ve long found perplexing; otherwise-smart women who, when the subject is politics, will always vote for the woman first. Or, should I say, “always” vote for the female candidate, since they are frequently women who grunt and roll their eyes when the likes of Margaret Thatcher or Condi Rice are mentioned; what they mean, naturally, is liberal women.
Oprah endorsed Obie. And it’s ruffling some of that same wad of feathers:
Yet a backlash by Clinton supporters appears to have prompted a rethink by Winfrey, the African-American media titan who is routinely described as the most influential woman on television…a reader called austaz68 said she “cannot believe that women all over this country are not up in arms over Oprah’s backing of Obama. For the first time in history we actually have a shot at putting a woman in the White House and Oprah backs the black MAN. She’s choosing her race over her gender.”
I’ve met people – most of them women – who literally say, in as many words, they vote for women first, regardless of their policies. Of course, most of these people are in Saint Paul, where the only real choice in politicians is “liberal” or “more liberal”.
I’ve been waiting with bated breath to see how the local Sorosphere would react to the news that their conclusion that the “No New Taxes” crowd all but blew up the 35W River Bridge was wrong.
And while Lori Sturdevant is the gold standard for Tic PR flaks in this area (and Nick Coleman is the DFL’s trained organ-grinder monkey), there is no better barometer of the Twin Cities’ left’s smug, entitled gestalt than Brian Lambert. I’ve beein waiting for his take on what is – for most of us – the good news; the news that bad design, rather than depraved malfeasance, led to the collapse.
Was I to be disappointed?
It’s Lambert. He’s the most reliable source of material in town.
It was 6 p.m. Tuesday when I first heard of the NTSB’s “preliminary” finding that a design flaw—too thin gusset plates—was the cause of the I-35W bridge collapse. By 6:07 p.m., I had received a copy of an e-mail Star Tribune bete noire, Dan Cohen, had fired off into the teeth of Eric Ringham and Tim O’Brien of the paper’s editorial page and columnist Nick Coleman.
Read Lambert’s piece for Cohen’s letter and [the parts of Cohen’s] background [that express Lambert’s bias]. Summary: Cohen, like me, was jumping on Nick “the Monkey” Coleman’s many, loathsome, premature assignments of guilt. (A detailed fisk of Coleman’s “the dog ate my logic” column will follow, probably tomorrow).
And to start with, Lambert puts on his big-boy pants and takes his medicine:
Those of us who shared Coleman’s view—that penny-pinching by craven politicians fearful of the wrath of the cynical “small-government crowd” bear a responsibility for the collapse—aren’t exactly buoyed by the NTSB report.
I’m trying to imagine how “buoyed” one would be by circumstances that led to 13 deaths. But in the interest of discussion, I’ll let that one slide.
But this one is “preliminary.” It is not the last word, and myriad issues remain, all supporting more comprehensive inspection and maintenance of government-owned infrastructure, something that requires significantly more cash than will ever be generated by a piddly five-cent-a-gallon tax increase…
…and all of which would be more useful than the billion plus dollars we’re going to spend on a light rail line from nowhere to noplace – which seems to be completely inviolate in the world of Brian Lambert and Nick Coleman.
Moreover, although Cohen and his “no-new-taxes brigade” have distilled this to Coleman and the Star Tribune vs. Republicans, Carol Molnau and Govenor Pawlenty in particular, Coleman at least was pretty clear at the start that blame should be placed at the feet of both political parties with the Republicans just happening to be running the show as the thing fell into the river.
This is, of course, buncombe: it was aimed squarely at Pawlenty, fiscal conservatives (and the handy dandy group that serves as our lobbying body, the Taxpayers League) and anyone that doesn’t claim to channel the spirit of Walter Mondale. Which would be Minnesota’s right – Republicans and the thin film of fiscally-responsible Tics.
Read it and judge for yourself.
There is actual good news in Lambert’s column, though. That’s right – those of us who believe Coleman has less “gatekeeping” and “editing” than any self-respecting blogger are also vindicated!
In the interest of both fairness and putting on a quality show for the reading public (who always loves a good scrap . . . not to mention the sight of newspaper elitists eating crow), I called…Coleman, who, at a little before 4 p.m. Wednesday afternoon, was banging out a column that he doubted the paper would ever run. (Have I buried the lede here?)
When I asked what he was going to say to the Dan Cohens of the world, Coleman replied, “I’ve been strongly advised not to even try.” Word, he says, had been passed along down the editing chain that nothing from him on the NTSB finding was wanted unless he could come up with a new, fresh “reported” angle, maybe, you know, another variation on some victim’s story. (Can’t get enough of that, can we?) But his columnist’s opinion on the report? Apparently not, according to Coleman.
Did I mention he was writing one anyway?
No, and since the suspense isn’t killing you either, gentle reader, here it is.
That’s why I like the guy. He’s a public asset. I think it’s the Irish thing. Born to brawl and all that. When you have some insulated, dweeby editor wringing hands over . . . ooohhh “contentiousness” and “needless provocation” . . ., you want a guy who basically says, “[Bleep] off, and go back to your pod.”
Did the “insulated, dweeby editor” mention anything about “jumping to conclusions” and “acting on facts not anywhere in actual evidence?”
“Responsibility as a reporter?”
“Writing to a standard higher than the bloggers who standards Nick Coleman couldn’t meet if he had to?”
I used to think that was what good Metro columnists did. Especially when they had the acute theatrical sense to know that everyone following a story as rich as the Strib‘s (entirely warranted) “Get Molnau” series wants to hear his response to what appears to be a damning official declaration that he and his colleagues have been wrong, and his apology to the poor beknighted Ms. Molnau. (Believe me, that last part ain’t happening.)
And…why?
He was wrong! The engineers have (preliminarily) scuppered Coleman’s arrogant, purplefaced, wrong conclusion! Empirical fact has beaten emotional demigoguery!
And Coleman’s empirical, considered, “journalistic” response?
As for Cohen, Coleman says, “I like Dan. Hell, I agree with him on about 90 percent of his criticisms of the paper. But he’s full of gas on this gusset thing.”
“Full of gas”.
And yes, [Strib letters editor and leftyblog starboinker Tim] O’Brien says reaction to the NTSB report is already building with righties demanding to know when the paper is going to apologize to Carol Molnau.
Maybe publisher Chris Harte will run over to St. Paul hat in hand. I don’t see Coleman making that trip.
A better guess: like all good high priests of knowledge, they’ll withdraw to their inner sanctum until the peasants go elsewhere.
We’ll get to Coleman in a bit.
I’m always puzzled when American news outlets report this kind of story with a straight face:
Fidel Castro said Wednesday he is not yet healthy enough to speak to Cuba‘s masses in person and can’t campaign for Sunday’s parliamentary elections.
“I am not physically able to speak directly to the citizens of the municipality where I was nominated for our elections next Sunday,” the ailing 81-year-old wrote in an essay published Wednesday by state news media.
In other news
That is all.
George Soros apparently doesn’t care what he has to do to buy public perception.
First, it was his attempts to flood the media market with left-leaning propaganda – “Media Matters for America” and the the “Center for Independent Media”.
And now – abject anti-war lies:
A STUDY that claimed 650,000 people were killed as a result of the invasion of Iraq was partly funded by the antiwar billionaire George Soros.Soros, 77, provided almost half the £50,000 cost of the research, which appeared in The Lancet, the medical journal. Its claim was 10 times higher than consensus estimates of the number of war dead.
The American left; if you can’t win the war of ideas, buy it.
The study, published in 2006, was hailed by antiwar campaigners as evidence of the scale of the disaster caused by the invasion, but Downing Street and President George Bush challenged its methodology.
New research published by The New England Journal of Medicine estimates that 151,000 people – less than a quarter of The Lancet estimate – have died since the invasion in 2003.
And where, oh where, have we heard this bit before (emphasis added)?
“The authors should have disclosed the [Soros] donation and for many people that would have been a disqualifying factor in terms of publishing the research,” said Michael Spagat, economics professor at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Controlling your own media means never having to explain yourself.
sEd notes that it’s Rush Limbaugh’s birthday:
Happy Birthday to the man who made conservative talk radio a dominating presence — Rush Limbaugh. We’re all in your debt, sir, and thank you for all of the hard work you do.
In 57 years, he’s had more impact on the world than any radioman I can think of.
And on me, actually; when i was a 25 year old neophyte talk radio host, Limbaugh’s big surge sorely constricted the number of stations that would actually pay kids like me to work mid-day and evening shows; while a mid-market station might have paid me $24K, LImbaugh’s satellite show was scot-free to the stations. In a sense, the industry ate its seed corn; there aren’t many local political talk hosts out there under age 50, anymore. But that’s the fault of a ton of short-sighted General Managers – and without Limbaugh, the market wouldn’t exist at all.
So happy birthday, El Rushbo. Enjoy the weekend. There is much ass to kick.
(And keep my chair warm for me).
Over at True North, Swiftee assails the Minnesota Monitor’s (and its parent body, the Center for Independent Media’s) claims of “independence”.
As does this piece by Danny Glover at the Beltway Blogroll:
I don’t have a problem with [partisanship and political principle in journalism], and I’m perfectly fine with both existing within the new media order — so long as people are transparent and honest with readers about their partisan leanings and their principles.
I don’t believe that’s entirely the case here.
I think that’s been the issue most of us on the right have had with the Monitor and the CIM since its inception; not that it’s a rent-a-blog, but that it’s been opaque to the point of disingenuity about both its funding and its mission.
Glover:
The folks behind the center clearly understand “independent” to mean something different than most politically informed Americans, and Morley was transparent about defining the term as he understands it. But casting as independent a Washington-oriented publication that admittedly is not politically independent, of both party and philosophy, is still misleading…calling the new publication The Washington Progressive and its parent the Center For Progressive Media would be far more truthful. Why run from the political terminology the operation embraces?
That’s bothered me; it seems as if the Center and the Monitor have tried to have their cake and eat it too – publishing explicitly “progressive” content, while trying to camouflage the motivation.
The Center for Independent Media has a worthwhile mission, and people with competing worldviews should consider organizing similar efforts to train the next generation of journalists. Anyone who reports the news with what Morley calls a “moral perspective,” regardless of what that perspective is, needs to pursue “rigorous adherence to the highest standards of journalism.”
Unfortunately, the center’s word choice, something endemic to sound journalism, does not rise to those standards.
Read all three pieces.
Paul Schmelzer took understandable, mild umbrage over the “Shootie” award I gave the Minnesota Monitor yesterday.
He might not be entirely wrong. But we’ll get back to that.
Let’s go waaaay back to the spring of ’06.
Back before the Minnesota Monitor even started publishing, I got a tip from a source that said the “Center for Independent Media”, a group that “rented” office space from the George Soros-funded Media Matters for America, was going to be funding “grassroots citizen media” outlets, and was looking for reliably liberal bloggers to write for them. So – going back to the summer/fall of 2006 – I and quite a number of center-right bloggers, in the interest of clarity, started asking the Monitor and its management (at that time, Robin “Rew” Marty of Powerliberal) where the money came from – who, indeed, were the “liberals with deep pockets” that were fronting the Monitor writers’ “stipends”?
For the better part of a year, “we” asked, and asked, and asked again. The Monitor, when it responded at all, said that, appearances aside, the Hungarian-born currency speculator and leftymedia sugardaddy had nothing, nothing to do with the Center for Independent Media or the Minnesota Monitor. We asked the Monitor’s editor; I emailed the Center for Independent Media and asked directly. The CIM didn’t respond at all. Robin Marty went further:
To clarify, the Center for Independent Media is not receiving funding from Media Matters. The only financial arrangement they have is to rent office space.
Cleverly, carefully worded.
Except “Media Matters” wasn’t the crux of the debate; money from George Soros was. Robin’s response was that if one didn’t see an armored car labelled “Soros International” unloading bags of currency labelled “Media Matters” at the CIM offices, it didn’t count!
Never mind that many – especially Joe “Learned Foot” Tucci at Kool Aid Report and this blog’s regular commenter Master of None – did the digging and found the links. The Monitor’s party line, and the line from its supporters, remained unchanged.
And so – given that the definition of “insanity” is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results each time, we moved on, mostly; we took shots at the obloquy and apparent disingenuity of the denials, but figured there were bigger fish to fry. The Monitor’s critics assumed the site was a “Soros” (among many others) front; its supporters stomped their feet and demanded to see the photos of that armored car and those bags of money.
And then, Eric Black went and admitted it all.
Now, I have been unstinting in my regard for Paul Schmelzer and his work at the Monitor. In a region that’s become accustomed to the likes of Brian Lambert as a media “reporter”, Schmelzer has done a great job; he’s head and possibly shoulders above the pack at the Monitor (in some cases, toss in knees or ankles). He took over as editor in August. I think he’s done a decent job – and I freely admit in deference to Schmelzer and his predecessor, Robin Marty, that I could certainly not run a big group-blog like the Monitor.
Schmelzer has noted – in private email to me and in this comment thread in the Monitor, that nobody since August has asked him about the Monitor’s funding, and that he’s being up-front about it.
Which, to be fair to Schmelzer, is true; most of us had given up and settled into our beliefs, pro and con, on the subject.
So Schmelzer is correct in that he is being open about the Monitor and CIM’s funding, albeit under intense questioning from Tom Swift (see the comment section).
But there is plenty of history here. Kudos to Schmelzer for being up-front about it – but, to be fair (to us), it’s not like it didn’t take well over a year of trying, accompanied by a lot of rhetorical abuse and tittering from the Monitor and its defenders, to get to this point.
Does it matter? On the one hand, not really. I mean, I don’t begrudge the Monitor’s staff their paychecks; if you love to do something (and blogging is rarely more than a labor of love), it can be mighty nice to see some payback. And if George Soros or any other fatcats with deep pockets want to spend their kids’ inheritance on propaganda organs – well, it’s their money! I know I’d jump on a check from Richard Mellon Scaife or the Heritage Foundation with both feet. I’d also disclose, completely and immediately, the fact that I had gotten the check, rather than tapdancing and misdirecting and denying the source of my support – I’d just as soon let the reader accurately and completely know, and let them assign or deduct credibility accordingly.
Just as most of us have done with the Monitor.
It’s not that complicated. Or shouldn’t have been, at least.
PS: My wise old grandpa always told me “don’t listen to lectures about “embarassment” from people who seem unable to feel it themselves”.
Words to live by!
Conservative talk show featuring the cream of the local blogging crop – including bloggers that’ve brought down two governments (Jean Chretien and Dan Rather) not only goes on the air, but lasts nearly four years (and counting, knock wood), kicks ratings ass, and draws 20,000 podcast downloads a week?
The Strib’s never heard of us.
Put a one-hour show promoting atheism on Sunday mornings on an also-ran “liberal” station that’s been circling the drain since it went on the air?
The Strib is right there.
Sorta like the time the Today show did a five minute interview (“The left’s answer to Rush Limbaugh!”) with Fast Eddie Schultz, when he had a “network” of six stations, five of them in markets like Lisbon, North Dakota.
(“Hahahahaha! Mitch is jealous!” No, not a bit. The Northern Alliance rips on the Strib pretty consistently, and indeed has held an “Unsubscribe-athon”; it’s fair to say our audience isn’t reading it very much. They really don’t matter. Just wondering about their news judgement, given the rather lopsided impacts of the various shows involved. Just saying).
…that “Jackie Harvey” isn’t over-the-top enough…
…Melinda Jacobs is here to serve you. Bonus: Jacobs is “real”.
Oh, but Mel, babe?
So, why is FM 107.1 so successful?
It’s not, and you should stop with the upsucking.
(Via Brian “Saint Paul” Ward @ Fraters, who read a lot more of the site than I could stomach. Kudos, bro. You’re a better dude than I).
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