Jeff Horwich of MPR’s In The Loop noticed what I wrote about my guest-shot on the show two weeks ago, in the show’s “Loophole” blog.

He commented about my “country radio mouse/city radio mouse” remarks:

[I provide] these observations, which certainly caught my attention:

The culture shock continued when I saw the way the show ran. Where commercial talk show involves a host or two, a board operator, and maybe a call screener (and on major-league talk shows like Limbaugh they might add a person or two to do on-the-fly research), a National/Minnesota Public Radio show involves a crew that, to my commercial-radio tastes, looks more like the crew for a good-sized TV production…The show’s closing credits ran on a long time, listing close to a dozen people. Plus the band. To produce a one-hour, monthly show. Not criticizing. Just saying – to my frugal, commercial-radio-raised tastes, it was like being in a foreign country.

I can understand the impression, and it’s valid to a certain extent. True, on the night of the show we put on an impressive display. We are fortunate to draw on the engineering staff of MPR once a month to make the show happen, and of course a beautiful and effective space for what we do. We can plug into some remarkable resources here.

It’s worth pointing out, though, that there’s more (or less) here than meets the eye. Many of the names in the credits — including people who run the lights, hold the microphones, run the slideshow, and print up scripts — are volunteers. We couldn’t do it without them. Many other names in the credits are people from inside and outside MPR who offered their free advice or assistance in putting the show together. Our band and stage manager are compensated but…let’s just say they wouldn’t be there if they weren’t in it for the experience.

(Carson on) I did not know that! (Carson off)

Duly noted!

I will say this (in addition to what I’ve already said) about In The Loop – the thing I found most surprising about the show’s production was that the whole production had a kind of “Hey, gang!  Let’s put on a show!” quality to it – in the sense of enthusiasm, as opposed to amateurism – that was the last thing I’d expected to encounter at MPR (especially given things I’ve heard about life in the Keillor and Lanpher universes at MPR).

If you’d have asked me twenty minutes ago about the fields that seemed to combine the least long-term upside with the most short-term danger or at least unpleasantness, I’d have suggested:

5. Ryan Rhodes’ plumber

4. Minnesota Monitor’s journalism teacher

3. Courtney Love’s accountant

2. Moslem sex-advice radio host.

1. Etiquette consultant for Democrat bloggers

Twenty minutes later, I see I’m totally wrong:

Dr. Heba Kotb is tackling a taboo in the Arab world unlike anyone else: She’s talking about sex openly on a show broadcast all over the Middle East.

It’s a big first in these parts of the world, and Kotb leaves little uncovered.

“We talk about masturbation … sex over the Internet. We talk about sex and Ramadan. We talk about the wedding night,” said Kotb. Entitled “The Big Talk,” the show is broadcast once a week over a satellite channel from Cairo, Egypt.

It took the 39-year-old mother three years of negotiations to get her show on the air. And a main reason she succeeded is that she talks only about sex allowed in the Quran — sex between husband and wife. (Watch sexologist describe why sex is good )

But even with that guideline, it’s no easy sell.

The promo for “The Big Talk” starts with Kotb saying, “Sex. Don’t be afraid. Join me to talk about sex without shame.”

I’m assuming there will be plenty of burka-related questions.

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

We hope they survive it.

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

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

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

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

Gotcha.

Doug Grow is saved from the “distinction” of being the local media’s foremost, most pollyannaish DFL shill only by Lori Sturdevant.  He is, literally, a heartbeat away from the title.

And throughout his career, on no issue has Grow been less rooted in rationality than the gun issue.  His latest column is a further descent.  He writes about a group of mayors – including those of both of the Twin Cities – who want to reverse federal legislation restricting government access to legal gun sale transactions.

Grow writes with his customary German-jazz-band subtlety:

Here’s a brutal example of how all this plays out:

Tuesday night, two Minneapolis men were robbed, then shot and killed. It was a horrid, random crime. To the credit of Minneapolis cops, the suspected assailants were quickly found.

Now, what police would like to know is how the gun ended up in the hands of the young gang banger they believe pulled the trigger.

“Imagine if this was a drug deal,” Minneapolis Police Chief Tim Dolan said. “You wouldn’t just want to get the guy buying the drugs on the corner; you’d want to go after the supplier.”

The feds probably have a record as to where the gun originally was bought. But Dolan said his department will be hard-pressed to get it because of the Tiahrt Amendment and the NRA.

“I’d love to pop whoever helped put that gun on our streets,” Dolan said. “Whoever did belongs in prison, too. But the NRA is very powerful.”

Notice what Grow has done; tied the NRA, via a rhetorical back channel, to a murder.  Framed the Minneapolis Police Department as plucky underdogs against the big bad National Rifle Association.  Implied that the Tiahrt Amendment makes it impossible for the cops to zoom directly in on the gun’s illegal supplier.

What Grow does not do – because it would show a sentient reader that Grow’s case is buncombe – is explain what the “Tiahrt Amendment” really is and really does. 

David Kopel explains it all in this excellent piece in NRO.  Read it, and remember its details, while reading Grow’s piece.  Compare fact and reality.  Kopel (who I shall italicize, to distinguish him from Grow) writes:

the appropriations bill reinforces existing provisions in federal and local gun laws prohibiting the release of those records that are allowed to be kept on gun owners. Federal law requires that dealers inform federal law enforcement any time a person purchases two or more handguns in a 5-day period. Current law requires the federal government to keep private the names of lawful purchasers.

In other words, the Tiahrt Amendment protects the law-abiding gun owner from government surveillance and harassment. 

Which is the sort of thing the typical anti-NRA shill will dance about and call “paranoid”, and which a cursory look at the record shows clearly is not:

In early 2003, the Supreme Court was on the verge of hearing a case involving the city of Chicago’s attempt to obtain the name of every multiple handgun purchaser in the United States. After the case had been briefed, but before oral arguments, Congress passed an appropriation with a very specific prohibition on the release of purchaser names. In light of the appropriation language, the Supreme Court sent the case back to the lower courts. (For details on the law and the case, see my article in ABA Preview of United States Supreme Court Cases.)

 Oh, yeah – and lest you were in doubt, Grow’s thesis – that the Tiahrt Amendment hampers law-enforcement – is hogwallow:

Sometimes the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) traces a particular gun at the request of law enforcement. The trace may involve an attempt to find the owner of a stolen gun, or to learn more about a gun seized from a criminal, or it may involve a gun seized for a paperwork offense (such as failure to register the gun in some jurisdictions). BATFE traces can be useful in some cases, but they are not representative of the broad universe of guns used in crime — as Gary Kleck and I have explained.The appropriations bill requires BATFE to disclose the necessary caveats in published summaries of firearms trace data — thus preventing BATFE from using trace summaries to push a political agenda, as it did during the Clinton years.

In other words – Doug Grow’s mewling aside – the Tiahrt Amendment requires law enforcement to follow due process  in getting the records of law-abiding gun owners.

It wouldn’t be a Doug Grow Strib column on guns if there weren’t a fawning reference to some astroturf group of “anti-NRA gun owners” to complement the cartoonish facade of the NRA:

There is a new organization trying to rationally represent the interests of gun owners who are as perplexed by some NRA positions as the rest of us are. The American Hunters and Shooters Association, founded by former pro football player Ray Schoenke, is working with the mayors and police chiefs in trying to eliminate such bloody pieces of gun law as the Tiahrt Amendment.

“We’re just trying to do common-sense things,” said Schoenke, who once ran for governor of Maryland.

Common sense is a direct threat to the NRA, so Schoenke’s 18-month-old organization is being targeted.

Let’s stop right there.

Grow states this – or, to be accurate, parrots Schoenke’s statement – with not a jot of background for the reader.  Apparently he assumes his word is good enough. 

And he has to hope so, since the facts certainly gut his thesis to the bone.

But 180 mayors aren’t giving up. They keep pointing to a stunning stat: 30,000 people in the country are killed each year by firearms.

 Unstated; how many of them are killed by people who are not involved in the drug trade, or have criminal records and/or histories of chemical or mental impairment, or are suicides (which is tragic and a totally separate issue).

Also unstated:  that every year, firearms are used between 80,000 (FBI estimate) and 1.2 million (Gary Kleck’s estimate) times to deter, repel or kill criminals in the act, over 80% of the time without a shot being fired, and with over 1,000 criminals killed in legal self-defense per year.

When Doug Grow talks about guns, it’s always the interesting stuff that gets left out.

I wonder what Lori Sturdevant gets out of being a full-time DFL shill?

No, I don’t mean that I think she’s on the DFL’s payroll.  That’d be a pretty defamatory thing to write about a journalist, and that’s certainly not my intent.

Although to all intents and purposes Lori Sturdevant is no more a “journalist”, these days, than Jeff Fecke.

Let’s perform a multi-level fisking of today’s editorial.  I’ll do the traditional dissection of her column; I’ll also put her various propaganda-friendly code words in bold, so we can see the “subtle” shadings of words that make her column (columns?) (entire body of post-beat-reporter work?) an exercise in DFL propaganda.

Watching the House DFL majority laboriously assemble an attractive state budget last week, while knowing that it’s destined to be dismantled by vetoes, was dispiriting work.

So I did what adroit legislators do during deficit years (which is what this year feels like, no matter how much the GOP pols yammer about a surplus). The savvy ones say, when you can’t spend, borrow. I dug out the House and Senate bonding bills, and found something to make me smile: high-speed rail to Chicago.

Beyond  Sturdevant’s reflexive bias, I’m almost starting to wonder if she regards spending itself, rather than programs or “helping” people or the actual work of government, as a virtue in its own right?

Because “smiling” at the mere mention in a bonding bill of a huge, big-ticket boondoggle?

One wonders if Sturdevant would “smile” at a bill that levied a 1% tax on, say, talk radio revenue, converted the proceeds into a huge pile of $20 bills, and lit them into a huge bonfire?

Both bills include $2 million to seriously plan for the day when Minnesotans could get on a train at a restored Union Depot in St. Paul, and disembark 5½ hours later at Union Station in downtown Chicago.

Amtrak runs from St. Paul to Chicago once per day now, and takes eight hours on a good day to do it. Even with service that slow, ridership is rising. The bonding bill proposal, sponsored by Sen. Katie Sieben, DFL-Newport, and Rep. Alice Hausman, DFL-St. Paul, anticipates six round trips per day, at a top speed of 110 miles per hour.

One wonders if a cost/benefit analysis would be any part of that study.  Why?

We’ll get to that.

You want faster? (I do. [I’m shocked – shocked, I tell you] It’ll cost more [Ibid]), and mean fewer stops. But it’s possible that St. Paul to Madison to Milwaukee to Chicago eventually could be done in four hours.

You know what’d really be cool?  If we built a chair with big rockets on it, that’d get you to Chicago in about forty minutes!

Wait!

That’s what we have now!  It’s called an “airliner”, and it exists, and makes dozens of round trips a day, and, I would guess, is faster and will cost less, in terms of customer fares and public subsidy, than this miracle train that will make the trip for billions of dollars more money and at triple the time.

Imagine the possibilities. A professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison could board a train at 8 a.m., and step off light rail at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities in time to teach a noon seminar. A Chicago cycling enthusiast could load his bike on the fast train on Saturday morning, transfer to a southeastern Minnesota circulator in La Crosse or Winona, and be tooling along the Root River trail by midday. A businesswoman in St. Cloud could get on the Northstar (it’ll get there eventually), transfer to Central Corridor light rail, then take the fast train right into the Windy City’s Loop. It’ll take a little more time than today’s drive-fly-drive trip requires, but there’d be ample elbow room for laptop work the whole way.

So not only is Sturdevant sneaking in calls for two more rail projects (an utterly-unneeded “circulator” and the less-stupid Northstar), but she’s assuming that the professor, cyclist and St. Cloud businesswoman market is enough to justify the costs of this immensely-expensive line.

Question for Sturdevant, or anyone who assumes she has a point:  if there’s no market for the current, expensive train that will get you to Chicago slower than your car will at virtually the same cost as a forty-minute flight (even after the immense subsidy that underlies your ticket), why is there suddenly a market for something that’ll be vastly more expensive (to the customer and especially the taxpayer), that’ll provide either cost savings nor a decisive change in speed?

Simple fact; the current generation of Amtrak trains can, at least in theory, make the trip at over 80 miles per hour.  If there were a market imperative to punch passenger traffic down the mainline to Chicago at a higher priority than the freight traffic that currently uses the lines (as, indeed, was done up until air travel made such scheduling obsolete and cost-ineffective), then it’d be a small matter to make the trip to Chicago a six-hour-ish trip, for virtually no extra money.

But there’s not.

Which doesn’t stop Sturdevant from dreaming them up, in the same make-believe world that seems to drive her entire conscious life:

The Midwest Regional Rail System’s map has the fast train following the existing Amtrak route — go down the Mississippi along lovely Lake Pepin to La Crosse, then hang a left.

The map in my mind’s eye includes a spur track to Rochester. (We’re talking a few passenger trains here, not 34 coal-bearing brutes per day.) If Minnesota wants to juice up the job-creating potential of the collaboration between the University of Minnesota and Mayo, how about connecting the two campuses by rail?

Shuttling professors and college kids – slowly and at immense expense, compared to cars – should be a major fiscal priority for this state?

 Read the rest of the piece, if you want to see as shameless an endorsement of cash-whoring pettifoggery as I’ve ever seen.

Sturdevant ends the piece by recognizing – sort of – the opposition:

Of course, only one Republican’s attitude really counts. Gov. Tim Pawlenty hasn’t been a promoter of high-speed rail, but neither has he signaled opposition…[R]emember what Pawlenty said in his 2003 State of the State speech? “Behind me is a portrait of Abraham Lincoln. When he took office, he set two main goals. First, preserve the Union. And second, build the transcontinental railroad. … He had a vision and agenda for building the future beyond the immediate crisis. … We also need to get about the business of rebuilding Minnesota’s future.”

If the governor and his Republican allies won’t go along with the kind of building that a generous state budget affords, the least they can do is follow the example of their party’s founding father and start building a better railroad.

Every time I read one of Sturdevant’s flights of fancy, I wonder if she’s really that dumb, or if she just thinks her audience is?

In Lincoln’s day, the transcontinental railroad was a technological marvel, a social imperative and political masterwork.

Today, a “high-speed” train to Chicago is a technological throwback, an economic albatross, an ideological reflex and a serving of political pork.

Slow, expensive pork.

The Saint Paul Pioneer Press’ new owner is sueing its former publisher, Par Ridder:

[the suit accuses] …Ridder and others of stealing sensitive information as they left for new jobs at the rival Star Tribune newspaper in Minneapolis.

The sweeping 46-page lawsuit takes aim at the Star Tribune and its new owner, Avista Capital Partners, as well as Ridder and two other former Pioneer Press employees who left the paper with him. It claims, among other things, Ridder committed fraud and civil theft, and disclosed trade secrets.

Suffice to say MediaNews – which bought the PiPress after a series of sales that included former Strib owner McClatchy – isn’t happy:

The lawsuit, filed in Ramsey County District Court in St. Paul:

 

Asks that Ridder and the two other former Pioneer Press employees not be allowed to work at the Star Tribune for a year. 

Claims all three are violating non-compete clauses that they had at the Pioneer Press. 

Asks that the computer data they took with them not be used, and that a computer expert be allowed to inspect the defendant’s computers and destroy files containing Pioneer Press data.In a statement released by the Star Tribune, Chris Harte, the newspaper’s chairman, said “we will address these matters point by point in our legal response to the complaint and look forward to a full resolution.”

Harte said Ridder “has been discussing these matters in good faith with the Pioneer Press,” but that the lawsuit made further comment inappropriate.

Calls to Ridder and the others named in the lawsuit were not returned.

Dean Singleton, CEO of MediaNews Group Inc., which controls the Pioneer Press, had sharp words for the Star Tribune when he met with newsroom employees Thursday. Singleton said he was incensed by Ridder’s actions.

“In Par’s world, he could get away with anything because Daddy would always take care of him,” Singleton said.

Ridder’s father is P. Anthony “Tony” Ridder, former CEO of the dismantled Knight Ridder newspaper chain. Ridder’s family bought the Pioneer Press in the 1920s, and the company later became Knight Ridder Inc., one of the nation’s largest newspaper operations. Knight Ridder was sold last year to the McClatchy Co., which then owned the Star Tribune. McClatchy quickly sold the Pioneer Press and several other Knight Ridder papers.

 The Strib also covers the story (in the business section), and provides a link to the current filings (PDF alert).

I never cared much for Imus.  I can’t say that I’ve listened to him more than a half a dozen times, ever; he never really took off in the Twin Cities (Pointless disclosure: Salem Radio engaged Imus for the morning shift at the re-tooled AM1570 within the past couple of weeks).  I’ve always found his phlegmy, gargly-sounding voice unlistenable; as someone who grew up in the business, I’ve always found the old-school, big-name “shock jocks” (from back when that term meant something) to be deeply distasteful people; and as he developed as a reliable liberal outlet in a medium run by conservatives, I found him (counterintuitively) less and less interesting.

So he’s gone.  Whoop di doo.

Of course, the scandal that led to his demise (?) teaches all the wrong lessons. 

Jason Whitlock writing in the Kansas City Star sums up the real importance of Imus’ demise, and the way it went down.   You need to read the whole thing – but I’m going to excerpt big chunks of it anyway.

Thank you, Don Imus. You’ve given us (black people) an excuse to avoid our real problem.

You’ve given Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson another opportunity to pretend that the old fight, which is now the safe and lucrative fight, is still the most important fight in our push for true economic and social equality.

Exactly.

William Raspberry wrote an excellent column about 15 years ago, officially consigning the petty racism of name-calling to the “Pathetic, Ignore” bin (and I’d love to find that article online somewhere).  Long story short: anyone who thinks that ignorant morons calling black people naughty names is teh biggest problem facing blacks in America today – or even an important one – is deluded. 

Thank you, Don Imus. You extended Black History Month to April, and we can once again wallow in victimhood, protest like it’s 1965 and delude ourselves into believing that fixing your hatred is more necessary than eradicating our self-hatred.

The bigots win again.

The only question I have; which bigots? 

Jackson and Sharpton, who believe Blacks in America deserve no better from their “leadership” to wallow in the sort of petty victimhood afforded by a statement as dumb (dumb!) as Imus’?

Or the casual, de facto bigots who control so much of African-American culture in America:

While we’re fixated on a bad joke cracked by an irrelevant, bad shock jock, I’m sure at least one of the marvelous young women on the Rutgers basketball team is somewhere snapping her fingers to the beat of 50 Cent’s or Snoop Dogg’s or Young Jeezy’s latest ode glorifying nappy-headed pimps and hos.

If the misogyny and self-loathing in hip-hop were to be directed self-directed at any other ethnic group, psychologists would queue up around the figurative block to try to find the cause of such a cultural dissociation.

I ain’t saying Jesse, Al and Vivian are gold-diggas, but they don’t have the heart to mount a legitimate campaign against the real black-folk killas.

It is us. At this time, we are our own worst enemies. We have allowed our youths to buy into a culture (hip hop) that has been perverted, corrupted and overtaken by prison culture. The music, attitude and behavior expressed in this culture is anti-black, anti-education, demeaning, self-destructive, pro-drug dealing and violent.

Rather than confront this heinous enemy from within, we sit back and wait for someone like Imus to have a slip of the tongue and make the mistake of repeating the things we say about ourselves.

The thesis – that mainstream black culture has become Black America’s worst enemy?

It’s embarrassing. Dave Chappelle was offered $50 million to make racially insensitive jokes about black and white people on TV. He was hailed as a genius. Black comedians routinely crack jokes about white and black people, and we all laugh out loud.

There is nothing quite as depressing as watching the various “Apollo” comedy specials and tours.  And while Chapelle is funny (in the same way that “Borat” was funny – in a way that I kind of didn’t like myself for finding funny, in many ways), you watch it knowing that behind all comedy is some form of pain or another – and the sense that the “pain” behind the likes of Chapelle and the less-tony black comic community is self-hatred.

Somehow, we’re supposed to believe that the comments of a man with virtually no connection to the sports world ruined Rutgers’ wonderful season. Had a broadcaster with credibility and a platform in the sports world uttered the words Imus did, I could understand a level of outrage.

But an hourlong press conference over a man who has already apologized, already been suspended and is already insignificant is just plain intellectually dishonest. This is opportunism. This is a distraction.

Worse than a distraction; it’s going to give some of the lesser lights of the “civil rights movement” a sense they’ve “won” something, while the real problems just grind on and on.

And those real problems, more and more, drive Mercedes and wear lots o’ bling:

I don’t listen or watch Imus’ show regularly. Has he at any point glorified selling crack cocaine to black women? Has he celebrated black men shooting each other randomly? Has he suggested in any way that it’s cool to be a baby-daddy rather than a husband and a parent? Does he tell his listeners that they’re suckers for pursuing education and that they’re selling out their race if they do?

…No. We all know where the real battleground is. We know that the gangsta rappers and their followers in the athletic world have far bigger platforms to negatively define us than some old white man with a bad radio show. There’s no money and lots of danger in that battle, so Jesse and Al are going to sit it out.

Read the whole thing.

And ask yourself; with Imus gone but Fitty Cent and Snoop Dogg still acting out a stereotype more corrosive than Stepin’ Fetchit (because nobody seriously aspired to be Mr. Fetchit, while a generation of kids now use the word “pimp” as an adjective of approval), what’s really changed?

 UPDATE:  Flash at Centrisity adds 2,000-odd words to the subject.

The number one item on all the morning shows today?

Don Imus.

Especially on the Today show; NBC has a financial relationship with Imus, who simulcasts his morning show on MSNBC.

Call me a cynic, but I say lLook for Imus’ numbers to boom after his “two week suspension”.

In fact, look for his return to be the most heavily hyped event in the history of radio.

As I’ve noted in the past, when I want badly-thought-out analysis of events that substitutes snark for logic, I turn to area leftyblogger Cucking Stool.

And I usually turn right away, because – sheesh, it’d be like fisking the senile or the handicapped.

But Mr. Stool’s outdone himself this time, going past merely dumb and swerving into broad, group-based character assassination, commenting about local conservative bloggers’ attacks on Al Franken’s old anti-gay “jokes”:

Geez, you go on vacation for a couple of weeks, and when you get back, there’s been a sea change in where the parties stand.

That, or  you really weren’t very sure of it before  you went on vacation, Cuck. 

 Conservative bloggers are now the defenders of gays and lesbians. Several right-wing bloggers are attacking Democratic Senate candidate Al Franken for some skits and comments he made more than 30 years ago that they, with their finely tuned sensitivities, construe as possibly antigay.

Really, Cuck?  The crack about our “sensitivities” aside, perhaps you’d like to favor your readers with some sort of link to what the bloggers are talking about?

So they can – y’know – make up their own minds?

That’s quite a change from when the Republican Party was trying to use same-sex marriage and gay adoption as wedge issues. It seems like just yesterday that the GOP caucus in St. Paul was trying to put the gay marriage issue on the ballot to gin up voter turnout

I’m a conservative, and I have been for decades.  Among my beliefs – marriage is a guy and girl thing.  And also fraught, but I digress.  I oppose gay marriage.

And yet, 20 years ago, I got involved in a gay bashing incident.   If you take Stool’s puerile stereotype seriously, you’ll know how I reacted – by piling on and helping beat the crap out of the gay guy.

But wait!  I didn’t!  I got involved on the side of the gay guy, the victim of the incident.

How could that be?  Doesn’t that go completely against the stereotype?  On what basis can someone like Mr. Stool judge me, if not by stereotype?

Y’see, Cuck, that’d be the difference between Republicans and Democrats; while many conservatives have sincere beliefs about what marriage is, we still stand up for the dignity of the individuals.   

 and that überconservative pinup girl Ann Coulter was calling a Democratic presidential candidate a “faggot.”

And you’ll recall – and you’ll have to recall, because Stoolster won’t tell you – that it was conservative bloggers that cut Coulter the loosest the fastest.  This blog included.

If Ann Coulter didn’t exist, the lefty media would have to create her. 

Indeed, as Cuck has shown in this piece, the do.  Over and over again.

Since these bloggers are now courageous champions for civil rights for gays and lesbians, it won’t be long before they call on Sen. Norm Coleman to repudiate his vote for a federal constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and to support the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and hate-crimes legislation.

Uh, you see, Stool, there again you miss the point.  Standing against character assassination of gays (to say nothing of violence) isn’t the same as debasing the definition of marriage (many conservatives, myself included, support civil union legislation while wanting to defend traditional marriage); hate-crimes legislation is broadly stupid, and deserves to be opposed by anyone who believes in genuine civil liberty. 

It wouldn’t be a Cucking Stool post without a dumb snark – the too-frequent tack of the dim left,  the unintentional irony of slamming bigotry by employing it.

Wait for it…

Wait…for…it…

They’ve seen the progressive light. I mean, that has to be it. The only other explanation would be craven hypocrisy, and that certainly couldn’t be the case.

Numbnuts!  If you can’t see the difference between defending traditional marriage and defending people against scabrous character assassination, then you shouldn’t be using terms like “craven hypocrisy”.  You might hurt yourself.

UPDATE:  My bad.  This piece of logically-retarded, snarky, moronic bilge wasn’t written by Cucking Stool.  It was written by Tim O’Brien of the Strib.  Y’know – the paper where the editors and gatekeepers are supposed to help make sure the content isn’t, y’know, puerile and dim.

My apologies to Mr Stool.

I was listening to Hugh Hewitt’s show last night.  He announced that he was about to play “the greatest song in the history of rock and roll…”

…and then the radio cut out before he could play “Born to Run”.

My reception in Saint Paul is always kinda iffy.  Drat the luck.

Dennis Miller – one of my five all-time favorite comics – starts his latest venture, a radio talk show, today (coincidentally, just in time for the re-christening of AM1570, the Patriot’s sister station, as the “Talk of the West Metro”.  Miller appears from 9-noon on 1570). 

Good news?

Maybe.  I’ve commented in the past about how standup comics and talk radio really don’t mix.  Much of Air America’s initial, ballyhooed lineup was former standups – Marc Maron, Janeane Garofalo, Lizzzzzz Winstead, Al Franken, Sam Seder.  Let’s give credit where it’s due – all of them but Seder were quite successful at comedy.  The qualifier – they were successful in their element, working on a stage in front of a crowd, giving them instant feedback (or, in Franken’s case, as a writer, which is another medium entirely). 

And, like most comics who try to do talk radio – a very different medium requiring a very different energy and focus – all of them were disastrous flops on the air. 

On the other hand, Miller is one of the best at what he does – blazingly-literate, funny-in-a-byzantine-intricate-way commentary about people and events.  He’s vastly better at comedy that could  translate to talk radio than Franken, Garofalo or Maron.  And he’s been edging closer to the radio medium – via his great HBO series and his failed stabs at Monday Night Football and his CNBC show – for most of a decade, now.   If there were a standup comic who could do talk radio – who might have learned how to make the transition from talking to a room full of people to talking to a microphone and a slate of phone callers and an audience that one must imagine rather than see – it could be Miller.

And he’s a libertarian conservative.  That’s going to help, of course; liberal talk was and remains DOA, while conservative talk promises to surge as the next election cycle approaches.  Miller should be in his element.

Brian Maloney on the challenges Miller faces:

An astounding glut of syndicated weekday fare, with far more programs than the market can support.

True, but that’s been the case for years, and is hardly a reason not to give it a try.  I mean, it’s only money, right?

A curious time slot choice, 10am – 1pm ET, which will have him up against Rush Limbaugh and many other successful mid- morning shows.

That is, indeed, a strange choice.  Far better, I’d think, to run Miller either in the morning slot, against the likes of Laura Ingraham and Bill Bennett, or perhaps as an alternative in the afternoon to Sean Hannity. 

Though 80 stations signed up for his debut, quite a decent number, most are tiny, including a number of Salem Communications- owned outlets.

True – including here in the Twin Cities; 1570 is a smaller, more niche-oriented signal (albeit much better-placed now than during its years as “the Patriot II”, broadcasting shows that didn’t quite make the cut for AM1280).  Maloney correctly notes that these small stations are notorious for tape-delaying shows, making it impossible for people in their markets to call in and participate (and accordingly lowering listenership).  AM1570 will be running the show live in the Twin Cities, which is a very good thing – but 1570 is, at best, a very new project (as in, on its first day today!), and is a smaller, weaker signal than even AM1280.

Miller brings baggage to the radio, including his failed CNBC show, where his performance was lackluster. Does he have a real passion for the issues? Can he develop a topic?

We’ll see! As I noted above, Miller might be a more auspicious candidate for this than the vast majority of comics – indeed, more than any comic I can personally think of at the moment. But having some solid radio experience on his production team will help a lot, too (presuming Miller breaks from traditional standup comic form and can actually listen to their advice…)

Most of all, he simply lacks the experience in talk radio needed to hit the ground running. We’ve repeatedly seen celebrities plucked off the street and given shows, only to fail when they quickly run out of steam.

Always a good point; from Soupy Sales to James Hightower to Al Franken, the radio landscape is littered with the carcasses of celebs who were “the next big thing” (or more recently “the alternative to Limbaugh”). But I think Miller has paid more applicable dues in the business than any of the others; he’s in the right place (right of center!) and, arguably, at the right time.

Handicaps aside – and there are some big ones – I think Miller stands a chance.

With the release last week of the transcripts of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s trial transcripts, I started a countdown; how long would it be until the Mainstream Media turned him into either a benign figure, or even something akin to a clever folk hero?

The first bit was Saturday, on some NPR news show or another (you know – the one featuring the arid, personality-free anchors. That one.  They noted about KSM that he felt bad about killing children!  That he seemed to be quite the magnetic personality!

They were humanizing a person who has murdered thousands!
And now…

WHAT TIMING! Just when the attorney general and the president were coming under fire for the politicized dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys, the Pentagon released a transcript of a March 10 hearing in which Guantanamo detainee Khalid Shaikh Mohammed confessed to masterminding the 9/11 attacks. Now we can get back to the Bush administration’s preferred topic: What a heck of a job it’s doing in the war on terror.

No, it’s not some fringe-left dolt like Cucking Stool or Jesus General. It’s a newspaper.

Question: When should the administration have released the transcripts?

Or are your attention spans that short?

Ahem:

A NASA scientist [James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies] who said the Bush administration muzzled him because of his belief in global warming yesterday acknowledged to Congress that he’d done more than 1,400 on-the-job interviews in recent years.

Censorship?  Nah. 

However, the Administration would be justified in calling the guy a panty-waisted drama queen:

Mr. Hansen refused to denounce earlier comments he made referring to the White House as a “propaganda office,” and saying, “It seems more like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union than the United States.”
    “I was referring to the constraints of speaking to the media,” Mr. Hansen said, when asked about his comments.

 1,400 interviews.

It’s like he’s got a number tattooed on his forearm.

Republicans questioned him about his ties to prominent Democrats. 
Mr. Hansen received a $250,000 grant from the Heinz foundation, which is controlled by Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat. Mr. Hansen was a vocal supporter of Mr. Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign.
    “As far as I know, there’s no political connection to this award,” said Mr. Hansen, who has donated several thousand dollars to past presidential campaigns for Mr. Kerry and Mr. Gore. “It’s an environmental award.”

Mr. Hansen; you might have a future with the Minnesota Monitor.

Among the reporters taking early retirement at the Strib this past week is Dane Smith, dean of Minnesota political reporters.

Doug Tice – an editor who is very rarely mistaken for a cliched liberal reporter – reminisces:

It seems that during the lead up to the Spanish-American War McKinley needed to get word to a rebel leader holed up somewhere in the Cuban hinterland. He called in his best agent and said:

“I need you to take this message to Carlos. I don’t know where he is. I don’t know how find him. I don’t know how you get back afterwards. And if you’re caught your government will deny ever having heard of you. I don’t want any questions. I just need it done.”

And with that the agent saluted, withdrew, and completed the mission.

That’s the kind of guy Dane is. Not much for saluting, to be sure. And a word of complaint now and then has been known to escape his lips. But he got the job done. No matter how elusive the story, or how half-baked the concept of his editors; no matter how long and late the hours; no matter how uncooperative and disagreeable the sources; Dane got the journalistic job done.

And he did it with style, skill, and a dry-eyed shrewdness about politics and politicians leavened with decency and humor.

Eric and I had lunch just last week with a long time political insider who lamented Dane’s departure from the newspaper business. He said it was Dane’s passion for fairness that would most be missed. He recalled the way Dane would patiently interview him on a tough, unwelcome story.

Smith – and, arguably, Black – by most accounts are the type of journalists that most journalists were taught to be, long ago; people who told the story and kept their beliefs, their histories and their politics out of it.

Something that, unfortunately, seems to be a dying art these days.

(Correction: It’s Doug Tice, not Eric Black.  I hadn’t noticed Doug was backstopping Black on the blog)

Last week,Joel Rosenberg highlighted a piece from the Blue Earth Daily Democrat about a fatal shooting.

Let’s flip through the piece and find the bits and pieces of atrocious style, editorial malfeasance, and error in fact; I’ll highlight them and put explanations in square brackets.

No fair looking at Joel’s piece. Yet.

A Richfield man was charged Tuesday with unintentional murder for shooting his half- brother to death in their home last Friday.

Jerome H. Bartlett, 40, allegedly got into an argument with his half-brother who went out with a friend to get takeout food and found the front door locked when he returned about 9 p.m. Friday [Leaving aside that it’s a bit of run-on – who found the front door locked, the half-brother or the friend? Who were these half-brothers and friends? Do they turn up in the future?]. Derek Storrusten, 36, had left it unlocked and got angry at his brother for locking it, said the friend, according to second-degree murder charges filed in Hennepin County District Court [Huh?]. The charging document continued:

Storrusten pounded on the door and called his Bartletts cell phone [Whose? His? Huh?] before getting in through a back door. He started arguing on the basement stairs with Bartlett, then went down stairs to Bartletts bedroom. Then the friend, who was identified only by initials, heard a loud gunshot.

“You killed me,” Storrusten yelled a few times, the friend told police.

“Talk to Jesus,” Bartlett replied several times.

The friend [Was this the same friend as above?] ran outside and called police, as did Bartlett. He said Bartlett appeared in his underwear and yelled at him to go home.

Bartlett initially told police he was awakened by noises he thought were made by an intruder and accidentally shot his brother. Then he said he knew it was Storrusten, but he fired in self defense [Brother? Storrusten? The usage is confusing].

Bartlett was waiting for police and directed them to the basement where they found Storrusten dead, with a 50 mm handgun a few feet away. He was taken to Hennepin County Medical Center where he died that night. [What? Both times?]

Oh, yeah. And that “50mm handgun”? Fifty millimeters is two inches – almost five times the bore of Dirty Harry’s .44 Magnum:

Would it be this kind of handgun?

No, that’s only 27 milllimeters!

Here’s the only “50mm handgun” I know about…

…and it’s not technically a “hand” gun.

Oh, and I lied. The story wasn’t from the Blue Earth Daily Democrat. It was from the Minneapolis Star/Tribune – the place with the gatekeepers that make them so much better than bloggers.

…pimp-smacking Larry Jacobs – U of M professor and apparently the only “political expert” on any Twin Cities reporter’s rolodex – like fisking Lori Sturdevant, is sort of like doing finger exercises on the guitar, mandolin and cello; they’re things you do over and over again because it keeps you limber for the real fun stuff.

Eric Black – one of this city’s best reporters, and I mean that sincerely and with no hidden joke in the background – went to Jacobs to wonder why Rudy Giuliani is doing so well among conservatives.  Jacobs’ answer – the same one he gives for every surprising result from the GOP – “conservatism is dead!”

Gary Miller at TvM punts the old guy about 90 yards:

Republicans have known for years that the liberal bugaboo Ms. Rodham would be the Democratic nominee in 2008 so that does not suffice as the reason Republicans are turning to the “electable” Giuliani.  Few could mistake the fact that the Mayor is personally in favor of abortion rights and other socially liberal positions.  But what Jacobs apparently does mistake is the fact that by pledging to appoint judges in the mold of “Roberts, Alito and Thomas”, Giuliani has merited the mantle “functionally pro-life”.  In other words, a president can have his own policy preferences, but if his fidelity to the text of the constitution is paramount, he will pledge to allow such decisions to be decided by people in those laboratories of democracy we call “states”. 

Does the Mayor still have obstacles in his quest for the nomination in this regard?  Absolutely.  But for an observer of Jacobs’ supposed pedigree to miss this obvious explanation for Mayor Giuliani’s meteoric rise is an important case study on how conventional wisdom is regurgitated among the chattering class. 

To be fair, I don’t think Jacobs has done anything but regurgitate conventional wisdom in 20 years.  Why he’s still the official go-to-guy for the entire Twin Cities media is way beyond me.

As I explained last week (and was seconded by James Taranto), far from seeing a diminution of their influence, social conservatives are displaying their sophistication. 

The notion that social conservatives are mindless crowd-followers seems to enthrall the left. 

The Elder beats down Brian Lambert:

For all the talk of “crushing of dissent,” “questioning of patriotism,” “building a theocracy,” “trashing the Constitution,” and “creating a climate of fear” in George Bush’s Amerika, it’s notable that at the end of the day, the only actual efforts to limit debate and free expression are coming from the Left. Imagine that.

Read the whole thing.  And respond by burning everything Brian Lambert has ever written, just to show him the real effect of what he’s proposing.

Just kidding about that last bit.

Nutroots tell Nevada Democrats “jump”. Nevada Democrats respond “off what?”

The Nevada State Democratic Party is pulling out of a controversial presidential debate scheduled for Aug. 14 in Reno and co-hosted by Fox News, according to a letter released late Friday from state party chairman Tom Collins and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev).

The letter said Nevada Democrats had entered into the agreement with Fox, despite strong opposition from Democratic activist groups such as MoveOn.org, as a way of finding “new ways to talk to new people.”

But it’s all over now; MoveOn can’t abide presenting the Dem message through any but democrat-beholden friendly media.

Good!

Keep preaching to the choir!

Can you imagine if the Republicans limited themselves to friendly media? If we eschewed ABC, NBC, CBS, NPR, the AP…?

Keep it this up, Dems!

Twin Cities broadcast legend John Hines is moving to KTLK:

John Hines, for the past 16 years a morning mainstay at country music station KEEY (FM 102.1) is moving down the dial to conservative talker KTLK (100.3 FM) where he will fill the 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. morning slot recently vacated by Andrew Colton.

On the one hand, good riddance to the arid, dull Colton. 

But Caulfield-Rybak is playing to hype, calling KTLK a “Conservative” station.  

Oh, it’s moved to the right since it’s original incarnation, which was spawned during the big craze two years ago that claimed conservative talk was dead; the station’s original lineup included only Limbaugh as a genuine conservative show, and was larded with the somnolent Colton and Guest, the mismatched Pat Kessler, the misconceived Janecek and Lambert, and the capable but not-really-aligned Dan Conry.  As the original lineup melted down (only the Limbaugh time slot beat AM1280 the Patriot, a station with 1/20 KTLK’s power), they added more, proven, conservative hosts (Sean Hannity, Jason Lewis), but have studiously avoided (in my opinion) being identified as “conservative”.

Why?  My guess – to try to validate some very expensive consultants’ highly-paid opinions.

Because Hines is certainly a high-profile attempt to salvage the “conservative talk is dead” strategy:

Anselmo acknowledged that Hines [like his predecessor Colton] would be a distinctly apolitical voice on a station populated by conservative hosts. “What he’ll bring is great morning radio, with personality, entertainment and local focus.”

Hines is one of the best in town.  But can he save a concept – “conservative talk radio is dead!” – that the market nationwide shows is a dud?

I give him a year.

Whenever a smug, sanctimonious, unctuous liberal demigogue anywhere is under attack, you can count on someone in the Strib front office to stand up and be counted.

And with Algore’s hypocritical, power-guzzling ways (and, moreover, his lame “carbon-credit” defense) being heckled off the stage of public opinion, it makes sense that that someone is Nick Coleman.  A fellow child of political power, a fellow patrician grown accustomed to lecturing the hopeless hoi-polloi, both with hours of, um, fascinating stories to relate the sixties to today, Coleman is the Algore’s perfect defender.

It’s all so – unfair, says Coleman:

After his film about global warming won an Oscar on Sunday, Al Gore basked in the adulation of Hollywood.

You knew he’d get paid back.

No, Nick.  We knew he’d give us plenty of material. You do understand the difference, right?

The right-wing wood-chippers have been chewing Gore into little pieces ever since.

COLEMAN BS ALERT:  Actually, the story came out in The Chattanoogan – not exactly part of the Right Wing Noise Machine. 

They didn’t enjoy the joke when Gore reached into his tux and pulled out a phony presidential campaign announcement before the Oscar orchestra drummed him off stage.

Truth be told, I actually did get a laugh out of that.  Whatever his faults, Algore – like the President, actually – can occasionally poke fun at himself.  I’ll give him that much.

Strike two, Nick. 

The very sight of Gore offends people who think the Supreme Court ruled he should never again be seen in public. Those folks can’t forgive Gore for continuing to draw breath.

(Closed circuit to Nick Coleman’s nonexistent editor:  Isn’t that not only a little hyperbolic, but kind of clubfisted and inarticulate?  And, by the way, as we saw with Vice President Cheney’s brush with the Taliban this past week, it’s not the right that goes about wishing death on people…)

But what really got the phlegm flying on talk radio was the “gotcha” from a conservative group that outed the former vice president as a Limousine Electricity user. Zap.

Last year, Gore’s mansion used almost 20 times as much electricity as the average American home. Take that, you Hollywood types.

Everyone loves a juicy bit of hypocrisy, and I am prepared to believe a politician might say one thing in public and act another way in private. But the Gore electricity kerfuffle offers an opportunity for Americans to point a finger.

At ourselves.

Before Nick begins the real purpose of this column – a rote transcription of talking points – let’s set a few things straight.

I’m far from above conserving.  Of course, in my case it’s not a matter of buying into a fabian socialist scare story; it’s because I’m half Norwegian, and I like to squeeze twelve cents out of a dime, and I’m all for sending less of my take-home pay to Excel Energy.  Or to the House of Saud, for that matter.  It’s a market prerogative, and I’m doing my best to vote with my feet and my wallet.

I mentioned “fabian socialist talking points”:

The science on global warming is convincing [Hah!], and so is the need to throttle back on our polluting energy ways.

“The best response to Al Gore’s energy usage is for us to think about our own,” says Michael Noble, executive director of Fresh Energy, a St. Paul-based nonprofit group.

The group is working to develop a “clean, efficient and fair” energy system (www.fresh-energy.org). “We all ought to be looking at the automobile we drive, how we heat our house, whether it’s insulated, whether we have efficient appliances, and how to reduce our fossil fuel use.”

When non-profits start talking about making things “fair”, it’s time to keep one hand on your wallet and the other on your Constitution.

No, we don’t have to live in cold, dark caves, Noble says. The issue is about taking responsibility for our energy use, while supporting efforts to “change the entire energy system, top to bottom, to substitute energy-efficient and carbon-free energy for fossil fuels which lead to warming.”

Of course, the market will do that, on its own.  It got a major boost this past two years, as gas prices jumped over $3 a gallon; SUV sales plummeted, people took a serious look at hybrids (and found them largely wanting), alternative energy started to show at least fringe-y signs of being viable someday, and even environmentalists started reconsidering their generation-old hysteria against nuclear power.

Gore, by the way, offsets his fossil-fuel use by paying extra for renewable energy credits.

This was ignored by the talk-radio goobers, but the idea is simple: For a small extra charge, pennies per kilowatt hour, you can “buy” renewable energy credits from your energy company, which uses the money (it is carefully audited) to buy that amount of nonpolluting power (such as wind energy) for its system rather than building more power plants.

Oh, it hasn’t been “ignored” at all.  We’ll be talking about the “Carbon-neutral” flimflam this weekend on the NARN, most likely.

“The scientific evidence is rock-solid,” says Noble. “The only solution to global warming is to reduce our total carbon emissions by 80 percent. Al Gore has helped get that message across.”

Even if Tipper leaves the laundry room lights on.

The evidence is far from “rock-solid”, and Coleman’s attempt at spin control ignores the real point:  Algore, the carbon scold, is an energy-guzzling hypocrite; this past week, his motto – “conservation for me, but not for thee”, became clear.

And we’re making sure the world knows it.

 Michele Bachmann – newly-minted Congresswoman from the Sixth District – has always been catnip for the nutbars. 

Going back to her time with the Maple River Education Coalition (now EdWatch), which was (if memory serves) her stepping-stone to the legislature, she’s been a lighting rod for all manner of loonies, spazzes, AV-club marxists, conspiracy-mongering dimbulbs, spittle-flecked wannabee pundits, personality-deficit-disorder-plagued schlemiels (and a few gay people with legitimate gripes about her uncompromising opposition to gay marriage).  She beat Patty Wetterling last November, as I predicted (and the Strib did not) by eight points; I remain convinced that her unhinged, deranged detractors were responsible for at least a point or two of that total.

Someone asked in the comment section last week why I hadn’t commented yet on Bachmann’s seeming malaprop regarding Iran’s plans in Iraq.  The simple answer was, I really had nothing to say, yet.  I hadn’t really paid much attention; I figured if the mainstream media is attacking Bachmann or, indeed, any conservative, it’s either:

• a hatchet job on their part (see Rochelle Olson’s coverage of Alan Fine)
• a real reach (see the Strib’s coverage of Rod Morgan Grams)
• A slip of the lip, mistatement or flub that gets blown up, with the help of a local news establishment that is in active connivance with the DFL, into a major event.

The answer?  Well, it’s Bachmann, so “all three, and a little drool to boot” is probably the correct answer.

Jay Reding writes the post I would like to have:

The Star-Tribune is questioning Rep. Michele Bachmann when she said that Iran was planning to partition Iraq and create a terrorist state. Rep. Bachmann is actually correct, except she’s confusing Iran and al-Qaeda.

Al-Qaeda did indeed declare their own Islamic State of Iraq. There is also some evidence that the Iranian government has supported Sunni militias in the past and would continue to do so if they thought it would serve their tactical aims.

Bachmann’s statements were imprecise, but the Star-Tribune could have done a small amount of research and figured out what she meant — there is an “Islamic State of Iraq” presently operating in Iraq, and it is quite possible that the Iranians would either support them directly or end up creating a de facto partition of Iraq through their influence of the Shi’ite militias. Bachmann’s statement at most may have confused Iranians with the Majlis Shura al-Mujahideen fi al-Iraq (Mujihadeen Shura Council — the umbrella group for Sunni militants in Iraq).

Now, Representative Bachmann has never been one of my go-to people on foreign policy or defense; taxes, education and social policy are her turf. 

But as Ed and I discussed on the show this past weekend, Bachmann’s statement actually got most of the situation right; Iran does want to see the US get defeated in Iraq; they do want to establish a sphere of influence in the new country; it is obviously they want to use that sphere as a safe haven for their own terrorist proxies.

So did Bachmann muff the facts about who did what to whom in Iraq?  Possible.  Hell, Silvester Reyes, the Dems’ choice to run the House Intelligence Committee, didn’t do so hot at that either, and that is putatively his turf.

With any other Minnesota representative, it would have been treated as a simple flub – a molehill.  Since it’s the poster-child for everything the DFL and the Strib loathes, on the other hand, it shall be treated as a mountain.

NOTE TO THE HATRED-ADDLED:  There’s nothing “difficult” about defending Bachmann – because I’m not.  Merely pointing out facts. 

And noting someone’s comment doesn’t imply any form of consternation.  At least, not for most of us…

Light the lights!  Pop the popcorn! 

Nick Coleman is writing dreck again!

Last Saturday’s column attacks Minneapolis Fifth Ward alderman Don Samuels for his remarks – they should “Burn North High School Down”, says Don – and tries to connect Samuels with a big, bad, Republican (natch) movement that is trying, apparently, to light our kids on fire. 

Or something.

Coleman:

Don Samuels has apologized for his words, but not his views. And he isn’t likely to. For the Fifth Ward City Council member from Minneapolis who suggested burning down North High School is not just one man with an opinion.

He is a stalking horse for a movement that wants to torch public schools. It has gotten frighteningly close to its goal.

Let’s use Coleman’s “arson” metaphor for a moment.  Indeed, let’s take it to its logical conclusion. 

Arsonists usually light fires for a reason.  Some, true, do it for the sheer jollies of watching something burn.  But much arson – especially the burning of things of value, has a more, er, pragmatic motive; insurance fraud, revenge, something, some reason for lighting that thing on fire.

Coleman can’t possibly assume that Samuels, and the movement of big, bad, cigar-chomping whiteys for whom he is a “stalking horse”, want to “torch” the school just for kicks.  Can he?

The Center of the American Experiment, a local conservative think tank, is renewing the push for school vouchers, and it tapped Samuels to endorse its position paper. In his foreword to the recent publication, Samuels again displays a flair for the dramatic, writing that he wonders “how many future murderers are in the first grade classes of the four elementary schools within a mile of my home?”

Officer, arrest those first-graders!

All well and good for Coleman – a child of immense power and privilege, who lives in St. Paul’s tony, Wellstone-worshipping Mac-Groveland enclave, the son of a powerful poltician, brother of St. Paul’s mayor, stepson of a high-power newspaper publisher – to yip at the observation of Samuels, a man who lives in the neighborhood and sees firsthand the failure of the public school system, not just to prevent those first graders about whom Coleman giggles from murdering, but indeed to teach them anything of value at all. 

But if you take Samuels seriously, it is not just his language that is lousy. It is his policies.

Samuels has become the darling of a coalition of mostly conservative, mostly suburban groups involved in a coordinated assault on “government monopoly schools.” These groups are pushing hard in Minnesota for expanded tax-credit or tuition vouchers to allow public dollars to be spent on private schools. It isn’t just people in the North High neighborhood who should worry about that.

This paragraph is notable not just for what it has wrong, but for the questions it completely begs.  “Mostly conservative?”  You mean some liberals are breaking ranks?  “Mostly suburban?”  What, you mean urban people are starting to turn on their beloved schools?  (Stay tuned). 

And again, what possible motivation could there be for this “coordinated assault?”  The sheer joy of coordinating assaults?

Some groups pushing for vouchers have fought to outlaw gay marriage or to keep children from receiving sex education or learning about evolution. They have a right to send their kids to religious schools. They don’t have a right — Article XIII of the State Constitution bars public funding for “sectarian” schools — to subsidize such schools with tax dollars.

Fortunately for Coleman, the State Constitution allows strawmen in arguments.  I, however, do not.  It matters not an iota if “some” groups don’t believe in evolution or gay marriage or sex education; “some” groups that fought in the American Revolution owned slaves; “some” groups that defeated the Nazis were murderous Communists; “some” groups that buy the Strib are Republicans.  Do any of those facts invalidated the rightness of  America, World War II or the Strib, in and of themselves?

Again, Coleman fails to note these groups’ motivations (although he gets close, painfully close, without probably knowing it).  But he does revert to the “the law says so, and the law is always right” argument, which is the last refuge the the befuddled.

But we’re going to close in and deal with those motivations.  Oh, yes we are.

Nevertheless, the crusade is on. And Samuels is its hero.

Other black leaders are being lobbied to convert to the vouchers cause. One, NAACP President Duane Reed, says he recently refused requests to testify on behalf of a vouchers/tax credit bill in the Legislature. He says the request came from a group affiliated with the Libertarian Party, whose platform praises tax credits and charter schools as “interim measures” that will help kill the public schools.

“This is not about Don Samuels,” Reed said at Thursday night’s public meeting at North High with Samuels. “This is about … tax credits. Which is just a code word for vouchers. This is just teeing up a sensational issue.”How many black leaders support vouchers?” he said to me later, proceeding to tick off a long list of black groups, starting with the NAACP, that oppose them. “Now Don Samuels all of a sudden is an expert, and he is going to speak for us? I don’t think so.”

The old “I know stuff” argument; an oldie but a goodie for Coleman. 

The simple fact is, this is one area where every  parent, every taxpayer, every citizen is an expert.  We all know what is best for our children.  We don’t need a school adminstrator, a superintendant, a teacher to tell us, much less a “community leader” who is more beholden to parties and special interests than to you and I, whatever our race.

Pretty radical notion, huh?

Slowly but surely, we’re going to back into the motivation for this “arson” that Coleman keeps bargling about.  He won’t know it, but he’ll do it. 

Just watch.

Charter schools, funded with public funds, were supposed to help produce new teaching methodologies and education strategies. Other states limit their number. New York has a limit of 100. Iowa has a limit of 10. Minnesota has no limit. Today, we have 131 charter schools, with 23,600 students. At least 19 more charter schools are on the way.

How much is too much?

How much water is too much? 

It depends, doesn’t it?  How thirsty are you?  How much do you have?  What is the rationale for any limits?

Because in New York and Iowa, the “rationale” for the limits has nothing to do with education, but is rather that “the establishment wants them”.  Charter schools – despite some well-publicized failures – have been a huge success in Minnesota.  They have been the first step, for many poor parents (the ones that can’t afford the private schools that Coleman grew up in), in getting control of their kids’ education, getting the respect that the public system denies parents.  For many of them – myself included –  it’s been a Godsend. 

And why would the establishment care?

Well, that’d speak to that “motivation for arson” thing we were talking about above.

No, we’re not there yet.  But we will get there.

First, we have the boogymen:

The largest sponsor of charter schools, Friends of Ascension, has ties to former state Republican chairman Bill Cooper, who has served on the group’s board of directors. Friends of Ascension has 16 schools with 2,800 students (12 percent of charter school enrollment). Nor is Cooper the only former Republican Party chair to have found a keen interest in the inner city.

Cooper has “found a keen interest” in the inner city, which presumably is manifested in him driving vans around North Minneapolis, kidnapping kids, and enrolling them in the FOA schools?

Former GOP chairman Ron Eibensteiner and his wife are the founders of KidsFirst Scholarships, which award privately funded vouchers [emphasis mine] to children (650 this year) to attend private schools. Those scholarships are funded by grants from right-wing billionaires such as Ted Forstmann and the late John Walton of the Walton Family Foundation.

A “privately funded voucher” is the same as a “chaste pregnancy”.  Nick!  It’s called a scholarship, numbnuts!

But it’s OK – because in reporting Eibensteiner’s serial breakins around North Minneapolis to force families to accept their “private vouchers”, we are almost there – the motivation for these men’s attempt to torch “our” schools!

Critics such as the liberal People for the American Way point out an obvious motivation: By handing out private vouchers in the inner city, conservatives hope to create political momentum for state vouchers that will damage public schools.

Not to mention the teaching of evolutionary science.

But those inner-city parents, beholden to the DFL as they are (because Minneapolis, especially the North Side, are DFL territory like no other place in the state), and committed to their childrens’ education, are resisting Big Bad Bill Cooper’s entreaties, and tearing up Ron Eibensteiner’s checks and throwing them in his face.

Right?

Wrong:

The fire has been set. Public schools have lost thousands of students to charter schools and open enrollment

DING DING DING DING DING!

Public schools have lost thousands of students – enough to force the Minneapolis Public Schools to consider closing branches, enough to set the district into a frenzy of “reform”…

…well, no.  No reforms are in on the way.  No increased focus on reading, match, science and history.  No reassessment of an education model that is an untrammelled failure that can not be solved with more money, any more than money can slow your fall from an airplane, of a system that devalues parents, assaults their values (and not just about gay marriage, evolution and sex ed, although public education’s attack on families’ faith is real and constant), marginalizes them at every turn (lip service aside).

No.  They don’t want to deal with “root causes” – a failed model, a sclerotic system, a dysfunctional bureaucracy that starts in each and every school and extends to Washington.  They just want more money.  Oh, yeah – and to find a way to shut off the escape valve that so many parents are using.

This is not just an intramural squabble in the black community. All supporters of public education should be worried. It is not just North High that is under assault; it is the very idea of public education.

Public education has only itself to blame for the “assault” – the only “assault” in history, by the way, entirely effected by retreat, and carried out by people fleeing the fight.  The system is huge, arrogant, and does something that is utterly incongruous with human nature; tries to pound every shape of peg into a square, institutional, one-size-fits-all hole. 

As an inner-city politician with friends in high places, Samuels didn’t set the schools ablaze. He just fanned the flames. But his friends are dancing around the bonfire.

No.  They are reacting pragmatically.  And inner city parents are taking them up on it, in droves – political alignments not only aside, but rendered irrelevant by a higher cause, the children themselves.

And if Nick Coleman, sitting in his snug, smug Mac-Groveland house things those inner-city parents are “dancing” rather than coldly pragmatic and acting in their childrens’ interest (and preservation), then it doesn’t take a high school graduate – literate or not – to see who the vacuous patrician is.

I’ve been doing this blog for five years.  And I’m not going to stop any time soon.

But even at the beginning of the blogging phenomenon, I figured that there had to be a way forward – a next big thing in citizen journalism.  For me, the next natural step forward would be to do some sort of audio production.  I’ve had plans for almost a year to do a podcast – but the technical overhead of recording, editing, hosting and posting for subscription was more effort than I wanted to bite off.  Still, I figured that someday the technology would come to make audioblogging as easy, rewarding and productive as blogging the written word.

And for me, someday is now.

Ed, of course, beat me to it:  he’s up and going on BlogTalkRadio – a new service that will do for audioblogging what Blogger.com and Townhall.com did for web blogging; make audioblogging simple, user-friendly and (most importantly of all) ubiquitous.  Best of all, it avoids the one big problem I always had with traditional podcasting; it allows live talk, complete with call-ins; it has all the interactiveness of blogging, but it’s live!.

Yeah, I’m stoked.

I’ll be starting a show shortly, too. 

  I’m doing a test broadcast tomorrow, and then will start a regular show on at BlogTalkRadio.com.  I’ll be rolling out a new site for my own podcasts (along with the space available on BlogTalkRadio), hopefully over the weekend.

Here’s the important part; BlogTalkRadio is, (Ed and I notwithstanding) heavily dominated by left-of-center talent.  Ed and I, of course, are looking to help change that. 

More details as they become available (and by all means, listen to Ed’s show)

(more…)

…which rarely plays videos that are more than a week old…

…is playing “I’m Not Ready To Make Nice”.

Wow.  Who’da thunk it?

I listen, occasionally, to Michael Savage for about the same reasons I occasionally listen to Steve Vai.  The material itself bores me stiff, but the sheer technique is fascinating.

Savage has mastered the art of pushing listeners’ buttons; he is a virtuoso of manipulative talk-radio technique.  And, like any virtuoso, watching them riffing can get pretty dull after you watch the same arpeggio for a while.

So I don’t listen much anymore.

But this view into life behind the scenes on the Savage show…:

 Kicking off hour three of last night’s live broadcast, Savage dropped the “F-bomb” onto unsuspecting affiliates from coast- to- coast.

While some sharp- eared station board operators may have kept the offending words from reaching the airwaves, it’s highly likely that most were unable to catch it.

…is interesting, if only because it’s so much like a day at the NARN with Chad, Brian and King.

(And you can tell Brian Maloney’s been in the bigs too long; he thinks most of Savage’s stations have actual live board operators…)