Molly Ivins dead at 62.

It’s best not to speak ill of the dead.  So what I’ll do is display this quote…:

“She was magical in her writing,” said Mike Blackman, a former Star-Telegram executive editor who hired Ms. Ivins at the newspaper’s Austin bureau in 1992, a few months after the Times-Herald ceased publication. “She could turn a phrase in such a way that a pretty hard-hitting point didn’t hurt so bad.”

…and note that Ms. Ivins’ writing was in fact the exact opposite of what Mr. Blackman wrote.  Snarky and cliche-driven enough to make Jeff Fecke blanche (although better than Duncan “Atrios” Black, at least), devoid of logic or, usually, fact, embrace for “plain speaking” that was in fact generally ill-informed babble…

…well, again, it’s best not to speak ill of the dead and all that. 

UPDATE:  Brian Ward – who notes the second career that Ivins made out of attacking Bush – notes the President’s response to Ivins’ death:

She’s made a second career out of bashing him, attaching her name to no less than four books on the subject. And the President of the United States, who could have justifiably let her death pass withouth official notice, went out of his way to say this:

Molly Ivins was a Texas original. She was loved by her readers and by her many friends, particularly in Central Texas. I respected her convictions, her passionate belief in the power of words, and her ability to turn a phrase. She fought her illness with that same passion. Her quick wit and commitment to her beliefs will be missed. Laura and I send our condolences to Molly Ivins’ family and friends.

A measure of forgiveness, tolerance, and class that we can all aspire too. George Bush took office saying he wanted to improve the tone in DC. Unfortunately, you can’t do that dance with an unwilling partner.

I can’t imagine Ivins returning the favor.

UPDATE 2: Let me be clear about this, since the tone of my post above isn’t; I’m sorry Ivins died.  I dont wish cancer on anyone.  And Ivins was a good writer.  One I disagree with on virtually everything, one whose standard of proof and logic were frequently dismal, and one whose public persona irritated me (and did so long before bashing George W. Bush became her meal ticket), but perfectly capable of writing excellent stuff nonetheless. 

The pundits are crowing – yet again – about the decay and (they say, voices quivering with joyful hope) demise of conservative talk radio as a market-beating format.

They even pant about the notion that Limbaugh…might…be…flagging!

Apparently not so:

For the first time in recent memory, El Rushbo is not only fending off four competitors during his 9am – noon timeslot, he’s beating every news and talk show heard anywhere in the region, liberal or conservative and regardless of the time slot.With a staggering 116% percent surge in the key adults aged 25-54 demographic, Rush clobbered everything the Puget Sound Area had to offer, with an enormous 5.4 share of the audience.

This in liberal Seattle, a place where even Air America had a fighting chance. 

Here in the Twin Cities, it’s interesting to note that on the largely non-conservative, milquetoast-oriented KTLK-FM, here in the ultraliberal Twin Cities, Limbaugh is pretty much carrying the entire station.

Nope.  Not dead yet.

Who said the following:

“It’s an angry, nasty, pissing and moaning format where the only thing they say is ‘Bush stinks’ or ‘Bush is bad’,” he said. “No commercial advertiser wants to be associated with that” 

Was it:

a) Talk radio authority and critic JB Doubtless

b) The guys who, ironically, held the “who can drink two gallons and not pee” contest that led to a woman’s death

c) John Hunt, general manager at WWTC “AM1280 The Patriot”

d) Sean Hannity’s batman

e) The general manager of a station in ultraliberal Monterey, California?

It was e.  And as we saw earlier this week, he’s right!

“I Hate Bush more than you do!”

“No, I hate Bush more than you do”.

“Well, I think he’s dumber than you think he is”

“No way, duuuuude”

I listened to local rent-a-blogger Jeff Fecke on “Minnesota Matters”, the local Frankennet affiliate’s (for now) attempt at a local show. 

Let me step out of “conservative host” mode for a bit here, and switch into “guy who loves good talk radio” mode.

My earlier observations about the show still hold true – “Minnesota Matters” is no worse than any Twin Cities leftyblog (heh heh) and makes for better radio than anything Janet Robert has tried before…Which is, of course, damnation by faint praise. But faint praise is more than Janet Robert’s FrankenNet affiliate has earned in three years of existence. Limited, qualified, muffled, mildly-chuckled kudos to all involved.”   I’ll stand by that.  Fecke was the audio version of his blog (see paragraphs 1-4, above – it’s not a bad synopsis of Fecke’s oeuvre); he passed on his Straight-from-George-Soros-but-since-I-don’t-have-the-smoking-gun-showing-that-even-though-the-group-that-paid-Fecke-shares-office-space-with-Soros’-Media-Matters-For-America-there’s-no-financial-connection-whatsoever-and-you’re-an-idiot-to-wonder-because-I-ASSURE-you-there’s-no-connection-nosireebob talking points with the fluency you’d expect from someone who’s spent the last several months being paid to do the job; the interviewer was passable.

But what killed the show was the callers. 

Good talk radio doesn’t need callers anymore than good food needs coriander.  Both serve as accents, spices, variations on the theme. 

Don Vogel – for whom I started in talk radio as a call screener – explained the art of call selection once upon a time.  There are four kinds of callers:

1. Great Callers.  These are the people who have a point that is like a jet-pack strapped to your show’s back; they rocket the show ahead of itself, add something to the proceedings that make the whole thing more entertaining, gripping and valuable.  A good screener flags the great callers and gets them on the air pronto.
2. Boring Callers.  Instead of a jet pack, a boring callers straps a bag of spoiled meat to a show’s back; they agree, maybe, but not only do they add nothing to the conversation, they sap the energy from the conversation.  They weigh things down, destroy any momentum, and stink the place up.  Their calls should be politely declined.
3. Crazy Callers.  Crazies are…well, crazy.  Their calls can be a dead weight or a godsend.  Picking which is which is what separates a good screener from a bad one.
4. Ordinary Callers.  They have good questions and input.  You air them, if you need them, after the Great Callers and the good Crazy Callers, just so that the Ordinary Listeners don’t feel intimidated.

The show – like most Air America shows – sounded like the same person called over and over again, with the same point (or “point”).  The were desperately dull.  One might have sufficed; the show, such as it was, would have benefitted from their absence, believe it or not; you can be in the fever swamp without sounding like you’re marinading in the fever swamp.

At any rate – the show would have done well to ignore the boring callers – most to all of them – and just talked.

Note to Janet Robert:  I’ll check back in a few weeks to see if you’ve implemented any of this.  Enjoy.

It’s interesting, sometimes, to look into foreign media to see what the rest of the world is thinking.  I read German pretty fluently (and get around in Dutch modestly well), so that’s where I gravitate.

And it can be kinda scary at times.

Via Davids Medienkritik, this piece from Handelsblatt, a sort of left-leaning German Wall Street Journal, is kind of enlightening:

The USA is putting firms under massive pressure worldwide to stop doing business with Iran. With that economic isolation they want to force the country to stop its controversial atomic program. Especially German firms are hard hit by that, indeed they traditionally do good business in the region. The latest case comes from the banking world.

BERLIN. After massive pressure from the USA, Commerzbank has now announced that it will end its processing of dollar-business for Iran at the end of January. Commerzbank boss Klaus-Peter Mueller has already publicly complained about the pressure from the Americans in his position as President of the Federal Union of German Banks.”

David – as solid a critic of the German media as there is – notes:

The article almost makes it sound as if the United States is to blame for Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. There is absolutely no hint that it might be wrong or unethical to trade with (and financially prop-up) Iran or other violent dictatorships/state-sponsors of terrorism. This despite the fact that Iranian President Ahmadinejad has repeatedly stated that Israel should be wiped off the map and that the Holocaust is a myth. There is also no mention of Iran’s support of Hezbollah nor does Handelsblatt mention the country’s bleak human rights record. Instead, America is made out to be the bad guy while Ahmadinejad gets a free pass. One honestly has to ask, where are the German concepts of fair trade and economic and social justice in all of this? Where are the traditional objections to profiteering and capitalist excess?

Read the whole thing.

OK, lefties, this one’s for you.

Dennis “Starchild” Kucinich is floating the trial balloon; the left wants to resurrect the “Fairness Doctrine”, which would require that broadcasters “balance” their politically-focused programming. This would either force stations to air liberal hosts (who are a drag on the market) or, as most stations did before 1987, steer for the safe, boring middle.

The Democrats want…

…well, let’s let Democrats tell us what they want. As we noted yesterday, Democrat blogger Taylor Marsh says:

Democrats are still behind in radio…instead of using their donor base to help hosts who could hold their own. Creating Democratic business consortiums that help hosts get on the air, with the best of us staying on and eventually catapulting to syndication. The Fairness Doctrine could really make a difference.

In other words, “let’s use government to force the market to do what we can’t make it do via talent and savvy”.

Obsessive Regular commenter “Doug” puts it another way; when asked if Fairness Doctrine supporters believed that the people were too stupid to process information for themselves, he responded:

No Mitch but they are too lazy.

OK, lefties – keep ’em coming. Why do you want to reinstate the “Fairness Doctrine”?

What excuses do you have for parsing the First Amendment?

Comments must be on-topic; I will be uncharacteristically really ruthless about this today.

 The other day, when talking about the Dems’ plan to try to reinstate the “Fairness Doctrine”, I noted that there really are only two sides to this debate; you support free speech, or you believe that federal bureaucrats should control it; the exact words were “authoritarian thug”. 

We have a vote for thug:

But the Fairness Doctrine is back or at least being talked about again, with Congress set to challenge the FCC. The thought is already driving conservatives nuts, with more here, here, here, here, here, with Jeff Goldstein his usual obtuse self. QandO offers more. One blogger calls it Free Speech’s Abu Ghraib. [waves] They’re all nuts [Doh!  I’m “nuts”!  I’m disintegrating in the face of the logical onslaught!]. They’re also very happy with controlling the radio waves.

Let’s stop right there for a minute.

The woman writing this bit – Taylor Marsh – bills herself as a “radio host”.  Her “radio show” is, of course, an internet-only stream.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it explains how so much of what she says really has nothing to do with the reality of the radio industry.

Conservatives “control the airwaves” because we provide a better product that more people want to listen to.  Example:  My NARN pals and I (who broadcast on a real station as well as a real internet stream) “control the market” among political talk on Saturday afternoons not because of “corporate support” (Salem vs. Clear Channel?  Puh-leeze).  No, we bitch-slap both KTLK-FM and the local Air America affiliate like a prison laundry-room beat-down because people want to listen to us, for whatever reason.

Ipso Limbaugh, Hannity, Hewitt and the rest of us.  Nobody holds a gun to an audience’s head and makes them tune in. 

Looking at Ms. Marsh’s take on history is interesting, inasmuch as it shows the left hasn’t changed their talking points in over a decade:

The short version of the Fairness Doctrine is that in 1987 Reagan had it scuttled. Shortly after that Rush Limbaugh began his journey and right-wing radio was created and gradually took over the airwaves, with the help of their corporate friends

I’ve often wondered what Democrats think they mean when they say this?  Was it that…:

•  Limbaugh succeeded only because of the machinations of a cabal of oligarchs that forced America to make him their #1 talkradio choice?
• Or was it that they don’t think there were a slew of “corporate friends” backing the likes of Jim Hightower, Mario Cuomo and, of course, Air America?  And, with that in mind…
• …how do they think someone launches a national syndication effort?  By nailing posters up on telephone polls asking people to listen?

And, speaking of “corporate support”; the week after the NARN went on the air, Fast Eddie Schultz appeared on the Today show, in a gushy, fawning interview with Katie Couric.  “Is this man the answer to Rush Limbaugh?”, Couric asked in the teaser into the break before the interview.  At that moment, Schultz had six stations in his network; other than Fargo and Minneapolis, none were in large markets.  KSTP’s Joe Soucheray had a bigger cumulative audience.  But the big media desperately want someone on their side to come along and knock off Limbaugh, which is why stiffs like Schultz and Air America get such breathless, sycophantic approval from (and treated like actual players in) the mainstream press.

  More history gone tragically awry follows:

 I’m exaggerating, but Democrats were so dense about radio for so long it’s amazing there are still any progressive hosts out here working every day to get back on radio.

They were indeed dense – and, looking at the endless farce of Air America, seem to remain so – but the denseness was that of the fat ‘n happy incumbent, not the plucky challenger.  Remember when the “Fairness Doctrine” was repealed?  I do – I was working in talk radio at the time.  Who were the big players?  ABC Talkradio was the big network in 1987; their big players were Michael Jackson (who, with the repeal of the Doctrine, came out as an unabashed lefty), Sally Jessy Raphael (not political, but her sympathies were obvious), Owen Span (left of center) and some whom I’ve long forgotten, but not a conservative among ’em.  Mutual’s big – and only – property was Larry King, who never did a “political” show, but whose sympathies are and were solidly left of center.   “Conservative” network talk was pretty much unheard of; Morton Downey, Bob Grant and Joe Pyne were the godfathers of the genre, and they were purely local.

So in terms of content, the left had control of talk radio the day the Fairness Doctrine was put to sleep.  How could that status quo have flipped 180 degrees within two years? 

 Because “corporate friends” willed it?  Or because Rush Limbaugh et al delivered a product that the market wanted and scooped up in droves?

And what about those droves?  How did they get there?

 It’s about getting control of all the little stations in all the little towns so that you can influence all those people.

Why does the left fail at radio?  Because they don’t understand it.  Yes, Limbaugh has been for many years a Clear Channel property – but his popularity waxed long before that deal was ever inked.  And in those days, stations – including a throng of small to mid-market stations, most of them not even “talk radio” stations in format terms – took Limbaugh’s show in droves.  My own radio alma mater, KQDJ in Jamestown ND, ran Limbaugh for years; the rest of the day, they were middle-of-the-road music and farm prices.  Many small market stations followed suit.  Why?  Because people tuned in.  Which is the goal in the business.

The inevitable rejoinder from the left is “But ClearChannel controls both Limbaugh and hundreds of stations!”.  Yes, for now – they’re selling off most of their small-market stations – and it’s irrelevant.  ClearChannel is a business.  Not only that, but much of the “success” Air America has had in the past few years has been from Clear Channel optioning Air America programming at some of its smaller urban stations as a tactical move. 

In other words, Clear Channel – the big, bad, “conservative” radio powerhouse – did more than any other broadcast corporation to keep Air America alive in the market.  Why?  Because they figured there might be a (fringe) market!  (They eventually realized they figured wrong; most Clear Channel talk stations are backing slowly out of their Air America commitments).

Let’s return to Ms. Marsh.  Contempt for the audience?  She’s got it!

 The host gets to know his/her audience, they trust him/her, so when this host tells them to vote for Right Wing Randy/Roxanne, they likely will.

Yeah, it worked like a charm this past November, didn’t it? 

 After all, they’ve built up a trust. Republicans will do anything to get ratings, which includes leaving the facts out and plying their audience with daily doses of emotion instead.

Leaving aside the “facts” bit – and no movement that includes Keith Olberman and Chris Matthews should complain much about selectiveness – talk radio is entertainment.  Emotion trumps fact (although among many of conservative talk’s stocks in trade is filling facts about stories the left-wing media omits.  Memogate, anyone?) 

But I’ll give this to Ms. Taylor; her next graf sums up the left’s ignorance of radio as perfectly as anything I’ve seen:  

Creating Democratic business consortiums that help hosts get on the air, with the best of us staying on and eventually catapulting to syndication. The Fairness Doctrine could really make a difference. Why do you think conservatives are screaming like crazy?

The left treats radio like a top-down command economy; all it takes is a couple (more) lefty plutocrats, and all the walls will fall!  And like all top-down command economies, it needs government coercion to work. 

(And as far as that “the best of ‘us'” bit – I’ll have to listen to Ms. Marsh’s show and see if she rates this impromptu promotion).

Ms. Marsh; there is nothing preventing Democrat talk radio from doing exactly what you describe.  Nothing.  Indeed, it’s been done; NPR (and MPR) are nothing if not the product of left-leaning power brokers – they differ in working through government rather than the market.  And in fact, Air America’s three year nightmare was exactly what you described (except for the whole “best of ‘us’ vaulting to syndication”; Air America tried to skip the whole “learn how to do good radio” step of the process.  As did Hightower and Cuomo.  The results were, at worst, comical; standup comics make lousy talk hosts). 

No, what you (plural) want is for government to force the market to accept you. 

We’re “screaming” (the term I use is “pointing out the inherent oppressiveness and paternalism of your idea”) because you want the government to do for you what the your genre’s fundamental lack of talent, mass appeal and market savvy can’t do for you.

Because head-to-head, all things being equal in a free, open market, conservative talk beats liberal talk every time.  And without Big Brother holding a gun to our head and telling us to fight with an arm behind our backs, we always will.

So here’s the question:  Do you believe that people are too stupid to be trusted as consumers of free speech (as Ms. Marsh seems to)? 

Because, as Ms. Marsh put it in about as many words, that’s really the only reason to reinstate the “Fairness Doctrine”.

Remeber during the first four years of the Bush Administration?  When every Democrat, including the ones who’d spent the Clinton era chuckling at the crazies in the Libertarian Party, thought concern for civil liberties (other those to abortion, making poop sculptures and exposing oneself in public) was the mark of tinfoil-hatted crazies?

 Remember how the minute John Ashcroft was sworn in, they became strict constructionists…no, that’s not accurate.  They became not-very-discerning absolutists? 

And when word got out that a group of soldiers mistreated a group of Iraqi detainees, Liberty was the word of the day?

They must have woken up.  The fantasy is over; the leopard’s spots are visible again.  The Democrats want to put free speech on a leash and make it bark like a dog:

Over the weekend, the National Conference for Media Reform was held in Memphis, TN, with a number of notable speakers on hand for the event. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) made an surprise appearance at the convention to announce that he would be heading up a new House subcommittee which will focus on issues surrounding the Federal Communications Commission.

I can hear it now:  “Oh, it’s just that nutbar Kucinich”.

Not at all.  Regulating free speech (by conservatives) is close to the heart for the left for almost two decades, ever since the Fairness Doctrine was repealed, opening the way for conservative alternatives to the left’s smothering hegemony in the media.  Hillary! Clinton and John Kerry have both floated the idea.

Kucinich’s push isn’t the ravings of a crackpot; it’s a trial balloon floated by someone who can’t do the Democrat mainstream any harm.  Their focus groups can poke and prod and see if the issue can move in from the fringe in time for the election.

In addition to media ownership, the committee is expected to focus its attention on issues such as net neutrality and major telecommunications mergers. Also in consideration is the “Fairness Doctrine,” which required broadcasters to present controversial topics in a fair and honest manner. It was enforced until it was eliminated in 1987.

Kucinich said in his speech that “We know the media has become the servant of a very narrow corporate agenda” and added “we are now in a position to move a progressive agenda to where it is visible.”

What Kucinich means, of course, is that he (and the new Democrat majority for whom he speaks) want to explore the idea of using the government to reassert control of the media. 

Here, though, is where the real agenda is betrayed:

FCC Commissioner Michael Copps was also on hand at the conference and took broadcasters to task for their current content, speaking of “too little news, too much baloney passed off as news. Too little quality entertainment, too many people eating bugs on reality TV. Too little local and regional music, too much brain-numbing national play-lists.” Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein also spoke at the event.

Of course, Mr. Copps doesn’t note how much Americans’ news and entertainment bypasses the traditional broadcast and print media, today.  The market has been bleeding people away from newspapers, network newscasts, even the Big Three’s entertainment programming for decades…

…and have been proving Copps’ thesis to be void and without merit, lately, inasmuch as we are, right now, in the golden age of the broadcast TV drama.  The networks have had to respond to cable and the internet; some of that response has been Fear Factor, true, but great drama, comedy and writing (24, House, Scrubs, Lost and many more) are all over the place, like never before.

But don’t be fooled.  This isn’t about Fear Factor, or about quality at all; the FCC held full sway during the “glory” years of Laverne and Shirley, Three’s Company and The Love Boat. 

No.  This is about silencing talk radio, neutering conservative blogs, and re-homogenizing all American news content.

If you are a conservative – or a liberal with any integrity – you need to call your congresspeople and set them straight about this.

And if you call yourself a “liberal” but you support this, then you need a new, more honest label.

How about “authoritarian thug”?

(more…)

Who wrote this Democrat puff piece?

Anyone who expected Democrats to grow delirious with power once they took the reins on Capitol Hill will be sorely disappointed with the first major bills passed by the U.S. House last week.

Yay!  They got through a day without gagging on hubris!

Let’s see; ahistorical; carefully omitted context; hagiographic to Democrats.

Gotta be Sturdevant.

Whaddya think?

The City Pages’ Britt Robson interviews a range of Strib staffers on their reactions to the paper’s recent sale.

Rochelle Olson – she of the piece on Alan Fine’s domestic abuse arrest which, for space reasons, neglected to mention the salient facts of the arrest’s expungement, the lack of any physical evidence against Fine, or later convictions against Fine’s soon-to-be ex that one might expect would give the reader a complete picture of the case – notes:

“There is enough anger to go around, but from what I hear, it is mainly directed at Pruitt and Anders,” says [Olson], a metro reporter who has worked at the paper for seven years. “There’s a lot of derisive talk about Pruitt, because he was painted in other media as the golden boy, this tanned San Franciscan up-and-comer who liked rock and roll music and talked about a new paradigm. He and Anders led people to believe they cared about journalism. And when push came to shove, all they cared about was the bottom line.”

It might explain the key facts being left out of the Fine piece; people were too busy provisioning their lifeboats.

Well, it’s more palatable than “all parties involved were in the bag for Keith Ellison”, isn’t it?

There are, though, a couple of interesting quotes; I’ll add the emphases. First, reporter Mike Kaszuba:

“We need to squeeze out another 10 years to stay in this industry. And you sit back and say, wow, I wonder if there is another 10 years left in this industry? We are the Watergate babies, from back when it was cool and sexy to be a journalist. We were naive, goofy idealists in a way. Now it is about dollars and cents. The thing I got into it for, I’m not sure it’s even among the top five reasons this place runs anymore.

And Biz beat reporter Mike Meyers:

I didn’t go into this job to retire at 50 or to make a fortune. I did it because I liked it and I enjoyed the work. It is a calling. And over time, it has become more and more of a regular job where you show up do your job and leave.

I remember going into radio, and staying in it for years after I should have left, because it was cool and sexy (and, lest I forget, because I loved doing the job, most of it). I never had the baggage of a “calling”, although with talk radio I had the impediment of it being the first serious love of my life, which is similar, I think.

And I remember the realization; the world doesn’t have to fund my fun, to say nothing of my love. And anyone who follows a “calling” has to accept the notion that not everyone will support it; just monks are dependent on the largesse of a church or institution, newspaper reporters with a “calling” are dependent on the world valuing that calling sufficiently to keep them, or some number of them, employed.

So why has that calling been so devalued in the past 20 years?

I’d have loved to have heard the answers Britt Robson got to that question.

The fever-swamp fringe of the American Left subsists on a number of ongoing memes, the most head-scratchingly bizarre being that they are an oppressed minority among the media.

As evidence, they point to Fox News – one cable network in an array of four broadcast and at least four major cable news sources – and whinge “They’re biased”, incredibly ignoring Eason Jordan’s CNN, Dan Rather’s CBS, and, worst of all, the late Peter Jennings’ ABC.

Which would be bad enough, except it’s not true in the first place.

Five news outlets — “NewsHour With Jim Lehrer,” ABC’s “Good Morning America,” CNN’s “NewsNight With Aaron Brown,” Fox News’ “Special Report With Brit Hume” and the Drudge Report — were in a statistical dead heat in the race for the most centrist news outlet. Of the print media, USA Today was the most centrist.

An additional feature of the study shows how each outlet compares in political orientation with actual lawmakers. The news pages of The Wall Street Journal scored a little to the left of the average American Democrat, as determined by the average ADA score of all Democrats in Congress (85 versus 84). With scores in the mid-70s, CBS’ “Evening News” and The New York Times looked similar to Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., who has an ADA score of 74.

Most of the outlets were less liberal than Lieberman but more liberal than former Sen. John Breaux, D-La. Those media outlets included the Drudge Report, ABC’s “World News Tonight,” NBC’s “Nightly News,” USA Today, NBC’s “Today Show,” Time magazine, U.S. News & World Report, Newsweek, NPR’s “Morning Edition,” CBS’ “Early Show” and The Washington Post.

The study’s a little over a year old – and got virtually no publicity outside the blogosphere and talk radio.
Says Brian Anderson, citing the study in a LATimes Op-ed:

The propaganda charge is unfair, at least when it comes to the network’s presentation of news. In the 2004 presidential race, Fox pollsters consistently underestimated President Bush’s support. In its final preelection poll, Fox had Kerry winning by a couple of points, one of the only polls to show the Democrat on top. I’m not sure a right-wing fifth column would do that.

A recent comprehensive study by UCLA political scientist Tim Groseclose and University of Missouri-Columbia economics professor Jeffrey Milyo found Brit Hume’s “Special Report” — Fox’s most straightforward news show — more centrist than any of the three major networks’ evening newscasts, all of which leaned left…And although it’s true that the network’s opinion shows (as opposed to its news shows) are, as they’re supposed to be, noisily opinionated, it’s equally true that Fox’s biggest star, O’Reilly, is no mainstream Republican. He regularly charges the oil companies with price-gouging and attacks big business for squashing the little guy. And who can say what host Greta Van Susteren’s politics are? She mostly zeroes in on lurid murder mysteries and scandals..There’s no doubt, of course, that Fox News is more conservative than CBS or CNN. But, after all, that was its founding mission…
Fox’s real ethos is not Republican but anti-elitist — a major reason it connects with so many Americans and annoys so many coastal elites. “There’s a whole country that elitists will never acknowledge,” Ailes once observed. “What people resent deeply out there are those in the ‘blue states’ thinking they’re smarter.”

The other meme – that two out of three Fox viewers believe that Iraq was behind 9/11 – is cited as hard fact by legions of credulous leftybloggers, talk radio callers, and commenters. Of course, it’s not; even the original “study’s” authors, the Program on International Policy Attitudes, says that the study wasn’t broad enough to be interpreted as a basis in fact; correlation (however arrived at) doesn’t equal causation. And, oddly, the study didn’t ask, say, CBS viewers how many believed the Memogate allegations were true, or how many CNN viewers believe that WMDs were the sole reason for invading Iraq.

I somehow suspect that poll will never be taken.

Every time the Strib’s New Years’ editorial makes a muted plea for a monolithic socialist state or a vacuous apology for the vapid left, an angel will lose its wings and fall to earth.

As we say farewell to 2007 and hello to 2008, it’s appropriate that we take a moment to reflect on events of the past year. That a single circuit around the sun could have brought so many welcome developments would have seemed incredible a year ago. Remember the sadness of that season? The deaths, in cruelly quick succession, of Frank Stanton and Gerald Ford? The prospect of a winter with virtually no snow? The Iraq Study Group had found almost no reason for optimism in the war; polar bears were endangered; Israel was proposing a new settlement in the West Bank; James Brown was dead.

Into that void of hope strode 2007. How quickly things changed!

No one could have foreseen the sudden surrender of Osama bin Laden. His dramatic arrival at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, with his hands up and his BlackBerry at his feet, turned the tide of what we used to call the “war on terror” [“aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh”] and certainly earned him his recent designation as Time’s Person of the Year (albeit deceased). The rapid unraveling of the Iraq insurgency, and the speedy consolidation of power by Iraq’s first female president [“Someone grab my harp!!!”] , combined to form a miracle: a truly democratic, progressive [“Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeelp”] government, and a year in which the dwindling U.S. force — now down to 150 — suffered not a single casualty.

Likewise, the 2006 Christmas sales numbers for Al Gore’s film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” [“Pull thy ripcord, Jeremiah!”] shocked Detroit, the energy companies and Washington into an unprecedented effort to fight global warming [“I’m going in! I’m going in!”] . President Bush’s now-famous shirtsleeves stroll down Pennsylvania Avenue [“A Jimmy Carter reference…hey, where the hell are my wings?”] before delivering his State of the Union address last January showed that he finally understood the nature of the threat [“Hang on! It’s going to be a bumpy landing!”] . And while the arctic summer ice has yet to recover, the federal initiative to outfit polar bears with FEMA pontoon boats offered a temporary fix and won world admiration.

Of course, some problems remain. The refugees who fled North Korea after Kim Jong-il’s suicide still need meaningful work [“Assuming the position!”] . Fidel Castro’s renunciation of communism has created a troublesome brain drain in Miami as Cuban-Americans pull up stakes and move back home [“Did he just write the communism will recify its own excesseswhoooooaaaaaaaaaaaah!“] . And the passage of national universal health care threatens to extend the average U.S. lifespan and put more pressure on the Social Security system [“This place is so crowded from all those British cancer patients who died on the waiting liwhoaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!“] .

Even so, a country that can make college free for any student with a 2.5 grade point average or better can do just about anything [“Did they just devalue college, and at the same time raise the demand curve to the point that no person can afford a higher education without government assistance, all the while utterly socially devaluing all non-college-track vocationsaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!“] . We’re proud to live in a country that, in a single year, brought peace to Sudan and Somalia [“Isn’t that a conservative value…hey, I still have my wings…”] , gave free HIV medications to anyone on the globe who needed them, made abortion permanently legal but completely unnecessary [“ISn’t that a complete logical inversion, making a good free and ubiquitous but then assuming that people will have the infinite common sense not to use is Heeeeeeeeeeeeey, wheeeeere did my wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiings gooooooooooo…“] , and established a national endowment to prevent domestic abuse [“Oh, take my fecking wings. The notion that you can spend money to prevent something like domestic abuse – something we don’t even entirely understand – is just too stupid to think about. I’m walking home”] .

And of course, the Twins’ victory in the 2007 World Series speaks for itself. [“Welcome to the Metrodome. No, I have no wings. Just a pitchfork”]

As long as they are cute old folks…

a 78-year-old woman with a variety of serious health problems.

…chasing an inept, harmless footpad…

A large young woman approached Brown’s booth and purchased two dolls and a blanket for $100… $59 worth of jewelry from her; $20 worth of jam at another booth; $15 worth of bath goods from still another booth…

As the woman continued her shopping spree, Brown started to have nagging doubts. She called the phone numbers on the check the woman had written. The numbers had been disconnected. She called the bank and left a message.

The woman left the mall. The bank returned Brown’s call.

“The account is closed,” Brown was told.

…and the action looks like something from Family Guy:

“That check you wrote is no good,” Brown said.

“Whaddya mean?” the woman said.

“Check’s no good, just like you,” Brown said.

The woman started to move away.

“I told everybody, ‘She’s back!”‘ said Brown.

While other booth operators sought help, Brown, who often gets about on a little scooter, caught up with the woman. Then she got off her scooter.

“I told her, ‘You’re not going away, I’m making a citizen’s arrest,’ ” Brown said, adding, “I saw that on ‘Judge Judy.’ “

Good job, Ms. Brown.

Maybe, now that Democrats are in charge in St. Paul and Washington, vigilantism citizens protecting themselves isn’t a symbol of a greater social ill after all…

Update 12/31: Final day of voting – and Dan Stover is still within six votes of Learned Foot. Foot has played a Gopher-like first six days of voting; will Stover pull off a Red Raider-like comeback in the next day?

Voting ends as close to midnight as I get around to turning it off…

(more…)

Mike “Mikementum” Mosedale of the City Pages writes about the Strib sale and, mainly bloggers reactions to it, with a Cnote about the new publisher:

Not to be a buzzkiller, but it appears the personal politics of new Avista head honcho Chris Harte should meld quite nicely with those of the current Strib regime.

Tangent here: So does this mean that Mosedale is breaking with the common saw among local far-lefty medioids and activists – the City Pages’ base – that the Strib is really a conservative front organization?

Harte, who is expected to assume the role of chairman of the board at the Strib, is a longtime Democrat.

Yeah, I don’t think a lot of us on the right hold out much “buzz” for a reform of the Strib from within. I suspect the vast majority of us think that, at most, being owned by a private VC firm rather than a firm that participates in the noxious conceit that newspapers are a monastic order with a higher calling just might make the changes in the news market swing back and smack the newsroom a bit more directly. That a VC company might look at incidents like this a little more sensibly than did McClatchy.

Or at least gut the editorial board like a fish.

A few years ago, he contemplated a run against Susan Collins, the moderate Republican Senator from Maine, and since 2000, he has contributed more than $37,000 to assorted Democratic candidates and causes.

Good information…

…which Brian had a solid day or two earlier, not to mention Ed’s very complete listing.

The Strib staff meets the world outside the media cloister:

NEW YORK It must have surprised its own newsroom as much as it did news operations and media observers across the country.

After reports surfaced Tuesday that the Star Tribune in Minneapolis would be sold by McClatchy Co. to a private equity firm called Avista, a columnist at the paper, Doug Grow, said workers there — like everywhere else — were scurrying around the Internet trying to find out anything about Avista.

“Everything we’ve heard from McClatchy recently is ‘Hey, we’re all in this together. We don’t do layoffs.’ Blah blah blah BS,” he told the Associated Press.

Shocking, innit? That managers might BS reporters as if they were mere commoners!

Seriously – that’s one of the parts about this story, and the decay of the major media in general, that makes it so hard to feel too much sympathy for the Strib staffers. Media people – especially at newspapers – see themselves almost like a monastic order, driven to a higher calling than the proles they “serve” with their reporting. They show it in their reactions to things like blogs (Nick Coleman summed the situation up as “astronomers being assaulted by people who swear that aliens force them to have sex with Martians” from his point of view) and mere readers (see: any Kate Perry column); they are the lonely beacons of enlightenment serving an ignorant and benighted rabble against the encroaching dark.

Maybe reality is starting to sink in?

The New York Times on Wednesday observes: “The sale caught most employees at the paper off-guard [an acquaintance at the Strib, not in the newsroom, confirms this – MB] and angered some newsroom employees, who expressed concerned that Avista Capital Partners, which owns no other daily newspapers, could make severe staff cuts.”

And if that happens, what will the peasants do for fair, objective news reporting? Like this?

Nick Coleman, a metropolitan columnist for the paper, told the Times, “It was like, who? Everyone knows the whole industry is in play and that just about anything could happen, but nobody thought we could get sold. There’s a real sense of betrayal …

“At a fire sale,” he said, “people get discounted, so we’re very concerned, worried and anxious.” But he added, “maybe it takes someone from outside the newspaper business to see the way forward.”

Five will get you ten it takes someone from outside the Strib to see it. Goodness knows they’ve had enough opportunity.

it’s a great time to be in the news and advertising business.”

McClatchy unloads the Strib at a $670 million loss.

Avista Capital Partners, an investment group focused on media, healthcare and energy companies, will pay $530 million for the newspaper, which Sacramento, Calif.-based McClatchy bought from Cowles Media Co. in 1998 for $1.2 billion.

The deal is expected to formally close sometime in the early spring. Chris Harte, a member of Avista’s advisory board, will serve as chairman of a board overseeing the Star Tribune. Harte is a former publisher of newspapers in Akron, Ohio; Portland, Maine, and State College, Pa

Word has it that McClatchy, riven with debt from its purchase of Knight-Ridder, unloaded the paper for a huge loss because the purchase is to be all or mostly cash; McClatchy needs cash.

Hey, all you dotcom survivors – how does this sound to you?

The printed daily newspaper “will be the core of our business well into the future,” Harte told hundreds of employees gathered in the Star Tribune’s largest assembly room. “But it won’t be the overwhelming majority that it is today many years from now.

Um, yeah. All you production-side people start circulating your resumes.

(Sales and contracts people – you’re probably safe…)

“You and I and everyone who works with us will have to listen carefully to our readers and our advertisers and make sure we provide them with the information and advertising they want, when they want it, how they want it,” he said. “By doing that, the Star Tribune will continue to be the dominant medium in the Twin Cities.”

I wonder what, exactly, this means? Could it mean, as Brian Ward puts it, that…:

the days are numbered for front page agenda journalism, PC blinders on important stories, insult editorials, unchecked casual plagiarism, and the willful arrogance of a self-aware monopoly …

…or not remains to be seen (and Brian’s found disheartening evidence that’s just not gonna be).

But since Avista is a venture capital company rather than primarily a media operation, maybe it’ll mean that while the Strib editorial board remains the type of caricature of liberal cabal that conservatives could scarcely design as parody, at least they’ll be run with a bottom-line focus that will mean their excesses will harm them where it hurts most – in their pocketbook (or budget).

Carnivore at KvM on this tragic shooting in Boston:

A day after a loner gun nut went on a human hunting trip at the local bus full of nuns, punching a 30mm hole through countless people, the Mayor is calling for a ban on the weapon of mass destruction used during the shooting.

The high powered weapon, known as the AK-57 triple barrel, laser, radar, heat seeking, shotgun is able to spew ammunition such as explosive tipped ammunition in a rapid fire high powered fashion.

“High powered weapons such as these are only for the high powered battlefield like when I was in high powered Vietnam,” said Senator Kerry. “They serve no civilian purpose with their high power bayonet lugs.”

OK, it’s not a real news story.

Or…is it?

Read KvM to find out…

The first and last annual Susapalooza – our group parody of Twin Cities professional child of the sixties Susan Lenfestey – is switching into its big finale.

Voting begins tomorrow.

Here’s what you do: Read the various entries.  Voting starts the morning of Christmas Eve. Winner will be announced on New Years’ day!

The contendas:

• Yossarian, “Dashed Dreams“
• Learned Foot, “Christmas Torment“
• Marty Andrade, “Rapid Transit To Hell“
• Dan S., “Conservatives’ Slinky Hatred“
• Riverdan, “Sylvia Plath Was Such A Pollyanna“
• Lassie, “Waterboard My Heart“
• Dave, “Waxy Yellow Buildup Of My Life“
• Yossarian (Second entry): “Reflections of Misery“
• Swiftee, “The Dove Of My Spirit Has Crashed Into The Tower Of My Misery“
• Yossarian (Third Entry): “Dungeonmaster Of My Soul“
• ak, “I Am Woman, Hear Me Shriek“
• zestro, “Echoes Of The Dead“

Come on back any time between December 24 and December 31.

[Note: Originally published 12/20/06, updated and bumped forward]

Via Foot, I notice that Susan Lenfestey has a blog, featuring her own particular brand of…

…well, what do we call it? Spittle-flecked ranting? Paranoid delusion? Serving as a mindless streetwalker for the party line?

Whatever it is, it deserves our encouragement, because freedom of speech and argumentation is a treasure to be cultivated because it’s fun to watch puffed-up, self-important “children of the sixties” make asses of themselves, their beliefs and their generation.

So I’m going to do what needs to be done: I’m going to sponsor a contest, the First And Last Annual Susapalooza. Here’s how it works:

1. Write a paragraph of the most over-the-top Susan Lenfesty parody. Borrow, er, liberally from her blog – but out-lenfestey her in every possible way.
2. Leave the paragraph in the comment section of this post. I’ll keep pushing it to the top of the schedule.
3. On December 25, I’ll post the finalists, along with an online poll to vote for the “winner”.
4. On New Years Eve, we’ll announce the “winner”.

The “winner” gets a beverage of his/her choice from me, and maybe some other piece of NARN/SITD swag. Probably.
So puff up your self-righteous, vein-popping indignation. Whip your petulant depression to a fine fever. Sniff down your nose at your fellow citizen.

It’s art, dammit.

Update and Bump 12/21: Lenfestey isn’t pleased with this contest:

I’ve been described by some local lads (who blog under phony names [Really? Someone named “Lenfestey” digs at my name?] and remind me of the pimple-pussed boys I used to see playing war games in the Dungeons and Dragons emporium on Lake Street a long, long time ago) as a depressive, “sucking on the tailpipe of my Prius.” In my dreams! The Prius part. Sucking on the tailpipe, not so much. Read on.

They call me other things as well, which is curious to me, seeing as I’m such a little piece of fluff in the big lint screen of opinions. What a funny waste of their time.

No, Susan, you’re right; your depressive, angry yet self-adoring, precious, arrested-adolescent little opinions are a fart in the cosmic wind. True. But by dint of your social connections, they get printed, seemingly no questions asked, in the Strib. Hundreds of worthy writers go unpublished, while your whiny, kvetching sore-loser snivelling jumps to the head of the line.

It’s like the crazy lady who was constantly yelling about those Damned Ukrainians at the bus stop over by Phoenix Games (where pimply lads of all ages play wargames and, horror of horrors, enjoy themselves) got her own show on CNBC.

By itself, it doesn’t beget a response in polite company. When it’s elevated far beyond where it deserves to be, it deserves satire.

Update and Bump 12/22: Last weekday for submissions! Post will be open for entries all weekend, though – so put that Christmas shopping off until you’ve lenfested this post with your best parody!

Update and Bump 12/23: OK . One more day! Competition is going to be fierce!

Like every Twin Citian under the age of 70, I wasn’t listening to Willy Clark yesterday morning.  In fact, like an awful lot of Twin Cities radio listeners, I haven’t listened to KSTP since Mischke moved to the middle of the working day and Bob Davis moved to late mornings.  As in, not at all. 

Nada.  Zip. 

Seriously.  KSTP-AM is my radio alma mater, and I haven’t hit its preset on my car radio since Rush Limbaugh changed stations.  Not once.

But I digress.  A little bird told me that Willy Clark was talking about me yesterday.  To be fair, I needed that little bird, because I didn’t know Willy Clark was even still on the air (and, looking back, I see that we’ve gotta be up to about contract time here…).  Anyway, he wasn’t happy:

A mention of SITD came up around the 8:30 mark.  Kenny Olson was Googling reviews of the show, they came across yours (Kenny read his description, something about a smug, talentless punk) and Willy characterized the guy that wrote that as an unemployed loser who can’t get hired in radio, or something like that.  

Oh, my.  Aren’t we feisty?  Wouldn’t Willy Clark be much more – I dunno, listenable if he took some of that feistiness and used it to sound like he wasn’t on NyQuil on the air?

Willy Clark:  I am employed; very well-employed, as it happens (details never shared online).  As to being a loser – well, I’m no “morning guy at KSTP”, but I do OK. 

But the ultimate question, Wills, is not “can Mitch get hired in radio”; I did in the past, and I have the best unpaid gig in the business right now.  But I don’t work in radio anymore.  Other challenges called – challenges that don’t involve stroking the egoes of or supplying coke to program directors.

No, the real question is “Could Willy Clark get a job outside of radio?”

And “Will he be able to, soon?”

Don’t know if they podcast those things, but if you can get the audio, might make for a good NARN drop.

Good point. 

If anyone taped the Willy Clark show…

…no, I’m being serious here.  If there are any dedicated Willy fans who…

…Hey!  Quit giggling!  I’m trying to run a blog…

Oh, forget it.

Watching David “The Lori Sturdevant Of The Beltway” Gregory providing audio campaign collateral for “interviewing” John Kerry this morning on Today.

And I can’t confirm this, but I think Gregory has his head so far up Kerry’s butt that he actually signed off the piece from within Kerry’s esophagus.

The Zuckers meet the ISG.

Learned Foot beat me fair and square in the race to fisk the latest Susan Lenfestey column in the Strib.

Which is sort of like saying “Learned Foot beat me to the pool of suppurating runoff from that roadkill deer, and he brought a champagne flute”, but victory is victory.

Nonetheless, I’ll have to tackle Lenfestey’s column myself, whenever my self-esteem drops low enough that I need to see someone who makes me feel better in comparison.

The View is to TV what Susan Lenfestey is to “writing”.

Which is great for people like us:

Joy Behar was met with boos and gasps from The Views studio audience when she described Donald Rumsfeld as “Hitlerlike”. FBLA is a little surprised that Behar actually knew Hitler, and more surprised that the Views audience knows who Rumsfeld is. Or maybe theyre just sick of the Hitler simile–when everyones like Hitler, no one is.

Joy Behar: like Christmas in December.