The NARN guys – John, Brian and Chad with Volume I (“The Opening Act”), King and Michael with Volume III (“The Final World”) and Ed and I (Volume II, “The Headliner”),  along with David Strom and Margaret Martin of Taxpayers’ League Live, and our producers Matt Reynolds and Irina Malanina – are taking one of our three breaks we ever take during the broadcast year, for Easter.

Oh, there’ll be “best of” broadcasts of all the shows.  Tune in if you’ve got nothing else going on.  I will!

But on behalf of all the guys and gals, I’d like to wish you all a blessed and happy Easter. 

And we’ll look forward to y’all tuning in next week.  Because there’ll be plenty of news to talk about…

I was originally going to write my big, earth-shattering conclusions in this installment of this series. 

But I find that I have both more to write than I thought, and some loose ends to tie up.

So today, let’s tie up loose ends.

(more…)

Monday.  April 6, 1987.

I woke up.  A restless, miserable weekend was over.  It was time to get back to business – finding myself both a living for the short term, and my next talk radio job. 

Preferably at the same time.

On the plus side:  I’d been through this before.  I’d gotten whacked at radio jobs, starting when I was 17, at KQDJ in Jamestown.  A couple of slickeeboys had bought KEYJ, changed the call letters, and tried to make it sound like a big-market middle-of-the-road station.  Along the way, they fired a bunch of the locals, me included.  I’d gotten diced four years later – at the same station, different reasons, same basic deal.

And now, KSTP.  I was getting used to one one of radio’s great truths; you never quit a job on your own.

Other pluses:  when I heard that the firings were coming, I’d snagged an old copy of the “Standard Rate and Data Service” directory – the SRDS, or “Serds”, a telephone-book-thick listing of every radio station in the country by market, format, power, coverage and rough ad rate.  The book was about 700 pages thick, I think, and covered literally every radio station in the US and its territories (as of November, 1986, anyway). 

I took a highlighter and started going through the book, starting with the markets I wanted to take a shot at.  I focused on finding talk stations in mid-sized markets – Madison, Columbus and the like – as well as suburbs of bigger markets (places like New Bedford MA, Santa Rosa CA and Aurora IL), the kind of place that used to hire 24-year-old kids for peanuts, put them on mid-days or evenings or wherever they felt a need for a solid, reliable local show – and let ’em get some experience.

And of course, I marked down all the talk stations in big markets.  While I figured I had a very long shot of getting an actual on-air job there, I’d certainly take another producer gig. 

Any port in a storm.

I took a legal pad and started my list; stations, markets, and program directors (where they were listed in the SRDS), all in pencil, since I knew the list would change.

And at 9AM, I started cold-calling.  And I stayed on it until lunchtime.

After lunch, I spent a couple of hours cold-calling some of the Saint Paul and Minneapolis neighborhood newspapers.  I’d done some writing for a few of them the previous year, trying to stretch my Hubbard paycheck.  I’d be stretching even further, now.  But I landed a little assignment – worth about $60 – that afternoon from one of the neighborhood papers, which was worth a little celebrating.

And then, back to cold-calling radio stations.  And, briefly, a shot of pay-dirt.  The program director at WSME in New Bedford, Massachussetts was looking for someone – cheap – to do a mid-day show.  He wanted my tape.

I had a cassette and an envelope ready to go.  I typed out a cover letter, ready to go out the next morning.

I crossed my fingers.  For tomorrow, I was going to call the headhunter for the job in Orlando. 

One day of looking.  Two solid leads. 

My panic was starting to wane, just a little bit.

(more…)

While Scots in America don’t have a national holiday that enshrines mass public drunkenness and projectile vomiting, we do have – for the last nine years, anyway – Tartan Day.

According to Wikipedia…:

…took root in the United States and since 1998, the date of April 6 has been officially recognised by the United States Senate as a celebration of the contribution made by generations of Scots-Americans to the foundation and prosperity of modern America.

The date is significant as it commemorates the signing of the Declaration of Arbroath in 1320, the first known formal Declaration of independence. Not only was the United States Declaration of Independence modelled on that document, but almost half of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were of Scottish descent and the Governors in 9 of the original 13 States were of Scottish ancestry.

So tack a “Mac-” onto the front of your name, quaff a couple shots of Laphroaig, paint your face blue and moon your boss today – he can take your job, be he canna take your freedom!

Play bagpipe music, or at least Big Country, Simple Minds and the Proclaimers, in your cube.

Talk like Sean Connery. Eat a burrito, but call it haggis just to see the reactions you get.

Save a nickel, rather than spending it.

It’s Tartan Day. You deserve it.

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.

Photocop is DOA:

Drivers in Minneapolis won’t need to worry about smiling — or grimacing — for the cameras again any time soon.

The state Supreme Court agreed Thursday with the lower courts that the city’s so-called PhotoCop cameras at a dozen intersections are preempted by state law and therefore illegal.

Wave bye bye!

I heare that Kirk Kerkorian is bidding a chunk of money to buy Chrysler. 

Yaaaawwwwn.  Whatever.

But hearing that during WWII Kerkorian flew one of the coolest airplanes ever?

Now that is interesting!

MLP at Casual Sundays with Mr. Curry:

Hustle and Flow

That Thing You Do, with whores and profanity

What is it that separates a “journalist” from a polemicist?

Willpower.

Oh, journalism professors and editors and people who regard journalism as a high, monastic calling will quibble with that – and justifiably so.  But at the end of the day, the only thing that really separates “journalism” from agenda-driven polemicism is the will, on someone’s part, to make it so; to tell the “who, what, when, where, why and how” of a story, and to either leave the “becauses” out of the story, or balance all of the applicable “becauses” and let the consumer make up their own mind.

Me?  I’m a polemicist.  I worked as a reporter – radio and freelance print news – off and on for a decade and a half, mostly off.  I worked hard to keep my personal views of the things I covered out of my reporting – not that there was much personal opinion to add to most of it (I covered business news for one St. Paul weekly, crime for another, Arts and Entertainment for yet another).  But I’ll be honest; I’m here with an agenda, and a predefined set of good guys and not-so-good guys (and a big set of genuine bad guys).  Oh, I do try to be fair, as far as it goes; indeed, I am demonstrably fair in my treatment of disagreement.  But I leave you no doubt as to where I’m coming from.

Now, I’ve “known” Jeff Fecke from Blog Of The Moderate Left (BlOTMoL) for years; he’s been blogging almost as long as I have.  I have talked a certain amount of smack at Jeff over the years – partly because he’s tried to emulate the John Stewart-Via-Atrios model of leftyblogging (reduce all news and opinion to its’ lowest snarky denominator)…

…and partly because last fall he joined “Minnesota Monitor” as a paid “reporter”.  MinMon is, as noted elsewhere in this blog, a lefty group-blog supported by “liberals with deep pockets”; the group that cuts their checks, the “Center for Independent Media”, used to share office space with George Soros’ “Media Matters for America”; they’ve since moved.  Last year, they started organizing and paying regional leftybloggers.  When queried – repeatedly – about this relationship, MinMon’s “staff” respond with a giggle, a snark, and a change of subject. 

But whatever.

Fecke, in his capacity as a “reporter” for the MinMon, attended Tuesday night’s “Town Hall” meeting with MN 2nd District Congressman John Kline.  I wrote a compendium of the various livebloggers’ accounts yesterday. 

The big “story”, of course, was Fecke’s claim in MnMon (reiterated by “editor” Robin “Rew” Marty) that Kline’s staff had barred him from liveblogging – but allowed a group of conservative bloggers to blog away unhindered.  He wrote “Minnesota Monitor had intended to liveblog the event.  Unfortunately, while some conservative bloggers were allowed internet access, Kline staffers informed this reporter that I would not be able to take advantage of internet access that had been offered me after inquiry with the Lakeville school district.”

Several conservative bloggers attacked this claim (here and here, for starters); sources with familiarity with the Congressman’s staff’s decisions indicate that Fecke’s claim is baseless; Michael Brodkorb scanned and posted the forum’s rules.  There remains no actual evidence of any double standard.

So at the very least, the question “Was Jeff Fecke the victim of conservative perfidy” is up in the air. 

Although not to him:

Now, if you’re coming her from the conservative blogosphere, you’re probably expecting that I’m going to be arguing vehemently about the decision by the Kline camp not to let me liveblog. 

 Actually, no.  We were expecting that you’d be calling the Kline “camp’s” decision an anti-left, anti-media double-standard in the first place. 

But to argue that I was at fault because the Kline camp wouldn’t let me use equipment I’d already secured? 

I’m wondering precisely where the hangup is, here:

1. The event was held in a Lakeville School  school building.
2. Jeff had, by his own account, asked the school for access to the WiFi.  Fecke said it himself:  “Unfortunately, while some conservative bloggers were allowed internet access, Kline staffers informed this reporter that I would not be able to take advantage of internet access that had been offered me after inquiry with the Lakeville school district“.
3. According to Kevin Ecker and Michael Brodkorb, though, the school’s wi-fi was turned off.  Ecker: “I spoke with several members of the Kline staff and it was never related that there would be no liveblogging. Just that while the school had wifi, it wasn’t turned on. And I verified this with my laptop….which I had out, open and turned on”. 
4. If Fecke has some information indicating that Congressman Kline’s staff had some means for turning on the Lakeville schools’ wifi equipment, to disenfranchise bloggers critical of him (but not, apparently, those who support him), then perhaps we should see it.

So unless Fecke has some evidence that the “Kline Camp” had actually tried to freeze out critical coverage, perhaps as a “reporter” he’d be well-advised to put up the evidence or quit crying conspiracy and discrimination.

Y’know – the sort of thing “journalists” (as opposed to people who carry notebooks and play dress-up and talk reporter talk) are supposed to do.

Of course, Minnesota Monitor has a dog in the race; despite affecting the window-dressing of a “serious” journalistic venture, there’s no real doubt that their “coverage” is biased hard to the left. 

Look – be a bomb-tossing polemicist.  Or be a “journalist”.  Or be a journalist who is honest about being a bomb-tosser.  Just don’t pretend.

Like when one says things like…:

The Kline camp went into this meeting terrified of…something.  I’m not sure what. 

Then why mention it?  Because nothing about Kline’s appearance seemed to bespeak “terror” in any sense that I’ve been able to recognize. 

If you, Jeff Fecke, have some insight into the “terror” that lurks in the mind of John Kline – combat veteran, former bearer of the nuclear football, career Marine officer, long-time successful congressional representative – then “I’m not sure what” hardly suffices.  Favor us with the evidence, the insight, the FACTS, before you go playing at being both clairvoyant and journalist. 

 And I think it was a huge strategic blunder.  But they were scared to death of something happening that would make John Kline look bad, and they took pains to ensure that the meeting would be as tightly controlled as possible.

One wonders if Jeff Fecke has ever “covered” any sort of political event in his life.

Jeff – all politicians, and their staffs, control their messages (if their staffs are worth anything). 

Kline could’ve scored some points had he been less fearful of anyone finding out that he talked to the unwashed masses.  Instead, the story that ran on the networks was that Kline was afraid of the unwashed masses.

Because Kline knows that the mainstream media will treat him only vaguely less-badly than the leftyblogosphere will.  The media he needs – conservative bloggers, talk radio – was there, getting the message he needs, out. 

Jeff signs off with a snark that shows, in its way, how badly-suited for this sort of thing Fecke would seem to be:

And don’t worry, righties: I’ll make sure Mr. Soros buys me a Blackberry for the next one.

Note to Jeff – and, indeed, the whole MnMonitor community; your response to the whole “Soros funds you guys” question has scuppered whatever credibility you seemed to be seeking, initially, with anyone who pays attention to these things (which, to be fair, might not include your audience).  You never answered any of the many, legitimate questions about where the Center for “Independent” Media was getting its money with anything more than a giggle and a snark and a “nothing to see here, nosirreebob” (except for the one of you who finally admitted that “liberals with deep pockets” were keeping you guys in the chips). 

This is where you pay for it!

Periodically, I take out (rhetorical) contracts on bits and pieces of the English language that need to be communally expunged. 

Every once in a while, it seems to work.  A few years ago, I demanded that the word “bloggy” disappear from the language.  It’s been a while since I’ve seen that linguistic abomination in print.

So it’s time for another round of linguistic executions. 

1. “Internets”:  Usually used ironically – to show how very much more clever the user is than the madding hordes on the “internets” – the term is an offshoot of the ancient (in Internet terms) Usenet habit of taking a newbie mistake and making it part of the vocabulary (“This is sucks” – alt.aol.sucks, 1993).  The problem is, to be anything but ironic, these turnabouts are predicated on the user actually being more clever than the person committing the malaprop.  A casual reading shows this rarely to be the case.  Please stop.
2. “Truthy” (“truthiness”): When everything is “ironic” all the time, then nothing is ironic.  And if we extinguished not only the word but the concept, perhaps John Stewart would be able to do something other than the same show, week in, week out, forever and ever, amen…
3. “Dee di deeeee!”: Unless you are Carlos Mencia, using this phrase suits you better to be a target than a user of the phrase.  You’ve been warned.  Not Carlos?  No se va.
4. “Hel-looooo?”:  Time for a new phrase to indicate your nonplussment at your fellow human’s concentrated denseness (in your enlightened opinion).
5. “It Is What It Is”: Like “going forward” and “at this point in time”, after about two trillion uses, It Is meaningless.

Carry on. 

Matt Abe at Scholar’s Notebook notes a couple of GOP-sponsored bills that might just be a step in the right direction:

A pair of bills with bipartisan support (HF 2007 and SF 1768), including Senate authors Sen. David Hann (R-Eden Prairie) and Sen. Warren Limmer (R-Maple Grove) and a raft of DFL authors in the House, would withdraw Minnesota from the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).

Although such a move would also cause Minnesota to lose federal education funding, it would also allow the state’s schools to emerge from a variety of federal mandates, many of which are unfunded or underfunded, which would free up money currently being spent to comply with these mandates. The state would actually save money and regain more control over its schools by withdrawing from NCLB!

This is one of those areas where in the past I’ve bit my tongue around some of my fellow Republicans who’ve been interested in “education” issues; NCLB tries to put lipstick on a pig, trying to bring principles of accounting to providing “accountability” to education.  An admirable goal, perhaps, especially given the 13 billion we spend on education in Minnesota every year, but it only works if one picks the right measurements.  And standardized testing is not just the wrong measurement – but the current system, which essentially forces schools to “teach to the test”, is downright harmful to actually “educating” children. 

Abe continues:

Constitutionally, eduation is a state function that should be administered by the state and locally-elected school boards, not “regional” boards, the federal government, or the United Nations. The Legislature should pass this measure swiftly, and Governor Pawlenty should sign it into law this session. It would be a major victory for the local control of our schools.

And if there’s anything public schools need to survive, it’s more, not less, localism.

(Read the whole series)

 Let’s sum up what happened in the previous episode:

1. A child, “Nate”, had made up a story; that Zam, my son, was late for homeroom because he was in North Dakota, “getting a sniper rifle” to shoot a teacher.
2.  Zam was, in fact, standing beside me in the Assistant Principal’s office – not in North Dakota.  Unarmed.  Bemused.  And in huge trouble.
3. “Policy” required the Assistant Principal to treat this boy’s goofy story as if it were a full-blown attempt to murder a teacher – by Zam. 

The fun was just beginining.

(more…)

In the fall of 1981, I took Journalism 101. The teacher – Jim Smorada, then the editor of the Jamestown Sun – was a great reporter and a great teacher.

And while my “career” as a “journalist” was short, underpaid and undistinguished, I can honestly say that I held true to almost everything Mr. Smorada taught me…

…including, perhaps most importantly of all, his imprecation to never, never, ever refer to myself as “this reporter“. Of this, I am modestly proud.

That is all.

(more…)

An array of Minnesota bloggers, left and right, covered Congressman John Kline’s town hall meeting last night. 

The Twin Cities’ fringe left, convinced that Kline was shunning his constituents (because his office didn’t kowtow to the demands of a group of stalkers “demonstrators” who conducted several de facto sit-ins at his office), showed up in force.  Some of the best of the Twin Cities’ conservative blog community showed up to keep an eye on the “demonstrators” (and, as it happens, the leftybloggers).

Joe Tucci of Kool Aid Report was there, and provided the first report I saw of the evening’s tempest in a teapot:

740 – Gold star Mom just [smacked down the assembled lefties]. Half the place gave here a standing O. Half did not. Guess which half sat on their asses. Watch for the footage (and why the assholes patriotic Americans that didn’t stand, didn’t applaud her son are dregs) on residual froces tomorrow.

…

815 – LIBERAL LIES!!!! Minnesota Monitor monitor sez:

Reporter [heh -ed.] Jeff Fecke has called in from the town hall meeting sponsored by Rep. John Kline (R – Minn.). Although wifi access has been enabled, [lie – it has not been enabled – we checked. -ed.] Kline’s staff has asked that there be no live blogging of the event.He asked no such thing. They merely said that the school’s wifi was off. Fecke playing loose with facts? Like that never happens.He asked no such thing. They merely said that the school’s wifi was off. Fecke playing loose with facts? Like that never happens.He asked no such thing. They merely said that the school’s wifi was off. Fecke playing loose with facts? Like that never happens.He asked no such thing. They merely said that the school’s wifi was off. Fecke playing loose with facts? Like that never happens.

He asked no such thing. They merely said that the school’s wifi was off. Fecke playing loose with facts? Like that never happens.

Curious, I ran over to Minnesota Monitor (a regional rent-a-blog supported by the Washington-based “Center for Independent Media”, which used to share office space with George Soros’ “Media Matters for America”, but which denies any connection or funding from Soros, even though I’m not aware that the group has ever responded to any questions about its funding with anything but a giggle and a change of subject) to see what the fuss was about. 

MinMon’s rent-a-blogger Jeff Fecke, who wrote an otherwise fairly dispassionate account of the event, had this to say about the purported “restrictions”:

Minnesota Monitor had intended to liveblog the event.  Unfortunately, while some conservative bloggers were allowed internet access, Kline staffers informed this reporter that I would not be able to take advantage of internet access that had been offered me after inquiry with the Lakeville school district.

The Kline camp also declined to let news media hook into the auditorium audio feed, and did not allow anyone in to set up until ten minutes before the meeting was to start.

Michael Brodkorb responded by posting the rules for the event, that WiFi was not at the moment available, and that he…:

…walked into the auditorium, found a place to sit and used my Verizon Wireless Air-Card to access the Internet.  It is was not the responsibility of Lakeville South High School (the taxpayers) or Congressman Kline’s office (the taxpayers) to provide me with access to the Internet…

To prevent being scooped on future live-blogging events, I would suggest liberal bloggers buy air-cards, rather than creating conspiracy theories that  “somce conservative bloggers were allowed internet access”

And Kevin Ecker clarified:

I spoke with several members of the Kline staff and it was never related that there would be no liveblogging. Just that while the school had wifi, it wasn’t turned on. And I verified this with my laptop….which I had out, open and turned on. Plus both Joe Tucci and MDE were liveblogging next to me. Nobody questioned it. 

 Which introduces the question; when will the “journalists” – as the MinMon people claim to be – either:

• reveal the source that told them that live-blogging was “prohibited”
• elaborate on their claim of discrimination (“…some conservative bloggers were allowed…Kline staffers informed this reporter that I would not be able to take advantage of internet“)
• Admit that they cried “wolf” when they should have cried “we didn’t do our technical homework”

Note to the MinMon kids from someone who’s actually worked for a [bad] living as a reporter; nobody is required to kiss your ass just because you show up at an event claiming to be a reporter.  Getting let into events late and being barred from PA system feeds is hardly unusual, and rarely political, and never an impediment to covering a story.

And a separate note from someone who has worked for a [equally bad] living as a broadcast producer, covering news, sports and special events; your failure to have a backup plan for a technical hitch doesn’t constitute a “conspiracy”.  When you are trying to cover an event and you are relying on any form of technology to help get the story out, you must always assume that the technology will fail, and have a back-up plan.  Michael Brodkorb had a technical workaround – his Verizon card.  Other conservative bloggers took their notes and waited until after the event to upload and publish; good enough is good enough!

Grow up.

After complaining about being repressed by the injustice inherent in the system, Fecke reported that the crowd – on both sides – seemed fairly restrained and civil.   

Kevin Ecker of Eckernet was also there, and had a slightly different take:

Several moments stuck out, some of them in retrospect, some of them I know even before were going to be memorable. One in particular was when a woman got to speak and started by saying she was a Gold Star Mother. I couldn’t help but wonder how many of these hippies knew the difference between a “Gold Star” mother and a “Blue Star” mother. So I knew where this was going and wow, she hit the ball out of the park with her speech, and when she was done quite a few people got up to applaud the sacrificies of her and her son. Not the lefties of course, they just sat there sulking.

Retired Lt. Col. Joe Repya…called out the lefties in the audience, declaring that they should be ashamed of themselves for not standing up and applauding for a Gold Star Mother and her deceased son.

More from Ecker, who opined…:

Somewhere in there [a woman who was a detractor of Kline’s] objected to being called unpatriotic (nobody called her that…it’s liberal talking points), and then called Kline dispicable. Kline waited until she was done and said he understood why she was upset if her patriotism was questioned, but that he also gets upset when he is called dispicable.

Fair?  Balanced?  You be the judge.

The Lady Logician from Ladies’ Logic was there, and promises both photos and a longer post.  But she notes:

Both sides were fairly equally represented. The town hall meeting was open to ALL issues so we did get a couple of intelligent questions about issues other than Iraq, but we all knew why the majority was there and the questions reflected it.We heard from the usual suspects on the left but we also got to hear from a Gold Star Mom (Merrilee Carlson) and from Powerlines Sgt Thole from Chaska. Sgt. Thole’s rep read from his 3/17 Star Tribune editorial and informed Congressman Kline that they were going to present his office first with the Appeal for Courage Petition (if you are active duty you need to check the site out).

Stay tuned; I have a hunch this is just getting rolling.  

And thanks, and good job, to Joe Tucci, Kevin Ecker, Lady Logician, Andy Aplikowski, and even Jeff Fecke.  I mean, I’d be wrong not to thank a guy for serving up a high, down-the-middle ‘tater like that…

(Read the whole series)

Note: I have been changing the names of all Saint Paul Public Schools officials so far.  I’m adding real names to the story now.  The actions that took place as part of this story need to be attached to real school officials, who are agents of a system that needs to be held accountable.  For while “the system” – the Saint Paul Public School system and the compulsory education system as a whole – are the overarching problem, people are responsible for what they do, even if it’s the “policy” of the organization they serve.  But I have little idea where I stand, legally, on this. 

Truth is an absolute defense.

 It was February 7, 2006.

My journey – which had started in 1990 as a proponent and supporter of public education, the son of a teacher and grandson of two more – was about to turn a half circle, never to return.

My son Zam had a bunch of behavioral problems, mostly in the middle of grade school, mostly caused by acting out after his mother and I divorced.  Divorce is almost always a nasty whack in the head, and kids react differently.  And of course, like a lot of boys, Zam was not one to sit in a chair and raise his hand and march on cue.  As I noted in the last installment, Zam was a challenge for everyone. 

But by seventh grade, even though he still wasn’t much for sitting in his desk and doing what he was told to do when he was told to do it, his behavior was pretty good.  He was attending Ramsey Junior High, reputed to be one of St. Paul’s “better” junior high schools.

Which didn’t mean he ever caught a break.  One day, he found a pair of scissors on the sidewalk.  He brought them to school – and when he told a teacher, he got suspended for another “weapons violation”.  Note that the scissors were exactly the same as the ones used in the school’s Art Room, and indeed may have been originally taken from there!  No matter.  A second “weapons violation”, another three day holiday suspension.

It was policy.

And one day when another kid tackled him in the lunch room – even though every witness, including some teachers – said he didn’t hit back, he got suspended, too.  “He has a history of behavioral problems” said the various assistant principals. 

And what did they say?

“It’s policy!”

So he sat out his suspensions (which seems to be the only “punishment” in the school vocabulary these days; they “punish” behavior by making kids stay home.  Someone’s unclear on the concept, and I don’t think it’s just me…), learned his lessons, and basically endured.  I kinda admired him, in a way.

One chilly February morning, Joseph Heller reared his surrealistic head.

(more…)

It was Friday, April 3, 1987.  

As people got done with their various shifts, Pervy LeDouchebag [1] gave them the news; they were getting let go. 

A rumor spread around that Pervy had a gun stashed away in case someone got out of hand.  I silently hoped he’d fly off the handle; I had my own gun in the car, after the weekend’s anti-semitic fun. 

But it wasn’t all that terribly dramatic.

Hubbard in its infinite wisdom got rid of a lot of us – the most successful staff it’d have in a decade, and certainly the only one it had in the pre-Limbaugh era that day.

Morning Producer Allison Brown – who’d worked with Mike Edwards and Lee Valsvik – is still in the market, producing Gopher Hockey if memory serves. 

Tom Myhre – the morning news guy and the station’s assignment editor, and the guy who I’d met in October of 1985 who had gotten me in the door at the station – opened a metal detector shop in South Minneapolis right around the time KSTP fell apart.  I think he still runs it – I haven’t seen him in a few years. 

I last talked with mid-morning producer John Barnier – who’d been producing Pat Milan, who’d replaced Geoff Charles from 9-11 – about fifteen years ago.  He was a photographer – both a working one and an academic with a yen for work in the Holy Land – and was running a photography studio in downtown Saint Paul. 

Executive Producer Rob Pendelton, the guy who hired me after Myrhe got me in the door, went on to be a producer at WCCO (he beat me out for a job there in a few months, actually), then returned to KSTP to work with Barbara Carlson.  I lost track of him for the better part of a decade after that, until, oddly, he spent a few months at The Patriot producing “The Stitch”, a weekly hockey broadcast on Saturdays.  He jumped from there to produce “Janecek and Lambert” at KTLK, which didn’t last all that long.  I need to drop him a line; he always lands on his feet.

Reporter Tom Rivers – who’d come to KSTP from a “pirate” radio station in the English Channel – returned to the UK, where he took over as London Bureau correspondent for UPI Radio News.  I think he’s with CBS, now.  You can still hear “Tom Rivers in London” reporting on one story or another, occasionally – I’ve heard him in the past year.

Reporter Karen Booth went on to MPR, then spent some time as the DFL’s communications director, then some PR work.  The last I heard she was with the State Department, somewhere in Eastern Europe.

(For those who might ask – Kathy Wurzer had gotten caught in an earlier budget cut.  She went to Channel 9, then (allowing for a diversion to Channel 4 a few years back) to a long career as Morning Edition host at MPR.

Reporter Peg Sneden?  She went back to Grand Rapids.  I think she got married.

Sports Director Mark Boyle?  He went to KMOX in St. Louis, then to work for Scott Meier to help launch WFAN in New York for a while, and has been the voice of the Indiana Pacers since the early nineties.

Sports producer Doug Westerman didn’t get whacked – they kept him around to finish out North Stars season.  In the end, he wound up hanging around, producing Bob Yates and some other shows for several more years, until he went over to KFAN in the late eighties/early nineties.  Today, he’s program director at KTLK, where the Northern Alliance is kicking his station’s ass in the all-important Saturday Mid-Day ratings war.

Dave Elvin got out of radio, pretty much.  One of the best jazz bass players in the Twin Cities, he did some knocking around (including, he once mentioned, a tour or two around the US and Australia backing Gene Pitney).  He got his MA in Journalism at the U of M and moved to Boston, where the last I heard he spent years working as a PR guy for the Big Dig, and even wrote a book on the subject.  We traded emails a couple of years (and two or three hard drives) ago; he’s a freelance PR guy in the greater Boston area.  It sounded like he was doing well.

There were other people, of course; a couple of sales guys, some back-office people, two weekend producers,  an engineer, none of them that I remember by name.  I remember it coming to a total of around fifteen, from a staff of around thirty.

Me?

I took my shot at Pervy LeDouchebag as I got my check and left the building.  “Give me a call when you need  a morning show that doesn’t suck ass”, I said.  He wasn’t impressed.  Not that it mattered in the long run; he lasted a little less than a year at KSTP, before a series of sexual-harassment suits (he hadn’t fired all of his litigants!) and the station’s free-falling ratings (from a 4.4 at one point – the station’s best pre-Limbaugh performance ever – down to the low “2” range) sent his alcoholic butt packing.  I have no idea what became of him, but I wouldn’t bet against jail time and cirrhosis.

———-

I left the building that day feeling completely hollowed out.  I’ve only felt that way a few times in my life – all of them involving divorces or breakups. 

I drove back to St. Paul, had a couple of beers, and started figuring out what I was going to do next. 

(more…)

(Read the whole series)

 In the last installment, we talked about my daughter Bun’s problems with…

 …well, no.  Let me stop right there.  Go back and read Part IV of this series.  The problems were not my daughters!  Oh, the creeping emotional trauma in her life was real enough.  But the schools’ response was too stupid for words. 

Still, the damage it did was real enough. 

And as difficult as her situation was, and as much damage as the schools’ one-size-fits-all mania for following academic “models” to the exclusion of common sense did to her, it was  piker compared to my son Zam’s journey.

(more…)

…what surprises me more:  that some teachers and schools in the UK are softpedalling teaching about the Holocaust and the Crusades to avoid offending Moslems…:

Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Governmentbacked study has revealed.

It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial.

There is also resistance to tackling the 11th century Crusades – where Christians fought Muslim armies for control of Jerusalem – because lessons often contradict what is taught in local mosques.

[A British government study] found some teachers are dropping courses covering the Holocaust at the earliest opportunity over fears Muslim pupils might express anti-Semitic and anti-Israel reactions in class. …[another school] deliberately avoided teaching the Crusades at Key Stage 3 (11- to 14-year-olds) because their balanced treatment of the topic would have challenged what was taught in some local mosques.”

…or that any schools in the Western World teach any of this stuff in the first place.

I’m not aware of either of my kids being taught about the Crusades at all, or anything about the Holocaust at more than the  most cursory possible level. 

Well, not in school anyway.

25 years ago, Great Britain didn’t cotton to Britons, or British territory, being fodder for thugs and terrorists.  It was 25 years ago today that Argentina invaded the Falklands.  A group of 85 British Royal Marines fought back against 1,000 Argentine Marines and Commandos:

As the [Argentine Marine] LVTP column passed the old airfield, they came in range of [British Royal Marine] Lt. Bill Trollope’s section; he gave the order to open fire.  The LVTPs were each armed with a 12.7mm machine gun that made these amphibious troop carriers a formidable threat to Lt. Trollope and his small section of Marines. Marine Gibbs, armed with a 66mm anti-tank rocket launcher took aim at the lead Argentine APC and opened fire, but missed. An  84mm Carl Gustav round fired by Marine Brown found its mark and stopped the lead LVTP dead. The Argentine marines inside the LVTP were unhurt and quickly evacuated the vehicle. The other Argentine LVTPs now spread out and opened up with their 12.7mm machine guns on Trollope’s section positions. Lt. Trollope ordered a withdrawal back to Government house, happy that at least one of the Argentines APC would not give the Marines any problems in the near future.

Some Brits remember.

The Strib editorial board came out against the cap on charter schools (which we’ve discussed here and here). 

The idea had me scratching my head; the Strib and the anti-charter Minnesota Federation of Teachers are co-bedfellows of the DFL, which is carrying the MFT’s water on this issue.

I figured there had to be a whammy in there somewhere.

Let’s look, shall we?

But limiting charters is not the best way to assure adequate state support for traditional public schools. The larger issue is funding public education programs well enough to allow both traditionals and charters to thrive.

Perhaps a more recent Senate action will make that possible. Although the full Senate adopted a low-ball $496 million increase for education a week ago, it is now debating an income tax increase that would pump in another $400 million.

Well, we could see that coming, right? 

We’ll come back to that.

Still, there are some senators itching to put the brakes on charter expansion, worried that the new schools are hurting regular public school enrollment. They point to a state finance report that identifies charters as one of the state’s fastest-growing expenses.

Which is, of course, rubbish.  Publicly-financed schools of all types – traditional or charter – get paid a certain amount of money for every day every child is in school.  Except that charter schools get a little less of it; charter schools don’t get their parent districts’ supplemental appropriation proceeds, for example.  So keeping a kid in a charter school for a given day – or year – costs the state the state’s taxpayers less than keeping the kid in a traditional public school.

It is true that growth has been rapid; the number of charter students has risen from 10,000 in 2001 to 23,700 today. But that growth has been driven by interest and demand.

Let me digress a moment here; that is a very curious turn of phrase.  Of course the growth is triggered by interest and demand! 

The big question – why is there such “interest” and “demand”?  

And why does the DFL feel the need to choke that “interest and demand” off? 

For 20 years, Minnesota has been a pioneer in offering public school choice, acknowledging that today’s students have a variety of learning styles and needs.

In fact, charters are just part of the menu of educational choices. Out of 800,000 public school students, more than 100,000 attend some type of alternative, contract or charter program — all under the public school umbrella.

Clearly, a significant number of students and families believe in school options.

Again – why do you suppose that is?

But given that it’s the Strib editorial board, I should accept good news where I find it.  For example, they put the numbers in context:

As for cost, stopping the expansion of charters is estimated to save the state about $6 million over two years out of a $13.5 billion education budget.

In other words, one-twentieth of one percent. 

Moratorium supporters do raise questions worth considering. Some school officials worry that programs have been set up just so organizers can go after state startup funds.

But then, there are laws against fraud.  No? 

 A handful of rural groups have said they’ll start charters to stave off much-needed district consolidations.

Let’s stop right there.

Consolidating rural districts is the dumbest thing this state has ever done for education.  In fact, consolidating smaller schools into big, factory-model schools is the dumbest thing this nation has ever done when it comes to schooling.  The simple fact is, rural schools do, statistically, a better job of teaching kids to read, write, do math, learn science and history than big, factory-model schools.  The smaller, in many cases, the better.

Consolidation has nothing to do with educating children, let alone educating them better.  It’s about making the system work better for the system’s sake.

And if the Strib editorial board believes – as they seem to – that an urban parent’s choice is worth protecting (thanks, Strib!), why not that of a parent in a small, rural town who is blanching at the thought of his kids being on a bus for over an hour each way, morning and night – for the dubious privilege of attending a big, prison-like, factory-model school that won’t do as good a job of educating them as the small, rural school they’re losing?  Which the proposed charter school will replicate? 

Indeed, the best way to “save” the public school system – I believe the only way to save it, if indeed “saving” is possible – is to deconsolidate schools, rural and urban.  Dismantle the huge, factory-model schools, with their need for Orwellian security and the chuzzlewitted addiction to “policy” and bureaucracy that do nothing but teach kids that authority is not only uncaring, but stupid (not that it’s not a valuable lesson).  Move the schools out into the neighborhoods.  Make them small – no more than the number of names the principal can remember, ideally.  Move them into the neighborhoods they serve.  Quit segregating by grade level; let older kids teach younger kids.  Live lean.  Focus on the mission – teaching reading, writing, math, science and history. 

Sort of like…well, charter schools.

[Rejection] should befall the charter moratorium when the Senate and House bills land in conference committee. The door should remain open to create innovative schools for Minnesota students.

Well, we ended up in the same place, anyway. 

It was Thursday, April 2, 1987.  And I hadn’t slept at all.

I tossed and rolled about most of the night, pondering the imponderable.

Why did this keep happening to me?

Hadn’t I done my best?

 Why wasn’t I good enough?

Why was this happening?

Maybe if I tried really hard to make things right…?

Screw it.  I’m better than that.  I’ll bounce back, and fast.

God.  God god god god god god.  Why?  Didn’t I work hard enough at it?

Shit.  Shit shit shit shit shit.  How was I going to get by?

I was so close.  I had – well, not everything I wanted in the world, but bits and pieces of it, and the potential for so much more.  Why?

Screw it.  I’m going to show them.

What am I going to do?

You know.  Sort of the same tossing and turning and cold-sweating and wandering wondering you do when you go through a big breakup.  Which was kind of what it was like for me. 

Although I didn’t really know that for a few years. 

———-

Word finally leaked down from Corporate.  They were basically going to whack all but one of the producers, all but one of the news people, all but one of the sports people, and consolidate a bunch of the station’s support staff (scheduling, etc) in the corporate office. 

They were going to replace the producers with a bunch of newbies just out of Brown Institute (the local DJ factory, which still exists, and is still in the business of convincing kids that they can be the next Dave Ryan) – kids who’d be happy to work for their first “big break” at $4.25 an hour, as opposed to the $6-8 an hour that most of us were getting at the time.

Of course, nobody was saying anything official. 

———-

On the Charles show that afternoon, depression reigned supreme.  I sat in the studio during a commercial break with mid-morning producer John Barnier and Dave Elvin – my senior in terms of time at KSTP, but only on his first radio job (KSTP was #4 for me) grumped about what a crappy deal it was, getting whacked – especially by someone as stupid as Pervy LeDouchebag [*].

I smiled.  “Hell, Dave – until you’ve gotten gassed at least once, you’re not even a member of the fraternity!”.

John had been diced a couple of times; this was my third go-around.  We grinned a grim grin.

Which was one grin more than I had in me at the moment, but you gotta hang on to something. 

(more…)

(Read the whole series)

 There was a time I felt that the biggest problem with public (and much private) education was that it was a “one-size-fits-all” approach to teaching children.  I’ve learned over the years that that is a distant third, of course, but we’ll get to that.

Still, the fact that the goal of public (and most private) education is to jam all the pegs, whether round, triangular, star-shaped or square, into round holes has been a huge problem to my kids and I; realizing it was one of my way points on the journey from public school supporter to implacable enemy.

It goes without saying that divorce is among the most traumatic things that can happen to a child.  Mine were no exception.  Far from it. I won’t go into details of my divorce – what, indeed, would be the point? 

Suffice to say that for the kids, it was another story.

My son – well, I’ll save his story for another day.

(more…)

Lori Sturdevant observes the anniversary of Minnesota’s Special Education Act – the government effort that started the series of programs that currently…

…well, let’s get back to that.

Sturdevant – as reliable a flak for the “no new taxes are too extreme!” lobby in the DFL (and those parts of the Minnesota Republican Party that were indistinguishable from the DFL for most of 40 years) starts by talking with former governor Al Quie:

He’s the only surviving member of the eight-legislator interim study commission appointed in 1955 “to make a complete study and investigate the problem of handicapped children.”I was a green, wet-behind-the-ears, eager-to-learn state senator,” Quie recalled last week. But the 31-year-old farmer from Dennison had caught the attention of a fellow member of the governing board of the Lutheran Welfare Society and the chairman of the state Senate Welfare Committee, Sen. Elmer L. Andersen.

That’s right. The panel that put Minnesota out front in the education of exceptional children (they soon learned not to say “handicapped,” Quie said) included two future governors. Elmer also recruited his brother-in-law, Sen. Stanley Holmquist, a school superintendent and a future Senate majority leader. This enterprise was loaded with talent.

Yaaaaaay, government!

Because of the efforts of the “best and brightest” of a generation of Minnesota politicians, the problem was solved! Right?

Well, of course not. While exceptional kids remain largely exceptional, Special Education has become yet another political cudgel:

Quie remembers no partisan fight over the program’s cost (this was before the “no new taxes” era.)

It was also long before the era of “everything a kid does that doesn’t fit in with a school, teacher or administrator’s idea of what a kid needs to do to fit in with the program is a ‘handicap'”.

Today, special ed helps kids with genuine handicaps. It also is a dumping ground for every child that doesn’t behave exactly as he or she is “supposed to”. Special ed classes teach kids with real problems and issues; they also are a place where kids that are handicapped by their inability to sit in a chair for six hours in a hot, airless room, march in straight lines, or raise their hands and ask permission for a drink or to go to the bathroom.

And because they’re in those “special classes” to teach them to conform and comply with that model, the school district gets more money. Lots of it. How big a vortex?

Find yourself a parent with a “Special Needs” child with a mild “Educational Behavioral Disorder” (EBD); ask them what sort of “assistance” they’re getting from the district. Then, ask them how easy it is to get the “assistance” to stop.

Hint; you can’t. If the school district were truly burdened by having kids with mild problems sitting in “special” classes, they’d be eager to cycle kids with small, manageable problems back out of special ed, to free up the funding. Right?

If special ed funding were a zero-sum situation, sure. But it’s not. Every kid that gets designated “special ed” triggers an entitlement of money, and that entitlement remains as long as that child is considered “special”. There is no incentive for the school district to get the kid out of special ed. Ever.

It’s a cash cow. And a political cudgel:

Amazing what 50 years of inflation does, isn’t it? It’s almost as amazing as what has happened to school district budgets since Gov. Tim Pawlenty and the Legislature removed inflation from the special-ed funding formula in 2003.

The state’s share of special-education funding now averages about 40 percent, and it’s dropping. The feds pay another 14 percent — despite their long-ignored promise to pay 40 percent. That means that in virtually every Minnesota school district, funds intended to reduce class sizes, buy materials or pay for extracurricular programs are now being used for special ed.

Keep that trend going, and special education will be doomed to political trouble in the state of its birth. Already, said Senate E-12 funding chairman LeRoy Stumpf, school superintendents tell him they are reluctant to disclose how much they are spending on special ed, for fear of a citizen backlash.

Perhaps – if you removed the sentimental syrup that Sturdevant pours over the story, with her reminiscences of politicans’ salad days and the “golden age” of Minnesota politics, where DFLers and Republicans united to act like DFLers – we could start talking about the grounds for that backlash. Special Ed is both a dumping ground for kids who don’t conform and comply to demands of an educational model that could hardly be designed worse for many kids, and a bottomless source of extra funding when applied, as a permanent, open-ended entitlement – to kids who are only “special” because they don’t color inside the lines, figuratively speaking.

Perhaps it’s time for that backlash to happen.

If you come to a Minnesota Organization of Bloggers (MOB) party (of which one is shortly due!), you almost feel like you’ve stepped into a Mob party; you hardly ever hear a real name.  Fishsticks, Bogus, Elder, Saint, Rocket, Flash, Swiftee, Swede, Wingman, Trunk, Atomizer, Foot, Dementee, Triple-A – almost everyone seems like they have a nickname.  In many cases, I don’t know the name behind the nickname.

For example, I have been reading Kool Aid Report for almost three years now, nearly every day – and it wasn’t until today that I had a real name to associate with Learned Foot.

It’s almost strange – especially given that I’m one of the few MOB bloggers who has never used a nickname or pseudonym.

Well, as far as you know, anyway.

Some of my most enduring memories of summer as a child – between probably ages six and ten, at least – in North Dakota in the early seventies:  the smell of dinner at my Grandma’s place as we all sat with her and watched Lawrence Welk and then Wonderful World of Disney; the taste of Randy’s Hamburgers (a small midwestern chain that made White Castle look like haute cuisine, and was the only fast-food place in Jamestown back then); and, above all, the voice of Herb Carneal broadcasting the Twins games that Dad listened to all summer on a green, Emerson portable radio in the back yard as he did one project or another. 

I’ve mentioned this to hundreds of people over the year, and I know I’m not the only one for whom Herb Carneal was the sound of summer on the Great Plains. 

Carneal died this morning at age 83, and the Twins know where he fits into their legacy:

“This is a sad day for the Minnesota Twins organization and millions of baseball fans across the Upper Midwest,” Twins President Dave St. Peter said in a statement. “Herb Carneal’s voice was the signature element of Twins baseball for multiple generations of fans. Clearly he was one of the most beloved figures in Minnesota sports history.”

He was one of the lucky figures in sports broadcasting – in life, really; the ones who not only carve out a niche, but who make it their own in a way that resonates with generations of people:

Carneal joined the Twins broadcast team in 1962, the team’s second season in Minnesota. He had spent the previous five seasons doing play-by-play for the Baltimore Orioles and before that had worked Philadelphia Phillies and A’s games.

This would have been his 52nd season of describing major league games.

And that’ll retire the side.