The Strib Editorial Board acts like a blindfolded man examining a cow, and declaring what he’s prodding at to be two powderhorns, a dusting broom, a walking cane and a fur rug.

Sometimes a cow is just a cow.

And sometimes a financial scam is just a financial scam.  In this case, it’s the state’s “Alternative Learning Centers” – schools for kids who are having trouble in the traditional school system. 

Today, almost 150,000 — nearly 20 percent of state public school students — go to Alternative Learning Centers (ALCs). But a May 13 story by Star Tribune reporter Jim Walsh looked behind those numbers to reveal some troubling issues.Yes, students are going to the schools in droves, but what happens after they get there? A majority of them never take standardized tests or graduate. A quarter to a half of them are absent most days. So is it good enough that only a tiny number of alternative students are being educated — or are the schools too often holding areas that delay the dropout process for a few years?

The Strib feels about the cow, and finds a wet sloppy thing that it figures is a leather washcloth:

Those and other questions raised in Walsh’s story deserve answers. The state and school districts should do a better job of tracking and evaluating ALCs and students. And more should be done to find effective ways to assess and educate the most challenging students. Tens of thousands of youth are involved; if they fail to get a basic education, their earning capacity and quality of life are imperiled. Moreover, the state’s future workforce and economy will be negatively affected.

It notes a smell – and, in noting “something smells like bulls**t”, comes perilously close to the truth:

Now some observers worry that enrollments have swelled because district officials use the schools as “dumping grounds” for the worst students. There is also concern from some quarters that districts keep the students in the system because of the $200 plus million in state funding they attract.

…but then notices the long legs with the hard ends, and figures it’s part leather dining room table:

One of the original and strongest arguments for the learning centers is that they keep students in school who would otherwise drop out.

They came so close to the truth.

School Funding 101:  Schools get an amount of money for every day a student attends.  If the student is absent – or drops out – that money doesn’t go to the district.

The beast doesn’t like being starved.

Schools have ample tools – including the cooperation of well-funded departments of local County Attorney’s offices – to keep “truant” kids (defined as kids whose absence or tardiness jeopardizes that per diem payment).  But thanks to No Child Left Behind, schools have also become obsessed with test scores.  Students who can’t, or won’t, excel on the standardized tests that have become public schools raison d’etre since NCLB need (although they’ll never say it) to get rid of the problem kids…

…but if those kids drop out of school, the districts lose the per diem that they get for each student attending.  

ALC’s solve this Catch 22, giving districts a place to continue mandatory attendance (and collecting of the per-student per diem, naturally) while firewalling all those inconvenient bad test scores in a place where they won’t be held against all the other schools.  Not unlike a grocery store that hides rotting merchandise under and behind the fresh stuff, except that the “rotting merchandise” is the student body.

  The idea is that with more time and individualized attention, students who couldn’t make it in a traditional school can still earn a high school diploma. Then, after achieving that goal, some will be inspired to go on to higher education.

Except that “extra attention” really doesn’t exist – ALC is basically an unstructured hodgepodge, and graduation is entirely subject (at least in Saint Paul) to the individual students’ motivation to get that diploma – a goal that doesn’t mean much to everyone who is sent there). 

At most alternative schools fewer than 25 percent of the students took the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment; among those who did, only 22 percent passed the reading exam and 4 percent passed the math test.

That’s not good enough. State, district and alternative school officials must work together to evaluate ALC programs and find ways to raise their success rates.

Yeah, that’d be nice – but that’s not the point of having ALC.  And the Strib should know that.

Domino’s Pizza is bad enough. 

And their latest ad – “it takes a wise man to choose between Philly Cheesesteak Pizza and Brooklyn Style Pizza – so we asked the Weismans of Short Lawn, New Jersey” – goes one step beyond the nausea-inducing notions of either recipe with this little line:

MR WEISMAN:  “Cheesesteak!  Have it with a hot cuppa cawfee…”

SCRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATCH

Pizza with coffee?

What unholy beast foisted that idea on the world?

A couple of Saint Paul legislators, operating under the cover of both darkness and mayoral complicity, tried to ram a stealth tax increase through the Legislature:

 Without any public notice or testimony, a Minnesota House-Senate conference committee voted around 3 a.m. Monday to authorize the St. Paul City Council to levy a 3-percent sales tax on food and alcoholic beverages sold in the city’s bars and restaurants, starting Jan. 1. The full Senate then voted early Monday evening to kill out the food and beverage tax amendment, which had been slipped into the big end-of-session tax bill.When word of the tax increase proposal circulated Monday, response from opponents was swift.“We’re already maxed out on our drink prices compared to the surrounding communities,” said Dan O’Gara, owner of O’Gara’s Bar and Grill. “This tax increase could kill the (hospitality) industry in this city.”

The legislation would have increased the tax on beer, wine and liquor sold by the drink in St. Paul to 12.5 percent from the current 9.5 percent. The sales tax on food sold in city restaurants would jump from 7 percent to 10 per cent…The tax was never proposed in a bill, so St. Paul bar and restaurant owners never got a chance to tell legislators how it would affect them, [Minnesota Licensed Beverage Association executive director Jim] Farrell said. “It’s the sleaziest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Mayor Coleman?  Sure, he’s all for it:

While the tax was her idea, Moua said Mayor Chris Coleman and some City Council members vetted it privately. “Nobody likes to impose a tax, but they didn’t object,” she said.

Coleman was tight-lipped about the proposal, but said for the second year in a row the city of St. Paul is looking at a gigantic hole in its budget.

“We’re continuing to work hard for local government aid to deal with our $16 million deficit,” Coleman said, referring further questions about the sales tax measure to Moua.

Coleman sorta summed up the culture shock involved here; he and the Gang of Four extreme liberals who dominate the Council ‘s primary goal is to work for government, as opposed to working for the governed.  The mission, to these people, is to ensure government is sustained by any means necessary.

Even sleazy ones.

 

I got a lot of feedback about my response to Swiftee’s cartoon last week. 

Much of it was negative; some said I should have condemned Swiftee’s use of Robin Marty’s ultrasound.  Simple fact:  I expressed my disapproval.  I don’t agree with using peoples’ children – even those of public figures (yes, Robin’s a public figure) – as material in this little online scrum of ours.  As I noted, I wish Swiftee would have taken a less-personal approach…

…because, other than getting so very, very personal and dragging someone else’s fetus baby into the argument, he’s right. 

 More on that later.

But at any rate, I’ve said I disapprove.  I’m not sure what kind of theatrical garment-rending people expect, but don’t hold your breath – it ain’t gonna happen.  People who’ve criticized my response (or, for that matter, assume a definitive response is incumbent on me) want me to pound the whole thing into a black and white square, when it’s very gray and has no shape.  I’m personally very pro-life, but think that medical exceptions might exist that could justify it, sometimes; I also believe that the issue should be reserved to the states, that Roe was a ludicrous decision that conjured nonexistent penumbrae from the ether, that government governs by the consent of the governed and that means “compromise”, even if we find some of the compromises loathsome (I have a hunch Tom Swift and Amanda Marcotte would both be repulsed by the German or French solutions to the abortion issue, permitting abortions into the first quarter of gestation and then banning it completely afterward), and that partial birth abortion is unjustifiable in every case I’m personally aware of, and could (and in the case of viable fetuses otherwise-normal babies, should) ethically be treated as murder.  I believe that Swiftee was wrong to pick on Robin’s baby, but that someone needs to point out the irony that the little darling that Robin and Smarty will no doubt love intensely and do a fabulous job of raising is not one iota different, physically or morally, than the millions just like him or her that are aborted every year, and that there’s a reason people like Swiftee and, also, me get so exercised that the pro-“choice” movement plugs its ears and goes “nya nya nya” to avoid addressing that reality. 

Make that black and white.  Get back to me when you’ve got it done.

You can quibble about my approach – whatever.  Or you can do what Mark Gisleson did (and does on so many issues):  create your own special world with its own logical, rhetorical and ethical rules all your very own, so that in your mind you win all the arguments and everyone else is all ickypoopy.  Gisleson quotes some unnamed wag who conjures up moral analogies with the lithe suppleness of a German funk band:

In response to Mitch:

Altruism is fighting for a right you do not necessarily wish to exercise yourself.

Thanks for noticing!  I do that all the time; I have fought (literally – like, with my fists) for the rights of gays to not get the shit beaten out of them, though I’m not gay; I fight for the abortion debate to be remanded to the states where it should be, even though I’ll never have one; I fight for freedom of speech (well, I do use that); as the Twin Cities’ foremost feminist, I fight tirelessly even as lesser, more patriarchal minds titter with misguided derision, even though I’m a guy.  A lifelong non-smoker and non-drug user, I fight against smoking bans and oppose the War on Drugs.  I’ve even chided Swiftee for what he did, even though I’m a pro-lifer and I’m not Rew or Smarty and Swiftee’s a friend of mine!

I am, indeed, as altruistic as it gets.

Assholism is fighting for war when you have absolutely no intention of ever laying your own ass on the line, or making even a teensy tiny sacrifice while others see their lives completely disrupted.

Fascinating (no, really), and utterly irrelevant.

Just because Bush answers questions by raising new topics doesn’t mean you get to.

(Side note:  What is the Latin term for non-sequitur, again?  That one keeps stumping me). 

The “new topic” is inseparable from the old topic.  And who died and appointed Mark Gisleson the supreme deity?  I can answer the question in any way that is germane. 

Which is exactly what I’ve done. 

 What Swiftee did is what Swiftee did, and it has nothing to do with chickenhawks or the right to privacy.

 Again – I disapprove of Swiftee making the argument personal.  But I think it’s funny that many of the same people who are gamboling about hollering for Swiftee’s head for getting too personal (but being on point!) tittered and chuckled when the less-talented likes of Ken Avidor and Jeff Fecke put out online cartoons that, for example, misrepresented my fellow conservative bloggers and I (the term is “lied”, actually). 

Silence!

And it amazes me that the local media tries to link to me when I clearly don’t want to be linked to (family friendly media have no business linking to me), but ignores Swiftee (aka Tom Swift, failed St. Paul schoolboard candidate) who, in post after post, drops his pants, waggles his wee-wee, and shits on everything and everyone to prove how loathsome liberals are.

 Well, duh.  Swiftee – firebrand that he is – gets 1-200 visitors a day.  Gisleson benefits from the lefty hive mentality and gets many, many more.  Traffic equals visibility (if you’re a leftyblog, anyway).

(And why is it that leftyblogs and every other DFLer in Saint Paul thinks calling Swiftee a “failed school board candidate” pejorates him in any way?  Shall we call Algore, John Kerry, Mike Hatch and Patty Wetterling “failed candidates?”)

And, since most of the Minnesota rightwing blogs still link to Swiftee, I have to assume that the party of Pawlenty is OK with mocking other people’s fetuses.

Again with the “own special little world” bit; by Gisleson’s insular logic, might we assume that the DFL is OK with Gisleson’s frequent invocations of violence, references to his self-proclaimed past as a labor goon, and references to revolution (which, even though many local conservative bloggers took them out of context, were still kind of dumb?)

Swiftee wasn’t mocking the fetus baby; he was mocking a contradiction he sees in the baby’s parents’ world view.  I think it was excessively personal, and I think Swiftee would have made a much better point if he had not done it.  But while we’re on the subject, how about we talk about that whole “contradiction” thing? 

We can leave the specific people out of it if you’d like.

At any rate; if you want to condemn someone’s actions, do it yourself; I’ve said all that I need to say.

Lori “The One-Woman DFL PR Operation” Stufdevant is watching the meltdown of Larry Pogemiller’s “Happy To Pay!” bloc with the usual near-suicidal depression.

I scarcely have the heart to fisk her anymore.  I feel like I could write everything she’s done this session according to a standard template:

 [pick a DFL legislator] is feeling sad.  Her [pick a program] got vetoed by Tim Pawlenty.

“I don’t know how I’m going to explain this to [a constituency the DFL trots out to elicit tears; women, children, immigrants, the elderly are old standbys],” she told me, barely holding back a tear.

A GOP legislator I know who harkens back to a more responsible, caring, cooperative time in this once-great state agrees.  “Arne Carlson would have never stuck [constituency] in the back.”

The only hope, short of an electoral miracle or a meteor hitting Tim Pawlenty and ushering in a more loving, caring time in this state’s history, is a softening of hearts and grips on the $44,500,000 – a fraction of what this state spends on roads and cops! – to buy office supplies and stationery for this program.

Good luck with that.

Need I say more?

Well, of course I do.  The devil is in the details – and there are always details. 

New ideas that build on an intact government-services infrastructure were stopped by evidence that Minnesota doesn’t have one anymore.

Lori Sturdevant would have you believe that Tim Pawlenty has destroyed state government?

“I keep hearing that we should be more like business, and that businesses both cut expenses and invest in new things,” said Rep. Mindy Greiling, DFL-Roseville, the House K-12 finance chair. “I don’t know. I don’t think too many businesses let their whole plant crumble in order to improve the landscaping.”

Her analogy would be more apt if the proposed investments were merely aesthetic improvements. They weren’t.

No, they are much less useful: 

…Getting more little kids ready for kindergarten and bigger kids ready for college goes to the heart of this state’s aspirations for its future.

Read back (if you have the stomach or the tolerance for mindless bathos) in Sturdevant’s piece.  She’s talking about early childhood education – a nice freebie convenience for working parents, but something that does very little to “prepare” kids for school (and that’s even if you assume that “preparing a four year old kid for school” is a good thing!). 

Another interesting detail – Sturdevant’s “don’t look at the emperor” approach to recent history.  Remember – the DFL came into this session proposing a feeding frenzy of spending and regulation, ranging from sending state agents to visit and push state programs on new mothers to bringing the full weight of law enforcement to bear on school stadiums’ lights shining into Phyllis Kahn’s windows to giving the franchise to 16 year olds to sending the Attorney General after companies that don’t achieve “social goals” to…

…well, you get the picture.  Or you would get the picture, if you get your news from Republican blogs and not the Strib, anyway.

Because what does Sturdevant say about Our Silly Legislature?

The ideas bandied about this year may not have been right for Minnesota. Other ways of going at the Big Challenge might work better.

Yes, Lori.  “Other ways”.  “Ways” sponsored by people who are not idiots who are drunk on power and awash with a sense of wanting revenge for having been out of power. 

But discussion of all such options ended too soon this session — silenced by an inability or unwillingness either to raise new revenue or to move money away from programs that were hit in 2003. With one day to go before regular-session adjournment, this year’s Capitol story looks to be the triumph of unfinished business over new priorities. That’s not the way to move Minnesota ahead.

No, but it’s a way to keep it solvent and help the powers that be learn a sense of responsibility.

And by “responsibility”, I don’t mean “…to a phony legacy kept alive by people wanting to re-create the DFL’s salad days”, Ms. Sturdevant.

Nick Coleman is happy to pay spend your money for a meaningless party:

Minnesota’s celebration of its 150th birthday in 2008 is shaping up to be nothing special. I’ll bring the cheese. You bring crackers.

That may be all we get to observe the admission of Minnesota as the 32nd state of the Union on May 11, 1858. We can hold it in my garage, if I can get it cleaned up.

Coleman bemoans the fact that our “happy to pay…” legislature hasn’t ponied up enough money for…I don’t know, a party suitable to soothe the collective egoes of people who tie their personal worth to that of their state?  I have no idea.

The sesquicentennial isn’t underfunded. It is unfunded.

That needs to change, in a big way. And in a big hurry.

Um – why?

The commission was authorized by the Legislature in 2005, and the plan was to appropriate $2 million in state funds for the sesquicentennial and to seek $2 million more in private contributions. But legislation allowing the commission to accept contributions just passed a couple of weeks ago, and Gov. Tim Pawlenty — who didn’t include funding for the sesquicentennial in his budget priorities — vetoed a bill that included a belated appropriation.

Yet another reason we need to be thankful Tim Pawlenty won.

That 1958 celebration of Minnesota’s 100th birthday cost $1.1 million, which is $8 million in today’s dollars and amounted to almost $3 per capita. Today, with a larger population, $750,000 amounts to just 15 cents per Minnesotan. Whoopee. Knock yourself out.

The centennial included a historic train that visited 86 of the 87 counties in the state (Cook County had no rail connection), a big parade and a giant statehood celebration at the old Memorial Stadium, plus celebrity appearances at the State Fair, including a visit from Marilyn Monroe.

This time around, we should ask Prince and Bob Dylan to put on a free show on the riverfront, but we’ll be lucky to get Britney to get out of a cab.

Question:  is there any reason a state government that is constantly piddling and moaning about being broke needs to throw a big vanity-fest at taxpayer expense? 

Look. We need a celebration. Not just to celebrate, but to contemplate, too. To think about who we are as a people, how we got here, where we came from (including a candid look at the way that the wresting of the state from the “wilderness” meant disaster and suffering for the Indian tribes already here), and where we are headed.

Ain’t no party like a Nick C party.

 Nick Coleman writes about Minnesota US Attorney Rachel Paulose:

Today, a different list of removals needs another name:

Rachel Paulose.

Her staff is in rebellion. The senator who nominated her is demanding the head of the man who presided over the process that produced her. And the bottom line is clear:

Her appointment to a job for which she was unqualified, and which she has demonstrated she is incapable of performing, was the poisoned fruit of a corrupt process.

 Er, yeah, except none of that is true.

One gets the impression Coleman is “Sturdevanting” – rotely reciting DFL talking points.

Not that he’s a DFL monkey or anything, nosirreebob.

I remember thinking at one point that the best way to discredit Algore and his well-heeled global warming panic machine is to expose people to it by force.

I guess I was right; school kids in Canada are seeing the movie over and over again, and finding it wanting. 

Some of the story reads like Scrappleface:

“One of the teachers at my kid’s school showed it and he even said ahead of time, ‘There is some propaganda in this,’ ” says Tim Patterson, a Carleton University earth sciences professor. “I said to him, ‘You even knew this was a propaganda film, and you still showed it in your classroom?’ ” The weirdest part: It was the gym teacher.”

But no.  It’s real.

First it was his world history class. Then he saw it in his economics class. And his world issues class. And his environment class. In total, 18-year-old McKenzie, a Northern Ontario high schooler, says he has had the film An Inconvenient Truth shown to him by four different teachers this year.

“I really don’t understand why they keep showing it,” says McKenzie (his parents asked that his last name not be used). “I’ve spoken to the principal about it, and he said that teachers are instructed to present it as a debate. But every time we’ve seen it, well, one teacher said this is basically a two-sided debate, but this movie really gives you the best idea of what’s going on.”

Maybe Chad the Elder has the wrong idea.  Maybe rather than fight his PC ‘burb’s showing of the movie, he should demand that people be hauled to the community center in trucks.

 The old saw says “90% of all politics is local”.  That’s especially true in Saint Paul, partly due to a city council system that inherited some of Chicago’s old-boy (and old-girl) clacqueishness, and partly due to its’ system of “community councils”.  These councils – one in each of the city’s official neighborhoods – are elected, more or less (everyone in the neighborhood may or may not be able to vote, depending on the rules) – but as a very general rule, they are the province of people who really really love tinkering with the nuts and bolts of low-level community politics. 

They are also one of the key sources of grassroots political power in Saint Paul.  Which is why the recent takeover (some DFLers say “coup d’etat“) of the Highland Park council by a group of Republicans was such good news. 

Bear in mind – these councils tend to be provinces of DFL orthodoxy, run by career non-profiteers who’ve eked out livelihoods scudding about running petty pseudo-governments below the radar.  They aren’t bashful about using that power to their ends; in my own Midway neighborhood in 1993, an electrician from Highland Park took his life’s savings and opened a gun shop on Snelling Avenue.  The Hamline-Midway Community Council pulled out all of the stops to shut Greg Perkins and Saint Paul Firearms down, carrying on a years-long smear campaign against the businessman in the media.  When neighborhood conservatives mounted a challenge to put some pro-Perkins people on the council board, the council hurriedly organized a campaign to repel the intruders (ethical) and changed its bylaws to gag all board members who disagreed with the board’s majority position or face expulsion (dubiously ethical, cowardly).

The DFLers who hold the power love it, and they hoard it jealously:  a witness to the Highland board voting wrote me to say “By the way, did you know that [Gayle Summers, until recently the council’s paid staffer] was greeting people at the election meeting, telling people NOT to vote for Bill [Poulos, the incoming Republican chair] or Georgia [Dietz, a St. Paul GOP stalwart and another new board member], because they’re “too divisive”?  Hmmmmm. Can an employee of the council DO THAT?”

The “bad” news – if you’re a DFLer who’s part of the city’s heretofore single-party power structure, rolling the log over might have exposed a lot of financial cockroaches:

Newly elected officers at the Highland District Council in St. Paul say the neighborhood group owes thousands of dollars in back taxes and penalties and that its finances are in serious disarray.

President Bill Poulos sent a letter to the group’s board members Thursday saying the Minnesota Department of Revenue recently seized $1,568 in unpaid payroll taxes and that a conversation with IRS officials this week revealed the group owes more than $33,000 in back taxes, interest and penalties dating back to 1998.

“We have serious financial difficulties,” Poulos said. “This is what we know we owe. We don’t know what we don’t know. We suspect it’s considerably more than this.”

I will be following this closely.

I love this next bit of probably-unintended bias:

Poulos was elected board president two weeks ago in a Republican takeover of the council that highlighted increasing partisanship in neighborhood groups.

 “Partisanship”.  When it’s DFLers exercising untrammelled power (even at the petty level of the neighborhood council), the word never appears (see also: everything Lori Sturdevant has ever written).  But let Republicans run a well-organized campaign to get a share of the power, and suddenly it’s a mean, nasty, brutish world (ibid).

Gayle Summers, the council’s lone full-time staffer and one of the city’s longest-serving community organizers, resigned last week.

As one of the city’s 19 district councils, the group is funded in part by taxpayer dollars.

In addition to the taxes and penalties, Poulos said IRS officials have no record of tax returns for the nonprofit organization from 2001 to 2005.

Summers could not be reached for comment. Her husband, Thomas Summers, said she was not home and could not be reached Thursday night.

“We are monitoring the situation and we hope that things work out for that organization and that they can continue to serve the community,” said City Council Member Pat Harris, whose 3rd Ward includes Highland Park.

By the way, parts of the power structure in Saint Paul are showing their true colors.  From an email on a Saint Paul discusssion forum:

>I’m sure that [Summers] could see
> that she is going to have a very inexperienced board
> that will be tripping over itself, saying stupid
> things, getting its nose into places it doesn’t
> belong

I had to ask – where don’t citizens in a democracy “belong”?

From the PiPress story: 

Poulos said newly elected officers began examining the group’s finances once they were able to gain access to the office’s computers. They found unopened mail stuffed in drawers and learned of the Department of Revenue seizure after asking the council’s bank for updated statements.

The group has $12,000 on hand, leaving it unable to cover its IRS obligations, Poulos said. He stressed that the group is not bankrupt or insolvent.

“It’s shocking. No one had any inkling of the kind of errors that were being made,” said Armstrong, who is still a member of the board. “We’re all eager to find a solution.”

Former treasurer John Goering, who is no longer with the group, confirmed he had little oversight over the books.

“I’m very willing to help with what I know, which in truth isn’t very much,” Goering said. “I think I saw two checks in the whole time I was there.”

I will be following this story as much as I possibly can.

Here’s where we can all help out: 

The group has scheduled a public meeting at 7 p.m. May 23 at Hillcrest Recreation Center to update community members and discuss how to proceed.

If you’re a Saint Paul Republican, or just someone who wants to see some accountability in Saint Paul politics, you oughtta show up.  I will be there, come hell or high water.  If you’re interested in showing up, let me know – write me at “feedbackinthedark” at yahoo dot com. 

(Fraters are also watching the story)

Today is Stan Lynch’s 52nd birthday.

Lynch was, of course, the long-time drummer for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – and he has to be the most underrated American drummer in rock and roll history.

Tom Petty:

“Stan was a little younger than us. But he was a very good drummer and he was really conscientious, and he worked really hard. And he sang as well. He sang harmony. He was like our main harmony singer in the days before Howie [Epstein, the Heartbreakers’ long-time bassist, who died of an overdose a few years ago]. He was a powerhouse onstage. He reminded me sort of [like] Keith Moon in a way. He was so powerful I used to say he had this fifth gear that he could go into and just really make everything explode.”

A great, amazing drummer who ably split the difference between a Max Weinberg-like human metronome and a Keith Moon-ish powerhouse.  Sort of an American John Bonham, without the drinking, drugs, and trashed hotels.

Just saying.

Nancy Barnes, Strib Editor, wrote a “Q and A” piece on Sunday discussing the changes at the paper.

I won’t address the whole thing – here it is – but a couple of bits and pieces caught my eye.

 Why don’t you do something about the paper’s political views?

The newspaper and the editorial department are separate. As editor, I have no influence over the editorial pages. I do have influence over the news pages. If you see bias in the news pages, please feel free to call me. We work every day to deliver the news fair and straight. If we don’t, we have failed our readers.

This is interesting; to my knowledge, it’s the first time that an editor at the Strib has acknowledged that the peasants are restless about the Strib’s relentless editorial bias.  With the departure of Jim “Our Paper Is Fair and Balanced, And Only A Republican Moron Would Question Us” Boyd, it’ll be interesting to see if the paper actually starts trying to come to terms with its reputation (which is neither entirely justified, at least in terms of many of the paper’s beat reporters, nor inaccurate) of being a de facto DFL PR shop.

At any rate – Barnes has issued the invitation.  Let’s see how sincere she is.

Getting called “the worst president in history” by The Worst President In History?

Priceless:

Former President Carter says President Bush’s administration is “the worst in history” in international relations, taking aim at the White House’s policy of pre-emptive war and its Middle East diplomacy.

The criticism from Carter, which a biographer says is unprecedented for the 39th president, also took aim at Bush’s environmental policies and the administration’s “quite disturbing” faith-based initiative funding.

Listen to me now and hear me later, Goofytooth:  you were the worst president of my lifetime.  As you phumphered and droned about human rights, you actively connived with the bloodthirstiest regime in history for baldly base political purposes.  

You were, are, and shall always be a morally repugnant scumbag. 

On the plus side, your incompetence and the sheer horror you unleashed upon this nation turned me – at 16, very much a liberal Democrat – into a conservative by age 20.

So I have that for which to thank you.

But that, as they say, is all. 

The Simpsons is running episode 400 tonight. 

Let the trivia geeks have their day in the sun!

 The part I think is the coolest:  the show has literally been around for a generation:

“We’ve got writers now who are so young that they grew up watching the show,” [creator Matt] Groening said. “They’re always reminding those of us who have been around longer that we’ve already done a joke that somebody is pitching.”

However…:

His sitcom, “The Simpsons,” presents its 400th episode tonight, capping 18 seasons with no finish line in sight.

And the characters may just be hitting their stride.

By “hitting their stride”, does the writer mean “the show doesn’t suck anymore”?

Because I think it’s been a couple of years since the show was actually funny.

Please advise.

I got an email yesterday from a friend of mine:

At what point is the line officially crossed.

http://restraininorder.blogspot.com/2007/05/babys-best-friend.html

It would be nice to see those of reason on the right to publicly condemn this type of post.

The link is to Swiftee’s post over at Restraining Order about Robin “Rew” Marty and her husband Smarty’s impending arrival.

Now, don’t get me wrong; Robin’s OK; leave aside the fact that she’s the “editor” of the local Soros sock-puppet astroturf groupblog “Minnesota Monitor”, there’s hope; in fact, of all of the Twin Cities’ leftybloggers, I think she (and perhaps even hubby Smarty) stand a pretty decent chance of becoming conservatives when they grow up – and given that they’re expecting, that might even be happening sooner than we thought. Women without children tend to be Democrats; after they have kids, they tend (statistically) to migrate to the right. There’s hope for those crazy kids.

Swiftee reposted the ultrasound picture (from Robin’s blog, “Powerliberal”), and added:

Robin posted a picture of her fetus, but I noticed something awry right away. Given Robin’s obsession with partial birth abortion, I think that little bundle of cells needs some protection…

A fetus baby with a helmet. It’s kinda funny, if you don’t know the people involved. Still funny when you do, but it makes me a little uneasy.  I generally prefer to keep politics impersonal.  And yet it’s hard to look at, say, this (not safe for work or queasy stomachs; it’s the end-result of a “partial birth abortion”, and it’s horrific) and not want to make it very personal and not-abstract-at-all for those who support it.

So when is “the line” officially crossed? It depends on what you mean by “the line”.

The line of good taste? Swiftee doesn’t just cross that line routinely; he beats it with an axe. Seriously; I get a little queasy when people bring other peoples’ kids, unborn or not, into their humor. Would I rather that Swiftee not have done the cartoon? Sure.

The line of legitimate satire?  Plenty of thud-witted leftybloggers cavil and gambol about like poo-flinging monkeys when, for example, someone who didn’t serve in the military supports the war; while such bleating doesn’t really rise to the level of “satire” (more like “ignorant, illogical japing”), it’s the same thing – they’re inserting their politics into someone else’s personal situation.  I don’t like any of it, really.

Is Robin and Smarty’s baby “fair game” for satirists, given that

1. she put the ultrasound out on her public website, and
2. she and her colleagues from the “Minnesota Monitor” rentablog she “edits” have stumped for abortion on demand and partial birth abortion, and fumed and phumphered when the SCOTUS shot the procedure down?

Well, I’d say “I hope not” – but of course, in the world of internet “cartoonists” (and remember – Swiftee is the Twin Cities’ foremost internet cartoonist, if you leave out “Faithmouse” and “Wapsi Square” and pretty much everyone else but Ken Avidor), pretty much everything is fair game. If there’s an unflattering or embarassing pic of yourself out there somewhere online, it’s going to pop up sooner or later, intended to dink at some belief of yours or another.

So – did Swiftee “cross a line” with his cartoon? What line? Where? In the coarse thrum of the political blogging interchange, I’m not sure there’s a line left anymore; any line one person draws is someone else’s sport to cross, and ones’ best bet is to strictly separate the personal and the public (as, indeed, I do).  The one that civil people try to observe when dealing with one another…

…and, if you’re so inclined, draw your own line.

Which, for me, is this: Congratulations, Rew and Smarty. I’d have not posted an ultrasound pic if it were my kid, but I hope all goes well. For many of us, the morally-disconnected abstraction of the “right to abortion” became a lot more concrete when we had our own kids; abortion was kind of a non-issue for me 16 years ago, too.  But for what it’s worth, I wish Swiftee woulda kept things a lot more abstract – Baaaad Swiftee!  Bad boy! – just as I wish a lot of “pro-choicers” could see things a lot less abstractly.
I’d just as soon everyone leave each others’ kids out of it. They didn’t ask to be included in the discussion.

And that’s really all I have to say about it.

About twenty years ago I was playing in a band. The drummer was the second-youngest of about eight kids from a very left-leaning family. All eight of the kids were very politically aware, and some of them – not the drummer – were quite active. And it was fun; I’d get into long political discussions over all of the issues of the day; the siblings were all pretty sharp, passionately motivated, and had strong opinions.

Including about gun control. They all favored it. I, being at the time a conservative talk show host (who hoped to be right between jobs, any ol’ day now), opposed ’em. Older brother sneered “a real man doesn’t need a gun to protect himself”; he got a good yuck, until I asked if his sexagenarian father would be “not a real man” if set upon by a gang of young toughs.

Anyway.

One evening, not a week after a long argument about guns, the drummer called me. “We gotta go gun shopping”. He’d been mugged while walking down Pleasant Avenue just off Lake Street.

We went to the gun shop. I talked him out of buying a chinese-made AK-47 knockoff, and into a revolver (a Charter .44 Special). We then went to the range and busted off a couple of boxes of ammo – I brought my whole arsenal (a .45 Colt Auto, an 8mm Hakim battle rifle, and a .22 rifle and .22 automatic pistol) along with to get him seriously oriented. He ended up turning into quite the gunny; the last we talked he had the Charter, a .44 Magnum, an SKS, a .303 Enfield Mark IV, a .45 Auto and a Walther P38 his father had brought back from the war.

Proving, as the old saying goes, that “a conservative is a liberal that’s been mugged (and a libertarian is a conservative that’s been audited”).

It happened in Cleveland (from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, via TvM), where State Rep. Michael DeBose, a previously anti-gun Democrat lawmaker, had nearly the identical epiphany while walking around his “transitional” neighborhood:

The loud muffler on a car that slowly passed as he was finishing the walk caught his attention, though. When the car stopped directly in front of his house – three houses from where he stood – he knew there was going to be a problem.

“There was a tall one and a short one,” DeBose said, sipping on a McDonald’s milkshake and recounting the experience Friday.

“The tall one reached in his pocket and pulled out a silver gun. And they both started running towards me.”

“At first I just backed up, but then I turned around and started running and screaming.”

“When I started running, the short boy stopped chasing and went back to the car. But the tall boy with the gun kept following me.

It was a “road to Damascus” moment for Debose:

DeBose twice voted against a measure to allow Ohioans to carry concealed weapons. It became law in 2004.

He who votes last votes loudest.

Every time some nutbar inflicts his mania upon the world with a firearm, you can practically count the seconds until the left will start to try to jam the round pegs of this nation’s law-abiding gun owners into the square holes of the “nut with a gun” meme.  It’s also good sport to predict exactly what they will lie about to try to make that happen.

Alex Gerber in the Washington Times takes a high-profile whack at it. Indeed, it might be safe to say you can tell Gerber is lying whenever his fingers are moving above the keyboard:

Ours is a country, unique among industrialized societies, that has become insensitive to murder.

Nothing unique about our “insensitivity” – murder rates in Russia in the past decade, and Brazil for most of the past several decades, dwarf US rates. 

How else to explain the “American gun culture” that tolerates some 14,000 firearm murders, including 400 children, in 2005 — the last year statistics are available?

 “How else to explain”?  Simple:  a lie and an out-of-context statement.

In few areas is John Edwards’ “Two Americas” meme so accurate as this; there are indeed “Two American Gun Cultures”.  One – the law-abiding gun-owning citizens, the NRA, the people who hold legal concealed carry permits in 40 states – are intensely law abiding, less than 1% as likely to infract the law as the general public.  The other – drug dealers, gang bangers, criminals in general, self-declared islands of immunity to the niceties of American law. 

The “gun murders” in this country are committed by the latter, condemned and in many cases thwarted by the former.

 Guns are easily purchased despite laws about waiting periods and background checks. The Seung-hui Cho story indicates the restrictions posed by the 1968 Gun Control Act are enforced only in the breach.

Again, cynical buncombe.  The system in Virginia had a fatal flaw that didn’t put his involuntary commitment for mental health issues on the public record so that his “Permit to Purchase” could have been flagged.   

Firearm murder rates 100 times higher in the United States than, for example, in Britain or Japan, are stark evidence our gun control laws are a joke.

No, that’s evidence that our murder-control laws are a joke.  And rates of other violent crimes – assaults and hot burglaries, for example – have risen past  US levels in the UK since…

…they banned guns!

Japan is indeed a tranquil country; it is also intensely homogenous, and their people tolerate police brutality on a level that would set the American media and the ACLU aflame with righteous rage were it transposed here. 

Gerber takes a break for lying to be merely stupid:

What is not a joke is the absurd contention of the NRA gunslingers that if the Virginia Tech students had been armed there would have been far fewer victims. When would this powerful gun lobby have our students start arming themselves — at the high school or college level or in kindergarten? No civilized nation legitimizes packing a pistol while attending school.

Untrue, of course; Israeli teacher routinely “pack” pistols at school, to prevent precisely this form of crime.

Gerber’s brand of “logic” is worthy of the Minnesota Monitor, of course; college students are adults, not kindergartners. 

Repeated polls have shown the majority of our citizens favor much tougher gun control laws.

Untrue, of course.  Over the past twenty years, when asked the hopelessly broad question “do you favor tougher gun controls”, a majority answers “yes” – but when asked to go into specifics – the actual “tougher gun control laws” Gerber bleats about – the numbers drop into the cellar. 

President Clinton attempted gun control in 1994 when he banned military type assault weapons that have no sane civilian use, but President Bush allowed this modest gun control measure to lapse in 2004.

And with good reason; in a world where any self-respecting cocaine trafficker can get fully-automatic submachine guns and assault rifles for a black-market song, and where illegal “hot” weapons on the street are available to any punk with $50, the ban was yet another superfluous feel-good measure for bureaucrats who didn’t dare address the real issue – a failed war on drugs. 

Early detection and treatment of the mentally ill is important but is not an adequate answer to firearm shootings gone amok. Mental health specialists are far outnumbered by the mentally disturbed and depressed youth of our country.

 Gerber states this as an absolute.  OK, Alex – why is it not an adequate answer?

The debate over gun control is dominated by the interpretation of the Second Amendment to our Constitution — widely acclaimed as “the finest document ever devised by man.” In the one-sentence Second Amendment, “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right to keep and bear arms should not be infringed,” the key word is security, but not the kind of security that is now relevant to our nation.

Most rational constitutional scholars, including Sanford Levinson and Laurence Tribe, are deserting that interpretation, with the Supreme Court likely soon to follow.

As voiced in the Federalist Papers, the Second Amendment was concerned with the tyrannical kingdoms overseas, which would be “speedily overturned” were the people allowed to bear arms — an “advantage the nation would possess — and serve as a barrier to the despotism of the Old World.”
By today’s standards, crime was no problem in the largely rural New World whose inhabitants seldom locked their doors. Aside from rifles for hunting, firearms played a minor role in everyday life. Unknown in Colonial days were rival gangs engaged in drive-by shootings, drug-related homicide, road rage gunfire and, certainly, students shooting other students.

Again – as usual – patent rubbish.  While the world has changed, the colonists, living as they did mostly in rural areas, were on their own against most of whatever disorder did spring out at them – much as a typical homeowner, downtown office worker or driver is against today’s burglars, rapists and carjackers.   

Alex Gerber, a clinical professor of surgery, emeritus, at the University of Southern California, is a former health care consultant to the White House and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Ah.  Good to see the WashTimes can find a real expert to speak up for the totalitarian case.

While outrages like Columbine and the Virginia Tech massacre are all fresh in our minds as depressing reminders of man’s depravity, it’s useful to remember that whenever one is tempted to ask “can it get any worse”, the answer is usually “it already has been”.

The most horrific schoolhouse massacre in American history took place eighty years ago today in tiny Bath, Michigan, as a deranged farmer, Andrew Kehoe, arranged the most cold-blooded mass-murder of children in American history.

Kehoe arranged not one but three explosions:

1. The first, at his farm, served to draw firemen and rescuers away from the Bath School.
2. The second bomb – 500 pounds of dynamite – obliterated the north wing of the school, killing dozens of children and teachers.
3. The third bomb was in Kehoe’s car; he drove to the scene of his first blast, and detonated it, killing himself and several would-be rescuers.

It was a plot worthy of the most verminous Ba’athist. And it could have been worse; 500 pounds of dynamite under the other half of the school misfired and failed to detonate.

As bad as things get, remember; it’s probably been worse.

Huge news from the Strib, as it finally endorses the rights of fathers – even unmarried fathers – to access to the children they help raise!

For children, it is hard enough when their parents break up. If both adults are engaged with their kids, the situation should not be made worse by shutting one parent out.Last week, the Minnesota Supreme Court reaffirmed the importance of continued parent-child ties. Justices ruled that the former boyfriend of an adoptive mother deserved visitation with daughters he had helped raise.

This is great news!

It’s also baloney.  I changed a few words.  The actual graf in the paper read:

Last week, the Minnesota Supreme Court reaffirmed the importance of continued parent-child ties. Justices ruled that the former lesbian partner of an adoptive mother deserved visitation with daughters she had helped raise.

This issue of parents interfering with their childrens’ other parents’ access to their children – whether as fallout from a divorce or in the aftermath or an out-of-wedlock childbirth – has been an epidemic in our society for over thirty years. 

Don’t get me wrong – if it takes a fashionably-oppressed minority to bring the issue to the editorial page, it’s great news.  It’s just that for every adoptive lesbian co-parent whose parental (or step-parental) rights are being trampled, there are hundreds or thousands of fathers who’ve been dealing with it for generations, now, with fallout that impacts all of society.

A couple of notes, so that you are able to speak credibly on the issue that so many conservatives are holding against Mitt Romney:

• A “machine gun” is an “automatic weapon” (fires like a machine gun – blasting away as long as one holds the trigger) – not a “semi-automatic” weapon (fires one and only one round every time you pull the trigger).
• It’s been illegal for citizens to own automatic weapons in the US since 1934 (one of my commenters noted the legislation:  The National Firearms Act (NFA), cited as the Act of June 26, 1934, Ch. 757, 48 Stat. 1236, as amended, currently codified as Chapter 53 of the Internal Revenue Code, 26 U.S.C. § 5801 through 26 U.S.C. § 5872) unless they get a “Class III” license from the BATFE; these require a stringent background check, equal in most respects to a “Top Secret” security clearance.  In the 70 years this has been the case, there has been one crime committed by a Class III licensee.  It was a cop.
• The 1994 Crime Bill, with the “Assault Weapon Ban” which Romney (and apparently you) support, had nothing to do with “machine guns” – but with “assault weapons”.
• Which are not to be mistaken for “Assault Rifles”.  An “assault rifle” is a rifle capable of “selective fire” (full or semi-automatic), and fires either a small-caliber or low-power rifle round (so they don’t buck out of the shooter’s grasp when firing full-automatic).
• No, indeed, an “assault weapon” has no technical definition whatsoever recognizable to any gunsmith, armorer, or anyone else in the firearms industry.  They are, for lack of a better definition, guns that someone in Congress thought looked like Army Guns back in 1994.
• You asked yesterday on your show – what would I think about my neighbors owning “machine guns” (apparently not knowing that “machine guns” were never part of the 1994 Crime Bill’s “assault weapon” ban.  Simple answer – if my neighbor had my criminal, chemical or mental-illness record (i.e., none), I wouldn’t care if she had a machine gun, a flamethrower, or the keys to a nuclear submarine – because merely possessing a big nasty army gun doesn’t magically make a good person go bad.

Let’s try to bone up on this, Hugh.

UPDATE:  A comenter corrected me on the National Firearms Act, of 1934).

Every once in a while, I’ll relate a personal anecdote in this space.

And, slightly more rarely, someone will chime in “I think that’s bulls**t”.

So – just for the record, and to be taken to the bank: if I write it in this space, and it’s not fairly clearly satire, then it’s the truth.

(While I regret any inconvenience caused by any misapprehension on the part of individual readers in determining what is and isn’t “clearly satire”, it’s not really my or my blog’s problem).

That is all.

Like lots of Americans, including many Republicans, I was of many minds about Jerry Fallwell.

He was one of the boogeymen I held before me as I tried (and eventually failed) ton convince myself to remain a liberal Democrat in high school and college. His “Moral Majority” struck me as…well, basically right about most things, but the group’s name struck me as a bit immodest for my austere Scandinavian tastes.

But he certainly helped focus attention on issues that were and are vital to Christian conservatives. And the media, inflamed by the likes of Jim Bakker and the nearly-irredeemable Pat Robertson, bayed and cavilled about him like he was a pelt they wanted to collect. Many of his worst “gaffes” were taken in a context that was, to be honest, grossly mangled.

I was sitting in a coffee shop yesterday enjoying a rare day off when I heard the news. A painfully austere-looking woman next to me was reading the news on her laptop. “Jerry Falwell is dead!”, she said to me – exhuberantly, breaking into a happy little chuckle. Apparently she assumed that since we were in a liberal neighborhood, everyone she came into contact with would share her elation.
I sat quietly for just a moment, wondering – how do I answer this? That I don’t really giggle over much of anyone dying? That many of Falwell’s stances were reported grossly out of context (as is the norm for mainstream Christian fundamentalists)?

I figured “why not play the gaffe card?”

“Ayep”, I said. “And as a firebreathing Christian conservative Republican, I didn’t agree with everything he said, but he certainly was an interesting character”.

She shrivelled just a bit.

I left it at that.

Miss O’Hara took it a bit further:

As you know, Reverend Falwell passed away today. Like him or not, I am nothing short of appalled by the reactions we are seeing from some folks. I never really followed Falwell, so can’t say much about his doctrine, but there are way too many people spewing incredible buckets of hate toward this man. Yesterday I was unhappy that people actually care about Buttafuco/Fisher; tonight I just don’t understand how we’ve become so narcissistic that we can’t feel empathy for the family of someone who has died, or the deceased themselves. It isn’t as if he were, oh, shooting homosexuals point-blank like Che Guevara or actively planning to wipe another nation or two off the face of the earth like Ahdmadinejad. And even so, they are lost souls too.Nothing prepares me for the hate unleashed by people in our society, even when the object of that hate is suffering or dead or being abused. Certain pockets of our culture have marinated in hate and vulgarity so long they have no capacity to actually care for each other as human beings, no matter one’s creed. We’re no longer human, but just belief systems. Not exactly what God intended.

I look at some of the dimbulb leftybloggers who are erupting in joy today, and all I can feel is depressed.

I love the new Guthrie.  Oh, it’s disconcerting, and when you react to it – inside or out – you feel like you’re playing a part that’s been pretty well scripted out for you by some dweeby little metrosexual architect somewhere, as if you’re part of his artistic vision…

…but at the end of the day, it’s a great place to go to watch not just a play, but to see the world go by.

Inside the building. 

Outside?  A very different story.

The area around the New Guthrie is a dreary, arid place; cold and cement-y in the winter, dry and hot in the summer.  It’s long been one of the most depressing parts of Minneapolis.

The Strib’s architecture beat reporter (for now), Linda Mack, points the finger:

Stand in front of Spoonriver, the streetwise new restaurant facing the Guthrie Theater, and you’ll feel the problem. The cafe’s outdoor tables with their orange umbrellas are inviting, but what lines the street? Parking meters.

No trees are allowed on this part of S. 2nd Street because most of the buildings are historic ones. Trees weren’t part of the original industrial landscape that the St. Anthony Falls Historic District protects, preservationists argue, so trees aren’t allowed today.

That’s absurd. There weren’t sidewalks either when this area between the mills on 2nd Street and Washington Avenue was a giant rail yard. But there are sidewalks now, and people living in the mills and walking the streets. The city should foster neighborhoods that are as livable as possible, and there’s nothing that works better than trees.

But…:

In Minneapolis, the city’s Public Works Department holds more sway than the Planning Department. And despite Mayor Rybak’s push to turn Washington Avenue into a tree-lined boulevard, the nearby streets are wanting.

In Minneapolis, bureaucracy trumps the market. 

Which is a shame, because it’d be nice to walk out of just about the coolest theater in the business onto a street that looks like something other than a Bloomington car lot sans cars. 

Especially since,  y’know, that’s what the market is trying to do, without any tax money needed in the process.

The Miracle On Ice apparently…

…wasn’t:

For the twentieth straight year the Roman Catholic Church and Pope John Paul II have rejected the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey Teams Gold Medal Victory as a bona fide miracle.

“Of course, it’s disappointing,” said teams captain Mike Eruzione. “At some point you begin to doubt yourself whether or not in fact there was divine intervention in that victory over the Soviets.”

The Miracle on Ice has been controversial since TV Evangelist Al Michaels asked his viewers, “Do you believe in miracles?” when referencing the U.S. victory over the powerhouse U.S.S.R Red Army team in a medal round hockey game in 1980. His enthusiastic answer to his own question, “Yes!” converted millions to the hockey team’s cause, testifying that their highly unlikely victory was indeed the result of divine intervention.

Anticipating papal validation of the event, the media quickly dubbed the event as the “Miracle on Ice”. However, Michael’s proclamation that a miracle had just occurred, as well as the media backing, had no authority with the Catholic Church whom must investigate all claims of miracles independently.

I didn’t know the Pope even played hockey.

(Via Red)

Jeff Kouba notes something my daughter and I both caught during 24 last night, when Ricky “Doyle” “Silver Pistols” Schroeder ordered CTU to “set up a perimeter!” to stop the escaping Cheng:

*pause so audience can dissolve in fits of laughter* Do we have even one example of a perimeter ever working on this show?

Indeed, in six years, I think the only thing a perimeter has ever done on 24 is earn overtime pay for LAPD/CHP/CTU redshirt extras.

But it occurs to me – there’s a bit of pop culture fame to be seized here. “Set up a perimeter” is the ultimate sarcastic negator!

Think about it:

• “Patty Wetterling set a perimeter on the Sixth District Congressional seat”
• “Al Franken has set a perimeter around Coleman’s Senate seat!”
• “Minnesota Monitor has set a perimeter around journalistic credibility!”
• “Ryan Rhodes’s lower bowel is a perimeter against noxious emissions”

It works.

That is all.

I’ve gone back and forth with Syl Jones for years.

Oh, let’s be realistic; Syl Jones has written stuff with the complete blessing of the region’s largest media outlet; I’ve responded in my little basement blog.

As noted earlier, I disagree with Jones about 80% of the time; it’s not that I agree with 20% of his columns, but 20% of any given column (as an average) might be something I can get behind.

While today’s column (via Anti-Strib, whose mission would seem to be nearly accomplished) is probably going to push the curve up a bit, Jones remains…

…well, let’s just cut to the column:

Who’re those people traipsing around downtown Minneapolis after 11 p.m. every night? Who’s blocking the sidewalk daring you to cross the street? Who’s calling women “bitches” under their breath for the fun of it? Who’s running like banshees through the skyway? Look — it’s the New Slaves.

The New Slaves come in all colors, all races, both genders. Too many are African-American but that’s nothing new. The New Slaves are defined less by race and more by their failure to discern their own enslavement. They are shackled to a subculture of violence and yet their chains are invisible to them. We who have eyes to see, however, cannot fail to recognize the old signs of an ancient enemy.

Whoah.

The New Slaves chant lyrics to songs that glorify materialism. The New Slaves claim that obeying “the rules” means selling out. The New Slaves hang out on street corners selling drugs, harassing ordinary citizens, and shooting each other on buses. The New Slaves wear T-shirts saying “Stop Snitchin.” The New Slaves celebrate their own defilement.

It’s a right of passage, in fact.

Jones gets to something that’s bothered me for years:

But, let’s be real: The zombies who patrol our urban metroplex are not alone in their disrespect for others. Our entire society is steeped in rude and destructive behavior that is not only accepted but also televised. We glorify Donald Trump, Rosie O’Donnell, Britney Spears, Simon Cowell, Paris Hilton, even the Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho — to name a few — by broadcasting their personal brand of disrespect around the world. The New Slaves may be untutored in the deeper significance of this culture’s foibles, but they’re not stupid. They are learning that it pays to be disrespectful, pays big time, and they are demanding a piece of the action.

For me, the great symbol of this was always…

…Dick Vitale.

Yep, the loud but dimwitted basketball sportscaster whose career peaked in the eighties by bringing a glorification of mindless agression to the coverage of pro basketball; it was around then that the NBA began looking less like a professional sports league and more like an evening at an R’nB club.  It was about that time (and I may be a tad hyperbolic when I “credit” the whole movement to Vitale, but it was with Vitale’s ascendance that I really noticed it) that trash talk became the lingua franca of pro basketball – with football not far behind.

And Jones is…

…right:

When the Masters in our society — the “wealthy curled darlings” as Shakespeare characterized the Venetian upper class — stoop to new behavioral lows and are rewarded by 24/7 coverage, the New Slaves get the message. They are ready to act out with increasingly deadly force to protect their fragile sense of self-esteem.

Feeding a culture of narcissism, self-indulgence and instant gratification to a generation of people addled by the replacement of “Self-Respect” with “Self-esteem” is like keeping a four-year-old on a diet of Captain Crunch.

Oh, Jones isn’t totally right (emphasis added):

The New Slaves, you see, have access to guns courtesy of the NRA and a disgruntled sense of entitlement, a deadly combination.

This is, of course, crap.  The NRA is behind most gun laws that work – the laws that punish gun criminals, as opposed to the worthless palliatives Jones’ fellow travellers shill, which attack only the law-abiding.  I’ll assume Jones doesn’t care enough about the issue to know the facts, as opposed to being a mindless disinformer.  (I’ll allow in advance – I’ve been wrong before).

It is time for a new civil rights movement — with an emphasis on the word “civil” — aimed at freeing our youth from a cultural imperative that preaches death, imprisonment and a profound failure of personal development.

Corporate America, youth leaders, the philanthrophic community — all need to rally around the idea of a) calling out the New Slaves and their Masters and b) setting them free. Mayors, police chiefs, university professors, athletes, pop stars and, yes, the slick Russell Simmons — rap mogul extraordinaire — need to stop hiding behind the mask of libertarian license and help set these young people free by, paradoxically, establishing limits for their behavior.

So far, so good.  In fact, there’s a major political movement that’s been saying exactly that for the past fifty years or so.

Although Jones either doesn’t know, or would rather the uninformed not hear it:

We don’t need the bitter personal invective of a ranting Bill Cosby or the partisan tongue clicking of self-identified conservatives selling a failed Republican agenda.

Syl Jones:  Take careful notes here.

What you propose IS the Republican agenda; getting show-biz to curb its behavior for society’s good; promote individual responsibility (as opposed to the group blame to which so many in what was once called the “civil rights movement” are handcuffed).

We don’t need Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, for that matter. What we do need is something W.E.B. Du Bois specified many years ago:

“It is the trained, living human soul, cultivated and strengthened by long study and thought, that breathes the real breath of life into boys and girls and makes them human, whether they be black or white, Greek, Russian or American.” Not only is this is how we become human, it is how, at long last, we become truly free.

Where have we heard this?

Syl Jones, right as he is in this case, might be mortified to hear it.

(Via Tracy at Anti-Strib, who has a very different take on the piece)