I found a record of a night I unaccountably missed a year ago in writing my “Twenty Years Ago Today” series.

I’ve been to a fair number of concerts in my life. Good ones (U2, Saint Paul Civic, 1987; Ian Hunter, First Avenue, 1989; Stevie Ray Vaughan, Riverfest, 1986), fair-to-middlin’ ones (Hüsker Dü, First Avenue, 1987), awful ones (The Butthole Surfers, First Avenue, 1987) – and a few that are drilled into my head as great moments in my life; Los Lobos and Warren Zevon (different nights a week apart at First Avenue, 1991); Bruce Springsteen (several times, but especially on the second night of the Born In The USA tour at the Civic in ’84 and on his greatest hits tour in ’99)…

…and, 21 years ago tonight, Richard Thompson at the First Avenue, touring in support of Across a Crowded Room.

I went to the concert with my usual gig posse from back in that day; my fellow Don Vogel producer Dave Elvin, and his college classmate, whom Twin Citians now know as MPR’s Chief Political Correspondent Mike Mulcahey. It was a chilly night that kept whispering “winter is coming”.

“Rue Nouveau”, a local band led by art-pop-rock stalwart Gary Rue, opened. They were actually really good, although I don’t remember much; I point it out merely to show that I do, in fact, remember they existed.

And then – a set-change and two beers later – Thompson took the stage, playing (as I recall) “Little Blue Number“.

And I’ll have to confess – while I was a huge Thompson fan, at that moment I really only had two of his records – Shoot Out The Lights, the 1982 classic I wrote about at some length last year, and I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight, an equally-classic 1972 album that was my introduction to Thompson and his by-this-time ex-wife Linda. At any rate, I didn’t know an awful lot of the songs, which spanned what was already almost two decades of recorded output.

In a way, it was a good thing; sometimes hearing something for the first time, without preconceptions, enhances the impact. At least, that’s one possibility for why that concert, 20 years later, is still pounded into my head.

The band was one of the most fascinating ensembles I’d seen. Clive Gregson played guitar and keyboard; Christine Collister, about 5’0 and 105 pounds (and five were hairdo) played acoustic guitar and percussion and contributed improbably-big, booming contralto backing vocals along with Gregson (with whom she recorded several albums apart from Thompson); Dave Pegg played Bass, Dave Mattacks was the drummer, and Danny Kirkpatrick sat on the drum riser playing the three-row button accordion.

And, above all, Thompson himself, the most amazing guitar player I’d ever seen. He played a brown Fender Strat, and had a peculiar picking style; most guitar players either play a flatpick (between the thumb and forefinger) or they fingerpick (using their fingers, or, like Nils Lofgren, metal picks perched on their fingertips). Thompson did both – held a flatpick, and also picked heavily with his middle, ring and pinky fingers…

…all of which sounds technical and clinical, and explains nothing about the impact watching him play had on me, standing there, swaying limply back and forth, trying to absorb it all, vowing to repent of everything I’d ever done on the guitar and start over from scratch later that night.

The rest of the setlist? I didn’t know most of them in the first place, other than the ones from Shoot… and Bright Lights, and the titles of some albums (“Hand of Kindness” stood out), so the only thing that still registers, twenty years later, was that it was all amazing. Thompson is either the world’s funniest depressing artist, or the world’s most depressing funny artist; his music swerves from odes to hope and joy (“Wall of Death“) to harrowing trudges through the darkest of nights (“Shoot Out The Lights“) to keening pleas for forgiveness (“For Shame of Doing Wrong“).

Two moments stand out, still, though.

One – very late in the night – was a long, gorgeous version of “Calvary Cross”, the centerpiece of Bright Lights; the lights dimmed, and the song started, quieter and more subdued than the original (it’s the audio track on this Youtube video, although the video itself has nothing to do with Thompson or the song), with Thompson weaving the vocal through his reedy guitar part. Collister and Gregson hummed the background parts from dim backlight as the song – about the unpredictability of a writer’s muse – swelled through the second verse and then through a long, inspired improvisation on the guitar that left me pretty well physically drained.

And then – as the clock closed in on 1AM, and after two encores that left the crowd cheering for still more, Thompson took the stage alone, holding his Strat, and played “End of the Rainbow“, also from Bright Lights, the most depressing song in the history of the English language. It didn’t “clear the room”, per se – he knocked the song dead – but the audience was subdued as the lights came up; they filed out pretty quietly.

Dave and Mike dropped me off at the house. I went downstairs and started on my mission to re-learn the guitar.

For a sense of what the night was like, check out this series of Youtube vids, pulled from a video Thompson released from that tour. Same band, and much of the same setlist.

While I think my parents thought I might grow up to be an academic, I turned off that track bright and early. One of the things that sparked that swerve was the notion that you could – and many would-be professors do – slave away for years and years, and are still not really considered professors until they get “tenure”. Until they got tenure, life was an endless parade of crummy jobs, moving constantly, being treated like (by academic standards) crap.

I preferred the much more stable world of radio.

The point, of course, was that life on the academic track was nasty, brutish, and tenuous – until one achieved that magical state of tenure.

Which was, if nothing else (in theory) a fairly objective state. Either one had it, or one did not, and one usually knew what was required to get it. It was pretty black or white.

Some of life’s issues break out like that – with a black or white answer. Others, not so much.

And with still others, it really depends on how you come to the issue.

———-

Abortion’s never been my biggest topic. The way I figure, if we lose the war on terror, the Planned Parenthood staff and the Pro-Life Minnesota staff are both pretty well screwed. If this nation isn’t secure, none of us will be protesting at abortion clinics; if the nation is prosperous (ergo Republican), people will be either financially secure enough to want the babies, or working too hard to have sex enough to make it an issue.

Make no mistake about it, I’m pro-life. I think abortion is wrong. A pro-“choice” dogmatist will try to read some big pathology about “wanting to control women” into that. It’s garbage, of course; with two teenagers, I realize that my odds of “controlling” anyone are slim to nil.

No, it’s because I value human life and because being pro-“choice” involves a leap of faith that I can’t justify.

That’s right. The “anti-religious” stance on abortion requires the leap.

Bear with me here.

Last week, I was reading Jeff Fecke,writing over at “Shakespeare’s Sister”, your one-stop shop for shrill, skin-deep “feminism”. Now, I’ll admit – I’ve given Fecke a hard time this last year or so; partly due to things like this, sometimes for things like this, and largely for his nonpareil skills as a single-A-league Atrios impersonator.  Sometimes I read, sometimes I ignore.

But since he refers to me (later on), I figured it was worth a read.

My memory was tripped by this Monday quote from Mark Steyn. Ordinarily you’d expect he’d be saying something about how the Muslims have taken Oberammergau,

Given the influence of John Stewart on the left’s sense of humor, in a generation no liberal will be able to dismiss an opposing idea without some sort of labored exaggeration. I may hold a telethon.

But I digress:

but on Monday, he decided to take a break, and instead defend the stalking of a 12-year-old boy and his family:

Michelle Malkin reports that the blogospheric lefties are all steamed about the wingnuts’ Swiftboating of sick kids, etc.

Sorry, no sale. The Democrats chose to outsource their airtime to a Seventh Grader. If a political party is desperate enough to send a boy to do a man’s job, then the boy is fair game. [Emphasis mine]

“Fair game.” Now where had I heard that before?

I’m tempted to answer “the same place the writer learned – or didn’t learn – about context”.

But never mind; we’re about to find out!

Back in May, my friend and then-editor at Minnesota Monitor, Robin Marty, announced she was expecting a child. It was great news for Robin and her husband Steve, and obviously those of us who know them were happy for them.Now, Robin was and is a longtime supporter of abortion rights. Something about women having the right to determine what happens in their own bodies.

Well, let’s cut the euphemism; abortion rights is the ability for women to (depending on your point of view) destroy an inconvenient (or, rarely, dangerous) tissue mass, or destroy a human that can’t quite exist outside the womb yet.

Everyone can “control what happens to their own bodies”; it’s called “wearing a rubber”, “taking precautions”, “being aware that sex has consequences”, or – heaven/goddess/physiology forfend – keeping your clothes on.

The usual response is “sex shouldn’t be tied to having kids”. And it’s there that pro-life and pro-“choice” people split.

We’ll get back to that very shortly.

Anyhow, like many pro-choice women, Robin was still able to enjoy her pregnancy, knowing that even though it was early in her term, the fetus that she carried was going, eventually, to grow into her child.This is, of course, something those of us who are pro-choice get.

I remember that moment back when my daughter was in about her 25th week, when I was almost certain she was going to be a Crock Pot. The funny part was, I felt the same thing about my son!

I’m not quite sure what Fecke means by this; as a pro-life father of two, I most definitely knew my kids were – God or physiology or blind capricious fate willing – going to grow into the vexing, voracious teenagers they are today. Does he really think that there’s something about being OK with abortion that grants some special perspective on rearing children?

I’m willing to chalk it all up to sloppy writing – Fecke is nothing if not reliably imprecise. If, on the other hand, that is what he (or any other pro-“choice” person) believes – well, I’d love to hear more.

Let’s chalk it up to “sloppy writing” and ignore the digression and move on:

I knew that at one month, two months, even four months, my daughter really didn’t exist yet.

Let’s stop right here – since it does, in fact, illuminate the entire difference between the sides in this “debate”.  The overarching question is “when does life begin”; the empirical answer is “we don’t know yet”.  To the pro-life person, the response is “err on the side of life, since life is absolutely sacred”.  To the pro-choice person, it is…

…whatever it takes to support the fundamentally political thesis that undergirds the pro-“choice” movement.  In other words, a leap of faith.

Let’s start at the beginning.

A fertilized egg – without the aid of any medical intervention, either either caring for it or “terminating” it – will spontaneously abort itself, or “miscarry”, about 1/4 of the time.

And in places with no medical care whatsoever – including Minnesota, not much over 100 years ago, during our great-great-grandparents’ lifetimes – a child was 1/3 likely to die in childbirth, or within the first year thereafter.

Thus – without any aid (or assault) from medicine – a conceived egg left to its’ own devices has a 50-50 chance of becoming a living, breathing, independent human being, through a process that exists for no other reason than to create human beings, using physiology that – pleasurable and species-reinforcing side-effects aside – exists purely to create more human beings. Human beings that need some help getting started – a place to quickly evolve, we hope, from zygote to fetus to baby.

To the pro-“life” person, the implication is that one of sex’s consequences is that, if the right sperm meets the right egg, the couple – fella and dame – are entering into something that transcends either of their own lives, much less their own bodies; the creating of another human being, who will – physiology or God or remorseless chance willing – will one day be just like us, only maybe a little better. Because sex has such far-reaching, legitimately life-altering consequences, we alter our behavior accordingly – we abstain (even to the point of abjuring sex outside of marriage), or we are extra-cautious, believing as we do that a “fetus” is something that might not be “viable”, per se, but that is intended to be viable (knowing also that no “fetus” is “viable” until it can hold a job and pay its rent), and which is imbued with a moral significance by the very fact that it is intended to be human one day. Something we have no more right to extinguish for being inconvenient than a hospital has to euthanize intensive care patients (who, indeed, are often no more capable of living outside the ICU than a 18 week old fetus is of living outside the womb.
To a pro-“choice” person, the zygote is a mass of tissue until – at some hard-to-determine point that nonetheless seems to usually swerve to the side of convenience, including up to the moments before birth in all-too-many cases – it isn’t.

In summation: cohesive view about the role of reproduction in life and the ethical and place of the “fetus” in that process, versus belief in a mystical change in state from “tissue mass” to “human” that takes place…when? When the head comes out? When the “fetus” gets past the earliest point medical science has been able to sheperd a preemie to life? When government, in the infinite wisdom of a body of people who eschew studying either science of philosophy for the here-and-now noodling of the law, says it turns into a human?

Given that, wouldn’t it be much more fair to say that “given my attachment to the notion of this mystical unknown threshold, I believed she didn’t really exist yet”. Because you have no objective, empirical measurement – nothing analogous to, say, “it exists”. Such a belief is, objectively, no more grounded in fact than belief in a flat earth or Ron Paul.

And – since this post moves on to talk about thresholds for taking offense at satire – Fecke should be aware that the notion that a fetus “doesn’t exist” is no less objectionable than saying a profoundly handicapped child or a comatose person “doesn’t exist”.

Had my ex-wife suffered a miscarriage, we would have been sad, of course, but I know in my bones that we would not grieve the way we would…well, let me put it this way. I can type “if my ex-wife suffered a miscarriage.” I can’t even bring myself to type out the hypothetical that would apply to my daughter now. The mere thought makes me sick to my stomach. If anything happened to my daughter, a part of me would die, forever. I would never be the same, and I would never want to be. Had my ex suffered a miscarriage? It would have been sad, and we would have grieved for the idea of the child we’d expected.

Which is true, as far as it goes; every day of my then-wife’s pregnancy, I hoped and prayed for her health, and theirs – just as I hope God or blind cruel fate keeps the drunk drivers and diseases and random tragedies at bay for them. I hoped for this before they were born, and as they’ve grown and turned into people with personalities with whom I have three combined decades of history, it’s only grown.

But – this is rather important – that’s a matter of human nature, a sign that you are a fairly normal parent.  One has developed attachments and history with a seven year old; with a “fetus”, there are only hopes.
It’s not an objective metric about the beginning of life.

This is a roundabout way of saying that one can believe a fetus is not yet a person, and still be excited about pregnancy.

Abortion is, obviously, one of the most contentious issues there is. Like many such issues, there is a hard core of 10% on the right that wants it banned and criminalized, and 10% on the far left that wants to make it a civil sacrament. In between, there are an awful lot of shades of belief, including many – myself included – who are fundamentally libertarian, but believe personally that life begins at conception and that a “fetus” – given the fate that God or physiology or remorseless fate has in mind for at least half of them if you leave them alone – is attended with a little more moral gravity than a toenail or a plantar’s wart, and that just because God or evolution or what-have-you has set things up so that that incipient life form needs a female uterus for a few months isn’t a sign of its lack of ethical and moral weight, but a sign of how much weight the whole idea of physiology, sex, pregnancy, reproduction and men and women themselves have in the great scheme of things.

Is it a belief? Yes. Not much different than “a fetus is a blob of tissue until we really want it not to be.

Which ties us, at long last, into the real subject of this post – something that was even more contentious than the abortion issue itself, at least among regional bloggers, few months back:

And Robin was. So like any good blogger, she posted an image of the first ultrasound.

At this point, enter Tom Swift, crazy Minnesota blogger and erstwhile GOP candidate for school board in St. Paul. (I won’t link to him, and if he finds his way back here, Melissa, terminate him with extreme prejudice.) [As good a symbol of gutlessness as I’ve seen, really – Ed] He blogs under the name Swiftee, and he created an image to welcome Robin and Steve’s child into the world:

You get it? Because Robin was pro-choice, she might decide to abort the child she wrote about, so let’s get it some protection.

Not to speak for Tom Swift – a person who truly needs nobody to speak for him – but that is the most overdramatic possible reading of his point.

What was his point? Maybe that any “fetus” – not Robin’s, in particular, or not just hers – might have reason to be nervous, since the same consciousness that decides he or she is important enough to carry to birth can change his or her mind. Or maybe – given the number of people who don’t credit a fetus with “existence” until the umbilical is cut – that given the existence of partial birth abortion the “fetus” is never really safe. Maybe that a mythical, cognitive “fetus”, lacking an objective, hard-wired standard like “Tenure” that’d cause his/her parents (in general, not Rew and Smartie) to consider him/her a real person, isn’t any safer than that non-tenured professor – except the fetus isn’t going to wind up teaching freshman literature at Normandale if he/she doesn’t make the convenience cut.

Caustic, tactless and very, very pointed? Sure. Not that that’s ever really stopped anyone from ripping on commentators before.
But we’ll come back to that.

That’s not the interesting part of the story, though. Swiftee’s image got those of us on the left seething, but we let it go, primarily because we don’t want to give him the traffic. But that seething got back to local blogger Mitch Berg, who styles himself as a “reasonable conservative,” someone who believes in hitting his opponents hard, but fairly. And Mitch’s response to Swiftee was what I remembered:

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”[…]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…

Very Pilate-like, Mitch was. But it was that line — “fair game” — that caught my memory. Mitch styles himself as reasonable, but if you cross out the official hemming and hawing, [I’m official? Who knew? Did anyone catch my title? – Ed] Mitch’s meaning is clear: heck yes, the child of Robin and Steve is fair game. If you can make a political point by attacking the Martys, then by all means, go for it.

Well, that’s one way of looking at it.

Here’s something else I wrote about the whole flap last spring – something that reveals a lot more about my side of this flap than the bit Fecke chose to quote:

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.

One thing that most of us who favor free speech accept as a given is that nobody has a right not to be offended. Many of us – myself included, and the orthodox Catholic Tom Swift even more so – are offended by the existence of abortion, especially the partial-birth variety, via which parents not a whole lot different than Rew or Smartie could decide that the baby, as Fecke noted at the beginning of this post, “didn’t exist yet”.

Did it bother me that Swift took a photo from someone I actually know, like and respect? Of course it did. I like the Martys. I wish ’em the best; I’d be pleased as punch to bring a basket of garf rags (cloth diapers), A’nD and Desenex to the baby shower. I also think that, as people who’ve assumed the role of public figures (when Rew took on the job of editing the local sorosblog “Minnesota Monitor”) they were nuts to put any part of themselves or family life out in public. I’ve been a “public figure” of one sort or another since I started in radio when I was 16; I’ve had anti-semitic death threats (I’m not Jewish), I’ve had stalkers (and still do, although they’re really not very smart ones) – and so I keep my kids, my job, my girlfriends (when I have one) and their kids religiously out of this blog and everything else I write. Partly because anything you do put out there is “fair game”; partly because the concept of “fair game” is unfair.

Tom Swift is also a friend, someone I know and respect – but to call him a “bull in a china shop” is to underestimate a bull’s tact, as least on the blog. He’s the kind of person every pro-“choice” activist wishes would just shut up and go away.

And while I wish that the world – and its agent, in this case, Tom Swift – had left Rew and Smartie’s ultrasound pictures alone, and that this flap wouldn’t have involved two sets of friends of mine (and that puppies didn’t die, for that matter), the fact is that Swiftee was right. It was perfectly-aimed satire – and for left-leaning public figures (as Fecke is) to barber that it’s “tasteless” opens us all up to an endless dissertation about “tasteless” satire that the left defends even more blythely on principle, and with even less consideration, with counterexamples and counter-counterexamples, ad infinitum.

It sucks that it involved people I know.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Fecke post without the jump from out-of-context to unsupportable:

What is happening to the Frosts is not unusual, and not unique. It happened to Melissa and Amanda when they had the temerity to be women with opinions who wanted to work in politics

Who had made a blogging career out of saying some things that were every bit as objectionable as Fecke finds Swiftee, and which a bunch of unpaid conservative bloggers had the “temerity” to point out to people. That’s what we do. To paint Melissa Macewan and Amanda Marcotte as hapless victims is both a crime against context and, oddly, intensely anti-feminist.

It happened to John Murtha, who had the unmitigated gall to be an anti-war ex-Marine. It’s happened over and over, and will happen over and over again.

Just ask Gennifer Flowers!

Mitch was right: there is no line anymore, at least for the right. Everyone is “fair game.”… If they can attack a woman using her own ultrasound records for the sin of being both pro-choice and an excited expectant mother, they will do it.

Leave aside Fecke’s sloppy use of the omnipresent “they”, as if right wing bloggers are part of some monolithic medusa controlled by some central brain, and the irritating victim-mongering. Let’s shoot for honesty, here (on the off-chance that any of Fecke’s audience read this) – nobody “attacked” Robin.

And if the “fetus” “doesn’t exist” as a person yet – that was Fecke’s line, remember – then where’s the attack?

I’ll ignore all criticism, by the way – I think I’ll adopt Jeff’s “I know you’re not really a person” as a defense…

(more…)

Developing.

Not to say that the Dems don’t “get” the heartland, but…:

Stock-car racing fans filled Lowe’s Motor Speedway in North Carolina yesterday, erasing concerns that a political dispute in Washington had erupted into a full-scale health scare at NASCAR events.

Democratic House staffers, who were attending the Bank of America 500 race as part of a fact-finding mission of health and homeland security issues, took the unusual step of getting inoculated against several rare diseases and a sexually transmitted illness.Republican staffers refused the shots, saying they are not necessary. The recommendation also angered some lawmakers, who thought it was insulting to suggest that race fans might be infectious.

I’m tempted to spread a rumor among dems that dragons roam west of the Missouri.  Five’ll get you ten Hillary Clinton’s staff shows up wearing armor and carrying swords.

As Matt Abe notes over at North Star Liberty, pragmatism seems to be the order of the day:

After opposing them while he was a U.S. Senator, candidate Fred Thompson now backs billions in taxpayer subsidies to Archer Daniels Midland and Big Ag to burn our nation’s corn supply for fuel — while domestic oil exploration and petroleum refinery construction have been at a virtual standstill for years, conveniently providing the “crisis” that ethanol has been waiting to solve.

Ethanol may be a scam, but like light rail and SCHIP for all, it wins elections…

…or, more to the point, primaries.  In rural states.

Don’t get me wrong.  I grew up in a rural state.  The notion that America could be run entirely according to coastal urban interests and still survive is comical.  But the classic rural state cliche – rock-ribbed conservatives who send the likes of Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan and Tim Walz to Congress, to bring home all the swag they can frank – is a real thing, which leads to things like the ethanol boondoggle.

…even if it doesn’t solve the problems that it purports to solve, even with a blank check from the public treasury. Just ask Governor Tim Pawlenty — or former lieutenant governor candidate Judi “What’s E85?” Dutcher.

Ethanol’s a no-brainer — for politicians on both sides of the aisle. Tyler would certainly agree.

Sort of like paying your bookie.

Today on the Northern Alliance Radio Network:

• Volume I The First Team – John, Brian and Chad – will shoo the Stroms from the studio and kick things off from 11-1.
• Volume II “The Headliner” – Ed is off on assignment again, but I will be in next, from 1-3.
• Volume III, “The Final Word” – King and Michael will talk Minnesota trash after that until 5PM.So join us on the Northern Alliance Radio Network, 11AM-5PM Central on AM1280 The Patriot, and at Townhall.com!

So git on in here and listen up!

MFB at Nihilist drew my attention to this bit here – about the Wisconsin (…) mom who got her kid high on chiba:

The criminal complaint says the three had agreed to keep the incident a secret, but police received a tip and obtained a court order to seize the video that includes images of the boy…

 Let’s stop here. 

Outrageous?  Absolutely.  These “parents” should be in huuuuge trouble.

But this bit here…:

… wearing a motorcycle helmet and staggering around a bathroom, “in what appears to be a confused and altered state.”

I wonder – has the writer actually had a two-year-old?

Because when mine were two years old, I thought they were high, half the time…

Via the miracle of the IPod, I can actually listen to the Dennis Miller Show. 

My new weekend project: figure a way to altern my DNA so that I can replicate both Miller and Jason Lewis.

DNA replication is, indeed, the sincerest form of flattery.

So now that I have a computer, I did some digging through the office, and found that I have about six old IDE hard drives lying around.  Some of them are stuffed with data (including probably six gig of music files).

Now, opening up the PC and plugging them in, one or two at a time, isn’t the worst way to handle things, but c’mon.  One at a time.  Dude.

So I’m wondering – is there something about IDE the prevents there from being more than three devices on a controller?  Or is there such a thing as an IDE controller and bus that allows more than three?  Say (allowing for a couple of squib disks in the pile) four or five?

“Youth Against War and Racism” wants to help guarantee future war and entrench further racism, by nagging – again – the Saint Paul School Board to restrict military recruiters on Saint Paul school campuses:

Youth Against War and Racism (YAWR), the Twin Cities metro area student group, asks for your support in urging the St. Paul and Minneapolis School Boards to restrict military recruiters’ access to high schools.

Under the No Child Left Behind Act, schools allow recruiters access to schools, but YAWR asks that recruiters be restricted to Career Centers where school counselors can supervise the recruiters’ contact with students. They do not want recruiters in school cafeterias, at sporting and other extra-curricular events or elsewhere around schools and students.

The military has had large presences at School Board meetings in the Public Commentary times, and has been allowed to freely advocate for their position with school boards.

Please come support the students who actually attend the schools and live in the community, in advocating for their position. Also: Please phone or e-mail the School Board in your district with your concerns.

A little bird tells me Superintendent Carstarphen would like this whole issue to just go away – that she’s sick to death of board time being taken up by these yowling little patricians-in-training and the college-age-and-older lifestyle leftists who are basically using them as a mouthpiece (to be fair, I’m jamming that last bit into her mouth – but to her credit, she would, I’m told, rather actually deal with education than this particular vanity issue).
Last time this came up, Swiftee and I went to the meeting and spoke.  If you care about the St. Paul Schools, it’d be great to have some more people there next time.

I think I’d be more surprised if this hadn’t happened:

An anti-semitic message that included a swastika was found etched into the wall of a bathroom at Columbia University on Thursday, just two days after a noose was discovered hanging from the door of a professor at Teachers College.

In a message to the Columbia community, President Lee Bollinger said he was saddend by the second incident of hate in a week.

Not counting Ahmadinejad’s speech, natch.

Red strikes again: 

1. What’s the first thing(s) you read in the morning?  After my email?  Usually Lileks.

2. What’s your favorite guilty pleasure website? I’m not sure that I have many “guilty” pleasures. 

3. What job do you fantasize about having?

Dennis Miller’s talk show.

4. Last movie you saw?

Ahem; South Park, 1999.

5. Last book you read? House to House, David Bellavia – the account of an Army squad leader in the Second Battle of Fallujah.  I liked it so much, I interviewed him.

6. Best show legendary biz/movie star encounter.  There are a couple.  Timothy Leary playfully hip-checked me back in 1986, in the “green room” on the Vogel show.

And back in 1999, after Springsteen’s show at the Target Center, I waited out on Seventh Street by the loading dock until about 3AM for his customary trip out to meet the hardcore fans and get my ancient copy of Darkness on the Edge of Town autographed.  I got to the front of the pack, and handed Bruce the slipcover as Patty Scialfa and Chuck Plotkin looked on in the background.  “I’m such a huge fan, I named both of my kids after you”, I said.  Bruce looked up, seeming mildly alarmed.  “You did?”  

“No, no”, I replied.  “I’m a fan, not a stalker”.  The three of ’em got a good laugh. 

7. Proudest media moment?

Good question.  I mean, I’ve worked in or around the  media on and (mostly) off since I was 16.  I’d say the big ones were:

1. Interviewing Rochelle Olson on NARN
2. Smacking down Marjolyn Bijlefeld of the National Coalition to Ban Handguns on my old KSTP show in ’86
3. This incident from the Vogel show
4. May 27, 1980, at KEYJ in Jamestown – my junior year of high school.  I was in noon-hour orchestra practice, getting ready for graduation the next day.  The fire alarm went off.  Ozone and smoke laced the air as everyone evacuated.  I slipped away from the rest of the group, found the fire chief, got the story (there was an electrical fire, and a woman was trapped in one of the elevators), and called it over to Darrell Williams, the station’s news director.  Got major kudos – heady stuff for a punk kid.

8. Ever had a brush with the law? Describe.

In the winter of 1990-1991, my at-the-time wife and I were flat broke.  We also had no space in our garage, so for one reason or another we ran up like 14 snow emergency parking tickets.  We couldn’t afford to pay ’em – we were donating plasma to buy diapers, for crying out loud.  Unfortunately, I didn’t go to court or anything.

A year later – the day after I started my first decent-paying job as a tech writer – a couple of deputies were waiting for me at home with 14 arrest warrants.  I spent a couple of hours in the lockup, until my at-the-time father-in-law came down to bail me out. 

That was about it.

9. If you got a unicorn what would you name it?

“President Hillary”

10. What does your TiVo think about you?

I don’t own a Tivo.

11. Character of fiction you most resemble?

Not really sure there is one.  I’d like to think Dolokhov from War and Peace, though.

12. Who plays you in your bio-pic?

I’ll shoot for the stars and say John McGinley. 

13. What’s your ringtone?

The one that my cell phone came out of the box with.

My kids’ phones have the “Techno” tone.  I think an ex-girlfriend has some Euro thing, but I haven’t heard it ring in a long time, and may have trashed it.

Oh, and I can’t find my cell phone.

14. Favorite electronic device?

Today?  The IPod I bought – used – two days ago.  I’m finally able to listen to the Dennis Miller show!

15. What do your friends say is your best quality?

Ooof.  Hopefully how I listen, but I have no idea.

16. What do your enemies say is your worst?

My enemies?  As distinct from my friends?  That I crush them mercilessly yet easily.

My friends might say it’s that sometimes I’m pretty cluelessly insensitive.

17.What natural talent do you wish you had?

Domestic talent.

18. What’s your theme song?

“Gloria”, U2

19. Do you believe in love at first sight?

I could be persuaded.

20. When’s the last time you volunteered? Where?

Neighborhood cleanup day.

…that someone out there will take this story…:

Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, claims he converted from Islam to Christianity,

…as proof of coercion or torture?

“Having a quick laugh at your expense”

does not equal

“Having undies in a bunch” or “Melting down”.

That is all.

Go put that on a dozen email listservers.  Hop along now!

Google has yanked a bunch of ads critical of “MoveOn.Org”, because the ads – according to Google – violated the copyright (of a logo that MoveOn otherwise works hard to propagate throughout the entire world at every opportunity – like most public organizations do with their logos).

Foot has had about enough of the double standard, and is doing what he does best; mocking it:

PHOTOSHOP CONTEST!
   

Photoshop this famous trademarked logo:

Here’s my dashed-off MS-Paint effort:

Think you can do better?  (In point of fact, only Ken Avidor could possibly do worse)

Get over to KAR, oil up your copy of Photoshop, and get cracking.

(more…)

…apparently hangs on my every word, writing and utterance.

Thanks, Crayola Boy!  Maybe someday someone’ll give a rat’s ass about what you “write”/”draw”/whatever!

Dream a little dream, little fella!

Hurry on back, Jay.

Last spring, Ed and I covered the ongoing story of Troy Scheffler, a student at Hamline University who was apparently suspended and told to seek mental health treatment after speaking in favor of individual, armed self-defense in the wake of the Virginia Tech mass-murder.

King from SCSU Scholars notes that while some people get it…:

The interim suspension, enforced on April 23, continues in place to this day, according to a press release from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

“Hamline’s punishment of Troy Scheffler is severe, unfair, and apparently unwarranted,” FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. “Peacefully advocating for students’ ability to carry a concealed weapon as a response to the Virginia Tech shootings may be controversial, but it simply does not justify ordering a mandatory psychological evaluation.”

…others – like Hamline University – clearly do not: 

There has been no movement, apparently, since Mitch and Ed interviewed him. I had a chance to talk with Troy before he went on their show and I did not find anything in him that appeared in any way “nutty”.

Beyond that, Scheffler is a concealed carry permit holder in the state of Minnesota; he’s over 21, has passed a background check and a training course, is free of any record of drug or alcohol abuse or violent mental illness, and has never had a cop note that he has a penchant for violence.  He is, demonstrably and statistically, a supremely good risk.

No, Hamline University; it isn’t about his mental health.  It’s about his beliefs:

 But apparently the willingness of a person to argue for concealed carry permits as a way of defending yourself on a campus from a Virginia Tech-style homicidal rage is so far outside Hamline’s experience as to lead to such speculation. And, it would appear, reason to deny Scheffler any form of due process within Hamline’s judicial system.

I’ve continually tried to interview someone from Hamline on this issue.  I will try again.

Does Ramstad have just one foot out the door?

Less than a month after announcing his retirement, longtime U.S. Rep. Jim Ramstad is being asked by national party leaders to reenter the race.Facing Democratic challengers for all three of the congressional seats they hold in Minnesota, Republican leaders have been quietly meeting with Ramstad, a source close to Ramstad has told the Star Tribune.

Ramstad, 61, still plans to retire in January 2009, at the end of his ninth term, according to a statement by his chief of staff, Dean Peterson. Ramstad declined to be interviewed.

It may, of course, be less an endorsement of “moderate” GOP politics, and more a matter of conservation of effort:

Political observers note that while Ramstad’s third congressional district in the Twin Cities’ western suburbs has historically leaned Republican, a Ramstad decision to postpone his retirement could save the cash-strapped GOP campaign committee as much as $1 million to defend the seat, a factor that could be huge in a tough presidential election year.

The fundraising effort certainly needs a boost.

If there’s one event I’d love to try to get to in the Twin Cities’ this weekend, it’s the reunion of the crew of the USS Minneapolis.  It’s likely to be the last one.

But Nick Coleman was there, doing one of those columns he does occasionally – a good one:

They called him “Daisy” May when he was one of 700 sailors — most of them kids — on a heavy cruiser named the USS Minneapolis (CA-36) that survived Pearl Harbor to become one of the most decorated warships in the Pacific during World War II, enduring torpedoes, typhoons and kamikaze attacks, and earning 17 battle stars in 25 engagements…This week, May and his remaining comrades will rendezvous in the city for which their ship was named, holding a final reunion and sounding Taps on the story of “The Fighting Minnie,” and themselves.

“She was the best ship in the Navy,” May said as his shipmates began to gather at the Normandy Inn for their last detail, which ends with a banquet Saturday. “As far as I know, she was the only ship in its class to take two hits from [Japanese] torpedoes and survive.”

The Minneapolis was conducting training exercises off Pearl Harbor during the Japanese attack on Dec. 7, 1941. The crew thought they were seeing smoke from Hawaiian farmers burning sugar fields until they were ordered to break out live ammo. Practice was over.

The war had begun.

The whole thing is worth a read.

I’ve been  highly critical of the NCAA’s drive against Native American-related team names – or, more particularly, names that aren’t overtly degrading (I think Washington could retire “Redskins” without any great fuss).  And while I realize it’s a fine line and an emotional topic, I take schools like UND at their word that their mascot names – the “Sioux” – have no derogatory intent. 

Still, I’m glad to see that the U of M, in enacting the policies of that rigidly ethical body the NCAA, has  observed the highest standards of ethics and logic, declaring with unequivocal moral rectitude that…:

A University of Minnesota policy discouraging the school’s athletic teams from competing against the University of North Dakota in any sport…

Well, while I disagree with the policy, it’s good to see that the U of M is standing for principle, even a misguided principle, and eschewing the path of the weasel – like, for instance, if they’d exempted the big money-maker game against their archrival, a rivalry that is a huge cash cow for the athletic department…

… except hockey will stand.

[SCREEEEEECH]

Um…

So in other words, the U of M will stand by smug, sanctimonious PC policy, except where there’s big money and alumni dollars involved?

UPDATE:  King adds:

One is left to conclude that the University has engaged in the ultimate of cheap signaling.

Brian Lambert – the Major Renault of the Twin Cities media – yaps about the Stribs’ discovery of that thing that most terrifies people like…well, Brian Lambert; the free market.

But first, some things that oughtta scare all of us:

Former City Pages editor, Steve Perry, has been busy tunneling through some juicy news troves as he prepares to launch his much anticipated website, The Daily Mole, (Think: A young, hip, bra-less version of MinnPost.com).

Not sure that I want to see a bra-less Steve Perry.

But I digress. 

In the process, he came across an interesting piece of Star Tribune in-house stategery, (as W* would say) that we felt needed to emerge from behind the Mole’s beta fire-wall to be shared with all of you.

I quote:

“Ridder’s Star Tribune legacy: The newspaper of the very best zip codes.”

By Steve Perry
October 2, 2007

Let’s stop right there.

Brian Lambert and Steve Perry – no Frogtowners, no blue-collar working stiffs, nobody who would seem to have seen the wrong end of a time clock in his entire post-Dinkytown-fratboy lives, they – are yipping about a newspaper, a business, actually selling their product where the money is?

Perry:

Par Ridder may have fallen, but his vision of the Star Tribune’s future marches on. The map shown here (click on the image for a large view) is an internally distributed Strib planning document that identifies the “key zip codes” in the paper’s primary distribution area. Think of it as a visual rendering of the paper’s latest push to shore up its collapsing profits and reshape its news coverage in the most demographically attractive corners of the metro: the affluent, mostly conservative outer-ring suburbs. And if you live in Minneapolis or St. Paul (or any first-tier suburb save Edina), think of yourself as the hole in the donut.

The red sectors on the map also help to make sense of Avista point man Chris Harte’s push for a more conservative editorial page voice in recent months, a development that Brian Lambert and Deborah Rybak have been watching closely at their Rake-hosted media news blog. (Harte’s more notorious diktats have included forced revisions of editorials calling for DOT chief Carol Molnau’s head, and championing a proposed gas tax hike.)

Um, yeah.  The Strib has become a conservative tool.  Just ask…I dunno, a conservative.  Does Steve Perry know any?

I’ll go back to Perry’s bit while I herniate myself laughing:

As one Strib veteran tells the Mole, “The right-wing blog voices that were bashing the paper a couple of years ago, Hugh Hewitt and the rest, have gotten pretty much everything they wanted.

We got a paper that doesn’t say “be gentle” when the DFL says “bend over?”

(shrugs) 

 The GOP wanted the Minnesota Poll gone, and now it’s gone.

Really? 

They wanted to get rid of people like [editorial board members] Jim Boyd and Susan Albright and their editorial policy, and they’ve succeeded at that.

Well, to be fair to all of us conservatives, anyone that supported unbiased, fair journalism should have wanted both of them chased from 425 Portland by a torch-and-pitchfork-bearing mob.   

Now there won’t be editorials about the war and global warming; they’ll write about local issues like zoning conflicts in Coon Rapids instead.

Let’s leave the Strib’s congenital bias aside for a moment; even if they were going to remain a pure DFL flak organ, the fact remains that “local sells”.   

 They wanted the paper to hire a conservative columnist, and they got that.

Over how many dead bodies? 

From here on out, it looks like the Strib becomes the conservative, suburbs-oriented paper, and the Pioneer Press will become the paper of the city underdogs and the blue voters. They may wind up getting pushed more to the left.”

Let’s leave politics aside for a moment, again; the Pioneer Press might just have to to exactly that, since they blew the chance to try to capture the moderate-right-leaning audience that both papers have piddled on for all of recent memory.  If the Strib (and it’s a HUGE if) is actually moving to the middle, the PiPress may have lost its best chance to survive.  Period.

The irony is that the Parmeister worked his magic in St. Paul before turning his talents on Minneapolis. East of the river he frankly declared his intention to turn the Pioneer Press Op-Ed section into “the conservative alternative to the Star Tribune”, all while and blanding-down “news coverage” to those same mythically potent outer suburbs.

The “mythically potent” ‘burbs where most of Minnesota’s growth, and red-ifying, are happening, in other words.

In other words, though shamed by his own malfeasance, Ridder has wrought red across the Twin Cities metro.

Well, maybe he’s not so dumb after all.

(Via Ed and Tracy)

I’m guessing it’ll be Australia:

Doctors plugged an Italian tourist into a drip-feed of vodka to save him at a hospital in Australia that ran out of the medicinal alcohol it would normally have used for treatment.

I’m sure Atomizer’s insurance covers it, too. 

“The patient was drip-fed about three standard drinks an hour for three days in the intensive care unit,” he said.

OK, maybe he’ll need the “deluxe” plan. 

“The hospital’s administrators were also very understanding when we explained our reasons for buying a case of vodka.”

I think every talk radio listener in the Western World would understand.

Still hate ’em.

Posting has been light the last few days, because…well, I’m too tired to blog.

No, nothing debilitating.  I’ve just been burning blowtorching the candle at both ends for a couple of weeks.  That, combined with the change of seasons, means my usual up-at-5AM blogging schedule has been honored only in the breach, pretty much, all week here. 

It’s not like I don’t want to have stuff up…y’know.

But I think I’m getting back on top of my game here.  And there’s tons of stuff to write about – so expect a virtual deluge tomorrow.