I don’t know about you, but it seems I’m a little behind this week, not only in my writing, but in blowing up busloads of innocent people.
Read the rest of the piece. How dumb is Amy’s target?
She has a PhD.
That is all.
If you make Atomizer the next Ambassador to the UK, he can at least work with the locals to help prevent this sort of embarassment.
The title of this post in the Daily Mail – “When we elevated fatuous bits of female fluff to celebrity status” – hits directly on something I wondered about when I caught about thirty seconds of the Teela Tequila (?) or Kim Kardashian show or some such trifle the other day.
The drip-drip effect of all these empty-heads being paraded before us as beacons of success is that, among women of all ages, even those of us in our 40s who should know better, it is now no longer seen as ironic to be interested in whether or not Kylie has had a face lift, or Lindsay Lohan has or has not checked out of rehab, or totalled her car while drink driving. Or Sienna Miller has said yes or no to Rhys Ifans, or Jennifer Lopez has piled on the pregnancy pounds.
Thanks to last year’s bombardment of the banal, to know and care about these people is now seen as normal.
They’re the flip side of the “Simpson Trial” coin, really; it’s a short leap from the trivialization of murder to the significantization (I know, it’s not a word. Or is it?) of walking wastes of public attention span like Nicole Ritchie.
But Liz Jones notes that there’s hope:
And finally and most commendably the American news anchor Mika Brzezinski, for shredding her script in anger at being ordered to lead a bulletin with yet another Paris Hilton story – a liberating act tantamount to burning her bra, surely?
In the special little world of the left-leaning gimmickblogger, everything’s acceptable – but don’t complain about government!
Cuckling Stool is a leftyblog whose gimmick – a conversation between an dyspeptic, smug, anonymous blogger and his fictional, smarter, dog – has reached about 14:59, dips into the same meme every untalented leftyblogger has been overusing for the past year. Conservatives never write, opine, or climb on soapboxes; no, it’s always “whining”.
Dear God, deliver us from Mitch,
It’s called a “back” button, slapnuts.
the man who thinks that sackcloth and ashes are a fashion statement. Mitch the hot dryer vent of human beings, taking the crease out of your slacks and the curl out of you hair. Mitch, the man who sells a line of custom hair shirts. Mitch . . .
Mommy?
Mommy, is that really you?
We get the picture, Spot. Why the rant?
Because “Spot” learned got a book of handy similes at the Solstice celebration?
Poor Mitch put up a post today lamenting the problems of the core cities:
The inner cities have their issues. If you’re in Minnesota and reading this, you know about them; you’ve either fled them, are paying for them via your taxes, or are – like me – living among them.
Where does Mitch live, Spotty? The near north side of Minneapolis?
Actually, grasshopper, he lives near Hamline University in St. Paul. But Mitch is so put upon, so besieged by something called “local government aid” that he can’t stand it.
Er…so what?
Crime doesn’t stop at Thomas Avenue (and my house had the bullet holes in it, ten years ago, to prove it). And – not to knock the great contributions that efficiency-apartment-dwelling anonymous wackjobs from the Bloomington bring to our society, but those of us who actually live in and pay taxes to the cities we live in have the right to an opinion. At least until Hillary! bans it.
Wait a minute, Spot. I thought that LGA in effect took money from guys like you, Spot, and used it to provide services to core city residents like Mitch. Right?
Well, yes, that’s right.
Actually, that – like pretty much everything Stoop has ever tried to write – is wrong. LGA takes money from the parts of the state that “turn a profit”, and transfer it to the parts that live “beyond their means”.
And, being a Saint Paul property taxpayer, I am the city’s “means”.
Why is he complaining and not you, Spot?
An interesting point, grasshopper. Perhaps it is because Spot recognizes that the entire metropolitan area is a community.
Let me translate that from Platitude to English: two parts of that “Community” have spent three generations addicted to several decades of hare-brained social experimentation, spending every dime they could squeedge out of taxpayers – their own, like me, and everyone else via LGA – to reinforce failure. Some of our neighbors (and more who, like Spot’s fictional owner, live in airless studio apartments and wait for entitlement checks) are “happy to pay” for whatever their betters tell them. On the other hand, “get” the whole “dissent” thing.
Regardless, Mitch, Spot says that you should get out of the house more: clean your garage, shovel your walks, mow the grass; you need the exercise.
Big talk, from a guy who’d seem to live on a diet of flaked-off lead paint chips.
Worthless, played-out Bad dog.
Iraq: a war that the left hates.
Venezuela: A country that the left loves to have around, like that “Che” t-shirt that so many of them keep in the back of their drawer.
Iraq: A dangerous place.
Venezuela: even more dangerous!
Iraq’s and Venezuela’s populations are roughly comparable: 27.5 million versus 27.7 million. In the last three months, there have been 1498 civilian fatalities in Iraq. During this same time, roughly 3000 Venezuelans have been murdered.For the last three months of 2007, a Venezuelan was twice as likely to lose his life to violence as an Iraqi. It looks like its time for Hugo to put more attention on his abysmal security situation and less attention on Hollywood.
Look for Nancy Pelosi to demand a timetable for US withdrawal.
While the Shooties are the premier local blog award ceremony, Dave Mindeman of MnpACTed! is making a game effort at mining the same material from the left.
And I always love crashing other peoples’ parties.
…it is hard to look at 2007 in a very positive light. Despite a very hopeful election swing in the 2006 cycle, we still:
A. Have Iraq stretching out indefinitely.
“…and, damn the luck, improving”
B. Couldn’t get any substantial Congressional legislative changes through.
That’s because, despite the fact that the DFL/Democrats won a bunch of elections, all they got at the end of the day was a bunch of Democrats.
C. Despite big majorities in the Minnesota State Houses, we didn’t get any major legislation outside of a “Pawlenty” approved environmental package.
Ibid.
D. A Bridge fell down.
And that’s a political story…how?
(Oh, I kid. I’m a kidder. Everything’s political these days).
E. And we have a deficit looming….again.
Damn those economic cycles! They make all those spending increases so untenable! We oughtta pass a law!
10. Rep. Marty Seifert — The question about Seifert is… can he make a point without props? Master of the one-liner and the NO vote, Seifert has managed to maneuver his little minority caucus into a potent obstructive force when coupled with Pawlenty’s veto pen. Unfortunately obstruction is all he does — issues of transportation, health care, property taxes, education…. nothing gets accomplished. Seifert is the master of doing nothing — and he does it oh, so well.
Which is, as it happens, about the only option left to him when he’s the leader of a party that’s in an almost-prohibitive minority. (For now).
In other words, he’s a Republican doing the job his voters sent him to Saint Paul to do.
And Democrats just hate it when Republicans act like Republicans, and work toward Republican agendas.
8. SOS Mark Ritchie — Well, well, looks like we are going bi-partisan this year. Ritchie let his ambition get in the way of….smart politics. Always looking for another way to raise money, Ritchie ventured into the forbidden territory of mixing campaign funding with his government job. He truly made Brodkorb’s job way too easy.
Well, to be fair, Ritchie made it easy for all of us. And, lest anyone forget, some of us predicted this.
Still, in spite of his transgression, Kiffmeyer was far worse.
Because she sold, er, what? To whom?
Any ol’ time here.
7. Sen. Dick Day — …Funny how Dastardly Dick hardly ever mentioned immigration during his Senate career
In case the writer hasn’t noticed, Minnesota doesn’t have much of a border with Mexico, nor much immigration enforcement responsibility.
I’m not sure what Day’s position has been, traditionally, on “Sanctuary Cities” or using state resources to enforce immigration laws, but I’m gonna guess neither does the author.
Just a hunch.
6. Rep. John Kline — I have been trying to figure out what it is, John Kline does all day. He takes all of his foreign policy votes from White House memos.
Which was, to be fair, one of the points he was elected on.
He doesn’t hold any district meetings for constituents.
And now he won’t sponsor any 2nd Congressional District funding projects.
Which, inasmuch as he attacked “pork” and “earmarks” in his campaign, in a campaign where the GOP base was audibly disgusted by porkmongering Republicans, is a good thing.
We could stick any mannequin in a uniform up there in Washington and accomplish the same thing. Gasp! You don’t suppose……
…that he’s really Betty McCollum? No, I don’t!
5. Minnesota Majority/Tracy Eberly — …Eberly’s screed about Native Americans titled “Dirt Worshipping Heathens” got a lot of attention and was generally condemned on all sides of the spectrum. It is still on the “Anti-Strib” blog, although some comments have been added to “explain” it somewhat.
15:38 and counting.
Then there is Minnesota Majority, a new right wing group promoting their idea of “values”, which had this on their website:
“Black women, for a variety of reasons, are more prone to underweight babies than are Caucasian and Asian women. It is not surprising that Sweden has a lower infant mortality rate, or that Japan has a longer life expectancy than the United States does. They are nearly racially pure: we are not.”
You won’t find the “racially pure” reference any more; they softened the language but the underlying innuendo remains.
The only “innuendo” is that someone at the MNMajority needs to buy a thesaurus; leave out the waterboarding of context, and they were pretty clearly shooting for “Homogenous”, not “minority-free and all-white”.
Racism is simply not acceptable in any forum.
And digging to create it where it wasn’t intended is right behind it.
4. Tim Pawlenty — Pawlenty’s veto pen has put Minnesota in a quandry.
Also a quandary – although probably not the one the author intends.
Without new revenue…. education, health care, and especially tranportation issues… are not keeping up with the need.
Or, alternately, the “need” is being inflated well beyond this state’s means.
Pawlenty is waiting for the next economic boom to fix it for him but his policies are reducing jobs and economic activity…
A statement that is simply too obtuse to even bother fisking.
.creating deficits and uncertainty. He and the legislature have opposite agendas which is not conducive to compromise.
Lori Sturdevant? What have you done with Dave Minderman?
The DFL has never worked toward compromise. The DFL works toward enacting its agenda, no exceptions; their idea of “compromise” is to get GOP politicians to acquiesce. And the fact that Pawlenty and at least part of the new generation of GOP leadership won’t knuckle under to the browbeating is scaring them silly.
3. Michael Brodkorb — The MDE (Minnesota Democrats Exposed) blogger was #1 last year but moved down this year because his act is getting a little old…Still the main stream media picks up on this stuff and makes everybody comment on it…. so Brodkorb gets his wish. Throw enough mud and some of it is bound to stick.
Alternately – keep eating the DFL’s lunch, and eventually the DFL is going to come home very hungry at supper time.
We have a tie for #1 this year. Couldn’t figure out who was worse, so they will share the “honor”:
T-1: Michele Bachmann: The evangelical and right wing darling lived up to her unpredictable description in 2007. From the Presidential kiss to the “secret” plan for Iraq from Iran,
Which has been less secret lately, since the Iranians have been getting caught all over Iraq moving weapons and Special Forces more efficiently than rush hour on 494.
Bachmann found her way into the news over and over. She has been less controversial lately because she has kept her comments to herself, but she has let her votes do the talking. Votes against SCHIP and for the Iraq War dominate her partisan outlook.
Which, let us not forget, was what she promised in her campaign.
To an even better assortment for ’08!
Paul Schmelzer took understandable, mild umbrage over the “Shootie” award I gave the Minnesota Monitor yesterday.
He might not be entirely wrong. But we’ll get back to that.
Let’s go waaaay back to the spring of ’06.
Back before the Minnesota Monitor even started publishing, I got a tip from a source that said the “Center for Independent Media”, a group that “rented” office space from the George Soros-funded Media Matters for America, was going to be funding “grassroots citizen media” outlets, and was looking for reliably liberal bloggers to write for them. So – going back to the summer/fall of 2006 – I and quite a number of center-right bloggers, in the interest of clarity, started asking the Monitor and its management (at that time, Robin “Rew” Marty of Powerliberal) where the money came from – who, indeed, were the “liberals with deep pockets” that were fronting the Monitor writers’ “stipends”?
For the better part of a year, “we” asked, and asked, and asked again. The Monitor, when it responded at all, said that, appearances aside, the Hungarian-born currency speculator and leftymedia sugardaddy had nothing, nothing to do with the Center for Independent Media or the Minnesota Monitor. We asked the Monitor’s editor; I emailed the Center for Independent Media and asked directly. The CIM didn’t respond at all. Robin Marty went further:
To clarify, the Center for Independent Media is not receiving funding from Media Matters. The only financial arrangement they have is to rent office space.
Cleverly, carefully worded.
Except “Media Matters” wasn’t the crux of the debate; money from George Soros was. Robin’s response was that if one didn’t see an armored car labelled “Soros International” unloading bags of currency labelled “Media Matters” at the CIM offices, it didn’t count!
Never mind that many – especially Joe “Learned Foot” Tucci at Kool Aid Report and this blog’s regular commenter Master of None – did the digging and found the links. The Monitor’s party line, and the line from its supporters, remained unchanged.
And so – given that the definition of “insanity” is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results each time, we moved on, mostly; we took shots at the obloquy and apparent disingenuity of the denials, but figured there were bigger fish to fry. The Monitor’s critics assumed the site was a “Soros” (among many others) front; its supporters stomped their feet and demanded to see the photos of that armored car and those bags of money.
And then, Eric Black went and admitted it all.
Now, I have been unstinting in my regard for Paul Schmelzer and his work at the Monitor. In a region that’s become accustomed to the likes of Brian Lambert as a media “reporter”, Schmelzer has done a great job; he’s head and possibly shoulders above the pack at the Monitor (in some cases, toss in knees or ankles). He took over as editor in August. I think he’s done a decent job – and I freely admit in deference to Schmelzer and his predecessor, Robin Marty, that I could certainly not run a big group-blog like the Monitor.
Schmelzer has noted – in private email to me and in this comment thread in the Monitor, that nobody since August has asked him about the Monitor’s funding, and that he’s being up-front about it.
Which, to be fair to Schmelzer, is true; most of us had given up and settled into our beliefs, pro and con, on the subject.
So Schmelzer is correct in that he is being open about the Monitor and CIM’s funding, albeit under intense questioning from Tom Swift (see the comment section).
But there is plenty of history here. Kudos to Schmelzer for being up-front about it – but, to be fair (to us), it’s not like it didn’t take well over a year of trying, accompanied by a lot of rhetorical abuse and tittering from the Monitor and its defenders, to get to this point.
Does it matter? On the one hand, not really. I mean, I don’t begrudge the Monitor’s staff their paychecks; if you love to do something (and blogging is rarely more than a labor of love), it can be mighty nice to see some payback. And if George Soros or any other fatcats with deep pockets want to spend their kids’ inheritance on propaganda organs – well, it’s their money! I know I’d jump on a check from Richard Mellon Scaife or the Heritage Foundation with both feet. I’d also disclose, completely and immediately, the fact that I had gotten the check, rather than tapdancing and misdirecting and denying the source of my support – I’d just as soon let the reader accurately and completely know, and let them assign or deduct credibility accordingly.
Just as most of us have done with the Monitor.
It’s not that complicated. Or shouldn’t have been, at least.
PS: My wise old grandpa always told me “don’t listen to lectures about “embarassment” from people who seem unable to feel it themselves”.
Words to live by!
Every time Youtube bugs me – for example, when stalkers use it to play out their pathetic little dreams of acting like a “journalist” – I just kick back and think that without Youtube, things like this would never resurface.
I also see this, or especially this, and wonder if I can’t possibly find a copy of my old band’s “Erotic County” – the country version of the Prince classic “Erotic City”.
Maybe someday.
The inner cities have their issues. If you’re in Minnesota and reading this, you know about them; you’ve either fled them, are paying for them via your taxes, or are – like me – living among them.
Minneapolis and Saint Paul are taxed half to death; Minneapolis’ crime rate has fallen from brutally-high to merely ridiculously-high, with a murder rate higher than New York, Boston, LA, San Francisco. Higher, indeed, – ironically, given how Minneapolis’ political, academic and media elites sniff at them – than Mobile, Omaha (twice as high!), Tampa, Jacksonville, higher in fact than all of the major cities in Texas but one (and only slightly off Houston’s pace). Only marginally lower than Chicago. (Saint Paul’s is quite low by major-city standards – 60% lower than Minneapolis – a testament to Saint Paul’s excellent police department, strong neighborhoods, and at least a couple of relatively sane administrations).
The cities are addicts; their drug is money. Nearly four decades ago, the “Minnesota Miracle” enacted the idea of “Local Government Aid”, which as the DFL’s stranglehold on the inner cities accelerated turned into an eternal subsidy of DFL inner-city policy by the parts of the state that actually pay their way. Governor Pawlenty’s cuts in LGA acted the same way as cutting off the heroin acts on a jonesing junkie; the addict went crazy. The body couldn’t get along without the drug; the drug had incorporated itself into the body’s chemistry. City governments had been providing “services” far beyond what their eroding tax based could provide, even as their left-leftward-moving policies drove more and more of the tax base out of the cities themselves. When LGA cuts forced cities to pass the “service” costs directly to their own tax bases, and the cities were forced to pay their own bills – well, you’ve read the headlines and the op-ed pages, right?
And yet, election after election, the DFL stranglehold over the inner city not only deepens, but gets more and more radical; Greens now have a solid foothold in Minneapolis; Saint Paul’s “Gang of Four” ultra-liberal councilpeople is now a Gang of Five. Policies that were madness thirty years ago are commonplaces today.
How did it get this way?
90% of politics is local. And the DFL understood this from the very beginning, and over the past fifty years has extended its reach into every corner of life in the Cities.
Is there hope?
More tomorrow.
…with this blogger.
David Brauer – former Twin Cities Reader (or was it the City Pages? Who can tell anymore?) writer, KSTP-AM morning guy and MPR’s current Sole Voice on the Media, writes in the Daily Mold’s wrapup of the year’s top stories about something I was actually pondering myself over the weekend.
No, not this bit…:
Atrios lovingly labels the mortgage meltdown as a pile of poo, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that while inner-city neighborhoods have been shat upon, those are troubled places used to such muck; the real gonad-shrinking panic is emanating from the petro-enabled Outer Burbosphere, whose overvalued aura of Manifest Destiny may exhibit a steeper downward arc than our own fading American empire.
Many’s the lefty who fantasizes about the burbs’ crumbling and the US joining Sweden among the ranks of “former powers”. Apparently equally many are the leftybloggers who think Duncan “Atrios” Black’s fourth-grade dribblings are quotable.
But I digress: here’s the part I started pondering late last week, myself, when i was writing about the Northstar Commuter Rail line a few weeks ago. A few comments popped up in my comment section that mirrored some things I’d heard from some left-leaning friends of mine:
With the approval of the North Star I actually hopped on MLS last night and looked for homes in Elk River and Big Lake. Down Side, of course, it is crazy Bachmann land. But nice homes and a better price than burbia with a commute that would be very doable on the Rail…if enough people like me consider the move, her days are numbered anyway *smile*
In other words (not to stuff words into commenter, neighbor and pal Flash’s mouth, but it reflects something I’ve heard from other people, so I’m going to use the comment emblematically), once rail transit makes it politically correct for (white, middle-class) lefties to move to the ‘burbs, they’ll flee the mess that three generations of their own party’s policies have created.
Along these lines, Brauer adds:
Wouldn’t it be something if the flipped parts of Minneapolis and St. Paul were some day repopulated by the Hummer-scarred expats of Commuterland?
Indeed, I pondered over the weekend – should Linden Hills, Highland Park and Saint Anthony Park’s upper-middle-class Prius-driving yuppie demo decamp for the ‘burbs to escape the collapsed education system, crime and social ills that their own liberal/DFL machine, system and philosophy have made into untouchable institutions, it’ll leave behind a huge stock of housing at bargain rates – housing that is well-built (compare a 1910’s Edwardian, solid as Churchill’s bunker, with the shoddily-built, cheesily-appointed McMansions that glut the left’s future stronghold), well-situated (sited and built before the left’s tinkering with the market via Urban Renewal, when the free market still ruled demographics) and very, very liveable (as the Twin Cities were before three generations of DFL hegemony messed the place up).
And conservatives – being people who appreciate value over “statements” and “messages” – will go where the value is.
By about this time, the shoddily-mass-manufactured McMansions will of course be decaying into rotting husks, and the suburban high schools will be crime-sodden atrocities, and the DFL will be plaintively begging the prosperous inner cities to bail them out.
As David Brauer notes, things change. As history tells us, the more they do, the more they stay the same.
Tomorrow, there’s going to be a special election in Minnesota Senate District 25. Republican Ray Cox is taking on DFLer Kevin Dahle.
Brodkorb has the latest at True North and MDE:
It is worth noting that Republican-endorsed Ray Cox has raised nearly $40,000 (to be exact – $39,885) for the special election in SD 25 this Thursday.
Meanwhile, DFL-endorsed Kevin Dahle may be embarrassed because his fundraising numbers haven’t been posted on the campaign finance board’s website.
Ray Cox is not, as far as I’ve seen, a solid conservative – but he’s the GOPer that’s showed up. Getting conservatives in office is goal #1, of course (for me, at least), but growing the GOP caucus isn’t far behind.
So if you live in District 25 (Map – PDF alert!) – the Rice/LeSeuer County area – you need to get out to the polls Thursday and make sure you vote early and often. Crushing the DFL candidate in the heart of Tim Walz’s district [SD25 is in CD2? Who knew?] would be a great way to kick off the new year.
Happy New Year!
And you know what that means, right? Yepper, it’s time for the Shooties!
The Shooties have been an annual tradition here at Shot In The Dark for…well, a year, now. The Shooties stand watch over the regional media, alternative media, and political scene, ready to skewer the obnoxious, pretentious, and dumb (and, occasionally, reward the meritorious).
Technical awards were given out at a ceremony at Keegans’ last October.
So, with no further ado, let’s get on with the show!
The Baghdad Bob Award for Holding On To An Absurd Fiction Long Past The Point Of Pathetic: This award goes to the Minnesota Monitor. For the entire year of their existence, they denied – or, more accurately, refused to comment on, and declared all speculation “paranoid” – their relationship with George Soros’ attack-PR firm “Media Matters for America”, saying that there was no reason whatsoever to assume that just because the Monitor’s parent group, the ironically-named “Center for Independent Media”, shared offices with MM4A early in its organizational life, that there was any relationship between the CIM and the left-supporting billionaire.
Until former Strib reporter Erik Black put the qibosh on the “silly” “nonsense”-ical “attack” meme by…confirming it, as he was departing CIM employ and decamping to the MinnPost.
The Daniel Pearl Profiles in Journalistic Courage Award: This year, we award this award to none other than ace “journalist” Jeff Fecke, of the Soros joint Minnesota Monitor, in what will be the first of several awards this year.
While trying to “cover” a John Kline town hall meeting he claimed that that Congressman Kline’s staff had barred him from liveblogging – but then turned around and allowed a group of conservative bloggers to blog away unhindered. He wrote
“Minnesota Monitor had intended to liveblog the event. Unfortunately, while some conservative bloggers were allowed internet access, Kline staffers informed this reporter that I would not be able to take advantage of internet access that had been offered me after inquiry with the Lakeville school district.”
Like a lawnmower going over a gopher, Michael Brodkorb and Joe “Learned Foot” Tucci ripped Fecke’s claim of discrimination to shreds; Brodkorb even scanned and posted the forum’s rules.
Perception remained reality at the MinMoneyitor.
The “Let’s Go Find All The Narrow-Minded Bigots – and Lynch Them” Award for Even-Handed, Detached “Journalism” – Phil Krinkie was a famous tax hawk in the State House for many years. He’s also a great guy – funny, jovial, reasonable, a great ambassador for fiscal conservatism. Lori Sturdevant is a DFL hack whose every column is a bit of “unpaid” flakkery for the left in this state; not only does she never deviate from the party line, she usually is right in line with whatever transient strategy is in current effect. So when she wrote about a conversation with Krinkie, after reciting the entire catalog of DFL talking points about Krinkie, she added “Notice how much more reasonable a zealot can sound when chatting with an old classmate than when performing on the stump?”
There’s reason to believe she wasn’t even trying to be ironic.
The “This Is London” Plaque for Creative “Journalistic” Cribbing – Over the summer, the Minnesota Monitor’s Jeff Fecke got busted for low-grade plagiarism, shoddy attribution, and trying to bluster his way out of being busted for these mistakes with a creative edit or two. His only response? “On the advice of my editor, I have no comment”. Which was pretty much Fecke’s response to every question about his work with the Monitor last year.
The Richard M. Nixon Award for Ethics – Busted for numerous ethical lapses, the Minnesota Monitor – which came into existence trumpeting its “Code of Ethics“, which tells its practicioners to “Admit mistakes and correct them promptly” – didn’t really admit or correct much of anything.
The Joe Isuzu Trophy – This award is given to those who talk a huuuuuge game, and delivery a tiiiiiiiny one.
And the “winner” this year is Minnesota “MNob” Observer, a lawyer apparently licensed to practice law in Minnesota and who writes for about sixty regional leftyblogs, whose analysis of the Olson v. Brodkorb summary judgement, er, flunked with dishonors.
The Minnesota Monitor “Do As We Say, Not As We Do” Award For Grating Hypocrisy – Karl Bremer – dyspeptic anti-Michele Bachmann obsessive from Stillwater – made huge waves when, mirabile dictu, nearly every left-leaning regional website simultaneously tripped onto a month-old, native-American-bashing post at “Anti-Strib”. And while Anti-Strib got ripped pretty soundly by the local Sorosphere (and, let’s not forget, a fair chunk of the regional dextrosphere), there was deafening silence about a comment Bremer himself left on a post at “Dump Bachmann“:
I thought I saw the name Drew Emmer among those arrested with Larry Craig for cruising MSP airport bathrooms for anonymous sex. I could be wrong, but Emmer’s behavior and comments seem oddly similar in both form and content to Craig’s.
There was never a comment from anyone involved in The [decreasingly relevant] Dump, or any other leftyblog outlet, about Bremer’s slander.
Being the darling of the local Sorosphere means not needing basic ethics.
The “Howard Dean” Trophy For Leaving Liberals Screaming and Sputtering: Every year for the last, oh, two years or so, the City Pages – the occasionally brilliant but always reliably hip-“counterculture”-lefty local “alternative” freebie ‘zine – gives two “Best Blog” awards. The “Best Liberal Blog” is generally stridently, constantly political (“MNVolved”, I think, in ’06, although it didn’t survive much beyond the award, and “Clucking Stool” in ’07); the “Best Conservative Blog” has been the one that talks the least about politics. In ’06 it was Nihilist in Golf Pants, and the award seems to have gutted the spirit of the once-prolific stalwarts. But in ’07, the “award” went to Dan Lacey of “Faithmouse”. Perhaps trying to avoid the City Pages “Best New Band” jinx (the “winners” inevitably break up) Lacey turned around and sold the “award” on EBay. It drew sputtering from the usual assortment of left-leaning waxy yellow blogbuildup, but who cared? The quietest blog smackdown of the year, it was also by far the best.
And finally, the big kahuna, the award that started it all:
The Charles Townsend Award – In 1765, British parliamentarian Charles Townsend, in noting the Colonies’ protests against the Stamp Act, said:
“And now will these Americans, Children planted by our Care, nourished up by our Indulgence until they are grown to a Degree of Strength & Opulence, and protected by our Arms, will they grudge to contribute their mite to relieve us from the heavy weight of that burden which we lie under?”
And this year’s winner is: a triple play!
Positively loathsome.
And that’s it for this year’s edition of the Shooties! So until next year, thanks for stopping by, and remember – if you’re in the media, the alt-media, or regional politics, and your head is tightly jammed where the sun doesn’t shine, I’ll be busily writing down the details!
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