Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Diversity proponents say “We need an office that looks like America” meaning an office staffed by people who are Black, Hispanic, American Indian but all carefully toe the line chanting the same Liberal ideas.

 It’s especially annoying in federal agencies, where the “deep state” long-term bureaucrats are all committed leftists who feel emboldened to wage war on conservatives.

 Trump should attack that starting with a tweet “We need a government that THINKS like America” meaning a 50-50 balance of political opinion among staff members, regardless of the color of their skin. 

 It will cause a storm of outrage of course, he’s politicizing the non-political jobs, imposing litmus tests, etc., but that’s already happened so the outrage will be a manifestation of Berg’s Seventh Law.  Politicization was done by the left and we’re seeking to restore balance, as diversity proponents themselves insist is necessary.  After all, aren’t they the ones who say we must have a wise Latina on the court to bring that perspective to the law? Well, then, shouldn’t we have intellectual diversity throughout the administration in proportion to the electorate which, as we know, is evenly divided?

 It would be amusing to watch and who knows, it might just open the public’s minds to the possibility of firing ideologically motivated bureaucrats who are sabotaging the new administration with leaks and resistance movements from within.

 Joe Doakes

Intellectual diversity?

That’s misogynist!

Last week at the hearings on  the “Constitutional Carry” and “Self-Defense Reform” bill, the clown antics of Ross Derp (or whatever his name was) got the headlines.  (Update:  It was Ross Koon.  I regret the error).

But something even more indicative of the anti-gun, criminal safety movement was buried in the background

But first, a quick factual tangent:

Berg’s Nineteenth Law:   It’s time to inaugurate Berg’s Nineteenth Law – one of my list of iron-clad laws of human political behavior.    It’s a law because it is always true.

The law reads as follows:

No Minnesota gun control group has ever made, nor will they ever make, a statement of fact that is simultaneously

• Substantial
• Original, and
• True

OK.  Back to last Wednesday.

Dubious:  Before the hearing, “Protect” MN – the pack of ELCA-coiffed biddies who have “led” Minnesota’s clownish gun control “movement” (speaking physiologically, not politically, here), attempting to undercut the “Constitutional Carry” bill, distributed lists of people who’d been rejected for carry permits to the legislators on the committee.

Erick Lucero, from the solid red Northwest, picked up the narrative:

The organization passed out packets to each representative on the committee that contained names of constituents in their districts who were denied permits. Rep. Lucero’s packet consisted of 61 pages with approximately 15 denials on each page, making a grand total of 915 denials. All of the denials listed Hennepin as the county of denial.

So – nearly a thousand denials in Lucero’s district alone?

Sounds pretty damning!

But…

Lucero quickly noticed a discrepancy.

Lucero’s House District 30B exists almost entirely in Wright County. The only exception is the City of Hanover which is split between Wright County and Hennepin County. Of the 3,200 residents in Hanover, only a quarter reside in the Hennepin County portion.

In other words, “Protect” MN would have you believe that every man, woman and child in the Henco portion of Hanover had applied for a permit and been denied, 1.12 times over.  Every liberal exurban anti-gun zealot, every toddler, every man-jack breathing human in the Henco portion of Hanover!

Lucero says this is a classic example of how the left skews facts.

“The anti-Constitution, anti-Second Amendment, gun grabbers pervert statistics and use false information to to promote their anti-gun agenda,” Lucero said.

Being a sitting legisaltor, Lucero must be at least a little diplomatic.

I have no such restriction.

“Protect” MN/s entire “strategy” is to spout bullshit to fool the uninformed, the gullible, the incurious, the casually-irate, and Joan Peterson.

They are liars who think – hope – that Minnesotans are too dumb to know any better.

Hide illegal aliens in Minneapolis?    No problem.

Parade down the freeway without a demonstration permit?  Here – have a police escort!

Sell a legal product on a day that isn’t “legal” today, but will be in four months?   Incur the wrath of the All Powerful City!

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I read a good quip the other day:

 “Obama policies kill Obama values: if you dither and appease while Russia turns Syria into a charnel house, your commitment to humane treatment of refugees will collapse under the human catastrophe resulting from your fecklessness.”

 Okay, technically it’s not true.  Obama’s policies were expressly designed to fundamentally transform America from the nation I grew up loving into a generic second-tier former imperial power like England, France, Spain or Italy.  Sadly, he largely succeeded.

 But the quip works if you replace “Obama” with “Liberal” because then you get:  “Liberal policies kill Liberal values.”

 Welfare intended to help families, disintegrated families.  

 Student loans intended to create an educated populace where students succeed, leave students ignorant and bankrupt.

 Obamacare intended to make health insurance affordable, made it unaffordable.

 Holy cow – this could become another Berg’s Law.

 Joe Doakes

I have a hunch it’s going to be a big year for Berg’s Laws – old and new.

Last week, Kurt Schlichter discovered Berg’s Seventh Law.

This week?  Satirical dramatization.

I should be getting royalties.

In East Germany in 1991, all it took was one border guard commander to jump the queue and completely short-circuit his communist leaders’ plans to keep communism alive.

Just one cop, opening one gate, and half a century of oppression deflated like a Vikings winning streak.

In Minnesota, we’re not nearly that dramatic.

Jim Surdyk, owner of Surdyk’s Liquor in Minneapolis, decided to open yesterday – four months before Minnesota’s Blue Laws are formally repealed.

The city of Minneapolis will do its darnedest to show them who’s boss, of course.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Former President Obama was furious that President Trump accused him of ordering a wiretap.  A former Obama mouthpiece said:

 “A cardinal rule of the Obama administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice,” said Kevin Lewis. “As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false.”

 No.  Sorry, that’s not going to cut it.  I may have been born at night, but I wasn’t born last night.  I know how this works.  When Guido put a hit on Lucky Louie, The Don didn’t actually order that, he just mentioned that he really needs this problem to go away.  There’s never an outright order, hasn’t been since some guy innocently wondered “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”

 If Obama were innocent, that’s not the way to deny the accusation.  When someone asks: “Did Obama order a wiretap on Trump?” you say “No.”  Unless he did it.  Then you have to weasel around the question.  But not like that.  Like this:

“I don’t believe you can find any evidence of the fact that I have changed Government policy solely because of a contribution.”   

 That’s not to say he didn’t do it, only that he doesn’t believe you can find the evidence that he did it.

That’s not to say there is no evidence, only that he doesn’t believe you can find it.

That’s not to say he didn’t change government policy because of a contribution, only that he didn’t do it solely because of a contribution.

 Now that guy was a straight-up expert at weasel words, Master Class liar.  Obama and his minions are pathetic amateurs by comparison.  Might as well sign the confession and be done with it.

 Joe Doakes

Heh.

Here’s the article I wrote about the history of protest violence being designed to beget violence in response.  Be careful at any Republican events, and keep your head screwed on straight; they want you to react violently.  That’ll cement the media’s narrative.

Via Paul Seefeld, here’s some video from the riots last week at the Capitol:

And:

Here’s ♫ today’s music playlist. 

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talk radio show – is on the air!

Today on the show:

• The Gathering Storm:  the many (smug, entitled, pampered) faces of the toxic left
• Of Walls and Visas.

Don’t forget – King Banaian is on from 9-11AM on AM1440, and Brad Carlson is normally heard on “The Closer” edition of the NARN Sundays from 2-3PM.

So tune in the Northern Alliance! You have so many options:

• AM1280 in the Metro
• Streaming at AM1280’s Website
• Streaming on IHeartRadio
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• Via my UStream video and chat channel.
• Send us an SMS text message – 651-243-0390
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488
• Podcasts are now available; for my show and for Brad’s
• And make sure you fan us on our new Facebook page!

Join us!

But Trump’s first month of employment numbers are pretty darn good.

“GREAT AGAIN: +235,000,” Trump posted on his Twitter account in a retweet of a Drudge Report headline on Friday minutes after the Bureau of Labor Statistics released payrolls data for February showing the U.S. added a net 235,000 jobs during the month.

Gary Cohn, the former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. president who’s now director of the National Economic Council, used the report as validation of Trump’s approach to bolstering the economy, which has included bringing in corporate executives to the White House to press them for hiring commitments and publicly scolding companies over plans to move production abroad.

Like I said, all caveats apply; there are a lot of people out there out of work and off the grid, vis a vis the Bureau of Labor Statistics top-line unemployment nmbers.

But the stats show a rise in pay – which has been fairly absent from Obama’s “recovery” so far.  There is a long way to go, and one month of good news isnt’ “Morning in America” just yet.

My personal jury is still out.  But it’s not a bad start.

What works for Minnesota taxes can work just as well in other areas.

The IRS has trailers full of evidence of their own complicity in targeting conservative and Tea Party groups.

They just don’t want to release them.

So they won’t.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Train got stuck in a snow drift in North Dakota, 25 feet tall and 200 feet long.  Crews tried pulling it out with locomotives and pushing it out with bulldozers.

 

Ended up having to dig it out by hand.

 

That’s a lotta snow.

 

Joe Doakes

I keep telling people about North Dakota winters.

They think I’m joking.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The theory of diversity holds that by adding more viewpoints we get a better result, regardless of how smart the individuals holding those viewpoints are.  Diversity increases group intelligence.

 In practice, if you want a smarter group of people, add smarter people.  Diversity dilutes group intelligence.

 This is not news, it’s confirmation of what we already knew from anecdotal evidence. Adding more people to a committee does not increase committee intelligence, it just takes longer to get nothing done.

 It’s settled science.  You’re not a science denier, are you?

 Joe Doakes

To the left, “settled science” means “comports with our  narrative, so shut up”.

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is checking out the deli at the new HyVee.  Bill GUNKEL, former Republican who is now chairmain of the Inver Grove Heights chapter of “Former Republicans for Ron Paul”, notices him and walks over.

GUNKEL:   Hey, Merg.

BERG:  Hey, Bill.

GUNKEL:  I see that a bunch of you went to The Beast to beg your masters for longer leashes.

BERG:  Huh?  Oh, the hearings for the Stand your Ground and Constitutional Carry bills?  Yeah.

GUNKEL:  You’d think with all the time you spend on politics, “Voting Harder” to try to “change things from the inside”  you’d think you wouldnt have to beg masters to do things like protect yourself or buy things on Sundays, and that at least half of your income wouldn’t be stolen from you by your dear leaders…or is it all just in vain?

BERG:  Right.  Libertarians – some of them, anyway – believe that incrementalism is just a way to rationalize tyranny.

Thing is, freedom rarely goes away in a single stroke, and not once in all of history has it come back in one.  Saying “give me all the liberty now!” is fun and satisfying, but it ignores the fact that tyranny, not freedom, is mankind’s natural state. Any freedom we have – bits and pieces, or all of it – is an aberration, not the norm, in human history.

GUNKEL:  Derpity derp.  Eventually, when the current system becomes unsustainable, we’ll have freedom!

BERG: That is such a cute, utterly faith-based statement.

GUNKEL  Are you mocking me?

BERG:  Not as far as you know.  Look, Bill, here’s the problem; the natural order of things is from order to disorder, from freedom to tyranny, from good to bad.

If you don’t incrementally push the needle up – or if all you do is chant harder and withhold consent harder and snark harder, on the assumption that all you have to do is wait for “the collapse”, which will usher in freedom for everyone – the needle will incrementally get pushed down, further and  further, constantly.

GUNKEL:  So bring on the collapse!

BERG:  Sure!  I mean, provided you think there’s any evidence that in the lack of authority, it’s in humans’ nature to revert to freedom, equality, voluntarism

And SCENE

Earlier this morning at the House Public Safety Committee hearings on the “Stand your Ground” billl, a “pro-bill” testifier erupted in a caracature of a pro-Trump, white supremacist tirade; at one point, he reportedly said it was time for gun owners to return to “lynching” people.

Then he got up and walked out.

He’s utterly unknown to Minnesota’s close-knit 2nd Amendment activist community.

The moment I saw the photo (a screen grab from video),  that voice in my head that monitors stereotypes screamed “Carlton graduate and non-profiteer paid to be a false-flagger”.

Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover.

“He” registered for the event as “Ross Koon”

And, sure enough, searching for “Russ Koon” leads you to a Facebook profile.

And here’s his publicly-visible post:

So he misrepresented himself about being a pro-gunner, and his “testimony” was a “satirical” sham designed to defame people he pretty much hates.

That’s pretty much the whole story, right?

Of course not.  Anti-gun ghoul Joan Peterson tweeted instantly:

Coincidence that the doyenne of Minnesota criminal-safety is right there ready to go with a tweet in support of this bit of “satire?”

But that’s just a clenched old liberal exercising her penchant for overheated hypberbole – right?

Of course not.   Mr. Koons’ pro-criminal-safety pedigree goes back a ways.  Turns out Mr. Koon’s mother is one Mary Koon.  And Mary Koon is a pastor at ultra-liberal Oak Grove Presbyterian Church, and publicly lists as her “likes”…

…Moms Want Action.

(“But” you might say, “that doesn’t make her a member!”.  Perhaps.  On the other hand, it’s pretty much all you need to do to be counted as a member, so we’ll run with it).

So let’s sum it up:

• The scion of one of Minnesota’s white, privileged “elite” liberal families lied about his personal beliefs, in order to…
• Slander gun owners in front of the legislature, and did it…
• …with the obvious, full knowledge of Minnesota’s anti-gun/pro-criminal-safety “elite”.

This was just the most egregious episode in a hearing where the anti-gunners essentially beclowned themselves, treating the hearings like a private flash mob.

Keep up the good work, Reverend Bence!

(Thanks to the crew from MNGOC for all the research on this post)

UPDATE:  From a witness:

He didn’t immediately leave the building. I watched him get hugs and attaboys from several of the anti-gunners present, including the lady in charge of handing out red Everytown shirts.

SCENE:  At the Minnesota State Capitol.  Mitch BERG, laptop in hand, is walking between the House and Senate chambers when he encounters Dorbert AARONSON, chairman of the group “Gun Owners of Minnesota”, a non-profit incorporated in Des Moines, Iowa.

AARONSON:  Excuse me – do you know the way to the Minnesota state capitol?

BERG:  Er – you’re in it.

AARONSON:  Ah.  Sorry.  I just got into Des Moines,

BERG:  Saint Paul.

AARONSON:  Right.  Saint  Paul.  I”m here for a hearing on a gun rights bill.

BERG:  Ah. So am I.  The Constitutional Carry bill.

AARONSON:  Yeah.  We’re supporting the bill that we drew up.  It requires immediate dropping of all firearms regulations.

BERG:   Wow.  Who’s carrying it?

AARONSON:   Nobody has the balls to carry this bill!

BERG:   Wow.  So how’s it ever going to pass?

AARONSON:  It’s not supposed to pass.   It’s supposed to educate the voters.

BERG:   Educate them…that the way to change policy and win freedom is to demand things that are politically impossible?

AARONSON:   You have to have the courage to demand the impossible, and nothing less!  It’s called the Politics of Confrontation, and we are masters of it!

BERG:  Masters of…what?  What bills are you behind the passage of?

AARONSON:   We passed “Shall Issue” carry permitting in 2003…

BERG:  No, you didn’t.  That was GOCRA!

AARONSON:   We passed the Capitol Carry, Silencers, the prohibition against confiscating guns after natural disasters…

BERG:   All of those were the result of GOCRA, MNGOPAC and the MNGOC.  Your group had nothing to do with any of those!

AARONSON:  We educated voters to demand nothing less than everything!

BERG:  But by demanding things that can not ever pass, you open the door for our rights to be further

AARONSON:   Anything less than everything is nothing, and anyone who settles for anything less than everything is a complete sell-out!

BERG:   You mean the legislators bringing the bills today…?

AARONSON:   Sellouts!  Cowards!   Worthless collaborationists!

BERG: So in other words, you and your group are focused exclusively on things that can only be reached incrementally – and you reject incrementalism.  Which means the goals can never be reached.

AARONSON:  Only by people who are worthy!

BERG:  Huh.  But if it can never be reached, and you keep fundraising forever on the issue…

AARONSON:  Pretty sweet deal, huh?

BERG:   Huh.  Yes.  Yes it is.

AARONSON:  See this watch?  It’s a Rolex, wrapped around another Rolex.

BERG:  Pretty cool.

And SCENE.

(NOTE:  Any similarities between the fictional character above and the Iowa-based “Minnesota Gun Rights” are purely coincidental, and probably unintentional.  Honest).

Kurt Schlichter notes that “You Can Tell What Leftists Are Doing By What They Accuse Conservatives Of Doing”

Sound familiar?  Of course it does.

I caught this on MPR last week; arts reporter Marianne Combs’s piece on the new season at the Guthrie, featuring the new “Trump Derangement” theme:

This fall, the Guthrie will stage Lillian Hellman’s “Watch on the Rhine.” The show deals with the rise of fascism on American soil at the start of World War II, but Haj says it feels startlingly relevant today.

“There’s a line in the play that says something like, ‘We don’t send people back — we’re Americans. That’s not what we do.’ And that line was written in 1941,” Haj said. “The reason we do the classics is not to look at plays or stories under glass; it’s to understand that many of these classic texts have absolute resonances to our current times.”

The Guthrie follows “Watch on the Rhine” with Noel Coward’s “Blithe Spirit,” which at first might seem like a non sequitur. But Haj explained that Noel Coward, a contemporary of Hellman, wrote the play at the onset of World War II.

The message – “we, the Guthrie’s artistic directors, believe we’re living in times just like 11933 Germany; we believe our audience is like the British of 1940, who need something to take their mind off being firebombed every night”.

But don’t dare accuse anyone of Trump derangement!

Joe Doakes from Como Parks emails:

Liberal:  There is absolutely no voter fraud; therefore, we do not need an investigation or voter ID law and you’re a hateful racissss for saying so.

 Conservative:  Dozens of non-citizens voted illegally in Ohio.  There were more votes than voters in Detroit.  

 Liberal:  There is voter fraud; but we do not need an investigation or voter ID law and you’re a hateful racisss for saying so.

 As always, Monty Python anticipates real life, in the “Expedition to Lake Pahoe” sketch:

 “ . . . there is no – I repeat, no – cannibalism in the British Navy.  Absolutely none.  And when I say none, I mean that there is a certain amount, more than we are prepared to admit, but all new ratings are warned that if they wake up in the morning and find any toothmarks at all anywhere on their bodies, they’re to tell me immediately so that I can immediately take every measure to hush the whole thing up.”

 Joe Doakes

I think it’s hilarious that George Orwell’s 1984 has re-entered the best-seller list – since it was written about the Western far-left.  And it still may as well be;  the ease and fluency with which the left’s chanting points bots went from “Our electoral system is perfect, and you’re a racist misogynist transphobe traitor to suggest otherwise” to “our electoral system is a shambles” after November 8 would have beggared Orwell’s imagination.

One of the bills being heard tomorrow morning at 10:15 AM at the State Office Building will be HF238 – Rep. Nash’s “Defense of Dwelling and Person Act”, sometimes called “Stand your Ground”.

This is an absolutely vital bill.  Here’s why.

To use lethal force in self defense in Minnesota, you have to meet four criteria:

1. You can’t be a willing participant
2. You need to reasonably and immediately fear death or great bodily harm
3. You can only use enough force to end the threat
4. And, at least outside your home, you have a duty to retreat.

The first three, while somewhat subjective, are relatively clear to most people, it’s this last that causes problems.

What is the “Duty to Retreat?”  How far?

Are you obliged to run away if you have a bad knee?  If your are beset by multiple younger, faster assailants?  If you are part of a group being held at gunpoint?

Those are not idle questions.  As the graphic above points out, there are at least a dozen bits and pieces of case law that govern the “Duty to Retreat” under Minnesota law.  Which one applies to your situation?   If you’re a lawyer, sitting in an office with a subscription to WestLaw, you can probably rustle up the data with a little bit of time, and gather the various interpretations.

If you’re walking to your car through a dark parking lot, and some suspicious character is tailing you?  Less so.

County attorneys like having discretion on these sorts of questions.   It’s wrong, and needs to be stopped.

Last weekend, a group of “anarchists” attacked a pro-Trump rally at the Minnesota State Capitol.    Thugs wearing helmets and masks sucker-punched and kicked unsuspecting peaceful demonstrators, and in one case sprayed mace into a crowd of people.

It was not a spontaneous event; they were quite obviously organized, equipped, and had planned for the event.

They sprayed what was described as “Bear Mace” into a crowd of unsuspecting people – which can easily be a lethal weapon for people with respiratory conditions.   There were six arrests.

The entire fracas was caught on film, in front of dozens of witnesses.  There is not problem showing the violence, brutality and intent of the event.

No matter.  They are aligned with the left against the right.  And in Saint Paul, that’s license to block streets, clog freeways…

…and now, to physically attack people with potentially lethal force.   Ramsey County has declined to charge the arrested protesters – four boys and two girls – with anything.

Monday, the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office said there were insufficient facts to prove felony-level riot. The attorney’s office said State Patrol has presented the case to the St. Paul City Attorney’s Office for consideration of misdemeanor charges.

That is bullshit, stacked high and deep.

If it were a bunch of rednecks from Isanti County who’d maced the “Womens’ March” a couple weeks ago, they’d still be in jail.

Look at the boys and girls who were arrested.  Check out the names:  Anton.  Isabell.  Linwood.  Those are upper-middle-class white kid names.  Breck School names.  Names that drive Subarus until they get a Volvo.  Names like the children of John Choi’s law school classmates and Chris Coleman’s Crocus Hill and Kenwood cronies have.

It’s the special, deluxe, “for progressives only” justice, part of the “progressives only” school, university, public sector union and non-profit parallel universe of power and privilege that the Big Left in Minnesota gets.

UPDATE:  I’ve seen reports that Linwood Kaine is the son of Hillary Clinton’s VP candidate.

Well, I’m gonna guess there were some lawyers involved, huh?

…until it’s not.

I say that, because it’s a phenomenon that is verging on being a “Berg’s Law”; today’s jokes about the behavior of liberals are tomorrow’s news stories about the behavior of liberals.  I have no doubt that someone in the comment section will, before long, post an article from Mother Jones or Raw Story that reads like the link above – but non-fiction.

It’s fun to make fun of National Public Radio.

The upper-middle-class white liberal bias; the pretentious production style; the air staff’s frequently sloppy, mannered delivery; the unearned condescension to all other media; if you’re a radio person, the massive budgets and huge staffs combined with the often dismal state of practice of the radio craft; the complete inability to do a show off-script (listening to NPR reporters trying to ad-lib on the morning of 9/11 would have been funny under less dire circumstances) – I mean, Terri Gross is considered a brilliant broadcaster because…

…she can freestyle an interview (or at least be made to sound like she’s freestyling after repeated cycles of NPR’s obsessive editing).

It’s fun to make fun of public radio:

For all that?  There are shows I do like.  I enjoyed Prairie Home Companion while Garrison Keillor hosted it (while ignoring and mocking his puerile politics), and might like it even more with Chris Thile at the helm.  MPR’s news does an adequate job of seeking balance – not perfect, not great, but adequate, which means if you grade on a curve against other media they rate an A.   On Being with Krista Tippett can be an incredibly interesting show.

And then there’s been “Splendid Table“.   For a couple decades, now Lynn Rossetto Kasper has been hosting the show – and by “hosting”, I mean “saving it from the suffocating, self-parodying cliches that are most public radio”.    Rossetto Kasper brought an air of engagement, mirth…fun to  the show, and to a subject that inspires all too much leaden foodie navel-gazing.

Brought.

Rossetto Kasper is retiring from the show after 21 seasons.  She’s being replaced by Francis Lam, former top foodie at NYTimes Magazine and an accomplished chef in his own right.  He clearly knows his food.

I got my first, er, taste of Mr. Lam’s style this past weekend.  And it’s dreadful.

I’m going to put part of the blame on whomever produces and edits the show – and being an American Public Media (the production spinoff of MPR) joint, God only kjnows who that is, since like most APM shows it’s got a staff list longer than a Michael Bay movie.  But whoever it is who decided on Mr. Lam’s broadcast style seems to have given the directive; “Don’t just do public radio cliché; define and supercharge them!”.

A paraphrased, but typical, piece of a Lam interview:

LAM:  So tell us about [whatever].

GUEST:  I’m glad you asked.  It’s really about [interesting explanation redacted]

LAM:  Ah.  […several seconds of exaggerated pause, apparently to connote depth and thoughtfulness…].  Interesting.

So yeah, the editing was dreadful.

But Lam himself comes across as…oh, drat, now I have to go into my thesaurus to find new terms to describe the clichés of the public radio delivery.  Lugubrious?  Disconnected?  Stylized to the point of caricature?  I don’t know.

Maybe it’ll improve.  Maybe it was an isolated episode.

Or maybe, in the era of Trump, Public Radio is making a concerted effort to be more pompous, more caricaturish, and less accessible to the plebeians.

Let’s hope for improvement.