I’ve been waiting with bated breath to see how the local Sorosphere would react to the news that their conclusion that the “No New Taxes” crowd all but blew up the 35W River Bridge was wrong.
And while Lori Sturdevant is the gold standard for Tic PR flaks in this area (and Nick Coleman is the DFL’s trained organ-grinder monkey), there is no better barometer of the Twin Cities’ left’s smug, entitled gestalt than Brian Lambert. I’ve beein waiting for his take on what is – for most of us – the good news; the news that bad design, rather than depraved malfeasance, led to the collapse.
Was I to be disappointed?
It’s Lambert. He’s the most reliable source of material in town.
It was 6 p.m. Tuesday when I first heard of the NTSB’s “preliminary” finding that a design flaw—too thin gusset plates—was the cause of the I-35W bridge collapse. By 6:07 p.m., I had received a copy of an e-mail Star Tribune bete noire, Dan Cohen, had fired off into the teeth of Eric Ringham and Tim O’Brien of the paper’s editorial page and columnist Nick Coleman.
Read Lambert’s piece for Cohen’s letter and [the parts of Cohen’s] background [that express Lambert’s bias]. Summary: Cohen, like me, was jumping on Nick “the Monkey” Coleman’s many, loathsome, premature assignments of guilt. (A detailed fisk of Coleman’s “the dog ate my logic” column will follow, probably tomorrow).
And to start with, Lambert puts on his big-boy pants and takes his medicine:
Those of us who shared Coleman’s view—that penny-pinching by craven politicians fearful of the wrath of the cynical “small-government crowd” bear a responsibility for the collapse—aren’t exactly buoyed by the NTSB report.
I’m trying to imagine how “buoyed” one would be by circumstances that led to 13 deaths. But in the interest of discussion, I’ll let that one slide.
But this one is “preliminary.” It is not the last word, and myriad issues remain, all supporting more comprehensive inspection and maintenance of government-owned infrastructure, something that requires significantly more cash than will ever be generated by a piddly five-cent-a-gallon tax increase…
…and all of which would be more useful than the billion plus dollars we’re going to spend on a light rail line from nowhere to noplace – which seems to be completely inviolate in the world of Brian Lambert and Nick Coleman.
Moreover, although Cohen and his “no-new-taxes brigade” have distilled this to Coleman and the Star Tribune vs. Republicans, Carol Molnau and Govenor Pawlenty in particular, Coleman at least was pretty clear at the start that blame should be placed at the feet of both political parties with the Republicans just happening to be running the show as the thing fell into the river.
This is, of course, buncombe: it was aimed squarely at Pawlenty, fiscal conservatives (and the handy dandy group that serves as our lobbying body, the Taxpayers League) and anyone that doesn’t claim to channel the spirit of Walter Mondale. Which would be Minnesota’s right – Republicans and the thin film of fiscally-responsible Tics.
Read it and judge for yourself.
There is actual good news in Lambert’s column, though. That’s right – those of us who believe Coleman has less “gatekeeping” and “editing” than any self-respecting blogger are also vindicated!
In the interest of both fairness and putting on a quality show for the reading public (who always loves a good scrap . . . not to mention the sight of newspaper elitists eating crow), I called…Coleman, who, at a little before 4 p.m. Wednesday afternoon, was banging out a column that he doubted the paper would ever run. (Have I buried the lede here?)
When I asked what he was going to say to the Dan Cohens of the world, Coleman replied, “I’ve been strongly advised not to even try.” Word, he says, had been passed along down the editing chain that nothing from him on the NTSB finding was wanted unless he could come up with a new, fresh “reported” angle, maybe, you know, another variation on some victim’s story. (Can’t get enough of that, can we?) But his columnist’s opinion on the report? Apparently not, according to Coleman.
Did I mention he was writing one anyway?
No, and since the suspense isn’t killing you either, gentle reader, here it is.
That’s why I like the guy. He’s a public asset. I think it’s the Irish thing. Born to brawl and all that. When you have some insulated, dweeby editor wringing hands over . . . ooohhh “contentiousness” and “needless provocation” . . ., you want a guy who basically says, “[Bleep] off, and go back to your pod.”
Did the “insulated, dweeby editor” mention anything about “jumping to conclusions” and “acting on facts not anywhere in actual evidence?”
“Responsibility as a reporter?”
“Writing to a standard higher than the bloggers who standards Nick Coleman couldn’t meet if he had to?”
I used to think that was what good Metro columnists did. Especially when they had the acute theatrical sense to know that everyone following a story as rich as the Strib‘s (entirely warranted) “Get Molnau” series wants to hear his response to what appears to be a damning official declaration that he and his colleagues have been wrong, and his apology to the poor beknighted Ms. Molnau. (Believe me, that last part ain’t happening.)
And…why?
He was wrong! The engineers have (preliminarily) scuppered Coleman’s arrogant, purplefaced, wrong conclusion! Empirical fact has beaten emotional demigoguery!
And Coleman’s empirical, considered, “journalistic” response?
As for Cohen, Coleman says, “I like Dan. Hell, I agree with him on about 90 percent of his criticisms of the paper. But he’s full of gas on this gusset thing.”
“Full of gas”.
And yes, [Strib letters editor and leftyblog starboinker Tim] O’Brien says reaction to the NTSB report is already building with righties demanding to know when the paper is going to apologize to Carol Molnau.
Maybe publisher Chris Harte will run over to St. Paul hat in hand. I don’t see Coleman making that trip.
A better guess: like all good high priests of knowledge, they’ll withdraw to their inner sanctum until the peasants go elsewhere.
We’ll get to Coleman in a bit.
“starboinker”?
“STARBOINKER”???
That may be brilliant, but I need to know what it means before I decide it is.
“That’s why I like the guy. He’s a public asset.”
Hmm, why does Lambert’s keyboard add an “et” to the end of words describing Coleman?
Mitch proclaimed: “Empirical fact has beaten emotional demigoguery!”
A Shot In the Dark first! Drinks on Angryclown!
Please. I’m Scandinavian. My demigoguery is always unemotional.
Point of order: How is favoring limited government “cynical”?
It’s cynical because they don’t really want limited government, of course. They want to tag zygotes with RFID chips to make sure they’re carried full term, don’t you know.
Bravo, Mitch.
I’ll thank you to keep your mitts off my zygotes!
Mitch,
http://www.startribune.com/nation/13917536.html – please let’s talk about journalistic integrity and even-handedness for a moment. You were WRONG about Mark Ritchie violating the law – yet here is clear example of the President’s staff breaking the law, perhaps not intentionally, but given the enormous coincidence of the time the e-mails were deleted to the time certain key criminal investigations were going on.. well it smells like rotten fish. Where is your concern about holding the government accountable to integrity, about small government for that matter? Coleman is small potatoes – but 90% of the time writes far better than any blogger in this area writes (that I know of anyway). Your prose is good, I’ve said so in the past, complimented you on it, but your findings are so often wrong that any comparative complaint just seems like whistling in the wind. Coleman is paid by the Strib, his articles are fair, not great, but vastly better than Katherine Kersten, who couldn’t make a sound point if someone handed here the Gettysburg Address. Your attack on Coleman is just a perpetuation of pure political invective – and when you occassionally find something with meat, you throw a party. Well, I’ll hand you a noise-maker on this one, Coleman leapt to conclusions too early – but he’s HARDLY alone (cough*Iraq has WMD*cough), now isn’t he?
Second –
He was wrong! The engineers have (preliminarily) scuppered Coleman’s arrogant, purplefaced, wrong conclusion! –
Oh, NO!!! Coleman wasn’t right!??! Mitch, as if you’ve never been wrong, on say, 5-10 things a week?
and then there’s:
“Writing to a standard higher than the bloggers who standards Nick Coleman couldn’t meet if he had to?”
What standards are those, Mitch? Where is your vaunted code of ethics for which you assail MinMon? You strut and crow about not conforming to mass media standards, because they are essenitally meaningless because everyone is biased and can’t possibly work to overcome that bias because you can’t overcome your own, so what standards?
Coleman wasn’t right!??! Mitch, as if you’ve never been wrong, on say, 5-10 things a week?
Do I bobble the occasional fact – maybe even five or ten on a bad week? Sure! Just like you drop 5-10 in a long comment!
But I cop to it, which is something neither Coleman or the Strib ever do!
And at any rate, Peev, it’s irrelevant. That bit you wrote above is just groaningly illogical. The way to attack someone’s perceived (in this case, erroneously) error is to show where it’s an error, not point out other perceived (again, in this case usually erroneously) errors! You seem to thinknk that one needs to be without error to call someone else on their errors! Are you sure you want to take that route?
Now, let’s try to figure this next bit out:
What standards are those, Mitch?
The ones that “professional journalists” – like I was, briefly, at one point – supposedly use.
Where is your vaunted code of ethics for which you assail MinMon?
I don’t publish one. Assailing MNMon with “my” code would be just plain weird.
MNMon has one. I and others have caught MNMon breaking that code a number of times. Contrary to their “code”, they’ve never acknolwedged it.
I do not publish a code, because for a solo blogger who is not operating (for the most part) as a journalist, that would be a pretentious waste of time.
I do, however, try my best to be fair, clear, as thorough as the material warrants (which is usually not much) and acknowledge my errors.
You strut and crow about not conforming to mass media standards,
No, I point out as a matter of fact that I’m not a journalist (although when I put my “reporter” hat on, as I occasionally do, I follow the rules I was taught almost thirty years ago to a fault), and that this blog is not a news organization (although I occasionally report news).
The “strutting and crowing”, as you put it (it’s really more like justifiable satisfaction at a job well done) comes from having eaten the local media’s lunch so very, very, very many times. Especially Nick Coleman’s.
because they are essenitally meaningless because everyone is biased and can’t possibly work to overcome that bias because you can’t overcome your own, so what standards?
You might want to have that conversation with Erik Black, actually. We had an interesting talk on this very subject on the NARN show last spring.
Mitch,
I apologize if this is OT but I think I may have missed a few posts (my own fault) but would you mind please explaining the origin and meaning of “tic”? Or if you did a post explaining, it just point me to it.
Thanks,
TW
Well, I’ll hand you a noise-maker on this one, Coleman leapt to conclusions too early – but he’s HARDLY alone (cough*Iraq has WMD*cough), now isn’t he?
So I gather that in March 2003 you didn’t believe Saddam had WMD?
Mitch, I’ll take a stab at Thorley’s question:
Thorley, I had been giving mitch a hard time for following the Republican talking point meme, initially originating with Fox, used by President Bush, and than parroted by most Righties the ‘democrat’ rather than Democratic party affiliation. He slept on it a few days and than started calling the Dems Tics instead. His attempt at being original is noted. I’ll leave it at that.
Flash