There is no person in the Twin Cities media that inspires more unreasoning derangement than Katherine Kersten.  When it was announced, several years ago, that she’d be joining the columnist staff at the Strib, the “journalist” community acted like management had proposed mandatory sodomy during work breaks.

The Twin Cities’ “journalist” community – which has tolerated all manner of abuses of contact, fact and selective omission and mangling of context with scarcely a peep – was concerned about the “journalistic integrity” of the Strib’s famously biased, fact-challenged editorial pages.

But for these many years, I’ve been trying to press these people for details.

Here’s a typical exchange (*) from a local chat room frequented by media and near-media:

[Writer A]: Katherine Kersten is teh suck.

Mitchberg: Er, why do you say that?

[Writer A]: Have you read her latest article in the Strib?

Mitchberg: Yeah.  What about it?

[Writer A]: She says that marriage is about having kids.

Mitchberg: Yeah.  And…?

[Writer A]: That And she says that people who don’t have kids should get married!

[Editor B]: Hah!  She is teh crazee! LOLZ!  Can I haz baybee?

Mitchberg: Y Er, OK, both of you – I read the whole article.  She says no such thing.  Merely that the institution of marriage, traditionally and historically, throughout the world’s many, impossibly diverse cultures, is pretty universally about bringing men and women together to have children.  And that the dissolution of this tradition has caused lots of problems in our society.

[Writer A]: Marriage is about kids?  What?  What about adults?

Mitchberg: You’ve never been married, have you?

[Writer A]: No, and what does that have to do with it?

Mitchberg: Er, never mind.  Look, her main point is that marriage has always been how societies see to the upbringing and protection of children.  It goes back to prehistory.

[Writer A]: Marriage was always about property.

Mitchberg: Well, yeah, managing property, sure…

[Writer A]: No, because women were property.

Mitchberg: Er, yeah.  Put down the Womyn’s Studies textbook.  There are a zillion societies on earth, and their treatment of women varied widely.  In some, they were chattel.  In others, they were second-class citizens at best. In sub-saharan Africa, most societies were matriarchal, and in much of Asia many societies had a stealth matriarchy.  The treatment of women varies, historically, as widely as possible.  Others were not a whole lot different than we see ourselves today.  And some societies detested homosexuality with a homicidal passion, and others tolerated it with no major issues.  The variations were almost infinite.  And yet every single one of these societies had one thing in common; they were an institution in which man/men came together with woman/women to have, protect and raise children.  What do you suppose the odds were, given the vast number of permutations in every other facet of male-female relationships, that pretty much every one would see marriage as a union of males and females to raise kids?

Mitchberg: Hello?

[Writer A]: So people who don’t have kids shouldn’t marry?

[Editor B]: LOLZ!  ShE Iz tha CrayXEE, Beeyotch!

Mitchberg: Ed, yeah, got it.  A, I didn’t say that.  Could you show me where she does?  Of course you can’t.  Kersten neither prescribes nor proscribes.  She merely points out that the institution of marriage exists for a reason, and that reason isn’t sharing employee benefits.  Do I believe having kids is the only justification for marriage?  I dunno.  In the extremely unlikely event I marry again, I’m sure not having any more.  I’ve done my time.

[Writer A]: So you agree with her.

Mitchberg: Er, that’s kinda NOT what I said.

[Producer C]: I would think as a conservative you’d want the Strib to hire a smart conservative to represent your side.

Mitchberg: Let’s stay, hypothetically, that Katherine Kersten really is a poor writer, and that, as you also say, everyone always knew it.  Given the panic the Strib’s editorial board and columnists went into over hiring the putatively sub-par Kersten, do you honestly think they’d go and hire an even better conservative?  I mean, even as things are and/or putatively are, Kersten give them aneurysms.  Can you imagine if they had a bigger, badder one in the newsroom?

[Writer A]: So  you think marriage is about kids.  Isn’t it about adults?

Mitchberg: You may have perfectly summed up the crux of the Culture War.  Some believe marriage is about benefits, status and adult concerns.  Some of us believe it’s about raising kidst.  It seems the twain will never meet.

[Writer A]: This is futile.  She is teh dumb.

[Editor B]: And she a looser.

(*) Of course it’s satire.  Any resemblance to conversations I’ve had with people in the Twin Cities media and sorta-media in past – especially in the past 48 hours – is purely coincidental.  All celebrity written voices are impersonated – badly .

Mitchberg: Yeah.  And…?