Shot in the Dark

Tag: Brian Lambert

  • It’s The 2013 Shootie Awards!

    It’s New Years Day, and as such it’s time for a tradition unlike most others – the Seventh Annual Shootie Awards, “honoring” the “best” in Minnesota blogging, talk radio, and social and alt-media in the same way D-Con Mouse Pellets honor the best in rodent culture. The Nick Coleman/Brian Lambert Memorial Award For Broadcast Excellence: With the virtual…

  • Open Letter To The MinnPost Editorial Team

    To:  Joel Kramer (CEO/Editor), Roger Buoen and Susan Albright (Co-Managing Editors) Don Effenberger (News Editor) From:  Mitch Berg, Uppity Peasant Re:  They Get What They Pay For Esteemed Editors: I was never much of a reporter.  I could always do the “who, what, when, where, why and how” of a story just fine, and earned a living…

  • Nick Coleman: Same As It Ever Was

    Anyone remember this classic? So, how is it that nakedly partisan bloggers who make things up left and right are gaining street cred while the mainstream media, which spend a lot of time criticizing themselves, are under attack? Or this one? “Bloggers don’t know about anything that happened before they sat down to share their…

  • I Wonder If Eric Black And Brian Lambert Know This?

    Joe Doakes from Como Park emails to elaborate on the subject of this piece, assailing the MinnPost’s Eric Black’s participation in the resurrection of the long-forgotten “Second Amendment Was Written To Protect Slavery!” meme: I forgot about this when I wrote to debunk Carl Bogus’ law review article.  Bogus relies for some of his historical evidence…

  • It Passes For Critique

    Brian Lambert took umbrage to Joe Doakes’ and my dissection of Eric Black’s anti-gun piece last week in the MinnPost, which cited a justifiably obscure theory by Dr. Carl Bogus. And Lambert took after that dissection with the keen analytical mind and the rapier logic I’ve associated with Lambo for the 26 years I’ve known him: At…

  • RIP Karl Bremer

    Karl Bremer passed away from complications of pancreatic cancer yesterday. Bremer, the co-author of “The Madness of Michele Bachmann: A Broad-Minded Survey of a Small-Minded Candidate,” died Tuesday afternoon, Jan. 15, at his house in Stillwater Township, from complications related to pancreatic cancer. He was 60. Bremer was a tenacious muckraker, an award-winning blogger and…

  • The 2012 Shootie Awards!

    It’s New Years Day, and as such it’s time for a tradition unlike most others – the Seventh Annual Shootie Awards, “honoring” the “best” in Minnesota blogging in the same way D-Con Mouse Pellets honor the best in rodent culture. The Nick Coleman/Brian Lambert Memorial Award For Broadcast Excellence: There wasn’t much to report on…

  • A Cheap Piece Of Tin With A Partisan Stenographer Pinned To It

    I was out at Target the other day when I ran into a familiar face pushing a shopping cart full of Reynolds Wrap through the grocery section.  It was Professor William G. Krieppi, Associate Professor of Rhetoric at Hennepin Technical College’s School of Geology. It went something like this. ———- KRIEPPI:  (Seeing me) Hey, Merg!…

  • He Don’t Need No Stinking Facts

    Brian Lambert at the MinnPost reports on the story of… …sorry.  I had quick chuckle there.  I’ll carry on. Brian Lambert wrote a piece in the MinnPost about the flap with Jack Tomczak… …sorry.  I got overcome with a gale of laughter.  OK.  Pull it together, Mitch.  Here we go. Brian Lambert reported on… …Oh,…

  • Democrats: Continuing To Elevate The Dialog

    A Maine state Democrat legislator urges Dick Cheney’s execution: Rep. Chuck Kruger (D-Thomaston)…used his Twitter account to express his view that former Vice President Dick Cheney should be executed…Kruger made the statement through his Twitter account this past summer, saying, “Cheney deserves same final end he gave Saddam. Hope there are cell cams,” a reference to…

  • Cowles

    Long-time Strib publisher John Cowles passed away over the weekend at 92. Brian Lambert at the MinnPost carries the lengthy list of paeans to Cowles and his regional media legacy, which includes ponying up money to help found the MinnPost. Of course, if you follow politics in Minnesota, Cowles’ legacy is inescapable; he ran the Star Tribune, from…

  • 14,000-Odd Posts

    2612 weekdays of waking up at 5:30AM and writing til 7-ish. 520 weeks of following the Minnesota news cycle. Two Presidential, three Gubernatorial, three Senate and 32 Congressional contests, plus five complete legislative election cycles and 11 Legislative sessions.  One wrestler ushered out of office; one Senatorial plane crash and two electoral train wrecks covered.…

  • Picking At The Veneer

    Brian Lambert wants someone to do the reporting for him, in re my piece last week on the Koch flap: Mitch says he’s friends with the two names involved in the incident. So call them up and have them, you know, emphatically, explicitly deny on the record what everyone is tittering about. Heh.  Brian’s a…

  • What The Hell Are We Supposed To Think About The MNGOP?

    Brian Lambert at the MinnPost h quoted me the other day: Minnesota’s most prominent conservative bloggers are oddly quiet about the party’s exciting weekend. Minnesota’s “most prominent” conservative bloggers – Powerline, Ed Morrissey – don’t do much coverage of local politics much less the inner workings of the MNGOP. Of course, those of us who do…

  • Guilty Until Proven Innocent. As Usual.

    This blog’s first post (other than “hey, look, I have a blog!”) back in 2002 was about a firearms-related issue – the battle for concealed carry, as it happens. And since then, it’s fair to say I’ve written a post or two about the second amendment and the civil and human right of self-defense. But…

  • Lambert: “Art Is Politics!”

    (SCENE:  Liam Branbert and his wife Slainte, midly disheveled, under the covers, smoking cigarettes). LIAM: “So did the earth move for you?” SLAINTE: “Sure, a little”. LIAM: “But did it move in a progressive way, or kind of a conservative way?” SLAINTE: “Um – I dunno?  Why?” LIAM: IT’S IMPORTANT, DAMMIT!” (And scene). ——————– Absurd?…

  • Happy Birthday, Bob Dylan

    Bob Dylan turns 70 today. I’ve been rediscovering him lately; I’m pretty literate on some of his first-generation descendants, but for various reasons I never really marinated my head in Bob Dylan. Yet. So – may it please the unjustifiably-self-righteous Brian Lambert, here  he is. Included mainly because I couldn’t find a Dylan version of…

  • Falling Off The Cliff Notes

    Brian Lambert, writing at The Same Rowdy Crowd, laments the the state of journalism’s self-congratulatory, clubby order of high-priests-of-information that allowed Rolling Stone to “scoop” the establishment press (or should we say, the more-establishment-y press) on the McChrystal story; the idea that RS beat the NYTimes and the rest of the mainstream/dead-tree/agenda/establishment media to the…

  • Myth list: Faeries, World Champion Cubs, Reporters Who Actually Know Stuff

    You live, you learn. After eight and a half years of covering the journalistic geography in this town, some of the basic contours are as well-known as my bike ride to work; Lori Sturdevant will be a dozey DFL hack; Nick Coleman will be a thud-witted and utterly predictable DFL hack; Brian Lambert will be…

  • Krugman Warned You!

    As Lefty pundits from the esteemed Paul Krugman to the unhinged Brian Lambert have pointed out, it’s only teh dum ignant racist conservatives who oppose healthcare. Keep that in mind when you read this detailed takedown – on both liberal and conservative principles – from  Glenn Beck: Myth Truth 1. This is a universal health…

  • Meet The New Meme, Same As The Old Meme

    On the one hand, I don’t know that anybody quibbles about Lori Sturdevant being a bought-and-paid-for (figuratively) tool of the left – someone who is the mirror opposite of the “extremist” conservatives she clutches her pearls and complains about during the course of every single legislative session.  She’s pretty well thrown in with the radical…

  • Day Late, Millions Short

    Brian Lambert shows why KTLK-FM had such a rocky start in the Twin Cities, in a piece that purports to be about Air America tanking; along the way, it also shows why liberalism is starting to gasp for air in the age of Obama. Lambert starts with the genesis of his short-lived radio show: I…

  • It Just Occurred To Me

    I ask people on the left, constantly, “so what, precisely, is the problem you have with Katherine Kersten – besides the fact that she’s a conservative?” The closest thing I’ve seen to an answer that wasn’t solely fueled by politics was “she was never a reporter; she’s nothing but a think tank writer”.  In this…

  • Cult Of Personality

    I’ve ripped on talk radio’s “Cult of Personality” – the belief, against all rational evidence, that “celebrities” make good talk radio hosts – for years.  It’s been a cancer on the business for a decade and a half, both locally (for years, KSTP-AM has figured that newspaper columnists and TV reporters are perfectly  suited to host talk…

  • But They’re Utterly Balanced Up Til Then, Right?

    The WaPo writes about a colleague’s job change: Senior Producer Sasha Johnson announced Monday she’s leaving journalism to serve as press secretary at the Department of Transportation, meaning yet another member of the Fourth Estate has left to join the Obama administration Isolated jump?  As the artcle notes, hardly.  The WaPo piece notes the large…