Last week, DFL bloggers thought they’d caught Tom Emmer “lying”.<\/p>\n
The putative “lie”, of course, was that the Emmer Campaign didn’t notify the Campaign Finance Board that Mark Buesgens had left the campaign until a week later, after Buesgens had been accused of Driving While Intoxicated, and the campaign figured “well, no time like the present”.<\/p>\n
This, of course, being how most average people handle niggling paperwork.<\/p>\n
“Nooooo!”, shrieked the leftybloggers, “failure to change the name, all evidence aside, is proof of a coverup!”<\/p>\n
I’d like to think this sort of joyless, nagging, phony punctiliousness is a new, irritating trend of the wonkish left. \u00a0Unfortunately, it’s a very old, irritating trend of the wonkish left.<\/p>\n
I’ve dug back through history and found several examples of this pathology in action.<\/p>\n
———-<\/p>\n
April 1912<\/strong>:<\/p>\n LOCATION: \u00a0The deck of SS Titanic<\/em>.<\/p>\n FIRST OFFICER LIGHTOLLER: “OK, everyone form an orderly line for the boats…”<\/p>\n STEVEN MICAH TIMMERMAN (A wobbly and lefty pamphleteer): \u00a0“Wait! \u00a0Do all those lifeboats have the Coast-Guard-mandated number of certified lifejackets?<\/p>\n LIGHTOLLER: “What? \u00a0Look, people have to get into the lifeboats, or we’ll have fifteen hundred dead!”<\/p>\n TIMMERMAN: \u00a0“I will have the liability lawyers on your ass so fast you’ll be screaming “uncle”…<\/p>\n LIGHTOLLER: “What the hell do you want us to do?”<\/p>\n TIMMERMAN: \u00a0“Look, if you want to send all “the rich” off into these unsafe lifeboats, go for it – but I’m going to send the working class off to search for enough life jackets to fit the letter of the law! \u00a0You will not <\/em>kill the poor with your substandard lifeboats!”<\/p>\n (and scene).<\/p>\n ———-<\/p>\n December 7, 1941<\/strong>:<\/p>\n LOCATION: \u00a0Opana Radar Station, the northern tip of Oahu, Hawaii.<\/p>\n PRIVATE JONES: “Sir, I have a large radar contact coming in from the north. The report is on your desk”<\/p>\n MAJOR ERIC MICAH PULSEY: Oh, my goddess, Private Jones; what is this? \u00a0“We have at this time no idea what a group of planes would be coming from the north for<\/em>” \u00a0What the hell <\/em>is that?<\/p>\n JONES: Sir?<\/p>\n PULSEY: Ending a sentence with a preposition<\/em>, Jones? \u00a0Go and retype this report. \u00a0What the hell are you, some ignorant red-stater?<\/p>\n ———-<\/p>\n December 31, 1999<\/strong>:<\/p>\n SCENE: The US-Canadian border crossing at Vancouver.<\/p>\n BORDER PATROLPERSON DAVID MICAH MINDELBERG: “Sir, what are you doing with this huge truck full of fertilizer and diesel fuel?”<\/p>\n ABU HADJ AL-JIHADI: \u00a0“Er…I am not <\/em>coming to build a bomb to desroy a Millenium celebration…”<\/p>\n MINDELBERG: “Well, duh. \u00a0The millenium doesn’t begin until 2001<\/em>! \u00a0What kind of stupid wingnut do you think I am?<\/p>\n AL-JIHADI: Heh heh.<\/p>\n MINDELBERG: Don’t insult my intelligence. \u00a0Drive on, and don’t be an idiot.<\/p>\n (AL-JIHADI drives on)<\/p>\n MINDELBERG: Sheesh. \u00a0Stupid wingnuts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last week, DFL bloggers thought they’d caught Tom Emmer “lying”. The putative “lie”, of course, was that the Emmer Campaign didn’t notify the Campaign Finance Board that Mark Buesgens had left the campaign until a week later, after Buesgens had been accused of Driving While Intoxicated, and the campaign figured “well, no time like the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-10","category-lefty-alt-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13808"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13811,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13808\/revisions\/13811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}