{"id":1602,"date":"2007-11-10T10:34:22","date_gmt":"2007-11-10T15:34:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1602"},"modified":"2014-12-12T14:53:12","modified_gmt":"2014-12-12T20:53:12","slug":"where-was-karl-where-was-steve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1602","title":{"rendered":"By Association"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A few years back, many left-leaning commentators &#8211; up to and including <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newsbusters.org\/blogs\/matthew-sheffield\/2007\/09\/15\/geraldo-rivera-apologizes-saying-hed-spit-michelle-malkin\">Geraldo Rivera<\/a> and some who a<a href=\"http:\/\/www.oliverwillis.com\/archives\/2006\/11\/28\/the-first-law-of-malkin\/\">re on the George Soros payroll<\/a> &#8211; tried to bury Michelle Malkin in a wave of <a href=\"http:\/\/timblair.net\/comments.php?id=187_0_1_0_C\">anti-Filipina bigotry<\/a>.And while many people, left and right, rose as one to condem this ugly racist display, a number of left-leaning commentators were as silent as death on the subject.  Among the silent &#8211; and thus, complicit &#8211; were:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Steve Perry, editor of the big-buck-lefty-supported <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailymole.com\/wordpress\/\">Daily Mole<\/a> (and, at the time, editor of the City Pages),<\/li>\n<li>Karl Bremer, foul-mouthed Stillwater screechmonger, who has found via the local alt-meda a ready outlet and ravenous market for his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/search?q=%22Karl+Bremer%22+site%3Awww.shotinthedark.info&#038;ie=utf-8&#038;oe=utf-8&#038;aq=t&#038;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&#038;client=firefox-a\">raving vein-bulging screeching inner lout.<br \/>\n<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Minnesota Monitor<\/li>\n<li>Every leftyblogger that attends &#8220;Drinkiing Liberally&#8221;, an organization of regional leftyblogs, which <em>sets the agenda <\/em>for local left-leaning alternative media.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The inference is clear; Perry, Bremer, Eric Black and the DrinkLib bloggers think the only place for a Filipina woman is writhing around a greased pole on a stage, or turning tricks by a navy base.<\/p>\n<p>For that matter, on this blog I&#8217;ve commented many times at great length about the pre-1945 German trait of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/search?q=Goldhagen+site%3Awww.shotinthedark.info&#038;ie=utf-8&#038;oe=utf-8&#038;aq=t&#038;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&#038;client=firefox-a\">eliminationist anti-Semitism<\/a>, as identified by Goldhagen.  Who was silent on this subject?  Perry, Bremer, MinMon and Drinking Liberally.<\/p>\n<p>Their silence tells the tale; obviously, they hate Jews and want them all murdered.<\/p>\n<p>Let us not forget that four years ago, DrinkLib participant and leading local leftyblogger Mark Gisleson <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/archives\/000327.html\">called for the lynching <\/a>of Vice President Cheney, among many other things.  Whose silence again rolled like a hurricane storm surge?   That&#8217;s right; Karl Bremer, the MinMon, the DrinkLib bloggers, and&#8230;well, OK, Steve Perry did sort of wind up giving Wege a muted &#8220;tut-tut&#8221; online.<\/p>\n<p>The meaning is clear; all left-of-center alt-media commentators are racists who want to murder jews and lynch Dick Cheney.<\/p>\n<p>Their silence is the proof.<\/p>\n<p>When will leftybloggers rise as one and attack Steve Perry, Karl Bremer, the Minnesota Monitor and all of the Drinking Liberally leftyblogs?<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;-<\/p>\n<p>Stupid, right?<\/p>\n<p>Yep.  Intentionally so.<\/p>\n<p>If only Steve Perry&#8217;s &#8220;Daily Mole&#8221; could say the same thing about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailymole.com\/wordpress\/2007\/11\/09\/reader-op-ed-it%e2%80%99s-still-okay-to-bash-native-americans%e2%80%94at-least-on-the-right\/\">Karl Bremer&#8217;s grindingly, corrosively stupid &#8220;Reader Op-Ed&#8221;<\/a> hit &#8216;n run on Tracy &#8220;Anti-Strib&#8221; Eberly and, by the way, <em>every single center-right blogger in the Twin Cities<\/em>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>What happens when a leading local Republican blogger publishes a virulently racist screed that refers to Native Americans as \u201cdirt worshipping heathens,\u201d \u201cdomestic terrorists permanently stuck in the Stone Age\u201d and \u201chumanoid animals,\u201d and describes them as a race \u201cso primitive that they created nothing of any lasting value, nor did they contribute anything of note to the world\u201d?<\/p>\n<p>In Minnesota, evidently nothing\u2014at least from his right-leaning compatriots in the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers and the mainstream media.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Wow. That&#8217;s pretty damning stuff.  Where could that have come from?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Minneapolis regulatory affairs consultant Tracy Eberly published such a piece on his local blog Anti-Strib on October 11. Those are just a few salient quotes from it. If you want to read his further defense of genocide against Native Americans, you\u2019ll have to visit his website yourself. Suffice to say it would make Andrew Jackson proud.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Um, yeah, Karl\/Steve.  About that.<\/p>\n<p>Bremer knows how to put links into web copy; he provides <em>copious <\/em>links to the other Minnesota Organization of Bloggers (MOB) blogs that he wants to smear by association.  So why &#8211; in the left-leaning &#8220;Mole&#8221;, publishing to a left-leaning audience &#8211; can&#8217;t he provide a link to Eberly&#8217;s actual <em>piece<\/em>?<\/p>\n<p>Does he (<strike>and, by association, Perry, MinMon and the Drinking Liberally bloggers<\/strike> damn, now I&#8217;m picking up that awful habit), know is audience isn&#8217;t going to bother googling and digging to <a href=\"http:\/\/anti-strib.blogspot.com\/2007\/10\/dirt-worshipping-heathens.html\">find the article<\/a>?  Is he counting on inertia (a reasonable assumption) to keep his audience from knowing the actual context in which Eberly was writing?<\/p>\n<p>So read Eberly&#8217;s piece.  I did.  For the first time. I didn&#8217;t like it much, and don&#8217;t agree with it. Of course, I understand where it comes from &#8211; and it&#8217;s not racism.<\/p>\n<p>To know that, of course, the reader would need to know the context of the story as well as the pull-quotes Bremer has elected to highlight.  But that would undercut Bremer&#8217;s foamy-mouthed, self-righteous &#8220;point&#8221;.  It&#8217;s unsurprising, of course &#8211; Bremer, a long-time anti-Michele Bachmann zealot, writes for &#8220;Dump Bachmann&#8221;, a blog whose entire <em>oeuvre<\/em> is built around crimes against context (<strike>and which also refuses to condemn the attacks on Malkin, the Holocaust, and to renounce the attack on Dick Cheney<\/strike> Crap.  It&#8217;s catchy, and hard to kick).<\/p>\n<p>More on that later.  Bremer next lets his imagination romp and play &#8211; with results that some of his associates might find&#8230;hinky?:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Eberly is a member of a group known as the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers, or more appropriately, MOB. Self-described as \u201ca group of mostly center-right bloggers,\u201d MOB includes virtually every Republican blogger in the Twin Cities, including GOP-affiliated Minnesota Democrats Exposed, TCF-connected Power Line, and St. Paul Pioneer Press editorial board member Craig Westover.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Bremer slips from omission into lying, here.  PowerLine is <em>not <\/em>&#8220;connected&#8221; with TCF, any more than <strike>Karl Bremer is &#8220;connected&#8221; to the Nazi Party for whom his deafening silence  about the Holocaust is a sure sign of support<\/strike> (dammit) my employer is &#8220;connected&#8221; to my blog (I&#8217;m going to make sure Scott Johnson sees that, however; Steve Perry might want to see to the &#8220;Mole&#8217;s&#8221; &#8220;fact&#8221;-checking).<\/p>\n<p>More importantly (to me)?  The MOB is <em>rigorously non-partisan<\/em>.  As one of the group&#8217;s &#8220;organizers&#8221; (there <em>is<\/em> no &#8220;organization&#8221;), I <em>am <\/em>the one, along with Chad the Elder, Brian Ward and King Banaian, to state this for the record; <strong>the MOB eschews politics completely, as a matter of principle<\/strong>.  The group is a blogroll and a twice-annual gathering at a bar.  Not only that, but we have made a point of reaching out and <em>inviting<\/em> leftybloggers to our semiannual MOB parties; not only as blanket invitations on our blogs, but specific emailed invitations <em>to the leftybloggers themselves<\/em>. These invitations have included several sent to specific City Pages writers (Paul Demko among others) <em>while Perry ran the place<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Karl Bremer&#8217;s &#8220;boss&#8221; at DumpBachmann, Eva Young, attended the last MOB Party.  <\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1064\">She seemed<\/a> to have a great time!  And &#8211; what&#8217;s this?  Tracy from Anti-Strib attended!  Eva must hate Indians, too!<\/p>\n<p>Some &#8220;right-leaning&#8221; group, that MOB, huh, Karl?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Eberly reportedly finished third in the runoff for their little club\u2019s \u201cmayor,\u201d so he clearly has their respect.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>For the benefit of any &#8220;Mole&#8221; reader who reads this; the &#8220;Mayor&#8221; race is the MOB&#8217;s equivalent of a &#8220;Miss Congeniality&#8221; award and &#8211; again, I say this as one of the MOB&#8217;s <em>Capi di tutti capi<\/em>, the mayor election is <em>not an official MOB function<\/em>.  It is something the Kool Aid Report does for the fun of it.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Yet since Eberly\u2019s \u201cdirt-worshipping heathens\u201d column ran last month, the silence from the usually fawning MOB mob has been deafening.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Let&#8217;s make sure we provide the context that Karl Bremer (<strike>anti-filipina, anti-semite and pro-lynching-advocate-by-omission that he is<\/strike> Jeebus, this &#8220;smear by omission&#8221; thing <em>is <\/em>a slippery slope!) is apparently afraid to, yet again.<\/p>\n<p>Anti-Strib is a rant blog.  It is not the <em>Weekly Standard<\/em>.  It is among local center-right bloggers what &#8220;Norwegianity&#8221; is for the local  center-left; the loud, unrepentant, sometimes gauche, sometimes dead-on (well, Anti-Strib, anyway), shoot-first-ask-questions-later portion of the local center-right psyche.  They are <em>South Park <\/em>conservatives of the most unrepentant stripe; they whiz on Political Correctness with the sort of glee that PZ Meiers piddles (or tries to piddle) on faith, or &#8220;Crayola Boy&#8221; Avidor pees on&#8230;I dunno, artistic talent?<\/p>\n<p>And &#8211; take note, Karl Bremer &#8211; just because we share a label doesn&#8217;t mean we think, act or believe the same.  I&#8217;m not a screedblogger, so sometimes the Anti-Strib is off-putting.  It&#8217;s a &#8220;big tent&#8221; groupblog, so the writing is mighty uneven, ranging from amateurish and awful to really good (sort of like the <em>City Pages<\/em>).<\/p>\n<p>Do I care for the tone of Tracy&#8217;s piece? Of course not.  Of course, unlike Bremer, I know some of the backstory that is probably opaque to Bremer and his readers; as he notes, Eberly is reacting to &#8220;Doug&#8221;, a malignant comment-section tumor (one of only four people that&#8217;s ever been banned from this blog) who <em>claims<\/em> to be (among many, many things) Native American, and who relentlessly romanticizes Native culture.  &#8220;Doug&#8221; is such a remorselessly abrasive jagoff that if he were to start advocating for unicorns and puppies, I&#8217;d be tempted to rhetorically warm up the .270 and the meatgrinder.  And I hate that &#8211; because while I deeply respect Native culture (I&#8217;ve spent a lot of time reading about hunter-gatherer and aboriginal farming cultures in recent years) within their cultural context, Doug&#8217;s relentless preening is enough to make Russell Means break out a copy of <em>Fort Apache <\/em>out of pure snotty spite.<br \/>\nTracy&#8217;s article is an attempt to let the air out of a really obnoxious balloon.  Was it coarse and un-PC and maybe just a tad less artful than I&#8217;d shoot for, myself?  Sure.  Remember, I banned Doug rather than indulge in a reaction I&#8217;d rather not have; after almost six years of this, I&#8217;ve learned to pick and choose my stressors.  Tracy sees it differently; that&#8217;s Tracy.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t endorse his reaction; neither do I think it&#8217;s a sign of racism or lousy character or bad breath or anything other than wanting to give the relentless prig Doug a rhetorical wedgie.<\/p>\n<p>Suffice to say every regional leftybloggers had best be <em>very <\/em>careful about their own flippant bigotries.<\/p>\n<p>And, of course, &#8220;logical fallacies&#8221; &#8211; like the kind Bremer smears all over himself in the next bit:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.minnesotademocratsexposed.com\/\">Minnesota Democrats Exposed<\/a> is authored by Michael Brodkorb, a paid consultant to the Minnesota GOP, Norm Coleman and many other past GOP campaigns. Brodkorb calls Anti-Strib.com a \u201cdaily read,\u201d and it\u2019s the first permanent link on his website, where he has been flogging Al Franken relentlessly lately for Franken\u2019s statements about Native Americans.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The &#8220;daily read&#8221; list is in alphabetical order.  And &#8211; lest the distinction be lost on anyone dim enough to take Karl Bremer as an authority on anything &#8211; <strong>Tracy Eberly is not running for US Senate. <\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Even Westover, with his bully pulpit on the Pioneer Press editorial page, has remained on the sidelines<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Bremer, again, fails to provide a link to allow the reader to note that Westover has &#8220;remained on the sidelines because <a href=\"http:\/\/craigwestover.blogspot.com\/\">his blog has been moribund for six months<\/a>. Clearly, Westover&#8217;s &#8220;silence on  Al Quaeda&#8221; during that time means he also supports stoning gays &#8211; by Bremer&#8217;s logic.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Substitute \u201cBlacks\u201d or \u201cJews\u201d or \u201cChristians\u201d or \u201cCatholics\u201d for \u201cIndians\u201d in Eberly\u2019s harangue, and what do you think the reaction would be, even from the right?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That&#8217;s easy.  &#8220;That&#8217;s stupid enough to be a Karl Bremer opinion&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Isn\u2019t it time Republicans and their internet and media cheerleaders [<em>Hahahahahahaha! &#8211; Ed.<\/em>] quit pointing their fingers at liberal political groups and their TV ads, and cleaned up the hatefulness in their own back yard? A good place to start would be a repudiation of one of their own family members, Tracy Eberly and Anti-Strib, for the shame he\u2019s laid upon their doorstep. Because as long as they remain silent about fellow MOBster Tracy Eberly and his \u201cearth-worshipping heathens\u201d slurs, they will all wear the mantle of racism in my eyes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>OK.<\/p>\n<p>Tracy; don&#8217;t insult Native Americans.  Please.<\/p>\n<p>Now &#8211; Steve Perry?  What do you think about the fact that Karl Bremer has selectively misreported key facts of this story?  If these misstatements aren&#8217;t corrected and atoned for, you will forever wear the mantle of &#8220;hack&#8221; in my eyes.  And I know that&#8217;d hurt you to the quick.<\/p>\n<p>Eva Young (Karl&#8217;s boss at &#8220;Dump Bachmann&#8221;) &#8211; either Karl misrepresented the MOB, or you are a closet right-winger because you attended the last MOB party.  Clearly, if Bremer is correct, your participation in the MOB party means you <em>Hate Native Americans<\/em>!  Where&#8217;s the correction &#8211; nay, the outrage?<\/p>\n<p>See where this leads?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>Karl Bremer is a Stillwater writer and part Cherokee Indian<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Good thing he&#8217;s got &#8220;aggrieved minority&#8221; to fall back on.<\/p>\n<blockquote \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few years back, many left-leaning commentators &#8211; up to and including Geraldo Rivera and some who are on the George Soros payroll &#8211; tried to bury Michelle Malkin in a wave of anti-Filipina bigotry.And while many people, left and right, rose as one to condem this ugly racist display, a number of left-leaning commentators [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[326,4,18,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-alt-media","category-media","category-pc","category-stupid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1602","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=1602"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49887,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1602\/revisions\/49887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}