{"id":2338,"date":"2008-03-27T13:56:02","date_gmt":"2008-03-27T18:56:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2338"},"modified":"2008-03-27T13:56:02","modified_gmt":"2008-03-27T18:56:02","slug":"the-party-always-finds-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2338","title":{"rendered":"The Party Always Finds You"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few days ago, many of us in the local center-right blogosphere got a good laugh at a local leftypundit’s declaration “if you say you’re not a racist, you are”.<\/p>\n

Apparently the corollary is “if you negotiate carefully and in good faith to make sure that a potentially-political event is non-political,\u00a0 you are political”.<\/p>\n

Or so Nick Coleman would have you “think”<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Tuesday’s cancellation of a visit to Forest Lake High School by Iraq War veterans in a giant bus labeled “Vets For Freedom National Heroes Tour” produced a bonanza of outraged media reports:<\/p>\n

“Heroes banned by School! Minnesota hates the Heroes!”<\/p>\n

Or maybe a Minnesota school was just trying to keep its students from becoming pawns in a political game.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Perhaps.\u00a0 It’d be a lot more convincing if Minnesota schools didn’t pretty routinely teach man-made global warming as fact, gun control as an unequivocal good, the revisionist view of the Civil War as gospel, of the libertine view of sexuality as a teenager’s choice.\u00a0 It’d be a lot more plausible if Minnesota school students weren’t routinely carted to the Capitol to picket legislators – but only on behalf of Education Minnesota, of course.<\/p>\n

It’d be a lot more convincing if Saint Paul didn’t have a “Paul and Sheila Wellstone School”.<\/p><\/div>\n

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There would not have been much outrage if that big bus, instead of saying “Heroes Tour,” had been painted to say “Republican Tour to Shore Up the Pro-War Vote.” But that would have been an honest paint job.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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And it would have made clear why Forest Lake Principal Steve Massey — now vilified by right wing radio and TV — did what he did.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Nick?<\/p>\n

Cut the crap.<\/p>\n

Massey had reached an agreement with Pete Hegseth; politics was out.<\/p>\n

And let’s cut the crap just a bit further;\u00a0 what if it were <\/em>politicial?\u00a0 So what?\u00a0 <\/em>Forgetting for a moment that the public schools don’t even make a laughable effort to insulate students from (acceptably PC left-of-center) politics; what’s wrong with students getting many sides <\/em>of a given debate?<\/p>\n

Rather, of course, than the one side that the Minnesota Left deems appropriate.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Massey and Forest Lake — a patriotic small town with a Fourth of July parade where spectators stand and doff their hats and put their right hands over their hearts every single time an American flag goes by — are getting a bum rap.<\/p>\n

The visit to Forest Lake was worked out by Massey and Forest Lake alum Pete Hegseth, an Iraq veteran who heads Vets for Freedom. VFF says it is nonpartisan, but the liberal watchdog group the Center for Media and Democracy said it began as a Republican front group managed by White House insiders.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Ah.\u00a0 Well, if “Center for Media and Democracy” says so.\u00a0 Not like the CfM’nD would be “polticizing” things, would it?<\/div>\n
\n
Their plan? According to the Center for Media and Democracy, the plan is to drum up support for the war. The group’s political bent was clear last year when it bought TV ads to thank Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., for supporting the war.<\/p>\n

Hey, folks: It’s an election year. Things may get ugly. They sure were in Forest Lake.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Well, let’s be clear; the “ugly” came from the hordes of drooling lefty droogs who bum-rushed Flake High on command from their lords at Democrat Underground.<\/p>\n

Speaking of politicizing things.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Permit me to say something: Vets for Freedom are real vets, their heroics are authentic (but not all heroes support the war) and their right to their opinion is unquestioned.<\/p>\n

But uniforms and valor should not hide a political agenda. On that, they must be questioned. Even in a school. Especially in a school.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Spare us the phony concern.<\/p>\n

Nick Coleman, who became the doormat<\/a> of the Twin Cities center-right alt-media for politicizing schools<\/a>, is only “concerned” because students might see a message that disagrees with him and the party whose monkey he is. <\/em><\/div>\n

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Massey had little choice.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Finally, truth.\u00a0 When a DFL-linked group says “jump”, a public school principle is well-advised to say “off what”?<\/div>\n
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Forest Lake shows how badly we need to talk about this war. And how very hard it is to do.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Especially when the “conversation” is led by nutslaps like Nick Coleman.<\/p>\n

For real <\/em>conversation about the Flake High fiasco, tune into the NARN this weekend.\u00a0 Various shows will be interviewing the various figures in this story; more as details are available.<\/div>\n

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<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few days ago, many of us in the local center-right blogosphere got a good laugh at a local leftypundit’s declaration “if you say you’re not a racist, you are”. Apparently the corollary is “if you negotiate carefully and in good faith to make sure that a potentially-political event is non-political,\u00a0 you are political”. Or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2338","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=2338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2338\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}