{"id":2520,"date":"2008-05-02T14:18:19","date_gmt":"2008-05-02T19:18:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2520"},"modified":"2008-05-02T14:30:44","modified_gmt":"2008-05-02T19:30:44","slug":"repeat-it-often-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2520","title":{"rendered":"Repeat It Often Enough"},"content":{"rendered":"

News Flash; the Minnesota Monitor is helping Al Franken circle his wagons by taking an ad hominem <\/em>attack at Michael Brodkorb.\u00a0 Indeed, other than Katherine Kersten (who earns the left’s ire by transgressing the liberal old-boy’s-and-Lori-Sturdevant’s-club at the Strib<\/em>), nobody in the Twin Cities arouses more deranged ire than Brodkorb.<\/p>\n

Indeed, it seems sometimes it makes them depart the surly bonds of reason.<\/p>\n

Disclosure:\u00a0 Michael’s a friend of mine, and my NARN colleague.<\/p>\n

Background:\u00a0 Along with many of us on the center-right, Michael smelled a rat when the Monitor – whose operations are underwritten by the “Center for Independent Media” – went live back in ’06.\u00a0 The CIM started life sharing offices with George Soros’ attack-PR firm Media Matters for America – which, many of us felt, was more than just a coincidence.\u00a0 The Monitor’s first editor, Robin Marty, tittered and giggled and obfuscated when Michael and many other local bloggers asked for details about the Monitor’s <\/em>funding – or even a denial that Soros was involved.\u00a0 Not that it would have mattered, other than as a way of helping the casual reader assess the “independence” of the “Center for Independent Media” from Soros; to the informed observer, being in bed with Soros, whose other activities are to say the least unsavory, might have helped the reader in judging how much and what kind of credibility to assign the Monitor<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But other than a slip of the lip from a contributor (who admitted that the Monitor<\/em> was\u00a0 “supported by liberals with deep pockets”) and stalled – until former Strib<\/em> reporter Erik Black let the truth slip out when departing the Monitor <\/em><\/a>for the MNPost <\/em>last fall.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, there’s a reason the left gets all deranged over Michael Brodkorb; if Michael were a fighter pilot and big scoops on DFL shenanigans were enemy planes, the side of his cockpit would look like John Landers’ P51<\/a>, only with donkeys instead of swastikas and rising suns.<\/p>\n

“Surely”, their reasoning goes, “he must <\/em>be on the GOP’s payroll”, the reasonable among them insist – although nobody’s ever come up with anything, beyond Robin Marty’s hit piece from a few years ago<\/a>\u00a0(which made the unsubstantiated leap from “Brodkorb was a paid consultant to the Mark Kennedy campaign” to “the GOP pays Brodkorb to blog”) which served only to give the local deranged left an ad-hominem <\/em>shrieking point.<\/p>\n

And to this day, they’re still hovering out there.\u00a0 Still trying to make that connection.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Today, we got a double helping of fun.\u00a0 We were not only served with the rich irony of Paul Schmelzer (whose writing and editorship I have in the past guardedly praised<\/a> in this space), a paid employee of a group linked with people to whom the Monitor <\/em>and the CIM have gone to great lengths to hide their ties, flogging the thin gruel of Robin Marty’s old, debunked accusations about Brodkorb’s blog’s supposed financial ties to the GOP…<\/p>\n

…but we got him muffing the basic facts of the story<\/a> – the AP piece by Pat Condon I wrote about earlier <\/a>today.<\/p>\n

Schmelzer:<\/p>\n

The AP neglects to mention Brodkorb’s past work as research director for the Republican Party of Minnesota<\/strong> and a part-time gig as “press consultant” to former Republican senatorial candidate Mark Kennedy; according to Federal Elections Commission reports, he earned $4,500 per month at that job.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Condon’s AP story<\/a>:<\/p>\n

He dropped out of college in 1995 to work on the failed U.S. Senate campaign of Rudy Boschwitz. In the late ’90s, Brodkorb worked for state Senate Republicans, where he started to learn how to do “opposition research” — digging up dirt on opponents. He did it well enough to become director of research for the state Republican Party, and served in similar roles for several Republican campaigns…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…and later…<\/p>\n

Brodkorb started Minnesota Democrats Exposed anonymously in 2004, when he was still a paid employee of the state Republican Party.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think that counts as a “mention”, don’t you, Paul?<\/p>\n

Schmelzer:\u00a0<\/p>\n

The AP also doesn’t mention the check for $5,500 Brodkorb received on September 3, 2006, for research services<\/a> provided to the Michele Bachmann campaign.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And for about the thousandth time in three years, I have to ask – so what?\u00a0 Brodkorb gets to have a day job – right?\u00a0 Leaving aside that adding “scare quotes” around “press consultant” doesn’t by itself impeach Brodkorb’s story (right?), I have a question for the Monitor<\/em>:\u00a0 Given the reputation as a giant-killer that Michael Brodkorb has built up, and the fact that he is not <\/em>a dumb guy, and that he’s got a city full of leftybloggers and DFL opposition researchers scurrying about like cockroaches on amyl, looking for that magic link that’d discredit him, does anyone rationally think that Brodkorb – who claims not to earn his living from politics today – would risk all of that by trying to lie about his income?<\/p>\n

Y’know – like the Monitor<\/em> did?<\/p>\n

And when you get back to us on that, Paul and Robin and your various supporters (heh), please try to use things like “evidence” rather than “innuendo” and “jumping to conclusions that aren’t warranted by evidence”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

UPDATE:\u00a0 Joe Tucci hit the same conclusion<\/a> at about the same time, noting that Schmelzer has added a “correction”:<\/p>\n

The “correction” is even funnier than the “error”:<\/p>\n

The AP only mentions in passing<\/strong> Brodkorb’s past work as research director for the Republican Party of Minnesota and leaves out<\/strong> specific reference<\/strong> to a part-time gig as “press consultant” to former Republican senatorial candidate Mark Kennedy…<\/em> (emphasis mine).<\/p>\n

It’s a 1,000 word fucking<\/em> wire story. Should they have posted a detailed and exhaustive C.V. along with the story? “OMFG – Brodkorb worked at McDonald’s when he was in high school , and they clear cut rainforests!!!”<\/p>\n

Is that something they normally do? Is it desirable?<\/p>\n

Only if you’re a power hungry partisan hack with an axe to grind<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

News Flash; the Minnesota Monitor is helping Al Franken circle his wagons by taking an ad hominem attack at Michael Brodkorb.\u00a0 Indeed, other than Katherine Kersten (who earns the left’s ire by transgressing the liberal old-boy’s-and-Lori-Sturdevant’s-club at the Strib), nobody in the Twin Cities arouses more deranged ire than Brodkorb. Indeed, it seems sometimes it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,4,2,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs","category-media","category-minnesota-politics","category-narn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2520","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=2520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2520\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}