{"id":2846,"date":"2008-07-10T07:00:17","date_gmt":"2008-07-10T12:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2846"},"modified":"2015-04-27T12:20:53","modified_gmt":"2015-04-27T17:20:53","slug":"a-funny-thing-happened-at-billys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2846","title":{"rendered":"A Funny Thing Happened At Billy’s"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two things did not <\/em>happen at the MDE\/MNPublius Happy Hour at Billy’s on Grand last night:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Nobody started singing Kumbaya<\/strong>. In the presence of each other’s “operatives”, nobody apparently converted to their respective dark sides. Left stayed left, right stayed right, and though the twain met, it did not turn into an Ophrah episode.<\/li>\n
  2. Nobody started throwing punches<\/strong>. Everyone got along just fine in the presence of a roomful of the other side’s “operatives”. The lion didn’t lie down with the lamb, but they did share nachos and buffalo wings with each other.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Who did I meet? It was such a blur; I met Mary Lahammer from Channel 2, and found we shared some time in the North Dakota broadcasts wars. I met the MNPublius <\/a>guys – Matt and Sean, whom I call the “giggly fratboys”, but all in good fun (Michael Corleone: “It’s not personal. It’s business<\/em>), along with (naturally) the co-host of the party, my NARN colleague Michael Brodkorb<\/a>. Gavin Sullivan<\/a> was there, along with Jeff Rosenberg from MN Campaign Report, Joe “Learned Foot” Tucci from KAR<\/a>, one of the fellas from “Liberal in the Land of Conservative” (nice guy, albeit a poor judge of “smack<\/a>“), Sara Janecek and her colleagues from Politics in Minnesota<\/em>, Dane Smith, Shadow from the “Urban Renaissance Coalition<\/a>“, Brian McClung from Governor Pawlenty’s office, Anne Mason from the Erik Paulsen campaign, “Two Putt Tommy” (who’s graduating from being a comment section gadfly to writing for “MNBlue”<\/a>; honestly, he could do better). I’m told even Charlie Quimby braved the flood of “anti-progressive operatives” and showed up, although he disappeared before I could work my way over to that corner of the bar.<\/p>\n

    And of course, I saw Brian Lambert, now with Minneapolis Saint Paul Magazine…<\/p>\n

    …at whom I’ve taken my fair share of shots<\/a> over the years.<\/p>\n

    And at whom I’ll no doubt take many more.<\/p>\n

    But – here’s the fun part – I had a blast meeting him. He’s sort of like a political photonegative (a polinegative?) of Bob Davis; quick, glib but articulate, just erudite enough. We haven’t actually met face-to-face since he sat in for Geoff Charles one day at KSTP in 1985 – and I have to say that I had a great time talking with the guy.<\/p>\n

    I know. Stifle the “Kumbaya” stuff<\/em>, dagnabbit; I’m gonna keep dinging on all <\/em>of their politics! I mean, let’s be clear – nothing about the event was, as Charlie Quimby put <\/a>it, “a symbolic show of bipartisanship<\/a> \u2014 which is people who’d like to stab each other in the back pretending they won’t”. There was nothing “bi”-partisan about the evening; we all knew what sides everyone was on, when we were talking politics at all. It was multipartisan and <\/em>nonpartisan (and let’s be perfectly clear; I only stab people in the face).<\/p>\n

    But as I noted earlier this week – one of the great joys of events like these is that you start to see people with whom you spar (constantly!) as people, rather than as collections of cliches and stereotypes. Which makes arguments, debates and discussions more difficult and, ultimately, much more rewarding.\u00a0 And which some, unfortunately, find threatening.<\/p>\n

    Kudos to Matt, Sean and Michael. We gotta do it again sometime.<\/p>\n

    Hmmm…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Two things did not happen at the MDE\/MNPublius Happy Hour at Billy’s on Grand last night: Nobody started singing Kumbaya. In the presence of each other’s “operatives”, nobody apparently converted to their respective dark sides. Left stayed left, right stayed right, and though the twain met, it did not turn into an Ophrah episode. Nobody […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[333],"class_list":["post-2846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs","tag-brian-lambert"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2846","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=2846"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53012,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2846\/revisions\/53012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}