{"id":2881,"date":"2008-07-16T07:00:51","date_gmt":"2008-07-16T12:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2881"},"modified":"2011-09-01T07:53:04","modified_gmt":"2011-09-01T12:53:04","slug":"birkeys-great-leap-forward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2881","title":{"rendered":"Birkey’s Great Leap Forward"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in college, I was the editor of\u00a0 the school newspaper.<\/p>\n

The newspaper had its own mail box at the school post office.\u00a0 And every week like clockwork, I got a copy of Gramma<\/em>, the official propaganda organ of the Cuban Communist Party.\u00a0 A holdover from a previous, more-radical editor (although I was still a liberal at this point), it was helpfully translated into English.\u00a0 Stilted English that sounded like it came from the bastard child of a Yale semiotics professor and a half-literate union thug (“Comrade Castro announced that production of milk in the third year of the Fourth Five Year Plan in Metastiza Region had increased 35% over previous years, testimony to the wisdom of Comrade Castro’s agriculture pollicies”) but English nonetheless.
\nViewed in that light, Andy Birkey’s piece in today’s Minnesoros “Independent”\u00a0<\/em> almost makes sense:<\/a><\/p>\n

Some politicians running for re-election in a safe district can get lax in their campaigning,<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Right.\u00a0 Some of them skip the Juneteenth Parade, until someone calls and tells them that Barb Davis-White is there.<\/p>\n

but Rep. Keith Ellison is working hard in this year\u2019s campaign. At a Saturday afternoon meeting of LGBT activists at the Spirit of the Lakes Church in Minneapolis, Ellison expounded on his “politics of inclusion and generosity” and the responsibility to engage every voter in the district even when the odds look good.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A new sugarcane harvest in Santa Margarita<\/strike> appearance in front of a friendly constituency.<\/p>\n

Read the whole thing – a puff piece on Ellison’s outreach to gays – and ask yourself two things:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Given how the local leftymedia has harped on Barb Davis-White’s religion – especially its anti-gay aspects – just as they do for every Republican politician who is open about a faith that doesn’t aggressively embrace homosexuality, why has nobody in the leftymedia asked Rep. Ellison (the way they ask Barb Davis-White and Michele Bachmann, to pick two random examples) about how his religion, the very anti-gay Islam, affects his views on homosexuality?<\/li>\n
  2. Given that the Fifth is a district where the DFL can traditionally count on being able to wrap a bag of dog poop with DFL stickers, endorse it, and collect 50% of the district, why is <\/em>Ellison – as lax and lazy a campaigner as Minnesota has ever seen – hitting the hustings?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    What would Che do?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Back in college, I was the editor of\u00a0 the school newspaper. The newspaper had its own mail box at the school post office.\u00a0 And every week like clockwork, I got a copy of Gramma, the official propaganda organ of the Cuban Communist Party.\u00a0 A holdover from a previous, more-radical editor (although I was still a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-08"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2881","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=2881"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22397,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2881\/revisions\/22397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}