{"id":3261,"date":"2008-09-08T07:08:04","date_gmt":"2008-09-08T12:08:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3261"},"modified":"2008-09-08T11:13:52","modified_gmt":"2008-09-08T16:13:52","slug":"they-doth-protest-too-much","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3261","title":{"rendered":"They Doth Protest Too Much"},"content":{"rendered":"

Predictably, the local lefty “alternative” media (for those of you for whom the Strib, <\/em>WCCO and MPR aren’t left enough<\/em>) is up in a snit over the treatment journalists got at the convention…<\/p>\n

…er, wait.\u00a0 Look at the coverage the Sorosphere <\/a>gives the convention; see how often the term “media professional” pops up.\u00a0 Interesting turn of phrase.<\/p>\n

But I digress.\u00a0 It’s interesting\u00a0 the number of “Journalists” whose only “story” at the convention involved tramping around with a bunch of people whose primary mission (at a high level, not necessarily among any individual protester) was to “shut down the convention” and provoke a police overreaction.<\/p>\n

Among “journalists” who seem institutionally incapable of recognizing, much less “reporting”, a couple of key facts; that…:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. …if you’re protesting in a group of over 25 or so, and you have no permit, you have an illegal assembly.\u00a0 And no, that doesn’t chill free speech, because…<\/li>\n
  2. …permits are issued pretty much for the asking in Saint Paul, except when EVERYONE wants one, in which case there’s a lottery. As there was, last spring.\u00a0 Permits are issued so that groups of, say, klansmen don’t get to demonstrate at the same time and place as, say, Holocaust survivors.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And…<\/li>\n
  3. …if your “demonstration” goes outside the time and place specified on the permit, your assembly is <\/em>illegal.\u00a0 And…<\/li>\n
  4. …when you’re at an illegal assembly, the Police have every right to tell you to leave. And…<\/li>\n
  5. … when the police tell you to leave, it’s called a “lawful order”.\u00a0 You have no more business arguing with cop about an order to disperse than you do to try to try to talk your way out of showing one your drivers license when you’ve been pulled over.\u00a0 It’s the law<\/em>.\u00a0 And…<\/li>\n
  6. …if you resist, stall or dink around with lawful orders, you can be warned – and then force can be used to enforce the order.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Now – if any of you “media professionals can show me any stories where…:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. …the police regulated the content of any of the legal <\/em>protests, or…<\/li>\n
    2. …regulated the content of any “media professional”‘s coverage of any event, or…<\/li>\n
    3. …broke up a legal, permitted <\/em>protest where nobody was committing violence,<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      …then let’s talk.<\/p>\n

      And then we’ll talk about the double standard you “media professionals” practice; you condemn the police for treating “media professionals” (and dipsticks with video cameras who claimed to be “journalists”) who were standing around at illegal assemblies<\/em> as what they were – poeple who are breaking the law.\u00a0 And then you turn around and support the Obama campaign, an administration that will make the “Fairness” Doctrine a matter of policy, which will <\/em>suppress genuine, legal speech with the full weight of the federal government.<\/p>\n

      We’re talking about a group of “media professionals” (and amateurs, not that a blogger is one to crab about that) whose only <\/em>focus was the protests and whatever happened to them.\u00a0 They cared not an iota about what happened in the Xcel Center (beyond the fact that the objects of their stereotypes and bigotry were going to be meeting there); they certainly didn’t cover the dark side of the protesters on whom they slathered endless, favorable, victim-mongering coverage (while the “demonstrators'” sandbag attacks on buses and the harassment of delegates on their way to the convention somehow<\/em>\u00a0never got covered.\u00a0 Go figure!).\u00a0 No, these “journalists” already had their stories written before they arrived in downtown Saint Paul.\u00a0<\/p>\n

      And that’s not really “journalism”.<\/p>\n

      So maybe if we conservatives peed in buckets, slept under\u00a0 bridges and didn’t shower for a few weeks…?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Predictably, the local lefty “alternative” media (for those of you for whom the Strib, WCCO and MPR aren’t left enough) is up in a snit over the treatment journalists got at the convention… …er, wait.\u00a0 Look at the coverage the Sorosphere gives the convention; see how often the term “media professional” pops up.\u00a0 Interesting turn […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-days-of-adolescent-rage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3261","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=3261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3261\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}