{"id":33112,"date":"2014-01-01T10:15:26","date_gmt":"2014-01-01T16:15:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=33112"},"modified":"2015-04-27T12:20:29","modified_gmt":"2015-04-27T17:20:29","slug":"its-the-2013-shootie-awards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=33112","title":{"rendered":"It’s The 2013 Shootie Awards!"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s New Years Day, and as such it’s time for a tradition unlike most others – the\u00a0Seventh Annual<\/a>\u00a0Shootie Awards, “honoring” the “best” in Minnesota blogging, talk radio, and social and alt-media in the same way D-Con Mouse Pellets honor the best in rodent culture.<\/p>\n

The Nick Coleman\/Brian Lambert Memorial Award For Broadcast Excellence<\/strong>:\u00a0With the virtual demise of the Twin Cities’ liberal “AM950”,\u00a0you’d think we’d be going begging for a recipient for this traditional honor.<\/p>\n

Not so.<\/p>\n

This year, the\u00a0award goes to\u00a0Minnesota Public Radio’s Keri Miller.<\/p>\n

Don’t get us wrong; Miller is not a thud-witted radio pretender like Coleman was, nor a chuckling Uptown caricature like Lambert.\u00a0 Miller\u00a0has a multitude of approaches; one minute – say, when interviewing any Republican or conservative – she’s acerbic and aggressive, badgering and hectoring and interrupting to the point it’d be\u00a0fairer to say she “occasionally allows her conservative guests to interrupt her interruptions” (Mike Wallace’s ghost reportedly wanders the miles of halls at MPR urging Miller to “dial back the cranky, toots”).\u00a0 The next minute – when a DFL politician, dependent or employee is on the air, usually – she’ll sound as if she may be giving the guest a back massage.\u00a0 The real show of Miller’s expertise?\u00a0 As Bill Glahn notes, she’ll even do both during the course of the same interview<\/a>!<\/p>\n

So fear not.\u00a0 The legacy of Brian Lambert, Nick Coleman and Andrew Colton lives on.\u00a0 Whoever Andrew Colton was.<\/p>\n

The Larry Jacobs “Most Overquoted Person in the Twin Cities Media” Award<\/strong>: \u00a0This award – which has also gone to Professor David Schultz of Hamline University, a relentless liberal who seems to be regarded as the only knowledgeable source on Minnesota conservatives – is rarely a huge surprise.<\/p>\n

But let’s give a nod to tradition; the award this year goes to none other than Larry Jacobs himself, especially in honor of his NYTimes <\/em> piece declaring Minnesota the winner over WIsconsin in the blue vs. red economic battle<\/a>, even though Minnesota’s experiment with spendthrift liberal government hadn’t really taken effect yet.<\/p>\n

The John Najarian Memorial Award for Surgically-Precise Sarcasm<\/strong>:\u00a0 This award goes to this blog’s good friend John Gilmore at his blog Minnesota Conservatives<\/em>, who satirized with a brilliantly straightened face the ideal of reading Twin Cities liberal bloggers in a piece which, tart tongue notwithstanding, is an essential read, even down to its ingeniously snarky title “On It:\u00a0 Reading Minnesota’s Liberal Blogosphere<\/a>“.\u00a0 The mark of Gilmore’s pithy genius?\u00a0 He mixes in some sincere, legitimate, deserved compliments; to the excellent if equally snarky Tony Petrangelo, and\u00a0the\u00a0City Pages’\u00a0<\/em>Aaron Rupar (Gilmore says he has ”\u00a0a large measure of personal style that’s impossible to pick up in any journalism class”, which is true; while Rupar punches his ticket as a\u00a0DFL water-carrie<\/a>r, we must give credit where due; Rupar isn’t the\u00a0onanistic panty-sniffer\u00a0<\/a>his colleague Kevin Hoffman is)\u00a0and Sally Jo Sorenson, who can be annoyingly juvenile but is a capable reporter with – improbably – a sense of integrity).<\/p>\n

But then comes the payoff – “compliments” that, to those who’ve followed Minnesota’s liberal ‘sphere for any time at all, are just howlers; Eric Austin has “an admixture of deadliness and humor” (only his logic <\/a>is funny; his “deadliness” is against those who can’t fight back<\/a>).\u00a0 And\u00a0attorney Gilmore must be paying some intra-professional respect to\u00a0Steve “Spotty” Timmer, calling him an essential read notwithstanding Timmer’s very dubious grasp (or misleading explanation) of the law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But the true mark of Gilmore’s genius?\u00a0 In a piece ostensibly urging people to read liberal blogs, he directs people to read Minnesota Progressive Project, which is a little like introducing people to\u00a0French cuisine with a tastefully-arranged\u00a0Merde au Vin Flamb\u00e9<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0 – a cunning double-cross if there ever were one.<\/p>\n

Anyway – bravo, John!\u00a0 Oscar Wilde applauds from the great beyond!<\/p>\n

The George Santayana Memorial “He Who’s Forgotten History Is Condemned To Be A Liberal Academic” Award<\/strong>:\u00a0This year, it goes not to an academic,per se, but to a blogger.<\/p>\n

Sally Jo Sorenson – who, I take pains to note, is one of those rare Minnesota liberal bloggers who doesn’t seem <\/em>to deserve police surveillance – is a perfectly fine writer.\u00a0 But\u00a0one might assume that she skipped a few history classes to concentrate on the Poli Sci,\u00a0<\/a>if\u00a0 you catch my drift, not that I have a “drift” or anything.<\/p>\n

The “Minnesota Nice” Award<\/strong>:\u00a0\u00a0Minnesotans are an accomodating bunch.\u00a0 If one of us needs some help, someone will no doubt be there to pitch in (see also:\u00a0 Rep. Martens, above).<\/p>\n

And so last year when Governor Messinger<\/del> Dayton announced his budget, it was a natural assumption <\/em>that Carrie Lucking – Executive Directrix of “Alliance for a “Better” Minnesota” – would be there to tweet about the picayune details found deep inside the Governor’s big, thick budge<\/a>t.<\/p>\n

Notwithstanding the fact that the details were buried deeeeeeeeep inside a budget that had supposedly been available to the public for precisely 13 minutes when Lucking wrote the tweet.<\/p>\n

Some cynical wags said it had to be because Lucking had <\/em>to have gotten a copy from Bob\u00a0Hume, a senior staffer for\u00a0Governor Messinger<\/del> Dayton and, rumor and innuendo and a rogue Strib <\/em>article <\/a>had it, either Lucking’s boyfriend or spouse.<\/p>\n

Me?\u00a0 I think Hume and Dayton got their copies from Lucking, after Messinger dictated it.<\/p>\n

Anyway – all that cooperation?\u00a0 It’s just nice.<\/p>\n

The “The Media, The Media, The Media’s On Fire! We Don’t Need No Water, Let That Liberal Institution Burn!” Award<\/strong>: This one\u00a0goes to\u00a0the entire\u00a0mainstream-media “Fact-Checking” racket, which\u00a0seems to have morphed <\/a>more into a “Democrat\u00a0Ministry of Truth” than it\u00a0even started out.<\/p>\n

The Just Remember, Libruls are Teh Smrt Award<\/strong>: I’ve noted it before; the Democrats should <\/em>have been able to impose some <\/em>kind of gun control law this past session.\u00a0 They\u00a0controlled the legislature, and they have a governor who does whatever his ex-wife tells him to do.\u00a0 They\u00a0couldn’t have asked for a more favorable\u00a0situation – other than the\u00a0whole “Minnesota is closely divided between the GOP and DFL” bit.<\/p>\n

But the DFL House Metrocrat caucus’s\u00a0gun-grab brain trust – Representatives\u00a0Paymar and\u00a0Hausman – not only introduced a raft of\u00a0draconian assaults on the Bill of Rights (all of them crudely copied-and-pasted from other state’s\u00a0bills) guaranteed to inflame the peasants.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Alice Hausman, introducing a resolution declaring Steven Colbert funny<\/p><\/div>\n

Best of all?\u00a0 When it came time for Hausman (who represents Saint Paul’s House District 66A in the same way Prince Charles of Wales “represents” the Welsh) to introduce one of her gun-grab bills to the House Judiciary Committee, Hausman was nowhere to be found.\u00a0 So Chairman Paymar, likely in violation of House rules, allowed Martens – a registered lobbyist – to do Representative Hausman’s job, reading the bill into consideration.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Rep. (apparently)\u00a0Heather Martens (DFL 66A) exploiting the victim of an earlier tragedy<\/p><\/div>\n

Rumor has it the DFL will just let Alida Messinger, Michael Bloomberg and George Soros sit on the house floor and cast their votes for them in 2014.<\/p>\n

The Cicero\/Demosthenes\/Socrates Award For Excellence In The Advancement Of Keen-Eyed Rhetoric:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>The gun control movement in Minnesota hired Richard Carlbom, PR-chitect of the Gay Marriage law, to help them try to jam down anti-rights legislation in the next session.<\/p>\n

One of the reasons was the comedic ineptitude of the Minnesota gun movement’s current leadership.<\/p>\n

And while Representative Heather Martens has earned plenty of brickbats for her tone-deaf, unintentionally comic performances<\/a> over the past decade or so (and a Shootie award or two, including this year, which see), the breakout performer was Jane Kay of “Moms Want Action”.\u00a0 It’s a safe bet that a big part of what will no doubt be the gun-grab movement’s push toward calming, “reasonable” talk about “responsible” laws and “sane” approaches is to try to counter the Jane Kay’s legacy as a purple-faced hate-clogged caricature <\/a>who, notwithstanding a slopped-on coat of feminist sloganeering, managed to simultaneously make her message cheaply sexist (while utterly un-sexy) <\/a>and self-marginalizing <\/a>at the same time.<\/p>\n

If Richard Carlbom spends his first three months doing damage control, Kay is part of the reason.\u00a0 And for that, she earns the award, and earns it well!<\/p>\n

The Walter Duranty Award<\/strong>:\u00a0 Among Minnesota’s “Libertarian” “movement” – which coalesced around the Ron Paul campaign in 2012 to seize a disproportionate control of the MNGOP – were quite a few one-time, there-and-gone “activists”, a gratifying number of very sharp people who did a good job in bringing solid, needed libertarian politics to the MNGOP, and – at the very core – a group of smirking, preening, frat-boy-esque self-styled “Anarcho-Libertarians” who really were only there to pee in all the peasants’ Wheaties and then slap themselves on the back and laugh at the complaints.<\/p>\n

Now, if the question is “is our government too powerful” and “do we need to limit the power of government over the individual”, I’m with you. \u00a0Government is too big. \u00a0We need to carve much of it out and toss it away.<\/p>\n

But just as the “peace” movement 30 years ago wasn’t about “nuclear weapons” but “US nuclear weapons”, the Liberty Fratboys rose as one to applaud Edward Snowden’s assault on big intrusive government (qualified yay)…<\/p>\n

…as Snowden applauded Vladimir Putin’s human rights record<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The “Every Junior High Impressed-With-Himself Chess-Club Prig” Award For Intellectual Rigor<\/strong>:\u00a0\u00a0After a long absence from this award, it almost feels like old home week, as we award this to a man who was once a candidate for a Shootie Lifetime Achievement award.\u00a0 That’s right – Nick Coleman, gone from the Shooties for years, is back, and he shows that he’s still at the peak of his game, where “his game” means “autoerotic and homoerotic japes delivered with all the grace of a Danish jazz band”, and “peak” means “same crap, different year”.\u00a0 This piece <\/a>– which laces Coleman’s usual oeuvre <\/em>of erection jokes with a long train of outright fabrications – was almost a return to the Nick Coleman of his Strib <\/em>Columnists’ Row glory days, except<\/del> including the fact that nobody with an IQ above plant life read it.\u00a0 And for that, we salute Coleman.\u00a0 It’s not like we give these things away.<\/p>\n

Well, actually, we do.\u00a0 But what I mean is…<\/p>\n

…well, anyway, congrats!<\/p>\n

The Nancy Pelosi “You Won’t Know What It Means Til You Do It!” Award For Wishful Planning<\/strong>:\u00a0\u00a0MNSure.\u00a0 Duh.<\/p>\n

The Claudius Caesar Award For Excellence In Praetorian Guardsmanship<\/strong>:\u00a0\u00a0This is always a hotly-contested award – and getting moreso every year, as the “objective” media slides ever-more into the bag for the left.<\/p>\n

This year it was a tight, tight race, nearly a coin toss.\u00a0 Both of the contenders in the final two exemplify the trend of “objective” “mainstream” media allowing (left-leaning and\/or pro-big-state, pardon the redundancy) groups to underwrite “journalism” and “news coverage”.<\/p>\n

At the end of the day, we decided to give the runner-up spot to Minnesota Public Radio News – a news organization that has not just any <\/em>arm of government, but MNSure, perhaps the most controversial executive-branch project in the state this past year, as a sponsor for Keri Miller’s Morning Circuit <\/a>– an MPR News<\/em> production.\u00a0\u00a0 A casual reader might note that this is a conflict according to the Society of Professional Journalists’ “Code of Ethics”<\/a> (while the pros know, of course, that the SPJ code is nothing but a framework by which journalists evade all accountability).<\/p>\n

The prize, however, goes to the MinnPost, <\/em>whose coverage of Second Amendment issues this past year, while\u00a0posited as “journalism”,\u00a0was delivered\u00a0with five-figure annual grant from the “Joyce Foundation” – which, the MinnPost <\/em>never bothered to tell the reader,\u00a0also sponsors most of America’s major gun-control groups, as well as “Take Action Minnesota”.\u00a0 So not only was there a never-explicitly-stated imperative for the MinnPost <\/em>to slant its coverage – but the coverage itself was shoddy and risible, ranging from historically myopic <\/a>to ludicrously badly-reported <\/a>to just-plain-false and propagandistic<\/a>, devolving eventually into an extended rhetorical tongue-bath for Minnesota’s incompetent gun -grab movement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The capstone of the whole year?\u00a0 Accompanying one of the MinnPost’s<\/em> pieces (citing a long-obscure and generally-debunked theory that the Second Amendment was instituted to defend slavery), the site decided to use this as an symbol for Second Amendment support:<\/p>\n

\"\"

Yep. Confederate soldiers. Because that’s what all of you law-abiding gun owners are – to the Joyce-Foundation-supported MinnPost<\/em>.<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/strong>In a just world, a news organization with integrity would apologize, not only for the post-hoc <\/em>slander, but for its misleading, slanted and, frankly, bought-off “journalism”.<\/p>\n

The world, of course, is not a just one.\u00a0 Does the MinnPost <\/em>have integrity?<\/p>\n

Oh, it’s a new year, full of promise, isn’t it?<\/p>\n

The Charles Townsend Award<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 In 1765, British parliamentarian Charles Townsend, in noting the Colonies\u2019 protests against the Stamp Act, said:<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd now will these Americans, Children planted by our Care, nourished up by our Indulgence until they are grown to a Degree of Strength & Opulence, and protected by our Arms, will they grudge to contribute their mite to relieve us from the heavy weight of that burden which we lie under?\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Townsend’s statements sum up the arrogance of the professional bureaucrat, the institutional utopian, the Masters of the Universe who believe they were sent here to keep us peasants from crapping in our beds.<\/p>\n

And for the first time in the history of the Shooties, the Townsend award goes not to a stupid statement by a politician, but a photo that gloriously sums up Minnesota under DFL rule in 2013:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Governors Zygi Wilf and Mark Messinger<\/span> Dayton<\/p><\/div>\n

Yes, it’s Zygi Wilf in a paroxysm of glee over all those taxpayer dollars he’s going to be marinating his tush in – but it could just as easily be Javi Morillo, or Elliot Seid, or Greta Bergstrom or Carrie Lucking, roiling in glee and amazed that they’ve been able to put one over on the rubes, as our “Governor” wonders what this thing on a long stick is and\u00a0hopes Alida doesn’t take away his driving privileges.<\/p>\n

You have to give them the money to know what the money is!\u00a0 Or something!<\/p>\n

Or we’ll lose the Vikings!<\/p>\n

Anyway – as long as there’s a New Years in Minnesota, there’s a Shooties.\u00a0 See you next year!<\/p>\n

(Here are the previous Shootie winners, going back to 2006<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s New Years Day, and as such it’s time for a tradition unlike most others – the\u00a0Seventh Annual\u00a0Shootie Awards, “honoring” the “best” in Minnesota blogging, talk radio, and social and alt-media in the same way D-Con Mouse Pellets honor the best in rodent culture. The Nick Coleman\/Brian Lambert Memorial Award For Broadcast Excellence:\u00a0With the virtual […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[333,182],"class_list":["post-33112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geekery","tag-brian-lambert","tag-shootie-awards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33112","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=33112"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52981,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33112\/revisions\/52981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}