To:\u00a0 Dennis Lien, St. Paul Pioneer Press<\/p>\n
From:\u00a0 Mitch Berg<\/p>\n
Re:\u00a0 Fact Checking in your 10\/9 piece<\/a><\/p>\n Mr. Lien,<\/p>\n Mitch Berg here.\u00a0 Not sure if you’re new in the market because, like an awful lot of people to the right of Amy Klobuchar, I don’t actually read the daily newspapers in this town.\u00a0 I know I’ve seen your name in the paper, but I don’t recall if you’re an old PiPress <\/em>hand or not.<\/p>\n I’d like to hope <\/em>so, since your piece on Thursday incorporated a lot of rookie, or rookie-esque, flubs.\u00a0<\/p>\n Your piece covers the “Dump Bachmann” blog, run by Eva Young.\u00a0 The reason I wonder if you’re a newbie is, of course, “The Dump” got near-saturation coverage before the 2006 election, back when lots of reporters – whether well-meaning or gullible – treated “The Dump” as a legitimate news source.\u00a0<\/p>\n It’d seem you and the PiPress<\/em> have fallen into the same trap – whether through wishful thinking or merely digging for anything <\/em>to throw at the conservative rep and lightning rod in the Sixth.\u00a0<\/p>\n The reasons matter not – the same First Amendment that applies to me (until the Obamessiah repeals it) covers you.\u00a0<\/p>\n But there’s some fact-checking to be done, here:<\/p>\n There’s a lengthy discourse on whether Bachmann will attend a debate.\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n “Discourse” requires two sides, Mr. Lien.\u00a0\u00a0The word you’re looking for is “echo chamber”.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0From its debut in 2004, the site, dumpbachmann.blogspot.com<\/a>, has been home to a hyperactive collection of people who find Bachmann oddly compelling.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Whatever your piece’s other faults, Mr. Lien, I’ll give\u00a0you style points;\u00a0“hyperactive collection of people who find somone oddly compelling” is the most artful way to describe “bunch of obsessed stalkers” I’ve ever read.\u00a0 Kudos!<\/p>\n But please see to this bit here…:<\/p>\n \u00a0Young said she spends an hour or two every evening updating the blog. Minneapolis cartoonist Ken Avidor handles the video items.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Let’s cut the crap, Mr. Lien.\u00a0 It’s Ken Weiner<\/em>.\u00a0 “Avidor” is a pseudonym he adopts to try to dignify his dork-fingered oeuvre<\/em>.\u00a0 But don’t worry about names, since whenever he wants a different identity<\/a>, he just takes one<\/a>.\u00a0 Without bothering<\/a> to tell anyone.\u00a0 You can call him Avidor, you can call him Weiner, you can call him Al Goldstein’s kicktoy<\/a>, you can call him the only “cartoonist” in the Twin Cities less accomplished than Swiftee<\/a>…<\/p>\n …but those of us who know him best just call him “the Lord of the Sock Puppets”.\u00a0<\/p>\n “What I bring to the blog is not only documentation and video, but a little bit of humor,” Avidor said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Yep!\u00a0 Funny stuff, like the picture of Michele Bachmann in a Nazi outfit!<\/p>\n (Although to be fair, perhaps that was what you were referring to when you wrote about The Dump’s “provocative, in-your-face bits of rhetoric”<\/p>\n And quoting Karl Bremer – a man whom Yellow Hacks have disowned for giving them a bad name – is kinda a self-limiting move, Dennis.<\/p>\n At any rate, please see to this, OK?<\/p>\n That is all.<\/p>\n (PS to Eva:\u00a0 “Acknowleding and responding” to something is not the same as “having a cow”.\u00a0 Or to put it another way; I’m laughing at you).<\/p>\n (And, of course, Lien).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" To:\u00a0 Dennis Lien, St. Paul Pioneer Press From:\u00a0 Mitch Berg Re:\u00a0 Fact Checking in your 10\/9 piece Mr. Lien, Mitch Berg here.\u00a0 Not sure if you’re new in the market because, like an awful lot of people to the right of Amy Klobuchar, I don’t actually read the daily newspapers in this town.\u00a0 I know […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,44],"tags":[208],"class_list":["post-3441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs","category-stupid","tag-a-klo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3441","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=3441"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76201,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3441\/revisions\/76201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}