You are a blogger, writing for a blog that is, let’s just say, “hyperspecialized” on one local politician.<\/p>\n
In some of your more many flights of fancy, you call yourself a “citizen journalist”.\u00a0 I will, in fact, call you “journalist”; first, you have to call me “Admiral”.<\/p>\n
But I digress.<\/p>\n
You asked me a question last week on your “blog”; if the Tea Parties are as independent as I said they were in a stand-up interview with am anonymous blogger who was roaming the Capitol grounds with a camera during the Tea Party, “who pays for the porta-potties?”<\/p>\n
I’m sure you chuckled a high-pitched, strangled, adenoidal cackle as you hit “Post” on that one.<\/p>\n
But since you fancy yourself a “journalist”, I thought I’d ask you, why not do what “journalists” do?\u00a0 Do what I used to do back when I was a “reporter”; do the actual work, and call around and find out who paid for the porta-potties<\/em>, so as to tell once and for all if there’s a vast, right-wing conspiracy behind the Tea Parties, or if it is (like pretty much everything that’s ever been in your “blog”) a rumor and an assumption and a nudge and wink and strangled cackle?<\/p>\n Oh, yeah – I talked with Toni Backdahl, one of the people from “Moving MN Forward”, the grass roots group that organized the MN Tea Party.\u00a0 She writes:<\/p>\n – Walgreens stuff for event:\u00a0\u00a010.64<\/p>\n – Adobe font for T-shirts:\u00a0\u00a058.72<\/p>\n – domain names .org, .inf, .net:\u00a0\u00a050<\/p>\n – building tops for barrels:\u00a0\u00a034.08<\/p>\n – office max:\u00a0\u00a033.62<\/p>\n – archivers paper:\u00a0\u00a017.06<\/p>\n – banners:\u00a0\u00a0220.97<\/p>\n – Blick art:\u00a0\u00a024.58<\/p>\n –\u00a0 metal for stand: \u00a0123.56<\/p>\n –\u00a0 insurance: \u00a0463.81<\/p>\n – t-shirts Monitors: \u00a0567<\/p>\n – Office supply: \u00a0122.59<\/p>\n – 2-way radios:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0330<\/p>\n Total costs:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a02056.63<\/p>\n donations:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a01630<\/p>\n left to cover:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0-426<\/p>\n The above is [one of the local organizer]\u2019s account for her portion of the event. Online T-Shirt sales figure is not included here, but our portion is minimal and most likely will not cover the deficit. Also they sold some t-shirts at the event but haven\u2019t received any info on that either.<\/p>\n [Another local organizer] received a few donations from friends of his to cover the cost of printing (15,000 flyers and 10,000 post cards)<\/p>\n Port-a-potties were $497.00 (one friend gave him $500 for it)<\/p>\n I had about $200.00 worth of expenses (cell phone, hosting, printing and misc) that I donated without reimbursement<\/p>\n [Another local organizer] had about $100.00 worth of expenses in cell phone charges she donated without reimbursement. Angela had expenses for the credential materials she donated without reimbursement.<\/p>\n We all brought garbage bags and water (which got mixed into the water from [Minnesotans for Limited Government])<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Sounds like Rush Limbaugh and “Faux” News (hahaha, that never gets old -no, really) teamed up!<\/p>\n But at any rate – see?\u00a0 It’s fairly simple.\u00a0 Question answered.<\/p>\n Now you can respond to this one of two ways:\u00a0 do some digging and find actual evidence <\/em>that there’s some larger, more sinister group funding these Tea Parties, or giggle your strangled little giggle and snark “Suuuuuure, that’s all<\/em>“, and scamper back to your little cave.<\/p>\n I’m guessing you’ll go with “B”.<\/p>\n Now, since we’re all playing “journalist”, I have a question for all of you: Is the entire staff your Bachman-Derangement-Syndrome motivated blog a result of attempted lobotomies gone terribly wrong, or did your parents feed you peeled lead paint chips as babies?<\/p>\n See?\u00a0 That’s <\/em>journalism!<\/p>\n Playing little doop-di-doop games with Photoshop?\u00a0 Not so much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" You are a blogger, writing for a blog that is, let’s just say, “hyperspecialized” on one local politician. In some of your more many flights of fancy, you call yourself a “citizen journalist”.\u00a0 I will, in fact, call you “journalist”; first, you have to call me “Admiral”. But I digress. You asked me a question […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lefty-alt-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4735","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=4735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4735\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}