{"id":6097,"date":"2009-11-09T08:01:56","date_gmt":"2009-11-09T13:01:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=6097"},"modified":"2009-11-09T08:16:46","modified_gmt":"2009-11-09T13:16:46","slug":"kersten-the-shorter-every-liberals-critique","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=6097","title":{"rendered":"Kersten: The Shorter “Every Liberal’s Critique”"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is no person in the Twin Cities media that inspires more unreasoning derangement than Katherine Kersten.\u00a0 When it was announced, several years ago, that she’d be joining the columnist staff at the Strib<\/em>, the “journalist” community acted like management had proposed mandatory sodomy during work breaks.<\/p>\n

The Twin Cities’ “journalist” community – which has tolerated all manner of abuses of contact, fact and selective omission and mangling of context with scarcely a peep – was concerned about the “journalistic integrity” of the Strib’s famously biased, fact-challenged editorial pages.<\/p>\n

But for these many years, I’ve been trying to press these people for details.<\/p>\n

Here’s a typical exchange (*) from a local chat room frequented by media and near-media:<\/p>\n

[Writer A]:<\/strong> Katherine Kersten is teh suck.<\/p>\n

Mitchberg: <\/strong>Er, why do you say that?<\/p>\n

[Writer A]:<\/strong> Have you read her latest article in the Strib<\/a>?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mitchberg: <\/strong>Yeah.\u00a0 What about it?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

[Writer A]:<\/strong> She says that marriage is about having kids.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mitchberg: <\/strong>Yeah.\u00a0 And…?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

[Writer A]:<\/strong> That And she says that people who don’t have kids should get married!<\/p>\n

[Editor B]:<\/strong> Hah!\u00a0 She is teh crazee! LOLZ!\u00a0 Can I haz baybee?<\/p>\n

Mitchberg: <\/strong>Y Er, OK, both of you – I read the whole article.\u00a0 She says no such thing.\u00a0 Merely that the institution of marriage, traditionally and historically, throughout the world’s many, impossibly diverse cultures, is pretty universally about bringing men and women together to have children.\u00a0 And that the dissolution of this tradition has caused lots of problems in our society.<\/p>\n

[Writer A<\/strong>]: Marriage is about kids<\/em>?\u00a0 What?\u00a0 What about adults?<\/p>\n

Mitchberg<\/strong>: You’ve never been married, have you?<\/p>\n

[Writer A<\/strong>]: No, and what does that have to do with it?<\/p>\n

Mitchberg<\/strong>: Er, never mind.\u00a0 Look, her main point is that marriage has always been how societies see to the upbringing and protection of children.\u00a0 It goes back to prehistory.<\/p>\n

[Writer A<\/strong>]: Marriage was always about property.<\/p>\n

Mitchberg<\/strong>: Well, yeah, managing property, sure…<\/p>\n

[Writer A]:<\/strong> No, because women <\/em>were property.<\/p>\n

Mitchberg<\/strong>: Er, yeah.\u00a0 Put down the Womyn’s Studies textbook.\u00a0 There are a zillion societies on earth, and their treatment of women varied widely.\u00a0 In some, they were chattel.\u00a0 In others, they were second-class citizens at best. In sub-saharan Africa, most societies were matriarchal, and in much of Asia many societies had a stealth matriarchy.\u00a0 The treatment of women varies, historically, as widely as possible.\u00a0 Others were not a whole lot different than we see ourselves today.\u00a0 And some societies detested homosexuality with a homicidal passion, and others tolerated it with no major issues.\u00a0 The variations were almost infinite.\u00a0 And yet every single one of these societies had one thing in common; they were an institution in which man\/men came together with woman\/women to have, protect and raise children.\u00a0 What do you suppose the odds were, given the vast number of permutations in every other facet of male-female relationships, that pretty much every one would see marriage as a union of males and females to raise kids?<\/p>\n

Mitchberg<\/strong>: Hello?<\/p>\n

[Writer<\/strong> A]: So people who don’t have kids shouldn’t marry?<\/p>\n

[Editor B]:<\/strong> LOLZ!\u00a0 ShE Iz tha CrayXEE, Beeyotch!<\/p>\n

Mitchberg<\/strong>: Ed, yeah, got it.\u00a0 A, I didn’t say that.\u00a0 Could you show me where she does?\u00a0 Of course you can’t.\u00a0 Kersten neither prescribes nor proscribes.\u00a0 She merely points out that the institution of marriage exists for a reason, and that reason isn’t sharing employee benefits.\u00a0 Do I believe having kids is the only justification for marriage?\u00a0 I dunno.\u00a0 In the extremely unlikely event I marry again, I’m sure not having any more.\u00a0 I’ve done my time.<\/p>\n

[Writer A<\/strong>]: So you agree with her.<\/p>\n

Mitchberg<\/strong>: Er, that’s kinda NOT what I said.<\/p>\n

[Producer C<\/strong>]: I would think as a conservative you’d want the Strib to hire a smart conservative to represent your side.<\/p>\n

Mitchberg<\/strong>: Let’s stay, hypothetically, that Katherine Kersten really is a poor writer, and that, as you also say, everyone always knew it.\u00a0 Given the panic the Strib’s editorial board and columnists went into over hiring the putatively sub-par Kersten, do you honestly think they’d go and hire an even better <\/em>conservative?\u00a0 I mean, even as things are and\/or putatively are, Kersten give them aneurysms.\u00a0 Can you imagine if they had a bigger, badder <\/em>one in the newsroom?<\/p>\n

[Writer A<\/strong>]: So\u00a0 you think marriage is about kids.\u00a0 Isn’t it about adults?<\/p>\n

Mitchberg<\/strong>: You may have perfectly summed up the crux of the Culture War.\u00a0 Some believe marriage is about benefits, status and adult concerns.\u00a0 Some of us believe it’s about raising kidst.\u00a0 It seems the twain will never meet.<\/p>\n

[Writer A<\/strong>]: This is futile.\u00a0 She is teh dumb.<\/p>\n

[Editor B<\/strong>]: And she a looser.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(*) Of course it’s satire.\u00a0 Any resemblance to conversations I’ve had with people in the Twin Cities media and sorta-media in past – especially in the past 48 hours – is purely coincidental.\u00a0 All celebrity written voices are impersonated – badly .<\/p>\n

Mitchberg: <\/strong>Yeah.\u00a0 And…?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is no person in the Twin Cities media that inspires more unreasoning derangement than Katherine Kersten.\u00a0 When it was announced, several years ago, that she’d be joining the columnist staff at the Strib, the “journalist” community acted like management had proposed mandatory sodomy during work breaks. The Twin Cities’ “journalist” community – which has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-war","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6097","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=6097"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6126,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6097\/revisions\/6126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}