{"id":6664,"date":"2009-11-25T08:55:41","date_gmt":"2009-11-25T13:55:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=6664"},"modified":"2015-04-27T12:20:52","modified_gmt":"2015-04-27T17:20:52","slug":"it-just-occurred-to-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=6664","title":{"rendered":"It Just Occurred To Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

I ask people on the left, constantly, “so what, precisely, is <\/em>the problem you have with Katherine Kersten – besides <\/em>the fact that she’s a conservative?”<\/p>\n

The closest thing I’ve seen to an answer that wasn’t solely <\/em>fueled by politics was “she was never a reporter; she’s nothing but a think tank writer”.\u00a0 In this story – one you usually hear from people in the media – the idea that spending years becoming a hard-drinking, dyspeptic “ink-stained wretch” is the bit of seasoning in the human stew that makes a columnist a columnist.\u00a0 It’s sort of an echo of Nick Coleman’s\u00a0 classic explanation of why he’s better than bloggers,\u00a0 “I Know\u00a0 Stuff”, where “stuff” equals “reporter” stuff – as if the life experience we all <\/em>bring to the table doesn’t really <\/em>give one a useful perspective on anything.\u00a0 To these people, knowing the double-dog secret ace reporter handshake is the only real <\/em>qualification.<\/p>\n

Enh.<\/p>\n

Another one – and this one is <\/em>overtly partisan – is that “Kersten is closely linked to Power Line<\/em>“.\u00a0 I’ve heard it from any number of Twin Cities’ lefty writers, although Brian Lambert actually wrote it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now, I’ve seen a few leftymedia types jump from that to “Kersten and Powerline have the same opinions”, as if it’s unthinkable that four conservatives would have some occasional synchronicity, and ignoring that they, the critic, was usually in completely sync with “The Daily Kos” at any rate…<\/p>\n

…but that’s not really the point.<\/p>\n

I’m curious:\u00a0 the leftymedia says that Kersten having the occasional episode of synchronicity with Power Line <\/em>is a bad thing…<\/p>\n

…while Nick Coleman\u00a0 – the columnist against whom Kersten is constantly unfavorably compared because his decades as a reporter and columnist and just-plain observer<\/em> – can get a complete pass for writing an uncritical, incurious, note-by-note regurgitation of a liberal think-tank piece to which Coleman added not a whiff of his vaunted no-nonsense reportorial curiosity<\/a> or experience or world-weary inquisitiveness.\u00a0 Indeed, Coleman added nothing but a little brow-beating prejudice.<\/p>\n

So let me ask, again – what is <\/em>the comparison, here?\u00a0 Other than politics, of course?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I ask people on the left, constantly, “so what, precisely, is the problem you have with Katherine Kersten – besides the fact that she’s a conservative?” The closest thing I’ve seen to an answer that wasn’t solely fueled by politics was “she was never a reporter; she’s nothing but a think tank writer”.\u00a0 In this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63,4],"tags":[333],"class_list":["post-6664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lefty-alt-media","category-media","tag-brian-lambert"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6664","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=6664"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6682,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6664\/revisions\/6682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}