I’m gonna tell you a story about a couple of groups of people.<\/p>\n
News people – especially newspaper people – subscribe to the American ideal of what journalism is, and what journalists are.\u00a0 Part of the culture involves seeing journalism as an almost monastic calling, with a higher codes and rituals and an impenetrable argot that separates them from baser callings.\u00a0 Among good reporters, it’s a mission; among lesser ones, it’s an affectation.\u00a0 It’s neither good nor bad.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I grew up with a foot in that world; I was a news reporter, on and (mostly) off from age 16 into my late twenties.\u00a0 I did my level best to stay detached and stay as close to “objective” as I could (even during my stint in the news department at ulter-liberal KFAI, of all places), where I am happy to relate that nobody ever guessed from my reporting that I had any politics at all.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And then there’s the other world; the more plebeian, less-lofty world of radio, especially the part of radio outside of the few remaining serious commercial radio newsrooms.\u00a0 The world of stunts, dirty tricks, “punking” the competition with gleeful abandon; the world that spawned Howard Stern and Scott Shannon and Opie and Anthony, for better or worse.\u00a0 A world where an extra couple of hundred listeners tuning in for an extra fifteen minutes can mean the difference between having a great job and filing for unemployment yet again.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s a nasty, brutish, deeply dysfunctional world where arrested adolescents romp and play routinely on the dark side of the ethical moon.\u00a0 And damn, when it’s fun, it’s fun<\/em>!<\/p>\n Blogs are somewhere between the two, and way outside ’em to boot.\u00a0 A blog reflects its writers, pretty much; you can tell Powerline<\/em> is a bunch of lawyers with scrappy streaks, that The Sheila Variations <\/em>is written by an eclectic with ADD, that Captain’s Quarters’ <\/em>Ed Morrissey is a mild-mannered guy with an incisive rhetorical left hook and a Rainman-like command of facts.\u00a0 And you can probably tell that this blog is the product of a guy who wears a bunch of hats; diarist, would-be-eclectic, amateur pundit-via-rhetorical-pugilist.<\/p>\n Anyway.<\/p>\n Last week, when the “Punk the Monitor” scheme got hatched, I asked myself – “is this a good idea?” to mock, to “punk”, such a request?<\/p>\n Jeff Fecke left a comment yesterday:<\/p>\n Mitch\u2013<\/p>\n Thank you for your interest, but I have no comment at this time.<\/p>\n Sincerely,<\/p>\n Jeff Fecke<\/p>\n P.S. Oh, wow, look how easy that was!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Oh, wow, but that’s not the whole story.\u00a0<\/p>\n If it were, say, Tim O’Brien or Nick\u00a0Coleman or Lori Sturdevant writing to me, that’s what I’d do.\u00a0 Because they’re biased hacks who are out to attack the politics I personally espouse, and will use any info I provide to that end – but they’re the establishment, and everyone knows what they’re about.\u00a0\u00a0No surprises there.<\/p>\n And if Eric Black or MPR or most mainstream reporters sent an email, it’d be another story; most of them take “detachment” fairly seriously.<\/p>\n But\u00a0the Minnesota Monitor is an inherently deceitful enterprise, a propaganda organ funded (lavishly, by blog standards) by liberals with deep pockets whose mission is to win elections and regain control of this nation.\u00a0 Which would be fine – if they were open and honest about their goals, motivations and support, so that the unwitting could make up their own mind.\u00a0 Nobody reads Powerline <\/em>or Captain’s Quarters <\/em>or this blog for that matter and comes away thinking there’s any attempt at neutrality (although I do try to be fair).\u00a0<\/p>\n As such, the Minnesota Monitor – like the Huffington Post or\u00a0the Young Turks –\u00a0deserves <\/em>overt mockery – which, by the way, is the type of thing Fecke himself serves up at conservatives in non-Monitor blogging (you be the judge<\/a>!), but expects everyone else to turn off when he puts on his “junior reporter” hat.\u00a0 It’d be like me doing this overtly partisan blog five days a week, and then walking into the Patriot studio and demanding that everyone treat me as a non-biased, open-minded objective person – nobody <\/em>would buy it, and I’d get mocked for trying (and deserve it!).<\/p>\n \u00a0Why, it\u2019s almost as if, if you don\u2019t want someone to interview you, you can decline to be interviewed<\/em>. And you can even do so without being a jerk. And you don\u2019t have to \u201cpunk\u201d anyone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Jerk?<\/p>\n Mommy?\u00a0 Is that you<\/em>?<\/p>\n Jeff is right.\u00a0 “Punking” the monitor is an act of free will.\u00a0<\/p>\n And declining “interviews” would certainly be a good idea – I know I would.\u00a0 Ignoring the Monitor completely would be a fine plan, actually.\u00a0 Most people do!<\/p>\n But mocking, pranking, “punking” is a perfectly fine way to express a different opinion; that we do not respect The Monitor; we see the “junior journalist” badge, but we’re not buying it (for good reasons that have more to do with journalistic credibility than ideology<\/a>); that we are competing for hearts, minds, funny bones, votes, and the nodding realization at the end of the day that “these guys are reliable”.\u00a0<\/p>\n But hey, that\u2019s what you do when you\u2019re an adult.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n No, Jeff, it’s what you do when you respect the requestor.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0That\u2019s what, say, Michael Brodkorb did the two times I asked him for comment\u2013and the two times he\u2019s asked me for comment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Michael works in politics, and must maintain relatinships with all sorts of people.\u00a0 I do not.<\/p>\n You and Aplikowski are less mature than Brodkorb. I mean, if that was me, I\u2019d be really embarrassed. But hey, whatevs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And I’d be embarassed if I was busted passing clairvoyance off as “reporting”, and even more so if I ever used the word “whatevs” (or “Pwn3d” or “hacktacular” or “whatevah”)\u00a0in a sentence.<\/p>\n Tomato, tomahto.<\/p>\n