Any Color You Want, As Long As It’s DFL!

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Jon Tevlin – who replaced Nick Coleman on columnists row at the Strib a long time ago, and you’d have a hard time telling the difference unless you notice the incremental drop in entitled arrogance – is getting out of the column business:

In the past couple of years, however, I’ve gotten worn down by the weekly screeds and wishes that I lead a short, uncomfortable life. I began to dread the 3 a.m. calls and anonymous notes. After many weekends got ruined by hostile chatter on social media, my wife, Ellen, wisely suggested I either kill my column or Twitter. I survived the past few years, in fact, by removing social media from my phone.

I fear we are becoming a mean, arrogant country. In fact, at 6 a.m. the day after voters elected a bigoted, narcissistic megalomaniac,

(Yes, I did check to see if he was in that paragraph was intended as satire.  Apparnetly not.  Ed)

I wrote to my financial planner the following words: “I feel like I’ve wasted 30 years of my life. Get me out of here.”

Mr. Tevlin – if you have to ask, you probably did.  Sorry to say.

Paying attention to Twitter is a rookie flub, of course; the day when Twitter’s nonexistent business model finally sinks it will be a great one for public discourse.

But that leaves a vacancy on Columnists Row [1].   Who’ll fill it?

On the one hand, who cares?  It’s the Strib.

On the other?

Well, Bob Collins at MPR writes:

Ideally, the Strib would hang out a “white men need not apply” shingle since the newspaper’s lineup of voices is almost exclusively male, white, and comfortable.

Bob – perhaps  because he’s white and male, but I suspect more because he’s part of a media outlet that is pretty much demographically identical tot he Strib – misses a key point.

The Strib’s columnist stable (outside of Kersten, whose status at the Strib is always nebulous anyway) reminds me of Alan Dershowitz’s assessment of the Harvard Law School faculty: “You think “diversity” is someone with different colored skin, or in a skirt, who thinks exactly the same as you”. (The same could be said of MPR, by the way).

What difference would it make if the Strib hired a non-white non-male (let’s call ’em NWNMs, just for the fun of it) if their writing was indistinguishable from the DFL flaks with bylines that make up the rest of the staff? Would hiring a black woman whose point of view is indistinguishable from Lori Sturdevant or Nick Coleman (or Keri Miller) really be that big a change, much less improvement?

In print,  if someone’s entire perspective on the world is that of a Prius-driving, Whole Foods-shopping, “Al Franken shouldn’t have resigned!”-ing, DFL upsucking, Saint Olaf/Macalester/U of MN Journo program-degree-holding, Kenwood or Crocus Hill-dwelling, mad-about-Bernie-but-still-Hillary-voting intellectual love child of Lori Sturdevant and Nick Coleman, does their skin color or reproductive plumbing really make that big a difference in the newspaper’s output?

Other than in the “virtue-signaling ticket-punching” kind of way, I mean?

Mark my words:  after much sturm und drang, the Strib will pick someone in a skirt, and/or with fashionably dark skin, whose perspective is no different from that of Jon Tevlin, Nick Coleman, Lori Sturdevant, Keri Miller or Kim Ode for that matter.

 

[1] Hypothetically, anyway.  The Strib could just decide to save the money.

17 thoughts on “Any Color You Want, As Long As It’s DFL!”

  1. What difference would it make if the Strib hired a non-white non-male?

    I think you underestimate the masochism of many lefties who need to be told how much they’re part of The Problem because they’re “male, white, and comfortable” (or some combination thereof). It’s their own little original sin for which they can be sorry. And then ignore.

  2. This is like arguing whether “Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Old Oak Tree” sounds better on the red Close & Play or the blue Close & Play.

  3. dare anyone speak the truth? MPR and to a slightly lesser extent, the Strib, are White Supremacist organizations that are committed to an ideological Unified Field Theory of race, gender and politics that tolerates every form of diversity well left of center. These ideologically pure organizations pack their interest groups into well segregated silos coordinated(led) by a proven elite cadre of whites and carefully chosen “others”.

    Ask yourself of all the on-air talent at MPR how many are American Indian? How many are Hmong? How many are Somali? How many are black? How many are Hispanic?

    Oh they do sympathetic stories about these balkanized local communities but nobody at MPR is going to give up their 6 figure salary or have their brand devalued by putting up a KFAI mix of voices.
    And when they do discuss presenting “other voices” they get hung up on the problem of whether they should have an on-air person who speaks the mesolect of their community rather than the acrolect that is the MPR brand and god forbid that anyone speaking the basilect get anywhere near their hallowed microphones for anything but a humint story.

  4. Mac, I your comment from beginning to end. And adding in those -lect words made it educational too because I had to look them up. Very good.

  5. I had put “heart” in angle braces which were then ignored by the HTML processor: in other other words, I really liked your comment…

  6. I’d still wager that the slot will go to the presently unemployed Al Franken, as his voice is “too important.” Al might now like to work that hard, though.

  7. Pingback: In The Mailbox: 01.02.18 : The Other McCain

  9. NW, I think the Star&Sickle is a fine place for Angry Al to feather his nest, provided he can do it from NYC…’cause if you think he’s moving back with the rubes in fly-over country, you’re seriously deluded.

  10. Just in the nick of time, Franken becomes available and needs a job. Thank the … non specific deity or random variable….

  11. If I ran the Strib, I would then thank Bob Collins for the suggestion and hire a local version of any number of respectible non white male writers, like Debra Saunders, Laura Ingraham, Peggy Noonan, or Michelle Malkin. There have to be some lesser knowns who are similar and looking for a job.

  12. 1. “I began to dread the 3 a.m. calls and anonymous notes.” Personally I find it very hard to believe that this happened. As Obama proved, no one is required to answer their phone at 3 a.m. and since when are grizzled newsroom vets (even fake toughs like Coleman & Tevlin) worried about anonymous notes? Better to worry that your audience is between 70 plus and dead. Also, Twitter is a sewer – you should know stepping in it means you are going to get covered quickly in detritus.
    2. This seems like the perfect job for Avery Librelle to apply for. Just check all the ‘right’ boxes ala Senator Warren. If Avery Librelle didn’t come to mind when you read “virtue-signaling ticket-punching”, you haven’t been reading SITD very closely.

  13. Sef, are you trying to dox Librelle? We don’t know if it’s a he, she or ze; white, black or white but identifies as black.

  14. Democrats have always believed that your social function is dependent on your ethnicity, race, and sex. No less in 2017 than in 1957.
    Collins begins with “white male” and transforms it into “white, male, and comfortable” as though those are the same things. And in his narrow professional & social world, it likely is.

  16. Ideally, the Strib would hang out a “white men need not apply” shingle since the newspaper’s lineup of voices is almost exclusively male, white, and comfortable.

    It is okay to be a racist, as long as you are the correct kind of racist. It is okay to be a sexist, as long as you are the correct kind of sexist.

    What is the correct kind?

    The correct media will let you know.

  17. “We don’t know if it’s a he, she or ze; white, black or white but identifies as black.”
    Good point Swiftee. If Avery identifies himself/herself/zerself in any of the categories that are commonly on an application, the MPR Bobs of the world will be able to judge he/she/ze by “they’re” chromosome & melanin count (’cause he’s all about SCIENCE!) and not by the content of “they’re” character.

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