It’s been a little over a year since Liz Collin released “They LIed”, her investigation of the Derek Chauvin trial .<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’ve been on the air with Liz – and for that matter, she’s filled in for me on my show – but the book didn’t come up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But to get on topic: I basically accept that two things can be true: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But someone referred me to this review of <\/em>the book, by one Deb Copperud, writing in “Racket”,<\/a> which is one of the myriad attemepts to come up with an online replacement for the City Pages<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The article – it’s billed as a “review”, but we’ll come back to that – is sub-headed “With sources like convicted murderer Derek Chauvin and his mother, the former WCCO-TV reporter serves up red meat to Alpha News junkies in ‘They\u2019re Lying.”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I’m not sure the “editors” at “Racket” caught the irony of the juxtaposition of the chortle about sourcing with the article’s title: “Liz Collin\u2019s High School Classmate Reviews Her Stupid New Book”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just for fun, let’s keep count of the logical fallacies – ad homina, <\/em>appeal to authority, etc – which will be presented in bold, and facts presented, which I’ll mark in bold and underlined. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I am not the target audience for local journalist Liz Collin\u2019s debut book, They\u2019re Lying: The Media, the Left, and the Death of George Floyd<\/em>. I read it because I\u2019m a longtime leftie Minneapolis resident and I take perverse enjoyment in the opinions of suburbanites<\/strong> who denigrate the city as a burned-up, carjacked wasteland. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n As a longer-time resident of Saint Paul, I take even more perverse enjoyment watching people who live in leafy green upper middle class enclaves<\/a> like Copperud’s House District 61B<\/a>, which might be better described as an “urban life theme park” [1], pleading the authenticity of their urban street cred – especially as opposed to, y’know, Minneapolis cops and those who are married to them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Ad homina: 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a professionally unsuccessful former classmate of Collin, I have followed her career with interest, envy, and, most recently, schadenfreude. I wanted an explanation of how Collin\u2019s marriage to Bob Kroll, former union president of the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis and mustachioed chthonic avatar of police brutality, downgraded her career from WCCO darling to Alpha News right-wing shill<\/em><\/strong>. Plus, books from low-rent vanity<\/strong> publishers<\/strong> are funny and make me feel grammatically superior to their authors. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Copperud writes for Racket, and does a podcast<\/a>. No word on the budgets for either outlet, but she apparently missed the memo that, in this online era, that self-publishing often gets you better financials than going through a “real” publisher. Ask Ed Morrissey<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Ad homina: 3.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Collin\u2019s 261-page book begins when she and Kroll return from a weekend out of town, oblivious to the events of May 25, 2020. They are quickly gobsmacked and astounded by what they consider to be an outsized reaction to bystander video of George Floyd pinned to Chicago Avenue by Minneapolis Police Department Officer Derek Chauvin\u2019s knee. Collin\u2019s incredulity lingers throughout the entire book, as she cannot or will not recognize the significance of Floyd\u2019s murder. She refuses to see Floyd as a synecdoche for victims of an unjust and brutal culture of policing. Instead, she turns him into a caricature, a dangerous, drug-addicted urban villain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Collin does acknowledge that the video \u201clooks bad.\u201d But she refutes the optics with dubious arguments that accuse all of the major players, from former MPD Chief Medaria Arradondo, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman, and Attorney General Keith Ellison, of engaging in a vast left-wing conspiracy to victimize the MPD officers who were called to Cup Foods. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Let’s take a moment to point out a simple fact, inconvenient to both “sides” of this discussion: two things, sometimes more, can be true at the same time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In this case, four things:<\/p>\n\n\n\n None of those are especially controversial – are they?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Collin posits that \u201cpoliticians were creating the illusion of accountability without holding themselves accountable\u201d and that they conspired to convict Chauvin and the three other officers without due process. She tries to support this thesis with an analysis of Maximal Restraint Technique training materials and a close reading of Floyd\u2019s autopsy<\/span><\/em><\/strong> and subsequent autopsy reports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And…what about that analysis? How did, or didn’t, it support Collin’s thesis? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Don’t just leave that dangling out there, Ms. Copperud!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ad Homina: 3 The most frustrating piece is Collin\u2019s hammer-headed insistence that a \u201cmixed race group\u201d of police officers could not possibly engage in racist violence. This is a \u201cbut I voted for Obama!\u201d type of racism denial, as if J. Alexander Kueng\u2019s presence magically absolves the MPD\u2019s well-documented history racially discriminatory practices. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n So we’ve got competing bits of illogic: “Mixed groups can’t be racist” vs. “Minneapolis cops can only <\/em>be racist, and if you try to say otherwise, I’ll drop this Obama-era criticism of white liberals. That’ll show you”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Occasionally, the timeline jumps backward 30 years to arcane MPD stories which Collin intends to connect with the 2020-21 narrative and support her conspiracy claims. But the only common thread linking these incongruous 20th century flashbacks with the rest of the book is just that \u201cBob was there.\u201d In my imagination<\/strong>, the writing process looks like Collin clacking away at her computer with Kroll standing behind her, tapping her shoulder, spraying moist bits of spearmint Kodiak across her keyboard as he goads, “Lizzie, ya gotta tell ’em about the time I took down the Vice Lords!”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Well, at least she called it a product of her imagination. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Collin centers herself as a victim of \u201cthe media and the Left,\u201d taking particular umbrage at her former employer, accusing WCCO\u2019s management of having a liberal political agenda. She blasts WCCO for requiring reporters to interview racially diverse subjects, for issuing a disclaimer about her marriage on crime and policing stories, and for taking her off the anchor desk. She writes, \u201cI was blacklisted. I went from being a familiar face on WCCO-TV down to being on the news barely a minute a day.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n The victim narrative continues<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Wait!<\/p>\n\n\n\n That list of actions does in fact sound like Collin was, in fact, dealt dirty. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Does WCCO not <\/em>have a liberal agenda? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Are Collin’s assertions wrong? <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c[They] started insulting me personally\u2014for the color of my hair and skin,\u201d Collin writes. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n And is that <\/em>untrue?<\/p>\n\n\n\n She portrays Kroll as a maligned target who suffers online burns from bullies like former MPD Police Chief Janee Harteau and Twitter troll @BillyAn23338604. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Or that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n After Kroll and Collin\u2019s address is doxxed, the \u201ccancel culture vultures\u201d protest outside their home in Hugo, Minnesota. Activist and attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong \u201csegregated people\u201d and had \u201cBlacks\u201d (yes, that is Collin\u2019s actual word choice) kneel in front of a flagpole on Collin\u2019s front lawn<\/span><\/strong>. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Now, that did <\/em>happen. It’s on film – from (ahem) liberal WCCO, and at least another TV station. Does Copperud dispute that<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chauvin, of course, positions himself yet another victim: \u201cWhen Derek Chauvin heard about Arradondo\u2019s public indictment,” Collin writes, “he said, \u2018That\u2019s when I knew they were stacking the deck against me.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n It’s still a free country, sorta, no thanks to people like Copperud. Chauvin can say what he wants. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The reverse racism claims are gross<\/strong><\/span> but predictable. More troubling is Collin\u2019s unwillingness to acknowledge racism at all. She writes \u201csystemic police racism\u201d just like that: ensconced in quotation marks, mocking the phrase Joey Tribbiani-style. I understand where she’s coming from because I grew up two years ahead of Collin, in Worthington, the small, southwestern Minnesota town where she started a neighborhood newspaper as a kid.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n “Gross but predictable” – maybe, maybe not. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But are they wrong<\/em>? It’s hard to look at future\/former Rep. John Thompson’s behavior as anything but racist. Isn’t it? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Back in the 1990s, when Collin and I both exercised in the basement of the old downtown YMCA and served Tremendous Twelve and Granny’s Country Omelet breakfast orders to the Sunday morning after-church crowds at Perkins, Worthington was an ethnically diverse town. But it was also a consequence-free setting for casual racism. This was a point in time when a FUBU brand Love Sees No Color T-shirt could effectively declare its wearer to be free of bigotry. Very few words or actions were considered racist, short of calling someone an ethnic slur while punching them in the face. Incredibly, in 1998, half of the Worthington High School students cast in the spring musical performed in blackface. Even more wild? No one objected!<\/p>\n\n\n\n But just because no one got in trouble for racist stage-makeup or behaviors back then doesn\u2019t mean that they weren\u2019t racist. Concepts like double consciousness, code switching, cultural appropriation, unconscious bias, systemic racism\u2014these are all nuanced distinctions that had to be picked up while fulfilling college credits, or while attending workplace sensitivity training, or just by being a literate person who\u2019s heard about social injustice. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n So to try to pick some cherry tomatoes out of the word salad:<\/p>\n\n\n\n To sum it up: Copperud is tarring Collin via the behavior of other people, in another place, from decades ago. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Collin has not evolved beyond the ’90s dichotomy of racist or not-racist. For Collin, as long as there is no historical precedent and no prior consequences for racist behavior, then racism isn\u2019t a problem.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Copperud assumes that dichotomy is wrong without saying why, beyond invoking a standard that Copperud finds absolute and certain but which must not and therefore can not be questioned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She seems to lack the intellectual curiosity<\/strong> to dig in to what Floyd\u2019s murder symbolized. Anyone who lumps people together as \u201cBlacks\u201d in 2022 and who thinks that a couple of police officers of color can negate a whole racist system of policing has a long way to go on their anti-racist journey<\/span><\/strong>. Collin is still parked in her Hugo driveway<\/span>. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n “Anti-racism” is, of course. not to be mistaken for “not being racist”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Ad homina: 5 But we’ve come all this way through this…er, “review” to find that Copperud seems to have buried the lede:<\/p>\n\n\n\n I have to admit that Collin\u2019s journalism is competent, dogged, and detailed<\/span>. I expected dubious research and, while Collin sometimes footnotes sources that blur the boundaries of credibility<\/strong> (New York Post, Alpha News, Heritage Foundation, @crimewatchmpls), <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Whose “boundaries of credibility”? And why? Does the writer for that bastion of reason, “Racket.com”, have any reason beyond unvarnished ideological chauvinism? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Especially given that…<\/p>\n\n\n\n most of the citations are sound. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Screaaaaaaaatch. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n One could also take serious issue with her sourcing, which includes: convicted murderer Chauvin, plus the convicted murderer’s mother Carolyn Pawlenty, imprisoned partner<\/a> Thomas Lane, and failed defense attorney Eric Nelson, among other uniformly pro-cop voices.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n One could?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Because of any of the facts presented? Or statements presented as facts without countervailing information? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Or just because Deb Copperud wrinkles her nose in disgust? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Overall, the book met my expectations. I hoped for grammatical idiosyncrasies and They\u2019re Lying <\/em>delivered. Collin credits Dr. JC Chaix for his proofreading work, which includes unconventional spelling, inconsistent capitalization, unnecessary commas between subjects and verbs, and a complete disregard for a uniform style guide. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Oh. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t recommend buying They\u2019re Lying<\/em>, but I do recommend looking up Chaix\u2019s bizarre author biography<\/a> on Amazon<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Ad Homina: 5 At times I actually enjoyed the narrative, especially when Collin skewers Mayor Frey\u2019s vanity. She recalls how he flailed during the protests and riots and reminds the reader that Frey was, is now, and ever shall be, as long as he is in office, in sole charge of the MPD. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n So…Collin was right? <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Hold on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Waaaay back in this review, didn’t Copperud call Copperud’s allegations about Minneapolis and Henco leadership “dubious?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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Facts Presented: I’ll call it 0.5; facts were presented, but significance was not established. Or attempted. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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Facts Presented: 2 (including the ‘anti-racist journey’ which, if you stipulate that “not being racist” is an imperfect state of mind while “anti-racism” is a bit of social logrolling, kinda straddles the categories). <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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Really odd, irrelevant ad hominem: 1
Facts presented: 2.5-3.5, more or less.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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