Shot In The Dark - Politics and Current Events in Minnesota and Beyond

Saturday, July 12, 2003

Block Party, Redux - While the music was great, and the cause (contributing to the maintenance of the grand old Basilica) is certainly a good one, the politically-liberal Catholic leadership still uses its position to coddle a lot of very dubious causes. So I fully expected to see every entrance to the fenced-off festival area to be plastered with "The Basilica of St. Mary's Bans Guns On These Premises". Enh. No biggie - I doubt I'd have brought one if I had one.

But among the various food and vendor booths spread along the "midway" alongside the Basilica, I found exactly one "political" booth; Citizens for a ~~Supine~~ Safer Minnesota.

Leave aside for a moment the fact that the materials they were handing out were both stupid and inflammatory (their "Minnesotans Against Getting Shot" buttons are an especially Skoglundesque brand of idiocy) or just plain wrong (marking up their literature to highlight the factual errors is an exercise in patience and trying to avert Carpal Tunnel Syndrome); no, the dumbest thing about the booth was the banner at the top of the awning, which said in three-inch letters:
Welcome To ~~Texas~~ Minnesota
...with "Minnesota" in fake handwritten script, as if scrawled in place of the crossed-out Texas.

Beneath all the cynical factual legerdemain behind CSM, the most noxious thing about the group is that they honestly believe that tighter gun controls are a sign of intelligence; that states with more liberal gun laws can't be as "smart" as Minnesotans (or as we used to be, anyway). Their spokespeople gave speeches replete with references to the "Cold Mississippi" we'd turn into if we passed the Minnesota Personal Protection Act - as if Texans or Mississippians (or people from any of the 32 other shall-issue or no-permit states, for that matter) cared any less about their state, or fellow human beings, or were somehow just not as smart as the rest of us.

If this sort of stereotyping were aimed at anyone but white Texans or Mississippians (and the stereotype of the concealed carry permittee, carefully reinforced by the likes of the Star Tribune, is that of a middle-aged white male), it'd be justifiably condemned.

I know Texans. Hell, I'm related to a few. I've been to Texas (even spent time at the dreaded Enron when it was just Enron, not "Enron!"), and the people didn't seem any dumber than Minnesotans. I met bigots and rednecks, and they didn't seem any redder-necked or bigottier than the masses of yobs I used to entertain in bars in Brooklyn Center and Fergus Falls.

I'm from North Dakota, for crying out loud - a concealed carry state that's "dumb" enough to figure out how to build an educational system that's tied with Minnesota's at the top of the heap, for 40% less money.

I was raised, in my naive youth, to believe that conceit would eventually be its own undoing. I know that justice is rare in this world - but deep in the back of my mind, I still fervently believe that the sort of overweening conceit that CSM practices will come back to bite it. In some ways, I think it already has - the bill passed into law, after all.

Time will do it, of course, without any need of my help. But it's galling to see this sort of - let's call a spade a spade - bigotry, being passed off as acceptable by anyone...

...much less in the shadow of the house of God.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/12/2003 06:42:22 PM

Block Party - I went to my first-ever Basilica Block Party last night. Wow - fun time. Amazed I've let so many of them go by without seeing one. I spent the whole evening at the Verizon stage, watching Franky Perez, Edward McCain and the Suburbs.

First things first - the opening act, Franky Perez, was amazing. His CD wanders all over the map; mid-tempo latino-tinged balladry (Two Lost Angels, Bella Maria), raucous hook-crazy bar-rock (Love and Hate, Cecilia), and a patriotic ballad (You're A Part Of Me) that swerves unpredictably between Proud To Be An American-style mawkishness and some genuinely beautiful insights (Perez, a Las Vegas native, is the son of Cuban refugees). Live, though, he's as kinetic as films of early '70's-era Springsteen, and his band, the Highway Saints, is razor-sharp. I'd only seen one of his videos (and, in retrospect, heard one other song, although I didn't know it was Perez at the time) before last night - it was amazing. His stage style borrows a lot from the great Stax R'nB performers of the sixties and seventies as it does from Springsteen, and was a refreshing break from the dull, staid cynicism that typifies so many groups performing today. I'm hoping his sophomore CD is a strong one, and gets his stage show out in front of a lot more people; he's really, really good. He'll be at the State Fair this August, at the Bandshell. See him, or I'll come out and give you what-for.

Edward McCain was next. McCain is custom-made for Cities 97; an engaging personality (he had the funniest stage banter of the night), but his music is a mix of mid-tempo acoustic pop ballads and mid-tempo mildly-jazzy acoustic pop ballads that are a lot like chinese food for lunch - an hour later, you've forgotten you've eaten. I imagine McCain's great at the Fine Line, or some intimate little club; in front of a couple thousand people on a stage at the end of a parking lot, stuck between the awesome Perez and the frenetic Suburbs, he was a fish out of water. A capable, fun fish, but still.

On to the Suburbs. The 'burbs were a seminal early-eighties new-wave/dance band from Minneapolis that's had more botched shots at stardom (note the date on the link) than Kate Capshaw.

I remember in about 1982, a college classmate of mine spent weeks talking about his favorite "Just amazing" band from the Cities, the Suburbs. Finally, one night, he played a 'burbs record for me and a few other locals. After weeks of buildup about what an amazing band they were, it was...a letdown.

And over the next several years, knocking around the Minneapolis music scene (and then working as a nightclub DJ), I heard every record they ever did - and was bored stiff. Among Minneapolis bands, I always preferred the Replacements, the Hüskers, Prince - their records sounded less dry and mannered, at the time.

But somehow, despite their reputation as the best bar band in town, I managed never to see the 'burbs live.

Big mistake.

Their show last night (a good one by their standards, say some longtime 'burb gig veterans) was a huge, anarchic, amphetamine blast of fun. The band was tight like a band that's been playing together off and on for 26 years should be tight, but loose in a way that a great live band should be; Charlie Watts once described the Stones as "loosely tight", and that fits the bill. Chan Poling and Beej Chaney split the singing, and while I've heard for years about their idiosyncratic interplay onstage, I really did have to see it to believe it. Poling was the eternal alt-rock geek keyboardist, who had the air of the classical musician slumming it in a bar band - and made it work. Chaney looked, after all these years, like nobody so much as a mid-eighties Iggy Pop, and acted the part; clambering up lighting standards, diving off the stage and floating about on the hands of the crowd (he got a solid 200 feet from the stage), and he's an anarchical, underrated guitar player to boot.

The main point - the band on stage was the exact opposite of their recorded history. While on record they always sounded mannered and fussy and just a little too precious for my raucous punk and soul tastes, onstage they were loud and...

...joyous. The songs that sounded so dry and dessicated on their over-rated early-eighties albums sounded big and alive and full of actual soul onstage.

It was a great evening. Wish you could have been there.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/12/2003 03:47:24 PM

Friday, July 11, 2003

The Missing Link - According to Instapundit, we now have our smoking gun linking Hussein and Bin Laden.

According to Judge Gilbert Merritt - a lifelong Democrat according to Glenn Reynolds, who apparently clerked for Merritt - an Iraqi informant has provided documentary evidence:
When I began questioning him about the list, how he obtained it and what else it showed, he asked would it be of interest to the Americans to know that Saddam had an ongoing relationship with Osama bin Laden.

I said yes, the Americans have, so far as I am aware, have never been able to prove that relationship, but the president and others have said that they believe it exists. He said, ''Well, judge, there is no doubt it exists, and I will bring you the proof tomorrow.''

So today he brought me the proof, and there is no doubt in my mind that he is right.

The document shows that an Iraqi intelligence officer, Abid Al-Karim Muhamed Aswod, assigned to the Iraq embassy in Pakistan, is ''responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group.
But why would such a document have been published?
The only explanation for this strange set of events, according to the Iraqi lawyers, is that Uday, an impulsive and somewhat unbalanced individual, decided to publish this honor roll at a time when the regime was under worldwide verbal attack in the press, especially by us. It would, he thought, make them more loyal and supportive of the regime.

His father was furious, knowing that it revealed information about his supporters that should remain secret.
Merritt states his background and side in this issue:
It does not prove that they engaged together in any particular act of terror against the United States.

But it seems to me to be strong proof that the two were in contact and conspiring to perform terrorist acts.

Up until this time, I have been skeptical about these claims. Now I have changed my mind.
As always, we'll see.

Although it seems a safe bet that we won't see it in the NYT, ABC News or the BBC.

(Via Instapundit)
posted by Mitch Berg 7/11/2003 12:03:43 PM

Meme Watch - Steve Gigl is a Minnesota guy with a fun blog - sorta Fraters-meets-Adam Corolla. I like it.

He's got this bit today, lifted from Acidman - one of those Internet memes that I shake my head at as I finish every flipping question. Here goes.
Do you have a personal hero? If so, who is it? Ernest Shackleton. He's finally getting his due, almost 90 years late.
What is your favorite book of all time and what made it so good? That's gotta be "Crime and Punishment". It's good on many levels - as good versus evil, as an allegory about the evils of the secularization of the Endlightenment and Socialism, and as a Columbo episode without the seventies styles.
What does “diversity” mean to you? Respect for genuine differences - and that means ideas as well as skin color or gender.
What is the wildest thing you’ve ever done? Intervened in a gay bashing, on the side of the bashee.
Do you regret doing it? Of course not.
Can you drive a stick shift? I hope never to buy an automatic transmission again. I had it on my first car, and hated it. I love stick shifts.
What’s the highest speed you ever traveled in a car?Driving, about 100. Riding, 125.
Which is better: snakes or spiders? I love them both.
What is the most disgusting thing you ever ate? Scrapple. For northerners, it's a type of loaf sausage found in the mid-atlantic region. It tastes like it's made from a hog that died and sat suppurating in a field in the middle of summer before it was dropped into a meat grinder. Vile stuff. Yes, worse than haggis.
Have you ever sh*t your pants? Be HONEST! Specifically my pants? As in, nobody else's? No.
Was losing your virginity an enjoyable experience? Yeah, but I have fun filling out tax forms, too.
Should oral sex be outlawed or encouraged? Is oral sex when you just talk about it?
Name one man with a fine ass. Juan Valdez, on the cover of the coffee cans. The burro looks like a thoroughbred.
Do you watch golf on television? If not, will you iron my shirts? I'll buy an iron before I watch golf on TV.
Who is Martha Burk? Martha Burk is a clinical psychologist. She probably has people asking if she's Martha Burke, the woman that's been driving half of the New York Times' front page this past year, in re the Masters.
If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? My employment status. So I'd have less time for this sort of thing.
Do you eat raw oysters? I prefer to smoke them.
Are you claustrophobic? Only in a political sense.
If you rode a motorcycle, would you wear a helmet even if the law said you didn‘t have to? I've seen a guy splatter his head after flying off his bike. Yes, damn skippy I would.
Name five great Presidents. Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson, Reagan, FDR.
Name three sh***y Presidents. Carter, LBJ, Martin Van Buren.
Now call me fanny and slap my ass. Just kidding. I'll save time by just calling you an ass. Just kidding.
This is the 4th of July. Did you set off any fireworks? Bottlerockets are very therapeutic.
If you could have dinner and conversation with anyone in the history of the planet, who would you choose? Christ, Churchill, Lech Walesa, George Patton, Stanislaus Schmaizner, and an Aramaic-Polish-English-Yiddish translator.
Whew. That'll be enough of that.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/11/2003 10:00:02 AM

Deja View - I had an "interview" of sorts in downtown Minneapolis yesterday - basically to sign a contract for another of the little short-term jobs that's kept me out of foreclosure this last six months. Posh deal, really - three and a half days onsite, probably a week working at home. If only I could get one of those jobs every, say, two weeks or so. Life'd be pretty good right now.

I moved here in '85. I lived in various parts of South Minneapolis for a couple of years, then moved to Saint Paul, where i've pretty much stayed since '88. Now, I love Saint Paul. People from Minneapolis see our sleepy downtown, and completely miss the point - Saint Paul is a city of neighborhoods. Downtown rolls up the sidewalks at six, but the action is all happening out on Uni or Grand or North Rice or Payne. The neighborhoods are where life takes place in Saint Paul - each with its own personality. Highland is snooty and aloof in its Lexuses (Lexi?). Mac/Groveland fairly shudders with earnestness - its population of college kids exudes the stuff, before they move to Saint Anthony Park, which has the elegant but nebbishy style of the college professors and non-profit execs that swarm the place. And the Midway, where I live, is a great place to raise kids; the neighbors watch out for each other like they used to do in genuine small towns.

Now, compared to Saint Paul, Minneapolis has neighborhoods in the same way that Applebees has Mexican Food; same ingredients, but they just don't go together the same way. Oh, there are identifiable neighborhoods in Minneapolis, but purely for transient, social reasons; Uptown was Uptown because of its mass of musicians and artists and slackers (who've mostly moved to Northeast). And it's not really a neighborhood if it's recognized as such for all the wrong reasons; would you think of Camden or Phillips if it weren't for crack, gangs and tragedy? Because while Saint Paul's Frogtown and Swede Hollow have their problems, the neighborhoods have histories that predate the troubles, and will probably survive them. Most of Minneapolis' neighborhoods are places where people sleep when they're not working or at the lake.

Yep. I love Saint Paul. It's warm, it's friendly (most of it), it's home. It's Yin.

Sometimes I need Yang.

I used to practically live in Downtown Minneapolis. Its thriving throb was what I left North Dakota for. I played in a bunch of bands at all the bars you know (First Avenue/Seventh Street Entry) and a few you don't (McCreedy's). I loved it.

Then I got married, and life coagulated into two big blots around my house and job (wherever that was at the time). I went years without going downtown. I missed it, badly.

My big second interview last week (won't hear about thirds until next week, I'm told) was downtown, deep in the marble canyon of the older quarter of the core, Second Avenue and Seventh Street. I had a meeting there yesterday, and another (for yet another short-term job) today.

So much has changed downtown since I last actually knew the place, it's like learning a new city. Buildings have different names. Merchants have changed names, disappeared (where did Slice of New York go? Dammit!), even entire blocks have morphed.

And it's fun!

So while I'd be hoping to land the third interview (and hopefully the offer) at the company from last week even if it were in Maple Grove or Eden Prairie or Minnetonka (like my last three jobs), I'm also rooting for it because part of me really, really needs that buzzing of downtown energy.

So - let's all join me in crossing my fingers. Or yours, if that's easier.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/11/2003 09:34:59 AM

Thursday, July 10, 2003

Stars In Uniform - 62 years ago, Jimmy Stewart was drafted, rejected for being underweight, and joined the US Army Air Corps anyway. He was standing guard duty when news of Pearl Harbor broke. He was a corporal when he reported for flight training. By the end of the war, he was a bird colonel and had flown 20 combat missions, and proven himself as a leader even beyond that. The story is fascinating.

The Tillman brothers - Pat, an Arizona Cardinals safety, and Kevin, a minor-league pitching prospect - earned plaudits for leaving the world of professional sports behind to join the Army after 9/11 - and justly so. Both served in combat in the Gulf, and now both have been accepted into Ranger training (although only a small number even among successful trainees are selected to join the 75th Airborne (Ranger) Regiment).

Now, perhaps, even a stranger story; rapper Canibus has followed through with his own vow to join the Army. He's now a cavalry scout.

So what's so important about celebrities (albeit B-list ones, unlike Stewart) joining the military? In the case of the Tillmans, it's that men who are on the brink of immense wealth are willing to drop it all in mid-career to serve their country - knowing that professional athletics depends on being at a physical peak that is not only fleeting, but that the military, especially elite infantry units like the Rangers, are famous for wearing out just as fast as professional sports.

For the rapper, it's as big a jump; while Canibus is a B-list rapper (most famous as a battle-rapper), he was at the peak of his career, in an industry with a shorter memory than sports.

The point? Maybe there is none. Or maybe it's just that all is not lost.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/10/2003 06:29:28 PM

Offsetting Penalties - Well, it's official; the entire right wing has joined forces in castigating Ann Coulter and Michael "Weiner" Savage (as well Trent Lott before both of them). Sullivan even paid Coulter the ultimate dismissal; he said she's like a conservative Michael Moore (rhetorically speaking).

Now, as the Fraters aptly ask - where is the left? Where are the denunciations of Micheal Moore's fabrications and bigotry? Where are the wholesale shunnings of Maureen Dowd's bile?
posted by Mitch Berg 7/10/2003 04:00:07 PM

The Bleeding Edge - I've posted several times about Gay Marriage in the past year. On no issue do my postings get as many comments and emails - which would make sense if I were Andrew Sullivan, a key stakeholder in the issue! But I'm straight and single (again). Yes, I've come around, somewhat reluctantly, to Andrew Sullivan's side of the issue. To me, the whole thing seems like something that the free market will solve, no matter what the political argument decides.

My idea was, essentially, to privatize marriage - to make it private contractual matter between people and, if desired, their church. I admitted it was a pie-in-the-sky plan.

Or was it?

Not only is John O'Sullivan from NRO proposing the same basic thing - so is Michael Kinsley.

His notion should sound familiar to longtime readers of this blog:
That solution is to end the institution of marriage. Or rather (he hastens to clarify, dear) the solution is to end the institution of government-sanctioned marriage. Or, framed to appeal to conservatives: End the government monopoly on marriage. Wait, I've got it: Privatize marriage. These slogans all mean the same thing. Let churches and other religious institutions continue to offer marriage ceremonies. Let department stores and casinos get into the act if they want. Let each organization decide for itself what kinds of couples it wants to offer marriage to. Let couples celebrate their union in any way they choose and consider themselves married whenever they want. Let others be free to consider them not married, under rules these others may prefer. And, yes, if three people want to get married, or one person wants to marry herself, and someone else wants to conduct a ceremony and declare them married, let 'em. If you and your government aren't implicated, what do you care?
Yep, Kinsley's an ofay liberal whose rhetoric (in this piece) almost sounds as if he's mocking the cadences big-L Libertarians use when talking about this issue. But O'Sullivan brings it back to the point that I, personally, have always considered the strong point of this concept:
Strict religious marriage, I suspect, would thrive even more for a variety of reasons. As the comparative success of evangelical over "mainstream" Protestantism demonstrates, people actually prefer institutions that make stern demands upon them to those that assume failure and forgive it in advance. Religious marriage would benefit from that yearning. Young women too would demand it of their swains ("If you really loved me, you'd marry me for keeps — in church.") And those who did marry in church would be more likely to have children (and so perpetuate their kind) than those who were, however subconsciously, hedging their bets...Traditional marriage might well emerge strengthened from this evolutionary test.
Berg, Kinsley and O'Sullivan today. Tomorrow...?
posted by Mitch Berg 7/10/2003 10:59:08 AM

Savage Nausea - Before we get to the beef of this post, here's a bit of radio trivia for you; when someone in the radio business really does something to cheese off listeners and management, they get fired. When management wants to use a controversy for pure publicity benefit, they "suspend" the personality. It's the oldest trick in the book. If you hear - ever - of a radio personality being "suspended" from the air, replace it with the phrase "given a couple days' paid vacation and priceless free publicity".

So far so good?

OK. So Michael "Weiner" Savage is back. Whoop di doo.

The story's all over the blogosphere, of course - the dyspeptic Savage was fired from MSNBC, and suspended from his radio gig, for an outburst on TV last week.

I won't repeat my past writings about Savage, who I think is the worst thing to happen to conservative talk radio; he's a throwback to the Joe Pine/Morton Downey/Tom Leykis era of talk radio - combative but never enlightening, strident but never funny. He's everything Limbaugh dragged conservative talk radio away from. I literally can't listen to his show; the first time I heard him, I figured he had to be a liberal ringer spoofing a conservative host, maybe Al Franken in red-state drag.

But this isn't about Savage. It's about WWTC (1280AM), "The Patriot", Savage's local outlet. WWTC is one of those little lower-power AM stations that has been casting about for a niche for decades, and it seems they've found it with "The Patriot"; talk radio for those who think Jason Lewis is too much a G-dless commie.

Don't get me wrong - the Patriot has some good programs: Michael Medved and Hugh Hewitt are freqently brilliant, and Dennis Prager is often fascinating. Mike Gallagher merely bores me stiff.

But for whatever reason, they carry Savage twice a day; six hours of nauseous dyspepsia.

Here's the part that amazes me: I was listening to Hewitt as I was driving last night, and WWTC's General Manager came on with a promo - twice per hour, in fact. I'll paraphrase the promo:
We know Michael Savage has caused a lot of controversy, and we apologize to his fans for taking him off the air. Please be assured that "the Patriot" will never knuckle under to liberal pressure groups to keep a talk show host off the air. Now, with that out of the way, we're happy to announce Michael Savage is back!...
Now, it's not like the management at WWTC needs to worry about being perceived as every liberal's caricature of conservative talk radio - it's their stock in trade, and the first format idea that's worked for WWTC in recent memory.

The MSNBC flap has got to have Savage, the Salem Network, WWTC and everyone in between cackling with glee at the short-term publicity.

I'll bet dollars to Krispy Kremes that Savage's "one day suspension" coincided with a dentist appointment made six months ago.

Speaking of Irritating Conservatives - The Fraters have been carrying out a debate on the merits of Ann Coulter.

No, not those of her book, or her value as a political commentator. Many conservatives, even her staunchest defenders, have excoriated her latest book, "Treason", and Coulter's approach to rhetoric.

But the Fraters are carrying a wide range of opinion on the other big question - is Coulter a babe?

Well, duh. Even Andrew Sullivan, the gay conservative, knows this.

But in a world with Michelle Malkin, Virginia Postrel, Sabine Herold and Laura Ingraham, it should be clear that we have enough bootylicious, logically-impeccable conservative/libertarian female firebrands who are also not conservative versions of Michael Moore (if only rhetorically).
posted by Mitch Berg 7/10/2003 10:21:35 AM

Wednesday, July 09, 2003

A Thousand Times Dead - In today's column, Laura Billings reiterates what she and every other non-D.J. Tice-related columnist in the Twin Cities media has been repeating endlessly for the past six months: "Minnesota Nice" is dead.

Apparently distraught over a prank death, the Naomi Gaines case, and the boat rage incident on Lake Minnetonka over the weekend, Billings declares that mythical quality dead yet again (following on its death upon the election of conservative Tim Pawlenty, its death again when the legislature followed Pawlenty's lead on holding the line on taxes and cutting the budget, its re-deadedness when the Minnesota Personal Protection Act passed, Billings bemoans the rottenness that has befallen our state of late:
If you want proof that Minnesota Nice may only be treading water against a stronger tide of selfishness and self-absorption, this is it.

"I worked 12 straight years on the water patrol, and I've dealt with a lot of people," said Hennepin County Sheriff's Capt. Bill Chandler, who made it to the scene about 40 minutes after the first call. "You always get cases where some people are afraid to come forward, but I've never seen a case where people physically hindered deputies from doing their jobs. I've never seen a case where the frustration level was so high.''

What started it all was the kind of over-amped argument that has become too familiar on our freeways — less expected on the water, where everyone claims to be relaxing.
"Minnesota Nice", though, was always a sham. Leave aside the criminal element - they'll always be with us, no matter what state we're in.

There's an entire organization of people who've moved to the Twin Cities (and I can't find the link or remember the name right now, but it's out there, honest!). They formed nearly 20 years ago because...Minnesotans just don't socialize with outsiders!

Remember Russ Shimooka? The outgoing Japanese-American sportscaster came to KARE11 in the late eighties to replace Tom Ryther on the station's evening newscast. He lasted about three months; he was subjected to so many racist taunts and phone calls, it just wasn't worth it. Shimooka went back to San Francisco, to his old job - probably not a believer in Minnesota Nice (And let's not forget Ryther, who was fired because he was old! Also not Minnesota Nice!). How about Amy Powell? Asha Blake? For that matter, any other minority on the TV in this town has gotten the same treatment, from enough people to draw comment!

So before we officially inter the concept of Minnesota Nice, let's note this: Nobody - at least, nobody in the media - bemoaned the demise of "Minnesota Nice" until Tim Pawlenty was elected to office. And five will get you ten that if we ever get another DFL governor, Laura Billings will do a column on the return of the whole smarmy concept.

Minnesotans will still behave exactly the same. Like people - good, bad and indifferent.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/9/2003 04:31:28 PM

Off The Bridge - The St. Paul woman who threw her twin toddlers off the Wabasha Bridge on July 4 - here's a news flash - had issues.
The ex-husband of a woman charged this week with throwing her twin sons into the Mississippi River told a judge nearly four years ago that the mother was unstable and had threatened the life of another of her children.

Nathaniel Ellis, the father of Gaines' oldest son, now 7, asked the judge to award him full custody of the boy after the couple's divorce in 1999 because Gaines "has once attempted to take her own life and on a few occasions she said … that the next time would take hers and my son," according to Ramsey County family court records.

District Court Referee Charles H. Williams Jr. threw out the custody request in 2000 because neither Gaines nor Ellis claimed the boy and his baby sister in their divorce papers. Ellis, who was convicted of criminal property damage stemming from a fight with Gaines that year, later had a daughter, now 2, with his ex-wife, relatives said.
This is one of those Hellerian situations:
Leaving aside the exceedingly minimal legal standing that unmarried fathers have in court, Minnesota law has very steep requirements for changing custody for kids; the "Health and Safety" of the children has to be provably, documentably in danger. This is not a bad thing in and of itself - it prevents kids' living arrangements from being as easily manipulated by parental whims and specious charges as it might be (and has been in the past).
On the other hand, as hindsight shows us, the woman was deeply disturbed. Advocates for the mentally ill make simultaneous, contractictory demands; that society recognize and act on problems like Ms. Gains' - but without resorting to involuntary commitments or excessive scrutiny into their personal lives, especially things like custody of their children.
We'll be following this case as it develops.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/9/2003 02:33:02 PM

Consumer Confidence Reaches Six Month High - The Berg Index of consumer confidence crept up to a score of 10 this week, on news of a new two-week contracting job at a major local company, and several new job leads popping up in the past few days. This is a six month high for the index.

Experts say the index was held back from a bigger jump due to waiting for word about a third interview at a local Fortune 500 company.

The Berg Index - which rates consumer confidence on a scale of 1 to 100, and is the only such index or poll recognized by Shot In The Dark - plummeted to an all-time low of 0 in January with the demise of my last long-term contracting gig. It hovered between 0 and 2 through February, March and April, and then climbed briefly to an 8 in May. Experts attributed that climb to my little two-week contracting job at a major local company. The index then went back to a 3 for most of June, as several long-term job leads evaporated unexpectedly.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/9/2003 10:49:42 AM

Iran, Again - Trawling the big blogs, Iran is the story of the day.

While it seems the students in Teheren have cancelled their big protest today - apparently due to serious threats - protests continue around the US and the rest of the world.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/9/2003 10:40:30 AM

Iran - I grew up in Jamestown, North Dakota. It's a place that has nearly nothing in common with Iran, or anywhere in the world outside of small town USA.

Perhaps that was one of the attractions.

Jamestown is the home of Jamestown College. In the sixties, it was the kind of place were kids from well-off-enough backgrounds whose academic aptitude wasn't good enough to get into a serious college on the coast would while away their draft-elegible years, far from the prying eyes of anyone that mattered. Today, JC is a thriving little college, whose enrollment has tripled over the last fifteen years, a time that's seen many similar colleges in the Midwest collapse from lack of interest. Things are good at Jamestown today.

In 1980, things were not good. The college spent the years between the end of the draft and its current prosperity muddling through a long run of nearly-criminal mismanagement. They had to do something to keep the doors open.

And for a few years, that something was recruiting overseas. A few graduates from the fifties and sixties had moved back overseas, and had fond memories of the puritan little outpost overlooking the isolated little island in the sea of wheat. And in the seventies and eighties, as the Gulf states simultaneously rolled in oil wealth and realized they needed to build a cadre of western-trained professionals, those graduates told their nephews and nieces and cousins about Jamestown.

So by 1980, the little school in the middle of nowhere hosted a German, two Kuwaitis, seven Lebanese, three Palestinians, five Jordanians (yes, they all got along just fine) - and about twenty Iranians.

Now, American kids that came to Jamestown tended to be either workaholics attending a few of the programs at which the place excelled (it had superb pre-med and nursing programs), who tended to be found more in the lab than the bars, or kids who were going to JC because they didn't want to go someplace "big and impersonal" like North Dakota State; they weren't social animals. Most were farm kids, kids from the little towns that dot the prairie - and like their parents, they pretty much kept to themselves.

The kids from the Middle East were very different, especially the Iranians. They were cosmopolitan - most had spent time in Europe on their way to America. All were at least bilingual - many communicated with each other in French when the gulf between Arab and Farsi failed them. They had their strange customs; while most were fairly secular, some prayed to Mecca; and every weekend, the entire Gulf community at the school gathered on a big field on the college's edge to play soccer, a game only a few of us had ever seen on TV, and fewer understood. We watched them playing as we biked or endless all-in games, shouting in Arabic and French and Farsi and, rarely, English, a small gaggle of local girls sitting on the sidelines clapping or with their arms wrapped around the one that brung 'em.

They had the kind of money that made most of us Anglo kids goggle-eyed with wonder; I remember standing behind an Iranian kid at my bank, waiting to cash my $100 check from my radio job, and hearing him ask if that month's $2,000-odd stipend check from the government had arrived yet (which was more than my father made as a high school teacher at the time). And as the outgoing, cosmo elites of their societies, they were not content to sit in their dorm rooms, or stand around the keg parties that drew most of the Anglo students - not for long anyway. They came down into the town, they met people, they bought things, and when they gave up on the girls at the college, they started dating the local girls.

And before long, the attitude of many townies was a midwestern echo of the old English lament about GIs during World War II; they were overpaid, oversexed and over here. There was conflict - some of the local rednecks figured flying fists would rake in the babes in a way that their jacked-up Novas and eight-track players stuffed with Bad Company tapes had stopped doing.

It was a strange confluence - the sort of fish out of water story that is probably lost on people from a diverse, major metropolitan area. My kids, growing up as ethnic and social minorities in schools that are mainly H'mong, Hispanic and Afro-American, nod uncomprehendingly when I tell them I was 16 before I met a person that wasn't white or Native American.

A girl who sang in a band with me started dating an Iranian guy, my junior year of high school. He was a math major. And when you got past the language barrier (although his English was vastly better than my Farsi) and the money and the attitude, talking to him was genuinely fascinating. Growing up as I did with the very limited horizons one gets growing up in a typical small town, it was eye-opening to talk with someone who'd seen Paris, who could get around in four languages, and who was going to go home in two years to lead his nation - as an engineer or professor or civil servant in a land where "foreign-educated civil servant" meant big things. I won't say that talking with him "opened my eyes to the outside world" - but it made that world a lot more real, at a time when most of it was still imported via TV from Fargo.

You know how the story ends. Khomeni took over. The Shah departed, unlamented, and died, unmourned by the little slice of Iranian society that I knew.

Then came the hostage crisis - which ushered in a new phase of abuse from the redneck townies - and finally, Hussein's invasion. Nearly overnight, it seemed, all twenty-odd Iranian students packed up and left - some of them parting with a few ill-advised verbal shots at the rednecks and the US, that irritated me then, but I chalk up to adolescent fervor today. Most went home. The few that didn't moved to someplace they'd be less grindingly alone and isolated, if not less hated - Chicago or New York. Word filtered back from the few that kept in touch - things were tough. At least one died in the war; the rest, I have no idea.

They're all my age now, the lucky ones. They probably have kids, and probably shake their heads in disbelief that they spent those years of their young lives stuck in a bucolic, frigid little Ukraininan/German outpost at the edge of the world, before the purges and bombings and turmoil that dominated their early-adult years.

Today, much of the blogosphere is observing the fourth anniversary of the July 9 student uprisings. Jeff Jarvis is carrying a bit of a clearinghouse of Iranian blogs, as well as Iranian Girl. Lileks has his usual terrific, relevant slice of life, and Instapundit is on the case as well.

posted by Mitch Berg 7/9/2003 10:12:03 AM

Tuesday, July 08, 2003

Gay Marriage and the Republicans - A non-Republican friend of mine asked me the other day - what do I think the Gay Marriage flap will do to the GOP?

For me, the solution is simple (as most pie-in-the-sky ideals are): get government out of the business of "Marriage". To government at any level, the only concern should be recognizing and enforcing a contract between two people. The moral and religious aspects should be the province of the churches (and synogogues and mosques) that are where most marriages take place - if the churches opt to perform and observe same-sex unions, that'd be their theological prerogative (one with which I'd sincerely disagree on theological grounds). Opposite-sex couples that disagreed with their church's stance (as I would with the pro-same-sex stance in my own Presbyterian church) could marry elsewhere; same-sex couples who felt the need for a church-sanctioned marriage could find a church that observes them - or, if the motivation is more financial than moral, just sign their contract at a courthouse ceremony.

It is, of course, not that simple in the real world. Hardly anyone separates the religious/moral and legal aspects of marriage in their own minds, or in practice. Marriage is marriage is marriage. And it's between a man and a woman.

Could this be the big wedge that derails the GOP juggernaut?

Good question.

Abortion divides Republicans, of course. To some, it's an evil to be scourged from the earth; to other Republicans, it's a troublesome civil liberties issue that we have to live with.

Governmental philosophy divides the party as well. The national divide between the Reagan/Goldwater Repubicans and the Rockefeller/Whitman Republicans is mirrored in Minnesota by the split between the Michelle Bachmans and the Dick Days of the party.

But both of those issues are ones on which Republicans can agree to disagree; they can put some emotional distance between themselves and the issues by not getting abortions and observing the Big Tent philosophy of coming together when the chips are down.

But Gay Marriage hits everone, whether in the pocketbook or in the vows they take with their spouses. To many Republicans, Gay Marriage is not only about a fundamental realignment of the moral basis of marriage - it's also a government subsidy of a lifestyle.

Both, of course, would be answered by getting goverment out of the "marriage" business; the moral aspects would be decided by the religious institutions and the participants, which is where the decision belongs; the machinery of the actuarial industry will determine the market benefit or detriment of the practice, which is both the motivation for many gay marriage activists and the key objection for many opponents.

But since that won't happen in the real world an y time soon, the question is: can Republicans co-exist on this issue? Or is it something we're going to has out? And how?

Feedback is eagerly solicited.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/8/2003 01:43:39 PM

Tired, Cranky - I'll post more this afternoon.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/8/2003 10:35:34 AM

Monday, July 07, 2003

American Bankers and the Media - According to an editor at the Star/Tribune, the paper is considering doing some followup on their coverage from last spring about the whole American Bankers flap.

If you didn't read the series from the past two weeks about the story, here it is. We will be revisiting this, as well as other stories, shortly.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/7/2003 08:22:49 AM

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year - Don't get me wrong. I love my kids like there's no tomorrow.

But my mom's in town today, and she's taking them to visit her in North Dakota tonight. Then, hopefully, out to my sister's place in Montana, then wrapping things up with a couple of days at my Dad's place.

I look forward to this 7-10 days all year long. It's when I recharge my parental batteries, and have some semblance of a social life beyond every other Friday.

Blogging may be light today - I'll be out driving my Mom around, looking for graves of relatives I never knew I had.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/7/2003 08:20:34 AM

Sunday, July 06, 2003

Hot Potato - A woman tried to toss her kids into the river Friday, and jump in after them, in an incident that happened within sight of the Taste of Minnesota. A good samaritan recovered the woman and one child.

Expect advocated for the mentally-ill to jump on this as evidence that the Pawlenty budget cuts are "killing people". Expect others to use it as an example that welfare benefits are drawing people from out of state.

The body of the second child has yet to be recovered.
posted by Mitch Berg 7/6/2003 06:36:48 AM

Berg's Law of Liberal Iraq Commentary:

In attacking the reasons for war, no liberal commentator is capable of addressing more than one of the justifications at a time; to do so would introduce a context in which their argument can not survive