I’m gonna tell you a story about a couple of groups of people.
News people – especially newspaper people – subscribe to the American ideal of what journalism is, and what journalists are. 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. Among good reporters, it’s a mission; among lesser ones, it’s an affectation. It’s neither good nor bad.
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. 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.
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. 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. 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. It’s a nasty, brutish, deeply dysfunctional world where arrested adolescents romp and play routinely on the dark side of the ethical moon. And damn, when it’s fun, it’s fun!
Blogs are somewhere between the two, and way outside ’em to boot. A blog reflects its writers, pretty much; you can tell Powerline is a bunch of lawyers with scrappy streaks, that The Sheila Variations is written by an eclectic with ADD, that Captain’s Quarters’ Ed Morrissey is a mild-mannered guy with an incisive rhetorical left hook and a Rainman-like command of facts. 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.
Anyway.
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?
Jeff Fecke left a comment yesterday:
Mitch–
Thank you for your interest, but I have no comment at this time.
Sincerely,
Jeff Fecke
P.S. Oh, wow, look how easy that was!
Oh, wow, but that’s not the whole story.
If it were, say, Tim O’Brien or Nick Coleman or Lori Sturdevant writing to me, that’s what I’d do. 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. No surprises there.
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.
But the 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. 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. Nobody reads Powerline or Captain’s Quarters or this blog for that matter and comes away thinking there’s any attempt at neutrality (although I do try to be fair).
As such, the Minnesota Monitor – like the Huffington Post or the Young Turks – deserves 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!), but expects everyone else to turn off when he puts on his “junior reporter” hat. 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 would buy it, and I’d get mocked for trying (and deserve it!).
Why, it’s almost as if, if you don’t want someone to interview you, you can decline to be interviewed. And you can even do so without being a jerk. And you don’t have to “punk” anyone.
Jerk?
Mommy? Is that you?
Jeff is right. “Punking” the monitor is an act of free will.
And declining “interviews” would certainly be a good idea – I know I would. Ignoring the Monitor completely would be a fine plan, actually. Most people do!
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); 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”.
But hey, that’s what you do when you’re an adult.
No, Jeff, it’s what you do when you respect the requestor.
That’s what, say, Michael Brodkorb did the two times I asked him for comment–and the two times he’s asked me for comment.
Michael works in politics, and must maintain relatinships with all sorts of people. I do not.
You and Aplikowski are less mature than Brodkorb. I mean, if that was me, I’d be really embarrassed. But hey, whatevs.
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”) in a sentence.
Tomato, tomahto.
Now have your people get back to me on those 13 questions, OK?
And add this one; how did the bloggers who now work for Minnesota Monitor react when the giggly fratboys at MN Publius “punked” Kennedy Vs. The Machine by squatting on their old blogspot space?
Further Mitch, if Andy does in fact have “immediate combat potential for continued military operations”, then he can join weight watchers, drop a few and sign on the dotted line.
Mitch said:
or would be, if that were in any [way] what he did.
Hm, in my search to (unsuccessfully) try and find the actual height/weight ratio requirements for the US Marines (incidentally, apparently, you only have to be 4’11” or so!), I came what I believe is the web log in question:
http://www.residualforces.com/but-what-does-it-all-mean/
On this page, he explains that the name of the blog is taken from a DOD term:
And the reason (besides not being properly proportioned) he gives for why he doesn’t join the military is:
Perhaps he didn’t mean this to sound like it was trying to treat his role as a “legitimate military function” but it sure isn’t hard to read it that way.
Incidentally, FWIW, IMO, blah blah disclaimer etc:
I am disappointed in the whole affair that the original post refers to. The signal to noise ratio in current American political discourse is already abysmally low. More deceit is the last thing we need.
This situation is not a big deal. Its a tiny deal.
Its the willfulness and acceptance of it that I find disturbing. Democracy can only thrive when those who are participating are reasonably well informed and it is my opinion that the amount of lies and distortion (from many sides) clogging our understanding of reality are the greatest threat we as a nation face. When it comes down to it, I’m far more concerned about a deceived and hopelessly confused society than I am about a bunch of religious radicals. The militant religious fundamentalists can only kill me. Existing in a society where I can’t trust anything I hear or read and knowing that this foundation of distortion is what every decision that we are making is trying to be built on destroys something much more important.
If I were given the option of dying in exchange for everyone knowing the truth about what is going on and what is being done for even just one year, even if that truth showed that my own goals and beliefs are wrong, I’d gladly trade my life for it. I’d regret not being able to see what came of it, but just to sweep the lies away for a time so we _know_ and can act accordingly would be worth so much more than my life.
Also, FWIW, I really don’t give a shit who is paying who for reporting. What matters to me is that what is being reported is truth and that any conjecture, assumptions, or editorialization is clearly marked as opinion.
For example, if Exxon is paying a scientist, it may be worth double checking their data that supports Exxon but if the data is true and the conclusions are true, that Exxon paid for the research does not make it otherwise. Likewise, if my favorite organization is paying a scientist but they skew or lie about their data, I am furious (actually more angry than I would be if it were a neutral or opposing group because in doing so, they not only lied but they tainted my causes and any other information from related sources).
In other words, if Soros is backing the Minnesota Monitor, I don’t care. If they say he isn’t when he is, I care that they lied about it. If they report on an event and make a statement of fact that is actually assumption (like the incident regarding the wireless card), I care that they stated assumptions as fact.
I just want the truth.
I may not like it, I may not be able to handle it, but it is still better than the alternative. If you don’t want to say something, don’t say it, but for the sake of everything, don’t lie about it.
I don’t agree with everything in the chapter and think that the translations of many of the verses may be skewed from their original intent, but Christian or no, I suspect this one is pretty much right on:
Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’ Anything more is from the evil one. – Matthew 5:37
Doug said:
I’m not debating you and I’ll detail the reason in a minute.
In which you failed to name the REAL reason: you can’t refute my points, so therefore you call them strawmen and irrelevant.
Did ya refute my points Paul?
Wow, you actually read them this time!
Yes, I did, because if you could name one single example, you have waved it in my face like a nine-foot dick. Your evasive response, once again, proves my point.
Hey, just to amuse me, could you go ahead and elaborate a bit on the scientific method. I haven’t seen that pompous, bombastic, self-indulgent lecture is a while.
Sure. But first, bring up your pompous, bombastic, self-indulgent “reams of evidence” that you never link to. No matter how much you deny it to be true, the fact that those who believe in global warming never have made it past Step #2.
You can’t win that one either, which s why you called it ‘pompous, bombastic, self-indulgent .’
I repeat this again, Doug (you’ll think of it as ‘regurgitation’)
How about addressing Terry’s question: “Where does Bill Clinton’s excuse go on that on that list of yours anyway?” Come up with an answer, Doug, or you will prove my points once again.
Paul said,
“In which you failed to name the REAL reason”
I named the reason. Ad nauseam in fact.
Against my better judgement, I’ll make one more attempt to explain it to you. If you respond with your typical, “ah ha! and I thought you would think that I thought you thought that way!”, response, I’ll assume you either take the short bus to school or you yourself served and were within 10 feet of an IED blowing up.
Try to follow along Paul. I said,
“The will of the people is to get the hell out of Iraq but it is a group of ideologues with half baked plan and no strategy for success that are keeping us there.”
You moronically respond with;
”Okay Doug, show a single example where appeasement – giving in to an aggressive adversary in the hope that it will convince them to become peaceful themselves – has provided any lasting peace or security.”
It’s a strawman. Here’s why.
You’ve defined get the hell out of Iraq as appeasement. Therefore, your entire “challenge” to give you an example is based entirely on a false pretense or more directly, an informal fallacy.
I’ll make it really clear for you. You expect me to give an example of appeasement working to support my statement that the will of the people is to leave Iraq.
When I don’t play your stupid little game, you run around claiming victory.
“Your evasive response, once again, proves my point.”
No Paul. I’m not evading. I’m simply not playing your stupid little narcissistic gotcha game.
To address Terry’s request, let’s compare the two.
Andy Aplikowski:
“I exceed the height to weight ratio for the US Marines.”
Bill Clinton:
“I worked for two years in a very minor position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I did it for the experience and the salary, but also for the opportunity, however small, of working every day against a war I opposed and despised with a depth of feeling I had reserved solely for racism in America before Vietnam. I did not take the matter lightly, but studied it carefully, and there was a time when not many people had more information about Vietnam at hand than I did. I have written and spoken and marched against the war.”
I don’t know. You tell me Paul. Which guys excuse seems more believeable?
phaedrus-
My original response wasn’t meant to be taken seriously 🙂
However your quote from Gen. Pace brings up something I never thought was adequately parsed by the media:
“I believe homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts,” Pace said. “I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way.”
Notice he says “homosexual acts”, not feelings or inclination. If “gayness” is an orientation uncoupled (pardon the wording) from the act of sodomy, there’s nothing in Pace’s words that can be construed as anti-gay.
OK Doug, how would YOU define “get the hell out of Iraq” if it isn’t simple appeasement and turning tail, since you haven’t done so?
Let’s also define “the will of the people.” Which people? The Democratic
Underground? The Huffington Post? Daily Kos? Are you like that reporter who asked, “I don’t know how Nixon got elected. I don’t know anyone who voted for him!”
you respond with your typical, “ah ha! and I thought you would think that I thought you thought that way!”, response
No, Doug, I simply used your own words against you.
I’m not evading. I’m simply not playing your stupid little narcissistic gotcha game.
Interesting terminology for your inability to refute a point.
To once again use your own words, I simply gave you what should have been a target-rich enviroment if you have truth and facts on your side. It was obvious that you couldn’t refute the points, so you reverted to your usual ad hominem attacks. That’s why I claimed victory–to paraphase your own words yet again–because you enjoy sticking to us Righties, because its entertaining to you. Yet you didn’t do so.
The obvious conclusion is that you are unable to do so,because there is no way your arrogance would have allowed you to pass up such a chance.
I don’t know. You tell me Paul. Which guys excuse seems more believeable?
Andy Aplikowski’s. Recall that Clinton was called “an unusually good liar” by Senator Bob Kerrey (D-Nebraska). Funny how the Left never cared about lies while Clinton was in office.
Now stop evading and switching the subject, and stay on topic, Doug.
Paul whined,
“To once again use your own words, I simply gave you what should have been a target-rich enviroment if you have truth and facts on your side. It was obvious that you couldn’t refute the points, so you reverted to your usual ad hominem attacks. That’s why I claimed victory–to paraphase your own words yet again–because you enjoy sticking to us Righties, because its entertaining to you. Yet you didn’t do so.”
Thank you for that Vizzini. Truly priceless.
“Funny how the Left never cared about lies while Clinton was in office.”
Funny how 212 Democrats in the House wanted to censure Clinton for lying. Even funnier is that even after the grand jury investigation, Clintons approval stood at 63% and still funnier is that in poll after poll, 6 in 10 Americans felt Clinton should be censured, not impeached. What were we talking about? Oh yeah. The will of the people vs idealogues.
But the funniest part? that you accuse me of dishonesty while you continually spout platitudes like, “funny how the Left never cared about lies while Clinton was in office”.
Give it up Paul. You really should conserve your energy for more important things like popcicle stick craft hour.
Swiftee brayed: “Huh. Evidently MiniMoni’s stories ring true when assclown detects them reverberating off his colon walls on the way up to his ears.”
Well, I probably didn’t score as well on the reading comp part of the SAT (whoops, ACT) as your kids, Swift One. Can you post their scores again?