Changes at KSTP

Sometimes people think that talk radio is a medium marketed to angry, white males.  That is probably a simplification, but I admit it sometimes seems true.  [Of course, I am a white male and I do get angry some times.]  And I do admit it.  I listen to KSTP.  The days of Dick Pomerantz, Mike Edwards, Jesse Ventura, and Barbara Carlson are long gone and the station has become much more ideologically oriented in its talk programming, but I still listen quite a bit, although not to everybody there.  I cannot abide that ThompsonO’BrienDavis guy and think they have some terribly paranoid syndicated men [being male may be a prerequisite at the station] on weekends sometimes.  I believe that good talk radio has to be about more than politics and agenda pushing, yet recipes, dream interpretation, and entertainment and celebrity gossip [e.g., WCCO in the morning] can only go so far before you find yourself reaching for the dial and saying, “All right, KBEM, let’s have some jazz”.  [Unfortunately WCAL has not been an option for four years now.]  And perhaps now KSTP is moving toward more a less ideological format, although the recent canning of Tommy Mischke is confusing.

 

Matt Thomas and the rest of the sports coverage is good [although like all sports coverage in this area there is way too much ice hockey], Joe Soucheray [who clearly has replaced Jason Lewis as the one they consider the franchise player of the station] can be interesting when he isn’t letting his obsessions with a few themes such as global warming and Franken-Coleman carry him away, and I have usually switched my dial to the Pat Reusse sports[?] updates when I am listening to the radio and it is time for one.  Jim Souhan seems to be filling in well in the former Mischke early afternoon slot [although it apparently is not a permanent arrangement] and A. L. Brown who is limited to one bad time slot and some occasional guest hosting [lovely oxymoron] may be the best they have.

 

So, anyhow, Pat Reusse is now the new morning drive time guy.  By Hubbard standards, Reusse is considered some kind of “liberal.”  Although on his inaugural show this morning, his primary guest was Governor Pawlenty.  This could be an interesting development.  We’ll just have to wait and find out, I guess.

 

In the meantime, former KSTP morning guy David Brauer who now writes for MinnPost asks today, “Hey Pat Reusse, are you crazy?” and wonders why a man Reusse’s age would make such a move.  To quote a local television station, “Good question.”

 

It will be interesting.  And in a somewhat related note, Brauer is also suggesting that Jack Rice [who seems like a conservative guy not so hung up on things and who keeps topics moving] may be leaving WCCO.  [Of course, so are a lot of other people.]

Where are we?

I often wonder if people in Fort Worth or Superior or Moorhead or Oakland or St. Petersburg or Tacoma feel the same way we do sometimes. After all, we all have the same problem. We live in cities [clearly cities with our own urban identities, not suburbs, and in many cases good cities] which are located next to or near a larger city. And I wonder how often the media, even alleged news media for whom an obligation to factual accuracy would seem to be important, fail to properly identify them and what takes place in them.

We have already seen and heard more incorrect references to the site of this year’s Republican National Convention than most of us care to note.

These things are not new. I imagine that they have been going on since the nineteenth century. One of the earliest memories of seeing television screw this up was when Democratic Presidential nominee George McGovern stopped by during a campaign stop in the 1972 election. [Actually, I had never owned a television until that summer when I got a used black and white which only received VHF to watch the political conventions.] NBC showed the South Dakota senator speaking from behind a podium which clearly said “Saint Paul Hilton” and put a caption on the screen saying, “Minneapolis.” I don’t follow ice hockey, but have heard references to a hockey team going to Minneapolis to play the Wilds.

Well, Katie Couric recently made this same, common mistake and even our Governor got confused. [There was an incident involving Michele Bachmann, but I haven’t figured enough out about that one yet to figure out the whole context and, frankly, I doubt if she is worth the effort of finding out.]

Couric was confused, Pawlenty likely was just spiteful. Couric apologized. Pawlenty had his spokesperson waffle. We have no reason to suspect that Couric wishes us ill. Maybe she had just seen too many stories of Mayor Coleman the Second running around with Rybak acting as if their cities were sharing the hosting of this awful event. We know that Pawlenty wishes us ill. [In addition to living in Eagan which ought to be a clear enough indication of his spite toward us, he has compiled a legislative and gubernatorial record which make it manifest, his veto of Central Corridor notwithstanding.] He is the enemy of Minneapolis also, but it is easy to confuse ones enemies. After all Pawlenty’s friends Bush and McCain know that whomever is not ones friend is ones enemy, a blanket assumption which can lead to a lot of confusion.

I doubt that there is any easy solution. We can continue to call the errors to people’s attention, but that is likely no more productive than our efforts to catch traffic scofflaws on Edgerton or elsewhere.

I know that people still screw this all up for other places too. Local media, including the DPP have referred to the Twins or somebody else going to Tampa to play the Rays.

Well, let’s keep our eyes and ears open. As far as the pols are concerned we can do our best to influence or possibly remove them. And for the media we need to remember to factor all of this in when we evaluate the other things they tell us.

Truly a Scandal Sheet

When I was in junior high school, I had a teacher who referred to all pieces of paper, but particularly newspapers, as “scandal sheets.”

Fortunately for whatever current affairs minded students he had, his advice on newspapers probably did not carry a lot of weight since he taught industrial arts.

But there is an article in today’s DPP that makes you wonder about what he said.

The first sentence of an article titled, “Two teens shot on West Side, "reads

“Two teens were wounded by gunfire Saturday night on St. Paul's West Side as the city's Cinco de Mayo celebrations ended nearby. Two teens were wounded by gunfire Saturday night on St. Paul's West Side as the city's Cinco de Mayo celebrations ended nearby.”

That’s it. There is no mention anyplace that there was any reason to believe that Cinco de Mayo had any connection to the shooting. We may find that out later, but except for the sensationalistic opening, the article gives no hint that the neighborhood celebration would have any connection with the story.

Using that kind of thinking, any crime that takes place anywhere in the city in late January or early February could be connected to the Winter Carnival. Of course, the Carnival is run by the rich and white for the rich and white and for downtown, not by minority people in a neighborhood.

Just think what crimes might be connected with the Republican National Convention.

Methinks that Ms. Leslie Brooks Suzukamo needs to examine both her work and her motives.

UPDATE -5/5/08

In an article today St. [sic] Paul / Four teens, adult held in shootings, Nick Ferraro notes way down in the sixth paragraph,

[Police spokesperson] Panos said the shootings had nothing to do with the Cinco de Mayo Fiesta celebration that had just ended nearby.

Considering the placement that the paper and Ms. Leslie Brooks Suzukamo gave the matter Sunday, this should have been given better placement.

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, 0300 hours

When she was First Lady, I had some respect for Hillary Rodham Clinton and thought that she might indeed have some qualifications to be a leader in her own right. Had she filed for divorce in the proper New York court on January 22, 2001, I likely would still have some of that respect. But Hillary somehow thinks she can’t make it without being married to one of our worst presidents, the philandering Bill.

If being First Lady makes one qualified to be president, maybe this year the Republicans should choose a Nancy Reagan-Laura Bush ticket. And Hillary should consider Rosalyn Carter for her running mate.

I never thought it was anybody’s business how often Bill and Hillary were together at 3:00 a.m., but since Hillary seems to think that the phone call at that hour is so important, maybe we aren’t out of line in finding how often they indeed were together at that hour. It might not be possible to find out for certain, but Secret Service assignment logs might help.

It might be pushing the proverbial envelope, but let’s see some ambitious newspaper or news service go for them and see what happens.

Observations on Obama, his mosque, and his imam

If I believe all that I hear lately, Barack Obama, whose being Muslim has been well documented on countless blogs and talk shows over the last year or so, somehow has a pastor [or, more correctly, until recently had a pastor] at some strange mosque in Chicago called the Trinity United Church of Christ. “Trinity,” “church,” and “Christ” seem like strange words to be in the name of a mosque, but I am not an expert on Islam. Maybe a “pastor” is some special kind of imam. This “pastor,” Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, jr. baptized Mr. Obama several years ago and also officiated at his marriage and baptized his children. I am not sure where baptism sits among the Muslim rites, but as I said, I am not an expert on Islam.

I do know something about a Christian denomination called the “United Church of Christ” [UCC] which is a predominantly white Protestant denomination. I have been a member of one of its congregations since 1968 and at one time was actually a student at one of the denomination’s theological seminaries.

I have heard many of their mostly white, male, and straight clergypeople and I have heard several who were not white or not male or not straight. I have read articles and position statements from the denomination’s people, both clergy and lay.

The things which Dr. Wright is quoted as saying may be surprising but if the Trinity United Church of Christ were indeed a Christian body like the other congregations who use the UCC label, instead of the secret mosque it must be, the comments certainly would not seem shocking when one considers that the entire denomination seems to be extremely tolerant of strangeness and does not seem to have any conception of heresy.

Dr. Wright has apparently said, “God damn America” as part of a sermon. Isn’t that what white Baptist Phelps is essentially saying when he brings his strident pickets to military funerals? No. actually Phelps is saying that God is already damning America. CONTEXT IS IMPORTANT. In fact I can think of a lot of situations in which religious figures, clergy or lay, Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, or Jewish might string those three words together in the right context

Dr. White was senior pastor at Trinity mosque for over thirty years. He must have delivered a lot of sermons or messages or lessons or whatever they’re called. Why not look at a little more before rushing to judgment? The membership of his church at the time of his recent retirement was almost one hundred times what it was when he started there. Considering that people are constantly dying, moving, and changing faiths, to move a church from 80 to 8,000 probably meant that at least 12,000 people must have joined Trinity Church while he was there, yet nobody outside Illinois and the religious community ever seemed to hear of him. Whatever he was doing must not have been too scary or somebody would have “outed” him earlier, and if Obama were truly a good politician he would have had an earlier opportunity to run away.

Somehow a lot of our leading people say outrageous or stupid things and still stay respectable. Andrew Young said that the British had invented racism, but somehow he stayed respectable and was confirmed to be our Ambassador to the United Nations and later served as mayor of a major American city. [Of course the claim was not accurate, since there are no new sins and racism was around before there were British, but it was only mild hyperbole since the British have done a lot to perfect racism.] W went to Bob Jones University, a school whose president once called on God to strike President Reagan and Secretary of State Haig dead for establishing diplomatic relations with the Vatican, and praised the Reagan legacy and he went on to be appointed president. Jimmy Carter stumbled over “ethnic purity.” In a 1976 debate, Gerald Ford, the sitting president running behind in the polls, said that he did not think Poland was under Soviet influence, yet was gaining on Carter in the polls up until election day. It used to be common for the American people to judge a man or woman by a broader context than we sometimes are tempted to do in this news-, but not necessarily well-compiled or placed in context news-obsessed society.

I don’t know who [if anybody] I will be supporting in November. Actually, I find national politics not particularly important sometimes. However, I am impressed with Senator Obama’s handling of this matter. He seems to have acknowledged the goodness of Dr. Wright and appreciated his work while giving his own perspectives on race and faith. He has not shoved Wright off into some kind of limbo as President Clinton did with Zoe Baird or Lani Guinier or his Arkansas friends involved with Whitewater.

I know Obama is an Ivy League lawyer and politician and I would expect him to be a persuasive speaker and I am sure that these things helped him, but he does seem to show a sincerity on racial matters that we don’t see often, if ever.

And if you drive by a building and see that it hosts a United Church of Christ, don’t assume that it is a mosque with a cross on it.

Happy 199, Mr. President

I don’t think I have heard much said about this today and yet it seems that somebody should be noting it. Our media seem to be focused on other things.

Today, February 12, 2008 is the sesquicenquadrigenerenovennial [I learned that word in 1975 when the national bicentennial was approaching and somebody needed an impressive way of saying 199^th anniversary and thought this word would do that] of the birth of Abraham Lincoln. Also, according to many sources, it holds the same distinction for Charles Darwin.

Some day we may have a discussion on which of these men did the most to influence the way we live today, but for now I’ll just note that in 366 days these men will be having their bicentennials.

Last post of the year

Tonight is New Year’s Eve and tomorrow will begin 2008. Local media have been full of end-of-year retrospectives. I know that they do this between the December 25^th holiday and the end of the year because that is a slow time of the year. January usually brings Congress, state legislatures, and city councils back into operation, often with new personnel and leaders, and new Presidents, governors, and mayors into office around the Great North American Republic, providing new news. So to fill the space and air time available the end of year retrospectives such as the top stories in various categories and the who’s who of dead people are done prematurely. U.S. News and World Report’s “The Paper Trail” aptly noted this phenomenon saying,

I've indulged in some end-of-the-year, space-filling lists to round out the holiday season.

A parenthetical note: Last year President Ford generously died during this week and the national media must have secretly jumped for joy since it gave them a chance to till their spaces and time with things that they already had in the files or cans.

Since these time/space crunches don’t affect me I will do some of these in the next few days as 2008 works its way through.

Some of these things will be brief RIP notes on some local people who left us in 2007, retrospectives on departing members of our City Council, and a new recall for U.S. Senate Republicans to demonstrate consistency regarding Senators Vitter and Craig now that Louisiana will have a Republican governor.

I have also been studying some of the recurring controversies on gay marriage and the use and non-use of “Christmas” as the name for the December 25^th holiday. I think there are some interesting links that I haven’t seen explored elsewhere, but I don’t quite have the thing enough together to post at this time.

And I am sure that there will be more to comment on as things develop.

AND A HAPPY 2008 TO ALL!

Three ongoing peeves and a Monday morning to gripe about them.

Peeve One. Does anybody know what “Twin Cities” means? You won’t learn from listening to any radio station, watching any television service, or reading any major area newspaper.

Let’s look at the words a bit.

“Twin” means two. It can mean the other one of two, but every definition you look up stems from the number two.

Suburbs and cities are different things, even though Minnesota law was changed three decades ago to allow suburbs to dishonestly call themselves “cities.”

Minneapolis is a city. Saint Paul is a city. Falcon Heights is not a city; it is a suburb. Likewise North Oaks, Bloomington, Maplewood, New Hope, and a few hundred others. Even if they were cities, they are not two in number.

Historically the Twin Cities have been Saint Paul and Minneapolis. To add any of the two hundred or so other jurisdictions located within a local phone call’s distance is doubly incorrect, since it adds something that is not a city and changes the sum from two to another number.

I am getting very tired of media labeling somebody from St. Louis Park or Mendota Heights as being a Twin Cities driver or banker or janitor or whatever. It is wrong and it is misleading and it makes one wonder how accurate much the other stuff that source is reporting is.

Similarly, referring to Roseville, Falcon Height, Maplewood, Vadnais Heights, or other such place as a “Saint Paul suburb” demeans our city and defeats the purpose of the parasites who live there. They live there because they don’t want to be part of us. Of course they don’t mind sticking their noses into our business, but that is what parasites do. The tapeworm never intends to become a steer. It just wants to use the steer for its own subsistence.

Peeve Two. The second peeve is the recurring “x-hundred block” of whatever street for addresses in our city. Many cities are set up with numbering for which that phrase would be appropriate. Ours is not.

Where is the 1100 block of Payne Avenue? 1100 is a church between Magnolia and Jessamine. 1199 is a saloon at Payne. Jessamine, Geranium, and Rose all come in between. The 300 block of North Snelling? There is a whole freeway in the middle.

Let’s find better ways of getting the message out. If we need to say Payne between Rose and Maryland, let’s say so. If we need to write that something happened at 16xx Highland Parkway, let’s write it that way.

However, if you tell me the 600 block of Fountain Place, I’ll understand.

Peeve Three. The third peeve is referring to Minneapolis as being “across the river. [or to us as being “across the river” from them]. “Upstream” and “downstream” would be more accurate terms. By looking at the fire hydrants in front of KSTP one can easily tell that there are two cities next to each other and there surely is no river there.

Baby, the Snow Must Fall

I looked out at 35E about 5:00 this evening and traffic was crawling both northbound and southbound.

Television, radio, newspapers, and their connected web sites had been warning usthat this might happen. The meteorologists were right. Snow was falling and traffic was getting snarled.

Well, folks, it is winter in Minnesota.

And it is one reason that I am glad that I don’t commute.

I hope you and yours were well in the chaos.

Thoughts on 1963 [and 2001]

WARNING: This is a ramble.

Today marks the forty-fourth anniversary of the close of a weekend that probably anybody over fifty won’t forget, the weekend that Presdient Kennedy was killed, mourned, paraded, and buried.

I’m not sure what makes the people in mainstream media choose what is newsworthy and how much to focus on something, but it seems that this year there was little attention given to the anniversaries.

November 22, 1963 shares a lot with September 11, 2001.

In 1963 the nation was steeped in the post-war idea that we were a strong and invincible country, that our only real enemies were the Communists and their sympathizers among us. We thought we were entering on a new era with a young president, the first one born in the twentieth century.

In 2001 we were beginning a whole new century. We still felt the euphoria of the end of the Cold War. We knew that we had some discontent in the country, but nobody took that seriously.

We all woke up on both of those days. And those who were old enough will never forget where they were or what they were doing when they learned about them. [Personally, I was in high school American History class when the word that JFK was shot was put on the school intercom and at home listening to Barbara Carlson when I heard her saying that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I thought she meant the one downtown, so I turned on my television to see if one of the local stations had any video. I got a surprise.]

On November 25, 1963 people all across the nation were watching their televisions. Most people only had affiliates of major networks available to them and the major networks had shown nothing but news and commentaries [no commercials] related to JFK or the new president, Mr. Johnson and what might happen in the future. The television and other media had crowded the Dallas Police Department headquarters and we had seen Oswald moved from room to room several times, protesting his innocence to all the cameras and reporters present. On Sunday the 24^th with the whole country watching he was killed. Talk of conspiracy has gone on ever since and probably will never stop. The 29^th century version of the History Channel on whatever the 29^th century replacement we have for television will probably still be asking questions about it.

There was a late morning memorial service in the city I lived in at a theater downtown and my brother and I went to it. [School was canceled almost every place in the country.] We heard the various civic leaders and clergymen from almost all of the big religious traditions speak or pray about how it shouldn’t have happened.

When we got back home we saw the conclusion of the funeral and the burial at Arlington Cemetery. I remember that the bugler who was to play Taps had not kept his mouthpiece warm and bungled it a bit, something that my band teacher found incomprehensible.

But later on November 25 things started to get back to normal. After the funeral regular programming and commercials resumed and our teachers tried to find ways to get back to us the day of learning they seemed to feel that we had lost. Actually, I had learned a lot.

On this anniversary of the Kennedy burial, it does us well to remember all of our national traumas, to think about their similarities and differences, and learn from them.

Minnpress.com and Saints

Most of what appears here is about political and social matters and the things which affect them, such as the media which tell us about these things.

I decided to check up on the newest professional internet news concept [minnpost.com which has received a fair amount of hype in non-print media] which debuted this week.

I will probably say more about minnpress.com later. There is more I want to check out. But I found an article about the 1920’s New York Yankees, one of the most famous dynasties in the sport’s history.

While I have noted, although not here, that perhaps the Red Sox are becoming a new dynasty [although they have a long way to go before reaching that level] that they have not won a World Series without having a former Saint on the team [Millar in ’04, Drew in ‘07], Pat Borzoi has written about those Yankees and notes the presence of a former Saint [Mark Koenig] on those teams, and of his role in winning the 1924 Junior World Series for the Saints.

It is an interesting article which reminds us of independent minor league teams, of the Junior World Series, of Lexington Park – of a different era.

The era was not perfect and I wouldn’t want to minimize the problems. Most of them were reflections of the society from which that era of baseball derived. Labor relations were poor, health and training attitudes of both management and players left a lot to be desired in both majors and minors, and playing was limited to white men.

But the article is interesting and worthy of reading. And you can follow links off of it to learn more about minnpost.com.