Right is right and wrong is wrong and torture is the latter

In recent years the DPP [Dispatch Pioneer Press for those who were wondering] has reduced its editorial and opinion section considerably, in editorials, syndicated columnists, and letters to the editor. However, they sometimes do obtain good guest columnists and certainly A. L. Brown’s occasional contributions qualify.

Since KSTP radio has shelved Mr. Brown from his Sunday afternoon spot again, it is indeed fortuitous that his work shows up once in a while in the DPP and yesterday’s column is indeed edifying.

Brown is a lawyer. After distinguishing between legal advise and legal counsel, he identifies the poor counsel given by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, particularly the work of Jay Bybee who is now a federal judge.

But his primary point is the indefensibility of the use of torture by a free people. He notes

“The American standard is clear: Torture is always morally and legally wrong. This standard is a strength, not a vulnerability. It deprives our enemies of a rationale or moral standing while providing both to those who work on our behalf.”

I fear that he errs in writing this in present tense. I suspect that under the misdirection of the Bush administration that we have already gone too far in the wrong direction. And I doubt that Bybee’s counsel probably made much of a difference, because I suspect that if he had not given them such counsel that [although it might have taken some doing] they would have found an lawyer who would.

But Brown points out that each person who tortured or helped make the torture possible, needs to have his/her case examined.

President Obama seems to have been less than clearly decisive on this. But we still need vigilance on this matter and ought not let it be forgotten. And maybe we will learn from our inexcusable mistakes.

NOTE: I suppose that we should not view Brown’s departure from KSTP with alarm. This seems to be a seasonal thing, since the station commandeered the Twins from their age-old home with the Good Neighbor and they no longer need him to fill in that slot during spring and summer, but it is still a shame. While KSTP seems to have made some moves lately to move a little bit away from its right-wing base, eliminating Willie Clark and [apparently] all three faces of ThompsonO’BrienDavis and replacing them with Pat Reusse [whom it looks like is being played as the new in-house “liberal”], a couple of guys from Wisconsin who don’t seem to think that political topics are the only topics to cover, and WCCO discard Smarmy Al Malmberg [who seems, however, to have made a transition from simply smarmy to smarmy and pandering with the pseudo-conservative, anti-tax constituency his new station has given him], they really should have more room for Brown. I think it would be interesting if he could fill in for Joe Soucheray sometime, but I imagine that it would be too much shock for Garage Logicians.

Link to the DPP column

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.

Did anybody note that we just had something called a World Series?

Did anybody note that we just had something called a World Series?

The DPP showed the importance it gave the event when they put the story of the third game on page 17C of Sunday’s city edition.

I guess that maybe I am nostalgic for the way they used to do it, play games during the daytime at whatever would be noon or one o’clock at the home team’s ball park, taking days off for travel only when geography seemed to require it, being aired on network radio and shown on major network television, heard by people who could, with or without permission, sneak a radio onto their work or school premises and seen by people who could go home for lunch and sneak a peek or two of smuggle a television into a break room.

Those World Series were noticed by people from all across the country and even people who were not baseball fans seemed to have an interest, even if the local team was not involved or there was no local team. Wherever you went, you could ask, “What’s the score?” and the person you were asking would understand what you were asking about. It might turn out that he/she did not have any more current information than you did, but you both were thinking of the same topic. Other differences [political, religious, class] were put aside for a few days and replaced by temporary new divisions [Giants-Indians, Cardinals-Yankees, Dodgers-Yankees, Mets-Orioles, etc.] took their places in areas where there were no teams and in areas where the locals were playing there was a new us-vs.-them which replaced the Cold War in people’s minds for a few days.

Those days are not coming back, but maybe each October we should at least reflect on then.

Congrats, A L Brown AND Tutu the Second Time

It was nice to see an op-ed piece from A. L. Brown in today’s DPP. He also addressed the St. Thomas–Archbishop Tutu matter in a little different way than I had here. The paper identified him as a KSTP talk show host, but did not say when his show is on. Wonder why?

Maybe because the Hubbards just seem to use him as fill-in [and never for Soucheray]. They used to give him Sunday afternoons which has to be the worst spot available [which had once been made available to somebody else they would consider to be strangely radiclib, Nick Coleman – not the real Nick Coleman, but his son who shuttles his very ordinary predictable pablum between newspapers like Elizabeth Taylor was shuttling between husbands forty years ago] , but they made other programming choices and forced him out of that.

KSTP used to have more diverse minds on its air. Remember Barbara Carlson [who by herself sometimes coujld be a year’s quota of diversity in just a few hours of the morning]? Dick Pomerantz? Michael Jackson [no, not that one – the white guy from South Africa who actually challenged apartheid amid all his show-biz sycophancy but was dumped for the Missouri Mouth]? The Mayor of Brooklyn Park, James Janos? Or Turi Rider? Are your ears still ringing from that last one?

Back to Mr. Brown’s comments. I did not go into things like why Ann Coulter was allowed to speak there. It is indeed strange when somebody who seems so void of fact or world perspective is allowed and a Nobel Prize winning bishop is not, but that’s their business. I was focusing forward. If Tutu is not allowed, disinvited even, who will be tolerated? I suggested that the students and constituency of the Merriam Park-based semi-Catholic university [named after a man noted for his intellect] can accept banning the good bishop that they ought to be ready to mobilize to see to it that nobody else similarly opinionated [whether of similar opinions or contrary] be permitted an audience there either. It would leave a lesser university, but it would be consistent.

And I do wonder if Archbishop Tutu were a Catholic bishop if the action would have been the same.