Part of the Northern Alliance, speaking truth to
power...
The fellas over at Powerline have
been engaged in a rather interesting war of words with the
Minneapolis Star
Tribune. If you can wrap your noodle around
the (noblest) goals of the modern states' rights movement (pushing power down to
the people, at a level where they can actually make a difference) a parallel
sort of thing might be developing right there in Minnesota, in the dealings of
Concerned Citizens with members of the Fourth Estate. It might very well play
out the way that this exchange between the writers of a blog, all of whom have
day jobs and their adversary, a professional representative of the mainstream
(if relatively small market) press, is a kind of passion play on the topic of
speaking truth to power - just not the way that particular formulation was
ordinarily meant.
I've argued before
that the further up you go in governmental spheres, the harder it is for the
average Joe or Jane to make a difference. Mr. Smith might once have gone to
Washington, but he'll get short shrift there these days - at least dealing with
the bureaucracy. But when the folks at city hall are also your neighbors and you
see them at the PTA meetings, it becomes a little more difficult to simply blow
them off.
Except these Powerline
folks have really gotten under the skin of the Op-Ed folks at the
Strib.
Really.
(O)ne
of us gave a guest lecture to a Humphrey Institute class that was attended by
student Camille Gage. She challenged the accuracy of the news story we had
linked to reporting the FAIR investigation, saying that Tully was a
“racist”-- an accusation that I (Hinderaker) found odd, since she
did not claim to have met Tully. I told Gage that if she had information showing
that the news story wasn’t true, she should send it to us via email, and
we would publish it on Power Line as a supplement or correction to our original
post. We never heard from Gage, and concluded that, in fact, she had no relevant
information.
Seems like Ms. Gage went
on to write a highly critical editorial which the Strib published, essentially
calling the Powerline folks big fat liars. But the Strib ran the assault on
the blog's veracity without bothering to check any of her statements, including
easily verifiable facts and contraindications. Which is, to say the least,
shoddy.
I'm not a lawyer (not even a
sea lawyer) so I don't have the legal definition of "libel" close to hand. But
Hinderaker
is
a lawyer, I believe, which makes his closing lines sound a bit ominous (to my
ears, anyway):
Last August
deputy editorial page editor Jim Boyd falsely called us fraudulent smear
artists. Last December Metro columnist Nick Coleman falsely suggested that we
have taken money under the table from undisclosed benefactors. We're beginning
to take these libels personally.
If
they'd ask me, I'd pass on to the
Strib
leadership the first bit of advice I ever received, having discovered that I was
digging a hole for myself: Stop!
Posted @
05:42 PM
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Posted in
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Sendit
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Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." - John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Ceasar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friederich Nietzsche
