Secrets of the City

Wow. A blatant troll post. Nice work. Did you even understand the column?

We need more poster like you, Dave. To go hang out at some other site.

davet, in fairness, this is a liberal-oriented site. Know your audience. You can do a post that vilifies, say, Senator Bachman, or Bush, or a known conservative writer, with the point of the post being, simply, vilification as art form, and it will be “fair comment, because, hey!, it’s all true.” But to do this to Garry . . . here . . . ain’t gonna fly.

Not entirely fair, or intellectually honest, but there are lots of conservative-oriented web sites out there that make the same distinctions, backwards, and which will shower you with praise.
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“Let’s all consider ourselves fortunate that we have someone of such virtue to tell us how best to lead our own lives.”

This isn’t a liberal vs conservative argument. It’s more about how the headline and blurb that davet wrote doesn’t match the article it links to. Part of it is even fabricated. When it’s negative on top of that, it’s just trolling.

So, how did this get to the front page?

a) Rubber-stamp editorial staff at MNspeak.
b) Controversial trolling creates shitloads of comments, page views and ad click-throughs.
c) Something else?

Yeah, this is a liberal site. It plainly says so, right in the whiny conservative bullshit FAQs to the right.

It was an obnoxiously slanted post, bobby. But, you know, since the monogamy police has reared its ugly head, hopefully they’ll be prepared to make identical comments when the Republican party runs its own adulterers under the banner of family values.

in fairness, this is a liberal-oriented site.

I would disagree with that statement. There are liberals here for sure, but there are plenty of conservatives as well.

Be that as it may, the article was mostly about how it used to be compared to how it is now. That and that the government likes to waste money. I think Dave T missed that part about the article though…

“Controversial trolling creates shitloads of comments, page views and ad click-throughs.“

The underlying assumption being that this site makes money for someone? Strangely, that hadn’t even occurred to me. (And, NTTAWWT. Good for them if it does.)

I think it is an L v C issue, in that I’ve seen postings as meritless as this one but aimed the other direction that received none of the instant troll-rating commentary. Casual comments vilifying one side of the poli-continuum are accepted as being as natural as breathing, while one thrown in from the other side is often labelled trollbait.

This isn’t bad or unjust – The site IS dominated overwhelmingly by people closer to one side of the continuum than the other, so it’s all understandable, and in fact there’s nothing wrong with it being that way – sites like this have owners, and editors, and the communities formed over time generally tend toward some homogeneity, and I was just pointing that out to davet.

Of course, the more I think about it, it’s not a secret, so maybe davet IS the guy in the bar who walks up to the biggest drunk and points to another drunk and says “are you gonna let him call you what he just called you?” and then ducks.
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Being too lazy and too uninterested to click the link to the Salon article, I did find this post to be funny. So if we simply ignore the facts and enjoy the comedy: everything’s all good!

OK, now I did click, and I’m way too uninterested to click to get the free Salon pass. So nevermind.

It’s not a great piece. But it’s not greatness it totally unrelated to Keillor’s marital history, and has more to do with the facts the he sounds like he forgot his meds and just started babbling.

have you seen Keillor’s red socks? he wears those and expects to be taken seriously?

Why do you even have a review and registration process if you are going to let mostly anonymous people post threads immediately after registering?

Let’s hope this Dave Tomas is not:

Dave Tomas – Fridley, MN – High School Teacher @ Columbia Heights High School – graduated from college – engaged to Traci Erickson, wedding set for March.

Definitely not a great piece. It started off well, but then it got off track and started rambling off into space.

Interesting that the title of the post was changed.

Summary of the article for those who don’t want the Salon day pass:

“Nature doesn’t care about the emotional well-being of older people. It’s about the continuation of the species — in other words, children.”

Last week Garrison visited a grade school and he writes about the diversity and multiculturalism he saw and compared to how he grew up. He told a story to them as part of “I Love Reading Week” and argued that the children are better for having met him. He jokes, “Pay me a quarter-million dollars and I’ll do a study that proves it.”

“Yeah, this is a liberal site. It plainly says so, right in the whiny conservative bullshit FAQs to the right.“

Look, I’m not trying to say something derogatory here, and I’m not claiming that a site shouldn’t have a POV or a community consensus. It’s a fun and intelligent site, the discourse is generally well above the standard web-site discourse, and commenters generally do a good job of justifying and supporting their statements. But are you really saying with your comment that the site and it’s commenters don’t tend toward one side of the continuum?
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The Anti-Keillor sentiment was better when Rex was here…

So, an ad hominem attack on a complete misrepresentation of an article written by someone who has slight leftward tendencies is a conservative viewpoint. Interesting…

Let’s hope this Dave Tomas is not:
Dave Tomas – Fridley, MN – High School Teacher @ Columbia Heights High School

Wow, a public school teacher who’s not a flaming lefty. Hope he gets hazardous duty pay for all the incoming I’m sure he’s subjected to. Or maybe he just stays in the closet like most conservative government workers do.

Maz-

I hope he’s not a public educator because he can’t read and understand English. The article had nothing to do with him telling people how to lead their lives and he doesn’t really touch on moralism either. It’s about focusing on children.

Ah. More trolling from Dances With Lesbians.

“So, an ad hominem attack on a complete misrepresentation of an article written by someone who has slight leftward tendencies is a conservative viewpoint. Interesting…“

D, the fact that you can type “slight leftward tendencies” about Keillor shows the perception issue here. Everyone sees themselves as being at the center.

And an anti-Garry diatribe is generally launched from a rightward POV. Even a bad diatribe.

But I’ll stop now, because the poli-stuff is a fairly nonrewarding path for all.

But I’ll stop now, because the poli-stuff is a fairly nonrewarding path for all.

Ditto. The reason I used “slight leftward tendencies” is because:

a) I don’t know a lot about his politics, but he does agree with some conservative viewpoints AND some liberal ones.
b) He has issues with the current president. (There’s a shocker!)

wow, I suprised anyone cares that someone is taking a poke at Garrison Keillor. I’m sure he can take care of himself anyway; prolly already issued a cease and desist order to dave.

in other news, anyone need an extra ticket to TV on the Radio’s Thursday show?

Wow, a public school teacher who’s not a flaming lefty

I think it’s sad, too that so few conservatives consider teaching kids a worthy profession.

bobby_b.
a plea to you.
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enough.
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with the.
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fucking.
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dots.
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I love political gossip more than anyone I know, and have not heard that Keillor cheated on his wife (or wives). Norm, well, that’s a different story.

Also, Keillor went to rehab to stop being a drunken bastard before rehab was cool.

For you, Dotty, anything.

“I love political gossip more than anyone I know, and have not heard that Keillor cheated on his wife (or wives). Norm, well, that’s a different story.“

Norm didn’t write stories about Garry. Garry wrote stories about Norm.

(And Garry didn’t actually say Norm cheated. Garry had neither the facts nor the guts. He just used some of the most vile innuendo and crappy rumor-mongering ever to make it into a major publication in order to trash some people whose politics he hates. So, I’m conflicted, as I’ve loved PHC for decades, and I despise GK.)

That article about Norm was bizarre, and I would never defend it. But I had heard much more salacious versions of that rumor for years before the article came out. No idea if any of it’s true, but it was out there.

I know several married couples whose marriages have really been over for years, by agreement even, but who (correctly or not – I don’t know) believed the conventional wisdom that, as long as there’s no outright hostility and the parents can still be friends, the kids are much, much better off if the people stay married. Some of those people (again, by agreement) seek things outside of the dead marriage that marriage usually provides, knowing that, in the circumstances, there’s nothing dishonorable or dishonest about it.

But to Keiller, none of that matters – it’s all just a great opportunity to smear.

I think if someone runs on the “Family Values” ticket and then is exposed as a Hypocrite and a Fraud – like Norm has been- then any “smearing” they get is well earned.

Neocons call it “smearing” when the facts are against them.

When they have “dirt” on the other guy suddenly it is all about “the rule of law.”

I don’t remember Norm running on any “family values” ticket. That’s a convenient myth. Seems to me he ran on pro-freedom, pro-national defense “ticket.” Kicked his liberal opponent’s ass doing it too. But like I’ve said here before, Norm’s natural tendencies are to side with the democrats in an argument and he’s no hero of the conservative movement. He got most of his votes from grateful minnesota hockey fans.

“I think if someone runs on the “Family Values” ticket and then is exposed as a Hypocrite and a Fraud – like Norm has been“

Man, you need to get out more. Norm’s pretty much on your side. He was one of the five or so senators working against Bush just a few weeks ago. We’re looking for a Republican to run against him next time.

And, BTW, sacrificing your own interests in order to make your kids’ lives better is immoral and fraudulent in your eyes? Careful what yoiu wish for, rd.

So, maz, if Norm wasn’t working any family-values line, why did he fly Laurie in from her home in L.A., where she lives full-time, to appear in cozy, soft-focus “we’re such a close family” TV ads during the 2002 campaign? heh.

I heard a rumor, as of yet unsubstantiated, that Keillor and Coleman have a little love nest condo that they share in downtown St. Paul. The public hate is just a front.

Maz-

Ever the revisionist historian:

Kicked his liberal opponent’s ass doing it too.

Wellstone would have kicked Norm’s ass if he hadn’t been ASSASSINATED.

Here’s proof you are incorrect about Norm’s family values ties:

FAMILY RESEARCH COUNCIL AWARDS COLEMAN TRUE BLUE AWARD

Who’s the Family Research Council you ask?

FRCs Principal Issues:

-Since the early 1990s, FRC has emerged as a leading conservative think-tank championing traditional family values by lobbying for state-sponsored prayer in public schools, private school vouchers, abstinence-only programs, filtering software on public library computers, the right to discriminate against gay men and lesbians.

-FRCs objective is to establish a conservative Christian standard of morality in all of Americas domestic and foreign policy.

-FRC has dedicated itself to working against reproductive freedom, sex education, equal rights for gays and lesbians and their families, funding of the National Endowment for the Arts and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. FRC supports a school prayer amendment and would like to disestablish the Department of Education.

How’s that for UNCONVENIENT TRUTHS Maz?

If anything the article had a conservative bent.
It was a humor piece.
Opened and closed with the premise of government spending funds to reach “obvious” conclusions.
Worth a few mild chuckles. Garrison is capable of better, but this was ok.

I think what’s most dangerous idea re: the sites contributors slant/makeup as conservative vs republican is making assumptions and taking seriously, comments that seem to expose the motivations of anyone. Making the assumption just makes you look like a fool.

It’s the internet; even if I were being sarcastic/satirical, a post’s tone cannot be easily decerned, especially by bleeding-heart baby-killing gaywads. Or is it hypocritical, facist, brown-baby killers?

You can still espouse for things that didn’t neccessarily work out for you personally.

That’s what great about America!

(Also, ranty is great).

“You can still espouse for things that didn’t neccessarily work out for you personally.”

bud jr

If only that’s what you and your neo-puritan ilk busied yourselves with in American life, “espousing for” families. But instead, despite serial failures at marriage, you and your sanctimonious peers invest your dark energy inveighing against others who’ve come up no less short than yourselves, or endeavoring to pass amendments to the state and U.S. constitutions, not to expand or codify citizen rights, but to single out and proscribe certain groups out of rights shared by their fellow citizens, forcing them to cobble together workable lapproximations of family, only to be demonized by you and your like for even that.

That’s what is making America less and less great drip by venomous drip.

neo-puritan ilk ?

Ha ha. That’s not the bud jr. I know. heh.

Get Kokonutz started on the Vice of Smoking, and he’ll sound every bit the neo-puritan he despises.

What a classy drive-by screed, davet. You must know something more about decency than the rest of us.

Dan Savage has an interesting take on this:

http://www.thestranger.com/blog/

Scroll down a little and stop when you see “Fuck Garrison Keillor”.

“Dan Savage has an interesting take on this:“

I think Savage kind of misinterpreted what GK was meaning (or trying) to say in the piece, and it’s clear most of his commenters really know nothing about GK or his true political leanings, but still, I enjoy finding instances on the web where many people are actively and passionately reviling Keillor. Cognitive dissonance of the “anti-Keillor Dan Savage” aside, I can just sit back and enjoy.

Apparently, kokonuts is a big gay homo.

Vermin: Smoking’s not a vice but an ungovernable physical addiction to nicotine. If the nic addicts can find a way to get it to their brains without involving my lungs, fine by me. As I’ve already written, it’s their drug delivery system I have a problem with, not their deliberately cultivated addiction. You’re free to be as stupid as you care to be and ignore all the warnings and research on the downside to nic addiction. Just leave everybody else out of it. Up to speed?

In Shakespeare’s day, you would have shut down the theaters.

You’re the same people. Kokonutz.

I hope msbarber will be so open minded about adultry when he finds out I’ve been riding his wife!

His “wife” is a wooden puppet.

FYI.

“That editorial in the Wall Street Journal about President Clinton being involved in drug running in Arkansas was bizarre, and I would never defend it. But I had heard much more salacious versions of that rumor for years before the editorial came out. No idea if any of it’s true, but it was out there.”

Not to further the lefty-righty argument more, but isn’t it neat how that works for both sides?

Oh, and this is completely, 100 percent a “lefty” site … except when we’re discussing what chain restaurants we’d love to see open in the area.

So close but yet so far.

So far we have:
Maz & Bud Jr frothing from the right and hurling ephithets
Raindog frothing from the left and accusing someone of murder
S4xton taking a shot at the Bartel Cartel
Kokonutz bringing some literacy to the discussion
The obligatory “…was better when Rex was here” cliche
Max bringing the obvious to the forefront (and bonus points for the Dances With Lesbians bit — we expect more of that now that you’re an award-winning journalist)
The obligatory mention of the cease & decist letter

We still need:
Dizzy calling Rep. Ellison a terrorist
A butt sex allusion involving Alexis
A conspiracy theory involving Powerline
Hating on the Strib
Mention of the #5 bus line
And of course, a picture of Admiral Ackbar. Oops, wrong site. My bad.

What’s curious, of course, is why my measured tutorials on conservative principles are considered “frothing” and “crazy,” while the profanity-laced insults that they generate are not. Oh well.

Fuck off, loony!

heh

while the profanity-laced insults that they generate are not. Oh well.

Oh I’m fairly certain most think that Raindog is more frothy and crazy that even you Maz.

But we also find raindog to be adorable.

Well Raindog is more like the funny kid with Tourettes than anything to be taken seriously. She just needs a pat on the head and a popsicle and a timeout.

Vermin: Am I to understand that by your own private logic you’re conflating a filthy, disease-causing drug delivery system that nic addicts use to fix in public places and artistic expression? To oppose smoking in my midst is to commit artistic censorship? This wandering line of faux reasoning is even more incohate than Keillor’s dashed off column that sparked this thread. Pull yourself together and make some sort of a real effort.

I didn’t read any of this but GK is a creepy old man and I kind of hate him.

Rat: In Shakespeare’s day, people thought nothing of defecating most anywhere that peristalsis overcame their alimentary canal. But when it was found that the “plague” of the era, cholera, was related to poor sanitation, new social norms informed by the greater good of public health were enforced in the form of many of the sanitary measures we take for granted today. I’m not aware, though, that there were any concommitant calls for the closing of theatres. Though it might’ve become more pleasant to have sat among the groundlings.

I was going to comment on this thread earlier, but didn’t have time. (SXSW will ruin you!) However, I just noticed that Dan Savage (of Seattle’s The Stranger) just wrote a tirade similar to this post about Keillor’s column too.

s4xton: you know I think you’re usually on target, and maybe the initial post could have been phrase less flame-like, but I do really think there’s something going on here with hypocrisy. (Of course, people are going to think I’m predisposed to say this for non-political reasons, but I’ll try to say this as convincingly as possible: I’d feel this way regardless of that stupid t-shirt thing. I think Keillor is a windbag, regardless.)

I don’t see how GK’s column being “for the children” makes his “nuclear families are best” statement any less offensive or hypocritical.

I think Dan Savage is exactly right about this paragraph:

The country has come to accept stereotypical gay men — sardonic fellows with fussy hair who live in over-decorated apartments with a striped sofa and a small weird dog and who worship campy performers and go in for flamboyance now and then themselves. If they want to be accepted as couples and daddies, however, the flamboyance may have to be brought under control. Parents are supposed to stand in back and not wear chartreuse pants and black polka-dot shirts. That’s for the kids. It’s their show.

It really takes somebody who doesn’t know a single gay parent to come up with that.

In all fairness, I’ve never met a gay parent — or person, now that I thin k about it — who wasn’t wearing chartreuse pants and black polka-dot shirts.

Waitasecond? What?

Apparently I wasn’t the only one who “misinterpreted” GK’s column. He has issued an apology.

I initially refrained from responding to the comments here, primarily because of the incredibly reactionary flames it generated right off the bat. I will grant that the original post should have been phrased differently. But wow — it’s amazing how quickly people rush to judgement.

What’s even more amazing is how they jump to exactly the wrong conclusion — making the assumption that I was posting from some politically conservative anti-Keillor position.

Trust me — I’m definitely anti-Keillor, but my reasons have nothing to do with politics. Or t-shirts.

(Oh and PS: I’m not a teacher from Fridley. THAT was funny.)

MNSpeak was better when GK was suing it.

Blotter item quotes Keillor saying it was “tongue in cheek.”

Tongue in cheek, eh?

So unusual sexual practices are fine by GK, so long as they are practiced by heterosexual couples? Typical.

What does this have to do with butt sex lesbians? I searched “butt sex lesbians” on google, and I didn’t find either. I’m very disapointed. I wanted to find lesbians having butt sex. or maybe just lesbiand, or just but sex. But seriously what the hell does Admiral Acbar have to do with but sex and lesbians? is their some weird starwars porn I haven’t seen yet? Come on this is supposed to be about butt sex and lesbians not A prarie Home companion.