Powerline - A Columnist Nips at Our Ankles
[edit: column follows]
Poor Nick Coleman, the Minneapolis Star Tribune's worst columnist, devotes his entire column in tomorrow's newspaper to attacking us. I'd like to respond to his charges, only I can't figure out what they are.
Coleman says we "pursu[e] a right-wing agenda cooked up in conservative think tanks funded by millionaire power brokers." If by that he means that we're conservatives, we plead guilty. The think tank in question appears to be the Claremont Institute, with which we have an extremely loose affiliation. And if he means to suggest that we share Claremont's respect for the Founding Fathers, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, we can only plead guilty once again.
Beyond that, it's hard to say what Coleman's point is, other than the fact that he doesn't like us, or, I guess, any other conservatives, which is hardly news. This is one of his more coherent sentences: "[L]ike talk radio, they are dominated by the right and are only interested in being a megaphone without oversight, disclosure of conflicts of interest, or professional standards." I have no idea what Coleman means by "conflicts of interest," and he never provides a hint. As to "professional standards," he never cites a single instance in which we have misrepresented a source, tried to pass fake documents off as genuine, or, for that matter, even made a mistake. So, again, it's hard to make much of a substantive response.
Coleman seems to be obsessed with our site, even though we rarely mention him. He went so far as to count the number of times we "shilled for votes" in the Wizbang Best Blog contest. (I'd explain the relevance of this to his tirade, only I don't understand it.) It's remarkable that even though he has obviously spent a lot of time poring over our site, he cannot identify a single substantive error that we have made.
Coleman concludes his tirade, which should be an embarrassment to his employers, by purporting to "fact check" us. In the course of his "fact check," he says "If I had the money they think I do..." Again, I have no idea what in the world he is talking about. We have never written anything that suggests we think that Nick Coleman has a lot of money. Indeed, speaking for myself, I have never spent a single moment thinking about Coleman's bank account. Bizarre references like this one have, however, caused me to wonder about his mental health.
Coleman concludes:
[D]oes Powerline or its mighty righty allies take money from political parties, campaigns or well-heeled benefactors who hope to affect Minnesota's politics from behind the scenes? We don't know, and they don't have to say. They are not Mainstream.
I can't speak for any "mighty righty allies," but as far as we're concerned, we don't take any money from any parties, campaigns or "benefactors." We don't even have a tip jar. But here is what I think is curious: Coleman pretends to be a journalist. As such, doesn't he occasionally do research in the course of writing his columns? I assume the Strib provides Coleman with a desk and a telephone. We publish our telephone numbers on this site. Coleman says "we don't know, and they don't have to say" whether we get money from parties or campaigns. But, Nick, you didn't ask. If you really thought this was a burning question that needed to be investigated, why didn't you pick up the phone and call one of us? We'd have been happy to fill you in.
I'm not surprised, however, that Coleman didn't bother to do research to verify his slur against us. He's done the same thing before. On December 13, Coleman was a guest host on the far-left Air America network; he unleashed a tirade against us. Among other things, he described us as paid political operatives--the same charge he makes in tomorrow's column. We responded to it by writing:
[W]e have, in general, no objection to being paid. On the contrary. As it happens, though, we are not being paid by anyone, although we do get a little revenue through Blogads. Again, Nick Whoever's [we later learned it was Coleman] research skills seem primitive at best.
Now, if Coleman were the responsible journalist he claims to be, don't you think he would have done a little investigation before slandering us again? And, given that we know he scoured our site to count the exact number of times we mentioned the Wizbang contest, doesn't it seem almost certain that he saw the above post--which was, after all, about him--and therefore knew that the charge that he makes against us tomorrow was false?
It's been a long time since I went to law school, but I think there is a technical term for journalists who make charges that they know to be untrue.
startribune.com
Nick Coleman
Published December 29, 2004
The end of the year is a time to bury the hatchet, so congratulations to Powerline, the Twin Cities blog that last week was named Time magazine's "Blog of the Year!"
Now let me get a new hatchet.
These guys pretend to be family watchdogs but they are Rottweilers in sheep's clothing. They attack the Mainstream Media for not being fair while pursuing a right-wing agenda cooked up in conservative think tanks funded by millionaire power brokers.
They should call themselves "Powertool." They don't speak truth to power. They just speak for power.
The lads behind Powerline are a bank vice president named Scott Johnson and a lawyer named John Hinderaker. If you read Powerline, you know them better by their fantasy names, Big Trunk (that's Johnson) and Hind Rocket (Hinderaker). I will leave it to the appropriate professionals to determine what they are compensating for, but they have received enormous attention from the despised Mainstream Media and deserve more.
I wish I didn't have to do it, because I already get ripped a lot on the site, which thankfully also has had some nice photos of bikini-clad candidates for Miss Universe to keep me company. But I accept Powerline's contempt; I am only a Mainstream Media man, while Big Trunk and Hind Rocket are way cool. They blog.
I work for a dopey old newspaper committed to covering the news fairly while Powerline doesn't make boring commitments. They are not Mainstream Media. They are Extreme Media. Call them reliable partisan hacks.
That's what they call me: A reliable partisan hack, even though they sometimes like columns I write about dumb things Democrats do. I have criticized many dumb Democrats, but Democrats don't matter these days. All the power is in the hands of Republicans, and Powerline's job is to make life easier for them. Mine isn't.
A story: In 1990, I reported that this newspaper's endorsement of DFL Gov. Rudy Perpich was decided by then-publisher and Perpich crony Roger Parkinson. He had quashed the decision of the newspaper's editorial board, which had voted in favor of the Republican challenger, Arne Carlson.
The truth got out, the Republican won and the public was served. If Extreme bloggers, who know nothing that happened before last Tuesday, had the same commitment to serving the public, I wouldn't have a problem. But like talk radio, they are dominated by the right and are only interested in being a megaphone without oversight, disclosure of conflicts of interest, or professional standards.
Powerline is run by Ivy League lawyers, one of whom (Johnson) is a vice president at TCF Bank in Minneapolis and works for Bill Cooper, an ex-state Republican Party chairman. Johnson and Hinderaker are fellows at the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank that seems to be obsessed with gays and guns and wants to return us to the principles of our founders, although I can't determine if that includes Ben Franklin's skirt chasing.
Mainstream or Extreme? We report, you decide: Last month, Claremont gave its Winston Churchill Award to that visionary statesman and recovering drug addict, Rush Limbaugh!
Time magazine's "Blog of the Year" is not run by Boy Scouts. It is the spear of a campaign aimed at making Minnesota into a state most of us won't recognize. Unless you came from Alabama with a keyboard on your knee.
My ancestors came here as Irish sod busters in the 1850s, and they would be spinning beneath that sod if they saw powerful people trying to tear down what they built. But they'd enjoy how the Extreme works now: How it hammers all its opponents in the Mainstream as limousine liberals.
I keep wishing the Ivy League boys had told me I was rich before I took my first job cleaning bathrooms in a factory at night, or my next job driving a school bus, or my first newspaper job at the old Tribune for $147 a week.
But Extreme bloggers don't tell truths. They tell talking points. Powerline is the biggest link in a daisy chain of right-wing blogs that is assaulting the Mainstream Media while they toot their horns in the service of ... what? The downtrodden? No, that was yesterday's idea of the purpose of journalism. Extreme bloggers are so hip and cool they can make fun of the poor and the disadvantaged while working out of paneled bank offices.
But enough. It's time for auld acquaintance to be forgot. So as a gift to Powerline, let me try my hand at some blogger-style "fact-checking."
1) "It's totally unexpected," Johnson, the banker, told the newspaper after Powerline won "Blog of the Year."
But the Aw Shucks Act doesn't fly. Powerline campaigned shamelessly for awards, winning an online "Best Blog of 2004" a week before the Time honor. That online award was a bloggers' poll, and Powerline linked its readers to the award site 10 times during the balloting, shilling for votes.
2) "We keep it very much separate from our day jobs," said Hinderaker, meaning the boys don't blog at work.
But they do. Johnson recently had time at his bank job to post a despicable item sliming Sen. Mark Dayton. If I had the money they think I do, I'd put it all in TCF. Then I'd pull it out.
3) Powerline sells thousands of dollars in ads, including one for T-shirts that say, "Hung Like a Republican."
But does Powerline or its mighty righty allies take money from political parties, campaigns or well-heeled benefactors who hope to affect Minnesota's politics from behind the scenes? We don't know, and they don't have to say. They are not Mainstream.
They are Extreme.
Nick Coleman is at
ncoleman@startribune.com.
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