Below is a copy/paste job of an electronic mail that I sent to the News Director @ Minneapolis/St. Paul's ABC affiliate KSPT TV. If you don't know what I'm talking about watch the segment from http://thedailyshow.cc.com/.... I'm sorry I have yet to develop the skills required to better embed a link or a picture in a Daily Kos Diary. Sometime or another I need to do that. It's getting to be a problem.
To those of you who like to read a coherent essay that's grammatically correct, I apologize. My stream of consciousness style is more like a verbal regurgitation. I probably shouldn't publish my first drafts but I'm normally too busy to self edit. If someone would like to take on that job, give me a shout out here at DK.
To those of you who live in or around the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, my beef is in no way directed at the good people of the Twin Cities. Hell, I loved Fran Tarkenton. The Purple People Eaters? Well, except for Super Bowl IV perhaps. Why we love you so much here in Kansas City that the good folks at KC's football club donated Matt Cassel to your cause. (You can thank us later when he recovers.) It was hard to give him up but I personally feel that he's in a better place. I also have several relatives there and in the Milwaukee area. Minneapolis reminds me a lot of Kansas City where I now live. Even the bridges. Well, I suppose we had that hoppin' little tea dance down at the Hyatt Regency while you had the I 35W Mississippi River bridge collapse. Potato/potato I suppose, but, as usual, I fear I digress.
Ms. Lindsay Radford, News Director, KSTP TV, Minneapolis MN,
This electronic mail is in reference to your recently televised piece concerning Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges use of "Gang Signs." I understand that news outlets try and present a balanced view of current events. I would never ask them to do otherwise. But, while it's one thing to present both sides of an argument, it’s entirely another when the counterpoint is being given (very awkwardly and all but comically) by individuals who are making up their case out of whole cloth and who obviously have a political ax to grind with this mayor. This is the point where one might expect professional journalistic prospective and journalistic integrity to enter into the process, but what you chose to do was to reduce your station to little more than a very public bullhorn for some asshole police union whose only purpose was to vent their vitriol and obvious political grievances (real or imagined) against a public official they neither like, respect, nor agree with.
As a black man, I am highly insulted by this consistent (and seemingly endless) drum beat being sounded by the people that you just gave a public platform to. These people seem to all be suggesting that if there's some dark colored skin in the picture, something nefarious must automatically be involved. A rather maladroit attempt to scare white people into fearing the black community; and those who hang out with them evidently. Even a brain dead, roadside, skimmer skunk should be able to see that the police union reps were making up this whole argument. Trying to parley their supposed "expertise" in law enforcement into a phony narrative where this whole thing becomes just a matter of differences of opinion, at best. (In the non-journalistic/non-political world, we call this lying. Or putting it another way, if he didn't have his tiny little pud in his hand, he wouldn't have dick.)
I could understand it if they were in any way ambagious in their critiques, but because they were so ham-handed in their commentary only a babbling, drooling imbecile would fail to notice this point. Well, I exaggerate a bit. You wouldn't actually have to be drooling into your oatmeal to not recognize this as an obvious political hatchet job. My apologies to the memory of our 40th President of these United States and the saliva impaired. I do tend to get carried away.
I believe this begs the question, is there no one in your news organization who actually possesses an I.Q. higher than that of a brain dead, roadside, skimmer skunk? (That would be an I.Q. of 1. I just assumed that you needed someone to do the math for you on that one.) Or, as is more likely the case, has your station become such a wanton ratings whore that you don’t mind ginning up a few Arbitron points by pandering to, and giving a public forum for the most vile, whacked out, retched, extreme, right wing, Teabagger Express, Bat Shit crazy element of our society? I may be wrong here, but doesn't Fox have that viewership wrapped up?
I certainly hope that none of the above is the case here. Otherwise one might conclude that you have lost all semblance of journalistic perspective or ethical propriety, if indeed you ever possessed them in the first place. It would indicate to this observer that any notions of ethics or fair play is currently lacking from your "news” organization, making you little more than a free community message board for every nut job asshole organization out there. Are you so in need of eyeballs on your station that you’re willing to resort to manufactured outrage and the most odious forms of race bating that you can conjure? If so, kudos to you, it seems to have worked. I’ve heard of you and I don’t live within 900 miles of the Minneapolis/St. Paul region. You do realize though that there’s a difference between fame and infamy? If not, Google it. The reason I ask is that most of the people in this country don't seem to be aware of this difference. Perhaps it's a long lost knowledge that only a logophile would be aware of.
Mam, if nothing else in this world, I am a man of letters. At present, I possess a dual Ph.D./M.D. degree in Virology from a highly regarded institute of higher learning. I have a M.S. in Biology, with an emphasis in bio-immunological assay techniques, as well as a B.S. in Chemistry, Biology, and Mathematics. What I have never had, in all my long and storied academic career, is one single journalism class. And yet even I, ignorant though I may be, realize that although there might be two sides to every story, very rarely are both views equal to one another. In this case it is so obnoxiously obvious that I think that you, as news director, should recheck the credentials of your staff. Was this just a matter of journalistic laziness? Or is this indeed the view of your station. If that’s the case, perhaps your General Manager should take off his Imperial Grand Wizard’s hood, make use of his position at KSTP and hit the airwaves with an op-ed piece explaining how he thinks that giving a platform to unmissable liars engaged in some rather odious political hackery and race-baiting demagoguery is beneficial to the community at large in the Twin Cities Area. By giving a platform to these dullards who are actively vilifying the black community of this country for cheap political gain, you not only hide cowardly behind this fig leaf of "equal time" but you're simultaneously justifying this travesty in the name of higher ratings. That's a twofer. Pretty sneaky sis.
Now I might just be an ol’ rural doc, a livin' out here where the Hoot Owl shit hits the clock. And I may not have never had me no journalistic experience or edumacation what’s so ever, but even a poor old, broken down, dirt poor, ignurnt as Hell, backwoods country negro such as myself can recognize himself a dereliction of the fiduciary trust that the good people of these United States gave (away) to the broadcasters of this nation when I sees it. Or maybe it’s because my own gang affiliations forces me to see all this through jaundice eyes? (You're white so you may not know that all of us colored folk are affiliated with one gang of another. For me, it’s the AMA yo. Fuck dat rod of Asclepius. It's Caduceus representin' in the hissay. We do our gang signs mostly in Latin.)
It is truly too bad that this is an electronic mail because I sure do have a “gang sign” that I’d love to share with you right now! BTW, which is correct, would I be flashing or flipping this particular gang sign? I don’t know ‘cause I ain’t got me no Journalism degree.
Lovingly Submitted,
xxxooo
dc, B.S., M.S., Ph.D., M.D., A.S.V., A.C.E.P.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxXXXOOOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo2Y'all
Perhaps some of you fine folks here at Kos would like to thank the author of this masterful exercise of the First amendment. This stalwart of the fourth estates name is Jay Kolls whose electronic mail address is listed as jkolls@kstp.com.
Why wait though? You can follow this intrepid petitor veritas on Twitter with the Twitter handle @JayKollsKSTP. (For you members of the Latin Grammar Police, I'm sure I got the suffixes wrong. If I'm lucky that's all I screwed up. It's been a while. Sorry, I'm old.)
If you'd like to give Jay's boss an attaboy try the KSTP Channel 5 Eyewitness News director, Lindsay Radford. Her electronic mail address is lradford@kstp.com. I'm sure she'd love to hear your thoughts on this matter.
And, as of now (0331 CDST 11/14/14), if you hurry you can go to http://kstp.com/... and see the station's attempt to justify... er I mean defend their story. If you haven't seen the unedited version of this story, you can see that there too. Just search "mayor gang signs" on their site and it'll pop right on up.
Good thing the press is in the tank for the liberals, otherwise no telling how far they could have taken this story.
xxxooo
dc