Good Monday noon Fellow Seekers,
This piece is cross-posted at my new home, MinnPost.com.
In Thursday’s Strib, the snarky gossip C.J. relayed a tale reinforcing exactly the image that Senate candidate Al Franken is trying to shed, that of a rude, angry, self-important loudmouth whose idea of relating to Republicans — even a mere Carl conservative (the kids at Carleton College refer to themselves as “Carls”) — is to mock, berate and humiliate.
Predictably, the MNGOP, Powerline and some other righty blogs did what they could to amplify the kerfuffle. Media-wise DFLers whom I consulted said Franken — who apparently is not denying the incident, while not confirming the details — had caught a major break if, as appears to be the case, the incident was not preserved on video.
But on Friday, the next worse thing happened. The mighty Drudge Report linked to C.J.’s account.
You may not know how big a deal it is to get linked by Drudge. I had the experience once in my own Strib, Big Question blog days, when a piece about Michele Bachmann’s bizarre claim to know about a deal between Iran and Al Qaida to divide Iraq and create a terrorism zone from which to attack Israel and the United States got a link from Drudge.
Back then, and relying on my faulty memory, the best traffic The Big Question had ever had in a day was about 20,000 page views. After being Drudged, that post was viewed more than 700,000 times over two days and the next thing you knew the delusion of poor Rep. Bachmann’s (which she still hasn’t ever properly explained, by the way) was being discussed on talk radio programs up to and including the mighty Rush Limbaugh.
I won’t feign respect for Drudge nor Limbaugh nor C.J., none of whom share my enthusiasm for substance or civility. But linkage by Drudge is, I’m pretty sure, the biggest thing that can happen to you online.
Important, serious national journalists try hard to get Drudge to link to them. They not only alert Drudge to anything they write that they think might get a link, but I fear they allow their inner Drudge to influence them when they are deciding what to cover. Both the Washington Post and the L.A. Times websites get more traffic from Drudge linkages than they do from any other outside source.
My esteemed former colleague Terry Sauer of startribune.com told me Friday afternoon that the C.J. column, which more typically attracts about 10,000 hits a day, was north of 200,000 after the Drudge link.
Franken spokester Jess McIntosh said late Friday that the campaign had received exactly four inquiries about the Carleton incident from non-journalist Minnesotans, and no one, before me, had asked about the impact of being Drudged.
I don’t know how damage the Drudging of Franken’s snitfit will inflict upon the candidate’s ongoing efforts to Minnesota nice-ify his image. But my spidey sense is tingling.
Not only is Franken a jerk, he’s not smart enough to keep his bullying under wraps until after the election. I wonder what his former teacher would say about this.
LOL. Yes, what would Ms. Molin say about this? I didn’t hear anything in that ad about little Alan not playing nice with the other kids.
If only that were Franken’s only problem with being elected…
Still, we Minnesotans love nut jobs, so who knows?
I’d still like to know what was actually said, both by Franken and by the college Republican involved.
Are Franken supporters all completely delusional? CJ confirmed what happened with the head of the Carlton Democrats, who would seemed to be unbiased, if not actually biased toward Franken. This wasn’t a conversation between two people. There were a bunch of people present, all of whom witnessed Al Franken being a jerk. If CJ’s story was inaccurate, one would think that at least one of the witnesses would say so, or the Franken camapaign would clear things up. No one has come forward, though.
I’d still like to know, after numerous incidents like this (including some actually on video) why some people can’t understand that Al Franken is a jerk.
Just checked the Strib web site for all of the CJ columns mentioning Al Franken.
The closest to ‘confirmation’ of the incident was the statement “Fritz’s version of the encounter was backed up by Pablo Kenney, prez of the Carleton Dems.”
Rather vague; doesn’t mean anything beyond agreeing that a conversation took place.
After all, CJ is not a reporter — she’s not in the business of accurately reporting facts.
And while ‘a bunch of people’ may have been in the area, there is no indication that anyone else was listening to the conversation.
Dan’s other allegations are even more vague.
So I’m not really sure who is being ‘delusional.
This whole thing has a certain aura of swiftboating about it.
Wow.
Fritz gave a pretty detailed explanation of his conversation with Al Franken. Pablo Kenney, the head of the Carlton Democrats, backed Fritz’s version of the encounter. He didn’t agree that a conversation took place, as you suggest. He backed Fritz’s version of the encounter. So, in fact, that does mean that Kenney said more than a conversation took place.
Between your baseless attack on CJ’s reporting skills (again, if something was not accurate, Franken was free to dispute it, and yet didn’t) and lying about what Kenney said, I think its you that would make the swiftboaters proud.
As for other instances of Franken being a jerk, here is something to get you started:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5byqTqyOr0
goodmorning. pk and dan, let’s drop it. i’ll evenhandedly delete the last two comments, one from each of you, when things started to get personal. cheers, eb