True North

Steve “Mister Furious” Perry - former journalist, now Soros minion and “editor” of the Minnesota Monitor, is sad.

He and his minions - in this case, Karl Bremer - tried to play the “public activism” game earlier this week (or, to be accurate, continued his decade-long obession with sliming his bete noire, Rep. Michele Bachmann). And as we all know, one of the wages of public activism is that the public gets their cut at you.

And Perry is trying to cut back. But now that he’s dealing with people who play the game better than he does, it’s just…not…working:

After a scheduled appearance by the pro-war veterans’ group Vets for Freedom

Well, there’s a gutless little slur for ya, right outta the gate!

“Pro-war?” Guess Perry hasn’t read David Bellavia’s book, or heard the guy speak. Simple fact; there’s nobody on earth more anti-war, as a concept and as a fact, than someone who’s spent time in combat. Bellavia is no GOP stooge; his book is pretty forthright about his own beliefs, as well as those of us fellow grunts (he talks with admiration about one of his squad’s fire-team leaders, a Polish-American who hated Bush and Rumsfeld with a passion that might yet land him a Soros stipend of his own).

Pro-war? Tell it to Bellavia’s face.

The websites Look True North and Minnesota Majority posted letter generators for writing to Bremer that include his photograph and, for a time, included his home addresses and home and work phone numbers as well. (Cached screen grab with personal data removed here.)

And True North removed that information almost immediately.

(And yeah, I condemn anyone who threatened Karl Bremer, assuming it happened - which is a hell of a lot more than Bremer would do for me or anyone who’d ever spoken out against him, I guarantee you. I believe that people should be able to separate their activism and their private life; I’ve respected people on that count pretty religiously; Karl Bremer’s associates have not).

On Tuesday evening, right-wing KTLK-FM talk host Jason Lewis had the following exchange with a caller (emphasis added):…

Jason Lewis: I don’t lead a jihad against individuals unless they happen to be in the public arena. Of course, you could make the argument this guy’s now in the public arena.But if citizens are truly fed up with a small minority of socialist kooks in Stillwater, led by this Karl Bremer character who’s got a bizarre obsession with Michele Bachmann, I can’t be held accountable for what citizens might come up with. If you want to let this guy know you think he’s a bum, that’s up to you. I’m just saying that people ought to know his name, because he’s the guy, the ringleader, in Veterans for Peace and all this, that literally are censoring veterans.

Yep.

So - so what?

We continue the transcription:

Lewis: Yeah, right. Well, the problem with these protesters–the problem they’ve got is, they entered the public arena…Karl Bremer has been out there putting his name in the papers in his letters to the editor bashing Michele Bachmann. So he is now a public person, and hence he’s going to take the slings and arrows just like he hands them out. Long overdue, to be sure.

And again - so what?

Mr. Perry: Is Jason wrong?

Is Karl Bremer - a very frequent source and sometime contributor to Perry’s propaganda mill, as well as a high-profile contrib to Perry’s ex-gig, the Daily Mole - not a public figure? Is his public involvement in the stifling of Vets for Freedom’s appearance somehow off-limits?

Why? (Preferably in terms other than “because we really really want it to be”?

I mean, Bremer likes to dish out the abuse. Not that I advocate abuse (to say nothing of Bremer’s brand of context-mangling hackery), but can’t he take it?

If so, then why is he mixing it up in public? And why is Steve Perry breathlessly repeating his “reporting” as fact?

I phoned KTLK, a Clear Channel station, intending to ask program director Steve Versnick if this harangue fits the station’s programming policies. He has not yet returned the call. If and when he does, I’ll update with his response.

Well, I can’t speak for Steve Versnick. If I were Jason Lewis’ boss (and Clear Channel could do, and has done, worse), though, my response might be something like…:

Mitch Berg, Program Director: Steve? Bubbie? What’s the matter? You and your little website and its little clacque of hangers-on wanna be activists! You’re all fair game! I mean, if someone threatens you, call the friggin’ cops, and I’ll have your back! But if you think that the rules change just because your pal wants to do his sliming under cover of the Democrat Underground hive, you’re sadly mistaken.

Have a nice day!

Which is a lot nicer than my first draft, “If you find something here that isn’t strictly covered by the First Amendment, then go pound sand up your ass, crybaby”.

Here’s hoping.

Cross-posted at Shot in the Dark. Comments welcome.