Free Doug Tice!

I suspect I’m not alone in believing there are at least two elephant-in-the-room-sized topics the Star Tribune’s in-house, salaried, reader representative/ombudsman, Kate Parry, could have moved on Sunday rather than a fusty dissection of ethical overreaching in the Eric Black-Doug Tice blog, “The Big Question”. But that’s just me, I guess.

I mean, Parry’s own publisher is sued by his former employer for what is described — in public, legal documents known now to the entire American journalistic community — as a comically clumsy attempt to subvert his old shop, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, retain proprietary material that did not belong to him, and on and on.

Or, if that doesn’t quite rise to newsworthiness, or seem sufficiently worrisome in terms of breaches of ethics, maybe a thought or two on why Parry’s paper has played so far back on its heels in the matter of Rachel Paulose and the on-going, still-expanding, US Attorneys story? There is a drama with a significant appearance of faulty editorial judgment on the part of the Star Tribune. Especially when you consider the quality of reporting done by former D.C. staffers that has been excluded from publication in the new Avista-owned, Par Ridder-operated Star Tribune.

But, let the elephants graze on the carpeting, and lets concern ourselves with whether Doug Tice overstepped in recommending that his blog readers dial up Michael Brodkorb’s website if they want to read Al Franken’s comic profanities in all their original glory.

My, my, my … I am truly feeling the vapors.

Let me just say here that I’ve worked for Doug Tice and with both him and Parry. Well, sort of anyway. They were and are both diligent office workers, something never said of me. Which is a way of saying that we probably never exchanged more than a nod in the 15 years I was at the Pioneer Press.

Parry’s “issue” is that Tice failed, however momentarily, to walk the finest of silk-thin lines between his day job as the Star Tribune’s political editor — where he would have some involvement in coverage of, say, Rachel Paulose — and his other day job as the conservative end of the Black-Tice blogger duo.

I’m tempted to dismiss the whole thing with a glib, “Give me a break!” but that would dodge an opportunity to argue that it isn’t the temerity of Tice’s blog work that is the problem, it’s the timidity. Tice is one of the most thoughtful conservative writers in town, at a time when the whole liberal-conservative, blue-red debate needs more thought and far less sophomoric, radio-style demagoguerey. For God’s sake, get off the guy’s back and let him write!

Parry’s first order of business, if she wanted to avoid the perils of Par and Paulose, should have been to explain why in hell Doug Tice, a well-known and well-regarded conservative, is parked in the hibernaculum of “political editor” when he so clearly has reasoning and writing skills well beyond any other conservative among the paper’s current staff?

Parry dispenses smothering maternal concern over Tice going a bit too far in his blog — by recommending a website for language he’d rather not print … IN A GODDAM BLOG! — because of the appearance problem it creates for his political editorship. As though the constant accusations of political hedging and orientation thrown up against the Star Tribune will disappear if Tice — that loose cannon — will just rein himself in and pretend he isn’t really a conservative on the internet.

This kind of clubhouse logic is so ingrown and anachronistic it really isn’t worth trying to deconstruct.

My points are these:

A: The Star Tribune has at least two far more relevant and serious ethical questions readers would like represented than the arcane matter of an entirely reasonable and (some say exceedingly) sober conservative nodding to another conservative on the company website.

B: The political editorship should be turned over to a veteran staff journalist with no track record of ideological preference.

And finally,

C: Doug Tice should be freed up to regularly contribute intelligently-formed, debate-worthy conservative (or whatever) viewpoints on the whole gamut of issues afflicting this community and country.