The Rake Magazine

Author: Tom Bartel

  • Oh, That's Why Harvard and Carleton Are Such Crappy Schools

    You know, this is just too easy.

    In case you missed Kersten today, the topic is "Why St. Thomas University is going to hell in a handbasket". The short answer is, (and I’m only telling you this because reading the column will just cause you to think ill of thoughtful Catholics) because they don’t have the archbishop of St. Paul as an automatic member of the university board of directors any more.

    But, in good conscience, I can’t spare you the punch lines.

    Number one:

    Who remembers that Macalester and Carleton colleges were founded,
    respectively, by the Presbyterian and Congregational churches? Harvard,
    Yale and the University of Chicago were also originally
    church-affiliated institutions. But academics often view religious
    affiliation as incompatible with elite university status, and believe
    that it interferes with their "academic freedom."

    Number two:

    Because the widespread secularization of religiously affiliated
    colleges destroys true diversity in education. There are plenty of
    schools where students can learn professional skills and how to look
    out for Number One (and planet Earth).

    We need a few places where they can be called to pursue something higher: a transcendent vision of faith and morality.

    From number one, are we to infer that the two best colleges in Minnesota, and three of the best universities in the world are not as good as they could be because they eschew religious affiliation? (Disclosure: I was a religion major at Carleton. The former editor of The Rake has a masters in Divinity from Harvard. Those two things might explain a lot.)

    One other thing of note regarding Catholic universities in the United States: the recognized leaders in that category are Jesuit schools. Georgetown, Fordham, Holy Cross, Boston College are names you might recognize. The thing about the Jesuits is that they exist outside of the traditional church hierarchy. They report only to their own superiors, who report to the pope. The local bishop has no authority over them. (If you want to check into an interesting bit of local history, ask yourself why, until this year, the Twin Cities was the lone U.S. metropolitan area of any size without a Jesuit school. The answer: Bishop John Ireland didn’t want the insubordinate SOBs in his diocese. You can look it up. This is why we have St. Thomas instead of say, Georgetown.)

    I should of course mention Notre Dame, too. Notre Dame is not Jesuit, so they’re not as institutionally insubordinate as they could be. However, the bishop of the diocese of Fort Wayne/South Bend, Indiana does not sit on the board of trustees of Notre Dame.

    So, I guess Notre Dame also fails the Kersten test and you can lump them and the Jesuits in with godless Carleton, Harvard and Yale and decry their failure to inculcate morality and transcendence in their curricula, too.

    While you are at it, be sure to remember that, according to punchline two, concern for "Planet Earth" is also inconsistent with "a transcendent vision of faith and morality."

    This is truly funny stuff.

     

  • Spare the Rod, Spoil the Newspaper

    I made a mistake the other day and accidentally tuned in to KTLK and whatever right-wing boob they have on during the late morning. With a little checking after I got back to the office, I found his name is Dan Conry, and he has, like so many of his ilk, the IQ and eloquence of a doorknob…or of Katherine Kersten, whichever is higher.

    For he was haranguing about Kersten’s column of Monday, in which she asserted (surprise) that the government was out to take your kids and brainwash them.

    The impetus for these two nitwits with access to the media was the recent hearing before the state Supreme Court of the case of Gerard Fraser.

    Here’s the case in a nutshell: Gerard, 12 years old and 195 pounds (for some reason the Strib thought his weight was relevant) is the son of Shawn and Natalie Fraser, who are described as “devout Christians.” Gerard was (surprise) rebelling against his parents’ devout Christian discipline. Shawn and Natalie tried to communicate with Gerard grounding him and withholding privileges. They even went so far as to paste Bible quotes on the refrigerator. When this didn’t work, the devout Christians did what any devout Christians who are steeped in Deuteronomy would do, they paddled Gerard—36 blows with a wooden paddle.

    Subsequently, Gerard ran away. He was picked up by police as he was walking along the road. He told the police his parents were hitting him. Surprisingly, police (as they are required to do when there is an allegation of child abuse) turned it over to Hennepin County, who removed Shawn and his brother from his parents’ home while they investigated.

    Somehow, none of these details made it into Kersten’s column. Of course, if there had been any explanation of how Gerard came to the county’s attention, it might have undermined the impression Kersten was trying to leave–that Big Brother was watching and waiting for any excuse to swoop in and snatch your kids.

    Anyway, as Kersten then wrote, the Frasers sued the county to get the kids back, and were “finally vindicated” when the state Appeals Court (which is packed with Pawlenty appointees) returned Gerard to his devoutly Christian parents. Gerard, by the way, is now shipped off to a devoutly Christian boarding school in Utah. According to Kersten, the tuition at this school is $50,000, which is more than Harvard. The Frasers raised the money by refinancing their house.

    I can only hope the Frasers can’t make the payments when their full interest rate kicks in and they end up homeless, just like Jesus. I wouldn’t mind the same fate for the Strib editors who uncritically let Kersten inflame the rabble with this drivel, and don’t even demand that she include the very basic question of how this kid came to the attention of the authorities in the first place.

  • Carpe Latinitatem

    I was walking around the office the other day and overheard one of the Rake’s ad reps telling two more reps that he’d just sold an ad contract. I opined, in passing, that his customer must be a very perspicacious sort. That, of course, brought the conversation to an abrupt halt.

    "What the hell does that mean?" he asked. So I told him wise or perceptive, and that it was from the Latin perspicio, which means to see through or to see thoroughly, and that perspicio, in turn came from per (through) and specio (to look) and that someone who could see through things tended to be wise, hence the connotation.

    "Perspective comes from the same roots, and you can change the inflective prefix and come up with introspective, inspect, respect, aspect, and so forth," I continued.

    Of course, by that time, the group had moaned, much like my children do when I go all Latin on them, and had gone back to their offices to sell more ads. At least I hope so.

    I thought of all this when I noted that on the NY Times today, the most emailed story was A Vote for Latin. The article is a good read, and makes a good argument for studying Latin. I am basically of the opinion that, if Thomas Jefferson thought is was worth knowing, it probably is. After all, as far as presidents go, he was the very summit of perspicacity.

  • Kicking the Reading Habit

    The wailing and gnashing of teeth continues unabated at the Strib and other print publications these days. A report from ABC, the company that audits the circulation of the Strib and most other daily newspapers, just noted that most daily newspapers’ circulation was down again. The Strib was down over six percent.

    Editor Nancy Barnes had a folksy take on the whole thing in her column on November 11. (I could show you a link to it on the Strib’s website, but the link to the story goes nowhere, which could be a small part of the Strib’s problem.) At any rate, Barnes, after noting that her college-age daughter “gets all the news and information she needs online,” wrote, “I, on the other hand, cannot start my day without coffee and at least one newspaper,” and then continued to describe the daily’s efforts to choose stories her readers want to read.

    Probably since I am much nearer Barnes’s age than her daughter’s, I can also not conceive of starting my day without coffee and three newspapers. Unfortunately, of the three that arrive on my porch every morning, one doesn’t have enough in it to last me through my cup of coffee. And when the dog needs his walk, and I have to choose how to spend my time before work, the one at the bottom of the pile never makes it to the top.

    At MinnPost.com, a new web-based newspaper that will further damage the Strib’s circulation, David Brauer wrote a piece that quoted the Strib’s circulation director as saying the main cause of declining circulation was not the Strib’s editorial “fluffiness” (as Brauer called it) but rather “no time” to devote to the paper.

    Somebody in the circ department needs to send Barnes a memo to shorten stories and make them faster to read. Oh wait, they’ve already done that. So what could be the answer?

    Here’s an idea, and I have to admit I’m just guessing here: the real answer is not that readers have “no time.” It’s that they have no time for drivel, or a newspaper that churns it out as a matter of course. And if anybody thinks the Strib isn’t in the business of turning out drivel, what exactly do you call it when its media columnist lists one of his ambitions as “bowling alongside Cyndy Brucato”?

    Oh, that’s just coy self-deprecation, you tell yourself. But you’re wrong, because he follows that up with a startling exposé of the cordial relationship between WCCO anchormen Frank Vascellaro and Don Shelby.

    Sure, they’ve got serious articles in the Strib, too. For example, they’ve got all kinds of items about Russia, and Pakistan, and sometimes even Iowa. Unfortunately, they are usually things I read yesterday in the New York Times, the newspaper at the top of my coffee-stained pile.

    Even when the Strib does serious journalism all by itself, where is it?

    A good piece by Stribber Tom Meersman on November 12, about the draining of small prairie ponds, was at the bottom of the front page, right under the story about Viking Adrian Peterson straining his knee and another about soccer star David Beckham’s appearance in Minneapolis. Illustrating the Beckham story was a four-column front-page photo of ten-year-old girls with cameras waiting to take his picture. The story itself was longer than the prairie ponds story. While the ponds story was interesting and important for anyone who wants to know whether we might have drinkable water for our children, the Beckham story amounted to a series of quotes from people who went to the game, which provided insight on the level of “teen girls feel the same way about Beckham as Frank Vascellaro does about Don Shelby, except Beckham has his own fragrance and Shelby just has a special way of tying his tie.”

    I guess Barnes put the Beckham story on the front page because, as she says, she is looking for “the right balance in today’s wired world.” Part of that balance must consist of the nine photos on the Strib‘s website of Beckham’s appearance, including one of him with his shirt off, that must have revved up girls even older than ten. The link to that story, thank God, was working.

    Figured in, too, must be Barnes’ belief that she’s laying down a solid foundation to attract the readers of the future. I can hear all the ten-year-old girls in their fifth-grade classes today: “Sally, did you see that cool story on Becks in today’s Star Tribune? When I get old enough to decide what I want to make time to read, I’m gonna get a subscription.”

  • If you're going to insult me, cancel my subscription first

    Here is the first sentence of today’s Star Tribune editorial on "Aiding Baby Boomers’ Search for Meaning": "The nation’s supernumerary baby-boomers have reached what’s being
    gently called "the second half of life," but the big generation is
    still doing what it has done since its diaper days: It’s demanding
    notice and altering the contours of every phase of life it touches."

    Yuk.

    And not only for the mawkishness. "Supernumerary" means superfluous, not numerous.

    Of course, maybe the editorial writer is superannuated, which means "too old to work."

  • You Can't Sue City Hall

    John Ashcroft, the predecessor of Alberto Gonzales and
    former title holder of “Craziest Attorney General since John Mitchell” has an op-ed
    piece     in today’s NY Times. In it he argues that the telecommunication
    companies who provided access for the Bush administration’s illegal wiretaps
    should be held immune from lawsuits.

    As he says, “Whatever one feels about the underlying
    intelligence activities or the legal basis on which they were initially
    established, it would be unfair and contrary to the interests of the United
    States to allow litigation that tries to hold private telecommunications
    companies liable for them.”

    I can see his point. Because if the administration can
    blithely get away with breaking the law, why shouldn’t the companies who helped
    the do it get away with it too? It wouldn’t be fair to stick them with the
    blame just because they didn’t listen to their mother when she said, “Well, just
    because George or Dick or John or Alberto jumps off the bridge, that doesn’t
    mean you have to jump off the bridge, too.”

    It’s easy to see why Ashcroft is advocating the immunity.
    After all, since leaving the Attorney General’s office, he’s made his living as
    a consultant—and op-ed writer—for, you guessed it, telecom companies.

    But, whatever his motives, I’m going to have to agree with
    him on this one, although not for the reasons he cites. No, revealing
    procedures of our intelligence community during the discovery process is not
    the most dangerous possible outcome of these lawsuits. (I mean, c’mon, do you
    think the guys who outed Valerie Plame really give a damn about that?) Not granting immunity from lawsuits to the
    telecoms is far more dangerous than letting the lawsuits proceed for the reason
    that this suit would inevitably end up in the Supreme Court.

    Imagine what would happen there. If you can’t, let me help
    you. What if the Court decided that it’s alright for people to break black-letter
    law if the president says so? Because if it came to that, that’s the only logical way to let the
    telecoms off the legal hook.

    And if we had the highest court deciding that it’s okay to
    break the law, pretty soon we’re gonna be hearing things like “Freedom is
    Slavery” or “War is Peace” or “Ignorance is Strength.”

    It’s not that far fetched. After all, Big Brother is already
    watching.

  • Redband Trailer for No Country…

    I’d never seen "redband" trailers offered on a movie website before. I guess I’d just been going to too many Doris Day movies.

    Anyway, I was attracted to the one on No Country For Old Men‘s site. It’s the new Coen Brothers movie.

    Anyway, you click on the redband trailer link, and it asks you to verify that you are 17 years of age by putting in your name, zip code and birthdate. They then check this on some database.

    For the record, my name is Timothy Pawlenty, 55115,11/27/60.

  • Of Burrows and Bergs

    I like the rodent.

    Gotta love the beautiful turn of phrase in a blog. Jeff Horwich over at MPR got off a good one about MinnPost‘s staff yesterday in his piece on the pending competition between MinnPost and The Daily Mole. He described them thus: "[the staff list] reads like the manifest of lifeboats from the "Titanic" that appears to be the Twin Cities’ newspaper industry."

    I can’t comment much on MinnPost because I haven’t seen anything yet more than the almost daily announcements of how serious they’re going to be: "A Thoughtful Approach to the News"?

    Well maybe I can comment on that…

    The Strib, the Pioneer Press aren’t thoughtful? Here’s a hint: not everybody jumped overboard. Some brains are still on the boat over there. They’re just younger brains who weren’t eligible for the buyouts and so have to stay and bail furiously. (Here’s another hint: their owners aren’t going to sit around and let you steal their online audience without a fight, but that’s for another day and another post.)

    Steve Perry over at The Mole noticed the "Thoughtful" tagline, too. He put a motto up on The Mole the other day: "A Think-y Talk-y Approach to the News."

    The comparison between MinnPost and Daily Mole is spurious, sort of like the difference between what’s looking a lot like oatmeal and what is already mindful of spicy Thai food. One will be good for you, if you can choke it down, and the other will be good for you too, and make you happy you ate it, and it goes really well with beer.

    The Daily Mole is, of course, out there already being thinky and talky, and Steve tells me that there’s a lot more to come. Right now the staff is basically Steve and a weather guy who is a whole lot better than Paul Douglas. He’s got a couple of really good posts today: a conversation with Margaret Kelliher and a disection of the Strib’s bridge story.

    People have asked me what I think the difference between MinnPost and The Mole is going to be. So far, I’ve been saying that I have no idea–other than I know Perry a lot better (we worked together at City Pages for ten years) and I would never underestimate his ability to come up with provocative and spot on commentary.

    But as of yesterday, I’ve got even a better answer. Here it is.

    Did I mention that Perry is also one of the funniest people I know?

  • We Do This Every Three Years

    If you are reading this, you are at The Rake’s new web site. And you are looking at the result of a lot of work by Cristina Córdova, our web editor, Matt Bartel, our web geek, Brad Richter of Codewarp, and Erika Stenrick and Ronan Dowling of Gorton Studios. Kraig Larson of Ciceron did the design heavy lifting. I’d be remiss, too, if I neglected to mention FAMFAMFAM for their creative commons icons.

    I won’t go into too much detail except to say that writing the Oxford English Dictionary probably was easier than integrating our old inflexible content management system into a new one.

    The only thing harder than actually doing it, was thinking of all the things we wanted to do. For that, I’m going to give yet one more prop to Cristina Córdova.

    And, of course, a big one to all the talented writers and artists and editors who’ve contributed their wonderful thoughts to The Rake for almost six years now. (One of the neat features of the new site is the author index. Click on any story byline and see what happens.)

    We hope the new format will provide a better experience for you.

    We know it’s better for us. It will be even better for us when the memory of the birthing pains subsides.

    So, tonight we’re having a couple of drinks.

    Thanks for reading rakemag.com.

    Tom Bartel

  • Stranger in a Strange Land

    UrbanEye, a New York Times email newsletter, is meant to be a daily
    aid in deciding “what to see, eat, do and wear in New York City.” It is
    useful for the infrequent visitor to New York to know what he is
    missing when he isn’t there. Since discovering the newsletter, I’ve
    devoured the theater and art suggestions in particular, and made notes
    in my Moleskine of what to see when I make my semi-annual sojourns.

    I pay no attention, however, to the “what-to-wear” pretensions of
    UrbanEye. Those sartorial suggestions are infrequent—and only implied
    within the gallery, theater, and music listings. I should have perhaps
    taken the hint, though, by the very fact that fashion is mentioned in
    the “sell line” for the email sign up, that how you present yourself,
    even when at leisure, is more important in New York than here. (I could
    have also picked up that idea from my daughter, who was home from New
    York for a few days during a school break recently and brushed off her
    mother’s offer to pay for a haircut with, “Mom, I get my hair cut in
    Manhattan.”)

    This insensitivity to fashion is how I ended up at the Armory Show in
    ill-fitting Nautica jeans from Costco and a faded hemp shirt I once
    bought in Duluth because I was cold and had forgotten my jacket.

    The Armory Show is an annual assemblage of art galleries from around
    the world. Art is flown in from Tokyo, Vienna, Berlin, Paris, London,
    Milan, Madrid, Tel Aviv, and San Francisco and displayed in one place
    for New York collectors to be led around by experts and told what to
    buy. (At least that’s what happens according to the Times, which ran a
    recent front-page story about an arriviste collector from Florida who
    required “introductions” to the galleries in order for them to allow
    her to spend a quarter-million dollars of her money.)

    As I walked around the show, I realized that I was indeed dressed as if
    I had originally set off for a day in the swine barn at the Minnesota
    State Fair and had somehow gotten off at LaGuardia Airport instead of
    Larpenteur Avenue. As I browsed among stylish New York men in their
    draped Italian suits or five-hundred-dollar jeans, and the
    coiffed-and-coutured women on their arms, I unintentionally began to
    focus my gaze more on the attendees in the halls than the art on the
    walls. I pulled out my notebook and scrawled a reminder about my next
    visit: “In NY, wear BLACK jeans.” As I closed the book, I looked up and
    saw coming toward me an attenuated young man in pegged black jeans and
    a skin-tight black silk turtleneck. Setting off his wardrobe were his
    goatee and fringed hair—both of which had been bleached to a degree of
    whiteness only dreamt of by Gwen Stefani—and a set of platinum dog tags
    which seemed to mark him as a brand-new second lieutenant in some fey
    ninja army.

    I opened the notebook again and added, “Put The Devil Wears Prada on Netflix list.”