True North

OK - so you’d think a post that starts like this…:

I got the stinky meat smell out of my car.

…can’t possibly end well. And in fact I’ll let you be the judge. But local lefty(?)blogger and longtime commenter Discordian Stooge writes:

Our [Katherine Kersten] is enraged about religion in schools. Shocked? Don’t be. It’s only because it’s an Islamic school.

Of course, I agree with her. The school is obviously supporting religion, and specifically Islam. Since it’s a public school, it’s wrong. But of course, we dangerous atheist lefties support the Muslim hordes and only hate Christians, so we’ll ignore this. Oh, wait.

Stooge (if I may call him Stooge, since “Disco” seems a bit stretchy) is writing about Kersten’s expose on the Tarek Ibn Ziyad Academy, a Moslem-focused - or, according to Kersten’s source, completely Islamic - charter school in a Saint Paul suburb.

I’m not going to get into the “discrimination against Christians” argument; although there’s plenty of evidence of it, let’s come back to it some other time.

Here’s my real question; there is no figure in the Twin Cities’ media that inspires more irrational and, frankly, unseemly derangement than Katherine Kersten. From the day it was announced the Strib was going to hire an actual conservative as a columnist, Twin Lefties - from Nick Coleman and the Strib Editorial Board to the usual array of leftybloggers - howled like a bunch of feral beagles, and churned out enough ad homina to power a good-sized wind turbine.

Of course, anyone who takes a partisan position invites a counterposition. Such is debate.

But when Stooge says…:

Anyway, until [Kersten] decides that religion in public schools is wrong, not just the religions she doesn’t like, I’ll continue to ridicule her.

Well, that’s a choice one may make. But I have to ask…

…when has Kersten supported “religion in public schools?”

Not “school choice”, mind you (and for clarity’s sake, let’s not go into “Vouchers”, since if you throw out vouchers you also need to throw out government-sponsored grants and government-secured student loans to anyone who attends a religious-affiliated college or university), or perhaps inveigling schools to relax a bit about allowing faith-affiliated groups to use the occasional school facility outside of school hours (since their parents paid the same taxes everyone else did, or thoroughly-voluntary prayer, say, in the locker room before a football game.

When has Katherine Kersten supported something equivalent to the Tarek Ibn Ziyad Academy - a publicly-funded school that has a fundamentally faith-based program that would be hostile (passively or actively) to a student of another faith from the opening bell to the moment the bus dropped him off at home?

I’d like some of Kersten’s critics to answer that one.

As to this bit…:

Honestly, Star Tribune, hire Cap’n Fishsticks as a columnist, or maybe Mitch Berg.

Stooge, what did I ever do to you?

(Hee. Thanks).

Oh, and…:

Someone who can come up with an original idea, not just copy from other right-wingers.

Have a word with Flash, when you have a moment.

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