True North

Andy Birkey is very, very concerned about violence at the Republican National Convention this September.

Well, at least about violence that hasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of ever happening - like the button-pushing comment of a couple of morning talk show hosts.

The Twin Cities’ newest conservative talk show host has an idea for managing the thousands of protesters coming to the Republican National Convention in St. Paul in September: machine guns.

Chris Baker, formerly a talk radio host in Houston, took over the morning spot on KTLK in early March. On Friday, he took issue with the debate among Minneapolis law enforcement personnel as to whether police should limit the use of Tasers and pepper spray on protesters in Minneapolis (link to audio file). Baker’s suggestion is violent suppression of what he calls “stinky protesters” that are part of “an industry funded by billionaires and communist organizations (and) they are well-coordinated and incredibly dangerous.”

Dog bites man. The MNMon gets its monthly stipends from Mr. Soros. A talk show host pushes peoples’ buttons to elicit a controversial, emotional reaction from everyone in the audience, thereby generating more publicity, ergo more traffic.

Which doesn’t fit?

Trick question, of course; they’re all the same.

Baker continued: “So we’ve been talking about police protection during the upcoming convention when all those stinky protesters are coming. There seems to be a big debate over whether or not police officers will be able to wear helmets, carry shields, use pepper spray and Tasers on this crowd. You know, I’ll tell you what works on a crowd like this — a machine gun, that always works very well.”

Baker’s co-host, “Jordan,” agreed: “Mow ‘em down, baby!” he added.

Yawn.

Seriously. So friggin’ what?

Does Chris Baker run any police department?

Closed-Circuit to Birkey:  talk with Media reporter Paul Schmelzer; talk radio is all about pushing buttons.  Not to say I agree with this particular stunt or statement - doy - but please.

Peace advocate and former FBI agent Coleen Rowley heard the violent rhetoric on Friday. “It doesn’t take an expert on the First Amendment to recognize that suggesting the ‘good ol’ boy network’ hand out ax handles and machine guns be used to mow a crowd down comes close to inciting violence,” she wrote at the Huffington Post. “This inflammatory rhetoric looks no different than the reason we are not allowed to falsely yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.”

Ah. So Colleen Rowley - via the left’s paid stooges in the Sorosphere - is calling for censorship.

Whew.  To think we coulda had her in Congress!

She continued: “I can also speak from personal experience — having worked almost 24 years as an FBI agent — that such remarks would almost certainly elicit investigative concern if the tables were turned and such speech came out of the mouth of someone critical of the government.”

Well, about that…

I have no idea what the “official” level of concern is, but I can’t help but notice that while Andy Birkey is right on the remarks of an obscure morning host in Minneapolis who has absolutely no police command authority, neither he nor the Monitor have ever written about the many, many remarks by the anarkids, and their plans to disrupt the convention, and life in Saint Paul in general(either actively or by passive, tacit approval), plans that are even making putative peaceniks nervous.  Plans to stalk delegates, to attack military recruiters and war memorials, plans (andrehearsals) to actively provoke violence.

So answer me this question, Andy Birkey (or anyone who is paying attention to this story):  who is more likely to actually cause any sort of problem at all in Saint Paul this September?

The “anarchists”  - upper-middle-class fops who are taking out their anger at mommy and daddy by playing at being working-class heroes, who’ve been chattering like a bunch of lemurs on amyl about the disruption they want to cause, the vandalism they want to wreak, the mayhem they plan?

Or a talk show host?

Backup question:  The Minnesota Monitor has been, since its founding, largely a joke.  So what’s the next step down from “joke?”

Cross-posted and comments welcome at Shot In The Dark.