So, with Wisconsin now on the side of the angels in the CCW permit wars, I found myself musing with perfect hindsight on something I wish I'd started doing back in '88-'89 when this whole shall-issue campaign started really rolling...
I wish that I had gathered all the newspaper editorials over the years. You know the kind, the ones predicting blood in the streets, mass carnage, shootouts over parking spaces, and generally handwringing over every conceivable Dodge City fantasy the reporter could concoct... And as each new state became embroiled in the shall-issue debate, send the accumulated clippings to the editorial departments of their big newspapers, to reporters and freelance journalists, with an attached note reading simply "To save you work, here are your templates!"
Not that the sight of yellowed, crumbling, decades-old clippings, containing the same shrill predictions that they were about to make, predictions that never came true, would have any influence on their thought processes... But it would have to be just a little embarrassing to know that what you were about to type on your iPad is practically a word-for-word ripoff of hackneyed myths first pecked out on a DOS PC in a smoke-filled newsroom.
Wonder what would produce the bigger horror to the properly educated modern journalist - the idea of a DOS PC or a smoke-filled newsroom?
ReplyDelete"pecked out on a DOS PC in a smoke-filled newsroom."
ReplyDeleteThe good old days. I remember being able to smoke a work. Of course for the most part, all of my jobs have been pretty much outdoors types.
We got to read all of those same old tired editorials last year when we got "shall issue" here in Iowa. I'm still waiting for the shooting to begin. Now if we could do something about that defenseless enclave to our east.
"Law enforcement officers are thoroughly trained in weapons use, and they have professional protocols to follow. I want them to be carrying a weapon wherever and whenever. I trust they will know when to shoot, and when not to shoot. The rights-demanders: not so much."
ReplyDeleteThe good ol classic "only ones" theory. Perhaps he should read up on his Teflon theory, "trust but verify".
Journalists embarrassed? I don't think it's in their DNA.
ReplyDeleteFrom M-W dictionary
ReplyDeleteEMBARRASS, transitive verb
1. a : to place in doubt, perplexity, or difficulties
Ah! There's your problem right there.
Journalist are NEVER in doubt about their opinions thus can never be embarrassed.
Another uninformed Fudd. He writes a bigoted post and doesn't have a clue what he is talking about.
ReplyDeleteLexus/Nexus search? Can you get the service from your local library?
ReplyDeleteDOS 3.2? Nrw-fangled stuff, go back a bit further.
ReplyDeleteA gang accosts an upstanding citizen with their illegal weapons. The citizen, being unarmed as the law says he must be, is not able even to threaten the felons, and is killed.
Julius Caesar, City of Rome, knife ban.
Some of the same people who predicted blood in the gutters if Florida got CHL showed up in Texas and later in a couple of other states with the same mantra.
ReplyDeleteThat it had not happened in Florida never seemed to enter their picture of unreality. That carried onward after there was no bloodbath in Texas.
Fran Sage, Sierra Club guru (guruette?) of Alpine, Texas, apparently believes that there is something in the cactus pollen of Big Bend National Park which would send CHL holders into a murderous frenzy were they allowed to carry therein.
Forty-eight years of reading/listening to all this infantile prattle can indeed be wearying...
And all the letters to the editor grousing will be signed Ellie Light.
ReplyDeleteVW: subdked. It's like subverted, only with a duke instead of a (per)vert