Amidst the dreary stream of press releases and photo shows from GOP pals and sponsors, Dakota War College serves the public by exemplifying ad hominem attacks to avoid the actual arguments presented against the Republican Party’s moral and practical rot.
First, unable to overcome the logic of an editorial in that Sioux Falls paper pointing out that racist symbols of the traitorous Confederacy have no place on public property, DWC author Pat Powers likens opponents of such inappropriate displays to ISIS and calls them a “mob” bent on censorship (which it isn’t, because censorship deals with the government restricting expression by entitites other than the government, not with the government’s control of its own statements on its own property). American newspapers and other social critics aren’t terrorist revisionists trying to erase history; they are decent patriots who support teaching history but don’t support using government resources to celebrate traitors with intimidating racist symbols.
Then this morning, Powers creaks out of bed and blasts a letter to the editor criticizing Senator Thune and the “extremist, misogynist, racist, classist wing driving the GOP” not by addressing each specific charge (please, Pat, show us how Thune is not supporting a White House and policies that promote extreme deregulation and the continued disadvantaging of women, minorities, and lower-income Americans) but by complaining that he can’t find the author of the letter on Google or the statewide voter registration list. That Sioux Falls paper verifies that letter writers are real people, and regardless of whether that writer votes or not, the writer’s statements stand unrefuted.
Perhaps instead of just buying ads on Dakota War College, South Dakota Republicans should pay for their blog mouthpiece to take some debate lessons from The Displaced Plainsman.
If you pen a letter to the editor you must verify your name, physical location, phone number and most recently your email address. It is somewhat surprising that media savvy Pat Powers doesn’t know that.
Of course he makes no mention of the gutless wonders that tag themselves as “Anonymous” in his comment section.
Pat, is Anonymous one person, a group of people, or are they all the same person?
The Displaced Plainsman likely had Pat Powers in mind when he wrote that column.
C’mon Pat, shouldn’t we be discussing the politics of Thune, Rounds, and Noem’s tacit approval of Charlottesville and Trump’s hateful Tweets?
Leave it to Powers to attack the messenger and not the content of the letter to the editor.
It seems that media savvy Powers would know that when you pen a letter to the editor the paper requires verification of who you are, a physical location, phone number, and often times an email address.
Before Powers goes off the rails again, he should insist that Anonymous guy that posts over there all the time Identify himself.
I suspect most people think there is a difference between letters to the editor in the real newspapers are different than bloggings from madmen across the globe. The media Newspapermen used to want to protect themselves and their reputations from the sort of George Ferebee letter writing scams of yesteryear. It is a different paper I would like to write someday if I have the time, but I submit the internet unintentionally killed all common decency and good reporting in the US of A. It’s possible the owners of the internet actually did it to spite on the newspapers for writing bad or mean articles against them, but I think it was probably unintentional.
Yes, grudz, there is a difference, which Roger makes clear. The real newspapers verify their authors’ identities, while Dakota War College admits mostly anonymous, unverifiable comments filled with false and irrelevant statements. How can one trust anyone who won’t engage in a mutual sharing of real names?
Quite funny, Roger, that Pat would dismiss comments from a named, verified author by whining that he can’t independently verify the author’s identity (he’s actually just frustrated he didn’t get to do an attack piece on the guy) while he makes his bread and butter by fostering all sorts of anonymous comments.