Denver comPost reporter replies to my letter

O

Oatka

New member
On another thread, I posted this lady's article. THREAD

Via email, I reamed her a new one regarding her lack of research and blind parroting of MMM handouts.

Her reply. Note the shifting of the attack, and that last revealing sentence. Italics mine.

"I appreciate the time you took to write complaining about my article. I can assure you I did plenty of research before writing.

I believe, it is you, not me, who has a very strong opinion on the subject of guns -- which, by the way, was not the point of the sidebar. The point was that another high profile grass roots effort -- for good or for bad -- has modeled itself after Mother's Against Drunk Driving. The merits of the cause were not the issue.

But that is not what prompted me to write. I must take exception with the idea that simply because a woman had a successful career prior to having children she is somehow not really a stay at home mother. I stayed home with all of my children for varying time after they were born and still managed to do a little free lance work and still considered myself a writer.

I don't really see how Donna Dees Thomas previous political involvement or connections to the news media makes her any less a mother who was worried about her children.

Again, I am writing this more as a mother than a reporter for the Denver Post, and I suppose I am quite sensitive to this subject. If you want to write again, feel free.

Jenny Deam"
 
Tell Jenny about Mothers Arms. Good women care about their kids and families. Many women don't accept the statist drivel of the MMM.

I note your point ... Jenny is either incredibly naive, or simply chooses to play dumb. It comes out looking the same, doesn't it? ;)

Regards from AZ
 
Oatka,
Don't take this wrong. She did do an incredable(sp) amount of research into that article. I've just spent the last 2 hours on line tracking down Andrew what's his name, and the event of the 1830's mentioned. She(Jenny) did an impressive amount of research and an equal amount of twisting to put that article together. WOW! How she managed to tie in and hide a board member of Levis along with a reform movement to stamp out prostitution deserves a twisted form of appreciation.(4.5 million grant to Bell Campaign by the number 4 Al Gore top contributor and widower of the deceased board of Levi's member.)(1830's movement). I'll get back to you on this. Je* H. Ch*, they ain't even TRYING to hide a lot of this slime anymore!

Keep digging this stuff up, and I'll try to give you as much as I can so you don't go into these (e-mail) with less than a full magazine.

[This message has been edited by RAE (edited September 19, 2000).]
 
"Again, I am writing this more as a mother than a reporter for the Denver Post, and I suppose I am quite sensitive to this subject. If you want to write again, feel free."
Translation: "I have a uterus, I don't need a brain."
M2
 
I am confused. I read what you posted on http://www.thefiringline.com:8080/forums/showthread.php?threadid=39238 that she wrote. And she is correct that blip was not really for or against gun control, it was simply a little blip on the formation of the MMM. And the focus was on the connection between MMM and MADD.

She describes [in part] the how/why both MADD and MMM have gathered a following.

I think you either don't understand or are ignoring the point of her article, simply because she was righting about the MMM. That article was very close to being neutral about gun control.
 
Before we roast Oatka, let's look at a few things here...

From the original article:

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>In San Francisco, a professional organizer of non-profit groups named Andrew McGuire already was working on the same cause. In 1998, he had been given $4.5 million to create a national grassroots organization for gun control. "They said we need a MADD for guns," McGuire said.[/quote]

Where did he get this funding?

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>McGuire's new foundation was to be called the Bell Campaign, to symbolize the tolling of a bell for every person lost to gun violence. The organization was to kick off in late May of 1999.[/quote]

Does the Bell Campaign make a distinction between innocent deaths and deaths as a result of a lawful defence? If not, how is this a comparison to MADD??

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>On May 14, an estimated 750,000 people showed up on the Washington Mall -- movies stars side by side with moms pushing strollers -- all decrying gun violence. All
the while the cameras rolled.[/quote]

How many people where there???

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Very often it is anger, says Katherine Saltzman, interim associate vice president of academic affairs at Metropolitan State College. "There are things that open your
eyes so widely you can't get them shut again. You feel compelled to do something."[/quote]

So instead of focusing on the cause of violence, we desire to change the vehicle?

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Don't forget guys, right now a conviction for DUI rests almost exclusively on a Blood Alcohol Test, i.e. Breath-alizer. Something that is an inherently poor test, and one that leads to false conviction. MADD is the biggest proponent for testing people in this manner, and for lowering the BAC leagal limits (in Massachusetts it is 0.08, basically 1 beer for me.) In Massachusetts, you loose your 'right' to own a gun after a DUI. Are you sure you want your 'gun rights' to depend on this kind of 'evidence'?

I think Oatka was correct in installing a new @$$h0le for Ms. Deam. She wrote a story, trying to compare two groups, but left out some very important facts.



------------------
~USP

"[Even if there would be] few tears shed if and when the Second Amendment is held to guarantee nothing more than the state National Guard, this would simply show that the Founders were right when they feared that some future generation might wish to abandon liberties that they considered essential, and so sought to protect those liberties in a Bill of Rights. We may tolerate the abridgement of property rights and the elimination of a right to bear arms; but we should not pretend that these are not reductions of rights." -- Justice Scalia 1998
 
Overheard in a store. "I am not a hypocrite; I am a Democrat."

------------------
Sam I am, grn egs n packin

Nikita Khrushchev predicted confidently in a speech in Bucharest, Rumania on June 19, 1962 that: " The United States will eventually fly the Communist Red Flag...the American people will hoist it themselves."
 
Glamdring, the problem is that, whatever she may have said or not said about gun control, she gave the MMM a free pass on a major lie. If the NRA had claimed to have patterned itself after the damn Sierra Club ("They had saved a lot of wildlife, and we wanted to save guns. We said, 'We need a Sierra Club for guns.'") no one would believe it, because the SC and the NRA are totally different kinds of orgs with different methods and different kinds of goals.

Same with MMM and MADD. MADD took a TOTALLY different approach to drunk driving than the MMM is taking to violence. MADD pushed for vigorous enforcement, tough penalties and social stigmas for DRUNK drivers, not everyone who wanted to drive a car. They NEVER tried prohibition and they NEVER denied the role of personal responsibility. They also don't have mysterious secret funding running to several million dollars.

The MMM did all that. They could not possibly be patterned after MADD. But she just let it pass. Why? Why did she refuse to question their assertions? Would the NRA get that same pass?
 
I honestly don't know how someone could read her column and not perceive a strong, positive bias for gun control. As noted above, she did not investigate the differences between MADD and the MMM. There is no mention of other women's groups that hold positions counter to the MMM. The column seems to almost fawn over the wonderful, pure MMM movement.

Indeed, Oatka, if you want to test her, ask her to write an article re: Mothers Arms, the SAS and other pro-freedom women's groups. I'll wager (1) she'll never write such a column, (2) she'll make sure she includes counter arguments from the MMM and others if she does write the column, and / or (3) she'll make other negative references to the ladies involved in pro-freedom work.

Regards from AZ
 
A person who is given 4.5 MILLION dollars to start a grassroots organization is, in fact, modelling his actions on the Bolshevik "professional revolutionary".

Grassroots, my hairy grassy @ss.

Good work exposing the leftist-liars Oatka.
 
Don: I see your point. And that does clarify things a bit. But for the sake of arguement assume that some people feel any killing of humans is wrong. [NOT saying I agree with that, just that many people DO believe such] Then wouldn't they view MADD and MMM as similar?

When I say that article is close to neutral I mean that it isn't presenting an arguement to support gun grabbing. Except very weakly thru the connection of MADD=MMM. I guess I am used to reading material for information and when I read that article I see the points of similarity between MADD and MMM. And it provides some ideas for how to "fight" against MMM.

It seems to me that many people here that read it see it as saying that MADD is good, and that MMM was based on MADD, so MMM must be good? :confused:

The author may well have a agenda, but the fact that she doesn't state a postion on guns in her private email response would suggest to me she is more of a fence setter than rabid either way. Oatka said that he "reamed her a new one" about her article" which sounds rather insulting to her. Perhaps it was meant as a metaphor?

I would be curious to see the message that Oatka posted to Jeany Deam.

[This message has been edited by Glamdring (edited September 20, 2000).]
 
*sigh*
Grass roots my big ole bottom.
Andrew McGuire wormed 4.5 million from the Goldman Fund( www.goldmanfund.org ) to start the Bell Campaign. I imagine he said something like "Well, *they* are after Jewish kids now"-The Goldman Fund had, prior to the Jewish Daycare Center, contributed $200,000 to McGuire's Tramua Foundation. After the day care incident, the donation jumped to 4.5 million. Also Donna DT,in her own words, didn't give a hoot about guns until Columbine move *it* into the white suburban neighborhoods. Andrew McGuire is a professional fund raiser(read the original article and PLEASE someone explain to me how a professional fund raiser is grassroots?), he does it for a living. Let's also keep in mind here that McGuire was at the head of the board at MADD that fired Candy Lightner, the REAL grassroots founder of MADD. Andrew McGuire, is doing to the MMM, exactly what he did to MADD. He's nothing more than a self serving, greedy blood sucker. And I do mean blood sucker. I see a whole lot of comparison around the web between MADD and MMM, but ya know, the REAL one to make the comparison would be Candy Lightner, the founder of MADD. She's pretty silent on the subject.

[This message has been edited by RAE (edited September 20, 2000).]
 
Some background on why I go after these people in this manner.

During the 50s and most of the 60s I was a tramp printer. I guess today they would call it a "contract printer". :) I was in my early 20s then and thought it would be really neat to get a driver's licence from all 48 states, so I started drifting.

Almost all of my experience was in country weeklies, and by osmosis picked up a great respect, if not affection, for the Fourth Estate and everything it stood for.

Many is the time I'd overhear the editor verbally castrate some hapless reporter because he didn't research his article or just took someone's word. They were a tough crew with high standards, and I admired them for it.

Contrast that kind of integrity with what we are subjected to today. These people wouldn't last 5 minutes under the old discipline.

So, when someone in this profession puts out a piece of journalistic bilgewater like the above article, it triggers my low threshold of tolerance.

Yes, I feel I gave the lady, and her editors for passing this junk, a reaming. I did not save the letter as I rarely get answers to these kinds of letters. Either they are too p!$$ed or embarrassed to answer.

This is from memory -- I asked her (Ye Gods madam!) if she did ANY research on this subject. I mentioned that, usuing Google and 15 minutes of my time, I came up with the following . . . and then rebutted the "just a housewife", the Dees-media/political connections, and 750,000 MMMs with all kinds of URLs. I said that if I, as a layman, could come up with so much counter info, why couldn't she? I also pointed out the MADD-MMM difference and asked her why that wasn't mentioned. Based on all those flaws, I asked her if she was under orders to write agitprop or was she just so new to the business she didn't understand the concept of professional reporting.

I also mentioned the widespread belief that the media is just a propaganda tool for the liberal Left and that most reporters are looked upon as "presstitutes" - a sad state of affairs for a once proud profession. I mentioned that the "comPost" was being ridiculed on the Internet for the whole world to see and now had the same validity as the tabloids - a legacy I doubted their publishers were looking for.

I never use foul language of queston their ancestry, just their professionalism.

Here's my reply to hers:

[opening salutation]

I'd like to respond to some of your statements.

"I believe, it is you, not me, who has a very strong opinion on the subject of guns "
Only from the standpoint of what I see is the selling out of journalistic integrity by Fourth Estate members who constantly propagandize the anti-gun position. The most
egregious offender is exemplified by another Post "reporter", Carla Crowder. EVERY article in the Post is slanted against guns and their owners. Then we have the latest mean-spirited article is one by Woody Paige
about the US winning a gold medal in shooting. He makes a weak claim to complainers that "it was just a joke". Had he ridiculed our swimmers in a like manner,
he would have been crucified.

"The point was that another high profile grass roots effort -- for good or for bad -- has modeled itself after Mother's Against Drunk Driving."
My point is that it is an rsatz "grassroots" effort and some mention of Dees' political background should have been mentioned. MMM gives every indication of being a wing of the DNC, as the caliber of the people
involved point to a highly organized and well-funded operation. MADD targeted the person, MMM targets the implement, a major difference that should also have been pointed out. They are trying to cloak themselves in an aura of respectibility and legitimacy by tying themselves to MADD. Articles like yours aid them in that deception.

"I must take exception with the idea that simply because a woman had a successful career prior to having children she is somehow not really a stay at home mother."
If you or any other non-political woman had started the organization, I would have had no problem. It is her previous political connections, which is at issue. She is made out to be an ordinary, non-political
mother who was just fed up at the carnage, when in reality she is far from that.

"I don't really see how Donna Dees Thomas previous political involvement or connections to the news media makes her any less a mother who was worried about her
children."
!!!! Then we don't see eye-to-eye on this. Her political background smells to high heaven, as pointed out by a few other journalists. Her not-to-distant connection with the Clintons only increases the odor.
If anyone deeply associated with the right-wing (as she is with the Left) would set themselves up as a "grassroots" persona I would be just as skeptical. Motherhood and children are Hot Buttons, and the Left is cynically exploiting it. How many times have you heard their mantra, "it's for the children".

"Again, I am writing this more as a mother than a reporter for the Denver Post, and I suppose I am quite sensitive to this subject."
Therein lies the problem. How can you objectively report on this emotional subject with this mindset?

It would make good copy, I think, if the Post would send an unbiased reporter (do they have any?) to the next MMM seminar. A political reporter would have a field day.

[closing salutation]
 
Oakta thanks for the response. That makes a lot more sense to me than the way I interpeted your intial post [mea culpa].

Are you still publishing articles?
 
Glamdring, believe me, I know what you mean. This is close to the line at which I let things go, but it demands a response in my opinion. Of course your mileage may vary.

Hube, you are obviously paying close attention. :D
 
Oatka, just out of curiosity, did you bring up the topic of the MMM's tax-exempt status? Don't they claim 503(C) status as a charitable organization, and isn't that status reserved for "non-political" orgs that don't do things like endorse political candidates or endorse bills for passage? I notice she didn't mention that either, and to my mind it's a big deal. The NRA and GOA don't try to do this.
 
Glamdring - I must have given the impression I was a reporter. No, I just handled the mechanical end - setting type, making up the forms, running the presses, and sometimes delivering the finished product. But, I was around some first class reporters and editors and sopped up their ethics and war stories like a sponge. A special breed in a great profession.

Don - 503(C) status? No I didn't. I had a two-pager going and figured her eyes would glaze over. However, it's waiting in the wings for the next one.

BTW, I got the impression that she was just naive and not a Goebbels trooper. Just as dangerous though.

After making the noble statement earlier that I didn't resort to name calling, I did relapse a bit in my broadside to that weasel Woody Paige, about his Olympic shooter hatchet-job. The term "Clymer" worked itself into the dialogue. Oh well, sports writers aren't "real" reporters. ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top