{"id":2434,"date":"2009-07-27T09:53:57","date_gmt":"2009-07-27T14:53:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=2434"},"modified":"2009-07-27T10:02:29","modified_gmt":"2009-07-27T15:02:29","slug":"the-skunks-aim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=2434","title":{"rendered":"The skunk&#8217;s aim"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Readers of the blog are going to have to wait until the Budgeteer prints my reply to read it. Newspapers don&#8217;t like to publish stuff that showed up somewhere else first. <\/p>\n<p>But in rereading Doty&#8217;s column this morning I find myself chuckling. Oh, I&#8217;ll have to make amends to the very decent Art Johnston whose political instincts I panned. (A lot of folks like Art don&#8217;t like the slippery talk of politicians). I&#8217;ll have to hope that Judge Hylden will brush off my observation that judges are subject to elections as just that &#8211; an observation. Perhaps Sarah Horner, the Trib&#8217;s education reporter, will marvel at my private contempt for the service she has provided the School Board in minimizing the rapid deterioration of the Duluth Schools. (Although, I&#8217;ve never been sure if it was Sarah or her blustering Publisher Steven McLister, a Chamber of Commerce crony, who was calling the shots on the coverage of the Duluth Schools.)<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m sure that JCI&#8217;s public relations man, Steve Greenfield, has provided every person in town that I commented on unfavorably with my out-of-context references to them. Regular readers of this blog will probably be able to guess at their identities because I&#8217;ve often referred to them here first with somewhat more diplomatic words. But frankly, I think Doty has plumbed the most outrageous stuff from my 1288 emails and I can&#8217;t help but ask myself: Is that the best he can do? <\/p>\n<p>I referenced a peeing contest in the last post. A new metaphor comes to mind now. When I was in high school I routinely ran across urinals that some wag had written &#8220;follow this line&#8221; in with permanent marker. The line was drawn up the urinal and up the wall above it as high as the wag could draw it. I was mystified by the meaning of this for a number of years before I finally asked another guy what it could possibly mean.<\/p>\n<p>Any junior high kid who ever tried to write his name in the snow in yellow or any mother who ever watched her little boy&#8217;s friends fence with crossed streams while they piddled together in a toilette bowl probably figured this out faster than I did. Let&#8217;s just say that anyone dumb enough to follow the line would quickly regret having done so without an umbrella.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, and Mr. Doty. Thanks for advertising my book. I may be able to charge a little bit more for it with your help.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Readers of the blog are going to have to wait until the Budgeteer prints my reply to read it. Newspapers don&#8217;t like to publish&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-red-plan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2434\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}