DISQUS

chetlyzarko · 5 months ago

Ah, I see Ed. You've (and MM) lost all pretense of "journalism" here, and even in the realm of opinion have transcended the bounds of fairness and crossed lines. Now we see the "big brush" I predicted in the comments a few days ago - this time blending the paint with the race card - that you're going to paint all Republicans with. Now you link the Lennox story to these other race stories because they're all young? Can't you see the ridiculousness of this?

Well, you clearly support (or lean to or avoid painting with the same brushes) the Party (Democratic) that spawned the Klu Klux Klan. Mark Brewer, chair of the Michigan Democratic Party, represented the Klan. The Democrats still proudly seat and recently elected as President Pro tem pore (third in presidential succession) former-Klan member - Robert Byrd - in the United States Senate.


“ I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side... Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds. ”
— Robert C. Byrd, in a letter to Sen. Theodore Bilbo (D-MS), 1944.


That, my friend, is racist. For the Democrats to elevate this man to third in the line of presidential success - by choice - in 2009 - is the hidden race story you should be covering. The Klan - mostly white southern Democrats - murdered thousands of blacks and perhaps hundreds of white Republicans in its early days, as purely political terrorism to prevent them from being elected or to deny them political representation and power. It worked for 90 years.

Should all other Democrats be guilty of the sins of previous and current Democrats?

By the way, Gray was removed from the party shortly after his racist rants. Bristow's case, I understand, is different - and while his behavior has been stupid and may be deplorable the Southern Poverty Law Center label is just a label. Since they won't answer questions on their process and they've expanded their definitions, it's lost the value in my mind and others it used to have. I suspect now they're just satisfying donors - I believe they did good work at one time though. Regardless, removing an elected position should require a high bar of evidence - Gray clearly met that standard (walking in the street after the election with a Klan hood - by the way, a symbol of the old Democratic Party) of when a person should be removed but other than an SPLC label which refused to delineate its standards I don't see evidence for Bristow's removal.

I'm proud to be a member of the Party of Lincoln, whose inaugural Bible President Obama swore his oath to - the party of abolitionism and the end of slavery. I'm actually proud Obama was elected, despite my policy disagreement with him on many issues, because occasionally I see a larger march of history and Obama's election and presidency has many positive things to contribute in that evolution.

Erding · 5 months ago

And it is comments just like chetlyzarko's that make it so painfully onbious that the GOP is losing touch with reality.

ebrayton · 5 months ago

You know chetly, as I wrote this piece I predicted inside my head the lecture that would pour from your keyboard upon its publication. I could have written your comment for you word for word before you did, so predictable is the faux outrage. The irony is that the one painting with a broad brush here is you because you are so trapped into that false dichotomy where one can only criticize Republicans if they support Democrats. Thus you write:

Well, you clearly support (or lean to or avoid painting with the same brushes) the Party (Democratic) that spawned the Klu Klux Klan.

I neither support nor lean to the Democratic party. I have never voted for a Democrat in any election in my entire life.

As for Robert Byrd, I think that dottering old man is an embarrassment to both the Democratic party and West Virginia and I think they should have voted him out long ago (or better yet, never elected him in the first place). Of course, even without that, your argument is absurd. The element of the Democratic party a century ago that supported the KKK, the Dixiecrats like Strom Thurmond, all left the party for the Republicans decades ago. Does that mean that all Republicans are racist? Of course not. I have never made such a claim, nor would I ever make such a claim, nor have I ever even implied such a thing. It is only your imagination that reads such an implication into this article.

These are simple statements of fact, not one of which you actually attempt to challenge. Yes, there really is a pattern lately of young Republicans, and some old ones as well, getting into serious trouble using new social media to send out inflammatory and often racist messages. And yes, there really is a pattern of young Republicans in Michigan doing the same thing. Several of those incidents are noted, thus establishing the pattern.

Could one do the same thing with the Democrats? Of course they could, especially in Michigan. One might even cover a whole range of stories about corruption among Democrats in the Detroit city government, from the disgraced and convicted former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to the disgraced and convicted former chair of the city council Monica Conyers, wife of Democratic Rep. John Conyers, who may well get caught up in his wife's problems. Oh gee, this very news outlet has been covering that story as well. Why? Because it's true, regardless of which party is implicated. I don't recall your complaints that by covering those stories and presenting the facts about them we have somehow implicated all Democrats as corrupt.

The funny thing, Chetly, is that you are so blinded by partisanship that you falsely presume that everyone else is as well.

EricBee · 5 months ago

Do you vote?

ebrayton · 5 months ago

Of course I vote.

EricBee · 5 months ago

I have a very difficult time believing that unless you always vote straight ticket Republican that you can honestly claim that you've never once voted for a Democrat in any election.

MarkGrebner · 5 months ago

Finally - something I can comment on! (I've been reading everything with interest, but I'm sure everyone understands if I don't discuss the lawsuit.)

The only Ed Brayton I can find on Michigan's voter rolls lives in Paris - the suburb of Big Rapids, that is. If I've got the right person, he votes in every even-year general election, but nothing else in the past ten years. No political leanings are discernible from the records I have.

That Ed Brayton is married, and his wife voted in the Republican presidential primary 18 months ago, and I have her coded as pro-environment. It's not always safe to impute one spouse's political views to the other, but it's not a bad bet to do so.

My considered judgment is that Ed is not very interested in local or statewide politics, but is conscientious enough to vote when he knows what he's doing and he thinks his vote counts.

Update: I'm not sure if I've got the right Ed Brayton or not. The voter is a professor at Ferris State who teaches Construction. The writer is a science expositor. They both seem to live near Grand Rapids and are about the same age. And they have similar faces, but apparently different hair. If this Ed Brayton doesn't teach at Ferris State, he's not registered to vote in Michigan under the name "Ed* Brayton".

ebrayton · 5 months ago

Thank you for outing the voting patterns of my uncle (not me, because Ed is not my proper name). I honestly can't understand why you or anyone else has access to how anyone votes. A person's votes should be absolutely protected and private. They go to all that trouble at the polling places to protect such data, giving every person a privacy sleeve to make sure the person next to them can't see how they vote, then they hand that information over to others. In my opinion, that should be criminal. The notion that you have a database of voters and you have them "coded" based on their votes makes my skin crawl.

I do not teach construction, I am not married and I am nowhere near being "about the same age" as my uncle. And frankly, I don't think my "leanings" are any of your business except what I choose to reveal to you.

MarkGrebner · 5 months ago

Your UNCLE! That explains the eerie similarities, coupled to irresolvable discrepancies.

There's public access to voting information for the same "reason" as many other social rules: it's just an unfolding of the history of the activity. At the time of the Founding Fathers, not only was whether you voted a public issue, but so was WHO YOU VOTED FOR, since the secret ballot was unknown.

Since voting started out as a public act, the extension of privacy rights has been halting and erratic, implemented only when prompted only by some specific, over-riding concern. (Voter registration and secret ballots were imposed to break the urban machines, for example.) As a result, a surprising amount of information is available about individuals' political actions. In many states - not Michigan - every choice of party ballot in a primary is carefully recorded and disclosed.

Sorry this is so far off topic, but I suppose it's the expression of my repressed response to all the fascinating points raised in the rest of this thread.

chetlyzarko · 5 months ago

Oh, I lost it in my being appalled at the central grotesque-logic tenet of the story.

You are actually using Facebook friend status to try to prove a connection between two individuals? I have nearly 600 "friends" on facebook - I rarely request new ones and almost always say yes to friend requests because I'm in an outreach business. I know politicians who just started who get 600 friends in a few weeks. Most of these folks are not people I've met - most but not all are people I have some vague knowledge of it - some I've never met but have a coincidental shared interest - etc. Lennox, an elected official, no surprise, has over 3000 friends. That Bradley Dennis would friend request him, or vice versa, doesn't mean they knew each other.

You're tech-savvy enough to know that, which makes your use of the point here - if that was the extent of the "evidence" you hinted at last week - pathetic. If MM has been reduced to documenting the facebook connections of college republicans, it has no doubt lived up to its financiers dreams.

ebrayton · 5 months ago

Yes, I am well aware that lots of people have Facebook friends they don't know. I have hundreds on mine as well. It is clearly not necessarily true that merely having someone as a Facebook friend means they know them, or know them well. But it is one piece of possible evidence. And in this case, Dennis only has 17 friends on Facebook, as the picture shows, so that tends to undercut the reason you offer for doubt.

chetlyzarko · 5 months ago

Ed, you have seriously misread the facebook data, I believe. I'm sure it's an accident, and hope you retract below, admitting the numbers favor the explanation I offer.

You apparently did a search of Dennis Lennox - and found 17 people with the words Dennis Lennox in their name, not that Dennis Lennox only has 17 friends. How do I know - Dennis and I have 259 MUTUAL FRIENDS (which shows up on my page as his facebook friend) when I duplicated the search. You then did a search in a pop up box of only his friends for "Brad Dennis," and found the one and only one friend so named. When I look at Dennis Lennox's home page, I see he has 3436 friends. If indeed he had only 17 friends and Brad Dennis was one, the numbers would favor your interpretation. Brad Dennis has fewer friends, but I only know he has 42 "mutual friends" with me (I can't see his total because I'm not his friend on facebook, yet) - including Ron Weiser (I presume you don't believe Ron is guilty now) ironically. 42 mutual implies hundreds of friends though.

I commend you on condemnation of Byrd, et al (although Byrd never left the party) and your claim of not voting Democrat. But your articles that are anti-Republican, without correspondingly being anti-Democrat, betray something. Functionally, its irrelevant whether you pull a Green or Libertarian lever - you are paid by Soros to do anti-Republican bidding (lest that not really be important, which it isn't, your editor set the precedent of noting how important my sources of income are allegedly to my reasoning) and effectively that taints the body of your work. You claim your publication reports on Democratic scandals - but it does so differently than it does on Republican ones. First, I don't see original stuff coming from MM - the Detroit scandals came from MSM sources. Second, you're going after much smaller fish - which is fine - small stories are important. But you allege a "pattern" of "young Republican" conduct with six alleged bad apples? There are millions of young Republicans and millions of young Democrats ... you've found something that says anything about a pattern in six? Come on.

I also don't see you writing articles on the bad things said by Democrat precinct delegates - admit it, Ed, your publication choose what the issues and people it prefers to investigate. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with that - Fox and MSNBC do it too and its part of democracy. But don't lay claim to the holy ground of neutrality either, which this site does attempt.

On that note, I'll try to fade away as the issue and protagonists aren't worthy of protracted thought. Hopefully you can understand my pov, at least, and you agree about the facebook numbers.

ebrayton · 5 months ago

chetly wrote:

Ed, you have seriously misread the facebook data, I believe. I'm sure it's an accident, and hope you retract below, admitting the numbers favor the explanation I offer.

It appears you are correct. As I am not a friend to either of them on Facebook, I could not do a direct search and had to have someone else do it for me. I then misanalyzed the evidence in the picture. Mea culpa.

I also don't see you writing articles on the bad things said by Democrat precinct delegates - admit it, Ed, your publication choose what the issues and people it prefers to investigate.

Is there such a pattern to report on? I'm not aware of one. If you can show me a series of incidents involving Democratic precinct delegates and operatives around the country posting racist and bigoted things on new social media websites and causing national controversies for it in the last year, please do. I am not aware of any. Every single incident I reported was reported accurately. That is the only thing that matters to me.

Erding · 5 months ago

And it is comments like chetlyzarko's that make it so painfully obvious that the GOP is quickly losing touch with reality.

chetlyzarko · 5 months ago

Erding, comments that point out the fallacy of attacking a group by pawning up the indiscretions of individuals loosely affiliated with it?

Pointing out that Democratic Senators ELECTED - in 2009 - a Klan member to lead the Senate? or that "Facebook friend" is hardly evidence of anything?

Ride high on your victory, Erding. Wish the demise of the R's - the "end of history" was written about when the Cold War ended, but it seemed to chug along in different ways anyway. You may be right - the GOP may be at a low point in the political cycle - but power corrupts and the political cycle is born.

EricBee · 5 months ago

You know, Chetly, you seem like a nice enough guy, but occasionally at least attempt to remove the armor of the eternal warrior, who flies about the Internet mining every sentence uttered by everyone else for some kind of definitive statement. Sometimes statements of fact are just statements of fact. Dennis Lennox denies knowing the other two people named in this lawsuit; on the other hand, he is Facebook friends with one of them. Everyone who uses Facebook understands that this may or may not mean anything.

Also, did you look at the date for your Robert Byrd quote? That was 65 years ago. Suggesting that today he remains a racist is the same thing as accusing me of being a homophobe because back in high school I used to describe things I thought of as silly and/or stupid as gay.

chetlyzarko · 5 months ago

I got the Byrd quote from Wikipedia. Who cares whence it came from - will Osama bin Laden's terrorist rhetoric, if surviving 65 years from now, be acceptable? Suggesting that Robert Byrd's association with the Klan is an unacceptable way for the Democratic Party to associate itself - regardless of what's in Byrd's heart - is not unreasonable. And its not like saying you're still (or you were ever) homophobic because you uttered an anti-gay word 20 years ago - it'd be like saying the homosexual lobby shouldn't accept you because you beat the snot out of homosexuals 20 years ago. I don't think many blacks (or whites) would think Klan membership = saying the word gay, or even saying the n-word, in degree of severity.

That said, I'll retreat somewhat from this issue. None of the protagonists are much worthy of engaging my time further.

EricBee · 5 months ago

As usual, Chetly, you're trying to make this into something that it is clearly not. At issue isn't whether Osama bin Laden's rhetoric is acceptable in 65 years, but whether someone's attitudes (or those of an entire political party) can be accurately judged based on something said a long time ago. You said it yourself, it would be unfair to call me a homophobe because of something I said just two decades ago; yet, you seem to think it's okay to judge the entire Democratic Party based on something Robert Byrd said before the Civil Rights movement. So, I guess a thank you is in order to you for making my point for me.

KellyLogan · 5 months ago

I am fully in support of information that helps the public be more informed of the very real and deep structural prejudices we have here in Michigan. The KKK and other white supremacist and related militia groups are a significant and growing concern precisely because they are not discussed in an open and honest way, only with little 'shock' blurbs like the spots on Rand Gray flagging motorists in KKK regalia.

That having been said, I think that this article doesn't quite hit the mark of exposing the underlying mechanisms or showing any firm connections between racially-charged actions and the political 'profit' gleaned from them. The overall idea I was left with after reading is that bad things are happening because some young Republicans are racists or using racist tools for political ends (or both), but without any broader or deeper understanding of why, or any real proof that there are any significant connections between these incidents. Imagine if I wrote a similar article on how recent Democratic actions show a move of the party towards peace and against big business because of the string of actions by Dennis Kucinich, Henry Waxman and John Conyers.

Let me be clear here: I think there has been some excellent work exposing the use of racial tools for political ends. Articles that tied the 2000 Bush campaign's to its use of a smear on McCain, accusing him of fathering his adopted black child, for example; these articles showed the history of similar tactics used by Rove and his aides and the proxies they used. Or the articles by Greg Palast on voter disenfranchisement in Florida and other states that used the underlying racial disparities in our justice system to throw black voters off the roles. So please understand that I am all for exposing further racial abuses for political ends, but a real case has to be made; thin, unconnected allegations can be worse than no coverage at all.

More specifically:
1.) There seems to be no real connection between the first five paragraphs and the rest of the article; the conservative Republican groups that the students Grebner is filing against belong to are not shown to have any functional connection, no shared command structure, with the Young Republicans or any of the other groups in the rest of the article, other than they are Republican and some are also in Michigan.
2.) The Grebner suits allegations of conspiracy are made to look fairly threadbare, with the only evidence given being as anemic as identifying the students themselves by MAC/IP was in the last article; a facebook connection, living on the same floor?!? I need firmer evidence to show a charge of conspiracy.
3.) (Minor point) - The second paragraph/sentence seems cut off: "Grebner's suite alleges that. . ." that what? The rest of the sentence describes the students, but I'm not seeing where it reconnects to say what the suit alleges they did.
4.) Good points on spotlighting general Michigan connections like YAF, but again, no demonstration of acting connections between them and the other people talked about.
5.) The flow of the article changes again with the idea that Republicans in particular are having problems with 'them there internets' and then throwing out another couple of unconnected incidents without a context or basis that connects to the Republican party as a whole.

These are not problems I am pointing at you, Ed; there is a lot of good information here. I see these issues directly as editing faults. Your editor should have held you to higher standards on what evidence you presented and how it was presented, should have made sure there were connections that readers would see, should have made sure there was one central theme and/or split this into several related stories.

I have greatly enjoyed having Michigan Messenger as a resource for good local news, and I forward/share many articles to my friends and fellow activists because of this, so I hope you will take my comments in the spirit of constructive criticism that I mean them to be in.