THE PRAIRIE EDITOR: The Front Page Is Not The Editorial Page

Andy Warhol once wrote that (almost) everyone gets fifteen
minutes of fame. That’s of course a typical sound-bite
aphorism exaggeration, but for those in certain professions,
such as political writing, it can be somewhat true.

I’ve actually had a few of these, though they were properly
short as predicted. In 1982, I wrote an article in a Minneapolis
newspaper I edited and published that predicted an unknown
Colorado senator named Gary Hart would emerge to challenge
Walter Mondale seriously for the 1984 Democratic presidential
nomination, and when he beat Mondale in the New Hampshire
primary, I was briefly “discovered” by the national media. (I
still prize a gracious letter to me from Hart campaign chair Ted
Sorenson asserting that I was the first journalist to predict
Hart’s national rise.) In 1985, determined to try to do it again.
I wrote in my newspaper that a then little-known Delaware
senator would be a serious candidate for president in 1988. By
1987, he was Michael Dukakis’s most formidable rival, and once
again I received brief attention. As it turned out, Senator Joe
Biden developed a double aneurysm and had to withdraw, but
I must note that he eventually did make a bit of a comeback,
and is currently the vice president of the United States.

Then in 1990 I began writing articles in a Washington, DC
newsletter that the governor of Arkansas was going to be
the next Democratic nominee in 1992, although at the time,
incumbent President George H. W. Bush seemed unbeatable.
Few took me seriously.

Finally, in the off-year elections of 2010 and 2014, I called the
the number of eventual gains for the Republicans, especially
in the U.S. house, as well as any other national pundit, and it
was briefly noted.

I have also on several occasions got it wrong. I did not think
Ronald Reagan would be elected president in 1980. I thought
Mitt Romney would win in 2012. And I did not see either Bernie
Sanders or Donald Trump coming on so strong in 2016. (I’m just
lucky, I guess, that most folks remember your successes and forget
your failures.)

This brings me to an op ed I wrote for my Prairie Editor blog a
few days ago that contended that many in the national media were
indulging in a kind of coup d’etat on behalf of one of this cycle’s
presidential nominees against the other one. Newt Gingrich liked
my characterization so much that he began citing it on various
national radio and TV programs, as well as posting it on the
biggest social media sites. Subsequently, numerous journalists,
print and broadcast media, and online sites noted my piece.

Newt Gingrich is a partisan in this year's presidential race. He is
on record as supporting Donald Trump. He often acts as a
surrogate for Mr. Trump (and, I might add, seemingly doing a
much better job most of the time advancing the Republican
ticket than the nominee himself does.

What makes my coup d'etat comment perhaps unusual is that I
have not endorsed, nor do I publicly support either candidate. In
fact, I have often criticized each of them when they said or did
what I felt were outlandish things. My purpose was not to serve the
campaign of one candidate, but to defend the responsibility of the
media to be fair in their reporting the presidential contest. I was
being critical of print and broadcast reporters and editors, not of
editorial journalists. My view can be summed up in one sentence:  
The front page is not the editorial page.

I make no claim to being "objective." In fact, my readers (who span
the whole political range from left to right) expect me to be an
opinion journalist and not a reporter. Nevertheless, I was for many
years a reporter, and I know the difference between fairness and obvious
bias. Nor does my assertion of a media coup d’etat come to most
American eyes and ears as a surprise. Almost every voter already
knows that much of the media is in the tank for one candidate. It’s
just also true that a large number of voters are pleased by this and
understandably perhaps are not being critical.

But I don’t think a biased media trying to predetermine the
outcome of the 2016 presidential race is good for anyone. Yes,
it pleases those who are for the candidate who is the beneficiary
of the bias in the short term, but in the long term it is an
egregious violation of the role of the media in our American
representative democracy. It trespasses on the rights and duties of
the voters, and it violates the underpinnings of one of the pillars
of our Republic --- the role and responsibility of a free press.

As I have already said, most adult Americans already know that
my contention of media bias is true in this cycle. Some who do,
and want to rationalize its occurrence, are openly acknowledging
it, and saying it is a good thing because the biased media is
protecting the electorate from an “evil” candidate. Words like
“fascistic” and “Hitlerian” are often employed wrongly to justify
this view. In fact, it is those who use this rationale, and these
emotionally overblown words who are the ones using elitist,
totalitarian and demagogic language to serve an arrogant and
dangerous view of the role of the media in America.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the American press was extremely
partisan. Newspapers in those days were unambiguously for one
political party or another, for one political candidate or another.
As the media grew and diversified in the early 20th century, radio
and TV came into being, and standards for a "fair" press emerged.
After World War II, the principle of balanced and fair reporting of
the news was firmly established, even as the institution of editorial
opinion expression was preserved and also flourished.

In less than two weeks, U.S. voters will choose their next president.
They need to make their decision not only from reading and
listening to the opinions of others, but even more vitally, from
being presented fairly the facts, issues and prospects that will
assist them to decide their vote.

I don’t think my assertion of calling out the media will amount
to very much in the larger scheme of things, but I’m glad to add
a voice to defend the principles which create, enable and require
a free media to do its job in a free country.
.
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Copyright (c) 2016 by Barry Casselman. All rights reserved.

THE PRAIRIE EDITOR: Are These Mutineers About To Take Over?

In a few days, a national election will take place in which a
political party of mutineers, led by a woman, could likely take
over the government. This nation, which has the world’s oldest
legislature, would almost certainly be turned upside down,
and the political establishments of both major parties thrown
out.

Am I speaking about the U.S.A.? Are the mutineers Trump
supporters? Is the woman Hillary Clinton? Is the legislature
the U.S. Congress?

None of the above.

On October 29, 2016, the voters of Iceland will go to the polls
to elect their new government. The political party most likely
to win this election did not even exist three years ago. Iceland is
currently governed by a coalition of the Independence Party
and the Progressive Party. These two establishment parties now
trail the provocatively named Pirate Party that was founded by
Birgitta Jonsdottir in 2013 in response to a financial scandal
involving figures from the ruling government. Winning 3 seats in
parliament, the Pirate Party, led by Ms. Jonsdottir, promptly moved
to overthrow the nation’s blasphemy laws (Iceland’s version of
“political correctness”) and succeeded.

In 2016, following the scandal, a demonstration took place in the
nation’s capital which brought out a huge percentage of the entire
population. It is now considered the largest public demonstration,
in terms of proportion of the population, ever to take place in any
nation! (It would be the equivalent of 21 million Americans
demonstrating in Washington DC.)

From that point on, the Pirate Party has led in the nation’s public
opinion polls.

Iceland is one of the world’s smallest nations. It is also one of
the northernmost countries in the world. It is located entirely on
an island of active volcanoes, glaciers and hot springs, and has a
land mass of 40,000 square miles. Its population is 323,000 (about
the size of the city of Minneapolis). It was founded in the 9th
century A.D. by a Norwegian chieftain. It soon became an
independent commonwealth and established the world’s oldest
parliament, the Althing, in 980. Icelanders speak their own
language, Icelandic.

Unless Americans were bargain-hunting for airfares in recent
decades, and took advantage of Icelandic Air’s low rate flights to
and from Europe (always with mandatory stops in Reykjavik,
Iceland’s capital), few U.S. citizens have visited this tiny and
remote country.

Begun in poverty, and ruled from Scandinavia for most of its
history, Iceland won its independence in 1918, and became a
republic in 1944. With aid from the U.S. Marshall Plan after
World War II, the little republic industrialized, and is now rated
the 13th most developed nation on earth.

Iceland endured a financial crisis in 2008 (at about the same time
one took place in the U.S.), and many of its banks failed. Unlike
in the U.S., many bankers were jailed for their role in the crisis.
With an influx of tourism, and an international $4.6 billion
bailout, the country has recovered.

Recently, however, it was revealed that the prime minister’s wife
was involved in a financial scandal. The prime minister then
resigned and new elections were called.

Birgitta Jonsdottir is a poet, web programmer and former
Wikileaks activist in Iceland. She and her “pirate” mutineers
represent an entirely new direction in European politics. If the
Pirate Party wins on October 29 in this tiniest of European
nations, the reverberations of its mutiny could be enormous
throughout this entire ancient continent.

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Copyright (c) 2016 by Barry Casselman. All right reserved.

THE PRAIRIE EDITOR: A Roller Coaster In Hell

To say that enduring a volatile time is like riding on a rolling
coaster is a cliche, but enduring the 2016 presidential campaign
is something more --- like riding a roller caster in hell -- and
like nothing else we’ve been through collectively as a nation in
modern times. (There were some "infernal" campaign cycles in
the 19th century.)

There are now about two weeks to go. The formalities of the
primaries, caucuses, vice presidential choices, conventions
and TV debates are concluded. A few October “surprises”
have been trotted out. The polls are inconclusive (the most
accurate poll in 2012 shows Trump ahead by 2 points, two other
major polls show race tied, several major media polls show
Clinton ahead by several points).

Conventional wisdom, encouraged by the political and media
establishments, is now settling on a comfortable victory by
Hillary Clinton, a narrow take-back of control of the U.S.
senate by the Democrats, and major gains (but not control) in
the U.S. house by the Democrats. In short, a liberal landslide.

It could indeed turn out that way, but I would not rule out some
surprises, even astonishing ones, election night. Is that because I
know something secret, or even wish for something shocking at
the polls? No, it is because a presidential election cycle with so
much volatility, unconventionality, and surprise is more likely to
end with a loud noise than with a whisper.

Over the past eighteen months, I have commented regularly about
this election. After miscalculating which candidates would emerge
and win in both parties, I got the end of it partially wrong. Even
though I have been writing about voter dissatisfaction for years, I
did not see its apotheosis coming in 2016. I dismissed Donald
Trump early and often, especially after his celebrated “gaffes,”
and watched him rise back again.

I finally came up with the notion of the “mutiny of the masses,”
an uprising of a hitherto unrecognized group of Americans, many
of whom do not regularly vote, and some who usually vote for the
major parties --- all of whom are profoundly unhappy with how
government is managing its public affairs and duties.

After Bernie Sanders, the object of the liberal members of this
group was defeated for the Democratic nomination, the only
remaining champion of these mutineers was Donald Trump, the
Republican nominee. After the major party conventions, most
of the major media, including some in the conservative media,
turned their wrath on Mr. Trump in what I described as a
“media coup d’etat.” Mr. Trump, in the most unorthodox
presentation of a presidential nominee in memory, made his
way through three TV debates. Polls then wavered wildly as the
media and his opponents battered Mr. Trump even as more and
more damaging disclosures were made about Hillary Clinton,
her husband and their controversial mutual foundation.

Air Force One 2017 is now setting up its landing pattern over its
home air base. On the ground, millions of Americans await its
final touchdown,  and to see who comes out the door as it pulls
up to the electoral count. Perhaps conventional wisdom is right,
and the now-predicted winner will be the new president. Perhaps
the “mutiny of the masses” will have been only a passing phase,
and perhaps the media coup will have succeeded in its goal. I
have little concrete evidence against this conventional wisdom.

But in Brexit in the United Kingdom, national elections in
virtually all European countries, and the recent referendum in
Colombia in South America, a worldwide “mutiny of voters”
has defied the polls, the media, the experts and most
expectations.

Can that mutiny happen here?

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Copyright (c) 2016 by Barry Casselman. All rights reserved.

THE PRAIRIE EDITOR: And The Winner Of The Third Debate Was......

I think I’ve done my share of criticizing some of my media
colleagues for their performance in covering the 2016 presidential
campaign, including admitting my own shortcomings, but I am
now compelled to pay homage to journalist Chris Wallace for his
performance as the moderator of the third and final  2016
presidential debate. He was easily the biggest winner of the
night in Las Vegas.

I know a good many of the national journalists who cover
presidential politics, and count many of them as friends, but I
have not ever met Chris Wallace. He has a distinguished media
lineage, being the son of broadcast legend Mike Wallace. (I would
think his late father would be immensely proud of his son today.)

Mr. Wallace has set the gold standard. He has demonstrated that
substance can be maintained by a strong and fair moderator.
Both major political parties should require his level of
performance in moderators of all future debates.

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Copyright (c) 2016 by Barry Casselman. All rights reserved.

THE PRAIRIE EDITOR: Robert Zimmerman, Laureate

Robert Zimmerman was born in Duluth and then raised in
the remote northern Minnesota town of Hibbing seventy-five 
years ago. He has now won the 2016 Nobel Prize for
literature. Along with the prize medal, he will receive more
than a million dollars. He doesn’t need it; he’ll probably give
it to charity.

He doesn’t need the money because he’s made a fortune over
the years, and he doesn’t need the recognition of the prize
because he’s one of the most famous persons in the world
where he is known as Bob Dylan, folksinger and songwriter.

I suppose the award will be a bit controversial since Dylan is
not formally a poet, a fiction writer or a dramatist --- the usual
categories for the recipients of the prize. The Nobel committee
has given him the prize for his lifetime of songwriting and lyrics,
a music form of poetry. Since the origins of poetry are generally
believed to have arisen from early music and song, I don’t think
even “purists” about what is literature, and what is not, have a
case against this laureate. Considering his enduring body of
work, which he has refined over half a century, and the impact
of it on American and world culture, I don’t think there is a
reasonable argument that he should not be so honored.

I share a few things with Robert Zimmerman, including
perhaps most strikingly, the same birthday (although he is older
than I am). We also share a similar background, and for many
decades I have lived in the Twin Cities where he made his early
foray into a musical life. Years ago, I dated a young woman whose
mother had been Zimmerman’s religious school teacher in
Hibbing, and she told me a few stories about when he came over
to their house. Decades after that, I settled in Minneapolis to
publish a newspaper in the neighborhoods of the West Bank and
East Bank where young Bob had come in the late 1950a as a
scraggly teenager with a guitar. One of my advertisers, now
deceased, was a West Bank bar owner who had operated an East
Bank coffeehouse a few years before, and he related to me his
first-hand account of young Zimmerman coming into his Ten
O’Clock Scholar one Friday afternoon, looking to play and
sing. My bar owner friend told Zimmerman that he could
perform that evening --- which he did. At some point in the
evening, while the Hibbing teenager was playing, the bar
owner’s wife came in and asked who was playing. After he told
her the name, she reportedly said, “He’s terrible. Fire him!’
And so ended, Bob Dylan’s first professional singing gig, as it
was told to me. (He had earlier played the piano for two nights
for Bobby V’s band). The bar owner also told me he ran into
Dylan years later in Manhattan, and Dylan had remembered
him and treated him graciously. Local folks have also reported
to me seeing young Zimmerman sitting on the sidewalk in that
East Bank neighborhood called Dinkytown, and performing
for passers-by, something which folksingers still do there
today. The area was, in fact, a place where many well-known
folksingers and musicians got started, including “Spider John”
Koerner, Dave Ray, Tony Glover, John Beach, Peter Ostroushko,
Butch Thompson, Willie and the Bees, and performers from the
legendary West Bank School of Music.

I published my newspaper for fourteen years in those
neighborhoods, and lived there for many years more. From
time to time, I would hear stories about Bob Dylan coming
back to the West Bank and the Twin Cities anonymously to
see family members and to hear some of his old musician
friends perform. I did not ever see him myself, nor have I ever
met him. I probably won’t either.

Although I make a living as a journalist and writer about
history, I am first an American poet. I attended the Iowa
Writers Workshop, got a degree there, and my work has
appeared in some of the leading U.S. literary magazines.
Books of my poetry and short fiction have been published.
I guess that makes me more formally a person of “literature.”
Some of my fellow writers and others, as I mentioned earlier,
might object to Bob Dylan receiving the Nobel Prize for
literature. In fact, the Nobel committee has been quite erratic
in the recent past, awarding the prize on occasion more for
political “correctness” than for true merit, in my opinion.
On the other hand, a few years ago, the prize went to the
Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer who, in spite of being
almost unknown outside a few literary circles, was perhaps
then the greatest living poet in any language. That was an
inspired choice to be Nobel literary laureate that year --- just
as I think it was an appropriate choice to give the prize in
2016 to a Jewish kid from northern Minnesota who grew up
to sing to, and to inspire, so many around the world.

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Copyright (c) 2016 by Barry Casselman. All rights reserved.

THE PRAIRIE EDITOR: A Media Coup D'Etat?

What we are now witnessing in the 2016 U.S. presidential
election is an unprecedented media coup d’etat as many of
the combined media forces (but not all of its members) are
attempting to determine the next president before the voting
takes place.

I want to make clear that I have not endorsed either Hillary
Clinton or Donald Trump, and that I have criticized each of
them on occasions when I thought it was fair and appropriate.
I found Mr. Trump’s  recently released video tape comments
to be crude and unacceptable, and I found some of Mrs.
Clinton’s comments in the release of texts from her speeches
to be inappropriate and seriously wrong-headed.

Those are only my opinions, and I know they are not shared
in many cases by partisans of each candidate. Nonetheless,
I don’t feel it is my job or prerogative to tell my readers how
to vote in this election.

Unfortunately, many newspapers, magazines, major and cable
TV and radio networks are  choosing to take part in an attempt
to influence the outcome of the election way beyond what I
think are the acceptable standards of the media’s role in a
presidential election. To be fair, it is not only the liberal media,
but some in the conservative media as well who have joined
into this endeavor.

This has taken the forms of days and weeks of one-sided
press coverage (I distinguish that from editorial opinion), hours
of relentless and repetitious broadcasts of the most salacious
material about Mr. Trump while downplaying equally serious
material from Mrs, Clinton’s hitherto unpublished speeches
and e-mails, obviously biased moderators of the TV debates
so far, and generally one-sided coverage of the campaign itself
once the primary/caucus season was concluded, Before that,
the media clearly overplayed its coverage of Mr. Trump, and
did so mostly uncritically, giving him an unfair advantage
against his Republican nomination opponents.

I make a distinction between opinion writing and reporting
journalism. It is understood that some are writing with a
partisan point of view. My attention here is directed to those
who presume to be addressing their readers and audiences
without unfair bias.

Media bias is nothing new. Polling of reporters show that an
overwhelming majority of them are liberals and Democrats.
(Decades ago, it should be noted, most in the media were
conservatives and Republicans.) Balanced coverage is perhaps
an unrealistic expectation, but the behavior of so many media
institutions in 2016 goes beyond mere bias. The front page is
not the editorial page. No wonder all polls of public attitudes
show trust in the media to be so low.

It is understandable that much of Donald Trump’s manner, and
many of his words, turn off media and establishment elites in
both parties. It is fair to criticize him for his lapses. But Hillary
Clinton also speaks controversially and has made egregious
mistakes. To try to pretend that she does not have equally low
credibility is unjustifiable.

Fortunately, the final say in an election rests with the voters.
Donald Trump might well lose on November 8 because he was
not able to persuade enough voters that he should be president.
Perhaps he will make a comeback. It is not up to the media,
however, to try to predetermine that result by bullying the public
into their own way of thinking.

For whatever reason history has presented the American
electorate with two such flawed nominees, it is up to the voters
to sort this dilemma out on their own.

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Copyright (c) 2016 by Barry Casselman. All rights reserved.

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THE PRAIRIE EDITOR: On Writing About Food And Restaurants

Although I am a literary (poetry and fiction) writer who makes
his living writing about history and politics, I have throughout
my writing life devoted part of it to an ongoing conversation
about food and dining out. But I’m certain that if any of my
writing lasts for any time, it will not likely be my food
commentary.

We theoretically spend one-third of our lives asleep. Unless you
are a medical doctor, physiologist or psychiatrist, there is not
much to write about this huge block  of time in our daily lives.
I calculate, however, that most of us spend 3-6 hours a day in the
purchase, preparation and consumption of food. Of course, if
you are in the food/restaurant business, that daily time is much
more. It is, therefore, not a superficial or unimportant part of
virtually everyone’s daily life.

I became a professional journalist by editing and publishing two
small newspapers. I had not intended to do this. Instead, after
getting a degree from the Iowa Writers Workshop, I went to New
York City to work as a literary editor and poet. Soon enough,
however, my lack of funds brought me to Minnesota and a plan
to create a literary publishing house, and when that proved
economically unrealistic, I began to publish two community
newspapers, one in the suburbs and one in the heart of urban
Minneapolis. What made my newspapers distinctive perhaps
was that I was a literary writer and not a trained journalist.

In those days, the early 1970s, the extraordinary food culture
renaissance we are now enjoying was in its relative infancy. High
cuisine, fine wines, specialty coffees and teas, and farm-to-table
produce had been available to the very affluent for decades, but
an incipient food culture now began to be shared by many middle
class Americans. This was often led by those from Mediterranean
backgrounds, including the Spanish, French, Italian, Balkan,
Greek and Middle Eastern. Those who originated from more
northern European cultures often came later to this culinary
“revolution.”

I had come from a family which prized good food --- although until
I was in my teens, I had little contact with most ethnic food
cultures except my own plus the standard Chinese and Italian fare
from local restaurants in my small city. My grandmother was a
legendary cook, but the range of her menu was small. Her daughters
were all excellent cooks, but except for my childless Aunt Reta, the
food choices were limited. Aunt Reta once invited me over to her
house (when I was twelve) to make crepes Suzette from scratch, and
it was a thrill. The only problem was that it didn’t take much liqueur
to get me tipsy, and when my mother came to pick me up, she was
furious.

Trips to New York City and south Florida in my teens made me
gradually aware of more and more food cultures, and by the time
I got to Minnesota in my late 20s, I presumed I knew something
about food.

In fact, my food education had only begun.

I began writing regularly about food after being invited to be the
food critic of one of the state’s largest daily newspapers. The pay
was tiny, and I had my own newspaper, so I declined the offer and
began writing restaurant reviews for my own publication. This was
at the time when general interest in dining out was beginning to
boom. My anonymous reviews became my newspaper’s most popular
and best revenue-generating feature.

I have always tried to be very careful writing about food matters
I don’t know much about. I’m not a chef, nor am I a farmer,
nutritionist or restaurateur. I do have a wide-ranging palate, love
to eat, and am willing to explore for food adventures. I also took
the time to befriend talented young chefs and imaginative
restaurateurs. I soon became immersed in the local food culture,
and on frequent trips across the country, I went out of my way to
go to celebrated restaurants. A few years later, I began to lecture
(about politics) on transatlantic and other cruise ships where an
extraordinary range of fine dining was available. In my travels
abroad, especially in Europe, I aggressively sought out local
dining experiences.

I am still not truly an “expert” about food, although I have
acquired some knowledge about preparing food, running
restaurants, the difference between fresh and not-so fresh
produce, the experience of the world’s wines and craft beers,
and the cameraderie of sharing tables with other food lovers.

I also have noted the excesses of food snobbery, the artificial
preciousness of some food writing and descriptions, and the
all-too-frequent lack of good value in food pricing in grocery
stores, markets and restaurant menus.

But it is a special delight to be introduced to a new vegetable
or fruit, encounter a superb new recipe, enjoy well-prepared
foods, have a great restaurant experience, and be poured or
brewed an extraordinary wine, coffee or tea.

Being a storyteller, my approach is to try to put my food or
dining experience, good or bad, into the context of an
anecdotal account that might interest a reader. I constantly
look for not only new foods and recipes, but also the many
wonderful characters in the food culture who make it possible,
that is the chefs, the restaurateurs, the baristas, the sommeliers,
the waiters and waitresses, and of course those who grow and
produce the food we eat.

What I have learned most is that there is poetry, mystery,
philosophy and music in the food we eat and drink. It’s not
something you can learn in a school, or even acquire by reading
a cookbook. Thanks to our new food culture, it isn’t even
necessary to spend a lot of money (although some do).

For me, food writing is about paying homage more to what we
spend our time doing. Eating and drinking is something each of
us does every day --- in fact it takes about a sixth of every day of
our lives.

That this inevitable daily act can also include so many of
the insights and pleasures of our conscious life makes writing
about food perhaps as incomparable and revelatory as some
other subjects we usually take more seriously.

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Copyright (c) 2016 by Barry Casselman. All rights reserved.