I'm on your side, I really am.
I oppose special privileges for the especially privileged. No special interest group considers itself more, in the Dana Carvey, Church Lady sense, more "special" than so-called "journalists."
Hey, I pulled that journalism scam for 18 guilty paycheck years. Oooh, I am a journaliste. My special training and unusually large brain enables me to select certain facts and weave them into an entertaining narrative in order called (Ta Da!) Journalism! The rest of you are mere scribblers, unworthy to approach the altar of faux objective journalistas.
Even the Wisconsin State Journal is pushing special privilege legislation called the "Free Flow of Information Act." Dig that title? By now, even Miss Landers' class in Mayfield is street smart enough to recognize a scam when they trip over one.
The purpose of said "Free Flow of Information Act" is to give to the old news media (that most Americans completely distrust) special First Amendment privileges that no one else could enjoy. That is why the whole concept is totally bogus.
Is David Blaska a journalist? Hey, who isn't? Aren't we all?
Actual e-mail sent to Scott Milfred, opinion page editor of the Wisconsin State Journal:
I have a blog now, along with approximately 100,000 others. [Postscript: In Madison alone.] Does that make me a journalist? How about if I write a letter to the editor? Call in to a radio talk show? Slap up a poster. Put up a video on YouTube, post an entry on FaceBook? I'm serious. I don't mind you, so much, Scott, altho you blew it big time by not having me as a regular columnist. I just don't want John Nichols to have more First Amendment freedoms than Dear Old Dave.
Actual reply from the Milfred man:
From: SMilfred@madison.com
Subject: RE: Am I a journalist?
Date: October 25, 2007 10:34:45 AM CDT
To: dblaska@charter.net
I think you are a recovering politician and bureaucrat. ;-)
Fair warning from the soon-to-be scourge of the mainstream news media:
From: dblaska@charter.net
Subject: RE: Am I a journalist?
Date: October 25, 2007 5:52:50 PM CDT
To: SMilfred@madison.com
It will be so recorded. Thank you.
In the U.S. Supreme Court's 1972 Branzburg decision, libertarian Justice Byron "Whizzer" White affirmed that "liberty of the press is the right of the lonely pamphleteer who uses carbon paper or a mimeograph just as much as of the large metropolitan publisher who utilizes the latest photocomposition methods."
Quoting from The Weekly Standard of October 22, 2007, "Freedom of the press, White continued, 'is a fundamental personal right' that is not confined to newspaper and periodicals or any other instrument of the press."
In other words, no special privileges. We're all in this boat together!
My wife is Polish
So, theoretically, I can get away with this. (Hey, I placed a call to my wife, Marilisa Sieczkowski, in Krakow this April and the hotel operator corrected my pronunciation.)
A Polish immigrant went to the DMV to apply for a driver's license. First, of course, he had to take an eye sight test The optician showed him a card with the letters 'C Z W I X N O S T A C Z.'
'Can you read this?' the optician asked.
"Read it?" the Polish guy replied, "I know the guy."
Rim shot.
