Tina Smith made a very pleasant visit to Morris recently. It's good she was part of a group that went around, for her own safety. Look at the news out of Michigan this past week. The Trump/Republican crowd is getting more hardened with every passing day, it seems.
Yes, there are a fair number of Democratic-oriented signs around Morris, along with "Black lives matter," but the folks counter to all this seem ever more energized, and it's getting rather scary. If you vote Democratic, are you automatically suspected of being "Antifa?" What exactly is "Antifa?" Is it any sort of organized group at all? Is it a boogeyman propped up by Trump? Rhetorical question.
Gretchen Whitmer is safe. Our U.S. Senator Tina Smith, buttressed by being part of a contingent, stayed safe. Who knows what all lies ahead?
I have a post on my "Morris of Course" site about Smith's most pleasant visit to Sarlettes Music where she shared how she had been an oboe player. I told Del "she looks like an oboe player." Maybe I'm remembering Robin Dunnum, MHS Class of '72. Here's the permalink to my "Morris of Course" post:
Ol' Forum Communications
The Forum of Fargo couldn't cut it here in Morris but they'd like us to listen to their political endorsements. So the Forum is telling us this time around not to vote for Smith but for Jason Lewis. Groan. Need we trot out any of Lewis' offensive statements from the past? Evidently we need to.
He has bemoaned how it is no longer acceptable to call women "sluts." He has argued that "young single women" who vote based on coverage of birth control pills were not human beings and were without brains, according to a 2018 CNN article. Oh I know, the GOP/red state Trump crowd would say "CNN is fake news." Lewis made his "sluts" comment after Rush Limbaugh caused a stir in 2012 with comments about women's rights activist Sandra Fluke.
"Are we beyond those days where a woman can behave as a slut, but you can't call her a slut?" Lewis dramatically intoned on a subject that probably doesn't cross our minds often. The language ought not. Wonder what lurks in the recesses of his mind to promote such thoughts. But this is the person who Forum Communications, former owner of the Morris paper, wants to be our new U.S. Senator. Heaven help us all.
Ed Morrison wrote at the time of the Forum coming here, that this company was "one of the best" for harnessing all the cutting edge tech in media. Bill Marcil Sr. of the Forum spoke to us about all the "synergy" the company was going to employ. So much, I guess, they ended up in a position where they were going to shut down the Morris paper. I got that info from a very well-placed source in the newspaper business, who in turn had his own unimpeachable sources, he said. He's credible.
If the Morris paper had closed, would government legal notices be placed in the Chokio Review? Papers are notorious for lecturing government on how the old legal notices system must not be discarded just because we have the Internet. They talk like it's a God-given right for them to keep getting the money for legal notices on their pages, because gosh almighty, they really do want the money. Oldest motive in the world.
But at the same time they preach on this inalienable right of theirs, they reserve the right to just go out of business. Hmmm.
The Anfinsons came to Morris to rescue the paper. Sue Dieter, the manager under the Forum, just seemed to vanish - no goodbye column or quotes that I can recall. Maybe Dieter knew of the Forum's intentions and wasn't disclosing much of anything, but word leaked out, to certain people anyway, who would have reacted: "Holy cow, we can't lose our newspaper in Morris."
At the same time we're hearing the Whitmer news, the planned abduction, I'm hearing sharper rhetoric from the Trump cult members around Morris. There's a restaurant where you can hear this sometimes, like the remark I heard the other morning about a Morris police officer who apparently has a Biden sign in his yard. The Trump people are most frowning as they think their guy is on the side of the police, period.
But what about the women? We need advocates for them too, nothing like what Jason Lewis presents. And if local police are receptive to voting Biden/Harris, I say all the more power to them! And I tend to be a police skeptic.
Congrats to Morris Area School
Yes we got a decent MAHS Homecoming under our belts, n'est-ce pas? We can appreciate so much with media inroads like the school's YouTube channel. We had nothing like this when I was a young lad. My "Morris Mojo" podcast episode for today, Oct. 10, focuses on media, and asks if MACA should take full ownership of its media outreach. The radio and newspaper might be sidelined. So I invite you to listen by clicking:
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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