http://www.startribune.com/featuredColumns/12551256.html
My husband mentioned this morning that Normandale Community College had made Minnesota Public Radio, and the front page of the Star Tribune. Hey, that's big news, right? Think again.
The subject of this "news" isn't so much Normandale as Katherine Kersten's conservative blow-hard blog "Think Again," which recently featured a brief sort-of-journalistic article about the meditation room at Normandale. That room, a temporary space, is primarily being used by the school's large population of Muslim students who observe traditional prayer practices: five times per day, after washing one's feet, in separate areas for men and women. Kersten "checked it out" on a "tip" and was deeply offended by what she found. Muslims praying in a public education institution! Muslims leaving their Muslim literature for other Muslims in the prayer room! Rumors of conflicts over use of the room between Muslims and non-Muslims! Shocking.
Never mind the fact that the 30-something Kersten undoubtedly spent her youth in the classroom standing to pledge allegiance to the flag each morning, a citizen of "one nation under God." So did I.
The conservative blog Powerline picked this up, as did a few other issues blogs (including the Lake Minnetonka Liberty, for crying out loud), mainly reprinting the article while inserting occasional opinion commentary between the copyright paragraphs. Meanwhile, Kersten's Star Tribune blog attracted hundreds of comments, and the ensuing dialogue devolved into "conservatives" and "liberals" slinging insults at each other from opposite sides of the Internet security blanket. The new president of the college wrote a letter attempting to temporize, but not before a fair amount of attention was paid to the blog feeding frenzy.
Interestingly, both the Strib blog and the MPR commentary are much harder to find via Google, some 24 hours later, than are the many non-news-media reprintings of the Powerline reprinting of the original blog article (with accompanying inserted comments.) From the opinions of one paid blogger, a cheap but primary source, to the entirely inelegant commentaries of tertiary bloggers who rip the article and post it on their own sites to boost the perceived content. This is news, folks.
Given that my husband teaches at Normandale, I don't enjoy the same liberty as Kersten to comment with any depth on the content of Kersten's original report: blogs have a disheartening way of biting you in the ass at inopportune times. But I can honestly say I'm disappointed in Katherine Kersten, as a published writer; and in the Star Tribune for treating this muckraking blip on the local radar as an opportunity to boost readership for a few hours, and nothing more. Why not give the issue real journalistic attention, if it deserves that; and if not, why pay writers like Kersten to stir the local shitstorm? The issues immediately become obscured by a thick coating of foul-smelling diatribe.
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