J.D. Prose – 1/30/10

This page was last updated on February 2, 2010.

Veon Disciples solicit money for legal costs; J.D. Prose; Beaver County Times; January 30, 2010.

As you read this opinion column, keep in mind Mr. Prose wears at least one other hat for the Times. In addition to being an entertainer/pundit, Mr. Prose is a reporter covering political stories. Ask yourself this. When a pundit gives his political opinions in one part of the paper, can he be trusted to report politics objectively elsewhere in the paper? After all, would a person whose opinion is 1+1 equals 3 report 1+1 really equals 2? Does he have a “Chinese wall” in his head to keep his opinions from bleeding into his reporting? If it can get worse than that, Mr. Prose has made name-calling and personal attacks a foundation of his columns. If pushed, I’d be willing to bet Mr. Prose would try to excuse his writing by claiming he’s paid to be controversial and stir debate. The problem is, you don’t need to get into name-calling and personal attacks to accomplish those goals.

You can find the archive of my Prose column critiques here.

Mr. Prose’s (probably unintentional) one week hiatus from explicit name-calling ended.

Please don’t interpret the following as support for Mr. Veon. It’s only to show another example of Mr. Prose’s faulty logic.

Mr. Prose asks, “Here’s a pretty easy question to answer: Who’s more deserving of donations, Haitian earthquake victims or unrepentant former state Rep. Mike Veon?” This is a false choice and the logical extension of this is you must give all your donations only to the most deserving cause on your list. Let’s change the question to “Who’s more deserving of donations, Haitian earthquake victims or your local Humane Society?” Besides, isn’t Mr. Veon innocent until proven guilty?

Mr. Prose’s apparent man crush on Glenn Beck continues, or perhaps it’s jealousy. At least four Prose columns last year mentioned Glenn Beck complete with name-calling. As I noted before, methinks Mr. Prose doth protest too much. <g> My position on Mr. Beck is this. Though I find it difficult to get past the presentation style, whenever I checked factual claims I wanted to refer to, I found them to be accurate.