J.D. Prose – 8/6/11

This page was last updated on August 8, 2011.

This group isn’t a bunch of smart ALECs; J.D. Prose; Beaver County Times; August 6, 2011.

As you read this opinion column and his Twitter “tweets,” keep in mind Mr. Prose wears at least one other hat for the BCT. In addition to being an entertainer/pundit, Mr. Prose is a part-time 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? (You may recall NPR claimed it fired Juan Williams for doing exactly what Mr. Prose does.) 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.

Below is a detailed critique of portions of this column.

“Thanks to the folks at Keystone Progress, we learned this past week that the innocuous-sounding American Legislative Exchange Council is really a front for right-wingers and corporations to give suggested bills to mindless politicians more than willing to do their evil bidding.”

[RWC] If Mr. Prose told the truth about just learning of ALEC and/or what it does, it speaks poorly of a professional pundit who makes his living writing political columns. I’m just a retired engineer and I ran across ALEC at least eight years ago when I started my amateur political punditry. As for what Mr. Prose wrote about ALEC, visit the ALEC website and other info sources and make up your own mind.

With “Legislative Exchange” in its name and its membership composed primarily of state legislators from across the country, what did Mr. Prose think ALEC did? Heck, the ALEC website home page even includes a link labeled “Interested in learning about ALEC Model Legislation? Click here.” If these folks are trying to hide what they do, they aren’t doing a very good job.

Since Mr. Prose didn’t tell us, who is Keystone Progress? In its own words, “Keystone Progress is a multi-issue progressive advocacy organization that combines cutting edge online organizing and communications with rapid and hard-hitting earned media strategies.” Translation using Prosespeak: KP is an “innocuous-sounding front for left-wingers and labor union management to give suggested bills to mindless politicians more than willing to do their evil bidding.” This column could be part of the group’s “hard-hitting earned media strategies.” I’m sure the only reason Mr. Prose didn’t tell us about KP is he ran out of room. <g> Then again, it could be because the KP “report” at best is an example of the pot calling the kettle black. For example, though KP may not have been involved in this particular case, does Mr. Prose want us to believe congressional Democrats cranked out the 2,000-page Obamacare bill virtually overnight by themselves? Buy that and I have a bridge to sell you.

The rest of the piece is just more name-calling.

By the way, Mr. Prose knows his employer is an evil corporation (Calkins Media, Inc., owner and operator of the BCT), right? Mr. Prose’s definition of corporation could be “businesses whose owners don’t support leftist policies.”

Finally, Mr. Prose did a good job at getting the story out to his local fellow travelers. At least one of the leaders of Beaver County Reds is wound up about it and other stuff on her Facebook page.