J.D. Prose – 3/17/13

This page was last updated on March 24, 2013.

If Corbett has lost women, it’s all downhill from here; J.D. Prose; Beaver County Times; March 17, 2013.

According to his Twitter page, Mr. Prose is a self-described “Surly progressive.” 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 critique of portions of this column.

“We hate to beat a dead horse, but in this case, the horse deserves to be beaten and then tossed into some European frozen lasagna. Bon apetit!”

[RWC] Mr. Prose and his editor need a spellchecker for French.

“Here’s the first line from Public Policy Polling’s summary of its survey released Tuesday: ‘Tom Corbett — already among the country’s most unpopular Governors — has seen his position worsen considerably over the last two months.’

“And, here’s the last line: ‘Obviously, we’re still a long way off from 2014, but for now Corbett looks like the most endangered Governor in the country up for re-election next year.’ Oof.

“In between were some startling numbers showing Corbett TRAILING Democrats such as U.S. Rep. Allyson Schwartz, former U.S. Rep./losing Senate candidate Joe Sestak, Treasurer Rob McCord, former state DEP secretary John Hanger and former state Revenue secretary Tom Wolf after LEADING all five of them in January.

“We’re no statistician, but that appears to be a downward trend.

“Corbett trailed Schwartz, Sestak and McCord by 11 percentage points, Wolf by 9 percentage points and Hanger by 7 percentage points. PPP noted that the leads were especially eye-opening because none of the Democrats, even Sestak at 52 percent, have impressive name recognition numbers … and, we’ll add, everybody knows Corbett all too well.”

[RWC] Forgive me for being skeptical of poll results that happen to support the ideology of the pollster. According to Wikipedia, PPP “is labeled as a Democratic firm because in its private client work, it conducts polls only for Democratic campaigns and progressive [leftist] organizations.” This is at least the second time I’m sure Mr. Prose meant to clue his readers in about PPP but ran out of space. <g> That PPP is a Democrat firm doesn’t make its results wrong, but its political leaning should be noted when citing its results.

“Quinnipiac University followed that up with a poll released Wednesday that had Corbett pitted against the same Democratic field and trailing Sestak, Schwartz, the unfamiliar state Sen. Mike Stack and the even-more-unfamiliar Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski.

“Corbett led Hanger, businessman Tom Knox, McCord and was tied with Wolf (39 percent each). Notably, 53 percent of women disapprove of Corbett.

“‘Pennsylvania voters, especially women, don’t like Gov. Corbett and are ready to consider several possible Democratic challengers,’ said Tim Malloy, the assistant director of Quinnipiac’s Polling Institute.

“We’d offer Corbett some free advice on how to turn things around, but we don’t know what it’s like to be unpopular with women.”

[RWC] Given colleges are bastions of the left, my comments about PPP also apply to QUPI.

Did you note what’s missing? At no point did Mr. Prose identify what allegedly makes Gov. Corbett unpopular.

“LEAST OF BURDEN

“There’s a specious argument that claims background checks for gun purchases would somehow burden private sellers and buyers because … uh … communism?

“Mayors Against Illegal Guns released a map last week that shoots down (pun!), at least in this state, the whole theory that driving to a gun dealer to get a background check done is soooooo difficult.

“MAIG found that 99.97 percent of Pennsylvanians live within 10 miles of a gun dealer. So, it wouldn’t be so cumbersome for sellers/buyers to drive … what? … 20 to 25 minutes — at the most — to get a background check done.

“Is this really unreasonable, our NRA friends? You have to jump through more hoops to adopt a dog for Pete’s sake.”

[RWC] Had Mr. Prose spent less time making ellipses and more on research, he would have found Pennsylvania requires state-licensed sellers to perform background checks using the Pennsylvania Instant Check System operated by the Pennsylvania State Police. Depending on the firearm, private sellers must use a licensed dealer to make a sale and the dealer must perform a background check as he would if he were the seller.

“BABY STEPS

“We might just have a regular feature here checking on all the bills Teapublican U.S. Rep. Keith Rothfus supports. The latest bill Keith’s co-sponsoring to create jobs, jobs, jobs, is HR 447, a bill that criminalizes performing an abortion based on the gender, sex, color or race of ‘the child’ or the race of a parent.”

[RWC] This is a bill lefties should like. Aren’t lefties the guys who tell us the punishment for an act should be greater if things like “gender, sex, color or race” are a factor? You know, the so-called “hate crime.” If he doesn’t support “HR 447,” I guess Mr. Prose supports killing unborn babies simply because of “the gender, sex, color or race of ‘the child’ or the race of a parent.” If you think this is an unfair representation of Mr. Prose’s position, I refer you to my critique of his column entitled “Voting for anti-violence bill before voting against it.”

“Hey, that should eliminate unemployment completely!”

[RWC] As I asked in my critique of last week’s Prose column, how many jobs were generated as a result of the so-called “jobs” programs passed during the last several years?

Here are some telling facts. In two consecutive columns, Mr. Prose wrote about Rep. Rothfus (in office for less than three months) and jobs/unemployment. During the approximately four-and-a-half years Mr. Prose had his “official” pundit column while Jason Altmire (D) was our U.S. rep, I found no mention in those columns of Mr. Altmire in connection with jobs/unemployment. The same was true for then-Rep. Mark Critz (D), Mr. Rothfus’ opponent in the 2012 election. In fairness, though, Mr. Prose understandably ducked the jobs/unemployment issue in general except when calling for the extension of unemployment benefits.

“As one Democratic Wag quipped, ‘Why not sexual orientation? Aborting gay babies is OK?’

“Now, that’s just silly. Everybody knows babies don’t choose to be gay until AFTER they’re born and start watching the Teletubbies.”

[RWC] It’s interesting Mr. Prose and his imaginary “Democrat Wag” think killing unborn children is something to joke about. Once you cross the line to support abortion, I guess there aren’t many lines you won’t cross.