From Steve Timmer's award of the Spotty -
Brian Lambert penned an endorsement, but it’s more than that, really, of Ilhan Omar over the unknown cipher (sorry, I betray my opinion in the matter) Antone Melton-Meaux for the Fifth District DFL nomination. As somebody who has lived an area that has see-sawed between the Third and the Fifth District four times while I lived in the same house, I found this paragraph really resonant:
Ms. Omar is hardly a bashful flower. She likes the stage and the lights. No one will confuse her with quiet, plodding Marty Sabo [or others we could name, ed.]. And that’s good. This is a wildly different time.
You owe it to yourself to read the entire thing.
In its endorsement of Omar’s opponent, the Star Tribune editorial board said it favored Melton-Meaux because of his “integrity.” I asked the question, “Have you got a source?” Maybe he took a polygraph in the conference room while the ed board watched.
I suspect that Melton-Meaux’s integrity was entirely self-reported.
Remember, a Spotty™ is awarded, in the name of my old alter ego, to the writer of an op-ed, letter to the editor, or blog story or comment that I wish I had written myself.
Timmer's work has been followed and at times highlighted at Crabgrass. Timmer put in a teaser quote from Lambert to encourage reading the entire thing, so, same here, and there even is an intelligent comment stream! Lambert wrote:
Far from being detrimental, the noise Omar and the others are making, both impudent and imprudent to the ears of sclerotic institutions like the Star Tribune editorial page, is actually healthy for a functioning democracy. And absolutely vital to one like we have today, which is being rotted out from within by an enormous cast of shameless, homogeneous charlatans. (You want eye-rolling? Zoom me any time the Strib natters on about the anodyne values of “reaching across the aisle”, “consensus-building” and “pragmatism.”)
I am jealous, both about better writing from others, but more against MN5, for sequentially having Kieth Ellison and then Omar represent it, while in MN6 where I live the sequence was Michele Bachmann and Tom Emmer. Birds of a feather flocking together, each district, and while Emmer is a step better than Bachmann, that is like saying a destructive fire might be less a worry than a major deadly one.
There was Dump Bachmann, a website inspired by Emmer's predecessor; while Emmer has far to go to earn the scorn Bachmann generated being herself. Of note, Stephen Miller, Trump's Hater in Chief, got his DC start as a Bachmann staffer.
Ilhan Omar will be reelected. Outside money aside, she speaks truth. Truth hurts some folks' sensibilities, but more of truth, even becoming the norm, would be fun getting used to.