Paul Allen, radio voice of the Vikings, mocks Minnesota protestors
On his KFAN morning show Friday, Allen suggested that protest marchers are paid
He has the same First Amendment rights I have. And he has opinions he cares to speak up about, with a forum that reaches more people locally than I do. Viking ownership has the right to react any way they choose, depending on if he is an employee at will, or as more likely, under a contract possibly with a clause about conduct reflecting badly upon the team and ownership.
How things shake out with regard to ownership outlook will be a future determination.
What the reporting is:
While discussing the cold with former Vikings linebacker Chad Greenway, Allen said, “In conditions like this, do paid protesters get hazard pay? Those are the things that I’ve been thinking about this morning.”
The moment was saved by awfulannouncing.com and can be heard here.
“Probably not gonna touch that one,” Greenway said, according to an audio clip posted by the web site awfulannouncing.com.
Allen continued. “Everyone’s catching strays this week,” he said, citing NFL quarterback Baker Mayfield and former NFL QB Charlie Batch. “They’re just all over. Protestors caught one this morning.”
The remark, which pushes the false narrative that protesters are paid by left-wing groups, is commonly made to undermine the importance of social protest. It drew immediate ire on social media.
With the freedoms we all have, ownership included, the Wilf family would be free to endorse Allen's opining, or to act in some other way.
The bottom line seems the man has expertise in sports broadcasting (unlike the TV coverage showing coaches in the press box or sideline closeup or parents in the stand instead of the field where offensive and defensive formations on the field and player substitutions can instead be covered). His range of opinions, however, are a mixture of experience and outlook, but with no particularized expertise. I have opinions. He has opinions. If fired, he could be replaced with one of equal or better expertise and talent, or one less gifted. But with social media reacting owhership likely should pay attention and act as they feel best for their business interests and for the cohesion of their team members and administrative people.
We have freedoms. We face responsibility. Myself, I publish and realize I could end up snatched on the street and sent to an El Salvador hellhole by these people I criticize. It is not likely, but could happen. Risks exist.
My opinion, This Allen guy is a horse's ass. If he does not like my saying so, he can sue me. All it takes is a lawyer and the filing fee. Bless him.
We live in America. More formally, in the U.S. of A. With all that it means.
____________UPDATE___________
The outlet publishing of the radio commentary is a matter of editorial choice. The same statewide outlet also published an AP feed: "From frigid quiet to outraged sorrow, a few hours on Minneapolis street where agents killed man," a second AP feed, "Videos of deadly Minneapolis shooting contradict government statements," and an NYTimes feed, "In court filings, witnesses describe fatal Minneapolis shooting of Alex Pretti." That third item is helpful because of the NYTimes having a paywall.
If PiPress did any editorial, I did not do any excessive degree of searching, but found none. They covered what they saw fit, in the way they saw fit. The NYTimes feed ended:
Those sworn statements were filed as part of a lawsuit backed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota that accused federal agents of repeatedly violating protesters’ rights during a recent surge of immigration enforcement. The federal judge hearing that case issued an injunction earlier this month that imposed restrictions on agents. The Trump administration appealed, and an appellate court issued an administrative stay this past week that blocked the injunction.
On Saturday, lawyers for the protesters filed an emergency motion that asked the appellate court to allow the injunction to go back into effect.
That's news. They published it. The overall reporting at PiPress seems to be less judgmental and less supportive of local official actions and opinions than that at Strib, but that's only a guess. It's an outlet I bookmarked, but do not follow closely.
My hope is the injunction is reconsidered and reimposed, but that's editorial, not news reporting. Likewise my hope is the hateful siege gets lifted and Trump removed because of dementia. Again an editorial thought, but with factual reported bases.
____________FURTHER____________
Across the Atlantic The Guardian appears more editorially inclined:
Alex Pretti’s death could be a moment of reckoning for Democrats to call time on Trump waging war on his people
Opening paragraphs:
Wearing helmets, gas masks and camouflage fatigues, the federal agents took aim and prepared to open fire. “It’s like Call of Duty,” one could be heard saying via a TV mic, referring to a first-person shooter military video game. “So cool, huh?”
This was the scene on the streets of Minneapolis on Saturday after armed agents, wearing masks and tactical vests, wrestled 37-year-old Alex Pretti to the ground and shot him dead. The killing took place just over a mile from where Renee Good was fatally shot on 7 January, a scene that itself was less than a mile from where police murdered George Floyd in May 2020.
“How many more residents, how many more Americans need to die or get badly hurt for this operation to end?” the Minneapolis mayor, Jacob Frey, demanded at a press conference on Saturday, referring to the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration crackdown in Minneapolis. An angry crowd gathered and swore profanities at federal officers, calling them “cowards” and telling them to go home.
Donald Trump spoke of “American carnage” in his first inaugural address nine years ago. The US president has surely delivered it by deploying Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to the streets of a major city in order to create a spectacle of terror reminiscent of a civil war – or a video game.
In the first year of his second presidency, Trump’s ICE deployments have been carefully aimed at cities that are Democratic-led and often Black-led, as if imposing collective punishment for their defiance. In this, he is borrowing from an authoritarian playbook reminiscent of Saddam Hussein of Iraq targeting the Kurds or Soviet leader Joseph Stalin causing the Holodomor, or “death by hunger”, in Ukraine.
It is the same vengeful petulance that in the past week alone has seen Trump lash out at Canada and other Nato allies over perceived slights in Davos during his quest to conquer Greenland.
Trump seems to reserve a special loathing for Minnesota because he lost the presidential elections there in 2016, 2020 and 2024, despite most neighbouring states voting in his favour. He recently made the false claim that he won Minnesota all three times. In reality, no Republican – not even Ronald Reagan – has prevailed there since Richard Nixon in 1972.
I would call it Trump's fetish to conquer Greenland, rather then "quest." Continuing:
Minnesota is home to the biggest Somali community in the country, making it a target of Trump’s animus: this week, he described Somalis as “low-IQ people”, not even trying to conceal his racism. It is also home to Somali-born Ilhan Omar, a progressive congresswoman who gets under Trump’s skin. The state’s governor, Tim Walz, is a trenchant critic of the president who was Kamala Harris’s running mate in the 2024 election that she lost to Trump.
Garrett Graff, a journalist and historian, wrote on his Doomsday Scenario blog this week: “This is what fascism looks like – there is no bright line between democracy and autocracy, it’s a spectrum, and not all of the country will experience that switch at the same moment in the same way. But let’s be clear: there is a US city living under occupation by fascist presidential secret police right now.”
That conclusion was hard to avoid on Saturday. TV pictures showed the air thick with teargas as agents forced one protester to the ground. He could be heard shrieking: “I’m a United States citizen! You’re gonna kill me! Is that what you want? You want to kill me?” Nearby a woman was kneeling and screaming as a man tried to comfort her.
The protester fatally shot by a federal officer was identified as ICU nurse Alex Pretti. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claimed that officers fired “defensive shots” after a man with a handgun approached them. Walz accused the authorities of a “rush to judgment” and called the shooting “sickening”.
The DHS and other government authorities have already shredded their credibility with false and misleading claims in the past. A chorus of Democrats reacted in horror to the shooting and called on ICE to get out of Minneapolis, with some urging Congress to cut off its funding.
[...] The past week in Davos felt like an inflection point when western leaders drew a line in the sand over Trump’s bullying over Greenland and said: no more. Pretti’s death could be a similar moment of reckoning for Democrats and others in the domestic arena to call time on Trump waging war on his own people.
The Guardian did not expressly say "batshit crazy" but they know it when they see it. Nor did they get into Vance and courage and not indifference being needed to begin looking into the 25th Amendment, yet the question is there. It seems the Siege on Minnesota can only be lifted with the racist demented heart of hate sidelined. (Taking Stephen Miller and The Turner Diaries with him). JD should take the lead in sidetracking the three, Trump, Miller and the novel; but will he?