Fraters Libertas

A Roast for Yost

Mark Yost wraps up his series on the sources of outsourcing with his descriptively titled column, Taxes and Regulation Are Killing US Jobs. (With editorial page headlines, apparently there is no time for subtlety.)

I recommend you read it all, it's typically insightful and provocative stuff.

Also appearing in today's editorial page are signs that Yost is starting to make a few waves in the stagnant, mono-ideological waters most readers have come to expect from the local editorial pages. (Note - I tried to work the word "fecund" into that sentence - and failed. Turns out it doesn't mean anything like what it sounds.)

Today's Pioneer Press Letters to the Editor page should have included a picture of Yost's face superimposed over a piñata. No less than six correspondents have been roused from their complacent stupors to line up and take their swings at three separate columns.

Included today is a by-lined anti-Yost Commenty from Graham Lampa. He's a student organizer from Hamline, responding to a Yost editorial critical of that college's banning of military recruiters, due to the "don't ask, don't tell" policy towards gay soldiers:

At the same time that you belittle our efforts to create a campus free of all forms of discrimination, you slight us with prejudicial attacks on our age and our status as students. We are not children and we will not be treated as such.

If I may summarize Mr. Lampa's argument: waaaaaanh!

Also, today alone, five letters to the editor, criticizing three different Yost editorials. Highlights:

... it is the worst kind of divisive editorializing ...

I choose to call Yost's column morally bankrupt.

Yost owes every family of every man and woman serving in Iraq or Afghanistan a huge apology.

All that from just a dash of Conservative perspective on the hallowed grounds of the editorial page. And it doesn't stop there. Next, a couple of casual Nazi projections, proving the worst crime in modern history is often the first refuge of critics of conservatives:

[Yost] also posits that the value of a person is strictly financial. Do we dare ask how this thought applies beyond immigration policies, say to retirees or to developmentally disabled adults?

Then there is the overall argument that "intelligence" should dictate American immigration policy, which, given the eugenics movement at the beginning of the 20th century, is really frightening.

That last comment is from a letter also including this whiny yawp of frustration:

I am tired of the elevation of the United States over the rest of the world. I am tired of arguments that place economic growth over the needs of people.

Not to join the love it or leave it chorus, but there is a place where this letter writer could go where the US is not elevated above that rest of the world. That would be, THE REST OF THE WORLD. Those countries place their self interest above everyone else, every time. And they don't even have to feel guilty about it. It seems to me this correspondent would be a lot less troubled over there.

Finally, a letter providing a grand unified theory of Yost criticism:

In rebuttal to Yost's column, both many others and myself are perplexed that a man of such ineptitude and "class-baiting" deserves a job with a newspaper of such stature. Going off half-cocked at a senator who is not of Yost's political persuasion or blaming blue-collar workers for the welfare state isn't professional journalism. Nor does it produce any viable solutions for society.

Three generations ago the U.S. government didn't give handouts to the immigrants in my family.

"Fixing the problem" is always the answer. Remove the handouts and give "our best and brightest" the jobs (or tell educators to better prepare them). Partisan politics and class warfare such as Yost's are divisional, biased and highly unbecoming of his position.

Believe it or not, this letter was not signed "Rip Van Winkle, Hopkins."

He's shocked at partisan politics showing up in the Pioneer Press editorial pages? If this guy's not waking up from a 100-year nap, he's at least waking up to the fact that there actually is another side to the argument. A rude awakening I'm sure, for someone used to what the paper has traditionally served up.

It looks like the herd is finally getting spooked by the Pioneer Press's rightward tip in its editorials. How long can this bum's rush of rhetorical sniping continue at Yost? Hard to say, but it's quite possible, in this 52-48 state, Yost could achieve constant partisan scrutiny and acrimony. Although he won't truly arrive until some brilliant, left-leaning blogs dedicate themselves to second-guessing his every utterance. (The existence of such brilliant, left-leaning blogs, still a matter of speculation.)

Lest the Pioneer Press management start to get the impression that these letters are the totality of opinion on the work of Mark Yost, a letter of support, if you're so inclined, would seem to be in order.

Not that he needs help in refuting his critics. (Most of these people can be sufficiently answered with one question: 'Where do you buy your crack?') As an example of what the nay-sayers face when challenging the arguments of a responsible professional, I refer you to what the other member of the PiPress Right Bros., Captain Fish Sticks, had to say to a letter writer challenging him.

Yowza - there he goes again, systematically dismantling a bomb throwing challenger for the second time this week. Now that's responsiveness to the readers (far more than they wish, I'm sure). And an example of an effective disincentive for publicly going off half-cocked over what somebody said in the newspaper. It's another blogging miracle!