This Man Doesn't Know What the Hell He's Talking About

Senior Editor of MSP Magazine Adam Platt departs his official beat of urban affairs and restaurant coverage to engage in a little media criticism:

Listening to KSTP before noon is risky business. Though the station hosts Tommy Mischke and Joe Soucheray, two wonderful radio talents, it also is home to some of the intellectually weakest bombast on the radio. From Willie and Jay to [Bob Davis] to Dave Thompson, it's just big bags of opinions unmoored from any coherent intellectual philosophy. Sure it's shtick as well, but do the people who lean on its every word get that?

For now, we'll let slide the gratuitous shot at the talented and entertaining Bob Davis

Instead we turn to another of his targets, Dave Thompson. Let the record show that Dave Thompson does the radio show following Twins games on week nights. According the immutable laws of the universe, this cannot take place before noon.

Furthermore, anyone who's ever spent more than 30 seconds listening to the Dave Thompson Show would never use the word "bombast" to describe his presentation, let alone intellectually weak. If Dave Thompson can be criticized, it is for having too thoughtful of an approach and being overly dependent on the cold, logical construction of his arguments and on philosophic consistency.

Either Platt never listened to Dave Thompson before publicly sliming him or he doesn't know the meaning of the terms "intellectually weak" and "bombast." If it is the latter, allow me to help out by providing some examples of the form.

There's this:

.... cravenly rubber stamping the agenda of a President who has gone a long way to destroying our country's security and economic vitality is actually more offensive than a joke about sex with robots.

And this:

Amtrak has been bashed by idiot Republicans and transportation-ignorant types for decades, but the Midwest can only dream of the dense network of fast, frequent Amtrak trains that knit together the Eastern Seaboard.

And this:

I know most conservatives hate environmentalists and anything that portends organized efforts of obligatory social responsibility (I don't deny that many conservatives act responsibly on an independent basis), but the willful stupidity of looking at today's weather and making statements about climate change is simply too dumb to countenance.

If you would like to read more intellectually weak bombast, these, and many more examples, can be found in the archives of the Adam Platt blog.