A refresher - Betsy Hodges, the Mayor of Minneapolis, was out canvassing in North Minneapolis for election 2014 with other community organizers. At one point, she posed for a picture with another community organizer, an African America man, with each of them pointing a finger at each other. If you've seen the video of the pose, it's clearly a social, Stephen Colbert like, fun pose between two people on a November day.
The Minneapolis police union, upset that a month earlier the Mayor addressed wanting more police accountability, created a completely made up story, insisting the finger point was the Mayor of Minneapolis making gang signs. It didn't matter the picture had laughing, smiling faces, it didn't matter the gesture was a common gesture everyone uses, and it didn't matter no Minneapolis gangs were affiliated with a gang sign of a pointing finger. The police union got all in a huff and insisted the Mayor had taken sides with street gangs instead of the Minneapolis police.
The police union went around to numerous media outlets to try to get them to run with their smear campaign. I've talked with people from the Star Tribune, Pioneer Press, Channel 4 and Channel 11, all of whom insisted they told the police there was no story there, and they all refused to do the police union's bidding.
Then came KSTP 5, a media outlet owned by a family, Hubbard, who openly supports Republicans. In the past, Channel 5 has refused to run truthful Democratic ads attacking Republican candidates they support (Mills), while at the same time they seem to have zero filters when it comes to running lying attack ads against Democrats. They jumped at the chance to go after the Democratic Mayor of Minneapolis, sending faithful reporter Jay Kolls out to try his best to drum up outrage at the nefarious "point heard round the world."
What happened next was all out mockery of KSTP 5, with plenty of scorn and snickers from local, national and international news outlets. I did a quick funny interview about it with an Irish radio station, and Jon Stewart dedicated a segment of the Daily Show to dismantling the non existent story. Here's a link: http://www.cc.com/video-clips/3dzi3m/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-signs-of-anarchy
KSTP tried desperately to recovery their integrity, but by refusing to apologize for the ludicrous police union hit story, they never have, and even still today are considered a lesser news outlet in the Twin Cities. Over time, the laughing ended and the story went away. Kolls somehow kept his job. You'd think he'd have wiped his brow, let out a very vocal "Whew," and went about his life. After I openly made jokes about him, Jay Kolls blocked me on Twitter in 2014, as well as numerous others who said anything about #Pointergate. He might have been deleting any embarrassment from his life, but he also seems to be very sensitive about it all, as he should be!
#Pointergate was such a huge mistake, that even today, Kolls gets poked online, like when Andrew Urevig asked on Twitter if he ever apologized for smearing Mayor Hodges. What Jay should've done is ignore and block Andrew, as there is NO defense for his actions. That's what he should of done. Instead:
Oh for God's sake. Jay, what are you doing?!? Shut up! You are already a laughing stock because of #Pointergate and time will NEVER make it better. You were a fool to do the story and KSTP were fools to air it. You should just delete all of your public social media accounts and cruise quietly to your retirement. YOU CAN'T WIN THIS! YOU JUST CAN NOT! Stop trying. You come off as still trying to make Mayor Hodges, one of the nicest politicians I've ever met, into some sort of gangland mastermind, while insisting you're so familiar with street culture you know where all the gangs are hanging out at all times. You sound like an idiot who tried to bluff your story into reality. Just SHUT UP!
Jay Kolls and KSTP, I'm pointing at YOU! The world was never laughing with you, but laughing at you. Even the police union has moved as far away from this stink pile as they can. It's time for you to do the same. Please stop embarrassing yourselves.
KSTP/Kolks are hacks.
ReplyDeleteYour last few shows with the pointing out of the laziness/absurdity of our local media are spot on. And I voted yes to see the amphibian molester Soucheray with a potato.