May 4, 2007 9:32 AM

"Here's a Good Idea - Have A Point!"

I really love this - Billings Gazette reporter Ed Kemmick attacks me, and from what I can tell, it doesn't seem like he actually bothered to read the article he is attacking. You'll notice he doesn't question any of the facts reported in the piece because they are all supported (and anyway, why should a reporter today analyze the actual facts?). Instead, he just creates a storyline in his head and then applies it to what I've written, even though the actual text of the article says nothing about what he laments.

After trying to make some sort of point about the budget surplus (it's so incoherent I can't really figure out what he's trying to say), he makes a sad attempt to claim my article was some sort of diss on Butte America - a laughable charge. Butte is a terrific place with terrific salt-of-the-earth people, as I said in the article. But its economy has been devastated by exactly what I described in my article. Somehow, Kemmick - a reporter - would like us to believe that reporting on that basic fact is insulting to Butte. It's sort of a sad, pathetic economic version of the hysterical right-wing charge that reporting on what's actually going on in Iraq is somehow bad for/insulting to the troops and "anti-American." Highlighting the realities of Butte's economy is not anti-Butte in any way - and its pretty sad that a journalist would make such a charge. And claiming Butte's economy hasn't been hurt as Kemmick implies is to behave as blindly as the CEOs who jet-setted out here this week to trumpet free trade's benefits to ordinary workers.

Ed says folks in Butte "have little patience for the kind of reformers who parachute in like a movie star visiting a refugee camp and then use the picture of poor old Butte to trumpet their latest cause." I'm not really sure who he's talking about, and I certainly can't believe he's talking about me because I never thought the hour or so drive from my place in Helena down to Butte was the equivalent of "parachuting in like a movie star" (I also never thought of myself as "a movie star"). Maybe he's referring to Citigroup executive Bob Rubin and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke who came to Butte last week. But then, that would seem odd considering, as I said in my article, it would be strange to have the captains of global finance use Butte to trumpet THEIR latest cause in the class war.

Ed's blog today reminds me of a hilarious line from the movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles. "When you tell one of your stories," says Steve Martin to John Candy, "here's an idea: have a point. It makes it so much more enjoyable for the listener." Words to live by, Ed. And here's one other tip: Next time, try reading the content of what you are "analyzing" - it really would make your writing more, um, relevant.