Is this the first signs of the City Pages rightward turn? CP attacks Al Franken in what they claim is "a lighthearted story not meant to be a huge expose." This is a perfect example of conservative framing: Al Franken should not be considered a serious candidate, we have anecdotal evidence that you should take at face value.
In his down time, however, Franken is apparently still quite the class clown. At least that's according to several of his neighbors in a downtown Minneapolis luxury high-rise. They say the Stuart Saves His Family star exhibits endlessly zany behavior on the treadmill in the communal workout room.
"He yells, 'Go Al!' and then puts his sweaty towel in his mouth, shakes his head back and forth, and growls like a dog," says Lauren Zeller, a 28-year-old risk consultant. "The cycle repeats: 'Go Al!,' towel, shake head, growl."
Hilary Cheeley, a health care technology project manager, says she recently caught him yelling at the television during a Twins game.
(City Pages)
The artist, Jay Bevenour, lives in Philadelphia, PA. The writer, Ben Westhoff, lives in Brooklyn, NY. Westhoff mentions way at the end (the last paragraph) that his main source is a Republican. I consider this barely mentioning that his source is more than likely politically motivated and completely disingenuous.
Westhoff claims to be a Democrat and typically writes music reviews for the Village Voice. From his debut political article, he sounds like a Joe Lieberman Democrat. The VV and CP are owned by the same media corporation, Village Voice Media. Over at MNSpeak, CP Editor Kevin Hoffmann claims:
Ben Westhoff is a native of Minnesota who currently lives in New York and freelances for the Village Voice, among other publications. He was back in town for a friend's wedding and pitched me this story, which I thought was kind of a funny look at a local celeb/political candidate.
(MNSpeak)
What happened to the days when CP had local writers covering local stories that matter? Oh yea ... that was before the Village Voice Media was taken over by New Times which some Libertarians from Arizona own. They've forced out the vast majority of the progressive voices (and some of them award winning) opting to bring in freelance attack hacks who'll write negative and petty hacktastic hackery on Democrats for some fast cash. They did the same at NYC's Village Voice. They've got a conservative cookie-cutter model they're implementing in every other paper they own. Here's a description of what went on at the Voice.
... since Michael Lacey, Jim Larkin, and their New Times papers offer much potential fodder for traditionalist Voice fear and loathing. First off, there was the old Clear Channel saw, how the New Times–VVM merger would further inhibit the already highly constrained alt-media world, all but stamping out the woolly idiosyncrasy prized by what back in the Stone Age used to be called "the underground press." This owed to the troubling "cookie- cutter" nature of the New Times model, the fact that NT publications in such disparate locales as Broward County and Dallas tended to bear a strong resemblance to each other. Critics charge this is all part of NT’s lean, mean anti-local bias orchestrated in no small part by its national-advertising arm, the Ruxton Media Group. Politically, the NT approach also raised hackles. Lacey detractor Bruce Brugmann, editor of the independent San Francisco Bay Guardian, summed up NT’s stance to the current political landscape as "frat-boy libertarian, leering neoconism. They don’t endorse political candidates. To them it is one big, cynical joke."
(nymag.com)