George Rebane
These pages rarely mention Jeff Pelline or comment on his work. The exception here is pursuant to an email I received this morning that contained the most recent egregious posting on Pelline’s blog that again misrepresented and attacked me.
For newer readers not familiar with the gentleman pictured nearby, Pelline was at one time editor of The Union. From our first and only meeting, we didn’t hit it off – the differences between us were too great, literally in every dimension imaginable. As the capacity and countenance of the total man became known in the community and at the newspaper, the Former Union Editor was terminated as being redundant. This deprived the very liberal, self- and loudly-proclaimed journalist of his accustomed trumpet and caused his nose to become disjointed, in which condition it has remained since.
By any measure, Pelline is a dedicated leftwinger who attempts to present himself as a middle-roader to those unfamiliar with the country’s political terrain. He has a following that he deems wholly insufficient for his obvious grandiosity. With that following he communicates through the blog which he started after leaving The Union. His posts continue to reflect a persistent bitterness toward his former employer, containing “scooplets” of local news that seek to compete with our newspaper. These droll postings of local store openings, entertainment events, etc are regularly interspersed with diatribes attacking what he understands about and/or fabricates from what is happening on the Right.
But the real burr under his blanket seems to be RR and the extension of its themes through my Union columns and KVMR commentaries. Even though my voice is an admittedly small one, it seems to be of the type that needs to be muted if not silenced in the worldview of his politics. My monthly columns and biweekly commentaries should be proscribed because they do not represent the middle-mind of the county as Pelline sees it. And being the Grand Arbiter of Political Placement and Correct Thought, he sees my views as being harmfully divergent from the permitted latitude of local thought.
So for some years now the man has continued to bitch and moan about my print and broadcast presence, and various appearances at local events. His latest apoplexy is the result of my September column ‘The Advent of Obamunism’. In his most recent diatribe – the post that launched my response – he takes a couple more steps down the ladder of journalistic standards, a ladder that apparently goes all the way down. (BTW, I am not a journalist.)
Besides repeating his special views of acceptable politics and the aggregate political leanings of our county, he attempts to show how unsuitable is my presence in this forum by again misrepresenting what I wrote, this time in regards to last June’s primary election. Pertaining to my backing Sue McGuire, he stated –
Before the election Rebane wrote: “Sue McGuire has all of the qualifications to become our new supervisor,” and I’m voting for her, not Nate Beason. – Rebane, May 30
The use of the first person pronoun outside of the quotes to convey what I said is a big no-no in journalism. I did not say “and I’m voting for her, not Nate Beason.”, which fabricated coda is even appended with the attribution “- Rebane, May 30”, thereby giving the reader the sense that the whole thing was my pronouncement.
A more competent journalist with professional standards would have written – ‘In his endorsement of Sue McGuire, who ran against Nate Beason, Rebane stated on May 30th that “Sue McGuire has all of the qualifications to become our new supervisor.” ’
(To see the variance from fact and tone in Pelline’s reporting, please read my entire post ‘Voting for Sue McGuire and Doug LaMalfa’ from which the above mal-quote was generated. Also please read Pelline’s entire piece and attempt to decipher his attributions and emphases.)
Continuing in the same perfidious vein, Pelline tells his readers that I then tried to misrepresent the local loss by Sue McGuire, by writing –
After the election, he tried to downplay the outcome: “Dammit Todd, don’t tell ‘em [we won]. Let ‘em rest in the comfort of their fabricated world.”
This tongue-in-cheek quote, sans the gratuitous [we won], was taken totally out of context, and from a comment I made on Todd Juvinall’s blog (!) under a post in which Todd summarized the overall performance of conservatives in the primaries across the United States.
Such examples of twisted journalism abound on Pelline’s blog, not only directed against me, but also against other local voices who do not fit into his mangled mold of the attitudinal profile a community should have. Hidden under his substantial ego is a very small, bitter, and nasty man who represents the worst of his profession.
I’ll end with an apology to RR readers for this tedious distraction from our usual daily round of more stimulating discussions and debates, a distraction which unfortunately also betrays my human frailties.
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