Steam Valve

Creating Victims

In its never-ending search for victims to write about, the Star Tribune is trying to whip up sympathy for homeowners whose eminent domain award goes to their lender to pay down their mortgage.  It reports: 

In an unusual twist brought about by stressed lenders and highly leveraged real estate, homeowners across the metro who are facing the loss of land due to eminent domain projects are increasingly getting notices from banks claiming rights to the proceeds. In the past, such notices were sent so rarely that county officials never saw a need to keep track of how often it happened.

What "unusual twist?"  Standard mortgage provisions require paying eminent domain proceedings to the lender.  Homeowners benefit by getting their mortgages paid off sooner, with more of their payments going to reduce principal instead of paying interest.

Minnesota law requires that the condemning authority provide notice to lenders, as well as owners, lessees and anybody else with an interest in the property when property is sought to be condemned. 

In an interesting non sequitur, the article first tells us that homeowners are getting notices from their banks claiming rights to the condemnation proceeds.  Then, in the very next sentence, we are told that county officials have never kept track of how often "it happened" that homeowners received such notices. 

How would the county have any record of notices that were sent to homeowners?  Does the Star Tribune expect the government to be the nanny that watches over pitiful homeowners unable to read the documents they sign, and to record every time lenders enforce their contractual rights against these poor, unsuspecting homeowners?  Just exactly how much intrusion into our lives will be necessary to protect us from our own ignorance?

Did this writer even attempt to get to the bottom of this non-story? Or, in her mission to infantilize homeowners and pave the way for more governmental intervention, did she think that was unnecessary?

Some Hit Hard by the Economy Have a Home to Return to

startribune.com leads with an article describing how some "Latinos in the prime of their work life are returning home because their dreams have collapsed along with the economy."

And here I thought that the economic hardships besetting us were being felt by a large swath of Americans across the board.  Why are we reading an article that implies that it's only affecting latinos who are being forced to return to Mexico?

The non-latinos adversely affected by the economic downturn don't have a place to return to.  But there's no article about that at startribune.com.

Why is that?

Victimology 101

Fox news reports today that MSNBC was "the victim of a hoax:"

MSNBC was the victim of a hoax when it reported that an adviser to John McCain had identified himself as the source of an embarrassing story about former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the network said Wednesday.

David Shuster, an anchor for the cable news network, said on air Monday that Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, had come forth and identified himself as the source of a FOX News Channel story saying Palin had mistakenly believed Africa was a country instead of a continent.

Eisenstadt identifies himself on a blog as a senior fellow at the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy. Yet neither he nor the institute exist; each is part of a hoax dreamed up by a filmmaker named Eitan Gorlin and his partner, Dan Mirvish, the New York Times reported Wednesday.

Now, let me get this straight: MSNBC reports as "news" derogatory statements about Sarah Palin that it attributed to somebody that doesn't even exist, described as a senior fellow at an Institute that doesn't even exist, and MSNBC is a victim????

Gee, I always thought that the media had an obligation to make sure that what it was reporting was actually true. That makes MSNBC negligent, not victimized.

If there was any victim here, it was Sarah Palin.

But here's the best part:

The Fox news report goes on to say:

The hoax was limited to the identity of the source in the story about Palin -- not the FOX News story itself. While Palin has denied that she mistook Africa for a country, the veracity of that report was not put in question by the revelation that Eisenstadt is a phony.

In other words, the fact that the information came from someone who lied about his own identity and his credentials does not put the veracity of the information in question?

It is widely believed that people who lie to others about one thing are more likely to lie to others about something else. And people who lie about their own identity in order to get attention, as this filmmaker apparently did, should have no credibility at all.

Some might say that we're all victims of a media that passes on lies without so much as checking into the identity of their source. Or we're victims of our own gullibility if we believe what comes out of media outlets who've been shown time and time again to be reporting falsehoods and biased stories.

Cross-posted on Truth v. The Machine