The Tony Award

Tony Petrangelo blogs for something called Left MN. Tony Petrangelo has a unique skill set. Most of his readers wouldn't know this, but among Tony Petrangelo's other skills, he:

• Is a world-class Parcheesi player
• Has grown forty different varieties of clematis
• Provided uncredited backup vocals on the 1971 easy listening smash "Don't Pull Your Love" by Hamilton, Joe, Frank & Reynolds, although some less charitable people suspect he actually was Reynolds
• Can emulate Lamont Cranston* by seeing what evil lurks in the heart of men

How do I know these things? Well, actually I don't. It certainly is possible that Tony Petrangelo is only an average Parcheesi player, or that he has never played the game at all. And based on the photo accompanying his blog post, it's actually likely that Tony Petrangelo wasn't even born in 1971. Truth be told, I don't know anything about Tony Petrangelo except that he blogs for Left MN.

Tony Petrangelo knows things about me, though. This I know because I read this post, in which Tony Petrangelo avers:

Of course, right-wing bloggers will distance themselves from overt expressions of bigotry while winking at it. In this case, the winking was done by Mark Heuring of Mr. Dilettante’s Neighborhood,

Tony Petrangelo knows that I'm winking because, to finish the quote:

who responded to a comment on his blog post that it “certainly is possible” that speakers at the meeting were agents provocateurs sent to make the opposition look bad.

Yeah, that responding to a comment on his blog post thing. It'll get ya every time.

Let's go back and provide a little context, shall we? Indeed, I wrote a post about a month ago concerning the vote that the St. Anthony City Council took that stopped, at least for now, a potential Islamic community center in the old Medtronic building on Old Highway 8, on the eastern edge of St. Anthony. Here is the original comment, from the estimable Night Writer:

IIRC, doesn't St. Anthony have a large percentage of university professors and such types? (I was looking into the demographics a few years ago when considering moving my mom up here). Their prejudice is generally much more subtle, if not any less virulent. Still, this is kind of an odd situation and one or two loud voices - especially the senstational ones - can skew the perception of a meeting. It kind of makes me wonder if the reactionary comments were from a true "islamophobe", or from an agent provacateur looking to lay some groundwork for a suit (which would require the Islamic community expected their application to be denied - and the story suggests that up until the meeting this was not the case).

If you read the comment in full, you see that Night Writer holds no brief for bigotry against the group trying to get the site. He merely wonders if it is possible that someone might be trying to set the stage for a lawsuit. That's a fair question, since there appears to be a lawsuit in the offing.

My response, in full:

I know there’s a certain percentage of U of M professors in St. Anthony, but it’s not a big part of the population. As for the agent provocateur idea, that certainly is possible. The population in St. Anthony skews significantly older, since a lot of people who live there have been there for a very long time, although you are starting to see some churn.

It certainly is possible. Maybe not likely, but possible. I don't know the motivations of those who spoke out against the Islamic Center. Having not reached the level of satori** that Tony Petrangelo apparently has, I don't know what evil lurks in the heart of men.

Tony Petrangelo does, though. And he offers me and his readers some advice:

I suggest that you look at the tape and ask yourself, “do these folks look and sound like CAIR plants?”

And the Pam Gellers of the world have taken notice.

The tape doesn't appear to be available at the link Tony Petrangelo provides any more. But for the sake of argument, let's stipulate that the folks who spoke out against the Islamic community center plan were (a) St. Anthony residents and (b) stone cold bigots, even though I don't know that to be true. Since Tony Petrangelo thinks so, that should be good enough for all of us. After all, it certainly is possible that Tony Petrangelo is correct.

There are a couple of points to be made here.

• I made several observations in the initial post, two of which are germane in this case. First, the St. Anthony City Council is responsible for its votes, its overall deportment and its behavior. It is not responsible for the statements that visitors make when the council is in session.
• Second, I support the Islamic community center, as you can see in the very post that Tony Petrangelo cites. I made two points about it. First:

The location for this Islamic center is not likely to be problematic for anyone. I drive by the facility every day during my commute and I would doubt that most St. Anthony residents would have even realized it was there if it weren't for the recent publicity.

         And,

It's often typical that religious congregations set up, at least initially, in non-traditional venues. I've attended religious services in old movie theaters and strip mall store fronts. You go where you can find space, so setting up shop in the basement of a suburban office building isn't particularly unusual.

         Perhaps that's winking at bigotry. It certainly is possible.

• I'm not sure what a CAIR plant would look like. Perhaps it looks like a clematis.
• What I do know is this -- no matter if Tony Petrangelo is a modern-day Lamont Cranston and knows the evil that lurks in the heart of men, or whether he's a world-class Parcheesi player or a master gardener, he took my blog post waaaaaaay out of context and gave it a meaning that it didn't have. I guess if you have satori, you can get by with that.
• As an aside, if you'll pardon my French, I really don't give a shit what Pam Geller thinks. I don't pay attention to her, don't link to her and I haven't quoted her work in nearly seven years of blogging. I usually hear about her when someone on the port side brings her name up, much in the same way that I learned about Orly Taitz a few years back. Geller's view of the case isn't relevant to the issue at hand. I have it on good authority that she's icky or something, though, and that I shouldn't pay any attention to her. For that reason alone, I am grateful that Tony Petrangelo takes on the task of monitoring the internet for intermittent bursts of Gellermania. It is good that he is willing to take one for the team that way.
• One last thing -- if you go back to my original post, make sure you read through the comments all the way to the end. Alert Twin Cities political blog readers will note that another portside blogger of note weighed in on the matter.

*I mean the Lamont Cranston who was the protagonist of the old radio show "The Shadow," not the local 70s era rock band that still appears periodically

**Satori is a Japanese Buddhist term meaning "enlightenment." I know the term not from any study of Buddhism, but rather from Kerouac's 1956 novel "Satori in Paris."