Ordinary Lazy Hack Journalist of the Week
By Ladies and gentlemen, I present Christina Capecci, a young Catholic lifestyles columnist who was apparently the only person the Times could find to write a story about the impending Coleman-Franken recount. Chris Stellar
A man presented as an “ordinary voter” in a New York Times article today about the impending recount in Minnesota’s U.S. Senate race has strong ties to the Republican Party and conservative causes that the article does not reveal. . . .
Rouen said he gave Capecchi, who found him via a Facebook group called “Looking for Coleman Ballots,” his whole background during a 30-minute interview two days ago. He said he was surprised to be identified only as a pheasant hunter in the Times article, and in fact was somewhat surprised to be included at all, given how the ballots-in-the-trunk story has since “evolved.” (On Minnesota Public Radio today, Secretary of State Mark Ritchie reiterated that the story was false, calling for those who started the rumor to speak up.)
Rouen’s political background isn’t hard to trace. In 2002, he ran for the Minnesota House of Representatives in District 60A but was defeated by DFLer Margaret Anderson Kelliher, now speaker of the house. That year he also served as spokesman for the Rod Grams Minnesota Victory Club, a political action committee formed to aid candidates in local races. A frequent writer of letters on newspaper opinion pages, Rouen had a letter, which ridiculed Democratic vice presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), published in the Oct. 31 edition of the St. Paul Pioneer Press.
As Media Matters pointed out the other day, Capecchi’s story also donates space to Sean Hannity and the Minneapolis Star Tribune‘s own wingnut Katherine Kersten (who is apparently useful to the story because she wrote a confoundingly stupid post the other day detailing how Minnesota’s Democratic Secretary of State, Mark Ritchie, is…um…a Democrat.) If Coleman loses the recount, I’m sure Capecchi will be able to find a lot of “ordinary GOP staffers voters” shipped in from DC to trash Mark Ritchie’s office.