The Rake

On the one hand, The Rake has become my free alternative media print publication of choice because of their slick full-color production (handling The Rake leaves no unsightly newsprint stains!), urbane style, engaging columnists, and sometimes remarkable reporting (see Dean Staley's amazing May 2005 article, "The Grounded Man," about how the fellas at an Eagan flight school caught Zacarias Moussaoui, a.k.a. the twentieth hijacker, before he got airborne).

On the other hand, The Rake is another liberal/progressive alternative rag, like its competitor City Pages and others you may have seen in Milwaukee and Chicago. They wear their ideology on their sleeve, which is legit, but sometimes they step over the line, which certainly must delight their core demographic but turns off the rest of us.

Case in point: in the current issue, a lampoon of conservative commentator Katherine Kersten and state Sen. Michele Bachmann (R-Stillwater). I can't find it on The Rake web site or I would link to it. Suffice it to say that it is as tasteless, cowardly, and hateful as any good lampoon should be, in the lefty wing-nut vein of Michael Moore-Al Franken-Garrison Keillor.

(To Kersten's and Bachmann's credit, if they weren't effective, they wouldn't be such targets of the left. Or as Han Solo once said, "I must've hit it pretty close to the mark to get her all riled up like that, huh, kid?")

Now if only The Rake had the witty, smart, sassy, and passionate Dara Moskowitz (currently with City Pages) to write her oh-so-tasty restaurant reviews, those deviations into left loony land would be a tad easier to forgive and forget. On second thought, in that respect maybe CP needs her more than The Rake does.

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