Jody Schwann? Give Me a Break


There are some weeks that I am forced to spend hours and hours to come up with a suitable “Get Out of Town” target. This is not one of them. In fact, the first part of what you’re about to read pretty much wrote itself.
The story begins shortly after I got off work Monday night. I headed home and just seconds after hitting the bachelor chair for my nightly nap the phone rang. And then it rang again. Then my cell phone rang.
I logged onto the computer and found a handful of emails from friends, relatives, and even a former city council member. They all wanted to know the same thing – have I heard the news?
Obviously, the news wasn’t that, to quote a classic 50’s rock and roll song, “there’s good rockin’ tonight” (although there was probably some boots knockin’ in one local household). This was a different kind of news – an announcement so obscenely silly that nobody, and I mean nobody, would have dared predict.
If you haven’t figured out what I’m talking about, I have four key phrases: Dave Munson, Jody Schwann, Chief of Staff, $98,000.
Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
What the fuck is our moronic mayor thinking? I guess maybe it makes sense for the man who talks out of both sides of his mouth to hire a person whose mouth doesn’t move when she speaks. No, it still makes no sense.
What exactly are her qualifications? Idiotboy said on the news last night that her so-called expertise with government-related stories was what attracted her to him. Uh, right. I guess compared to her predecessor, John Bachman, that may be true.
It seems to me that the way to get a job with the mayor is to throw the most softballs. Through every controversy concerning the mayor, it was only her channel that he would use, and she was the only “reporter” to get the elusive “open-door” leader to chat. Inevitably, the softballs she lobbed were so easy to hit that even the Canaries could have reached base.
And she gets a salary of $98,000? That’s more than the sum total of her four years at KELO! Hell, I’d kiss Munson’s ass for that kind of change…and I’m more qualified!
Before I get carried away, I have something more serious to discuss today. As many of you know, I’m a big fan of the Opie and Anthony show on XM radio. Earlier this year, they hooked up some cameras in their studio, and one could watch their broadcasts on a program called Paltalk.
The Paltalk experience didn’t end when the show was over, though. The O&A fan room was a 24-hour room where fans of the show hung out and drank, argued, laughed, and did everything else that friends would do.
And that’s exactly what we had become – friends. Any time I was bored, I knew that a hundred or so of my friends would be hanging out online – some just communicating in text but a good percentage of them also speaking on cam. Since the show’s home base is located in New York, quite a few of these new friends lived in cities such as Boston, New York, and Philly.
Because of their proximity to each other, there have been many get-togethers, and they have also been broadcast on Paltalk. This past weekend people from all over the country gathered in New Jersey for a softball game. Included in this group was a beautiful young woman from western Canada named Jen, who had saved money for months to make the trip.
The night before the game, Jen and a couple of others gathered at the home of a woman named Brand, who had started dating Bobby, another Paltalker, a couple of months earlier. I checked in just before going to bed late Saturday night, and they were having a great time.
I checked in on the softball game the following afternoon, and these five people hadn’t shown up. Rumors had been floating around all day, but most people figured they had just overslept.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. At around 5:30 a.m., Brand and Bobby had an argument in her driveway. He pulled out a gun, and after shooting her a number of times, put the gun to his own head. Jen witnessed the entire event.
Obviously, the room was devastated when the news came down. It may seem hard for anybody who is not a part of this room to understand, but although we see each other in one-inch square cams, we really are friends. I see and talk to these people every day, and both Brand and Bobby knew me as well as anybody.
The big concern right now (besides the well-being of their surviving family and friends) is that the media may turn this into a Myspace-type scandal. This wasn’t a pedophile stalker situation like we hear about on the news everyday. The fact that these two people met on Paltalk has no bearing on the events that occurred early Sunday morning. They could have just easily met at the supermarket; or a bar. Hell, they could have even met at an Opie and Anthony event. It was a real relationship that had a tragic ending.
Those who have come into contact with me in the past couple of days can no understand why I’ve been so subdued. While plenty of people in my life have died over the years, none have died in these sort of circumstances. I’m just thankful that I had other online friends such as Casey, Catherine, Lucci, and three beautiful ladies named Jamie to help cheer me up. Too bad all of these beauties live thousands of miles away. I could use some extra special help to get over my grief.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I read the story in the paper today and could not wait to get home to see what you had to say about it. Alas, nothing. I was so bummed out. But I'm better now. 98,000 dollars?? What the fuck? I guess it pays to kiss ass. The line to pucker up starts behind me.

Sorry to hear about the loss of your friends, that truly is a tragedy. I'm sure the grief isn't dulled any by the thousands of miles between you.
Anonymous said…
actual genius on munson's part. kdlt or ksfy had nothing on her appointment, she's given "exclusives" to kelo about 100 times already, and the only place that might question this whole thing is the argus, who as dee knudson will tell you is out to get the greatest guy to walk the earth since jesus.
Anonymous said…
I think this is a conspiracy!

Look at all the former KELO reporters with ties to city government.

It's a plot to officially change the name of Sioux Falls to Kelo-land, thus making Kelo-land an actual place with real people.

Scott, save us!!!!!!!!
Anonymous said…
Yeah, I wonder how long it will take Jodi to get used to calling it Sioux Falls instead of KELOLAND.

Yeah, Jodi always through softballs at Munson. What surprises me is why wasn't she started at $72,000, (the starting pay) and then reviewed in a year for a raise?) Why the F U C K would Munson offer her $98,000 right off the bat? Like she would turn down $72,000 ($44,000 a year raise from her current job)? She has NO government experience, NONE! Sure she has educational credentials, but a lot of people do. Makes you wonder if there is a Monica Lewinsky thing going on.

And why was the council left out on this decision? At least shown resume's with names blocked out or asked to submit questions that Dave could ask. This decision was made a LONG time ago, and nothing was going to stop good old crooked, lying, SOB, Dave. I think it has a lot more to do with the tight knit group of SD GOP and the Wealthy Schwann Family that Jodi comes from.

This whole matter stinks, we can only hope her and Munson get caught with their hands in the cookie Jar and we can be rid of both of them!

Detroit Lewis
Anonymous said…
What a bunch of jealous idiots. Maybe if Chad didn't have to take his "nightly nap" and had a little more ambition he wouldn't be rubbing the sleep out of his eyes calling the mayor names for doing his job.
Anonymous said…
Hey, Kmart -

You are pretty funny.

Do you really think it has to do with jealousy? I think it has more to do with being fiscally responsible. You don't pay someone without experience for the job the top wage, you start them out at the bottom of the pay scale, then you give them raises based on performance, it makes economic sense, especially when it is taxpayers money! And BTW, I have lots of names for Munson, and none of them are honorable.

Detroit Lewis
www.25dp.com
Anonymous said…
I'm just playing Devil's Advocate here...Jodi has some pretty strong ties to Washington, from her time there while in college to the years of covering politics for SMELLOLAND. She's got Tom Daschle on her speed-dial, Herseth in her back pocket and Thune eating out of her hands.
Sounds to me like ol' conservative South Dakotans are a little intimidated by having a woman - a relatively YOUNG woman - holding such a high seat in their backyards.
Good for her. From my time with Jodi, she was driven and determined to make a name for herself. And the salary, well makes sense to me. You pay for what you get - and Sioux Fizzle got one helluva bargain in Jodi.

She's gonna make a difference in your podunk little town, so just deal with it and go back to Scarlett's.
Anonymous said…
I don't beleave she "controls" any of the politicians. She was just an intern in Washington...and a pawn by many of them while at KELO. The only intern I remember with any power in DC was Lawinski, and I have too much respect for Jodi to even kid about that. I think Dave is going to see that the "wonder girl" he hired for 98 grand is going to be a lot less wonderful for Sioux Falls and more driven to get herself a job somewhere else...taking the tax money that us taxpayers from "Sioux Fizzle" are paying her and running.
Anonymous said…
Maybe Jodi will do a good job? Only time will tell. But that is not the issue here. You pay 'entry level' wages to an 'entry level' position. Duh.

DL
Anonymous said…
Relatively, in Mayor Munchkin's world, that IS entry level scratch.
Anonymous said…
And you would only pay entry level to someone qualified for the job. She has zero political accumen. None. What kind of stories did she cover anyway? Besides she's on TV, you can't really call her a journalist can you? Name one story a TV station in this town has broken, ever.

The only good thing she will be able to do is stonewall the media.
She's had it done to her and she has the personality of an ice cube.

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