Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Editorial: "Tim's Toyota shares its success with PV"

Call us back once the bloom is off the rose, the promoters are done losing money on half-attended events, and the public is sick of shelling out big bucks for flat soda and dealing with snarled traffic. Say five years. At least three, anyway.

I'm sure the Fains are doing great from it, but it's a little early to declare the Albatross Arena a success for the rest of the community.

Letters: Feet to fire

Ed Kahn backs me up on asking harder questions of the county departments for the ongoing series, and another whiny golfer gets his comeuppance from the editors, who hang a lame pun in his headline. Poor slob.

Cartoon: Don't Tread on Me

Ack.

Update: 6:47pm: Link fixed, thanks Lefty.

Thomas: "Leaving Iraq equals a win for jihad"

Originally titled "Unending War" (May 30), the nutbar right's favorite junkyard dog continues to remind me of Monty Python's Black Knight, four limbs missing but still cursing us as cowards for refusing to shred him further. Sort of pitiful, really.

The Courier editors ran this more or less full-length and expunged his occasional passive voice without too much damage, with one important exception: where the Courier wrote "People make mistakes" in war, an admission you'll never find in the administration talking points he uses in place of a brain, Thomas wrote "Mistakes are made," keeping him more in line with the amnesiac obfuscators currently facing Congressional inquiries.

This was a mistake, of course. The Courier consistently treats radical-right voices with clear respect, in contrast to its rather less consistent treatment of moderate and progressive writers.

Update, 3:30pm: I forgot to mention Cal's wacky take on Japanese culture. For the record: completely wrong.

A1: "Prescott Valley mayor announces new narcotics unit"

PV is assigning two officers as a new narc team. The Courier breathlessly characterizes this as "War on Drugs" in a shouter headline and the lead. Pathetic.

The subject of addressing the social problems related to illegal drug use, distribution and production deserves an adult conversation about reality rather than mindless rhetoric.

Online: "Blogs! Prescottonians voice their opinions online"

I'm running a little late this morning, and I've already seen a bunch of hits from this story by Shari Lopatin (and I'm sure John Kamin deserves a mention as well).

There's a bigger list here that I expected to see, nicely done.

Shari was professional and assiduous on the phone, and seems like a nice person. That makes it harder to whine about the details of the coverage. Regular readers here will probably know what I'm talking about, I'll just bitch about one easy thing: no space in "Courierwatch."

I was under the impression that this story was being done for print, however. Could happen?

Update, 5:35pm: 23 clicks in from prescottdailycourier.com, not bad! Thanks, John.