Saturday, June 2, 2007

Editorial: "Local student leads by example"

In familiar style, the unnamed Courier editor squanders more than half the column on a simple-minded parable to illustrate that Ryan Erickson is admirable for trying to help fellow BMHS students with pocket-change grants, saying nothing that wasn't in the news-side puff piece. Must've been a slow day.

Boring, but essentially harmless.

A1: "Wal-Mart foes face campaign violation charges"

You probably saw this coming. Not content to bury the opposition at the polls, the well financed Wal-Mart shills have marshaled their lawyers to escalate the pissing contest. Perhaps the court will see it for what it is.

I think the editors could have hit this copy a little harder, though. As with previous stories on this legal battle, it's messy and confusing.

Letters: Round and round

Today we get a couple new angles on roundabouts, one from local celeb and blues fan Alan Dean Foster.

Talk of the Town: "For American taxpayers, the hits just keep on coming"

What was it Tim was saying about the Courier's editorial mantra? "Local, local, local," wasn't it? And "Talk of the Town" certainly implies a local source, right?

So I'm fascinated to find the "Talk of the Town" slug over a piece lifted directly from the Cato Institute's house organ, The American Spectator ("Free at Last," April 30), scribbled "special to the Courier" by well known media whore Doug Bandow. Having been forced out of Cato, a couple of years ago Bandow washed up on a desert island called Citizen Outreach to continue his radical libertarian ranting, subsequently expanding to the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

I admit to a brief flirtation with libertarian thinking back in the '70s, but I grew out of it. Since the Reagan era this market has been cornered by rich people taking advantage of weak, angry minds to push the idea that the only good government is a dead government, and they're pursuing that goal by any means necessary to make themselves richer. But scan their stuff yourself at the links, you don't need me to tell you how sophomoric and dangerous it is.

That the Courier editors are shoveling this insidious crap at us under their 'local' slug ropes me off, though. Go ahead, tell me this is an accident. Now tell me another one.