Friday, December 10, 2010

Letter: Bipartisan squabbles undermine progress

Just go read this great letter from David Hackathorn.

Friday catchall: "I don't see color"

In his personal column today, Tim protests that the Catch-22 features are misunderstood. "People assume that it's all about race," but "I don't see the color, folks. To me, it does not matter."

Perhaps if Tim cared about the strong undercurrent of racism in Prescott, he'd understand how he's facilitating it. Is it that you don't see it, Tim, or are you refusing to see it?

To sum up my previous analysis on this, the perps featured by Yavapai Silent Witness fall into two clear categories: offenders who are white and nonviolent, and long-gone old cases who are Hispanic and violent. No violent whites, no non-violent Hispanics.

YSW selects the offenders for this "most wanted" treatment, which implies a set of selection criteria. So far this round the only new "most-wanted" cases on the list are two white kids passing through the state on the highway who happened to get caught with pot and jumped bail. For pretty much any thinking person reading this, these offenses do not rise above the who-cares level. So we can reasonably infer that YSW does not have enough live cases to fill any of the 22 slots they set up for themselves.

With only who-cares and dead cases to choose from, what do they choose? Should we imagine that there are no dead cases of violence by white people? I think not.

As a professional newsman, Tim should have the skills to see this farce for what it is: a biannual funds promotion for the Silent Witness program with racist undertones and, most important, without news value. It's a failed experiment, and the Courier should take the lead in sending it back to the bush leagues.

Update, Friday night: The Saturday edition includes the first Hispanic perp wanted on a recent beef, assault on a cop.

Front page: Ousted mayor enjoys mountain biking, retirement lifestyle

Um, what in the world is this bit of attic-rummaging doing on the front page? What is it doing in the paper at all? Rick Killingsworth was out in PV six years ago, Ken. Is the Courier a personal scrapbook for its employees and their old friends? You could play up the biking angle and put it in the Vitality section, maybe, but it's not news despite the opportunity for Tom Steele to replay his glory days.

Just by the by, I was no fan of Killingsworth as mayor, but I was in on some of the awful stuff that Tony Mortillaro was doing at PV Town Hall, and his firing was well deserved and a long time coming.