Wednesday open

Now it can be told.

Editorial: Honeymoon ends for Obama

The unnamed Courier editor writes, "it's heartening to see that he is no better or no worse than any of his predecessors." Read that again.

One might argue that the editor just isn't very good at communicating what he means, but on reflection I think this reveals an inadvertent truth: the editor does not want an extraordinary or effective president, and by extension does not want effective government. This reflects the fashion for radical libertarianism that weighs down this country so heavily.

This further reduces doubt that the editor will consider it victory if our president fails to win effective health-care reform, fails to get us out of Iraq, fails to bring bin Laden to justice, fails to repair our economy, or fails to rebuild our education system for the 21st century. Our editor is clearly more interested in cheerleading for a political team than contributing to addressing our very real societal problems.

For shame.

Police deploy Peacekeeper

The Prescott PD gets to roll out the new toy it unveiled last week -- to bust a nonviolent non-offender with an entertaining penchant for self-decoration (and, perhaps, because of it). This is clearly a case of having a new hammer and looking for nails. How much did this pointless exercise cost? What would it have cost last week? Who ordered this deployment of both equipment and expensive personnel? Has it become PD policy to roll a SWAT team for every apparent break-in?

This incident amounts to outrageous buffoonery that diminishes the credibility of the Prescott PD as well as us as a society. Will the Courier follow up with appropriate questions? I won't hold my breath.

Editorial: Good journalism died with Cronkite

The unnamed Courier editor leaps onto Walter Cronkite's descending coffin decrying the state of journalism today and setting himself up as the last bastion of goodness and light. I'm sorry, Editor, but Cronkite would take one look at your work and send you to the mail room.

The key to maintaining your ethics is constant self-examination. Ask yourself the tough questions, seriously, challenge yourself to be toughest on your own biases, and drive the snakes out of your own nest.

Short of that, and given the Courier's history of political favoritism, the headline reads rather like triumphalism.

Talk of the Town: Permit holders are not the threat

Matt and Sherrie Seibert deliver the NRA position in response to the editorials against the booze & bullets bill. Dismissing the objections to the new law more or less out of hand, the Seiberts, who make their living by certifying people to carry concealed weapons, spend the bulk of their column space pushing the paranoia button, attempting to convince the reader that people with hidden holsters are our only dependable defense against the crazies who are presumably out looking daily for knots of undefended people just to kill us all.

The illogic and fearmongering here speak for themselves, and are hardly worth the trouble to refute. What I'd like to focus on is the Bizarro world that these people and their followers live in.

Let's leave aside their financial interest for the moment and assume that they're sincere. They truly believe that on some random day there is a reasonable chance they will face a nut with a gun intent on killing them or others, and that their training and ready weapon will allow them to eliminate that threat with deadly force.

Ignore the actual likelihood of this scenario arising. Ignore the actual statistics on what happens to amateurs who pull guns on professionals. Ignore what happens to bystanders at gunfights. I just want to look at the psychology here, because while I think relatively few Americans buy fully into this John-Wayne mythology, many of us keep one foot in that world.

What they're describing is a world fraught with deadly danger. I dunno about you, but if I were to even suspect that I were in that much danger on a daily basis, my survival mechanism would move me out of there posthaste.

So I have to conclude that for these people survival is not at risk. Rather, they are attracted to the role of invulnerable hero, the white-hat cowboy who never takes more than a flesh wound in the left arm as he wipes out the black-hat gang. Many go further, seeing themselves as the reliable defender of American values against the forces of evil, particularly their own government -- meaning in my book, the rest of us.

In its essence this is the adolescent expression of powerlessness. But like adolescents, frightened, powerless adults with adolescent fantasies are dangerous to society. I'll agree with the Seiberts that most gun-owners will hurt no one. But a few of them, with the help of drugs or lack of drugs or emotional trauma or yes, alcohol, will become the very crazies they fear.

Or is it just fear? Perhaps for some it's the hopeful anticipation that one day they will be able to pull that weapon and become the flag-wrapped hero. Either way, I really don't want to be there when it happens, and to the greatest practical extent I want to eliminate that pathology from my community, because it is the gateway drug for school shooters, letter-bombers and fascists, most of whom, I notice, think of themselves as flag-wrapped heroes.

Eliminating guns won't eliminate this problem, but what we can do as a society is limit our exposure to it while we educate against it and treat the pathology.

Busy Monday

I got stuff to do. So you talk.

Editorial: Foreclosures still spreading

The unnamed Courier editor once again treats us to a rambling mumble about the macroeconomy, predicting dire consequences if the gubmint doesn't get out of the way and let the "free market" (stifled guffaw) solve all our problems based on a few gobbets of received wisdom from the rich guys who created the mess in the first place.

Editor, when you've actually studied some economics and have something credible to say, you'll be allowed to wear your pundit button. But you're not an economist, nor do you apparently have anything to say that isn't already a large-print headline on Fox News. No one reading you can do anything with what you say except get mad. Do you not see the childish futility in that?

PV police get statue

The scariest point in a deep recession is probably the worst time to roll out public art, whether it's ugly or not. People revert to their heritage of serfdom and see the king putting fancy gargoyles on his castle when they don't have enough food. It pisses them off. But TM's coverage anticipates that reaction and addresses it up front, pointing out in the headline and high up that the town commissioned the ugly thing last year with '07 money. Judging from the comments it's not enough to quiet the mob, but TM and the headline writer deserve a cookie for this awareness of community feelings, unusual in the paper.

Election: Katan

In the candidate coverage up to now, it appears that the articles have derived from interviews with the candidates. This time I smell a rat, and I've verified with Paul that Cindy's story includes information from outside that context, reference to his protest a couple of years ago that got some public attention but is probably seen in a negative light at the Courier. That was the only inserted information. From this I think we should be concerned about editorial interference with the election, and watch this coverage more closely for bias.

Verde Independent: Meteor Crater Staycation

I first saw Meteor Crater in 1970 amid a three week-death march around the Southwest plotted by my ambitious but largely clueless dad. It was cool then and it's still cool. It suffers a bit I expect from its roadside-curio image left over from the Route 66 tourist traps, but today besides the Really Big Hole it features a pretty good set of modern museum displays on astrophysics and space stuff. if you haven't been it's worth the trip, and thanks to Steve Ayers for this little feature on it.

Column: Rodeo can help drive economy

Something odd is going on here. Normally a piece like this will be labeled "Talk of the Town." Here it's just called "Column" to distinguish it from the letters. Is this a new idea for the editors, or is it some form of special treatment for George, who I'm sure is not on the editors' list of faves?

As to George's idea itself, I dunno. I would not like to see the middle school grounds turned into a baseball park, and while an equestrian center is more 'traditional' for Prescott, it's still devoting a lot of resources to a sport, exclusively serving the small number of residents who are into it. I gather George is imagining that businesses would lease the City property more or less permanently, and that's better than offering a big developer a sweetheart deal on public land to build something really awful, like say a hockey arena.

Update, 6:30pm: Mayor Wilson, in the comments, says, "With a new multi-use facility, the Prescott Rodeo Grounds could be used for many other functions, such as concerts and other events. The possibility of a permanent “Rawhide” type attraction has also been discussed." Oh, lordy.

Let's see, the City already owns an underused theatre that with some investment and commitment would be great for concerts, etc. There's also a really good facility at Yavapai College that can't draw enough people to break even, and a really big multi-use facility in PV that if it maintains its current success rate will likely be an antique mall in another ten years. Concerts are not turning profits here, Mayor. And a faux-cowboy show for the tourists? Are you serious? Completely apart from the lowbrow creepiness of the idea (sort of an update of the old Smoki shows, I suppose), are you saying you'd sell the fairgrounds to an attraction producer? I gotta wonder whether the voters might like to have word with you about that. With ideas like these floating around I'd just as soon see the whole place in weeds.

But we all ought to notice that the Mayor is describing a process in which the voters are apparently not considered stakeholders, working out what to do with public lands behind closed doors. I for one would like to hear a whole lot more about that.

Editorial: Fast-track tactic means no good

From the comments:

Could you smarten up? It's HENRY. Henry Paulson. As for the speed of legislation --you're probably among those who really don't get what a train wreck we've gone through in the last year, and how urgent was the need for action. None of us will ever know how much worse it might have been if the legislators had dithered. But I am quite sure that if they had, you would have written this very article, but inverted, bizarrely comparing their inaction to some other completely incomparable crime rather than the brutal murder of a civil rights worker. Perhaps those people in Queens who allegedly did nothing while Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death.

I couldn't have said it better. The editor is falling in line with the concern trolls, those who employ the tactic of faked and ignorant objections only to obfuscate, confuse, delay and obstruct. Stick to the local beat, Editor, where you still have a chance to project some credibility.

What if you gave a party and no one came?

Isn't it a bit odd that after stumping up the tea-party protest yesterday, there was no coverage of the events in the Courier? Hmm.

Update, 5:45pm: Ah, there it is. The revolution!

That's the way it is

I grew up with Cronkite, and it's gratifying to hear this week that in the context of our culture of tearing down anyone who espouses higher values, he has maintained his reputation for relentless integrity as well as his public affection. We would all do well to keep him in mind as a model for journalistic professionalism. I'll miss him.

Local legislators get renewable energy, county savings bills signed into law

This brief rundown of what passed and got the Governor's signature is good, but it's a long way from enough. Voters really should get a lot more information about what's going on in the legislature, from the introduction of bills, through committee debates and changes to final votes, regardless of the advertisers' ideas about what sells. I think covering state and local governance should be the highest priority for any paper's resources, including the Courier.

I'll be talking about this and other legislation at length with Rep Mason this weekend on The People's Business, 2pm today and tomorrow on KJZA, 89.5 and 90.1FM.

Talk of the Town: We need to fix immigration laws

Robert Greybehl is trying to say something here. It seems like the editors could have given him a little more help in saying it, as it's pretty much coherency-free. That they stuck the Talk of the Town label on this rambling LTE indicates a certain disregard for both the writer and the reader.

TGIF Open thread

Remember what happened 40 years ago? I hope we still have the capacity to think that big.

New gun law makes bar owners first line of defense

Here's what I asked for yesterday, and I'll bet more than a few local residents will be surprised that bar operators are not pleased with the bullets & booze bill. I know and work for some of these people, and I know that many of them are very big on Second Amendment rights. But where the rubber meets the road, they agree across the board that public safety demands clear limits, and they apparently don't buy the idea that all CCW holders are cool, well-trained professionals who are just there to defend us from the bad guys with a dead-on hipshot across a crowded room.

Sorry to be a bother, but editors, where was this article when it could have done some good, when it was up for vote in the Legislature?

Now, about that headline: while I tend to agree with the sentiments, it's really more than a little over the top, reflecting the editorial position rather than the news. That's a reflex we must resist even when it favors our own opinions.

Editorial: State should back out completely

The unnamed Courier editor kites the idea that if the state won't fund Sharlot Hall Museum, it should give up ownership to an organization that will. It's a fair point in principle, but is that really the outcome we want? I don't think so. The museum offers greater value than its parochial local-curio and tourist-attraction aspects, and stepping it down from a successful professional organization into the hands of well-meaning local amateurs (where it started) would not bode well for its long-term future, even if it does continue to tick over in the short term.

I recognize that the editor may be exercising this logic to evoke exactly this thought process. But he also may just be reverting to his habit of seeing government involvement as bad, as the headline implies.

The positive response is to stand up for our important institutions when the legislature is making bad choices. The museum clearly deserves an unrelenting and vigorous defense.

Update: in response to BearWhizBeer: I checked. The museum is a small state agency by special legislation, and its staff is paid by the state.

Letter: Starting black church is an act of racism

Here's a great example of how privileged white racists convince each other that they're the real victims of racist conspiracy. Because they think about race in terms of exclusion, they infer that everyone else is too.


When I think of black Xtian churches, I just see a difference in style, a difference that devotees would clearly not be able to exercise in a white church, whatever their color. I mean, go on, try to imagine a bunch of Presbyterians doing some real singing and gettin' their groove on for the Lord.

Perhaps Mr Barry would think I'm being racist when I say I play black music.