O'Reilly: "Rosie is sinking her ship with vitriol"

A little light entertainment for your morning coffee. Identifying O'Donnell as a spokesperson for 'the left' is as goofy as putting O'Reilly up as the voice of 'the right,' rather than the radical nutbar entertainment industry, in which both are leading lights.

From 'The Rosie Factor,' as originally headlined (see it before it sinks), the Courier left out this bit referring to Disney, which I find particularly amusing:

If it fires O'Donnell, the left will attack the company on free speech grounds.

Wanna bet, Bill?

For the record, in removing 220 words from this 560-word column, the Courier editor carefully preserved Bill's points, editing graph-by-graph, and I think only inadvertently turning his lead into a fat joke. Compare that to the Goodman slashing yesterday.

Herron: "County Web site makes tax research easy"

I generally like Al's approach to controversy, where he says, "OK, let's check out whether this is true" and patiently dismantles wackiness. That's what he's after here, and I strongly support the idea of making sure you understand the real effect of your new assessment before you start jumping up and down and calling for bodily harm to the assessor.

But Al, I have to say I wish you'd go after this with a little more umph and point of view. I get the feeling I'm reading Heloise.

Editorial: "Editorial: Liquor Board must look at location, too"

Maybe the Courier editor is being charitable to Council, but this reads like he's chiding the hapless bureaucrat for not having the right responsibilities. That might add a new level of bumbling to make the story funnier, but leading off with suicide in the standard gratuitous pop-culture reference kinda breaks the mood, and pretty well obscures the editor's point.

Letters: Whiskey Row Alley

After a two-night gig over the weekend I almost started my own rant about this. The alley is rapidly degenerating back to its pre-improvement state. What bugs me most is the nightly scatter of burning butts from the new back porch at Matt's. What a pigsty! The new state law cranking up May 1 will do nothing to change this, I expect.

Is it worth a little attention from our local paper to help poke the Row merchants into cleaning up their act?

Cartoon: Donkeys watch TV

Maybe I'm thick, I just don't get it. Somebody 'splain it to me.

Update, noonish: Here's your link, Lefty.

Slow news day

No news is good news, as they say. If there's really so little going on in town, we should be thankful. On the other hand, maybe the entire news staff had the day off yesterday.

Use this to comment on the 'stories' I'm skipping over today, mostly barenaked press releases.