This faceplants into the so-bad-it's-funny category. Starting with a wannabe-hip headline ripped from the cultural memes of 1979, the unnamed Courier editor plunges wildly through a paranoid landscape, unable to tell mountain from molehill, and pretty sure the moles are out to get him. It's kinda Alien vs Caddyshack, with the editor standing in for Bill Murray.
Because organized hackers broke into the Email accounts of DPS officers, says the editor, "assume that nothing in cyberspace is safe." Presumably the editor also keeps a weather eye out for meteors as he sprints into the building from his truck.
Yet on the same day this hawkeyed newsman fills his Friday column (below) with a viral Email containing the most insidious sort of infection there is: facile hate for the weak.
Better idea: Assume that nothing on the Courier op-ed page is safe. And keep laughing. We're all in it for the lulz.
For readers of the Daily Courier in Prescott, Arizona. Comment and discuss. Be nice, now.
Muggs archive
▼
Friday, July 1, 2011
1 comment:
I encourage you to share your own views and experience with me and other readers. How you do that matters, and I'm committed to maintaining a place where readers and commenters can feel safe from adolescent BS. So here's the deal:
There are two kinds of anonymous comments: those by people who have a genuine fear of revenge from the dark side, and those from darksiders just hiding to avoid accountability. You may post comments anonymously, but I reserve the right to treat anonymous comments as found items that belong to me and do with them as I see fit.
If, on the other hand, you're willing to stand by your convictions and post under your own name or a regular handle, your comments belong to you, and I'll edit them only on egregious violations of respect for others.
If this doesn't work for you, I'm sure you'll be happier somewhere else.
This reminds me of something that happened in my hometown paper, which (much like the Courier) is now part of one of these agglomerations of numerous small newspapers that are controlled by an out of town/state right-wing group/family.
ReplyDeleteAnyways the editor of that paper wrote this screed about how you shouldn't believe everything you hear on the internet, blah, blah, blah. Now I had been in a longish running discussion with the paper (and the previous editor) about their failure to fact-check some really glaring lies in their letters to the editor page (stuff like the Courier prints, e.g. claiming the stimulus built an $8 billion train from Vegas to Disneyland).
The very same day as the editor was admonishing readers for getting suckered by the internet, They ran a "letter" that was one of those lying chain e-mails verbatim--the letter "quoted" an economist saying something really glaringly stupid. I went to the economist's webpage and the splash screen was a statement in giant letters that he had not made the stupid statement attributed to him.
I got in a good argument with that editor, where he basically said it is not the job of his newspaper to make sure the information they print is factual.
As such, this boils down the Courier company line about perfectly, and it is why a Courier-watch like yours is needed.