Media HorsesAss Reads Joel Connelly…
posted by on June 4 at 9:59 AM
…so you don’t have to.
Joel Connelly is fuming again about those damn kids on their damn bikes—out there riding their 10 speeds when they should be at home fucking their brains out and getting themselves pregnant when they’re not watching the interminable NBA playoffs or writing letters to their representatives complaining about high taxes. Yes, it’s another Connelly column about Seattle’s politically powerful cyclists and their conspiracy to do away with the Alaskan Way Viaduct.
Says Joel…
[This] week, council members allocated $8.1 million to study the “surface-transit option” in replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct.Surface transit is a pet idea of those who seem to be forming Seattle’s agenda these days and pushing for a gentrified, politically correct, largely childless, heavily taxed city, a place that embraces bicycles and exiles NBA basketball.
Over at HorsesAss, Will describes Connelly’s latest jab at the cyclofascists as Falwell-esque.
I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians, the ACLU, People For the American Way—all of them who have tried to secularize America—I point the finger in their face and say “you helped this happen.”
Says Will…
Jesus, we embrace bicycles? And stopped having kids? We have gone too far.To the hyper-sensitive, sports-hating, condom-using, tax-and-spend, Capitol Hill enviro-fascists, Joel points his finger at you.
Joel? I live in the city, I have a kid, and I’m happy to pay my damn taxes. Where do you live again? How many children do you have?
Actually...
"Will Kelley-Kamp Reads Joel Connelly..."
Whoops... sorry about that, Will. Making the change now...
Surface-Transit is my preferred option because I plan on adopting four little girls in a couple of years. If the Viaduct is gone and there's fantastic mass transit, when they're overactive teenagers, I won't have to chauffer their asses all over the city. Oh, and they get to breathe cleaner air too.
As for taxes, "Taxes are the price you pay for civilization."
I can't help pointing out that in a column making fun of Al Runte for calling Bill Richardson "Eliot Richardson," Connelly repeatedly spells Venus Velazquez's name wrong.
Largely childless? Bullshit.
Young people and parents of young children largely support mass transit, because we actually have a stake in the long term direction of the city.
Geezers like Joel can't see beyond one or two years.
I also like how we "exiled" NBA basketball. It's like saying we kicked someone out of our restaurant when all we really did was refuse to give them a 50% discount.
Honestly, I kind of like that Joel writes for the PI. It gives me chance to keep track of what passes for reality with those fucking whackjobs in the 'burbs.
The last bicycle Joel rode had a banana seat.
But my favorite was the ingenious pairing of "heavily taxed city" with "exiles NBA basketball."
Obviously, he knows perfectly well that Seattle voters overwhelmingly don't want to spent their tax dollars subsidizing Oklahoma billionaires and their sports franchises. It's a prudential and conversative approach to taxes -- just the opposite of what he implies. Same goes for the viaduct, of course: the surface-transit option is the least tax-dependent of the choices.
I don't think Joel knows too many cyclists, and whether surface-transit is just for that, well, he is being crotchety.
But since the bulk of the article is about races for the School Board, the Port and the Council, he has proved one thing about the Stranger and Goldstein -- you are hyper-sensitive.
don't ask me to get involved in the viaduct debate! its one hot potata!
I think Joel is in need of a good "Bicycle Smile" right about now...
Gitai @ 3:
What if the viaduct's gone and there *isn't* fantastic mass transit?
Or, what if there *is* fantastic mass transit and the viaduct is still there?]
Then I imagine the whole city will be overrun by the monkeys that fly out of my butt.
Cool. Will the monkeys have jetpacks or wings?
Jetpacks, of course. What do I look like, the Wicked Witch of the West?
@12 We need to reduce road capacity. It's the only way to reduce traffic. I think we need to phase out the idea that major thoroughfares are for commuting, and get it through peoples' heads that they need to vanpool, take mass transit, or walk. We as a city can encourage the latter through zoning, making it so that office parks, affordable housing, amenities are all in close proximity, meaning that if you get a kickass job at corporation X, you can move within walking distance.
As for the major thoroughfares, the main uses they should be encouraged for are cargo and interurban (meaning from Seattle to Portland, not Everett) travel. And frankly, we should never have allowed the interstate highway system to dominate either. When container shipping became commonplace in '50s, we should have repealed the Jones Act (which forbids a ship from loading cargo in one US port and unloading it in a different one without first visiting "a far distant port of call"), and emphasized sea routes for coastal shipping and revitalized the railroads for inland shipping. It would have fucked with the Teamsters, but the Longshoremen and Stevedores would have experienced a renaissance.
Just a quick clarification, I'm pretty sure that the Jones Act forbids a FOREIGN ship from loading at one US port and then unloading at another US port. Aren't US flagged vessels allowed to transfer loads from one US port to the next? I'm guessing that since you brought it up along with the Teamsters et al you're aware of that but since most people have no idea what it's all about...
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