A nice treat on this week’s the Stranger News Hour during the David Goldstein Show on 710 KIRO at 7pm.

No city hall stuff. No police accountability stuff. No RTID stuff. No news section stuff at all. Stranger arts writer Charles Mudede will be on to discuss this year’s Stranger Genius Awards.

Enjoy!

The Parents Television Council, a right wing media watch dog group, has issued a report decrying the fact that the traditional family TV hour, the first hour of prime time TV, is not safe for kids.

The right wingers at PTC find that Fox is the worst offender.

Some of their findings:

There were 677 sexual scenes or spoken sexual references, an average of 3.76 per hour.

Well over half of all programs (54.8%) contained sexual content.
Since 2000-2001, the amount of sexual content during the Family Hour has increased by 22.1%.

CBS experienced the largest increase in sexual content since 2000-2001, from 0.34 to 2.31 instances per hour – a 579% increase.

ABC had the most sexual content with 5.97 instances per hour.

The War at Home (Fox) had the highest frequency of sexual content of any program with 33 instances per hour.

And they write:

We found that the Family Hour has become increasingly laced with sex and violence. Along with scheduling adult-themed shows like Bones and Desire for the Family Hour, we also found the networks taking graphic and explicit shows that had originally run in later timeslots, like Grey’s Anatomy and C.S.I., and re-airing them during the Family Hour.

The report goes on to blame the commercial interests of broadcasters and scolds broadcasters for lacking in corporate responsibility.

The PTC has every right to criticize broadcast television and call for fellow conservatives to put economic pressure on broadcasters to change their ways (which the report does). But I gotta say, I love it when right wingers eschew personal responsibility and whine.

Indeed, there’s a great response to the report in City Journal (an urban policy magazine), that A) dings the PTC for living in the long-lost era when prime time TV broadcasting was even relevant … and B) more importantly, slams the family values crowd at PTC for being delinquent parents.

By explaining how the media and technology revolution of the last 20 years has made it easy for parents to actively provide their kids with appropriate and educational stuff to watch, the City Journal article basically nails these conservative “family values” whiners for being lazy, uncreative, delinquent parents who rely on throwing their kids down on the couch after dinner and having Fox TV baby sit.

From the article:

In light of these marketplace realities, let’s return to the question of who killed the broadcast TV family hour. The answer: parents like me! Armed with all these new viewing options and technologies, parents, not broadcasters, now determine the content of the family hour and when it will take place. We no longer have to sit down at 8:00 each night to be spoon-fed our daily dose of family-friendly fare. For example, in our home, my wife and I have designated one television for most of our children’s video consumption, and we use a DVR to amass a large library of programming that we believe is educational, enriching, and appropriate. We can catalog and archive dozens of programs and supplement them with VHS tapes, DVDs, and computer software. When we allow our children some TV time, we know that they’ll be able to watch our preferred episodes of Dora the Explorer, Go Diego Go, Blue’s Clues, and The Wiggles.

Technological empowerment will spread and benefit parents even more in coming years. Comcast Corporation, the nation’s largest cable provider, conducted a poll last year of its most aggressive VOD and DVR users and found that 85 percent indicated that they “always have appropriate shows available for their children to watch.” Moreover, 65 percent said that they “have fewer conflicts about what to watch on TV,” and 63 percent said that they “watch more television as a family” thanks to the tools.

Needless to say, families didn’t have such content tailoring and viewer empowerment in the past. The PTC seems stuck in that past, though, when it sees a national crisis just because some TV broadcasters fail to air enough family-friendly programming at 8:00 each night. I happen to agree with the PTC that not all of the programming shown on broadcast TV at 8:00 PM is appropriate for my children. But like millions of other parents, I can now take matters into my own hands.

Again, the PTC has every right to criticize broadcast TV, but my advice to the family values crowd at the PTC is this: Spend less time whining and start putting some energy into your parenting.

p.s. Oh, and, ha ha ha, you lost the culture wars.

Film

LSD and Other Drug Scare Films at Grand Illusion

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This detail from the NYT story on Mitt Romney’s gay-rights flip flop made my head explode…

Mr. Romney’s eldest son, Tagg, 37, says that back in the early 1990s, he told his father privately that he was thinking about becoming a Democrat.

His father sat him down to dissuade him, taking him through the differences between Republicans and Democrats. Tagg Romney says he does not remember his father’s talking about abortion, another issue that has troubled his candidacy, but he does remember being warned that Democrats would lead the country toward same-sex marriage.

“He thought it was very wrong to discriminate,” Tagg Romney said. “But where Democrats are going, they’ll eventually want to extend marriage to gays. I said, ‘No way.’”

Where to start?

It can’t be an accident that the NYT chose to illustrate this story about Mitt Romney’s flip-flops on gay marriage with this photo…

Hm. Mitt’s new anti-gay position looks pretty gay, doesn’t it? And leave the little girl alone, Mitt. Go bother bigots of voting age.

I’m a cyclist. I ride pretty much everywhere, often down to the U-District. At least twice a week I ride through the intersection where two cyclists were hit—run over—by a dump truck yesterday. Both men were dragged under the truck for 25 feet; one died at the scene, another was badly injured. Neither was wearing helmets—does anyone wear helmets anymore?—but I’m not sure helmets would have helped them under the wheels of a dump truck.

The truck was turning right from Eastlake Avenue East on to Fuhrman Avenue East when it hit the cyclists, who were in a bike lane headed toward the University Bridge. David Hiller, advocacy director for the Cascade Bicycle Club, is quoted in this morning’s PI as saying that this accident has, er, struck the bike community in “a very personal place.”

As a cyclist, my first reaction was, “Fucking drivers—fucking truck drivers, fucking bus drivers, fucking car drivers.” I immediately assumed that the truck driver had to be at fault. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had people—drivers that aren’t using their signals—turn right, right in front of me, right on top of me, at that intersection. That could have been me under that dump truck.

But watching the TV news last night, I listened as one witness said the truck was moving very slowly and the bikes were moving very fast—too fast for the truck driver to see them coming.

And then I thought about that hill. Coming off Capitol Hill along the freeway, blasting down Harvard Avenue East, which dumps you on to Eastlake Avenue East right before Fuhrman… man, it’s easy to pick up some serious speed. It’s also tempting—particularly on a summer day, when the bridge is constantly going up and down—to race toward University Bridge, to beat that light at Eastlake and Fuhrman, so that you can blast up the incline that starts after you cross over the bridge. If you take advantage of that hill—if you pick up speed, pump your legs, and get low—you can be at that intersection so fast that car, bus, and truck drivers can’t see you coming, much less react to you in time.

So knowing what I know now… I’m going to have to set aside my natural allegiance to my fellow cyclists and reserve judgment about the truck driver. It’s possible that the cyclists were at fault yesterday. Were they coming down Harvard Avenue East? Were they hurtling toward the bridge? If they were, well, it’s possible that they were going so fast that they, essentially, threw themselves into the path of a truck that was already turning right, a truck being driven by someone that never had a chance to brake, a driver that couldn’t have seen them coming, couldn’t react in time.

It’s going to be hard for area cyclists to wrap their heads around this, but this accident may not be the driver’s fault. It may be the cyclists’ fault.

It is, of course, still a tragedy. And that intersection, however yesterday’s accident unfolded, is still dangerous—it’s not just cyclists that blast through it, or hurry up to beat that bridge. But yesterday’s death may not fit the script of our usual “careless driver, martyred cyclist” morality play.

Tonight I’m going to New York for the first time ever. I’ll be there for a whole week and I’m really, really excited.

Or I was excited, until I got off the plane for a two-hour layover in Phoenix. I walked into the airport, looked down, and saw this:

What the fuck is that!? Can you see that? Can you see all the little plane shapes flying erratically in the vertigo-cursed sky? Why the hell would you put this carpet everywhere in your airport!? I don’t want to see that! I don’t want to see hundreds of planes swirling around, mere seconds away from colliding into one another or being sucked into a whirlpool of death! That shit’s fucked up!

Fuck you, Phoenix. Fuck you and your nasty little mind tricks.

I can’t wait to get to New York.

From the mouth of a dead man:

It is quite true that my film’s view of man is less flattering than the one Rousseau entertained in a similarly allegorical narrative [“Emile”] — but, in order to avoid fascism, does one have to view man as a noble savage, rather than an ignoble one? Being a pessimist is not yet enough to qualify one as a tyrant (I hope)….

Jim Emerson, a smart critic in the Ebert camp, recently discovered the dead letter and reanimated it because of my own criticism of Kubrick’s cinema.

That’s right. Either from beyond the grave (“Anything that says there’s anything after death is ultimately an optimistic story,” Kubrick said of “The Shining”), or from within it, Stanley Kubrick responds to a critic who accuses him and his films of nihilism.

But my reading of Kubrick’s work has no similarities with Hechinger’s reading. We are saying completely different things. Hechinger had a moral agenda; my designs and criticism do not. What I want to get at, and expose like an organ in a body, is the core of Kubrick’s work. What is its logic? What makes it tick? And that thing is human hate. You will not find love in that body, nor will you find peace. All is war, and all sex is rape.

There is a scene in Full Metal Jacket that needs closer inspection. It happens like this: A Vietnamese man on a motorcycle brings a prostitute to some bored American soldiers. He calls a price and promises she will suck and fuck. A black soldier, played by the great Dorian Harewood, accepts the fucking offer. But the Vietnamese prostitute rejects his bid because she fears he has a big dick. The black man then unzips his pants and shows her “pure Alabama blacksnake.” The prostitute’s eyes pop out at the sight of his animal, and she greedily accepts his bid: sold.

The problem with this scene is it makes no sense. First, she doesn’t want to fuck him because his dick is too big; second, he shows her that his dick is too big; third, she wants to fuck him because his dick is too big. There is no escape from this breakdown of meaning. There is no escape because there is no hope here. That dark contradiction is a symptom of a cinema that sees nothing but the worst in all motives and interactions.

The Prayer Warrior is on the move again…

Dear Prayer Warrior,

Thank you for praying for my trip to DC. Please pray for me now as I lead in the development of a plan to deal with corporations that are supplying millions of dollars each year for same sex marriages and anti judeo Christian values.

Your Pastor,
Hutch

You know what totally sucks about being young and punk rock, and yet able to hold a steady job? (Other than “Nothing!” of course.) When I crave oysters and three-tiered platters of deluxe seafood like the feast Angela Garbes got to eat in this week’s chow lead, I have to go alone, because none of my fucking poor-ass friends can afford to eat like I want to. (Sorry guys, but you know it’s true.) And I make enough money to pay for me, but not really enough to pay for them.

I even started a club with a few of my other friends who are in the same position (a Sub Pop employee and a teen center worker). But a club is not able to quench immediate urges—it requires planning and the syncronization of our collectively incredibly busy schedules. It is not just enough to get the oysters eventually—I want them tonight.

I guess I’ll just have to wait until we all grow up to be able to have this urge satisfied. Or I could start hanging out with old people. (Hi, Meinert!)

From today’s Seattle Times…

Two transgender individuals attending a weekend conference in Seattle were kicked out of a men’s bathroom at Pacific Place and then ejected from the downtown mall in what could become a significant test involving transgender people under the state’s year-old gay-rights law.

The Aug. 31 incident led about three dozen people who were attending the Gender Odyssey Conference at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center to march on the mall in protest on Labor Day, staging what they called a “pee-in” at the fourth-floor bathrooms.

The two female-to-male transgender people involved in the incident weren’t arrested but said they were mortified as a security guard led them down escalators as shoppers gawked and pointed.

“I don’t think straight people can truly understand the gravity of what this means emotionally,” said Sean, one of the two. He and the other man, his friend Simon, both asked that their last names not be used.

“Peeing is basic,” Sean said. “Anyone who feels a need to use a bathroom should be able to do so without someone rapping on the stall while your pants are down around your ankle.”

As Dan, Christopher and dozens of Slog readers have noted, phone books have become obsolete to the average computer owner and are a huge waste of paper. Last week, Slog readers encouraged me to round up as many phone books as I could, pile them into my car, and drop them off at Qwest Dex regional headquarters in Bellevue.

At first, I invited Slog readers to drop their phone books off at a central location so that I could deliver them to Dex. I constructed a massive cardboard box and left it next to the Stranger offices in a nook where homeless people often sleep. Within a day, someone ripped of the “Stranger” banner and threw it the box. The box also accumulated four Pepsi cans, a sock, two t-shirts and three trash bags from Top Food and Drugs. Only two people dropped off their phonebooks.

Dan ordered me to go door-to-door to collect unwanted phone books. I put on a nice shirt and drove to Ravenna.

The first house I visited (on 19th) had a large “God Bless America” sign leaning on the living room window, and a pro-life sticker taped above the doorbell. I swallowed, rang the doorbell, and nervously tapped my foot on the welcome mat. Nobody answered, thank God.

The next house had a large dog, so I skipped it.

After the third house, I started to get terribly bored. I rang the doorbell on another “America” house and ran away. I skipped houses. I tied my shoe slowly. I purchased some gum. After a while, I had no idea where I was. Then, I realized I had to pee. People looked up from their gardening and glared at me. I wanted to yell, “I’m not a solicitor! I’m the Public Intern! I’m here to help!”

I called Christopher Frizelle—he had written about the a large stack of phone books in the basement of his apartment, and I asked if I could come over and get them. He told me “yes” and I drove to his apartment off Broadway. Together, we piled over sixty phone books into the backseat and trunk of my Camry.

I drove to Dex headquarters (a nondescript building facing the freeway near Factoria) began unloading the phonebooks.

It was 5:30 PM, so employees were leaving the building as I dumped phone books next to the entrance. A man asked me what I was doing there and I told him, “just delivering phonebooks.” He chuckled and walked to his Lexus. Another man stood in the lobby on his cell phone, presumably calling security. I continued to add to the pile of phone books.

Books began to fall from the top of the mound, which made the pile even uglier. I waited for someone to come out and confront me, so I could tell them why I was there and what I was doing. No one came outside. The Dex people pretended the mound didn’t exist.

Steven Blum
Public Intern

A garbage truck hit a bicyclist at Eastlake E. and Furhman Ave. E about a half hour ago. This is at the Southern entrance to the University Bridge off Eastlake.

The bicyclist, a man, was killed. He was with another biker, who was not harmed.

As the sad tipster who called in with the news—he lives right by the scene of the accident—reported it: “We’ve really got to figure out a way for bikes and cars to share the road.”

No details are available yet.

My nefarious influence on the world via Wikipedia continues:

Hi Brendan

Just read your humorous account of discovering your own “facts” on wikipedia. Funnier yet: I’m in a band in LA that named our album The Ortolan after reading that same wikipedia entry. It comes out nationwide next Tuesday… Anyways, knowing that a Tintin-loving Belgian named Claude Souvenir is partially responsible for our album title is a delight.

Best, Will

Here’s the short version: About ten years ago, in Paris, after a very long and great dinner, I had a tipsy conversation with a suspicious Belgian named Claude Souvenir who told me about how one eats the ortolan, a tiny bird that is customarily caught, tortured, and eaten whole, with rich Christian symbolism.

My memory of that conversation made it into this article, which I wrote last year. Then my memory of that conversation went up on Wikipedia, presented in a sort of authoritative way.

A few weeks ago, I stumbled across my own quote, while doing research for something else. I thought it was funny that my memory would be cited as an authority on anything and wrote this story about it.

Then Will (above) wrote me the letter about reading my story about reading my own memory in a Wikipedia article—the same article that influenced the choice of his band’s album.

Anyway, the Wikipedia article in which my memory was cited as an authority—I’ve been edited out of it. Which is sort of insulting and sort of relieving.

Tonight: The Juan Maclean, Clipse, Dirty Projectors, and More.

SRSLY: This Week’s Setlist.

Roll Deep: Trent Moorman on Drum Rolls.

The Best: Kim Hayden on George Jones.

“Dicked Around at Work. Ate Some Tacos”: Jeff Kirby on Ben Snakepit

Don’t You Know?: Terry Miller on Jan Hammer.

Animal Collectives: Molly Hamilton on Deerhunter, Grizzly Bear.

Tim Eyman’s latest initiative, I-960, which would require a super majority vote of the legislature to pass tax increases and require those tax increases to go before a vote of the people—withstood a joint legal challenge from the Service Employees International Union and environmentalists at Futurewise.

The state Supreme Court refused (unanimously) today to toss the initiative before it gets its chance at the ballot this November.

There were two legal arguments against Eyman’s initiative.

First, the plaintiffs argued that I-960’s requirement for a legislative super majority to pass any tax increase is a de facto amendment to the state Constitution. “Editing the Constitution by initiative is beyond the scope of the initiative process,” envionmental attorney Knoll Lowney says. Indeed, you cannot amend the Constitution by the initiative process.

The Constitution already specifies when legislative action requires more than a simple majority. Most tax increases are not on that list.

Second, the anti-Eyman folks argued that I-960’s requirement that all tax increases passed by the legislature must automatically go to a vote of the people also takes the red pen to the state Constitution. Requiring a vote of the people, circumvents the referendum process as spelled out in the state Constitution. You cannot file a referendum without first collecting signatures. To change that guideline, you’d have to change the Constitution—which, again, you cannot do by initiative.

The court didn’t reject the central claim that I-960 may be unconstitutional, but they rejected the idea that I-960 would literally change the language of the constitution. For example, it may be unconstitutional to pass an initiative saying people cannot protest on Wednesdays, but that initiative wouldn’t change the language of the constitution. However, if and when it passed, it could be thrown out for violating the constitution.

And so, since I-960 wasn’t setting out to change the language of the constitution, the Court held that the initiative did not fall outside the scope of the initiative process.

As to I-960s constitutionality, they would be happy to rule on that after the election.

The Court wrote:

At issue is whether this court should review the validity of the challenged provisions of I-960 prior to the November 2007 general election. Preelection review of initiative measures is highly disfavored. The fundamental reason is that “the right of initiative is nearly as old as our constitution itself, deeply ingrained in our state’s history, and widely revered as a powerful check and balance on the other branches of government.”

Appellants challenge the constitutionality of I-960. Such a challenge is not subject to preelection review. While the disputed sections of the initiative may be subject to constitutional challenge, if passed, the initiative does not exceed the scope of the legislative power. The initiative therefore may be placed on the general election ballot.

First Hill

9th and Madison

The Washington State Liquor Board has temporarily suspended Vito’s Madison Grill’s liquor license. They will not be serving booze this weekend.

According to Liquor Board spokesman Brian Smith, last February, the Seattle Police Department received a tip that Sting Entertainment was promoting an event at Vito’s, and was allowing minors in to the bar for a $10 cover charge.

When SPD showed up, there were 10 underage patron in the bar, some with drinks in their hands.

Smith says Vito’s was originally supposed to serve a 7 day suspension in July, but they came to an agreement with the Liquor Board. Vito’s license has been suspended for 4 days and they will pay a $1500 fine.

Prohibition at Vito’s ends on the 11th.

If you’re interested in Tim Burgess’s position on issues besides gay marriage and his decision to take money from Concerned Women for America, don’t worry—we’ll be continuing to cover the campaign, and we plan to have Burgess and (hopefully) Della in for an endorsement interview with our full editorial board.

In the meantime, here’s an article I wrote when Burgess first got into the race against Della (scroll down to the last few paragraphs); here’s a Slog post Josh wrote about Burgess’s position on police accountability after a debate between Burgess and Della last month; here’s another on the police accountability issue; and here are Burgess and Della’s campaign web sites, where you can get a sense of their views on city issues (and read a press release where Burgess accuses Della of “Karl Rove campaign tactics”).

Earlier this week, I posted a list of potential candidates for the state house seat vacancy that’s opening up in the likelihood that Rep. Joe McDermott (D-34, West Seattle) takes over Sen. Erik Poulsen’s (D-34, West Seattle) state senate seat.

Poulsen announced earlier this week that he’s going to leave the state senate to lobby on behalf of Washington’s public utilities.

One name I wasn’t aware of was Ivan Weiss, the chair of the 34th District Democrats. Washblog reports that Weiss is in.

Again, replacing Sen. Poulsen and Rep. McDermott happens through an appointment process. The approximately 113 Democratic precinct committee officers in the 34th are courted by candidates. Then the PCOs vote on nominees and winnow it down to the 3 top names. Those names are forwarded to the KC Council and the Council chooses. The pick is limited to a Democrat—not because McDermott is a Democrat, but because the turf is controlled by a D—Dow Constantine—at the County Council level.

It was a violent week for the drugs.

New Gateway Theory #1: Marijuana leads to stabbing.

New Gateway Theory #2: Stabbing leads to marijuana.

New Gateway Theory #3: Marijuana leads to Pit Bulls killing children.

Vietnam: Executing six for trafficking heroin.

Tasers: Killing dopers.

Not Violent: Montana to open eight free treatment centers.

Cop Quote of the Week: “I feel bad leaving these drugs in the evidence room. There’s a million dollars in drugs someone could use.”

…then why, people are wondering, did he just launch MySpace and Facebook pages?

I reported last week that the Sierra Club’s attempt to get its anti “Roads and Transit Package” POV published in the Voters Guide had gotten a preliminary nod from King County Superior Court.

Here’s the deal: Environmentalists who oppose this November’s $17.5 billion Roads and Transit package (they think the roads portion cancels out the benefits of the transit portion), took Sound Transit to court last week arguing that Sound Transit (cleverly) picked a cuckoo road warrior, Kemper Freeman, to write the Nay statement in the voters’ pamphlet. They believe that his message—strictly anti-transit—will turn off liberal King County voters.

Environmentalists worry that liberal voters won’t hear the complaints from the left about the $6.9 billion roads portion of the package—and how it would impact the environment.

Well, it looks like Sierra Club and Sound Transit (ST is in charge of the Roads and Transit statements in the voters guide) are about to sign off on an out-of-court agreement that will put Sierra Club’s anti position in the guide .

From today’s Sierra Club press release:

The Sierra Club is determined to have its opposition to RTID reflected in the Voter’s Pamphlet Guide. The public has the right to know that massive highway expansion will make global warming worse. For more information, check out www.nortid.org.

The Sierra Club originally went to court over concerns that the original “con” committee appointed by Sound Transit did not include road opponents, only those against Sound Transit. The Sierra Club wants to include this statement:

“The Sierra Club opposes because it makes global warming worse. (www.nortid.org) Billions spent on 150 miles of new highways and roads will swamp transit benefits. Proposition 1 also relies on regressive tax increases. Climate change demands smarter approaches like congestion pricing – not massive new taxes for new roads.”

The Sierra Club has come to an agreement with the committee initially appointed by Sound Transit to include the Sierra Club’s statement in opposition, and Sound Transit indicated it was open to settling on the terms proposed. Settlement today could not be finalized as King County elections and the RTID Steering Committee needed more time to respond to the compromise offer.

Producers of the British TV series “Kill It, Cook It, Eat It” are coming under fire for their decision to screen the slaughter of baby lambs, piglets, and veal calves on TV. National Farmers Union spokesman Anthony Gibson says farmers aren’t opposed to letting people see how their meat is produced; they oppose this show, he says, “because it smacks of sensationalism to show baby animals being killed.”

Slog readers, what do you think? Is it OK for a network to use the televised deaths of animals like this:

or this:

or these:

… to boost their ratings?

Rep. McDermott Knighted by King in Lesotho, South Africa:

In recognition of his tireless efforts in Africa in medical, economic, humanitarian, political and cultural areas, Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) was knighted by the King of Lesotho during a ceremony held on August 22 at the Royal Palace, Maseru, Kingdom of Lesotho.

“His Majesty Letsie III, by the Grace of God, Sovereign of the Kingdom of Lesotho, is pleased by these presents to appoint Jim McDermott Knight Commander of The Most Dignified Order of Moshoeshoe” reads the official citation.

During the official ceremony, King Letsie III personally draped a symbolic ribbon across Rep. McDermott, as the congressman’s wife, Therese Hansen, and Lesotho officials looked on.

Not bad! But the place to go for high honors is another small kingdom inside of South Africa, Swaziland:
Where is my lion skin? Where is my medal? Where is my Chibuku Shake Shake?

Who knew?

Not me, apparently, when I posted yesterday that city council candidate Tim Burgess was a member of the Presbyterian Church in America—which, it turns out, is the very conservative faction of the Presbyterian Church, the other faction being the Presbyterian Church USA. Dave Meinert and others familiar with the split promptly ripped on Burgess in the comments, charging that PCA church doctrine is racist, sexist, and fundamentalist. I noted in the comments that I “may have been mistaken,” and took the reference to PCA down. (Burgess had talked to me about the difference before, but in rewriting my post yesterday, I got it backward.)

So, for the record: Burgess’s congregation is part of the Presbyterian Church USA, the more mainline, liberal branch of the Presbyterian Church. I stand corrected; my apologies for any confusion.

Erica did a great job reporting on our meeting with city council candidate Tim Burgess.

For those just joining us: ECB has a story in this week’s paper revealing that an ad firm co-owned by Burgess (the Domain Group, now known as Merkle/Domain) worked for eight or nine years for Concerned Women of America, a serious right-wing group that fights against equal rights for gays and lesbians, among other “family values” issues.

In the buildup to the 2004 elections, CWA paid Domain $328,479 for copywriting, media buys, and consulting work.

Erica also called readers’ attention to an op/ed Burgess wrote for the Seattle Times in early 2005 (after the “family values” voters carried the day in November 2004). In the op/ed, Burgess, trying to get the Democrats back on track with “values voters” like him, urged Democrats to reach out to religious voters. He wrote: “We value the sacredness of marriage between a man and a woman.”

The CWA contract and Burgess’s use of boilerplate anti-gay code language alarmed us. Erica’s story (she originally wrote about it on Slog) was accompanied by several angry posts by Dan.

Erica and I have both been following Burgess on the campaign trail and thought he was a strong candidate. And so, after the CWA news broke, we invited him into our office to hear him out more fully.

Again, Erica has a great report on the meeting, but I’m still having trouble getting excited about a candidate whose political judgment was such that he could take on a client like CWA. I am comforted by the fact that two years into the contract, he battled with his partner to kill the contract, and that he gave his employees the option to opt out of any CWA work, though.

I’m also happy that when I asked Burgess why he now thinks the CWA contract was a mistake, he said: “I don’t want to be associated with those types of messages. These are hate messages.”

Although, footnote, I’d like to know why Domain Group was in CWA’s orbit in the first place. Did Domain have a strong reputation with the Christian right? Why so? In our interview, Burgess also told us that Gary Bauer came to Domain. Burgess says they turned him down. He doesn’t, however, remember if CWA came to them or if Domain sought out CWA. Either way. It’s unsettling. It’s also unsettling that he wouldn’t tell us which presidential candidate he voted for in 2004.

Meanwhile, I’m still not sure what I think about Burgess’s evolution on gay marriage. He says he switched from pro-civil unions to pro-gay marriage after gay leaders such as Tina Podlodowski, state Rep. Joe McDermott, and City Council member Tom Rasmussen— whom Burgess met with in his deliberations before deciding to run for city council— convinced him that his problem with gay marriage was “semantic.”

Here’s a snippet from our interview, where I tried to get to the bottom of that explanation, which had seemed like a sweeping way of not really answering the question.

Me: You keep saying, “They convinced me I had a semantic problem.” But what was the specific problem you had with marriage that you didn’t have with a civil union? How did they convince you it was a just a semantic problem? What semantic problem did they identify, and then how did you come out on the other side of that conversation?

Burgess: I think it came up where, and I don’t remember if it was Tom or Tina who asked my position on gay marriage, and my response was, “I have no problem with civil unions.” And they said, “Hey great, BUT…” and then we got into a discussion about marriage equality and what that meant. And so I then talked about and had a dialogue with all of them. With Joe McDermott, with all kinds of people to tell me what the difference is and why this is important. And I went through a process…

Me: Tim, I’m trying to get at specifically what you weren’t aware of. You said it’s just semantic. So I want to know: I used to think this about gay marriage, but now…

Dan: Why did you think a same sex marriage should not be allowed to be a marriage? What was magic about those syllables?

Tim: I don’t think I thought affirmatively it should not be. I supported civil unions, and I viewed marriage as inside the context of the church. Then my position became: Marriage can be religious or it can be civil and that’s where I then saw the freedom to say, you know what, it can be civil unions. That’s fine. But it can also be full marriage equality and I don’t have a problem with that.”

Satisfying answer?

The King County Executive has a secret admirer.

I hope there are free ringtones in the afterlife.

Music

Dirty Projectors, YACHT at Vera Project

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Mark Weil, a prominent Uzbek theater director and part-time Seattle resident was stabbed to death in Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, presumably by “two young men in baseball caps waiting for the director in front of his building.”

He was not robbed.

From the AP:

The Ilkhom Theater, which Weil founded in 1976, was the first independent theater in the Soviet Union. Long before perestroika was introduced in the late 1980s, Ilkhom gained popularity for staging uncensored productions that combined elements of Uzbek folk theater, Italian commedia dell’arte, absurdist plays and pantomime.

Some of Ilkhom’s productions have discussed themes of homosexual love, a taboo topic in Uzbekistan, a predominantly Muslim country in Central Asia where gays still face ostracism and persecution. Homosexuality is punishable by up to two years in jail.

Weil was about to open to open a production of The Oresteia.

“I’m opening the season tomorrow, whatever happens,” were Weil’s last words, according to [spokeswoman Oksana] Khripun.

Photo courtesy of Andrew Taylor.

UPDATE: I know it looks like a sneakily attached sticker, but according to a Hooters rep, they’ve been “looking at opening a new location in the [Seattle] area.” Waiting to hear back from Brix and Hooters corporate.

UPDATE 2: PHEW! The Brix developer just called. Hooters is NOT moving in. However, I just got word that Chili’s will be taking over the Bailey-Coy Books property.

The commentors in this post about my mustache and its raison d’être are right—I’m a jackass for neglecting to mention that this devastatingly dapper fellow…

…is Burke Kenny, the 22-year-old Olympia gentleman who, this very week, won top marks at the World Beard and Moustache Championship in Brighton, England.

After four years of nurturing his full beard and mustache with a meticulous daily regimen (which includes scrubbing it with Grandpa’s Pine Tar soap, paddle brushing and trimming split ends), Kenny’s own facial hair was deemed some of the best on the planet.

Obviously.

He is also obviously hilarious. This quote is the best sentence I’ve read all week: “I love to let the beard speak for itself.”

Huzzah, good sir! Godspeed, congratulations, et cetera.

All men have secrets and here is mine, so let it be known: People who gab on cell phones while driving make me want to kill. If I had a penny for every time I saw a cell-phone gabber attempting a ridiculous left turn, I could buy a nice semi-automatic weapon and shoot them all. Instead, I’ll just take consolation from the U.K., where lawmakers have passed legislation punishing cell-phone drivers with two years in jail. Full story here.

If you haven’t heard, the 5 building, Rainier Cold Storage complex in Georgetown is getting a makeover. The Sabey Corporation purchased the 300,000 square foot site for $10 million last October and immediately reached out to Georgetown residents and business owners for input on the renovation.

Confounded and surprised by Sabey’s neighborhood-friendly approach to development, I contacted Jim Harmon, Sabey’s Senior Vice President of Investments. My first question: “are you guys crazy?” as seeking out community input generally means you’ll end up hearing a million different things from a million different people.

Harmon laughed. He told me Sabey got involved with Georgetown when they saw how organized the community was. Sabey didn’t have a fully realized plan for the site, so they asked the neighborhood for suggestions. “We walked into it not knowing specifically what we were going to do,” Harmon says. “People were surprised that we didn’t have a specific plan.”

Sabey recruited 8 neighborhood representatives from Friends of Georgetown History, a Georgetown merchants group and the Georgetown Community Council, and held monthly meetings to figure out a plan for the 5 buildings at the site.

During the process, Sabey’s structural engineers determined one of the buildings was sinking and would have to be demolished. The cold storage had frozen the ground underneath it, and when the freezer was turned off, and the ground started to thaw, the building started to sink.

Because of the costs associated with demolishing such a massive building, the site will be turned into an office tower. However, Harmon says “We don’t know what the design is going to be. Not glass and shiny fancy marble. It just wouldn’t go with the neighborhood.”

Sabey hasn’t determined what they’ll do with the other four buildings on site—one of which is occupied by Georgetown Brewing—although Harmon says residential units and ground level retail are a possibility. There are also preliminary plans to add some office space in the Rainier bottling plant, which is currently used by artists and craftsmen. The current tenants will remain, Harmon says, noting “to squeeze the artists out just wouldn’t be wise.”

Sabey should have a complete plan and a time line in the next few months.

Photo by Rick Moerloos via Flickr

Say the rich family with the big house with four kids that lives on the other side of Capitol Hill from me uses 10 times as much water as I do in my West Capitol Hill apt.

Well, they pay a lot more for it than I do. And that makes sense. (And they can afford to.)

But should their water come rushing out of the pipes faster than it does at my house?

This is essentially the same question that’s in front of Congress when it comes to Net Neutrality—a proposal that would prevent Internet providers from speeding up or slowing down net content based on source, ownership or destination.

The telecom companies like AT&T that control the pipes to the Internet want to give better service to the bigger content providers. Their reasoning: Big providers use more and pay more, so they should get better service—while smaller content providers should be relegated to second tier service.

Practical implication: AT&T could make WalMart.com much more accessible to the public than Hel-Mart.com; or they could make FOXNews.com more accessible than Slog!!!

The battle (the main lobbyist for AT&T is based here in Seattle) heated up this week when the DOJ filed comments with the FCC arguing that net neutrality regulations are unnecessary because the market will take care of everything. And, the DOJ pledges that if inequity breaks out they will swoop in and take action.

Don’t believe that the DOJ will stand up for the little guy if necessary? Take some action of your own.

NEW YORK - A filmmaker who was behind documentaries that bashed Rupert Murdoch and Wal-Mart is now focusing on Rudy Giuliani, creating an “online viral video campaign” about the presidential candidate timed to coincide with the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attack.

Robert Greenwald on Thursday launched the first of four short videos about Sept. 11 and the Republican former mayor. The others are planned to launch throughout the month.

Here’s the first, about Giuliani’s ill-fated emergency command center:

Good news: Senate plans to consider bill allowing groups barred from receiving US aid because of their abortion policies to receive contraceptives.

Food additives: Connected to hyperactivity in children.

Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction: And Bush knew it.

Norman Mailer: Hospitalized with breathing problems.

Larry Craig: Resigning again?

Suicide bomb in Algeria: Fifteen dead.

Cholera in India: Those who aren’t dead face hunger.

Dead bees: Israeli acute paralysis virus to blame?

“Kicking ass” in Iraq?: So says Bush.

Ruling: USA Patriot Act enables “far-reaching invasions of liberty.”

Condi: Secretary of State? Nope—“office wife,” according to Washington Post.

Babies: Too fat?

Brownback: Supports war, constitutional ban on gay marriage.

Suicide: Rate soars among US girls.

Things you didn’t want to know: Hugh Hefner still has sex “several times a week.” (Also, he loves Holly the most.)

Recipe of the Week: Tequila-Glazed Chicken With Jalapeno (Recipe and Photo via Bon Appetit/Epicurious)

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Yesterday, Dan, Josh and I met with Tim Burgess, who’s running against incumbent David Della for City Council. My main goal was to find out what he was thinking when he, as the owner of an international ad agency based in Seattle, took on anti-gay, anti-woman hate group Concerned Women for America as a client in 1999. Concerned Women, Slog readers will recall, is the D.C.-based group that wants to ban abortion, believes homosexuality is a disease, and thinks birth control is abortion. For a look at what the lovely ladies of CWA are up to in Washington State (mostly seeking to ban sex ed and allow pharmacists to refuse to do their jobs) go here.

Additionally, Dan, Josh, and I were concerned about an opinion piece Burgess wrote for the Seattle Times in the wake of the 2004 election. In that op/ed, Burgess asserted that if the Democrats wanted to win over “values voters” (religious voters who were widely credited for Bush’s reelection), they needed to understand what their values were. Among other things, Burgess wrote, values voters “don’t like abortion. We value the sacredness of marriage between a woman and man. We recognize that not everyone agrees with us and we know the law isn’t a good mechanism to resolve these issues, but moral persuasion is.”

Burgess has since tried to distance himself from those views, saying that he was merely trying to describe what certain people of faith believe. Given the context in which that editorial was written—two months after Bush was swept to reelection by values voters, after a year of anti-gay-marriage initiatives in which “upholding the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman” was code for banning gay marriage—we were skeptical.

First of all, I give Burgess credit for showing up. Given the beating he’s taken on Slog over his editorial and his association with CWA, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he wanted to stay as far away from the Stranger’s office as possible. Compare Burgess’s stand-up behavior to his opponent David Della, who has not returned a single call from anyone at the Stranger since I wrote a mildly critical story about him after he defeated Heidi Wills four years ago. (No city council member, in my experience, has ever held a grudge that long; hell, even Margaret Pageler would sit down with us.)

Over the course of an hour-plus interview Burgess explained but didn’t exactly absolve himself. Although he did say working with CWA was “a mistake” that he wouldn’t repeat if he could do it over again, he never quite managed to explain his rapid (very rapid) transformation from ad agency executive working for anti-gay, anti-choice hate group to city council candidate with a pro-gay-marriage, pro-choice platform. “It was a business decision,” Burgess said. “I told my employees later that it was the wrong decision.” Burgess said he tried after one or two years to convince his partner, Richard Perry, to drop what eventually became an eight-or-nine year contract, but Perry would not agree. In lieu of dropping CWA, Burgess said, his firm began allowing employees to recuse themselves from working on CWA literature and other projects, an opportunity Burgess availed himself of as well. (His former employee James McWhinney, who is gay, corroborates this, saying he himself “chose not to” work on the CWA campaign. McWhinney describes the “culture” of Burgess’s agency as “one in which I finally felt free to be myself.”) Given the chance to represent CWA now, Burgess said, “I would say no because I don’t want to be associated with those kind of messages. Those are hate messages and a distortion of what I view the Christian doctrine to be.”

But let’s not let Burgess off the hook completely. After all, his firm did profit handsomely from their association with—and creation of—what Burgess now describes as “hate messages.” (In Burgess’s own words, “[CWA] came up with themes and we executed them.”) In 2003 alone, they took in $328,000 from CWA. That’s a lot of money from a contract Burgess now says was “a mistake”. And Burgess was the person at his firm directly responsible for bringing in new business; he told us he “can’t recall” whether he approached CWA or vice versa.

As for that editorial: Burgess told us he was only trying to “describe the views of voters from my faith tradition,” adding: “My assessment of that election was that Senator Kerry lost because he did not connect with people of faith. It was a plea to my political party to welcome these people to the table.” Throughout our interview, he used similar language, referring to values voters in the third person: “Those people,” “their views”. But in the 2005 editorial itself, he made it clear that he considered himself a values voter, using the first person throughout. “[F]or many of us, our political views are shaped and guided by our religious faith. We’re not Bible-thumpers, but we read it, study it and believe it.”

Burgess described the op/ed as “an attempt to say to my political party, this is a big issue that needs to be addressed.” But he refused to tell us whether he voted for Kerry or Bush—responding a bit too pointedly that “no American should have to answer that question.” (He was more willing to reveal that he voted in favor of both the four-foot rule in strip clubs and pro-pot Initiative 75).

Burgess now says he fully supports equal marriage rights for gays and lesbians. As recently as a year ago, however, he did not. He says the evolution of his position on the marriage issue came after he started considering a run for council, when he talked to gay and lesbian friends about what issues they considered most important. “At the time, I supported civil unions and I viewed marriage as something that happened within the context of the church,” Burgess told us yesterday. “After talking with (gay former City Council member] Tina [Podlodowski] and [gay state rep] Joe [McDermott], I decided that I had been hung up on a semantical issue.” However, he acknowledges that he would not push his own pastor to perform gay weddings or lobby the leaders of his own denomination to allow them. “I’m just not there yet,” he said, adding: “I’m running for city council, not city theologian.”

Asked again about the coded anti-gay language in his editorial (“sacredness of marriage between a woman and a man”), Burgess said it was not his “intent” to suggest that only men and women should be allowed to marry, a point that Dan didn’t find entirely convincing. “That’s the only possible interpretation of that phrase!” he shouted. Burgess responded: “Maybe I should have written it in a different way or more artfully, but I didn’t.”

Ultimately, I believe that Burgess’s contrition is sincere, that he supports abortion rights and gay marriage, and that he has, as he told us yesterday, “evolved and learned from my experiences in life.” What I don’t know is whether the City Council is ready for a member whose views have shown a tendency to shift so rapidly.

With all the tough talk about airport security, apparently you actually don’t need an ID to fly.

That’s pretty scary. But what’s scarier is this: I once lost my driver’s license, this was in 2002, and I got on board at National Airport in DC with this … which no joke… I’d been referring to as my Mohamed Atta ID since 9/11.

Remember him? The guy who did work for Concerned Women for America, and is now running for City Council?

We met with him yesterday. I just spent three hours writing a 2,000 word long post about it. And now, thanks to the magic of technology, that post is gone. Once I’ve stopped banging my head into my desk, I’ll try to recreate it.

Up & Coming’s Say: Go see Dan Deacon and/or 1-2-1-2.

Dub & Death: Floating in the remembrance of things past.

Candy-Gram: Golden Robot Army makes a sweet impression.

New Morrissey Musical: Done by some dudes from Reno 911?

Sorry, Grizzly Bear: We neglected to love them in the paper, so Eric Grandy loves them on Line Out.

News on Booze: With Deerhunter!

Win Free Tickets to Clipse!: One more reason why you should be refreshing Line Out every three minutes.

Mr. Stevie Wonder: Jonathan Zwickel calls him “Nourishment in the junk food world of pop.”

History: Trent Moorman goes back to Georgia circa 1986.

Machine Head: Band and fans hated by Disney.

Skatebård: Kicking some ass on the dancefloor.

Spoon at the Showbox: Christopher Hong reviews last night’s show.

Old World Vs. New World Pt. 2: Carl Orff vs. To Rococo Rot.

You Said You’d Never Forget!!: 9/11 happened in 2001, people. 2001!

Looks like Seattle’s got a brand-new weekly publication debuting this week. This one’s called “SEAT” and the focus seems to be alterna-christians (rad!). Not sure what the title references (right hand of god, maybe?).

Anyway, welcome to town, “SEAT”!

Also, dude might want to get some trucks on that board if he plans on doing any righteous shredding.

“Oh, you guys don’t just publish anything?”

“How long should the press release be?”

“We’d like to advertise, but y’know, for free.”

“Oh, so our event’s not cool enough?”

Like I’d heard earlier: Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul will be in Seattle on Sept. 14 to try to capitalize on the excitement he’s generated here.

He’ll be giving a speech on the Constitution at Seattle University and holding a rally at the Lake Union Naval Reserve Gym.

He’ll also be holding some fundraisers: A $200-a-plate lunch with supporters, a $2,000-per-person “briefing” on his campaign at a private home, and a $1,000-per-person reception at the Lake Union Naval Reserve.

Recently from the mouth of John Cusack: “I’ve made 10 good films.”

His list:

“The Sure Thing, Eight Men Out, Say Anything, The Grifters, Bullets Over Broadway, Grosse Pointe Blank, The Thin Red Line, Being John Malkovich, High Fidelity, Max - that pretty much covers it.”

Do the rest of his movies suck?

“Well, there aren’t 40 that are great, put it that way.” He pauses for an eternity, eyes widening. “But that’s fine. Ten is a good batting average, don’t you think?”

Actually, Cusack, 10 is generous. We will accept The Grifters, The Thin Red Line, and Being John Malkovich. As for the rest, add them to your forty that aren’t great.

According to Councilmember Tom Rasmussen, the Seattle Housing Authority (SHA) is looking at purchasing several of the Lock Vista apartment buildings currently slated for condo conversion. Residents recently collected 600 signatures urging SHA to use eminent domain to acquire the building.

Rasmussen will be visiting the Lock Vista Apartments tonight at 5:45 to meet with residents and find out if any of them have found other affordable housing in the area. He also wants to know if any residents can afford to purchase their units if they’re converted.

I’ve got a call in to SHA about their plans.

UPDATE:

Virginia Felton, SHA’s Communications Director, says they’re trying to figure out a way to buy the building, but with an estimated cost of 15-20 million dollars, it’s a bit of a longshot. “It’s not clear that we’ll be able to do anything before a sale goes through,” Felton says,”but we’re looking at it.”

SHA actually looked at purchasing Lock Vista two years ago when it was up for sale but, according to Fetlon, the studio and one-bedroom apartments “didn’t fit [SHA’s} needs at that time. [SHA is] trying to get out of the studio apartment business.”

SHA is looking at the building again because of all of the noise being made by residents and the displacement coalition but even if they were to purchase Lock Vista, there’s no guarantee all of the residents would be able to stay.

“By law, any project that we get involved in, 50 percent of the residents have to have incomes below 80 percent of the median income, ” Felton says. “If people [at Lock Vista] were over that income we [would] simply help them transition out.”

SHA will make a determination on Lock Vista sometime next week.