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Monday, September 10, 2007

Re: Connelly’s Wrong, etc…

posted by on September 10 at 15:39 PM

First of all, it was a little weird that the dailies hadn’t done anything on the story that a high-profile challenger for a Seattle City Council seat had ties to an extremist group.

And so it’s even weirder that the only thing that shows up after Erica’s coverage is this convoluted rant from the P-I’s Joel Connelly attacking Erica. Sheesh. Maybe the P-I should cover the story before letting Connelly out of the attic.

Second, I want to repeat one of Erica’s points about Connelly’s asinine attempt: Connelly attacks me for not talking to Rep. Dave Reichert about his religion, but then attacks us for talking to Burgess about his religion. That’s just weird, Joel.

P.S. to Connelly: When I called you to see if you had talked to Reichert before you defended his religious views, you admitted that you hadn’t. You were “planning to,” you said. You also, coincidentally, hadn’t talked to me before calling me a bigot. So, question: Have you talked to Reichert yet?

RSS icon Comments

1

Wow, you're like this superhero swooping in to rescue "ECB" from a dirt-clod fight on the playground.

Posted by Hailp me, Underdawg, hailp me | September 10, 2007 4:10 PM
2

Speaking of convoluted rants...Bickering about religion with reporters from the real newspapers won't solve anything.

Josh, I think you really need to calm down. Leave the building, go to Barca, and have like four drinks. And take Erica with you, but make sure she has six.

Posted by Did you have a bad day? | September 10, 2007 4:22 PM
3

An excellent development. The soul in which the Celestial Sophia reigns is Light Soul while the soul wherein the subjective is subdued by the objective is a Dark Soul. Chesed and Gervurah in the divine dance.

The toxic beliefs of the Christians keep their shrivled souls in darkenss. Only the Jewish soul is light. Eric is correct in lashing out at these Christian idiots, they deserve our scorn. Tikkum Olam is hard work, the only work that matters. You've done it again Mazel Tov!

Posted by Issur | September 10, 2007 4:27 PM
4

Wow, Connelly managed to get it completely backward. Freedom of speech means Erica's column - or Josh's, or Connelly's - are protected speech. Burgess' original editorial is protected speech. However, what Connelly appears to be advocating in his editorial is that Erica should not have had the right to write about her misgivings regarding Burgess' religious beliefs and/or actions on the behalf of extremist organizations. That, my friends, WOULD be suppression of free speech.

Posted by Geni | September 10, 2007 4:29 PM
5

Give up on Connelly. The PI sucks, anyway. All their good columnists have left, and those remaining are either phoning it in (Connelly, how many more days till you get that pension?) or scraping the sewer drains for content (Jamieson, who earned his AA in Hypocracy), or in the fastlane of the highway to hell (that old dude who was writing about interstates the same year that Eisenhauer passed the Interstate Highway Act).


The issue here has been, and continues to be, all about TIM BURGESS and his TWO-FACED TURNABOUT.


Whoddathunk that the Stranger would be helping David Della? Just goes to show that you can't kick a guy just because he may have hugged that big ugly thing that Nickels hates so much. Della is consistently courageous, which is glaring in the face of the cowering weaselness of Tim Burgess.


So, we want MORE ABOUT BURGESS and less about Connelly and the PI. Why are so many GLBT people, like Podlodowski, endorsing Burgess? What's in it for them? Are they pawns of Greg Nickels? Are they tied to the developer community? Have they no soul (ah, perhaps that's a redundancy, considering the previously asked questions about their character)??

Posted by Nota Dime | September 10, 2007 4:29 PM
6

To the advocacy journalists at the Stranger, CWA is "an extremist group." To journalist-journalists, CWA would be "a conservative political group." I don't think the fact that Burgess' company did work for CWA would be considered any more newsworthy, in that context, than the fact that a conservative political group or two probably bought phone service from US West while Bruce Harrell was its general counsel, or software from Microsoft while Eric Oemig worked there, or...I could go on, but you get the point.

Posted by Trey | September 10, 2007 4:34 PM
7

This is almost as nuts as Tim Eyman whining about not being consulted and given a meeting with the PI editorial board before they ran an editorial saying his latest nutso idea is a bad idea.

Just get over it, guys. On both sides.

You're not the center of the universe.

Posted by Will in Seattle | September 10, 2007 4:40 PM
8

@6: To those of us living in reality, CWA is an extremist group. There's no need to sugar-coat the truth in some quixotic attempt for "objectivity."

It's also quite newsworthy when someone running for office has worked for an advocacy group that's 100% at odds with their current stated positions.

Posted by Matt | September 10, 2007 4:48 PM
9

I guess I'm confused.

Exactly how does examining Burgess's political views in the context of his own written words and the work in which he has been engaged affect his right to free speech? How does explaining to your readers what a candidate's beliefs are impinge on those beliefs?

The same problem infects all of Connelly's examples, including the Baird public meeting, in which members of the public were, you know, exercising their right to free speech. Seems Joel thinks those rights only belong to the privileged.

Posted by David Neiwert | September 10, 2007 4:54 PM
10

Eh, who cares if the dailies cover it or not, you know Michael Grossman and Della people are going to do 20 mailings on it.

Posted by Dean | September 10, 2007 5:30 PM
11

Dean, I agree. Della just keeps sending out emails to his list that blast Burgess. I signed up on Della's list a while ago and I'm still waiting to Della to say why we should vote for him and tout his record of accomplishment. I'm guessing that Grossman has told Della not to do that, but instead just slime Burgess. It is all getting so tiresome.

I'm hoping that the folks at The Stranger will do as they suggested they would a couple days ago and start focusing on the two candidates and comparing their stances on issues that will come before the Seattle City Council. Now that would be useful because no one in the media seems to be doing that.

Posted by Alcina | September 10, 2007 6:29 PM
12

As for the romper room fight...

Well, in Dan Savage's own words, The Stranger is theater.

Dan is completely insufferable, but he knows exactly how to work in his wit and smarts with his insufferability.

ECB and Feit are insufferable but stumble really badly at it. No amount of feedback on Slog is going to change the fact that ECB and Feit have the ability to do good work but let their respective insufferabilities cripple them.

Posted by matthew fisher wilder | September 10, 2007 6:56 PM
13

Not to say Dan's gotten away with it all the time, if it weren't for that meddling Fefer re: votergate. However, that's once in what 4 years?

Posted by matthew fisher wilder | September 10, 2007 7:01 PM
14

I hope we're theater.

Josh and ECB are writers. They're planning this week's news section. Joel ain't in it. A couple of posts to Slog is all they're tossing off. Joel landed his complaints about Josh and ECB and me on the front of PI's local section. We're keeping this in perspective, Joel is losing his shit.

Posted by Dan Savage | September 10, 2007 7:04 PM
15

Sitra ahara is tricky. Leave the darkenss to the goyium and get back to writing news. Kelippot are just empty shells after all. Mazel Tov!

Posted by Issur | September 10, 2007 7:34 PM
16

The theater thing is cute and all.

But imagine being on the winning side of an election. Not because you compromised your values, but because you didn't shoot yourself in the foot.

Eh? Winning! Just picture it. All you have to do is keep your facts straight and don't do anything wacky. And then you win.

You still get to get drunk, but you'll be a drunk winner instead of a drunk loser. Better!

Posted by elenchos | September 10, 2007 8:08 PM
17

Dan,
You, Jessica and Josh sure like to dish it out.

And now... a little criticism from the Elephant Man and you're running to your mommy. Waaa!

Grow up.

Posted by Not enjoying the spotlight, Dan, ECB and Josh? Too bad | September 10, 2007 8:34 PM
18

#11

Burgess is a pig who takes millions of dollars of hate monger money .. and you need to know more?

His grin is Satanic.

He sold his business for many millions and lives in the ritzy part of Queen Ann, ex cop ( oh, love cops as political leaders, so well trained in the art of compromise and understanding)

Bad taste in suits.

Posted by earle | September 10, 2007 9:05 PM
19

#11
I actually care about issues and where candidates stand, what their future plans are for our city, and how they plan to go about accomplishing those things.

For example, I know Della wants another viaduct and Burgess seems to be a surface+transit supporter. However, no one in the media seems to be asking either of them and indepth questions about how they will go about implementing these plans and how they plan to pay for it. Will we have yet another levy?

I would love to see a comparison of their stands on a whole variety of issues such as the lack of affordable housing in Seattle and what they plan to do about that.

Posted by Alcina | September 10, 2007 9:52 PM
20

Big Jowl Connely, a perfect representative of the soft right trying to confuse the issues. People do have a right to question this slippery fellow with the PR firm that spinned for the CWA. Anyways, their was that black commentator also from the PI talking about the rude manners of the left confronting Baide down south, like there was actually two legitimate sides on the Genocide in Iraq debate. That is like debating about the taste of shit. We destroyed their country with the Collin Powell Doctrine of War, and then fanned the sectarian violence every single day we have been there. The Best way to begin to make amends to Iraq is to Impeach Bush, and send him to the Hauge, but alas, Nancy Pelosi says no.

Posted by GJ | September 10, 2007 10:42 PM

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