For Mindy...

by JeanineAnderson

When our elected officials contemplate the introduction of a tax on plastic shopping bags—wasteful, polluting, and, has already been proven elsewhere, unnecessary plastic shopping bags that we can easily live without—that's unacceptable finger wagging. But when the Seattle Times spills barrels of ink about our need to protect Puget Sound from polluters and bulk-head builders and calls on our elected officials to take action, that's just a sober-minded and responsible effort to "elbow [our] elected officials and bureaucrats" into taking action.

See how that works?

It's an open secret: a quick dusting of Gold Bond Medicated Powder can keep a fellow's junk feeling fresh as a tingly daisy.

Now, Gold Bond ad execs are explicitly targeting the man's-junk market, via the sassy, double entendre-laden website/ad campaign PowderMyEquipment.com.

(Thanks for the heads-up, Gawker.)

by sea kay

Bruce Ramsey pitches a fit in today's Seattle Times about, yes, his inalienable right to plastic shopping bags.

I don't want to use a cloth bag. I don't want to carry the bag to the store, and I don't want to limit my shopping to the capacity of my bag.

What if I want to buy more? I can pay the 20 cents, but it is a punishment tax, a city-wagging-its-finger-at-me tax: bad, bad, bad.

I don't want the disapproval and I don't want the people in Shoreline, Edmonds, Redmond, Kirkland, Bellevue, Renton, Kent and Burien laughing at me for being a sap for the greener-than-thou progressives in Seattle. And I don't want the people who did this to have my 20 cents.

Jesus Fucking Christ, when does the whining end? So the extremely well-compensated Bruce Ramsey doesn't want to pay $.20 for a plastic bag. Boo fucking hoo. And Bruce doesn't want people in Seattle's suburbs—cities that are likely to follow Seattle's lead, if the city has the courage to buck the almighty Seattle Times on this issue, and ban wasteful, polluting plastic bags in the very near future—snickering at him. It might shrink his dick.

The Seattle Times' faux-populism on this issue is as revolting as it is hypocritical.

Right now the Seattle Times is running a front-page series on protecting Puget Sound. The series is so very high-minded, so very liberal, so very—what's the phrase again? Ah yes: it's so very greener-than-thou. Well, guess what, Bruce? Reducing or eliminating the number of plastic bags we use will not only keep them out of our waste stream, but it will keep them out of Puget Sound. Here's a little factoid from a wire service story that ran in the PI some time ago:

One of the most dramatic impacts is on marine life. About 100,000 whales, seals, turtles and other marine animals are killed by plastic bags each year worldwide, according to Planet Ark, an international environmental group.

Last September, more than 354,000 bags—most of them plastic—were collected during an international cleanup of costal areas in the United States and 100 other countries, according to the Ocean Conservancy.

The bags were the fifth most common item of debris found on beaches.

Plastic bags are wasteful, stupid, and do real harm to our beloved Puget Sound and our local marine life—just like bulkheads, the destruction of wetlands, and industrial and residential runoff.

The issues being raised by the Seattle Times in its "Failing the Sound" series are tough ones, hard to solve, hard to reach consensus about. And, man, is the Seattle Times ever wagging its fat fingers! At rich people building bulkheads on Bainbridge Island, at developers, at local politicians. But Bruce Ramsey bravely draws the line at inconveniencing himself. So what if the damage done to our environment by plastic bags is, as Ireland has demonstrated, an exceedingly easy problem to solve—and one most easily solved with, yes, a tax. From the New York Times:

In 2002, Ireland passed a tax on plastic bags; customers who want them must now pay 33 cents per bag at the register. There was an advertising awareness campaign. And then something happened that was bigger than the sum of these parts.

Within weeks, plastic bag use dropped 94 percent. Within a year, nearly everyone had bought reusable cloth bags, keeping them in offices and in the backs of cars... “I used to get half a dozen with every shop. Now I’d never ever buy one,” said Cathal McKeown, 40, a civil servant carrying two large black cloth bags bearing the bright green Superquinn motto. “If I forgot these, I’d just take the cart of groceries and put them loose in the boot of the car, rather than buy a bag.”

Gerry McCartney, 50, a data processor, has also switched to cloth. “The tax is not so much, but it completely changed a very bad habit,” he said. “Now you never see plastic.”

Intelligent Americans aren't the only ones who consider George W. Bush a colossal waste of sperm and egg. Creativebits rounds up advertisements from around the world that try dissing Dubya to sell product. Some are pretty, some are cute, and they're all here.

(Thanks for the heads-up, MetaFilter.)

Local New York City news anchor blows her stack O'Reilly-style:

Sue from News 4 Cursing

Unanswered questions: Who was "you," and just what was "you" doing?

Via Towleroad.

(H/t: Matt Hickey.)

Good night, everyone!

This was originally posted on Saturday. I'm moving it up for readers who may have missed it because, unlike me, they actually have better things to do on the weekends than lurk on Slog.

This morning's Seattle Post-Intelligencer features one of its biannual uplifting stories about someone overcoming drug addiction. Just in time for Mother's Day PI reporter John Iwasaki introduces us to a woman fighting to regain custody of her daughter:

This mom's keeping her head above water

Standing on her mother's shoulders in the shallow end of the pool Thursday evening, the 5-year-old girl in a purple Speedo suit squealed every time she jumped into the water.

"Let's do it again, Mommy!" she said after one leap sent waves splashing over Pauline Walker's head.

On Mother's Day nearly a year ago, Walker's face was wet for another reason. Incarcerated for doing drugs and separated from her daughter, the holiday left her ashamed and weeping.

"I spent the whole day in bed," she said.

Pauline Walker is clean now and I sincerely hope for Walker's sake, and her daughter's sake, that she stays clean and doesn't wind up in another relationship with a violent asshole, stealing to support her habit, and dealing drugs on the side. That would suck for her and her daughter. And here's hoping that Walker, when she gets out of the halfway house she's living in now, finds employment and regains custody of her daughter.

Walker hopes to become a drug-abuse counselor—don't they all?—and that may be for the best. Because, as the PI made clear in November of 2006, people with a history of drug abuse aren't allowed to hold certain jobs. Like operating heavy machinery—you know, like cranes. Remember Warren Taylor Yeakey? Here's a Slog post I wrote in November of 2006 after a crane collapsed in Bellevue:

Every six months or so one of Seattle’s daily papers runs a story about some drug addict who, through drug treatment, managed to turn his or her life around. The stories are usually self-consciously gritty and predictably uplifting. “See?" they say. “Drug treatment really works! With a little help anyone can get his life back on track!"

Meet Warren Taylor Yeakey. Until Thursday night, Yeakey was a perfect candidate for one of those gritty turned-his-life-around profiles in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Until six years ago, Yeakey was in almost constant trouble with the law. He had a history of drug abuse, and busts for meth possession in 1994 and 2000. He served four months in prison after his 2000 arrest. He then completed a drug rehab program, got his GED, and got married. He also managed to get a good-paying job in construction.

Another drug-rehab success story, right? Yeah—until the crane Yeakey was operating collapsed in Bellevue on Thursday night, killing one man and causing millions of dollars worth of damage to three buildings. Yeakey was in the control booth at the top of the crane at the time of the collapse. It’s a miracle he survived the fall.

When the PI learned the Yeakey—like Waker and all the other recovering addicts that the paper had exploited/heaped praise on in nearly identical stories to the one in this morning's paper—had a history of drug abuse, it splashed this hysterical, prejudicial headline across the top of paper:

Operator in crane wreck has history of drug abuse

And here's the first two paragraphs of the PI's front-page crucifixion of Warren Taylor Yeakey:

The man who was operating the massive tower construction crane at the time of its deadly collapse in downtown Bellevue Thursday night has a long criminal record, including at least six drug convictions.

Crane operator Warren Taylor Yeakey, 34, of Tacoma, who survived the fall with minor injuries, went into a drug treatment program in 2000 after an arrest for methamphetamine possession in Pierce County, records show.

A former drug user like Yeakey—who almost died himself in the accident—was guilty until proven innocent. The man had abused drugs—unlike, you know, all the writers and editors at the PI, none of whom has ever so much as touched an illegal substance—so the paper convicted him with a headline and a lead. (The crane was ultimately determined to have collapsed due to a faulty design.) So much for the PI's bleeding-heart empathy for former drug addicts who've managed to turn their lives around, huh?

And you'll never guess who wrote that story about Warren Taylor Yeakey: PI reporters Andrea James and John Iwasaki.

So, Pauline Walker, it's just as well that your career aspirations don't involve construction, factory work, driving a truck, bus, or cab, or any other gig that involves operating heavy machinery and carries with it some small risk of being involved in a fatal accident some day. Because the story John Iwasaki would write about you if were involved in an accident wouldn't nearly so supportive as the one he wrote for today's paper. Because, as we've seen, the PI's bleeding heart scabs over damn quick when a recovered drug addict is involved in an accident.

Check it out...

You have to click through to the full story from the front page of the PI's website—where the image is discreetly cropped—to get to this ass shot. But those cheeks are spread clear across the top of the PI's local section.

It's not the word "fuck" in a headline above the fold (my completely and totally serious and only prescription for saving daily newspapers), but ass on the cover of the local section is a start. The PI will doubtless lose a few subscribers over this—outraged parents will be calling to say that they have children, blah blah blah, and that they thought the PI was a "family newspaper," blah blah blah—but those are the kind of subscribers dailies should be anxious to rid themselves of. Newspapers are for adults, not families.

This weekend I received the following Last Days Hot Tip, announced with the subject line Hot Tip! (booger eater):

On Saturday, May 10, at around 1 pm, my girlfriend and I were on the 358 Metro from Greenwood to downtown. When we got to around 60th and Aurora, a young man (early to mid 20's) got onto the bus and sat on the bench across the aisle from me. He proceeded to vigorously pick his nose, inspect his findings, then eat his boogers. This went on steadily for 10 solid minutes, after which his pace simmered to a pick-and-eat every couple of minutes. Attached is photographic evidence of this man's booger-eating. Also, he was wearing a magic mushroom t-shirt.

The emailed tip did indeed feature photographs of the man in action, and if the subject of Hot Tipper Wellington's Portrait of a Booger-Eater had been Ken Hutcherson or Tim Eyman or John Curley, I would have posted it with glee. But the subject is just some dude caught doing something hideous in public. If you're a man who rides the bus, digs for gold, and enjoys the booty (ugh ugh UGH!), it could be you. Let this be a lesson to us all.

This Dove ad featuring "real women"...

Was Photoshopped.

Two people—just two—talking on cell phones get hit by trains... and both our daily papers spot one of those disturbing trends that daily papers can't resist pointing out:

It's dangerous to talk on a cellphone when you're anywhere near railroad tracks.

That sounds obvious, but railroad officials say it bears repeating after a man was struck and killed by a train Wednesday while talking on a cellphone, the second such accident in the region in the past 2-½ weeks.

A man talking on a cell phone while walking Wednesday on railroad tracks was hit by a train and killed. He was the second person in the area to be killed by a train while talking on a cell phone in the past two weeks.

Presented for your consideration, daily paper editors: Youth Pastor Watch.

Reuters:

Austrian Josef Fritzl, who imprisoned his daughter for 24 years and fathered her seven children, said he was no "monster" and he could have killed her and her children had he wanted to, according to his lawyer.

"I am not a monster," Austrian daily Oesterreich quoted Fritzl as saying in comments relayed by his lawyer Rudolf Mayer. Fritzl also criticized media coverage of his case as "totally one-sided."

from dieselhorst

So says Jeff Kemp, Seattle's kinder, gentler anti-gay bigot.

Kemp heads up Families Northwest, a Redmond-based "pro-family" group, and he's got an op-ed in today's Seattle Times. (It's across from some days-old Dowd and Friedman.) Kemp's piece oozes concern, tosses out some alarming numbers ("With a trillion-dollar cost nationally, everyone is paying the price for fractured families"), throws around some dubious stats ("...similar marriage preparation and mentoring programs have helped to reduce divorce and teen pregnancy by 29 percent"), and promotes marriage intervention models very like ones developed by Families Northwest. It's just another paid advertisement masquerading as an opinion piece in the Seattle Times.

Kemp's piece end with this uplifting thought:

The goal to reduce divorce and unwed childbearing rates is not insurmountable. Marriage continues to be the most pro-child institution we have, and knowing now that divorce is hazardous to your wealth, a healthy marriage is truly priceless.

If marriage is pro-child and unwed parents are a bad thing, then Families Northwest should want my child's parents to marry. If Families Northwest doesn't want my child's parents to marry, then Kemp's group isn't really pro-child. Kemp and Families Northwest are for some children's families and against others. And while Kemp may be able to get through an op-ed piece without fuming about The Gays by name, he's just as bigoted as Redmond-based Rev. Ken Hutcherson.

from The Headless Horseman

Cardboard Tube Fighting League!

by Espressobuzz

Is the man who once coined the term "vast ring wing conspiracy" now an integral part of the monster he once decried, willingly abetting a yellow journalism vendetta against Barack Obama?! Peter Drier, of the American Prospect and the Los Angeles Times (amongst others), brings forth the case against Clintonista Sidney Blumenthal:

Former journalist Sidney Blumenthal has been widely credited with coining the term "vast right-wing conspiracy" used by Hillary Clinton in 1998 to describe the alliance of conservative media, think tanks, and political operatives that sought to destroy the Clinton White House where he worked as a high-level aide. A decade later, and now acting as a senior campaign advisor to Senator Clinton, Blumenthal is exploiting that same right-wing network to attack and discredit Barack Obama. And he's not hesitating to use the same sort of guilt-by-association tactics that have been the hallmark of the political right dating back to the McCarthy era.

Amongst the questionable media narratives Drier accuses Blumenthal of pushing (there are many, and it is a long and winding piece):

• Obama's high school exposure to a Hawaiian Marxist poet, who Obama mentions briefly in Dreams from My Father and who has since been elevated to an Obama father-figure by hard-right press critic Cliff Kincaid.

• The recent 'Obama as Radical Black Nationalist' narrative, and his Chicago connections to Weather Underground member William Ayers.

• A National Review article which accuses Obama of being an integral part of Chicago machine-style politics, which notes: "Blacks adapted to both the tribalism and the corrupt patronage politics."

• A plethora of different Tony Rezko stories.

• And lest anyone forget, the circa February 'Obama as Cult Leader' narrative penned initially by Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer.

Hardball politics or cavorting with the enemy? Read the piece and draw your own conclusions.

Looks like the bigwigs have caught on to our local celebrities...

Seattle Notables tracks local residents like Slats, aka "the Original Hipster," a quirky musician and nightclub aficionado noticeable for his Ramones-esque leather outfit and scraggly mop of brown hair hidden under a broad-brimmed black hat.

They even get an interview with our pride and joy!

"It's kind of strange when I go in a bar and everyone's taking a picture of me, or I walk down the street and they're yelling my name," says Slats, whose real name is Chris. "I'm just living my life and all of a sudden it's like, 'Whoa, what's going on?'"

His real name is Chris!

Turn the tables, Chris. Turn 'em right around!

From: Company Communications

Date: Thu, 1 May 2008 10:05:07 -0700

To: All Seattle Times

Subject: Message from Frank Blethen

I am pleased to share the attached press announcement with Seattle Times employees regarding the promotion of Ryan Blethen to Associate Publisher, The Seattle Times. One of the primary responsibilities of my Blethen generation has been inculcating the fifth generation in our public service mission and preparing them for eventual leadership of the Seattle Times Company. This promotion for Ryan is a major step in the transition from the fourth to fifth generation of Blethen family stewardship of The Times.

My fourth generation has always been grateful to work alongside talented and dedicated employees who share our passion for both journalistic and business excellence. It is gratifying that the fifth generation will have the same privilege. Please join me in congratulating Ryan on his promotion.

Frank Blethen

from The Real Mike Wilkes

According to the White House, that sign behind Bush...
...it was not referring to the war in Iraq but to something else entirely, something to do with the ship returning home. The sign just happened to be there, and the White House regrets that the American public thought it had anything to do with the victory speech.

After shifting explanations, the White House eventually said the "Mission Accomplished" phrase referred to the carrier's crew completing its 10-month mission, not the military completing its mission in Iraq. Bush, in October 2003, disavowed any connection with the "Mission Accomplished" message. He said the White House had nothing to do with the banner; a spokesman later said the ship's crew asked for the sign and the White House staff had it made by a private vendor.

"President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific and said `mission accomplished' for these sailors who are on this ship on their mission," White House press secretary Dana Perino said Wednesday. "And we have certainly paid a price for not being more specific on that banner. And I recognize that the media is going to play this up again tomorrow, as they do every single year."

Yeah, yeah—again with the Globe and Mail story. It'll be out of my system soon, gang, I swear. But it needs to be said...

Reporter Kirk Makin exposed his bias—he pulled it out and slowly stroked it—when he used the word "raunchy" to describe the sex life of a married couple in his piece today. Way to be objective there, Kirk. And then there's this:

Judge Nicholas noted that the couple—who have a son—had regularly engaged in sadomasochistic behaviour over the years.

You gotta love how Makin drops in the detail about these two being parents. He might as well have written, "OMFG! They let these people have children? These raunchy-ass sadomasochists?" Because, of course, everyone knows that good parents, if they're going to have sex at all, should only have vanilla sex.

As if insulting this particular couple and calling into question their fitness to parent weren't bad enough, Makin fails Globe and Mail readers—raunchy or regular—by neglecting to get a quote from someone willing to defend a common type of sexual expression that is now, it seems, illegal in Ontario. Makin quotes a scandalized judge and a crusading prosecutor but he doesn't bother to find anyone to speak for the other side, i.e. for all those raunchy, disenfranchised kinksters up there in Canada.

Compare Makin's piece to this ABC News story about the bondage-gone-wrong death of a man in Tennessee last week. The ABC News piece includes several quotes from Susan Wright of the National Coalition of Sexual Freedom. From ABC News:

Bondage Rule of Thumb Broken

"You never, ever leave someone alone when they're in bondage," Wright said. "For safety reasons, if someone's in bondage, you have to be there to observe them and make sure there are no complications."

Wright likened responsible bondage to sky diving and rock climbing—both activities that are not smart to do solo. She said that typically, couples involved in the fetish establish safewords that are used when someone becomes uncomfortable.

"You don't just up and leave someone because accidents happen," she said. "These are sex games. People are just supposed to be having fun."

So retroactive props to David Schoetz of ABC News for doing his job. And Makin? You're a stupid fucking hack.

...when you can read hilariously thorough synopses of today's top films for free at KidsinMind.com?

The site's stated mission:

The purpose is to provide parents and other adults with objective and complete information about a film's content so that they can decide, based on their own value system, whether they should watch a movie with or without their kids. We make no judgments about what is good or bad or anything else. We are not affiliated with any political party, any cultural or religious group, or any ideology. The only thing we advocate is responsible, engaged parenting.

It's a perfectly noble goal, carried out with scientific precision, with every reviewed film dissected for Sex/Nudity, Violence/Gore, Profanity, and Substance Use. The resulting text makes for some good, weird reading, as every "adult" component of a film is spelled out plainly. (The voluminous cataloguing of Sex/Nudity in Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay ranges from "A man is shown masturbating under sheets (we see rhythmic movement and then see a spurt of semen hit his face)" to "A young man's arm accidentally grazes a young woman's clothed breast," and "A man massages a woman's ankle.")

Best of all are the final messages presented for each film.

Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd: "Revenge is not always the answer to pain. 19th century London was an awful place."

The Rolling Stones concert film Shine a Light: "If you love what you do, you can achieve excellence and longevity. Music is about feeling and teamwork."

Juno (in which "A young man is shown in running shorts in several scenes (bare legs to the thigh)"): "Love is hard work. Parents seem to assume that teenagers are not sexually active, when in reality they are."

Jenna Jameson's Zombie Strippers (whose vast Sex/Nudity roundup reads like porn written by a computer): "Zombies can do anything."

Explore for yourself here. (And parents: Don't let my camp appreciation of the site deter you from availing yourselves of its offerings, which really do lay out every single potentially objectionable detail for a given movie, from come-splattered faces to caressed ankles.)

Thanks to MetaFilter for the heads-up.

Seattle Times:

Seattle's pigeons shot with darts at risk of painful death

Who else besides Steinbacher is playing hooky today to dive into GTA4? I don't expect to hear from my husband for the next 72 hours at least. What does it say about culture when a $60 car-jacking sandbox will make far and away more money than any other piece of media this year?

New in IV: radio stations' playlists are mixed randomly (but sadly, no ’80s), parked cars must be hot-wired; sex is depicted (not super explicitly), humans react more realistically based on where they've been shot; and, most exciting: an online multiplayer option.

Machkovech, is it all that?

Why stupid questions should not be dignified with serious answers:

Rick Downer wonders why vehicles carrying more than one person are allowed to use the regular lanes?

"I don't mind paying taxes to build High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes as long as the HOVs use them, but daily I see HOVs in the regular lanes when their lane is wide open," he says.

He thinks people with more than one person in their vehicles should be required to use HOV lanes.

And the change should be called the Lane Fairness and Road Rage Reduction Act, he said.

Answer: Washington Department of Transportation spokesman Noel Brady says HOV lanes were created to give commuters an incentive to car pool or take the bus.

Vehicles with passengers could be forced to use HOV lanes when traffic is heavy enough. But it would be hard to decide what the threshold should be.

At any rate, he said, Downer is most likely seeing drivers with passengers in regular lanes when there isn't much traffic. When there is a lot of traffic, drivers who qualify for the car pool lanes usually head there, anyway.

Next week, in the Getting There: How come old people act like they have a right to sit anywhere on the bus, when the front seats are clearly marked "for handicapped and elderly"? And why can't we force people with fewer than eight items to only use the express lines?

The Mae Shi, by ashlyn tahlier

Nevertheless, I enjoyed finding this photo on the Seattle Times website, accompanying Lynn Thompson's report on the controversy surrounding Mount Si High School's Day of Silence in support of gay and lesbian students, strenuously protested by anti-gay warrior Rev. Ken Hutcherson.

Photo credit: Ken Lambert, The Seattle Times.

(Also, the guy holding the sign is identified as 20-year-old John Sawyer; if you know him, please give him my regards.)

P.S. Don't throw rocks.

What I love most about New York Times foreign correspondent Barry Bearak's first-person account of his time in a Zimbabwe jail for the crime of "committing journalism" is the sub-plot that involves the Internet.

You can blame Robert Mugabe and Zimbabwe's broken justice system for the insanity that led to Bearak's jailing, and you probably should, but Bearak also clearly wants you (and his bosses) to know that the Internet age was partly to blame, too.

Here is how Bearak reported on Zimbabwe before the election crisis, back before he was arrested:

With elections coming in Zimbabwe, I soon made two trips to Harare, each time taking ritualistic precautions for safety. I left my credentials and laptop at home, entered the country as a tourist and interviewed people only behind closed doors. Each night, I destroyed my notes after e-mailing their contents to myself at an Internet cafe. I wrote my articles only upon returning to Johannesburg.

Sounds very spy-vs-spy, but safe. Then, surprisingly, Mugabe lost the election, Zimbabwe became huge news, and...

Daily articles needed to be filed. I had to openly work the streets, then go back to a room with a reliable wireless link to transmit from my laptop. Over time, normally wary reporters began taking risks that mocked earlier prudence, announcing their names and affiliations at opposition news conferences.

Necessity numbed my own caution. My articles required continuous updating for The Times’s Web site, so there I’d be in downtown Harare, a backpack slung over my shoulder, dictating quotes from my notebook and spelling names into the wavering connection of the mobile phone.

In case you're not getting the implication that the demands of reporting for the web led to his jailing, Bearak mentions it a few more times:

I was staying at York Lodge, a collection of eight cottages spread around a lovely expanse of shrubs and lawn. At age 58, after 33 years as a reporter, I’d like to think I have a nose for trouble, alert to danger like some frontier cavalry scout who tenses up at the sound of a suspicious birdcall.

But the police had been at the lodge for 45 minutes before I knew a thing. I was filing another update for the Web site when I left the room for a breather about 4 p.m. Maria Phiri, a tall, wiry detective in hoop earrings and a red dress, called out, “Hey you!”

And then:

I managed to call Celia with a borrowed phone. My wife somehow knows how to all at once be emotionally distraught and serenely levelheaded. She was already strategizing about how to free me; at the same time she was getting ready to assume the newspaper’s Zimbabwe coverage from Johannesburg.

“Don’t worry, whatever the cells are like I can handle it,” I told her, attempting a tough guy’s bravado. I added a reporter’s inside joke. “Really, anything is better than having to file four stories a day for the Web site.”

It's old news that it's a new world out there for journalists, but it's interesting to see that domestic reporters aren't the only ones both embracing and harrumphing at all the change. Interesting, too, to see that during Bearak's ordeal in Zimbabwe the new media world cut both ways—sometimes favoring him:

The night before, I had wanly told [my lawyer] that the case against me seemed hopelessly open-and-shut. I had written articles, and anyone who Googled my name with “Zimbabwe” would have all the proof that was needed. She harrumphed at that, insisting that even a simple database search was beyond the technical expertise of the Harare police.

I now realized she might be right.

by shapefarm

Some folks in the comments thread on Dom's post yesterday about those stupid fucking credulous hacks at the Seattle Times and PI—Mike Carter and Paul Shukovsky—admonished me for being mean to those stupid fucking credulous hacks Carter and Shukovsky. If we want to have an impact on the way stupid fucking credulous hacks like Carter and Shukovsky report about the War on Drugs and grow-op busts—they currently report with their tongues lodged in the asses of whatever DEA spokesperson appears before them—we should be nice and respectful and polite. "You'll catch more stupid fucking flies with stupid fucking honey blah blah blah."

We've already tried being polite. The posts Dom and I wrote about this particular grow-op bust weren't the very first posts we've written taking the dailies to task for their failure to live up to their own professed standards of objectivity, impartiality, and fairness when it comes to drug busts. (Shukovsky is capable of being objective, as Dom pointed out, but only when it comes to alleged pedophiles.)

Here's a nice, respectful post I wrote last October about a grow-op bust story in the PI...

...forty one paragraphs about indoor grow-ops in King County, the violence associated with them, the emerging Southeast Asian connection, and the deleterious impact all of this is having on the quality of the food served in area Vietnamese restaurants. Seriously. But there isn’t a single graph in Levi Pulkkinen’s story—not one sentence, not a measly parenthetical, not a hint—about how marijuana prohibition is responsible for the lawlessness that Pulkkinen writes about/takes dictation from the police about....

It would be great if the PI was as anxious to inform its readers about the benefits of marijuana legalization—and the futility of the war on pot (anybody at the PI having any trouble scoring pot lately? didn’t think so)—as the paper is to breathlessly report every heroic detail of the local, state, and federal government’s destructive and ineffective war on a plant. How many times do we have to read the exact same story about pot? Grow op busted! Violence associated with illegal activity! So many tons seized! Blah blah blah. When will the daily papers stop helping to wage the drug war and start actually reporting on it?

And here's a nice, respectful post I wrote about a grow-op bust story in the Seattle Times last July...

The story in today’s Seattle Times details—no, it glorifies—the work being done to root out grow operations in our area. The busts, the people going to jail, what we’ve learned, how we can fight this scourge. The effort has, of course, eaten up massive amounts of local and federal law enforcement time, landed a bunch of poor motherfuckers in jail, and cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars. And no where in the piece does the Seattle Times mention, oh, the sheer ridiculous futility of all of this.

...

Where are the quotes from a pro-decriminalization organizations? Local pot smokers? The large and growing number of Americans who, despite decades of slanted and biased coverage like this, have concluded that the war on drugs is a waste of time, money, and lives? If I wanted to read White House Drug Policy Office press releases I could go to their fucking website. Do I really need to read them on yours?

And here's another. And another. And another.

We've written about this crap again and again. And I know the reporters at the Seattle Times and PI have read the polite posts we've written about their unbelievably biased coverage—all those nice respectful posts—because I've typically received a mewling, defensive, not-for-publication email from the reporters after I put up one these posts. I guess I've finally lost my patience. I'm sick of being polite.

Again, no one is asking for screeds against the War on Drugs—that's our job. We certainly don't expect reporters at the PI and Seattle Times to flip from a pro-War-on-Drugs bias to an anti-War-on-Drugs bias. But when reporters at Seattle's daily papers fail—utterly fail—to apply the same standards of objectivity and impartiality to drug stories that they make such a fuss about applying to all other stories, again, we're going to call out the stupid fucking credulous hacks.

And here, courtesy of a Slog commenter, and for ease of reference, are a few of the questions that the PI and Seattle Times need to ask grow-ops are busted:

Do such raids work? Are they cost effective? Are they unnecessarily dangerous, either to the police or the suspects? Do they actually reduce the amount of pot on the streets? Do they make us any safer? Would simply legalizing it make us safer? Does filling our prisons with everyone involved in pot growing or smoking help or harm society in any measurable way?

Originally posted yesterday. Moved it up because the fundraiser/cocktails thing for laid off Seattle Times employees is tonight. Look for me there—I'll be on the patio doing bong hits with Mike Carter.

The Seattle Times is having to lay off a bunch of folks—a lot of newspapers out there are facing hard times. We've had our beefs with the Seattle Times, of course, just as they've had their beefs with us. The mutual beefery will no doubt continue. But no one at the Stranger is delighted to see so many writers and editors lose their jobs. That's why I'm passing along this email from Seattle Times writer and blogger David Postman (with his blessing) about a fundraiser he's hosting to help out newly laid-off Seattle Times employees...

We're losing some great people, particularly among the young crowd. I'm trying to raise some money for the newspaper guild's fund that helps laid off workers.... I figure it's a worthy cause for both Times haters and supporters because it goes to the people who write the paper, and not the big names we all know. There are two former Times Olympia interns among the laid off workers, and a few people who put in 15 years each or so in the suburban bureaus. But because they are in a bureau and not downtown they have no seniority.

So we're having a little fundraiser [tonight] night at Paddy Coyne's near the Times. Any and all Stranger folks will be warmly welcomed.

The fundraiser is tonight from 6 to 9 PM at Paddy Coyne's Pub (1190 Thomas Street, Seattle, WA 98109). It's $20 at the door. Appetizers will provided.

Full text of the invite after the jump.

Continue reading "Things Are Tough All Over" »

The announcement came from the DEA. Yesterday at 1 p.m., a press conference downtown would detail a string of pot raids and arrests around Seattle. So I, familiar with the unscrutinizing coverage the daily papers reserve for drug busts, wrote this post to challenge reporters in the mainstream media. Could they ask the sorts of questions about pot busts that they would ask about any other policy issue—why is the government doing this and is the strategy effective? Basically, cover the different sides of the issue.

The Times and the PI sent respectively Mike Carter and Paul Shukovsky. Two smart guys – and solid reporters on other subjects – and they wrote the same old rah-rah stories (almost identical articles) that glorify drug busts. They go like this: feds have announced arrests, they’re cracking down on drugs, about a dozen people were busted, those suspects are likely going to jail. Curtain.

Where’s the rest—like how much the raids cost, if the defendants (or organizations who speak for them) have anything to say about it, if armed raids were the best tactic, and if this will reduce availability of pot? I called Carter and Shukovsky to find out.

Carter: “I think we can let it go that Dan Savage thinks I’m a fucking credulous hack. In fact, we’re going to.” Hangs up.

Shukovsky: “If the Slog is going to award me the super hack of the day, I want a plaque or something. I’m not going to comment to you.”

First things first. Can we get Mr. Shukovsky a “super hack of the day” plaque?

Next, guys, it’s not that Dan thinks you’re fucking credulous hacks. It’s that everyone now knows you’re fucking credulous hacks—on the issue of pot. My polite phone call was your chance to explain that there’s some logic behind omitting the parts of a story that would be included in any piece of objective journalism about these busts—what the Times and PI purports to report—but you refused to talk.

It’s not like you have to take a position to legalize marijuana. Here’s an example of covering two sides of controversial enforcement stories, while remaining objective. For these examples we’ll use stories written by… you.

Carter on a pedophilia case.

[about the enforcement] Assistant U.S. Attorney Roger Rogoff described one of the letters written by Weldon Marc Gilbert as a "template for the misguided, skewed thinking of a typical grooming child molester," intended to deflect guilt and manipulate the boy into not cooperating with authorities….

[question the enforcement] The recovery of the first letter outraged Gilbert's defense attorneys because it was reportedly found by a guard in a stack of legal documents. The defense has filed a motion seeking to dismiss the federal charges against Gilbert, alleging the government is guilty of "outrageous conduct" that deprived Gilbert of his constitutional right to legal counsel. That motion has been sealed by a federal judge.

Shukovsky on a whaling case:

Prosecutors charged the whalers with violating the Marine Mammal Protection Act, a misdemeanor that carries up to a year in jail. If found guilty of also violating tribal laws, they could face time in a reservation jail [about the enforcement]….

Johnson, 55, said he was thinking of the next generation of Makah whalers when he launched the hunt for the gray whale [questions about the enforcement]. "The five of us did this to protect the kids," he said. "If nobody exercises their treaty right -- we don't have one."

The Makahs signed the Treaty of Neah Bay in 1855, giving up vast tracts of forest lands laced with streams teeming with salmon. The only treaty recognizing a tribe's right to hunt whales, it's an acknowledgement that Makah culture and spirituality -- not to mention traditional cuisine -- are thoroughly infused with whales and whaling.

Good reporting on those issues, gentlemen. See, you didn’t have to advocate for any position to cover those stories fairly. And when it comes to pot, you don’t have to be the DEA’s tools.

Today's column from the Seattle Times' Chicken Little editorialist Joni Balter has it all. The phrase "nanny state"? Check. Overwrought references to "social engineering"? Check. Mockery of organic food and gardening as "enviro-dogma"? You betcha.

Take it away, Joni:

[Seattle City Council president Richard ] Conlin's latest proposal is a wide-ranging resolution that aims to strengthen "Seattle's food system sustainability and security." The measure promotes healthy eating, militant vegetable growing, greenhouse-gas-reduction opportunities related to food. It aims to address obesity and food waste and improve everyday access to farmers markets.

If that sounds like a nanny state in a bib overall, it's much more. It's 12 pages of enviro-dogma that might, finally, take the green-city bit overboard ... into the compost bin.

Shorter Balter: If we stop eating fast food and buying all our groceries exclusively at Wal-Mart, the terrorists have won!!! (I'll leave it to readers to figure out what the hell "militant vegetable growing" means.)

Since becoming council president a few months ago, he has become Conlin Unplugged, pushing Seattle to the forefront of sustainable living. Sometimes it seems he is trying to out-Berkeley Berkeley.

The proud architect of the city's pygmy-goat policy — he pushed to permit miniature goats as licensed pets — seems more focused on Green Acres than Green Lake.

Conlin is a social engineer who clearly sees himself as the overseer, left unchecked, of Seattle as one giant kibbutz. Pesticide-free, of course.

Well, for God's sake, Joni, spray some pesticide on me STAT!

Keep in mind that the proposal that's got Balter all hot and bothered is, in her own words, a "measure [that] promotes healthy eating... vegetable growing, [and] greenhouse-gas-reduction opportunities related to food. It aims to address obesity and food waste and improve everyday access to farmers markets." A kibbutz, in contrast, is this. See the difference?

But boy, is Balter good at framing:

Conlin has pushed a plan to recycle kitchen waste, whether customers want to or not. Starting next year, many Seattleites will be issued another container for garbage, to pull food waste out of the waste stream.

Let's try phrasing that another way: Conlin has pushed a plan giving customers the option of recycling kitchen waste, instead of just throwing it out. Starting next year, Seattleites who want to recycle food waste can get another container to pull food waste out of the waste stream.

But Balter isn't done yet. She hasn't mentioned the poor! Oh, here they are:

About a year ago, San Francisco outlawed plastic bags at large grocery stores. Conlin and Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels go further. Conlin is a proponent of the plan to charge 20 cents per paper and plastic bag in grocery, drug and convenience stores to reduce landfill space and cut greenhouse-gas emissions.

One gets the impression no price tag is too high if Conlin and his pals can feel they are saving the Earth with every breath they take and every move they make.

Middle- and lower-income residents have limits. Most will follow along, grab a canvas bag and do the right thing. But where does it end? Bit by bit, baby step by baby step, we are pricing the middle class out of the city — sometimes in an effort to turn our city into one giant commune.

Um, Joni? A tax on plastic bags does not "go much further" than banning them outright. The reason: Unlike a ban, charging a nominal fee gives consumers a choice. If you want to bring your own bag, it's free. Or, if you prefer to use a disposable bag, you pay 20 cents. Nobody's putting a gun to your head, nor is anyone taking any options away.

Also: "No price tag is too high"? How disingenuous can you be? It's a 20-CENT FUCKING FEE that is COMPLETELY OPTIONAL. Conlin isn't forcing anything on anyone (and for the record, the fee has strong support from the rest of the city council)--and even if he somehow could force the plastic-bag fee down an unwilling city's collective throat, it's still 20 FUCKING CENTS. If a middle-class person uses so many optional plastic bags that they can no longer afford to live in Seattle, that's their own stupid fault.

But not to fear--Joni's a reasonable anti-environmentalist. Hey, she even shops at the PCC from time to time!

I am all for farmers markets and food grown close to home. I sometimes shop at the Puget Consumers Co-op in my neighborhood, which procures some vegetables a few miles from where my mother-in-law lives in Sequim. I favor reasonable behavior changes — steps like conserving water and energy to be green and help reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

But, damn it, she's tired of these enviro-commies marching us all off to their eco-rehabilitation camps!

But give me — no, give our residents — a break. This is not a commune. This is a big urban city.

Hey, you know what's great about "big urban cities"? They're the kind of places where environmental policies--recycling, bans on environmentally harmful (and unnecessary) things like plastic bags, city-run composting programs, policies that promote local food--first take hold. If it weren't for environmental efforts that initially took hold in big, urban cities, we'd all still be driving massive gas guzzlers, throwing our newspapers in the trash, and eating pesticide-drenched produce and antibiotic-injected meat. So I'm all for big urban cities setting an example for everybody else. In a sense, it's our job.

I understand that right-wing editorialists like Balter trade in "they're trying to take away our FREEEEEEDOMS !" outrage. But using a bully pulpit like the editorial page of the Seattle Times to argue against even the mildest environmental improvements (read the resolution if you don't believe me, but it calls for things like "strengthen city support for the local food economy" and "identify additional locations and infrastructure for community gardens) isn't just disingenuous. It's irresponsible.

On Apr 24, 2008, at 10:30 AM, Dan Savage wrote:

so, mike... ever smoked pot?

On Apr 24, 2008, at 10:47 AM, Mike Carter wrote:

I think we should keep SOME mystery in our relationship, don't you
Dan?

m

On On Apr 24, 2008, at 10:49 AM, Dan Savage wrote:

...a non-denial denial?

On Apr 24, 2008, at 10:51 AM, Mike Carter wrote:

That's the mystery, isn't it?

by Timwillis

Yesterday I slogged about the Tennessee woman facing charges of reckless endangerment after her husband was found dead from bondage gone wrong.

In the comments to the post, Ziptag wrote:

Dear The Stranger and Stranger Readers,

I have lost a friend in "hilarious" sexual circumstances. Please, remove the names or other identifying information reagrding the people involved in this incident. It can be very painful for friends and family to see their loved ones mocked and, worse, named. I have been involved in an ongoing effort to expunge my friend's name from the internet to protect her child, and I urge you to consider the feelings of those who have lost someone they love.

I feel Ziptag's pain, but there's no denying he/she is fighting a losing battle. The names I dropped in my original post weren't breaking Stranger news--they were drawn from the already-existing-and-rapidly-multiplying national news reports, which have since been picked up by countless blogs, and expunging the names from cyberspace is now a virtual impossibility.

The moral: If you happen to be a sensitive friend/relative of someone who dies in a salacious way, never Google them again.

The supplementary moral: For kinksters, the internet is a double-edged sword. Sure, it can help you find harmonious playmates, but if something goes terribly wrong, it'll splatter your name all over tarnation forever.

Freaky twist: Another comment to the instigating post directs readers to the surviving wife's MySpace page, where I learned that her current mood is frowny-face. The times we live in...

Paul Shukovsky.