Things That Make Me Want to Hit Myself About the Head With Hammers

Fair warning, this'll probably be the first in a series. As a rule, I'm a fairly content individual, but there are a few things that actually do make me want to hit things, or hit myself with things. This week? It's been the commenters on the DMN. Specifically, the slackjawed mouthbreathers who turned this story about the Gay Rights march in Oaklawn into a discussion rife with homophobia, and completely filled with jawdroppingly awesome untruths. The conversation veered - and stayed - on gay marriage. More than one person insisted the law in Texas didn't ban it, and that there was a lot of fuss about nothing. A simple Google search could've cleared that astounding misconception up, but since the poster couldn't even spell discriminatory correctly, I'm assuming there were challenges that precluded such an experiment with the truth. But really, I do not get this debate about gay marriage. The government (and I'm veering dangerously into Trey Garrison territory here) has no business being in the marriage business. Marriage is a religious ceremony. Government (if I'm recalling my constitutional knowledge correctly and completely forgetting the past eight years) isn't supposed to be engaged in religion. The simple solution? The government gets out of the marriage business, and begins offering civil unions to everyone, for legal purposes. You get your civil union at a courthouse, and then it's up to you - and a church - to hash out any marriage ceremony you might want. The answer seems so simple that there's probably something I'm missing. If I'm not, why hasn't it happened?

Jim Schutze...

...head combustion in 3....2....1...

No, No, and a Thousand Times, No.

I used to work for the Dallas Morning News. I went in knowing I'd only be able to work there a year on the meager compensation I was going to be getting, but I also took comfort in things like a 401K plan, insurance, etc. Let me make this perfectly clear. Journalism is not a lucrative career path. It's a downright spartan existence if you work for even a big metro daily, unless - of course - you're A.H. Belo CEO Robert Decherd. Robert Decherd just announced today that he would be laying off another 500 A.H. Belo employees. He also blithely announced the company would no longer be contributing to employee 401K's, and that they'd also have to pony up some money to park at work, or for their DART passes - each were previously a benefit. It may seem small to be miffed that it's gone, but when you're making less than $30K a year, paying $40 a month for parking adds up fast. And yet, Robert Decherd got a raise. Sure, it was after taking a pay cut before, but he got a raise nonetheless. Let me tell you about my last raise. I had to work for about 18 months at a job where I pretty much had to excel every day, then beg, to get it. People get raises for work well done. Decherd gets his for running the company into the ground. Now, yes, other newspapers are shuttering, too. It's a bad time in general for the journalism world. But I lump him in with the other CEOs who fail to do a very important part of their jobs - stick a finger in the air, and see which way the wind is blowing. As I've said before, the newspaper industry suffers from failure to thrive because it failed to plan. It suffered - and actually, still suffers - from delusions of onipotence and chose to see the Internet as a fad. It failed to be an early adopter of the Internet and missed a huge opportunity to train its audience to use it in conjunction with newspapers. It failed to demonstrate early that newspapers have value, and that value can translate to the Internet. The sea change in journalism didn't start two years ago, or three years ago, or even a decade ago. As a bastion of innovation, the cruel irony is newspapers failed - there's that word again - to see the potential of the Internet at its earliest for what it was then, and what it could be later. Don't say nobody could know that - because there are men who have gotten very rich knowing exactly that. But let's circle back to the original point - Robert Decherd's complete failure to appreciate his employees, and who actually needs to be relieved of a job. From the faux obsequious "Dear colleagues" right down to the insistence that everyone needs to tighten their belts, Decherd's memo to employees is just Ipecac in prose form. Considering his wages alone would pay for at least 12 employees, possibily more, when will the board of A.H. Belo realize that the fat that needs trimming is at the head, not the rump?

Dear DallasNews.Com:

This. This. THIS. Did you not read it aloud? Did the death of this baby's parents really result in his condition improving? Because that's totally how it reads. Update: You're welcome!

Um....

OK, we all had a good laugh when the city's paper of record endorsed Mike Huckabee. Clearly, someone was pulling our collective leg, right? And then the inevitable McCain endorsement came. OK, sure. McCain. And although Jim Schutze would also throw the wholesale love of the Trinity project in that list, too, I'm sure, I would say that may be the only semi-legitimate endorsement the DMN has done in the past two years. I mean, at least there were some people other than city officials that were for it. It was a pretty even pitting of fors and aginners. But now, now you've got this convention center hotel thing. For those of you not from around here, the Dallas City Council, in its infinite wisdom, decided to fund a convention center hotel in the downtown area. I mean, sure, it undoubtedly is a sound investment, given that so many hotel chains are clamoring to build in the dow...oh wait. You mean, nobody in the hotel business thinks building a hotel in this economy would be a worthwhile investment? Crazy. We're gonna do it anyway, though, Mayor Tom "Big Hands" Leppert says. Even though there were enough signatures on an effort to defeat the idea that we pretty much have to put it to a vote now. We're going to forge ahead. Now, when for once the editorial board could maybe, I don't know, represent the thoughts and ideas of people that do not office within a two mile radius of them, and perhaps the thoughts and ideas of people who do not own property that will go up in value after a hotel is built, they turn around and do this. This. With the headline of, "Yes, build a city-owned convention hotel." Let me have just one more second of incredulity, and check that headline again. No, it still says, "Yes, build a city-owned convention hotel." And, upon a triple check, I also note that there is no mention of the fact that the parent company of the Dallas Morning News stands to fare very well if the hotel is built, since it owns a goodly chunk of the property near the proposed building site. So today, dear readers, I have a question: Do you actually read the editorial section of the Dallas Morning News, and if so, why?

Something I've Always Found Vaguely Disturbing

So I've always found the "Love Is" comic kinda disturbing. I mean, the thought is innocuous, but upon closer review, you realize that everyone's naked. The chick, the guy, they're naked. I mean, you can see nippleage on the chick and everything. And while I've found this odd my entire life, I was OK with it. Mentally, I just named them The Nakeds and had done with it. Then in today's DMN comics section, there's the usual "Love Is." Only now now The Nakeds have two little anklebiters - both naked. The whole family is naked. And then I go look up the series to see if I can find out when they spawned their little nudist children - and found this panel. Yep, that's right. Naked Grandpa, Naked Grandma, Naked Mom, Naked Dad, and two little Naked nippers. Eeeeeeeeeesh. Am I the only one creeped out by that?

Mike Hashimoto Made Me Physically Ill

I was raised to believe to respect life. I don't know many people - sociopaths and those with homicidal tendencies aside - who can simply shrug their shoulders and allow someone to die - especially unjustly. Having covered the criminal justice system, and having closely followed Dallas County DA Craig Watkins efforts to make sure no innocent man is in prison, I am not confident that everyone that makes that stop in Huntsville to sit on death row is guilty. Neither, apparently, is Watkins, who recently announced he would be spearheading an effort to try to determine that very thing. But last week, DMN Editorial Board member Mike Hashimoto implied that Watkins' gesture was a publicity-seeking one, washing the entire effort in a dirty film of near character assassination. It turns my stomach to think that someone who should be celebrating this extra bit of sunshine on a branch of county government could denigrate a gesture that has so far uncovered the seedier side of Dallas justice. As Grits for Breakfast pointed out in his response, "Why not at least acknowledge that his actions aren't totally out of left field?" Yes, Watkins has received a lot of publicity. But that publicity is now recorded history. People now have doubts about a prosecutor that was once celebrated - because they are now fully informed about Henry Wade's actions. When history is recorded, it makes it doubly harder - or at least gives an object lesson - for someone tempted to repeat it. With this national attention on Watkins' efforts, what future prosecutor is going to want to suppress evidence when the danger is there that your successor will uncover it, and therefore rewrite your legacy? So, Mr. Hashimoto, I can take a little grandstanding, if it means justice. I can take the possible publicity-seeking, if it means that we don't find out five years from now that an innocent man was lethally injected. Why can't you?

Here's a New Phrase for You, Mr. Blow:

Dear Lord Baby Jesus. I sat down Saturday to read your column, because I didn't have a bag of hammers to hit myself with, and the upper left hand corner of the Metro section seemed like an acceptable substitute. I guess I should be glad that you've gone back to your raison d'etre, the "golly gee" column, but this giant pile of Jenny poo just about made me spew my Cheerios, old-school Rodrigue style. I can only imagine you sitting at your desk, after coming back from a long lunch somewhere downtown, where you clutched Steve Harris' hand tightly all the way there and all the way back, so you wouldn't get lost. "Holy smokes!" you thought. "I've got to write a column, and it's almost 1:30. How will I ever make it back to Sunnyvale by 3:30 at this rate?" So then you scrambled for that special pad you keep in your right desk drawer, the Lisa Frank one with the unicorn on it and "Steve's Column Ideas: Don't Touch!" written in purple sparkle pen on the front. You thumb through it... "Screw Angela Hunt over with an elephant column...No, did that already. Write about the doo-dads on the traffic lights....no, shoot, did that, too. Oh, oh..OH - here it is - the DOOZY - words my grandpa uses, and how I miss them." "How'd I miss that?" you wondered aloud. Indeed, how did you? I mean, it was written in bold letters in red Sharpie across two pages, with "Best Idea EVER" next to it. And then you sat down at your computer, bemoaning the fact that it's not an IBM Selectric, I'm sure, and proceeded to pen an homage to the words "whatchamacallit," "doodad," "dealybob," "doojigger" and "doohickey." And then came this graph:

We should resurrect "right smart," too. It has nothing to do with intelligence. It's a useful measure of quantity – more than "picayunish" but not quite "boocoos."

Boocoos? Seriously? Boocoos. Boocoos. Boocoos. I'm gonna let you all ponder that for a second. Steve, the word is French. Yes, it maybe bastardized in the South as the way you spelled it, but it's still a French word. It's beaucoup, or beaucoups. It means an abundance, or wealth of. You can still hear it said - in France. Maybe, possibly in Louisiana, too. And Quebec, eh? Or in any high school French class. In other words, there are beaucoup places to learn that beacoup is a French word that is still used around the world, wherever the French language is spoken. Alan Peppard, I would've saved some of this for you, but Uncle Barky already got to you. But to the GuideLive editors: Really? Nearly 3/4 of the front page, and all of the back - for that? Really?

How To Save Your Local Newspaper

This morning comes the news that A.H. Belo will shed an additional 500 jobs - this on top of the hundreds already cut in the past five, six years or so. What does this mean for Dallas' Only Daily? Less people working there, of course. And you can be willing to bet they won't be this guy, this guy, this guy or this guy. And today, on various and assorted city blogs, there's been plenty of "why do we even have this liberal-commie-pinko-conservative-republicanloving-anti-American newspaper anyway?" posts, but none that are really all that helpful. How do you save a large metro daily that, much like Baby Jane, refuses to come to grips with reality and instead totters toward some horrific collapse? You forget ego. This isn't New York. It's not Time magazine. You're going to have to figure out what readers want, and then do it - even if it means giving up what you think is all the bright and shiny stuff. Which leads me to this: You know what newspapers are having a decent time of it? Community newspapers. Know why? They're local, local, local. And not in some half-assed way. They're all in, and their readers enjoy it. It's the reason why you can still see People Newspapers, Star Newspapers, and Today Newspapers still going strong. People want to read about what's going on where they are. NeighborsGo was a decent first start. But to stop there is like Josh Hamilton seizing up midswing. It's not going to produce anything - as I'm sure we've all noticed. Sure it's popular, but when you go from it to the Metro section, that's when you get your miss. There are simply not enough Metro reporters, and the Metro section is too small. People want to know stories about their communities. There are over a million people in Dallas alone, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, and I wager 1/3 of them at least have interesting stories to tell. That being said, yes, people do want their national news. But in this day and age, people are turning to other sources for that - primarily because they can get it faster than TDMN can print it. How do you cover state and national news? Again - make it local. A national wire story that runs now - all 15 inches of it - in the A section could be pared down to a simple sidebar, and instead that subject gets a local spin. If it's a new state law, then how is that going to affect the Dallas area? If it's a story about Hurricane Dolly, then how is the local Red Cross finding gas prices affecting its ability to help respond in situations like that? Yes, to a certain extent stories like that are being done - but hyperlocal means 15-25 percent wire, not 50 or 75. The Dallas Morning News can survive - but it has to be relevant to its readers. It can't do that with columns about doodads on street lights, stories by Wayne Slater that I read already in Time or the Wall Street Journal two days ago by someone else, or by letting people like Ed Bark go. In short, you need more Levinthal, and less um, other stuff.

Dave Marsh Eats Thor Christensen's Lunch

Not to pile on TDMN tonight, but over on its music blog, Playlist, critic Thor Christensen takes Dave Marsh to task for his story on the greatness that is Alejandro Escovedo. Christensen says he doubts Marsh would've written such a glowing piece in the Austin Chronicle if Marsh's wife, Barbara Carr, wasn't Escovedo's new manager. Says Thor:

Dave Marsh is one of rock's all-time best (and feistiest) critics. But at age 58, he's still got a thing or two to learn about journalistic ethics.

Hmmm. And ouch. Thing is, Marsh is pretty well-respected. He's also, I guess, better at the Internets than Thor Christensen, because he responded in the comments section.

I'm not a liar and you're ignorant. I wrote the liner notes for Por Vida, the Alejandro tribute album. I have been a supporter from the beginning.

Yeah, Thor, it's true, too. I checked. Took five seconds on Google.

New, Relevant Columnists Needed

As a writer, I know we can be awfully hard on each other sometimes. But we're also the first ones to actually express appreciation for a truly well-written piece, I think, and the first ones to realize just how difficult it may have been to put all the pieces together because, well, we've made the sausage before ourselves. Which is why I can say this: Steve Blow, you just may be a giant ignoramus who violated basic Journalism 101 with your column this week. If what Dallas Councilwoman Angela Hunt says is true, this column is the height of skewed unfairness and smug buffoonery. Not only did you not contact her prior to print, after she took the time to contact you and explain herself, you chose to leave the column as is - both in the print edition and the Web edition, at least, as of 8:45 p.m. You even have the opportunity to make it right in a blog post, but lemme see ... nope. But this is just a drop in the bucket of my discontent with TDMN columnists and opinion writers. My friends and I - all educated, late 20s to mid-30s - frequently talk about the things we like, and the things we detest about the Dallas Morning News. More often than not, the increasingly out-of-touch, irrelevant columnists and opinion writers irk the group. Perhaps there is an audience for people enthralled with the doodads on traffic lights, people frightened by everyone in Dallas (Hi, Rod!) and people who like hard-to-follow babble about DART Man. I don't know. But I do know there's a giant chunk of people out here who are rather disenfranchised by the Metro column offerings of the Dallas Morning News - and these are people who are dedicated readers of the dead-tree version, the kind the TDMN needs. A column or opinion piece that inspires debate is one thing - a column or op-ed piece that inspires disgust or complete disinterest is another.

Of this, and that

1.Nothing rhymes with Owen Wilson. I tried. If you can find something besides a cheese and a homebuilder in McKinney, I will buy you number 3.* 2. Go figure. 3. Thanks, Maggie, for pointing me to this. 4. Wake me up when this is all hashed out, OK? Someone (whose name starts with Ass and ends in Press) needs to chill. 5. Just because there is some punnery to be had, doesn't mean you have to use all of it, OK? 6. Christopher Beam is awesome. * The latter part, not the former. You're not getting a Maggie. And the suggestion has to be really good. If you're Owen Wilson himself, just e-mail any word at all, along with your brother's phone number.

Let's Tsk Tsk While Comparing Two Completely Disparate Situations

So, over on one of the Dallas Morning News' bajillion blogs, Rod Dreher has his crunchy con-ness all in an uproar over the fact that the Clintons gave more percentage-wise to charity than the Obamas did. So where do I start? Let's start with the fact that the Clintons earned more than the Obamas. Then there's also the fact that we're talking about two couples that are at completely different stages in their lives - the Clintons are empty-nesters with oodles of disposable income, the Obamas have two young daughters to feed and clothe, as well as their college educations for which to plan. Let's not also forget that the span of time between Hillary and Bill Clinton and college debt and the span of time between Barack and Michelle Obama and college debt are substantially different as well. And then there's what one commenter, Matt, said:

Obama has spent many years working with the down and out in South Chicago...can you put a price on a person's time and effort?

And then, of course, as many of the other commenters pointed out - the bulk of the Clinton's charitable giving went to their own charitable foundation. Dreher's lack of homework peeved quite a few, as you'll see in the comments. (And yes, I felt compelled to respond to one person who decided to bring the Bible into it by well, bringing the Bible into it, which you will see in the comments.)

This is your installment of ...

THIS is not news. It does not belong in this portion of your newspaper's website. It belongs in the entertainment section. Thank you.

Cubes, the world still thinks you're a tool

So Henry Abbott tried to get into the Mav's locker room tonight, just to see if perhaps Mark Cuban's edict would wiggle for an ESPN blogger. It didn't. Abbott, Andrew Kamenetzky of the Los Angeles Times and, of course, Tim McMahon of the Dallas Morning News were all stopped at the door. Apparently, there was even a shitlist, I mean, ahem - a list of bloggers, so the guard would know who was verboten. The most moronic thing? I'll let Abbott explain:

The Laker locker room, however, is fair game for bloggers tonight. As, of course, is the Mavericks' locker room at any road game.

I still haven't met anybody who tells my they understand or believe Mark Cuban's explanation of how the blogger ban came to be.

So yeah, Cubes. Nobody believes you. Nobody. And pretty much everyone thinks you're a tool.

Cubes, dude ...

Seriously. You're the last person I'd think would go technophobe. The fact that you'd let a blogger in to the Mav's locker room would be a step forward, and here you are saying you're giving someone who's really only half a blogger (because really, anyone who works for the Man is really not a renegade blogger you seek to ban) the heave-ho. I do get it. I do. You don't want to let just any hack working on his E-Machine from the comfort of his mother's basement into the inner sanctum of Mavericks Nation. I get it. And, while I am not blogging from my mother's basement, I promise never to even ask for press credentials. But to change policy in the middle of the season and yank the cred's of a guy that has been there the whole time is goofy. I know you said you didn't boot Tim MacMahon because he wrote something you didn't like about Avery Johnson. From the DMN article:

"I can assure you that I am not singling out Tim MacMahon," Cuban wrote in an e-mail response to a reporter's questions. Cuban said he never read MacMahon's posts and had no idea MacMahon had been blogging so long. He said someone did bring the Johnson item to his attention, along with the fact that MacMahon was a blogger.

I'm not going to call you a word that ends with pants-on-fire, but for reals? You've never ventured to the DMN's Mavericks' blog? Seriously? Bobs Mong and Decherd, you either need to do better marketing, or Cubes, you lack awareness. I'm doubting either is the case. I have a hard time choking down a scenario that has you not looking at the DMN's coverage of a team you own. I have a hard time choking down that you never got a blip on your RSS feed that featured a Tim MacMahon blog post, considering you have even said you use - nay, rely on an RSS feed for reading material:

"Between Google for News, video and web, Live.com for images, Icerocket.com for blog and RSS and Amazon for books, its pretty easy to find everything and anything from anywhere." -- Mark Cuban, blogmaverick.com, March 10, 1:32 p.m.

According to the Dallas Morning News:

The Mavericks' new policy denies locker room access to writers whose "primary purpose is to blog." The policy states that the team does "not have enough room in the locker room, nor enough media passes to fairly accommodate everyone."

Well, the solution seems easy enough. If the blogger in question is also attached to a paper product or a broadcast, he is not just a blogger. He's a contributor to the newspaper, magazine or sports broadcast. When Sports Illustrated or ESPN - who have a veritable stable of bloggers whose work never sees the print or video product - come calling, are you booting them, too? Don't be a tool, Cubes. There's a way to keep out the riffraff without looking like you're just giving a writer the boot because you didn't like what he wrote. This policy looks knee-jerk, and makes you look like, well, a jerk.

Hmmm....

Over on Overheard, the People Newspapers blog, Merritt Patterson points out an interesting letter to the editor printed in the Dallas Morning News:

Would any of the parents and fans of the South Oak Cliff boys basketball team who attended the playoff game against Highland Park last Saturday afternoon and repeatedly screamed "Don't let that white boy shoot" care to help me explain to my 6-year-old son what skin color has to do with basketball?

William Olsson, Dallas

Anybody know anything about THAT? I know there was press coverage of the game, but I didn't see any mention of that particular cheer.