Example of Overt Racism from a Blogger

Zee over at SpicedSass seems to just not care about what she says on her blog. I find it amazing that a human being is this racist and bigoted and prejudice all wrapped up in one.

WMD Revisionism

Some local revisionism on why we went to war.

We invaded Iraq because they we thought they weren't living up to their end of the UN resolutions. These finds, without a single WMD find, prove that they weren't.

What Rob does not answer is why the war could not wait until say, now? Why not wait until we had the whole world on our side and we had a plan for what to after we won? What was the rush??? Oh yea, we were under imminent threat from WMD, that is why couldn't wait. Now of course we know there were no weapons, just plans for weapons. There are "plans" for weapons at UC. Why don't we invade Clifton? Those evil Bearcats are a threat to my Redhawks, damn it!

Detecting a Pattern?

Am I detecting a pattern with the latest Maggie Downs column? It is a very well written and a nice column, but why is it in the Metro Section? Is this coffee shop going to advertise with the Enquirer or the new Weekly? When is the weekly supposed to come out? It was slated for Fall and it is now Fall. Is Maggie the poster gal for the Real Life, Real News program? This is real life, but is it news? This column would make a very entertaining piece if it ran with video and was played during the 5 PM "news" hour on any of the Local TV stations. Is Maggie the manifestation of what Gannett wants to make its newspapers into? The print version of the Today Show?

I like Maggie's writing, and she is a really great person as well, but I wish she would write more about what is going on, not on what people could do in their spare time.

UPDATE: Wes Flinn adds some comments.

Young Politics

Greg Korte has a good take on young voters. This part is a bit self serving, but still very very true:

Notwithstanding the Internet, television remains the primary source for news for young people. And television does a poor job covering local campaigns - especially one in which 26 Cincinnati City Council candidates are competing for attention.

Radio does a little better than TV in covering local politics here in Cincinnati, but the internet I think does a great job. And yes, that was very self-aggrandizing.

Real Life, Real News, Real Crap?

Jim Romenesko's Media Memos has a lengthly memo purportedly from Enquirer Editor Tom Callinan about a new program hitting Gannett newspapers and how it specifically affects the Enquirer. This plan, "Real Life, Real News" amounts to basically human interest market driven news. What we are going to get now is giving readers what they want, or say they want. We therefore can expect to get less of hard news. The marketing study part of this program indicates a gender and age gap. It seems that all that means to the Enquirer Management is that we (the readers) want to make the Metro section in a Tempo part deux. This except sums up what they are going to do to change their age gap:

Real Life source: As we developed a product aimed at 25-34s, we created an e-mail list of several groups of young professionals and creatives and invited them for several get-acquainted discussions over the summer. The discussions reinforced much of what we have talked about - they are interested in local news about neighborhoods and things unique to Cincinnati, places to go and things to do, goods things happening in the community, news from their neighborhoods, restaurants, local music, travel ,careers, health and fitness, arts and culture. They want to see and hear from their own generation, not what they see as our out-of-touch critics. And, they talked about looking forward, not to the past (complaints about the "riots" obsession…and, Pete Rose - many of them were born after the Big Red Machine days).

We are now going to get Dateline NBC and People Magazine in the pages of the Enquirer. If we young professionals care about what our politicians are doing I guess we are just shit out of luck. Charlie Luken, Simon Leis, and Phil Burress can do what ever the hell they want, but since the Enquirer seems to think "we" want to burry our heads in the sand, I guess we get the same crap you can watch on every Local TV station, FLUFF. Callinan tried to say this was not fluff, but it is. It is human interest gone amuck.

A second negative appears to be an abandonment of the City of Cincinnati. The suburbs will now be the focus of the paper. Every example from the memo dealt with suburban issues. The Enquirer seems to be following the ways of WLW.

The only positive thing from this memo is the realization of the importance of the internet and an increase in special content for the internet. What that exactly entails was not detailed. The Enquirer has recently increased the number of times a day they are updating the front page of their website with news stories. This is a positive step. It would be nice to do this on the weekends too, but they would need to hire some new to do it, or just break down and hire me to do a blog (cough, cough).

More from Gannett.

UPDATE: Dr. Andrew Cline at Rhetorica has a very different view on this "new" program.

Feeding Racists

Talk about generous, according to an inside source Cincinnati Tomorrow fed Nate Livingston and Amanda Mayes tonight at a special "After-Five Walk." It appears that Nate and Amanda were using the computers at Media Bridges and after the CincyTomorrow event there ended the word was passed in the building that they had a bunch of food left over and the first people to partake were Nate and Amanda. Doesn't that violate the boycott? Doesn't eating the "white man's" food somehow taint Nate? Is Kabaka Oba going to have to "purify" Nate from the "devil's" food?

ISP Problems

My cable Internet connection is giving me fits, so my posting will be intermittent. I am skipping my VigPol column this week. I apologize to my readers for that, and I promise to be back next week.