Spastically Incomprehensible
My local rag, the Oregonian, has an incurable tendency to take up quixotic and unpopular conservative causes, and then make an ass of itself maniacally defending them against the wishes of all present. When they lose, as they did with assisted suicide and measures 66 and 67, they imperiously scold their readers afterward and hamhandedly predict a dreadful comeuppance of some sort that invariably fails to materialize. When they win, as they did endorsing Bush in 2000 and the Iraq war, they quickly turn into Emily Litella in the widely predicted catastrophic aftermath, saying, to anyone still reading (and there aren’t too many), “Never mind.” This is somewhat easier to do when more than half of your newsroom has been booted out of 1320 SW Broadway over the years, and institutional memory is thus less of a problem.
In Sunday’s paper, the inexplicably still employed Jeff Mapes, evidently sitting on Phil Knight’s lap, typed up a front-page teabaggerish “news” story that predicted, yet again, a Republican landslide in the state legislature in 2010, owing to the “anger” in the “business community” over the passage of 66 and 67, which didn’t affect 97% of citizens, but nonetheless is somehow going to overturn the current 3/5 Democratic supermajority and maybe even bring us our first Republican governor in 23 years. Please, Jeff, load me up some of what you’re smoking. Near the end of the article, Mapes woefully admits that Republicans might have a shot at THREE of the 36 seats they would need to pull off such an absurdly improbable coup, after having interviewed a half dozen righty true believers who clearly aren’t even waiting for the eggs to start counting their chickens.
In every case Mapes cites, Republicans have no actual candidate on offer, just a Democratic incumbent with less than a 50% approval rating, but yet they all see a bright new conservative dawn ahead. Trouble is, Oregon Republicans, unburdened as they’ve been with any actual governing position for nearly a quarter century, aren’t exactly what you’d call saleable; they tend to have Sarah Palin’s brains and James Inhofe’s looks, and in a state where the populated parts are 70-30% Democratic, and the uninhabited parts 50-50, well, forgive me my skepticism.
Of course, Mapes resorts to sinister tales of union bosses, characterized as a malevolent “machine,” outspending our beleaguered plutocrats ($7.5 million vs. $5 million) to “ram through” commie ideas like not closing schools and laying off state police with the recent tax bills. As further evidence of liberal perfidy, Mapes excoriates the bills the obviously overconfident legislature passed after 66 and 67, which, egads, make it easier to prosecute fraudulent lenders, bars employers from snooping at the credit histories of job applicants, and allows public agencies to shift deposits from banks to credit unions. Ayn Rand must be rolling over in her grave as such flagrant communism sweeps the great Northwest, as the irrelevant and bonkers Republicans Mapes interviews assure us.
Fortunately, no one who still reads the Oregonian takes much of this, uh, “reporting” seriously. The righties they so slavishly court with such balderdash think they’re the Daily Worker already, and the liberal majority they flail at at every turn just yawns and reads something else on the toilet in the morning. Back when the Oregonian was first trying to turn itself into a freeze dried version of FOX News, its slogan was, “If it Matters to Oregonians, It’s in the Oregonian.” That got dumped after the paper missed the story, for twenty years, of Sen. Bob Packwood’s sexual fumblings that broke in the Washington Post, and stickers started showing up around town that said, “If it Matters to Oregonians, It’s in the Washington Post.” They tried to recover from that little boner (pun intended, natch…) by meekly rebranding themselves “Practically Indispensable,” a presciently halfhearted gesture that was about 300 reporters, and heaven knows how many subscribers, ago. I wonder what their next slogan will be.
“Practically Insensible?”
Hey, what’s with all this nonsense about predicting elections that are almost 9 months off? It’s not as if it’s August. Crimeny. We already have a long enough election season that begins to rival baseball season, but this is ridiculous.
Wishful thinking. Even if the Dems screw everything up in the next 9 months, this delusion of a Republican sweep is ludicrous.
Especially here. My, but I despise that Oregonian… I can see a corner of its building from here; I wish I had something disgusting to load into a tennis ball cannon about now. I see the whole episode as just another attempt to “work the refs” and manufacture excitement on the right.
Crimeny is right.
So why not read these publications, which are free to those with internet access and won’t dull your alleged brain with the nonsense of individual liberty? http://revcom.us/, http://www.granma.cu/ingles/index.html, http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/, http://www.themilitant.com/index.shtml
Individual liberty? I guess if your individual’s name happens to be Goldman Sachs, Blackwater, or Exxon, I see what you mean. But maybe you’ve noticed that for poor old Fred Finkbinder, things aren’t so rosy. Those commies have noticed this; why are you folks so danged dumb?
I’m not the one here who needs to read granma.
Wow, talk about retar… uh, I mean reality challenged. Is there a more reality-based newspaper in Portland?
Nope. We have two successful newsweeklies, one thin and edgy and one fat and boring. (I’ve written for the fat, boring one…) When I was growing up, there was the Republican Oregonian and the Democratic Oregon Journal, but like the PI in Seattle it declined because it was the afternoon paper. Naturally, after Newhouse bought the Oregonian it immediately swallowed the Journal, but for several years they “combined’ the papers, and we actually had four pages of editorials and two pages of comics. Dear Abby plus Ann Landers. Only the comics remain.
Every day another writer pens a “farewell” column; today it was Margie Boule, who was a lame TV hostess (Who did play, quite well, Audrey in a local production of “Little Shop of Horrors,” a high point in her career).
She had been typing away since 1987, boring columns suited to a touchy-feely “women’s” section circa 1975, all these years, eating up space that might have been given to someone useful.
They also dumped their only transportation reporter last week, just as the metro area is faced with replacing the Interstate bridge, the city is installing its first eastside streetcar, and one major bridge is about to fall down, among other minutia.
I’m guessing Portland journalism is doomed. (Except for CHNN, of course….)
The interstate here is undergoing a revamp within the city limits (federal funding but, you know, shh!) and the mayor is adamant that we get our own streetcar–lot of debate about that.
Meanwhile, the state labor dept. published its survey of employers who are cutting “fringe benefits” (their actual phrase) for employees–these are health insurance, sick leave and vacation time.
Leaders are silent.
But, man, do we need that streetcar!
I have sort of a love/hate relationship with the streetcar; it’s elegant and always packed and stops at my front door, but I can usually beat it to Powell’s on foot, so I only take it if it’s raining. The problem with it is it’s about 1 1/100th of a real system that would get people out of their cars; it only serves people going from walkable and yuppie NW, to walkable and yuppie Pearl, and into downtown. The new extension to the east side won’t help, either, because it only loops through commercial districts and skips all the neighborhoods.
On the other hand, it has drastically affected development in its path; before we were left with a thousand or so unwanted condos, several thousand had sold. With them came street trees, sidewalk cafes, retail, etc. in what was a flyblown former industrial area. Unlike buses, streetcars aren’t noisy or smelly, and people like to live right next to them.
“Sarah Palin’s brains and James Inhofe’s looks” That’s one hell of a handicap!
We had better luck with our two Chicago papers. The conservative Tribune that prided itself as a rival to the NYT has gone downhill to the Sun Times which when it started its revival, realized that using a local, serve the readers approach was a much better idea. It has had to survive even though the publisher Conrad Black was a crook and stole 31 million. Black went to prison for that. The Tribune which always looked down its nose at the Sun Times, is now trying to serve local readers better. It is a much smaller paper which still editorially is far too Republican, but they do provide a less strident position. On foreign affairs they are still national security idiots like the NYT.
When I think of the Chicago papers, I think of Mike Royko… he and Art Buchwald were what drew me from the funnies to the editorials when I was a kid. I think he worked for both, and bailed out of one to escape Rupert Murdoch, to boot. I hope your papers survive, especially considering that you still have two, but time will tell; looting the newspapers turned out to be just as effective for the Corporate Communists as looting the government was.
Is the Trib all gung-ho for nukes like the NYT? It wouldn’t surprise me.
Their next slogan will be, “Cigars, Cigarettes, Tiparillos?” When in doubt, whore it out…with discretion.
I doubt that will work out. One thing that has always struck me about the Oregonian, having met a great many people who work there, is that it attracts the homely. At a party, you can literally spot them by their stooped shoulders, weak chins, bad hair, and lumpy physiques, often put together. They huddle near the food table, usually, a little island of misfit toys amongst the normal. And that was in the good old days, before the buyouts.. I bet it’s worse now.
As hookers, I bet they’d have a whole lot of spare time.
I smoked cigarettes for several years and stopping appeared to be extremely difficult. I tested out all the quitting tools but not anything helped. Then I came across the electronic cigarettes. The electric cigarette utilizes a nicotine compound that consists of simply nicotine. Simply no toxic chemicals in the least. They have already completely saved my life.