julia versus the blogs

yesterday, the indy star's token leftist columnist dan carpenter made a dig at the anti-julia blogs:

"Absolutely," Sarge Visher replied near the end of an overwhelming Monday at the workplace he runs, U.S. Rep. Julia Carson's home office on Fall Creek Parkway.

"The response we're getting to her situation is not what the blogs have been dishing up. These are nice people."

Weblogs, decidedly mixed and often vicious when it comes to treatment of his boss and friend, barely existed when she asked him to manage her first try for Congress back in 1996. The often-anonymous, increasingly influential gossip mills make a strong case that social change is not always progressive; and that makes for deep irony when they're aimed at Julia Carson.

indeed. yet ruth holladay objects:

But since Dan Carpenter in the Star yesterday referred to the "often vicious" treatment Rep. Carson received from bloggers, I feel a tiny obligation to enter the fray.

The blogs were in fact the only early and consistent truth-tellers about Carson's repeated health problems. The blogs addressed concerns, which now we know were valid, that she was extremely unwell. Before there were blogs, it was readers who called the Star, demanding coverage of the fact that Carson missed, at various times, so many votes in Congress. It was readers who got that story out in the open, not the Star's Washington bureau.

If the blogs were vicious, it was, perhaps, only because they were trying to do the job the Star should have done.

like clockwork, ruth's comments showed up in a post at antijulia advanceindiana.blogspot.com, where gary exhorts that "Carpenter would have fit right in with the reporters in the 1960s who covered up all the Kennedy scandals in the name of protecting Camelot."

now, i appreciate ruth's impulse to jump in and defend bloggers against criticism from mainstream media figures, but i have to wonder whether ruth has ever actually read the blogs that she's so quick to defend.

the anti-julia blogs routinely call her racist nicknames like "bag lady" and "ghetto queen". they insist that julia is the head of some corrupt, nefarious organization they call "the ghetto mafia", which they claim routinely took part in felonious activity such as widespread voter fraud.

even now, as julia presumably lays dying in hospice care, they continue to impugn her honor and integrity. and don't even get me started on the absurd rumor they're still trying to spread that andre carson is the illegitimate love child of julia and andy jacobs. or that julia practices voodoo. or the rumor about julia stealing some dude's wallet.

these are vile, hateful people who have relentlessly used every attack they can think of against julia, even after they've been debunked. to say that the blogs have been "decidedly mixed and often vicious" about julia is putting it lightly.

perhaps blogs were the first ones to question the congresswoman's health. as they say, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.¶

september eleven mentality: a video mashup

i was thinking about sampling or remixing this excellent montage by tpm even before wfmu created a contest for it. but the opportunity to win a bunch of wfmu swag was too much to resist. my initial attempts weren't going anywhere, until i came up with the idea for this video mashup. enjoy.

update: forgot to add a direct link to the youtube video in case the embedding code doesn't work for some readers.¶

julia has cancer

the big news today, even overshadowing the governor's horrible poll numbers, is the revelation that julia carson has terminal lung cancer. she released this statement yesterday:

In the late summer of 2007, Congress granted me a leave of absence because of my leg infection. My wonderful doctor cured the leg, and I went into rehabilitation, planning to be back in Washington shortly.

Then the second shoe fell -- heavily. My doctor discovered lung cancer. It had gone into remission years before, but it was back with a terminal vengeance.

Therefore, I take this occasion to express my loving and literally eternal gratitude to my friends, including family, constituents and colleagues, who have given me so much love, support and trust. God bless our beloved country.

as tully writes, julia's life was a real american success story: she rose from poverty to a seat in congress, where she was beloved by many of her constituents.

but as much as she is adored, there is a vocal minority that despises her and calls her racist names and other vile garbage at every opportunity. unsurprisingly, these scum are out in full force on the star's talkback forums.

i haven't had much to say about julia's health since she first went into the hospital a couple months back, primarily because i didn't know what was up and i wasn't going to give the julia haters any further ammunition. i know how these things work: whenever a media figure or liberal blogger writes so much as a single sentence that's critical of julia, that sentences ends up quoted, in isolation and out of context, somewhere like advance indiana. it wouldn't matter if everything else in the piece was glowing praise: the haters would latch onto that one critical sentence. and while AI generally prefers to ignore me, i wasn't going to give anyone the chance to use my words for another anti-julia attack.

now that the truth is out, i wish julia the best and hope she can live out her final days in relative peace. one component of this is that yes, she should resign her congressional post. i don't begrudge a dying woman her privacy for keeping her cancer a secret until now, but now that she's gone public with her illness, she should take the next step and resign with dignity. the district deserves someone strong and healthy in that seat, fighting to represent us in congress. and perhaps just as important, julia deserves her rest. she's had a long, successful career, and she's earned a break. terminal cancer is enough to deal with; she doesn't need the stress of politics on top of that. ¶

lolcoltsgiving

only one lolcolt this week. if you don't like it, make some yourself! you're lucky i'm still making 'em at all!

happy thanksgiving, everyone. we can go back to the partisan bickering tomorrow. ¶

why property tax repeal won't work

hat tip tdw, this one paragraph from the fort wayne journal-gazette says it all:

Hoosiers are most likely best served by a reasonable mix of various taxes and user fees, and that mix may well be out of balance. Data compiled by the Federation of Tax Administrators shows that in 2005, 35.8 percent of Indiana's state and local revenue came from property taxes, above the national average of 30.6 percent – and that number has likely risen since 2005.

emphasis mine. more than a third of the state's income comes from property taxes. that's an enormous amount of money, and a huge chunk of the budget.

if we repeal or even modestly trim back property taxes, we have to do something to offset the lost revenue: either cut spending, raise other taxes, or both. the legislature is not going to cut a third of its budget this year. ain't gonna happen. which leaves raising other taxes: the ones that are named most often are sales and income taxes. yet some in the legislature are reluctant to raise the sales tax by even one percent, because that would make indiana's sales tax higher than neighboring states. they definitely won't want to raise it 2-3% or more.

whatever taxes you raise, you're going to end up with "winners and losers", as niki kelly says. niki did the math, looking at the daniels and kenley plans for cutting property taxes (not repealing, just cutting), and discovered that she'll actually pay more taxes under both plans. multiply the numbers in niki's article by about 3 to get a glimpse of what would happen if property taxes were repealed. retirees living on fixed incomes might make out pretty well, and the people who live in half-million dollar houses on meridian street might be a bit better off, but those of us who work and buy stuff would be hit pretty badly.

so in a way it's good that mayor-elect ballard is backing away from his promise to support repeal. other than eric miller, he was the state's highest-profile proponent of repeal, and if he now realizes it's impossible then hopefully the whole "repeal movement" will die down. (i've been getting a lot of guff over at abdul's place for pointing out ballard's flip-flop. most of them just tell me i'm stupid, which is pretty typical over there, but one of them calls me "stAllidiot!", which i quite like. they seem to believe that ballard hasn't flip-flopped and actually will lobby for repeal in the future. i guess we'll have to wait and see on that one.) ¶

ballard: my first broken promise

the indy star mentioned it first. then the accidental mayor blog was the first to draw attention to it. then, state dem party chair dan parker put out a press release. mayor-elect ballard has already flip-flopped on property taxes, only a week after being elected, and before he even takes office.

the abduls of the world can hem and haw and say that ballard hasn't really changed his position here. but he has. here is the promise, directly from the property taxes page of his campaign site:

1. Lobby the state legislature to pass a constitutional amendment eliminating property taxes in Indiana. I believe that with the current makeup of the legislature, 35-40% of legislators approve of such a measure.

2. Failing a state constitutional amendment, I will find an acceptable mix of taxes within Marion County to greatly reduce the influence of property taxes in Indianapolis. This will help bring the middle class back to Indianapolis, increasing the overall tax base and reducing the tax burden on the poor.

pretty simple, huh? basic, straightforward language, right? in order to keep this promise, ballard doesn't need to actually get property taxes repealed. all he has to do to keep this promise is lobby the legislature for a constitutional amendment. then, when that fails, he can go on to find another solution.

has ballard lobbied for an amendment? no. will he? apparently not, if he now supports the governor's plan. so if he promised to do X, has not done X, and has no intention of doing X, then there's no other way to look at it: he's broken a campaign promise. and he isn't even in office yet!

it would've been such an easy promise to keep! after all, candidate ballard had to know that the mayor has no power to actually do anything about property taxes. all he had to do was some token lobbying, then when it inevitably failed he could get behind the mitch daniels plan. easy as pie, campaign promise kept. but no, he couldn't even do that. he can't even be bothered to respond to questions about his flip-floppery.

not that i'm surprised. property tax repeal for indiana truly is a radical, fringe idea, and ballard's support for it was one of many reasons that i and people like me never took him seriously as a candidate. it's the kind of thing that sounds nice as a one-sentence poll question—hey, do you want to pay less taxes?—but like i said over at doug's place, just about everyone who's actually looked at the numbers know it's not feasible. property taxes bring in billions of dollars that fund our schools and other important stuff. you can't just get rid of them without doing something major to offset all that lost revenue, like massive increases to sales and income taxes, which would do plenty damage on their own.

the only question is: will the tax protesters now turn on the mayor-elect, their once-hero?

oh, and one more question: when will someone create ballardlies.com? ¶

lolcolts face the music

another week, another edition of lolcolts. i can has victory over kansas city this week? ¶

i get mail... about doctor octagon ii

remember way back in january 2006 when i wrote about dr octagon ii? no?

dr octagon ii was a fake record, a bootleg in the true meaning of the word. some shady operators knew that rapper kool keith had been talking about doing a sequel to his highly successful dr octagon record from the mid-90s, so they got their hands on some kool keith recordings and rushed it to the market under the title "dr octagon ii".

at the time, i blogged about the record, linking to a fan alert (now deleted), quoting this passage:

The album has been bootleged by 101 Distribution, in association with Real Talk Records and 33rd Street Records. The album has already been shipped and is in stores as of October 12th. It cannot be recalled. The album features 2 demos, 2 Clayborne Family tracks, and 6 INCOMPLETE tracks from the upcoming 7th Veil album. The cover of the album features Kool Keith standing in front of an Escalade, which he is not even down with. 101 Distribution, Real Talk, and 33rd Street are being sued for this release. According to Jacky Jasper, the official bootlegger is Michael Kinbrew (a.k.a. Scoobie) and his partner Damon Evans. Supposedely, these two have stolen records from Kurrupt and had false negotiation agreements with Kel of "Kenan and Kel" (Nickelodeon). HipHopSite.com has already recalled the album. Some albums have slipped through the cracks and made it into stores.

i thought the story was pretty much over when the real dr octagon sequel came out five months later, which i loved. but apparently not, because this morning i received this email:

hi stallio,

we came across this link on your site and wanted to speak to you about the validity of its details. 101 did not release the Kool Keith Dr. Octogon Returns bootleg. the fact is, micheal kimbrew sold the title to 33rd Street/ Bayside after we verified the album was not official. while it is true 101 did talk with michael kimbrew just out of sheer interest, tracking the barcode with soundscan will prove no connection between 101 distribution, damon evans and this title or any of the parties you mention in your report.

would it be possible to update this information. it's simply not true.

kind regards,
Damon Evans
Executive Director,
101 DISTRIBUTION
www.101d.com

so there you have it. damon evans of 101 distribution officially denies having anything to do with the bootleg. i of course have no idea who put it out; i was simply quoting from a page on koolkeith.co.uk.¶

meet the new rishawn biddle

tdw notes that rishawn biddle has found someone new willing to pay for his prose: the american spectator! no word on whether this is a one-time thing or a new regular gig, nor is there any word on whether rishawn was hired in ignorance of, in spite of, or because of the controversy surrounding him. (considering the spectator's contributor list i wouldn't be surprised if the answer is "because of".)

his spectator byline mentions that he's "the proprietor of dropoutnation.net," and what do you know, rishawn has a new blog titled "dropout nation". education has always been a pet issue for rishawn, so this is probably a good fit for him: having a themed blog will keep him focused so he'll be less likely to get into any real trouble. there's not much there yet but i'm sure it'll pick up steam soon, as rishawn is known to be verbose.

furthermore, while rishawn let the eponymous rishawnbiddle.com expire and turn into a spam farm long ago, i see that he has another personal domain: rishawnbiddle.org. there's not much to this site either, just a splash page with a photo of a homeless man (why, rishawn, why?) and PDFs of some old star editorials he wrote. the page's frame-based, clumsy design leads me to suspect that it was an old site he had lying around, and he's just using it to host his email, but he might decide to update it sometime.¶

entropy, death, and rebirth

one of the lingering questions in the local blogosphere is "what now?" before the election, some of the city's highest-profile right-wing blogs had the express function of ranting frothily about the peterson administration and his fellow democrats. now that peterson is out and republicans control the city-county council, what happens to those blogs?

indy undercover seems to have no purpose if republicans control city government (unless the FOP turns on ballard and the council), and the blog may be shut down. or it might continue on as a ballard-boosting law-enforcement blog and simply shut down its controversial comments section. if the blog dies, the mystery surrounding the identity of its author "joe friday" will likely die with it.

in contrast, the fringe "bart lies" site brought about its own obsolescence by using such a specific name. that site will surely die, though if the site's second splash page is any indication those folks will be teaming up with the "fair tax" folks, who promise they aren't going away. once they fail to get property taxes repealed, they plan to move on to harrassing local school boards.

meanwhile, sir hailstone is taking a break. presumably he intends to return to blogging, but we all know that in the blogging world "taking a break" sometimes means "no new posts for months if ever". hailstone's "digital farmers" blog has been getting a lot of kudos from other right-wing bloggers recently for his role in the ballardosphere. this may be a surprise to longtime readers, who might remember him from his failed primary campaign, his multiple blog purges to remove embarrassing material, and that time he put out a "hit" for gossip about "that tdw bitch".

as the anti-bart blogs die off, new species of blogs are being born. the wave of the future is the anti-ballard blog. at least two such blogs have been spotted in the wild. one is keep indy honest. there isn't much to this blog yet other than righteous anger and two single-paragraph posts. another, the wonderfully named accidental mayor, is a bit more substantial, with a suprising amount of quality content considering it's only been up for four days. the accidental mayor blog feels like a marion-county-focused taking down words, but that might just be because they're both typepad blogs with similar designs. at any rate, it's off to a promising start.

and speaking of TDW, a few trolls on various blogs have been suggesting that that TDW would die off following this year's election failures. don't believe it. as TDW has repeatedly pointed out, she works for the state party, not the county democrats, and overall democrats did pretty well in indiana this year.¶

lolcolts!

another game day, another batch of lolcolts! (for last week's lolcolts click here.)¶

is the ballard honeymoon over?

candidate greg ballard was a cipher, an enigma. the people who voted for him didn't know much more about him than they knew about noob saibot. so now that ballard is our mayor-elect, there have been two primary fears about what kind of administration he's going to build.

right-wingers and ballard supporters have feared that ballard might stack his administration with establishment republicans and longtime party hacks, effectively selling out the grassroots political revolution they were convinced they'd been a part of. meanwhile, democrats and progressives feared that he'd load up his staff with the types of fringe characters who were ballard's most-vocal online supporters—in other words, we were afraid of an entire administration full of "bart lies" types.

mayor-elect ballard has now named his transition team, and if the names there are any indication, he plans to do both.

the list is chock full of GOP insiders, and gary welsh for one is ticked off about it. for one thing, the transition team includes both marion county prosecutor carl brizzi and former US attorney susan brooks. gary supported brizzi in last year's election, but these days he doesn't care for either brizzi or brooks, because they never prosecuted marion county democrats for alleged corruption. beyond that, the team contains two partners from the law firm ice miller, which has close ties to outgoing mayor peterson. and there are also two partners from barnes & thornburg, another high-powered law firm that donated $20,000 to peterson's re-election. (barnes & thornburg has also been in the news in the past couple years because two of its attorneys have had to resign because of their ties to disgraced lobbyist jack abramoff.)

at the same time, ballard appointed darla y williams to be his liason with the peterson administration. in addition to having the most hideously incoherent blog layout i've ever seen, darla is well-known as someone who has a long-standing personal grudge against mayor peterson, and whose past job performance has been questionable at best. she's the type of person who's prone to go off on long-winded rants about the "ghetto mafia". in other words, appointing her to be the liason to the peterson administration, where she will have to work day-in day-out with mayor peterson and his aides for the next two months, is like extending an enormous middle finger. it's like appointing miss ann or sir hailstone—both of whom seem to be big darla williams fans. you couldn't pick someone who would be more overtly hostile if you tried.

both gary and jen at tdw speculate that the more experienced members of the transition team will deal with the darla problem soon enough. and there are signs that it might have already happened: wilson notes that darla's name mysteriously doesn't appear in this morning's star article about the transition team. one can only hope that ballard has already cut her loose. ¶

check out these awesome sandwich bags i found

i probably should've bought some. i mean, who couldn't use some awesome sandwich bags?

was biddle's contract violated?

ruth holladay reports that the newspaper guild is investigating rishawn biddle's firing. apparently the guild's contract with the star was not followed:

A Star insider notes that management "completely ignored the due process outlined in the union contract... They have to inform the Guild in writing whenever they terminate someone, and they didn't even bother to do that."

apparently the star didn't send that written notification to the guild about biddle's firing until two days later.

ruth also has a public statement from rishawn, but it doesn't have much that we don't already know: rishawn regrets what he wrote and is no longer with the star.

but the most interesting tidbit on ruth's blog is this:

FYI, sources inside the newsroom speculate that Dennis Ryerson and Barbara Henry are untouchable in this matter, and Tim Swarens will also survive. Apparently, this is not the only blog-related fiasco to occur at 307 N. Penn, but in other cases, the "mistakes" were made by non-employees -- you know, those freelancers -- and caught before they went online.

ruth speculates that these prior blog "mistakes" were made by freelancers—the star pays a lot of freelance reporters and editors who are thus technically not "employees". but if i had to guess, my money would be on the problems occurring over at INtouch, the star's "random folks we picked up off the street" blog. the standard of conversation there has always been far lower than at expresso, and as i've pointed out before on this blog, rishawn biddle was not the first person to have been "deleted" from the star blogs. the first i know of was jocelyn tandy-adande. and considering the kinds of garbage that was in her edited posts, i can only imagine what didn't get through.¶

who is greg ballard?

the link on the star front page says it all: who is greg ballard?

he's just won the indianapolis mayoral election, and yet after months of campaigning i really have no clue who the guy is other than that he's an ex-marine and he's Not-Bart-Peterson. apparently that was enough for some 77,000+ naptown residents.

mayor peterson is perhaps the first major victim of the property tax crisis. he didn't cause the problem; the governor and the legislature are the primary culprits there (and are surely quaking in their boots now that they've witnessed the fall of so many incumbents today). but the mayor and the city-county council weren't proactive enough about preventing property taxes from going up, and so they went way up for some unlucky souls. in the end, the GOP did a better job motivating their people to get to the polls.

i sincerely hope that greg ballard is everything his supporters say he is, because we're now stuck with the guy for four years. he certainly never demonstrated to me that he was a legitimate candidate; his own party never really took him that seriously. so here's hoping that he manages to put together a competent staff and some kind of coherent plan. it's easy to stand around proclaiming that "we can do better", but now that he actually has the job, we'll see how well he does.

update: the fact that democrats seem to be doing well in other parts of the state further demonstrates that the GOP wins in marion county are primarily about anger over property taxes, not some sort of major republican resurgence.¶

don't be like ballard: vote

it didn't seem right to post anything non–colts-related yesterday, especially after that close loss at the end. but it's a new day: the day before the election.

the hot rumor circulating the blogs this weekend is true: greg ballard did not vote back in 2003. the man wants to be mayor, but four years ago he couldn't even be arsed with voting for mayor. that really shows a commitment to the city and its problems, don't you think? i guess we'll see how many of his supporters decide to emulate their hero by staying home tomorrow, and how many one-up their man and actually vote.

but let me say this, my fellow hoosiers: if you're smart enough and plugged-in enough to be reading this blog, you should definitely get out there and vote. if for no other reason, do it so that when you run for future office, future wilson allens won't be able to dig up your voting record and leak it to the press.

in other happenings...

star editor dennis ryerson printed a column about the rishawn biddle situation. there's not much new in the column; even the apparent refusal to refer to biddle by name is not new. and while it addresses complaints about biddle's firing, it does not address the most important questions. namely, rishawn's ramblings apparently did not have to go through an editor before they got posted to expresso, as other star blogs do. why not? and how much responsibility does the star share for creating the environment where rishawn could post whatever nonsense he wanted without a filter, and for hiring an editorial writer who had previously been fired for shoddy work?

also, abdul has a post titled was rishawn wrong? if anything, abdul's post demonstrates exactly what was wrong about rishawn's post, as abdul is able to make pretty much the same argument as rishawn did, but without being offensive or pulling out his thesaurus of 19th century racial slurs.

in answer to abdul's question, i again have to say yes. black politicians face far more scrutiny than white politicians do, simply because they're black. there are tons of non-black politicians in indiana who behave horribly, but people don't group them together and wonder whether, for example, white politicians in lawrence reinforce stereotypes of white people as being rich, amoral, stuck-up assholes. plus, the fact that abdul himself can off the top of his head list a half-dozen black marion-county democrats who he has no problems with suggests that there isn't anything uniquely bad about black politicians or even marion county black politicians; there are simply fewer of them than white politicians and they get far more scrutiny.

beyond that, the rishawn saga has pretty much boiled over. it did hit the AP wire and a few national blogs, but for the most part didn't get a lot of national attention, and locally everyone has gone back to talking about the election. so things could've gone a lot worse for rishawn, but he's probably not breathing any sighs of relief, either.

update: i almost forgot... i wanted to mention the parallels between what i was saying about about black politicians facing more scrutiny and the recent national discussion about whether hillary clinton "played the gender card" recently. (of course, it doesn't matter whether hillary did play such a card, only whether the media decides she did, which they apparently have. but that's an unrelated point.)

black politicians face far more scrutiny than whites, but they can't easily acknowledge this in public or they get accused of playing the race card. similarly, part of the animus against hillary clearly is that she is a female, but she can't really come out and say that without the media freaking out. read garance's tapped post about what she calls "the secondary conversation" for more. ¶

lolcolts

my fellow hoosiers, i have a vision. that vision can be summed up with one word: lolcolts.

in an ideal world, the internet would be full of lolcolts. the good news is that this ideal world can become a reality. but i can't do it by myself!

that's where you come in. go out there and make more lolcolts. i have given you a first example above, based on a photo by aj macht. if you need inspiration, go here and then go here. maybe open each site in a separate tag and toggle between them; i don't know. however you do it, go out there and make more lolcolts!

update: here's another to make sure you're on the right track:

thanks to mike for spreading the meme.

2nd update: you can view all my lolcolts posts by clicking the "lolcolts" label below.¶

biddle story hits fox news/AP wire

the job market for rishawn biddle just got harder, as news of his firing has now hit the AP wire, including foxnews.com:

INDIANAPOLIS — The editor of The Indianapolis Star publicly apologized Thursday for what he and community leaders considered racially offensive comments posted by an editorial writer on one of the newspaper's blogs.

Editorial columnist RiShawn Biddle's posting on the online discussion board criticized City-County Council President Monroe Gray, who, like Biddle, is black. The blog, titled "Expresso," referred to Gray and other city Democrats using language that both the Star's editor and elected officials called offensive and unacceptable.

The language has since been removed from the site, and Editor Dennis Ryerson said at a news conference at Martin Luther King Jr. Park that the writer was no longer with the paper. Ryerson declined to say whether the writer was fired or resigned.

the story has now gone national, virtually ensuring that rishawn's name will pop up in dozens if not hundreds of newspapers and news sites across the country (and the net) tomorrow.

on the bright side, the offending post has finally been deleted from the star's servers, where it remained hidden but readable for some 30 hours after ostensibly being "removed".

update: see also romenesko at poynteronline.

2nd update: matthew felling writes this insightful post for cbs's public eye blog.¶

a candidacy denied

south carolina democrats have determined that they will keep stephen colbert off the ballot:

This essentially means that Colbert’s short lived White House run in the Palmetto State will come to an end, because he has said that he would not try to be placed on the Republican Party primary ballot.

The state party's executive council met this afternoon in Columbia to decide which Democratic candidates met the criteria to be placed on the ballot. To be placed on the South Carolina ballot a candidate must demonstrate national viability as well as campaign in the state.

Colbert, who officially filed papers to get on the ballot this morning, lost a roll call vote, 13-3.

Meanwhile, presidential long shots, Rep. Dennis Kucinich and former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel, made the cut.

colbert was actually polling higher than kucinich and gravel. 0% doesn't seem all that viable to me. ¶

biddle reactions from across the web

today mayor peterson, state rep william crawford, and other local politicians staged a press conference about the rishawn biddle controversy, which forced the indy star to actually report on the story. note however that the story carefully avoids mentioning rishawn by name:

The criticism of the newspaper stemmed from an editorial columnist's online discussion board posting, known as a blog, that criticized City-County Council President Monroe Gray.

The blog referred to Gray and other city Democrats using language that both the Star's editor and elected officials called offensive and unacceptable.

Dennis Ryerson, editor of the Star, said he ordered the posting removed as soon as he became aware of it and apologized on behalf of the paper.

He said the employee who posted the comments is no longer employed by the paper and that the comments did not follow the paper's standards.

"I want the Star to be, like the mayor said of the city, a model of civility," Ryerson said. "The Internet should be a center of electronic dialogue, not diatribe."

of course, the post was "removed" from expresso but remains on the server even today.

gary welsh's reaction to the press conference is predictable. to gary, everything is evidence of an all-encompassing antidemocratic conspiracy by "the carson machine", and this is no exception. in garyzarro world, biddle was fired for daring to criticize the Powers-That-Be, not for throwing around racially offensive language like "coonery". never mind that just yesterday gary admitted that the post in question remained offensive even after the "zip coon" part was removed.

ruth holladay asks whether biddle deserved to be fired, suggesting that ryerson and the star share a large part of the blame for creating an environment where biddle could post such nonsense without an editor's approval. to be sure, this incident is embarrassing for ryerson: not only does the star have trouble keeping racist, offensive comments off its talkback pages, but it can't even prevent its own employees from posting offensive material.

doug thinks rishawn's firing "[s]eems like a bit of a loss" because rishawn "seemed like a nice enough guy". while i'm sure that in his actual day-to-day personal life rishawn is nice enough, i always thought that he came off as a bit of an arrogant, condescending twit in his online posting and debating.

abdul thinks there's a bit of a double standard going, because democrats weren't equally up in arms when city-county council attorney aaron haith referred to abdul as "the grandson of willie lynch". there may be some validity to this, but then again, the two acts are hardly in the same league. as i said in the comments at tdw, haith made a spontaneous, one-sentence, offensive remark. rishawn, in contrast, wrote a nine-paragraph screed that was loaded with offensive language, which he went back and edited four times and yet is still offensive. haith's mistake was arguably a crime of passion done in the heat of the moment; biddle's was clearly premeditated, and directed toward the public. hell, rishawn was so proud of his race-baiting garbage that he sent out an email bragging about it. i have to wonder whether any of this would've even happened if he hadn't sent out that email.

and besides, by complaining about his own incident and not condemning biddle, abdul is being just as partisan and hypocritical as he complains the other side is being. it cuts both ways, chief.

melyssa aka miss ann, as usual, uses this as an opportunity to talk about herself. she is still ranting about how an IFD chief allegedly called her a "bull dyke" months ago. i say "allegedly" because, unlike abdul's complaint, there is no actual evidence that this ever happened. melyssa herself didn't even overhear the comment; some dude said it happened, so that is enough for her to post about it on 20 different blogs for months on end. personally, i have no reason to believe what some dude said, and i am immediately skeptical of any claims that arise from the "bart lies" crowd. but if it actually did happen, then she's right, that's disgusting and worthy of condemnation.

indy undercover unsurprisingly jumps at the chance to complain about "democraps". indyu's argument is the same as abdul's (only not as well-written), but the post is interesting in that the commenters are actually more offensive than rishawn's original post: one of them even makes zip coon jokes. that's classy!

various anonymous commenters at various right-leaning blogs defend rishawn on free-speech grounds, which of course doesn't really apply. rishawn is more than welcome to restart his old blogspot blog and do nothing but reprint lyrics from hair for all anyone cares. but the indy star has no obligation to give him blog space on their servers for his ramblings, nor to cut him a paycheck for doing so. plenty of us are out here blogging for free on our own time—in fact, i really need to finish up this entry and get back to work myself.

that's all the coverage of the issue i've seen online, aside from tdw and other things i've linked to in previous posts. but with this morning's press conference, i wouldn't be surprised if this story sticks around for another news cycle or two.

update: gary welsh is now demanding ryerson's resignation because ryerson attended this morning's press conference. it seems reasonable to me that the editor of the paper might want to appear at a press conference attacking his newspaper, in order to defend himself. but to gary it's an outrage!

2nd update:luke ford (who conducted the infamous "little black book" interview) picks up on rishawn's firing and writes:

I knew RiShawn when he lived in Los Angeles and interviewed him Feb. 25, 2003.

I once wrote that he was the only darkie in a room of pale faces (at a panel at AFI). He reproved me for the word "darkie." He said it was racist. I removed the word.

Biddle worked at Forbes. He was fired when his notes couldn't substantiate one of his stories (quotes). He went to the Los Angeles Business Journal and then to the Indianapolis Star as an editorial writer.

ford also quotes from this column by richard prince about rishawn's firing.¶

a slur deleted

via tdw, i see that rishawn biddle's controversial post has been deleted* and star editor dennis ryerson has issued an apology:

Recently comments on this blog were posted by a Star staff member, which included offensive, insensitive and wholly inappropriate words in reference to Indianapolis/Marion County City-County Council President Monroe Gray. Those comments have been removed. These comments absolutely did not meet the Standards of The Star. I apologize to Council President Gray, and to all communities who with good reason were highly offended by the remarks.

curiously, the other rishawn biddle post i discussed recently, the one explaining why the ed board didn't endorse greg ballard, has also been expunged, which suggests that biddle and all his posts have been permanently removed from expresso. at some point, i or someone else might want to browse back through the official expresso archives looking for his older material.

* of course, as i discovered long ago, nothing ever gets truly deleted from the indy star blogs. indeed, rishawn's posts are still there if you know the url to them. they have been removed from the blog front page, and links to them will no longer appear (except in other "deleted" posts). but the files are still there, and all those links in the blogs to the offensive post still work. i've mentioned this more than once on my blog only to be ignored, but perhaps now someone will take notice.

update: rishawn's older posts appear to be intact. just his october posts have been removed, presumably along with his ability to post new ones.

2nd update: more from ruth holladay:

I can't get Amos Brown WTLC 1310-am out here unless I'm in the car, but I am told Amos has been raking RiShawn and the Star over the coals the past two days for Biddle's language.

Someone in the know, with longtime ties to the editorial department, commented on RiShawn's name-calling: "How stupid can you get? ...

Then, as for how it even happened: "Dennis is supposed to be so much of a monitor of those (editorial) pages. How could he let this go through?"

Biddle reportedly has had problems in the past with submitting material that was inflammatory, and editorial page editor Tim Swarens had warned him that certain columns were "not publishable."

3rd update: rishawn biddle has been fired.¶

timeline of a slur

following up a bit on my previous post, here is a timeline:

1. october 26: indy star editorialist rishawn biddle authors a post called "coons for power" (or some such variation). we know this was the original title because the filename of the post remains "coons_for_power.html". we do not know exactly what this post said, as it has since been replaced in the google cache with later versions.
2. at some point, rishawn revises the post and retitles it "Didn't coonery end with slavery?" this presumed second draft of the post contains the typo "laxy" (instead of "lazy") and does not include a disclaimer noting that the post has been revised.
3. rishawn fixes his typo and adds a disclaimer that the post has been revised. this is presumably the third draft of the post.
4. rishawn thinks better of having the word "coon" in the title of his post, and retitles it "The Indianapolis Black Democrat minstrel show". instead of calling all indy black democrats coons, he decides to only refer to city-council president monroe gray as a coon, stating that gray's recent actions are "more Zip Coon than honorable statesman".
5. october 29: apparently now proud of his post, rishawn sends out an email bragging that expresso is back online. ruth holladay responds enthusiastically, quoting rishawn's "zip coon" passage and approvingly stating that "Someone at the Star needs to be saying this stuff." when the post's racist language is pointed out to her, ruth responds that she doesn't really know what "zip coon" means and speculates that "this may well be edited out".
6. gary welsh picks up on the story and remarks that "The post makes some very salient points on the state of Democratic black leadership in the city right now, but most would agree the Zip Coon analogy is way over the top."
7. i read about the post on gary's blog, post about it, and begin scouring the google cache for the original version of rishawn's post. i'm unable to turn up the true original post, but i do manage to locate a couple previous drafts.
8. october 30: rishawn deletes the bit about "zip coon" from his post, but he leaves in all the parts about minstrel shows and shuckin' and jivin'. so his post isn't really any less offensive; it just has one fewer slur. unfortunately, it is too late for him to take those words back, as the story is now all over the blogs, prompting a post at TDW.

i feel compelled to point out once again that rishawn isn't just some jackass blogger; he is an editorial writer for the largest newspaper in the state, and his bizarre race-baiting is taking place on that newspaper's web server. ¶

resurrexpresso?

courtesy AI, i learn that the indy star's expresso blog is back! linking to this post from friday, gary writes:

Biddle likened Monroe Gray's tenure as the Council's President to Zip Coon, a derogatory, racial slur on black men dating to the days of slavery. The post makes some very salient points on the state of Democratic black leadership in the city right now, but most would agree the Zip Coon analogy is way over the top.

needless to say, if one week before an election, gary welsh agrees with you but thinks you went "way over the top" then you went way, way over the top. like stratospheric. (and note that this version of rishawn's post was "revised"..."to better reflect the overall point." and it was revised at least twice, since the version in the google cache [archived here for your convenience] is worded differently and has the more-offensive title "Didn't coonery end with slavery?", but still bears the same disclaimer at the bottom. one can only imagine how awful it was originally.)

naturally, gary doesn't link to this unrelated post also by rishawn biddle, explaining why the star endorsed mayor bart peterson and other democrats. biddle's point is that while peterson has his flaws, his opponent greg ballard has no real platform and a childlike grasp of politics. literally the only thing ballard has going for him is that he's Not-Bart-Peterson. that might be enough for gary and the "bart lies" crowd, but for those of us who don't live on bizarro world, it's not enough. being Not-Bush wasn't enough for john kerry (though these days i suspect it would be), and being Not-Peterson will not be enough for greg ballard.

at any rate, what do we make of this? is expresso back for good? will rishawn biddle fans (if any such creature exists) once again have a regular place to ready his musings? will expresso regain its coveted link from the star's front page, which it lost back in august? perhaps it'll even get a link on indy.com, the star's brand-new website, which is basically intake with comments (and minus the blog squad, who have been evicted from their blogging home... in fact i'm surprised that link still works, as everything else that used to be at intakeweekly.com has apparently been erased)? inquiring minds want to know.

update: rishawn has revised his "coonery" post yet again, this time removing the zip coon reference. here is the passage as it used to appear:

Then there's the embarrassing spectacle that is Monroe Gray, whose tenure as city-county council president is being marked by a lack of decorum during council sessions, the videos of himself on YouTube and responses to allegations of corruption that wouldn't be acceptable to a child who claimed his dog ate the homework. His act, more Zip Coon than honorable statesman, epitomizes the lack of seriousness some Black politicians show in their work; it's just inexcusable.

the phrase "more Zip Coon than honorable statesman" has been excised from the post.¶

mr yuk is green

talk about your inexpensive costume ideas... all i needed was some posterboard, a bit of elastic, and some green paper (in fact i've had this green adhesive-backed sticker-paper for years and am finally gettting use out of it, what with this and the handmade parts is parts cds). just print it out, cut it out, and mask it up! they're a bit flimsy, but are so inexpensive that i made twelve of the things, which should be cool for future group photos.

the show saturday night was pretty cool. bobby vomit started things off in style, with an "i didn't mean this to be a set but i guess it is" performance on the ones and twos. classic vomit.

i went next, choosing to get my set out of the way early, which is always nice if you don't care how many people are there to see you play (though the crowd wasn't too small, really). i played some old halloween material, some stuff from droplift 2, and some electro-type beats i've been working on for possible future projects. people seemed to dig it.

next up was cellular narcotic, who did an improv electro set using a whole slew of korg electronics: korg synths, korg drum machines, and more. his set didn't sound too bad, but we were really hoping that he would do some circuit-bent stuff like the stuff on his myspace, so the korgs were a little disappointing.

then came gerald stokes, who did some pretty abrasive breakcore-style stuff. it didn't sound too bad. however, gerald was quite visibly drunk and i had to wonder what his set might've sounded like if he were sober enough to stand up straight. sure enough, later in the evening he ended up puking on the basement floor and having to be taken home.

next up was common dominator. he did some solid breaky material, at times melodic and at other times just good hard breaks. very nice stuff. he also had some free cds, so i made sure to snag one.

at some point, baconhanger played. i'm not totally sure when that was, and i didn't get any photos of him because i was upstairs at the time, but we could still hear the music coming up through the floor and it sounded good.

around this time came murkbox. his set was criminally short, but there wasn't a dull moment.

after murkbox came sir vixx. sir vixx did a laptop set of high-quality breakcore, with a mic so he could scream vocals from time to time. sir vixx danced frantically along with his tunes and he also did something else interesting: he lip-synced to his samples. i'm not sure i'd ever seen anyone do that before, and definitely not to that extent. still, it worked for him, and he just oozed stage presence. in a night full of good performances, i'd have to pick sir vixx as the best of the evening, because he really put on a show.

next up, i guess, was humdrum, who rocked the house in classic electro style. i'm running out of things to say at this point, especially about people i've seen play dozens of times, but what else is there to say but "he played a bunch of cool electro"?

while humdrum played, tmi/tmo set up his large array of gear on the floor. then he performed. i'm not sure how to describe his set... it was dark. it was rather abstract. it was, i guess, industrial, but i don't remember it having a lot of beats per se. still, i remember it sounding pretty good and i look forward to hearing the recording. (as far as i know, everything after my set got recorded.)

finally came the set i'd been waiting all night for: muerto zoke. zoke has become almost a legendary figure among bad taste circles, with his disorienting, intense sound. like i wrote on his bad taste bio: el muerto zoke is more "stunt rock" than stunt rock himself is these days. this is what cognitive dissonance sounds like. and his set didn't disappoint; it was everything i hoped it would be.

by this point it was 3am and virago was passing out from sheer exhaustion, so we weren't able to stick around for the final performance of the night by dr. butcher m.d.. then again, i've seen him play probably more than any other artist around (other than maybe bobby vomit), so i didn't mind missing it. still, i'm sure he put on a great set of high-quality breakcore as usual, so if you're into that stuff you would do well to check out his myspace or better yet download his album for free from the bad taste ears page.

so that was it! i have photos of most of the performers here. like i said, i didn't get any pics of baconhanger or drbmd, and for obvious reasons i didn't get any of myself... but i do have more pics of my costume here.¶

stelarc

i've been too busy working to do any blogging. virago and i did find the time to go see stelarc talk at herron school of art, but i don't really have time to blog that either. so here's a photo.

tomorrow is the bad taste halloween show in muncie. afterward i should have at least some photos of my costume, if not of the show.

san diego is on fire

readers with crisp memory might recall my family roots in san diego: my mother grew up there. my parents met there. my girlfriend grew up there and her parents still live in the area.

so i just can't get myself worked up about the silliness of indiana politics while massive fires rage all over southern california. half a million people have been evacuated from their homes in an area i visited less than a decade ago. virago has been spending a lot of time investigating how closes the fires have come to her parents' house in escondido (answer: very close, but they hadn't evacuated as of a couple hours ago.) in light of that, who gives a shiz about governor daniels' property tax plan? ¶

things i am not impressed by

color me totally unimpressed by the following:

• any anti-radiohead backlash. F the haters. come to think of it, i'm generally unimpressed by xeni jardin.
• any anti-stephen colbert backlash.
• any anti-al gore backlash.
• the greg ballard campaign. (true story: whenever i mention greg ballard to my girlfriend, she inevitably ends up asking "who's greg ballard?" to which i invariably reply "exactly.")
• the matt kelty campaign.
• any congressperson who voted against expanding SCHIP or anyone who would make excuses for them.
• the fact that my ISP throttles my bittorrent traffic, inhibiting me from legally sharing my own music.

i wish i had extra hands, so i could give these things four thumbs down.¶

shortest campaign ever?

via blue indiana, i see that chris minor has already dropped out of the race for indiana's 2nd district. that's what, two... three weeks after he began his campaign?

minor, you may recall, got a lot of attention a couple weeks back when it was revealed that his paychecks come from controversial mercenary company blackwater usa. then he made things even worse by pulling a dickerson—in other words, he went before the local media and pointed out exactly where all the skeletons in his closet were hidden. (it turns out minor was effectively forced out of the kokomo police in '91, and then got arrested for DWI in 94.) i guess this was an attempt to defuse any future bad press by getting the story out himself. (it didn't work for eric dickerson, either.)

honestly, i was somewhat expecting minor to pull out, after i read last week that minor plans to begin another 6-month blackwater contract in iraq next month. that would place him in baghdad through april, which simply wouldn't give him a realistic amount of time to run in the primary. fortunately for him, minor figured this out in time to drop out of the race and let someone else lose to joe donnelly. unfortunately, if he'd figured it out just a couple weeks earlier, he could've saved himself the embarrassment of having his blackwater connection and his past mistakes all over the local paper.¶

the daily show: favorite indiana moments

the daily show has a brand new website, and it has videos from every episode, all the way back to jon stewart's first episode on january 10, 1999!

unfortunately, even that is not far enough back to see the mythic segment on bob kern, the felon who tricked his way onto the ballot against dan burton in '98. this segment is of particular interest because it allegedly also features kern's then-campaign manager and now-wingnut jocelyn tandy adande. unfortunately, because it aired during the kilborn era back in may of '98, this video will probably never turn up on any official daily show site. (so if some politically-savvy hoosier happens to have it on tape somewhere, get that shiz on youtube!)

for now, if you want a bob kern fix, you'll have to make do with this, which has a couple short clips of kern along with other wacky candidates that have been featured over the years. right at the end, there's a shot of kern in a parking lot (it appears to be clearwater crossing) walking next to a woman in a polka-dot dress who i suspect is jocelyn, but there's just not enough to tell.

still, there's tons of other videos on the site, so you're sure to find something of interest if you look. if you want to relive bobby knight getting fired, it's there. so is this segment about sewage in evansville. and these videos mocking mike pence for comparing baghdad to indiana in the summertime. or who can forget classic indiana moments like this or this?¶

look who's not talking about droplift II!

in early september, a lazy journalist at a "webmag" that will not be named noticed a blurb at the top of droplift.org proclaiming that "Droplift II is in the works!"

thinking that would be a nice subject to do an article about—because "some people are doing the same thing they did a few years back" is such a compelling storyline—he sent an email to the contact email about setting up a possible interview.

his request was quickly passed on to the snuggles mailing list, the creators of droplift, and the ensuing thread inspired me to create droplift II.

so today, more than a month later, the journalist sent this message to the droplift contact person, who happens to be named craig (with a C):

hi Graig. after the "hype" of droplift II turned into a prank, i don't think there's a theme for an interview anymore. good luck with your projects!

so apparently there will be no droplift II writeup in his webmag. i guess he didn't appreciate my prank. c'est la vie. it does make for an interesting timeline, though. to wit:

1. journalist decides to write puff piece about "droplift II", unaware that the album is not actually in production and will most likely never be released.
2. journalist's inquiries (in part) inspire an artist to create and release a parody compilation called "droplift II".
3. journalist promptly loses interest, not realizing the role he himself has played in the story.

to me, that sounds like a much more interesting "theme" than whatever nonsense he thought he was going to get, but then i would think that.

p.s. did i mention droplift II?¶

colbert for president

our political discourse these days is so perverse that when stephen colbert announced on his show last night that he is running for president, we see weird pieces like this show up on the website of the new york times:

How far Mr. Colbert is willing to go — and why exactly he is doing this, beyond stoking interest in his show and a new book, "I Am America (And So Can You)" — was not at all clear. He did not return messages left with various publicists this morning.

But assuming he is serious, what would Mr. Colbert have to do to get on the Democratic ballot in the South Carolina primary, which is expected to be held on Jan. 26?

i wouldn't be at all surprised if team colbert is honestly trying its best to get stephen's name on the ballot in south carolina. the joke becomes that much more powerful if south carolina voters can actually go into the ballot box in january and file a real vote for him. but... "assuming he is serious"?

update: forgot to mention possibly the most interesting detail in the story. the filing fee to get on the ballot for the democratic party in SC is $2,500. if you can't afford that, you can instead collect 3,000 signatures.

in contrast, the fee to get on the ballot for the republican party is $35,000. that really demonstrates the difference between the two parties.¶

gore wins!

al gore has won the nobel peace prize! i think josh marshall has pretty much the definitive take on this:

There are several layers of irony and poetic justice wrapped into this honor. The first is that the greatest step for world peace would simply have been for Gore not to have had the presidency stolen from him in November 2000. By every just measure, Gore won the presidency in 2000 only to have George W. Bush steal it from him with the critical assistance of the US Supreme Court. It's worth taking a few moments today to consider where the country and world would be without that original sin of this corrupt presidency.

And yet this is a fitting bookend, with Gore receiving this accolade while the sitting president grows daily an object of greater disapproval, disapprobation and collective shame. And let's not discount another benefit: watching the rump of the American right detail the liberal bias of the Nobel Committee and at this point I guess the entire world. Fox News vs. the world.

And not to forget what this award is about even more than Gore. If half of what we think we know about global warming is true, people will look back fifty years from now on the claims that "War on Terror" was the defining challenge of this century and see it as a very sick, sad joke -- which rather sums up the Bush presidency.¶

how much did you pay for in rainbows?

i paid £7, plus their £0.45 fee, so £7.45. i figure that's around what i'd pay for it if i had to get it at the local record store.

if you don't know what i'm talking about: radiohead has released their newest album, in rainbows, as a digital download (to be followed up with a deluxe box version). this is in itself big news, as critics collectively dubbed radiohead "the greatest band in the world" a few years back. but the really revolutionary part is that radiohead is letting you choose how much you pay for the album. don't have much money? go ahead and enter £1.00. or try plugging in £0.00 if you can bring yourself to do such a thing without feeling guilty.

this is basically an enormous middle finger to the recording industry. the band has no label, and yet will probably make more money from this release than it ever could have under any label contract. (plus they plan to do a normal cd release by january and will surely make more then.)

i kind of wanted to get the deluxe boxed set, but for £40 i just don't have the money to justify it right now. in fact, i had been waiting to even download it until i got my next long-awaited paycheck. (the check was from an august invoice, but apparently a "glitch" resulted in it not being sent out until the end of september, when it was promptly lost in the mail.) but then i remembered that i still had a balance on my paypal account, so i transferred that money over to checking, thus feeling justified to spend £7 for a digital download. (perhaps listening to amnesiac earlier today was too much and put me over the edge.)

the files are normal 160kbit mp3s, unencumbered by DRM. the download was quite zippy. and the music is pretty good, too.¶

top 40 crushes smooth jazz

commenter spectre draws our attention to the latest update in the radionow saga:

Two days after Emmis Communications Corp. announced it was pulling the plug on WNOU-FM (93.1) because of poor ad revenue, the company said it is selling the station to competitor Radio One.

Radio One will broadcast RadioNow programming in Indianapolis on WYJZ-FM (100.9), which is currently a jazz station.

RadioNow was one of Indianapolis' few Top 40 radio stations. It has been off the air since Monday, when Emmis announced plans to move the news-talk programming of WIBC-AM (1070) to 93.1 FM in January 2008. In the interim, Emmis is broadcasting 93 days of Christmas music.

"The decision to take RadioNow off the air was a difficult one," said Tom Severino, vice president and Indianapolis market manager for Emmis. "It has been a vibrant, successful format, which is why we're so pleased with this agreement with Radio One. It benefits both companies, and it especially benefits the loyal listeners of RadioNow. We consider this the best-possible ending to this story."

Radio Now will own the intellectual property of the RadioNow brand, including the trademark, the WNOU call sign. No purchase price was disclosed.¶

radio yesterday: go ahead and touch that dial

so i saw this on tdw yesterday, but didn't want to just go around copying her content. (that's a joke, kids.)

WIBC, probably indy's oldest radio station, is hopping from AM to FM in january. that's good news if you love rush limbaugh but can't bring yourself to flip to the AM dial in order to listen to him, but it's bad news if you listen to rush and live out in BFE where you're out of range of the FM signal (since FM doesn't carry nearly as far as AM). and it's bad news if you're a fan of top 40 radio, since the frequency WIBC is moving to is 93.1.

yes, in order to make room for WIBC, they're doing away with radionow 93.1, which was the city's only real top 40 station. devoted radionow listeners can still hear the station online or using future bricks called "HD radio receivers", but the on-air personalities like nigel have all been fired (so who will write all those redneck parody songs now?). in other words; they haven't killed radionow; they've merely gutted it and are letting it bleed to death.

WIBC doesn't flip tuners until january. but radionow is already gone. in its place: christmas music! that's right, in this time when other radio stations are looking for halloween material to play, emmis is skipping all the way to xmas. i tuned in yesterday and the first song i heard was "do they know it's christmas?" as dave barry would say, i'm not making this up.

i've never been a big fan of radionow, but i did have it programmed on my car radio for something to switch to when WHHH plays too many songs featuring t-pain (switch off the damn vocoder, t-pain!), so i will miss it a little bit. they had a friday dj mix featuring dj orion that was kinda cool, though not as cool as WHHH's mikki fikki mix. they were also one of only 15 stations in the country to air radio with a twist, which as far as i know is the only lgbt-themed syndicated radio show in the country. but apparently owner emmis communications thinks they can make more money off rush limbaugh and other talkers than from top 40 radio, so i'll just have to adjust my listening habits accordingly.¶

a glossary of code

you've probably heard of godwin's law, which states that "[a]s an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."

some people misinterpret this to mean that as soon as you use the H-word or the F-word (fascism), you've lost the argument. but that's not really what it means. indeed, some things truly are comparable to hitler or fascism. the problem is that these comparisons are thrown around so often, and used incorrectly so frequently, that when you use these terms, people stop listening. as such, it has become virtually impossible to have a serious online discussion about subjects such as fascism, because people will ignore you, regardless of the merit of your argument.

along those lines, here are some more phrases to avoid. whenever i see any of these phrases, i immediately assume that the person using them is a wingnut with no idea what they're talking about. of course, it is possible to use these phrases correctly (for example, "greg ballard doesn't seem to have any support outside the 'bart lies' crowd), but for the most part, they should be avoided by anyone who wants to be taken seriously. some of these are specific to local politics, while others are no doubt used regionally or nationally.

BART LIES!—much like the "lies" of michael moore, the "lies" of mayor bart peterson are not actually lies at all; they are policy disagreements.

detroit—this is racist code for "scary black folks". thus the claim "indy is turning into another detroit" means "indy is being taken over by scary black folks".

cleveland—code for "black folks"; see detroit.

gary (gary, indiana)—code for "black folks"; see detroit.

pea shake—the moment anyone starts complaining about pea shake houses, my eyes roll into the back of my head.

"sweet pea"—racist nickname for city-county council president monroe grey; see pea shake.

the carson machine (or "the machine")—racist code for the delusional belief that the city is ruled with an iron fist by a cabal of black democrats, at the center of which is representative julia carson. the irony of "the carson machine" is that these people simultaneously believe that carson is a weak, dying old woman incapable of representing us in congress and also that she is so powerful that she runs the entire city like a dictator.

ghetto mafia—see the carson machine.

"fair tax"—the so-called "fair tax" proposal to eliminate property taxes and replace them with income & sales taxes is not only orwellian in its unfairness, it is impractical and implausible, and anyone who tells you otherwise is either confused or lying (to themselves, to you, or both).

the party of lincoln—yes, lincoln was a republican. then, 100 years later, the republican party adopted the southern strategy.

socialist—there are extremely few actual socialists in the united states. europe is a different story.

anyway, that's just a few. there are dozens more, but i gotta run.

update: tdw reposts my glossary, which has so far elicited 46 comments.¶

vote mercenary

yesterday, several blogs picked up on this story from the south bend tribune that a man named chris minor has announced that he's running against joe donnelly for indiana's 2nd district in congress. (let's get the obligatory joke about him being a "minor" challenge out of the way now.)

the tribune describes minor as "a retired U.S. Army captain" and "an intelligence analyst for the State Department" who "retired from the military with an 80 percent disability for noncombat related injuries". his past as a disabled veteran might help him get right-wing votes, which he'll surely need, since i don't imagine him being a popular candidate with fringe views like this:

Minor said he would like to replace Pelosi with Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., "the pride and joy of the conservative movement."

today's indy star carries an AP article about minor's candidacy, and it includes one surprising fact that the tribune's james wensits apparently overlooked. minor actually works for blackwater USA.

Minor said he is an independent contractor hired through Blackwater to work for the State Department.

Blackwater has been the focus of recent allegations involving actions by its employees hired to protect diplomatic personnel in Iraq. In one case, Blackwater guards were involved in a Sept. 16 shootout that left 11 Iraqis dead. The FBI is investigating, and Democrats in Congress want to update a law that has kept Blackwater and other private security contractors in Iraq immune to criminal prosecution.

yes, that blackwater, the one that is under investigation for its drunken recklessness and shoot-first-ask-questions-later attitude.

the fact that a congressional candidate works for a scandal-prone mercenary firm—though minor disagrees with the term "mercenary"—even if, or i should say especially if he claims to work for the state department, seems like a pretty important detail to me. so how did that detail come to be left out of the south bend tribune article? did wensits simply not ask who cuts minor's paychecks, taking his claim of working for the state dept at face value? did wensits know about the blackwater connection and yet leave it out of the article for some reason? or did an editor remove that fact before the article was released to the public? we'll probably never know, and it doesn't really matter now that the real facts are out there.

still, it was awful convenient for minor that the name of his extremely controversial employer was left out of the first article that announced his candidacy, the one all the blogs linked to. though, i'm not sure that even working for blackwater would be a strike against him with the kind of voter who considers mike pence to be "the pride and joy of the conservative movement."¶

rockcycle

i'm not entirely sure how i feel about this:

Rockcycle uses a proprietary process to transform iconic album covers and the vinyl discs inside into non-audio products such as purses, notebooks and magnets. Stains and other wear and tear are preserved inside a clear laminate.

"There is a lot of great album art that's going to waste due to the digital age, and we're recycling that art and keeping it out in circulation," said Nancy Wagner, Jeff's spouse.

part of me thinks this is pretty cool, and wants to head down to castleton to see what they have in stock, maybe buy some stuff.

but as a collector and fan of the vinyl format, another part of me can't help but feel this is a waste of good records.

don't get me wrong; there are millions of junk records out there that would benefit from being transformed into a purse or a bowl. go into any thrift store and check out their vinyl: half of it will be old christian records, crappy compilations put out by shell oil, and other junk that nobody would ever want to listen to again. however, if you watch the video, it's clear that these are not the records that are being recycled. no, rockcycle only destroys the good records, the ones that someone might actually want to buy and listen to.

in other words, you might not find a lot of merchandise there made out of sing along with mitch records, but apparently you will find the beatles, because a beatles purse is shown in the video. good-quality beatles records are still a bit hard to come by, as the beatles are still quite popular. but it's virtually impossible to go through a used record section without stumbling across some sing along with mitch or herb alpert's whipped cream mixes. (if you manage to do so, someone has probably gotten tired of looking at them all and thrown them in the dumpster.) so it should be obvious which records need to be recycled, and yet those are precisely the ones least likely to be recycled at rockcycle.

i guess i need to reserve final judgment until i've had a chance to go there and check the place out. for one thing, i have no idea what the prices are like; i'll be a lot more forgiving if prices are reasonable.

on the other hand, it also looks like they have stuff made out of old cassette tapes, and i have no problem with that.¶