You return from a couple of weeks in the Bay Area, you expect to have a lot of catching up to do on the news of the day. But sheesh, after a daily diet of oil-spill scandal, Barry Bonds indictment, gas prices passing $4 a gallon and real estate tanking in the one place you’d think was recession-proof (besides Seattle)…well, coming back home is a little like leaving a Quentin Tarantino premiere party for an evening with the Cleavers.
So let’s see…a local former high-school basketball star turns up dead in Brazil. Coming home in the middle of this I was trying hard, reading the updates, to figure out who Tony Harris even was, let alone how he wound up in Brazil, and what in God’s name had happened to him. I do happen to know, however, who his former coach is, and his name is not spelled Al Hairstone, as Q13 had it. Finally, The Times ran a pretty good overview, apparently from a freelancer. I’m still not sure why this is such big news. I guess the answer is, bigger news just ain’t there. Or it ain’t being reported.
I mean, if we want to talk former basketball stars, I found it interesting that John Johnson, or JJ to the many Sonics fans who remember him as one of the best passing forwards basketball has ever produced (at a time when the competition was stiff, what with Larry Bird, Rick Barry, Bill Walton, Magic and other purveyors of that fine art among JJ’s contemporaries)…now where was I? Oh yeah. It turns out JJ was robbed in Redwood City, and it made pretty big news in the peninsula dailies. Robbed by a 74-year-old man, apparently, and robbed of his 1979 championship ring! O the pain, the outrage, the embarrassment! But not a word in the Seattle dailies, from what I can tell using their admittedly lame Web search engines (other than some random forum mention). I mean, you don’t call this news?
Then there’s the case involving, from what I can tell, a UW student who is somehow entangled in the murder of a British college student in central Italy. Whew, can someone do an org chart on this story? Again, I’m not sure what places this convoluted tale, sordid though it be, in the realm of headline buster. Maybe when it’s all investigated and tried it will make a good True Crime report, but without more details right now it’s hard for me to know why I should care. My suspicion is that TV coverage drives the print “make good” factor on stuff like this. I remember when it was all just the opposite.
Then there’s the Fun Forest. Guess it’s time for the old arcade to head off to that great amusement park in the sky. Many fond memories there. But none of them even remotely recent, of course; and there you have the whole problem in a nutshell.
Oh well. At least I was spared even a passing mention of the David Copperfield-aspiring model nastiness in the Bay Area news media.
One measure of how truly significant a piece of news is has to do with its geographic reach. From what I gather, Barry Bonds was a big story up here. The oil spill got a few mentions, too. And California gas prices, outrageous as they are, probably popped into the roundups. As far as the Bay Area’s housing collapse, that probably didn’t get much play up here. We’re not there yet, folks, and let’s hope we don’t get there. Except for the tony legacy neighborhoods (Marin County, S.F. proper), it’s a real meltdown in the making. Of course, down there The Chron doesn’t sugar-coat. The bare hungry cryin’ truth, with corroborating stats, is all laid out. By comparison, the Seattle dailies are kind of tiptoeing around, from what I can tell. At street level here, I’m starting to hear the ugly stories of defaults and flips gone bad and, worst of all, overbuilding in a time of real-estate downturn. When already-constructed condos aren’t moving, why is DPD still rubber-stamping every townhouse and hi-rise development coming in through the door? There’s a real-estate story I’d read.
But somehow, I still expect the next Seattle headline I see on the subject to read, “Housing market showing growth despite national trend.”
In any case, getting back to my original point (two weeks away perhaps has given me a mild bout of blogorrhea)…Cali headlines made it all the way to Seattle, but I have to say I cannot recall a single Seattle headline making it down to the Bay Area. Even the sensational, and sensationally covered, FCC hearing on media consolidation failed to raise a 2/18bi (ancient newsie talk for filler). So perhaps our mild, gray climate bespeaks a certain news temperament as well. Or maybe it’s that our news outlets are failing to find and report the real good stuff. A wise editor once told me a reporter’s job was to “tell me what happened, and make me care.” It’s so much easier to just leave off that second part.
You missed another local b’ball name’s missing link: John Brisker, who was compared to Tony Harris even as he disappeared in Uganda during the days of Idi Amin 30-years ago. Mention was made of Brisker here: http://www.crosscut.com/blog/c.....in+Africa/
Talk of the Mariners signing Barry Bonds plus the fact that in the old days, the Giants were “our” MLB team makes it bigger news up here than in, say, Paducah, KY.
Razing the Fun Forrest is a crime against humanity…
That the Bay Area takes no notice of what happens up here should serve as a warning as to how genuinely un-special Seattle is regarded by most of the rest of the world, FCC hearings or not. The folks in Darfur could give a rip about Prop 1 or light rail.
Face it…Seattle isn’t all that changed from the days when it was noted mostly as the place you stopped off at to go to Filson’s for provisions and supplies on your way to the gold digs in Alaska or the Yukon.
Tomorrow being Thanksgiving, thought is given to how thankful we all should be for the freedom to engage in blogorrhea.
The Piper
I forgot…True Crime…the the locus of the crime, Perugia, Italy, has one of those silly “sister city” relationships with Seattle. Couple that with the juicy, tabloid-nature of the crime, the fact that a primo perp suspect is a coquettish co-ed from the UW, and that the cable channels are all over this like dogs on a juicy steak bone, and you have the makings of the perfect Jean Enersen story.
Even an old looking Mike James was interviewed about it. Looking shocked and perplexed, the former King5 anchor, just returned from travels in Perugia, was hard pressed to reconcile the grizzly nature of the crime with the whole sister city thing.
Looks as though besides airplanes, coffee, and software, Seattle exports gruesome crime dramas and murder. Who knew we were so diverse?
The Piper
If I may Offer News form another place, the Hindustan Times has a fascinating pair of articles on racism .. or the lack thereof. One deals with the success of Muslims in India of developing a tolerant variant of this traditionally xenophobic culture and the other talks about the fact that the wealthiest group in Silicon Valley are Indians.
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I mention these stories here on HA because both contest liberal shibboleths. The first show a very different view of Islam from the POV of a society very different from our own. Why can’t we celebrate exactly this sort of tolerance in Islam? The other shows that the US can benefit hugely form Immigration and that skin color is not the ultimate barrier in Jefferson’s creation.
So far it appears the “mainstream” media are ignoring the news that the good ol’ boys in Texas who run the almost-reconstituted AT&T monopoly have suddenly pulled the rug from the company’s long-standing and much-honored “telework” program. The 10,000-15,000 affected employees have been told they can either do their nine-to-five (actually nine-to-six, assuming an hour lunch) or hit the highway.
LEFTY SKEPTIC’S ANALYSYS: At first blush, this doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. By the company’s own figures, telecommuting has saved them over $30 million a year in real estate costs, earned them plenty of public kudos and done a good turn for the environment. However, the company’s work force is about 50% unionized, and this may be a way to make a sizeable reduction in their work force by coercing people to quit or firing them in a way that skates around a hefty severence commitment.
“a little like leaving a Quentin Tarantino premiere party for an evening with the Cleavers”
Hey Paul, if you’re bored, take a stroll at 3rd & Pike after dark.
“I’m still not sure why this is such big news. I guess the answer is, bigger news just ain’t there. Or it ain’t being reported.”
It’s a good thing this kid dropped dead so the so-called “liberal biased media” wouldn’t have to talk about Scott McClellan’s bombshell revelation that Bush, Cheney, and Rove were involved in the Plane outing and lied to him and the public about it.
I predicted all along that Bush’s underlings would sing when publishers waved money under their noses, and that’s happening now, just as I predicted.
Bush aides are resigning on a daily basis now, and you can bet more “insider” books will be forthcoming. There should be enough confessions by the end of the year to haul Bush before a grand jury.
Where this leaves our troll friends, of course, is now that people they defended (e.g., Scott McClellan) are blowing the whistle on people they’re still defending (e.g., Bush, Cheney, and Rove), they have NO excuse for continuing to defend them. The administration has been exposed as a pack of traitors and liars. Any normal human would find this situation awkward. But our troll friends, oblivious to the lynch mob circling around them and their ilk, go right on lying and spewing on behalf of their fascist puppetmasters, good little Nazis that they are. Predictably, they will call McClellan a liar. Next up: Rove’s book. Then they can call HIM a liar. Cheney probably will write a book, too, giving them an opportunity to call HIM a liar. Finally, after everyone else’s book has come up, and Shrub is safely ensconced at his Paraguayan ranch in the extradition-free zone, Shrub will come out with HIS book and get paid $25 million to say, “Yup, I did it.” And then the trolls can call HIM a liar. Man, it’s getting harder every day for our troll friends to justify themselves in their own shriveled minds. Fortunately, they have the advantage of being in a chronic vegetative state going for them. It’s easier to be a wingnut troll if you don’t have to think very much.
“And California gas prices, outrageous as they are, probably popped into the roundups.”
The local media puts this in the news to make Seattleites feel better about how much THEY pay.
Shrub write a book? You’ve gotta be kidding, right? He’s not even smart enough to pay someone to write it for him like Rove and Cheney will.
Maybe he’ll take up painting, only to discover that his stuff doesn’t sell because Cheeta the real chimp is a better artist.
As long as the big brokerages like Windermere and Coldwell Banker keep paying for two-page spreads in the “homes” section of the Sunday want ads, the only “news” about real estate you’ll see either of our fishwrappers print is what the brokers want us to read. Therefore, there’s not going to be anything in print about the housing market going bust here until it’s already happened.
@9 It would be ghosted, of course. Probably by a defense lawyer.
I have it on good authority that GWB has ALREADY written the book, with his co-author and fave philospher.