Left In Lowell

Having a blog means being able to write when the spirit moves you, to clarify a previous thought, or simply to respond to something from the “offline” world when you think there needs to be a discussion. Like my blog responses to conversations with elected officials…when Councilor Rita Mercier decided to take my lack of support for reelecting incumbents personally…or when Rep. Golden failed to get the point of a post (admitting he hardly read the blog) aimed at asking a question about some legislation.

In this case, I almost decided not to write out my thoughts because I’m probably going to piss some people off. Well, the heck with that. I’m going to explain some things, and I’m then going to ask for feedback. I think it’s worth it.

The item in question is whether or not I/we (I will take primary lead on this) are too hard on (”bashing” was a word I think was used) the Lowell Sun. The conversation stemmed from a reader believing I was too unfair - actually, inaccurate - in my sarcastic remarks about the Sun in this post from the morning about Meehan and UML. But it extends beyond that to all the frustrations we’ve voiced over the Lowell Sun in the last couple of years.

In the post, I said, “Even the Sun (a laggard when it comes to updating their website) put the item in their breaking news section” with a link to the news story. Specifically, there is nothing inaccurate there, though it’s a little biting, I’ll admit. The Lowell Sun is a laggard compared with most newspapers its size or bigger in updating their website. It’s a marketing system that I’m sure their corporate parent chose. They want the print edition (presumably where most of the money is) to have high priority over their website. But it has the end result of making much of the news they post on the web, especially that covered by other papers in the state or nation, awfully out-of-date.

The complaint really stemmed from this particular case, though; that the Sun had actually “broken” the story first last night, and on its website immediately put the smallish article up in the Breaking News section. They felt I mislead about how “timely” the Sun was. But the published Globe article this morning was already more comprehensive than the short breaking story from the Sun, because any comprehensive article from the paper edition that the Sun runs on any subject is never updated on the web before noon.

Now, I don’t think this is a whiny who-gets-credit-for-breaking-news complaint. I do think it’s a legitimate one. But I also take a little bit of umbrage at the fact that I was called inaccurate. I was not. The Sun doesn’t always update their site in a timely manner, and if a little frustration comes out when I talk about it, that’s because a) it’s frustrating and b) this is a blog. It’s an online journal (in the “diary” sense) of opinion. Writing a blog is more intimate and passionate.

And on the inaccuracy comment, if you don’t like something I say and think I was unfair in dealing with the Sun or any other subject, make your case in the comments. That’s why they’re there. I do actually stand by my sarcasm, because it expresses real feelings, and it’s a legitimate point, and I’m willing to defend it (hence this post).

Hell, if you don’t think you can put your name on on a comment, be anonymous if you want.

I will admit to having very little respect for some aspects of the Sun - its website was one of the first things on which I commented, and very little from that list has changed. I also can’t stand the agenda-driving motivation of much of its editorial page. But I have enormous amounts of respect for individuals at the Sun, hard working men and women, especially those who make it their goal to have fair and balanced coverage.

The great thing about a blog is when you have something “on your chest,” you can, if you so choose, put it out there. Anyone can start a blog and say whatever they want (short of incitement to violence or libel). And blogs rely on credibility built up over time in order to gain readership. A juggernaut like the Lowell Sun should have very little to fear from a blog who is simply “bashing” them with no reason, as the credibility of the blogger will quickly be slagged…and maybe they have everything to fear from one who criticizes fairly.

Some people obviously think this blog’s credibility has been harmed by the constant frustrations expressed about the Lowell Sun (I will admit, it has rather seeped into our language). So, what do you think?

Some items I thought were interesting out of John Greenwald’s weekly batch of cultural events. And don’t forget, until until February 22nd, you can see the Women of Western Ave at the Whistler show, Whistler House Parker Gallery. You’ll even see my new piece there!

The list of events (details in the next section):
Poetry Open Mic And Slam Thursday
Destination World: Brazil - Lowell, Thursday, February 1st, from 5 - 9pm
A Print Is A Print Is A Print - Brush Art Gallery, Feb 24 to April 1, 2007
The Essence Of Culture 4th Annual Exhibition - The ALL Arts Gallery, Opening Reception February 10, 6-9
Independent/Foreign Film Night At The Pollard - “The Great Match,” Pollard Memorial Library, Thursday, February 8th at 7 p.m.
“Dinah Was” - Merrimack Repertory Theater, February 15 – March 11, 2007
Save The Date: Brush Annual Fundraiser - The Brush Art Gallery, Friday, May 4, 2007 from 7pm to 10pm.

(more…)

Sco in Watertown just had to beat me to write up the news that Rep. Marty Meehan will be interviewing for the Chancellor’s position at U-Mass Lowell. (Brat!)

The Globe is saying that Meehan is on the short list of candidates. Even the Sun (a laggard when it comes to updating their website) put the item in their breaking news section. Their report goes further and says Meehan “is emerging as a top candidate for the UMass Lowell chancellor’s job.”

Queue the scrambling for someone to replace him before it’s even obvious he wants the job.

However, I do believe that Meehan would make an impressive Chancellor should he decide to take an offered position. He honestly cares about UML and its standing in the University system, wants to see innovative and breakthrough research, especially in renewable techonologies, and I think he’d make a good manager for UML. Of course, as the Globe article mentions, we’d be losing a fairly senior Rep who now has the opportunity (and I believe, appetite) to head up the investigation of this administration’s allowance of fraud and war profiteering. He may not want to give that up. I wouldn’t be surprised if Meehan had yet to make up his mind one way or the other. Both directions would be awfully tempting.

Tonight’s City Council
agenda has a motion from City Councilor Kevin Broderick requesting the Manager to ask LTC (Lowell Telecommunications Corporation) to meet with the Cable Sub-Committee and the City Clerk regarding televising Sub-Committee meetings.

It has now been 12 months since the City Council first expressed its desire to have Sub-Committee meetings televised. The initial discussion took place at this City Council inaugural meeting on January 3, 2007. (more…)

Well, thank you Senator Reid.

Senate Dems made two things clear: they will not let Republicans stall on the minimum wage bill in order to avoid voting on the Iraq war resolutions. And they will be happy to withhold any pay raises for Congress until the bill passes.

The cloture vote (the vote to end debate and move forward on an up or down vote) passed, 87-10. Hit Americans in the purse, well, too bad for those poor schlubs, but hit legislators in the purse…let’s just say turnabout is very fair play.

Media Matters catalogs the outrage perpetrated by the MSM on Kerry, over his tearless announcement that he wasn’t going to run for president. I watched quite a lot of that speech. Did the stupid Globe reporter even do as much?

My god, on such a simple, simple item, the press just can’t resist sexing up a story for the hell of it. And you wonder why blogs are disgusted with the state of the media today?

Lordy, even the Sun couldn’t resist, although at least they didn’t overdo it. “Kerry, almost moved to tears, announced on the floor of the U.S. Senate that there would be no encore performance to his failed 2004 bid for the White House…”

Indeed, Media Matters clears things up, and gives us - *gasp!* - context:

For the record, at no point did Kerry shed any tears on the floor of the Senate last Wednesday; he simply did not “cry.” Rather, during a single sentence Kerry became emotional and his voice caught. The press’ key distortion though, was that the single sentence had nothing to do with running for president again. Instead, Kerry was momentarily overcome with emotion when he noted that the misguided war in Iraq threatened to undo everything he had fought for since his return from Vietnam more than three decades ago.

As The Chicago Tribune’s political blog, The Swamp, accurately noted, “It was when Kerry talked about coming home from Vietnam that he choked up.”

Still, members of the press blissfully manufactured the storyline suggesting the senator shed tears of self-pity over his dashed presidential hopes.

Media Matters then points to the video and encourages readers to go watch it for themselves. Fast forward to the 29th minute “if you want to see only the final six minutes, which is where the news was made.”

I hereby present the mainsteam press with the title of “Completely Lame.”

[HT: dKos]

Glenn Greenwald really wallops one into the stands with this post. In it, he examines the self-pitying crying game that movement conservatives are engaging in to distance themselves from the Bush/DeLay sort of leadership:

There is a serious fraud emerging in the political landscape that, though easily predictable and predicted, is now being perpetrated with full force — namely, that the so-called “conservative movement” is not responsible for the destruction wrought on the country by the Bush presidency and the loyal Republican Congress which followed him. Even more audaciously, the claim is emerging that the “conservative movement” is actually the prime victim here, because its lofty “principles” have been betrayed and repudiated by the President and the Congress which have ruled our country for the last six years.

But as Greenwald points out, they were hardly just hanging on for the ride:

But the deceit here is manifest. Lowry and his “conservative” comrades were anything but passive observers over the last six years. They did far more than “watch” as the President and the Congress “disgraced” themselves and damaged this country. It was self-identified “conservatives” who were the principal cheerleaders, the most ardent and loyal propagandists, propping up George Bush and his blindly loyal Republican Congress.

It was they who continuously told America that George Bush was the unified reincarnation of the Great American Conservative Hero Ronald Reagan and the Great Warrior Defender of Freedom, Winston Churchill, all wrapped up in one glorious, powerful package. It was this same conservative movement — now pretending to lament the abandonment of conservatism by Bush and the Congress — which was the single greatest source of Bush’s political support, which twice elected him and propped up his presidency and the movement which followed it.

The conservatives have some points - after all, this president is not fiscally responsible, is interventionary in a way with which many conservatives of the protectionist kind are uncomfortable. But their hypocrisy in forgetting their own part in the last six years (it’s not ancient history!) is strange as it is explainable. Greenwald says it’s because they rush to reject a president which was “the Embodiment of Conservatism” now that he is being judged to be a failure. “That is because ‘Conservatism’ — while definable on a theoretical plane — has come to have no practical meaning in this country other than a quest for ever-expanding government power for its own sake,” says Greenwald.

However, the route they take to deny the Bushies is very telling. It takes a tone of victimhood and passivity, nevermind the actual truth of the matter - that they took very active part in electing and supporting these people. They’re so very disappointed, what a terrible tragedy that this president and Congress has perpetrated on us true conservatives. Movement conservatives will selectively forget the lies they gleefully spread from Drudge to FOX News, around watercoolers and at family gatherings. Lies they had the full capacity to debunk at the time, but chose not to. And they will forget the terrible vehemence with which they denounced anyone who disagreed with them - calling us traitors, and worse. Even threatening us on radio and TV.

No, it’s they who are the true victims…in their own imagination. Conservatism works, they insist, but not that kind of conservatism. Perhaps they are victims - of their own authoritarian need for some sort of cult to belong to, no matter what the cost to themselves…or to the country.

Before anyone changes their mind about the Decider’s stupid decision to escalate the war in Iraq (for what, the 7th time? and it worked so well before), you might want to reexamine the administration’s talking points about that recent battle in Najaf, first.

And not just the presidency, either.

Via AMERICAblog, I read this account of the real reason Senate Republicans are stalling on the minimum wage (and it’s not merely their contempt for the working class).

So, we have Republicans blocking (via a million poison amendments, because a real filibuster would be worse than voting against it) a popular, necessary increase in the minimum wage, which will not reflect well on them in two years. In order to what, stall a vote on any Senate resolutions about the Iraq war, another thing about which the American people have made up their minds?

Talk about a rock and a hard place…on the one hand, popular minimum wage bill. On the other, resolutions that express in the Senate what the American people are feeling. All things the Republicans want to refuse to face. Only, in 2008, a shocking 21 Republicans are up for reelection. (In ‘06, the Senate races were stacked with Dems facing reelection, which was why it was thought near impossible for the Dems to take over the Senate - they did anyway.)

Besides the obvious necessity of getting rid of the Bush-enabling Republicans for the sake of the war, the working class, and not least of all our existance on earth, it will be sheer pleasure watching these 21 squirm with their own poor choices of the last six years. It’ll practically be a cakewalk to run against them and win. They keep handing us rope, and we’re only a month into the new session.

The Herald confirms the Phillips article I posted about yesterday stating that Patrick would consider a deal with legislators about their pay, in exchange for considerations about changing who’s in charge of the wayward “independent” Mass state agencies. (I told you, Phillips does actually sometimes hit the nail just right, and sometimes gets everything totally wrong - like with “Killer Coke.” This was an instance of the former.)

The governor said it is unlikely that lawmakers will put in for higher pay this year, but he said he wouldn’t be shy about using the volatile issue as a bargaining chip in the future. Patrick is pushing several agenda items that could encounter friction in the Legislature, such as local option taxes and reforms to independent agencies like the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority.

“Listen, I’m here to get stuff done, so sure, you bet,” Patrick said when asked if he wanted anything in return for lawmakers’ pay hikes.

Somehow, the fact that Patrick isn’t hiding from the possibility makes me a little less wary of the potential deal. He’s going to take responsibility for it, and isn’t going to sneak around the issue. That’s a good thing. And as I said, what Patrick is asking for (regaining control of agencies like the MTA, something Romney failed miserably at because he never bothered to engage lawmakers) is going to take the full cooperation of the powers-that-be in the legislature to accomplish.

It has been pointed out that legislators don’t make a whole lot of money (especially considering many of them live in metro Boston, or live out in the west of the state and must maintain second apartments in Boston so they can be legislators) given what they can (and do) make in the private sector, and that a raise wouldn’t be out of line. Still, giving further power to reward loyalty to Trav and DiMasi by handing out now-better-paying chairmanships and leadership positions makes me nervous. Power like that has been abused so much in the past, and I don’t expect that to change.

The crux of the debate about the morality of the matter appears to be between those who think a deal like this would be more akin to a bribe, and those who think that it wouldn’t be much different than making the sorts of deals that executive and legislative branches have been making throughout our history to get things done. Right now, I’m leaning towards the second argument (petr is very convincing). Your thoughts?

[ Hat tip to BMG].