Don't Let Rudeness Prevail ?!?
Today's post was best put by an anonymous comment earlier today listed below....the only thing I'd add to the list is going after your truly a few months ago :)
+++++++
Their Sunday editorial today ("Don't Let Rudeness Prevail") astonishingly ends,
"let's all vow to begin to do our part by saying "good day" to our neighbors and being a bit kinder to those we encounter."
Are you kidding me?
This from a woman who is:
--suing her editor-in-chief who quit for $25 million,
--suing the Independent,
--suing the American Journalism Review reporter,
--fighting with her own neighbors through her homeowner's association,
--starting a trial next month with the NLRB, which is prosecuting her for much worse than "rudeness,"
--threatening local shop owners,
--sliming her former editor on the front page of her newspaper for child pornography,
--going after local ministers,
--firing long-time dedicated News-Press employees for questioning her skills and temperament,
--attacking local chambers of commerce,
--attacking local leaders,
--allowing routine shotgun blasts from Travis Armstrong and Laura Schlessinger against multipe local targets?
"What lazy, cheap, power-hungry hypocrites," as Schlessinger said in a different context last week, before complaining about hostile and mean bloggers this week.
Delusional, dumb or something worse?
Do they think readers are stupid? No wonder we are quitting the paper in droves.
+++++++
Their Sunday editorial today ("Don't Let Rudeness Prevail") astonishingly ends,
"let's all vow to begin to do our part by saying "good day" to our neighbors and being a bit kinder to those we encounter."
Are you kidding me?
This from a woman who is:
--suing her editor-in-chief who quit for $25 million,
--suing the Independent,
--suing the American Journalism Review reporter,
--fighting with her own neighbors through her homeowner's association,
--starting a trial next month with the NLRB, which is prosecuting her for much worse than "rudeness,"
--threatening local shop owners,
--sliming her former editor on the front page of her newspaper for child pornography,
--going after local ministers,
--firing long-time dedicated News-Press employees for questioning her skills and temperament,
--attacking local chambers of commerce,
--attacking local leaders,
--allowing routine shotgun blasts from Travis Armstrong and Laura Schlessinger against multipe local targets?
"What lazy, cheap, power-hungry hypocrites," as Schlessinger said in a different context last week, before complaining about hostile and mean bloggers this week.
Delusional, dumb or something worse?
Do they think readers are stupid? No wonder we are quitting the paper in droves.
Labels: Santa Barbara News-Press
posted by Sara De la Guerra | 7/22/2007 11:29:00 AM
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22 Comments:
There are two hilarious truths about McCaw and the whole N-P fiasco:
1) She paid $100 million for the paper, then gave it to her boyfriend to run -- and was dumb enough to tell everyone that his only experience was as editor of his high school paper. Not that we wouldn't eventually have figured it out. Priceless!
2) She blithely insists on publishing her badly written, self-penned editorials filled with grammatical errors, misspellings, etc. on the front page (accompanied by a photo of her that appears to be at least 10 years old) without seeming to have a clue that we're all laughing at her.
As Barney Brantingham put it right at the beginning of this self-inflicted mess -- "Amateur Hour."
Personally, I think it's the greatest Santa Barbara freak show since the Michael Jackson thing.
She plainly can't control her temper and thinks if something isn't published in her paper it doesn't exist.
Travis was right on in his editorial about the vagrants. I, for one, am sick and tired of being harassed on State Street. You cannot walk a city block without being confronted and it has gotten worse over the years. Make panhandling on State Street illegal, and enforce it.
Looks like the NP is trying to set the stage for making themselves appear the victims when the NLRB case comes up in August.
I'm not buying it. They sound like lazy, cheap, power-hungry hypocrites.
"No wonder we are quitting in droves."???????
YOU'RE NOT. You're all a bunch of closeted News-Press readers! You all say you're not reading the paper, but you can quote word for word what they write.
Maybe Dr. Laura was right. Everyone's a hypocrite.
"Amateur hour" indeed. Between the incompetent, corrupt fools in Washington that have spent that past 6 years deliberately destroying government, the mainstream media being reduced to subservient lapdogs to their corporate owners and the mindless antics of celebutards like Paris Hilton and Ann Coulter, we really are in a new Golden Age of Incivility and Stupidity. Lightweight people like Wendy and Arthur cast in the role of newspaper barons? I'd say it fits the times we live in perfectly.
Travis was right on again in this editorial - how he sees the streets now that he is also walking them. There is incredible rude and dangerous behavior, including drivers not watching for pedestrians while they yammer on their cell phones.
He got the homeless rudeness down perfectly, some of the worst hassling in town, in our beautiful downtown where we spend millions on trees, sidewalks and benches only to allow homeless to polute and harass those very same spots.
They were not created or paid foby them, yet they have taken them all over and make it poison for anyone to feel comfortable going down town. The merchants paid for the sidewalk improvements, yet the vagrants are scaring away the shoppers.
What happened to public vagrancy laws. You don't see this in other cities, except Santa Monica and even there the merchants demanded this human pollution get cleaned up.
Travis was dead on right - homeless panhandlers have made a choice to harass pedestrians and they are perfectly able to work and clear off the streets. They are 99% Anglos and 85% male.
You don't see hard working hispanic panhandling statestreet, only white males. How did the demographics get like this. Why are only white males allowed a free ride to harass pedestrians.
If the panhandlers were primarily hispanic males, would their be an instant end to this pollution? I suspect there would.
Same with the junk RV dwellers - priamrily all white males. Hispanics have too much pride to live so badly and illegally on the streets. They might as well have stayed in Mexico if that is how they end up living.
Yet the city tolerates and welcomes white males to live on our streets. Again, why this particular Anglo demographic for vagrants and homeless?
"Quitting in droves."
Last subscription census the News-Press was reported to have the largest plunge in the region. The trend will probably continue with the next one. Management must be getting touchy.
Learned this in the NewsPress.
Notice: Public hearing August 9 - 7pm at Westside Community Center on medical marijuana dispensaries and the need to regulate them in Santa Barbara.
They are creatingmajor neighborhood blight, beyond selling marijuana.
The 211 West Victoria "Acme" dispensary has (1) marijuana fumes flowing out of open windows to the streets; (2) too many double parked cars on the street in front; (3) major debris, cast-offs and trash constantly on the sidewalk; (4) cars parked in driveway blocking the sidewalk; (6) no handicap access causing wheel chairs to get a running start on the street to get over the high door jam; (7) a hostile attitude from the drug glazed staff when these neighborhood abuses are reported to them; (8) fear of retaliation from drug money thugs reporting these zoning violations to city; (10 )mutliple witnessed incidences passing "pemitted" marijuana to friends on the street.
City ordinances need to be drafted immediately to protect residents next to this federally illegal distribution center in the middle of this residential family neighborhood, right next to multiple city housing projects.
Is this how the city gets housing affordable -- by inflicting city sanctioned blight and driving down the neighborhood?
No thank you. This is irresponsible municipal indifference.
Come to the meeting and protect your neighborhoods from this terrible blight.
Interesting observation. All slackers in front of the library that make it a scary place to go are all white too.
Is there discrimination in enforcement or engagement in this activity in the first place? Why do white guys get to ruin this city and brown guys get run out of town?
I don't read the NewsPress enough to know Travis' opinion 1st hand. The Judge didn't speak well of his character. I don't know he has the ability to deal with city problems so I'd need to hear more about how his proposals would work. Details.
I've lived and walked downtown for years. I don't see the homeless as worse. What part of downtown? Maybe more drugs are available? Possibly that needs to be addressed in detail. Something odd about looking to Travis about homeless etiquette. He cares about their manners? There's nothing like finishing school.
As I see it there are too many shoppers and DON'T think they are not dangerous. Rare a vagrant could scare a real shopper. Shopping is intense and most can only focus on their mission. Many are rude and ruin our beautiful city. The slow shoppers are waiting for someone or not spending. I don't have a problem with a few sightseers being around.
The business that comes with tourism is cheap and shoddy. Hookers and scammers frequent the so called classy digs. My family and myself have paid taxes for almost a century here. Do we like to go out to a nice place and see some "escort" working the bar? Not really.
Has Travis talked to Sheriff Brown? The jails are already a mental health facility. Wendy is libertine, more government laws not good. What are the libertine answer to these problems?
Mrs. Childs set up a camp. I hear Wendy has 20 acres, she could do alot. She could be an example.
I'll believe that Travis is serious about discussing the problem when the Newspress allows a counter point letter
Vagrants and creeps at the library, in the library, around the library -- why does this continue? Yes, it is scary, and keeps a LOT of people from going there who otherwise would be enjoying the beautiful community institution. (I know people who live in SB but go to the Goleta library just to avoid the creeps.) It is well located, has tons of new books available, has really helpful staff (the librarians upstairs can help you find almost anything!) and would otherwise be a lovely place to spend an afternoon or an evening. They even let you bring in drinks now! But who wants to hang out with the filthy weirdos? I go there to get books and dvds but remain standing -- I prefer not to sit at the free internet stations (god knows what germy hands have been on the keyboard?) but just find what I want and check out.
Sad...it could be a beautiful place for us all, but seems to have been claimed by those who have nowhere else to go -- the (voluntarily, chronic) homeless, mentally ill, winos, runaways, an other fringe people.
Why must the public library take on the burden of these guys (yes, mostly white guys, as has been pointed out, and a few white women)?
Mrs. Childs at the Child's estate set up a camp for working men, not boozed out slackers.
It was self-governing unit on private land, and not a "hobo camp" free ticket to any drifter who wanted to come here and crash at the public's expense and generousity.
These men worked and took care of themselves. They did not just stick their hand out and get in everyone's faces like today's bums.
You are not talking apples to apples here. You are talking bad apples here today.
A lot of the 'homeless' I see on State Street are the Trustifarians, as they are derisively called in Santa Cruz -- young people from homes who are on the streets and panhandling as a matter of down-and-out posing. They can be rude, and to some people just the sight of them, knowing what they are, is annoying.
A lot of real homeless have mental health issues that can account for 'rude' behavoir. Is Travis (I don't read him very often anymore) bringing up a big culprit -- Reagan's turning them out of facilities that were trying to help them, and the real threat that Schwarzenegger will do the same with budget cuts?
OK, a libertarian newspaper owner and her pit-bull editorial writer don't want to hear about tax-funded solutions. Could they at least address private-sector or nonprofit solutions rather than blaming mentally ill people with nowhere to go for being 'rude'?
I must say that the News-Press call for civility makes be shake my head in bemused confusion. Mr. Armstrong's columns are so full of hyperbole, vituperative vitriol, and snide yet illogical non-sequitors as to be nearly unreadable. Putting aside the matter as to whether or not Mr. Armstrong is accurate or even righteous, his tone is not in the least civil. Civil discourse is characterized by a polite courtesy that addresses ideas and not personalities, appeals to logic and reason and not emotion, and offers those with whom you disagree a large measure of respect and understanding. I have not seen that tone in News-Press in a long time.
"Mental health homeless" should have been made wards of the court a long time ago and since they cannot make decisions for their own personal safety, the court makes them for them and puts them in institutions .... .again.
This is why the public guardians office exists - to provide conservatorships for those who cannot fend for themselves.
Put the $30 million a year spent on "homeless" into the public guardian's office and finally get some direct results we taxpayers can see.
And the rest of the slackers left on the streets, can just get gone.
Travis Armstrong's editorials lately have been sane and right on. I suggest you go to the library and read them for free.
Travis is making a lot of sense about public policy and is leaving petty personality alone. Thank you, Travis. Keep it up.
Anon 8:44 AM,
>Maybe more drugs are available? Possibly that needs to be addressed in detail.<
Does Travis (mouthpiece for Wendy), who is known to have his own personal demons, write about addiction and the homeless? To not fully discuss the matter would be a disconnect from reality and just mindless chatter. Both addiction and mental health need to be a part of a productive discussion. And Snarky is right....
>Travis is serious about discussing the problem when the Newspress allows a counter point letter<
What we got here, is ... failure to communicate.
I was aware of the differences in the situation from the Child's estate era. I don't think zoning would allow Wendy to set up camp, but she could fight for that. I can't get into her libertine head, or Travis with his problem, part of it appears to be denial. With all the obstacles, the best solution I came up with was a Wendy camp. It is worth alot of thought until Travis is allowed to discuss the whole matter and there are counter points. The other alterative is lazy, cheap, power-hungry hypocrites will waste alot of ink. Wendy is an example, she could be a better example.
People you're lucky to have bus fare or a ride to the Goleta library. Would you prefer the less fortunate go to the vacant State Street "shopping" areas?
Makes one wonder if Travis's new sobriety is behind his saner editorials, and the other ones were written during alcoholic blackouts. Some people do get mean when they drink.
Question was posed: People you're lucky to have bus fare or a ride to the Goleta library. Would you prefer the less fortunate go to the vacant State Street "shopping" areas?
Answer: Yes. People who want to enjoy their own PUBLIC library should not have to choose between a ride out of town and an atmosphere somewhat akin to the L.A. Greyhound bus station.
The City and/or County somehow manages to dodge this very real problem.
When people post about Travis improvements, would you please point out the specifics? That is an opinion you aren't backing up. It doesn't make me think I'll check him out. It is more the opposite, it does feel trollish. I'm glad others monitor the N-P, another opinion helps the people who don't read it now.
I've always liked reading zines and alternate views. Reading what the people close to an experience or event say is paramount to a fuller comprehension. Including addiction, co-dependency, mental health, homeless and other fringe groups.
I think the N-P is in a deep coma, if not dead. I am more interested in reading about the historic significance now. Including the impact of Wendy to date on the community. The lawsuits will be another book, better read in with a historical perspective. History may seem premature, there is more to come, but it helps me accept the disease, coma or death. Maybe a hostage situation is more like it? The new tabloid Wendy puts out is another story. I'd like to see a new format and name. She will be looked at like a Michael Vick for what she did here. A new product would be seen on it's own.
I heard a Congress person say they were discussing bringing in a psychiatrist to see how better to deal with the President's disconnect.
It would be worthwhile to hear from professionals on Santa Barbara's diaster. The N-P wants the hungry, ignored and suppressed to not act rude, after N-P lead with and condone rudeness. A2 columnist has several decades of undisputable rude and abusive leadership, possibly driving others to suicidal states and it's said one murder was provoked. They all refuse to discuss and control any situation when another opinion is involved. It is unrealistic to further suppress a community, even if they are attempting that masked in a kinder plea.
With years of lawsuits ahead, there needs to be a place to release the hurt, anger and disgust as it emerges.
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