NOTE: New content is added from the TOP. This seems rational to us, but confuses some folks. Also: This is not a blog. You cannot directly comment. We are glad to hear from anyone, and may publish your comments with permission. Mondo Boulder will not reveal personal information and will not share your e-mail address or use it for any purpose except perhaps to respond directly to you.
Oh please oh please, be honest about who you are so that the overly modest and oh so un-hypocritical Evan "Vote by Phone" Ravitz will work with you. [ Sept. 18, below ] He is, after all, Boulder's Best Activist as the Camera Obscura noted. And we all know that THEY are NEVER wrong (at least their rare and paltry corrections would indicate such).
Working with Herr Ravitz would be such a boon for MB and yourself. Imagine hitching your Web wagon to such a star; the very same one that claimed that a former mayor's bout with cancer was due to what ER said was her alleged obfuscation of issues surrounding the University of Colorado. You certainly wouldn't want to miss an opportunity to work with such a soft-spoken straight-shooter as that, would you?
And as for his allegation of spin and misrepresentations, I seem to recall that your PhD in Forced Axial Rotation of Uninteresting Topics have never been applied to ER or his ilk. And if you are who my people say you are, then you are more than just an Old Boulder Bozo, but not much more. Please rethink your position on this and consider adopting a more erect posture. Any true, upstanding citizen would.
Sincerely,
Wing Commander Prefect
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Now, Now, Prefect. We're fine with incoming criticism. We might state, however, that Mondo Boulder has never identified ER by name in our shots at the local axe-grinding community. His own letter was his outing. I don't conceive how anyone would think Mr Ravitz is being manipulated by the shadowy mavens at Mondo Boulder, since it was a year and a half ago that we e-mailed him about the Officer Electro outrage and there's no evidence whatsoever that Modest Geniuses, Ltd has the slightest influence on Boulderia's civic commedia dell' arte.
More like, if they notice at all, people will assume that like the ACLU, Mr Ravitz finally became aware of the problem after a couple of people died locally from Tasering.
Better latte than never, as we say in Boulderia.
–Peter Aretin
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Rumpelstiltskin
"Oh," answered the maiden, "I'm supposed to spin straw into gold, and I don't know how."
The little man then asked, "What will you give me if I spin it for you?"
—Rumpelstiltskin, The Brothers Grimm
The Camera's Thursday lead editorial praises Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle for "Tasering wisely." The Camera urges other police agencies to follow Pelle's "prudent example" of prohibiting zap guns for "passive restraint."
The editorial subtly implies a connection between Ryan Wilson's death and Pelle's enlightenment without actually linking the two events. But the Camera makes no mention whatsoever of the incident that actually led to the policy change, the Tasering five times of Christopher Neilsen by Longmont police and Boulder County Sheriff's Deputy John Appleman. Neilsen was later found to have suffered a seizure before a car crash and again after the Taser blitz. [ Sept. 18, below ]
According to a story in the Longmont Times-Call, the County paid $90,000 and "the sheriff’s office revised its policy for Taser use on Aug. 2" to avoid a lawsuit by Neilsen, who is still considering suing the Longmont PD. The Times-Call story says Sheriff Joe Pelle "did not return several calls for comment."
So the policy change was made as part of an agreement with a Taser victim and to avoid a lawsuit and has no connection with Wilson's shocking death on Aug. 4.
Maybe the Camera's editorial board doesn't read the Times-Call, but they ought to read their own paper.
–Peter Aretin
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SEPTEMBER 19, 2006
TODAY IN RELATIVELY RECENT BOULDERIAN HISTORY
On this day in 2004, a Boulder woman in the 4200 block of 75th Street, called 911 just before 5 a.m. to report the sound of gunshots. The driver of the car "gestured like he was pointing a gun, and when she yelled at him he drove off slowly," according to the Camera. It turned out to be the sound of Sunday newspapers hitting the driveway.
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IMPORTANT NOTE:
Before undertaking International Talk Like A Pirate Day, please read this important note. The charming pirate play,
is a drama á clef involving certain powerful figures formerly at the University of Colorado, whom we, obviously, DARE NOT NAME ! The dialog is, almost verbatim, taken from GREAT LITERATURE, um, Chaucer, according to a medieval scholar we consulted.
"Death to the Pope! Death to all who say Islam is a violent religion!"
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[Hark! an e-letter!]
Let me just say this about that ...
"Peter":
On this page [ Aug. 6, below, also June 21, '05 ] you misrepresent me thusly:
"I wrote Boulderia's self-described "Best Activist." Not interested." and "self-designated activists."
I WAS interested, but I only work with people using their real names.
I have never "self-described" or "self-designated" myself as "Best Activist." The readers of the Camera voted me that in 1992.
If you are who people say you are, then you, for money, have also misrepresented those of us who want elections conducted transparently. Because of spin doctors like you, our efforts have come to nothing for 2 years, finally resulting in a lawsuit.
When you are honest about who you are, about what I say and what others designate me, and when you correct your misrepresentations of what hundreds of people are trying to do for Boulder and US elections, then I will consider working with you.
I recall your webpage and e-mailings at different times prominently featuring the "Best Activist" moniker, and as far as I'm concerned, if you embrace the description, though it originates with others, it is a self-description. I recall no denials or disavowals, as would befit a properly Modest Genius.
I never asked you or anyone else to "work with me." Like the ACLU and others, I contacted you strictly FYI, and if egregious violations of the civil rights of your neighbors by a secrecy-obsessed police force aren't of inherent and compelling interest to you and to Boulderia's self-aggrandizing guardians of Peace and Justice, that's no splinters off my woody. And you did say you weren't interested in the issue.
I don't know who people say I am, nor do I recall ever writing on the subject of transparent elections, but Mondo Boulder has never received a nickel from anyone. We don't support any political parties. We don't milk any sacred cows. We wield no influence in the corridors of power. We don't subscribe to fantastic conspiracy theories, junk science, or superstition in any form, and that's no way to win friends and influence people here in the Enchanted Kingdom.
We do, however, answer our e-mails, which is a lot more real than most certified local poobahs. As for spin-doctoring, see the story below.
Peter Aretin
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Homespun News
Next time, use a Taser
Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle defended the use of Taser stun guns shortly after a deadly incident in Lafayette, but he has since tightened restrictions for their use in his department.
Pelle said the policy was tightened after 22-year-old Ryan Michael Wilson's death, as well as a lawsuit filed against the county by a man who claimed he suffered a seizure after a deputy used a Taser on him.
Sheriff's deputies now are instructed only to use their stun guns if "the person is trying to hurt you," Pelle said.
"We have prohibited the usage on passive restraint," he said.
That's nice. But is this statement from a front page story from the Sept. 16 Daily Camera actually true?
That depends on whether you believe what you read in the papers. Just five days earlier, the Camera ran a brief item describing a $90,000 payment from the County to make a potential Taser-related lawsuit go away. [ NOTE: We were incorrect in originally stating this story is not available on the Camera's website. ]
The lawsuit was threatened by "a driver who suffered seizures before and after sheriff's deputies used Tasers on him," according to the Camera. "Sheriff's officials also revised policies for using the stun guns as part of the settlement," the story said, and, "Sheriff's officials changed the policy for using Tasers on Aug. 2." That's two days before Ryan Michael Wilson died after being zapped by Lafayette cops, so unless the Sheriff employs psychics, Wilson's death played no role in the policy change.
In the Bible, it took 40 days and 40 nights to produce the world-girdling flood, and that's how long it took to produce an autopsy and the tests revealing Wilson had no drugs in his system but died from a lethal combo of electric shock and a heart condition. In that time, Boulderia spent $30,000 retrieving John Karr from Thailand to test his DNA, which did not take 40 days, hosting a media circus, and finally shipping America's celebrity pedophile off to California to face misdemeanor charges.
We also had our annual orgy of breast-beating and sententious philosophizing over the 9/11 atrocity, the Boulderian ACLU fretted that the Council might make so bold as to sack the head of the Human Relations Commission just for making the HRC a public laughingstock, and Boulderia's political activists continued their jeremiads over the mistreatment of terror suspects.
Also: An Aspen cop appealed her dismissal for misuse of a Taser, Aspen revised its Taser policies, and an Arapahoe County jail inmate died after deputies Tasered him for yelling and banging on his cell door. He's quiet now.
Neither the 90,000 bucks, the Sheriff's impossible chronology, Aspen's Taser troubles, or the Aurora Taser death bore mentioning in the autopsy story. The story did say that "Wilson had a knife and 'displayed assaultive behavior.' " In the normal way of speaking in America, this would mean Wilson had a knife that threatened the police officer. But the Lafayette cops have been exceedingly coy about what "role" this knife played, if indeed, it played any at all, so if that's what is being said here it's startling new information to be delivered so casually.
More likely, the Camera has just fallen in with the Lafayette PD's attempt at spin regarding a knife. The Lafayette PD also dropped hints about Wilson being on drugs which turned out to be untrue, and in another 40 days, the public may finally find out about the knife when the authorities eventually unveil their finely-crafted version of events.
There's a moral here: Police do not instigate reforms out of the goodness of their hearts, or because the ACLU issues a press release, or because of oversight by elected representatives, or because of investigative journalism, or because citizen activists would know civil liberties from a poke in the eye.
Police instigate reforms when people sue, and it starts costing the kind of money it's worth $90,000 just to keep a jury from discussing. Aspen's policy change came just after it received a model of a potential Taser policy from its insurance pool.
I'll bet the Boulder County Sheriff's Department got one too.
–Peter Aretin
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SEPTEMBER 13, 2006
Kind Bud Good Sam's Stoner cousin from Boulder
One news story about that ABC miniseries says it shows 9/11 happening because Clinton was "distracted by the sex scandal." Scripting was supposedly influenced by behind-the-scenes conservative string-pullers. How remarkably candid! We can now send one thank-you letter to the same folks for both 9/11 and the Iraq war. And there's your real sex scandal: Mohammed Atta and Ken Starr make pretty strange bedfellows !
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Don't say we never bring you any
WAR NEWS
No. 2 Man in Iraq Captured ... Again
A note slipped under the main gate of Baghdad's Green Zone today announced the capture of Al Qaeda's No. 2 man in Iraq, "a guy named Khalil Rhoi." This marks the third No.2 man Al Qaeda has lost this month, and coalition officials said his loss would constitute a "severe blow" to the terrorist group, leaving them with only one remaining northwest-central assistant No. 2 man and depriving them of the cups of hot java and packs of smokes found concealed in Khalil Rhoi's vehicle after it ran into a Humvee.
Coalition forces began seeking Rhoi over a year ago when he was only an intern for the south-southeast No. 3 man. Though they frequently found indications he had been present, he always seemed to elude them.
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Day of the Dead
or: Wardo As A Dancing Skeleton
The Meaning of 9/11
It had to happen: an advert for a band called The Churchills. Had it been the Little Churchills, the name would have been witty. The timeworn band-naming formula calls for a qualifying adjective. As it is, the name's merely another indicator that the Mighty Injun of Profit is virtually passé. We're bored with Ward.
At the height of The Embattled Professor's1 notoriety, he was logging a half-a-dozen media mentions a day. Despite a mild 9/11 spike, Wardo barely googles2 one or two media mentions these days, and some of those turn out to be about The Home of the Kentucky Derby or some governmental subunit in Australia. Thus Wardo passes into the American lexicon as a sort of bogeyman-under-the-bed routinely invoked by right wing pot-stirrers. The one who's gone farthest with this is David Horowitz, reformed leftist and professional academic scare monger.
Horowitz can play the Prissy Academic better than many real life Prissy Academics, but oddly, a lot of the fawning acolytes who comment at his web mag, Frontpagemag.org, read like semi-literates. And considering Horowitz's considerable exertions over Wardo's offenses against scholarly protocol, Frontpagemag.org appears to violate copyright law with utter gay abandon, reprinting wholesale lots of stories from the Rocky Mountain News in their entirety with no copyright notice or permissions stated. Is this something to which The Rocky turns a blind eye? It would seem hard not to notice. We tried asking Frontpagemag.org and The Rocky about it, but fromages of such magnificence don't respond to e-mails from upstart nobodies, etc.3
In any event, there's little word about the big touring campus debate series between David and his Goliath, the Most Dangerous Professor In America™ which appears to have fizzled after only one date. We dutifully enquired about this from Frontpagemag.org and the CU Campus Republicans, but ... you know the drill. Silence speaks megabytes.
So Wardo will be dusted off briefly every 9/11, like those jolly skeletons at Halloween. The last Sunday Camera reminds us once again how momentous events, such as the 9/11 atrocity (it was not that much-abused and misunderstood term, a "tragedy") spawn holidays of the macabre, annual outpourings of bloviation, navel-gazing, axe-grinding and public scab picking.
Bob Greenlee's column in the Sunday Obscura resurrects the particularly redolent episode of the Library Flag Flap. Like then-Sen. Ben "Highhorse" Campbell before him, Greenlee conveniently forgets there are ten American flags flying between the Municipal Building and the library, one right outside the entrance, making the issue of displaying yet another one in the lobby an issue not of patriotism but of whether to engage in a self-aggrandizing display of public piety or not.
And like the other fans of the soi disant El Dildo Bandido, Mr Greenlee mistakes El Dildo's relentless self-promotion for patriotism. This pest buttonholed every talk show host and reporter who failed to elude him. He launched a website to celebrate his own "patriotism." He had coffee mugs and T-shirts printed to advertise his wonderful self. He spoke of running for office. This shameless opportunist, who is not even a Boulder resident, rode his personal 9/11 horse just as far as it would take him.
Fortunately, that wasn't far. A Republican women's kaffe klatch gave El Dildo an award and he sank back into the obscurity he so richly deserves. Sen. Campbell abruptly retired from politics ahead of a brewing influence peddling scandal in his office, and Marcelee Gralapp, the librarian at the helm during the flap retired with honors and a plaque there. Chris Power, former library employee and originator of the Big Flag Idea, is currently following in El Dildo's footsteps, hawking a book about his travails as a patriot. I'm going to read it right after I finish re-reading Tristram Shandy a couple of times.
And I'm not going to hear The Churchills. I've heard enough Churchills to last a lifetime.
–Peter Aretin
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EMBATTLED PROFESSOR WARD CHURCHILL™ MEMORIAL FOOTNOTE SECTION
1Embattled Professor Ward Churchill™ is a registered trademark of Modest Geniuses, Ltd., etc. etc.
2Let's quit horsing around and stop capitalizing google. It's generification is inevitable.
3Mondo Boldo must give the Colorado ACLU credit. They may not know jack about civil liberties, but they do answer their e-mails.
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AUGUST 31, 2006
TODAY IN RELATIVELY RECENT BOULDERIAN HISTORY:
August 31, 2004 was a tough day for relations between the sexes at the University of Colorado. A group of 25 female University of Colorado employees held the second of two meetings with CU Pres Elizabeth Hoffman. They had marched on her office in June demanding an explanation and apology for her testimony in a hearing that she had heard "cunt" used as a term of endearment. A CU spokesperson had spun at the time that Liz, being a medieval scholar, heard it in Chaucer. But Chaucer, being more delicate than Liz, does not in fact use this word, but a Frenchified euphemism. Oops. She must have meant D.H. Lawrence.
CU regents decided in a secret meeting that a secret grand jury report raking them and other CU officials over the coals for the football sex scandals should remain secret, though details had been reported widely. Despite an expensive stable of in-house attack lawyers, regents got outside legal advice from "lawyer-lobbyist" Tom Strickland, a Denver attorney who unsuccessfully ran for U.S. Senate in 1998 and 2002.
And in faraway New Mexico Katie Hnida, former CU football aspirant, became the first woman in NCAA Division I history to score a point in a game. After leaving CU, she had created an uproar with claims she was raped and sexually harassed by CU team "mates."
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Kind Bud Good Sam's Stoner cousin from Boulder
Who's the Poet Laureate of Boulderia? Stephen Vincent Benet Ramsey, of course!
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Media Porn
Snookered?
After the ball is over, after the break of morn,
After the dancers' leaving, after the stars are gone,
Many a heart is aching, if you could read them all—
Many the hopes that have vanished after the ball.
—Charles K. Harris’s “After the Ball” sold two million pieces of sheet music in 1892 alone.
The Mondo Boulder News Team jumped on its bike this morning and did what a lot of Boulderians are doing these days. I rode by to see if the Media Horde was still encamped on the sidewalk across from the Palace of Justice. A century ago, this area of town was a haphazard collection of shanties called Bugtown, where bums scrounged for scraps. Lately, they have scrounged for scraps of media porn.
But the talking heads have folded their tents and stolen away in the night; mostly. Only a couple of pavilions remained. They were sweeping the fast food wrappers out of the sat dish trucks that remained.
Hey, guys, don't let those swingin' doors hit you on the ass on the way out!
Our own local Whores of Babble On can now return to their humdrum lives, still stunned and giddy from servicing the circus that passed through town. Now, Boulderia's in the Hangover Period, the morning after when all and sundry have time to reflect on all the crass, stupid, premature, overheated and exploitive things they said and did during the frenzy. It must be like the aftermath of one of those incidents of ergotism that sometimes struck medieval villages. Whenever a particular fungus that produces a cruelly strong and toxic chemical relative of LSD contaminated the rye crop, whole villages would sometimes go on orgies of sex, violence and craziness.
Or maybe it's like the devastation of a psychic Hurricane Katrina. The aftermath brings more utterly predictable flak for the police, of course, but that's utterly out of line. If Boulderia's dreamy peasantry and elected poobahs are content to let the Boulderian police operate without meaningful governmental oversight and citizen review, like an independent, secret force, they can just plug their pie holes about the cops.
The DA is catching lots of criticism, which she really deserves for mispronouncing "poignant." One of the most surprising things about the fiasco is the difficulty investigators had in determining whether or not The Monster really had unique knowledge of the case or not. This is not actually a technologically daunting issue. If someone had bothered to archive all the news coverage and web tittle-tattle on The Case --and it would probably fit on a single DVD or one cheap hard drive-- it would not have taken long to discover The Suspect was right only about publicly known things and otherwise, wrong.
Some folks are steamed about the way the California authorities snookered our DA. They weren't going to blow ten grand shipping a fruitcake from Thailand; they let Boulderia pick up the tab for that. Now, they've decided to extradite him after all, now that they only have to pay shipping back to California and can reap the kudos for nailing a soi disant celebrity pedophile. Cheapskates! The local judge should have refused their extradition request: "You want him, you catch him. He'll be busking on the Mall."
But the really sad part, that must make our Brit cousins across the pond blanch, is that the first thing that happened after the arrest was that The Suspect was marched straight into a news conference where he made his fantastic "confession."
What followed can only be called Media Porn.
Our own local rag o' record, the Daily Camera, set no good example. We could paper Folsom Field and fill Boulder Res with the paper and ink the Camera expended in the general orgy of smarmy tittle-tattle and prurient gossip. Read the e-mails! Hear the phone calls! So maybe we should shut up about those out-of-town news ghouls when our own dear local fount of truth is happy enough to dance in the chorus line.
But it sure got what we laughingly call people's minds off the poor guy Tasered to death by the Lafayette cops, didn't it?1
1It takes so long to get an autopsy of an ordinary mortal around here, people say, "Who?" when the results are finally released.
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AUGUST 23, 2006
TODAY IN RELATIVELY RECENT BOULDERIAN HISTORY:
This day in 2003, Boulder valley school students first began reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, sort of, in accordance with a new state law requiring it. Except they didn't have to. The law lacked any penalties for violating it, plus a federal judge blocked enforcement of the law, providing, that is, it had included any penalties to enforce. The injunction might have affected only four Denver-area schools, or it might have meant no schools had to comply. Lawyers for the school district decided it did, so students were required to stand, face the flag, and recite the pledge, unless they preferred to stand, face the flag, and not say the pledge, or remain seated and not say the pledge. Or say it. Whatever.
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Oz you is, or Oz you ain't, my baby?
Remember H.M. Wogglebug, T.E.?
If you read the Oz books1 as a kid, or maybe as a different sort of adult, you may recall that H.M. stands for "Highly Magnified" and T.E. stands for "Thoroughly Educated."
I've been thinking about the Wogglebug a lot, lately.
After all, Boulderians are all Thoroughly Educated2, as newspaper feature writers are ever wont to remind us. And living in Boulderia is a bit like being in Oz, though I'm not sure anyone in Oz would fork over hundreds of clams to be turned into a pincushion, either therapeutically or decoratively. Prof Wogglebug also founded the Oz College of Arts and Athletics, to which any resemblance by the University of Colorado is purely coincidental.
Boulderia's magicality index has been slipping a bit in recent years, though, despite the fact that trendy Boulderesque kitchens now sport a "snake oil" faucet right between the "hot" and "cold" spigots. The Shire used to sport a healthy artistic fringe community, too, but now seems to be down to the merely lunatic fringe. There have been attempts to jump start an annual Fringe Festival, importing an artsy creative fringe to temporarily replace the depleted local product. But last year's attendance at the first Fringe Fest was disappointing, and this year, the Circus came to town and put the kibosh on the Fringe Fest just as it was getting going.
You know which Circus I mean, The Media Circus, Three Rings Of Bad Taste. They came from all over and pitched their tents by the waters of Babble On, hard by the Palace of Justice, blocking the sidewalk, and there they remain, slavering for any tidbit about the the would-be Confessed Murderer, writing headlines like, "Evidence key to the case." The Confession has about the same aroma as a brick of limburger after a week in the sun, but no matter, it's all entertainment tonight and law enforcement lite. We learn what The Monster manqué ate and drank on the
Dishin' the dirt.
plane back to the U.S., though a puzzling coverage gap leaves the avid public wondering if he went poo poo or pee pee. Well, you'll recall the Wizard turned out to be a big Talking Head, too.
The Daily Camera, tossing dignity aside, jumped into the media mosh pit with élan, printing stuff like page one stories on those airheads who used to fill the web with blather about The Case. Guess what? They're at it again!
Boulderia's Thoroughly Educated image has also taken its hits lately. There was our own District Attorney Mary Lacy on The News Hour pronouncing the "g" in poignant, like the hard g in pregnant, or Ernest Borgnine. Ouch! It must hurt when your own sound bite bites you in the ass!
I came across this in a recent Camera story about the proposed "carbon tax": "The council voted 7-1 in favor of his motion to consider language that would decrease to $1.3 million the maximum amount the tax could bring in every year. That would still give the council a 20 percent 'cushion' in case estimates of how much money the tax will raise are wrong."
Think about it: The proposed tax is on electricity. "The program" is supposed to get people to use less electricity. So if the program is successful, and consumers actually use a lot less electricity, the city will raise the tax rate so they can keep spending money to, yup, convince people to use less electricity. If the program is unsuccessful, council will no doubt decide more expenditures are needed to convince people to use less electricity and thus raise the rate anyway. Or they may raise the tax to fund some completely unrelated project, the way they used an increase in the trash tax to get the money it cost to think up the tax on electricity.3
The sole dissenting vote on lowering the maximum was from Councilperson Andy Schultheiss, who's certain Boulderians are Stupid enough to let the City spend twice what the proposal "asks" for. "I think we could ask for 10 times this amount and win," he said. How true, and that's scarier than a flock of flying, Bluetooth-enabled monkeys.
So far this proposal, hardly calculated to flatter the intelligence of Boulderian electors, has provoked no particular outcry, no mobs of angry peasantry holding flaming faggots aloft as they march on the Palace of Misrule. We're used to it! Sixty percent of the take will go for administrative costs and the proposal is polling an 80 percent approval rate.
That's why Stupidity should always be capitalized in Boulderia. It's a special kind of stupidity that only Thoroughly Educated people are allowed to have. They make the same mistakes over and over, but only after much debate, many letters to the editor and thorough study.
Which reminds me of one of the Wogglebug's inventions: a pill that students can take that replaces four hours of study. That would sure boost those state test scores for school kids!
I wonder if that pill would work on District Attorneys? Or City Councilpersons?
1There are dozens of Oz books, not just the one Hollywood made famous. I read 'em all.
2Seventy percent of us have "at least" a bachelors degree. I once worked on a pick-and-shovel crew for my alma mater's grounds department in which everybody had a bachelors or a masters, except the lone Latino, who worked harder than everybody else. Nowadays, they've quit giving this sort of job to Anglos and people with degrees, with good reason.
3Thinking up taxes takes money. They're invariably regressive taxes, but since Boulderians are all Thoroughly Educated and, consequently, rich, it doesn't matter.
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AUGUST 13, 2006
TODAY IN RELATIVELY RECENT BOULDERIAN HISTORY
This day, 2003, a Camera story reported how a "flash mob," presumably composed of oxymorons, had been "organized to spontaneously converge" on the County Courthouse lawn at 5:59 pm. The ploy was a total flop, in no small part thanks to the paper's front page story.
In 2004, the Camera reported that Boulderians were enjoying lower gas prices than surrounding communities. A "minor price war" had driven the price for regular unleaded to $1.75. A story in yesterday's Camera reported Boulderia's average gas price the lowest in the state, at $3.01 a gallon.
Cheap gas is now as dead as flash mobs.
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Our Secret Police
It was buried deep in the story. It couldn't elude Mondo Boulder's eagle-eyed reader(s)1, of course, but for the benefit of those far out on the tip-ass end of our spiral arm of the galaxy who are channeling Mondo Boulder via dilithium crystals, today's Taser story in the Camera reveals that Officer John Harris, who wielded the shocker in last week's fatality won a "Life Saving Award" last June.
But Lafayette officials refuse to say what for!
That's downright paranoid. Or maybe that editorial scolding from the Camera, "Silent City," made 'em mad and they're just going to hold their breath 'til they turn blue. So there. Or maybe they've had their jaws wired shut.
Also buried in a short item back in the July 30 Camera was news that Boulderia's sister city Aspen sacked one of their officers for Tasing "a 63-year-old homeless woman who was rummaging through donations behind a thrift shop."
You might have thought the Camera would have updated this item, incorporating it into their Taser narrative instead of making readers dig for it. Another brief item in Friday's paper, missing from the website, merely reports Calvano's appeal of her dismissal.
But the Aspen incident also brought criticism of official secrecy. An Aspen Times editorial said, "It's unfortunate that the city and its police department were unwilling to release even the most basic facts and observations from the incident between Calvano and [ homeless woman ] Carol Alexy."
Unlike Lafayette, Aspen's city manager eventually revealed basic information on the case. "By releasing the investigation," wrote the Times, "[ City Manager ] Barwick complied with Colorado's Open Records Act. As we've said before, investigations into improper use of force by police officers should not be buried in their personnel files. They are public records that deserve a public airing." Boulder police are as secretive as Lafayette's, regularly shielding police conduct from public scrutiny as confidential "personnel matters."
This incident does tend to show that it is actually possible, in theory, for a town of rich white folks to terminate an officer for irresponsible electroshock administration, and to operate a police force in something other than compulsive secrecy.
Too bad the few Boulderian voters and taxpayers who appear to care about any of this can't administer a few jolts to our own complacent poobahs and secret policemen.
1We have one full-time reader, who reads every word, including these footnotes, and one part-time reader, a former graduate assistant for Ward Churchill, who reads every other word and skips the footnotes as "too distracting."
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AUGUST 11, 2006
TODAY IN RELATIVELY RECENT BOULDERIAN HISTORY
This day in 2003, a press release posted on the official University of Colorado website said, in part:
Law enforcement training and the belief among police in the United States that their lives are likely to be in danger at any moment encourages the use of deadly force in any potentially dangerous situation, according to CU-Boulder sociology Professor AnnJanette Rosga.
Rosga studies police use of force and the training of police in human rights-respecting practices in emerging democracies around the world, such as Bosnia-Herzegovina where she was a Fulbright Scholar in 2002.
The fatal shooting of developmentally disabled 15-year-old Paul Childs by a Denver police officer on July 5 raised a public outcry in northeast Denver against police practices. Rosga said the shooting is an example of a training philosophy that encourages the use of overwhelming force by police in situations officers deem "life-threatening."
"Departments justify such procedures on the grounds that they protect officers," said Rosga. "But my research shows that, as often as not, heavily armed and guarded police preparation for "worst-case scenarios" cause civilians to feel threatened and to act irrationally and tends to create conflict instead of mitigating it."
...
"Police are taught that their safety depends not on conflict-resolution skills or communicating with civilians, but on demanding citizens do as they say on command and on the use of deadly force when compliance is not forthcoming and there is any suggestion of a threat toward the officer," said Rosga.
According to U.S. Department of Justice statistics, police officers in the United States kill an average of 373 people each year. In virtually all cases, said Rosga, authorities deem such homicides "justified," on the grounds that an officer's life was in danger.
"The truth is, policing is not as dangerous as many of us are led to believe," said Rosga. "Statistics show that the risks of on-the-job death faced by police officers is on the low end of the spectrum, comparable to those faced by electricians, and nowhere near to employees of fishing industries who die at more than eight times the rate of police officers on the job."
...
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On Aug 11 2004, primary election returns showed popular progressive mayor and former child prodigy Will Toor winning a seat on the county commissioners, aka, The Tripartite Hegemony, since he faced only a Libertarian opponent in November.
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Mourning Becomes Electric
The mule that I rode,
My friends rode it too.
But I do not care,
Because I rode it first.
–Mexican folk song.
There's been an outpouring of support since Mondo Boulder launched its searing indictment of Bouderian activist, officialdom and press response to the sorry affair of last Friday's Taser-induced death and the outrageous public Taser assault on Liberty McCarty that preceded it two years ago. One sample:
Right ON! Give 'em hell, Peter. I can only hope that the "reporter" at the Camera ( and Times-Call, for that matter), care enough to follow up on this (and maybe get hold of the McCarty investigation. Sounds like an ideal FoIA request to me...
The Prefect
Well, actually, that's the whole damn outpouring right there, but we're not in this for fame and influence, but in service of the pure flame of Liberty, right? OK, the truth, so help me Churchill, is that we love to swim in the deep river of irony that runs through life in Boulderia. Amnesty International is a name to conjure with to Boulderian progressive officials and mullahs, at least when it's decrying the abuse of citizens of faraway lands. But when an extensive and damning report by this hallowed organization cast a very harsh light on the County Commissioners' enthusiasm for handing every sheriff's department employee a shiny new shocker, they acted like they'd never heard of 'em.
Boulderia's cadre of moral high-grounders are deeply outraged by torture, unless it's the guy who's now suing the Lafayette PD, claiming he was Tasered while hooded and manacled in a holding cell. Abu-Ghraib-O-Rama!
Our leaders fearlessly weigh in on geopolitics and foreign policy matters, but are curiously passive, downright submissive, in their relationship with our own local police forces, over which they have about as much control as the government of Lebanon has over Hezbollah.
Still, it's good to see some of the things Mondo Boulder was hueing and crying about two years ago finally being mentioned in the local press: The number of cops who are suing Taser International1 over training injuries is fascinating background. But it would also be good to see some mention of the undisclosed financial arrangements between Taser International1 and various police officers who pushed for the adoption of these joy buzzers in their local departments.
Gosh, it would be interesting to know if any of that went on in Boulderia, wouldn't it?
But let's not get our hopes up, or as one particularly progressive city official says, our woody chafed. The Lafayette Chief has already announced there are no plans to change any department policy. So it doesn't really matter what happens in that lawsuit, what the secret investigation into the recent fatality really finds, or what opinions citizens or elected officials or the local press or upstart nobodies on the Web might have on police policies.
And the only way any truth about the Liberty McCarty assault will ever be known is if there is a lawsuit, and that doesn't seem to be in the cards. A FoIA request by a third party without the will and the resources to go to court for the public's right to know will go no farther than the Chief's desk.
Still, if some of Boulderia's visionary citizenry finally realize that Tasers aren't harmless toys but potentially lethal weapons there will at least be some tiny public benefit that was paid for with one human life.
–Peter Aretin
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WARD CHURCHILL MEMORIAL FOOTNOTE SECTION
1Taser international, the manufacturer, is where the police have sent the Taser in question to see if it's defective. This is like letting the Phonak cycling team do their own drug testing, or, um, letting the police investigate complaints against the police.
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AUGUST 8, 2006
What's that smell?
Whatever it is, the funky aroma of secrecy coming from Lafayette and its police chief over the Taser-related death of a suspect last Friday is wrinkling the nose of the official press. Today's Camera politely editorializes about the fragrance.
It's downright putrid that Lafayette officialdom still can't offer a simple narrative of events going into the fourth day of "investigation" of an incident at which an officer was actually present. If you, dear reader(s), or, gods forbid! I, were arrested, our names, addresses and a not-necessarily-accurate account of the circumstances would be promptly and freely given out to the press.
That unpleasant odor is the scent of lawyers. Right now, the City's lawyers and lawyers for officer John Harris, who wielded the Taser, must be busy, busy, busy, and if they had their way, the public would know even less that the little sniff it's gotten. But imagine the poor Chief's dilemma: If he were to wait too many more days before mentioning (Oh, yeah, I almost forgot...) that knife, the cover-up stink would grow very strong indeed. But without a green light from the lawyers, the Chief's unable to reveal what "role" the knife will play in the unfolding drama.
These days, nobody, big or small, official or unofficial, admits anything. Stall, equivocate, deflect suspicion, admit nothing, hope for a miracle and hope people will forget about it. And it worked just fine for Lafayette in the Liberty McCarty assault-by-Taser. They almost got away with not even revealing the name of Scott Emerson, aka Officer Electro, and have never offered any justification at all for the attack. If the Chief's luck holds, he can keep public watchdogs from digging up that malodorous and happily buried secret "investigation." Maybe Lafayette can hire Floyd Landis as a spokesperson.
It's good the Camera editorializes about police secrecy. That's a start, but it's just a whiff of the problem. In Lafayette, as in Boulderia, and in most cities, there's no meaningful oversight or control over police forces by citizens or elected officials. Boulderia's citizen review board is a lame joke. Truth is, if elected officials don't like police policies, firing the Chief is about their only option.
So it's no surprise police departments can act like independent franchises, deciding for themselves which laws to enforce or not enforce, and making liberal use of "personnel matters" and "ongoing investigations" to cover butts and hide embarrassing smells from the public they're supposed to serve.
–Peter Aretin
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AUGUST 7, 2006
LATEST BULLETIN
The guy who died after being Tasered by Lafayette police [ Aug. 6 ] had a knife!
At least, he had a knife with him. A folding knife. But after two and a half days of investigation, the Lafayette Chief of Police doesn't "know what role that knife played," according to the latest bulletin, 1:40 pm today, on the Camera's website. Neither the Chief or the City's spokesperson returned calls over the weekend, but now that they're back in the office, the public is learning a lot more detail about what the police don't know. They also don't know if the dead guy had drugs in his system or not. They probably also don't know if he has stopped beating his wife, or if he is a pedophile, though they didn't mention those. They have, however, been able to name the officer. Now, they should ask him to phone the Chief.
No doubt a few more days investigation can shed light on whether that knife was still folded up in the man's pocket, or whether it was unfolded and in his hand, factors known to affect the role that it's playing.
Do you suppose he intended on trimming a few buds from those alleged pot plants?
All this would be funny if some poor bozo weren't dead. As it is, the straight-faced way in which these absurdities are delivered is just plain weird.
–Peter Aretin
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AUGUST 6, 2006
TODAY IN MONDO BOULDER HISTORY:
Aug. 6, 2003 - "It's just too bad we must offer no products, in order to forestall your ungovernable desire to send us money, because the Mondo Boulder Consumer Research Center has just developed an oh-so-cool gear item that could easily become the next road rage: the pedestrian helmet. Imagine the oblivious cell-phone pedestrian who is struck by a cell phone cyclist and knocked off the sidewalk into the street and into the path of a cell phone driver (this might even be an elderly cell phone driver, on his or her way to plow into a farmers' market). Thanks to the cell phone pedestrian helmet, his noggin, like that of the cell phone cyclist and the cell phone driver is protected from other cell phone users. It may be mostly full of air, but you wouldn't want to scratch the case."
Aug. 6,2004 -
"Last year [ i.e., 2003]in Mondo Boulder:
'Today is the day one of the Statehouse Gang's proudest pieces of recent legislation, the Pledge of Allegiance law, takes effect, going down in history alongside such stellar moments as the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and the first use of the electric chair, which also happened August 6. Starting today, Colorado teachers and kiddies must take the Pledge each day, although with characteristic moral courage, Colorado lawmakers provide no penalties for disobeying the law. The Pledge law will soon halt the decline of modern youth and have them as patriotic as folks were when we developed the bomb and the electric chair.'" [ NOTE: As it turned out, of course, they didn't have to, and they aren't.]
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Electro II
The Sequel
Could THIS happen if nothing is done?!
On Friday night a Lafayette cop, Officer Name Withheld, Tasered a guy suspected on growing pot on public property. Officer Anonymous said the fleeing suspect "displayed assaultive behavior" and the officer feared for his life. But the guy isn't going to complain to the papers. He died.
Even though it was an on-duty officer in a public place, the Lafayette PD is withholding all information, even the name of the officer, pending an investigation. The police like to operate under the maximum possible secrecy and disgorge even basic information reluctantly, especially to citizens. Lafaytte Chief Paul Schultz was stonewalling me even about Officer Electro's name more than a hundred days after the Tasing of Liberty McCarty in 2004. "Personnel matter," he said. Chief Schultz didn't, however, try to bullshit the Camera when they finally asked, and that's where I finally read it.
The police may have to be a little more forthcoming on this one, though the customary lengthy secret investigation is being launched by members of the Lafayette, Louisville, Boulder and Longmont police departments, with the Boulder County sheriff's and district attorney's offices boosting the investigative horsepower. But the results of the investigation are something they don't mind letting the public know right out in front: "Excessive force" is not suspected. You have to wonder what is excessive if not death.I was genuinely creeped out by the Liberty McCarty Tasing because, if an armed cop in full riot gear can (presumably) fear for his life when encountering a slight woman, hands raised, in a diaphanous harem girl outfit, then that officer could Tase any one at any time. He might Tase you. Even worse, he might Tase me. Lafayette PD Sgt. Scott Emerson, as Officer Electro's secret identity turned out to be, gave Ms McCarty two full doses of electric blue fire --a color picture of him doing so appeared on the front page of the Camera-- then he stepped over her and left her lying in the street. After a lengthy, stem-winding secret investigation --it's a personnel matter, you know-- the Lafayette PD announced Officer Electro did not violate any of their policies! And that was it. Everything else about this extremely public act by a public employee remains secret.
Well, that ought to have made your hair stand on end. Except a funny thing happened.
Nothing.
Were all these flaming peace & justice activists surrounding me a bunch of pod people? I wrote the City Council. Deafening silence. I wrote Boulderia's self-described "Best Activist." Not interested. When the Sheriff's department outfitted every deputy with their very own Taser, I wrote the County Commissioners about the damning Amnesty International report on Tasers. No reply.I wrote the ACLU. They didn't even answer my e-mail. Imagine my surprise to now read in the Camera that the ACLU suddenly "demands end to Tasers." Right then I realized Liberty McCarty's mistake.
She didn't die.
If she had died, all these folks would have been defending her civil rights like crazy.
So I have to wonder: If all these staunch civil libertarians and elected officials and self-designated activists had raised a little more sand back when Liberty McCarty was flagrantly and publicly assaulted, would it have changed anything at all?
Would a 22 year-old would-be pot farmer still be alive?
–Peter Aretin
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AUGUST 3, 2006
TODAY IN RELATIVELY RECENT BOULDERIAN HISTORY:
This day in 2004, Boulder County ACLU Chair Judd Golden sent a letter to the owners of Peaceful Valley Ranch arguing it wouldn't violate state law to reverse their decision not to allow a gay couple to hold a marriage ceremony there, even though the couple had already decided they wouldn't hold it there anyway, so there. CU officials, threatened with a lawsuit by CU College Republicans, reversed a decision to restrict a "school and society" course to minority and first-generation students. It is not known if any Republicans subsequently enrolled in the course.
Last year, the Camera reported on the previous day's meeting of one of Boulderia's race issues committees, which wrestled with the problem of convincing a "white, politically left-leaning community" that it's a hotbed of racism. "People who are good-hearted folks and would stake their life on getting behind ending hate don't see themselves as part of the problem," said a spokesperson for the Safehouse Progressive Alliance for Nonviolence.
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Thank God for Drunks!
[DISCLAIMER: We Mondo Boulderians do not in any way condone the antics of drunken louts. As culture war vets, we ourselves have received much unwelcome attention from soused thugs who did not approve of our prescient tonsorial and sartorial arrangements back in the halcyon 60s. Some of these football-addled thugs mistakenly thought we were gay. Disclaimers like this are necessary because Boulderians, despite their much-touted educational and economic attainments, can be as literal-minded and simplistic as Commerce Citians with outdoor toilets and dialup connections.]
Just about a year ago, Boulderia's cadre of professional busybodies were getting their undies into convoluted topological multi-dimensional arrangements over a terrible crisis of racism in our enchanted shire. This hullaballoo was kicked off when a small-time Mexican drug-dealer and brawler from Lafayette came to Boulder, got drunk, and broke the jaw of a half-black CU student in a late-night parking lot face-off. Parties unknown, probably students, a group well known for sobriety and probity, sent some hateful e-mails or a racist nature.
Dueling committees immediately formed to begin the hueing and crying, using the local press as a convenient megaphone. The City responded in the only way it knows: "Here! Please! Take $10,000 in public funds! No! Wait! Here's $16,000 more!" A Hate Hotline was established.
Since then it's been quiet. Awfully quiet for a Hotbed of Hate. We haven't heard a word from or about the Hate Hotline.1 No racial incidents have splashed across Boulderia's front pages. And, mind you, a great, big, anti-Hate cannon all loaded and with its fuse waving in the breeze ought to be a real temptation to any one looking for any easy way to spark a lot of malicious mischief and make a loud noise.
The long Hate drought finally ended last week, to the almost palpable relief of the axe-grinding community. True, this wasn't the juicy racial incident the hate mavens could really sink their teeth into, but it was at least a bias incident and at least the perp lived here in town.
This time it was yet another drunk guy punching a gay guy on Pearl Street.
Though there's been no love lost on drunk-ass jerks these many years, all this time in Central Boulderia has left us feeling about equally battered by the town's preachy, self-righteous activists who endlessly patronize their neighbors by pretending we can't read and form opinions without a sermonette from them. Before the Pearl Street punching-out lout was even over his hangover, before any charges were brought, the Anti-Defamation League's new office here in Hate City issued a communique, dutifully reported in the Camera, on the important subject of drunk guys punching gay guys. The ADL said,
"Hate crimes are not like other crimes, because they have an impact far beyond the individual victim of the crime. When a victim is chosen because of his or her sexual orientation, everyone who shares those characteristics feels threatened. Those crimes resonate throughout the victim's community, and threaten the safety and well-being of every member of that group."
So it doesn't "resonate" with non-gay me when a neighbor gets punched in the face? Or it doesn't have an "impact far beyond the individual victim of the crime" when little You Know Who and Susannah Chase, sexual orientations unspecified, are cruelly murdered? Is this patronizing twaddle?
Rather unprofessionally, the Camera worked in a gratutous statement from the Peace and Justice Center in its story reporting the arrest in the drunk punch incident. Said the Peas and Juices spokesperson, the punch was "totally wrong and inappropriate. This guy was exercising his First Amendment rights. And violence in any form is not an acceptable response to conflict." Thanks for clearing that up!
On the national scene there's America's high-profile drunk du jour, Mel Gibson, and his anti-semitic tirade during his recent DUI bust. The Camera ran a syndicated editorial cartoon that pictured a Gibson mug shot altered with a Hitleresque mustache and drooping forelock. The interesting thing about this is that apparently no one in the opinion-dispensing chain of command was capable of recognizing the cartoon as the same kind of venomous smear as Gibson's tirade. If it's supposed to be trenchant comment, it's just lazy, since Mad Max's anti-semitism has nothing to do with Aryan delusions of the master race; retro-Catholic Mel is still steamed over the Jews killing Jesus. The cartoonist should have shown Mel in a Pope hat.
Oh, where would Boulderia's anti-Hate warriors be without 'em?
Thank God for drunks!
–Peter Aretin
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THE EMBATTLED PROFESSOR WARD CHURCHILL™ MEMORIAL FOOTNOTE
1Idea: Why not sentence Boulderia's rare and endangered hate criminals to answering the Hate Hotline. Cold sober. That would get some calls coming in. Or is that cruel and unusual?
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JULY 27, 2006
EXCLUSIVE!!
An Eccentric Genius's Underground Fortress!
In a daring clandestine excursion deep into the Texian-held territory of southern Colorado, Counter-Intuitive Agency operatives may have located the elusive, eccentric spiritual leader and folk-architect, Meher Milstein.
A tower cleverly disguises Meher Milstein’s high-tech underground stronghold as one of the many picturesque ruins that punctuate Colorado’s landscape, left by a vanished civilization. Counter-Intuitive Agency analysts believe the tower may eventually house a powerful weapon based upon principles hitherto unknown to science. The device may be part of the mysterious De-Texification Program long-rumored to be operating in SoCol. The surrounding soil has been reduced to a faintly radioactive ash that defies analysis.
The current incarnation of Meher Milstein, as he presently appears, addresses his followers from a secure area of the underground fortress’s upper level.
Powerful force-fields beyond human ken corruscate in the upper-level control area.
Counter-Intutive agents secretly photographed machinery housed in the tower. Although described as the prototype of a “solar meridian observatory,” the device may in fact represent an unimaginably powerful new weapon based on principles not at presently clearly understood intended for purposes too terrible to be grasped. Or something like that.
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JULY 14, 2006
TODAY IN RELATIVELY RECENT BOULDERIAN HISTORY:
In 2004, construction workers hung a homemade banner that read "Megan, I love you. Will you marry me? Te Amo. Miguel," at a construction site at Ninth Street and Canyon Boulevard, according to a Camera story. "There's a certain amount of romanticism about Boulder,"the construction superindendent told the paper. But Boulderians are doomed to toss restlessly on their futons forever, wondering what the answer might have been. Nobody knows who Megan or Miguel were, and whether their chi was matrimonially aligned or not.
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NOTICE
Deadlines wait for no newspaper -man or -woman. And in that daily struggle to put some meat on the paper's advertising bones, to ensure no writers of letters to the editor have impudently abused their hyphens or Capital Letters, in all this hurly-burly, mistakes sometimes occur. Inadvertencies transpire. Spell-checkers betray. Juxtapositions go unnoticed.
And consequently, there, peeping from the page through the inky foliage of the day's chronicle of the Mundane, the Pathetic and the Terrible, for a moment we glimpse the familiar mug of our old pal, the Absurd.
Mondo Boulder intends no discomfiture to the gentlepersons of the Press when we herewith present our latest updating of the ever-popular Clippings Files, true-life snippets ripped from the pages of Boulderia's Embattled Print Media. (And a few from the web, where folks could correct their goofs, but don't seem to bother.)
Shucks, we know full well if there were no Real Journalists out there pounding the Nice, though occasionally Snarky, pavements of The Navel of the Universe, we angry, semi-employed losers, etc., etc., wouldn't have much to do. The whole blustering blogosphere would collapse to a festering point. The whole infernal web would be about What I Had For Dinner Last Night, and bad opinions of worse movies.
We know who's the Tail and who's the Dog!
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JULY 7, 2006
[ HARK! A LETTER ]
Let me just say this about that ...
Dear Mr. Ewegen,
I enjoyed your column in today's Mondo Boulder. I'm glad you're working with that fellow, Peter Aretin. Between the two of you, maybe you can shed some light on the dark corners of Boulderia's oppressed population.
I was fortunate enough to witness part of the naked bike ride [ June 29, below ] and found myself thinking that most of these people were not from Boulder, or at least had moved here only recently. The weighty issue of body types is not the concern here, body hair is. Because in addition to requiring svelte figures, a full body waxing is also a must.
Keep up the good work.
Sincerely,
the Prefect
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Now, hang on. You forget that Peter Aretin may not be Bob Ewegen at all but that he or she may instead be but a willing stooge under whose name Embattled Professor Ward Churchill™ is raising The Art of the Footnote to unprecedented heights of creativity. Soon, very soon, he/I/we plan to include the entire Encyclopedia Britannica in a footnote, an undoubted Guiness-worthy feat. I/me/we will cite the whole EB in reference to a subject which is not mentioned at any place therein.
However haltingly expressed, your concerns have been noted, your pain felt. Expect soon the World Naked Candle Light Vigil to End Global Warming and Full Body Wax.
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Hot Air Rising: Whose Ox Gets Gored?
Do you believe like I believe? Do you believe in magic?
–The Lovin' Spoonful
The debate whether human (or prairie dog) activity is causing global warming continues to hotly swirl in the letters columns of the Daily Camera like a low-grade tropical storm. For this tempest of largely unintended ironic humor, Boulderians can thank the three Gs, Bob Greenlee, Bill Gray and Al Gore. The third one, Gore, is a former Democratic presidential hopeful currently touring with a movie that is more charismatic than he is, called "An Inconvenient Truth." The movie argues that human-caused CO2 is causing catastrophic global warming.
Greenlee, a former Boulderian mayor and councilperson, has taken over Jon Caldara's column and cross as Token Conservative at the Daily Camera. He has cited Gray, retired Colorado State prof, bona fide hurricane expert and global warming apostate, in his columns.1
Mondo Boulder's gotta love hearing a right-winger compare the Left's science to a religious cult, and to hear Boulderians retort with heated defenses of "hard" science. The local appetite for the softest kind of science, a sort of Dairy Queen Science, is traditionally so insatiable it's a pillar of the local economy. Believers call it "alternative" science, hard scientists call it "pseudoscience."
But all the irony isn't why Boulderia's governmental Poobahs are loving this teapot tempest and why they're laughing up the sleeves of their bike jerseys.
Reactions to Greenlee and Gray in the Camera's Letters page have been mostly hilarious. Printing such apostasy has been compared by readers to promoting Holocaust denial and was deplored as "a disservice to the community."
Now, I'm a Native Son, but I was forced to misspend part of my childhood in what we laughingly call the deep South, where fundamentalism and race prejudice reigned. The Boulderian response to greenhouse gas heresies strikes me as not so unlike what you'd have gotten in the wilds of 1950s Arkansas for questioning the divinity of Jesus or coming out in favor of dancing with Negroes in patent leather shoes. The CO2 folks confidently attribute everything from Hurricane Katrina to the melting of the polar ice caps on Mars to the drought in Colorado to forest fires all to global warming and insist that we must act to stop it right now, except for anything that has to do with nuclear power.
Traditionally, before the current hard science craze, you'd expect to hear Boulderians suggesting that global warming be attacked with Feng Shui, maybe by rearranging the continental land masses more harmoniously, or by holding a really freaking big candle light vigil.
Or wishing on a star. They might as well.
Our governmental Poobahs are loving this big public dialog because they have a 9 million dollar2 plan to lower Boulderia's greenhouse gases, and as long as Boulderians are strenuously debating whether human activity is causing global warming or not, they're not brooding about
The Most Inconvenient Truth Of All:
The chance that Boulderia's ambitious greenhouse gas reduction crusade will actually produce a detectible effect on global climate, ever, is actually about the same whether human activity is causing global warming or not.
Special Embattled Professor Ward Churchill™ Footnote Section
1The Camera ran a full page Sunday feature, "The Skeptic," on Gray, but despite the hot-button nature of his opinions, the piece failed to turn up on the Camera's website until Mondo Boulder asked about it. The Camera's Online Editor obligingly posted the piece, where, [ drumroll ] for a special limited time only, Mondo Boulder's reader(s) may find it HERE. Tell 'em Al sent you.
2City council worries, though, that Boulderians will feel insulted at being undertaxed for this and the gentry won't respect them unless they levy a bigger fee. [ NOTE:Really. ]
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NOTICE:
Embattled Professor Ward Churchill™is a registered trademark of Modest Geniuses, Ltd., and may not be vilified, abused, outspoken or gainsaid, nor worshipped with an uncritical, doglike devotion except by express permission of Modest Geniuses, Ltd.
