June 21, 2007
Loose Lips Loses One More
Since 1983, Loose Lips, the City Paper's weekly local politics column, has been the place to get quirky news and commentary on the District's political figures. But today, James Jones, Loose Lips columnist for the last two years, bids farewell to the paper.
Jones came to the City Paper after a stint at WAMU, and his first column was published on March 11, 2005. According to the folks at the City Paper, Jones has taken a position at the D.C. Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, and a replacement will be named in the coming weeks.
Given Jones' apparent betrayal of the guild, he would be the first of the column's writers to move out of journalism since creator Ken Cummins quit in 1999. Erik Wemple, who took the reigns after Cummins, went on to become a Senior Editor at the paper and eventually Editor in Chief, though he was almost lost to the Village Voice last year. His replacement, Jonetta Rose Barras, is currently a columnist for the Examiner and co-hosts the D.C. Politics Hour with Kojo Nnamdi on WAMU. Her sucessor, Elissa Silverman, is currently following local politics for the Post.
We've always enjoyed Jones' writing, and the world of local politics will surely miss him. But who will take his place? Could the City Paper try to steal Mark Plotkin and his decades worth of political experience and commentary away from WTOP? Or might they opt for Dorothy Brizill, finally giving her the official soap-box she's been seeking for so long? Maybe NBC 4's Tom Sherwood? Or Capital Community News' Gabrial Pacyniak? Maybe someone from the inside? Or might they pull a Fenty and make a midnight announcement that they're bringing in outside talent from New York?
We remain in suspense.
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Plotkin? Sherwood? Are you KIDDING me? Why would folks with a good reputation stain it by associating themselves with the Chity Paper? I mean, this _is_ a job that was once held by Eric Wemple. Enough said.
The bottom line? It doesn't matter. Just like the Orioles have no hope while Angelos is around, the City Paper will continue to plummet until Cherkis and Wemple are history.
Plotkin and Sherwood's gigs are too good and high-profile already. Brizill is a better bet. Or Gary Imhoff, if they thought he'd ever talk about any other damn thing besides the school takeover.
Loose Lips always has been good, and so is Tim Carman, but the rest of the CP has gone to shit under Wemple. You can expect the following in every issue:
1.) Some sort of hit piece based on one of Wemple's many grudges. This isn't journalism. This is childish score-settling.
2.) Reviews that go on and on and on and on, yet never deliver an actual opinion. We get it! You can put a sentence together. Now tell us if you actually liked or disliked the fucking record!
3.) Hooker ads.
Really, that's it. The Onion is better.
C'mon, City Paper reviews are always a laff riot. You can almost see the reviewer's tiny brain working on yet another way to recycle the same old hipper-than-thou quippage. And you usually have to wade through 3 columns of this shite before they even mention the goddamned movie.
It's pretty bad when the ads for Goo Guzzling Sluts and Backdoor Brazil Bitches 27 are more entertaining than your editor-generated nontroversies ("City parks are running red with the blood of dog walkers, angry parents, and screaming infants!"). Eff that noise.
And while we're on the subject, I must protest in the strongest terms that Backdoor Brazil Bitches 27 is a shameless ripoff of Backdoor Brazil Bitches 25, down to the latter's use of the oiled limbo pole in scene 27.
I've always seen CP as more independent and muckraking than grudge-oriented. I enjoy particularly enjoy Show and Tell, District Line and, often, Young and Hungry.
CP cover stories are often good, too, though no story or format will suit everyone. The latest cover hit for CP was the one on bees and "CCS". It ran just last week, and went way beyond what's available in the bigger press outlets.
From what I can see, the critics that feel the need to call out Wemple by name are the one's with the grudges. It just seems so... personal... to them.
Martin you are a good writer and always up with local issues, how about you, seriously?
I will miss James Jones LL column, it often the only thing worth reading in the CP. JJ often called thing what they are, such as when he described my Ward 1 Councilmember as a SUCK-UP which is soooo true.
I'm not going to jump on the CP bashing bandwagon; but it does seem like their senior writer and editor, at least occasionally, make sport of ruthlessly savaging some unlikely target. Like Kenny Hawkins (search for author "hsu" in the June 6, 2006 issue) here: secure.washingtoncitypaper.com/archive/index.html to see what I'm talking about.
Even so, despite the things I don't like about the CP there are more than a couple of things to like. Young & Hungry has long been a favorite column of mine and Cheap Seats rules; on top of that, the CP is a handy way to grab a portable copy of the Straight Dope and Savage Love, movie & concert listings, etc.
But more than just being a convenient source of information about nightlife, the CP does do stories that would never see the light of day at the Post or Times. Do I think the CP's editorial stance and tone is bit self-important and overwrought at times? Sure, but the information in the CP provides another data point to consider when forming opinions.
Oh yeah, not to tempt the wrath of Wemple of anything; but it also seems like the CP may trolling DCist for story ideas. Does this week's City Paper cover story (www.washingtoncitypaper.com/display.php?id=1859) look at all familiar? www.dcist.com/2007/03/29/blogging_street.php
Um, catcalling doesnt exactly fit the description of an "exclusive scoop". Who cares who wrote about it first.
If you read both articles, CP's is clearly more interesting to read than DCist's dry annoyingly "serious" posting.
The City Paper's catcalling article is F'ed up. The f'ing writer catcalls women in the article! Why is a paper in a lefty city publishing this garbage? The whole "is it bad or is it good" tone of the article was complete nonsense. Is it good to yell anything at any stranger? That peice was just legitmizing completely socially unaceptable behavior. Sure at the end it's like, oh it's not good, but by debating it they give it more legitamacy then it deserves.
I read City Paper only for the Savage Love column.
The rest seems to be written by pissy 18 year olds who have zero life experience, yet feel the need to constantly tell the rest of us just how evil we are for our apparent constant oppression of the true 'artists' that apparently deserve to sit on their tight little overeducated underexperienced asses in massive free apartments in trendy neighborhoods, while the rest of us work to support them.
But their idiotically outdated ideas of how cities work is unintentionally funny. Their constant 1960s liberal mantra about how The Man is ruining the paradise that is DC and how if we'd all just fund more midnight basketball then all the hell that has festered in DC for decades would simply disappear is funny, then irritating, then sad.