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Good morning, Washington. We realize that the Morning Roundup is often filled with depressing, disheartening news about what's happening across the D.C. area, whether it's crime, transportation accidents, under-performing schools, you name it. But we keep filling 'er up with the news of the day, however bleak, and you keep coming back for more, so we were surprised this morning to read that Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth thinks the Post's readers want "happier stories, not 'depressing' ones." That quote comes via a Howard Kurtz piece exploring the extent of Weymouth's involvement in spiking a Post Magazine story about a woman whose arms and legs had been amputated. Weymouth may have only tangentially influenced the newsroom decision to kill the piece, but the larger sentiment is what's disconcerting. Freelance writer Matt Mendelsohn spent more than a year with Lindsay Ess, a Richmond resident who had been close to death and was finally receiving four prosthetics. Here's the quote from Mendelsohn: "To label Lindsay's life 'depressing,' especially as if she needs to make some advertiser comfortable, is, well, depressing in its own right."
What is Going On With the King Solomon Lodge? Late on Friday, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty's office sent out a notification to the press that he would announce on Monday morning that he was shuttering King Solomon Grand Lodge in Woodridge, a frequent go-go venue, after a series of violent incidents there. But then on Monday, the mayor's office said that the announcement had been postponed, and today Nikita Stewart digs into why that happened. The official word from Fenty's office is "a scheduling conflict," but Stewart talked to some people connected to the lodge who wonder if the mayor didn't jump the gun, especially considering they say they weren't given any notice of the decision. The news conference has been reportedly rescheduled for Thursday.
Metro Suffers Another Death: The Metro employee who was struck by a train last week died on Monday, the Post reports. It took John Moore, 44, of Arlington County, four days to die after being hit by a train between National Airport and Braddock Road. This makes the fourth WMATA employee death since the June 22 Red Line crash.
Briefly Noted: D.C. school teacher gets 18 months in sex abuse case ... Man stabbed outside Adams Morgan apartment building ... Maryland GOP leader resigns ... New York Ave. briefly closed following police chase, crash ... Native Americans ask SCOTUS if 'Redskins' offends.
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can't read the article because the link is broken, but... shouldn't SCOTUS be asking the Native Americans if "Redskins" offends, and not the other way around?
I think it is more they are asking SCOTUS if the lower courts have the right to cancel the trademark. They had previously said that the Indians waited to long.
This whole PC thing about complaining about "offensive" team names has gone to far. The Takoma Park Tards the Frederick Fudgepackers, the Swampoodle Stutterers, the Bloomingdale Boobmen, and the Gaithersberg Drunk Smelly Homeless Bums were all great team names that some people took out of context.
Why doesn't Tom just do the Morning Roundup? Gothamist has 4 posts by 10am.
Also (and I'm feeling cranky today), there is lots of good stuff to report on if you just look. During my "get in the office news scan" I learned:
*DC considering banning blunts;
*Safety inspections to end; and
*ACORN Brothel Development services in Southeast.
All gold on DCist.
Yeah, the "Morning Roundup" is more like the "Elevensies coffee danish break" for those of us serfs to start the day on Fed time...
Can we get a link to the ACORN video? I want to see if it was Monkey
I'm really tired of you guys complaining every freakin' day about what time the morning roundup posts. It's before noon, OK? Do some work or something and leave poor Sommer alone.
agreed, dank. i mean, if people want more for their money, maybe they can start ponying up some cash. i'm sure sommer wouldn't complain!
Cronyism, blog-style. Does DCist count the hits it gets before the roundup and market those stats to advertisers?
So. Quadruple amputees, go-go violence, Metro suicides, sex abuse cases, stabbings, resignations, police crashes, and antequated racist epithets? If that's the best you can do for Morning Roundup, please go back to delaying it until 11:30am, please.
Anyway, with the Tea Party protestors safely esconced in their trailer parks and residents eagerly awaiting the arrival of the IMF/World Bank protestors with cartons of air fresheners, I feel this is as good a time as any to make a calm, measured examination of the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the two-party system and ask the question that V.I. Lenin asked over a hundred years ago: "What is to be done?"
Let me be so bold as to predict your first question: but where's the poop jokes? I ask a minute of your indulgence. What benefits a political movement to "make its voices heard" if that voice falls upon deaf ears, or minds so intellectual undernourished that it stares slackjawed in a feeble attempt to grasp whatever tedious political point that's trying to be made? I ask only because of the inevitable ad homenem attacks that protesters engender in this town. Whatever vague message they want to trasmit is all but lost amid the sound and fury of street theater and marionette puppets and the juvenile antics of the so-called anarchists. "Revolution is the opiate of the intellectuals" a wise man wrote on the side of a toilet, which, in lieu of what passes for current political discourse, I would amend to "...bong hit of the pseudointellectuals."
More's the pity that the intellectual giants behind these two (bowel) movements could not meet on the field of battle to exchange withering critiques, witty bon mots, and hilarious japes about the merits of trade unionism versus laissez-faire capitalism! Instead, we're treated to a sort of vague anti-establismentism couched in terms of either patriotism-cum-jingoism or the tired, shopworn arguments that all property is theft. All of which serves to only marginalize whatever legitimate arguments either side could make about the expansion of government power and the lack of transparency among international financial institutions that borders on total opacity.
Considering the lack of a positive agenda that the right advances in lieu of the healthcare "debate," it ill behooves me to make such broad critiques without positing some alternative scenario. What follows is my Five Year Plan for Economic Justice:
1. Cut defense spending in half. Why should Americans kill Iraqis when Iraqis can do this for themselves? Put the National Guard to work rebuilding the levees and patrolling the streets of DC. The only way to meet the threat of wheelchair-bound double-amputees with shotguns is with Marine Corps snipers and heavy artillery.
2. Cut the marginal tax rate to Reagan-era levels. Twenty-nine years of creeping socialism and corporate welfare have resulted in a tanked economy, morbid obesity, and golden parachutes for corporate necrophiles. The only golden thing Bear Stearns execs should be getting is showers.
3. Cease all highway construction and redirect funds towards mass transit. If induced demand has taught us anything, it's that if you build a world-class Japanese Bullet Train, people will use it. This will spur the infill expansion of walkable communities to keep Fatty McFatfat from becoming Corpsy McDeadDead.
4. Annex Mexico, declare it the 51st State, and grant statehood to the District. This effectively eliminates 80% of the illegal immigration problem as well as that of having one extra star sticking out of the American flag. You also will finally start to get some decent Oaxacan cuisine in this dump.
5. Destroy all monsters. This should be self evident.
I know these views aren't popular, but I for one have never courted popularity. When their enemies were at the gates, the Romans suspended democracy and appointed one man to defend it. You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villian.
i don't know why i even bother commenting, when monkey can just come along and produce this kind of genius prose. we're all a band of amateurs in comparison.
blah blah blah finally start to get some decent Oaxacan cuisine
Okay, I'm in.
Seriously, do you know how hard it is to find not just real Mexican, but real southern Mexican, in this burg? And don't get me started on my search for remotely authentic cochinita pibil. The least-worst option I've found so far was at Rosa Mexicano. Rosa-freaking-Mexicano, people!
You're living in a fool's paradise. You'll no more likely find authentic southern Mexican cuisine in DC any more than you'll find a real NY slice anywhere near as good as Famous Original Ray's (Not Affiliated with Original Famous Ray's). Your best bet is to just relax, sit back, and wait until the definition of "TexMex" broadens to include Quebec. Then look out for the wave of "Nuevo Poutine" brasseries, where your deepfried yucca is drowned in queso fresco curd and brown gravy.
that actually sounds pretty good...
It does, at that. Anyone wanna come on board as a partner in opening a new Canexican brasserie?
I bow before the master
Monkey for dictator. Seriously. One question on the monster destroying, does this include baby-eating "moral" politicians? Please say yes. Viva La Revolucion!
Okay, that's 30 seconds of my life I will never get back.
Sounds like Ron White's plan. We buy Mexico and sell it to a country that is flush with cash for a down payment, but you know they ain't gonna be able to make the monthlies...like Peru. Then we foreclose, use the money to buy up the smaller Central American countries all the way down to Panama. Border patrol becomes obsolete because instead of guarding the whole stretch from San Diego to Corpus Christi, we just have to worry about the Panama Canal. I think we can handle it. Immigration and undocumented worker problems solved in one fell swoop. That, and legalize weed. Can we make this happen?? YES WE CAN!!!
well, despite the fact that this is missing a shriek at the end and any mention of the national guard deploying flaming poop trebuchets (which we all know was the reason l'enfant designed the broad diagonal avenues through the city), i think this is something i can get behind.
so, who's going to be the robespierre figure in this political drama?
W/R/T point #5:
"Destroy all monsters. This should be self evident."
I submit that this is what IMF/World Bank protesters must be attempting with their marionettes. They certainly don't have a chance at 1–3 & I doubt #4 ever entered into their collective, unwashed, trustafarian-be-dredlocked heads.
I motion that the original teenage mutant ninja turtle be exempt.
I motion that the original teenage mutant ninja turtle be exempt.
I motion that the original teenage mutant ninja turtle be exempt.
I motion that the original teenage mutant ninja turtle be exempt.
Speaking of Ninja Turtles, I know this is from Baltimore, but this kid is awesome.
bad link there, bubbalicious. care to try again?
With respect to Point 3, which is the greater need: enhancing mass transit or curtailing the wave of undocumented Scottish immigrants that threatens our culture? Mr. McFatFat and Mr. McDeadDead are welcome in this country, but only if they learn to speak our language, pay our taxes and embrace our culture, and they've shown no willingness to do so. The very institutions of motherhood, apple pie and baseball are at stake here. Without swift and decisive action, we'll all be slaves to those handsome shepherding bagpipers within a decade. Frankly, the only solution is to militarize our border with Scotland.
Amerikee for Amerikuns, bejabers!
I’ve had it up to here with your anti-monster bias. Thanks to people like you, Fruit Brute and Fruity Yummy Mummy only exist in memory. Both Boo Berry and Franken Berry are essentially endangered.. found only in October on the shelves of supermarkets that you won’t even admit to yourself that you shop at.
A society without berry and fruit monster- themed cereals is a castle without walls – if our future isn’t part of this complete breakfast then I don’t know what is.
Spoken like a true Bride of Count Chocula. I'd expect this sort of monster apologism from a Qisp dupe, but I thought more highly of you. What's next in this perverted nexus of monster fetishism and corporate necrophilia? Wacky Packages fifth columnism? S'blood, do yo think I am easier to played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me!
Score to Monkey, with an assist from th' bard.
gah, too many broken links today. i can't click through, boondoggle.
gah, too many broken links today. i can't click through, boondoggle.
gah, too many broken links today. i can't click through, boondoggle.
Monkey is the only thing I read DCist for. He really should get a cut of -ist empire revenue.
I don't know what's more depressing, the fact that you think this stuff is the only thing worth reading here, or that you actually think Gothamist turns a profit. I'd throw myself in front of a Metro train except there's already a line of employees waiting.
I agree with you on that profit point. There is only so much money one can make off of soccer and softcore porn. Now hardcore porn, that's an entirely different ballgame.
I was with you until #5.
Monsters are good for business.
It took John Moore, 44, of Arlington County, four days to die after being hit by a train...
I'm sorry, did that conflict with your schedule?
Agreed, gotta be a better way of saying that.
I read it differently...like he was such a tough SOB that it took him four days to die after being hit by an effing train. He hung in there like a champ, but unfortunately, he lost the fight. Metro track workers really need to be paid more for these occupational hazards. There's gotta be a better way.
Yeah, I suppose it could be read either way. Agreed about the higher pay for these jobs, or how about higher safety standards? Four employee deaths since June?? That's really unacceptable.
I'm in favor of both. And they should be completely and totally funded by Dan Snyder. It would be a much better use of his money than throwing cash at the wrong side of the field...Dan, the potentially-offensive-Redskins need an offensive line. Please comply, or make Metro better. Alternatively, sell the team. I have $20...let's discuss terms.
Are you suggesting that they scout Metro employees for offensive line replacements?
Now, that's thinking outside the box! If they're half as tough as the late Mr. Moore, they'll be a damn sight better than the stiffs the Skins are trotting out there right now.
Do you know what story I would find happy and upbeat and not depressing?
Katherine Weymouth getting fired before she totally drives the Post into the ground.
This is an amazing and long article about the young woman in question as depressing by the Post. Her story is powerful. I am offended that the Post would not run the story. It is a great testament to perseverance and a great example for all of us on how to embrace life even if you are handed a huge basket of lemons.
http://www.sportsshooter.com/news/2266
Its a nice story, but to be honest I think WaPo has too many of these features. (excepting Gene Weingarten's Pulitzer-worthy story on people who left babies in cars--that was amazing).
I want to see more actual local news. Of course, it is easier to have one reporter write a feature on the Eastern Shore crabbers than it is to have 3 reporters file actual news items.
Yeah, but this was a piece that was targeted for the sunday magazine, which is specifically for features (vs. local news.) And Weingarten won't be doing any more pieces like the baby one (or the Joshua Bell playing in the Metro), as he took the buyout. It sucks and blows.
Regarding "the Lessons of Lindsay"
WaPo is no place for world class reporting, such as this piece, anyway. Lindsy's story a inspirational tale, unlike today's story "The Same Old Jay, Only Older".
So that explains the happy face on the cover of the WaPo when Iraq was invaded...
Let's see if this works.
wow. don't mess with hopkins students.