Peoria Pundit

During my WEEK interview Tuesday, Mike Dimmick
mentioned that there’s plenty of unreliable sources of information on
the Web.

Supposedly, because I have training and experience as a journalist, my
site is more responsible than many others. Well, whatever.

Still, the comment got me thinking about those times I failed to be
responsible.

I recall early in my blogging career, I repeated information I pulled
from a Usenet post about how Jane Fonda passed along to the North
Vietnamese a note that was passed to her by a prisoner at the notorious
“Hanoi Hilton.” While there are many reasons for vets to hate “Hanoi
Jane,” that tale is untrue.

Longtime readers know I occasionally make errors. I’d like to think I
don’t many many of them — I simply don’t do original reporting anymore,
so there are fewer opportunities to make fact errors — and that those I
do make are cheerfully corrected.

But what I regret the most are errors not in fact, but errors in /tone/.

I’ve come to regret intemperate remarks about reporters at the /Journal
Star/. I try to critique the work, not the workers, but sometimes my
zeal gets the better of me. And for that, I apologize.

But I’m not going to apologize about complaining about the quality of
the news coverage Peoria gets.

Journos — who will think nothing of writing bad stuff about anybody –
are notoriously thin-skinned about what is written and said about them.
I get remarkably little feedback from Peoria media workers. I wish that
would change.

You know the phrase: “You only hurt the one’s you love”? Well, I love
Peoria and I grew up reading the JS and watching these local stations. I
have an emotional connection, and I feel no shame in hectoring them to
live up to higher standards.

Peoria is at a crossroads. Will the powers that be give up, and let
Peoria sink into the urban decay that destroyed East St. Louis? Will the
media retreat into a regional business model and start reporting about
those wacky drug-using, gun-shooting Peorians from the safety of the ‘burbs?

I’ll bruise a few egos to keep that from happening.

Actually, I didn’t see the actual Live at 5 interview
with Jerry Kohn, the
Libertarian Party candidate for the U.S. Senate. I do, however, have
access to the article on the East Peoria-based station’s Web site.

I’ll touch on the highlights: There’s *gasp* someone on the he ballot
who’s not a Republican or a Democrat. Again, a news article on a
Libertarian Party candidate focuses how odd it is that there’s a third
party. Kohn is asked the obligatory question about Jack Ryan and his
decision to quit the race after embarrassing public-but-sealed court
documents were ordered released.

/”It has nothing to do with Jack Ryan. I think our country is at a
crossroads right now, both economically and politically and we need
to make some changes fast,” said Kohn./

My major fault with the article is that it gives very little idea what
the Libertarian Party platform is.

/Kohn says the U.S. should pull out of Iraq immediately. He also
believes in letting laissez-faire prevail./

That’s it.

Jeff Trigg
got in a comment about how “interest” in the LP is growing, which is a
statement that cannot be verified. What can be verified is his complaint
that the state of Illinois doesn’t treat the Libertarian Party as
legitimate.

I’m a lower-case “L” Libertarian, and I suppose I should be thankful for
any coverage of a candidate who agrees with about 95 percent of what I
believe (I simply cannot understand how the LP believes the United
States isn’t simply defending itself by removing Iraq from the list of
terrorist supporting nations, but that’s another post).

But I would like to see one story … /one/ stinking article … that
simply covers the LP as if they aren’t a novelty act.

WHOI: Peoria Police Can Live Anywhere They Want

Peoria police officers win the latest round in a 3-year residency battle.

The city council did not get the necessary seven votes Tuesday night
to force the police department to go to court for the right to live
outside of Peoria.

That means an independent arbitrator’s ruling that officers don’t have to live within city limits stands.

Most of the council members who voted against the police department
are upset, saying this opens the door for all other city employees
to leave town.

Well, congratulations, fellas. Peoria Police officers have won the right to not have to live next door the the lowlifes they arrest and ticket.

They are now free to move to Dunlap, Germantown Hill, Creve Coeur and other communities that require their police officers to live amongst the people they police.

And what is missing from this article? The votes. I want to know exactly which members of the city council think Peorians should be police by people who think they are too good to live next door or the same block.

Why is this important. This is an extreme example, but I’ll use it anyway. During the Tiananmen Square Uprising, ordinary Chinese citizens were on the verge of throwing over their Communist government. The hard-liners would have none of it. They ordered troops from outside Beijing into the Square to suppress the demonstrations. About 7,000 people died, as did the quest for real democracy and freedom in China.

Now, Peorians will be policed by people who live outside Peoria. The cops who will decide who to arrest and what crimes to fight will be doing so only because it’s their job. They won’t be doing it because they want to make a better place in which their children can live.

Now, they will be simply punching a time clock.

Acidman links
to this
and wonders about the future of political
discourse. I’m not wondering, cause I remember the bile and hatred
directed at Clinton during his entire eight years in office. There was
precious little official GOP condemnation of Jerry Falwell’s Vince
Foster murder conspiracy videos.

Yes, Clinton was a lying creep.

And the GOP and its agents bent over backwards to give the weasel all
the ammunition he needed to set himself up as a martyr and victim of the
Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.

If we keep this nonsense up, we’re going to end up like some banana
republic where the legislators duke it out in the aisles and every time
there’s an election, the defeated candidate has to flee the country.

I await the inevitable comments stating that while I have a point, but
it really is the /other guys/ who are worse.

OK, so here’s this guy who is accused of being an al-Qaida sleeper
agent. He’s been held as an enemy combatant and denied the right to see
his attorney for more than one year. Thanks to a U.S. Supreme Court
decision, he must now be allowed access to the courts to challenge his
detention.

So what’s the headline in the /Journal Star/? Court decision may help
ex-BU student .

I read that, and I thought some student had sued Bradley University over
his grades or something like that.

Because I long ago stopped thinking about Ali Saleh Kahlah as a former
BU student.

But the /Journal Star/ is so hell bent on localizing everything, they
have to approach this story in terms of his Bradley University
connection. That’s the Peoria angle.

What this article doesn’t specifically state is whether Ali Saleh Kahlah
is a U.S. citizen or not. It implies he is.

According to the Drudge Report
, anyway:

Official Washington and the entire press corps will be rocked when
Hillary Rodham Clinton is picked as Kerry’s VP and a massive love
fest will begin!

So predicts a top Washington insider, who spoke to the DRUDGE REPORT
on condition he not be named.

“All the signs point in her direction,” said the insider, one of the
most influential and well-placed in the nation’s capital. “It is the
solution to every Kerry problem.”

“There are three issues that this campaign will be decided on –
national security, health care, and the economy, not necessarily in
that order.”

“Kerry believes that no one is better on national security than he
is, he served in Vietnam after all, so he has that covered and the
suggestion that he needs to strengthen the ticket with someone who
has national security credentials is dismissed as foolish.”

I don’t buy it. From the tone of the commentary, this “top Washington
insider” is member of the GOP.

I the guy actually agitating for Sen. Clinton to get the nod. Perhaps,
although for the life of me I cannot understand why so many Republicans
are itching to run against her.

Lissen up folks: The Clintons won two races against you guys. There’s no
reason to think having this person on the ticket won’t actually help the
the Kerry ticket. GOPers have an irrational — almost pathological –
fixation on the Clintons that goes beyond their fitness for office. It’s
every bit as sick and twisted as the far left’s hatred of George W. Bush.

There is a huge mushy middle ground of voters who may not think the sun
shined out of Bill and Hillary’s butts, but they remember the Fat Times
that (coincidentally) accompanied his two terms.

Funny thing is, thanks to the start of the recovery, Kerry would be the
beneficiary if he happens to win.

? Tears of joy

/Many of the 500 or so people gathered at the Illinois Army National
Guard base near the Greater Peoria Regional Airport for the unit’s
welcome home shared that sentiment. The buses carrying the soldiers
from their demobilization point in Indiana home to Peoria were about
an hour late, but no one in the crowd seemed to mind.

There was an almost carnival-like atmosphere in the large helicopter
hanger. On one side, members of the family support group sold
T-shirts, buttons and magnets with the unit’s logo, a cartoonish
helicopter flying over Downtown Peoria. On the other side, people
were chatting with friends. Some children were on the ground
coloring signs.

All were eager to have the “River City Hookers,” as F Company is
known, home at last.

The unit and their CH-47D Chinook cargo helicopters left for Iraq in
February 2003 within a week of getting orders to mobilize for war.
Troops spent two months training at Fort Campbell before arriving in
the Iraqi theater. Since then, the unit has had its tour of duty
extended twice, most recently in April.

In November, Iraqi insurgents shot down a Chinook carrying troops.
Sixteen soldiers died, including three from the 106th: 1st Lt. Brian
Slavenas, 30, of Urbana, Chief Warrant Officer Bruce Smith, 41, of
West Liberty, Iowa, and Sgt. Paul Fisher, 39, of Marion, Iowa.

A memorial in their honor sat next to the stage where *U.S. Sen.
Dick Durbin [a Democrat], U.S. Rep. Ray LaHood, R-Peoria*, and
others from the state National Guard heaped praise upon the 106th,
saying soldiers did their job and did it well./

There is some talk in the article about the poor job
the Pentagon and
Congress did providing adequate missile defense for these folks’ Chinook
helicopters. We’ll see how Durbin votes on future military defense spending.

These guys really took it on the chin in Iraq.

I’m glad they are back and safe.

The good folks from WEEK are going to come over to my house to interview
me about the blogging craze. I’m going to have them interview me on my
deck sipping iced tea as I blog on my nifty new laptop.

So what do I discover on my email this week? Server maintenance. It
starts exactly 30 minutes before the guys are going to be here.

I believe the technical term for this situation is “ARRRG!”

Honestly though, the server should be back up by then.

If not, then …. ARRRG!

… finding a serial number for Adobe Photoshop 5 LE.

Look, I have the software LEGALLY, but I simply cannot find the S/N.

I need it for the laptop.

Who said it?

“I’ve never been to Peoria, but I’d stake my reputation that there is systematic racism in Peoria’s school system and that its been there throughout the history of Peoria’s schools.

“I’d bet Peoria’s schools are segregated … I’d guess the school board has been complacent in the systematic racism there. Those school board members who have should be charged with a crime, go to trial and go to prison for it.”

These are the words of Halford Fairchild, associate professor of psychology and black studies at Pitzer College. He was quoted by reporter DeWayne Bartels in this week’s Peoria Times-Observer. No link is available.

Bartels’ article begins with a snippet of a confrontation between Peoria School Board member Aaron Schock and an audience member (a “Campaign of Shame” participant) at a recent board meeting. The woman accused Schock of saying something he didn’t say (and the tape backed him up), and then denying she said it. It’s one of several incidents where people who support Superintendent Kay Royster accused board members of saying things that they didn’t say.

(And why isn’t Royster taking the microphone and telling these people to stop disrupting board meetings in her name? Why isn’t she telling these speakers to stop making up facts about her bosses, the people with whom she should be seeking to worth with, not against. Her silence is tacit approval. It’s as if she is angling to stage a takeover of the board.)

Fairchild was one of two “experts” Bartels interviewed on the effectiveness of these types of confrontations. Fairchild was the looney one.

Bartels is the only reporter doing this sort of reporting. He’s actually fact-checking what these people are saying. The Journal Star won’t pull the trigger and tell readers that the accusations are wrong, as if reporting facts that people deny are facts is somehow taking sides.

Too bad his stuff isn’t on the Web. If Times-Newspapers would simply use a blogging-based system, each reporter could easily get their articles on the Internet with a couple of keystrokes.