Peoria Pundit

On Star Trek, the Starship Enterprise cruised the galaxy defending the United Federation of Planets. Is this the first step to making that future a reality?

The Personal Spaceflight Federation, whose establishment was announced Tuesday, brings together a who’s who of space entrepreneurs, including SpaceShipOne designer Burt Rutan, whose team won the $10 million X Prize last October, and video-game genius John Carmack, whose Armadillo Aerospace team was among the leading contenders for the prize.

The industry group plans to work with federal regulators to help draw up the “rules of the road” for suborbital space tourism, following up on last year’s landmark law on private-sector spaceflight, said Gregg Maryniak, who serves as the federation’s chief spokesman as well as executive director of the X Prize Foundation.

Actually, an association of private businesses designed to bring commerce to space seems like something one would find in a Robert Heinlein novel that anything created by Gene Roddenberry, who couldn’t even bear the though of money being used in the future.

Since our government seems more interested in subsidizing tobacco farmers and honey production than in extending humanity’s presence to the Moon, Mars and the outer planets, it’s up to private enterprise to secure humanity’s survival by placing all our eggs in more than one basket — the Earth.

The Journal Star’s editorial board interviewed Alma Brown, a City of Peoria official running for a spot on School District 150 Board of Education:

Brown said her biggest concern is the district’s budget, which is $14 million in the red this year. She said every expenditure needs to be challenged, and the budget should be picked apart line item by line item. She also suggested that the district share the city’s grant writer so it can find additional funding sources.

Really, Ms. Brown? Not safety? Not after two separate students-with-guns cases within a week of each other? Not white flight to the suburbs? Not low test scores?

Oddly enough, there is nothing in this article to indicate that either Brown or the editorial board even brought up the subject of kids with guns. Or white flight. Or test scores.

I was surprised for about a microsecond, then I remembered this was the editorial board who was doing the interviewing, these are the brainiacs who argue in favor of closing fire stations as they argue for more funding for flowers.

The Chicago Tribune’s Charlie Madigan tells politicians and Big Media pundits to stop whining about blogs:

It all reminds me of a mix of what I have read about genuinely robust periods in American journalism, the era of the pamphleteers back before everything became so formal, the “yellow kids” era, when the media barons of the 19th and early 20th Centuries were carving up the pie, and maybe the birth of TV, when no one quite knew what to put on the screen.

The difference is that, in those eras, it took decades before media became self-referential enough to develop ethics and standards and journalism schools and thoughtful journals that would deconstruct every aspect of this messy business. Because the medium of blogging is speed-of-light stuff, we have become self-referential and obsessive about what happens well ahead of the historical curve.

Also, it’s so easy an idiot could do it.

Witness the fact that many are!

You don’t know how hard it was for my to resist the urge to link the phrase “an idiot could do it” to a certain blogger I know. I leave it to my long-time readers to guess who.

Heh.

Anyway, Madigan expresses a thought I’ve had many times. Eventually bloggers who want to be taken seriously will have to develop a set of ethics and standard rules. There’s nothing that’s going to keep people with an axe to grind and a chip on their shoulder from signing up for a free blogger account. The trick for them will increasingly be getting heard past the noise. The last time I checked, there were more than 8 million blogs. There are blogs that get hundreds of thousands of hits a day, if not more.

And frankly, I don’t want blogging to grow up too much. The value of blogs is their raw, uncensored, unedited nature. If blogs become newspapers on computers, we’ve accomplished nothing except put a lot of printing press workers out of work.

And just once, I’d like to see some attention given to the effect microbloggers are having on the communities in which they work. A small blog in a small community can have a tremendous impact.

The difference between bloggers and the “yellow kids” is that bloggers are the guys next door (just ask my neighbors) and that the yellow kids were old, rich white dudes who could afford to buy a printing press. You don’t even need to own a computer to blog; you can do it from a public access computer down at the public library. I’ve blogged from a computer in a hospital waiting room.

Jennifer Davis reports on 3rd district candidate Bob Manning’s annoyance with the Peoria Area Chamber of Commerce’s endorsement of his opponent:

“Here I am, the only one in my race with 18 years business experience, and they pick a government attorney who works in Springfield. Is this really the Chamber of Commerce or some other political arm? It really puts their credibility in question.”

Instead of Manning, who has a master’s degree in business administration and works as a financial consultant, the chamber PAC endorsed 3rd District incumbent Gale Thetford and gave her $3,000. Thetford, general counsel for the Illinois Department on Aging, even voted for a half-cent sales tax increase in 2001 – the only thing the chamber has strongly lobbied against in recent memory.

Worse, Manning says he’s heard from “a number of different sources” that he was the actual preferred pick of the chamber’s nominating committee.

Who has the Chamber endorsed and given money to? Clyde Gully, Marcella Teplitz, Patrick Nichting and Dave Ransburg.

I too am shocked. How the heck did Nichting, a member of the so-called Four Horsemen, get on that list?

Anyway, Davis’s entire Word on the STreet column is a good read this week.

UPDATE: I thought that Manning story reminded me of something:

Manning said he has been advised to wait to run for an at-large seat,
and implied that there are those in Peoria Area Chamber of Commerce who would prefer he not run against Thetford, who he pointed out it an attorney working for the state government, in other words: A government bureaucrat.

“I’d like to see them explain their way out of that,” he said with a
chuckle.

Yahoo News has a story about Fidel Castro’s best friend.

I’ll be completely honest with you. The only reason I’m linking to this story is this Not Safe For Work photo:
Read more »

Let’s say there was a blog. Now, this theoretical blog focuses on local news and events. The guy who runs it has a passing familiarity with the processes of journalism and is formally trained in the field.

He’s a big proponent of blogging as new method of practicing journalism. This theoretical blogger would love make it a vocation instead of an avocation. He imagines having the time and resources to blog full-time and still be able to pay for health insurance and make the rent.

But, alas, he also knows that no local print or broadcast media company is going to hire him to do it. He knows because he been asking around and dropping hints for more than a year. Theoretically, that is.

Where could this would-be professional, full-time micro-blogger go to apply for a grant to see if such a set-up might work?

Matt Hale is in the federal sneezer, so he isn’t hanging out in his daddy’s East Peoria basement anymore. But Rich Miller is reporting that one or more of his followers — or perhaps just run-of-the-mill knuckledraggers who share his point of view — are targeting Mexicans and other minorities up in Joliet.

Feh.

Peoria is home to a growing Mexican population. I hope this doesn’t sound too patronizing, but I’m glad. I find these folks to be hard working family people, exactly the kind you want to help to stabilize otherwise deteriorating neighborhoods.

Peoria Pundit “cub blogger” Willy Nilly is wondering why regular school beat reporter Elaine Hopkins didn’t write the recent article about the gun incident at Greeley School:

[R]umors are circulating that she has been pulled from the beat beacuse President Aaron Schock wasn’t happy with the coverage the board was getting. If Aaron wants better coverage, maybe he should return from his part time job in Springfield when there are shootings in Peoria Schools. Apparently PJS Ed Board Member Shelly Epstien is married to a Dist 150 Teacher. Did Schock threaten to put pressure on Shelly’s wife if Hopkins wasn’t moved? Stranger things have happened.

I bow in admiration to Elaine Hopkins. She was a class act two decades ago when I was a lowly intern at the Journal Star. I admire her reporting. But, I’ve gotta say that I really doubt that she got pulled from any beat because of pressure from Schock. And I doubt that a politician would threaten the spouse of a major editor of a daily newspaper in such a crass fashion. The more likely excuse is that she was on vacation, taking a few days off or working on an other assignment when the Greeley story broke.

Steve Tarter takes a look at what Peoria-area radio stations follow what format. He makes this observation:

Although there’s only one talk station in this market (WMBD), talk is an extremely popular format around the country. Unfortunately, due to consolidation and other right-wing tendencies, all the talking is generally done by one person (and his first name rhymes with mush).

This is BS. Rush is on the station for three hours a day. Sean Hannity is on the air for two hours a day. Then there’s three hours each of Michael Savage and Jim Bohannon (not a right-winger, by any stretch). There’s a smattering of other syndicated programing. At night, they have the Coast-to-Coast program, which appeals to black-helicopter conspiracy theorists.

In the morning, there’s four hours of Dan Diorio and in the afternoon, they have two hours of Jamie Markley and Phil Luciano. None of these guys are right-wingers and these are local programs. Add the station’s news programs, and no commercial station in Peoria has as much local programming as WMBD. Smart radio listeners depend on the station, which is the place to go for breaking news coverage, like when that knucklehead fired a gun at Woodruff High School.

The facts don’t support Tarter’s snarky dismissal of the station as all-Rush, all-the-time.

… the Journal Star has printed what is apparently it’s very first article the fact.

Now, this article isn’t on the front page, or course. It’s a Gary Panetta column, on the inside Arts section. The headline above the article doesn’t mention the the words “Nazi” or “Peoria Civic Center,” just something bland about art and politics. And it isn’t until the eighth sentence until the subject is actually broached.

In Journalism 101, that’s called that burying the lede.

The result is that while the Journal Star can now finally say it’s addressed the whole issue of the Peoria Civic Center designer being a Nazi sympathizer issue, it did so in a way that probably left most readers still completely unaware of the fact. Nice trick. It’s just a coincidence, of course, that this helps the paper’s editorial board argue in favor of preserving Johnson’s designs when people are not be aware he was Nazi sympathizer.

The article is fairly offensive, too. Panetta mentions the irony of the fact that avant guard artists like architect Philip Johnson were among people who suffered under Hitler, although Leni Riefenstahl did just fine under Hitler. But that’s a minor point to the article, which is mostly devoted to excusing and apologizing for Johnson’s efforts on behalf of Der Fuhrer.

After all, Panetta asks, weren’t the 1930s a time when art was all about elitism? Funny, my understanding of the 1930s art scene was that it tended to express sympathy with the common man. Except in Germany, where art was all about glorifying Hitler and in Russia where art was about glorifying the State and the Party.

And besides, Panetta writes, the Nazis were all dramatic and expressive with the torchlight rallies and parades, which is bound to attract artists like Johnson. So, Panetta says, you can understand Johnson being attracted to Hitler, book burnings aside

Panetta doesn’t address the fact that during the 1930s, Hitler was quite open about his hatred of Jews and the superiority of the German race, and that he was in the process of sending his troops to burn and rape their across Europe. Johnson wasn’t just a pacifist or an isolationist, like Charles Lindbergh. Johnson was a committed fascist who tried his best to bring Hitler-style government and Hitler-style beliefs about race and nationalism here to the United States.

But, it’s OK, Panetta explains, because he apologized after World War II started. Damn forward thinking of him, considering he would have arrested and jailed for the duration had he not done so.

Panetta concludes that just because the guy who designed the Peoria Civic Center was an avowed Nazi sympathizer is no reason to knock down those beautiful glass arcades. Funny thing is, the question in Peoria has never been whether to knock down the glass arcades because the guy who designed him is a Nazi sympathizer. Unless you’ve been reading Peoria Pundit, other Peoria blogs the Peoria blog who covered this first or the Washington Post, you were probably not even aware that the guy who designed the Peoria Civic Center was a Nazi sympathizer. No, instead the question has been whether to expend extra taxpayer money to maintain the arcades during upcoming renovations. It is those who demand they be preserved who have been insisting that the architectural integrity of Philip Johnson’s designs be preserved because of their historical significance. Now that Johnson has been outed locally as the Nazi sympathizer that he was, suddenly everyone wants to ignore history.

When the Peoria City Council votes on its $55 million renovation package, will anyone on the council mention Philip Johnson? If they put up a plaque to Phil Johnson, will they leave out his 10-year-long support for Hitler? Or will they ignore the real history of the man whose designs they want to preserve for history?

UPDATE: Willy Nilly takes me to task for not mentioning he had the story first.