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An Evening in Juarez: Rich Wright’s Story

Tuesday, November 25th, 2008

There’s a remarkable piece of journalism by Rich Wright titled, The Mask of Red Death.

It’s remarkable at once for two quick reasons: First, El Paso journalism doesn’t rise to many heights (see 4 Borders Pundit), and, second few El Paso journalists can write well (see 4 Borders Pundit). Wright, in less than 2000 words, describes (creates?) a competent metaphor for Mexico’s current troubles. His story takes place in a bar in Juarez. The metaphor incorporates economy, culture, crime, corruption and, a 4 Borders Pundit fave, booze. 4BP never met a bar in the 20-something countries he visited that he couldn’t find metaphors in.

This metaphor, however, is different. It’s different because it’s better than 4BP has written about.

To get it out the way, any crime-novel devotee, or wannabe gonzo journalist will be taken in by his opening sentence: “Thursday night I went to Juarez .” It’s a simple sentence, but unloads, like a shotgun blast, loads of cultural connotations for Southwest Border-aware locals living here in current times. And, much unlike a double-aught blast to the stomach, Wright’s story just gets better from the opening sentence.

What transpires during Wright’s visit is nothing short of a Catholic School-rhetoric miracle come to life. He finds two world-class musicians in a working-class bar. And then he records them. And then he puts the recording up on YouTube.

You can see it, and you should see it, here.

The video, I think, portrays Mexico better than all the gawking press, gringo gossip, and foreigner-manufactured realities could: Mexico remains a sophisticated, complex, corrupt, life-loving and optimistic land that outsiders would do better to know than to avoid. Mexico is one of the few places where concert-hall musicians would deign to play for beer-drunk locals.

To hell with 15-second sound bites from MSM. Watch the whole thing and see both a story and the future of reporting.

And after all, when is the last time two world-class musicians turned up in a shithole ghetto bar in Detroit or Houston?

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JFK, El Paso, and a Suitable Parody

Sunday, November 23rd, 2008

Here, Tastes Like El Paso has a brilliant parody of El Paso Times’ rather curious, and decidedly offbeat, out of left field local take on JFK’s assassination. I don’t think there was too much local about JFK, no matter what Ramon Bracamontes may think.

Well, a byline is a byline. And every MSM journalist knows that clippings make a resume, and resumes make new job opportunities. Especially in the emerging online journalism business. Which is, you know, where every MSM journalist secretly would like to go, if they could just get over that darn CSS evening class.

//Just sayin’, ya know?

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When Is the Best Time for a Strike?

Sunday, November 23rd, 2008

Whenever Hollywood’s Screen Actors Guild wants one.

The dearth of creativity and acting talent begs for a strike. A time-out, if you will. I won’t even go all political and say that the market doesn’t bear Hollywood’s fringe-left mentality, lest Congress hear about it and bail them out, too.

If Hollywood would just go away for awhile, some good old-fashioned Left Wing healing could begin.

And besides that, Hollywood is right behind mainstream print media in going out of business. That might not be such a bad thing, either.

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McCain Endorsed in Dem-Town

Sunday, November 2nd, 2008

STUNNER: The El Paso Times endorses John McCain for President.

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What the Heck is a Culinary?

Saturday, July 26th, 2008

Sophisticated El Paso Times food blogger Felipa Solis recently traveled to New York, where she learned a new noun: culinary.

Gushes Solis, “So, while there, I had to indulge in the culinary of the city,” “In any event, the culinary was all amazing…,” and “Now, time to focus on the culinary of our own hometown.”

Never mind the spacing problems (duly noted by our own Milton Waddams, who notices that Solis seems to resist inserting a space or two after a period. That’s not the point of this post. The point of this post is to point out, to the pointy-headed people on point at the El Paso Times editorial desk, that “culinary” is either an adjective or, in variation, an adverb, but never a noun.

Now see here:
culinary |ˈkələˌnerē; ˈkyoōlə-|
adjective
of or for cooking : culinary skills | savor the culinary delights of the region.
DERIVATIVES
culinarily
adverb
ORIGIN mid 17th cent.: from Latin culinarius, from culina ‘kitchen.’

And one more thing, esteemed spelling & grammar editorial mavens at our local rag of record: “in tact” is a word, not two.

P.S. Good Lordy. They just keep on coming: That would be “ensure”, not “insure,” dear editors. I certainly don’t need State Farm to “insure” my tomatoes.

You might need insurance against embarrassing speeling mistakes.

Yes, we did that on porpoise.

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El Paso Times Follies 26 July 2008

Saturday, July 26th, 2008

Under the Communities section of today’s El Paso Times, we see this dramatic headline: “To Report Problems.” But the article covers local events.

Are all events in El Paso problematic?

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El Paso Corruption Update 22 Jun 2008

Sunday, June 22nd, 2008

The FBI El Paso corruption case keeps humming along. The latest conviction, that of Antonio “Tony” Dill, a lobbyist, made headlines last week. He plea-bargained out, admitting to bribing a member of the El Paso County Commissioners Court. Link chart (below) is appropriately updated.

I’d link to a good El Paso Times article from May 29th on U.S. District Judge Frank Montalvo’s disclosure that ‘more than 80 “persons of interest” have been linked to the investigation, including 35 past or current public officials, 13 lawyers and three current or former judges,’ but the Times’ extraordinarily-excellent archive system hides articles faster than the Air Force hid the Roswell alien bodies, and you can’t read the article out of the archives, or Google it, to save your alien body-hiding life.

Nonetheless, the center-of-gravity in this Venn Diagram-like arcade of corruption appears to be the odd construct known as the El Paso County Commissioners Court.

Newspaper Tree, which has a functioning archive system, reports on the Dill plea here.

The Old Prospector asked me by cellar phone the other day what the heck a lobbyist does anyway. “How does he make money off of urging people to do stuff?” OP asked.

“I don’t rightly know,” I said. “But if I urged you to lay off the cheladas at Acetunas would you give me five dollars?”

I couldn’t tell if the gurgling, snorting sounds coming out of the phone were laughter or anger.

Meanwhile, back on May 12th, Newspaper Tree’s David Crowder was trying to, in more cerebral terms than the Times staff had done previously, argue for more openness in the case. Well, that’s 3213 words a reader will never get back in his or her lifetime. OP told me on the phone that anytime media argues for more access, it just means they’re lazy.

“I know a thing or two about digging for gold,” he said, in a conspiratorial tone of voice that suggested he was talking to me out of a stall in the men’s room of a nearby bar on Doniphan. “And I ain’t never asked the guvmint to pint me towards the goal. I found what I found through my own hard work.”

I’d link to another Times article on Dill being out on bail quicker than you can say “Commissioners Court,” but hell, it’ll be “archived” soon enough.

“Archiving” by the Times is just another way citizens get El Paso’d around here.

OP later texted me from Acetunas. He was between sets in a karaoke showdown, having just won the narcocorrido competition before heading into the single-elimination Bee Gees Are Back retro-round. ‘Don Kirkatrick is blowing thng out of prportion.’ OP still hasn’t mastered texting on his Blackberry.

I texted him back: ‘Gt on ur mule and go hme.’ I’m no Blackberry hero either.

So here we go with another updated El Paso Corruption Link Chart:

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El Paso’s Democrat Caucus Caca

Saturday, March 15th, 2008

To be fair, the El Paso Times covered the local Democrat caucus mess — you know, the confusion, poor planning, reactions of irritated voters, and the general infighting and raucousness that typically accompanies anything associated with the Party of the People. Because locally, and nationally, the people in that Party are usually confused, out of step, irritated, pugnacious and raucous.

In other words, if you want to understand why so many people in the world can’t stand the Ugly American, you have to understand what underpins the Ugly American. It ain’t the stench of Chico’s Tacos food on his/er lips, that’s for sure.

Well, it’s not like Americans hide it anyway. The whole Dem mess — locally and nationally — is widely played out in MSM for all the world to see (and avoid). Somehow, Americans have built a nation that not only no longer seeks to hide/avoid/change its juvenile habits, but a nation that rides passports and airplanes overseas to celebrate them in the face of people who are often more politically-astute, and who don’t wear tennis shoes to the Louvre.

You could Google it. Just look at the mess Howard Dean & Co have created in Michigan and Florida. Talk about a lack of vision, i.e., a vision that Hillary would end up with something less than an annointment as the Dem candidate.

If the Dems can’t plan three months ahead for contingencies like Obama, how are they going to plan for fighting terrorism three years from now?

I suppose they could just eliminate tax breaks, so there’s a war chest to cover political shortsightedness.

Oh wait. That just happened, though surely a veto is coming.

So the Times covered the El Paso Democratic Caucus Ca-ca, and it did so here. Adriana Chávez wrote all about it. There was poor organization (though that’s really an El Paso thing, not limited to Democrat movers-and-shakers), whacked-out screaming Obama supporters in their filthy politically-charged T-shirts (tsk, tsk), and “mass confusion,” whatever that means these days.

OK — it means when sun-loving, Chicos taco-sucking locals have to play on a state or national level, they don’t have the tools, training, protocol or education to compete.

Outsiders visiting El Paso already know all that. For that matter, carpetbagging hero wannabes, like Dee Margo, and his stagemaster Guv Perry, a man who never met a wayward border town into which he wouldn’t like to stick his political pinky, know that.

Possibly to help soften the rising (?) sense of urgency over local Democrat incompetence, Times reporter Ramon Bracamontes launched a journalistic missile on March 6th, acknowledging and then glossing over the mass hysteria confusion during the caucus, noting that voter turnout in El Paso was the highest in 40 years. Good for El Paso, though we’ll see how good it is in November, when either Hillary or Obama is dispatched, and memories (or not) of the caucus still ring in the brainpans of the honest, hard-working, raise-taxes-now-dammit blue collar crowd that always votes Democrat on the border, no matter how much that hurts.

Addendum: Of course, at the time of the writings, the Chico’s Tacos shack local tradition on McRae hadn’t been shuttered, so the public was looking for something to think about, and local MSM outlets were looking for something to write about.

Let’s give appropriate props to the El Paso Times for filling in a news gap.

(golf claps)

And now the Times has gone above and beyond local expectations by filling folks in on the real political story of 2008. While the Democrat meltdown over Michigan and Florida, and superdelegate defections, is making national headlines, El Pasoans are now (thankfully) keenly aware that the GOP in nearby Alaska is having a meltdown. (Hat-tip: Dan Joling, AP writer, appearing in your local rag, courtesy of editor Don Flores.)

And now you know why you shouldn’t be upset about that whole El Paso Democrat caucus thing anymore.

Whew. For a minute there, we were worried that the Democrat Party was off-track.

UPDATE: Stop the ACLU notes a “moonbat meltdown” at Daily Kos.

And, Burnt Orange has Hillary worked up over Texas caucuses, with a clear threat to cause a delay at the state convention. You see, Obama has more caucus delegates — whoops.

Well, well.

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Congressman Reyes RAINs on a Parade…

Sunday, August 12th, 2007

…and we like it, for once. A bit late to the fight, but there nonetheless, Congressman Reyes signed up to co-sponsor the Internet Radio Equality Act. This is an initiative to allow small-time broadcasting (podcasting) by individuals, colleges, and the like, and has 134 sponsors in the House. More on the act here. MSM to blame for trying to raise copyright and royalty issues beyond the already-absurd point, in order to keep up marketshare and keep those dollars flowing in.

MSM has missed the boat for 15 years. Their attack on podcasters was just another tactic to avoid the fundamental issue everyone (but them) know: MSM products are crap. Journalism is inaccurate, biased and unpopular. Music is inane and boring. Television is devoid of useful content. The brightest sparks of creativity in media are being set off by DIY media ventures made possible by the Internet and modern home-computer technologies.

You can write, record and publish your own music in a day off your bedroom computer. You can research and publish a blog post in an hour at a public library. You can digitally stream a video of you teaching how to make a souffle and have it read by people in 15 foreign countries, in an afternoon. And you can do it better because you don’t have a bottom line, a nest of fearful bosses, or irked stockholders to worry about.

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28 July 2007: Your Weekend RSS Update

Sunday, July 29th, 2007

As you can see, we’re working on a new website design. Due to technical difficulties, you may experience problems viewing this site. Do not adjust your set.

FBI EL PASO CORRUPTION CASE:
In 2006, real estate speculators descended on El Paso after BRAC results were announced. The housing market boomed. This year, the lawyer market is exploding.

Lawyer Mary Stillinger ain’t gonna represent Ysleta School Board Trustee Milton “Mickey” Duntley, El Paso School Board Trustee Charles Roark, and former NCED Chief Operating Officer Ernie Lopez. So said Hizzoner, U.S. District Court Judge Frank Montalvo.

MISCELLANY:
The El Paso Empowerment Zone (not our beloved Adventure Zone, where 4 Borders Pundit can be found anytime he is in El Paso avoiding his day job), is in trouble with HUD over its spending. Newspaper Tree has the details. Goodness: liquor purchases, charges without documentation and apparently unauthorized trips with teenagers. But let’s see: booze, fraud and teens running around without parental supervision: sounds like a typical American urban environment to me, so maybe HUD is off-base on this.

Wannabe DA Theresa Caballero opines on corruption in El Paso and holds a special place in her pen for DA Jaime Esparza. Esparza probably needs to reassess whether he’s been asleep at the wheel while corruption broke all around this wannabe fair city, and Caballero’s published friends-and-foes list, helpfully laid out in her blog, probably deserves a link chart.

Mudville Gazette is all over the Scott Thomas Beauchamp story. If you haven’t heard yet, Beauchamp runs a blog called Sir Real Scott Thomas, in which he portrayed soldiers, including himself, being assholes, UCMJ violators and possibly criminals, in Iraq. He may have written his brutal stories while in Germany, or while in the Middle East. Truth will tell soon enough, but fact is, Beauchamp writes like a wannabe Hunter S. Thompson, but without the Southern gentility (Thompson was courteous about women), or a certain gonzo tactfulness: HST never made fun of a disfigured woman. And there’s the difference. Thompson, who served in the Air Force, got in trouble with his chain of command for writing up local wrestling matches as if the fighting, blood, rivalries and injuries were real, while Beauchamp goes gonzo by mixing American Psycho, Private Pyle and Catch-22, all randomly, like a drunk with the munchies and a working ATM card. If what Beauchamp writes about his daily “landscaping” duties is real, then what better GI’s know as “weeds-and-seeds” or “pavements and grounds” detail is probably what he deserves. That’s where screwups go in the military.

Sorry, El Paso Times. Your story on disabled El Pasoans suing Chico’s Tacos is mis-headlined. It’s the Paso Del Norte Civil Rights Project doin’ the suin’, not the disabled themselves. Me, I’d sooner sue Chico’s for putting too much cheese on those flautas. And I wonder why PDNCRP wants to damn with faint praise this overrated chain by calling it a “quintessential El Paso tradition.” I mean, does this advocacy group hate Chico’s, or El Paso in general? Quintesseintially, I think the Project just hates, period.

Living in the Borderland as we do, it’s likely none of us have ever thought much about immigration. Except those who constantly complain that El Paso, Laredo, Deming, Las Cruces, and various — ahem — lesser metropolises in between don’t meet our sophisticated, well-bred needs. Fortunately, the International Association of Chiefs of Police have thought about migration, and put out a handy guide on the topic, which you can read in the comfort of your migrant-infested home here.

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