Hey Fitchburg Pride, nice job!

You know, sometimes you have to give credit where credit is due.

In this case, I want to point you to the Fitchburg Pride's quite decent article and editorial about drug treatment options in the area, and specifically the proposed Fitchburg Primary Care Associates clinic (who I've also written about before).

The article's pretty good, and was a pleasant surprise when I read it. Honestly, just seeing that a reporter in Fitchburg did some actual research is incredibly refreshing. Enough to make one "proud?" Meh. But it's enough to make me suggest you go read it instead of just ranting about it.

So umm... Good work!

Now I somehow feel dirty after saying all that. I need to go find something stupid in the S&E now to polish my blackened soul back to its normal sheen...

Phew! That was easy!

Huh?

A friend has alerted me to a particularly confusing quote in this Fitchburg Pride article.

It's a pretty boring article about the opening of a supermarket. Not the sort of thing I'd normally even read. But get this:

"There are trees around, so it is not just a black wasteland," said Mayor Dan Mylott standing outside of the store. "The back is as nice as the front because the parking garage is back there, it is a beautiful place to be."

A black wasteland? What the fuck?

I had several thoughts when reading this particular quote. First I pictured a post-apocalyptic wasteland, a la Mad Max. Dan Mylott was a mohawked road warrior who found a tree in the middle of the vast desert and for one brief moment brought his deathmobile to a stop just so he could get out and gaze at it in awe.

However, it turns out that despite Fitchburg's woes, it isn't actually a Mad Max-ish post-apocalyptic wasteland...

Next, I thought that perhaps he actually said "a blank wasteland," meaning of course a wasteland without any trees in its parking lot. Which would mean Fitchburg Pride either made a typo (unheard of!) or misheard him.

Alternately, this could mean that perhaps he really wanted to say "a motherfucking wasteland" and replaced "motherfucking" with "blank" in order to appear more mayoral. Sort of a self-bleeping mechanism...

But when you look at the larger quote, it also appears our mayor thinks that a parking garage is "a beautiful place to be."

Now, I've been in a lot of parking garages. Not once have I looked around and thought "Gee, this sure is a beautiful place to be!" Usually I'm just trying to figure out where the fuck I parked so I can leave as quickly as possible.

The only conclusions one can really reach from this quote is that the mayor is either really easily impressed by strip malls and parking lots, lies (unheard of for a politician!), or is drunk all the time.

Yeah, he should do great in the next election...

Shocking news! Lisa Wong is Asian!

I don't generally read the Save Fitchburg blog these days. While it does seem to have a lively community of commenters, most of them strike me as being clinically insane.

However, I do read (or at least skim) the Fitchburg Pride and stumbled across its "Save Fitchburg Roundup" (Jason Lefferts of the FP also founded Save Fitchburg). The last time I looked at Save Fitchburg was shortly after Lisa Wong announced her candidacy for mayor, at which point commenting was moderated due to racist dipshits making idiotic remarks because she's Asian.

Good move on the part of the Save Fitchburg guys to go to moderating, but it didn't do much to make me think their commenters have improved any...

However, I was glad to see there was a pretty coherent comment by "Howdy's" which was quoted in part in the Fitchburg Pride:

[G]ender, ethnicity, age, etc SHOULD not be an issue with this election, but I believe it still will.

Yes, this is the 21st century….in Fitchburg.

I am 100% on board with Lisa. I am excited about the opportunity she brings, but…

There are many Fitchburg voters that will have a hard time getting beyond what they see.
I’m glad Lisa will make her “first” appearance in a “safe” environment. It will take a very polished Lisa to make many similar appearances all around the city to overcome the familiarity Mylott and Donnelly already have with the voting base. Change is hard, especially in Fitchburg. Lisa will need to make people comfortable with her while she is touting her credentials and vision

The "safe" environment mentioned is Wong's speech to an "Asian Pacific Islander even at the Statehouse". I don't know any more about that, but it's not really germane to what I'm talking about right now anyway. It does seem weird that it would be called "safe" just because of a shared heritage, but no matter...

Lisa Wong is a woman of Asian heritage. So fucking what?

Are people in Fitchburg that big a bunch of morons that they actually care one bit what ancestry a person has when choosing who to vote for as mayor? Some would apparently say yes, but oddly enough I seem to have a higher opinion of the voters of Fitchburg.

While "Howdy's" up there is well spoken, I actually totally disagree that Wong's racial heritage will matter one bit.

Who would it matter to, after all? Obviously it doesn't matter to me, it probably doesn't matter to you if you're reading this blog, and frankly I don't know a lot of people in general who actually have a problem with Asian people. Sure, the dicks who comment on Save Fitchburg (and get deleted) are racist, but they're hardly the voting majority. One or two morons don't speak for the masses. And while racism is definitely out there, I don't think it generally takes a form that would hurt Wong's mayoral campaign.

If her name was Lisa Al-Masri or something then maybe that would matter, because people actually feel quite comfortable being openly racist against Arabs these days, but who the hell hates Asians? A few crazed WWII veterans who wish we could go back to the days of internment camps for the Japanese, and that's about it. Most of the racism actually manifests in thinking that Asians are smarter than white folks, which I don't see as hurting Wong's chances. (It also manifests in a belief that Asian men have small penises, but again that shouldn't affect Miss Wong one bit.)

Perhaps there are reasons to vote against Wong. But her age, gender, or ethnicity aren't among them.

This post actually comes from a bigger frustration, which is the idiotic "Is America ready for a black/female president?" bullshit you see in polls dealing with Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Now it's represented on the local level as "Is Fitchburg ready for an Asian female mayor?"

The only people who seem to not be ready are the fucktards asking the question in the first place.

The rest of us have been ready for some time.

Sentinel desperately in need of "Community" news

In my occasional trawlings of the local newspapers I sometimes find something that's worth writing about. Far more often, however, I find something that just makes me snicker at how ridiculous the local news actually is.

It's not like I expect a lot from news, really. I haven't watched television news in at least a decade. The local newspapers are several orders of magnitude beneath television news (yes, even Fox News), but at least they're in print form and I can easily skim through the crap to get to those items that may have somehow retained a little tiny shred of dignity.

So I was skimming the Sentinel website today, and noticed the following enticing article linked on the front page:


Holy cow! You know that's got to be a good juicy story!

Understandably, I was all eager to read what would no doubt be some sort of old-fashioned moralizing about the evils of seeing boobies on the interweb. That could entertain me for 30 seconds or so.

Sadly, I discovered a couple of problems with this item of "Community" news...

First, it's really fucking old:


While it's good to see that the devoted editors of the Sentinel do indeed work at (exactly) 2 am, the nearly two and a half year-old nature of the item is less encouraging. Perhaps that one late night did them in for the next 28 months, but holy crap people, this is linked to your front page!

The article itself was a bit of a disappointment once I got to it. Apparently it's a pseudo-Ann Landers syndicated bit of drivel. The fun porn stuff was only the first of three letters to "Annie", and the response was boring.

Also, here's another problem:


Now, I'm sure that people in Manitoba have made-up problems that need answers from faceless syndicated columnists who don't have to answer to anybody just like everybody else, but this is in the "Community" section of the local newspaper. Manitoba is decidedly not local! If you wanted to drive there, this is the route you would have to take. That's a long drive, people.

What does all this mean to you and me, the loyal readers of the local press? It means it's time to take action! There are clearly far too few things going on in our own community to warrant mention. So it's time to start making the news!

Fathers, start looking at a lot more porn on the internets. I suggest you start with tentacle porn and work your way up. Make sure never to clear your cache or delete cookies or really make any attempt at all to cover what you did. Then let your teenage daughters use your computers. With any luck they'll discover your surfing habits and write a letter to the local paper about it. Then we'll have real community news!

Also, mothers, I suggest you become obese and get in car accidents.

There you go, a surefire way to get the Sentinel to actually put news from this community in the "Community News".

On a brighter note, at least the Fitchburg Pride is on the ball with their shocking "Breaking News" about some dude dumping leaves in the woods. Go Pride!

Crime down, doomsayers disappointed

Good news for people like me who keep insisting crime in Fitchburg isn't as bad as people make it out to be. It actually isn't!

Or at least it's not as bad as it was in 2005, according to this article in the Fitchburg Pride about the Fitchburg Police Department's 2006 report.

According to the Fitchburg Police Department's 2006 annual report, overall crime in the city dropped 15 percent from 2005, especially in areas of drug incidents, breaking and entering, rapes and assaults.

Unfortunately, the most recent report on the FPD website is from 2004. It would be nice for them to put out some recent figures to the public, since people (particularly candidates) have been harping on how terrible crime is despite evidence suggesting otherwise.

So why's crime down? That of course is going to depend on who you ask. But Chief Edward Cronin had something to say that more public figures should listen to:

Cronin said the department has been focusing on more than just suppression, acknowledging through programs, reinforcement and advocacy that crime is a much larger issue affected by outside factors such as economics and race.

"We've generated a big picture way of looking at the problems," Cronin said. "You can't keep hitting things in one way, you can't keep arresting people and ignore the outside factors that have contributed to the crime, and minority status and poverty are right on top."

Holy crap! Address the roots of crime instead of just blindly focusing on enforcement and things actually improve!

He goes on:

He says the department's approaches are about empowering others.

"It's not about things like language, but the affirmation of who someone is when they walk in here and about serving the community honestly and with humility because in my mind, that's what leadership means," he said.

"I'm not saying we don't have problems," he continued, "But we're making progress without having to use thug policing. I have always said that our community is not our enemy."

Indeed it's not.

One of the big problems with things like the "Liberty Walk" is that they treat the community as the enemy. Almost explicitly in that case, since the idea was to get a bunch of people who didn't live in the "bad" neighborhood to walk through that neighborhood, essentially belittling the people who do live there. It's no wonder they were met with scorn by the residents. They were treating that entire community as an enemy, one they could apparently only face with an army of like-minded walkers with them.

Ted DeSalvatore's vigilantism does the same thing. As I quoted in an earlier post:

DeSalvatore admits he regularly walks through neighborhoods in his ward which have a reputation for drugs and violence, often taking videotape and calling the police if he spots illegal activity.
DeSalvatore also acknowledges that certain people often ask him to leave, which he refuses to do.
He says that on one recent occasion, he told a confrontational young man on Elm Street, "I'm going to be back here every day just for you."

Clearly, to some of our mayoral candidates, the community is the enemy.

Glad to see Chief Cronin has the right attitude.

Incidentally, don't expect people to drop the spurious "crime is out of control!" claims. They've never been based on facts anyway, so more recent facts aren't going to change anything.

Crap

Word of warning to my fellow Linux users. Don't use the Konqueror web browser to write posts on Blogger. Or if you do certainly don't hit "preview" at any time.

Argh.

Oh yeah, and someone else is running for city council. Youngish. Likes to run. Bad puns could ensue.

Also, the Fitchburg Pride newspaper is hilariously bad. Many jokes to be made. Especially about religion in the Corner Corner and the written-by-someone's-eight-year-old-brother expose on typing "Fitchburg" into search engines. Hilarity!

Doesn't play well with others.

In what will come as a surprise to no one, Ted DeSalvatore is not very popular with his peers.

Two city councilors say that Ward 4 Councilor Ted E. DeSalvatore is a divisive force on the council, and works to advance his own interests, not those of the city.

But DeSalvatore said the opposite is true: It is the other councilors who take issue with him, and who advance personal agendas.

Here, DeSalvatore is utilizing the "I know you are but what am I?" strategy of debate. Well done, Ted!

"I have grown tired of (DeSalvatore's) implications that his fellow councilors' actions are always of a political nature, while his actions and intentions are always so noble. I see things very differently," Ward 5 Councilor Stephan Hay said during Tuesday's City Council meeting.

Hay and Councilor at-large Thomas Conry both spoke Tuesday night, and disputed DeSalvatore's claims -- printed in a newspaper article last week -- that councilors made "backdoor deals" prior to choosing a new councilor Tuesday night.

"I find this insulting and untrue," Hay said. "Since this process began, I have not been asked by one councilor other than Mr. DeSalvatore to vote for a specific individual. And Councilor DeSalvatore did not ask me to vote for someone; he told me who I should vote for."

The quoted remarks "were false, contained innuendoes and pure suppositions," Conry said.

So, contrary to the "backdoor deals" innuendo previously published (by this same newspaper, natch), apparently the only person trying to rig the election of a new councilor was Ted himself.

At least Ted's honest about one thing:

DeSalvatore acknowledged that tension exists between him and other councilors.

Too bad he thinks it's because he's Sir Galahad and they're a bunch of demons out to steal his Grail (yes, that's a strained metaphor).

"There is a core group that will stand against me because they don't like the way I haven't fallen into place," he said.

Here's a little lesson in human relations, Ted. The other councilors "stand against you" because you do things like slander them to the local bootlick press, not because you're some kind of dashing maverick.

Additionally, it's just conceivable that they disagree with you because all of your ideas are profoundly stupid. Perhaps they'd like to see the town become a better place and are frustrated at having to drive over the speed bump of your ideas to get there.

While I may not be crazy about Dan Mylott as a mayor, I do like his statement.

"Things have been said about the council that are not true," Mylott said.

He added that he hopes DeSalvatore will "start to moderate those loud utterances that really don't make a lot of sense."

I believe that would be all of DeSalvatore's utterances, Mr. Mayor.

While the Sentinel's article focused rightfully on Ted being a dick, the new weekly paper Fitchburg Pride (providing a conservative weekly alternative to the conservative daily paper) focused their website's "Breaking News" for Wednesday pretty much exclusively on Mylott. Perhaps saying anything substantial about Ted's social problems makes them less proud.

The paper named after a high-school pep rally ran the headline "Mylott stands by comments critical of DeSalvatore" and the body of the article contained this:

Mayor Dan Mylott stood behind comments that were made last night by councilors Stephan Hay and Thomas Conry, Jr. towards fellow councilor Ted DeSalvatore. Last week, DeSalvatore said he thought councilors were colluding to select a replacement for an empty City Counicl [sic] seat.

"It is causing dissention [sic] among councilors," said Mylott.

He responded to comments people have made about backroom politics among council members, saying it is not true, and that councilors are open about their opinions. DeSalvatore is considered a likely candidate for mayor, as is the three-term Mylott.

The rest of the article dealt primarily with Mylott's plan to fine delinquent "industrial wastewater users", whatever they are.

Thank god we have an alternative press in Fitchburg!

Are DeSalvatore's plans for a mayoral run in trouble? I really doubt it. This is a man who fancies himself an "outsider", surely he couldn't care less if he has the ability to behave with civility towards the people he'd have to work with as Mayor. Surely he can get more done going it totally alone, right?

Of course, some voters may recognize that it would be unwise for a mayor to constantly make an ass of himself and alienate people like the city council and the chief of police. At least I hope so.