The Gitmo shuffle

Obviously the cataclysmic events of 9/11 brought national attention to the Amherst Select Board decision from the night before restricting the display of 29 commemorative American flags in the downtown.

Around 6:00 AM that morning the AP sent out a brief one-paragraph article about the Amherst town officials decision from the night before, just proving how slow a news day 9/11 first dawned.

Unfortunately some of the BIG media (Fox and CNN) got the story wrong--probably in the confusion of what started going terribly wrong at 8:46 that morning. As a result, some folks watched the Twin Towers fall and then heard a story about a small town in western Massachusetts restricting the rights of residents and businesses to fly the American flag. You can just imagine the hate mail that flowed into Amherst Town Hall that week.

Well as that old saying goes, "here we go again." This Gitmo detainees to Amherst story hit the AP wire on Tuesday (curiously they did not carry it a month ago when the Springfield Republican first covered the story) and within hours the story broke about Federal authorities arresting a Sudbury, Massachusetts resident for plotting to attack shopping malls (probably in the Boston area.) Not a good mix for Amherst.

But, once again, the story is not always presented fairly. Some people make is sound as though Amherst is laying out the welcome mat and promising to harbor Osama Bin Laden. The two men now named by Ruth Hooke are, rightfully, getting great scrutiny and may not pass the smell test.

But the actual Warrant article does not name names and does say four times that the person or persons (does not even mention a number) will have been "cleared." Surely out of all the people left at Gitmo, there does have to be one or two who are completely innocent. Therefore they are not "terrorists".

So if they do ever come to Amherst, the town would not be coddling terrorists.

Michael Graham rips Amherst on radio and in print. Ouch.

Howie Carr Piles on. Double ouch.

And now even the Wall Street Journal. Triple ouch.

The Amherst Bulletin speaks, in their wimpy sort of of way.

Ruth Hooke on welcoming Gitmo guys to Amherst

Whew! So yesterday's 443 hits set a new world's record (about half coming from Boston radio station WTKK 96.9) surpassing last year's 412 when the AP covered Ms. Awad resigning as Amherst Select Board member citing stalking and harassment by little old me as the reason. This of course set the stage for a replacement election last October and a reorganization of the Select Board where Princess Stephanie ousted Gerry Weiss as Chair.

Selectman Weiss speaks

Mr. Weiss's Chariot.

So Boston radio personality Michael Graham wanted to hear Mr. Weiss out on this proposal to allow (2) "cleared" Gitmo detainees to resettle here. Happy to oblige him.

The warrant article (#14) Town Meeting will vote on does not contain any names whatsoever and clearly uses the word "cleared" four times.

So again, just for record. If there is any chance in Hell the two individuals have any connection to terrorist activities I will of course vote No on the floor of Town Meeting. But this naming of the two is kind of a new wrinkle and I'm now told that the two in particular may have some connection to bad things. Makes me wonder about the definition of "cleared."

Amherst Town Meeting: I gave it my best shot

Mr. Graham's blog post about the People's Republic

Yes, the petitioner and Mr. Weiss show up in the Hall of Shame

Really Dumb Foreign policy from the People's Republic

Innocence restored

So I’m sorry my Conservative friends, but have we lost our humanity?

These two 'Guantanamo Guys'--at least according to Federal officials charged with protecting us (although they did do a lousy job that awful morning)--proclaim them “cleared”. They did not do a God damned thing on 9/11. Their only crime is wearing cotton on their head, the pallor of their skin or the accent of their spoken language.

No tax money will be involved if the two men should relocate to Amherst; and--ONCE AGAIN-- the Federal government has cleared them, so they are NOT a threat to local citizens.

Strangely, at the beginning of this Select Board meeting Princess Stephanie voted in favor of two resolutions: one supporting "Climate Action Day" (A global warming thing) and another supporting/promoting "United Nations Day," neither of which are local issues.


My original take over a month ago


Boston Globe picks up the story

UPDATE: 8:00 PM
Of course what is also hyper-hypocritical from Princess Stephanie is that she tells the venerable Boston Globe that "It was just my luck that two of us were absent,"(meaning her pawns Select Board members Alisa Brewer and Aaron Hayden) but two months ago in discussing flying the AMERICAN flags on 9/11 she said the decision (knowing I will come before them next year and the year after that to ask for the flags to fly) should not be "an issue for which the outcome should be politicized by making it dependent on the attendance at a meeting or the make up of the board. Etc."

Lesson learned?

So when I saw the other day that the illustrious Amherst Select Board would be voting on a street closing for Lincoln Avenue to celebrate a safe Halloween block party, I was wondering if the recent disastrous "experiment" to close off that same street to through traffic (mainly to and from economic Juggernaut UMass) would come up or not. It did.

(You can tell Princess Stephanie used to be a PR flack.)

It's Baaaaack...

So the UN Flag (liberated last week--probably as a dorm room decoration) has been replaced, for the 4th or 5th time in the last few years. Paid for by a UN Committee, who also apparently donated the flagpole all those years ago.

What do people want from the media

People want the media to inform, entertain, amuse and they want it all instantly. A Herculean task for the industry—especially since a lot of folks want it free.

But above all, readers want to trust the source. You expect the New York Times or Wall Street Journal to thoroughly vet a story so you know what you are reading is reliable. Folks hate to be deceived.

And in journalism, even with iconic newspapers, it happens. Reporter Janet Cooke’s, infamous profile of “Jimmy, an eight year old third-generation heroin addict” that originally won a Pulitzer Prize for the Washington Post but was then rescinded because it was all fiction.

The Washington Post did something hardly any major newspaper does: they apologized; and in a mea culpa report by their ombudsman of what had gone wrong concluded it was due to a “failure to check confidential sources and the risks of putting sensationalism above editorial judgment. “

I disagree with Mr. Crosbie’s declaration that the local news story is dead, which flies in the face of Tip O’Neil’s famous assertion “All politics is local.”

Yesterday a run away balloon that everyone at first thought had a 6 year old stow away child on board riveted the nation.

If not for that hair raising component of a child potentially at great risk it could easily have been just a local news or blogger upload about an “interesting” family who happens to keep a large flying saucer balloon tethered in their backyard and who also recently appeared on the national TV show “wife swap”.

Here in bucolic Amherst, I posted on Monday morning about a “ghost bike” (a bicycle painted all white and placed at the scene of a car/bike accident where they cyclist died) vandalized by ax wielding assailants.

The local newspaper picked it up the next day (even used a photo from my blog) and then within 24 hours both local TV news stations covered the story as well.

And on a slow news day that is the kind of tragic/weird story that could hit the AP wire (they covered the original accident/death a month ago, a hit-and-run still to this day unsolved).

I agree with Crosbie that in today’s 24/7 world of instant information the average reader initially craves (to, sort of, quote Sgt Joe Friday) “just the facts”; but then 59 seconds later, they are ready for a well-written, well –researched, human interest story--all the better if it actually occurs in their neighborhood.