Category: Uncategorized

Newspapers routinely publish the names of people who’ve been murdered, or assaulted, or kidnapped, or had any number of other horrible things done to them. But when a woman is raped, most have policies banning the use of names.
This came to a head yesterday, when the two teenaged girls who were kidnapped in California were found. CNN and the rest had been running the girls’ names and photos all day (in the absurd overkill way we’ve gotten used to — but that’s another complaint). Then, when the girls were rescued and they told investigators they’d been raped, suddenly their names and photos disappeared.
(For instance, this is today’s New York Times story — no names. Yesterday’s, which included names, seems to have been taken down from the web site. This is the AP story after the girls were rescued but before they said they were raped — complete with names; this is the story after — no names.)
Anyone else think this is absurd? To me, this just dates back to the old premise that a woman who’d been raped was somehow spoiled and shamed, that she was somehow at fault. Is being raped somehow more shameful than being beaten or murdered? Not publishing the name (and thus treating it like every other crime) just increases the stigma attached to being a victim of the crime.
Here are a few other pieces on the topic.

Here’s my story in today’s paper, on the new school ratings released in Texas yesterday. Another snoozer.

Lo, vast is the reach of the CD Mix of the Month Club. Just did a sort on the Word file that holds everybody’s address. As of the July trade, CDMOM discs have made their way into 28 states (plus the District of Columbia), three Canadian provinces, and three other foreign countries (Australia, Austria, and Ireland). Close to 500 CDs have been swapped in total.

Oh, why the hell not?

Fright-Show Alert: I’ll be TXCN all night, talking about school ratings. And, in the interest of informing the easily frightened early on, I’ll also be on Good Morning Texas on WFAA next Tuesday.
And no, I won’t be talking about any Cheap Dates.
While I’m posting about WFAA, I’ve been meaning to post this little whirlwind tour through television past: WFAA at Fifty. Really interesting stuff — and I’m not just saying that because the people who own them write me a check every two weeks..

It’s tough being a former dictator stuck living with your mom.

“What ain’t no country I ever heard of. They speak English in What?”

Ever since his abomination Kids, I’ve hated hated hated Larry Clark. (His artistic crimes against humanity extend far beyond infecting us with Harmony Korine.) So, even though the article’s not strictly speaking about him, I was somewhat glad to read of his seduction of a woman 37 years his junior — it fits so well into the skeezeball old-man image I have of him.
As an aside, if I ever wanted to absolutely take someone down in an article — I mean humiliate them, make them look like befuddled fools through the power of their own idiocy — George Gurley would be the guy I’d want writing it. That man has a serious talent for making people look silly; he does more damage with people’s quotes than any other reporter working today. Perfect example: this profile of 21-year-old socialite Elisabeth Kieselstein-Cord. (Sample: “She said she is currently reading the new Steve Martin novel, Shopgirl. ‘I think he

Listening to a CDMOM disc from one of my reliably good traders, I noticed a Serge Gainsbourg track called “Melody.” A nice, sexy song, in Serge’s inimitable swingin’ Parisian style. Then, a few minutes in, a female voice intones: “Melody Nelson.”
“Hey!” I think. “I know from Melody Nelson!” Any Movable Type user knows that when you first install the system, the login/password combo you have to use is melody/nelson. “Hey, maybe I’m the first person to figure this out, and the supercool Trotts, Ben and Mena, will think I’m cool for crossing between the worlds of ’60s French pop and content management systems with such ease!”
Then I saw someone beat me to the punch a couple months ago. Oh, well.
Strange coincidence: a different Serge Gainsbourg track appears on my July mix. That’s two Serge sitings! (And Serge citings!) One more and it’s officially a trend!
(Of course, it won’t be official until the hipsters at Time or some other respectable media organ report it with a back-pages piece, headlined: “A Surge in Serge: It’s Encore Time for French Pop Star.”)

A couple quick posts (busy day!):
– Scientologists invade west Florida. Before I got my current gig here in Dallas, I considered taking the job of the reporter who wrote this story — Scientology writer for the St. Petersburg Times, a very fine newspaper. But then I realized I’d rather not live my life under the threat of lawsuits from crazy people. And I’d probably never get to meet John Travolta, anyway.
– On a bulletin board in a neighboring newsroom department, there’s a note tacked up that states: “More people are killed every year by falling coconuts than by sharks.” It’s a well meaning reminder not to blow isolated incidents out of proportion, as much of the press did last summer when a supposed rash of shark attacks made big, scary news — despite the fact they were still extremely rare.
Unfortunately, that little coconut “fact” is just wrong. Cecil Adams, among others, says so. I printed out that Adams column and posted it (in cognito) on the bulletin board last week as a factual counterpoint.
I came into work a couple days ago and found my posting had been taken down. The original anti-coconut posting remained. Some people just can’t handle the truth.