Facing down the rebellion in DisneyTimeWarnerLand
The dislike itself is
understandable (traditional media jealously guarding their monopoly on what
becomes "news".) But if we'd called a female
reporter "honey" you can bet that we would also be describing her
article's attitude as "bitchy."
But we're not like that. So we used "snarky"
instead.
We suspect someone at the Sarasota Herald
Tribune feels a trifle touchy, as well they should, about the paper's
unexceptional coverage of the biggest September 11th crime scene that wasn’t
reduced to rubble...even though they were right-there-on-the-ground.
This has, in turn, distracted editors normally
preoccupied with more mundane concerns, like suppressing details from
surfacing (or surfacing prematurely?) of local Congresswoman Katherine
Harris’ sybaritic and lipstick-smeared local past.
“She was the local ‘pump,’” one Sarasota
physician-cum-socialite told us unbidden (if indelicately) before launching
into salacious anecdotes which are apparently common knowledge in certain
circles, featuring conduct unbecoming representatives claiming to uphold
traditional family values.
This also may explain the Bush family's current
antipathy for her. They're in a position to know, to put it delicately. (But
even a casual observer would say that the "lipstick-smeared" part comes as no
surprise.)
"A
gunk-filled drain, sure... But we got our own Sudanese terrorists."
Even in a cesspool of corruption, like
Florida, Sarasota represents the gunk-filled bottom of the drain. The paper’s
editors may just feel unappreciated for their Promethean effort to keep the
lid on...
They're like Customs officials forced to
stand around in the hot sun at U.S.-Mexico border crossings all day while
doing their best to look the other way.
Its deceptively hard work. Few can appreciate
how quickly one runs out of other ways to look...
The story continues:
This is
complete Tosh (but not Bother.) And the truth is altogether more entertaining.
"How
'bout them Devil Rays anyway?"
When a
local newspaper profiles a local author, typical questions might include: “How
did you find our fair city?”
And
replies often lean on a colorful anecdote, a laying on of the local component.
For example:
“Them grits down at Mom’s diner sure hit the spot.”
But
Herald Tribune reporter
Lauren Glenn clearly feels she is made of much sterner stuff. At least so she
would have had us believe... She asked each and every one of her questions in
an accusatory tone that even Court TV’s Nancy Grace reserves for
Michael Jackson’s attorneys, or Joran Van Der Sloot family spokesmen.
Her
very first question was: “How much money do you make?”
After the shock had worn off enough to once again permit speech, we told her
bluntly, “That’s none of your business."
Her response was so instructive that we've been waiting to tell you
about it.
“You might as well tell me,” she sneered. “We can find out you
know.”
Well
now. You'll have to trust us about the sneer.
But the
quote’s word for word. Its not the sort of question you forget...
“We can find out you know.”
Although we had conducted literally hundreds of interviews for
“Welcome to TerrorLand” with credible eyewitnesses
across Florida, many with shocking revelations, the Herald Tribune was
completely uninterested.
Once
again, you can imagine our surprise.
Bizarrely,
Glenn’s sole line of questioning concerned our income... So much so
that we were finally forced to ask, “Do you have any questions that aren’t
about money?”
So she
must have found something newsworthy about it, although she
strangely never reveals what in her article.
Could
they be doing a three-part series?
An even
more chilling prospect: she was asking the questions for some other reason.
The
real question is: what was the point of doing a snarky hit piece
on an obscure writer who couldn’t get on Hardball with pictures of our current
President alone in a room doing something inappropriate with a bat and an
elephant?
I mean,
if you’re too
lazy to deliver any hit? For an answer we turned to someone not
personally involved... 
“Especially funny was her portrait of flight school operator Rudi Dekkers as a
victim, and Hopsicker as an evil man out to crush what the "Naples
businessman,” chortled local political writer John Patten.
Calling
the article “an interesting rip job,” he wrote, “Locals will long remember
Dekkers' face getting plastered all over our television sets when it was
revealed that he had taught Mohamed Atta how to fly right here in Venice.
Venetians were horrified, but Dekkers, thrilled with all of the attention,
turned his Warholian 15 minutes (that stretched out to an ungodly four or five
days) into an ad for his flight school.”
“That
image alone, that of Dekkers as victim, made me throw down the article in
disgust.”
We
wondered: Did she think quoting Rudi Dekkers was
going to settle my hash?
"Rudi
Dekkers... said Hopsicker's accusations have taken a toll on his
business and caused former customers to stop associating with him.
"This S.O.B., he doesn't realize he destroys families and
people," Dekkers said in a telephone interview Thursday. "I have seen nothing
that's the truth. He fantasizes. He fantasizes stories, and names," reported
the Herald Tribune.
"If I had the money, would I sue him? Into hell," added Dekkers, a Dutch
immigrant who now charters airplanes from Naples. "I would sue him into hell."
Well now. I'd contribute
$20: Should we take up a collection so poor Mr. Dekkers can have his day in
court? What are the odds he'd make it to a deposition without experiencing the
'ol David Ferrie 'night before testifying heart attack?'
But on to more important
questions. Like:
"Is the Sarasota Herald
Tribune ever planning on telling their readers about the heroin
trafficking?"
When
the Trib's reporter said “we can find out you know,” we hope she was
telling the truth. Because Americans, and most especially the families of the
almost 3000 murder victims, are still waiting for answers to hundreds of
conspicuously-unanswered questions.
So we
have a few questions for the Sarasota Herald Tribune. If they don’t know the
answers, we'd appreciate it if they'd adopt reporter Glenn's attitude:
“We can find out, you know.”
Because
if “we can
find out you know” had been the Sarasota Herald Tribune’s motto in the stunned
aftermath of the 9.11 attack—when it would have mattered—the
nation could have been spared... a lot, not the least of which was the
disgraceful spectacle of every American network with which Time Warner
cross-promotes trotting out international criminal Rudi Dekkers as the expert
on the hijackers' time in America.
If the
Sarasota Herald Tribune had reported to the waiting nation the news—the
real news—that DEA agents discovered 43 pounds of
heroin on the Lear jet of flight school owner Wally Hilliard during
the same month Atta and Marwan arrived to “fly” at his school... And that the
plane had made 30 weekly trips for thirty weeks in a row down to Venezuela and
back ferrying the same people...
Imagine
how America’s sad and tragic recent history might have been changed. Here
recall how only the fact that "communist" Lee Harvey Oswald inexplicably lived
long enough to scream "I'm a patsy!" on camera which prevented the U.S.
military from invading Cuba in retaliation.
If
someone high in American government was trading heroin with Osama bin Laden at
the time of the attack...would we still have invaded Iraq?
Youth wants to know
Why
doesn't the Sarasota Herald Tribune ask Katherine Harris about shilling for
one of Rudi Dekkers and Wally Hilliard's failed ventures (Florida Air) while
Florida Governor Jeb Bush was at the same time shilling for
another Hilliard failed venture (Discover Air) in Orlando?
Are
Republicans
known for giving free public endorsements to failing
enterprises? Or were these somehow special cases?
And why
did the Herald Tribune run a story so laughably false that it would have
caused even a Warren Commission staffer to blush with shame?
We
refer to the Herald Tribune report “Fifth Pilot Trainee Vanishes:
‘Mohammed’ Slept on her Couch,
Venice Woman Says”
which exhibited a twisted pretzel logic that would make Steely Dan proud.
Why was
a Sarasota Herald Tribune reporter stalking and intimidating Mohamed Atta's
American girlfriend even after she told him she’d get in trouble
with Jeb Bush's Florida Department of Law Enforcement if she said anything?
Why
didn’t Sarasota Herald Tribune reporters question the illegal ownership of
flight schools, fixed base operations, and American air carriers by foreign
(Dutch) nationals doing business with the terrorists?
From
John Patten:
“Our nation's most terrible moment provided quite a windfall for the flight
school entrepreneur. Dekkers had significantly jacked up his prices for the
9/11 terrorists. It appears if you attended Huffman Aviation's flight school
and didn't want to learn to land, it cost extra, and Dekkers collected that
extra.”
Patten
is absolutely correct. Demonstrably correct. We're happy to provide the Herald
Tribune with citations. We’d like to know: What’s up with that?
We want
to hear The Sarasota Herald Tribune say “We can find out you know”
about matters of greater significance than "local self-published
conspiracy theorists."
It
seems only fair. We’ve been a good sport about their snidely derisive,
condescending & attitude-filled celebration of ignorance.
James Garrison, RIP
In situations where addressing abundant evidence disproving the government’s
official explanation proves inconvenient, which seem to occur with
extraordinary frequency, "Conspiracy theorist” is the label used by
authorities and their lap dogs in the major news media
Despite
40 years worth of shilling by the likes of Dan Rather (the only
reporter present in Dealey Plaza when Kennedy was murdered who, drat the luck,
didn’t see a thing) every poll shows an overwhelming majority of the American
people believe the Warren Commission's conclusions were a sham, and that
courageous New Orleans prosecutor Jim Garrison was right about the existence
of a conspiracy to assassinate JFK.
The
percentage grows every year.
We hope
that one day “Welcome to TerrorLand”
helps the investigation of some courageous future prosecutor intent on
discovering the truth about the Sept 11th attack.
We feel
a little like Forrest Gump. That's all we have to say about that.