Last week I hypothesized that closeted Republicans actually run Seattle's Left-of-Left, Angry Alternative Weekly, The Stranger. This week I'm sure of it. What else but a Rovian Cointelpro campaign could account for this isolationist bile?
Read on.....
You'd have to be sniffing amyl nitrate poppers around the clock to formulate claims such as these - which, I, your intrepid unofficial Stranger ombudsperson - was able to glean from the above-linked, post-11/2 socio-political secessionist manifesto titled, "The Urban Archipelago."
*Urban liberals have the power to decide that commuters will no longer be welcome as employees of in-city businesses. "People who commute to the city for their livelihood and then attack urban areas and people in the voting booth are the worst kind of hypocrites. Commuters, we neither want nor need you."
(The ripple effects of this pronunciamento are already being felt across the city of Seattle. The directors of Pemco, Starbucks, Boeing, Washington Mutual and the University of Washington are all at this moment in hastily-convened meetings debating mass lay-offs of suburbanites in their employ, so as not incur the wrath of The Stranger and its many readers who are in positions of great political, corporate and cultural influence).
*Urban liberals have been the driving force involved in "saving fragile suburban economies," but after 11/2, "we do not have to concern ourselves" with that.
Interestingly, in the same piece, the Stranger posits that urbanites "don't use suburban roads. We can let the suburbs figure out a way to pay for them."
(So....see...urbanites have been "saving fragile suburban economies" not by actually going there and shopping or working, but by a sort of, um, unexplained telekinesis).
Apparently, the power of thinking, as opposed to doing, figures quite prominently into the urban liberal weltanschaung described by The Stranger.
*For instance, I had not known what an important contribution urban liberals had been making - through "worrying" - to battling the invasion of the American heartland by Wal-Mart, which The Stranger describes as a "rapacious corporation." Once again Red America: you're on your own now. "Liberals in big cities spend a lot of time worrying about the impact Wal-Mart is having on the heartland. No more."
I'm sure the heartland is devestated to hear that. About as devastated as all the multi-hued shoppers filling the Wal-Mart just south of Seattle in Renton. It seems people with children and mortgages - as opposed to lime-green hair, piercings and I-Pods - unaccountably like a good bargain.
There's more in The Stranger's stated, and sweeping urban agenda to capture the White House and win legal gay marriage nationwide. Specifically, rallying the urban base with "safe injection sites" for heroin users; and "discouraging excessive auto use by taxing mileage."
Given all this, and additional material in the same issue, such as "F*** The South," by the noted author "Anonymous," it would be easy enough to presume The Stranger is merely playing to the hard-core urban liberal peanut gallery. Easy enough to presume that they do all this tongue in cheek, and are happy at the end of the day to be making money.
But that would be to ignore the long-term game plan of the GOP, which backs rags such as The Stranger through covert placement of Republican-linked business operatives on the corporate boards of the parent media companies which own such publications.
And that long-term plan is brutal in its simplicity: as readers grow older, and become, say, voting adults, they inevitably realize how far they've progressed from the infantile, knee-jerk, blindly obeisant liberal posturing represented by their local "alternative weekly," or weeklies; whether it's the one in Cleveland, Chicago, New York, Boston, L.A. SF, Eugene, Portland, or Seattle.
It starts when you vote for Kerry for president, but Republican Dino Rossi for Governor, who - final absentee and provisional ballots pending - appears likely to become this state's first GOP Guv elected since 1980, and is carrying the key Seattle collar counties of Snohomish and Pierce, as well as one suburban Portland hub, Clark County.
Places crucial to any state-wide election, where neither Christine Gregoire's "I'm a D So Vote For Me," nor The Stranger's "F*** You" amounts to much of a platform, I'm afraid.
Where it ends is anybody's guess. But I for one will be wondering just how many urban "Democrats" are going to have that famed Red America delicacy - green bean cassserole made with Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup and Durkee canned onion rings - on their Thanksgiving tables later this month.
Oops, gotta go. There's the UPS guy on my Seattle doorstoop. I think he's got those Buck Owens CDs I ordered.
Cross-posted at Rosenblog.
Posted by Matt Rosenberg at November 12, 2004 12:38 PM | Email ThisWe live on islands of sanity, liberalism, and compassion--New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle, St. Louis, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and on and on.
New York City - Outrageous Taxes, Outrageous Cost of Living, Decent Housing in Short Supply, Mediocre Schools at best.
Chicago - High taxes, horrible schools, legendary corruption.
Philadelphia - Corruption, high taxes, held hostage to public employee unions
San Francisco - urine-soaked-vagrant capital of the world, city pays for sex change operations while schools sink deeper into mediocrity, filthy environment.
Can the urban elitists get a clue, maybe, of exactly why we in the red counties reject your enlightened, liberal style of government?
Posted by: Matt J Kurlander on November 12, 2004 02:19 PMI'm also a native Philadelphian that has lived in Seattle for the past 7 years, so I've seen both the 'good' and the 'bad' of the urban condition (even though as a suburban kid, I admittedly didn't see the inner city that much). I'm not old enough to have personally witnessed the entire decline of the city of Philadelphia either, but a part of that decline, I feel, was a lack of funding into civic projects while also raising taxes, which drove the weatlhier people out to the suburbs, which lowered the total tax base, and the problem perpetuated itself until Philadelphia became an 'island', one that no one wanted to live on.
In Seattle, this hasn't happened in any way, but as a resident, I do worry that we could go down the same path. The Stranger wants to 'do battle' with the suburbs by employing liberal policies. That is one-sided thinking that I worry could backfire, much like it has with making the Philly unions way too powerful, but I also worry that leaving civic projects like the Monorail unfinished will have just as devastating an effect as the city expands its housing density without providing for ways to get around.
But beyond simple tax and spend issues, there are other factors that brought about the decline of life in Philadelphia as well. One is the drug war. The drug war hit East Coast cities particularly hard in the 80s, which brought a wave of crime that drove anybody out of the city who could afford to do so. That may have actually had a greater effect on lowering the tax base and the decline of Philadelphia than anything. I think this is where the folks at the Stranger may actually be on to something. By promoting more liberal policies towards drug use and issues of personal freedom, we won't fall into the same cycle of violence that East Coast cities fell prey to in the past, and wealthy folks that are willing to pay for a nicer island (like me) will stick around. It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone at this point, liberal or conservative, that the War on Drugs has caused more problems that it's solved, and solving this puzzle could also be part of solving the puzzle of making urban areas and the true urban philosophy actually work.
I love living in the city, but if there are crack dealers shooting each other on my street, I've moving to Redmond.
Posted by: thehim on November 12, 2004 08:03 PM