In finding Chris Morris' Green Deal (sic) "oops-ed" to be disinformative, misinformative, objectionable and dismissive, our guest columnist is being charitable.

I had planned on writing a response of some sort to one of Chris Morris' worst ever News and Tribune opinion column outings: OPINION: Green Deal a little farfetched. Morris' column truly is abominable, but Randy Smith beat me to the critique. Here it is.

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Keep Chris Away from the Children.

I'm a writer and have been a writer most of my life. I've also been a newspaper reporter and newspaper news and copy editor (over the course of two decades), a book editor, and a published author. I also wrote a nationally distributed column on topics of my choosing for a few years.

On Tuesday, I woke to find a Twitter referral to an opinion column by Chris Morris, an assistant editor of the Jeffersonville daily newspaper. Given that Morris is a member of that paper's editorial board, I don't know whether that particular piece would be called an op-ed, but in my view, it certainly qualifies as an "oops-ed."

I consider myself a fairly sophisticated reader of mainstream science and politics, so the error in the very first sentence was jarring to me.

Morris referred to something he calls the "New Green Deal." No one else has ever heard of it, though there is a dramatic proposal circulating about a "Green New Deal." That was either a glaring mistake by the writer or a disingenuous attempt to belittle by mis-terming something one opposes. In modern times, such mis-terming has been a primary tool for disinformation, popularized by former Speaker Newt Gingrich and his technocratic ally, Frank Luntz.

Nothing if not determined, the columnist continues to refer to his bugbear as the "Green Deal" throughout his editorial. Again, there is no such thing. There is a Green New Deal.

Morris at least acknowledges that the proposal, in its breadth and ambition, hearkens back to the second President Roosevelt's New Deal designed to address a nation in crisis.

The column's headline calls this new proposal "a little farfetched." In most dictionaries, it would be "far-fetched," but I'll postpone further criticism of what could have been a difference of opinion on orthography.

However, as an aside, Mr. Morris's newspaper is becoming known for its near-daily errors in facts, spelling, grammar, and word choices that are, to me, risible.

As a natural editor, I've made a pest of myself in pointing those out, sometimes privately but more often via social media. And sometimes, it is appreciated by the reporter, who tries to correct the errors in online editions. I'm sure others resent my suggestions.

I do this for historical reasons. I became a precocious and accomplished reader early in life because I read newspapers. My parents modeled this and I, being an eldest child, emulated their example. In short, I learned to read by reading newspapers. Over the years I developed a highly advanced ability to proofread, a skill that no longer offers remuneration.

A newspaper that has no standards when it comes to spelling, grammar, or word choice puts children (and adults) like me at risk of being "word dummies." Beyond that, for a certain class of individual, it diminishes greatly the reputation of the newspaper. We can ill afford that.

But back to Mr. Morris's opinion piece.

I'm generally inclined toward the ideas of the Green New Deal. I see them as ambitious but doable. Mr. Morris sees them as far-fetched.

And I'm certainly not the person within his readership who can best refute the disinformation and misinformation Morris relies on to form and express his opinion. But I'll bet I can express mine in a more credible way than he has done with his.

Mr Morris unintentionally "blows it" in his second graf, one in which he poo-poos recent reports of climate change scientists with incendiary intent. He exaggerates:

The basis behind the Green Deal (sic) is a recent climate change report which (sic) basically states if (sic) we don't change our ways, the Earth as we know it will cease to exist and be swallowed up by floods, out-of-control fires and will basically be inhabitable.

Inhabitable means capable of being inhabited. That is, those bad things (can we agree?) will make life on earth, "basically," livable. If the mischaracterization hadn't already undermined the editorial, the poor word choice essentially refutes the point Mr. Morris was (presumably) trying to make.

Later in the piece, Mr. Morris does it again. See if you can pinpoint the moment where he undercuts the credibility of his own piece.

I do believe many Americans, however, have absolutely no conscious when it comes to littering and being more environmentally friendly.

I am conscious of where Morris went wrong here. How about you? He may have meant to write "consciousness" here, but it's more likely he meant to say "conscience." These are different words with different spellings and meanings. One implies awareness. The other implies guilt and a need for correction.

Morris continues:

Do I believe in a lot of what this Green New Deal [ah-ha!] is pushing [you know, like a drug dealer]? It is way too left of center for me and unreasonable.

There are many places you can go to read more about current climate science. I believe we are already seeing the effects of anthropogenic global warming and the resultant extremes in temperature, precipitation, winds, captured oxygen, etc. It's plausible that we are very near a tipping point where we will be unable to reverse the effects of the gases we are injecting into our atmosphere.

I'm eager to see if we have politicians and policy makers who can come up with an American and a global solution.

I don't believe I've read an opinion from a masthead editor of a mainstream newspaper that used such pejorative and dismissive language. The piece does little to inform while hurling insults at broad swathes of Americans. Had I been in charge, it would never have been published.

I could critique it line-by-line, but as I said, there are others who can do that better than I can. Chris Morris, after all, is paid to inform and opine. I am not.

I am, however, willing to submit an invoice if his newspaper is willing to underwrite a well-researched op-ed column.

Let's leave it at this: Almost every paragraph is acid-tongued, deliberately insulting, objectionable, misinformative, or disinformative. That's not what I look for in a newspaper or from a man who represents the editorial board of his publication.

And far sooner than 11 years from now, Mr. Morris will disavow this contribution to the public discourse. If his is the view from the "center," God help us all.

THE BEER BEAT: Speakeasies here, speakeasies there, and not an original thought to be found anywhere.

It's far easier to be "magical" when your family has profited immensely from LEGAL liquor sales, the budget is unlimited, and you're not scraping for crumbs to implement good ideas -- but money can buy neither love nor an exemption from imminent prosecution for inexcusably pretentious word abuse.

The CJ's writer somehow keeps a straight face, this being a skill I never learned.

Blink and you might miss the latest trend to hit Louisville bars: Speakeasies, by Bailey Loosemore (Louisville Courier Journal)

 ... "It's sort of out of time and out of space," said Maud Welch, co-owner of Hell or High Water in downtown Louisville. "You walk in and you feel like you're part of an escape."

Welch and her brother, Stirling Welch, opened Hell or High Water earlier this year after spending 18 months constructing their bar within the Whiskey Row development.

The Louisville native said she was inspired by the speakeasy trend that picked up in New York during the four years she lived there.

"I just fell in love with the concept, especially in New York where in the hustle and bustle, you were able to go into these hidden underground spaces to have a quiet moment with a friend," Welch said. "It was pretty magical."

All together now:

"Speakeasy" is voyeurism, channeling the thrill of that danger without having to encounter it.

---

From June 2, 2017

THE BEER BEAT: "Please stop calling your legal, open-to-the-public bar a 'speakeasy' " -- and other adventures in fake news.

Allow me to suggest that far too many lamentations about the scourge of "fake news" are found to emanate from those who routinely and unquestioningly absorb vast mounds of extraneous bilge written and photographed in the service of food and drink promotion.

It isn't so much that many of the press releases I read from food and drink businesses are badly written, though stunningly often, they are.

Cringing in the expectation of further abuse is no way to enjoy your morning coffee.

Rather, it's when these hype sheets refer to the imperative of Hagio-Simmered Whey Encrusted Virgin Pork Gills, somehow combining pretentiousness, snobbery and loin of PT Barnum in a single phrase. We're supposed to nod knowingly, so that others will, too, even if none of us has any idea what it means.

As another example, a word like "speakeasy," unraveled here. To use this word without having a clue as to its proper context and historical meaning ... well, is that not fake?

If it isn't fake, what is?

And before someone asks, the late Speakeasy in New Albany was a restaurant, bar and musical venue that didn't claim to be something it wasn't. It was a proper name, not an implied identity. 

Fantasy is fun, and it appears that vast numbers of us were raised on pretending, though spouting utter nonsense doesn't make you a card-carrying member of the 1%, precisely because the 1% still holds all the cards -- and intends to keep it that way.

Better to learn something, act on one's convictions and teach the coming generations how life really works. End-times extravaganzas financed by plastic might prove only to presage the end times. I'd prefer to think and move otherwise.

I remain supportive of the various revolutions in food and drink, and always will, but the time has long since passed to raise a hand and call "bullshit," whether to drivel oozed by national political figures, local economic dishevelment directors or the posturing that accompanies restaurant openings and new beer releases.

Now, I'm going to make a statement (again) without really knowing how I intend to back it up, but speaking only for myself: It's back to hitting fungoes and shooting those hundred free throws every day. My world needs to be about fundamentals, genuineness and dependability. The train must become reacquainted with the rails, and those rules that matter learned prior to breaking them.

Rant over. Enjoy your damned weekend.

Please stop calling your legal, open-to-the-public bar a "speakeasy", by Esther Mobley (SF Gate)

Just because your bar doesn't have a sign does not make it a "speakeasy."

Other features that, sorry, still don't make it a speakeasy: a hidden door. A reservation-only policy. An intimidating gatekeeper.

And here's something that definitely precludes your bar from being a speakeasy: You send out press releases and post endless photos on Instagram, no matter how many old-timey mustaches or antique medicine bottles may appear in said photos.

For a while I've been biting my tongue, willing to let this term go the way of "handmade" or "artisanal," wearing itself out to the point of meaninglessness. But it's gone too far now.

The latest offender is the Grid, the new "Tron"-themed "speakeasy" inside the arcade-cum-bar Coin-Op. (Though there's some confusion even among its operators about what to call it: All press releases call it a "speakeasy." But one partner prefers "VIP lounge" to "speakeasy," which, don't even get me started on "VIP lounge.")

Spare us: Both Grooms and Gahan, putting themselves and corporate interests ahead of Hoosier Families.

There assuredly are a few local Democrats who can write, but unfortunately, they're not writing on the DemoDisneyDixiecratic Party's website or social media pages.

Rather, we get by-the-numbers political template drivel, which might have been composed by a DNC Bot rather than a human being, such is the sad absence of a pulse.

Still, let's take a look at two sentences, beginning with the header.

Grooms out of touch as he seeks third term

Fair enough. It's true that Ron Grooms' record is dismal. He's never met an oligarch he wouldn't fluff, or a theocrat he'd fail to enable. Local, state and national chambers of commerce undoubtedly will see to it that Grooms never pays, ever again, for his annual suite in Branson.

It's the subheading that matters.

Record reflects putting himself and corporate interests ahead of Hoosier Families

Remember this sentence should Jeff Gahan reverse course and decide to challenge Grooms.

Also remember it if Gahan chooses to run for a third term as mayor.

Has any local politician in recent decades been more aptly summarized by party scribe Dickey's "putting himself ahead" than Gahan? Grooms may be a corporate shill, but so is Gahan, and at least Grooms doesn't have his portrait in every barber shop.

The chairman's batting below the Mendoza line. Doesn't this mean it's time to be called up to the big leagues as shoeshine contractor for Tom Perez?

THE BEER BEAT: "Please stop calling your legal, open-to-the-public bar a 'speakeasy,' " and other adventures in fake news.

Allow me to suggest that far too many lamentations about the scourge of "fake news" are found to emanate from those who routinely and unquestioningly absorb vast mounds of extraneous bilge written and photographed in the service of food and drink promotion.

It isn't so much that many of the press releases I read from food and drink businesses are badly written, though stunningly often, they are.

Cringing in the expectation of further abuse is no way to enjoy your morning coffee.

Rather, it's when these hype sheets refer to the imperative of Hagio-Simmered Whey Encrusted Virgin Pork Gills, somehow combining pretentiousness, snobbery and loin of PT Barnum in a single phrase. We're supposed to nod knowingly, so that others will, too, even if none of us has any idea what it means.

As another example, a word like "speakeasy," unraveled here. To use this word without having a clue as to its proper context and historical meaning ... well, is that not fake?

If it isn't fake, what is?

And before someone asks, the late Speakeasy in New Albany was a restaurant, bar and musical venue that didn't claim to be something it wasn't. It was a proper name, not an implied identity. 

Fantasy is fun, and it appears that vast numbers of us were raised on pretending, though spouting utter nonsense doesn't make you a card-carrying member of the 1%, precisely because the 1% still holds all the cards -- and intends to keep it that way.

Better to learn something, act on one's convictions and teach the coming generations how life really works. End-times extravaganzas financed by plastic might prove only to presage the end times. I'd prefer to think and move otherwise.

I remain supportive of the various revolutions in food and drink, and always will, but the time has long since passed to raise a hand and call "bullshit," whether to drivel oozed by national political figures, local economic dishevelment directors or the posturing that accompanies restaurant openings and new beer releases.

Now, I'm going to make a statement (again) without really knowing how I intend to back it up, but speaking only for myself: It's back to hitting fungoes and shooting those hundred free throws every day. My world needs to be about fundamentals, genuineness and dependability. The train must become reacquainted with the rails, and those rules that matter learned prior to breaking them.

Rant over. Enjoy your damned weekend.

Please stop calling your legal, open-to-the-public bar a "speakeasy", by Esther Mobley (SF Gate)

Just because your bar doesn't have a sign does not make it a "speakeasy."

Other features that, sorry, still don't make it a speakeasy: a hidden door. A reservation-only policy. An intimidating gatekeeper.

And here's something that definitely precludes your bar from being a speakeasy: You send out press releases and post endless photos on Instagram, no matter how many old-timey mustaches or antique medicine bottles may appear in said photos.

For a while I've been biting my tongue, willing to let this term go the way of "handmade" or "artisanal," wearing itself out to the point of meaninglessness. But it's gone too far now.

The latest offender is the Grid, the new "Tron"-themed "speakeasy" inside the arcade-cum-bar Coin-Op. (Though there's some confusion even among its operators about what to call it: All press releases call it a "speakeasy." But one partner prefers "VIP lounge" to "speakeasy," which, don't even get me started on "VIP lounge.")

Which prompts the other important question: Must we be branded in the first place?

About New Albany, the recently affixed green banners downtown say: "The Heart of the City."

Meanwhile, the city's advertisement in last week's SoIn reads: "New Albany: It's where you should be."

Interestingly, the city's previous ads, which have run for the past two years, note: "More to Explore."

With the horrendous, ludicrous, be-Dudgeoned "Come to City" always hovering in the city's collective memory of atrocities, the preceding slogans constitute another wave of someone's earnest effort -- who or what this someone is suggests the first of several vital questions -- to brand New Albany.

That these efforts invariably sound old and dated provides clues as to their origins.

What these geriatric wordplays seem to have in common is the perennial lack of participation in the branding process on the part of any of those (businesses, citizens) who are about to be branded. No matter what is said by the many who object to their exclusion, or how often it is said, the non-transparency continues ... again, and again.

Thus, as a Twitter reader perceptively wrote: "It's tough to market a brand when you have multiple entities pushing multiple brands."

He then countered with two suggestions of this own:

"New Albany, the Heart of Where You Should Be"

and

"New Albany, no mob of young people here!"

Maybe no mob of young people, but plenty of white-skinned motorcyclists traveling in groups ... and they're the ones who scare me the most. Those costumes ... just terrifying.

Reader MC subsequently embraced the melting pot approach, and synthesized an amalgam:

"Explore the heart of New Albany. It's where there is more to come."

Even the newspaper editor got into the act; SVH suggested:

"New Albany. Better than Regular Albany."

This got the juices flowing, and these ensued:

"New Albany. Old politics."

"What Happens in Inanity, Stays in New Albany."

"Come for the Heart of New Albany -- Stay for the Liver."

"New Albany: Deep in the Heart of Bad Sloganeering."

I persist in thinking that Dave Thrasher's classic take is the best: "New Albany: We're All Here Because We're Not All There." But this idea from old buddy LB isn't bad:

"New Albany: Home of New Albanian Brewing Company."

That works for me!

Trickling back: It's about gravy, not gravity.

One can be for the River View project or against it, although like most New Albanians, not much of a damn is given at all, but to me, the most regrettable aspect of the proposed development just might be the inexplicable decision of its proponents to describe the potential economic impact on downtown as "trickle back."

I personally heard these words spoken at the recent public hearing at the library, and DNA repeated them in its mailing yesterday -- because that's what happens when you're looking off someone else's paper come exam time.

(By the way, congratulations to OSIN's Daniel Suddeath for including the "trickle back" passage in his account of the coming council vote on inclusion of River View in the TIF area)

Understanding that historical perspective is fleeting in a place like New Albany, it must be stated for the record that "trickle" as an economic (and perhaps linguistic) principle has considerably bad (and dated) connotations, going back to the far-off 1980's and Ronald “Supply Side” Reagan's program to enhance and preserve the wealth of the enriched, crumbs of which inevitably would reach the poor, or so we were told.

For all the hue and cry to date, during which River View's backers have all but suggested that the condo project with $180,000 studio flats would cure the common cold and make Charles Atlas out of the puniest of male anatomies, is it really a positive selling point to define the project’s economic benefits as "trickling back" to the remainder of downtown?

For $53 million (without a TIF pledge, it's so far an imaginary sum), don’t we have a right to expect something more than a trickle? Is the usage of this term unintended buffoonery, cluelessness, or just plain bad writing?

Given the stock caricatures of beautiful, white, Merlot-sipping stock traders gracing the back page of Mainland's prospectus (above), I'm guessing the latter. The acclaimed conversation from yesterday continues here: Mr. Haney, DNA support "trickle back" from River View.

News and Tribune eliminates Sunday, adds Monday, calls it "robust." I call it very bad writing.

I guess that's what happens when advertising salespeople pretend to be journalists in a society where too few people can tell the difference, which makes me feel for the genuine, trained journalists who must listen to people like me pontificate, when their publishers evidently don't read the paper, anyway, or else they would not foist tripe like this on us in the guise of news.

Seriously, real journalists don't write ad copy like this unless derringers wrapped in pink slips are pointed at their heads -- do they?

The News and Tribune will launch a Weekend edition Saturday and also begin publication of a Monday edition starting Monday, publisher Bill Hanson announced Wednesday.

The Weekend edition will feature the combined content of the current Saturday and Sunday publications and will be delivered by mail on Saturdays. It will be available at area retail outlets and newspaper racks starting Saturday morning and into Sunday.

“We are combining two already strong newspapers into one even more robust product — as well as adding a Monday newspaper many subscribers have been asking for,” Hanson said.

Then comes the inevitable, albeit it delayed, punch line:

The Monday paper — like the rest of the week — will be delivered the same day by the U.S. Postal Service. The News and Tribune will not publish a paper on federal holidays because there is no mail delivery.

Reckon that's the real dollars and cents reason for all the smoke, mirrors and bull feces, right?

Another bottom line decision from the Retirement Systems of Alabama, just like the one that has deprived New Albany of its local newspaper for the first time since before the Civil War.

Well, I can speak only for myself and the missus.

I've persisted as a subscriber solely because of the Sunday edition, being an old fart and actually enjoying the feel and smell of newsprint with coffee on a lazy morning off. Hanson's "robust" explanation quite simply is a contrived insult to the intelligence of any thinking human, especially New Albany's newspaper readers, who already are the major losers in the pension fund-driven "combining" of newspaper operations.

Lest the point be raised: Editor Shea Van Hoy has explained to me in detail the reason for my column no longer appearing, and although it's disappointing, I respect both him and the reasoning behind the decision. This is not about that, because I had no intention of dropping my subscription until Wednesday's announcement.

Now, there's no choice. Anyone want to start a newspaper?