ann arbor is overrated.

While the rest of the country dukes it out over Bob Greene, Ann Arborites can follow a different columnist’s ouster - that of Dustin Seibert, whose “The Manifesto” had been one of the best columns in the Daily. In a piece (not online) appearing in the conservative Michigan Review entitled “I paid the cost to be the Boss,” Seibert details how he was overlooked for a promotion in the Arts department, how he sent an angry mass e-mail to the Daily staff “in the style that only I can freak the best” and how he was then removed from the paper by his editor-in-chief.

Okay, he didn’t tell any female readers that they could offer him a “different perspective” on breast implants if only they offered some visual aids, as Greene has been said to. But Seibert’s parting shot offers enough name-naming detail to keep A2 media watchers away from Media News for a while. The Arts editors, according to Seibert, constitute a “fascist regime.” The editor-in-chief believed the Arts section to be “all fucked up.” Luke Smith and Jeff Dickerson, he writes, “the two managing Arts editors…I hold most directly responsible for all this, expressed that they used to be ‘intimidated’ by me as the ‘black kid who wore the big leather jacket’”, being, as they were, “two extremely Caucasian kids from Traverse City whose experiences with black men were probably limited to Carter from Spin City.” And Smith, whose column has come up in this weblog before, was apparently annoyed because Seibert “would not spit-polish his cock like his other writers.”

Maybe conservative publications really do have more fun.

Also, Merrie of mythoslogos has this to say about the “Coney Island” thing:

Coney-Island-ism is a hideous Detroit Metro area thing that has seeped into Ann Arbor…One would think Coney-Island-ism began in New York, where there is a place called Coney Island. But one is not certain. However, it was a “big thing” in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s to get your hot dogs and fries smothered in vomit-like chili sauce in Metro Detroit.