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Bland on Bland

Okay, so we haven’t been posting as much as usual lately. And here’s why.

This Judy McGovern column, aptly titled “Watch for report on greenway,” exemplifies everything that’s wrong with A2 political discourse today. It can basically be summed up by saying that you should watch for a report on the greenway.

What happened to our favorite columnist’s exhortations for townies to “take back the neighborhoods“? The nightmare scenarios about student cars taking up spaces that could go to hard-working Ann Arbor families? The insinuations that the Ann Arbor media need something akin to a Project Censored so taboo stories like the blight of porch couches can finally get some much-needed coverage?

A suffocating fog of blandness has settled over the political landscape in A2 these last few months, and bloggers are suffering the effects. Just turn on any city council meeting. The public comment portion is dominated by the same people and topics week after week. Palestine, Palestine, bringing back the spirit of the 60’s, more Palestine. Even the NIMBYs seem to be taking a breather. (As Tolstoy might have said, “Palestine public commenters are all alike; every NIMBY public commenter is NIMBY in his or her own way.”)

So we’ll do our best to hold up through this crank drought. In the meantime, we hear that there’s this report on the greenway that you should be watching for.

5 Responses to “Bland on Bland”


  1. I believe this is why Ann Arbor is sometimes known as “The Beige City.”

    posted by dcwp on October 30th, 2006 at 12:53 pm

  2. What the HECK does Palestine have to do with local politics in the People’s Republic of Ann Arbor? Are those pro-Palestinian protestors in A2 nuts? Oh, wait, I just answered my own question in the affirmative.

    posted by woobagooba on October 30th, 2006 at 4:41 pm

  3. Bland Arbor.

    You could call it.

    posted by David Boyle on October 31st, 2006 at 12:14 am

  4. There are no hard-working families in Ann Arbor. It’s another myth.

    posted by toasty on October 31st, 2006 at 3:24 am

  5. I love the phrase “working families.” It’s useful for calling attention to those other common kinds of families: the sitting on their asses watching Jerry Springer families, the 200-year trust fund families, the chronically unemployed families. When I hear about “working families” I also always think of the pre-industrial revolution family-as-economic unit. Because if it’s a working family, clearly everyone is working, right? I mean, the kids must work in sweatshops, or at least have paper routes, or something, in order to pull their weight. I would be very disappointed to hear of a so-called working family where all the kids do is go to school and engage in economically unproductive activities like soccer or ballet. Surely that’s not the case…

    Ok, like you say, AAIO, things are slow.

    posted by Carolyn on October 31st, 2006 at 2:15 pm

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