A2 rhetoric reaches absurd new heights on the News letters page, but this time from the conservative side: the Ypsilanti School Board’s decision to scrap the Braves team name is worse than the Trail of Tears, and, as if that weren’t enough, just as bad as a similar action by EMU’s regents.
We’ve criticized the News for characterizing blogs primarily as an efficient new way for kids to advertise their availability to bullies and sexual predators, so it’s only fair to link to their more positive coverage of local online communities.
Two residents of the neighborhood where the proposed Bandemer Ridge condo project would be attempt to correct the perception that they are “a group of NIMBYs.” The evidence: “[M]any of us feel this massive development is out of scale for our neighborhood and would have significant negative impacts on our quality of life.” Isn’t that more or less the definition of a NIMBY?
Ann Arbor NIMBYs set a new standard for shamelessness: trying to “save” the “historic” Elks lodge by speaking out against a project that just happens to be a six-story building in their proverbial backyards. One bewildered Elks member told the News, “Now, everybody wants to help us…We’ve had our hands out for years, and nobody helped us.'’
The project would, as one resident pointed out, be like sixty Twizzler pieces surrounded by many single Twizzler pieces.
A letter to the News explores the prophetic power of film:
Early in 1979, Jane Fonda’s “The China Syndrome'’ was successful at the box office, and then the catastrophe at Three Mile Island happened on March 28, 1979. The nuclear power industry was crippled. Despite the spinach scare earlier with E-coli, the country is gripped with fear from the recent Taco Bell illness in the East. Interestingly, not too many people saw the film “Fast Food Nation.'’ We did at the State Theater, and it’s worth viewing. Since Taco Bell gets their produce and meat from plants in Texas, you can imagine how the film and real illness are connected.
We usually avoid any work titled “[something] Nation,” so perhaps we’re missing something here, but was there something in it about scallions from Texas?
Of course, the ability of pet-issue movies for the NPR set to predict world events wouldn’t be very useful if you could realize it only through hindsight.
Recently, we saw the film “Bobby.'’ The similarity between the Vietnam era and a young charismatic Bobby Kennedy, with the current Iraq conflict and Barack Obama, who may be a candidate for president, are chilling. I can only pray that nothing happens to the young senator from Illinois.
You might want to include the Mayan civilization in your prayers too. Recent box office events point toward an imminent collapse.
The “new high school names are politically correct” meme is picking up steam! Two letters in the News’ latest “Focus” section use the dreaded PC label. Another letter snarkily warns that Skyline and Northcrest may still “risk offending someone somewhere,” while one writer derides the proposed names as “comfortable.” What happened to the days when high school names were there to challenge, to provoke, maybe even to offend our delicate sensibilities?
Gawker has a few words for a writer to The New York Times’ “Ethicist” column who argued that reneging on a deal to buy scalped Michigan football tickets when a better deal came along is okay because scalping tickets is unethical anyway. “Look, I grew up in Ann Arbor,” the Gawker editor reveals, “and I recognize that college football–and perhaps Michigan football in particular–is something that millions of people in this country believe has some kind of value. But as far as I’m concerned, you guys just made traffic miserable on Saturday afternoons when I wanted to drive to Target because they had the best deals on shampoo.”
But s/he’s not finished with the anti-A2 screed. Unfortunately, as often happens when someone tries to take a swipe at Tree Town from a comfortable several-hundred-mile distance, it comes out like a funhouse-mirror version of the Deuce:
And it is so Ann Arbor of you to write in to an advice column with a pre-fabricated answer to your own question and ending with “agreed?” I’m sure you’re reading this column right now with a slice of Zingerman’s chocolate cherry bread and some artisanal Provencale butter from Whole Foods and thinking “Yup. I knew I was right. Now where did I put that question for Car Talk?”
First of all, the only topping for Zingerman’s chocolate cherry bread that makes sense is cream cheese (Philly cream cheese; the in-house stuff is just too tangy.) But the real problem is that the quintessential Ann Arborite portrayed here probably isn’t going to be buying scalped football tickets (and certainly isn’t going to be clogging traffic by attempting to drive to the game.) Scalped tickets for Jorma Kaukonen at the Ark, maybe.
It’s a tradeoff. Sure, move to New York and you get the nightlife, the restaurants, the public transportation. But you lose the ability to make accurate snide remarks about A2 based on arcane details of last night’s Greenway Task Force meeting, and sometimes you don’t even realize what’s been lost.
The News is soliciting entries for its local news haiku contest. Their sample entry:
Frieze Building must fall
New dorm will fill streets with cars
Town too weak for gown
Ever since the AAPS announced the two names under consideration for the new high school, Skyline and Northcrest, there’s been a lot of complaining (the Daily seems to think that one of the names is “Northridge”.) But here’s an argument we hadn’t heard yet: the names should be rejected because they’re “politically correct.” Perhaps the concern is that substrings like “north” and “sky” might make people think about global warming or something.
Today’s top story in the Daily (not online) details the efforts of landlords to whip students into a frenzy over their ultra-desirable housing — only to end up with a single group of three students camping out in an SUV all night outside of Campus Management’s office for a crack at what the leasing company had touted as “the most sought-after house for the fall.” Said one of the lucky new leaseholders, “What surprised me is that it was supposed to be the most sought-after house, but no one came for it until 8.”
So, there’s no housing frenzy, as was threatened by the landlords when the ordinance was up for consideration. But the dire predictions of a mad rush that never materialized have resulted in “confusion,” for which some students are blaming the ordinance. “I feel like a freshman again, trying to figure out housing,” a junior told the Daily. “I think this adds a lot of anxiety to students around this time of year,” said a sophomore. It might be too much to expect the average undergrad to master the intricacies of A2 politics, but could they at least refrain from acting as the PR organ for the landlords’ association?