June 15, 2005

Cleanliness Is Next To...

Think Carefully, Now

Into the email inbox this morning from PR Newswire came a release declaring that Reader's Digest had decreed Portland to be the cleanest city in America, beating out the closest competitors of San Jose, Buffalo, Columbus, and San Francisco.

You can see the full rankings for the overview, but if anyone actually cares what Reader's Digest says, they can see the results page for the Portland area, which mainly appears to credit the Combined Sewer Overflow ("Big Pipe") project, the urban growth boundary, public transit through bus and light rail (including creating a fareless zone), sustainability practices, and Waterfront Park.

A number of those criteria will ring some alarm bells around these parts, mostly (although not at all exclusively) with people of the rightward political inclination.

So we thought we'd help them out and offer them up some rhetoric they can use against any of their pet peeves which might have been seized upon by the magazine. We suggest they use this: Cleanliness is next to communism. After all, didn't Colonel Flagg firmly establish that if you remove third, fifth, sixth, and seventh letters from its title, you're left with Red Digest?

Posted at 09:46 AM | PermalinkComments (9) | TrackBacks (0)
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Comments (9)

  1. John Hays on 15 Jun 2005

    I caught your comment over at the Portland Metroblog.

    The post that mysteriously disappeared was my post wherein I criticized the blogging software because of some of the bugs.

    I also criticized some of the blandness of the posts and some of the juvenile cuss words used and to make my point I posted a post with a cuss word in the title about white supremacists in the tri-county area .

    I realize that the Portland Metroblog is a corporate investment and that writing biting satires and exposes are not really the thing to do, but I figured since I was blogging for free I might as well do some posts that might arouse the ire in some people.

    There's way too much deleting of comments about issues that people have strong stands on. In other words don't post posts or comments that might upset the population. I received a lot of email about not discussing certain subjects. I guess the local head honcho, Betsy, contacted one of the overall head honchos, Sean, and Sean decided he didn't want any posts censored. I guess Betsy had other ideas and she runs a tight ship. There's a clique over at the blog.

    There's too much advertising on the blog.

    I was asked to post about seven posts a week or more and by one of the head guys, Sean, and some of the local blogger over at the Portland Metroblog were upset that I was posting as much as I was.

    I deleted the post after I received some hate email. I guess one of the cardinal sins at that blog is criticizing the blogging software or some of the posts.

    All in all, though, I liked posting over there despite all of the hassles, death threats and hate email.

  2. Sid Leader on 15 Jun 2005

    I guess picking up after myself has really paid off!

  3. allehseya on 16 Jun 2005

    heh

  4. Betsy on 16 Jun 2005

    Hmmmm...there weren't any deletions or editing of posts done on MetBlogs by me, that's for sure (save for one post of an authors where I cleaned up a missing tag that was rendering the rest of the site red.)

    And as for running a 'tight ship'? Uh...that's news to me. MetBlogs is actually a pretty loose confederation of authors, and while I'm the local captain, I don't exercise any editorial control - even to correct misspellings or typos. Do I try to make sure we're legal? Yep - which means I will suggest a change if an author is infringing on someone else's copyright, for example, or failing to credit another's work.

    I won't get into the rest of MetBlogs inner workings (which are far less conspiratorial than Mr. Hays would have you believe), other than to say this: I wish John would have let the post stand instead of deleting it himself, as I know of at least four people who would have commented to it - publicly, on the site itself. When he chose to delete it, and had never bothered to contact anyone about his concerns either before or after? Well, we considered it his resignation letter...wouldn't you?

  5. Betsy on 16 Jun 2005

    Oh, and - we live for biting satire and/or exposes at MetBlogs. We'd just like them to be coherent, is all.

    (I'd add in a bit here about contacting me if you want to contribute - but then I should pay b!X for advertising and our 'corporate entity' hasn't given me promotional dollars yet. When I show up at the chinwag next week, b!X, remind me that I promised to buy you a coffee for coopting your comments with our own less- than- interesting drama....)

  6. sean bonner on 16 Jun 2005

    If only it was that interesting.

  7. The Pieman on 16 Jun 2005

    Hmm.

    Interesting dialogue going on here, especially since John's explanation here doesn't exactly square with the explanation he's giving on his own blog. Further, since the standard rule at Metblogs is 3 posts a week, his description of what he was contracted for doesn't jibe with my personal knowledge.

    So, for the discerning customer, I present, first, his post that got deleted (sans title, which I forgot to save) for context, then his post at John Hays about his ouster, then my comment to that post, and his response, which (I think) gives a different story about how he got tossed, as well as the purpose behind the post he wrote at Metblogs that led to his ouster.

    Keep in mind, I was going to keep his original post under wraps and call it water under the bridge, but I need to call a spade a spade, when I see the explanation he offers.

    The Metblogs Post:

    Portland Metroblogging has gone downhill. The posts are stupid and the perl program (typepad) that runs the website has too many bugs.

    Perl programs are becoming obsolete. PHP is the way to go.

    Perl programs are to server side hosting as Michael Schrunk is to District Attorneys. Useless and stupid. People just keep using them because they're there and they've become a habit, even though years ago they became obsolete.

    Further insults about everything can be found by clicking on the permalink below.

    The Pieman. Come on. Many prosecutors put their names on their posts without coming up with a ridiculous name like the Pieman. Geez, a graduate of law school and the only posts he can come up with are "worst or best places" for this or that.

    Then we have benkay, supposedly a student from Catlin Gabel, whose posts try to shock us by using the "fuck" word.

    There's russ who hasn't made an intelligent post the whole time he's been posting.

    I could go on and on, and I will later. But let's face it, Portland Metroblogging hasn't done shit for any important dialogues going on in the metro area.

    At least Blue Oregon and the One True Bix have something intelligent to discuss.

    And they have better blogging programs.

    His post at his site regarding his ouster:

    I used to post over at the Portland Metroblog. It's a group blog. Apparently one of my posts upset some of the other people who blog over there.

    I got a terse email saying I was being kicked off the Portland Metroblog and a couple of emails cussing me out.

    Oh well. It will give me more time to write about local issues here or anything else I want to write about. Besides, some of the people over at the Portland Metroblog were always bugging me to censor my posts and not post anything that might upset people. I guess they only wanted bland posts.

    My comment:

    John,

    Having been able to see your final post before it was taken off of the Metroblog site, I must say that I was saddened by the way you lashed out at various other Metrobloggers who (at least in my case) haven’t done anything so grievous to you.

    Sure, as you indicated in your unpublished post, it may be true that “Portland Metroblogging hasn’t done shit for any important dialogues going on in the metro area.”

    But who said it had to? Metroblog is a place for various Portland-area writers to share their perspectives on things going in, on, or around town. It’s generally, at least in my opinion, a place for people who aren’t familiar with the city, or who are looking to learn more, to get a feel for the city and its people. So, in my opinion, the random mish-mash of postings there (including yours, for the most part) was fine, provided they were Portland-related in some way.

    I won’t comment on your statements about other Metbloggers. Regarding your statement about me–"The Pieman. Come on. Many prosecutors put their names on their posts without coming up with a ridiculous name like the Pieman. Geez, a graduate of law school and the only posts he can come up with are ‘worst or best places’ for this or that."–Well, I have to admit I found that offensive. I didn’t only write best of/worst of posts, although that is admittedly the niche I chose on the Metblog. I wrote on other things though: the Fun Center, people begging for money, the weather, the Blazers. All Portland-related, all with my opinion.

    Readers who want my thoughts on other things, or a more personal insight into me, can follow the link on the page to my blog. My choice of a name to post under is my own decision, made for my own reasons. Seeing as half (or more) of all bloggers use a pseudonym, I don’t see why my doing so is such a big deal.

    Anyway, I wish you well. It’s unfortunate you left on such a sour note.

    John's response:

    Thanks for your comment. When I posted that other post I was just in somewhat of a bitchy mood. I had written a post that I just couldn’t publish because of some bug in the blogging program that Portland Metroblog uses. The bug is that if you put a question mark at the beginning of the blockquote script like this - - then it wipes out the post at the permalink post.

    I thought I would write another post that might piss off everyone at Portland Metroblog and try to publish that. It worked.

    My eldest daughter who was here while I was bitching about the blogging software thought that post was hilarious.

    I didn’t realize that people are constantly reading the Portland Metroblog since I couldn’t see the user statistics or any statistics, for that matter.

    I deleted that post when I got my first hate email and I discovered what the bug was.

    I’m not upset that I got kicked off. Those things happen.

    I liked posting over there. I’ll still read the Portland Metroblog and I’ll still link to it.

    I leave it for the reader to judge for themself what actually happened, and whether its a matter of censorship or someone just making bad choices and being held to account for them.

  8. The One True b!X on 16 Jun 2005

    Ok, well, a reference or two did not bother me, but at htis point I have to make it clear: This is ridiculous.

    While I find the subject interesting, it has utterly nothing whatsoever to do with the post at hand. The early mentions were fine, and sometimes there are random digressions, and that's all well and good.

    But I respectfully suggest to you MetBloggers a novel idea: Why not post long quotations from the missing post and ensuing exchanges on your own blog rather than threadjacking here?

  9. The Pieman on 17 Jun 2005

    Apologies! Didn't mean to offend.