“Fake News” Shines On The Star’s Opinion Page

It’s no secret that the folks over at the Star dislike me. Tim Steller–justly–took me to task for a column in which I inadvertently misspelled his name. That, somehow, morphed into a Twitter conversation during which he accused me of poor writing, and even offered his aid to teach me how better to write.

Look, if anyone wants to enhance my skill, I will always be a willing pupil.

But when I tore yet another inane Star editorial to ribbons and Mr. Steller could argue only with my mishandling of his name–and I genuinely am sorry for that ignominious oversight–but not argue with any of the points I handily dismantled or made myself, well, I had a damn hard time imagining that anyone in the legacy media, much less the Star, could offer me much I didn’t already know.

Save for how to pander to the already brainwashed audience of the legacy media, I suppose.

I’m not sorry to say my meager writing ability is already advanced well beyond that point, and I can thank you, the readers of the Arizona Daily Independent, for keeping me motivated to continue learning and improving.

I am also not sorry to say that the Star’s latest editorial hires come as no surprise either: They didn’t come to knock on my door.

Or call me.

Or even tweet me.

But Sarah Garrecht Gassen–yes, I verified the spelling this time–is ebullient in her proclamation that the Star now has two “Conservative with a ‘big C'” commentators on the opinion page.

Forgive me a bit of graphic imagery, but it was when I read that “big C” line that I found myself in need of a rag to wipe my beverage off my keyboard. And my chin. Nobody should read something that amusing while sipping from a glass.

Interestingly enough, one of the two “Conservative with a ‘big C'” writers is not just a fledgling author but also a benefactor of the failed–and embarrassing–John Winchester campaign. Yes, that’s right, Joseph Morgan joins the Star after campaign finance records reveal he received at least $4,500 in payment for “field director” services to the unbelievably foul Winchester campaign. You see, Joseph Morgan is little Johnnie Winchester’s cousin. Fake conservatives and fake news are close relatives, too, you know.

I’ll pause here to allow you to find a rag and clean up your keyboard.

Supposedly, this Mr. Morgan–spelled correctly, too–writes for another publication. But I’ve seen a couple of his pieces, and he clearly was no English major. Granted, neither was I, but I take pride in my work. And I certainly do not fill pages with bunk in support of the establishment’s choice to defeat the one representative in Pima County who had actually worked to curb the gross malfeasance that typifies Pima County governance. Morgan had written several junk editorials and letters to the editor in support of his relative that first praised Ally Miller for holding to her campaign promises, then chided her for being “incompetent to the extreme”, and then defended Winchester’s frivolous lawsuit against the City of Tucson.

And this is how the Star adds “conservative” voices. No, seriously. Does the editorial board over there want to help make them better writers, too?

This move of desperation belies the fact that the Star and the legacy media are in their death throes. They promulgate the same “fake news” that the general public learned to despise even more broadly in 2016, and you and the growing number of ADI readers innately know that. Maybe they think some shoddy writing from a couple of alleged “Conservatives with a ‘big C'” will magically and instantaneously imbue them with some specter of balance, but reality will prove their new efforts futile.

We see right through these thin, sputtering smokescreens and realize the narrative from that rag remains the same. So let them throw up a token “conservative” column each week. It’s like giving a dose of aspirin to the brain-dead victim of a fallen grand piano: It fosters classic comedy, but it won’t even delay the inevitable.

Two things still bother me, though: How does any ill-conceived campaign of a worthless candidate under the control of a ruthless bureaucrat have $4,500 to waste as specious payment to a family member, and why would the Star–that acts as a willful extension of the Huckelberry-Bronson waste machine’s media arm–hire on a relative of the candidate that Chuck back-doored into the primary? Anybody else wonder if Huckelberry needed to get that raise and to create new jobs so he could pay back some of the money his cronies threw away on the failed Winchester primary and the costly-but-razor-thin Bronson victory?