Dismantling the Fascist Takeover of Eugene If you’re a resident of Eugene, you might not have noticed that your home town was a “hotbed of emboldened white nationalism”, “overcome” by neo-nazis summoned into being by the shocking election of Donald Trump. Don’t let the thousands of people who showed up in support of the second…
Category: Bitter Pill
The Bitter Pill #8: Deconstructing the EW’s Response to Recent Criticism of their Workplace Culture
They said it couldn’t be done! Wait… no, they said it shouldn’t be done. Anyway, I did it. What follows is a line-by-line exegesis of the Eugene Weekly’s official response to scathing public criticisms of the behavior of management from several former employees. The text may have been edited since I copied it for this…
Prophets of DOOM!!!
The Bitter Pill #7 Kelly Kenoyer’s list of some of the “myriad reasons” for impeaching Trump does a good job of demonstrating how lacking the EW’s case for impeachment is in the sort of substance that might serve as common ground across ideological lines. “Our Institutions Won’t Save Us,” as Baynard Woods’ article in the…
Candid thoughts between you, me, and the world’s intelligence services #1
The Bitter Pill #6 Hard-headed woman/Ghost in the Shell You may know me as that guy who writes bitchy letters to editors of Eugene’s Weekly and Register Guard. From this, you may have gathered that I’m a frustrated artist. If so, I commend you on your perceptiveness, and thank you for taking the time to…
The Eugene Weekly Takes on Fake News
THE BITTER PILL #5 A fight to the death of journalism. I’m not at all surprised that Camilla Mortensen’s fake news buyer’s guide was a hodgepodge of vaguely related ideas and platitudes. On the other hand, the hectoring tone of her opening did come as a shock. Rather than a photo of NPR’s Elizabeth Jensen,…
Very Much Like a Newspaper
The Bitter Pill #4 I have to hand it to the Weekly: it looks just like a newspaper. They seem to have gotten a firm handle on the whole matter of arranging words according to the familiar pattern of Headline, Sub-Heading and body text. The illusion suckers me in most every time. Even though I’ve…
Make Cosplay, Not War
The Bitter Pill #3 I’ve been on a real rollercoaster lately. After completing Bitter Pill #2, I started developing a gnawing feeling that maybe spending so much time thinking and writing about the Eugene Weekly was a form of mental illness, or at least a serious defect in character. A good friend, albeit of the…
The Best Idea Whose Time Has Come
I appreciate all the Weekly has done this year to render its annual Best of issue as a farce. Opening with a profusion of randomly conceived Staff Picks goes a long way to exploding whatever illusions anyone might have that EW is in contact with some means of objectively, or essentially, determining what is “best”. However, in an age where an…