Tag Archives: AGN Media

local news, State news

Bathroom Bill is a huge error

I am going to stand foursquare, solidly behind my former colleague Jon Mark Beilue, who has written a profoundly reasonable rebuke of Senate Bill 3, which the Texas Senate approved on a partisan vote.

SB 3 is the so-called Bathroom Bill. As Beilue notes, it is rooted in unfounded fear. Read Beilue’s column in the Amarillo Globe-News here.

I’m not an “embarrassed conservative” who voted twice for Ronald Reagan, as Beilue describes himself. I am an unapologetic progressive who is horrified that state government would waste its time — and my money — on this discriminatory legislation.

The bill would require transgender individuals to use public restrooms that comport with the gender assigned on their birth certificate. That’s right. A burly dude who once was a woman has to use the women’s room; a hot babe who came into this world as a boy has to use the men’s room.

How in the name of all that is reasonable does one enforce such a law? Who is going to check to see if a woman has all her appropriate body parts? Who’ll do the same thing to a man?

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who runs the Senate, keeps yapping about protecting women from sexual assault in the restroom. The police report zero incidents of such crimes occurring; senior police officials oppose SB 3.

So does House Speaker Joe Straus, whose chamber gets this bill next. What is the House going to do with this monstrosity? That remains the Question of the Day.

All 31 Texas senators voted on SB 3. Twenty-one of them approved it. I don’t yet know this with absolute certainty, but I’m sure that means state Sen. Kel Seliger of Amarillo joined his GOP brethren in approving this hideous legislation.

And that, dear reader, provides me with one of my greatest disappointments, that Sen. Seliger would sign on to this travesty.

I do share Beilue’s concern, though, about the fate of “sane, reasonable” conservatism. It has been trampled to death by far-right fear mongers.

media news

Do political endorsements still matter?

Not quite a year ago, I posted an item on this blog that wondered how my local newspaper would call its endorsement for president of the United States.

How would the Amarillo Globe-News endorse Donald J. Trump, which, to my mind seemed like a done deal, given the company’s corporate loathing of Hillary Rodham Clinton?

Here’s what I wrote a year ago:

https://highplainsblogger.com/2016/07/now-who-will-get-my-local-papers-endorsement/

The paper did endorse Trump, even though it appears to me to have been a sort of “canned” endorsement, written by someone in Augusta, Ga., headquarters of Morris Communications, the paper’s corporate owner.

It does beg the question: Do newspaper endorsements really matter in this day and age? I’m beginning to think they don’t, which I consider to be a shame.

I keep circling back to the 2010 campaign for Texas governor. The incumbent, Rick Perry, announced that he wouldn’t sit down with editorial boards to make his case for re-election. He wanted to speak “directly to Texans,” he said. Virtually every newspaper in Texas ended up that year endorsing the Democratic challenger, Bill White, the former Houston mayor.

We did at the Globe-News. We might as well have endorsed Satan himself, given the response from our readership.

Well, Perry won handily. He stuck in the eyes of newspaper editors and publishers.

Donald Trump had much the same hurdle to clear. A lot of formerly traditional Republican-leaning editorial pages endorsed Hillary Clinton. Did they sway anyone? Probably not.

Which brings me to a final point. One of the great lies that newspaper executives keep foisting on their readers is that they don’t intend to change people’s minds. Actually, though, they do.

A newspaper that expresses its opinions seeks to shape their communities. How else do they want communities to follow their lead if they don’t intend to persuade readers to think as they do?

Newspapers that backed Clinton wanted their readers to vote in a like manner, just as those that endorsed Trump. Given that the overwhelming majority of U.S. papers backed Clinton — and she still lost — I am left to wonder: Do these endorsements really matter?

I’m open for discussion on this one. Talk to me.

media news

No longer missing the sniping from left and right

I once posted a blog item about two fellows with whom I had a sort of professional relationship.

One is an ultraconservative firebrand; the other is an ultraliberal firebrand. I offered the notion that I must be doing something right to have angered both of them for essentially the same reason: I tilt too far the other way.

Here is what I wrote in July 2010.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2010/07/barbs-from-the-left-and-the-right/

I was working full time at the Amarillo Globe-News then, as editor of the Opinion pages. I would leave that job about two years later. I’m still blogging my brains out.

What I find refreshing about blogging in this context — as a retired former journalist — is that I no longer have to argue with critics who say I tilt too far in the opposite direction.

I tell people now — and I’ll reiterate it here — that I am now free to speak without apology. It’s not that I ever apologized for what I wrote when I was a working print editorialist. It’s just that I felt the need to correct whatever misinterpretation a critic would level at me.

“Your paper is too liberal,” they might say. “That rag of yours is too conservative,” others might say. No one can say that about this blog.

As the sayings go: “It is what it is,” and “What you see is what you get.”

As time marches on since my departure from daily print journalism I find myself separating myself more easily from the regular occurrences that would develop, such as the one noted in that July 2010 blog post.

I love telling friends with whom I cross paths that these days I am: unfettered, unchained, unrestrained, unleashed, uncaged, untethered, unrestricted … you can put the prefix “un” in front of any descriptive term you want.

That’s me. I’m having a blast, man.

media news

Here is a seriously valuable public service

I invite you to read this item from today’s Amarillo (Texas) Globe-News.

You cannot make this stuff up.

It comes from the paper’s weekly “food inspection report” collected from Amarillo municipal code enforcement officials. It’s part of the public record. It’s available for anyone to see upon request. The newspaper has for a number of years been publishing this report as a form of public service. It lists eating establishments and watering holes around town. This particular joint is a strip club in southwest Amarillo.

This feature is enormously popular among readers of the newspaper.

I don’t read the newspaper regularly. In fact, I rarely have read the paper since resigning from the AGN in August 2012. Many of you know the story about that, so I won’t go there; I’ll save it possibly for another day.

I do like this feature and I admit that I miss seeing it.

This item might be the most bizarre complaint I’ve seen.

The media are getting their share of hits from disgruntled Americans who’ve taken the bait dangling from politicians who accuse them of offering “fake news” and other such things.

This inspection report isn’t fake anything. It’s real and it highlights the serious public service that the media can — and do — provide on a regular basis.

But seriously? “Breast implants found inside bar utensil holder … “?

local news, media news

Happy Trails, Part 29

We have spent the past two days peddling some of our worldly possessions.

Retirement has given us time to do these things.

It’s also allowed us to catch up with friends and former colleagues who have stopped by to say “hey” while we’ve been sitting under the hot sun on our driveway.

Three of them came by today and my wife and I took time to visit and to learn about their lives and to tell them about ours.

One particular exchange is worth retelling here.

It went something like this …

We were talking about blogging. I told my friend that blogging occupies a good bit of my retirement time these days. “It’s what I do,” I told him, repeating a mantra I often give to friends who inquire about the things that occupy my time.

I told him the name of the blog likely will change once my wife and I pull up stakes and relocate down yonder, somewhere in the greater Metroplex region.

Then I mentioned how, since 9/11, I was able to live the editorialist’s dream. When I was working for a living at the Amarillo Globe-News, I faced the prospect of having to fill a large bit of empty space on the Opinion page. The editorialist’s dream that came true on 9/11 was that the pace of events became so frantic and so relevant that I never had to worry about how I was going to fill that space.

Indeed, the ideal situation for someone who writes editorials is to grapple with deciding which issues I could set aside for the next day — or beyond.

Since that terrible day on Sept. 11, 2001, I have had zero trouble finding issues to comment on.

That trend has continued every year since then. Now that I’m no longer employed, am retired and writing this blog, I find myself with an embarrassment of riches in topics to discuss. The cool part about it as well is that this blog has many wings to it: I call it a blog that comments on “politics, public policy and life experience.”

As I told my friend this morning, ever since the most recent presidential campaign, my list of discussion topics has grown seemingly exponentially.

It’s the “life experience” topics — such as this “Happy Trails” series of blog posts — that give me the most pleasure.

Retirement also has unshackled me. I’m now free to speak my own mind, lay my own bias on those who read this blog.

Much more to come. I promise.

national news, religious news

Long live the secular state!

Jon Mark Beilue has done it again. He has written a spot-on column for the Amarillo Globe-News that I want to share here.

I won’t restate my friend’s thoughts, other than to echo his notion that the founding fathers created a marvelous governing document that has withstood many challenges over time.

They knew that the nation’s European immigrants came here to flee religious persecution, so they wrote into the Constitution’s First Amendment that there should be no law that established a state religion; indeed, of all the liberties protected in the First Amendment, they mentioned religion first.

Here, though, is an additional point I want to make above Beilue’s excellent essay.

It is that the United States to this very day remains a significantly more religious country than virtually all the nations of Europe. Americans are more inclined to attend worship services than Europeans. I am aware that church attendance is declining in the United States, but it remains far greater than it is throughout Europe, where worship attendance has plummeted for decades.

Why is that important? Because many nations of Europe have state religions. The United States has none. The Church of England? A state religion. Catholicism is ingrained in the governing documents of several European nations.

I make this U.S.-Europe connection only because those original immigrants came across The Pond from Europe.

The Constitution stipulates that there must be “no religious test” applied to candidates for public office at any level. The word “Christian” does not appear in the Constitution.

Were the founders fueled by their personal religious faith when they wrote the Constitution? Certainly. I don’t doubt that for a moment. However, they knew better than to write their faith into the nation’s government document.

As Jon Mark Beilue writes: “Our Founding Fathers, they knew what they were doing.”

local news

You want fireworks? Try this display

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Fourth of July 2017 brought back a special memory for yours truly.

It goes back 22 years to our very first Independence Day celebration in the Texas Panhandle. It involves lots of fireworks — as in Roman candles and assorted ordnance that went “boom!” in the night — and a display brought to us by good ol’ Mama Nature herself.

I had come to work for the Amarillo Globe-News in January 1995 and was informed that the newspaper played host to an annual fireworks show. It was a big deal for the company. The publisher of the G-N, Garet von Netzer, told me how the paper would have a company picnic at Ross Rogers Municipal Golf Club; the G-N took over the site for the evening. We had barbecue, played games, and were entitled to bring guests to enjoy the festivities.

The neighborhoods around Ross Rogers and adjoining Thompson Park would fill with thousands of spectators who came from miles away to witness the annual tradition.

That’s what we did on July 4, 1995. It would be a blast, man … no pun intended.

As the sun lowered itself in the western sky that evening, thunderheads began to form over Bushland. Then around 9:45 p.m. or so, they lit the fireworks and the show began.

Boy howdy, did it ever! The sky then lit up with lightning strikes and the sound of enormous thunderclaps. The fireworks launched into the sky were backlit by, shall we say, the real thing.

It was an astonishing display of Mama Nature’s mighty power juxtaposed with humankind’s meager efforts at replicating it.

It was our great luck that the storm we witnessed to our west stayed away that evening. We saw it from a bit of a distance, but we were close enough to hear it, to feel it — and to marvel in its splendor.

I thought about that wonderful evening last night as I stood on my front porch watching the lightning fire up the sky while listening in the distance to fireworks that were being ignited by some brave souls seeking to celebrate the 241st year of our national independence.

I walked into the publisher’s office the next morning, by the way, still in awe at what my wife and I had witnessed the previous evening 22 years ago. “Hey, Garet,” I asked, “is there any chance you can order up that kind of display every Fourth of July?”

His answer? “That’s the power of the press for you.”

local news, media news

Happy Trails, Part 16

I’m still trying to shake myself loose from my previous life as a working stiff, but a brief encounter today illustrated how difficult that task remains.

I walked into the polling place this morning to vote in the Amarillo municipal and Amarillo College election. I presented the voting judge my voting registration card and my driver’s license (with photo ID that’s now required).

He looked it over, signed me and said, “Oh, you’re with the newspaper.”

“Um, no. I used to be,” I answered. “I left the Globe-News nearly five years ago,” I explained. “I guess you haven’t missed me,” I joked. He chuckled and said, rather sheepishly, “I don’t read the paper.”

“Well,” I said, “neither do I.”

This is the kind of greeting I get from time to time as I conduct daily business here. My job as Opinion page editor of the Globe-News more or less defined me in the eyes of many folks who read the paper and saw my name on the Opinion page masthead.

That’s all great. At some level I do appreciate the recognition that comes my way. Everyone who brings up my recent past is gracious, kind, some are complimentary; others say something like, “Oh, I often disagreed with you, but I always read your stuff.”

My wife and I are still in the midst of this transition from full-time work to full-time retirement. The transition is progressing along many fronts. The most critical of them is our on-going effort to prepare to commence to get ready to relocate.

When that task is completed, hopefully sooner rather than later, we’ll be resettled in a new community where no one knows us from the past we have left behind. We’ll greet everyone for the first time and no one — except for family members who will live nearby — will know what either of us used to do for a living.

I look forward to completing that journey.

legal news

RIP, Racehorse Haynes

I just heard that one of the more fascinating characters I’ve had the pleasure of meeting has passed away.

Richard “Racehorse” Haynes died early today. He was 90.

Man, I’ve got a short story I want to tell. So I believe I will.

Many years ago, when I was living and working in Beaumont, Texas, I walked down the street from the Beaumont Enterprise — where I worked as editorial page editor — to the Jefferson County Courthouse.

I approached the front door and waved at a fellow I knew, a local lawyer named Gilbert Adams, who motioned for me to approach. I did and at that, Adams introduced me to Racehorse Haynes, who standing next to Adams puffing on a pipe. “Hey, Race,” Adams said, “I want you to meet this fellow.” We shook hands and Adams then informed Haynes that I was editor of the local newspaper.

So help, as God is my witness, when Haynes heard that that I was a member of the media, his eyes lit up like a Christmas tree. We stood there for seemingly hours. I barely got a word in edge-wise. Haynes regaled me with his tales of his relationships with the media; he managed to tell me why he was in Beaumont in the first place, which was to assist Adams on a case that Adams was working on.

I ended up having to break off the visit. I am pretty sure it would have gone on until the next great flood.

Two things stood out about Haynes, whose reputation as one of the nation’s top criminal defense lawyers was well-known; I certainly knew of him. I knew that he was from Houston and that he had defended some very high-profile defendants.

The first thing I recalled at the time was how grandfatherly he appeared. He was not a physically imposing man. He was dressed in a plain dark suit and he looked like, well, anything but a flamboyant barrister.

The second thing, of course, was how he garrulous he was with a media guy. His status as a “famed” lawyer didn’t seem to impede his willingness to talk about anything with yours truly.

We said goodbye and went our separate ways.

Years later, I moved to Amarillo to become editorial page editor of the Globe-News. Then I learned of Haynes’ connection to the Texas Panhandle. It was where a Tarrant County judge had moved the trial of one Cullen Davis, the Fort Worth millionaire who was accused of murdering the live-in boyfriend of his estranged wife and his 12-year-old stepdaughter. Davis was thought at the time to be the richest man ever accused of a capital crime in the United States.

A Potter County jury acquitted Davis, whose lead counsel in that trial was Racehorse Haynes.

So, one of the nation’s more notable lawyers has passed from the scene. I just felt compelled to tell you my Racehorse Haynes Story.

May you rest in peace … “Race.”

local news, media news

Blogging … it’s what I do

I recently noted that High Plains Blogger had posted its 7,000th item. I thought it was a big enough deal to mention it in a tweet.

This post will be the 7,010th item when I publish it.

That brings me to my point: Why do I keep doing this? The answer is simple: It’s what I do.

Retirement has given me lots of time to share some opinions on this or that public policy, the president of the United States. The blog covers national, international, state and local matters. It’s a big world out there and it is my aim to weigh in as often as humanly possible on whatever issue moves me.

At this moment, I am moved to comment on blogging and my unabashed love affair with what I am doing these days.

I’ll stipulate that my wife and I have plenty to keep us busy around the house. We’re setting the stage a little bit at a time each day for a major change in our life together. It will involve relocation. We have a lot of things to do to get ready for this change. We have a lot of issues to settle and decisions to make. We’ll make them in due course.

In the meantime, I intend to keep writing this blog.

You see, I spent the a significant majority of my journalism career crafting opinion essays. Whether they were editorials that spoke for whatever newspaper where I worked, or signed columns that spoke for myself — or the occasional op-ed essay that required some original reporting — I wrote them with varying degrees of joy.

There was a catch. I didn’t always agree with the editorials I wrote on behalf of the newspaper. Here’s a little something you need to know that goes with the job of writing editorials: When you work for someone else, you don’t always get to speak for yourself; if your boss tells you to write an editorial with which you disagree, well, I relented and did what I was instructed to do.

I recall when I interviewed in late 1994 for the job of Amarillo Globe-News editorial page editor that I told the publisher at the time there were three lines I wouldn’t cross, three issues I couldn’t go against my deeply held views. He hired me anyway. Fortunately, he never sought to force me to cross any of those lines. Nor did the fellow who succeeded him.

At the three newspapers where I wrote full time, I was able to write columns that enabled me to speak with my own voice. I reported to several editors and publishers, all of whom allowed me that opportunity — and I was grateful for that freedom.

Blogging, though, is an entirely different matter. I answer only to my own conscience, my heart, my own world view.

Now that I am retired, I have granted myself the freedom to say whatever the heck I choose to say. I strive to be reasonable. Yes, High Plains Blogger has its critics as well as its fans, which is no different than it was during the years I worked for The Man.

More than 7,000 posts after this blog came into being, I am no mood — nor do I have any inclination — to slow down.

It’s what I do.