Monday, April 07, 2008

Stupid idea finished, woe is us.

It's time for another NOE Reader Quiz.

A headline in last week's Voice declared "Tunnel's done, time to celebrate." Before I give you the link, guess whether that headline appeared in the news section or the editorial pages.

...

You were right.

I'm as big a fan of the Stevens Creek Trail as anybody, and I understand the importance of maintaining good relationships with people at City Hall. But, just off the top of my head, I can think of enough potential criticisms of this project that it may not be the best candidate to induce the paper to drop all pretense of objectivity. (The article, of course, mentions none of them).
  • $3.5 million is a large amount of taxpayer money to spend to extend the trail a very short distance.
  • The city used eminent domain to complete this section of the trail, which should always give us pause even when it's justified.
  • And, as the residents who posted comments on the Voice website pointed out, the city has yet to address concerns about inadequate lighting, lack of emergency phone access and displacement of homeless people.
Does anybody have an image of the page from Our Dumb Century in which the Onion ran a photo of the Hindenburg going down in flames underneath the headline: "AWESOME! Nation wowed by tremendous Hindenburg Explosion." I feel like that would be appropriate here.

1 comment:

Nemesis of Evil said...

And yes, I know the residents were complaining about the effect of homeless people on the trail, rather than vice versa. I just didn't want to give that line of thought the tiny amount of legitimacy that might accompany a mention on this blog.