Why Reading the Local Rag Can Be DANGEROUS to Your Mental Health!

Dear reader, the mind boggles that the Hearst Corporation, new owner of our wildly unpopular local rag, AKA Yellowwich Time, for some reason continues to keep this money-losing joke of a "newspaper" alive. They should just pull the plug and end the misery of its death-throes, not to mention the misery of all of us here in Greenwich who have to put up with it on a daily basis.

Hearken now to the latest swill, "History has a home at Seven Oaks," which would earn a quick, unmerciful "F" if any student here in Town were rash enough to write this gibberish:

"The 15-room house was designed in the Georgian Revival stule which reflected the architecture of New England in the 17th century. The original Georgian style was named for the four King Georges of England who reigned in the late 19th and early-to-mid 20th centuries. It was brought to America by the early settlers."

How does one even begin to untangle this wad of drivel? Can a "Revival" style pre-date its "original" style? One rather thinks not. Did the "four King Georges" really reign in the late 19th century, when Victoria was firmly on the throne from 1837 to 1901? Methinks she would not have been amused to learn this.

And what's all this about the early settlers of America arriving in that same time period of "the late 19th and early-to-mid 20th centuries"? What happened to Jamestown in 1609, or the Plymouth Colony in 1620? Does the Yellowwich Time reporter really expect us to believe that the Revolution was fought at the same time as the Spanish-American War?

Let's try to unsnarl the mess created by this ignoramus. King George I of England came over from Germany to assume the throne in 1714. He never really learned to speak English, which he pronounced with a Germanic accent; thus the mispronunciation "eye-ther" instead of the original "ee-ther" for the word "either" entered the language. None of his courtiers dared to correct the King, and in fact began slavishly to mimic his error. He died in 1727, never having gotten it right.

George II took over that same year, and carried on until he died in 1760. Handel wrote his "Coronation Anthems" for George's investiture as King in 1727, and was repaid when the King later got up to take a bathroom break during the first performance of the "Hallelujah Chorus". Since no one could stay seated in front of the King, everyone else got up, too. And so, dear reader, we all continue to stand today in memory of George II's weak bladder.

George III, as everyone but the Yellowwich Time writer knows, was the last King of America. He reigned from 1760 to 1820, but the real monarch during his latter years was the Prince Regent, later George IV. Such unpopular missteps as the Stamp Act and the tax on tea led to his being burned in effigy on our side of the Pond, and when the colonists had had enough, they revolted. From the "shot heard 'round the world" at Concord bridge on April 19, 1775 until the Treaty of Paris in 1783, the Brits chased the Yanks up and down the countryside. Our American George (Washington) managed to lose nearly every battle, but finally won the war thanks to the timely intervention of the French. King George lost his own battle with porphyria, and his son took over the reins for the final ten years of his life.

George IV was a naughty boy. As Prince Regent he led the life of a pampered playboy, eventually building up to a 50-inch waist and tipping the scales at 245 pounds (well, 17 and a half stones, if you prefer). During his reign architecture morphed from the Georgian to the Regency style. He died in 1830.

Well, there you have it, dear reader: a romp through the reigns of the four Georges. Somewhat different dates from those set forth in Yellowwich Time, to be sure, but all of us here in Town know you can't believe anything you read in that rag.

Bottom line: the local rag gets an F-minus-minus for its attempts to pervert the facts of history, not to mention the history of architecture. Please, somebody, just shoot this pathetic non-newspaper and end the misery. Pretty please?

The Yellowwich Time Can't Speak English

Today's headline in the local rag, AKA Yellowwich Time, shows us all just how pathetic they really are:

Cops relish in Golder verdict

So there you have it, dear reader: the illiteratest dumbest waste of newsprint on the planet at its shining worst. Why the Hearst Corporation doesn't just fire the cretinous staff and close the rag down is one of the world's great unsolved mysteries.

Update:

Just a quick note to say that the indefatigable editor of Greenwich Roundup has correctly noted that there is no such word as "illiteratest". Your scribe was merely indulging in a small parody of the lack of verbal acuity at the editorial desk of Yellowwich Time.

Until now, your scribe has graciously forborne to poke fun at the numerous misspellings and typos that infest the moth-eaten pages of the local rag. We all make typos, since to err is all too human. But an ungrammatical headline?! That kind of major-league boo-boo should not be allowed to pass unchallenged.

Is is any wonder that many citizens here in Greenwich are already referring to the YT in the past tense? They can obviously read the handwriting on the wall, and know that it is only a matter of time until the Hearst Corporation puts this money-losing, readership-losing bad joke of a "newspaper" out of its misery. Hasten the day, seems to be the general feeling. Your scribe cannot recall ever knowing of any other local paper so universally despised as that from which we suffer here in Greenwich.

In short, the YT is, to coin a phrase, a dead rag walking. Even the jerks who write it probably know this, which is why they are so shamelessly innocent of any attempts at quality control. Well, they brought it upon themselves, and most of them are probably mentally already halfway out the door. That is, assuming there is anyone left there who is still capable of rational thought...not the most likely of possibilities, one would wager.

And thus, dear reader, your scribe looks forward to the day when he will be called upon to write the epitaph of the unlamented daily rag once known as Yellowwich Time. Indeed, it is already written:

The illiteratest dumbest waste of newsprint on the planet

Her Job Interviews Didn't Work Out, and so...

She's baaaack! Greenwich's own avatar of The Terminator is once more "on the job," according to the local rag, Yellowwich Time. Aren't we the lucky ones?

She was given a paid two-month leave of absence, ostensibly for health reasons, so that she could start looking for another job. But, alas, her frantic interviews didn’t pan out (is anyone surprised?), and now she’s back in our midst, continuing to make more trouble for us all. How Betty Sternberg can have the effrontery to show up again and continue to collect her obscene paycheck day after day is a total and utter mystery to your scribe. It seems as though some people have absoutely no principles, let alone sense of shame. Lie to the taxpayers, lie to the RTM, lie to the school parents, lie to the hapless students themselves, over and over and over again, watch the test scores of a once-great school system implode, and continue to cash your unutterably, grossly indecent, imcomprehensibly inflated paychecks. Only in Greenwich, dear reader.

And since none of her job search efforts during her “sick leave” have panned out, here she is, back again, suppressing the results of the June 6th Harris poll, and continuing to milk us for all we’re worth. Aren’t you proud, dear readers, to be such lucky taxpayers in this wonderful Town of Greenwich? Never a reality test. Never an accountability hearing. Screw up, screw up, screw up, lie, lie, lie, and spend, spend, spend--that’s the motto of Betty Sternberg and our loverly Board of “Education”.

And so Betty is continuing to bilk us, and milk us, and bill us, day by day by day, with the tacit consent of our so-called Board of “Education”. When, dear readers, do you think we will have been “educated” enough to learn our lesson? Has anyone ever heard of the phrase “taxpayer revolt”?

"...Don't Mess Around With Bill"

Your scribe enjoys reading blogs other than his own, such as the never-ending adventures of SaraClaraDara (see last post for the hot link), and oftens finds them a source of entertainment, information, and enlightenment. Consider if you will, dear reader, how entertaining, informing, and enlightening it was for your scribe to read in the blogosphere that:

You Don't Spit In The Wind,
You Don't Pull The Mask Off The Lone Ranger,
And You Don't Mess Around With Bill.
It is not a good idea to get on Bill Clark's bad side.
You have been warned: Bill will not easily suffer fools and he certainly wont stand by quietly when he sees an injustice.

These words were music to your scribe's inner ear, since he would never have written them about himself, but is quite happy that someone else has now written them about him.

Ironically, he does not know whom to thank for these kind words, other than that the person who wrote them also writes the prolific blog, "Greenwich Roundup". Studiously ignored (but eagerly read) by the staff of the Hearst-owned Yellowwich Time, "Greenwich Roundup" has a breezy, no-holds-barred way of presenting the actual events that transpire in this Town - which are often quite different from the sanitized version you may (or may not) read about in the local rag. If we lived in China, for example, this irreverent blog would have been expunged from the Internet on its very first day of publication; thankfully, we live in a country where the First Amendment and the freedom of speech it enshrines is still (mostly) the law of the land.

Here is the full segment of "Greenwich Roundup" that dealt with your scribe yesterday:

08/14/08 Sweet Dreams Bill "Greenwich Gossip" Clark - Boston Dumped Mario
Mario Is Not Going To Boston
Hennepin library chief offered job in BostonMinneapolis Star Tribune, MN By STEVE BRANDTHennepin County Library Director Amy Ryan has been offered the job of heading Boston's public libraries, and is expected to announce today whether she'll take it.
The 57-year-old Minnetonka resident was interviewed Thursday, along with other finalists, by that city's library trustees.
She's expected to meet with Mayor Thomas Menino and negotiate terms of the job before making her decision, said Mary Bender, a Boston library spokeswoman.
Ryan's openness and experience running community libraries in Minneapolis were considered her advantages in the Boston competition. Boston has 27 branches, and Menino wants more attention paid to them.
She's headed Hennepin County's libraries for the past three years after a career in Minneapolis libraries, and oversaw the merger of the library systems. She served as chief of the 14 branch libraries in Minneapolis before switching to oversee building projects. She described the Hennepin job as her dream job when she was named.
Hennepin County Commissioner Mark Stenglein said Ryan would be missed.
"I hate to lose her, but she needs to do what she needs to do," he said. "I think it's a compliment to the Hennepin County system that they're interested."
Stenglein said he thinks that even if Ryan departs, the continuing merger of library systems will go smoothly.
"She's done a good job of making sure she's covered things," he said. "That's what a good manager does."
Ryan said last week that she was invited to apply for the job, and found the Boston system too enchanting an opportunity to pass up. Boston is the nation's first big-city public-supported library. Its collections include Shakespeare folios, Mozart scores and the library of President John Adams.
Her parents are from Boston and a daughter attends college there.
Please See:
05/14/08 - Heard It Through The Grapevine - Greenwich Library Director Has Quit (Update - Confirmation)
08/13/08 Boston Shocker: Search for library president narrows down to Mario
You Don't Spit In The Wind
You Don't Pull The Mask Off The Long Ranger
And You Don't Mess Around With Bill
It is not a good idea to get on Bill Clark's bad side.
You have been warned Bill will not easily suffer fools and he certainly wont stand by quietly when he sees an injustice:
Please See:
07/26/08 Bill Clarke Has The Inside Scoop About What's Going On At The "Yellowich Time"
05/06/08 - Did You Know That Greenwich Gossip Webmaster Bill Clark Had Been Banned By The "Yellowich Time"
Gentleman Jim 1,079, Loopy Lee 74
Gary Kriss Gets Caught
Bye, Bye, Mario
Shocking Developments at Greenwich High School
The Unspeakable Betty Sternberg Strikes Again
Bye, Bye, Michele

Well, when you look at that list of scribal musings, dear reader, it does seem to be true that fools are not suffered gladly in these pages, and that injustices do indeed cause the scribal blood to boil. It reminds one of Sir Philip Sidney's famous dictum in his essay, "The Uses of Poetry": that a good play "can make a king fear to be a tyrant." Words and ideas have great power, as the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the framers of the Constitution well knew.

How nice to know that even in these latter days there are still worthy heirs of John Peter Zenger and Tom Paine. And one of them is hard at work writing "Greenwich Roundup".

Gentleman Jim 1,079, Loopy Lee 74

Well, dear reader, the people of Greenwich have spoken, and Loopy Lee has been knocked for what one hopes is her final loop. The only astounding thing about the vote totals in yesterday's Democratic primary is that 73 other local loonies apparently voted for Loopy Lee in addition to her own vote.

That is, of course, assuming that LL did not do what we were taught in grade school, namely not to vote for yourself in an election. Your scribe thinks it is possible, though perhaps not very likely, that Gentleman Jim Himes did in fact vote for his opponent out of old-fashioned sportsmanship, in which case there are only 72 certifiable loonies still at large in the Town of Greenwich.

But the damage has been done. Loopy Lee squawked loud enough and long enough to get both the local rag, AKA Yellowwich Time, and the local non-news station WGCH, otherwise known as the World's Greatest Communication Hoax, to take her seriously. Their craven kow-towing to her stridency has done our community a great disservice, spreading her hate-filled views as though they actually had a place in civilized society. Shame on the media of the Town of Greenwich for playing along as Loopy Lee's patsy!

And, of course, one of the most rational minds and skilled writers this Town has ever been privileged to call a citizen has lost her job for trying to maintain a sense of balance and fairness in this community. The local rag - which, quite appropriately, has just been taken over by the Hearst Corporation, long known for its propensity for yellow journalism - chose to listen to Loopy Lee's malicious and largely false accusations against Sarah Darer Littman, and relieved Sarah of her long-running responsibilites on the op-ed page.

On second thought, dear reader, Loopy Lee may have won the election after all. The final score is Loopy Lee one, and the truth zero. And we are all the losers as a result.

Update: M. I. has left a comment about Sarah entering the blogosphere. My bad for not letting everyone know that you can read the amazing (truly!) adventures of SaraClaraDara at: http://saraclaradara.livejournal.com/ and her political blog at http://saramerica.livejournal.com/. If and when I get around to taking M. I. up on her offer to redesign my blog, you will undoubtedly see links to Sarah's sites. Meanwhile, add them to your own list of favorite sites!