Media
Thursday, April 19, 2012
The oil disaster, two years later: seafood, human health in jeopardy
Posted by Alex Woodward on Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 1:15 PM
Two long, essential reads spell out the still burning impact of the BP oil disaster, two years after the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion killed 11 men and sent millions of gallons of oil and chemicals into the Gulf of Mexico for months.
For Al Jazeera, Dahr Jamail looks at crustacean and fish populations in the Gulf and makes disturbing finds — seafood with tumors, lesions and deformities.
A statement to Al Jazeera from Gov. Bobby Jindal's office reads, "Gulf seafood has consistently tested lower than the safety thresholds established by the FDA for the levels of oil and dispersant contamination that would pose a risk to human health. ... Louisiana seafood continues to go through extensive testing to ensure that seafood is safe for human consumption. More than 3,000 composite samples of seafood, sediment and water have been tested in Louisiana since the start of the spill."
Except those thresholds are far lower than the amounts consumed in Louisiana. The FDA guidelines represent a national average, not a regional one.
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Stop writing about hipsters
Posted by Alex Woodward on Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 2:15 PM
Just do it. Please. Do it until you have really examined how possible it is to not be doing it.
The recent resurgence of it started as an invective, a slight to a generation of people doing the same "cool" things others have done but without any effort or reason. Collectors of "cool" things, an inter-generational mash-up of pop cultural artifacts and fashion. The Internet made this way easier to do — there are websites where you can catalog all the "cool" things you like and share them like they're your own discoveries, like your identity depends on it. It's self-obsession set to self-destruct, "a culture lost in the superficiality of its past and unable to create any new meaning."
Somehow, instead of fizzling out as a dumb pejorative, it became ironic self-parody, then an actual thing. Mainstream media fixated on what it is or means. People self-identify as it. It's a marketing gimmick. Now it's a marking of a travel destination.
Congratulations, New Orleans, you're one of them now, says the "listicle" farts-for-brains soothsayers Travel + Leisure, which seemingly just lists the pretty unanimously agreed "cool" and interesting cities in the U.S. then arbitrarily dubs them hipster destinations. So what makes you a hipster, New Orleans?
Friday, March 30, 2012
Coca-Cola graffiti matter is "resolved," says Clarkson staffer
Posted by Charles Maldonado on Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 12:16 PM
Background on the off-chance you haven't heard about any of this yet, from Kalen Wright on NOLA Femmes:
The following is a letter I sent this evening to elected officials and law enforcement; I’m tired, so it was brief and to the point.Spray-painted stenciled graffiti advertising a Coca-Cola product in conjunction with the NCAA Men's Final Four event.
Honorable Mayor Landrieu, Councilmembers Palmer and Clarkson, and NOPD 8th District Commander Walls:
The attached photos depict advertising associated with the NCAA Men’s Final Four event for Coca-Cola products — spray-painted on sidewalks and pavement (including flagstones) in the French Quarter and Faubourg Tremé (and perhaps other) neighborhoods in our city. I ask, is this really how we want companies to behave when our city hosts national events?
This all started last night, when Wright took to Twitter to raise awareness that (1) Coca-Cola ads were popping up on French Quarter sidewalks and (2) that is against the law. Note: It is not a violation of the new state law that makes graffiti in the French Quarter a felony. That law only applies if a building or structure's been defaced.
(More after the jump)
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
"Jungleland": This Sunday's New York Times Magazine cover story
Posted by Kevin Allman on Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 10:36 AM
Part of the story is about all the new fauna living in the abandoned houses and overgrown lots in the Ninth Ward (a topic we covered last year in our own cover story), part of it is about the Sisyphean task of keeping the neighborhoods clean and the growth cut back ("In the Lower Ninth, a property remains cleared for only three to six months. A Chinese tallow tree, for instance, will grow from seed to two-foot-high sapling in a summer and six feet within a year.") ... and part of it focuses on the ongoing "Katrina tours" of the Ninth Ward, which remain a sore subject with people who are just trying to live their lives.
A moment from one of those tours is under the cut ...
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Assistant U.S. Attorney is Nola.com commenter 'Henry L. Mencken 1951'
Posted by Charles Maldonado on Thu, Mar 15, 2012 at 4:01 PM
US Attorney Jim Letten today confirmed that one of his office's employees — Assistant U.S. Attorney Sal Perricone — has been commenting on The Times-Picayune's Nola.com using the handle "Henry L. Mencken 1951."
"On Tuesday, March 13, 2012 following press accounts of a legal filing in Orleans Parish Civil District Court, Assistant United States Attorney Salvador Perricone acknowledged for the first time that he has in fact been the sole user of the Nola.com identifier Henry L. Mencken 1951," Letten said, reading from a prepared statement.
Letten said he confronted Perricone after it was reported that River Birch landfill owner Fred Heebe filed a defamation suit against Perricone. Heebe hired a forensic linguist to analyze the comments. The linguist determined that Perricone was likely "Mencken," a prolific commenter who frequently used the site to weigh in on stories about investigations and prosecutions his own office was involved in.
Perricone has been recused from all cases upon which he commented, Letten said. However, as reported by the T-P, he was present this morning at a hearing in the federal fraud case against River Birch executive Dominic Fazzio.
(Continued after the jump)
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
The Sports Illustrated Saints bounty cover
Posted by Kevin Allman on Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 11:04 AM
By now, anyone who's interested in the New Orleans Saints bounty story has probably read the story by Sports Illustrated's Peter King. Now comes this week's SI cover, which is all-Saints all-the-time, featuring a photo of Jonathan Vilma:
Monday, March 5, 2012
"It's OK to hate the Saints again"
Posted by Kevin Allman on Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 1:20 PM
Ever since the Gulf coast was flooded by the effects of Hurricane Katrina, the city of New Orleans and their football team have been a beacon of goodwill, sympathy and other warm fuzziness. From a PR standpoint, the team was bulletproof, and the Saints' rise to prominence became a symbol of the city's efforts to rebuild itself.That's great...unless you grew up hating the Saints. ...
But the Saints made the most of their moment in the sun. They won 10 games in 2006 and made the playoffs. Three years later, they won the Super Bowl. The storybook finally had its ending, but the Saints still had that air of distinction that made them impossible to hate. This bounty scandal nullifies all of that, and while I generally disagree with the sentiment that it should, I'm more than happy to accept that it does.
Etc. Etc. This may not be quite the first and it surely won't be the last; it's just a sidebar to the story that's going to spin out in the weeks and months ahead.
Believe me, we understand what's going on here; it's the sports equivalent of the political dog whistle. I know a lot of people who don't like the Falcons or the Giants or the 49ers, but don't seem to bear a general animus toward Atlanta or New York or San Francisco per se. The Saints, somehow, are different — and have been different ever since 2005. So much of the distaste for the Saints seems wrapped up in a distaste for New Orleans the place that it's hard to separate the two.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
GQ does a ridealong with NOPD during Mardi Gras
Posted by Kevin Allman on Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 12:15 PM
There are too many great quotes and vignettes to cite them all — you really have to read it all —Â but here's just two of them:
Some of the most common Mardi Gras injuries, according to Palmisano, come as a result of falling drunks, the aforementioned beads, and kids toppling off of ladders, where they've been perched for a better view. But that's never the extent of it. "We've already had one cardiac arrest today," he says. And over the weekend, after the Zulu ball, some guy "was having the big one, passed out in the driveway." He coded on the way to the hospital, but they got him back.It's sort of a given that folks don't have their own safety in mind during Mardi Gras. Just last Saturday, Smith tells me, some drunk climbed the back ladder of the command van, to surf on the moving vehicle. Now the ladder is boarded up, and that idiot is facing charges of criminal mischief and public drunkenness.
Palmisano's radio crackles. A kid just got hit in the head, it seems, with a coconut—"an infant," he clarifies—which sparks a debate over whether Zulu, the krewe known for tossing coconuts, will be able to keep its insurance. "They've got to get rid of them coconuts," Bourgeois insists.
The officers and I reenter the river of humanity, journeying further away from Iberville, and finally discover a woman beyond the moral-tightening effects of any color neon, vest or otherwise. She has the wild, standing-on-end hair of what I can only assume is recent electroshock, nipples for breasts, and a washcloth-sized loin cloth-slash-skirt. She's perched on a second-floor balcony and is grinding on a handrail. To her right, a middle-aged white woman with Harry Potter hair suctions her mouth to the exhibitionist's chest—I try to imagine these women in Walmart, bargain-hunting. The cops decide now would be a good time to turn me off Bourbon Street. We make a right on Toulouse, then another on Royal. A brass band is playing. From a balcony a handful of pranksters are dangling what appear to be furry puppet tails on fishing line. The crowd is hysterical to grab them. One house over, I see a wisp of a man materialize from behind translucent curtains. He looks pale, misunderstood. Next to me, a guy with long hair and a polo shirt glances up, sees the apparition, hollers to his buddies: "Does he look like a faggot or what?"
Read the whole thing. It's fascinating.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Milwaukee weekly on sheriff: "Disingenuous" media hound
Posted by Charles Maldonado on Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 10:16 AM
Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke hates the Milwaukee Homicide Review Commission (HRC), a position he was more than pleased to share with members of the New Orleans media, including Gambit, who were investigating the HRC after the Landrieu administration adopted its own version of the "Milwaukee Model" in an attempt to reduce New Orleans murders.
Clarke on the homicide reduction model: "This is how politicians attack problems, right? A commission, a task force, a blue ribbon committee, whatever," Clarke says. "It's OK to try these different things; I'm all for trying new initiatives. But after a certain point ... this thing started in '05, so we're coming on year seven or eight. Is this thing producing anything of value any more?"
That sort of position, taken in the media, would likely come as no surprise to Milwaukee Shepherd Express writer Joel McNally, who offers this description in a scathing column about Clarke's opposition to a new sentencing reform program:
Clarke is welcomed with open arms and microphone by right-wing talk-show host Charlie Sykes whenever the sheriff wants to denounce black political leaders, Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele, judges or the district attorney, to the delight of Charlie's conservative white listeners.The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel carries almost daily stories on whatever Clarke thinks about people controlling his budget or successful criminal justice reforms he despises.
But, of course, reality never bears much relationship to right-wing rhetoric, white or black.
A prime example occurred at a black conservative forum in Washington, D.C., at which Clarke declared of Milwaukee: “It's a city that has forever been in the throes, if you will, the brace of liberal orthodoxy. And I've been a man alone—a man alone, trumpeting conservative values.”
Monday, February 6, 2012
Detroit "Halftime in America" Super Bowl ad actually shot in New Orleans
Posted by Kevin Allman on Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 5:33 PM
So that meant-to-be-inspiring but sorta-ominous "Halftime in America" ad during the Super Bowl last night? The one with Clint Eastwood using Detroit's comeback as a symbol of how America is somehow coming together in the, uh, second half of our history or something? The one that seems to have offended Karl Rove? This one?
Surprise! It wasn't shot in Detroit, but in New Orleans. Hello, Hollywood South:
But contrary to what the might ad suggest, the spot was actually filmed in New Orleans and Los Angeles. “Yes, part of it was filmed in New Orleans . . . and some was filmed in various parts—such as Los Angeles,” Dianna Gutierrez said. She specifically points to the tunnel scenes as being taken at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, while the stadium shots were in New Orleans.Asked whether any part of the ad was filmed in Detroit, Gutierrez said that previously taken footage from various parts of the Motor City was used. No image of Detroit was shot for the specific use in this ad.
New Orleans: Like a Rock.
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