January 06, 2004
Welcome To My Planet
On the frontpage of the Hawaii Tribune Herald (named in the rest of this post as the Trib) today was a giant picture of Mars... the reason that is was there was...
1. The editors (snork..) find it wonderful that a piece of the rover thingy has "Hokuulu" on it which means "Red Star" in Hawaiian.. A tribute to ancient navigators and the techies on Mauna Kea freezing their collective buns off looking at the stars...
2. They don't know how to report the news...
3. And it was a slow news day
There is a dearth of reliable information here on the Big Island. The local "News and Talk" station does its morning drive local news by reading copy off the Trib. Sometimes a several days old copy. Its embarrassing. The Trib is full of syndicated columns of schlock, a few photos and sometimes letters, all leaning to the left. Very little original reporting and most of that has retractions and corrections in a day or two. One of the most interesting columns is a " Arrest Report" Anyone that gets picked up by the cops gets his or her name on this list for the crimes they have been charged with...but there is never anything written to say if they were guilty of the charge... So a persons reputation can be ruined in this town for a false charge... This has happened and I wait for the day the paper gets sued for defamation of character so that column gets removed...
Often times the writers of local news use pidgin English so the grammar is a bit odd, and as I said no editor to speak of...The most original content is the sports pages , two thirds of which are devoted to High School sport.
Last week, when we were trying to celebrate the holidays all the paper could report on was "MAD COW IN HAWAII" Pure sensationalism as none of the tainted meat ever got here and we don't import live cattle except for breeding, about 100 or so a year... It was just a story.
In fact, I am a bit surprised that the reporting today was "LANDING ON MARS A SUCCESS>>>PHOTOS LOVELY>>" With the pidgin and the bad grammar it could have easily been "THE MARS LANDING, ON EARTH, CONSIDERED SUCESSFUL< GREAT PICS..." Wee'd have had a replay of the "War of the Worlds" in Hilo with that headline and the huge planet on the front page.
I wonder what Martians would think of Hawaii? So much water and so warm. I can see and hear in my mind's eye one of the drinking Cunningham Crazies saying
"Hey, jus look at da guy ovah dere, he dah kine tourist from where..? You know da mainland they done use da sunblock get cancer like dat kine guy ya... Mebbe he from Minnis-ota or place like dat.." "You, Junior go sey Aloha to dah tourist ya dat guy der, dont want him think we not like him, give him da "stink eye..." Yeh say "Hey Mon, Welcome to My Planet..."
they would accept the little green men... after all they see them all the time
Im teasing a bit. So serious on the last post. Going into work tomorrow. Have a ton to do. Maybe make a sale or two...
