We Also Read the Weeklies: PanzerKardinal Edition
Last week we guessed that this was going to be a big week for papal comment in the weeklies, and we're glad to see we weren't wrong. We were hoping for some fresh perspectives, or maybe some Seattle angle to the commentary, but maybe that was expecting a lot. Knute Berger in "Mossback" was the first to weigh in on the Catholic boss and the whole "the Vatican isn't a Democracy so why don't we go invade it" joke is tired and not funny, but we were surprised and delighted when he called out the secular right at the end of the column. Thanks, Knute! We forgot there was a secular right! For more comment on Dregs Benedict in this week's Seattle Weekly see "Glory Days" in the arts section.
Nina Shapiro's "Advanced Displacement" article about the public school situation seems like a pointless rehash off the bat, but she does come around to make a good bit of sense. The article on Tom Delay doesn't seem to have a great reason for existing as opposed to "All Action and No Talk" which does a fair job of calling out our Dems in Olympia. Of course, there's also more on the election that won't die.
We're treated to lots of Roger Downey this week in and out of the food section, but we're most concerned with a duo of his articles centering on drinking. In "Let's Lose the Würz" he argues that wines should be named so as to be easily pronouncable by American tongues and that "Gewürztraminer" is particularly offensive. We think "Gewürztraminer" is a beautiful German word. Merlot is so much more popular because it's easier to say than Cabernet Sauvignon? We buy that, because it's certainly the inferior wine, but that doesn't mean we should rename Cab Sauv. Ah, but Downey redeems himself on the very same page with his interesting little examination of cocktail creation.
There's another appearance of the always successfull Jukebox Jury just in time to skip the Pioneer Squarathon listings. Not that there aren't some fine bands involved (Kuma, Bebop & Destruction, we love you), but we'll be skipping the event.
The Stranger also didn't dissapoint us on the pope front. The heavy hitting is taken on by David Schmader in "Last Days" where he shows no shame for beating Ratzinger with the Nazi hammer. C'mon. We know it's an easy one because he's a German asshole, but he was like 12 during his stint in the Hitler Youth.
Seattlest was happy to find tons of additional Microsoft bashing in this week's paper after they tapped a vein along those lines last time around. "Revelations" is the offical follow-up by Sandeep Kaushik, but there's also worthy material in "Counter Intel" where Josh Feit points and laughs at Redmond's gay hacker recruiting campaign. "Gates-Gate" by new, uh, counter-point to the counter-point we guess, talks about ways to stick it to Microsoft, which is fine. Great, really. The suggestions just aren't that sharp. Buy a Mac? Switch browers to Firefox? You should have done those things long ago.
The "Mean Streets" article is cool and definitely brings up some things that need to be discussed as long as Seattle is having this big transportation conversation, but by end of the article we're not sure we're still riding along with him. His conclusion is that our streets would be safer if they consisted of the same hodgepodge of scooters, bikes, rickshaws and cars as some Asian locales.
