AN EMAIL CORRESPONDENT suggested I look up September 1, 1939, a poem by W.H. Auden about the reactions he witnessed in NYC to the outbreak of WWII in Europe:

“All I have is a voice

To undo the folded lie,

The romantic lie in the brain

Of the sensual man-in-the-street

And the lie of Authority

Whose buildings grope the sky:

There is no such thing as the State

And no one exists alone;

Hunger allows no choice

To the citizen or the police;

We must love one another or die.”

EDWARD SAID WRITES:

“Rational understanding of the situation is what is needed now, not more drum-beating. George Bush and his team clearly want the latter, not the former. Yet to most people in the Islamic and Arab worlds the official US is synonymous with arrogant power, known for its sanctimoniously munificent support not only of Israel but of numerous repressive Arab regimes, and its inattentiveness even to the possibility of dialogue with secular movements and people who have real grievances. Anti-Americanism in this context is not based on a hatred of modernity or technology-envy: it is based on a narrative of concrete interventions…

“…Demonisation of the Other is not a sufficient basis for any kind of decent politics, certainly not now when the roots of terror in injustice can be addressed, and the terrorists isolated, deterred or put out of business. It takes patience and education, but is more worth the investment than still greater levels of large-scale violence and suffering.”

PHIL AGRE WRITES:

“In an infrastructural world, security cannot be a force, something exerted from the outside, a lid kept down or a shield put up.

“…The important thing is to draw a distinction between military action, as the exercise within a framework of international law of the power of a legitimate democratic state, and war, as the imposition of a total social order that is the antithesis of democracy, and that, in the current technological conditions of war, has no end in sight.”

IRA CHERNUS WRITES:

“To ask about our share of responsibility does not in any way condone the evil. It does not lessen by one whit the responsibility of those who actually did the deed. In death as in life, they remain fully responsible for their own heinous choices.

“But pacifists cast the net of responsibility more widely because that is the only way to end the cycle of violence. If we go on putting all the blame on others, and thereby justifying vengeance, we simply perpetuate the suffering and anger that led to the violence.”

NAOMI KLEIN WRITES:

“The era of the video game war in which the U.S. is always at the controls has produced a blinding rage in many parts of the world, a rage at the persistent asymmetry of suffering. This is the context in which twisted revenge seekers make no other demand than that American citizens share their pain.

“…The illusion of war without casualties has been forever shattered. A blinking message is up on our collective video game console: Game Over.”

ROBERT FISK WRITES:

“Retaliation is a trap. In a world that was supposed to have learnt that the rule of law comes above revenge, President Bush appears to be heading for the very disaster that Osama bin Laden has laid down for him.”

AND LAWRENCE FREEDMAN WRITES:

“The first step is to agree a realistic description of the objective. The eradication of terrorism as a global phenomenon does not meet this test, because not only is the definition contested in many instances but also the phenomenon’s existence is bound up with numerous conflicts, many beyond immediate resolution.”

NOAM CHOMSKY WRITES:

“…The crime is a gift to the hard jingoist right, those who hope to use force to control their domains.”

NY TIMES: “Web Offers Both News and Comfort.”

PONDER-AGE #1: I believe there likely won’t be another big terror attack of this sort within the next weeks or months. The state-of-seige measures now in place or considered are a matter of locking the barn door after the horse has gotten out, a universal human reaction but one which, in this case, should be guarded against. We don’t want the defense of American property to become an excuse for the destruction of American freedoms.

PONDER-AGE #2: Besides the immediate destruction and mass murder, the attack (and the reactions to it) could very well destablize an already teetering economy.

At least one airline, Midway, has said it won’t resume business; this week’s suspensions had been the last of its many fiscal woes.

Also, “just-in-time” manufacturing and distribution systems (not to mention catalog and e-commerce retailers) have made American business even more dependent on its air freight system; even as budget-cutting companies have reduced their use of passenger business flying. The lack of air-transport options means truck and van delivery systems are glutted and sluggish.

Not only have movie theaters and other entertainment attractions been closed one to three days, but the lack of TV commercials means movie openings this and near-future weekends will face diminished attendance.

On the almost-positive side, four days without the NYSE and NASDAQ might provide an overdue breather from the past year and a half of irrational selling that had followed four years of irrational buying.

PONDER-AGE #3: I really wish Harper’s Magazine had an adequate website, because I’d love to link to editor Lewis Lepham’s big essay a month or two back on America’s contradictory image of itself as all-powerful AND all-innocent. It’s precisely this national self-image might’ve helped lead to the bombings.

In Lapham’s argument, the U.S. (or at least its top management and the punditocracy) likes to think of itself as both The Only Superpower and The World’s Peacemaker. Thus, everything done in the country’s name is unquestionably Good, from backing the Contras and Pinochet to bombing Belgrade.

This is not to justify the terrorists but to understand the feelings they successfully exploited among their suicidal foot soldiers. From at least the Spanish-American War on to the present day, the U.S. has instigated, supported, and/or sponsored all manner of terror attacks, coups, counterrevolutions, proxy armies, covert actions, etc. etc.

Yes, superpowers (Rome, Japan, Spain, England, Russia, the Ottomans) have historically and regulalry abused their power as means of maintaining it. But if that’s what it takes to be the world’s single most powerful entity, we should ask if we really want to keep being it.

CORWIN HAECK WRITES:

“Not quite a morbid aside, but this occurred to me early in the unfolding of the story: Some buildings are just too damn tall.

“I always felt that way about the World Trade Center. Not only were they too tall, but they visually unbalanced the entire island of Manhattan. The towers, by virtue of being featureless, untapered rectangles, looked top-heavy and ungainly.

I admire some tall buildings. The Empire State Bldg. is a brilliant classic. The Patronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur are too tall but at least look cool. Overall, though, most really tall buildings are excessive and ugly.

“Now we see again that they can be targets, too.

“The loss of life in this attack is terrible. The loss of the buildings is no tragedy.”

SCRIPTING NEWS quotes an email posted from a Seattle hotel room by John Perry Barlow, a pro-corporate Libertarian with whom I often disagree, but who here has a salient warning:

“…Nothing could serve those who believe that American “safety” is more important than American liberty better than something like this. Control freaks will dine on this day for the rest of our lives.

“Within a few hours, we will see beginning the most vigorous efforts to end what remains of freedom in America. Those of who are willing to sacrifice a little – largely illusory – safety in order to maintain our faith in the original ideals of America will have to fight for those ideals just as vigorously.

“I beg you to begin NOW to do whatever you can – whether writing your public officials, joining the ACLU or EFF [note: Electronic Frontiers Foundation, a group opposing Net censorship], taking to the streets, or living visibly free and fearless lives – to prevent the spasm of control mania from destroying the dreams that far more have died for over the last two hundred twenty five years than died this morning.

“Don’t let the terrorists or (their natural allies) the fascists win. Remember that the goal of terrorism is to create increasingly paralytic totalitarianism in the government it attacks. Don’t give them the satisfaction.

“Fear nothing. Live free.”

For 31 of Seattle Center’s 39 years of existence, Bumbershoot: The Seattle Arts Festival has been its biggest annual event.

Devised from the start to encompass the entire former World’s Fair grounds (except the now separately-run Space Needle and Pacific Science Center), it’s also the last of Seattle’s annual lineup of big populist summer gatherings (starting in May with Opening Day of Boating Season and the Film Festival, then continuing with Folklife, the Bite of Seattle, and Seafair).

Bumbershoot’s premise: An all-you-can-eat Vegas buffet of culture. A book fair in one corner, short plays in another, contemporary art installations in another. At the big stages, bigname music celebs. At smaller stages scattered about, secondary performers of all types.

And between everything, the familiar sideshow attractions of Thai-food booths, street jugglers, balloon sellers, and fenced-off beer gardens.

In its early years, Bumbershoot was strictly aimed at a specific socioethnic caste then taking control of the city’s cultural identity–aging, increasingly square baby-boomers. Nonwhite performers were largely limited to boomer-friendly blues bands; mainstage shows were heavy on the likes of Bonnie Raitt and James Taylor.

In the late ’80s, that started to change slightly. Younger, hipper, and more diverse acts have steadily gained their way into the mix.

A bizarre P-I preview story called this year’s lineup “Bumberpalooza,” comparing it to the ’90s Lollapalooza rock package tours. I initially thought the article’s writer used the analogy to claim the festival was becoming more corporate-mainstream.

But the writer, still believing Lollapalooza’s original “alternative” hype, really wanted to say B’shoot had become edgier and more experimental. Fortunately, she was right.

With more hip-hop acts, a whole electronica stage, and a mainstage lineup ranging from Loretta Lynn to G. Love and Special Sauce, Bumbershoot 2001’s fulfilling its name’s promise of an all-covering umbrella of expression.

In these images: Happy crowds; the Book Fair (including, this year, only one small press with the word “heron” in its name!); local collectors’ caches of electric mixers and Harlequin Romance cover paintings; an information booth at the start of the slinking line into KeyArena; Posies legend Ken Stringfellow; a hula-hoop demonstration on the main lawn; and, below, our ex-Stranger colleague Inga Muscio.

Muscio, scheduled to perform on the Starbucks-sponsored literary stage, peppered her half-hour slot with plugs for smaller coffee brands. She ended it with a story about dreaming Starbucks boss Howard Schultz was her S&M slave.

Which Loss Is Worse?

by guest columnist Jenniffer Velasco

Everyone has losses, each one unique. It can make one stronger, or it can make one a victim.

For me, it’s the feeling that something is missing permanently.

It’s too difficult to re-examine the overwhelming losses in my life. I’m too busy right now, creating a life from pure dreams and fantasy.

So I leave journal-like writings that ache and bleed… still.

I tried to write in the Arboretum’s Japanese garden, but it was so zen; too peaceful, too calm. I ended up forgetting about loss; pretending I was a coy fish.

I attempted to write about loss in a coffee shop, but it would be too intense to cry in public. I’m so focused on plans, schemes, schmooze, booze, friends, art, and, oh yeah, life.

My apartment is open and friendly; yet the space where I sleep celebrates my sacred losses. One is of my failure to see my grandma, who raised me and protected me from the bad men. The other is the loss of being a mother.

In my bedroom, I’ve placed a painting of my grandmother Lola, half-young and half-old, and a painting of myself holding a child in my arms before giving him up for adoption at age 17.

Aug. 28, 1993

Brandyn:

It’s been a month since I last held you. It had been so difficult that day. You looked so beautiful. How could anyone with a heart give you up without feeling?

But in my tears and heartbreak, I still put your well-being first. This is what matters to me: That I’ll know for sure you’ll be OK and well taken care of. In my ease of giving you up, I am giving up the chance to know or feel love for you. Your love will be for other parents.

I’ve been through a lot with you. You were born three and a half months before your time. I wanted to keep you. I fell in love and saw you in the prenatal hospital often, holding you for hours at a time, just enjoying my few moments.

It hurts so much to love you, knowing I’m going to lose you in a matter of time.

But I’ll tell you this: I was never afraid to love.

Sept. 7, 1998

This month has been testing.

I’ve been working hard, trying to save money for a ticket to the Phillipines. My mission was to see Lola (a Filipino word for “Grandma”). She is my mom’s mom.

I’ve been through an attempted muging for $400, the only way to buy a plane ticket. My Washington ID has been lost.

I waited for six hours with my dad, racing against time. The clock ticked away. I fought the passport agency–crying, yelling, hating everyone. I ended up having to drive to my old high school to get my freshman records, just to verify that I’m an American, I’ve lived here all my life.

In all this, I was thinking only of Lola. I needed to see those kind eyes of hers just one more time. I felt sick inside with fire and anxiety; trying to cut the red tape.

I finally relaxed, thinking all the proper papers are in order. I was finally going to see Lola.

As I was cleaning my closet, my mother called from New York, telling me Lola was dead.

I HAD KNOWN the love of my Lola. The fried rice with eggs in the morning, Sleeping next to her at night, arguing–me in broken Tagalog, her in her brittle English. She died thinking of me.

But with my child, I felt a slower grieving. I was too young and naive about my love for him; waiting for the hope the he’d look for me to explain how much I’ve wept for him. Every Christmas, every birthday, every Mother’s Day, every baby I see reminds me of my life without him.

The sun is coming up. It’s Thursday, I think. Many pains have carved my existence; yet I don’t identify with them.

I am at this moment, not by what I’ve lost but by what I’ve gained.

Teenage girls across North America are snapping up T-shirts with risque slogans on them, including assorted variations on the number 69, Playboy, and declarations of general naughtiness.

Parents, journalists, and even a few politicians are getting predictably perturbed. (My, aren’t these grownups just so immature?)

News flash: Adolescents have hormones, and love to make a big tease among their peers. Adolescents also love to proclaim their independence and impending grownuphood, and there are few better ways to do that than by publicly announcing one’s sexual arrival.

What’s new? Just the particular pride and explicitness in these T-shirt statements.

Three years ago, one of my ex-Stranger colleagues tried to get a deal to write a book about high school girls who were really virgins but were branded as sluts by other girls, merely for looking or acting insufficiently ladylike. Three years, of course, is the standard turnover rate for teen trends; so the younger sisters of those ‘90s shunned girls are now proudly proclaiming slutdom as a status symbol.

(Of course, today’s assertions of slutdom probably have as little to do with reality as yesterday’s accusations of slutdom.)

In keeping with a more-or-less annual tradition around these cyber-parts, here comes another fantabulous MISC Late-Summer Reading List. Its purpose: To let you know what you should’ve been investing your time with this warm-weather season, instead of frittering it away on needless time-wasters such as jobs and sex.

High Drama in Fabulous Toledo by Lily James: A raucous, giddy little novel that lives up to its title with nary a tinge of irony. Our heroine is the bored, easily distracted fiancee of a borderline-suicidal bar owner. She gets kidnapped from a 7-Eleven parking lot one night, and turned over to become the captive bride of a rich computer genius completely lacking in social skills.

After the initial shock she comes to like the adventure of her predicament; but soon becomes bored again as she realizes her captor’s domestic-suburban plans for her life. Meanwhile, her distraught boyfriend is consoled by a mysterious policewoman with, shall we say, personal issues of her own. To tell any more would spoil the ride.

High Drama is a great light-comic caper story that also happens to be classifiable as “post-feminist” or “genre-deconstucting” (the genre here being romance-novel ravishment). It’s also a highly accessible, engaging read that, in a better world, would bring wealth and renown to James and to the literary-press publisher FC2, which put it out.

The Knife Thrower and Other Stories by Steven Millhauser: One of the dozen or more tomes I’d left stacked at home from the Tower Books closing sale back in February. Shouldn’t have waited this long to read it.

This guy’s one helluva prose stylist, and he spins great yarns too. His sentences and paragraphs, lovely as they are, are always held subordinate to his fantastical plots–which, clever as they are, are always held subordinate to the heart and dignity with which he endows his characters.

Many of these tales have to do with the dark side of small-town existence, and the light hidden behind such shadows. The finest example of this is “The Sisterhood of Night,” in which a gentleman relates his town’s newest teenage fad: Girls who sneak out of their homes in the middle of the night to gather in the woods and, apparently, do nothing. No drugs, no sex, no Satanic rites; but also no peer pressure, no parental shrieks, no requirements to do or say anything. The narrator ends by wondering whether this could be more potentially subversive than any cult or gang; Millhauser leaves you feeling like it just might.

The Bellero Shie by Jay Davis: A gem of a tiny paperback. When the author was here on a reading tour in June, he left some promo copies at Confounded Books (now at 2nd & Bell in Belltown). Behind the circa-1961 corporate-manual cover are eight stories which amaze and confound in their finely-tuned haunting alienation.

In “Family Food and Drug,” an unwitting supermarket customer is put through militaristic interrogation, for the “crime” of refusing to provide personal demographic-marketing information. In “Sparky,” a man retreats from his wife and family to his only consolation, the family dog, which happens to be dead and stuffed. Yeah, it’s PoMo, but it’s PoMo with a soul–and a quietly aching one at that.

(The apparently closest thing the publisher has to an online presence is this review, which lists a California address for the outfit even though the inside cover says it’s from Illinois.)

Erogenous Zones: An Anthology of Sex Abroad, edited by Lucretia Stewart: Great premise: Literary nonfiction passages from many times and places, all about having sex far from one’s home, with someone the author didn’t set out from home with. But the adventures become repetitious after a while; particularly the ones involving hookers with the invariable hearts-O-gold and the ones involving anonymous gay-pickup sex. But it is a very handsomely-manufactured volume; and it’s fun to read some of the troubadoric descriptions from male diarists, languishing wistfully over the bodily and other charms of their long-separated meaningless-encounter partners.

Mike Daisey, the comic actor and monologuist who became the conscience of Seattle E-business with his show 21 Dog Years: Doing Time @ Amazon.com, has signed a (reputed six-figure) deal to turn it into a book.

The bad news: Daisey’s taking the money to finance a move to NYC. Don’t leave us, Mike! We need you!

ELSEWHERE:

Odd recipes including “Tofu Sex Aids” and “Liquid Meat” (found by Robot Wisdom).

Singles to Jingles

by guest columnist Charlotte Quinn

IN THIS WACKY WORLD, TV ads create the music hits.

The radio stations wouldn’t touch Sting’s new album, but suddenly got bombarded with requests for his new song after the Jaguar commercial aired. So now we have greedy and artless ad execs chosing our records for us (rather than greedy and artless radio producers).

Then there is Moby, who deserves brief mention, since he sold every song on his album Play to advertisers. The Chemical Brothers sold out to Nike, but most horrible of all is, of course, the old Nair commercial that some how got the rights to “Short Shorts.”

This leaves us with the obvious question: Is there any dignity left?

I wonder if it has anything to do with 100 TV channels, or the MTV generation, or the gradual coorporate overtake of the music industry, or… oh whatever! Truth is, when this generation gets older, our favorite songs, the anthems of our generation, will be fuel for Rolaids, Paxil, and feminine itch products.

Here are some possible ads we may see in the future:

• Britney Spears, “Oops, I Did It Again”: Adult diapers.
• Nirvana, “Come As You Are”: Viagra.
• Jay-Z, “Can I Get A…”: Visa (“Whoop whoop” will be replaced with “Gold card”).
• Quarterflash, “I’m Gonna Harden My Heart”: Anti-diarrhea medicine (“Heart” replaced by the word “Stool”).
• Ben Folds Five, “She’s a Brick and I’m Drowning Slowly”: Anti-constipation medicine.
• No Doubt, “Don’t Speak”: Hallmark (“Don’t tell me cause it hurts” replaced by “Say it with Hallmark cards”).
• Ramones, “I Wanna Be Sedated”: Bladder-control medication (much better than the “Gotta Go” jingle).
• Mudhoney, “Touch Me, I’m Sick”: Paxil, the social anxiety disorder pill.
• PiL, “Rise”: Microsoft (“May the road rise with you” replaced by “Where do you wanna go today?”).
• Coldplay, “Yellow”: Ultra Brite toothpaste (“Look at my teeth, look how they shine for you… Yeah, they’re not yellow”).
• Sheryl Crowe, “You Oughta Know”: Ford (“Know” replaced by “Own… (a Ford truck)”).
• Blink 182, “What’s My Age Again?”: Erectile-dysfunction medication.
• Prince, “Little Red Corvette”: Dentu Grip denture adhesive (“Little red Corvette, baby you’re much too fast” replaced by “A little Dentu Grip, baby it sticks so fast”).
• Eminem, “Slim Shady”: Norelco Slim Lady shaver (“…All you other slim shavers are just imitatin”).
• Soundgarden, “Black Hole Sun”: Hemorrhoid medicine.
• Madonna, “Papa Don’t Preach”: Clorox bleach (song becomes a plea from daughter to father not to over-wash the clothes, “preach” replaced by “bleach”).
• Sir Mix-A-Lot, “Baby Got Back”: Ford (“I like big butts” replaced by “I like big trucks”).
• ‘N Sync, “Bye Bye”: The Bon Marche (word “Bye” replaced with “Buy” and “Day-O” gets a rest).
• Assorted Artists, “We Are the World”: Coke (all the actual artists (still living) will perform it, replaceing, “We are the children” with “We are the Coke drinkers”).
• U2, “Bloody Sunday”: Motrin, menstrual cramp relief.
• Tears for Fears, “Shout”: Shout stain remover (“Shout, shout, get it all out, these are the stains we can live without…”).
• Moby, “Trouble”: Roto Rooter, Desinex for jock itch and athletes foot, and Gynolotrimin (they are the only ones left who haven’t bought it yet).

TODAY’S PREVIOUSLY-ANNOUNCED CONTENTS have, as local readers might guess, been postponed.

When last I wrote about Emmett Watson, the dean of Seattle newspapermen, I described him as “possibly the greatest self-proclaimed hack writer in Northwest history.”

He was a helluva lot more than that.

He was a city’s chronicler, in a three-dot item column and occasional longer essays, then in three volumes of memoirs (all, alas, out of print).

He was also a city’s conscience, though he’d never admit to such a potentially pretentious appellation.

He would, however, freely admit to being a throwback to both the old days of newspapering and the old days of Seattle.

The former meant he was a master of the now largely-forgotten Art of the Column and the heritage of the classic newspaperman character type, the ink-stained wretch who drank with two fists and typed with two fingers. Watson wasn’t really like that, but he endearingly pretended to be such for droll-comic effect.

The latter meant he gave a damn about this once-forgotten corner of America and the humans of all social strata who inhabited it. He hobnobbed with the powerful, and dropped many a local-celeb name in his columns, but felt at home with the working stiffs, the unsung men and women who actually did things. (It’s sad but appropriate that his final published column appeared in last fall’s strike paper, the Seattle Union Record.)

Even his “Lesser Seattle” schtick, a running semi-gag about trying to “Keep the Bastards Out” and put the brakes on regional development, was really a not-so-disguised paean to the Seattle and the Northwest that he knew, the gruff but lovable place of honest curmuddgeons and simple dreamers–a culture he saw being steadily eroded, not just by loud-talkin’ Calif. immigrants but by local boosters who seemed to hate everything that was great about this place and desperately wanted to turn it into something “World Class” at any cost.

Watson tweaked and stretched the format of the three-dot column so it could say just about anything he wanted it to. He was outspoken (and on what I consider the right side of) just about every big political and social issue of the past half-century.

And it’s not an exaggeration to note that all I’ve done in this online (and sometimes print) column was an attempt, however misdirected and feeble, to try to write like he did.

NEXT: My print future.

ELSEWHERE:

• “The Comics I Don’t Understand Page” (found by Pop Culture Junk Mail)….
• No, most women in the middle ages were neither princesses nor warriors….

SEATTLE (May 3): Declaring the written word “a passe institution,” longtime Seattle writer Clark Humphrey has announced he’s changing careers to become a documentary photographer.

He’s holding a coming-out party for his vivid color images, titled Words: Who Needs ‘Em?, on Saturday, June 2, 7-9 p.m. at the Belltown Underground Gallery, 2211 First Avenue in Seattle (north of the Frontier Room).

The event will be held on the 15th anniversary of Humphrey’s original “MISC.” column in the old Belltown-based monthly Arts Focus (it later appeared for seven years in The Stranger). The exhibit will remain on display through July 5.

A professional writer for nearly 20 years, Humphrey wrote Loser: The Real Seattle Music Story, still the most complete account ever written about the early-’90s “Seattle Music Scene” hoopla. In addition to his Stranger tenure, his material has appeared in The Seattle Times, Seattle Weekly, Seattle magazine, Washington Law & Politics, The Comics Journal, Tower Records Pulse!, Penthouse Hot Talk, and The Washington Post Book World.

He continues to contribute a biweekly column and crossword puzzle to Tablet, a new alternative arts tabloid. He also maintains an ongoing “online column” at www.miscmedia.com; and for the past year and a half has published MISCmedia magazine, a print version of the website.

But his future projects (books, exhibitions, and a revised print magazine), several of which will be previewed at Words: Who Needs ‘Em?, will all involve original photographs and art in one form or another.

Why the switch? After losing a dot-com crossword-writing gig, Humphrey trolled around for writing assignments and found the trough crowded by laid-off web writers. Realizing the online fad (email, chat rooms, personal web sites, etc. etc.) had reinvigorated written-word culture to the point of decimating it as a career profession, he turned to the not yet totally demystified world of visual images.

“Everybody’s writing these days,” Humphrey said. “Or, rather, everybody thinks they can write.”

At the show, Humphrey will offer previews of one upcoming book and two larger-scale exhibitions:

IN LAST SUNDAY’S Seattle Times Sunday magazine, my ol’ pal Fred Moody had a memoir piece about his 20-plus years as a freelancer, staff writer, and/or editor at Seattle Weekly. It’s a nice little read; but two aspects particularly struck me:

1. Moody appears to believe, unless he’s being really sarcastic (and he’s been known to get that way), that the original Weekly incarnation under founding publisher David Brewster was a daring, status-quo-challenging “alternative” rag.

Bull doo-doo. Claiming the Brewster-era Weekly had ever been “alternative” is as phony a boomer-generation conceit as claiming Linda Ronstadt had ever been a rock singer.

From the start, the Weekly had been an attempt to put out the content of a slick upscale city monthly on once-a-week newsprint. (Brewster had previously worked on the first Seattle magazine.) The second cover story was about a “foodie” restaurant (the now-defunct Henry’s Off Broadway). Restaurant covers outnumbered arts covers most years, as best as I can recall.

From its political priorities to its entertainment coverage, everything in it was aimed at a small but well-defined target audience–the New Professionals who wore Nordstrom dress-for-success suits to jobs at the big new downtown office towers, attended watered-down “art” movies such as Harold and Maude, and dined on “gourmet” versions of American comfort foods. (The paper’s original backers included Gordon Bowker, who also helped start Starbucks and Redhook.)

If it ever took a “non-mainstream” approach to its topics, it was the same approach as that taken by early NPR or such PBS shows as Washington Week In Review–not the elite speaking to the masses, but the elite speaking to itself.

And if it ever took anything approaching an “irreverent” attitude toward regional politics, it was only firmly placed within official worldview–that The Sixties Generation, no matter how blanded-out and comfortably ensconced in premature middle age, was the absolute ultimate apex of human evolution.

In this worldview, oldsters (including oldster politicians) constituted a squaresville presence to be placated or patronized.

And anyone too young to have needed (or too proletarian to have attained) a college deferment from Vietnam didn’t even count as a full human being.

Thus, rock n’ roll music was never, ever, a priority at the old Weekly. Nor was any black culture too young to have been taken over by whites.

If you think this is just my Blank Generation whining, it isn’t. The Weekly has been sold and totally revamped twice, but old Weekly worldview lives on in the current mayoral campaign of Mark Sidran, whose demographic-cleansing campaigns as city attorney are based squarely on the assumption that upscale white baby boomers are the only “real” people in this town.

2. Moody was right on the button when he noted that, just as the success of the early Stranger proved how old and unhip the old Weekly was (or at least as it had become), so is today’s Stranger heading in the same direction.

But that’s a topic for another day.

NEXT: People who want me to plug their sites.

ELSEWHERE:

• ” The page you are looking for has been randomly shifted into a parallel universe….
• Who doesn’t love bizarre LP covers? Nobody, that’s who….