Tancredo's 32 Seconds of Fame

posted: November 13, 2007 3:19 EST

His campaign down the tubes, the feeble presidential candidate finally hits YouTube with a shock-and-awe ad.

By Michael Roberts, Westword (Denver)

To paraphrase Dick Cheney, Rep. Tom Tancredo's quizzical presidential campaign is in its last throes. But it's going out with a bang -- literally -- with a commercial running in Iowa that makes Lyndon Johnson's infamous 1964 mushroom-cloud spot look subtle.

The ad (click here) begins with Tancredo offering an endorsement of the message that follows: "Hi, I'm Tom Tancredo, and I approve this message because someone needs to say it." An instant later, the screen fills with overtly scary, often overexposed images of a hooded man placing a bomb in a book bag and heading to a mall. Meanwhile, a narrator who bears a striking aural resemblance to Boris Karloff in The Grinch Who Stole Christmas declares: "There are consequences to open borders beyond the twenty million aliens who've come to take our jobs. Islamic terrorists now freely roam U.S. soil." Next, he adds, "Jihadists who froth with hate here to do as they have in London and Spain and Russia," with the locations in question punctuated by shots of a blasted bus, a destroyed train and a lifeless, bloodied young boy. Then it's back to the mall, and once the voice intones, "The price we pay for spineless politicians who refuse to defend our borders against those who come to kill," we see the figure set down the book bag just prior to a fade to black and the sound of an explosion. The final graphic reads: "Tancredo... before it's too late."

Over the top? Oh man -- but it's also very much in keeping with Tancredo's true-believer style, which is analyzed in Westword's 2003 profile. During his early days as a Colorado state representative, Tancredo was known as one of the "House crazies." Iowans who see his latest commercial may well revive the nickname.

comments (0)

» categories: Immigration | Michael Roberts | Tom Tancredo

Buck Fush

posted: October 4, 2007 1:41 EST

The media’s coverage of a college newspaper’s profane two-word editorial deserves more than a few curse words.

By Michael Roberts, Westword (Denver)

"I think it's been really disheartening," says J. David McSwane about press coverage that's swirled around the Rocky Mountain Collegian, the Colorado State University-based student newspaper he edits, since an opinion banner reading "FUCK BUSH" was printed in its September 21 edition. "As a journalist, I'm extremely frustrated."

He should be. On September 25, for example, Channel 4's late newscast led off with anchor Jim Benemann stating, "The editor at the student newspaper up at CSU says he will sue if he's fired." As McSwane, who recently turned twenty, pointed out in an item he affixed to the Collegian's website, he did no such thing, since he hadn't been interviewed for the piece. Indeed, the person doing the talking was McSwane's attorney David Lane, who enjoys delivering provocative declarations; in this situation, he proclaimed, "If I can make a case that the government is putting a gag in David McSwane's mouth, they're going to federal court."

Nonetheless, Channel 4 news director Tim Wieland isn't troubled that Benemann's intro cited McSwane rather than his counsel, saying, "I'm comfortable with that" — and neither does he think the station blundered by failing to mention in this report and numerous others that McSwane helped the CBS affiliate win a prestigious Peabody Award in April 2006 and worked at the outlet as a paid investigative producer (not just an intern). Full disclosure is typically deemed a journalistic necessity, yet Wieland maintains that staffers initially felt McSwane's previous association with the outlet wasn't "germane" to the Collegian brouhaha, and only decided that it might provide "context" in some instances after skipping over it during three full days of reporting. Westword has a McSwane connection as well. In September 2005, the paper ran his feature "An Army of Anyone," which built upon the investigation that earned Channel 4 its Peabody: As a student journalist at Arvada West High School, McSwane posed as a pot-smoking dropout interested in joining the Army in order to document the dubious lengths to which recruiters were willing to go to get him into uniform. He was awarded with an Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) prize for his high-school efforts and the Westword offering, which ran alongside a companion article written by yours truly that focused on recruiting in the wake of the scandal McSwane stirred. I also guested alongside McSwane on a KHOW talk-show segment hosted by Peter Boyles.

Is any of that germane? Damn right it is — because it gives news consumers the maximum amount of information, rather than treating them like children incapable of putting details into perspective. Then again, McSwane understands why Channel 4 took the tack it did. "Of course they're distancing themselves from me," he says. "If I was them, I'd distance myself from something like this, too."

McSwane and many of his Collegian colleagues set out to cause a commotion, albeit not as large a one as developed: "I didn't think it would go national," he admits. Too bad their concept was so clumsy. They were incensed about a September 17 incident in Florida in which disruptive college student Andrew Meyer was forcibly prevented from quizzing Massachusetts Senator John Kerry; a video of Meyer's "Don't tase me, bro!" plea to security officers quickly became a YouTube sensation. But after penning the ardent defense of free speech that appeared on the September 21 Collegian cover, they felt they should underline their point by exercising this right in the boldest way possible. Hence, the "FUCK BUSH" line, which McSwane says was intended as a "wake-up call" to students who passively accept the status quo instead of voicing their views, as college enrollees have in decades past.

Predictably, the decision to target George W. Bush, who was only peripherally related to the Florida dust-up (Meyer wanted to know if Kerry and the president had been in Yale's Skull and Bones society), transformed the editorial into a culture-war blast of the sort that sucks up far too much of the media's attention these days. "Fuck Bush" bumperstickers have been around for years, and the profane part of the expression is extraordinarily commonplace in settings like college campuses. But that didn't stop CSU student Republicans such as student Chelsey Penoyer from taking advantage of this golden opportunity for attention-getting by organizing protests against McSwane and hitting the media circuit.

read on . . .

comments (0)

» categories: Bush regime | Censorship | Michael Roberts | The press

Infomercial Guru 'Video Professor' Sues His Unnamed Critics

posted: September 24, 2007 2:04 EST

By Michael Roberts, Westword (Denver)

Denver's John Scherer, a.k.a. the Video Professor, comes across as a kindly sort on the infomercials that his company airs on TV stations and cable systems across the country. But as was made clear in Westword's 2006 cover story about the Prof and his empire, which is based on mail-order tutorials designed to teach folks how to use computers, write code and so on, he doesn't sit back quietly when critics bad-mouth him.

Still, he's moving into new territory with his latest battle -- a lawsuit filed in Denver federal court against individuals who've anonymously complained about his products on Internet posts.

The Video Professor doesn't publicize his litigiousness. As a result, the new suits reached the media's attention via a September 21 press release issued by the Washington, D.C.-based activist organization Public Citizen.

read on . . .

comments (0)

» categories: Alternate reality | Michael Roberts | The press

Republicans Say DNC Will Be a Grand Ol' Party

posted: September 13, 2007 3:40 EST

Denver's 2008 Democratic National Convention will help GOP, Colorado official claims.

By Michael Roberts, Westword (Denver)

Although the Democratic National Convention doesn't open in Denver until August 25, 2008, press coverage in these parts makes it seem as if the balloons are just about to drop. There's hardly an edition of a local daily newspaper or a nightly newscast that doesn't include some tidbit of DNC news, leaving Republican politicos to fight over the scraps. And as the convention nears, the coverage disparity is likely to expand.

Such a scenario should fill Colorado Republican Party head Dick Wadhams with despair — but if that's the case, he's doing a fine job of hiding his pain. He acknowledges that getting reporters to concentrate on Republican concerns in this environment will be problematic. "With Denver hosting a national convention, it'll be easy for the media to gravitate to anything Democratic," he says. But, he goes on, "I see it as an opportunity for the Colorado Republican Party as well. I think the Colorado media, in particular, will be sensitive to this and will actually seek out a Republican response as we get closer to the convention. And I think it will help Republican candidates."

How? Wadhams's response plays on already familiar GOP themes. While he views Hillary Clinton as a weaker candidate than her two highest-profile rivals, Barack Obama and John Edwards, he predicts that the Democrats will nominate her for president anyway. Moreover, he believes any of the Republican presidential frontrunners — Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney or Fred Thompson — can beat her, at least in Colorado. And he expects that the party platform approved at the convention will be "so liberal" it will hurt Colorado candidates such as senatorial hopeful Mark Udall, who he says is "trying to cultivate a moderate image."

read on . . .

comments (0)

» categories: Conventions | Hillary Clinton | Michael Roberts | Obama | Romney | Rudy Giuliani | The press | Unfounded Optimism

Pre-South Park, the First Trey Parker-Matt Stone Interview

posted: August 15, 2007 5:09 EST

By Michael Roberts, Westword

Believe it or don't, August 13 marked ten years since the debut of South Park, an animated series that turned a gaggle of profanity-spewing kids living in a Colorado mountain town into television and big-screen favorites. The show is the unlikeliest kind of success, and that's appropriate, since Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the onetime locals behind the phenomenon, hardly followed the predictable path to stardom. They had a DIY sensibility from the beginning, as is demonstrated by the following Westword article — their first major interview, published more than four years before the American public in general knew thing one about them.

"The Ultimate in Sound Bites," which first appeared on April 21, 1993, the better part of a year before the beginning of Westword's online archives, caught Parker and Stone while they were CU film students trying to raise money to complete their first film, then called Alferd Packer: The Musical; better known as Cannibal: The Musical, it was released in 1996. The pair stopped by Westword's former offices alongside cohorts Jason McHugh and Ian Hardin and proved to be just as joyfully anarchic as their legend would suggest — particularly Parker, who was just 23 at the time, but already had a finely tuned sensibility for bad taste. They were rewarded for their efforts when Westword's own Kenny Bé drew an excellent mock poster for Alferd Packer, reproduced here.

McHugh and Hardin, who's now known as Ian Keldin, didn't disappear. According to the Internet Movie Data Base, McHugh worked on several Parker-Stone projects, including the big screen opus Orgazmo and episode one of South Park, and produced and acted in 2006's Electric Apricot, a Spinal Tap-like parody from the mind of Primus' Les Claypool. As for Hardin/Keldin, an interview on a Cannibal: The Musical tribute site, notes that he went on to form his own video company and play in a local Denver band called Zed.

What about Parker and Stone? You know that story — but you probably don't know the one below:

CU students are filming a musical based on galloping gourmet Alferd Packer.

By Michael Roberts, Westword

April 21-27, 1993

“We used a lot of our money and a lot of our time to make it as gory as possible,” says 23-year-old moviemaker Trey Parker about his first feature film, Alferd Packer: The Musical. “People ask, ‘Is the gore tastefully done?’ And I say no — absolutely not. That would ruin it.”

Taste is the enemy for director-producer-lead-actor Parker, a student in the University of Colorado-Boulder’s tiny film department. Rather than trying to make a historically accurate film about Packer, who was convicted of killing and eating five men he’d been hired to guide through the Colorado mountains during the winter of 1874, Parker’s come up with a story that combines cannibalism and musical comedy. “It’s an ironic contradiction,” Parker says. “One minute, people are singing a song, and the next, it’s really violent and disgusting.”

Originally, the project was little more than an elaborate joke. In trying to come up with an idea for a five-minute film that would serve as his senior thesis, Parker remembered a term paper about Colorado’s most famous cannibal that he’d written for a history class a year earlier. Turning this tale into a full-length musical epic, with himself as Packer, never crossed his mind. “Me and my friends just went out to Loveland Pass and had fun,” he says. “We made a fake preview for a fake movie.”

read on . . .

comments (0)

» categories: Alternate reality | Church/sex | Michael Roberts

The Weekly World News is Dead! Sort Of!

posted: July 27, 2007 9:12 EST

By Michael Roberts, Westword (Denver)

There have been plenty of ugly developments in the newspaper industry of late: buyouts, layoffs, Rupert Murdoch's likely purchase of the Wall Street Journal, and so on. But few have been as flat-out tragic as word that the Weekly World News, a tabloid that made news by making up the news, will soon disappear from a supermarket near you.

As noted in this Reuters dispatch, American Media, Inc., whose portfolio also features the National Enquirer, announced that the WWN print edition will perish with the August 27 edition, although its online doppelganger will live on at WeeklyWorldNews.com.

A 2003 Westword column featured a rare look inside the Weekly World News courtesy of former Rocky Mountain News music writer Justin Mitchell, whose twisted career landed him at the WWN — as Ed Anger, among other personae — prior to a journalistic rebirth in China.

read on . . .

comments (0)

» categories: Alternate reality | Michael Roberts | The press

Digitize This

posted: July 20, 2007 9:19 EST

National CineMedia is the future of movie-theater advertising — and probably the future of movie theaters, period.

By Michael Roberts, Westword

Not long ago, advertising at movie theaters was a fairly ambient medium. In the moments before the main feature unspooled, muted Muzak would play quietly over the sound system as slides featuring plugs for the concession stand or nearby eateries cycled past, interspersed with trivia questions and assorted filler.

No more. Today's pre-show advertising is exemplified by "FirstLook," produced by National CineMedia, a fast-rising firm affiliated with billionaire Phil Anschutz. These elaborate infotainment packages are larded with promos and mini-documentaries about forthcoming movies, TV series, video games and so forth, along with a liberal sprinkling of commercials. The material is bounced off a satellite from National CineMedia's massive headquarters in Centennial to more than 12,000 of the approximately 38,000 screens in the United States — and that number will go up in late 2008, when another 1,200-plus screens from the Loews Cineplex Entertainment group come online.

Plenty of ticket-buyers despise such advertising assaults. After all, they'd skip them using their TiVo or simply surf to another channel if they were at home. But at the theater, where the chairs are bolted to the floor facing the screen and remote controls don't work, these folks constitute a truly captive audience. "People don't have to see it if they arrive late," acknowledges Kurt Hall, National CineMedia's chairman and CEO, "but they may not get a seat — and if they do, it might not be a good one, especially with all the summer blockbusters out there now. Otherwise, the only way they can shut it off is to stop going to the movies."

Some viewers appear to be choosing this option.

read on . . .

comments (0)

» categories: Alternate reality | Michael Roberts

Jerry's Kids

posted: May 15, 2007 3:16 EST

Like Saddam Hussein, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who died on May 15 at age 73, was satirized so frequently that it's easy to underestimate his influence. Of late, he was best known for determinedly moronic cultural crusades and brain-dead pronouncements epitomized by his assertion that Tinky Winky, the purple Teletubby, was gay. But Moral Majority, an organization he headed, helped establish the conservative Christian voting bloc that gave America presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush — and if the group's ideological offspring aren't quite as powerful as they once were (thank you, Ted Haggard), presidential candidates who shrug them off do so at tremendous peril.

Turns out, though, that the phrase "Moral Majority" didn't spring fully developed from Falwell's brow. Rather, it was conceived by former Denver newsman Paul Weyrich, whose 1994 profile in Westword (penned by Ward Harkavy, who's now a staffer with the Village Voice) sheds light on Falwell and the movement he helped spawn. To read it, click here. — Michael Roberts, Denver Westword
comments (0)

» categories: Church/state | Michael Roberts

Cuts Redux: The Daily Press is Pressed

posted: May 9, 2007 11:27 EST

By Michael Roberts, Westword (Denver)

The Denver Post joins the trend of buying out employees. Its owner, Dean Singleton, who has more than 50 daily papers, admits that the newspaper business is facing tougher times than he expected.

read on . . .
comments (0)

» categories: Michael Roberts | The press

Tom Who?

posted: May 7, 2007 2:23 EST

By Michael Roberts, Westword (Denver)

As of this writing, there's a very telling technical glitch in the section of the MSNBC site devoted to rating participants in May 3's debate of Republican presidential candidates. Click the "Picking the President" link keyed to Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo and you might be transported to a Mit Romney feature instead. It's as if the webmaster is saying, "You aren't really that interested in Tancredo, are you? Wouldn't you rather check out someone who's got a chance in hell to actually compete?"

Such questions are justified given Tancredo's performance in the debate, which was emceed by MSNBC's Chris Matthews from the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. Even folks who pay attention to politics may not have recognized hopefuls such as Jim Gilmore (Virginia's former governor), Duncan Hunter (a California congressman) and Ron Paul (a rep from Texas). Yet Tancredo still managed to come off worst of the ten yappers, and the reason was his obvious discomfort. The Lone Star Times, which gave Tancredo an "F" on its grading page, had it about right. "Can you say deer in headlights?" the author asked.

Granted, the format was particularly bad for Tancredo. For the most part, candidates were expected to give answers within thirty or sixty seconds — a problem for Tancredo, since he prefers blabbing about topics at length to encapsulating them in a few well chosen words. But he knew the rules going in, had plenty of time to prepare for the sort of questions he'd be asked (there were precious few surprises), and he still managed to bungle even the simplest responses. At one point, Matthews asked the politicos to comment about the possibility of Bill Clinton being back in the White House — a reference to Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton. Softballs don't get much bigger, fatter and slower, and because Tancredo was on the far end of the stage (meaning that everyone else had a chance to answer before he did), he had plenty of time to think of a pithy/humorous retort. In the end, he came up with a decent take-off on a George Bush line, saying that Bill was already measuring the drapes in the Oval Office. But he stammered out the joke instead of punching it, displaying all the comic timing of a mortician on a first date with a still-mourning widow.

That's the way it went throughout, and to make matters worse, Tancredo seemed to get sweatier and more awkward as the marathon session went on. He recalled Richard Nixon in his famous 1960 face-off with John F. Kennedy — the one historians credit with helping win the election for JFK. The main difference: Nixon was better.

If Tancredo doesn't get more polished fast, even his anti-immigration faithful will bail on him. Then it won't be long before there'll be no Tancredo button to click.
comments (0)

» categories: Michael Roberts