The Trail is dead, long live the Trail

so the trail-gazette has a new editor-publisher, replacing the old publisher. i wouldn't ever expect anyone besides hired staff enjoying a smooth glide path into seeing their submitted writing in print, and believe me, if it hurt my feelings to not get every single submitted letter or column or story idea or suggestion in hard font, i would have run off crying into the candycane forest decades ago. this blog has over 1300 entries since its inception, so i'm not exactly taciturn, or agonizing over word choice so much i can't generate more than a few crafted and high gloss polished phrases a week. but let's not pretend for a second any of our local media is the equivalent of the new york times or washington post, bursting at the seams with content and difficult to near impossible to crack the editorial pages of as a regular joe without suffering through 50 rejection letters or (the modern equivalent) no response at all beyond an "ackowledgement of receipt" form letter. the new publisher of the trail apparently hasn't had time to craft that form letter, and the bar isn't very high at either the trail or the village voice, as just the past month has seen anonymous or "first name only" letters to the editor published (which is frowned upon even in bad high school newspaper publications), as well as letters to the editor from staff family members. bill brown is guaranteed to get every random thought he jots on paper published in every outlet, and while that is certainly the "expected right" of every elected trustee, i guess, i am not sure that, lacking balance or counterpoint, it adds to a very vibrant community discourse, and it reinforces an already burgeoning ego, when you know that everything you spill out will be displayed on the newspaper wall the next day outside the kremlin, while the opposition is effectively muzzled. the only funny part of this is, the new publisher apparently does allot himself time in the day to craft silly excuses and make false promises, like when after his fake excuse about never receiving any submitted letter to the editor gets poked full of holes, sending out an email saying he had received it and "just letting you know it will be published" and then not publishing it. the classic dennis miller dodge of keeping a caller to his radio show he disagreed with on hold, segment after segment, finally granting him airtime 5 seconds before a hard break. a real knee slapper if you are in on the joke, but i already knew it wouldn't be published, because i don't exist except when it comes time in town to volunteer for trash pickup or raising money for cancer research or dignitaries visting town or film production crews needing red tape cut or helping the migrants or advertising or fundraising, so i didn't lose any sleep over it, and used my time on hold to list and sell more stuff on ebay. i call it the "double dodge", and jody street, welcome to the same garbage and weekly yodeling column your predecessor strapped you with.