Here is a letter to the editor from reader and poster Infotainme. Again these are the opinions of the writer and not necessarily those of this editor. Read on and feel free to comment below:
Reading this week’s dependably goofy analysis of Zimmer’s new hire on 411, “Zimmer Expands City Payroll,” I had an odd flashback to watching TV with my grandmother. 60 Minutes, then Murder She Wrote. Part of it anyway. And then I would put the tea service away, cover her with a shawl, and carefully turn the TV off as she dozed. http://hoboken411.com/archives/25258
You’ve noticed the signs for a while, mixed in with 411’s reflexively slanted ‘reporting’. “I’m tired.” “You don’t appreciate what I go through.” “My feet are swollen.” All right, all right, then - why don’t you go sit in your favorite chair and I’ll put on some tea. There’s a story about cats with six toes on 60 Minutes.
For a while it registered somewhere between a wince and a cringe. You were reluctant to ask, “How was your day?” for fear of getting an earful about every person who took up too much room on the bus, or ‘smelled,’ or had a ‘funny accent,’ or did not have 10 items or less. At one time these were offset by happier reflections. But now not so much. Before long it will be time to increase the font size for the ‘targeted audience demographic’ and apply for special parking privileges.
This phenomenon, the greying of 411, has accelerated noticeably since Zimmer was sworn in as acting mayor. It is awkwardly apparent in the, um –oh, let’s pretend it’s an article for old time’s sake- on the hiring of Daniel Bryan.
The first thing that catches the eye -and is meant to catch the eye- is that backward baseball cap. Wait –two backward baseball caps. The ruffian! Picking up on Frau 411’s unease at this breach of decorum, a member of her crotchety coterie grouses, “Hopefully he dresses appropriately for the job and leaves the frat boy look at home for Friday and Saturday nights when this guys and his friends are pissing on peoples doors.” Yeah, ya hoodlum! What he said, ya door-pisser! I thought people like you were rounded up in the Palmer Raids. http://hoboken411.com/archives/25258/comment-page-3#comment-168262
Doddering on, trying to explain how swapping out a $125k “chief of staff” for a $35k aide is not a bargain, 411 questions the competence of “the young Mr Bryan.”
Or the young Master Bryan perhaps? You can just feel the itch to toss in “the young punk Mr. Bryan” or “that smart-alecky whipper-snapper Bryan.” Mercifully, the faux Times writing style held off these impulses.
But as the day wore on, the cloistered, once-relevant, figure became cranky beneath his green eye shade, as he often does when the light is changing over, and started deleting posts until everyone stopped talking in embarrassed deference to the frailties of age. “You have a problem with what I wrote? Take it up with me via email.” The cyber equivalent of, “Hey, you kids get off my lawn. That ball lands over here again, I swear to God I’m keepin’ it!” And so he will. Ask around.
Not surprisingly, 411’s announcement yesterday of this coming Wednesday’s community meeting on public safety issues with the HPD at Wallace omits all reference to Peter Cunningham, one of the meeting’s principal organizers. http://hoboken411.com/archives/25326 Cunningham does not wear backward baseball caps as such, but clearly he has backward cap tendencies as far as granny 411 is concerned: he is dead to her.
HobokenNow, which reports on the community as a whole rather than on an increasingly small circle of still-living friends, handled it slightly differently: “Peter Cunningham organizes community policing meeting next week.”http://www.nj.com/hobokennow/index.ssf/2009/08/peter_cunningham_mee...
With the unintended irony that now coats the site like algae in a neglected fish tank, 411 makes reference to “Zimmer’s internet response team.” You mean like a ‘response team’ that generates Pravda-like ‘interpretations’ of reality excluding whatever is politically inconvenient and posts them as gospel on a commercial website - that kind of internet response team?
Ok, so 411 doesn’t want to be politically relevant anymore. We can’t ask it to be. But we’ll have to live with the consequences that arise when it tries to be relevant. You always hope your grandma will give up driving at more or less the time that she should give up driving. But this can’t be guaranteed. 411 isn’t ready to face that fact yet, despite continually mounting evidence to the contrary. So don’t assume you are safe on the sidewalk, so to speak.
The thumbnail of Winston Churchill at his most dyspeptic that serves as avatar on the suddenly-rare Red Haven posts has become the perfect symbol for the site. That sullen, crusty I-know-no-one-loves-me-anymore-but-I-don’t-care punim of long past glory; the paradoxical baby face of Churchill’s later years glowering at these backward-hatted infidels. There, there, now, your lordship. It’s just a passing cloud. Let’s go see what’s on the Hallmark Channel.
- Infotainme
◦
