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March 19, 2009 WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11
Couple things today. First, a nod to former editor Anthony Pignataro, who has compiled and self-published a book featuring some of the best and most interesting work he produced during five years at the helm of MTW. The book, titled Remember the Technicolor Dreamboat! And Other Tales of Maui's Misfits, also features illustrations by Eh Brah! cartoonist Ron Pitts, so it's doubly part of the Maui Time ohana. It's available for purchase via a link at mauitime.com. Check it out. Second, on a much more somber note, I got an e-mail from reader Rebecka that felt like it deserved to be printed: "Almost exactly one year ago, someone very special to me passed away. His name is James Crigler. James was extremely intelligent, charming and such a kind spirit. He loved VW buses, Chihuahuas, trips to Hana, playing guitar and drums, concerts and motorcycle rides around Maui. Music was his passion—he loved to make mix CDs for his friends and turn us on to new music. James was a great friend, he was loved by many. He was my best friend and boyfriend, and I miss and pray for him every day. If someone you love is battling drug or alcohol addiction, please support them in getting help—you could save their life."
THURSDAY, MARCH 12
It's been a good year for Saturday Night Live. A show that hadn't been relevant since the Clinton Administration got a shot in the arm when its presidential election coverage—and more specifically Tina Fey's spot-on mockery of Sarah Palin—went viral. Now, with the election over and a difficult-to-lampoon chief executive in the White House, SNL is making headlines again, at least in Hawaii. A sketch that aired March 7 featured host Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson (who apparently has Polynesian roots) and cast member Fred Armisen decked out in stereotypical hula attire strumming a uke and singing table to table in a tacky tiki restaurant. What's gotten the goat of some in government and the tourism industry is the tone of the sketch. In between poorly sung verses, the resentful troubadours offer bitter asides like: "Here's a fun fact about Hawaii: our biggest export is coffee and our biggest import is fat, white tourists." Leading the charge against the sketch is Lt. Gov. Duke Aiona, who told the AP he "wouldn't let such distortions go unchecked." Huh. Read that line again, and tell me which part is a "distortion."
FRIDAY, MARCH 13
Earmarks have become a convenient political punching bag, an easy target for those looking to cast themselves as fiscally responsible, finger-wagging spendthrifts, which is the cool thing to be these days. Certainly there's plenty to criticize—considering our ballooning national debt, profligate government spending and the unhealthy influence of lobbyists, cutting down on wasteful, unnecessary allocations is an important goal. But denouncing earmarks across the board is a foolish oversimplification. Like anything else they should be judged on their individual merits. Or you could be like John McCain and just call all of them "evil." There were more than 8,000 earmarks in the $408 billion spending bill recently passed by Congress and signed by Obama, but one that McCain singled out was a $2 million allotment for the Imiloa Astronomy Center on the Big Island. Pounding the bully pulpit on the Senate floor, McCain asked why we should spend money "to promote astronomy in Hawaii when unemployment is going up and the stock market is tanking." Indeed, why would we want to give 0.000005 percent of one spending bill to an important educational center in a state where education is in dire need of support? Damn commies.
SATURDAY, MARCH 14
Interesting quote in today's Maui News from Mayor Tavares. Discussing the metaphorical significance of the image on the cover of Maui County's 2010 budget booklet—a silversword plant sprouting up through the harsh volcanic ground of Haleakala—Tavares said, "We're still growing even though we're in some not-so-great soil." Allow me to add another layer of meaning: we also have serious reservations about the gardener.
SUNDAY, MARCH 15
Attended a media justice conference in Honolulu yesterday with publisher Tommy Russo. Some folks from Akaku, which helped organize the event, were there too, so the Maui media contingent was well represented. While the room (UH's spacious campus ballroom) wasn't packed, attendance was decent considering it was a bunch of us boring news types talking about ourselves for five hours on a drizzly Saturday. Highlights included a keynote address by veteran muckraker Bob Scheer—whose current project, truthdig.com, is worth adding to your regular surfing schedule—and a Skype-assisted interview with Burmese journalist U Win Tin, who spent 19 years in prison for, well, being a journalist. Kind of puts our petty concerns in perspective, doesn't it?
MONDAY, MARCH 16
| |  | | | |  | | Swan song for an albatross. |
We cover the Supreme Court's Superferry decision on page 8 and Rob Parsons follows up on last week's prescient cover story in his report, but that damn boat's been mentioned too often in this space to not acknowledge it again, maybe for the last time. As I write this, it remains unclear exactly how things will play out, but it's tough to imagine the boat staying in the water much longer. Really, it's bittersweet. Rooting against something is always less satisfying than rooting for something, because even when you win, you still sort of lose. The idea of an inter-island ferry isn't bad on its face; it's just that here it was poorly planned and even more poorly executed. And even if it stops running tomorrow, all the money and resources that went into this boondoggle can't be unspent. The best we can hope for is that the public and private players who rammed the Superferry through against logic and the law will be made to pay for their actions. Don't hold your breath.
TUESDAY, MARCH 17
"I will do more than reach across the aisle, I will walk across the aisle." That was Gov. Lingle addressing the state legislature back in January. Flash-forward a mere two months and that spirit of Kumbaya togetherness has predictably dissolved into acrimony. To be fair, there's hyperbole and name-calling on both sides—quoted by the AP, Rep. Marcus Oshiro called Lingle "a disciple of Rush Limbaugh." (Did everyone in the Democratic Party get the "compare every Republican to Limbaugh" memo or what?) But after promising to keep all options "on the table," Lingle has reversed course and now says she won't consider either staff cuts or tax hikes to help offset the deficit. "They don't come and sit with me and talk about it," she complained in the same AP piece. Time to face facts: we've got a buncha whiny teenagers running the show and nobody wants to clean up their room. MTW
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| Entertainment and lifestyle news for Maui, Hawaii and the surrounding Islands. Maui Time Weekly is Mauis only independent and locally owned newspaper.
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