Source:
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Coconut%20Wireless
by Jacob Shafer
December 18, 2008
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 10
There are political scandals and then there are political scandals. Some are dry and wonkish and need to be sexed up for public consumption through oversimplification and perhaps the addition of the nonsensical-but-perennially popular “gate” suffix. Other scandals need no embellishment. The exploits of
Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich
fit firmly into the latter category. Not only did this guy—whose funny name and impossibly puffy helmet hair already made him an easy target for cheap mockery—try to auction off Obama’s Senate seat, he didn’t even bother to talk in code when discussing the deal over the phone. Also, he tried to shake down a children’s hospital. If all this had happened in a movie, critics would have derided it as “titillating but wholly unbelievable.” Of course, corruption and Chicago politics are familiar bedfellows, but ol’ Rod is trying to make malfeasance an Olympic sport. Maybe the most depressing aspect (and there are plenty to choose from) has been the efforts of
Fox News
to do the “guilt by association” thing and connect the dots to the Obama Administration, mostly by running the same three stock photos of the President-elect and Blagojevich standing close to each other while saying something like, “there is no evidence of any wrongdoing on Obama’s part…yet.”
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 11
An unfortunate choice of words:
Gov. Lingle
hopped the pond yesterday to deliver a pep talk to the
Maui Visitors Bureau
, as reported in
The Maui News
. Discussing past downturns, including the ones that followed the first Gulf War and the 9/11 attacks, Lingle was quoted as saying “you could fire a cannon without hitting anybody” at Kahului Airport. Really—fire a cannon? At an airport? Whether it was an off-the-cuff remark or part of a prepared speech I’m not sure, but either way Lingle might want to think twice before tossing out that chestnut again.
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 12
So I got hit by a terrible stomach bug last night. I’ll spare you the gory details, but suffice it to say I’ve become intimately acquainted with the stack of old magazines on the back of my toilet. One of them, the post-election issue of
Time
, had an interesting essay by
Pico Iyer
about a chance encounter he had with
Obama
at a burger joint on Oahu in 2006. Though a little cloyingly fanboyish, the piece ends with a nice summation of the hopes many have pinned on the new commander in chief: “[T]he past and the future that [Obama] speaks for are precisely the ones that belong so uniquely to the new century and the 95 percent of humans who are our neighbors at the global burger table. It’s more than possible to make your fortune in Alaska—but I’d much rather find the future in Hawaii.”
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 13
OK, so the jokes and snide remarks about
Blagojevich’s hair
have already gotten stale, but I have to repeat the one from tonight’s
SNL
Weekend Update segment (a fond adios to
Amy Poehler
by the way, one of the funniest women on television): “Hey Rod, it looks like you’re wearing a toupee that’s also wearing a toupee.”
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 14
Not cool: The Associated Press reports that someone
set fire
to
Sarah Palin
’s
church
in Wasilla, Alaska while people, including a couple of kids, were inside (no one was seriously injured). Clearly this was the act of a deranged individual (and, to be fair, authorities have not said whether the Palin connection factored in, but come on). Man, this is just what we need: a stupid messed up act of violence that gives ammo to the far right in their ongoing war with secular rationalists (aka church torching, ACLU joining, flag desecrating terrorist lovers). I can hear Sean Hannity screaming already…In other news: Have you seen the footage of that
Iraqi journalist
throwing his shoe at Bush’s head
during a press conference? (If not, a quick Google search will deliver the goods.) Wow, that guy is my new hero. The best part of the ensuing coverage has been mainstream media outlets explaining that, in Muslim culture, this is considered an insult. Um, I know the soles of the feet have an especially negative connotation for followers of Islam, but I’m pretty sure hurling a wingtip at someone’s dome is a universal sign of disrespect.
MONDAY, DECEMBER 15
If it wasn’t before, it now seems clear that the main tourism-related issue isn’t so much getting people to come to Hawaii (even in lean times the Aloha State is still a prime destination); it’s getting people to jump islands after landing in Honolulu. That theory is bolstered by the latest
hotel occupancy
figures, which show Oahu within 1 percent of last year’s numbers, while Maui, Kauai and the Big Island continue to suffer declines for which the word “freefall” is more understatement than hyperbole. After resisting for too long, Maui hotel operators are finally getting the message that they’ve got to lower rates if they want to fill beds, but even that may not be enough. It’s
gloomy
, but it’s also
reality
. So this is where the
“let’s get creative”
spirit takes over, and we re-imagine the Valley Isle in terms other than a revolving door for tourists to dump their cash and catch a sunburn. Right? Right? (A note to readers with photographic memories and/or way too much time on their hands: I know several weeks ago I promised I wasn’t going to write about hotel occupancy numbers again until the news was good, but that was in my other column, the Business End. So yes, I’m escaping on a technicality.)
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 16
Why is it that whenever an African runner wins a marathon I have to hear from some idiot claiming the result is proof that blacks and whites are genetically different and therefore [insert vile
racist
conclusion]? The latest example of this disturbing phenomenon arrived in my inbox this morning, two days after
Kenyan runners
finished first through fifth in the
Honolulu Marathon
. I’m not going to re-print the contents of the e-mail or even summarize the argument, a term I’m using
very
loosely. It’s just sad that somewhere out there is a guy (the message was unsigned—surprise, surprise—but I’m assuming guy) who took the time to sit down at his keyboard and commit this pile of brain spew to writing, then send it off to various media outlets, presumably with the hope that it would reach as many eyeballs as possible. I mean, get a hobby dude.
MTW