Monthly Archive for September, 2009

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C-Ville Weekly Looks Back on 20 Years

In the latest C-Ville Weekly they’ve rounded up some really enjoyable memories of the twenty years that they’ve been publishing. Owner Bill Chapman recalls the highlights, with staff rounding up the highs and the lows (“Gail Force,” anyone?) in the years gone by. Look closely in the “lows” section and you’ll see the logo of Distribution the ‘zine that became this very website, from back in 1994. Perhaps intentionally–in a nod to nudity in The Hook last week–Chapman’s piece includes their 1998 photo of a streaker and a description of the fallout, which included Kroger pulling C-Ville’s rack from their store and the requisite Daily Progress story about the ban.

Hook Publishes Playboy Photos

The Hook has a montage of tiny nude photos in its current issue, Liza Palka points out for CBS-19. The article is about UVA students who wound up in Playboy (such as in their “Girls of the ACC” feature) and how their future careers panned out. (Which turns out to be as successful attorneys, generally.) Palka does seem to be attempting to gin up controversy—she says that the image “has Charlottesville buzzing” and and is “causing controversy,” but the only reader who appears to care is a UVA student, who describes the appearance of the nude female body as “horrendous”—though it is fair to point out that featuring full frontal nudity in a Charlottesville newspaper is a bit unusual.

The image in question includes twenty images containing nudity, fourteen including breasts, three bottoms bared to an extent that probably wouldn’t be permitted on network TV, and six instances of more-or-less exposed genitalia. The images are pretty small—the biggest bits of nudity I see are 4mm of pubic hair and a pair of 1cm wide breasts—so this doesn’t exactly constitute an anatomy lesson. Another image features tastefully-placed flowers (though the flower doesn’t quite cover the girl on the left), presumably because those images are significantly larger—and thus detailed—than the montage. Palka asked Hook editor Hawes Spencer what the thinking was behind including the images, who said that they help to illustrate the article, and that the paper’s staff didn’t regard them as inappropriate for their own children to view in the paper.

This isn’t quite a parallel, but a personal media pet peeve is stories about an offensive word—such as the lengthy federal court case over U2’s Bono declaring at the Golden Globes that winning an award was “fucking brilliant”—in which the media outlets refuse to utter the word in question, which often leaves the audience wondering what, precisely, we’re all supposed to be so upset about. There’s certainly logic in showing images from Playboy in an article about UVA girls posing nude in Playboy—otherwise it’s tough to assess what, exactly, they’d gotten themselves into—though whether that logic trumps standards of decency for a publication will surely vary from reader to reader.

County Facing Revenue Shortfall

The county budget is in rough shape, Rachan Dixit writes in today’s Progress. Sales tax and personal property tax revenues are down 6.6% and 4.8% respectively, leaving Albemarle with a $4.7M shortfall. That’s worsened by the governor’s recent budget cuts, leaving the county $600k short on expected state funding. Short of a spectacular improvement in the economy in the coming months, the debate over taxation and spending should be particular contentious come spring. If this seems familiar, it’s because the same thing happened last year.

County Considering Consolidating Three Schools

The Albemarle County School Board is trying to decide whether they should shut down Red Hill, Scottsville, and Yancey elementary schools, Brandon Shulleeta writes in today’s Daily Progress. All three are in need of some significant infrastructure repair, and it’s not obvious whether they should each be renovated, or if they should be shut down and replaced with a single school big enough to accommodate the 525 students. The board’s waiting for a recommendation from superintendent Pam Moran, which is expected next week. There’s a hearing later this month, and a decision is planned for October 22.

Though this might be an infrastructure consideration, inevitably it’s got lots more rolled up in it—how big schools should be, the racial diversity of the schools, how far kids have to ride on the bus, etc. The cheapest option will likely prove to be consolidating the three, but that’s not necessarily the option that will lead to the best education for future students. Expect a ruckus.

A Look Back at the UVA Baby Switch

It’s been over a decade since the UVA baby switch. (New to town? See Time’s 1999 story. The whole thing is too complicated—and bizarre—to explain here.) The UK’s Daily Telegraph has done a followup story on the two girls, who are now fourteen years old. Callie Conley and her (adoptive) mother, Paula Johnson, are both interviewed by the newspaper, while Rebecca Chittum and her (adoptive) grand/mother, Rosa Chittum, characteristically demur, so this is all from Conley’s perspective. For more, see Mike Allen’s 2008 look back on the decade anniversary of the whole affair in the Roanoke Times.

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