C-Ville Weekly‘s Racist Rant

Published by Waldo Jaquith on July 23, 2013 in Meta News. 22 Comments

A recent issue of the C-Ville Weekly included a paragraph from “The Rant” that read as follows:

To all you black motherf#$%ers running up here to the Charlottesville restaurants looking for free food, we wouldn’t be known as a restaurant, we would be know as a food bank. So, from now on when you bring your black ass into a restaurant in Charlottesville and want free food, carry your asses to a food bank. Thank you.

This was received poorly, as Marcella Robertson reported for NBC-29 yesterday. Protesters gathered in front of the newspaper’s Downtown Mall office, resulting in editor Giles Morris reading a prepared statement of apology to them. The paper also ran an apology in the current week’s issue. (I would link to the original piece or the apology on C-Ville Weekly’s site, but I cannot find either.)

Unfortunately, the paper’s response is to simply keep a tighter rein on the section (“rants that are sexist, racist, or in any way espouse points of view motivated by hate will not run in the paper”), rather than to finally axe the execrable embarrassment that is “The Rant.” If they don’t publish any comments “motivated by hate,” there would be virtually nothing left. The very purpose of it is to provide a public forum for people to say things that they would never say with their name attached to it, comments that would never otherwise be printed in the paper. It’s been some years since “The Rant” was added to the weekly, and it has cheapened the publication markedly ever since. (Most tellingly, they’re happy to print nasty remarks about individuals, but they censor the names of businesses that are criticized. Businesses advertise in the newspaper, of course, while individuals do not.) Morris would be smart to go beyond sanitizing “The Rant,” and just kill it. The newspaper and Charlottesville would be better for it.

Student Jailed for Narrowly Escaping Armed Assault

Published by Waldo Jaquith on June 28, 2013 in Crime, Law and Justice and UVa. 36 Comments Tags: , .

Last April, late one night, three female UVA students were walking through the darkened parking lot from Harris Teeter to their car, having bought a few things for a fundraiser, when they realized they were being followed by several people. As they got to their car, one of them drew a gun, and another person jumped on the hood of the car. The terrified girls locked the doors as the assailants demanded that they get out. They fled in the car, calling 911. Shortly after they fled, they were pulled over by a vehicle with sirens and a light. Safety.

Or not. They were pulled over by their assailants: plainclothes Alcohol Beverage Control officers who wrongly suspected they had purchased a 12-pack of beer. The driver, 20-year-old Elizabeth Daly, was arrested and jailed on charges of assaulting an officer and eluding police. As K. Burnell Evans writes in the Daily Progress, Commonwealth’s Attorney Dave Chapman—up for reelection in November—dropped the charges against Daly yesterday, but the student remains upset and confused by the whole experience. None of the agents are named in the story, and the ABC refused to discuss the case with the paper.

The story has gotten significant attention in the 12 hours since it was published, and seems like the kind of piece liable to get a great deal of national attention in the coming days. Here’s hoping that the outcome of that is that the ABC is made to answer for what in the world they were thinking, because there are so many levels on which this debacle was a terrible idea.

Council Race a Dead Heat

Published by Waldo Jaquith on June 12, 2013 in Government and Politics. Closed

Last night, city Democrats nominated Dave Chapman and Todd Divers for commonwealth’s attorney and commissioner of the revenue, and Kristin Szakos received one of the two nominations for City Council…but the second council nominee still isn’t known, the Progress reports. Bob Fenwick and Wes Bellamy tied, each getting 1,088 votes in the low-attendance primary, although the election board’s count this morning gave Fenwick another three votes. Now the provisional ballots will be counted—four in all—to select a winner…unless that’s a tie, too. The winner will join Szakos in running against Republicans Michael Farruggio and Buddy Weber in November’s general election.

Craddock Named to BOS

Published by Waldo Jaquith on June 12, 2013 in Government. Closed

Petie Craddock was appointed to the Board of Supervisors last night, J. Reynolds Hutchins writes for the Progress. The local man was the unanimous choice of the BOS, who appointed him to the Scottsville district to complete the term of Chris Dumler, who resigned last month. Craddock says that he will not stand for election in November. He’s a former member of the planning commission, as well as the board of a few other organizations, and calls himself a non-partisan moderate.

County School Board to Include Students

Published by Waldo Jaquith on June 11, 2013 in Education and Government. 4 Comments

The Albemarle School Board is going to add a rotating non-student representative, Tim Shea reports for Charlottesville Tomorrow. Members of the County Student Advisory Council, a student-run group representing the county’s three high schools, will take turns participating in school board meetings, while board members will start attending the student group. The specifics of the relationship are still being worked out, but there seems to be consensus about the broad outlines.

Sideblog