Comments on: I say it’s spinach.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 10 Mar 2004 18:45:22 +0000

This really, truly, couldn’t be by the same guy who wrote “The Haygoods of Columbus” and who won all those awards at the Boston Globe . . . could it? Is there a Wil Haygood Jr.? Honest to Betsey, i cannot reconcile this turgid tale (and see, i use alliterative cliches, too) with the very unaffected writer of that book. I don’t mean to hint at anything awful (like an alien inhabiting his body, like Vince D’nofrio in MiB?), but could someone have switched bylines?

There’s having a bad day, and we’ve all been there (lived there), and there’s. . .this. Someone owes either Wil Haygood or central Ohio (yes, i live just a few miles east of Etna) an apology.

Pax, jeff

By: Lance Mannion

Lance Mannion — Tue, 09 Mar 2004 21:22:56 +0000

Just to pile on. Jimmy Stewart was six-three. That’s a good deal taller than “around” six feet. And Bedford Falls was a mill town, not a farm town. George Bailey wasn’t a farm boy. He was the son of a banker who wanted to be an engineer. Guy can’t even get his cliches in order.

By: Jim

Jim — Tue, 09 Mar 2004 19:47:47 +0000

Is this the same Wil Haygood? If so, He’s from Columbus. http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:UAHv1X5fWeQJ:www.poynter.org/dg.lts/id.3467/content.content_view.htm+%22Wil+Haygood%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

By: Nance

Nance — Tue, 09 Mar 2004 14:32:26 +0000

Oooh! Ooh! I forgot this part! Ahem:

The Ohio shooter seen by an eyewitness was a white man in his thirties, maybe early forties. Around six feet. It’s a description, but it’s a kind of everyman-in-rural-America description. It might as well be George Bailey, the Jimmy Stewart character in “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

I, too, was amazed at the glancing attention paid to the fact that central Ohio is not only farmland, but there’s a BIG GODDAMN CITY sitting right in the middle of it. The fact the interstate has a three-digit number might have tipped the reporter off that it’s a beltway, not a through-road. This is not a story about the country, for God’s sake.

By: Michael G

Michael G — Tue, 09 Mar 2004 14:22:54 +0000

That was the Kraft-Ebbing contest — No, No, Wait Wait. That’s something else. You want the Bulwer-Lytton contest. Actually you want the Rick Bragg contest. I think “condescending” is the right word here. This kind of over writing is unforgivable but it accurately reflects, I think, the attitude of a lot of media people in some big, sophisticated, urbane East Coast Cities like NY and DC toward the rest of the world. I notice it a lot here in California and it seems to go equally in other parts of the country. For evidence I offer the condescending and snickering coverage of the recent California recall election that was completely miscalled by the NY and DC press. But then the NYT bought the WMD story too. What ever happened to Judith Miller?

By: Pam

Pam — Tue, 09 Mar 2004 12:54:11 +0000

Don’t they have some kind of contest for this type of writing? You know….”It was a dark and stormy night” type thing. To see who can write the worst story? This piece could win.

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 09 Mar 2004 09:49:57 +0000

My lord, didn’t those people look around the area? Farmland? Yeah, it’s rapidly diminishing farmland. My parents live not two miles from that last shooting near Etna and having grown up there, it’s become overwhelmed by mass suburbia. It’s the rapidly growing Pickerington-Pataskala mega-suburb, which will meld together someday, swallowing up tiny Etna.

As for the fear factor, sure, no one wants to be shot driving down the freeway, that sounds silly to say when I read back what I typed but I was more afraid of the .22 caliber killers from nearly 30 years ago, who were roaming east-central Ohio, shooting people at random, and turned out to be two brothers from Kirkersville, roughly 30 miles east of Columbus

As for farmers, you’re right on that. A more pessimistic bunch would be hard to find

By: ashley

ashley — Tue, 09 Mar 2004 07:22:46 +0000

I don’t even think it’s tabloid TV quality. It’s that condescending, “we know it all and you don’t, simple viewer” tone of small market TV consumer reporters.

Jeez, I’m sick of unskilled media workers.

Like they say, there used to be a handful of outlets owned by 4 companies. Now, there’s thousands of outlets owned by 4 companies.

By: alex

alex — Tue, 09 Mar 2004 05:05:11 +0000

Sounds remarkably like the voice of tabloid TV. That thing could pass for the kind of narrative you’d hear on Dateline or 20/20 or 48 Hours, dubbed over some footage of farmland by a reporter who’s spent more time in the makeup trailer than on the beat.

By: Nance

Nance — Tue, 09 Mar 2004 03:52:41 +0000

Yeah, that was my first spit-take moment, too — I’ve never known an optimistic farmer, either. In fact, farmers are famous for assuming the worst about everything, to the point of absurdity. Bad weather means low yields, good weather means low prices, both of which they hate. I’ve often thought a happy farmer would be one who had a magic rain cloud that only visited his acreage, so he could have a bumper crop in a high-price year. Then he’d have to think of something else to bitch about, but it wouldn’t take him long.

There were many, many other spit-take moments, though. Like, oh, this: Pataskala and Etna have the weathered-farm-community look that, no matter how hard Hollywood tries, it cannot duplicate. Old buildings, clapboard storefronts, the curved road leading into town. What the hell does that mean? And this: Fear was descending like daylight across the flat landscape, through the naked tree branches, beneath the bright blue sky. Huh?

I mean: Huh?