Keep this in mind: Marilyn, Wharf Rat, you, and/or anyone else can come on Aspen Post without fear of censorship and have their say.

And what a say it’s been.

In the end, despite all the bad, that’s a good thing.

All best, Michael!

Ok. I get your point. There are plenty of strong personalities at work in this town. Neither you nor Marilyn are shrinking violets, which is exactly why your input is valuable. As we learned from the community forum that you moderated a few months ago, plenty of people in town are afraid to speak up, so I am delighted that the two of you want to be heard.
You know that I respect your capabilities. It’s just that if Marilyn used the Red Ant to throw darts at you, and Michael used the Aspen Post or FAIR to throw hand grenades at Marilyn, there might not be sufficient column inches left in either publication to write the Aspen obituary that will result if we spend ourselves into a foxhole.
Geeeeesh….I got home from dinner tonight (the bar at LULU Wison’s was packed) to an email from Marilyn implying that I was favoring YOU! How did I get in between you two love birds?

When Marilyn gets back in town, I plan to take the two of you to the woodshed (AKA Zele) and force you to kiss and make up.

Use the smell test. What you’ve seen is the following (I hope you’ve seen it all):

1. Two people writing letters to the editor of the Aspen Daily News alleging they were misquoted by “Post Time News”.

2. F.A.I.R. electing not to run a story written by the Con Job about Marilyn Marks that was scheduled to run last Wednesday.

3. I-Con firing all guns on deck against Marilyn Marks and Curtis Wackerle.

4. I-Con refusing to explain or even acknowledge the errors made by Post Time News.

4. A “cat fight” in which one cat is clawing and the other is cleaning her paws.

You decide wherein lies the truth.

Cheers!

Are you, Michael Conniff, suggesting that a person like Marilyn Marks is capable of quelling free speech?

Liberty and Justice for all, indeed. This stinks. And the odor is coming from underneath several tales.

Cheers,

You know I respect your opinion–that goes without saying–but you need to realize Marilyn is trying to destroy FAIR for the simple reason that it dared to write a story about HER.

I could care less about Marilyn–less than less–just I could give a flying whatever about Mick Ireland.

Marilyn was all for FAIR as long as she perceived (incorrectly as it turned out) that we were anti-Mick. Now that it’s obvious we’re holding her to the same standard she has completely flipped out, threatening lawsuits and trying to discredit everything we do.

Don’t put me in the same sentence with her.

Best, Michael!

Thanks!
Marilyn

I admire your goal, and you know at one time I shared your enthusiasm for Aspen Post as an activity worthy of considerable investment. As a concept I believe that my enthusiasm still exists; however, the fact that the Con Man is the guiding light serves as a barrier to my commitment. His lack of credibility impedes the success of this particular project.

If you had the opportunity to hear this morning’s Con Games, you might conclude (as I do) that the Con Man has very little, if any, ability to objectively describe others’ positions. If this thread can be categorized as a maniacal rant by Marilyn Marks against his holiness then I’m a monkey’s uncle. Not a single mention on air of the underlying circumstance; namely, that F.A.I.R. misquoted Paul Menter, that Menter protested by a letter to the editor of the local papers, that Post Time News modified the Aspen Post version of the letter without issuing a retraction of the published form, and that Marilyn Marks subsequently criticized the underlying journalism of F.A.I.R.

Out of that, the Con Man elects to vilify her on air with a series of scathing personal attacks, while simultaneously professing to sit back and let her “rant” (if you call the aforementioned comments by Marks “ranting”). It just belies common sense.

Whether he knows it or not, he embarassed himself tremendously this morning. I particularly enjoyed the part where he implied that Marks is somehow inferior to the Con Man because she didn’t attend the Veteran’s Day ceremony. Perhaps if he read his own “best local blog in the country” he would have determined that she was in Florida at the time. Maybe one of these days he’ll wake up and realize that you can’t be an attack dog commentator and an unbiased journalist at the same time. I doubt it though, because that dude has issues. I think if he replayed the tape of the vitriol he leveled against Marks and then applied the adjectives to the person in the mirror it might be very illuminating.

Mitch, I admire your dedication and loyalty to Aspen Post and consider blogging in general to be a very worthwhile exercise.

Take care.

That reminds me of:

It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is. If the–if he–if ‘is’ means is and never has been, that is not–that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement….Now, if someone had asked me on that day, are you having any kind of sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky, that is, asked me a question in the present tense, I would have said no. And it would have been completely true.
~Bill Clinton, Grand Jury Testimony (footnote 1,128 in Ken Starr’s report)

Cheers,

I’ve got this cool, propeller-head tool that allows me to compare two different versions of the same file and highlight the differences. Old-schoolers will recognize this as grep…

The point is, when you’re representing yourself as a fair, factual, investigative reporting entity, you don’t get to change your words once you go to press. Certainly you can try, but that takes you out of the realm of objectivity and places you squarely in the political.

Even I had to admit plagiarism when a mutual friend spiked lyrics from a famous C&R artist. What’s different here? No, this is not plagiarism, but it’s every bit as pertinent.

My disappointment notwithstanding, I disagree with Marilyn’s late-night assessment of Aspen Post. I plan to keep trying to make Aspen Post a worthwhile read, even though I regard this a low point that print journalists will use to support their premise that blogging is intellectual masturbation.

Cheers,