Another Open Letter to James Ragland
Dear James Ragland:
I sincerely hope it doesn’t feel like I’m harping on you. But after reading your column this morning, in which you argue that Six Flags shouldn’t sell beer, I felt compelled to share some thoughts with you.
My first thought is that I just made a beer pun. Harp? Beer sales? But that’s beside the point.
The point is, your argument against beer sales at Six Flags is a lousy one. First, you say they shouldn’t sell beer because people are “worried about patrons getting drunk, getting on a roller coaster, and throwing up on rides and spectators alike.” When a Six Flags spokeswoman points out that you don’t see that happening very often at other parks that sell beer, you say, “In this case, stats don’t mean much: once is too often if you’re on the wrong end.”
By that logic, if one hockey fan is killed by an errant puck, then we shouldn’t let people play hockey. Oh, I know it doesn’t happen very often. But you and I will agree, James, that if you’re the one killed by an errant puck, once is too often.
I bet you can see where I’m headed with this. James, stats do matter.
Next, you suggest that people going to Six Flags don’t really even want beer. You write: “Good luck getting Six Flags officials to cough up copies of any consumer surveys they’ve done illustrating that this is what their guests want.” I want to make sure I understand this. So you’re saying that people don’t like to drink beer. Do I have that correct? Which means, what, that Six Flags is in league with the brewers? Six Flags wants to tempt people to drink something they don’t want, thereby creating a larger market for Budweiser?
You know how I know you don’t believe that, James? Because two paragraphs later, you write: “[W]e can’t force the company’s bigwigs to tell us what we want to hear — that this is all about making an extra buck or two.” Ah-ha! Do you see what you did there? How is Six Flags going to make money by selling something that people don’t want? James, you know people want beer. Six Flags knows people want beer. Because beer tastes good, and when it’s hot and you’ve been walking all over God’s creation, following around your kids, dealing with crowds and lines, a beer tastes extra good.
And when did making an extra buck or two become a bad thing? Six Flags isn’t a non-profit, is it?
Finally, you close your argument by saying that your biggest worry is that after drinking beer, people will climb into their cars with their kids and drive home. I’m going to ignore the fact that there’s nothing wrong with drinking beer and driving your kids home, that getting drunk and driving your kids home is what you should be worried about. I won’t point out that, for instance, as a 175-pound man, I can quite legally consume two 12-ounce Bud Lights in an hour and drive my kids home. Nope, I’ll leave those points for another time. Instead, I’ll just ask another question: why do you give a pass on the beer issue to the Rangers Ballpark, “where a cold beer often washes away memories of forgettable baseball”? If Six Flags shouldn’t sell it, then neither should the Rangers Ballpark, nor the AAC, nor, now that I think of it, any restaurant.
James. Please. If you wish to abstain, then you have my support. But before you commit your thoughts to newsprint, please get them in order and make sure they’re cogent. Sometimes, I find, a beer helps.
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I prefer to be charitable. I imagine James Ragland drawing the short straw for the assignment to write an opinion piece against alcohol sales. All of the poor arguments he uses are nothing more than clues to readers, like a hostage blinking SOS to the terrorists’ video camera. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. James Ragland will thank me for it, after he’s released by Belo.
I had the same sentiments when I read his column this morning.
Don’t be mistaken Ed, there are several activist groups in the Dallas area that fight the expansion of any, any, any alcohol sales. At one time in the early 1900’s, Dallas was the national headquarters for the Anti-Saloon league, whose strength helped pass prohibition amendment to the US Constitution.
Go to Houston, they don’t even understand the term “dry”, it’s a completely foreign term to them. Other cities, the same way.
Restaurants in (laughably called) “dry” areas are allowed to serve drinks, they just can’t purchase their inventory at wholesale and must pay a “fourth tier” of costs. In some cases their neighbors (sometimes just yards away) enjoy a competitive advantage in their purchasing power by being on a patch of land that is “wet”.
Consumers (especially those of us in North Dallas) can’t buy a six-pack at their local grocery, instead for many of us Plano and Addison are closer, sending the tax revenue to those cities.
I do not advocate a wholesale expansion of alcohol – zoning and safety must be a consideration. But I feel more confident in a large chain’s procedures in carding younger purchasers than in some of the smaller merchants along Inwood (or Greenville, or Industrial).
One other component of the fight against expansion (besides those who feel their moral authority should be imposed on others)is those businesses which were granted competitive advantages many years ago. They fear they will lose their granted monopolies, whether it’s liquor sales to clubs or “wet” real estate leases.
If you do drink (with or without the kids around), just drink responsibly, please.
Um, there’s an annual amusement park in Dallas that serves beer all over the place.
It’s called the State Fair. Perhaps he should be pulling stats from that before he starts writing columns about how something bad MIGHT happen.
Ragland’s puritanism baffles me. European amusement parks have served beer and wine from time immemorial. Could it be that he just doesn’t get around much?
Dude:
Why is it that your deductive reasoning processes evidence no overt failings only in circumstances when you are defending your right to quaff?
TOMC
Geez, cut the guy some slack. Ragland is a columnist, not a pundit. He doesn’t have to make sense. He just has to string together enough sentences, nonsensical or otherwise, to construct a column that’s better than Steve Blow’s. Remember, you don’t have to outrun the bear; you just have to outrun your buddy who is also running away from the bear. (Does anyone remember John Anders? Pity that FrontBurner hadn’t been around then.)
@ Tim, Re: James and cogent thoughts: I wish you’d harp on this from Wednesday where James is a mind reader: “Here’s what I think: The mayor is fed up with a lackluster school district driven by internecine politics and marked by one fiasco after another. He doesn’t believe Superintendent Michael Hinojosa, who has lost the confidence of several trustees, can turn the district around the way things are set up now. He’s probably right.”
1) 103 Exemplary & Recognized schools plus ah-nother national recognition just this week do not = lackluster. 2) Fiascoes in the biased gleeful eyes of DMN 3) He worries about the lost confidence of trustees with “internecine politics.” 4) George Bush has spent more time in Dallas schools than Ragland. IJS
Ragland, Blow, Schutze, Dreher…
It’s all variations of the same dreary story. Columns are the gravestones over the careers of good writers. (It was true of Anders, too. And the old, original John Bloom, one of the most brilliant writers at the Times-Herald until they made him a columnist.)
What happens when they give you a column? You end up chewing on the end of a pencil thinking Deep Thoughts.
The antidote is simple and effective: Get out of the office and do the thing that made you such a good writer in the first place. And — Schutze and Dreher — stop talking to so many politicians.
Bill, do you read Schutze? His reporting,which drives 99 percent of his columns, is impeccable. Have you followed this Inland Port mess? He wouldn’t have uncovered any of this if he were not out “talking to so many politicians.” You should be thanking him if you’re a resident of Dallas.
Anyhow, the guy breaks a big story just about every week these days. I wouldn’t link him with columnists like Blow and Ragland who average about a phone call a column.
I stopped going to amusement parks cause I heard a story about a kid that threw up on a roller coaster. Once is too often.
Then I stopped going on plane rides cause I heard a story about a guy that threw up during landing. Once is too often.
Then I stopped eating in restaurants because I heard a story about a lady who threw up after eating some bad guacamole. Once is too often.
Now I just sit and read blogs in my house on Saturday afternoons.
With the economy being what it is, and newspaper columnists being the self-righteous dullards they are, the more alcohol the better.
Hold on a second, Bill Marvel. Are you suggesting that Blow was ever a good writer?
Eh, all I got to say is for a local columnist, if they’re not “talking about what you’ve got to say” you might as well hang it up.
Say what you want about Blow and Ragland and Jack Floyd, they take positions and you notice.
You obviously don’t agree, but that’s not always the point, now is it?
It’s one thing to take a position and be able to defend it. It’s quite another thing to take an idiotic position based upon inherently faulty logic and when your support for that position in internally inconsistent.
IJS,
Blow is a very fine writer when he’s at his best. Obviously, since you disdain him, you haven’t spent much time over the years reading him. You’re judging him by his run-of-the-mill columns. Which is my point.
And, Matt,
Schutze does what every pundit does. He calls his usual circle of sources and writes what he’s made up his mind to write. That’s okay. Sometimes he’s right. Often he’s wrong.
But opinion is not stories.
A little background. I was an uncritical admirer until he wrote about something I happen to know a little about: My neighborhood. (Not his; he doesn’t live within 12 miles.) We were having a severe problem with prostitution along our tree-shaded streets and as a result we got up a little neighborhood group and went down to Austin to lobby for stronger prostitution laws. Jim seemed to think this was some kind of North Dallas genteel revolt against the colorful messiness of the city that he so loves to romance about. So far as I know, he never bothered to knock on a single door in our lower-middle-class neighborhood (that would be called reporting). He shot from the lip.
After that, I started reading him critically. I found that, yes, indeed, he could be brilliant. He could also hide his lack of reporting and deep thought behind a lot of glib sarcasm.
You can tell within a sentence or two which Schutze you’re going to encounter. You can also predict what position he’s going to take on virtually any issue. How original is that?
The truth is, this city doesn’t really have a great columnist, in the Royko mode. Probably, given the decline of newspapers and the print media, it never will have one.
And Jr,
I don’t read to agree or disagree with “positions.”
awful column.
Didn’t they already pass this and alcohol will be allowed?
If you want dry, move to Lubbock James Ragland.
Bill, what do you think about Schutze’s reporting on the Trinity? What he reported on back in 2007 is all coming true. It’s absolutely incredible what he’s been able to do on that subject.
And, on the Inland Port, his “usual circle of sources” included a congresswoman on-the-record claiming that two other elected officials–in her own party–were shaking down a wealthy businessman. That’s not punditry. That’s just old-fashioned reporting and these days we should be in awe of that.
Why go to Lubbock when he can just hit Kroger’s?
http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/29/2825
Dear Mr. Marvel:
There is much to distain about Mr. Blow’s writing. Having been the subject of one of his diatribes — and I would note that he didn’t even bother to try to contact me, although my e-mail appeared at the bottom of each one of my columns — I know him to be, for the most part, a careless, lazy, unimaginative, and shallow-thoughted hack. [Note to commentators: here is your obvious entry point to launch similar strings of adjectives at my columns.]
But I say “for the most part.” Mr. Blow once wrote an article about his grown son having a heart-attack or some kind of seizure on the sidewalk outside Mr. Blow’s office, and as he cradles his son waiting for the ambulance to arrive, he calls him “My baby, my baby.” It was an emotionally raw, excellent piece of writing, and I still think of it from time to time, being the father of a son.
But I also agree with you that the relentless drumbeat of column deadlines will ruin all writers eventually.
Man, republicans do like the nanny state.
That column moved me too, Marty (and it’s one of the few Blow columns I can actually remember). But as both a parent and a cynic, I have to say that arousing maternal/paternal emotions is pretty low-hanging fruit. I got misty at the end of Marley, too, but not without simultaneously feeling contempt for the writers.
FTR, I would probably never set foot at the State Fair of Texas if it didn’t sell alcohol. And I’ll be more inclined to go to Six Flags once it does.
PO.S. I should add that Blow was candidly recounting a real-life incident rather than being a tear-jerking manipulator like the Marley writers. So good on him; still, I stand by my assertion that it’s sort of easy pickins.
I meant P.S. I wasn’t calling anybody a POS. Not until I’ve finished my coffee.
Does it appear to anyone else like the DMN turned off comments to Ragland’s column?
Daniel,
No one cares where the fruit hangs. We just want it to be sweet.
Ragland, like all the other DMN columnist, is doing his best to avoid writing anything that resembles journalism. That would get you fired.
Calling DMN’s columns pablum, attributes too much substance to them.
What I think has been lost in all the discussion of Six Flags is the situation at Hurricane Harber. There, you’re looking at young guys in the vicinity of young girls, all comparitively scantily clad. Stir in a little beer, a little flirting, a lot of sun, your chances of a little bikini top-grabbing go way up. To the guys it’s fun; to some girl’s Daddy, it’s not gonna be fun. On the bright side: This looks like a full-employment act for off-duty police officers. (And the surroundings aren’t all the bad.)
@ Tim -
There’s no way you only weigh 175 lbs.
@ John: There’s no way I’d drink Bud Light. But the weight is accurate. If you want to place a bet, I’ve got $20 right here, friend.
Marty, just for the record, when I interviewed your editor for that column, I also requested an interview with you (or rather the real person behind “Marty.”) But Tim declined the request. That was reported in the column.
By the way, in light of recent events in your financial industry, I think your columns would be much more interesting now. Any chance of a special guest appearance?
@ Tim
By 175 lbs., do you mean naked, on an empty stomach, right after going to the bathroom, first thing in the morning weight? What’s your Old Monk weight?
Since I don’t drink (child of an alcoholic) I don’t really have a dog in this hunt. But good luck getting regular folks to pay five or six bucks for a beer. Maybe Mr. Tim Rogers has that kind of money to throw around, but the rest of us are living on a budget these days.
Dear Mr. Blow:
I did, in fact, make a guest appearance in D last month specifically addressing the stock market — with a follow-up last week. You can find them both here: http://frontburner.dmagazine.com/2009/02/24/marty-cortlands-financial-advice/#comments
Just curious why Tim’s rebuff would have stopped you dead in your tracks. Maybe, ya know, you could have sent me an e-mail directly?
Enough about Blow, already! How many of you folks (bloggers, commentators, lurkers, you know who you are) is willing to pay five or six bucks for a beer at Six Flags? Come on now, be honest!
If I’m willing to pay that at the fair, and at the ball park, and at the AAC, why wouldn’t I be willing to pay that at Six Flags?
My bad, Marty. I thought Tim was actually in charge over there.
So, tell me, would you have agreed to a face-to-face, on-the-record chat against Tim’s wishes? (The terms were that I’d interview the real person but respect the nom de plume in print.)
Are you two gonna sword fight, and if so, who picks the urinal?
Time to face the music Cortland.
Blow is being fairer than Tim has ever been to anyone in his life.
What if he throws in a case of beer?
Dear Mr. Blow:
I’m not sure why a face-to-face was important to you, but I would have been happy to answer your questions by e-mail.
(GMAFB: you might have just as well offered to throw in a bag of grass clippings. I don’t drink beer. But if he had offered to share a bottle of Remy Martin Louis XIII, I might have been tempted.)
Best,
MC
I’m guessing to make sure you’re an actual person, and not just a amalgamation of work by several D writers.
Such the dangers of writing under a nom de plume.
I’m resisting the impish urge to call up Steve Blow and offer to grant him an interview, right now, if he picks up a few rounds at Al’s. And yes, I’m Marty Cortland, and no, I won’t reveal my real name. Just be there at 5. And don’t forget your credit card. On account of I’m powerful thirsty for some of that Martin Loo-ey stuff. That’s with one X and three I’s!
Oh, the drunker I got, the more fun I’d have.
Daniel, do it. And tape it.
Daniel:
Yes, please do. It’s conceivable that Mr. Blow would write a column based on the encounter that I might actually enjoy reading. I also think that you would be funnier and less insulting than I, so it would be good for Mr. Blow, too.
Hey Marty, let’s meet me at Six Flags with a jug of that Remeee and a couple of ladies and we’ll laissez le bontemps roulez if you know what I mean, and I think you do.
“I imagine James Ragland drawing the short straw for the assignment to write an opinion piece against alcohol sales.”
Imagine on, Ed.
I’ve been critical of James and other columnists for a variety of reasons. But I have one rule: I base my criticism only upon what I know or am firmly convinced are the facts. And one thing I know from personal experience as a former DMN writer is that James was not assigned to write such a column. That was NOT how the News operated in the 13 years I was there, and it is not how the News operates now. (If you will kindly pick up your Saturday News and turn to the editorial page, you will see a brief editorial in favor of alcohol sales at Six Flags; the editorial page, of course, does take its marching orders from on high.)
When you base an opinion or an argument upon what you “imagine” to be the case, you inevitably weaken that argument because it is no longer based upon fact but upon wishful thinking.
Kinda like arguing that the Pope isn’t interested in social justice because he lectured a certain senator about the Church’s position on birth control, when you come to think of it.
Shoot Marty, the girls are waitin’…and the jug o’ Remmee’s ain’t gonna get any younger. Or is it the other way around. What’s your answer Sinbad?
I could be wrong, but it seems that crunching on a ****roach carcass as part of a Six Flags insect eating contest would be far more likely to induce vomiting than drinking a little yellow-colored water, otherwise known as domestic light beer, before riding the Titan.
Oops, wrong link. Here’s the short clip of the bug eating contest (at :11).