In case you missed it, Jim Schutze predicted the future a few weeks ago. He said Steve Blow would write an “Aw, shucks, the Trinity Project is still wonderful” column. Steve Blow did just that (though a week past Schutze’s predicted deadline). Imagine, then, Schutze’s delight as he put up this post yesterday, pointing out how Blow’s column could have been better.
Here’s what I don’t understand: did Blow not read Schutze’s prognostication? Your city columnist should be reading the Observer’s blog, right? Especially the posts that are about him. Because you can do that from Sunnyvale. Right? So how do you write that column about “doomers” and “gloaters” without mentioning by name the biggest gloater in the city, Jim Schutze — a guy who preemptively called you out for writing the very column you just turned in? I just don’t get it.
22 comments
We can debate about what defines “funny” all we want…but that was FUNNY.
In both senses.
Only negative nellies read The Observer, and Steve Blow is most definitely not a negative nelly!
Let’s be honest… 99% of people that live in DFW have never heard of The Observer, and those that have do not view it as a credible news source. It’s sort of like the MSNBC of papers!
Your headline puts an image in my mind where Jim Schutze is a sort of kickboxing Jack Ruby and Steve Blow is Lee Harvey Oswald is his final astonishment and brief flash of agony, crumpling with one last “Awww, sshhhuuuuucckksss…”
Please remove same.
Thank you in advance,
Daniel
The more important issue here is the status of Trinity River Project.
The Gloomy Gus’s at the Observer and the How-Doodely-Do dreamers at the DMN are cranking out columns almost daily.
Given D Magazine’s (past? present?) stake in the project (cover story, toll road claims), maybe it’s time you folks revisit all aspects of the plan with sober eyes.
Let’s be honest James . . . you sleep in Dallas Morning News editorial pajamas don’t you?
The Observer is over-the-top and carries its own wacky agenda, but you might be surprised how well-read and influential that little paper with the personal ads is. Not to mention no other papers in this city appear to track our train wreck that is city hall any longer.
Actually I guess he would bark it with fierce final fury: Aw! Shucks! Played in slow motion over and over on the evening news, though, the terrible moment would enter the collective American consciousness as an attenuated, garbled and husky plea in vain for divine clemency.
Please remove this image as it is abusive.
Maybe what this really proves is that Jim Schutze is a time traveler and isn’t bound by the conventional wisdom that a time traveler can’t change the past without affecting the future.
“Let’s be honest… 99% of people that live in DFW have never heard of The Observer…”
About the same percentage that have canceled their DMN subscriptions over the past decade.
I can’t stand the far-left politics of the Observer, but I do enjoy reading a point of view that’s different from my own from time to time. Once in a very long while I’ll even agree with them.
@ bizzle- If I slept in DMN editorial pajamas I wouldn’t be posting here on D. Furthermore, I never said I didn’t like The Observer- I was just making a point. I actually like Wilonsky quite a bit- he’s one of my favorites! But they do have very few readers and they also tend to lean to left- thus I dubbed them the MSNBC of papers. Am I wrong?
@ James,
Lets be honest… Schutze is hands down the best journalist currently covering Dallas and it’s politics, the Morning News puppets don’t even come close. Schutze, Wilonsky, and the DO staff are the only reporters in town that can call Comfortable Tom Leppert out as he lies through his teeth and puts Dallas in danger.
And lets be honest about something else… as “The Greatest Generation” and the Boomers die off the DMN will not be replacing the readership of it’s print product. Day old print news is dead. Ironically I’d bet the DO and D Magazine will be around longer than the DMN daily print product because a market still exists for in depth investigative journalism that a weekly or monthly publication can do, at best the DMN will probably convert to a weekly only publication as well.
I’m not always a big Schutze fan, but that was a journalistic beat down. Brilliant!
The position of lead city/metro columnist at a major daily newspaper used to be a very big deal. Mike Royko, to name but one, had a major impact on politics in Chicago for decades. How did an utterly unexceptional and unimaginative writer such as Steve Blow (who strikes me as a sort of avuncular but incompetent Ned Flanders-in-print), ever ascend to such a lofty position? Is he someone’s brother-in-law? Even if Schutze is correct on all counts, wouldn’t the DMN’s secret agenda be better served by a more capable spokesman than Blow?
Blow isn’t my favorite, but he certainly isn’t incompetent. And on the opposite end, Schutze is a brilliant writer, but as of late he seems to be venturing more into black-helicopter territory – in some cases implying connections between people, events and places that are tenuous at best. Not every political issue is tinged with intrigue and conspiracy, despite his best efforts to insist otherwise.
Schutze is Texas A&M. Blow is UT. Texas A&M is obsessed with UT. UT is oblivious of A&M.
Hollering hogs on a feather bed, it looks like Jim Schutze kickboxed my humble groin. — Steve Blow
I’m generally against bullies picking on the weak and defenseless — but Blow is a guy that just screams out for a bitch-slapping. And Schutze delivered it masterfully.
Did Mrs,. Schutze never teach her son to pick on somebody his own size?
Maybe it was just Steve blows density… I mean destiny to write tha column.
Tim has Major mancrush and loves kicking the dmn crotch
Reading Steve Blow is like a column I’d imagine from from Ned Flanders, without all the “okely, doakely” stuff…
Let’s be fair here. An altogether revolutionary idea, given that this is a blog, but let’s try it.
Nobody reads Blow for serious commentary. Blow knows exactly who his audience is and he writes for that audience, and by and large he hits the target every time. You probably aren’t in that audience. Schutze certainly isn’t — he reads Blow the way a cat toys with a fly. It’s not an audience that wants to chew over the deeper issues of polity. It’s just folks who appreciate an “aw shucks” kind of column every now and then as a kind of shorthand expression of modesty, false or not. They go to mom and pop cafes after Sunday church. They live in the mid-scale burbs. They don’t read D, and don’t care what readers of D or the Observer or their bloggers think about the Trinity project.
There’s some danger in what Blow does. In writing for just folks, he risks writing to a crowd that’s getting smaller. Just folks ain’t who they used to be. Many columnists have made this mistake, and newspaper columns are the graveyards of many a good writer. Anybody remember John Anders?
Schutze’s problem is a little different from Blow’s. Schutze is like a loose lion at the circus, crazy as hell but you can’t not keep your eye on him. He’s funny, he’s unpredictable, and occasionally dangerous. When he’s right, which is roughly half the time, he’s really, really right. The rest of the time he’s crazy as a coot — and as crafty.
And he has this going for him: Nobody else is writing about the city with anything like his flair or doggedness.
So, why is Schutze taking out after Blow? He certainly can’t do any damage to Blow, whose fans are probably unshakable. And it certainly doesn’t make Schutze look any bigger or wiser or braver.
But of course Schutze is really gunning for bigger game. He’s despised the DMN ever since his days at the late lamented Times Herald. When the Times Herald collapsed (Schutze was already writing for the Observer, I believe), according to DMN folklore a decree went forth from Burl Osborne that under no circumstances was the News to hire Schutze, or even let him through the door. This didn’t help.
So, as with so many other things, Schutze has let mostly personal enmities warp his agenda — he’ll swerve out of his patch any time to take a swipe at the News. And this weakens him considerably as a columnist. The bottom line is that, much as you’d like to, you really can’t take him seriously, because you don’t know what that grinding noise is out back, where he keeps his axes.