Community Standards

So, The Dallas Morning News is going to publish announcements of same-sex unions alongside traditional marriage and engagement announcements. Buzz, being liberal and all, can get behind that.

The daily, it announced this week, also is going to be more restrictive on advertisements for firearms, only taking ads from federally licensed dealers and accepting none for "assault" weapons. Buzz owns a gun, so we're ambivalent on that one. (We're only soft on crime until someone breaks into our house.)

Finally, the News will accept no ads for "gentlemen's clubs." Being a greedy liberal, we really support that one. Woo-hoo, more money for the Dallas Observer! (We protest the use of the word "gentlemen," however. While we're in favor of nakidity among women, we don't consider stuffing bills in someone's G-string a gentlemanly act.)

But you probably already knew this, since the News announced it in print. So what's our point? This: In a memo to his staff, Publisher Jim Moroney wrote that "these new policies have been put in place in an effort to best reflect the fabric of our community and reader base."

Oka-a-a-a-y. Work with the ol' Buzzer here. No titty bars. Fewer guns. Yes to gay unions. The fabric of our community. Hate to break it to you, Jim, but your community is Dallas. That's in Texas, in the "let's get all torqued up at the titty bar, grab our guns and go a-homo huntin' South."

Somebody buy that man a map.

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No shame:Buzz hates being called a homer, but we risk it in this case to champion the Dixie Chicks, who put on a damn fine concert at the AAC this past Sunday. Even if you don't like the band's music, you should admire them more than their country music arch nemesis Toby Keith, who took a few moments out from singing Ford truck commercials to capitalize on this spring's jingoistic fervor, thereby helping stave off irrelevance for a few more years.

What we didn’t like at the show was the shameless promotional pandering of local radio stations that set up booths (Kiss 106.1and 99.5 The Wolf), had staff walk around in T-shirts( 96.7 The Twister)or had placards up ( 96.3 KSCS). Why? Because Kiss 106.1 is owned by Clear Channel, which allowed many of its 1,200 stations to ban Chicks songs after the group criticized President Bush. The Wolf doesn’t play songs from the band’s new album. And KSCS also banned Chicks songs after the controversy. (Hell, if Buzz had only known stations would stop playing an act’s music if it criticized President Bush, we’d have dubbed a fake tape of J. Lo calling him a jerkwad.) In any case, it seems these stations like getting face time with the Chicks’ 15,000 concert-going fans by night but kowtow to the idiot minority during the day. Of course, where there’s money to be made, no good conservative is going to let principles stand in the way of his pocketbook.