You know you’re thinking it. You may have even said something to your spouse or your drinking buddies. But it takes a particularly insensitive jerk to say out loud what many insensitive jerks were thinking privately after fired police Chief Terrell Bolton broke down blubbering at his news conference last…

Well now, that’s just plain rude. Buzz is referring to the Texas Senate Democrats’ sudden skedaddling to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to deny GOP efforts to redraw congressional district maps more to Republicans’ liking–or more to the liking of U.S. House Majority Leader Tom “Mr. Megalomania” DeLay. Eleven Democrats bolted for…

The Dallas Observer is often incorrectly referred to as a “liberal” rag. We’re not really; we just run sex ads, which makes us relatively well-paid, not necessarily liberal. You doubt Buzz? Well, smartyboots, we have in our hands an official Republican National Committee “census document” that seeks to delve into…

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…

We here at the Dallas Observer try to do and to be good–at least as good as circumstances allow. Sometimes, we wonder why we bother. (Not that we bother much. But still…) Take, for instance, our April 25, 2002, story “Sweetheart Deal” by Thomas Korosec and Rose Farley, about how…

A three-judge panel of the 5th District Court of Appeals has granted the Dallas Observer summary judgment in a libel suit brought by restaurateur Dale Wamstad. That means we won, though it’s too soon to tell whether Wamstad will appeal. This is good news for Buzz, since we edited the…

Each year, the Press Club of Dallas passes out scads of bronze statues of a semi-naked woman–called the Katie Awards–for excellence in local journalism and public relations. Buzz, while not a member of the club (see Groucho Marx’s comment re: clubs, membership in), would like to suggest a special prize…

This much we know is true: (PRIZM!) Youth OUTreach is a local organization for gay, lesbian and transgendered young people. On May 2, members of the group decided to get together in the food court in Town East Mall in Mesquite. They sat at tables. They ordered food. They talked…

One of Buzz’s favorite episodes of the TV show South Park introduced characters called “underpants gnomes.” They’re dim, vulgar pixies who steal little boys’ underpants as part of a grand business strategy. The plan? Step 1: Collect a big pile of underpants; Step 3, the profits. The joke is that…

Here’s a rhetorical question for you, apropos of nothing, really: How many pictures of dead Iraqi soldiers did you see during the media’s wall-to-wall coverage of the war? Buzz watched roughly 40 hours of TV news during the heavy fighting and saw lots of pictures of artillery pieces firing, tons…

On occasion, assorted persons–our friends, family and co-workers, chiefly–accuse Buzz of being a cynic. This wounds our heart deeply. Tears on our pillow, etc. etc. How can we be considered cynical, we ask in aggrieved tones, when people generally behave just about as badly as we expect they will? We’re…

Here’s a little inside Dallas Observer baseball for you: Our writers have quotas. They’re expected to write so many stories a year in exchange for continued employment. On occasion, our hardworking reporters find the quota system a bit burdensome. (By “on occasion” Buzz means “always,” and by “bit burdensome” we…

Finally, Buzz brings you some sort of good news. The state of Texas, in its all-too-finite wisdom, has bowed to eons of mammalian evolution and decided that breast-feeding your child is not a sign of unfit parenting. This is particularly good news for Jacqueline Mercado and her boyfriend, Johnny Fernandez,…

Here’s a lesson in standard journalistic etiquette for those of you who aren’t part of the media elite. (And by “elite,” Buzz of course means anyone who knows where to find the chilé-lime fried pork rinds at Kroger.) Often, after you write a story about someone, that someone will call…

You would think that if someone were to build the world’s largest zoo in Denton and announce plans to have it open this summer, the public would have noticed by now. It’s hard to be stealthy when you’re moving lions, tigers and elephants into a suburb. It’s even harder when…

A youth group that calls itself the Young Conservatives of Texas is taking some credit for the recent firing of a Fort Worth Star-Telegram business writer who called them “anti-intellectual little fascists” in an e-mail. The missive upset the group, though Buzz isn’t sure why. Maybe they didn’t like being…

Texans have to bear the burden of a number of stereotypes: Texas men are brash, gun-loving bubbas; the women are over made-up, big-haired shallow shoppers; we’re all materialistic, right-wing, anti-enviro religious freaks. In reality, none of those descriptions is more than 60 or 70 percent true, tops. Still, the tarring…

Well, isn’t this just peachy? For years now, Buzz has made it known that we are amenable to a little journalistic bribery. Cheap bribery, too. Our soul, we’ve advertised, can be bought for $1.89. Cash or check. Granted, it’s a bit frayed, sort of a fixer-upper, but still cheap at…

Exactly how bad will Dallas’ curbside trash recycling program have to perform before anyone with city government acknowledges that it just ain’t right? Pretty bad, apparently, judging by the latest numbers in a national survey. The survey published last month by the trade publication Waste News found that only 2.2…