Letters

Wonder women Are women in comics (“Fatal femmes,” May 18) treated like second-class citizens? You mean, like in real life? As one of the fanboys you wrote about in your article, I have to admit that you hit a couple of proverbial nails on the head. At the very least,…

Buzz

Bullish on Belo Now comes a time of year that Buzz truly hates. Once again someone has sent us the annual report for Belo Corp., our favorite monolithic media conglomerate, and our job is to make sense of it. Let us reiterate. If Buzz knew anything about business, we wouldn’t…

Fluff

Misguided Muslims I know I’m just asking for trouble, but I can’t help myself, so, sigh, here goes: Area Muslims’ campaign against The Dallas Morning News’ perceived bias against them is, to say the least, ridiculous. If you want to see just how absurd it is, go to the Web…

Knockdown

Jesus Gabriel Sandoval Chavez stands on top of a mountain at the outskirts of Delicias, Mexico, and takes a deep breath of clean air. For once, his eyes aren’t watering. His lungs feel good. Below him are the dust-filled towns of Delicias, Rosales, and Saucillo. Within an hour or two,…

You can go home again

Here are two thirtysomethings in blue jeans slouching on the porch of a century-old white-pillared house in North Oak Cliff, one of them eating a fajita burrito and the other with his hand in his back pocket saying “yup.” Most of us would have trouble seeing them as significant blips…

War of words

As far as civil disobedience goes, the protest in front of The Dallas Morning News early Friday morning was about as obedient as it gets. A handful of Muslim demonstrators walked along Young Street, slowing their gait deliberately as they ambled in front of the entrance to the newspaper’s parking…

Bill soon due

When you open your phone bill on June 1, don’t be surprised to see a vaguely worded statement explaining why you need to open your wallet a little wider. The changes in your phone bill are the result of a battle fought between Texas cities and telecom companies in Austin…

Buzz

Schoonerville Trolley Buzz, hypocritical middle-class leftist that we are, wholeheartedly supports public transportation. That is to say, we feel guilty about not taking buses ourselves, and we definitely think you should ride them. (That would leave us more room to park our truck.) In fact, if you people would get…

Letters

The turkey leg goes to… About damn time somebody addressed Lee Hancock’s tactics (“Let’s talk about sects,” April 27). I was a reporter for the Beaumont paper at the time of Byrd’s dragging death. I covered his murder from the time it happened until the beginning of the second trial,…

Cyber bore

April 27, 2000. Dateline Dotcompound. Somewhere in a secluded section of North Dallas, the DotComGuy, a Dallas techno-geek who has cut himself off from the world to live his life online for a year, is holding yet another press conference. About a half dozen local broadcast and print reporters are…

Raising the roof

Outside Franklin D. Roosevelt High School in East Oak Cliff, a concrete retaining wall is emblazoned with big red letters touting the slogan “Mighty Mustangs” and the credo “Pride, Respect and Responsibility.” But the shabby condition of the ’60s-era building, which sits a few blocks away from the Corinth Street…

DECA decked

Only one month after Stephen Elsaesser accepted the position of president of the board of the Deep Ellum Center for the Arts, he found himself helping his fellow board members draft a statement announcing the center’s impending closure. At the troubled DECA’s regular monthly board meeting May 3, Elsaesser says…

Buzz

Mr. Conflict Give credit to Don Venable, the gadfly-turned-trustee-turned-gadfly again. He may have been out of public service for a while, but the former school board member still knows how to toss out a good sound bite. Venable, who is suing the Dallas Independent School District to block its plan…

Last call

It couldn’t get worse. No way. Even if it did, so what, he could take it. Kevin McCarthy — longtime Dallas talk-radio host, winner of five Katie awards from the Press Club of Dallas, known for his wit and humor and interviewing style not to mention his smooth-voiced wooing of…

Fluff

Kevin Cubed An addendum to the Kevin McCarthy column you have/will/may slog through (see big-ass story, this page): In an e-mail exchange, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban says that my e-mail requesting comment from him was the first time he’d heard that his firing of McCarthy helped contribute to his…

Letters

Man with a mission Jonathan Fox, the reporter who wrote “Epistle to the Jews” (May 4), was very courteous and is obviously very competent as a journalist. In fact, I found the article to be extremely well-written. Nevertheless, the article as edited is not without problems. It didn’t bother me…

Bolton’s blues

Randy and Sandy Magg’s retirement party was not supposed to be controversial. The husband and wife, both police officers, had logged a combined 50 years of public service, and to honor them, their bosses at the Dallas Police Department planned a party for the first week in April. At the…

Epistle to the Jews

The call to a Dallas evangelist came from Cincinnati, Ohio. On the line was a Jewish man seeking spiritual answers — of the Christian variety. The Reverend Jim Sibley, a missionary for the Southern Baptists’ North American Mission Board, took the call from the Hebrew soul searcher, who got Sibley’s…

House of Cards

Eileen Sanchez cradles her 2-year-old son in one arm and her set of blueprints in the other. “This was going to be our dream home,” she says, unrolling the plans. Unfurled, the blueprints reveal a two-story house with four bedrooms and a three-car garage. Sanchez envisioned each of her three…

Pistol-packin’ mama

East Dallas’ second-story men, smash-and-grab specialists, and plain old-fashioned burglars can breathe easier now. Willetta Stellmacher has hung up her little pearl-handled .25. For 26 years, until her retirement earlier this year at age 83, Stellmacher reigned over The Square apartments with a gun, a rigid — some would say…

Parting shots

Settling himself into the witness stand in the Dallas County courtroom, burly and bearded Johnny Bonds makes no attempt to hide his ear-to-ear grin as he catches the blank gaze of defendant Michael Lee Davis. Technically, Bonds is present only to provide a judge with his insights into a man…

Buzz

Taking sides We suppose it might be wrong, ethically speaking, for a newspaper person to help raise money for one side in a heated political issue. But when the issue is raising money to help keep public swimming pools open for poor kids, who in their right minds could be…