We live in a nation that has just sentenced a 12-year-old boy, less than 5 feet tall with an IQ of less than 60, to a maximum-security juvenile facility. It is not a proud day. No matter what your view on either the necessity or the appropriateness of this measure,…
Exploitation first WFAA Channel 8, the “Family First” station, rushed to remain at the head of the ratings pack in hosting a February 3 town meeting in Arlington tied to the slaying of Amber Hagerman. Call BeloWatch cynical. But what public purpose did this session serve? Venting outrage before the…
The boys should have been having a ball. It was a sunny autumn day, and on the greensward that is Garland’s Winters Park, the culmination of everything for which the Genesis ’85 boys soccer team had worked so hard all season lay before them. They were at the annual Celtic…
Patrick Owen sits on his stool, gently cradling his acoustic guitar in his long fingers. Running through an impressive rendition of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” Owen plucks and pulls at the instrument’s strings, bending them until they almost break. Though it’s early in the night, his…
It’s barely daybreak on the 1996 political horizon, but maverick Wise County Attorney Stephen Hale is already facing opponents who want to assure his political sunset. Since shortly after taking office in January 1993, Hale, who prosecutes misdemeanor crimes in this rural county of 36,000, about 40 miles north of…
Cowed Town daily The Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s embarrassing and shameful overreaction to a right-wing Christian group went national this week in a lengthy article in the The New York Times. S-T Executive Editor Debbie Price, as you’ll recall from the Observer’s January 25 story, booted openly gay editor Todd Camp…
It was the night of Domingo Garcia’s annual Christmas party, but not every guest was in a festive mood. In fact, Sylvana Alonzo couldn’t stand the idea of attending her third holiday party in three nights. “Roberto, do we have to go tonight?” she said tiredly as she was getting…
News: graceless under pressure Talk about lack of class. No, not “Da Boys,” as The Dallas Morning News’ intensely unhip editorial page habitually–and ludicrously–refers to them. BeloWatch is speaking, of course, about Dallas’ Only Daily. In a January 26 pre-Super Bowl editorial headlined “Da Boys–It’s time to show class as…
I was walkin’ along, mindin’ my own bidness the other day, when Our Man Phil Gramm popped up and announced to the world that he’s a “blue-collar Republican.” So now I know how Jessica-who-fell-in-the-well felt. I went home to lie down from the shock, and then class warfare broke out…
Winners and whiners Julie Lyons, get real! You’re just another whining Green Bay Packer fan [“Evil’s triumph at Texas Stadium,” January 18]. Sounds to me like you’re also another one of those people that is jealous of the Dallas Cowboys, “America’s team.” Thought you might like to know who named…
Barbara Jordan, whose name was so often preceded by the words “the first black woman to…” that they seemed like a permanent title, died Wednesday in Austin. A great spirit is gone. Jordan was the first black woman to serve in the Texas Senate, the first black woman in Congress…
In the early-morning hours of July 8, 1995, Sky Callahan staggered through the dark and unfamiliar streets of Guatemala City, his mind and body reeling from a brutal beating. Two men whom he believed to be government agents had kidnapped the Dallas documentary filmmaker, forced him into their car at…
It began with the battle of the big men–a bloody scrap they’d still be talking about months later. In one corner was David “Tank” Abbott. A 280-pound 6-footer, Abbott looked the part of the classic barroom brawler–big, with an enormous beer belly, buzz-cut hair, and no discernible neck. His martial…
D and Bartlett to make match? Hot publishing buzz has unprofitable D magazine, just out with its (yawn) “How to marry a millionaire” issue, about to hook up with a new set of monied mates. The word is that owner Glen Solomon, who restarted the moribund monthly, will step down…
A campaign targeting gay journalists launched last month by the Christian, conservative American Family Association has chalked up its first victory. Responding to a complaint from an AFA member, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram has transferred a gay editor out of a job that occasionally required him to work with schoolchildren…
Go ahead, touch that dial I feel like I have just lost a very good friend. I feel like I should be in the middle of some kind of “identity crisis,” because I don’t know where I fit in at KERA radio [“Stop the music,” January 11]. I am a…
Sitting in one of those hard seats in the cavernous central jury room of the George L. Allen Sr. courts building in downtown Dallas, I knew only two things for certain: That my day was shot to hell; and that I was bored out of my mind. Well, things change…
News’ child-custody saga probes Wright and wrong The January 21 edition of The Dallas Morning News contained an extraordinary story: the saga of Channel 5 anchor Brad Wright’s messy, messy divorce and custody battle. The Sunday piece, by Tim Wyatt and Howard Swindle, began at the bottom of the front…
Danny Wettreich, a 44-year-old native of London, England, personifies precisely what many find repugnant about American capitalism. In the 13 years since he moved to Dallas, Wettreich has bought and shut down businesses, shuffled millions of dollars in securities, drawn suspicion from two federal agencies, and thrown people out of…
Between a Boulder and a hard place More than a year ago, feminist Karen Ashmore said goodbye and good riddance to Dallas. Ashmore, who co-founded the Dallas Rainbow Chapter of the National Organization for Women, said she was burned out on Big D’s provincialism–especially when it came to race relations…
Gold Rush! Yee-haw! Look at them settlers lashin’ their teams and bouncin’ their wagons in an all-out scramble to stake a claim in Electronville. The telecommunications bill is the Gold Rush of 1996, an industry free-for-all, a wild, pell-mell greed-stampede. All the settlers have pretty fair grubstakes to start with;…
On the eve of Armageddon, my grandma sat on the living-room sofa and considered this theological conundrum: Was it right to pray for the Green Bay Packers to win? Was it right to beg divine intervention on behalf of the more virtuous, if less talented, team? If Jesus were here…
