Opinion & Commentary

Tell me first. To be a cool place to live, what does downtown Dallas need? Action. Tons and tons of people, not all super-rich, not all homeless, either. But that’s the problem with downtown. Rich people in the towers. Desperadoes in the alleys. Long empty sidewalks between. For that to…

Got the dreaded Tweet from Lance Armstrong last night: Thanks for all the messages on retirement 2.0. And thanks for ALL the support the past 2.5 yrs. Onward! Retirement 2.0 means two things: 1. The greatest cyclist who ever lived is done riding professionally. 2. His comeback that I was…

I refuse to jump up and down and scream about John Wiley Price. There’s this story floating around the media that they had to shut down yesterday’s meeting of the Dallas County Commissioners Court because Price had a meltdown when some in the peanut gallery called him the county’s “chief…

Welcome to Local Music ‘Mericans, where we’ll be meeting some people behind the local music scene who aren’t necessarily members of a local band, but are more behind-the-scenes folk. Most rock-jocks’ physical appearances tend to be a jarring opposite of how we picture them in our heads. And then there’s…

This is Day Four of the “How Totally Useless Is the Dallas City Council” watch, and you know what my problem is already? I’m bored. This is all about the serial faux pas problem with Dallas Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway, who is slated to become the real mayor of…

Time to start a watch. I hereby declare this the beginning of the “How Totally Useless Are the Dallas City Council and Mayor?” watch. Day One. I wrote here yesterday about the huge dilemma City Hall faces with Dwaine Caraway, the council member who is next in line to fill…

Whether you’ve reached the end of your rope or merely the end of your week, welcome to Whitt’s End: *Finally some good news for Texas Rangers fans. After whiffing on Cliff Lee and having face-of-the-franchise Michael Young demand a trade, locking up Josh Hamilton for two years relieves some winter…

Just came from that joint meeting of the Downtown Connection Tax Increment Financing District board and Downtown Dallas Development Authority (please don’t ask me what any of that means), and I am happy to report that Ted and Larry Hamilton’s Atmos Center project is a go, with, matter of fact,…

You know what is one of the most common questions I get from people about Dallas Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway? They always ask, “What the hell is a mayor pro tem?” Let’s talk about that. Pro tem is a shortened version of the Latin phrase pro tempore. According to…

You know how people always rearrange themselves a little bit on an elevator every time someone gets on or off? Think of political Dallas as one big elevator ever since former Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle announced last week he’s going to run for mayor in the May election. Shuffle…

Dear Readers: Although many of you have loved and/or loathed my columna for years, the Mexican still finds new readers every week in the unlikeliest of spots (hola, Chattanooga! See you in August, inshallah!). As a result, I sometimes receive questions about the methodology of the column, questions all of…

Three weeks ago I did a smack-down on Tim Rogers, the editor of D, after he was the subject of a bad front-page story in The Dallas Morning News. The story was about phone calls Rogers made to the media relations department of the school district to get his kid…

Welcome to Local Music ‘Mericans, where we’ll be meeting some people behind the local music scene who aren’t necessarily members of a local band, but are more behind-the-scenes folk. Denton’s Eric Delegard was the recording engineer (and executive producer, for that matter) for the LP that really ignited things for…

Dallas Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway was on The Ticket’s Dunham & Miller show about an hour ago talking about why he gave the key to the city to convicted dog torturer Michael Vick. It was so typical. The Ticket guys started out all big and pissed off, talking about…

Check me on this. Dallas Area Rapid Transit, the outfit that runs the trains, didn’t know how to keep their trains running in an ice storm. The same kind of trains operate in winter weather cities all over the world. There’s a way to keep them running in an ice…

I’m serious. I want Jimmy Carter to come monitor our elections. We need his help. So, if you were around here eight years ago, when Dallas was getting national attention for vote fraud, you might be especially concerned about recent developments in the county elections department. Until the Legislature adopted…

Whether you’ve reached the end of your rope or merely the end of your week, welcome to Whitt’s End: *So, what’s harder to predict: Weather or sports? Coulda sworn Ron Jackson, Pete Delkus and the boys said there was a 30-percent chance of 1-2 inches of snow on Friday. But I…

I watched that video of Tuesday’s Dallas County Commissioner’s Court meeting — the one about Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price and the firing of elections administrator Bruce Sherbet — and I swear that Price was doing a whole new persona. He speaks now with a new gravitas, slowly and…

Dear Mexican: My gabacho friends look at me askance for being a gabacho who enjoys mariachi music. They, and even some of my Mexican friends, run and hide when I go a step further and start listening to the mournful ballads of Vicente Fernandez, backed up by—you guessed it—a mariachi…

All you people are here for the Super Bowl. I know what you’re thinking. You call Dallas things like “the Buckle of the Bible Belt.” Then you mock us for being hypocrites, because we have so many nekkid bars. It’s true. We do have a long history of trying to…