Buzz

Fight Persists Against Stephenville Company Spunky Squaw's Name

Texas Online Store's Racist Company Name Angers Indigenous People

I support

Local

Community

Journalism

Support the independent voice of Dallas and help keep the future of Dallas Observer free.

Support Us

At Last, Beto vs. Cruz in a Debate Tonight. Let's Keep It Clean, Boys.

By Patrick Williams
Sep 21, 2018

GOP Sen. Ted Cruz faces off against Democratic challenger U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke tonight at SMU in their first of three debates, and no doubt Texans everywhere will be glued to their screens to learn the answer to the race's most pressing question: Will O'Rourke say the word? You know...
Hey, Texas, It's 4/20! Whoopee Effin' Doo

By Patrick Williams
Apr 20, 2018

Sorry about that headline. It's 4/20, the unofficial national marijuana holiday when America celebrates the happy wonders of weed. It should be cheerier, right? Weed is potent and plentiful. Yay! But this is Texas, where it's still illegal. Boo! And it will probably remain illegal until the cows come home,...
Meet Norway, the Least Shithole of Nations

By Patrick Williams
Jan 12, 2018

President Donald Trump says we should be importing more immigrants from Norway, rather than spots like Haiti or Africa and other places he diplomatically called "shithole countries" (allegedly). The obvious question, besides "Oh, God, is he really going to be in the White House three more years?" is, "What makes...
Was UNT's Dorothy Bland Really Racially Profiled? Good Question. Too Bad She Didn't Ask It.

By Patrick Williams
Nov 6, 2015

Based on what we know, calling University of North Texas journalism dean Dorothy Bland a race-card-playing, self-aggrandizing, lying, cop-hating bigot is entirely unfair. Not that some people care. Trolls, mainly. Still, some serious humans are upset with Bland too. She's the target of an online petition demanding her firing for...
We Resolve to be Better in 2012

Hah. We kid. C'mon, you didn't really buy that did you?

By Patrick Williams
Dec 29, 2011

Move along: Another new year — time to take stock, clean the slate, roll out the cliches and take advantage of our editor's holiday cheer to slip by a few words of drivel about Buzz's New Year's resolutions. Now Buzz is just shy of turning 50, so the mind is...
Beating Up Babes in Toyland

Perry and Tea Party make a blue Christmas for needy kids.

By Jim Schutze
Dec 22, 2011

Humbuggered: Buzz is having trouble this year with Toys for Tots. Just call us a Grinch. You see this smarmy hoopla on the TV news every night with a bunch of shiny-eyed volunteers handing out plastic Big Box crap for poor children, and the volunteers look awfully pleased with themselves...
A Hard, Compassionate Case for Immigration Reform

Sometimes, even conservatives make good points.

By Patrick Williams
Dec 15, 2011

Listen up: The first thing Buzz noticed when we got our advance copy of Press 2 for English: Fix Immigration, Save America were numbers: "The direct after-tax costs illegal immigrants impost on the public coffers each year," said press material accompanying the book, is $9.6 billion. The source cited for...
Price vs. Culbreath: Oh, You Know This'll Be Good

Santa brings political theater fans an early Christmas present.

By Patrick Williams
Dec 8, 2011

Merry, merry, merry: OK, Santa, cancel the pony. We've already received the bestest present any Dallas newsguy could desire: Betty Culbreath is running against her former mentor, County Commissioner John Wiley Price, in the Democratic primary. Just typing those words made us pee a little. From the happiness, you know?...
Have You Considered Occupying Monster.com?

By Patrick Williams
Dec 1, 2011

Boom shaka-laka: Occupy Dallas called for a general "strike" by wage earners this week. We're not sure which day, because, you know, it's a fluid movement (in more ways than one). Whichever day it was, none of us were supposed to shop or show up at work. Ooh, better lay...
Democracy: What a Meshuga Way to Run a Country -- or HOA

Can't we all get along? Oh, hell no.

By Patrick Williams
Nov 24, 2011

Microcosmic world: Buzz recently received an email from the president of the homeowners association of our condominium, ordering all residents to remove personal property — door wreaths, potted plants, holiday displays, everything — from the building common areas. (There's actually a point to this anecdote. Stay with us.) Some residents...
Fixing the Trinity Levees: Don't Worry, Just Trust City Hall

By Patrick Williams
Nov 17, 2011

Trust them: Jim Schutze took the week off from his Trinity "Oh, shit, here comes the water" beat this week, but our river problems keep rolling, so it's up to Buzz to fill Schutze's Wellies. Last week, Schutze got his hands on some internal documents from the local office of...
Time for Occupy Dallas to Push Back

We can't roll over for DPD's goon-squad tactics.

By Jim Schutze
Nov 10, 2011

Time to push back: No way should anybody let this drop. Last week's Occupy Dallas arrests should be taken as a direct challenge, not a lesson or defeat. The Dallas Police Department is already trying to paper over the outrageous arrests of seven bank protesters last Saturday on trumped-up "misuse...
Bug Tussle at the County

Is everyone in county government just plain nuts?

By Patrick Williams
Nov 3, 2011

Just because you're paranoid: We may never know the real reason Lisa Chambers was canned by Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins after serving just 15 months as the county's director of homeland security and emergency management. Chambers says her firing last week came because she pointed out "irregularities" in the...
More Tarnish for the "Texas Miracle"

New report finds the Lone Star swimming in deep debt.

By Patrick Williams
Oct 27, 2011

Welcome to sunny Greece: The very week that Governor Rick Perry, campaigning for president in South Carolina, announced his plan to overhaul the federal tax system, an ugly report emerged on the condition of the 50 states' finances, which are awful — even in the miracle land of Texas. Perry...
What's Occupying Tom Leppert

The Senate candidate doesn't like mobs of protesters. Someone alert the Tea Party.

By Patrick Williams
Oct 20, 2011

Fat, rested, ready: Buzz is back after a week's vacation spent camping out on Wall Street, fueling the fires of progressive revolution as we take back America from the crony capitalists and amoral fat ... Naaah. Just foolin'. We spent the week in New England, eating large quantities of fatty...
It's Good to Be White...

...But let's not get cocky and blow it with anti-voting laws.

By Patrick Williams
Oct 6, 2011

Block the vote: Listen up, fellow white people. Buzz knows that the election of a black president has ushered in a giddy era for many of us. White people have been able to get away with stuff we wouldn't have dared in pre-Obama days: that whole birther thing, the secret...
Media Political Pundits Quit Surfing TMZ Long Enough to Sculpt Narrative, Declare Rick Perry Campaign Sunk.

By Patrick Williams
Sep 29, 2011

Terrible thing to waste: So that's it, then. Governor Rick Perry's run for the GOP presidential nomination is done, o-vah, dust in the wind. One inarticulate response in a debate watched by precisely 172 people in which he muffed a chance to call Mitt Romney a flip-flopper again, plus a...
Eat Up While You Can, Texas

Worry: It's what's for dinner.

By Patrick Williams
Sep 22, 2011

Just kidding: Wrapped around this issue is our 2011 Best of Dallas® edition, in which we take a lighthearted look at predictions that the end of the world is near. Man, we hope those jokes don't come back to bite us in the ass. We say this because Texas AgriLife...
Dallas Should Go With the Flow Control

The sweet smell of money covers up garbage's stink.

By Patrick Williams
Sep 15, 2011

Go with the flow: How about that? City council member Carolyn Davis said something Buzz agrees with. Either it's time our doc adjusted our meds, or Davis actually made sense at a recent hearing on "waste flow control" when she said: "[Trash has] been going there for 50 years and...
Falling for Big Tex's Line

State Fair of Texas' big dude seems vaguely presidential these days.

By Patrick Williams
Sep 8, 2011

Fair warning: So what is it about Big Tex? Is he the devil, or are we just dumb? How does that tall, black-haired State Fair icon tempt us back to Fair Park year after year, though we know pretty much exactly what we'll get? It's not that we don't love...

More Buzz

Buzz

Fight Persists Against Stephenville Company Spunky Squaw's Name

Texas Online Store's Racist Company Name Angers Indigenous People

I support

Keep Dallas Observer Free.

This Week's Issue