KC Confidential

Let’s leave the tears and hollow eulogies for the family…

Because when it comes right down to it, the blame for the death of Fast & Furious star Paul Walker lies directly at the feet of the slain movie star. Walker was a passenger in a ridiculously fast and ridiculously driven 2005 Porsche Carerra GT this past weekend. The car burst into flames  with Walker and his race car driver pal on board after striking a streetlamp in Santa Clarita, just north of Los Angeles a 45 MPH zone.

After which friends and associates of Walker, 40, and his race car driver pal, 38, played dumb for CNN and other news networks when asked if they thought speed was a contributing factor in the crash and Walker’s death.

“Don’t give me that shit, he was going too fast” says local race car driver Brian Haupt of Carriage & Motor Works on Southwest Boulevard. “They’re denying the obvious, because he was going really fast. You don’t wad a car up like that and kill yourself without going just incredibly fast.” Continue reading →

Missouri’s Nefarious Antlers
photo credit: Karen Mitchell

It’s one thing to write a stick-in-the-mud story saying poor taste is a reasonable excuse for denying college students their freedom of speech…

Which is pretty much what Pitch entertainment writer David Hudnall did this past week under the headline, “The Mizzou athletic department should continue to eject Antlers from games as long as they’re acting like terrible people.”

Terrible people, eh?

There’ve been plenty of folks who thought the “Back Page” ads the Pitch and other alt weeklies accepted for years from adult businesses trafficing in minors were acting like terrible people. I digress.

The Antlers are the over-the-top of Missouri students who attend MU basketball and football games and engage at times in off color antics and/or speech.

However in sticking it to the Antlers, the Pitch appropriated a copyrighted photograph of the group and ran it without permission. Which is a fairly big journalistic no-no for a for-profit media organization like the Pitch, which is owned and operated by large corporation. After all, the Pitch takes in hundreds of thousands of dollars in ad revenues, it’s not like Tonys Kansas City, sweating it out from dawn to dusk just for for the ego trip.

Or like KCC, for that matter.

Unfortunately the pic the Pitch poached belonged to none other than a University of Missouri  journalism professor. Continue reading →

This year’s Missouri football team is good but not great one, says scribe Craig Glazer…

That could change if the MU beats Auburn. And that now is a must win game if this year’s Missouri football team wants to earn the respect of national sportswriters and fans.

“Missouri is about to play the game that could define them,” Glazer says. “because if Missouri loses, they could get knocked out of the BCS bowl games completely and get stuck going to a lesser bowl.

“Let me say this about Missouri; if they beat Auburn – and Auburn is a legitimate team – that would make them the best Missouri football team in history.” Continue reading →

Look, we all bleed Chiefs red -one way or another – right?

However some are a little more thin-skinned, and that’s okay. It’s understandable to be tragically bummed when your woman runs off with some Duck Dynasty wannabe or the home team loses. Shit happens.

And make no mistake, there’s no sin in reexamining the NFL team of  your choice midway through the season after having more time to evaluate them. And that’s what football Scribe Craig Glazer is guilty of.

But who doesn’t reassess things after receiving further information? Continue reading →

Diane Disney Miller tours DIsney theme park with Art Whatshisname

Get me rewrite!

The first thing I thought when I read Diane Disney Miller‘s obit in the Star a week ago; somebody screwed up. With so many staff shortages and veteran reporters and copy editors laid off, no one caught the fact (or remembered) that Miller spent considerable time and energy here in the early-mid 1990s being courted by Screenland movie dude and attorney Butch Rigby.

Ah but Rigby remembered.

And he was granted an “As I See It” column in the newspaper five days later (he’s pals with columnist Mary Sanchez). A column that provided him the chance to accomplish two goals; a minor rewrite of history and an opportunity to kiss up to Miller’s heirs and maybe land a donation for his 20 year-old plan to erect a monument and/or museum here to the beloved animator who spent part of his early years in the Cowtown.

Mission accomplished, except for one thing; it was a faulty accounting.

Because Diane Disney Miller’s visit in 1994 was little more than a schmooze trip to attempt to get her to contribute to Rigby’s group’s original plan to build a statue of her father Walt. Continue reading →

Anybody else think the word “glitch” has been way overused lately?

First officials in the Obama administration – and shortly thereafter, the media – glommed onto the word in an effort to downplay the myriad problems with the Affordable Care Act website. A mere “glitch,” they said.

But two months worth of problems hardly qualifies as a “brief interruption.”

Which brings us to the mysterious case of Dan Meers aka the Kansas City Chiefs mascot known as KC Wolf. And what the Kansas City Star labeled a “glitch” that resulted in Meers being seriously hurt and having what could be career-ending back surgery while attempting a practice bungee jump from the stands to the field at Arrowhead Stadium.

Meers did not return calls for this column. Continue reading →

With rare exception, flimsy reporting on the Plaza Lights have been the rule…

You know the game; mindless television news reporters breathlessly painting word pictures of hundreds of thousands of spectators at the Thanksgiving night ceremony, with endless miles of strung out Christmas lights – enough to reach Sedalia (maybe back).

The bigger the yarn, the better and who’s to say different?

Enter intrepid Kansas City Star reporter Jim Fussell and the FYI section. Continue reading →

The battle lines are drawn…

Massive companies like Walmart, Best Buy,  Kohls and McDonald’s have effectively declared war on Thanksgiving and, as Phillip Brown says, it’s up to consumers to sort things out. Either we given in and flood the store’s Black Thursday sales today – all but insuring they’ll not only continue in future years but grow – or we draw the line and hold off shopping until, you know, Black Friday.

The choice is ours, and Brown could not have laid it out more plainly.

With that in mind as I began my other Thanksgiving ritual – culling out and recycling the multitudinous ad inserts in my Kansas City Star and Lawrence Journal World newspapers –  it came to me; that somewhere in those ads was the dividing line between the good merchants and the bad.

The good, being those respectful of the Thanksgiving holiday and the ritual of families gathering in thanks once a year; the bad being the corporations trampling on America’s most sacred holiday in the interest of getting their mitts on the almighty buck one extra day out of the year. One measly day, for crying out loud.

Look, I know this is hardly a scientific tally, but at least it’s a start.

And hey, why not reward the merchants who waited for Black Friday and punish those guilty of trampling on Thanksgiving?

Now on the tally: Continue reading →

Forget what Paul Wilson said about silence being golden, you’ve got a party to go to…

Look, there’s a time and a place for everything and while Mr. Wilson’s advice may have been heartwarming, if you haven’t ever saddled up on a Thanksgiving morning and headed to the National Guard Armory in KCK for a BYOB blues blowout with some of the Cowtown’s hippest and finest dressed African Americans – and a smattering of clued in white folk – you haven’t lived yet.

Seriously. Continue reading →

This just in…

Insiders on former Kansas City Star columnist Steve Penn’s defamation lawsuit against the newspaper say Penn and his attorney are poised to breath new life in his battle over his firing for alleged plagiarism charges.

We’ll see.

The case was dismissed recently after a key Penn witness’s mother reportedly fell and the party was unable to be in KC for the trial.

So where do things go from here? Continue reading →