Forgive me if I’m suffering from smoky brain … 

MMSA issued a press release this week saying it’s spent $1 million on Covid-related infrastructure in preparation for the 2020-2021 ski season. 

This is $1 million more than it’s spent on Eagle Lodge in the past two decades. 

Meanwhile, the town has bid a partial farewell to Public Works Director Grady Dutton, who has officially retired but will remain on as a “Parcel” consultant. 

Haislip Hayes is his successor. 

Dutton’s eternal claim to fame will be the Multi-Use Facility/Ice Rink which he said would open Halloween, 2017. 

Given Covid, would you rather have a new ice-rink facility or wish you had simply put a roof on the existing open-air facility? Oh, never mind.

… Contemplate this for a minute as you look outside at the hordes of visitors traipsing up and down the sidewalks on Main Street. 

If we had budgeted $4 million for marketing this year as opposed to $6 million, the town could be saving $40,000 a week. Just one week’s savings would be enough to pay for eight years of car storage for MLT Executive Director John Urdi.

So now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s hear from another reader who thinks I’m an idiot. From John Rogitz, in response to last week’s column:

Jack, it might be interesting for readers to get a little fuller picture of the “losers and suckers” comment that anonymous people said Trump made

In fact, that’s the first glimmer of background missing from the recent editorial. The allegations are anonymous.

On the other hand, there have been a number of non-anonymous people who were present when Trump supposedly made the comment who have refuted the anonymous allegations, including John Bolton, not known as a Trump acolyte. You forgot to mention that.

You cite a “professional reporter” who “verified the story”. That “professional reporter” is Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of The Atlantic, where the story appeared. According to the New York Times, Goldberg “shaped” the Atlantic’s endorsement of Clinton in 2016. Goldberg’s employer, the billionaire owner of The Atlantic, is a Biden mega-donor, having donated (so far) over $600,000 to the Biden campaign. So the “professional reporter” is a Clinton shill who was writing an anonymously-sourced story in a magazine the proceeds of which are going to Biden, and his “verification” consists of stating that he personally knows the anonymous sources, if only we will believe him.

Think your readers might be interested in that?

Oh, and Fox News “corroborated” the story not by independent verification, but by reporter Jennifer Griffin tweeting that “two senior Trump admin official confirm” Goldberg’s story. Like Goldberg, Griffin refuses to reveal who these officials were, making it likely that they are the same ones Goldberg relies on. So Fox News did not “corroborate” Goldberg; Jennifer Griffin parroted him.

The Sheet is your paper and you’re entitled to any opinion you like, just as you are entitled to cherry pick facts you like to support your editorial views. But the disingenuousness of choosing to report only that which places your opponents in the worst possible light (in this case, an anonymous report of an alleged off-hand comment as Trump was successfully concluding multiple peace treaties in the Middle East, which escaped the attention of The Sheet) and selectively divulging some facts while omitting others of equal or greater importance has become depressingly customary in the press.

Which makes it interesting when an editor complains about the “impact Mr. Trump has had on my profession”. He’s had an impact no doubt, but one that is minuscule compared to the daily foot-shootings the press administers to itself. It may be that reporters, like vampires, find the use of mirrors problematic.

My reply:

I believe in the professionalism of my colleagues on the national stage.

And if you don’t believe the losers and suckers story, do you believe the audio on the Woodward tapes?

Problem is, John, you’re so caught up in Trump that you will defend anything.

I learned long ago that undying allegiance to fallible human beings is a recipe for disaster.

As if Hitler didn’t drive that point home …

 

Rogitz’s reply to the reply: 

What would a Trump critique be without reference to Hitler? Unimaginative, but I know that you, like me, are pressed for time, and I can’t blame you for seizing on quick dogma.

As for “undying allegiance to fallible human beings”, this is an excellent characterization of belief in a colleague who is obviously biased and who publishes anonymously-sourced information in an organ the profits of which are going to the opposing candidate – don’t you think? Since we’re reaching back almost a century for parallels, would you also believe in the professionalism of Walter Duranty?

Speaking of Hitler, on Wednesday, Gideon Taylor, President of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference), today announced the release of the U.S. Millennial Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness Survey, the first-ever 50-state survey on Holocaust knowledge among Millennials and Gen Z. The surprising state-by-state results highlight a worrying lack of basic Holocaust knowledge, a growing problem as fewer and fewer Holocaust survivors – eyewitnesses to a state-sponsored genocide – are alive to share the lessons of the Holocaust.

Nationally, there is a clear lack of awareness of key historical facts; 63 percent of all national survey respondents do not know that six million Jews were murdered and 36 percent thought that “two million or fewer Jews” were killed during the Holocaust

And nearly 20% of millennials and Gen Zers incorrectly believe that Jews caused the Holocaust.

Now, by Mr. Rogitz’s rationale, this survey should be discounted because it was commissioned by an interest group which must have phrased the questions in such a way so as to elicit a desired, ignorant response. Clearly doctored results meant to encourage maximum news coverage in the liberal media. 

Cue Trump waxing philosophic about Charlottesville … 

I had a nice breakfast with Bea Beyer this week and at one point talked about what has struck me as an increasingly fruitless exercise, trying to maintain a center of gravity in a polarized world, and feeling mostly like a Stretch Armstrong action figure. She laughed and said, “Read W.B Yeats. The Second Coming.” 

The Second Coming 

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

-W.B. Yeats (1919)

Results from the second round of funding for Mammoth’s Business Assistance Program providing grants to small businesses adversely affected by COVID-19. 

Recipients include:

• Another T-Shirt Shop • Blazing Shears • Haute Looks Salon • Innsbruck Lodge • Pokonobe Lodge • Mammoth Mountain FM Associates • Noodle-ly • Profiles Salon • Red Lily Floral Design • Simply Massage Mammoth • The Bodyshop Gym • Therapeutic Exercise Design & Development

The Town has $100,000 allocated for a third and final round of business assistance funding. To be notified when the application period opens, please register for Public Service Announcements on the Town’s “Notify Me” webpage.

Please review the Town’s Business Assistance webpage for additional information: https://www.townofmammothlakes.ca.gov/977/Business-Assistance-Program.

Sheet history. From 15 years ago … the Sept. 24, 2005 issue:

Tony Hawk and Danny Way christen the Volcom Brothers Skatepark. 

Mammoth Town Council, led by Rick Wood, John Eastman and Tony Barrett, vote to remove Therese Hankel as a Mammoth Lakes Planning Commissioner. Fellow Commissioner Roy Saari says in defense of Hankel, “I voted the same way [as Hankel] on these issues. Why aren’t you attacking me? Is it a personal issue?” 

The following classified appears in the same issue: “For Sale. One spot on the Planning Commission. Sucking up to Town Council a must. Pay = $75/meeting (seriously, the position is open and pays $75/meeting). Pick up an application at the Town offices. 

Stacy Corless writes a feature about Shields Richardson opening the Side Door at the Village at Mammoth. 

And on page two, Lunch jokes about various Town muckity-mucks returning from a peer resort tour. “Anyone ever notice the other resorts never come to Mammoth looking for ideas?” 

10 years ago … Sept. 18, 2010

When informed that the Mammoth Lakes Foundation planned to ditch the Beekley Ski Museum and develop an arts component and build the Edison Theater, Mammoth Mountain Ski Area CEO Rusty Gregory cracked, “I guess performing arts are their priority now instead of college, Beekley, etc.” 

Phases two and three of the project, envisioning the creation of an arts studio and a teaching kitchen, are never built. 

5 years ago … Sept. 19, 2015

The Measure Z campaign rages in Mammoth Lakes. Shields Richardson, Michael Raimondo and John Wentworth all make No on Z speeches at Council. 

NIH dumps CEO Victoria Alexander-Lane.

The Fairgrounds dumps Sally Symons, who’s later found to have embezzled. 

A week later, several Bishop Police Officers sign a letter of no confidence in outgoing Chief Chris Carter.