Possibly the funniest Laffable Luddite post...

...Since the last one! Ken Avidor's headline BLARES --

"Seattle Transportation Examiner.com Reporter [sic] Not Reporting His Opposition to Recent Seattle Personal Rapid Transit Proposal"

Not reporting on it, but quietly whispering his opposition on his personal blog.

The Laffable Luddite says:

"He's covering monorail!"

"He's NOT covering monorail!

He then goes on to breathlessly quote all the stuff I reported - a week ago - at PRTJJ's sister blog, "This Week In Precipitation" (TWIP, The Editor's Blog of The PRT NewsCenter™). And what does "quietly whispering" mean? How is posting something in a normal size font 'whispering'?

For some reason,  Ken  has a bug up his butt about my not reporting it at Examiner.com, as though some massive pipeline of Seattle Transportation News has been filtered to omit mention of the Great PRT Conspiracy. 

News Flash -- I don't report anything on Examiner.com anymore, not in over TWO years, which was when I decided Examiner to be pretty much a joke as a citizen journalism umbrella.

My material is still there, it's still damn good stuff, but I haven't been adding to it, and I won't be.

Examiner doesn't really vet anything anyone writes. Content-wise there is no difference reading an Examiner-branded blog as opposed to something on Blogger or Tumblr -- quality depends on the author, being part of Examiner adds no value.  And so in the last couple of years Examiner has become, in my opinion, a home for a lot of right wing nutjobs. Why would I want to be part of that brand?

I wouldn't, so I don't and I'm not.

Why has Ken Avidor decided to obsess about Examiner? I don't know and really don't care -- although I am amused.

If you want to know you could ask him -- if he allowed "PRT Moondoggie" readers to post comments.

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Ken also writes

David Gow has finally acknowledged the existence of the PRT proposal for his city on his Get There Fast website's news page, with this comment:
Get There Fast takes no position on this proposal.

revealing (yet again) that he has absolutely no idea what he's talking about. I'm designer and admin for  GetThereFast.org, but it's not 'mine.'  It is run by a Seattle-area committee as an advocacy/community outreach website about PRT. Therefore MY editorial voice is not present on the page of news links.  That GTF takes no position on the CenTran monorail proposal (again, I covered it here) is simply a statement of fact, and we want to stay out of what is, essentially, a political campaign.

As for "finally" acknowledging the existence of the "PRT proposal," I want to extend my apologies to Ken. New posts of news on GTF can lag because it often takes me a while to get to it, since I give PRT NewsCenter most of my time.

Although, Ken,  my not having enough time for GTF is really your fault. All your anti-PRT idiocy creates tons of work for me here at "PRT Is a Joke IS A JOKE."

Update 1:

I suppose I should acknowledge the possibility that Avidor thinks he is Valiantly Taking The Fight To The Enemy On His Home Turf. But the way he's gone about it comes across as 'Don't cover PRT your way, cover it MYYYY way.'

Ken, I'm telling you this as a friend -- get some help for the OCD.


Allow comments, Ken! Cluck cluck bawk bawk BAWK! 
gPRT

A Certain Demeaner

Ken Avidor served himself up for us to write about today, with the following tweet. Apparently he just couldn't resist the opportunity to conflate Bachmann's 2003 PRT bill with the current St. Croix River Bridge project.

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The one thing has nothing to do with the other -- unless you equate the bipartisan support for the bridge in the MN congressional delegation with the 13 Democrats and 5 Resmuglicans who were pro-PRT in the 2003-04 state senate session.

We'll leave behind the matter of the bridge, since Ken's handlers seem to have helped him find the correct side of that issue. But what of this 'promotion' of PRT by Minnesota Public Radio?

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It was a story in MPR's News & Features section. Got that? Not Opinion or Editorial.

In Ken's eyes, if a news story doesn't agree with his propaganda it must be enemy propaganda. That's how author Dan Olson is turned from a reporter into a promoter.

You know, this reminds me of the time Ken Avidor took issue with an article about a possible PRT project in Dubai:

"Personal Rapid Transit" PRT Disinformation Part II and III (Ye Olde PRT Skeptic Blog, 11/5/05)

"Fun"? There was nothing fun about it. Ken wasn't satirical, there was no irony, he employed no pun or other wordplay. 

Nope, it was just Ken Avidor suggesting you Google sexy pictures of Zoe Naylor while thinking of an accomplished business reporter who happens to have the same name.

Far from fun, it was demeaning. Ken Avidor might as well have told journalist Naylor to hold an aspirin between her knees.

Ken makes MPR sad

gPRT