Quotes & amp;amp; Notes

by Inlander Staff


Moore Facts to Check -- Professional thorn in Bush's side Michael Moore was pretty careful about the facts he presented in his film Fahrenheit 9/11. In fact, he had a team of pros vet every single item. Sure, he presented them with his own spin -- that's an American tradition shared by everyone from Bill Clinton to Rush Limbaugh. But as he made the rounds of talk shows, he was subjected to a withering barrage of questions about his facts, which he seemed to defend pretty well. This is all fine and dandy, but we're waiting for the national press corps to apply their newfound skepticism to everyone else who's out there peddling opinions. Certainly time could be devoted to whether Rush really is right, and where would we be today if the press asked similarly tough questions of, say, Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld as they took the country to war?





Lisez l'Etiquette -- Who reads labels anyway? Perhaps that's what a rogue factory worker was thinking when he or she added a special message to a care instructions label on a travel bag. "Nous somme desol & eacute;s que notre president soit un idiot. Nous n'avons pas vot & eacute; pour lui," read the message stitched into bags made by Tom Bihn, Inc., a Port Angeles, Wash., manufacturer. The little rewrite hasn't gotten anybody fired, as sales are up on the news of the hidden protest. So if you're not up on your French, the message to those surrender monkeys (remember when that was supposed to be funny?) is "We are sorry that our president is an idiot. We did not vote for him."





Protest Camp -- Two Spokane men pitched a large blue tarp on the median outside the Spokane Club early this week to protest the City Council's passing of the Transient Shelter Ordinance, which makes creating any kind of shelter without a permit on public property illegal. Dave Bilsland, who plans to stay put in the makeshift tent, says the ordinance criminalizes homelessness. The men plan on camping there until the mayor signs the ordinance, which puts the law into effect. At that time, they'll drop the tarp, but say they'll continue to sleep outside, "so people can see what happens when the sprinklers go off at 4 am." Certain aspects of the ordinance, says Bilsland, don't make any sense. (Or, about as much sense as hanging a Confederate Flag on your tent, as they have done, when you're trying to draw sympathy for your cause.) Bilsland points to a section that defines "transient shelter paraphernalia," which includes "sanitary facilities for storage or disposal of human solid waste."


"I think they just made the sewage treatment plant illegal," Bilsland says. "Shoot, I think they just made the whole earth illegal!"





Publication date: 07/01/04