From The Newsroom...

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

HARLINGEN, Texas - It's been, and remains, a wild time in American news. Things are happening, things are being said and things are forever on the way. We try to catch it all, but that's impossible. What we hope for, then, is a venue where the worst news finds a stage, where the day's top story gets billing, where the worst of newsmakers get pilloried. Here are stories that have fallen through the cracks, as they say in newsrooms across the land:

1.) THE DEAD BLOG - Amateur blogger Tony Chapa is the proverbial easy target. He used to operate an okay blog here. His MyHarlingenNews.com had a following. Today, it is in ruins, abandoned by readers and ignored by commenters who usually want a say in the doings of their community. Chapa's blog has died, and a lot of the credit goes to a rival blog with the name of www.MyHarlingenNews.blogspot.com. It is in hiatus, according to its editor, a student at UT-PA. The short-in-stature Chapa still sits at his computer keyboard 24/7/365, posting steady attacks on his competition, daily Bible verses at odds with his personality and a mind-numbing number of press releases. In between, he posts self-aggrandizing notes about his "Big Time" presence on Facebook and Twitter. But it's all over for the once-noisy, mini-Rush Limbaugh. His rants are ignored and that stuff growing at his feet while he sits at his computer has now been identified as weeds, the sort one sees in vacant lots. There will be no public viewing of Chapa's blog. Residents here are conducting a collection for a cardboard coffin that'll be walked to that pauper's grave at the city cemetery by his last two readers - Juan Jose Ortega, who is banned from most other sites, and the pathetic Jake, a man, we presume, whose homosexual desires accounted for the overwhelming majority of his comments on Chapa's comatose blog. Across town, residents are asking, "What? Who is Tony Chapa? Huh? Nah, don't know him, and that's probably good. Is he a U.S. citizen? What - really?" We would be remiss to not end this vignette with, as he likes to post at the bottom of his attack missives, Ha ha ha...

2.) The Idiot Judge - Richard Cebull, chief federal judge for the State of Montana, fired off a racist Email last week in which he said President Barack Obama was the son of animals. The Republican appointee of George W. Bush has apologized, but civil rights groups are asking for his head. Cebull has said he won't resign, but even his homestate's biggest newspaper, The Billings Gazette, has asked him to leave the bench willingly, and quietly. In its editorial, The Gazette said Cebull, who is White, could not possibly be seen as a fair and objective judge by any defendant appearing in his soiled court. Federal judges are appointed for life, and they generally keep those jobs short of being convicted of murder, but Cebull's fate may rest in knowing no one wants him in a position of authority if his brain does not know the difference between intelligence and stupidity. Goodbye, Cebull, you Goddamned dope...

3.) The Rio Grande Valley WhiteWings - Hope springs eternal. And these are the days when one feels the joy of baseball's impending Opening Day, as majestic a new dawning as there is in life. We have been hard on the team's management and its inability to stay current on bills it has not paid to the City of Harlingen for use of Harlingen Field. The team is $50,000 in arrears as it heads into the 2012 season. We wish the players luck, and we wish the citizenry even more luck. Fronting 50 grand in cash before the season opens to come current on that debt will not be easy for this minor league operation. But we hope they do pay. It's the right thing to do, and local fans are eager to see the team succeed. We are making plans to be there for the first pitch, but are having trouble finding a worthy, safe hotel. So, we are now looking at South Padre Island...

4.) THE RETREAT - We are aware that bloggers make concessions. We know that some bloggers want to make a little cash off their enterprise. It's there, of course. Politicians always seek those who will support them by way of glowing write-ups that may or may not be true. But we are dismayed to see Jerry McHale, editor of http://www.brownsvilleblues.blogspot.com/, hand in his journalism flamethrower in exchange for a few Advertising dollars. McHale likely knows more about city politics than any other three bloggers combined. His trenchant editorials used to be must-read columns. No one was spared, no jabs were held back for the later rounds, everybody was whipped mercilessly in stories sandwiching soft-porn he availed to his readers. Not these days. Today, McHale posts ridiculous political campaign posters no renegade would ever consider. He augments those with columns that are clearly neutered, his age-old barbs aimed at the local college president now likley etched on both sides of his skull, there where he can easily pluck them for quick use. Brownsville is in a mess. Little is shaking out of City Hall. Nothing comes from the county. This, it says here, is still the time for revolution in the bordertown at the end of the Rio Grande, the so-called colostomy's mouth. The Old McHale, like the Old Trabajo, is desperately needed in town. No one else can wield the principal's paddle like McHale. Residents familiar with his old ways remember he would hold it like Hammerin' Hank Aaron held his bat that year he broke the Babe's homerun record...

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