spin

I'm a little pissed off this morning.

Yesterday I planned my first ever press conference. Mark Funkhouser was scheduled to file his petitions to be candidate for mayor, so I worked with him and his staff to put together an event. Before filing, Mark read and signed a giant copy of a Commitment Letter to the people of Kansas City, which laid out a number of priorities that would guide his tenure as mayor.

It all came together just as planned, and I walked away a little high, because we'd managed to attract the daly paper and a number of TV crews.

I should've paid a little closer attention to the newspaper that morning. Of course I noticed the headlines. Even in Kansas City it's not often that you have two elected officials indicted for mortgage fraud in as many days. But I was so caught up in planning the event, it adn't occured to me that our nice little press conference about good, honest leadership might be buried under the slime of business as usual.

So what happens?

The alleged criminal fiiles for office and steals all the spotlights as reporters record her insane comments.

And I do mean insane.

Shields claims the Bush administration is almost exclusively targeting Democratic officeholders, such as herself, which the U.S. attorney denies. The mayoral race is nonpartisan.

“I am not going to give in to political terrorism,” Shields said.

I'm sorry, but that is positively deranged. DERANGED!

There's no other word for it.

Anyhoo, it's funny to be on the other side of things. All those years I was a reporter, duutifully hustling the bad story. Now I'm the flak whining, Why can't they write about the positive?

(Which isn't really true. It's more like I'm growsing, Why can't people who are so drunk on their own tinhorn power as to be certifiably insane just go away so we can have a city that works for once?)