SF Weakly, canned by chicken of the sea

I stopped reading SF Weekly years ago, finally giving it up for the wretched attempt at journalism that it is. I mean, with the daily Chronicle being so bad, you would think the independent weeklies would shine. The SF Bay Guardian is still cool, but it has dropped off my weekly reading too.

But while I may be negligent in my reading of the SFBG, the Weekly Weakly I abandoned purposefully for repeatedly bad reporting and some acts of downright bad City citizenship.

I was pointed to one of their news blogs last week—their blogs have commenting either disabled or under constant "review" mind you—that was just full of errors and pretty insulting to the fringe they so desperately claim to represent.

Local LGBTers have probably been following the whole reggae artist Banton concert brouhaha. Banton you may recall has called in song for gays to be shot and burned with acid. Yeah, nice guy. Some Bay Area residents don't think local venues should support such hate speech/song calling for violence against its citizenry. Pollo Del Mar (and his male persona) with many others in the community lit up Facebook and Twitter and such on the issue. All of that news can be read on Pollo's Ducal board pages (on topic here) and the Bay Times has some pretty accurate reporting on it.

The lame ass over at the Weekly (Eric Arnold) got it all wrong, going so far as to refer to Pollo as a Transgendered Activist and accused her of leading a violent gang who pepper-sprayed the band and onlookers. So many things wrong with that. Not the least of which is the "Transgendered Activist" line. My comment to the post, never approved by the way, pointed out that the term is "transgender" no "-ed" which is in itself offensive to those who are. And Pollo is neither transgender, nor an activist. How long does one have to live in SF before he can recognize a seven-foot, wigged man in clown make-up as a drag queen? Arnold managed to offend transgenders, drag queens, and activists in his reporting. Not to mention that Pollo and the very few post-cruise protesters left before the show started and could have led no such assault. And as huge as Pollo is, there is no way she could have stealthily sprayed anyone with pepper spray and slink out. (Update: The Weekly has revised the reporting, and finally included earlier comments. Mine was hacked in the middle, but it looks like an electronic error rather than redaction.)

All of this nonsense continued to play out all over Facebook and Twitter and various Bay Area and LGBT-bent blogs. (And last night at Brain Farts trivia.) But not, of course, over at the Weakly. The SF Appeal, an online-only SF newspaper which is now my local news outlet of choice (Actual local reporting! Actual news! With fact checking and everything!), got into the story. The local CBS affiliate had some fact-inclusive reporting as well, even going so far as to ask Pollo for comment. Ultimately, the Weakly posted a somewhat half-assed update.

Pollo, in her inimitable style, humorously covers it all in her weekly column (The Glamazon Diaries) in the Bay Times this week. It's worth the quick read.