Right wing writer Shawn Macomber drops by Oil City for the American Spectator and takes great care to include every Venango cliche in his piece:
As the only old-timer willing to talk to city slicker reporters, Huber has gone from an anonymous just-scraping-by old-school oilman to the closest thing Venango County has to a media celebrity. . . . Huber laughed, shook his head. "In the old days when we found a rattlesnake we hit it over the head with a shovel and it didn't bother anyone anymore. Now they have someone crawl into a hole to make friends with it, see what its house is like, make sure it'll take me as a neighbor."
At which point, I kind of expected Macomber to relate that Huber launched into a grizzled prospector dance, cackled, threw his pick up in the air, then plucked it from the ground, licked the tip and looked crestfallen. “Nuttin’”
It may be time for Oil150 to send media contacts to some, shall we say, more representative Venango figures.
Word on the street is that the new Brother Bean will open this weekend. No suggestion of when or if shows will start.
Free and Legal Downloads:
Talking Heads Live at the Sun Palace, Tokyo, 1981
Mike Doughty Live at Castaway's on January 23, 2009
Tily & The Wall That Remix Sucks (full album)
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2 comments:
Well, you can always count on those city slicker reporters to figure that a quick scratch of the surface will get them the full story of any small town area. Good lord-- he even quoted McElwee's book!
But my favorite line in the whole piece is this:
"Barbara T. Zolli sashays around the picturesque grounds of her domain with the mischievous swagger of a 1930s screen siren"
She's never going to live that one down!
I agree with Peter - I couldn't believe that comment about Zolli!
The article was VERY stereotypical and just not very good, I thought. While it's great that this region continues to get coverage, it seems as if the same story just keeps getting rewritten.
-erin w.
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