Asheboro: Incestuously Incestuous

It's been a very busy day dodging the precious droppings of the Stork (it's feast or famine with that bird), and tomorrow looks like it's going to be more of the same, so I'm going to keep this short. 

Expounding on this morning's post, I've heard from several people today (friends and long-time customers of Mike & Pat Bradshaw) . . . who are new to the concept of blogging and commenting on newspaper stories . . . and who are very angry because, although they've "registered" with the Courier Tribune (some of them on Sunday or Monday), they cannot read ANY of the stories - much less comment on them. 

Tempers are pretty hot.  It seems these days, I'm not the only one out there who is a local "conspiracy theorist".

As a registered reader since this summer, I've had no problem today (I left a new comment on Sunday's Peachtree article this morning) until just a few minutes ago . . . when I was inexplicably logged off, and could not pull anything up except via the search engine.

The story on Peachtree Street Produce has been very rapidly (for the Courier) removed from prominence on the online front page.  No big surprise to me (but I know it's very disappointing to the Bradshaws).  That's how our local newspapers treat a story they want to bury.

Of course, I've had repeated issues with the Mollom SPAM filter . . . and Buzz Armfield has had repeated problems logging since he decided to be "outed" as Mary Johnson's friend (there are people in Asheboro who really do think I don't have any).

Even as a long-time blogger, I honestly don't know what to tell these folks - because I don't know what is going on over there.  I don't understand why it takes days to register and be "approved" (I registered at two news sites today and started commenting immediately) . . . or why so many comments on Sunday's article have been deleted - comments that defended the Bradshaws.

Well, maybe I do know.  Truth hurts.  And the Courier is only about a decade behind on telling it.  It's all just so Orwellian and 1984.

I really don't understand why the publisher of a newspaper cannot answer a simple e-mail.  I mean, I know the Stevens Media Group has reason to be ashamed of the way David Renfro (a practiced "right people" butt-kisser - to the point of actually staring in an advertiser's ad) ran the place for so many years. 

But if the Courier would just own up to past errors in judgement (translation: covering the guilty tails of "the right people"), and clean up their act, it would go a long way towards restoring community good will.

As I told Pat Bradshaw (whose pain I feel) tonight, what Asheboro really needs is for the SBI to come to town and start INVESTIGATING what is going on with the City Council and Randolph Hospital and Garland Yates' DA's office and at the newspaper. 

It's all gotten just too incestuously incestuous.  And I just don't know what it takes.  I've been begging for help for going on twelve years.  And it's like talking to a black hole.

No hope .  . . and no change for us.

We The People of Asheboro really need some outside eyes . . . and a broom.

I'm very tired now.  The babies are tucked in and I've got to go home and go to bed.  We "dime-a-dozen" doctors covering call 24-7 for days on-end (and who do not make $700,000+ a year), need our rest when we can get it.