Dan Savage, Gun Nuts
OK, so the Mayor's office refused to comment about what it termed Dan Savage's "juvenile publicity stunt" featured in this week's Capitol Hill Bugler. Sure, everyone knows that Savage is a publicity whore, hypocrite (he's libertarian except when he doesn't like something) and so on, but his publicity stunts are generally fairly harmless. But I think this time out the 40-something teenager (but he swears he's 32!) fucked things up for other reporters in town and knifed-up Josh Feit, his paper's news editor. That's because Savage charged into City Hall last week armed with pot cookies and a toy gun (pretty realistic looking in the pics, however) to make a point about how dumb Mayor Nickels' proposed nightlife ordinance is. He's right: it's a dumb ordinance, as this paper has noted repeatedly.
Too bad Savage is dumber.
You see, Savage used the power of the press (he was playing reporter when he visited da' mayor's office, how fucking quaint!) to get behind closed doors in Nickels' offices. And he did so while carrying a weapon—that it was fake is beside the point because it just as easily could've been real. That's now going to make the security folks at City Hall rethink who gets to go where and under what circumstances. Why's that important?
When the new City Hall opened in 2003, Feit sounded the alarm about how offices in the building would be closed to the press and public unless a reporter, say, had a specific appointment to get behind the locked doors to City Council members' offices. That would've totally screwed up the press' right to casually cruise around amongst politicians playing with tax dollars and ask them annoying questions when they least expected it. And that's exactly what the public expects us to do and that's exactly what we've got the First Amendment for. Feit's column was brilliant then, and one of maybe two things he's ever written with which I agreed.
That led to a meeting the following week with Council's office administrator and several reporters (Feit blew the meeting off, unaccountably). The forces of the locked doors pointed out that this was post-9/11 America and that security was paramount. We just cannot have people cruising around—they could be up to no good. The reporters—most notably Jim Brunner and Bob Young of the Seattle Times—pointed out that that was horseshit. The media won and were allowed to wander behind locked doors at City Hall pretty much as it pleased after waving their press badge. No appointment needed.
There's a pretty good chance that Savage put all of that in jeapordy when he went skipping off to City Hall last week to play reporter. But, then, he's little more than a gadfly with a pen. He was way-stoned and some people will excuse his behavior as just a harmless bit of savagery. Bet that SPD and City Hall security don't think that it was. And, neither do I.
Write Comment
Email to Friend
Print Article
