During Tuesday’s Wichita City Council workshop on arts funding, Mayor Carlos Mayans referred to his intern as “Mini-Me.” It’s one thing for an editorial cartoonist to characterize Mayans’ assistant that way, as The Eagle’s Richard Crowson did last summer when the mayor persuaded the council to approve the hire. But is that any way for a mayor, even one known for his colorful rhetoric, to refer to his aide?
Posted by Rhonda Holman
It saddened me to hear about the financial troubles facing Exploration Place. The building is a stunning architectural landmark for Wichita.
Unfortunately, the programs and exhibits inside have never lived up to the spectacular and inspiring exterior. Too many static displays. Not enough hands-on, engaging exhibits.
The “Kansas in Miniature” exhibit is charming, for instance, but hardly must-see. You don’t need a soaring $65 million building to house such modest aims. And the health exhibits don’t exactly make my pulse quicken, either.
The programming problems call for more than tweaking. Will the current board and civic leaders listen to the community and make some radical changes? Hope so.
What do blog readers think of Exploration Place? How could it be better? What science centers in other cities could be good models?
Posted by Randy Scholfield
The subheadline “Fluoride-cancer link may have been hidden,” which appeared Wednesday in The Washington Post, may give pause to those — myself and other Eagle editorial board members included — who have dismissed the anti-fluoride arguments as hooey.
Federal investigators are looking into whether a Harvard University professor buried research suggesting a link between fluoridated tap water and bone cancer in boys. If follow-up research reveals a true link, perhaps Wichita and Hutchinson will be viewed as ahead of the times, rather than behind.
Posted by Melissa Cooley
At the stroke of midnight, many of the 10.8 million copies of J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” will be unwrapped and snapped up. That the biggest blockbuster of the summer of 2005 is a book is something to celebrate. That it will occupy its reader for hours is a bonus both for bored kids and their parents.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
At its press briefing last week, the Wichita Police Department released photos of two dolls that Dennis Rader left for police. The photos were disturbing, particularly the one of a doll that was bound and hanging from a pipe.
KAKE, Channel 10, showed the photos of this and another doll. The Eagle chose to use a portion of one doll on its Sunday front page. Did KAKE go too far? Was The Eagle too cautious? Did we both cross the line? Does it matter if the doll was depicting an adult victim or a child?
The BTK case present editors with difficult choices. How do you report what happened without being too graphic and insensitive to the victims’ families, and yet not so sanitize what happened that it misrepresents the true horror of these crimes?
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Seen the latest issue of The New Yorker? The July 11 – 18 issue just
came out, and Kansas took yet another hit. It seems The New Yorker
ripped off my cartoon caption contest idea and has been running
captionless toons on its back page for a few months now, inviting
readers to submit their own punchlines. Yeah, I know. We weren’t really
the first ones to do such a contest. I just enjoy thinking The New
Yorker would ever bother to look at and steal from The Wichita Eagle.
Anyhow, take a look at the caption that won this time. Click
to enlarge. See what wonderful national attention our beloved state
school board is garnering for Kansas? It’s not going to stop. Once
again, one is led to wonder: When will business leadership wake up and
realize the degree of eco-devo damage that our foolish school board is
inflicting on us? We can "brand" our state with futile slogans all we
want. The truth is we’re already branded. We’re branded as a bunch of
backwards anti-science hayseeds. That brand was seared into our hide by
a red-hot iron wielded by Connie Morris, Steve Abrams and their ilk on
the board. Made it all the way into The New Yorker. Read it and weep.
Posted by Richard Crowson
Wichita’s reputation for being a family-values town doesn’t quite fit its TV viewing habits, according to the May Nielsen ratings’ local Top 10. Can it be that many of the Wichitans who spend Sunday mornings in church see no contradiction in spending Sunday evenings watching two of the steamiest shows on network TV, ABC’s “Desperate Housewives” (No. 3) and “Grey’s Anatomy” (No. 8)?
Posted by Rhonda Holman
London Mayor Ken Livingstone gave a stirring statement after the recent terrorist bombings that eloquently sums up why the terrorists will fail. See especially the passage at the end in which he directly addresses the bombers.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
Here’s a spoof headline from Eagle reader Wes Garton:
STRIP CLUB OWNER TO PURCHASE CENTURY II; Claims She ‘Only Wants to Help the City’
Posted by Randy Scholfield
