He said, She said: Put on your Bullshit Goggles

When I started working for this paper, the first thing my editor told me was that I would have to put on my "Bullshit Goggles," meaning he knew better than I some of the people I would be dealing with. Lately, he's told me I have good Bullshit Goggles, so I get a gold star for that.

Lately, though, I've gone from having to wash off my goggles after every meeting to having to wash them off after every phone call, which is turning into washing them off quite a few times a day and the biggest waste of water ever.

Two of the towns I cover are filled with drama. In one town, the township council refuses to get along. Everyone has something to say about everyone else and they all fight. At meetings. It's quite irking to be sitting there quietly in my chair and listen to the council fight -- not bicker or disagree. But fight. And they're mean about it! So when I have a council member call me and tell me that another council is doing something naughty and illegal, I have to put on the Bullshit Goggles and make sure I'm seeing straight. Most of the time, it turns out to be just a load of crap that doesn't mean anything. Like that naughty illegal stuff that really isn't happening.

In the same town, the school board is having its own set of problems. The school board isn't getting enough state aid, so they're suing the state Department of Education over what they consider to be a "discriminatory" state aid formula. But their budget process this year has been absolutely inane. I'm not joking. Every time I turn around, there's another meeting on their budget. One of the guys running for school board this year called the budget process, 'Ridiculous to the point of a comedy," which I think is just completley accurate. No Bullshit Glasses for that one.

In another town that I cover, the school board wrote a letter asking a board member to resign when the board member wasn't even there. He allegedly made a racial comment to a resident in the hallway during the recess of a meeting in February and since then, people have been going crazy trying to get him off the board. Legally, all the board can do officially is censure him, which is basically a "slap on the wrist" action with no teeth to bear. So they voted 4-3 to write a letter asking him to resign. The board member hasn't even gotten the letter, but the article on it is coming out tomorrow. At least he knows the letter is coming so my article won't cause a whole lot of problems for him. But it's frustrating that people are making this big a deal out of it. Yes, racism is a huge problem that we need to deal with but guess what? IT'S HERE TO STAY. I have a sneaky suspicion that all these people saying that they don't want racists on the school board make their own racial comments.

Ever heard the "Avenue Q" song "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist"? I truly believe that. To all the parents saying that they don't want a racist on the school board: Racists shouldn't be raising your children. As a result, you are all unfit for parenthood and should resign from being a parent. And by saying this, I'm going on record stating that I'm not condoning racism, but I'm not naive enough to think that these parents are perfect on their ridiculous stuffed up pedistols.

Okay, I'm down off my soap box now. Seriously, this kind of thing frustrates me. I'm tired of my poor Bullshit Goggles causing the water in my office to run out. Being a journalist is so much more than having to deal with the bullshit that comes from our sources, but sometimes it doesn't seem like that's true. If print ever goes dead, it's going to be because we've been taking over by bullshit pushing us out of our offices and destroying the printing press machines.

Wonderful, eh?

At any rate, for the record, journalism isn't so bad, I'm obviously still working here, so it's not all death-consuming, but sometimes yeah, it gets pretty frustrating. If you're not up for this kind of thing, start looking for a new profession now. Run -- don't walk -- to the nearest Monster.com.