Open letter to Kate Woods c/o Inside San Benito

To: Kate Woods, award-winning journalist, San Benito satirist laureate, word painter of toxic landscapes, and President of the  Nan Pipestem Wildlife Rehabilitation Center

From: Doug Meier, recent escapee from the soul-sucking confines of Gilroy

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Kate. I relished joining forces with you to fight the good fight against raging stupidity compounded by flagrant apathy compounded by toxic dosages of unchecked corruption. We shined some light on the halfwit incomps running the local creepshow.

Thanks to the Republic of Gilroy and Inside San Benito, the likes of wannabe state assemblyman Iggy Velasquez, the Los Valientes goon squad, and Mainstreet Media tyrant publisher Steve Staloch were exposed for what they are, a dotard mule-train of specious mendicants and complicit willing idiots, instead of congratulated for what they pretend to be.

Out of morbid curiosity I was browsing the Opinion archives of the redesigned Gilroy Dipsack. I discovered that ALL links to my 100-plus columns published in the Dipsack lead to "invalid request" errors. Check it out: you can access any former or current Dipsack columnist except Doug Meier.

I am honored that Dipsack editor Mark Derry would take the trouble to erase me from the Dipsack Opinion page archives. I have now joined Kate Woods on the official Meanstreet Media blacklist! Apparently my posts criticizing Mark Derry's rancid little newspaper puppy mill hit home. Or maybe his wife Jenny Derry, PR flak for the Santa Clara County Farm Bureau, demanded my deletion for pulling down her pants and revealing the "Property of SoCal Developers Lobby" tattoo on her ass? 

[at left, Santa Clara County Farm Bureau mouthpiece Jenny Derry, and her husband, Gilroy Dispatch editor Mark Derry (artist rendition)]

I wonder if they'll also erase the editorials I penned as a member of the Dipsack editorial board? Will they attempt to rescind the two CNPA awards (a first place in 2002 and a second place in 2001) garnered by my Republic of Gilroy columns in the pre-blog era?

Kate, you know better than anyone how the creeps run their creepshow with impunity. The fourth estate is on permanent hiatus from Gilroy and SBC. When your Badlands column was embargoed and you were taken off the San Juan and Hollister beats, at least 50 letters expressing the community's outrage poured into the Pinnacle News. Nothing printed in a Meanstreet Media publication before or after generated more honest community outrage against the creepshow than the Silencing of Kate Woods.Then Pinnacle editor Mark Paxton, at Staloch's urging, censored the community's voice as well. He refused to run any more letters objecting to Kate Woods' removal. In his mind this was a public service! 

You were dangerous to them. After Meanstreet's takeover of the original Pinnacle News, as resurrected by Tracie Cone, and the subsequent dumbing down and screwing up of that once-proud weekly, Meanstreet (at the behest of Censorin' Steve Staloch) unarchived your Badlands columns and the investigative pieces you published in The Pinnacle before and after Staloch took over. Just as Joseph Stalin purged all perceived threats to his iron-fisted rule, so Staloch "disappeared" you from his sad little totalitarian empire. Because you always represented the Truth, which they can't stand.

Journalism, as the sackless Paxton would define it, means that no influential local personage, no matter how corrupt, is ever offended, especially if they are on good terms with the publisher.

 

[at left: Steve Staloch, Mainstreet Media publisher, creep protector, and Kate Woods, the award-winning investigative reporter whom Staloch censored for insisting on reporting the truth].

 

 

I live in Truckee now, but I'm still devoted to the Bay area, the coast, funky old San Jose, weird wonderful Santa Cruz, the mountains on both sides of the Valley, and the Valley (I still work there, remotely, from the Far East Bay). Regrets? Yeah. I regret that I spent nine years of my life anchored in Gilroy, and that for half of that time I honestly thought that the situation could improve, deluded myself that despite the daily evidence of rampant ignorance, it wasn't really all that bad! Wrong.

OK so the creeps know that I ditched G. Half of the Gilroy school board and the district office slackers who manage low expectations in the Gilroy school district are quite pleased that the GUSD Watchdog doesn't watch them anymore. I suppose they can claim they outlasted me. But you know my response. They can have their unflushed turdlet town and all the floaters who clog it. Anyway, during my time in Gilroy I held the district accountable for its ineptitude. I exposed the rampant incompetence. I helped elect two board members who now hold the school district accountable to tax-paying, home-owning residents who foot the bill for the district's academic morass. And I was a constant thorn in Mainstreet Media's side. I exposed its seamy underbelly. It's on the Internet record and neither Staloch nor Derry can take it down.

Ah, Gilroy. Ever notice that there isn't a single competent waiter or waitress in the entire town? But then the pinnacle of cuisine in Gilroy is the big hot sweaty bbq known as the Garlic fest... and Rib Night at Applebee's.

Gilroy seems to cherish being an intellectual dead zone, a breeding ground for flabby dufus video-game addicts with ambitions to work the checkout line at Target and Wal-Mart and CostCo. "Welcome to Gilroy! Celebrate obesity in soulless deadening cookie cutter subdivisions! Enjoy a fulfilling career in the nail salon industry!"

It's been six months since my family completed Operation Escape from Dipshitville, armpit of Santa Clara County. That right there was a life moment I'll never ever forget: rolling down the cargo door on the Budget rent-a-truck, about 5,000 pounds over limit, bound for the Sierras. Before putting the rig in Drive, I asked my 15 year old son Henry if he had any regrets and he said None! I said Sure? and he said Nope. and I said Then let's you and me get the hell out of this two-bit town, and we high-fived and we wore big shit-eating grins that lasted all the way to the mountains. With the Gilroy housing market in a death spiral -- thanks in large part to the stewardship of a city council / planning commission that bends over for any developer (what RDO?), my grin is wider than ever. Yeah, I got out in time; feel sorry for those homeowners who didn't sell but wish they had. Gilroy, like Stockton, Antioch, Vallejo, Sacramento, and other overbuilt areas, is ground zero in the housing market collapse.

I ditched the scene, Kate, but I still keep tabs on Inside San Benito. God love it. It's the only outlet attempting to give people the truth, framing the news and the politics in San Benito county with honesty, and using humor and undeniable facts to hold the creeps accountable.

[at left: Mainstreet Media brass enjoy a night out after a hard day of censoring dissenting opinions]

It may seem like no one cares, but In SBC there's a healthy undercurrent of outrage and anger against the Beavis' and Buttheads who've screwed things up so badly. Not everyone in Gooberville is a goober! Just remember how many people wrote in when your Badlands column was axed. That outpouring was genuine, heartfelt outrage, not the manufactured claptrap you usually get in your typical letter to the editor to the Hollister Free Pants or the Gilroy Dipsack. (Or is it the Hollister Flea Ranch and the Gilroy Dogfart? I can never remember!)

Kate you are correct when you say that these crappy little newspapers are doomed. It's the nimble independent Internet sites that will expand while the little podunk shoppers-pretending-to-be-newspapers shrivel. There's a market in South SC County and SBC for an alternative weekly that's Internet based and regional, not provincial. I hope you and your Inside San Benito cohorts are in the mix when real community journalism returns to SBC. 

Comments

[Oeditpus Rex]

Bastard. You totally gronked "Flea Ranch" from me.

Reporters — can't trust any of 'em. :P

[Kate Woods]

Dear Doug Meier --

Let it be known, as you have said countless times in your stories, that I AM NOT WRITING for your wonderful news blog, but rather, am merely finally commenting on the outstanding public service that you have rendered to the Silicon Valley/San Benito/Gooberville region.

Thank you, Doug. I, for one, think you are one of the finest and funniest writers ever to grace this shithole. I feel fortunate to have had the good fortune of reading your sage and insightful pearls of hilarity and truth regarding the real history of politics and greed in this area. Thank you so much, for being such a champion of veracity, and of me, when no one else could give a flying fuck. You are so highly regarded among many in Gooberville, though you may not know it.

You are our Hero,

Yours Most Truly,

Kate Woods