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These appear to be tough days for the media in general and columnists in particular. At any moment, some zealous investigator might examine my earlier work and discover that there is no such person as Ananias Ziegler and no such organization as the Committee That Really Runs America.
Thus all those alleged conversations with Ziegler are complete fabrications. This is a rhetorical device employed since the time of Plato, at least, but as the new millennium approaches, there must be some need to cast aside the traditional ways.
Perhaps it would be better to take the offense here, and point out the flaws of others.
For instance, the Wall Street Journal of Aug. 14
mentioned Salida, in a list of the four favorite towns
discovered by John Villani, author of The 100 Best Small
Arts Towns in America.
He stated that Salida is a river-rafting and
mountain-biking mecca ... home to a large and diverse
artists' community
and located at 8,000
feet.
The last time I checked, Salida sat only 7,034 feet above mean sea level. Maybe this is quibbling, but if that newspaper were 1,000 points off in reporting the Dow-Jones average, and somebody called this discrepancy to its attention, I bet nobody would call it quibbling.
We take hypsometry quite seriously in Colorado. In other states, the signs at the municipal limits announce the population or that the water supply has been approved by the health department. But here, it's elevation; how could the Journal be so insensitive about something that means so much to us?
Last year, the Journal reprinted a falsehood that also
appeared in the July edition of Sunset, the magazine of
Western living
and in promotional brochures for the
prison museum in Cañon City: That Alfred (or Alferd,
depending) Packer was the only man in U.S. history to be
convicted of cannibalism.
Packer was never convicted of cannibalism for the simple reason that cannibalism has never been illegal in Colorado. If it's not a crime, you can't be convicted of it.
Packer was convicted of murder. The verdict was overturned in 1885, for reasons arising from a botched legislative transition from the territorial status of 1874, when his fellow prospectors perished in the San Juans, to the statehood status of 1883 when he was tried in Lake City.
He was soon retried in Gunnison for manslaughter, convicted of five counts, sentenced to eight years for each count, and sent to the penitentiary in 1886.
For further media flaws, you could turn to the July 27
edition of Newsweek, which had an article about
off-the-beaten-path vacation getaways, among them the Nada
Monastery near Crestone, where there isn't a ski lift
for a hundred miles, and the nearest espresso is 50 miles
off.
The Monarch Ski and Snowboard Area, where I have personally seen several ski lifts, sits only 65 miles from Crestone, and I also know for a fact that Don Geddes will be happy to sell you espresso in Saguache, only 30 miles from Crestone.
It saddens me to say this, but similar inaccuracies creep into the pages of the Post from time to time.
About a fortnight ago, I read yet another boast from Arvada that Ralston Creek represents the site of the first documented gold discovery in Colorado, back in 1850.
But in early 1807, Capt. Zebulon M. Pike was in Santa Fe
after he was caught trespassing on Spanish soil. There he
met an American trapper and trader named James Purcell, who
told Pike that he had found gold on the head of La
Platte
-- that is, in South Park, more than 40 years
before the Arvada discovery.
In the Perspective section of the July 27 Post, I read a piece by Guillermo Vidal, executive director of the Colorado Department of Transportation.
You would think that he, of all people, would be able to
count how many times Interstate 70 crosses the Continental
Divide -- once, at the Straight Creek tunnels. But he
wrote that it is a high-mountain road that crosses the
Continental Divide twice.
Perhaps he thinks Vail Pass crosses the Divide, which it
doesn't. Or he's as geographically challenged as Dave
Minshall, a Denver TV reporter who, some years ago, had
cross-country skiers venturing across the Continental
Divide
between Aspen and Crested Butte, which are both
on the Western Slope. Or maybe Vidal was averaging I-70
with U.S. 40, which crosses the Divide three times --
Berthoud, Muddy and Rabbit Ears passes.
And if I can just get people excited about all these transgressions against truth, then nobody will look at my stuff.
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