The city of Dallas’ overwhelming problem with false burglar alarms became abundantly apparent this past January when Ivey Head’s 77-Drive-In Cafe on South Industrial Boulevard burned to the ground. A controversy ensued because a police dispatcher had refused to respond to Head’s alarm company’s call for help because the city…
A document the A.H. Belo Corp. recently filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission flatly contradicts a key Dallas Morning News executive’s published explanation for the demise of the paper’s Sunday magazine. On November 15, 1994, The Dallas Morning News published a story on page 10D of the business…
Get up offa that thing I just read the article, “Single with children” [February 22], the story of Linda Koop and the two boys she took in. I could say a lot of negative things about some of the players in that piece–but my hat still goes off to her…
Neighbors think the old man who lives at the corner of Cortez and Thornberry might be a little crazy. His house is falling down, its paint is fading away, and plastic tarps cover holes in its crumbling wood-shingle roof. The old man’s yard, jammed with lumber, pipes, bricks, scaffolding, and…
Editor’s note: This is the final week Molly Ivins’ column will appear in the Dallas Observer. We are forced to discontinue her column because the management of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram has ordered her syndicate to yank it from our pages. The Star-Telegram took the action after the Observer published…
George Broussard leads me through post-apocalyptic hell. The enemy is everywhere and heavily armed. They spring out from hiding, aim and fire their weapons. Broussard races down the alleyway and plugs these swinelike foot soldiers with thunderous shots from his 12-gauge. The alleyway is quickly littered with perforated corpses and…
Among the parents living in the tidy, peaked-roof cottages of Dallas’ ‘M’ Streets neighborhood, it has been fodder for gossip for months now: How did Pete Sessions, Republican candidate for U.S. Congress, get his 6-year-old son into highly coveted Stonewall Jackson Elementary while living outside the school’s boundaries? Did Sessions,…
In his dreams I turned to my dinner partner–beautiful, bright, smartly dressed. She bent close and whispered…and winked. Her wink made me smile. Whew! Point Buzz in the direction of a cold shower! A scene out of a Danielle Steel potboiler? Not hardly. This is a pitch letter crafted by…
Return to Camelot I am writing in response to the article that appeared in the January 18-24 issue of the Dallas Observer (“It’s the stock price, stupid!”), written by Miriam Rozen. The article is, in my opinion, full of lies, distortions, half-truths, and unfounded insinuations. The article commences with a…
News plans new Arlington daily; suburban newspaper war looms The Dallas Morning News has declared war on the Fort Worth Star-Telegram by announcing a blitzkrieg invasion of Arlington. After learning that BeloWatch and others were onto the story, the News on Tuesday ran a page-one article to unveil its closely…
Not long ago, Cheer Dallas, the country’s first serious gymnastics-oriented, pompon-eschewing, non-drag-wearing gay cheerleading squad, had the opportunity for statewide exposure. This Week in Texas, a magazine with a huge circulation that lists events in the gay community across the Lone Star State, wanted to put a couple of the…
On November 3, 1993, both the letter and the tape were introduced as further evidence for terminating forever Pat Hope-Hall’s parental rights. Court-appointed social worker Paula Everett and Carol Bowdry, a retired CPS administrative reviewer, both urged this harsh remedy. Bowdry described Pat’s relationship with Alicia as “toxic.” She testified…
Phil who? When U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm dropped out of the presidential race, he left a couple of high-profile Texas Republicans with a hard decision: To whom should they shift allegiance? Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison stood shoulder to shoulder with Governor George W. Bush to publicly announce they wouldn’t decide–just…
Journalistic charity begins at home Obviously it’s a little much for BeloWatch to expect The Dallas Morning News–whose editors talk so much about objectivity, accuracy, and even-handedness–to describe the world as it really is. But it’s quite astonishing how sharply the paper skews reality when it’s reporting on itself. On…
Setting aside that Pat Buchanan is a racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic anti-Semite, what wonderful news from New Hampshire! It’s the nuts! It’s the berries! Yes, well, that is rather a large mound of manure there connected with his name, much of it justified, I’m afraid. There’s even more: He defends…
The cloyingly heartfelt sound of new-age music swells in the background as the credits brashly announce the topic for the day’s show: “Help! My Daughter’s Been Kidnapped.” Sally Jessy Raphael’s nasal voice rises over the music as images of girls playing with their fathers flood the screen. “Today,” says the…
Is the black man worth loving?” The question hung over the crowd gathered in the pews of Jubilee United Methodist Church on a recent Friday night, a promise and a paradox. To each of the 125 African-American men and women, the answer was obvious. Yet here was Robert Ashley, well-known…
Gazing into the abyss There are at least two errors in the statements made by Ed Zabel in the Observer article about him [“Dealing with the Devil,” February 15]. The first concerns gargoyles, which were designed to be waterspouts, and nothing else. The second concerns Zabel’s bizarre theory that the…
The March night promised to be chilly. An unusually large crowd turned out for the Sulphur Springs City Council meeting, more than could fit within the warm confines of City Hall, so the meeting was moved to the much larger civic center. When the doors opened, citizens of the small…
Would a bleeding-heart liberal kick a guy while he’s down? Should a girl like me, in whom the milk of human kindness flows copiously for everyone, from protein-shy Hottentots to the glandular obese, actually aim a few swift boots at the prone form of Sen. Phil Gramm? Nah. But it’s…
Former Dallas Independent School District trustee Dan Peavy has filed suit against the Dallas Observer for reprinting a transcript of the profanity-peppered tape recording that led to his resignation. In its October 5, 1995 issue, the Observer printed a transcript of racist, sexist, and homophobic comments that Peavy admits he…
Just another politician Though it’s nothing new for a candidate to stump as “not another political insider,” Buzz had to stop and look twice at a campaign sign planted in the Midcities. Bob Stewart, a Republican running for the District 42 state House seat representing parts of Hurst, Euless, and…
