BARBWIRE
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ANDREW BARBANO
Pirate Laureate of the High Desert Outback of the American Dream


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Je Suis Charlie
"Our republic and its press will rise or fall together." — Joseph Pulitzer

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"Media is the plural of mediocre."
— Jimmy Breslin (1928-2017)

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   Everybody knows the dice are loaded.
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.
   Everybody knows the war is over.
Everybody knows the good guys lost.
   Everybody knows the fight was fixed.
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich.
   That's how it goes.
Everybody knows...
Everybody knows the scene is dead
   But there's gonna be a meter on your bed
That will disclose
   What everybody knows...
   Everybody talking to their pockets.
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
   and a long red rose.
   Everybody knows. Everybody knows.
That's how it goes.
Everybody knows.


I hope you understand I just had to go back to the island.
Leon Russell, 1942-2016


Cat house to state house: Any publicity is good publicity
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno / Expanded from the 6-27-2018 Sparks Tribune / Updated 7-1-2018 / Expansions in blue


Greatest Hits Dept.

WE WON: BIG NEWS FROM THE NEVADA PRESS ASSOCIATION CONFAB IN GOMORRAH SOUTH —> BARBWIRE NOMINEE GUY RICHARDSON INDUCTED INTO HALL OF FAME ON FIRST BALLOT

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8 the hard way!
Barbwire wins 8th Nevada Press Association award

GOLD 2017
Don't ask Renown Med for marijuana to help your chemo
10-4-2016
We Don't Need No Education
Toxic turf threat ignored

12-13-2016
Kate Smith & Lady Gaga
2-14-2017

Bronze 6-pack
In the Uber-Nevada legislature, words can kill
4-28-2015
On artificial turf, don't breathe unless absolutely necessary (above)
11-24-2015
Leading questions, lead-headed leaders
1-19-2016

Hopelessly trying to win an earthquake
4-18-2013
2013 Loony Tunes Legislative Lexicon
5-30-2013
The politics of media ga-ga boosterism
3-20-2014

We Don't Need No Education—> Neverending Barbwire Series

1997 Pulitzer Prize entries

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SUING FOR SCHOOLS
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If Reform Fails: Health Care, Jobs and Unions — new power to the people on the public airwaves

The program premiers were available to every television set in the region because of a high-mileage media hybrid.

The shows appeared on both commercial and community stations. The non-corporate entity produced the events, commercial TV greatly expanded distribution.

Thus began an ongoing series of sane public interest programs which generate both entertaining heat and more than a little light.

Please spread the word and consider contributing to the cause online at ReSurge.TV.

You may also take the public option known as the U.S. Postal Service and send a check or money order to ReSurge.TV, P.O. Box 10034, Reno NV 89510.

Your contribution will help fund the distribution as well as ongoing efforts at developing new media, including a regional, non-corporate community radio station and the return of community television to Reno-Sparks-Washoe.

You are present at the creation of what I hope can become a new media model where the programming accurately reflects what's happening on the ground and the media impact is powerful enough to forcefully pass the message upward.

Thanks.

Be well. Raise hell.

Andrew


Click here for selected on-demand re-runs from the Barbwire.TV archives

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Daily Sparks Tribune 2-10-2008

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Awhile back, I got a call from someone supporting the unsuccessful recall of sullied Storey County Sheriff Gerald Cook Antinoro. (Barbwire 10-31-2014 et seq.)

His detractors were researching if there had ever been a sheriff ousted in Nevada history or if theirs would be the first.

I gave them a cold shower. Not only was it not the first, but fleshmonger Dennis Hof, a 2018 Republican nominee for Nevada State Assembly, is nowhere near the first of his profession to get that far.

The precedents lie in sprawling Nye County, most famous these days for solar energy arrays. Four decades ago, sunshine did not illuminate Nye's dark corners.

In 1967, Beverly Harrell opened Cottontail Ranch in southern Nye, one of the closest brothels to Las Vegas.

After multiple brushes with the Bureau of Land Management, she decided to run for Nevada State Assembly. It became Nevada's second biggest political story of 1974, eclipsed only by former Republican Gov. Paul Laxalt's upset defeat of Lt. Governor Harry Reid for the seat of legendary Sen. Alan Bible. In the year of Watergate, even.

I met Ms. Harrell only once when she and a very, ahem, exotic entourage arrived in a huge motorhome for an interview at Reno's KTVN TV-2.

Not long before the election, I discussed that race with a top gun lawyer.

"She's going to win," he said. "My mom lives down there where everybody hates the BLM and they're going to send her to Carson City hating the BLM."

News crews had an excess of volunteers wanting to cover it. Mme. Beverly had promised all the guys "open house" if she won.

A day or two after the November election, I got a call from a highly placed Las Vegas Democrat.

"How much did Beverly Harrell win by?"

"She didn't," I replied.

"Not a chance," said the heavy hitter. "Those bastards stole it from her."

Thereby hangs a tale. Or two. Or three.

The Nye results were not official by the morning after because one ballot box from an outlying area had mysteriously gone missing while traveling through the rural night.

When the votes were finally counted, an obscure garage owner from Hawthorne in Mineral County was the upset winner.

I called State Sen. Richard Bryan, D-LV, who had heard the same thing and said he'd look into it. Bryan had narrowly lost to incumbent Attorney General Robert List in a year when Republicans were dropping like flies.

In the early 1980s, investigative reporter Jeanie Kasindorf wrote a story for New West magazine which she eventually turned into a 1985 book, "The Nye County Brothel Wars."

It had everything a soap opera required: Sex, drugs, corruption, murder and mayhem.

It became a sanitized 1981 TV movie ("Incident at Crestridge") starring Oscar-nominee Eileen Brennan ("Private Benjamin", "The Sting") as a sheriff trying to clean up the "massage parlor" business in rural Wyoming. (Nevada gets no respect.)

Pernell Roberts ("Bonanza", "Trapper John, MD") played a corrupt mayor who decides the sheriff is bad for business and starts a recall. His henchmen stuff the ballot box and the sheriff loses, but not until a "masseuse" who was leaking info to the sheriff dies in a mysterious car accident.

The recall part, at least, was true. Nye County Sheriff Joni Wines was indeed ousted after about 18 months on the job and is a central figure in Kasindorf's research.

Margarita-swilling former Chicken Ranch brothel owner Walter Plankinton, played by a lookalike in the watered-down movie, ran for assembly in 1982.

The good ole boys on the Nye County Brothel Board tried to shut Plankinton down for purportedly illegally "advertising" his business.

"Plankinton's appearance on a TV show, his interviews with two publications and the use of the brothel's name in a Las Vegas casino show was tantamount to advertising," the Reno Gazette-Journal reported on July 21, 1982. (Sound familiar?)

The Chicken Ranch was closed for six weeks until U.S. District Judge Harry Claiborne overturned the revocation on First Amendment grounds in May of 1981.

Plankinton was merely following the media hustling playbook written by former Mustang Ranch proprietor Joe Conforte and since copied by Mr. Hof.

He has already defeated the incumbent Republican in the primary and is now the favorite to win the seat in November. Current Mustang owner Lance Gilman now sits on the Storey County Commission. The Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center (aka TRIC) boss has become borderline respectable as madcap Sheriff Cook-Antinoro's most powerful enemy.

The flesh peddler continuum is thus set for the next step on the path to legitimacy.

Do they still use paper ballots in Nye County?


Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)
_______
Andrew Barbano is a 49-year Nevadan, executive producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration, first vice-president and political action chair of the Reno-Sparks NAACP, labor/consumer/civil rights advocate, member of Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO and editor of NevadaLabor.com and BallotBoxing.US and SenJoeNeal.org and DoctorLawyerWatch.com/ As always, his opinions are strictly his own. Check local listings for other Nevada cable systems. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988 and received its 8th Nevada Press Association award and 5th first-place at the 30 Sept. 2017 NPA annual convention in Carson City. (That trophy and about six bucks will get you a Latte Mocha Cotsafracas Chingade at just about any Starbux worldwide, guaranteed.)

WEB XTRAS & SMOKING GUNS —>

ANTE INTO THE GAME: Support the new season of Barbwire.TV by putting your money where my mouth is.


Metastasizical Statisticals

Trump FCC chair investigated for Sinclair ties
TheVerge.com / 2-15-2018

Ready for Trump TV? Inside Sinclair Broadcasting’s Plot to Take Over Your Local News
Its mix of terrorism alerts, right-wing commentary and “classic propaganda” could soon reach 3/4 of the US.
By Andy Kroll/Mother Jones Oct.-Nov. 2017

How Sinclair Broadcasting puts a partisan tilt on trusted local news
By William Brangham/ PBS NewsHour 10-10-2017

Top-down Democrats haven't learned
By Dennis Myers / Reno News & Review 8-10-2017

More Faux than Fox? Corporate octopus Sinclair moves to dominate Nevada and U.S. television
By Dennis Myers / Reno News & Review 8-3-2017


  A thousand thanks to those who keep sending show suggestions.

  Stay tuned.

  I encourage you to donate to the cause at Barbwire.TV/ The medium that shapes public opinion needs at least one refuge where it is not filtered through the distorted green eye shades of prissy corporate accountants for whom profit is the only priority; where self-censorship is the journalist's normal work environment and where all sins of omission are tacitly encouraged and forgiven with the wave of a balance sheet.

  This is important. We've got a lot of work to do.

 

END OF TIMES SURVIVAL KIT. Defend yourself with humorous or humorless but always-peerless pontification by subscribing to the Barbwire Confidential News Service. Scandalous bonuses for new subscribers.

Hush Hush!

"Media is the plural of mediocre."
— Jimmy Breslin (1928-2017)

Last year's dark foreshadowings unfortunately became reality. I thus suggest inoculation by signing onto the HushHush! list at BallotBoxing.US/ It's cheap as well as enlightening entertainment. Thank you kindly for your support.

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)

Peruse the Underbelly of the News —> Subscribe to Barbwire Confidential

For all the news you never knew you needed to know 'til now: Tell your friends and friendly enemies to subscribe to Barbwire Confidential for warm laughter, cheap thrills, hot scoops and occasional cold logic at BallotBoxing.US/ Cheap at twice the price. (Hush Hush!)


Smoking Guns—>
Ghost in the machine: The return of NAGPAC
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno / Expanded from the 6-20-2018 Sparks Tribune
Lucky June 13: Cheap shots and low blows
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno / Expanded from the 6-13-2018 Sparks Tribun
A duo of D-Days visit Nevada this week
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno / Expanded from the 6-6-2018 Sparks Tribune
Grandma, gold standards, forearms and tin ears
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno / Expanded from the 5-23-2018 Sparks Tribune
Mother Dolores: Our village loses its patron saint
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno
/ Expanded from the 5-30-2018 Sparks Tribune
Beer & music and rent & pillage
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno / Expanded from the 5-16-2018 Sparks Tribune
Stormy weather: Poll dancing for fun & prophet
Barbwire by Andres Luis Barbáno / Expanded from the 5-9-2018 Sparks Tribune
Flint, Nevada: Dirty deeds done dirt cheap
Barbwire by Andres Luis Barbáno / Expanded from the 5-2-2018 Sparks Tribune

$75 dead or alive: Still crazy after all these years
A mass murderer becomes famous on TV a century later

How come nobody noticed 'til now?
Barbwire by Andrew Barbáno
/ Expanded from the 2-21-2018 Sparks Tribune

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory owners Max Blank and Isaac Harris. Is not Mr. Harris eerily familiar to television junkies?

From the Emmy-winning opening slate of the blockbuster "Cheers" television series. Combined with its "Frasier" spinoff, it lasted 20 years.
The "shirtwaist kings" immigrated from Russia and made a fortune manufacturing "Gibson Girl"-style blouses. (Photo, "The American Experience"/PBS)
The Emmy-winning opening slate of the "Cheers" television series before the "slate" of creators is superimposed. Looks like Mr. Harris' dead ringer (at left) is having a bloody good time.

"Who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?" Chico Marx disguised as Groucho Marx in "Duck Soup" (1933)
Back to the story of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist holocaust

SITE NAVIGATION TIPS: When all else fails, read the instructions (A favorite John Hanks aphorism I've been using for decades)

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DoctorLawyerWatch.com | Barbwire Oilogopoly Archive
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Copyright © 1982-2018 Andrew Barbano

Andrew Barbano is a 49-year Nevadan, editor of NevadaLabor.com and SenJoeNeal.org; and former chair of the City of Reno's Citizens Cable Compliance Committee. He is the executive producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration and serves as first vice-president and political action chair of the Reno-Sparks NAACP. As always, his opinions are strictly his own. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us.

Barbwire by Barbano moved to Nevada's Daily Sparks Tribune on Aug. 12, 1988, and has originated in them parts ever since.
Whom to blame: How a hall-of-famer's hunch birthed the Barbwire in August of 1987
Tempus fugit.

Betty J. Barbano
2-7-1941 / 12-27-2005

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