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Cathedral Basilica of San Francisco de Assisi, Santa Fe, NM (click to go to Guardian's pics of NM)

Thanks to its Summertime NSA Spy Story, the Guardian has acquired the kind of immediacy and daily traffic some other media outlets are green with envy over. Well of course. Why not? It's all a competitive corporate game for the attention of the masses, after all.

The Guardian, however, showed itself to be an appallingly shameless tool of power during its miserable coverage of the Egyptian coup and the bloodly aftermath, for which it continually failed to call things by their "right names." Instead, they presented almost continuous and almost unadulterated pro-military propaganda. This shameful display was one of the most neo-lib friendly of any media outlet deigning to cover the uproar in Cairo and elsewhere in The Two Lands and it literally put the lie to the Guardian's growing reputation for Speaking Truth to Power. No, the Graun, like all corporate media, is part of the Power Game, and "Speaking Truth" is a matter of positioning within the Power Structure at any given moment.



Readers saw how media positioning works a few days ago when the Guardian posted what they said was the "Full Story" of the Bloody Aftermath of the Egyptian coup, now called "Massacre in Cairo." Yes, well. A bit late, since they were referring to "alleged shootings" and such during the massacre, which they would only call a 'massacre' (in scare quotes) later because the military denied it, but at least it was more accurate than their "as it was happening" coverage, which was no less dishonest than most major media's initial Iraq War coverage. Shameless unapologetic toadying is what it was.

During all this hoohah, I was trying to follow one of the more charming aspects of the Guardian's summer fare, its Road Trips USA "Texas-New Mexico" segment, but I lost the thread due to multiple complicating factors (including News Overload) and the fact that the link to the travel section seemed to be missing from time to time if not most of the time.

At any rate, I called the story up on the search feature, and sure enough, there it was. I was most especially taken by the final leg, because, well, it covers my home place. The Santa Fe, East Mountains, Albuquerque Triangle is our stomping grounds, and while I may have some quibbles with Ms Rogers' stops along the way, it's nice to see the landscape and the sites and the people -- and the food -- featured, even if the feature was pretty much buried by other things at the time.

They call it The Land of Enchantment for a reason... ;-)

Mission San Miguel, Barrio de Analco, Santa Fe, NM

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Note: We kinda like it here (despite -- or maybe because of -- its Far West Texas flavor) We spent a good part of  the day at the Barbed Wire Collectors Show having a grand time chatting up the old coots who make wonderful displays of their wire collections, having some Frito Pie, and otherwise banging around and hanging out until it was time to go over to the re-opening of the consignment place that has become one of the most popular stops in town. Then we bought some books at the Library Book Sale, "D. H. Lawrence in New Mexico, The time is different there," "Utopian Vistas, The Mabel Dodge Lujan House and the American Counterculture," and "Tierra Amarilla, Cuentos de Nuevo Mexico." Whoo-hoo! (As if we need more books! )