The Desert Gadabout

LA fitness: The Great Burger Ban

Since we import virtually all our ideas by way of southern California, you just know this kind of stupidity will be headed our way within the calendar year:

A proposal that would place at least a one-year moratorium on new fast-food restaurants in a broad swath of neighborhoods, mostly in South Los Angeles, won unanimous support from a Los Angeles City Council committee Tuesday.

If approved by the full council and signed by the mayor, the law would prevent fast-food chains from opening new restaurants in a 32-square-mile area. The moratorium would be in effect for one year, with the possibility of two six-month extensions.

As the old joke goes, they give you a Perrier and a motivational tape at the California border, but even the most entrenched public health advocate has to confess this is beyond gross government micromanagement.

It's also a bit hypcritical.

After all, you can still get a $14 BLT at The Stork and three scoops in a waffle cone at Silky Smooth. What those places lack is the stigma of creating low-income fat people. They're more than willing to cater to pudgy city councilmen, though.

Journalese

Every decade or so journalists adopt words they don't understand and assign them to cultural events they don't understand in hopes someone else understands what they're trying to say. In the 90s we had:

• Generation X
• Generation Y
• Zeitgeist

In the early 21st Century we could add "blogs," among other things, to words journalists tossed around without understanding them. We know that because journalists regularly enter the blog world these days showing they have no clue how to be personal, engaging, or interesting.

In 2008 I'm officially sick of these words:

• Post-modern
• Emerging church
• Empowerment
• Green (anything, unless it's a nice cliche', like "green with envy")

My friends at the AZ Green Day blog get a reprieve from that last one because, well, I like them and I like their blog. Green has been co-opted by marketers, though, and what people have come to know as "green" isn't really environmentally friendly. The issue of modern environmentalism is better understood as sustainability. For example, "green" suggest you buy a hybrid car. Sustainability suggests you buy an older used car that gets good gas mileage, because it has a much smaller carbon footprint. See the difference?

I encourage my journalists peers to stop copying each other and read a few books or something. Books you can't buy at an airport, I mean. Add some fiction to your diet. Read some of those books you heard about in college.

More than anything, really learn something about the world rather trying to live a life outside of it.It's OK -- even preferable -- that you know something about your subject before you report the story.