Angela Woodall’s fun to argue with, even if this blogger can’t get a word in edge-wise. What the Oakland Tribune Reporter did on Thursday was call me to complain that I mentioned her extensively in my recent blog posts (haven’t done a video yet) about the Oakland Alameda County Coliseum Complex, and blast me for my expressing what is my view of her presentation of a Twitter tweet about the Coliseum JPA that provided a link to a Wikipedia definition of Tammany Hall.
See, for those who know, Tammany Hall is the picture of political corruption, and my opinion of Woodall’s Twitter tweet was that she was on to something. But Woodall, after basically yelling in my ear for about three minutes, and such that I had to hold the phone away from my ears, said that wasn’t what she meant (she said she was thinking of their secretive voting habits) and that I should have called her to ask her about it, before stating my opinion.
I explained that because of the way the Twitter tweet was linked to the Wikipedia definition of Tammany Hall, and my experience with the Coliseum JPA, I didn’t believe I needed to do so. What was surprising to me was that Woodall then admitted she didn’t give much more than “a glance” at the link to the definition for Tammany Hall! Wow.
Woodall was also calling around town, obsessed with the idea that I work for Former 49ers PR Man Sam Singer (I don’t) and that I wasn’t with SFGate.com because of that – not true …
See video…
– and all because I was against AEG being the manger at of the Coliseum Complex; And while Sam’s a good friend, I do have the right to oppose AEG – period.
But, the hard truth is I have a lot of publicists who are my friends around the country and especially in sports and entertainment and tech; the only reason Sam takes spotlight is he and I agree on a few Bay Area matters that some knee-jerk self-important and not at all nice sad-sacks of people feel I should be on their side about. Plus, I enjoy fighting those folks – I just have to admit it – because they’ve all been so very mean to me.
Frankly, I’m tired of these so-called East Bay journalists (and I don’t call myself one) who have expressed dislike for me, and don’t know me, yet write crap about me, spammed me on SFGate.com’s comment section, and communicated with the anti-corporate activists, who in two cases have sent death threats to me. So I am happy to run my own ship at Zennie62.com – free and unfettered from SF Chronicle censorship and poised to build a really new kind of media approach. It’s nice. I will also never look at the SF Chronicle, which I came to regard as my tormentor, with any level of respect I once had. But I digress.
As I said to Angela, I’m not trying to be a journalist – I’m not working to hide my feelings behind some silly veil of objectivity that, at the end of the day, everyone knows is fake. I’m a blogger. I blog. My code is to be interesting, provocative, and occasionally controversial.
While I enjoy blog war, unlike some citizens in San Francisco and the East Bay, I don’t seek to hurt the feelings of others just for sport, or say they’re my “old friends” when they’re not. It was not my intention to hurt Angela’s feelings, who’s work I enjoy.
As I said to Angela, because of my history with the Coliseum JPA, much of it not good and I’m still scarred by, I’m going to zero in on something like her Coliseum Tammany Hall Twitter tweet, and do what blogger’s do best: amplify it. That was red meat for me, and I ate it up. As far as I’m concerned the Coliseum JPA has not changed much since 1995, and the last three Oakland City Auditors have avoided auditing it, and that spells more bad history to come in the future.
Angela now gets where I’m coming from, and I understand where she’s at philosophically. We have different mind sets, and some things we’re not ever going to agree on. Our views are different because of our backgrounds, and my unique, close relationship with an organization, the Coliseum JPA, I once sought to run. Some of the people who stood in my way of leading the JPA are still there, and I’m watching them like a hawk.
And here’s some news: I’m not the only one in the sports business World who is.
Stay tuned.