Snyder's Side: Article 5
Whatever Happened To Eddie, Dave And Company?
Like I said on the index page, I stumbled across copies of Dirty Dave Carson's and Powerless Eddie Powers' political hack job masquerading as "journalism" back around 2000 or so: The New Observer. While I didn't agree with everything that was going on in Wyandotte County at the time (still don't), I found it hard to believe that the entire world as we knew it was going to fall down around our feet as they would have had you to believe. As time went on, more and more of their "views" got farther and farther away from believeable. I found it interesting that, while Eddie was a former Wyandotte County resident (Wyandotte HS graduate), he lived in JoCo but complained about Johnson County Republicans running Wyandotte County. Eddie's own father was a Wyandotte County Republican bigshot (along with Dirty Dave) and the apple of his eye didn't fall far from the tree. Their writing was a loosely mixed combination of opinion, satire and personal vendetta; where the facts got overlooked as many times as they got reported. They stepped over some boundaries, flat out destroyed some others and finally got caught with their hands in the proverbial cookie jar after publishing some stories about where the mayor at the time lived. Lawsuits were filed, trials were held, and in the end they were convicted of criminal defamation.
They tried to keep going, but one day a small but noticeable note was posted in the Kansas City Kansan. Simply put, Dave and his wife fired Eddie as their "editor" of The New Observer. While it said he wasn't supposed to be handling anything related to TNO or it's website, Eddie still plodded along, bellowing out his same tired lines for a little while. I have it on good authority they didn't pay him at one time or another for his "services." I still have all the files I copied from their website and copies of the papers, including the infamous "She Lives In JoCo!" issue -- they're good for a laugh or two. In more than a couple of the files were hidden (in the page markup, you had to reduce them to plain text files to see them) several other names, I suspect these were some of the silent partners in their "newspaper" endeavors. I didn't look into them much after things started to unravel, it just didn't matter -- and they didn't matter.
Now, Dave's pushing up daisies somewhere and Eddie's back at his palace in JoCo. I've been told he hangs out with nutjobs like Dan Leap, controversial Merriam City Council member and local "artist" known for making lamps out of musical instruments. While it would be interesting to hear Eddie's side of the story, he has become pretty obscure on the Internet and newspaper business. He did try a feeble attempt at a comeback with another political hack job called The Community with actual Wyandotte County resident (and perpetual complainer) Marilyn White. But it didn't last long, and now it's as forgotten as TNO to most everyone out there. I've been meaning to see if his JoCo political rag The Citizen is still in print, but it's not been important enough to me to go out there and find it.
So in the end, all the whining, crying, bitching and lying didn't really mean much. The speculative project known as Kansas Speedway started a metamorphosis in western Wyandotte County that has yet to stop. True, it hasn't yet begun to really offer a whole lot of tax relief, due to the fact that the tax generated in the area out there is being used to pay off the bonds taken out to build the area -- hopefully we'll realize more and more of that as time goes by. But it's something, and what we had before wasn't even that. Consolidation of the city and county governments may have helped in some areas, but I feel it could do a whole lot more -- and my plan is to make my voice heard about that as much as I can. I know I'm not alone about this, I just hope we can address the issues and leave unwarranted, personal attacks out of it. History tells us that personal vendettas don't accomplish much -- right, Eddie?
As always, if you want to respond, drop me a note. Who knows? Maybe Eddie will "man up" enough to respond. But I doubt it.
Take Care,
KS