Kelso's Crapulence

Say what you will about John Kelso – say it real loud, so he can hear you – but even at the ripe old age of pissy, he still likes getting his hands dirty.

The admittedly senile shit-flinger has a history of sliming those on the Statesman enemies list – i.e., the Chronicle – when the editorial board doesn't want to get their hands dirty. He's sheathed their stings in fake-homespun homilies at least as far back as 1994, when he bomb-threw against former Chron News Editor Daryl Slusher and his mayoral campaign for the boys upstairs.

So you could practically hear the spittle plunking into the Statesman drool cup once the city decided to become a South by Southwest co-sponsor and grant the fest some fee waivers, mainly in the form of police overtime for closed streets – a decision that was the city's alone to make. (Funny how Queen Kelso, fresh off bitching about "money freebies the City of Austin is giving out to just about anybody," neglected to mention waivers for his paper's own race this weekend.) But the Statesman couldn't blather about SXSW's supposed unseemliness – not while publishing SXSW supplements and cashing in on their Web site. So they called in the hayseed hit man – like an enema kit, he's handy every now and then. Why else do you think they continue to publish his ham-handed, faux-populist prose, years after the last saps of originality leeched out his ample, graying frame?

Now the crux of his newest complaint – that SXSW is reporting unofficial afterparties to the fire department – created quite the stir online before he appropriated it. Regardless of the (lack of) merits here (e.g., the cred-conscious complainers admit that they didn't have the required permit, but it wasn't publicized enough), "Pappy" goes out of his way to mislead, falsely claiming SXSW and the Chronicle are one and the same. We hate to disappoint, but we have separate buildings, separate staffs, separate jobs. Is Kelso responsible for the ins and outs of the Statesman's Capitol 10K? What about Austin360.com? (We'd do better to start by asking if he knows the basics of dressing and feeding himself, but you get the drift.)

The most pressing question is whether Kelso even knows that several nonofficial SXSW parties were listed on his own employer's Web site. Austin360.com ran an extensive list of these soirees – the narcs! We wager his intern-assisted Internet trips consist of ordering diabetes supplies from Wilford Brimley and RippingOffJimSwift.com and that's about it.