Public Editor

I presently have both my legal secretary and my private detective looking into the laws of the State of Washington as they relate to Peeping Toms. However, I find it hard to believe that they will come back with any conclusion other than that this week’s privacy-invading feature, “I Saw You,” is highly actionable. Certainly it is, at the very least, highly deplorable. I count about a half-dozen instances of binocular-clad Stranger writers acting—by their very inaction—as accessories to lawlessness, at least three instances of them engaging in remote observation of sexual congress, and one shameful admission of attempted child abduction.

We learn what kind of city Stranger writers see when they leave their squatter lean-tos and make their way in the world: a Seattle where everyone is rutting like dogs, or performing illegal acts, or drinking and drugging. All of which is to say, it is not my Seattle. And I am sure, dear reader, that it is not your Seattle—or the Seattle of your neighbors, either. Which can only mean that it is a fictional Seattle, created by lascivious minds in order to transform the world into something as ugly and mean and immoral as the face they see in the mirror every morning. (It is noteworthy that the few legal acts in the feature are frowned upon by Stranger scribblers; like the snotty high schoolers they wish they still were, this aging band of miscreants casts judgment on what ordinary people are wearing, eating, and doing. The idea that they have any moral authority is laughable; have you seen these people? They could not claim superiority over a cockroach.)

Also disgusting: DOMINIC HOLDEN’s continued obsession with trying to derail plans that could allow my limousine to pass, unmolested, beneath the filthy streets of downtown Seattle as I am driven from my shooting range in Discovery Park to my weekly pottery classes in West Seattle. (In case you are wondering: They are a sop to Mrs. Steen, who has threatened to make me oversee the kitchen staff unless I spend more time using my hands in ways that “make her smile”—and I know that usually means a new vase.) Not content to just let it be after last week’s hysterical and exceedingly overlong article about all the terrible things a tunnel will supposedly cause—none of which is going to come to pass, I personally guarantee—Mr. Holden this week devotes space to dancing on the grave of a bid by one potential tunnel contractor who pulled out, no doubt, after noticing what kind of yellow journalism he would be up against. Similarly, ELI SANDERS harasses Congressman Jim McDermott about his failure to be Seattle’s “daddy” during this insipid tunnel debate (I am not even sure what that means), and in doing so performs the previously impossible task of making me feel sorry for a seditious surrender-monkey like Baghdad Jim.

Finally, near the back of this monotonous plea for the revocation of its publishing license, The Stranger offers some honesty about its real intentions. To wit, a new column by ADRIAN RYAN called The Homosexual Agenda. Never has there been a more forthright distillation of this paper’s reason for being—and as always with anything involving Mr. Ryan, it is far too gay.

Follow A. Birch Steen at www.twitter.com/strangerslog.