One of the roles of an independent news Weblog is to critique the local and national press. The blogosphere, you see, is the future of news, since newspapers of all stripes have given up the ghost of democracy and sacrificed their objectivity to the almighty bottom line.

An educated reader has very little trouble at a glance realizing that most newspapers spend very little time and money on news gathering and virtually no time at all standing up to the powerful and asking tough questions. What they do spend on news is just filler between the ads.

In responding to this trend back in the 1960s and '70s, during the cultural revolution of that period in U.S. history, alternative weekly newspapers sprang up to counter this trend and give educated, liberal audiences a different point of view. The Village Voice in New York was one of the first.

In the nation's capital, Washington City Paper fills that role today. In Atlanta, Georgia, there is Creative Loafing. In Birmingham, Alabama, there is a very attractive ad machine called Black and White.

Alas, the greed of the capitalist machine has even overwhelmed the alternative weeklies these days. So much so that it is amazing they continue to attract readers at all.

I have written myself for a couple of the best alternative weeklies in the country, Gambit Weekly in New Orleans and Metropulse in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Having moved back to Birmingham from New Orleans last year, after spending a few months in Washington during the 2004 election campaign, I didn't really expect to find any great newspapers in my home town.

But the last thing I expected to find was a right-wing rag still claiming to serve the liberal arts community in Birmingham. It just goes to show you can fool enough of the people some of the time.

What, you may ask, am I talking about?

Just click on the current issue of Black and White and tell me I am crazy.

The B and W gives lip service to the Birmingham arts community with a brief on the artwalk (their Web design does not allow posting links to individual stories, which just goes to show you that even a free newspaper is somehow afraid of the Web).

And while there is never any investigative reporting in the paper, enough of a slight, their entire opinion section is filled with cheap, syndicated conservative drivel.

They start their minimal coverage of the Hurricane Katrina aftermath by blaming the looters for the slow rescue response in a piece written by Nicole Gelinas, a regular op-ed contributor to the New York Post, the conservative New York tabloid owned by Rupert Murdock, who you may also recall owns the Fox News network.

The headline?

"A Perfect Storm of Lawlessness: New Orleans' vicious looters aren't the real face of the city's poor - their victims are."

Right.

Never mind that President George W. Bush, the directors of Homeland Security and FEMA refused for four days to give the order for the National Guard waiting in Montgomery, Alabama, to head down to the coast of Mississippi and New Orleans and begin giving the poor, trapped people there food and water and rescue them from the toxic flood waters - that is until the president was on the way down for a photo op.

Then, they use a piece by Daniel Henninger, deputy editor of the right-wing Wall Street Journal editorial page, to blame the entire debacle on that evil government inevitability - "bureaucracy."

"Bureaucratic Failure: To understand Katrina's problems, read the 9/11 report."

Jesus H. fucking Christ these people are stupid.

To add insult to injury, they are now running the column of Ann Coulter, the nut job maven of the GOP, who blames all the problems in America on poor Cindy Sheehan in an article subtitled, "Commander In Grief."

And of course, that fat, stupid, blow hard and Rush Limbaugh want-a-be J.R. Taylor just has to weigh in (pun intended) to blame it all on the so-called "liberal" Washington Post.

Never mind that the Washington Post has now earned the nickname "The Pentagon Post," for its editorial support of the war in Iraq, by the liberal blogs.

Taylor had so much to think last night that he forgot to obtain ANY facts whatsoever for his diatribe.

So why should the liberal arts community in Birmingham even give a shit what the B and W writes? Is it time for a boycott?

Would their conservative advertisers care if everyone on Birmingham's Southside decided to toss the paper in the garbage from now on instead of reading it and looking at the ads?

Try it and maybe it will convince the editors to find some balance in their coverage from now on.

I offered them a piece on New Orleans a couple of weeks ago and they didn't even bother to return my e-mail by saying "no thanks."

Wilson: New Orleans Depends on the Kindness of Strangers

The column stacks up against all these writers if I do say so myself.

Codrescu: Love Note to New Orleans
Rice: Do You Know What It Means to Lose New Orleans?
Tisserand: New Orleans Is Gone!
Raines: The Crescent City Blues
Bragg: This Isn't the Last Dance

So tell Black and White to kiss your ass until they start running some real journalism. Pick up a few copies and toss them in the recycle bin - without even looking inside.

If you are a true artist, there's nothing in the paper worth reading anyway.