Headline Writer Misses the Joke; Column Writer Amazed by Discovery of "Secret" Product

Brett Slattery puts his tongue firmly in cheek and launches his advertisement for "Goof Off-Rust Stain Remover" (thinly disguised as column) by telling readers to paint their "home driveways and sidewalks rust-colored" to hide hard-water stains.

The kids on the copy desk decided that would make a dandy headline, entirely missing the part where the Goof Off promoter says, "On second thought, forget about painting your home driveway and sidewalks rust-colored," and gets on with urging readers to buy a "secret" product that he found "amazing" for keeping his house-for-sale signs tidy.

Sun Coast Media Group readers are accustomed to strange headlines emanating from the copy desk because the kids are yet not fully comfortable with the concept of reading. What subscribers are less accustomed to is a "columnist" who hasn't read the product label of an "amazing secret" that he's promoting.

The label Slattery isn't reading says his "amazing" and "secret" product is a 10-percent concentration of oxalic acid laced with a touch of hydrofluoric acid. Of course this reactive compound removes iron stains, as any high school chemistry student knows. It's a process called chelation, a multiple-ion bonding (chelate is Greek for "claw") that takes place at room temperature. It's simple: an oxalic acid molecule grabs on to several Fe2O3 (rust) electrons and forms a complex molecule that's highly water soluable. The new compound is ferric oxalate, and it rinses away with water.

It's neither "secret" nor "amazing;" it's 11th grade chemistry.

And by the way, do what Slattery forgot to tell you: Buy oxalic acid crystals for less than a buck a pound at the hardware store and dilute it yourself -- but be sure to read the label. It can be nasty stuff.

Brett Slattery's Slippery Slope: We're Turning into Them

"There are states that track your speed on toll roads. You enter the toll road at point A. You arrive 60 miles later at Point B. The speed limit is 60 mph. So it will take you one legal hour to get to point B. If you arrive sooner, you get a ticket on your calculated speed." -- Brett Slattery.

"We have yet to find any verified accounts of municipalities (in any state) automatically issuing traffic citations based on transit times recorded by electronic toll collection systems." Snopes

We know who Snopes is, but who is Brett Slattery?

He's a real estate agent. He's also Sun Coast Media Group's occasional columnist. This morning, Slattery steps out of his field of expertise to offer an opinion. To be fair, he's not an actual journalist or a reporter so expectations of objectivity or sourcing can be put aside. And, after all, it's the Charlotte Sun headline that get the ball rolling: "Red light cameras -- what's next?"

The lame "what's next" is designed to inflame, not inform. Most readers will recognize from the outset that the copy desk kids left their professionalism in their lockers back at page-designing school. But it's Slattery's 7th graf that delivers the Kool-Aid.

At first, he attempts imitating a reporter by appearing to attribute his fourth or fifth assertion: "Newspapers have reported ..." It's three paragraphs down, by which time readers who had been giggling since the end of the first graf are now emitting small guffaws at the delicious irony. Folks like Slattery -- we're grouping him with various types who see conspiracy everywhere and threats from government around the corner -- routinely accuse newspapers of being unreliable. So it's choice for an old reporter to see in black and white this sudden reliance on what he reads in "newspapers." The fact that Slattery grossly mischaracterizes what "newspapers" have reported is another post for another day. Let's just say an objective and balanced report would not serve his purpose. Which we're coming to.

Broker Slattery's purpose is to stir his brew of logical and journalistic failures and mix with an unctuous dose of xenophobic, ethnic, and near-racial slurs and stereotypes in order to lubricate his slippery slope fantasy. Old Word Wolf fans will locate most of the poison quite easily for themselves. We'll just close by promising a Silver Bark Bark Award to anyone who locates one actual fact in Slattery's ink that might qualify as well-informed opinion.



Brett Slattery's world view regarding highway safety improvement: "Our government gets richer ... camera makers get really rich ...insurance companies see a big boost in premiums ..."

Regarding preventing planes from being used as weapons of mass destruction: "... If Homeland Security can authorize scraggly strangers to grope your wife and kids, then gaining access to cell phone data is a piece of cake."

Regarding proximate causes: "China is light years ahead of us on this. So are most Middle Eastern countries. ... with red-light cameras now popping up in our own country, we have demonstrated a willingness to be a little more like them."