Our Rocky made the cover of Nation magazine.

Having spent several months as Rocky’s interim communications guy, I witnessed up close and personal the viceral, organized and popular sport of Rocky bashing. I can tell you it looks no different from the inside than the outside for the simple reason that both of our major daily papers love it and facilitate it. John Hughes (D-News Editor) pushed one young reporter so hard it ruined the kid’s career. Revised: And I watched in horror the local media morph into parapazzi at the slightest opportunity to spark a new sensational furor while refusing to write about many of the important things Rocky was doing.

But we noticed and the world noticed, and this national praise and national presence reminds us once again, Salt Lake City is a world class city with a majority progressive community surrounded in part by a hostile tribe grunting in unison against rational progress and thoughtful discourse for fear of being exposed for what they are not.

Over the past seven years, Anderson has transformed the city. While outsiders who know little of the nuances of Utah politics might assume this nerve center for the Church of Latter Day Saints to be a bastion of conservatism, among those who track urban policy trends the city has become synonymous with some of the most creative urban government thinking in the country.

We can count on a jealous republican state legislature to continue to block Rocky at every turn out of a petty jealously for the fact that one out-spoken liberal has brought more benefits to this state then they ever will.

When Anderson proposed a law stating that the city would favor doing business with companies that paid a living wage to their employees, the conservative state legislature did an end run around this by passing a bill prohibiting municipalities from making contract decisions based on such criteria. He is, according to senior staff, often at loggerheads with councilmen, state legislators and the governor. Some go so far as to say that anything he supports, the legislature will oppose.

And don’t count on a responsible local media to play a role in improving our quality of life.

Case in point. the Desert Morning News did not print Professor Firmage’s letter(print version) recently because they endorse his views and believe the community will benefit from hearing his voice, but rather because it is provocative and generates letters to the editor like this, this, and this.

I assure you if the D-News had received any intelligent critiques they would have published those. That only idiots disagree with Professor Firmage or Rocky is no excuse for legitimizing cave-level community discourse but it is par for the course around here at least for the forseeable future.

We need to get the Tribune back in the hands of Jack Gallivan and The McCarthys, and we must elect current Minority Leader Ralph Becker Mayor of SLC.