One thing I’ve learned about blogging in recent years is how quickly a story can travel around, sometimes not allowing those that have learned about it to know about all of the changes taking place and leading to some rather pointed comments to be made. Then again, maybe it’s because as some folks tell me “I’m not mean enough to be doing this.” It’s definitely one of the scariest things about attempting to do this for a living.
The best example of this recently is the coverage by the blogosphere of Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford‘s decision to not issue a proclamation to the annual Central Alabama Pride parade on the city’s Southside. If you really don’t want to read the back story to understand this piece, click here to get to the point…
This morning’s Birmingham News ran a story with the online headline:
Birmingham mayor denies gay parade permit, The Birmingham News, 5.24.2008
The story stated that the mayor had decided to not only not issue the proclamation requested by event organizers, as first shared by Sweet Homo Alabama and Birmingham Blues on Friday (complete with the text from the email sent from Langford’s office), but also said that he would not issue them the permit needed to hold the parade (scheduled for June 7).
The text of the email included in Kathy’s post (about half way into it) did not contain any language that would lead one to believe that he would deny the permit, but did say that he would deny the hanging of banners in the area announcing the events and signing a proclamation.