By Larry Judkins
Glenn County Observer
The American trend of being easily offended continues.
On Friday, February 28, the following message was sent to The Glenn County Observer. It is reproduced here exactly as it was written:
“Hello, I would appreciate it. If you would stop calling the jail. the gray bar hotel and using the term we will leave the light on for ya. it is very offensive. It’s already one thing to be makeing these people‘s mistakes public. so then you have to make a joke that it’s a motel? I don’t find it funny at all just because you’re a perfect citizen. You think it’s OK to make that kind of joke that’s very unprofessional. whoever writes that obviously has a sick sense of humor. If it’s that old fat guy with glasses he definitely looks like a child molester. Or a crossdresser after work. Not funny to you right? People make mistakes and go to jail some for a long time people get taken away from their families and friends hardships trials, and tribulations from people going to jail. It is hard on everybody financially and you just think it’s a joke you’re smart ass remarks are going to get your cocksucker slapped one of these days.”
The message was sent by someone who calls himself Zack. His last name is apparently Bolinger. At least, that name is included in his email address.
As for the Graybar Hotel items, they are indeed posted by the “old fat guy with glasses he definitely looks like a child molester”, as is everything else in The Observer. It’s a one-person production. The reason I don’t include my byline near the top of the Graybar Hotel jail booking items is because very little in them originates with me. That is, the information in them all comes – sometimes word-for-word – from the jail staff, the Glenn County Sheriff’s Office, the Orland Police Department, and occasionally other sources.
Not even the term, “Graybar Hotel”, originated with me – not by a longshot. Before I started using it, it was the name many inmates in the Men’s Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles used. In 2014, “The Greybar Hotel” (note the British spelling, “Grey”) was the title of an episode of the TV show, The Mentalist. Furthermore, The Graybar Hotel was the title of a 2017 collection of short stories by Curtis Dawkins, a prisoner serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole at Lakeland Correctional Facility in Michigan for the “mistake” of committing murder (as one particular person with whom we have just become acquainted would say). And, here in Glenn County, the late publisher of The Sacramento Valley Mirror, Tim Crews, sometimes used the term.
I use “The Graybar Hotel” to grab readers’ attention. Using “The Glenn County Jail” would, quite frankly, get boring.
Of course, I could use some other term. How about “clink”? “Cooler”? “Pokey”? “Hoosegow”? “Slammer”? “Calaboose”?
Not that it really matters. No matter what term is used, even “The Glenn County Adult Detention Facility” (yawn!), someone would be offended by it.
The Glenn County Observer 