The Sunshine Blog: Bidding Aloha To James And Rose, Kauai’s Avatar Anchors
Short takes, outtakes, our takes and other stuff you should know about public information, government accountability and ethical leadership in Hawaii.
The not-so-dearly departed: Well, that didn’t last long. It seems James and Rose, the avatar anchors who had been reading the local news as part of The Garden Island’s coverage on Kauai, have been unplugged.
This according to former Garden Island reporter Guthrie Scrimgeour . As he points out, James and Rose are just the latest in a long line of Kauai newspaper reporters to depart, himself included.
Scrimgeour confirmed with the paper’s parent company, Oahu Publications Inc. — owner of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser media empire which was recently purchased by the Carpenter Media Group out of Alabama and Mississippi — that the contract with an Israeli production company to produce the show had been terminated. The company wouldn’t say why but, as Scrimgeour opines (and The Sunshine Blog agrees) “it seems likely that a broadly negative public response played into the decision to end James and Rose鈥檚 tenure at The Garden Island.”
“James, a middle-aged Asian man, and Rose, a younger redhead, were never able to figure out how to present the news in a manner that wasn鈥檛 deeply off-putting for viewers,” he writes.
They regularly butchered Hawaiian names and hilariously got other words wrong. OK, they were totally and unsurprisingly lame. Many, many people agreed, just read the comments on every article written about them.
Scrimgeour says he watched every episode (The Blog hopes he got extra pay for that) and surfaced this hilarious excerpt:
“In one particularly stilted exchange about the pumpkin giveaway, Rose asked James, ‘And how have these free pumpkins impacted the community?’ to which James responded, ‘The free pumpkins have brought joy to many.'”
As with most layoffs — and the Star-Advertiser has had plenty lately — it appears to have come down to money. It seems no one wanted to sponsor the segment. Duh.
The Blog had been surprised to see Longs Drugs prominently featured as the show’s prime advertiser when it first aired in September. But a Longs spokeswoman told Scrimgeour they were unwitting sponsors and found out only belatedly that the company logo was being displayed on the show.
The Blog can’t help but wonder if that mightn’t have been the last laugh of former Oahu Publications senior exec Aaron Kotarek who, right about the same time Rose and James were being deleted, left Hawaii for a new job at the Spokane Spokesman-Review. Kotarek has taken credit for the avatar adventure in press releases.
For a further smile — or perhaps to shed a tear for the sad state of the local news business — read Scrimgeour’s initial piece for Wired, ““
Not feeling the love: As we all now know, Hawaii voters approved that constitutional amendment to remove discriminatory language regarding same-sex marriage. But the vote was much closer than expected. In , the ConAm was approved by 51.3% of voters but 40.4% voted against it.
Combine the no vote with the 7.8% ballots left blank and the 0.4% other votes 鈥 where voters wrongly selected more than one candidate or ballot option 鈥 and that comes to 48.6%. That’s far from landslide support for marriage equality in a state that prides itself on aloha. Had the no, blank and over votes exceeded the yes votes, the ConAm would have died.
Contrast that to Colorado, constitutional ballot question passed easily this month, 64.3% to 35.6%. In California, the vote on showed 62.6% voting for the measure and 37.4% against.
And Nevada voted almost the exact same way in 2020 when it overturned an 18-year-old ban on same-sex marriage, “making the state the first to enshrine gay couples鈥 right to marry in its constitution,” according to .
It’s not like Hawaii’s ConAm didn’t have support. Among to the Vote Yes For Marriage Equality candidate committee to raise awareness of the issue were Rep. Ed Case, lobbyists Jennifer Sabas, Bruce Coppa and Blake Oshiro; attorneys Bill Kaneko, David Louie and Ivan Lui-Kwan; Hula’s Bar and Lei Stand owner Jack Law, Alaska Airlines executive Daniel Chun, state Sen. Carol Fukunaga and media hound Ann Botticelli.
The committee spent more than $50,000 on the ConAm, according to with the state, but the result was a near run thing.
Political Reform — The Sequel: Give the Campaign Spending Commission credit for much-needed persistence. Its legislative package for the coming session will include two good-government proposals that it also pushed last biennium, without success.
The first would expand a 2006 ban on campaign contributions from government contractors to include the officers and immediate family members of the company owners. It also would apply the same prohibitions to recipients of government grants.
This time supporters of the proposal can point to a Civil Beat/New York Times report published in April that revealed just how deeply the pay-to-play culture is ingrained in Hawaii politics.
By examining hundreds of thousands of campaign contributions and more than 70,000 government contracts, reporter Blaze Lovell discovered that nearly $1 out of every $5 donated to politicians came from people tied to companies doing business with state and local governments.
鈥淲ith this new information, I will look at the issue with more urgency next session,鈥 Senate Judiciary Chair Karl Rhoads said shortly after the report was published.
The CDC is giving him that chance.
The commission is also proposing that the ban on in-session fundraisers by elected officials be expanded to prohibit them from accepting contributions at all during session.
Rhoads said last session that the proposal would be unfair to incumbents in election years, since their challengers would still be able to raise money during session.
The Blog notes that incumbents rarely lose reelection. And they already enjoy so many advantages in Hawaii politics that if a bill to target pay-to-play politics happens to help challengers, that鈥檚 an added benefit.
Young guns: Two lawmakers from Hawaii have been selected by the as recipients of the 2024 CSG 20 Under 40 Leadership Award: Rep. Diamond Garcia, a Republican, and Sen. Troy Hashimoto, a Democrat.
Awardees must demonstrate an ability to engage officials across party, departments, branch and/or state lines “in meaningful ways to advance the common good.”
Recipients will be recognized at the CSG National Conference, Dec. 4-7, in New Orleans.
The council is the nation鈥檚 only organization serving all three branches of state government.
Mark your calendars: The Blog plans to tune into which features a bunch of new lawmakers talking about their plans and hopes for the upcoming session. You can tune in from 10:30 a.m. to noon on the council’s Facebook page or . Watch it later on the .
Speaking of good ideas that have gone nowhere in previous Legislatures, the group, one of the oldest citizen advocacy organization’s in Hawaii, also plans to discuss former lawmaker Jim Shon’s idea for a Citizen’s Legislative Bill of Rights. The Blog is keeping all its fingers crossed this time around.
