I also don’t understand why the ellipses are important. Except to omit stuff that doesn’t matter, which is typically what ellipses are used for. That’s how I use them. But to say that they are an indication somehow of whether the inclusion of Matt Heinz in the story is irrelevant is kinda missing what New Times does. They cover Arizona politics, and they do it quite thoroughly. Whenever there’s a politician in the spotlight, there’s often a question of how what’s happening with that politician may affect others in the state. The inclusion of Matt Heinz in the story may not be relevant to readers outside Arizona, but it’s very relevant to the readers they are writing for.

Heinz is a longtime Tucson city councilman who went to the legislature and is now vying for Gabby Giffords’ (and before that, Jim Kolbe’s) seat, and he’s up against another lesbian, state Sen. Paula Abdoul, for the Democratic primary. Both are very well known here, although Abdoul probably has the higher name recogntion. I know none of this matters to people in Elay, but Heinz’s breaking with fellow Dems to vote to approve Pinal County’s $5 million for “immigration enforcement” when they are 70 miles north of the border (north of Tucson’s Pima County even, which was at that same time was specifically written out from the same funding) definitely is of interest here. Particularly in a community and district where Babeu’s immigration stance doesn’t enjoy nearly the kind of support it has when you go further away from the border.

And it appears that now there are more than one version of the article. NewTimes no longer has the “stay over” text in their story. But going from JMG’s copy, it seems it originally said:

About a week after Heinz’s nod to Babeu, the sheriff spent the night at Heinz’s home, text messages that Jose shared with New Times show. “I’m at Mat Heinz and his boyfriend for dinner & ice cream . . . we are going out to bar and . . . to their house. [Am] staying over,” Babeu texted to Jose at 1:04 a.m. last April 2.

Observation One: The terms “stayed the night” and “spent the night” have strong connotational differences. You stay the night at a place, you spend the night doing something. Staying the night means just that, but spending the night usually assumes closer association and in conversation is often assumed to have a sexual component.

That was the set-up.

Observation Two: If a text has a purpose then incidental information mentioned in the context of a text might be a matter of accuracy. But when a text is edited then the decision to include or exclude words reflects intent.

I can’t tell whether we are to assume that Babeu put the “…” in his message or whether New Times edited the text message.

But if edited, then the inclusion of the “stay over” was superfluous to the story and only included for some other purpose than to illustrate how Jose was threatened.

In fact, the entire mention of Heinz seems untied to the story. If we are going for abuse of power, this incident is irrelevant. If the story is, however, “he’s gay! Gay, gay gay!” then it’s relevant to bring up “ooh, look, he stayed the night with another gay! And he got money!”

Observation Three

The paragraph ties two events together and (sorry, but it’s impossible to miss) implies correlation. “About a week after Heinz’s nod to Babeu, the sheriff spent the night at Heinz’s home”.

“A week after X, Y happened” is a common journalistic tool (and a pretty obvious one) that is employed when you can’t declare quid pro quo but you want to introduce the notion.

When taken in total, I came away with the strong impression that New Times wanted me to believe that Babeu “spent the night at Heinz’s home” in repayment (probably sexual) for a vote. It annoyed me at the time, and still does.

Others may look at this and not see any implied wink-wink suggestions at all. They may find this anecdote entirely necessary to reporting about the threat of deportation. Or perhaps this text – out of all texts written over the six years – was essential to provide backstory and context. And I might be the only person on the planet (other than Steven Thrasher) who got the impression that New Times was suggesting something more than ice cream.

But somehow I don’t think so.

I think another point is that it’s OK to have friends who have different political views. Good heavens, some of my friends are Republicans. I don’t paint people with a broad brush. Furthermore, even if I didn’t especially care for someone, I wouldn’t want them out on those backroads late at night and would have offered a sofa for the night.

**rolls eyes**

LGBT distinguishes between gays and transgendered people, so no, he is not stereotyping gays as crossdressers. If he had referred to the Sherriff and his guests as transgendered people or crossdressers then you’d have a point. But calling him a member of the LGBT community doesn’t refer to him as a cross-dresser any more than referring to a group of black and white voters calls black people whites and white people blacks. Give it a rest.

Now, it’s worth pointing out that my partner and I have had an old friend staying over for the week, visiting from out of town, and no one has asked or assumed that we’re all climbing into bed together. Then again, I’m not sure that anyone wants that particular visual (doesn’t help that this sherrif is someone I’d really like to see in porn).

Babeu lives in Pinal County, where there are no gay bars. I don’t know where in Pinal County he lives, but I think it’s probably safe to say its somewhere near the county seat of Florence, since that’s where his office is. It is also just inside Congressional District 4, where he’s running for office. (Most of the rest of Pinal County is in CD1.) There are no gay bars in Pinal County. So if he wants to go clubbing, he’s ether going to go to North Phoenix or he’s going to go to Tucson. Florence is an hour and a half away from Tucson, and an hour and fifteen minutes from Phoenix. And since getting to either city requires driving several miles of back roads, it only makes sense that someone would want to find a place to stay if the option is available rather than drive back home at 3:00 a.m. on very dark country roads (because of the observatories in southern AZ) in the middle of the desert.

Arizona readers and writers would have understood this. The fact that others elsewhere don’t and jump to different conclusions probably speaks more about their perceptions than the intent of the New Times piece