By PETER RUGG
Glass
Fox blamed owner David Glass, who they say blames the team’s failures on the restrictions of a small market, then assembles a team of untested or fading players. Read the evaluation here.
By ERIC BARTON
Over at the other end of Missouri's portion of I-70, Monsanto is sort of a big deal, giving out money like they've figured out how to genetically modify soybean plants to make it.
The seed and herbicide maker, for instance, has its money in the St. Louis Science Center and the children's museum, making sure St. Louisans of the future think of Monsanto when they think of field trips.
But this article in May's Vanity Fair exposes the other side of Monsanto, the one that bullies farmers and seed dealers with a team of badass attorneys. The 
article is largely based in Missouri, and the piece begins with an anecdote from the Square Deal general store 100 miles north of Kansas City in Eagleville, Missouri. And here's how the story summarizes Monsanto's operations in the heartland:
Scenes like this are playing out in many parts of rural America these days as Monsanto goes after farmers, farmers’ co-ops, seed dealers—anyone it suspects may have infringed its patents of genetically modified seeds. As interviews and reams of court documents reveal, Monsanto relies on a shadowy army of private investigators and agents in the American heartland to strike fear into farm country. They fan out into fields and farm towns, where they secretly videotape and photograph farmers, store owners, and co-ops; infiltrate community meetings; and gather information from informants about farming activities. Farmers say that some Monsanto agents pretend to be surveyors. Others confront farmers on their land and try to pressure them to sign papers giving Monsanto access to their private records. Farmers call them the “seed police” and use words such as “Gestapo” and “Mafia” to describe their tactics.
The story also paints a bleak future for dairy farmers, who will be the next target of Monsanto, 
according to the piece. Monsanto wants dairy farmers to stop advertising that they don't use Monsanto products, a plug that's getting more popular with consumers. That's evident in the popularity of Shatto Milk Company, the Osborn, Missouri, dairy that's become much-loved as much for its no-growth-hormones promise as for those cool glass bottles it comes in.
By ERIC BARTON
It seemed strange this morning to read Jason Whitlock complain in this column about how the editors of Playboy screwed up a story he'd written for the magazine by writing a headline that he didn't like. The Kansas City Star's sports columnist claimed that the headline — “Jason Whitlock, The Black KKK” — didn't reflect the freelance story he'd written for Playboy.
What seemed odd was to be reading his complaint in the Star. Why would the paper's editors allow one of their writers to use his column to complain about the editing of a piece he wrote on the side? It's like complaining to your boss at your day job about that prick you work for at night.
I left voice mails for the Star's Holly Lawton, sports editor, and Mike Fannin, managing editor for sports and features. I didn't immediately hear back, but if I do, I'll post the response here.
Napolitano
"Playboy has an impeccable history in dealing with civil rights issues. We didn't have any ulterior motives when deciding on a headline for Mr. Whitlock's excellent story. Even though we used the working title 'The Black KKK' in our assignment letter to Whitlock on February 7, I was not made aware of his displeasure until a month after we had gone to press. (For the record, Whitlock misquotes the subhead to the story. It actually reads, 'Thug life is killing black America. It's time to do something about it.') From the beginning, our idea was not to stir divisiveness but to stir debate. I still believe the title, presentation and planned publicity campaign are appropriate and accurately reflect the points in the article expressed in its introductory paragraph and throughout. I feel that most people who read his brilliant cultural commentary will regard it as a powerful indictment of the root causes of violence and despair devastating our cities and suburbs."
After getting the e-mail, I called Whitlock for a response to the statement. Whitlock says he returned my call because nobody else had gotten a response from Playboy, and he wanted to hear what editors there said. Whitlock says the assignment letter in question got to him after he had filed his piece, and he says he didn't know how the magazine was going to be promoting his article until April 23, when he received a pitch letter being sent to media outlets. "That's when I was like, 'Holy shit,'" he says.
As for the claim that he knew about the headline for a month before the article went to press, Whitlock says: "They're so full of shit."
After our short conversation, Whitlock added: "I realize I'm talking to The Pitch, so I know my words are going to get twisted. You have enough?"
Yes, I believe I do.
By ERIC BARTON
Kansas City weathercasters missed their chance to make on-air, off-color jokes about Jared Allen's jersey number. But Twin Cities weatherman Chris Shaffer wasted no time going right for the tasteless, joking on air that Allen coming to Minneapolis was an omen that somebody was "gonna get 69 sex!"
Shaffer quickly realized he'd gone too far. He corrected himself by saying, "I don't know about that. That's a little aggressive."
Aggressive? To his viewers? To the future the Mrs. Shaffer? Certainly not to Allen, whose Jared Allen's Sports Arena & Grill makes good use of the 69 reference with the slogan "Wine 'em, Dine 'em, 69 'em." Now that's aggressive.
BY DAVID MARTIN
The Cordish Co. claims that the Kansas City 
Power & Light District is an $850 million project.
That number appears to be off by about a half-billion dollars.
Scrounging around my desk for a lost CD, I came across a glossy brochure the Downtown Council put out a couple of years ago. The brochure illustrates in impressive detail all the investments that have been made between the Missouri River and 31st Street.
The Power & Light District is described in the brochure as a $350 million project. But Cordish claims in its materials that the entertainment district is worth $850 million, a figure the media have repeated.
Cordish's Jon Stephens says the larger number is correct. “The aggregate development cost of the Power & Light District footprint is estimated to be $850,” he tells me in an e-mail.
But the Downtown Council was closer to the truth.
The Power & Light District sits in a tax-increment financing (TIF) area. When a TIF is in place, developers are eligible to receive some of the new taxes their projects generate.
A city-funded agency called the Economic Development Corporation administers TIF. According to the most recent report available on the agency’s Web site, the entertainment district’s cost is estimated to be $322 million. (City-issued bonds are paying $269 million of the tab.)
Another $50 million is assigned to a condominium-and-hotel project that Cordish has yet to formally submit to the city. But even if that piece comes to life, the Power & Light District is still a few hundred million short of its list price.
Cordish, it appears, is counting development within the TIF area but outside the entertainment district. The new H&R Block headquarters, for instance, cost $308 million.
Asked for clarification, Stephens says the $850 million figure is an “inclusive number,” whatever that means.
P.S. If anyone has seen a jewel-case-less copy of Dwight Yoakam singing the songs of Buck Owens, let me know.
By Justin Kendall
Johnson County District Attorney Phill Kline fired another salvo in his ongoing media war with 
The Kansas City Star. This week’s installment of the liberal, abortion-loving media hating on Phill Kline came in an e-mail from the DA’s office titled “The Kansas City Star's modus operandi: Ignore facts, focus on controversy, attack with editorials.” (Click on the image at right to read the full text of the message.) The e-mail was a response to the Star claiming that a judge’s ruling applied only to Kline and not Planned Parenthood. The Star was wrong, and Kline went on to cite his history of oppression by the daily.
By ERIC BARTON
Oakland's East Bay Express this week features this tell-all story written by a reporter who worked as a tax preparer for Kansas City-based H&R Block. The reporter, Steve Koppman, writes that Block preys on the poor, pushes bogus "add ons" on its customers in order to drive up profits and employs people at minimum wage with false promises of bonuses.
Koppman enrolled in Block's tax-preparation course in October 2006, a course that potential employees pay $200 to take. Koppman then worked as a tax preparer in Walnut Creek, California. As a tax preparer, Koppman claims he was exposed to Block's "bizarrely byzantine" employee bonus program, which he describes this way:
Employees are given credit for each tax return they complete and additional Block service they sell. Employees also receive extra commission for each year of prior Block employment and each level of advanced training they attain. If the total commission on these items exceeds the employee's hourly base salary, the excess will be paid as a bonus several weeks after tax season is over..This legendary "bonus" is what employees pin their meager hopes on. I guess I was a relatively productive first-year worker, so even though I only worked part-time for Block for a month beyond training, I got a tiny "bonus" of about a dollar an hour, better than most of my first-year colleagues
As for the add-ons, Koppman claims many were bogus attempts to simply jack up the cost of tax preparation:
To make any money as preparers, we were pressed to push add-ons. These are services at the heart of lawsuits Block has paid more than $100 million to settle in recent years, according to company filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The Pitch left a voice mail and e-mailed Block's media-relations office in Kansas City this morning. This afternoon, I received this response from Vice President of Communications Linda McDougall:
Eric,While we would hope that your publication not link to an article we believe to be inaccurate, we ask that you identify the article as an opinion piece and not as a news story.
Our statement is as follows:
"We do not believe this article accurately describes the operations of H&R Block. The article reflects the opinion of only one person who does not appear to understand the company's training programs, products and services, and compensation guidelines, and who did not respond to the company's offer to personally address his concerns. It's disappointing that Mr. Koppman would choose to air his grievances in this manner."
Linda McDougall
H&R Block
By JEN CHEN
Just when everyone’s neuroses on The Real Housewives of New York City were
starting to get interesting, Bravo had to crash the hagfest and air the season finale last night.
The drama had been swirling around our favorite former Fort Scott resident, the socially ambitious Alex McCord and her gay/not-gay husband Simon. The other Housewives wanted to have a girls’ night out, but because Alex can’t go anywhere without Simon, they both showed up. Alex claimed that the other women should have said no when she asked if she could bring him, but the other chicks insisted that she should have just known and shouldn’t have asked to bring him in the first place (true). Anyway, Housewife Ramona had a major hissy fit upon seeing Simon, which made her eyes go all buggy in her tight face. She later stomped out of dinner, claiming that she had previous plans. We later learn that Ramona’s mom was powerless in her marriage, so Ramona gets all insane whenever she sees women being all co-dependent.
In last night’s episode, Alex and Simon meet up with a couple of the other Housewives at a charity event. Talk turns to the big Girls’ Night Out debacle. Alex says that she doesn’t get the whole concept – she’s for gender equality.
“Take that issue to Capitol Hill,” snorts Bethenny.
“Why can’t we talk about vibrators in mixed company?” Alex neighs, in an attempt to be witty. In the meantime, Simon’s laughing a creepy honking “haw haw” laugh at this sexy talk. Other minor Alexcentric subplots: Simon has to go to Australia for his stepfather’s funeral. They’re going to be separated for nine days! The horror! In the meantime, Alex takes her 4-year-old son Francois to a child psychologist to get tested for preschool. Francois, whom Alex and Simon talk up as being a multilingual child genius, manages to come off as charming. “I’m too smart for you!” he tells the doctor.
Then, the episode ends with a big dinner of all the Housewives and their families. They’re seated in a private room at the 21 Club. Alex shows up in a silky, subtly-patterned mustard yellow pantsuit with a matching loose-fitting, short-sleeved, button-down shirt. It's reminiscent of the ethnic clothing that Pier One used to sell in the ’80s
Anyway, Ramona starts needling A&S about their nine-day separation. “Were you allowed to have a girls night?” she bitchily asked. They both handled her pretty well and answered that they spoke three times a day. In the meantime, Francois is running around and screaming. Then, he started stabbing Bethenny’s boyfriend’s $30 hamburger with a plastic toy. Bethenny says something like, “He can translate ‘Twinkle Twinkle’ into Latin. But wouldn’t it be more useful to teach him not to stab his friend’s boyfriend’s burger?”
Next week: The reunion special, in which Alex talks about the naked pictures of her that’s floating around. Yeah, that’s right. Naked Alex. Enjoy!
By DAVID MARTIN
Voters in Kansas City, Missouri, chose a new mayor more than a year ago. Yet a billboard promoting a candidate who failed to make it out of the primary looms over midtown.
Nearly 14 months since her name appeared on a ballot, Janice Ellis continues to ask for support 
from a billboard near 36th and Main. Ellis, it turns out, is not forgetful or a sore loser. She says she's talked to the the billboard owner about papering over her face and her campaign slogan of "No excuses. Just results."
But, as Ellis tells it, Phil Goode, the president of Emerald House Convention Center, to which the billboard is attached, is unwilling to send someone up the ladder until a new client wants to rent the space.
“He said, ‘It’s my billboard, my property.'” Ellis says.
Before I spoke with Ellis, I called a phone number on a second billboard affixed to Emerald House. "Yeah, what's your point?" a man barked when the Ellis ad was described. A follow-up question met with a similar response: "Maybe you ought to call her [Ellis] and talk to her about it."
I assume the charmer was Goode, but the man on the phone refused to give his name, calling it "not important."
By PETER RUGG
We’re getting closer to Tuesday’s vote on the city smoking ban, and almost everyone who’s visited their favorite dive bar in the last month has seen those “Vote No on Question 3” signs. As someone who’s struggled with my own nicotine demons, I can appreciate the city wanting to protect me from myself. But Kansas City, it turns out, isn’t big on smoking anyway.
Out of 16 metro areas, Kansas City is ranked 13th in the percentage of people who smoke, according to a study by the Pittsburg Regional Indicator project. About 19 percent in the metro smoke, compared to the No. 1 smokiest city, Detroit, where 26 percent of residents smoke.
The study also found that Kansas City led the nation in the number of smokers who quit. From 2003 to 2006, 26 percent of the metro’s smokers gave it up. Maybe they saw a sign of things to come.
By ERIC BARTON
Last week, Pitch contributor Chris Rasmussen wrote this item for the Bugs & Cranks blog that suggested ways to teach his child about the lifetime of misery she'll face if she becomes a Royals fan. Now Chris is getting parenting tips via a video response from broadcaster Trev Alberts:
Chris then posted this response to the response, in which he suggests that perhaps he should "should focus entirely on my daughter’s positive attributes rather than creating a soulless, beaten fan of a small market team."
By JEN CHEN
Deadlines, social obligations and lack of TiVo sometimes interfere with my TV-watching ways, and sadly, I’ve missed the last two episodes of The Real Housewives of New York City. But really, in the grand scheme of things, I’m pretty sure that haven’t missed all that much. My favorite character – former Fort Scott resident Alex McCord – is still annoying and pretentious (and still doesn’t own a comb). Gawker has an excellent write-up of last night’s episode, as does the blog Scented Glossy Magazines. And Gawker also drops the scary suggestion that naked Alex pictures might possibly be floating around out there.
Oh, and “gorgons” is my new favorite word.
By C.J. JANOVY
Missouri Congressman Emanuel Cleaver’s certainty that Barack Obama will win the Democratic nomination and the presidency in November made Countdown with Keith Olbermann last night (and maybe the other news shows too, but I only watched MSNBC).
Also exposed: Cleaver’s dissing of Obama’s speechifying, saying that in the black church, Obama’s rhetorical skills would be considered “mediocre.”
Cleaver sounding a lot like Geraldine Ferraro: “I think for many white Americans, they are looking at Barack Obama and saying, ‘This is our chance to demonstrate that we have been able to get this boogeyman called race behind us, and so they’re going to vote for him, whether he has credentials or not, whether he has any experience, I think all that’s out the window.”
But Olbermann missed what I thought was Cleaver’s most effed-up comment in his March 30 interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which came just after his Ferraro-style statement:
“It’s this country’s opportunity to say, ‘We’ve solved the [racism] problem, it’s all over. And frankly that is causing many African Americans to tremble, because after November -- and if I had to make a prediction right now I’d say Barack Obama’s going to be the next president – after November, any redress on racial issues will be met with rejection, because we’ve already demonstrated that we’re not a racist nation.”
So, what, I’m not supposed to vote for Obama so that African Americans can still legitimately claim that the country is racist? C’mon, Rev. I think enough of us are smarter than that, and we understand that electing a black president won’t end racism in the U.S.
But hey, what do I know. I’m just a white voter.
For another opinion, I’m liking what former state Rep. Lloyd Daniel – also a poet and activist -- has to say about Cleaver’s support of Sen. Hillary Clinton. This post on Daniel’s Web site starts like this:
“Congressman Emanuel Cleaver is standing on the wrong side of history. It was during the mid-to-late 1950s and early ’60s, at the height of the civil rights movement, before the rise of the Black power movement, many older and once radical Negro leaders failed to support and even, in some cases, lobbied against a number of the young, dynamic and up and coming leaders including people like John Lewis, Kwame Toure (Stokely Carmichael), Bernice Johnson Reagon and James Foreman, who were all leading members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). They even bad-mouthed a then young preacher by the name of King.”
And it just gets better from there:
“Cleaver, despite the Clinton campaign’s, cynical and misleading statements, lies and race baiting, “throw a rock and hide your hand” attacks, continues to serve as a mouthpiece for them.”
By C.J. JANOVY
In this interview with Canada's CBC Radio, U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver -- a Hillary Clinton holdout, despite enormous pressure from other African Americans -- says he thinks Clinton will not get the nomination. "If I had to make a prediction right now, I'd say Barack Obama is going to be the next president," Cleaver said. "I will be stunned if he's not the next president of the United States."
By ERIC BARTON
Journalists spend most of their time pointing out the screw-ups of others, so you have to hand it to Joe Posnanski for pointing out his own in this recent post on his blog. He lists three self-effacing — and pretty funny — blunders early in his career. Truth is, we can all likely relate to that feeling of thinking your latest screw-up is surely going to end your career early.
