Blogger's mellow; his site's got sass

S.L. resident expresses his opinions on SLCspin

The first thing to notice about Ethan Millard, the proprietor of www.SLCspin.com, is that his personality doesn't match his posts.

His Web site traffics in incisive, sardonic commentary about local politics — and Millard certainly has his favorite targets and topics. But the man is mellow.

He's nonchalant about who does or does not read his blog ("When you start a blog, you should be ready for it to be just you"). He doesn't participate in local politics ("I'm not involved so much as observant"). And he favors iterations of the same modifier ("They're really, really, really under the gun").

Millard said his interest in politics isn't traceable to anything cogent. It's just been a long-standing fascination of his.

He's parlayed that fascination into a popular site within political circles. Millard picked up an award from Salt Lake City Weekly in the publication's annual "best of" issue, and he gets between 250 and 500 hits a day.

The one thing that speeds his speech is soccer: specifically, Real Salt Lake soccer.

Millard, a season-ticket holder with his brothers and a friend, attends all the home games at Rice-Eccles Stadium, but he's not sure yet whether he'll make the jump to the Sandy stadium in a few seasons.

The blog reflects that conflict as he aims at Real owner Dave Checketts, Sandy Mayor Tom Dolan and Salt Lake County Council members. The council technically holds the public-money purse strings but politically may be obligated to fork over millions to save credibility with the Legislature, which endorsed a Sandy stadium site by clearing a path for the team to seek tax money.

Millard, 29, lives in the Capitol Hill neighborhood — a scant 10 minutes from Rice-Eccles Stadium and his front-row seat — and heralded last fall's Sandy stadium announcement with a "DISASTER!!!!" headline. Since then, he's stayed on message, particularly hitting the County Council for its role in the debate, with blog entries including "When Fat Men Attack!!" featuring Dolan and County Councilman Randy Horiuchi on Feb. 13, and "Today's Jackass" about Councilman Joe Hatch on March 1.

Hatch took his roast in stride.

"To be rightfully indignant of something like that would be absolutely foolish," said Hatch, who reads Millard's site and four others each morning along with his dose of daily newspapers. "I took it as an enormous compliment to be called a jackass. That means he actually thinks that what I'm saying is important. I see (that) blogging should be more of a guerilla aspect, and clearly, SLCspin has that."

Millard puts himself directly in the center of the political spectrum. "If you want to know my political opinions, they're all right on SLCspin," he said. "I don't carry any political banners that are not what I really believe."

Comments