As with NikeTown and Planet Hollywood, local media is lining up to kiss ass and give oodles of free advertising to the newest upscale downtown space, the big-name-backed GameWorks.

The glorified arcade, even a week in advance of its opening, got hard-hitting print exposes (all with color photos) in both the Times and P-I. On 3-9, the Times ran a 30-paragraph piece headlined "For true to life action, try out the latest in arcade games." They had to; on 3-6, the P-I beat them to the story with 27 paragraphs of "GameWorks: 'A Town Hall for the MTV Generation.'" The Sunday Times struck again on 3-16: "GameWorks off and running." (In local news; there was no room in the business section due to a long, fawning article on a Boeing exec.)

PR releases as news are bad enough. But calling GameWorks a "Town Hall" is both culturally and politically loaded terrain for an objective news story. A town hall is a place where all are welcome and interaction is encouraged. GW is a private business that will make lots of money by surrounding patrons with a cacophony of stimuli. Direct contact with other people is nearly impossible. The only types of public discourse available are through an individual's consumer choices and, via machine, through shared electronic adrenaline fantasies.

It would be amusing, except for the city of Seattle's determined effort to rid downtown of any kind of public setting where people can do anything other than work or consume. GameWorks is no Town Hall; it, like downtown itself, is a Disney-style theme park based on the idea of a town hall, but without the messy intervention of people or real life. And our local media is happily along for the ride.