Remember, you heard the 'R' word here first

Buddy. Roemer.

With the shaky start Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is off to on his ethics jihad thus far, it is useful to remember the last messiah who was going to fix everything that's wrong with my home state.

Buddy. Roemer.

If messiahs actually existed in politics, so many Louisianians (and others) wouldn't have been doing so much "magical thinking" regarding what Bobby Jindal actually could do for the Bayou State. See, if messiahs actually existed in politics, Gov. Buddy Roemer would have fixed all by 1989, and the Gret Stet would now be known as the Land of Milk and Honey.

With boudin for dessert.

But it ain't. Instead, the Gret Brown Hope -- with the Legislature in special "ethics" session -- now gets to show the world he, too, buys his footwear at Pottery Barn.

On the up side, however, the gub'na has plenty of cash to pay the fine for failing to report campaign contributions in a timely manner, and his chief of staff got swell free tickets to the Hannah Montana concert.

In the Gub'na's Box, no less.

A GENERATION AGO, Buddy Roemer could not turn grafters into servants, a Third World enclave into Silicon Valley or -- while he was at it -- water into wine. As I recall, I reminded folks of that after Jindal got himself elected and hopes were reaching Obamaesque heights.

Alas, some Louisianians still will be surprised to discover Jindal is no more the second coming of Christ than Roemer was. Shocked that one man -- even with feet of flesh and blood, as opposed to clay -- is incapable of feats that rightly belong in the Almighty's realm.

In politics, as in life, there is no such thing as cheap grace. There is grace, for sure, but cooperation is required for it to work its wonders.

The change Louisianians await lies not within one man -- no matter that the man is some sort of wonkish wunderkind. No, the change Louisianians await lies within themselves.

There is grace in this world. But Louisiana must first "come to Jesus" to unlock its power.

And Bobby Jindal ain't no messiah.

3 Chords & the Truth: Them moods happen

Life is hard.

So sometimes you got to rock. Hard.

I'm in one of those moods. So sue me.

On the other hand, sometimes life can be pretty sweet. After all, we did just get done celebrating Valentine's Day and all that. So we can play around on the lush side of life, too, on 3 Chords & the Truth.

I guess what I'm saying here is that whetever mood you're in, we just might have it covered on this edition of the Big Show. Drop by, tune in and download now . . . won't you?

Really, I'll bet you've never heard anything like 3 Chords & the Truth. In a good way, naturellement.

'The work of a madman!'

So long, it's been good to know 'ya.

Words to live by as the disintegration of our culture and our country continues apace as atrocities become so frequent as to lose their shock value. Pearl . . . West Paducah . . . Columbine . . . Red Lake . . . Lancaster County . . . Virginia Tech . . . Omaha . . . Lane Bryant in Chicago . . . and now Northern Illinois University.

This latest gun rampage, by a former NIU grad student, claimed five students' lives before the shooter killed himself. Another young male gone berzerk in the deadliest of fashions.

Another routine atrocity in another American town.

ABOVE is some of the early MSNBC coverage of this latest deadly mayhem. I know all this coverage all starts to look alike and meld into one big, surreal blob as time -- and tragedy -- go by, but I urge you to give it a look for one important reason. On MSNBC's air Thursday evening, someone named the beast.

Someone -- a criminal profiler -- finally told us what's going on. It starts at 3:35 into the clip, with Dan Abrams' interviewing the profiler, Pat Brown.

"Usually these men are young and they're kind of involved in the anti-life kind of culture of young people," she said. "That's why we always have the guy turning up in black . . . usually obsessed with killing."

So far, a pretty good mirror of much of our popular culture. I'd call it the popular culture of a society in its death throes.

But I digress. Back to Brown, the expert on criminals and what makes them tick:

"And it's a very cultural thing," she explained. "If you look back in time, you have kamikaze pilots who killed themselves. And now we have in some cultures suicide bombers; here we have . . . what do you do to get the glory when life is not going well . . . you become a school shooter."

Abrams wonders why we are no longer shocked by our ongoing atrocities.

"It's become the cool thing to do," Brown said. "And it's all over the Net. You can actually go to sites now, and you can talk about how you can be a Columbine guy yourself.

"And so when you decide you want to go out with a blaze of glory, you follow the pattern. You know you're going to get famous doing that."

Kamikazes. Suicide bombers. American young men wanting to do another Columbine. Or now, Virginia Tech.

Death cults, basically. Nihilism run amok. School shooters -- and mall shooters like Robert Hawkins this past December in Omaha -- are our suicide bombers. Terrorists, all.

And they don't come out of nowhere.

IT'S NOT LIKE we weren't warned. The novelist Walker Percy foresaw our times back in 1971, when he wrote "Love in the Ruins: The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World."

Percy, a minor prophet at least, set his novel in 1983. It actually took us until now to get close enough to Percy's dystopia for a keen observer to think "Whoa!"

At first glace all seems normal hereabouts. But a sharp eye might notice one of two things amiss. For one thing, the inner lanes of the Interstate, the ones ordinarily used for passing, are in disrepair. The tar strips are broken. A lichen grows in the oil stain. Young mimosas sprout on the shoulders.

The author describes a landscape where all is falling apart, including society and politics.

Political parties have careened off toward ideological extremes. The Republicans have become the Knotheads, looking for all the world like the fondest reactionary dreams of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham.

The Democrats have become the "Lefts," or, in our real-life vernacular, the Party of Kos.

The country is disintegrating, and the Catholic Church has split into three parts: the Dutch Schismatics, the American Catholics (who play the Star-Spangled Banner at the elevation of the Body and Blood) and the remnant Roman Catholics -- a scattered and dispirited bunch.

And everybody is overcome with angst of one sort or another.

The vines began to sprout in earnest a couple of months ago. People do not like to talk about it. For some reason they'd much rather talk about the atrocities that have been occurring ever more often: entire families murdered in their beds for no good reason. "The work of a madman!" people exclaim. . . .

The center did not hold.

However, the Gross National Product continues to rise.

There are Left states and Knothead states, Left towns and Knothead towns but no center towns (for example, my old hometown over yonder is Knothead, Fedville behind me is Left, and Paradise Estates where I live now does not belong to the center -- there is no center -- but is that rare thing, a pleasant place where Knothead and Left -- but not black -- dwell side by side in peace), Left networks and Knothead networks, Left movies and Knothead movies. The most popular Left films are dirty movies from Sweden. All-time Knothead favorites, on the other hand, include The Sound of Music, Flubber, and the Ice Capades of 1981, clean movies all.

I've stopped going to movies. It is hard to say which is more unendurable, the sentimental blasphemy of Knothead movies like The Sound of Music or sitting in a theater with strangers watching other strangers engage in sexual intercourse and sodomy on the giant 3-D Pan-a-Vision screen.

BUT ENOUGH about that. Let's talk about the latest atrocity, instead -- at Northern Illinois, right?

"The work of a madman!"

Stupid, as opposed to completely nuts

Times-Picayune clarifies Nagin photo

by The Times-Picayune
Wednesday February 13, 2008, 11:40 PM

A photo in some Metro sections and on Nola.com on Wednesday showed a laughing Mayor Ray Nagin pointing an M-4 rifle at Chief of Police Warren Riley at a news conference to announce new crime fighting equipment purchased by the New Orleans Police Department. A review of a video taken at the event shows that the mayor momentarily pointed the gun at the chief as he was lowering it but he did not deliberately point it at Riley.

WHAT THIS MEANS is that the mayor of Chocolate City is merely a fool who doesn't know how to handle firearms -- remember, every gun is a loaded gun, and you don't point a loaded gun at what you don't intend to shoot -- and not a maniac.

Nagin may be nuts, but there is no evidence thus far that he's a homicidal maniac.

There is plenty of evidence, however, that he is a fool and a buffoon. And thus, the fools and buffoons who reelected one of their own as mayor of New Orleans in the wake of his spectacular Katrina mismanagement have ensured that the entire city will continue to suffer.

Democracy's a bitch, y'know?

Four Songs: Taking the week off

Four Songs is taking the week off.

Why? Because we can. And because I'm kind of tired. It's been one of those weeks.

We'll try concentrating on getting 3 Chords & the Truth out the door this week.

S'alright? S'alright.

It's a lock: Death a winner in '08

Great. It looks like it's pretty well official now.

The November election will be the Party of Abortion and Sex squaring off against the Party of Greed, Eternal War and Torture.

The U.S. Senate -- or was it the Roman Senate . . . I forget -- today voted largely along party lines to restrict the Central Intelligence Agency to interrogation techniques approved in the Army field manual. In other words, no waterboarding, no torture of any sort.

NOW THE BILL goes to Caesar President Bush who, as head of the Party of Greed, Eternal War and Torture, has vowed to veto it. Joining his fellow Greed, War & Torture senators in voting against the anti-torture legislation was presidential candidate John McCain, who had very nasty things done to him at the Hanoi Hilton many years ago.

(For those of you under 35, the Hanoi Hilton was not a five-star hotel. But it was in Vietnam.)

Meanwhile, after breaking from his fellow Abortion & Sex senators to vote in favor of torture, Nebraska's allegedly pro-life Ben Nelson was reported to be unavailable for comment due to overwhelming confusion.

The Associated Press has the depressing details:

Congress on Wednesday moved to prohibit the CIA from using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods on terror suspects, despite President Bush's threat to veto any measure that limits the agency's interrogation techniques.

The prohibition was contained in a bill authorizing intelligence activities for the current year, which the Senate approved on a 51-45 vote. It would restrict the CIA to the 19 interrogation techniques outlined in the Army field manual. That manual prohibits waterboarding, a method that makes an interrogation subject feel he is drowning.

The House had approved the measure in December. Wednesday's Senate vote set up a confrontation with the White House, where Bush has promised to veto any bill that restricts CIA questioning.

Arguing for such restrictions, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said the use of harsh tactics would boomerang on the United States.

"Retaliation is the way of the world. What we do to others, they will do to us — but worse," Rockefeller said. "This debate is about more than legality. It is also about morality, the way we see ourselves ... and what we represent to the world."

(snip)

Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, backed by Senate Republicans Olympia Snowe of Maine and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, inserted the provision in December into a bill providing guidelines for the running of U.S. intelligence agencies this year.

The 19 approved interrogation techniques in the military field manual include "good cop/bad cop," "false flag" — making prisoners think they are in the custody of another country — and the separation of a prisoner from other prisoners for up to 30 days at a time.

It prohibits military interrogators from hooding prisoners or putting duct tape across their eyes. They may not be stripped naked or forced to perform or mimic sexual acts. They may not be beaten, electrocuted, burned or otherwise physically hurt. They may not be subjected to hypothermia or mock executions. It does not allow food, water and medical treatment to be withheld, and dogs may not be used in any aspect of interrogation.

Republican presidential contender Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, voted against the measure Wednesday.

LET ME ATTEMPT to get this straight. And, please . . . bear with me here.

Come November, as a Catholic who believes what his Church teaches, I am somehow expected to vote either:

* For the Party of Abortion and Sex in order to put an end to the Party of Greed, Endless War and Torture's relentless pursuit of . . . well . . . greed, endless war and torture.

* Or, alternatively, for the Party of Greed, Endless War and Torture in order to keep the Party of Abortion and Sex from getting its grubby, K-Y jelly-smeared hands on the Supreme Court, which someday is supposed to put an end to Roe v. Wade. But hasn't yet after 35 years, despite enough Republican appointments to supposedly have done that already.

UMM HMM. I think I get it now.

How about this instead? How about -- as a Catholic who believes what his Church teaches -- I tell both parties to go to hell.

And then spend my time trying to figure out how to survive the long, ugly decline of an empire that lost its soul, then lost its mind.

The Bolshevik Revolution had its reasons

The Omaha World-Herald reports on just what kind of country we are today:

In October, Tommy Jelinek, a member of the Nebraska National Guard, returned home from a 15-month tour in Iraq and moved in with his wife at the apartment she had rented while he was gone.

Two months earlier, when Trista Jelinek applied for the apartment at Villa Vinee, a complex near 78th and Howard Streets, she told the staff of her husband's pending return and listed him as a future tenant.

But instead of a homecoming, the Jelineks say, Tommy Jelinek got an eviction notice.

In January, about three months after he settled in with his wife, an apartment manager required Tommy Jelinek to fill out an application to be on the lease.

Then, on Jan. 24, the manager notified Trista Jelinek that she would have to evict her husband.

The reason: A credit report indicated that he had "delinquent credit obligations."

The management company, Robert Hancock & Co. of Omaha, has stood by its decision to evict Tommy Jelinek, despite the Jelineks' attempts to resolve the matter.

Deborah Sanwick, an attorney for Robert Hancock, said the company requires every adult listed on a lease to have good credit. That way, if one tenant moves out, the company isn't left with another who can't make the rent payment.

Tommy Jelinek, who works for an insurance company, informed the manager that he had paid the bills on his credit report. The Jelineks also questioned why Tommy's credit score mattered — noting that Trista Jelinek had paid the $685-a-month rent on her own before her husband's return.

"I can't tell you how frustrating this has been," said Trista Jelinek, a crisis counselor on the Boys Town National Hotline. "We've asked them how we can make this work.

"But they just keep saying, 'It's our policy.' This should never have gone this far."

Tuesday, a judge issued a temporary restraining order, halting the eviction until a hearing can be held.

And we used to fret over the commies. . . .

It looks like the Bush Administration -- key members of which, including the goons at the top of the ticket, ought to have been in jail by now -- is trying to defend the indefensible in hopes of convicting some soul mates in pragmatism . . . who happened to have the bright idea of crashing planes into the Twin Towers and Pentagon as a shortcut to humbling infidels and glorifying Allah.

The Washington Post reports on how, having been failed by rank denial, our Reich-wing leadership now is giving sophistry a go:

After years of refusing public comment on a particularly harsh CIA interrogation method, top Bush administration officials have suddenly begun pressing a controversial argument that it was legal for the CIA to strap prisoners to a board and pour water over their face to make them believe they were being drowned.

The issue promises to play a role in the historic military prosecution of six al-Qaeda detainees for allegedly organizing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, in cases described by the Defense Department on Monday. One of the six detainees, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, was subjected to the technique known as waterboarding after his capture in 2003, and four of the others were subjected to different "enhanced interrogation" tactics by the CIA.

If the information the CIA collected is used in court, defense attorneys may attack it as tainted and unlawful. If the government relies instead on evidence the FBI collected in voluntary interrogations -- using the CIA information as a road map -- defense attorneys could still allege that the material is the "fruit of a poisonous tree" and unlawful.

The government's defense of the waterboarding episodes, laid out in congressional testimony and administration statements over the past two weeks, relies on a complex legal argument that many scholars and human rights advocates say is at odds with settled law barring conduct that amounts to torture, at any time or for any reason. It also leaves open the possibility that, under the right conditions, the CIA could decide to use the tactic again.

The strategy appears to be aimed primarily at ensuring that no CIA interrogators face criminal prosecution for using harsh interrogation methods that top White House and Justice Department lawyers approved in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks. Because waterboarding was deemed legal at the time by the Justice Department, Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey told lawmakers, he has no grounds to launch a criminal probe of the practice.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin M. Scalia echoed the administration's view when he said in a BBC Radio interview yesterday that some physical interrogation techniques could be used on a suspect in the event of an imminent threat, such as a hidden bomb about to blow up. "It would be absurd to say you couldn't do that," Scalia said. "And once you acknowledge that, we're into a different game: How close does the threat have to be? And how severe can the infliction of pain be?"

White House spokesman Tony Fratto told reporters last week: "Any technique that you use, you use it under certain circumstances. It was something that they felt at that time was necessary, and they sought legal guidance to make sure that it was legal and that it was effective."

FOR ALL YOU PRO-LIFERS who can't vote for Hillary or Obama because of their unwavering advocacy of killing fetuses because it's the practical thing to do -- and I am among that number -- I'm just wondering how, philosophically and practically, what the Bush Administration is trying to sell us regarding torture is any damn different.

Well?

Is dignity and worth possessed only by innocent humans upon whom we have, by our twisted "logic," bestowed it?

Are "unalienable rights" alienable after all? Or has our government done horrible things, but now is laboring to "rebrand" them as good?

Kind of like the most fanatical of abortion proponents.

Or like Josef Stalin, who had to break a few eggs to make an omelet . . . or a socialist paradise. That didn't exactly work out for ol' Uncle Joe (or those under Soviet rule), and you can't expect that defeating "terror" by embracing it will work out any better.

On dem first day of Christmas. . . .

I think there's pretty much two things you deserve when you die.

First, you ought not die alone. Second, if the newspaper does a story about your passing, the least it can do is try to get the facts straight.

SADLY, a broadcasting professor from my days at the Louisiana State journalism school -- now the Manship School of Mass Communication -- came up empty on both counts when he left this world Thursday.

That someone would have no close family left is awful, but largely uncontrollable. But for someone as accomplished as Jules d'Hemecourt -- he was a professor, a past print and television newsman, and a lawyer, too -- that the local paper couldn't get some basic facts straight seems somehow fundamentally unjust.

When reading his obit from The Advocate in Baton Rouge, note that the name of the novelty record he made as "Tee Jules" really is "The Cajun 12 Days of Christmas." Note also that d'Hemecourt was a TV news director in Alexandria and Baton Rouge, not just an anchorman.

IF I CAN REMEMBER THAT, surely someone at the Baton Rouge paper could have:

Jules d’Hemecourt IV, a retired LSU journalism professor and the voice behind “The 12 Cajun Days of Christmas,” has died, friends confirmed Monday. He was 64.

Jim Engster, general manager of Louisiana Network and d’Hemecourt’s co-worker for several years, said d’Hemecourt died Thursday, one day after being hospitalized from a brief illness.

Engster said funeral arrangements were pending for d’Hemecourt, a native of New Orleans who had no immediate family members.

Engster said doctors summoned him to the hospital shortly before d’Hemecourt passed away.

“It was somewhat ironic that a man who influenced thousands of students through the years … had very few family members, and no one really knew he was deathly ill,” Engster said.

D’Hemecourt was a decorated journalist whose career spanned TV, print and radio news, as well as law.

According to biographical information provided by LSU, d’Hemecourt served as news director of WJBO-AM before working in the early 1970s as a TV news anchor for KALB in Alexandria and WRBT, now WVLA, in Baton Rouge.

I KNEW OF Jules d'Hemecourt long before I enrolled at LSU in the fall of 1979. I first heard the name in the early 1970s, when I read an article in TV Guide, I think it was, about this hotshot small-town news director at Channel 5 in Alexandria. And soon enough, he was running the brand-new news department at Baton Rouge's relatively new Channel 33, WRBT.

Soon, being a little media freak, I was catching "33 News" whenever I could. One, I was a sucker for an underdog newscast going against the old-timers, Channels 2 and 9.

Two, I liked Jules' style.

Part of that style was an alter ego who occasionally popped out on 45 RPM novelty records. "Tee Jules" (colloquial French for "Little Jules") was the impish Cajun kid within who came out with local classics like "The Cajun 12 Days of Christmas" and "The Cajun Night Before Christmas."

In the two degrees of separation that is my hometown, the musical director and arranger was my junior-high band director, Lance Chauvin.

WHEN I HEARD of d'Hemecourt's death the other day, I remembered that I had, as a 12-year-old kid, recorded Tee Jules' "Cajun 12 Days of Christmas" from a holiday newscast on WRBT. I think it must have been Christmas 1973. Maybe 1974.

You can listen to it here, though I must say that the quality isn't the greatest, given that TV audio wasn't the greatest back then (and neither were portable tape recorders) . . . and that the reel-to-reel tape is over 34 years old.

Still, what comes through loud and clear, across the years, is how charming local TV could be.

What else comes across is that broadcast news used to be so much better written. Listen to d'Hemecourt's intro to "The Cajun 12 Days." It's . . . it's . . . literate. Sort of literary, even. And it may represent the last time the phrase "to wit" ever was used on a local TV news show.

Rest in peace, Tee Jules. And God bless you, Dr. d'Hemecourt.

UPDATE: From the comments, an object lesson for every newspaper or web-site obit writer -- when you don't get it straight, the deceased don't get their due . . . and the survivors can be hurt.

There wasn't much The Advocate did get straight in its story on Jules d'Hemecourt's death -- and life. And now a relative writes to set the record straight:

They also got the fact wrong about Jules not having any living family. I am Julia d'Hemecourt, daughter of John d'Hemecourt. Jules was our cousin. My family (my parents, brothers and sister) reconnected with him when my siblings and cousins (also d'Hemecourt's and Jules's relatives) started taking his classes at LSU. He was a part of our holiday celebrations, and we visited him every time we went up to Baton Rouge. He would call a few times a month and tell my mom, who he loved, jokes (usually Boudreaux and Thibodeaux ones). We loved him, and we miss him.

I'm governor because my state is racist

Beautiful. Pennsylvania's governor just admitted that he got the job because his state is full of racist rednecks.

I wonder how that one's going to go over? The Associated Press reports:

Gov. Ed Rendell, one of Hillary Rodham Clinton's most visible supporters, said some white Pennsylvanians are likely to vote against her rival Barack Obama because he is black.

"You've got conservative whites here, and I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate," Rendell told the editorial board of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in remarks that appeared in Tuesday's paper.

To buttress his point, Rendell cited his 2006 re-election campaign, in which he defeated Republican challenger Lynn Swann, the former Pittsburgh Steelers star, by a margin of more than 60 percent to less than 40 percent.

"I believe, looking at the returns in my election, that had Lynn Swann been the identical candidate that he was — well-spoken, charismatic, good-looking — but white instead of black, instead of winning by 22 points, I would have won by 17 or so," he said. "And that (attitude) exists. But on the other hand, that is counterbalanced by Obama's ability to bring new voters into the electoral pool."

AND ONE ASSUMES that Hillary Clinton would be just fine with using the nation's vestigial racism to her utmost advantage.

It is better that Britney should die. . . .

It was the high priest Caiaphas who decided "it is better for you that one man should die instead of the people, so that the whole nation may not perish."

He was worried this Jesus character was becoming too popular, that the Jews would come to worship Him as a god, and that would bring the terrible might of the Roman Empire down on all their heads. So the math was easy -- Jesus had to go. Better Him than many thousands.

Caiaphas obviously was a man after 21st-century America's heart. Trouble is, the Romans wiped out Israel anyway . . . albeit a few decades down the road. And not because of the Jesus Thing.

I WONDER how much -- in our own postmodern American Way -- we have determined that it is better that now-famous-for-being-famously-troubled Britney Spears should die so that the whole nation may not . . . what? Call it "Psychotherapy Is Not Enough."

The thought occurred to me tonight as I was browsing yet another volume in the library of Britney Goes Mental coverage -- this one from Rolling Stone -- consuming the worldwide press nowadays. It's really beyond debate that this poor child is likely to die, probably fairly soon, due to whatever usually befalls famous, psychologically troubled addicts living life on the edge in the company of the People Who Prey Upon Them.

And the best that we, as a society, can muster is to stand around and gawk at the spectacle of it all. It's as if we have stumbled upon a bad car crash, there's horribly injured young people trapped inside the ball of twisted metal and broken glass, and the whole mess is starting to catch fire.

No cops yet. No fire truck or paramedics, either.

So what do we do? Pose next to the broken bodies of the dying victims while the significant other takes pictures with the camera phone . . . of course.

And Junior -- a pragmatic lad, he -- grabs a bag of marshmallows, snaps off the antenna from the burning, wrecked car, and starts making delicious, roasted treats for the gathering crowd. At a quarter a marshmallow.

LIKE I SAID, that's what occurred to me as I read this excerpt of an upcoming Rolling Stone article:

In person, Britney is shockingly beautiful — clear skin, ruby lips, a perfectly proportioned twenty-six-year-old porcelain doll with a nasty weave. She cuts through the crowd swiftly, the way she used to when 20,000 adoring fans mobbed her outside a concert, with her paparazzi boyfriend, Adnan Ghalib, trailing behind.

Only a few kids are in the store, a young girl with her brother and two blondes checking out fake-gold charm bracelets. Britney rifles the racks as the Cure's "Pictures of You" blasts into the airless pink boutique, grabbing a pink lace dress, a few tight black numbers and a frilly red crop top, the kind of shirt that Britney used to wear all the time at seventeen but isn't really appropriate for anyone over that age. Then she ducks into the dressing room with Ghalib. He emerges with her black Am Ex.

The card won't go through, but they keep trying it.

"Please," begs Ghalib, "get this done quickly."

One of the girls runs to Britney's dressing room, explaining the situation through a pink gauze curtain.

A wail emerges from the cubby — guttural, vile, the kind of base animalistic shriek only heard at a family member's deathbed. "F*** these bitches," screams Britney, each word ringing out between sobs. "These idiots can't do anything right!"

Ghalib dashes over to console her, but she's already spitting, growling, throwing a big bottle of soda on the floor so that it begins to spill underneath the curtain, and then she's got a box of tissues and is throwing them on top of the wet floor along with piles of discarded merchandise. A new card finally goes through, but by then Britney is out the door, leaving her shirt on the ground and replacing it with the red top. "F*** you, f*** people, f*** , f*** , f*** ," she keeps screaming, her face splotchy and red as she crosses the interminable mall floor, the crowd behind her growing larger and larger. "Leave us alone!" yells Ghalib.

The siblings run after Britney to get a video to put up on YouTube, and some of the shopgirls run after her to hand off the merchandise she left behind, and there's an entire bridal party wearing yellow T-shirts who have pulled out camera phones too. A crush of managers in black shirts and gold name tags try to keep the peace, but the crowd running after Britney gets larger, and now the shopgirls have ­started to catch up to her, one of them slipping spectacularly in her platform shoes, grazing her elbow. She pulls herself up, mustering the strength to tap Britney's shoulder. "Um, I'm from the South too," she mumbles, "and I was wondering if I could get a picture with you for my little sister."

Britney turns to Ghalib and grabs his arm. "I don't want her talking to me!" she screams. She whirls around and stares the girl deep in the eyes, her lips almost vibrating with anger. "I don't know who you think I am, bitch," she snarls, "but I'm not that person."

BRIT MUST DIE. Because we demand it.

We won't admit that, any of us, but it doesn't make it any less so. If the bitch lives, the narrative is dramatically compromised. And even reality TV needs a compelling dramatic narrative . . . and redemption is so f-ing Bing Crosby playing yet another Catholic priest in an old black-and-white movie, you know?

Nope. The ho gotta go.

It is better for us that one Britney should die instead of the people, so that the whole nation may not perish. See, if this Greek tragedy in a modern Rome doesn't conclude with a media riot in a cemetery in Kentwood, La., we shall not be spared.

There will be a defective morality play to deal with. Then there will be ourselves to deal with.

If Brit doesn't die, then we're not any better than her, ultimately. Losers die while people laugh. We're not dead, and we're unaware of the laughter, so we're not losers. Or at least not as bad a loser as Britney Spears, who could not overcome being hillbilly trailer trash, alas.

Which is why she couldn't deal with all the drink, drugs, divorce, promiscuity, selfishness and extreme materialism. Or with the mental illness.

Unlike ourselves, who have a pretty good handle on things. That is why we can fake a long face for the benefit of Brit, even though the economy depends on her remaining miserable . . . at a bare minimum.

YEP, WE'RE DOING FINE right here in America, the New Jerusalem. And we think we can well afford our crocodile tears, as did a people long ago and far away.

Yet, there is that Cassandra's cry, drifting across millennia, settling -- unsettling, actually -- somewhere on the fringe of our consciousness as we ever more desperately try to overwhelm it with cacophony:

"Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep instead for yourselves and for your children, for indeed, the days are coming when people will say, 'Blessed are the barren, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed.' "

3 Chords & the Truth: Here's the thing

OK, the direct sell.

Here's what's on 3 Chords & the Truth this week. This is the kind of stuff we play.

IF YOU LIKE THIS, you'll love the show. If you love the show . . . listen.

Is that direct enough? Here's the lineup:

Kentucky Rain
Elvis Presley (1970)

It Never Rains In Southern California
Albert Hammond (1972)

Another Rainy Day in New York City
Chicago (1976)

Louisiana Rain
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (1979)

Tears of a Clown
English Beat (1980)

I Am Going Home
The Wailers (1963)

Ride Captain Ride
Blues Image (1970)

Slide
Goo Goo Dolls (1998)

A Child Like Grace
Michelle Shocked (1996)

Time Is a Healer
Eva Cassidy (1998)

Hang On To Your Ego
Beach Boys (1966)

Cruel to Be Kind
Nick Lowe (1979)

Girl of My Dreams
Bram Tchaikovsky (1979)

It's Over
Boz Scaggs (1976)

In a Car
Solid Jackson (1996)

Forget Myself
Elbow (2006)

Get Right with God
Lucinda Williams (2001)

Jesus Is God
Scarecrow & Tinmen (2000)

Jerusalem
Matisyahu (2006)

Romulus
Sufjan Stevens (2003)

Bohemian Rhapsody
Grey DeLisle (2005)

Mr. Tambourine Man
The Byrds (1965)

Their own Bobby Kennedy

Confronted with a presidential candidate who challenges them to be more than the sum total of their desires, some young Americans have become unhinged, mistaking the messenger for the Messiah.

Or so says ABC's Jake Tapper:

Inspiration is nice. But some folks seem to be getting out of hand.

It's as if Tom Daschle descended from on high saying, "Be not afraid; for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all the people: for there is born to you this day in the city of Chicago a Savior, who is Barack the Democrat."

Obama supporter Kathleen Geier writes that she's "getting increasingly weirded out by some of Obama's supporters. On listservs I'm on, some people who should know better – hard-bitten, not-so-young cynics, even – are gushing about Barack…

Describing various encounters with Obama supporters, she writes, "Excuse me, but this sounds more like a cult than a political campaign. The language used here is the language of evangelical Christianity – the Obama volunteers speak of 'coming to Obama' in the same way born-again Christians talk about 'coming to Jesus.'...So I say, we should all get a grip, stop all this unseemly mooning over Barack, see him and the political landscape he is a part of in a cooler, clearer, and more realistic light, and get to work."

Joe Klein, writing at Time, notes "something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism" he sees in Obama's Super Tuesday speech.

"We are the ones we've been waiting for," Obama said. "This time can be different because this campaign for the presidency of the United States of America is different. It's different not because of me. It's different because of you."

Says Klein: "That is not just maddeningly vague but also disingenuous: the campaign is entirely about Obama and his ability to inspire. Rather than focusing on any specific issue or cause — other than an amorphous desire for change — the message is becoming dangerously self-referential. The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is.“

IF I'M BARACK OBAMA, this kind of nonsense is messing with my mind. Then again, I think your mind already has to be pretty well messed with to go into politics.

Still . . . whose fault is it that some 21st century Americans are mistaking the first coming of Obama with the second one of Jesus Christ? I say it's our own damn fault, all of us.

We Baby Boomers, having thrown over God, family and tradition -- by and large -- seem to think we can raise up a new generation in a transcendental vacuum. God and family have been replaced with cynicism and stuff.

And the world we've created in our own image spiritlessly slinks off toward Sodom.

Until. . . .

The quadrennial silly season begins, and comes upon the political horizon a Democratic candidate who looks like America -- looks like America in all its messy, polyglot glory. And this candidate, Barack Obama, talks of creating a government that sticks up for the little people, while declaring to the world that our ends do not justify George Bush's torturing means.

WHEN MODERN AMERICANS once again hear rhetoric based upon enduring principles and not a laundry list of unpayable bribes . . . well, they can get discombobulated. Really, we haven't heard such unbridled apparent idealism since the spring of '68, when Bobby Kennedy appealed to the better angels of Americans' nature and got killed for his trouble.

In a nation unfamiliar with the audacity of Christian belief and praxis -- in a nation where many Christian churches are unfamiliar with the audacity of Christian doctrine and practice -- we do not know how to deal with the idealistic. When someone calls us to look beyond ourselves as the source and summit of whatever the hell it is we're looking for, why are we surprised when some who stumble in the darkness mistake the formerly normative for the supernatural?

We created Seinfeld Nation -- a country about nothing. So we have to deal with it when the ingenuous overreact to Something . . . especially when Something comes in the form of a presidential candidate.

So far, I don't think even "gimlet-eyed" journalists like Time's Joe Klein know how to deal with it and, in fact, are partially misreading it -- accustomed as journalists are to a different kind of political rhetoric. A recap from the Tapper excerpt above:

"We are the ones we've been waiting for," Obama said. "This time can be different because this campaign for the presidency of the United States of America is different. It's different not because of me. It's different because of you."

Says Klein: "That is not just maddeningly vague but also disingenuous: the campaign is entirely about Obama and his ability to inspire. Rather than focusing on any specific issue or cause — other than an amorphous desire for change — the message is becoming dangerously self-referential. The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is.“

WELL, that's one interpretation . . . the cynical one.

On the other hand, what Obama just might have been saying -- in a more upbeat manner -- is:

"The change agent you have been waiting for is you. You have the power, not me. So get off your asses and effect some change."

Of course, that messianic scenario has the power to throw several sectors of American society into their own conniption narrative.

He gets it

David Freedman of WWOZ -- New Orleans' jazz-and-heritage community FM station -- gets it. Commercial radio doesn't.

It's not about the transmitter, or about HD Radio. It's about the content, and how to best deliver lots of content in various forms to your audience.

Which is kind of what we're about at Revolution 21 -- just on a grass-roots scale.

Our capricious, sadistic deity?

Meteorological horrors happen, and one supernatural entity or another ends up getting the blame. But the weather never does.

The pattern holds with some poor, grieving Arkansans trying to make sense of what one can't make sense of, as reported by The Associated Press:

Tonya Selken's home sat in a dip along a ridge on Dog Mountain, where they had a sweeping view of rolling horse pasture and the misty Ozark foothills in the distance. But she didn't choose these two of her grandfather's 210 acres just for the scenery.

This was one of several places the family mapped out for their protection from tornadoes. In the nearly 60 years since the family bought the place on Shady Grove road, they had seen several twisters hop over this spot and touch down harmlessly on the ridge beyond.

"She was in the house once when one went right over the top of her," said her father, Jerry Simpkins.

But on Tuesday, the family's luck ran out.

The 36-year-old letter carrier and mother of four was one of three Van Buren County residents killed in a monster storm that ground a path across the Southeast, claiming more than 50 lives in several states. Her husband Raymond, 38, and their 14-year-old daughter, Ellise, were also seriously injured.

Standing Wednesday amid the debris field of twisted metal and pink insulation, Carmon Lagunes struggled to grasp why God would take her sister.

"That's his wrath," she said, looking toward the wreckage. "For some reason, he's not happy right now and this is. ... Nobody understands God's will. I sure as hell don't understand it.

Said Anita Goodnight, the sisters' aunt: "God didn't do it. Satan did."

Looking around the valley, where locals raise cattle and cultivate shiitake mushrooms, it is hard not to marvel at the capricious of nature. As workers cleared toppled trees and replaced snapped power poles, cows grazed lazily beside barns whose tin roofs proclaim "Jesus Saves."

THE QUESTION is not "Why did God kill somebody with this big ol' tornado?" And it's not a lock that the devil had anything to do with it, either.

S*** happens. And so do bad, bad tornadoes and other deadly meterological phenomena.

If you ask me -- and you didn't -- the proper question is "Why did God permit nature to take its course in such a cruel manner?"

"Why did God, who knows all, choose not to grant a saving miracle in this case, when He has in others?"

The answer goes something like . . . beats me. God's will is a mystery, and so is the interplay between the awesome power of nature and the randomness of dumb luck . . . or dumb misfortune.

We don't understand it, and we never will. At least, not this side of eternity.

Four Songs: Dust for Lent

Remember, man, that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return.

IT'S LENT, and that's one of two things the faithful might hear on Ash Wednesday as they receive ashes on their foreheads. The other would be "Repent, and believe in the Gospel!"

Dust. Ashes. Repentance. Mortality. Lent is not about warm fuzzies and attaboys. It confronts us with the reality of our fallen existence and ends by reminding us of The Way Out.

And the price Jesus paid to make it so.

So, this episode of Four Songs is about dust. And that's all I'm sayin'. It just seemed appropriate.

Download it now. You have to do something for Lent.

Louisiana's eternal hangover

If you reside in the Gret Stet, this depressing bit of reading should humble you mightily, thus rendering you capable of the kind of mortification required of this Lenten season.

IN OTHER WORDS . . . remember, Tee Fats, you are dust, and dust you never quite rise above.

Appropriately for its Ash Wednesday edition, The (Baton Rouge) Advocate went to some national industry-site consultants and asked the question, "No, really. How are we doing?"

On Sunday, lawmakers will gather for a special session on ethics that Gov. Bobby Jindal is billing as the linchpin to building a stronger economy.

However, half-a-dozen out-of-state industry site consultants contacted by The Advocate said the state has more pressing hurdles than political graft.

The biggest problems are that company executives consider Louisianans to be poorly educated, poorly trained and in poor health, the consultants said.

“If I have a client that says we need to set up an operation in the South somewhere, Louisiana’s not going to pop to the top of our chart,” said Ron Pollina, president and founder of Pollina Corporate Real Estate Inc. in Chicago.

Andrew Shapiro with Biggins Lacy Shapiro & Co. in Princeton, N.J., said he mostly represents white collar projects — financial services, headquarters, research and development and pharmaceutical companies — that would not think of looking at the state.

“I haven’t considered Louisiana in years because it’s redlined by clients,” he said, which means it is essentially kept off any list of potential sites.

(snip)

For 2007, the top 10 “pro-business” states were Virginia, South Carolina, Florida, North Carolina, Utah, Wyoming, South Dakota, Alabama, Georgia and Nebraska.

Where did Louisiana fall? The state was in the bottom 25, finishing better than lowest-ranked California but still keeping company with the states with sputtering economic engines.

Pollina began doing the study in 2004 — long before federal agents found U.S. Rep. William Jefferson’s bundle of money on ice. In four years, Louisiana has never crept into the top 25.

Shapiro said Louisiana’s education problems begin at the elementary level and build from there.

To have a skilled labor force, preparation must begin the moment future workers enter the school system, he said.

“(Louisiana) is not creating a capable work force that can compete,” Shapiro said.

WHILE THE NEWSPAPER reports a positive buzz out there about Louisiana's new governor, what Pollina says in conclusion ought to be enough -- especially with the last round of Mardi Gras hurricanes still clouding the brain -- to sober up even the most slap-happy "Bobby Jindal is the Messiah" die-hard.

I'll give you a minute to embrace the porcelain deity and prepare for your offering.

OK, here we go:

Pollina, whose father grew up on a Louisiana strawberry farm, points out that Jindal has a lot of obstacles to overcome, including a legacy of lackluster qualities associated with the state.

“Various governors come in. They go out. They do things to try to stimulate business in the state. We have not seen any consistency in their efforts,” he said.

YEP, that's about the historical shape of things. But did all y'all Louisianians really need a Yankee from Chicago to tell you that?

Mardi Gras . . . here and there

THIS IS MARDI GRAS in New Orleans, with the Golden Band from Tigerland (that's the LSU band for you infidels) marching in Rex, the grandest parade of Carnival.

THIS (left) is Mardi Gras in Omaha, where people call it Fat Tuesday, for they are infidels.

No one is parading in Omaha. That's because it's snowing, it's 21 degrees, the wind is blowing like a son of a gun, and the snow is drifting all over.

My big Carnival fun has been shoveling the walk and driveway. Maybe I'll try shoveling again while drinking beer.

THEN AGAIN, the @#$&*!$ bottle probably would freeze to my lips.

On days like today, this Louisiana boy soooooooo wants to go home.

Poopy drawers. Butt cheek. Piss. DAMNATION!

Bollocks.

Sh*t.

F***.

THERE, now I'll never have to bear the horrible burden of Dr. James Dobson ever endorsing me for anything, anytime:

"I'm deeply disappointed the Republican Party seems poised to select a nominee who did not support a Constitutional amendment to protect the institution of marriage, who voted for embryonic stem cell research to kill nascent human beings, who opposed tax cuts that ended the marriage penalty, and who has little regard for freedom of speech, who organized the Gang of 14 to preserve filibusters, and has a legendary temper and often uses foul and obscene language.

"I am convinced Sen. McCain is not a conservative, and in fact, has gone out of his way to stick his thumb in the eyes of those who are. He has at times sounded more like a member of the other party. McCain actually considered leaving the GOP in 2001, and approached John Kerry about being Kerry's running mate in 2004. McCain also said publicly that Hillary Clinton would make a good president. Given these and many other concerns, a spoonful of sugar does not make the medicine go down. I cannot, and I will not vote for Sen. John McCain, as a matter of conscience."

NOBODY deserves to have that done to them -- a Dobson endorsement, that is. You could be looked upon as a power-hungry, misguided prig purely by involuntary association.


HAT TIP: Crunchy Con.

Godwin's Law goes way of Geneva Conventions

You know, it's impossible to abide by Godwin's Law -- the unofficial law of argument that he who calls someone a Nazi automatically loses -- when so many people in this country are acting like Nazis.

First in the ranks of goosestepping disciples of evil would be the government of the United States of America. Specifically the Bush Administration and the Central Intelligence Agency.

Consider, for example, this testimony before Congress by CIA Director Michael Hayden, as reported by MSNBC:

Congress is considering a bill that would restrict the CIA to only those methods authorized by the Army's field manual for interrogation. Hayden said that would make no sense. The Army's interrogators are young people with limited training, while the CIA's interrogators are highly trained, he said.

The Army interrogates a broad range of people, while the CIA's program is tailored to a specific group of terrorists. It would make no more sense to apply the Army's interrogation manual to the CIA than it would to apply the Army's grooming standards or its rules on sexual orientation, Hayden said.

YES, THE CIA has goons quite skilled in the black art of torture. They can do this, because they are highly trained for it.

Just like the SS.