Dear Diary: Rope. End. Near.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Here's another in the occasional series of dispatches recorded some years ago from the front lines of Catholic radio -- Pope FM.

MONDAY, OCT. 21, 2002


Dear Diary,

I'm nearing the end of my rope, but I just can't quit without another job. I think divine intervention of some sort is needed . . . if only for my endurance.

I'm short on time, and I have to go to bed soon, being that I have to be at Pope FM by 6:15 or so in the morning for a 13-hour shift (every day for the rest of the week) during the "Pledge-a-Thon." To boot, a nasty chronic ailment has returned with a vengeance after several years' absence (after a several-year off-an-on run).

I JUST SENT the following note to a longtime volunteer -- the 25-year-old intern who was weeping in my office last week:

Susie,

Be prepared. I have absolutely no idea what to expect tomorrow. I came to work today to find everything I had prepared in the present control room/men's room ripped apart with no good explanation, other than the engineers now thought they could get the new control room functioning "enough." Everyone seemed to think I should be happy about this.

They were still frantically working on it when the Missus came to get me after 7 to take me to the doctor. Manic Don still was revising and explaining the "run sheet" for the first day of the Pledge-a-Thon. The other days have yet to be scripted . . . and he is scripting everything to within an inch of its life.

I spent the entire day trying to decide whether to just quit . . . that and praying for enlightenment. But I decided I wouldn't give the Don the satisfaction.

So far, he's been working the other two interns like dogs.

Welcome to the new Pope FM. Don't be sad, and don't be afraid. But do be prepared, and do be resolved. In all the wrong ways, Pope FM is becoming incredibly close to "the real thing" in radio.

Hang in there. . . .

GOD HELP US at Levy Pants, Midwest Division.


-- Me

Dear Diary: Live . . . from the crapper

EDITOR'S NOTE: Revolution 21's Blog for the People continues an occasional series of dispatches recorded some years ago in the trenches of Catholic radio. The names aren't real, nor are the places, but the stories are -- and it's a snapshot picture of what happens when "Their zeal consumes them" meets "Sinners sacrifice for the institution, not vice versa."

In other words, there has to be a better way.

SATURDAY, OCT. 19, 2002

Dear Diary,

Well, the insanity continues apace at Levy Pants, Midwest Division. Pope FM, remember, equals Levy Pants in A Confederacy of Dunces.

Thursday, "The Triumvirate" (Ken, Fred the Development Guy and Manic Don) grudgingly admitted the reality of what I'd been telling them for a month -- our new studios wouldn't be ready for the "Pledge-a-Thon" this coming week. I'll be engineering it from the men's room.

No, really. The crapper. The head. The loo.

The Facilities.

See, right now, we have a cobbled together, temporary control room in what will be the men's room. The commode drain is there, but not the stool itself, or the sink, or the urinal. That would take up too much room, leaving none for the equipment. But the plumbing and the floor drain are all there -- complete with that certain je ne sais quoi . . . the intermittent fragrant hint of sewer gas.

CONTRARY TO THE OPINION of Fred the Development Guy, God did not "expand time."

I plugged a Behringer studio mixer into the borrowed control board we have, just to make it functional enough for me to engineer the Pledge-a-Thon with minimum hassles and give me enough inputs for a line feed from the makeshift interview studio and to run microphone cables to the phone room, which conveniently is just outside the men's room -- uh, CONTROL ROOM -- door.

But to make room for the volunteers and telephones, Manic Man, our fearless program director, had to move out of his temporary digs.

Where would he go? Where would he go?

Well, let's just say I ended up literally begging him and the GM not to move our temporary, jury-rigged and very precarious production room into a still under-construction space so Manic Man could take over the present room for his office . . . right now.

Did I mention all this was less than a week out from the Pledge-a-Thon?

ME, I THINK the Lord is a fan of A Confederacy of Dunces. And, as an added benefit, He is teaching me radical compassion for an intern I used to have little patience with but who was, fairly literally, crying on my shoulder Friday over her mistreatment by the Manic Mad Man of the Midwest. She referred to him as "a male chauvinist pig."

When you hear meek, charismatic-Catholic 25-year-old women use the term "male chauvinist pig," you absolutely KNOW he's probably worse than that, even.

Really, this guy is making a crapload of enemies real fast. And he's starting to make the wrong enemies. Or at least make them for the station.

I don't know what the Lord has in mind for all this, but I know in my heart it involves my stepping up to the plate to try to rally the troops and hold them together to weather the raging storm.


Taking to the factory floor
with a banner made of a . . .
a . . . an (ahem) bedsheet,

Me

It was necessary that this happened. . . .

Because you should never have to pay $275 to look like wussy versions of The Ramones.

It's Hammertime!

Operation Louisiana Bloodbath

It occurs to me that my home state, Louisiana, is a lot like Iraq.

The government's pretty crooked, people are always squabbling, the "Sunnis" in the north hate the "Shiites" in the south . . . and everybody hates (for lack of a better Iraqi analogy) the "Christians" in New Orleans. And if the fishermen learn how to make car bombs out of roadside "fresh-shrimp trucks," we all in trouble, Cap.

Then the rednecks will start booby-trapping meat pies, and it'll be a bloodbath.

Anyway, Louisiana's version of Saddam Hussein -- Huey Long -- kept things in check for a while from the late 1920s through 1935, mainly through a masterful balance of bribing Louisianians with petrodollars and, when necessary, exercising brute political force.

If there had been wood chippers big enough back then, he probably would have put some prominent "anti-Longs" through one. Mulch one, instruct a thousand.

But then, in September 1935, one of the "anti-Longs" got off a lucky shot before being turned into Swiss cheese by Huey's version of the Republican Guard, and Louisiana's been going to hell ever since.

OH, SURE, various governors -- including Huey's little brother Uday Earl -- kept the peace, more or less, through keeping up the varying combinations of petrobribery and demagoguery. But that wasn't going to last forever.

At some point, your oil money ceases to exceed the amount you're paying out in bribes to the warring tribes, and then it's all she wrote.

Welcome to All She Wrote.

Oil revenue tanked. The Great Recession hit. And one day, Louisiana realized it had been spending all this money but folks were still poor, dumb and contentious, and the state was fresh out of grease for all those outstretched palms.

Budget cuts would have to be made. Civic leaders, newspapers and (GASP!) even legislators began to talk about ending Louisiana's program of Every Community College a University. Oxen, at some point, must be gored.

One of the early targets might be the "Sunni" enclave of Alexandria, which has its own ox, but nobody knows exactly why that is. And the newspaper there, the Town Talk, is making ominous noises. From a Wednesday editorial:

The editors of a New Orleans newspaper looked long and hard at the state of higher education in Louisiana, the demand by the governor to "right-size" the bloated university landscape, and the need to help the state become a smarter, better place.

From within their city -- which wallows in a sea of tax dollars lapping at the doors of colleges and universities -- these thinkers ruminated and then pointed a crooked finger at how to fix higher education.

They, the editors of the Times-Picayune newspaper, wrote this: "Certainly a plan for downsizing is needed -- and the state ought to look at duplicate and underperforming programs. The Legislature foolishly upgraded Louisiana State University at Alexandria to four-year status in 2001, even though there was already a public university in nearby Natchitoches."

Forget for a moment how such wisdom is shaped -- by people who brag about a town built on government handouts and perpetual corruption, who are comfortable with poverty and murder rates that dwarf the national averages, and who are so numbed by dysfunction that they drop everything to march in drunken parades.

Forget about the river of education funding washing through the Big Easy, a city so detached from learning that the state had to commandeer the local school system because of its chronic failure, and where 44 percent -- nearly half -- of the adults can't read well enough to fill out simple forms.

"SO NUMBED by dysfunction that they drop everything to march in drunken parades"? Them's fightin' words.

I've been accused by aggrieved Louisianians of taking gratuitous shots at my home state. Shots, yes. Gratuitous, hardly.

But I never, ever in a million years would have written that. Especially if I lived in Alexandria, which isn't exactly the municipal version of one of Saddam's grand palaces. With an editorial like that, the Town Talk editors could have saved precious newsprint and simply written "Dear New Orleans; F*** you. And Baton Rouge, too. Die soon."

I imagine the warm fuzzies will spread from town to town as more hard-to-justify state colleges end up on various hard-times hit lists. And when the state finally succumbs to the budgetary inevitability and actually starts trying to save what it can and cull the rest. . . .

BUT I GUESS civil war is inevitable when you have jobs programs masquerading as state universities, and every town has one. Especially when the Sunnis already hate the Shiites, and everybody hates the Christians.

3 Chords & the Truth: Just a little bit loony

We're all just a little bit crazy, aren't we?

Well, not all of us are over-the-top tormented like Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett (God rest his soul) was three-plus decades ago when the Band released Barrett-inspired songs like "Brain Damage" -- featured this week on 3 Chords & the Truth -- and "Shine on You Crazy Diamond," et al. But we all are at least a little bit "eccentric," aren't we?

I mean, how boring would life be if we weren't?

Take my wife, for example. . . . You wouldn't believe h




ON SECOND THOUGHT, my lovely bride is perfect in every way. Sometimes, she feigns imperfection or eccentricity, but that is solely a ruse to make me feel less conspicuously inadequate as a human being.

I am flawed. I am unworthy.

And if you're like me, I have just the set for you this week on the Big Show. Because we're all "Crazy as a Loon."

Or something like that -- except for my wife. Whom I love.

WE'LL ALSO spend a lot of time this week strolling through the history of rock 'n' roll (and all the flavors of rock, too) . . . at least a little bit. Lots of fun this week on 3 Chords & the Truth.

And that's about all I have to say about that. To say any more would just give the whole thing away, and that would be no fun.

It's the Big Show, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

David Carradine hangs self

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
'Neath the halo of a street lamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence

"Fools", said I, "You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you"
But my words, like silent raindrops fell
And echoed
In the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said, "The words of the prophets
are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls"
And whispered in the sounds of silence

"Sounds of Silence"
Simon and Garfunkel (1965)

Triple cocktail of doom

Can I get a "radio"?!

RADIO!

Can I get a "records"?!

RECORDS!

Can I get a "newspaper"?!

NEWSPAPER!

What's that spell?!

R.I.P!!!

And that's the "dead and gone" of it. When you have a newspaper dedicated to covering radio and the record industry, and then you count on selling it -- for a hefty subscription fee -- to people in those two woebegone industries, you're pretty much toast.

JUST LIKE Radio & Records, dead of a terminal business model after a 36-year run. Here's what passes for an obit in The Tennessean:

Radio & Records, a major music industry trade publication, announced plans to close on Wednesday (June 3) citing the current economic climate as the reason.

Founded in 1973, R&R is headquartered in Los Angeles and was acquired in 2006 by VNU, a company that also owns Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter. VNU changed its name to the Nielsen Company in 2007.

Billboard and R&R publisher Howard Applebaum met with R&R employees in Los Angeles at noon Wednesday and told them the publication was closing. More than 40 employees lost their jobs, including at least one in Nashville.

IT'S BRUTAL out there. Good night, and good luck.

Omaha . . . I am your archbishop

The Diocese of Springfield, Ill., where the Vatican went to find Omaha's next archbishop, was a MESS when Bishop George Lucas got there, and he's spent a decade trying to clean it up.

Lucas will find his next see to be merely a mess, with the most pressing problem being that vocations to the priesthood here have dried up -- the Archdiocese of Omaha will ordain no new priests this year and none next year, either.

Other than that, the new prelate will face a bunch of run-of-the-mill millennial Catholic crises . . . lousy religious education for the church's youth, not enough priests to do the job, the ongoing ecclesiastical Fifth Column that is Catholic secondary and higher education, etcetera and so on.

HERE'S A BIT from this afternoon's story in the Omaha World-Herald:

In his prepared remarks, Lucas said he is humbled to be given the responsibility of leading the 220,000-member Omaha Archdiocese.

"I look forward to learning about all the ways the Gospel is preached and lived in the Archdiocese of Omaha," he said. "I have a great deal to learn and you all have much to teach me."

Lucas showed he had done his homework by prominently mentioning Catholic schools, a focus in the family and social lives of many Omahans. He said even a casual observer would be impressed by Catholic education here.

"I look forward to not being a casual observer, but an active participant in this endeavor," he said.

To priests, Lucas said, "Not only will I depend on you to teach me, I will depend on you to support me, as I support you."

To non-Catholics, Lucas said he had been very active in inter-faith work in Illinois and plans to continue that in Omaha.

Lucas, 59, was named today by Pope Benedict XVI as the replacement for retiring Omaha Archbishop Elden F. Curtiss, who had submitted his mandatory resignation when he turned 75 two years ago this month.

(snip)

Pope John Paul II appointed Lucas bishop of Springfield in October 1999. He was installed Dec. 14, 1999.

The Springfield diocese is home to about 170,000 Catholics in 164 parishes, according to the diocesan Web site.

The diocese, in south-central Illinois, is served by 99 active diocesan priests and 62 religious order priests. The diocese also has eight Catholic hospitals, a religious seminary, a Catholic university, a Catholic college, seven Catholic high schools and 54 Catholic elementary schools.

Lucas comes to Omaha under much different circumstances than when he went to Illinois in 1999. A sex-abuse scandal involving the former Springfield bishop, Daniel Ryan, was brewing in Springfield at the time. It eventually erupted into greater scandal and lawsuits along with the national clergy sex-abuse crisis.

In an interview today, Lucas said the diocese had taken the steps it needed to take to protect children, to be transparent and to ensure that the diocese was operating with integrity.

That said, he added, "The hurt of the abuse is still felt very deeply by those who were abused."

BUT AT LEAST he won't -- at this writing at least -- have to deal with allegations his predecessor had a taste for underage boys or deal with a diocesan chancellor who gets beaten up in city parks by teens who take umbrage at being propositioned for sex.

If he's lucky, he won't have to call in an outside investigator here in the next five years, and he won't have the Omaha equivalent of the radically traditionalist, bomb-throwing Roman Catholic Faithful accusing him of a hands-off policy toward "predatory homosexuals." That and of having a taste for high-school boys himself.

The Decatur (Ill.) Herald & Review reported on the whole mess in August 2006:

Lucas called for an investigation of alleged clergy misconduct "amid a climate of increasing doubt and mistrust" in February 2005, the report stated.

The probe was spearheaded by Springfield attorney Bill Roberts, a Methodist.

The investigation found "some misuse of power and some serious misconduct" by a "very small number of priests," Lucas said.

Lucas remains confident in the virtuous service of the vast majority of the more than 120 priests in the diocese. He acknowledged the "painful truth" of revelations and hopes the investigation will restore the confidence of parishioners.

"I'm deeply sorry for the misdeeds of any priest whom I have placed in or allowed to remain in a position of trust in this diocese," Lucas said.

The report stated that former Bishop Daniel Ryan engaged in sexual misconduct with adults and used his authority to conceal his actions.

"Although denied by Bishop Ryan, this behavior did occur and caused scandal in the church by leading others to do evil," the report stated. "It resulted in feelings of hurt and anger, as well as thoughts of doubt and mistrust, both in the church as an institution and in its leaders."

The report documents anecdotal evidence of Roman Catholics abandoning the faith because of Ryan's actions.

"The investigation found a culture of secrecy fostered under Bishop Ryan's leadership which discouraged faithful priests from coming forward with information about misconduct," the report added.

Ryan no longer participates in public ministry and does not live in the diocese, the report stated.

"We saw a culture that had grown very permissive, very lax, a culture lacking discipline, a culture in which at some point the people became distrusting and wary of bringing things to the head of their church in this diocese because they believe that it wouldn't be handled appropriately," Roberts said.

Some believe Lucas rewarded priests who protected Ryan by honoring them with the designation "monsignor," the report noted. The probe found no evidence Lucas was aware of alleged misconduct by honorees but found Lucas could have researched some priests' characters more carefully.

The panel found false and without merit the allegations by area resident Thomas Munoz, who claimed to have engaged in sex acts with Lucas, five priests and three seminarians. Munoz failed a polygraph test and has a history of criminal and deceptive behavior, the report stated.

IT'S NOT EASY being an archbishop. But it's got to be easier than being bishop of Springfield, Ill.

At least once the Star Wars jokes get old.

His brain hurts

After the week he's already had just two days in, I'm sure Jim Suttle's brain hurts. Maybe his staff can help a mayor-elect out.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

The mayor-elect came. The mayor-elect blathered. The mayor-elect hauled ass.

(Sigh.)

Omaha's incoming chief executive, Jim Suttle, called a press conference to say his "community chief of staff" is out amid allegations the aide had a homosexual affair with an underage boy in the 1990s.

"I have asked Matt Samp to separate himself from my administration," Suttle said. "He will not be my community chief of staff; he will not serve in my administration."

Suttle spent the next couple of minutes saying a criminal background check wouldn't have uncovered the allegations against Samp, that too many challenges face Omaha to worry about a single blah blah blah, blahblah, blah, blah blah blah blah, blahblahblah, blah.

Nothing to see here. Move along. No questions. I'm out of here.

And then Suttle was gone.

THE QUESTIONS about the mayor-elect's intelligence and judgment remained, however, along with an angry press corps and a besieged Suttle press aide, Ron Gerard.

During his no-questions "press conference," Suttle spoke about trust and how it's "important to maintain faith among our citizens that we will not be deterred from the mission we have in the Mayor’s office." The first "mission" for any public official, though, is not to squander the people's trust by acting in a recklessly stupid manner.

Jim Suttle's first big test came before he even has taken office, and the result was an epic fail.

The mayor-elect is being disingenuous in saying no background check would have turned up problems with his prospective co-chief of staff; Suttle didn't need a criminal-records check to unveil what was stinking to high heaven right under his nose.

FOR EXAMPLE, one commenter on an earlier post maintains Samp's practice of "'mentoring' male teenagers" is no secret in local Democratic circles. I don't find that hard to believe, being that Omaha is the big-city version of a small town -- everybody knows everybody else, and people talk.

And mayors-to-be don't have the luxury of dismissing scandalous gossip when it comes to hiring a staff to do the public's business, as opposed to pubic business. Suttle had a duty -- an obligation of trust, as it were -- to get to the bottom of those "ugly rumors." That probably would have required one phone call from the mayor-elect to the police chief.

Furthermore, it wasn't just talk. Democrats had been warned about Samp by Nebraska's attorney general. From Monday's Omaha World-Herald story:

Nebraska attorney General Jon Bruning wants Suttle to rescind his offer to hire Samp.

"We can't have someone like that working in government," he said of Samp.

Bruning said an Omaha father contacted him earlier this year, concerned about e-mails and other communication that his 16-year-old son recently had been receiving from Samp. Although the interaction was not criminal, Bruning, a Republican, said he notified two Democratic leaders about the complaint.

When Bruning heard about Samp's city job last month, "I was sick to my stomach and angry," Bruning said. "The citizens of Omaha deserve better."

BRUNING WAS even more explicit today with KETV television:

Bruning said he thought Samp's relationship with the teen was immoral, but there was no evidence of criminal conduct. [The age of consent in Nebraska is 16 -- R21.]

"If Matt Samp can explain why he's calling a 16-year old at 1:30 in the morning and e-mailing him sexually explicit emails, then I'd like to see that explanation. But I can't imagine there's anything that I or the citizens of Nebraska are going to buy," Bruning told KETV.

He said the latest complaint doesn't warrant criminal charges but he will investigate any further allegations that may come to his attention.

CRIMINAL-BACKGROUND check, my eye. The whole stinking heap . . . right under Jim Suttle's nose. But he couldn't be bothered with such unpleasantness.

There's a word for that kind of indifference. It's negligence. Just the thing we're looking for in a mayor. Especially now.

"The mission of the next administration is important and the challenges facing city government are too numerous to focus our energies on one news story," Suttle said before fleeing from the assembled news media. In other words, having demonstrated his incompetence and negligence in the little things, Suttle wants us to "move on" and not worry that he's now in charge of the Really Big Things.

The mayor-elect is not only stupid, he thinks we're nuts.

Kaboom!

It takes a special kind of stupid. . . .

* To, if you're the incoming mayor, not conduct background checks on people you're appointing to key jobs in your administration. Like chief of staff.

* To tell the local newspaper that background checks represent a "suspicious, punitive system, and that's not something I build on. . . . What goes on in private lives is private business. I don't sit down with anybody and say, 'Tell me about your past.'"

* To refuse to ask police for documents detailing accusations that your designated "community chief of staff" began a homosexual relationship with a 14-year-old boy and kept it up for two years. (A law-enforcement source told the Omaha World-Herald the teen, who killed himself after going to the police, "was credible and the investigation of the first-degree sexual assault allegations he made when he was 19 would have been pursued if he hadn't died.")

* To dismiss the allegations about the aide, Matthew Samp, out of hand as "character assassination" and tell a reporter something as dumb as "You have to set (rumors) aside and just look at whom is trying to embarrass whom. I've seen this, and this happens."

UNFORTUNATELY for Omaha, alas, it looks like Jim Suttle is going to be a "special" kind of mayor. God help us all.

Imagine for a moment that we're not talking about the chief executive of a city of 435,000. Imagine instead that we're talking about a Catholic bishop who has just named a new chancellor for his diocese.

And say there were credible allegations that the priest picked as chancellor had initiated a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old boy, who five years later reported the underage relationship to police, who found the teen "credible" and initiated an investigation, but then this tormented youth killed himself.

Furthermore, let's say the new bishop was taking a leisurely swim down the River of Denial and publicly refused to even consider looking into the matter himself. And let's just imagine His Excellency then proclaimed that he didn't believe in conducting background checks, calling them a "suspicious, punitive system, and that's not something I build on."

How do you think that would go over?

ME, I THINK an enraged public would be burning the chancery down by now -- and not totally without justification, given the recent history of these kinds of things. In fact, a Catholic priest facing "credible" allegations of the sort now dogging Samp would be immediately removed from active ministry pending a complete investigation.

What, is it somehow more dangerous (or unseemly, or unjust, or whatever) when sexual-abuse scandals occur in the Catholic Church than when they hit city hall?

But that's a rhetorical question. Here's something more concrete: Your average forklift driver probably undergoes more pre-employment scrutiny than Jim Suttle's average chief of staff.

According to this morning's World-Herald, we are not amused:

Some angry and appalled leaders and residents want Omaha Mayor-elect Jim Suttle to look further into allegations that a top aide had a sexual relationship with a teenager in the late 1990s.

The World-Herald reported Sunday that a 19-year-old Omahan told police in 2001 that he had a sexual relationship, starting when he was 14, with Matthew Samp. Samp, now Suttle's co-chief of staff, was about 23 at the time.

It is illegal for an adult to have sex with someone under 16.

Suttle said Saturday, while out of town on vacation, that he did not plan to ask police for more information and did not do background checks on employees.

Suttle, who could not be reached Sunday, plans a statement today at a 1:30 p.m. press conference, spokesman Ron Gerard said. Suttle, a Democrat, takes office June 8.

Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning wants Suttle to rescind his offer to hire Samp.

"We can't have someone like that working in government," he said of Samp.

(snip)

A 2001 police investigation into the report about Samp stalled when the youth, Brad Fuglei, killed himself a week after filing a police report. Fuglei was 19.

Patlan said Samp, expected to handle communication with external groups such as neighborhood associations, will have no credibility unless he is cleared.

"If the kid was still alive," Patlan said, "the question remains: Where would Samp be now? Would he be in prison? There's too many questions."

Omaha resident Amy Adams, who attended high school with Fuglei, was incensed to hear that Suttle wasn't investigating further.

"That disgusts me," she said. "If allegations come up and you don't look into it, that seems ridiculous."

THAT SEEMS ridiculous because it is ridiculous. I guess Jim Suttle is just a ridiculous kind of guy.

Who is going to be our next mayor.

I think we're about to learn the hard way that not being Hal Daub is no good reason to elect somebody mayor.

On George Tiller

George Tiller is dead, victim of an especially late-term abortion.

The doctor -- who specialized in late-term abortions at his Wichita, Kan., clinic -- fell victim to someone with murder in his heart and a gun in his hand. From a dispatch by The Associated Press:

The gunman fled, but a 51-year-old suspect was arrested some 170 miles away in suburban Kansas City three hours after the shooting, Wichita Deputy Police Chief Tom Stolz said. Johnson County sheriff's spokesman Tom Erickson identified the man in custody as Scott Roeder, who has not been charged in the slaying.

President Barack Obama said he was shocked and outraged over the killing.

Long a focus of national anti-abortion groups, including a summer-long protest in 1991, Tiller was serving as an usher during Sunday morning services when he was shot in the foyer of Reformation Lutheran Church, Stolz said. Tiller's attorney, Dan Monnat, said Tiller's wife, Jeanne, was in the choir at the time.

Stolz said all indications were that the man acted alone, although authorities were investigating whether he had any connection to anti-abortion groups.

Stolz said the man being held would likely be charged Monday with one count of murder and two of aggravated assault. Stolz said the gunman threatened two people who tried to stop him.

The slaying of the 67-year-old doctor is "an unspeakable tragedy," his widow, four children and 10 grandchildren said in statement issued by Monnat. "This is particularly heart-wrenching because George was shot down in his house of worship, a place of peace."

IT IS SAID in the Talmud that "whoever destroys one soul is regarded by the Torah as if he had destroyed a whole world and whoever saves one soul, is regarded as if he had saved a whole world."

Some right-wing, allegedly Christian whack jobs are celebrating the death of a man who committed great evil. But is George Tiller's judge, jury and executioner -- at least by God's standard -- any better than someone who might, if it were possible, abort millions of late-term fetuses single-handedly?

Would not both have "destroyed a whole world"?

In addition, Tiller's murderer -- through this orgy of death directed against a child of God -- will have done grave damage to a movement seeking to promote respect for the lives of humanity's most vulnerable members.

WHEN IT COMES DOWN to it, Tiller merely was an executioner, carrying out death sentences passed down by a parade of people for a plethora of reasons. Tiller was just the last stop for mothers and their unborn children on a hell-bound train conceptualized by Satan, assembled by fallen and hardened hearts, driven by elites in love with "final" solutions, stoked by politicians, switched onto the main line by materialism and ridden by the selfish and the desperate alike.

But Tiller's killer . . . now he represents a special breed. This was the kind of monster who can do the devil's work and convince himself it was the Lord's idea. This was someone who set himself up as judge, jury and executioner, then said to hell with the trial.

Whoever pulled the trigger on George Tiller unilaterally decided a nation of hit men was a far superior concept to a nation of laws, and he was just the Goodfella for the job.

IF WE HOPE to remain a nation of laws and not of warlords, the full weight of what law we have left must fall upon the gunman who took it upon himself to abort the abortionist. Or, to paraphrase Fox anchor Shepard Smith, "We are America. We do not f***ing assassinate people."

Roughly a generation ago, Pope John Paul II coined a term to describe a way of life such as ours. He called it the Culture of Death.

Basically, we are a society that figures most problems can be solved by somebody -- either in the womb or out -- ending up dead. We find death, in all its forms, strangely compelling . . . and we get what we value.

George Tiller's assassin deemed death an appropriate solution to the problem of a death-dealer and acted accordingly. In doing so, this "defender of life" became just another death-dealer -- another destroyer of a whole world -- establishing himself as another antihero of our anticulture.

The Culture of Death: It's not just for the George Tillers of the world.

It's also for all those who, in the name of God, decide they will become as gods and mete out divine vengeance accordingly.

Speaking of f***. . . .

The "community chief of staff" for Omaha's mayor-elect apparently has a rather low opinion of the city's daily newspaper, the World-Herald.

Matthew Samp, on his Twitter account, had some choice words for the newspaper -- which endorsed former mayor Hal Daub -- after the returns were all in and Samp's guy, Jim Suttle, had been elected Omaha's next mayor.

"Love me some Jim Suttle. F*** the World-Herald," the Democratic political operative tweeted after the May 12 election.

WELL, as it turns out, the World-Herald is reporting Samp may know a little something about f***:

A top appointee to Mayor-elect Jim Suttle's administration faced an investigation in 2001 into whether he had sex with a 14-year-old boy.

The teenager, who championed gay rights in high school, killed himself a week after telling police about his sex with two men, including Matthew Samp, who has been named Suttle's co-chief of staff.

SOMETHING TELLS ME this morning's Sunday World-Herald will be burning a hole in our driveway. Which is nothing compared to the impact it will have at the Suttle residence.

"F*** the World-Herald"?

Matt Samp just may have learned his last lesson in politics: That which f***s last f***s well, indeed.

UPDATE: The teen-ager involved in the story, says the World-Herald, was Brad Matthew Fuglei. Here's an excerpt from a 1998 feature in the newspaper on the then-North High School student.

Note who figures prominently in the piece:

Brad Matthew, the son of Nancy Fuglei of Omaha and Bruce Fuglei of Montana, is a member of North's Student Council and show choir. He volunteers for the Nebraska AIDS Project and recruited friends to help out with Teens Educated to Combat AIDS.

When he is not working at the men's department at Younkers, hanging out with friends or doing homework, Brad likes to play the piano and write music. His lyrics often reflect his thought about God, he said.

"He's a total free spirit. He doesn't care what others think," said Matthew Samp, an older friend who is like an older brother to Brad Matthew. "He's every parent's dream child -- strong, intelligent and dependable. He's completely against smoking, drinking and drug use. He doesn't need a baby sitter."

The murder of Shepard hit Brad Matthew hard. The idea for a vigil came to him around 2 o'clock one morning while he was talking online and doing homework. The next day he called Samp, who had been an events coordinator in Minneapolis, for help. Samp outlined a plan for Brad Matthew, who went right to work.

Between classes, he called gay and lesbian support groups seeking speakers and spreading the word. He selected Memorial Park because it was built, he said, in honor of those who have died in battle. It seemed appropriate.

Brad Matthew wrote press releases, selected the music and outlined the program. He asked Brink to speak because he knew members of her youth group.

"I think he showed a lot of initiative," said Bruce Fuglei. "I was amazed he did it. But then I'm often amazed by him. He's always been a unique kid. He thinks of others before himself."

Samp said Brad Matthew's natural charm and charisma make people enjoy being around him. He knows who he is and what he wants out of life.

OF COURSE, we won't know a lot until the World-Herald story actually hits the street in a bit. But I think it might be safe to say that the sound you just heard was a nuclear bomb going off in the middle of Omaha politics.

3 Chords & the Truth: My name is Mudd

A show like this can mean only one thing: My name is gonna be Mudd.

C'mon, I reference freakin' Hee-Haw, for pity's sake! I even assume people will remember the show . . . and Junior Samples' hilarious bits selling used cars. That number again: BR-549.

And then on 3 Chords & the Truth, we go on to play stuff by the band that took its name from Samples' Hee-Haw bits -- BR5-49.

IT'S NOT flippin' brain surgery. I am an idiot. I have outed myself as a gol-darned redneck. I had relatives who lived in the country.

In trailers.

Some still do.

And, oh, what's the point . . . I mean, what the hell. The Big Show is gonna end up being the no-show. OK, you want some truth with your three chords?

I'll give you truth. Whether or not you can handle it is another question.

I drink Schlitz . . . PBR is kind of pricey.

There. I've gone and done it now. My credibility is toast. I don't care.

So, if you care about as damn little as I do, give 3 Chords & the Truth a listen this week. It's the Big Show. Be there. Aloha.

HEY, Y'ALL! Watch thi. . . .

When evil meets ignorance

For a killer time, call 723-1400.

That's the way it is in little Warren, Pa., where someone following in the spiritual footsteps of John Wilkes Booth, Charles J. Guiteau, Leon Frank Czolgosz and Lee Harvey Oswald can connect with someone following in the intellectual footsteps of Forrest Gump. Who'd a thunk it?

Probably lots of people . . . but that's not important now.

OBVIOUSLY, 723-1400 is the number for Idiots 'R' Us -- and we all know what great fun the devil can have with a useful idiot. Like getting them to place a personal ad calling for the president's assassination.

Personal ad? You mean 723-1400 is the number for the local. . . .

Yep, the local newspaper. In Warren, I guess The Times Observer is where the village idiot lives, according to this ABC News report.

A classified ad which ran yesterday in a Pennsylvania newspaper -– which appears to call for the assassination for President Obama -– was pulled today.

The ad, which ran in the classified section of The Warren Times Observer, connects Mr. Obama, the first African-American president, with four previous presidents who have been assassinated and reads, “May Obama follow in the steps of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy!"

(snip)

Today, the newspaper issued an apology, calling it an “errant classified personal ad.”

“The ad representative didn't make the connection among the four other presidents mentioned and mistakenly allowed the ad to run,” the newspaper’s statement says. “The Times Observer apologizes for the oversight.”

THAT'S A COSTLY "disconnect." Technically, the northwest Pennsylvania newspaper -- depending upon whether the ad is judged to be a legitimate threat against the president -- could be an accessory to a felony.

Threatening "to take the life of, to kidnap, or to inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States, the President-elect, the Vice President or other officer next in the order of succession to the office of President of the United States, or the Vice President-elect" is a violation of the U.S. criminal code.

It's a good thing the paper's publisher came clean to the Keystone Progress blog . . . after calling the cops. Turn in a wingnut; save your own butt.

Keystone Progress called the Times-Observer for comment and got a return call from John T. Elchert, the paper’s publisher. Mr. Elchert was extremely apologetic and wanted to make it clear that the ad did not reflect the paper’s policy.

“It is unfortunate that it made it to press,” said Elchert. “The person who took the ad didn’t recognize the significance of the names. We cancelled the ad and turned the information over to the authorities.”

Mr. Elchert said that he contacted the local police who were forwarding the information to federal authorities.

THERE'S SOMETHING ELSE Elchert needs to do, though.

Let's assume it's true that "the person who took the ad" really didn't grasp what the thing was getting at. It's disturbing, but probable, that someone could be so mind-numbingly dumb and still get a job somewhere.

And that's what the publisher needs to rectify. Any employee who's ignorant enough to get you in this much trouble (and get you this much bad publicity) shouldn't have been hired in the first place.

Elchert can't undo the damage resulting from what happened on both ends of 723-1400. But he sure as hell can undo the original mistake -- the one who inputted the ad instead of calling the authorities.

Father Cutié and the downsized deity

You have your dissent, and then you have your dissent. In the Episcopal Church, one of these things is not like the other.

If you're a Catholic priest who can't stick to his vows and gets him a woman -- c'mon in, the water's fine! And if you're an Episcopal priest who ditches his wife to get him a boyfriend, you just may be bishop material.

But if you're an Episcopal priest or bishop who decides the demands of a jealous God and the truth claims of historical Christianity supercede the popular notion of one's genitalia as a free-fire zone . . . you're just s*** out of luck, Bunky!

THAT'S AS GOOD an explanation as any for why a publicity-whoring Catholic scandalmonger gets everything but a 21-Trojan salute from the local Episcopal diocese when he switches teams. After all, in the Catholic Church, "Father Oprah" couldn't keep his girlfriend and his priesthood, too.

Or his TV show . . . or a platform to continue as a bestselling author . . . or, basically, any reason for the rest of us to pay attention when he yells, "Hey! Look at me!" From The Associated Press:

A popular Miami priest and media personality known as "Father Oprah" has left the Catholic Church to become an Anglican after he was photographed cavorting on the beach with his girlfriend.

The Rev. Alberto Cutié was removed from his Miami Beach church after photos of him kissing and embracing a woman appeared in the pages of a Spanish-language magazine earlier this month.

He was received into the Episcopal Church, the U.S. branch of the Anglican Communion, in a ceremony Thursday at Trinity Cathedral and may later announce he will marry his girlfriend, which is allowed in that denomination. He must complete other requirements before serving as an Episcopal priest.

(snip)

The Cuban-American priest was born in Puerto Rico and previously hosted shows on the Spanish-language channel Telemundo. He is also a syndicated Spanish-language columnist and author of the book "Real Life, Real Love: 7 Paths to a Strong, Lasting Relationship."

He headed the archdiocese's Radio Paz and Radio Peace broadcasts, heard throughout the Americas and in Spain, and earned the nickname "Father Oprah" — as in talk show host Oprah Winfrey — for his relationship advice.

Earlier this month, Cutié told CBS he has been romantically involved with the woman in the photos for about two years after being friends for much longer.

BUT OBJECT TO THE Episcopal Church's Cult of the Eternal Orgasm, and that just makes you a heretic -- like the clergy who fled to some awful Anglican archdiocese somewhere over the rainbow, where some horrid little archbishop lacks the tolerance of your average Seattle priest . . . who also happens to be a Muslim.

Again, from the AP, whose reporters must be amused, if not confused, by now:

National leaders of the Episcopal Church have ousted 61 clergy who aligned with a former bishop in California when he broke with the national church in a dispute over the Bible and homosexuality.

Former Bishop John-David Schofield led his congregation in San Joaquin to become the first full diocese to secede from the U.S. denomination in 2007. Four years earlier, Episcopalians consecrated their first openly gay bishop, setting off a wide-ranging debate within the church and upsetting conservative congregations.

Schofield ultimately was removed as head of the diocese and barred from performing any religious rites. He maintains he is an Anglican bishop under the worldwide church.

Episcopal leaders said Wednesday they were deposing all clergy who severed their ties and joined Schofield in affiliating with an Anglican archdiocese in Argentina.

Jerry Lamb, the new Episcopal Bishop of San Joaquin, called the decision to oust the clergy "heartbreaking."

"But, the fact is, they chose to abandon their relationship with the Episcopal Church," he said.

ALLAH KNOWS why they'd want to abandon the Episcopal Church. It's not just anywhere they could -- to recall the words of Flannery O'Connor -- serve a God less than themselves.

Facebook, you ignorant slut!

I'm told the average IQ in this country is 100.

Seems rather on the high side to me. Then again, I've just been on Facebook.

If you hang out enough on the Internet, it's pretty easy to find lots of reasons to fear for one's country. For me, this is one of those moments. Let me explain.

OUT THERE on the Interwebs somewhere, an Omaha web-design firm, What Cheer, has placed a simple-enough website called I Live in Omaha. The sole function of the site is to have Omahans fill in the blank of an innocuous-enough statement -- "I live in Omaha because. . . ."

Nice idea. Nice way for all of us to get in touch with some of the things we love about this place we call home.

At least in theory, that is.

The problem is the medium . . . and the shortcomings of (for lack of a better term) human "intelligence." And when you combine all that with original sin and this country's toxic political culture, it's "Katie, bar the door."

LOOK WHAT HAPPENED when one of the folks at What Cheer said "I live in Omaha because we are a blue dot in a red state." From the comments:

**** ******* at 10:04am May 27
f***ing liberals

*** ******** at 10:06am May 27
f***ing conservatives.

*** ***** at 10:08am May 27
f***ing dumbasses!

***** ***** at 10:09am May 27
Thank the universe for that!!

**** ******* at 10:10am May 27
haha this s*** is stupid

****** ******* at 10:11am May 27
WTF!?

***** ***** at 10:12am May 27
very.

*** ******** at 10:34am May 27
peace love and pot?

******** ************ at 10:37am May 27
Peace. Love. And pot.

******** ********** at 10:43am May 27
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. oh and don't forget the stds.

**** ****** at 10:48am May 27
Oh the STD's. Lol, for the fear you might lose your genitalia if you sleep with anyone from Omaha. xD and yes Peace. Love. Pot. Another sign you're in the big O

**** ******* at 11:31am May 27
with all the pot everyone is an obama humper, go smoke your pot with obama

******* **** at 11:41am May 27
(Name deleted) shut up. let me guess you voted for nadar

******* **** at 11:42am May 27
oh i forgot mccain had his d*** in your a** lmao

***** ****** at 12:06pm May 27
OMAN U SURE TOLD HIM LAWL

***** **** ******* at 12:25pm May 27
wow you guys are morons.

******** ****** at 12:38pm May 27
i live cuz i want ok

******** ******at 12:39pm May 27
i live here cuz i want to ok ppl i mssed yup on the first one

**** ******* at 1:02pm May 27
No (name deleted) you just had your whole fist up obama's a** you f***ing white liberal

******* **** at 1:14pm May 27
i didnt like obama fagtard thts how much you know

***** ***** at 1:15pm May 27
Boy, these kinds of comments sure make Omaha seem attractive. Shut up and grow up.

******* **** at 1:16pm May 27
hey f*** you lady.

***** ***** at 1:17pm May 27
Yea, real smart reply

******* **** at 1:19pm May 27
ok im sure your quite the genuis type huh? (name deleted)

***** ***** at 1:21pm May 27
wow. real mature. glad we live in a city where people can be adults.

******* **** at 1:23pm May 27
wow why do you really care. its not like you know me so dont assume.

******** ***** at 1:29pm May 27
OK children, back to go your corners

******* **** at 1:32pm May 27
lmao

IF I DIDN'T THINK most other cities had an even greater percentage of barbarian morons than Omaha, I'd be out of here tomorrow after reading that. And that's what we're dealing with as a culture -- we do not await an assault by the barbarian hordes; we, instead, are the barbarian hordes.

And we can't write, punctuate, spell or go more than two combox posts without saying something vulgar.

Unfortunately, the Internet -- a development that has such potential for good -- has become something akin to Miracle-Gro for the "id." This, I suspect, is because computers lack the capacity to hit their users upside the head with a two-by-four.

Increasingly, "society" has come to lack such a capacity as well. And that's why freedom's just another word for @#$%! #&*+@ !$%&* $%**! @#!&$%!

UPDATE: After one of the guiltier participants in this now-deleted Facebook thread, realized future employers and family members can use this thing called Google to look up all the stupid things he's done on the Internet, he left a comment asking me to delete the post.

Sorry, but I don't delete posts.

But I did go to a lot of trouble to extend an instance of radical mercy to this individual (and all the others who likewise covered themselves in ignominy) by deleting the names from the account of the Facebook comments.

This is your one free shot at getting a clue, kid. Don't screw it up.

Find your summer place

Percy Faith and the orchestra can help you get into that sweet summer spot.

Here, they do just that in a 1960 television appearance with the smash hit, "Theme From a Summer Place." It's kind of difficult to listen to this and not smile, innit?

3 Chords & the Truth: It's summer!

This week, 3 Chords & the Truth sounds like summer.

There's a good reason for that -- it's summer (at least unofficially), and we're ready to bust out and celebrate summertime, summertime sum-sum-summertime.

So, given all that, this episode of the Big Show might be a good one to load onto the iPod and take to the pool. Or maybe you could plug it into a boom box and kick it "old school" at the campsite or at a picnic.

ALL YOUR NEIGHBORS will want to know what the cool show is on the radio. Except it's not the radio exactly. It's better than the radio . . . it's freeform, and HAL 9000 at MegaCorp Broadcasting don't know nothin' 'bout no freeform programming.

Really . . . does HAL 9000 know who Mose Allison is, even? Ella Fitzgerald? Dale Hawkins? Matthew Sweet? BillyBraggWarParliamentMarshallCrenshawDanleers ZacharyRichard?

We do. We play 'em all this week.

And we're having more fun than is legal in 27 states.

OK, here's our guarantee for this week's episode of 3 Chords & the Truth: If we don't blow your mind outright, we'll at least expand it. And if you don't like it, we'll give you your money back.

OF COURSE, the Big Show is free, but that's not important now. The important thing is it's summertime, and we're livin' large. It's the only way to go.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Good enough for government work

And the final score in the Great Plate Debate this week is Old-School Newspaper Legwork 27, Nebraska's Design Community 0.

That's because it wasn't "the design community" or its arrested-development behavior, in the wake of a faulty contest to choose ugly license plates, that ultimately saved Nebraskans from six years of hideous tin on their bumpers. Instead, it was something as simple as the unhip "old media" asking the right questions at the right time and holding state officials up to public scrutiny.

BASICALLY, somebody had to be the "grown-up" here, and the Omaha World-Herald stepped into the void. This was the result:

State officials said Friday that the original selection was based on a public Internet vote that, a new review shows, had been skewed by a web site's prank.

The review of the voting results was prompted by a request from The World-Herald for the raw data to see if the humor web site had succeeded in hijacking the vote.

Thursday night, Beverly Neth, the state's motor vehicles director, said the voting patterns raised "some real questions and real concern."

At a press conference Friday, Neth said: "I now have new evidence that shows it is clear that the site's malicious intent was realized. I am taking responsibility for this situation, and I am here today to make this right."

State officials said the state's webmaster, Nebraska Interactive, was able to pinpoint the votes that came through CollegeHumor.com and Neth disqualified those votes.

The humor web site encouraged people to vote for what it called the most boring design. That design, which was black, white and red with the Nebraska.gov Web address, was announced by Gov. Dave Heineman as the winner Tuesday.

In the face of new information, administration officials backed off previous statements that the votes linking off the CollegeHumor.com site were "spread evenly'' among the four plate options, thus rendering the prank moot.

That information had come from an employee of Nebraska Interactive, the private company that manages Nebraska.gov, the state Web site, Neth said.

IN THE END, the state's press and the state's executive branch behaved like actual adults to rectify an increasingly embarrassing situation. Credit goes to Heineman and Neth for admitting the vote was a mess and promptly fixing it, despite the embarrassment that had to involve.

In this case, it seems "government work" ended up being good enough . . . considering. If I were Heineman, though, there'd be a new Nebraska.gov webmaster tout de suite.

Unfortunately, you can't say much for the state's "design community," which launched some of the earliest and loudest complaints about the prospective 2011 Nebraska plates but, when the going got rough, picked up its MacBook and went home.

Because, as always, bull**** walks.