Meanwhile, in the U.K. . . .

Hours after John Lennon's murder in New York, a shocked Great Britain sat down to watch this memorial on BBC 1's Nationwide program.

Roll the videotape. . . .

A terrible day in the life

I always heard these things in my bedroom in Baton Rouge -- news of shocking deaths in the dark of the night.

In 1978, I was in high school, up late and listening to the radio when I heard the pope was dead. A month and a half later, I was up late working on homework and listening to the radio -- WFMF -- when I heard a report that the pope was dead. I thought somebody had screwed up and put on an old newscast.

In 1980, I was a sophomore in college. The night of Dec. 8, I was up cramming for finals, listening to the radio. The DJ came on with the shocking bulletin -- John Lennon was dead, shot outside his apartment building in New York. He read the news today . . . oh boy.

Oh, God, no.

Please, God, no.

The death of the pope was big (as was the death of the other pope), but I wasn't Catholic then. The murder of John Lennon was shattering.

The pope was an old man in Rome. He was the vicar of Christ, but he was a distant one back then -- a guy you read about in the papers, or perhaps saw on the TV news once in a while.

John Lennon . . . the Beatles . . . they had been a daily presence in my life -- a pervasive part of the culture in which I had marinated since the age of 3. John, Paul, George and Ringo were the soundtrack of my earthly existence.


IN 1964, my Aunt Sybil and Uncle Jimmy gave me a copy of Meet the Beatles. I had me some Beatles singles, too.

In 1966, John told an interviewer the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ, which arguably was true. Truth, however, is no defense against public indignation when veracity meets unpopularity -- people like funhouse-mirror images of themselves a lot better when everybody knows the mirror is all screwy and not him.

Then, John Lennon suddenly was a communist or something, and Mama busted up all my Beatles records. That's how we showed our esteem for the second person of the Holy Trinity back then, as opposed to going to church.


WHEN I was old enough to think for myself -- and to buy my own damned record albums -- the Beatles were back. Big time.

John was always the challenging Beatle. The one most likely to piss you off -- and to make you think. I rather like how he'd sometimes mess with your head, and it was funniest when people didn't get how funny it all was.

Like "Imagine." It's funny to see religious Republicans enthusiastically singing along with "Imagine," a song Lennon once described as "virtually the Communist Manifesto." (Well, OK. Not every Republican.)

We didn't always agree with this presence in our lives -- hell, we didn't always understand this musical fixture of ours -- but we always had to give him credit for honesty, just like we always had to give him credit for amazing songs. We couldn't not give him his due for the music of of our lives.

And now, Dec. 8, 1980, at about 10 o'clock at night. . . .

Suddenly, it was like the soundtrack of my life had been left sitting in the rear window of my '76 Vega. It had warped. It didn't sound right.

A constant presence wasn't, not anymore.

I heard the news 30 years ago today. Oh boy, nothing has been the same since. And it hurts.

Still, it hurts.

Your Daily '80s: Ain't dere no more

March 17, 1980. Broadcasting magazine. The Mutual Broadcasting System -- "The World's Largest Network" -- heralds its affiliation with 1050 WHN, New York City's only country station.

July 1, 1987. WHN drops country music, as well as its vintage call letters, to become sports-talk WFAN. In 1988, WFAN would move to 660 on the New York dial, ending the historic tenure of WNBC.

Aug. 31, 1998. Mutual's now-owners, Westwood One, shuts down the Mutual newsroom in Arlington, Va., merging its operations into that of its affiliated CBS Radio.

April 18, 1999. The last newscast under the Mutual name is aired.

May 7, 2002. New York's last country-music radio station, Y-107, changes format. New York has been without a country station since.

Sic transit gloria radio. Bee doop.

When TV was but a punk kid of 10

In 1949, this was the NBC Television Network. It stretched from New York to St. Louis, all hooked up to the coaxial cable, as ably explained that year by Howdy Doody, Buffalo Bob Smith and Clarabell the Clown.

If your city wasn't on the hookup, then your local network affiliate (assuming you had a TV station at all) got its national programming, what there was of it, via kinescopes -- 16-millimeter film recordings of a TV monitor at the New York studios. The hinterlands got network shows when they got them.

And videotape still was the better part of a decade in the future.

What you see here -- the state of the art four years after the end of World War II -- features less capability and lower quality than a 4G-enabled smart phone today. And it was miraculous.

As primitive as it seems today, it would revolutionize an entire society in the years following 1949.


THOUGH TELEVISION still was very much in its infancy in April 1949, NBC was in a mood to celebrate how far the medium had come since the advent of regular American broadcasts 10 years earlier in New York.

Through the New York facilities of WNBT (now WNBC), here we have a kinescope of TV's first anniversary gala. NBC was celebrating a decade of television, and the network was throwing a party.

Kind of an austere party by today's standards, but a wingding nevertheless.


IN THIS CASE, the folks at WNBT were thanking their lucky stars for now-forgotten singing stars, because not only was TV history in short supply in 1949, but also reliable ways of archiving old programs. That tends to make retrospectives problematic.

Let's just say I hope you enjoy old kinescopes of fighter planes taking off from the deck of an aircraft carrier. That was a really big deal back then -- it wasn't the content; it was that the TV people could broadcast from an underway naval vessel at all.


IT'S TIME to go, now. And, of course, that would be Bulova Watch Time.

Your Daily '80s: The day the music died

May 10, 1982. Noon.

WABC -- Musicradio 77 in New York and one of the biggest Top-40 radio stations ever -- became Talkradio 77. Decades on, radio fans refer to that day as "The day the music died."

At 12:01 p.m., May 10, 1982, there was only one Top-40 AM station standing in New York, 66 WNBC. Top-40 held on there for a time, but then WNBC evolved into more of a talk station with bits of music here and there.

And then, in 1988. . . .


After 66 years on the air, WNBC was no more.

America answers the call

I was starting to think that Great Britain had locked up all the good political parties.

So imagine my delight to see that, in last night's New York gubernatorial debate, the only candidate who made any sense whatsoever was Jimmy McMillan of The Rent Is 2 Damn High Party.

Not only that, if you go to the party's website, you'll be greeted by the most danceable campaign theme song ever. A stone-cold jam.

From what little I could tell from the above video, The Rent Is 2 Damn High Party is the most entertaining thing to hit Western politics since this:


That's right, the rent is too DAMN high. Especially on landless peasants.


See, I told you.

Only on Wall Street

This.


And this.


Got the attention of this, which cranked out a metro-blog posting that went something like this:

There are few socially acceptable reasons to speak to strangers on New York City’s subways during the morning commute. Almost none, in fact. But that doesn’t stop Solomon Lederer.

His speech to a crowded B-train car could almost be mistaken for the interruptions already familiar to transit riders. “I just want to say something for like 30 seconds,” he begins, in the style of panhandlers, proselytizers and the sellers of dubiously charitable candy bars. But Lederer’s attire — ubiquitous corporate casual, with a flyer-laden satchel he refers to as his “purse” — signals that the 29-year-old Morgan Stanley software developer might be after something different.

“I have this idea,” Lederer continues, “that we can do some kind of exchange or networking on the subway so that we can get more of what we want and possibly give more of what we can give.” He then hands out the flyers to make his offer plain: Hi! I have an idea to make our commute more interesting and productive, but need some feedback and help with the details.

This unusual approach is part of Lederer’s effort to take the ethos of social networking offline — to “friend” his fellow subway riders. It’s a challenge to the sullen isolation of the commute, giving everyone the chance to join his impromptu circle of altruistic exchange.

“I have this sense that on the subway, there’s more we can do to interact with people,” he explains.

Lederer’s experiment started last month, when he invited passengers on the F line to contact him with advice and ideas. The flyers, which include his email address, landed Lederer lunch with the chief communications officer of a holding company, a date and a solicitation to clean a woman’s soiled guinea pig cages.

THAT, IN TURN, got the attention of this:


AND THAT last week led to this:

Less than a week after the story appeared, Lederer, a software developer, was fired by Morgan Stanley. He said his participation in the story led to his termination.

A Morgan Stanley spokeswoman said that Lederer was not fired for talking to a reporter, adding that it is not company policy to disclose reasons for termination.

Morgan Stanley’s employee code of conduct bars workers from representing themselves in a media outlet as an employee without prior permission, but it’s not necessarily a fireable offense, according to a source familiar with the policy. Other companies have similar policies, though some are stricter than others.

Lederer, who has worked with the company since late April, said he did not represent himself as a Morgan Stanley employee when addressing subway passengers. He said he was not aware of any prior issues with his job performance.

“I was trying to do a good thing and it backfired,” he said.

According to Lederer, a company director sent him a text message shortly after the story appeared last Friday and asked to meet. Lederer said he was told that he “exhibited poor judgment,” but he wasn’t fired that day. He said he believed the matter was closed, until Wednesday afternoon, when he was dismissed.

I DON'T KNOW whether it's more comforting or disturbing to know that the folks at Gordon Gekko's block party treat their worker ants just like they do the rest of us.

And I thought I had all the reason I needed to hate Wall Street. Yet another complete failure of imagination on my part.


HAT TIP: The Gothamist.

Crazy loves company

Move over, David Duke.

Company's coming . . . from way up yonder in New York state.

And now the Gret Stet of Louisiana -- infamous for almost electing a neo-Nazi nut two decades ago -- can muster enough people for some kind of crazy-politician 12-step meeting.

After which, of course, the Bubbas from Louisiana and the angry white suburban people from New York will go to a Nazi biker bar to solve the problem of the Black Menace. Or the Mexican menace.

Whatever.

HERE ARE the details from The New York Times on how -- if there is a God -- things are looking a little brighter for the Obama Administration tonight, what with all the tea-party victories in all those Republican primaries. (It's not that I'm thrilled with Barack Obama, it's just that the alternative is soooooo much worse.)

Carl P. Paladino, a wealthy Buffalo businessman and political neophyte, won a stunning victory over his rival, former Representative Rick A. Lazio, in New York’s Republican gubernatorial primary on Tuesday night.

The victory for Mr. Paladino, whose agitating campaign strategy and attacks against Albany earned him a late surge in the polls, marked the second major triumph on Tuesday night for the Tea Party movement, which backed the businessman against Mr. Lazio, a dyed-in-the-wool Republican mainstay.

The result was a potentially destabilizing blow for New York Republicans. It put at the top of the party’s ticket a volatile newcomer who has forwarded e-mails to friends containing racist jokes and pornographic images, espoused turning prisons into dormitories where welfare recipients could be given classes on hygiene, and defended an ally’s comparison of the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, who is Jewish, to “an Antichrist or a Hitler.”

Bomb-throwers and pyros for America

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Everybody knows the game our self-proclaimed "patriots" are playing with "Obama's a Muslim" and the self-righteous faux outrage over "the Ground Zero terror mosque."

Everybody except, of course, the willing dupes who comprise the intended target of the GOP brass, Glenn Beck, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and all those who define themselves through their rage.

It's all about hate; it's all about fear; it's all about paranoia. It also is all about politics and the upcoming midterm elections.

What it's also about is playing with fire. It's about ginning up a mob to demand that the federal government . . . New York city government . . . hell, anybody tear down the whole edifice of our constitutional rule in the name of saving the republic from The Other.

The cynical right wants us all to become a lynch mob to save ourselves from terrorism, which is related -- somehow -- to America's first black, socialist, Nazi Muslim president. Or something like that.

It's not exactly a credit to our cultural and democratic bona fides that the vast majority of Americans fail to see the deep and toxic irony of this.

INSTEAD, every time I log on to Facebook, I am confronted with the sidebar list of how many family members, friends and old classmates "like" Glenn Beck.

Like Glenn Beck, like his message. Unfortunately, Beck's message is both bats*** crazy and racially incendiary.

As you know, I grew up in the Deep South -- south Louisiana to be exact. I know what that was all about 40 and 50 years ago, and what it is still too much about now.

I can't judge anybody's heart today -- especially folks I haven't seen in years, decades even -- but I know how a lot of them were raised. I know how I was raised.

I know what was in the cultural air we breathed. How we never gave our assumptions, or those of the society around us, a second thought as we took spiritual Corexit into our hearts and minds. I know that such enculturation can be nearly inexorable, because when you're raised that way from birth, the poison gets into that space between visceral reaction and engagement of the conscience and the mind.

SCRATCH THE SURFACE of my home state, Louisiana, and you'll quickly get to a very bad place. Do the same in any part of America, and you're likely to find varying states of the same collective id.

They say the devil's greatest trick is to convince us he doesn't exist. He just hides in our crooked hearts as our overconfidence congratulates itself on what good, moral, patriotic and God-fearing works of art we have become.

Yet the lynch mob sings "Onward Christian Soldiers" as "the better angels of our nature" twist in the wind, strange fruit of a demagogue's tree.

Feds to City: Drop Dead (of fear)

Just to refresh your memory from the other day

I am speechless, apart from the word "unconscionable," so I'll just excerpt this story from WCBS television in New York:

CBS 2 HD has discovered the feds will have plenty to question.

Federal officials knew that sending two fighter jets and Air Force One to buzz ground zero and Lady Liberty might set off nightmarish fears of a 9/11 replay, but they still ordered the photo-op kept secret from the public.

In a memo obtained by CBS 2 HD the Federal Aviation Administration's James Johnston said the agency was aware of "the possibility of public concern regarding DOD (Department of Defense) aircraft flying at low altitudes" in an around New York City. But they demanded total secrecy from the NYPD, the Secret Service, the FBI and even the mayor's office and threatened federal sanctions if the secret got out.

ARE THERE SOME Ford Administration holdovers still at the Pentagon and the FAA?

Unconscionable.

How to trigger an entire city's PTSD

Unbelievable. Just unbelievable.

We're from the government . . .

And we're here to scare the holy living s*** out of you.

See, the above picture shows an F-16 seemingly chasing a Boeing 747 from the fleet of Air Force One backups this morning. The jumbo jet is flying low -- really low -- over Manhattan.

But not so low you can easily tell it's a presidential plane.

New Yorkers seeing this -- or in some cases seeing this coming straight at their skyscraper offices -- did the entirely natural and logical thing, given this bit of recent New York history:

They panicked.

They streamed out of their high-rise offices and into the streets.

They ran for their lives.

And one woman grabbed her camcorder to document what she was sure must be a hijacked airliner ready to bring carnage to her city once again this decade.


HERE'S an account of the incident from The New York Times:

An Air Force One lookalike, the backup plane for the one regularly used by the president, flew low over parts of New York and New Jersey on Monday morning, accompanied by two F-16 fighters, so Air Force photographers could take pictures high above the New York harbor.

But the exercise — conducted without any notification to the public — caused momentary panic in some quarters and led to the evacuation of several buildings in Lower Manhattan and Jersey City. By the afternoon, the situation had turned into a political fuse box, with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg saying that he was “furious” that he had not been told in advance about the flyover and the White House facing questions about it. In unusually harsh language, the mayor criticized the Defense Department for conducting the exercise and the Federal Aviation Administration for being secretive about it.

The flyover, which began around 10 a.m., resulted in widespread confusion and a flood of calls to emergency hot lines. Perplexed officials at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and other authorities were inundated with calls from anxious ferry passengers, office workers and residents.

The mayor said the Police Department and someone in his administration – he did not say who – received an e-mail from the Federal Aviation Administration late on Thursday, informing them that there would be “a fly-by for a photo-op, as they described it.”

However, Mr. Bloomberg said he was not apprised of the flyover until his BlackBerry started buzzing this morning with messages from people asking if he knew what was going on. He characterized it as a breakdown in communication that “will never happen again.”

“First thing is, I’m annoyed – furious is a better word – that I wasn’t told,” he said at a City Hall news conference held to discuss the swine flu cluster in Queens.

Jim Peters, an F.A.A. spokesman, said “the photo op was approved and coordinated with everyone.” Notification was made in advance to the mayor’s office, “including its 911 and 311 operation centers,” the New York City Police Department, the New Jersey State Police, the United States Park Police and other agencies, he said.

The Police Department confirmed that it had been notified about the event but said it had been barred from alerting the public. “The flight of a VC-25 aircraft and F-16 fighters this morning was authorized by the F.A.A. for the vicinity of the Statue of Liberty with directives to local authorities not to disclose information about it but to direct any inquiries to the F.A.A. Air Traffic Security Coordinator,” the Police Department said in a statement.

The mayor criticized the secrecy around the flyover. The e-mail notification “did have the normal language of saying this is sensitive information, should be distributed on a need-to-know basis, that they did not plan to have any publicity about it, which I think is ridiculous and just poor judgment,” Mr. Bloomberg said.

I WONDER whether the Air Force photographers had long-enough lenses to catch a few shots of panicked New Yorkers having coronaries?

Can you imagine? The Air Force has this brilliant idea to fly a jumbo jet low over New York and buzz several skyscrapers and the Statue of Liberty. They coordinate with the FAA, which apparently is OK with the idea.

Then the FAA notifies an office at City Hall, but orders the New York bureaucrats not to tell anyone.

Your government at work, folks.

When I consider all the gathering storms out there that only the federal government is big enough to deal with, the words that come to mind are "Be afraid. Be very afraid."

OF COURSE one might wish to take a more proactive stance. As in, "Put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye."

Do it now, before you're way too woozy from the swine flu.

It's not the Brooklyn Bridge but, hey. . . .

The New York Daily News didn't sell some petrorube the Brooklyn Bridge. But the tabloid's reporters and editors did something almost as good -- they stole the Empire State Building.

COME TO FIND OUT, it wasn't that tough. After all, it was paper-pushing bureaucrats they were dealing with. The only challenge there would be accomplishing something legit.

The News swiped the 102-story Art Deco skyscraper by drawing up a batch of bogus documents, making a fake notary stamp and filing paperwork with the city to transfer the deed to the property.

Some of the information was laughable: Original "King Kong" star Fay Wray is listed as a witness and the notary shared a name with bank robber Willie Sutton.

The massive ripoff illustrates a gaping loophole in the city's system for recording deeds, mortgages and other transactions.

The loophole: The system - run by the office of the city register - doesn't require clerks to verify the information.

Less than 90 minutes after the bogus documents were submitted on Monday, the agency rubber-stamped the transfer from Empire State Land Associates to Nelots Properties LLC. Nelots is "stolen" spelled backward. (The News returned the property Tuesday.)

"Crooks go where the money is. That's why Willie Sutton robbed banks, and this is the new bank robbery," said Brooklyn Assistant District Attorney Richard Farrell, who is prosecuting several deed fraud cases.

Of course, stealing the Empire State Building wouldn't go unnoticed for long, but it shows how easy it is for con artists to swipe more modest buildings right out from under their owners. Armed with a fraudulent deed, they can take out big mortgages and disappear, leaving a mess for property owners, banks and bureaucrats.

GEE, MAYBE HARD TIMES have brought back "undercover" journalism, which had fallen into disrepute among a generation of journalists -- flush with the gravitas that goes with bringing down a president and all -- who had come to take themselves waaaaaaay too seriously.

Fittingly enough, it was a tabloid like the Daily News, the Chicago Sun-Times, that pulled off the last grand "undercover" investigative series. It opened a bar and named it the Mirage. Get it?

I think you know the purpose:

The Mirage was the event that changed everything. The Sun-Times "opened a tavern, staffed it with reporters and photographers, and waited for the city inspectors to come and shake them down. They sardonically called the bar the Mirage, and it drew petty crooks like drought victims to a vision of water."

Series of this magnitude -- the Mirage was 25 days of stories that began on January 8, 1978, preceded by four months in late 1977 of running the bar and many more months of planning -- aren't measured by the good they do. They succeed if they collect the biggest prizes. Mirage was a Pulitzer finalist, but Ben Bradlee of the Washington Post and Eugene Patterson of the St. Petersburg Times argued for its defeat. "The Pulitzer Prize Board decided not to award the Sun-Times the prize because the series was based on deception," Fuller related. "The board concluded that truth-telling enterprises should not engage in such tactics."

This judgment reflected the uneasiness seeping into a business that, after the Pentagon Papers and Watergate, was taking itself especially seriously. "We would not allow reporters to misrepresent themselves in any way, and I don't think we would be the hidden owners of anything," Bradlee told me at the time. Patterson said, "Some felt the Mirage story could have been reported in another way," and he compared the Sun-Times to an undercover policewoman enticing a john.

The Mirage's champion when the Pulitzer board met had been Clayton Kirkpatrick, then the editor of the Tribune. Kirkpatrick argued not merely for the opposition's big story but for a way of journalistic life in Chicago. It was his own paper, in fact, that won three Pulitzers earlier in the 70s for undercover projects. The Sun-Times didn't get into that business until Pam Zekman came over from the Tribune in 1975, bringing the tavern idea with her. The Tribune had said no to it for liability reasons -- the editors imagined the horrible spot they'd be in if someone staggered drunk out of their bar, climbed into his car, and drove into a school bus. Sun-Times editor Jim Hoge said yes.

IT'S MY firm conviction that God not only "don't like ugly," He also don't like snooty. Three years after Ben Bradlee helped to scuttle a Pulitzer for the Sun Times' "Mirage" series, his Washington Post had to give back its Pulitzer.

Perhaps "Jimmy's World" rings a bell. How about Janet Cooke?

Talk about your series "based on deception". . . .

Trashing the boss is an Idiot's Delight

I'm so happy I didn't make that pledge to one of my favorite radio stations.

Saturday evening, I'm out in the yard, slingblade and shovel in hand, turning a weedy plot into a big vegetable garden. Sitting a few feet away, on an old railroad tie, is a radio, tuned to my little AM transmitter that's pumping the Internet feed of WFUV -- the voice of Fordham University, "The Jesuit University of New York" -- into this weedy little expanse of Flyover Country.

I LIKE WFUV. It, over the years, has become the resting place of some of New York's most legendary FM jocks from the days when FM mattered to a music-loving world. Jocks who dictated how a nation listened to music at legendary stations like WNEW. Jocks like Dennis Elsas and Pete Fornatale, who were later cast off as Corporate America set about killing radio.

Even today, Elsas and Fornatale do some of the smartest music programming on the airwaves . . . or what's left of the airwaves, alas. Saturday, it was Fornatale's wonderful Mixed Bag Radio that kept me company as I turned the earth, by hand, like Nebraskans of old.

And as my back got in touch with every one of my 47 years.

Soon enough, 7 o'clock rolled around -- time for "New York's last freeform DJ," Vin Scelsa, with Idiot's Delight. Little did I know.

The following is verbatim from the archived program:

So we're in Studio V [Scelsa's home studio -- R21], and here at the beginning of the show tonight, I want to acknowledge and celebrate an important judicial decision that was handed down by the state supreme court in California this week -- it's about time. We've got another state now joining Massachusetts, having its highest court say that gay people just have -- have just as much right to marry as anybody else.

Gay people have equal rights in this country! Or at least in the state of California, and the state of Massachusetts. Yes!

We celebrate this -- it's the last bastion of . . . of old thinking that exists still in this country. You know, you read about like, uh, the history of interracial marriage in this country. There was a woman who died recently who, back in the 1950s, was forced to leave her home -- she and her husband. It was a black woman and a white man who grew up in a very interracial, mixed community in the state of Virginia, I believe it was.

And this was back in the 1950s. They got married and were forced to leave their state and told they couldn't come back, and we look at that and we go, "Man, that's absurd,' you know? It seems like the Dark Ages, not the 1950s, but in that sense, the '50s were the Dark Ages. And we still are in the Dark Ages when it comes to gay people and gay rights, and . . . and civil unions don't cut it. (chuckles.)

Civil unions is a compromise. Civil unions is appeasement, and we know how we all feel about appeasement.

Until gay men and women have equal rights in this country, there is a big, black cloud hanging over us all.

So, here at the beginning of the show today, we salute California with a little set of traveling music.

[Set of music about California, ending with Judy Garland singing "San Francisco," live at Carnegie Hall, 1961.]

I forgot about that little speech at the end. You can smoke or drink or get married, here in San Francisco or in California. No matter who you are, no matter what you are -- race, religion, gender no longer matter in San Francisco. And this opening set tonight is a celebration of that state supreme court decision that came down in California this week legalizing gay marriage.

Finally, equal rights. Let's hope it sticks.

The governor, Schwarzenegger, says that he will, umm, he will not support any move to battle this decision.

It's the writing on the wall, friends. It's the handwriting on the wall -- it's gonna happen, it's happening slowly . . . it's happening too slowly, but the same thing was true with, with umm, uhh, you know, the civil rights movement back in the '50s and '60's, it happened too slowly. The women's movement happened too slowly, but gradually changes are made, changes are made because the world is changing, people are changing.

Kids, and young generations now, just take it for granted that people love whoever they love. And, and if they want to make a commitment to the person they love, then they should be allowed to make a commitment just like anybody else. It's . . . it's taken for granted by young people. They're . . . they're much hipper and smarter and world, uhh . . . world wise than, uh, so many of their elders.

[Promos, station ID, comes back to list selections in the previous set, then in the middle of the back announce. . . .]

Do you think that most people who are against the idea of same-sex marriage, of gay marriage, have . . . just have never met a gay person? Is . . . is that it? Is that what it comes down to? That they've never met a gay person, that all they know about gay men and women is, uhh, you know the . . . the sort of stereotypes that they see on the TV and the movies?

And . . and in real life they've never . . . a lot of white people have never met a person of color. That's hard to believe here in New York, you know, 'cause we're such a . . . a multicultural city -- and in this whole area of the country. But when you go to other parts of the country, and you can, you know, go for a couple of days and never see anybody who doesn't look white. And that has a lot to do with, with fostering prejudices, you know?

If you . . . if you, if you only have your imagination and the fears that have been instilled -- you've got to be taught. South Pacific is back on the Broadway stage over at Lincoln Center, with that great song . . . 'You've got to be taught to hate and fear, it's got to be drummed in your dear little ear, you've got to be carefully taught.' And then if nothing ever comes along to, to, to shake those things that you were taught . . . to shake them up and make you think differently -- well, then you're not going to think differently.

Oh, don't get me started on this subject. I think I already am started on this subject. I feel adamant. And angry. Because I do know people who are in this situation, people who are discriminated against simply because they love somebody who a certain part of society says is unnatural, and illegal in the sense that, you know, you're not gonna get locked up or arrested or whatever, but you're not gonna have the same rights as the rest of us.

That's absurd! Absolutely absurd! (chuckles)

There's no logical reason for it except that people have been taught this, and they never learn anything different. Arrggh!

But in California this week, there was a victory! And . . . and, and every man and woman in America should celebrate it, not just . . . not just people who are gay. Not just people who are in same-sex relationships, but every man and woman. Because until . . . you know, it's the old cliche: Until we're all free, then, none of us is free. Until we all have the same rights in this country, then none of us has those rights. It's as simple as that.

[Returns to announcing songs in the previous set.]

WELL, IT'S GOOD TO KNOW exactly how big an idiot am I. Exactly what a mean oppressor am I. How narrow-minded am I, as a resident of one of those bucolic hellholes lying outside New York City, where I probably haven't seen a Negro forev . . . never mind, there goes one now.

Likewise, I guess I need to inform a gay friend of mine that he must not be after all, being that I have known him for 20 years and still oppose same-sex marriage -- an opposition that, according to Scelsa, must be rooted in my complete ignorance of homosexuals.

Yea, verily I stand before thee as a hater, for I have been carefully taught. By the Catholic Church.

Well, slap mah mouf and call me Nellie Forbush.

Of course, Vin Scelsa is entitled to his opinion, no matter how ungrounded in natural law or human anthropology. On the other hand, Mr. Scelsa last weekend took a nice little chunk of his program to trash part of the mission statement, as it were, of his employer. You know, the Jesuits. A wholly owned subsidiary of the Catholic Church -- that bigoted bunch of haters who carefully taught the likes of lil' ol' me to hate the poofters, don't you know?

WHICH, TO BE SURE, isn't even true. Nowhere does the Church say to hate anyone. Nowhere does the Church say that same-sex attraction is even sinful.

What the Church does say is that marriage -- defined as the union of a man and a woman for many millennia now -- is "a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring." Same-sex unions not only never have met the "marriage" litmus test but, according to how marriage has been defined throughout all of human history, never can meet that standard.

What the Church also says is that sex outside of marriage is sinful, not to mention societally disruptive. Therefore, while homosexuality is a condition that is neither virtuous nor sinful, it is a disordered condition in regards to how intimate relationships were biologically and sociologically designed to operate. And, therefore, homosexual acts are sinful -- there is no way for them to occur in a morally licit context.

IT WILL BE INTERESTING to see how far gone the Jesuits are -- whether they've gone from mere doctrinal squishiness to out-and-out self-hatred with anti-Church proclivities. Really, are the Jebbies so far gone that they'll tolerate letting their employee use their facilities to trash a fundamental teaching of their Church, and then insinuate they're a bunch of mind-poisoning bigots?

I can't speak for the Jesuits, but let me ask you this: Would you let it slide if you invited someone into your home (or into your employ), only to have the wretched little troll take your money, eat your food, insult your religion and your moral values after having hijacked your PA system?

Me, I think you'd probably sock the sumbitch in the schnoz and throw his ass into the street. That's what I think.

But I guess I could be wrong " . . . because the world is changing, people are changing."

That damned (though lovely) Honor Blackman

Two stories. One governor. All about the same thing, and the lengths to which some politicians will go to get it . . . or make it an obligation-free entitlement via the charnel-house method.

What is it? Let's just say Agent 007 "had" the answer in Goldfinger.

Here's the latest breaking story, still unfolding as I type, from The New York Times:

Gov. Eliot Spitzer has been caught on a federal wiretap arranging to meet with a high-priced prostitute at a Washington hotel last month, according to a person briefed on the federal investigation.

The wiretap recording, made during an investigation of a prostitution ring called Emperors Club VIP, captured a man identified as Client 9 on a telephone call confirming plans to have a woman travel from New York to Washington, where he had reserved a room. The person briefed on the case identified Mr. Spitzer as Client 9.

The governor learned that he had been implicated in the prostitution probe when a federal official contacted his staff last Friday, according to the person briefed on the case.

The governor informed his top aides Sunday night and this morning of his involvement. He canceled his public events today and scheduled an announcement for this afternoon after inquiries from the Times.

The governor’s aides appeared shaken, and one of them began to weep as they waited for him to make his statement at his Manhattan office. Mr. Spitzer was seen leaving his Fifth Avenue apartment just before 3 p.m. with his wife of 21 years, Silda, heading to the news conference.

The man described as Client 9 in court papers arranged to meet with a prostitute who was part of the ring, Emperors Club VIP, on the night of Feb. 13. Mr. Spitzer traveled to Washington that evening, according to a person told of his travel arrangements.

The affidavit says that Client 9 met with the woman in hotel room 871 but does not identify the hotel. Mr. Spitzer stayed at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington on Feb. 13, according to a source who was told of his travel arrangements. Room 871 at the Mayflower Hotel that evening was registered under the another name.

(snip)

Mr. Spitzer gained national attention when he served as attorney general with his relentless pursuit of Wall Street wrongdoing. As attorney general, he also had prosecuted at least two prostitution rings as head of the state’s organized crime task force.

In one such case in 2004, Mr. Spitzer spoke with revulsion and anger after announcing the arrest of 16 people for operating a high-end prostitution ring out of Staten Island.

“”This was a sophisticated and lucrative operation with a multitiered management structure,” Mr. Spitzer said at the time. ”It was, however, nothing more than a prostitution ring.”

AND NOW, THE OLDER, less sexy story that's pretty much about exactly the same thing, as reported by Rochester's Catholic diocesean newspaper:

New York state's eight bishops -- including Rochester's Bishop Matthew H. Clark -- voiced in a joint March 10 statement their strong opposition to Gov. Eliot Spitzer's proposed Reproductive Health and Privacy Protection Act.

The bishops' statement describes the proposed legislation as "a radical proposal" that would elevate abortion to a fundamental right in New York state and maintain the state's reputation as the "abortion capital of the United States." The bishops are calling on all Catholics to let their legislators know they oppose this bill, which Spitzer introduced last spring. The bishops also plan to meet privately with Spitzer March 10 to discuss the proposal, as well as education tax credits and other critical issues facing the state.

The proposal, known as RHAPP, would establish the choice to terminate a pregnancy as a protected and fundamental right and ensure abortions are legal throughout all nine months of pregnancy, according to Jann Armantrout, the Diocese of Rochester's life-issues coordinator, who spoke about the proposal Feb. 27 at St. Mary Parish in Waterloo. It would allow post-viability abortions to be performed outside of hospitals and on an outpatient basis in clinics, It also would transfer the state's abortion-related laws from the criminal code into public-health law.

RHAPP would make abortion virtually immune from state regulation and reverse the current law requiring that only doctors may perform abortion. Instead, it would allow any health-care practitioner to perform the procedures, Armantrout said. It also would block the passage of an "Unborn Victims of Violence Act," meaning that those convicted of killing a pregnant woman and her unborn child could only be punished for one murder.

Last but not least, RHAPP would eliminate from current law conscience protections that allow doctors and hospitals to refuse to perform abortions; medical students to refuse to learn how to perform abortions; and Catholic agencies, hospitals and schools to refuse to provide insurance coverage for abortions, Armantrout said.

"The extremism of this proposal is couched in euphemisms like 'choice' and 'reproductive health care for women.' The words have become unmoored from their meaning; they cannot mask the fact that the bill attempts to legislate approval for a procedure that is always gravely wrong," the bishops said in their statement.

SEE, JAMES BOND exists only in literature and in the movies. Having your cake and bedding it, too, gets a lot more complicated -- and untidy -- in the real world.

Laws get broken. People get hurt. Babies get killed in the womb.

All because of, well . . . you know.