Showing posts with label Pope FM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pope FM. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Dear Diary: Of Irishmen and their car bombs


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.


This look back at my dysfunctional life at Pope FM requires a little stage setting.

In other words, it's all Josefina Loza's fault, what with her mentioning in the Omaha World-Herald that, indeed, there is such a drink as an "Irish Car Bomb," and that people,
you know . . . drink them.

This caused howls of protest from some members of the local Irish-American community, and a persistent mau-mauing campaign on the part of some local outfit, the Irish American Cultural Institute.


HERE'S PART of the story in today's World-Herald:
Today, when you're wearing your green, crawling through pubs and downing an Irish Car Bomb cocktail or two, here's something to keep in mind:

That drink will make some heads explode. And probably not yours.

The 31-year-old concoction made up of Guinness stout, Bailey's Irish Cream and Irish whiskey makes many traditional Irish-Americans crazy. They hate all it stands for: The name makes light of serious historical and current events, and the potent cocktail glorifies drinking on a holiday they say has somber significance.

St. Patrick's Day drinks described as Irish Car Bombs are “tasteless” and “culturally insensitive,” said Chuck Real of the Irish American Cultural Institute in Omaha. He was shocked that such a cocktail existed in Irish-American pubs. He also isn't happy that people make Irish Car Bomb cupcakes and cakes such as those featured on today's Living cover.

To Real, the name conjures up memories of unrest in Northern Ireland. Car bombs sometimes were the weapon of choice, and many believe that the Provisional Irish Republican Army was responsible. Bombings still occasionally happen Real cited three bomb threats in the past five years. They aren't funny, he said. They're lethal.

“St. Patrick's Day to the older generations and to those in Ireland has always been a day of obligation,” Real said.


(snip)

After last week's reference to the drink, Real received a handful of calls and e-mails from members of his group. Kathleen McEvoy became so upset and short of breath that she had to use her oxygen tank to finish her conversation, he said.

“Don't you know that this could hurt people's feelings,” McEvoy, 80, later told The World-Herald. “It makes it seem that all Irish people were terrorists.”

What if cocktails were called “The 9-11” or “Afghan bomber,” she asked. “How would people feel then?”
I'LL TELL YOU how I feel now. I feel like I've just waded through one of the biggest piles of bulls*** I've ever encountered, what with all these Irish eyes a-cryin'.

No, a comparable argument here would be that al-Qaida or the Taliban would be upset if we named a drink for their proudest accomplishment. So long as the drink were a Shirley Temple, they'd probably be elated.

Basically, here, local Irishmen are playing the victim card because their long-lost cousins back in Ulster became so notorious for being al-Qaida before al-Qaida was al-Qaida that some enterprising Connecticut barkeep, back in 1979, named a concoction of Guinness, Irish cream and Irish whiskey after the Irish Republican Army's marquee weapon.


Remind me to shed a tear as I play the world's smallest violin in honor of bruised Irish sensibilities.

ANYWAY, that's the inspiration for this latest installment from my, er . . . interesting radio past at Pope FM, a time and place that seems like an alternate universe far, far away.

You won't believe it, but I swear to God it's true. The names, etc., have been changed . . . to protect the guilty.




MONDAY, FEB. 24, 2003



Dear Diary,

About a month or so ago, our program director, "Manic" Don
Lawlor (note the last name), cold-cocked me by dumping a phone call on me to schedule an interview taping. The call was from Mike O'Malley, local contact for the Irish Northern Aid Committee, which was sponsoring a fund-raiser for the Sacred Heart Girls Primary School in North Belfast.

"What is it about that group?" I recall thinking at the time, "It rings a bell." Anyway, Father Seamus Boyle, Passionist pastor of the parish, was going to be in Kansas City to receive an award from the Ancient Order of Hibernians, and "the Irish Northern Aid Committee" was bringing him up here to raise money for his school, which you may remember was the focus of violent protests by Protestants, who were trying to keep the children from accessing the school through a Protestant neighborhood.

I smelled a rat somewhere, so I told the guy I'd tentatively pencil them in for today at 1 and refer the matter back to the program director.


So after I got off the phone, I did a Google search for the "Irish Northern Aid Committee" and came up with its more well-known moniker, Noraid. And various news items, etc., indicating that Noraid had been forced in the mid-'80s by the U.S. government to register as an American agent for the . . . IRA.


And that Noraid has been accused widely of funneling money and weapons directly to IRA terrorists. Etcetera, etcetera and so on and so on.

So, I dutifully printed all this stuff out, plus some background articles about the protests and told the program director, Manic Don, that Noraid stank to high heaven, was an IRA front, and that while Father Boyle and his school certainly were of interest, under no circumstances should there be an uncritical, PR puff-piece interview. I said that it might even be useful to include a Protestant churchman knowledgeable about Northern Ireland in the interview and turn it into a challenging dialog.


But under no circumstances, I said, should we be turned into an uncritical PR conduit for terrorist sympathizers and the ethnic and spiritual poison that breeds them.


Predictably, my idiot program director shoved all the cautionary material into a drawer and blew me off.

Fast forward to Friday. The Noraid flack shows up at the station unannounced and asks Manic Don whether the interview is still on. He says yes, and O'Malley, the Noraid flack, gives him a Noraid flier for the fundraising event, which Manic throws on my desk.


I come in to work a few minutes later, find this on my desk and very nearly blow a gasket. I write IRA on it in black magic marker and give it back to him, once again advising that we not allow IRA sympathizers uncritical PR on Pope FM, even though they've found a useful idiot to legitimize them in this beleaguered priest.


So, when I came into work today, I pretty much knew what I would have to do.

So, about 1:30, in comes the Noraid guy with Father Boyle in tow. I recognized him from TV and the Internet stories. Manic Don Lawlor and our development and public-relations director give them the nickel tour and go in to talk about the interview.


I hear Manic Don telling them that we "don't want to ruffle any feathers" and "don't want to get into politics."


So, after a while, Lawlor comes into my production room and starts setting up for the interview, trying to smooth things over with me by saying that they weren't going to get into politics but wanted to do the interview so as not to "insult the priest." He also said we might interview the Noraid guy to be polite, but that it "won't see the light of day." (Like I was about to believe this guy???)


I said the fact that Noraid was sponsoring the priest's visit couldn't be ignored, and asked what kind of "peace prize" was going to go to a priest who'd associated himself with reputed IRA gunrunners. I asked him whether the Hibernians would give Father a "peace prize" if he'd been protecting little Protestant girls from a Catholic mob, of which there were just as many in Ulster.


Finally, I told him that, in conscience, I could not and would not engineer for the interview, and that I already had enough to answer for before the Judgment Seat and didn't want to add that to the list. I also told him that, as a convert with Scots-Irish ancestors on my father's side by the name of McShane, IRA thugs probably had killed at least a few of my distant kin.


I then walked off, leaving Manic to engineer the interview (which would be conducted by our development guy) himself. So, I spent 30 or 45 minutes in the lobby talking to our contractor's foreman and our secretary, who seemed genuinely troubled when I told her the score. I added that if I were in Northern Ireland, I'd likely be dead meat if I crossed the Tiber (converted) in one direction or the other.


Later, Manic Don and our development guy complained to the GM about my refusal to engineer the interview. So the GM, Ken, tried to smooth things over and said the station might use the interview on our soon-to-be-resurrected talk show Living in Grace, but that they'd have one of our Irish diocesan priests on to talk about the situation in Northern Ireland.


I told him the same thing I'd told the program director, adding that as a convert, I thought I had a different and valuable take on the subject and that
, in the wake of 9/11, we should keep 10,000 miles away from any group that had any ties to terrorists past or present.

He then moved on to trying to allay some other concerns I'd had about our underwriting practices.


But then -- damn! -- he just had to go. So I caught him before he walked out the door and told him that by wanting to run that interview, we were in the political and moral quicksand now, and that any airing of that had to be as part of an honest, critical, hard-news look at the situation or I wasn't going to be having anything to do with that particular
Living in Grace, either.

He said he had to run, but that he'd "have a talk" with me about it.


I'll just bet.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Dear Diary: Quo vadis, Domine?

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.


TUESDAY, NOV. 12, 2002


Dear Diary,

The other week in youth group, a couple of Catholic-school girls (I think they were Catholic-school lobotomized) were expressing grave doubts about the Real Presence. The next thing I knew, I was tracing the prefigurement of the Paschal sacrifice -- and the logic of consuming that sacrifice in a meal -- from the Last Supper to John 6:56 and all the way through the Old Testament from the Passover back to Abraham, Isaac and the ram caught in the brush.

And then I told one of the girls, "Don't take my word for it. Look it up for yourself."

Funny thing is, I knew all that was in my brain already, but I never really systematically looked at the Eucharist past the prefigurement in the Passover. Never.

I think the message was meant for me more than the unbelieving teen-ager: "You're not leaving the Catholic Church. You damn well can't leave the church."

Still . . . the lunacy just doesn't let up. In the Catholic Church or at Pope FM -- where for the first time I'm starting to fear a catastrophic spiral into oblivion. And feel that, no matter how much I might like to see the SOB crash and burn, I have to find a way to gently steer Manic Don away from a self-immolation that could incinerate EVERYTHING and everyone.

THE PROBLEM at Pope FM is pride and delusions of grandeur -- that the only way to serve the Lord and evangelize, evangelize, evangelize the universe into becoming the "right" kind of Catholics is to become some sort of corporate, Papist media empire of the upper Midwest. Folks are getting big heads, and the medium is becoming the message.

Unfortunately, actually taking care of business and simply being present to suffering souls is so mundane. No, what we want is a kind of Hollywood Catholicism, where it's so much more important to look good than be good. The rub, however, is that you live in a radio Hooterville, the phone is at the top of a utility pole and the carpenter who built your new studios is a woman named Ralph.

And it's all starting to fall apart.

Somehow, I'm getting past some of my anger at the whole mess and starting to feel like I just can't walk away from the cross here. Kind of a personal "Quo vadis, Domine?" moment.

OH, DID I mention our contractor did such a lousy job -- and that warnings from our engineers were so completely ignored -- that our new studios are anything but soundproof? In radio, that's a VERY bad thing. They'll be next to useless, and the work of the station will be significantly crippled.

All for the low, low cost of $100 grand or so. Perfect.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Dear Diary: I inhabit M*A*S*H . . .
as told to O'Connor . . . by Fellini

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.



WEDNESDAY, NOV. 6, 2002


Dear Diary,

Sometimes I think I inhabit a Midwestern sequel to A Confederacy of Dunces. Other times, I think it's Walker Percy's Love in the Ruins.

Today, I'm pretty sure I inhabit a revival of M*A*S*H. I am Hawkeye Pierce, and my new program director at Pope FM is a fat Frank Burns.

Manic Don is 35, ex-Coast Guard and has never gotten over it. He doesn't know jack excrement about radio but tries to act like he's God's gift to the airwaves.

He writes everything in military lingo, puts all times on the 24-hour clock, asks everyone whether everything's "5-by-5," and organizes (to use the term loosely) a tiny station staff like it's the Pacific Command.

He also specializes in trying to downplay his own glaring failures by trying to make others look worse.

And today he ordered me to reduce the time I spend on production work by 75 percent. All the while he desperately tries to foist the more tedious and mundane parts of his job description off on others (read: "me") . . . by fiat.

I called him on that once, in a very Southern manner (despite the fact that he has 100 pounds on me). Within two days, I got a new job description allowing him to do just that.

Two words: Captain Queeg. Furthermore, I refuse to tell the SOB what I did with his @#$!* strawberries.

I've been trying to hold on until he crashes and burns, but I don't know whether that will be possible. OK, Pope FM is M*A*S*H as written by Flannery O'Connor based on a storyline by Fellini.

I keep trying to remember that I once loved my job, and that it was supposed to be about Jesus. It sure as hell doesn't look like Jesus now. Egos, money and the general dysfunction in every aspect of Catholic life today have seen to that.

I'm damned good at what I do. Damned good. I thought I had found my calling in Catholic radio.

I guess I was wrong. Again.


-- Hawkeye Pierce

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Dear Diary: The post 'Pledge-a-Thon' post

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.

SATURDAY, OCT. 26, 2002



Dear Diary,

The "Pledge-a-Thon" ended last night, raising roughly half of our stated goal of $250,000. Still, it was more money than we raised during the on-air portions of any previous Pledge-a-Thon.

I don't know what this means for the future at Pope FM, because God seems to be driving this situation like a Noo Yawk cabbie drives from La Guardia to midtown Manhattan when he's got a fare from Peoria in the car . . . by absolutely the most "direct" (heh) route possible.

All I do know is that I am absolutely, positively wiped. On top of everything, we spent today moving furniture out of my mother-in-law's apartment and into the assisted-living place.

NEVERTHELESS, it's a strange thing what happens when you just do your damn job the best you can when you would rather not do it at all.

I got nothing but compliments the whole Pledge-a-Thon . . . from the engineering of the show to the music I was playing (which would have -- and, in the past, had -- given my old boss, Mary, the next best thing to angina). You would have thought I was the Lou Gehrig of Catholic radio.

God, I'm old. Make that the Cal Ripken, Jr., of Catholic radio.

Thursday morning, our secretary, Penny, came into the control room bearing a large bottle of Rolaids and a kiss on the cheek. I wish she had come with a bottle of limoncello, too.

And all through the week, people would call in to ask the name and artist of songs I was playing. One was Ken the GM's 13-year-old son when I was playing some Christian techno music by Ultrabeat. Another was Ken's wife, who dropped into the control room to say she loved one song I played and thought the voice was familiar.

It was "The Rising" by Bruce Springsteen.

AND FRIDAY NIGHT, after the Pledge-a-Thon ended, Ken came into the control room to shake my hand. Manic Don gave me a high five.

Kind of surreal, being that minutes before (the end of the Pledge-a-Thon bearing down on them) Manic Don and Fred the Development Guy -- you know, the one who believes in God expanding time -- sounded much like Catholic used-car salesmen in a desperate bid to get the phones to ring.

That always happens when fund drives are falling woefully short. I always find it dismissive of the providence of God and beneath Christian dignity. Therefore, I always go into my Zen-master mode, becoming more and more calm as the pitch-people become more and more frantic.

And I always try to send not-so-subtle messages to knock it off through forcing them to go to break, and through the music I play when they do.

This time, when the frenzy just was getting to be too much, I got them to go to break -- which Manic Don told me had to be a SHORT song. So I played all 5:35 of Aaron Thompson's "No More Fear." Thompson is a gifted Catholic singer-songwriter from Phoenix.

And at the end of the show, I played a chant version of the Kyrie, followed by Nicole C. Mullen's "Redeemer":

Who taught the sun where to stand in the morning?
Who told the ocean you can only come this far?
Who showed the moon where to hide 'til evening?
Whose words alone can catch a falling star?

Well I know my Redeemer lives
I know my Redeemer lives
All of creation testify
This life within me cries
I know my Redeemer lives

The very same God that spins things in orbit
He runs to the weary, the worn and the weak
And the same gentle hands that hold me when I'm broken
They conquered death to bring me victory

Now I know my Redeemer lives
I know my Redeemer lives
Let all creation testify
Let this life within me cry
I know my Redeemer, He lives

To take away my shame
And He lives forever, I'll proclaim
That the payment for my sin
Was the precious life He gave
But now He's alive and
There's a new day

Now I know my Redeemer lives
I know my Redeemer lives
Let all creation testify
Let this life within me cry
I know my Redeemer, He lives

©2000 Wordspring Music/Lil 'JAS' Music/SESAC

MAYBE the wind has shifted at Pope FM. Then again . . . aw, who the hell knows.


Wearily yours,

Me

Dear Diary: The blowup. No, really. . . .

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.



THURSDAY, OCT. 24, 2002


Just a quick note before I collapse from exhaustion. But if the anthrax comes again, I'm covered . . . I'm on two weeks' worth of Levaquin, of the Cipro family.

Meanwhile, the "Pledge-a-Thon" proceeds apace. And my general manager seems to have had an epiphany after the new control room damn near self-destructed because of a defective wiring punch block. Our contract engineer went to punch in one set of wires for the air monitor, and . . . kerflooey. We were putting out nothing but the sounds of silence.

It was the first time I ever saw true panic in his eyes.

After he got the room back on line (precariously, warning us not to bump into the wall), I took the hour's break I got when we went to "Catholic Queries Live" (which originated the past two days from our unfinished new studios) to wire up the men's room . . . uh, old control room . . . the way I originally had it. I told the GM that was the only "Plan B" we had, and that no one had better touch it.

Today, he complimented me on the wisdom of my approach, said that Manic Don hadn't had a clue how much was involved in putting on the Pledge-a-Thon, that he was impressed with how I put all the pieces of the operation together and that he'd gotten several compliments on the music we were playing.

And some other board members complimented the show -- one saying his 13-year-old daughter told him Pope FM was sounding "like a real radio station."

Sometimes, the Lord sends His small consolations and vindications. He's a good guy.

Tuesday, June 09, 2009

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

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Dear Diary: The Lord is my . . . WHAT?!?

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 . . . Pope FM, if you will. 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.


WEDNESDAY, OCT. 9, 2002



Dear Diary,



I think, someday, this diary may turn into a book. The only roadblock to my turning the continuing saga of Pope FM into the next great American comedic novel is that A Confederacy of Dunces already has been written.

And, either fortuitously or tragically, I seem to have wandered into the real-life sequel, which is centered upon an exceedingly bizarre little Catholic radio station. Picture Pope FM this way: Hunter S. Thompson finds Jesus, joins the Catholic Church, buys WKRP and turns it into a religious station.

But he never kicks the pills and the booze.

This is the kind of surreal, whacked-out chaos that swirls about me, here in the great Midwest, as I huddle in my broken-down production room in a ramshackle little radio station. Apart from Jesus Christ, my salvation is the limoncello our secretary keeps in the break-room freezer.

If we were a Baptist radio station, I'd be sooooo screwed right now. . . .

WELL, IT'S BEEN an eventful couple of weeks since my last entry. Work has gotten so bizarre as to defy description.

"The Triumvirate" has entered into an unbreakable feedback loop, and Manic Don -- the program director, as well as the catalyst for the troika -- has just released an organizational plan in which all roads lead to himself. In the staff meeting where all this was unveiled, I found that, as production director, I don't even have the power to decide what I'm working on during any given day.

I told them not to insult me by letting me keep a meaningless title if I have that little control over what I do. The past two weeks, I have surprised even myself with the level of bluntness I've developed.

Don and the development guy kept saying that "station business" (i.e. underwriting and promos) had to take precedence over creating programming during business hours. I told them that evangelization was the station's business, and that Pope FM was not a commercial enterprise.

As was the case with Jimmy Swaggart, I am becoming increasingly and utterly convinced it's all about money, and it's all about us . . . not suffering souls in need of Jesus.

I swear to you, Catholics are the craziest bastards this side of the West Bank (of the Jordan, not the Mississippi).

THERE'S GOING TO BE a spectacular meltdown and/or explosion. I just can't decide whether I'm being called to view it from close up -- and perhaps be around to help pick up the pieces if I don't go up in the mushroom cloud -- or to view it from a safe distance.

Meanwhile, I had a voice mail the other day from a Baptist guy wanting to talk to a priest about possibly converting -- even though his wife is violently opposed to the Catholic Church. I forwarded his info to our secretary, asked about procedures for referrals and made a couple of suggestions about priests to put him in touch with.

Well, tonight after hours, I pick up the phone . . . and it's the same guy, asking about good reference books.

"You're the guy who left the voice mail, right?" I asked. He said that he was.

Had anyone from the station put him in contact with a priest or someone else?

No.

So I suggested Father Hardon's Pocket Catechism as beginning reading, and I gave him the name and phone number of the priest who confirmed my wife and me. I also suggested that he just patiently answer his wife's questions or objections, but not to argue with her about it.

I figure God really wants this guy to be Catholic. Sometimes I wonder why, but that's not my call. Fortunately.

On another front, Manic Don of the Holy Humvee tried to dump building playback logs for the automation program on my already overloaded plate. Trouble is, that's not my yob, man. Not in my job description.

I told him my plate already was full and that automation programming wasn't in my job description but was in his. By the end of the day, I was handed a new job description.

Guess what it included?

It also included reclassifying me as "occupational/non-exempt" from "professional/ exempt." When I pointed that out to Don and Ken, the general manager, (in writing, for documentation purposes) and mentioned "overtime" (which would substantially increase my salary), let's just say an abrupt correction was made.

THE IMPROBABLE, unbelievable saga of My Life at Pope FM just keeps getting better and better. This translates to more and more incredible . . . in the sense of "You won't believe this s***!"

Once again, I remind myself -- and the world -- that, yes, it really happened. Likewise, I note that I'm about to be guilty of "burying the lede," but what am I gonna do? It's a diary, Diary.

Today at Levy Pants -- if I inhabit the sequel to A Confederacy of Dunces, this must be the Levy Pants factory -- I was tasked to clean up a Pope FM Update done by Don and Ken. The copy, written by . . . oh, you know who the hell wrote it, had the general manager introducing the Messiah -- um, Don -- as "part mad scientist, part creative genius and just plain sinner like the rest of us."

It's all very frat boy, you know. Well, that is if frat boys went around spouting phrases like "just plain sinner like the rest of us."

I could have tried -- futilely -- to naysay against such juvenile things going over the air. But what's the fun in that? I prefer to imagine certain board members hearing that through the static on their FM radios.

And in a Pledge-a-Thon promo I just finished tonight for the Lord of the Hummer, he took a "Star Wars" tack on fund raising. I looked and looked and looked for the voiceover for one part of the spot, but it wasn't there, so I just voiced the part myself.

I did, however, do some editing. Can you imagine how it might sound, through the static of our weak signal, if I had read the line as written, which began
"The Lord is our Master Vader . . . ."

Listen to that in your mind's ear. Imagine someone paying scant attention to our staticky broadcast.

"The Lord is our Master Vader . . . ."

I CAN SEE IT NOW. I drop dead, and somehow -- probably through a clerical error -- I end up in Heaven Itself, right in the middle of the Beatific Vision, and there He is.

Jesus Christ.

Right there in front of me.

Coming out of an adult bookstore.

I . . . don't . . . think . . . so.

But that's the less-than-beatific vision our listeners came thiiiiiis close to having as they listened to Pope FM over their morning bowl of Froot Loops.

Something tells me that the Froot Loops aren't just in our listeners' cereal bowls.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Dear Diary: Humvees for Jesus

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 . . . Pope FM, if you will. 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.


MONDAY, SEPT. 23, 2002


Dear Diary,


I write with some trepidation about what posterity will think of this missive. For what I will think of this missive in future years.

I fear people might read this and think me delusional -- that something as bat-s*** crazy as what I'm about to put to figurative "paper" couldn't have happened, that I made it all up. Sometimes, I fear that I'll think the same thing in five or 10 years.

Note to posterity (and to my future self): You can't make this s*** up. You just can't.

Well, it's been a while since I've written, and things have changed quite a bit around Pope FM. Mary, our general manager, is gone to tackle running a chain of Catholic radio stations. Ken is running the show now, and he's going great guns to "corporatize" the place.

His mantra seems to be "How can we do some business here?" Funny, I didn't know non-profit Catholic radio -- or Catholic evangelization -- was "bidness." Silly me.

Too, we have a new program director. Actually, this is a new position. Before, Mary did the program-director thing as part of her general-manager duties, and I reported to her. Now I have an extremely manic -- and extremely odd -- middle manager to brighten my work experience.

This is gonna be a rough ride.

HERE, DEAR DIARY, is a vignette that (I think) illustrates the big picture. And you'll see the genesis of my "rough ride" assessment.

First, the new guy, Don, is driving everybody nuts -- except for the fast clique formed by him, the general manager and the development director. They all have five kids (the new guy's fifth is on the way), they're all around my age, they're all "Catholic and Damned Proud of It" (for lack of a better term) types, etc.

All I can say briefly is the direction of the station has turned 180 degrees in the blink of an eye. There has been wrenching change in the whole culture of the station in a week . . . manic would be an apt description, I think. Manic, just like (as I noted earlier) Don.

I mean, I am the voice of restraint at the place now. Don has about five years of pent-up ideas he's unleashing all at once and expecting to implement by the end of the year. With very limited resources to accomplish any of it . . . even after the technical expansion is complete.

Honestly, I desperately want to give the station a contemporary, non-dyspeptic sound. I desperately want to reach out to young people. But in such a short time, you can only do what you can do with the resources you have. And you have to be deliberate in what you're doing.

BUYING A HUMVEE, I don't think, can be described as exercising due deliberation.

That's right, ladies and germs, Don wants to get someone to donate the scratch for a Humvee -- the Pope FM Humvee -- which we then would have painted like the Vatican flag to play off the theme "The Church Militant."

I am the only convert left on the staff, and I can't convince these zealots how badly that might piss off people who have no clue what the Church Militant is. So much so that we wouldn't have the opportunity to explain it (and so much so that it might not make a difference when you do).

And then we will face the reaction of the Protestants. ;-) As a friend comments about such things, "Their zeal consumes them."

APART FROM the PR-nightmare possibilities, I can think of a lot neater things $35,000 could buy instead of a used Hummer.

On the up side, Don values creativity, allegedly likes Holy Spirit Rock and seems to have the capability of being collaborative. On the down side, I picked the wrong week to stop doing crystal meth.

Friday, the intern who produces Keys to the Kingdom came into our temporary production room, looking concerned and asking how I was. I told her I picked the wrong week to stop smoking crack.

She then, unprompted, blurts out "How can you STAND it!"

Metaphysically, I have NO IDEA what is going on here. All I can figure out is that God has some sort of Rube Goldberg plan in all this, which He is laughing Himself silly watching.

I'll submit here a memo I sent to the entire Pope FM staff right after Don laid the whole Humvees for Jesus thing on us. I am sure I am now looked upon in that peculiar way the manic-depressive looks at the Normal Affect Population when he's bouncing off the walls in a fit of giddy delirium.

That's right, I'm a party-pooper who Just Can't See. In the peculiar world of Catholic radio, I'm sure that makes me a Bad Catholic as well.

Anyway, here's the memo:

Dear all,

Before we go too far down the promotional and imaging road, perhaps we need to stop and put on Protestant or average-Joe Catholic glasses.

As this whole clerical sexual-abuse mess drags on and (probably) gets worse, it will have a tremendous impact on how Catholics evangelize and, indeed, relate to the larger society.

For example, I would never, in this climate, use “The Church Militant” as a promotional scheme or even subtext. I think many not-so-well catechized Catholics immediately would be turned off by the phrase, having misunderstood the use of the word “militant.” And Protestants would feel threatened . . . and not without justification. Trust me, a convert, on this.

Lord knows the station needs to be pepped up. Lord knows we need to vastly expand our programming efforts toward teen-agers and young adults. And Lord knows Catholic media needs to learn to relate to average people in compelling and effective ways.

But we have to realize that we are trying to evangelize for a Church that has some grave problems right now – gravely sinful problems at the highest levels in some cases. We are sinners, our priests are sinners, and some of our bishops are major-league sinners. It’s an unpleasant fact, but it IS a fact. And it is not without precedent in Catholic history, although that DOES NOT make it any easier to live through or cope with right now.

In this light, I think what we need to do is run the Humvee and “Church Militant” into a tree and walk forward into the greater community in humility, and in our humanity, proclaiming the Christ “who saved a wretch like me.”

If we can come up with the $35,000 or so that would buy a used Hummer, I would suggest buying a more cost-effective vehicle and using the excess to begin endowing efforts toward helping the underprivileged in town. At any rate, the whole issue is a serious discussion the PR committee and board needs to have. At least that’s my two cents’ worth.
A LOT OF GOOD that did.

I wandered out to the reception desk this afternoon, only to find a fishbowl on the counter with some change in it. In front of the fishbowl was Don's yellow-and-white model Hummer.

On the fishbowl is a sign: "Help the Humvee!"

I asked our secretary what the deal was. She got this bemused look, and said "Don told me to put this up here."

I hung my head.

Did I mention that he's "blown up" three computers -- crappy ones, yes, but three computers nonetheless -- trying to make them do God knows what? And I was at work until 12:30 a.m. Wednesday desperately trying to fix the WaveStation automation, which suffered a Challenger-scale "major malfunction." Well, at least short of literally exploding.

Don was nowhere to be found.

And now the station organizational chart officially has all roads leading to the program director. Except for the stuff he doesn't like to do. In the staff meeting where that loo-loo was unveiled, I reached new pinnacles of bluntness that I did not know I was capable of.

I picked the wrong week to quit chasing fistfuls of downers with bourbon.

Why are Catholics so bat-s*** crazy?


NOTE TO MY FUTURE SELF: No, you didn't make this up. It happened. It's completely whack, but it happened. I don't know how this Pope FM thing will shake out, but I hope you make it through all right.

Tell me, are you still Catholic?

Monday, August 18, 2008

Shooting craps for life in the Culture of Death


In the bitter cold of December 2000, as the disputed Bush-Gore election turned red hot at the U.S. Supreme Court, I was working in the peculiar world of Catholic radio. Pope FM, if you will.

Our little FM station was an affiliate of EWTN radio, and I recall that as the legal battle raged between George Bush and Vice-President Al Gore -- as the presidency hung in the balance -- the network aired a special rosary for life. It never was billed as a prayer for Bush's victory (and legally it couldn't be) but we all knew the score: This was a rosary for the "pro-life" Bush to prevail over the "pro-abortion" Gore.

At least that's what the entire Pope FM staff was praying for. Me included.

I DON'T THINK I ever thought politics could change America's "Culture of Death" into a "Culture of Life." I did, however, think the election was all about federal policy and potential Supreme Court nominations. I thought government could be used to fight a "holding action."

I thought Roe v. Wade could be rolled back, and I thought maybe the Republicans, through political action, could somehow hinder the nation's cultural disintegration so that maybe -- maybe -- revival might come to our culturally and religiously devolving land before it was Too Late.

We were pro-life, true-believing, orthodox Roman Catholics. We stood for Jesus, saving babies, the Pope and EWTN. And it was a given that we'd vote G-O-P in the name of G-O-D.

So in that bleak midwinter, there we sat in our dilapidated little studios in a shabby little strip mall in a ramshackle part of town -- there we sat in the Pope FM conference room reciting the rosary with EWTN, praying for the triumph of a man who ultimately would do little to roll back the tide of fetal homicide in America.

Praying for the installation of a president who would, however, go on to do awesome things in the fields of pursuing an unwise and unjust war, rolling back civil liberties in the name of national security, and in turning CIA "spooks" and Army "grunts" alike into torturers whom -- in a more civilized age -- it would have been necessary to try at Nuremberg.

In a more civilized age, it would have been necessary to try Bush and much of his administration at Nuremberg.

If we really cut to the chase here, I guess what we were after -- at least what I was after -- was forestalling America's judgment by a just deity. Call it what it was: lawyering up and gunning for a cosmic stay of execution.

"Look, Jesus! We voted Republican . . . you know, GOP -- God's Own Party. Well, yeah, we're all driving 2.5 cars and living in too-big houses and bitching about taxes . . . but. . . ." BZZZZZZZZZT . . . as the lights dim all across the New Jerusalem.

MY GOD, look what we did. The economy's even in the tank. It was the original Rickroll.

Looking upon our civic wreckage from a biblical crime-and-punishment perspective is especially interesting -- not to mention ironic. In our political quest to avert -- or at least defer -- divine judgment, we instead may have brought it about.

Because if George W. Bush is not God's judgment upon a wicked people, I don't know what is.

And now -- in the name of salvation through better jurisprudence -- some would have us again do what we did in 1980 . . . and 1984 . . . and 1988 . . . and 2000 . . . and 2004, only expecting different results this time with the GOP's presumptive nominee, John McCain.

Am I saying vote for Barack Obama, the Democrat -- the pro-abort?

NO. To tell you the truth, I suspect there is no morally justifiable choice between McCain and Obama. Maybe the sheer catastrophic potential of someone with McCain's penchant for both wrongheadedness and hotheadedness being in charge of American foreign policy is enough "proportionate reason" to vote for Obama.

Then again, maybe not.

All I know is this one thing: I won't get fooled again.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

It ain't easy being bold in a timid age


I didn't discover The Bryant Park Project on National Public Radio until it already was a dead show broadcasting.

My loss.

The BPP was envisioned by NPR as an experiment in how "old media" might transition into a "new media" landscape, and that experimentation resulted in a multimedia effort that spanned terrestrial and satellite radio, podcasting, blogging, a web portal and "social networking" sites like Facebook and Twitter.

As well, The Bryant Park Project was set up so its listeners -- and readers -- could pay attention to that man (and that woman) behind the curtain. They pulled back the drapes to show us the folks twiddling the knobs and levers, and we liked who we saw.


AND IF YOU go by what people say instead of what they do, so did the NPR brass. From a blog post by NPR interim CEO Dennis Haarsager:
First, let me wholeheartedly agree with your high praise for the BPP staff. They are a team of smart, creative journalists who have delivered compelling programming every day. I want to specifically mention Alison Stewart, one of the finest hosts in broadcasting today; executive producer Sharon Hoffman; and senior supervising producer Matt Martinez. They are some of the most talented people I have ever encountered in broadcasting and they have done a great job of presenting news in a different way and in building loyalty among all of you in a short period of time. They have my gratitude and the respect of this entire organization.
BUT. . . . (And you knew there was a "but" in there, didn't you?)
BPP was designed to help us explore the complex, undefined digital media environment and, we hoped, to establish new ways of providing content on unfamiliar platforms. We've/I've learned -- or relearned -- a lot in this process. For non-commercial media such as NPR, sustaining a new program of this financial magnitude requires attracting users from each of the platforms we can access. Ultimately, we recognized that wasn't happening with BPP. Radio carriage didn't materialize to any degree: right now, BPP airs on only five analog radio stations and 19 HD Radio digital channels. Web/podcasting usage was also hampered -- here's the relearning part -- since we were offering an "appointment program" in a medium that doesn't excel in that kind of usage. Web radio is growing very rapidly (much faster than FM did), but it's almost all to music and, increasingly, to attention-tracking music (e.g., Pandora). While there might be a viable audience for a day/time specific program on the Web at some point in the future, it is not on the horizon.
PARDON MON FRANÇAIS, MAIS . . . that's the biggest load of fork-tongued bullsh*t I've heard since leaving the peculiar world of Catholic radio.

In public radio, the fragrant load goes something like "blah blah blah . . . serve the public interest . . . blah blah blah . . . programming not available over the commercial airwaves . . . blah blah blah . . . new and exciting modes of communication . . . blah blah blah . . . reach out to diverse audiences." Rinse. Spin. Repeat.

In my experience inside Catholic radio -- and I would suspect this holds true for 80 percent of any broadcasting done in Jesus' name -- take public radio's fragrant load and substitute bromides such as "serve the Lord Jesus . . . inspirational and catechetical . . . uplifting . . . reaching out to spread the Good News to every soul." Genuflect. Cross yourself. Repeat.

That is why it's such a good policy to ignore what people say and, instead, watch what they do.

Then you're not so shocked and disappointed when public radio, by and large, sounds like the only listener who matters is 60ish, lives in a big house on a private lake and has two college-age children . . . Muffy and Skipper. Or when an "experiment," like The Bryant Park Project, gets aborted before it has run long enough to gather meaningful data or refine any techniques for committing "broadcasting" in a New Media world.

LIKEWISE, "do -- not say" lessens any disillusionment with Christianity per se when one figures out its on-air apostles often are less interested in the gospel of Jesus Christ (and in being an effective witness to all) than in serving up something deemed acceptable to those most likely to pay handsomely for the service.


Why do you think so much of Christian media sounds like
what Revelation says Jesus would spit out?
13
'"Whoever has ears ought to hear what the Spirit says to the churches."'
14
"To the angel of the church in Laodicea, write this: "'The Amen, the faithful and true witness, the source of God's creation, says this:
15
"I know your works; I know that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either cold or hot.
16
So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.
THE GREAT IRONY of our time? That it's so damned difficult to be bold during a stretch of history when boldness is a necessity, not just one of many viable options.

Let me amend that slightly. Make that "intelligently bold during a stretch of history . . ." yadda yadda yadda. See, it's always been easy (and lucrative) to be boldly stupid . . . or boldly lewd . . . or boldly and stupidly lewd . . . or, for that matter, lewdly and boldly stupid.

I know it was difficult to be bold in Catholic radio -- at least in the corner I once inhabited, where holiness somehow got confused with bad music, boring lectures and a timid spirit.

For instance, I fell into producing a program of "contemporary" music aimed at young people. I say "fell," but the reality was more "jump" into producing the show because -- to be blunt -- it was awful (and deeply stupid), and I knew it could be so much more.

And as I started to approach the land of "More," I started to hear a refrain that would be oft repeated: "Catholic radio's not ready for that yet."


You'd think it was 1960, and I was trying to integrate a Southern lunch counter.

AT ONE POINT during my tenure as producer, the general manager and I sat down for a weekly production meeting. The three teen hosts were having commitment problems -- in short, they didn't "commit" to showing up every week to tape the show. I wanted to fire them and get hosts who took the job seriously.

The GM thought it would be easier just to kill the show.

I told her I thought the show was an important outreach to youth. If canceling there must be, cancel the present hosts -- not the show. The show, I added, had potential. Maybe . . . someday . . . it could be syndicated.

Then came the moment when I almost walked out the door . . . and down the road . . . all the way home. For good.

The boss admitted youth programming wasn't "a priority" at that time, and that she didn't want me spending so much time putting the show together. She was starting a daily series of five-minute reflections by local priests, and she wanted me to concentrate on things like that.

Bleeah.

OK, it was time to lay it on the line.


I told her I was seriously worn out and burned out by long hours and unending technical crises. That little youth show was the only thing keeping me engaged at the moment. It was important. It had potential.

She repeated the youth show wasn't a priority and that people wanted to hear their priests on the air. Besides, she added, "Youth don't contribute to the station."


Monetarily.

UNTIL THAT MOMENT, I always had thought the expression "seeing red" was just that -- an expression.
Then I did.

It took every bit of strength to control myself. I almost bit a hole in my tongue to keep from calling the GM a g**damn Pharisee and quitting.

Instead, I repeated that youth programming was important. I emphasized that all the production work was getting done, despite the time I spent on that particular program. The rest of the day I stewed. I couldn't believe what I had just heard.

The next day, the development guy and I were talking about youth programming. I told him what the boss said about kids "not contributing" to our little Catholic FM station.

This guy was the best money hustler I'd ever seen, and his jaw dropped. Literally. His expression was one of total shock.

"If youth programming isn't a priority, what is?" he asked. "That's the future."

Exactly.

BUT THAT'S what radio is all about today. That's what America is all about today -- grab a buck today, screw the future. Suck up to them what have . . . screw them what don't.

And if financial exigencies of the moment mean that devout keepers of the Catholic airwaves stand ready to cut back on Christian witness to the young -- to a community's own children -- why should we be taken aback that a bunch of public-radio bureaucrats would sacrifice a medium's future to save pocket change today?

After all, it's just radio. However important radio might be, it doesn't rank up there with eternal life. And some folks have decided even that is just another budget item.

So if it's easy enough for a Catholic-radio general manager to think it more expedient to ax -- rather than improve -- a youth program with no budget to speak of, how easy must it be for a public-radio suit to kill an "experiment" that fans loved but NPR failed to "sell" to enough affiliates?

And what of the future?

Well, "after all, tomorrow is another day!" Until it's not.

Monday, November 19, 2007

Be careful with your dreams. They may come true.

Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue. And the dreams that you dare to dream, really do come true.

Harold Arlen wrote it, and Judy Garland lived it to a nightmarish end at age 47.

Sometimes, over the rainbow, the dreams that come true aren't all what they're cracked up to be. And you better be careful about those dreams that you dare to dream, lest they really do come true.

And break your damn heart.

RIGHT NOW, it's starting to look like Louisiana State's football coach, Les Miles,
has an appointment to meet the dream of a true Michigan Man. Miles has the chance to try to fill the shoes of his old coach and mentor, Bo Schembechler, after Lloyd Carr has given up on trying to do just that.

And this grand opportunity to try to go home again comes as Miles and his LSU Tigers chase after a national championship. Could there be anything better than that?

Sure, doing that at your alma mater. Being a hometown hero back in the place you count as home.

Be careful of your dreams. Sometimes they only partially come true.

Can that count as one definition of "nightmare"? I think so, and I know a little something about that.

When you think you have it made, it's important to remember a couple of things: S*** happens, and people can be real jerks. It all falls under The Fall. You know, Adam, Eve, serpent, apple.

Ever since The Fall, we've dealt with sin,
exile, death and chaos. Our dreams are subject to all of those, which quickly can turn them into nightmares.

And sometimes, you think you've landed yourself a really sweet gig. The powers that be tell you how much they love you. They tell you how much they need you. They pay you a nice chunk of change. All of this happens right at the point where you say,
"I'm livin' the dream."

Then, of course, life intervenes. Unless you are exceptionally charmed, things don't always go quite right. You encounter slackers, backbiters and screw-ups. Sometimes, you are one -- or all -- of the above.

And then, to rip off another popular song:


Baby, baby
Where did our love go?
And all your promises
Of a love forever more?

REMEMBER POPE FM? That was an occasional series of posts I did about a Catholic FM station I really worked at, though the name has been changed to protect the guilty. In 1999, I thought I could be there forever.

I'm not there now. It's The Fall,
dammit.

See, I loved that station, even though the programming wasn't always my cup of tea. I learned a lot, and I did a lot of good there, and I think I made a "religious" station just a bit more accessible to people who don't live in church . . . and who don't see life as a never-ending progression of bad liturgical music and stern church ladies.

The Catholic Church pretty much has been in disarray ever since the Second Vatican Council, despite that council having been much needed. What I learned from my "dream job" is that the folks who think they have the answers on how to set her straight again are pretty screwed up themselves.

Misplaced priorities and toxic spirituality have no ideology. The center did not hold, and one lunatic program director and several crises of conscience later, I was out of a job. The alternative would have been worse.

Still, I felt as though I'd been through a divorce. A nasty divorce from someone I once
had loved.

I HAD SEEN borderline-crazy and completely wrong things done there in the name of Jesus Christ, by the people who ran a radio station that professed to have the Catholic answer. I had just seen the crazy underbelly of, and cold cynicism within, a tool of the Church I sought out as a refuge 17 years ago.

I almost lost my faith. The last thing I did as I gathered up my things and walked out of my office for the last time was to pitch a crucifix on the floor. What had gone on there under Jesus' dying gaze, the indefensible that had been defended in Christ's name -- indeed, under the nose of Jesus Himself in the Pope FM chapel
's
tabernacle -- was scandalous and a sacrilege.

I had come to believe that not only did the Church not have the answer, it didn't even have a clue.

Do you know how that feels? Do you know what it feels like to have something precious to you start to leave an exceedingly bad taste in your mouth?

It feels like The Fall. And it breaks your heart.

I am still Catholic, by the grace of God. I finally internalized the reality that the Church is not Pope FM, nor is it the flawed men who lead it. Pope FM is a flawed evangelist for the Church; the bishops are compromised shepherds who sometimes neglect their flock.

I am a Bad Catholic, trying to get to tomorrow from today. Intact.

We all are The Fall.

AND THE TROUBLE with our dreams is they sometimes come true . . . and aren't nearly so dreamy. I hope Les Miles thinks about that before leaving a pretty decent gig for his "dream job."

We all know that coaching is a do-or-die, cutthroat kind of profession, all the noble collegiate bromides aside. Boosters are cold, and fans are nuts -- I know this, I are one. A fan, that is. Don't have the scratch to be a booster.

If Michigan were to betray a loyal and true Michigan Man -- or if the loyal and true Michigan Man were somehow to betray it -- could Les take it? Could a coach's coach make the necessary halftime adjustments to his broken heart?

Aye, there be the rub.

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Dear Diary: The power of punk

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 . . . Pope FM, if you will. 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.


SUNDAY, AUG. 25, 2002



Dear Diary,



It had to happen. It hadn't happened in awhile.

I was working on Holy Spirit Rock early this afternoon, pulling some of the music for next Saturday's show, when I hear a knock on the door. Mrs. Favog was due back shortly with our almost-16-year-old friend Ruth, one of the co-hosts of the Pope FM show, and I thought she didn't want to bother with the key or had her hands full with groceries.

So I open the front door, and . . . .

Mormons.

You know, the bicycle guys. White shirts, black slacks. Name tags. A cross between Wally Cleaver and the Stepford Wives.

I'm Catholic, I say, but they won't stop the step-by-step spiel. I'm the production director at the Catholic radio station, I say, but that didn't make a dent. And I throw in that I'm really busy now working on our Christian rock show. They won't leave me alone, I really don't have time to talk to them and I really don't want to be rude.

At this point, Mrs. Favog comes home with Ruth. We're active in our church, she says. Would you like to come to our 11 a.m. service, they say. We'll be at our church, I respond. Can we come back? they persevere.

"So," asks Stepford Cleaver, "how did you come to your faith?"

"I became Catholic after studying the faith and searching," I replied.

"I came to my faith in the Lord through the Spirit," Stepford said.

"The Spirit has to have something to work with," I shot back.

Just at that moment, an eruption of grinding guitars and screamed vocals pours forth from the huge speakers in our living room, literally shaking the joint. It's the remote speakers from the amp in my home studio/office . . . Ruth has put in a hardcore Christian punk CD, and it's kind of cranked up.

The Mormons jump back from the door. Stepford is startled -- horrified even.

"I don't know how the Spirit could work with that playing," he says.

"Would you believe that's Christian music?" I politely answer.

Stepford is aghast.

"I can't picture Christ listening to that!"

"I can," I tell him as I shut the door.