FYDT

And let God's people say amen.

If they're not fired up about grammar. . . .

First Trump, now this.

Can't we Americans get any damned thing straight anymore?

Then again, if newsroom staffers at metropolitan dailies can't be expected to know the difference between "they're," "there" and "their," why should we suddenly become competent at politics? Or anything else, actually.

Joe the Plumber isn't getting paid to understand political science. People at newspapers, on the other hand, are paid to know the King's English -- or at least they used to be.

Design by Beetlejuice

This is what I call putting 10 pounds of "design" in a 5-pound bag.

Predictably, the sack tore at the Lincoln (Neb.) Journal-Star, and we ended up with the Ghostbusters blasting the hell out of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man (or something supernatural) right above a story about Omaha cops blasting the hell out of a Airsoft-armed robber . . . and a sound man for the Cops TV show. Tacky, much?

I do love me some nice newspaper design, and once upon a time, I had something of a knack for it. But I love me some journalistic integrity more. And when you let "designers" and artists run roughshod over the editorial process in the name of making tomorrow's bird cage liner nice and pretty today, weirdness is sure to ensue all too often. Because artists.

BUT WHAT gets me is that this isn't that outstanding of a page, designwise. Obviously, the Design Powers That Be appear wedded to having a story with less-than-compelling photos as the centerpiece.

In this case, a better journalistic page would have been a better designed one, too. It would have been easy to avoid this journalistic -- and common-sense -- train wreck. As Lou Grant is my witness, if I've seen front pages built around mediocre art once, I've seen it a thousand times.

On the other hand, if big pictures of crumbling concrete are that near and dear to your ink-stained heart, and you just can't make the lead story the centerpiece . . . just find another Ghostbusters picture for the top of the page. Duh.

You know what I'd do if I were a newspaper editor trying to herd a bunch of cats designers? I'd ask Jim Romenesko for an 8x10 glossy photo of himself and I'd turn it into a bunch of posters like this, to be displayed prominently around the newsroom . . . especially around the design desk.

Huh?

Well, this is something you don't see every day.

Wait, it gets better. 

The Spiro Agnew Room, in honor of the disgraced Richard Nixon's disgraced first vice president, is at the Omaha Press Club. Which, in 1972, named a private room in honor of Agnew, who famously called the nation's press "nattering nabobs of negativism."

APPARENTLY, the naming was done while the press club's board put its collective tongue firmly in its collective cheek, but it nevertheless honored the then-vice president by putting his face on the barroom floor -- a longtime honor at the club -- with Agnew himself attending the dedication.

"I don't get press rooms dedicated to me too often," he said at the June 10 event. "In some places, I'm not even allowed in."

A year and a half later, after Agnew was forced to resign right before pleading no contest to tax-evasion charges stemming from an alleged bribery scheme in 1967, when he was governor of Maryland. The press club, though, decided it would keep the room's name just as it was. According to Bob Considine's newspaper column of Nov. 11, 1973:

Nebraska.

This picture pretty much sums up who we Nebraskans are.

The photo, by Omaha World-Herald photographer Kent Sievers, ran on the front of today's Midlands section with this story.

To summarize, I think a catchphrase of Nebraska native Larry the Cable Guy will work pretty well -- "Git 'r done."  I don't care who you are, what Nebraskans have done in the wake of a swirling monster's rampage through a small town is inspiring.

Particularly this guy in the wheelchair.

Git 'r done, indeed.

Calling all Cajuns: Save Matthew Stevens!

The Mississippi State beat writer who unloaded on Lafayette, La., and Cajuns in general got his.

The Columbus (Miss.) Commercial Dispatch canned Matthew Stevens. It was well-deserved.

Stevens

It's one thing to say, in your opinion, that someplace stinks. It is quite another to say that, then lay it on, employing stereotype after stereotype, and then sticking a turd on top by making fun of an entire people -- Louisiana Cajuns -- and the way they speak.

"I'm not going to go as far as to say that they're not people," Stevens said during the show. "But I don't know what they are because they don't speak English - and it's not French - but I don't know what it is."

Co-host Brian Hadad responded with, "They're the missing link - if you believe in evolution - between apes and humans, there's Cajuns."

That, cher, is beyond the pale. And now Stevens knows how far beyond the pale it was. Would that Hadad of Bulldog Sports Radio suffered the same fate, being that what he said was worse. As in straight-up bigotry against an entire people, a people who in the mid-1700s were "ethnically cleansed" from Canada by its British rulers.

Both Stevens and Hadad apologized, apperently sincerely, for their toxic Internet-radio rant. That's appropriate, but neither repentance nor forgiveness obviates the need for temporal consequences for bad actions.

WHEN I POSTED on this Friday, I was (needless to say) mad as a hornet. Perhaps I ought to have counted to 4,000 before hitting the "publish" button. Well, dat's da Internets for you. And, basically, I stand by what I wrote -- I wish I had fleshed it out a little more, but I stand by what I said then.

That said, I think maybe now is the time for grace. I think maybe now is the time to make Stevens' "teachable moment" truly teachable. I think maybe it's time to make something good come out of something so publicly ugly.

Right now, I'm thinking of Rabbi Michael Weisser, who in 1991 was the cantor and spiritual head of a Reform synagogue in Lincoln, Neb. The New York Times picks up the story in an article from 2009:

One Sunday morning, a few days after they had moved into their new house, the phone rang.

The man on the other end of the line called Rabbi Weisser “Jew boy” and told him he would be sorry he had moved in. Two days later, a thick package of anti-black, anti-Semitic pamphlets arrived in the mail, including an unsigned card that read, “The KKK is watching you, scum.”

The messages, it turned out, were from Larry Trapp, the Grand Dragon of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Nebraska, who kept loaded weapons, pro-Hitler material and his Klan robe in his cramped Lincoln apartment. Then 42, Mr. Trapp was nearly blind and used a wheelchair to get around; both of his legs had been amputated because of diabetes.

In a 1992 interview with Time magazine, Mr. Trapp said he had wanted to scare Rabbi Weisser into moving out of Lincoln. “As the state leader, the Grand Dragon, I did more than my share of work because I wanted to build up the state of Nebraska into a state as hateful as North Carolina and Florida,” he said. “I spent a lot of money and went out of my way to instill fear.”

Rabbi Weisser, who suspected the person threatening him was Mr. Trapp, got his telephone number and started leaving messages on the answering machine. “I would say things like: ‘Larry, there’s a lot of love out there. You’re not getting any of it. Don’t you want some?’ And hang up,” he said. “And, ‘Larry, why do you love the Nazis so much? They’d have killed you first because you’re disabled.’ And hang up. I did it once a week.”

One day, Mr. Trapp answered. Ms. Michael, the rabbi’s wife, had told him to say something nice if he ever got Mr. Trapp on the line, and he followed her advice. “I said: ‘I heard you’re disabled. I thought you might need a ride to the grocery,’ ” Rabbi Weisser said.

Then, one night, Rabbi Weisser’s phone rang again. It was Mr. Trapp. “He said, quote-unquote — I’ll never forget it, it was like a chilling moment, in a good way — he said, ‘I want to get out of what I’m doing and I don’t know how,’ ” Rabbi Weisser said.

He and Ms. Michael drove to Mr. Trapp’s apartment that night. The three talked for hours, and a close friendship formed. The couple’s home became a kind of hospice for Mr. Trapp, who moved into one of their bedrooms as his health worsened, and Ms. Michael became Mr. Trapp’s caretaker and confidante.

Mr. Trapp eventually renounced the Klan, apologized to many of those he had threatened and converted to Judaism in Rabbi Weisser’s synagogue.

LOVE trumps hate. Every time. The man the Klan leader called a "Jew boy" and tried to run out of town saw the tortured human behind the contorted mask of hatred, then responded to the human being -- not the hate. And then a miracle happened.

It seems to me that Matthew Stevens is way ahead of where the late Larry Trapp was on that grace-filled day 23 years ago. I wonder what a little grace might accomplish in the heart of the 29-year-old sportswriter.

That's why I'm hoping some newspaper in south Louisiana needs a sportswriter. Actually, I'm hoping some daily in south Louisiana needs a University of Louisiana-Lafayette beat writer. And I'd like to see an editor at a south Louisiana paper who needs a sportswriter reach out to Stevens and offer him a job . . . and find him a nice place in a good neighborhood. (They do exist down there. Louisiana has its problems, but it's not a wasteland, after all.)

And I'm hoping that if a paper has a job, and if an editor reaches out to the Prodigal Sportswriter, that Stevens takes that outstretched hand and begins what might turn out to be the education of a lifetime. One in humanity . . . and in grace . . . and in the unexpected joys and tender mercies of a place on the map where he'd least expect to encounter them.

THAT'S WHAT I'm hoping. Pray God that someone makes it so.

There might be a hell of a book in that, one to be written someday by a now-chastened, unemployed sportswriter. But first things first.

You have nerve, and then you have nerve

A sportswriter from Columbus, Miss., thinks Lafayette, La., is "the worst place in America."

You read me right.

Somebody from Columbus, Mississippi -- as in Burning -- thinks not only that Lafayette is the worst place in America but, indeed, that "it's not in America." And not to be outdone by his guest, Matthew Stevens of The Commercial Dispatch, sports-talk idiot Brian Hadad of Bulldog Sports Radio opined that Cajuns really aren't human at all.

Stevens

"They're the missing link -- if you believe in evolution -- between apes and humans, there's Cajuns," Hadad, the station's general manager, said on the Internet outlet. Well, now that Mississippians aren't allowed to openly define African-Americans out of the human race anymore. . . .

FROM THE story in the Advertiser in Lafayette:

From somebody who has spent his career working to right wrongs for the Cajun people, local attorney and cultural activist Warren Perrin says the words are spoken from "utter ignorance, prejudice and contempt."

"They did exactly what the British and Col. Charles Lawrence did to the Acadians three centuries ago: They judge all by the actions of a few. How sad we still find this in humanity, next door," Perrin said.

Stevens, 29, spent Thursday through Sunday in Lafayette to cover the NCAA Regional baseball tournament at M.L. "Tigue" Moore Field, in which MSU fell to UL.

During his radio show, he said he drove around Lafayette for 90 minutes in search of a neighborhood where he might live and raise a family but found nothing.

He also said that the only thing Cajuns know how to do is cook and that America would be better off without Louisiana.

"I think what this should do," said City-Parish President Joey Durel, "is motivate us to open our arms and show how wrong he is rather than prove him to be right. This is just an opportunity for us to prove him wrong."

Stevens has since apologized through social media and media interviews.

"It's me saying it, not anybody else's voice, not a bad edit," Stevens said to The Advertiser. "But after proper reflection as to what kind of human being I want to be, that's not It. And I don't endorse what I said in that rant or the opinions I had in that rant."

Last weekend marked Stevens' first time in Lafayette, and he attributes most of his bad experience with the city to safety concerns from staying in a hotel on the north side of town.

"I did have a bad experience in Lafayette, but whatever kind of experience I had in Lafayette does not give me the right to say what was said in my radio program Wednesday," Stevens said. "I obviously hurt and offended and angered a lot of people, and I take full responsibility for that. That's on me, and I can't take it back."

Stevens is a native of east-central Illinois but has lived and worked in Mississippi for the past few years.

Hadad

ANSWER ME this: Do you think a couple of jokers who said such things -- one via Twitter and both on an Internet station -- about African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Mexican-Americans or Native Americans would still be employed, even after issuing non-apology "apologies" in the wake of such open bigotry?

Let me help you out. The answer is "no."

The managing editor of Stevens' newspaper said, basically, the whole thing was unfortunate. You think?

"I certainly hate that this has happened because it's not an accurate portrayal of the city or our paper," Slim Smith said. "What I was really disappointed in is his characterizing so many people in a city with such broad terms. It's not a fair assessment to make. This will be a teachable moment for Matt." 

No, a "teachable moment" would be firing his sorry ass. And that goes double for Hadad, who thinks Cajuns are "the missing link."

And did I mention the dud-namic sports duo reside in Mississippi, whose sordid history (not to mention census data) leave its residents no damn room to talk . . . about anything or anybody?

That, my friends, not only is outright bigotry but also stunning gall. Absolutely amazing nerve.

As a south Louisiana native, I will admit that in many ways, no, Louisiana is not of the United States. Louisiana is more the northernmost Caribbean nation than it is American. After all, it was a French possession, then a Spanish possession, then a French possession again before it ever was part of this country.

MISSISSIPPI, on the other hand, has no such excuse. [Yes, what now is Mississippi, too, was variously French, Spanish or British -- the earliest French settlement on the Gulf Coast was where Biloxi is now -- but Louisiana was more heavily populated, under European rule for longer, for the most part, and New Orleans was a center of colonial government. -- R21] And as exemplified by Bulldog Sports Radio -- and the clowns it chooses to put "on the air" -- it still seems to be in the business of trashing anybody and everybody else in an effort to make itself feel better about its own shortcomings.

“If Obama wants to cut Louisiana from the union tomorrow, we are better off as people,” Stevens said. If excising states from the union will make us "better off as a people," perhaps the president should look a little bit more eastward than the Gret Stet.


HAT TIP: Romenesko.

 

UPDATE: Everyone's in full non-faux apology mode now. Well, that's something, though I wish experience hadn't led me to tend toward cynicism when it comes to things like this. It's easy to apologize if you think you might be facing a firing squad if you don't.

Me, I'd prefer to watch what young Mr. Stevens (and Hadad, too) does rather than immediately believe what he says. Louisiana-Lafayette broadcaster Jay Walker, however, is a more forgiving and generous soul than I am.
 
Such is the nature of so many who these two were so quick to trash in an attempt to look way cooler than they are.

Targeted ads for your garden-variety killer

You'd think sending out breaking-news email blasts wouldn't be brain surgery for a newspaper.

But sometimes at The Advocate in Baton Rouge, La., everything is brain surgery, and there are no brain surgeons on staff. And no one there plays one on TV, either.

Thus, this unintentionally hilarious Advocate news alert from three days ago.

A highly amused high-school classmate posted this on Facebook. That's The Advocate, not so good journalistically a lot of the time, but usually a pretty good reason to shake your head and chuckle.

The watchdog rolls over, plays dead

Nebraska Watchdog, a political-news website, is blazing a journalistic trail in the United States today.

Unfortunately for it and for the rest of us, the trail ends at the edge of a cliff, and it's a one-way thoroughfare.

In the name of "objectivity," the website said last August that "in order to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest," it wouldn't cover the gubernatorial race because Republican candidate Pete Ricketts is one of its major financial contributors.

Perhaps because we have publicized it on our website since our 2009 launch, many of our readers know Omaha businessman Pete Ricketts is a founding contributor to the non-profit Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, of which Nebraska Watchdog is a part.

As you may also know, speculation is growing that Ricketts may soon enter the 2014 Nebraska governor’s race.

It is important to note that no donor to the Franklin Center, and there are many, have any editorial control over Nebraska Watchdog’s content.

However because of Ricketts’ financial relationship with the Franklin Center, Nebraska Watchdog has decided not to report on the governor’s campaign while Ricketts is a likely or actual candidate.

AND THAT'S exactly what has happened. Nebraska Watchdog hasn't reported on the race. The gubernatorial race. Because a disclaimer at the end of every story on the governor's race wouldn't be sufficient?

Because scrupulously fair and balanced coverage, combined with a disclaimer at the end of every story on the Nebraska governor's race wouldn't be enough to quash scurrilous talk about the "appearance of a conflict of interest"?

When a "news" site abandons its fundamental mission -- covering the news, and voters deciding who will be the next leader of their state seems like reasonably big news to me -- it begs a couple of questions. First, is it really true that "no donor to the Franklin Center, and there are many, have any editorial control over Nebraska Watchdog’s content"? Or is Watchdog managing editor Joe Jordan merely really, really afraid of what would happen to his operating expenses (or his future employment) if his reporting on Sarah Palin's favorite Nebraska gubernatorial candidate went somewhere a major sugar daddy didn't want it to go?

Oh, did I mention that the notoriously right-wing Koch brothers also are major donors to the Franklin Center?

Second, has Jordan's no-coverage stance made him boss of a news outlet which will end up with little to do and less reason to exist? If Pete Ricketts wins in November -- which he likely will in this bright-red state -- will Nebraska Watchdog, by that no-appearance-whatsoever-of-a-conflict-of-interest reasoning be unable to cover any political story to which Ricketts is somehow connected? Will there be zero coverage of the executive branch of Nebraska's state government, no reporting on the governor's legislative agenda, no mention of bills the governor has threatened to veto . . . or bills the governor says he'll sign?
 

Joe Jordan

WHEN EVERY story dealing with a major donor is too hot to handle, and when that major donor happens to get himself elected governor, what then? If logic and consistency is as important to the Nebraska Watchdog chief as not looking bad (no matter how bad that makes you look), he may have backed himself into an inescapable corner.

And we thought there was an inherent conflict between business and editorial functions in the advertising-supported media. Now it's looking like the non-profit mode -- when it relies on corporate or individual sugar daddies -- may be even more problematic.

That's a fine mess Joe Jordan has gotten himself into.

If this is how Nebraska Watchdog rolls, and how it will continue to roll, perhaps the Watchdog has had its day already. And perhaps the time has come to quit while it's behind . . . the eight ball.


HAT TIP: Romenesko.

Short attention-span newspapering

As Flounder said as the Deltas wreaked havoc on Faber College's homecoming parade . . . "Oh boy, is this great!"

The Omaha World-Herald has endorsed a gubernatorial candidate whose primary national exposure heretofore -- during a 2011 foray into a U.S. Senate race -- has been for comparing welfare recipients to raccoons. Swallow your coffee and let it percolate in your head for a second, then know you're a lot smarter than the newspaper's editorial board -- or that you actually give a damn.

Don't forget to swallow that coffee first.

Sayeth the World-Herald:

The State Capitol is in for big changes next year.

Nebraska will have a new governor for the first time in 10 years. At least one-third of the Legislature, including its speaker, will be replaced by newcomers. The state auditor, government's financial watchdog, also will be new to the job.

This will be no place for on-the-job training. The state's next chief executive should be someone with solid state government experience.

This big job is being sought by six Republicans and one Democrat. In the crowded and qualified GOP field, candidates voice similar positions on many issues — taxes, government efficiency, boosting the state's economy and creating jobs.

Jon Bruning's experience, management skills and demonstrated leadership in government make him the strongest choice for the GOP nomination to face Democrat Chuck Hassebrook in the fall.

State government encompasses dozens of agencies with responsibilities ranging from agriculture and prisons to Medicaid and highways. It spends about $8.1 billion annually and employs 18,000. Leading this is not an abstract political exercise.

The next governor must chart a course for those agencies, mind the budget and work with legislators on tax policy, public safety and the “problem child” Department of Health and Human Services. The next Legislature will deal with several issues — prison crowding, the “good time” law and water — in which Bruning has particular expertise.

WILL BRUNING also be well positioned to tackle Nebraska's "raccoon problem"? Inquiring readers want to know.

Really, I don't know what's worse when considering this World-Herald endorsement -- a newspaper that can't remember . . . or one that just doesn't give a damn.

FU2, Bo. Now, with the pleasantries all done. . . .

I can't get too mad at Nebraska's football coach and undisputed-champion F-bomb dropper, "Mad Man" Bo Pelini.

Yes, after a big comeback against Ohio State in 2011, the coach had some choice words about Husker fans and a couple of Omaha World-Herald sports columnists, as reported (and illustrated) by the website Deadspin. Then again, what the hell do you think I was saying about him Saturday afternoon?

Nebraska's second-half performance against UCLA would have been enough to make the pope drop a few choice expletives. I wonder how you say "stupid #@!*#+% a-hole" in Spanish? Or Italian or Latin . . . whichever.

Pelini's real problem is that his teams keep having UCLA-game meltdowns. Or is that Wisconsin-game meltdowns? Ohio State-game meltdowns? Maybe Texas A&M- or South Carolina-game or Georgia-game meltdowns.

You get the gist, I presume.

 Audio is exceptionally NSFW

ONE HAS to wonder whether Coach Bo's infamous id too often mucks about with his coaching superego. Whatever the reason, though, it looks like we have a foundational failure in the Nebraska football program, which follows on the heels of the somewhat more spectacular foundational failure that was Bill Callahan's Reign of Error down there in Lincoln.

That's no way to keep the fans streaming into Memorial Stadium, and no way to keep the Huskers' legendary home-sellout streak alive through Year 51 and into Year 52. Mess that up and you've just screwed up the one thing Callahan's benighted tenure as Nebraska coach couldn't.

That. Would. Be. Bad.

When you couple meltdowns on the gridiron like Saturday's with behavioral meltdowns like Pelini occasionally has both in public and in private (or in private that goes public), you're flirting with both Public Relations Armageddon and Sellout Streak Apocalypse. Especially when you insult the very fan base that's stuck with the Huskers through a lot more thin than thick for the past decade.

BARRING a drastic turnaround -- and a drastic change in the on-field character of his Nebraska football squads -- I think Coach Bo is gone. Involuntarily, despite his threat to walk on the leaked 2011 audio.

Pelini's foundational problem, to put it in LSU terms, where he was defensive coordinator before heading to Lincoln as the head man, is that he seems to be Gerry DiNardo following the abject disaster of Curley Hallman -- an improvement, but definitely not the guy.

I think this is as good as it gets under Pelini, and that's not where NU needs to be . . . and certainly not where Nebraska football has the potential to be.

The big question here is who's out there to get the Huskers where they need to be without sacrificing all the values that make Nebraska football special and keep the program's nose clean with the NCAA. Athletic Director Shawn Eichorst has some hard thinking to do as this season, like most of the rest under Pelini, remains mired in the muck of mediocrity.

Expect a rousing victory this week against South Dakota State. Whee!

And we have a winner. . . .

The 2012 Chickenshits of the Year award goes to management at the Kansas City Star, because that's what they are.

Think I'm being harsh?

Yeah? Then read this from KC Confidential:

Check out this startling tale involving a pair of Kansas City Star reporters reportedly presented with a proposition – a variation on Sophie’s Choice – that only one position remained for the two of their jobs.

“They brought in two reporters – Karen Dillon and Dawn Bormann – and told them that one of them had to go,” says a staffer. “And that they had to decide which one would stay and they had until next week to figure it out. Sort of like ‘The Hunger Games.’ That’s the scuttlebutt anyway.”

There’s more.

“Karen Dillon has seniority, so she has the option of taking it or not taking it,” says the source. “And if she does, Dawn gets laid off. Dawn’s a great person but I think Karen will vote in favor of herself because she’s got teenage kids at home.”

This just in: Bormann is o-u-t.

CAN YOU believe it? I knew that you could.

Just like I knew you'd come around to my way of thinking.

Amid the universal hand-wringing by newspaper-management types about how the difficult economy, a disintegrating business model and everybody's favorite bogeyman -- the Internet, of course -- is killing the industry, I'd like to propose another primary reason for Your Local Daily's impending doom. That would be that most American newspapers (and I don't think this is an overbroad generalization) are run by dolts, chickenshits and a-holes.

Difficult economies, disintegrating business models and the Internet can be coped with and overcome with a little thought, creativity and effort. Dolts, chickenshits and a-holes atop the organizational chart rarely can be.


HAT TIP: Romenesko.

Everything I need to know, I learned in 1948

Click on photos for larger, readable versions

This isn't just an old issue of the Capitol News -- the way rad tout mag from the hot-wax peddlers in Tinseltown.

This isn't just another "primary source document" for students of the cultural history of the United States.

And this isn't just another fascinating estate-sale find in Omaha, Neb.

No, Poindexter, this is a guide to good living, good music, good writing and good times. Everything you need to know, pally, you'll learn in 1948. Because, as the continued existence and occasional unearthing of this cultural touchstone proves, it's always Postwar America somewhere . .  and there you, too, can be a hep cat, baby!

So, what did I learn from the preserved wisdom of '48? A few things.

FOR EXAMPLE, from the cover of the December 1948 edition of the platter-patter rag, I learned that if you're one to watch the record go 'round and 'round when you're grooving on your stacks of wax, don't be surprised if your eyeballs turn into spinning 78s.

I ALSO learned that the wise owl better give a hoot what Dave Dexter says -- he's gonna sign Sinatra to Capitol someday, you wait and see. I don't think he'll "get" the British invasion and the lads from Liverpool, though, Daddy-O!

AND WHILE I was doing a double take on that news blast about how Columbia's movie mavens are remaking Latin music maker Desi Arnaz into La-La Land's new cha-cha heartthrob, I found myself wondering what hilarious hijinks Lucy and Ethel will inflict upon the Left Coast.

LIKEWISE, didja ever wonder what the Pied Pipers would sing if they were pie-eyed? And do you suddenly want a piece of pie now?

I do.

I wonder why.

AND WE SEE that Nat  King Cole had himself a hit with "The Christmas Song" some 12 years before he had himself a hit with "The Christmas Song."

ONE VERY IMPORTANT thing to learn is that you got to be hep to the lingo, Clyde.

If you're not hep to the lingo, you might have ignorantly turned the headline Blues Bawlers / Sign New Cap / Waxing Pacts into something like Blue Ballers / Sign New Cap / Waxing Pacts. There's a difference, you know.

FINALLY, Capitol Records not only provides "Christmas cheer throughout the year," it also provides a pretty decent workout from lugging those albums full of 78s all over creation.

So drop the needle in a groove, dude, and we'll chatter about the platters long into the new-old year.

A date that will live in the infirmary

It's a day that will live in infamy, and a day that Greg Camp's aging father has never forgotten.

That's why today, Camp will sit down for lunch with his 92-year-old dad and four more survivors of the brutal Dec. 1, 1941, aerial attack on Pearl Harbor by Japanese bombers.

-- Story in Columbus, Ga., Ledger-Enquirer

SURE, it's fun to cut school and smoke weed all day long, and there's always someone you can pay to take the ACT for you . . . but then you end up getting a job at a newspaper in BF Georgia, and you can't pay some smart dude to write your feature story for you because there aren't any, and there you are.

Stuck.

"Pearl Harbor Day . . . Pearl Harbor Day . . . that's like in December, right? That crippled president said something famous about Pearl Harbor back in the day, dude.

"Uhhh . . . 'Tuesday, Dec. 1, 1943, a date that will live in the infirmary . . . .' THAT'S IT!

"OK, I got this. Kewl."

FILE UNDER: If You Can't Laugh . . .

Cheap grace: The football edition

You ever notice how football coaches are quick to say, after a big loss, "It's all on me. I'm responsible." 

You ever notice, likewise, how snippy and defensive football coaches get when a sportswriter has the temerity to suggest that what happened just might be due to some shortcoming of theirs?

In other words, "It's all my fault; how DARE you suggest this is my fault?! Now where's my raise."

You ever notice how Nebraska's Bo Pelini pulls this cheap grace act over and over again after his Huskers lay egg after egg in a Really Big Game? Here's Pelini doing it yet again, getting snippy with a favored target for his wrath, Omaha World-Herald sportswriter Dirk Chatelain. 


70-31.
 
The Huskers fell to a five-loss Wisconsin team 70-31 in the Big Ten championship game. You know what a team that loses to a five-loss Wisconsin team in the Big Ten championship would be called if it played in the Southeastern Conference, as opposed to one of the weaker major conferences? 

Kentucky.

This year, the Wildcats went 0-8 in the SEC, and head coach Joker Phillips was forced to take real responsibility for his team's poor performance. He got fired.

LISTEN, I don't know whether Pelini ought to be canned. or even how you could explain getting rid of a coach who won 10 games, even in a notoriously weak conference. But I do know a pattern when I see one -- this particular one being meltdowns in big games against beatable opponents.

I also suspect that another pattern's emerging -- that this is as good as it gets for Nebraska football now, that this is the new normal. Tom Osborne's gone, and he's not coming back. 

Go Big Red! But make a trip to the liquor store before the next big game -- we're all going to need a drink.

Integrity . . . what a concept!

In television news anymore, the most common "I" word is . . . I.

As in . . . "I will do anything for ratings."

Or, "I was the emcee for the Bratz Appreciation Society's "Tart Up Your Tykes" event today, so here's a minute of airtime devoted to that instead of real news."

Or, "Did I look OK in that outfit? It didn't make me look fat, did it?"

Less common on local TV these days is another "I" word -- "integrity."

As in, "Management is treating employees really badly, and it's trying to get us to slant the news. Integrity demands that we not go along with this and bring attention to bad practices -- even if it might well be career suicide, especially amid media contraction and in this economy."
 
THAT'S the "I" word we're seeing play out here, live and local, as the anchor team for Bangor's WVII television -- one of them the station's news director -- quit at the end of the 6 o'clock news Tuesday. Most people probably will say theirs was a supreme act of stupidity, that no one in their right mind will hire them now.

“I just wanted to know that I was doing the best job I could and was being honest and ethical as a journalist, and I thought there were times when I wasn’t able to do that."

-- Tony Consiglio

I say that integrity is its own reward, even when it involves sacrificing one's career. Doing the right thing rarely makes you rich. Sometimes, it can get you killed.

And in the wake of Cindy Michaels and Tony Consiglio's most public of resignations from WVII, lots of people in Bangor -- and across America -- now know something's rotten in the state of television in that city. It certainly got the immediate attention of that city's newspaper, the Bangor Daily News, and other media sites. That's not nothing.

Michaels and Consiglio, who have a combined 12½ years’ service at WVII (Channel 7) and sister station WFVX (Channel 22), shocked staff members and viewers with their joint resignations Tuesday evening.

“I just wanted to know that I was doing the best job I could and was being honest and ethical as a journalist, and I thought there were times when I wasn’t able to do that,” said Consiglio, a northeastern Connecticut native who broke in with WVII as a sports reporter in April 2006.

Not everyone was shocked by the on-air resignations.

“No, that was unfortunate, but not unexpected,” said Mike Palmer, WVII/WFVX vice president and general manager. “We’ll hire experienced people to fill these positions sooner rather than later.”

Neither reporter had told anyone of their decisions before Tuesday’s newscast.

“We figured if we had tendered our resignations off the air, we would not have been allowed to say goodbye to the community on the air and that was really important for us to do that,” said Michaels, the station’s news director, who has spent six of her 15 years in Bangor’s radio and TV market at WVII.

Both Michaels, 46, and Consiglio, 28, said frustration over the way they were allowed or told to do their jobs — something that has been steadily mounting for the last four years — became too much for them.

“There was a constant disrespecting and belittling of staff and we both felt there was a lack of knowledge from ownership and upper management in running a newsroom to the extent that I was not allowed to structure and direct them professionally,” Michaels explained. “I couldn’t do everything I wanted to as a news director. There was a regular undoing of decisions.”

While choosing not to respond to individual complaints or charges, Palmer did take issue with the former anchors’ characterization of management’s role.

“Upper management is not involved in the daily production of the news. Period,” said Palmer, who had just finished posting online job opening ads in his office at 10 p.m. Tuesday. [Really? Follow the link. Kudos to TVSpy. -- R21] “We’ve made great changes over the last few months and are not slowing down.”

Michaels said there were numerous things that contributed to their decisions.

“It’s a culmination of ongoing occurrences that took place the last several years and basically involved upper management practices that we both strongly disagreed with,” she explained. “It’s a little complicated, but we were expected to do somewhat unbalanced news, politically, in general.”

MAYBE the anchor duo will get lucky. Maybe Michaels and Consiglio will come out ahead financially and careerwise amid the fallout of their televised quitting. Then again, maybe not.

If not, standing up for what's right, and the self-respect that comes from that, will have to suffice. Like it says in the Bible, sometimes your reward will have to wait till kingdom come.



HAT TIPS: Romenesko, TVSpy

Dear LSU: Never fire this man

How f***in' easy it was for me to largely stay away from the Internets on Sunday.

How f***in' easy it would have been for me to miss the most f***in' epic of all Les Miles' f***in' epic press conferences as LSU's head football coach.

Excuse my language.

But, WOW! What a press conference!

I don't give a flying expletive deleted what stupid-ass Tiger fans think about Les. Don't care how badly they want him fired for losing two games this season, or for shooting craps on the sideline and sometimes rolling snake eyes. I know a little about LSU fans, being one, and I know that if brains were dynamite, 48.92 percent of them wouldn't have enough to blow their nose.

And I know that a lot of them get even stupider -- not to mention meaner -- after they've been drinking Bud Light all day and night. So any noise they make about removing this great man as the Tigers' coach should be regarded as the drunken ravings of a bunch of dumbasses.

FOR ONE THING, if LSU ever fired Les -- particularly so long as he keeps winning more games than he loses -- it never would find any decent coach insane enough to take that job. Only one decent coach today is insane enough to put up with such a dumbass fan base . . . and his name is Les Miles.

Like, you did watch the video, right?

And for another thing, Les is one of the few coaches out there just as certifiable as Louisiana itself. The Mad Hatter is the personification of the Gret Stet when it's at its bat-s*** crazy best, yet he somehow manages to avoid being like Louisiana when it's at its bat-s*** crazy worst.

LSU -- and Louisiana -- cannot lose this singular individual who, in fact, is the only person in the state to have successfully pulled that off. Les Miles not only should never be fired, but the Ole War Skule instead needs -- and I'm talking right now -- to commence an all-out research program dedicated to cloning the coach and disseminating his gene pool widely throughout the state.

And if there's a university geneticist who can do this great service for Louisiana, you need to grab him and give him a big kiss on the mouth. If you're a girl.

OR A GUY, but only if she's a girl. Because on this here blog, "heteronormative" is not a dirty word.

Have a great day.

1948: Dewey doesn't defeat Truman

Ladies and gentlemen, you are watching here via the facilities of NBC television and Life magazine, coverage of the 1948 national elections, live and direct across the network.

This is looking more and more like a stunning reversal in fortunes for the Republican ticket headed by Gov. Thomas Dewey, a ticket that had seemed to be destined to coast to victory against a riven Democratic Party and a president whose popularity has steadily faded since he assumed the high office upon the death of FDR. And it is our privilege -- Life and the NBC network -- to bring this live coverage to you, the television viewer, thanks to this electronic miracle of our modern times.


IF YOU will indulge us ladies and gentlemen, as Ben Grauer fires up yet another Camel and we peer into the iconoscope through a smoky haze . . . just a moment, ladies and gentlemen, we are getting word that we have results in from Ohio . . . yes, the results are in ladies and gentlemen of the television audience across the East Coast from Schenectady to Philadelphia to here in New York City and down to our nation's capital, and President Truman has taken Ohio. We repeat, President Truman has won Ohio and thus has claimed the necessary electoral votes for re-election as president of the United States . . . this is extraordinary, a stunning reversal of fortune, television friends.

Now we understand the president may have a statement for the assembled press and supporters at his Kansas City hotel, and you will hear that right here on the NBC hookup, but you won't see it, because we can't do that yet because we don't have the coaxial cable running that far yet. But you will hear it over our NBC microphones, viewing friends as the camera pans wildly to and fro.

Now if you will bear with us as you squint at your 12-inch screen, we have a little confusion here, as it's just 1948 and no one has ever done this sort of thing before -- and frankly, kinescope compadres, we just have no idea what the H-E-double hockey sticks we're doing.

At all.

BUT at least we're not the Chicago Daily Tribune.

Yep, this is Bo's team, all right

You know how a football team ostensibly takes on the personality of the head coach?

Well, I think this little moment at Saturday night's 63-38 Husker implosion at Ohio State explains a lot -- about both the personality thing and why Nebraska's big-game meltdowns just keep coming and never get fixed. Long story short, this is Bo Pelini's team, and Bo's boys are just as clueless as their coach.

Who, for pity's sake, goes out on the field to warm up while the marching band is still playing . . . and marching? 

Who in the world takes the field to practice field goals when the Buckeye marching band is doing the sacred "Script Ohio" to close its halftime performance?

Who, for the love of Johnny Rodgers, is that clueless? Or maybe arrogant? Or, most likely, arrogantly and willfully clueless?

Bo's boys.

WHAT'S a little interfering with your opponent's most revered tradition on its home field when your coach can say this about the hiring of Nebraska's new athletic director: "You know, I've been concentrating on Ohio State. I don't know anything about that."

No, why should Bo know anything about that after serving on the chancellor's AD-search advisory committee? More importantly, though, what kind of clueless idiot fails to even fake some sincere enthusiasm for the guy who will have the power to fire his underperforming self?

That would be Bo Pelini. I'm a little surprised it took the Omaha World-Herald's Lee Barfknecht until this morning to put in print what Husker fans have been saying since Clueless Bo stepped in it Thursday afternoon.



I SWEAR, letting that man in front of a live microphone is like handing Barney Fife a loaded gun. Or letting Bo's boys on the field for a big game on national TV. Or, for that matter, letting 'em anywhere near Ohio Stadium when the Buckeye band is practicing its scarlet-and-gray penmanship.

"Look, Daddy! Teacher says every time a gunshot's fired, one of Bo's boys needs a new pair of shoes."