Late, Late Show's good, good guy

Let's all raise a glass of sparkling grape juice to Craig Ferguson, late (or is that late, late?) of The Drew Carey Show and present host of CBS Television's The Late, Late Show.

From The Associated Press:

LOS ANGELES -- Craig Ferguson decided not to poke fun at Britney Spears for at least one night.

The host of CBS' "The Late Late Show" told viewers Monday that after seeing photos of the 25-year-old pop star's shaved head, he reconsidered making jokes at the expense of the "vulnerable."

(snip)

"For me, comedy should have a certain amount of joy in it," Ferguson said. "It should be about attacking the powerful -- the politicians, the Trumps, the blowhards -- going after them. We shouldn't be attacking the vulnerable."

Ferguson recalled his battle with alcoholism and said he worries Spears may be having troubles of her own.

OH . . . AND IT LOOKS LIKE Britney's giving rehab another shot. Let's hope it takes this time, and that she can get a grip on Demon Rum . . . and Demon Sex . . . and Demon Crappy Self-Concept . . . and Demon You, Too, Can Be as God . . . .

Hessians

A most interesting item from The Associated Press:

MCKEESPORT, Pa. — Edward “Willie” Carman wanted a ticket out of town, and the Army provided it.

Raised by a single mother in this old industrial steel town outside Pittsburgh, the 18-year-old saw the military as an opportunity.

“I’m not doing it to you, I’m doing it for me,” he told his mother, Joanna Hawthorne, after coming home from high school one day and surprising her with the news.

When Carman died in Iraq three years ago at age 27, he had money saved for college, a fiancee and two kids — including a baby son he had never met. Neighbors in Hawthorne’s mobile home park collected $400 and left it in an envelope in her door.

Across the U.S., small towns are quietly bearing a disproportionate burden of war. Nearly half of the more than 3,100 U.S. military casualties in Iraq have come from towns like McKeesport, where fewer than 25,000 people live, according to an analysis by The Associated Press. One in five have come from hometowns of less than 5,000.

Many of the hometowns of the war dead are not just small, they are poor. The AP analysis found that nearly three-quarters of those killed in Iraq came from towns where the per capita income was below the national average. More than half came from towns where the percentage of people living in poverty topped the national average.

Some are old factory towns like McKeesport, once home to U.S. Steel’s National Tube Works, which employed 8,000 people at its peak. Now, residents’ average income is just 60 percent of the national average, and one in eight lives below the federal poverty line.

On a per capita basis, states with mostly rural populations have suffered the highest casualties in Iraq. Vermont, South Dakota, Alaska, North Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Delaware, Montana, Louisiana and Oregon top the list, the AP found.

There’s a “basic unfairness” about the number of troops dying in Iraq who are from rural areas, said William O’Hare, senior visiting fellow at the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey Institute, which examines rural issues.

Diminished opportunities are one factor in higher military enlistment rates in rural areas. From 1997 to 2003, 1.5 million rural workers lost their jobs due to changes in industries like manufacturing that have traditionally employed rural workers, according to the Carsey Institute.

(snip)

Death is not the only burden the war has put on small towns.

Entrepreneurs in many small communities have lost their businesses after deploying in the Guard and Reserves, said Senator Jon Tester.

Another fairness issue, raised by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., is the Pentagon’s practice of transporting the remains of military personnel killed in Iraq only to the nearest major airport. He has introduced legislation to require delivery of the remains to the military or civilian airport chosen by the family.

Support for the war in rural areas has declined sharply in the past three years. AP-Ipsos polls show that those in rural areas who said going to war was the right decision dropped from 73 percent in April 2004 to 39 percent now.

(snip)

Joanna Hawthorne is bitter about a military she said enticed her son with promises of money, then sent him to a war based on a lie.

When her son’s first enlistment was nearing an end, before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Hawthorne said he decided to re-enlist, partly because the signing bonus of more than $10,000 would help pay his bills.

When he deployed to Iraq, his sister said, he had money saved and planned to go to college when he got out of the military in 2005.

Instead, he died in Iraq in 2004 when his tank overturned.

Hawthorne said the military gave her $4,000 for his funeral, but it wasn’t enough to cover the $14,000 expense. The funeral home forgave the rest.

“You don’t see anyone who has money putting their children into the military,” Hawthorne said. “I’m all for our soldiers. Without them, our country wouldn’t be where we are today, but this war just doesn’t seem right.”

IT'S COME TO THIS in our all-volunteer military at a time of war. We're sending in the Hessians.

And the Hessians are coming back home -- coming back home disproportionately dead.

During the Revolutionary War, the British supplemented their ranks with soldiers-for-hire from what would eventually become Germany. Today, King George 43 and his generals in the Pentagon just send for their soldiers-for-hire disproportionately from America's small towns, where the deck is stacked (and not in a good way) and a future is what college boys from the big city have.

The military as a way out worked out pretty well for Audie Murphy during World War II. He killed a bazillion Krauts, then got a million-dollar wound, a Medal of Honor and a Hollywood career.

We knew why the hell we were in World War II. Somebody tell me -- with a straight face, now -- why the hell we're in Iraq.

Even amid the catastrophe that is Iraq, kids from small-town America still see the military as a way out. Or at least as something to do.

But that "something to do" too often means they come home not as postmillennial Audie Murphys but, instead, as merely dead. Or merely horribly wounded.

And the "who" of who is paying the price probably is why President Bush has gotten away with murder for as long as he has. We don't have to fight this insane, pointless war -- or at least the well off and the college boys and the politicians' sons and daughters don't, by and large.

We have the Hessians to do it for us, freeing us to worry about the truly important things in life. Like that ski weekend. Or replacing the SUV with a new H2.

Or sending Johnny off to State U., where the most dangerous thing he'll do in his dissolute college existence (before heading off to his dissolute adult existence) is drink to excess and risk a catching nasty case of something from "hooking up" with the coeds.

Dear Diary: It gets worser and worser

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.

* * *

TUESDAY, FEB. 26, 2002

Dear Diary,


The archdiocese is trying to pull a fast one.

Bob Kolfrier may have been "ordered" to stay away from kids (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) but he didn't. He was involved with the "Spirit Fire" youth group connected to Pope FM this whole time. He was an occasional guest priest on Keys to the Kingdom -- and we know that because of the bishops' document on Catholic media, HE HAD TO BE APPROVED BY THE ARCHBISHOP.

I know for a fact this was the case. The producer told me there were only so many priests approved to appear on that show.

This is total and complete bulls***.

THIS IS THE BUNCH OF LIES being fed to the newspaper:

Eight months before authorities started investigating a priest for allegedly
viewing child pornography, the Catholic Church removed him from his teaching
duties and limited his contact with children, according to police documents.

The Rev. Bob Kolfrier told his archbishop in February 2001 that he
viewed child pornography as many as four times a week, for several hours each
time, according to a search warrant filed Monday in Madis County.

Kolfrier was removed from his teaching position at Carson Catholic High
School and was ordered to abstain from contact with children outside of worship
services, documents state.

Last June, Kolfrier transferred to St. Theresa Catholic Church in Southtown as part of a regular rotation.

AFTER READING TODAY'S ARTICLE and seeing that what it stated was not the truth, the missus and I knew what conscience demanded that we do.

We called up one of the reporters on the story, and told her that Father Bob had been involved with Keys to the Kingdom, the Spirit Fire youth group and had gone on bus trips to "Steubenville of the Rockies." We also told her the chancery HAD to have known he was involved with Keys to the Kingdom because every priest on that show was approved by the archbishop or Father Mark Leinstell, the chancellor.

We also gave her the name of the bishops' document so she could look it up on the Web.

I wouldn't bet money that I won't be fired. Damn these people. Damn them all.

Internet matchmaker ad we'd like to see

Losing it

XM satellite radio programming guru Lee Abrams -- architect, by the way, of one of the great radio stations of my youth: WRNO, The Rock of New Orleans -- thinks we're losing our collective . . . er, stuff. He lays it all out in an inspired rant on his blog:

I think American Culture may be having a nervous breakdown. Popular Culture is one of our greatest resources and exports, but “junk” culture is clogging the arteries of our lives. I tune in a “respectable” news channel and hear, in order:

*A critical update on who the Father of Anna Nicole might be, along with ongoing coverage of Anna Nicole’s death. Since when does a trashy bimbo with absolutely no talent but DOES have a skill for attracting attention, warrant ANY coverage on a legitimate news channel? I thought we had tabloids for this stuff...and no she's NOT Marilyn Monroe.

Then…

*Ongoing debate about The Dixie Chicks and how “important” they are to the 2008 elections. Huh??? Keep up their rants and it’ll guarantee a Republican President.

Then…

*More about the pre-marital sex the astronaut with the attempted murder rap. If as much attention was paid to the positive efforts of NASA we'd have someone on Mars by now.

Then….

*An update on Brittney’s partying and a possible split with Paris. Important stuff...

This was NOT on an Entertainment” segment. This was masquerading as “news”. This celebrity thing is WAY out of control. It’s “junk culture”. It’s always existed, but never before have there been literally millions of websites, radio, TV and other outlets to spew this shit….and many people actually DO believe what they hear and read. And think it’s important. It MUST be if “News Alive Action Super Update at 10” is doing the lead story. This is very sick. What’s sick is the degree it is making us a Nation of media cretins. I can’t blame consumers... I can’t blame anyone— but its happening and it’s out of control…and it isn’t one of these old guy things wishing we were back in the 60’s….it’s one of those, we Americans better be careful or we’ll choke on our own trash. It CAN happen here.

Yep. Go read the whole thing.

You want a mission statement? I'll give you a mission statement

"To find those with holy hand grenades
up their butt and pull the pin."

(Hat tip: The Internet Monk)

I watched this interview with Canada's most listened-to Christian radio host -- aired on Canada's most-watched Evangelical television program -- and let's just say chords were struck.

Furthermore, I'm just grateful that I wasn't drinking hot coffee when I watched Drew Marshall on 100 Huntley Street. I'd still be trying to clean it all off of the monitor, the keyboard, the wall . . . .

Somebody's little girl

Here's what you won't read in our celebrity-obsessed media's non-stop coverage of Britney Spears' descent into madness: Britney Spears was somebody's little girl. She -- such as she is -- still is somebody's daughter.

And as she descends into the alcohol-, sex- and psychically fueled hellfire of her own making -- and as scads of American websites, newspapers, tabloids and magazines make s***loads of money chronicling every aspect of the destruction of a human being . . . turning profound tragedy into spectator sport -- those who love her grieve. Those who love her want her to just stop it, stop it now.

But they are utterly powerless to make her stop it.

They cannot stop her headlong -- now bald headlong -- descent into that special hell inhabited by poor little rich girls (and boys) for whom the camera never blinks. For whom the inner demons do their dirty work in front of 300 million slack-jawed gawkers who worship the rich and famous as they wait, just wait, for all of those Britneys to screw it all up . . . screw it all up bad enough so that their ordinary American lives seem just a bit less futile and meaningless by comparison.

We -- the hopelessly ordinary -- gawk at these magnificent human disaster areas for whom all the money and fame (and, sometimes, maybe even talent) in the world has profited nothing. Zilch. Zero. Nada. Rien.

Britney Spears. Lindsay Lohan. Paris Hilton. Pete Doherty. They're to today's mass media -- to today's mass media consumers -- what a good train wreck was to silent movies. They're Harold Lloyd hanging from the minute hand of a giant clock 15 stories up.

They're Slim Pickens riding the Big One down to the Apocalypse.

All for our amusement . . . and for our entertainment dollar.

SOMEWHERE, some poor little rich girl's mama cries.

Somewhere, an American media consumer -- leading a life of quiet futility and despair -- sits wide-eyed in front of the television set (or computer screen) waiting for the next human train wreck on Entertainment Tonight.

I am guilty. And so are you.

Somewhere, Britney Spears' mama sits, crying over her daughter adrift in a sea of futile wealth.

Somewhere, Britney Spears' children's souls are being lashed by an invisible bullwhip, the wounds from which will bleed somewhere down the road.

It just doesn't add up

OK, THIS IS BAD.

Even for a journalism major.

Don't mess with people's religion

It's axiomatic that you can expect more heat than light when you start talking religion or politics.

Daily Reveille columnist Emily Byers, however, just can't help herself. This brazen hussy down at Louisiana State University insists upon trashing most college students' religion with incendiary rhetoric such as this:

Imagine that parents taught children to form healthy relationships with this line of reasoning: The best relationships call for honesty, generosity and mutual respect. Your chances of finding happiness, security and fulfillment in such relationships are very high; however, they require you to exercise self-restraint. Since you're probably not capable of self-restraint, here are numerous ways to form relationships in which you and another person consent to use one another for your own selfish benefit. These relationships require you to take careful precautions to ensure your well-being, but they are just as acceptable as the first kind and much more common. Choose whichever you feel is best.

It may not make sense, but this is precisely how proponents of comprehensive sex education expect to teach young people to form healthy sexual relationships.

The French House hosted the Spirituality and Choice Discussion Series on Tuesday sponsored by the LSU Women's Center, Spiritual Youth for Reproductive Freedom and VOX: Voices for Planned Parenthood. This session, "Sex Education: Too Much or Not Enough?" explored the compatibility of spirituality and support for comprehensive sex education.

Each of the four speakers on the discussion panel claimed that ideally sex education should portray abstinence until marriage and the use of contraception as equally acceptable alternatives for young people. This approach is often called abstinence-plus or abstinence-based sex education. Each panelist emphasized the importance of ensuring that young people are free to choose what's best for them as individuals.

I'm not sure a person can be expected to choose "what's best" when he or she is told that both alternatives are equally acceptable. Young people are always free to choose abstinence or contraception. Even programs that strongly encourage abstinence don't deny them that choice; however, they can only make an informed decision when they've got a clear picture of both alternatives, and they certainly won't get that from the sort of program Tuesday's panelists described.

Acknowledging the validity of abstinence as a healthy choice while contending that it can be unhealthy to repress one's sexual urges is an apparent contradiction. How can self-restraint be healthy and unhealthy at the same time?

Calling abstinence until marriage "ideal," as members of Tuesday's panel repeatedly did while admitting that you don't expect young people to choose it is pointless. Why mention abstinence if you're going to insinuate that it's practically impossible to practice? Someone who sings the praises of "choice" but implies that young people are incapable of choosing to master their sexual urge clearly has very little faith in their ability to choose.

SHOCKING, ISN'T IT? This sort of disrespect of her contemporaries' -- indeed, our entire Western society's -- most sacred religious beliefs stung the student population at LSU, resulting in strong but surprisingly restrained and reasoned rebuttals in the Reveille's comboxes. To wit:

Ryan
posted 2/15/07 @ 11:13 AM EST

[QUOTE]An argument for contraception is essentially an argument against self-restraint and for consensual objectification. The contraceptive attitude says, "Let me use you, and I'll let you use me."

This attitude cannot teach people to have healthy sexual relationships. If a healthy sexual relationship requires mutual respect, one must act unselfishly and practice self-restraint in order to have one.[/QUOTE]

Wow, that's just a load of crap. How about "an argument for contraception is an argument against STDs and unwanted pregnancies and for two consenting adults to do something that is no business of yours or your church's".

How does this attitude not teach people to have healthy sexual relationships? It's much more healthy than failed abstinence-only plans. Why does mutual respect require abstinence? I guess it is easy to think this way if you discount all of the healthy relationships which have mutual respect without abstinence that people are in right now.

Maybe you need an article to justify your stance on an issue that is causing the death of millions of people, but publishing this load is not helping anyone.

Joe
posted 2/15/07 @ 5:39 PM EST

Travis, your comparison of sex to global warming is priceless. I love how you attempt to validate your biased point of view by trying to use irrelevant scientific facts. I suppose you feel that anyone who takes medicine for an illness is committing and unspeakable sin that goes against the natural process of life! Seriously, SRC and Ryan make excellent points in that it is scary that a person can become so brainwashed and lacking of any ability to think for themselves due to their religion or faith.

On a side note, just about every article written by this columnist makes me sick to my stomach at first, then I sit back and smile when I think how much more intelligent of a person I am for the simple reason that I am able to think for myself and how pitiful she is for being such a puppet.

ON THE OTHER HAND, I am a bit puzzled about the "freethinking" aspects of being a member of the largest and most doctrinaire religious organization in the United States, if not the entire Western world. Of course, I am not an adherent of the Church of the Holy Inconsequential Climax, so I admit to not being an expert on its internal discipine or on potential consequences facing dissenters.

I will admit, however, that some of the rituals of the Church of the Holy Inconsequential Climax are downright interesting.

Dear Diary: My pervs-in-the-Church nightmare

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, FEB. 25, 2002

Dear diary,


From the newspaper:

A priest at St. Theresa Catholic Church in Southtown told an investigator that he viewed child pornography on the Internet as part of research he had been conducting since he was a seminary student.

Details of the investigation were included in a search warrant filed Monday in Madis County District Court. The investigation is taking place in Carson, where the Rev. Bob Kolfrier formerly served at Word Incarnate-St. Joan parish.

No charges have been filed against Kolfrier, and the investigation is continuing.

The search warrant gave these details of the investigation:

Church officials learned in January 2001 that two young men had seen Internet addresses for child porn Web sites on Kolfrier's computer in the church office.

The young men told a priest at another church, who notified the Word Incarnate-St. Joan pastor.

A meeting involving Archbishop Felton Burris, the Rev. Mark Leinstell, chancellor of the archdiocese, the pastor and Kolfrier was held Feb. 1, 2001.

Kolfrier was removed from his teaching position.

Kolfrier later transferred to St. Theresa in Southtown during the regular rotation period in summer 2001.

Police learned of the allegations in October 2001.

Sgt. Michael Bauer of the Carson police interviewed Kolfrier in his Southtown office Wednesday. According to the search warrant, Kolfrier told Bauer that he viewed child pornography on his computer three or four times a week for two or three hours at a time over three years. He said he was conducting research on child pornography. He also said he used a computer program to remove the Web site addresses from his computer.

Kolfrier was not at Masses this weekend and will not be working in the parish until the investigation is concluded, Leinstell said.

One reason for Kolfrier's absence, Leinstell said, is so television and newspaper reporters "won't run him down."

Leinstell said the archdiocese will cooperate with the investigation.

WHO THE !@#$ does Father Bob think he's fooling . . . other than, perhaps, himself? And note that the archdiocese knew about this for more than a year, but kept him in parish ministry. AND WORKING WITH THE KIDS ON KEYS TO THE KINGDOM !!!!!!!!

Ths is outrageous. Here at Pope FM, my boss is swimming down the River of Denial. She buys the research line, though she says it was "incredibly stupid." A quote from her: "I've known Father Bob since he was in high school, and there's no way he has any interest in child pornography."

One of the kids involved with Keys to the Kingdom is like a daughter to Mrs. Favog and me. She's devastated, more or less. She kept telling her mom, "But he's a great guy!"

Furthermore, Mary -- my boss -- said they would be having a meeting Friday night with the Keys to the Kingdom kids. She, the "spiritual activities director" and Father Fabian Desmond will handle it. I suggested they bring in a counselor specializing in this, from the Catholic rehab facility. I was rebuffed out of hand.

God help us all. Damn these people. Damn them.

Dear Diary: It's no longer academic. It's personal.

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.

* * *

SUNDAY, FEB. 24, 2002

Dear diary,


So much for Jesus in the tabernacle warding off all the bad s*** from Pope FM. It don't get no badder than this. Southtown is a suburb, pretty much right in the south-central part of town. Fr. Bob Kolfrier is a pretty regular guest on Keys to the Kingdom . . . I know him. Our assistant pastor at St. Matthew's is a good friend of his. He is (was?) supposed to be the priest on Keys to the Kingdom tomorrow night to talk about the Mass.

This from today's newspaper:

Published Sunday

February 24, 2002

Southtown priest under investigation in child-pornography case

A parish priest in Southtown is under investigation by authorities in Madis County in connection with allegations of child pornography.

Madis County Attorney John Nift confirmed the investigation and told the Carson Daily News that two search warrants had been served - at the Carson church where the priest had been assigned until last June as well as at a residence in the Southtown area. Computer equipment was seized in the search, the newspaper said.

Nift said no arrests have been made and the investigation was continuing. He could not be reached Saturday for comment.

The newspaper said the priest, the Rev. Bob Kolfrier, served at Word Incarnate-St. Joan parish in Carson from 1998, when he was ordained, to June 2001, when he became an associate pastor of St. Theresa parish in Southtown.

The Rev. Larry Beidecker, pastor of St. Theresa parish, said Saturday that he had no information on the investigation. He referred all questions to the Rev. Mark Leinstell, chancellor of the archdiocese. Leinstell could not be reached.

I (WE) NEED PRAYERS. If the archdiocese and my boss do not do the right thing tomorrow -- that is, make sure Father Bob (even though legally there is a presumption of innocence) IS NOT on the air and DOES NOT interact with those kids -- I intend to immediately quit my job. In this kind of thing, there is no debate, there is no worrying about the extreme financial hardship you will be leaping into.

There just isn't.

So, Holy Mother of God, pray for my boss to have common sense and for a sense of Pope FM's self-preservation override her propensity toward ultrapiety and circling the wagons. Pray for the archdiocese to do the right thing . . . and quickly. And pray for my actions to be guided by the Holy Spirit and not by intense anger, righteous though it may be.

And one more twice . . . What we're all about

EDITOR'S NOTE: Yet again -- and I'll probably do this every now again again -- we're rerunning this blog's opening post . . . just to make sure a few things that need to be said keep getting said. After all, Revolution 21 IS kind of, well, unique.

So here goes (again), a blast from the past:

GREETINGS. The Mighty Favog here. Welcome to Revolution 21.

Let's get something straight right now, O huddled masses: Revolution 21 ain't your grandma's radio podcast. It ain't your typical Catholic radio thing, and it ain't your typical corporate, over-researched, same-boring-playlist rock radio thing, either.

But is it really useful to define Revolution 21 by what it's not? So sorry, my plebes! My bad.

Let's just say -- plainly -- what Revolution 21 is. Revolution 21 is radio that aims to reflect life as it is lived by screwed-up, struggling, inspired-yet-bumbling children of God sorely in need of His grace and forgiveness.

Revolution 21 realizes that Catholics like the Mighty Favog -- your host and the master of dysfunctionality -- live life with one foot in Heaven and the other in the gutter with all the other schmucks called Humanity. We strive for holiness, we occasionally achieve it, and sometimes the best we can muster is Holier Than Thou.

Oh, well. Blame it on Eve and that damned apple.

For his part, the Mighty Favog -- though a great and mighty Favog -- is a Bad Catholic. It is to be hoped, however, that he is capable of decent radio . . . and a stellar podcast.

And he's trying most mightily to become, at the least, a Mediocre Catholic.

So, like us believing schmucks, Revolution 21 is a mixture of the sacred and the secular. The serious and the foolish. Rock . . . and roll. And blues in the night.

But Revolution 21 has a problem with our oversecularized, materialist and ultimately shallow culture. We figure schizo is the only thing you get out of putting faith waaaaaaaaaaaaaay over in one corner of your life and "real life" waaaaaaaaaaaaaay over in another corner so the two never touch (probably out of fear of some Matter-Antimatter cataclysm).

Or something like that.

Well, Revolution 21 LIKES IT when things get blowed up good. We say put that Faith Thing and that Life Thing in a bag, shake it the hell up and see what happens.

I mean, ain't that a lot more fun than alienation, ennui and life in Schizo City? Or, if not always fun, at least always a lot more interesting and, ultimately, rewarding.

But then again, it's not All About Me -- or All About You -- is it, now?

Enough blather, proclaims the Mighty Favog, your potentate of New Media!

Let us now proceed with trashing preconceived notions of radio formatting and stale bourgeois convention. Let us now do radio like we ought to be living -- faith and life together, recognizing only two kinds of music. That would be Good and Bad.

The bad, we don't mess with.

Dear Diary: More Catholic than the Pope FM

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, FEB. 18, 2002

Dear Diary,

I am spitting mad.

The other week, as I told you, I somewhat got into it with a couple of the Pope FM powers that be over their planning to bar the Keys to the Kingdom teen-agers (the ones not on the air) from our chapel during the show. I was told it was just for one week, until the little darlings could be "instructed" in proper decorum before the Blessed Sacrament.

Well, tonight, the kids were supposed to be instructed. But still, before I left the station tonight, our "spiritual activities director" denied one teen-ager permission to go into the chapel when he asked, and then told several of the kids that they were requested to (again) stay out of the chapel during the show.

I find this outrageous and incredibly self-righteous. Absolutely outrageous, this telling ANYONE, without demonstrated cause, that they cannot enter into the presence of the living God. That IS what we Catholics believe about the Eucharist, right? That it is the living God? Christ incarnate?

TRUTH BE TOLD, most of these kids are a lot more pious than I am. Though the young volunteer producer of Keys to the Kingdom told me last week that she had to "yell" at one kid for going in the Pope FM chapel barefoot.

I barely restrained myself from telling her "So what? The best Jesus ever did in the footwear department during His earthly life were first-century flip-flops."

Dunno, maybe my revulsion and puzzlement at this rigidity and hyperdevotionalism has turned me into a squishy AmChurch goofus, but I figure Jesus cares more about what's in the kids' hearts than what's on their feet.

This is deeply weird.

And Lord forgive the plank in my own eye, but I told the missus this morning that if Flannery O'Connor were still alive, she'd be writing about our "spiritual activities director."

Furthermore, I offer the following prayer with total sincerity and considerable pain:

"Saints Walker Percy and Flannery O'Connor, O precious barefoot Son of Man who had no home to lay Your sacred head . . . HELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLPPP!!! Amen."

And "Oy veh!"

They're gone . . . oh why? What went wrong?

From The Associated Press:

A second blogger working for Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards quit Tuesday under pressure from conservative critics who said her previous online messages were anti-Catholic.

Melissa McEwan wrote on her personal blog, Shakespeare's Sister, that she left the campaign because she was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the level of attention focused on her and her family.

"This was a decision I made, with the campaign's reluctant support, because my remaining the focus of sustained ideological attacks was inevitably making me a liability to the campaign," McEwan said Tuesday night.

Kate Bedingfield, a spokeswoman for the Edwards campaign, said McEwan left the campaign under her own terms. Both Bedingfield and McEwan declined additional comment.

McEwan's resignation came just one day after another blogger, Amanda Marcotte, left the Edwards staff for similar reasons.

Both had become a flashpoint for conservative critics. Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, called Marcotte and McEwan "foul-mouthed bigots" for remarks he deemed anti-Catholic. Last week, Donohue called on Edwards to fire both bloggers.

Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, responded that he considered the bloggers' past writings personally offensive and added that similar content would not be tolerated. But he decided to keep Marcotte and McEwan on staff to give them "a fair shake."

"We're beginning a great debate about the future of our country, and we can't let it be hijacked," Edwards said in a statement last week.

Donohue had promised a nationwide public relations campaign in newspapers, magazines and Catholic publications in an effort to rid the Edwards campaign of the two bloggers. The Catholic League counts 350,000 members.

McEwan and Marcotte have stressed that the content and opinions on their personal blogs are in no way a reflection of the Edwards campaign.

In one posting, McEwan described Christian supporters of President Bush as his "wingnut Christofascist base." Marcotte once posed a mock question-and-answer session in which she speculated what would have happened if the Virgin Mary had taken an emergency contraceptive.

"You'd have to justify your misogyny with another ancient mythology," came the answer.

Baghdad? You want Baghdad? We got Baghdads!

While the United States is trying to put Humpty Dumpty together again on the mean streets of Baghdad, we seem to have a few Baghdad farm clubs of our own over here. Here's a snapshot of one such minor-league Baghdad in my hometown, Baton Rouge, La., courtesy of writer Jeff Roedel of 225 magazine

The camcorder’s flip-out screen is small, but the image still captivates. A young black kid, who can’t be more than 13, sits on a rundown porch in the depressed neighborhood between Beauregard Town and the north gates of LSU, known for generations as The Bottom. A deep, but inviting voice asks the child if he’s carrying. Without hesitation, the kid lifts his long shirttail up and pulls a handgun, big and flashing in the sunlight, out from under his waistband.

His eyes narrow as he holds the Glock up for the camera the way a kid across town might show off a new baseball mitt. He wields it with the casual defiance of Dirty Harry.

Local rapper Silky Slim, 35, has hours and hours of footage just like this, most of it revealing the shock and awe of teens who arm themselves for protection, or worse. He also has too much footage from too many funerals for his friends. The compact digital video camera remains charged and ready on the backseat of his sleek black Hummer, an astonishing vehicle on any street, but particularly so in The Bottom.

He plans on compiling these real life clips into a documentary about what’s really going on in the ’hood. He wants the movie to entertain, to appall and to initiate positive change. Whatever it ends up being, the documentary should serve as a wake-up call to those who have no idea what the daily lives of so many low-income Baton Rougeans are like.

“This junk over here is rough,” Silky tells me on the first of many trips with him into the neighborhood. “It ain’t even worth livin’ in. It’s for people who ain’t got no place to go.”

Two blocks in, Silky warns me that policemen will probably stop us because I’m white, and they’ll just assume I’m in the area to score crack. “Yeah,” he says. “It’s hard to escape this right here.”

But in a sense, Silky has escaped, although not without the scars—and bullet wounds—that serve as proof of just how hard it can be.

And so Silky finds himself caught between a newfound desire to help strangers and the streetwise instincts still lingering from his days spent on the wrong side of the law. He has pending a felony accessory after the fact charge stemming from an incident in the fall. According to the official police report, a member of a tree-trimming service was fuming on his cell phone about the theft of three chainsaws when Silky approached him and “offered to get the saws back for $150.” When something is stolen in the ’hood, people often ask Silky to look into it. Believing Silky to be in league with those responsible, the man called the police and reported the theft. Silky remained at the scene and told the officer he was not intending to keep the $150, but only meant that it would cost money to buy information leading to the recovery of the chainsaws.

“You call the police, and you’ll never see those saws again,” Silky told the complainant, who could not be reached for comment. The charge is under review with the district attorney, but Silky is confident it won’t even reach a preliminary hearing. The rapper calls it $250,000 of free publicity, referring to how many times the story ran on local news along with a plug for his anti-violence activism.

“The guy did the right thing,” Silky says. “He called the police. My instinct, coming
from my neighborhood, is to look into things myself. Is this whole situation going to keep me from helping people? Of course not. If it does, then I’m not too sincere about it.”

Silky grew up Arthur Reed in a poor home in The Bottom. As a teen dropout, he quickly gravitated to a life of drug dealing, intimidation and crime. “The way I grew up, and (the way) these kids grow up is if somebody take your shoes, you go kick their ass,” he says. “If you’re teaching a kid to be a soldier, he’s going to go out and find a war.”

Silky found his war in the 1980s as a founding member of the 4Down and Southside Wrecking Crews, which are credit with launching the gang violence that still poisons depressed pockets of Baton Rouge, and giving the 6 o’clock news plenty of fodder for crime reports. “There’s no glorification in being a gangsta,” he says of his own crime-addled teens and twenties. “I know, I lived that life. And all I was anticipating was death.”

Silky was just 14 when he first entered the Louisiana penal system for attempted murder and aggravated assault. He spent the next 12 years bouncing between gang life and prison. He won’t talk about what happened or why he was arrested. That was another person, and it was so long ago.

(snip)

But then something happened. In 2003 Silky and a Tahoe full of friends were driving from California back to Baton Rouge when their SUV struck another vehicle and flipped four times. The violent crash killed everyone save for the one person wearing a seatbelt: Silky Slim. He had to push a dead friend off his chest in order to escape the wreckage. “As soon as my feet hit the ground I felt God say ‘I brought you out of this, now what are you going to do?’”

Though raised in a Baptist church, Silky gravitated toward Islam after the accident. He says his violent past bred in him a beast-like mentality, and the disciplined strictures of the Muslim faith best help him stay out of trouble. Silky does not namedrop Allah or Muhammad, or refer himself as a Muslim, but he says he studies the faith, and he prays five times a day.

Now Silky is working to make The Bottom better by helping the elderly, setting an example for the youth. And he keeps filming his documentary. Silky has even convinced a couple teenagers to give up their guns.

For four years he has organized annual Stop The Killing rallies for the entire neighborhood to celebrate a day of non-violence. This year he plans to host a rally every three months. “My thing is,” Silky says confidently, “if we can do it on one day, we can do it every day.”

Still, there’s no denying his newfound purpose has to be motivated, at least in part, by overwhelming guilt.

He tells me that residents of The Bottom don’t call it that. No, here it’s called Southside, and all the young men born and raised in Southside know they have a sworn enemy in the gang from Eden Park. And anything can spark the violence. If a Southside hustler tries to sell drugs in Eden Park, or Eden Park gangsters are seen with some Southside girls, there is going to be trouble.

The goal in Southside, Silky says, is survival, and survival with “comforts”—nice cars, flashy jewelry and the latest clothes. All the material things the average young Southsider does not have become, in a lot of cases, all he tries to get.

(snip)

Silky introduces me to Dan Collins, a two-time Vietnam veteran who tells me to keep my hand in God’s hand, and Imam Fahmee Sabree, a renovator and landscaper working on a burnt-out home in The Bottom. Then there’s Calvin Beal, a former Chicago Cub and director of the Leo S. Butler Community Center. Beal helped Silky give away books at a Halloween “treats and treasures” party. The books were the treasures.

“I seen you on the news,” one stranger tells Silky with a wide smile. “You doin’ good.”

At 17, Silky’s oldest daughter, Khatara, is nearly her father’s age when she was born. She’s going through what he calls the “headache years.” A boy at school picked on her today, and all she wants to do is talk to her dad.

Silky’s own father was sent to Angola for 24 years when Silky was 3. Now, Silky is unwed and has six kids of his own, aged 7 to 17. His youngest son Dexter wants to be a rapper like Dad. Silky doesn’t like this idea.

Weeks later Silky tells me we’re going to see someone special, someone he’s been meaning to visit for a while. He parks the Hummer and, to my surprise, leaves it running. A graying woman swings open her tattered screen door. We step over a hundred cigarette butts on the porch, and Silky swallows her with a hug. We walk into her dim, lonely home. Silky leaves the door open so he can keep one eye on his car. It feels and smells like death. And the feeling fits, I guess, because this poor lady, Mrs. Bates, has been in mourning since her son’s murder. She’s literally grieving herself to death. The man responsible only got 18 months time, and Mrs. Bates can’t make sense of any of it. Silky’s understanding eyes, his words of encouragement and pledge of support—“Anything you need,” he repeats—show her total empathy, not just that her son is gone, but in an unbelievable way that says ‘It should have been me instead.’

And Silky knows it may be him one day. All this peaceful give-up-your-guns rhetoric is likely to piss off the wrong street kid—one that thinks killing Silky will be the ultimate boost to his reputation.

“Sometimes, I’ll be at a funeral and wonder if this many people will come to mine,” Silky says. “If my life can save many others, then it’s cool. But I don’t want to be a trophy.”

AS AN ASIDE (though it's another story entirely), why is it that Islam is so attractive to folks from the mean streets who are tired of the streets and tired of being mean?

Could it be that -- in a world where life is a fight to the death -- a postmodern Christianity where the tough-love gospel of Jesus Christ has been replaced with the "I'm Good Enough, I'm Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me!" glop-spel of Stuart Smalley appears not only to be irrelevant but, indeed, stupid ass?

Just askin'.

Bathroom etiquette

If the main line from your house to the sewer has become clogged with roots, and it's midnight, and no Rooter-Tooter guy can come until the next afternoon, and your commode can hold only so much (well, you know) . . . and toilet paper . . . and Mr. Clean (for obvious reasons) . . . and, by God, you are fresh out of chamber pots (known in my Southern childhood as "slop jars") . . . .

Well, this means at some point you will depend upon the kindness of friends (and the neighborhood Starbucks). In this eventuality, you will find that your friends just might feed you lunch in addition to sharing their loo.

Also in this eventuality, it is good manners to actually buy some coffee from Starbucks after you've taken care of bidness. Just make sure that the sewer-rooter guy probably will have the job done before the rental on your Starbucks tall mocha has expired.

If the timing is dicey, buy a pastry or a CD instead.

LIKEWISE, WHEN THE SEWER BACKS UP, it's useful to be doing laundry at the time . . . as opposed to No. 2. In the first case, your family room carpet will end up really wet next to the utility room, but it will not require haz-mat experts to clean up. Instead, it will be pretty clean, and a wet vac -- and 12 hours or or so of the electric-fan treatment -- ought to do the trick.

Fortunately for Mrs. Favog and myself, it was the washing machine that exposed the, uh, arterial blockage. That only resulted in Mr. Favog's profligate use of the full-range of Anglo-Saxon profanity. (Funny how some people don't take to soaked carpets at 12:30 a.m., a door out to the garage that falls off the hinges and shlepping ShopVac load after ShopVac load of soapy water out into a snowstorm -- and 10-degree cold -- in a flannel robe and very soaked slippers.)

Now, if the "triggering event" somehow had involved the upstairs toilet and, uh, No. 2, blogging would have been very light for a while. It takes time to a) remove all one's valuables from a residence, and b) set it afire.

But it didn't, and now -- thanks to Rooter-Tooter guy No. 3., Discount Sewer & Drain of Omaha, (402) 572-8639 -- the plumbing now plumbs, and at a reasonable cost, too.

As opposed to Rooter-Tooter guy No.1, who thought that we thought that unless we paid him $275 we would go the way of the unfortunate San Jose "hold your wee" contestant. Or Rooter-Tooter guy No. 2, who quoted a rate of $85 an hour but mentioned nothing about a "mandatory" $150 video colonoscopy of our sewer line, which could be broken, you know, as he tried to upsell us to a $660 super-duper drainline high colonic, because roots are like Tribbles . . . cut out one and 87 billion replace it.

Aye, happiness is carefree flushing. And a dry carpet.

Dear Diary: Going to Eucharistic charm school

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, FEB. 9, 2002

Dear Diary,


A massive sex scandal (again) is upon the Church -- priests diddling CHILDREN, diddling TEENS, and bishops covering up the whole mess. It is too much to bear. For me, this may well end up being the final straw. I cannot bear this; I cannot bear AmChurch vapidity; I cannot bear "traditionalist" obsession with protocol above all.

If many are to persevere as Catholics, we are going to have to find a way to reconcile doctrine with the fact that many of those whom we are supposed to obey in matters of morals and faith possess neither. And these are the corrupt shepherds God supposedly has given us.

How, exactly, is a body supposed to get his mind around that? And the reality that the faction of the Church so concerned about the Church's eroding moral authority is the most prone to whistle in the graveyard when presented with the gravest erosion of that moral authority. How am I supposed to get my mind around that?

There were two great schisms over less serious stuff than this. I know there is precedent for similar kinds of corruption in the Church. But would there have BEEN a Church anymore had these previous fits of corruption taken place in the age of mass media and a disarmed Vatican?

God help me, I think the only way some superpious types retain their faith with such (apparent) serenity is that they are, on some level, deeply warped.

We had a staff meeting at Pope FM yesterday about the dedication of our Chapel of the Eternal Word this coming Monday. It was like being hurled back to Jansenism 1955.

Listen, I get upset about liturgical abuses. I cringe when I see women going up for communion with their cleavage falling out of their tops. I was apoplectic when I saw a college kid in the communion line on Good Friday with a "Coed Naked Volleyball" T-shirt on. And I came close to doing physical violence to kids at a "youth Mass" who couldn't stop acting up even during the consecration.

But it damned near enraged me to hear our station manager and volunteer "spiritual activities director" imply strongly that while genuflection on one knee is the Vatican requirement, it really doesn't go far enough. Thus, we should feel free to genuflect on both knees or prostrate ourselves when entering the chapel.

And I was sooooooooo encouraged to hear that I would be allowed to enter into the presence of my Lord and Savior only when properly attired. My usual blue jeans, I understand, are OK so long as they are "in good repair." But staff members are not to wear shorts in the chapel, even walking shorts, as we are to set an example for proper reverence.

Walking shorts are OK for visitors.

Our spiritual activities director then said how it dismays her to see kids in shorts at Mass at the boarding-school chapel near her house. Egad!!! I'm sorry, but when it's 95 or 100 degrees here, I wear nice shorts to Mass.

You know, I know people who work at that school, and I know the reputation of Father, and I know that any inappropriately dressed kid would be out of that church in a heartbeat.

But for me, the coup de grace, was when the powers that be decided that on Monday night, the kids in for Keys to the Kingdom will not be allowed into the chapel without adult supervision because they had not been instructed yet in proper chapel decorum. I objected in the strongest terms about denying them the opportunity to be in the Eucharistic presence, saying that if a kid went in there and -- out of ignorance -- wasn't sufficiently reverent, it couldn't be held against him. And if a kid were in there unsupervised and were willfully irreverent, that was a matter between him and God.

Furthermore, I said, suppose someone called into the show and had real problems. Should the kids not on the air be prevented from taking their prayers to the Real Presence?

"Jesus hears our prayers just as well wherever we are," said the spiritual activities maven. "They don't necessarily have to be in the chapel to pray."

I love it when people slow-pitch to Barry Bonds.

"Well," I said, "that would seem to beg the question of why exactly we have a chapel."

At that point, the boss decided that we needed to move on to other topics.

Of course.

Dear Diary: This is crazy. This is crazy. This is crazy.

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.

* * *

TUESDAY, JAN. 22, 2002

Dear Diary,


Well, Doug liked the Pope FM promo I E-mailed him. Says it's further proof still that I've found my calling in radio.

Is it?

Frankly, I wonder how long I'll be able to do it . . . radio, I mean. Been seriously worn down and frustrated by the lack of resources at Pope FM and the extreme reluctance of my boss to spend money even on absolute essentials.

Mary, my boss, also has this highly annoying habit of blaming EVERYTHING that goes wrong on Satan, even when it's pretty obvious that there are many other possible explanations. Great way to avoid responsibility for one's own decisions, eh?

When you work with crappy old equipment, s*** tends to happen.

Sad to say, though, that I used to buy into that kind of thing. But to be fair, it's the peculiar culture at the heart of Pope FM that's the problem, not just Mary.

OK, Diary, here's the deal: EVERYONE constantly refers to everything that screws up as being a case of Satan being after us.

I was starting to fall into that a year or so ago until, oddly enough, a visiting priest on Total Catholic Radio Network's daily Mass provided me with a real sanity check on that score. He said, basically, not everything that goes wrong is the work of the Devil, and even if it is: a) You can't live life looking over your shoulder for Beelzebub, and b) don't give Satan the satisfaction of acknowledging his evil work.

Made eminent sense to me. Now I save the blame-Satan talk only for the most blatant cases for which any other explanation is difficult to concoct. Not so everyone else at the station. It drives me nuts.

I've already mentioned the story about a technical screw-up during our Pledge-a-Thon last month. Mary was having major trouble getting the phone patched through to the on-air feed. I asked her whether she'd done A, B and C. Yes, yes, she said.

I walked into the production room to find her saying, "Be gone, Satan!" I then looked at the control board for two seconds, punched a button, and the phone line was patched through. She hadn't done what she said she'd done.

And I've also told you about how Mary constantly is saying she can't wait to have Jesus on the premises (our forthcoming Eucharistic chapel) so Satan will leave us alone. (Did Satan leave Jesus Himself alone when He actually walked the earth? Not according to my Bible. As the Lord may have said at some point, "Oy veh!")

Also, there seems to me to be constant talk about the Holy Spirit -- as in, the Holy Spirit revealed this to me at adoration . . . the Holy Spirit will do this, and the Holy Spirit is up to that . . . if the Spirit moves you to etc., etc. That strikes me as leaning waaaaaaay toward the charismatic . . . not that we ought to discount the Spirit at all as Catholics, it just seems to me to be a disproportionate focus on the Holy Spirit.

Finally, we seem to have a big emphasis on "spiritual works of mercy" but every time I've proposed doing some corporal works of mercy -- most recently, contributing to 9/11 relief -- I have been dismissed out of hand. That would be a departure from our mission, I've been told.

Funny, I didn't know there was some sort of huge dichotomy when it comes to works of mercy.

Oh . . . about Father Jonathan Flava. He and J.T. Good were the speakers at last weekend's "Holy Glow" conference. Father Flava, a Benedictan evangelist, expounded on how we ought not think, that our thinking gets in the way of the Holy Spirit acting. (Our conference was a combined thing with the local charismatic Catholics . . . Flava was "their" guy.)

Folks went gaga over him. I was going "Huh?"

He also was fairly apocalyptic (real Catho-tabloid stuff), and boasted that he hadn't read more than five books in however many years -- the Spirit reveals to him everything he needs to know. It sounded to me too damn much like Magisterial snake-handling.

Really, Diary, I'm at a bit of a loss trying to make sense of all this and where I fit into "orthodox" Catholicism if this is the direction it's headed.

AND NOW, the archbishop (citing the new media guidelines passed by the USCCB) is demanding effective power of prior restraint on our program content. He wants to have approval on EVERYONE on Pope FM who "teaches the faith," whatever that stunningly ambiguous phrase might mean.

My objections to my boss about prior restraint was met by utter platitudes about "we must be obedient." And my concerns about the possibility for arbitrary dictates and gross abuse by a bishop were met by "that would help in our sanctification."

When my idea of evangelization and good radio is spots like the one I sent Doug, assuredly it's only a matter of time before I get a shiv in the back and my cold, lifeless body is sacrificed upon the altar of the chancery gods.

I swear to God, Diary, I've become Dr. Tom More and my life a Walker Percy novel.

Pass the lapsometer.

Don't fear the 'Delete' key . . . the 'Delete' key is your friend.

Some folks on the hardcore secular left really ought to read what they write. Then they need to use the "Delete" key to save themselves further embarrassment.

For instance, some myopic soul left the following comment on Beliefnet's Crunchy Cons web log concerning Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards' Blog Nazis:

John Edwards has not "messed with people's religion". Two of his bloggers, before working for him, on their own personal blogs, said some rude things. (If they write stuff like that on Edwards' campaign blog, then by all means, hold it against him.) All of the people making the biggest stink about this were NEVER going to vote for Edwards, so to act like this is "useful information" is completely disingenuous. I say it improves his image, for not caving in to bullies like Donohue and Malkin.

BY THAT SAME LOGIC, or lack thereof, could I hire David Duke to run Revolution 21's Blog for the People and expect the Angry Left to utter nary a peep?

I mean, yeah, Herr Duke -- in his personal publications and in a previous job as head of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan -- has said some rude things. But as long as he keeps his personal views off of the R21 blog and doesn't use sick days to attend Holocaust-denier conferences in Tehran, everything would be perfectly kosher, right?

Er, make that "alles güt."

No???

But what about that distinction between personal activities and job-related activities?

Oh, I get it. If a Democratic presidential candidate hires foul-mouthed Libertine Left fascist harridans who blaspheme God and engage in the worst sort of Papist baiting, that's perfectly OK so long as they don't call the pope a f***wad on the actual campaign blog.

But if I, as a socially conservative theist, were to hire a convicted-felon, Jew-hating, racist Ku Klux Nazi who puts in appearances at Holocaust-denier confabs in Iran, I am supremely confident that not one Netroot neurotic would ever stoop so low as to call me a right-wing, Neo-Nazi hater who was just biding my time until I could poison the Harlem water supply and parade down Pennsylvania Avenue with Gloria Steinem's head on a pike.

Wouldn't happen. Nuh-uh, no way, no how.

You bet your sweet bippy it wouldn't.

This program is brought to you by @#$!*%+=!

See at the top of the blog page, right-hand side?

It's the podcast. Listen. Now.

THIS WEEK, we give a big R21 shoutout to the Edwards '08 'Net organization!

And while we're at it . . . John Edwards' blog crew wanted to set the record straight about the mean, nasty, ugly things they've been saying about Catholics and other religious folk.

Your Mighty Favog has graciously provided them that opportunity. Here's Amanda Marcotte:

"Thanks, Favog. I think all you people just need to go @#$! your own %^$!@#(% you lousy @`#$*@& . . . ."

Thank you, Amanda. Now we hear from Melissa McEwan of Edwards '08:

"What don’t you lousy @!#$*@ understand about keeping your noses out of our britches, our beds, and our families? I hope you all @!#$#% die, and then I'll @!#$*#%and !#$. You !&#$%@*!"

Thank you, Melissa. Lucky are the men who love these, um, specimens!

ALSO ON THE PODCAST this week, we hear (uncensored) from Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, Over the Rhine, ELO, Joni Mitchell, the Modern Skirts, Imogen Heap, Sackcloth Fashion, Rhett Miller . . . and more!

Be there. Aloha.

Postcard from New Orleans Hell

Words fall to the floor, insufficient. Powerless. Bile rises. As does blood pressure.

What the @#$! can you say to this?

Other than "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." Lord, have mercy.

From The (Hell New Orleans) Times Picayune:

Seventeen-year-old Clarence Johnson lost a fistfight, and he walked away.

Then he went to his mother’s apartment, police said, where she kept a home with cocaine, a gun and a picture of her young son smiling, holding a pistol and a wad of cash.

His mother sent him back out with the gun, police said, and clear instructions: Get revenge.

Johnson did as he was told, police said, getting a ride from a friend to the corner of Simon Bolivar and Clio streets in Central City, where he waited for the boy who had beaten him up to come out of a corner po-boy shop. When the teen emerged, Johnson lit him up with several gunshots, leaving 17-year-old Robert Dawson lying dead near a street corner.

Dawson had returned to New Orleans just four hours earlier from Katrina-induced exile in Dallas.

Johnson remained at large Thursday, while his mother, Vanessa Johnson, 44, was in jail on second-degree murder charges after being picked up by police the night before at her apartment in the 2500 block of Erato Street, part of the Guste public housing development.

Police said Vanessa Johnson played a principal part in the murder, in a disturbing scenario that police said underscores their inability to prevent killings in a street culture that embraces deadly retaliation.

“No police department can make up for that degree of deficient parenting,” police spokesman Sgt. Joe Narcisse said. “Even with our best-laid plans, these type of incidents cause us great pause. What more can a department do to prevent these type of incidents?”

Robert Dawson and his mother spent 10 hours on a bus from Dallas on Wednesday and returned to their hometown about 3:30 p.m., relatives said. Four hours later, Dawson became the city’s 21st murder victim of 2007.

Late in the morning Thursday, his mother, Dorothy Dawson, 54, milled around the site of her son’s murder, near the pool of his dried blood, trading hugs and condolences with friends. She said she had health problems, and can’t read or write. Her son had been her caretaker. She described a somewhat shy boy who gave one-word answers and loved sports. The youngest of three children, Robert Dawson was the man of a single-parent house.

“He handled my business, made sure I got my medicine and paid my bills,” his mother
said. “He took good care of me.”

(snip)

Minutes later, at a family friend’s house several blocks away, Dawson hugged his mother and said he’d see her later, Dorothy Dawson said. He said he was going to play basketball with his buddies. He didn’t mention the fistfight, and she saw no sign of anything wrong.

The exchange between Johnson and his mother contrasted sharply, according to police.

“He went inside and told his mom about the fight,” Narcisse said. “Then she armed him with a gun. She instructed him to go outside and ‘kill them all.’”

Me Big Chief, I got 'em tribe

The Hear 2.0 blog has run a fascinating interview with futurist Watts Wacker, CEO of FirstMatter, LLC. He says we're going tribal, which sounds about right to me.

The context here is radio, but the concept holds across the board.

Watts, what trends will matter most in the next few years that would relate to people who work day in, day out in radio?

One of the most significant trends is what I call “self-selecting social organization.” People are looking to find people like themselves and coming together in almost a neo-tribal orientation of living. And there’s a tremendous opportunity for all media, particularly broadcast media, to facilitate these people finding “themselves” in the easiest possible way. And it would also result in a lot of new business models for radio.

Like what new business models?

Well, I like to use the example of video podcasting. I know a couple of women in Nashville who are 23 years old. They video podcast a show weekly. They're suddenly getting people to give them $0.25 an episode. They do it every week. And if you get
50,000 people to send you $0.25 a week for 52 weeks, that adds up in a hurry. And suddenly, these women are their own production studio, and their job is just being themselves, where they podcast what it's like to be 23 and be a mom in the world today. They're putting together a neo-tribe of young women who are moms, and they're facilitating them obtaining information.

That's what I mean by a new kind of business model. That is why you see Time magazine saying the person of the year is "you.”

I UNDERSTAND WHY this is attractive to folks, and why it may be necessary to get by in a world that's more impersonal, alienated and downright hostile. But is it a good thing?

Is it just a new twist on what we've always done? Or could it all go very south on us, like Iraq's splintering into its old model of ethnic and religious hatred, as well as warring clans and tribes, once the Iron Fist That Kept the Lid On was put out of business?

Are we merely building community by other means, or will everybody outside our particular "tribes" suddenly start to look a lot like The Other?

That's certainly the dynamic at play on the Internet -- or at least seemingly so -- where left-wing nutwagons and right-wing nutwagons have been loosed from the oppressive forces of distance, time and money to form virtual communities of True Believers, primed to take demonization, bigotry and bile worldwide at the click of a mouse button.

To take two examples from today's headlines, see Pandagon and Shakespeare's Sister. Not to let the "God is a Republican" crowd off the hook, but the lefty wingnuts have been making the headlines of late . . . .

So, are we really screwed or what? I'm asking, here . . . not necessarily sayin'.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The headline is a lyric from "Big Chief," a popular Carnival song in New Orleans, referring to the tradition of "Mardi Gras Indians." It is what it is, and that's all it is. We now return you to your regularly scheduled political correctness.