Stop killing black people! BLAM!

Here's to you Mr. Shoot at a TV News Crew and Tell 'Em Your Name Man!

Most people wouldn't do that when the camera is running, and most people wouldn't have the sheer guts to say "My name is Shawn Sweet" and dare The Man to come and arrest your gunslingin' butt. I know people will say you're just the Idiot of the World, but I think you're fearless.

But I have a question, Mr. Shoot at a TV News Crew and Tell 'Em Your Name Man. I want to know how it is that the KMTV reporter and photographer are the ones "killing black people on the north side" when it's mostly black people like yourself who've been driving around north and south Omaha neighborhoods firing handguns out of car windows . . . at other black people.

Just curious. I mean, please correct me if there's been an unreported epidemic of Ku Klux Klan members going on midnight rides through the 'hood.

Here's the story from the Action 3 News web site:

An Action 3 News crew comes dangerously close to violence on the streets of Omaha. We were reporting on a triple shooting, when someone drove up and fired a gun.

Shawn Sweet's decision to fire a gun in the air and yell profanity at our news crew on Sunday landed him a not-so-sweet situation. The police picked him up that night. Tuesday we met him face to face in jail, where he says he's ready to face the consequences.

Here's some of what he said to Action 3 News Reporter Dave Roberts.

Dave: "Do you understand what you did scared the life out of my friends and co-workers on Sunday?"

Shawn: "And I'll suffer for that. I am not trying to get anything out of nothing. I told you before they come in here, I knew what I did was wrong."

Dave: "Do you think that my friends have ever seen a gun go off in a neighborhood? Do you understand what's going through their heads?"

Shawn: "They haven't but now they have. That's good because they see what we go through everyday."

Dave: "What are you trying to tell us?"

Shawn: "What I am trying to say is on the north side they black ball us. They bring all the crime out to the north side when there's crime happening all around Nebraska."

Dave: "You said (while fire you gun on Sunday) stop killing black people on the north side. How is the media killing black people?"

Shawn: "By exploiting their business. If you go somewhere else they'd shoot you for putting their business out there like that. Where I come from, what happens in the streets, stays in the streets because it's considered, it's telling."

Shawn: "I apologize to channel 3. I'm telling you I apologize. I will do anything, community service, donate money, whatever."

Sweet also tells us that he was on something when he decided to act violently towards our news crew on Sunday. However he wouldn't tell us exactly what he was on.

CLICK ON A PICTURE to see the Channel 3 video report.

Six years on: The gutting of America

I was listening, on the Internet, to the contemporary-Christian station in New Orleans when the morning-show hostess relayed the news that an aircraft had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York. It must have been some idiot in a Cessna, I recall thinking.

Soon enough, it became clear that it wasn't. I ran for the television set. Getting ready for work kept getting delayed. It was a jetliner. And another. It's terrorism. And another one -- this time, the bastards hit the Pentagon.

This was war. We weren't sure with whom yet, but this was war, all right.

I was watching coverage on CBS as the first tower fell. And then the other. We knew there were thousands dead; what we didn't know was how many thousands. Hurriedly, I dashed off an E-mail to a friend in New York -- are you OK?

At some point, I must have called into work to say I would be delayed. I was going to have to bring my wife into work hours early -- she worked the night shift at the local newspaper, and it was all hands on deck there.

BY THE TIME I got to my job as production director at the local Catholic radio station, it was locked up tight. I unlocked the front door, went into empty studios, set up my portable TV set to keep up with the news and went about not getting much work done.

Finally, the general manager showed back up and told me she'd sent everyone home to be with their families, because no one knew what would get hit next. I suggested that we get announcements on about where to give blood, what parishes would be having prayer services, how to donate to the Red Cross and other relief agencies . . . the usual Stuff You Need to Know.

She thought it was a good idea, and I set about putting that together and getting it on the air.

By that time, President Bush had made his way to the bunker at Strategic Command headquarters just south of Omaha, and the boss and I stepped outside to see whether there were fighter jets overhead or to maybe catch a glimpse of Air Force One. No fighter jets where we were, but we did see an AWACS plane circling.

Then things started to get weird.

And, no, I'm not talking about the surreal nature of the attack itself. Or the lines of panic-buying motorists at gas stations. I'm talking about the aftermath of that day.

I'M TALKING ABOUT, for instance, a Catholic priest on EWTN -- in his Mass homily Sept. 12 -- telling people, "So NOW you come to Mass. . . ."

I'm talking about going to a memorial Mass at our parish and being asked to sign archdiocesan "pledge cards" promising not to fold, spindle, mutilate or murder Muslims on the home front. I told my wife I'd sign one just as soon as they came out with pledge cards for the other nine commandments.

I'm talking about Catholic pontificators blathering on the Catholic airwaves about how thousands of American babies were murdered every single day and you never heard anything about it like you did the attacks on New York and Washington. True enough, but a wholly inappropriate, staggeringly cruel and stupid thing to say on the air at that time.

I'm talking about Catholic theologians who used to be Reformed theologians going on EWTN and speculating about whether America was under divine judgment. Again, maybe so or maybe not -- Who could say? -- but not exactly the time to run off at the mouth about it, being that the World Trade Center was still a smoking mountain of rubble and shell-shocked New Yorkers were wandering around Manhattan with their missing loved ones' pictures taped to handmade signs asking "Have you seen . . . ?"

I'm also talking about a president who went on television only to tell Americans that it was now their patriotic duty to buy stuff.

All of the above represented important clues to the mess we'd find ourselves in six years on from that awful day. It pointed to a Church riven between the Pharisees and the feckless, and a big nation led by small men who think much of economic stratagems but little of eternal things.

SIX YEARS ON from what seemed to be the start of a great campaign against Those Who Seek to End Us, we find ourselves instead engaged in partisan political skirmishes amid one faltering, ignored little war in Afghanistan and one full-blown catastrophic quagmire in Iraq.

And in damning testimony to just how small are the men who lead us -- and how criminally venal and malfeasant, too -- the full-blown catastrophe is one we had no cause to fight in a country having squat to do with 9/11. The faltering, unfinished little war, however. . . .

Even back home, catastrophe has become not something that madmen commit against us but what we do to ourselves through a failing nation's everyday oversights, indifference and incompetence.

IT WAS JUST TWO YEARS AGO that we watched an American city drown because the American government doesn't do flood-protection so well.

We sat glued to our television sets as New Orleanians sat baking in their attics or sat waiting on their roofs. Yet more sat starving around a convention center or stood baking -- and dying -- deposited by rescuers on Interstate ramps only to be abandoned by their government. All in and around The City FEMA Forgot.

Two years ago, I sat stunned, watching as people from my home state begged the camera for help -- begged for food, begged for water. I watched shocking scenes from Somalia played out in Louisiana. In America.

Old men, sick and dehydrated, falling out on the high ground of unbroken levees amid a fetid sea. Falling out in front of TV cameras as grizzled cops wept and asked the cameraman where the feds were. Where the Army was. Where help was.

Years ago in Somalia, the American government would spring into action, airlifting thousands of tons of emergency food to starving people. Now, in a poor state in a poor region of our own rich country, it seemed all the American government could deliver were long faces and empty promises.

You would think all this over the past six years would be enough to command our full attention. You would, but you'd be wrong.

NO, WE HAVE MORE important things to occupy us. We have the urgent matter of Paris Hilton to worry about. We have the travails of Nicole and Lindsay to obsess over, not to mention whatever will become of the love child of the late Anna Nicole Smith and Larry Whatshisname.

And there's the Kid Rock-Tommy Lee smackdown over on MTV, while Britney Spears slouches through a white-trash dance in a white-trash trance, leading the cognoscenti to speculate whether she was white-trash wasted.

We have to worry about how to pay for our McMansions -- the ones we bought while working-class kids -- many of them sold on the U.S. military as a way off a dead-end street -- got shipped off to Iraq to fight and die in a woebegone war. One --again -- with precious little to do with those towers that fell on that clear September day in 2001.

And there's the problem of how to fill up the big tanks on our big SUVs with gasoline from Big Oil that costs big money.

Then there's how to deal with the depression that overtakes us -- and our children -- when all the bounty of a materialistic globe-spanning empire no longer can sate a hungry heart.

WE'RE SIX YEARS ON from 9/11, the day Osama bin Laden delivered a shocking blow that nevertheless failed to bring clarity to the muddled American mind. We remain led by men and women who not only can't do anything right, they seem to not even try.

Six years on, heartbreak mounts across our land. Our hearts continue to harden toward our fellow countrymen (read the comments on just about any New Orleans story lately?), and the American soul is ever more troubled.

Six years into the War on Terror -- the first war ever waged against a noun instead of the malefactors behind it -- we're losing badly. We may even be coming to the end of us as any sort of world power.

And the thing is, none of that is the fault of Osama bin Laden and his band of Islamic nut jobs.

When whomever tosses the last shovelsful of dirt atop us gets ready to engrave America's tombstone, they'll probably reflect that we did it all to ourselves. And then they'll turn to a touching song by John Prine, a great American tunesmith, for a fitting epitaph:

Sweet songs never last too long on broken radios.

When Vic 'n Nat'ly wuz young

Unable to do anything actually constructive this evening, I have been wasting lots of time on WWL television's 50th anniversary web page. I've been wasting hours strolling down video memory lane, including revisiting the John Pela Show, New Orleans' local teen music-and-dance show, for the first time in well over 30 years.

ABOVE IS A STILL from the early-'60s incarnation of the Pela show, where you see Channel 4's affable host presiding over the musical undulations of the very young Vic 'n Nat'ly, Vic 'n Nat'ly, Vic 'n Nat'ly, Vic 'n Nat'ly Vic 'n Nat'ly, Vic 'n Nat'ly and . . . Vic 'n Nat'ly.

Here's a latter-day picture of the young sweethearts, now four decades older, a lot grayer and living in a FEMA trailer in front of their upper Ninth Ward house, which they've had gutted for a year and a half but are waiting on Road Home money to finish renovating.

Nat'ly is hoping that she'll be able to choose avocado green as a color option when she buys her new kitchen appliances.

When cops get bored

Given the staggering insanity of this particular abuse of police power, you have to wonder whether the busted burger-maker isn't guilty instead of spilling, ohhhhhhhh . . . about eight to 10 kilos of industrial-grade methamphetamine into the hamburger meat at Mickey D's.

Appropriately, this story was on Yahoo.com:

UNION CITY, Ga. (AP) -- A McDonald's employee spent a night in jail and is facing criminal charges because a police officer's burger was too salty, so salty that he says it made him sick.

Kendra Bull was arrested Friday, charged with misdemeanor reckless conduct and freed on $1,000 bail.

Bull, 20, said she accidentally spilled salt on hamburger meat and told her supervisor and a co-worker, who "tried to thump the salt off."

On her break, she ate a burger made with the salty meat. "It didn't make me sick," Bull told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

But then Police Officer Wendell Adams got a burger made with the oversalted meat, and he returned a short time later and told the manager it made him sick.

Bull admitted spilling salt on the meat, and Adams took her outside and questioned her, she said.

"If it was too salty, why did (Adams) not take one bite and throw it away?" said Bull, who has worked at the restaurant for five months. She said she didn't know a police officer got one of the salty burgers because she couldn't see the drive-through window from her work area.

Police said samples of the burger to the state crime lab for tests.

City public information officer George Louth said Bull was charged because she served the burger "without regards to the well-being of anyone who might consume it."

The problem with TV news is it's Hap-less

Local TV news is all screwed up because there's no room anymore for real people who know things, like this legendary New Orleans sportscaster, the late Hap Glaudi.

Glaudi, who came to WWL television from newspapering -- the old New Orleans Item, to be exact -- was a Yat's Yat who hailed from deepest Noo Oiyuns, graduated from Jesuit High School and never missed mentioning old couples' 50th wedding anniversaries on the 5 o'clock edition of Eyewitness News.

I'm not being clear enough, this is plain. Let me be succinct; Hap Glaudi was Noo Oiyuns. Or N'Awlins. Or New Orleens, to Yankees who can't even pronounce the damn name right but insist on being overly familar, anyway.

I WAS BORN AND RAISED in Baton Rouge, and I wouldn't dream about being overly familiar with the Crescent City. But I did spend a lot of time out on the river at Head of Island, La., and I spent a lot of time watching Hap on Channel 4.

Just enough to know what we've lost . . . what we're still losing. And that is ourselves. We don't know who we are. We don't know where we came from. We sure as hell don't know where we're going.

A SYMPTOM OF THAT is the Land o' Suck that is local media today. It no longer reflects who we are: If you think someone like Hap Glaudi could get a job on Action Eyewitness Newswatch on Your Side today, don't give state troopers permission to search your car if you get pulled over.

Someone who absolutely is Omaha, or Toledo, or Waxahatchie, or Noo Oiyuns just ain't gonna get a snowball's chance in hell unless they can do a mighty fine job of disguising who they really are.

It's like the story my old college newspaper adviser told me about sitting on a campaign press plane, comparing notes with the New York Times writer.

"Whadda you think of this story?" asks the Times guy.

"I think you need to dull it up if it's going in the Times," replies the adviser, who back then was with The Associated Press.

"Yeah, you're right," the Times guy admits.

WELL, AT LEAST the Times was -- and is -- a good newspaper, despite the dulling-up process. In your hometown and mine, however, what you're likely to get on Action Eyewitness Newswatch on Your Side is not only dull, but probably dumb as a box of rocks, too.

Me, I'd rather have Hap.

Here's some recollections of the legendary Mr. Glaudi from those who knew him, as recounted in a Noo Oiyuns Times-Picayune article on WWL-TV's 50th anniversary last week:

"I remember an old car," (morning news anchor Sally-Ann) Roberts said. "That's what I remember of Hap. Hap was a person that didn't have to put on any pretensions. He was exactly what he appeared to be on the air. He had a very common touch. What was that car he drove?"

"It was an old car," (5 p.m. and 6 p.m. co-anchor Angela) Hill said. "I don't know the name of my car."

"He drove that car, and I think that said a lot about him," Roberts said. "He didn't need to put on airs or try to keep up appearances. He was just naturally New Orleans."

IN THE FUTURE, will anybody remember there even was an Action Eyewitness Newswatch on Your Side at all, much less recall any of the blow-dried boxes of rocks biding their time in your town?

Biding their time, that is, until they can land a gig on Action Eyewitness Newswatch on Your Side in a faraway TV market that's another rung up the ladder to . . . what, exactly?

GO TO THE WWL-TV 50th anniversary section on the station's web site here.

Mike the Tiger to PETA: 'You idiots!'

Ah . . . PETA. Those tactless folk who love critters but hate people are on a jihad against Louisiana State because it keeps a live tiger mascot, which lives in palatial tiger digs that many folks in Baton Rouge's ghettos -- where humans live in shacks and kill one another at an alarming rate -- might be willing to fight him for.

Despite the fact that . . . well . . . Mike VI is a, you know, two-year-old, 300-pound tiger. With big sharp tiger teeth and razor-sharp tiger claws on great big tiger paws.

The New York Times is all over the ongoing cat fight:

Fans who are in town Saturday for Louisiana State’s home opener against Virginia Tech can get a glimpse of L.S.U.’s latest recruits — football players and a tiger mascot.

Mike VI, a 2-year-old Bengal-Siberian tiger who is expected to grow to 700 pounds, was acquired last month from an animal-rescue center in Indiana.

The tiger was placed on view last Saturday in a $2.9 million, 15,000-square-foot campus habitat equipped with a wading pool, a waterfall, scratching posts, air-conditioned sleeping quarters and around-the-clock care from the L.S.U. School of Veterinary Medicine.

“He probably gets better medical treatment than most of us,” Sean O’Keefe, L.S.U.’s chancellor, said. “He’s one charmed cat.”

That is a widely held view here, where football and a live tiger are seen as essential to the character of the state’s flagship university. But not everyone agrees. The university and the state are on the skirmish lines of a growing fight waged by animal-rights groups, lawmakers and courts to bar the use of animals as live mascots, for staging fights or even in certain types of sporting equipment. Perhaps never before have animals been so prominent on the sports landscape.

When L.S.U.’s previous mascot died in May of kidney failure at age 17, representatives of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals asked the school not to get another live tiger. PETA argued that tigers need to roam over hundreds of miles, not square feet, and that wild animals become stressed in stadiums filled with tens of thousands of people.

(snip)

The L.S.U. case represents perhaps PETA’s most visible attempt to dissuade universities from using live mascots. L.S.U. has kept live tigers since 1936. About three dozen schools keep live mascots. Others have discontinued the practice as being inhumane or too costly for appropriate care.

When L.S.U.’s previous tiger mascot died, PETA sent a letter to the school saying that large carnivores “suffer extremely” in captivity because they are denied the opportunity to engage in natural behaviors such as running, climbing, hunting, establishing territory and choosing mates. Most universities and all major professional teams use costumed humans, not live animals, as mascots, PETA said.

(snip)

“Keeping wild animals in captivity is cruel,” Lisa Wathne, a PETA captive exotic animal specialist, said in an interview. “As grandiose as Mike’s expensive habitat may look, it is inadequate for a tiger. The whole idea of carting this animal to a sporting event with screaming people is stressful to any wild animal.”

TO PARAPHRASE LOUISIANA'S late governor, the ever-colorful "Uncle Earl" Long: Them SOBs done lost their minds!

Let me see whether I fully understand the complaint. PETA's poobahs seem to be upset that a two-year-old tiger is being kept in a luxury habitat that's roughly 10 times the size of my house and, frankly, a hell of a lot better landscaped.

Mike has a swimming pool. I don't.

He has free medical care, accessible at a moment's notice. I don't.

He has his own little waterfall and stream. I don't.

He has legions of adoring fans, and everybody loves him. I have a wife and two dogs who tolerate me -- most of the time.

He has a scratching post. I don't.

The State of Louisiana has given that tiger everything a cool cat (Hey! He has AC, too.) could want, excepting a Mrs. Mike the Tiger. But I'm sure that could be arranged.

MEANWHILE, there are those folks living in ghetto shacks, subsisting on ghetto medical care (Translation: Overcrowded charity-hospital emergency room), sending their kids to crappy ghetto schools and dying ghetto early even when they don't get gunned down by feral ghetto thugs.

And then you have the really unfortunate people of Da Slums a Noo Orluns.

Of course, you likewise have the "habitat" of some of the state's best and brightest high-school students a couple of miles up the road at Baton Rouge Magnet High School. Here's a picture:

THIS IS WHERE human citizens of East Baton Rouge Parish -- rich and poor, black and white -- send their human children for eight hours a day. Their high-achieving children who will be attending universities like LSU.

I'll bet some of those kids would take on Mike for his fabulous digs right now, too. Again, the Tiger Thing notwithstanding.

So what trips PETA's trigger amid all the deprivation and suffering of their fellow homo sapiens within spitting distance of the luxurious digs of a tiger mascot? That the tiger ain't got it good enough.

Now, that's rich. Good Lord, you'd think someone had slipped Sir Paul McCartney a cheeseburger or something.

Hey! That sounds like a game plan.

Hokie memorial playlist

Here's the playlist for this week's special encore of Revolution 21's Virginia Tech memorial episode. And don't forget this week's regular edition of The Big Show, "The Revolution 21 All-Star Joint."

1 Amazing Grace
Aaron Neville, 2003

2 Reflections of My Life
The Marmalade, 1970

3 God Grant Me Tears
A Ragamuffin Band, 1999

4 Absalom, Absalom
Pierce Pettis, 1996

5 How Can You Mend a Broken Heart (Live)
Al Green, 1997

6 Hymn
Jars of Clay, 1997

7 No More Fear
Aaron Thompson, 2002

8 Miracles Out of Nowhere
Kansas, 1976

9 Hold on to Happiness
Mugison, 2004

10 When You're Gone
The Cranberries, 1996

11 Us And Them / Any Colour You Like
Pink Floyd, 1973

12 One For Sorrow, Two For Joy
The Innocence Mission, 2003

13 I've Been Loving You Too Long (to Stop Now)
Otis Redding, 1966

Tigers and Hokies together -- win, lose or draw

In our Catholic tradition, the faithful receive ashes on their foreheads each Ash Wednesday to remind us of an important thing -- kind of a divine reality check.

It comes as the sooty sign of the cross is made upon our heads: "Remember, man, you are dust and to dust you will return." That, my friends, is perspective.

With that beginning-of-Lent perspective, we realize that what we do between dust and dust is what defines us. And realizing that no matter how big a shot we become, that no matter how smart, or cool, or mighty we think we might be now, we're still going to end up a pile of dust in the ground . . . well, that ought to have an impact on how we define ourselves.

The consequences are, shall we say, grave.

AND THAT'S WHAT one hopes folks keep in mind when it comes to the games we play. Like football.

Football is fun. Football is a great thing. And there's nothing like Southeastern Conference football.

But it's just football. Football, in the long run, doesn't have much to do with how we define ourselves between the dust . . . and the dust. At least the winning and losing part of football has little to do with the story between the dust.

How much in perspective we keep football -- how we treat one another as we cheer on our favorite teams -- however, does have something to do with the writing in the dust of our lives.

I'M REMINDED OF THIS because my LSU Tigers are playing Virginia Tech tonight at Tiger Stadium, which isn't the most hospitable environment for visiting teams -- or their fans. And I'm fine with that, within reason, inside the stadium for the 60 minutes of the football game.

But when you consider that many LSU and Hokie fans have come to know a lot about the "dust to dust" thing recently, you'd hope that folks would have a grasp on the whole matter of perspective -- and a keen sense that what divides us as LSU or Tech fans is minuscule compared to what binds us as brothers and sisters . . . and, one would hope, good neighbors.

IN THAT LIGHT, I'm reposting the Virginia Tech memorial episode of the Revolution 21 podcast as an additional, special presentation this week. I think it will remind us all of some things that we never should have forgotten.

For one thing, that life often is a vale of tears. And it is how we treat one another in that vale of tears -- and as we find our way out of our particular vales of tears -- that's a big part of what we write about ourselves in the Book of Life.

In closing, here's my original descriptive post about the VT memorial edition of the Revolution 21 podcast:

WE ALL KNOW what this episode of the Revolution 21 podcast is about . . . what it had to be about. We cannot overcome the horror that lurks among us if we do not confront it. We must grieve for its victims and celebrate the light of the world -- and those souls' light in this world -- so that the darkness triumphs not.

Trouble is, I've had a hard time motivating myself to do the program this go 'round. One of the elements of this program is me talking . . . at least occasionally. It's a basic ingredient of human interaction, given that I can't shake your hand across cyberspace or give you a hug . .. particularly when we're all hurting to one degree or another.

But the deal is . . . what the hell can I say? In a very real way, words fail. Utterly.

Words cannot capture the groaning of broken hearts.

Words fail.

I THOUGHT ABOUT speaking of how the great failure of our age -- the great failure of most of human history -- is our failure to solve many pressing crises without somebody (or many somebodies) ending up dead.

I'm sure you can name any number of things for which our miserable "fix" is kill, kill, kill. And now, we have a crazed college student killing 32 innocents in what seemed, in his deranged mind, to be a fitting coda to a tortured and miserable existence.

And on it goes, with nothing seeming to break our addiction to violence, revenge and death.

WHILE I THINK THERE'S TRUTH in what I intended to say, what I intended to say is also pretty obvious. And while obviousness might be tolerable here in writing about the podcast, my blathering obviousness hardly would contribute to a fitting memorial to the lives -- the shining futures and the future generations -- we've lost this awful week in the Year of Our Lord 2007.

So I decided to shut up, restricting my poor insights to the Pod-O-Matic and Blogspot domains. In the show this week, the music and the context will speak for itself.

And I pray it will be worthy of the departed we grieve today. May God rest them, every one.

The Revolution 21 all-star joint

Welcome to Mighty Favog's All-Star Joint. We got a jukebox that goes doyt doyt.

But the thing is, we like so many kinds of music -- and have so much of it -- that your proprietor sometimes feels like he's between the devil and the deep blue sea when programming the evening's entertainment.

Or is it the morning's entertainment? I don't know. I've been sick, and my head feels like a Beatle acid trip.

ANYWAY, your genial Revolution 21 podcast host thinks he's put together an exemplary program for your listening enjoyment -- an auditory extravaganza that will take you to places you haven't been and turn you in directions you weren't expecting. But, really . . . how much of what you hear on The Big Show was really expected?

Now go listen here, or with the player at the top of this page. Or there are plenty more "William Shatner 'Sings'" videos I can post.

You think I'm bluffing.

And I'm sending this one to your mama an' dem

Ve haff veys to make you pay

SO, YOU THOUGHT you could get by without forking over the big bucks for me to remove Leonard Nimoy's "Bilbo Baggins" song (to use the term loosely) from your brain.

That was a big mistake, pally.

Now I'm playing hardball. I'm Bob Gibson, and the high, hard one is hurtling toward your head.

Deal with William Shatner's "interpretation" of "Rocket Man." When you cry "uncle," you will find some sharp increases on the ol' rate sheet.

Suckers.

This is your TV. This is your TV on drugs.

I'M IMPLANTING this wretched little song into your brain because I can. I have the ability to remove said "Bilbo Baggins" song from your mind, but that will cost you cash money.

Capiche?

Personally, I think this video was the result of a Vulcan mind meld gone very, very wrong.

AS I SAID, I can unstick this from your brain. E-mail me at mail@revolution21.org for a price quote.

Why, as an LSU alum, I dread Saturday's game

Saturday night, on national television, Louisiana State plays host to Virginia Tech for the Hokies' first road football game since this spring's massacre in Blacksburg.

I dread it. Of all the schools in all the country, why do the Hokies have to have their first road game in Baton Rouge?

Here's why I am apprehensive: There are some things civilized people Just Don't Do, and LSU football fans, unfortunately, have been doing them for a long time now.

From USA TODAY, circa September 2005:

It was a stark contrast to the welcome Tennessee's team received when it arrived on campus two hours earlier. LSU fans rocked their buses and broke windows by throwing beer bottles at the Vols.

UT athletics director Mike Hamilton said the Tennessee party had four buses, and he was on the last one, which included other school officials and cheerleaders. "They were throwing bottles at the buses and that kind of stuff," Hamilton said. "The bus I was on, they broke three of the windows."

Vicky Fulmer, wife of UT coach Phillip Fulmer, was riding on the first UT bus and said fans threw beer all over it.

LSU officials explained that three cracked windows occurred after the UT buses mistakenly got behind the LSU team buses, which stopped as scheduled.

"Usually that never happens," LSU associate athletics director Herb Vincent said. "We keep the (visiting team) buses moving so the fans never get the opportunity to touch the buses."

From Amy Welborn's Open Book blog, September, 2005:

The report from Baton Rouge

-UT team busses stop, for some reason, in the midst of parking lots where LSU students have congregated. Students converge, start rocking busses, throwing beer bottles at them, break windows, including 4 on the bus holding the AD. Good move.

-A student with no money on him is approached by LSU coed, asking for donations for Katrina victims. He has no money. "F*** you, Tennessee fan!" she says.

-Weird security on the sidelines. Getting reamed out for standing - "Son, you must either kneel or sit." Getting reamed out for sitting with the managers. "Son, your coach has not given you permission to be here." Um, yes. "Son...."

This from someone who's been to games in every other SEC venue, I believe, and who is not, ahem, by any means a silent partner in defending his own teams. But he did, in the heat of after the moment, claim that this one was the worst in terms of fan reaction, even worse than Georgia, which, as I recall him telling me a few years ago after his first trip to Athens, was pretty bad.

Because, you know, the Vols are so polite.

LOUISIANIANS ought to think about that. Behavior like that is symptomatic. It just might be pointing to a serious disease lying just below the surface . . . or right out there for everybody in the world to see, except for the victim, who may be just too accustomed to being sick to realize anything's wrong.

For instance, here is what LSU athletic officials feel compelled to tell Tiger fans before the Virginia Tech game:

TO: Fans, Friends, and Supporters of LSU Athletics

FROM: Skip Bertman, Athletics Director

The excitement surrounding this football season -- and this week’s Top 10 matchup against Virginia Tech in particular -- is at an all-time high. Before I mention some of the things to look for as you come to campus, I am passing along a message from head coach Les Miles and the LSU football team.

WE SALUTE THE HOKIE SPIRIT: A message from the LSU Tigers

“The Virginia Tech community suffered the horrific loss of family and friends in the tragic shootings of April 16. All of us on college campuses across the nation shared in their grief and suffering.

“As students, fans and alumni from Virginia Tech come to the LSU campus for the Hokies’ first road football game of the 2007 season, we know Tiger fans will welcome them with open arms and sympathetic hearts.

“The people of Louisiana are known for their heart-felt compassion and gracious hospitality, and on this occasion we hope everyone will pay particular respect to the Virginia Tech players and their fans.

“The competition on the field will be healthy and fierce, and your Tigers will represent LSU with pride when the ball is kicked off. But in pre-game festivities, let us all be mindful of the difficult road our visitors have traveled since April 16.”

- Signed by Matt Flynn, Glenn Dorsey and Craig Steltz (team captains in last week’s season opener) and head coach Les Miles.

REMEMBERING THE VIRGINIA TECH TRAGEDY

At the game on Saturday night, it is important that we pay respect to the students and faculty members who were lost in the tragic shootings of April 16, and also to celebrate the spirit shown by Virginia Tech in recovering and moving forward.

We spoke with Virginia Tech officials during the summer as we prepared for this week’s pre-game activities. We wanted to strike the proper tone with any recognition we make of the events of April 16. It is important to be respectful of the individuals who were lost, and to also be encouraging and supportive of our visitors.

We will salute the Hokie Spirit with parachutists who will fly into Tiger Stadium with the flags of Virginia Tech and LSU and the game ball, weather permitting. We will also have a moment of silence in recognition of the students and faculty members who were lost on April 16. And, finally, the Tiger Band – one of the greatest assets we have at LSU – will play the Virginia Tech alma mater. It is believed that this will be the first time in the history of Tiger Stadium that the Tiger Marching Band will honor our visitors by playing their alma mater.

I CAN GUARANTEE YOU, similar public statements never have had to be issued at the University of Nebraska before a big game. I mean, this is a state where Memorial Stadium fans above the visiting team's tunnel applaud "the enemy" at game's end. Win, lose or draw.

I kind of like that.

Luciano Pavarotti, requiescat in pace

From The Associated Press:

Luciano Pavarotti, whose vibrant high C’s and ebullient showmanship made him one of the world’s most beloved tenors, has died, his manager told The Associated Press. He was 71.

His manager, Terri Robson, told the AP in an e-mail statement that Pavarotti died at his home in Modena, Italy, at 5 a.m. local time. Pavarotti had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last year and underwent further treatment in August.

“The Maestro fought a long, tough battle against the pancreatic cancer, which eventually took his life. In fitting with the approach that characterized his life and work, he remained positive until finally succumbing to the last stages of his illness,” the statement said.

For serious fans, the unforced beauty and thrilling urgency of Pavarotti’s voice made him the ideal interpreter of the Italian lyric repertory, especially in the 1960s and ’70s when he first achieved stardom. For millions more, his charismatic performances of standards like “Nessun dorma” from Puccini’s “Turandot” came to represent what opera is all about.

Instantly recognizable from his charcoal black beard and tuxedo-busting girth, Pavarotti radiated an intangible magic that helped him win hearts in a way Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras — his partners in the “Three Tenors” concerts — never quite could.

“I always admired the God-given glory of his voice — that unmistakable special timbre from the bottom up to the very top of the tenor range,” Domingo said in a statement from Los Angeles.

That's the way it was, Sunday, April 17, 1955

There was a time when network TV news was better than local TV news today.

But it was a lot worse than network TV news today, which itself isn't as good as network TV news 30 years ago.

Welcome to NBC's Plymouth News Caravan with John Cameron Swayze, April 17, 1955. There's a reason why, over at the Columbia Broadcasting System, Edward R. Murrow spent so much of his television tenure fighting "The Man." Then, like now, championing journalistic ethics and pushing for solid content is akin to dancing on the edge of a cliff.

Love 'em or hate 'em, the 1960s happened for a reason. Leaving the 1950s sounding stilted. Very, very stilted.

For idiot WorldNutDaily columnists and misanthropic 'Catholic' bloggers

I let loose on the following hateful anti-New Orleans post by Relapsed Catholic's Kathy Shaidle a few days ago, but I thought this video (above) truly put her misanthropy in context, so I'm revisiting the matter now.

IT'S GOOD that we be absolutely clear about things, so watch the video, then read this by Shaidle:

Nice to see that other people are finally saying what I was saying the first week, two years ago.

Like V-Tech, Katrina revealed a lot about so-called conservative bloggers, who mostly fell all over themselves about New Orleans and what a shame it was that it was being destroyed.

Now, I expect liberals, libertines and progressives to mourn the loss of a cheap hotbed of public drunkeness, murder, laziness and corruption. Oh and don't forget the great food! Liberals are obsessed with "all those great restaurants", as we know from every debate about multiculturalism.

However, I expect (stupidly, as I continue to discover) conservatives to be a little more sober, to be able to see beyond their base appetites and be realistic about sending money to people so stupid they live in a bowl in a flood zone, how they'd spend all your donations on lap dancers, so primitive they couldn't control themselves during a crisis. Then they re-elected the mayor responsible for their misery. Because he's black, of course!

I saw all this clearly. You didn't. I really don't know how some of you make it through each day without falling down a manhole.

HAT TIP: Ashley Morris: the blog

Fit hits the shan where the rubbers meet the road

Take what happened when the idiots who run Washington, D.C., decided to buy defective -- imagine that! -- Chinese condoms for free giveaways, supersize it, and you start to get some idea of what happens when an entire society starts thinking with its little head instead of its big one.

The Washington Post gets the facts but misses the irony:

Tens of thousands of condoms provided free by the District to curb HIV-AIDS have been returned to the health department because of complaints that their paper packaging is easily torn and could render the condoms ineffective.

Demand at two distribution sites in Southeast set up by groups combating AIDS plummeted more than 80 percent after the condoms, in a mustard-yellow and purple wrapper, were introduced this year. More than 2,000 packets a week were scooped up in mid-March, but by late May, only 400 were being given away each week.

Volunteers concerned about why interest had dropped began asking people who had picked up the condoms. They were told about packets ripping in purses or bursting open in pockets. As a result, many recipients said they had little confidence that the condoms would offer protection.

In addition, expiration dates on some of the Chinese-made condoms were illegible.

"People were saying, 'These packets aren't any good,' " said Franck DeRose, executive director of an educational organization called the Condom Project, one of those involved in the grass-roots distribution system. A coalition that includes the Condom Project sent back 100,000 condoms to the city, about 15 percent of what the city says has been passed out to groups.

The city's effort to dispense up to 1 million condoms this year has drawn praise, but there has been little applause for the packets. The wrapper is emblazoned with the slogan "Coming Together to Stop HIV in D.C."

Concerns arose almost immediately. In interviews yesterday, officials at nearly half a dozen organizations that had been dispensing the condoms said they had received negative feedback from clients. Many said that the packaging seemed shoddy, they said.

"We're using them mostly for demonstration programs," said Cyndee Clay, executive director of HIPS, which helps sex workers in the city.

Some people were suspicious about the way the wrappers look. Even before reports of ripping, youths involved with the group Metro TeenAIDS wondered why the wrappers weren't plastic or foil, like those sold in stores.

"They doubted the authenticity of the condoms" and balked at taking them, executive director Adam Tenner said. "Distribution of those condoms has been really difficult," he said, and the nonprofit diverted funding from other programs to buy its own. "The question becomes, how do we fix this?"

We do tears, too

From The Associated Press:

WASHINGTON --Under that famously self-confident exterior is a president who weeps - a lot.

President Bush told the author of a new book on his presidency that "I try not to wear my worries on my sleeve" or show anything less than steadfastness in public, especially in a time of war.

"I fully understand that the enemy watches me, the Iraqis are watching me, the troops watch me, and the people watch me," he said. Yet, he said, "I do tears."

"I've got God's shoulder to cry on. And I cry a lot. I do a lot of crying in this job. I'll bet I've shed more tears than you can count, as president. I'll shed some tomorrow."

Bush granted journalist Robert Draper several extended interviews in late 2006 and early 2007, as well as unusual access to his aides, for the book "Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush," which went on sale Tuesday.

I'LL BET THE LOVED ONES of the 3,752 American soldiers killed in the crier-in-chief's dirty little war have cried a lot more tears than the self-absorbed instigator of their Iraq agony.

Maybe he can think about that -- maybe even shed a few more crocodile tears -- when he's out there "replenishing the ol' coffers" after Jan. 20, 2009. I'm sure there'll be at least a few remaining "true believers" who'll throw good money after bad to hear how one of the worst presidents in history royally screwed up America . . . or, perhaps by then, what's left of it.

We whored ourselves, but all we got was screwed

Feeling "rode hard and put away wet" yet, fellow pro-life Christian types?

For the better part of 30 years, orthodox Christians and others against killing babies in the womb supply-sided their Christian witness, added a party-line gospel that had nothing -- absolutely nothing -- to do with Jesus Christ crucified, risen and coming again . . . and all we got was a lousy ban on partial-birth abortion.

Which dedicated abortionists now have found a way around.

Meanwhile, we've stuck the nation with the likes of David Vitter, Larry Craig and the torturer-in-chief, George W. Bush -- a man for whom no delusion about a failed war in a Middle Eastern dung heap is too insane to be held tight.

Do you think God is trying to tell us something?

FOR 30 YEARS, we believed that a bunch of conservative politicians whose basic assumptions about economics and society tend to violate Christian ethics in one key aspect or another -- starting with "blessed are the poor" -- had the power to save a society sick unto death. Meanwhile, we lost confidence in the power of the Savior of the world to redeem a shallow, oversexed and avaricious culture.

We have rendered ourselves unto Caesar -- or Reagan, Bush, Dole and Bush . . . whatever -- and all we got was this lousy job at Burger King, a bumper sticker and a campaign T-shirt. And that unjust, stupid little war in Iraq that's killing our young men and women while smashing our military to bits for . . . ?

Here's the abortion story from The Boston Globe, via the Omaha World-Herald:

In response to the Supreme Court decision last spring upholding the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, many abortion providers around the country have adopted a defensive tactic: To avoid any chance of partly delivering a live infant, they are injecting fetuses with lethal drugs before procedures.

That shift in late-term abortions goes deeply against the grain, some doctors say: It poses a slight risk to the woman and offers her no medical benefit.

"We do not believe that our patients should take a risk for which the only clear benefit is a legal one to the physician," Dr. Philip Darney, chief of obstetrics at San Francisco General Hospital, wrote in an e-mail. He has chosen not to use the injections.

But others feel compelled to do all they can to protect themselves and their staff from the possibility of being accused.

Upheld in April, the federal ban is broadly written, does not specify an age for the fetus, and carries a two-year prison sentence. It forbids partly delivering a live fetus, then intentionally causing its death.

Even before the ban, the method known medically as intact dilation and extraction — typically involving removal of a fetus as far as the skull, which then is punctured and drained to ease its passage through the cervix — was rare, accounting for less than 1 percent of all abortions.

Instead, doctors usually use the method known as dilation and evacuation, in which the fetus is killed surgically while still inside the uterus before removal.

Now, if a fetus is not dead as it is removed, a provider might be accused of violating the law. So the lethal injections beforehand, carefully documented, are aimed at precluding any accusation.

Bellevue abortion provider Dr. LeRoy Carhart did not return repeated calls from The World-Herald seeking comment on whether he uses such injections.

A spokeswoman for the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights, whose attorneys have represented Carhart, declined to comment.

In a 2004 court case, Carhart testified that, in abortions after 18 weeks, he first anesthetizes and then kills the fetus inside the uterus with drugs. Asked whether he thought such injections were safe for his patients, Carhart replied yes.

Dr. Michael Greene, director of obstetrics at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, said that in experienced hands, the injections add no risk and are "trivially simple" compared with other obstetrical procedures. The main drawback, he said, is that "it is yet another procedure that the patient has to endure."

Patients have not objected to the injections, Greene said.

"They all are appreciative of what we do for them and understand the circumstances under which we work," he said.

The injections are generally used in abortions after 18 or 20 weeks of gestation. Medical staff inject the heart drug digoxin or potassium chloride.

Dr. Mark Nichols, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Oregon Health & Science University, said his impression is that most providers of later-term abortions are making injections routine.

At his own clinic, he said, the new rule is that any patient with a fetus over 20 weeks' gestation must have an injection.

YOU HAVE TO WONDER what might have been had pro-life Evangelicals, Southern Baptists, Catholics and their fellow travelers had put all the time and treasure they squandered on the Republican Party on evangelizing a lost people and transforming a debased culture.

How many of our slaughtered little brothers and sisters might be here with us today had we given George W. Bush less and the poor more?

How many abortionists might be looking for honest work today had we loved power less and loved our children more?

How many souls might have been rescued from the wickedness and snares of the devil had we retreated to Christian ghettos less and impacted the American culture more? Would we be having this highly unsatisfying conversation today if we loved Jesus Christ more than Jesus Junk?

IT TAKES A SPECIAL BUNCH of self-righteous idiots to act like a bunch of two-bit whores, then be utterly surprised when they get nothing but screwed.

Sad thing is, when we get screwed, it's our neighbors -- and our kids -- who catch that nasty STD.

A 39 is an 'F' on anybody's grade scale

The Associated Press reports President Bush once again has been blowing smoke up the collective butt of the American people when it comes to Iraq.

Actually, the AP didn't say exactly that. But that's what is plain from what the wire service does report. I am soooooo shocked:

WASHINGTON - Baghdad has not met 11 of its 18 political and security goals, according to a new independent report on Iraq that challenges President Bush’s assessment on the war.

The study, conducted by the Government Accountability Office, was slightly more upbeat than initially planned. After receiving substantial resistance from the White House, the GAO determined that four benchmarks — instead of two — had been partially met.

But GAO stuck with its original contention that only three goals out of the 18 had been achieved. The goals met include establishing joint security stations in Baghdad, ensuring minority rights in the Iraqi legislature and creating support committees for the Baghdad security plan.

“Overall key legislation has not been passed, violence remains high, and it is unclear whether the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion in reconstruction funds,” said U.S. Comptroller David Walker in prepared remarks for a Senate hearing on Tuesday.

An advance copy of the 100-page report and Walker’s testimony was obtained by The Associated Press.

GAO’s findings paint a bleaker view of progress in Iraq than offered by Bush in July and comes at a critical time in the Iraq debate. So far, Republicans have stuck by Bush and staved off Democratic legislation ordering troops home. But many, who have grown uneasy about the unpopularity of the war, say they want to see substantial improvement in Iraq by September.

Next week the top military commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, are scheduled to brief Congress.

“While the Baghdad security plan was intended to reduce sectarian violence, measuring such violence may be difficult since the perpetrator’s intent is not clearly known,” GAO states in its report. “Other measures of violence, such as the number of enemy-initiated attacks, show that violence has remained high through July 2007.”

Republican leaders on Tuesday showed no signs of wavering in their support for Bush.

“The GAO report really amounts to asking someone to kick an 80-yard field goal and criticizing them when they came up 20 or 25 yards short,” said House GOP leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters he would like to ensure a long-term U.S. presence in the Middle East to fight al-Qaida and deter aggression from Iran.

“And I hope that this reaction to Iraq and the highly politicized nature of dealing with Iraq this year doesn’t end up in a situation where we just bring all the troops back home and thereby expose us, once again, to the kind of attacks we’ve had here in the homeland or on American facilities,” said McConnell, R-Ky.

Democrats said the GAO report showed that Bush’s decision to send more troops to Iraq was failing because Baghdad was not making the political progress needed to tamp down sectarian violence.

“No matter what spin we may hear in the coming days, this independent assessment is a failing grade for a policy that simply isn’t working,” said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.

The report does not make any substantial policy recommendations, but says future administration reports “would be more useful to the Congress” if they provided more detailed information.

If God is dead, WTF is the only thing left

Methinks John Carroll is onto something big. If you don't know who John Carroll is, go here, as Rod Dreher can fill you in on Carroll's Big Idea -- contained in this book -- over on Crunchy Con.

Once you've been briefed, I can relate a couple of thoughts Rod's post sparked in the Imperial Brain.

A BRIEF
INTERMISSION
for BACKSTORY
BRIEFING . . .
WILL BE BACK
PRESENTLY

And the Mighty Favog's take on this begins in three . . .

Two . . .

One . . .

START.

* * *

IT SEEMS THAT WESTERN CULTURE has gone off the tracks in two significant ways simultaneously. Secular humanism basically posits that we are our own end and make up our own morality, if indeed the collective concept of morality is possible at all.

Without any "eternal vision" to guide us, there really is no reason to behave well -- to work and play well with others. I think this is clear even from a purely behavioralist perspective: Absent eternal reward and punishment, why should we behave well, whatever "well" might be? Absent any trancendental truths, or deity to enforce them, who has the authority to make the rules, anyway -- much less enforce them?

Then everything quickly devolves to "might makes right," and anything is permissable in creating the "might" to enforce your individual concept of "right."

But even among those of a trancendental mindset -- those who believe man is created in the image of God -- over the past 500 or so years, we more and more have gone from a self-concept of being "in the image of God" to that of being a god . . . or resembling a God whose image we created just the other day to suit our own purposes.

This, I think, ties right into what Carroll is saying about churches failing to draw upon 2,000 years of Jesus stories for our defining narrative. Since the life, Passion and resurrection of Christ, Western civilization has had this narrative of who we are, where we fit into The Story and what our job is here on earth. And the Christian story dovetails into the Hebrew narrative going back almost 6,000 years.

So despite this 6,000-year collective memory of Who We Are, Why We're Here and What We Must Do, for the past few hundred years we've been trying to "reimagine" the whole shebang when it hardly was necessary.

AND WHEN YOU GET to Carroll's questioning of traditional Christianity resorting to mere doctrine, it is easy to see his point about doctrine's ineffectiveness in combating a new "tradition" that solipsistically references nothing higher than the individual.

I'm just spitballing here, but perhaps what needs to happen is to start answering questions and challenges with even bigger questions. Wonderfully Jewish, eh?

For example, instead of just automatically reverting to a recitation of doctrine, we need to rediscover the "why" behind the doctrine, leading to the big question of "What does it mean to be made in the image of God -- what are the responsibilities we bear from being made in the image of God?"

And they wonder why circulation's in free fall

Last week, this was deemed by The Washington Post and 20-odd other American newspapers to be unfit material for consumption by American readers, because editors thought it might cause adherents of the Religion of Peace (TM) to get their burkas in a bunch and become violently offended.

Isn't this what they call the "soft racism of lowered expectations"?

Furthermore, if a group is regularly pandered to for fear it will become violent, isn't that the same as conditioning a group to employ violence -- or the threat thereof -- to achieve its goals? Isn't that conditioning every special interest to employ violence -- or the threat thereof -- to get what it wants?

And isn't that the death knell of democracy and a civil society?

In other words, by treating people with kid gloves for fear of creating another Iraq . . . you end up with another Iraq.

HAT TIP: Crunchy Con