Every man a schmuck

Dear America,

Congratulations! All you bastids is gonna be a big banana republic!

HAAAAAAAAA! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! HAHA! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

We's all white trash now!


Love,

The Gret Stet of Louisiana


P.S.: Squirrels is good eatin'.

Hell on wheels

To my old man, wheelchairs didn't bring forth visions of the disabled. They were just more stable platforms to shoot from.

I learned this the hard way.

Mrs. Favog and I hadn't been married but a few years when we became aware of my father's . . . uhhhhhh . . . eccentric views about those confined to chairs with two big wheels in back and a pair of little ones in the front. We were living in Baton Rouge at the time, and we were over to my folks' house for dinner.

IT WAS Labor Day. I know this because I recall that we were watching the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon.

I made the mistake of asking whether they'd be making a donation to Jerry's Kids, fighting the good fight against muscular dystrophy.

Hell, no, said the old man.

Why was that?

He then launched into a diatribe about the crippled, wheelchairs and guns. Something about how the Wheelchair People were just itching to gun us all down.

I can picture it now: The cute little Muscular Dystrophy Association ambassador -- probably all of 11 years old -- was pissed as hell about his impending horrible death from a dread disease and, dammit, he was going to take as many people as he could with him.

Unfortunately for us, the wife and I did the rational thing when presented with the specter of Roland the Crippled Wheelchair Gunner. We laughed our asses off. But my old man wasn't joking.

I ought to have figured that he wasn't. The old man almost never joked.

WHAT FOLLOWED was an angry diatribe by the old man -- aimed at his uppity son and his g**damn Yankee wife. Somewhere in there was the memorable phrase, "I might not have book learnin', but I got common sense."

That phrase spoke volumes, actually. It needed to. What followed from the old man was about a month's worth of silence -- and not just on the subject of wheelchairs and guns.

The old man is long dead now, but the whack genius of Psycho Gunners on Wheels lives on in Favogian lore. After all, you just can't get anymore insane than. . . .

Ohhhhhhhhh . . . CRAP:

This shooter had an unconventional mode of transportation.

Shortly after 1:30 a.m. Wednesday, police responded to a call about a person who was down in the street near 69th and Maple Streets. Officers found Patrick Amburn, 40, of Glenwood, Iowa, who told them that he had been shot by a man in a wheelchair.

Amburn was taken to the Nebraska Medical Center with a gunshot wound to his back. His injuries did not appear to be life-threatening, police said.

THANKS, Omaha World-Herald. I can hear the old man going "HEH HEH HEHHHHHHHHHH!" all the way from Roselawn Cemetery in Baton Rouge, La.

The cops had better haul in Jerry Lewis for questioning. He probably knows the assailant.

We extend greetings to our Chinese overlords

No comment is necessary on this CNBC report, I don't think.

Morgan Stanley -- one of the two last independent, U.S.-based investment banks -- is negotiating with the Chinese government for a fresh infusion of funds into the beleaguered investment bank.

Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack held various conversations with potential merger partners Wednesday afternoon including top executives at Citigroup and Wachovia Bank . However, Mack continues to work to keep Morgan Stanley an independent company CNBC has learned.

Executives at Morgan are currently crunching numbers to determine how much of an additional minority stake they need to sell to settle market fears about the company.

Mack's plan is to sell a piece of Morgan Stanley to a Chinese bank. Mack has been dealing with Chinese government officials all day Wednesday to line up money from China.

He also has been dealing with top officials from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury to lobby them to give approval to a Chinese bank increasing its stake in the company.

China’s sovereign wealth fund, China Investment Corporation (CIC), already owns 9.9 percent of Morgan. However, Mack, according to people close to the company, understands that he faces significant obstacles including a turbulent market that has crushed Morgan shares.

People close to Mack say that he does not expect any deal tonight and he would like to avoid one on Thursday. However, if he has to do a deal, because of further deterioration in stock price he will.

CNBC's David Faber had earlier reported that the Federal Reserve has been active in encouraging the Chinese to invest in U.S. financial institutions. The Fed has even made it clear that it would look favorably upon a Chinese acquisition of a U.S.-based financial institution, sources said.

Morgan Stanley stocks plunged more than 24 percent Wednesday and it is imperative that the investment bank gets a cash infusion before its shares decline further. London-based HSBC has also been cited as a possible suitor for Morgan Stanley.

Napoleon Obama rallies the troops

Overheard on Obama Farm: "All speech is free. Some speech is freer than other speech."

IN ITS TUESDAY EDITIONS, the Chicago Tribune tells a tale that could have been written by George Orwell . . . or Saul Alinsky in full "We'll really f*** 'em tomorrow!" mode:

Chicago radio station WGN-AM is again coming under attack from the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama for offering airtime to a controversial author. It is the second time in recent weeks the station has been the target of an "Obama Action Wire" alert to supporters of the Illinois Democrat.

Monday night's target was David Freddoso, who the campaign said was scheduled to be on the station from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. Chicago time.

"The author of the latest anti-Barack hit book is appearing on WGN Radio in the Chicagoland market tonight, and your help is urgently needed to make sure his baseless lies don't gain credibility," an e-mail sent Monday evening to Obama supporters reads.

"David Freddoso has made a career off dishonest, extreme hate mongering," the message said. "And WGN apparently thinks this card-carrying member of the right-wing smear machine needs a bigger platform for his lies and smears about Barack Obama -- on the public airwaves."

THIS READS like a page out of the Industrial Areas Foundation playbook.

It's the kind of grassroots strong-arm tactic a "community organizer" uses against the city council or a school board . . . or an abusive employer in the community. But to use such tactics as not-so-vague intimidation against a media outlet in the name of stifling free-and-open debate?

And not only that, but to use such tactics not against The Man, but in service of a Washington pol who seeks to become THE Man?

Would Saul Alinsky cheer on a disciple who grabbed the reins of power? Or would he be horrified that his methods had been subverted by the institutional power base in service of Obama's personal ambition?

And the status quo.

Maybe some hints lie in an old Playboy interview with the Old Radical himself, conducted by Eric Norden in 1972:

PLAYBOY: The assumption behind the Administration's Silent Majority thesis is that most of the middle class is inherently conservative. How can even the most skillful organizational tactics unite them in support of your radical goals?

ALINSKY: Conservative? That's a crock of crap. Right now they're nowhere. But they can and will go either of two ways in the coming years -- to a native American fascism or toward radical social change. Right now they're frozen, festering in apathy, leading what Thoreau called "lives of quiet desperation:" They're oppressed by taxation and inflation, poisoned by pollution, terrorized by urban crime, frightened by the new youth culture, baffled by the computerized world around them. They've worked all their lives to get their own little house in the suburbs, their color TV, their two cars, and now the good life seems to have turned to ashes in their mouths. Their personal lives are generally unfulfilling, their jobs unsatisfying, they've succumbed to tranquilizers and pep pills, they drown their anxieties in alcohol, they feel trapped in longterm endurance marriages or escape into guilt-ridden divorces. They're losing their kids and they're losing their dreams. They're alienated, depersonalized, without any feeling of participation in the political process, and they feel rejected and hopeless. Their utopia of status and security has become a tacky-tacky suburb, their split-levels have sprouted prison bars and their disillusionment is becoming terminal.

They're the first to live in a total mass-media-oriented world, and every night when they turn on the TV and the news comes on, they see the almost unbelievable hypocrisy and deceit and even outright idiocy of our national leaders and the corruption and disintegration of all our institutions, from the police and courts to the White House itself. Their society appears to be crumbling and they see themselves as no more than small failures within the larger failure. All their old values seem to have deserted them, leaving them rudderless in a sea of social chaos. Believe me, this is good organizational material.

The despair is there; now it's up to us to go in and rub raw the sores of discontent, galvanize them for radical social change. We'll give them a way to participate in the democratic process, a way to exercise their rights as citizens and strike back at the establishment that oppresses them, instead of giving in to apathy. We'll start with specific issues -- taxes, jobs, consumer problems, pollution -- and from there move on to the larger issues: pollution in the Pentagon and the Congress and the board rooms of the megacorporations. Once you organize people, they'll keep advancing from issue to issue toward the ultimate objective: people power. We'll not only give them a cause, we'll make life goddamn exciting for them again -- life instead of existence. We'll turn them on.

PLAYBOY: You don't expect them to beware of radicals bearing gifts?

ALINSKY: Sure, they'll be suspicious, even hostile at first. That's been my experience with every community I've ever moved into. My critics are right when they call me an outside agitator. When a community, any kind of community, is hopeless and helpless, it requires somebody from outside to come in and stir things up. That's my job -- to unsettle them, to make them start asking questions, to teach them to stop talking and start acting, because the fat cats in charge never hear with their ears, only through their rears. I'm not saying it's going to be easy; thermopolitically, the middle classes are rooted in inertia, conditioned to look for the safe and easy way, afraid to rock the boat. But they're beginning to realize that boat is sinking and unless they start bailing fast, they're going to go under with it. The middle class today is really schizoid, torn between its indoctrination and its objective situation. The instinct of middle-class people is to support and celebrate the status quo, but the realities of their daily lives drill it home that the status quo has exploited and betrayed them.

THE OLD RABBLE-ROUSER really had suburbia's number, didn't he?

Certainly Obama, the erstwhile community organizer, still is adept at Alinskyesque sloganeering and at cutting and pasting from the IAF playbook. But in what way does he propose to rally the middle class against that status quo, which "has exploited and betrayed them"?

Especially when he's running on a platform that's merely a Democratic Party version of the status quo in an attempt to become the duly elected Quo of Quos.

Hanoi Hiltoning John McCain

If John Kerry got "Swift Boated" in 2004, is John McCain about to get "Hanoi Hiltoned" this year?

It would appear, so far as presidential politics goes, the Vietnam War is a gift that keeps on giving. To Republicans and Democrats alike.

BRAVE NEW PAC has come out with an ad and Internet video featuring a former Naval Academy classmate of McCain's who, as it happens, occupied the cell across the corridor from the GOP presidential nominee in the infamous North Vietnamese prison.

"I think I can say with authority that the prisoner of war experience is not a good prerequisite for a president of the United States," Phillip Butler says in a 30-second ad by the political action committee. The TV commercial is based on the PAC's much longer YouTube video featuring Butler.

Brave New PAC aired the ad on national cable for a couple of days, reports Talking Points Memo, to see whether "Hanoi Hiltoning" McCain has legs:

Robert Greenwald's Brave New PAC goes up on national cable with a new 30-second spot starring fellow McCain POW Phillip Butler, who says he knows from personal experience that a POW background is not desirable in a commander-in-chief.

"John McCain is not somebody that I would like to see with his finger near the red button," Butler says in the spot.

(snip)

As for the buy itself, it's a modest one. The spot is running on national cable today (and ran yesterday, too). It's funded by Brave New Films and Democracy For America, the independent group run by Jim Dean, who's Howard Dean's brother.

The ad is really a flare -- an effort to see if this controversial line of attack catches the attention of the national media.

"If it takes off and this storyline gets some pickup, then that'll give us some incentive to go raise more money for it," Brave New PAC spokesperson Leighton Woodhouse tells me.

I DON'T KNOW WHY the ad wouldn't "have legs."

Actually, what Brave New PAC proposes in 2008 is thin gruel compared to what George W. Bush's backers actually did to McCain in the 2000 South Carolina primary. Pro-Bush forces, after all, went so far as to suggest McCain was some kind of Manchurian Candidate.

All the Democrat-leaning PAC contends with the latest videos is that McCain was a touchy hothead before he was taken prisoner by the North Vietnamese, and that "the POW experience" certainly does not enhance one's physical or mental health.

To tell you the truth, I was wondering when the Dems would get around to publicly saying what I had been thinking for some time now.

And if there are others like me. . . .

And if you're still not convinced. . . .

Did I mention that Hurricane Ike was only a strong Category 2 storm when it plowed into the Texas coast?

This is why you evacuate

These government before-Ike and after-Ike pictures of Texas' Bolivar Peninsula is why you get the hell out of Dodge when The Man says "Get the hell out of Dodge."

As anyone in south Louisiana will tell you -- well, anyone but the really stupid and the really foolish -- you don't mess around with hurricanes. Hurricanes have lots of ways they can kill you.

And they have lots more ways they can kill you if you do something stupid. Like stay on the coast when one's aimed at you.

If only your BlackBerry could crap in your pocket. Or be a surly brat.

Love, honor and cherish your BlackBerry.

MORE THAN your wife. More than your kids.

Wives and kids are disposable. Thus, we have this story from WCBS-TV in New York:

Of all the possible things that can come between spouses, you can now add BlackBerrys -- or more precisely -- BlackBerry addiction to the list.

A new study reveals BlackBerry's are becoming -- among other things -- the 800-pound gorilla in the bedroom.

'Berry, 'Berry, addictive?

"I live with it. I can't live without it," one New York City resident told CBS 2 HD.

Yeah ... there's a reason some call 'em ... CrackBerrys.

But are you having a love affair with yours?

"I am on my BlackBerry more than I see my boyfriend," one woman said.

The study of 6,500 traveling executives says 35 percent of them would choose their PDA over their spouse.

"That's a tough call," one said.

"Oh you don't want to go there," another added.

AND THEN, we have this story from the Omaha World-Herald:

Nebraska lawmakers didn't expect the first children dropped off at hospitals under the state's new "safe haven" law would be a teenager and a preteen.

The law was intended to save newborns.

People who work with children and families say they were not surprised, though, and called the dropoffs a "wakeup call."

The 2-month-old law was used twice Saturday, both times by people leaving misbehaving adolescents with whom they could no longer cope.

An 11-year-old boy was dropped off Saturday afternoon at Immanuel Medical Center in Omaha. A few hours later, a 15-year-old boy was left at BryanLGH Medical Center West in Lincoln.

"This is what we feared," said Kathy Bigsby Moore, executive director for Voices for Children of Nebraska. "It appears this law has now created a new front door to the child welfare system."

Karen Authier, executive director of the Nebraska Children's Home society adoption agency, said the cases should be a "wakeup call" to alert communities to the need for more resources to help struggling families.

State Sen. Brad Ashford of Omaha, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said he had not anticipated many older children would be dropped off when he agreed to remove the age limit in the original safe haven proposal.

Upon reflection, however, he said the law's first use is an indicator that Nebraska needs better ways to deal with young people with behavioral problems. Other indicators, he said, include the level of gun violence in Omaha and teen suicides.

"It's an alarm bell, clearly another alarm signal," Ashford said. "I'm very concerned about how pervasive these issues are."

WE ARE A SICK BUNCH of SOBs, we enlightened and knowledgeable postmodern Americans.

There's no need for "safe haven" laws for CrackBerries. No one in his right mind would think of throwing one away.

What kind of barbarian would treat such a fine communication device like he would his wife? Or a child?

How 'bout THIS 'faith merchandise'

Barack Obama has set the price for a Catholic's soul at $2.50. Cheap!

Two-and-a-half bucks and a Catholic can tell the world he -- or she -- backs a guy who is perfectly OK with the fact that, since Roe v. Wade in 1973, 48 million or so American babies have been the victims of legal homicide in their mothers' wombs.

A GUY who thinks that when teen girls get knocked up, they're being "punished," and that a little pill or a little procedure can negate the punishment by making a defenseless human being disappear.

A guy who couldn't even bring himself to oppose partial-birth abortion . . . or favor a "born alive" act to guarantee medical treatment for infants who survived late-term abortion attempts.

CNN has the details:

The Obama campaign is preparing rolling out a new line of “faith merchandise” – the latest move in an ambitious effort to win over religious voters.

“Check out the Believers for Barack, Pro-Family Pro-Obama, and Catholics for Obama buttons, bumper stickers and signs….” says Obama Deputy Director of Religious Affairs Paul Monteiro in an e-mail obtained by the Beliefnet Web site.

“Believers for Barack rally signs and bumper stickers, along with all Pro-Family Pro-Obama merchandise, are appropriate for people of all faith backgrounds. We'll soon be rolling out merchandise for other religious groups and denominations, but I wanted to get this out to you without delay,” he adds.

Both campaigns have been making a major push for the Catholic vote, which has gone to the winning presidential campaign in every race since 1976, except Al Gore’s 2000 White House bid.

Beliefnet reported that "Clergy for Change" and "Pro-Israel Pro-Obama" merchandise will soon be offered.

FOR A LOUSY $2.50, Obamaniac Catholics can tell the world they don't care their Church places concepts like "Catholics for Obama" pretty much in the same neighborhood as "Catholics for Nuking Darfur."

I can't wait until the Republicans come out with "Catholics for Torture" signs.

'GREAT HORNY TOADS, THAT SMARTS!'

Some of Barack Obama's "nutroot" supporters are finding the presidential election to be an unexpectedly sticky wicket.

AND IN POLITICS -- unlike the sexual revolution -- when you make a "mistake," you damned well are going to get "punished" with a good ass-kicking.

Thus the Financial Times audience revisits the cast of Change You Can Believe In in New Hampshire, as the Lightworker discoveres how difficult finding an abortion provider can be when you need to terminate your political base amid a particularly nasty electoral freak-out:

Mr Obama signalled that he was heeding calls for a more aggressive approach with a punchy stump speech that combined cool anger about the country’s problems with mockery of John McCain’s claims to be the man to fix them.

The crowd hooted with derision as the Illinois senator sarcastically picked apart his opponent’s claims to be an agent of change. “He’s saying, ‘watch out George Bush, with the exception of tax policy, healthcare policy, education policy, energy policy, foreign policy and Karl Rove-style politics, we’re really going to shake things up in Washington.”

He avoided direct attacks against Sarah Palin, Mr McCain’s running mate and the catalyst of Republican resurgence. But his supporters showed less restraint.

“You want to know the honest truth? I think she’s like a bad actor from a B-list sex movie,” said Paula Vanbuskirk, an Obama-supporting independent, whose contempt for the Alaska governor and self-styled “hockey mom” was shared by almost everyone questioned by the Financial Times.

If it was Mr McCain’s intention to ignite a fresh “culture war” between middle America and east coast liberals by nominating Ms Palin, the evidence in Manchester suggested he has succeeded in spectacular fashion.

“I just do not trust the American people,” said Eleanor Shavell, 58, a computer programmer, who, along with several others, joked she would move to Canada if Mr Obama loses. “I cannot believe that 80 per cent of this country thinks we’re headed in the wrong direction yet 50 per cent are supporting McCain and Palin. I guess it’s like at school, there’s always got to be a bottom 50 per cent.” [Emphasis mine -- R21.]

METHINKS MS. SHAVELL might be making a bit of a rash assumption about who's on the back side of the Bell Curve.

Really, how bright can a political party be when it knows what its opponents are going to do, how they're going to do it and -- like Wile E. Coyote or Yosemite Sam -- they walk right into the trap anyway.

Muttering the whole time about those "stupid varmints."

Eye-rack. Track. Hell-bent. Exactly, Charlie.

Tina Fey is Sarah Palin

Uncanny. I don't know whether I've ever seen a more dead-on parody of someone as Tina Fey's of GOP vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin.

Sanity's not all it's quacked up to be

The New York Times went to Alaska and discovered -- surprise! -- the Republicans' vice-presidential nominee is just another power-hungry, crony-appointing, paranoid, authoritarian clone of the guy we say we desperately want out of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Imagine.

IT'S A PITY the Daily Kossack "nutroots" pretty much inoculated Gov. Sarah Palin -- at least among the socially conservative and the fair-minded -- against the political consequences of her own shenanigans by letting their visceral hatred of motherhood, Christianity and disabled infants get the better of them.

After such an eruption of Naziesque "final solution" invective -- spleen vented at the image of a "hockey mom," her Down syndrome baby and her preggers teen daughter -- the American people might feel sorry enough for Palin to place her a heartbeat away from the presidency. And John McCain in it.

That would be a bad thing. Not that, alternatively, electing Barack Obama would be a good thing, mind you.

But that's not important now.

WHAT'S IMPORTANT is that Ruthie the Duck Girl is dead at 74. It says it right here in New Orleans' Times-Picayune newspaper:

Ruthie the Duck Girl, a French Quarter eccentric who zoomed from bar to bar on roller skates, often wearing a ratty fur coat and long skirt and trailed by a duck or two, died Sept. 6 at Our Lady of the Lake Hospital in Baton Rouge. She was 74.

Ruthie, whose real name was Ruth Grace Moulon, had been suffering from cancer of the mouth and lungs when the residents of her Uptown New Orleans nursing home were evacuated to Baton Rouge as Hurricane Gustav approached, said Carol Cunningham, a close friend who watched over her for nearly 40 years.

"I've always looked at Ruthie like a little bird with a broken wing, " Cunningham said. "She was always so dear to me."

Miss Moulon, a lifelong New Orleanian, became a French Quarter fixture, achieving legendary status in a city that treasures people who live outside the mainstream. Along the way, she acquired a coterie of people like Cunningham who found places for her to live, paid her bills and made sure she got home at night.

A tiny woman with a constant grin, she frequently sported a bridal gown and veil on her forays because, people said, she considered herself engaged to Gary Moody, whom she met in New Orleans in 1963 when he was a sailor.

Moody showed up at a 2001 birthday party for Miss Moulon at Mid-City Lanes Rock 'N Bowl, but the two never got to the altar. According to a Times-Picayune interview that year, Miss Moulon had a stock reply whenever anyone asked if there might be a wedding in her future: "I got engaged; that's enough!"

In 1999, Rick Delaup made her the subject of a documentary, "Ruthie the Duck Girl."

Miss Moulon's daily routine consisted of roaming from one watering hole to another, mooching drinks and cigarettes. She could be sweet one minute and unleash a torrent of profanity the next.

Although people deemed Miss Moulon's behavior unconventional even by French Quarter standards, no one ever diagnosed her mental condition because she refused to see a doctor, David Cuthbert wrote in The Times-Picayune in 2001.

"She's not out of touch with reality; she's just not interested, " photographer David Richmond told The Times-Picayune.

WHAT'S IMPORTANT is that we are a nation that looks at Ruthie the Duck Girl and sees something just short of humanity.

What's important is that we are a nation whose elites look at little Trig Palin, the candidate's son with one too many chromosomes, and condemn his mother for bringing him into the world.

What's important is that a culture can make short work of the gap between aborting little Trig Palin and devising a "final solution" for society's factory rejects, who zip around the Vieux Carré on roller skates -- ducks close behind -- mooching drinks and bumming smokes.

What's important is that I can see either McCain-Palin or Obama and his running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, slapping on the roller skates and zipping down the Boulevard of Broken Schemes (and screams).

What's important is that, right now, Americans see a city like New Orleans -- broken and flood-damaged and, quite frankly, a little nuts -- and wonder why we just didn't remove the feeding tube. Remove all life support from the one place in America that could see Ruthie the Duck Girl as a cause for celebration, not consternation.

I particularly liked this comment on the Times-Picayune obit:

Posted by vaticanlokey on 09/13/08 at 7:07AM

Years ago, when I was still working at Poppy's Grill (and the Rouses in the Quarter was still the A&P), I recall meeting Ruthie on Rue Royale with her duck in tow. For some reason, she wasn't wearing her skates that day. We talked a bit, I gave her a few cigarettes (I was still smoking back then) and she went to go inside the A&P, telling the duck to stay put. While inside, the duck wandered out into the street and got hit by a car and killed. Someone rushed into the A&P to get Ruthie. She walked out with this indescribable look on her face, wandered out into the middle of Rue St. Peter to look at the carnage, and literally yelled at the dead duck

"I TOLD you to stay put, duck!" and without another word, wandered down to Rue Bourbon and disappeared.

I have never forgotten that day, and I will never forget Ruthie the Duck Lady. She is one of the many reasons I proudly call New Orleans home.

Au revoir, Ruthie, and give the duck my best!

WELL . . . OK. This one, too:

Posted by NOLevee on 09/13/08 at 10:05AM

Once when tending bar at Lord VJ's (now Ryan's) Bar Ruthie in came Ruthie with her duck, she climbed up on the bar-stool placed the duck on the bar and in her duck-like sounding voice said: "Give me a rum n' coke, give my duck one too."

Taken a bit back I said, "What?"

In which her sardonic side expounded, "What? Are you deaf? I said give me a rum & coke and make one for my duck too."

So I did. And the both of them preceded to enjoy their drinks.

She was definitely one of a kind.

WHEN I LOOK at what we Americans most value today -- and especially when I look at the fine electoral mess we've gotten ourselves into -- it occurs to me that Ruthie Moulon, the Duck Girl of the Vieux Carré, wasn't the nutty one.

Analyzing cable's coverage of Ike

As we watch, for the 400th time, the "new video" of cars creeping around debris on Texas roads today in the wake of Hurricane Ike -- both in stand-alone mode and in multiple frames on the TV screen -- it reminds us cable news is almost as good a parody of itself as was the most devastatingly funny send up of television news ever.

That would be Saturday Night Live's "death of Buckwheat" sketch from March 1983.

All that needs to be said about television news got said 25 years ago. Enjoy.

3 Chords & the Truth: Refuge from the suck

As I write this, Hurricane Ike is giving the Texas coastline a good thrashing. God knows what's happening to poor Galveston.

God knows what's about to happen to the price of a gallon of gas for the foreseeable future.

MEANWHILE, the Republicans have restarted the culture wars -- because, frankly, that was the only way they could win -- and the far left of the Democratic Party has taken the bait. Enthusiastically.

And observant Catholics like me hear "We hate you. We really hate you." (And, by the way, I am the last New Deal Democrat standing.)

The Republicans, of course, are counting on that. Because that's the only way they can win this year. Did I mention that?

Back to the storm front, my Louisiana hometown is still a shambles from Hurricane Gustav a couple of weeks back, and my mother only has electricity to half of her house. Go figure.

Up here in Nebraska, it's been raining all week . . . and God knows what we're going to be paying for a gallon of gas in a few days. (You can't mention that one too much. All God's chillin need gas. Or for the city to instantly build a decent mass-transit system.)

TIMES ARE TOUGH; times are ugly, and they're getting uglier.

There's only one thing for us to do in times like these: Crank it up! That's where this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth comes in.

In the impersonal and the abstract, you might hate my guts, and I damn well may have had it with you -- and the politicians might be clapping with glee at the spectacle -- but it seems to me there's one thing we can agree on.

That would be good music. Again, that's where this week's edition of the Big Show comes in.

Good music. Diverse music. "Oh my God, he can't be as big an effing redneck as I thought" music.

And -- Whadda you know? -- if you're hip to the cool sounds, too, you might not be half bad yourself. (God, I sound like I'm sporting a pocket protector or something. Geez!)

I GUESS THAT'S what this week's 3 Chords & the Truth ultimately is about. Unity through a shared quest for sweet diversion from a world o' suck.

Works for me. How about you?

It's 3 Chords & the Truth. Be there.

Aloha.

Mac is starting to pity PC

Here's a couple of the new ads for Windows featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld.

Apparently, the $300 million Microsoft campaign is supposed to combat Apple's wildly successful "Mac vs. PC" ads. Ummmmmmmmm . . . yeah.

There may be a point somewhere in the first two Gates-Seinfeld commercials, but it will take half the world's intelligence services to decipher what that might be.

Until the intelligence estimate arrives, just look at the Windows campaign much as you might the operating system itself -- an antiquated notion smothered by a mountain of bloated code and ready to lock up on us any second now.

This sounds eerily familiar

Part of the local hurricane statement from the National Weather Service at Galveston/Houston on Thursday as Ike loomed out in the Gulf of Mexico, a mere day away.

The last time I heard something like this . . . well, you know.

MAXIMUM WATER LEVELS FORECAST:

GULF-FACING COASTLINE WEST OF SARGENT...5 TO 8 FEET

SHORELINE OF MATAGORDA BAY...4 TO 7 FEET

GULF-FACING COASTLINE SARGENT TO HIGH ISLAND
INCLUDING GALVESTON ISLAND......12 TO 16 FEET

SHORELINE OF GALVESTON BAY...15 TO 25 FEET

LIFE THREATENING INUNDATION LIKELY!

ALL NEIGHBORHOODS...AND POSSIBLY ENTIRE COASTAL COMMUNITIES... WILL BE INUNDATED DURING THE PERIOD OF PEAK STORM TIDE. PERSONS NOT HEEDING EVACUATION ORDERS IN SINGLE FAMILY ONE OR TWO STORY HOMES MAY FACE CERTAIN DEATH. MANY RESIDENCES OF AVERAGE CONSTRUCTION DIRECTLY ON THE COAST WILL BE DESTROYED. WIDESPREAD AND DEVASTATING PERSONAL PROPERTY DAMAGE IS LIKELY ELSEWHERE. VEHICLES LEFT BEHIND WILL LIKELY BE SWEPT AWAY. NUMEROUS ROADS WILL BE SWAMPED...SOME MAY BE WASHED AWAY BY THE WATER. ENTIRE FLOOD PRONE COASTAL COMMUNITIES WILL BE CUTOFF. WATER LEVELS MAY EXCEED 9 FEET FOR MORE THAN A MILE INLAND. COASTAL RESIDENTS IN MULTI-STORY FACILITIES RISK BEING CUTOFF. CONDITIONS WILL BE WORSENED BY BATTERING WAVES CLOSER TO THE COAST. SUCH WAVES WILL EXACERBATE PROPERTY DAMAGE...WITH MASSIVE DESTRUCTION OF HOMES...INCLUDING THOSE OF BLOCK CONSTRUCTION. DAMAGE FROM BEACH EROSION COULD TAKE YEARS TO REPAIR.

Gustav + 10 days: All is well!

Nothing to see here down there in Louisiana, more
than a week after Gustav didn't flood New Orleans.

Nothing to see here at all. New Orleans didn't
drown. No harm, no foul. Just move along, please.

Look! Barack Obama called noted breeder Sarah Palin
a pig! Lipstick on a pig! Soooooooey! Barnyard brawl!

Newspapering for Dummies. Really.

This is the gadget publishers think will save their newspapers.

They are mistaken. The only thing that will save newspapers is if publishers stick their heads in the oven.

Unfortunately.

HERE'S THE DEAL: The doomaflatchie above, called the Plastic Logic reader, is supposed to be like a big Kindle, allowing for display of something approaching a print newspaper in size and style. Presumably, it will sell for a Kindlelike price.

The New York Times has a story about the Plastic Logic reader -- on its website:

The electronic newspaper, a large portable screen that is constantly updated with the latest news, has been a prop in science fiction for ages. It also figures in the dreams of newspaper publishers struggling with rising production and delivery costs, lower circulation and decreased ad revenue from their paper product.

While the dream device remains on the drawing board, Plastic Logic will introduce publicly on Monday its version of an electronic newspaper reader: a lightweight plastic screen that mimics the look — but not the feel — of a printed newspaper.

The device, which is unnamed, uses the same technology as the Sony eReader and Amazon.com’s Kindle, a highly legible black-and-white display developed by the E Ink Corporation. While both of those devices are intended primarily as book readers, Plastic Logic’s device, which will be shown at an emerging technology trade show in San Diego, has a screen more than twice as large. The size of a piece of copier paper, it can be continually updated via a wireless link, and can store and display hundreds of pages of newspapers, books and documents.

Richard Archuleta, the chief executive of Plastic Logic, said the display was big enough to provide a newspaperlike layout. “Even though we have positioned this for business documents, newspapers is what everyone asks for,” Mr. Archuleta said.

The reader will go on sale in the first half of next year. Plastic Logic will not announce which news organization will display its articles on it until the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, when it will also reveal the price.

Kenneth A. Bronfin, president of Hearst Interactive Media, said, “We are hopeful that we will be able to distribute our newspaper content on a new generation of larger devices sometime next year.” While he would not say what device the company’s papers would use, he said, “we have a very strong interest in e-newspapers. We’re very anxious to get involved.”

WELL . . . OK. Fine.

You have to wonder why someone would plop down a few hundred bucks for something that does a lot less than a cheap laptop you can buy for the same price. But . . . OK, I guess.

Here, however, is where the whole scheme goes really wrong. And it is because newspaper executives are idiots.

Worse than that, they are greedy idiots:

If e-newspapers take off, the savings could be hefty. At the The San Francisco Chronicle, for example, print and delivery amount to 65 percent of the paper’s fixed expenses, Mr. Bronfin said.

(snip)

Papers face a tough competitor: their own Web sites, where the information is free. And they have trained a generation of new readers to expect free news. In Holland, the iLiad comes with a one-year subscription for 599 euros ($855). The cost of each additional year of the paper is 189 euros ($270). NRC offers just one electronic edition of the paper a day, while Les Echos updates its iRex version 10 times a day.

A number of newspapers, including The New York Times, offer electronic versions through the Kindle device; The Times on the Kindle costs $14 a month, similar to the cost of other papers. “The New York Times Web site started as a replica of print, but it has now evolved,” said Michael Zimbalist, vice president for research and development operations at The New York Times Company. “We expect to experiment on all of these platforms. When devices start approximating the look and feel of a newspaper, we’ll be there as well,” Mr. Zimbalist said.

LET'S SEE. If I have a laptop -- some of which you can buy for not much more than a Kindle -- I would want to pay money to get an inferior version of what I already get online for free. . . .

I'm sorry, I think I was about to pose a wholly unnecessary question.

The only thing that possibly could be stupider than that would be if newspapers killed off their websites in favor of a Kindlized subscription product. One that couldn't match its present multimedia offerings online.

You think you have carnage in the newspaper industry now. . . .

Only newspaper publishers would expect people to pay full-subscription price for a product that's less functional than their dead-tree editions, then pay hundreds more for a thingamajig to read it on. This when you can get the same thing online for free somewhere, even if not from The Daily Blab.

Only newspaper publishers would do such a thing after eliminating 65 percent of their fixed operating expenses -- especially when subscription and single-copy sales account for just 20 percent of revenue, roughly.

Assuming a newspaper could bring a sizable majority of its print advertising over to an electronic edition when print is no more -- And, really, where would those print advertisers go? -- you'd have to think the bottom line would look so much healthier than it does today.

Even if you gave your product away.

CHARGING READERS two or three Benjamins a year for a product you were coming out ahead on by its very printing-plant-free nature is just avaricious. And avarice doesn't fly in the new-media world.

Now, fellas . . . when you stick your heads in that oven, make sure it's a natural-gas model. All-electric would be such a horrible way to go.

Best ad campaign ever

The folks behind the best ad campaign ever give us perhaps the best Web ad ever.

If Internet advertising were this consistently clever and entertaining, I don't think newspapers would have a big problem in monetizing their Internet editions. I want to go out and buy a Mac right now, don't you?

Well, actually, I've wanted to for a while now. There's just this little issue called money standing in the way.

HAT TIP: The NECreative blog, via Twitter.

Palins put bee in Buzz's bonnet

Far be it from me to promote substance abuse -- particularly that of an illegal nature -- but this column on Bayou Buzz.com really is best read stoned.

For the first time ever, the 2008 Republican Convention celebrated unwed teenage motherhood by seating Sarah Palin's reportedly 5-months' pregnant daughter with her teenage lover, proudly in the VIP row. As the swollen, 17-year-old Bristol Palin complacently gripped her swarthy impregnator's hand, Alaska's governor and the prospective mother's mother sternly lectured on family values and accused "the media" of persecuting her family.

Has the Republican Party gone mad?

No. But perhaps it's watched "The Da Vinci Code" too many times.

Are the Republicans returning to the cult of the goddess?

Maybe. Anything to win the election, right?

The Republican wanna-be First and Second Families made a fascinating tableau, with fertility being unabashedly the message. Sarah wore a tight choker of fat pearls, the luminous gift of oysters, enhancers of libido and mimics of male anatomy. Her plain, silvery tunic fit like Joan of Arc's breastplate and set her apart as the GOP's new high priestess. Cindy McCain, swathed in pearls, wore a bright green outfit—highlighting the Republicans' odd claim to now be champions of global warming. And green is also the color of fertility, of shimmering, budding springtime woods, of leafy glens and grassy fields where fertility rites took place until authoritarian Christianity wiped it out. With her tightly-pinched face and platinum hair hanging loose, her older children gathered around her, Cindy stood for fertility well-preserved.

But the frisky Palins are fertility real and present. Bristol showed us her tummy, her breasts, her pregnant fulsomeness. Sarah's husband, whom she calls "The First Dude," a crow's caw of sexual prowess and desirability, exhibited his softer side by cuddling the infant rumored to actually be his grandchild (by the voluptuous Bristol and her lover), although Sarah claims to be the mother.

If there weren't tricolor flags and people wearing elephant hats, one might think we were at Stonehenge.

How will bright green outfits, bouncy boobies, big bellies, sleeping babies, beehive hairdos, and fecund boyfriends help McCain win the presidency?

Because sex sells; sex wins votes; sex seals the deal.

I'M REALLY AT A LOSS what to say about this -- at least at a loss for things to say that don't begin with "Holy" and end a couple of expletives later.

C'mon, is this s*** for real?

"(T)he swollen, 17-year-old Bristol Palin complacently gripped her swarthy impregnator's hand"?

What, couldn't Sarah Whalen, The Bayou Buzz's hot-and-bothered columnist, work in the phrase "turgid member" while she was at it?

I don't know exactly what has so stung the Bayou Buzz "editors" -- and I think I'll keep "editors" in quotes from now on in relation to this amateurish and weird website -- that they would post Whalen's ode to whack, but you have to wonder whether it has been covered editorially by Al Goldstein at some point.

One thing I do know for sure after reading this: Sigmund Freud died 69 years too soon.

Over at Catholic and Enjoying It, Mark Shea thinks the Buzz piece is another example of the "nutroot" liberal freak-out over the existential threat Sarah Palin's example poses to Abortion, Inc. The piece is a freak-out, that's for damn certain, but it's not of the "nutroot," Daily Kos variety.

NO, THIS IS a down-home, whacked-out, "there's no eccentric like a Louisiana eccentric" freak-out. This is the crazy aunt you might find in Anne Rice's attic.

This is Uncle Fester at Pat O'Brien's after his third hurricane.

From what can be gathered online, Sarah Whalen "is an expert in Islamic Law and a photojournalist specializing in U.S. foreign policy issues." At some point, she apparently taught at Loyola University in New Orleans. And she has been a contributor to the Arab News and The Palestine Chronicle.

One who appears to have "gone native."

The bee in the bonnet of The Bayou Buzz isn't political commentary as spewed by Nutroot Nation. No, this is political commentary you rightly could expect from Hamas. Or the official Saudi press, as it were.

BEFORE THE INTERNET democratized the publishing universe, this Bayou Buzz screed is what you would find lying on a table at the student union. In all its mistyped, poorly photocopied glory.

It's also -- way down the bayou or way up in the piney woods -- the kind of "philosophical treatise" over which you might find some not-half-as-clever-as-he-thinks sort waxing rhapsodic. At least once he'd borrowed a dictionary to look up words such as "swarthy" and "fecund."

In other words, "Move along. There's nothing to see here."

Unless, of course, you happen to be a trained mental-health professional. Or maybe Jack Bauer.

Same as it ever was

Alana Taylor sits in a classroom at the NYU journalism school, looks at her clueless professor and finds the whole experience wholly outdated and totally lacking.

I'll alert the media.

THEN ALL THE MEDIA and I -- we veterans of different debacles at different journalism schools at different points in history -- will go to a fine drinking establishment, knock back a few and laugh and laugh and laugh:

Back in class, Quigley tells us we have to remember to bring in the hard copy of the New York Times every week. I take a deep sigh. Every single journalism class at NYU has required me to bring the bulky newspaper. I don’t understand why they don’t let us access the online version, get our current events news from other outlets, or even use our NYTimes app on the iPhone. Bringing the New York Times pains me because I refuse to believe that it’s the only source for credible news or Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism and it’s a big waste of trees.

At least I had hoped that this class would be more advanced. I hoped that perhaps my teacher would be open to the idea of investigating other sources of news from the Internet and discussing how they are reliable or not. I hoped that she wouldn’t refer to podcasts as “being a pain to download” and that being aware of and involved in the digital era wasn’t just a “generational” thing.

I am convinced that I am taking the only old-but-new-but-still-old media class in the country. At this point I may not learn too much I don’t already know about my generation and where it’s taking journalism. But one thing’s for sure — I’m certainly going to gain some insight into what exactly they mean by generation gap.

AND YOU MAY ask yourself, well . . . how did we get here?

Same as it ever was . . . same as it ever was . . . same as it ever was. . . .

Back in my day at the LSU School of Journalism (now the Manship School of Mass Communication), all we wanted was . . . well, what we wanted was a 1981 version of what Alana Taylor wants. That and electric typewriters in every classroom.

Why don't I share a bit from a hard-hitting story in the LSU student newspaper, The Daily Reveille. Someone I know rather well wrote it . . . 27 years ago.

From the Reveille of Oct. 16, 1981:

Equipment and facilities of the University's School of Journalism were criticized as being "antiquated" by Chancellor James Wharton in Thursday's edition of The Daily Reveille.

However, a recent sampling of journalism students say the school's facilities are only part of the problem there.

The students said they faced problems in dealing with typewriters and other equipment in bad repair, but said a far larger problem they faced was a curriculum short on practical experience in their fields.

Most of the sampling also said they felt the absence of video display terminals and other state-of-the-art equipment in the school hampered the students in preparing for future work experiences.

"I feel that (the lack of new equipment) is hurting the students' education. We have manual typewriters in our journalism typing room -- out in the field, not only are people not using manual typewriters, they're not even using electric typewriters. They're using VDTs," said junior news-editorial major Eleanor Ransburg.

"It's not keeping you up to date with what's going on now. We're learning the old ways. We should learn the old ways and the new ways.

"One of our guest speakers in class said he hadn't been in the building since he graduated and the chairs looked like the same ones that were here when he was here in the 1950s," she said.

(snip)

[Junior advertising major Cindy] Blanchard also said the advertising curriculum of the journalism school was deficient. "I think a lot of the teachers are good but I think a lot of the structuring is at fault.

"I think the structuring of the class is really kind of deficient. I think we learn more theory and not enough practical application. We don't get to put into practice what we learn in the book. What I've had so far is not too much of what I can use (in the field)," she said.

SAME AS IT EVER WAS. And yes, Alana, we Young Turks who somewhere along the way turned into journalism fossils feel your pain.

Does this ring a bell, by chance?

An associate managing editor for the student paper also criticized the school for not having enough equipment for its students, as well as School of Journalism Director John C. Merrill.

Lisa Schelp said Merrill is trying to "isolate" the school and train its students to be "academicians" instead of reporters and editors.

"Only having one video display terminal for 25 people in the reporting class is ridiculous, almost every newspaper has terminals," she said. "We don't even have newspapers in the journalism reading room. It doesn't make sense. What we need is exposure to many kinds of newspapers.

"I don't know what his (Merrill's) point is in trying to isolate the journalism school and make us all academicians. We're trying to communicate. We have to communicate with everybody, not just academicians," Schelp said.

LORD. Somebody at that journalism school ought to have said something to that intrepid Reveille reporter (again, with whom I'm well acquainted) about unloading every last jot out of his Stationers' Reporter's Note Book and dumping it into his story. Talk about making a point, rehashing it and then rehashing the rehash. . . .

Then again, back in the day, Reveille reporters got paid by the column inch. Whatever it takes, you know?

But down that path a tangent lies. Let me return to my point here.

Students are always pretty sure they're getting screwed over by somebody. Sometimes, it's even true. For instance, the LSU J-school, overall, was pretty appalling in 1981. Fortunately, our professors still taught us pretty well, despite everything.

Another truism is that journalism school -- or any kind of professional school, it seems to me -- always perfectly trains students for the world that just was. Never the world that will be.

The reason for that is staggeringly simple: We're really good at knowing what just was. And we're not so good at predicting the future. While we might have some general idea of what will be, the future likes to throw knuckleballs -- when it isn't throwing you curveballs.

The state of newspapers and broadcasting today is the curveball with which the future put my generation of J-school grads deep in a hole. When we were in college, there was no Internet for us to master, and "social networking" was Friday night at the Cotton Club. Or maybe the Bengal.

We never knew what hit us. But we're learning.

I suspect Alana Taylor, today's frustrated NYU student, will be doing the same in a couple of decades -- dealing with the unknowable curveball the future throws you while you're deeply engrossed in the World That Just Was.