Everything's better with. . . .

I can't decide which of these Dash Rip Rock moments is more appropriate for those times when I'm confronted by the never-ending calamity that is my birth state (see previous post), so -- what the hell -- just take your pick.

I mean, whatever floats your boat, cher!

Bekuz stoopidetee haz wurked owt gud sow for

Watched the video about planning for $74 million more in cuts to LSU?

Good. Now see this, which ran in Friday's edition of The Advocate:

Continued state budget cuts to education will soon make Louisiana resemble a Third World country, college leaders said Thursday.

The leaders made the comments at a League of Women Voters of Baton Rouge sponsored event, which focused on the long-term impacts of budget cuts on higher education.

State college officials talked about unity in the face of funding reductions and political interference.

“When times are good, invest in higher education,” LSU Chancellor Michael Martin said. “When times are bad, redouble those efforts.

“We are very much at risk of turning the higher education system in this state into one that serves a Third World country, not a First World,” Martin continued.

Higher education has suffered more than $270 million in budget cuts the past 20 months because of reduced state revenues. The ongoing fear of college officials is the so-called “cliff” year next summer when $290 million in federal stimulus dollars keeping colleges afloat will dry up.

“It won’t be recoverable in any of our lifetimes,” Martin said of the potential impact of the “cliff.”

ONCE AGAIN, we see a bunch of academics peering into the maw of abject hopelessness and still trying to look on the bright side.

No, that's not meant to be snarky. See, they think Louisiana is going to become Third World. As in "isn't there yet."

Cockeyed optimists, all.

3 Chords & the Truth: All you need . . .

. . . is love.

But there's a catch.

Love is a verb.

Download 3 Chords & the Truth for details . . . and some fine music. That is all.

Oh . . . except for this last thing about the Big Show. . . .

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

The Plowed Profile comes to corn country

John Barrymore, star of stage, screen and drinking establishments, blew into Omaha in May of 1939 -- still long on talent but, alas, rather short on cash.

"The Great Profile" was bringing his latest stage vehicle, My Dear Children, to the Tech High auditorium in a triumphal homecoming for one of his co-stars, Dorothy McGuire. Thing is, that homecoming turned out to be more than a little mortifying for the Nebraska ingenue -- being that the great actor turned out to be an even greater drunk, not to mention a supreme offender of polite Omaha society.

And then somebody let him on the radio, an apparently bibulous session with KOIL where he rambled and snorted through listeners' written questions.




UH . . . YEAH. It's pretty evident the poor man was as plowed as the nearby cornfields that first of May. Reportedly, Omahans were offended.

Not half as much as the local theater guild, however. Even Time magazine took note:

Soon the Barrymores' acting gave strong hints of their home life. With gusto John shouted at Elaine such stage lines as "You damned selfish brat." In the play he spanked her harder, she fanged his wrist more savagely, than was necessary.

Fortnight ago their quarrel burst like a boil: Elaine quit the show in a spuming huff. A few days later, performing before Omaha's highbusted Drama League, John was royally pickled. Up & down traveled his voice, to a bull-like bellow, to a bird-like whisper. Scandalized were Omaha's great ladies when he ad-libbed such lines as "Albert, you look like a pregnant string bean." Afterwards Barrymore's press-agent offered the excuse that he had been "very tired." Concurred the Drama League's lady president: "He must have been very, very, VERY tired."

THE 'ENCHANTING' Dorothy McGuire -- she who had the hot mom -- wouldn't be taking in the spectacle much longer:

"Mr. Barrymore was a great disappointment to Dorothy," reported a November 1941 profile on the young actress in Life:

She toured with him for eight months, and was particularly embarrassed on the occasion of a one-night stand in Omaha, where his classic vocabulary and uninhibited stage presence made a shocking impression of old family friends of hers in the audience. By the fall of 1939 she found the Great Profile's shenanigans so taxing that she abandoned the troupe in Chicago, thus missing the New York opening. "I'd come blissful and starry-eyed from Our Town into this roughhouse," she said later. "I really and truly was shocked."

IN THE biography John Barrymore, Shakespearean Actor, Michael A. Morrison has this account of the Omaha tour stop:

As the tour progressed through the South and Midwest, however, Barrymore soon came to resent the play and his fourth wife. Again there were much-publicized quarrels with Elaine Barrie; Barrymore showed up in an inebriated state and made unprintable comments at a luncheon in Omaha designed to promote the play. He improvised on the script whenever his memory failed or the impulse arose , and on at least one occasion resorted to four-letter words. After further marital tumult, Elaine Barrie agreed to be replaced and left the tour in St. Louis.

I GUESS you could say a lot of things about my "damned town," Omaha. If you're paying attention, though, you'd know one of them wouldn't be "boring."

And you don't have to be well and properly plowed -- or, for that matter, as high as an elephant's eye -- to know "it's one of the most enchanting places" you've ever been in.

Let's go to the videotape

Welcome to May 22, 1958. WRC television in the nation's capital is having a big soirée, and they've invited President Eisenhower.

All the bigwigs are there, including the Sarnoff dynasty -- father and son -- which wields the controls at the Radio Corporation of America, parent of the National Broadcasting Co., which owns WRC in D.C., which is dedicating its brand-new, ultramodern radio and TV facilities.

It's all about color today, and I'm not talking the integration battles up on Capitol Hill. I'm talking color television. And during this particular shindig, the president will be appearing in living color for the first time from our nation's capital.

And it all will be preserved for posterity on something called "television tape." That is -- How do the kids say? -- cool.

NOW IF WE press this button on the television-tape recorder, we can fast forward . . .

. . . all the way to 2010, 52 years in the future. Robert W. Sarnoff, president of NBC in 1958, is long dead. His father, RCA founder and chief David Sarnoff, is longer dead.

For that matter, RCA is dead, too. It didn't survive the 1980s, at least not as a corporate entity. A foreign company bought the name to put on cheap electronics made in China.

Ike is dead, commentator David Brinkley is dead, analog television is dead, broadcasting is dying . . . and TV engineers had to round up a tandem of antique videotape recorders and new technology in 1988 to preserve this, the oldest surviving color videotape, for you to watch here now.

For you to make it -- this lost world -- live again.

1973 down, 1968 to go

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

It's over. Or is it?

At least when I was a kid, we only had one of these damn things to worry about at a time. As NBC's Richard Engel said about the Iraqis, my celebration also will be restrained.

We now return you to our quagmire in Afghanistan and political strife at home.

Dr. Laura leaves in a snit (yay!)

Dear Dr. Laura,

Shut up. Just shut up.

You rake your callers over the coals for whining and acting like children. Yet when the psychological rubber hits the radio road, your response is to whine about how black folk are being mean to you for gratuitously using the N-word over and over and over again to "make a point" with a caller upset about . . . the N-word.

Listen, peaches. "Jade" was not being "hypersensitive" by chafing at white guests coming into her half-black household and throwing around the N-word like they had a perfect right. Jade was being . . . normal.

You, on the other hand, by mau-mauing the poor woman with the whole hoary "hypersensitive" meme when it comes to African-Americans being upset by crackers gone wild -- and then using the N-word 11 times in just a few minutes (you could have made your point with just one utterance . . . or even none) -- became just the sort of bigot Jade was talking about.

AND YOU were doing it in her house -- on the radio.

So now, after losing your marbles, you're picking up your empty bag and going home . . . the whole "You can't fire me; I quit" thing?

Bye. Quit your whining, take responsibility for the mess you've made for yourself and grow up.

Now, go. Get out of here. Buh-bye!

I MEAN, look what this woman has brought us to. Al Sharpton now has become the voice of reason and restraint.

Way to go, Buttercup.

'Patriots' and their sympathy for the devil

Here's all you need to know about America and her "patriots" today, in three simple video clips.

Above, we see that "patriots" today are so offended by Muslims building a mosque blocks from Ground Zero in New York that they're willing to give offense to the most precious principles of American constitutional law, as enshrined in the First Amendment.


AND THEN we see that Republican "patriots" in Congress and elsewhere are so upset about illegal immigration, they are chomping at the bit to undo the 14th Amendment, undoing some foundational principles of their own party in the process and once again leaving the question "Who is an American?" up to the political whims and prejudices of the moment.


LET'S ASK St. Thomas More, as depicted by Paul Scofield in A Man for All Seasons, how that's going to work out for them.

Has anyone considered that it's better to give the devil his due than to give him the whole bloody country, something our American "patriots" seem hell-bent on doing?

Veni, vidi, geeky

Let us travel back to the early 1960s, when your Mighty Favog was but a sprite . . . and Americans still made stuff.

Sigh.

Harry Reasoner's Wild Kingdom

We travel to the undulating landscape of San Francisco, where our intrepid CBS television newsman Harry Reasoner is on the trail of the mysterious hippie.

I'll stay here in the Impala to safeguard our supply of narrow ties and gray woolen suits. Meanwhile, Harry is instructing our Haight-Ashbury guide on our game plan for luring a pack of hippies to our camera position. Let's listen in on what Harry is saying to tracker Warren Wallace:

"Well, it's going to be tricky to snare one, Warren. Usually, they can smell Establishment at a great distance, and they'll run away.

"But I estimate that if we can bait a trap with enough incense and cigarettes . . . oh . . . and munchies -- and if you stand off to the side and start yelling . . . and the exact wording is important, here, Warren . . . if you start yelling, 'Sunflower scored some really good [BEEEEEEP!], man' . . . I think we can snare one or two."

FAST FORWARDING from 1967 to 2010, we get to pass judgment on the completely unhip and slightly bemused Reasoner's conclusions about his encounter with the wild hippies amid the coastal hill country of the Bay Area.

And you know what? For a clueless, tragically square old fart, it would seem Harry Reasoner had the hippies' number.

Because the Age of Aquarius remains just another pipe dream, and Better Enlightenment Through Chemicals was just another (dis)illusion.

And the hippies? They ended up selling out to The Man, of course.

COULD IT have been any other way? Harry was right . . . such a waste.

Dissent was in order. New ideas were in order. The Establishment was corrupt. And what was the great rebellion against establishmentarian rot? Tuning in. Turning on. Dropping out.

That worked out so well for us all.

Well, at least the music was groovy. Maaaaaaan.

If you can't dazzle 'em with cleanup. . . .

Some say the government is in complete disarray when it comes to dealing with the BPocalypse in the Gulf of Mexico.

I disagree.

The accusations of disarray and incompetence only stick if you assume the aim of the federal response is to protect the public and the environment. As this whole corporate catastrophe drags on and on, the less this assumption actually holds water.

From the start, though, BP's game plan has been clear -- cover up anything that will cost the oil giant money. But what one would think is the government's game plan only exists in some old textbook from high-school civics.

Instead, what we have is a federal government totally compromised by Big Oil and the political cash and Washington lobbyists in which it invests, as opposed to . . . safety measures. This means the top federal priority doesn't involve the American public or resources, but instead has everything to do with covering up its own complicity in the catastrophe.

BASICALLY, it's like this: If you can't dazzle 'em with effective regulation and governance, baffle 'em with bullshit.

Thus, the feds' whole "Oil? What oil?" act as fishermen keep finding gobs of the stuff and researchers begin to laugh at the government's latest "science."

And now, from The Daily Beast, comes the latest installment in our ongoing series, a little something we call If BP and the Feds Say It, You Know It's Not True:

While officials claim most of the oil from America's worst-ever spill has disappeared, fishermen hired by BP are still finding tar balls—and being instructed to hide their discoveries.

Two weeks ago, as federal officials prepared to declare that some three-quarters of the estimated 5 million barrels of oil released into the Gulf over three months had disappeared, Mark Williams, a fishing boat captain hired by BP to help with the spill cleanup, encountered tar balls as large as three inches wide floating off the Florida coast.

Reporting his findings to his supervisor, a private consulting company hired by BP, the reply, according to his logbook came back: "Told—no reporting of oil or tar balls anymore. Don't put on report. We're here for boom removal only," referring to the miles of yellow and orange containment barriers placed throughout the Gulf.

Williams' logbook account, which I inspected, and a similar account told to me by a boat captain in Mississippi, raises serious concerns about whether the toll from the spill is being accurately measured. Many institutions have an interest in minimizing accounts of the damage inflicted. The federal and local governments, under withering criticism all summer, certainly want to move on to other subjects. BP, of course, has a financial incentive.

The miraculous disappearance of the oil and the pending transfer of $20 billion to Ken Feinberg, who is independently overseeing the claims fund, have resulted in the oil giant cutting back its response operations. With a recent halving of the Vessels of Opportunity program, which hired fallow charter and commercial fishing boats, captains and deckhands are now less reticent to describe their experiences.

This includes Mark Williams, who worked in the program until he was deactivated last week. Williams' saga is typical. In May, he arrived in Alabama from Atlantic Beach, Florida, to captain a charter boat. He got one day of red snapper season before Roy Crabtree, NOAA Fisheries Southeast regional administrator, shut down the Alabama waters for fishing.

"That morning [June 1], we took a charter out to the 'Nipple' and saw what looked like a lot of grass," said Williams, referring to the part of the Gulf where the continental shelf gets very deep, a favored habitat for large fish. "When we got closer, we saw it was mattes of oil in solid slicks. By that afternoon, oil was getting in our reels. Crabtree shut down fishing the next day."

For the rest of June and much of July, Williams worked off and on as a deckhand on boats enlisted in the Vessels of Opportunity program, including a boat called Downtime that in early June first sighted tar balls and oil sheen in the Pensacola Pass.

Williams was also part of the skimming operations at Orange Beach when miles-long mattes of oil washed on to its shores the following weekend. Untrained, Williams remembers putting more than 100 pounds of oil-soaked absorbent boom in debris disposal bags that he was later told should have held no more than 20.

Subsequently, Williams saw seven large shrimp boats, with two Coast Guard vessels accompanying them, five miles off shore. "Plumes were everywhere," says Williams, referring to thin layers of crude oil floating on the water's surface. "Every time another boat would approach the shrimp boats, the Coast Guard would get on the radio and tell the boat to veer back to shore." Williams says he believes the boats were putting dispersant on the oil, even though the Coast Guard has denied using dispersant off the Florida and Alabama shores. "The plumes were gone the next day," Williams says.

Back in Florida on July 27, his boat, Mudbug, was activated into Vessels of Opportunity. While the media, BP, and the Coast Guard were reporting no more oil, Williams and other boat captains were assigned to find it.

Three days later, Williams found remnants of dispersant in a canal in Santa Rosa Sound north of Pensacola Beach. He reported it to his supervisor, who worked for a company that BP hired to help with cleanup, O'Brien's Response Management.

Williams wrote in his logbook, "Returned p.m. for check-out. [Supervisor] said, 'Oh, they sent someone out there and it was algae'—No fucking way—Idiots."

O'Brien's was founded in 1982 by Jim O'Brien, a retired Coast Guard officer, who originally called his firm O'Brien Oil Pollution Service, ironically known in the industry as "OOPS." Over the years the company has been acquired and merged with other response companies; it was hired by BP and Transocean prior to the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig as an emergency-response consultant.

On Saturday, July 31, Williams found a "tea-type" stain on the water and followed it toward Fort Pickens, which is the western tip of Pensacola Beach. He wrote in his logbook, "We found massive tar balls—both in quantity and size, in small gulley. They ranged from ping-pong ball to coconut in size not 3' from beach line."

After that, Williams was taken off spill and tar ball watch and put on boom removal. In an inlet north of Pensacola Beach, his crew sighted more tar balls. He wrote in his logbook: "Middle of Sound to off-load boom. 1" to 3" tar balls—floating—must be old—told [supervisor] at end of the day." That's when he was told not to make the report, but rather to simply gather up the boom.

“We found massive tar balls–both in quantity and size, in small gulley.”
Williams was deactivated from Vessels of Opportunity last week. Last Tuesday, the day before he was dropped, the boat captain wrote, "Coming back p.m. from Ono Island. Counted 12 oil plumes small in comparison to offshore between range marker and decon barge." This was a week after Carol Browner, a top energy adviser to President Barack Obama, announced 75 percent of the oil had been contained, evaporated, or dispersed.

I HAVE long said the last casualty of the BPocalypse will be whatever legitimacy the U.S. government has. That day draws nearer with every official lie -- with every public-relations obfuscation aimed at a public Washington desperately hopes is otherwise occupied with the misadventures of Snooki. Or cable-TV cage matches. Whatever.

In 1858, Abraham Lincoln, during his unsuccessful Senate campaign against Stephen A. Douglas, famously quoted the book of Matthew when he prophesied that "A house divided against itself cannot stand." Today, I'd like to think he would say the same about a nation buried in bullshit, because it's true.

You know the saying "You are what you eat"? Well, while we might well avoid consuming BP's finest Corexit-petroleum soup du jour, it's not so easy abstaining from the fragrant entrée every segment of our society -- most notably our leaders -- put before us daily.

And that's as deadly as anything BP can spew into the Gulf of Mexico.

Energy by Dave

Oooh ooh, what a little moonlighting can do for Gov. Dave Heineman and, supposedly, the Nebraska economy.

All while weaning America off of evil petroleum. That's the deal reported in the Omaha World-Herald as Gov. Dave gets out there to "shill, baby, shill":

Heineman said that passage of a law last spring has removed many of the obstacles for privately owned wind farms, but he asked about 45 officials at the Nebraska Wind Forum what else the state needs to do.

"How do we take another quantum leap forward?" the governor asked. "That's where we need your input and advice."

The forum was organized to inform private developers of the changes in state law, and make a pitch to develop new wind farms and wind-energy related manufacturing plants.

Nebraska has some of the best wind resources in the nation, but has lagged behind its neighbors because of obstacles of allowing private electric generation in a state that only allows publicly owned utilities.

Heineman added that the U.S. needs to get serious about reducing its reliance on foreign oil "so our sons and daughters aren't fighting in the Middle East" to preserve the flow of oil.

WORD IS Gov. Dave will be making out even better than the state as a whole from the development of wind energy -- meteorological surveys have identified the best "wind field" in the state as being right outside the governor's office in Lincoln.

The predominance of hot air in the gubernatorial air mass suggests geothermal-energy possibilities as well, experts say.

Alms for the Puritans

Amid all the unseemly spectacles we're likely to encounter in these fractured, formerly-United States, the sorriest sight of all is the unfettered self-righteousness of the deeply, deeply stupid.

Here's the latest brain-eating bacteria sweeping across that Petri dish of the Internets, Facebook. A screenshot of what you find when you click on the link somewhere in a pool of some Facebook friend's cybervomit adorns the top of this post.

And it is priceless indeed -- "If you can afford alcohol and cigerattes then you don't need Foodstamps."

If this were a horse race and you put down $20 and picked Misanthrope, Misspelled and Mispunctuated in the trifecta, you'd have enough money to buy all the "cigerattes" and alcohol you could ingest on your way to an early demise. You'd never need to rely on a single "Foodstamp."

FRANKLY, if I knew I were the object of derision for someone so gobsnockeringly moronic that this, in all likelihood, will be his (or her) most enduring contribution to Western civilization -- hell, I'd be smoking like a chimney and drinking like a fish. A man can only take so much, and that would be as good a way as any to end it all.

No, really. Think about it.

A person so stupid and ill-educated that they think it's "cigerattes" and not cigarettes, and not food stamps but Foodstamps (I dunno, maybe this person is a German jackass) writes such a thing because, presumably, he has a job and begrudges others government assistance because they are -- again, presumably -- even more worthless than an illiterate bile-spewer. And because they might have a nicotine habit and take an occasional drink.

That, my friends, is true injustice.

Here we have a mean-spirited, skinflint knuckle-dragger with a job . . . and a lot of damned nerve. Then we have some poor unemployed schmuck on food stamps who, on the other hand, probably worked his ass off for years before getting the old heave-ho amid the worst economy in 70 years. And he probably can spell both "cigarettes" and "food stamps" correctly -- and, for good measure, knows where to place the comma in a complex sentence.

As I said, it's enough to drive one to both "cigerattes" and alcohol.

NEVERTHELESS, the Facebook Puritan posse "likes" such simple-minded self-righteousness. It's always the other guy who's good for nothing, don't you know?

And never the "real American," who is the backbone of the nation.

Which would explain that wicked case of scoliosis.

You have to break a few eggs. . . .

Call this post You Have to Break a Few Eggs to Make an Omelet, or . . . the history of my old school, Baton Rouge High, as seen through "the phone egg."

Above, we have the phone egg, and classmate Hardy Justice, as seen in the pages of the 1979 Fricassee.


THEN, the phone egg -- minus the pay phone -- as seen in the fall of 2007, when the school long had slipped into disrepair and dilapidation.


AND LAST WEEK . . . destroying the campus -- well, much of it, anyway -- in order to save it.

One thing they ought to save, at least, is the phone egg. And when the new gymnasium rises from the rubble of the past, they ought to refurbish the "egg," put a '70s vintage pay phone in it (complete with nickel phone calls) and place it next to an entrance.

Because the past is part of all our futures.

Walk, don't fly

TRAVEL ADVISORY: After the unfortunate Icarus incident, travelers who plan to venture close to the sun are strongly urged to take the pedestrian bridge. Flying close to the sun is undertaken at your own risk.

Iowa and Nebraska authorities -- due to the continued high water and strong currents on the Missouri River -- will not be plucking your sorry ass out of the drink if you choose to fly and your damned wings melt.

This travel advisory is in effect until further notice. Thank you.

Don't try this at home

Boy, do I remember Great Shakes.

When I was a kid, I loved Great Shakes. I loved to make Great Shakes.

Except this one time when I didn't put the lid on tight enough. You remember that creepy Tay Zonday viral video on YouTube a few years back?

That wasn't the original "Chocolate Rain."

The Radio Shack guide to dead tech

1949

1974

1985

1986

2010

3 Chords & the Truth: The water's fine!

Dear folks,

Hope things are going well back at 3 Chords & the Truth! Am having a great time on this mental trip to the Bahamas.

The water is fine, the beach is pristine, and I'm doing my own musical thing here! Nobody looks askew at me when I play wild, crazy, improbable collections of all kind of music -- because here on the beach, in the Bahamas, everybody's free to do our own thing, baby!

And I'm a-doin' it! You can make book on that.

You just wouldn't believe the fineness going on here by the ocean, in the Bahamas of my mind.

Sweet!

I MEAN, all these crazy artists are here -- like, people who would NEVER play on the same bill -- and they're having this amazing jam session on the beach outside my cabana. OMG!

Really . . . wish you all were here!.

Hello! This is the Internet, people . . . you can join me on my mental trip to the Bahamas! WOOT!

Did I mention the water's fine?

Anyway, gotta go -- time to play some more tunes! So join me on the Big Show, won't you?

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Oh, wait. "Aloha" is Hawaii, isn't it?

Why did Santa Anna bother?

Mis amigos en México,

We are sooooo, soooooooooo sorry about the late unpleasantness of that whole Mexican-American War thing. We are also soooo, soooooooo sorry that, previously, American settlers moved into Tejas and caused so much trouble for you with that most unfortunate war of independence.

We'll forget the Alamo if you will.

I'll tell you what. Take Tejas back, with our deepest apologies. Really, it's yours. No, go ahead. We were wrong to have annexed it in the first place.

Nuestras mas sinceras disculpas.

Somos lo siento. Realmente.

Dial 'N' for numbskull

Don Imus said he was sorry, too.

Yet that wasn't enough to save his butt . . . or his TV and radio shows. And pffft, he was gone. For a while.

And back in 2007, Imus didn't even get the Rutgers women's basketball team on the other end of a phone line in order to drop "nappy headed hos" on 'em direct. Or taunt them with the N-word.

Over and over again.

No, that's what Dr. Laura Schlessinger did the other day. On the radio. With an African-American caller on the other end of the line.

"Jade" called in to the program to ask what to do about her white husband, who did nothing when friends and relatives came into their house, made insensitive racial remarks to her and even bandied about the N-word. In her presence.


YOU WOULD THINK that's pretty cut and dried. Somebody's ass needs to be kicked here. And it ain't Jade's.

Well, Dr. Laura's a shrink, and I guess shrinks just don't think like regular people. From a transcript on the Media Matters website:

CALLER: OK. Last night -- good example -- we had a neighbor come over, and this neighbor -- when every time he comes over, it's always a black comment. It's, "Oh, well, how do you black people like doing this?" And, "Do black people really like doing that?" And for a long time, I would ignore it. But last night, I got to the point where it --

SCHLESSINGER: I don't think that's racist.

CALLER: Well, the stereotype --

SCHLESSINGER: I don't think that's racist. No, I think that --

CALLER: [unintelligible]

SCHLESSINGER: No, no, no. I think that's -- well, listen, without giving much thought, a lot of blacks voted for Obama simply 'cause he was half-black. Didn't matter what he was gonna do in office, it was a black thing. You gotta know that. That's not a surprise. Not everything that somebody says -- we had friends over the other day; we got about 35 people here -- the guys who were gonna start playing basketball. I was going to go out and play basketball. My bodyguard and my dear friend is a black man. And I said, "White men can't jump; I want you on my team." That was racist? That was funny.

CALLER: How about the N-word? So, the N-word's been thrown around --

SCHLESSINGER: Black guys use it all the time. Turn on HBO, listen to a black comic, and all you hear is nigger, nigger, nigger.

ON WHAT PLANET does Jade's dilemma warrant a rant on "If black comics can say it, why can't we?" That's the kind of thing I used to hear from my late, incredibly racist old man.

In the Deep South.

And on and on Schlesinger went, using "nigger" at every opportunity, over and over -- as a taunt of the "hypersensitive" black caller.

Unbelievable . . . not.

I wonder how "hypersensitive" the Orthodox Jew psychiatrist would be about people coming into her home bragging about how this one guy wanted way too much for his house, but he Jewed him down.

Or telling her to her face that the damn "Kikes" were just too hypersensitive about racial and ethnic slurs.

Somehow, I don't think she'd be amused. I'd hope she would respond with an uppercut to the jaw.

BUT DR. LAURA is very, very sorry now, because this is national talk radio, and Don Imus-type money is on the line here:

I talk every day about doing the right thing. And yesterday, I did the wrong thing.

I didn’t intend to hurt people, but I did. And that makes it the wrong thing to have done.

I was attempting to make a philosophical point, and I articulated the “n” word all the way out - more than one time. And that was wrong. I’ll say it again - that was wrong.

I ended up, I’m sure, with many of you losing the point I was trying to make, because you were shocked by the fact that I said the word. I, myself, realized I had made a horrible mistake, and was so upset I could not finish the show. I pulled myself off the air at the end of the hour. I had to finish the hour, because 20 minutes of dead air doesn’t work. I am very sorry. And it just won’t happen again.

LET'S HOPE it doesn't. But sorry, as Dr. Laura would be quick to tell a caller, isn't necessarily enough.

And if she comes out of this whole thing with her national radio empire intact, somebody needs to apologize to Don Imus.

Every idiot for himself!

It would appear that a lot of Omahans think there really is such a thing as a free lunch in life.

It also would appear that a lot of Omahans think that you can cut whole big chunks out of city government -- which is the alternative to taxpayers manning up and, like, paying the cost of running a city -- and that the Good Life fairies will magically stop that city from becoming a dilapidated s***hole, and that they won't find themselves on the very short end of Every Man for Himself.

KETV, Channel 7, as a public service, today offers this excerpt from a very long book -- People Are Too Stupid for Direct Democracy:

A group of concerned Omaha property owners said it has polling data that show local taxpayers are fed up with Mayor Jim Suttle's proposed tax increases.

The Metropolitan Omaha Property Owners Association said it commissioned a polling firm to survey hundreds of Omaha residents in all parts of town, asking hot-topic questions about the city's budget crunch and taxes.

The group said that its results show that most Omahans disapprove with the direction that City Hall is currently taking.

Rental property owner John Chatelain said he's worried that he'll have to sell the west Omaha house he rents if property taxes rise again.

"That would mean that the profit flow will be even less, which means that people will be able to pay even less for homes, which means property values will go down," he said.

Tom Jizba of the Metropolitan Omaha Property Owners Association said Chatelain is not alone.

"We have been increasingly concerned about the growing intrusiveness of the government," Jizba said.

He said that the poll found that 70 percent of the respondents felt Omaha is on the wrong track and that 67 percent said they disapproved of the way Jim Suttle is handling his job as mayor.

THAT'S DEMOCRACY for you -- whiny babies demanding all the benefits and services government offers, but completely unwilling to shoulder any of the responsibilities of self-government.

I grew up in a place where that ethos had an iron grip. It ain't pretty, and Omaha doesn't want to go there.

Trust me on that one.

Pssssst . . . Eve! Take this smart phone

If you want to learn about modern life -- especially postmodern life -- look at your smart phone.

Because if your life . . . er, your smart phone, is anything like the deal one Omaha man got, congratulations! You're a officially a member of a club born when Eve bought the serpent's line about that apple.

If not that Apple.

IT'S ALL in the book of Sprint, Chapter 4G (as told to the World-Herald):

For two days in late July, Monty Poland searched Omaha for something that didn't exist.

Poland, 39, had just purchased a new smart phone from Sprint, the HTC Evo. The handset, purchased at a discount with a new contract, cost Poland $275, excluding a $100 mail-in rebate.

It was loaded with features, including bundles of applications, the latest version of Google's Android operating system, a touch screen, dual cameras and wireless Internet that could be channeled to make the phone a wireless hot-spot.

Poland discovered those just fine. What he couldn't find was a place to use a feature Evo has that few other smart phones possess: the ability to connect to Sprint's 4G wireless network.

He tried to access the network from many places. At his home near 72nd and Giles Streets? Nope. In downtown Omaha? No way. At the La Vista Sprint store where he purchased the device? Not even there.

That's because even though Sprint proclaims Evo's 4G capabilities on in-store signage, the company's website and in commercials, 4G service isn't available anywhere in Nebraska or Iowa.

The term 4G stands for “fourth generation,” meaning the latest and fastest version of digital mobile functionality. It is superior to 2G, which was introduced in the early 1990s, and to 3G, which dates to around 2002.

Having the latest and most reliable technology is key to companies' profitability, because smart phone customers are hungry for faster mobile Internet connections to stream video, download applications, or “apps,” and browse the web. Mobile phone companies engage in heated battles to reach pacts with network providers while investing billions in the updated networks.

But in the end, all the whiz-bang features need to work.

“It's like buying a laptop computer with supersonic speed, but the local Internet provider doesn't offer supersonic Internet connections,” Poland said. “Why spend the extra dough to buy something you can't use?”

After two frustrating days, Poland revisited the Sprint store and asked a manager why the 4G connection wasn't working.

Poland learned that 4G wasn't available in the Midlands. In fact, it is available in only 48 U.S. markets, of which the closest is Kansas City, near Sprint's national headquarters in Overland Park, Kan.

OVERPROMISING -- and, alternatively, getting suckered -- is what we do as children of the first consumers, who believed Satan when he advertised that "your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods who know what is good and what is bad."

I'll bet the scaly SOB stiffed 'em on the 4G service, too.

The thing is, we never learn.

Never.

Ever.

In fact, our entire Western economy is built upon the fact of our permanent placement in planetary special ed. Let's just say it's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Men World.

AND THE hell of it -- literally -- is illustrated by what Monty Poland did when Sprint offered him a full refund: He turned it down.

Which explains why America's churches are so empty come Sunday.