Brother, can you spare a vote?

There's really only one rule that matters as you try to save an elected official's job amid people hell-bent on throwing him out of office prematurely.

That would be "don't give people more reasons to recall your boss."

Let's just say that with friends like Forward Omaha, Mayor Jim Suttle doesn't need enemies. But as it turns out, the enemies on Suttle's payroll are a hell of a lot more dangerous that the ones who have been out to get him for months now.

Forward Omaha's argument to keep Suttle in the mayor's office is, simply, that barring malfeasance or criminal activity, people really have no good reason to kick an elected official to the curb. We have these things called "elections," and they ought to be respected.

GUESS WHO just associated the specter of "criminal activity" with the mayor? And guess who never got the memo about digging-abort procedures in the event of a hole?

And guess who was trying, it would seem, to turn every homeless person in Omaha into a "no" vote on the recall, either by hook or by crook?

And guess whose harebrained scheme just blew up in Jim Suttle's face?

It's all in this morning's Omaha World-Herald, these tales of yet more homeless roundups, yet more shady promises of turning -- wink wink, nudge nudge -- society's ultimate outcasts into respectable campaign canvassers overnight. Frankly, one would be forgiven for thinking this had to be a case of vote buying and election fraud, because the whole notion is otherwise just too incredibly moronic to be legit:

When campaign workers called the Open Door Mission and asked if they could load up homeless people and drive them to the election office — with the promise of $5 and a job — they were told “no” two days in a row.

It appeared to be an attempt to “exploit” the homeless and it was wrong, said Candace Gregory, head of the Open Door Mission.

The refusals, however, didn't stop Forward Omaha from sending three buses to the homeless shelter Wednesday and loading up about 10 men before a staff member with the shelter intervened, Gregory said.

(snip)

The campaign handed out fliers to the homeless people Wednesday that clearly urged voting “no” and included a sample ballot with the “no” marked.

“I strongly agree they have the right to vote, but not in this circumstance, where they're told to ‘Vote this way and you get this (money),'” said Gregory, who noted the mission provides its clients with transportation to polling places on Election Day.

She also said many of the homeless people did not make the distinction that the $5 was payment to attend a training seminar. Some thought they'd get the money if they voted.

Noelle Obermeyer, a spokesman for Forward Omaha, said the person who called the Open Door Mission was a volunteer. She said the volunteer did not tell anyone in a leadership position in the organization that the mission had rejected the request.

She also said the fliers distributed were not produced by Forward Omaha and were not handed out with the organization's approval.

“Leadership didn't know about these things,” said Obermeyer.

WHAT? This strains credulity, to be charitable.

"Leadership didn't know about these things"?

The fliers distributed weren't a product of Forward Omaha?

Nobody said anything to anybody about the homeless shelter telling the anti-recall group to take a hike two days running? We're really supposed to believe this?

Not credible. Not credible at all. People are gullible, but gullibility has its limits.

And Forward Omaha just blew right though them.

THE MAYOR doesn't need to send over a staffer to be the group's new overseer. The mayor needs to send over a staffer to can every Forward Omaha official who left fingerprints on what may be a debacle of criminal proportions.

Simply '70s: Two shows are Beta than one

It's like . . . a time machine!

Watch what you want when you want to watch it!

It's magic, I tell you! Like Star Trek or something, this Betamax machine is. The wonders of modern electronics never cease to amaze in 1975.

What will they think of next? And it only costs $2,295!

Now if I only had $2,295.

3 Chords & the Truth: Goodbye, cruel world

Goodbye cruel world . . .

I'm leaving you today.
(To lose myself in 3 Chords & the Truth)
Goodbye,
Goodbye,
Goodbye.

Goodbye, all you people,
There's nothing you can say
To make me change my mind.
(The world is still behaving badly, and
I'm looking for good stuff on the Big Show)
Goodbye.

(It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
Which means both hello and . . . goodbye.)

With apologies to Pink Floyd

Simply '70s: The odd couple

No, not The Odd Couple, the odd couple -- Sally Quinn and Hughes Rudd on the CBS Morning News.

What were they thinking upon the debut of this . . . thing on Aug. 6, 1973? "They" being the people in charge of CBS News.

Was this a backdoor attempt at a precursor of the Jerry Springer Show? Were the network producers thinking they could slip one by William Paley, taking on the mantle of plausible deniability and feigning total surprise when Rudd inevitably snapped and began to stub out Lucky Strikes on Quinn's forehead as she affected her way through the day's headlines?

Would she have name-dropped her way through the aftermath, saying she once had provoked the Great Man himself, Edward R. Murrow, to do the very same thing during a junior-high field trip?

Sadly, none of the nefarious plans for prematurely lowering the television IQ (assuming there were any nefarious plans, as opposed to a plain-old screw up) came to fruition, and neither did the ratings that would have generated. The Quinn-Rudd era of the CBS Morning News ended -- mercifully -- in February 1974.

Notable appearances this day: Jay Silverheels' anti-litter PSA and a young Pat Buchanan, flacking for "Tricky Dick" Nixon.

Can you help a mayor out?

I'd like to have been at the Forward Omaha staff meeting that birthed the bright idea of busing the homeless to vote early in Omaha's mayoral recall election . . . and then paying them $5 for "training" on how to canvass voters.

I really would have liked to be there. That kind of stupidity -- a public-relations (at a minimum) gaffe of such complete idiocy that it almost makes one wonder whether the recall-istas have a point -- doesn't come around all that often. It's kind of like a total solar eclipse of dumb . . . you kick yourself if you miss it.

Anyway, the Omaha World-Herald, in this afternoon's paper, tells the tale of why Mayor Jim Suttle is probably as good as dead. And why Omaha is on the cusp of sliding from everyday, ordinary chaos into real chaos -- the kind where there are fistfights at City Council meetings and lawyers trying to figure out how a city can file for bankruptcy.

NO, REALLY. Read this and stand in awe:

A decision to bus homeless people to the election office by Mayor Jim Suttle's campaign has prompted an investigation by the Nebraska State Patrol and an apology from the mayor.

Suttle says his campaign will no longer bus the homeless to the election office on the same day they are paid $5 to attend a get-out-the-vote training seminar.

But Suttle says he stands by his decision to offer a ride to people in east Omaha who wanted to cast an early vote in west Omaha. But he says the busing plan should never have been mixed with the training seminar.

He says he did not know about the combination until after the fact.

“Unfortunately, someone from Forward Omaha decided to combine the dual efforts to assist voters and recruit election day workers. This was a mistake,” said Suttle.

The busing controversy ignited criticism around Omaha, amid reports from a witness at the election office that the homeless men and women were coached on how to vote and were paid $5 after — or before — they cast a ballot.

Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine said he asked the Nebraska State Patrol to investigate the incident, because he wants to ensure that people have confidence in the election process. “It seems to be a question of perception. It's important people believe in the process. If there isn't any impropriety, that's fine,” said Kleine.

ACTUALLY, I was once at a staff meeting where something that spectacularly dumb was floated. The only difference was that particular spectacularly idiotic brainstorm was allowed to eventually blow itself out before the public could get a hold of it.

You can read all about that one, at a radio station we'll call Pope FM to protect the guilty, here. Nevertheless, I'll give you just a little taste from the 2002 diary:

Honestly, I desperately want to give the station a contemporary, non-dyspeptic sound. I desperately want to reach out to young people. But in such a short time, you can only do what you can do with the resources you have. And you have to be deliberate in what you're doing.

Buying a Humvee, I don't think, can be described as exercising due deliberation.

That's right, ladies and germs, Don wants to get someone to donate the scratch for a Humvee -- the Pope FM Humvee -- which we then would have painted like the Vatican flag to play off the theme "The Church Militant."

I am the only convert left on the staff, and I can't convince these zealots how badly that might piss off people who have no clue what the Church Militant is. So much so that we wouldn't have the opportunity to explain it (and so much so that it might not make a difference when you do).

And then we will face the reaction of the Protestants. ;-) As a friend comments about such things, "Their zeal consumes them."

Apart from the PR-nightmare possibilities, I can think of a lot neater things $35,000 could buy instead of a used Hummer.

IN THIS CASE, like I said, the plan was allowed to quietly die despite the initial enthusiasm. Sometimes, the good Lord is just looking out for you.

And sometimes He's not. Enter Forward Omaha and its guy, Suttle.

It's amazing how self-absorbed some folks, some entire organizations, can be. It's amazing how unaware some folks can be.

You take a nasty, nasty recall battle. Add a seriously divided city. Throw in the Age of the Tea Party. Season liberally with an ongoing, severe budget crisis brought on by severe recession.

Add a bunch of homeless people -- some of them seriously down on their luck, others seriously chemically dependent, yet others seriously mentally ill. All of them not exactly civically engaged.

Round them up at a local homeless shelter to go vote early, if not often. Bus them out to the 'burbs to vote at the election commissioner's office. Make sure they vote the right way. Give them a fin for "training."

Doug Einung, 54, of Omaha stood in line with one busload of men and women for about 35 minutes Wednesday. He said the homeless were repeatedly urged to vote “no.”

“Everybody was getting directions from her, and she was telling them to vote ‘no.' And, some of them, they weren't paying attention. They'd get up close (to the voting booth) and one guy asked, ‘How are we voting again?' And she'd say, ‘No,' ” said Einung, who described himself as a conservative who supports Suttle's recall.

Einung said one of the men in the group smelled of alcohol.

But Einung said he heard no talk of money.

One homeless man, Michael Sergeon, had initially told reporters on Wednesday that he was paid $5 to vote. A few minutes later, Sergeon retracted his statement, saying he was paid $5 to hand out campaign brochures.

WHAT'S THERE to be misunderstood? More importantly, what is there in any of this to convince Omahans that booting Suttle, taking the budgetary hit from all those elections and reaping -- possibly -- the whirlwind wouldn't be an improvement over a mayor who puts his political life in the hands of the Keystone Kops?

To employ the lofty language of political science . . . holy crap!

Let's not even get into the persuasive art involved in some scruffy dude trying to hand you a "Vote No" brochure between requests for "anything to help a brother out" and a smoke.

No, I'm looking at the newspaper, and watching the local news on TV, and I'm starting to think I'm back home in Louisiana. Just what Omaha always aspired to.

The Mayor Suttle Recall Committee might have started the race to the bottom by hiring some champions of the world as petition circulators, but Forward Omaha may have just emerged a winner. This, of course, means Jim Suttle may have just emerged a big loser.

Well, I hear Louisiana's former governor, Edwin Edwards, is getting out of the federal pen. Maybe somebody can slip somebody a little somethin', bend a few Nebraska state laws and get him on the mayoral ballot.

Time to embrace the chaos, 'cause chaos is what we're likely to get.

The trouble with translators

It started in 2006 out of necessity for American soldiers in Iraq.

They needed a microphone and a clunky laptop running a new speech-translation program to tell scared Iraqis "THIS IS A RAID! WE'LL TRY NOT TO KILL YOU!" in the middle of the Babylonian night.

Now all you need is a Google Android phone to live dangerously and "presione 2 para español."


ONCE AGAIN, we have achieved Star Trek.

We are on the verge of the "universal translator," and it will lead nowhere good. Klingon opera, anyone -- in English?

College radio awaits.

Simply '70s: Missing Nilsson

If you don't think you've ever really and truly seen a genius at work, click the "play" button.

Then you will have.

Here's the late, staggeringly great Harry Nilsson from a 1971 BBC television special.

Put the lime in the coconut and drink 'em all together,
Put the lime in the coconut and you feel better,
Put the lime in the coconut and drink 'em all up,
Put the lime in the coconut and call me in the morning.

Happiness is a pissing match over a warm gun

“Expanding the context of the attack to blame and to infringe upon
the people’s Constitutional liberties is both dangerous and ignorant,” she added. “The irresponsible assignment of blame to me, Sarah Palin or the TEA Party movement by commentators and elected officials puts all who gather to redress grievances in danger.” “Especially within hours Limbaugh railed against the left’s attempts to “massage” the shooting “for their political benefit,” saying Democrats were just waiting for an excuse to “regulate out of business their political opponents. . . . I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody in the Obama administration or some FCC bureaucrat or some Democrat congressman has it already written up, such legislation, sitting in a desk drawer somewhere just waiting for the right event for a clampdown. . . . They have been trying this ever since the Oklahoma City bombing.” And David Brock, CEO of the liberal watchdog Media Matters, wrote an open letter to Rupert Murdoch calling on him to fire or rein in Beck and Palin for their use of violent rhetoric on Fox News. “Beck and Palin are two of Fox’s most recognizable figures,” Brock wrote. “Before this heartbreaking tragedy in Arizona, you were either unwilling or unable to rein in their violent rhetoric. But now, in the wake of the killings, your network must take a stand.” “I’m not playing politics,” Beck said on his radio show Tuesday. He said he had “softened” his rhetoric over the past two years. “Nobody wants to recognize this. Why? Because it hurts their dialogue.” "There are those who claim political rhetoric is to blame for the despicable act of this deranged, apparently apolitical criminal. And they claim political debate has somehow gotten more heated just recently. But when was it less heated? Back in those “calm days” when political figures literally settled their differences with dueling pistols? In an ideal world all discourse would be civil and all disagreements cordial. But our Founding Fathers knew they weren’t designing a system for perfect men and women. If men and women were angels, there would be no need for government." While it would be impossible to top the self-centered offensiveness of today's Sarah Palin video -- where she used the attempted assassination of Gabrielle Giffords to peddle her message of victimhood -- Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) gave it his best shot, but could only manage a trifecta of stupidity. of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.” Should we have expected anything else? Four days after the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords that left six dead and fourteen wounded, and on the day that Congress and the President will honor the victims of this tragedy, Sarah Palin just happens to choose today to assure America that she is among the victims. In a carefully orchestrated video, complete with a large American flag that apparently flutters next to her fireplace, Palin quickly gets her sympathy for the victims and their families out of the way so she can get to the real reason for her message -- to attack the debate that has arisen about the role violent rhetoric so commonly used among elected Republicans, their media surrogates, and of course Palin herself, may have played in last Saturday's tragedy. A California man was arrested on Wednesday morning for threatening to kill Representative Jim McDermott, Democrat of Washington State, as the shootings in Tucson sparked impassioned conversation about Congressional security on Capitol Hill. Charles Habermann, 32, of Palm Springs, Calif., was arrested for phone calls he made in December to Mr. McDermott’s office in which he threatened to kill Mr. McDermott, as well as the congressman’ss friends and family, and to put the congressman “in the trash.”

"What we cannot do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on each other."

-- President Obama

Nice thought. Too late.

It's not rocket science

More cowbell, dammit!

Uhhhhhhh . . . don't I gots me some Mountain somewhere on the iTunes?

Burrrrrrrp. (thud)

God's 'right'-hand brand

Click screenshot to read full-size

If you're running a Catholic website -- and not only that, a Catholic apostolate, an organization meant to cooperate with God in the saving of souls -- what the hell does this have to do with anything?

I think that's a question not only Living His Life Abundantly, the apostolate run by Johnnette Benkovic that's behind the screenshot, but for a whole Catholic subculture centered on EWTN, the Eternal World Television Network. What the hell does a murderous madman's politics have to do with saving souls?

What does it have to do with the Catholic faith?

What does it even have to properly do with the culture wars, which are the bread-and-butter of "Catholic radio" and EWTN? And what would possess a "staff journalist," much less a Catholic one, to quote a story from World Net Daily (home for birthers, extreme ideologues, "tea-party patriots" and all manner of life forms on public discourse's outer limits) like it was . . . ahem . . . gospel truth?

What?

WHAT DOES this have to do with the fundamental reality of what happened in Tucson, Ariz., on Saturday?


WELL, SINCE the Democrats have put "enemy" politicians in the crosshairs, too, the Catholic Church -- or at least some holier-than-thou elements of it -- have no insights to share about the coarsening of American political discourse? The tendency toward dehumanizing one's ideological opposites? I mean, apart from "Nanny nanny boo boo!"

Does Right make right . . . or, at least, stooping to the left's level make Not Wrong?

Have the Living His Life Abundantly people -- the whole Catholic radio and EWTN crowd, for that matter -- decided the one unforgivable sin isn't against the Holy Spirit but, actually, is "being a Democrat"? That one's highest calling in the Christian life is throwing culture-war brickbats at "Them"?

That the only people worthy of salvation (and if they think anyone is worthy of salvation, they need to hang up their scapulars . . . and their 501(c)3 tax exemption) are those who vote the right way?

Or the Right way?

I WORRY that someone, somewhere must be spreading a really bad interpretation of Matthew 25:

31

"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne,

32

and all the nations will be assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

33

He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

34

Then the king will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

35

For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me,

36

naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.'

37

Then the righteous will answer him and say, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?

38

When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you?

39

When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?'

40

And the king will say to them in reply, 'Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.'

41

Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

42

For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,

43

a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.'

44

Then they will answer and say, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?'

45

He will answer them, 'Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.'

46

And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."

UHHHHHHH . . . I'm just a stupid blog guy, here, but I really, really don't think Jesus was talking about conservative politics when he placed the sheep on His right. In fact, a lot of this passage mitigates against what passes for the political right in America these days.

It's a self-evident fact, at least for those with eyes to see, that the Almighty is not a Republican. Or a Democrat, either. He may be a Fabian socialist, but don't quote me on that.

You watch, that last sentence is going to come back to haunt me -- perhaps via an article by "staff journalist" Susan Brinkmann, OCDS.

Simply '70s: The sounds of '75

Nineteen seventy-five.

That was the year the final results were tallied . . . and we didn't Whip Inflation Now. This despite getting nifty little orange-and-white buttons at the supermarket the year before.

The first full year of the Ford Administration, though, was one that saw us glued to the radio, even though the price of both glue and radios was up.

On the other hand, after the initial audio-visual investment, hanging on every funky note played by folks like Billy Preston -- once known as "The Fifth Beatle" -- was free.


1975 ALSO was the year the Bee Gees were back. Big. With a new upbeat, funkier sound. Little did we know they'd end up being royalty in this new music people were calling "disco."


THERE WAS the lovely Yvonne Elliman, too. Wasn't she the gal who did "I Don't Know How to Love Him" on the "Jesus Christ Superstar" soundtrack?

Anyway, she was on Soundstage with the Bee Gees. Here. she's doing her killer cover of Blind Faith's "I Can't Find My Way Home."


MEANWHILE, over on "Loose Radio" (or KQ-98 . . . or WRNO . . . or WNEW . . . or . . . well, you get the picture) there was this little thing by Lynyrd Skynyrd that, soon enough, would be a battle cry -- and the song we bugged the crud out of disc jockeys requesting late at night.

This performance was from the BBC series, The Old Grey Whistle Test.

All together now . . . FREEEEEEEEE BIIIIRRRRRRRRRD!

An Action NewsWitness update

True . . . true.

Now back to you, Blow Dry.

We can only imagine

Surveying the west Omaha landscape on a snowy Sunday night, one could contemplate the quiet, feel the biting January chill and mistake the world for one at peace.

One might imagine his fellow Americans -- all of them -- gazing at the powdery comforter pulled over a manicured suburban scene, grateful for the beauty of it all.

One might get lost in the nature-imposed tranquility of such a night and imagine that an anger-crazed teenager hadn't, just a few days ago, shot and killed his assistant principal.

Hadn't shot and wounded his principal.

Hadn't shot at and missed a custodian as he fled the scene of the crime -- a high school just miles away from this peaceful sight.

Lost in a gentle snowfall, engulfed in the soft glow of a leaden January sky, one's thoughts have difficulty embracing the notion of an anger so intense, so soul-deadening, so hope-destroying it would demand that a young man jam a Glock up against his own head, then pull the trigger in a bid for oneness with the abyss.

TAKING IN this wintry vista, one struggles with the vision of a paranoiac snapping an ammo clip into another handgun, in another American city far away, then taking aim at a congresswoman, then pulling the trigger, authorities say. Pulling it again, and again, and again, we hear -- like some sort of self-appointed destroyer of entire worlds.

Appearances can deceive. We are tempted to think the falling snow might somehow forever bury -- mystically obliterate -- the blight upon our land. That the ugliness within us might not survive the beauty without.

Eventually, though, the snow clouds exhaust themselves. Eventually, the light shines upon the illusion and melts it away.

Eventually, we must deal -- Might deal? Can we deal? -- with the muck and the grime.

Maybe.

Maybe we'll just close our eyes, trying not to notice the stink of that which molders around us. And we'll wait for the next snowfall . . . for the next blessed illusion.

A child care thing goin' on

Parents: It's 6:30., do you know which cafe Mrs. Jones and your children are at?

Are they holding hands? Making all kinds of plans?

While the jukebox plays their favorite songs?

3 Chords & the Truth: Desperate for d'lovely

Pardon me if I'm a bit fed up with shooting and anger and death and strife and mayhem.

It was a bad week in Omaha. You've heard why.

I don't know about you, but I've got to get away, and I'm doing my best to take 3 Chords & the Truth with me this week. I thought I'd start off about half a century or so ago and take it from there -- "there" being a time and place where we at least pretended to be civilized, and kids shooting up schools were unheard of.

An era of madmen could do worse than drowning its sorrows with a hi-fi full of Mad Men music.

Like I said, that's our starting point this week on the Big Show.

TO TELL YOU the truth, if all our popular culture can conjure anymore is booty calls, bling and poppin' caps in random ass, I may just take up permanent residence in the Wayback Machine. I gotta get away.

We gotta get away. We gotta learn a new way of living before all we know is dying.

I'll think about that later. Now I need to remember that times were simpler -- not perfect . . . just not quite as insane as today's default existence. Now I need to remember when lovely trumped angry, at least in the culture's official box score.

Back during a time when I still could be shocked.

I need to get away for a bit. Yes, indeed. I'm reckoning you do, too.

FOR SOME of you, this week's 3 Chords & the Truth will be a trip to a familiar and beloved destination, one where the rough edges have been smoothed out by the amazing grace of passing time. For others of you, it might be a journey of discovery.

But, at any rate, it ain't here. It ain't the fresh tragedies of a new year -- 2011 -- when you'd think we'd know better.

Welcome to a touch of class from years long past. Back when men wore hats . . . and it was really bad form to bust a cap in your neighbor's ass.

Meet the parents . . . 1 and 2

It's official -- Mom and Dad will be known henceforth as Parent 1 and Parent 2.

The revised designations come by edict of the U.S. State Department, which is changing its paperwork so it's just as confusing as the rest of our society. Because now Heather does have two mommies. Or daddies.

Or something.

The government press release, however, noted that it remains up to mothers and fathers -- or mothers and mothers . . . or fathers and fathers . . . or parents who transcend gender identification altogether -- to fight it out between themselves over who gets to be 1 and who has to settle for 2.

NOT REALLY, but I don't know why the hell not:

The Department of State is pleased to announce the introduction of a redesigned Consular Report of Birth Abroad (CRBA). The CRBA is an official record confirming that a child born overseas to a U.S. citizen parent acquired U.S. citizenship at birth. The redesigned document has state-of-the-art security features that make it extremely resistant to alterations or forgery.

CRBAs have been printed at U.S. Embassies and Consulates around the world since their introduction in 1919. Effective January 3, 2011, CRBAs will be printed at our passport facilities in Portsmouth, New Hampshire and New Orleans, Louisiana. Centralizing production and eliminating the distribution of controlled blank form stock throughout the world ensures improved uniform quality and lessens the threat of fraud.

Applications for U.S. passports and the redesigned CRBA will also use the title of “parent” as opposed to “mother” and “father.” These improvements are being made to provide a gender neutral description of a child’s parents and in recognition of different types of families.

IN A RELATED development, the Vatican this week declared that, in deference to the new U.S. policy, all Catholics in English-speaking countries immediately will begin praying "in the name of Parent 2, Child 1 and the Special Friend" when making the sign of the cross.

In response to Rome's decree, Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew denounced the popish heresy and declared that the proper formula for the sign of the cross was "in the name of the Parent, the Child and the Honored Companion."

Believers worldwide, meantime, shrugged and returned to their video games.

Simply '70s: Bowie, unpainted

Apparently, this is David Bowie's first television performance, during a 1970 closed-circuit telecast of Britain's Ivor Novello Awards where his 1969 composition "Space Oddity" won a special award for originality.

This rarity shows what the man looked like when he looked like . . . a man. And before advancing age forced him to ditch androgyny because, frankly, Old Guy in Drag doesn't exactly suggest dollar bills busting out of one's bustier.

To shrimp, or not to shrimp

You don't need to pick up Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet to partake of a good Shakespearean tragedy.

All you have to do is head down to Louisiana.

The New York Times' Amy Harmon, I am sure, knew she had herself a good story when she started trekking down to Delacroix to chronicle the struggles of a shrimping family in the wake of the BPocalypse. What I wonder, though, is whether she knew she was committing Shakespeare -- albeit a Shakespearean tragedy that trails off before everybody's dead or bereft.


IF YOU'RE NOT from the state of my birth, you'll start to get what I mean pretty quickly:

While Americans were debating their reliance on fossil fuel in the wake of the worst offshore oil spill in United States history, Aaron Greco was trying to decide what to do with his life. His story illuminates the singular appeal and hardships of a livelihood in jeopardy.

And as the Obama administration paves the way for deepwater drilling to resume in the gulf, it is young men like Aaron who will shoulder the direct impact of the nation’s decisions about what energy to consume and what seafood to eat in the years to come.

Few of his friends born into the Gulf Coast’s fishing communities were following their own fathers and grandfathers in the pursuit of wild seafood. Long before the oil rig exploded, rising fuel prices and competition from Asia’s cheap farmed shrimp had made a risky and physically punishing profession far less profitable: only a few thousand Louisianans now make their living fishing, down from more than 20,000 in the late 1980s.

Yet Aaron was among those of his generation still drawn to an elemental way of life. He wanted to be his own boss, to spend his days on the teeming marshes outside his door, 30 miles south of New Orleans and a world away. He wanted to pace himself to the rhythm of the oysters, crabs, and his favorite quarry since childhood, the shrimp.

“I want to chase the shrimp more than anything,” he told his girlfriend. “But I’m stuck.”

When the spill closed the waters around St. Bernard Parish, Aaron bounced between doubt and determination. His sisters pushed him to go on to college; his uncles warned of the lingering effects of dispersants used to clean up the oil. Even after the well was capped, Aaron questioned his own abilities.

IF YOU ARE from Louisiana, and if "it was good enough for my daddy" is your motteaux, you probably think the damn Yankees are making fun of you. Read on anyway.

Better yet, go to the Times website and read the whole thing. Not that it'll do any damned good.

For Buddy, who had dropped out of school in 10th grade without ever learning to read, there had been no choice: like almost everyone else in Delacroix, descendants of Spanish-speaking Canary Islanders, he never considered anything other than fishing.

The time he did spend in school he used to advantage, singing “Sweet Caroline” to the pretty blonde in front of him on the bus, whom he soon prevailed on to marry him. But like many who grew up on the banks of the Bayou Terre aux Boeufs, he felt looked down on at the high school “up the road” — a designation that denoted social class as much as geography.

Others may have regarded them as poor, but the truth was teenagers could make good money in those days on the brackish waters that flowed into the gulf. In 1986, the year Buddy and Carolyn’s first child, Brittany, arrived, wild-caught gulf shrimp still accounted for nearly a quarter of the shrimp Americans ate, commanding the equivalent of nearly $2 per pound dockside.

And when Aaron was born, in 1990, Buddy covered the hospital bill with a few hundred sacks of oysters at $27 each.

“I paid for your stinky behind in that bayou,” he liked to remind his son, and it didn’t take long for the lesson to stick. Aaron spent his childhood catching minnows with a scoop net in the ditch near their home, his shrimper boots reaching up to his shorts. On fishing trips with his father, he lined up the little fish that dropped from the netting and stuffed them in his pockets.

“You take those out of there,” his mother commanded when she caught him. “They get in my washer and dryer, I’m going to have a smell out of this world.”

By the time Aaron was 13, he was lobbying to leave school himself. “Let me come on the boat,” he pleaded.

But Buddy wanted his middle child, and only boy, to have other options. The money in fishing was unpredictable, the work was dangerous, and there was no retirement plan. Carolyn’s father, a shrimper all his life, had had his hand ripped off in an accident with his rigging. Buddy’s father, stricken with lung cancer, hauled his oxygen tank with him onto the boat until a few days before he died in 2001.

“You finish school, Aaron,” he told his son. “You take after your mother — you smart enough to go to college.”

LARGE SWATHS of my home state -- millions of its citizens -- are the last of the Mohicans . . . or the Sioux in an eternal Wounded Knee. The world has fundamentally changed around them; they stay the same.

The economy upon which they have staked -- continue to stake -- their all is sinking as fast as what's left of the marshland under their feet. The only question is what will slip beneath the Gulf swells first, the land or the people who have populated it for generations.

Tradition is a fine thing. But it can turn deadly when it leads to ossification -- to turning one's back on education and new ideas. Holding fast to a way of life is a noble thing, except when it is untenable.

Louisiana is fast becoming untenable. All the things crucial to its survival are all the things in which it so desperately lags.

Ay, there's the rub . . . to adapt and forswear a way of life, doomed though it may be, or to follow in thy father's footsteps, yea, though they lead to, and over, a precipice.

But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. . . .

TO BE, or not to be -- that is the question. I dread the forthcoming answer.

Simply '70s: Stick it and win

If you grew up in Baton Rouge, La., in the 1970s, you just got goose bumps.

And, irrationally, you're hoping the guy from the radio station will see the bumper stickers on your computer screen, stop you and give you a prize.


WIBR (Radio 13), WFMF (Why, oh, why didn't they stick with progressive rock?) and WLCS (the Big Win 910) . . . we got 'em all covered. For we of a certain age, these stations -- with able assists from WAIL and WBRH (starting in '77) -- provided the soundtrack of our youth.


It was a time when school shootings were unheard of and teenagers did not live by the calendar on their smart phones, which blessedly did not yet exist. I miss those days, and I miss these radio stations.

Even the post-Loose Radio incarnation of 'FMF. But don't tell my friends; that would be so not cool.

Everybody has his reasons

"Everybody that used to know me I'm sry but Omaha changed me and (expletive) me up. and the school I attend is even worse ur gonna here about the evil (expletive) I did but that (expletive) school drove me to this. I wont u guys to remember me for who I was b4 this ik. I greatly affected the lives of the families ruined but I'm sorry. goodbye."

-- Robert Butler Jr.,
high-school gunman

Oh. Well, that explains it, then.

I'm sure Vicki Kaspar, the Millard South assistant principal gunned down by Butler this afternoon died tonight knowing it was for a damned good reason. Right?

Yes, again

Not again.

Yes, again.

Tell me it wasn't Westroads.

No, it was Millard South High School.

How many dead?

An assistant principal and the shooter, by his own hand. A Glock ain't an assault rifle, and Omaha got a little lucky this time. Just a little.

"This time." That's a hell of a couple of words -- this time. They mean it's happened here before -- which it has. They mean it probably will happen again -- which I wouldn't doubt.

"This time." A hell of a thing, "this time." A hell of a thing that means I can just recycle what I wrote about last time, which is, in itself, a hell of a thing. This matter of history -- and youthful domestic terrorism -- repeating itself in my city. In Omaha.

Mayor Jim Suttle said this thing "descended on our city." No, things like this don't descend on a city, except in the sense that evil descends upon a place to wreak its havoc. Things like what 17-year-old Robert Butler Jr., unleashed don't descend so much as they're carefully constructed in the human heart.

Fitfully hatched in a demented mind.

Cynically incubated in a full-blown culture of death. That would be us, the world's new barbarians.

HERE'S WHAT I wrote three years ago, when youthful mayhem "descended" on Omaha in 2007 during the Von Maur massacre. Not a damned thing has changed except the name, the place and the extent of the carnage.

Just replace "Robert A. Hawkins" with "Robert Butler Jr.," "Christmas shoppers and salespeople" with "students and faculty." Call it good.

Or very, very bad.

Robert A. Hawkins was a terrorist just as much as is Osama bin Laden. Osama's a big leaguer; Robbie Hawkins was a rookie-league screwball pitcher. How do you like your newfound fame, kid?

I can appreciate that Hawkins was a sad, tormented and pathological young adult. I can. So were Hank Williams and Janis Joplin, but they still managed to leave behind much beauty in this world and killed no one but, ultimately, themselves.

And let's not forget Vincent van Gogh.

Robbie Hawkins' legacy is death, panic, mayhem, gore and heartbreak. Thousands of years of human tradition and theology tell us mayhem and death are the province of the Evil One, and modern psychology can offer no treatment -- no effective prophylactic -- for the demonic.

Robert A. Hawkins, age 20, was a sick young man. A sick young man who listened to the devil inside. A sick young man for whom self-murder just wasn't good enough.

No, he had to take eight others with him on his way out.

I grieve for the hell Robbie Hawkins' life became, just as I weep over the hell on earth he brought to innocent Christmas shoppers and salespeople. I will not, however, make excuses for what he did -- what he did to eight fellow humans, what he did to their families and friends, what he did to this city.

This city . . . Omaha. My home.

With great difficulty, I pray that God has more mercy on Robbie Hawkins' tormented soul than Robbie Hawkins had on a bunch of innocent people he knew not from Adam. But that doesn't change what Hawkins decided to become Wednesday afternoon -- a terrorist. Albeit one without a clue.

WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY that has fetishized sex, violence, death and materialism. None of the above can fill the void that haunts our being. None of the above can give adequate meaning to young lives like the one Robert A. Hawkins threw away in that Omaha shopping mall.

Americans are quick to mock those young, Islamic terrorists who embrace suicide, murder and carnage for the greater glory of Allah -- and the chance to screw themselves silly in Paradise with 72 hot virgins.

But at least they kill -- and die -- for something, no matter how warped.

For what did Robbie Hawkins -- and all his youthful predecessors like Harris, Klebold and Cho -- kill . . . and die?

For what?