O! What mine eyelets hath seen!

Hello. I'm the Mighty Favog's lucky baseball cap.

I have rested atop that boy's sweaty-ass head for the last 20 years, through thick and thin -- and I'm mainly talking about your blogmeister's hair, here.

Can somebody's head be "sweaty-ass"? Just wondering.

Anyway, where was I? Aiiight.

AHEM. For the last 20 years, I have adorned the Mighty Favog's incredibly ugly head, which -- whether it technically can be sweaty-ass or not -- has a tendency to expel copious amounts of smelly saline solution on hot days at the ball park. As you can see, that has taken its toll on me.

It didn't make it any easier that for years at the College World Series, I had to witness things like Ben McDonald getting shelled like Omaha Beach by the Texas Longhorns in 1989. My Tigers had a habit of getting to Omaha, but not being able to get over the hump.

FINALLY, in 1991, the Favog and I sat for a week in general admission, watching LSU tear through the CWS field. We liked those old metal stands just beyond first base at Rosenblatt Stadium, because if you wanted a drink -- or if you just had to go -- you could save a lot of time by climbing down the sides . . . and then climbing back up again.

Try that today, buddy, and they'll have your ass in handcuffs. Wait, that didn't sound exactly right. You know what I mean.

I remember we were sitting in the grandstand for the championship game against Wichita State, and after the final out, with the Tigers victorious, that stupid idiot picked up Mrs. Favog and started spinning us all around like a top. I thought we were going to fall down about 3 million stadium steps.

AND I REMEMBER two years later, when we were back in the first-base cheap seats and the Long Beach State fans thought they were about to send LSU home. Eliminated. "Start the bus! Start the bus!" was what they chanted at us.

Bottom of the ninth. Three runs. Tigers win, then go on to beat Wichita State (again) in the championship game.

In 1996, things got kind of blurry -- not to mention dizzifying and deafening -- when Warren Morris hit that bottom-of-the-ninth, two-out line drive that kept going until it had cleared the right-field fence. I saw the ball go out . . . and then I was flopping all over as that idiot owner of mine kept throwing me and waving me and whacking me on stuff. Then -- yet again -- picking up the wife and spinning.

I thought we were going to die. And you wonder why I look like I do now.

I was there at Rosenblatt when LSU won in '97, too. This one Alabama fan was really unamused by our "Around the bowl and down the hole! Roll, Tide, roll!" cheer. And we were there in 2000, too, when Stanford got a little Tiger payback for Paul Carey's walk-off grand slam in 1987.

And, of course, we were there -- Mr. Cap Abuser and me -- through all the just-miss years and a couple of years of abject CWS humiliation during the Smoke Laval Era. Enough said.

Really, I don't want to talk about it.

SO NOW, after a four-year absence, Paul Mainieri has our Tigers back in Omaha -- the Omaha where we live, and the Omaha where Fathead's wife's dad worked for three decades to make the College World Series a local institution. (OK, so your Idiot Blogger married up . . . and married well. Lots of people can marry a higher class of wife, you know?)

I imagine the boy will be back in the stands come Sunday, cheering on his alma mater. While Mr. Expatriate has famously conflicted feelings about Louisiana and his hometown, Baton Rouge, there is no ambiguity in his rabid support of LSU baseball and football.

Frankly, I don't know if I will make it this year. I am old, and I am tired. I have seen better days, obviously, and my appearance seems to horrify Mrs. Favog. I mean, I'll try, but my stitching ain't what it used to be . . . and Fathead's noggin hasn't gotten any smaller over the decades.

Judging by my aching seams and sweatband, the boy ain't a size 7 3/8 anymore.

So, if I see you, I see you. If I don't . . . well, I'll always have my memories. In the ball yard of my mind, I'll always have Rosenblatt's left-field bleachers -- the old ones -- the Twizzler Man and "Share with your neighbor. And don't be stingy!"

Geaux Tigers.

Whither broadcasting? I'm with Ron

Whoever is in charge of moderating website comments for WOWT -- Omaha's Weahehhehhehther Authority -- never, EVER ought to be hired for any job involving screening inmates' mail.

Ever.

SOME CHANNEL SIX VIEWERS, writing in the comments of the Omaha City Weekly Media Watch blog, complained the station's webmasters were censoring any negative comment concerning WOWT's bungled coverage of early Sunday's EF-2 tornado.

One reader noted his criticism of the station and chief meteorologist Jim Flowers, though measured and respectful, never made it into the website's comments section.

Apparently, WOWT staffers were too busy assigning blame to everyone but themselves for the station's inability to do what competitor KETV did -- provide live coverage as the storm bore down on the city -- to deal with negative comments.

THAT'S WHY a combox warrior has to be wily in these cases.

Likewise, it helps to get an assist from station personnel too harried or too dense to crack a really simplified version of a jailhouse code. In fact, the code "Ron from Omaha" used to breach the station's Pleasantville Firewall was so simple it required no key to decipher it -- just a sharp eye.

And sharp eyes must be something in extremely short supply at Channel Sux. Here are the messages (you read the words typed in all CAPS . . . that's how simple the code is):

Posted by: Ron Location: Omaha on Jun 9, 2008 at 02:34 PM
CHANNEL 6 is to be commended for not being EMBARRASED to tell it like it is about how ITSELF AND others had no lead time to know about the bad weather. Many people FAILED to see the tornado in OMAHA. IT IS PATHETIC, people, THAT JIM FLOWERS of everyone in Omaha is STILL the only one on the air who HAS the guts to tell us how people came so close to dying in their beds because of the freakish nature of this storm. Telling the truth is HIS JOB, and I'm glad Jim does it so well.

Posted by: Ron Location: Omaha on Jun 9, 2008 at 04:36 PM
Robyn says it all. WOWT could not know that bad weather was coming when the weather bureau FAILED to tell the station's meteorologists -- who weren't there anyway -- that there might be severe weather in OMAHA. I don't think it's right that WOWT should be BLAMED by some OTHER PEOPLE who didn't have weather radios, FOR its all THEIR OWN FAULTS. WHAT A BUNCH OF LOSERS! i'm going to FIRE back at these naysayers with the truth, which JIM FLOWERS so bravely told people to-day. WOWT, you're my favorite station. And all the whiners should HANG IT UP. don't SURRENDER YOUR moral high ground to these nattering nabobs of negativism. don't give them such LICENSE!

FISH. BARREL. FIREARMS.

And when swirling clouds of death and destruction bear down on our homes and loved ones, we count on these jokers to warn us that danger is nigh.

Among the impressive clot of refrigerator magnets on our old Kenmore (Really, I think standing near our refrigerator might relieve the pain and stiffness of arthritis.) is an old one from Channel 3 -- another station that was half an hour late and a sawbuck short early Sunday.

The magnet, back from when Action 3 News was KM3 News, listed "3 Things Every Kid Should Know" -- what county we live in, what's a tornado watch, and what's a tornado warning.

Maybe all the Omaha broadcasters -- save Channel 7 -- could pool their depleted budgets and go in on an updated version of that KM3 relic. It could add a fourth item, after the explanation of "tornado warning." Maybe something along these lines:

If you're counting on us to tell you a tornado's coming, follow these simple instructions. 1) Put your head between your legs. 2) Kiss your ass goodbye.

Anybody know where I can buy a $40 black-and-white, battery-run digital TV?

Exactly 24 hours ago, I was in our basement at the computer when all hell broke loose outside.

I've always been a night owl, and at about 20 after 2 Sunday morning, I was thinking of turning in after finishing up with some E-mail.

THE MISSUS, who had been dozing in the Big Blue Chair, was getting ready for bed herself. It just so happened that the living-room TV was on Channel 7, and that Channel 7 happened to have meteorologist Chuck McWilliams on duty as a line of storms bore down on the Omaha metro.

And it just so happened that my wife noticed that McWilliams had broken into programming to warn that a storm he'd been eyeing on its trek across eastern Nebraska was about to hit far southwestern Omaha with unexpected violence.

It had suddenly gone tornadic. The National Weather Service issued a severe thunderstorm warning at 2:22 a.m. The tornado warning followed at 2:26 a.m. The tornado sirens went off just as the tornado -- an EF-2 -- bore down on our neighborhood.

My wife ran downstairs and I ran upstairs -- to grab Molly the Dog, who was trying to hide behind the Big Blue Chair.

WHAT I DIDN'T KNOW as I ran back down to the basement, with Molly the Dog in my arms and with the sirens blaring, was that the tornado was right over our neighborhood, having lifted off the ground about a mile and a half from our house.

It had plowed into the Millard area of Omaha nine minutes before the tornado warning went out. The only warning anyone had -- at least apart from that telltale freight-train roar before your roof disappears -- was a two-minute heads up from a junior weatherman pulling an all-nighter at KETV, Channel 7.

The sirens were too late because the tornado formed too suddenly.

Channel 3 was no use because no one was there, no one or nothing but an automated crawl across the bottom of the TV screen. Ditto Channel 6. And multiply Channel 6 by Channels 15 and 42.

You know what 3 times 6 times 15 times 42 equals? Nothing.

Thank God for Channel 7 -- and for Chuck McWilliams drawing the short straw Saturday night.

Just as I got downstairs with Molly the Dog, the cable went out. Remember that, by this time, a 2½-mile stretch of southwest Omaha already was a patchwork of downed trees, arcing power lines, missing roofs and blown-apart houses.

MINDLESS INSTINCT directed me to a battery radio, which I switched on for . . . well, I can't tell you why because I knew what I'd find. Nothing.

On KFAB, Omaha's news-talk leader . . . commercials. On the stripped chassis of news-talk KKAR -- which, if it were a car, surely would be missing its engine, its wheels and would be resting on concrete blocks -- there was something from the satellite.

On all the FMs . . . fugeddaboutit. Wait, I think there might have been a live person on Z-92 reading the weather bulletin after a few minutes had passed.

We went back to the crippled television, changed the channel from cable 9 to over-the-air 7 and watched Chuck McWilliams through the snow.

After a few minutes, KFAB and the rest of Clear Channel's Omaha stations came to life with some sketchy live weather coverage . . . as the storm was getting ready to cross the river into Iowa. KKAR also finally came to life -- well, as much life as KKAR ever comes to, being that it barely has a staff.

By the grace of God, nobody died in Omaha in the wee hours of Sunday morning. A few close calls and a couple of minor injuries -- but no body bags, thank the Lord.

The only carcasses strewn about town in the storm's wake were those of the city's radio and TV stations. Well, all but one.

Then again, the tornado had nothing to do with those fatalities. The storm merely exposed the corpses.

IF YOU WANT to see the death notice for American radio, I think I may have run across it Sunday night on NebraskaRadio.com.

Deane Johnson isn't a newspaperman, and he doesn't play one on TV. But as a retired Top-40 program director who used to work for the legendary Todd Storz back when radio was IT, the man knows an obit when he hears one in the street after his neighborhood has just been hammered but good:

Saw a group of neighbors out in the street talking. Joined them. What were they talking about? You won't believe it. They were talking about how you couldn't depend on KFAB any more for information and couldn't watch TV because the power was out. If I were running a station like KFAB, these things would scare the bajeezus out of me.

BETRAYED LISTENERS scare today's pilots of the airwaves? Feh!

Now if the neighbors were investment bankers. . . .

Aske nawt fore hoom thee bel towlez. . . .

When the president of a local school board decides that, no, public education isn't necessarily a public obligation, I'm not sure how much further a community has to go before it hits rock bottom.

After all, it's a little eye-raising -- even in Louisiana -- when a public-school poobah comes out for vouchers. What's next? Prostitutes for monogamy?

THAT'S WHERE the court of winners and wretches finds my hometown -- in a nosedive and still pushing the yoke and throttle hard. If it's indeed true that a strong community is one of proverbial "brother's keepers," Baton Rouge surely bears the mark of Cain.

Not that I'm completely surprised or anything.

Why would the president of a public school board -- such as East Baton Rouge Parish's Jerry Arbour -- say, in effect, "We give up. We can't educate your kids properly. Take the state's money and run"?

Communities outsource things like collecting garbage, not educating their children. Public funds need to go to entities accountable to taxpayers as a whole, not to entities accountable to God-knows-whom (or what) or, perhaps, accountable to no one at all.

Why would communities not insist upon adhering to such a basic principle?

Well, for one thing, because it's hard. And because, first, some sort of commonweal must exist. Individuals must find it within themselves to bond themselves irrevocably to others on some level beyond that of the clan . . . or Klan, as the case may be.

John Deaux must, somewhere within himself, find the strength to be his brother's keeper. Even if that brother is a minority, or poor, or just not all that edifying to be around.

You'd think folks in the Bible Belt would be more serious about biblical principles. But we are talking about Louisiana.

AND WE ARE TALKING about the Deep South here. We are, after all, talking about a region where -- historically -- the electorate hasn't cared much for education, and what care it had was for "white" schools. "Nigger schools" got what was left over from those slim pickings.

In state after state, community after community across the South -- and, to be fair, in many urban areas outside the South -- we have seen a familiar progression from the earliest days of school desegregation.

First, a federal court steps in to order the integration of public schools long under the unequal and unjust yoke of de jure segregation. Then, after much fulminating by local pols and sometimes violent outrage on the part of the public, a token effort is made at "integration." Usually, this involves the admittance of a token number of minority students into "white" schools under the banner of various "freedom of choice" schemes.

Of course, after some time, a federal district judge would deem such tokenism as wholly unacceptable. Baton Rouge's stab as such foot-dragging proceeded at a grade-per-year snail's pace, and had not yet reached the elementary grades by the time the federal judge had enough in 1970.

Then -- at least in Baton Rouge's case -- "integration" was to be achieved through voluntary majority-minority transfers and through a "neighborhood schools" plan. That's right, going to your own neighborhood school constituted race-mixing progress.

Except that white folks either a) fled what previously were mixed areas of town, b) fled the public schools or c) both. And the "integrated" schools largely weren't.

Finally, fed up with segregated "integrated" public schools, federal courts then turned to the B-word -- busing. That, of course, led to an explosion in the numbers of private schools, particularly in Baton Rouge. And to a population explosion in "whiter" outlying areas.

As the public schools, under "forced busing," went from majority white to majority black -- and from majority middle-income to majority lower income -- the white exodus picked up steam, with previous holdouts fleeing what they now saw as "failing schools." I'm not sure, but I think the difference between acceptably mediocre and "failing" is somehow proportionate to the percentage of African-American (and underclass) students.

Now -- almost three decades after "forced busing" began and several years after it was deemed pointless and abandoned along with the 47-year deseg case -- my hometown school district has gone from 65 percent white to 83 percent minority. Whites, once a strong majority in Baton Rouge, now make up less than half the population.

Until Katrina flooded Baton Rouge with those fleeing New Orleans and southeast Louisiana, the city's population hadn't grown in two decades.

THAT'S THE HISTORY of these things, and I would imagine Baton Rouge's troubled transformation mirrors that of more than a few Southern cities. And some Northern cities, too.

No, I am not digressing. My point is to suggest that America's original sin -- slavery and racism -- destroyed basic bonds of human affection. Racism was so prevalent for so long that the notion of commonweal has become unthinkable.

When a people has become so accustomed -- so enculturated over centuries -- to thinking that some humans are chattel, that some humans are less than oneself, it becomes impossible to think of anyone as one's brother. And impossible to believe that you are The Other's keeper . . . and he yours.

Is that, ultimately, why Jerry Arbour, the school board president, finds it easy to figuratively throw up his hands and abandon his responsibility to educate the public's children? Is that, ultimately, why Baton Rouge -- why Louisiana -- pretty much always has thrown up its hands and abdicated its responsibility too?

And why, when someone at the capitol gets the notion that the state budget is too big, it's always education, health care and social services that take the big hit?

IF PRESSED by someone up here in Yankeeland to explain my hometown and home state, maybe I'll tell them that to understand Baton Rouge (and Louisiana) you need to understand a city (and a state) that throws its hands up.

Huh?

See, when you're faced with a really big problem -- as most people are sooner or later -- you basically have two choices: You bear down and fix it, or you throw your hands up.

For centuries, when faced with corrupt oligarchs and politicians, what have Louisianians done . . . what do Louisianians do still? They throw their hands up, and the crooked pols are still in charge.

When faced with endemic poverty and social dysfunction? Throw your hands up.

Sputtering economic infrastructure . . . ignorant workforce? Put on a pot of gumbo, grab a six pack of Abita . . . and throw your hands up.

Failing schools? Throw your hands up.

In other words, "It ain't me, it ain't my kin, throw the bastards a voucher and let the private schools clean up the mess."

IF I AM NOT my brother's keeper (if I have no brother, just The Other) there is no such thing as commonweal and -- unless I'm getting directly screwed here -- civic culture and governance ain't my problem. My problem is how to move heaven and earth to get a prime tailgaiting spot at Tiger Stadium.

To be born a Louisianian is to learn not to ask for whom the bell tolls.

It's much easier just to throw up your hands.

June 1968 + 40: 'Some people see things as they are and ask why. . . .'

3 Chords & the Truth: 1968 + 40

1968. What a year.

An amazing year, a despairing year. A deadly year.

IT -- 1968 WAS -- the year we lost Martin and Bobby, who died 40 years ago today . . . murdered by yet another crazy-mad guy with a gun. Sixty-eight . . . the year of the police riot at the Democratic convention in Chicago.

The year of the Tet Offensive, in which the Viet Cong lost the battle but won the war.

1968. A year of wonder. Apollo 8 and William Anders, Jim Lovell and Frank Borman reading from Genesis as their tiny command module orbited the moon.

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.

And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness."

AS THE ASTRONAUTS read words more than half as old as civilization itself -- read from sacred scripture on Christmas Eve -- we saw the Earth rise over the horizon of the moon's surface.

I guess whether you remember 1968 as a year of strife and horror come to our living rooms every night on the evening news or, alternatively, as a year of possibility and wonder depends on whether you were a kid or not. I was a kid and, though the horror was there -- somewhere fuzzy in the background -- what stuck with me was the wonder.

The Wonder Years . . . somebody ought to make a TV show. . . .

I THINK THAT, now, as middle-aged man, is the time I really appreciate the horror on the periphery of my 7-year-old's existence during that fateful year. The gut-wrenching agony of the murdered Martin Luther King Jr. The mind- and soul-numbing senselessness and incalculable loss of another Kennedy gunned down.

I still see, in my mind's eye, the live TV coverage of the funeral train.

All the "what ifs" surrounding all the "never will bes." Possibilities thwarted. Hope denied.

Is four decades later too late to grieve?

1968. A hell of a damn year, that's for certain.

Well, at least the music was first rate. And we'll be hearing a lot of it on this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth.

Be there. Aloha.

Twistering the night away

Here we go again.

We're due, sometime soon here, for a second-straight evening of Weather From Hell. Welcome to late spring on the Great Plains.

LAST NIGHT, much of Nebraska and Iowa got to pick what was behind one of three curtains -- tornadoes, giant hail or flash flooding. Some contestants got the tornadoes, which -- in some cases -- means you have to give up everything else you've won. Ever.

Others took the giant hail, while many of the remainder ended up with le deluge. A few lucky contestants -- lucky, that is, if you're a masochist -- picked one curtain, then got the other two as parting gifts from a cosmic Monty Hall.

Now, we get to be on this prime-time game show again. Here's the recap, and the pregame preview, from this afternoon's Omaha World-Herald:

More severe weather and a serious threat of flooding were expected this afternoon and tonight in southeast Nebraska and western Iowa.

Wednesday night, the region was hit with a little bit of everything - heavy rain, hail, wind and, possibly, tornadoes.

Reports of tornadoes came in from the cities of Ceresco, Ulysses and Surprise in Nebraska and from near Glenwood, Red Oak and Malvern in Iowa, said Terry Landsvork, observation program leader at the National Weather Service office in Valley.

Landsvork said Plattsmouth, Neb., and Red Oak, Iowa, each had about 5½ inches of rain.

"They are building an ark in Plattsmouth," he said.

Murray, Neb., and Lincoln both reported hail measuring 1.75 inches in diameter. Reports of 1-inch hail came in from around the Omaha metropolitan area, Landsvork said.

A line of storms packing high winds and some suspected tornadoes ravaged Ceresco, about 15 miles north of Lincoln, about 8:30 p.m. The storm knocked out power, downed trees, blew out windows and blew off part of the roof of the town's only tavern, the Barn Door.

Storm debris was scattered across U.S. Highway 77, the location of the tavern and the Mills Squeegee convenience store. A satellite dish and some cinderblocks were blown off the store's roof.

Just west of town, the metal panels of a farm building were strewn around power poles and across a field. Damage to farm buildings also was reported farther west near Ulysses, Dwight and Valparaiso.

Eugene and Betty Tvrdy lost their century-old wooden barn and a machine shed near their farmhouse west of Ceresco.

One of the couple's goats died during the storm when the barn collapsed, trapping the animals. Nine other goats made it out of the rubble safely, Betty Tvrdy said today.

Two of the couple's missing horses were located this morning on the edge of the farmstead. Both horses appeared unharmed.

The goats and horses are staying with a neighbor today while the Tvrdys survey their damage and meet with insurance adjusters.

(snip)

Tornadoes also were reported in Nebraska near Champion, Maywood, Bertrand, Smithfield, Elwood, Kearney and Wauneta. Nearly a half-dozen funnel clouds were spotted in southwest Iowa.

An acreage about two miles south of Emerson, Iowa, home to a family of four, was wrecked by a tornado. Siding and part of the roof were torn from the house, and windows were broken. Trees were down, and limbs and branches were strewn about.

As the storm moved east in Iowa, it damaged another home and then headed into Montgomery and Union Counties.

Larry Hurst, Mills County emergency management director, said the Emerson family was not injured. "A little shaken, but they were able to get safe shelter."

Two barns and a machine shed also were destroyed on the acreage, said Josh Bowen, a friend of the family.

The tornado was among four or five funnel clouds spotted in Mills County on Wednesday evening. No injuries were reported.

MOST PLACES, springtime is seen as the season of rebirth . . . the season of pleasant weather and the warm up to a summer of fun. And that it is.

But out here on the Plains, springtime also is the season of capricious and violent weather. The season during which you just might get unlucky, with everything you have at 5:15 one hot, humid and blustery afternoon gone with the wind by 5:17.

And you consider yourself blessed because you're alive, and your loved ones are alive. Not all are so lucky, as we have seen across the mid-South and Midwest over and over again this spring. Already.

It gives you something to think about this time of year. And it sends a dry-ice chill right down your spine when the tornado sirens sound and, if you're smart, you grab your pets and your loved ones and dash for the basement.

Omaha has been lucky. We haven't seen The Big One in 33 years. But that last Big One -- an EF-4 (out of 5) -- opened a gash that split the city in half and killed three.

Miraculously, only three.

EVEN TODAY, the 1975 Omaha tornado ranks as the second most costly in American history, having wreaked more than a billion dollars' havoc -- 1.1 billion 1975 dollars.

It's going to be another long night tonight. Hope the garden makes it through again.

And they laugh at the Obamaniacs. . . .

Unfortunately, you can't make this stuff up.

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank captures this scene from the road in New York, at Hillary Clinton's big speech last night:

The rush of the opportunistic superdelegates toward the inevitable nominee only worsened what was certain to be an unhappy day for the Clintons, who had arrived at their Westchester home at about 3 a.m. after an awkward last day of campaigning in South Dakota. Bill Clinton had flown into a rage and called a reporter a "scumbag." At her last event in South Dakota, Hillary had lost her voice in a coughing fit. Somebody had seen fit to play an inappropriate John Fogerty tune before she took the stage: "It ain't me, it ain't me. I ain't no fortunate one."

On Tuesday evening, the crowd began to assemble at Baruch College in Manhattan for Clinton's non-concession speech. The scene was made to look festive: The Clinton campaign ordered 70 boxes of Domino's pizza for the press corps, and set up a cash bar for its fundraisers, or "honored guests." The honored guests were not in a partying mood, however. One older woman pointed at a reporter accusingly and said: "He is the one who destroyed our heroine!"

A crew from "The Daily Show" joined the party, and, hoping to keep Clinton in the race, struck up a cheer of "Four more months!"

Such an outlandish thing seemed almost plausible among the Clinton backers in the hermetically sealed Baruch gym. Below ground level, there was no cellphone or BlackBerry reception, and there was no television playing in the room. That meant that they could not see the network projections showing that, while Clinton had won South Dakota, Obama had won enough delegates to clinch the nomination. Instead, they listened to Tom Petty's "Won't Back Down."

WHY DO I keep thinking of Baal and golden calves? Or, in this case, a golden ass . . . er, donkey.

Really, though, what more is there to say about the spectacle that is Clinton '08? What words do we have for old women who unselfconsciously go around spouting angry paeans to megalomaniacal Huey Long wannabes in drag?

Is this Bosnia, or what? Run! Run! Snipers! Incoming! Incommmmmiiiinnnnnng!

ONLY ONE THING in particular comes to mind right now -- at least apart from last night's post. It's this: When a society throws the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses overboard in order to set out on a brave, new course, it's not that we mortals get over the need for a deity.

It's just that we'll start to worship any damn thing . . . or politician. Even Hillary Clinton.

It's the end of the world as they know it

Have you ever wondered whether the Clintons are metaphors for America itself? That Bill and Hill are the story of modern (and postmodern) America time-compressed and writ small?

After all, it takes a little story to illustrate a big story, right?

BILL CLINTON was born into a family of modest means . . . and into a world of familial dysfunction, which obviously left its scars on his psyche. Yet, through sheer smarts and epic drive and ambition, he got himself into Georgetown, then into Yale Law, then embarked on a life of the law and public service -- and marriage, family and his own one-man sexual revolution -- until he climbed and clawed and "Comeback Kidded" his way to the top of the world.

From 1993 to 2001, no man on earth was as powerful as William Jefferson Clinton.

And at his side was Hillary. Born Hillary Rodham, the future first lady, U.S. senator and presidential candidate lived a bourgeois life of relative middle-class privilege. And after getting the political bug as a "Goldwater Girl" in 1964, she used her drive and considerable smarts to shine at Wellesley College . . . and then Yale Law, where one of the most formidable political mergers of the modern age took shape.

She helped the family political franchise along through those years of struggle, until reaching the pinnacle of political power with her senior partner, Bill.

SOON, HOWEVER, the ultimate power couple would find that once you get to the top, the only place to go is down.

Clinton, Inc., weathered its own private Vietnam with l'affaire Lewinsky, which left the union -- and the partnership -- bruised and beaten, but intact and ready to begin plotting Hillary's ascent after an eight-year interregnum.

They thought it was "Morning in America." Instead, their trouble was just beginning.

Tim Reid of The Times in London gets it pretty much right-o in this account from the campaign trail:

Seventeen months after she sat regally in her New York living room and calmly declared: “I’m in and I’m in to win,” Hillary Clinton stands on a stage in a stifling hot shed in South Dakota, coughing and spluttering, as her daughter, Chelsea, grabs the microphone from her hand to take over the show.

“A long campaign,” the former First Lady chokes out between sips of water. Her husband, red-faced and exhausted – and having just apologised for another angry outburst in front of reporters – looks on wistfully at the final rally of his wife’s presidential bid, an endeavour that has been transformed from an inevitable juggernaut into a costly train wreck.

It was an extraordinary moment, exactly five months after the first contest in Iowa, to see the former First Family in the dying moments of the longest primary campaign in history, a gruelling journey across America that was meant to end in a Clinton restoration and has instead bought a very different inevitability: defeat at the hands of Barack Obama.

(snip)

In this final day of campaigning, Mrs Clinton was still defiant, still giving, as she has done for months, an impressive and detailed stump speech full of uplifting prescriptions for healthcare, taxes and energy independence. Yet there was a sense of a woman with her fingers in a leaking dam, straining to halt the impending flood of super-delegates to her rival. Even as she spoke in Sioux Falls, several of her Democratic Senate colleagues were meeting behind closed doors in Washington to plot the end-game by planning a mass endorsement for Mr Obama.

At two events she became convulsed by coughing fits. At one she got the name of the local mayor wrong. In Yankton, she completely lost her voice and had to leave the stage. Chelsea again took over, the reluctant, largely mute campaigner of Iowa now a star in her own right. During the day Mrs Clinton’s event advance team was laid off. Campaign staff were urged to turn in expense receipts. Young aides were talking about vacations. Several volunteers, amid a slightly hysterical fin de siècle atmosphere, gave Oscar-like speeches listing all the states they had visited.

PERHAPS NO COUPLE has been such poster children for their generation -- and for a whole era of American history -- as the Clintons . . . Bill and Hill. Their motto just as well could have been "You can't touch this," because, well, who could?

All good things, however, come to an end eventually. Bill and Hill perhaps knew that in their heart of hearts. But they never saw it coming, not until they were wandering -- shell-shocked and desperate -- through the ruins of the Clinton '08 campaign.

Now the former president and the would-be president appear for all the world like a couple of half-crazed refugees stumbling, glassy-eyed and babbling, out of the ruins of a political Dresden of their own making. Their reputations in tatters, their futures uncertain, they can't help but mindlessly prattle about glorious days still to come.

The world, alas, has moved on.

THE CLINTONS, Bill and Hill, are America. America, behold yourself . . . soon enough.

Soon enough.

Ellas Otha Bates, R.I.P.

OK, so Bo Diddley is lip-synching . . . and not all that successfully. And so what if KHJ radio's Sam Riddle don't know Didd-uh-lee squat about how it's important not to overenunciate Did-lee.

(Boss Angeles, my ass.)

There are only two things you need to know about why this is a cool video. One, it's Bo-bobo-bo-bobo-BO! Diddley, dammit!

Two, everything's better with go-go dancers.

I miss the '60s. And we all miss Bo Diddley.

I think the whole state is 'hormonal'

Really, I shouldn't give a rat's patootie about the Louisiana Legislature.

I shouldn't even be paying much attention to Louisiana at all, being that I've lived in Nebraska for 20 years -- and that the doctors have done all they can do for their patient down south and have turned her over to God.

BUT SINCE there's no equivalent to Al-Anon for Louisiana expatriates . . . and since noting all the crazy-ass things that go on there is a lot easier than trying to dig up such magnificent examples of ridiculousness locally, I therefore am compelled to post the following from WAFB television in Baton Rouge:

At the Capitol, legislators might adopt a daily uniform. Everyone would dress the same, like in school. It sounds silly, but some are already trying it out.

Every woman in the House Transportation Committee wore turquoise and brown Monday. It's no coincidence that they all got a staff memo. "I don't have enough time to think about what I'm going to wear, so the memo saves me that day. I know exactly what I'm going to wear, like a uniform," says Rep. Karen St. Germain of Plaquemine.

(snip)

Men have been matching for years by wearing a dark suit with a patriotic-looking tie or a seersucker suit and boots. So, Representative St. Germain says it's their turn to tie together. "It's a little bit better than standing up and yelling on a hormonal day. This was a lot more effective," she says. St. Germain says it shows solidarity, with a little silliness. "I think it's a little fun in the middle of a long six months of being at the Capitol. We kind of needed something to bring us back to reality. Hey, this is not a bad idea."

GOOD LORD. Even as someone of the male persuasion, I am embarrassed.

"Better than standing up and yelling on a hormonal day"?

These are the people making the call on stuff like cutting social services, health care and higher education. And on "reforming" ethics. Let's not forget ethics.

Geez, what's the men's excuse? "I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue"?

Why I'm here . . . and not there -- Part 2,378

Below, I want you to take a look at an unremarkable snapshot before someone tucks it away in the Omaha scrapbook.

From the Omaha World-Herald:

Imagine a streetcar ride from downtown to the Henry Doorly Zoo along a transformed 10th Street boulevard.

At 10th and Bancroft Streets, a fountain would be the centerpiece of a new roundabout. Signs would help visitors decide whether to go to the zoo, get on Interstate 80, stop at Lauritzen Gardens or head to the new north downtown baseball stadium. Tenth Street would be renamed Parkway 10.

For now, it's all just a pipe dream.

But it's the vision that was shared Monday by Mayor Mike Fahey, City Councilman Garry Gernandt and a number of south Omaha neighborhood leaders.

The first step toward improving the corridors along 10th and 13th Streets is setting new rules and regulations that will preserve the area's character while enhancing it with new lighting, landscaping and attractive development.

The city now has limited control over the type and look of commercial development along those entryways to downtown.

Monday's announcement in the mayor's conference room seemed to demonstrate that Fahey had made amends with the south Omaha neighborhoods. After months of controversy over plans to demolish Rosenblatt Stadium and build a new downtown ballfield, Fahey stood with many of the people who had condemned him earlier this year.

"All was forgiven months and months ago," said Jason Smith, the former Save Rosenblatt leader.

Even as the Rosenblatt fight raged on, neighborhood leaders and the Fahey administration were simultaneously working on the plan for 10th and 13th Streets.

Fahey said that in the seven years since he and Gernandt were elected, Rosenblatt has been the only issue that caused significant disagreement between the two. They have worked together to improve the 24th Street business district, build the new South Omaha Library and construct the Salvation Army's Kroc Center, Fahey said.

"Support for south Omaha has always been an administration goal," Fahey said. He said he remains committed to "improving the look and feel of the entire city."

"WELL," SAYS ANYONE from around these parts. "So?"

Exactly. Here, we had a fairly boilerplate lead story in today's evening edition about cool things the city hopes to do in south Omaha . . . hand in hand with politicians and civic leaders it, two months ago, battled in a nasty guerrilla war over the fate of the neighborhood ball yard.

Albeit a ball yard that seats 23,000 people.

And you know what else? I'll bet these pie-in-the-sky plans actually come to fruition in a few years. Unlike pie-in-the-sky plans regularly floated in other municipalities of my intimate acquaintance.

Working and playing well with others. It's a concept proven to work in contexts other than bribery and kickbacks.

This. Is. Cool.

In 1945, what now is WNBC-TV in New York was WNBT, and it broadcast over Channel 1.

Yes, in 1945, there was a Channel 1. What there wasn't was too many televisions on which to watch what was playing on Channel 1. That's a pity -- folks missed one of the freakin' coolest station IDs ever produced.

Back then, lots of things seemed important. They were surrounded by an air of importance. And people thought they were important.

Today? Everything is cutoffs and flip-flops.

Whatever.

I wish I had been born a couple of decades before I was. It might have been nice to live more of my life during the era of Stuff That Mattered, you know?

Radio on the TV: 1948

What's interesting about these kinescopes of a special DuMont television broadcast of Don McNeill's Breakfast Club program from ABC radio isn't just the peek we get at the earliest days of American network television.

NO, WHAT'S INTERESTING is the view inside what it took to put on a live network radio program way back when. It took people. Lots and lots of cast members. An orchestra. Writers churning out scripts. A technical crew.

Today, we get WAV files on HAL 9000.

Anybody got a time machine they can lend me? "Progress" hasn't left me exactly edified.

Snapshots! We got snapshots!

Well, OK. Snapshot . . . singular.

It occurred to me that I've never posted a current snapshot of myself on the blog, so I thought I'd remedy that today. Here's one of me taken downtown recently by Mrs. Favog.

Lovely city, Omaha is. And a regal god, if I do say so myself.

Not the God, mind you, but a god, to quote from Groundhog Day.

Baton Rouge: Now I remember why we left

Well, the comments on my "Dear Baton Rouge" post have been, uhhhhh . . . enlightening.

For instance, now I remember exactly why Mrs. Favog and I left, and were glad to do so. And also why -- even though I sometimes get wistful over home -- we'll be moving back over the dead body of my Omaha-born wife.

I can't blame her. I really, really can't. Like folks often say, Baton Rouge is one of those places it's really interesting to be from. . . .

AS I SAID, the comments on that previous post over the past couple of days have been interesting. And they've pretty much convinced me that, once again, my old man inadvertently told the truth one fine day, via one of his typical dyspeptic rantings.

Indeed, when it comes to my hometown, "Dey ain't no hope!" Or so it would seem by the rednecks and wannabe Ku Kluxers who crawled out of the swamps and into the Revolution 21 combox.

Here are excerpts from every single comment, except for a couple of deleted ones from a guy who was getting obsessive and, finally, obscene:

From Colleen:

And now I want to see Omaha. My own home state of NJ had Asbury Park infamously in ruins for a decade or two there, but it is on the rise again. I'm not sure what caused the turnaround but I did hear mention of the real estate trend of "follow the gays." I believe this is also known as "follow the artists," and if you can follow some gay artists to where they're settling, that place should really be booming soon.

From GO:

You nailed that one...Omaha does it with multimillioniare philanthropists, and you're mad because Baton Rouge can't do it?

What you're really mad about is that Baton Rouge doesn't have lots of millionaires...

From GO:

The school systems of Ascension, Livingston, and the private school system in Baton Rouge are THRIVING and getting GREAT MARKS on standardized testing and achievements...The reason? Nobody, not a millionaire, not a middle class state employee, not a married college student with school aged children, wants to send their kids to a system that has been run for FOUR DECADES by the NAACP and a ridiculously senile old judge, acting as a puppet at the behest of the prosecution in a desegregation case...

Seriously...a judge that takes 40 years to decide a case? FORTY YEARS? In the balance was our community's school system...

Do you HONESTLY think anyone with half a brain wants their kids in a system like that? Being run like that? Under that sort've weight?

Oh, wait a minute...NONE OF YOU REALIZED THAT, did you?

(snip)

The community got its school system taken away, and then they realized it might not ever get given back to them...At what point-DURING A FORTY YEAR DESEG CASE-does the community just give up? The judge & the plaintiffs never wanted to give it back...So why dump money and resources, nevermind time and volunteering the resources many had available, to a system that was being run not by the community, but an organization and a judge who were both proven to have smashed it to bits...

The community isn't to blame for our school system...Catholic, Redemptorist, PBS, CPS, Livingston, & Ascension's collective systems and growth are almost DIRECTLY attributable to the NAACP, and that idiotic old bat of a Judge Parker, and their completely inept bungling and gumming up of the works of that system...

From GO:

What we're talking about is how the community lost control, and a motivated (politically? ethnically?) community group held it hostage with quite possibly the dumbest man to ever wear a robe and call himself a judge in history...For 40 years, guv-u-nuh...

That wasn't the COMMUNITY holding it hostage...That wasn't WHITE PEOPLE holding it hostage...That was a judge and a community group.

There is no wrangling, no tangent you can spin off on while raging once again about a machine you want to blame someone else for building...

Own it. The truth shall set you free...

From GO:

So the community is supposed to subject itself to the machinations and the posturing during the case...

For 40 years?

That's what a "progressive" community does in your eyes?

(snip)

What's hilarious is that you IGNORE the fact that the community lost control of its school system. It was no longer their own.

Would you pay a child support for children that aren't your own? Would you pay someone else's car note without being able to drive it?

Of course not...Yet you are excoriating the same community for not passing taxes to fix a system they had absolutely no control over...

No taxation without representation, m'friend...You talked about not escaping, I showed you how the community did exactly that.

From Anonymous:

Two numbers, Omaha 80% white, BR 46% white. No need to post any more statistics.

From jamarco:

You have proved his point. Deseg. and busing really worked? right? Just like mom used to say, "you can't bring your friends up, they will only bring you down". Same goes with the schools in BR. Mamma was right. Now all the public schools in BR are in the same shape. And guess what, the money is still there, in BR. Have you been to Perkins Rowe or the Towne Center? When is the last time you drove down highland road, went into the back gate of the country club of Louisiana by giving the guard a Bigmac? or waited for a table at Louisiana Lagniappe for better than hour, or Better yet have you driven down Airline to Ascension Parish?

If you want to look at some real good numbers look at Ascension Parish. It compares very well to your Omaha.

From Anonymous:

It's not about white flight. It's about a large black population, that is uneducated, unmotivated, and that will continue to vote for democratic politicians who perpetuate the problem for their own benefit.

From Anonymous:

When a city has over 100,000 blacks who are granted majority black districts and elect judges like Don Johnson, and Senators like Cleo Fields, and councilmen like Bones Addison, you are screwed. Just move the hell out as soon as you can, and find somewhere like Omaha or some other western or midwestern state with demographics that don't look like ours, and you'll never regret it.

From jamarco:

you keep losing your own argument. If you live in a place with a broken toilet, and no mater how much money you throw at it just can't be fixed. Most sain people have two options replace the broken toilet (private schools) or move to another place with working toilets (ascension-livingston). Why would you want anybody to live in a place with a broken toilet, I don't. When you look at the racial makeup of omaha, how did the busing work, you took a very small number of black students and bused them to white schools right? and probably closed the black schools, that plan did not work here, we bused blacks to white schools and whites to black schools. I lived it!

From jamarco:

i didn't want to point this out not being a racist and all, but of the ten places taht Kiplinger ranked as best places to live not one has a majority black population.

From Lee High Rebel:

Dear Flavor Flavog,

No federal judge destroyed the Baton Rouge School System. The black "students" single handedly destroyed the Baton Rouge School System. You see they destroyed the physical property, buildings, grounds etc. of the schools that they attended. No one wanted to teach there or go to school there so those schools suffered. Then there was desegregation, and as there nature requires, the black "students" then physically demolished the new schools that they attended. This in turn demolished the spirit of learning in the system and anyone who actually wanted their kids to get more than just a free lunch had to send their kids to a private school or leave the parish. That's how the Baton Rouge school system was destroyed.

From jamarco:

nope, i will be around for awhile, will attempt to leave a bit of wisdom EVERY day, even after you stop posting them. I may even attempt to leave comments on some of your other topics also. And by the way us "rednecks" from the great state of looseiana are coming if LSU can pull it out! I have in the past spent lots of money in your town...and i guess you can tell that I had several black english teachers in highschool and at least one at LSU, so my grammer and command of the English language leaves you wanting...

From KingHueyDeweyLouie:

You must have been a kid when you moved, or else you never lived in Baton Rouge, maybe your wife did, I don't know. A lot of people don't know these things are in baton rouge even people that still live in Baton rouge don‘t. But there are some very small businesses along the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge, they are easy to miss, like I said a lot of people don't know they are there, as a matter of fact when one blew up several years ago people thought is was an earthquake...big plants and I don't mean alocasias or colocasias I mean, petrochemical plants! Just sit back and take in some clean Nebraska air (if you can stand the smell of corn, although I understand that a lot of corn is now grown in cotton and sugarcane fields around baton rouge) and imagine the amount of money that is generated by the millage taxes that these buggers pay to the city-parish. By the way I don‘t think the $75,000 homestead exemption applies. So there is a lot of tax money in baton rouge. As a side note, Jamarco calls it as he sees it, you shouldn’t resort to name calling and making fun, he types fast and he slept through most of his English classes, I know, I wrote most of his papers. And by the way, he is not a redneck, he hasn’t been on a tractor in years and he doesn’t cut his own grass, some guy named Pedro does (now he really is a redneck).

From Lee High Rebel:

The truth isn't hatefulness or kindness, it's just the truth. I watched the truth unfold from 7th grade through 12th grade. Now I make my money in the construction industry rebuilding and repairing the damage that is done to the schools by the "students", and I'm good at it. I wouldn't be where I am today without those little demolition experts, God bless them.

WHAT'S INTERESTING (and troubling) is that racial scapegoating erupted from something as simple as my making a point about how Omaha, a city with many similarities to Baton Rouge, really has made remarkable progress in the time I've lived here -- such progress that it's being noticed nationally, and is appearing in lists of "best cities."

Really, how do rants about the injustice of school desegregation logically arise from my noting that in many respects, Baton Rouge -- my hometown -- still struggles, and that the difference lies in the realm of "civic culture"?

I opined that Omaha has an extremely strong one, and Baton Rouge . . . not so much. Likewise, I noted the rundown condition of my alma mater, Baton Rouge Magnet High, and the existence of large tracts of crumbling and blighted property -- the old Bellemont Motor Hotel, for instance.

Many things I might be, but naive isn't one of them. I fully expected that lots of Baton Rougeans would be angry that I'd "dissed" their city. Wouldn't surprise me a bit if lots of Baton Rougeans gave me the Scott McClellan treatment, calling me a disloyal little rat who hauled butt, then dumped on my hometown in front of damn Yankees and everybody.

Of course, if you're gonna crack on me for leaving Louisiana, and if you're going to be fair about it, you're going to spend the rest of your life ripping me and a few hundred thousand other folks a new one. And you -- to your dismay -- will find the list is an ever-growing one.

ANYWAY, all this I would have expected.

What slightly surprised me, but oughtn't have, was that after the first positive comment, not only did things go negative and nasty, but that the unifying theme was that Baton Rouge's problem is as plain as black . . . but not white. That Baton Rouge would be just fine if it weren't for federal judges, the NAACP and a city-swamping Negro menace that has destroyed the schools and God knows what else.

Really. That's the gist of people's complaints . . . that I'm some sort of Yankeefied turncoat who just refuses to see that Baton Rouge sucks because it's no longer white enough. The bile lies pooled above, for you and all the world to read.

Now, the question remains regarding how representative these comments might be. After all, this is the Internet. Throw a news story or a blog post out there on the Information Superhighway, and it's going to attract combox nutwagons like a windshield attracts love bugs.

But still. You also can count on a fair number of reasoned, and reasonable, respondents along the road. Everywhere but here . . . when the conversation turns to what's wrong with Baton Rouge (where I used to live), what's right with Omaha (where I now live), and what the former might be able to learn from the latter.

The law of averages tells me this is a fluke. Having been born and raised in Louisiana tells me I shouldn't be surprised. And William Faulkner tells me that, in the South, "The past isn't dead. It isn't even past."

SO SHOULD I BE surprised that, two decades since I last lived there, my hometown -- at heart -- is still a churlish little backwater, riven between black and white, unable to work and play well with others but (as always) hiding behind a delusional "Laissez les bon temps rouler" façade?

Ought I really be shocked, shocked that the reality of Baton Rouge might, to a large extent, hinge on a critical mass of bitter little George Wallace wannabes who -- though rendered incapable by the feds of literally standing in the schoolhouse door and proclaiming "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever!" -- still find it within their means to segregate themselves in white-flight schools and in comparatively white communities . . . to hell with the commonweal?

To tell you the truth, that's as good an explanation as any for a state where Medicaid, social services and education (both higher and elementary-secondary) are always the first things the budget ax whacks. It's as good an explanation as any for a school system going from something like 67 percent white to 83 percent black in 28 years.

And that looks like a likely culprit for why not only did voters not approve any school-bond issues for three decades, but also for why no one cared enough to hold "the bad, awful school board" accountable for its actions . . . or inaction . . . or outright abdication of its responsibilities. Or whatever.

While I'm thinking of it, do murders in the 'hood -- unless they're especially grisly or sensational -- still end up reported as briefs inside The Advocate's Metro section, while slain white folks more than likely end up on a section front? Just asking.

Mayor-President Kip Holden likes to refer to Baton Rouge as "America's Next Great City." Really? What I see in my comments box, the abject dump I saw when I visited my alma mater and the plethora of rundown and abandoned properties any traveler will see surely suggest that the good mayor might suffer from "America's Next Great Disconnect From Reality."

ONCE AGAIN, as Abandoned Baton Rouge blogger Colleen Kane -- a New Jersey transplant -- so reasonably asked at the end of one of her posts on the ruins of The Bellemont motel, "Baton Rouge, kindly explain thyself."

I don't pretend to know how Baton Rouge would explain itself. All I know is how I would explain it, as someone who was born, raised and educated there. And as someone who worked there, then moved away from there.

But I do know how a lot of folks in these parts see my home state . . . and my hometown.

They see it as an exotic, bizarre and fascinating place they wouldn't mind visiting. But no way in hell would they want to live there.

Sadly, I can't say that I blame them. Because, when it comes right down to it, neither would I.

3 Chords & the Truth: Thinking about home

Home


Years I had been from home,
And now, before the door
I dared not open, lest a face
I never saw before

Stare vacant into mine
And ask my business there.
My business, - just a life I left,
Was such still dwelling there?

I fumbled at my nerve,
I scanned the windows near;
The silence like an ocean rolled,
And broke against my ear.

I laughed a wooden laugh
That I could fear a door,
Who danger and the dead had faced,
But never quaked before.

I fitted to the latch
My hand, with trembling care,
Lest back the awful door should spring,
And leave me standing there.

I moved my fingers off
As cautiously as glass,
And held my ears, and like a thief
Fled gasping from the house.

Emily Dickinson

WE'RE THINKING about home this week on 3 Chords & the Truth, the music half of the Revolution 21 media empire.

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

You're illustrating my point, Baton Rouge

My readers in Red Stick write, and one illustrates my point so well that I just cain't hep mahsef but to pull that sucker out of the combox and make a post out of it.

REALLY, perhaps there's something in what belches out of the Exxon refinery and chemical plant that acts on neurological function or something:

GO said...

What's hilarious is that the readership of this blog are-once again-putting on display an absolutely dazzling lack of perspective, and ONCE AGAIN bemoaning problems, without wondering about either A.) Solutions, or B.) The context within which these problems sprung up.

The school systems of Ascension, Livingston, and the private school system in Baton Rouge are THRIVING and getting GREAT MARKS on standardized testing and achievements...The reason? Nobody, not a millionaire, not a middle class state employee, not a married college student with school aged children, wants to send their kids to a system that has been run for FOUR DECADES by the NAACP and a ridiculously senile old judge, acting as a puppet at the behest of the prosecution in a desegregation case...

Seriously...a judge that takes 40 years to decide a case? FORTY YEARS? In the balance was our community's school system...

Do you HONESTLY think anyone with half a brain wants their kids in a system like that? Being run like that? Under that sort've weight?

Oh, wait a minute...NONE OF YOU REALIZED THAT, did you?

Otherwise, I'm sure such a germane and illuminating point would've been brought up by people who seem to be most adept at COMPLAINING ABOUT a problem...

We had issues that created a completely different context to complain about this problem...

The minions of the NAACP & a completely inept judge kept the school system under a consent decree for FORTY FREAKING YEARS...You think that might have people at the Capital and folks in the community turning a deaf ear or blind eye to its plight?

Who wants to try to help a system that's basically imprisoned by folks who purport to be after the best interest and the better angels of our nature, but clearly did far more harm than good...

I mean, its REALLY REALLY REALLY easy for all of you to sit here and complain about the state the system's in, but who wants to send their kid into it? None of you did, none of you would, most of you will try your best...

Without context or an actual grasp of WHY the system came to be where it did, how in the world can any of you with a straight face talk about how sad a situation its in...

The community got its school system taken away, and then they realized it might not ever get given back to them...At what point-DURING A FORTY YEAR DESEG CASE-does the community just give up? The judge & the plaintiffs never wanted to give it back...So why dump money and resources, nevermind time and volunteering the resources many had available, to a system that was being run not by the community, but an organization and a judge who were both proven to have smashed it to bits...

The community isn't to blame for our school system...Catholic, Redemptorist, PBS, CPS, Livingston, & Ascension's collective systems and growth are almost DIRECTLY attributable to the NAACP, and that idiotic old bat of a Judge Parker, and their completely inept bungling and gumming up of the works of that system...

YEAH, THAT'S RIGHT, CAP. It's all the nigras' and da gummint's fault.

And you think it's acceptable that people ought to pay multiple thousands of dollars to "escape" the educational suck? To pay for separate but unequal school systems? I've got news for you.

You. Can. Not. Escape. It.

Every day and every way, you can't escape it, and Baton Rouge can't escape it, and Louisiana can't escape it.

The story is in an illiterate-ass workforce that Corporate America won't touch with a 10-foot bullfrog gig. The story is in a sky-high crime rate.

The story is in high insurance rates, and in spending more, more and ever more for prisons and cops.

The story is in jobs across the trade- and service sectors being filled by people who are manifestly unqualified to do what they're doing -- and it shows in the lousy service you encounter day by day.

But -- Hey! -- the white-flight schools are doing well.

And Louisiana is emptying out.

You know what, I went to legally segregated schools in Baton Rouge until fourth grade, when the court ordered the "neighborhood schools" plan as a deseg remedy. And I'm here to tell you that the East Baton Rouge Parish public schools were just as full of violent little dumbasses when the only black faces you saw were those of the janitors and the lunchroom ladies.

And the two black kids at Red Oaks Elementary caught hell from everybody. Most especially from the teachers.

Likewise, you seem to assume that Baton Rouge was the only city to ever endure a decades-long deseg case. You need to get out more.

Lots of cities did, including Omaha.

The difference is that it took a dysfunctional backwater like Baton Rouge to f*** deseg up that badly.

Congratulations. You're now New Orleans. Without the Quarter, or the streetcars, or the brass bands, or the second lines through the neighborhoods.

You must be so proud.

Thanks for writing. You illustrate my point so very well.

I'm so glad we had this time together. . . .

Harvey Korman (1927-2008)
Requiescent in pace.