Obeying the voices in our heads

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It's a fact that popular culture -- the boob tube, music, movies, celebrity worship -- drive and shape our larger Western culture.

TV gets into our brains -- puts ideas in there -- and our brains begin to think different things.

Movies tell us stories, and we respond to them, and our beliefs shift.

Music goes to our minds and our hearts, and it affects what we think and what we believe.

One way or the other.

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WHAT COULD go wrong?

What could go wrong with a culture that takes its cues from popular entertainment -- from Hollywood, from the music industry, from the celebrity biz -- when lots of those faces on the screen and voices in your iPod belong to people who are out of their f***ing minds?

Really, what could happen?

All right, let me take this tack . . . what can we learn from this?

I'll start. I'll tell you what I've learned from Charlie Sheen today.

I've learned that this is 42:38 of my life that I can never, ever get back. If you want to waste nearly 43 minutes of yours, that's your own affair. You've been warned.

And the Oscar for Best Presenter goes to . . .

. . . Kirk Douglas.

Let me just say this: I want to live to be 94 years old. And at age 94, I want to be screwing with the minds of a bunch of people half my age.

I also want to be funnier by half than all the people half my age (or a third my age) trying in vain to follow my act.

And I want to be flirting with all the young gals.


AND I'D LIKE to think I had some small role in causing one of them to drop the F-bomb on live, worldwide television.

Just like Kirk Douglas.

Simply '70s: Showing his shortcomings

Hello, everybody, this is your action news reporter with all the news that is news across the nation, on the scene at the 1974 Academy Awards. There seems to have been some disturbance here. Pardon me, sir, did you see what happened?

"Yeah, I did. I's standin' overe there by the paparazzi, and here he come, running across the stage at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, behind David Niven, nekkid as a jay bird. And I hollered over t' Ethel, I said, 'Don't look, Ethel!' But it's too late, she'd already been incensed."

3 Chords & the Truth: (402) 3-CHORDS

Starting this week, you have to dial 10 digits to listen to 3 Chords & the Truth.

Frankly, we've run out of numbers in the 402 area code, driven no doubt by the world's desire to come to Omaha, by God, Nebraska, pick up a phone and "reach out and touch someone." Someone, of course, being the Big Show.

What else could it be?

Anyway, because of the extreme popularity of 3 Chords & the Truth -- and musical programming such as this week's ode to the telephone -- Nebraska's 402 area code is all full up. Thus, we welcome our new number to dial by -- 531.

THE NEW area code will be rolled out inside the existing 402 area, with new phone lines getting the 531 designation starting in about a month. But as of . . . right now, we're all 10-digit dialers around these parts.

And without a doubt, this fast-fingered, extra-digited sign that we've arrived -- that eastern Nebraska is big-time now -- can be laid at the World Wide Webbed feet of the Big Show.

You can thank me later.


OH . . . what the hay. Thank me now by clicking where you need to click, listening to the podcast, then getting all your friends and family to do the same.

Because I'm aiming at a new goal for my neck of the telecommunications woods -- 13-digit dialing.

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

(Click.)

Human-sizing the big story

This TVNZ report tells the story of Canterbury Television, destroyed in Tuesday's Christchurch quake.

If you think about it, the tragic story of a little TV station on the south island of New Zealand is the big story, only made small enough to get your brain -- and your heart -- around.

Simply '70s: The hottest car of the decade

Meet the Ford Pinto -- new for the '71 model year.

Look at that baby! It's "a little carefree car to put a little kick in your life."


I'll say!

Apparently, edginess has its limits

When it's something you want to hear, it's "edgy."

When it's something you don't, it's offensive and violates some flavor or another of unspecified "values."

In New York, this pro-life billboard highlighting the inconvenient statistic that 59.8 percent of pregnancies among non-Hispanic black women there end in abortion is offensive.

“The ad violates the values of New Yorkers and is grossly offensive to women and minorities,”the city's public advocate, Bill de Blasio, tells The New York Times. That's because, in the big city, telling minorities that we're eradicating most of them before they can emerge from the womb to become a "social problem" for white people is much more "offensive" than the actual eradication of most minorities before they can pop out of Mama's belly and start troubling Caucasian advocates of tolerance and open-mindedness.

FOR INSTANCE, take Times judicial reporter Linda Greenhouse (please), who's so tolerant of pro-lifers -- particularly Puerto Rican, Democratic pro-life officeholders -- that she lets no stereotype go unmolested in the push for better demonization.

You want to know the one instance when it's permissible to call a Latino Democratic pol "nutty" in New York City? This is it. And a state senator, no less.

If you ask me, the first sign a nation's on the road to oblivion is when it's more offensive to bemoan the extermination of 59.8 percent of a city's African-American children than it is to exterminate them in the first place. Think of it this way . . . we fought a bloody civil war a century and a half ago for this?

At least Jefferson Davis would have had enough sense to look at the LifeAlways billboard, sadly shake his head, then bemoan the senseless loss of perfectly good free labor. Which says a lot about us today, doesn't it?

The earth moves, crushing worlds entire

The Big One came last September for the Canterbury region of New Zealand.

Above, a scientist discusses what happened on Canterbury Television's morning program, Good Living. What host Megan Banks could not know -- and what geoscientist Pilir Vilamor couldn't predict -- was that it would happen again, with such devastating effect, in just a few months.

Tuesday's quake in Christchurch was "just" a 6.3 on the Richter scale, compared with the 7.1 in September, but it struck with blind ruthlessness. Hundreds may be dead, with nearly a hundred of that already confirmed.

And 15 of the 25 staffers at Canterbury Television -- CTV -- are missing somewhere in the rubble of their pancaked studios, Radio New Zealand reports:

Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker said it has been a "dreadful day" for rescue teams, and that about 75% of the city had now been covered by searchers on Thursday.

However, no survivor has been pulled from the wreckage of collapsed buildings, including the CTV and Pyne Gould buildings, since Wednesday afternoon.

Mr Parker says rumours of survivors being found alive in rubble on Thursday are not true. The search and rescue operation is happening in a "pressure cooker environment" and it easy for onlookers to get false hope, he says.

More search and rescue crews are due to arrive from overseas on Thursday night joining teams already working from Japan, Singapore, Taiwan and Australia. The operation will continue overnight on Thursday, he says.

Prime Minister John Key said on Thursday there are no survivors from the CTV building. Work had resumed there earlier on Thursday after there were concerns that the nearby Hotel Grand Chancellor might collapse.

Police estimate up to 120 people were in the devastated building which housed a language school, a regional television station and a nursing school.

The language school, Kings Education, said on Thursday it feared nine staff and 37 students students remained inside. A further 35 students are unaccounted for. The school has students enrolled from Japan, China, the Philippines, Thailand, Korea and Saudi Arabia.

AMONG THE MISSING -- now presumed dead by authorities, says the New Zealand Herald -- is Jo Giles, longtime CTV presenter, competitive pistol shooter, motor-sports enthusiast, onetime political candidate . . . and mum.

One of Ms Giles' daughters, Olivia Giles, said her family was pulling together to cope. "We're all supporting each other and still all hopeful. The main focus is just Mum."

Ms Giles' son James Gin said conflicting information yesterday about the chances of his mother surviving made it tough.

"We hear there were 15 people alive which was amazing, then within 10 minutes we find out that was false. To be honest I don't know what to think. Of course we hope we see our mum again."

ANOTHER WHO LIES somewhere beneath what once was CTV is Samuel Gibb -- journalist, devoted husband and "the last person that deserves this":

His wife, Cindy Gibb, struggled to accept the news that there was no hope left of her husband coming out of the collapsed CTV building alive.

"I don't know anything else. I just need my husband back," she told the Herald.

"I'm too young for this to happen. It's not supposed to happen like this. Sam's just the best person in the world."

THE EARTH SHOOK under Christchurch on Tuesday. Technically, experts say, it was just an aftershock from last fall.

To those who did not survive it, to families whose hearts and lives were ripped apart by it, to a television station laid waste because of it, to a city that lies in rubble after it . . . that was no mere aftershock.

In New Zealand this week, the earth shook, and whole worlds came crashing down. Nothing will be as it was.

Just between you and me, 'Mr. Koch' . . . .

Punking a governor like Wisconsin's Scott Walker -- not to mention exposing his real agenda -- is about as good as it gets.

Maybe not as good as punking Fidel Castro (definitely not "one of us" in the Walkerian continuum of "us" and "not us."), but pretty dang good.

From the Chicago Tribune:

On a prank call that quickly spread across the Internet, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was duped into discussing his strategy to cripple public employee unions, promising never to give in and joking that he would use a baseball bat in his office to go after political opponents.

Walker believed the caller was a conservative billionaire named David Koch, but it was actually a liberal blogger.

The two talked for at least 20 minutes a conversation in which the governor described several potential ways to pressure Democrats to return to the Statehouse and revealed that his supporters had considered secretly planting people in pro-union protest crowds to stir up trouble.

The call also revealed Walker's cozy relationship with two billionaire brothers who have poured millions of dollars into conservative political causes, including Walker's campaign last year.

Walker compared his stand to that taken by President Ronald Reagan when he fired the nation's air-traffic controllers during a labor dispute in 1981.

"That was the first crack in the Berlin Wall and led to the fall of the Soviets," Walker said on the recording.

The audio was posted on the Buffalo Beast, a Web site in New York, and quickly went viral.

Editor Ian Murphy told The Associated Press he carried out the prank to show how candidly Walker would speak with Koch even though, according to Democrats, he refuses to return their calls.

AT ONE POINT during his conversation with Not Koch, the cheesehead-in-chief was sounding quite the revolutionary, in an aristocratic, send-in-the-Pinkerton-agents-to-bust-some-union-heads Andrew Carnegie kind of way:

On the call, Walker said he expected the anti-union movement to spread across the country and he had spoken with the governors of Ohio and Nevada. The man pretending to be Koch seemed to agree, telling Walker, "You're the first domino."

"Yep, this is our moment," Walker responded.

YEP, it's your moment, all right, governor. A great big "OOPS!" moment.

Enjoy.

The president's new clothes

So . . . the Obama Administration literally is taking the law into its own hands and decreeing heterosexual marriage, in effect, discriminatory.

Meanwhile, 6,000 years of civilization just texted to ask "WTF?" as America's cultural war just "kicked it up a notch."

Probably a big notch.

The details come in this report from NPR:

The decision announced Wednesday represents a big victory for gay rights activists.

Obama's Justice Department has been arguing to preserve the Defense of Marriage Act for two years in courts all over the nation. Government lawyers said they were acting out of a sense of legal precedent, not moral obligation.

Everything changed Wednesday when Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress that Obama had determined that the administration can no longer defend the federal law that defines marriage as only between a man and a woman.

"After careful consideration, including a review of my recommendation, the president has concluded that given a number of factors, including a documented history of discrimination, classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to a more heightened standard of scrutiny," Holder said in a statement released Wednesday.

At the White House, spokesman Jay Carney said Obama himself is still "grappling" with his personal view of gay marriage but has always personally opposed the Defense of Marriage Act as "unnecessary and unfair."

From now on, the Justice Department will no longer fight to support the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act in court. But the government will continue to enforce the law across the executive branch unless Congress repeals it or a federal judge throws it out.

I REALIZE I'm not a constitutional lawyer, and I don't play one on the Internet, but what the hell does the definition of marriage have to do with not throwing gays out of the military?

The definition of marriage predates not only the constitution of the United States but also western civilization itself, leading me to wonder whether this has more to do with the king's new clothes than civil rights and constitutional order.

As much as the nekkid-as-a-jaybird monarch wanted to believe he had a fine new outfit, it just wasn't so. There is a difference between delusion and reality -- one which "progressives" think they can wish away just as facilely as they do the normative definition of matrimony.

Legally, if the administration unilaterally decides that a law that has been on the books for 15 years -- one which it has been defending for all that time -- suddenly is constitutionally indefensible merely because times have changed and the law is slave to societal whimsy, shouldn't it, logically, be asking what other laws are invalid because they make distinctions based on gender or "conventional" notions about the right role of sexuality?

Shouldn't Holder's Justice Department be filing civil-rights lawsuits against every local jurisdiction that allows men to go topless but forbids women to? Shouldn't we be eliminating the legal tyranny of laws based on what may well be outdated concepts of "underage" sex?

And don't we owe fundamentalist Mormons and traditional Muslims a big apology and a legal free pass to marry however many women as they will?

THE ONLY WAY out of this, I fear, is just getting the state the hell out of the marriage business altogether. Give any two consenting adults a civil union if they want one, and leave marriage as a religious matter.

Barring any reassertion of authority by society's dwindling cadre of "grown-ups," America will not end well, though end it will.

Frankly, I don't know why Glenn Beck is all head up about the pending global takeover by the coming Islamic caliphate. If and when it arrives on our shores, I predict we'll be about ready to embrace a little order -- any kind of order -- to make the mayhem stop.

Well!

Here's a question that scares me, frankly: Is mine the last generation to "get" the cultural assumptions that underlie the hilariousness of all the Jack Benny gags in this four-decade-old episode of The Lucy Show?

2011 was a bad year for history education

Dear Louisiana T-shirt purveyors:

You might find it helpful to stick to tried-and-true subject matter for your sartorial creations. For example, LSU (spelled L-S-U) is always a winner. Likewise, you can't go wrong with "Geaux Tigers" (spelled L-S-U).

Also, gastronomic subject matter generally is safe. You know, gumbo, red beans and rice, jambalaya (spelled ???????) and "Suck da heads."

You might, however, wish to avoid more complex subject matter, such as politics, socioeconomics, religion (apart from WWJD, spelled W-W-J-D) and Louisiana or American history. For instance, take the T-shirt design above.

Can you spot what's wrong with that shirt?

Think Louisiana history class. Eighth grade. I'll wait while you look confused and then flail about on Google.

Oh, dammit to hell, here's a hint: The parishes north of Lake Pontchartrain and east of the Mississippi River are called the Florida Parishes for a reason. What is it?

Simply '70s: The day the music died

Back in 1976, the music really did die in Omaha.

That's when, on Sept. 2, just after midnight, the Federal Communications Commission ordered legendary Top-40 blowtorch KOIL off the air. As in canceled its license.

According to the commission, Star Stations owner Don Burden did very, very bad things. According to Burden and his employees, political and business enemies railroaded the Omaha radio tycoon.

Nevertheless, the flagship Star Station -- KOIL -- was toast after 51 years on the air. So was its sister FM station, KEFM. So were Top-40 giants in Portland (Vancouver, Wash.) and Indianapolis.

THE FEDERAL "death penalty" made news across the country. It was all over Broadcasting magazine (here and here) and the other trades.

And the Mighty 1290 was no more . . . for a while.

KOIL came back to the Omaha airwaves in December of '76, with a new owner. But never again was it truly mighty.

And soon enough, all that was left were the call letters, parked by corporate owners on another frequency, a robostation spitting out whatever the satellite and the automation dictates.

See, some things are worse than death.

Kids: The other endangered species

McDonogh 35 High will have to remain batty for a while longer.

The variety of bat infesting the New Orleans school, you see, is an endangered species. You can't harm a little bat hair on their little bat heads. And now, apparently, the "exterminators" have to . . . not do that.

Instead, they have to catch and release all the remaining bats. Meanwhile, the endangered kids inside McDonogh 35 have to hope they don't come down with bat-scratch fever. Or something.

NOW, don't get me wrong. I don't want to kill the little endangered winged mammals -- bats have their place in this world, albeit not inside somebody's kid's school.

On the other hand, wouldn't it be nice if our society placed the same emphasis on the health and well-being of its children as it does on that of a bat?

Apparently, we can move heaven and earth not to kill the winged love children of Grandpa Munster, but -- in Louisiana, at least -- no one can lift a finger to make sure kids have clean, well-maintained and bat-free public schools.

In the Gret Stet, among other places, you have to pay the "private-school tax" for that. That's because, when it comes right down to it, we don't give a bat's ass about our children -- or the future they represent.

MAYBE INSTEAD of worrying about the bats in McDonogh 35's belfry, the now-kinder and gentler "exterminators" ought to be trapping the McDonogh 35 student body . . . and safely releasing it far, far away from the Gret Stet of Loosiana.

It's too late. He's been assimilated.

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

Doesn't Joe Scarborough know that rational discussion is a communist plot? Doesn't he know that the future is all about heat, not light?

Doesn't he know that every Democrat, pinko, America-hatin', godless son of a bitch needs to be eradicated? And Carl Bernstein? WTF?!?

If that boy -- who, by the way, already is suspect for hanging around with the daughter of JIMMY FREAKIN' CARTER'S national-security adviser -- ain't careful, right-thinkin' folk are gonna start to say he's a socialist.

Uh oh.

Never mind, it's too late for ol' Pinko Joe.

Simply '70s: (Sp)AM America

Before ABC had Good Morning America to wake up its segment of the television audience, it had a little something called AM America.

And on this April 25 back in 1975, Saigon had been surrounded by the North Vietnamese army . . . and Stephanie Edwards wasn't faring too much better amid a Monty Python offensive in the ABC studios in New York.

The boys were plugging their new film, Monty Python and the Holy Grail as, no doubt, the American breakfast-time audience consumed "ham and jam and Spam a lot."

A school only Grandpa Munster could love

It was only a matter of time before the bat-s*** craziness of my home state extended to . . . bats. And s***.

In New Orleans, McDonogh 35 High School's flying-rodent problem has been well known for a while now. In fact, it made the TV news in January (above).

Plans were hatched (none of them, sadly, involving input from Grandpa Munster, who knows bats better than your average ghoul), and Orleans Parish School Board officials spoke earnestly about the school's winged dilemma.

On the television, doctors gravely noted that people can, like, catch stuff from being around bats -- and their droppings. Rabies, for one.

Of course, this wasn't deemed a problem, and district officials noted that a student was far more likely to die falling through a floor or when a ceiling caved in on him.

OK, Orleans school administrators didn't actually say that. It well could be true, but that's because the McDonogh 35's falling-down problem just might be worse than its bat-infestation problem.

Anyway, that was last month. Plans hatched. Anti-bat blitz promised. Students thought to be perfectly safe -- just so long as you didn't actually think about it.


NOW WE fast-forward to Friday's TV news.

It seems students are protesting outside the school and are refusing to go inside. Now, why might that be? Guess.

Actually, WWL television didn't have to. Let's go to the videotape . . . and the Channel 4 story below:

Students at McDonogh 35 High School refused to go to class early Friday morning, saying they are fed up with problems at the school, specifically bats in the building.

Students and parents say there have been bats inside the school for months and they've begged the principal to do something about it with no results, so Friday students stood outside the building demanding action.

Outstide the school students chanted, “No more bats, no more bats.”

Organized and determined, these high school students said enough's enough. They were teaching the first lesson Friday morning, and it was the right to protest. They say the school building is old and falling apart, and they've been living with that but say now its infested with bats and they can't learn.

“When I walked out the class and turned the corner,” said student Tatiyana Nodoselski, “I saw a white bat and it was coming toward me. It was in my face and I forgot the wall was behind me, and I ran, and it forced me into the wall. I just panicked.”

Parents share the frustration and stood alongside their kids demanding something be done immediately.

"The only thing we want to do is protect our children, this right here is our future and if they dont' care about it, we care about it," said Gail Greathouse, a parent.

Orleans Parish School Superintendent Darryl Kilbert said bats are common problem in older buildings in blighted neighborhoods. He said they will close the third floor of building, at least through Mardi Gras, to let pest remediation continue.

IF YOU'RE shocked, you must not be from Louisiana.

What is shocking, though, is that parents and students cared enough to actually raise hell. That may be a first.

Obviously, all that flappin', swooping and screeching must have driven them, uh . . . batty.

3 Chords & the Truth: The war on suck

DEATH TO SUCK!

Join the revolution.

Claim the power.

Stand up for your rights. And stand with 3 Chords & the Truth in the revolt against suckage.

No longer will we tolerate sucky music (as if we ever did here). No longer will we tolerate those who tolerate sucky music.

We will take to the streets, and we will raise our digital players high, and will will crank the Big Show the hell up. And a world o' suck will not be able to withstand it.

REMEMBER, you are the musical change you have been waiting for. Don't suck, and don't mess around with them what do.

Music for the people!

Down with suck!

Long live the revolution!

Death to the suck mongers!

The eclectic, united, will never be defeated!

Musical diversity now!

End cultural hegemony of the corporate reactionaries!

IT'S 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Another grown-up exits the scene

Now it's Bill Monroe who has passed from this mortal coil, another media grown-up who hasn't been -- and can't be -- replaced.

Monroe died Thursday at age 90, leaving behind a legacy as the first news director of Channel 6 in New Orleans, and as Washington bureau chief and moderator of Meet the Press for NBC television.

The Times-Picayune's obituary tells the story of a career defined by integrity . . . and guts:

In 1950, The New Orleans Item, one of the city's two afternoon papers, hired him as an editorial writer. Mr. Monroe had had print experience as a New Orleans reporter for the United Press wire service before he went to war.

Four years later, when WDSU was looking for a news director, Mr. Monroe applied for the job -- and landed it. When he joined the NBC affiliate, it was six years old.

The news staff amounted to "three or four people who just read the news," he said in a 1998 interview. "Early television reporters were converted from newspaper reporters."

Mr. Monroe hired a fleet of seasoned journalists, including the reporters Alec Gifford, Ed Planer and Bill Slatter, and the photographers Mike Lala and Jim Tolhurst.

By that time, the station had already made a name for itself in 1951, when it covered U.S. Sen. Estes Kefauver's organized-crime hearings in New Orleans. Five years later, after Earl K. Long was re-elected governor, Mr. Monroe sent Gifford and Lala to Baton Rouge to show what he felt would be an interesting legislative session.

This was long before open-meetings laws, but nobody said anything, Mr. Monroe said in the interview, because everyone seemed to believe that someone had given them permission.

"We were there a week and a half before we were challenged," he said.

Long tried to have them removed, but the New Orleans delegation resisted because they had become stars.

"That experiment "put people in touch with the Legislature in a way they hadn't seen before," Mr. Monroe said in the interview. "The Legislature came alive. We got more letters for that than any other thing we did."

During that period, the station started airing editorials that Mr. Monroe wrote and delivered. The station stirred up controversy when it called for calm during the civil-rights period, when New Orleans' public schools were facing desegregation.

There were about 50 editorials related to the civil-rights movement, Mr. Monroe said.

The station's call for calm "appealed to the common sense of a lot of people in New Orleans," he said, "but that mild message, in the context of the times generated a bit of hatred toward the station."

Mr. Monroe said he received death threats, and advertisers threatened the station with financial ruin if it didn't back off. But station owner Edgar Stern Jr. stood firm.

For the editorials, WDSU won a Peabody Award, broadcasting's most hallowed honor, and a national award from the Radio and Television News Directors Association.

A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT: First, picture a television station running regular editorials, thoughtfully delivered. In many markets -- despite the death of the "Fairness Doctrine" decades ago -- that's difficult enough right there.

Then picture a news director adamantly advocating for a wildly unpopular position . . . just because it's the right and responsible thing to do. Picture him doing this some half a hundred times over the course of a year or so, despite hate mail and death threats.

Now picture the station's (most likely) corporate owner stand behind the station's wildly unpopular editorial stance despite advertisers' threats of an economic Armageddon.

I lost you a step or two ago, didn't I?

That's because the grown-ups have left the building. The loss is all ours.

What were we talking about, again?

My life, in song.

And hey . . . uh . . . uh . . . uh . . . podna, why did I walk into this room, again?