Our top story tonight. . . .

"Mark has a little wiener. Have you ever dressed the wiener up?"

In other words . . . this probably ain't safe for work, even though it all was on the air. Enjoy.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes. Turn and face the strain.

It started out amazingly temperate for a late December day here in Omaha. We're talking upper 50s for a high.

It was 61 yesterday.  

And then this evening, the cold front. The wind is blowing hard; the temperature is falling fast. The optimistic forecast for Sunday is 13 for a high.
 
The one I believe says 10.

Anyway, I ventured out to play chicken with the Polar Express a bit ago, playing with my new Nikon digital SLR camera. I thought these pictures looked rather like the kind of night it's shaping up to be.  

I just may have to throw another log on the fire . . . and we don't even have a fireplace.

Jesusland 1, Anti-H8 Brigade 0

Well, it certainly didn't take long for A&E to quack . . . er, crack. 

"Tolerance" is one thing in television. Money is another, and in this case money won. A&E execs could see the network losing a lot of it if Duck Dynasty went away.

"After discussions with the Robertson family, as well as consulting with numerous advocacy groups, A&E has decided to resume filming Duck Dynasty later this spring with the entire Robertson family," the channel said in a statement. 

In an apparent gesture to the advocacy groups, A&E said that it would "also use this moment" to broadcast public service announcements "promoting unity, tolerance and acceptance among all people."

EXPECT THE Forces of Tolerance (TM) to pitch another fit. Because that's what we do in this country.

A Christmas Hallelujah

3 Chords & the Truth: It's a party!

I'm just gonna say it. I'm just gonna put it out there . . . the heck with modesty.

This year's yuletide edition of 3 Chords & the Truth is the most fun you can have at a Christmas party without bare butts and photocopiers being in the mix.

And the Big Show is a party -- every week, yes, but especially for every year's Christmas edition. This year is no exception. Great music, great times, great program.

By the way, don't ask about the big smudge on the office Xerox machine. Trust me on this one.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Alo-ho-ho-ho-ha.

And have yourself a merry little Christmas now.

Baby, it's cold outside

I really can't stay. . . .
But baby it's cold outside
I've got to go away. . . .
But baby it's cold outside
This evening has been. . . .
Been hoping that you'd drop in
So very nice. . . .
I'll hold your hands they're just like ice
My mother will start to worry. . . .
Beautiful, what's your hurry?
And father will be pacing the floor. . . .
Listen to the fireplace roar
So really I'd better scurry. . . .
Beautiful please don't hurry
Well maybe just a half a drink more. . . .
Put some records on while I pour
The neighbors might think. . . .
Baby it's bad out there
Say what's in this drink. . . .
No cabs to be had out there
I wish I knew how. . . .
Your eyes are like starlight now
To break this spell. . . .
I'll take your hat, your hair looks swell
I ought to say no no no sir. . . .
Mind if I move in closer
At least I'm going to say that I tried. . . .
What's the sense of hurtin' my pride
I really can't stay. . . .
Baby don't hold out . . . baby it's cold outside
. . . ah, but it's cold outside!

-- Frank Loesser

Ol' Phil from Jesusland

 

Nuance is dead.

Hyperbole is alive.

Willfully reading the worst into every word out of every mouth, then demonizing The Other for "hate speech" is a growth industry for which there is no apparent ceiling.

OK, so Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty notoriety ain't down with the gay agenda. Considering that he's a 67-year-old evangelical Christian from north Louisiana, that should be no surprise. 

Given that the A&E cable network is raking in record earnings based on the proposition that the hirsute, duck-call-making Robertson clan is a postmodern version of the Beverly Hillbillies -- minus the Beverly Hills part -- and do wacky things because they're wacky rednecks, it beggars credulity that the TV execs are shocked and offended that ol' Phil gave an interview that sounded like something you'd expect from Ol' Phil from Bumf***, Louisiana. For example:

“We’re Bible-thumpers who just happened to end up on television,” he tells me. “You put in your article that the Robertson family really believes strongly that if the human race loved each other and they loved God, we would just be better off. We ought to just be repentant, turn to God, and let’s get on with it, and everything will turn around.”

(snip)

“Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men,” he says. Then he paraphrases Corinthians: “Don’t be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers—they won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t deceive yourself. It’s not right.”

I GUESS some things are too real for "reality" TV. Probably a good quarter of the United States' population is too "real" for TV, actually.

Two things are absolutely true today. First, we are a nation divided and at each other's throats. Second, what a person says is way more important than what a person does, and the muddled things we think -- or haven't thought out, exactly -- will get us written out of polite humanity, regardless of how we actually live our lives or treat our fellow man.

Amid the never-ending tribal warfare that passes for American society today, Phil Robertson made the fatal error of sounding weird in saying something politically incorrect. The man A&E made famous for being a "good ol' boy" -- a rich good ol' boy, but a good ol' boy nevertheless --  has been made a non-person for living out his typecasting.

And 25 percent of Americans just got the message, loud and clear. Throw another stick of dynamite on the fire, wouldja?

One thing I appreciate about being Catholic is that Catholicism knows the value of nuance when it comes to things like homosexuality. In other words, we try to make it clear that the person is not the sin, and the condition is not the sin. Only the sin is the sin -- it's what we do that can become problematic, not what we are or who we are.

OR . . . as the Catechism of the Catholic Church says about homosexuality:

2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,141 tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered."142 They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.

I WISH Robertson had the moral, cultural and religious vocabulary to have been a lot more nuanced about this matter. And not flippantly gross. (You'll know it when you read it in the GQ piece.)

Saying the right thing the right way probably wouldn't have kept GLAAD's indignant harpies at bay, and it might not have even kept Ol' Phil in the good graces of Hollywood, Inc. It, however, would have been more faithful to the biblical truth Robertson seeks to proclaim -- and added just a little clear water to the muck of another culture-war fever swamp.

*  *  *

THEN, OF COURSE, there's what Ol' Phil from Bumf***, La., had to say about race. Which, again, is utterly unsurprising. Which means the man is completely clueless, and perhaps morally obtuse.

As others have said, he's lucky the gays have made such a stink because it's taking attention away from this:

“I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across the field.... They’re singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’—not a word!... Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.”

OH, GOD . . .  the Happy Negroes live on in Southern lore. This ain't religious; this is the staying power of a disordered and deviant culture. This is how one is formed by that rotten culture, and formed to the point where the deviant looks completely normal.

Where vice looks like virtue. Where empathy not only fails, but moral blindness prevails.

And it's just ignorant.

Well, we at least can say Phil Robertson deserves a good shunning because of that, right? Well . . . hold on there, Hoss. There's this:

Willie has just come back from Washington, D.C., where he accepted an award at the Angels in Adoption Gala. (He and his wife, Korie, adopted a biracial child named Will and are dedicated advocates of the practice.) As we speak, there’s a film crew outside the house, prepping for a State Farm ad that the family will be shooting here on the property tomorrow. The Robertsons receive more than 500 media requests a day, and Willie had to negotiate down to four shooting days a week with A&E just so the family would have a bit of breathing room. Phil knows it won’t last. He can already see that the end is near, and he’s prepared for it.

MR. IGNORANT REDNECK managed to raise a son who adopted a biracial child. He raised a son who tirelessly advocates adopting biracial children.

I'd say it would be reasonable to assume Phil Robertson loves that half-black grandbaby with all his heart. No matter what crazy s*** he said for the benefit of a magazine writer. Meantime:

“So you and your woman: Are y’all Bible people?”

Not really, I’m sorry to say.

“If you simply put your faith in Jesus coming down in flesh, through a human being, God becoming flesh living on the earth, dying on the cross for the sins of the world, being buried, and being raised from the dead—yours and mine and everybody else’s problems will be solved. And the next time we see you, we will say: ‘You are now a brother. Our brother.’ So then we look at you totally different then. See what I’m saying?”

I think so?

We hop back in the ATV and plow toward the sunset, back to the Robertson home. There will be no family dinner tonight. No cameras in the house. No rowdy squirrel-hunting stories from back in the day. There will be only the realest version of Phil Robertson, hosting a private Bible study with a woman who, according to him, “has been on cocaine for years and is making her decision to repent. I’m going to point her in the right direction.”

OBVIOUSLY, we're dealing with a horrible person here. Absolutely irredeemable. Mandatorily ostracizable.

Life isn't always logical, and neither are the people who live it. A lot of times, the heart is a lot smarter than the brain, and our actions are a lot nobler than our words. God forbid that the total of our human worth should be less than the sum of our all-too-human faults.

Not that that matters anymore. Not here, not now.

Crucify him!

Deck the halls with ginned-up outrage

If somebody had to say it, chances are that Jon Stewart just did.

"Uff course Kris Kringle iss vhite!"

A Festivus pole made out of beer cans at the Florida state capitol? That I find hilarious.

Fox News cynically using the commemoration of the Savior's birth to manufacture outrage, ill will and hatred of one's fellow man? That is as truly disturbing as it is completely predictable.

The TV gathering spot for pissed-off people on the political right might have "news" as part of its name, but it seems to have a lot more in common with Joseph Goebbels than it does with Edward R. Murrow.

The cynicism on display by Fox News regarding "the war on Christmas" is astounding, coming as it is from people casually cashing in on the sacred as they appeal to the worst demons of their viewership.

3 Chords & the Truth: Hat trick

 
Fedoras: Is there anything they can't do?

If you could boil down the latest edition of 3 Chords & the Truth to a single, pithy sentence, that might be it. And right about . . . now . . . you're saying "HUH?"

Let's just say that on the Big Show this week, there's a lot of stuff dating to back when men wore hats. Hell, there's even a song on the program about "When Everyone Wore Hats." Music sure was good when hats were way cool.

Speaking of way cool, French pop music from the '50s and '60s may have been equaled from time to time, but never bested. Yeah, we have some of that this week, too.

Just listen to the gol dang show, will 'ya? In your heart, you know I'm right.

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

What kind of world would it be sans la France?

    There is no more after
In Saint-Germain-des-Prés  No more day after tomorrow
No more afternoon
There is nothing but today

When we meet

In Saint-Germain-des-Prés

There is no more you

There is no more me

There is no more yesterday

The unimportance of being earnest

 

The Pillsbury Doughmagogue strikes again.

Let me explain Gov. Dave Heineman's latest smoove move as Nebraska's chief executive: It's as if Poppin' Fresh had appointed the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man to the Confectioners Council a few years after the big guy got busted for spreading malicious lies about Mrs. Smith. And after he never got around to paying his fines for an unfortunate 1984 incident in Manhattan.

Of course, the press learns of the whole deal, and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man abruptly withdraws, saying his dad had just been turned into a s'more. And Poppin' Fresh is left without even a hardy "Hoo hoo!" for curious reporters.

What the doughboy can't say is this, because it is true: "Who cares if the dude stinks up the kitchen? He's my kind of culinary hack!"

Or something like that.

I THINK you'll find my analogy reasonably close as you read about how terribly hard it is to be a D'oh!-magogue in a world where the press occasionally pays attention:

Shannon

Bellevue businessman Patrick Shannon said Monday the governor knew about Shannon's state fines for campaign violations before appointing him last week to the Nebraska Legislature.

Shannon withdrew Friday several hours after questions surfaced about an anonymous smear campaign he orchestrated against an opponent in a 2004 legislative race. Shannon cited a family medical emergency as the reason for his withdrawal.

Gov. Dave Heineman declined to say Monday morning whether he knew about the $16,000 in state ethics fines levied against Shannon before appointing him to the vacant District 3 legislative seat.

Heineman: D'oh!

“He's withdrawn, and we're in the process of finding a new senator to appoint to District 3,” Heineman said. “That's the most important priority.”

Later Monday, The World-Herald contacted Shannon at his Bellevue tax and accounting business.

Shannon said the vetting process for the appointment lasted about three weeks. It included a private, in-person interview with Heineman that lasted about 40 minutes and “one or two” follow-up phone conversations with the governor.

Shannon said during the in-person interview that Heineman questioned him about the $16,000 in fines.

“He told me he knew (about the fines) and asked what did I learn from it,” Shannon said.

Shannon sent an email to the governor's office Friday, stating he couldn't fill the seat because his father had “just suffered a heart attack” in Oklahoma and it would be necessary for him to help provide care for his mother.

In an interview Monday from his Bellevue office, Shannon said the heart attack was mild and his father had been dismissed from an Oklahoma hospital and was recovering at home.

OBVIOUSLY, what Shannon learned from the ethics fines was that if you don't pay them, nobody notices . . . or cares. What he also learned is that the governor doesn't care if his appointments stink up the unicameral, just so long as it smells like Republican hackery.

What I love about Nebraska -- and what has been its saving grace since Boss Dennison's fall from power in Omaha -- is that Nebraska pols are just so bad at this stuff. Would that all politicians were so utterly incompetent at all the right things.

December dog sense

It's 10 degrees in Omaha right now, the ground is covered with snow, it's rather hazy and the wind chill is 1 below zero.

LONG STORY short, I think Molly the Dog has the right idea here.

Alas, I disturbed Her Royal Hunkered-In Highness, who no doubt wants Pop to go away -- and to take the annoying, clicking Rectangle of Death with him.

Her wish, etc., etc.

As you were, Mollster.

Sequester, bane of man's inspiring

You can look at this video of a glorious flash mob by the The United States Air Force Band a couple of ways.

First, the pop-up Christmas concert at the National Air and Space Museum was a glorious thing -- an unexpected musical encounter with beauty and joy. If this version of Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" doesn't move your heart, you may not have one.

Second, The USAF Band has been reduced to staging flash mobs. Thank your local member of Congress for that. It's too bad ol' Johann Sebastian never wrote a little something called the "Sequester Blues."

Ironically, it's those same trolls who befoul the U.S. Capitol who are most likely to see a performance of this scale by a military band. In the federal universe, Washington, D.C., is the center of gravity -- or, if you like, the black hole that sucks everything toward itself.

Still, even in Washington, a military orchestra has to resort to a flash mob. The sequester forbids the armed services from spending any of its own money on promotional or "community-outreach" events. This means that if you're a fan of service bands, you're seriously out of luck out here in the provinces.

Last year's Heartland of America Band concert

IN OMAHA, the annual holiday concert by the Air Force's Heartland of America Band, based at Offutt Air Force Base here, used to be a glorious thing. For us and our friends, it was a Christmas tradition. In recent years, budget cuts shrank . . . and shrank . . . and shrank the band. This year, the sequester killed the Christmas concert.

A 26-year tradition of downtown Omaha holiday concerts by the Air Force's Heartland of America Band will end this year, a victim of federal budget cuts.

The Omaha World-Herald had sponsored the popular series each year since 1987, giving away free tickets to readers who sent in coupons clipped from the newspaper.

But the rules of the budget sequestration forbid the service branches from spending any money on promotional or community outreach events. It's the same rule that has grounded the Navy Blue Angels and Air Force Thunderbirds precision-flight teams and canceled a summer air show at Offutt Air Force Base.

“We're sad that this tradition is coming to an end. I think the Heartland of America Band is sad, too,” said Joel Long, The World-Herald's communications director. “But with the current state of the sequester and financial constraints, there was no other choice.”

In place of the downtown concerts — held since 2005 at the Holland Performing Arts Center — a much smaller band will play a series of community holiday concerts at local high schools, said Doug Roe, the band's director of operations. Suburban Newspapers Inc., a World-Herald subsidiary, will underwrite concerts Dec. 14 in Bellevue, Dec. 15 in Gretna, and Dec. 20 and 21 in Papillion. The Opinion-Tribune newspaper will sponsor a concert Dec. 8 in Glenwood, Iowa.

“These high school auditoriums aren't the Holland Performing Arts Center,” Roe said. “But through the medium of music, we're still going to entertain.”

Military bands in America date back to the colonial era, a time when commanders sometimes used music to guide troops in battle. Bands always have played at funerals, promotions, command changes and military balls.

In the modern era, their public concerts also are a public relations tool — and for many civilians, their only direct contact with the armed forces.

“For that hour and a half we're on stage, we ARE the Air Force, we ARE the military,” Roe said.

But budget cuts have battered military bands generally in recent years, and the Heartland of America Band in particular.

In 2011, Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., persuaded her House colleagues to slash the Pentagon's music budget from $388 million to $200 million a year.

“Spending $388 million of the taxpayers' money on military music does not make our nation more secure,” McCollum said in a message posted last year on her House website. “It is excessive and a luxury the Pentagon can no longer afford.”

That prompted the Air Force to cut 103 band positions across the service, eliminating two of the 12 active-duty bands and sharply cutting two others, including the Heartland of America Band.

As recently as 2007, the Heartland Band featured 60 airmen. That was cut to 45 in an earlier round of budget cuts, and then to 16 in June. The eight-state region it used to cover — stretching from Montana to Iowa, and North Dakota to Kansas — was cut to a single state, Nebraska, plus a few nearby counties in Iowa.

WE INHABIT a nation whose leaders have plenty of money for financing foreign fights and entangling the American people in pointless wars of choice. We endure a government that can find a billion or three -- or 500 -- for Wall Street interests, yet the Heartland of America Band can't even field a decent flash mob anymore.

But because "government spends too much," we haven't a red cent for music. For joy. Or for lots of other things that build America and Americans up, as opposed to tearing some other country down.

I would imagine Bach -- not to mention Jesu, of joy of man's desiring fame -- might take a dim view of that, and of the barbarians we have become.

Only if your Christmas tree is a pussy willow

As I find myself often thinking the older I get . . . I picked the wrong day to quit smoking crack, snorting meth, drinking Everclear and sniffing glue.

On the other hand, there is neither enough booze nor are there enough illegal substances in the world to get this image out of my mind. Neither will there be enough to kill the section of your brain where the picture of this hideous thing now resides. Sorry about that.

On the third hand, why should I be alone in my torment? I hate being alone in my torment.

One thing I learned from this Etsy.com page, though, is that there are, per capita, just as many disturbed individuals in Canada as there are here in the United States. I blame our disturbed, shallow and hypersexualized common Western culture.

SOMETIME between the time I was born 52 years ago and now, our genitals (and what we do with them) became no mere fraction of who we are. Instead, who we are has come to be defined by our genitalia and what we choose to do with them. That's not only ass-backward, but just wrong -- as in utterly depraved.

Once upon a time, we put stars, candy canes, popcorn strings and shiny glass ornaments on our Christmas trees, which we regarded as a symbol of new life in the bleak midwinter. Now we put "Were vulva Dead Zombie" ornaments on them. How fitting, considering.

I eagerly await the advent -- not -- of the "Syphilitic Oozing Penis" yuletide ornaments, which should be arriving . . . wait, let me go check Etsy.

How low can we go?  Obviously, somewhere just below the waistline.

Lord have mercy. But I won't blame Him if He doesn't.

I second that emotion (No, not Pelini's)

I've been an LSU fan for as long as I can remember. I've been a Nebraska fan for more than 30 years.

My allegiance to both schools is unquestioned, and the only time I'm not bleeding purple and gold is when I'm bleeding scarlet and cream. I mean, I married a Nebraska grad. We were engaged at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln . . . at Husker football picture day.

'Nuff said.

There's only one thing about this Nebraska-fan thing. Now we're in the Big Ten. We're supposed to hate our "rival," Iowa. Yet I'm finding myself in the amen corner of . . . a Hawkeye football blogger, Adam Jacobi.

When the dude is right, the dude is right. And Jacobi nails it here on Black Heart, Gold Pants:

Then there's the remarkable stay of execution Bo Pelini got from AD Shawn Eichorst. The consensus, myself included, was that Peiini had coached his last game in Lincoln by the time the smoke cleared from his press conference. His team played terribly, he swiped his hat at a referee's face, he sniped at a sideline reporter at the half and he called an admittedly sketchy penalty "chicken shit" and dared his boss to fire him.

Eichorst did no such thing, instead publicly casting his support for his hot-tempered head coach. It's eminently possible that if Nebraska biffs its bowl game, the brass takes a renewed look around and sees a five-loss team with the most high-maintenance coach in the Big Ten (if not the nation) and decides it's not worth it. Rich Rodriguez's team laid down in its Gator Bowl appearance and Michigan axed him for it, so it's plausible. But it wouldn't make much sense, since if Eichorst wants to fire him, he could have done it right now without a problem.

Either way, Pelini's just been done the most impressive favor we've seen from an athletic director in quite some time, and if this quiets the hounds in Lincoln for a while so be it. Coaches get fired too often in this zero-sum game anyway. It's just, I've never seen a man so ready to be fired. It's amazing he didn't throw the microphones at the presser back at the reporters.

I'd be so sick of that crap if he were my school's head coach. I don't know how Nebraska fans even tolerate it. I know he's not like this every week (or really at all since 2010) but that's just embarrassing behavior from someone who's supposed to be one of the faces of a major university.

YES, yes, a million times yes! And there lies the rub.

Most Husker fans -- beaten down by a decade of incompetence and burned by then-AD Steve Pederson's firing of a 9-3 coach, Frank Solich, and his ushering in of the disastrous Bill Callahan reign of gridiron error -- will forgive Pelini anything short of first-degree murder or the forcible rape of Herbie Husker. Some even think his Incredible Hulk shtick is somehow admirable, because "he's passionate."

Well, Woody Hayes was "passionate" when he punched a Clemson linebacker, Charlie Bauman, toward the end of the 1978 Gator Bowl. He also was a hell of a lot better head coach than Bo Pelini.


PELINI'S ANTICS during and after Friday's Nebraska-Iowa "Heroes Game" was just half a psychotic break short of what got the Woodster, the Buckeyes' greatest coach ever, canned the very next day after 28 years at Ohio State and five national championships. I guess Bo just wasn't "passionate" enough, alas.





AFTER BEING half an inch from being taken off the field in handcuffs, Pelini then dared his boss to can him. Wow.

And then . . . and then . . . in one of the most stunning examples of cheap grace ever, he didn't get fired. Double wow. 

Then again, I guess a press release offering a cheap apology is all you need to get cheap grace -- particularly when it would cost a not-so-cheap $7.6 million to buy out the "penitent's" contract. Note to Husker AD Shawn Eichorst: Put your lawyer pants on and tweak the "for cause" language in all future contracts.

I don't think it's too much of a stretch to predict that Pelini's cheap grace from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln will pay a dividend of more cheap displays from Mr. Accountability and more costly public-relations black eyes for a school and an entire state.

Yeah, Husker fans love them some "passion." Let's hope they don't get thrown by that wild horse.

If they -- if we -- do, better change the Nebraska fight song to Warren Zevon's "Lawyers, Guns and Money." Because the chickenshit will have just hit the fan.

Videos of the year: The SEC edition

1) There was a 109-yard runback in a Big Ten game once. I think it involved a bad batch of bratwurst and a distant restroom at Camp Randall Stadium.

2) SEC, baby! SEC!

3) "Rammer jammer, yellow hammer, go to hell, Alabama!"

4) You have to begrudgingly hand it to Nick Saban for his professionalism and good sportsmanship. If that had been Nebraska's Bo Pelini instead of the Alabama coach on the wrong end of that wild finish, right now we'd be rearguing the whole deal about "Should crazy people be allowed to have automatic weapons . . . even if they make $3 million a year and we say 'passionate guy' instead of 'psychotic break'?"
 

Götterdämmerung für Redaktion

Obviously, there must be too many damn Germans in the Omaha World-Herald newsroom -- two-word proper nouns magically become one-word ones.

In America, we have "cold fronts." At the World-Herald, they have "coldfronts." In Germany, I have no idea what "Redaktion" do at Der Daily Blabben.

But I do have an idea that somebody's getting paid good money for making their employer look like the home of grammatical (insert your own one-word compound noun here).

Yeah, I know it sounds petty. But I'm just kinda, sorta tired of people just not doing their damn jobs, and seemingly not giving a rip about that.

3 Chords & the Truth: Save the last wing for me

Happy . . . Thanks . . . giving . . . from . . . W . . . K . . . R . . . P!

Or 3 Chords & the Truth. Whatever.

And as God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.

And as God is my witness, when the fambly starts to bug the crud out of you this long weekend, you will have a place to escape and chill with some fine music.

That place would be the Big Show. Naturally.

Just stay the hell out of the parking lot when you make your musical escape. The gobblers are hitting the pavement like sacks of wet cement. Oh, the humanity!

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

A speech ungiven in a language unlearned

Here's some of the beginning and then the conclusion of the speech John F. Kennedy never lived long enough to give at the Dallas Trade Mart that horrible day in November 1963.

It was written in a language little understood and, sadly, no longer spoken in the United States:

This link between leadership and learning is not only essential at the community level. It is even more indispensable in world affairs. Ignorance and misinformation can handicap the progress of a city or a company, but they can, if allowed to prevail in foreign policy, handicap this country's security. In a world of complex and continuing problems, in a world full of frustrations and irritations, America's leadership must be guided by the lights of learning and reason -- or else those who confuse rhetoric with reality and the plausible with the possible will gain the popular ascendancy with their seemingly swift and simple solutions to every world problem.

There will always be dissident voices heard in the land, expressing opposition without alternative, finding fault but never favor, perceiving gloom on every side and seeking influence without responsibility. Those voices are inevitable.

But today other voices are heard in the land -- voices preaching doctrines wholly unrelated to reality, wholly unsuited to the sixties, doctrines which apparently assume that words will suffice without weapons, that vituperation is as good as victory and that peace is a sign of weakness. At a time when the national debt is steadily being reduced in terms of its burden on our economy, they see that debt as the single greatest threat to our security. At a time when we are steadily reducing the number of Federal employees serving every thousand citizens, they fear those supposed hordes of civil servants far more than the actual hordes of opposing armies.

We cannot expect that everyone, to use the phrase of a decade ago, will "talk sense to the American people." But we can hope that fewer people will listen to nonsense. And the notion that this Nation is headed for defeat through deficit, or that strength is but a matter of slogans, is nothing but just plain nonsense.

(snip)

Finally, it should be clear by now that a nation can be no stronger abroad than she is at home. Only an America which practices what it preaches about equal rights and social justice will be respected by those whose choice affects our future. Only an America which has fully educated its citizens is fully capable of tackling the complex problems and perceiving the hidden dangers of the world in which we live. And only an America which is growing and prospering economically can sustain the worldwide defenses of freedom, while demonstrating to all concerned the opportunities of our system and society.

It is clear, therefore, that we are strengthening our security as well as our economy by our recent record increases in national income and output -- by surging ahead of most of Western Europe in the rate of business expansion and the margin of corporate profits, by maintaining a more stable level of prices than almost any of our overseas competitors, and by cutting personal and corporate income taxes by some $11 billion, as I have proposed, to assure this Nation of the longest and strongest expansion in our peacetime economic history.

This Nation's total output -which 3 years ago was at the $500 billion mark -- will soon pass $600 billion, for a record rise of over $100 billion in 3 years. For the first time in history we have 70 million men and women at work. For the first time in history average factory earnings have exceeded $100 a week. For the first time in history corporation profits after taxes -- which have risen 43 percent in less than 3 years -- have an annual level of $27.4 billion.

My friends and fellow citizens: I cite these facts and figures to make it clear that America today is stronger than ever before. Our adversaries have not abandoned their ambitions, our dangers have not diminished, our vigilance cannot be relaxed. But now we have the military, the scientific, and the economic strength to do whatever must be done for the preservation and promotion of freedom.

The strength will never be used in pursuit of aggressive ambitions -- it will always be used in pursuit of peace. It will never be used to promote provocations -- it will always be used to promote the peaceful settlement of disputes.

We, in this country, in this generation, are -- by destiny rather than by choice -- the watchmen on the walls of world freedom. We ask, therefore, that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility, that we may exercise our strength with wisdom and restraint, and that we may achieve in our time and for all time the ancient vision of "peace on earth, good will toward men." That must always be our goal, and the righteousness of our cause must always underlie our strength. For as was written long ago: "except the Lord keep the city, the watchmen waketh but in vain."

5 Decades & the Truth

A funny thing happened on the way to this week's episode of 3 Chords & the Truth.

About half past noon this afternoon, I turned on the CBS News web stream of its coverage from Nov. 22, 1963 -- that day. Uncut, real time, starting at the moment of the first bulletin that shots had been fired at the president's motorcade in Dallas.

Within an hour -- live on TV -- America was forever changed. Over the next three days, television news grew up, making up how to cover the unthinkable, live and non-stop . . . as it covered the unthinkable, live and non-stop.

It did so, by today's technical standards, primitively and without formatic bells or whistles. Television also did so powerfully and occasionally artistically -- and without a surfeit of hairspray.

OF COURSE, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was a powerful blow to a country -- to a people. The death of our young president and the images of his grief-stricken widow -- as well as television's reflection of our own grief -- hardly could fail to affect. Powerfully.

Let me put it this way. When President Kennedy fell victim to Lee Harvey Oswald's deadly aim, I was four months shy of my third birthday. I have memories of that day.

The sense of overwhelming sadness and loss endure after five decades. It comes storming out of the mists of time, as raw and fresh as yesterday. And it wasn't just the loss of what was; it was the loss of what might have been.
 
Too, maybe it was the loss of what might not have been. We are a greatly changed people from what we were Nov. 21, 1963. In some ways, that is a good thing. In more ways, I fear, that has been a bad thing.

We are a more cynical people since that day.

Great tragedy, should you survive it, can make you stronger. The aphorism to that effect did not come from nowhere.

Great tragedy, however, is just as likely to break you, too. That is a proven fact. Fifty years ago, I think, we were broken -- at least partly. I am 52, and I have lived my life watching the wheels come off a society. Not uniformly, but enough.

I've unfortunately done my part to make that so, Lord knows.

THAT'S WHAT is washing over my mind and through my soul as I find myself unable to pull myself away from CBS-TV, circa 1963. When Walter Cronkite once again -- through the time machine of videotape -- read the flash from Dallas confirming the death of the 35th president of the United States, I reflexively crossed myself.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In retrospect, that's not a bad reaction, even half a century hence. In that spirit, this sad anniversary isn't the time for jazz, rock 'n' roll or even blues in the night. That's what happened today on the way to the Big Show -- there won't be one. It just didn't feel right.

Stay tuned for a few days for a pre-Thanksgiving edition of 3 Chords & the Truth.

God bless us, every one.