NOAH's lark lands on mountain o' cash

The Times-Picayune has a couple of tales of your tax money "at work" in New Orleans.

TALE NO. 1:

Doris Grandpre knows exactly who gutted her 7th Ward house last year, then helped her start rebuilding the single shotgun where she lived for three decades before Hurricane Katrina.

"There was David. You got Christopher. Then there was Jason. Oh, and Simon," Grandpre, 76, said this week, recalling the student volunteers who came from Boston and Seattle to tear out her plaster walls and save the few precious items the flood did not destroy.

"I call them my little angels," she said.

It appears, however, that another crew has taken credit for demolition work at Grandpre's house. City records show that Hall & Hall Enterprises, the highest-paid contractor in Mayor Ray Nagin's home remediation program, billed the city $7,830 for gutting and boarding up the house and cutting the grass at the St. Anthony Street property.

The house is one of at least seven addresses that appear on two lists detailing post-storm remediation. One list belongs to the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana's Office of Disaster Response, which organized volunteers from across the country to come to New Orleans and provide free home remediation services, such as gutting and boarding up homes, to residents in need of help.

Those same addresses appear on a list produced by the nonprofit New Orleans Affordable Homeownership Corp., which oversaw a remediation program that contractors billed a total of $1.8 million.

The homeownership corporation, also known as NOAH, billed taxpayers more than $25,000 for work at those addresses.

Grandpre, a retired nursing aide at Charity Hospital, said Wednesday that she has no idea how her address got on NOAH's gutting list. Since January 2007, she has lived in a Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer in her side yard, and no city contractor has ever stopped by.

"A group of kids took the stuff out," she said. "The only people who helped me was people from outside the city."

The duplicate entries on the NOAH and church lists raise more questions about the management of a short-lived city program designed to help elderly and poor residents along the road to recovery. A city official said last week that, to his knowledge, NOAH had paid out all of the $1.8 million to its subcontractors.

In light of the scrutiny, NOAH's board of directors suspended the organization's business last week and served notice Wednesday that its remaining four employees will be terminated Friday as of 5 p.m. Officials declined to name the employees or disclose their salaries. NOAH's former executive director, Stacey Jackson, resigned in June.

Also on Wednesday, the NOAH board asked the New Orleans Finance Authority to put into escrow federal funds that were to have been funneled to NOAH for use as soft-second mortgages for low-income homeowners.

(snip)

The shutdown of the agency comes as the FBI and the inspector general of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, which authorized grants that financed the gutting program, have launched their own investigations. The city official who oversaw the program has acknowledged that City Hall improperly used the federal money and may have to pay back more than $223,000.

Meanwhile, Jackson, the former executive director, has been linked through business and personal connections to several contractors who worked for the program, including Richard Hall, whose firm billed for $345,000 worth of work, including gutting and boarding up Grandpre's house.

Another house, on Forshey Street near the Monticello Canal, fits the same pattern. Records provided by the Episcopal Diocese program show that volunteers from Texas arrived in October 2006 and tore drywall, tile and floorboards out of the house, which took on 7 feet of water in Katrina. The volunteers even managed to save a few heirlooms.

Ann Brown, whose brother owns the property, said she remembers the volunteers.

"I talked with someone from the church group who was there," said Brown, who lives a block away and keeps an eye on the lot. "I met them. I talked to them personally."

However, three separate NOAH contractors, including a firm owned by Nagin's brother-in-law, have billed City Hall a combined $5,115 to gut, board up and cut grass at the Forshey Street house.

Myers & Sons claimed it had done $4,415 worth of work at the lot, while Iron Triangle and Smith & Associates Consulting have billed $350 apiece. Smith & Associates is owned by Cedric Smith, whose sister is Nagin's wife, Seletha.

TALE NO.2:

Contractors working for New Orleans Affordable Homeownership billed taxpayers at least $123,000 to gut 30 homes that records show were torn down shortly thereafter -- also at public expense -- raising further questions about a troubled city agency charged with a leading role in flood recovery.

Interviews with neighbors suggest that some of that gutting work was in fact never performed.

Whether or not taxpayers were defrauded -- a question that has drawn the attention of federal investigators -- the fact that city-financed gutting crews were followed in short order by city-financed backhoe operators suggests, at best, a City Hall management debacle.

James Ross, a spokesman for Mayor Ray Nagin, said the city is required to pursue demolition of houses deemed to be health threats or in danger of collapse, regardless of whether they have been gutted. He also said that some homeowners may have reconsidered an initial decision to repair a home and sought its demolition instead.

All together, NOAH paid contractors about $1.7 million to gut about 460 properties, according to City Hall records. About 400 other properties received less costly services, mainly grass-cutting and boarding.

Slightly more than 10 percent of the homes the agency assigned to remediation contractors have since been demolished. The federal government financed about half of those demolitions; private individuals paid for the others.

Matt McBride, a blogger and activist who has maintained a database of all properties granted demolition permits since Hurricane Katrina, cross-referenced that list with a remediation list provided by NOAH. He found substantial crossover.

The Times-Picayune spot-checked 11 of the properties that the city spent the most money fixing, ranging from a property on Catina Street in Lakeview at a cost of $8,257 to a property on North Galvez Street in the Lower 9th Ward costing $4,070.

Ten of the 11 had been demolished. The city has issued a demolition permit for the only house still standing: the North Galvez property, one of only a couple of structures on a mostly abandoned block. The city issued the permit to one of the contractors hired to tear down blighted properties at taxpayer expense.

The house has been gutted, but it is unboarded and open to the elements. City records show the work on that house was done by Hall & Hall Enterprises, the highest-paid contractor in NOAH's remediation program.

Richard Hall Jr., who owns that firm, is a former business partner of NOAH's embattled former director, Stacey Jackson. He did not return a phone call Tuesday.

HERE WE HAVE two tales of a city. Do not expect any happy endings.

Here is what you can expect:

* The U.S. Attorney's Office in New Orleans -- the three federal prosecutors in Louisiana being the state's only effective defense against public corruption -- will get an indictment against Stacey Jackson, the former NOAH head. Perhaps other indictments will be forthcoming as well.

* Being that the trial has to be held somewhere in Louisiana, God only knows whether any convictions will be forthcoming.

* Federal relief money intended to help New Orleans and Louisiana recover from Hurricane Katrina will continue to be wasted, misallocated and blatantly stolen for as long as it continues to roll in.

* The people who need help the most will continue to get the least.

* New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin will continue to run reporters around in circles. When that stops working, he will denounce any reporter who's uncovered yet more graft, incompetence or outright stupidity as "hurting the recovery."

AS THEY SAY back home, "Dat's Looziana for you!"

And as they say everywhere else, "This just might be the time Louisiana cuts its own throat, but good."

Truly -- with the exception of harboring Islamist guerrillas who carry out attacks against the national government -- the Gret Stet reminds one of no less than Russia's troublesome Chechen Republic, an economically devastated region of the dysfunctional and the disadvantaged . . . and of grafters, mobsters and kidnappers. With every outbreak of shenanigans across its post-Katrina landscape, Louisiana further cements its status as America's Chechnya.

And in New Orleans, "an economically devastated region of the dysfunctional and the disadvantaged . . . and of grafters, mobsters and kidnappers" describes Central City on a particularly good day.

FOR THREE YEARS NOW, in the wake of Katrina and the federal flood, Louisiana pols and New Orleans "leaders" have trekked to Washington, D.C., with their hands outstretched. Billions upon billions of taxpayers' dollars, after much wrangling, have been put into those outstretched hands.

And now the outstretched hands full of taxpayers' dollars have been slipped, it would appear, into the pockets of politicians and their cronies -- just as the most cynical and parsimonious in the nation's capital said would happen.

Barring the resumption, after 140 years, of Reconstruction and military occupation (which, really, Louisianians ought to be on their knees praying for . . . that being their last, best hope) there is only one surefire way to stop Louisiana in its thieving tracks.

Only one remaining way to stop crooked pols, their crooked agencies and crooked contractors from collecting federal dollars for work volunteer church kids did. Only one last chance to stop fools in public office from taking federal money to "remediate" flooded homes . . . right before more federal money goes toward bulldozing those same "remediated" homes.

Cut off the cash. Now. Every penny.

There's an old saying I heard over and over growing up in Louisiana -- "Root, hog, or die." Maybe it's time my home state (and the crooks who run it, and the enablers who populate it) find out exactly what that means.

HAT TIP: Your Right Hand Thief.

Digital rebels without a clue

Talk like National Public Radio's Dick Meyer and you might be a dangerous man.

TO WIT:

"The 1960s was a symbolic turning point," Meyer said, citing the decade as a time when personal choice became more important than following tradition.

"It became much more important to make all these choices as a witting, conscious consumer of life," Meyer said of formerly tradition-bound elements like religion, where people live, whether they decide to get married.

"And deeper than that, there was a sense that if you did follow a traditional route," Meyer said, "you were an existential weakling."

MEYER IS AUTHOR of Why We Hate Us: American Discontent in the New Millennium, and he can't stand incompetence, indifference, rudeness and normative bad behavior. Or, at least, what used to be bad behavior before it became normative. His comments were from a piece accompanying audio from an interview on NPR's Morning Edition.

Meyer, NPR's new digital-media editorial director, also has a certain fondness for traditional community . . . and tradition, period. He thinks it wasn't bad to have identities other than the one you manufacture for yourself out of whole cloth -- a religious identity, an ethnic identity, a community identity.

He thinks those things can add real meaning to life.

IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN BETTER for Meyer, at least among some decidedly postmodernist combox warriors, had he advocated flying jetliners into skyscrapers. At least, with that scenario, those now hurling invective at poor Dick Meyer might instead be wringing their collective hand and wondering "Why does he hate us? Have we done something to offend."

That, however, is not how Postmodern Man -- which is kind of like Socialist Man, only whiny and self-centered -- rolls when it comes to those guilty of thought crimes. Here's something taken from the comments on a Meyer thread at The BPP Diner:

This is either a joke or just pure provocation. The man is angry because the only place where he could be sure that the guy making his sandwich wouldn't forget the tomato has closed. The man is a self-hating trailing-edge boomer (see his bio) who yearns for the good old days of "community" where everybody knew your name. Well, they knew your name, but they were probably much more fond of calling you "hey nigger", "hey faggot", "hey dyke", "hey kike", "hey slut"...

AND HERE'S another measured response to the Meyer piece on NPR's Morning Edition:

"But I have no sympathy for "poor Dick Meyer". Appreciating civility and values is one thing. But there's a difference between that and wishing for things to be like the past. You know what, things aren't like they were 50 years ago. Get Over It.

"Seriously, you want a guy who thinks community is having the people in the lunch place know your name running digital media where in the present we are trying to build new types of communities?"

YES. Yes, I do.

If people don't care to know your name in the "real world," they sure as hell won't care to know it in the "new media" world, either. And if someone doesn't care that his sandwich was made indifferently and not-to-order by a couple of lazy morons at the chain eatery, he also just might not care whether your Internet content is created indifferently by a department full of morons.

And if folks think that a prerequisite for building "new communities" based on digital media is the neglect or outright destruction of real-world communities, wait until the power goes out. Or a bad storm hits. Or your house burns down.

Or, perhaps, wait till some future day when oil is no longer affordable (at all) and the economy runs out of gas in an energy-starved country. Can a "digital community" save us if our computers have no juice? Or if we no longer can afford to buy a computer?

Even considering all the potential online social media have, will computers or some "digital community" be there to help raise your kids, or have your back when life hits the fan . . . or make sure you eat when you're old and enfeebled, then wipe your ass when you no longer can?

NO, I GUESS things aren't as they were when I was born in 1961. In some ways, that's a really good thing -- being that I was born in the Jim Crow South, experienced segregated schools first hand and saw quite enough ugly before I turned 10.

In other ways, it's a terrible thing that things aren't as they were in 1961. The commodification of everything in society -- including people -- wasn't nearly so advanced as it is now. Folks had manners, for the most part, and while the barbarians might have been at the gate, they generally weren't running the culture.

Yet.

Tradition is a funny thing. Religion, too. When they're functioning in a meaningful way, they can seem stifling to some people. We feel like we're unable to "create our own identity."

And sometimes, tradition for tradition's sake can grow incredibly stale and pointless. You can't ever lose sight of the "why" in tradition . . . or in anything else.

Thus, it's quite true that some traditions outlive their usefulness, if ever they had any. I don't know that many civilized people would argue for female circumcision, serfdom, intractable class structures or women being regarded as property.

On the other hand, when you start flailing away at the whole of "tradition" and the "old ways" with a broadax, you're going to find quite quickly -- as we now are realizing -- that we've just chopped down whole institutions and forces of habit that provided refuge from what sought to devour us. The unfettered freedom to "create our own identity" likewise gives a disordered and dysfunctional society the unfettered license to define us as mere pieces of meat.

What does a virtual community based on digital media do about that?

Really, isn't the craving for "new kinds of community" online just a case of humans -- operating on sheer instinct -- desperately seeking what they've just spent the last 50 years dismantling?

And some combox Nietzsches see poor Dick Meyer as being unfit to do his digital duty just because he, on some level, recognizes that?

Good God.

Oh . . . sorry about that invocation of a primitive belief structure. It's difficult being a troglodyte, you know.

Ask Dick Meyer.

She likes us! She really likes us!

Business-tech columnist and author Sarah Lacy ventured out onto the Plains and into our fair metropolis of Omaha for a book tour, expecting to find stolid Midwestern types respectably and soberly inhabiting a stolid Midwestern city.

With a few geeks in the corner.

One, naturally, would have just a leeeeeetle bit of the evening's baked dish hanging off his pocket protector.

Instead, the author of Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0 found a funky, creative and happenin' kind of place. That's OK, Sarah -- it's kind of fun to pleasantly surprise people.

But, really, if you know a little about the kind of folk who homesteaded Nebraska, you no longer are surprised that Omaha is a little bit quirky and whole bunch creative. For example, here are some typical Nebraska homesteaders:

ANY QUESTIONS?

I didn't think so.

You tried to tell us, Alexander Isayevich

Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn is dead.

That makes one less who will look humanity square in the eye and tell it what's what.

THIS IS SOLZHENITSYN'S diagnosis of what ails the West, excerpted from his 1978 address at Harvard's commencement -- a speech, come to think of it, about as brave as anything that had gotten him in so much trouble back in the U.S.S.R.:

I am not examining here the case of a world war disaster and the changes which it would produce in society. As long as we wake up every morning under a peaceful sun, we have to lead an everyday life. There is a disaster, however, which has already been under way for quite some time. I am referring to the calamity of a despiritualized and irreligious humanistic consciousness.

To such consciousness, man is the touchstone in judging and evaluating everything on earth. Imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity, and dozens of other defects. We are now experiencing the consequences of mistakes which had not been noticed at the beginning of the journey. On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. In the East, it is destroyed by the dealings and machinations of the ruling party. In the West, commercial interests tend to suffocate it. This is the real crisis. The split in the world is less terrible than the similarity of the disease plaguing its main sections.

If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President's performance be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or of unlimited availability of gasoline. Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism.

It would be retrogression to attach oneself today to the ossified formulas of the Enlightenment. Social dogmatism leaves us completely helpless in front of the trials of our times.

THIS, MEANWHILE, is from an article in today's edition of The Sun, the mass-market London tabloid:

Many Ibiza tourists are hardcore ravers who drink, dance and smoke away their nights then spend their days in the baking sun.

No wonder it is known as the island that never sleeps.

But however much fun it may sound, the non-stop lifestyle takes its toll on the sleep-deprived, dehydrated partygoers’ faces, with many needing more than a dab of concealer to cover their facial creases.

But the party girls refuse to rein in the late nights and heavy-drinking sessions.

Instead, they have found the perfect way to revive their looks — Botox.

The latest must-do in Ibiza isn’t a new club night, it is beach Botox — and mum and daughter team, Christine, 47, and daughter Nicole Shenton, 27, are cleaning up.

They moved themselves and their beauty firm, Belisimma, to the White Isle six years ago after discovering there was a gap in the market on the island.

(snip)

“Business has been non-stop since we started, especially from British party girls.

“A lot of girls admit the most sleep they get is kipping on the beach in the day.”

Mum Christine says: “We find that most of our clients are British girls who have good jobs, money to spend and are here to party.

“Their faces are obviously affected by the amount they drink, smoke and sunbathe. They want to do all those things but still look good.

“That’s where we come in.”

One of Belisimma’s regulars Laura Jackson refuses to get on the plane home looking worse than when she arrived — even though she spends a fortnight partying every night.

Single mum Laura, a jewellery designer from Manchester, says: “I’ve been having Botox out here for the past two years and can’t get enough of it.

“It’s great — the moment I land, I call Christine to get some Botox before I hit the clubs. Then after two weeks of clubbing, she gives me a top-up before I get on the plane home.

“When I tell people I’m 25, they never believe me. It’s amazing considering the kind of lifestyle I lead. It’s non-stop partying from the moment I get off the plane, and I usually come to Ibiza at least twice a year. “This means a fortnight of drinking a lot and getting hardly any sleep.

“Also, when I’m at home I go out drinking every weekend, and spend most Sundays in bed eating a fry up.”

"SINGLE MUM LAURA" deludes herself in more ways than one. Go to the Sun story page and look at her picture.

And I'm quite sure that when she tells people she's only 25, they never do believe her.

Just like -- way deep down where we can see the truth about who we really are -- we don't believe, not really, our own PR about how happy, healthy, prosperous and enlightened we are in our Western, postmodern rave-up.

You know marketolatry has gone too far. . . .

John, Paul, George and Ringo have nothing on Miley Cyrus, a.k.a. Hannah Montana.

And, if John Lennon was right and the Beatles were, back in the day, more popular than Jesus Christ. . . .

SUNDAY AFTERNOON, Mrs. Favog and I attended a 6-year-old girl's birthday party. A 6-year-old who loves, naturellement, Hannah Montana.

Among the loot the child raked in:

* A Hannah Montana doll.
* A Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus CD.
* A Hannah Montana backpack.
* A Hannah Montana notebook.
* A Hannah Montana singing pen.
* A Hannah Montana "activity pack."
* Hannah Montana pencils, sticky notes, etc., etc., etc.

WHEN I WAS 6, the Beatles were all the rage. But even a cultural force like the Fab Four was easier to escape than the marketing apocalypse behind the 15-year-old daughter of Mr. Achy Breaky Heart.

Is there any point to American culture -- at least anymore -- other than pimping the latest disposable teen star to the toddler-to-tween demographic? And then selling the kiddies Jägerbombs and NuvaRings once they -- like fallen tween angel Britney Spears -- achieve puberty . . . and communion with their inner skank?

Sunday, as I struggled with acute Hannah Montana overload, I mused what it does to a teen-ager's head -- even if she did have the advantage (unlike some noted train wrecks) of not being raised by money-grubbing hillbillies -- to walk into a store and see shelves and shelves of . . . herself.

Commodified and idolized.

Personally, I don't think there are enough shrinks in the world to deal with that kind of interpersonal train wreck. Particularly after the applause stops, and all manner of commodified you ends up in the deep-discount bin.

Or worse, at the 99¢ Only Store.

There's only thing more ridiculous than our worshiping some all-powerful deity Who died on a cross and can have His body and blood, soul and divinity become one with a wafer of unleavened bread and a chalice of wine so His creation might feed on Him.

That would be what we worship in His place.

Overheard tonight on Twitter

Old times there are not forgotten. . . .

In all the sordid racial history of the American South, one taboo was always powerful enough to kill.

The act of it was strictly illegal. In 1955, in the Mississippi Delta, the mere thought that a 14-year-old black boy might have had it on his mind put Emmitt Till in his grave. What was left of him.

MISCEGENATION.

If all the racial bugaboos of the segregated South had a corresponding curse word, miscegenation would be the F-word, the C-word, the MF-word and the S-word all rolled into one. Especially if we're talking a black man marrying, having sex with, dating or just looking wrong at a white woman.

(White men having their way with black women -- so long as no wedding vows were exchanged -- garnered de jure disapproval but a de facto wink and a grin.)

Miscegenation.

The feds said states' rights didn't include forbidding interracial matrimony. But the toxic enculturation of a Jim Crow society remains lodged in many a Southern mind, not unlike a malignant and inoperable tumor.

The fear of miscegenation is the kind of carefully taught evil that wormed its way into the subconscious of Southerners -- of Americans -- of a certain age and older. It gets beneath one's beliefs and convictions; it adheres itself to Pavlovian recesses of the subconscious, the ones governing what you feel in that split second before moral rectitude kicks in.

IT'S AN UGLY TABOO that feeds on the ugliest parts of our human fallenness.

Which, of course, makes exploiting voters' ingrained race-mixing revulsion a no-brainer for the savvy-but-unethical political operative.

And, in case you haven't noticed, there are just a few of those in the Gret Stet of Louisiana. It looks like a few more have just crawled out from under a rock in Baton Rouge to take racially charged shots at the city's African-American mayor, as reported by The Advocate:

Mayor-President Kip Holden on Friday said he is calling for a criminal investigation into a political mailer that alleges he had an affair with a married woman and was beaten up by her husband.

The mailer was in the form of a letter signed by the Rev. Charles Matthews, who Holden said does not exist.

The mailer includes a photo of Holden with a “black eye and busted lip” that he said is actually a doctored version of the picture on the mayor’s Web site.

Holden acknowledged he did suffer a black eye last year when he tripped over a piece of carpet, but noted he did not get a busted lip from the accident.

The mailer claims the woman’s husband punched Holden in the mouth and eye, and police have refused to serve as his bodyguard “on moral grounds and a strong belief that someone is going to get injured or worse, die.”

THE NEWSPAPER, truth be told, sanitized the story quite a bit. It didn't even touch the miscegenation angle, which the political mailer most certainly did -- including a photo of the black mayor and the white woman in question. Here's some purple prose directly from the "reverend's" word processor:

Pulling his pants up with one hand, grabbing his expensive alligator shoes with the other, Mayor Melvin "Kip" Holden ran from the residence, but not before a 5' 10" Caucasian man punched him in the eye and mouth (see picture). A reliable source reported seeing the Mayor's mouth bleeding as he hurried to a black Lincoln with a public license plate.

Standing in the door of his residence the man watched the Lincoln speed away driven by the mayor's bodyguard, an on duty Baton Rouge police officer. With tears in his eyes, he turned and stared at his nude spouse.

EXPENSIVE alligator shoes.

Caucasian man, tears in eyes.

Nude spouse.

You didn't see any of that ugliness in The Advocate's "mainstream" reportage. Nor did the paper point out the staggering irony of it all -- the political opponent Holden suspects is responsible for the flier is . . . black.

Holden said the allegations are ridiculous, and are obviously the handiwork of one of his opponents in the mayor’s race and their operatives.

“I have had the same four police officers with me since I took office. The only one that is no longer working with me is Eugene Smith, who said he needed additional time with his family after his father was killed in an accident,” Holden said.

Holden said criminal charges may be filed as a result of the smear tactic. He said he’s contacted the state Attorney General’s Office and the FBI.

Because the mailer was sent via U.S. mail and contained false information, federal mail fraud charges could be pending against the perpetrators, Holden said.

Holden also suggested that Metro Councilman Byron Sharper may be involved because he called the mayor’s office earlier this week and warned that “we’re going to drop a bomb on you.”

Sharper could not be reached for comment Friday afternoon.

In a statement issued Friday afternoon, Holden said Metro Councilman Sharper’s brother, Kurt, has distributed the fliers in public buildings.

“We have provided his identity to law enforcement as a source of information and involvement,” Holden said in the statement.

PERHAPS SOMEBODY'S trying to get both white men and black women mad at the mayor. I mean . . . y'think?

Then, to throw in a red flag for all the fire-breathers among the Religious Right, the smear piece declares, ostensibly unironically:

The FAMILY RESEARCH COUNCIL, THE LOUISIANA FAMILY FORUM, Local Ministers, and the Metro Council recently defeated Mayor Holden's attempt to pass a blanket declaration as to Baton Rouge being a sanctuary for homosexuals through his One Baton Rouge resolution. Please join with us in demanding legal and moral conduct from our public officials.

YOU BET, podna. Pleas for legal and moral rectitude in a sleazy, racist flier allegedly produced by black pols stooping to Kluxer tactics against a black mayor. Only in Louisiana. . . .

Only in Louisiana, dammit. Isn't anyone down there the least bit ashamed yet of what they tolerate and who they vote into office?

Anyone? Anyone?

When you're out of Schlitz, you're out of beer

I tried Schlitz again after many, many years because it's cheap, and inflation is rampant. I still drink it because it ain't half bad -- just like 35 years ago when I used to ask the old man for a sip, then down half the can.

WHADDA YOU KNOW? It seems I'm a trendsetter and didn't know it. At least that's what The Associated Press says:

It's the beer that made Milwaukee famous. Now Schlitz is making the city nostalgic.

That beer with the old-time mystique is back on shelves in bottles of its original formula in the city where it was first brewed more than a century and a half ago.

Schlitz was the top-selling beer for much of the first half of the 20th century. But recipe changes and a series of snafus made the beer — in many a drinkers' opinion — undrinkable, turning what was once the world's most popular brews into little more than a joke.

But after decades of dormancy, the beer is back.

Schlitz' owner, Pabst Brewing Co., is recreating the old formula, using notes and interviews with old brew masters to concoct the pilsner again. The maker of another nostalgic favorite, Pabst Blue Ribbon, it hopes baby boomers will reach for the drink of their youth, otherwise known as "The Beer That Made Milwaukee Famous." They also want to create a following among younger drinkers who want to know what grandma and grandpa drank.

"We believe that Schlitz is if not the, one of most iconic brands of the 20th century," said Kevin Kotecki, president of Pabst Brewing Co., which bought the brand that dates to 1849 from Stroh's in 1999. "And there's still a lot of people who have very positive, residual memories about their experience. For many of them it was the first beer they drank and we wanted to give it back to those consumers."

In Milwaukee, the comeback is creating a buzz. Stores are depleted of their stock within days, they're taking names for waiting lists and limiting customers to just a few six- or 12-packs each.

People like Leonard Jurgensen say the beer reminds them of better days. The 67-year-old, who grew up on the edge of the brewery downtown, said decades ago it seemed that everyone in the city either worked for the brewery or knew someone who did. If there was a special occasion, you drank Schlitz. Jurgensen had it on his wedding day 45 years ago.

"For many years the product was associated with happy times, especially to people my age," said Jurgensen, who's writing a book on Milwaukee's breweries. "As we all know, the world is not the best it can be today. We used to think those were hard times and when we look back on them, those were the good old days."

BECAUSE, TRULY . . . "When you're out of Schlitz, you're out of beer."

Now, if Schlitz can make a big comeback . . . maybe the other beer of my youth, Dixie, will do it, too. I think I've just made myself thirsty.

3 Chords & the Truth: The defining lie?

What if everything you were supposed to believe about yourself -- and where you are from -- was a lie?

That's the gist of our centerpiece musical exploration on this week's 3 Chords & the Truth.

What if the glorious "heritage" you were taught to take pride in was, instead, a more compelling case for intense shame?

WHAT DO YOU MAKE of that? If you -- if your region and culture -- have been held captive by a defining historical lie, how do you make peace with the present and move on to the future?

If you have any good answers, contact me at mail@revolution21.org.

Intrigued? You should be. It's a hell of a question, and we meditate upon it through some great -- and diverse -- music this week.

Of course, in addition to the seriousness, we have a lot of fun, too. That's because the Big Show is the place where you never know what's going to be thrown at you next. Every song an adventure, I say.

And you'll be saying that, too.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, and you can listen right now, right here.

Be there. Aloha.


UPDATE: You did know that the show is available on iTunes, right? Just go to podcasts and search for 3 Chords & the Truth. It's as simple as that, and you can become a subscriber.

What hath YouTube wrought?

Video contains profanity. I'm so shocked.

The "Leave Britney alone!" guy (???) is "leaving YouTube alone."

Why? Because YouTube has disrespected him/her/it. Chris Crocker is not YouTube's favorite viral celebrity.

I MEAN, "They invited the 'Chocolate Rain' guy to, like, go sing at some YouTube event in, like, China."

But no such "cewebrity" luuuuv for Mr. (Miss?) Leave Britney Alone! Such shabby treatment.

"I'm not mama- and papa-friendly, I understand. Mamas and papas don't like me, but guess what? Their kids do," he/she/it says. "I'm a voice of this generation . . . I'm a voice of this generation, and there's no stopping me."

I DISAGREE.

The downside of El Patron

Contrary to all appearances, this was not Colombia . . . or Nicaragua . . . or El Salvador . . . or Cuba . . . or Hugo Chavez's Venezuela.

NO, THIS WAS the Louisiana into which I was born -- or removed by just a very few years from the Louisiana into which I was born. Folks thought they were getting the moon.

By the time the grafting pols and their cronies had skimmed theirs off the top, we ordinary Louisianians more or less ended up with a Moon Pie. It's funny how many of the people you can fool for so much of the time.

Moving to the United States some decades ago was something of a culture shock. Cognitive dissonance are I.

Easy answers to stupid questions

Former Louisiana secretary of state -- and former insurance commissioner -- Jim Brown asks an odd rhetorical question on a blog post this morning. Odd because the answer is so obvious that it doesn't even beg a question, rhetorical or otherwise.

Brown, on the cleverly named Jim Brown Blog, wants to know:

ARE WE ALL FEDERAL CRIMINALS
LIVING IN LOUISIANA?

The short answer: Yes.

The long answer: Hell, yes.

The funny irony: Jim Brown is a convicted federal criminal living in Louisiana.

Brown is upset that state Sen. Derrick Shepherd (the noted droopy pants opponent) was hauled before a federal judge after being accused of slapping around his girlfriend:

Louisiana State Senator Derrick Shepherd gets in a tussle with his girlfriend over the weekend and he's hauled off to federal court. Is there any violation of the law that is not considered a federal offense? If anyone actually takes the time to read the U.S. Constitution, there are only three crimes specifically enumerated. Treason, piracy and counterfeiting. So why has Congress undertaken an overzealous expansion of criminal laws?

A report from the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies recently determined that there are some 4500 federal crimes listed in the US Code. It used to be that Congress would create one particular crime by passing a new law. But in recent years, multiple crimes are listed within the same statute. One new law enacted right after 9/11 contained 60 new crimes. Were they really necessary?

Our representatives in Washington now want to delve into any number of local crimes, flaunting the intention of our country's founders. Drugs, robbery, car theft, the list goes on and on. What happened to the 14th amendment and states rights?

NO, IF SHEPHERD slapped around his girlfriend, that would not, per se, be a federal crime.

But getting arrested is a violation of the terms on which Shepherd was released by the federal court as the senator awaits his federal trial on fraud and conspiracy charges. Of the federal variety.

Funny how that works, huh?

Having grown up in the 1960s and '70s, I remember that NORML used to be quite the deal. You know, NORML -- the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. Basically, what you had was a bunch of heads who couldn't stay off weed, so they sought to repeal the laws that said you couldn't smoke the ganja, mon.

Apparently, what we have in Louisiana is a state full of pols -- and pols' crooked cronies -- who just can't stay off the graft, mon. And if everybody's doing it . . . why do it gots to be a federal offense?

Mon.

Or, to put some lipstick on a porker of an argument, Brown concludes:

In 400 B.C., the Greek orator Isocrates stated: "Where there is a multitude of specific laws, it is a sign that the state is badly governed." Tasedus wrote in the 1st century A.D. of Rome: “Formerly we suffered from crimes. Now we suffer from laws."

UHHHHH . . . that would be Tacitus. Publius Cornelius Tacitus.

Add education to the list of things in Louisiana that ought to be a federal crime.

This is a joke. Then again, this is Wednesday.

The spoof below comes from the best thing since The Onion -- a website called Not the Los Angeles Times. And it is just that, a joke.

Actually, there still are a few employees at the Los Angeles Times, and at many other American newspapers.

BUT IT'S STILL only halfway through the week. Monday, this might not be funny anymore . . . so, for those reading this next Tuesday, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend.

With that said, however. . . .

For the 23rd time in 18 months, the Los Angeles Times is losing its top editor. Raul Jones, a former newsroom janitor who rose through the ranks as layoffs shrank the number of real journalists, was fired yesterday after refusing to lay off the paper's last employee – himself.

In a blistering farewell e-mail sent to himself, Jones defended his stance against further cuts. "I had to draw the line," he wrote. "It's one thing to sack everybody else, but I can't countenance my own dismissal. Who's going to cover city and state government, the war in Iraq and Britney Spears? The quality of the paper will suffer."

But Tribune Co. spokesman Randy Michaels said the paper would do just fine, thanks to sophisticated new software that rewrites wire-service stories in the style of former Times reporters.

"We analyzed past articles and found that 38% of all stories began with the writer mentioning the time of day," Michaels said. [Click here for recent examples.] "Our new software will duplicate that formula."

As Michaels spoke, cleaning crews swept through the Times' newsroom, removing cobwebs and tearing down Xeroxed portraits of former publisher Mark Willes, whose smiling face had been plastered all over the building by reporters nostalgic for the "good old days."

Removing editor Jones wasn't easy. Because he was the paper's last employee and wouldn't dismiss himself, Tribune executives had to find a replacement editor from Chicago who was willing to can Jones and then promptly resign.

COME TO THINK OF IT, none of this is very funny at all. That's because, truly, what we see as a knee slapper today is what corporate media bean counters see as reality . . . tomorrow.

I know the last place I'D want to be. . . .

If you're a woman, where's the last place on earth you'd want to be when an earthquake hit?

YEP. And where's the last place you'd want your OB/GYN to -- ahem -- be when the earthquake hit?

From Twitter:

First earthquake paper gown, legs in stirrups about 3 hours ago from mobile web

I am totally serious. My Ob/Gyn was IN my vagina and an earthquake started rattling the room! about 3 hours ago from mobile web

Good news, vagina is healthy, albeit shaken up. about 3 hours ago from mobile web

My Ob/Gyn said it was OK if I didn't want to evacuate to the parking lot in my paper gown. I was more concerned about the speculum. about 3 hours ago from mobile web

What a way to go. about 3 hours ago from mobile web

UPDATE: Is here, on CNET.

Keeping hope alive

Some people prefer to look for hope in unlikely places. Like here:



I prefer to look for hope where I'm more likely to find it. And where I'm much less likely to be disillusioned.

Like here:



Find more videos like this on The BPP Diner

And here:



Find more videos like this on The BPP Diner


HAT TIP: The BPP Diner.


UPDATE:


Find more videos like this on The BPP Diner

Abu Ghraib? No, Omaha.

Staff lead a young man into a brightly lit room.

He is barefoot and shirtless.

HIS HANDLERS wear latex surgical gloves.

But what really gets your attention in the bright light are two stainless steel hooks - big enough for deep-sea fishing - pierced into his upper back.

A heavy-duty cord connects to the eyelet on each hook. With a mountaineering rope and four pulleys, a man hoists Dalton off the floor, his hooked skin stretching as he rises.

HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE THINGS happened to Iraqi detainees at the hands of their American interrogators at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. But this, from the pages of the Sunday World-Herald, is not a story of that. Nor is it a tale of some of the more horrific violations of the Geneva Conventions at the U.S. detainee camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The actual scene: A recent Sunday at an Omaha tattoo parlor:

The practice is called suspension, and several dozen people have tried it at a Bellevue tattoo shop, Dr. Jack's Ink Emporium.

Despite potential health risks, including infection, suspension is becoming more common across the country. But it's far from mainstream, and remains a fringe activity.

Suspension is not entirely new; some Native American tribes practiced a form of it in the 1800s and earlier as a rite of passage for young men.

Dalton and others do it to prove they can withstand the pain, giving them a sense of control over body and mind. They like the feel-good kick when their bodies release endorphins - narcotic-like hormones - in response to the pain, as well as the relaxed feeling when they are done.

And some like "performing" for the dozen or more people watching at the tattoo studio.

In an era when soccer moms have tattoos and teens have steel studs in their tongues, suspension is a way to stand out.

On a recent Sunday evening, more than 30 people watched Dalton and three others suspend at Dr. Jack's.

(snip)

Dalton, 34, lay on his stomach on a padded table. Monte Vogel, general manager of the four Omaha-area Dr. Jack's shops, holds one hook. Mike Coons, a Dr. Jack's manager, holds the other.

The hooks gleam.

The sharp end of each hook is inserted into a hollow needle about 2 inches long. Vogel and Coons, wearing black latex gloves, pull up handfuls of Dalton's skin and, with a smooth motion, slip in a needle and hook, one on the right side of his upper back, the other on the left.

He doesn't flinch.

"Like a champ," Coons says.

"Always," says Dalton, who has suspended four times in the past nine months, each time hooked in his upper back.

DEVOTEES OF SUSPENSION pay Dr. Mengele's Dr. Jack's $100 a session for a few minutes of carefree swinging. From massive hooks run through them like a tarpon at the end of a 30-pound test line.

Dalton had it rough as a kid. He says he was physically abused and spent several years in foster homes. The abuse, he says, gave him a tolerance for pain.

He said that after a stint in the Army, he became an electrician and mechanic. He has always loved art and took pottery and painting classes in high school. One of his favorite pieces: a dragon perched atop a mountain.

Dalton tapped that background when he became a Dr. Jack's tattooer about a year ago.

With the wood floors, off-white walls and bright lights, the room where Dalton suspends looks like a small dance studio.

The shop's owners designed it solely for suspension. A wall of glass allows people to watch from padded benches in the shop's main room.

Dalton, wearing long plaid shorts and a black cap, leans slightly forward when it's time.

Vogel attaches parachute cords to the hooks' eyelets, then connects the other end of the cords to a steel bar rigged to the rope and pulleys.

A Dr. Jack's employee pulls the rope slightly, and Dalton's hooked skin stretches. As Dalton is gradually pulled up, only the balls of his feet touch the floor; then, only his toe tips.

The employee pulls the rope a little more and Dalton is suspended, his feet dangling a few inches above the floor.

Dalton doesn't scream or moan.

The crowd quietly watches through the window.

Dalton feels the pressure of the hooks pulling his skin and a slight numbness in his upper back. He's feeling high, like a distance runner who is in good stride and past the point of pain.

He's looking forward, his arms dangling. Music from Clutch, a heavy blues-rock band, pumps into his head through earphones.

Dalton pushes off the glass wall with his legs, causing his body to swing. With each push, the arc of his swing increases.

His heart beats faster. He doesn't feel any pain.

He looks like a skateboarder as he zips from one side of the room to the other. He knows the crowd wants to see more than just someone hanging. They want action.

"Getting close to 15 (minutes)," a Dr. Jack's employee calls out.

Dalton swings a while longer before the crew lets him down, to the applause of the crowd. He had suspended about 20 minutes.

WHY IS IT that any "enhanced interrogation" Bush, Cheney & Co. performs on Arab wretches in the name of "freedom" and "security" comes as shock to us at all, here in the American heartland? It's no more than what we do to ourselves . . . for our own "tortured" reasons and to overwhelm a gnawing pain that's worse than any giant fish hook protruding from our flesh.

Or was that a meat hook?

Ryan Schoultz, a 20-year-old cook, is tan and polite and talks with a Southern accent. His wife is there to take pictures.

He has hung once before, from his back. This time, it's from the chest. More of a challenge.

As he's lifted, his skin tears slightly. He doesn't feel pain but he hears his skin rip. The crew lets him down so the skin won't tear more.

Schoultz vows to try it again -- but not this night.

THE BARBARIANS are no longer at the gate. If there's a fundamental difference between us and tattooed Amazon headhunters with bones sticking through their lips and noses, I fail to apprehend what that might be any longer.

On the other hand, I readily grasp the difference between Saddam Hussein and ourselves. Saddam had the good sense never to torture himself. Or at least never pay $100 for the "privilege."

One question: How long before some Bush Administration official dredges up this little story from Omaha, Neb., as a defense exhibit at a war-crimes trial? Is what I'm asking.

I don't care who ya are, this is funny

This is NPR: National Pub . . . oh the hell with it

National Public Radio's excellent experiment, The Bryant Park Project, now belongs to history.

The alternative morning program for public-radio listeners -- and the 24/7, multiplatform "New Media" effort surrounding it -- gave up the ghost Friday as its staff said goodbye to listeners and, a few hours later, its website became a cyberghost town.

Its Twitter feed ceased tweeting.

AND A NUMBER of NPR affiliates began the process of putting something else on their digital subchannels -- new programming that likewise will go unheard by an HD Radio-free listening public.

NPR executives will survey the carnage and declare -- actually, already have declared -- The Bryant Park Project a failure. A noble effort that never really got off the ground, never gained an audience, never developed into the digital answer for a public broadcaster faced with upcoming generations who are rejecting radio for the Interwebs and their iPods.

Obviously, The Bryant Park Project had turned into a luxury NPR no longer thought it could afford. And that's pretty much where we stand, here in the besieged trenches of traditional, mainstream media.

The Digital Huns have battalions of radio men and newspapermen (and women) pinned down, audience reinforcements are not forthcoming and the commanders have been told that supplies and ammo are starting to run desperately short. What to do?

Obviously, given the dire circumstances, only one thing. Stop probing for a way out . . . somebody could get killed out there.

Far better that Her Majesty's media starve en masse than have someone get picked off by a Facebook sniper while probing enemy lines.

REALLY, ONLY THE ONION could do justice to the ongoing story of the print and broadcast media's utter fecklessness and timidity in the face of the "New Media" challenge. For once, it wouldn't have to make this s*** up.

In canceling the BPP, interim NPR chief Dennis Haarsager said the program failed because, among other reasons, "Web/podcasting usage was also hampered . . . since we were offering an 'appointment program' in a medium that doesn't excel in that kind of usage."

I realize I am just a Philistine -- a Schlitz-drinking ruffian with an Interwebs account and not enough sense to be running a fine organization like NPR into the ground -- but I thought this (Whadda youse call it again?) "podcasting" thing was all about "appointment" listening.

See, here's the deal: We get to set the appointment time. We can listen whenever we want.

And it seems to me that -- since the NPR media player delivered the program in segments -- it would be simple enough to update the newscasts hourly . . . or any segment if it became horribly dated before the next full program aired. (Then again, I wouldn't know about these fancy technological paté-and-quiche doomaflatchies what NPR has. I have been known to drink Schlitz and wipe my nose on my sleeve.)

I guess there just must be some fundamental disconnect between BPP listeners who saw -- and heard -- a witty, informative and well-put-together multimedia effort and NPR suits who saw nothing but roadblocks on the road to the Digital Future.

The thing is, if you have exemplary content that an audience desires, what's a little roadblock other than something you'll bypass soon enough? What can't be as easily bypassed is the kind of organizational nincompoopery that launches a major programming-and-Internet initiative, fails to gain clearance on more than five analog radio signals and 19 digital-radio subchannels, doesn't promote it, then kills that major initiative because not enough people listened.

Item 1: NPR only managed to get its major New Media project on five lousy affiliates when there must be dozens where the BPP would have been a far better programming fit than Morning Edition. Oh yeah, the show was on a satellite-radio channel, too.

Item 2: 19 HD Radio subchannels basically work out to zero listeners. How many of you out there have HD radios? How many of you out there can find one in a store? How many of you out there even know somebody with an HD radio? I rest my case.

Item 3: Launching a major programming-and-Internet initiative, failing to gain clearance on more than five analog radio signals, 19 digital-radio subchannels and one satellite-radio channel, not promoting it, then killing that major initiative because not enough people listened is the craziest thing I've seen in radio since my program director AT A CATHOLIC RADIO STATION wanted to buy a station Humvee and paint it in camo "to represent the Church Militant."

I am not making this up. Neither could The Onion.

AS I'VE WRITTEN BEFORE, it seems to me The Bryant Park Project was a success by any programming benchmark. It was fresh, it informed and -- in the two weeks I got to know it before NPR pulled the plug -- it made me laugh.

Come on, what's the last NPR program that made you laugh?

Whad'Ya Know? doesn't even make me laugh.

Perhaps, however, the BPP's greatest success was in creating a virtual community out of a few over-the-air listeners here, some Sirius satellite listeners there and a bunch of online listeners over yonder. By design, Bryant Park Project hosts and staffers lifted the veil between faceless public-radio program and the listener driving to work . . . or sitting at his computer at work . . . or eating breakfast . . . or, perhaps, sitting in a room -- alone -- and feeling friendless.

Old media, new media, multischmedia . . . NPR's "new kind of news program" did a very old-school thing. It made a human connection. It created community, which ought to be something even the most addle-minded radio executive can understand on some level.

Community. We humans crave it, but less and less manage to achieve it.

We moderns don't do church so much anymore. Neither do we know our neighbors, nor are we the club-joiners we once were.

I'll bet it's been decades since there was a schoolyard standoff between devotees of Color Radio W and Boss Radio X. Why? Because young people don't listen anymore.

Why? Because Corporate MegaRadio, Inc., has turned radio into a gigantic, flavorless, excitement- and community-free cluster. . . never mind.

THE BRYANT PARK PROJECT was breaking that unfortunate mold. It had turned its tiny corner of the electromagnetic spectrum once again into a communications medium. Listeners -- and readers -- got involved with the program. They submitted story ideas. They pointed staffers in more profitable directions on a story or two.

What a concept in modern communications -- an organic community of media providers and media consumers. The BPP created one. For its trouble, it got canceled before anyone reasonably could tell how the experiment would turn out.

And when the ax fell, listeners set up a Bryant Park Project page on the social-networking site, Ning. Likewise, the BPP group on Facebook is still active.

Maybe this is the real experiment. What happens when the corporate gatekeepers lose control of their creation? How does it work when listeners refuse to let a cherished program -- or station -- slip into oblivion?

What are the ramifications for the media landscape -- both "new" and "old" -- then?

But perhaps the biggest question centers on why any media provider -- broadcast or print -- would refuse to embrace means of communication that turned mere media consumers into members of "the family"? Why would you bring people into your paper's . . . or station's . . . or network's life, then kick them to the curb before anyone had a chance to spill red wine on the couch or "forget" to return that chainsaw they borrowed last summer?

Why would you do that?

Whatsa matter? You don't like people or somethin'?