All you holy murdered children, pray for us

I'll make this short and sweet.

FIRST, an excerpt, please, from The Washington Times -- on a federal investigation into how Commonwealth Catholic Charities, Richmond (Va.) arranged for a Guatemalan teen in foster care to have an abortion.

The bishops' letter, first publicized Friday by the Wanderer, a national Catholic weekly newspaper, detailed a series of botched management decisions that preceded the Jan. 18 abortion.

The unnamed girl, who already had one child, had been fitted with a contraceptive device provided by CCR two months earlier, the letter said. CCR members signed the consent form necessary for a minor to have an abortion and had someone drive her to and from the abortion clinic.

It is illegal in Virginia for a social worker to sign a parental consent form for an abortion. The state's notification law stipulates that at least one parent, grandparent or adult sibling must give consent.

The girl, whose parents are missing, was a ward of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

(snip)

The church also teaches that knowingly using contraception is a mortal sin, although it does not incur automatic excommunication. Moreover, the church objects to some methods of contraception - those that prevent a fertilized embryo from implanting in the uterus - as forms of abortion.

"Some members of the MRS [U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Migration and Refugee Services -- R21] staff were not sufficiently aware of church teaching and [USCCB] policy regarding these matters to take stronger and more appropriate actions," Bishops DiLorenzo, Wester and Driscoll said in a letter to their peers.

"This incident is a most regrettable stain on the record of excellence in the work both of MRS and of Catholic Charities," they said.

CATHOLIC CHARITIES. Taking teen to be fitted with an IUD. And, later, for an abortion.

Does something seem, uh, amiss here?

And that's even before we get to out-and-out violations of Virginia law.

Screwiest of all is the Catholic bishops' assertion that some staffers of a USCCB agency "were not sufficiently aware of church teaching. . . ." I said "screwy," not "surprising."

Because it isn't surprising that employees of an agency of the American Church knew little and cared less for fundamental Catholic moral teaching. After all, if the bishops -- and their subordinate priests -- can't be bothered to teach the Catholic faithful a damned thing about Catholic moral law, why the Sam Hill should they care to teach their employees . . . who may or may not actually be Catholic?

IN FACT, the only thing the American bishops are worse at than teaching the faith is in modeling it.

And when those bishops go to their exceedingly just reward, the first saint to whom they will have to explain themselves -- I am sure -- will be that precious little child who never got a chance to be born.

Murdered, when it comes right down to it, by their negligence and solipsism.

Ve haff veys to maken zem talk

It's been a long, agonizing process, this losing of our national soul.

AND WHAT ONGOING congressional hearings are bringing to the forefront is the extent to which the American government has summoned the Ghost of Third Reich Past in the name of "preventing another 9/11."

Well, given what's there for the reading in The Washington Post, Osama bin Laden needn't bother. His wisest course -- when the Bush Administration already is doing a fine job of turning America into Amerika, then bringing the whole enterprise to its knees -- would be to just get the hell out of the way.

To wit:

A senior CIA lawyer advised Pentagon officials about the use of harsh interrogation techniques on detainees at Guantanamo Bay in a meeting in late 2002, defending waterboarding and other methods as permissible despite U.S. and international laws banning torture, according to documents released yesterday by congressional investigators.

Torture "is basically subject to perception," CIA counterterrorism lawyer Jonathan Fredman told a group of military and intelligence officials gathered at the U.S.-run detention camp in Cuba on Oct. 2, 2002, according to minutes of the meeting. "If the detainee dies, you're doing it wrong."

The document, one of two dozen released by a Senate panel investigating how Pentagon officials developed the controversial interrogation program introduced at Guantanamo Bay in late 2002, suggests a larger CIA role in advising Defense Department interrogators than was previously known. By the time of the meeting, the CIA already had used waterboarding, which simulates drowning, on at least one terrorism suspect and was holding high-level al-Qaeda detainees in secret prisons overseas -- actions that Bush administration lawyers had approved.

OF COURSE, all this was perfectly legal and ethical. That's why der Gestapo the CIA was so concerned about keeping the Red Cross' nose out of the government's little enterprise.

One of the most explosive memos was the account of the October 2002 Guantanamo Bay meeting in which the CIA's Fredman joined 10 Defense Department officials and lawyers to discuss how to extract better intelligence from detainees there. Fredman, whose agency had been granted broad latitude by Justice Department lawyers to conduct harsh interrogations of suspected terrorists, listed key considerations for setting a similar program at the Cuban prison. He discussed the pros and cons of videotaping, talked about how to avoid interference by the International Committee of the Red Cross and offered a strong defense of waterboarding.

"If a well-trained individual is used to perform this technique, it can feel like you're drowning," he said, according to the meeting's minutes, which do not provide a verbatim transcript.

Fredman said medical experts should monitor detainees. "If someone dies while aggressive techniques are being used, regardless of the cause of death, the backlash of attention would be severely detrimental," he was quoted as saying.

CIA spokesman George Little declined to comment on the remarks attributed to Fredman. "The far more important point is the fact that CIA's terrorist interrogation program has operated on the basis of measured, detailed legal guidance from the Department of Justice," he said. "The agency program, which has been carefully reviewed within our government, has disrupted terrorist plots and saved innocent lives."

IF SOMEONE THINKS he is going to die, it's torture. This is not complicated stuff.

And "measured, detailed legal guidance" is no excuse, particularly when all that lawyerin' is designed to help you get away with using Third Reich techniques in defense of "American values" -- which now apparently include both torture and "the ends justify the means."

'Tell 'em I lied!'

At least Uncle Earl was honest about lying to voters.

OF COURSE, "Uncle Earl" is the late Gov. Earl Long, little brother of Huey and his heir to the Long dynasty in Louisiana politics.

Ol' Earl was not a "reform governor," and he made no bones about that. Ask Blaze Starr.

That being what it was, doesn't this sound pretty familiar still? From "I Remember Earl" in the late, lamented Baton Rouge "alternative" paper, Gris-Gris (June 15-21, 1976):

[Then-Attorney General Jack] Gremillion was walking by the governor's office when he recognized a contingent from Pearl River waiting to see Long.

He went into Long's office. "Governor, those people from Pearl River who you had me promise a road to are here."

"What the hell road are you talking about?" asked Earl.

Gremillion reminded Earl that he had specifically ordered him to promise the Pearl River folk a road during the recent campaign.

"Hell, I don't have time for them. Send them away."

Gremillion pleaded, "But Governor, what can I tell them?"

"Tell them I lied!"

NOW THAT my home state has "progressed" so much since the 1950s, and now that "reform" has taken hold, how shall we measure how far Louisiana has advanced?

Well, I certainly think we can say everything's bigger in the Bayou State now. The gub'na has reformed the whole game of lying to the voters, for one thing, introducing the idea of "economies of scale."

So instead of lying to a little group of piss-ant voters from a little piss-ant town about building them a little piss-ant road, the modern "reform" governor efficiently (and more effectively) tells great big lies to all the state's voters about how he would "prohibit Legislators from giving themselves pay raises that take effect before the subsequent election."

And then Gov. Bobby Jindal smartly leverages his "reform" image to deny that he's lied at all:

Asked if the campaign promise mirrors the governor’s current stance, press secretary Melissa Sellers responded in the affirmative, saying the governor still maintains the same position. “(Jindal) said this again at a press conference last week after the House's vote and continues to point out that not only is the Legislature's move to double their pay completely unreasonable, but it should not take effect until after the next election," Sellers says.

ADMITTING TO LIES can be counterproductive, the modern "reform" governor realizes, compromising his political capital and rendering him less effective in bringing honesty to state government.

Progress. You've got to love it . . . right, Louisiana?

Yep. It's official. Jindal's toast.

Well, that didn't take long. Another "reformist" Louisiana governor has been eaten by the natives.

IN THIS CASE, the "natives" would be the Louisiana Legislature. The poverty-stricken public servants -- who surely must be underpaid and underappreciated if sheer repetition of a sob story has the power to make it true -- have voted to pull themselves up by the taxpayers' bootstraps. And some struck a "let them eat cake" pose toward those who object to paying more for the same old dysfunctional policymaking:

Sen. Ann Duplessis, D-New Orleans, asked colleagues to go along with House changes in her Senate Bill 672 that reduced the proposed legislative pay from $50,700 a year to $37,500. Lawmakers currently get a base salary of $16,800 a year.

Although floor debate was almost nonexistent in both houses, Duplessis suggested that people -- many of whom have jammed radio talk shows, Internet blogs and the Capitol switchboard -- just don't understand how much time lawmakers put in to the part-time job.

"We will not let a few radio (talk show) people dictate what we know is important," Duplessis said after the vote. She said lawmakers have been in session off and on since February and will probably be called back for one or two special sessions before a regular fiscal session next year.

She said the pay raise is needed to help lawmakers offset pay lost from their regular jobs.

"We should be focusing now on moving forward with the people's business," she said. "Once people understand what we do, what our schedules are like . . . they will understand."

RIIIIIIIIGHT. Do you think the Times-Picayune reporter kept a straight face writing that one up?

The "people's business" -- like once-again trying to sneak creationism through the back door of the high-school science lab. And passing pay raises for themselves . . . while health-care, social services and higher education get the business.

"Fiscal restraint" ain't for you and it ain't for me, it's for those sick people and eggheads behind the tree.

And what does the Great Reformer, Gov. Buddy Roemer Gov. Bobby Jindal, propose to do about that "Marie Antoinette meets the Dukes of Hazzard" orgy at the capitol, a mere three floors below his office?

Same as the last time we checked in -- nothing. Here's the gub'na's statement after Monday's Senate vote for final passage:

"I'm very sorry to see the legislature do this. More than doubling legislative pay is not reasonable, and the public has been very clear on that.

"I will keep my pledge to let them govern themselves and make their own decisions as a separate branch of government. I will not let anything, even this clearly excessive pay raise, stop us from moving Louisiana forward with a clear plan for reform."

THERE ARE TWO possibilities here. Either Jindal was in cahoots with the Legislature all along and is blowing smoke up the voters' butts, or a governor who wields near-dictatorial powers just got rolled by a body that strives for color coordination, lest its fairer members become "hormonal."

And once you get rolled by the Legislature once, it's going to happen one more time . . . and one more once . . . and one more twice. . . .

In fact, by caving in the face of extortion -- and, really, that's the most charitable explanation for Jindal's non-action -- the new governor didn't salvage his "clear plan for reform" at all. What he did was kill it -- such as it was.

No, the only agenda on the table now is the Louisiana Legislature's. Because, as Jindal has made clear, whatever crazy-ass thing its members want, they are apt to get.

Let me know how that "reform" works out for you, Louisiana.

Me, I'm going to crack open a cold one, sit back and enjoy the show (from a safe distance . . . like Nebraska). It's Roemertime.

Nobody 'needs' killing

The following post was meant to be a comment on Rod Dreher's Crunchy Con post about the Turlock, Calif., toddler-stomping madman who "needed killing."

After writing the thing and checking it twice, I hit the "post comment" button . . . and the damn thing went into the Beliefnet moderation queue, which is kind of like a black hole, only worse. And I'd worked so hard on it. . . .

So here you go.

Anyway, it occurred to me that what the man "needed" wasn't killing but, instead, stopping. And the only way the cops could do that was by killing him. The difference may seem to be nothing more than mere semantics, but it's not.

The difference is between civilization and barbarism.

MY COMMENT BELOW takes the bait of a poster who asked "Libs in the room who are anti-abortion and pro-death penalty please raise your hands."

I'm a lib in the room who's anti-abortion AND anti-death-penalty.

It just seems to me -- even apart from any religious convictions I have on those matters -- than any "solution" to a problem that leaves someone dead isn't much of a solution at all.

In the case of abortion, there are possible solutions where no one has to die. The expectant mother can be assisted by government programs and by churches, crisis-pregnancy centers and other private initiatives. If she chooses to keep her child, there are programs to assist her in that as well -- though not enough.

And I know this is a radical concept, but the father also could, like, step up, be a man and take 50 percent responsibility in supporting and raising that child.

Then, there always is the option of adoption. Back in the "bad old days," we somehow recognized that option, and there was an entire infrastructure -- usually private -- for caring for young women in a tough spot who were willing to agree to adoption.

Sometimes, there isn't a solution that leaves no one dead . . . like in the case of "just war" (which Iraq ain't). That would be called an unavoidable tragedy, if not a catastrophe.

Likewise, in the case of the California maniac, it looks like the only way to stop the madman (albeit too late) was for the cops to take him out. No one ought to rejoice in that, or to say he "needed" killing.

Obviously, what he "needed" was help. He didn't get it. He killed his kid, and the cops had to end the threat in whatever way they could. It was a lose-lose situation.

But the minute we start thinking that someone "needed killing" in order for some greater good to occur -- that killing is a necessity, a good thing in itself, instead of a profound FAILURE of some sort -- we surrender yet another part of our soul to the barbarian within. And we surrender yet another piece of our incredibly fragile society to the barbarians at the gate.

Who would be us.

It is insufficient to be against the death penalty only because we might screw up in X number of convictions. We must be against the death penalty in all but the most extreme and desperate circumstances -- as in, that's the only reasonable and possible way to remove the threat of the evildoer . . . circumstances that are exceedingly rare, indeed -- because the life of even the worst murderer has worth and possesses some inherent dignity.

And when we violate that dignity, we violate our own and coarsen our society just that much more.

I will be the first to admit that there are some evil, violent SOBs who I think "deserve" killing in the worst way. That's emotion talking. Not only that, telling me to kill is the part of myself that has a hell of a lot in common with the evil SOB I so hate.

Giving in to that -- deciding that, yes, some people "need killing" -- is no virtue. It's a horrible vice.

Got corn? Uhhhhhhh . . . no.

America, allow us to introduce ourselves. We're the Midwest.

OF COURSE, you probably know us better as Flyover Country, home of rubes, hicks, yokels and rustics. I think you like to bandy around the quasi-slur "corn-fed."

You ought to know us better as The People Who Feed Your Condescending Selves. And here's a news flash for you: What with all the terrible weather and flooding and everything else we've been having all across America's Breadbasket . . . there ain't no corn.

Crop yields are going to be down. Way down. And that's assuming the corn crop can finish being planted -- or, in many cases, replanted -- in time for a timely harvest.

Soybeans? Who knows?

BUT THERE'S NO REASON for you to panic over our recent misfortune. Unless you use corn meal, eat corn flakes, cook with corn oil, like tortilla chips (or tortillas), drink bourbon whiskey or white lightnin', drink milk, eat beef, eat pork, feed your pets, consume any number of processed foods or put ethanol-blend gasoline into your vehicles, you should be just fine.

Otherwise, you're screwed.

Nighty-night, America. It's late . . . time for us hayseeds to pitch some of the rubble of our tornado-damaged dwellings out of the way so we can grab some shuteye on our soggy matresses.

Come winter, perhaps you might give us a thought one chilly morn, as you sit down at the kitchen table for a hearty bowl of . . . nothing.

Scum of the earth

What kind of scumbuckets will picket the funerals of Boy Scouts killed in a tornado?

The Rev. Fred Phelps' band of lunatics from Kansas will. From the Sioux City (Iowa) Journal:

Westboro Baptist Church, a Topeka church with the Web site www.GodHatesFags.com, released a stament minutes ago indicating members plan to picket the funerals of the four Boy Scouts killed by Wednesday night’s tornado.

Calling tornadoes “the favorite weapon of His wrath,” the group listed the first of the four funerals as taking place Tuesday in Omaha. However, a funeral for Aaron Eilerts of Eagle Grove, Iowa, is reportedly taking place Monday in West Point, Neb., about 40 miles southwest of Sioux City.

Westboro was in Denison, Iowa, in 2005 to picket the funeral of Sgt. Casey Byers of Schleswig. Byers was killed on June 11, 2005, in Iraq.

IF TORNADOES indeed are the favorite weapons of God's wrath, I can't wait for the EF-2000 monster that's going to take out Phelps' "church." And only Phelps' "church" in Topeka.

I wonder what the hateful bastards would have to say about that?

Rebels without a cause? Or a clue?

Who'd a thunk Louisianians would get upset over something besides California baseball coaches suggesting they didn't know the Civil War was over? (It's over???)

BUT IT'S TRUE! The Louisiana Senate wants to triple legislators' base pay, while the House of Representatives -- overcome by modesty, it seems -- voted to merely double it. And the angry voters of the Gret Stet are having none of it.

L'étendard sanglant est levé, y'all.

Blog posts and newspaper accounts are filled with talk that les citoyens are rallying aux armes. Le jour de gloire est arrivé!

Naturellement, this isn't a case of people rising up in favor of something -- you know . . . liberté, egalité, fraternité -- but instead, people rising up against lawmakers who have the abject nerve to raise their own pay when they've accomplished precious little of late.

As in forever.

Bad schools, bad roads, bad ethics, bad economy, bad government and a receding coastline are just fine so long as taxpayers don't have to pay too much out of pocket for it. But if they think they're getting overcharged for doodly squat . . . formez vos bataillons!

Well, at least until the next crawfish boil . . . or until somebody restocks the icebox with Abita. Laissez les bon temps rouler, cher!

SEE, THIS IS the kind of stuff that happens every time Louisiana gets a "reform" governor. Fella rides into Baton Rouge talking the messiah talk, but voters soon find out he can't walk the messiah walk. Or even walk, period, and chew gum at the same time.

When Gov. Bobby Jindal was on the campaign trail slinging around 31-point action plans, you wanted to think things could be different this time. I mean, what was the alternative?

Vote for the non-reform good ol' boys?

Still, in the back of your mind was the spectre of Buddy Roemer. Big talk, no walk. In politics, messiahs don't happen -- pretenders do. And really, if you're depending on a state politician to save your butt, one has to wonder whether that's a gluteus maximus worth saving.

The only thing that has surprised me is the sheer speed with which Jindal has morphed into Roemer. This incompetent ideologue, this cynical "reformer," this press-ducking, Legislature-bullied gutless wonder has been reduced to wimpering "Stop, or I'll tell the voters on you!"

Well, Baby Bobby Blunderbuss didn't need to, as reported in The (Baton Rouge) Advocate:

Reacting to public outcry and threats of recall, members of the House approved a legislative pay raise plan Friday that more than doubles — instead of triples — their base salary.

The amended plan, passed on a close vote, proposes a $20,700 increase in lawmakers’ base pay — putting it at $37,500 effective July 1. Lawmakers’ total compensation package would hit nearly $60,000.

Legislators would still be guaranteed annual increases in their base pay — without future votes. Future raises would be tied to changes in the Consumer Price Index.

The original plan, approved by the Senate, would have translated to a compensation package of some $70,000 annually for rank-and-file lawmakers. It had tied legislative pay to that of U.S. congressmen with increases in those salaries triggering one for state lawmakers.

Gov. Bobby Jindal said after the vote he remains opposed but will do nothing to stop the raise from going into effect if approved by the Legislature. [Emphasis mine -- R21]

“Even though they reduced it, I still think it’s too much,” Jindal told reporters who questioned him at a Lake Charles appearance.

“There is still time for them to turn back. They will have to answer directly to the people,” Jindal added in statement issued by his office.

I DIDN'T DO IT, nobody saw me do it, and I won't veto anything. Or, to quote the late Freddie Prinze on the '70s sitcom "Chico and the Man," "Ees not my yob, man!"

The hell it isn't.

But it's not like we didn't see this coming. Well, at least I did. In 1987, I voted for Roemer.

So now Louisiana voters know what they're agin' . . . or one of the things they're agin', at least. That's not important now.

What's important is this: What are Louisianians for? Until voters in the Gret Stet can answer that one, what they have -- assuming they can maintain their outrage, which is debatable -- is a revolution without a rudder.

And a rudderless "revolution" will drift no place good.

3 Chords & the Truth: Away down South

The Devil is in the kudzu, and Satan has surfaced in the swamp this week on the Big Show.

Ashley, meanwhile, contentedly slips his mint julep on the front porch. Swinging back and forth as the breeze comes up off the river, he admires the moonlight and magnolias.

"Repent, sinners! Jesus is calling!" Brother Cletus is working up a full head of steam at the revival tent at the edge of town.

Cries of "Hallelujah!" emerge from the Amen Corner, as the church ladies out back prepare to serve up temptation once the Holy Ghost has put in a good night's work. Not Demon Rum but, instead, the shameless hussy Blackberry Cobbler.

DOWN THE ROAD, some good ol' boys get loaded on Demon Bud. Up the creek, somebody's out running a trot line. In the city, a banker has supper at the Club.

In the 'hood, a murder will end up as a local brief in the newspaper.

At the family restaurant out on the highway, a black server greets an old white lady as "Honey" and they embrace in a big hug. On an Internet sports board, an SEC fan complains about how the "n*****s" got Confederate flags banned from the local stadium. The Civil War wasn't about slavery, he types. Facts is facts.

On campus, the conservative college kids rail against the liberal college kids. The progressives berate the reactionaries. None of them understand their parents. And parents don't understand their kids, whose private-school educations didn't come cheap.

MEANWHILE, the angels keep watch over the neighborhood, as Miss Betty stops to chat with Miss Bertha, and Mr. Joe has a fistful of quarters for Junior to play video games while he chews the fat with Senior at the Quick Shop.

And old times there are not forgotten. Way down South in Dixie. On 3 Chords & the Truth.

Be there. Aloha . . . y'all.

Ethel! This here GPS ain't workin' right!

Click on graphic to enlarge.

Tiger fans, if you're looking for the College World Series in Omaha, Oklahoma, you're going to miss the game. But what do you expect of people in Baton Rouge, Mississippi?

What does it take for a newspaper to get the story -- or graphic, as the case may be -- right? Let's see:

Veteran reporter: $55,000.
Graphic artist: $40,000.
Single-copy of The Advocate: 50 cents.

Functioning education system: Priceless.

Look away! Look away! Look away! Tigerland

Naw, I guess this was a joke, too. Jes' tryin' to make that Yankee coach look silly, with all his big tawk about us not knowin' the Civil War's over.

Crazy sumbitch think the war's over!

FUNNY THE THINGS you find when you're directed to the UC-Irvine athletics site to see the picture of the "good" LSU baseball fans waving American flags to greet the Anteaters at Alex Box Stadium in Baton Rouge.

Funny, didn't the LSU administration tell fans they'd really, really, really rather they didn't bring purple-and-gold Confederate battle flags on campus?

And didn't fans get the idea that the battle flag tended to rub minority students the wrong way? Of course, some fans couldn't have cared less . . . not that they didn't know the War of Northern Aggression was over or anything, according to this 2006 Associated Press story:

BATON ROUGE, La. -- The flag blends a symbol of the Confederacy with the school colors of Louisiana State University, a combination that provokes anger from blacks and creates headaches for the university.

Black students held a string of game-day protests last year -- the largest attracting several hundred participants -- to demand that the school prohibit fans on campus from flying the banner, a Confederate-style flag in the purple and gold of the LSU Fighting Tigers. The protests resulted in a few scuffles and a lot of attention in the news media -- but no ban on the flag.

This year, the protest organizer is taking a different approach: Instead of protest marches, senior Collins Phillips said he's planning pregame tailgate parties near Tiger Stadium. Beginning with the season opener on Saturday, Phillips said the parties will aim to encourage students to discuss the different meanings the flag carries: from pride in the South to the shame of slavery.

"If we were to march again this year, I think it would be a little redundant. People would say, 'There they go, marching about the flag again,'" he said.

University officials consistently rebuffed Phillips' demands for a ban on the LSU-themed Rebel flag, saying a ban would infringe on First Amendment rights. But while those who like the flag consider it a symbol of both LSU pride and Southern heritage, the school is opposed to the idea of merging its colors with what is also a symbol of slavery.

"We have an intolerance of the display of this symbol, a fundamental rejection by the university, of the use of university colors to even vaguely imply that we would tolerate or endorse this display," said LSU chancellor Sean O'Keefe.

The school has no restrictions on flying the flags on campus, but O'Keefe released a letter Friday asking fans to leave them at home.

"We will not impede the constitutional right of free speech by banning this flag, but we ask that it not be flown on the LSU campus," the letter said.

The school also sent letters to wholesalers and local retailers, asking them to stop selling the flag -- and strongly implying that the stores could be frozen out in the future on the lucrative sales of franchised LSU flags, banners and other items. The flags retail in some stores for $35. To wholesalers, the school sent letters indicating that the flags -- with their taint of racism -- could cause the value of LSU's trademarks to drop, O'Keefe said. The letters included the veiled threat of a lawsuit.

The result, O'Keefe said, has been a sharp drop in the sales of the flags.

"These are serious businesspeople. They get the picture," O'Keefe said.

The owner of one Baton Rouge flag shop said he stopped selling the flags at LSU's request. Byron Smith, owner of the Flag Shop, added that the flags weren't big sellers anyway -- until Phillips started his protest campaign last year.

"I started getting calls like crazy" after the protests began, from people requesting the flags, Smith said.

Phillips' protests drew wide coverage on local TV news and front-page stories in The Advocate, the local daily. Before the homecoming game, three people were arrested for allegedly throwing objects at the roughly 200 protesters. Phillips said he and other demonstrators were spat upon and called racial slurs.

Phillips, 23, a general studies major focusing on communications and African-American studies, takes pride in publicizing the fact that a large chunk of the population considers the flag a symbol of slavery and racism.

ISN'T THERE ANYTHING ELSE to take Southern pride in, apart from a lost cause to preserve a "peculiar institution"?

I'm asking, because I well know how central veneration of that lost war was -- is? -- to one's very identity as a Southerner. After a century and a half, we don't break out the slur "damn Yankee" for nothing when a non-Southerner offends us.

Really, we can talk about honoring our heritage, and our fallen ancestors, and Southern pride, and blah blah blah blah till Gen. Robert E. Lee rides back from the dead atop his beloved Traveller . . . but what does it say about us that we still venerate a war fought to preserve a way of life predicated on enslaving the Negro race?

By what mental and spiritual gymnastics do we turn what is objectively shameful into the source of our "Southern pride"? Again, I'm asking, because it took me a mere four decades of life -- and almost half of it away from the orbit of Southern groupthink -- to ask some quite basic questions on this topic.

HAVE WE SOUTHERNERS become nothing more than America's Serbs? And is Louisiana the rowdy, dysfunctional corner of a rowdy, dysfunctional homeland?

Or am I just a disloyal, so-called LSU fan? And a damn Yankee turncoat bastard, to boot.

It takes a special kind of person

From the comments, some brave soul crawls out from beneath his (or her) rock to reveal what a skid mark he be on the knickers of humanity:

Anonymous said...
My, The Holy Lord Most Almighty God must REALLY be pissed at y'all to keep sending His Wrathful Tornadoes at you the way He is!

What'd y'all do - vote to allow Gay Marriages or something?

BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAA!

(and if you think I'm being crude in the face of tragedy - need I remind you that Y'ALL are the same exact way every time we have an earthquake in California? Guess you hypocrites don't ever REMEMBER doing that, though, DO YOU?)

11:07 AM

YOU KNOW, there are loonies behind both front lines in the Kulturkampf, but it takes a special brand of jackal to actually revel in a region's misfortune and in the death of four of its children.

And, as we learned this morning, three of those dead children were from Omaha.

So, "Anonymous," here's to you. Now, go to hell.

Then again, I suppose someone such as yourself already occupies a hell of his own making.

Keep that trash down on the bayou

There's nothing like responding to an insult . . . by living down to it.

There's nothing like taking a stereotype . . . and giving it new legs.

There's nothing like being too bloody stupid to realize that the nation isn't laughing with you, but instead is laughing at you.

Well, dat's Loosiana for you!

IT ALL STARTED when California-Irvine's baseball coach, Mike Gillespie, gave an interview to the school's hometown paper. In that interview, Gillespie compared Louisiana State's fans to Nebraska fans -- and not in a positive light:

Gillespie said the LSU fans will be different from those UCI encountered at Nebraska.

“That was pretty electric,” Gillespie said of Saturday night’s crowd of 8,646 at Haymarket Park that witnessed UCI’s 3-2 win over the host Cornhuskers. “It was a sea of red, but they’re not a hostile group,” Gillespie said of the Nebraska faithful.

“They’re not on you, and they’re not rude and they’re not vicious and they know the Civil War is over and they know how to act,” Gillespie said, before backtracking somewhat. “Now, I don’t mean to suggest [that is the case at LSU] I really don’t.”

YES, HE DID MEAN to suggest every word of it. And then some LSU fans set out to prove the man right.

Now it's all over the Internet exactly how right Gillespie was . . . and, to a degree, he was right. Stupid to say it to a reporter but pretty much right, nevertheless.

Nebraska fans are some of the classiest in the nation -- no, the classiest in the nation. For as long as anyone can remember -- after the clock ticks down to 00:00 -- fans at Memorial Stadium have given the visiting team a standing ovation.

Win, lose or draw.

Even Oklahoma.

BY COMPARISON -- unless half-drunken chants of "Tiger bait!" can be considered a warm, loving welcome for visiting teams and fans -- this cannot be said of LSU. And unless hearty greetings of "F--- (fill in the blank)!" are considered non-hostile behavior, my experience with LSU home athletic events (and even some away games) tells me that Gillespie wasn't completely full of beans.

Ask any Nebraska football fan brave enough to follow the Huskers to either the 1985 or 1987 Sugar Bowl where, each time, the opponent was . . . LSU.

I remember the 1987 game well, because I was there. And my wife is a Nebraska alumnus.

It's an amazing -- and amazingly unpleasant -- thing to be on the wrong end of "Tiger hospitality" in the Big Easy. But why believe me? Believe the postgame story from The New York Times:

The key sacks came from Broderick Thomas, the end, and Danny Noonan, a consensus all-American middle guard, on the last two plays of the third quarter after L.S.U., trailing 17-7, had taken over on the Nebraska 17-yard line following a blocked field-goal attempt

A defensive tackle, Neil Smith, a New Orleans native, said the motivation for Nebraska came on the first night in town, when nine players and two graduate assistants were arrested in the French Quarter for disturbing the peace, charges which were later dropped.

''A lot of guys say they were mistreated and didn't want to come back,'' Smith said. ''I felt like we needed to give them a bonus to get them to want to come back.''

Noonan, one of those arrested, said the incident was influential in the Huskers' performance. ''I think that only helped us,'' Noonan said. ''We got fired up. The people treated us like dirt.''

AND LET'S NOT FORGET the treatment Tennessee received when the Vols came to Tiger Stadium for a 2005 weeknight game in the wake of Hurricane Rita.

So, the UC-Irvine coach told the truth as he saw it during an unguarded moment. As it happens, the truth as Mike Gillespie saw it was pretty close to the truth as it actually is.

Of course, there are a great many polite, gracious and welcoming Tiger fans. Those may even be a sizable majority. The problem is an inordinately large minority of hateful, rude, profane and -- yes -- racist jerks.

Monday evening, in response to Gillespie's "disrespecting" of the locals, a couple of these morons thought making a joke of the Civil War would be a real knee-slapper. Which kind of proved the Anteater coach's point about Louisianians not knowing the Civil War ended in 1865.

The loss of a generation of Southern men might be the stuff mirth is made of back home . . . and the deaths of 600,000 Americans might be 900,000 too few for some LSU fans who seek a best-of-three smackdown . . . and the fact that my homeland made chattel of human beings and thought it so good it fought a war to, among other things, preserve its "peculiar institution" might be damned funny to some Tiger fans, but that crap isn't going to fly here. Or across most of America.

To summarize -- just in case Baton Rouge didn't get the memo -- the Civil War wasn't a laughing matter. And it's still not.

I can't imagine that LSU's African-American students were amused by the baseball "joke." Neither, I imagine, was most of Baton Rouge, where white folks happen to be in the minority.

AS A NATIVE of Louisiana and an alumnus of LSU who now resides in the United States, maybe I'm the person to inform Tiger fans of one cold, hard fact of life -- your act is wearing thin.

This is one example that you've entered the Michael Richards Zone. This is another. And this is yet another.

And this one . . . this one includes a YouTube video that renders the "humor" of the Alex Box Stadium "Civil War" banner null and void. Out here in America.

In case you don't want to follow the links, here's the video, shot in January before the BCS National Championship in New Orleans:


LET ME lay this out for folks from my home state -- particularly those who plan to make the trip to Omaha this week to cheer on our Tigers.

I was born and raised in Louisiana. My family had been around Baton Rouge for a generation before Jefferson struck a deal with Napoleon, and I know that my hometown (along with the rest of the "Florida Parishes") didn't join in on the fun until 1810.

One of my great-great-grandfathers lies in a Confederate grave at Port Hudson, La. Another died in the Battle of Atlanta. Somehow, I don't think a "two out of three" Apocalypse would sit well with them.

I know "Fergit, hell!" In fact, in elementary school, it came as something of a surprise to me when I first learned the South lost the war.

Having grown up in a milieu where it was possible to not know the South lost the war, it is no surprise that I also know segregation . . . and know what racism looks like when I see it. And I know the Alex Box Stadium ha ha banner was sick sick inappropriate.

YOU DON'T come up with that kind of stuff -- even as a joke, even to tweak a loudmouthed opposing coach -- without making a very basic assumption that LSU is a "white" school and the Tigers are a "white" team. Despite the African-American players on it.

That kind of sick conditioning is something you fight, for the rest of your life, to overcome. First, however, one has to recognize it's sick. Then one must decide to resist the sickness.

Obviously, judging by at least one LSU fan site, folks down on the bayou are struggling with the first part of the equation. The "it's sick" part.

"America's original sin" sure has staying power. More than 140 years after the South's "peculiar institution" died a violent death, people just can't confess that dirty little secret everybody already knows.

Not after the South started a war that damn near destroyed it.

Not after it lost most of a generation in that war.

Not after a century of Jim Crow, that de jure attempt to undo the 14th Amendment south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

Not after the civil-rights movement and several acts of Congress finally killed ol' Jim Crow.

Yeah, the Civil War. Best two out of three. Ha ha. A joke.

A joke built upon the corpses of a mountain of martyrs.

TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH, it would have been a lot funnier if LSU officials had given every fan walking through the gate a little American flag. War over . . . and Mike Gillespie looks like a fool instead of looking vindicated.

That's probably how it would have gone at Haymarket Park in Lincoln. And that's exactly why at least one Louisiana expatriate now calls Nebraska home.

And as a Nebraskan, and an Omahan, this native Baton Rougean has one thing to say to my fellow Tiger fans: Leave your "funny" banners and some of your other "peculiar" notions back in the swamp. They're not welcome here.

The jambalaya, etoufée and gumbo, you can bring. That, and the best of that Fightin' Tiger spirit.

Horror on the Plains

There were about 100 Boy Scouts at the tornado-struck camp 50 miles north of here in Iowa. No basements.

Television reports say the entire camp was leveled. Around 40 of the 100 injured; four confirmed dead. KETV cited officials who said many of the injured have head wounds.

The scouts were on a weeklong campout. And now the whole camp is gone. Gone.

HERE'S AN EARLY REPORT from the Omaha World-Herald:

The storms that struck Omaha Sunday caused damage only to homes, trees and property. Wednesday night’s storms that sprung up from Lincoln to western Iowa took lives.

One tornado, according to Harrison County dispatchers has four fatalities and up to 30 to 40 injured.

According to an Omaha city official, at least one of the groups of scouts at the camp was from Omaha

Mercy Medical Center in Sioux City will be getting two young juvenile males by medical helicopter right around 8 p.m. from the tornado that touched down at the Little Sioux Scout Ranch.

Parents are to call 431-9272 for information on injuries.

Shortly after 9 p.m., parents who had gathered at the Fellowship Hall in Little Sioux had yet to learn who had been killed and who had been injured.

A state trooper told parents he would deliver a list of names as soon as possible, but the scene at the Boy Scout camp was chaotic. He asked for their patience.

More than 100 people were gathered at the hall, a one-story brick building, and many more were streaming in.

There were numerous reports of damage and tornadoes touching down in Lincoln but nothing confirmed yet as of 7:45 p.m. said Kerry Eagan, chief administrative officer for Lancaster County.

Mike Krysl, a spokesman, for Mercy Medical Center in Sioux City, said the hospital in full-scale disaster alert. Krysl said he did not know the extent of the two juvenile's injuries.

We're getting hammered . . . fatalities

A tornado has destroyed several buildings at a Boy Scout camp in southwestern Iowa, killing four and injuring 30 to 40 others, according to a report on KETV, Channel 7 in Omaha, which cited information from the Harrison County emergency dispatch center.

The scout camp -- the Little Sioux Scout Ranch, just northeast of Little Sioux, Iowa -- was filled with Boy Scouts for a summer event.

This comes as a virtual freight train of tornadic thunderstorm continues to rake eastern Nebraska and western Iowa. Tornado sirens have been going off in Omaha throughout the evening, as one tornado warning is replaced by another before it can expire.

This is the worst night of weather amid a couple of solid weeks of horrific weather. All of Douglas County (Omaha) -- as well as numerous other area counties -- also are under flash-flood warnings, with creeks rising fast and reports of street flooding incoming.

The lights are starting to blink. Gotta run if I want this to post.

UPDATE: Boy Scouts, according to Channel 7, have confirmed four deaths. Damn, it's hailing and I hear a roar.

UPDATE 2: OK, the hail has pretty much stopped here in west-central Omaha and the wind seems to have calmed down a bit for the time being. But we're getting torrential rain, and there's reports of creek flooding all through the west side of town.

Millard, which got whacked by a tornado early Sunday morning, is flooding in spots. Likewise, Papillion Creek, which runs through west and central Omaha, is flooding -- causing at least one car to flood out at 90th and Center streets.

O! What mine eyelets hath seen!

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

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

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

Anyway, where was I? Aiiight.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Geaux Tigers.

Whither broadcasting? I'm with Ron

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

Ever.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FISH. BARREL. FIREARMS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now if the neighbors were investment bankers. . . .