You broke my heart! You broke my heart!

A member of the stopped clock that is the Bush Administration comes up with the correct time regarding the ongoing disaster that is New Orleans.

YOU'LL NOTE I didn't say the ongoing disaster that is post-Katrina New Orleans. At any rate, The Times-Picayune asked federal recovery czar Douglas O'Dell what time it was, and he said it's late.

Late, indeed:

On one of his frequent visits to New Orleans, federal recovery coordinator Douglas O'Dell delivered a bruising critique of the Nagin administration on Thursday, saying "there is growing frustration" in Washington with the speed, efficiency and competence of City Hall's efforts to manage the local recovery after Hurricane Katrina.

O'Dell, who consults with dozens of federal, state and local agencies and troubleshoots regulatory logjams, said Mayor Ray Nagin's recovery director, Ed Blakely, often does not return his calls and seems to be operating under the premise -- erroneous, O'Dell thinks -- that a new presidential administration next year "will reload the cannon and start shooting money down here."

O'Dell's critique, developed over several interviews, came as The Times-Picayune accompanied him on an all-day New Orleans visit Thursday. The coordinator visits the area at least every other week to discuss a wide range of recovery issues with regional officials, his aides said.

O'Dell's most recent visit included a problem-solving technical session with local, state and federal housing officials; a discussion of education issues with state Education Superintendent Paul Pastorek; meetings with local business leaders and law enforcement officials; and consultations with Paul Rainwater, his state counterpart as director of the Louisiana Recovery Authority.

O'Dell praised the work of some local and state leaders, such as Pastorek, who recently unveiled a massive school reconstruction plan involving 28 new or rehabilitated schools and $685 million in hand for construction.

And he singled out for more praise Bill Chrisman, the city's new capital projects director, and Cynthia Sylvain-Lear, who oversees capital projects as the city's deputy chief administrative officer. "She has her finger on the pulse," he said.

But in several interviews, O'Dell expressed continuing frustration with Blakely, an urban planning professor from Australia who once served as deputy mayor of Oakland, Calif.

He said Blakely is often absent and unavailable and leads an office that produces "ethereal visions" of recovery that cannot be financed with federal recovery dollars.

"I'm basically asking Blakely, who's probably getting paid a whole hell of a lot more money than I am, to do his damn job," O'Dell said.

"He's there not only to plan, but to execute. Not only to manage, but lead. He's not an elected official, but as a nonelected official he wields enormous influence over the future of this city and the speed of its recovery," he continued.

"And he's failing, in my view."

(snip)

Asked why he chose to be so blunt about the work of Blakely's office, O'Dell said: "What I'm trying to do is plainly tell the federal view, the universal federal view . . . that the federal government has created $126 billion worth of response to this tragedy. And there are a lot of people in the federal government who are not happy with the way it's being applied -- with the speed it's being applied, the efficiency with which it's being applied. And there's great concern as to the transparency with which its being applied."

O'Dell said Thursday that Blakely's office sometimes seeks recovery money for projects "based on rough sketches, arm waving, 'imagineering,' whatever."

THERE'S ONE THING, however, that I couldn't tell you whether O'Dell grasps or not. It's the sad fact that this is as good as it gets in the Big Uneasy.

I don't know that the former Marine general apprehends that New Orleans is the slow-witted goombah in the godfather's coterie -- the one who's just as eager to skim a few Benjamins off the top of the weekly protection-money haul as he is clueless that the capo (that would be the Louisiana statehouse) knows the score and would have had him whacked years ago, except that N'Awly is mama's sister's baby boy, and even Michael Corleone doesn't need that kind of heat.

And even Michael Corleone doesn't need that kind of heat. . . .

And even Michael Corleone doesn't need that kind of heat. . . .

AS THE CIVIC-MINDED IDIOT with an admitted soft spot for N'Awly, I've been saying and saying, "N'Awly, cut that s*** out . . . the Big Boss is wise to you, and if he don't whack you, the G-Man will!"

And N'Awly, he say, "Aw, Favog! You worry too much. Ain't nobody gonna mess wit N'Awly. If Cuz get too mad at me, I'll shake Unk Sam down for a few thou more, and we be square. Chill, Cap!"

And den I say, "Cher, you don' unnerstand. It different this time. Unk Sam sick of coughin' up more protection money than what he owe da Capo. I hear he been talkin' to da feds, an' if push come to shove, da Big Boss gonna hang you out to dry wid da G-Man.

"Dat way, you outta his hair, and he don' have to tell his Mama he had her sister's baby boy whacked."

And then N'Awly say . . . well, N'Awly was gonna say sumptin', but right then the floodwall started leakin' through the newspaper expansion joint . . . and this wall a water started headin' our way . . . and I ain't ashamed to say I got the hell outta there.

Last I saw N'Awly, he was kickin in the door of da liquor store, tryin' to grab him a case of Early Times before the water got too high and rurnt it.

I GUESS UNK SAM -- not to mention Gen. O'Dell -- knew how to get N'Awly out of everybody's hair after all. Something tells me N'Awly's (and the Capo's, too) days in the "protection" bidness are numbered.

Behold . . . a communiss plot

Every now and again, I am reminded that my Omaha-bred wife and I hail from the same country but different worlds.

THE ABOVE PHOTO and story is from Page 17 of the Evening World-Herald on Wednesday, Nov. 27, 1963. There was nothing remarkable at all that day in Omaha, Neb., about this bit of newspaper boilerplate.

Typical Omaha elementary school. Staged picture accompanying routine, feel-good story about a natural-gas company providing ice cream and cookies for the kids next door. Cute . . . but ho-hum.

If this story and picture -- reflecting an equivalent reality in my hometown, Baton Rouge, La. -- had run that same evening in the State-Times. . . .

Forget it.

There is no way in hell that story and picture ever would have run in the State-Times. The circumstances behind it would not -- could not -- have happened. Not without military occupation . . . and, come to think of it, not even then.

What was unremarkable in Omaha in 1963 didn't even start to happen in Baton Rouge until 1970. Technically.

It never did work out, actually.

Speaking of 'blowed up good' . . .

What we've come to

If you click on this Drudge Report ad, it takes you here, to an "urgent" survey by the NewsMax magazine and website.

OF COURSE, NewsMax doesn't really give a damn what you think about blowing a country to Kingdom Come just because we can. No, NewsMax is all about the marketing, baby:

I understand that as a voter in this poll I will be signed up for FREE breaking news alerts. I can unsubscribe at any time. Votes with invalid emails will not be counted. Poll results will be provided in a future email to you.

I THINK I PREFER the Sun's cheap ploy for attention among Great Britain's knuckle-draggers . . . large, uncovered female breasts on Page 3. Yes, bodacious tatas in your morning newspaper might well be a near occasion of sin, but at least they're not playing on nationalistic tendencies to bloodlust.

But hooters aren't something the conservative chattering classes would see as fit viewing for Bubba in Bentonville. No, no . . . let's stick to figuring out the next Middle Eastern nation to blow up good.

It's kind of like what Americans do nowadays instead of cockfighting. Or pit-bull fights . . . especially since Michael Vick's in the federal pen.

That's us Americans. Staying classy all the way to Armageddon.

The perfect pop song

It would be a better world, I think, if we still had Shindig! and Hullabaloo on television.

I know it would be a better world if the great Jackie DeShannon (née Sharon Lee Myers) still were crankin' out the big radio hits like she was, say, in 1965 -- the year she made this appearance on NBC's Hullabaloo.

"When You Walk in the Room," if you ask me, belongs in the rarified ranks of songs that merit consideration as The Perfect Pop Song. Listen for yourself.

The Broom Man goes home

There's a party in Heaven today. It has nothing to do with the Olympics.

Nor does it have a thing to do with Warren Buffett's making another billion or three. And today's big headline, Barack Obama picking Joe Biden as his running mate, was sooooo yesterday's news before it even happened.

NO, IT'S PARTY TIME for the Heavenly Host because the Broom Man has, at long last, come home. The Omaha World-Herald has the big news:

The blind broom peddler who whistled as he walked Omaha streets for more than 55 years has died.

The Rev. Livingston Wills, who often said "God is good," died Friday at St. Joseph Villa Nursing & Rehabilitation Center. He was 91 and had been living there since May.

"Rev," as he was affectionately called, sold brooms as a way to help support himself and his family.

When Wills began going door to door in the 1950s, Omaha was a much smaller city. Six days a week, he would put on a suit and tie, sling brooms over his shoulder and head out the door.

Often he would catch a bus near his north Omaha home and then walk through Florence, Benson, Dundee or some other neighborhood, never seeming to get lost.

"God will take care of me," he would say. "Do you need a good broom?"

He couldn't tell a $10 bill from a coupon, so he simply trusted people, said his friend Sandy Nogg of Omaha. Cars bumped him several times, and sometimes people slammed the door in his face, but he never became discouraged.

"The hearts of the people of Omaha were for him," said Bernadine Jefferson, a friend of about 50 years. "I think a lot of people felt like he was part of their family. He was joyful and he had a good memory. He really enjoyed being around people."

(snip)

Wills didn't make brooms, though. He attended Union College in Lincoln, where he studied English and history. After graduating, he moved to Omaha in the late 1940s, intending to teach, but instead he felt a call to ministry.

He was ordained and served for many years as pastor at the Tabernacle Church of Christ Holiness at 25th and Seward Streets. Wills was elevated to bishop in the church in 1975.

Last year, The World-Herald's Goodfellows campaign drew attention to Wills' failing health and financial needs. He had fallen behind on his utility bills, and readers sprang into action.

Within a week, more than $2,000 in donations arrived, in checks big and small. They all came with a message: Please give this to the Broom Man.

THE TRAGIC FLAW at the heart of the human condition is that, when we saw the Broom Man walking down the street peddling his wares, we saw the Broom Man walking down the street peddling his wares.

By virtue of our human fallenness and our cultural conditioning, we're quite incapable of seeing anything below surface trappings. We actually think, probably, that it's better to be like Bill Gates than to be like the Broom Man.

God forbid, most of us probably think it would be better to be President Bush than to walk a dark mile in the Broom Man's shoes.

We value, I think, the wrong kind of success. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say we put inordinate value on the wrong kind of success.

Bill Gates' fundamental contribution to the world has been -- pretty much -- the "blue screen of death." (Can you tell I'm a Windows user?) George W. Bush's big contribution has been to drag a nation further into the mud, injecting what might turn out to be a fatal dose of "preventive war" and a torture-state ethos into our body politic.

REV. LIVINGSTON WILLS, on the other hand, gave a Midwestern city a living example of what it means to trust God and love one's fellow man.

And Omaha's Broom Man sold a damn good broom at a reasonable price. You can't beat that.

God will take care of us. Though we could use a good broom.

3 Chords & the Truth: It's about the journey

I usually like to surprise people with what I play on 3 Chords & the Truth.

SOMETIMES, THOUGH, I just like to throw up the week's playlist to demonstrate that the Big Show ain't exactly what folks are used to nowadays -- at least not when it comes to radio . . . or even to most webcasts or podcasts.

3 Chords & the Truth is not about a format, and it's not about a subculture or a niche. What it's about is the music. Good music. And good music can come from a lot of places, just as righteous mixes can cover a hell of a lot of musical ground in one set.

When it comes to this show -- like they say, whomever "they" might be -- we're all about the wonder of the journey. The actual destination is lagniappe.

So, that being said, here's this week's playlist:

Must Get Out
Maroon 5 (Songs About Jane)
2003

Your Heart Is Breaking Down
Choo Choo (Choo Choo)
2008

Should I Cry (alternate take)
Jackie De Shannon (The Definitive Collection)
1964

Six Days on The Road
Dave Dudley (Country USA - 1963)
1963

Straight Eight
Spencer Bohren (Born in a Biscayne)
1984

Boris the Spider
The Who (My Generation -- The Very Best of the Who)
1966

Real Love
Cretones (Thin Red Line)
1980

Lost in the Supermarket
The Clash (London Calling)
1979

You're Lost Little Girl
The Doors (Strange Days)
1967

Innocence Lost
Steve Taylor (I Predict 1990)
1987

Lost My Mind
Matthew Sweet (100% Fun)
1995

Departure / Ride My See-Saw
The Moody Blues (In Search of the Lost Chord)
1968

Handshake Drugs
Wilco (A Ghost Is Born)
2004

Brightly Wound
Eisley (Room Noises)
2005

Sole Salvation
English Beat (Special Beat Service)
1982

I Do
J. Geils Band (Monkey Island)
1977

Easy Does It
Count Basie & His Orchestra (The Essential Count Basie, Vol. 2)
1940

Do You Love Me
The Contours (The Classic Rhythm & Blues Collection: 1958-1963)
1962

Baby Workout
Jackie Wilson (The Classic Rhythm & Blues Collection: 1958-1963)
1963

I Saw Her Standing There
Beatles (Meet The Beatles!)
1964

You've Got To Hide Your Love Away
The Silkie (British Invasion Gold)
1965

Everything Gonna Be Everything
Don Covay (See-Saw)
1966

She May Call You Up Tonight
The Left Banke (There's Gonna Be A Storm - The Complete Recordings 1966-1969)
1967

Frankenstein
New York Dolls (New York Dolls)
1973

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

This ought to hold you till the Big Show

It's 1966, and The Left Banke manages to sound just like it does in the studio . . . while in the middle of a golf course.

And look! It's Renée! SHE'S WALKING AWAY!

OK, so the staging is just a tad cheesy. And The Left Banke is lip synching to its hit record. But you've got to admit "Walk Away Renée" is one great song.

Dear Diary: The Lord is my . . . WHAT?!?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Revolution 21's Blog for the People continues an occasional series of dispatches recorded some years ago in the trenches of Catholic radio . . . Pope FM, if you will. The names aren't real, nor are the places, but the stories are -- and it's a snapshot picture of what happens when "Their zeal consumes them" meets "Sinners sacrifice for the institution, not vice versa."

In other words, there has to be a better way.

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 9, 2002

Dear Diary,


I think, someday, this diary may turn into a book. The only roadblock to my turning the continuing saga of Pope FM into the next great American comedic novel is that A Confederacy of Dunces already has been written.

And, either fortuitously or tragically, I seem to have wandered into the real-life sequel, which is centered upon an exceedingly bizarre little Catholic radio station. Picture Pope FM this way: Hunter S. Thompson finds Jesus, joins the Catholic Church, buys WKRP and turns it into a religious station.

But he never kicks the pills and the booze.

This is the kind of surreal, whacked-out chaos that swirls about me, here in the great Midwest, as I huddle in my broken-down production room in a ramshackle little radio station. Apart from Jesus Christ, my salvation is the limoncello our secretary keeps in the break-room freezer.

If we were a Baptist radio station, I'd be sooooo screwed right now. . . .

WELL, IT'S BEEN an eventful couple of weeks since my last entry. Work has gotten so bizarre as to defy description.

"The Triumvirate" has entered into an unbreakable feedback loop, and Manic Don -- the program director, as well as the catalyst for the troika -- has just released an organizational plan in which all roads lead to himself. In the staff meeting where all this was unveiled, I found that, as production director, I don't even have the power to decide what I'm working on during any given day.

I told them not to insult me by letting me keep a meaningless title if I have that little control over what I do. The past two weeks, I have surprised even myself with the level of bluntness I've developed.

Don and the development guy kept saying that "station business" (i.e. underwriting and promos) had to take precedence over creating programming during business hours. I told them that evangelization was the station's business, and that Pope FM was not a commercial enterprise.

As was the case with Jimmy Swaggart, I am becoming increasingly and utterly convinced it's all about money, and it's all about us . . . not suffering souls in need of Jesus.

I swear to you, Catholics are the craziest bastards this side of the West Bank (of the Jordan, not the Mississippi).

THERE'S GOING TO BE a spectacular meltdown and/or explosion. I just can't decide whether I'm being called to view it from close up -- and perhaps be around to help pick up the pieces if I don't go up in the mushroom cloud -- or to view it from a safe distance.

Meanwhile, I had a voice mail the other day from a Baptist guy wanting to talk to a priest about possibly converting -- even though his wife is violently opposed to the Catholic Church. I forwarded his info to our secretary, asked about procedures for referrals and made a couple of suggestions about priests to put him in touch with.

Well, tonight after hours, I pick up the phone . . . and it's the same guy, asking about good reference books.

"You're the guy who left the voice mail, right?" I asked. He said that he was.

Had anyone from the station put him in contact with a priest or someone else?

No.

So I suggested Father Hardon's Pocket Catechism as beginning reading, and I gave him the name and phone number of the priest who confirmed my wife and me. I also suggested that he just patiently answer his wife's questions or objections, but not to argue with her about it.

I figure God really wants this guy to be Catholic. Sometimes I wonder why, but that's not my call. Fortunately.

On another front, Manic Don of the Holy Humvee tried to dump building playback logs for the automation program on my already overloaded plate. Trouble is, that's not my yob, man. Not in my job description.

I told him my plate already was full and that automation programming wasn't in my job description but was in his. By the end of the day, I was handed a new job description.

Guess what it included?

It also included reclassifying me as "occupational/non-exempt" from "professional/ exempt." When I pointed that out to Don and Ken, the general manager, (in writing, for documentation purposes) and mentioned "overtime" (which would substantially increase my salary), let's just say an abrupt correction was made.

THE IMPROBABLE, unbelievable saga of My Life at Pope FM just keeps getting better and better. This translates to more and more incredible . . . in the sense of "You won't believe this s***!"

Once again, I remind myself -- and the world -- that, yes, it really happened. Likewise, I note that I'm about to be guilty of "burying the lede," but what am I gonna do? It's a diary, Diary.

Today at Levy Pants -- if I inhabit the sequel to A Confederacy of Dunces, this must be the Levy Pants factory -- I was tasked to clean up a Pope FM Update done by Don and Ken. The copy, written by . . . oh, you know who the hell wrote it, had the general manager introducing the Messiah -- um, Don -- as "part mad scientist, part creative genius and just plain sinner like the rest of us."

It's all very frat boy, you know. Well, that is if frat boys went around spouting phrases like "just plain sinner like the rest of us."

I could have tried -- futilely -- to naysay against such juvenile things going over the air. But what's the fun in that? I prefer to imagine certain board members hearing that through the static on their FM radios.

And in a Pledge-a-Thon promo I just finished tonight for the Lord of the Hummer, he took a "Star Wars" tack on fund raising. I looked and looked and looked for the voiceover for one part of the spot, but it wasn't there, so I just voiced the part myself.

I did, however, do some editing. Can you imagine how it might sound, through the static of our weak signal, if I had read the line as written, which began "The Lord is our Master Vader . . . ."

Listen to that in your mind's ear. Imagine someone paying scant attention to our staticky broadcast.

"The Lord is our Master Vader . . . ."

I CAN SEE IT NOW. I drop dead, and somehow -- probably through a clerical error -- I end up in Heaven Itself, right in the middle of the Beatific Vision, and there He is.

Jesus Christ.

Right there in front of me.

Coming out of an adult bookstore.

I . . . don't . . . think . . . so.

But that's the less-than-beatific vision our listeners came thiiiiiis close to having as they listened to Pope FM over their morning bowl of Froot Loops.

Something tells me that the Froot Loops aren't just in our listeners' cereal bowls.

Satan is a Brillo pad

Jesus has gone into the bathroom-fixtures bidness in Livingston Parish, La.

And Satan looks like a Brillo pad and some WD-40.

BATON ROUGE'S CBS affiliate, WAFB, explains . . . I guess:

Robb Keppler says he asked for a sign and he got it, in the form of Jesus in his bathroom sink.

Keppler lives in the Livingston Parish town of Albany with his daughter-in-law and her child. She also has another one on the way. His 21-year-old son, Private E2 Brandon Keppler, is serving overseas. Before Brandon joined the Army, his father says the soldier had some hard times with a relationship that went bad and he subsequently suffered with depression. The soldier went into a hospital and his family says he talked of taking his own life.

His father struggled hard to keep the family intact. A praying man, he asked for a sign. "Let me know something," Rob Keppler recalls saying. "I was having a hard time dealing with it myself and stepped out the shower one night and saw it plain as day right there," he said as he pointed to a rusty spot in his sink. Was this simply a rust spot caused by the slow drip of water, or was this a sign, an image of Jesus? Robb Keppler has no doubt. "It is an image of Jesus, a clear sign," he says.

"After we saw the image, everything just started coming together," Keppler said. He says his son is now doing fine, serving in Afghanistan, and his life has straightened out.

WELL, BLESS THEIR HEARTS, I guess that if a rust spot in the bathroom sink helps bring these folks closer to the Lord, I reckon He'll go with the flow. You know?

But if you ask me, if that rust spot in the lavatory is an image of Our Lord and Savior, the Man Upstairs has done gone and contracted out miraculous apparitions to Pablo Picasso.

He could do worse, I guess.

Mr. Bush, tear down this wall (of stupidity)!

Can we swap our current American president -- and the two aspirants to the star-spangled throne -- for a former Soviet leader?

WE'RE IN NEED of someone with a little common sense around here.

In an op-ed piece for The New York Times, Mikhail Gorbachev tries to explain to Americans the cold, hard facts of life about realpolitik . . . and about basic human nature as it collectively applies to great nations:

The problems of the Caucasus region cannot be solved by force. That has been tried more than once in the past two decades, and it has always boomeranged.

What is needed is a legally binding agreement not to use force. Mr. Saakashvili has repeatedly refused to sign such an agreement, for reasons that have now become abundantly clear.

The West would be wise to help achieve such an agreement now. If, instead, it chooses to blame Russia and re-arm Georgia, as American officials are suggesting, a new crisis will be inevitable. In that case, expect the worst.

In recent days, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President Bush have been promising to isolate Russia. Some American politicians have threatened to expel it from the Group of 8 industrialized nations, to abolish the NATO-Russia Council and to keep Russia out of the World Trade Organization.

These are empty threats. For some time now, Russians have been wondering: If our opinion counts for nothing in those institutions, do we really need them? Just to sit at the nicely set dinner table and listen to lectures?

Indeed, Russia has long been told to simply accept the facts. Here’s the independence of Kosovo for you. Here’s the abrogation of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, and the American decision to place missile defenses in neighboring countries. Here’s the unending expansion of NATO. All of these moves have been set against the backdrop of sweet talk about partnership. Why would anyone put up with such a charade?

There is much talk now in the United States about rethinking relations with Russia. One thing that should definitely be rethought: the habit of talking to Russia in a condescending way, without regard for its positions and interests.

Our two countries could develop a serious agenda for genuine, rather than token, cooperation. Many Americans, as well as Russians, understand the need for this. But is the same true of the political leaders?

THE PROBLEM FACING the Soviet Union's final leader in his effort to persuade Americans is as simple as it is tragic . . . as in America's tragic flaw.

See, the problem here -- and the thing that threatens to lead us to an unwanted superpower conflict -- is that the United States is an empire led by revolutionary narcissists and populated by a navel-gazing people uninterested in foreign affairs. This ignorance isn't just embarrassing, it's dangerous.

Basically, Americans are too ignorant to know when their leaders are acting like bulls amok in the gift shop of the Thermonuclear Hotel. And the Polish Missile Crisis -- or the Ukraine Crisis . . . or the Georgian Crisis -- will catch them completely by surprise.

Only this time, we'll be Khrushchev.

Sadly, I'll bet a lot of folks will have to click on the link to figure out what I'm talking about.

Dear Diary: Humvees for Jesus

EDITOR'S NOTE: Revolution 21's Blog for the People continues an occasional series of dispatches recorded some years ago in the trenches of Catholic radio . . . Pope FM, if you will. The names aren't real, nor are the places, but the stories are -- and it's a snapshot picture of what happens when "Their zeal consumes them" meets "Sinners sacrifice for the institution, not vice versa."

In other words, there has to be a better way.

MONDAY, SEPT. 23, 2002

Dear Diary,


I write with some trepidation about what posterity will think of this missive. For what I will think of this missive in future years.

I fear people might read this and think me delusional -- that something as bat-s*** crazy as what I'm about to put to figurative "paper" couldn't have happened, that I made it all up. Sometimes, I fear that I'll think the same thing in five or 10 years.

Note to posterity (and to my future self): You can't make this s*** up. You just can't.

Well, it's been a while since I've written, and things have changed quite a bit around Pope FM. Mary, our general manager, is gone to tackle running a chain of Catholic radio stations. Ken is running the show now, and he's going great guns to "corporatize" the place.

His mantra seems to be "How can we do some business here?" Funny, I didn't know non-profit Catholic radio -- or Catholic evangelization -- was "bidness." Silly me.

Too, we have a new program director. Actually, this is a new position. Before, Mary did the program-director thing as part of her general-manager duties, and I reported to her. Now I have an extremely manic -- and extremely odd -- middle manager to brighten my work experience.

This is gonna be a rough ride.

HERE, DEAR DIARY, is a vignette that (I think) illustrates the big picture. And you'll see the genesis of my "rough ride" assessment.

First, the new guy, Don, is driving everybody nuts -- except for the fast clique formed by him, the general manager and the development director. They all have five kids (the new guy's fifth is on the way), they're all around my age, they're all "Catholic and Damned Proud of It" (for lack of a better term) types, etc.

All I can say briefly is the direction of the station has turned 180 degrees in the blink of an eye. There has been wrenching change in the whole culture of the station in a week . . . manic would be an apt description, I think. Manic, just like (as I noted earlier) Don.

I mean, I am the voice of restraint at the place now. Don has about five years of pent-up ideas he's unleashing all at once and expecting to implement by the end of the year. With very limited resources to accomplish any of it . . . even after the technical expansion is complete.

Honestly, I desperately want to give the station a contemporary, non-dyspeptic sound. I desperately want to reach out to young people. But in such a short time, you can only do what you can do with the resources you have. And you have to be deliberate in what you're doing.

BUYING A HUMVEE, I don't think, can be described as exercising due deliberation.

That's right, ladies and germs, Don wants to get someone to donate the scratch for a Humvee -- the Pope FM Humvee -- which we then would have painted like the Vatican flag to play off the theme "The Church Militant."

I am the only convert left on the staff, and I can't convince these zealots how badly that might piss off people who have no clue what the Church Militant is. So much so that we wouldn't have the opportunity to explain it (and so much so that it might not make a difference when you do).

And then we will face the reaction of the Protestants. ;-) As a friend comments about such things, "Their zeal consumes them."

APART FROM the PR-nightmare possibilities, I can think of a lot neater things $35,000 could buy instead of a used Hummer.

On the up side, Don values creativity, allegedly likes Holy Spirit Rock and seems to have the capability of being collaborative. On the down side, I picked the wrong week to stop doing crystal meth.

Friday, the intern who produces Keys to the Kingdom came into our temporary production room, looking concerned and asking how I was. I told her I picked the wrong week to stop smoking crack.

She then, unprompted, blurts out "How can you STAND it!"

Metaphysically, I have NO IDEA what is going on here. All I can figure out is that God has some sort of Rube Goldberg plan in all this, which He is laughing Himself silly watching.

I'll submit here a memo I sent to the entire Pope FM staff right after Don laid the whole Humvees for Jesus thing on us. I am sure I am now looked upon in that peculiar way the manic-depressive looks at the Normal Affect Population when he's bouncing off the walls in a fit of giddy delirium.

That's right, I'm a party-pooper who Just Can't See. In the peculiar world of Catholic radio, I'm sure that makes me a Bad Catholic as well.

Anyway, here's the memo:

Dear all,

Before we go too far down the promotional and imaging road, perhaps we need to stop and put on Protestant or average-Joe Catholic glasses.

As this whole clerical sexual-abuse mess drags on and (probably) gets worse, it will have a tremendous impact on how Catholics evangelize and, indeed, relate to the larger society.

For example, I would never, in this climate, use “The Church Militant” as a promotional scheme or even subtext. I think many not-so-well catechized Catholics immediately would be turned off by the phrase, having misunderstood the use of the word “militant.” And Protestants would feel threatened . . . and not without justification. Trust me, a convert, on this.

Lord knows the station needs to be pepped up. Lord knows we need to vastly expand our programming efforts toward teen-agers and young adults. And Lord knows Catholic media needs to learn to relate to average people in compelling and effective ways.

But we have to realize that we are trying to evangelize for a Church that has some grave problems right now – gravely sinful problems at the highest levels in some cases. We are sinners, our priests are sinners, and some of our bishops are major-league sinners. It’s an unpleasant fact, but it IS a fact. And it is not without precedent in Catholic history, although that DOES NOT make it any easier to live through or cope with right now.

In this light, I think what we need to do is run the Humvee and “Church Militant” into a tree and walk forward into the greater community in humility, and in our humanity, proclaiming the Christ “who saved a wretch like me.”

If we can come up with the $35,000 or so that would buy a used Hummer, I would suggest buying a more cost-effective vehicle and using the excess to begin endowing efforts toward helping the underprivileged in town. At any rate, the whole issue is a serious discussion the PR committee and board needs to have. At least that’s my two cents’ worth.

A LOT OF GOOD that did.

I wandered out to the reception desk this afternoon, only to find a fishbowl on the counter with some change in it. In front of the fishbowl was Don's yellow-and-white model Hummer.

On the fishbowl is a sign: "Help the Humvee!"

I asked our secretary what the deal was. She got this bemused look, and said "Don told me to put this up here."

I hung my head.

Did I mention that he's "blown up" three computers -- crappy ones, yes, but three computers nonetheless -- trying to make them do God knows what? And I was at work until 12:30 a.m. Wednesday desperately trying to fix the WaveStation automation, which suffered a Challenger-scale "major malfunction." Well, at least short of literally exploding.

Don was nowhere to be found.

And now the station organizational chart officially has all roads leading to the program director. Except for the stuff he doesn't like to do. In the staff meeting where that loo-loo was unveiled, I reached new pinnacles of bluntness that I did not know I was capable of.

I picked the wrong week to quit chasing fistfuls of downers with bourbon.

Why are Catholics so bat-s*** crazy?

NOTE TO MY FUTURE SELF: No, you didn't make this up. It happened. It's completely whack, but it happened. I don't know how this Pope FM thing will shake out, but I hope you make it through all right.

Tell me, are you still Catholic?

Choo Choo cha-boogie

When I was but a lad in college -- long ago and far away, let me assure you -- really fun bands like Choo Choo seemingly grew on trees.

They were everywhere, and it was good.

NOW, APPARENTLY, you have to go to Bern, Switzerland, to have the kind of thing we took for granted in 1981. Either that says something bad about the United States today, or something good about Switzerland.

Probably both.

Shooting craps for life in the Culture of Death

In the bitter cold of December 2000, as the disputed Bush-Gore election turned red hot at the U.S. Supreme Court, I was working in the peculiar world of Catholic radio. Pope FM, if you will.

Our little FM station was an affiliate of EWTN radio, and I recall that as the legal battle raged between George Bush and Vice-President Al Gore -- as the presidency hung in the balance -- the network aired a special rosary for life. It never was billed as a prayer for Bush's victory (and legally it couldn't be) but we all knew the score: This was a rosary for the "pro-life" Bush to prevail over the "pro-abortion" Gore.

At least that's what the entire Pope FM staff was praying for. Me included.

I DON'T THINK I ever thought politics could change America's "Culture of Death" into a "Culture of Life." I did, however, think the election was all about federal policy and potential Supreme Court nominations. I thought government could be used to fight a "holding action."

I thought Roe v. Wade could be rolled back, and I thought maybe the Republicans, through political action, could somehow hinder the nation's cultural disintegration so that maybe -- maybe -- revival might come to our culturally and religiously devolving land before it was Too Late.

We were pro-life, true-believing, orthodox Roman Catholics. We stood for Jesus, saving babies, the Pope and EWTN. And it was a given that we'd vote G-O-P in the name of G-O-D.

So in that bleak midwinter, there we sat in our dilapidated little studios in a shabby little strip mall in a ramshackle part of town -- there we sat in the Pope FM conference room reciting the rosary with EWTN, praying for the triumph of a man who ultimately would do little to roll back the tide of fetal homicide in America.

Praying for the installation of a president who would, however, go on to do awesome things in the fields of pursuing an unwise and unjust war, rolling back civil liberties in the name of national security, and in turning CIA "spooks" and Army "grunts" alike into torturers whom -- in a more civilized age -- it would have been necessary to try at Nuremberg.

In a more civilized age, it would have been necessary to try Bush and much of his administration at Nuremberg.

If we really cut to the chase here, I guess what we were after -- at least what I was after -- was forestalling America's judgment by a just deity. Call it what it was: lawyering up and gunning for a cosmic stay of execution.

"Look, Jesus! We voted Republican . . . you know, GOP -- God's Own Party. Well, yeah, we're all driving 2.5 cars and living in too-big houses and bitching about taxes . . . but. . . ." BZZZZZZZZZT . . . as the lights dim all across the New Jerusalem.

MY GOD, look what we did. The economy's even in the tank. It was the original Rickroll.

Looking upon our civic wreckage from a biblical crime-and-punishment perspective is especially interesting -- not to mention ironic. In our political quest to avert -- or at least defer -- divine judgment, we instead may have brought it about.

Because if George W. Bush is not God's judgment upon a wicked people, I don't know what is.

And now -- in the name of salvation through better jurisprudence -- some would have us again do what we did in 1980 . . . and 1984 . . . and 1988 . . . and 2000 . . . and 2004, only expecting different results this time with the GOP's presumptive nominee, John McCain.

Am I saying vote for Barack Obama, the Democrat -- the pro-abort?

NO. To tell you the truth, I suspect there is no morally justifiable choice between McCain and Obama. Maybe the sheer catastrophic potential of someone with McCain's penchant for both wrongheadedness and hotheadedness being in charge of American foreign policy is enough "proportionate reason" to vote for Obama.

Then again, maybe not.

All I know is this one thing: I won't get fooled again.

Do as we say, not as we do

The Worst President Ever is issuing ultimatums to Russia about how to handle affairs on its own border.

What makes George W. Bush's somber proclamation even worse is the mind-blowing hypocrisy of it all, as evidenced by this Associated Press dispatch:

The Russian foreign minister said Thursday that Georgia could "forget about" getting back the two separatist regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Medvedev also met with their leaders in Kremlin this past week, raising the prospect that Moscow could absorb the regions even though the territory is internationally recognized as being within Georgia's borders.

Bush disputed the claim that two areas may not be part of Georgia's future. They are of Georgia now, he said at the ranch, and reaffirmed that they are within recognized borders. There is "no room for debate on this," the president said.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who briefed Bush after a quick trip to Georgia, said that "when it is resolved, I mean the underlying conflict, it must be resolved on the basis of the territorial integrity of Georgia."

I'M SURE about half of the Serbian population just stroked out. A mind can wrap itself around only just so much.

Seems to me Kosovo used to lay within the internationally recognized borders of Serbia. Until the West decided it didn't. Now it's the world's newest, internationally recognized, independent narco-terrorist state.

Meanwhile, Americans follow the party line, tsk-tsking about the thuggery of Russia and praising our leaders' efforts to stick the American people's noses in everybody else's business. Even in everybody else's own back yards.

And we used to say the Soviets were brainwashed.

One for my baby . . . .

Rhythm . . . and an extra helping of blues

Before Jerry Wexler, we just knew it as "race music."

IN 1949, the young staff writer at Billboard, the music-industry trade paper, took "race music" and gave it a new name -- "rhythm and blues." R&B. But writing about the music -- and naming the music -- wasn't enough.

Where Wexler, a Jewish atheist kid from New York, really made his mark on the music world wasn't in writing about music that was quintessentially American . . . or in giving it an identity, even. He made his mark, starting in 1953, in making rhythm and blues -- and later, rock and soul.

Jerry Wexler, a fixture at the top of Atlantic Records along with founder Ahmet Ertegun, simply was one of the greatest producers of the R&B (and rock and roll) era. Perhaps the greatest producer.

And now he's gone. Dead at 91, reports The New York Times:

Mr. Wexler was already in his 30s when he entered the music business, but his impact was immediate and enduring. In 1987, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame recognized his contributions to American music by inducting him in only its second year of conferring such honors.

Mr. Wexler actually didn’t care for rock ’n’ roll, at least as it evolved in the 1960s and ’70s. Though he signed a British band called Led Zeppelin and eventually produced records by the likes of Bob Dylan, Carlos Santana, Dire Straits and George Michael, his main influence came in the 1950s and ’60s as a vice president of Atlantic Records, working largely with black artists who were forging a new musical style, which came to be called soul music, from elements of gospel, swing and blues.

“He played a major role in bringing black music to the masses, and in the evolution of rhythm and blues to soul music,” Jim Henke, vice president and chief curator for the Hall of Fame, said in an interview. “Beyond that, he really developed the role of the record producer. Jerry did a lot more than just turn on a tape recorder. He left his stamp on a lot of great music. He had a commercial ear as well as a critical ear.”

Mr. Wexler was something of a paradox. A businessman with tireless energy, a ruthless streak and a volatile temper, he was also a hopeless music fan. A New York Jew and a vehement atheist, he found his musical home in the Deep South, in studios in Memphis and Muscle Shoals, Ala., among Baptists and Methodists, blacks and good old boys.

“He was a bundle of contradictions,” said Tom Thurman, who produced and directed a documentary about Mr. Wexler in 2000. “He was incredibly abrasive and incredibly generous, very abrupt and very, very patient, seemingly a pure, sharklike businessman and also a cerebral and creative genius.”

The title of Mr. Thurman’s documentary, “Immaculate Funk,” was Mr. Wexler’s phrase for the Atlantic sound, characterized by a heavy backbeat and a gospel influence. “It’s funky, it’s deep, it’s very emotional, but it’s clean,” Mr. Wexler once said.

Though not a musician himself, Mr. Wexler had a natural rapport with musicians, who seemed to recognize his instinct for how best to employ their gifts. In 1950, while he was still at Billboard, he encountered the young singer Patti Page and hummed for her a 1947 song he liked, “The Tennessee Waltz.” Her subsequent recording of it sold three million copies in eight months.

A few years later he was a partner at Atlantic, presiding over the 1954 recording session of Ray Charles’s breakout hit, “I Got a Woman.” He said later that the best thing he had done for Charles was to let him do as he pleased.

“He had an extraordinary insight into talent,” Charles, who died in 2004, said in “Immaculate Funk.”

Mr. Wexler wasn’t always a mere listener. In the mid-1960s, at a recording session with Wilson Pickett, Mr. Wexler wanted more of a backbeat in the song “In the Midnight Hour” but couldn’t explain in words what he wanted, so he illustrated it by doing a new dance, the jerk.

In the late 1960s and ’70s, he made 14 Atlantic albums with Ms. Franklin, whose musical instincts had been less than fully exploited at her previous label, Columbia. Mr. Wexler gave her more control over her songs and her sound, a blend of churchlike spirituality and raw sexuality, which can be heard in hits like “Respect,” “Dr. Feelgood” and “Chain of Fools.”

“How could he understand what was inside of black people like that?” Pickett asked in the documentary. “But Jerry Wexler did.”

(snip)

Given the chance, Mr. Wexler would have produced to the end and beyond.

“I asked him once,” said Mr. Thurman, the filmmaker, “‘What do you want written on your tombstone, Jerry?’ He said, ‘Two words: More bass.’”

3 Chords & the Truth: Diversity and all that jazz

When I was in college, LSU's campus radio station, then called WPRG, had what I considered a great format -- pretty much the full spectrum of album rock and college-y alternative fare, plus a minimum of one jazz cut an hour.

SOME DJs BALKED at the jazz thing, but I thought it was brilliant, and it made WPRG sound a sophisticated cut above your average college-radio fare. And isn't it funny that -- almost three decades later, during this age of "diversity" -- most areas of our lives aren't very "diverse" at all?

What we have is an age of Balkanization, not "diversity." Focus groups of the pathologically self-segregated.

Minds closing shut all across the land.

ME, I'VE ALWAYS been a freak. I even grew to like a lot of my parents' music, back during a time when there was a wide gulf between "our" music and "theirs."

I like rock. I like alt. I like country.

And I like jazz.

So, today's show is a little like that old WPRG college-radio format. Only more so.

If you like real diversity, you'll find it here. And here. And even at the top of this page, in the player window.

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

Picture of the year

From The Guardian in London.

Something's just wrong with folks down there

I was born and raised in Baton Rouge. I have lived in Omaha for 20 years now.

With that kind of background, you start to draw some conclusions about where you are -- and about where you're from. You look at the lingering racism back home. You look at lousy public schools, crooked politicians always on the make -- and on the take -- and every bit of the public infrastructure falling apart.

You look, and you think "This is not good."

AND IF THAT WEREN'T ENOUGH, you read stories like this -- and, really, you wish you hadn't just read a story like that -- and then, a week later, you read this from WAFB television in Baton Rouge:

A worker at a Baton Rouge photo lab is used to developing photographs of birthday parties, beautiful sunsets, and vacations. A picture of a girl cutting up a dead puppy, however, was a first.

The worker, from a Baton Rouge Walgreen's drug store, immediately called sheriff's deputies, who launched an investigation. Deputies were led to a student from Woodlawn High School who told them her mother had gotten the dead puppy for her from the East Baton Rouge Parish Animal Control, according to a police report.

The puppy that was given to the student's mother for the school assignment had previously been euthanized, investigators were told. Upon further investigation, deputies learned that the dissection of the dead puppy was part of an assignment from the girl's biology teacher, Dennis Dyer. The assignment read, in part, "Skeletal preparation can be an interesting and rewarding project for those who recognize that beauty and have the stomach for the grosser side of Biology." A report from the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Office says the teacher told his students if they could not find a dead wild animal, they could get one from animal control.

(snip)

The teacher says the student approached him and stated that she went to animal control and workers there "offered to provide her with a euthanized animal if it was for a school project," Trahan said. "Once they've been euthanized, they are disposed of," said Hilton Cole, director of the EBR Animal Control Center. "And that's the end of their little lives and it's rather unpleasant. So, if somehow, some way, one of these animals can somehow help a student or help an educational program or enhance a life maybe in the future and stimulate some young mind to become a scientist or an investigator of some sort, I feel like that's a worthy cause," Cole said.

THE TANGIPAHOA PARISH animal-control center putting down 170 animals in a day. The East Baton Rouge Parish animal-control center giving away euthanized puppies to be dissected by a kid at home.

Now, the expatriate wonders something else. No, "wonders" is not the correct word. The expatriate knows something else. He knows the Thing Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken.

He knows that "It" is true -- that which has, in the past, been thrown in his face by people who looked at him like he was from a particularly rough patch of Albania.

Yes, Louisiana is a pretty backward place.

Yes, something's just wrong with people down there.

Sorry.

When radio was . . . different

Well, this isn't a bad way to waste 24 minutes -- this late-1940s NBC-produced documentary about . . . the National Broadcasting Company.

Behind Your Radio Dial highlights how NBC programs came to listeners' RCA Victors, Zeniths, Philcos, Crosleys and Admirals. And it briefly covers this new-fangled thing, too.

"Television," I think they call it.

America speaks to the people of Georgia

As Russian bombs leveled their homes and Russian tanks scattered their army, residents of the would-be newest NATO member state wanted to know where their Western friends were.

GEORGIANS, as recounted by Newsweek below, wanted to know where was President George W. Boosh . . . er, Bush.

As civilians and Georgian military personnel fled Russia's expanding offensive, many were asking why the country's allies, including the United States, haven't come to their aid. The head of Georgia's National Security Council, Alexander Lomaia, told NEWSWEEK on Monday, "If all countries together said [to Russia], 'We are not buying your gas and we'll exclude you from all international organizations, you will be an international pariah,' [then] they would stop."

After surviving a bombing, David Tshimashvili, the commander of a military tank base in the capital Tbilisi, said, "We thought Bush was our friend. We supported them in Iraq. Where is Bush? Will he come here now?" Tshimashvili remembered when thousands gathered in Tbilisi's Freedom Square in 2005 to hear the American president, who declared that the "sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia must be respected."

Tshimashvili had his tanks evacuate the base two days ago, but he was still on site when Russian bombs hit, injuring him in his arm, shoulder and chest. From Tbilisi Central University Hospital, where he is recovering, the commander said, "I still believe in Democratic values, but never again in America. We feel very disappointed that there is no real help from the U.S. and Europe."

THESE GEORGIAN PATRIOTS, whose country picked an unwinnable fight with Russia, deserve an answer. Unfortunately, President Boosh . . . er, Bush could not be with us tonight to answer our allies' heartfelt questions. He did, however, leave us the following video -- his personal message of consolation and advice to the Georgian people.

Could somebody get the lights, please?

Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States and Sen. John Blutarsky:


Note: Contains some profanity.

'We are all Georgians now'

McCain urges UN: Act on Russia @ Yahoo! Video

John McCain "knows" wrong. He doesn't "speak for every American," like he told Georgia's nutwagon president, Mikheil Saakashvili.

John McCain doesn't speak for me. Not even close -- at least not how he thinks he speaks for me, as reported by Agence France Presse:

Republican White House hopeful John McCain Tuesday stepped up a fusillade against Russian "aggression" and declared that today, "we are all Georgians."

Addressing voters in Pennsylvania, McCain said he had spoken by telephone earlier with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who he said wanted to thank the American people for their support.

"I told him that I know I speak for every American when I say to him, today, we are all Georgians," said the Republican, a hardliner against Russia who wants the mighty nation expelled from the Group of Eight club.

Both McCain and his Democratic rival Barack Obama have condemned Russia's incursion into Georgia following the Saakashvili government's abortive attempt to rein in the breakaway, pro-Moscow region of South Ossetia.

I'LL GIVE SEN. HOTHEAD this: We are all Georgians now. And how that is isn't anything like McCain thinks it is.

Today, in the United States and across the West -- but especially in America -- we are all Georgians in that we are stupid fools who were insane enough to elect even bigger and stupider fools to lead us. The stupid fools in power have gone on to do staggeringly stupid and foolish things -- like start a foolish war in Iraq when there was no just cause for doing so.

Our stupid and foolish leaders also have spent the 17-plus years since the fall of the Soviet Union poking the Russian bear with a stick and humiliating a proud nation that, increasingly, doesn't need to take that kind of s*** anymore.

Meanwhile, Georgia's stupid and foolish president, Saakashvili, launched a stupid and foolish all-out assualt on South Ossetia, killing Russian soldiers in the process.

Some say he stepped into the bear's trap. Be that as it may, Saakashvili still poked Un-Gentle Ivan in the eye and dared the bear to do something about it.

This did not go well for Georgia. In fact, "Geor" is lying, bloodied, over here. "Gia" is somewhere over yonder. But you really don't want to look.

Yes, "we're all Georgians" now. Rub-a-dub-dub, all dopes in a tub. And how do you think we got there?

This past week, Georgians got theirs. We'll get ours soon enough. From somebody.