Sanity's not all it's quacked up to be

The New York Times went to Alaska and discovered -- surprise! -- the Republicans' vice-presidential nominee is just another power-hungry, crony-appointing, paranoid, authoritarian clone of the guy we say we desperately want out of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Imagine.

IT'S A PITY the Daily Kossack "nutroots" pretty much inoculated Gov. Sarah Palin -- at least among the socially conservative and the fair-minded -- against the political consequences of her own shenanigans by letting their visceral hatred of motherhood, Christianity and disabled infants get the better of them.

After such an eruption of Naziesque "final solution" invective -- spleen vented at the image of a "hockey mom," her Down syndrome baby and her preggers teen daughter -- the American people might feel sorry enough for Palin to place her a heartbeat away from the presidency. And John McCain in it.

That would be a bad thing. Not that, alternatively, electing Barack Obama would be a good thing, mind you.

But that's not important now.

WHAT'S IMPORTANT is that Ruthie the Duck Girl is dead at 74. It says it right here in New Orleans' Times-Picayune newspaper:

Ruthie the Duck Girl, a French Quarter eccentric who zoomed from bar to bar on roller skates, often wearing a ratty fur coat and long skirt and trailed by a duck or two, died Sept. 6 at Our Lady of the Lake Hospital in Baton Rouge. She was 74.

Ruthie, whose real name was Ruth Grace Moulon, had been suffering from cancer of the mouth and lungs when the residents of her Uptown New Orleans nursing home were evacuated to Baton Rouge as Hurricane Gustav approached, said Carol Cunningham, a close friend who watched over her for nearly 40 years.

"I've always looked at Ruthie like a little bird with a broken wing, " Cunningham said. "She was always so dear to me."

Miss Moulon, a lifelong New Orleanian, became a French Quarter fixture, achieving legendary status in a city that treasures people who live outside the mainstream. Along the way, she acquired a coterie of people like Cunningham who found places for her to live, paid her bills and made sure she got home at night.

A tiny woman with a constant grin, she frequently sported a bridal gown and veil on her forays because, people said, she considered herself engaged to Gary Moody, whom she met in New Orleans in 1963 when he was a sailor.

Moody showed up at a 2001 birthday party for Miss Moulon at Mid-City Lanes Rock 'N Bowl, but the two never got to the altar. According to a Times-Picayune interview that year, Miss Moulon had a stock reply whenever anyone asked if there might be a wedding in her future: "I got engaged; that's enough!"

In 1999, Rick Delaup made her the subject of a documentary, "Ruthie the Duck Girl."

Miss Moulon's daily routine consisted of roaming from one watering hole to another, mooching drinks and cigarettes. She could be sweet one minute and unleash a torrent of profanity the next.

Although people deemed Miss Moulon's behavior unconventional even by French Quarter standards, no one ever diagnosed her mental condition because she refused to see a doctor, David Cuthbert wrote in The Times-Picayune in 2001.

"She's not out of touch with reality; she's just not interested, " photographer David Richmond told The Times-Picayune.

WHAT'S IMPORTANT is that we are a nation that looks at Ruthie the Duck Girl and sees something just short of humanity.

What's important is that we are a nation whose elites look at little Trig Palin, the candidate's son with one too many chromosomes, and condemn his mother for bringing him into the world.

What's important is that a culture can make short work of the gap between aborting little Trig Palin and devising a "final solution" for society's factory rejects, who zip around the Vieux Carré on roller skates -- ducks close behind -- mooching drinks and bumming smokes.

What's important is that I can see either McCain-Palin or Obama and his running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, slapping on the roller skates and zipping down the Boulevard of Broken Schemes (and screams).

What's important is that, right now, Americans see a city like New Orleans -- broken and flood-damaged and, quite frankly, a little nuts -- and wonder why we just didn't remove the feeding tube. Remove all life support from the one place in America that could see Ruthie the Duck Girl as a cause for celebration, not consternation.

I particularly liked this comment on the Times-Picayune obit:

Posted by vaticanlokey on 09/13/08 at 7:07AM

Years ago, when I was still working at Poppy's Grill (and the Rouses in the Quarter was still the A&P), I recall meeting Ruthie on Rue Royale with her duck in tow. For some reason, she wasn't wearing her skates that day. We talked a bit, I gave her a few cigarettes (I was still smoking back then) and she went to go inside the A&P, telling the duck to stay put. While inside, the duck wandered out into the street and got hit by a car and killed. Someone rushed into the A&P to get Ruthie. She walked out with this indescribable look on her face, wandered out into the middle of Rue St. Peter to look at the carnage, and literally yelled at the dead duck

"I TOLD you to stay put, duck!" and without another word, wandered down to Rue Bourbon and disappeared.

I have never forgotten that day, and I will never forget Ruthie the Duck Lady. She is one of the many reasons I proudly call New Orleans home.

Au revoir, Ruthie, and give the duck my best!

WELL . . . OK. This one, too:

Posted by NOLevee on 09/13/08 at 10:05AM

Once when tending bar at Lord VJ's (now Ryan's) Bar Ruthie in came Ruthie with her duck, she climbed up on the bar-stool placed the duck on the bar and in her duck-like sounding voice said: "Give me a rum n' coke, give my duck one too."

Taken a bit back I said, "What?"

In which her sardonic side expounded, "What? Are you deaf? I said give me a rum & coke and make one for my duck too."

So I did. And the both of them preceded to enjoy their drinks.

She was definitely one of a kind.

WHEN I LOOK at what we Americans most value today -- and especially when I look at the fine electoral mess we've gotten ourselves into -- it occurs to me that Ruthie Moulon, the Duck Girl of the Vieux Carré, wasn't the nutty one.

Analyzing cable's coverage of Ike

As we watch, for the 400th time, the "new video" of cars creeping around debris on Texas roads today in the wake of Hurricane Ike -- both in stand-alone mode and in multiple frames on the TV screen -- it reminds us cable news is almost as good a parody of itself as was the most devastatingly funny send up of television news ever.

That would be Saturday Night Live's "death of Buckwheat" sketch from March 1983.

All that needs to be said about television news got said 25 years ago. Enjoy.

3 Chords & the Truth: Refuge from the suck

As I write this, Hurricane Ike is giving the Texas coastline a good thrashing. God knows what's happening to poor Galveston.

God knows what's about to happen to the price of a gallon of gas for the foreseeable future.

MEANWHILE, the Republicans have restarted the culture wars -- because, frankly, that was the only way they could win -- and the far left of the Democratic Party has taken the bait. Enthusiastically.

And observant Catholics like me hear "We hate you. We really hate you." (And, by the way, I am the last New Deal Democrat standing.)

The Republicans, of course, are counting on that. Because that's the only way they can win this year. Did I mention that?

Back to the storm front, my Louisiana hometown is still a shambles from Hurricane Gustav a couple of weeks back, and my mother only has electricity to half of her house. Go figure.

Up here in Nebraska, it's been raining all week . . . and God knows what we're going to be paying for a gallon of gas in a few days. (You can't mention that one too much. All God's chillin need gas. Or for the city to instantly build a decent mass-transit system.)

TIMES ARE TOUGH; times are ugly, and they're getting uglier.

There's only one thing for us to do in times like these: Crank it up! That's where this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth comes in.

In the impersonal and the abstract, you might hate my guts, and I damn well may have had it with you -- and the politicians might be clapping with glee at the spectacle -- but it seems to me there's one thing we can agree on.

That would be good music. Again, that's where this week's edition of the Big Show comes in.

Good music. Diverse music. "Oh my God, he can't be as big an effing redneck as I thought" music.

And -- Whadda you know? -- if you're hip to the cool sounds, too, you might not be half bad yourself. (God, I sound like I'm sporting a pocket protector or something. Geez!)

I GUESS THAT'S what this week's 3 Chords & the Truth ultimately is about. Unity through a shared quest for sweet diversion from a world o' suck.

Works for me. How about you?

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

Aloha.

Mac is starting to pity PC

Here's a couple of the new ads for Windows featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld.

Apparently, the $300 million Microsoft campaign is supposed to combat Apple's wildly successful "Mac vs. PC" ads. Ummmmmmmmm . . . yeah.

There may be a point somewhere in the first two Gates-Seinfeld commercials, but it will take half the world's intelligence services to decipher what that might be.

Until the intelligence estimate arrives, just look at the Windows campaign much as you might the operating system itself -- an antiquated notion smothered by a mountain of bloated code and ready to lock up on us any second now.

This sounds eerily familiar

Part of the local hurricane statement from the National Weather Service at Galveston/Houston on Thursday as Ike loomed out in the Gulf of Mexico, a mere day away.

The last time I heard something like this . . . well, you know.

MAXIMUM WATER LEVELS FORECAST:

GULF-FACING COASTLINE WEST OF SARGENT...5 TO 8 FEET

SHORELINE OF MATAGORDA BAY...4 TO 7 FEET

GULF-FACING COASTLINE SARGENT TO HIGH ISLAND
INCLUDING GALVESTON ISLAND......12 TO 16 FEET

SHORELINE OF GALVESTON BAY...15 TO 25 FEET

LIFE THREATENING INUNDATION LIKELY!

ALL NEIGHBORHOODS...AND POSSIBLY ENTIRE COASTAL COMMUNITIES... WILL BE INUNDATED DURING THE PERIOD OF PEAK STORM TIDE. PERSONS NOT HEEDING EVACUATION ORDERS IN SINGLE FAMILY ONE OR TWO STORY HOMES MAY FACE CERTAIN DEATH. MANY RESIDENCES OF AVERAGE CONSTRUCTION DIRECTLY ON THE COAST WILL BE DESTROYED. WIDESPREAD AND DEVASTATING PERSONAL PROPERTY DAMAGE IS LIKELY ELSEWHERE. VEHICLES LEFT BEHIND WILL LIKELY BE SWEPT AWAY. NUMEROUS ROADS WILL BE SWAMPED...SOME MAY BE WASHED AWAY BY THE WATER. ENTIRE FLOOD PRONE COASTAL COMMUNITIES WILL BE CUTOFF. WATER LEVELS MAY EXCEED 9 FEET FOR MORE THAN A MILE INLAND. COASTAL RESIDENTS IN MULTI-STORY FACILITIES RISK BEING CUTOFF. CONDITIONS WILL BE WORSENED BY BATTERING WAVES CLOSER TO THE COAST. SUCH WAVES WILL EXACERBATE PROPERTY DAMAGE...WITH MASSIVE DESTRUCTION OF HOMES...INCLUDING THOSE OF BLOCK CONSTRUCTION. DAMAGE FROM BEACH EROSION COULD TAKE YEARS TO REPAIR.

Gustav + 10 days: All is well!

Nothing to see here down there in Louisiana, more
than a week after Gustav didn't flood New Orleans.

Nothing to see here at all. New Orleans didn't
drown. No harm, no foul. Just move along, please.

Look! Barack Obama called noted breeder Sarah Palin
a pig! Lipstick on a pig! Soooooooey! Barnyard brawl!

Newspapering for Dummies. Really.

This is the gadget publishers think will save their newspapers.

They are mistaken. The only thing that will save newspapers is if publishers stick their heads in the oven.

Unfortunately.

HERE'S THE DEAL: The doomaflatchie above, called the Plastic Logic reader, is supposed to be like a big Kindle, allowing for display of something approaching a print newspaper in size and style. Presumably, it will sell for a Kindlelike price.

The New York Times has a story about the Plastic Logic reader -- on its website:

The electronic newspaper, a large portable screen that is constantly updated with the latest news, has been a prop in science fiction for ages. It also figures in the dreams of newspaper publishers struggling with rising production and delivery costs, lower circulation and decreased ad revenue from their paper product.

While the dream device remains on the drawing board, Plastic Logic will introduce publicly on Monday its version of an electronic newspaper reader: a lightweight plastic screen that mimics the look — but not the feel — of a printed newspaper.

The device, which is unnamed, uses the same technology as the Sony eReader and Amazon.com’s Kindle, a highly legible black-and-white display developed by the E Ink Corporation. While both of those devices are intended primarily as book readers, Plastic Logic’s device, which will be shown at an emerging technology trade show in San Diego, has a screen more than twice as large. The size of a piece of copier paper, it can be continually updated via a wireless link, and can store and display hundreds of pages of newspapers, books and documents.

Richard Archuleta, the chief executive of Plastic Logic, said the display was big enough to provide a newspaperlike layout. “Even though we have positioned this for business documents, newspapers is what everyone asks for,” Mr. Archuleta said.

The reader will go on sale in the first half of next year. Plastic Logic will not announce which news organization will display its articles on it until the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, when it will also reveal the price.

Kenneth A. Bronfin, president of Hearst Interactive Media, said, “We are hopeful that we will be able to distribute our newspaper content on a new generation of larger devices sometime next year.” While he would not say what device the company’s papers would use, he said, “we have a very strong interest in e-newspapers. We’re very anxious to get involved.”

WELL . . . OK. Fine.

You have to wonder why someone would plop down a few hundred bucks for something that does a lot less than a cheap laptop you can buy for the same price. But . . . OK, I guess.

Here, however, is where the whole scheme goes really wrong. And it is because newspaper executives are idiots.

Worse than that, they are greedy idiots:

If e-newspapers take off, the savings could be hefty. At the The San Francisco Chronicle, for example, print and delivery amount to 65 percent of the paper’s fixed expenses, Mr. Bronfin said.

(snip)

Papers face a tough competitor: their own Web sites, where the information is free. And they have trained a generation of new readers to expect free news. In Holland, the iLiad comes with a one-year subscription for 599 euros ($855). The cost of each additional year of the paper is 189 euros ($270). NRC offers just one electronic edition of the paper a day, while Les Echos updates its iRex version 10 times a day.

A number of newspapers, including The New York Times, offer electronic versions through the Kindle device; The Times on the Kindle costs $14 a month, similar to the cost of other papers. “The New York Times Web site started as a replica of print, but it has now evolved,” said Michael Zimbalist, vice president for research and development operations at The New York Times Company. “We expect to experiment on all of these platforms. When devices start approximating the look and feel of a newspaper, we’ll be there as well,” Mr. Zimbalist said.

LET'S SEE. If I have a laptop -- some of which you can buy for not much more than a Kindle -- I would want to pay money to get an inferior version of what I already get online for free. . . .

I'm sorry, I think I was about to pose a wholly unnecessary question.

The only thing that possibly could be stupider than that would be if newspapers killed off their websites in favor of a Kindlized subscription product. One that couldn't match its present multimedia offerings online.

You think you have carnage in the newspaper industry now. . . .

Only newspaper publishers would expect people to pay full-subscription price for a product that's less functional than their dead-tree editions, then pay hundreds more for a thingamajig to read it on. This when you can get the same thing online for free somewhere, even if not from The Daily Blab.

Only newspaper publishers would do such a thing after eliminating 65 percent of their fixed operating expenses -- especially when subscription and single-copy sales account for just 20 percent of revenue, roughly.

Assuming a newspaper could bring a sizable majority of its print advertising over to an electronic edition when print is no more -- And, really, where would those print advertisers go? -- you'd have to think the bottom line would look so much healthier than it does today.

Even if you gave your product away.

CHARGING READERS two or three Benjamins a year for a product you were coming out ahead on by its very printing-plant-free nature is just avaricious. And avarice doesn't fly in the new-media world.

Now, fellas . . . when you stick your heads in that oven, make sure it's a natural-gas model. All-electric would be such a horrible way to go.

Best ad campaign ever

The folks behind the best ad campaign ever give us perhaps the best Web ad ever.

If Internet advertising were this consistently clever and entertaining, I don't think newspapers would have a big problem in monetizing their Internet editions. I want to go out and buy a Mac right now, don't you?

Well, actually, I've wanted to for a while now. There's just this little issue called money standing in the way.

HAT TIP: The NECreative blog, via Twitter.

Palins put bee in Buzz's bonnet

Far be it from me to promote substance abuse -- particularly that of an illegal nature -- but this column on Bayou Buzz.com really is best read stoned.

For the first time ever, the 2008 Republican Convention celebrated unwed teenage motherhood by seating Sarah Palin's reportedly 5-months' pregnant daughter with her teenage lover, proudly in the VIP row. As the swollen, 17-year-old Bristol Palin complacently gripped her swarthy impregnator's hand, Alaska's governor and the prospective mother's mother sternly lectured on family values and accused "the media" of persecuting her family.

Has the Republican Party gone mad?

No. But perhaps it's watched "The Da Vinci Code" too many times.

Are the Republicans returning to the cult of the goddess?

Maybe. Anything to win the election, right?

The Republican wanna-be First and Second Families made a fascinating tableau, with fertility being unabashedly the message. Sarah wore a tight choker of fat pearls, the luminous gift of oysters, enhancers of libido and mimics of male anatomy. Her plain, silvery tunic fit like Joan of Arc's breastplate and set her apart as the GOP's new high priestess. Cindy McCain, swathed in pearls, wore a bright green outfit—highlighting the Republicans' odd claim to now be champions of global warming. And green is also the color of fertility, of shimmering, budding springtime woods, of leafy glens and grassy fields where fertility rites took place until authoritarian Christianity wiped it out. With her tightly-pinched face and platinum hair hanging loose, her older children gathered around her, Cindy stood for fertility well-preserved.

But the frisky Palins are fertility real and present. Bristol showed us her tummy, her breasts, her pregnant fulsomeness. Sarah's husband, whom she calls "The First Dude," a crow's caw of sexual prowess and desirability, exhibited his softer side by cuddling the infant rumored to actually be his grandchild (by the voluptuous Bristol and her lover), although Sarah claims to be the mother.

If there weren't tricolor flags and people wearing elephant hats, one might think we were at Stonehenge.

How will bright green outfits, bouncy boobies, big bellies, sleeping babies, beehive hairdos, and fecund boyfriends help McCain win the presidency?

Because sex sells; sex wins votes; sex seals the deal.

I'M REALLY AT A LOSS what to say about this -- at least at a loss for things to say that don't begin with "Holy" and end a couple of expletives later.

C'mon, is this s*** for real?

"(T)he swollen, 17-year-old Bristol Palin complacently gripped her swarthy impregnator's hand"?

What, couldn't Sarah Whalen, The Bayou Buzz's hot-and-bothered columnist, work in the phrase "turgid member" while she was at it?

I don't know exactly what has so stung the Bayou Buzz "editors" -- and I think I'll keep "editors" in quotes from now on in relation to this amateurish and weird website -- that they would post Whalen's ode to whack, but you have to wonder whether it has been covered editorially by Al Goldstein at some point.

One thing I do know for sure after reading this: Sigmund Freud died 69 years too soon.

Over at Catholic and Enjoying It, Mark Shea thinks the Buzz piece is another example of the "nutroot" liberal freak-out over the existential threat Sarah Palin's example poses to Abortion, Inc. The piece is a freak-out, that's for damn certain, but it's not of the "nutroot," Daily Kos variety.

NO, THIS IS a down-home, whacked-out, "there's no eccentric like a Louisiana eccentric" freak-out. This is the crazy aunt you might find in Anne Rice's attic.

This is Uncle Fester at Pat O'Brien's after his third hurricane.

From what can be gathered online, Sarah Whalen "is an expert in Islamic Law and a photojournalist specializing in U.S. foreign policy issues." At some point, she apparently taught at Loyola University in New Orleans. And she has been a contributor to the Arab News and The Palestine Chronicle.

One who appears to have "gone native."

The bee in the bonnet of The Bayou Buzz isn't political commentary as spewed by Nutroot Nation. No, this is political commentary you rightly could expect from Hamas. Or the official Saudi press, as it were.

BEFORE THE INTERNET democratized the publishing universe, this Bayou Buzz screed is what you would find lying on a table at the student union. In all its mistyped, poorly photocopied glory.

It's also -- way down the bayou or way up in the piney woods -- the kind of "philosophical treatise" over which you might find some not-half-as-clever-as-he-thinks sort waxing rhapsodic. At least once he'd borrowed a dictionary to look up words such as "swarthy" and "fecund."

In other words, "Move along. There's nothing to see here."

Unless, of course, you happen to be a trained mental-health professional. Or maybe Jack Bauer.

Same as it ever was

Alana Taylor sits in a classroom at the NYU journalism school, looks at her clueless professor and finds the whole experience wholly outdated and totally lacking.

I'll alert the media.

THEN ALL THE MEDIA and I -- we veterans of different debacles at different journalism schools at different points in history -- will go to a fine drinking establishment, knock back a few and laugh and laugh and laugh:

Back in class, Quigley tells us we have to remember to bring in the hard copy of the New York Times every week. I take a deep sigh. Every single journalism class at NYU has required me to bring the bulky newspaper. I don’t understand why they don’t let us access the online version, get our current events news from other outlets, or even use our NYTimes app on the iPhone. Bringing the New York Times pains me because I refuse to believe that it’s the only source for credible news or Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism and it’s a big waste of trees.

At least I had hoped that this class would be more advanced. I hoped that perhaps my teacher would be open to the idea of investigating other sources of news from the Internet and discussing how they are reliable or not. I hoped that she wouldn’t refer to podcasts as “being a pain to download” and that being aware of and involved in the digital era wasn’t just a “generational” thing.

I am convinced that I am taking the only old-but-new-but-still-old media class in the country. At this point I may not learn too much I don’t already know about my generation and where it’s taking journalism. But one thing’s for sure — I’m certainly going to gain some insight into what exactly they mean by generation gap.

AND YOU MAY ask yourself, well . . . how did we get here?

Same as it ever was . . . same as it ever was . . . same as it ever was. . . .

Back in my day at the LSU School of Journalism (now the Manship School of Mass Communication), all we wanted was . . . well, what we wanted was a 1981 version of what Alana Taylor wants. That and electric typewriters in every classroom.

Why don't I share a bit from a hard-hitting story in the LSU student newspaper, The Daily Reveille. Someone I know rather well wrote it . . . 27 years ago.

From the Reveille of Oct. 16, 1981:

Equipment and facilities of the University's School of Journalism were criticized as being "antiquated" by Chancellor James Wharton in Thursday's edition of The Daily Reveille.

However, a recent sampling of journalism students say the school's facilities are only part of the problem there.

The students said they faced problems in dealing with typewriters and other equipment in bad repair, but said a far larger problem they faced was a curriculum short on practical experience in their fields.

Most of the sampling also said they felt the absence of video display terminals and other state-of-the-art equipment in the school hampered the students in preparing for future work experiences.

"I feel that (the lack of new equipment) is hurting the students' education. We have manual typewriters in our journalism typing room -- out in the field, not only are people not using manual typewriters, they're not even using electric typewriters. They're using VDTs," said junior news-editorial major Eleanor Ransburg.

"It's not keeping you up to date with what's going on now. We're learning the old ways. We should learn the old ways and the new ways.

"One of our guest speakers in class said he hadn't been in the building since he graduated and the chairs looked like the same ones that were here when he was here in the 1950s," she said.

(snip)

[Junior advertising major Cindy] Blanchard also said the advertising curriculum of the journalism school was deficient. "I think a lot of the teachers are good but I think a lot of the structuring is at fault.

"I think the structuring of the class is really kind of deficient. I think we learn more theory and not enough practical application. We don't get to put into practice what we learn in the book. What I've had so far is not too much of what I can use (in the field)," she said.

SAME AS IT EVER WAS. And yes, Alana, we Young Turks who somewhere along the way turned into journalism fossils feel your pain.

Does this ring a bell, by chance?

An associate managing editor for the student paper also criticized the school for not having enough equipment for its students, as well as School of Journalism Director John C. Merrill.

Lisa Schelp said Merrill is trying to "isolate" the school and train its students to be "academicians" instead of reporters and editors.

"Only having one video display terminal for 25 people in the reporting class is ridiculous, almost every newspaper has terminals," she said. "We don't even have newspapers in the journalism reading room. It doesn't make sense. What we need is exposure to many kinds of newspapers.

"I don't know what his (Merrill's) point is in trying to isolate the journalism school and make us all academicians. We're trying to communicate. We have to communicate with everybody, not just academicians," Schelp said.

LORD. Somebody at that journalism school ought to have said something to that intrepid Reveille reporter (again, with whom I'm well acquainted) about unloading every last jot out of his Stationers' Reporter's Note Book and dumping it into his story. Talk about making a point, rehashing it and then rehashing the rehash. . . .

Then again, back in the day, Reveille reporters got paid by the column inch. Whatever it takes, you know?

But down that path a tangent lies. Let me return to my point here.

Students are always pretty sure they're getting screwed over by somebody. Sometimes, it's even true. For instance, the LSU J-school, overall, was pretty appalling in 1981. Fortunately, our professors still taught us pretty well, despite everything.

Another truism is that journalism school -- or any kind of professional school, it seems to me -- always perfectly trains students for the world that just was. Never the world that will be.

The reason for that is staggeringly simple: We're really good at knowing what just was. And we're not so good at predicting the future. While we might have some general idea of what will be, the future likes to throw knuckleballs -- when it isn't throwing you curveballs.

The state of newspapers and broadcasting today is the curveball with which the future put my generation of J-school grads deep in a hole. When we were in college, there was no Internet for us to master, and "social networking" was Friday night at the Cotton Club. Or maybe the Bengal.

We never knew what hit us. But we're learning.

I suspect Alana Taylor, today's frustrated NYU student, will be doing the same in a couple of decades -- dealing with the unknowable curveball the future throws you while you're deeply engrossed in the World That Just Was.

Gone with the wind after 252 years

The old Boyd oak is falling in the storm
All the huge, green branches blowing down. . . .
Gustav took our tree out in the gale
I don't think that we can take it
'Cause God took so long to make it
And we'll never have that live oak tree again

(with apologies to Jimmy Webb)

The last of the great live oaks on the Capitol grounds in Baton Rouge deserves better than a "MacArthur Park" ripoff, but that's just what happened to come to mind.

It's not all hot gumbo and cold beer being a Baby Boomer, you know.

I TOOK the above picture of the Louisiana State Capitol 20 years ago through the massive limbs of what was called the Thomas Boyd oak, named after the LSU president who presided over the Ol' War Skule when it sat where Huey Long's legacy now reaches for the sky.

Was called the Thomas Boyd oak. Hurricane Gustav put it in the past tense while he was attending to the rest of south Louisiana -- particularly Baton Rouge.

And I'll never take that picture of the Capitol again.

Here's the story from The Advocate:

A tree that had seen more than 250 years of history at the State Capitol — the last of three historic live oaks remaining in the Formal Gardens — was downed by Hurricane Gustav.

The Thomas Boyd oak, with its large branches held off the ground by cables just high enough for passers-by to bend under, was uprooted by the winds that swept through Baton Rouge.

“That was our major loss,” said Mathilde Myers, assistant horticulture manager for the Office of State Buildings.

Back in the 1700s, Myers’ ancestors, the Cabo de Gonzales family, owned land that ran through the Pentagon Barracks to the Arsenal Garden area, she said.

“It was a horticultural garden back then as well,” Myers said. “It wasn’t just for growing row crops or sugar cane. It was more aesthetic-type gardens. It was more for the love of plants.”

The Thomas Boyd oak was once part of a tree trio in the Capitol garden, accompanied by the Annie Boyd oak and Nicholson oak.

The Boyd oaks were named for Col. Thomas Duckett Boyd, president of LSU from 1896 to 1927, and his wife, Anna Fuqua Boyd.

The Annie Boyd oak was uprooted during Hurricane Betsy in 1965.

The Nicholson oak, named for LSU math professor and two-time LSU President James S. Nicholson, was already declining after it was struck by lightning and had to be taken down in 2000.

A story in the 1961 Morning Advocate quotes the first grounds superintendent, Euberne Eckert, saying he took borings of the tree in 1941.

Based upon his estimate, the oak’s age in 2008 could be 252 years.

“It will make a real impact, as far as a feeling of loss,” Myers said.

“It was the centerpiece of the garden,” said Louis Wolff, horticulture manager for the Office of State Buildings. “It’s really going to change the overall look of the garden.”

Kulturekampfers für Obama

Translation:

"60,000 Reichsmarks is what this person suffering from hereditary defects costs the People's community during his lifetime. Fellow German, that is your money too. Read '[A] New People', the monthly magazine of the Bureau for Race Politics of the NSDAP."

Got oil?

For many Americans, the first news of what Hurricane Gustav really did hit might come at the gas pump.

Here, from the Houma Courier, is what you haven't seen on the TV news . . . or in your local newspaper:

More than $1 billion worth of oil and gas per day is not reaching U.S. markets because of damage done by Hurricane Gustav, the director of one of the largest Gulf of Mexico industry supply ports said.

Channels leading to the Gulf of Mexico oilfield clogged by storm debris and lack of electricity at Port Fourchon are the leading problems, said Ted Falgout, executive director of the Greater Lafourche Port Commission, which operates the Fourchon site.

Channels leading to the Gulf of Mexico oilfield clogged by storm debris and lack of electricity at Port Fourchon are the leading problems, said Ted Falgout, executive director of the Greater Lafourche Port Commission, which operates the Fourchon site.

Progress toward recovery was made Friday when the port’s Belle Pass Entrance Channel opened to vessels.

Falgout and other officials said losses would have been greater if the storm, which made landfall at Cocodrie Monday morning as a Category 3 with 110 mph winds, had stayed true to initial projections and ramped up to a Category 4.

Port Fourchon officials worried that the storm would cause the catastrophic consequences predicted in an April report, which details the economic impact of a three-week work stoppage.

The report said a storm like Gustav could cause billions of dollars in lost oil revenue and tens of thousands of lost jobs across the country.

Those scenarios did not materialize, officials and economists agreed. So far, no official estimates have been made concerning the overall effect Gustav will have on oil.

The port continued operating after the storm, and remains on track through generator power, as officials wait for traditional electric service to be restored.

“Clearly right now, there’s probably a billion dollars per day of oil and gas unavailable to the American public that this port plays some role in furnishing,” Falgout said, noting that damage to rigs several miles offshore could play a role in the overall equation.

The oil-speculation markets do not appear to be responding to such predictions, however.

“Apparently what the market is telling us is the damage to the Gulf was not bad at all because oil prices have actually fallen in the face of this,” said Baton Rouge-based economist Loren Scott. “My understanding is 2.3 million barrels of oil were not processed because refineries were down. Maybe we will still seek a spike in oil prices when it becomes clear power is out.”

WELL, I GUESS if the press isn't covering it, maybe the billion-dollar-a-day shortfall of oil and gas didn't really happen.

But if one day next week some soccer mom pulls up to the Exxon station in her SUV and her wallet is $10 lighter than it was after the last fill up, will America then care about Louisiana and the missing wetlands that used to protect the oil-and-gas infrastructure?

No, it won't. That is because gasoline grows on trees at the Exxon-Mobil orchards somewhere in Texas, where the mean gas farmers plant fewer and fewer petroleum trees every year to keep prices artificially high.

Um hmm. It's true.

And you heard it here first. Oh . . . and remember that Ike's coming.

Break out the Welch's and the strippers

Oh yi yi, ma pouvre Louisiane! Could it be that your inherent joie de vivre leaves you somehow susceptible to unending mal de gouvernement?

THE NATION first saw this back in the age of newsreels, with the homespun, strutting demagogue Huey Long giving his dirt-poor subjects some of what other Americans had taken for granted for decades, but giving himself a lot more off the top as he plotted to take the White House from Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

A couple of decades later, a nation returned to watch the televised spectacle of Huey's little brother Earl crowin' all the way to the funny farm . . . yanked from the loving arms of New Orleans stripper Blaze Starr and thrown into a rubber room, paranoid and stained purple from the grape juice he had taken to pouring over his head.

Two decades after that, America tuned back in to marvel at the grafting -- and womanizing -- antics of the Silver Zipper, one Gov. Edwin W. Edwards, whose present address is the federal prison at Oakdale, La.

Three years ago, television -- and Hurricane Katrina -- introduced a national audience to da mayuh uh Noo Orluns, "Crazy" Ray Nagin, who proceeded to cry and cuss on the radio as his city drowned, then presided -- of a fashion -- over the half-hearted rebuilding of a self-proclaimed "Chocolate City" . . . and an exploding murder rate.

Nagin went on to say the murder spree at least kept the city's "brand" out there. This before he, ultimately, ended up proclaiming himself a "vagina-friendly mayor."

KATRINA GAVE US NAGIN, and now Gustav has given us Terrebonne Parish President Michel Claudet. According to the Houma Courier, things ain't good after the hurricane down on the bayou in Houma.

And you probably would have heard about that already had Terrebonne's very own Boss Hogg managed to be at least half as entertainingly whack as Nagin.

But Claudet has been anything but. The best the man could muster, says the Courier editorial board, was to hand off the reins of post-deluge power to Roscoe P. Coltrane and slink off to mutter about those damn Duke boys:

Terrebonne’s response to Hurricane Gustav has been hampered by poor communication from parish officials, and most of the responsibility rests with Parish President Michel Claudet.

Problems started long before Claudet ceded his leadership of the parish’s hurricane efforts Tuesday to Sheriff Vernon Bourgeois — something no one got around to announcing to residents until a day later. They started before the storm, as Claudet and his emergency-preparedness director, Jerry Richard, refused to answer even the most basic questions from reporters and the public about what the parish was doing to prepare.

One of the greatest examples is an e-mail received by The Courier and various Louisiana TV stations and newspapers Aug. 29, as Gustav strengthened and forecasters projected with increasing certainty that the hurricane would hit here or somewhere dangerously close.

Neither the name associated with the e-mail, nor the subject line, includes anything that would indicate it is an important notification or that it even came from Terrebonne Parish government. The subject line reads, simply, “press release.” Open it, and here is exactly what it says, in its entirety:

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

August 29, 2008

6:00 A.M. or 0600 hrs. (8/30/08) the EOC will be fully operational.

Mandatory evacuation 4 pm (1600) Saturday, August 30th by declaration of Parish President Michel Claudet.

That was it?

You would think an announcement of that magnitude would have warranted elaboration from the parish president – not a minion or spokesman but the man charged with the wellbeing of 110,000 residents whose lives and property were threatened by a powerful hurricane. And not just to the media but to the people he represents.

(snip)

Throughout this storm, our questions to Claudet and Richard have mostly been met by vague answers, unreturned phone calls, evasiveness or a parish president and emergency director who say they are too busy to tell the people what they are doing to protect them. Sometimes, they simply hang up.

Claudet told the Parish Council, whose members questioned at a meeting Thursday why they, too, have been left out of the loop, that knocked out cell phones and other technological problems impeded communication during the storm.

Once the phones came back on, he said, “all hell broke loose” as officials worked to respond to myriad callers.

“No one can prepare for something like this,” Claudet told the council. “It’s impossible.”

THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT'S response to Katrina, of course, proves that abject incompetence and a tendency to melt down are not phenomena found only within the borders of the Gret Stet.

But you do start to wonder, though, when two hurricanes in three years produce a pair of unrelated meltdowns in basic governance and crisis management. Especially within the context of a state much better at elevating crooks and cartoon characters to high office than statesmen.

Real people suffer because of this stuff. Real progress is stillborn because of this stuff. Louisiana and the American taxpayer ultimately pay a price because of this stuff.

You won't read about any of it in the national press, just like you won't read about the horrendous damage done by Gustav to the state beyond New Orleans' miraculously unbreached levees.

MAYBE IF CLAUDET -- better sooner than later -- pours some grape juice over his head, boinks a stripper, gets hauled off to the booby hatch and then federal prison somebody in a New York newsroom will notice the sufferings of south Louisiana.

HAT TIP: Your Right Hand Thief.

Back to the 19th century

Hey, New Orleans didn't go in the drink.

Move along, nothing to see here. Right?

Well, let me put it this way. The above map is of Baton Rouge -- Louisiana's capital city. It's a community of some 240,000 souls, more or less.

All the orange areas are estimated to be without electricity for 14 to 21 days, thanks to Hurricane Gustav. Large areas of the state are in just as bad shape.

Move along, nothing to see here. Especially when it's pitch dark.

'Now do you care about Louisiana?'

Large swaths of south Louisiana remain dark and in shambles five days in Gustav's wake.

Because the blackest of the blackouts and the shambliest of the shambles lie not within the woebegotten borders of Orleans Parish, the plight of Louisiana is no big whoop to the national media.

IF THE NATION'S ARBITERS of newsworthiness happened by accident to take a look at Friday's Times-Picayune -- after all, it is a New Orleans newspaper -- they might want to rethink their lack of attention to what was hit by the "bullet" the Crescent City dodged:

Three days after Hurricane Gustav made landfall, more than 95 percent of Gulf of Mexico oil production is still shuttered and a key hub for the offshore petroleum industry remains without power.

Gustav slammed into Port Fourchon, a hub used by more than 60 companies to service Gulf rigs and platforms, before coming ashore in Cocodrie on Monday. Port Fourchon also houses the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, a facility that receives about 12 percent of the nation's oil imports.

Director Ted Falgout said Thursday that Port Fourchon may not be able to receive power for four to six weeks. He also said storm sediment and stones displaced from a jetty may leave one of the port's channels impassable for as long as a week.

Meanwhile, the energy sector is beginning to reoccupy its facilities in the Gulf of Mexico, although the bulk of oil and gas production remains shut down. More than 87 percent of the Gulf's natural gas production remained shut down on Thursday, down from 92 percent on Wednesday. More than 95 percent of Gulf oil production remained shut down on Thursday, the same amount as Wednesday.

As of Thursday, 73 percent of the platforms in the Gulf and 52 percent of the rigs in the Gulf remained evacuated. Platforms are the offshore structures from which oil and natural gas are produced. Rigs are offshore drilling facilities.

DOESN'T THIS MEAN that the United States has just lost a pretty big slice of its oil supply for the foreseeable future? And isn't that a big deal?

As a T-shirt popular down on the bayou says, "Now do you care about Louisiana?"

Ve haff veys to deal vith Christianists

I cannot and will not vote for Barack Obama. I cannot and will not vote for a candidate as devoted to abortion -- indeed, infanticide -- as the junior senator from Illinois and his "nutroot" enthusiasts.

On the other side of the political coin, my default position is that I also will not vote for the Party of Unrelenting War, Torture and Social Darwinism . . . and its latest shill for neoconservative geopolitical madness, Sen. John McCain.

At least that was my default position.

EVERY TIME I surf over to blogs such as Crunchy Con and read the latest ravings of Fourth Reich enthusiasts for the Democratic ticket -- stuff like this below -- it makes it just a little more likely that I might hold my nose, pray for the best and vote McCain-Palin:

If Sarah Palin crashes and burns this campaign season, it will be a pity for many reasons, not least because we will no longer have the opportunity to read clarifying missives like the one Mark Steyn received today from a reader in Washington state:

This abortion prohibitionist hag won't cut it among women with brains. And BTW she is a good example of reproduction run amok. 5 kids; 1 retard. I wonder if the bitch ever heard of getting spayed.

AND THE SOLE REASON I would vote for a party I otherwise loathe would be to spite Nazi monsters like Mark Steyn's correspondent in Washington state.


HAT TIP: Crunchy Con.

3 Chords & the Truth: Falling for September

Mrs. Favog and I love September.

September starts with the Labor Day weekend and a trip to the Nebraska State Fair, rolls right into college football, then glides into the first signs of nippy weather and -- finally -- segues into October with those autumn leaves.

SEPTEMBER IS a month of hustle and bustle, new beginnings for schoolkids and old memories for former schoolkids. September brings out the comfortable old sweatshirts and ushers in the realization that Thanksgiving and Christmas aren't that far off.

We at 3 Chords & the Truth love fall . . . and we love September. September is something to celebrate, particularly in the Midwest. In the Midwest, September is the month that's juuuuuust right.

That's one of the joys of living on the civilized edge of the barely tamed Great Plains. September becomes a celebration -- sort of like a monthlong meteorological Carnival season before the strict and unforgiving Lent of winter on the prairie.

Really, you haven't lived till you've experienced 25 below zero the week before Christmas. Or until it's so cold that yours is the last car running . . . until your battery cable gets so brittle it snaps. And your fingers still get frostbitten through your thick insulated gloves.

Nebraska isn't a place for sissies. But we'll always have September.

And this week on the Big Show, that's what we celebrate -- September. And fall . . . both the seasonal and arse-over-head varieties.

We at 3 Chords & the Truth are funny that way.

Be there. Aloha.

Big blow holds that tiger

Hurricane Gustav hung on to the ball when it hit the wall . . . and who knows when next the goal will be in view for LSU.

LORD KNOWS, the Tigers' next home football game won't be Saturday. The Troy State contest has been pushed back to November.

And no one knows whether it will be possible to play in damaged Tiger Stadium next week either. Even if the old ball yard is fixed up in time, who knows whether Baton Rouge -- still mostly without electricity, a state which will continue for days or weeks -- will be up to the task of a football weekend anytime soon?

From The Advocate in storm-ravaged Baton Rouge:

LSU Athletic Director Joe Alleva made the official announcement Wednesday that Saturday’s game between No. 7-ranked LSU and Troy has been postponed to Nov. 15. Tickets already purchased for the Troy game will be honored Nov. 15.

Alleva, LSU System President John Lombardi and Chancellor Michael Martin met Tuesday to discuss options after Gustav ripped through the area Monday.

Moving the game to Monday was not an option and the thought of playing the game in the Superdome or anywhere in the state was also turned down.

“This decision was a university decision and really wasn’t made until earlier (Wednesday) morning when we were sure that we had to postpone the game,” Alleva said.

The determining factors for the postponement were the condition of Tiger Stadium and the LSU campus, as well as the city’s current predicament.

LSU’s campus incurred several pockets of major damage and the venerable football stadium was not spared.

While there isn’t apparent structural damage to the 84-year-old “Death Valley,” the interior absorbed a notable series of blows.

Several seats on the west side of the stadium were damaged and the 200- and 300-level club seats were particularly hard hit, with several awnings ripped away.

Associate athletic director for facilities and grounds Ronnie Haliburton said several team bleachers from the sidelines apparently blew into both sides of the stadium.

The natural grass surface was also victimized with several gashes and divots from debris. Haliburton and his staff spent much of Tuesday removing debris.

The overriding problem with the stadium, though, was as of Wednesday there was no power and no guarantee it would be restored by Saturday and be reliable for a game.

When all factors were weighed, the bottom line was a stadium that wouldn’t have been playable.

“There were a lot of factors why we had to do it,” Alleva said. “The first is safety. Our stadium suffered a lot of damage. There are windows blown out. We don’t know the condition of the scoreboard and the lighting system. … There’s no power and we don’t know when power is going to come back on.

“The city of Baton Rouge is in too bad a shape to take resources away to play a football game. We’ve got to worry about the citizens of Baton Rouge and getting them power and food and water that they need. We’ll reschedule this game and hopefully the city of Baton Rouge will back on its feet shortly.”

AND RIGHT NOW, "hopefully" is up for grabs:

The focus shifts to a Sept. 13 home game against North Texas, but even that may need to be done tentatively.

With crews scattered around the greater Baton Rouge area trying to restore power, there’s no guarantee LSU’s campus will get immediate attention.

“My biggest concern is to make sure the stadium is ready to go next weekend,” Alleva said. “And we’re going to make sure it is, but that’s still a concern. We have to get contractors in here, and obviously contractors are very busy. We have to make sure we get the stadium safe for next weekend.”