Prada Bitch 1, Poppy Z. Brite 0

New Orleans writer and church-closing protester Poppy Z. Brite explained on Christmas Eve why she remains a Catholic, despite her . . . differences with church leadership and doctrine.

But if we all leave, then the assholes will have uncontested ownership of a potentially beautiful and valuable institution, and if we Catholics who don't believe this garbage put up with it, then hate will remain part and parcel of Catholic doctrine.

HER PAEAN to peace, love and understanding was entitled "Bite my fat one, Prada bitch." In case the reader might be unclear about the identity of the "Prada bitch," she included a graphic explaining, in graphic terms, what "Nazi popes" could do.

Furthermore, Ms. Brite -- who has said "I think of myself as male, and that I am attracted to males" -- was quite upset over Pope Benedict XVI's recent statement about gender, which supported what Judeo-Christian tradition has held about such things since, oh . . . forever. This all ties in somehow with why Poppy had been helping to "occupy" an Uptown parish the Archdiocese of New Orleans had seen fit to shutter.

"In case you've ever wondered why I don't just go to some other church," she wrote, "no one at Our Lady of Good Counsel thinks I'm going to destroy the human race."

As one who has written my own archbishop suggesting -- amid the scandals and a petulant tantrum he threw regarding governance of Boys' Town -- that he start acting like a shepherd or please resign, I sympathize on some level with those who are unwilling to scrape and bow before the majesty of the chancery.

On the other hand, who the *&@! does she think she is?

By definition, Catholics "believe this garbage." When she was confirmed as an adult -- as did I when I was confirmed as an adult -- Poppy Z. Brite made this profession:

“I believe and profess all that the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches,
and proclaims to be revealed by God.”

NOTHING THERE about "Catholics who don't believe this garbage." So forgive me if I don't have much sympathy for Ms. Brite's and her fellow at Our Lady of Good Counsel protesters' bleating about the archdiocese, etcetera and so on, acting in bad faith.

Like this from the Times-Picayune:

Tuesday's action appears to end parishioners' long attempt to save their parishes, an effort that began in April, when [Archbishop Alfred] Hughes announced they would be closed as part of a massive restructuring of post-Hurricane Katrina worship life in the archdiocese.

Parishioners seized their churches after their last scheduled Masses in late October. Since then, they have occupied them in shifts around the clock, holding priestless Sunday prayer services and, they said, steadily building support for their volunteer rosters.

As Comiskey arrived at Good Counsel, one person from the crowd asked loudly about an earlier statement from archdiocesean officials that those participating in the vigil would not be disturbed as long as they remained peaceful. She didn't immediately respond.

As police prepared to remove Baquet, others close to Baquet, including his attorney, Lee Madere, were furious that police would not allow them access to Baquet to make sure he had medicine he needs as part of his treatment for cancer.

"You ain't never eating at Lil' Dizzy's again," Madere, standing at a church door, told a police officer, referring to the Esplanade Avenue restaurant run by relatives of Baquet.

Shortly after police arrived at St. Henry, one distraught parishioner, Cynthia Robidoux, rushed to the locked door tearfully demanding entry.

Robidoux told Assistant City Attorney Nolan Lambert she wanted to swap herself for the three parishioners inside to spare them arrest. Moreover, she told Lambert and police, she said she wanted to be arrested herself.

"I want everyone to see what they're doing. I want them to be ashamed," she said, referring to Hughes and other church officials.

I LOVE IT when folks, on one hand, portray church officials as disciples of "hate" then, on the other, get all snitty when they perceive them as not acting "Christian." Isn't that exactly what they expected of "assholes"?

These eminently rational folk admittedly "don't believe this garbage" themselves, think the Holy Father is "Nazi" who needs to "f*** off" and only remain in the Catholic Church because they don't want the "assholes" to have "uncontested ownership" of it as they, the brave revolutionaries, seek to change unchangeable doctrine.

Translation: We're Fifth Columnists who want to remake the church in our image, but we need to hang on to the petty cash and copy machines to accomplish it.

What's not to love?

MAYBE NOT EVERY protester at Our Lady of Good Counsel is as obnoxiously obnoxious as Poppy Z. Brite. Maybe not all of them want the pope to "f*** off." Maybe not all of them want the church to accommodate the sexual vagueness of a gay man trapped in a woman's body who in 1988 said he/she/???, at one point, "grew depressed because I couldn't go out at night and f*** greased-boy ass in some back room."

If so, whose "Brite" idea was it to let Poppy speak in their names? Get in front of the TV cameras? Be a ringleader of the church occupiers.

At any rate, all charges were dropped Wednesday. The "assholes" were merciful, it would appear. That, or not keen to feed the protesters' need for spectacle.

Damn pity. I would have liked to see how Catholic New Orleans would have reacted to "NAZI POPES F*** OFF."

Your FUBAR government at work

If Joe the Congressman can't screw over poor people, non-profits, small-business people and Grandma when hard times are at hand, why, it's hardly worth the effort of getting elected.

And a screw job, according to the Los Angeles Times, is just what's about to happen in a month, when the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act goes into effect:

Barring a reprieve, regulations set to take effect next month could force thousands of clothing retailers and thrift stores to throw away trunkloads of children's clothing.

The law, aimed at keeping lead-filled merchandise away from children, mandates that all products sold for those age 12 and younger -- including clothing -- be tested for lead and phthalates, which are chemicals used to make plastics more pliable. Those that haven't been tested will be considered hazardous, regardless of whether they actually contain lead.

"They'll all have to go to the landfill," said Adele Meyer, executive director of the National Assn. of Resale and Thrift Shops.

The new regulations take effect Feb. 10 under the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, which was passed by Congress last year in response to widespread recalls of products that posed a threat to children, including toys made with lead or lead-based paint.

Supporters say the measure is sorely needed. One health advocacy group said it found high levels of lead in dozens of products purchased around the country, including children's jewelry, backpacks and ponchos.

Lead can also be found in buttons or charms on clothing and on appliques that have been added to fabric, said Charles Margulis, communications director for the Center for Environmental Health in Oakland. A child in Minnesota died a few years ago after swallowing a lead charm on his sneaker, he said.

But others say the measure was written too broadly. Among the most vocal critics to emerge in recent weeks are U.S.-based makers of handcrafted toys and handmade clothes, as well as thrift and consignment shops that sell children's clothing.

"We will have to lock our doors and file for bankruptcy," said Shauna Sloan, founder of Salt Lake City-based franchise Kid to Kid, which sells used children's clothing in 75 stores across the country and had planned to open a store in Santa Clara, Calif., this year.

There is the possibility of a partial reprieve. The Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is responsible for enforcing the law, on Monday will consider exempting clothing and toys made of natural materials such as wool or wood. The commission does not have the authority to change the law but can decide how to interpret it.

But exempting natural materials does not go far enough, said Stephen Lamar, executive vice president of the American Apparel and Footwear Assn. Clothes made of cotton but with dyes or non-cotton yarn, for example, might still have to be tested, as would clothes that are cotton-polyester blends, he said.

"The law introduces an extraordinarily large number of testing requirements for products for which everyone knows there's no lead," he said.

Clothing and thrift trade groups say the law is flawed because it went through Congress too quickly. By deeming that any product not tested for lead content by Feb. 10 be considered hazardous waste, they contend, stores will have to tell customers that clothing they were allowed to sell Feb. 9 became banned overnight.

THIS THING is either going to bankrupt or make crooks out of more Americans than anything since Prohibition. And it continues a disturbing trend toward benefiting big business at the expense of the little guy through Congress' efforts to "reform" something or another.

See the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act for just a couple of examples.

But the real victim of such idiotic government overreach -- particularly overreach that serves to make earning one's keep (or, now, keeping one's kids clothed) prohibitive for average citizens will be government itself. With every intervention that makes life harder for Joe the (fill in the blank), with every slick new law that lessens competition for the captains of industry, ordinary people believe just a little more that they just can't win.

And they come to think that, indeed, there's just no percentage in obeying the law at all because the law has just become another tool the rich use to screw the hoi polloi. Bottom line: The federal government begins to lose legitimacy.

Great timing, too. Just when the funding for bread and circuses starts to dry up.

No one ever learns that the Bolshevik Revolution happened for a reason.

The next big thing

As we speak, there are Mac enthusiasts flocking to their local Apple stores wanting to buy the new MacBook Wheel. I have a better name for it, but there are ladies present.

Really, if Steve Jobs built it, people would buy it. Probably the same people who really enjoy tagging MiniDiscs.

I think the reason The Onion's satire is so damned funny is because you know there's someone out there. . . .

HAT TIP: Dvorak Uncensored

Revisiting Revolution 21's premise

Every now and again, I like to revisit what Revolution 21 is all about -- if for no other reason than to remind myself.

SO, here we go:

Let's get something straight right now, O huddled masses: Revolution 21 ain't your grandma's media provider. It ain't your typical Catholic radio thing, and it ain't your typical corporate, over-researched, same-boring-playlist rock radio thing, either.

But is it really useful to define Revolution 21 by what it's not? So sorry, my plebes! My bad.

Let's just say -- plainly -- what Revolution 21 is. Revolution 21 is a website and music program that aim to reflect life as it is lived by screwed-up, struggling, inspired-yet-bumbling children of God sorely in need of His grace and forgiveness.

Revolution 21 -- that is, the Blog for the People and 3 Chords & the Truth -- realizes that Catholics like the Mighty Favog (your host and the master of dysfunctionality) live life with one foot in Heaven and the other in the gutter with all the other schmucks called Humanity. We strive for holiness, we occasionally achieve it, and sometimes the best we can muster is Holier Than Thou.

Oh, well. Blame it on Eve and that damned apple.

For his part, the Mighty Favog -- though a great and mighty Favog -- is a Bad Catholic. It is to be hoped, however, that he is capable of decent "radio" . . . and a stellar show.

And he's trying most mightily to become, at the least, a Mediocre Catholic.

So, like us believing schmucks, Revolution 21 -- all of it, text and audio -- is a mixture of the sacred and the secular. The serious and the foolish. Rock . . . and roll. Well, you get the idea.

But Revolution 21 has a problem with our oversecularized, materialist and ultimately shallow culture. We figure schizo is the only thing you get out of putting faith waaaaaaaaaaaaaay over in one corner of your life and "real life" waaaaaaaaaaaaaay over in another corner so the two never touch.

We say put that Faith Thing and that Life Thing in a bag, shake it the hell up and see what happens.

I mean, ain't that a lot more fun than alienation, ennui and life in Schizo City? Or, if not always fun, at least always a lot more interesting and, ultimately, rewarding.

But then again, it's not All About Me -- or All About You -- is it, now?

Enough blather, proclaims the Mighty Favog, your master of New Media!

Let us now proceed with trashing preconceived notions of radio formatting and stale bourgeois convention. Let us now do radio and blogging and . . . whatever . . . like we ought to be living -- faith and life together, recognizing only two kinds of music. That would be Good and Bad.

The bad, we don't mess with.

WELL, THAT'S pretty much the foundational vision of what this enterprise is about -- trying to come up with a new model of being a person of faith, of being a Catholic, in media.

Catholic media shouldn't have to be all about preaching and, frankly, staying in the Catholic ghetto. It should be about more than non-stop apologetics and, sad to say, some really bad "contemporary" music.

Of course, there needs to be a place for all that -- well, except for the bad music -- in Catholic radio, webcasting and podcasting. But there needs to be more. The Catholic media message, especially at this time in history, needs to be multidimensional.

There needs to be a cultural-support system for faith . . . and a space where Catholics can be intelligent, fun, culturally attuned beings while paying mind to the Permanent Things. If you listen to Catholic radio at all, for instance, you know that just isn't happening there.

IF ANYTHING, you start to wonder how such a church ever could have produced a Flannery O'Connor or a Walker Percy. Hang on a sec. Walker Percy was a convert.

You also start to wonder why most of the musicians and authors whose work you consider to be the most "Catholic" have achieved that while walking out the door of the church. You know, the whole "I was raised Catholic" thing.

You wonder whatever happened to whatever in Catholicism produced so much of the Renaissance. Whatever kept so much of Western culture alive during the Dark Ages.

I mean, how in the hell did we get from there to a culturally retarded institution which oftentimes has nothing better to offer the Almighty than the liturgical equivalent of this:


SO, HOW DOES ONE expect to get anywhere with something like, for example, 3 Chords & the Truth in this milieu?

You don't.

As the general manager of a Catholic radio station once told me about an effort far less "out there" (at least from a religious-radio perspective) than 3 Chords & the Truth, "Catholic radio's not ready for that." That, of course, begs the question, "When the hell will it be, then?"

Not now. Not when Catholic culture -- and let's face it, Christian culture in this country -- isn't any smarter than what it's supposed to be transcending.

So, what I think I need to face up to is that what I'm doing has no prospect of success within "the church." I don't know that I'd change a word of the above "mission statement" (for lack of a better term), but I know I can't force proselytizing or overt evangelizing into what is more properly the realm of culture and art.

Music -- art -- is more than just a tool for chalking up souls. It's more than the ol' evangelization bait and switch. And most importantly, it's not being true to the fullness of who I am or what I'm trying to accomplish here . . . whatever that might ultimately be.

WHAT I'M DOING, I guess, is "Catholic media" in the sense that it's media done by a guy trying to be a faithful Catholic. Just don't expect that it's "Catholic media" in the sense of being a shill for the institutional church, or merely a utilitarian "hook" for convincing you to be Catholic or to do as I say God says.

You are welcome here even if you think I'm full of it, and that that goes double for my religion.

If there's anything wrong in my foundational vision, it's that it is too formal -- as informal as it is, relatively speaking. The institutional church, for all I know, probably would be actively hostile to what I'm doing . . . at least if its name had to be on it. And I damn well know most Catholics just don't "get it."

Our church is a timid church.
It fears how some things might look.
There is no room for this.
Our church is a timid church.

SOME OF YOU will know the tune to put to that. Expect 3 Chords & the Truth to change accordingly, starting this week.

Brother, can you spare some bling?

Paul Krugman, the Princeton economics professor and New York Times columnist, says it's beginning to look a lot like the Great Depression out there. I am not going to argue economics with a Nobel laureate.

ELSEWHERE in the Times, Michael Lewis and David Einhorn explain that the sad financial straits we're in isn't a matter of bad breaks or a few bad Wall Street bankers, but instead is a matter of national insanity.

Einhorn and Lewis:

Incredibly, intelligent people the world over remain willing to lend us money and even listen to our advice; they appear not to have realized the full extent of our madness. We have at least a brief chance to cure ourselves. But first we need to ask: of what?

To that end consider the strange story of Harry Markopolos. Mr. Markopolos is the former investment officer with Rampart Investment Management in Boston who, for nine years, tried to explain to the Securities and Exchange Commission that Bernard L. Madoff couldn’t be anything other than a fraud. Mr. Madoff’s investment performance, given his stated strategy, was not merely improbable but mathematically impossible. And so, Mr. Markopolos reasoned, Bernard Madoff must be doing something other than what he said he was doing.

In his devastatingly persuasive 17-page letter to the S.E.C., Mr. Markopolos saw two possible scenarios. In the “Unlikely” scenario: Mr. Madoff, who acted as a broker as well as an investor, was “front-running” his brokerage customers. A customer might submit an order to Madoff Securities to buy shares in I.B.M. at a certain price, for example, and Madoff Securities instantly would buy I.B.M. shares for its own portfolio ahead of the customer order. If I.B.M.’s shares rose, Mr. Madoff kept them; if they fell he fobbed them off onto the poor customer.

In the “Highly Likely” scenario, wrote Mr. Markopolos, “Madoff Securities is the world’s largest Ponzi Scheme.” Which, as we now know, it was.

Harry Markopolos sent his report to the S.E.C. on Nov. 7, 2005 — more than three years before Mr. Madoff was finally exposed — but he had been trying to explain the fraud to them since 1999. He had no direct financial interest in exposing Mr. Madoff — he wasn’t an unhappy investor or a disgruntled employee. There was no way to short shares in Madoff Securities, and so Mr. Markopolos could not have made money directly from Mr. Madoff’s failure. To judge from his letter, Harry Markopolos anticipated mainly downsides for himself: he declined to put his name on it for fear of what might happen to him and his family if anyone found out he had written it. And yet the S.E.C.’s cursory investigation of Mr. Madoff pronounced him free of fraud.

What’s interesting about the Madoff scandal, in retrospect, is how little interest anyone inside the financial system had in exposing it. It wasn’t just Harry Markopolos who smelled a rat. As Mr. Markopolos explained in his letter, Goldman Sachs was refusing to do business with Mr. Madoff; many others doubted Mr. Madoff’s profits or assumed he was front-running his customers and steered clear of him. Between the lines, Mr. Markopolos hinted that even some of Mr. Madoff’s investors may have suspected that they were the beneficiaries of a scam. After all, it wasn’t all that hard to see that the profits were too good to be true. Some of Mr. Madoff’s investors may have reasoned that the worst that could happen to them, if the authorities put a stop to the front-running, was that a good thing would come to an end.

The Madoff scandal echoes a deeper absence inside our financial system, which has been undermined not merely by bad behavior but by the lack of checks and balances to discourage it. “Greed” doesn’t cut it as a satisfying explanation for the current financial crisis. Greed was necessary but insufficient; in any case, we are as likely to eliminate greed from our national character as we are lust and envy. The fixable problem isn’t the greed of the few but the misaligned interests of the many.

(snip)

Our financial catastrophe, like Bernard Madoff’s pyramid scheme, required all sorts of important, plugged-in people to sacrifice our collective long-term interests for short-term gain. The pressure to do this in today’s financial markets is immense. Obviously the greater the market pressure to excel in the short term, the greater the need for pressure from outside the market to consider the longer term. But that’s the problem: there is no longer any serious pressure from outside the market. The tyranny of the short term has extended itself with frightening ease into the entities that were meant to, one way or another, discipline Wall Street, and force it to consider its enlightened self-interest.

THUS DO AMERICANS great and small, and thus have they done ever since Gordon Gekko told us "Greed is good," and the Reagan Administration governed as if it were so. Today is the enemy of tomorrow, and our wants have become the mortal enemy of our needs.

We Americans live as if we can separate faith and life -- or lack of faith and life, for that matter. It doesn't work out. God won't stay in a box, only to be taken out for an hour on Sundays -- if then. There are consequences when we try to do that, both individually and collectively.

Likewise, Satan won't stay in a box either, content to come out only when we want to have a little naughty fun. You don't have to give the devil his due; he'll just take it.

Among other things.

WHAT HAS BEEN playing out on Wall Street, in Detroit . . . and on Main Street, too, resembles nothing so much as it does a cleaned-up version of ghetto nihilism. You know, the kind of life your kids like to hear glorified by the likes of Lil' Wayne, T-Pain and 50-Cent.

Er, Fiddycent.

If you have no hope of long-term reward for right behavior, no faith in a better day to come, see no prospect of something -- Someone -- greater than yourself caring for even the humblest of creatures and someday setting what is wrong aright, why not go for the bling, the blow and the booty? Or, in polite "society", the immediate return writ large, the second home in the Hamptons and "friends with benefits."

Or a high-priced "escort." Whatever.

ONE PATHOLOGY widespread among the "underclass" is an inability -- often so ingrained as to be a cultural trait -- to act in its own long-term interest through self-restraint and delayed gratification. Today, nothing so defines the culture of Wall Street, and of Main Street, so much as this same pathology.

How else do we explain McMansions, investment banks with 30 times more debt than assets, three cars in the garage and subprime mortgages?

Today's headlines tell us of a financial crisis. The systemic and cultural dysfunction behind the financial crisis, however, speaks to a longtime -- and ongoing -- spiritual depression. Our society struggles with a deficit of faith, while deflationary pressures deplete its reservoirs of hope.

WE'VE EATEN. We've drunk. We thought we were merry. Was it all because the only prospect we saw for tomorrow was "die"?

Music and magic in the night

The magic is gone. Radio is dead.

Not so long ago -- OK, long ago -- the moonlight brought magic into the lives of American kids, their rooms illuminated by the dial lights and vacuum tubes of bedside radios and their ears filled with the soundtrack of amazing worlds that lay somewhere behind four-inch loudspeakers.

Where now lives -- if one can use the term so loosely -- syndicated fare like George Noory's all-night freak show and angry AM-radio ranters used to exist a world where DJs spun records through the night, both across town and halfway across a continent.

LATE AT NIGHT, the old tube radio filled your room with the faint smell of ozone and the powerful magic of stepping into worlds not your own -- the kid in a burg like Baton Rouge eavesdropped on the big-time rock 'n' roll sounds of the big city via WLS in Chicago. Or he might have an entirely legal psychedelic experience in Little Rock -- Little Rock??? -- on KAAY's Beaker Street . . . or, closer to home over on the FM band, on "Loose Radio" or maybe aboard the Chad Noga Choo-Choo on "Rampart 102" out of New Orleans.

Up here in Omaha, kids lay in their rooms listening to the late-night "Good Guy" on the "Mighty 1290" KOIL. Or maybe to whomever was pumpin' out the hits on KOMA in Oklahoma City or KIMN in Denver.

Others, to be sure, had rigged up an FM set so they could tune in and turn on as their radio "guru" dropped the needle on some Moby Grape over on "Radio Free Omaha," and all the groovy cats of the upper Midwest dreamed dreams of Max Yasgur's farm.

We are stardust. We are golden.

We are no more.

THE MAGIC IS DEAD. Our radios -- and our alternate universes -- have collapsed upon themselves in a computerized corporate cataclysm, leaving shards of smashed tubes and smashed dreams scattered across the landscape of our culture and our minds.

After the Buy n Large Corp. bought and consolidated an entire medium, there was no room for such inefficiencies as magic. Soon enough, the airwaves no longer could support life at all.

The children of the magic took it for granted, and it vanished beneath mountains of financial, cultural and human debris. And BnL didn't even leave a Wall·E to clean up the mess.

NOW OUR CHILDREN go through life with cell phones and iPods wired to their brains. They'll never know the magic of conjuring up entire worlds out of a box of capacitors and electron tubes.

They'll do a keyword search for "theater of the mind" on YouTube. All the results will reference an album by Ludacris.

Now, if you will excuse me, I'm going to turn on my old radio -- the one with the glowing vacuum tubes -- and see whether I can tease the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. out of the ether from up there in Winnipeg. I'm becoming a fast fan of In the Key of Charles and Tonic with Tim Tamashiro.

Maybe somewhere out there -- somewhere beyond this all-American, all-capitalistic Iron Curtain of our own making -- there be magic.

Merely wires and lights in a box

Click on the 1942 Philco for audio

Following that last post -- about what passes for informational content on cable news channels these days -- I thought it might be appropriate to post a couple of the 7,231.459,295 reasons we all should be profoundly sorry that Edward R. Murrow is dead.

Above is a link to the first of those reasons, the famed CBS newsman's 1945 report from the Nazis' just-liberated Buchenwald concentration camp. What follows is a story from WREG television in Memphis about another of the countless reasons we should mourn that there are no men -- or women -- like Murrow on the American airwaves today.


IN HIS FAMOUS SPEECH to the Radio and Television News Directors Association, Murrow pretty much said it all. He warned, in concluding:

I began by saying that our history will be what we make it. If we go on as we are, then history will take its revenge, and retribution will not limp in catching up with us.

We are to a large extent an imitative society. If one or two or three corporations would undertake to devote just a small traction of their advertising appropriation along the lines that I have suggested, the procedure would grow by contagion; the economic burden would be bearable, and there might ensue a most exciting adventure--exposure to ideas and the bringing of reality into the homes of the nation.

To those who say people wouldn't look; they wouldn't be interested; they're too complacent, indifferent and insulated, I can only reply: There is, in one reporter's opinion, considerable evidence against that contention. But even if they are right, what have they got to lose? Because if they are right, and this instrument is good for nothing but to entertain, amuse and insulate, then the tube is flickering now and we will soon see that the whole struggle is lost.

This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful.

Stonewall Jackson, who knew something about the use of weapons, is reported to have said, "When war comes, you must draw the sword and throw away the scabbard." The trouble with television is that it is rusting in the scabbard during a battle for survival.

"If we go on as we are, then history will take its revenge, and retribution will not limp in catching up with us."

This . . . is #!@%&*$ CNN, mother#!@%&*$!

NOTE: Videos contain off-color language

Reason No. 7,231,459,295 Edward R. Murrow is really glad he's dead now.

THE NEW YORK POST has the, er, blow-by-blow account of New Year's Eve on what used to be the Cable News Network:

Comedienne Kathy Griffin may be doomed to life on CNN's S-list after answering a heckler with a shrieking, vulgar tirade during the network's live New Year's Eve broadcast.

"Screw you," she told the heckler. "Why don't you get a job, buddy? You know what? I don't go to your job and knock the d- - - out of your mouth."

The raunchy exchange, which occurred well after the ball dropped at midnight, was received with guffaws by the camera crew.

Co-host Anderson Cooper, who spent the night playing the role of straight man to Griffin's antics, then managed to break for commercial - although by that point, he could barely keep a straight face.

Cooper seemed to become increasingly uncomfortable with Griffin's off-color remarks, including her request to "get a pap smear from [CNN medical reporter] Dr. Sanjay Gupta," and her description of former CNN host Glenn Beck as a "heroin addict Mormon."

I CAN'T WAIT to see what Katie Couric does -- while broadcasting the CBS Evening News live from Bourbon Street on Mardi Gras -- when some drunk from Ohio demands "Show us your t***!"

SlimeBob GreedPants vs. Big Cable

Hey! Kids!

If your cable company doesn't pony up, we're gonna kill SpongeBob! And then we're gonna take Dora and we're gonna explore her! If you get our drift.

Tell Mom and Dad to call Big Cable and complain. Tell Mom and Dad you'll hold your breath until you turn blue.

SpongeBob's waterlogged life is in your hands, kids! Don't let him down.

OF COURSE, reports the Los Angeles Times, this worked fantastically. Because we're that kind of country.

Facing a backlash from TV viewers furious at the prospect of losing "SpongeBob SquarePants" and "Dora the Explorer," two media giants reached a new programming agreement that keeps those popular cartoon characters on the channels of the country's second-largest cable operator.

Viacom Inc. had threatened to pull 19 of its cable channels, including Nickelodeon, MTV, VH-1 and Comedy Central, from the Time Warner Cable Inc. systems at midnight Wednesday when their previous two-year contract expired.

At midnight in New York, minutes into the new year, Viacom granted an extension that allowed the two sides to keep talking. They then clinched a deal. The New Year's Day accord avoided a blackout of Viacom's programming in 13.3 million homes in the U.S. served by Time Warner Cable Inc., including nearly 2 million in the Los Angeles area.

Details of the new contract were not immediately available.

The resolution came after a long day of squabbling as each side accused the other of greed, and irate customers jammed Time Warner Cable's call centers, saying they wanted their MTV and Nickelodeon. The reaction from viewers was stoked by Viacom's costly media campaign in print and on television, much of it targeted at kids.

"Demanding that our customers pay so much more for these few networks would be unreasonable in any economy, but it is particularly outrageous given the current economic conditions," Time Warner Cable Chief Executive Glenn Britt said early Wednesday. "Huge price increases like what Viacom is demanding threaten the ultimate value of cable TV."

Viacom had purchased newspaper advertisements, featuring a tearful Dora the Explorer, and placed an on-screen crawl on its channels to alert viewers to the impending programming blackout. The ads encouraged viewers to complain to Time Warner Cable.

The tactic worked -- parents reported having to soothe children who were upset over the prospect of not being able to watch their favorite shows on Nickelodeon, including "SpongeBob SquarePants."

"Our family will cancel Time Warner if a suitable agreement is not reached," threatened Debra Cooper, a mother of two who lives in San Diego. "I admit SpongeBob's laugh drives me nuts, but he is part of our family, as is George Lopez, 'Home Improvement,' 'i-Carly,' and all the rest."

Cooper said she called Time Warner Cable twice Wednesday to lobby for the channel. The company was inundated with calls, and executives from both companies put their holiday plans on hold to return to the negotiations.

KILL YOUR TV. It's important.

Who knew?

For the last post of the year, we present The Future . . . or, what we were supposed to have 10 years ago.

Where the hell is my air car?

World-Herald dumps western Nebraska

Well, at least western Nebraska still can get Husker games on the radio. At least until the radio industry finishes imploding, anyway.

But they'll have to wait a day or two for the Omaha World-Herald's wall-to-wall coverage of everybody's all-Americans.

THAT'S BECAUSE the state's largest newspaper has decided them folks up in the Sandhills kin jes' go on ahead and become part of Wyoming, as has been threatened by some from time to time. In a state where folks past Grand Island have felt less and less connected to their more-numerous eastern Nebraska brethren, they are just about to have one less thing in common -- their formerly statewide newspaper:

Effective Feb. 2, The World-Herald is changing the way it delivers the news and provides advertising services across the state of Nebraska.

The newspaper will end its Midlands edition, which is distributed across much of the western half of the state. Instead of providing same-day printed newspaper delivery to that part of the state, The World-Herald will provide subscriptions to a replica electronic edition (e-Edition) for each day's paper. It also will offer delivery of the paper by U.S. mail.

In a significant related move, The World-Herald will expand distribution of its Nebraska edition, pushing delivery of this edition as far west as the Kearney and Holdrege areas. The Nebraska edition goes to press nearly five hours later than the Midlands edition that these areas currently receive, providing more up-to-date news.

The World-Herald News Service, created last year, makes available all World-Herald content to its family of daily and weekly papers across the state. Over the past two decades, The World-Herald has ensured quality news and advertising services throughout Nebraska by acquiring and improving newspapers and their related Web sites in Scottsbluff, North Platte, Kearney, Grand Island and York, as well as 11 weekly newspapers. The Norfolk Daily News also participates in the World-Herald News Service.

Four Iowa daily papers and 12 nondaily papers owned by The World-Herald also are part of the World-Herald News Service.

Omaha.com also provides World-Herald content 24/7 online and by mobile phone.

AHEM. Will the World-Herald Co. be vastly expanding the newshole of the North Platte Telegraph and Scottsbluff Star-Herald so they might somehow shoehorn in all that World-Herald News Service wonderfulness each day?

And what about all the World-Herald's coverage of Husker football on Sundays? Exactly how many of the Telegraph's or Star-Herald's Sunday sports sections could be fit into the World-Herald's college-football section?

Listen, I realize the newspaper industry is in for drastic changes, and that print editions will be less and less of the equation from here on out. What offends me is the newspaper peeing down western Nebraska readers' legs, then telling them it's a beneficial rain.

What we are talking here is a diminution of service to an overwhelmingly rural area of the state. What we also are talking here, in the socio-political sphere, is an unintended but not-so-subtle message to those folks that they do not matter in the grand scheme of Nebraska.

I UNDERSTAND the economic reasoning behind the World-Herald's move. What I don't understand is how the paper is allowing its brand to be diminished by so blatantly throwing in the towel and leaving so much of the state unserved by anything but the smallest of small-town newspapers.

The newspaper crisis has been building since the birth of the World Wide Web, and now the World-Herald reacts? Worse, the long-delayed reaction isn't a proactive one but, instead, comes in the form of a barely organized retreat.

And it's outstate World-Herald subscribers and single-copy buyers who've been left bleeding on the battlefield.

So now the paper's soon-to-be-erstwhile readers are expected to subscribe to the "e-Edition" available on the paper's woeful, truncated website? Good luck with that one, guys. Really, the "e-Edition" should be a joy to read in areas where broadband Internet service isn't nearly so ubiquitous as in the big city.

It seems to me many of the World-Herald's cost-saving objectives could have been met by either having its outstate editions printed in Grand Island, North Platte and Scottsbluff, then distributed from those hubs.

OR, BETTER YET, why not expand the circulation areas of those World-Herald Co. newspapers somewhat, and then offer an outstate edition of the World-Herald as a wrap-around to them, while raising the cover price of the papers, say, a dime? Would it really have been impossible -- and economically unfeasible -- to achieve cost savings while enhancing value to the customer?

Even if you are retrenching somewhat, isn't it always better to do it in a way that plausibly can be spun as a plus for your readership while positioning you as an industry innovator? Wouldn't it be smart journalism to add state- and national-coverage value to three of your western Nebraska publications while freeing up space in -- and the staff of -- those papers for more, and more thorough, regional and local coverage?

What the newspaper industry needs today is imagination and innovation. What it gets is slapdash haphazardry and sheer panic.

NEWSPAPERS LIKE the Omaha World-Herald could be intelligently organizing a graceful retreat from the business of publishing dead-tree newspapers and an entry into the world of multimedia news dissemination. A measured, thoughtful transition would give editors and publishers time to develop a game plan.

It also would give areas like western Nebraska time to more completely integrate into the broadband world so that no reader -- no citizen -- is left behind.

The World-Herald could have done that. Could have.

As in "coulda, woulda . . . shoulda."

The new shortwave

Before during and after World War II, listening to shortwave radio -- dropping in on what was up a world away -- was all the rage.

If what was on the Omaha airwaves was just too boring. well, let's see whether Radio Moscow is worth a few socialistic laughs and giggles. Alternatively, you might find less ironic enjoyment from the BBC World Service or Radio Netherlands International.

AND IF THERE was a crisis somewhere on the globe, maybe you could pull in a broadcast from the thick of the action through the static as the signal came and went.

Shortwave radio was exotic. Shortwave radio was romantic. Shortwave radio helped you escape the ordinariness of your ordinary old American town.

It's a new century now, and what's left of the Omaha airwaves is more boring than anyone ever could have imagined in 1958. I'm serious, here. Radio nut that I am, I'm pining for those comparatively exciting days when KFAB was spinning vinyl like the Mills Brothers' "Cab Driver." Or maybe even some 101 Strings or Jerry Vale.

But there is escape today via Internet radio . . . the new shortwave. And, lo, manufacturers are starting to advertise 'Net radio the same way they sold us shortwave well over half a century ago.

I mean, listen to this from Tivoli Audio:

When Tivoli Audio CEO Tom DeVesto and his team of engineers set out to create the next generation of home audio, they began with a simple question: What would the ideal radio do? The new Tivoli Audio NetWorks radio is the answer to that question. Taking advantage of broadcasting over the Internet, NetWorks delivers crystal-clear reception of any radio station, near or far, with no need for a computer. NetWorks allows listeners to tune in to Italian Opera from Milan, rock music from New York City, or any specialty, niche radio station from any location in the world in its native language, and in real time.

BETTER YET, watch:


THE BIG DIFFERENCE between now and then, though, is that you didn't have to sell your daughters into white slavery to buy that RCA shortwave table radio way back there then. There are, of course, well-heeled folk today who wouldn't think twice about dropping anywhere from $599 to $750 on an Internet table radio.

I, however, am not one of them. Me, I got no frame of reference for that kind of thing. I also got no daughters to sell into white slavery.

Running audio cables from my computer to my stereo will just have to suffice. Either that or firing up the old shortwave set atop the bookcase.

Benching New Orleans

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I once worked for a radio program director who loved pie-in-the-sky. Hated everything else -- and not only that, he saw no need to do "everything else" well . . . or at all.

Trouble is, it was such mundane skut work that actually kept the station on the air.

One day, after this doofus had dumped half of the work in his job description on top of all the drudgery in my job description, I had had it. I didn't particularly care whether it cost me my poorly compensated job or landed me in a fist fight with someone who outweighed me by 100 pounds.

"You're the laziest SOB I've ever seen in my life when it comes to doing the skut work nobody wants to do but has to be done," I told the guy . . . my boss. And it was the truth.

LEADERSHIP IS not an entitlement program, nor is it a license to dump your burdens onto others' shoulders. Leadership is figuring out what needs to be done, then getting it the hell done.

For that matter, good citizenship is all about discerning what the hell needs to be done, then getting on board with the work of making it happen. That's where your tax money comes in. Voting, too.

It's the skut work of civic life. It's what people need to get around to before the "visions of sugar-plums dance in their heads."

NEW ORLEANS and its leaders -- and its people, some of them -- remind me of that discombobulated boss I now am well rid of.

The Crescent City is one of those places -- another one is my hometown, Baton Rouge -- that never tires of chasing after grand schemes as if wishes really were horses, allowing all the beggars a free ride. In the wake of Katrina, feckless Mayor Ray Nagin made a big to-do of plans to reimagine downtown and create 6,500 jobs with the construction of the "Hyatt Jazz District" near the Superdome.

Of course, that never happened. Nor will it.

Nor have New Orleanians found any relief from a staggering murder rate, unreliable and expensive utilities, a dilapidated infrastructure, a struggling school system . . . or the little-abated threat of being another Katrina away from oblivion. One from which, next time, there will be no recovery.

America's soggy Pompeii . . . is what we're talkin'.

New Orleans -- and, indeed, Louisiana as a whole -- have found tender mercies flowing from their leaders (and, to be fair, from its citizenry at large) rather like waters from a dry well. In the Mojave Desert. In July. During a particularly dry year, even by desert standards.

WHAT NEW ORLEANIANS, and Baton Rougeans . . . and Louisianians, fail to apprehend is some basic "inside baseball" stuff. Namely, it's highly unlikely you're going to hit a three-run shot if you can't even manage a bloop single. First things first.

Thus we have a city, and its leaders, with visions of sugar-plums, bullet trains and jazz districts dancing in their heads when they can't even manage to put bus benches at the city's bus stops.

Well, at least they couldn't until a band of extraordinary ladies got together -- and got some saws, screws, paint and drills -- and set out to "bench" the city of New Orleans. And this they are doing, as the above video shows us.

These patron saints of mass transit may not be able to take the load off of working-class New Orleanians' shoulders, but they can take a load off their feet. Every little bit helps.

One gets the impression if it weren't for isolated bands of the extraordinarily civic-minded in that woebegone city, there would be no recovery there at all . . . 3½ years après le deluge.

MEANWHILE, in "the city care forgot," this is what has brought Mid City residents to the barricades:

NO FUNCTIONING CITY? No problem. No big-ass bonfire with thousands of people running around it -- and throwing fireworks in it? This is war.

What is wrong with this picture? Probably the same thing that caused someone on the SaveTheBonfire blog to think it necessary to post this on it:

I don't speak on behalf of anyone other than myself, but if you wish to see the bonfire continue:

* Do not throw fireworks or other foreign matter into the fire.
* Respect the directions of fire fighters and police, and identified bonfire marshals.
* Keep your clothes on (this is a family event; we bring our kids)

Do not get dangerously close to the fire, and respect any barricades that may be erected.

FIVE DECADES and change ago, CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow closed a landmark See It Now broadcast taking on Sen. Joseph McCarthy by quoting from William Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar." If you replaced the words "senator from Wisconsin" with "mayor of New Orleans," you'd have a pretty damn good epitaph for New Orleans:

The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it -- and rather successfully. Cassius was right. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."

Good night, and good luck.

Que sera, Sera-mas

I always was kind of fond of the Doris Day Show, which I hadn't seen in decades. Until now, with this sweet Christmas episode from, I think, the 1970-71 season.

Call me a sap, I don't care. It's Christmas, and Christmas is a powerful thing.

A blessed Christmas

Isaiah 9:1-6

The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom
a light has shone.
You have brought them abundant joy
and great rejoicing,
as they rejoice before you as at the harvest,
as people make merry when dividing spoils.
For the yoke that burdened them,
the pole on their shoulder,
and the rod of their taskmaster
you have smashed, as on the day of Midian.
For every boot that tramped in battle,
every cloak rolled in blood,
will be burned as fuel for flames.
For a child is born to us, a son is given us;
upon his shoulder dominion rests.
They name him Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero,
Father-Forever, Prince of Peace.
His dominion is vast
and forever peaceful,
from David’s throne, and over his kingdom,
which he confirms and sustains
by judgment and justice,
both now and forever.
The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this!

3 Chords & the Truth: The Christmas show

Ho! Ho! Ho! Here's the show!

The Christmas edition of 3 Chords & the Truth, that is.

I'm sure there's more to be said about its holiday wonderfulness, but I'm flat too tired to say it right now. I guess you'll just have to listen, then.

It's here. And here. I think you'll enjoy it, because no broadcast automation programs were harmed -- or even used -- in its production.

And, really, couldn't we all use a bit of the human touch at Christmastime? Be there. Aloha.

Or should I say "Mele Kalikimaka"?

A Christmas Eve four decades ago

Forty years ago, we were at the end of a hard year. 1968 was the year everything, seemingly, came apart.

White hatred killed Martin Luther King Jr. Arab hatred killed Bobby Kennedy. Ghettos burned across America, part of a spasm of inner-city violence that spanned the last half of the 1960s, off and on, and from which those communities never recovered.

THERE WERE student riots in Paris and police riots in Chicago. A communist offensive on the lunar new year convinced Americans that we really couldn't win in Vietnam and added the word Tet to our national vocabulary.

The world. Hell. Handbasket.

1968 was a year of grace, too. The video above depicts a big one we received on Christmas Eve -- God speaking to the world through His Word and three astronauts -- Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders -- circling the moon in an Apollo spaceship. Apollo 8, it was.

I was 7 . . . almost 8. I knew about Bobby Kennedy, and about Martin, and about the war. But it's grace that cuts through the chaotic noise when you're a kid. That was especially true in the '60s, which really were The Wonder Years, when we followed the space program like kids today follow . . . what?

Miley Cyrus?

1968 and 2008 -- radically different times unified in chaos and uncertainty. And the need for a little grace at Christmastime.

A '60s kind of Christmas

Do a search for Christmas videos on Google, and you'll find the most fascinating things.

For instance, did you know there's a Web site with nothing but home movies on it? There is. It's run by a film-transfer business called Home Movie Depot.

And there we find some old Super 8 movies belonging to a user, handle of Fabian. Fabian's family was in sunny Southern California in the 1960s, it seems. The web page guesses this home movie was from 1965.

It wasn't.

The women's clothes are off for '65. For one thing, miniskirts weren't widespread in this country in 1965, if they had gotten here at all.

FOR ANOTHER THING, the kids are playing with the Hot Wheels they got for Christmas. Hot Wheels didn't appear on the scene until 1968. Note to self: Retrieve old Hot Wheels and Hot Wheels track when you go back to Louisiana next summer.

Merry Christmas from the family.

Carve the turkey turn the ballgame on
Make Bloody Marys cause we all want one
Send somebody to the Stop 'n Go
We need some celery and a can of fake snow
A bag of lemons and some Diet Sprite
A box of tampons and some Salem Lights
Hallelujah everybody say cheese
Merry Christmas from the family

Feliz Navidad.