How desperate are newspapers?

This desperate.

The Omaha World-Herald -- which recently raised the ire of gay activists everywhere by refusing a same-sex wedding announcement for "business reasons" -- nevertheless seems to have found "business reasons" aplenty to run a rather (ahem) large ad for horny-making strips in its Thursday "Money" section.

BACK IN MY DAY, the high-school set was afire with tales of the miraculous properties of Spanish fly -- a magical potion that could get even the most zit-infested adolescent male laid. The tale less told, of course, was that it also could kill you.

But Spanish fly is so 1970s, you know? And even in the '70s, you'd be (cough) hard pressed to find display ads for the stuff in even the wildest alternative rags. You know, the ones that had all the advertising for abortion clinics and concerts sponsored by NORML.

The times, they are a-changin'. Now it's the formerly staid old maid of Nebraska journalism that's making money off Americans' utter desperation to get their freak on. The newspaper that won't run words like s***, f***, a**, d***, P**** or even "poop" has discovered the go$pel of Stimul-x (TM), the postmillennial aphrodisiac that supposedly gives you all the horn dog with half the kidney damage, tummy rumbles, convulsions or death.

THE BUSINESS of newspapers -- especially now -- is business, and if there's a buck to be made, it's in telling Americans how to get laid. Or, at least, in selling them the belief they're going to finally get laid.

Oh, the taboos that tumble when the high and mighty realize they have a business model that's truly f***ed.

A century of voices through the ether

People speaking, and singing, through the ether. Voices and music in the air. Mass communications -- instantaneous.

Broadcasting.

Music continuing on the ether. It started 100 years ago this year, in San Jose, Calif., the dream of Charles Herrold -- on again and off again from atop the Garden City Bank Building. Where once there were only the dots and dashes of Morse Code, suddenly into radio operators' headphones came music and voices.

PASSING THE TIME . . . through the ether, they called it a century ago.

Passing the time. Through the ether, from miles away. New friends discussing the news, talking about the weather and playing records on the Victrola.

Regular broadcasts began in 1912, with the water-cooled carbon microphones wired directly into the spark-gap transmitter. And so was, in effect, everybody listening to such a marvel.

A century later, San Jose Mercury News columnist Mike Cassidy is on a mission to make sure "Doc" Herrold isn't forgotten. Not this year.

Charles Herrold was an inventor and teacher who opened the Herrold College of Wireless and Engineering on San Fernando in 1909. As Herrold and his students noodled with the emerging technology, they would play phonograph records into microphones so they could test their radio signals.

Turns out the noise was a hit among crystal set hobbyists, who were suddenly picking up music and voices on their contraptions.

"They'd call up Doc Herrold," [retired San Jose State journalism professor Gordon] Greb says, "and say, 'Hey, could you play some more songs?' " No word on whether the requests came with dedications.

Herrold kept up the broadcasts until the United States entered World War I, at which time the government commandeered the air waves. By the war's end, newfangled vacuum tubes rendered obsolete Herrold's system, which relied on arcing electrical currents.

Herrold struggled financially after the war and gave his KQW to a church in return for a job at the station. The church eventually laid him off and sold the station to a company that renamed it KCBS, of which perhaps you've heard.

It's a genuine Silicon Valley story: An innovator makes a bet on technology and comes to market before the market is ready. Disruptive technology throws him off his game. He fails, but his original concept changes the world.

Of course, we like to end our Silicon Valley failure stories with a comeback. Herrold's story didn't work out that way. He finished his working years as a janitor at the Oakland shipyards. He died alone in 1948 in a Hayward nursing home, not far from where Greb was enjoying a budding radio career.

TRAGIC, but somehow appropriate. The father of radio as we know it met a fate emblematic of broadcasting today -- talented individual innovates, builds an audience, gets thrown away by the industry he helped build, fades into obscurity. Whadda ya know, even in radio, everything old is new again . . . including eating its own.

The ingrates who bought KQW from Herrold fired Herrold from KQW sometime in the 1920s. By the early 1940s, KQW was the Columbia Broadcasting System affiliate for the Bay Area and became the CBS-owned and operated KCBS in 1949.

By 1945, Doc Herrold's creation had grown so that it could produce a half-hour docudrama celebrating KQW's 33rd anniversary, calling dibs by nearly a decade on the 25th anniversary of commercial broadcasting's birth with KDKA in Pittsburgh. An entire industry had grown out of Herrold and his radio students chatting about the news and playing the Victrola into a carbon microphone wired up to a spark-gap contraption.

TODAY, those days -- the 1930s and '40s "golden days" -- mark something of a high-water mark for the radio arts in America.

And a century on from those first rudimentary broadcasts to California wireless enthusiasts . . . the industry Doc Herrold dreamed up has cast aside all the innovators who trod his path and filled his shoes.

Ten decades on, the wireless languishes in a high-tech rest home of its own making . . . alone, destitute and waiting for the last sign off.

This is San Jose calling. Is anyone there?

Los Angeles calling. Is anyone there?

New York calling. Anyone there?

Chicago calling. Is anyone listening?

This is the wireless station at Omaha calling. Is anyone there?

Omaha calling CQ. Is anyone out there?

Anyone?

Glenn Beck loses his s***

This is not helpful.

But, on the other hand, if President Obama really is turning us into a communist country, there will be a tremendous upside. Glenn Beck will disappear shortly, off for a lifelong vacation at a state insane asylum.

Which, come to think of it, might be a game plan -- communist or not.

Why Louisiana is toast

Today, all across the Gret Stet, Louisianians raptly pore over the morning paper and the Internet sports sites to read all about the LSU Tigers' top recruiting class in football.

That's the top story on The Advocate's website down in Baton Rouge because, especially in these dark days for print journalism, newspapers want readers. And the editors have a good idea what Louisiana readers (the few . . . the proud . . .) want to read.

MEANWHILE, down and over . . . in the column of itty bitty headlines . . . we find this: "LSU cuts sketched." Sketched? Let's try something pithier and closer to the point.

Maybe something like "LSU's doomsday budget plan."

Here's what that story says about the cuts being "sketched" at the Ol' War Skule while everybody is paying attention to the football team:

The LSU System on Wednesday contended nearly 2,000 employees would be laid off if worst-case scenario budget cuts discussed by the governor’s office come to fruition.

State Commissioner of Higher Education Sally Clausen also announced Wednesday that college officials plan to meet next week with leaders of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration to flesh out issues concerning budget cuts for the upcoming 2009-2010 fiscal year.

LSU System President John Lombardi said in a phone interview Wednesday that the worst-case scenario — chopping 30 percent of LSU’s budget — would decimate many campuses and shut down many academic programs.

The LSU system includes the main Baton Rouge campus, four other academic campuses, a law school, an agricultural center, two medical schools and the state’s public hospitals.

Patient care at LSU hospitals also would suffer, Lombardi said.

“What you end up with is a lot of lost people,” Lombardi said. “When you lose people, you lose everything. That’s what universities are all about.”

Lombardi said it was important to attach a strongly worded letter along with the numbers concerning the 18-to-30-percent range of cuts for which the Jindal administration asked campuses to prepare.

“When you’re looking at spreadsheets, your mind kind of glazes over,” Lombardi said. “We wanted to say, ‘This is really what you’re looking at.’”

Lombardi is referring to the loss of about 650 faculty and 1,250 support employees on LSU campuses statewide, according to the report. This would change LSU’s mission and wipe out its national competitiveness, he said.

Just on the main Baton Rouge campus, the cuts would amount to closing one entire academic college, he said. The results would include fewer academic majors, larger class sizes, more expensive tuition and greater lengths of time to graduate, the report states.

“While some may imagine that the budget reduction processes in other states protects LSU against dramatic relative decline in effectiveness, they are quite wrong,” Lombardi states in the report.

States such as Missouri, Maryland and Oregon are not planning any higher education cuts despite large state budget shortfalls, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

A LOSS of 2,000 jobs if the worst comes to pass. Devastating consequences for academic programs and students trying to graduate on time . . . or just pay their tuition bills.

And look -- other states with equally bad budget problems that aren't cutting higher education. Where do you think, in the future, a shrinking number of jobs is going to end up going?

To Louisiana, a poor, ignorant state busy devastating higher ed? Think again.

What that "insignificant" story in The Advocate ultimately means, Louisiana, is that more and more of you had better be making plans to visit your kids and grandkids in Texas . . . or Georgia . . . or North Carolina . . . or Missouri . . . or Nebraska.

Pretty much anywhere but the Gret Stet, which, come to think of it, ain't so gret a-tall.

Enjoy your football.

Love for sale, hunnert dolla . . . cheap!

The sense of entitlement some people feel knows no bounds. And then you have politicians, who are in a class by themselves.

Even as an economic plague sweeps across the land, you have at least one Nebraska legislator who thinks lobbyists' ability to buy him and his colleagues -- and their votes -- needs to keep up with inflation.

Nebraska state lawmakers are considering a bill that would raise campaign spending limits and raise limits on gifts from lobbyists to state officials.

A citizen watchdog group wants to know why Nebraska is increasing the amount spent on politics at a time when most of the nation is cutting back.

Lobbyists have been entertaining state senators on golf courses for years, but rising greens fees and other costs could soon make that impossible.

State Sen. Kent Rogert has proposed raising the gift limit from $50 to $100.

"I'd like to point out that very little costs $50 anymore, including a round of golf," he said. "It hasn't been changed in 20 years."

Rogert said that it's not just golf he's focusing on. Other popular gifts, including football and concert tickets, have also become more expensive.

"In changing the limits from $50 to $100, we're merely trying to improve the process with more common sense, ease and efficiency," Rogert said.

"The perception of raising a gift limit does not fly well with the public," said Jack Gould of Common Cause.

He questions why lobbyists need to give gifts at all, calling it simply a way to buy access to the political process.

"Officials have to be on guard about Greeks bearing gifts," he said.

I DIDN'T think it possible, but there you are. Nebraska has produced a legislator more brazen in his quest to be bought -- or at least rented for a while -- than the Gret Stet of Loosiana. Let us revisit that gem of a story which, by the way, comes courtesy of KETV television in Omaha:

"I'd like to point out that very little costs $50 anymore, including a round of golf," he said. "It hasn't been changed in 20 years."

Rogert said that it's not just golf he's focusing on. Other popular gifts, including football and concert tickets, have also become more expensive.

ROGERT OBVIOUSLY has his priorities as a public (wink, wink) "servant," but being an honest broker for his constituents isn't one of them. What, does Craigslist now have a category for "Senators Seeking Lobbyists"?

I don't know whether, as a Louisianian by birth, to be relieved or, as a Nebraskan by choice, to hang my head in shame. But I do know what needs to be done with Sen. Kent Rogert.

I can't say exactly what that is, being this blog tries to be at least somewhat family friendly, but I'll allow that it involves a 9-iron.

Would they prefer a pay cut . . . or else?

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Barack Obama is giving the plunderers of Wall Street a stay of execution, and those who prefer a nice chablis with their thievery are too stupid and greedy to accept it and just shut up.

MSNBC HAS THE DETAILS of the president's generous gift to folks who deserve so much more than a mere pay cut:

President Barack Obama on Wednesday imposed $500,000 caps on senior executive pay for the most distressed financial institutions receiving federal bailout money, saying Americans are upset with “executives being rewarded for failure.”

Obama announced the dramatic new government intervention into corporate America at the White House, with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner at his side. The president said the executive-pay limits are a first step, to be followed by the unveiling next week of a sweeping new framework for spending what remains of the $700 billion financial industry bailout that Congress created last year.

The executive-pay move comes amid a national outcry over huge bonuses to executives heading companies seeking taxpayer dollars to remain afloat. The demand for limits was reinforced by revelations that Wall Street firms paid more than $18 billion in bonuses in 2008 even amid the economic downturn and the massive infusion of taxpayer dollars.

“This is America. We don’t disparage wealth. We don’t begrudge anybody for achieving success,” Obama said. “But what gets people upset — and rightfully so — are executives being rewarded for failure. Especially when those rewards are subsidized by U.S. taxpayers.”

The pay cap would apply to institutions that negotiate agreements with the Treasury Department for “exceptional assistance” in the future. The restriction would not apply to such firms as American International Group Inc., Bank of America Corp., and Citigroup Inc., that already have received such help.

“There is a deep sense across the country that those who were not ... responsible for this crisis are bearing a greater burden than those who were,” Geithner said.

ONE EXECUTIVE has a problem with senior brass being put on a money diet, and whines to The New York Times:

“That is pretty draconian — $500,000 is not a lot of money, particularly if there is no bonus,” said James F. Reda, founder and managing director of James F. Reda & Associates, a compensation consulting firm. “And you know these companies that are in trouble are not going to pay much of an annual dividend.”

Mr. Reda said only a handful of big companies pay chief executives and other senior executives $500,000 or less in total compensation. He said such limits will make it hard for the companies to recruit and keep executives, most of whom could earn more money at other firms.

“It would be really tough to get people to staff” companies that are forced to impose these limits, he said. “I don’t think this will work.”

THEN I GUESS the government will just have to flat-out nationalize the firms and put government functionaries in those jobs. After all, how could they do a worse job than the capitalist pigs?

They couldn't do a worse job than a crowd that has paid itself outlandishly while flying the economy into the ground. These executives should count themselves fortunate, indeed, to still have jobs at all.

And they should get down on their knees and thank God -- or their good fortune, or whatever -- they live in the United States of America, where rarely do the masses take to the streets, ransack stately office towers and drag executives such as James F. Reda onto the pavement below.

They should get on their knees in gratitude that they -- at least for the time being -- don't live in a country where the bottom rail emphatically places itself atop the fence as the new overseer of revenge. Where we don't . . . yet . . . have true People's Courts proclaiming the erstwhile titans of finance and industry guilty, guilty, guilty of capital crimes of capital and immediately remanding them to the jurisdiction of a court not of this world.

As I was saying. . . .

Before humans were so progressive and advanced, marriage was a sacred thing -- a sacrament. An outward sign of an internal, sanctifying grace.

Looking at it this way, matrimony was a manner of a man and a woman helping one another to get to Heaven. It was how men and women got to model God -- model the Holy Trinity, with the love of the first two persons producing a third . . . a child.

"We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son."

BUT THAT'S NOT important now. What's important is whether we can entertain the masses with matrimony -- whether there's a buck (or several million) to be made off it.

Marriage: It's not the stuff of love and life anymore. It's a programming concept for reality television. It's a profit center for network bean counters.

On television in this postmodern age, according to The Live Feed, it's nothing sacred:

The network has ordered a new series from the producers of "Top Chef" that puts lovelorn singles into arranged marriages.
The show introduces four adults age approximately 25-45 who are anxious to get married but have been unsuccessful in their search for a mate. Their friends and family select a spouse for them, and the newly paired couple exchange marital vows. The series follows their marriages.

The rest of the details for the project, whose early working title is "Arranged Marriage," are being kept under wraps.

The series is from Jane Lipsitz and Dan Cutforth of Magical Elves, which launched "Project Runway" on Bravo and produces the network's "Top Chef."

It is the second series greenlighted by CBS' new reality chief Jennifer Bresnan, following the recent order for "Block Party," a competition among neighboring families.

The series order for "Marriage" shows CBS is not shying away from reality projects that might draw a few pointed editorials in the wake of the network's previous envelope-pushing social experiment, the fall 2007 series "Kid Nation."

The marriage series comes on the heels of CBS' success with traditional scripted fare this past fall, led by hit new procedural "The Mentalist."

Although it might seem surprising that CBS would opt for a potentially hot-button series when it's on a roll with tried-and-true concepts, reality TV is unlike scripted. New dramas and comedies can get away with showing merely the slightest twist on a decades-old format. But reality shows are built on taking chances with social experiments and competitions giving viewers something they have not seen before.

I CAN'T WAIT for the sequel. Maybe something involving divorce and firearms.

After all, on "Network," Howard Beale bought the farm on live television. Assassinated because of slumping ratings.

Then. Now. Panic.

Television news: then and now.

FIRST, THEN. Note especially David Brinkley's summation of the events of Nov. 22, 1963, starting at about the two-minute mark of the video.

Now . . . now. Let us look at what passes for a contemporary news voice -- one who is fatuous enough when sober as a judge. Here, however. . . .

HOWARD BEALE was right. We're in a lot of trouble.

Turn off your TV. Turn it off now.

And speaking of Paddy Chayefsky's prophecy . . . look at TV Land now.

TV Land, owned by the giant conglomerate Viacom. I want my Dick Van Dyke Show back. And Ruby . . . in Poochini.

Hell, I'll settle for a test pattern.

Paddy Chayefsky was a prophet

Paddy Chayefsky, when he was writing it, thought "Network" was a biting bit of satire. The movie trailer branded it "outrageous."

As a high-school student in 1976, I know we all thought so. We were trying to figure out how to get in the "R" movie.

I SAW "Network" again last night on Turner Classic Movies. I wonder, had he lived, how Chayefsky would have reacted to his unintended role as prophet. (Note: This IS an "R" movie, with "R" language.)


FOR THAT MATTER, I wonder how television -- how today's mass media -- would deal with a prophet being prophetic? Even a mad prophet like Howard Beale.


UHHHHHHHHHH . . . never mind.

Glory days, well they'll pass you by

It kills me to say this as a 30-plus-year Bruce Springsteen fanatic, but "Glory Days" was a highly ironic song to close his uberhyped Super Bowl halftime show.

I am old enough to remember how the Boss used to do "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" and "Born to Run." I saw Bruce and the E Street Band live when we all were in our prime.

AFTER WATCHING the Boss live -- via television cameras that neither blink nor filter a performance through wistful admiration before pronouncing a verdict -- a couple of things are pretty damned clear:

* The Boss is almost 60 years old.

* He can jump and run, or he can sing, but he can't do both anymore.

The Associated Press story is kind in its cheerful recitation of just the hype:

The 59-year-old Springsteen and his E Street Band opened with "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out," then without pause ripped through "Born To Run" and "Working on a Dream," before winding up the set with "Glory Days."

Springsteen, dressed all in black, came out Sunday night with the considerable challenge of packing the bombastic energy of one of his rollicking, three-hour concerts into an abbreviated Super Bowl halftime set.

That turned out to be no problem. He had fireworks, an expansive stage, about 1,000 people on the field and help from a Raymond James Stadium crowd equipped with small flashlights.

A five-piece horn section helped saxophonist Clarence Clemons blast out "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out," and a gospel choir came on stage to back Springsteen, his wife and bandmate, Patti Scialfa, and guitarist Steven Van Zandt during "Working on a Dream," the title song from his 24th album.

I GUESS SUPER SUNDAY'S overhyped miniextravaganza could have just been an instance where Springsteen's charm and enthusiasm were there, but his voice and execution weren't. But then again, let's face it, there's not a spring chicken anywhere in the band.

Clarence Clemons -- the Big Man -- just turned 67, for Pete's sake. That makes him old enough to be this middle-aged killjoy's father.

Hell, he could be in the Rolling Stones . . . another group well past its prime.

WE ALL, at some point, have to reinvent ourselves. Bruce has done it more than once, then unreinvented, then reinvented the reinvention. Big-ass bands are so '70s, and the members of this big-ass band are heading toward 70.

And unless it's Glenn Miller and His Orchestra, or maybe Benny Goodman or Duke Ellington, supersized sounds don't strike me as the soundtrack to a depression. What we need now is a Woody Guthrie for our national postmodern funk.

That's a bill the Boss can still fill . . . without resorting to taking hits of herbal tea or oxygen. And without subjecting his adoring fans to unintentionally ironic performances of "Glory Days."

I had a friend was a big baseball player
back in high school
He could throw that speedball by you
Make you look like a fool boy
Saw him the other night at this roadside bar
I was walking in, he was walking out
We went back inside sat down had a few drinks
but all he kept talking about was

Glory days well they'll pass you by
Glory days in the wink of a young girl's eye
Glory days, glory days

Well there's a girl that lives up the block
back in school she could turn all the boy's heads
Sometimes on a Friday I'll stop by
and have a few drinks after she put her kids to bed
Her and her husband Bobby well they split up
I guess it's two years gone by now
We just sit around talking about the old times,
she says when she feels like crying
she starts laughing thinking about

Glory days well they'll pass you by
Glory days in the wink of a young girl's eye
Glory days, glory days

Now I think I'm going down to the well tonight
and I'm going to drink till I get my fill
And I hope when I get old I don't sit around thinking about it
but I probably will
Yeah, just sitting back trying to recapture
a little of the glory of, well time slips away
and leaves you with nothing mister but
boring stories of glory days

THE BOSS had a hell of a lot longer run of glory days than most of us ever could dream of. They passed me by God knows how long ago. And they pass legends by, too.

Maybe it's time for Bruce to enter his Wisdom Days. With a little luck and a lot of grace, those never pass you by.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go off somewhere, kick a garbage can and cry. My youth is dead, and the rest of me is getting there.

We fired once more and they began to runnin'

Robert Cerasoli arrived in New Orleans full of piss and vinegar, legendary tales of his Massachusetts inspector-general derring-do heralding his coming to the land of swamps, bayous, hurricanes . . . and graft.

HE GAVE IT his best shot. But stressed out, ground down and with his health in a shambles, Cerasoli has stolen quietly away from the fever swamps with, no doubt, a keen appreciation for how Edward Pakenham felt.

But unlike the British general who died trying to conquer la Nouvelle-Orléans in 1815, at least Cerasoli got out alive. Barely.

The Times-Picayune does the post-bellum debriefing:

For Cerasoli, 61, the resignation marks an anxious end to a four-decade career in public service, but also allows him to lay down a heavy burden. In interviews before and after recent surgery to remove growths in his neck, and leading up to his decision to resign, Cerasoli agonized over the pressure to meet the lofty expectations of corruption-weary New Orleanians.

"I keep feeling this vicious guilt," he said. "I've never given up on anything before in my life."

His Blackberry buzzed with an e-mail: "Don't give up -- we need you." It came from a person he had met once, and who had no inkling of Cerasoli's predicament, or the emotional wallop her message would deliver.

Cerasoli started pondering his health and his future in December, after doctors removed two growths from his neck they had feared were cancerous. The growths were benign, but he and doctors discovered two more growths, also potentially cancerous. Those will have to be removed as well.

Before that first surgery, a stranger had approached Cerasoli in one of his favorite haunts, the ornate lobby of Le Pavillon hotel. She told him how much the city needed him.

As she walked away, Cerasoli hid his face and broke into a quiet sob. Such praise has both touched and distressed him.

"It's just so hard, you know, the pressure," he said, wiping away tears. "It's enormous. It's onerous. I get that all the time, people walking up to me on the street. . . . It's wonderful, seeing the rising expectations of the people here. But the last thing I want to be is the next 'last, best hope for New Orleans.'

"It's not about me. It's about building the office," he said, repeating what has become a mantra even as he has become an unlikely celebrity in a job that in many places would be held by an anonymous functionary.

Building the office has proved far tougher than Cerasoli envisioned. And the challenges that remain -- even the basic work of clearly defining city agencies, budgets and policies -- are more daunting than a successor might suspect. After 17 months, Cerasoli said, the office still needs to double its staff and garner basic tools and access to records.

Still, Cerasoli's experience here has opened a valuable view into the inner workings of a mysterious municipal apparatus.

"On a difficulty scale of one-to-10, it's a 10. I would compare it to governments I've looked at in the developing world," said Cerasoli, who has given lectures about corruption in such Third World countries as Sierra Leone and Swaziland. In New Orleans, he said, "information technology is in a terrible state. Getting access to information people regularly access in other places is a major problem. Public documents aren't being made public, if they exist at all.

"And I don't think the city government truly understands what the inspector general is supposed to do -- and might provide more resistance as it becomes more clear," he said.

RESISTANCE. Just imagine, being that this was what the gummint was doing before it figured out the threat posed to its peculiar institutions:

Though Cerasoli had fully expected the challenge of his career in New Orleans, he was in for a few shocks. The Nagin administration at first offered him a $250,000 budget -- a ludicrously low figure, he said. In Massachusetts, he had overseen a budget of $3 million and a staff of 49.

He spent his first four months working alone in university offices Wildes provided. Eventually, he secured a $3.2 million appropriation from the City Council; permission to hire his own attorneys, a move fought by the Nagin administration; and, most important, a charter change guaranteeing a permanent revenue source.

"But every one of those things was a big fight," Cerasoli said. "And after we got the money, we couldn't spend it, because everything we bought had to go through the city's purchasing process."

Requests ranging from pencils to lease agreements took weeks or even months to snake through the Nagin administration's approval process. Inquiries often produced excuses: "The computers are down," or "So-and-so is on vacation," or "We can't find your paperwork."

"There was always that mysterious hand there, that made you wonder if somebody was trying to stop it," Cerasoli said.

THE CITY might have gotten an idea, however, of the threat posed by just one office of honest men and women doing their damn jobs . . . against all odds. People who generally care and -- Heaven forfend! -- government that generally works could pose a threat to the ethic governing New Orleans since Iberville and Bienville first stepped off the boat and into the gumbo mud.

Indeed, people who generally care and government that generally works could undo everything the Gret Stet of Loosiana has stood for since it was the Gret Colony of Loosiana. And if everything that's near and dear to the Gret Stet of Loosiana is endangered, the culture and the people of the Gret Stet of Loosiana is in mortal peril!

Most assuredly, if godless Yankee interlopers, troublemakers and agitators are allowed to have their way with all their fancy investigatin', what will they come after next? The strippers on Bourbon Street? Drive-through daquiri stands? Pat O'Brien's and hurricanes?

Go cups?

IT WOULD ONLY BE a matta a time -- if dese damn Yankees get dey way -- befo' ersters on da haf shell, burld crawfish, swimp burls and Ellisyoo football disappear fum da face uh da ert!

And if dese Yankees find da whole uh Loosiana guilty, then ain't dis a indictment of our country in general?

I put it to you, Cap.

Ain't dis a indictment uh aw entire Ameruhcan society?

Well . . . y'all can do what'cha want to us, but we won't sit here an lissen ta y'all badmowf da U-nided State uh Ameruhcuh!

Gennulmuns!

LIKE DEAN WORMER, the Omegas, Faber College, Gen. Pakenham and the whole damn British Army, Robert Cerasoli never stood a chance. His successors won't stand a chance. Basic civil society doesn't stand a snowball's chance.

Not a chance. Not when they're up against Loosiana Lampoon's Aminal City.

Makes sense he'd go for the water pipe

What does it sound like when the clock strikes 12 and Michael Phelps' swim career turns into a pumpkin?

Bong!

Bong!

Bong!

Bong!

Bong!

Bong!

Bong!

Bong!

Bong!

Bong!

Bong!

Bong!

SEE, IT SEEMS, in this day and age, somebody's always there with a camera when you decide to do something really stupid. If you're Joe College Student, the photos usually just end up on Facebook for your parents and potential employers to see.

If you're swim sensation Michael Phelps, the photos of you making sweet love to a bong full of "cannabis" (as the Brits say) merely end up in a Fleet Street tabloid or three.

And by the time this s***storm blows over, The Phelps may well want to once again indulge in something just a little stronger than Ovaltine.

Extra! Extra! Read all about the news of the stupid in the News of the World:

THIS is the astonishing picture which could destroy the career of the greatest competitor in Olympic history.

In our exclusive photo Michael Phelps, who won a record EIGHT gold medals for swimming at the Beijing games last summer, draws from a bong.

The glass pipes are generally used to smoke cannabis.

And after sporting chiefs announced laws which mean four-year bans for drug-taking, Phelps’ dreams of adding to his overall 14 gold medal tally at the 2012 games in London could already be OVER.

Those dreams seemed the last thing on his mind when he puffed from the bong during two days of partying with students last November, a quiet time in the swimming calendar when athletes would not expect to get tested for drugs.

One party-goer who witnessed the star’s behaviour told the News of the World: “He was out of control from the moment he got there.

“If he continues to party like that I’d be amazed if he ever won any more medals again.”

Phelps’ aides went into a panic over our story and offered us a raft of extraordinary incentives not to run the bong picture.

It was on November 6, weeks after his Beijing triumph, that 23-year-old Phelps surprised students at the University Of South Carolina in Columbia by showing up unannounced at a house party.

He was visiting Jordan Matthews, a girl he was secretly seeing who was a student there.

Our source revealed: “Michael came to visit Jordan but ended up just getting wasted every night.

(snip)

The US Olympics Committee, who have pledged to clamp down on drug use, refused to comment, as did USA Swimming and Phelps’ coach Bob Bowman.

More surprising still was the World Anti-Doping Agency’s refusal to comment, given that they introduced the four-year ban on sport’s drug users.

Phelps, who earned £4million last year in endorsements, has resumed training for the 2012 games.

But there were fears about his commitment when, weeks after the bong incident, he began dating former stripper Caroline Pal.

Phelps is represented by marketing giant Octagon, which works with huge brands such as Mastercard and HSBC. They admitted proven cannabis use would be “a major taint” on Phelps’ character.

Spokesman Clifford Bloxham offered us an extraordinary deal not to publish our story, saying Phelps would become our columnist for three years, host events and get his sponsors to advertise with us.

In return, he asked that we kill Phelps’ bong picture. Bloxham said: “It’s seeing if something potentially very negative for Michael could turn into something very positive for the News of the World.”

SOMETHING TELLS ME Omaha just was handed a really, really strong bargaining position for getting repeat business in 2012 as the site for the Olympic swim trials. We may be the only city interested.

So, who's U.S. swimming's next great dope hope?

Death by a thousand paper cuts

A.H. Belo Co., owner of The Dallas Morning News and three other newspapers, plans to cut another 14 percent from its workforce -- some 500 jobs.

The Los Angeles Times, a Tribune paper, announced it would be lopping 300 positions -- 70 of them in the newsroom -- while folding its California section into the main news pages.

WEEK BY WEEK, the news gets grimmer for the dying newspaper biz and the bloodlettings continue apace. Week by week, subscribers to America's newspapers -- those what remain, that is -- find a lot less newspaper in the driveway.

And there lies the rub.

To cut costs, newspapers cut back on staff and news hole, which means the subscriber gets a lot less news for the same (or more) money. Which means more and more subscribers figure there's no percentage in subscribing to the local rag, which puts it further in the financial hole . . . which necessitates more cuts, which means less value to readers, which. . . .

You get the idea. I think the technical term is "death spiral." And it all goes back to the simple truth that, especially in hard times, people are reluctant to spend something for nothing.

Except for video poker or the lottery.

GIVEN THE LONG ODDS facing traditional media in this country, journalists at the L.A.Times and The Dallas Morning News might see that one-in-a-million shot as a significantly safer bet than the one upon which they've staked their livelihoods.

God bless 'em all.

3 Chords & the Truth: Will podcast for food

Because we couldn't afford Cloud 9.

It's brutal out there. And the economy is even worse.

I guess you've figured out -- and, boy, are you sharp! -- that we're taking a musical look at the signs of the times this week on 3 Chords & the Truth. Of course, the music will be great (that's a given, he says modestly), but whether your response to it is to enjoy the aesthetics or to howl in rage at the shape we're in . . . well, that's entirely your own choice.

ME, I GO back and forth between wanting to raise the red flag and get revolutionary on Wall Street's arse . . . and thinking, "What you gonna do?" while trying to make the best of what's going to be some hard, hard times.

Perhaps there's room for a little of both responses, you know? But, ultimately, we all do have to make the best of it, no matter what "it" might be. Like the ubiquitous "they" say, the flip side of crisis is opportunity.

Perhaps, like Tony Bennett sings about on the Big Show this week, we're all being called to live "the simple life" . . . because it's good for us. There's something absolutely biblical (in the good sense, not the "of biblical proportions" sense) about that notion.

MAYBE THAT'S the question we're ultimately exploring on this week's 3 Chords & the Truth. Not just "How do we get through this colossal mess?" but, indeed, "What is life?"

A lot of baggage for one weekly music show, eh? That's why the blog is here -- on a music show, you need to have time for the, er . . . music. That we do.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. It's just like radio -- except for it doesn't suck.

Be there. Aloha.

The pending demise of Uncle (Deleted)

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

I think I need to call home and check on Uncle (Deleted).

Between Barack Obama becoming the 44th president of the United States -- the first African-American president of the United States -- and today's election of Michael Steele as chairman of the Republican Party -- the first African-American chairman of the GOP -- January has been a cruel metaphysical month for Uncle (Deleted).

AND HE WAS WORRIED about a black proctologist.

From MSNBC:

Michael Steele was elected Republican National Committee chairman on Friday, defeating the incumbent party chief and three other challengers over six rounds of voting to become the first black to lead the GOP.

(snip)

"As a little boy growing up in this town, this is awesome," said Steele, the most moderate candidate in the field and considered an outsider because he's not a committee member.
In a brief acceptance speech, the new GOP chairman struck a tone of inclusiveness.

"We're going to say to friend and foe alike: We want you to be a part of us, we want you to with be with us, and for those who wish to obstruct, get ready to get knocked over," Steele said.

NOW, POLITICALLY, there's nowhere for someone as unreconstructed as Uncle (Deleted) to turn. For old Jim Crow, hiding out in the swamps of Louisiana, this cruelest of months must be something like the Charge of the Light Brigade:

"Forward, the White Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

N*****s to right of them,
N*****s to left of them,
N*****s in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air,
Sabring the n*****s there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Agitators and misegenators
Reel'd from the sabre stroke
Shatter'd and sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

(Apologies to Alfred, Lord Tennyson)

THIS MONTH, it's just been a bitch to be racist. Then again, tomorrow is another day!

But maybe not for Uncle (Deleted). Alas.

George Bailey is dead. Mr. Potter killed him.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

"And now with today's economic news, here's Noah Cash with the business report. Noah?"

"Thanks, Jim. We're f***ed. And that's our report for today. Jim?"

"Thanks, Noah . . . I think. We'll be back in 30 minutes with the 6 o'clock report, now we go live to New York and MSNBC:

As the government advances historic measures to revive growth, the data point to an economy that is getting worse. It’s far from clear the government actions — including a massive stimulus program and major intervention in the banking system — will stem the slide and restart the economy by year-end.

But even if it does, analysts say the recovery — when it comes — will likely be weak and slow.

With home prices continuing to fall and layoffs rising, the sharp pullback in consumer spending is a powerful force driving the economic contraction. That spending pullback will continue for some time to come, according to Stephen Roach, Morgan Stanley’s Asia chairman.

“The biggest force on the demand side of the world economy — the multiyear compression of the American consumer — is going to be ongoing,” he said. “This trend has only just begun.”

The ongoing retrenchment by American consumers makes it unlikely spending will return to pre-recession levels for many years. During the height of the lending boom, consumer spending surged to roughly 71 percent of gross domestic product — up from just 66 percent in 1990.

Since much of that spending was based on unsustainable borrowing, the post-recession economy will remain smaller until that shortfall can be made up from other sources of demand. With the rest of the world also in recession, at the moment, it’s hard to see where those other sources of demand will come from, analysts say.

The root cause of the recession — the collapse of the housing industry — shows no signs of letup. Prices fell by a record 18 percent in October 2008, according to the latest Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller index, and analysts say prices could continue falling well into next year. A pickup in existing-home sales in December was due largely to homes being bought at cut-rate prices in foreclosure.

“In fact the downdraft is probably gaining steam,” said Michael Englund, chief economist with Action Economics. “We are assuming going into 2009 we may be seeing some bottom, but we certainly are not seeing any sign yet in any of the reported data.”

(snip)

That deteriorating economy has also brought a massive wave of layoffs that also shows no signs of letup. The Labor Department reported Thursday that a record 4.85 million people were collecting regular unemployment benefits in the latest week. That doesn't include about 1.7 million people getting benefits through an extension passed last summer; that puts the total number of people on unemployment closer to 6.5 million. Millions more are working reduced hours or have exhausted jobless benefits.

Davos: It's all about the little people

The rich and the powerful are in Davos, Switzerland -- looking rich and important, solving all the problems of the world . . . and . . . bemoaning . . . the . . . economic . . . fate . . . of . . . schmucks . . . like . . . you . . . and . . . me.

F'RINSTANCE, that noted social activist and all-around Mother Teresa, Rupert Murdoch. These profound words from this holy man were lovingly preserved on a parchment scroll by Bloomberg News:

News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch said there’s no hiding from the worsening global economic crisis, and stressed the need for quick and “drastic action” to turn the tide.

People worldwide are “depressed and traumatized” to see their life savings, including homes and pension funds, disappearing, Murdoch said at a press briefing in Davos, Switzerland, today.

“It would be very foolish if we said here we are, we had a crisis, and how do we get out of it quickly,” he said. “The crisis is getting worse. When you get to the real economy, values are still going down.”

THEN MURDOCH, we are certain, went back up to the mountaintop to boogie oogie oogie with former presidential adviser and current cable-news talking head David Gergen, seen above getting his Deney Terrio on at last year's Davos conference. The blonde disco doll, no doubt, was laughing on the inside as hard as I was on the outside.

And none of us will ever be able to take David Gergen seriously again. If we ever did.

Wise course of action, that. I suggest we apply it to the whole bunch.

I'm sensing that you'll be broke. Soon.

What's the difference between Internet psychics and George W. Bush?

Internet psychics will cost you considerably less than $1 trillion. And they can't legally get you into a disastrous little war.

Other than that -- to point out a few similarities -- neither our former president nor Internet psychics have any idea what's going on, won't tell you anything you don't already know . . . and will leave you a lot lighter in the billfold than before you got hooked up with them.

America, what a country!

They've only had 28 years to figure this out

Picked up your local newspaper lately? Not much to it anymore, is there?

The ink-stained wretches are wretched, indeed, these days, and a whole medium is being washed away by the Two Horsemen of the Apocalypse -- the Internet and the tanking economy. A whole way of life, and the jobs that went with it, are being swept out into the troubled financial waters.

What? Four horsemen?

No, you didn't hear. (Probably because there was no room in The Daily Blab.) Two of the horsemen got laid off.

Well, there's one thing you can do in the face of this sudden media disaster. When next you see a publisher or an editor crying crocodile tears over what has befallen his newsroom . . . punch the son of a bitch in the nose. Then hand him a handkerchief.

BECAUSE, YOU SEE, what the Internet would ultimately do to newspapers has been a long time coming. The publishers and editors saw it coming. We all saw it coming.

We for sure saw this day coming 15 years ago, back when we were marveling at the news and information you could get off of America Online and CompuServe. But it was more obvious than even that -- we saw an inkling of it with the fledgling over-the-airwaves teletext services of the mid-1980s.

And, as we see in the above 1981 news story from San Francisco's KRON television, newspapers damn well knew this day was coming. Back then, geeks and the well-heeled were playing with Apple II, TRS-80 and original IBM personal computers that set them back $1,000-plus -- and newspapers like the San Francisco Examiner were making their content (sans ads or pictures) available for download.

Still, editors felt no sense of urgency in the days when online access was expensive and it took a couple of hours to download the paper via an old-style acoustic modem.

THAT NONCHALANCE about the computer world held sway for a long time -- I remember when I was a copy editor at the defunct (of course) Baton Rouge State-Times in the mid-to-late 1980s, only a couple of privileged longtime copy editors were instructed how to use the newsroom's lone Macintosh.

I wasn't one of them.

That nonchalance never did give way to any sense of urgency, come to think of it. For the last decade-plus, most newspapers' websites have remained red-headed stepchildren. And it is the Amazing Shrinking Print Edition that sets the agenda for the Uppity Whippersnapper Online Presence.

And for every cool online effort like the New York Times' or the Las Vegas Sun's, you have sorry, unnavigable messes like . . . well, most everything else.

NOW, THOUGH, broadband ubiquity has met Great Depression II, and that ink-stained nonchalance has given way to wild-eyed panic. Well, ye guardians of the Fourth Estate, you abandoned the parapets to go smoke cigars and admire your double-digit returns on investment.

And now the barbarians are at the gate, and you're desperately trying to reinforce it with the bodies of your cast-off employees. But it's too late.

I hope our new media regime will be a benevolent one. I hope that benevolence doesn't extend to Mr. Editor and Mr. Publisher.

HAT TIP: Jason Siffring.

The Culture of (freezing to) Death

Click on picture for video

We've been legally aborting the very, very young for a third of a century now. More recently, we started aborting the profoundly disabled and the terminally ill.

Now, we've moved on to the elderly. Namely, Marvin E. Schur, 93, of Bay City, Mich. Aborted for not paying his electric bill on time.

TECHNICALLY, the coroner listed the cause of death as hypothermia, meaning Marvin Schur froze to death. In his house.

Call it cryoabortion. This is a new technique, developed because of the cost-prohibitive nature of sending giant vacuum trucks to the homes of America's elderly to suck them out of their homes and into a tank full of saline solution.

In the new cryoabortion technique -- usually performed when a utility customer's debt to municipal power and light becomes greater than the value of his or her life -- the abortionist . . . well, why don't I let The Bay City Times explain how the procedure worked in the Schur case:

A pathologist said a 93-year-old Bay City man froze to death inside his home - his body found days after city workers said they limited electricity flowing to the house.

Marvin E. Schur suffered "a slow, painful death" inside his home at 1600 S. Chilson St. on Bay City's southwest side, said Dr. Kanu Virani, who performed an autopsy on the body.

"Hypothermia shuts the whole system down, slowly," Virani said. "It's not easy to die from hypothermia without first realizing your fingers and toes feel like they're burning."

Funeral services for Schur, a retired pattern-maker who lived alone, are at 11 a.m. Wednesday at the Gephart Funeral Home, 201 W. Midland St. Schur's wife, retired elementary-school teacher Marian I. (Meisel) Schur, died several years ago, and the couple had no children.

Virani, Oakland County's deputy chief medical examiner, performs autopsies for Bay County and numerous other Michigan counties. Of about 15,000 autopsies Virani has conducted, he said Marvin Schur's autopsy "is the first one I can remember doing on someone who froze to death indoors."

Virani said the temperature inside Schur's home was less than 32 degrees when neighbors George A. Pauwels Jr. and his wife, Shannon, found Schur's body Jan. 17.

George Pauwels Jr. said Schur owed almost $1,100 in electricity bills to the city of Bay City, though Pauwels said he noticed money clipped to those bills on Schur's kitchen table the day he found Schur's body.

Bay City Manager Robert V. Belleman said a worker with Bay City Electric Light & Power placed a "limiter" device outside Schur's home, between Schur's electricity meter and electrical service, on Jan. 13.

The device restricts the amount of electricity reaching the home and if a homeowner tries to draw more electricity than the limiter allows, "it blows the limiter, just like blowing a fuse, and then you go outside and reset it," Belleman said.

Belleman said he doesn't know if a city worker made one-on-one contact with Schur to explain the limiter's operation. Virani said he doesn't know if Schur suffered from dementia, which could have interfered with his ability to know how to reset a limiter.

Pauwels said Schur couldn't hear well, and said he believed Schur "had a little bit" of dementia.

THE CITY MANAGER, by the way, doesn't think the city did anything wrong. No, in most societies, it's perfectly acceptable to turn off the electricity of 93-year-old World War II veterans in the dead of a Michigan winter.

Dead of winter. Get it? It's a joke only municipal murderers could love.

If only poor Mr. Schur had been an investment banker. It's OK for investment bankers to leave the government -- and their investors -- holding the bag. In fact, if you're a Wall Street swell, you can spend all your money on million-dollar accessorizing, $50 million corporate jets and big bonuses for your homeboys even after Uncle Sam has pulled your cojones out of the toaster oven.

If you're a poor Michigan widower, on the other hand, the government will pull the plug on your toaster oven. And your furnace. And your stove.

THERE ARE people out there who get a bad case of the trots at the very thought of Darwinism in the science classroom but never get the slightest tummy rumble when Darwinism -- natural selection . . . survival of the fittest . . . the big evolutionary cull of "life unworthy of life" -- sets up housekeeping at the heart of civic society.

Either all human life is worth a damn, or none of it is. You can learn that now, or someday end up like poor Marvin E. Schur, killed by the city fathers for not being young, useful . . . or able to pay his light bill.

By the way, the Bay City Commission raised electric rates by 3 percent Monday. Good thing Mr. Schur died when he did.