The dark side of snark

Well, this was ugly. I do not refer here to Michael Jackson's memorial service.

Yes, too much of Jackson's service was too over the top. And the wife and I cut it off when congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee -- on behalf of the U.S. House, the Congressional Black Caucus and, no doubt, self-aggrandizing camera hogs everywhere -- stepped up to the dais and started throwing pipe wrenches into memorial gearboxes.

Personally, I think it would have been a fine and touching tribute to a great but tortured artist if the service had begun with Brooke Shields' touching and personal eulogy, brought down the house with Jermaine Jackson's touching version of Charlie Chaplin's masterpiece "Smile" -- Michael's favorite song -- and then ended with "We Are the World" and the family's goodbyes. But we live in a society that's just too "too," and you get what you get, considering.

SOMETIMES, you just have to take your Maya Angelou poetry and your Sheila Jackson Lee with your Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, Jermaine Jackson and Mariah Carey's dress.

Over at Crunchy Con, however, the inclusion of a special poem by Angelou was reason enough for Rod Dreher to discard any public pretense of Christian charity and treat the whole thing as if it were the grandest, most craptastic Jerry Springer Show episode in TV history.

In other words, a man's death -- and the resulting memorial -- has become reason enough, secure in one's cultural superiority and aesthetic development, to glue oneself to the flat screen and yell "Look at the freaks! Look at the freaks!"

I turned it on long enough to hear Queen Latifah speak of the dead as the Alpha and the Omega of human existence, and then to recite a poem typed emoted discharged composed by Maya Angelou, the Thomas Kinkade of American popular poetry, for the occasion. It was so purplishly, hathotically grotesque it would have made a Vogon blush. Naturally, it made me want to shout with glee at the Prytania screen, "Now I know why the caged bird upchucks!"

AND MANY of his commenters were far worse.

Please, Someone. Please give some lucky soul the opportunity to demonstrate that Richard Gatling did not live in vain.

Please, O Great and Powerful Someone.....give some fortunate creature of Yours the chance to demonstrate that Hiram Maxim's invention can be socially useful.

Please, please, PLEASE, O Most High Someone. Bestow upon us Your gift of Steady Hands, No Wind and Good Aim, and let us advance the cause of the Improvement of the Human breed in quick, rapid, 500-round-per-minute bursts.

CLASSY, eh?

Not touched on by Mr. Dreher is how turning on the TV to laugh at the "freaks" and the sublime awfulness of it all still pays tribute (and buys into) to what he considers a disfigured and destructive culture. Tuning in to laugh at the weirdos, it must be noted, is a far worse sin than actually being a weirdo.

And musing wistfully about mass murder of "weirdo" mourners, as did the above commenter, is just plain evil.

The relative merit of popular poetry -- the philosophical and cultural deficiencies of a public sendoff -- is no good reason to touch off an Internet orgasm of self-righteous vitriol. Show the respect you chide others for lacking.

Whatever his dysfunction, Michael Jackson was damned talented and broke down damned stubborn racial barriers in entertainment. However damaged his psyche and his soul, Michael Jackson was a child of God. Everyone who was at the Staples Center today is a child of God.

And to the only One who counts, that's the only thing that matters.

And to a heartbroken child, losing her daddy is the only thing that matters. Lord have mercy.

Speaking of harebrained schemes. . . .

You may or may not have heard of the guano storm surrounding The Washington Post's now-abandoned plan to -- for a price -- put together "informal salons" where lawmakers, bureaucrats and Post editors and reporters would discuss the issues of the day.

"Sponsors" of these informal salons -- according to a leaked "precursor" document to a Post flier that went out last week -- could find it advantageous to:

* Participate in an issues-based discussion as an equal at the table with key policy-makers

* Interact with core players in an off-the-record format

* Build key relationships in an informal setting

* Discuss critical topics of interest to you and your organization in a neutral environment with Washington Post news executives

* [Have an] Acknowledgement in formal printed invitations and at the dinner of your underwriting role

WELL, I GUESS the bigwigs at The Washington Post at least should get credit for creativity in the quest for new "revenue streams." After all, influence peddling as a "revenue enhancer" is definitely thinking "outside the box."

From Michael Calderone's blog on the Politico website:

But as far as materials go in preparing for the July 21 event, there was more than just a hastily-prepared,one-page flier. POLITICO has obtained a detailed, word document, sent out more than two weeks ago, which goes into greater specifics about what potential sponsors could have received.

And now that the Post is undergoing an internal review into what went wrong, it's worth looking at all the materials sent out by the business side, and how there could have been such mis-communication with the newsroom over the parameters of this an event.

The Washington Post salons, according to this solicitation to potential underwriters, would "provide an intimate and informal dinner and discussion setting where leading policy makers and business leaders discuss issues, options and solutions relating to major international, national, local and cultural affairs with top Washington Post editors, columnists and journalists."

In addition to Weymouth and Brauchli, the dinner on the week of July 20 would include "other Washington Post health care editorial and reporting staff." (As I reported Thursday, Brauchli said he was attending, but didnt know other guests invited. Reporter Ceci Connolly also told POLITICO she would be invited).

Other invited guests, according to this offer, would include the following: "Congressional leaders at the forefront of building health care legislative initiatives," "administration and agency officials involved in creating health care policy,"leading researchers from key think-tanks and academic institutions, "hospital and medical group trade association representatives (may be an underwriter), "health care insurance trade association representatives (may be an underwriter), "patient advocate group representatives," and "corporate leaders in health care delivery, health care IT, and / or insurance (may be an underwriter)."

The salons, to be held up to 11 times annually (except in August), were slated to be two-and-a-half hour. off-the-record dinner discussions with no more than 20 participants. As for editorial involvement, the offer mentions the "executive editor, key section editor, beat reporter (optional)."

REALLY, I DON'T KNOW how a reasonable person looks at this mad Post scheme as anything but influence peddling as part of the newspaper's business model. Put less charitably, the paper's management was perfectly willing to profit by pimping out its journalists and playing matchmaker for pols and those willing to "service" them (in a manner of speaking).

Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the late "D.C. Madam," would be so amused.

For a century now, newspapers have been quick to dust off the old line about how they "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." The phrase's originator, Chicago journalist Finley Peter Dunne, didn't have public relations in mind when he coined it.

Instead, he was worried about the potential for newspapers to abuse their power, just as any ingrained institution might:

"Th newspaper does ivrything f'r us. It runs th' polis foorce an' th' banks, commands th' milishy, controls th' ligislachure, baptizes th' young, marries th' foolish, comforts th' afflicted, afflicts th' comfortable, buries th' dead an' roasts thim aftherward".

ANYMORE, the newspaper doesn't do so much for us. But, unfortunately, it seems papers like The Washington Post are determined to use what pull they still possess to comfort the comfortable. For whatever profit they can milk out of the deal.

And if that just happens to heap more affliction upon the afflicted . . . well, the afflicted aren't in newspapers' target demographic.

But then again, if The Daily Blab is run by the same sort what runs The Washington Post, who'd want to be? Obviously, fewer every day.

While you're at it, get a DeLorean time machine

The San Francisco Chronicle trotted out a snazzy, retooled anachronism Monday morning. Now all the editors need is Doc Brown's super-pimped DeLorean to take them back to 1955:

One hundred forty-four years after two teenage brothers in San Francisco founded The Chronicle with a $20 gold piece borrowed from their landlord, The Voice of the West is about to embark on a bold new era that could provide a model for how daily newspapers can thrive in today's market.

Beginning today, the newspaper will be printed using full-color presses and acquire some of the characteristics of a daily magazine - a showcase for the dramatic use of sharp, crisp photographs, graphics and advertisements. The new presses will have the capability to run color images on most every page, including section fronts.

"This will be eye opening for a lot of people," said publisher Frank J. Vega. "It's going to give us a lot more vibrancy and flexibility in what we do. We're calling it high-definition newspaper. It's going to be much more visually pleasing."

The Chronicle, which has run its own presses since the 1800s, has long been plagued by poor color reproduction and annoying creases. Its current presses are more than 50 years old. Its photographers and artists carp about the paper's muddy appearance.

With state-of-the-art presses and a vivid page design, the newspaper's top editors say they are committed to producing a paper that can compete effectively against the imagery of the Internet, glossy magazines and television - or anything else that impinges on a potential reader's valuable time.

AT LEAST the dinosaurs had an asteroid strike to blame for their demise. Today's newspaper editors would like you to think the Internet is their asteroid . . . as they try to convince themselves that one harebrained scheme or another might yet turn away their date with doom.

Alas, there's no asteroid for publishers and editors to hide behind. This extinction is totally self-inflicted -- mainly due to the arrogance of an industry that thought time would wait for these men . . . and women.

This die-off is due to the stupidity of an industry that saw the handwriting on the wall a generation ago but thought that living in abject denial can make things not be so, thus making difficult change unnecessary.

There's one more area where the Daily T Rex departs from its reptilian ancestors: Today's dinosaurs, as exemplified so perfectly by the Chronicle, didn't even wait to die before turning into a bunch of fossils.


HAT TIP: The Media Is Dying.

Feed the world firefighters

For Steve LeClair, the world's smallest violin just got smaller. And it's still playing "My Heart Bleeds for You."

Can he hear it?

I didn't think so. I'll bet years of sirens and fire alarms haven't helped his tin ear any.

TIN EAR may be an understatement. With Omaha facing an $11 million budget deficit and thousands of his fellow citizens already having their paychecks frozen, cut or eliminated altogether, the president of the city's firefighter union had the nerve. . . .

Wait, why should I soften the impact for you? I want you to come across LeClair's quote in the Omaha World-Herald just as I did -- cold. And I want you to get just as angry when you read it.

The notion of an extended wage freeze is a sore point for city employees who feel they've become the whipping boy for all of the city's budget woes. Too frequently, they say, their paychecks become an easy target when revenues slow down.

Employees say they deserve raises that let them keep pace with inflation.

“When you ask me to take zero percent in consecutive years, you're taking milk out of my baby's mouth and food off my table,” said Steve LeClair, president of the Omaha firefighters union.

In 2003, civilian workers in Local 251 accepted a virtual freeze. In 2004, police and firefighters had no raise.

The freezes helped avoid proposed layoffs, cuts in services and the closing of facilities. But the contracts also included raises in subsequent years and other costly provisions, some of which have contributed to the city's current $500 million shortfall in its police and fire pension fund.

Even considering those earlier freezes, the unions kept pace with inflation from 1997 to 2007. The cost of living rose an average 2.6 percent per year during that period, compared with average wage hikes of 2.6 percent for civilian workers, 2.8 percent for police and 3 percent for firefighters.

YEAH, THE MEAN, MEAN city fathers want to make Mr. Fire Union President take a pay freeze, thus making his widdle, biddy baby go hungry. So said the righteously indignant Mr. LeClair.

To a World-Herald reporter who recently took a 5-percent pay cut and watched dozens of his colleagues thrown into the unemployment line. I wonder how much milk got taken out of their babies' mouths . . . how much food off their tables?

But apart from the sheer offensiveness of LeClair's remarks to the newspaper, how incompetent can you get as a union president? How public-relations unsavvy?

Apparently, Jim Suttle is contagious. Somebody better quarantine city hall before the whole damn city comes down with a bad case of the stupids.

Dumb and dumber lease a car

This is so stupid, I don't know where to start.

Unless, of course, it's by just skipping writing anything and proceeding straight to banging my head against the wall.

OK, I'll start by saying this: Omaha, generally, is a city that can withstand idiot politicians without missing a beat. The Big O's new mayor, however, is going to put us to the test.

Sometime in the next four years -- if not the next four months -- I predict we'll not only cry uncle, we'll be crying "Walt Calinger." If not "Fred Conley."

HE HASN'T been in office a month, but Mayor Jim Suttle -- who, indeed, has been anything but subtle -- already has established a firm routine . . . a modus operandi, if you will. Whatever the issue, we can count on Suttle to do stupid things, then leave it to his flack, former Channel 42 weatherman Ron Gerard (think the "Weird" Al Yankovic movie UHF here), to say stupid things by way of explanation.

Which brings us to the continuing saga of the mayor's overpriced hybrid SUV.

This morning, the Omaha World-Herald is reporting the interest rate on the city's lease for the official land barge comes to a cool 24 percent:

Jim Suttle's aides ignored the first rule of car shopping when picking the new mayor's SUV: Check the fine print.

The result: The lease on Suttle's Dodge Durango hybrid carries an interest rate of 24 percent.

That's nearly triple the average leasing rate and the rate paid for former Mayor Mike Fahey's leased SUV, based on a World-Herald review of both contracts.

The World-Herald reported last month that the Durango's annual payments were $15,717. That amount was later lowered by altering the payment schedule to $13,745. Even then, dozens of readers were left scratching their heads at the cost.

Suttle's spokesman defended the high interest rate, saying the city paid more to be able to return the SUV at a moment's notice, if needed, with no penalties. That's one feature of what's called a municipal lease, spokesman Ron Gerard said.

“It was one of the few options available,” Gerard said.

Suttle's transition team, however, didn't shop for other lease terms. Several readers asked why the city didn't buy the vehicle outright.

“The city doesn't have the money to buy vehicles,” Gerard said in an interview. “The city has an $11 million shortfall.”

Under the lease agreement, Omaha taxpayers will pay $14,000 in total interest over the four-year lease.

A leasing expert with the auto buying Web site Edmunds.com called a 24 percent rate “outrageous.”

“Just simply looking at it from the market perspective, it looks like they paid too much for the premium,” said Jesse Toprak, a senior Edmunds analyst.

DUMB IS paying 24 percent interest for a mayoral land barge when the city's broke and cutting everything in sight. Dumber is explaining -- with a straight face . . . and perhaps a slack jaw -- that the reason the city's overpaying by thousands and thousands of dollars to lease a land barge is because it can't afford to buy one for $14,000 less.

Because, after all, “The city has an $11 million shortfall.”

Apparently, the city also has an IQ shortfall at city hall. Hang on folks, this is gonna be a rough ride.

P.S.: Damn, I almost forgot. Wanna know who was one of the geniuses negotiating the SUV lease for Suttle? This guy.

3 Chords & the Truth: Sounds like America

Today's episode of 3 Chords & the Truth is brought to you by the letter U, the letter S and the letter A.

Additional funding for the Internet's premier music program comes from the letters U and K, and the Corporation for Non-Corporate Webcasting.

ON TODAY'S EPISODE of the Big Show, we're chillin' for the July Fourth holiday. We're taking some leisure time, and so is our brain.

No grand message, no lofty theme -- as if -- just some cool music and a nod to the red, white and blue, Yankee Doodle, and kickin' back for the lazy days of summer.

So, your mission for this week's journey into the land of cool music is to grab some cool refreshment, settle into a comfy chair, kick back and enjoy. That's about it.

YOU BRING the illegal fireworks, we'll bring the music.

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

To shoot or not to shoot . . . .

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

I truly am unsure whether to be horrified or to say "Way to go, pops!"

Because somebody had to

Somehow, I think Leonard Bernstein would approve.


HAT TIP: Red Stick Rant.

AAAIIIIIIEEEEE!!!!!!

Who needs a sterilization bill? One picture on The Drudge Report is worth a thousand of 'em.

Ick. Surely, Revvum Al, there must be a less grotesque way to combat unplanned pregnancy in the Third World.

Oh, wait. . . .

SO THAT'S HOW it is at Al Sharpton's church. They must have fun wakes.

Well, at least so long as Rev. Al keeps his groove off.

The Drudge calling the Franken weird

Matt Drudge thinks Minnesotans have elected Stuart Smalley to the U.S. Senate. Or maybe Drudge thinks Al Franken is good enough, smart enough, and doggone it, people like him.

Or -- most likely -- the conservative Drudge just wants to make fun of the liberal Democrat who used to play Smalley on Saturday Night Live.

But the thing is . . . Stuart Smalley was a character played by a professional comedian, and we were supposed to laugh at him.


Matt Drudge, on the other hand, is a persona -- a really bad knockoff of Cary Grant in "The Front Page," actually -- trying to pass himself off as a journalist. I'm not sure, but I think he thinks we're not supposed to laugh at him.

Not that it's stopping us.

Barbara Norton: My ace in the hole

The next time some overly content (yet somehow angry) Louisianian writes to tell me I revel in trashing the Gret Stet and am just a bitter expatriate, I now can invoke the Barbara Norton defense.

Rep. Barbara Norton of Shreveport is the Einstein who invited her godson, the potty-mouthed rapper (Is that too blatantly redundant?) Hurricane Chris, to perform a "clean" version of his hit "Halle Berry (She's Fine)" on the floor of the Louisiana House. And when that didn't go over so well among relatively sane people from sea to shining sea -- Thanks, YouTube! -- the solon defended her boneheaded move by saying, basically, ain't no big thang, 'cause you can't make Louisiana look no worse than it look already.

Uh . . . oh, yes, you can! And Rep. Norton was just the woman to do it -- twice, now.

I BELIEVE Norton's exact quote was: "They been making a joke out of Louisiana and politics for even before I became in the House of Representatives so they're not just now start making a joke out of Louisiana.

"Louisiana has always been a joke."

I rest my defense. One, I'm not a Louisiana legislator and, two, I don't go around telling TV reporters "Louisiana has always been a joke" without at least some elaboration or qualification.

Oh . . . and I usually make at least some sense.

The articulate legislator also introduced House Resolution 134 to "commend Hurricane Chris of Shreveport for his outstanding musical accomplishments and does hereby extend to him best wishes for continued success and happiness in all of his future endeavors."

Because, after all, says the proud godmama, "It's not out there shooting, it's not robbing, it's not killing, it's not selling guns. Let me ask you this right here -- what do you think about the uh, the uh, congressman in Washington who they just said on TV about going out and having a marrited affair?"

Marrited? Uh . . . OK.

Something tells me that, like the rest of us, Halle Berry isn't much amused.

HAT TIP: My Bossier

That sinking feeling

You know the exotic dancer in Independence Day -- the best friend of Will Smith's girlfriend?

Remember how she's convinced the aliens and their gigantic spaceships pose no threat, and how she and a hundred or so other like-minded folk in Los Angeles go up on a high-rise's roof to throw a big party, pass a good time and welcome the little green men?

Remember what happened to them?

Dat's Loosiana for you!

Because that, my friends, is the perfect metaphor for my home state. Anybody with half a brain can see that it's not benevolent forces bearing down on Planet Louisiana, and that somebody better do something quick or everybody's gonna die.

SO WHAT DO Louisiana's leaders do when the state's revenue model has blown up, the exodus of its best and brightest continues with no letup and, now, scientists say the Gulf of Mexico is going to swallow a Connecticut-sized chunk of the state and no one can stop it?

This.

HURRICANE CHRIS -- the rapper, not some future south Louisiana apocalypse -- wants to do unspeakable things with Halle Berry when he's not serenading the Louisiana House. Meanwhile, the death ray is charging up.

Dollars to doughnuts, the Gret Stet has about as much chance against the economy, demographics and rising sea levels as Independence Day's rooftop hoochie mama had against the space aliens.

Let's look at the burgeoning Gulf of Mexico, shall we? From the New Orleans Times-Picayune:

Even under best-case scenarios for building massive engineering projects to restore Louisiana's dying coastline, the Mississippi River can't possibly feed enough sediment into the marshes to prevent ongoing catastrophic land loss, two Louisiana State University geologists conclude in a scientific paper being published today.

The result: The state will lose another 4,054 to 5,212 square miles of coastline by 2100 -- an area roughly the size of Connecticut.

The reason: The Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers today carry only half the sediment they did a century ago -- between 400 million and 500 million tons a year then, compared with just 205 million tons today. The rest is now captured by more than 40,000 dams and reservoirs that have been built on rivers and streams that flow into the main channels.

Yet even if those dams were to be torn down and the river's full sediment load employed in restoration efforts -- a politically impossible scenario -- it would not be enough to turn back the tide of coastal erosion, write authors Michael Blum, a former LSU geologist now working for ExxonMobil Upstream Research Co. in Houston, and LSU geology professor Harry Roberts.

GET THAT? A huge chunk of the state, a chunk where hundreds of thousands of people now live, will be in the drink by the end of the century, if not sooner. And that's according to rising-ocean estimates not nearly as drastic as some.

None of this is any surprise. Scientists have been saying variations of this for years, and the Times-Picayune has been reporting on it all. For a while.

I wonder what wisdom Hurricane Chris -- or Halle Berry, for that matter -- might have for the masses as that economy-sized can of Whoop-Ass looms on the horizon?

Increased rates of sea-level rise spurred by human-induced global warming, when combined with the state's rapid rate of subsidence, or the sinking of soft soils, will inundate vast swaths of wetlands over the next century, according to the study.

The paper predicts water levels will rise between 2.6 feet and 3.9 feet along the coast by 2100.

If the researchers are right, such land loss can't be stopped, or even substantially slowed. That means the cause of "restoration," as efforts to build new wetlands and barrier islands are termed -- creating the impression that wetlands lost over the last 70 years can be reclaimed -- is a lost one.

Roberts said he recognized the paper's conclusions would be controversial.

"Louisiana is facing some really tough decisions here," he said in an interview. "You can't do this restoration all over the coast because the whole coast is not sustainable and it never has been."

AND LOUISIANA'S future "tough decisions" inevitably impact tough budgetary decisions the state faces in the here and now.

How much infrastructure money do you think the state ought to be wasting on places like Morgan City, projected to be in the deep blue sea in a few decades? Do you think Louisiana ought to be supporting a state university -- Nicholls State -- in as precarious a place as Thibodaux is going to be?

And what about New Orleans? Can it be saved? At what cost to the rest of the state?

Will the federal government pay to do it? Or will it cut bait?

Some small communities along the coast already are being abandoned. Many more towns -- and probably a few cities as well -- will be abandoned long before 2100. Where will those people go?

Who will pay for them to go?

DOES HURRICANE CHRIS have any suggestions for what hundreds of thousands of Louisianians might do for a living after the seafood and oil-and-gas industries have been devastated? Any clues about how to find those answers when the state's universities are being hammered by budget cuts that only promise to get worse?

So far, the only answer the administration of Gov. Bobby Jindal had for the New Orleans newspaper was that things probably aren't as dire as the geologists' report says.

Garret Graves, an adviser to Gov. Bobby Jindal on coastal issues, said that while the study's conclusions seem to him overly pessimistic, the state recognizes it will not be able to restore the state's historic coastline.

"If we can extract 80 percent or greater amounts of sediment from the river and put it in strategic places, we can be more effective in replacing land," he said.

"But we are going to have to prioritize," Graves said. "Will Louisiana look like it did in 1930? No, probably not.

"But is it possible for us to sustain a significant part of the coastal area in light of protected sea level rise and the erosion we're experiencing today?" he said, "Yes."

BECAUSE THE only thing the Gret Stet has to fear . . . is thinking negative thoughts. Surely the worst won't happen, so why think about how to deal with it?

Why try to help yourself, after all, when you can throw a crawfish boil instead? Or maybe stick your fingers in your ears and whistle a few bars of "Dixie."

And that's where we now find the Gret Stet. Atop a metaphorical L.A. (or LA) skyscraper, gazing expectantly at the spacecraft hovering above its head.

Isn't it pretty? Surely the spacemen didn't come all this way to hurt us. They've come in peace! Yeah, that's the ticket! Let's party!

Hey, what the. . . .

We won't take no static at all

Did radio even cross your mind when Michael Jackson died?

Did you turn on the radio hoping to hear a tribute to the "King of Pop"?

If you had, would you likely have heard one?

Exactly.

I'M BETTING that for most people nowadays, the answer was No, No, and No. No, Michael Jackson is dead and radio isn't feeling so good itself.

Over at Inside Music Media, longtime radio man Jerry Del Colliano called bulls*** on radio's performance during a "made for radio" moment last week -- just as he's been calling bulls*** on the corporate raiders who've been killing an industry for almost a decade and a half now. An excerpt:

Late last week when Michael Jackson died suddenly at his Los Angeles home, the radio industry was caught with its pants down and voice tracking up.

This is not to say that some stations did not respond -- the ones programmed by real live individuals and/or those who actually had control of their company's voice tracking did the right thing for their listeners.

For too many, radio was caught sleeping while new media was feeding the need of the public to know, mourn publicly and appreciate the talents of this great iconic performer.
TMZ broke the news and owned the story from start to finish.

That's TMZ like in gossip website -- no matter that it is owned by Time Warner.

CNN, New York Times, LA Times and other more "legitimate" news publications hedged in the name of caution (which is not on its face a bad thing) but then dropped the bomb on a public that had already been able to do what they couldn't do -- confirm a breaking story.

Thank you cell phones, Blackberries, iPhones, the Internet, social networking and the services that are growing up in or around them.

Radio stations really didn't see this type of thing coming.

When John Slogan Hogan, Lew Tricky Dickey and Fagreed Suleman embraced voice tracking and syndicated programming to help them save money, they apparently gave little thought to what happens in an emergency. I mean -- this was the death of a major performer.

What happens, God forbid, if a world leader dies or if North Korea actually fires a missile at Hawaii or if Iran attacks Israel?

WHAT HAPPENS is you're screwed if you're not online. Or if you can't afford to be online. Or if you're just a retro, "throwback" kind of person.

Trouble is, the suits running radio don't care that you're screwed. They're too busy running themselves into bankruptcy . . . and chasing away listeners.

What to do?

Well, if you're presently without a profession because of these people -- or if you're worried that splintered, online demographic "tribes" may not be the healthiest civic substitute for the communal experience of free public media -- you probably have run out of options for "working through the system."

After all, "the system" has its. F*** you.

THAT LEAVES the "'60s Option." Public protest . . . direct action . . . raising hell and grabbing attention.

What if, for example, all the skilled and talented people thrown away by the radio industry since Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (which allowed conglomerates to swallow an industry whole) decided to single out a single station in every Top 100 market, mark a single date on the calendar, then stage "sit-ins" at those stations?

Better yet, what if all the fired, laid-off and chased-off radio people forced their way into those 100 radio stations across the country, barricaded themselves inside and staged "radio-ins"? A "radio-in" is just like a 1960s-style sit-in, only the participants take over the station and actually commit radio . . . as opposed to what the Clear Channels of the world are calling "radio" nowadays.

I wonder how long they could keep it up before the SWAT team hauled them away -- or before the suits had their engineers turn off the transmitters? Just make sure you invite the TV reporters and YouTube mavens along for the ride, however short.

THINK OF IT . . . if all the castoffs of an entire industry took it back -- or at least part of it back -- for however long and then (again, for however long) began to put an entertaining product on the air while overtly operating in the public interest, the corporate suits suddenly would be put in the position of having people jailed for doing what those stations' federal licenses say they ought to have been doing all along.

And after the last paddy wagon had rolled away -- filled with folks who had just been trying to serve the public interest and make a point -- those 100 stations would go back to business as usual.

Business devoid of very many live people on the air.

Business devoid of meaningful news programming.

Business devoid of much up-to-date information like, for instance, the correct weather. Or the correct time. Or the fact that the biggest recording star since Elvis and John Lennon had just died.

The difference would be apparent. And striking

Power to the people. Now.

Dear God: What the . . . .

Dear God,


I know I'm not the brightest guy. So, I was hoping you could explain some stuff to me.

Like, why do so many people who desperately want kids never have them? And why are some people who shouldn't be let into any county where children reside able to breed like freakin' rabbits?

Relatedly, what the hell is up with this? I'm assuming, being omniscient and all, you've already seen this morning's Omaha World-Herald.

Gary Staton said he had lost the will to be a parent after his wife died.

Now, the man who dropped off his nine kids under Nebraska's safe haven law is going to be a father again.

Staton, 37, and his girlfriend are expecting a baby.

The couple declined last week to discuss the pregnancy, calling it a private matter. But Staton addressed the matter briefly in an e-mail to The World-Herald.

“Do you think I'm going to raise this one alone?” he asked.

Since the Staton children were young, the family has received $995,468 in different forms of government aid, including more than $600,000 in food stamps and $109,774 in Medicaid, according to Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services records.

The children were placed in foster care after their father left them. Under the latest figures available, the state paid an average $725 a month per child to foster parents in similar situations.

Staton has given up custody of his seven youngest children. They remain in foster care with their mother's aunt, who hopes to adopt them. The two oldest boys were in foster care until last month, when a 75-year-old Omaha woman was approved to be their guardian.

I HAVE BEEN reliably told you're pretty handy with a lightning bolt from the blue. Couldn't you do something about this clown's business end?

Thanks for your time and consideration.


Confusedly,

Favog

3 Chords & the Truth: The King of Pop is dead

If you're looking for kicks and giggles about the media orgy surrounding the death of Michael Jackson . . . if you're looking for a snark fest about the untimely end of the King of Pop (and Weird), move along.

Nothing to see -- or hear -- here.

If you're looking for a show that will help you look upon the wreckage of a prominent life as a means of feeling better about your own, this week's 3 Chords & the Truth is not your cup of tea.

YES, Michael Jackson is dead. Yes, there's a media circus under the big top. The Big Show can do nothing about either.

I take that back. We can ponder what went so horribly wrong in the life of arguably one of the greatest entertainers ever. We also can celebrate the good amid the mayhem.

It seems we owe the dead -- owe Michael -- at least that due. That we will do this week on 3 Chords & the Truth.

While we're at it, I saw this article in The Jerusalem Post by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who had tried to help the famously troubled superstar. An excerpt:

I am no prophet and it did not take a rocket scientist to see the impending doom. Michael was a man in tremendous pain and his tragedy was to medicate his pain away rather than addressing its root cause. On many occasions when I visited him he would emerge from his room woozy and clearly sedated. Who were the doctors who were giving him this stuff? Was there no one to save him from himself? Was there no one to intervene?

By the time I met Michael in the summer of 1999, he was already one of the most famous people in the world, but he seemed lethargic, burned-out, and purposeless. He wanted to consecrate his great fame to helping children but knew he could not due to the 1993 child molestation allegations against him. He was cut off from family and was alienated from the Jehovah's Witnesses Church which had nurtured him. He could barely muster the energy to complete the album he was working on. The only thing that seemed to motivate him was his children, to whom he was exceptionally devoted.

(snip)

In many ways his tragedy was to mistake attention for love. I will never forget what he said when we sat down to record 40 hours of conversations where he would finally reveal himself for a book I authored. He turned to me and said these haunting words: "I am going to say something I have never said before and this is the truth. I have no reason to lie to you and God knows I am telling the truth. I think all my success and fame, and I have wanted it, I have wanted it because I wanted to be loved. That's all. That's the real truth. I wanted people to love me, truly love me, because I never really felt loved. I said I know I have an ability. Maybe if I sharpened my craft, maybe people will love me more. I just wanted to be loved because I think it is very important to be loved and to tell people that you love them and to look in their eyes and say it." One cannot read these words without feeling a tremendous sadness for a soul that was so surrounded with hero-worship but remained so utterly alone. Because Michael substituted attention for love he got fans who loved what he did but he never had true compatriots who loved him for who he was. Perhaps this is why, when so many of his inner circle saw him destroying his life with prescription medication - something he used to treat phantom physical illnesses which were really afflictions of the soul - they allowed him to deteriorate and disintegrate rather than throwing the poison in the garbage.

ALL HE WANTED was to be loved. Don't we all. The trouble with Jacko was he didn't know how to get there.

God bless him, that's something we all need to be worrying about -- getting there. Getting to love. That's the point of everything . . . the point of life.

Michael Jackson had everything, yet had nothing. How?

Why?

And there but for the grace of God. . . . Lord have mercy.

That's the Cliff's Notes version of what this week's show is about. It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all.

Be there. Aloha.

The child who never was

The Jackson 5 were all that in 1970, and their 45s were more than likely playing on a hi-fi near you.

I know they were playing on a hi-fi near me . . . and on a radio near me . . . and the brothers Jackson were on a TV near me, too. I was nine, and the Jackson 5 became part of the soundtrack of my adolescence.

What I didn't know was that -- for the sake of my entertainment and Joseph Jackson's bottom line -- a little boy named Michael, one not much older than me, was being denied his childhood. That their old man was working Michael and his four elder brothers like dogs in the rehearsal hall.

No, not exactly like dogs. If old Joe had beat Fido every time he messed up "Roll over!" or "Fetch!" somebody probably would have called the Humane Society.

No such luck for Jermaine, Tito, Marlon, Jackie and Michael, the little boy with such star quality.

MICHAEL'S STAR shone brightly back then, and it just kept getting brighter. By the early 1980s, now out on his own, he was the undisputed "King of Pop." He also was becoming the undisputed King of Weird.

There was all the plastic surgery. The hyperbaric chamber, supposedly some sort of high-pressure, pure oxygen Fountain of Youth. The attempt to buy the remains of the "Elephant Man."

He bought a mansion and turned it into "Neverland," a fantasy world with giraffes and Bubbles the Chimp and an entire private amusement park. The little boy who never had a childhood now was the chronological adult desperately trying to revert to what he never had the chance to be.

IT DIDN'T WORK. Not unless you count the unreal world of the deluded inner workings of the man-child's mind.

As Michael Jackson's wealth, fame and professional acclaim grew, his emotional well-being waned and his private life imploded into a bizarre world of excess and scandal. And, later on, massive indebtedness and sex-abuse charges.

Bad things happen when, for the love of fame and money, children become means and not ends. When adults steal their childhood. When they try to turn back the hands of time and reclaim what never was theirs.

Something bad happened -- something unspeakably tragic happened -- to the King of Pop when he was but an aspiring prince. Or, more precisely, when his father's aspirations included his son's princehood.

Something, or someone, got into Michael Jackson's head and his heart, played with them as if they were big boys' toys and left them irreparably bruised and broken. Michael Jackson lived a storybook life, all right -- Humpty Dumpty.

Michael Jackson made "Off the Wall,"
Michael Jackson took a great fall,
And all the King's agents and all the King's men,
Couldn't put Michael together again.

MICHAEL JACKSON the composer, singer and dancer was one of the most amazing stories in entertainment history. Michael Jackson, the broken little boy grown up into a deeply disturbed man, will go down in "HIStory" as one of the great tragic figures of our time.

The King of Pop himself was responsible for some of that tragedy, but not all. His enablers and hangers-on have their role in this Greek tragedy, too.

But this horror had its roots in Gary, Ind., where a bunch of working-class kids played joyous music under a taskmaster's lash, singing for their parents' supper. The little boy with all the star power was being eaten alive by the ambition of a stage dad from hell.

The child on the Ed Sullivan Show -- the one with the face of an angel -- was being turned into an amusement park for untold demons.

Sleep well, Joseph Jackson. If you can.

Jacko's no longer wacko

It's the end of a long, strange trip. Michael Jackson is dead, according to TMZ.com.

From the breaking-news item on the website:

Michael suffered a cardiac arrest earlier this afternoon at his Holmby Hills home and paramedics were unable to revive him. We're told when paramedics arrived Jackson had no pulse and they never got a pulse back.

A source tells us Jackson was dead when paramedics arrived.

Once at the hospital, the staff tried to resuscitate him but they had no luck.

We're told one of the staff members at Jackson's home called 911.

LaToya ran in the hospital sobbing after Jackson was pronounced dead.

WHAT A tortured soul he was. Immensely talented, and immensely tortured. God have mercy on him, and on us all.


UPDATE: The Los Angeles Times now reports Jackson's death as well:

Pop star Michael Jackson was pronounced dead by doctors this afternoon after arriving at a hospital in a deep coma, city and law enforcement sources told The Times.

Tigers hook the 'Horns

The Alamo, the College World Series . . . when you're from Coahuila y Tejas, one ass-kicking is as good as another.

This time, the Louisiana State Tigers finished what Santa Anna started, administering an 11-4 beatdown to take the national championship of college baseball. As for Augie Garrido's Texas Longhorns . . . well, they came to Omaha, and all they got was another lousy doorstop.

But at least they showed up for the runner-up trophy presentation this time. That's something, I guess.

YOU MAY THINK this LSU alum sounds like a sore winner. Usually I'm not. But then again, we usually don't get an opportunity to pound Tejas into the dirt when a national title is on the line.

And as a native Louisianian, an LSU grad, an Omahan and a Nebraska fan -- not to mention having had seats in the middle of a bunch of Texas fans for Tuesday night's 5-1 Tiger loss in Game 2 of the final series -- Wednesday night's victory was sweet indeed.

Let me put it this way: The College World Series is personal to me, and not just because my alma mater has won the thing six times, with me there to see every championship. No, I fell in love with the CWS in 1983, when Roger Clemens, Calvin Schiraldi and Texas held off Alabama to win it all.

I had box seats for the championship, having driven in from North Platte, Neb., for the big game. A certain young female colleague at the North Platte Telegraph procured those tickets for a buddy and me -- her father, as it happens, had been the Series' PR man since it moved to the Big O in 1950.

When you come across a pretty young thing with connections like that, there's only one thing to do. We were married Aug. 20, 1983, and she since has become a rabid LSU fan.

My Nebraska fandom already was well established when we tied the knot -- we were engaged at Husker football picture day, right outside Memorial Stadium.

THIS IS ALL TO SAY that I'm not just an LSU baseball fan who can't stand Tejas. I'm an LSU baseball fan who can't stand Tejas who also happened to marry into the CWS. And when you have a team who can't bother -- as happened in 2004 -- to show up to get its second-place trophy, you have a team (and a coach) who just disrespected family.

And when you have too-obnoxious, too-indulgent, too-tanned, too-bejeweled, too-enhanced, too too Tejas chiquitas who get too offended -- she and her buddies -- that not everybody in Rosenblatt Stadium is pulling for the Longhorns and that some who aren't are too close to her . . . well, podna, Texas has messed with what the College World Series (and my town) is all about.

Don't mess with Omaha.

Or with dem Tigahs.

What the ayatollahs sow. . . .

In Iran, the ruling mullahs speak of God. Shown above, however, is what they do in His name.

The following verse, from Paul's letter to the Galatians, echoes in my head right now . . . as I watch a young woman die on YouTube:

Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

What the ayatollahs are sowing is death. Their turn is coming.

Allahu akbar, indeed.


HAT TIP: Crunchy Con.

O! Suck it up and git 'er done

They're talking about us down on the bayou. Most of what folks are saying is pretty good.

Interesting that, sometimes, visitors in Omaha for the College World Series look at our city and end up having more faith in us than we do. Says Gary Laney of The Advocate in my old hometown, Baton Rouge:

Baseball is about Little Leaguers in Williamsport, Pa., summer leaguers playing around the clock in Wichita, Kan., and collegians spending a couple of weeks at Rosenblatt Stadium — with the lucky few getting to feel the Ivy at Wrigley Field or hear the thud of a line drive off the Green Monster at Fenway Park.

When the Red Sox play the Yankees, the sport does fine. It’s when it goes into these misadventures with the new — overpriced Yankee Stadium seats, shortened college seasons — that it always seems to trip over its own spikes.

It’s within that context that folks here are a little nervous. Rosenblatt Stadium’s days are numbered, to be replaced for the 2011 CWS by a brand-spanking-new downtown stadium, to be called TD Ameritrade Park Omaha, named for one of the city’s Fortune 500 companies. Rosenblatt will become a parking lot for the Henry Doorly Zoo, and the stadium’s other tenant, the Omaha Royals, will move to suburban Papillion, Neb.

The new stadium promises, or threatens, to be everything Rosenblatt is not. Where Rosenblatt has the dome from the zoo as a right-field backdrop, TD Ameritrade Park will have the city’s skyline, and yes, Omaha has a skyline. Where Rosenblatt is in a working-class neighborhood with Zesto’s ice cream stand (where one can spend a couple of dollars for what is supposedly the best ice cream in the Midwest) across the street, the new place will be on the edge of trendy, touristy Old Market with the state-of-the-art Qwest Center across the street.

And, one is named after a corporate giant while the other is named after the mayor who brought professional baseball and the College World Series to Omaha.

All of those thoughts are downright scary for baseball purists. But folks in Omaha are the perfect hosts for the College World Series for a reason, and that’s what gives hope for their new stadium. If any place is going to do a new stadium right, it’s Omaha.

THERE'S A LOT RIGHT about Omaha. And, yes, if any town can make a major change to a beloved baseball tradition -- and, more importantly, make it work -- it's the Big O.

But we're facing tough times. City revenues are tighter than one of Sasha Baron Cohen's "Bruno" getups, and ordinary folk are yelling and screaming for city fathers to take a budget ax and cut right through the bone.

That's because Omaha, unfortunately, is not immune to America's generation-long affliction with taxorexia. It's kind of like anorexia and bulimia combined, except that while you're not taking any nourishment in, you're still purging cops, libraries, yard-waste pickup and street repair.

Funny thing is, it only applies to civic affairs. Show us skyrocketing cable-TV bills and we'll still pay up. We'll bitch, but we'll pay. Upgrade to digital, even.

And we'll sell Junior on Craigslist to fill up the SUV with premium unleaded.

But show us a city that's cut the budget to the point of "You don't want to go there," and we'll say "Go there . . . we ain't paying no stinkin' taxes." Of course, no one has any useful suggestions about where to cut, but that's not important now -- there must be some more fat somewhere.

Sadly, it's often between the ears of the armchair budget director.

AS I SAID, Omaha's in a tough spot right now, what with anemic tax collections and all. But we've been in tough spots before, and Nebraskans usually suck it up and do what needs to be done.

So maybe we just need to shut the hell up and do it again -- in this case, that would be protecting the city's quality of life, basic services and economic viability just as zealously as we've guarded the CWS all these decades.

What, do you think we got to the point where far-off newspapers run glowing accounts of life in Omaha by sitting on our butts muttering "No, no, never, no"? I think not.

Suck it up. It's important.

Getting a kick out of journalism?

Geez, I would have picked Howie Carr as the Boston Herald staffer most likely to attack an old man.

BUT NOOOOOO. Cops in a Boston suburb say it was another Herald reporter who mistook an emphysemic, 74-year-old man for a cage-match opponent.

The Eagle-Tribune of Lawrence, Mass., has the tale of the tape:

GROVELAND — A Boston Herald crime reporter is charged with kicking an elderly man with emphysema in the chest at a local laundromat, police said.

O'Ryan Johnson, 33, of 293 E St., South Boston, faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, a shod foot, on a person over the age of 65.

Witnesses told police that Johnson asked for help with a washing machine at Classic Cleaners Laundromat at 4 Elm St. Tuesday afternoon. When Kent White, 74, of Georgetown approached to help, witnesses said words were exchanged and Johnson began swearing at the elderly man.

Johnson then kicked the 5 foot 6 inch, 130-pound victim in the chest, witnesses told police.

"The victim doesn't remember what he said and then Johnson started swearing at him," Deputy police Chief Jeff Gillen said. "The victim backed away and Johnson ran at him, kicking him in the chest."

Gillen said the attack was especially brutal considering White's size and lack of threat to Johnson. Johnson is 5 feet 10 inches tall and weighs 160 pounds, according to court records. Johnson, a former Eagle-Tribune reporter, recently wrote a story for the Boston Herald about his experience as an amateur boxer.

JOHNSON'S EDITORS refused to comment on speculation that the Boston Globe chapter of the Newspaper Guild was trying to hire the crime writer away from the Herald to head up its ongoing negotiations with the New York Times Co.


HAT TIP: Romenesko on Poynter Online.