America's next great West Virginia

Courtesy of WAFB television, here's another dispatch from my hometown, delusionally referred to by its mayor as "America's next great city."

There's an old "Boudreaux" joke about how Boudreaux goes to the Westerns with his podnas and bets them John Wayne won't get his horse shot out from under him. About two hours later, as Boudreaux is paying off them ol' boys, he laments that he'd seen the movie twice before.

"Dey ain't no way I thought John Wayne would fall off dat damn horse three straight times," he says ruefully.

DEY A LOT of Boudreauxs in Baton Rouge.

And here's what happens when you think the city will quit looking a little more Third World every year -- and that people with brains will one day quit leaving Louisiana and start flocking to the Gret Stet -- if only they vote down yet another bond issue. If only they keep looking at the public school system as OK for black folks but nothing they'd want little Johnny anywhere near . . . or is even worth caring about.

After starting up in Baton Rouge 25 years ago, Innovative Emergency Management is leaving the capitol city. They're moving their headquarters 900-miles east to Durham, North Carolina, saying Louisiana can't lure the kind of workers they need.

IEM officials say for the past several years it's been hard to get educated technology professionals to move to Louisiana. One of the biggest issues their potential employees have with the state - education.

"Telling them they have to put their kid in private schools, this is an additional cost and these are just practical considerations," said IEM technology vice president Ted Lemcke.

Lemcke says struggling public schools are just one concern his company's potential workforce has with Louisiana. IEM workers advise federal agencies on how to manage threats to public safety and property.

"Young technology professionals are attracted to centers like Raleigh-Durham or Austin or other places, and they don't see Baton Rouge as one of those technology clusters," said Lemcke.

Lemcke says it's the main reason IEM is moving it's headquarters and about half of their 200 employees from Baton Rouge to North Carolina.

"These are perceptions these candidates have, and these perceptions have caused us some challenges with getting candidates to accept positions here," said Lemcke.

LONG GONE are the days when you could have a sixth-grade education, hire on at Standard Oil and make enough money to buy a bass boat, with enough left over to move far away from the "colored" folks. In fact, the very dream of a middle-class life with three cars and an oversized house in suburbia is all but gone -- even if Boudreaux happens to have a degree from LSU.

And Boudreaux has seen this movie over and over again the past three decades or so.

Big John Wayne keeps getting his horse shot out from under him, yet no one ever thinks that a different movie -- with a different screenplay -- might be in order.

Such is life in America's next great West Virginia.

The prez is shocked, SHOCKED. . . .

Given the appointments, actions and inactions of the Obama Administration over the last 10 months and change, the president's remarks to CBS' 60 Minutes seem to be, at a minimum, somewhat incongruous.

THIS IS the polite way of saying what a lot of people must be thinking right now, which goes something like: "You gotta be f***ing kiddin' me! He thinks anybody is f***in' buying this s***?!?"

The importance of not listening to what people say but, instead, watching what they do is highlighted by Matt Taibbi's magnum opus in the latest edition of Rolling Stone.

3 Chords & the Truth: We got it good

The word of the week on 3 Chords & the Truth is "Good."

Then again, that's the word of the week every week on the Big Show. I'm sorry, that's just the way it is.

PART OF ME wants to be modest and just not blow my own horn when it comes to the weekly music program of the Revolution 21 empire. But All of Me thinks you need to know the score. And the score is that you need to listen to 3 Chords & the Truth.

If you had to write a song about the program, it probably would be "Embraceable You." Or something like that.

I'm not one to brag, but after listening to the Big Show just once, nine out of 10 supermodels refer to your Mighty Favog simply as The Man I Love. Again, not bragging, just saying.

Because, you know, God Bless the Child that's got his own. And that's no Strange Fruit.

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

The Sound of Jazz

In the creative arts, greatness does not lie in the impressiveness of one's tool box. Greatness, instead, is an affair of the heart -- and the soul.

Today, our materialistic and technology obsessed culture too often thinks greatness can be purchased . . . or, at least, manufactured if enough technological and computer wizardry is applied to the matter at hand.

A remarkable program that aired on CBS television 52 years ago this week belies that foolishness. The Sound of Jazz was broadcast in fuzzy black and white, using bulky equipment much less sophisticated than your kid's Flip video camera. Yet, more than a half century on, it is still regarded as one of the greatest musical programs ever -- a defining achievement of a very young medium that very much (still) was making stuff up as it went.

The program, part of CBS' Seven Lively Arts series of programs, featured probably the greatest collection of jazz and blues artists ever gotten into a TV studio. It saw the last ever collaboration of two old friends -- Billie Holiday and saxophonist Lester Young -- who had grown far apart and, as a matter of fact, would both be dead inside of two years.

But on Dec. 8, 1957, magic happened one last time, bygones were bygones for just a moment, and the power of that moment -- a moment that went out live coast to coast on a Sunday afternoon -- brought a control room full of jazz mavens and TV engineers to tears. And the power of that moment, captured on a fuzzy, grainy kinescope, can take one's breath away over the span of decades and societal transformations.

Watch closely. Greatness isn't as common as people would have you believe.

NAT HENTOFF, the great jazz critic and one of the advisers who assembled the program, remembered it this way for National Public Radio:

Billie Holiday didn't actually write songs. She thought of a melody, and she hummed it, and then her piano player or somebody else would orchestrate it — or arrange it, rather. And as for lyrics, she would write those, but then she'd consult with somebody like Arthur Herzog, who was the co-writer on "Strange Fruit," and he would sort of shape it into a more singable form.

So the theme of the lyrics of "Fine and Mellow" was infidelity, and Billie knew a lot about that. I don't know how you put this. She had a poor choice of men, and that was one of the reasons, I think, that she could sing this song and a lot of other songs that had to do with dreams and aspirations and fantasies and romance when they turned bad. She was an expert at that.

What made this the climax of the show was this: She and Lester Young — she had given him his nickname, Prez, and he was the guy who called her Lady Day, which other people came to call her. They had been very close for a long time, but then they stopped being close. They paid very little attention to each other while we were rehearsing the show.

Lester was not feeling well. He was supposed to be in the big-band sequence, but he couldn't make it. I told him, "Look, in the Billie section," which was a small group. She was sitting on a stool surrounded by just a few musicians. I said, "You know, you don't have to just sit down and play."

When it came to his solo, in the middle of "Fine and Mellow," Lester stood up and he blew the purest blues I have ever heard.

Watching Billie and Lester interact, she was watching him with her eyes with a slight smile, and it looked as if she and Lester were remembering other times, better times. And this is true — it sounds corny — in the control room, Herridge, the producer, had tears in his eyes. So did the engineer. So did I. It was just extraordinarily moving. I think for all the times she sang this song, on records and in night clubs, this was the performance that I think meant the most to her, and it came through on "The Sound of Jazz."

CONSIDER that today, one might see the "art" of television as the world translated through the lens of a sports broadcast. The Sound of Jazz, and much of television back then, was the world as cinema.

It is an important distinction, and it's one that actually might say a lot about who we are . . . and who we used to be.

And if one is tempted toward the position that the free market -- commercial interests -- in every case is the best way of fostering cultural and societal excellence . . . think again. And think on this, from the Dec. 23, 1957 edition of Time:

"The blues to me," said hard-luck Singer Billie Holiday sipping a cup of coffee, "are like being very sad, very sick—and again, like going to church and being very happy. We've got to do right by the blues on TV, because the blues deserve the best." At air time, Billie sat on top of a bare stool and cuddled up to an old jazz-cult favorite, Fine and Mellow ("My man don't love me, he shakes me awful mean"), and did just dandy by the blues. And, for the balance of CBS's one-hour The Sound of Jazz, the art got what it has so long deserved: a TV showcase uncluttered by the fuss and furbelows that burden most musical telecasts. In the murky, smoke-choked studio, more than two dozen of the best jazz vocalists and sidemen worked through eight of the best jazz numbers with the kind of love, wonder, almost mystical absorption they usually summon up in the most free-wheeling jam sessions.

Soon after the show, however. Seven Lively Arts's producers heard a long, sad note from CBS. In spite of some artistic successes after a faulty start, Arts had wooed no sponsors in five weeks. So CBS decreed that on Feb. 16—after only ten of its projected 22 shows, and a loss of $1,250,000—Arts will close shop. Executive Producer John Houseman blamed the lack of sponsors partly on the critics, added: "But if you fail when you're doing something that's fun and good, it doesn't matter."

GREATNESS IS NOT a popularity contest. It is what it is, and profit is wholly unconcerned with quality, but instead with whatever folks will buy . . . for whatever reason.

Period.

We are called -- by a Savior, no less, who was murdered by popular demand -- to better than that. Enjoy the rest of the show.

If the presses stop and. . . .

If a newspaper dies and Editor & Publisher isn't there to tell us about it . . . does that mean everything's OK?

We're about to find out.

But I wouldn't bet my severance check on the whole "see no evil, hear no evil" thing working out for ink-stained wretches.

After either 108 years or 125 years, depending on how you count things, the bible of American newspapers has become obituary fodder. I guess that about says it all, doesn't it?

Well, no, actually.

But you'd need a history the size of William Manchester's biography of Winston Churchill to say it. No doubt, there would be a few chapters about talented people suddenly deemed useless by society and the captains of the economy.

There would be others touching on betrayal, and yet more about meaning lost and "right-sized" professionals struggle to redefine themselves.

THESE ARE the stories Editor & Publisher no longer will be telling us in real time. Amid the apocalypse, the live feed has gone dead. We're trying to establish alternate means of communication.

For now, though, this is a bit of how E&P reported its own demise:

Editor & Publisher, the bible of the newspaper industry and a journalism institution that traces its origins back to 1884, is ceasing publication.

An announcement, made by parent company The Nielsen Co., was made Thursday morning as staffers were informed that E&P, in both print and online, was shutting down.

The expressions of surprise and outpouring of strong support for E&P that have followed across the Web -- Editor & Publisher has even hit No. 4 as a Twitter trending topic -- raise the notion that the publication might yet continue in some form.

Nielsen Business Media, of which E&P was a part, has forged a deal with e5 Global Media Holdings, LLC, a new company formed jointly by Pluribus Capital Management and Guggenheim Partners, for the sale of eight brands in the Media and Entertainment Group, including E&P sister magazines Adweek, Brandweek, Mediaweek, Backstage, Billboard, Film Journal International and The Hollywood Reporter. E&P was not included in this transaction.

As news spread of E&P's fate, the staffers have been inundated with calls from members of the industry it covers, and many others, expressing shock and hopes for a revival. Staff members will stay on for the remainder of 2009.

CALLING Romenesko . . . CQ . . . CQ . . . requesting status report . . . CQ . . . calling CJR . . . is CJR on the air?

There was a time when I lived and died by my copy of Editor & Publisher. I wasn't the only one. Another was T.J. Sullivan:

Like a lot of journalists, I wouldn't be where I am without Editor & Publisher. I'd still be a journalist, of course, but I definitely wouldn't have followed the same path, which means many of the important stories I fought to report might never have been reported. I might not have met the same friends. I might not have even met my wife.

No joke.

I'm in Los Angeles today because E&P sent me to Idaho ... and then New Mexico ... and then ...

I'll explain.

As I approached graduation in the late 80s, the classified section of E&P Magazine was the most valuable item in the newsroom. It was to me, and every other journalism grad hoping to land a job at a newspaper, the only link to our future, the only publication that listed what few jobs the industry had to offer.

Unlike most of my friends, I applied to all of them. Regardless of whether I met the qualifications, I wrote each and every newspaper that placed an ad.

(snip)

But, the job I did take also resulted from an E&P classified. It was in Ketchum, Idaho, a weekly with an editor who let me crash in a spare room at his house for a few days until I found a place of my own.

Less than a year after that, still in Ketchum, I received a phone call at work from an editor in Santa Fe. He said he'd kept my letter of application for a job they'd advertised in E&P long before I took the job in Idaho. He'd tracked down my whereabouts by calling the references I'd listed. He said they'd already filled the investigative reporter slot, a post for which I clearly wasn't qualified, but they had an opening in sports and wanted me to fill it.

Sports? The closest I'd ever come to sports reporting was to take agate while working the late-night shift on the sports desk at the Lexington Herald-Leader. I wasn't a sports writer. I was an investigative reporter, or, well, I was going to be.

The editor didn't care about that. "You don't belong in Idaho," he said. "You belong here."

Two weeks later, I was again packing everything into my little, gray Chevette and driving hundreds of miles to live in a place I'd never been, all because of a job I'd found through E&P.

AMID THE triple whammy of the Internet, the economy and stupid, stupid management, whole modes of mass media are collapsing atop newly useless people like . . . well, myself.

I know newspapering . . . which is about gone forever. I know radio . . . ditto.

And I know "new media" is the place to be . . . just as I know that very few are getting rich in new media, and just as I know there probably isn't room for all us fossils in that brave new world.

By the time you're hearing that Editor & Publisher is biting the dust, you know that it surely must be the End of the World as We Know It.

And I don't feel fine.

The pioneers were no wimps

Some think heat vents are to keep your house warm.

That may be the case, but on blizzardy days like this, heat vents have a higher calling. Heat vents are where you dry your wet shoes after a couple of hours shoveling the walk, the driveway and (just to make sure you can get out in the morning) the street in front of your house.

And above the heat vent is where you hang your wet socks and thaw your ice-covered wool cap. At right is how I've been doing it lately.

These are the tricks of the Midwestern trade when winter blows across the Great Plains. As I write this, the wind is roaring outside the studio window.

Snow is coming down at the same time the wind is blowing it up from Omaha's newly minted urban tundra. Not a creature is stirring this snow-packed and windblown predawn -- at least no sane creature -- and the cable and Internet has been off and on.

(Note to self: Finish this post while the Internet is still on.)

CHANNEL 7 says it's 10 degrees out, with a wind chill of minus-11. That would be the high temperature this Wednesday; it's all downhill from here . . . all the way to 9 below zero about 24 hours from now.

Hello, December. Glad you could make it in time for Christmas.

Below is how things looked by the time I finished the second round of shoveling Tuesday evening. It's the look of snow coming down at a decent clip.


THIS was before the blizzard began in earnest.

At left is the view out the front door after the blizzard began in earnest.

This may go on for a while, according to the weatherman. Probably until noon, maybe longer.

Below is what you see when you open the front door enough to stick the camera outside -- getting it, and you, good and wet. Our car is parked in front of the house.

Perhaps you can make it out.

On a night like this -- when you have a driveway that slopes down from the street -- you don't try to get up the drive in the morning. Not when the snow has been falling, and drifting, all night.




IT'S DECEMBER in Nebraska, y'all.

The pioneers were no wimps. And, come to think of it, neither are we.

Bring it on.

Oh, the weather outside. . . .

On the street where I live, the sounds that echo across the frigid Omaha snowscape are the roar of the snow blower and the scrape of the snow shovel.

The snow, it falls silently.

The schools are closed, and even the malls will lock their doors and extinguish the lights of Christmas commerce in about an hour. The snow's falling harder than ever, the blizzard part is yet to come, and my city is shutting -- and hunkering -- down.

By nightfall, on the street where I live -- on the streets where millions of Midwesterners live -- the only sound to be heard will be that of the roaring wind. That, and snow blasting against the windows of the houses where we live.

Everything's canceled, and only the foolish will venture out. Well, the foolish and the cops. But at least the cops are getting paid to fight the losing battle with a December blizzard.

I FINISHED Round 1 of the day's shoveling a few hours ago. My coat and shoes probably have dried by now -- my Nebraska Cornhuskers wool cap, too -- my gut is full of hot dark-roast coffee, and it's about time for me to do battle with about four fresh inches of snow.

If I'm lucky, I'll get the walks and driveway cleared before the wind comes howling across the Plains, blowing the snow that's falling and the snow that already has fallen.

Out here in the great Midwest, all God's creatures are trying to beat out the December gusts. I'm trying to get the snow cleared before it all starts to drift, and the squirrels, sparrows, cardinals and blue jays are trying to fill their stomachs before digging in for the evening.

I think I'll have another cup of coffee and a bite to eat before rejoining the battle. Because it's December in Omaha and, truth be told, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Profile in leadership

This is so rare, I am compelled to make note of it for a generation with no real frame of reference.

Here is the basic concept: The leader of an organization puts the welfare of her organization and her staff above her own well-being. And fires herself, eliminating her own substantial salary to reduce the number of layoffs required in the new year.

And here is what's even more unbelievable -- it happened at a newspaper. The editor, Sandy Rowe, laid herself off after noting there were too many senior editors to oversee a pared-down newsroom.

IT HAPPENED at the Portland Oregonian, and it's all in Willamette Week Online:

Colleagues:

I today announced I am retiring as editor of The Oregonian. This was a tremendously difficult decision but I am confident it is sound. You deserve to know why.

When we first announced the buyout and possibility of subsequent layoffs, many of you wanted to know staffing targets, how and when we would decide about layoffs and what departments would be most affected. Reasonable questions, all. I responded we would not know the staffing target until we had a new publisher and a final budget and we wouldn’t start planning layoffs until the buyout was completely closed. I also said we would protect more content-producing jobs by reducing the number of editors. I did not realize at the time that statement would drive my own decision.

Led by Chris, in early November we went back into the budgets, determined to ensure the company’s profitability in 2010, the essential ingredient to retain jobs and turn our focus from cutting to building. At that point it became clear we would have to shed about 70 jobs total from the newsroom staff. As we have gotten much smaller as a newsroom, it is also clear we have too many editing positions concentrated at the top of the organization.

Over Thanksgiving I wrestled with the number of layoffs we would need and determined it was best to start by removing my own salary from the budget. I informed Chris of my decision last week. Doing this preserves other jobs.

The biggest single timing consideration for me is my conviction that we are indeed right on the brink of having both financial soundness and great opportunity for the future. That is the good news. The economy is starting to turn and Chris and his leadership team are putting all the pieces in place to take full advantage of our strong market position and growing online opportunity. It won’t be easy, but by this time next year, I predict this company will be in a modest growth position.

In News, I have no doubt you have the leadership within yourselves and in this room to meet the future with vigor and commitment. I am very proud of that. The superb work you have done and the public service we provide through our journalism has never been attributable to the editor or a small handful of people. It is from all of you. Yes, we are smaller than we have been and many talented colleagues have left, but look around you at the talent still here, ranging from veteran Pulitzer Prize winners to young super-talented digitally savvy journalists.

You will not lose the passion that drives you and in that, too, I take great pride. What you do is worthy, often inspired, and has never been more needed than it is today. Amid the noise of the media marketplace, more than ever the fight is to be the trusted source of local news and information. That is what you do so well, and you will win that fight — on any platform the market chooses.

I will miss you a great deal, but that is overshadowed by the gratitude I feel for the good fortune of having worked with you and every day having fun, laughing, struggling and, ultimately achieving tremendous things together.

I cheer you and wish you Godspeed on these important next steps in the journey.

Sandy

SANDY ROWE is the kind of editor you'd kill to work under and learn from. Unfortunately, staffers won't have that opportunity any longer . . . because she put those same staffers above herself.

That's good people. And good people are, increasingly, rare people in corporate America.

Pop perfection

Everything was better in 1964. Even if the TV was black and white.

3 Chords & the Truth: Cold comfort

With the weather being what it is as we roll into December on the Plains, consider this episode of 3 Chords & the Truth . . . cold comfort.

Here in Omaha, it got up to all of 26 degrees today. Right now, it's 18. Saturday, it might hit 40.

That will make it the "hot" day of the next week.

WHAT I'D RECOMMEND doing right now, if you're experiencing similar conditions, is putting on a kettle of water on the burner and some tea bags in the pot. Or perhaps some hot chocolate mix in your mug.

Then again, maybe it's just time to make a pot of fresh coffee.

As you curl up under something warm, it's your hot beverage of choice -- along with the music offered up on this edition of the Big Show -- that will keep you warm. That's what I call a game plan because, baby, it's cold outside.

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

Here's your one chance, Fancy?

The Dallas Morning News thought it had problems.

It ain't seen nothing yet, now that management has torn down the wall between those charged with telling readers the truth -- whether they want to hear it or not -- and those who haul in the bucks by telling people any damn thing to sell them stuff they probably don't need anyway.

The news-editorial and advertising functions of the American press always have been uneasy partners in a forced marriage -- one in which divorce wasn't an option, because as miserable as the couple might be, they needed each other. So they reached an accommodation -- agreeing to live as codependents who, alas, remain true to themselves.

No more, though. At least not in Dallas.

NO, MANAGEMENT at the Dallas Morning News thinks tough times will be much easier to bear if only one partner in this marriage of convenience could change the other one. Of course, this will not entail the business side of the newspaper giving up its favorite street corner and starting to dress like an Amish farm wife.

The Dallas Observer chronicles the run-up to the coming festivities . . . that no doubt will end in a fracas involving a 3-iron, an SUV, a fire hydrant and a tree:

After the jump, you will find a memo Dallas Morning News editor Bob Mong and senior vice president of sales Cyndy Carr sent to everyone at A.H. Belo Corp. Wednesday afternoon outlining what they call a "business/news integration." Which means? As of yesterday, some section editors at all of the company's papers, including The News, will now report directly to Carr's team of sales managers, now referred to as general managers. In short, those who sell ads for A.H. Belo's products will now dictate content within A.H. Belo's products, which is a radical departure from the way newspapers have been run since, oh, forever.

Those sections mentioned in the memo include sports, entertainment, real estate, automotive and travel, among others.The memo doesn't mention Business or Metro by name, but there are references to "health/education" and "retail/finance"; these are not defined in the missive. Says the memo, Carr's sales force will "be working closely with news leadership in product and content development." Executive sports editor Bob Yates and Lifestyles deputy managing editor Lisa Kresl are quoted in the memo enthusiastically signing off on the unconventional marriage; says Kresl, "I'm excited about the idea of working with a business partner on an arts and entertainment segment."

AMAZING HOW PEOPLE afraid for their jobs in a rapidly disappearing profession will say the damnedest things. Or do the damnedest things.

Remember that Reba McEntire song, "Fancy," the one about the dirt-poor girl whose dying mama turns her out to "be nice to the gentlemen" so she, at least, doesn't starve? By the end, Fancy ends up as a wildly successful, high-priced and high-class . . . singer and actress.

That's because it's a song. Somebody made that s*** up.

For the Dallas Morning News, things won't turn out nearly so well. That's because when you're a newspaper, you just can't afford to give readers reasons not to trust anything you say.

Ultimately, that translates into dollars and cents. Or the lack thereof.

Quote of the week

“I would probably need to apologize to her and hope she uses a driver next time instead of a 3-iron.”

-- Jesper Parnevik . . . the Swedish
golfer who introduced Elin Nordegren
to her future husband, Tiger Woods

The extended forecast: Ice Ice Baby???

It's below freezing outside, I live well above the Mason-Dixon Line, and now I read this.

"This" is from LiveScience.com, and I think one could synopsize the article in two words -- "Oh s***!"

TO WIT:

In the film, "The Day After Tomorrow," the world gets gripped in ice within the span of just a few weeks. Now research now suggests an eerily similar event might indeed have occurred in the past.

Looking ahead to the future, there is no reason why such a freeze shouldn't happen again — and in ironic fashion it could be precipitated if ongoing changes in climate force the Greenland ice sheet to suddenly melt, scientists say.

Starting roughly 12,800 years ago, the Northern Hemisphere was gripped by a chill that lasted some 1,300 years. Known by scientists as the Younger Dryas and nicknamed the "Big Freeze," geological evidence suggests it was brought on when a vast pulse of fresh water — a greater volume than all of North America's Great Lakes combined — poured into the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans.

This abrupt influx, caused when the glacial Lake Agassiz in North America burst its banks, diluted the circulation of warmer water in the North Atlantic, bringing this "conveyor belt" to a halt. Without this warming influence, evidence shows that temperatures across the Northern Hemisphere plummeted.

Previous evidence from Greenland ice samples had suggested this abrupt shift in climate happened over the span of a decade or so. Now researchers say it surprisingly may have taken place over the course of a few months, or a year or two at most.

"That the climate system can turn on and off that quickly is extremely important," said earth system scientist Henry Mullins at Syracuse University, who did not take part in this research. "Once the tipping point is reached, there would be essentially no opportunity for humans to react."

Saving grace in an amazing tablet?

This is great.

This is the paperless newspaper . . . and magazine.

This is what we all knew was coming down the proverbial pike a decade and a half ago. See?

NOW, it's almost here. But is it too late?

That's a good question, because the Big Question remains the same: In an era where free is the new subscription price and information comes from a diffuse electronic cloud surrounding us, how do you monetize this?

Will the ads in a "tablet" version of, as the demo shows, Sports Illustrated be compelling enough, targeted enough and cost-effective enough to hold advertisers and fix the broken model of "traditional media" financing? And is it possible anymore to charge for content even as cool as the demo?

See, in the brave new world we find ourselves inhabiting, the "cloud" giveth and -- as unemployed newspaper people everywhere have found out -- the cloud taketh away.

Mind your divots when using the driver

What happens in Vegas sometimes ends up in Us.

And in the New York Daily News.

And in the Telegraph in London.

And in the Sydney Morning Herald.

And on CBS, ABC and NBC.

PITY TIGER WOODS, he shoulda known better -- if what an allegedly scorned woman in Los Angeles says is true, not to mention another one on deck in Vegas (in addition to other anonymous-source teases on the Strip) -- than to cheat on his supermodel wife.

No, don't pity Tiger Woods. If someone has the hubris to screw around on a supermodel with a cocktail waitress, he deserves all the hell he's about to get. Including being given advice by John Daly:

On Tuesday, golfer John Daly said, “the thing that Tiger needs to look at is, whatever happened, just tell the truth.”

Daly also thinks Woods will be able to survive this controversy. “He’ll get over this. The family will get over it. They’ll move on. Golf needs him,” he said.

WHAT MAKES it worse for Tiger is that Daly kind of makes sense. Ouch.

They're a PC

They say Mac faked this video to embarrass PC.

Somehow, I doubt it. Now, if Ogre had run into the Microsoft Store in Mission Viejo, Calif., and screamed "NERDS!" while this "line dance" was going on, that would have been too perfect, thus leading me to think it a fake.

BUT THERE IS, starting at about the 2:11 mark in the video, a line-dancing shopper seemingly availing herself of a five-finger discount on a Microsoft product that likely will mete out rough justice to her in its own special way. And at 3:47, it appears a kid might be doing the same.

That child had better give his heart to Jesus, because his ass is going to belong to the Blue Screen of Death.

Of course, it could be that the lad was driven -- allegedly -- to a life of crime by a new Microsoft innovation. Allow MSNBC.com to introduce you to the brand-new Black Screen of Death:

Microsoft says recent security updates made to computers running Windows 7, Vista and XP operating systems are not to blame for the "black screen of death" some users are having on their machines, which results in the computer shutting off.

However, it was still unclear Tuesday what the source of the problem is. It is the first of any scope to affect users of Windows 7, the software maker's newest operating system which became available in late October. Microsoft said if there is a problem, it may be tied to malicious software, or malware.

"Microsoft has investigated reports that its November security updates made changes to permissions in the registry that are resulting in system issues for some customers," said Christopher Budd, security response communications lead member for the company. (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)

The company, Budd said, "has found those reports to be inaccurate and our comprehensive investigation has shown that none of the recently released updates are related to the behavior described in the reports."

Windows users are familiar with the "blue screen of death," when their computers essentially shutdown because of an operating system problem. The new "black screen of death" appears to occur when the computer is first turned on, then shuts down.

"We’ve conducted a comprehensive review of the November Security Updates, the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool and the non-security updates we released through Windows Update in November," the company says on its blog.

"That investigation has shown that none of these updates make any changes to the permissions in the registry. Thus, we don’t believe the updates are related to the 'black screen' behavior described in these reports."

WELL, that's it. Gotta post this sucker before the computer locks up.

Michael Dukakis was a piker

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According to authorities, Maurice Clemmons killed four Seattle-area cops and Mike Huckabee's political career.

That this guy was running around the country because the former Arkansas governor and presidential candidate made him eligible for parole in 2000 is bad enough. That this is the second time people ended up dead because of Huckabee's lenient ways is immeasurably worse.

And someone in the national Republican Party needs to formally apologize to Michael Dukakis, whose Willie Horton moment was pure Amateur Night compared to Republican Huckabee's reign of error in Arkansas.

BECAUSE YOU can't make this stuff up, The Associated Press takes the story from here:

As governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee had a hand pardoning or commuting many more prisoners than his three immediate predecessors combined. Maurice Clemmons, the suspect in Sunday's slaying of four Seattle-area police officers, was among them.
For a politician considering another run for the White House, Clemmons could become Huckabee's Willie Horton.

"In a primary between a law-and-order Republican and him, I think it could definitely be a vulnerability," said Art English, a political scientist at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. "It is very damaging when you have someone like that whose sentence was commuted. That's pretty high profile and very devastating and very tragic."

English said it's hard to avoid comparing the case to Horton, a convicted killer who raped a woman and assaulted her fiance while on release as part of a prison furlough program supported by Michael Dukakis when he was governor of Massachusetts.

Allies of former President George H.W. Bush ran ads criticizing Dukakis for his support of the program, undermining the Democrat's presidential campaign.

(snip)

Huckabee's role in gaining the release of a convicted rapist, Wayne DuMond, was the subject of an attack ad during his presidential run. While Huckabee's predecessor, Tucker, reduced DuMond's sentence making him eligible for parole, Huckabee took steps almost immediately after taking office to win DuMond's release.

Two members of the state parole board said Huckabee pressured them to show DuMond mercy, while Huckabee publicly questioned whether DuMond was guilty of the rape of a teenage girl. During the presidential primaries, a conservative group aired television commercials in South Carolina featuring the mother of Carol Sue Shields, whom DuMond killed in 2000 after his release.

Pulaski County Prosecutor Larry Jegley, whose office opposed Clemmons' parole in 2000 and 2004, said Huckabee created a flaw in the Arkansas justice system by freeing the number of prisoners he did.
"(Clemmons) should have stayed locked up like the jury wanted him and we wouldn't even be having this discussion," Jegley said.

"I just have been figuratively holding my breath and hoping something like this wouldn't happen," Jegley said. "I just think that a lot of the people that were subjects of clemency during that period of time were some very dangerous people who didn't need to be let out."

IT USED TO BE that when someone screwed up badly enough, they'd publicly repent of their sins, put on sackcloth garments and cover themselves in ashes as a sign of penance.

It is no credit to our "advanced" society that messing up big time now -- at least for certain privileged castes -- is just a ticket to a big buyout . . . or a cable-TV talk show.

Right, Huck?


SPLINTER. PLANK. EYE . . . Rev. Huckabee.

She who must be obeyed

This is Molly the Dog. She is the boss of us.

For the most part, she is a benevolent dictator. She doesn't require much of her subjects -- just food, water, treats, outside, inside and constant adoration.

Sometimes, she treats her unworthy footservants with amusing displays such as this. To Molly, however, it was simple dog logic: Want to lie in sun. Sun on table. Jump up on table. Lie in sun on newspaper on table.

Any questions?

No, Your Highness.

Touché . . . and good night

File this under: "I'm not dead yet!"

Nice ad that, for a change, out-Apples Apple. Now, all Rupert Murdoch needs to do is figure out how to make the "must-have handheld accessory of 2009" self-updating so it's no longer full of day-old news.

OH . . . and make it display audio-visual content, link to stories in all the other "handheld accessories," and somehow interest young folk in a "handheld accessory" that doesn't have an "i" in front of its name.

All for free.

(Crickets.)

Alrighty, mates! Let's get cracking on the next advert in the campaign, wot?

A bitter harvest of hunger

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As we emerge from our Thanksgiving food comas and start thinking about throwing away the leftover leftovers. . . .