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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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 articlein 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."
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.
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.
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.
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 storyfrom 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.
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.
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?
Something tells me this has become a Revolution 21 Thanksgiving tradition -- reveling once more in the sublimity that is the "Turkeys Away" episode of "WKRP in Cincinnati."
The show -- about the wacky characters and zany antics at a dysfunctional Top-40 station -- was a wonderful comedy that was wonderful because it was rooted just enough in reality. Back in the '70s and early '80s, we loved 'KRP because it was the Island of Misfit Toys with a microphone and transmitter.
I THINK it useful to reflect on "WKRP in Cincinnati" in light of where radio finds itself 30 years on. Let's ask just one question -- if there were a WKRP and it still was around for Thanksgiving 2009, what would we say about it?
Well, I think in most markets, we'd say it was the best station in town. We give thanks for many things this day, but that's not one of them.
Here's hoping your turkey wasn't one that hit the pavement like a bag of wet cement. Happy Thanksgiving.
It occurs to me that if Christian churches -- and I point big-time at my own -- believed as much in Jesus as even the Muslims believe in Jesus and were as open about that fact, we just might get somewhere in this country.
I mean, what if the Catholic Archdiocese of Omaha put as much energy into flooding the 'hood with some of that ol' time religion as it does into promoting the annual appeal? Is what I'm saying.
(Yes, of course the Catholics have lots of ministries and Catholic Charities, etc., and so on, but it's hardly "flooding the zone." What about the big high-profile push . . . like the annual appeal?)
So here we have a little story from my hometown about yet another "Stop the Violence" rally trying to convince people with nothing to live for to stop dying for nothing, too.
AND INThe Advocate's dispatch from Baton Rouge, there's this toward the end:
Children from Muhammad University of Islam on Plank Road visited the rally to share messages of faith and peace.
“Our religion teaches us that we should always be for each other because we are family,” said Tynetta Muhammad, 13.
Leslie X, of the Nation of Islam, said the solution to violence is simple: “Jesus told his apostles to love ye one another as I have loved you. If we do that, we will see our condition around us turn around.”
BUT CHRISTIANS by and large don't put stock in Jesus beyond Him being a celestial sugar daddy, and the Muslims are outnumbered, so we have the need for all these "Stop the Violence" rallies. Because in America today, you either have status and stuff or you have squat.
Signaling he's decided on new troop levels for the Afghanistan war, President Barack Obama said Tuesday he intends to "finish the job" on his watch and destroy terrorist networks in the region.
The president said he would reveal his decision on how many additional soldiers to deploy to Afghanistan after Thanksgiving. The White House is aiming for an announcement by Obama either Tuesday or Wednesday in a national address. Congressional hearings will quickly follow.
Military officials and others have been expecting Obama to settle on a middle-ground option that would deploy an eventual 32,000 to 35,000 U.S. forces to the 8-year-old conflict. That rough figure has stood as the most likely option since before Obama's war council meeting earlier this month when he tasked military planners with rearranging the timing and makeup of some of the deployments. That led to Monday night's final gathering.
With the war worsening on Obama's watch, U.S. combat deaths climbing and public support dropping, the president seemed aware he has a lot to explain to the public.
"I feel very confident that when the American people hear a clear rationale for what we're doing there and how we intend to achieve our goals, that they will be supportive," he said, speaking at a White House news conference with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
"It is my intention to finish the job," he said of the war in Afghanistan that has been going on since shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.
Obama held his 10th and final war council meeting Monday night. In response to a question about his upcoming announcement, he sketched out the areas - but not the specifics - of what he will talk about after Thanksgiving.
THEN, there's this -- the latest edition of Bill Moyers Journal. Here's Moyers' introduction:
Our country wonders this weekend what is on President Obama's mind. He is apparently, about to bring months of deliberation to a close and answer General Stanley McChrystal's request for more troops in Afghanistan. When he finally announces how many, why, and at what cost, he will most likely have defined his presidency, for the consequences will be far-reaching and unpredictable. As I read and listen and wait with all of you for answers, I have been thinking about the mind of another president, Lyndon B. Johnson.
I was 30 years old, a White House Assistant, working on politics and domestic policy. I watched and listened as LBJ made his fateful decisions about Vietnam. He had been thrust into office by the murder of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963-- 46 years ago this weekend. And within hours of taking the oath of office was told that the situation in South Vietnam was far worse than he knew.
Less than four weeks before Kennedy's death, the South Vietnamese president had himself been assassinated in a coup by his generals, a coup the Kennedy Administration had encouraged.
South Vietnam was in chaos, and even as President Johnson tried to calm our own grieving country, in those first weeks in office, he received one briefing after another about the deteriorating situation in Southeast Asia.
Lyndon Johnson secretly recorded many of the phone calls and conversations he had in the White House. In this broadcast, you're going to hear excerpts that reveal how he wrestled over what to do in Vietnam. There are hours of tapes and the audio quality is not the best, but I've chosen a few to give you an insight into the mind of one president facing the choice of whether or not to send more and more American soldiers to fight in a far-away and strange place.
Granted, Barack Obama is not Lyndon Johnson, Afghanistan is not Vietnam and this is now, not then. But listen and you will hear echoes and refrains that resonate today.
NO, OBAMA isn't LBJ, and Afghanistan isn't Vietnam, but I watched Moyers' broadcast -- I highly recommend you watch the whole thing, either above or on the PBS web site-- and those "echoes and refrains" do not only "resonate" today, they are absolutely eerie.
Afghanistan is every bit the mess today that South Vietnam was in 1964, with the added complication that the Afghans have been forever ungovernable.
The French empire, in tatters after World War II, was finished off in Vietnam and Algeria. The Soviet empire died, in large part, in Afghanistan. And if Barack Obama -- who has debunked any hope Americans had in him as a transformative leader -- either cannot or will not learn the lessons of history, the American empire will be finished off in the Middle East, and maybe America with it.
President Johnson led a country with a strong economy and a manageable deficit. All Vietnam cost him was the Great Society . . . and 58,000 American lives sacrificed for absolutely no damn good reason.
President Obama leads a country brought to its economic knees, with no hope of standing tall anytime soon. All Afghanistan might cost him is everything . . . and God only knows how many American lives sacrificed for absolutely no damn good reason. THERE IS the mission of killing as many al Qaida as possible, which is doable. That was the original reason for going into Afghanistan -- not getting ourselves caught up in the sequel to Brezhnev's Folly.
Capturing and holding the entirety of Afghanistan is not doable. Neither is creating a relatively honest, Western-style democratic government there, nor is turning 12th century peasants into postmodern, pro-Western sophisticates capable of supporting a relatively honest, Western-style democratic government.
Hubris has been the death of many an empire whose time has past. We are a hubristic people.
If any son of the South is honest with himself -- any white son of the South, that is -- sooner or later, he comes up hard against the truth of his "Southern heritage."
Namely, that all the popularly defined aspects of "Southern pride" are nothing to be proud of. For Southerners -- particularly we of a certain age -- this conclusion generally is reached, if it is ever reached at all, after a lifetime of equivocation, denial and trying to reconcile the irreconcilable.
There indeed is a bottom line, and it is this: The antebellum South, and all of the supposed "gentility" that surrounded this eternal Tara of our mind's eye, was built on the backs -- and at the cost of the freedom, dignity and lives -- of millions of African slaves.
It came at the cost of everything by which Americans self-define, and only after twisting the white man's soul into accepting good as evil and evil as good.
THERE WAS no noble cause. There was no honor in defeat. Our ancestors fought -- and died -- for a damnable lie, and the flag they rallied around just as well could have sported a big "666."
Lincoln was right; Jeff Davis was a traitor, and Sherman did what he had to do. The Lost Cause was damn well lost, because a people had damn well lost their minds . . . and perhaps their souls.
These things are all quite obvious. The white Southerner is able to state the obvious only after his own personal Antietam -- for enculturation and "tradition" will put up a hell of a fight -- and among the dead must be one's "pride" over a "heritage" that well earned its place on history's ash heap.
IT'S EASIER to pretend there's something much more noble about your great-great-grandpa fighting "the Yankees" in the Confederacy's "Lost Cause" than there is about Heinz's father fighting the Allies in Adolf Hitler's.
That your forefathers' "bravery" was braver than that of the Serb militiaman who fought to rid Bosnia of Muslims and Catholics.
At least in Germany, nobody has built an entire tourist industry on sepia-toned nostalgia for "the good ol' days" of the Third Reich, and it didn't take 144 years before University of Munich students were forced to quit chanting "Heil Hitler" after the marching band's rousing rendition of "Deutschland über alles."
Not so at the University of Mississippi.
At Ole Miss, students and football fans are determined to prove the truth of native son William Faulkner's observation that "The past is never dead. It's not even past." And at today's football game against LSU, as reported by the Memphis Commercial Appeal, they're even going to get some help from the Ku Klux Klan:
The Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan plan a rally before Saturday's LSU-Ole Miss football game to protest Chancellor Dan Jones' decision to bar the school band from playing "From Dixie with Love," a medley that some fans finish by shouting, "The South shall rise again."
Jones ordered the band on Nov. 17 to stop playing the medley that blends "Dixie," the Confederate Army's fight song, with the Union Army's "Battle Hymn of the Republic."
The band has played the song during Ole Miss football games for about 20 years.
Jones said the chant supports "those outside our community who would advocate a revival of segregation."
Jones' decision has stirred up the Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which plans a 10 a.m. rally in front of the Fulton Chapel before the 2:30 p.m. start of the game.
"This is not a white or black issue at all. It's freedom of speech. They've got a right to say what they want at the game," said Shane Tate of Tupelo, the KKK's North Mississippi great titan.
Tate said his group, part of the Southern Alliance of Klans, which claims more than 7,000 members, plans a short, peaceful demonstration.
"I'm just going to bring a few guys, show up and get our message across and then leave," he said.
Tate said he expects between 20 and 100 Klan members to participate.
He said his group does not allow Nazis or Skinheads, who are considered more violent segregationists than the modern-day KKK.
"We're Christians," he said.
In a press release announcing the rally, the organization said Jones' decision was an "attack on our Southern heritage and culture."
YEAH, JUST LIKE the Nuremberg trialswere an attack on German heritage and culture . . . that is, if the Nazi regime and its "lost cause" were the only parts of German heritage and culture anyone cared about.
At today's football game, LSU doesn't need to bring the Fighting Tigers, it instead needs to bring the reincarnation of its founding superintendent . . . William Tecumseh Sherman.
Of course, that would be a mighty tall order for a university that -- 148 years after Sherman resigned to lead a Yankee army and march across Georgia -- still can't bring itself to name a building for its founder.
You didn't think I'd allude to "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night" in the previous post and not throw the original John Lennon promotional video up here, do you?
Whatever gets you through the night (or the day) is all right . . . is all right.
Lots of the time, it's coffee. Coffee made with love, patience and an old, old pot -- because it's better that way.
OTHER TIMES, it's the blues.
This week on3 Chords & the Truth, however, we're putting together the blues with a little black coffee and seeing where it gets us. No doubt, somewhere that's all right . . . is all right.
Of course, there's lots of other tasty stuff on the Big Showthis go around as well, so you'd just as well stick around and give it a listen. You just might have your horizons expanded amid the musical fun.
Well, that's about all for now. Go grab yourself a hot cup of joe and meet me back here at the Internet connection.
This bleepfest of a political ad is said to concern next February's New Orleans mayoral election, but I say why waste something this insane (and illustrative) on just Louisiana's largest city?
After all, there's a whole state out there begging the question "Are you s****ing me?"
OF COURSE, you have the never-ending follies in New Orleans, which have seen Mayor Ray Nagin perfect the concept of absurdity as performance art. But the city's mayoral wannabes are off to a good start, as documented Wednesday by the The Times-Picayune:
Stepping to the plate Wednesday during the first meeting of all seven announced candidates for New Orleans mayor, four participants swung and missed on the very first question.
The faux pas unfolded as each candidate was asked to take a position on the Youth Study Center, the city-run juvenile detention site in Gentilly at which former inmates have alleged in a federal lawsuit they suffered inhumane treatment. The issue fit the youth-centered focus of the forum, which was sponsored by the nonprofit Afterschool Partnership.
First up was businessman Troy Henry, who apparently confused the "study center" reference with the generic notion of providing a safe place for kids to go after class. He said he favored the center but hoped it would be used "in collaboration with all the revised library systems that are also being built."
The next three candidates -- grocery distributor John Georges, insurance executive Leslie Jacobs and state Sen. Ed Murray  -- followed Henry's lead and also whiffed.
Georges said a new mayor would have to be "creative" in rebuilding ruined public buildings to include study centers, adding "it's also a budgetary issue."
Jacobs pointed out that with a $1.6 billion plan in place to rebuild local schools, "we need to look how to locate each of these youth studies centers inside of our school buildings."
And Murray, whose state Senate district includes the detention facility, said the next mayor should "somehow figure out a way to put (youth study centers) in schools and figure out how to just keep the schools open a little longer and also use library systems across the city" to bolster after-school programs.
By the time he took the microphone, nonprofit executive James Perry was ready to unload on what amounted to a hanging curveball.
"I want to be clear, because I think some folks misunderstood this issue," he said. "The Youth Studies Center is a jail. It is a prison, the subject of some very difficult litigation. Children have been imprisoned for long periods of time with no access to quality eduction [sic] at all."
UP IN BATON ROUGE, meanwhile, folks like to look disapprovingly at the Crescent City and its foibles, shaking their heads as they speak gravely about the "slums a Noo Orluns."
Perhaps they should rethink that. The hometown paper, The Advocate, serves up plenty of ironic food for thought:
A sister of Mayor-President Kip Holden pleaded guilty this afternoon to a bribery-related charge in an ongoing federal probe into the local criminal justice system.
Evelyn J. Holden, who worked in the property records section of the East Baton Rouge Parish Clerk of Court Office, admitted in federal court that she conspired with then-senior Baton Rouge City Court prosecutor Flitcher Bell and others to fix criminal and traffic matters in City Court.
Bell, who resigned last month, already has pleaded guilty in the case.
The government alleged that Holden and others “solicited and obtained cash and other things of value from individuals with criminal and traffic matters pending in (Baton Rouge City Court) with the promise that the charges would be dismissed, reduced, or otherwise ‘fixed’.”
In a factual stipulation read in court, prosecutor Corey Amundson said, “On numerous occasions, (Holden) paid a portion of the cash to Bell in exchange for Bell causing the charges to ‘go away’.”
THIS CASE -- this federal case, one must note, being that local authorities don't "do" corruption prosecutions -- has been going on for a while, though. The mayor's sister is hardly the only Baton Rouge official doing the "perp walk" here.
Three, including Holden, were charged just Thursday. That makes seven in all.
Baton Rougeans historically have had a problem taxing themselves enough to fund a First World infrastructure. Obviously, the city finds it can't afford an American judicial system either and is making do with a cheap Latin American import.
Surf music, Deadheads, tax revolts, valley girls, medicinal marijuana . . . the end of America.
It's the end of America out in California right now. The state is bankrupt. Unemployed former members of the middle class are living in tent cities. Exurbs are becoming ghost towns.
The rich are getting richer, and everybody else is heading for the poorhouse. The American Dream is dying fast . . . and that's one trend that already has come to your town.
WELL, here's another. Higher education as a pursuit limited to those rich enough to pay five figures a year, poor enough to get a Pell grant or smart enough to get a full-ride scholarship -- the University of California system just raised student fees an astronomical 32 percent, reports The Associated Press.
Not surprisingly, this is not going down well among students. All hell has broken loose, in fact, with students facing off against cops in riot gear and UC regents trapped by protesters in a UCLA building.
This, no doubt, is yet another California trend coming to a town near you:
The UC Board of Regents approved a two-phase increase that will boost the average undergraduate fee $2,500 by next fall. That would bring the average annual cost to about $10,300 — a threefold increase in a decade.
After a series of deep cuts in state aid, and with state government facing a nearly $21 billion budget gap over the next year and a half, regents said there was no option to higher fees.
Outside the meeting hall, hundreds of demonstrators chanted, beat drums and hoisted signs opposing the fee increase while UC campus police in face shields and California Highway Patrol officers with beanbag-shooting guns stood watch.
One person was arrested. She was cited for obstructing an officer and released, said Hampton.
There were 14 arrests on Wednesday.
Other protesters on Thursday took over an ethnic studies classroom building at the other end of campus, chaining the doors shut and forcing cancellation of classes. However, they were peaceful and were allowed to remain, Hampton said.
Many students from other campuses flocked to UCLA to join the protests, staying overnight in a campus tent city.
Laura Zavala, 20, a third-year UCLA student, said she may have to get a second job to afford the increase.
“My family can’t support me. I have to pay myself,” she said. “It’s not fair to students, when they are already pinched.”
Ayanna Moody, a second-year prelaw student, said she might have to return to community college next year.
“I worked so hard to be at one of the most prestigious universities. To have to go back, it’s very depressing,” she said.
STOCK UP on the Prozac, kid. The suck has only just begun.
The next time some music snob -- and, at this point, it probably would be an over-50 music snob -- complains that The Monkees were a "manufactured" group, you can shut Le Snob down with a two-word counterargument:
Michael Nesmith.
Here's Nesmith doing his post-Monkees classic "Joanne" live on Austin City Limits. Enjoy.
You can take the girl out of Louisiana, but you can't always take the Louisiana out of the girl.
And, you know, that ain't always a bad thing.
I suppose I need to follow This Week more carefully, because I totally missed this gem of a moment from early October, when veteran ABC and National Public Radio correspondent Cokie Roberts gave a short, blunt and quite reasonable answer to the question "How do you solve a problem like Polanski?"
REALLY, there's a certain rough elegance to prescription written by the daughter of two Louisiana members of Congress -- just take Roman Polanski out and shoot him. While we can argue about state violence and the death penalty -- which I'd just as soon abolish -- it takes a moral midget (of which we have plenty) to equivocate about the gravity of what the acclaimed director did.
He took a 13-year-old girl, plied her with drugs and champagne, then had his way with her. The law calls that rape. Most also would call it pedophilia. And what he has coming would pretty much involve taking him out and shooting him.
And though I would like the state to operate on a plain slightly above "He needed killin'" . . . well, sometimes, it just has to be said.
When a society is free, it is operating in the manner most consistent with the God-given dignity -- and free will -- of its people. If we are not freely virtuous, we are not virtuous at all.
There is, however, one thing more crucial to the functioning of a society than freedom. That would be order. Without order, a society doesn't function at all.
And if a society doesn't function, it's not a society. It's a post-apocalyptic "Mad Max" dystopia.
CONSIDER, THEN, a world not only where a school employee thinks it all right to post vulgar messages on a newspaper's website -- using a work computer, no less -- but a world where the bad guy is the newspaper editor who notified the school. Here's the story, as told by the "offending" editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, director of social media Kurt Greenbaum:
A single vulgar word cost a man his job on Friday.
It all started with Friday’s edition of Talk of the Day, a regular blog on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s website, STLtoday.com. Talk of the Day is exactly that. A conversation around the water-cooler topic of the day. Friday’s edition is often a little lighter. Last week, it was about the strangest things you’ve ever eaten, loosely pegged on a story about deer meat.
By mid-morning, a number of folks had commented about their experiences with Bird’s Nest Soup, octopus, cow brains and rattlesnake. Then, while I was in our 10 a.m. news meeting, someone posted in reply a single word, a vulgar expression for a part of a woman’s anatomy. It was there only a minute before a colleague deleted it.
A few minutes later, the same guy posted the same single-word comment again. I deleted it, but noticed in the WordPress e-mail alert that his comment had come from an IP address at a local school. So I called the school. They were happy to have me forward the e-mail, though I wasn’t sure what they’d be able to do with the meager information it included.
About six hours later, I heard from the school’s headmaster. The school’s IT director took a shine to the challenge. Long story short: Using the time-frame of the comments, our website location and the IP addresses in the WordPress e-mail, he tracked it back to a specific computer. The headmaster confronted the employee, who resigned on the spot.
IN A SANER TIME, there would have been but one thing to say about this man who made it his business to work in the midst of children: They let him quit? No 'You can't quit; you're fired'? No tar? No feathers?
But these are not saner times.
These are times where freedom has given way to license, and "order" is something Adolf Hitler must have rhapsodized over in Mein Kampf. Here are a few comments left on the STLtoday.com post:
I told you Kurt was a “Thought Nazi”
“Hi! Everyone, I’m Kurt and I’m a thought Nazi! I’ll smash down your bosses door and have you thrown out in to the street! Look at me in my smashing new shiny black Nazi jackboots!”
I hope this guy sues Kurt personally and the PD for BIG BUCKS!
Perhaps he suspected it and now he knows for sure who did it!
— Told Ya! 4:03 pm November 16th, 2009
I will add to my original comment and say this: Of all the comments that you guys choose to “narc on,” for lack of a better term, you chose one that was actually kind of funny considering the question he was responding to (this coming from a woman). Vulgar, yes, but nowhere near as offensive as some of the racist stuff I’ve seen of here.
Many newspapers use software where the comments have to be approved before they are posted. The Post obviously feels that the notoriety they enjoy from their “Wild West” posting style is worth more than that software. So either enforce your own rules or don’t, but by gosh, don’t go around playing “thought police” and then brag about it!
— Karen 4:27 pm November 16th, 2009
Heir Greenbaum:
The Furher and I were just discussing your actions. We are very proud of you. You are coming along nicely.
Joseph Goebbels
— Joseph Goebbells 4:39 pm November 16th, 2009
"HEIR" GREENBAUM? Gee, not only is the erstwhile Nazi propaganda minister not very facile mit deutschen, he can't even decide how to spell his own last name. Maybe it's the cyanide.
Or the bullet to the brain.
But could one expect anything any less idiotic from a combox knuckle-dragger who'd throw around Nazi accusations at somebody named GREENBAUM?
I'm tempted to say something now about how I don't know about this Internet thing. That wouldn't be particularly fair -- the Internet and all its accoutrements are nothing more than tools. It takes real, live human asshats to screw them up.
Kurt Greenbaum, within the confines of his own comboxes, has been made out to be the bad guy merely for doing what responsible people do in functioning societies. He helped to knock a vulgar jerk down a peg or three.
It's called a society policing itself -- part of the delicate dance between order and freedom that goes on without end in all functioning democracies.
Most people's consciences tell them -- well, at least they once did -- that you don't go around painting filthy names for women's genitalia on people's houses. Or on bridge abutments. Or on telephone poles.
Or on their websites.
And you certainly don't go around doing it with other people's paintbrushes.
TO THECOMBOX CROWD, Greenbaum was being a censorious censor. To history, the combox crowd may well represent a postmodern-day Weimar era that set the table for the re-establishment of Order -- with a terrible vengeance.
Once upon a time, popular-music radio mattered so much, "pirate" Top-40 stations off the English coast scared a government and provoked a massive official backlash.
Once upon a time, "pirate" disc jockeys were bigger stars than the musicians they put onto the airwaves -- and the youth of a nation fought to keep them on "free radio."
AND ONCE HER MAJESTY'S government -- in 1967 -- finally succeeded in pulling the plug, the staid facade of the British Broadcasting Corp., cracked under the weight of demands that it program for the people, not at the people. Later that year, BBC Radio 1 was born.
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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..JPG)
Here in Omaha, it got up to all of 26 degrees today. Right now, it's 18. Saturday, it might hit 40.
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