Asterisks on a balance sheet

This is the newspaper I grew up with.

The State-Times was the afternoon paper in Baton Rouge. I worked there once upon a time, on the copy desk. Before that, I got my byline in there a few times as an "LSU student writer" and a freelancer.

In 1991, the State-Times died. Newspapers, you see, don't have going out of business sales. They don't close. They die.

Since 2001 -- 10 years after my newspaper died -- there's been a lot more death (carnage, actually) in the newspaper business. Not only have newspapers died, countless thousands of careers have been killed even at the papers that -- technically -- are "survivors" of the bloodbath that is paradigm change.

A story in the MediaDailyNews newsletter notes that, since 2001, the newspaper industry has shed 105,000 jobs -- 9,700 of them in newsrooms across the land.

ENVISION it this way: This is the first job lost at a newspaper nine years ago.

AND THESE ARE all the jobs lost at American newspapers subsequently. One asterisk = one job:

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REMEMBER that each asterisk is a newspaper job -- production, support staff, advertising, circulation and newsroom -- that's gone forever. And that many, many, many of the almost 10,000 "asterisks" who were print journalists never will be that again.

Remember that thousands of these "asterisks" -- likely many tens of thousands of these "asterisks" -- represent lives and families upended by unemployment and the prospect of forever-diminished earnings.

Remember that while something surely will come along to replace newspaper journalism, it won't come in time to help a great number of these "asterisks."

And remember that a lot of things that you need to know will remain unknown to you for a good, long while . . . all because the "asterisks" you counted upon for that knowledge have gone missing.

Atlas shrugged off taking his meds

Sometimes, the collapse of American democracy and the collapse of the radio industry come together in a spasm of malevolent stupidity so fierce that one is tempted to pray for disastrous climate change to hurry up already.

Specifically, 40 feet of snow over Syracuse, N.Y. Enough to topple the towers of WFBL radio and muffle any stray sound trying to escape from the AM station -- particularly any sound coming from their "patriot" talk-show host, Jon Alvarez.

A STORY from Saturday's Syracuse Post-Standard explains:

Hours after a pilot’s suicide plane crash into a federal building in Austin, Texas, local talk-radio host Jon Alvarez created a tribute Internet page for the dead pilot.

In less than a day, Facebook, the social networking Web site where Alvarez created the page, took it down and issued him a warning: He could lose Facebook privileges if he violated its policy again.

“The Joe ‘Take my pound of flesh’ Stack fan page” included the killer’s manifesto, which is an angry rant against big government, big business and the Catholic Church. It quickly drew about 40 fans, Alvarez said. He didn’t check it again until Friday morning, when he discovered the page had been shut down.

“This guy was making a sacrifice to others who were having problems with the IRS,” Alvarez said. “We at least owed it to him to make note of his thoughts.”

BUT WAIT . . . you only think Alvarez has hit bottom. Oh, no. He has depths he can plumb, even by the low standards of American broadcasting's ongoing collapse.

"They just want to label him a loon,” he said. “I’m surprised more people haven’t done something like this. There’s a lot of frustration out there. I think this is just the tip of the iceberg.”

WELL, NO, he pretty much hit bottom right off the (moon)bat. As have large swaths of the American political right, starting with the "tea party" movement.

Today's weather

I don't like tonight's and tomorrow's forecast for Omaha -- too snowy.

An old friend found this forecast for Toledo on YouTube, so I think I'll go with it instead. Much funnier.

3 Chords & the Truth: Blues and grace

This week on the Big Show:

can be quite

and even give us reason to be But through it all -- if we look -- we just might discover

That, in a musical sense, is some of what we cover this week on 3 Chords & the Truth.

Well, that and some good ol' rockabilly (and fusion-y prog rock, too).

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

The first tweetcom?

Well, if those f***ers want to piss away their money on a show about the s*** I say, just call me the W.C.

I dunno, that just sounds like the kind of s*** Justin Halpern's dad might say about the sitcom pilot based on Halpern's insanely popular Twitter feed and Facebook page, S*** My Dad Says. They've cast William Shatner -- brilliant! -- as Dad in what must be the first television show to emerge out of Twitter.

ANYWAY, The Hollywood Reporter has the straight sh . . . uh . . . scoop on the upcoming tweetcom:

Twitter sensation S*** My Dad Says is becoming a TV pilot with William Shatner set to play the larger-than-life dad at the center of it.

The casting of Shatner lifts the contingency on CBS' multicamera family comedy project based on the Twitter account, which has enlisted more than 1.16 million followers since launching in August and has made its creator, Justin Halpern, an Internet star.

The pilot, executive produced by "Will & Grace" creators David Kohan and Max Mutchnick, was originally set up at CBS with a script commitment in November. Now, with Shatner on board, it has been greenlighted to pilot.

Halpern co-penned the script with Patrick Schumacker. Halpern and Schumacker co-exec produce the Warner Bros. TV-produced project whose title is expected to change if it goes to series.

Halpern, 29, had moved back in with his parents in San Diego, and on Aug. 3 he launched S*** My Dad Says, a Twitter feed featuring colorful -- often profane -- comments made by his 73-year-old father during their daily conversations.

SPECULATION IS that the suits will change the name of the show to something more TV friendly. The adolescent in me, though, hopes they don't.

Think of the potential marketing campaign and ads -- "Hey! Watch this S***!"

Maybe "We're talking S***. Fridays @ 9."

The Focus on the Family protests would be worth their weight in ratings gold. Am I a bad person for being able to see the marketing possibilities in this?

I don't feel particularly guilty about it, being that -- in my opinion, at least -- it would be several cultural steps up from, say, Gossip Girl.

I find this stuff so you don't have to

A Tea Party Airlines flight made a scheduled stop in Austin, Texas, today, destroying offices of the Internal Revenue Service.

It was a one-way trip. The pilot, disgruntled software engineer Joe Stack, punched his own ticket, according to The New York Times:

The authorities identified the pilot as Joseph A. Stack III, 53, and said his body had not yet been recovered from the building. The other person who was still unaccounted for was described by officials as a federal employee. A long, angry note posted on the Internet, on a Web site registered to Mr. Stack and signed “Joe Stack,” appeared to have been written by the pilot, though authorities had not confirmed the connection. By midafternoon, the company that hosted the site had taken the note down, saying it was acting at the request of the F.B.I.

The note related a long history of financial difficulties and frustrations with the nation’s tax and health care systems and with setbacks like the sharp decline of defense-related employment in southern California in the 1990s and the disruption of air travel after the Sept. 11 terror attacks in 2001. It ended with passages strongly suggesting that its author expected to die on Thursday, including a reference to Feb. 18, 2010, as his date of death.

“I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different,” the note concluded. “I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.”

The F.B.I., which set up a command post near the scene of the crash, has a small satellite office — part of the bureau’s San Antonio field office — in a different part of the office complex where the crash took place.

Bill Carter, an F.B.I. spokesman, said the criminal inquiry was in its early stages. “It’s a fluid situation that’s under investigation,” he said, which was echoed in a statement by Texas Gov. Perry. “There are a lot of indications but nothing definitive yet.”

As for Mr. Stack’s apparent suicide note, Mr. Carter said, “That’s being looked at by our San Antonio office, if that is a real note by this individual.”

OK, PERHAPS I'M being unfair with the Tea Party Airlines crack, though it's tough to pass up a line like that about such a confederacy of paranoid and angry dunces.

But on the other hand, while not all of Stack's rantings in his manifesto of a suicide note match up with what we take to be the "tea party position" (as amorphous a concept as that might be), enough of it sounded familiar enough to make an instant connection.

From Stack's website . . . before the Federal Bureau of Investigation ordered it taken down:

We are all taught as children that without laws there would be no society, only anarchy. Sadly, starting at early ages we in this country have been brainwashed to believe that, in return for our dedication and service, our government stands for justice for all. We are further brainwashed to believe that there is freedom in this place, and that we should be ready to lay our lives down for the noble principals represented by its founding fathers. Remember? One of these was “no taxation without representation”. I have spent the total years of my adulthood unlearning that crap from only a few years of my childhood. These days anyone who really stands up for that principal is promptly labeled a “crackpot”, traitor and worse.

While very few working people would say they haven’t had their fair share of taxes (as can I), in my lifetime I can say with a great degree of certainty that there has never been a politician cast a vote on any matter with the likes of me or my interests in mind. Nor, for that matter, are they the least bit interested in me or anything I have to say.

Why is it that a handful of thugs and plunderers can commit unthinkable atrocities (and in the case of the GM executives, for scores of years) and when it’s time for their gravy train to crash under the weight of their gluttony and overwhelming stupidity, the force of the full federal government has no difficulty coming to their aid within days if not hours? Yet at the same time, the joke we call the American medical system, including the drug and insurance companies, are murdering tens of thousands of people a year and stealing from the corpses and victims they cripple, and this country’s leaders don’t see this as important as bailing out a few of their vile, rich cronies. Yet, the political “representatives” (thieves, liars, and self-serving scumbags is far more accurate) have endless time to sit around for year after year and debate the state of the “terrible health care problem”. It’s clear they see no crisis as long as the dead people don’t get in the way of their corporate profits rolling in.

(snip)

I know I’m hardly the first one to decide I have had all I can stand. It has always been a myth that people have stopped dying for their freedom in this country, and it isn’t limited to the blacks, and poor immigrants. I know there have been countless before me and there are sure to be as many after. But I also know that by not adding my body to the count, I insure nothing will change. I choose to not keep looking over my shoulder at “big brother” while he strips my carcass, I choose not to ignore what is going on all around me, I choose not to pretend that business as usual won’t continue; I have just had enough.

I can only hope that the numbers quickly get too big to be white washed and ignored that the American zombies wake up and revolt; it will take nothing less. I would only hope that by striking a nerve that stimulates the inevitable double standard, knee-jerk government reaction that results in more stupid draconian restrictions people wake up and begin to see the pompous political thugs and their mindless minions for what they are. Sadly, though I spent my entire life trying to believe it wasn’t so, but violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer. The cruel joke is that the really big chunks of s*** at the top have known this all along and have been laughing, at and using this awareness against, fools like me all along.

I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different. I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.

THERE'S ENOUGH in Joe "Blow Your" Stack's dispatch from around the bend to have the "progressives" and the "patriots" arguing forever over who gets to claim him. Me, I lean toward the teabaggers because of one important thing.

They're the ones combining some nasty demagoguery with barely cloaked insurrectionist rhetoric. They're the ones trying to tell you that you're living under tyranny, and that President Obama is Joe Stalin in blackface.

They're the ones -- too many of them, at least -- getting into bed with the "patriot" movement as the far-right "militias" lurk in the shadows.

They're the ones painting any government big enough to deal with a 21st-century nation of 300 million as big enough to be an inherently wicked proposition.

They're the ones with the "Don't Tread on Me" flags from the American Revolution. They're the ones talking about a "new revolution." They're the ones prattling on about "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

Yes, Thomas Jefferson was the first to say that -- in 1787. His slave and mistress, Sally Hemings, didn't know nothin' 'bout no tree of liberty, however -- she was the personal property of Mr. Freedom.

I'M JUST FINE with heaping blame on the tea-party crowd because they've not been particularly particular about the sort of nuts with whom they jump in bed. I mean, what's one more, right?

Maybe I'd feel differently if they were more uncomfortable with the loons. Or if they didn't think their being mad as hell was the basis for anything other than being mad as hell.

Or maybe it was just those "THANK YOU GLENN BECK" signs when they were marching on Washington. Then again, it could have been all those instances of teabaggers trying to see how close they could get to Barack Obama while carrying firearms.

Whatever.

It remains that the tea-party movement once again has mainstreamed the idea of open insurrection against the United States' constitutionally mandated government, and thus has given a homicidal fruitcake like Joe Stack reason to believe his kamikaze mission would somehow be ennobled.

The lunatic is in their heads. And now American blood is on their hands.

Mortification

Chicken-and-andouille gumbo. Good stuff.

Can't have it today. No meat, fasting.

Die to yourself, you gravy-sucking pig, the church tells us this Ash Wednesday. Or, put more artfully as we receive ashes on our foreheads today, "Remember, O man, that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

And hold the gumbo.

See no future, pay no rent. . . .

Well, if this isn't a sign of the times, I don't know what is.

EMI is selling the Abbey Road studios, which it established in 1929 and which the Beatles made famous in the 1960s. From the Financial Times:

It was not immediately clear whether EMI would sell the Abbey Road brand name along with the property, but one media lawyer said: “The brand is worth more than the building . . . anybody who wants the studios will want the brand.”

EMI bought the house at number 3 Abbey Road for £100,000 in 1929 and transformed it into the world’s first custom-built recording studios.

In 1931, Sir Edward Elgar used studio one to record Land of Hope and Glory with the London Symphony Orchestra and by World War II Abbey Road was used for propaganda recordings for the British government and BBC radio broadcasts.

The Beatles put the studios on the map, using it for 90 per cent of their recordings between 1962 and 1969 and naming their final album Abbey Road. EMI used the studios for last year’s release of remastered Beatles albums.

Pink Floyd recorded Dark Side of the Moon at the studios, which have also been used by Radiohead, the Manic Street Preachers, Travis and Blur.

However, the studios have faced cheaper competition from recording facilities in other countries, and technological advances allowing artists to record using only a laptop computer have made it harder for labels to justify owning expensive recording infrastructure.

“What you have is a very, very expensive piece of heritage. If an artist goes to a label and asks to record at Abbey Road they will be met with maniacal laughter,” the media lawyer said.

MAYBE Paul McCartney saw the future coming. Or maybe all media is now run as if by shady rock 'n' roll managers:

Out of college, money spent
See no future, pay no rent
All the money's gone, nowhere to go
Any jobber got the sack
Monday morning, turning back
Yellow lorry slow, nowhere to go
But oh, that magic feeling, nowhere to go
Oh, that magic feeling
Nowhere to go
Nowhere to go

Give me liberty or give me . . . Thorazine!

What scares me about Tea Partiers isn't that they're pissed about what's become of their country -- hell, I'm pissed too (though for somewhat different reasons).

What scares me about Tea Partiers is that they're akin to unguided nuclear missiles -- God only knows who, what or where will be consumed by the fireball. This is not a "smart bomb."

WHAT ALSO scares me is that the last time the country was in this kind of turmoil, all we had to worry about were the Hippies, the Yippies, the Weathermen and the Black Panthers. This go around, I fear there are a lot more nuts like those described in this New York Times article than we had Hippies, Yippies, Weathermen and Black Panthers combined the last go 'round:

The ebbs and flows of the Tea Party ferment are hardly uniform. It is an amorphous, factionalized uprising with no clear leadership and no centralized structure. Not everyone flocking to the Tea Party movement is worried about dictatorship. Some have a basic aversion to big government, or Mr. Obama, or progressives in general. What’s more, some Tea Party groups are essentially appendages of the local Republican Party.

But most are not. They are frequently led by political neophytes who prize independence and tell strikingly similar stories of having been awakened by the recession. Their families upended by lost jobs, foreclosed homes and depleted retirement funds, they said they wanted to know why it happened and whom to blame.
That is often the point when Tea Party supporters say they began listening to Glenn Beck. With his guidance, they explored the Federalist Papers, exposés on the Federal Reserve, the work of Ayn Rand and George Orwell. Some went to constitutional seminars. Online, they discovered radical critiques of Washington on Web sites like ResistNet.com (“Home of the Patriotic Resistance”) and Infowars.com (“Because there is a war on for your mind.”).

Many describe emerging from their research as if reborn to a new reality. Some have gone so far as to stock up on ammunition, gold and survival food in anticipation of the worst. For others, though, transformation seems to amount to trying on a new ideological outfit — embracing the rhetoric and buying the books.

Tea Party leaders say they know their complaints about shredded constitutional principles and excessive spending ring hollow to some, given their relative passivity through the Bush years. In some ways, though, their main answer — strict adherence to the Constitution — would comfort every card-carrying A.C.L.U. member.

But their vision of the federal government is frequently at odds with the one that both parties have constructed. Tea Party gatherings are full of people who say they would do away with the Federal Reserve, the federal income tax and countless agencies, not to mention bailouts and stimulus packages. Nor is it unusual to hear calls to eliminate Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. A remarkable number say this despite having recently lost jobs or health coverage. Some of the prescriptions they are debating — secession, tax boycotts, states “nullifying” federal laws, forming citizen militias — are outside the mainstream, too.

At a recent meeting of the Sandpoint Tea Party, Mrs. Stout presided with brisk efficiency until a member interrupted with urgent news. Because of the stimulus bill, he insisted, private medical records were being shipped to federal bureaucrats. A woman said her doctor had told her the same thing. There were gasps of rage. Everyone already viewed health reform as a ruse to control their medical choices and drive them into the grip of insurance conglomerates. Debate erupted. Could state medical authorities intervene? Should they call Congress?

As the meeting ended, Carolyn L. Whaley, 76, held up her copy of the Constitution. She carries it everywhere, she explained, and she was prepared to lay down her life to protect it from the likes of Mr. Obama.

“I would not hesitate,” she said, perfectly calm.

TWO THINGS: First off, you know Glenn Beck's 9/12 Project? I'm betting what it really refers to is the size of the padded cell waiting for Beck.

This is the de facto leader of these folks.

Secondly, the trouble with basing one's "revolution" in part on the collected works of Ayn Rand is that every Randian fancies himself the real-life Howard Roark or John Galt. Unfortunately, all those übermen in waiting from sea to shining sea really are a lot more like Peter Keating.

Only dumber and less presentable.

And these delusional souls would be among the first to be eaten alive by the Darwinist social order they so desperately seek to build amid the hoped-for ruins of President Obama's "socialist order."

These self-styled "patriots" would have us think what they're up to is a new American Revolution against the forces of "tyranny." Evidence, however, would suggest something more akin to the French one.

And a lunatic Robespierre shall be their guiding light -- weekdays at 4 on the Fox News Channel.

Never trust any Conor over 30

Conor Oberst, the angst-stricken Omaha indie icon of Bright Eyes fame, turned 30 today.

And, alas, the world still sucks. Only harder, because now he no longer can trust his over-30 bourgeois, establishment self.

LOOK AT IT this way, the teen age wunderkind of 1993, the one selling cassette albums of his youthful songs of teen-age angst and helping to birth the Omaha indie scene. . . . Well, that was more than half a lifetime ago, now, wasn't it?

Now the music world ponders the question it dare not openly ask. Namely, what will Conor Oberst write about now as he hurtles toward middle age?

I have my spies, and they tell me what follows is a rough draft of Conor's latest anthem for life past Bright Eyes.

A life on the backside of 30:

The world has sucked . . . since 1980
The world has sucked . . . since 1980
Some say it sucked before then, but I don't care
I don't care it sucked; I wasn't around then
I wasn't around then
I wasn't around then
I wasn't around then

But I got here . . . in 1980
In 1980
In 1980
And I have suffered from all the suckage, since 1980
Since 1980
Since 1980

And you joined me here . . . in 1982
In 1982
In 1982
And you have done nothing to stop the sucking
To stop the sucking
To stop the sucking

And the world has taken to conspire against us
It takes aim at us
It tries to destroy us
And I greet the despair with a fifth of Old Crow
With a fifth of Old Crow
I'll give you some, and you'll give me some
And we'll get us some to fight this suckage
To fight this suckage
Oh f*** this suckage

And I feel the burning inside my esophagus
The liquor burns hot inside my esophagus
I can't rhyme esophagus
I can't rhyme esophagus
The liquor warms me
The liquor warms me
The liquor warms me

But I'm still 30; I cannot trust me
Not this old me
Not this bourgeois me
And you're here with me; you're only 28
You cannot trust me
You cannot trust me
You cannot trust me

The Old Crow has reached the depths of my stomach
It makes a glow there
I'm getting drunk there
Because the world sucks here
My life is despair here
I am still 30
And you can't trust me
And you still can't. . . .

3 Chords & the Truth: Party in New Orleans

Oh my Gawd, dawl!

What's dey to say about dis week's 3 Cawds & da Troot?

Of cahws, udda dan dat da Saints won da Supah Bowl, Mahdi Gras is almoss heah, an we gonna pawty hawdy, baby.

Translation for those of you hailing from somewhere above the 30th parallel, and east or west of the 90th meridian:

Goodness, friend! What is there to say about this week's episode of 3 Chords & the Truth?

Of course, other than that the Saints won the Super Bowl, Mardi Gras is upon us . . . and we're going to party hearty on the Big Show -- it's a New Orleans-flavored edition of 3 Chords & the Truth this week!

AND IT rocks. Hard.

That's about all there is to say, frankly. Of course, other than that if you're not boogying your way through the whole 90 minutes, you may want to schedule a visit with your health-care provider.

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

And . . . "WHO DAT!?!"