Goodbye, Magic City, it's hard to die

It's not surprising that The Birmingham News spiked a column about what the latest round of buyouts will mean for the newspaper -- and its readers.

First off, no one likes to air the family's dirty laundry.

Second, more and more newspapers nowadays have a policy of not reporting teen-age suicides for fear of prompting copycats. And to be sure, these are days when newspapers -- the News is just one amid a legion -- seemingly are being led by adolescents hell-bent on "showing the world" by doing themselves in.

How else to explain an John Q. Editor's decision to, in effect, pull the beater into the garage, close the door and just sit there . . . for almost 30 years. Three decades. More than a generation of knowing what was coming down the pike -- what logically had to come down the pike -- and knowing that if he sat in the car, in the closed garage, for long enough, he and everybody else in the car eventually would leave in a hearse.

Perhaps what's happening to the newspaper industry is just a "cry for help." But to qualify as a cry for help, it seems to me that you can't keep hanging up the phone every time somebody tries to call 911.

Talk about "teen-age stupid."

IN THAT CASE, maybe it's more instructive to show, before the exhaust fumes have finished their deadly work, what will happen to the loved ones. What is happening to the would-be suicide's innocent friends, passed out drunk in the back seat.

Maybe knowledge, in this case, indeed would be power. Maybe someone would check the garage. Maybe the next angst-filled teen would think twice before "showing the world."

That, I think, is what Birmingham News columnist John Archibald was trying to do. Maybe it was a cautionary tale. Maybe it was something more urgent, like a call to 911.

Whatever the case, Editor Tom Scarritt hung up the phone.

I guess the management of the News, like all the rest of the pissed-off newspaper adolescents out there, would rather you find out what happened from the suicide note. In the ink-stained universe, this is known as the final edition, when the suicide gets to tell the world it used to be a contender.

That "we had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun. . . ."

BULLS***. The suicide never hurts just himself. The suicide is going to drive a stake through your heart, too. And you have a right to know.

Here's John Archibald's column . . . before you get to read another suicide note from the mainstream media.

John Archibald: You have a right to know about News buyouts

It’s hard to look at Ginny MacDonald today and not hear the Neville Brothers in my head, singing their version of that old hymn, “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”

Undertaker, undertaker,
Won’t you please drive real slow?
That Miss Crazy, that you carry,
I sure hate to see her go.
I hate to see her go.

Plus, I want to see the bumper snicker on her hearse. What does it say?

Reports of her death have been greatly exacerbated.

No. Ginny Mac — Birmingham News transportation diva and Driver’s Side columnist — is not exactly dead. Not to you, anyway.

But today is her last day as a full-timer in the newsroom. She’ll keep writing a weekly column on Mondays, but no more front page stories from her about bridge collapses, speed traps or trooper madness.

Why do I tell you this? Because you buy the paper, most of you, and you know Ginny. You have a right to know that she, like so many experienced and trusted news gatherers, has taken a company buyout.

Today is a dark day at The News. It marks the last day not only for Ginny, but for health writer Anna Velasco. By May veteran political writer Tom Gordon — with more stored memory than an iPad — will be gone. So will young Erin Stock.

It’s not just a News thing, it’s a news thing. They tell us, in fact, that our readership is good and ad revenue is rebounding. But technology and economics have worn on profitability in all news operations. Ours is no exception.

But it hurts. In all, since buyouts were offered in 2008, The News has lost more than 500 years of reporting experience. Decorated reporter Dave Parks — who pretty much discovered “Gulf War Syndrome” — went. State editor Glenn Stephens, who could pilot a newsroom through a storm with an even keel, is gone. Food writer Jo Ellen O’Hara left us, as did outdoors writer Mike Bolton.

We’ve lost 32 people in the newsroom. Twenty were reporters, the real workhorses.

That may look small next to losses at the Raleigh News and Observer, which has seen its news staff fall from 250 to 115, or the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which cut 93 news staffers in one chunk last year. But it hurts.

If there is good news, it is that The News still has 125 people working to gather the news in Alabama’s largest newsroom.

Still, we mourn the losses to the News family. We mourn the loss to readers, to this community, to the republic.

As legendary editor Gene Roberts told a group of journalists last week in New York, journalism job cuts are more than economic news. They’re a matter of public interest.

“This not just a problem for journalism, this is a problem for democracy,” he said. “What a democratic society does not know, it cannot act upon.”

He is right. You need to know. Think of what you know of your government, and try to separate it from the news. Alabama’s most notable corruptions — Don Siegelman, Guy Hunt, Larry Langford, Jeff Germany, the 2-year college system — all started with reporters on the ground. Issues such as the county’s bond debt and crime in neighborhoods bubble to light in the press.

Those of us left in the newsroom will keep digging. For readers. For the republic. For ourselves, for Ginny and Dave and Anna.

We believe there will always be a need, and a market, for news.

There better be. News, as Roberts put it, is “democracy’s food.”

“If we are going to come up with solutions, then democratic society has to understand that there is a problem,” he said.

It’s not just our problem.

What dogs do

This is Molly and Scout. Mrs. Favog and I are their pets.

This is what they do as they wait for us to do their bidding on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

No place to go, nothing to do

From Facebook:

I live in North Platte Noww. Im only 13 and its boring there is nothing to do.. Whats up with all the drugs people say we do.. Yeah we do hang out at the park but so does everyone else. Its a community we know each other its not a big exciting city, but its a great town to live. We have fun in our own ways. You make friends that you will probably have for a lifetime. I love North Platte.

Kid, everybody thinks the grass is greener somewhere else, but usually it's not.

In Omaha, which is about 20 times the size of North Platte, kids hang out at the park, or at the mall, or in the Old Market and complain that Omaha is boring and there's nothing to do.

You're right, North Platte is a great place. When I lived there nearly 30 years ago, I grew to love the place. I met people who are friends to this day.

Most importantly, I met my wife.

BASICALLY, North Platte took a kid from the Deep South seeing how far away from home he could land a job, and it turned him into a Nebraskan.

For that, I will be forever grateful.

But here's the beauty of a small city like North Platte -- it's big enough to offer opportunities but small enough for a 13-year-old and her friends to make a real difference and accomplish great things.

For example, it's small enough for you and your friends, and maybe your parents, too, to find an underused property -- or maybe an old, rundown building the city would like to tear down or fix up -- and offer your free labor and enthusiasm to fix it up for, say, a youth center. Which would give kids something to do.

Or maybe you could start your own low-power radio station. Or your own North Platte youth-oriented website. Or organize summer showcases for local bands.

Or maybe kids could all get together to volunteer helping the poor or the homeless.

Or maybe you could just ask the Union Pacific whether you could have a paper-airplane flying contest atop the Golden Spike monument.

Actually, that sounds like fun. Even to a 49-year-old.

3 Chords & the Truth: Blue Spanish radios

I've been rummaging around in a box of old reel-to-reel tapes again, and I've found another radio classic from Uncle Favog.

And I suppose I have Woodstock -- or at least the soundtrack LP thereof -- to thank for this glimpse into Unk's foray into middle-of-the-road radio disc jockeying.

And it is this glimpse, preserved on Mylar-backed sound recording tape, that comprises this week's episode of the Big Show, otherwise known as 3 Chords & the Truth.

From what I gather from my uncle, who when this aircheck was recorded was going by J. Favog, he got this gig at one of Omaha's AM old-school giants just a week or two beforehand. And that was about a week after he got fired from KOWH-FM, then known as Radio Free Omaha and now known as defunct.

IT MUST have been the first week of May 1970 when Radio Free Omaha got an advance promotional copy of the Woodstock soundtrack album. Uncle Favog had been much into the seminal 1969 music festival at the time, and gave much attention to it on his overnight shows on KOWH-FM.

So one night when he was running a little late for his air shift, he figured he'd throw it on the turntable and let it track through while he gathered his other music for the overnight. In fact, being a big Country Joe and the Fish fan, he figured he'd start with that band's Woodstock set.

Cool. Live version of "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag," preceded by something called The "Fish" Cheer. Must have been "Country" Joe McDonald's humorous commentary on it was raining so much, Max Yasgur's farm was only fit for trout.

Or something.

Uncle Favog never did get to finish that air shift. He was bummed for a while, but got the overnight MOR job by promising to cut his hair and wear a tie to work.

The station didn't have a copy of the Woodstock LP, alas. Where Unk was concerned, that was probably a good thing.

SO LISTEN UP, and listen in, to my old uncle shoehorning his hippie-dippy self into a Frank Sinatra and Jerry Vale world on this vintage recording.

You know, I think "J. Favog" really came to love that gig. He found it counter cultural, in a weird sort of way.

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

Coming this time on 3C&T

Here's a small hint about this week's episode of 3 Chords & the Truth, coming to this site - and to here, too -- in a matter of hours.

OK, here's another hint (at right).

If you're from these parts -- and by that, I mean Omaha -- you're starting to get warm. And maybe you're starting to get nostalgic, too.

But that's the hint. And the other hint.

And it's coming soon to the Big Show.

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

Because breast-cancer patients are un-American

I wonder whether all the tea-party "patriots" worried about "ObamaCare" are much worried about this "death panel"?

Probably not, because WellPoint's death panel is a respectable capitalist death panel, not one of Barack Obama's communistic ones.

I guess Reuters reported the following story because it's based in Great Britain, and the Limeys are "socialists" just drooling all over themselves in anticipation of turning the United States into the simply-red USSA.

And MSNBC picked it up because, well . . . it's MSNBC, which rhymes with "Red TV."

YEAH, THAT'S the ticket:

One after another, shortly after a diagnosis of breast cancer, each of the women learned that her health insurance had been canceled. First there was Yenny Hsu, who lived and worked in Los Angeles. Later, Robin Beaton, a registered nurse from Texas. And then, most recently, there was Patricia Relling, a successful art gallery owner and interior designer from Louisville, Kentucky.

None of the women knew about the others. But besides their similar narratives, they had something else in common: Their health insurance carriers were subsidiaries of WellPoint, which has 33.7 million policyholders — more than any other health insurance company in the United States.

The women all paid their premiums on time. Before they fell ill, none had any problems with their insurance. Initially, they believed their policies had been canceled by mistake.

They had no idea that WellPoint was using a computer algorithm that automatically targeted them and every other policyholder recently diagnosed with breast cancer. The software triggered an immediate fraud investigation, as the company searched for some pretext to drop their policies, according to government regulators and investigators.

Once the women were singled out, they say, the insurer then canceled their policies based on either erroneous or flimsy information. WellPoint declined to comment on the women's specific cases without a signed waiver from them, citing privacy laws.

That tens of thousands of Americans lost their health insurance shortly after being diagnosed with life-threatening, expensive medical conditions has been well documented by law enforcement agencies, state regulators and a congressional committee. Insurance companies have used the practice, known as "rescission," for years. And a congressional committee last year said WellPoint was one of the worst offenders.

But WellPoint also has specifically targeted women with breast cancer for aggressive investigation with the intent to cancel their policies, federal investigators told Reuters. The revelation is especially striking for a company whose CEO and president, Angela Braly, has earned plaudits for how her company improved the medical care and treatment of other policyholders with breast cancer.

The disclosures come to light after a recent investigation by Reuters showed that another health insurance company, Assurant Health, similarly targeted HIV-positive policyholders for rescission. That company was ordered by courts to pay millions of dollars in settlements.

In his push for the health care bill, President Barack Obama said the legislation would end such industry practices. Making the case for reform in a September address to Congress, Obama specifically cited the cancellation of Robin Beaton's health insurance. Aides to the president, who requested they not be identified, told Reuters that no one in the White House knew WellPoint was systematically singling out breast cancer patients like Beaton.

Many critics worry the new law will not lead to an end of these practices. Some state and federal regulators —- as well as investigators, congressional staffers and academic experts — say the health care legislation lacks teeth, at least in terms of enforcement or regulatory powers to either stop or even substantially reduce rescission.

"People have this idea that someone is going to flip a switch and rescission and other bad insurance practices are going to end," says Peter Harbage, a former health care adviser to the Clinton administration. "Insurers will find ways to undermine the protections in the new law, just as they did with the old law. Enforcement is the key."

(snip)

The cancellation of her health insurance in June 2008 forced Robin Beaton to delay cancer surgery by five months. In that time, the tumor in her breast grew from 2 centimeters to 7 centimeters.

Two months before Beaton's policy was dropped, Patricia Relling also was diagnosed with breast cancer. Anthem Blue Cross of Kentucky, a WellPoint subsidiary, paid the bills for a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery.

But the following January, after Relling suffered a life-threatening staph infection requiring two emergency surgeries in three days, Anthem balked and refused to pay more. They soon canceled her insurance entirely.

Unable to afford additional necessary surgeries for nearly 16 months, Relling ended up severely disabled and largely confined to her home. As a result of her crushing medical bills, the once well-to-do businesswoman is now dependent on food stamps.

"It's not like these companies don't like women because they are women," says Jeff Isaacs, the chief assistant Los Angeles City Attorney who runs the office's 300-lawyer criminal division. "But there are two things that really scare them and they are breast cancer and pregnancy. Breast cancer can really be a costly thing for them. Pregnancy is right up there too. Their worst-case scenario is that a child will be born with some disability and they will have to pay for that child's treatment over the course of a lifetime."

I AM SURE these women, in some manner intentionally not reported by the Brit commies -- you have heard that even the Tories on that benighted isle are "Red" Tories, right? -- really had this coming, and that raw, unrestrained capitalism once again has acted in a manner morally superior to any statist policy paradigm.

"Enlightened self-interest," "greed is good" and all that rot, wot?

I like my juleps dark roasted

I am from the South.

This means I will find a way to put fresh mint in everything. Even my Community Coffee.

No bourbon for mint juleps? No problem. Just make your pot of dark roast minty.

Personally, I thought the garnish in the cup was a damn nice touch.

It is always -- repeat, always -- nice to be able to walk out the back door and cut a mess of something to put in something that will make that something taste like something special.

Say good night, Petri

There's a reason, as it turns out, that the dinnerware at the Favog household includes a set of Petri dishes.

And, as it likewise turns out, there's also a reason the crisper drawer in the refrigerator hadn't been closing quite right. This happens to be the same reason my lovely and talented wife told me not to post this.

Ow!

That was Mrs. Favog hitting me in the shoulder just now.

Say good night, Gracie.

Douglas Street

Here's a view through the windshield during a Sunday evening drive down Douglas Street in Omaha.


And, no, I'm not the Google Street View guy.


But I could be someday.


The old and the new of downtown Omaha.


That's all, folks!

No. 2,000

Exactly 2,000 posts ago, on Oct. 8, 2006, your Mighty Favog set out on a new-media adventure.

It began here.

Almost four years ago, I was pretty sure where Revolution 21 -- in both its podcast and blog permutations -- was headed. But life happens, the world keeps turning, and you continually reassess your assumptions and re-evaluate what the hell you think you're doing.

Today, April 19, 2010, I think the basic aim is the same. Revolution 21 is still a gumbo comprised of both the sacred and the secular. And blues in the night.

But I think the focus has changed from trying to force some Catholic-secular-topical-musical mashup into being, then calculatedly foisting it onto a world determined to compartmentalize and segregate everything, dammit, to just being myself and saying screw the consequences. For better or worse, what I am is an undistillable compound of the sacred and the secular, which influence one another and result in . . . this.

Among other things.

And that is the constant, through 59 episodes of the Revolution 21 podcast and 98 (so far) of its successor, 3 Chords & the Truth.

Two-thousand posts. Damn. I wouldn't have figured this thing would last 200 when I started out in 2006.

Go figure.

Well, you kids play nice for a while. I think I'm gonna go celebrate on the grittier side of NoDo at the Happy Bar.

3C&T: The song list!

By popular request, here's the song list for this week's episode of 3 Chords & the Truth.

Funny how disparate things work together, innit? You think there might be a lesson in that, America?

So . . . if you haven't given the Big Show a try yet, maybe now would be a good time.

And remember, the word of the week is "HAMBONE"!

	Song Name	Artist	Year
1	Mushaboom	Feist	2004
2	Lovefool	Cardigans	1996
3	Japanese Art	Theresa Andersson	2008
4	Hold On	Ian Gomm	1979
5	When You Walk in the Room	Jackie De Shannon	1963
6	I'll Never Fall in Love Again	Dionne Warwick	1969
7	Wishin' & Hopin'	Dusty Springfield	1964
8	Gotta Get Up	Nilsson (Harry)	1971
9	Mr. Blue Sky	Electric Light Orchestra	1978
10	Temptation Eyes	The Grass Roots	1970
11	Come and Get It	Badfinger	1970
12	A Day in the Life	Beatles	1967
13	Hambone	Red Saunders & His Orchestra (w/ Dolores Hawkins and The Hambone Kids)	1952
14	Bo Diddley (1955 single)	Bo Diddley	1955
15	Not Fade Away	Buddy Holly	1957
16	(Marie's the Name) His Latest Flame	Elvis Presley	1961
17	She Has Funny Cars	Jefferson Airplane	1967
18	Magic Bus	The Who	1968
19	New York Groove	Ace Frehley	1979
20	Rosanna	Toto	1982
21	Ballad of Medgar Evers	Phil Ochs	1963
22	Morgan the Pirate	Mimi & Richard Fariña	1968
23	Musical Key	Cowboy Junkies	1996
24	Sweeter For Me	Joan Baez	1976
25	Day Is Done	Peter, Paul and Mary	1969

My hit parade

This is our iPod. It has vacuum tubes, and you can't stick it in your pocket.

But it does get nice and warm, and the hot tubes in the guts of the 1956 Zenith hi-fi console smell like the magic dust of a long-lost childhood.

There apparently is something out there called "the slow-media movement." This, in our living room, is the "slow-music movement."

Tonight, Mrs. Favog and I were listening to a stash of 1940s home recordings, from back when home recording meant putting a cutting stylus to a blank transcription disc, then carefully brushing away the shavings as the music made its way out of the radio and into the acetate.

I WONDER whether that long-ago Omaha recording enthusiast imagined -- as he (or she) plucked favored songs out of the ether and hid them away in homemade records -- that someday, someone in Future Omaha would listen to those recordings and, however briefly . . . however tenuously, rend the veil between our worlds.

I wonder whether they could grasp that, amazingly, Your Hit Parade would live on -- that the world the recorder knew in 1944 would again emerge, not from the ether but from a homemade record to touch a future world of atom bombs and television and space stations and a computer in every . . . lap.

DID THEY imagine that the youthful Frank Sinatra -- the star of the show who drove legions of bobby-soxers to squeals of ecstasy more than a decade before Elvis got in on the act -- someday would be the long-dead Chairman of the Board . . . and that those frenzied young girls would be great-grandmas?

Someone in 1944 put a heavy stylus down on an acetate-covered aluminum disc rotating at 33 1/3 revolutions per minute. The stylus cut tiny grooves into the acetate blank. Message met bottle, and that union was cast into the currents of time.

Ah, but I have a time machine. It's a 1956 Zenith.

It's April 2010. It's December 1944. Ol' Blue Eyes is dead; long live Ol' Blue Eyes.

The slow-music movement can zip you across time and space in just the time it takes needle to meet record.

Listen! Sinatra's singing the No. 1 song on Your Hit Parade. Oh my God, you barely can hear "The Trolley Song" through the screams of the bobby-soxers!

L.S./M.F.T! L.S./M.F.T! Lucky Strike means fine tobacco . . . and lung cancer just in time for the Space Age. This is the Columbia Broadcasting System.

Well, 1944, it was good to make your acquaintance. So long . . . for a while.

3 Chords & the Truth: Hambone!

Oh, the sheer amount of rock 'n' roll resting on a Hambone foundation.

As you will hear this week on 3 Chords & the Truth, one day a youngish Bo Diddley heard this. . . .

Hambone, hambone
Have you heard?
Papa’s gonna buy me a mocking bird
And if that mocking bird don’t sing
Papa’s gonna buy me a diamond ring
And if that diamond ring don’t shine
Papa’s gonna take it to the five and dime
Hambone

Hambone, hambone
Where you been?
Round the world and I’m going again

Hambone, hambone
Where’s your wife
Out in the kitchen, cooking rice

AND THEN he stripped down the beat, turned it around, took the rap and made it his own. And a big beat was born.

This week on the Big Show, we're all about the big beat. And believe me, we know Diddley -- at least -- about Hambone.

We also know a little about pop, and pianos, and a fine set of folk music. Trust me, you have to be there -- on the Big Show.

There, we've got your musical number. We've also got puns and clichés aplenty to use as cheesy catchphrases.

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

Pikshures of thee day

Sigh. And when this is a tea party, the only offical lanoguage is "teabonics" -- at least according to the New York Daily News.

PRESS "1" FOR ENGLISH:

Indisputably, these are the pictures of the day, but that doesn't mean the News doesn't have a bunch more just as funny on display for your giggly pleasure. Get thee there now, and let the hilarity commence!

PRESS "2" FOR TEABONICS:

In desputea Indispot Indesputobley, thees our the picsures of the day, but that dos'nt mean the News dos'nt have a bunch more just as funny on dispay for you're giggly pleshure. Get the they're now, and let thee hilary comense!

Right to (Republican) life

The "pro-life movement" this week declared itself, in effect, to be a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party.

Not that this is a shock to anyone, it's just that before the movement dedicated to a political non-solution of a profound moral crisis held fast, at least, to some small sliver of plausible deniability.

AS REPORTED by the Omaha World-Herald today, Nebraska's largest organization of anti-abortion hypocrites (as opposed to pro-lifers) extracted that sliver from its endorsement rolls:

Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson and Republican Gov. Dave Heineman both drew fire this year from abortion foes for positions each took on key bills.

Nelson supported a compromise on the health care overhaul in Congress, angering Nebraska Right to Life.

Heineman opposed a bill to restore prenatal care services for low-income women, angering Nebraska Right to Life.

The anger felt against both anti-abortion politicians, however, has differed in scale.

Heineman on Wednesday received Nebraska Right to Life's endorsement, while Nelson was given its cold shoulder for life. The group announced that he would never be considered for another endorsement.

Nelson is up for re-election in 2012, while Heineman will be on the ballot this November.

The group considered Nelson's support for the health care compromise a graver offense than Heineman's opposition to the prenatal bill, which would have restored government-funded medical care for pregnant, low-income women, including illegal immigrants. Reports of affected women seeking abortions followed the bill's failure.

“We just don't see that as having the same weight as health care reform,” said Denise Ashby, director of Nebraska Right to Life's political action committee. “It doesn't compare in our eyes.”

Heineman and Nelson have long received the group's support. Nelson has voted 19 out of 21 times in line with the group's positions. He fell out of favor when he accepted abortion language in the health overhaul bill different than what was advocated by abortion opponents.

Nelson has long argued that the compromise language in the health care law will not allow federal dollars to fund abortions. Under the law, individuals can use a federal subsidy to purchase insurance plans that cover abortions, but policyholders must pay for the abortion coverage with their own separate check.

BEN NELSON was forever disowned for voting for a bill in which only Republicans, "right to life" political operatives and the Catholic bishops' conference could find any "expansion" of abortion rights or funding. Academics couldn't, and the abortion lobby certainly couldn't (which left its members madder than wet hens).

Meanwhile, Dave Heineman gets an endorsement after single-handedly scuttling prenatal-care funding, which quite literally has driven women to abort their unborn children.

Makes sense to me. But that's only because I realize that the politicized pro-life pretenders years ago had accepted their 30 pieces of silver. Had drunk the conservative Kool-Aid. Had surrendered to the kind of "politically correct" groupthink that burrows into the dessicated souls of those who think that politics precedes culture, then sells themselves to a political pimp daddy.

UNBORN CHILDREN -- indeed, vulnerable human beings of any stripe -- have met their worst enemy. And ironically, it's the "pro-life movement."

Planned Parenthood will only succumb more and more to ridiculousness born of its sheer zealotry for sexualizing children while simultaneously seeking to rid the world of as many of them as possible. Abortionists, left to their own devices, will only expose themselves more and more as cynical death merchants who prey on desperate women.

This kind of absurdity is term limited by its very absurdity. Polls of young Americans are bearing that out. Of course, it is young Americans who have had their ranks culled by a third.

It is only the ridiculousness of groups like Nebraska Right to Life -- resorting to sophistry to polish a political turd like Heineman -- that can discredit an entire moral and philosophical position.

Only "pro-lifers" can give lie to the sanctity of every human life, born and unborn, by demonstrating to the world that "even they don't believe that s***."

Be a Saint

Maybe the Vatican, in dealing with the sex-abuse scandal and its never-ending aftermath, just needs to follow the example of a Saint.

For one thing, unlike the pope, a Saint doesn't need a veteran Vatican watcher to explain to the rest of the press corps, in effect, "Yes, Benedict XVI was addressing the Scandals in this homily. It appears he was being critical of the church and pointing to the need for repentance."

At the Vatican, Christ's injunction in the fifth chapter of Matthew about letting "your 'Yes' mean 'Yes,' and your 'No' mean 'No'," has yet to gain complete traction among those who proclaim it.

IS IT POSSIBLE that, in his own way, a modern-day sinner turned Saint -- as in New Orleans Saints -- might have a better grasp on confession and repentance than many of the pointy hats who've been preaching confession and repentance to fallen humanity since 33 A.D.?

Present-day Saint and former Nebraska Cornhusker sinner Carl Nicks just might. Perhaps they ought to start subscribing to the Omaha World-Herald all across Vatican City:

Carl Nicks returned to Nebraska on Wednesday with a Super Bowl watch, a new tattoo and a humble act of contrition.

Nicks met briefly after practice with head coach Bo Pelini, who banned the offensive lineman from the Huskers’ pro day two years ago. It was an unceremonious parting with the program before New Orleans made Nicks a fifth-round draft pick.

Nicks called the NU football office Wednesday and asked if he could come by — and now plans to stay for the spring game Saturday.

“I figured it was about time to put some water on some of those bridges I burned,” Nicks said.

As soon as the 2007 season ended at Colorado — along with Bill Callahan’s reign as head coach — Nicks stopped going to class, which he counts among the “immature stuff I did.” About three months after Pelini replaced Callahan, he cited an arrest and Nicks being a bad example for returning players in barring him from pro day.

Nicks said it wasn’t until he got to New Orleans and talked with former Husker safety Josh Bullocks that he realized that he was in the wrong.

“For about a good three or four months I had blamed Bo for it and I was blaming other people, and at the end of the day, you’ve got to look in the mirror,” Nicks said. “Once I got a little older, played a little professional ball, I realized how good I had it and just how bad I treated everybody.”

AN ASSOCIATED PRESS story adds this from Nicks:

"I'm not who I was then," he said. "It just kind of hurts, to know I made a fool of myself."

Dressed in shorts and a Kobe Bryant Lakers' jersey, Nicks approached Pelini after the coach's post-practice session with reporters. They talked for a few minutes and shook hands.

"I wouldn't be true to Nebraska if I didn't try to apologize to Bo, even though I didn't play for him," Nicks said. "He's the face of Nebraska. I have to make it right with him, Mr. Osborne and everyone I did wrong when I was here."

Osborne surprised Nicks by greeting him as Carl -- "I didn't think he knew my name" - and then told him to learn from his mistakes and finish his college degree as soon as possible.

"I basically apologized to them for being an irresponsible athlete," Nicks said. "I didn't really have to do it, but I felt I needed to do it."

THAT IS the grace through repentance the Pope was talking about in his homily today -- the one the press was divining for applicability to the Catholic Church's present sins.

It would be nice if Benedict could just come out and say what he has to say . . . plainly. Specifically. Explicitly. It would be nice if he could do that in personal terms, not hiding behind addressing the "church."

It would be nice if the pope's subordinates -- who have been so quick to unleash public-relations Armageddon on the "evil press" for delving into the sins of the fathers -- could follow the Founder's command (again, from Matthew 5) instead:

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If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic, hand him your cloak as well.
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Should anyone press you into service for one mile, go with him for two miles.
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Give to the one who asks of you, and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow.

IT WOULD be nice if everybody involved -- the leadership of an institutional church just as in need of confession and repentance as any of us (and maybe more) -- tried to emulate the saints in all this. And failing that, maybe they just could follow the example of a Saint.

How 'Crazy' Dave got that way

Well, boys and girls, I see it's time for yore ol' Uncle Favog to pull the rockin' chair up next to the checker board on the pickle barrel and have a heart-to-heart with you young'uns.

Now, when you get a little older and make yore way into the world, you'll find that life can get complicated. Sometimes, nothing will make much sense to you, and you just won't be too sure about what to do or who you kin trust.

And maybe, child, you'll be governor of a small Midwestern state when you find nothin' makes sense no more, an' you don't know what friendly face to turn to ta get re-elected.

That's when you need to remember this one simple thing yore ol' Uncle Favog is about to be a-tellin' ya.

When you lie down with loons, you might catch crazy.

LOOK AT ol' Dave Heineman now. He didn't use to be "Crazy" Dave. Heckfire, he once was just another average, everyday Republican governor a-panderin' to the lowest common denominator.

And one day, he found that the lowest common denominator was bat-s*** loony. But he kept on a-panderin' . . . and that's how he got to be "Crazy" Dave, a-sellin' them used cars on the TV when gas is $8.50 a gallon an' nobody's a-buyin'.

I remember it like it was yestiddy . . . must have been back in ought nine -- no, it was back in 2010, it was. I read about it in the Omaha World-Herald, which was this thing folks called a newspaper. . . .

A political spat over whether Gov. Dave Heineman is a true tea party patriot took another turn Wednesday.

The governor said the only reason he had signed a February letter with 46 other governors asking for more federal stimulus funds a tea party no-no was to show solidarity with his colleagues.

“I was trying to be supportive of my fellow governors, who face much more difficult challenges than (Nebraska),” Heineman said Wednesday.

The issue was raised after Heineman, who is seeking re-election, visited a Lincoln tea party gathering Tuesday. The tea party movement opposes the federal stimulus program, as well as other things seen as making government bigger, such as the recently passed health care overhaul bill.

Heineman said that if he'd been given a chance, he would have voted against the stimulus program. But, lacking that opportunity, he supported taking the $1 billion allocated for Nebraska so the funds would not be sent to other states.

His explanation prompted a howl of hypocrisy from State Sen. Heath Mello of Omaha, a Democrat who supported the stimulus plan.

“If he doesn't support the stimulus money, he should send the money back and not sign a letter saying he wants six more months of it,” Mello said. “This is hypocrisy at its worst.”