Thursday, July 15, 2010

The Ministry of Silly Passports


Great Britain won't let Iroquois lacrosse players into the country because, to Her Majesty's government, their papers aren't in order.

Blimey!


AFTER ALL, reports The New York Times you can't be too careful, in this age of global terrorism, over whom you let into your country.
For a few hours on Wednesday, the Iroquois national lacrosse team thought its passport brouhaha had been resolved, thanks to a one-time waiver from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton clearing the way for it to travel to the world championships in England using tribal documents instead of United States passports.

But later in the day, the British government was said to have refused to grant visas to the team, even with Mrs. Clinton’s waiver, a potentially decisive setback for the team.

“We are deeply disappointed, and urge our friends and supporters to reach out to the British government to seek reconsideration,” Chief Oren Lyons of the Onondaga Nation, one of the six nations that make up the Iroquois Confederacy, said in a statement.

The team’s travel plans were first thrown awry last week when the British consulate asked for a written assurance from the United States government that the team would be allowed to re-enter the country using its tribal documents — an assurance that federal officials would not provide.

They changed their stance on Wednesday when Mrs. Clinton authorized the special waiver. The State Department provided the Iroquois team with letters providing assurance of their re-entry, said P. J. Crowley, the department’s spokesman.

Mr. Crowley told reporters in Washington that it would be up to the British government to decide whether to issue visas to the players based on those letters. But the Iroquois team described that decision as more of a formality, with the biggest hurdle — coming to an agreement with the State Department — having been cleared.

That turned out not to be the case. The British Consulate decided that the letters from the State Department were not sufficient because ultimately they were not passports, according to a United States government official informed of the decision.

“At this point there’s not a lot we can do,” Percy Abrams, the team’s executive director, said in a telephone interview. “We were given a set of demands, and then we met those demands — and then they were switched. That’s the way we feel.”

The U.K. Border Agency said in a statement that the British government would welcome the Iroquois team, but only if their players “present a document that we recognize as valid to enable us to complete our immigration and other checks.” The statement did not discuss the letters issued by the State Department, and a spokeswoman declined to elaborate. Until Wednesday morning, when Mrs. Clinton authorized the waiver, State Department officials had noted that federal law does not allow a tribal document to be used in lieu of a United States passport for international travel. (Security is one reason: The Iroquois passports are partly handwritten and do not include any of the security features that make United States passports resistant to counterfeiting.)
AND ONCE AGAIN, the Iroquois are reminded that with friends like the English, who needs enemies?

Perhaps the "people of the long house" would have had a lot more success getting to that English lacrosse tournament if they all had converted to Islam and gone around calling for death to all Jews, gays, etc., and so on. Maybe they might have even cultivated ties with al Qaida and urged their fans to blow up s*** all over Blighty.

Or maybe they just could have said they were Arab dissidents trying to get the hell out of the Great Satan after a vacay gone bad -- that they were longing for a friendlier, more self-hating spot for a little R and R.

Maybe then the Brits would have rolled out the red carpet for the Iroquois lacrosse players.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

The cleanup worker is a WHAT?


I imagine many of us figured this would be coming down the pike at some point in Oil Spill Nation.

The scene: Our intrepid MSNBC.com reporter makes her way to Grand Isle, La., where, amid the oil, she finds cleanup workers. Most of them black. Plopped down amid seething, resentful locals in a small town in the Deep South.

Can you imagine what happens?


ACTUALLY, it doesn't take much imagination at all:
To hear it from permanent residents of this tiny town at the southernmost edge of the bayou, the community is under siege. Not only did the massive oil spill in the Gulf force an abrupt halt to age-old routines dictated mainly by fishing, but the cleanup up effort has brought an army of workers from "outside."

"It’s a drastic change for us, especially in our marinas. It’s all workers," said Sheriff Euris DuBois. "The biggest change is we don’t know them. They are a different nature."

Grand Isle has only about 1,500 permanent residents, most born here, said DuBois. They are accustomed to a large influx of families who own the cottages – or "camps" that line the beachfront. But this year, with the beaches off limits and fishing shut down, most of these perennial tourists have stayed away.

Instead there are an estimated 5,000 cleanup workers – from Texas, New Jersey, Alabama and elsewhere. The workers are all male, and the vast majority are black.

That alone is a shock here. The town has only one black permanent resident, said DuBois, and no black tourists that he can recall.

"And they congregate!" a waitress named Jane told diners from out of town as she described the situation, repeating rumors that there was also a rash of theft and violence. "It’s bad to where our pastor on Sunday warned the congregation to lock their doors."

Some black workers report they have had a cool reception.

"I don’t go out here. I am not welcome," said a worker from Houston who only gave his first name, John. Asked why he felt unwelcome, he said wryly, "uh, just a teeny bit of racism."

A co-worker chimed in: "They gouge us (on rent). They don’t want us here," he said. "But we just do the work cleaning up their environment."
IT WOULD SEEM that Tony Hayward isn't the only one around with no public-relations sense. Then again, the BP chief isn't the one with his hand out here.
"They don’t like any of us," said a captain from New Jersey who is running a boat in the cleanup.

"It's not just blacks. It’s Yankees, and everybody who is not from Grand Isle," he said, giving only his first name, Mike.
SMALL TOWNS can be something else. Small towns in the recesses of the Gret Stet of Loosiana can be something else even by "something else" standards.

And
In the Heat of the Night is always playing somewhere. Well, that or Blazing Saddles.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

A foundation of . . . sand


Oh, what a tangled web he weaves when Bobby Jindal first practices to deceive.


Here's a good one, from an op-ed piece the Louisiana governor had today
in The (Shreveport) Times:
When booms did begin to arrive, it was too little and too late in many areas, so we proposed a 24-segment sand berm plan to protect our shoreline by using the natural framework of our barrier islands to help block and trap oil for collection before it gets into our marshes. Even after we demonstrated the effectiveness of sand berms, it took us weeks to convince the Coast Guard to approve even six segments from this plan, and then longer for us to force BP to fund the work.

In what has now become a pattern, the U.S. Corps of Engineers and U.S. Fish and Wildlife shut down our dredging operations on the northern Chandeleurs
[sic] Islands recently where we had already created 4,000 feet of land to protect our interior wetlands from oil impact, and indeed it has already worked to stop oil. A U.S. Department of Interior official said they were worried that our dredging operations would hurt a bird habitat nearby. The only problem with that is we were dredging in a permitted area in open water and there isn't a place for a bird to land for a mile.
IN THE PHOTO above, you can see all the earth-moving equipment several feet deep in the Gulf of Mexico, atop one of the governor's "effective" sand berms.

The trouble with building sand berms in the middle of the ocean, however, is that the waves wash them away absent something to hold them together -- riprap, or grasses and other vegetation, for example. Obviously, nothing's holding these berms together.


ABOVE is one of the berms off the Chandeleur Islands on June 25. Next is that same berm July 2, photographed from a higher altitude.


AND THEN . . . last week. Even accounting for the possibility of a really high tide, that doesn't look like engineering success -- or an effective oil-spill barrier.


YOU UNDERSTAND the need to try even iffy propositions, given the urgency here and the consequences of doing absolutely nothing. Unfortunately, the chance of doing anything useful on the Louisiana coast is diminished by the Mexican standoff between the dithering, incompetent Obama Administration and the hyperventilating, mau-mauing (and clueless) tag team of Jindal and the perpetually apoplectic president of Plaquemines Parish, Billy Nungesser.

I had wanted to think the best of folks like Nungesser and Jindal in this, even though I see Jindal as, alas, an even bigger disaster as governor than Kathleen Blanco. In short, I've been away from Louisiana long enough that my Spidey senses have atrophied some.

In other words, I f***ed up. I trusted that a collection of Louisiana politicians couldn't be that stupid or --
alternatively -- cynical.

READ for yourself what Discovery.com had to say Monday about what a boondoggle this is, a news item based on a retired professor's blog post. And reflect now that this crew is all about building giant rock jetties across an inlet by Grand Isle.
A dramatic series of of aerial images show that plans to build artificial islands to block oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill from reaching Louisiana's sensitive marshland appear to be crumbling. Literally.

Two months ago, against the advice of many coastal scientists, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal began furiously campaigning for the construction of six artificial islands to hold back the advancing oil. The federal government quickly granted Jindal his wish, and construction on the islands has been continuing apace.

But images taken of one construction site near the northern edge of the Chandeleur islands appear to show the sea washing away a giant sand berm over the course of about two weeks.

The first image . . . was taken on June 25. The second and third . . . were taken from roughly the same vantage point on July 2 and 7. All three images were first published yesterday by coastal scientist Leonard Bahr on his blog, LACoastPost.

Bahr, a former researcher at Louisiana State University, spent 18 years in the governor's office, advising five administrations on their coastal policy.

"There have been a number of plans over 20 years to save the coast," he said. "But after Katrina, it morphed into 'coastal protection,' which gives me pause."

The crucial difference is that within the Jindal administration, coastal policy has been cast as a war between man and the sea. Plans have been devised to build massive levees and other earthworks to defend the Mississippi River delta and its marshes from the Gulf of Mexico.

(snip)

"Building what they call 'the Louisiana wall' makes sense at first, but the science doesn't support it," Bahr said. "The science should be leading this issue, but it isn't. It never has."

Unfortunately, the berms project has charged ahead in this vein, seeking to build (and spend hundreds of millions of dollars) first, and ask questions later.

LET ME say again: I was wrong. And CNN and Anderson Cooper are just as wrong -- probably more so -- for giving mau-mauers like Jindal and Nungesser a nightly pass to swamp unsuspecting viewers with pure propaganda when they no more know their ass from a hole in the ground than do Obama's nincompoop bureaucrats.

Then again, these Yankees can be forgiven, I suppose, for not knowing the score. I should have known better, that Louisianians -- particularly their elected officials -- have an almost limitless capacity for losing their s*** in a crisis. This almost always results in people running around, wild-eyed, saying crazy things and doing things even crazier.

Remember Ray Nagin's and police chief Eddie Compass' blood-curdling-yet-utterly-false reports about all the rapes and murders in the Superdome after Katrina? And the FBI is still cleaning up the aftermath of New Orleans cops killing innocent civilians in Algiers and on the Danziger Bridge.

God knows what fresh hell will come out of this one-two punch of federal deadheads and Louisiana pieces o' work.

If the Big Easy doesn't want its musicians. . . .


Some people think Omaha is dull.

Unlike places like, oh . . . New Orleans.

But while the City That Care Forgot has been making news by trying to roll up the sidewalks -- at least for street musicians -- by 8, here's what I found Sunday night in boring ol' Omaha's Old Market. The top shot was taken at 8:31 p.m.



THIS WAS at 8:44 p.m. . . . on a really slow night for Old Market buskers.


AND THIS was at 8:52.

In New Orleans, this would be nearly an hour past "music curfew."


THERE IS a term for this kind of thing in a city that lives (and dies) by tourism and music. I think it's "nuts."

In fact, it might be the craziest damn thing you hear this year.

Now if New Orleans
-- prone to occasional hissy fits in which it bites the musical hand that feeds it . . . probably some sort of subconscious rebellion against having "always depended on the kindness of strangers" -- doesn't appreciate its wealth of musical talent, we'd be happy to take some of it off the Big Easy's hands.

They could play on Old Market street corners (
or, for that matter, in up-and-coming NoDo) until, say, 11 without getting busted. And I'm guessing they could do pretty good business, especially on weekends.

In fact, I'm thinking the Omaha Convention and Visitors Bureau ought to bring New Orleans' most-harassed group, the To Be Continued Brass Band, up here this fall to lead a jazz funeral for Rosenblatt Stadium after the Omaha Central-Creighton Prep football game there -- one of its last events. Just second line all the way up 10th Street from the old ballpark to the new place in NoDo.

And get
ESPN to cover it for SportsCenter.

I'm seeing,
in my mind's eye, a weekend "celebration of life" for Rosenblatt and a "welcome your baby" shower for TD Ameritrade Park. Then, To Be Continued could play a Saturday-evening show in the Omaha Chamber of Commerce courtyard at 13th and Howard streets.

Go ahead. Pass the hat.

Because Omaha is that kind of town.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Sign of the year


Seen Sunday in the Old Market, Omaha, Neb.

This TV set is 39 years old


When this Sony color portable was made in 1971, television sets were not cheap.

You had to save up for one. And they were tanks -- solid and heavy.

On the other hand, if a set like this model KV-1201 were to break, which was extremely unlikely, you could get it fixed. And the picture quality was very, very good . . . as you can see 39 years later.


I BOUGHT this set for $7.50 Sunday at an estate sale. If I had bought it brand new in 1971, I would have gotten almost four decades of use out of it, and it would still work like new.

Makes you wonder, doesn't it? It makes you wonder what the real cost is of our postmodern consumer society, where we buy lots and lots of stuff -- gadgets -- and almost none of it will last longer than a few years, at which point you will throw it away.

It makes you wonder whether the flat-panel HDTV you bought for $500 will last four years, much less four decades. It also makes you wonder whether, if it lasts two, you will junk it anyway because it's no longer the latest thing -- and we Americans are all about the latest thing, aren't we?

Me, I'm rather partial to scavenged relics of a lost era of durable goods -- truly durable goods.

And at $7.50, this bit of durability is a bargain you'd be hard-pressed to beat.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

It must be all the Corexit in the air

At 8:01 p.m. in New Orleans, you can stagger down Bourbon Street laughing and yelling like a lunatic.

At 8:02 p.m., you can lose your lunch in the gutter in front of Pat O'Brien's.

At 8:03 p.m. in the quarter, you can buy a T-shirt whose message begins with an F and ends with a K and has nothing to do with "fire truck." Then you can wear it into a titty bar, where the entertainment wears no shirt a-tall.

At 8:47 p.m., you can stagger out of the titty bar drunk as a skunk and randy as a junior U.S. senator from the Gret Stet . . . and once again upchuck into the gutter.

And at 9:14 p.m., you can randomly yell,
"Heeeeyyy! Rock annnnnnd rolllllllllll!"

ALL THIS MEANS is you're from Iowa, and you're having a fine time in the Big Easy. Good for you; the city is happy to take your money.

But if it happens to be 8:01 p.m., and you happen to actually be from New Orleans, and you're standing on a French Quarter street corner
playing music for the drunken, yelling and puking tourists . . . your ass is in trouble, Cap.

New Orleans has gone stark, raving
(and tourism-killing) mad, and The Daily Reveille at LSU is here to tell you about it:
The curfew, which is being put into effect amid an abundance of protest, makes it unlawful for street entertainment to be performed between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. from the entertainment district of Bourbon Street to Canal and St. Ann streets.

Another ordinance brought to the musicians’ attention makes it unlawful for any person to play a musical instrument on any public right-of-way in the city between 8 p.m. and 9 a.m. unless granted a permit.

Now, in addition to their trumpets and saxophones, the members of To Be Continued and other musical staples of the French Quarter can often be seen holding signs reading “Please Don’t Stop the Music” and other marks of protest.

“[Bourbon Street] is the birthplace of what we do,” said Sean Roberts, a trumpet player in To Be Continued. “It’s the most famous street for people to come and see what you invented, and we are a representation of that. So why wouldn’t you want your representatives to represent you?”

Roberts is one of many musicians currently in discussion with New Orleans law enforcement to find a way to make the ordinance mutually beneficial for the residents of the city and the entertainers.

Lisa Palumbo, manager of To Be Continued and marketing professor at the University of New Orleans, said the band — which has performed in the French Quarter since 2002 — never had a problem with playing its music until a few weeks ago.

“We’re not trying to make the French Quarter unavailable for anybody, but the 100 block of Bourbon is there for entertainment and commercial purposes,” Palumbo said. “We’re not trying to play all day or all night in any area. We’re just looking for a curfew that is reasonable for all parties involved.”
PERSONALLY, I blame it on all the Corexit oil dispersant BP is spraying into the atmosphere and on the water all around the Louisiana coast.

Now, if any New Orleans musicians might like to play sans harassment by the cops, we'd be glad to have them in Omaha. In the Old Market, they don't roll up the sidewalks at 8.

BP's human laboratory rats


"I wanted to leave several weeks ago, but my wife didn't want to leave, and we been married . . . well, our 30th anniversary was April 21, the day after the spill. So, I figure if she's gonna stay here and die, I'm gonna stay here and die with her."

3 Chords & the Truth: Crank it up!


The last time I posted a "WBRH episode" of 3 Chords & the Truth, it was an accident.


When I finished putting that particular program together back in February, it struck me that one of the musical sets sounded a lot like what we might have done at the radio voice of Baton Rouge High School 3o-something years ago. Or something like that.

This "WBRH episode" of the Big Show, however, is entirely on purpose -- as in, "If I could bring the WBRH of old into the present day . . . and then do the afternoon rock show there again, what would I do?"


THE ANSWER is simple: Something a lot like this edition of 3 Chords & the Truth. Of course, that's a lot like most editions of 3C&T, but not exactly.

If I had a shift on my high-school radio station once again, there's probably one or three things I do here I couldn't do there. But after I'd had a while to work on 'em . . . who knows?

This week, it's the spirit of '78, updated and plopped down in July 2010, right here on WBR . . . er, the Big Show.

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

Friday, July 09, 2010

'This water is poisonous'


When the government has no credibility because it's of, by and for the corporations pillaging its citizens, and when the press is so busy with "oil-spill gotcha" that it fails to ask fundamental questions, somebody's going to step into the breach.

"Somebody" could be a heroic citizen journalist. "Somebody" also could be a half-loony paranoid baselessly scaring the bejeezus out of people on Coast to Coast AM.

Has BP tapped into an undersea volcano, which is sure to unleash a tsunami that will destroy the entire Gulf Coast? Is the air so poisoned with benzene and hydrogen sulfide that the Gulf states will become an American Chernobyl?

Will hurricanes -- or just regular summer weather patterns -- spread toxic rain all across eastern North America, leaving it incapable of supporting human life for years?

Or, alternatively, should we just remain calm, because all is well?



EVERYBODY is claiming something. Transparency is elusive, and so is credibility. Still, you have to believe somebody.

The trouble is in discerning which somebody to believe.

Let's start with a simple question:
How much poison are the people of the Gulf Coast being doused with? The results some citizen watchdogs (top video) got from an independent lab are enough to give one pause.

This next video, an interview with a marine biologist on the Project Gulf Impact website, backs up one's worst fears on that point.


AS DOES this from the same website:


MEANTIME, the EPA tells us everything is all right. Meantime, clean-up workers aren't being given respirators. Meantime, the national press parrots the official line, interviews a dissenter or two . . . but won't spring for any independent testing.

And meantime, how many expendable, working-class Americans down there are going to turn up dead in five, 10 or 20 years?

This report from WWL-TV isn't encouraging. In fact, it makes you wonder why officials aren't starting to talk about evacuations.


AND WHILE one hesitates to believe a word of anything touched by Alex Jones and his Prison Planet website and radio show (not to mention Coast to Coast AM and a whole motley crew of online conspiracy nuts) . . . what the hell is up with this?

Are we facing an acid-rain blight across the Gulf South and Eastern Seaboard? Where are the mainstream science reporters when stuff, like the following sampling of
YouTube dispatches, is showing up all over the Internet?











OK, mainstream journalism, does anyone have a plausible explanation for this not involving the end of life east of the Mississippi River? Plant biologists? Organic chemists? Climatologists?

Anyone? Anyone? Americans across the Gulf South are starting to lose their s*** -- and their vegetation -- because . . . anyone? Anyone?

AND NOW that we're heading toward the meat of what's forecast to be one of the worst Atlantic hurricane seasons ever, this (below) is the level of planning going on at all levels of government:


CREDIBILITY right now is about in as short supply as marine life in the central Gulf of Mexico. Legitimacy of the federal government is careening toward a similarly scarce state.

And if the wackos are right --
on any one of their apocalyptic forecasts -- the United States of America can put its head between its legs and kiss its ass goodbye.


FOR THAT MATTER, when you have Kindra Arneson -- the fisherman's wife-turned-activist who's become one of the go-to interviewees for the national media -- is saying s*** like this and still getting microphones stuck in her face, governmental credibility and legitimacy may well be so compromised that an oily tsunami or a toxic-rain apocalypse would just serve to speed up the inevitable.

We now return you to our continuing coverage of the political pissing match, live from Washington, D.C.

Thursday, July 08, 2010

Head-case nation


I wish to associate myself with Mitch Albom's remarks in the
Detroit Free Press:
Note to journalism students. When we celebrate investigative reporting, it's for issues like war crimes, nursing home scandals or police corruption. It's not to report that LeBron James has opened a Twitter account.

But that was a "major" headline Wednesday. And James' first Tweet was Hello World, the Real King James is in the Building "Finally."

Honestly, who calls himself "King"?

Which brings me back to the man himself, who, after a few years of relative humility, now seems, at 25, to be stepping onto some assumed throne atop the world, like that "Airbender" kid, as if the rest of the planet naturally should step aside.

Excuse me if I turn my back. I no longer care less where LeBron James plays. I'm sick of the whole story. The number of supposedly respectable people tripping over themselves to hand him $100 million should make all of them and many of us ashamed.

In a country where people are out of work or out in the streets, LeBron's basketball home was never important. But spilling money on his head is downright insulting.

(snip)

Still, the final cherry on this ego sundae is the televised event tonight, an hour-long ESPN special at 9 o'clock (an hour?) in which James will announce who wins the right to wrap its money around his arrogance.

Only in America could we keep inventing reality TV that fantastically outshames the previous low mark. A prime-time event? To announce a free-agent signing? And don't point out that some proceeds go to charity. You want to give to charity, quietly write a check. Don't get a network to do it for you so it gets to pump its shows and you get to shower yourself in international coverage -- while calling it philanthropy.

The NBA has embarrassed itself here. The media have embarrassed themselves. And a guy who calls himself "King" may be beyond embarrassment, which is truly embarrassing.

Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Dear America: You're effin' nuts

This is insane.

Make it stop.

How Facebook rolls

The Facebook rulebook, simplified:

OK --
Group "praying" for the untimely death of the president of the United States.

NOT OK --
Group outing convicted pedophiles lurking in the dark corners of Facebook.


NOW THAT we have that straight, we can go back to pondering the ramifications of a company this warped knowing so much about us and demonstrating how little it cares for privacy rights. Except, of course, if you like to have sex with minors.

In that case,
Mark Zuckerberg has your back.

Lindsay's fickle finger of (epic) fail


Once upon a time, you could bargain with the barbarians.

Even Attila the Hun could be persuaded by Pope Leo the Great not to sack Rome.

But in our addle-minded age of unceasing incivility, nothing and no one, I'm afraid, can dissuade Lindsay Lohan and her whole generation of poor little rich kids from a ruthless sacking of what's left of Western civilization. What's to be said for a society where it's possible for the famously troubled actress to go into a Los Angeles courtroom to beg a judge for mercy, all the while giving the honorable court -- and the world -- a fingernail-sized "f*** you"?


TONGUES were wagging on the Fox 411 blog:
Lindsay Lohan may have come with a message for the Los Angeles Superior Court when she appeared for her probation revocation hearing on Tuesday, and it could spell more jail time on top of her three-month sentence.

Lohan, who was sentenced to 90 days in prison and 90 days in an in-patient rehabilitation facility for violating the terms of her probation, appeared in court
with the words “f**k u” printed on her middle fingernail.

And according to one expert, this could spell serious trouble for her sentencing, which was already triple the amount that the prosecution requested.

FOX411.com reviewed photos from three separate photo agencies -- Thompson Reuters, Associated Press and Getty -- all of which appeared to display the words on her middle left-hand fingernail.

A Thompson Reuters rep told FOX411.com in a statement that “the images of Lindsay Lohan published yesterday by Reuters were not altered beyond the normal bit of toning to correct color balance and contrast.”

An Associated Press rep said that after discussion among their photo editors, they sent out an advisory to clients that read in part "EDS NOTE: OBSCENE LANGUAGE ON LEFT MIDDLE FINGERNAIL."

If indeed Lohan's message was aimed toward the courts, "it would be a separate charge for contempt,” says New York City Public Defender Stacy Schneider. “She
could have an entire extra sentence heaped on top of her current one. If the judge were angry enough, it could run even consecutively.”

Los Angeles Public Defender Greg Apt echoed Schneider's sentiments, calling Lohan's fingernails a "creative" way to land in contempt of court.

"The judge could hold her in direct contempt, which could be between three to five days in jail for vulgarity," if the judge deemed the
words were aimed at the court, Apt said.
THAT'S THE RESPONSE of our terminally ill society. To debate whether or not Lohan's message was meant for the judge and, thus, constituted contempt of court.

On what planet is walking into your hearing with F U on a T-shirt, your lips or on your middle finger not contempt of court by definition? One can't imagine even ol' Attila tolerating suchlike.

But here on Planet Hollywood, it's just more grist for the media-fueled mill grinding down an entire civilization.

Lock the bitch up. Throw away the key. Then stop feeding the animals . . . and the voyeurs who love their dysfunction.

Tuesday, July 06, 2010

An extra shot of quirkiness with my brevé


Here's a slice of life from our favorite Omaha coffee emporium, Caffeine Dreams.

Oh . . . the painting? Yeah, there's a story behind that bit of artwork -- which is among the works on display, and for sale, at the shop.

Unfortunately, I don't know what it is.


I DO KNOW that it once lacked the coffee-shop version of a fig leaf. Pig Boy, though, left full frontal nudity behind one night when some high-school kids were playing a gig at Caffeine Dreams . . . and parents in the audience complained.

It wasn't about the music.

The first fig leaf -- quickly applied by the barista, who knew better than to mess with PO'd parental units -- was a bit of newspaper just big enough to mask the pig-man's shame. This later morphed into a sticky note . . . and now the added protection of a paper-napkin loincloth.

This is overkill, admittedly. Pig Boy wasn't that well endowed.

This, however, is the Midwest. And Mother knows best that edginess has its limits.

The irreplaceable editor


There's something I need to say.

You know how people -- mostly in corporations and crap -- say no one is irreplaceable? That's bulls***. The folks in North Platte, Neb., learned how irreplaceable Keith Blackledge was when he retired as editor of the North Platte Telegraph.

They learned how irreplaceable he was when he was no longer at the little daily newspaper, and no longer was taking punk kids right out of college and turning them into grown-up reporters and editors who, frankly, learned more in North Platte than they had in several years of journalism school. North Platte also learned how irreplaceable Keith was when -- suddenly -- the little newspaper that could . . . couldn't. Well, at least not nearly so much as it had under the steady -- and sometimes bemused -- leadership of Keith Blackledge.

People learned how irreplaceable one newspaper editor was when he no longer sat in that corner office at the Telegraph. When he no longer could will, it seemed, a little city to do what needed to be done, establish what needed to be established and build what needed to be built.

They also learned how irreplaceable Keith was when he grew too frail to serve on the approximately 98 trillion committees and boards he had served on for decades and decades.


AND NOW we all are learning how irreplaceable Keith Blackledge is as a presence in our lives -- as a living example of how to love the place where God has put you, do a job to the best of your ability and then teach your charges how to do that, too. We're learning that because time waits for no man -- not even Keith -- and it finally has taken that presence away from us.

We can't replace it. We can't replace the best damned boss we ever had -- those of us who were blessed enough to pass through the Telegraph newsroom on our way to somewhere, alas, not as good.

Almost three decades ago, a know-it-all, smartass kid from way south of the Mason-Dixon Line trekked out to the Sandhills of Nebraska to give Keith Blackledge a spring and a summer of hard work, some more-or-less decent news stories and, no doubt, a serious case -- or 20 -- of acid indigestion, with the odd migraine thrown in as lagniappe.

In return, Keith gave me a graduate-level, hands-on education in community journalism, a well-deserved ass-chewing or two, several friends for life . . . and my dear wife of 27 years -- the wire editor I stole from him on my way out the door.

I got the better end of the deal. Keith, meantime, was left holding an IOU I couldn't repay, not even if I had six lifetimes to try.

At the wedding shower, he also gave me the best advice I've ever gotten. Keith advised me that I should take care of all the monumental things in Mrs. Favog's and my marriage -- you know, world peace, geopolitics, erasing the national debt and divining the meaning of life -- while letting my new bride handle everything else. You know, like what I'll wear, where I'll go, where we'd live, what we'd eat, when I should just shut the hell up . . . stuff like that.

So far, it's worked out pretty damned well.

Except that I just broke Keith's rule about cussing in the newsroom.

I only can hope that the best damned newspaperman ever will forgive me this one last transgression. After all, I was -- and am -- replaceable.

Saturday, July 03, 2010

Ve haff veys uff makink you see no evil


Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. . . .

And now the Obama Administration is out-Bushing the Bushies with an outright ban on the public -- or the press -- seeing what's going on with . . . anything. No one will be able, under penalty of federal law, to get close enough to clean-up boats or oil booms to see our government at work.

Or not.


FROM A story in Thursday's Times-Picayune in New Orleans:
The Coast Guard has put new restrictions in place across the Gulf Coast that prevent the public - including news photographers and reporters covering the BP oil spill - from coming within 65 feet of any response vessels or booms on the water or on beaches.

According to a news release from the Unified Command, violation of the "safety zone" rules can result in a civil penalty of up to $40,000, and could be classified as a Class D felony. Because booms are often placed more than 40 feet on the outside of islands or marsh grasses, the 65-foot rule could make it difficult to photograph and document the impacts of oil on land and wildlife, media representatives said.

But federal officials said the buffer zone is essential to the clean-up effort.

"The safety zone has been put in place to protect members of the response effort, the installation and maintenance of oil containment boom, the operation of response equipment and protection of the environment by limiting access to and through deployed protective boom," the news release said.

The Coast Guard on Tuesday had initially established an even stricter "safety zone" of more than 300 feet, but reduced the distance to 20 meters - 65 feet - on Wednesday. In order to get within the 65-foot limit, media must call the Coast Guard captain of the Port of New Orleans, Edwin Stanton, to get permission.

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the national incident commander for the oil spill, said in a press briefing Thursday that it is "not unusual at all" for the Coast Guard to establish such a safety zone, likening it to a safety measure that would be enacted for "marine events" or "fireworks demonstrations" or for "cruise ships going in and out of port."

Allen said BP had not brought up the issue, but that he had received some complaints from county commissioners in Florida and other local elected officials who "thought that there was a chance that somebody would get hurt or they would have a problem with the boom itself."

Associated Press photographer Gerald Herbert, who has been documenting the oil spill, raised concerns about the restrictions within his news organization on Wednesday. He has asked for a sit-down with Coast Guard officials to discuss the new policy - and the penalties - but has not received a response.
SOMEONE NEEDS to explain to President Obama and his enforcers that bad PR starts at the point where you begin to make tea-party paranoiacs' looniest pronouncements begin to look . . . prescient.

Acting like a bunch of thugs while performing official duties like the mayor's incompetent brother-in-law appointee is no way to inspire confidence in the federal government's response to a national environmental catastrophe. As I've said and said, the final crisis coming out of the BPocalypse will be one of governmental legitimacy.

And, ultimately, Obama won't be able to blame that one on George Bush.

3 Chords & the Truth: Is America singing?

Here's something to think about this week on 3 Chords & the Truth:

Once upon a time, Walt Whitman could write this --
I Hear America Singing:
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.
I THINK, when you distill all that besets up on this Independence Day of 2010, it comes down to this one thing.

We're having trouble remembering the tune.

The tune that America was singing.

Anyway, that'
s what's on my mind for this holiday edition of the Big Show. Your mileage may vary.

There's some other stuff -- amazing stuff -- in there as well this week, so you really don't want to miss what we're up to as you go about whatever it is you're up to for the Fourth.

IT'S 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Friday, July 02, 2010

'I see Jack . . . and Chivas . . . and Bud. . . .'


Nothing says "Romper Room" like a recipe for absinthe frappé, courtesy of WWL-TV.

Back when this ad ran in a July 1960 issue of Broadcasting, the New Orleans version of the Boomer kiddie classic had to do the rest of the country one better, I guess. On Channel 4, no doubt, you had your "Do Bees," your "Don't Bees," and your "Shoobee Do Bee Do Bees."

NOW WE KNOW what fueled Miss Ginny's Magic Mirror.

The Crescent City always was a little different. (OK, a lot different.) And I really, really miss when the Jesuits ran the WWL radio and television empire -- "King Edward cigar time" (on WWL radio), absinthe drinks and Romper Room . . . all part of one's "mission from God."

Is Catholicism a great religion or what?

Thursday, July 01, 2010

The not-so-secret life of dogs

Click on photo for full size.


Here's the Molly edition of
What Dogs Do.

Mrs. Favog thinks the Big Blue Chair is hers. The woman always was a little clueless -- how do you think I got her to marry me?

For the record. . . .


Once upon a time, when young folk bought these things called "LPs" for $3.98 at a retail establishment called a "record store," you actually got stuff.


You got a 12-inch vinyl disc with grooves on the surface -- the "record," which was played on a "phonograph." It came in a large cardboard sleeve with artwork on the front and back covers. This artwork was large enough to see, as was the track listing on the rear.

If during one of your treks to the "record store" -- in, say, 1972 -- you happened to purchase Melanie's "Stoneground Words" album ("album" is what we often called "LPs," or "records"), you also got lyrics (again, large enough to actually read) on the "inner sleeve," which held the "vinyl" within the "sleeve."

And for your $3.98, you also got a fold-up display of many photos of Melanie, suitable for hanging on the wall of your room because, frankly, Melanie was a babe.


Can you get all that with iTunes, bunkie?

I didn't think so.