Monday, October 11, 2010

Suicide: It's an equal-opportunity killer


In case you've forgotten, America -- and given the state of the American hype machine the past week or two, I think you may have -- being gay is not the only reason youth get bullied.

It is not the only reason they kill themselves.

And, frankly, I'm starting to get scared that people are getting the message that gay-bashing is the only bullying going on out there. I'm afraid everything else is going to get overlooked.



HOW ABOUT this, America? How about we stop the bullying -- and suicides -- of all youth? Gay, straight, fat, thin, geeky, brainiac, spazzy, dorkish, gimpoid, stuck-up, slutty, virginal, lame-o, klutzy, doofus and religious fanatic.

Let's help them all.

Let's protect them all.

Let's save them all.

At its root, teen bullying -- or any bullying, for that matter -- isn't because kids are gay (or fill-in-the-blank). It's because kids are different in some way, and adolescence is hell on "different."

It's easy as hell to become the Other when you're 15. Hell, it's easy enough when you're 50. We humans don't "do" Other very well.

I've seen kids catch hell for all kinds of reasons. And oftentimes, kids who catch holy, unrelenting hell end up hating themselves enough -- or wanting the pain to stop badly enough -- that they embrace the most permanent solution they can think of . . . for themselves, or for the pain.

THERE WAS a rash of teen suicides in Omaha about five years ago, bringing wider attention to a deadly trend across Nebraska. The deaths led the Omaha World-Herald to publish a huge, and excellent, series on the subject -- not that our short attention spans let us recall this.

Or recall that the teen deaths, while sometimes linked to bullying, rarely had anything to do with homosexuality.

I don't mean to minimize how badly gay kids get treated -- they often are treated horribly, and that is horribly wrong. And, indeed, sometimes the specific illustration can give us a good idea of the general picture.

Sometimes, the "little" story tells the bigger one in a manner we can wrap our brains around.

But in this case, I think it's possible that the smaller picture might end up obscuring the larger one.

And the life that costs may be your kid's.

OK, this is addictive


In case you missed it the first time around . . . 29 years ago . . . here's how the rest of that first hour of MTV went.

As we learned on Sunday's edition of
Your Daily '80s, the first video played was from the Buggles. The first VJ was Mark Goodwin, but not really, because the videotapes of the VJ intros got mixed up, making Alan Hunter the first to introduce himself. But Goodman was the first to sit down and talk awhile.

Is that clear?
Well, nothing has been too clear since 1981 anyway, so don't sweat it.





And you'll notice that the VJ intros weren't the only thing to get out of order that first hour. Keep watching.



Sunday, October 10, 2010

Your Daily '80s: Video kills the radio star


Nah . . . just kidding.

Radio, as we all know, committed suicide. And you'll have to go to some lengths to find a music video on MTV today.

At any rate, we present a flashback to the launch of
MTV on Aug. 1, 1981. OK, everybody knows the first video played on MTV was the Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star." But what was the second?

Stay tuned and find out.

Saturday, October 09, 2010

Your Daily '80s: Weird . . . even for Al


Mix "Weird Al" Yankovic and Japanese television . . . and you might -- might -- have the weirdest thing that happened in 1984.

My magic box . . . in search of magic


You want to hear some heavy metal?

Try going back to the fall of 1935. You'll find some heavy metal nestled inside the art-deco wooden case of the Zenith 5-S-29.

This heavy metal, though, was made to fill a room with dance-band remote broadcasts. With soap operas and farm reports. With news, and with exotic broadcasts from across the sea.

Today, an iPod will give you music. Yesterday, this old Zenith filled your house with magic.

I know. I sound like a broken record (another lost metaphor only fossils like me get). But if you ask me -- and you didn't . . . tough -- one of the tragedies of our age is the absence of magic.

Where is the magic in an iPod? Where is the magic in YouTube? Sure, YouTube is a great tool . . . and, in some cases, a forum for all manner of tools.

And sure, You Tube can offer up stuff you never could have imagined -- or perhaps imagined that you'd never see again.

But it's not magic.

Kind of like the iPod, a zillion websites, Facebook, Twitter and whatever they'll think of next. All useful. All interesting. All with the potential to while away countless hours.

But magic? No, not magic.


MAGIC IS a multicolored dial glowing in the dark. Magic is the five tubes inside an old Zenith tombstone radio casting a backlight glow, silhouetting the angles and curves of a wood-veneer case.

Magic is the rich sound of a six-inch speaker fed by heavy metal and hot filaments.

Magic is the smell of ozone wafting through the room

Magic is sitting by yourself, listing to mellifluous voices on distinguished radio stations in distant cities, each with its own distinctive "sound." Each beaming the life of a far away place, a distinct local culture into the ionosphere and then back to earth, into a long-wire aerial, through the circuitry and out the cone speaker of a 1936 model-year Zenith radio set.

Made in the U.S.A.

Sitting in a darkened room. Singing into your ear and speaking to your soul.

Your soul -- where the magic lies.

Messages from the souls of men and women of the mellifluous voices in far-away cities speaking into microphones and putting turntable needles into the grooves of discs filled with music. Wonderful music.

Once, there was music in the air. Once, real people played it. Once, real radio stations communicated to "radio neighbors."

Once, magic ruled the air. Once, magic came to you on a Zenith "long distance" radio.

Once. Once there be magic. Now . . . "T'aint so, McGee."

Now, my old Zenith searches for ethereal magic in the still of the night. It searches in vain.

Friday, October 08, 2010

Your Daily '80s: Original Omaha punks


On this edition of Your Daily '80s, we see the evolution of some original Omaha punks -- R.A.F.


Remember, they're not getting older; they're getting balder.

First, we see R.A.F. from a cable-access program, Underground Omaha, in 1985. Think of it this way, what we have here is a time capsule of old-school punk, second generation.


Then, we see R.A.F. in concert in 1991.


And, finally, a couple of years ago at the My Generation Punk Reunion Show, held at The Waiting Room in Benson. I wonder what their teenage kids thought?

F***in' A. Rock 'n' roll!

3 Chords & the Truth: Any damn thing


OK, we took a week off here at the Big Show, but now we're back playing any damn thing.

Look. Here's our business card. See?

Right here. It says "We play any damn thing." And that pretty much sums up 3 Chords & the Truth, with this week's episode being no exception to the "any damn thing" rule.

For example, this week, we play. . . . Hang on. That would ruin the surprise -- the whole sense of audio adventure, would it not?

THERE WOULD be no sense of discovery, no sense of unknown delights lurking just around the next segue, would there? If you knew every single thing that was coming, it would just be one 90-minute long anticlimax.

And if that's what you want, you can just listen to your local commercial FM station.

No, here at the Big Show, we're all about surprises and "any damn thing." Any damn thing, so long as it's good.

The bad, we don't mess with.

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

Thursday, October 07, 2010

Your Daily '80s: High school radio, 1982


Do you remember rock 'n' roll radio?

Here's a little of how it went at North High School in Torrance, Calif. Or, we can put it this way . . .
Rock'n, rock'n'roll radio Let's go
Rock'n, rock'n'roll radio Let's go
Rock'n, rock'n'roll radio Let's go
Rock'n, rock'n'roll radio Let's go . . .

. . . to the wonderful world of 1982 at KNHS.

SADLY, KNHS left the airwaves in 1991. About all that survives of the voice of Torrance's North High -- at least that survives in cyberspace -- is this video. And the cache of a now-deleted history of the station on the school's entry on Wikipedia:
KNHS, was an FCC licensed FM radio station transmitting on 89.7 MHz, serving the Torrance, California area with a variety music format. KNHS was first licensed in the mid to late 1950s and ceased when a short-sighted TUSD allowed the station license to expire in 1991. The station originally broadcast with only one Watt and did not transmit with its full licensed power until 1972 when its studios and transmitter were moved to the second floor of the Industrial Arts building according to the High School newspaper The North Wind.

There was no professional management for the station and students of North High School ran the station, therefore the programming, educational value and financial earnings potential of the station was never realized. There was no engineer for the station except for a contract engineer who was only called on when something was known to be wrong.

In 1967, Mr. McKenzie managed KNHS activities, to include the broadcast operations, setting up and running the audio system for plays, and calling play-by-play for Saxon football games, sometimes even broadcasting from remote locations (other high schools). KNHS also had speakers at various parts of the campus, including the "quad," cafeteria, and other areas. During breaks and lunches, the speakers were turned on to let students hear the station. A "landmark" is the tower with the two omni-directional "halo" antennas at the top. The tower originally was above the old broadcast area by the cafeteria (a sound booth, the operations booth with a Gates audio console and Ampex tape recorders, and a music storage room). The theme song for basketball games was “Sweet Georgia Brown.” When KNHS moved in to the (then) new 2-story industrial arts building (with the auto repair area on the first floor), the antenna tower was also moved to the roof of the industrial arts building. Mr. Fields took over for Mr. McKenzie around the time KNHS moved to the industrial arts building. KNHS conducted monthly tests by turning on the transmitter and letting it stabilize, then a monitoring company was called to measure the frequency to comply with FCC regulations.

Can a Catholic swill that kind of tea?

Think Jesus Christ was a tea-party patriot?

Think again. And think about how much of Jesus' teaching you have to toss in the circular file in order to become a smaller-government, individual liberty above all and f*** the poor kind of political activist.

Unfortunately, lots of Catholics aren't thinking much at all. Many probably are even buying into Glenn Beck's raging phobia about social justice, this while claiming membership in a church centered on our oneness in the Body of Christ and a command -- not a suggestion -- that we exhibit a "preferential option for the poor."

To be succinct, polls indicate that bunches of Catholics are buying into the notion that everything they are obligated to believe -- and to put into practice -- is the kind of "socialism" that's bringing our country to ruin. Ironically, many of these conservative Catholics are just the sort of folk quick to condemn their liberal coreligionists as "cafeteria Catholics."


WELL, who's in the serving line now? Our Sunday Visitor shines some light on this:
Stephen Schneck, director of the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies at The Catholic University of America, said that Catholic voters have been known for their propensity to switch party allegiance, but their strong show of support for the tea party comes as a surprise.

“What strikes me is that even though Catholics are attracted to this movement, there really is a pretty sharp tension between some of the basic teachings of the Church in regards to politics, the role of government and what we owe to the poor, and what these tea party advocates are promoting,” Schneck told Our Sunday Visitor.

Church teaching, he explained, has an inseparable link between rights and responsibilities for both the citizen and the government, with both having an eye toward promoting the common good. The tea parties, however, have argued for rights based on liberty, not responsibility.

“From that perspective it’s all about getting the government out of our lives and about citizens being free from the demands and needs of the country as a whole,” Schneck said. “Much as we might like otherwise, the Catholic argument is that government and citizen are equally expected to be our brother’s keeper.”

While the U.S. bishops have supported the idea of universal health care, tea party activists have commonly called for the repeal of Congress’ health care legislation. And positions argued by tea party activists on issues such as immigration, Social Security and the government’s regulation of racial discrimination by businesses don’t fit within the principles of Catholic social teaching, Schneck said.

“That kind of thinking is at odds with Catholic thinking about solidarity, about the common good and about the role that the political order should be playing in regards to the dignity of the human person,” he said. “So there’s actually quite a distance between what the tea party is advocating and the Church’s general understanding of how politics and governance should work.”
OF COURSE, there is dissent on the right.
According to Father Robert Sirico, president of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, the radical extremists in the tea party represent only a small percentage on the fringes of the movement. At its heart, Father Sirico said, the tea party and its view of government are very close to the Church’s social teaching on the principle of subsidiarity, which favors doing things on a simplified level rather than leaving them to a more complex, centralized organization.

“I think the majority of the people who are involved in the tea party movement prefer things to be done at the most local level possible,” Father Sirico told OSV. “They are not against government in principle, they are against the excessiveness of government that we see, and that’s expressed in the principle of subsidiarity.”
AND WHILE Sirico allows that the tea party movement could learn something from Catholic teaching, he starts to sound like what Catholics on the right are so quick to condemn when it comes from the left. You've heard it before, as have I -- "How can a Catholic be a Democrat?"

It's a big cafeteria, people. Funny how tea-party "Catholics" could miss being right in the middle of it.

Please make sure you put away your tray when you're finished.

Obamma showinge his treu collors!!!


The following message is paid for by Outrage for Outrage's Sake 2010:

I think this videow showes the supposd "presiddente" Barak Hoosaine Obamma's treu collors!!! When the presiddentshul seel fell off the podiom, our Socshulist in Cheif thought it was funney!!!


"All of you no who I am." What arrogunce! Who does this Communiss impostur think he is? He thinkes he is funny and just has no respekt for the symmboles of our country!!!!!

This is bechuss, like a treu Muslin, he has no respekt for the offise of the presiddentcy and thinks America is a big Joke! THIS IS PRUFE THAT THIS MAN IS NOT A REEL AMERICAN-HE WAS BORN IN KENYUH!!!!!! He is juste like his Communiss African Father and thinks America is a Joke but thee last laufgh will be on him the Tea Party will take our Country back in thee elecshun!


And then thee peeople will overthrow his crooked Communiss dictator state in 2012!!!

Palin-O'Donnel 2012!!!!

Big Mike . . . Big Bad Mike


Long, long ago, this feller named Big Mike ruled the airwaves.


Well, actually, back in 1954, this other feller named Todd Storz was wiping the floor with Big Mike and KFAB in the Omaha ratings . . . but roll with me, here.

Anyway, Big Mike was a big, big radio station in the Midwest Empire, and everybody knew you didn't give no lip to Big Mike.

Big Bad Mike.

Then decades later came a rumble way down in the ground. And the smoke and gas belched out of the broker's office.

Everybody knew it was the end of the line for Big Mike.

Clear Channel.

Now they never reopened that worthless pit; they just put Rush and Beck in front of it. The carnival geeks just rant and rave, paying no mind they stand on a grave.

Because at the bottom of this pit lies a big big man. Big Mike.



(With apologies to the late Jimmy Dean, and with gratitude to the archivist of wonderful old issues of Broadcasting magazine.)

Wednesday, October 06, 2010

Your Daily '80s: How'd that work out for you?


Dear Church Lady:

Are you less offended by television today than you were 30 years ago?

No?

Well, I guess you wasted all that money you sent to the Moral Majority and the National Federation for Decency, then.

Broadcasting magazine, back in December 1980, was reporting on this big effort by the champions of decency to, no doubt, demonstrate through better polling that the masses were with them in opposing televised smut. And, as we saw over the intervening decades, there was much heated rhetoric.


THERE WERE many "pro-family" Republican politicians elected.

In the White House, we had eight years of Reagan and 12 years from the family Bush.

We've had boycotts.

We've had protests.

We've had crackdowns on the F-word. And the S-word.

We even had a gigantic "wardrobe malfunction" during the Super Bowl burlesque halftime show.

AND WHAT we've gotten from the networks and cable, lo, these many years hence, is televised fare that the horrified legions for decency could not have imagined in their worst nightmares in those waning days of the Carter presidency.


Culture precedes politics, and TV fare. It precedes polling and boycotts, too.

The trouble, dear Brutus, was not in the networks, but in the networks giving the people what they wanted. The only thing that could fix that, alas, was the Good News that good, Christian people were forgetting to proclaim while they were all on the picket line bewailing the Bad News.

The National Buffoon's Tribune House


Before Tuesday, there was a little bit left of the Tribune Co., after Sam Zell bought it and hired Randy Michaels to turn it into Delta House.

The bankruptcy judges had been trying to make sure of that.

Now, the carcass of a once-respected media empire pretty much has been obliterated by this story in
The New York Times. The Gray Lady did to Michaels' corporate toga party what Dean Wormer wanted to do to the Deltas, but couldn't pull off.

And then, to add insult to nuclear annihilation, the Times informs the Tribune crew that "Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life."

YOU WON'T believe it until you read it. And even then, maybe not:

In January 2008, soon after the venerable Tribune Company was sold for $8.2 billion, Randy Michaels, a new top executive, ran into several other senior colleagues at the InterContinental Hotel next to the Tribune Tower in Chicago.

Mr. Michaels, a former radio executive and disc jockey, had been handpicked by Sam Zell, a billionaire who was the new controlling shareholder, to run much of the media company’s vast collection of properties, including The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, WGN America and The Chicago Cubs.

After Mr. Michaels arrived, according to two people at the bar that night, he sat down and said, “watch this,” and offered the waitress $100 to show him her breasts. The group sat dumbfounded.

“Here was this guy, who was responsible for all these people, getting drunk in front of senior people and saying this to a waitress who many of us knew,” said one of the Tribune executives present, who declined to be identified because he had left the company and did not want to be quoted criticizing a former employer. “I have never seen anything like it.”

Mr. Michaels, who otherwise declined to be interviewed, said through a spokesman, “I never made the comment allegedly attributed to me in January 2008 to a waitress at the InterContinental Hotel, and anyone who said I did so is either lying or mistaken.”

It was a preview of what would become a rugged ride under the new ownership. Mr. Zell and Mr. Michaels, who was promoted to chief executive of the Tribune Company in December 2009, arrived with much fanfare, suggesting they were going to breathe innovation and reinvention into the conservative company.

By all accounts, the reinvention did not go well. At a time when the media industry has struggled, the debt-ridden Tribune Company has done even worse. Less than a year after Mr. Zell bought the company, it tipped into bankruptcy, listing $7.6 billion in assets against a debt of $13 billion, making it the largest bankruptcy in the history of the American media industry. More than 4,200 people have lost jobs since the purchase, while resources for the Tribune newspapers and television stations have been slashed.

The new management did transform the work culture, however. Based on interviews with more than 20 employees and former employees of Tribune, Mr. Michaels’s and his executives’ use of sexual innuendo, poisonous workplace banter and profane invective shocked and offended people throughout the company. Tribune Tower, the architectural symbol of the staid company, came to resemble a frat house, complete with poker parties, juke boxes and pervasive sex talk.

The company said Mr. Michaels had the support of the board.

“Randy is a tremendous motivator, very charismatic, but he is very nontraditional,” said Frank Wood, a member of the Tribune board. “He has the kind of approach that motivates many people and offends others, but we think he’s done a great job.”

The company is now frozen in what seems to be an endless effort to emerge from bankruptcy. (The case entered mediation in September after negotiations failed, and a new agreement between two primary lenders was recently announced.) But even as the company foundered, the tight circle of executives, many with longtime ties to Mr. Michaels, received tens of millions of dollars in bonuses.

Behind the collapse of the Tribune deal and the bankruptcy is a classic example of financial hubris. Mr. Zell, a hard-charging real estate mogul with virtually no experience in the newspaper business, decided that a deal financed with heavy borrowing and followed with aggressive cost-cutting could succeed where the longtime Tribune executives he derided as bureaucrats had failed.

And while many media companies tried cost-cutting and new tactics in the last few years, Tribune was particularly aggressive in planning publicity stunts and in mixing advertising with editorial material. Those efforts alienated longtime employees and audiences in the communities its newspapers served.

“They threw out what Tribune had stood for, quality journalism and a real brand integrity, and in just a year, pushed it down into mud and bankruptcy,” said Ken Doctor, a newspaper analyst with Outsell Inc., a consulting firm. “And it’s been wallowing there for the last 20 months with no end in sight.”

Mr. Zell has acknowledged that the deal has not turned out how he hoped. But noting a recent upturn in results, he said through a spokesman, “Tribune has made significant strides in becoming a current, competitive and sustainable media company. The measure of management’s performance is reflected in the increased profitability of Tribune’s media properties.”


NO, SAM,
deals rarely turn out like you hoped when you pay too much for properties with too much borrowed money, then put arrested-development corporate scumbags in charge to create a toxic work environment in the name of "creativity," while systematically jettisoning human capital and laying waste to whatever value Tribune's media products once had.

Hang on, though. It gets better, which means worse.
Mr. Michaels, who was initially in charge of Tribune’s broadcasting and interactive businesses as well as six newspapers, was a former shock jock who made a name for himself — and a lot of money for Mr. Zell — by scooping up radio stations while at the Zell-controlled Jacor Communications. Jacor was later sold to Clear Channel Communications for $4.4 billion.

In turn, Mr. Michaels remade Tribune’s management, installing in major positions more than 20 former associates from the radio business — people he knew from his time running Jacor and Clear Channel — a practice that came to be known as “friends and family” at the company.

One of their first priorities was rewriting the employee handbook.

“Working at Tribune means accepting that you might hear a word that you, personally, might not use,” the new handbook warned. “You might experience an attitude you don’t share. You might hear a joke that you don’t consider funny. That is because a loose, fun, nonlinear atmosphere is important to the creative process.” It then added, “This should be understood, should not be a surprise and not considered harassment.”

The new permissive ethos was quickly on display. When Kim Johnson, who had worked with Mr. Michaels as an executive at Clear Channel, was hired as senior vice president of local sales on June 16, 2008, the news release said she was “a former waitress at Knockers — the Place for Hot Racks and Cold Brews,” a jocular reference to a fictitious restaurant chain.

A woman who used to work at the Tribune Company in a senior position, but did not want to be identified because she now worked at another media company in Chicago, said that Mr. Michaels and Marc Chase, who was brought in to run Tribune Interactive, had a loud conversation on an open balcony above a work area about the sexual suitability of various employees.

“The conversation just wafted down on all of the people who were sitting there.” She also said that she was present at a meeting where a female executive jovially offered to bring in her assistant to perform a sexual act on someone in a meeting who seemed to be in a bad mood.

Staff members who had concerns did not have many options, given the state of the media business in Chicago, the woman said. “Not many people could afford to leave. The people who could leave, did. But it was not in my best interest to have my name connected to an E.E.O.C. suit,” she said, referring to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (Indeed, there are no current E.E.O.C. complaints against the Tribune Company.)

There have been complaints about Mr. Michaels in the past, however. In 1995, Mr. Michaels and Jacor settled a suit brought by Liz Richards, a former talk show host in Florida who filed an E.E.O.C. complaint and a civil suit, saying she had been bitten on the neck by Mr. Michaels and that he walked through the office wearing a sexual device around his neck.

“They were like 14-year-old boys — no boundaries at all — but with money and power,” Ms. Richards said in an interview.


THIS COMPORTS
with Michaels' reputation in radio. And anyone who thought that one of the middle-aged juveniles who helped destroy radio broadcasting would do the opposite in a field they knew even less about . . . well, we need a hit of whatever he's smoking.

Especially after reading that
New York Times piece.

Your Daily '80s: On the radio


The hits kept comin' in Vancouver on CFMI, FM 101.1.
Here's the way it was 30 years ago, on Oct., 1, 1980.

Tuesday, October 05, 2010

Missing him


Conan's promos on TBS . . .






. . . very funny.

Abandon hope


Here's a bit of Monday's Channel 2 news from home -- "home" being Baton Rouge.

Some other news involved downtown Baton Rouge becoming something of a free-fire zone -- toll so far, two dead, one wounded -- a local school system allegedly in violation of state contract-bidding laws, the question of whether or not Hawker-Beechcraft will up and move its aircraft plant to the city from Wichita, the state's ongoing fiscal nightmare and the ongoing dismantling of Louisiana State University and the rest of higher education.


THIS is what people care about, however, and thus it led the evening newscast:


ABANDON HOPE all ye who enter Louisiana.

Or, as Kenny Rogers says,
"You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em. Know when to walk away and know when to run."

Forget that lede. Baton Rouge is home in the sense I was born and grew up there. In that, I had no choice. I do, however, retain just enough affection for the home of my youth to be furious at what I observe from the safe distance of 1,100 miles.

And though Baton Rouge is "home," I live in Omaha now -- a Nebraskan by choice for more than two decades. There are reasons for that (see above).

And I am home. Unabashedly, unequivocally and without quotation marks.


UPDATE: Originally had the wrong clip for the second video. That's fixed now.

Monday, October 04, 2010

Your Daily '80s: Good night, David


John Chancellor and NBC Nightly News say goodnight -- and goodbye -- to David Brinkley as he departs for, eventually, ABC.

Just before leaving regular TV duties for good in 1996, Brinkley would -- unaware that the camera was still on during Election Night coverage -- speak great truth about the Clinton Administration after a colleague asked him what he thought of the president's re-election:

"The next four years will be filled with pretty words, and pretty music, and a lot of goddamn nonsense!"


Those are what you call timeless words, able to be applied broadly to presidencies, no matter of which political stripe.

Duh.


Katrina vanden Heuvel is worried about poverty -- it's getting bad.

Really bad.

Really, really bad.

Crazy bad, says the editor and publisher of The Nation in her Washington Post column last Tuesday:
It's clear that the Great Recession battered those on the bottom most heavily, adding 6 million people to the ranks of the officially poor, defined as just $22,000 in annual income for a family of four. Forty-four million Americans -- one in seven citizens -- are now living below the poverty line, more than at any time since the Census Bureau began tracking poverty 51 years ago. Shamefully, that figure includes one in five children, more than one in four African Americans or Latinos, and over 51 percent of female-headed families with children under 6.

These numbers are bad enough. But dig deeper -- as Georgetown University law professor Peter Edelman has been doing for nearly 50 years in his battle against poverty -- and the story told by these figures is even more staggering.

Edelman points out that 19 million people are now living in "extreme poverty," which is under 50 percent of the poverty line, or $11,000 for a family of four. "That means over 43 percent of the poor are extremely poor," said Edelman, who served as an aide to Sen. Robert Kennedy (D-N.Y.) and in the Clinton administration before resigning in protest over welfare reform that shredded the safety net. "That's over 6 percent of the population, and that figure has just been climbing up and up."

(snip)

Beyond what Congress can do immediately, it's clear that America needs a broader movement to create a more just and higher-wage economy. Edelman and other advocates say that we will need to push to make it easier for people to join labor unions through an Employee Free Choice Act or at least reduce legal barriers to organizing. The minimum wage should also be indexed to half the average wage.

"But you're still going to have a gap," said Edelman. "And you essentially have to invent some new idea of a wage supplement that starts from the premise that the so-called good jobs went away a long time ago and we've become a nation of low-wage work."

That's why 100 million people are struggling to make ends meet on less than $44,000 per year.

This devastating economic reality has the potential to create new political alliances -- and shape a 21st-century anti-poverty movement. Such a movement is urgently needed because the voices of the poor, of workers and of those struggling to get by are barely heard in the halls of power these days. Anti-poverty groups and advocates with ideas for a more equitable economy are often marginalized within even Democratic Party policy circles that seem hard-wired to reject them.

We know what needs to be done to reduce poverty. The question is who will fight that fight? And who will listen?
SOMEBODY HAS to do something about this, and the leftist journalist wants to know whom that will be.

Well, obviously not the leftists -- and note I don't use "leftist" as a perjorative; I tend to be one on many issues. That's because leftists like vanden Heuvel, back in 1972, blew up the broad-based, left-of-center Democratic coalition in favor of a purer, narrower radical coalition dedicated not to eliminating poverty and advancing social justice, but instead to promoting the sexual revolution and smashing the influence of social conservatives in the party.

That gave us a Democratic Party unable to beg, borrow or buy the kind of presidential and congressional clout it enjoyed before the "revolution." It gave us one contentious term for Jimmy Carter, while also giving us the reality of Reagan Democrats. Not to mention Ronald Reagan himself.

The libertine left also gave us the religious right.

And Bill Clinton surviving for two terms only by governing as a just-right-of-moderate Republican would have -- by gutting welfare (which vexes the left so) and giving Wall Street slicksters the keys to the candy store.

As we well know, this has led us to the fine mess we enjoy now, including those exploding rates of extreme poverty, as well as an anything-goes social and familial landscape of such chaos that it scarcely can deal with flush times, much less the Great Recession.

Thus, after much deliberation, more observation and ample aggravation, this New Deal-loving, old-time Catholic lefty has something to say to Ms. vanden Heuvel and her fellow secular, upper-crust, boutique lefties about the river they're crying on behalf of the impoverished abstractions they probably never encounter concretely:

I call bullshit.

Only on Wall Street


This.


And this.


Got the attention of this, which cranked out a metro-blog posting that went something like this:
There are few socially acceptable reasons to speak to strangers on New York City’s subways during the morning commute. Almost none, in fact. But that doesn’t stop Solomon Lederer.

His speech to a crowded B-train car could almost be mistaken for the interruptions already familiar to transit riders. “I just want to say something for like 30 seconds,” he begins, in the style of panhandlers, proselytizers and the sellers of dubiously charitable candy bars. But Lederer’s attire — ubiquitous corporate casual, with a flyer-laden satchel he refers to as his “purse” — signals that the 29-year-old Morgan Stanley software developer might be after something different.

“I have this idea,” Lederer continues, “that we can do some kind of exchange or networking on the subway so that we can get more of what we want and possibly give more of what we can give.” He then hands out the flyers to make his offer plain: Hi! I have an idea to make our commute more interesting and productive, but need some feedback and help with the details.

This unusual approach is part of Lederer’s effort to take the ethos of social networking offline — to “friend” his fellow subway riders. It’s a challenge to the sullen isolation of the commute, giving everyone the chance to join his impromptu circle of altruistic exchange.

“I have this sense that on the subway, there’s more we can do to interact with people,” he explains.

Lederer’s experiment started last month, when he invited passengers on the F line to contact him with advice and ideas. The flyers, which include his email address, landed Lederer lunch with the chief communications officer of a holding company, a date and a solicitation to clean a woman’s soiled guinea pig cages.

THAT, IN TURN, got the attention of this:


AND THAT last week led to this:

Less than a week after the story appeared, Lederer, a software developer, was fired by Morgan Stanley. He said his participation in the story led to his termination.

A Morgan Stanley spokeswoman said that Lederer was not fired for talking to a reporter, adding that it is not company policy to disclose reasons for termination.

Morgan Stanley’s employee code of conduct bars workers from representing themselves in a media outlet as an employee without prior permission, but it’s not necessarily a fireable offense, according to a source familiar with the policy. Other companies have similar policies, though some are stricter than others.

Lederer, who has worked with the company since late April, said he did not represent himself as a Morgan Stanley employee when addressing subway passengers. He said he was not aware of any prior issues with his job performance.

“I was trying to do a good thing and it backfired,” he said.

According to Lederer, a company director sent him a text message shortly after the story appeared last Friday and asked to meet. Lederer said he was told that he “exhibited poor judgment,” but he wasn’t fired that day. He said he believed the matter was closed, until Wednesday afternoon, when he was dismissed.

I DON'T KNOW whether it's more comforting or disturbing to know that the folks at Gordon Gekko's block party treat their worker ants just like they do the rest of us.

And I thought I had all the reason I needed to hate Wall Street. Yet another complete failure of imagination on my part.


HAT TIP: The Gothamist.

Dismantling Glenn Beck


What we need is an Academy Award for Best Internet Mash-Up Video of Cartoon Clips Adapted to Make Fun of Talk-Show Goobers Who Really Have It Coming.

If we had such an Oscar -- and the sad fact that we don't is some sort of indictment on American society -- it would go to this one. "This one" is called Right Wing Radio Duck, and it hits Glenn Beck and the perpetually pissed peeps of the tea-party movement where they live.

Oh, and it's funny as hell, too.

Jonathan McIntosh, to be succinct, is a freakin' genius. Here's part of how he describes Right Wing Radio Duck's plot:
Donald’s life is turned upside-down by the current economic crisis and he finds himself unemployed and falling behind on his house payments. As his frustration turns into despair Donald discovers a seemingly sympathetic voice coming from his radio named Glenn Beck.
WATCH. Now.

The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is contained in the video's 7:46 of searing social criticism from Rebellious Pixels.

Has Glenn Beck attacked McIntosh as a "socialist" yet?

Sunday, October 03, 2010

Your Daily '80s: High school radio, 1987

The WBRH staff, circa 1980

This evening on Your Daily '80s, we listen to a full three hours of high-school radio the way it was in 1987 in my hometown.

The station: WBRH, FM 90 in Baton Rouge.

The school:
Baton Rouge Magnet High School.

The student disc jockeys:
Judy Jetson and Stan Malone.

The date:
Friday, Sept. 18, 1987.

The music: Rock 'n' roll, baby!






Saturday, October 02, 2010

Your Daily '80s: 1988 predicts 2010


Geraldo Rivera and Fox News were made for each other.

You could see that way back in 1988, when the enfant terrible of TV talk had his own syndicated date with sensationalism, and the Fox News Channel was but a twinkle in Rupert Murdoch's jaundiced eye. You have to admit, however, that Geraldo threw a not-terrible right cross despite having just had his nose broken by a thrown chair.

Maybe
Fox ought to aim at this for Election Night this November. Geraldo could reprise his Fight Club thang with some tea-party patriots, and Glenn Beck could provide weepy ringside commentary.

It'd do boffo box office. Trust me on this.

What a difference nine years makes


Howdy, neighbor, howdy!

Welcome to
The Porter Wagoner Show, in wonderful black and white, with your guest star, Willie Nelson. It's 1965.

Watch the full episode. See more Austin City Limits.


THEN . . . the 1970s happened. And Austin, too.

Here's the Red-Headed Stranger a mere nine years after he was twangin' in Nashville and singin' on
The Porter Wagoner Show. It's 1974, Willie's a hippie, and he's starring on the pilot episode of some public-television show.

Austin City Limits, they call it.

Enjoy.

Friday, October 01, 2010

Your Daily '80s: A bitter PiL


John Lydon of Public Image, Ltd., possessed many skills in 1980. Lip syncing was not among them.

Come to think of it, remembering the lyrics most of the time wasn't part of his skill set, either.

And Dick Clark thought things would go according to plan when the former Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols and his new band, PiL, came for a May 1980 visit . . .
why, exactly? Like, dude, this ain't no Fabian or Frankie Avalon you're dealing with here.

WELL, Dick, it doesn't have much of a beat, and you can't do The Hustle to it, so I'll give it a . . . 275 out of 100.

The Man totally had it stuck to him that day.





IN JUNE of 1980, on the other hand, the great Tom Snyder of the Tomorrow show wasn't taking any of that s***.

If Lydon was gonna throw curve balls -- or a googlies, if you want to be cricket about it -- Snyder was gonna grab his bat and take his cuts.
And not necessarily at the ball.

I've featured the
Tomorrow interview before, but it's well worth another look.