Just Thank God You Don't Live In Indiana, Vol. XLIII

FOR reasons now lost--I've slept since then--I recently had the occasion to wiki up Pnin, and discovered the vintage cover above, which is, I suppose, laughable in its shamelessness, if that's the sort of thing you laugh about. I tend, even at my most agreeable, whenever that is, to view it as a serious argument for increased regulation of commerce, and, at most times--such as now, when Power Company surrogates are busy mutilating trees in my neighborhood, a necessary evil whose necessity seems less important to them than the opportunity to inflict mischief in the name of their Dark Master--a point on the very short continuum that terminates--I think it terminates--in the joyful stockpiling of multi-stage nuclear weapons on the grounds that this effectively deters their use in a way their total absence never could, and the attendant notion that the Freest Nation on Earth should positively bristle with armaments of every other sort in pursuit of keeping the world free of anybody else who might. It's been a while, but I don't recall there being three coeds total in Pnin, or any who, in 1953, dressed like Sandra Dee circa 1958.

[While I'm thinking about it--it must be the chainsaws--Somerby catches Keith Olbermann repeating Bob Herbert's pathetic Leaning Tower of Throbbing African Manhood remarks twelve hours, and several debunkings, later. Why is it you prefer to be lied to by "liberals"?]

Anyway, Senator Obama came to Northern Indiana yesterday, and strolled around with our congenitally disingenuous junior Senator, which leads even the New York Times to mush up its peas and hide them under the mashed potatoes:

The reasons for Mr. Bayh’s apparent presence in the inner circle of potential ticketmates are varied, and they say something about the nature of the 2008 race and the correlation of forces within the Democratic Party.
In contrast to Illinois, Mr. Obama’s home state, neighboring Indiana has not supported a Democrat for president since 1964, when it was part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s landslide victory. But in this election, it is considered a battleground state. Many Republicans crossed over to vote Democratic in the May 2 primary, and there is some thought that putting Mr. Bayh on the ticket just might be enough to make this red state and its 11 electoral votes turn blue.
During the primary campaign, Mr. Bayh, 52, not only supported Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, he was also one of her national campaign co-chairmen and described her in an advertisement as having “a spine of steel.” But his roots and popularity in Indiana run deep. His father, Birch Bayh, served three terms in the United States Senate (losing in 1980 to Dan Quayle, the last Indiana native to serve as vice president). And Evan Bayh served two terms as governor of Indiana before being elected to the Senate in 1998.

So you may think you can imagine what our local "news" coverage was like. But I doubt it. To begin with, these are the same wig mannequins who were still squirming in their anchor seats about Indiana's historic primary! weeks after it became clear that as a result of Your Vote Counting This Time! our selection lost. This actually went on until a mid-July Miley Cyrus sighting effectively altered the news cycle. The artificial excitement generated by rumors of a place on the VP Short List (there's a Presidential election, sometimes worthy of the name, every four fucking years. Don't you people pay attention?) has been treated as though it reflects honor upon the entire state, and especially its dedicated crew of Potential Thirty-Second Home Town interviewers. Which means that the "Event" was treated almost exactly as would rumors of a real-life Hannah Montana romance, with lots of gauging the sincerity of back pats and measuring pupil dilation during eye contact. Wherever it was my Poor Wife stopped during the proceedings the reporter informed us that Obama had used Bayh's name twice! Once in the introduction! and again when he praised the confounding issue of Indiana's last, fearless, Democratic Senator for his work in limiting Loose Nukes, raising the question of whether The Candidate had confused him with Dick Lugar.

What in the world can possibly be interesting about this stuff, and why does it have to be covered by a bunch of sugar-buzzed youngsters who can't wait for Santa? It's like the quadrennial thrall of Swimming, or Speed Skating, but absent any bursts of excitement in the real event. Evan Bayh is the most worst of Indiana's two Senators, and the other one is an octogenarian Republican Eagle Scout who's spent thirty-five years in Washington working on his Foreign Policy badge. Bayh got elected on the strength of his father's name (one of the most accomplished legislators from Indiana in its 192-year history, and the man who lost to Dan Quayle. Democracy simply does not work.) and immediately turned into the Younger, Handsomer, Slightly More Aware of His Surroundings Ronald Reagan. Tax Cuts! Workfare!  At least Reagan left his party more energized than he found it.  Bayh left the Indiana Democratic party right where he found it:  nowhere.  You think McCain performed a cynical obeisance to Bush for the sake of his Presidential aspirations? Bayh's like a television suitor of Flavor Flav; there's not enough There there for cynicism to find a toe hold.  (If it's ever discovered he's been in the pocket of Big Anything the only wonder will be what they imagined they were paying for.) Aspiration shapes the man like helium shapes a balloon. Not just an Iraq War vote, he was a fucking podium invitee when Bush signed the thing. Four solid votes with the Acting President on FISA. And I saw, more than once yesterday, someone suggesting that a strike against Bayh (why is he being considered for anything other than Tar & Feathers?) was that Democrats would lose his seat, thus endangering their mastery of the United States Senate. As though that were a bad thing. Hey kid, wanna buy a dirty book?

Tuesday on Look, Here's The Thing!™

WaPo: "Anthrax Dryer A Key To Probe". August 5

Bruce E. Ivins, the government's leading suspect in the 2001 anthrax killings, borrowed from a bioweapons lab that fall freeze-drying equipment that allows scientists to quickly convert wet germ cultures into dry spores, according to sources briefed on the case.

Look, Here's the Thing!: it might be nice if, three days after word got around that Ivins did not work with dry anthrax, the "explanation" that surfaces comes with some acknowledgment of the fact. Was this why reporters asked? Was it why "sources briefed on the case"--th' fuck is that, by the way? Is it more or less than "familiarity"?--brought this up now? Did someone actually inside the investigation just now cough up that lil' lunger of evidence? If so, was it prompted by news reports? Does it confirm, to any extent, that Ivins had no contact with supplies of dry anthrax, and thus is suspected of having concocted his own? None of these is particularly damning, which is all the more reason it'd be refreshing if the niceties would be followed, for once.

The device was not commonly used by researchers at the Army's sprawling biodefense complex at Fort Detrick, Md., where Ivins worked as a scientist, employees at the base said. Instead, sources said, Ivins had to go through a formal process to check out the lyopholizer, creating a record on which authorities are now relying. He did at least one project for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency that would have given him reason to use the drying equipment, according to a former colleague in his lab.

Look, Here's the Thing!: if Ivins had a perfectly good, job-related excuse for requisitioning the thing, in his own name, then, at the very least, it's not a real key to the mystery that he checked one out, is it? He didn't ask Joe in shipping to look the other way while he "borrowed one for the weekend" so he could "freeze-dry his own coffee". This, then, may be a Key to the Probe in the same sense that a large, buoyant piece of flotsam may be a Key to Not Sinking in the Aftermath of a Shipwreck. (The simile is not a haphazard one.)  At any rate, maybe paragraph three is a tad tardy on the Rounding Out with Relevant but Ameliorating Information the Charges Made in the Headline scale.

Eventually, through more elaborate DNA testing of the power and tissue cultures from the victims, they determined that the powder probably came from supplies made by Ivins, to which about 10 other people had access. Authorities last week cited "new and sophisticated scientific tools" that helped advance the investigation.

Look, Here's the Thing!: We like to apply something we call the So Long, Mom! Test in these circumstances. That is, given this explanation with your dear gray-haired momma, mutatis mutandis, in the role of actual suspect, would you pick up the phone and promise her you'll see her every visiting day?

Similarly, CBS News reported last night that Ivins lived near the shop where the envelopes were purchased (the rest of the Fort Detrick staff commuted from Maine, evidently), and had "an obsession with Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority" (which, full disclosure, is the Hellenistic attachment favored by my own Poor Wife) which, perhaps suspicious enough in itself, becomes doubly compelling when one learns a chapter of that organization may be found in Princeton, New Jersey, where some of the anthrax bombs were mailed! We've got the goods on you, Rico! Don't do anything stupid!

The nature of this obsession has not been explained, though it is said to have gone back to Ivins' college days in Cincinnati, a city which accepts the same denomination of stamps! Someone really needs to begin explaining how this guy came to be heading The Nonexistent US Bioweapons Program, or, alternately, why he wasn't tapped as Paul Bremer's assistant.

"Dry anthrax is much harder to work with," said one scientist familiar with Ivins's lab. A lyopholizer would fit inside the ventilated "biosafety cabinet" at the lab and could have been used without drawing notice, the scientist said. The machine could have processed a few small batches of anthrax liquid in less than a day, he said.

Look, Here's the Thing!: If he had the thing to work on a project, wouldn't the other people involved in the project have noticed that it was nowhere to be seen? Okay, maybe nobody wanted to rat.  The Empiricists' Code.  Maybe they just figured it was another one of Crazy Bruce's sorority-obsessed pranks.  It's the weekend.  Dr. Ivins must be headed up to Princeton with another thermos of Ames Strain Cosmos again!  Then again, maybe you could do the same thing on a hot plate.

Other biodefense experts noted that the drying step could have been carried out with equipment no more complicated than a kitchen oven. "It is the simplest . . . but it is the least reproducible," said Sergei Popov, a former Soviet bioweapons scientist who now specializes in biodefense at George Mason University. "If you go too fast you get 'sand,' " he said, referring to the coarser anthrax powder used in the first attacks, in September 2001.

Okey dokey, now that we understand the evidence may point to the use of an ad-hoc, easily obtainable mechanism, the freeze-dryer with Ivins' prints really looms large as the Key to the Whole Fucking Mystery.

The Army issued final rules last week that would cover workers who act in an aggressive or threatening manner. Those employees would be denied access to toxic or lethal biological agents under the revised regulations. Other potentially disqualifying personality traits include "arrogance, inflexibility, suspiciousness, hostility . . . and extreme moods or mood swings," according to the document.

Now if we can just figure out a way to have that disqualify you from being in a position to order its use.

Breaking News...Convict Still Sought...Authorities Considering Using Bigger Drum...More At 11:00...

Mr. Greenscreens, mostly by proxy:

TPM Reader RY keeps us posted ...

Disquieting Rasmussen numbers this morning--McCain's crying racism worked. 53% of Americans, including the same % of whites and half of all Democrats, thing that Obama's "dollar bill" remark was "racist." Only 22% think the Paris Hilton ad was racist--most of those being black people, of course (only 18% of white people took this view).

REALLY, now:  get some exercise, expose your skin to some sunlight, eat some green, leafy things. Take a few deep cleansing breaths. Busy your hands with something other than a keyboard. Take a few minutes and get your fucking story straight.

Back in the snows of New Hampshire, before he was buried by that first white avalanche, Barack Obama was leading an army of people who'd previously been turned off by politics, who were unfettered by participation in, or even a workable knowledge of, our Current Partisan Morass, and were boldly post-racial, unlike the wheezing, demented invalids of the old Democratic party, the one that had fought real racism tooth and nail and heroic non-violence and shotgun ambush, and won. Seven months later a majority of white Americans is parading around in hoods and bedsheets.

Running into this stuff for the umpteenth time I was reminded of the bit in Annie Hall, where Woody doesn't want Diane Keaton to smoke pot before sex because then he won't know if the laughs are genuine. How many times do you have to trot this stuff out for an easily entertained audience that's already convinced? (For that matter, how many times do you get to ignore whatever it is your candidate says, since Senator Obama had already said McCain's reply was not racist, but cynical?) This Racist! Racist! routine is neither smart, nor helpful, nor good politics. It may have seriously backfired against Hillary Clinton (down and out in New Hampshire, still fighting in Guam, thanks to the sudden appearance of the old-style racist Democrat, part of the still-kicking throngs who'd cast their first votes for Wilson, apparently), and it has become a constant stream of hot urea a full month before Labor Day.

Let's look, since I suppose we must, at that Rasmussen Poll. First off, it's stupid, if I'm not repeating myself. Second, it simply asks whether comments were "racist", without providing any definition. We are going to go waaaay out on a limb here and suggest that McCain supporters, and Republicans in general, have a strong, one might even say pathological, need to play the reverse racist, How Come There's No White History Month? minstrel routine at every public opportunity, as the Republican record on race is a source of Never-Ending Shame, and crypto-racism a source of Highly Reliable Votes. They went 2/3 for the "Obama comments were racist" line. We might bear in mind that these are self-described Republicans, and that of the people who respond affirmatively to the statement, "People never lie to pollsters and can't ever figure out what answers are preferable", 98% turn out to be "Someone who wants to make political hay out of the results". The remaining two percent were Employees of the Polling Firm.  And they all need to spend a month going door to door, demanding that the 90% of Americans who believe in God pony up for past-due collection Sundays.

So, let's say that the poll, which simply by being conducted manufactures the issue in some minds, has a marked suggestion that some large portion of the country does not share the definition of racism favored by some TPM correspondent with a hyperventilation problem, or else choses to toss the dart in some other direction. Perhaps this is news to you. If so, let me add my best wishes now that you've emerged from that decade-long coma.

I know, I know, these people are not running the Obama campaign, and Thank God for small favors, it's poorly enough run as it is. My one, self-described benign suggestion is that the continually-shifting "Progressive" rationale for the total embrace of a Centrist Democrat has, to this point, been getting shot down like the Iraqi air force, and maybe it's time to park it and try listening for once. And I don't mean like this:

The good news this morning? God Bless David Gergen! Really--he was on This Week and said (check the video or transcript for exact wording), "When McCain's camp calls Obama "The Messiah" and "The One", he's really calling him "upitty." I'm from the South, and we understand what that means. That's code." Jake Tapper looked like he had been pole axed. Donna Brazille knew what he was talking about, of course. But GS, George Will, and Tapper had to be bluntly told the the way the world works by Mr. Blandly Bi-partisan....


Here's the video:

Y'know, Mr. Blandly Bi-partisan (an odd epithet from an Obama supporter) worked for Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Bush I, and I'll be damned if I can recall a single instance of him denouncing, As A Native of the South, crypto-racist buzzwords back in their heyday, when they were flying like champagne corks at a Lee Atwater soirée. It's possible I was cowering in the basement at the time, but I'm still somewhat disinclined to give him credit for saying so now that his paychecks come from somebody else.   The idea that Republicans painting a Democrat as an "outsider...The Other" suddenly has racial overtones owes an apology to Joe McCarthy. And that really goes double if you can't bring it up without claiming he ran the fucking table, "pole-axing" Jake Tapper along the way, when he obviously did neither, and maybe it's just best to avoid posting the clip.  

It's a long way to November; you've been hearing this since January, but not listening. Now, the Celebrity thing is working--it doesn't matter whether you like it--and the "That's another word for Uppity" thing is not. And it doesn't matter whether you like it. The idea that McCain--like Hillary Clinton before him--should just stop campaigning and concede is infantile, and even if it worked to whatever extent in Democratic primaries, it's not going to work in the general. Americans take their decision in a Presidential election seriously. Not seriously enough to actually vote, generally speaking, and not seriously enough to actually inform themselves of the issues, but seriously enough to question where their vote, if any, should go. Like it or not the election is shaping up as a referendum on Barack Obama; like it or no he's being perceived as an attractive speechifier who's light on resumé and long on malleability. He needs to come out and articulate positive reasons for voters to support him, and to quit reacting to every piece of news and every magazine cover that comes down the pike. Nobody gives a fuck about that Dollar Bill shit except terminal insider wannabees; nobody fucking watches This Week, in warm weather, and nobody gives a fuck who David Gergen is or what he thinks of Charlton Heston, and the next person Mr. Blandishment "pole-axes" with one of his arguments will have the honor of being the first.  U.S. Fucking News and World Report only exists because high school debate teams use it in place of research.  Fortunately, there's a long way to November, and there's no one in American politics right now better able than Senator Obama to step up and make a case.  Now'd be a great time to start.  To this point he has stepped into the role of Celebrity, and he's left his chin open.  It's well past time that the campaign was turned upside down and the people who've been running him like it's 2005 and he's hoping to be somebody's Veep choice fell out. The hard appraisal's gonna come; if the candidate, and the campaign, and, to a small degree, his internet minions--too late there for any real calls for action--don't demand it, it'll be done by the toothless inbreds of Flyover America, so recently and miraculously risen from the Critical List.

The Blackwater T-Shirt Is A Nice Touch, Though

Feds Raid Culver City Medical Marihuana Dispensary

Like I always say, never sell to a man with a soul patch and an Uzi belted to his leg.  Unless you're selling Rush tickets.

UPDATE: 

rageahol said...
thats not an uzi, thats a plain ol standard issue glock, old guy.

Riley replies:

1) I actually considered putting a disclaimer up there to begin with, but I decided to let it go. 2) Generally speaking, "Uzi" is funny; "Glock" is not. 3) Riley has little if any use for gun culture, but knows enough about weapons not to have blown his fucking hand off. 4) Correctly identifying the weapon in question would have made him sound at least minimally knowledgeable, a condition to be avoided on several counts.  5) His eyesight has always been bad, but it's not that bad, yet. 6) The joke, such as it is, rests (or wobbles) on the three points of what a carnival pitchman might call his tripes:  a) that it is something I always say, making "Uzi" the appropriate period reference, and "Glock" an anachronism; b) that that great honking velcro holster contraption makes the man look like he strapped on a fucking howitzer in order to do battle with some aging hippies.  With glaucoma, no less; and c) the always risible dichotomy between the hipster accoutrements of the undercover cop and the ultimate display of the true cop mentality, wherein the frisson of the suggestion that one would attempt to make a "Buy", as they say on the street, of a little harmless weed while displaying a shoulder-launched anti-tank weapon on one's hip plays against the real-life frisson that, at least in retrospect, the soul patch is no less of a giveaway.  7) Similarly, I might have ignored the weapon altogether and said something like, "It proves the old adage, 'Never sell weed to that guy from Extreme who fronted Van Halen for six weeks", but, really, it's probably wisest at my age that I avoid cultural references altogether.  Rush was a leap.

SECOND THOUGHT:  If anyone wants to put up the money, I'll bet "DEA Evidence" boxes would be a big Xmas item in certain markets.

Another Astonishing Success Story For The FBI, Eh, Ms Viera?

AP: Anthrax Scientist Commits Suicide

WE'RE loath to do anything that might tarnish this blog's reputation for cool, dispassionate analysis of Today's Issues, but th' fuck if this case hasn't stunk from the start; th' fuck if the administration, The Washington Post, and the Judith Miller-owned New York Times weren't flogging the It's Entirely Possible That Saddam Hussein Did It! routine long after they or anyone else who'd paid attention worthy of the term "scant" could have believed it; and Bruce E. Ivins, lately deceased, was apparently running around the very "defense" labs we had more or less determined were the source of the stuff, able to operate his own unauthorized part-time evidence cleaning service as a sideline.

Don't get me wrong; the fact that Ivins was a suspect, the fact that he's said to have known that criminal charges were about to be filed against him, and the fact that he topped himself, supposedly as a result, do not make him guilty. They do not close the case. And they sure don't answer any gnawing questions about the investigation. By the same token, the fact that once again the Feds can't solve the highest of high-profile cases without stepping on their collective dick (Richard Jewell, anyone?), and they can't seem to suss the motive of murderous right-wing cranks (Eric Rudolph, anyone?), doesn't mean the case would have been solved easily otherwise, or that it was purposely sidetracked.

But then leave us recall that at the time the event was played as an extension of 9/11 by other means. And while 9/11 provided the cover for ill-conceived and criminally executed invasions, still ongoing, plus the recently-butressed repeal of the Fourth Amendment by voice vote and cloakroom deal, our yapping news spaniels just sorta lost interest in the case right around the time it became a dead-solid lock that the source of the anthrax was domestic (and, more than this, domestic government labs which we had insisted to that point did not exist anymore).

There were a finite number of reasonable suspects. They were people with security clearances, meaning they were subject to reexamination or removal. It's one thing to elude detection for longer than we might hope for in such circumstances; it's another to have been hoovering (sorry) up evidence right under the investigation's snout, especially in a case which, at least for public consumption, was part of the New Everlasting War On Terra.

Again, we no more trust news accounts than we do wingnut-tinged demonstrations of middle-aged estrus over the Fed's incredible accomplishments, and we'd never presume to question the inner workings of an investigation even if we did. But there's a minor throbbing in both temples this morning, one which seems to be suggesting that "murderous, terror-dealing unbalanced right-wing extremist sociopath with a security clearance" perhaps does not narrow down the master list quite as much as we'd like.

Jonah Goldberg: Putting The Cack In "Cachexia".

D. Pantload, "A Losing Salute". July 30

I'M serious: can a nation aspire to greatness, however defined, while a fat, loathsome slug like Goldberg eats free on its tender stalks and leaves a trail of slime everywhere?

Oh, I don't mean that in the First Amendment sense; Americans have tolerated worse and been made stronger for overcoming it (though they haven't been subjected to any mass-marketed stupidity so dismal, outside the specialty markets of End Times Revelations and cable television jewelry sales, in my memory, at least). I mean Goldberg is the ugly growth that won't go away, and that a sane person would seriously consider Getting Looked At. One may, of course, postulate without fear of concrete rebuttal that no one anywhere near the Goldbergian political orbit qualifies as sane, but someone at Goucher gave the man a diploma. Some editor at the El-Lay Times and/or other fine practitioner of what Oscar Wilde once called "journalism" must actually chew his stuff before spitting it into the Opinion Hole, though perhaps he is simply an experienced drinker. One hopes. At any rate, we must assume that, as it is patently obvious that Mr. Goldberg has no marketable sexual skills, there must be some money changing hands somewhere. And this sort of thing is met with shrugs, while honest prostitutes almost everywhere are still harassed by The Man.

(I'm serious. I have no idea what "aspire to greatness" means for a nation, and as for individuals, most of the people I've met to whom the term applies provide little if any support for its adoption as a guiding principle. They seem almost uniformly to aspire to collecting large enough wads of cash that they can live comfortably without having to concern themselves with the sort of philosophical problems "greatness" might raise. Or anything else. As for nations, well, I've been listening to this shit my whole life, having chosen to be born a Boomer and subjected to the carpet bombing campaigns of a succession of Roy Cohn battalions, forcible insertions of "God" into banal Boy Scout doggerel, which is then forced into the mouths of high school students, and dire warnings about the End of Our Precious Freedoms lest we stamp out comic books, pinko screenwriters, or Negroes, et. seq.  All I know is that you or I, given the opportunity to live in Sparta, Ancient Rome, or any of the three other civilizations whose Hollywood renderings give Victor Davis Hanson a hard-on, would, in all likelihood, choose exposure at birth. But, curiously, the one thing people who do profess to believe this stuff are convinced of the immutability of is the rightness of their own opinions. We find it curious--and, after fifty years, more than a skosh tedious--that the only black night of the "conservative" soul occurs when, and is limited in scope to, the prospect of losing an election. No one seems to ask why the Reagan Revolutionists were so good at renaming airports and so bad at everything else that the latter is now Worse Than Ever, and, hence, more in need of the application of "Conservative" "Principles" than ever.)

(Come to think of it, the airports haven't improved much, either.)

So now Goldberg rises like a fart bubble in a bathtub to defend his nation's honor against the comic books rock and roll marihuana addict commie thespian Soviet appeaser water fluoridator integrated school atheist takeover of public education love-in generation anti-war commie ACLU dupes leftist professors sex educators secular humanist anti-gun Big Government politically correct elitist nanny-staters unintended consequences Gay and Lesbian objectively pro-terrorist dead-enders Thought Crime of ESPN honoring the 40th anniversary of the "once infamous, and now famous, black-power salutes from the medal platform at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics" of Tommie Smith and John Carlos, which "rests on an inch-deep nostalgia and the triumph of celebrity culture".

One can, of course, simply attack, or simply dismiss, the antics of a cosseted buffoon who--nearing forty himself!--imagines the pathetic scrambling of his mentor Mr. Eff Buckley II, e.g., to Cover His Racist Ass Once The Game Became Untenable has rendered Goldberg's generation bulletproof on the issue.  Pooches were screwed! But I don't own slaves!  One could point out the same inability to construct an argument and the substitution of the keyboard twitch and the stale dyspeptic belch, the latter a mere mannerism picked up wholesale from that earlier generation that drilled young Jonah with Birch Society flashcards. There's the usual, comic, self-anihilating disavowal of his own words ("By the end of the 1960s, America had seen two decades of steady — if too slow — racial progress.") and the attendant hapless history, and, as usual, the frantic application of tar without control, lest his lack of a point and reflexive flinching be misconstrued (" In 1972, Palestinian terrorists — grateful for 1968’s lesson in the propaganda value of Olympics media attention — slaughtered Israeli athletes."). The man is the Comstock Load (do not sic me, Dear Reader!) of wingnutty stupidity. One almost swings the pick blindfolded:

Comments by ESPN sportscaster Stuart Scott typify the inanity of ESPN’s award. Scott, who was 3 years old in 1968, nonetheless told the Desert Sun newspaper that he remembers how “tense” the times were and how he remembers thinking, “Oh, that was cool for a black man to do that.” He added: “As an adult, I get it even more now.” Even more than when he was barely out of diapers? That’s setting the bar high.

Jonah Goldberg is four years younger than Scott! How do you reach that place, where dishonesty, even blatant dishonesty, even powered by the self-hoisting petard, is practically an autonomic response?  It's like short-changing someone in a fast-food transaction then ostentatiously pocketing the difference in plain sight.

I was fourteen years old that October, a white, middle-class suburban kid and a Track and Field fanatic who was coming to realize that the sort of morality tales told me in Sunday School and Civics Class seemed frequently at odds with what might be called "reality". Nowhere was that more apparent than with race.

(Yes, Jonah, it may be difficult for you to believe, but the toothless Federal gumming that followed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 did not actually result in any more African-Americans voting in the Jim Crow South; just as the Brown decision resulted in shuttered public schools for a decade, it resulted in an increasingly militant oppression of blacks.  And, before I forget, you're not qualified to sniff the jocks of Jesse Owens or Jackie Robinson, or, for that matter, to comment on who called whom a "Tom". Do you have the slightest inkling, or the tiniest concern, about what Jesse Owens faced when he returned to America as an Olympic hero, let alone before? If too slow! The pooch got screwed! Who do you think was doing the screwing? Not the Olympic Project for Human Rights. If Jackie Robinson sided with the gradualists of his era's NAACP, the motor behind the failed Brown, at a time when real personal sacrifice was being made just to bring attention to the dichotomy between Law and Practice; if Owens in his destitution became a spokesman for the US Olympic committee, despite the turbulent times; if there were people on the other side of the issue insensitive enough to disrespect either man because of it, then it is their shame and their business, and not yours to play political puff football with. You have no idea what you're even talking about.)

I remember '68. I remember Bob Beamon jumping out of the goddam stadium, Al Oerter winning his fourth discus gold, and Jim Ryan being felled by mono and Kip Keino. I remember the great Lee Evans demolishing his own world record in the 400, Jim Hines breaking 10 seconds in the 100. And I remember Tommie Smith and John Carlos.

And, you know what? I didn't piss myself about Black Power. I respected, even admired them, certainly far more than the people who just boycotted the Games, and all the more so when the white sportswriter brigade stopped trashing the draft-dodging Muhammad Ali long enough to call for their heads, and Avery Brundage, the slimiest invertebrate to ever preside over anything less than a junta, threatened to expell the entire American team unless Smith and Carlos were suspended. And I knew--probably more instinctively then, or perhaps by virtue of being a track athlete, and now more de jure--that the Olympic ideal is the celebration of individual achievement. not the rampant bullshit nationalism that the Games have become, with the encouragement of sponsorship dollars, since the beginnings of the Cold War.

And which, of course, has only gotten worse since then, as teevee dollars dictated more and more of what the individual committees did, and which turned every Games into a Jingoism-fest-cum-soap-opera for people who don't give a shit about sports at any other time and couldn't pick Jesse Owens out of the line-up people like Goldberg would have put him in for vagrancy.  The noblest of Olympic events, Track and Field is now a shambles and a sham; there isn't a record in the record books that can safely be considered untarnished. This is the direct result of the influence of US television money, which brought about the end of Olympic amateurism on the grounds that the Evil Empire was winning medals which were rightly ours. The East German women's swim team was once (rightly) considered an international disgrace; today cheating is considered a matter of individual preference, so long as you're a) American and b) don't get caught. That's the real fucking irony here; it's too bad we don't have men of the stature of Tommie Smith and John Carlos anymore. They, like Jim Hines, like Lee Evans, like Owens and Robinson before them, have spent much of their adult lives giving back to young people and their communities. Which is one more thing no one will ever say for Jonah Goldberg.

And thank you, ESPN.

Jack? Shit.

Jack Shafer, "The Untouchable: Why Nothing The Press Throws At Obama Sticks." July 29

FOUR grafs into his proof that the Press isn't in the tank for Barack, Barack is just so remarkably, so unprecedentedly slick that no one can get a good grip, Shafer--our guess is he was woozy from the requirements of all the reverse-counter-intuitive-intuitive-double-back-flip-anti-contrarian contrarianism the standard Slate article forces upon one (which can't be effortless even for the long-acclimated)--simply gives up the game twice. Twice:

What's unique about Obama and his candidacy is that almost none of the stuff the press throws at him sticks. Nor is the press alone in its inability to stick him. Hillary Clinton hurled rocks, knives, and acid at her rival even before the primaries (see this Jake Tapper piece from ABC News) and later upped the ante in desperation. She claimed that he was unprepared to serve as commander in chief and accused him of insulting gun owners and the religiously faithful. The eleventh-hour tactics may have won Clinton votes, but they failed to undermine Obama. [emphases mine]

1) Maybe common usage has finally devalued "unique" (or, more frequently, "very unique") to the point of total flaccidity, but I don't think so. (Shafer, though, must, since he actually employs "Teflon" in the next friggin' paragraph.) 2) Evoking Gregory Bateson in replaying the remarkable, and remarkably pervasive, Press Pundit critique of Hillary Clinton as the candidate who actually claimed she was the best qualified for the job! Oh, the gall of the woman! does not, oddly enough, quite convince us that your vision is so unclouded that what you say you can't spot must not exist.

Let's get Riley's personal feelings out of the way: I think this is a non-issue; I think there are serious concerns behind it, especially in light of 2000, 2004, and the catastrophes that followed. It's disappointing to me that so many Democrats, especially those whose sum total experience of national political campaigns are confined to one or both of those atrocities, think it's jake so long as it's the other guy's ox getting Gored--disappointing, but not surprising. I do not believe that Obama's treatment has approached the See No Moronity coverage of George W. Bush, or the statutory indecency of the public fluffing of John McCain, 2000.

But this is precisely not the issue. Let's roll the Press' standard defense of itself:

As long ago as March, the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz demolished charges that the press was soft on Obama by cataloging the tough pieces published by reporters exhuming the candidate's past: his financial relationship with friend and fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko, who is now a convicted felon; his friendship with former Weather Undergrounder William Ayers; his casting of 130 "present" votes as an Illinois legislator; his nuclear energy compromise in the U.S. Senate, said to benefit a contributor; incendiary comments made by his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright; and more.

Now, once again: maybe where you come from "demolish" means "wrote about" and "catalogue" means "five-item handbill"; maybe your street is divided by a medium strip, and maybe you eat a Po' Boy, or a Hero, or a Grinder. Certainly the stuff about Jeremiah Wright was laid on with a wheelbarrow, forget the trowel, but was this really negative coverage? Was it really coverage worthy of the name? Nobody ever quoted Senator Obama saying anything "incendiary about America", and he was almost universally praised everywhere except hopeless GOP sundown towns like The Corner for his "race speech" in Philadelphia. Sure, Wright managed to get himself back on the air for a thirty-second coda to his fifteen minutes. The use of this dreck does not count as tough coverage. It counts, as usual, as stupid sensationalism designed to hook the Lowest-Common Demographic (something, again, Senator Clinton would be roundly criticized for doing as a candidate).

Y'know, one can make the argument that the Press covered the Harken Oil story, or the McCain's Black Love Child story, in that both were out there, somewhere. But that would be to grossly overstate the case. The issue isn't whether stories get told--and anti-Obama stories are going to be told, so long as there's a FAUX network--it's about news judgments. It's about how long, and to what depth, stories are pursued. This is not 2000, or 2004; the Press has been found out, even if it took twenty-five years and a new technological information paradigm to catch people up with the 1980 election. There was an article about that in the Times! is no longer an answer.

To that list add the recent critical dispatches tarring Obama as a flip-flopper. The New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg found "the big papers … assembling quite a list of matters on which the candidate has 'changed his position,' including Iraq, abortion rights, federal aid to faith-based social services, capital punishment, gun control, public financing of campaigns, and wiretapping."

True enough. Which brings us to what should be the real complaint: that The Press comprises an awful lot of people who are paid an awful lot of money to tout horse races, and that's the coverage we get, with an extra scoop of hubris for good measure, and we're told to appreciate just how good that makes it. The Obama campaign consciously ran--let's make that "galloped"--rightward after the nomination was sewn up, so obviously and so patently that the only way not to cover it was not to cover him at all. And that he was now accused of "changing his position" on Iraq--by John McCain's lights, mind you--merely underlines the fact that he was allowed to go through the primaries--even before the primaries, Jack--portraying himself as the anti-war candidate while his position papers said something different.

It's the script, boys and girls, not a question of overt bias, and how long will it take to get these highly-overpaid scriptwriters to act like they understand the real basis for the criticism? Shit, there are minimum-wage Wal*Mart greeters who evince the classic symptoms of Stockholm syndrome combined with unregenerate pep-rallyism. How's "never to the sixth power" work for you? It's Obama, the Suave, Cool, but Untested vs. McCain, the Tried, the True, the Tired and Boring. If we had real journalism, except in fits and starts, it wouldn't be this way, and we wouldn't even be discussing it. If the Press was willing to learn from its mistakes, and wasn't largely self-contained (outside the hated internets), we wouldn't be discussing it. And if this election gave it another opportunity to feed the Anybody But Clinton itch in its marrow we'd be discussing how it is John McCain stays so sharp and so witty at 71.

You Go First.

David Brooks, "The Biggest Issue." July 29

MY Poor Wife and I were watching the local teleprompter readers try, and fail, to read teleprompters yesterday when a teaser for Teachers Learning About Vietnam! (the war, not the country) took us to commercial.

PW: This is just what Sue (her friend in the Humanities Department) has been complaining about. They never get to Vietnam in history classes. It's like that Simpsons thing where school's out for the summer, and the teacher runs out to say, "I forgot to tell you who won World War Two...We did!"

DR: They shouldn't bother.

PW: What?

[My Poor Wife is real, and really a teacher, and just so this doesn't sound like I'm talking to an imaginary cabbie, there was a break in the conversation when the story came on. I'm not supposed to yell at the "News" when education stories are on, and sometimes I even remember. She's remarkably understanding about the rest, or just totally defeated by now; the regular reader may have surmised by this point that I yell at the weather forecast. It was pretty much a nothing story. We resumed:]

DR: You've read Lies My Teacher Told Me. What we do get to in History classes is bunkum. And it's a particular type of bunkum: deflavorized national myths designed not to offend the legions of semi-pro offense takers out there. If they did get to Vietnam, students would barely know more about it than they do in its absence.

Fer chrissakes, there are people on the internets who will blithely announce that the US won World War I, saving the French in the process. It's not even jingoism. They believe it. It's how we teach history.

We've got two Presidential candidates, one on either side [chronologically] of the war, and neither one evinces any knowledge of it, at least publicly. They spew myths. They spew myths about Iraq and Afghanistan, and those are going on now. I can hardly blame teachers for not getting to Vietnam before the clock runs out. What are they supposed to teach? That our soldiers are heroes, that the war was controversial [it's the term the teleprompter readers used--twice--in introducing the story], that hippies spit on returning servicemen?

PW: I'm sorry, were you saying something?

[It's our little joke. Not that she wouldn't have tuned out by now if the volume were lower.]

DR: Shit, you were watching those morning shows with me last week. What do these people want our children to be educated for? To better understand the historical context of the Jonas Brothers' humanitarian concerns? Or the subtleties of Rachael Ray's grilled cheese?

Paging David Brooks.

Why did the United States become the leading economic power of the 20th century? The best short answer is that a ferocious belief that people have the power to transform their own lives gave Americans an unparalleled commitment to education, hard work and economic freedom.

So much for the Socratic method.

Between 1870 and 1950, the average American’s level of education rose by 0.8 years per decade. In 1890, the average adult had completed about 8 years of schooling. By 1900, the average American had 8.8 years. By 1910, it was 9.6 years, and by 1960, it was nearly 14 years.

Let's go ahead and note here the essential contributions of Child Labor laws, scholarly reform and scientific advancement, and expanded legally mandated attendance. Because we can be pretty sure that Brooks won't.

As Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz describe in their book, “The Race Between Education and Technology,”

And once again, I will believe that people such as David Brooks are seriously interested in improving education, as opposed to churning silt in order to muddy the politics of it, when they show some respect for their own. Especially, say, when they stop quoting the latest piece of work that backs up their established position on the subject as though it precluded further debate, and start acknowledging varying points of view.

America’s educational progress was amazingly steady over those decades, and the U.S. opened up a gigantic global lead.

And this is the point, Mr. Brooks--you've suspected it was coming, haven't you?--when we note that when you say "America" you mean "White America". I know you don't like to hear it; I know you've practiced saying "Liberals are always playing the Race Card at the first opportunity" for twenty-five years now. I don't know if you imagine you're being sly about it, or just don't care, or if you really believe--in that "here's a book that backs up what I think, making it the definitive study" way of yours--that race has no part in this. But you cannot make simple moral tales out of the history of post-Reconstruction education and employment and ignore the ugly immorality that kept 10% of the population from effectively sharing in either. You can not.

Now then, could you explain just what th' fuck "opened up a gigantic global lead" is supposed to mean?

In 1950, no European country enrolled 30 percent of its older teens in full-time secondary school. In the U.S., 70 percent of older teens were in school.

Oh, we had a gigantic global lead in "older teens" enrolled as full-time students. I don't suppose it will do any good to ask you why this is the case, since distinctions are to the social moralist what trades unions are to the University of Chicago economist. We--again you can thank, but won't, the sort of meddlesome liberal do-gooder, academic elitist, and tax-and-spend legislator you routinely sneer at--created multifunctional schools. We educated "older teens" who were entering trades, as opposed to making apprentices of 'em at fourteen.

America’s edge boosted productivity and growth. But the happy era ended around 1970 when America’s educational progress slowed to a crawl.

Gee, could that growth have had anything to do with Europe self-destructing in two World Wars, or the United States' position as the resource-rich breadbasket of the world, separated from the fighting by an ocean or two? The exploitation of cheap immigrant labor? Or how 'bout the establishment of a social safety net, trade and securities regulations, which at least partially protected workers and their families from the vicissitudes of speculator-driven boom and bust cycles? The forty-hour work week (quaint, isn't it?), minimum wage laws, improved public health laws, which made it possible for workers to grow up without rickets and live in cities without contracting typhus? Oooh, oooh, I know! Higher marginal tax rates!

No, my mistake; it must have been education, the decline in which, beginning around 1970, led directly to the Reagan Bust and the Clinton Calamity.

This threatens the country’s long-term prospects. It also widens the gap between rich and poor. Goldin and Katz describe a race between technology and education. The pace of technological change has been surprisingly steady. In periods when educational progress outpaces this change, inequality narrows. The market is flooded with skilled workers, so their wages rise modestly. In periods, like the current one, when educational progress lags behind technological change, inequality widens. The relatively few skilled workers command higher prices, while the many unskilled ones have little bargaining power.

I'm sorry. Goldin and Katz do not send me free books, which means I've begun the argument slightly behind, a situation which is compounded by the fact that this sort of bullshit gives me headaches. I assume--I hope--that Goldin and Katz spin a somewhat more subtle tale in their 496 pages, but suggesting that economic inequality--which expanded explosively throughout the Reagan/Bush I years, then moderated under Clinton, before exploding again with That Current Moron--is a direct function of worker education just buggers belief. It clearly is not the case during the adult lifetime of David Brooks. And that's without mentioning that the rallying cry for all this tax-cutting for the wealthy was the metaphorical effect of a rising tide on all boats. Of course, now that this has turned to shit the motto has turned into It's Your Own Damn Fault You Swamped!

Let's say, again, that we ought to reject the Single Point of View method of solving complex problems; that we should maintain a healthy, educationally-sound skepticism where overly-broad constructions are concerned, that we should double this when they fail to account for readily-obtainable evidence, and especially when this failure tends to excuse or exonerate the actions of the people who are pushing it in the first place. I have no idea whether this would include Goldin and Katz. But it fits David Brooks like a suit of taylor-made data.

1970 is about the time we began taking seriously the moral requirement to give equal access to public education to minority students. And it is right about the time that Mr. Brooks' end of the political spectrum began fighting that tooth, nail, and treatise by free-market economist. If you're serious about improving education, then get serious about providing health care, nutrition, and an enriched environment of language, literature, art and music for the economically disadvantaged. Quit trying to bust teachers' unions and pay off parochial school parents for voting your way, and start showing real interest in young lives. And start demanding that the wealthy pay for it. Knock off the free market pieties, which have turned to cinders in your hands while you were pretending not to notice anyway. In fact, how 'bout admitting you've purposely fucked things up, and vow to shut up while someone else tries to clean up the mess?

Mild Suburban Amusements, Vol. XIX

SUNDAY afternoon Larry jumped into my office window and started chattering, and I stopped to figure out what he was on about, and heard the unmistakable high-pitched, non-stop monologue of a sugar-buzzed five-year-old, which sounded close.  Too close.  So I looked out the window to see Parker, the aforementioned buzzee, tearing leaves off the autumn-blooming clematis growing on the lamp post.  I ran to the front door and threw it open.

DR:  Parker, just what do you think you're doing?

SB5: Stella (the neighbor's cat, sister to Keats) is under there!

DR:  Parker, do you know how to swim?

SB5: No.

DR: Well, I think it's amazing that in five years no one's seen fit to take advantage of that.

The Electric Gatekeeper of Hell

WARNING: the visually impaired should not watch this video. The rest of you can already see it's Meredith Viera.

AT one point last week the bereaved homeowner, forcibly separated from modern communications, considered getting all his news from the television networks, which still showed up in his living room unbidden, free of charge, like previously rejected suitors now possessed of some pathetic new hope, but secret, daring only to express condolences but thinking maybe! Maybe now he'll come back! But I'd only thought of it as some species of that experiment where one eats fast food every day for a month or watches the complete cinematic oeuvre of Former Saturday Night Live cast members and then blogs about it if he survives. But Katie's little puppy eyes looked so sad and hurt and trusting that first night that I couldn't bring myself to do it.

I got so far, though, as to actually try to watch the morning shows, and these were ten of the most unpleasant minutes of my life, ever.  I know it couldn't be that my expectations were too high. It must be that in the interval since I last watched one (when Hughes Rudd, R.I.P., still hosted the CBS Morning News) the very concept of "News" had been forgotten, and then was reconstructed by network archaeologists, largely through guesswork aided by the discovery of Joan Lunden's long-lost audition tape. On Thursday morning I sat down with coffee, buttered toast, and two aspirin, and discovered--this is right off the bat, mind you!--that at that moment the viewer could select  a) Miley Cyrus, b) George Michael, or c) Batman. I glanced at the clock, which read 8:15!  Even the wintergreen-flavored lo-cal hard news substitute they peddle had been dispensed with for the day. I'd begun with zero expectations and they had already proven impossibly high.

Who needs--or can take--this sort of thing before breakfast digests? Who among those prefers it come annotated by a clamor of carefully coiffed "talent" all nattering at once? Why are a bunch of middle-aged white people enthusing over the latest singing sensation beloved of girls from 11 to 11-and three-quarters as though this were a recently discovered demographic, or one which Nielsen recently reported had suddenly taken to watching morning "news" programs as a replacement for hot torrents of text messaging urea?

I resolved to tune in earlier next time, just to make sure there was no mistake. And it turned out to be worst than I'd even imagined.

Meredith Viera.

First, I'll own up to a visceral, possibly chemical dislike for the woman, and I suspect that part of it is that the way some people have gaydar I have I have an analogous ability to spot schoolyard tattletales and congenital suck-ups years, even decades later. Second, though we were born less than ten days apart she has been exuding that cloying eau de middling-town society page for twenty years, and as someone once said about Harry Connick, Jr., it's one thing to act as though Bob Dylan isn't important to you, and quite another to act like you've never heard of him. And there was the infamous 60 Minutes stint where she tried to portray herself as some sort of breast-feeding Feminist icon, even though real women, working and otherwise, who were struggling with real problems and real workplace oppression without high-six-figure salaries to cushion the blows never got the time of day in her stories.

And, finally, call me old fashioned, call me just plain old, but once you've decided that hosting game shows and hawking everything from patent medicines to washday miracles to panty shields is your line I think you should be done with reporting The News, and The News should be done with you. Once you have demonstrated that the things that come out of your mouth are for sale you're disqualified! Is this too esoteric a concept for the modern age, or just too potentially honest?


Now, maybe that's just me, but then, go ahead and judge for yourselves. Friday they gave Viera the 100th Anniversary of the FBI story. And fittingly, since she has all the qualities Hoover admired in a journalist.

Watch along with me, won't you, as we begin with a faux-noir tale of the Bureau's early fame, matched by faux-history (though this too is fitting). Dillinger! Bonny and Clyde! Scarface! Machine Gun Kelly, who gave 'em the G-Men moniker! Except, of course, that fans of the cinema may recall that Bonnie & Clyde were gunned down by state lawmen from Texas and Louisiana, although more casual viewers would be forgiven for mistaking the Sneaky Ambuscade Without Warning as Hoover's Boys' M.O. Capone was tracked down by T-Men, and it was John Edgar's wordcrafters that put their slogan in Kelly's mouth. Right on one count, though; the public execution of Big Dick John was all Purvis, pissing his drama-queen boss off no end, of course.

Then it's time to update our hagiographyin', as Viera interviews Robert Mueller. Skip ahead to around 2:30; believe me, you won't miss anything.

Let's talk about highlights for the F.B.I. The Unabomber?

Right. The stirring success story of a government agency which looked for the man for eighteen years, and managed to find him, somehow, shortly after his brother turned him in. And this in spite of the fact that a sizable percentage of the UNABOM task force didn't believe Ted Kaczynski was their man even after they'd arrested him. Perhaps because they'd been reading that miraculous profile that predicted he'd be a married, meticulous, blue collar worker with a high-school education.  Let's talk about highlights!

But it's not all fluff; Viera proves she can ask the tough questions:

But the FBI has had its embarrassments. The raid in Waco, Texas. The wife and son of White Separatist Randy Weaver were killed in a standoff in Ruby Ridge, Idaho.

Again, I'd lost track of her until Friday. Does she do all her research at Little Green Footballs?

And don't get me wrong. The Bureau has a lot to answer for about Waco. It has one shot to answer for, two if you believe the conspiracy theorists, at Ruby Ridge.  Okay. But is it possible that Viera is so tone-deaf she didn't realize how that sounds, or is that just her real journalistic credentials on display? She and I were born ten days apart. If you ask me about FBI "embarrassments" I'd probably start with Martin Luther King, spying on US citizens for partisan political purposes, infiltrating anti-war groups and inciting violence, Wounded Knee, and doing Reagan's dirty work for him. I might have gone back to the trial-less executions of Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd, or tuning Ma Barker into a criminal mastermind after they gunned her down, or the internal domestic surveillance they were doing even before the world's most successful malignant cross-dressing little fascist took over (Jane Addams, public enemy, anyone?) I might mention Hoover's warehouses of creepy, sex-obsessed licensed snoppery, his utter contempt for the law, his blackmail-fueled five decades of petty-tyranny, his racism, his cosy relationship with the Mafia the Bureau insisted didn't exist. I might've mentioned Fred Hampton, who, unlike Koresh or the Weavers, didn't get a warning, let alone hours or days to surrender. If you told me you wanted to restrict it to something within the memory of the Today Show viewership--like they remember the 90s?--I might've asked Viera if she'd ever heard of Judy Bari, or why Robert Hanssen and Wen Ho Lee didn't qualify as "embarrassments".  Waco and Ruby Ridge, whatever else they were, were legitimate law enforcement exercises gone bad (and then politicized).  Maybe we should start the list with the extra-legal killings and the overtly political acts.

Or maybe it's just me.

Happy 100th Birthday, FBI!

I think the Hoover Look-Alike Contest was particularly successful.

Frontier House

WELL, it is a little disappointing to discover the internets could do without me for 72 hours, which is why I decided to return early.  That, and the fact that I now have actual internet service again, and phone service, and U-Verse Teevee, whose simultaneous disappearance Tuesday afternoon qualify, in AT&T servicespeak, as Issues, and which they had pledged to Resolve only by tomorrow.  

They were, by the way, absolutely convinced that the problem was Ours, even though I tried to explain that someone at the newly refurbished mall Town Center Experience two blocks over had somehow blown up its electrical grid, causing all the stores to close for the day and browning us (in the neighboring grid) out for roughly one minute.  This, I felt, may have had something to do with it, even though our own failure occurred roughly five hours later, but also roughly at the exact moment the power company guys showed up to work on the transformer at the end of the next block.  (I was, it should be noted, trying to make myself understood over a pay phone situated on a median strip in the middle of 62nd Street, at 5:30 PM, which did seem to affect communications somewhat, from my perspective.  That made two people in a single afternoon who expressed utter disbelief when I informed them there was no cell phone number where I could be reached as there is no cell phone in my possession, nor has their ever been.)

In their defense, we were the only house so affected, so far as I've been able to tell.  Still, I suspect that the It Sounds Like A Household Wiring problem was just an excuse to bump us to the end of the repair line, and they somehow managed to solve the problem without ever coming within sight of our house.  AT&T and I are going to have a detailed discussion about this just as soon as my Poor Wife catches up on her phone calls.

Doing without all this stuff was surprisingly easy, except for missing The Daily Show and relying on non-internet sources for news.  It was actually much easier than kicking heroin (either time), except that coming off of the Boy you aren't forced to watch Meridith Viera.  And therein hangs a tale I suppose you'll be hearing shortly.