Man, being a press baron just isn’t the bowl of cherries it used to be. Not that publishers ever were sainted figures in the popular mind, but you don’t have to be a thousand years old to remember the high notes: Katharine Graham backing Ben “we stand by our story” Bradlee; the Sulzbergers going to the mat over the Pentagon Papers; the Bingham family standing staunchly for civil rights at a time when their Kentucky readership didn’t. Of course, all of these folks were publishers, not exactly press barons, but the job description is the same — build, maintain and defend the wall that stands between the newsroom and those who would interfere with its smooth operation.

This is a gross oversimplification, I know. But we’re talking broad strokes here, even caricature. Humor me.

True, you always had Citizen Kane/William Randolph Hearst on the other side, but at least you had a few good role models.

Not so much, anymore. From evil to merely comical, we behold the recent downfalls of Conrad Black and Par Ridder, aka Tony’s boy. I’ve had my eye on the latter gentleman since I worked for the Company Formerly Known as Knight Ridder, which was always crying poverty. No money for raises, no money for travel, no money period! It’s never been this bad! We’re hanging on by our fingernails! No, you can’t have a flat-screen monitor; don’t you know what those things cost? Then I saw an item in a Twin Cities weekly that revealed the check cut to Par Ridder when he moved to St. Paul to be publisher in 2004 — $250,000 for “relocation expenses.” Keep in mind 2004 was the Worst Year Ever in our corner of corporate journalism, at least until 2005 arrived. I guess they formed a human chain across the country and passed his furniture hand-to-hand.

Anyway, if you read the link above, you get a snarkalicious Christopher Hitchens hit piece on Lord Connie, with the sharpest barbs reserved for his wife, Barbara Amiel, who…

…turns out to be one of these women who are insatiable. Insatiable in the Imelda Marcos way, I mean. Never mind the mammoth tab for her birthday dinner in New York, where it’s at least arguable that business was discussed. Never mind the extra wings that had to be built onto her homes just to accommodate the ball gowns and shoes. What about the time she was on a Concorde that stubbornly remained on the tarmac at London airport? Irked at the delay, she telephoned the chairman of British Airways, Lord King, to demand action and—failing to get crisp service from him—announced that she would never fly the airline again. This, in turn, meant the acquisition by Hollinger Securities of a private jet for her. And this, in turn, meant the installation of an extra lavatory on the aforesaid private jet, at a cost of half a million dollars, so that Lady Black wouldn’t have to be inconvenienced by the crew members coming down the fuselage to use the existing one.

This comes close, but still can’t top Roger Ebert’s putdown of Lady Barbie, or whatever she’s called. After Black made public a letter to Ebert that revealed the star film critic’s $500,000 salary, Ebert replied:

Since you have made my salary public, let me say that when I learned that Barbara received $300,000 a year from the paper for duties described as reading the paper and discussing it with you, I did not feel overpaid.

As for Ridder the Younger, I think it’s safe to say his career has blown a few tires, left the road, tumbled end over end into the ditch, caught fire and had Tony Soprano pinch its nostrils shut until the bubbling stopped. I mean, when his own staff (or so I assume) is unafraid of mocking him openly — it’s just not a good time to be a scion.

Ah, well, he’s young. He can still change careers. And if he plays his cards right, I’m sure he can squeeze a little more cash out of the company just to go away and stop embarrassing them. Of the two, I’d take Black. You can almost always do better with an arrogant, swaggering prick — even one whose underlings turned off the escalators at the Chicago Sun-Times to save on electricity — than a daddy’s boy so attached to his Excel spreadsheets that he committed career hara-kiri to preserve them.

BTW, I’ve tried to imagine what sort of special sauce I’d have to consume before I’d consider myself too, too rarified to share a bathroom with a pilot, and I can’t do it. Very rich people can be squeamish about excretions; they seem to literally believe their shit doesn’t stink (although everyone else’s does). I recall reading once that Barbra Streisand’s concert rider requires she have a bathroom where she can flush the toilet without having to turn around and risk looking at the contents of the bowl. Of course, Streisand is quite the entertainer, and from what I’ve read of Amiel’s journalism, they’re not in the same league.

Also, it looks as though Rupert Murdoch has finally hammered out his deal for Dow Jones. Most, as in 99.9 percent, of the coverage will be about the Wall Street Journal, but Dow Jones owns other papers, too, and I know some people who work for them. They will almost certainly be sold, which will not be a good thing. Courage, friends.

Bloggage: Some stories from Iraq inspire fury, and others are just depressing. Two of the latter today: A boy who got his parents’ permission to join the army at 17 is killed at 18, and a laundress who went to Baghdad for the salary is paralyzed from the chest down five weeks later.

By popular demand, part three of the Dispatch series on Rachel Barezinsky, the high-school senior shot for the crime of making a crazy man think she was trespassing.

This was interesting: Yes, there is Islamic creationism, and yes, it’s a load of crapola, too.

Jesus of Siberia.

And that is all, folks. Carry on.

Ah, the Cranbrook Educational Community. The hoity-toityest private school in all of southeast Michigan. Its classrooms and studios have gestated luminaries as numerous as the stars: Michael Kinsley. Bob Woodruff. Mitt Romney! Nestled in the green bosom of Bloomfield Hills, it’s known for its lovely, peaceful campus, its public art — that’s Carl Milles’ Orpheus Fountain, above, along with Europa and the Bull — its museums, academies and general devotion to learning and enlightenment.

Eliel Saarinen was the main architect of the place, as well as the art school’s director. He and his wife lived in a house on campus. Since Alex was here, taking advantage of the Stay With a Blogger Weekend special, and since Alex is a huge fan of 20th century modern, it seemed a good time to finally get out there and see the Saarinen house.

Well, it’s everything you’d expect a Saarinen house to be — beautiful, austere, clean, symmetrical, attention paid to the last detail, and terribly uncomfortable-looking. Those Finns and their hospitality — everything about them says, “Come and admire, but don’t stay too long.” There was a “cozy corner,” a built-in banquette that ran around two sides of a room. A rug was draped over the seat, and extended out onto the floor. The guide said guests would sit on the bench and pull the rug up over their legs to stay warm. How cozy. What hospitality.

But hey, it’s Saarinen. Some people design for the comfort of the body. Others design for the benefit of the eye. You need a mix.

After that we took the long way home. I wanted Alex to see the Theatre Bizarre, in the back yard of a house along State Fair Road:

It’s…well, I’m not sure what it is. Nearest I can tell, it’s a performance space that opens one night a year — Halloween or thereabouts — for a night of macabre revelry. More pictures at the links.

The next day we spent on the water. Blue sky, blue water, blue T-shirt, blue freighter:

Our next Stay With the Blogger weekend will be after I change the sheets. Make your applications soon.

Bloggage: Ashley Morris has met his match.

Some people don’t like Crocs. Some people must not have children. Or a job that requires standing up for long periods of the day, evidently.

The Columbus Dispatch is running a three-part series on the shooting of a local teenager by the sort of resident politely described as “eccentric.” I’ve read enough multi-part series on wrenching medical conditions to see me through the rest of my life, but part one — about the shooting and how it happened — is well-done and well-worth your time. Some people shouldn’t have guns.

That’s it for me. Time slips away, and I have a lot to do in what remains.

So he did:

The caller lost his cool, but hang on after the hangup for the smirking. 4dbirds, you’ll love this.

I try not to make this blog too political. Probably should have saved it for the bloggage. But there isn’t going to be much of that today, because I’m empty as a cup and need to get a lot of work done by this afternoon, when Alex arrives for his stay at NN.C Central. It’s Stay With a Blogger Weekend, didn’t you know that? Photos when we get them.

I was talking about local driving habits with someone who grew up here, and he made the argument that yes, sure, Detroiters all drive like car thieves and favor moves like the Six-Lane High-Speed Cutover Without Signaling, but by and large, people drive with a decent baseline level of skill. I disagreed, but it was a boring argument and we don’t need to recount it here. However, I offer some proof of my position today. There was a huge water main break on a major freeway yesterday. I mean huge — a 48-incher — that erupted in a geyser and then abated to a mere waterfall, swiftly flooding the freeway. And I mean swiftly — a couple of cars were left on the road, water to their rear-view mirrors, drivers sitting on the roof waiting for rescue. That must have been some flood, I thought, stupidly, until I saw the victims on the late news and learned: Yes, they saw the water ahead of them and thought they could drive through it.

I mean, speaking of stupid.

I’m hoping nothing this exciting happens to Alex on his way here today.

L.A. Mary e-mailed to say the Comics Curmudgeon has opened her eyes to the thrills of “Gil Thorpe,” the strip so stupid it’s not even on the comics page in many papers. Editors save it, and “Tank McNamara,” for that problematic ocean of gray, the sports agate page. I never paid much attention to it, either, but the CC knows what he’s talking about:

Ha ha! Oh, man, the Gil Thorp summer hijinks are getting started even more quickly than I could have hoped! I’m totally in love with Gail Martin, the “rock and roll Carole King,” as she was called yesterday; truly, nothing shouts “rock and roll” like a collared shirt and a long braid that you clutch dramatically to your chest while you belt out your non-hits and your banjo player grooves behind you.

The art in this strip is almost comically bad. Fitting, I guess.

After five eps of “John From Cincinnati,” I think James Wolcott has it right: If this guy can heal the sick, the first thing he needs to lay hands on is this show. Although “I got my eye on you” is a new catchphrase here at NN.C Central.

OK, Alex just e-mailed and said he’s “leaving soon.” Which means I have to go banish dog hair, and pronto.

My life is even more boring than usual, so it’s all-bloggage Thursday:

Watching online video journalism find its footing is fascinating. I’ve said before I live in one of the worst markets for TV news — big and prosperous, but fully in the grasp of people who are squeezing it for every dime they can, while they still can — but this stuff is giving me hope.

I stumbled across this in my work last night, an index page for a video series on entrepreneurs produced by Crain’s Chicago Business. There are only two stories up, and both are good, but the one on the bike messenger is great. I’ve messed around a bit with digital video, so I have an idea what went into making it, and the answer is: A lot of work, and not a lot of money. They attached a POV (point of view) camera to the messenger and let him do his thing, then sat him down and had him talk about it a little bit, which they added as a voiceover. The video is nerve-wracking — I kept wanting to scream, “watch out!” — but his voice is calm, talking about finding the natural flow of the traffic and being like a river running through the rocks (rocks = cars). The reporting happens almost by accident. We learn that the messenger is a co-owner of his business, the Four Star Courier Collective, that it runs by “commie ideals” and that it makes for a unique niche of the profit-making community. There are a few facts about the messenger industry in general — it’s in decline — and the daily grind of getting from the Sears to the Hancock tower in five minutes, but then having to spend far more time being vetted by security.

If this were on one of my local newscasts, we would have seen the reporter’s face at least six times. There would have been silly wordplay and a question about firm thighs. The cuts would have come at a 3X pace, because people get so bored if they have to look at the same thing for longer than four seconds. And then there would have been the chuckling handoff to the anchors, who would say stupid things, and then on to the animal story.

I suppose, in the interest of transparency, I should admit that I sometimes indulge in a brief fantasy of being a bike messenger myself. Alan’s getaway-career fantasy is boatbuilding; mine is hangin’ with the dreadlocked boys down in the Messenger Center, comparing scars. This may have colored my opinion.

Why should the nation rebuild New Orleans? To give the world more fertile ground for the production of whorehouse proprietors who give good quote, that’s why:

“I know he’s not a drug addict,” she said. “I know he’s not a person that would down talk a woman. I know that he’s respectful. I know from what I’ve seen that he is honorable, that he’s a good man. His wife should be very proud of her husband irregardless of what he’s done. He was not a freak. He was not into anything unusual or kinky or weird.”

What a heart of gold that girl has!

I knew, sooner or later, Bigfoot would turn up in Michigan.

Today’s dirty-joke thrill: Unintentionally sexual comics covers/panels. You’ll feel so ashamed for giggling.

Have you noticed the amount of random b.s. that goes around the conversational circuit during your average day? A few months ago we discussed the “every meat eater has several pounds of undigested hot dogs in their bowel” meme, which I was astonished to read not long ago in, no kidding, a health magazine. It was a first-person piece on getting a colon cleanse; I guess someone drank the Kool-Aid.

One of the neighborhood kids is a veritable font of this stuff. “Did you know that you swallow, on average, eight spiders a night?” she told Kate the other day. This was followed by the news that “some ring of rocks” was “put there by aliens.” Kate, bless her heart, said, “the asteroid belt?” No. Further questioning revealed she was talking about Stonehenge. I tried to correct her, but I doubt it sunk in.

Today I read in the New York Times that someone is pushing a $25,000 genuine horsehair mattress with claims that it “breathes,” useful in that “the average person sweats about a pint a night.” Yes, a pint. Yes, “average.” Does anyone ever dare to say, “Um, that’s a load of crap” to people like this?

Anyway, I’m of two minds. I’ve introduced Kate to Snopes and their valuable service, so that’s one. The other is to fight fire with fire, to make up my own counter “facts,” a la John Hodgman. Next time I’ll tell that kid that you not only swallow eight spiders a night, but usually at least one millipede, and, while camping, two earthworms.

That’s it for me, folks. Discuss.

Warning: Rant ahead.

Good lord, does it ever stop? Words fail.

[Twitch.] [Twitch.] [Facial tic.]

OK, words are beginning to return. If you didn’t click the link yet, it’s about the testimony, yesterday, of Dr. Richard Carmona, surgeon general from 2000 to 2006. It turns out — brace yourself for a revelation sure to shock — that even the office of the so-called nation’s doctor is not safe from the black hole of evil that is Karl Rove…oh, hell. The black hole of evil that is this entire administration. Ahem:

“Anything that doesn’t fit into the political appointees’ ideological, theological or political agenda is often ignored, marginalized or simply buried,” he said. “The problem with this approach is that in public health, as in a democracy, there is nothing worse than ignoring science or marginalizing the voice of science for reasons driven by changing political winds.”

As you may suspect, among the things that didn’t fit into the political agenda were embryonic stem-cell research, questioning the effectiveness of abstinence-only sex-ed programs, secondhand smoke, even global warming research. But the whipped cream on the cake had to be this exchange (from an NYT story, not the one linked above):

And administration officials even discouraged him from attending the Special Olympics because, he said, of that charitable organization’s longtime ties to a “prominent family” that he refused to name.

“I was specifically told by a senior person, ‘Why would you want to help those people?’ ” Dr. Carmona said.

The Special Olympics is one of the nation’s premier charitable organizations to benefit disabled people, and the Kennedys have long been deeply involved in it.

When asked after the hearing if that “prominent family” was the Kennedys, Dr. Carmona responded, “You said it. I didn’t.”

Yes, don’t make an appearance at the nation’s premier event for the developmentally disabled. You don’t want to help “those people.”

Like most Americans, I never gave a thought to the surgeon general unless I was lighting a cigarette, until C. Everett Koop came along. Dr. Frank, my old buddy, considers Koop a personal hero, and explained why one day over lunch, although it should be obvious to anyone who remembers the Reagan administration. Koop, the proverbial “deeply religious” doc, a pediatric surgeon, found himself occupying the office during what would become the most profound public-health crisis of the latter half of the 20th century, and perhaps all of the 21st — AIDS. There was a lot of loose talk about God’s punishment and quarantines and maybe even detention camps. William F. Buckley made his notorious suggestion about buttock-tattooing to indicate the HIV-positive, if you recall. What a time it was.

And Koop, who could very well have gone along with all of this, issued a report. It contained the words “anal sex” and “condom” and other things polite people didn’t talk about. It also advocated AIDS education in public schools. He thought it would be a good idea if we instructed people — yes, even young, unmarried people — on the proper use of condoms. This made him few friends in the administration, but Reagan supported him. He even supported him when he called smoking “as addictive as heroin” and changed the warnings on cigarette packs from “may be hazardous to your health” to “causes cancer.”

For all of this, Dr. Frank admired Koop greatly. He was unafraid to speak uncomfortable truths, but most of all, he upheld the doctor’s core value: He placed the welfare of his patients — in this case, the whole country — ahead of his personal attitudes and beliefs. (This was a big thing for Frank, who is a pulmonologist. Every day in his practice, he saw people who willingly consumed the poison that was killing them, who wouldn’t even go outside so their asthmatic kid wouldn’t suffer. The urge to punctuate medical advice with a few brisk smacks to the jaw must have been overwhelming. But it also made him nod in agreement when Koop said that part about heroin.)

Koop left big shoes to fill, and I don’t think anyone really has. But the shoes have been there. And yes, in the interest of fairness, I will say that Bill Clinton screwed over his own surgeon general. Everyone with half a brain knew what Joycelyn Elders was saying when she said masturbation should be taught in schools. She wasn’t advocating wanking lessons and instructional videos. She was saying that maybe kids should be told the truth about masturbation. It was political cowardice to hang her out to dry.

But that was nothing compared to this. It is perhaps naive to expect politicians not to be politicians, but tell that to a person with a chronic disease hoping for a stem cell-based treatment in his or her lifetime, who might appreciate a little straight talk on the subject. The country that gave the world the Salk vaccine long ago ceded its scientific leadership in this field. Guess who’s rushing into the vacuum, luring the world’s top scientists to do research in their friendly country? Singapore. Have a nice day.

[Twitch.]

OK, rant over. Let’s go straight to the bloggage before I start sweating.

I wonder how the president of Chevrolet felt, after last night’s All-Star Game, having to hand the keys to his all-American hybrid SUV to a Japanese guy named Suzuki? Probably pretty good. It was a great performance.

I know, intellectually at least, that every day could be my last. I’ve been guilty of a morbid interest in strange, sudden deaths, if only because it usually motivates me to clean out my underwear drawer. Some deaths are worse than others, however; this one has to be one of the top five. And I’m not talking about the people in the plane; I’m talking about the people in the houses. Of course we heard the 911 tapes from the neighborhood on the late news; I know you will be as astonished as I was to learn that the people sound panicked and upset. “News,” you know.

Now I’m in the proper mood for aggressive journalism. I pick up my lance, and off to the home office.

Moments in the life of Mother of the Year:

I rode my bike down to the park to summon home Kate and a friend, who were playing there. When I found them they were crawling around in some bushes, trying to find her friend’s hat. The hat had been snatched, and hidden somewhere in the park, by a boy who lurks there and regularly gives them trouble. This was the second incident in a month, and I let fly with my opinion that this boy is “a nasty little shithead.” Well, it cheered them up, anyway. Where before they’d been near tears, now they were thrilled that they’d heard an adult — not only an adult, but a mother — use a bad word, and about someone they knew.

I’m sure it was all over the park in two minutes flat.

Mostly, I try not to swear around my kid. There will be time for her to discover the poetry of profanity, but that time isn’t now. What I try to do instead is use my entire vocabulary; if I’d been faster on my feet, that boy would have been “overcompensating thug-boy.” I also try not to be coy. I hate the way we think “fuck” is enough to cause fainting, but “f- – -” is A-OK. Some years ago one of my colleagues wrote a story about a dust-up at a high-school newspaper, which featured students quoted accurately using profanity. The stock phrase of description editors settled on was not “the students used a variety of obscenities,” but “the students used the f-word, the s-word, the a-word and several variations.” Something like that, anyway. It was so silly.

Needless to say, we never, ever used the word “nigger.” It was either “the racial slur known as the n-word” or “n- – - – -,” but the word itself was radioactive. A suspect in a racially motivated murder was arraigned, and the story pointed out that the man had several tattoos that suggested he would make no African-American friends in prison, so his lawyer asked for protective custody. Were it up to me, I’d have written, “The suspect has prominent tattoos featuring racial slurs,” but the AP went with “the suspect has a tattoo that reads, ‘Die, n- – - – -, die.’” When I first read this, I thought for half a second that he’d gotten a tattoo with dashes in it.

You see what I’m saying? Say it or don’t say it. But don’t pussyfoot around. The dashes don’t make it any less offensive. It’s just so much fan-fluttering.

After this, our editor, who was gay, promoted “faggot” and “queer” to dashed-out status, on the grounds they were the gay version of the ultimate racial slur. I truly mourned these, and not because I heard them so often coming out of the mouths of gay people. I just like language, all language, and the more, the better. Gay people have so many amusing euphemisms for homosexuality, I feared we were sliding down the slope toward incoherence, with such great terms as “nelly queen,” “Miss Thing” and my favorite — “nancyboy” — banished to the twilight of dashes.

You know where this is heading, don’t you? The NAACP is meeting in Detroit this week, and yesterday they “buried the n-word.”

Good luck with that. I’m sympathetic, but pessimistic. Also, cynical — I await the day, surely arriving any minute now, when someone says “nigga” is an entirely different word, and hence OK. I actually agree; if anyone can’t tell the difference between one black kid telling another “you’re my nigga” and a white racist saying the same thing in, eh, a different tone of voice, they probably haven’t read this far. Language is paint. You can apply it with a fine brush, a wide one, a spray can or a bucket, but the art is in the execution.

Interesting note: The Free Press marked this occasion with several stories, two editorials, a cartoon and letters to the editor about the issue. But they didn’t allow online comments on the original story yesterday. Now that would be an interesting thing to read an editor’s column about. I’m not holding my breath.

Not to change the subject too abruptly, but guess who’s coming to Detroit in September, and for whom will I shove aside all comers in my quest for tickets when they go on sale Friday? George Clinton, that’s who. Now two weeks away from his sixty-funkin’-seventh birthday, it sounds like George is sometimes baffled by kids today, and their filthy mouths, too:

Though he’s popular with rappers, Clinton says he doesn’t completely understand the hip-hop culture. “I can’t get used to [rappers] saying the things they say to girls and then expecting them to make love to that,” he laughs. “One guy was cursing this one girl out and I said, ‘Man, don’t talk like that to that girl,’ and she said, ‘Oh, here comes Captain Save-a-Ho.’”

By the way, if you want to know why Clinton is still important today, here’s a clue:

“We do it different all the time,” he says. “People want to hear the same songs they know, and at the same time they want something different. You have to be conscious of that. They say they’re nostalgic for that old music. I don’t want to be nostalgic,” he pauses. “I want to see what’s next.”

“I want to see what’s next.” I’ve known people who have been looking backward since they were 30 years old.

So, bloggage:

How the Chinese deal with corruption widely known to be deep, broad and systemic: They execute the head of their FDA equivalent. Well, that’ll surely take care of the problem, don’t you think? Everybody back to work!

Do you read the Comics Curmudgeon? If not, you should.

That’s all for this morning, the last (so we’re told) in the heat wave. And Mercury is no longer retrograde. Let’s all start new projects.

UPDATE: Undercover Black Man has your Giant Negro Roundup, for those you who follow such things. As I know UBM is a sometime writer for “The Wire,” I wonder if he shares any responsibility for one of the better lines from a recent season: After the shooting of Stringer Bell, one homicide detective asks another if they have a suspect description. “BNBG,” the second one says. “Big negro, big gun.”

Current temperature: 95 degrees. Relative humidity is a low — for this neighborhood, anyway — 28 percent. Which is not exactly a dry heat, but not the usual punishment, either. It’s a good test for whether you like warm weather.

I don’t like warm weather. Not this warm, anyway.

I really don’t understand why people move to Arizona. Isn’t there an easier, less expensive way to get skin cancer and die of heatstroke?

OK, so.

I know I give a lot of love to the NYT around here, but the place isn’t entirely all that. The Sunday Styles section is the paper’s true toy department; at least one story a week is laughingly stupid or brings the duh. This week there are two: One reveals the astounding news that young librarians tend to be hip, something I discovered in the sophisticated metropolis of Fort Wayne, Indiana…when? More than a decade ago, certainly, and maybe earlier. (And yes, Miss Beth, it was you who opened my eyes.) Oh well — we know NYT reporters get all their books free from Michiko Kakutani’s castoffs and don’t visit the humble regions of the local branch. Not that they haven’t done their research; they’ve watched lots of old movies:

Librarians? Aren’t they supposed to be bespectacled women with a love of classic books and a perpetual annoyance with talkative patrons — the ultimate humorless shushers?

Take it away, Connie.

But the real talker of the week was this, on Fred Thompson’s boobalicious trophy wife, and whether America is “ready” for a president with arm candy 24 years his junior. It’s Mrs. Thompson’s husband I’m not ready for, personally. I like to think the country has seen the hazard of electing an affable empty suit to the White House, but who knows?

Although if it leads to more New York Post leads like this, I might be swayed:

Gruff, graying Republican Fred Thompson has a proven track record of tapping into a younger generation – starting with his wife.

OK, then.

Tiger Stadium is doomed. Everyone knows this. It’s been doomed for a decade, but it’s double-secret probation doomed now. The Tigers have been playing in Comerica Park since 2000, the old temple is yet another crumbling ruin in a city full of them, and the time has come to git ‘er done. There have been plans over the years ranging from clearing it for a big box to the current one, the best (or most ambitious, at least) of the lot: Knock down all but a small portion of the entrance. Preserve the field for a Little League/amateur venue, the centerpiece of a park/history center. Most of the perimeter would be condo/mixed-use development. It’s not a done deal — there’s no developer willing to sign on the line — but a little momentum on the part of the city would help, and at this point “momentum” means “start swinging the wrecking ball.”

Well. This story has been Totally Detroit from the get-go, combining two of the city’s perennial roadblocks to success — race and nostalgia.

Exhibit A:

(The) city is moving to dismantle the stadium — with most of the structure to be razed next year. The council threw a monkey wrench into the plan this year when several members balked at the racial composition of the community committee created to advise the city on how to proceed, saying there were not enough minority members.

And Exhibit B:

“This doesn’t have to be torn down,” said Aaron Burton, 52, of South Lyon, who opposes demolition of the stadium. “There is plenty of other space in the area that can be developed. Keep the ballpark and use it.”

What an attitude. The follow-up question — Use it for what? – is rarely asked, or if asked, never answered with anything more than a shrug. I did a story on this last year, and was amazed by how many people seem to think the world clamors for old baseball stadiums, and is just waiting to get its mitts on one, so they can turn it into…”a minor-league park,” is the most common answer.

Yes, yes, a minor-league park. Because surely a city with four major-league professional sports competing for scarce dollars in a depressed economy, with two Big Ten colleges within a 90-minute drive, is clamoring for minor-league baseball. And lord knows how many teams would love to spend millions rehabbing a crumbing ruin with four or five times the seating they would require on the biggest day of the year. And surely the Tigers’ current owners won’t object to discount baseball being played a mile away from their home plate.

But…but…Babe Ruth played there! And Ty Cobb! And several World Series, and what about Ernie Harwell? Let’s keep it up another few years, at least, so we can think about it some more. Not do anything rash.

Boy, I’ll tell you, if there’s one thing living in the Rust Belt has taught me, it’s that nostalgia can be as corrosive as urban blight itself. The Yankees will be building a new park soon, if they aren’t already; excuse me, I don’t keep up with all these things. Ask New Yorkers what’s happening to the old place. In a place like New York, I doubt it will be there long.

OK, then.

Just checked the forecast. We were promised storms and a “slow cooling.” The sky is as clear as a baby’s complexion and the high will be…95!

Ugh. And so the week begins.

I am so glad someone else noticed this. I was thinking it was further evidence of my slow descent into the quicksand of Detroit.

What caught my eye about Al Gore III’s arrest earlier this week was not the famous name, the drugs, the fact he was driving a Prius or his dad’s statement about rehab. It was this: A Prius can go 100 miles per hour? Who knew?

I’m not quite ashamed to say I watched the hot-dog eating contest on ESPN Wednesday. I’m especially grateful that the runner-up, Takeru Kobayashi, covered his mouth during his “reversal” in the final seconds, and spared a national audience that. Although he did take his final bow with vomit or something like it down the front of his shirt, and I notice he and the winner didn’t shake hands.

Competitive eating is all the rage these days among reporters looking for the last unexplored, non-sexual subculture safe for a family newspaper. I guess it rings all those obesity-epidemic bells with editors, but speaking as one who tuned in during the introduction of contestants, I can tell you more were skinny or average-size than fat. Both Joey Chestnut, the winner, and Kobayashi, the six-time defending champion, are guys I could easily knock down in a sumo bout. The trick to winning seems to be in technique, not capacity — how wide you can open your jaw, how much you can relax your throat muscles, how much you can suppress your gag reflex. Also, how much you like wet hot dogs; arrayed before each contestant was a battery of cups, presumably filled with water. Each dipped their dogs before stuffing it into the piehole, I suppose partly for lubrication and partly to collapse the bun. There are few things I enjoy in summer more than a good hot dog, but this was just vile. (And not because one of the sponsors was Heinz. KETCHUP DOES NOT BELONG ON HOT DOGS. There will be no further discussion.)

You’d think a place like Michigan would be the cradle of competitive-eating stars, but I guess not. One of my favorite Jim Harrison lines: “Only in the Midwest is overeating seen as heroic.”

I fished almonds out of a bag of granola while Alan peeped through his fingers. I kept expecting something like the 2006 Preakness. But Kobayashi thoughtfully covered his mouth.

The older I get, the less I overeat, which is sometimes hard to reconcile with my size, but believe me, it’s true. And it’s not because I’m getting the middle-aged heartburn thing, either; I still can eat pretty much anything I want without paying a price in anything but thigh circumference. Maybe it has to do with the gradual ebbing of the hormonal tide. I’ve yet to meet a man who can fully understand what it’s like to be female and in the grip of a PMS-induced potato-chip destruction mission. (I always say, “You know how your dick makes you do stupid things? It’s like that.”) I hope it has to do with refinement, with being happy with a little quality rather than a lot of crap, but that might not be it, either. In the long run, it might just be the beginning of the downhill slide toward the Earlybird Special. All the things our bodies do to embarrass us — sweat, exude, crave — diminish with age, or are transmogrified into one area (hair sprouting in places it doesn’t belong). Say what you will about inappropriate sexual urges, but at least it’s proof you’re alive.

You ever notice how many contemporary libido scolds get that way in their 40s? Laura Schlessinger plowed a wide swath in her well-photographed youth, then decided it was her mission in life to condemn all younger women who did the same. The blood cools, and the memories of what it was like to be 25 — they fly right out the window.

Speaking of hormones, I was talking to someone at a party last week, another ex-newsie, who asked if I ever missed it. I said the only thing I missed was the newsroom, and we both agreed there was no better place to work than a bullpen city room, back before fear and flop sweat took over the business. He told a funny story about his northern California paper, which had not one but two transsexuals-in-transition working there, and the uproar it caused — mostly over the which-bathroom-do-you-use issue. He said one night he had to phone in a story, late, and the dictation was taken by Michelle, formerly Mike. It all went well until he signed off with “thank you, sir” and unleashed a torrent of estrogen-induced recrimination about respect and honoring choices and blah blah blah. And all my friend wanted to do was point out that the hormones change everything but the voice, and he just forgot.

Good times.

Well, we seem to have gone to stream-of-consciousness today, haven’t we? Let’s blog it up a little:

A Chicago Tribune critic/blogger asks his colleagues, “If a movie ever made you walk out, what was it?” I don’t know if I ever have — once I’ve paid the money, I’ll sit through just about anything — but I do have a few aborted-rental movies, including “Zoolander” and “Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas.”

This one’s for the Detroiters — ever wonder what the original Pistons logo looked like? Mitch Harper dug up one from the days of the Zollner Pistons, the current club’s predecessor. That guy looks like he’s quick on his Chuck Taylors, eh? Hilarious.

One of the advantages of being French is that natural slimness, born of cigarettes, genetics and aerobic rudeness. The new French president prefers to maintain it with exercise, which leads his constituents to rise as one and shout, “Quel fromage!”

Back to work. Have a great weekend.

Mercury is retrograde, but friends, we’re in luck: It’s another column by Tim Goeglein!

Ahem:

The blare of rap music has probably dulled our summer senses to the beautiful. A church friend once said to me, almost wistfully, “I sometimes think the culture of our country is ill. Where is beauty?” It was a poignant question.

Yes, yes it is. I regret to say, however, that from this promising opening — which swerves into a tantalizing paragraph of rue and regret for “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” — Tim bogs down in a defense of the recently deceased composer Gian Carlo Menotti:

He had high and immutable standards. His life showed that, as Flannery O’Connor said, sometimes you have to push back against the culture as hard as it pushes against you. That is, as a talented young artist with standards, he had to be willing to make his contribution whether there was anyone waiting to give him an award for excellence or not. The public loved and relished his music; the critics, ever in search of “the new,” did not approve.

Yes, I see how winning the Pulitzer Prize and New York Drama Critics Circle Award in the same year might lead a man to think the critics had it in for him:

Menotti’s operas – there are 25 – achieved a high degree of popularity, for which he was punished with condescension. He was deemed too old-fashioned. In fact, in 1971, Menotti wrote a letter to the New York Times in which he said, “I hardly know of another artist who has been more consistently damned by critics … The insults that most of my operas had to endure through the years.”

Menotti himself had to endure the insult of a Kennedy Center Honor in 1984.

But if you can stick with it, Tim delivers:

Despite the criticism, he never surrendered the role of beauty. We can now hear one of his strongest expressions of it in his masterpiece, Missa: O Pulchritudo, released on a recording for the first time earlier this year. My first reaction upon hearing it was: What kind of cultural prejudice kept this remarkable piece on ice for 25 years?

This may be the most beautiful music Menotti composed. Beauty is actually its theme, and one of the most tender passages is thus: “O Beauty, ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved You.” The piece was dedicated to God, echoing Bach’s credo “soli Deo Gloria,” dedicating every piece of music he ever wrote to the glory of God.

So now we see what kind of cultural prejudice: Menotti was too religious. Critics hate that.

One hopes and prays that Menotti gained a similar reception, though he seems to have had a modest understanding of himself.

Despite his persecution by the MSM.

He once said, “I do not know my own worth – I’m not Bach, but I like to think I’m not Offenbach either!” Very clever, very humbling. Indeed, Offenbach could not have written a Mass like Menotti’s. Beauty wins out in the end; excellence lasts. Why? Because God is beautiful, and he embodies an excellence and radiance pre-eminent that brings a glimpse of the eternal into our temporal lives.

Take that, Lennon and McCartney!

ADDED: If he wanted the approval of critics, he could have just come out of the closet. You know how liberal critics love a queer.