Today in Embarrassing Pictures, we again refuse to embarrass the proprietress, instead throwing her husband into the line of fire:

“These two boys are having fun demonstrating proper tooth brushing” during National Children’s Dental Health Week. “Albert Ramirez, son of Mr. and Mrs. Genaro Ramirez, 810 Nicholas St., looks on from the left while Alan Derringer, son of Mr. and Mrs. Roger Derringer, 405 Northfield Ave., does the brushing.”

Among the oddities of this picture, which I can’t precisely date, other than to say, “Man, when was the last time you saw a kid wearing a wristwatch like that, eh?” Both kids come from intact, Mr. and Mrs. homes. No one objected to having their exact address printed in the newspaper. And when Alan’s mom died, she still lived at 405 Northfield and still had her phone listed under Roger Derringer.

Also note the long-standing Hispanic presence in northwest Ohio (this was in Defiance). I wonder how Mark Krikorian would pronounce Ramirez?

I like the way Albert is “looking on.” Someone is always looking on in old newspaper photos. For newspaper journalists of a certain age, we lived for the day we wouldn’t have to take pictures like this or write their witless captions, and if you were any good at all, sooner or later you beamed up to a bigger paper, which as a rule didn’t run this stuff. And now, here we are decades later, and the buzz is in hyperlocal journalism websites that welcome and solicit pictures like this, and guess who’s writing the captions? Full circle.

My pledge: No one will ever look on in my cutlines. Unless it’s in an ironic, retro way. Because otherwise I will have to start drinking a lot more.

Because it’s Friday, another no-cal bonbon. Thanks, Char, for sending this “hastily made Cleveland tourism video.” As for the punchline, well, yes they are. They just don’t know it yet:

I have to go to a meeting, edit a pile of copy and do some serious writin’ today. You folks take it from here.

People these days are always accusing one another of living in an echo chamber. To be sure, it’s a hazard of modern life. You may find yourself writing things like this:

So, are we supposed to use the Spanish pronunciation, so-toe-my-OR, or the natural English pronunciation, SO-tuh-my-er, like Niedermeyer?

That’s Mark Krikorian, writing at National Review’s brainless group blog, The Corner. And OK, so he wrote it, big deal, these things tend to be self-correcting. Not in echo chambers:

Most e-mailers were with me on the post on the pronunciation of Judge Sotomayor’s name…

Well, of course they were. Perhaps they prefer the Ellis Island option, in which the Supreme Court nominee would have been renamed Sally Sutton in exchange for her parents getting that cushy public-housing apartment. But Krikorian goes on:

But a couple said we should just pronounce it the way the bearer of the name prefers, including one who pronounces her name “freed” even though it’s spelled “fried,” like fried rice. …Deferring to people’s own pronunciation of their names should obviously be our first inclination, but there ought to be limits. Putting the emphasis on the final syllable of Sotomayor is unnatural in English…

Then there’s a bunch of nonsense about how his name has been anglicized from the original Armenian — one whole syllable got added, oh my — and you just think stop stop stop you’re going to choke on your shoe, man, but nooo:

Part of our success in assimilation has been to leave whole areas of culture up to the individual, so that newcomers have whatever cuisine or religion or so on they want, limiting the demand for conformity to a smaller field than most other places would. But one of the areas where conformity is appropriate is how your new countrymen say your name, since that’s not something the rest of us can just ignore, unlike what church you go to or what you eat for lunch.

You hear that? There ought to be limits. Conformity is appropriate. A man can only bend so far. You let people pronounce their names however they want, and the next thing you know, we’ll have a man in the Oval Office named Barack Hussein Obama.

Someone tell Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito — I mean, Andy Scalls and Sam Allen — there’s a lady coming who’s going to give ‘em all fits.

One of my Twitter follows said it best: It’s spelled Krikorian, but it’s pronounced “Kracker.” HT: Virgotex.

Yeesh, what a week so far. Gathering the police news this week, I found a report of two coyotes attacking a cat. The witnesses called police to see if the cat had survived. In classic copspeak, the report revealed: “The officers found that it had not,” and disposed of the body. This seems sad all around. Sad that some family lost its kitty. Sad that two coyotes lost their meal, although the report wasn’t that specific, so it’s possible they got away with enough to make a decent lunch. Sadder still that this particular suburb spent quite a bit of effort in the last two years trying to eradicate their coyote population, with little success. They caught a female with pups, but anyone who knows coyotes knows this is like killing six rats and pronouncing the problem solved. Not that coyotes are rats. Just…it’s sad.

I’ve bored you before at length about one of my favorite things about Detroit — the wild animal life that thrums below the surface of human activity. If it can survive at this latitude, we have it, the coyotes, the ghetto dogs, pheasants, exotics. It’s not exactly Miami, but it’s getting there. Speaking of which, did anyone read the New Yorker piece last month on the spread of the Burmese python throughout Florida? Worth your time, and then some.

It seems the right time to kick off the bloggage, then. Another from my Twitter clan:

Feral children — they have their own website. With some killer prose: Certainly, it’s true that some animals wouldn’t make good parents. It’s difficult to imagine a crocodile doing anything other than eat a human baby. Noted.

You’ve watched “Mad Men.” So you shouldn’t be surprised by some of the ad campaigns they dreamed up. Check out the one for the Lysol douche. Yikes.

Nate Silver deconstructs the “Obama is targeting Republican car dealers” meme by pointing out the obvious: Most car dealers are Republican. There you are.

And here I go. Have a great Thursday, all.

A note on our type problems: J.C. is aware, and is working on it from his vacation in the Upper Peninsula, where wi-fi is something no one’s really heard tell of yet. Good news: This seems to be a home-page problem. In the meantime, if you click the headline, it’ll take you to a separate page (with comments) where everything’s OK. Noted? Noted.

EDIT: Type problem seems fixed, for now. Thanks, brother Jim! Also, a version of the Eaton Beaver clip is now linked in comments. Thanks, Duffy.

It’s a measure of how scattered I’ve been of late that I’ve been sitting here for two days thinking I have nothing to write about, and then — forehead slap — I remember that I went to see Elmore Leonard last Thursday. He did a read/chat/sign at Border’s, supporting his new one, “Road Dogs.”

The reading was brief, just the first page of the novel, which in the usual fashion, starts halfway down the page. Maybe three paragraphs, after which he said, “And that’s what the book’s about,” shut it, and started talking. He was aided in this by his son Peter, who just published his second novel — it’s a father-son book tour. The two chatted back and forth for about half an hour, took some questions, signed some books. Among the highlights:

Peter talked about the party his father threw for the cast of “Out of Sight,” after they wrapped shooting in Detroit. He walked into the dining room to find George Clooney had just arrived and was standing by himself. They chatted for a while, and then “the women heard he was there.” Surrounded.

The “10 rules of writing” were delivered at Bouchercon, the convention for crime-fiction writers, and were something he just whipped up on a legal pad. Today the list is a book, and one of the most often-quoted in stories about him, probably because they’re short, snappy and don’t require much introduction. One of the rules: Never use a word other than “said” to carry dialogue. Another: Use no adverbs. Because they suck. (In the signing line, I told him about the reporter for the Ohio University Post who used “ejaculated” to describe an exclamation. His editor announced to the room: “Someone ejaculated on Tim’s copy.” That was hard to live down.)

My favorites were the stories about the old days, about being called in to a movie set to convince Charles Bronson — I assume this was “Mr. Majestyk” — that yes, his character would have a particular female character with him in the pickup truck during the big chase scene, because otherwise who would be driving when he crawled into the bed with a shotgun to fire at the bad guys? (“I don’t know why the producers couldn’t have told him that.”) But also about the era of pulp fiction, which he barely touched on, other than to say he’d been paid 2 cents a word for “3:10 to Yuma,” “which was the top rate for the pulps.” I wish he’d talked more about this bygone era in American fiction, where so many great writers paid their dues and learned their craft. (I was once lucky enough to interview an expert on the mass-market paperback, and I could have talked to him for hours and hours about cover art alone.) Fiction workshops are all well and good, but there’s something to be said for strong characters, snappy dialogue and the whip of the market as a navigator of plotlines. Every so often Leonard is asked why he switched from westerns to crime fiction, and he always shrugs and notes that that’s what the market wanted at the time. Try telling that to the next MFA you meet.

(That said, my favorite MFA, Lance Mannion, is a great respecter of genre fiction and its writers. So this may not apply to all of them.)

Martin Amis, in an essay about Leonard collected somewhere, described his writing as jazz, and that’s the truth. He said he doesn’t outline his novels, never knows where they’re going to end until they do, and that sounds to me like a nice bebop solo, the trumpeter stepping out to noodle around with phrases, themes and melodies for a while, until he’s said all he has to say and steps back to let someone else take a turn. Leonard is Miles Davis with a pen.

I bought “Road Dogs,” which I’m interspersing with “The Quiet Girl,” two books that couldn’t be more different. If Leonard is jazz, Peter Hoeg is atonality, translated from Danish. I can only recommend one, and I think you know which one it is.

So, a little bloggage? Sure:

A tale of two Michigan economies — Ann Arbor and Warren. From the WSJ.

The right’s talking points on Sotomayor, by Dahlia Lithwick, another writer nearing national-treasure status.

Only in Detroit: A city councilwoman is billed a pittance in property taxes for a decade. How much of a pittance? Try $68 a year. Turns out the city records show her address is a vacant lot. Her reaction: Huh. I wondered about that. Now it turns out she probably won’t have to pay much at all. This city. I ask you.

Only in Detroit Journalism: Yes, I saw the “Eaton Beaver turns 69 today” clip from one of our local TV station’s happy-birthday roundup on the morning show. No, I cannot direct you to it, as the station has effectively wiped out the clip. More proof every news organization needs an editor well-versed in dirty jokes, puns and Johnny Fucherfaster stories.

And now, I have a barn to raise and a day to do it. Onward to the work pile.

I have a sick dog and a full plate, two factors that fill me with a desire to go back to bed, but alas — the long weekend is over, and I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it, although I spent a chunk of it working.

I’m worried about the dog. He stopped eating yesterday and showed other signs of intestinal distress, perhaps a result of licking up some bone meal Alan spread around the plants the last few days, or perhaps due to the fact he’s 17.75 years old and has the customary unknown expiration date. He no longer has the physical reserves to sustain an extended illness. I’m taking him to the vet today, if I can get in. Fingers crossed for Spriggy.

Meanwhile, here’s a funny video, via Roy, via Wonkette:

People sometimes tell me, “I’m not a Republican. I’m a libertarian.” This sounds to me like, “I want to smoke pot with the loose-moraled Democratic girls, but still not pay taxes.” To be a libertarian is to spend your life writing checks you’ll never have to cash and knowing that no matter what happens in the next election your side won’t win, and will only have to spend the next four years having, and expressing, grand opinions about those who did. You ask me, you guys can take a little ridicule.

God, I hope the dog is OK. Here’s hoping. You guys carry the discussion today. A few ideas:

Nice NYMag piece on the ancient roots of Jewish humor in the new Woody Allen movie. (Although why is it, when I hear that Allen likes to start production on a film when his children are out of school — i.e., have an excuse to be elsewhere — that I feel simultaneously relieved and creeped out?)

Also, word is we’ll have a Supreme Court nominee by midmorning. Let it be someone good.

I’ll be in and out, and maybe back by midafternoon, if I’m not at the vet’s.

Smells like onions.

Hey, are you guys working today? The day before a three-day weekend? Silly wabbits — hardly anyone else is. So today seems as good a day as ever to kick off a new Friday feature, which I’m calling Embarrassing Pictures, because, well, you’ll see.

Long-time readers will recognize this one, which I’ve used before, but not for a few years, so it’s fresh to most of you:

Just another self-portrait before a Saturday night out, c. 1981-82, around in there. Columbus, Ohio. I’m not in this one, but let me introduce you to the group. At left, some girl named Jeanine, who was friends with the other two girls in the picture — Lynne (with the champagne bottle) and Janet, known as Tall Janet for obvious reasons. The guys, in the back row, Jeff, Paul, Craig. Jeff and Craig were brothers. In front, Dan, known to all by his nickname, Futz. And at far right, in the Wayfarers, our very own Jeff Borden. I like this picture because it’s entirely a happy accident — Borden put the camera on a a tripod and used the self-timer, bounced the flash off the ceiling, and everyone just sort of assembled themselves. No one directed the pose or styled the outfits.

Details: Both Jeff and Craig were gay, lending support to the genetics argument, but both were natural performers, and I love the way Jeff is looking at Jeanine, like he’s about to throw her on the floor and ravage her, when in truth he couldn’t have been less interested. I love the way the ash on Jeanine’s cigarette is thisclose to falling. Futz and Paul are wearing buttons — buttons were big, back then. I still have my favorite from the era in my jewelry box. It reads VICTIM OF THE PRESS. I picked it up from a LaRouchie at one of their airport tables. I don’t know what was going on with Lynn’s sparkly disco vest, but she rocks it, I think. Borden’s wearing a hat because even then, barely 30 years old, he was stalked by the curse of a receding hairline.

Also, this: Jeff, Craig and Paul are all dead. AIDS. As I mentioned, Jeff and Craig were brothers. In the years immediately after they died, I thought a lot about them. Since Kate was born, I think mainly of their mother. Imagine losing two of your children, in subsequent years, to that disease.

Anyway, even though I wasn’t there, I was there. I think of this picture as exhibit A in the life I led at the time, when Borden and I lived across the hall from one another, left the doors open all the time, ran speakers from one apartment to the other, and had some great parties.

Good times.

That’s it for me, I think. Long weekend ahead, and I won’t be back until Tuesday. Discuss what you like in the comments and enjoy summer’s kickoff. Let’s hope it’s a long one.

Ahem:

“Punching, flogging, assault and bodily attacks, hitting with the hand, kicking, ear pulling, hair pulling, head shaving, beating on the soles of the feet, burning, scalding, stabbing, severe beatings with or without clothes, being made to kneel and stand in fixed positions for lengthy periods, made to sleep outside overnight, being forced into cold or excessively hot baths and showers, hosed down with cold water before being beaten, beaten while hanging from hooks on the wall, being set upon by dogs, being restrained in order to be beaten, physical assaults by more than one person, and having objects thrown at them.”

Abu Ghraib? No. Guantanamo? Nope. The Mississippi prison farm in “Cool Hand Luke”? Sorry:

Tens of thousands of Irish children were sexually, physically and emotionally abused by nuns, priests and others over 60 years in a network of church-run residential schools meant to care for the poor, the vulnerable and the unwanted, according to a report released in Dublin on Wednesday.

The report, linked above, is stomach-turning — this wasn’t the 16th century, but the 20th. This wasn’t one or two bad apples, it was a broad and deep conspiracy of sex abusers and sadists. It didn’t go on for a few months or years, but decades. One of the religious orders named within, the Christian Brothers, had the wherewithal — and the balls, for lack of a better word — to successfully sue the commission before the report came out, to keep names out of it. This was in 2004. Five years ago.

When I read accounts like this, I find it useful to imagine myself in the abuser’s shoes, participating in, oh, let’s say the beating while “hanging from hooks on the wall.” I try to imagine all the places, in the process of carrying out such a punishment, at which one would have the opportunity to have one of those Scorsese camera-pulls-back moments, when one could see oneself clearly: Now I will lift this kid and hang him from this hook…OK, where did I leave my lash?…OK, swing the arms a few times, loosen up the shoulders… And I can’t do it. Any child in such a position must have been hysterical, or fighting, or in shock. Torture is hard work for everyone; sometimes it really is heavy lifting. You have to go home at night, look in the mirror and think, just another day at the office. I really can’t fathom it.

So the discussion for today, if I may kick it off: What happens when this happens? What sort of group hysteria takes over that keeps participants from blowing the whistle? Are new members of a group chosen on the basis of their willingness to beat and rape children, or for their willingness to remain silent? What’s the deviant psychology that takes over and creates the conspiracy of silence? Is it just the Milgram experiment, over and over?

Or does the answer lie in this simple sentence, deep in the NYT story? The Vatican had no response.

Your call. I’m sorry to duck out on such a bummer note, but I have so much to do today it isn’t funny. Turns out running two websites is more than 2X the work.

I need some new idiots. Allow me to explain.

A while back I opened a new bookmark sub-folder for blogs. Called it “idiots.” It was useful in that it reminded me not to take the contents within seriously. I had a strict set of standards: The idiots had to be fun idiots, not depressing ones. I wasn’t interested in screechers, unless they were amusing, campy screechers. I started with seven or eight idiots, and one by one they have disappointed me and I deleted them from the feeds. I’m down to four. Four can’t sustain a coffee-break web-surf, although god knows, Rod Dreher tries. But even he has backed down on the entertaining hand-wringing hysteria of last fall, when the Wall Street meltdown had him running to Costco for 25-pound bags of rice and fretting how unprepared we were for food riots. Now he’s back to wearily shaking his head and disapproving of his fellow conservatives. If he can’t find a slut to kick around soon, I may be dropping him, too. Even Lileks is a bore these days, although it’s amusing to see how capably he’s motoring through the financial crisis at his newspaper, keeping his sunny side up, up. He’s made himself a TV star, he’s back to filing pointless columns about his difficulties with customer service, he’s — ohmigosh — “fisking” George Will for two million words. You need a fresher schtick to stay in my idiots folder.

So send me some idiots to check out. No, on second thought, don’t. If I relentlessly culled all my bookmarks down to the ones I actually visit, I’d be down to the Lolcats, Gawker, Jezebel, Roger Ebert and a handful of others, and I probably should. Cull, that is. I have enough ways to be distracted while working. And at the moment, I have enough work I don’t need the distractions. And Roy still does an excellent job as sort of an Idiot’s Digest.

Also, I have some fiction ideas I’d like to explore this summer, although I know I’ve said that before.

Besides, it’s time I spent more time in the analog world, and maybe admitting I can’t read the entire Internet every day is a good start. This, for example, was published in January, and I had to learn about it from freakin’ Facebook on Monday.

Also, I don’t want to end up like Kevin Smith:

As you mentioned, Zack and Miri didn’t do as well as expected. How did you take that?
I kind of dropped out of society. I just kind of wrapped myself in a weed-infused cocoon … a coma, if you will. And it was great. It was really, really wonderful, man. I don’t want to be one of those people who’s all, “Let me tell you about legalization!” But, my God, I don’t think I’ve ever been happier in my life. And after years and years of … you know, I used to literally fight with people online. I would waste days online, talking to total strangers, some of them probably children. I was a joke.

Don’t become a joke: New motto.

Bloggage:

The line in Obama’s Correspondent’s Dinner routine that made me laugh loudest was the poke he took at Michael Steele — in the heezy, yo! Dana Milbank, not so funny, but an amusing wrapup of the GOP’s gaffe-a-palooza.

Speaking of Roy, he has an amuse bouche up now, about reaction to Ted Kennedy’s improved health. A few of the usual bitingly funny lines are therein.

Admit it: The guy who rescued the wee ducklings is your new hero. And yes, I know there are those who say the ducklings would have been fine without the rescue, but we wouldn’t have the cute video, otherwise.

And now I’m going to make some calls, then go ride my bike for a long time. I plan to pass by an open field near the Milk River, where there will be crowds of Canada geese goslings (Canada goslings?). They will be nearly as cute as the ducks, but their parents are bigger and meaner. I won’t pass too close.

Today’s question is: How do you manage your credit cards? Mine strategy is pretty simple, and has been ever since I stopped living paycheck-to-paycheck: Most months, I pay them off in full. If I can’t pay them off, I pay them as quickly as possible. The longest I’ve carried a balance in recent years is about six months, maybe seven.

Like most moderates, I walk the middle of the road on plastic. Let me see the hands of anyone who wants to return to the days when, if your washing machine broke and you didn’t have liquid savings to replace it, you used a laundromat until you could scrape together a few hundred bucks? Didn’t think so. On the other hand, the last time I used a 90-days-same-as-cash financing option — to buy a new mattress after the old one sprung a leak and started poking me in the ass with a spring — the first mailing I got from the finance company was to spread that $300 over two years for an absurdly low monthly payment, etc. So I see how people become hard-liners.

I see plastic as an ally in navigating modern life, but as a treacherous one that must be watched at all times. Money — or rather, credit — is a powerful drug, and I’ve seen too many people end up in rehab. My sister has a friend who at one point owed a five-figure sum to MasterCard and Visa equal to half her annual salary. (She told me she knew the mortgage industry was crooked when someone offered this woman a 100 percent loan to buy a house, with enough extra cash thrown in to pay off all her cards, which at the time was something like 40 grand.) I’ve gotten in over my head a time or two, but was always able to recover quickly — maybe $2,000? On one card? Sounds about right.

Over the years, I’ve heard plastic horror stories from both sides of the fence, not just the in-over-your-head spenders, but also the gamers, the people who claimed to be harnessing the power of their cards, using the frequent-flyer miles and cash-advance perks to their advantage, and it’s fair to say I trusted them only incrementally more than the deadbeats. “I write two checks a month,” a friend told me once. “The mortgage, and MasterCard.” Everything — groceries, restaurants, utility bills, clothing — went on the card, which accrued frequent-flyer miles at the rate of $1=1 mile. He paid it off in full every month. After a year it had earned him a free ticket to Paris. He’s not the liar sort, so I guess I believed him, but part of me…didn’t.

Gaming plastic just sounds like something too good to be true. There’s got to be a catch. There’s always a catch.

Turns out, there’s a catch:

Credit cards have long been a very good deal for people who pay their bills on time and in full. Even as card companies imposed punitive fees and penalties on those late with their payments, the best customers racked up cash-back rewards, frequent-flier miles and other perks in recent years.

Now Congress is moving to limit the penalties on riskier borrowers, who have become a prime source of billions of dollars in fee revenue for the industry. And to make up for lost income, the card companies are going after those people with sterling credit.

Banks are expected to look at reviving annual fees, curtailing cash-back and other rewards programs and charging interest immediately on a purchase instead of allowing a grace period of weeks, according to bank officials and trade groups.

I did a story on credit a few years back, for a financial magazine. You know what the industry calls people who pay off in full every month? Deadbeats. Ha ha.

I have one card now, a Discover. I use it for newspaper subscriptions, which are set up as monthly bills, my iTunes account, and anything I order online, mainly because I can remember the number and expiration date and don’t have to dig up my debit card. I pay it off every month and have currently accrued cash-back rewards equal to a moderately priced piece of software. If they think I’m going back to the annual-fee days, they are, um, mistaken. I’ll go back to writing checks.

Why is money such a taboo in our culture? If I ruled the world, I’d institute a class in high school — say, sophomore year — called Practical Finance, and it would be all about using money in the adult world. Half the year would be spent studying credit. I think it’s at least as important as sex education, and maybe more.

Quick bloggage, because I went to a city council meeting last night that featured tears and cries of embezzlement, and I want to get the story written p.d.q.

Bloggage? Sure:

Matt Yglesias takes apart another stupid George Will column. Ably. I’m not even a total believer in light rail, but this is about facts.

A Gallup poll adds up the damage to the GOP:

Since the first year of George W. Bush’s presidency in 2001, the Republican Party has maintained its support only among frequent churchgoers, with conservatives and senior citizens showing minimal decline.

In other words, the party of Palin and Plumber. Good luck with the rehab.

One of those Sara-Jane-Olson-but-not stories — prison escapee builds new life on the outside, only to see it come crashing down decades later — concluded here today. Susan LeFevre was released today and, surprise, said something dumb:

“Prison is a very tragic – it’s a very hard place,” she said. “People really do suffer. Beneath the laughter and the veneer, there’s suffering.”

You don’t say.

I say: Time to write that council story. And do it justice.

There comes a time, when one is burning the candle at both ends, when it’s wise to snuff out one end, at least. I’m wondering if it’s entirely healthy to be checking the iPhone for updates on how Obama did at Notre Dame when your only child is trying on swimsuits at Macy’s. Decided the president, and the world, could get along without me for the afternoon.

This was in Ann Arbor, by the way. We went over to deliver Saturday’s sleepover guest back home, and stayed to check out the fairy doors. We found two; here’s one:

Here’s a Flickr page compiled by someone with more time, initiative and enthusiasm for the Ann Arbor-ness of the whole fairy-door concept, something I can’t quite explain. Fortunately, others already have.

What’s so Ann Arbor about fairy doors? You’d have to be there, but let me put it this way: One of the places we found one was a bookstore called Crazy Wisdom, your basic alt-lifestyles depot, up to and including the upstairs tearoom for the monthly witches’ meeting. Their fairy door was in the astrology section, which in this place was a little like classic literature.

I love Ann Arbor. These are my peeps.

After checking out of the news cycle I tried very hard not to pay attention to Barry at the Dome, but it was impossible. My quick verdict: Meh, although what he said was probably all he could say, and it seemed to go over pretty well. If it had been my commencement, I’d have felt badly used — is there any other issue where everything that can be said, has been said? But some people made it the elephant in the room, and it had to be acknowledged. Dialogue? Good luck with that. The very reason this issue is still around is that some people think “dialogue” consists of saying one thing over and over, maybe changing the wording slightly, but giving not an inch. Entering this debate is like being slowly strangled to death.

I gave up my hopes for a compromise on reproductive-health issues when the so-called conscience clauses went on the table. In this day and age, I can scarcely imagine there’s a health-care worker out there “forced” to participate in abortions against their will, but I can bet there are a lot of pushy, nosy, pious little jerks behind pharmacy counters who can’t fill a prescription for birth-control pills without running to confession afterward, and to the extent this person’s “conscience” had to be protected — well, that’s where I leave the discussion table.

I’m a hard-liner now, and I learned it from example.

I see Randall Terry is a Catholic now. Talk about a fish the Pope should have thrown back in the rancid pond that spawned him. I covered the Fort Wayne Operation Rescue arrest-a-thon, back in the day, and I believe Terry was either there or bestowing his support from afar, like Burt Reynolds in “Citizen Ruth.” When H-hour came, I watched a woman crawl under the belly of a police horse to take her place on the welcome mat of the clinic they’d chosen to blockade. Now I’m going to see a person lose a hand, I thought, in the fraught few seconds it took a very nimble horse to pick his way through that mess of humanity without hurting anyone. These were some very bad people.

One of the local leaders, as I recall, had infertility issues in his marriage. He, too, thought birth-control should be illegal. Proud to be an American!

I have a dentist appointment in 20 minutes, so I best floss ‘n’ go. One bit of bloggage you will enjoy, from the Wall Street Journal: Why you should never ever ever ruin Scotch whiskey with ice, a position I can back 100 percent, and have ever since a nice lady waylaid me in the duty-free mall at Heathrow and poured me a little sample shot of 12-year-old Macallan, neat. It was as sweet as candy, as complex as a Russian novel. I haven’t taken ice, or water, in Scotch since. And I still drink Macallan. That was some effective marketing.

ADDED: Didn’t I once call myself journalism’s canary in a coal mine? Ahem:

For decades, successful newspaper reporters and editors have looked forward to university fellowships as a chance to take a mid-career sabbatical and recharge their batteries. But the crop of fellows set to enter this year’s most prestigious programs, whose names are just now being announced, shows how much that pattern is changing. …“People are afraid that if they leave, at a time when newspapers are laying people off, their jobs won’t be waiting when they come back — and they’re right to think that,” said Charles R. Eisendrath, director of the Knight-Wallace Fellows at Michigan.

Yes, I’d say they are. Still, I wouldn’t have traded that year in Ann Arbor for all the job security in the world. It was, in every good way, a life-changing experience.