Because it seemed like something worth doing while another snowstorm bore down on us — now in progress, a few new inches — I took myself way the hell out to the west side last night. There was a “town meeting” for supporters of the Michigan film incentive tax credits, threatened with near-elimination in next year’s budget, and while my job isn’t on the line, I thought I’d go to fly the flag, another warm body in the crowd. I should have known something was up when it was moved at the last minute from a local studio with cavernous sound stages to a nearby banquet hall with enough room for an army.

Because an army showed up, and then some. Thousands, I’d estimate, at least two, maybe more. Parking was a nightmare, the hall so overfilled the fire marshall shut the doors and turned away probably a few hundred more. I squeaked in under the wire, but spent a lot of time standing around; the show started half an hour late, and the first speaker was ol’ shoe-polish head, the li’l man himself, ladies and gentlemen, Misterrrrr Mitch! Albom!

And to be sure, he wasn’t terrible. In fact, he was easily the best speaker of the night, doing what he does best — telling people what they want to hear: “This isn’t about saving Hollywood! This is about saving Michigan!” Big standing O for that one. And he did what newspaper columnists do best, talk tough without fear of contradiction: “Like it or not, this industry goes where the incentives are.” The message of the night was, the generous tax credits — and they are the most generous in the country, ranging from 30 to 42 percent — given to the film industry for work done here, is getting results beyond the chance to see Robert DeNiro in a restaurant. It’s providing jobs, building a talent base for future productions, etc.

No one talked about an end game, or even a compromise, at least while I was there. I had to leave during Mike Binder’s lament that “The Upside of Anger,” set in Bloomfield Hills, was shot in London because that was the best deal. (You remember “The Upside of Anger,” don’t you? Kevin Costner, Joan Allen, lots of University of Michigan references?) Is there ever a sunset on tax incentives, or do they set the state up to be thrown over when the next state gets stardust in its eyes? On the other hand, what else does Michigan have going for it at the moment? And the incentives have been an adrenaline shot to the burgeoning creative-class economy, and they are my people.

On the third hand, the same budget Gov. Rick Snyder has proposed cutting education funding by $920 million. (Mitch Albom has no children, and if he did, he’d doubtless send them to private schools.)

We’ll see how this works out. I’ll do my part, but I’m not hopeful. The best-case scenario would be for a cut that falls short of disastrous. Fingers crossed.

It was nice to get out of the house, even to wrangle with impossible parking. That’s how bad my cabin fever is at the moment.

Not much bloggage today:

Keep it classy, Georgia!

New York Times cooking columnist reveals, in his final column, that he doesn’t really cook all that much. (His wife does. Quel surprise.)

Think I’ll make some broccoli-cheddar soup today. Just because it’s snowy. A great weekend to all.

Oh, well, isn’t this special? The SPJ, that would be the Society of Professional Journalists to you civilians, thought it necessary to say something about the Buffalo Beast’s exquisite prank, played on Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, earlier this week. You probably read about it yesterday: A reporter — with whom I’m unfamiliar, but described elsewhere as “gonzo” — called Walker’s office posing as David Koch, known Tea Party moneybags, and proceeded to lead the guv around by the nose for 20 minutes or so.

Walker didn’t say anything all that terrible. He agreed that some Fox News MSNBC babe was “a nice piece of ass” and said sure, he’d love to be flown out to California after all this blows over and be shown a good time, but that’s about it. The greater crime, as Ezra Klein points out at the link above, is how easy it is for some rich guy to get the guv on the phone in the midst of a crisis, when members of the Wisconsin legislature can’t.

But you can read all about that elsewhere. I’m amused by the SPJ, which saw the need to scold an alternative weekly, one that has always been open and transparent about its politics, for some sort of ethical lapse. I don’t recall SPJ scolding Fox News for the ass-kissing coverage it gave James O’Keefe and his Costume Party Players during their ACORN and Planned Parenthood stings, and honestly, I don’t see much difference here. The Buffalo Beast site has been down since the story broke; I imagine their servers weren’t manned by J.C. Burns, and hence couldn’t handle the load. Whatever. The content has been duplicated around the web, and the call itself is on YouTube, so there you are.

Another day, another lonely vigil in Room 575, waiting for my students to come by for some guidance. I picked Room 575 today over the journalism library; less comfortable chairs, better view. I’m five floors above the Lodge freeway, the noise from which penetrates even the concrete block construction way up here. To the south, the Motor City Casino and Ambassador Bridge; to the east, the smokestacks of the Rouge Complex; below, a whole lotta snow. We got another inch overnight, and I guess we’re expecting another 1 to 3 tomorrow. February is beating on us fo’ sho’, but I can handle it as long as it stays above 20 degrees. My misery escalates sharply sub-20. Yours would, too.

Did Rick Santorum actually defend the Crusades this week? What the–? Are you kidding me? Note the first comment below that story:

You know, I listen to right-wing catholic radio (Relevant Radio), and I hear this sort of thing all the time.

I don’t doubt it. Detroit must have a right-wing Catholic radio station somewhere; I should listen more often. The last time I was stuck on a long car trip with the AM set on scan, I picked up a crazy Catholic station where the discussion was of Marie Antoinette. She was no let-them-eat-cake fashion plate, noooo, but a devout, holy, Catholic woman who has suffered the worst rap in history. Google “was marie antoinette a good catholic” and one of the first hits is this review of the Sofia Coppola film. Roger Ebert may be the master of the form, but there’s something to be said for film criticism that contains passages like this:

I didn’t plan to watch this movie. I was invited by two ladies more to chauffeur them through a difficult traffic section than anything else. One of the ladies planned to write the solicited review. But since the movie was obsessively sex-centered with embarrassing allegations against King Louis XVI, she didn’t feel comfortable writing it. So I assumed the task.

I recommend that site, if you have about nine hours to kill. You probably didn’t know there was a Catholic way to sneeze, did you? Or that a devout person might need instruction on how to eat alone. Also, fast food is Protestant.

OK, the students are starting to arrive, so time to Publish and run. Publish! Run!

Sorry I’m late today — I had to leave early, and here I sit, in the journalism library at Wayne State, waiting for my little lambs to come see me. Been here one hour. One student. They must all be at the pro-Libyan democracy demonstration, going on as we speak.)

Which means time to blog a bit.

Is it possible for me to love Mark Bittman more? Every week, a new pleasant surprise. Today’s: How to Make Oatmeal…Wrong. It’s about McDonald’s efforts at health-washing their breakfast menu:

The oatmeal and McDonald’s story broke late last year, when Mickey D’s, in its ongoing effort to tell us that it’s offering “a selection of balanced choices” (and to keep in step with arch-rival Starbucks) began to sell the cereal. Yet in typical McDonald’s fashion, the company is doing everything it can to turn oatmeal into yet another bad choice. (Not only that, they’ve made it more expensive than a double-cheeseburger: $2.38 per serving in New York.) “Cream” (which contains seven ingredients, two of them actual dairy) is automatically added; brown sugar is ostensibly optional, but it’s also added routinely unless a customer specifically requests otherwise. There are also diced apples, dried cranberries and raisins, the least processed of the ingredients (even the oatmeal contains seven ingredients, including “natural flavor”).

A more accurate description than “100% natural whole-grain oats,” “plump raisins,” “sweet cranberries” and “crisp fresh apples” would be “oats, sugar, sweetened dried fruit, cream and 11 weird ingredients you would never keep in your kitchen.”

It so happens I had oatmeal for breakfast today. I added two tablespoons of brown sugar and a handful of dried cherries. I guess that leaves out the 11 weird ingredients, but it made for a tasty breakfast. I feel a little bad for Mickey D’s, as they’ve gradually become my ubiquitous fast-food joint of choice. (My fast-food weaknesses are sorted into ubiquitous and special-occasion choices. Ubiquitous are the ones that are on every other corner. Special occasion is Steak & Shake.) I’ve come to far prefer it over Wendy’s, certainly. If I don’t have time to eat and am in sight of the golden arches, I get a crispy-chicken snack wrap, basically a single fried chicken finger wrapped in a tortilla with a little lettuce, cheese and ranch dressing, 340 calories that, along with a Diet Coke, suits me just fine. Sometimes I add a small order of fries, and call it lunch. What’s appalling to me is that it’s marketed as a snack in the first place. With a small fries, it’s knocking on the door of 600 calories, which is a perfectly fine lunch for anyone trying to stay under 2,000 for the day, which includes most people (or should). McDonald’s seems to be trying to make their menu a little less burger-centric, and I appreciate it.

Still, $2.38 for a bowl of oatmeal is highway robbery; I don’t think my beloved snack wrap is that much. One of the things Bittman touched on in his first column was a need to teach cooking skills to generations of Americans who’ve lost them along the way. Bittman is absolutely right that if you think you don’t have the time or skills to prepare oatmeal for yourself in the morning, you are seriously not understanding the nature of oatmeal, and McDonald’s will profit on your ignorance. Profit handsomely. Charging $2.38 for oatmeal and a little diced dried fruit is like charging $20 for a day’s worth of air.

What did you have for breakfast? Although now I’m thinking lunch.

Something found en route to looking up something else, and I’m sensitive to those of you who have topped out with $P news, because this is genuinely amusing and maybe interesting: Sarah Palin has created a sock puppet on Facebook to “like” herself. “Lou Sarah,” no photo available, confines his/her Facebook activity to commenting favorably upon, and otherwise boost, Sarah Palin’s Facebook presence. As a Wonkette commenter said, “Will the circle jerk remain unbroken?”

Newt Gingrich believes in a forgiving God. He’d better.

Finally: Rahm Emanuel, now hizzoner. Let the tired Chicago corruption jokes fly.

I didn’t get to the sports section of the NYT until later in the day yesterday, and am late in blogging this, but I doubt many others beat me to it. I don’t normally spend much time with that section, so it was a joy to see this handsome face dominating the page. (In the NYT, the Daytona 500 goes below the fold.)

It’s Greg Louganis, looking cuter than ever with salt-and-pepper hair and matching goatee. I didn’t know he’d been MIA from American diving since retiring in the late ’80s, and the story was pegged to his low-profile return to coaching “athletes with wide-ranging ages and abilities,” the story notes, adding:

To watch him dissecting a beginner’s front dive tuck during a practice last month was like observing Meryl Streep teaching an introductory acting class.

It goes on to note that he’s spent the past 23 years stabilizing his health (he has AIDS), practicing yoga, exorcising the standard array of personal demons and training dogs for agility trials, of all things. It almost sounded like he was hiding from the world, but then I thought back on what the world was like when he was a magazine-cover face, and thought, can’t blame him.

We’ve come a long, long way since 1988, when gay celebrities like Louganis were in an impossible position — unable to come out, but entirely unwilling to hide. I believe it was Jeff Borden who came back from the Los Angeles TV writers’ tour in 1984 and reported he’d heard from a Sports Illustrated writer that Carl Lewis was going to win every track-and-field event he entered, and then, at the height of his popularity, at his Mark Spitz Wheaties-box peak, come out of the closet. He was going to force America to admit that someone they loved was something they hated, and make them realize their position was unsupportable.

The Olympics came and went, and no Carl Lewis coming out. At the games, he came across as cocky and arrogant, making his value as an celebrity endorser less than golden. I guess he went for the money, because to this day, you can still find stories like this, from 2007:

One of the unspoken subtexts of all this, the shortfall in the public’s affection, the aloofness, the Michael Jackson comparison, even the red stilettos, was the question of Lewis’s sexuality. Some fellow athletes spread the story that Lewis was gay. He denied the rumour, but, whether by coincidence or not, Coca-Cola withdrew an advertising deal and Nike stopped using him in the States after the LA Olympics. One Nike executive was quoted as saying: ‘If you’re a male athlete, I think the American public wants you to look macho.’ The high jumper Dwight Stone perhaps hit the mark when he said: ‘It doesn’t matter what Carl Lewis’s sexuality is, Madison Avenue perceives him as homosexual.’ Lewis himself later said: ‘They started looking for ways to get rid of me. Everyone was so scared and cynical, they didn’t know what to do.’

Oh, well. The crisis for Louganis came when he admitted his HIV status some years after after the Games, and the media seized on the moment in 1988 when he’d hit his head on the diving board during competition, and allowed a doctor to treat the bloody wound without gloves. No matter that the country’s leading AIDS expert said the chances of a successful transmission under those circumstances were steep indeed. No matter he personally apologized. No matter the doctor tested negative. Every columnist needing to feed the beast weighed in — this number very well may have included me — and many of them disapproved. To them, Louganis’ Carl Lewis moment should have come on worldwide television, poolside, when the team doctor was bearing down on him to treat his bleeding head. Louganis proved not that strong. No harm, no foul, but lots of finger-shaking along the way. There was even a contingent who fretted about the other divers who entered the pool after Louganis; what about them, Mr. Olympics? Did you think about them in your selfish need to keep your condition private?

By the mid’90s (when Louganis revealed his HIV status), the first drugs that would make AIDS a chronic, rather than swiftly fatal disease were coming into wider use. But in the 1980s, the atmosphere was quite different. We knew by 1988 how one was infected with HIV, that you had to work pretty hard to get it, but it had served to make spilled blood into a metaphor for menace, not just for the person it was spilling from, but everyone who might come in contact with it. Hospital dramas on TV all featured a plot line where some nice nurse was accidentally stuck by a junkie’s needle. An ACT-UP demonstration was rousted by cops wearing thick yellow rubber gloves. Think back on all the people who used to work with bare hands and don’t anymore, from boxing referees to the ladies at the Red Cross. Christians speak of being washed in the blood of the Lamb, i.e., Jesus. Good thing this single guy who hung out with 12 other guys lived before retroviruses, or otherwise, ick.

I pity anyone with HIV who had to live through that era, but I’m very glad Louganis came out the other side with a satisfying life. I’m not a bit surprised he preferred to work with dogs. They don’t talk, and know the proper use for most newspapers.

Another fun thing I read in the same section yesterday: The Washington Nationals held open auditions for their mascots — giant presidents — last week:

For those who survived the physical test, auditions also consisted of an individual interview with members of the entertainment staff — which included questions like “What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done?” and answers like “pass gas in church.” Some candidates were ready to be spontaneous.

“I think my whole life has been leading up to this,” said Eileen, a 31-year-old schoolteacher from Alexandria, Va. “I walked around my college campus as a crash test dummy telling people not to drink and drive; I’ve been the Chick-fil-A cow and my school’s panther mascot. As the cow, I got my tail pulled a lot but knew exactly how to deal with it. I’m so ready for this.”

Fun fact: The Thomas Jefferson mascot is known as T.J.

I should read sports more often.

So, anything else going on? Pot calls kettle black, downs oxycontin milk shake. Indiana restaurant shows rare sense of humor, immediately apologizes. You can tell Foxy Brown was drunk in this photo, because only drunk chicks (and drag queens) think celery-green eye shadow is a good idea. Still, she kinda rocks it, don’t you think?

No, nothing else going on. Have a great Tuesday.

I think this explains why we bought a noisy, polluting machine to clear our driveway. Just to give y’all a sense of what we were facing this morning…

Well, that was interesting — a prediction for up to two inches of snow, and the overnight total was 10. And while everyone is bitching at the moment and I’ll probably be among them when the shoveling starts, there’s not a thing wrong with 10 inches of wet February snow falling on Michigan. Our ecology depends on a certain amount of moisture transfer from south to north, and last summer was dry. I’ll take it.

In the meantime, it’s a good morning to spend about 30 minutes here on the couch, catching up. Sorry I’m a little late today; this is a school vacation week, winter break, i.e., Keep Michigan Ski Destinations Solvent Week and I plan to spend it sleeping late. Because I don’t have much time, how about a little mixed grill?

I failed in my internet sabbath, but I managed to cut back enough — and pick up enough sleep — that my mood improved immeasurably. I was heartened to see the Wisconsin demonstrations continued, and picked up steam. Krugman:

Why bust the unions? As I said, it has nothing to do with helping Wisconsin deal with its current fiscal crisis. Nor is it likely to help the state’s budget prospects even in the long run: contrary to what you may have heard, public-sector workers in Wisconsin and elsewhere are paid somewhat less than private-sector workers with comparable qualifications, so there’s not much room for further pay squeezes.

So it’s not about the budget; it’s about the power.

In principle, every American citizen has an equal say in our political process. In practice, of course, some of us are more equal than others. Billionaires can field armies of lobbyists; they can finance think tanks that put the desired spin on policy issues; they can funnel cash to politicians with sympathetic views (as the Koch brothers did in the case of Mr. Walker). On paper, we’re a one-person-one-vote nation; in reality, we’re more than a bit of an oligarchy, in which a handful of wealthy people dominate.

Given this reality, it’s important to have institutions that can act as counterweights to the power of big money. And unions are among the most important of these institutions.

Yes. Yes yes yes yes yes.

And if you missed this in the comments over the weekend, Coozledad has a contribution for your next open-mic night (with apologies to Paul Simon):

They rounded us teabaggers up and we’re off to Wisconsin
I stashed some oxy right here in my bag.
So we bought a case of Miller Lite
Skoal Bandits and Moon Pies
And rode off to teabag Wisconsin
Cathy I said as we boarded the charter in Branson
Dollywood seems like a dream to me now
It took me four hours to clean up
from eating those hot dogs we got at the Stuckey’s
Snacking on the bus
Little Debbies and Fritos
She said the man in the corduroy looked like a Jew.
I said be careful he probably works for George Soros!
Toss me a Xanax there’s probably one stuck in your waistband
right by that cheeseburger and your cellphone
So I knocked back another beer
She passed out in the seat
And a green fart rolled out the window.
Cathy we’re going to be lost when we get to Wisconsin
What they call barbecue ain’t the same thing
I hope they’ve got us some motorized shopping carts
I’ve come to teabag Wisconsin!
Done come to teabag Wisconsin!

I was singing the line about the man in the corduroy suit during my grocery shopping. I hope anyone who overheard had a sense of humor.

Well, I was ahead of the wave, and now I’m behind it: Blogs, they are so over:

The Internet and American Life Project at the Pew Research Center found that from 2006 to 2009, blogging among children ages 12 to 17 fell by half; now 14 percent of children those ages who use the Internet have blogs. Among 18-to-33-year-olds, the project said in a report last year, blogging dropped two percentage points in 2010 from two years earlier.

Former bloggers said they were too busy to write lengthy posts and were uninspired by a lack of readers. Others said they had no interest in creating a blog because social networking did a good enough job keeping them in touch with friends and family.

Haven’t they figured out the secret yet? Let Paul Krugman do the work!

Finally, today’s question for the baseball nerds in the group: Why do pitchers and catchers arrive before everyone else in spring training? Is there a reason?

Shovel time.

It’s just as well that the weekend is coming, as I need to unplug from the internet and stop paying attention to politics for a while. I’m starting to feel that old sourness, the simmer I maintained from roughly 2004 through 2008…no, through now, that pecked-to-death-by-ducks feeling.

Part of it is — when will I learn? when??? — paying attention to Sarah Palin again. She “slammed” Michelle Obama over her breast-feeding proposal, in CNN’s headline. In the copy, she “took a swipe” with this nonsensical comment:

“No wonder Michelle Obama is telling everybody, ‘You’d better breast-feed your baby,” she said at a Long Island appearance on Thursday, after slamming President Barack Obama for rising gas prices and other items — like milk — since he took office. “Yeah, you’d better, because the price of milk is so high right now.”

Because the price of milk is, what? The White House’s responsibility? Is she making a joke? Infants aren’t fed milk, at least not directly. Should we bother to point out no one is saying “you’d better” breastfeed? Or by doing so are we falling into her trap?

Meanwhile, her wingman, Michele Bachmann:

“To think that government has to go out and buy my breast pump for my babies? You wanna talk about the nanny state, I think you just got a new definition.”

Oh. Again, no one suggested government should “buy” a breast pump for anyone, only that women should consider it for their babies, and that the IRS considers the cost deductible as medical supplies. This sounds very reasonable to a reasonable person; the benefits of breastfeeding are well-known, for both mother and child, and encouraging more of it is like encouraging healthy eating across the board, but as we well know, $P is opposed to that, too. Except when she’s claiming we all have first responsibility for our own health, in which case it’s a good thing.

(Most poor women — the ones most in need of financial support for breastfeeding — will find many pumps out of reach, financially, at least when they’re purchased new. However, there is a wide range of alternatives to the one I used, the Medela Pump in Style, which retails for $350. Those include the vast secondhand market (I paid $100 for mine, used), rental and the old favorite, “hand expression,” i.e. self-milking. But I wish more women would give breastfeeding a try; it is truly one of the best things I ever did. And I did it for a year, working most of that time. I never needed one of these. Mrs. O’s on the side of the angels here.)

And I’ve been watching the Wisconsin protests with mixed feelings, as I cannot avoid the spin from both sides, but having it all spun through my brain leaves me with this conclusion: This is not about public employees learning to give back or whatever. This is about busting their unions, and don’t even tell me it isn’t. Anyway, I guess this is the left’s tea party. The capitol building was so packed the people who work there were having trouble getting through the halls. And while this legislation will no doubt pass eventually, I can’t begrudge folks a few days of …well, not rage, exactly, this is Wisconsin. Disgruntlement? The Democrats’ run-and-hide strategy is nothing new, either; Molly Ivins wrote some of her best columns about this when tactic was used in Texas in the ’80s. Meanwhile, wait until the unions are gone — then the fun really starts. Wisconsin teachers are prohibited from striking under terms of their current contracts. When those are gone, well, careful what you wish for, King Walker.

(For an alternative on how one might successfully bargain with a union in a time of diminishing public resources, see here. I’ve linked before, but there you are.)

All is not grim, however: “I Am Number Four” looks like the best generator of hilarious bad reviews since “Sex and the City 2,” even without the “smells like number two” headlines. Ebert:

I like science fiction. The opening shot of “I Am Number Four” holds promise, as John (Alex Pettyfer), the narrator, explains that he is a Mogadorian, no doubt from a planet named Mogador. Specifically, he is Mogadorian No. 4. Don’t expect me to explain the Mogadorian numbering system. He is hiding out on planet Earth and doing everything possible to disguise himself as a box-office attraction like Edward Cullen.

Paul Constant:

Oh, and there are aliens called Mogadorians, who are evil and who want to murder John for some evil reason. They have evil monster dogs that look almost exactly like every other evil monster dog in cinematic history, from Ghostbusters onward. And John has some kind of power that can do whatever he needs at any given point. (He can cast light out of his palms like a flashlight, push things around with telekinesis, blow shit up, and… jump-start cars?) It’s just one scene of generic sci-fi garbage after another.

And so on.

So. Here’s to an internet-free weekend. Think I’ll clean a bathroom.

I’d like to go on the record to register my astonishment at how much discussion the RoboCop statue question has engendered hereabouts, but I really shouldn’t be too surprised — this is exactly the sort of topic for which talk radio, blogs and newspaper columns were invented, the equivalent of a bag of potato chips.

It all started when the mayor’s staff, in responding to a tweet, nixed the idea of a permanent RoboCop, and from there, the internet swung into action. It took just six days to raise $50,000 via Kickstarter, which should be more than enough to pay an artist’s foundry bill and stick him somewhere on the riverfront. As for all the arguments against, which boil down to It’s Not Serious and There’s a Better Way to Spend $50K, I say (shrug).

My thinking may have been influenced by a weekend in lovely Milwaukee last year, where you’ll recall I met yet another fictional character who lived in a real city, represented in statue form:

The Bronze Fonz stands there all day, offering photo ops for all. Fun fact: Sylvester Stallone funded his own Rocky statue, and was miffed when the Philadelphia art museum refused to place it at the top of the steps.

Of course, if it were up to me, I’d add ED-209…

…as a salute to the glitches in all of us.

For what it’s worth, I recall liking that movie. It had the usual ridiculous Paul Verhoeven ultra-violence, and a coke-fueled cynicism that will always be associated with the Reagan administration, in my memory. Peter Weller carries the lead role acting mainly with his mouth, an impressive achievement. There’s a show that seems to be playing on all background TVs throughout, called “I’d Buy THAT for a Dollar!” I want to see that show someday. As for Detroit being the model for our dystopian future, I remind you the film was shot almost entirely in Dallas.

So, who watched “Jeopardy!” this week? I didn’t see all three nights of Watson’s triumph, but I saw enough. The revelation, for me, was in how much we need more carbon-based life forms like Ken Jennings. I’d forgotten how much I missed him — a guy who wears celebrity lightly and always keeps his sense of humor, proof that fame doesn’t turn everyone into Sarah Palin.

The new governor of Ohio — not a Sarah Palin, but a cocky shit in his own right — stepped in it recently, calling a Columbus police officer who issued him a ticket an “idiot” in a public forum. Because I believe police are entirely capable of being idiots just like the rest of us, I watched the dashboard video of the stop. Didn’t see anything idiotic going on. I’d forgotten those Columbus P.D. uniforms, with the white shirts and hats. There was a story a few years back about a couple of Columbus cops doing something heroic — I forget what. They were photographed sometime after the heroism, and were cited by supervisors for not wearing their hats, as per department policy. Now that’s idiocy, guv’nor. Just so’s you know.

So, this has been something of a meander today, eh? Any more bloggage? A little:

The Amish Bernie Madoff. Priceless.

Come the revolution, I hope women like this are sentenced to life in Carhartt coveralls:

After Ana Pettus, a 42-year-old mother who lives in Dallas, watched a gold minidress with a plunging, fringed V-neck go down the runway at the Balmain show in Paris last year, she knew she had to have it. She bought the piece—she wears it as a tunic instead of a dress—along with three others from the fall 2010 collection at the Paris boutique of the luxury French fashion house. Price tag: €55,150, or about $74,000.

Fashion weeks in New York, Paris and Milan generate a tremendous amount of press and buzz for some of the world’s most expensive clothes. But many of the runway styles are actually purchased by a small group of customers, not all of them from the isle of Manhattan. And unlike celebrities and socialites, who often get designer clothes at no charge in exchange for publicity, these customers pay full price.

Things not to do when you’re pulled over on suspicion of drunken driving: Start drinking from a bottle of scotch and play the “don’t you know who I am?” card. Adios, Miguel Cabrera.

And adios to you, too. Have a great Thursday.

As soon as I heard the terrible news about Lara Logan, I knew it would only be a matter of time before a handful of numbskulls, marching forward under the banner NO MORE POLITICAL CORRECTNESS, would say something charming.

It didn’t take long. Roy has a roundup. It’s the Daniel Pearl story with sex and a prettier victim. That is, there are lots of she-asked-for-its, sprinkled with what-else-can-you-expect-from-those-animals, and a certain amount of what-exactly-happened-in-this-sexual-assault (and please, spare no details).

I’ll go in a different direction: What happened to Logan isn’t shameful in any way, and she should talk about it.

There was a movement in this direction some years back, in journalism circles. The editor of the Des Moines Register, I b’lieve it was Geneva Overholser, wrote a column asking, if rape isn’t “about sex” and is an assault like any other, why journalists have a widespread shared agreement not to name victims in news accounts. Maintaining the veil only serves to silently reinforce all the ugly prejudices about victims — that they’re ruined, somehow, and should never talk about it.

A woman came forward in the wake of that column, Nancy Something, and told her story to Overholser a Des Moines Register reporter, who wrote about it in painstaking detail, using her full name. It was a compelling read, and underlined her point. What happened to Nancy Something was an assault, plain and simple, that just happened to take a sexual form.

And nothing changed. If anything, the atmosphere regarding reporting crimes got even chillier. Look at a newspaper from the 1960s, and that’s one thing that strikes you — how much more open that sort of reporting used to be. If you got mugged in an alley, you could expect to find your name and address printed in the paper, as well as what hospital you were taken to, and what your condition was at press time.

I understand Overholser’s position, but I don’t share her belief that changing the journalism will change the nature of the crime. Every single one of us practices something I call “distancing,” i.e. the immediate calculus, upon hearing upsetting news about misfortune befalling someone else, of how this would not have happened to us. We wouldn’t have been in Detroit at that hour. We would never buy real estate in a city below sea level. We never accept opened bottles of beer from strange men. And so on. It’s far, far worse when it’s rape, because, as we’ve learned to accept for a while now, so often the perpetrator is someone we know. (But it wouldn’t be something we know, because we have such great people sense. And also, we would never wear anything that tight and low-cut, and we aren’t blonde, and so on.) It’s taken us a long damn time to get to where it’s acceptable for a woman to not be a virgin when she gets married. I think we’ve got some ground to cover before being beaten up = rape.

But maybe having Logan talk about it would help. Although who knows? Reading some of those reactions Roy rounded up, I’m wondering if it would make things even worse.

So, bloggage:

Let Jimmy Kimmel harvest the low-hanging fruit of the Harry Baals story. And then let Jon Stewart get the good stuff.

And that’s it for me, alas. This week, Wednesday is the new Tuesday.

My first serious boyfriend in college was long-legged and lanky, and when he was trying to get someplace fast, I practically had to scamper to keep up with him. Scampering is a decidedly humiliating way to travel, so as a defense, I changed my walking stride. You think you know how to walk until you have to walk with a long-legged person, and then you learn.

The secret is to get your hips into the game. Most casual walkers walk from the knees down, but if you engage your iliac region, you can easily get a few extra inches out of a stride. When I started to ride, I would later learn to recognize this in horses; horsemen use the term “good mover” to describe an animal that covers ground easily without appearing to work too hard at it. A “daisy cutter” is a classic hunter, one whose gaits are easy and long, without much knee action; put him in a field of daisies and his hooves will lop the blossoms off as they brush over the tops. Knee action is wasted motion, and should be saved for fancy carriage horses, where that sort of high stepping is prized.

I would never call myself a daisy cutter — my legs are too short. But I like to get where I’m going without too much shilly-shallying, and why are you walking so slow in the middle of the goddamn sidewalk? Don’t you know anything?

The Wall Street Journal has a fascinating story today about researchers studying the roots of anger. You’ll never guess what their laboratory is:

Researchers say the concept of “sidewalk rage” is real. One scientist has even developed a Pedestrian Aggressiveness Syndrome Scale to map out how people express their fury. At its most extreme, sidewalk rage can signal a psychiatric condition known as “intermittent explosive disorder,” researchers say. On Facebook, there’s a group called “I Secretly Want to Punch Slow Walking People in the Back of the Head” that boasts nearly 15,000 members.

I don’t want to punch slow walkers, but I will never understand people who don’t follow simple rules of the pedestrian road. I thought everyone knew them; they’re essentially the same as the one for cars: Slow traffic to the right. Don’t stand in the middle of the sidewalk. And — very big on college campuses — there is a time and place to hold hands with another adult, but it’s not on a university walkway between classes. You idiot.

I think I should volunteer for this study.

I live in a car-mad city now, but I still like to walk when I can, and most of the time I have sidewalks entirely to myself. I don’t think it’s making me any more patient, and I wonder how I’d do in someplace like New York, which I haven’t visited since the beginning of the smart-phone era. I don’t know how I’d handle the amblers, the slow-walkers, the distracted millions who will not look up from their little screens, not even when someone is coming up behind them, fast. The police at Wayne State have a boilerplate memo they offer to anyone interested in staying safe on an urban campus in a dangerous city, and high on the list? Ignore your phone. Your call will wait. It is the gimpy leg that the urban predator looks for, because it means you’re not paying attention to anything other than some stupid text message.

As I read on in the story, I realized I’m not a classic sidewalk rager. I don’t bump into people if it can be avoided, and for the most part I will go around slower ones without glares or (much) muttering. Having been a stroller- and wheelchair-pusher myself, I understand the special problems posed by small children and elderly parents. Needless to say, I don’t hip-check anyone. But I fully admit to being driven nuts by people who will fan out in a group, usually women, frequently four abreast so they can be just like the “Sex and the City” girls, and not be aware that they have chosen to become a blood clot in the artery of a busy city. I try to go around, but sometimes they’ll stop — so the camera can zoom in on them while they make some witty remark — and I have no recourse but to go through the middle. They act surprised, like I’m invading their space. Who let this interloper into my movie set? Hey, girlie. Learn to walk.

OK, some bloggage:

Speaking of idiots, the Republicans aren’t serious about zeroing out the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, are they? This has to be a bargaining-chip sort of deal. They aren’t really that stupid? No one’s that stupid. Oh, wait. So off I go to my elected representatives’ websites, there to register my objection. They’re all Democrats, so I believe it’s probably unnecessary, but you never know.

A milestone we all missed: Yesterday was Coozledad’s 50th birthday. Happy birthday, you delightful one.

This is red-carpet season, and Tom & Lorenzo are on the case, as usual. No red carpet is as tacky as the ones trod by the music industry, and their Grammy wrapup is hilarious. Just go to the main page, find part one and go from there. Never have I seen such awful formalwear, and I went to high school in the ’70s. Ignore the fact you won’t know three-quarters of the “stars,” and concentrate on the prose:

HELLO, GRAMMA FUNK! We don’t know who you are, but we feel like we know every inch of your body like an old lover. The curtain is rising on your vagina and your tits are screaming like two colicky babies.

Me, I’m off to work. Have a swell Tuesday, all.