Lately I’ve been spend­ing too much time read­ing right-wing blogs and Face­book pages. Usu­ally I leave this dirty job to Roy Edroso, but one or two have got­ten under my skin and I can reli­ably be found check­ing in here and there. It’s like sneak­ing cig­a­rettes when you’re try­ing to quit.

You won­der who the 18 per­cent are who think the pres­i­dent is a Mus­lim? I found a few. They use words like “usurper” a lot, not a com­mon vocab­u­lary word for those who insist that this or that “needs warshed.” But it’s one of those dog-whistle words; Google “obama usurper” and you get 101,000 results. This is a typ­i­cal usage, blah blah blah birth cer­tifi­cate blah blah blah. Google “obama mus­lim usurper” and you get even more — 559,000.

Then I read this lat­est blog by Roger Ebert, and a phrase jumped out at me:

This many Amer­i­cans did not arrive at such con­clu­sions (about Obama being Mus­lim, or the Antichrist) on their own. They were per­suaded by a relent­less process of insin­u­a­tion, strate­gic silence and cyn­i­cal mis­in­for­ma­tion. Most of the lead­ers in this process have been cau­tious to avoid actu­ally say­ing Obama is a Mus­lim. They speak in coded words and allow the impli­ca­tions to sink in. I recently watched Glenn Beck speak­ing at great length about Obama’s Mus­lim father, but you would not have learned from Beck that the father, who Obama met only once, was not a prac­tic­ing Mus­lim in any sense.

Strate­gic silence. Yes, that’s it exactly. This, when I pick it apart, is why I’ve reached the point where I feel more or less per­ma­nently furi­ous at about half the coun­try. I lived in Indi­ana for 20 years, feel­ing like a drag queen in Salt Lake City, but I got used to it. I used to believe that I could call many of them friends, that they had some­thing to offer. We dis­agreed, but, I would tell myself, they had arrived at this point in time via a dif­fer­ent path than mine; of course they reached some dif­fer­ent con­clu­sions along the way. (This was not always an indul­gence granted in return.) When they lost the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, I fig­ured they’d be sore about it, but I didn’t antic­i­pate a two-year tem­per tantrum, aided and abet­ted by their highly paid mouth­pieces, who smirk through their silence when their idiot min­ions roar about Marx­ism and social­ism and Mus­lim usurpers.

Ebert thinks Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin may announce their intent to run for office when the for­mer appears in the latter’s state on — would you look at that? another coin­ci­dence — Sep­tem­ber 11. I dis­agree. I think the chance these two will step off the Col’ Col’ Cash Express is slim verg­ing on none. I think we’re due another stu­pid rally and more tire­some sto­ries in the papers. But I think his con­clud­ing point is apt: It’s time for respon­si­ble Repub­li­cans to put up or shut up. Remem­ber when John McCain gen­tly told that crazy lady that no, his oppo­nent wasn’t a Mus­lim? I get the feel­ing the pow­ers that be in the Repub­li­can party look at that moment and smack their fore­heads: No won­der we lost. The money, and the mojo, comes from the cra­zies, and who cares if they get every lit­tle fact right? Facts are too easy to refu­di­ate, whereas urban leg­ends can be posted end­lessly on Face­book, e-mailed around the globe and oth­er­wise allowed to slide.

By the way, may I just say one more thing before I leave? I read not long ago that Sarah Palin was unin­ten­tion­ally con­jured by women like me, who “looked down on” women like her and the mil­lions she man­gles speech for. Because we are elit­ists. Because we know what “semi­otics” means. Because we say, “that car needs to be washed” and don’t buy Cool Whip, or what­ever. Well, if that’s true, I’m very sorry, believe me I am, but let’s not go all holier than thou just yet, shall we? Who, may I ask, referred to the cervical-cancer vac­cine as “the slut shot,” and said that any girl receiv­ing it would take it as an e-ticket to Promis­cu­ityville? Who sent me sheafs of let­ters after I returned to work fol­low­ing the birth of my child, inform­ing me I was an abu­sive mother? How many times have I been told I’m part of the “cul­ture of death?”

Maybe they didn’t mean any­thing by those charm­ing com­ments. If so, like Mitch McConnell, I take them at their word.

OK, enough rant­ing. I need to get some work done today. Blog­gage? Maybe:

Via Hank, a mall that’s deal­ing with its teen prob­lem son­i­cally, via a device that emits sounds irri­tat­ing to young ears. (What? When there’s all those Billy Joel CDs lying around?) You know what I fear as I age? The loss of my sense of smell. Kate’s always iden­ti­fy­ing mys­tery odors in our house that I can’t detect. I feel as though I’ve started down the path toward Foul-Smelling Old Lady­hood, and there’s no turn­ing back.

Via LA Mary, some video of crea­tures who dance bet­ter than I do: A dog. And a baby. Yes, another danc­ing baby. I know, I know. But this baby is amaz­ing.

And via Gawker, this is pretty amaz­ing, too. For those of you with pow­er­ful proces­sors, I rec­om­mend Arcade Fire’s new video, which is inter­ac­tive and Goog­lerific. Yes, by all means you should enter the address of your child­hood home.

Errands! Edit­ing! E-mail! I have an e-ticket to the grind­stone.

It’s good to get away from time to time — visit your bud­dies, observe the strange ugli­ness of the Bronze Fonz, swing over to Madi­son for pitch­ers on the ter­race at the Wis­con­sin Union. Planned cor­rectly, and with a lot of dri­ving, a good week­end can be as much fun as a week­long vaca­tion. I’m grate­ful to all who hosted, cooked, drove and oth­er­wise extended Dairy­land hos­pi­tal­ity.

The sou­venir of the week­end — besides a mild hang­over — was one of these, a Himalayan salt plate. I didn’t spend $60 for the big chunk, but I fig­ured for $18, I could take a chance that my disk of pink rock salt might be an inter­est­ing addi­tion to my bat­terie de cui­sine. It cer­tainly was an inter­est­ing addi­tion to the TSA work­ers’ Sun­day, as it got my bag yanked and hand-searched:

“Do you have ashes in here?” the guard asked.

“No, but I have a disk of Himalayan rock salt,” I said. “It prob­a­bly has lots of min­er­als in there, too. Should I unwrap it?” He said I didn’t have to go that far, but he got a chuckle that any­one would buy a chunk of salt to serve food on. Obvi­ously some­one who doesn’t watch the Food Net­work.

Here it is, in case you’re won­der­ing:

Impulse pur­chases — they’re what make our econ­omy strong.

I’ll be get­ting away a lit­tle later this week, too, tak­ing Kate and three friends for a two-day Cedar Point adven­ture. We chose this late date on the advice of fel­low Michi­gan­ders, who swear by the secret week before Labor Day, when Ohio and Indi­ana kids are back in school and the Mit­ten rules the penin­sula. Short lines for roller coast­ers, etc. We shall see. I think the only thing we can rea­son­ably hope for is good weather. Fin­gers crossed.

For the moment, how­ever, it remains sti­fling. The last few days started won­der­fully, with bright blue skies, low humid­ity and rea­son­able tem­per­a­tures, but once again, some­thing hap­pened and the heat set­tled in on Sat­ur­day. I am ready to wear some­thing that doesn’t need to be white and absorbent. I guess I’ll have to wait a while for that.

Can’t have too much sum­mer, I guess. So let’s skip to blog­gage:

Because I don’t expect the rel­a­tives of excep­tional peo­ple to be excep­tional as a default, I am not sur­prised to learn that Mar­tin Luther King’s extended fam­ily is a lit­tle, how you say, daft. But I found this story on Alveda King, Glenn Beck’s new BFF, to be instruc­tive:

Alveda is dis­mis­sive of (Coretta Scott King), who died in 2006, say­ing, “I’ve got his DNA. She doesn’t, she didn’t … There­fore I know some­thing about him. I’m made out of the same stuff.”

Oh.

(And may I just say, it was won­der­ful to be [mostly] away from the inter­net for two days, and thus be spared Beck­a­palooza? I may throw my lap­top away.)

Things you shouldn’t do when you’ve been drink­ing: Try to climb out on a win­dow ledge on the 22nd floor to take a pic­ture.

Finally, some­thing that frosted my cook­ies last night and con­tin­ues to do so: The egg indus­try says it’s time to say farewell to poached and sunny side up. Because how can they pos­si­bly keep 50 mil­lion damn chick­ens healthy? I’m now pay­ing $2.50 a dozen at the farmer’s mar­ket I guess, what? Per­ma­nently.

Must run — manic Mon­day.

Sorry I’m late today. School reg­is­tra­tion this morn­ing, fol­lowed by school-supply buy­ing, fol­lowed by FIX THE PRINTER NOW SO I CAN PRINT LIZ’S BIRTHDAY CARD fol­lowed by this.

I’ll be late tomor­row, too. Actu­ally, I’ll be gone tomor­row. Doing a lit­tle trav­el­ing this week­end, off to see the Trowel Tart in Wis­con­sin. I’m fly­ing. In case you were won­der­ing what it costs for a 75-minute flight from Detroit to Mil­wau­kee, the answer is: Too damn much. Northwest’s hereto­fore rea­son­able fares between its Mid­west­ern cities went pfft when it was swal­lowed by Delta. Still, it offers mul­ti­ple flights daily and the only non-stops, although I love to see what Travelocity’s bots can cob­ble together for me — sure, I’d love to go from Detroit to Mil­wau­kee via Atlanta and Hous­ton with a fly­ing time of 11 hours; and I’d save $20? Sign me up.

But never mind the cost — how often do you get to visit your best friend? Never often enough. Plus, a side trip to Madi­son is on tap, and that includes our other great pal, Dr. Frank. Who is now, a quick Google tells us, is on YouTube. Look at that mop of Irish hair. You’d never know his mother was Eye-talian.

So, with that, I make this a lame-ass fly-by. Let’s go right to some blog­gage:

Sto­ries you can’t make up, from the pharma beat: There’s a new drug to treat impo­tence. It’s made by a South Korean firm called Dong-A Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

As of late yes­ter­day after­noon, this guy was on track to be the next Susan Boyle, but what the hell, maybe you haven’t seen it yet. Most excru­ci­at­ing can­di­date inter­view ever.

While we’re on the topic of amus­ing videos, via Hank and Kim Sev­er­son, a fine col­lec­tion of Wendy’s train­ing videos from the ’80s. Go ahead and make fun, but remem­ber — that’s when Wendy’s had its mojo work­ing. Now? Well, Dave is surely spin­ning like a lathe.

Did you know the case that led to this week’s stem-cell rul­ing started with a com­plaint filed by the peo­ple behind the “snowflake babies” pub­lic­ity stunt? I’m sure that had noth­ing at all to do with it land­ing on the docket of a right-wing judge. No, not at all.

OK, I’m off to pack and groom. Have a great week­end, all.

A few peo­ple for­warded me this list today, about the worst bed­bug infes­ta­tions in the coun­try. To my amaze­ment, Cincin­nati tops the list. Colum­bus — such a clean city! — is right behind. Detroit is No. 5, Day­ton No. 9, and Bal­ti­more — hey, Lipp­man! Feel­ing itchy? — is No. 10.

For the record, I have never seen a bed­bug, or felt one’s bite. I know they’re a prob­lem in New York (No. 7), but until I read this, I never dreamed they were mov­ing west. I blame washed-out Brook­lyn hip­sters leav­ing Williams­burg to move back in with mom and dad in Wor­thing­ton. Along with all their lit­tle friends!!!!!

The first per­son I knew who picked up sca­bies was gay. It was the ’70s, and we all know what that meant. He got sca­bies, then crabs, then hepati­tis, then AIDS, and that was that. But it was the sca­bies that freaked me out. I knew the chances of me ever hav­ing unpro­tected anal sex with a stranger were pretty damn slim, but you could get sca­bies — he told me, scratch­ing his arm — from sit­ting on the wrong couch. Yikes.

Alan had a friend who got the same thing in a Motel 6 (he swears), and for years on our many trav­els by car, he refused to even con­sider stop­ping there. (The prices for more respectable lodg­ings in Santa Fe changed his mind, and we found the Motel 6 there to be nicer than many Hol­i­day Inns.)

Every night I troll the nation’s news­pa­pers and wire ser­vices for health news, and I am here to tell you: From micro­scopic to smashable-with-one’s-foot, them bugs is gonna get us all. What doesn’t kill them only makes them stronger, and you can never kill them all. That said, I am never buy­ing another piece of uphol­stered fur­ni­ture used, and any­one who comes into my house is going to have to stand on the back steps for skin inspec­tion and fumi­ga­tion.

Which just dis­lodged a mem­ory from “Gone With the Wind” (the novel): As the sol­diers begin walk­ing home after the war’s end, Mammy polices hygiene at Tara, requir­ing all to strip naked and sub­mit to hav­ing their clothes go into “the b’iling pot,” while simul­ta­ne­ously scrub­bing down with lye soap, fol­lowed by a home-brewed dysen­tery rem­edy: “…one and all, they drank her doses meekly and with wry faces, remem­ber­ing, per­haps, other stern black faces in far-off places and other inex­orable black hands hold­ing med­i­cine spoons.” Such happy slaves. Such a fas­ci­nat­ing book.

When­ever I men­tion it, I teeter on the brink of a doc­toral dis­ser­ta­tion. I’ll spare you and skip right to the blog­gage:

Why does every­one assume Mrs. Tiger Woods learned about his cat­tin’ ways via a super­mar­ket tabloid? I’ve sus­pected from the begin­ning the rev­e­la­tion came at her gynecologist’s office, deliv­ered with averted eyes and maybe involv­ing, yes, crabs. Not that she will tell you.

Rich peo­ple of means, please learn to grow old grace­fully. Plas­tic surgery might fool some peo­ple in your 40s, but down the road, it will only make you look like a mon­ster. Your wife, too.

With the retire­ment of the Crown Vic Police Inter­cep­tor, com­peti­tors are rush­ing to fill the mar­ket for police cars. The Freep show­cases the con­tenders, includ­ing one from an Indi­ana startup called Car­bon Motors. One of the police sta­tions around here has a tricked-out Mus­tang, and no, I don’t know why, either, except that they had the money and felt like spend­ing it.

Mean­while, the News looks at 75 years of the Chevy Sub­ur­ban. You have to really love cars to live in this town. Tol­er­ate ‘em, at least.

Thank God I have Tom and Lorenzo to tell me Isabel Toledo now has a line of shoes at Pay­less. And they include a fetch­ing fake-fur boot, just in case I need to make some extra coin on Wood­ward some grim win­ter.

Have a great hump day. I’ll be humpin’ copy, as usual.

Last week the roof project finally con­cluded with a lit­tle mop-up: A guy came out to rehang the back-side gut­ters and install a cou­ple more down­spouts. Now our brand-new roof will shed water effi­ciently. I pause to stick my fin­ger in my cheek for a weak pop, and then I wave it in the air and say woo. Big effin’ deal.

This is new for me. In the past, I had pride of own­er­ship in almost every repair we made, to this house and to our last house. There’s some­thing about car­ing well for one’s house that’s always res­onated with me, but not so much any­more. It’s true that a new roof doesn’t sat­isfy like a new kitchen, but it still felt vir­tu­ous, because you were adding to your home’s resale value and main­tain­ing the prop­erty, which reflected on the neigh­bor­hood and made every­one rest a lit­tle eas­ier at night.

But our real estate mar­ket can be explained in a head­line which I swear I’ve read 400 times in the last five years in the local weekly: Has the mar­ket hit bot­tom? The answer is always the same: Maybe. The answer is always wrong, because the cor­rect answer is: No. So putting a roof on my house, which used to feel like for­go­ing a new dress to put the money in the bank, now feels more like tear­ing up hundred-dollar bills and throw­ing them into a flush­ing toi­let. And as long as we’re read­ing the Obvi­ous News, it seems I have lots of com­pany.

When this reces­sion is over — if it ever is — and the his­to­ri­ans start to sort it out, I don’t think any­thing will be as impor­tant, in the long run, as what it did to real estate. It’s still my main dis­ap­point­ment with Barack Obama, that he didn’t launch a big show trial on Jan. 21, 2009 that would have marched the Wall Street shit­heads who wrecked the hous­ing mar­ket before a tri­bunal of fore­closed and washed-out home­own­ers and a judge that was a com­bi­na­tion of, ohhhh, Al Sharp­ton and Judge Judy, say. His gavel would be over­sized, and he’d be wel­come to use it on both his bench and the defen­dants’ heads. A guil­lo­tine would be right out­side the court­room, and we’d use it until the rope broke and the blade dulled.

That, at least, would show we take the dam­age these peo­ple did seri­ously. Peo­ple who don’t own houses or apart­ments get a lit­tle impa­tient with this, and I guess I don’t blame them, but trust me: This crash hurts every­one, owner or not. For those of us who don’t live in the places where the mid­dle class are shut out of own­ing real estate — which is to say, most of the coun­try out­side of New York City, San Fran­cisco and much (but not all) of Los Ange­les — our houses are the most expen­sive thing we own, and are far more than a place to lay our weary heads and store our record col­lec­tions. The sale of my par­ents’ house pro­vided half their retire­ment stake. They were of the gen­er­a­tion that saved up for a down pay­ment, shopped care­fully, bought and stayed put. No flip­ping or trad­ing up for them. Three bed­rooms, 1.5 baths, bought in 1962 and sold in 1995, paid off and worth seven times what they paid for it.

My gen­er­a­tion was dif­fer­ent, but not Alan and me, so much. This is our sec­ond house, in our sec­ond city. I pay extra prin­ci­pal on our house every month, although God knows why. Opti­misti­cally, it’s worth half what we paid for it. Recov­ery of our pur­chase price might be 20 years off. The Detroit Metro has spe­cial prob­lems, to be sure, but the whole coun­try is sweep­ing up this wreck­age, and I will never for­get who caused it. (Hint: It wasn’t Bar­ney Frank.)

For years, for prac­ti­cally ever, real estate was the safest invest­ment you could make. My mom started bug­ging me to buy a condo as soon as I had a full-time job. You couldn’t lose. Every­body pays some­thing for hous­ing, after all, and you might as well pay your­self, plus the mort­gage inter­est is tax-deductible. And hous­ing always went up. It didn’t rise at the redonku­lous rates of recent years, but a steady 1 to 3 per­cent was a given.

And while I may be over­stat­ing the virtues of own­er­ship, I still firmly believe that a neigh­bor­hood of own­ers is, in the broad­est terms, bet­ter than one of renters. When you have a finan­cial stake in some­thing, you pay more atten­tion to it. You care if the local schools are good, even if you don’t have chil­dren in them. You don’t like it when your neigh­bors let their lawn go to prairie (unless every­one else’s is prairie, too). You keep the walks swept. It’s the broken-window the­ory on a less dra­matic scale, and for gen­er­a­tions, it worked.

But that’s only part of it. Local gov­ern­ments rely on property-tax rev­enues to pro­vide ser­vices. When prop­erty val­ues slide, so do tax receipts. We’re only begin­ning to see these prob­lems, cities let­ting streets go or not replac­ing light­ing or lay­ing off fire­fight­ers. And how long did I say it might be before recov­ery?

When you think about it, pretty much every­thing in our econ­omy is pred­i­cated on the idea that we’ll always be grow­ing. (Cer­tainly our health-care costs have done that.) A few flat years we can han­dle. But a full-on retreat, a crash? This is new for me. Last week our bor­ing old city coun­cil got a lit­tle testy over some penny-ante travel for the city clerk, noth­ing big, but one of the mem­bers grumped that they were look­ing at another enor­mous short­fall the fol­low­ing year, and nick­els and dimes add up. I can’t imag­ine what they’ll be fight­ing over in three years. Prob­a­bly which one gets to quit first.

My house, my mill­stone. But with a nice new roof.

So, a lit­tle blog­gage? Sure. Scott Rosen­berg at Salon looks at a phe­nom­e­non I’ve been see­ing in my news search­ing for a while now: The con­tent farms have gamed Google. Don’t be evil!

“I think his dad’s bought them off, some­times. He’s prac­ti­cally sell­ing dope out of the trunk of his car. I have to give him one thing, though. Watch­ing his per­son­al­ity dis­in­te­grate made me give up pot for good. Well, that and the fact the shit makes you so fuck­ing retarded these days. The last time I smoked was spring last year. I was so para­noid I walked out of the house and hid in that big wall of shrubs by the soror­ity house. And the girls started that god­damn singing. ‘Together for­ever. Together for­ever.’ Do you have any idea how much that sounds like you’re eaves­drop­ping on some kind of blood sac­ri­fice?” — why I added Coozledad’s blog to my RSS feed. I was miss­ing too many of these, or dis­cov­er­ing them days later.

Another great Tom-and-Lorenzo Mad Style entry, this one on Francine Han­son, played by the sub­lime Anne Dudek.

I’ve taken a casual inter­est in Stephanie Sey­mour ever since Alan and I dis­cov­ered the “Novem­ber Rain” video on MTV. One of us would always say to the other, “She dies in the end.” Today, the NYT did a silly-season Sun­day Styles front on the dis­in­te­gra­tion of her mar­riage to Peter Brant, described as “a taller, more dash­ing ver­sion of Buddy Hack­ett.” Her “Novem­ber Rain” role was described thusly: “she por­trayed a bride who dies.” Every­one remem­bers her!

So have a great Mon­day, all. Mine will, as usual, be busy.

I have a meet­ing at 9 a.m., which is to say, in eight hours. That’s fol­lowed by another meet­ing, an inter­view and the usual fam­ily oblig­a­tions. My plan to have Me-Time Fri­day — or even a quiet hour to update my stu­pid blog — just col­lapsed, but ah well. Here, have some blog­gage:

Roger Ebert, mak­ing a lit­tle list.

What is Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ism, and is that why Shar­ron Angle is such a nut case? (Some of these alarmists need to spend a year in Indi­ana. This stuff is just nor­mal there.)

As seen on TV, all you peo­ple just need to get your minds out of the gut­ter. It’s a shake weight, OK, you shake it. Sheesh.

I may not have much today, but maybe if MMJ­eff isn’t too busy, he can lay out the Holy Stones of Newark/Glenn Beck story in bul­let points. It’s actu­ally kind of fas­ci­nat­ing.

See you next week, all. Or maybe at Sat­ur­day morn­ing mar­ket.

Wow. A new Pew Research Cen­ter sur­vey now says that 1 in 5 Amer­i­cans think the pres­i­dent is Mus­lim, and per­haps as many as a quar­ter believe he was born out­side the U.S. I pause now for a moment and thank what­ever gods may be that I don’t live in Indi­ana any­more, because I would surely know a few of them, and my head would have exploded by now with the strain of keep­ing a civil tongue in it. Hell, for all I know my cur­rent neigh­bors are totally down with this. One already told me her Pol­ish priest had said he hadn’t seen so much social­ism since he left the east­ern bloc. I flapped my hand and said, “Gotta run.”

Truth be told, I’m try­ing to be more tol­er­ant in my old age. Fat chance, sure, but I’m try­ing. It’s been my expe­ri­ence that when peo­ple are upset about some­thing, they don’t say, “I fear a lonely death,” they say, “The pres­i­dent is a Mus­lim.” One sounds pathetic, the other like you’re engaged in civic life. For as much as they bitch, moan, and bitch some more, most peo­ple have very lit­tle to fear from indi­vid­ual pres­i­dents, with obvi­ous excep­tions — sol­diers, For­eign Ser­vice offi­cers, etc. Their local city coun­cil and school board rep­re­sen­ta­tives make more deci­sions that they’ll see the results of day-to-day, but even there, things are all out of whack. What starts as a cur­ricu­lum change to encom­pass AIDS edu­ca­tion gets all wrapped up in anx­i­ety over one’s baby grow­ing up and devel­op­ing an inner life that does not wel­come a par­ent, and the next thing you know you’re stand­ing at a podium beg­ging the board not to under­mine your home teach­ing, which is that AIDS is God’s pun­ish­ment for homo­sex­u­als.

No, not beg­ging. Demand­ing. The police had to take a geezer out of a recent city coun­cil meet­ing in East­pointe this week. (I’d link, but the Det­News site has been hosed for the last hour.) He hit the police chief on the head with a cell phone. He was upset that the coun­cil is con­sid­er­ing a tax increase to cover short­falls in the city bud­get. East­pointe is a blue-collar sub­urb, and like every other munic­i­pal­ity around here and prob­a­bly around you, too, the coun­cil is grap­pling with how to sus­tain oper­a­tions when prop­erty val­ues, and tax receipts, have fallen off a cliff. They cut and cut and cut, and finally say, OK, here we go, it’s either a tax increase or we all start burn­ing our garbage in the back yard. Chances are excel­lent that geezer will still be pay­ing less in taxes than he did even a year ago and cer­tainly five years ago, but for now this is worth hit­ting a cop with a cell phone.

What would he have done if a city coun­cil­man had leaned for­ward, smiled gen­tly and said, “There’s help, you know. There are peo­ple out there who want to help you. Con­tact your local coun­cil on aging.” Prob­a­bly showed up with a rocket launcher.

Mean­while, thanks to Jason T., for show­ing me I need some new T-shirts:

Or maybe this one:

Source.

Well, it’s plain I’m a dry well at the moment, so let’s forge ahead and get the hell outta here:

This isn’t as funny as Coozledad’s account of how his bull, Llewd, got out of the pas­ture one night and tried to breed his own daugh­ter, but there’s some­thing about this clip that amuses me, and yes, I will stip­u­late that at the moment, I am not feel­ing the milk of human kind­ness.

Art Caplan, everybody’s favorite med­ical ethi­cist, on what hap­pens when hos­pi­tals say treat­ment is futile but fam­i­lies say, “Press on.”

I love the inter­net, because there are peo­ple out there who will watch “The Rachel Zoe Project” for me, and make it far more enter­tain­ing.

And now I’m gone. Apolo­gies for lame­ness. It’s just my way, today.

James J. Kil­patrick died Sun­day, I see. Younger peo­ple will recall him as a car­toon, the basis of Dan Aykroyd’s “Shana, “Jane, you igno­rant slut” sendup of “Point/Counterpoint,” the back-and-forth exchange at the end of “60 Min­utes.” Older ones, based on the obit­u­ar­ies I’m read­ing, would be for­given for think­ing “no big loss,” given how vile his stances were in the heat of the argu­ment:

Mr. Kil­patrick pop­u­lar­ized the doc­trine called inter­po­si­tion, accord­ing to which indi­vid­ual states had the con­sti­tu­tional duty to inter­pose their sep­a­rate sov­er­eign­ties against fed­eral court rul­ings that went beyond their right­ful pow­ers and, if nec­es­sary, to nul­lify them, an argu­ment traced to the writ­ings of Thomas Jef­fer­son, James Madi­son and John C. Cal­houn.

…At times, Mr. Kil­patrick went beyond con­sti­tu­tional argu­ments. In 1963, he drafted an arti­cle for The Sat­ur­day Evening Post with the pro­posed title “The Hell He Is Equal,” in which he wrote that “the Negro race, as a race, is in fact an infe­rior race.”

But 89 years of life is long enough to grow, it seems:

Mr. Kil­patrick ulti­mately acknowl­edged that seg­re­ga­tion was a lost cause and re-examined his ear­lier defense of it.

“I was brought up a white boy in Okla­homa City in the 1920s and 1930,” he told Time mag­a­zine in 1970. “I accepted seg­re­ga­tion as a way of life. Very few of us, I sus­pect, would like to have our pas­sions and pro­fun­di­ties at age 28 thrust in our faces at 50.”

Yep. I’m kind of a softy on James J., because I once wrote him a let­ter dis­agree­ing with one of his columns, and he wrote me back, on his per­sonal let­ter­head, no secretary’s ini­tials at the bot­tom, acknowl­edg­ing my points and respect­fully dif­fer­ing. I wish I still had that let­ter. Respect­ful dis­agree­ment — what a relic of a dif­fer­ent time.

I don’t want to excuse Kilpatrick’s ear­lier sup­port for seg­re­ga­tion and the like, although one thing this book project taught me — and I think I’ve said this before and I’ll prob­a­bly say it again — is that his­tory is both the up-close, day-to-day details and the long view, and as long as progress is being made, we’ll prob­a­bly be OK. Seg­re­ga­tion embar­rasses con­ser­v­a­tives today, because it reminds them of how many of their num­ber were on the wrong side, so I guess there’s some plea­sure in rub­bing their noses in it from time to time, but ulti­mately, what’s the point? If Jack Kil­patrick can change, any­one can.

I used to read his columns when they came in; he wrote two or three times a week for prob­a­bly a few hun­dred news­pa­pers. I know syn­di­cated colum­nists still exist, but I don’t read any of them any­more, at least not out­side their home papers. He wrote about pol­i­tics and lan­guage — an Ask Mr. Lan­guage Per­son with­out the humor — and, from time to time, coun­try life. Those columns were date­lined “Scrab­ble, Va.” and were about the nest of wrens under the eaves or what­not. It takes a lit­tle bit of tal­ent to make life’s mun­dane details into some­thing oth­ers want to read, and read again the next time. (She said mod­estly, sur­vey­ing her audi­ence of dozens…) In the grand scheme of things, he was a suc­cess­ful jour­nal­ist at a time when that was both eas­ier and harder than it is today.

Here’s some­thing that struck me from the obit: His first wife died in 1997. He remar­ried in 1998. Ha. Another man lost with­out a woman. I have a friend who tells his wife, “Honey, I love you and all, but if any­thing ever hap­pened to you I’d be stand­ing on the side­walk in front of the funeral home, propos­ing mar­riage to ran­dom women walk­ing past.” The most pow­er­ful men I’ve known know enough to be hum­ble around their wives, because their wives make their lives pos­si­ble. They run the house, get the dry-cleaning done, bal­ance the fam­ily check­book, pay their hus­bands an allowance. I saw one at a char­ity event, drool­ing over a silent-auction item. He turned to his spouse and asked, “Can I afford this?” Ask if they’d like to come over for din­ner, and he says, “Ask the boss. I show up where she tells me to go.”

I’d hope that Kil­patrick would be offended by a dum­b­ass like Jonah Gold­berg, but you never know. For now, it doesn’t mat­ter.

Blog­gage, while we’re on the sub­ject:

The Newt­ster, cra­zier than ever after all these years. As my friend Lance Man­nion points out, why is this allegedly “bril­liant” scholar still get­ting respect­ful cov­er­age from the D.C. press corps?

Everybody’s seen this by now, but just in case you haven’t: A few other things in the “hal­lowed ground” penum­bra of ground zero. I think Olga’s Salon & Spa should change its name to the Hal­lowed Ground Groom­ing Insti­tu­tion. Classy!

As some­one who’s dri­ven four-cylinder cars for­ever, I’ve never under­stood why they’re so often ignored by Detroit car buy­ers. (Even my fel­low Pas­sat dri­vers around here are all sport­ing V6 badges on the trunk.) Some respect, please.

Time to take Kate to the ortho­don­tist and, oh yeah, write a syl­labus. Later, all.

I try to engi­neer my week so that Fri­days belong to me and only me. I start work­ing on Sun­day after­noons, and I front-load my work week to the point that by Wednes­day, I am start­ing to get a lit­tle breath­ing room. Some­times it works, some­times it doesn’t, but if all goes as planned, by noon Fri­day, I’m cruis­ing.

Some­times it doesn’t go as planned. Last Fri­day, I got a call from one of my friends from my fel­low­ship year, an Israeli who’s now U.S. bureau chief for Yedioth Ahronoth, the largest daily (I think) in Tel Aviv. Could I put together some­thing quickly on the Flint Slasher? For actual money? Any­thing for you, Adi. (And any­thing for a lit­tle money. I spend so much time writ­ing for lit­tle or noth­ing, I’d for­got­ten what that’s like.) And so off I rolled around lunchtime, cruis­ing for Gene­see County instead.

And? A very sad place. Granted, I was on the po’ side of town. I remem­ber, after “Roger & Me” insulted con­ser­v­a­tives with the sug­ges­tion that per­haps cap­i­tal­ism isn’t win-win for every­one, read­ing some­thing spe­cific to Flint in one of their ide­o­log­i­cal house organs, which arrived by the truck­load at my paper’s edi­to­r­ial page. Yes, down­town Flint retail was dead, the writer said, but that’s because every­one was shop­ping at the brand-new mall, etc. etc. Per­haps. (That’s cer­tainly what hap­pened in Fort Wayne.) And surely a com­pre­hen­sive tour of the area with experts would have revealed a fuller pic­ture of the place. But I drove around a bit, and my over­whelm­ing impres­sion was Spring­steen­ian: Fore­man said these jobs are goin’, boys, and they ain’t comin’ back to your home­town. In Detroit, the ruin is Roman — you can see what was once a great city under the decay. In Flint, the dis­as­ter befell some­place far more ordi­nary. Which made it starker, and sad­der.

The term for these sorts of excur­sions is “para­chute jour­nal­ism.” I was happy to pack my chute and leave at the end of the day. And the result? Your basic fly-by visit by some empty suit.

Poor Adi. Dead­line was 2 p.m. Sat­ur­day, but that was for the final, fin­ished prod­uct. Trans­la­tion is a bear, espe­cially on dead­line.

And so the week begins. It’s a spe­cial one for one of our group: Laura Lippman’s lat­est, “I’d Know You Any­where,” drops tomor­row, and oh, how the praise has flowed. Ama­zon says it will be arriv­ing by tomor­row, but hasn’t shipped yet. “Three Sta­tions,” which I also pre-ordered and is pub­lished the same day, has shipped. So I’ll pay twice for ship­ping. But I’m happy to give my fave writer all-important “veloc­ity” in first-week sales.

A lit­tle blog­gage? Ohhh-kay:

An out­sider expe­ri­ences fair food, swoons. A nice wrap-up of what’s being deep-fried this year.

The Diego Rivera murals at the Detroit Insti­tute of Arts, recon­sid­ered.

I noticed this when I was in Ann Arbor a few years back. It blew my mind then, and still does: Col­lege stu­dents who check in with their par­ents mul­ti­ple times a day. I called my mom once a week, and that was because we had free long dis­tance (Ohio Bell was our family’s coal mine).

And now, hav­ing flown by, I must fly. Ta ta.

The bike ride yes­ter­day dis­ap­pointed, but only a lit­tle. No Fab­u­lous Hol­ly­wood Stars were in evi­dence down at South High, but appar­ently they have been; Miley Cyrus spot­tings are mak­ing my “grosse pointe” RSS feed fill like a bucket. Yes­ter­day it was basi­cally your aver­age film set, as seen from beyond the secu­rity line, which is to say, a bunch of trail­ers. You could get a sim­i­lar thrill at your local KOA camp­ground.

Well, I hope she’s enjoy­ing her­self. The Free Press had a story that said she asked some fans at the local CVS to back off and let her buy her chips in peace. I don’t believe this story for a minute. Nobody that thin and pretty eats chips of any sort, and if they do, they have lack­eys buy them.

Of course I didn’t see her. I never see the famous per­son. I have writ­ten about this before. I’d link, but I couldn’t find it in two Googles, so pfft. I am the anti-LA Mary. By the time I arrive at the party, it’s over. After I leave, it starts. My friends were wan­der­ing through the Ohio State Fair one after­noon and ducked into the Warner Cable tent. Guess who else had ducked in to play an impromptu set, just because he liked the inter­ac­tive QUBE sys­tem? Todd Rund­gren! I was not there. I sat in the bar when Elvis Costello traded blows, phys­i­cal ones, with Bon­nie Bram­lett in the bar across the street. Where I wasn’t. Another night, at another bar, I left early because I had to work the next day. An hour after I went home, Prince showed up. Played a few num­bers. Argh.

Once I was at the video post-production house wait­ing on my friend Mark to get off work. While I stood read­ing a bul­letin board, David Lee Roth squeezed past, behind me. Brushed up against me and every­thing. Didn’t feel it, didn’t know about it until some­one pointed it out later. That must have been some bul­letin board.

Last sum­mer, the local papers con­tained a funny story, about a Grosse Pointe woman who was sit­ting in a restau­rant, look­ing at the man across the way. She’s one of those women who knows every­one, and she knew she knew this man, but she couldn’t think of his name. Oh, well, time to get reac­quainted. She walked across the room, stuck out her hand and said, “Hi, I’m Muffy McPrep­ster.” He shook her hand and said, “Hi, I’m Robert DeNiro.”

Need­less to say, I was not there. (DeNiro was shoot­ing “Stone,” com­ing soon to a the­ater near you.)

I won’t ride my bike down that way today. I expect Miley and Demi will be work­ing the rope line.

We’ve been a shal­low pud­dle of late, eh? Sorry, but it’s been hot and mis­er­able, and I’ve been catch­ing up on this and that. I’m teach­ing again this fall, for reals and for money and every­thing, and I need to get my affairs in order, which means learn­ing Black­board, the sys­tem every­body uses and expects me to use, too. I’m baf­fled by lit­tle on the inter­net, and I thought Black­board was clip­ping right along the last time I tried to use it, but nobody could see my posts and my e-mail wasn’t get­ting through, and grr. One of my col­leagues sug­gested that I may well have been doing every­thing right, and that “it wasn’t appear­ing on Black­board” is the “dog ate my home­work” of the 21st cen­tury. Well, this time I will attain mas­tery. This time that one won’t work with me.

So let’s skip to the blog­gage:

In the Apple Doesn’t Fall Far From the Dumb Tree Depart­ment, meet Ben Quayle. He is not Brock Lan­ders, dammit, but you know what? I think the dog ate that man’s home­work.

Dear Ms. Sch­lessinger (sorry, AP style for­bids me from using the “Dr.” hon­orific for a PhD), per­haps you are baf­fled this morn­ing (although I doubt it), with­er­ing under the angry glare of those who would call you racist just because you used the word “nig­ger” 11 times on your stu­pid radio show the other day, all while in the course of telling a black woman she was overly sen­si­tive for object­ing to the use of the word by her husband’s white friends, because some come­di­ans on HBO use it all the time, and so obvi­ously that lady just lacks the sense of humor required for an inter­ra­cial rela­tion­ship. Or per­haps you aren’t. I sus­pect you’re read­ing your heaps of fan mail, and are sim­ply grate­ful that some­one, any­one is pay­ing atten­tion to you, how­ever briefly. (Here in Detroit, your show plays in the cov­eted middle-of-the-night time slot.) Watch­ing this brief video clip may help explain things to you. Although I doubt it.

Ayn Rand on the play­ground. Funny.

And I’m off to take the last, seriously-this-is-it, really-I-mean-it bite of my horse-eating project. Seri­ously. LAST BITE. Here comes the air­plane, open the hangar doors.