This is the final week of dead­line mad­ness, so expect even more spot­ti­ness and fly-by updates, but hell, while I’ve got you…

I’m still amazed at how lit­tle cov­er­age the Mex­i­can drug wars are get­ting north of the bor­der, but maybe this lat­est story will goose some­thing along. An Amer­i­can con­sulate worker — preg­nant, no less — and her hus­band, gunned down in their car while their infant wailed from the back seat. From what I’ve read of the killers, I’m amazed they left the baby alone. The num­bers are aston­ish­ing: Ciu­dad Juarez had 2,000 mur­ders last year, the high­est in the world. The weekend’s death toll alone was 20.

It wouldn’t sur­prise me if this isn’t our next stu­pid mil­i­tary excur­sion — south of the bor­der. How fun that will be.

Else­where in the Bad News for the Forsee­able Future front is a story we’ve been see­ing in fits and starts for a while — call it Our Crum­bling Infra­struc­ture, Water Divi­sion. A few months before New Year’s Day, 2000, a 23-inch water main broke in Fort Wayne, and drained a big chunk of the city for a few hours before they could get it fixed. This was dur­ing the great Y2K scare. Remem­ber, apoc­a­lyp­tic fan­tasies are never a hard sell in Indi­ana, and rather than doing what they might have done — cope with a lit­tle hard­ship for half a day, or use it as an excuse to go out to din­ner in another part of the city — instead res­i­dents fell out for their local gro­ceries to strip the shelves of bot­tled water. Shov­ing matches broke out in store aisles; it was all a lit­tle unsettling.

That story points out what our paper did back then — these pipes are old. The main in Fort Wayne was made of cast iron, for cryin’ out loud. The one in the open­ing anec­dote of the story dates from the inven­tion of the light bulb. And while cast iron is sturdy and our water infra­struc­ture has cer­tainly done its ser­vice, well, noth­ing lasts forever:

Today, a sig­nif­i­cant water line bursts on aver­age every two min­utes some­where in the coun­try, accord­ing to a New York Times analy­sis of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency data.

Falling free­way bridges, crum­bling infra­struc­ture (much of it effec­tively ignored for a cen­tury), crazed mur­der­ous drug lords — have I brought you down enough on this dreary Mon­day? Yes? Well, maybe we need a kit­ten picture:

See you folks — with my red, glow­ing eyes — later.

If you read news­pa­pers, you might notice the ombudsman/reader rep­re­sen­ta­tive is occa­sion­ally called upon to respond to the hand-wringers among the sub­scriber base who com­plain there is never any “good news” in the paper. This isn’t dif­fi­cult, because it’s sim­ply untrue. Every sin­gle edi­tion of vir­tu­ally every metro daily printed con­tains a heapin’ helpin’ of so-called good news, and except in extreme cases — 9/11, say — there is usu­ally at least one such story on the front page.

They never answer the obvi­ous follow-up ques­tion: Why would any­one want to read nice sto­ries about brave Boy Scouts when you can watch the video of the bridal shop brawl — a story that comes with a great, made-for-tabloid name — on YouTube? I don’t know much, but I do know this: Right now, a pro­ducer from “Bridezil­las” is speed-dialing that fam­ily and pray­ing some­one else didn’t get to her first.

Why would you want to read about upright pub­lic ser­vants, when you can read about dis­graced for­mer Detroit city coun­cil pres­i­dent Mon­ica Cony­ers, who went to court to be sen­tenced yes­ter­day and unleashed the furies. To be sure, you could won­der if this even counts as news, as Monica’s furies are rarely leashed at all; she can’t even check into a hotel with­out the police being called. After try­ing to with­draw the guilty plea she nego­ti­ated and signed eight months ago, she threw this into the mix: “My hus­band is an older man,” and pre­sum­ably inca­pable of car­ing for two teenagers (although he retains chair­man­ship of the House Judi­ciary Com­mit­tee). John Cony­ers didn’t show, by the way, although he was said to be in his office in the same build­ing when the hear­ing was tak­ing place. Yet another strange mar­riage in a world full of them.

Speak­ing of which, I won­der what Mrs. Massa is think­ing these days. I met a gay vet­eran in a bar in Key West once. Which branch? I asked. “The Navy, of course,” he replied. “Of course?” Weeks at sea on a float­ing tub full of men. Draw your own conclusions.

Well, pals o’ mine, I wish I could tell you the Buckley’s did the trick, but it didn’t. I feel as awful today as I did yes­ter­day, but now I have twice as much work to do, so I must away. A lit­tle bloggage:

I’m won­der­ing if Kate is going to want to see “The Run­aways.” My guess is, not if it means sit­ting next to her mother while Dakota Fan­ning sings “Cherry Bomb.” The whole movie looks a lit­tle, uh, mature.

This is very obscure, but I had no idea: Lynda Barry went out with him? Really? Really.

God, I feel like crap. Please to for­give. We’ll try again tomorrow.

I saw this story yes­ter­day on the Free Press’ most-popular list and — teach­able moment! — asked Kate if she could tell my why it hap­pened, how a man who had just hit a util­ity pole with no injury to him­self could be found dead just moments later, with evi­dence sug­gest­ing he’d decided to pass the time by uri­nat­ing into the ditch near where his car had crashed. She needed more infor­ma­tion than that, so I told her there was a live elec­tri­cal wire in the ditch. That closed the cir­cuit, to to speak:

“Because of the water?” Ding ding ding ding ding. It’s not exactly an SAT essay-question answer, but she’s only in sev­enth grade. We’ll leave the appre­ci­a­tion of life’s cruel ironies and the ques­tion of the universe’s per­verse sense of humor for senior year.

I needed that story yes­ter­day, which was not a very good one. Noth­ing cat­a­strophic hap­pened, just one of those comedy-of-errors 24-hour peri­ods you’re issued every so often. I’m work­ing on a book project, a custom-publishing job, i.e., writer-for-hire work. It requires his­tor­i­cal research down­town, at the Detroit Pub­lic Library. I found a park­ing place on Wood­ward Avenue, right in front of the place, which I chalked up to my prompt arrival in the first hour after open­ing. Win! Got out, paid in advance for two hours, went to the door — locked. Wouldn’t open for 90 more min­utes. No cat­a­stro­phe; I’d find a quiet place nearby to spread out my mate­ri­als and get orga­nized. That turned out to be an Einstein’s bagels on the Wayne State cam­pus, which was not quiet, but did have a big over­stuffed arm­chair free. Win! The arm­chair was free because it was right next to a mal­func­tion­ing door, which stayed wide open to the 35-degree ele­ments if not pulled shut, some­thing only every 10th cus­tomer realized.

After a few min­utes of this, I moved to another over­stuffed arm­chair, far enough from the draft that it wouldn’t bother me. Win! The one next to me was soon taken by a guy who was enjoy­ing a hot sand­wich and a con­ver­sa­tion with his friend on the other side of me, which I nor­mally don’t mind; I love to eaves­drop. Unfor­tu­nately, all they could talk about was how good their sand­wiches were.

But I got a lit­tle done, and headed back to the library at 10 ’til noon. My paid-for park­ing place was full; at least some­one was hav­ing a lucky day. I got another, paid for two hours. I had an OMG moment when I found a let­ter from 1938, the writer announc­ing he was com­ing to Detroit with “a moving-picture news­reel from the Ger­man For­eign Office…showing the cer­e­monies, indoors and out­side, in con­nec­tion with the National Social­ist rally at Nurem­berg last Sep­tem­ber. I do not believe any­thing of this kind has ever been shown in America.”

My heart soared, think­ing I had found a con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous descrip­tion of what were per­haps “Tri­umph of the Will” out­takes when I thought to check the dates. Um, no. Leni Riefen­stahl shot the 1934 Nazi party con­fer­ence, not 1937.

Trudged out to the car and found a $20 park­ing ticket. It was that kind of day.

I won­der if I can deduct it.

Came home, and heard about the guy who died with his wee­nie out, which was a use­ful reminder that one’s own bad day is almost never the worst bad day any­one ever had.

I wish I could have seen that news­reel. I wish more I could have heard what peo­ple said about it.

This project has been a use­ful reminder that there are two kinds of his­tory — the kind you live through day-by-day, and the kind you didn’t. Go through old news­pa­pers on micro­film for a while, and before long I guar­an­tee you’ll find some­one is being accused of lead­ing the youth of Amer­ica down the path to ruin and social­ism. Yes­ter­day I saw a col­umn from the last week of Octo­ber 1963, by Max Freed­man. Date­line Houston:

One of the most sur­pris­ing dis­cov­er­ies of this visit to Texas is the depth of feel­ing against the so-called Kennedy dynasty.

In Wash­ing­ton this com­plaint has dwin­dled to a pleas­ant lit­tle joke. Out here men swear angrily and women edge their speech with hard­ness as they denounce “the Kennedys.”

Don’t worry, Mr. Pres­i­dent. I hear Dal­las loves you.

OK, back to work. Lord knows what will turn up today. And I’ll remem­ber to feed the meter.

Oh! Another great Detroit­blog.

An all-bloggage Tues­day for an over­stressed blogmistress:

You want to know why the Great Lakes are fight­ing the Asian carp incur­sion so strongly? Because we already have enough inva­sive species in the world’s largest reser­voir of fresh water. Exhibit A being this ugly bastard.

The phrase “wait, what?” has caught on in Kate’s cir­cle. It has a cer­tain Cheech-and-Chong air of amused baf­fle­ment. I haven’t felt even vaguely tempted to use it myself. Until now. Wait, what?

Blame Chile: Their stu­pid earth­quake has short­ened all our days, per­haps knocked the very planet off its axis (a lit­tle). No kidding.

Will Leitch is a brave man. He tells his Roger Ebert story, a great read about just how stu­pid and feck­less youth can be (espe­cially youth with a pen and a great idea for a head­line — “I Am Sick Of Roger Ebert’s Fat F — -ing Face”), here. [Link fixed. Thanks, J.]

Off to the his­tor­i­cal library. With a peanut-butter sand­wich for lunch.

I spent most of Fri­day doing some­thing at the last minute. (So sue me, I have a journalist’s heart. We do things at the last minute.) Con­sid­er­ing I was judg­ing col­lege jour­nal­ism, that seemed fitting.

Fifty entries in an SPJ con­test. I read every one. I liked many of them. When it came time to pin the rib­bons, I felt the usual remorse that so many good entries wouldn’t go away with a prize. I expected all of this. What I didn’t expect was this: How lit­tle has changed. I’m not talk­ing about the flag of The Post, my col­le­giate alma mater, still rec­og­niz­able after, what? Thirty years of sub­se­quent edi­to­r­ial staffs? (Admirable restraint, if you ask me. The first thing a new edi­tor does in the real world is order a sweep­ing redesign. Ninety per­cent of the time, a crim­i­nal waste of effort.)

No, I’m talk­ing about the form itself — the stu­dent news­pa­per. By this time, the new media should have swept col­lege cam­puses. There shouldn’t be a stu­dent news­pa­per, but rather, a com­pletely inter­ac­tive platform-neutral infor­ma­tion stream, pro­cess­ing all the impor­tant news on cam­pus — in my day, record reviews, clas­si­fied ads on apart­ments and two-for-one pizza coupons — into a seam­less gar­ment of data acces­si­ble on every­thing from a lap­top to a phone, plus Twit­ter and Face­book and all the rest of it. Maybe, some­where, that is the case. All I know is that I saw tra­di­tional news sto­ries writ­ten in tra­di­tional ways, pre­sented in tra­di­tional lay­outs on tra­di­tional ink-on-paper. It was more than tra­di­tional. In fact, it was retro: At one point, I beheld a head­line with a kicker. You know what a kicker is? It’s the lit­tle mini-headline that runs over the main head, usu­ally with a rule under­neath, usu­ally just a few words:

Swine flu sweeps fresh­man dorms; vac­ci­na­tion clinic announced. Kicker: ‘Sick as a dog’

I haven’t seen a kicker in pro­fes­sional jour­nal­ism since Jim Bar­bi­eri was writ­ing them at the Bluffton News-Banner. That is to say: A while.

There are two ways of look­ing at this. One, that col­leges are seri­ously fail­ing jour­nal­ism stu­dents by keep­ing stu­dent papers around at all, like a school offer­ing buggy whip-braiding classes in 1925. Or maybe, just maybe, the news­pa­per isn’t a ter­ri­ble way to deliver news in any envi­ron­ment, but par­tic­u­larly on cam­pus, where kids fre­quently find them­selves with 20 min­utes to kill between this and that, and a paper is not only an effi­cient deliv­ery vehi­cle for the infor­ma­tion those stu­dents might want, but actu­ally, I dunno, some­thing pleas­ant to pass the time with.

I’m hold­ing with hope. It’s all I’ve got. Although a word of advice to stu­dent jour­nal­ists: You can almost always make your sto­ries shorter. You’re com­pet­ing with Twit­ter, you know.

And now the week­end is over, and I’m fac­ing a two-week sprint unlike many of recent years. Good news: It’s work, it’s pay­ing work, and that’s good. Bad news: Might be spotty around here for a while. But you guys are good con­ver­sa­tion­al­ists; you can carry this dump for a few days here and there.

Let’s start with an under­re­ported story, in my opin­ion: What if health-insurance reform dies, as so many seem to want? What then? The cost of doing noth­ing. Not cheering.

Or try this: A white soror­ity wins a step con­test, tra­di­tion­ally an all-black show. What then? Metafil­ter has a nosegay of links, and from watch­ing their per­for­mance, I’d say they brought it.

Dear Mr. Pres­i­dent, Stop smok­ing. Try Chan­tix — I hear it works.

And that’s it for me today. We’ll see what tomor­row brings.

The tem­per­a­ture rose yes­ter­day to a notch or two above freez­ing, then fell. A dust­ing of new snow arrived around night­fall. Fog cov­ered every­thing until it froze, and that’s where it stands now — silver-plated world. Every­thing is white, not too cold, and the air is so heavy with mois­ture it can mean only one thing. One or two more inches com­ing up from the south; should be here momen­tar­ily. I’d like to take a walk in it. Maybe I will.

From Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writ­ing, No. 1: Never open a book with weather. Well, this isn’t a book. It’s the first draft of per­sonal his­tory. And I’m allowed to talk about the weather.

A job I wish I had: Smash­ing up the ice on the St. Clair River. Seri­ously. My favorite thing is when the spring rains come in cloud­bursts, and the storm drain in front of my neighbor’s house clogs with spring tree-gunk, and I get to wade through the warm pud­dles with my rake and clear it. Actu­ally pilot­ing an ice­breaker through a trou­ble­some jam to send the backed-up water on its way? Bliss. It would be storm-drain clear­ance on steroids.

Nance’s Rules of Writ­ing: Don’t use stu­pid, dated, not-very-creative-when-they-were-coined, let-alone-now catch phrases like “on steroids.”

OK, then. I don’t want to con­tinue yesterday’s depress­ing dis­cus­sion for too much longer — I mean, in a sil­ver world, you want to be opti­mistic — but I caught part of “Fresh Air” yes­ter­day, and it seemed to per­tain, a lit­tle. Jour­nal­ist David Weigel of the Wash­ing­ton Inde­pen­dent was speak­ing on the new right, the right on steroids, the super-righty right rep­re­sented by the teabag­gers and CPAC. You know CPAC — these are the folks who were mak­ing jokes about fly­ing a plane into an IRS build­ing and killing a 68-year-old vet­eran (two tours, Viet­nam). And of course you know the Tea Party.

I was struck by the por­tion of the inter­view where Terry Gross asked Weigel about what the teabag­gers believe about the finan­cial melt­down that started the cas­cad­ing eco­nomic cat­a­stro­phes of the past two years. He said they blame the whole thing on Bar­ney Frank, Chris Dodd and the Com­mu­nity Rein­vest­ment Act, which is both not sur­pris­ing and pretty depress­ing. I’ve said this before and it didn’t orig­i­nate with me, but this is what we’re mov­ing toward — a media land­scape where not only spin varies from out­let to out­let, but the very facts them­selves. Wall Street is not under­reg­u­lated; Bar­ney Frank is the prob­lem. And vac­cines cause autism, of course they do.

Here’s the other thing that struck me: How the sorts of wackos I used to hear on my radio show(s) back in the day — the freaka­zoids who stayed up all night at the card table under the bare light bulb, writ­ing their single-spaced man­i­festos or let­ters to the edi­tor or what­ever, who would call and rant about the Bilder­berg­ers and the Fed­eral Reserve and the loss of the gold stan­dard and (my per­sonal favorite) Ezra Pound, that genius — these folks are now being wel­comed into the main­stream con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment. And they have some new enter­tain­ing ideas, about the president’s birth cer­tifi­cate and death pan­els and so on. And a new spokes­gal, who is much pret­tier than they are.

How com­fort­ing.

I ran into one of these guys one day, at Best Buy. I thought it was brave of him to intro­duce him­self, although I prob­a­bly should have rec­og­nized him from his public-access TV show. We chat­ted a bit. He was pric­ing cam­corders, but dammit, none of them had the fea­ture he needed. Which was?

“Night vision,” he said.

His public-access show was enter­tain­ing. This is how he gave web addresses: “H, T, T, P. Colon. Back­slash, back­slash. T-R-I-P-O-D. Dot — this is a period — C-O-M. Back­slash. Tilde. This is the key to the left of the numeral 1, but you have to shift…”

Any­way, they were jok­ing from the CPAC podium about Joseph Stack, the IRS bomber. Had to check to make sure it wasn’t Grover Norquist at the con­trols, ha ha. Imag­ine the reac­tion if– oh, why bother even bring­ing it up? The lib­eral media, etc. etc.

I’ll say this: I’m really glad I don’t live in Indi­ana any­more. I’m sure these folks are all over the place. I see two Don’t Tread on Me flags wav­ing in the neigh­bor­hood here, but it’s not a friendly place for the most part, so I don’t feel like I have to smile at them or anything.

Ach. We need to go out with some lev­ity. How about this essay on Rielle Hunter’s “quiet dig­nity.” Not talk­ing to the media about your stu­pid life choices qual­i­fies as quiet dig­nity now? Evidently:

In the early days, Amer­i­cans came to think of her in the sleazi­est terms: the for­mer party girl who used sex­ual wiles and New Age mumbo jumbo to steal Elizabeth’s hus­band. Most self-respecting women would feel com­pelled to say some­thing, any­thing, in their own defense. And most mod­ern mis­tresses would do much more than that. A fame-chasing Rielle would have come for­ward in the first days of her sex scan­dal, even if it meant defy­ing John’s wishes. She would have talked and talked as the inter­views declined in influ­ence, the sad jour­ney from Bar­bara Wal­ters to Billy Bush. By now she’d have fin­ished her book tour. We’d see her hawk­ing an Inter­net sex col­umn or shar­ing Twit­pics of Quinn to thou­sands of followers.

Or maybe, just mayyy­beee, she’s hold­ing out for the big pay­day. Just a thought. Maybe the quiet-dignity meter was recal­i­brated while I was wor­ry­ing about the Tea Party, but in my expe­ri­ence, a per­son who has it doesn’t say things like this:

That same spring, Rielle came to din­ner at my home in New York. The Edward­ses had just announced that Elizabeth’s can­cer was back and was incur­able, engen­der­ing a national out­pour­ing of sup­port. That didn’t stop Rielle from explain­ing to the group at din­ner, which included jour­nal­ists from other national pub­li­ca­tions, that Eliz­a­beth had got­ten can­cer because she was filled with “bad energy.”

OK, then. Back to the sweat­shop! Copy due in two hours!

My friend Michael called mid-week to won­der if I’d be free for some cross-country ski­ing Sun­day. Sure. The tem­per­a­ture rose to 38 that day, and con­tin­ued balmy through yes­ter­day, so we melted down to a walk through Elm­wood Ceme­tery. It’s the old­est in the city. We were on the look­out for the titans — Cole­man Young, Rus­sell Alger, Sonic Smith. We found only Alger, but it was a lovely day and we weren’t really look­ing that hard. We did see the liquor king:

And the beer king:

There’s a group site for firefighters:

I didn’t know fire­men would seek com­mon bur­ial, but I sup­pose these were the men with­out fam­i­lies, or maybe the ones who thought no one could under­stand them like the guys. The emblem was a mys­tery to me, but Michael’s dad was a fire­fighter. He said they’re bugles, which were the “get out of the way” alarm, blown by the crews in the days before sirens. Learn some­thing new every day.

I’ll come back on my bike in the spring. This is a place to spend a morning.

The balmi­ness ended today:

Who wants to go skiing?

OK, then. Speak­ing of ski­ing, I gather there was a hockey game last night, which “we” won, and as a result I am sup­posed to be exul­tant. Reader, I am not. I am weary­ing of the every-other-year we-fest that is the Olympic games. Excuse me: the (ket­tle drums go bum–bum–bum–bum; cue trum­pets DAAAH DAAAH DA DA DA DA DA, etc.) games of the 23rd Olympiad, or what­ever. I want some grumpier color com­men­ta­tors; I am sick of being told how proud I am of “Team USA.” I want some­one to ask, “Why do the snow­board­ers look like they put on all the clothes in the ham­per? Snow­cross? What’s next? Demo­li­tion derby?” This event always seems to go on four days too long. I know it’s com­ing when the voice of Mor­gan Free­man makes me want to throw things.

On the other hand, what else is there to do? It’s Feb­ru­ary. Any­way, Alessan­dra Stan­ley looks at the jin­go­ism angle today:

Even the calm, pro­fes­sional Bob Costas, who is the great excep­tion to the NBC rule of smarmi­ness, felt he had to explain him­self on Sat­ur­day night for enthus­ing about the unex­pected vic­tory — and infec­tious joy — of Mark Tuitert, a 29-year-old Dutch speed skater who sur­prised every­one, includ­ing him­self, by beat­ing the Amer­i­can Shani Davis in the 1,500-meter race.

“And this is to take noth­ing away from the inter­est in the States about Shani Davis and Chad Hedrick,” Mr. Costas said apolo­get­i­cally, “but what this means in the Nether­lands, I mean, this is their national pas­time, this is so huge there.” As Mr. Costas spoke about the new Dutch hero, the screen behind him car­ried a huge por­trait of Mr. Davis, who took the sil­ver medal.

Well, exactly.

Bloomberg fol­lows Rachel Mad­dow on the great under­re­ported story: Repub­li­cans who thun­dered against the stim­u­lus who now say, dude, where’s my stim­u­lus? (Qui­etly.)

And with that, I’m away. Mon­day waits for no one, even with five inches of snow in the forecast.

Johnny Weir, his Wikipedia bio (locked to fur­ther edit­ing until “dis­putes are resolved,” hmm) tells us he is a Rus­sophile who taught him­self to speak and read Russ­ian. Well, that explains a lot — why his name is writ­ten on his skates in Cyril­lic let­ters, why he speaks to his Russ­ian coach in Russ­ian, why his signs of the cross just before per­form­ing have a cer­tain Ortho­dox fla­vor to them, per­haps even why, when he looks at the ceil­ing and gives thanks for not turn­ing his triple Axel into a spin­ning but­tfall*, you can clearly read his lips say­ing, “спасибо” — “spa­sibo” for those of you who don’t have the Cyril­lic key­board set installed, or, in ‘mer­i­can, “thanks.”

* “spin­ning buttfall” — phrase attrib­uted to Dave Barry

I love Johnny Weir. I love how peo­ple want to ask him if he’s gay. Why do you even need to ask? Isn’t it obvi­ous? Although it’s true, in a world where gay peo­ple have joined the main­stream and a fair num­ber of them look, speak and act just like us, that some are still unnerved by how unlike-us he is. You’re not one of them Ander­son Cooper-type queers, are you, you can sense them ask­ing. Well, hell no. He’s fierce! He’s fab­u­lous! When I look at him, I think of the line from “Lit­tle Big Man,” after Dustin Hoff­man has returned to the Indian tribe of his boy­hood and re-met Lit­tle Horse, his very sen­si­tive chum with the great feath­ers: He had become a “hee­ma­nee” for which there ain’t no Eng­lish word. Johnny Weir is a hee­ma­nee; there is no Eng­lish word.

Any­way, I thought he got robbed. I was really pulling for him, and I thought he put on a fine show, and yes, I speak as one of those every-four-years skat­ing fans, which is to say, I can’t tell a triple Axel from a triple toe loop, although I think I finally know a triple Lutz when I see one — the knee sticks out. Both the Lutz and the Axel are named for the skaters who first did them. And that’s about what I know. But that’s OK, because Scott Hamil­ton and Dick But­ton are both excel­lent color com­men­ta­tors. I encour­age you to read this story on But­ton, the tran­script of an NPR story that aired a cou­ple days ago. Button’s opin­ion on Weir is one I can respect (the fierce cos­tumes and “con­ser­v­a­tive” skat­ing are like “two feet going off in oppo­site direc­tions,” and hence the low scores).

When But­ton leaves us, I hope Weir gets that job. We need a heemanee’s take on the figs.

OK, then. I’m writ­ing about fig­ure skat­ing to avoid writ­ing about Angry Joe Stack, the kamikaze pilot. The ques­tion now seems to be whether the attack was or wasn’t ter­ror­ism. Hmm. I’m going to stake my posi­tion out thusly: It depends. The attack is roughly par­al­lel to what Tim McVeigh did in OKC, with one major dif­fer­ence — I don’t think Stack iden­ti­fied him­self as part of a move­ment, although lord knows there are many more out there exactly like him. McVeigh’s attack wasn’t a sui­cide bomb­ing because he hoped to do it again. He thought he had com­padres out there who would join him in his helter-skelter home­made rev­o­lu­tion. (He did and he didn’t, and I rec­om­mend “Amer­i­can Ter­ror­ist,” out of print but still widely avail­able from used book­stores and pre­sum­ably your pub­lic library, as the best sin­gle book on the sub­ject. No flashy the­o­ries, no big-journo show­boat­ing, just dense with facts by two plod­ding, dili­gent reporters.)

A lot depends on how those oth­ers react to this, and we’ve seen from past events that fre­quently one crazy ass­hole with a big idea gives a lot of other crazy ass­holes the strength to carry out their own big ideas. I know this sounds mud­dled, but all I can say is, like pornog­ra­phy, I know ter­ror­ism when I see it, and while I see some of it here, it doesn’t appear to be clear-cut. It will likely lead to more secu­rity in gov­ern­ment build­ings, how­ever, which are already secured to the point of a Detroit liquor store. Expect pay­ing a call on the Social Secu­rity or IRS or even the post office to become even more of a pain in the ass.

This is maybe more of a ques­tion for Pilot Joe, but I won­der what sort of atten­tion gen­eral avi­a­tion gets from law enforce­ment these days. I won­der what’s stop­ping the Black Sun­day sce­nario. It would appear the answer is: Not much.

With that, I’m sure I’ve irri­tated enough of you that it’s time to make an exit. Still much to do today. Much to do over the week­end. Much to do, period.

Yay, Mitch Albom is report­ing from Haiti.

Will there be stu­pid one-sentence paragraphs?

Do you even need to ask?

Who will be in the photos?

Could it be Mitch Himself?

Again: Grow up.

Actu­ally, in mel­low moments, a state of mind I strive to reach more fre­quently, I won­der if Mitch is the world’s hap­pi­est man these days. I won­der if, as so often hap­pens in life and three-act screen­plays, whether the brass ring he was chas­ing hasn’t revealed itself to be cheap paint cov­er­ing zinc and not that shiny at all. I had a drink not long ago with some­one who admired Albom’s early work in Detroit, and says he really was a dif­fer­ent guy, once upon a time. He had wit and style and — this is key — enough of a bad-ass inside him to occa­sion­ally be naughty. Then he saw the oppor­tu­nity to cash in by warm­ing hearts. There’s always a buck to be made in the heart-warming trade. Ask the peo­ple who make greet­ing cards and much of the adver­tis­ing inflicted upon us dur­ing events like the Olympics. In Mitch’s case he made many, many bucks, and now look what’s become of him.

If I went to Haiti, I’d hire the rough­est, tough­est fixer I could find and ask to be taken on the Full Car­nage Tour. I’d want to see voodoo cer­e­monies and makeshift hos­pi­tals and squat­ters liv­ing in rub­ble piles. Mitch has to go to the Car­ing and Shar­ing Mis­sion, where he will write about the Noble Poor, Who Are Down But Not Out, Because They Have Love. Just a scan of the sub­heads makes your teeth hurt:

“See­ing the mirac­u­lous,” “Feel­ing joy and pain,” Doing what we must” — has a story ever announced itself to be more joy­less? Could there be a sin­gle thing in there you feel you haven’t read before? Haiti is poor. Haiti is tragic. Haiti is our respon­si­bil­ity. Haiti is yet another oppor­tu­nity for Mitch to warm your heart and tell you again what you already knew — it’s bad, but oth­ers are on the case, fight­ing the good fight, and yes, you can write them a check — while simul­ta­ne­ously throw­ing in lit­tle details of what a good guy he is:

It does not take long to set­tle in here. I put down my bag, blow up an air mat­tress and place it on the floor of the pastor’s quar­ters. That’s it.

Mil­lion­aire Mitch sleeps on the floor. That’s how poor Haiti is.

I won­der if, late at night in his counting-house, sur­rounded by his trea­sure chests full of gold or bales of cash or in his cash­mere under­wear per­son­ally woven by his invest­ment advi­sor, if he ever looks out the win­dow at the moon­light on the snow and thinks, This job used to be more fun. When your whole life is one long Good Deed, when you walk into every pub­lic event with that half-smile of smug self-effacement (yes, it exists), when you sit behind a micro­phone and say things like, “No, no the real heroes are the peo­ple who do this work every sin­gle day. I’m just the guy who tells the rest of you about them” — is there ever a small voice inside that says, You are so, so full of shit. Go ahead, tell them that, Mr. Modesty.

No, I didn’t think so, either.

Here’s my heart of hearts speak­ing: When I learned War­ren Zevon was a friend of this man, my opin­ion of War­ren fell by 37 per­cent. That’s say­ing something.

Oh, well. There are still hon­est writ­ers in the world. Roger Ebert responds to the Esquire piece. Says he’s not really dying all that fast, and that his cho­les­terol is excel­lent. Which is sort of funny, when you think of it. Ebert gets the Tom Sawyer expe­ri­ence of attend­ing his own funeral and hear­ing what all his friends have to say about him. What a lucky guy.

The man who made his bones wear­ing a stu­pid bow tie, name-dropping philoso­phers and mak­ing a who-farted expres­sion on a thou­sand Sunday-morning news-chat shows says loathing for Sarah Palin is born of “snob­bery.” Now that’s bein’ ballsy, George Will!

Back to the man­gle for me, folks.

The hol­i­day bol­lixed up my Mon­day chores and I have to slice one item from the list. Folks? It’s you. Sorta. I leave you with this long, long, long NYT exam­i­na­tion of the Tea Party move­ment, which you may dis­cuss, if you like. I’m not entirely sold on it; there are too many pas­sages like this, that mean­der on and on, mak­ing some pretty sweep­ing asser­tions with­out any actual human beings offered as proof:

They are fre­quently led by polit­i­cal neo­phytes who prize inde­pen­dence and tell strik­ingly sim­i­lar sto­ries of hav­ing been awak­ened by the reces­sion. Their fam­i­lies upended by lost jobs, fore­closed homes and depleted retire­ment funds, they said they wanted to know why it hap­pened and whom to blame.

That is often the point when Tea Party sup­port­ers say they began lis­ten­ing to Glenn Beck. With his guid­ance, they explored the Fed­er­al­ist Papers, exposés on the Fed­eral Reserve, the work of Ayn Rand and George Orwell. Some went to con­sti­tu­tional sem­i­nars. Online, they dis­cov­ered rad­i­cal cri­tiques of Wash­ing­ton on Web sites like Resist​Net​.com (“Home of the Patri­otic Resis­tance”) and Infowars​.com (“Because there is a war on for your mind.”).

Many describe emerg­ing from their research as if reborn to a new real­ity. Some have gone so far as to stock up on ammu­ni­tion, gold and sur­vival food in antic­i­pa­tion of the worst. For oth­ers, though, trans­for­ma­tion seems to amount to try­ing on a new ide­o­log­i­cal out­fit — embrac­ing the rhetoric and buy­ing the books.

But it gen­er­ally tracks with what I’ve observed anec­do­tally, and it under­lines a fear I’ve had for a while, i.e., that some­one from this gang is going to make an attempt on the president’s life:

…in Indi­ana, Richard Behney, a Repub­li­can Sen­ate can­di­date, told Tea Party sup­port­ers what he would do if the 2010 elec­tions did not pro­duce results to his lik­ing: “I’m clean­ing my guns and get­ting ready for the big show. And I’m seri­ous about that, and I bet you are, too.”

Here’s where Richard Behney stands, by the way. He hasn’t a chance of being elected to any­thing, but funny how his story — jus’ a plumber/entrepreneur who enjoyed sit­tin’ on the back of his truck at the end of the day, talkin’ about life — is pretty much a word-for-word match to the typ­i­cal teabag­ger pro­filed in the Times piece.

This part tick­led me:

(Ron) Paul led Mrs. South­well to Patriot ide­ol­ogy, which holds that gov­ern­ments and economies are con­trolled by net­works of elites who wield power through exclu­sive enti­ties like the Bilder­berg Group, the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion and the Coun­cil on For­eign Relations.

These folks used to call my radio show, many years ago. They’re Jew-haters to the last man. Maybe Joseph Sobran has a future in jour­nal­ism after all.

OK, now I must away. Tomor­row should be bet­ter. Alan’s off this week, and we’re think­ing of going to Wind­sor for dim sum, like the effete yup­pies we are. Is dim sum worth trav­el­ing for?