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.