The jour­nal­ism world, such as it is these days, is dis­cussing Randy Michaels’ no-no list. The for­mer radio wreck­ing ball, now the CEO — I get dizzy just think­ing about it — of the Tri­bune Co. issued a list of 119 words and phrases that must never, ever be heard again on the company’s news-talk sta­tion, WGN.

This story is being spun as a mon­u­men­tal case of micro­man­age­ment. It is. How­ever, it is noth­ing new. Every media out­let in the world has a boss who hands down these edicts; it’s one of the perks of the top job — cre­at­ing a world unto your­self in which no one ever, ever uses the word butt. The only thing that makes this case dif­fer­ent is the fact it’s the CEO doing it. In most com­pa­nies, espe­cially one like the Tri­bune Co., inevitably referred to as “trou­bled,” the CEO is — should be — the big-picture guy stand­ing on the bridge look­ing at the seas ahead, scan­ning for ice­bergs, not going below to instruct the coal-shovelers on the proper angle to wear their sailor caps. Not in Chicago, evi­dently. Ah, well.

Here’s the other thing: Michaels kind of has the right idea, or seems to have backed into the right idea. A big chunk of the entries on the list are the sort of trite jour­nalese that any­one with a sen­si­tive ear hates — clash with police, say, or went ter­ri­bly wrong, or one of my per­sonal pet peeves, diva. (I pre­fer the sim­pler bitch.) Look­ing at the rest of the list, though, I’m going to assume the smart part of it is sim­ply a case of a mon­key bang­ing out the first act of “Ham­let.” Remem­ber, this is Lee Abrams’ other half.

I’m going to fur­ther assume that many of these words never made it onto WGN’s air to begin with. Fatal death for instance. An intern might write that, but pre­sum­ably it wasn’t a rou­tine usage. Ditto bare naked and med­ical hos­pi­tal. I looked in vain for con­tro­ver­sial, and didn’t find it. He got famed in there, but not all its vari­a­tions; gen­er­ally, I fol­low the rule that if some­thing is famous, you don’t need to remind people.

The list also bans cer­tain words jour­nal­ists rely on to pro­tect our­selves — alleged, for one. Laypeo­ple hate that one. I think Eric Zorn tack­led it after the Flight 253 near-disaster, when a reader com­plained that we shouldn’t be call­ing Umar Farouk Abdul­mu­tal­lab the “alleged ter­ror­ist.” Zorn said yes we should, because that’s what we do — it’s not the news media’s job to decide when you’re guilty, but a court of law’s. If you don’t like it, you can always move to Afghanistan. Or tune your radio to WGN.

Zorn looked at the list, and the fall­out, on his blog yes­ter­day. In his defense, Michaels and his under­ling point out there’s noth­ing wrong with striv­ing for clear writ­ing, from the CEO all the way down. Agreed. But please explain, gents: What’s your prob­lem with pedes­trian? Is there a bet­ter word for a per­son walk­ing across a street? Or offi­cials? Don’t for­get that news writ­ing evolved the way it did because those sen­tences have to carry a lot of freight. It’s eas­ier for lis­ten­ers for a broad­caster to say “city offi­cials said” rather than “street depart­ment, police and fire and parks and recre­ation super­vi­sors said.”

With that, I go behind closed doors. I seem to have turned a cor­ner, health-wise, but not work-wise. So you all enjoy Fri­day, and I’ll see you in the wake of the weekend.

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.

Nathan Gotsch, one of those young squeaky-clean Fort Wayne guys for whom the phrase “you went to Con­cor­dia, didn’t you?” was coined, is try­ing to pro­duce a TV pilot far away from the Man, man. It’s an expan­sion of his Josh Jen­nings for Con­gress spoof of 2006 — he pro­duced a cam­paign com­mer­cial for a fic­tional char­ac­ter who decided a job in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives would be way bet­ter than one at Sub­way. He got a lit­tle atten­tion, if “being men­tioned on Tucker Carlson’s show” counts as “a lit­tle atten­tion,” and I think it does.

Any­way, Nathan got some atten­tion from the Man, and after con­sid­er­ing what going the tra­di­tional route would entail, decided to blaze an indie trail. He’s put together a bud­get for a $25,000 pilot pro­duc­tion, and is try­ing to raise the dough via Kick­starter. Here’s his fundrais­ing page.

I read the script and it’s pretty funny. (Fun­nier than “Reno 911,” any­way.) If you’d like to help Nathan, go to his Kick­starter page, watch the video, mar­vel at how much he resem­bles the absolute essence of a Con­cor­dia grad­u­ate, and, if you’re so inclined, kick him a few bucks. He has a week to raise about $15K. Goad to my fel­low Hoosiers, past and present — although the pilot script never explic­itly says so, the story’s set in Fort Wayne, and I can assume this would come up in sub­se­quent episodes. How­ever, if it gets picked up, I think we can expect to see Nathan’s crew in Michi­gan for exte­ri­ors shoot­ing, because we have the fat tax incen­tives. (For now.) So win-win all around for my Mid­west playas.

No pres­sure, just a chance to use a Web 2.0 idea for good, for a change. (You know how Kick­starter works, right? Nathan only gets the money if he reaches his goal. If not, you’re not billed. That way you aren’t giv­ing him cash to drink away his sor­rows because he didn’t get enough to make his pilot.)

Given the bum­mer tone of recent days, let’s make this Twin­kle Thurs­day, and strive for opti­mism in all things. It’s what Josh would do.

While this isn’t exactly a happy-news sort of thing, I’m call­ing it out because it makes me feel opti­mistic about the future — of jour­nal­ism, any­way. One of our read­ers, Kim, left it low in the com­ments of yesterday’s post, but let’s drag it out into the light of day:

Bob (not Greene) and all the other journos out there who have been accused of mak­ing it up: Here’s the story we used from a stu­dent jour­nal­ist who was at the bor­ing press con­fer­ence but pay­ing close atten­tion (and record­ing it) because she didn’t want to get it wrong. Note the link to actu­ally lis­ten to the state del­e­gate say­ing the words he now says were “poorly cho­sen” and mis­in­ter­preted. As you might expect, there’s been a fecal avalanche as a result. Rachel M., Huff­Post, Sally Quinn — everybody’s weigh­ing in. There’s a move­ment to skewer the stu­dent reporter because she is a stu­dent and because much larger, “actual” papers were present and totally missed it. Why’d they miss it? My guess is they were just mak­ing the dough­nuts, going to a con­ser­v­a­tive legislator’s press con­fer­ence about de-funding Planned Par­ent­hood and fil­ing that Sat­ur­day feed-the-beast story. Sim­i­lar to the rea­son a local del­e­gate who was present as a sup­porter of de-funding PP did not hear it — she admit­ted to not pay­ing atten­tion because she was talk­ing to another del­e­gate. Quite a les­son for the stu­dent. I’d say for pub­lic offi­cials every­where, too, but that would make me seem much younger than I am.

The story, if you’re not inclined to click through, quotes a state delegate’s inter­est­ing opin­ion about why there are so many dis­abled chil­dren in the world:

“The num­ber of chil­dren who are born sub­se­quent to a first abor­tion with hand­i­caps has increased dra­mat­i­cally. Why? Because when you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the sub­se­quent chil­dren,” said Mar­shall, a Republican.

That’s pretty clear, isn’t it? Mar­shall, well, he now says he didn’t exactly say that:

“No one who knows me or my record would imag­ine that I believe or intended to com­mu­ni­cate such an offen­sive notion. I have devoted a gen­er­a­tion of work to defend­ing dis­abled and unwanted chil­dren, and have always main­tained that they are spe­cial bless­ings to their parents.”

In other words: Shit. And you were record­ing? Dou­ble shit.

I love it when Roger damns with faint praise. In this case, review­ing “The Crazies.”

“The Cra­zies” is a per­fectly com­pe­tent genre film in a genre that has exhausted its inter­est for me, the Zom­bie Film. It pro­vides such a con­ve­nient sto­ry­telling device: Large num­bers of mind­less zom­bies lurch toward the cam­era as the hero wreaks sav­age destruc­tion; they can be quickly blown away, although not with­out risk and occa­sional loss of life. When suf­fi­cient zom­bies have been run through, it’s time for a new dawn.

“The Cra­zies” stars NN.C crush object Tim­o­thy Olyphant and Radha Mitchell, two actors who class up the joint, although I watched the trailer and it uses the old “no sig­nal” cell-phone trope. As they say in that other zom­bie movie: One more for the bon­fire. (That link doesn’t go to an imdB page, by the way, but to a great “no sig­nal” mon­tage, via John August, which he cred­its to Four­Four. Has all due credit been passed around? I hope so.)

It’s 9:47, which means my Flex Appeal class starts in 13 min­utes and I must away. The sun is up, the sky is blue, it’s beau­ti­ful, and so are you, dear read­ers. So I’m going out to play.

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!

Since we’ve all decided this reces­sion, the Great Reces­sion, will leave a wide and deep foot­print in our national soul, jour­nal­ists have begun sketch­ing it out. Yes­ter­day on “Talk of the Nation” they were dis­cussing this story in the Atlantic, which I haven’t read and don’t intend to, because it’s Feb­ru­ary and I’m cop­ing with my usual win­ter sub­clin­i­cal grumps, and who needs more?

This one, from Sunday’s NYT, sort of snuck up on me, hid­ing as it was in the Styles sec­tion; I thought Sun­day Styles was the place you went to avoid read­ing about strife and mis­ery, but maybe this doesn’t count, although it does to me:

In 18 months, Ms. Lentini went from edit­ing one daily newslet­ter to still edit­ing that one, as well as the 10 week­lies that gen­er­ated new ad rev­enue at no extra cost to her com­pany. Of course, there was a cost: her free time. “It’s, ‘How many plates can I keep going?’ ” she said. “You’re giddy with hysteria.”

She now starts at 7:30 a.m. instead of 9, and works Sat­ur­day and Sun­day morn­ings. The night of the Super Bowl, she fin­ished at 11. When she was first hired, she had money to pay some­one to fill in dur­ing her two vaca­tion weeks. That ended with the reces­sion, so now she dou­bles her work­load the week before vaca­tion. Hol­i­days? “I work most hol­i­days,” she said.

Even while dri­ving one of her daugh­ters to an after-school job as a hair salon recep­tion­ist, Ms. Lentini works. “Brid­get holds the lap­top,” she said. “She’ll say, ‘Mom, you got an I.M. from the photo edi­tor.’ She’ll read it to me, I’ll say, ‘Just put ‘O.K.,’ and write ‘tx’ for thanks. So I can work and drive.”

The story was about the new way we do more with less, and then some more, and some more on top of that, and won­dered what might hap­pen when the reces­sion ends, if it ever really does — will we still work this way? My own expe­ri­ence says yes, of course we will; that’s cer­tainly the way it was in news­pa­pers dur­ing our long slide, which pre­saged the gen­eral eco­nomic col­lapse. I used to liken it to starv­ing to fit into a two-sizes-smaller dress by prom night or your wed­ding day or what­ever. Diet-diet-diet-celery-water-diet, keep pulling every­thing in and then comes weigh-in day (quar­terly num­bers) and whew, you just made it to your goal! Yahoo! [Pause.] Now lose 10 more pounds.

I won­der because I heard from an edi­tor yes­ter­day, point­ing out sev­eral sloppy goofs in a story I’d han­dled, and not only was he right, I knew why I made the mis­takes: Because I’d edited that story at 1:30 a.m., after a seven-hour shift on my other job. I was still work­ing because I knew I’d have trou­ble sleep­ing that night (even though I was exhausted). Why? Because I’m stressed out at how much I have to do. It’s a loop.

I’m not com­plain­ing. I’m just won­der­ing. I won­der why we tell our friends story after story about work, its mis­eries and occa­sional joys, and yet, so few of our enter­tain­ments are about work. (Except for the usual venues — police sta­tions, hos­pi­tals and foren­sics units.) The answer is obvi­ous, I guess: Why pay for a novel or movie about some­thing I live every day? A few years I noticed some­thing: How often the peo­ple I met in the pages of a book were inde­pen­dently wealthy, either through fam­ily for­tunes or early-career wind­falls that left them with the means to have novel-worthy midlife crises unclut­tered by hav­ing to show up at work every day.

One of the many things to admire about “Office Space” is how well it cap­tures the exis­ten­tial mis­ery of life in a cubi­cle farm, from the chirpy recep­tion­ist to the passive-aggressive boss to the rit­ual of the office birth­day cake. You can almost taste the cheap frost­ing. My favorite sequence in “Up in the Air” is when the three main char­ac­ters sneak into another company’s Miami team-building party; there’s some­thing about the way the m.c. greets all the mem­bers of the best! sales staff! in the south­east region! that sent chills down my spine. (Not that I’ve ever been to such an event. In jour­nal­ism they just bark, “Back to your oar, 42.” The Miami sojourns for Knight-Ridder were known as Prick School.)

And yet, exis­ten­tial mis­ery is prefer­able to unem­ploy­ment, isn’t it? The new nor­mal will be no Miami at all. And no health insur­ance. The new model for free­lanc­ing is Crowd­spring, which puts a high gloss on the feed­ing frenzy. It works like this: You post a project, say­ing, “I will pay $300 for a logo for our start-up busi­ness. It should con­vey the idea of “book­ish­ness,” but be really smart and sorta techno and have blue in it. Show me what you got.” And then dozens of starv­ing design­ers (or writ­ers, if that’s the project) do the work and sub­mit it. You pick your favorite and pay your pit­tance, and every­one else goes home hun­gry. Doesn’t that sound like fun?

If you have a job, you’re grate­ful. If you have a job you like, you have rubies and dia­monds. Pause a moment to appre­ci­ate it.

The Daily Tele­graph asks a num­ber of writ­ers to list their Top 10 rules for writ­ing. Part one here, link to part two in part one. Will Self made me laugh:

Regard your­self as a small cor­po­ra­tion of one. Take your­self off on team-building exer­cises (long walks). Hold a Christ­mas party every year at which you stand in the cor­ner of your writ­ing room, shout­ing very loudly to your­self while drink­ing a bot­tle of white wine. Then mas­tur­bate under the desk. The fol­low­ing day you will feel a deep and coher­ing sense of embar­rass­ment.

Now, I must go to work. (Which I like very much. I only wish it paid bet­ter, espe­cially when there’s eight inches of snow atop my aging roof.)

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.

From the num­ber of times this story turned up in my Face­book feed yes­ter­day I have to assume everyone’s seen it by now, but not all of you stay online all day, so what the hell. It’s about Roger Ebert, and what his life is like now that he’s lost the abil­ity to speak, eat and drink. (He lost his jaw to can­cer four years ago, and recon­struc­tive surgery has been one fail­ure after another.)

Ebert posed for a pic­ture; with his imper­fectly fixed face, that requires no small amount of courage in and of itself. I’m glad he did, not just because it’s bet­ter to show one’s bro­ken face than to hide it, but because even a face that’s half-gone can still show the man within. Look at the eyes, squinched a lit­tle in what looks like mer­ri­ment, although you can’t say for sure at first glance — the mouth has been shaped by sur­geons into a sim­u­lacrum of a smile, and maybe that’s what leads your impres­sion. But once you read the story, you know: This is a man who smiles, who still smiles, who in fact seems to be smil­ing much of the time. He’s angered not by the fate of his phys­i­cal body, but by the same things he was angered by before, that anger us all — petty bull­shit, money-grubbing, spotty inter­net service.

There is no need to pity me, he writes on a scrap of paper one after­noon after some­one part­ing looks at him a lit­tle sadly. Look how happy I am.

I came late to my appre­ci­a­tion of Ebert. I was a Siskel par­ti­san, once upon a time. Siskel was like me — snooty, irri­ta­ble, a fan of Art. Ebert, the tabloid critic, was more of the hoi pol­loi, giv­ing three and a half stars to action movies, space epics and other crap. It was a while before I real­ized he was as dif­fi­cult to please as any dis­cern­ing arbiter, but he knew enough about movies and why peo­ple see them to judge them as indi­vid­u­als. “Con Air” is not “Cit­i­zen Kane,” but he didn’t see any rea­son to rub anyone’s nose in it if they pre­ferred action to Orson Welles. Mostly, I was in awe of his pro­duc­tiv­ity. It’s pretty com­mon — or was — for large news­pa­pers to have an A critic and a B critic, the lat­ter of whom was some­times a free­lancer. The A critic does the big-movie reviews and most of the related sto­ries, roundups and the like, while the B critic sweeps up behind him or her, or just light­ens the load. It’s not unusual for half a dozen movies to open on a sum­mer week­end, rang­ing from block­busters to art-house fare, and that’s a lot of stuff to see, con­sider and review in a week. Five years ago, I changed planes in Chicago on a Fri­day and picked up a Sun-Times. Ebert had bylines on six reviews, and I believe they cov­ered that range of ambi­tion. His take on the barrel-bottom straight-to-video entry was as con­sid­ered, and as respect­ful, as his thoughts on the $200 mil­lion tent­pole play­ing in all the multiplexes.

Respect­ful doesn’t mean boot-licking, by the way. Like my old screen­writ­ing teacher Terry, who was also a critic, he walks into every film expect­ing to enjoy him­self. (That’s what the audi­ence does, after all; why would you pay eight bucks to be pun­ished?) To the extent that the film ful­fills or dis­ap­points that expec­ta­tion is what he bases his reviews on. It seems like a small thing. It isn’t. You might think you’re a movie fan, but imag­ine what it would be like to be required to see every­thing, and then write about it after­ward, to have to form an opin­ion, sup­port the opin­ion, and then present it to a gen­eral audi­ence in a more styl­ish way than merely say­ing whether it was awe­some or sucked.

Now imag­ine doing it for 40 years or so, never los­ing your enthu­si­asm, and in fact adding to your work­load with extra assign­ments like his Great Movies series (which began as a Sun­day col­umn, swapped off every other week with the music critic, who wrote about the Great Albums), and the TV show, and the teach­ing gigs, and the film-festival work, and all the rest of it.

Now add can­cer and facial muti­la­tion, the lit­eral loss of your voice. Tell me how you feel about it then.

The fact Ebert is still at work in any capac­ity, much less at full speed, is noth­ing short of a mir­a­cle. His last extended leave, when he nearly died, he missed months of movies. When he came back, he resumed his old blis­ter­ing pace, and then watched the movies he’d missed, a few at a time, writ­ing reviews of them, so that the record would be com­plete. I think he knows what his opin­ion means to the moviego­ing pub­lic. I don’t see a lot of movies in the­aters, but I try to catch up with the bigs even­tu­ally, and I never feel like I’ve watched it all the way until I’ve opened the lap­top after­ward to see what Roger thought of it.

Lord knows he’s not per­fect. I dis­agree with him on many films, and his fond­ness for Spike Lee will always come between us. But in every other way — exper­tise, atti­tude, prac­tice — he is noth­ing short of a hero.

Ebert is dying in incre­ments, and he is aware of it.

I know it is com­ing, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is noth­ing on the other side of death to fear, he writes in a jour­nal entry titled “Go Gen­tly into That Good Night.” I hope to be spared as much pain as pos­si­ble on the approach path. I was per­fectly con­tent before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. What I am grate­ful for is the gift of intel­li­gence, and for life, love, won­der, and laugh­ter. You can’t say it wasn’t inter­est­ing. My lifetime’s mem­o­ries are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eter­nity no more than that lit­tle sou­venir of the Eif­fel Tower I brought home from Paris.

Years ago, I was watch­ing the cul­tural ker­fuf­fle over “The Pas­sion of the Christ,” prob­a­bly on Amy Welborn’s blog, because that was the sort of thing she wrote about a lot, back then. Ebert gave the film four stars, but the review is hardly wor­ship­ful, and he states out­right that “it is the most vio­lent movie I have ever seen.” I men­tioned this review some­where in her com­ments sec­tions, and some­one else retorted, Roger Ebert is an old man and he’s dying. His opin­ion no longer mat­ters, or words to that effect. This was before his ill­ness had taken its most seri­ous tolls (he’s fought it for years), but I was amazed by not only the cru­elty of that remark, but its utter igno­rance. Roger Ebert’s opin­ion not only still mat­ters, it will mat­ter for a long time after he’s gone. If that isn’t the best epi­taph a writer can hope for, I don’t know what is.

For a place where ideas are sup­posed to be exchanged in a lively man­ner, most news­pa­per edi­to­r­ial pages are, well, not.

The one in Colum­bus, when I was there, was the last stop before retire­ment, the place for loyal but lame geld­ings to put their whiten­ing muz­zles to the lush grass for the last cou­ple of years, and be asked to do no work more dif­fi­cult than car­ry­ing the chil­dren around the pas­ture, and have I mixed enough metaphors? (I’m told it has since improved. Con­sid­er­ably.) One of the young news­room guns used to pub­lish an equal parts scathing-and-fun inter­nal cri­tique of the paper, and did a hilar­i­ous take­down of Dis­patch edi­to­ri­als. At least twice a month the page could be reli­ably counted on to take note of an approach­ing hol­i­day, wel­come it, and hope it her­alded good things. I remem­ber one such head­line: Bean Can Day Awaited. Read­ers, do you know that “bean can day,” in quotes, does not turn up a sin­gle result in all of Google­dom? Could that aging scribe have been hav­ing his own joke, turn­ing in an edi­to­r­ial for a hol­i­day entirely born of his imag­i­na­tion, wait­ing to see if it would run? I think so. He was like the National Lampoon’s Pent­house par­ody, where the copy around the cen­ter­fold, month after month, was the text of the writer’s res­ig­na­tion let­ter, never accepted because it was never read.

My friend Leo does his best with what he has to work with in Fort Wayne, and that’s not bloody much, but even in the high-cotton days, I won­dered about the paper’s pecu­liar attach­ment to cer­tain writ­ers, both local and syn­di­cated. I think we had to have been among the last papers still run­ning the vile Joseph Sobran, years after William F. Buck­ley him­self had cashiered the anti-semitic bas­tard from the National Review. (Here’s a recent effort, “Sodomy, Abor­tion and the Forces of Hate,” in which he refers to our “mulatto president” — still swingin’!) And then there was the uniquely awful Thomas Sowell.

I don’t think this take­down of his lat­est book can be improved upon, so I’ll just link, quote a pas­sage or two, and encour­age the rest of you wal­low in it the way I did:

Even jere­mi­ads should have their joys; there is some­thing so won­der­ful about being a writer and a critic that deliv­er­ing even bad news can be a source of unbear­able plea­sure. But Sow­ell takes no joy in any­thing he has to say: his tone is as dour and depress­ing as his con­clu­sions. I under­stand that the man is a con­ser­v­a­tive, but can’t he crack a smile? Sow­ell is such a plod­der that even sar­casm, conservatism’s reli­able and some­times amus­ing old ally, is beyond his reach.

This busi­ness of dreary writ­ing escapes me. True, writ­ing can be a tor­ment. But then there is the pay­off: the unex­pected insight, the sly pun, the impli­ca­tion left dan­gling for the reader to run with. Did Sowell’s research assis­tants, one of whom has worked for him for two decades, ever hear him shout with joy? Did he ever run into a colleague’s office burst­ing with enthu­si­asm about a bril­liant sen­tence that made a whole chap­ter hang together? I can­not believe it. There is no grandeur in Sowell’s words, no sign of human cre­ativ­ity, no dream or fan­tasy of immor­tal­ity. Sow­ell writes as if called to grim duty.

It’s that good all the way through. I love a piece like this that sin­gles out some­thing you hadn’t thought of but, once it’s pointed out to you, hits you like a sledge­ham­mer. In focus­ing on Sowell’s unique joy­less­ness, he puts his fin­ger on what’s wrong with so many news­pa­per edi­to­r­ial pages. Leo fre­quently pointed out that the death of oxy­genated edi­to­r­ial pages tracked with the rise of the one-newspaper town, that the monop­oly on print adver­tis­ing led to the cur­rent model of point-counterpoint, on one hand/on the other hand, and what does the future hold? Only time will tell. What­ever. That doesn’t explain how Sow­ell found such a com­fort­able home on his page, but Sow­ell cer­tainly towed toed the ide­o­log­i­cal line, if also being as bor­ing as dry toast.

Joy­less — that’s exactly the word for it. Else­where in that story I learned with amaze­ment that Sow­ell has pub­lished 46 books. Forty-six! As Wolfe notes:

I con­fess to not hav­ing read them all. But I have read enough of them to know that Sow­ell is not one for chang­ing his mind. Although he claims to have been a Marx­ist in his youth, his pub­lished writ­ings never vary: the same themes — the mar­ket works, affir­ma­tive action does not work, Marx­ism is wrong, and, yes, intel­lec­tu­als are never to be trusted — dom­i­nate from start to finish.

I’ll say. Ironic that Sow­ell writes like a mir­ror image of a good Marx­ist appa­ratchik in Stalin’s Soviet Union, ain’a?

While we’re on the sub­ject of writ­ers, two rec­om­men­da­tions before I leave:

This NYT piece on the dis­cov­ery of a major influ­ence on William Faulker — a diary kept by a plan­ta­tion owner who was an ances­tor of a child­hood friend — is full of great details, not the least of which is its descrip­tion of the diary itself:

The cli­mac­tic moment in William Faulkner’s 1942 novel “Go Down, Moses” comes when Isaac McCaslin finally decides to open his grandfather’s leather farm ledgers with their “scarred and cracked backs” and “yel­lowed pages scrawled in fad­ing ink” — proof of his family’s slave-owning past. Now, what appears to be the doc­u­ment on which Faulkner mod­eled that ledger as well as the source for myr­iad names, inci­dents and details that pop­u­late his fic­tion­al­ized Yok­na­p­ataw­pha County has been discovered.

The orig­i­nal man­u­script, a diary from the mid-1800s, was writ­ten by Fran­cis Terry Leak, a wealthy plan­ta­tion owner in Mis­sis­sippi whose great-grandson Edgar Wig­gin Fran­cisco Jr. was a friend of Faulkner’s since child­hood. Mr. Francisco’s son, Edgar Wig­gin Fran­cisco III, now 79, recalls the writer’s fre­quent vis­its to the fam­ily home­stead in Holly Springs, Miss., through­out the 1930s, say­ing Faulkner was fas­ci­nated with the diary’s sev­eral vol­umes. Mr. Fran­cisco said he saw them in Faulker’s hands and remem­bers that he “was always tak­ing copi­ous notes.”

And, finally, another NYT story on another cel­e­brated author, this one 17 years old and Ger­man, who is bat­tling pla­gia­rism accu­sa­tions after her hot book of the moment was found to have lots of cut­ting and past­ing from other sources. This strikes me as a rather ballsy defense, however:

Although Ms. Hege­mann has apol­o­gized for not being more open about her sources, she has also defended her­self as the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a dif­fer­ent gen­er­a­tion, one that freely mixes and matches from the whirring flood of infor­ma­tion across new and old media, to cre­ate some­thing new. “There’s no such thing as orig­i­nal­ity any­way, just authen­tic­ity,” said Ms. Hege­mann in a state­ment released by her pub­lisher after the scan­dal broke.

In other words, the sampler’s excuse, i.e., I took that pre­vi­ous thing, yes, but I made it my own. Feh. Peo­ple who say there’s no such thing as orig­i­nal­ity are, what’s the word? Uno­rig­i­nal.

Finally, a good ChiTrib piece on the death of a les­bian bar. A lit­tle melan­choly, but not — the story points out that as the gay com­mu­nity is wel­comed into the main­stream, it has less use for bars as com­mu­nity cen­ters. Any­thing that gets peo­ple out of the smoky air and into the light can’t be all bad.

OK, I’ve prat­tled on too long and I have much work to do. Enjoy the weekend.

I think I just shot my writ­ing time fir­ing off a thousand-word memo to the stu­dents staffing Grosse​Pointe​To​day​.com. It started off as a gen­eral guide to cov­er­ing small city coun­cils, and, as usual, became some­thing else. When some­thing starts with “be on time” and ends with a lit­tle story about how I over­came my fear of the New York City sub­way sys­tem, I know I’ve lost the thread. Ah, well. Some­day, kids, I’ll be famous, and that memo will be worth some­thing. If I can stop writ­ing memos long enough to get any­thing else done, that is.

I’ve got about a mil­lion things on my mind at the moment, so let’s fall back on that time-tested trick of lazy colum­nists every­where — the three-dotter. I called it Items in Search of a Col­umn when I was doing that sort of thing, but I’m repu­di­at­ing all ties with my for­mer employer, hav­ing learned yes­ter­day that they laid off the last remain­ing full-time staff pho­tog­ra­pher, along with two other peo­ple, late last week. (What’s more, they called the guy in from his vaca­tion to fire him.) A news­pa­per with­out pho­tog­ra­phers, yes. Reporters now carry point-and-shoot cam­eras and take their own pic­tures, the stan­dard bush-league model. When I joined that out­fit, it was a year off of win­ning a Pulitzer Prize and, need­less to say, writ­ers wrote and pho­tog­ra­phers pho­tographed. But that was a long time ago.

I’m chang­ing my resume, any­way. New item: 1984 – 2004: In a coma. It would be less embarrassing.

…For the record, while I only heard it from an adja­cent room, it sounded like the Who sucked eggs at the Super Bowl. If noth­ing else, it inspired my daugh­ter to ask, “Why do only old peo­ple per­form at half­time?” Alan: “Because the last time they let young peo­ple do it, Janet Jack­son showed her boo­bie.” She did like the laser light show, but for the love of Mike, can we book some­one other than the Motown All-Stars or some other geezer out­fit for 2011? Just a thought.

…More bad news from my home­town: Casa d’Angelo on Fair­field is clos­ing its doors. “Declin­ing rev­enue,” etc. Today’s story says it’s a domino effect fol­low­ing the clos­ing of a nearby hos­pi­tal SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO, and the empha­sis should tell you what I think of that one. Well, it’s their busi­ness, they can do what they want. But it’s a loss for the neigh­bor­hood that will no doubt be cheered on by the knuckle-draggers, who have been trash­ing Fort Wayne’s south side as long as I can remem­ber. They think it’s unsafe, which struck me as ridicu­lous then and even more so now that my bad-neighborhood meter has been recal­i­brated to Detroit stan­dards. I used to despair that Hoosiers would rather buy a new house in a sub­di­vi­sion exactly like every other one than a crafts­man bun­ga­low for half the price in my neigh­bor­hood. Looks like noth­ing has changed.

…Does any­thing ever change? Some­times I wonder.

…My cheer at the Saints vic­tory, which was pre­vi­ously pred­i­cated on the sim­ple thrill of see­ing a feisty under­dog defeat their smug bet­ters, esca­lated to joy upon watch­ing this video. The fact it irks knuckle-draggers who resent the con­flat­ing of a foot­ball team with the social upheaval of Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina is just the whipped cream on my sundae.

…I hate the new Face­book, what­ever it is at the moment. Some­one asked the other day if I’d pay for Face­book. Most days, I’d pay to be forcibly dis­con­nected from it. Even as I con­tinue to use it, yes.

…Jezebel on unre­touched Madonna. Thanks, LAMary. I find these pho­tos as impos­si­ble to resist as choco­late cream pie in the refrig­er­a­tor, some­thing Madonna doubt­less hasn’t tasted in decades.

And with that, it’s into the shower with me. Sorry for the scram­bled eggs, but we have a snow­poca­lypse under way, and I need to run my errands early.

Alan and I are hav­ing one of our occa­sional squab­bles (“The Atlantic is a bet­ter ocean! The Pacific is a bet­ter ocean!”) over the lede on this story:

DETROIT — The 911 call came at 6:35 p.m. on Aug. 28 from a car that was speed­ing out of con­trol on High­way 125 near San Diego.

The caller, a male voice, was panic-stricken: “We’re in a Lexus … we’re going north on 125 and our accel­er­a­tor is stuck … we’re in trou­ble … there’s no brakes … we’re approach­ing the inter­sec­tion … hold on … hold on and pray … pray …”

The call ended with the sound of a crash.

The story is about Toyota’s sudden-acceleration prob­lem, of course. The dri­ver is described as an “off-duty Cal­i­for­nia High­way Patrol offi­cer.” We both agree that when one is in a car with an appar­ently stuck accel­er­a­tor, the first thing to do is shift into neu­tral. How­ever, I main­tain that any­one in a high­way patrol would have advanced train­ing in high-speed dri­ving and would know this in his bones, and if he didn’t do so, there must have been a rea­son — per­haps the car couldn’t be shifted into neu­tral at speed, I dunno. He main­tains I am “over­think­ing” it, and the guy just pan­icked and forgot.

And then I real­ized that this is just about the five-year anniver­sary of our move to Detroit, and we must be natives for sure now, because we are argu­ing about cars.

Every­one in that Lexus died, by the way. This just under­lines why I am bound and deter­mined that Kate learn to drive on a stick shift, and I don’t care if she burns out a clutch doing so; dri­ving a man­ual requires you to pay more atten­tion to the task at hand. And there’s another reminder: When we moved here, Kate was in sec­ond grade. This time next year, she will be months away from get­ting her learner’s license. Of course Michi­gan teens can start dri­ving under super­vi­sion at 14 years, eight months. Utter insan­ity, but that’s how an auto­mo­tive state rolls. I’m sure kids in Ken­tucky and Vir­ginia were expected to start smok­ing at 12, once upon a time, to help the state’s economy.

First of Feb­ru­ary, today. This is always around the time I notice the light is chang­ing, not so much the time the sun shines but the angle — ask a sci­en­tist why, I pre­fer the poets. The same thing hap­pens the first week in August, when, on lower-humidity days (it never quite gets “low” here), the sun seems dis­tinctly autum­nal. As any ground­hog will tell you, there’s a lot more win­ter ahead of us, but today, you can see the high-water mark. And it’s dry.

Both bits of blog­gage are old, but not every­one has time to read the inter­net every day. So here goes:

A Texas politi­cian declines to seek news­pa­per endorse­ment, and the news­pa­per calls this a “major rebuke.” Ha. Endorse­ments are one of those holdovers from not just an ear­lier time, but a way-way ear­lier time, and flat-out refuse to die. The best guessti­mates I’ve seen is that in a hotly con­tentious pres­i­den­tial elec­tion year, all the news­pa­per endorse­ments in the coun­try might have an influ­ence over 10,000 votes, tops, and that’s being gen­er­ous. Locally, who knows, but the fact that can­di­dates work so hard to get them, and make such a fuss when they do or don’t, always struck me as sort of pathetic.

Endorse­ments are based on editorial-board inter­views with can­di­dates, fol­lowed by a dis­cus­sion. The pub­lisher usu­ally wins, and the pub­lisher is usu­ally either a pro-business con­ser­v­a­tive and some­times a generic center-left lib­eral. A windy, bor­ing edi­to­r­ial will be pub­lished, using the royal “we.” (I some­times won­der if that royal we isn’t why edi­to­ri­als are so bor­ing; a pre­vi­ous ed-page edi­tor of in Fort Wayne referred to the board as “the page” or “this page,” and solicited columns from “friends of the page,” which is how they were des­ig­nated: Bob Butthead, Friend of the Page. I once asked why they didn’t ask oth­ers to be Ene­mies of the Page, a far cooler col­umn head if you ask me, but as usu­ally hap­pens when you’re deal­ing with peo­ple who con­sider them­selves not an I but a We, it didn’t go over well.

Any­way, the whole editorial-page struc­ture — Hear Us, Voice of This August Insti­tu­tion — was blown out of the water by the inter­net, but many of them haven’t got­ten the news yet. And so: “Major rebuke.” Now there’s a col­umn I’d read: By Major Rebuke, Enemy of the Page.

And speak­ing of media insti­tu­tions that refuse to change, even while the foun­da­tions are washed out from under them, Char­lie Brooker on how to report news, TV-style. A YouTube link, but funny and worth your time. Wasn’t I just talk­ing about this the other day? If only I’d taken the time to make the video.

Manic Mon­day is already under­way, a day with a per­pet­u­ally stuck accel­er­a­tor. Ciao for me, and off to rounds ‘n’ Russian.