Yesterday’s highlight: I met Detroitblogger John, the genius writer behind the stories at Detroitblog and their dead-tree versions in the Metro Times. (The former publishes more pictures; the latter pays him money, so I always click both.) I’ve known his name for a while, having wheedled it out of a filmmaker working on a documentary based on one of his stories. (This one.) I looked him up online, saw that he’s employed as an editor at a newspaper concern that never, ever publishes stories like the ones he writes, and took momentary pleasure in my accurate guess when I first stumbled across his work online — newspaperman. I don’t know much, but I know a prose style.

I didn’t try to contact him otherwise, having once exchanged an e-mail with him in which he said he keeps an anonymous byline because of his employer’s prickliness about freelancing. Besides, I’d already expressed my fangirl love; what else would there be to say?

But yesterday, when I walked into my department chairman’s office and found him talking to someone, and was introduced to John Redacted, the first thing I did was to blurt out, “I know your secret!” What a tool. I could share a cab with Colin Firth and never feel the need to tell him how much I love him. But writers? I lose all self-control.

“I think most people know by now,” he said. Well, that’s good. A man deserves credit for great work. I gather that he’s reached a rapprochement with his employer over the freelancing, but chooses to keep his profile low. Wise.

Then I asked something that’s been knocking around my head for some time: “Do you think Jay Thunderbolt would be amenable to having a spec screenplay written about him?” Cuz, you know, nothing is quite as visual as a six-foot-five-inch chain smoker whose face droops to one side and always wears a black suit with a bulletproof vest underneath. And runs a strip club out of his house. He already looks like a taller, younger, more facially paralyzed Christopher Walken.

“Sure,” he said. “He’s all about self-promotion.”

Don’t none of you folks steal my idea. Although I’m surely not the only one to comprehend his awesomeness. I was trying to find that story a couple weeks ago, I ran across another — apparently MTV did a piece on him for one of their series. Money quote from the show hosts:

“The thing about Jay is he probably hasn’t left Detroit in 30 years. He hasn’t flown in, God knows how long. When we booked him a flight his first question was, ‘How many of my guns can I bring?’ His second was, ‘Could you get me a smoking seat?'”

When you’re as awesome as Jay, you don’t need to leave Detroit. The party comes to you.

So that was yesterday. It also included a bowl of carrot-ginger soup from Russell Street Deli. Win-win.

Before I leave today, I have an RFK — request for kindness. Or to make it even more low-pressure, call it a request for karma, or even a DOYITAWC (direction of your interest to a worthy cause). One of our number, who comments from time to time as Velvet Goldmine, has a daughter who’s been invited to a National Youth Leadership Forum program at Yale this summer. It’s pricey, a deposit has to be sent pretty soon, and the money isn’t in this month’s budget. VG — I don’t think she’d mind if I told you her name is Melissa, and she’s the sister-in-law of my trusted friend Lance Mannion — is in a cash pinch. I told her that if she had a PayPal account, I’d send her a few shekels, and I just did. If you feel like sending a few of your own, the linked e-mail is qwerty1017 at ay-oh-ell dot you-know-what. (You can figure that out, right?) One of the great things about PayPal is, you can send any amount. I look at this as the online equivalent of a kid knocking on your door selling candy bars to finance a band trip. I always give those kids a fiver or so, so why not someone in Connecticut?

I stress that this isn’t an endorsement, I’m keeping no records, everything is between you and VG, and if you’d like to ask her any questions privately, you can send her an e-mail.

And is that all? I think that is all. Have an outstanding weekend. We’re expecting freezing rain!

I guess everybody wants to talk about last night’s Chrysler ad. OK. Let’s all watch it first; this looks like a nice HD version:

Wow. This is probably the seventh or eighth time I’ve watched it, and it keeps getting better. The opening shots are of the Rouge complex, the vast field of ominous smokestacks on the south side that you see from I-75 as you enter the metro area. It is not a pretty sight. It’s the sort of thing that if you were, say, a middle-aged woman coming to town on a house-hunting trip with your husband and little girl, preparing at midlife to pull up stakes and start over in a new city, and the day was gray and cold anyway, and suddenly the freeway starts to rise and you’re looking down at a place that looks like a set for a dystopian sci-fi flick featuring killer robots and toxic-avenger zombies — if you were that person, you might wonder what you’d gotten yourself into. (Not that I would know anything about that.)

Not only that, but the scene was shot in winter. No Pebble Beach ocean vistas or green mountain switchbacks or Bonneville salt flats with picturesque dust clouds, just bare trees, leaden skies and those clouds that roll in at Thanksgiving and don’t roll out until Easter except for once in a while in winter, when they are replaced by single-digit temperatures. Yep, this is the industrial Midwest, all right. The people we see on the street — Door Man and Dapper Man in Crosswalk — are African-American, as is the Fist. But not everybody. Look, a pretty skater. Are those real Lions doing roadwork? Can’t say. But it’s snowing, it’s cold, the manhole covers can’t contain the steam that rises up from below.

Is this hell? No, it’s Detroit. (And it’s a lot cooler.)

Now we see more of the car, because of course this is a car ad. If you’re an Eminem fan, or even know his face, you’ve already figured out who’s driving. After all, that’s his music on the soundtrack, along with…is that a gospel choir? Oh, man, they are going to go right up to the edge, aren’t they? And then here we are at the Fox — great marquee message, just fabulous — and yes, that is a gospel choir. Careful, Marshall, gospel choirs have been the ruin of many pop artists; they must be handled like plutonium, careful careful…

“This is the Motor City. And this is what we do.”

Perfect. In another venue, it would have played as bombast, but this is the Super Bowl. It’s where bombast goes to recharge itself, after it’s tired from visiting with Rush Limbaugh and Emerson, Lake and Palmer. This is where Apple dared to compare itself to George Orwell, where the Budweiser Clydesdales honored 9/11 victims, where a former presidential candidate made a joke about getting a boner for Britney Spears. You can’t go too far here, or if you can, no one has done it yet. And you came a little close, but not really. And you did it with such style. Ten out of 10. I hope the car’s half as good. You’re certainly going to sell a shitload of them here.

I hope this doesn’t signal the moment when Detroit Chic suddenly goes mainstream. If it does, I hope I can sell my screenplay first.

Elsewhere on the ad front, I can’t really speak with authority, as I only had the game on for background noise and didn’t watch all that closely. But, in general:

Darth Vader/Passat — very cute. However, I really wish I hadn’t read this obnoxious blog post about it first.

Groupon — ooh, edgy! I feel provoked! It’s so provocative! Actually, I’m not sure I trust Groupon anyway. I’ve used them once, for an opera ticket last fall, and felt I got what I paid for, i.e., a terrible seat for half price. But the half off stuff just seems wrong. From what I’ve heard, you offer at least a 50 percent discount, and then split the rest with Groupon, which means your discount is now 75 percent. I suppose the idea is to bring in new business, but I suspect it also brings in chintzy customers who tip for shit. Someone else, enlighten me.

The rest are a blur. No, I remember the Kia Optima, the epic journey. That was worth the time.

So. Another Monday, under a Monday-in-Detroit kind of sky. It’s been snowing on and off for three days, and finally, I feel like we have enough. I’ll feel differently in another month, but for now, the blanket seems just about right.

And now I have to get to work. Not in a Diego Rivera-mural sort of way, but in my own fashion. I risk repetitive strain injury! My collar is…well, at the moment it’s a turtleneck. Have a good day, all.

Hate to say it — I was really looking forward to a true blizzard — but what hit last night wasn’t anything close. Total snowfall of maybe four or five inches. Lots of wind, which made driving difficult, but the apocalyptic scenario promised all week fizzled. When will I learn? Take the forecast, divide by two. I did just check the weather radar, and there’s another big blob moving through at the moment, so we’ll get more, but the worst is over, and it wasn’t all that bad.

I did finally get enough sleep last night, with Kate being off school. Our district is infamous for never calling snow days, but they did today.

So now I’m drinking coffee and reading about Egypt. Also, thinking about my Arab students at Wayne State, who have been one of the great pleasures of this job. Many of them could easily make the grade at places like Michigan, but I suspect they come from conservative families who wouldn’t allow their sons — but especially their daughters — to leave home for a college dormitory. So much the better for me. I discovered a kindred spirit, i.e., a fellow Mitch Albom non-fan, in one, a girl who wants to be a sportswriter. Big hockey fan. She goes to Red Wings games in a jersey and matching hijab.

I just sent her this story, which I posted on Facebook last night. Delta airlines just did a special edition of their in-flight magazine all about the wonderfulness that is Detroit, a real boosterama of in-flight journalism. When I saw it was a million pages and stressed such unknown, uncovered stories as the blooming artists’ community and film industry, I gave it a pass. So I’m grateful someone else didn’t, and found the part where Albom is asked what he loves about the city, and he replies:

“I can walk into a coffee shop and see people reading my work or clipping columns to mail away, to give their loved ones a piece of home. As a newspaper columnist, there is a real sense of the community embracing you as one of their own wordsmiths — and that’s one of the reasons I’ve never left.”

This is an old theme with our boy, and he’s written several astonishing columns pledging he’ll never leave because you love me so much!!!! (Meanwhile, people who work close to him will tell you he’s looked many times for his next local fan club, but can’t find one worthy of him, i.e., a media market with four pro teams, a sizable newspaper and a radio station that will host his show and meet his salary demands, which speaks very well of Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, in my opinion.) Anyway, let me see the hands of anyone who believes Mitch Albom has ever walked into a coffee shop and seen a single soul “clipping columns to mail away.” He’s not even trying anymore, but I don’t think they put the A-team on this project in the first place, as just this brief, four-question visit with Mitch includes a usage error (Detroit is “family-orientated”) and misspells the name of Joe Louis Arena.

Anyway, I think my student will get a kick out of that.

OK, it’s time to go outside and get a-blowin’. I think I spent 14 hours at or near a keyboard yesterday, and frankly, I’m real damn sick of it. A swell day to you, whether you’re digging out or digging in.

Perhaps you’re wondering what the genesis of my problem is with Charles Pugh, current Detroit City Council president and former numbskull TV reporter in Fort Wayne. Reader, I’ll tell you.

Back in the 1990s-ish day, Pugh did a story on the well-known link between the Super Bowl and domestic violence. You remember that? Rising testosterone combined with cabin fever and erratic blood-sugar levels caused by weird snack foods and brought male tempers to a boil, and they bounced their wives all over hell ‘n’ gone. For a couple of years, this was an established fact that all the lifestyle sections and (especially) TV stations liked to make a fuss over around the end of January.

Only guess what? It wasn’t true.

An enterprising Washington Post reporter asked to see the data, and it turned out the whole contention was based on one study, and the authors of the study said the data had been misreported and twisted by people with an ax to grind. You can read the whole story at Snopes, if you’re so inclined.

Anyway, at least two years after this, after it had been discussed and put through the usual journalistic mea-culpa wringers, Pugh did a story for his station about how domestic-violence shelters are flooded with black-eyed women on Super Bowl Sunday. I think even his sources knew it was b.s., but hey — publicity! And so the one woman who appeared on camera was careful to say she noticed an uptick in services “during football season,” which also covers a lot of other stressors, including the start of school, cold weather, the holidays, and well, you get the idea. I wrote a note to the news director and Pugh himself, asking for an explanation, and discovered what it feels like to shout down a well. Neither responded. What is TV, anyway? Just a few moments in time that no one even gives their full attention to. La-di-da.

So last night I’m doing one of my jobs, gleaning the fields for stories about health care, and what do I turn up but this:

When fans flock to the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium on Super Bowl Sunday, few will be thinking about anything other than touchdowns and tailgates.

But nearby, in hotels, motels and on street corners, Texas authorities say a “dark side” will exist, one where children are sold for sex by pimps. And those sex traffickers are descending on the area.

“People are thinking of the Packers and the Steelers and the game on the field, having a good time and Super Bowl commercials. Most don’t think about a 12-year-old being forced to dance naked,” Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott told ABC News.

And this:

ATLANTA — Pimps will traffic thousands of under-age prostitutes to Texas for Sunday’s Super Bowl, hoping to do business with men arriving for the big game with money to burn, child rights advocates said.

And this:

While football fans are eagerly anticipating the Feb. 6 Super Bowl showdown in Dallas, some state officials are gearing up for the big game’s dark side: the surge in human trafficking that tends to accompany major sports and entertainment events. “What we’ve learned is that sexual trafficking, sexual exploitation of children in particular, is all about supply and demand,” says Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. With more than 100,000 fans descending on Dallas, that demand is going to be great. There is a “looming potential explosion of human trafficking around the Super Bowl,” says Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who is expecting hundreds of girls and women to be brought to the area.

The second story, from Reuters, is instructive. I’m going to do something I don’t normally do — quote more than three paragraphs or so, just so we can go through it and see if we can spot all the weasel words and agenda-laden sources. This entire story rests on two rickety legs, “child rights advocates” and the Texas attorney general. Ahem:

As the country’s largest sporting event, the game between the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers will make the Dallas-Fort Worth area a magnet for business of all kinds.

That includes the multimillion dollar, under-age sex industry, said activists and law enforcement officials working to combat what they say is an annual spike in trafficking of under-age girls ahead of the Super Bowl.

“The Super Bowl is one of the biggest human trafficking events in the United States,” Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott told a trafficking prevention meeting in January.

Wow, really? Tell me more:

Girls who enter the grim trade face a life of harsh treatment and danger, according to a Dallas police report in 2010. Few who emerge are willing to speak about it. Tina Frundt, 36, is an exception.

Now married and living in Washington D.C., Frundt was lured into sex work at 14 after she fell for a 24-year-old who invited her to leave home in 1989 and join his “family” in Cleveland, Ohio.

That family consisted of the man and three girls living in a motel. When Frundt declined on the first night to have sex with her boyfriend’s friends they raped her.

“I was angry with myself for not listening to him, so the next night when he sent me out on the street and told me … (to earn $500) I listened,” she said in a telephone interview.

Frundt paced the streets for hours and finally got into a client’s car.

When she came home in the morning with just $50, her pimp beat her in front of the other girls to teach them all a lesson and sent her back onto the street the next night with the warning not to return until she had reached the quota.

The scenario was repeated night after night as Frundt’s pimp moved his stable across the Midwest. Any sign of rebellion led to further beatings. Escape seemed out of the question.

“I was a teen-ager in a strange town with no money and no place to go,” she said. She finally escaped by getting arrested.

Frundt’s story is terrible, for sure. Notice it has nothing to do with the Super Bowl.

There’s some more stuff about how awful a teen prostitute’s life is, and then we’re back to the news peg:

“At previous Super Bowls, pimps hired cab drivers to turn their vehicles into mobile brothels,” said Deena Graves, executive director of child advocacy group Traffick911.

Up to 10,000 adult and under-age girls have come to previous Super Bowls, said Jerry Strickland, communications director in the Texas attorney general’s office, who acknowledged that precise figures are hard to gauge.

“The statistics are a moving target. They (under age sex workers) can’t be counted in turnstiles like ticket holders,” he said in an interview.

Can you give us a specific, Deena Graves? One arrest made in one of these moving brothels? One cab driver who took the cash to turn his rear-view mirror up? At least Jerry Strickland seems to know he’s carrying his boss’ water. Note the “up to 10,000 adult and underage girls,” which is sort of amusing. When Detroit hosted the Super Bowl five years ago, there were public and private parties galore, and you have to figure at least some working girls were there; I know I was told high-end strippers were happy to come and work as Jenna Jameson’s lingerie models at the party she threw. But “up to” is a wonderfully elastic term, and by saying that number includes adults, well, you’ve sort of muddied your own story. Anyway, it’s not like they can be counted with turnstiles! Onward:

Law enforcement agencies and advocacy groups rescued around 50 girls during the previous two Super Bowls, said Graves. Six were registered on the Center for Missing and Exploited Children website. One had been trafficked from Hawaii.

“Even one rescue is considered a success,” said Frundt who now advocates for exploited girls and has founded a girls’ treatment center and a safe house for girls in Washington D.C.

Finally, a link between the game and the crime. Too bad it’s vague and utterly unverifiable. “Around 50” during two previous games? Was that 25 per game, or 50 each year? How many were rescued by law enforcement, and how many by those convenient advocacy groups? Six were registered, only we can’t tell you who they are, alas, as sex-crime victims.

Finally, the feel-good ending:

To fight the trade, authorities, child welfare advocates and the airline industry are collaborating.

Representatives from American Airlines, Delta, United, Quantas and American Eagle are holding a training session to help them spot signs of trafficking. Nancy Rivard, president of Airline Ambassadors International, will also work with another 100 flight crews to distribute materials on flights.

Some 67,000 people signed a petition on www.change.org opposing sex trafficking as part of a campaign by Traffick911 called “I’m Not Buying It!” that is supported by 60 nonprofits and faith-based groups.

That campaign has also attracted heavy hitters like Dallas Cowboy Jay Ratliff, a three-time Pro Bowler, who made a public service announcement entitled “Real men don’t buy children. They don’t buy sex.”

Ratliff, who himself has two daughters, is recruiting other National Football League players for the campaign.

“You hear of sex trafficking overseas,” he wrote in an email from Hawaii where he is playing in the Pro Bowl. “But you never imagine it is happening in the United States.”

Training will happen. A petition has happened. A PSA has happened. And the Texas AG will be on the alert.

Please note that I am not questioning whether trafficking in underage prostitutes happens. We know it does. I am questioning whether it has any connection whatsoever with the Super Bowl. Why not the U.S. Open, or the Olympics, or the All-Star Game? Those events all bring large numbers of out-of-towners into a strange city to watch sports; are they less likely to get their freak on with a 16-year-old captive? What is it about the national pro football championship game that tempts so many to hitch a ride on its coattails? Is it something about the violence on the field, or the ridiculous, dead-of-winter, what-else-is-there-to-write-about hype that covers everything from advertising to the food pages (super dip ideas for your super spread!) that makes those left out want to latch on to the media gravy train?

I don’t mind a story on how to make a cheese ball in the shape of a football. But this sort of thing pisses me off. We’ve been burned once by this sort of piggybacking. If I were the NFL, I’d be throwing flags all over the place.

Speaking of which, this was also a health story last night:

Suffering an emotional loss in the Super Bowl may be hazardous to a fan’s heart health, a new study suggests.

Oh, bollocks it is.

Little Miss Grumpy, sitting here waiting for her snowstorm. Pantry is stocked, snowblower is gassed, bets are laid. Kate’s taking 12 inches, I’m going for eight, even though we’re in the purple band (forecast of 12+ inches) on the maps. We both think there’ll be a school cancellation. She still has to do her homework. Because I hope she’ll get good grades and grow up to be something other than a credulous journalist.

So I’m waiting for Snotorious BIG. Photos tomorrow, I hope. Have a good one, all.

Jeff TMMO has asked me to address the big news from last night, although it was really the big news from Monday: Mark Bittman is dropping his Minimalist column from the NYT, but starting an op-ed and magazine gig with the same paper, moving on from recipes to ruminations and analyses of U.S. food policy.

Jeff seems to mourn the loss for the food pages. I’m thrilled for the other sections’ gain.

I guess I should have mentioned it sooner, but as owners of the two Bittman cornerstones — “How to Cook Everything” and “How to Cook Everything Vegetarian” — I have paid less attention to his column, save for those “101” blowouts he does from time to time, the 101 salads piece, or the make-ahead Thanksgiving dishes, or whatever. I learned what I needed to learn about cooking from Bittman a while ago, and I think he’s going to be a wonderful voice on the opinion pages.

In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and predict that within five years, Bittman will win a Pulitzer Prize for commentary. He’s that good, and besides, the ranks of commentators in the dailies has grown so thin, the juries will be desperate to hand one to a fresh new voice. When Kathleen Parker and Leonard Pitts win the Big P, you know it’s time.

And judging from the lively discussions we have in this space about food, food policy, eating and all the rest of it, he’ll have no shortage of thought-provoking material. I can’t wait.

Meanwhile, what about the other news last night? I’m talking about Chris Matthews yelling at some Tea Party d’bag over their shameless use of Michele Bachmann to deliver their propaganda last night. While I congratulate Matthews for being one of the few journalists (on TV, anyway) who actually tells people they’re not answering the question he asked, all his spluttering isn’t going to change anything or anybody, so maybe the answer is to not pay attention to Michele Bachmann. Works for me.

And the Oscars! Nothing really really surprising there, was there? Brian took umbrage over Hailee Steinfeld being nominated for best-supporting when she was clearly in a lead role, but that’s the way Oscar rolls. Promising ingenues who hit one out of the park in their first role are almost always supporters, especially if they’re minors. It’s the Rookie of the Year prize, and all you have to do is think of all the people who have won it who never did work of the same caliber again. There was Haing Ngor (“The Killing Fields”), who wasn’t even an actor; Marlee Matlin (“Children of a Lesser God”), who still acts, but whose work is strictly at the TV-drama skill level, and, of course, Mo’Nique. I just hope the Oscars aren’t a total walkover for “The King’s Speech” this year. A very fine film, but there were many others, and those big consensus winners don’t age well. When was the last time you saw “Gandhi” on cable and stopped to watch even a minute of it? Or “Out of Africa,” for that matter? (Actually, I will watch “Out of Africa,” but only for Meryl Streep. Robert Redford is laughable.)

A quick pass by the bloggage before our mortgage man stops by. We’re refinancing our house, and I need to limber up for signing my name 400 times.

Via Lawyers, Guns and Money, a site you can waste a minute or an hour on: Better Book Titles.

I’ve been giving Tom & Lorenzo a lotta love of late, but what the hell, they’re on a hot streak, like today’s Dress Libs with Zooey Deschanel.

Someone should do this with “It’s the End of the World as We Know It:” A visual map of “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” Actually, someone should do a master’s thesis on the pop-culture afterlife of songs like this. Exhibit A, of course: the Rickroll.

Finally, today is my state’s 174th birthday, or so one of my tweeps tells me. Si quaeris peninsulam amoenam, circumspice. Happy birthday to the pleasant peninsula.

Off to flex my fingers. Good day to all.

It seemed the sun would never rise today, and I imagine it will be in a big hurry to get out this evening. I understand there’s a reason for that. It’s also the reason I’m feeling lamer and blanker than usual this morning. It couldn’t possibly be that I had four glasses of wine on a mostly empty stomach last night. As I had the night off and we were home before 11, I followed them with an over-the-counter sleep aid, ’cause I had the rare opportunity for a full night’s sleep and I didn’t want anything short of a wailing smoke alarm to penetrate it.

And sleep I did, but I still feel wrapped in cotton wool. After breakfast and two cups of coffee. Oh, well. If you’re not allowed a third cup four days before the winter solstice, when are you allowed?

And, not making excuses here, but I have work to do on a story. So let’s go to the bloggage early, shall we?

(Third cup, in progress.)

You’ve probably heard of PolitiFact, the St. Petersburg Times’ website, which strives to bring light to the darkness by fact-checking claims made by politicians. It was the 2009 Pulitzer Prize winner for Public Service, i.e., the best of the big P’s, and has been widely emulated around the country — there’s a version of it in Michigan now, run by a non-profit think tank, and original-recipe PolitiFact has licensed its name to other papers, as well. Seven states have PolitiFact sites now. (Don’t worry, Indiana. I’m sure you’ll get one…some day.)

This week, PolitiFact named its Lie of the Year. Before you click, see if you can guess. Anyone? Anyone? OK, Iet’s cut to the chase:

PolitiFact editors and reporters have chosen “government takeover of health care” as the 2010 Lie of the Year. Uttered by dozens of politicians and pundits, it played an important role in shaping public opinion about the health care plan and was a significant factor in the Democrats’ shellacking in the November elections.

Remember, earlier in the week, when we discussed the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and how they game the system? They have company: The Center for Science in the Public Interest, another group of nutritional busybodies. Yesterday they were a player in this story, which had the conservative blogs and Facebook rockin’ with outrage:

With perfect Grinch timing, a consumer group has sued McDonald’s demanding that it take the toys out of its Happy Meals.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group, claims it violates California law for the hamburger chain to make its meals too appealing to kids, thus launching them on a lifelong course to overeating and other health horrors. It’s representing an allegedly typical mother of two from Sacramento named Monet Parham. What’s Parham’s (so to speak) beef? “Because of McDonald’s marketing, [her daughter] Maya has frequently pestered Parham into purchasing Happy Meals, thereby spending money on a product she would not otherwise have purchased.”

The story goes on to harumph about Parham’s lack of parenting skills, blah blah blah, to the point that you can almost ignore a few key phrases:

You’re probably wondering: How is this grounds for a lawsuit? No one forced Parham to take her daughters to McDonald’s, buy them that particular menu item, and sit by as they ate every last French fry in the bag (if they did).

No, she’s suing because when she said no, her kids became disagreeable and “pouted” – for which she wants class action status. If she gets it, McDonald’s isn’t the only company that should worry. Other kids pout because parents won’t get them 800-piece Lego sets, Madame Alexander dolls and Disney World vacations. Are those companies going to be liable too?

No, New York Daily News, all the conservative bloggers in the world and MMJeff, they aren’t. Filing a suit and seeking class-action status isn’t the same as winning a suit or getting class-action status. I know we have many lawyers in this house, who can maybe speak to the possibility of Ms. Parham’s suit getting anywhere beyond the pages of the New York Daily News, but at this point, it hardly matters. They’re in a New York daily newspaper, their message has been amplified, they’ve put McDonald’s on notice that it has wandered into the crosshairs of the media-savvy Center for Science in the Public Interest and WIN WIN WIN.

The CSPI is the group behind the “health scares” of the ’90s, which really showed how this ridiculous gamesmanship works, the “studies” that showed fettuccine alfredo, Chinese food and movie-theater popcorn is bad for you. Remember the phrase “heart attack on a plate?” That was theirs.

Another Xtranormal winner: Why your waiter hates you.

Did you know Coozledad has a pet chicken? And that he talks to the animals, just like me? He does.

Phone’s ringin’. Gotta go. Have a great weekend, all.

The Monty Python killer rabbit scene from the Holy Grail film is funny in and of itself, but it achieves a whole new level of humor when you actually keep a pet bunny, or “house rabbit,” as the English say. It’s funny because it’s true. I can’t tell you how many times our own killer has launched herself at one or another of us, furious because we’ve done …something. Her latest trick is to lurk under the dining room table, then aggressively confront anyone who walks through the room. Thankfully, she does not nip in these situations, only threaten.

This is the point at which many pet owners would be dialing the Rabbit Rescue — or boiling water on the stove — but I cannot be distressed by this. In fact, I’m amused. It gives me an opportunity to say, “Behold the cave of Caerbannog!” in a Scottish accent. And I cannot help but respect an animal that doesn’t weigh two pounds but is willing to fight the giants she finds herself living among. And she’s not always bad-tempered. Just now, she jumped up on the couch, accepted some petting and gave me a few licks on the forehead. Rabbits don’t lick for salt, so the book says, so that can be interpreted as a gesture of affection. Like all victims, I choose to see it that way.

Aw, she just rolled over on her back. So cute. Bought herself another week of indulgence.

(Perhaps you’re wondering: Is Nance one of those people who talks to her rabbit as though it were a person, and depicts the rabbit talking back in a funny voice? You know me too well.)

I went over to my local Target to buy wrapping paper yesterday. I know the time to do that is the day after Christmas, but I cannot face another present-wrapping session with the stuff I’ve been trying to use up for a decade now. The mall the Target is part of has fallen on hard times. It has its anchors — Sears, Macy’s, the big bull’s-eye — but the rest of it is all game-over, stores that might as well rename themselves House of Russian Prostitute Style. And there was a shooting there Thanksgiving weekend, so that pretty much iced the cake for the holidays. For more than a year, I’ll occasionally get an e-mail with 16 forwards on it from someone claiming there’s a FORCIBLE RAPE IN THE PARKING LOT EVERY SINGLE DAY, AND THE POLICE ARE COVERING IT ALL UP. I ignore this stuff and shop there anyway, but yesterday, as I made my way in via the rutted back road that I usually take, I had a glimpse of spring. And it nearly broke my axle.

Last week’s snowstorm started in very warm temperatures, and it rain/snowed all day before the temperature plunged 25 degrees overnight, which made all that standing water and slush freeze solid, which means the badly maintained parts of the parking lot are already nursing embryonic potholes the size of graves, and I’m sure the streets in our destitute communities are going to be just as bad. I’m wondering if maybe Coozledad will be willing to share a mule come spring.

Oh, hell. Let’s change the tone. Bloggage awaits:

I know Gwyneth Paltrow is beautiful and fit and perfect and a much better person than me. I also feel a dress like this is a hostile gesture that underlines all of the above, and drives it home with a big F.U. I’m going to assume that after two pregnancies, she’s benefitting from some sort of hidden boob support built into the bodice, but what about the bottom? I guess she has to entirely denude her lady garden to avoid tacky bush assertion, and what if her period arrived unexpectedly? Ew. Just ew. This dress came from the luxury department in the House of Russian Prostitute Style.

What browser do you use? Did you know what you’re charged for goods and services online can depend on this? I wish I were kidding. And I have already found a use for Chrome.

Interesting piece on a Canadian company that has found its market niche as the Comment Police. They cleaned up NPR and saved its comments sections in the bargain. A nice reminder that not everyone’s comments are as fabulous as ours.

The always-interesting Laura Miller on why readers love bad writing. Via Hank.

Jim at Sweet Juniper has found something for his dog Wendell to pull this winter.

Finally, a little “Silent Night” for you, excerpts from the Facebook posting of a friend of a friend, who lived through last week’s blizzard in northwest Indiana:

What an incredible weekend. Wound up stranded because of the blizzard, but we made it to the fire station in Wanatah where about 30 other stranded motorists spend the night. Met some very interesting people and we turned it into a party. Many thanks to the firefighters and Wanatah officials for their hospitality. …It really was an incredible experience. First, space was set aside for the four Muslims stranded so they could spread their prayer rugs to pray. Then there was the family from Romania on their way to Chicago. Their 11-year-old son serenaded us with a violin solo of Christmas carols at 3 a.m. Everyone was still up and talking and the young man received a standing ovation. Never experienced anything like it.

When we want to be, we can be pretty good.

Here’s one reason I don’t listen to media conspiracy theories. Our case in point:

Here’s a locally bylined story in my morning newspaper. Both of them, actually. Headline: Group seeks ban on new Detroit fast-food eateries; City’s high rate of heart disease triggers request

The lead:

If nutritionists have it their way, Detroit fast-food restaurants would do more than hold the pickles and the lettuce.

Most people will read no further. As my fingers peck out these words, someone, somewhere in this place of two million souls is saying, “Jesus Christ, like this shithole doesn’t have enough problems” — we talk salty here — “now they want to ban fast food.”

The mysterious “they” always plays a big role in these conversations. “They” always want to “ban” something. Most people have only a dim idea of how the world works, and their understanding hasn’t advanced much since middle school. And most of us only listen to the news with half our attention. Who has time?

Back to our story:

The Washington, D.C.-based Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine on Tuesday called for Mayor Dave Bing to impose a moratorium on new fast food restaurants. The group said Detroit needs a diet because it has the fourth-highest heart disease rate in the nation, killing 3,400 city residents each year.

“We decided to take on fast food in general because the quality of most menu items is rather poor,” said Susan Levin, the group’s director of nutrition. “The whole country is suffering from these kinds of statistics.”

Oh, OK. Those guys. The noble-sounding Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine, aka the Vegan Doctors Group, likes to advocate all sorts of crazy stuff, including ending the use of all animals in medical research, which you don’t have to be a vegan to realize puts them in some pretty fringe-y territory, vis-a-vis the medical community. We had a vegetarian news editor in Fort Wayne who liked to put their “news” in our pages, including one memorable Thanksgiving, when the fattest paper of the year landed on 60,000 front steps with a banner story above the flag detailing just how toxic today’s holiday meal would be.

But the PCRM knows how to play the game in a crowded media marketplace. First, assume a sober, serious-sounding name. Second, focus your press releases narrowly; notice the group isn’t advocating a moratorium on fast-food restaurants everywhere (at least not in this case), but in one city. (Local media outlets are easier to penetrate than the New York Times.) Third, call for a ridiculously empty gesture that has no chance of passing, but can be easily summarized by a pretty reporter doing a stand-up outside a McDonald’s: A doctors’ group is asking the city of Detroit to adopt a moratorium on new fast-food restaurants. I’ll have more at 6.

And then wait for the magic to happen.

You have to wait until the fifth paragraph to get to the point:

Some cities have taken on burger joints, but that doesn’t appear to be on Bing’s menu. Mayoral spokeswoman Karen Dumas said the Health Department is educating residents “so they can make informed decisions.”

In other words, the mayor is not only ignoring the request, he won’t even waste a quote on them. But it doesn’t matter; for a group that counts a total membership of 120,000, fewer than 10 percent of them actual doctors, this story is WIN all around. They’re in both papers. They’re on the local Fox affiliate. In fact, Fox even found a city councilman who agrees; anyone want to guess which one? (If you said, “Charles Pugh, the dumbest man in journalism and city government,” you win.) The system was gamed, the newsroom hacked. As they say around here, their name rang out. And that’s how you do it, folks. Easy-peasey.

Fun facts to know and tell: Guess who the PCRM’s director of public affairs is? One-time FLILF Elizabeth Kucinich. Detroit already has 73 fast-food restaurants, no citation given. That seems shockingly low for a city of 800,000. Grosse Pointe has one (a Wendy’s). The last time I was jonesin’ for a Taco Bell bean burrito, I had to go to Harper Avenue in Detroit, appropriately so, as that’s where the former Mrs. Eminem went to buy her drugs, once upon a time. The drive-through window was a marvel of bulletproof technology; I don’t think people who check weapons in a prison have seen such a contraption.

I don’t eat much fast food. But when I do, I find a crispy-chicken snack wrap at McDonald’s, plus one of their fruit smoothies, fits the bill nicely.

A little bloggage on yet another clear, cold morning? Why not:

In a nightmare blizzard scenario you probably didn’t hear much about outside of Michigan and western Ontario, hundreds of motorists were stranded on a 60-mile stretch of Canadian highway between Sarnia and London, blinded by whiteout conditions caused by 50 mph winds blowing over southern Lake Huron, creating — anyone? — yes, massive lake-effect snow. Maybe because it’s Canada, with their very own accent and Mountie-like diction, but I love police quotes like this:

“We have rescued everyone that was stranded; 237 souls brought to safety,” said Ontario Provincial Police Sgt. David Rektor.

Two hundred thirty-seven souls. We always get our man, down to the last one.

How Gawker, et al was hacked, and how they handled it. (Badly.)

I heard some political gossip a while back that said outgoing Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm was looking to leave the state come New Year’s Day. I also heard California. No, probably Washington.

A good day to all.

I can’t tell you how many times I was reminded yesterday that it was the 69th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and I expect to be reminded at least that many times that today is the 30th anniversary of the murder of John Lennon. As someone who has always disliked anniversary journalism — the lazy morning-show producer’s friend, as s/he fills hour after hour with salutes to marshmallow fluff (celebrating its 50th, all this year!) and looks back at the O.J. Simpson case, now 16 years past — well, I disapprove.

I guess I do, anyway. When I’m bored, sometimes I look to Google for amusement. Today’s search: “today is the” + “anniversary of” and the results, while Pearl Harbor- and Lennon-specific today, reveal just how far we will go for a news peg:

March 15, 2010 — Today is the 25th anniversary of the first .com URL.

July 21, 2010 — Today is the anniversary of the Diana Ross downpour concert in Central Park.

November 28, 2010 — Today is the 115th anniversary of the first car race.

September 8, 2010 — Today is the 26th anniversary of Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon.

And so on. Anniversary journalism is cheap, easy and makes everyone feel good, even on bad-news anniversaries. People who weren’t alive when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor can post “I remember” on their Facebook pages and maybe change their profile picture to a flag. So patriotic! So easy!

I’ll grant you John Lennon, today. Anniversaries that end with a zero or 5 get dispensation. But cool it for 31, please.

I can’t believe I once followed Ted Turner around CNN on the day of its birth and watched as he was asked, over and over, “But how will you fill 24 hours with all-news programming?” The answer: With people yelling at one another. And with anniversary pieces.

A late update today. I apologize. I’ve been reading a bit about Elizabeth Edwards, and hoping I die forgotten and obscure, so as to not scare up the squadrons of drive-by biographers Edwards did. She’s a saint, she’s a bitch, she’s a devoted mother, she’s a selfish mother, she’s this, that and the other thing. Of course she is — was — all these things, which the better obits captured. My favorite was the Washington Post’s, which contains this gem:

(Screeching right-wing harpy Ann) Coulter verbally attacked her husband and said she wished “he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot.” Ms. Edwards, spotting Coulter on the MSNBC talk show “Hardball,” called in and on the air insisted politely but firmly that she refrain from personal attacks. Coulter refused to apologize and attacked the Edwards campaign for raising money by using her words. But the confrontation appeared to be a tipping point, costing Coulter advertisers and clients for her opinion column.

That right there is worth a free pass to heaven in my book, or at least a millennium of time off in purgatory. I know Ann has fallen on leaner times of late, but I didn’t know the dustup with Edwards was the instigator.

And then there’s Christine O’Donnell’s take. Why is this woman still in my newspaper? Don’t losers know enough to go away anymore?

She’s going to report him to President Obama? Is Helen Thomas old, confused or just a little spluttery, as we all get from time to time?

And now to do some real work for a change.

Barely two years later, I’m still amazed by a few things about the financial crisis of 2008. It doesn’t help that it was a complicated mess, and we have propagandists using it for their own ends, and yeesh that midterm election, but they boil down to this:

1) Most Americans have no idea how close to the cliff we came, and
2) How much of the bailout money has been paid back, and
3) What life would be like in this country without it.

Every so often when I’m on Facebook, I drop in on my former Indiana congressman, who has discovered the joys of social networking. I don’t dare friend him — it’s not him, it’s his commenters — but he’s capable of insight here and there, and it was fascinating, earlier this week, to see him trying to school his talk radio-listenin’ former constituents on just how essential TARP was. This being a Facebook thread, it’s pretty incoherent taken a piece at a time, but it would seem Mark Souder, bless his wicked little heart, gets it:

One of his friends says: Who touted the $700 billion? Obama and his “the sky is falling” GOP whimp friends. Members of Congress have no idea of what things cost when they pass bills like this. Don’t revise history.

Souder replies: I’m sorry to be aggressive on this but we absolutely do know. For example, National City Bank (number one at the time in our area) was toast and would have taken down much of our area’s businesses. We were getting a call a day of businesses having their loans foreclosed. Instead of a bank run, the govt floated cash and forced a merger. …It was incredibly scary. I got phone calls and e-mails at all hours of the day. It was Its A Wonderful Life on all fronts. …Stop acting like everyone in Congress is stupid. Too many liberals but most knew exactly what we were doing. The Republican members kicked all staff, including leadership staff, out of the room and argued for four and one-half hours. Business majors were furious at all the lawyers – bluntly said – who were clueless. But, unfortunately, many who knew better just told you what you wanted to hear. EVERY SINGLE MEMBER of Congress knew that 700 billion was a credit card limit, not the actual spent. It was useful for political purposes to smear the Democrats by acting like 700 billion was spent – unless you wanted to have to defend yourself, like I did, to the Tea Party groups.

“It was useful for political purposes to smear the Democrats” — heh heh. Yes, it was, and it would have been nice to have heard a few more honest Republicans speak to this, but ah well.

If you’re not inclined to go spelunking on Facebook, try this NYT piece based on Fed documents, which gives you more information:

As financial markets shuddered and then nearly imploded in 2008, the Federal Reserve opened its vault to the world on a scope much wider and deeper than previously disclosed.

Citigroup, struggling to stay afloat, sought help from the Fed at least 174 times during one remarkable 13-month period. Barclays, the British bank, at one point owed nearly $48 billion to the Fed. Even better-off banks like Goldman Sachs took advantage of Fed loans offered at rock-bottom rates.

The Fed’s efforts to stave off a financial crisis reached far beyond Wall Street, touching manufacturers like General Electric, the Detroit automakers and Harley-Davidson, central banks from Britain to Japan and insurers and pension funds in Sweden and South Korea.

I remember listening to a “This American Life” piece from the time that spoke of what happened when, one scary fall day in 2008, the U.S. banking system “broke the buck,” i.e., had NO money to lend. I recommend it to anyone who thinks enormous multinational corporations should run their finances the way your grandma does — i.e., McDonald’s shouldn’t roll out cappuccino machines in all its stores until it has saved the money in that coffee can in the cupboard. Everybody likes the car metaphor when it comes to economies these days. When I think of economics at this level, I think of early cars, how you had to be a mechanic yourself to keep one running, how a purring engine was a matter of manually adjusting fuel and air and spark juuuust right, then readjusting, then readjusting again, and being prepared to start from scratch when need be.

Economics is complicated. There’s a reason people get doctorates in it, and why so much of its study involves theory, theories that frequently don’t pan out. I only wish we had someone willing to break this stuff down in ways average people can understand, and then explain it on prime time. Kind of like the way Glenn Beck wraps his racism up in nostalgia for the good ol’ days.

As it shakes out, the TARP program will end up costing closer to $25 billion, not $700 billion. As for these nitwits who think the economy would be better off “in the long run” if it had been allowed to go off the cliff, I have this to say: Fuck you. Even Mark Souder agrees with me on that:

Bankruptcy (of the automotive companies) was discussed in depth, many times. Chrysler is much more marginal than GM. But for car companies, it was not understood by most Members initially about the Pension Guarantee Fund that people pay into. If a company goes bankrupt, those on pensions only get half their pension amount (we have far more people on pensions in our area than employed at the big companies) and the govt pays the whole thing. It would have cost far, far, far more for the govt to cover the pensions. And that is just one small part (unemployment, medcaid, GM is the largest employer of people with disabilities in america – most who would have then become taxpayer dependent, and on and on).

OK, it’s getting late. A little bloggage?

Via MMJeff, a heartbreaker about a survivor of a terrible crash between a distracted tractor-trailer driver (cell phone) and several vehicles, including a van carrying a group of Amish people. The survivor is Amish; she forgave, didn’t sue and tried to recover. Alas, the rest of the world doesn’t work that way:

“English people told us not to worry about it, they would be paid,” Eicher said, using the term the Amish bestow on outsiders. “We assumed they were paid.”

Then, this fall, the same bills started up again. One letter seemed particularly menacing, printed on bright fuchsia paper.

Pay up, the letters said.

She owes $23,273 to the hospital and $2,360 to a radiology group. She can’t see her chiropractor anymore because the insurance company just rejected $6,624 billed since the crash.

Shudder.

New Yorkers, spill: Is Andrea Peyser really as crazy as Gawker regularly makes her out to be?

No one is saying what’s wrong with Aretha Franklin, but everybody’s praying for her.

If you ask me, blind items and the internet were a match made in heaven.

At Wayne. Gotta go. Have a swell one, all.