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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bloggage, while we’re on the subject:

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

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

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

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

Mitch Albom got the Red Smith Award from the Associated Press Sports Editors this month. It’s a lifetime achievement award, the sort of thing you get with your gold watch and appointment with the death panel. Mitch, at 52, is probably covering the gray in his hair but nowhere near retirement, but hey! That’s entirely in keeping with his career! By the time Mitch hits what would be retirement age for you or me, we’ll all be watching white smoke pour out of the Vatican chimneys as he’s elected the first Jewish Pope. George Clooney will be working as his houseboy. And so on.

Over time, I’ve reached a sort of peace with Albom — I only get my dander up when he wanders off the sports pages. Which is often. But this isn’t one of those times. Let the APSE give him whatever award they want. I don’t even work for newspapers anymore. They made their bed, and they can lie in it, the feebs.

Then, yesterday, someone sent me this, from Deadspin. Snicker:

…the Happy Meal theology of (Mitch) Albom’s books that would’ve made Jonathan Livingston Seagull want to fly into the nearest wind tower.

I know it’s not just me who hates him. I once batted around the idea of a separate Mitch blog with another Detroit writer, or maybe even pitching a column to the Metro Times, in the grand tradition of Bobwatch, the Chicago Reader’s Bob Greene snarkfest. Among sportswriters, however, I’ve always assumed the dislike of Albom was based far more on jealousy than anything else. The number of sportswriters I honestly respect as writers, period, is pretty low, and I’ll bet the overwhelming secret thought most of Mitch’s colleagues entertain is this: Why didn’t I think of this shit first?

However, Deadspin lays out a pretty good collection of arguments as to why this award is the equivalent of Pia Zadora winning a Golden Globe. Its cornerstone is this Dave Kindred column about why Albom’s 2005 transgression — lavishly covered at the time, I won’t go into it here — ought to have disqualified him for this sort of laurel forever.

Well-argued, but as I said: That’s the APSE’s business. I was more interested in following the other links, especially this one, for which I reserve a comment I know many of you find offensive, but I cannot help myself: Jesus fucking Christ. If I recall correctly, Mitch’s 2005 shenanigans cost this man two weeks’ pay in the final arbitration. I guess not everyone can hold a grudge as long as I can.

Oh, well. Deep breaths. All better now.

Some of you may have noticed these new entries are arriving later in the day than they usually do. I’m sleeping later, plus I’m getting hammered with work from my hyperlocal site. Which is good for me, but may necessitate another schedule rejiggering, because I can’t keep this up.

So let’s skip to the bloggage:

Not quite OID, but close: Little girls set up lemonade stand, which is robbed. (Note to self: GREAT MOVIE SCENE.) In what newspapers love to call “an outpouring,” they’re finding this is probably the best thing to happen to them, ever.

Coozledad, remember when you said you found a worthless eHow article on burning pellets in a wood stove? One of the writers speaks:

“I was like, ‘I hope to God people don’t read my advice on how to make gin at home because they’ll probably poison themselves.’

“Never trust anything you read on eHow.com,” she said, referring to one of Demand Media’s high-traffic websites, on which most of her clips appeared.

Finally, a sweet story for cat lovers. Because you know what a softy I am in my tiny black heart.

Happy Thursday. Where did the damn week go?

It’s a perfectly lovely morning here, the last few days’ oppressive humidity blown off, the sun gleaming, the air deliciously cool. So you know what that means:

The people across the street are having some trees trimmed this morning. Yes, a wood chipper. I am going insane.

This is the downside of work-at-home self-employment. Well, that and the lousy money, and the lack of health insurance, and no one to bat ideas around with. I could probably think of a few more, but, well — the wood chipper just fired up again.

Sorry. I shouldn’t complain.

Having a bit of difficulty getting started this a.m. Or rather, I got started pretty early on other stuff, and can’t shift my head into blogspace. It seemed I missed a lot in my absence, including the whole Weigel thing, which I still can’t quite wrap my head around. The WashPost hires a blogger to cover the conservative movement, encourages a blogging voice, and then pushes him out when he becomes, what? A little too blogalicious? Because he trashed Matt Drudge? In writing? Well, OK. I get it. You can’t go around making smart cracks of the sort people make every day, at least not in writing. Because that would prove…something, I dunno.

For the record: I’m in favor of a more open exchange of ideas and even insults. If that means a lot of “biased” people get to keep their jobs, then so be it. I liked Weigel’s columns while they lasted. Have we figured out who dimed him? I’m still catching up, but this…

“It seems like he spends a lot of time apologizing,” said Penny Nance, the chief executive of Concerned Women for America, one of Weigel’s conservative critics. “The problem is Concerned Women for America and other conservatives resent the idea of the Washington Post or other major news affiliates hiring people who hate us to be the ones to report on us. David Weigel has already shown great distaste, if not downright disdain, for conservatives, so it’s difficult for us to take the Post seriously when this is the person the Post hires to cover conservatives.”

…caught my eye. In other words, we want to approve who covers us. The line for ring-kissing forms to the left. I can’t add more than Scott Lemieux at LGM, so I won’t.

And with that, I think I’d best get back to work. We’re obviously off the rails here. Apologies, and I’ll try to come to the table with a little more sentence-crafting savvy tomorrow.

I was sitting in the midst of Bitches Brew Revisited, one of the opening-night concerts at the Montreal Jazz Festival — excuse me, the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal — when it occurred to me why jazz is so popular here: Because French Canadians are basically French, and the French can be reliably counted on to embrace anything most Americans hate. It makes them feel superior. Perhaps they are superior. They’ve certainly got the charming-city thing figured out. “Bitches Brew,” I’m not so sure. There are moments in that record that feel like genius, others more like the emperor’s new clothes. That’s when your mind wanders.

So I’m starting a list: Things the French Love that (Most) Americans Hate. So far: Modern jazz, sweetbreads, politicians with wandering peckers. Let’s leave Jerry Lewis off for now. Dig deeper.

And yes, we had a fine time in Montreal. You are free to disagree with my contention that French Canadians are “basically French.” I’m aware that to a Parisian, a French Canadian is a knuckle-dragging, fur hat-wearing lummox. A former editor of mine was French Canadian on his mother’s side and spoke the language, and told me a story once of riding in a taxi from the Paris airport, chatting up the driver, who complimented him on his graceful usage while simultaneously disparaging those blockhead Canucks who massacre it every day in his taxi, and… Suddenly this is sounding very much like a taxi story, I realize.

Whatever. I did enjoy being immersed in a different language for a few days, because it reminds you both of how very much you know and how very much you don’t know. I pointed out to Kate several times that faking it through a foreign country isn’t so hard, that much of it is non-verbal puzzle-solving and other tricks. The elevator button for the hotel lobby says R instead of L, but it’s nothing you can’t figure out. Besides, it’s so amusing. The Lonely Planet guide said that even in France, stop signs are red, octagonal and say STOP, but in Quebec, they’re red, octagonal and say ARRET. Still, if you know the red octagon part, you can figure out the rest. And it’s fun to speak fake French, and speculate on why it’s the language of diplomacy; my theory is that it sounds much classier to call someone le sac du douche than just a douchebag.

More stories to come as the week wears on. For now, just this one, transitioning into the bloggage: We were questioned closely at the border, entering Canada, about our plans for the week, and whether we were going to stop in Toronto for the G20 conference.

“The G20 is meeting in Toronto?” I asked. “I didn’t know that.”

“I thought, as journalists, you would know about the half billion we’ve spent on security, the anarchist protestors, and all the rest of it,” the guard said.

Shamed! I was shamed. To be sure, the G20 is one of those things I pay attention to when it’s going on, but criminy, buddy, the pregame is sort of the definition of a local story. Nevertheless, once we were in the Globe & Mail circulation area, it was hard to avoid, and coming home Saturday, we stopped for dinner in a suburb of the big T, and watched the violence on live TV. It looked pretty bad, but I’m just going to throw this out there and see what you think:

Police love nothing more than expecting trouble. It gives them a big, big bargaining chip to present to their municipalities, in return for a blank check. When the Ku Klux Klan held a rally in Fort Wayne, the sheriff’s deputies fell out in a long row behind a line of riot shields that were so new you could practically see the stickum where the price tags had been. Riot shields are not normally gear the Allen County Sheriff’s Department uses, and I’m sure that was only the beginning. News that the world’s anarchists are coming to your city is music to a cop’s ears, as it represents huge overtime checks, helmets and gas masks and, for the bullies, a license to swing a club.

Which is not to say they wouldn’t rather be patrolling a pleasant summer day in the park. I’m just saying there’s a time in every job when you’re needed, and that feels good to everyone. I’m not saying I agree with the contentions in this rather paranoid article — short version: that, in need of a reason to use all that new equipment and justify its expense, that the police started their own riot — but it’s interesting to think about. The stuff about the shoes is intriguing.

I don’t know what the total damage in Toronto will be. But if half a billion in advance spending couldn’t stop it, maybe a different approach is called for next time.

Full-on bloggage today:

A story for Pride 2010, via Hank: After 45 years, a wedding. Also, an 89-year-old Stonewall vet sits it out this year.

The Back of Town blog — the “Treme” people — gets some love.

The Texas GOP comes out against oral sex. Way to nail down the swing vote, guys.

Susan Ager came out of retirement to write a very long account of her recent brush with endometrial cancer in Sunday’s Free Press. I know the lady had — has — a lot of fans, but I was rarely one of them. She didn’t even rank on the Albom Scale of Irritation, but she could get on my nerves. I can take or leave Sunday’s story — it’s certainly better than most of what they run on that space — but can I just say something? When I was a columnist, I got a certain amount of fan mail, and it wasn’t all from Brian Stouder. But when I published reader letters, I cut that stuff out. If someone wrote me a letter, told me how much they liked my column and then commenced to ask a question about something else, I cut right to the question. So when I read stuff like this…

(The surgeon) smiled at my bedside and said, “You’re meeting me for the first time, but I’ve known you for years through your work.”

…I cringe. What happened to self-effacement? There was a DetNews columnist who did the same thing. When she was off sick, she’d come back and write a column about how sick she’d been, peppered with reader notes about how much they’d missed her beautiful face smiling out of the newspaper. I ask you.

And now I ask you for leave, because, as usual, Monday is a killer.

Hank Stuever had a post on his blog yesterday, about a happy time in his life that coincided with a happy time in my life, i.e., working on the college newspaper. And even though his happy time was a decade after my happy time, it sounds as though the technology we used was about the same, and that was part of the fun of it:

I miss layout. It was probably the only crafty, tactile skill I ever mastered — starting in the journalism room in high school. I miss the waxer, the long strips of freshly developed type set in column inches, the bordertape, the pica poles, the photo reduction-ratio wheels, mitering my corners, the Zip-o-Tone, the 20-percent gray screen half-tones, the light-tables; writing headlines from count orders (”they need a 3-36-1 in 19-pica column width, and don’t forget that flitj only counts for half a character”). I miss the monstrous and cantankerous photostat machine. I miss light blue Copy-Not pens. I miss being able to fix a typo with a knife instead of a reset.

Much of that is probably gibberish to most of you, but to me, that paragraph, loaded with all those terms of art, is what separates a writer from a layout artist. I hadn’t thought about Zip-o-Tone (Zip-A-Tone, to be exact — sorry, Hank) since maybe 1978, and just that phrase brought it all back — the late nights at the Post doing just that, fueled on day-old doughnuts and bad coffee, trading jokes and insults. Disco light table! someone would squeal when “Don’t Leave Me This Way” came on the radio from down Parkersburg way, flicking the switches on and off during the chorus.

But I think I may have covered this topic before. What I meant to point out was this apt comparison later in Hank’s mini-essay:

I think I derived the same joy from laying out a newspaper that quilters derive from quilting bees. It required concentration, measurement, technique, artistry — but it never distracted you from conversations and gossip and laughs with your collaborators.

Yes. Exactly. It’s the craftiness of it. I’ve never been much for crafts, but like Hank, I miss the camaraderie of building something with your hands in a group. I got a little of that during my time on the copy desk; the work wasn’t so difficult you were risking anyone’s concentration by occasionally noting, out loud, “Name Redacted is the worst writer this newspaper has, and I’ll fight any man who disagrees.” We were just Amish ladies stitching squares together.

So thanks, Hank, for that. And yes, I will join your Layout Club. We can put out a newsletter or something, ol’ skool. I may still have some Letraset lying around here somewhere.

J.C. will probably use his admin status to post a photo in comments from those days. He was one of the supervisors of our backshop, back in the day.

So, anything else today? There’s this: You may have heard how the president of the Detroit Public Schools board imploded last week, or rather…[cue boom-chicka-wow soundtrack] maybe I should say, exploded. Mathis was briefly shamed into resigning after the superintendent accused him of playing pocket pool during their meetings, and if you want the gross details, well, read all about it.

I say “briefly shamed” because he had no sooner resigned than he tried to take it back, claiming “health problems” caused him to take matters into his own hands, ha ha. I think Laura Berman sums up the man in a few devastating sentences, here:

After graduating from Southeastern High School with a D-plus average, he got into Wayne State University in a program for the academically unqualified. When he failed to pass an English language writing exam required for graduation, he sued, claiming the exam discriminated against African-Americans. When the exam was dropped, a decade later, he duly received his bachelor of science degree.

Mathis was praised by his colleagues for his coolness under pressure and his lack of defensiveness: qualities that have stood him in good stead over the years, as he faced down challenges to his competency. As he told me in a March interview, his deficits had been written about before. “People make a lot of noise for a while and then it all blows over,” he said.

Maybe he felt compelled to test how low expectations might really go.

And they were already pretty damn low, let me tell you.

With that, an announcement: I’ll be scarce around here for a while. We’re taking a few days’ vacation, and this time we’re going someplace my cell phone contract doesn’t cover, so no mobile uploads. And where might that be? They speak French there, but it’s in North America. Where could it be? Let me put it this way: I told Kate I wanted to take her to Europe, but we can’t afford Europe, so we’re going for the closest equivalent within driving distance.

So: Au revoir for now, and I’ll see you back here Monday.

The New York Times has a front-pager on the fate of Larry King’s show on CNN, which seems pretty cloudy. The web version features a photo of King taken at the correspondents’ dinner this spring, looking 112 years old. I was shocked to learn he’s only 76; I thought he was 91-year-old Andy Rooney’s college roommate or something.

Everybody lucky to live long enough gets old, but not everybody in their eighth decade is old. I met an 81-year-old man at the Economic Club gala last week who looked like he could tow a tanker down the Houston Shipping Channel with his teeth. King, on the other hand, fairly dodders. If his show goes away at the end of the season — the once-mighty ratings colossus is already well behind Sean Hannity’s and Rachel Maddow’s shows in the same time slot — it will have died of nothing more than terminal geezerhood.

I lost patience with it years ago. I don’t even understand why the show is named after King, as all he does is show up, sit there and occasionally announce a commercial break between unchallenged chunks of celebrity blathering. Jon Carroll once called him a tabula rasa, and that, in my opinion, would be a much better name for the hour: Tabula Rasa with Suspenders Man. Tonight, Kate Gosselin!

I can never, ever in a million years improve upon this James Wolcott takedown of King, pegged to the last week of June 2009, when Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson all kicked the bucket within days of one another. King is at his best, or worst, or whatever-you-call it when celebrities die. I remember reading this in the car on our way down to Defiance one day last summer, and laughing so hard Alan told me to put a sock in it, I was distracting him from the road. A lengthy passage, but all in one paragraph:

For his June 26 show, he assembled an A-list trauma team to pay their respects: Liza Minnelli, Usher, Quincy Jones, and Deepak Chopra. O.K., maybe Deepak dragged the overall grade down to B-plus, but the next evening Larry gave us Cher, Celine Dion, Smokey Robinson, and Corey Feldman—Cher and Celine on the same show being Christmas come early for the drag-queen community underserved by cable news. For the next two weeks, Larry King Live was wall-to-wall Michael Jackson in memoriam, the guest list and the quality of insight being offered beginning to betray moth holes—in a surreal interview with renowned dermatologist Dr. Arnold Klein, rumored to be the biological (sperm donor) father of two of Jackson’s children, King asked, “Is it true that he wanted to look like Peter Pan?,” to which Klein replied, “I didn’t see him implanting wings on the back of his back or doing anything like that, right?”—until the addled nadir was reached during an interview with Jermaine Jackson at the Neverland Ranch when, as an inside tour was being conducted of the vacated rooms, a shadow crossed the end of the hallway. To those who dare to believe, who dare to hope, it was the ghost of Michael Jackson returning to his place of solace. On YouTube, the shadow was there for all to see. “Plenty of America’s most staggering dipshits saw it,” reported Gawker, “so CNN devoted an entire segment on King’s show tonight to solving the mystery. And the answer to all of this is—A crew member walked [past] a lighting fixture, creating a shadow on the wall. Yep, that’s it, just as any person with moderate levels of oxygen flowing to the brain should have deduced on their own.” I’m not sure how large a percentage of CNN’s core demographic fits the definition of “staggering dipshits,” but it is reassuring to know that the network isn’t ignoring their needs.

But that’s King at his best. Most nights he just sits there, grunting. Wolcott again:

Eloquence is not his thing. He solicits and accepts banal clichés that convert every celebrity death into a crunchy meal, while tossing off non sequiturs that keep everyone guessing. Part of what makes King perfect for his role is that he came out of the Walter Winchell world and thinks in staccato three-dot segments (as witness his widely mocked column in USA Today), equipping him with a built-in short attention span that some believe makes him the unofficial godfather of Twitter. A typical Larry King Live is a pastiche whose absurdism defies parody. Wearing his trademark suspenders and purple shirts, he looks as if he’s strapped to the chair with vertical seat belts, unable to eject. Sitting across from him may be former Incredible Hulk Lou Ferrigno—whom Larry mistakenly refers to as “Lou Ferragamo,” corrects himself, then repeats the error—and Marlon Brando’s son Miko, dressed in a festive Hawaiian shirt, followed by a panel exploring “the world of celebrity autopsies.”

There was some talk in the NYT story that the reason Hannity and Maddow are thriving and King isn’t is because they appeal to people on the ends of the political spectrum, who want nothing but an amen corner for their own beliefs. Um, no. It’s because they have a pulse. I can’t watch Hannity — those close-set, beady eyes just creep me out — but Maddow registers with me because she seems to have all of her big brain engaged with whomever she’s interviewing. Of course she goes easy on lefties and hard on their opponents, but even a few lobs are more tolerable than King’s non-engagement. You get the idea he’s thinking about his alimony payments.

Or maybe he’s thinking about his replacement. The story speculates on who might replace him. Katie Couric? Eliot Spitzer? But then, once again, comedy gold:

Mr. King has said in the past that his first choice for a successor is the entertainer Ryan Seacrest.

I’d watch that if he wore suspenders.

OK, another morning when I’d like to get the exercise over with early — it’ll be mid-80s before too long. I leave you with a bit of bloggage:

The non-link between vaccines and autism, as explained by Dr. Andrew Wakefield… in comics! Via Metafilter, where a commenter adds the Jenny McCarthy Body Count.

And may I just say, yesterday’s comment thread was fantastic? I never knew that about Austin Peay, the college whose name rhymes with “pee.” Basset, last night: Back in the, I don’t know, late 60s or early 70s the star of Austin Peay’s basketball team was one Fly Williams… which led to the cheer, “The Fly is open! Let’s go, Peay!” You guys are great.

And now I’m off. Rumor has it Greg Kinnear is shooting a movie in the Farms, so I’m off on bike patrol to gawk.

Hey, pals. I spent the morning writing a column for GrossePointeToday.com, which some of you might enjoy. Here’s the top:

For many years, center-left people like me knew who the bad guys were — the religious right. We learned to recognize their code words, their iterations and mash-ups of “family,” “values,” “faith” and “life.” (They, in turn, knew ours — “diversity,” “tolerance,” “embrace” and the all-important “people of” usage.) I suppose, in the back of my mind, I knew the pendulum would swing away from them someday, but as long as they could get respect from the people who spent my tax money, the watchword was vigilance.

What I didn’t expect was the emotion I felt watching the strange, bumbling comedy at the War Memorial Thursday night (March 25), where a little-known Grosse Pointe Farms group called Point of Relevance sponsored a presentation by one Linda Harvey, a Columbus, Ohio woman whose group, Mission: America, seeks — quoting from their website here — “to equip Christians with current, accurate information about cultural issues such as feminism, homosexuality, education and New Age influences.” Harvey came expecting to speak to the like-minded Point of Relevance. But they were outnumbered by a crowd of my people, scrambled via social networks and e-mail, holding signs and itching for a confrontation.

As a journalist, I’ve seen many such divided crowds, taunting one another. But I’ve never looked at the other side and felt this: Pity.

You can read the rest here. I’m not much for the cross-posting thing — most of you live elsewhere, I know — but I can’t be two people, people!

Besides, I have some good bloggage today:

Hank found a photo from the White House’s Flickr stream, and got a pretty good blog post out of it. It’s of special interest to those of you who write, for the living or for the love. If you follow his link back to the original on Flickr, you can blow the photo up huge and examine it in detail. It’s worth it.

But don’t stay there — on the White House’s photostream — too long. You can get lost in there.

This letter, “from a doctor who will not comply,” is racing around the internets. I’m calling b.s. on it. From the too-generic name (Linda Johnston, MD) to the suspicious lack of any identifying details (city or even state of practice), to the casual use of questionable statistics (Obamacare creates 150 new government agencies), to the oddly literate, flowing prose, the letter is pegging my meter. The time-stamp on my Facebook call on this was about 8:30 a.m. I’ll apologize if I’m wrong, but if I’m right, I want credit.

And while we’re on the subject of doctors, real ones, I know the one in this NYT story today. Mike Mirro is a cardiologist in Fort Wayne, one of the very very best, and this story is important. Read.

With that, I’m out. Have a great weekend.

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.