A few weeks ago I got an e-mail from the folks at Pom Wonderful, the super-expensive fruit juice in the Mae West bottle. Apparently they trawl the web looking for food bloggers, and the souffle post came up in the net. They asked if they could send me a free case. I didn’t reply. But I did Google the woman’s name on the e-mail, to see what turned up, and what ho, there were several blog posts that ran something like this: “The Pom Wonderful arrived today! It sure is delicious! Yum yum! Thanks, Pom Wonderful!”

Welcome to the future of journalism. Which is a lot like the past, only maybe with a bit more transparency.

Here’s how the 20th century Journalism Ethics 101 class would analyze my offer from Pom Wonderful: Turn it down. I’m not a food blogger, and even if I were, if I wanted to write about pomegranate juice, I should buy my own. That way, my opinions are not influenced by the fact they sent me a case free of charge — about $22 for an eight-pack of eight-ounce bottles.

In reality, it doesn’t work like that, mainly because companies don’t ask first. If I had an office with a publicly listed address, I’m sure they would have just sent it with a press release, and once it’s in the office, it’s too much trouble to send back. Every newsroom in America gets piles of freebies, most of slight value, sent in the hopes the product might turn up, by name, in a story down the road. Among the things in my own house that I didn’t pay for: An apron with the “Hell’s Kitchen” logo on it, a blue bowl and a single spoon (part of a cereal promotion), T-shirts galore, an airline-size bottle of Chivas Regal, books, bookazines, oh my the list goes on.

Different newsrooms have different distribution policies for this stuff. In Columbus, it all went into a drawer, and when we had enough for everyone in the department to get one or two pieces, we drew lots on a Friday and distributed it amongst ourselves. In Fort Wayne, whoever opened the mail would stand up and say, “Anyone want a bowl and a spoon?” or “Anyone want a banana bread mix?” or “Anyone want a T-shirt?” and if no one said yes, it went into a pile and either found a home later or went into the trash. The other paper held a semiannual sale, and the money went to a good cause, or maybe the newsroom flower fund, I can’t recall. Later, we had an editor who thought that, ethically, she was beyond reproach, and the rule became: All gifts, no matter how small and crappy, must be donated to charity. And so every quarter or so someone would have to drag a box of junk, most of it useless, to the United Way office. Sources say they rarely smiled when they saw us coming, as I doubt there was a pressing need among their client base for giant buttons that played the Purdue fight song.

You may notice something: No one ever opened the bowl-and-spoon box and said, “Wow! Great idea! Let’s do a story on cereal!” or “You know, this banana bread mix is just the thing for the busy homemaker with no time to smash ripe bananas! Get right on it, cub reporter!” It is safe to say we are thoroughly jaded about this crap. (Although mainly that’s a matter of degree. I’ve been on fashion-writer outings where there were drawings for diamond jewelry or designer clothes, and there was no jadedness there, I regret to say.)

I should pause here to note that this applies only to newspapers. Magazines are another breed of cat, particularly fashion magazines, which have a much cozier relationship with their advertisers. We all saw “The Devil Wears Prada.” I’m told the movie oversold the legendary Vogue sample closet, but only in the sense that it implied staffers were free to plunder it at will. They are not.

Anyway, here’s my point, a few hundred words later: Bloggers, some of whom are amateur journalists, are the new recipients of the banana bread mix and pomegranate juice, and some of whom don’t know you’re supposed to disclose how it came into your kitchen, as well as noting that they didn’t give it to you because they like your smiling face. Someone on Facebook noted the other day that the travel-writing game is already filling with professional PR people who have no qualms whatsoever about recommending a resort with crummy food or dirty bathrooms, because hey, they got a free vacation. It’s buyer beware all over again.

That said, there’s a restaurant in Sterling Heights here with a signature drink — the pomegranate martini. God, is it good. I don’t know what they make it with.

Bloggage:

There’s a new resident at Coozledad’s Vegetarian Farm and Petting Zoo, and lordy, is he ever cute. I think his difficulty coming into the world was due to that adorable Disneyesque punkin head of his. Also, watch the YouTube link, just in case you’re called upon to assist a laboring Holstein.

Roy drops in on Brother Dreher, and finds his readers discussing where to move when they abandon Obama’s Amerikkka. Remember all that right-wing jeering about Alec Baldwin’s threat to move to Canada? Yeah, me too.

Oh, and just in case you missed this when Moe posted it in comments over the weekend: Extreme shepherding. Really entertaining video.

Me, I’m off to edit citizen journalism. Because I’m crazy that way.

From the Fort comes word my alma mater just instituted a six percent pay cut, as well as a sharp reduction in 401K matches. I don’t know any more than that — this information was gleaned through instant message — but if true, they got off easy. Alan quipped, “So, they give back three years of raises,” a comment on the miserly wages paid there, but we’ve been gone five years, and I’d place a fair-size bet that meets-standards raises haven’t even seen two percent over the last few years. Coupled with the usual sharp increases in health-care cost sharing, it’s perfectly reasonable to assume that a person who hasn’t been promoted in the last few years has been going backward for some time now. This is just an acceleration. Well, as we always told the job applicants: The cost of living is so low! And many of the groceries will triple your coupons!

What’s more interesting to me is the 401K match. We know we’re responsible for our own retirement, that we must save throughout our careers to avoid eating Cat Food Surprise in our golden years. Fortunately, tax policy favored the 401K, and our employers sweetened the deal by tossing in a modest match. I’ve heard tell of media companies that matched 100 percent of your 401K contribution, but I never worked for one. The best I ever got was 50 percent if you saved six percent, and nothing after that — three percent, basically.

At a small paper in the Knight Ridder chain, people moved through pretty quickly, and it was interesting to hear how the policies varied from paper to paper. I was amazed to hear that at some places, the 401K match was made in company stock, no exceptions. Given that you can’t spend your 401K before retirement without paying a stiff penalty, and given that the company’s stock is now worthless, I wonder how the people who were stuck with that deal are faring, particularly considering the rest of the package is worth a lot less, too.

Considering how much crap you take doing the work of journalism — I’ve been called everything from a bleeding cunt to a fucking jackal — you’d hope the compensation package would at least ease some of the pain, the way it does in, oh, the legal profession. You would be wrong. Any half-bright bartender or waitress can out-earn a college-educated reporter in many media markets.

So, anyway, my sympathies to my former colleagues. Here’s hoping the cuts are at least across-the-board, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they weren’t. You have to pay for the talent at the top, after all.

So. The Detroit newspapers got another data dump from the Kwame Kilpatrick text-message archives, and it’s the same old story, underlined: Heedless, immature, power-drunk young politician sees world as his oyster, acts accordingly. He is enabled by everyone he comes in contact with, including his mother, who helpfully reminds him YOU ARE CHOSEN, all-caps, and I don’t think she was using “chosen” as a synonym for “elected.” His wife was no shrinking violet, either:

Part of that alleged sense of entitlement was revealed when first lady Carlita Kilpatrick complained she wasn’t getting a city-leased Lincoln Navigator fast enough. “Any word on my Navigator?” she asked in a June 12, 2002, text message. The city’s leasing of a Lincoln Navigator for Kilpatrick’s wife became a major controversy. By Sept. 18, 2002, the mayor’s wife still hadn’t gotten the Navigator, and asked “Can I get my truck before the 2004s (models) are out?”

Well, I guess they all learned their lesson. Screw up, cost the city millions, do a little jail time (which serves as a weight-loss program) and then graduate to a fine, six-figure job with a staunch local supporter (in a Sun Belt city, so you can get that fresh-start thing working). I have a new ambition in life: To screw up like Kwame. Maybe I’d enjoy a warmer climate.

Rhinoviruses continue to lay me low. It’s concentrated between my chin and clavicle, so I spend my days rasping, croaking and, of course, complaining. However, I still have work to do, so any bloggage today will have to come from you.

I have a very busy day that hits the ground running before 9 a.m. and won’t quit for about 48 to 72 additional hours, and may actually stretch beyond that. (Coffee, be my Rock.) A few things you can discuss today, without my benign moderating presence:

1) Paul Harvey. Couldn’t stand the guy. Everybody says, “Yeah, but he was a great broadcaster.” Woo. OK, then. Still couldn’t stand the guy.

2) “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” about to leave the nightstand and return to the library. I finished it over the weekend, and had that strange experience of a book I really, really despise that is still, nevertheless, a page-turner. You keep turning pages because you can’t believe how awful it is, what fresh assaults on logic and language will be found in the next chapter. The language problems are forgivable; the novel was translated from Swedish, and it has a strange history — the author died “shortly after delivering the manuscript,” the jacket copy says. Perhaps, in Sweden, when the author is dead, it’s considered bad form to actually edit his manuscript, because that’s where the outrage is, in the amount of prose in this hefty volume that’s simply screaming for the red pencil. For example. Here’s a journalist sitting down to research a sprawling family history:

The family consisted of about a hundred individuals, counting all the children of cousins and second cousins. The family was so extensive that he was forced to create a database in his iBook. He used the NotePad programme (www.ibrium.se), one of those full-value products that two men at the Royal Technical College had created and distributed as shareware for a pittance on the Internet. Few programmes were as useful for an investigative journalist. Each family member was given his or her own document in the database.

What the hell? Is that logorrhea, or a product placement?

Warning: The book is called the first volume of a trilogy. Given that, in 465 pages, we encounter serial murder, sexual sadism, torture, rape, Nazis, muckraking journalism, international crimes of high finance and other pulpy shenanigans, I can scarcely imagine what volumes II and III might reveal. Shudder.

3) Go immediately to the “This American Life” website and download the podcast of last week’s show, “Bad Bank.” It’s a companion piece to two others I’ve touted here before, “The Giant Pool of Money,” (about the mortgage meltdown) and “Another Frightening Show About the Economy” (about the credit freeze), and nowhere will you get a better glimpse at why we’re in the fix we’re in, and how it might be repaired. (Bad news: It isn’t. Yet.) Radio doesn’t compete for Pulitzers and TAL already has a Peabody, but they, and Public Radio International, should win some sort of major award for these reports, which are truly heroic explanatory journalism. Maybe a lamp in the shape of a woman’s leg.

A friend, a fellow newspaper journalist, wrote me the other day, “Sometimes I panic. Sometimes I think: What an amazing time to be alive.” Me, too.

4) Another hazard of houses standing empty.

5) Via Playboy, of all places, a credible analysis of yet another “grassroots” movement, in this case Rick Santelli’s tea party movement. Speaking of which: Scenes you couldn’t make up if you tried.

6) Finally, a link I’ve been meaning to post for ages. Sometime last year the New York Times began including a daily recipe on their Health section web page, called, duh, Recipes for Health. After several months, there’s now quite an archive, and it’s sortable by main ingredient, which really comes in handy when you’ve got a lot of something and no particular ideas about what to do with it. I’ve made several dishes, and have only been disappointed by one — the beet risotto did not come out a cute Pepto-Bismol pink, but a disappointing muddy color. This is a pretty good percentage with me, and these last few weeks of trying to eat better, I’m turning to it more often. Bookmark and explore.

And that’s it for me. For now.

We haven’t had a food post for a while, have we? Here it is, Fat Tuesday, so let’s have one. What’s For Dinner used to be a common topic here at NN.C, as you old-timers can attest. Occasionally I get an e-mail: Nance, what’s for dinner lately? I’m out of ideas. Well, I am, too. My cooking took a turn when we moved here, and a) we could no longer count on Alan’s presence at the dinner table, given the vicissitudes of morning newspaper production schedules; and b) Kate stubbornly refused to grow out of her toddler tastes, and continued to eat maybe seven foods. I decided life was too short to worry too much about this nonsense, and made a sandwich. FTW.

I think maybe I just needed to walk in the wilderness for a while, because lately I’ve been making my way back. It occurs to me that unless I want to put on five pounds a year indefinitely, ultimately ending up on one of those electric scooters at the grocery store, I should change my ways. The Mark Bittman book is illuminating a new path. I’m trying to simplify, un-process, give meat a detour more often than not and cook a bit healthier, but at the end of the day I want a little reward for all those whole grains and fresh fruit during the day.

So last night I decided butter is proof of God’s love, and decided to show the proper gratitude. I made a spinach soufflé and some oven-roasted potatoes with rosemary from our own bush, struggling through winter in the sunny window. And you know what? It was goooood:

Husband, in background, finds Field & Stream more interesting.

People are terrified of soufflés, and for no good reason. They’re much easier than you think, not nearly as tricky as you’ve been led to believe. If you can beat egg whites and fold them, you too can have a lovely entree consisting mainly of air. Truth be told, I prefer my soufflés of chocolate and for dessert, but for a light supper, it’s hard to beat ’em. Maybe with a little mushroom sauce over the top. Next time.

And while we’re on the subject of pleasures and indulgences, let me recommend the second book on the nightstand at the moment, Laura Lippman’s “Hardly Knew Her.” I know Ms. L has written short fiction before, but this is the first I’ve read of it, and I have to say, I’m impressed. These stories are wry and noir-y, concerned with a corner of crime fiction that rarely gets its full measure of attention — troublesome women. And not just the femme fatale in the fitted suit and veiled hat, either, but far more interesting ones, soulless party girls and over-the-hill sexpots and gold-diggers deprived of their full measure of gold. Oh, and the suburban prostitute-masquerading-as-a-lobbyist, and also the one who screws her contractor to get the little extras out of a home reno, and…you get the idea. Read and enjoy.

Pals, I have a whole list of supplemental readings I was going to post for comment, most on the decline of newspapers and some suggestions for saving them (or their newsrooms), but as I started to do so I realized I have utterly lost my enthusiasm for the discussion. Maybe it’s just today, on this fine, sunny, cold morning that still holds the promise of spring. Or maybe I’ve reached my limit. Anyway, not today. Today is a day for Mardi Gras beads and jelly doughnuts and last splurges before 40 days of Lent. (An agnostic though I may be, I retain the cultural patterns of my Catholic upbringing.) Can we muster some bloggage? Perhaps:

You couldn’t go to the Oscar parties, but Hank and his colleague Amy could, and bring you a full report. It doesn’t sound like that much fun:

Barward, we are thrust against the hardened chest of Gerard Butler (King Leonidas from “300”). Thrust again. Thrust once more. We can’t help it, buddy — we are being pushed from behind by . . . Oliver Stone and his Just for Men eyebrows. It’s a manwich. For some reason, Butler decides to go find his grog someplace else.

One minute these guys are all bluster and go-ahead-knock-it-off, the next they turn into pants-wetting, weak-kneed pansies: Rick Santelli vs. his imagination.

Sean Penn doesn’t need screenwriters — he comes up with his own killer lines, and at parties, no less.

And with that, I’m off. Go make yourself a soufflé.

It’s hard to know how much of this is honest journalism and how much is the cynical kind, perpetrated by editors looking for buzz, so you can take all this with as much salt as you wish, but.

First, New York magazine:

The long-anticipated war of the world versus Wall Street has erupted, and we non–Wall Street New Yorkers are caught right in the line of fire. On the one hand, how can we not share the populist outrage over bankers’ squandering a decade’s worth of profits and still taking bonuses as they bag federal bailouts? Most Americans just read about these guys; we got shouldered aside at the bar by them, and watched their bonuses push real-estate prices beyond our reach. We have greater cause than anyone to loathe the bastards.

On the other hand, until recently, America’s losses were our gains. Those Wall Street bonuses, in part, went to cover taxes that kept our streets clean and safe. They underwrote charity and culture. They supported restaurants, shops, and galleries. They paid the wages of cabdrivers, maids, doormen, and hairdressers. All New Yorkers stand to lose a lot in the austerity plans being imposed upon Wall Street by Washington.

Hmm, yes, I guess that’s true. All New Yorkers will lose a lot if deprived of the rich crumbs that fell from Wall Street’s table. Regrettably, the damage wrought by these greedheads is not confined to New York, and in fact spreads all over the world, to a lot of places where you cannot enjoy the New York City Ballet and related cultural luxuries. And so my sympathy is the proverbial world’s tiniest violin, playing a sad, sad song.

Oh, and please: Do not tell me that not being able to afford a Manhattan apartment is somehow equal to owning a Michigan house actively sending real dollars down the toilet, in large part because of Wall Street’s criminal behavior. Just…don’t.

Next, the cheekier NYT Sunday Styles. Hed: You try to live on 500K in this town. You sense that a story sourced by an author of an “Upper East Side novel of manners,” real-estate agents and the editor of the New York Social Diary is trying to apply the needle:

Private school: $32,000 a year per student.

Mortgage: $96,000 a year.

Co-op maintenance fee: $96,000 a year.

Nanny: $45,000 a year.

We are already at $269,000, and we haven’t even gotten to taxes yet.

Oh, my. [Pause for thought.] You know, this story is just here to push my buttons. I decline to have my buttons pushed. If you’d like to bat it around in comments, fine, but include me out.

I’m disinclined to engage with Candace Bushnell’s thoughts on what taking the train over a chauffeured Town Car might say about a banker forced to do so, in part because I read this story today, too, and a similar one, from the New Yorker, on Friday. You can read it at that link, but you’ll have to register; a video distillation is here.) The New Yorker story is better, but longer, and takes a look at how Florida’s “Ponzi economy” was brought to a catastrophic halt by the mortgage debacle, how housing was the engine of a long train representing Florida’s linked businesses, and when the engine hit a wall, the subsequent derailment was felt all the way back to the caboose. Reporter George Packer talks to people all along the socioeconomic spectrum, all of whom are suffering varying degrees of calamity. It was, honestly, the most depressing thing I’ve read in a very long time, although I was cheered to see that the “we all must share the blame for this” rhetoric was called out a time or two. A St. Petersburg Times journalist said the blame for this disaster looks like an inverted pyramid, with Wall Street and politicians at the top, and I think that’s about right. Packer talks to a couple who never went subprime, never treated their house like a cash machine, never overspent on credit cards, just tried to eke out a living near the bottom of the economy, and they are now the ones saying things like, “Maybe I’m a bad person. That must be why this is happening to me.” This, Packer observes, is more penitence than it currently being shown in New York or Washington at the moment.

So that’s what you should read.

A bit of bloggage? OK, a bit:

When Jim Harrison wrote his wonderful essay, “Ice Fishing, the Moronic Sport,” he wasn’t kidding. Really:

The day began with fishermen setting down wooden pallets to create a bridge over a crack in the ice so they could roam farther out on the lake. But the planks fell into the water when the ice shifted, stranding the fishermen about 1,000 yards offshore.

One hundred thirty-four saved from their own stupidity, one dead. The day’s temperature: Just shy of 50 degrees. I only wish I was kidding.

My mother’s favorite cabaret singer died this weekend. My mother and thousands of gay men, that is.

Finally, I know I’m very tough on the world’s most overrated newspaper columnist, but in the tradition of even broken clocks being correct twice a day, I give you…(drumroll)…a Mitch Albom column I actually liked. Halley’s Comet will likely appear before this happens again.

Finally, is it just me, or does “Stimulus Package” sound like the title of a dirty movie? Just wondering.

Enjoy your week.

I took a vow around the beginning of the year, which I may have mentioned but probably haven’t: No more copyright infringement. I’ve decided information may want to be free, as the nitwit saying goes, but the people who gather, package, contextualize and otherwise prepare information for public use need to be paid, because otherwise? No more information. So I thought about it a while, and made myself a personal fair-use policy, which is:

I will quote no more than three or four paragraphs of someone else’s writing, and will always provide a link back to the original source. Sometimes I might stretch it to five (I did yesterday, on the Aeroflot story), but that’s rare. Some writers may make that difficult — hello, Mr. Albom, with your stupid one-sentence paragraphs — but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

No more copyrighted music in video pieces, except in short, incomplete pieces. I’ve decided that “short” = “less than 30 seconds,” although I think the legal standard might be less than that — 15 or 20. I’ll ask a lawyer the next time I see one (which may be for lunch today, if Michael’s not tied up). I used a piece of “Optimistic Voices,” from the “Wizard of Oz” soundtrack, in one of my auto-show videos, and cut it off at 29 seconds, which is probably too much, given that the song is only 1:11, but bear with me, because I’m groping toward a solution.

Photos are more problematic. Hot-linking — that is, providing a photo on one site by embedding a link that slurps it from another — is generally considered bad ‘net manners, on the grounds it’s bandwidth theft. I’ve done it in the past, but I’ve decided not to anymore. Wikipedia is very helpful in providing creative-commons pictures, as is Flickr, but honestly, I’m flummoxed more often than not. Presumably Yahoo news photos, which are out there with credit lines, are free to use; certainly everybody does so. But I try to avoid them, because it seems wrong somehow. (Violation of self-imposed rule coming in: One paragraph.)

All of these rules are imperfect and fluid, but I want it on the record that I’m trying. If the new-media economy is going to be based on theft, I want no part of it. I also freely acknowledge I’ve been a sinner in the past, but in the future I’m going to walk the path of righteousness. I’m also paying more attention to the discussion of these issues in the culture, because I’m hoping we see some resolution soon, either through peaceful negotiation (unlikely) or a blood-on-the-floor lawsuit (more likely). Which brings us to today’s news, that the Associated Press has filed suit against Shepard Fairey, described as an “L.A. street artist,” for his use of one of their photos as the basis for a poster you might recognize:

Fairey found Manny Garcia’s picture, he has acknowledged, through Google Images. Then he “remixed” it, as the fashionable term has it, and rode it all the way to the Smithsonian. Now AP is saying, um, no, and wants to be compensated for its source material.

I hope they win. I don’t want to see Fairey sued back to the Stone Age, but I’m growing weary of remixing. The remixers — Lawrence Lessig of Stanford University is the most prominent — pop up on every third talk show these days defending this sort of thing. Remixing is the doorway to the next generation of creativity, they say; free the content and let today’s Photoshop artists, video editors and other nimble manipulators of technology show us the bright, bright future.

In other news at this hour, the original Fairey Obama portrait was purchased for the distinctly old-media price of $75,000, payable to? Shepard Fairey.

Here’s what I want to hear from the remixing crowd: An argument that doesn’t include the phrase “increased exposure.” Because that, they say, is what should be keeping Manny Garcia warm at night, the fact that so many more people have seen his picture than would have before. I guess Garcia is supposed to pay his mortgage with exposure, too, but I’m not sure that’s quite legal tender yet. Some people may live for exposure, but I require regular cash injections. Lawrence Lessig can give his book away because he has a nice secure job at Stanford paying his bills. The AP can distribute its content because it has clients who pay for it. Fairey didn’t pay a dime. He needs to, now.

I’m not a total philistine on this; I mean, I get it. I understand sampling, and collage, and all the rest of it. But when those rappers in the ’80s sampled Van Halen and James Brown, they quickly met the law firms representing these earlier artists, and had to put some cash down in payment for those catchy hooks. I fully acknowledge that use of one piece of art in another can be beneficial to the original artist; I hear most of my new music these days in car commercials and the like. But as an amateur filmmaker I know that if we tried to put a Stevie Wonder song in one of our movies, we’d hear from Berry Gordy. (Someone did that for Zombie Night — used a Beck song in his movie. I asked him about it in the Q-and-A, and he said, “Well, I sent him a letter asking for it, and I haven’t heard back, so I guess I can use it until he says no.” Everyone snickered. That was about the time I started formulating my new policies.)

Copyright violation is theft. We may well need to revisit the old rules that no longer make sense in today’s digital world, but until the rules change, it’s still theft. For a harsher take on what happens when information wants to be free, see this NYT story, about the losing battle against digital piracy in Hollywood:

The files are surprisingly easy to find, partly because of efforts by people like Mohy Mir, the 23-year-old founder of the Toronto based video streaming site SuperNova Tube. The site, run by Mr. Mir and one other employee, allows anyone to post a video clip of any length. As the site has grown more popular, SuperNova Tube has become a repository for copyrighted content. On a recent day, the new movies “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” and “Taken” could easily be found on the site by following links from other sites, called “link farms,” which guide users to secret stashes of copyrighted content spread around the Web.

…The piracy problem, however, does seem to weigh on him. He removed a copy of the movie “Twilight” from his site after a reporter pointed it out to him recently. “I think about getting sued every day. If that happens it will definitely take us out of business,” he said.

Good. Take him out of business. When professional filmmakers are driven out of business by piracy, we can all watch YouTube videos of laughing babies. Can’t wait.

Anyway, that’s my policy and I’m sticking to it. Any thoughts?

Our lonely quest for accuracy remains unfinished, so let’s put this at the top of the blog today, so our vast and influential readership sees it, first thing:

A commode is not a toilet.

It’s true that the word is a euphemism for toilet in many places, including the American south. But the one purchased by ex-Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain for his office likely supported his tabletop cigar humidifier, a Baccarat crystal decanter, a solid-gold dildo or perhaps his latest golf trophy, but not his overpaid ass.

This is a commode:

Thanks, Wikipedia.

No one, including his editors, tells Mitch Albom anything other than “yes, sir” and “great column, sir!,” so we’ll write him off, and let him snicker, you can’t justify $35,000 for a commode — yes, a commode …

But David Brooks has the best editors money can buy, so what’s his excuse? Ahem:

Then there was John Thain, who was humiliated because it is no longer acceptable to spend $35,000 on a commode for a Merrill Lynch washroom.

The Wall Street Journal, run by well-paid journalists who presumably know their Louis Quinze from their Louis Seize, explained it very well a few days back, but still, the confusion persists.

The WSJ is good enough to provide the original itemized list of Thain’s office furnishings, and you’ll note the commode is for the reception area. Think about it.

And that will be our last word on the subject, until someone screws it up again.

While we’re on the subject of language, however, let’s take a look at what the ex-governor of Illinois is doing. Oh, look. He’s lashing out:

CHICAGO — Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich today lashed out at lawmakers who booted him from office, calling his removal a “hijacking.”

Someone is always lashing out in the newspaper. “Lashed out” is straight journalese, the language reporters and editors speak amongst themselves that no one else does. Let’s use the miracle of Google to see its awesome power of description:

Drunk George Tenet lashed out at Bush’s neocons…

Noam Schalit lashed out at Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his government on Wednesday…

Pictured: The moment Sharon Osbourne lashed out at reality show contestant…

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney lashed out Friday when quizzed about the flap over a landscaping crew working at his home…

Kanye lashes out at Britney’s return to VMA…

Lashing out is done so often in news stories, and describes such a wide range of behavior, that the term is effectively meaningless. Follow that link to Sharon Osbourne, and you’ll see a proper lashing out — she’s throwing a drink in some slut’s face. Whereas Mitt Romney, whom you wouldn’t think has a lashing-out bone in his body, got tagged after responding to a question with another question: “If I go to a restaurant, do I make sure all the waiters there are all legal? How would I do that?” the former Massachusetts governor asked.

Of course, the first is from the Daily Mail, the second from the uptight L.A. Times. When in doubt, always trust a Brit. They know their lashing.

So. Kwame Kilpatrick was sprung from the slam shortly after midnight this morning. Of course he had a security detail, ineptly described in the Freep as “self-important, well-dressed men,” but the writer gets a pass — he was on deadline. I’m amazed at the politics of security details in this town; it really seems to be a badge of honor. (The superintendent of schools gets security as part of the position’s compensation package.) Kwame in particular appears to love rolling like Suge Knight, which I always found amusing, because the guy played college ball and packed on the usual few dozen retirement pounds, and hardly looks like a handy mugging target. He likes multiple vehicles and a big carbon footprint — his private posse last night went for no fewer than five SUVs. I guess Fidel Castro gets more, but in a place like this, it just reads as TGFW. Too Ghetto for Words:

The security guys, some wearing bow ties and long coats, others with Bluetooth-like devices in their ears, made it seem like the ex-mayor would be getting into one vehicle parked illegally in front of the jail.

For 20 minutes before Kilpatrick appeared, they stood next to an open door and kicked at the icy snow piled on the curb. It was a bush-league feint reminiscent of the body-double stunt Kilpatrick’s Detroit Police Executive Protection Unit employed last year during one of the then-mayor’s court appearances.

Instead, Kilpatrick walked about 100 feet to the west and entered the Suburban.

Sigh. Well, politics at the other end of the American class spectrum doesn’t seem any prettier. I read the New Yorker’s story about the brief political career of Caroline Kennedy and came away with two conclusions: New York dodged a bullet, and Lawrence O’Donnell is a gold-plated asshole. You’d think we’d have moved past the era of Kennedy brown-nosing, but nooo. Here he is on the woman who did get the job:

Now Caroline Kennedy has had her moment and flubbed it. Paterson has appointed Kirsten Gillibrand, a second-term congresswoman from Hudson, near Albany. “Paterson has no comprehension of upstate New York, absolutely none, and has chosen someone better at representing cows than people,” Lawrence O’Donnell says. “What you have is the daughter of a lobbyist, instead of the daughter of a former President or the son of a former governor. This is the hack world producing the hack result that the hacks are happy with.”

Good god. Now there’s a lash-out.

OK, off to Gymville. I feel like shit, but I’m soldiering on. Have a better day than mine doubtless will be.

I had Sunday lunch at Lance Mannion’s rooftop aerie in Fort Wayne many many years ago, back when Lance was an assistant professor teaching freshman English at Ball State. Among the guests were a couple of his colleagues, and one told a hilarious story that Lance now has zero memory of:

A third English department colleague was having lunch at a McDonald’s in Indianapolis. He had just bitten into his Big Mac when a woman approached him and said, shyly, “You’re John Updike, aren’t you?” The guy telling the story mimed the action perfectly — the sandwich held to his mouth, the glance up at the woman standing next to the table — and the English professor’s reaction, which was to put the burger down, wipe his hands on a napkin, chew a bit to clear his mouth and then reply:

“Yes. Yes I am.”

The woman, needless to say, was delighted. John Updike! Eating at a McDonald’s in Indianapolis! What are the odds? About the odds of a man misidentified as a famous writer being an actual English professor with a deep familiarity with that writer’s work, that’s what, because he carried on a conversation with the woman for several minutes. She said things like, “I know most critics say (this book) is your best, but I always liked (that book) better,” and he replied, slyly “This is just between us, but (that book) is my favorite, too.” It turned out she had a copy of one of his novels with her, and presented it for signing, which he did, along with a warm personal note. By the time she excused herself, I’m sure she felt she’d had a Celebrity Brush With Greatness for the record books, the sort of thing you hope for when you spot one of your heroes out in the wild and almost never have. Now that we’ve entered a time when everybody has a blog, I’m Googling “‘john updike’ + mcdonald’s + indianapolis” to see if maybe that woman is sharing the story, but so far the only references I get are to Lance’s blog, when I prompted him to tell the story a few years back, and my own, when I alluded to it. It’s sort of suspicious that Lance had no memory of this story; I recall it bringing the house down that day, and now I’m wondering if it’s just a figment of my imagination. No. My imagination isn’t that inventive.

Some prime bloggage today. I have something you journalists are going to love. The rest of you will love it, too:

Rotary-dial phones! Those old modems with the cups! You’ll notice one of the participating papers was the Columbus Dispatch — that’s because the service provider for all this was Compuserve, based there. I can still summon the sight of the copy editor whose job it was to handle the upload, and Kirk will remember his name, but I don’t. I sent this to someone this morning, who replied: It’s like a slasher movie; THE INTERNET’S IN THE HOUSE!!!! GET OUT!!!! IT WANTS TO KILL YOU AND YOUR PROFESSION. Man, I’ll say.

Eric Zorn at the Chicago Tribune sends me a lot of love, and I don’t send enough of it back, but it’s not guilt that prompts me to recommend his bloggage of Blago, which has been truly inspired — from an over/under estimate on use of the word “people” in a particular interview (he set the bar at 23, which turned out to be waaaaay low, as the guv dropped the p-bomb 73 times), to this analysis of yet another set of pet phrases. This particular public embarrassment was made for blogging, and you could do far worse. Go see Eric today.

In the Department of Other Shoes, I hesitate to link to this because it won’t mean anything to readers outside of Detroit, and those who know about it don’t need the prompt, but: As usual, the sex scandal is only the appetizer for the money scandal, as we are finding out in regard to city administration. This place makes Chicago look like Minnesota.

Short shrift today, but we’re in the midst of another snowstorm — it does, literally, look like Minnesota at the moment — and I have to go deal with it. New question: Will the snowblower fling the dog poo from the driveway, left there because the snow’s too deep for the little guy to find his usual grassy spots? I’ll keep you posted.

Here’s how the morning was scheduled: Take Kate to school, then home to repack the mojo bag (mobile journalism), swing by the mammography center for the annual you-know-what, then break free in time to catch the unveiling of the third-generation Prius at Cobo. And it all would have worked if there hadn’t been a fire alarm at the cancer hospital where the mammography center is located, which threw the proverbial monkey wrench into things. But it was probably useful, as there’s nothing like standing out in 20-degree cold with a bunch of cancer patients to make you decide things like Priuses (Prii?) aren’t all that important.

I considered bagging the m’gram entirely; I hadn’t been called yet, and so wasn’t in the position of the woman who’d gone in just ahead of me, left standing in her winter jacket over the gown, her bra and shirt in a plastic bag. But I couldn’t leave the company, and I’m not sure why. There was a woman trying to calm a young girl who obviously had a host of serious disabilities, quietly having a panic attack over the honking of the alarm. There was an old man in a wheelchair, heaped with blankets. And last out of the door serving our stairway was a young woman holding a baby, escorted by two others who were carrying an IV stand. The tube ran into the heaps of blankets and fleece keeping the two of them warm, and I didn’t know who it was attached to, but from the way the little party was acting, I suspect it was the baby. Do babies get chemo? Is it even possible for a kid not even a year old?

It cleared my head, certainly. The alarm was silenced after about 15 minutes, and after about five more, we were able to return to our individual appointments, but by then the schedule was FUBAR. I was freed from the Big Squeeze exactly 15 minutes before the Prius was scheduled for unveiling, and even I can’t drive that fast.

Fortunately, others were there. The new Prius looks a lot like the old Prius, but it’s supposedly bigger, faster, this-er and that-er.

As a consolation prize, how about a Tesla?

This is the Silicon Valley supercar, the all-electric totally hot totally green sports car. You need Steve Jobs’ salary to buy it — it costs well over $100K — and, well, it’s had a few problems. Daniel Lyons wrote about the car in Newsweek a few weeks back:

Tesla Motors didn’t just set out to build an electric car. It set out to teach Detroit a lesson. Back in 2003, when these guys from Silicon Valley were launching their company, they didn’t apologize for knowing next to nothing about the automotive industry. In fact, they took pride in this. They were rebels, disruptors, technogeeks operating at Internet speed—and they were convinced they could do better than the lumbering, clueless Big Three. Tesla’s lead investor, Elon Musk, a charismatic Web entrepreneur who made a fortune as a cofounder of PayPal, last year boasted to BusinessWeek that “Silicon Valley is the best in the world at everything it does.”

They must sell hubris in bulk at Whole Foods. Today, the Tesla, in Lyons’ words, is:

…a classic Silicon Valley product—it’s late and over budget, has gone through loads of redesigns, still has bugs and, at $109,000, costs more than originally planned. Tesla’s first 40 roadsters went out of the factory with a drivetrain that needs to be replaced. (Tesla will do the rip-and-replace for free.) Its second car, a sedan, has been delayed until 2011. Tesla, based in San Carlos, Calif., has raised $150 million and burned through almost all of it, plus millions more put down by customers in the form of deposits (the company won’t give an exact figure). Now, hit by the downturn, Tesla has laid off 20 percent of its staff, closed its Detroit office and borrowed money to stay afloat.

“The best in the world at everything it does.” I love people willing to say things like that on the record. You just know the followup stories will be even better.

Jalopnik really is the go-to source for auto-show blogging, at least for photos. (The Free Press and News provide a more holistic picture for Detroiters.) You can see the foxy model from my picture yesterday on Jalopnik’s, taken at the reveal of the Maserati Quattoporte. (Quattroporte means “four models.” No, wait. Let me check.)

I don’t know if I’ll make it back downtown after all. Things wrap up tomorrow at lunchtime, and then it’s Industry Days, the Charity Preview and finally the hoi polloi gates open Saturday.

A few people have asked about the pictures. Yes, they were taken with my new camera. (If you click the photos, it takes you to the Flickr page, which tells you the exact model, and if you click that, you get taken to another page that gives you everything from the price range to a selection of other Flickr pix taken with the same model.) Yes, most of them were shot on point-and-shoot settings. (I did a few on the Sports setting, to raise the shutter speed for moving rollouts.) Yes, it takes very nice pictures, but — don’t fail to consider the show floor is engineered to produce beautiful pictures, with artful lighting, lovely staging and an army of polishers who stand ready to banish any dust mote that dare show its face. Which is to say the camera is great but it’s not just the camera.

OK. I still have some paid work to do today, so I’d best get to it. A good afternoon to all. Be back whenever.

I’m not an unqualified Christopher Hitchens fan, but I found myself nodding along with his column in the current Vanity Fair, pegged to the 20-year anniversary of the ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses.” His nut sentence is this:

I thought then, and I think now, that this was not just a warning of what was to come. It was the warning. The civil war in the Muslim world, between those who believed in jihad and Shari’a and those who did not, was coming to our streets and cities.

It’s an interesting piece, and stirs a lot of memories; I haven’t given Rushdie much thought since he emerged from hiding a while back. I haven’t read him, and so my mixed salad of known-facts about the guy is mostly from Page Six — his apparently bottomless thirst for hot babes, plastic surgery on his droopy lids and, of course, what I remember from 1989. Pat Buchanan was one of the sneering conservatives who said, essentially, big deal, calling him a “trendy leftist” who would, “if the ayatollah has his way,” hear “the swish of a scimitar” before departing for eternity. The rest of the column was padded out with finger-wagging at a writer who dared to criticize a religion. Hitchens recalls that was a common reaction on the right, while on the left was mainly fear, until Susan Sontag wrangled PEN to his defense — and it took some wrangling. Arthur Miller is named by Hitchens as one of those who preferred to remain silent until shamed into speaking up.

I recall damp, tedious, writer-ly sort of protests, public readings of the book and one of those “I am Spartacus” displays for the cameras in New York City. I remember Lance Mannion, then my friend in Fort Wayne, said Bush the Elder should proclaim that any move on Rushdie would lead to us bombing Qom. (Lance, I confess: I was taken aback.) Mostly I remember being bewildered by any religion that could lead to those angry, screeching protests we saw around the globe at the time. Well, I guess we learned, didn’t we?

The most depressing thing about Hitchens’ column is how effective the fatwa was. Rushdie lives, to be sure, but others connected to the book were killed by Muslim lunatics, and even today, the mere threat of similar violence can loosen the sphincters of every editor and executive producer in earshot. I was writing my Big Long Essay About Newspapers at the time of the Danish cartoon blow-up. My ex-editor in chief was quoted by her editorial-page editor explaining her refusal to print the cartoons or let the ed-page editor link to them on his blog: “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.” Oh, snap! Somewhere Ben Bradlee is jealous.

Well, anyway — a good read.

Sorry for the late arrival today. It was a sleep-deficit catchup morning, which means I’m already behind. While we’re on the subject of the media, however: I had to force myself to read this blog entry about a certain blonde huckster with a very large Adam’s apple and her battle with a quote-news-unquote department, but I’m glad I did, even though it’s a Department of the Obvious sort of thing. (The headline is “grow a backbone” instead of “grow a pair” because it’s from Conde Nast and some pottymouth blogger.)

Now, off to shovel snow. Lance Mannion, stop by to help! We’ll discuss Rushdie!