If you’ve thrown a trout at me lately, or challenged me to match wits in the there/their/they’re test, or compared taste in books and movies, you’ve probably not heard back. I’m getting acquainted with the Ignore button on Facebook. I’m thinking of ignoring Facebook entirely. Don’t take it personally.

I’ve just about decided I’m too old to fully understand the Face (as the kids are calling it), and for once, that’s not a bad thing. I’d rather read a book; pity the soul who’d choose to spend that time on Facebook. Before I joined, I asked people why I needed to, and they all boiled down to “because you can keep in touch with all your friends.” Well, I can keep in touch with them now, and I don’t have to give up my privacy. I was finally convinced by a fellow journalist, who said he used the Face to get a full news cycle jump on the competition for a breaking story. I’m all for that, sure. But once I joined, then I had to learn to use it. The next thing I knew I was adding applications, lobbing Wall posts back and forth and otherwise wasting time. Just what the internet needs: Another way to waste time.

Lately the apps writers have been more aggressive. Someone challenges you to a trivia test, you take it, and to get your results, you have to pass a page inviting your friends to take it, too. I generally unselect everybody and pass it by, but lately they’ve been requiring me to pick a minimum number. Screw that. So: Ignore. Ignore, ignore, ignore. (Like all resolutions, I have problems keeping this one. Added a friend this morning.)

If anyone knows a secret about the Face that I’m missing, I’m interested.

Linkishness:

Via Eric Zorn: A great This American Life piece on the Jerry Springer you don’t know. Even if you think you did know him — and many Ohioans do — there’s almost guaranteed to be something here you don’t. A wonderful listen. Click on “full episode” and listen in QT.

I missed this in yesterday’s Freep — an amazing tale of bureaucratic heavy-handedness, or why you should keep up with what the kids are drinking these days. Detroit authorities snatch a UM professor’s 7-year-old away to foster care because the kid was seen drinking a Mike’s Lemonade at a Tigers game. The father said he didn’t know it was alcoholic (and I believe him).

Short shrift today, but deal — it’s 34 degrees outside and I have work to do.

This is something I read in Sunday’s NYT magazine; the story was about Moody’s bond- and security-rating service:

To get why (Moody’s stratospheric growth) is impressive, you have to think about all that determines whether a mortgage is safe. Who owns the property? What is his or her income? Bundle hundreds of mortgages into a single security and the questions multiply; no investor could begin to answer them. But suppose the security had a rating. If it were rated triple-A by a firm like Moody’s, then the investor could forget about the underlying mortgages. He wouldn’t need to know what properties were in the pool, only that the pool was triple-A — it was just as safe, in theory, as other triple-A securities.

Over the last decade, Moody’s and its two principal competitors, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch, played this game to perfection — putting what amounted to gold seals on mortgage securities that investors swept up with increasing élan. For the rating agencies, this business was extremely lucrative. Their profits surged, Moody’s in particular: it went public, saw its stock increase sixfold and its earnings grow by 900 percent.

By providing the mortgage industry with an entree to Wall Street, the agencies also transformed what had been among the sleepiest corners of finance. No longer did mortgage banks have to wait 10 or 20 or 30 years to get their money back from homeowners. Now they sold their loans into securitized pools and — their capital thus replenished — wrote new loans at a much quicker pace.

Mortgage volume surged; in 2006, it topped $2.5 trillion. Also, many more mortgages were issued to risky subprime borrowers. Almost all of those subprime loans ended up in securitized pools; indeed, the reason banks were willing to issue so many risky loans is that they could fob them off on Wall Street.

But who was evaluating these securities? Who was passing judgment on the quality of the mortgages, on the equity behind them and on myriad other investment considerations? Certainly not the investors. They relied on a credit rating.

You may have to read this a few times to absorb it. Go ahead. When you’re ready, come back and ask yourself how often you’ve heard someone of late say, “The mortgage mess is very simple — people didn’t pay their mortgages.” I think of this as the Stupid Simple Meme. A SSM reduces a complex issue to something that can be fit on a bumper sticker, and conveniently transfers 100 percent of the blame to the most powerless saps on the stage.

The bankers? They were just doing what comes nacherly — making money. How can we blame a business for making money? That’s what businesses do! And if they did it by churning fees, by ignoring the simplest due diligence in vetting loan applications, by marketing through outright lies? Details, details. The bad people are the ones who didn’t pay their mortgages.

The disaster in New Orleans? It was the fault of the people who chose to live below sea level, and the deaths were a natural result of people who simply refused to leave. (Are you listening, the Netherlands?) Granted, not everyone had Ashley Morris yelling in their ear for the last three years, but I’m still amazed at how many people shrug their shoulders at what happened there, who say it was simply inevitable, an act of God, something no levee could have held back.

(In case you think I’m only singling out right-wing Simple Stupids, the left has them, too: Remember “the cure for homelessness is housing”? Yeah, even 20 years ago it seemed a little pat.)

I have a new rule: Whenever anyone says, “It’s really very simple…” about a complicated problem, I stop listening.

Anyway, why bother? VRSA is going to get us all, and remember, folks: It came…from…Michigan! Mm-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.

(What is VRSA, you ask? Why, it’s MRSA, only with a V, for Very Very Very Scary.)

Actually, that story is worth reading, if only for yet another fascinating Detroit factoid:

Metro Detroit has a history of antibiotic resistance. Illegal drug users 20 to 30 years ago injected antibiotics with heroin in a misguided effort to avoid getting contaminated by dirty needles. As a result, many local bacteria developed resistance to penicillin and its relatives, such as methicillin.

Can you tell it’s Grumpy Monday around these parts? The weather has turned — and just as the redbuds were emerging, dammit — and we’re promised two-thirds of a week when we’ll be lucky to see 50 degrees, joy oh joy. We spent the last day of mild temperatures opening the cottage, which was both uneventful (no squirrels came down the chimney and decomposed under the pillow, like last year). Unfortunately, the shared dock has become a real problem. What was originally agreed upon as a sensible policy — two boats per cottage, back when a boat was an outboard with a 10-horse motor on the back — is now ridiculous. When did a recreating family of four come to need a ski boat, a pontoon and two Jet-Skis? A pox on all their houses; when gas goes to $5 a gallon maybe we can have a little water to actually swim in. I kept my head down, raked leaves and scrubbed things. There’s something about cleaning that empties the head and calms the spirit. Add a leaf fire, and things get just about perfect.

Bloggage? Oh, a little:

A few weeks ago I wondered what would happen to a newspaper if you took away paper, ink, trucks, Teamsters and the like. Answer: The Capital Times of Madison, Wis., which becomes an online-only paper very soon. Future: Very very murky. (This was the plan for my alma mater, derailed when Knight Ridder derailed itself. Never happened, but I will still watch this transformation with interest and, i fear, dread.)

The photo with this story kind of startled me, because as soon as I looked at it, before I even registered who was in it, I said, “Oh, huh. Indiana.” It has to do with the color and height of the cloud ceiling, something about that color of brown, I dunno. For a second I even thought it was Fort Wayne, and if pressed, I’d have said it was on Pontiac Street, beside the old Rialto theater. No, it was Anderson, but still: Indiana. Weird.

Not much, I know, but hey — it’s Monday. Give me some time to get rolling.

The Grosse Pointe News was sold last year, its longtime family ownership getting out while the lifeboats were still above the waterline. It wasn’t a very good paper when they owned it. It’s safe to say they set a pretty low bar. Our friend JohnC stopped subscribing when he couldn’t figure out what was happening at a big economic redevelopment project three blocks away from his house — they just couldn’t seem to explain it in a way he could understand. This was par for the course.

They also had lots of eccentric touches. There was a column on the editorial page, called Offering From the Loft. It was written in the first person. But there was no byline. Ever. It was the mystery column.

Needless to say, they honored the traditions of small-town journalism, the three Bs — boosterism, b.s. and bad writing. They sent one of their best guys to write about the Annie Leibovitz photography show at the Detroit Institute of Arts. This was his lead:

Sho’ as grits ain’t groceries theys doins t’night at Po’ Monkey’s Lounge.

Huh? Eight paragraphs of apostrophes later, here’s the nut:

Po’ Monkey’s place is among 70 of Leibovitz’s photographs gathered as “Annie Leibovitz: American Music” at the Detroit Institute of Arts through Jan. 7.

I’m being a little unfair. In the triple-A minors, they really don’t have the editors to rein in the writers who want to do stuff like this. But it isn’t too much to expect an editor who knows what the main issues are in a cluster of five municipalities encompassing 50,000 souls. I don’t expect a multi-part series on racism, but I do want them to stand up to the police departments once in a while. In return for their cooperation in sharing public documents, the police require that no names be attached to their reports. This isn’t entirely unjustified — there are many times when it would only cause more trouble for the involved parties, and there needs to be some sort of policy — but in the pages of this paper, it gets ridiculous. Last week’s police briefs contained a reference to police being called to “a high school on Vernier Road.” There is only one high school on Vernier Road. Like that.

After the paper was sold to a local businessman, I hoped a little fresh blood might enliven it a bit. Not a chance. It’s even worse. The Offering From the Loft might have been a puzzle, but at least it was written by (I think) a soul residing somewhere in this zip code. Now the editorial pages are full of syndicated material and canned op-eds from the Mackinac Institute for Public Policy, a conservative propaganda outfit. Local news coverage is weaker than ever; the police briefs are frequently the only real “news” in the paper, and yes, they’re still not identifying public buildings.

This was the lead on yesterday’s guest editorial, headlined “Broadcasting Rights Applied.” It’s by James H. Quello, a former FCC commissioner:

The recent Federal Communications Commission Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on localism released with the report and order regarding revised Form 355 — mandating more detailed programming and ascertainment than ever required before — represents a grossly untimely and blatant government mandated violations of the First Amendment.

Huh. It goes on:

The excessive burdensome additional governmental FCC requirements are counter to the urgent need to update regulatory and ownership rules of the past.

I read the whole thing twice. I have no idea what he’s talking about, or why I should care.

But there was still room for more suckitude, and it came in a King Features syndicated column from National Review editor Rich Lowry, who in 500 words or so tells us what Detroit’s problems are. In the interest of brevity, I’ll boil it down to one. Ready? “Liberalism.”

OK. The decline and fall of Detroit is a big, big story, an epic, encompassing so many titanic themes Cecil B. DeMille couldn’t get his arms around them. Economics, race, class, hubris, fear, greed — I could go on. It has defeated greater storytellers than Rich Lowry, but few have dismissed it with such a casual wave of the hand. I’m all for vigorous commentary on Detroit’s problems, especially by one of its closest neighbors. But is it too much to ask that it not be by a syndicated scold who, I’d be willing to bet, has never even set foot here? (It wouldn’t be a big bet; Detroit does a fair amount of convention business, and there’s a good chance Lowry overnighted at the RenCen at some point in the past. But the guy grew up in D.C., went to college in Virginia and lives in New York. So much for boots on the ground.)

But wait! Here’s a local column about Detroit’s problems. The writer objects to the mayor’s friends collecting money for his legal defense. She tries that “humor” thing all the blogs are about:

People who know me well, know I am a good cook and I enjoy it, so I deserve that $150,000 kitchen. I’m creating a “Karen’s Kitchen Kache Fund.” Anyone who wants to donate can.

It goes on from there. It doesn’t get better.

It’s unfortunate that this week’s issue arrived with the annual subscription-renewal mailing. It’s not expensive. I hate to cancel any newspaper subscription; they’re all struggling. But at some point, you have to make a statement about what you’re willing to pay for, and I’m drawing the line. I might reconsider if an editor can explain to me, in two concise sentences, what that FCC editorial was about and why they ran it. Otherwise, we’re letting it lapse here.

ADDED: No writer tackling Detroit should have to make weak jokes when reality is so much funnier. Note the photo. Note the caption. Note the goddamn TIARA.

OK. While we’re on the subject, a little more media bloggage:

I didn’t flip Wednesday night’s debate on until more than halfway through, so I missed the fun part. Thank God for Jon Stewart, because if he hadn’t had video I never would have believed it:

I mean, not even. I am ashamed for Charles Gibson. George Stephanopoulos isn’t really a journalist, but Gibson has no excuse. (And he’s a Michigan fellow! Argh.)

OK, time’s a-wasting. It’s a gorgeous day, and I’d like to enjoy it, even though it’s now Leaf Blower Season. My neighbors two doors down employ a lawn service that does every task with extra-loud leaf blowers. Seriously. They’ve been down there for a solid hour, drowning out the birds. Think I’ll ride by and glare at them.

Have a great weekend, all.

How important are facts in fiction? I guess it depends on the reader. Since I moved here I’ve been working my way through the vast canon of Detroit-based crime fiction, with varying levels of satisfaction. Loren Estleman’s Amos Walker series is almost uniformly a pleasure to read, although I’ve learned not to try to solve the mystery as I go along, because he’s going to pull a big rabbit out of his hat in the penultimate chapter, and you might as well just go along for the ride. Elmore Leonard is, of course, sublime from beginning to end. Donald Goines, not so much. Everyone else falls within that spectrum.

I’m currently sampling “Detroit Noir,” one of the Noir series, collections of short stories based in and around specific cities. (Sorry, Hoosiers, “Fort Wayne Noir” is not in the pipeline, although there is a Twin Cities Noir, which I hope features lots of killers in earflap hats.) It’s not bad, but it could have used another layer of editing, the kind that changes “Manoogian Manor” to “Manoogian Mansion” and corrects what was, for me, a total momentum-stopper in the one story set in Grosse Pointe, a line where “the sun dropped behind the Yacht Club.” I tried to figure if there was any point at which two people could sit in a car and watch the sun set behind the landmark Moorish watchtower, and came up with, “Not until the earth reverses its orbit.” The Yacht Club sits on the western edge of Lake St. Clair and enjoys some fabulous sunrises, but for sunsets, you’d have to be out in the water somewhere.

That kind of stuff drives me crazy. In “The Sporting Club,” Thomas McGuane sets his story in 1968 and has two characters go to the dedication of the Mackinac Bridge, which happened a decade previous. I see this stuff all the time. I know many authors aren’t journalists, and I know some ironing of the truth is permissible, but I wish they’d respect certain ironclad truths, including the construction dates of major pieces of infrastructure and the direction of the earth’s travel around the sun.

That is all.

“Detroit Noir” is pretty good, however. I hope there’s another one.

So how was your weekend? Mine went like this: Taxes errands taxes dinner w/JohnC taxes and now, soon, IRA deposits. I hate doing my taxes, but I love TurboTax, the only financial software I use. Every year, it gets better. It now inhales much of my 1099-misc data directly from my bank while I sit there filing my nails. My sole complaint: It keeps a running total of your payment/refund. At one point I owed $14,000, an utterly meaningless figure — I had told it all of my income, and none of my payments — but having a figure like that hovering in the corner makes you want to put off doing your taxes another few days.

I know I pay too much. There are probably dozens of deductions I am entitled to and don’t take. I stay squarely on the right side of the law and probably pay more than Donald Rumsfeld, but there’s no valuing peace of mind. My receipts aren’t creatively embellished. I really do keep a mileage log. If I were audited I would surely spend a few sleepless nights, but at the end it’s entirely possible I’d walk out with a refund. (Not bloody likely, but you never know.) I don’t even hate the IRS, too much. Someone has to be the bad guy.

Early in my career I wrote a story on some tax protesters in Columbus. They were followers of Irwin Schiff, and two of the dumbest telephone installers I’ve ever met. One had a Filipino mail-order bride and the other bragged about how much he wanted a Corvette, so he quit paying taxes and bought one. The latter was en route to federal prison when I left town, the other the subject of keen interest by federal authorities. They both thought they had stumbled across the greatest loophole in the history of tax law — that the income tax is voluntary. P.S. Irwin Schiff is in jail. Wesley Snipes should be.

Not much bloggage today, but a fun one. Find the No. 1 song on the day of your birth. It’s like the rock ‘n’ roll zodiac. Mine was “Jailhouse Rock,” which I consider a good omen. Like being born in the Year of the Dragon. Imagine being born under “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.” That would suck.

Off to the bank to “save for retirement.”

Stayed up late last night to read the Chris Matthews profile in the NYT magazine, a rather astonishing document, all things considered. Matthews comes off as a loud, crafty, needy, insecure, boastful toad who’s every bit the sexist shitheel you suspected he was, only utterly unaware of it. I say “all things considered” because the NYT generally doesn’t truck with this sort of thing. Here’s the lede:

Whenever Chris Matthews says something he likes, which happens a lot, he repeats it often and at volumes suggesting a speaker who feels insufficiently listened to at times. “Tim Russert finally reeled the big marlin into the boat tonight,” Matthews yelled — nine times, on and off the air, after a Democratic debate that Russert moderated with Brian Williams in late February at Cleveland State University. Matthews believed that Russert (the fisherman) had finally succeeded in getting Hillary Clinton (the marlin) to admit that she was wrong to vote in favor of the Iraq war resolution in 2002. “We’ve been trolling for that marlin for what, a year now?” Matthews said to Russert.

Comparing Hillary Rodham Clinton to a big flopping fish will do nothing to stop criticism — from Clinton’s presidential campaign, among others — that Matthews and his network, MSNBC, have treated the former first lady unfairly. But this didn’t keep Matthews from bludgeoning the marlin line to death in the postdebate “spin room.” “Russert caught the marlin; he got the marlin,” Matthews shouted to a school of downcast reporters who had been hanging on every canned word of Clinton’s chief campaign strategist, Mark Penn.

The spin room is a modern political-media marvel whose full-on uselessness is perfectly conveyed by its name, but Matthews appeared in his element. He wore a dreamy smile, walking around, signing autographs. As he went, Matthews seemed compelled to give his “take,” which is how he describes his job each night at 5 and 7, Eastern time, on “Hardball” — “giving my take.”

It goes on from there. It doesn’t get nicer. Matthews has bugged me for years and enraged me for most of them, but by the end I almost felt sorry for him. The era of the cable shoutfest is waning, and he hasn’t figured it out yet. The appeal of listening to two or three blowhards is pretty thin in ideal conditions, and when you can surf on your laptop to eight or nine smarter amateurs’ “take,” or watch the considerably more entertaining “Daily Show,” it goes utterly flat. And when you’re sitting with your laptop in front of the TV, and the comparison is right there in your face, it’s even less appealing. This gets it, I think:

Cable political coverage has changed, however, and so has the sensibility that viewers — particularly young ones — expect from it. Matthews’s bombast is radically at odds with the wry, antipolitical style fashioned by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert or the cutting and finely tuned cynicism of Matthews’s MSNBC co-worker Keith Olbermann. These hosts betray none of the reverence for politics or the rituals of Washington that Matthews does. On the contrary, they appeal to the eye-rolling tendencies of a cooler, highly educated urban cohort of the electorate that mostly dismisses an exuberant political animal like Matthews as annoyingly antiquated, like the ranting uncle at the Thanksgiving table whom the kids have learned to tune out.

Nothing illustrated Matthews’s discordance with the new cable ethos better than an eviscerating interview he suffered through last fall at the hands of Stewart himself. Matthews went on the “The Daily Show” to promote his book “Life’s a Campaign: What Politics Has Taught Me About Friendship, Rivalry, Reputation and Success.” The book essentially advertises itself as a guidebook for readers wishing to apply the lessons of winning politicians to succeeding in life. “People don’t mind being used; they mind being discarded” is the title of one chapter. “A self-hurt book” and “a recipe for sadness” Stewart called it, and the interview was all squirms from there. “This strikes me as artifice,” Stewart said. “If you live by this book, your life will be strategy, and if your life is strategy, you will be unhappy.”

Matthews accused Stewart of “trashing my book.”

“I’m not trashing your book,” Stewart protested. “I’m trashing your philosophy of life.”

(Can I just say that a book titled “Life’s a Campaign: What Politics Has Taught Me About Friendship, Rivalry, Reputation and Success” will probably be in Hell’s library. The only book I want to read less is “Big Russ and Me.” Or anything by Mitch Albom.)

Funny how these things change, how you go to bed in the summer and wake up and it’s autumn. The temperature’s the same but the wind has just a hint of north in it, the slant of the light is just a little different, and you know a new season is coming. Being able to feel those changes early on is a good skill to have, but once you get to a certain level of success, the world conspires to keep you in the dark. I once read a story about Bill O’Reilly’s sexual-harassment problem, and someone described the thin-air culture of national-TV anchors, how they go through their life trailed by squadrons of young women — interns, assistants, relentlessly ambitious climbers — whose job it is to make sure these hothouse flowers stay happy, hydrated and at the top of their game. They go, essentially, to a Graceland-without-walls, with the entourage saying, “Yes, boss” at every turn. No wonder they can’t feel the air.

I imagine reading Sunday’s NYT magazine will be like having a broken window in the house in January, however. At least at the Matthews’.

OK, I’m running late and trying to get to the gym while simultaneously listening to a “Fresh Air” podcast that explains the national economic meltdown in simple terms. I am but human, and so I’m going to cut one activity short — this one. Enjoy this bloggage, which finds the roots of Indian curry and Mexican mole in medieval Islamic cuisine. Mmm, mole.

Back in a bit.

One of Gene Weingarten’s chatters Tuesday says what I was thinking yesterday:

Billings, Mont.: Thought your Bell in the Metro story was good and all, but your Great Zucchini story from two years ago was the best thing you’ve ever written. Was that story submitted for a Pulitzer?

Pulitzer Prize-winner Gene Weingarten: It was. And I was only recently reliably informed that it got real consideration, but was ultimately rejected because it was perceived as not serious enough.

I’m not surprised; the Pulitzers are like that. It strikes me that of the journalists I’ve known who’ve served on Pulitzer juries, they tended to be at either best-or-worst ends of the spectrum, so it figures they get a few wrong. The Great Zucchini story was a work of storytelling art. I urge you to read it; it’s that good. And while the Joshua Bell story that earned Weingarten the big P was great, it was something you could stand at the beginning of and see all the way to the end. When I told Alan what the story was, I said, “They got this virtuoso violinist, Joshua Bell, to be a subway busker in D.C. and watched how people reacted.” He replied, “And they ignored him, right?” He didn’t know anything about the story; he just guessed that if you put a virtuoso playing a Stradivarius in a busy Metro station at rush hour, he’s not going to draw a crowd. The telling of the story is wonderful, but there’s no real surprise.

But the Great Zucchini had a huge surprise halfway through. You thought it was about one thing (a story about a children’s party entertainer), and then it turned out to be another thing (the common roots of fear and humor). Let’s see, what did win that year?

Jim Sheeler of Rocky Mountain News, Denver, Colo.
For his poignant story on a Marine major who helps the families of comrades killed in Iraq cope with their loss and honor their sacrifice.

See? Serious enough.

Oh, well. It may be like Paul Newman winning an Oscar for “The Color of Money” when he should have won for half a dozen better performances that preceded it, but it’s all good. (Bonus: I’ve linked to it before, but just in case you’re having a slow day at work and have some time to read it — Tears for Audrey, another Gene-sterpiece.)

Yesterday I mentioned writers who don’t get the web. I think Weingarten gets it. I don’t know another columnist who could pull off what he does every week with his live chat, and I think every single columnist should give it a try sometime. I’d love to know what the traffic is for that.

OK, then. Found this via Leo, and oh my, what was I saying about that word just a couple weeks ago?

Three reporters from Arizona, on the condition of anonymity, also let me in on another incident involving (John) McCain’s intemperateness. In his 1992 Senate bid, McCain was joined on the campaign trail by his wife, Cindy, as well as campaign aide Doug Cole and consultant Wes Gullett. At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain’s hair and said, “You’re getting a little thin up there.” McCain’s face reddened, and he responded, “At least I don’t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt.” McCain’s excuse was that it had been a long day. If elected president of the United States, McCain would have many long days.

Whoa! I know Mrs. McCain favors girly clothes and high heels. If that didn’t call for a shoe to be slipped off and applied, heel-first, to Mr. War Hero’s forehead, I don’t know what would.

You think this story is true? It’s getting a lot of blog attention, but then, we’re allowed to say “cunt” right out in the open, whereas a newspaper won’t even say “the c-word.” It’ll be “an insulting name related to her gender,” and most people will think, “Oh, well, once I told my wife to stop being such a little bitch during an argument; it could happen to anyone.”

I’m fortunate to live with a mellow soul. My dad was a grump, and he could curse, but he generally saved his profanity for inanimate objects, bad drivers, circumstances beyond his control and the like. I can’t imagine him using such a word on my mother, and to do so in front of witnesses? I like to think I’m as tolerant of human frailty as the next gal, but that one required an instant correction, as the dog trainers say. With a shoe.

This week has been seductively beautiful. I’ve been out and about on the bike every day; for once I’m caught up with my library accounts because hey, returning books is a good excuse to ride two miles. Next week, not so much, but oh well. I’m still looked on as something of an oddity around here, where driving half a block is not considered wasteful or slothful, only vigorous support of the local economy. One of my doctors is a cyclist, however, and at my last appointment we made small talk about the cost of being one in the Motor City. He’s been pulled over three times in the last year, he said; twice for running stop signs and once for resembling a person last seen stealing CDs from a car. While I teach Kate to obey stop signs on her bike, sooner or later she’s going to figure out that, for cyclists, a stop sign at a quiet intersection with no cars in sight can safely be ignored. You’re traveling slower, you have the advantage of eyes and ears, and you can’t hurt anyone but yourself. With all the piss-poor drivers I see on a daily basis, I guess it’s a credit to the low crime rate around here that police even bother to bug cyclists about such infractions. (And you should see my doctor, a white-haired soul in his late 50s who looks about as likely to break into cars as the Pope does. Please.)

OK, I’ve run dry. How about some bloggage making cruel fun of the pain of others? Here you go.

Ken Levine’s back with his “American Idol” recaps this season, and he correctly puts his finger on what was wrong with last night’s, which was nearly unwatchable:

While Syesha Mercado was screeching out some faux inspirational song that strung together every “I believe/Catch a shooting star/There’s time for every soul to fly/Reach within your heart/Strive to be the very best/Anything is Possible” bullshit cliché (and every one of those lyrics actually WAS in that song), Doug Davis, a young pitcher for the Arizona Diamondbacks took the mound and pitched the game of his life…knowing that in two days he will undergo surgery for thyroid cancer.

THAT’S inspirational. THAT’S real.

Disclaimer: I do not watch “American Idol” voluntarily. I watch it because my kid watches it, and while one day I will take her to see Iggy Pop, that day has not yet arrived.

This week’s theme was “songs of inspiration.” Every single one sucked, although the leadoff singer did have the advantage of menace:

Michael Johns sang “Dream On”. Most inspirational songs are not angrily shouted at you. Okay, okay, I’ll dream on. Don’t hurt me!

Three-day eventing isn’t for sissies. I watched an Olympic-caliber cross-country phase in Lexington a few years ago, and just being a spectator made my knees shake.

Someone actually makes a semi-amusing ad for special-event mass transit, and Catholics are outraged, so the ad is pulled. Someone make these pinheads direct traffic, then. The ad lives on, where else? On YouTube. Be subversive, and laugh at the Pope.

Me, I’m off for a bike ride.

First, congratulations are in order. NN.C’s BFF Deb’s husband — are you following? — was the editor of one of the Pulitzer Prize winners announced yesterday. This one. So that’s good. Also, our virtual pal Gene Weingarten won for feature writing. I’m sure today’s regular chat will be something, if he can fit his head through the door.

This, however, is bad: The Seattle Times is cutting 200 positions, 49 in the newsroom. Part of me wants to see the end of the ink-on-paper newspaper, if only because I want to stop fearing the next thing and just see what the next thing is. (The other part doesn’t want to lose 65 percent of our household income, not to mention our health insurance, followed by our house and all of our possessions.) I keep thinking that once you take ink, paper, presses, Teamsters, gasoline, trucks and all the rest of those costs out of publishing, maybe the decreased ad revenue will cover a few meager salaries for those of us who provide content. Or maybe not.

The other day I took a left turn (oh, never mind how) and happened upon a porn blog. Immediately I was served a banner ad offering to hook me up with some hot babes in Grosse Pointe. Their adware had figured out a way to access my Zip code — fine with me, and not because I want to meet hot babes in Grosse Pointe. I want the newspaper industry to continue in one form or another, and needless to say, this does not happen when I land on the Free Press or News sites. Let’s check now and see who is advertising there. A bank and the lottery on the home page. A house ad — an ad for the paper itself, one that doesn’t return revenue, in other words — on the first inside page I visit. Elsewhere, not bloody much.

If a pornographer can figure out what Zip code I want to meet hot girls in, why can’t the newspaper ad staff figure out a way to sell a similar ad to a local bakery having a sale on muffins? Why doesn’t the ad say, “36 garage sales in Grosse Pointe this weekend! Search the listings by clicking here!” Just wondering.

Bossy is a humor/domestic-life blogger. I’d call her a latter-day Erma Bombeck, but I always hated it when people compared my column to Erma Bombeck’s, so I’ll just say she’s like a far, far hipper great-grandniece thrice removed from Erma Bombeck. She writes about home and family life and trying to get a decent haircut, and she knows intuitively how to write for the web, how to use photos and strikethroughs and different colors and styles of type to enhance the story she’s telling. Go ahead and poke through her archives if you don’t believe me. At the moment she’s on a road trip, one lap of America to meet her readership. And guess what? Somehow — she hasn’t revealed how — she got a car company to sponsor her. Yes way, as Bossy would say. Saturn is loaning her four — four! different! — hybrid vehicles to make her drive in. I don’t know if she has some agreement with them to feature the vehicles in any particular way; I will say that so far (she’s on vehicle No. 3, the Sky) what she’s written about the cars hasn’t seemed intrusive or product-placement-y. has been a little product placement-y, but at least in an amusing way. So my question for you today is, if Bossy, one little non-corporate blogger somewhere around Philadelphia, can figure out a way to get a major GM brand to give her four cars to drive around the country in, in return for the exposure they’ll get in her little non-corporate blog, why can’t the professional sales staffs of the nation’s newspapers figure out a way to rework their advertising the same way? I know at least part of the answer — accepting the loan of a car for a week for a road-tripping writer would taint their holy journalistic integrity — but that’s not the whole answer. At least some of the answer is: They don’t know how. If the people running newspapers had half a clue, one would have hired Bossy by now. They wouldn’t have her coming into the building, but they would have some sort of arrangement whereby they link to her blog, feature her on their site, and figure out some mutual back-scratching financial arrangement.

And Bossy is just a humor blog. Imagine what could happen if newspapers took the time to find independent partners in the rest of the community, the ones they have trouble penetrating anyway — ethnic groups, young people, enthusiasts of this and that. What if there were big, clickable badges on related newspaper pages, and a regular monitor to tell the paper’s readers, “Bossy has a great story today; be sure to check it out.”

As some of you know, I have a part-time job that requires me to spend a great deal of time visiting newspaper websites. I’m becoming intimately acquainted with all the ways I can be served ads on a website. Many of them are annoying. Some are clever. All are necessary. Most are rare. But I want to see local papers trying them all, and then some. I can’t think of the last time I had to pass through an ad screen (like you do at Salon, and several other big sites) at a Detroit newspaper, if I ever did.

But worse than all of this, newspaper journalists show few signs of “getting” the web; that is, they don’t know how to add links to their copy, or embedded photos, or even of adapting their prose style to a itchy-click-fingered readership. That’s because they’re not writing for the web, but for their main product, the ink-on-paper version. And it shows — in the columns that go on too long because they have to fill a hole, in the turgid writing that has to stay turgid so some old lady in Warren isn’t offended, and so on.

The Online Journalism Review put a provocative headline on this piece (It’s time for the newspaper industry to die) but all Robert Niles is arguing for is the death of the old ways of thinking. The meat of the piece is a discussion of comments on individual stories, an idea the industry has only recently adopted. Niles points out what has bugged me since it started — how quickly comments sections can veer off-topic, and into rantfests dominated by two or three posters with nothing better to do. (One of the things I marvel about on my own little blog is how good our comments are from day to day, how I can leave for a day to attend a funeral and come back to discover a lively discussion has broken out in my absence, and I just want to sit down and listen for a while.) Where are the monitors, the guides, or, failing that, the Slashdot-type rating systems that shove the irrelevant and annoying posters to the back of the queue? (I’ll tell you where: Doing three other people’s jobs. You might have heard that staffing is way down.)

Well, this is now officially a trainwreck of a post. We started out talking about advertising, and now we’re back to writing, which I persist in believing will save us, at least a little bit. I apologize. But everything is happening so fast now. A decline I thought would play out over 10 years is now down to three. Roy is only the ten millionth smart person to point out the obvious —

Despite all the grand claims made for the groovy blog revolution, the phenomenon is still basically parasitic. Few bloggers do primary reporting. Why should they? The doomed dinosaurs do it for them, and all the bloggers have to do is link to them, occasionally adding some variant of “I call bullshit.”

Were the Times to fold, and all the other big pubs to be drawn down into its maelstrom — a consummation devoutly wished by wingnuts everywhere — these bloggers would have nothing left to talk about except one another, and reports from large rightwing publications which would presumably, as honorary non-members of the MSM, survive.

— but it doesn’t seem to be sinking in. Every day, I read someone online saying, “I cancelled my dead-tree paper because I don’t need it anymore. I read all my news online!” Well, good for you, then. Check back in a decade and tell me how that’s working for you.

Bloggage:

Once again, you can financially support the family of our late NN.C community member, Ashley Morris, here. If that makes you nervous, I’m sure Ash would appreciate a donation to a worthy New Orleans charity, perhaps Habitat for Humanity.

And to end on an amusing note, Improv Everywhere calls its latest stunt “Best Game Ever.” I agree; be sure to watch the video, which is tremendous. If you aren’t in tears by the time the Goodyear Blimp shows up, you aren’t human.

Well this was a Monday morning fit for the weekend it followed. I was in a bad mood for about 48 hours, entirely media-induced. I wish there was a way to check one’s hormone levels from day to day — gauges installed in the forehead, perhaps — so I’d know when to stay away from the papers.

It started Saturday with “This American Life” on Saturday, a particularly pungent episode called “The Audacity of Government.” (From the promo: “We’ve decided to spend an hour admitting and talking about the fact that everyone knows is true: America’s become a jerk.”) Part I was about the Bush administration’s attempt to buffalo an independent treaty commissioner, in order to enforce the “property rights” of a couple who built an illegal wall in their back yard, which backs up to the Canadian border. Part II was about the government’s relentless efforts to deport the immigrant widows of American citizens who died before their spouses’ permanent residency could be established — a group that numbers barely over 100.

It continued when I got home and read the story about this poor schmo, a former kindergarten teacher in his second trial for sexually assaulting two boys. It’s his second trial because his first conviction was overturned. The boys claim he grabbed them out of a lunch line and into an empty classroom and raped them both. Unfortunately, the classroom was never empty in the course of the day, and the kids showed all the signs of having been coached, and their stories changed with the wind. What happened? No one knows, but it’s highly likely the teacher on trial, practically the definition of a pencil-neck geek, didn’t do what he’s accused of. The jury has been deadlocked for a week, 11-1 for acquittal, but the holdout seems determined to hold out forever.

The funk lifted when he had our long-delayed dinner with friends Saturday. Main course: lamb chops. Mmm, lamb chops in the spring. Yum. But the next day, more outrages in the daily papers:

Remember when “vulgar” was a word everyone understood, and a description no one wanted to attract? Ah, those were the days:

Like so many of the over-the-top birthday parties that typically appear on “My Super Sweet 16” on MTV, Ariel’s celebration took the fairy-tale-princess theme to new heights.

Horse-drawn carriages delivered teenage guests to a faux-castle tent where they were met with dancing jesters and disco lights. The birthday girl, wearing a white dress and tiara, flew in via helicopter. And the evening ended with fireworks and the arrival of Ariel’s gift from her father: a brand new BMW 325i.

As viewers learned, Ariel’s dad was a successful oilman. “I love oil. Oil means shoes and cars and purses,” Ariel exclaimed to the camera as she and her father stomped around oil drilling sites in the muddy hills near her home in Campbellsville, Ky. When her father pointed to one of the sites and told viewers that it produced 120 barrels a day, Ariel asked, “How many Louis Vuittons is that?” Her father’s answer was “a bunch.”

Now there’s a lede that’ll keep you reading, even though you know what comes next: Ariel’s daddy is a swindler and thief, not to mention a man whose sense of restraint and decorum makes Tony Montana look like Prince Charles. Say what you want about WASPs, with their buttoned-down nerdiness and toothpaste tube squeezers and 25-cent tips for the yard man, but at least they don’t go around hiring choppers for their kid’s birthday party.

When the Obama administration sweeps into office, I look foward to seeing Ariel’s father face a firing squad. Ariel herself will be sent to a forced-labor camp for youthful offenders. ¡Viva la revolucion!.

Grumble, grumble. On to the Free Press and there was Mitch Albom, ever the edgy opinionator, going waaaay out on a limb to stake his claim that religious fanatics who shun doctors and sit idly by praying while their kids die of treatable diseases are — hold on to your hats — bad parents. But where is the qualifier? Ah yes, here it is:

Now I know there are many of us who believe “God has a plan.” And I hope and pray that’s true.

But I’m betting His plan doesn’t include us sitting around doing nothing.

Well-said, brave boy! My brother thinks picking on Mitch Albom is a waste of time. I heartily agree. And yet, I cannot stop.

Finally, in despair, I thought a little celebrity gossip might do me some good. Uh, no:

Madonna wants to remake “Casablanca,” set it in Iraq, and play the Ingrid Bergman role. Dr. Kevorkian on speed-dial for that one, baby.

So how was your weekend?

Oh, I shouldn’t complain. It wasn’t that bad. We got our drain cleared, the dog got his annual shots and an “excellent” from the vet, and as they say, who has anything to complain about, really? Not me. But I do still have some work to do, so that’s it for now.

C*nt is a terrible word and I don’t use it lightly. (I only play the asterisk game because it’s the first word in this post, and some people are still pretty shocked by it, Larry David or no Larry David.) I only deploy it for women who actively work to hurt, shame, blame and otherwise denigrate other women, particularly those who don’t deserve it.

But I think it applies here.

(And yes, it also applies to the women, and men, who book guests like this on wastes of time like the Today show, and continue to give them publicity.)

We got some more snow over the weekend, well within normal for March in Michigan — maybe three new inches. But Columbus, which by March is usually well into the mud/freezing rain/defrosting dog poo stage of winter, got a foot and a half, maybe more. My brother said it was so bad, he closed his bar. Then he called one of the TV stations, to get it added to the ever-lengthening closings list.

“Um,” she said. “Is this….an institution?”

“Hell yes it’s an institution,” he replied. “It’s a bar in Obetz! That’s like a church!”

“Sir,” she said. “I don’t think you’re being serious with me.”

Well, in a blizzard, all the serious is being hogged by people trying to drive.

I said last fall that I wanted lots of snow this winter, and I guess I got my wish. (As for our boating fortunes this year, in the god-I-hope-our-slip-isn’t-dry sense of things, I go for cautiously optimistic.) I’m still not really tired of winter yet. I miss my bicycle and the color green, but so much of coping with cold weather comes down to having the sense to wear a decent coat and boots. Still, there was a moment Saturday when I turned a corner and was hit in the face by a blast of wind, and thought: OK, enough. By week’s end the temperature should be nudging 50. That’ll do.

The student film is done. I left at the DVD-burning point, which was four hours into our last editing session. I’d recommend a class like this to anyone who likes movies, just so you can see what it takes to make even a very very small one. You’ll learn why “creative differences” are such a big factor in Hollywood. We spent an hour tweaking audio filters to get the right sound on a 30-second phone conversation, so that when we cut to one character while the other one was still talking, the voice would sound like it was coming through a telephone. There’s a strong tendency, at every step of the game, to say, “Screw it. This is good enough.” You need a few perfectionists in the room.

But here’s the best thing: This really is a creative outlet that is truly collaborative, and if you have the right collaboration, it becomes more than the sum of its parts. I’ll treasure the wonder I felt at every step of the process as our three-minute story came together. I also learned a thing or two about cheats for no-budget storytelling; one scene was lit by two hand-held flashlights. It was great fun, and I can’t wait to take the next class. And yes, I’ll post the video eventually, but please be gentle.

So, Monday-morning bloggage for you folks to fight about:

The qualifier, now an ongoing series: Mitch Albom spends 60 percent of his Sunday metro column outlining two cases of bad behavior caught on video and seen widely on the internet (the puppy-throwing soldiers and car-wash mom, for those of you who keep up with such things). Then…wait for it…the qualifier:

Now, I am not condoning either act — not the dog fling, not the hosing. Neither was smart or necessary. Both seem cold, cruel, even deplorable. But I wonder where we are going when every moment of every life is filmed.

The only thing that could make that passage better would be a “dare I say” inserted between “cruel” and “even deplorable.”

Another shoe drops in the Detroit text-message scandal. We are shocked, shocked to find it’s about more than sex. In fact, it’s about sweetheart deals and other glories of life in a corrupt city. By 2002, I was certainly aware that it was perfectly legal for my bosses to look at my company e-mail. (In fact, I often wondered if they were, and was sure to give them lots of juicy reading material.) What sort of moron sends stuff like this over a public (translation: where bosses = everyone) network?

In a message on Oct. 30, 2002, (mayoral chief of staff Christine) Beatty asked him how much she owed (mayoral friend and favored contractor) Bobby Ferguson for the driveway he poured at her Detroit home.

“Ya know ya my sister,” he replied. “Family don’t worry about shit like money.”

Finally, Laura Lippman’s new book, “Another Thing to Fall,” hits stores tomorrow. Run out and buy it and make the Lippman-Simon Co-Prosperity Sphere’s March 2008 one to remember. Plot synopsis: Lippman’s P.I., Tess Monaghan, investigates shenanigans on the set of a TV series filmed in Baltimore. No, not that one. (Which reminds me: Wire-blogging reaches its crescendo over at The New Package. Distracted as I was last week by my other life, your correspondent will check in…eventually. The new slackage!

OK, that’s it for me. I have a story to write, and have to readjust my head into money-making mode.