Like many of you, I read the Mitt Romney-at-Cranbrook story this morning and had it on my mind pretty much all day. It was good food for thought, with so many interesting angles to consider. If I’d been in an old movie, it would have been one of those scenes where an angel sits on one shoulder and a devil on the other, hissing in opposite ears:

Angel: He was in high school. Remember high school? Do YOU want to be judged for something you did in high school?

Angel: Don’t be ridiculous. Name Redacted was a little punk. He’s probably living in a Florida trailer park. He certainly wasn’t Harvard material. Much less Bain Capital.

And so on. At one point, I forwarded it to my Bridge colleagues, and one replied with a towering rant about triviality in news coverage that made steam come out the vents of my laptop. He made many good points. And yet, I cannot lie: I am a woman, and a frustrated novelist, and I find these stories fascinating. I think of how many American families would sell kidneys to send their children to elite schools like Cranbrook, only to find that, once the parents drive away, they’re as brutal and awful in their own way as the worst gladiator academies in Detroit. I think of young Mitt, who must have cast a very long shadow there as the son of the governor and an ex-automotive CEO — believe me, this is the closest thing to royalty in Michigan — using his position to smirk and lead bathroom jihads against a gay kid who dared to bleach his hair and style it in a way others found offensive.

On the other hand? It was 1965. That’s what gay kids had to put up with then, what many of them still have to put up with. It’s why we had the Stonewall riots and a thousand smaller rebellions, in living rooms and offices and over dinner tables. It’s why gay people have been loudly banging open closet doors for decades now, demanding to be taken seriously and treated with respect. But to ask the people of 1965 to act as though it’s 2012 is as foolish as demanding Christopher Columbus land in Hispaniola with the attitudes of a late-20th-century college president.

For months, I’ve been reading about Romney, from sources around the political spectrum, trying to gather an informed picture of the man. I’m reminded of something Paul Helmke, the former GOP mayor of Fort Wayne, said about Evan Bayh, whom he faced in the U.S. Senate race many years ago. He said you got the impression, talking to Bayh, that if you peeled back the skin of his face, you’d see wires and LEDs blinking inside — that he was more a robot than a human being. This exhaustive piece in Slate tracking his shifting position on abortion is, I fear, the man in a few thousand words: He’ll say anything to get elected.

As it happens, there was a significant event in Romney’s Cranbrook-era past that pertains here, as well — his brother-in-law’s sister died after an illegal abortion in 1963, which along with his own mother’s pragmatic ideas about the subject, appear to have informed Romney’s opinions early on. But today, it’s all about balancing votes on a scale. Who is this man? I wish I knew.

We can’t change what we did 50 years ago, but we do have control over how we talk about it today, and that’s all I’m left with now. Romney gave a weasel apology about “pranks” that “might have gone too far.”

“Back in high school, I did some dumb things, and if anybody was hurt by that or offended, obviously I apologize for that,” Romney said in a live radio interview with Fox News Channel personality Brian Kilmeade. Romney added: “I participated in a lot of hijinks and pranks during high school, and some might have gone too far, and for that I apologize.”

Yet another missed opportunity to prove what sort of man he really is. He stood by quietly when he allowed conservative groups to drive out a gay aide a few days ago. He could have made it his Sister Souljah moment, but didn’t. What could he have said today? Maybe this:

“I’ve recently been reminded that I was a bully in high school, and picked on one boy in particular.” (The story mentions another boy, and a teacher as well, but let’s not be petty.) “I wonder how many of us would like to live with the consequences of our high-school behavior for the rest of our lives. While the incident isn’t indelibly imprinted in my memory, others remember a consistent picture of events, and I will take their word I did what they say I did. I’ll only add that 50 years covers a lot of time not just in my life, but in that of the country. I’m sure gay students at Cranbrook today have it a lot easier, and for that I’m grateful. I’m certainly sorry I was part of the problem then. I’d like to be part of the solution now.”

(I just made that up. I’m sure a professional speechwriter could improve it.)

So, bloggage? Sure. Here’s a Laura Lippman column that touches on the theme, tangentially — about how she hated covering politics and looked for the more human angles to bigger stories:

After five years on the news side, I moved to features. Even there, I wasn’t drawn to the more glamorous assignments. Asked — forced — to write about then-Gov. Parris Glendening during his re-election campaign in 1998, I focused almost entirely on his blushing problem. Asked — forced — to cover the mayor’s race in 1999, I observed that mayoral candidate Martin O’Malley had a frat-boy smile; I don’t think he ever smiled in my presence again. I liked interviewing writers, but other famous people left me cold. Too polished, too practiced.

Good one.

A truly glorious takedown of Jonah Goldberg, pegged to his stupid Pulitzer resume-padding but timeless in its detail:

I just opened “The Tyranny of Cliche” to a random page. It is the start of Chapter 9, “Slippery Slope,” and it begins with quotations from Hume, Lincoln and T.S. Eliot. Then we’re treated to the prose of Mr. Jonah Goldberg, who is here to share his presentation on “slippery slopes.” It reads very much like a high school student’s essay assignment:

Ultimately slippery slope arguments are a mixed bag. They are useful as a way to reinforce good dogma, but they are also used to reinforce bad dogma. Similarly they can scare us away from bad policies and good policies alike. There are good slippery slope arguments and bad ones for good ends and bad ends.

Bad dogma!

Finally, I leave you with an easy, Facebook-y smile, one of those Buzzfeed things you can pass on to your friends: How to evolve your views on gay marriage.

Happy weekend, all.

I’m still reading the blowback on Obama’s gay-marriage proclamation, an activity not made any easier by the consumption of three beers. I guess this is a watershed moment, one of those where some people step forward and others don’t, but we trust they’ll catch up. What I don’t understand are the people who keep crowing that the North Carolina vote was SO lopsided, so this means it’s totally wrong. As though, if we’d put interracial marriage on the ballot in the same state in 1963, it would have passed by a similar margin.

What do we all think? I’ll have more in the morning? Right now, I just want to read.

Although Roy has his usual pithy, amusing roundup of the freaks, which you are encouraged to enjoy.

I have to say: When I heard Maurice Sendak was dead this morning, I didn’t think about him. I thought about baby Kate, sitting on my lap as I read her “Where the Wild Things Are.” When we got to the part about them roaring their terrible roars and showing their terrible claws, she would hold up her wee baby paws and hook her wee baby fingers into claws, and say raar.

My little wild thing. Gone for years, but still always with me.

Eighty-three years is a pretty good measure for a life. You can’t say he didn’t do a lot with it.

Same with Richard Lugar, but it’s all over now, baby blue. I’m avoiding most of the coverage, because I know sooner or later, someone will parrot the right-wing bumper sticker: Thank you for your service, but it’s time for you to go. Yeesh.

People ask me if the Democrats have a chance against Mourdock. Honestly, I don’t know. Someone here does, so let the rest of us know.

Looks like the North Carolina gay-marriage thing went down (snerk) too. This is bad news, but not the worst news. I feel, more than ever, that this issue is over, and what we’re seeing now is just the final skirmishes. But never say never.

A funny piece on a great idea by Eric Zorn, proposing a new journalism award – the Rumpelstiltskin, for spinning gold out of crap, or, to put it more clearly, doing a great job with an old, old story assignment:

Nothing awakens Chicago’s eager young reporters to the grim realities of the life they’ve chosen like their second Saint Patrick’s Day parade, when they realize there will be another parade every March until they retire and unless they get one of those glamorous overseas assignments that don’t exist any longer they will probably be out there covering it. Yet some skilled practitioners can actually make each parade sound interesting. There’s no Pulitzer for a gift like that, but there could be a Rumpy.

I’d nominate my current colleague Ron, who was given the unfortunate assignment of covering the Three Rivers Festival in Fort Wayne one year. Every day, he found a new way to cover the same old shit. My favorite was a story about the frog-jumping contest, written in the form of a letter to PETA. It was hilarious, and of course 82 percent of everyone who read it missed the point, which tells you everything you need to know about your average newspaper reader. They wrote forests full of letters condemning Ron for diming out the poor frog-jumpers, etc. But it was a rare week when it was more fun to read the stories in the paper than actually attend the stupid events, and he deserves a Rumpy.

Or maybe that’s just me.

What a story: The double agent who derailed the next attack.

I’m gonna watch some more Rachel, and set this for posting early tomorrow morning. We’ll take up the struggle tomorrow, eh?

Have a good one.

Was it just yesterday I went off on Rant 13B at lunch? That is, Why The Hell Is Facebook Worth $96 Billion? Probably. I deliver it roughly every other week. I don’t get it — a few ads on the sidebar for weight loss? How does it add up?

The only thing I can figure is, the data and privacy and all the rest of it we share with them, so willingly and unthinkingly, is worth a lot. A LOT.

Over time, I’ve been trimming my Facebook apps to the bare minimum I need to interact with people I want to interact with. I’ve had to resist stuff like Words With Friends, but given my problems resisting crap like Angry Birds, that’s probably a pretty good thing. But by doing so, I’ve been spared the mortifying — to me, anyway — updates I get on what everybody’s reading, delivered via “social reader” apps. Did I need to know my friend’s wife has a fondness for Kardashian news? No. Did Famous Journalist really check out a story about Kate Upton’s breasts? Shudder.

Still, there’s a sense, every time I run through my news feed, that I’m selling all my information short.

So it’s with joy, real joy, that I read that social readers are collapsing — the Washington Post’s, but also the Guardian’s and others. There’s a nominal explanation from the WashPost, something about Facebook modules, whatever they are, and I guess it’s plausible. But I can’t help but hope there’s something to it. I love the WashPost like few other newspapers– er, “content providers,” but there has to be a limit. I’ll register at their site, and they can presumably track what I’m reading there, but Mark Zuckerberg can kiss my bum. From casual observation, my opinion isn’t a minority view.

Sharing is one thing. Window-peeping is quite another.

Social media is essential for journalists, but man, I wish it weren’t.

Any “Mad Men” fans in da house? Of course there are. Any guesses as to what it cost to land the rights to “Tomorrow Never Knows” for last night’s episode? (And may I just say, what a great choice. My favorite on “Revolver,” and I didn’t know until today that the things that sound like seagulls in the first few seconds are actually tape squeals. Learn something new every day, etc.) A quarter-mil. Yikes.

We have a local story unfolding here, yet more of the endless corruption shenanigans in local government. Long story short: An overpaid county development officer left her job last fall, willingly, pocketing a year’s salary as severance, which would merely be wrong and appalling, except that the county is bankrupt and laying off less fortunate employees. A few raised a stink, which became a big stink, and throughout it all, this particular development officer has stuck her elegant nose in the air and refused to apologize for any of it, other than to say she deserved every penny because she worked so hard.

Over the weekend the Freep broke a story about some of the outside jobs she held, for alleged nonprofits that existed mainly to guide even more dollars into her overflowing pockets:

Turkia Awada Mullin had only one Cadillac, but she had two monthly car allowances to pay for it.

One was for $500 from her $200,000-a-year job as chief development officer of Wayne County. The other was for $500 or $600 — she couldn’t quite remember — paid by the Wayne County Regional Jobs and Economic Growth Foundation, one of several nonprofit groups Mullin headed in addition to her county job.

Did she really need $1,000 a month to run her car? Mullin was asked last month.

“I think it’s more than that with the mileage I put on it,” she said.

Poor, poor, greedy, greedy baby.

The tower of Monday has been scaled. Let’s hope the rest of the week goes more smoothly.

Man, this sketch by Ezra Klein, about the fallout of the very likely primary defeat of Richard Lugar, is depressing. If Lugar loses to the tea-partyin’ Richard Mourdock, here’s one likely scenario (assuming an Obama win in November):

Lugar loses and Mourdock wins the general election: This would be a signal that primary challenges remain a threat, and no Republican lawmaker can feel safe cutting deals or taking tough votes. This is a world where Republicans, having run and lost with a “Massachusetts moderate,” swear never to compromise on their principles again, and incumbent lawmakers realize that there will be a raft of primary challenges coming and so they had better spend the next two years shoring up their right flank. This is not a world in which you can imagine a ‘grand bargain’ getting done.

Lots of very casual observers might look at Michigan, where our attorney general and Republican-controlled legislature has recently gone crusading against two issues settled at the ballot in recent elections, and ask why. Why go after embryonic stem cell research, when it was overwhelmingly approved by voters in 2008? Why go after medical marijuana, approved by a landslide the same year? Because no one is listening to the people who voted, only the ones still making noise on the right. If there’s a bumper sticker for this chapter of the GOP history, it’s this: Don’t primary me, bro.

Tea Party Nation, what have you wrought?

Ugh.

How was your weekend. I went to a battle of the bands. Last year:

This year:

They lost their singer, gained a lot of confidence and finished third, which was pretty impressive. I think those judges in the middle were checking out the guitarist’s stems. I didn’t offer any wardrobe advice, but I did tell her the black dress made her look nice, and when you’re in showbiz, even church-basement showbiz, you should do your best in that department.

It didn’t hurt that they rocked it. Beyond that, I’ll say no more. I already edge close enough to toddlers-and-tiaras territory as it is.

Beyond that, it was just a swell couple of days. Long bike ride, Eastern Market, pleasant weather, a Tigers game. And they won.

How about you?

Good lord, is this weather for real? Ninety degrees on the freeway Thursday afternoon, not much cooler under the trees. Vicious wind, of course — we’re all waiting for the inevitable thunderstorms, and Friday? High of 70. For the Tigers game.

My boss Derek says, “You don’t get gentle showers anymore. Everything’s a cloudburst.” Word.

So. I’ve been more or less deprived of one of my scab-picking pleasures of late. I don’t think Mitch Albom has written more than a dozen columns since last Thanksgiving. He surfaced at one point and said something about finishing a book. He weighed in on Words With Friends and dashed off a few sports columns. But the ones I consider my joy and duty — the Sunday op-ed front-page thumbsuckers about the good ol’ days or kids these days, the ones I hate-read with such gusto — those have been scarce. Until this past Sunday, when he unearthed Ernie Harwell’s rest-deprived bones yet again, by way of announcing his play about the Tigers legend would be returning for a second summer run:

There’s a scene in the play “Ernie” in which the actor playing Ernie Harwell re-enacts the way he broadcast minor-league baseball games in the 1940s, when there was no money to send him on the road.

Blah blah blah about the ticker-tape feeding the radio play-by-play — you saw it in “Bull Durham” — and then this:

When asked what he did if the ticker-tape machine broke, Ernie replies that sometimes he’d make up a distraction, like a dog running on the field. And he’d have that dog racing back and forth, eluding escape, until the machine was fixed.

Of course, when the ballplayers came home, their wives would ask, “What happened to that poor dog?” And they’d say, “What dog?”

The audience always laughs. It is a sweet moment. A reminder of a simpler time, when broadcasting was about imagination — for both the listener and, at times, even the announcer.

“It is a sweet moment.” OK, sure. Then we get a Bob Greeney detour into the NFL Draft broadcast, of which Mitch disapproves, because it’s not sweet and narrated by an old Georgian, and finally we get to paragraph 13:

The play about Ernie, which I was honored to write at his request, reopens this week at the City Theatre in downtown Detroit, across the street from the Tigers’ ballpark.

Shucks, people. He didn’t want to write it! Ernie asked! Would you have turned him down? But really, what an amazing trick. He starts out relating a “sweet moment” in “the play ‘Ernie’” and only mentions it’s actually his own play after a couple hundred words. But he’s not done:

It is rare that a stage play runs for long in our city, rarer still that it returns for a second season. It’s extremely rare that people view it multiple times. I think the reason folks return for “Ernie” is the same reason we couldn’t wait to hear him talk about “the voice of the turtle” when he opened his broadcasts every season. It meant renewal. It meant familiarity.

Because it couldn’t possibly be you, could it, Mitch?

I hope this means the little man is back. It would be such a long summer without him.

So, a little bloggage?

In the words of young Alvy Singer, upon meeting Joey Nichols: What an asshole.

My colleague Ron had some good stuff in Bridge this week, on schools’ failure to adequately prepare students for college, although if you ask me, it ain’t the schools’ fault. (Hi, mom ‘n’ dad.) And Peter Luke had a good column about the difference between Michigan Democrats and Republicans that contains a few striking parallels between the two parties in other venues, as well.

A great read about the power of one dedicated nerd against an archivist who went very, very wrong.

And speaking of archivists, another good one.

The auction of “The Scream” makes some people want to do the same. Jerry Saltz:

With dapper white men and tall, thin white women making little finger signals while holding phones, speaking to strangers in Dubai or Russia or Beijing or Mitt Romney’s garage, the painting was sold “to an unknown telephone bidder” for $119.5 million. Thus, a great work of art that had been all but lost to us, hanging in a private Norwegian home for more than a century, made a brief public appearance and then was sold off to another private owner, probably to disappear for another 100 years. We will likely never see this work of art again in our lifetimes. The Scream is a part of art history and should hang in a public collection, probably in Norway, and not just decorate a California den or a dacha in the Ukraine, waiting to be fodder for the next auction. (Needless to say, no museum was in a position to spend that kind of money.)

Eh. I’m happy with my Coozledad original.

A great weekend, all.

As I may have mentioned about a million times before, I like to take a little midweek me-time at a bar near Kate’s Wednesday-night activity. I drop her off for three hours of musical instruction, and I go to the Park Bar for a wrap and two beers. I take my iPad. I read, I write (rarely), I people-watch.

This week was the first time I’d stopped by since Opening Day. Today’s was an afternoon game, but a few hardy souls were still pounding shots and being incredibly loud when I arrived at 6. One woman had tucked her shot glass into her cleavage and telling her friends that she was ABOUT TO BE FORTY-THREE, AND GODDAMNIT, I THINK I’M BETTER THAN EVER.

John Mellencamp interrupted on the sound system. They joined together like a pack of coyotes:

SO LET IT ROCK, LET IT ROLL, LET THE BIBLE BELT COME AND SAVE MY SOUL. HOLD ONTO SIXTEEN AS LONG AS YOU CAN. CHANGES COME AROUND REAL SOON MAKE US WOMEN AND MEN. Then she took out her shot and downed it.

It was sort of annoying, and then I reflected that the library doesn’t serve Stella Artois and I was the odd one out.

Hoosiers, is it true? Is it true Dick Lugar isn’t long for this world? He was always the Republican I never minded voting for, and not because he’s some flaming liberal. You couldn’t help but respect his intellect, which informed his positions, more than you can say for most politicians, especially more contemporary ones.

And while we’re on the subject of politics, here’s James Fallows on current events:

Mitt Romney informs us that the raid that took out Osama bin Laden one year ago was no big deal, because “even Jimmy Carter would have given that order.” …Jimmy Carter is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy who spent ten years in the uniformed service of his country. As far as I can tell, this is ten years more than the cumulative service of all members of the Romney clan.

Why, yes. Yes, it is.

Finally, do I have to have an opinion about Barack Obama, boyfriend? Because I’d prefer not to.

The downslope of the week! How wonderful.

Yep, up late dancing around the maypole catching up on work. Open thread!

I got a call sometime in January from an old pal, asking if I’d like to have lunch in two hours, spur of the moment, and I said yes. It was a wonderful lunch and a wonderful time, and I resolved that if I had the chance to see an old pal again, I’d do it, because once you hit 50 you just never know. I missed my college-newspaper reunion two weeks ago, and I regret it, but we did make time for Dr. Frank Byrne’s 60th birthday party in Madison over the weekend, and I certainly don’t regret that, even though it required a too-early flight out and a too-late flight home and the weather was fairly shitty. It was still a great party, and a day-after breakfast, and somehow — Frank swears — it remained a surprise.

He swears. He’s too nice a guy to say otherwise, but if it’s true, I don’t know how she did it, because it was one big party. All his kids flew in from their various outposts, his mom and sister showed, and there were a few from Fort Wayne, as well as the expected horde from Madtown.

I’ve been living in Detroit long enough that my eye is thoroughly scuffed to the decay; I hardly notice it anymore. But man, did I notice Madison. What a prosperous, money-soaked town. There was a demonstration going on down at the capitol, where we didn’t linger. (See weather report, above.) I mentioned that when we arrived at the party.

“I see they were demonstrating at the capitol.”

“They’re always demonstrating at the capitol. The news would be if they weren’t.”

I gather this will continue until the election, and if Walker isn’t recalled — polling says he has a good shot at prevailing — likely for a while afterward.

That photo below was taken in the student union — the Rathskeller, where we drank beer because of the rain outside, on the famous Memorial Union Terrace. Frank’s favorite summer socializing spot, by the way. Send him out for a pitcher, but don’t expect him back for 45 minutes; he has to stop to talk to a few million people along the way.

(We stayed at the Hotel Red, by the way — Mrs. Frank got a rate. The showers were amazing. I could marry that damn shower. If you ever get a chance to experience one of those multi-head, crazy-ass showers, do so. It made up for the chill rain.)

Our last stop on the way out of town was a record store, where we bought Kate the Velvet Underground’s “White Light/White Heat” album, along with Black Flag’s “In My Head.” “If my parents bought me these records when I was 15, I’d have checked the refrigerator,” the clerk said, but didn’t say for what. I left it at that. Some things, you just leave unexplained.

Where is Nance?