Those flag-draped coffins

This one has me puzzled. Dave Berg was livid on Thursday about an ad by Democrats that showed flag-draped coffins of American soldiers. Denny Rehberg put out a news release asking Monica Lindeen to disavow the ad. Republicans expressed outrage that Democrats would "exploit" the deaths of soldiers to raise money; Democrats pointed out that President Bush had used the flag-draped coffin of a terrorism victim in his own campaign ads.

My naive question: So what? What's wrong with showing pictures of flag-draped coffins? It's not an invasion of privacy, since no one was identifiable. Indeed, coffins are an accepted method of displaying human remains in public.

Is it because the Dems were trying to raise money? If the coffins had been displayed by a company trying to sell flags, or coffins, or better body armor, then I would be on the Republicans' side. But this is a political fight about multiple issues -- one of which is what we are going to do about a terrorism strategy that puts soldiers into flag-draped coffins. Let's not shrink from reality.

Is it a simple matter of taste? Maybe. I haven't seen the ad, thanks to my screwy computer, and the Democrats have now pulled it, so I probably won't. But I also think that excessively good taste in time of war is itself a perversion. Wars that have been as painless and distant as this one has been for millions of Americans ought to be shoved in our faces now and again.

There may be some pain, I suppose, for families of slain soldiers to see those pictures of coffins. But it would be far worse to forget their sacrifices and cut short a needed political debate simply out of fear that feelings might be hurt.

Far more than feelings are at stake in this war. I would hate to think that our political campaigns would be too genteel to remind us of that hard fact.

E-mail of the day

This comes from Bill White, who has been in occasional contact since a Nazi filed to run for office in Bozeman. White now says he has resigned from the National Socialist Movement. His reason:

My resignation comes days after it was revealed that the Chairman of the National Socialist Movement is involved in a Satanic cult called the "Joy of Satan".
Further, this cult certainly engages in inappropriate sexual discussions with children through their "Teens for Satan" e-group, if not actual sex with minors.

And, it appears many senior NSM members are members of this cult group, including at least one convicted child molestor that was readmitted to the NSM last year without much explanation.

Mass murder of children is OK, apparently. Just don't have sex with them first.

Here's the offending website. Much more here.

Troubling

This is a troubling story. It doesn't bother me so much that the school administration would pull the plug on a valedictory speech; school administrators are supposed to be idiots. That's their role in creation.

But I find it worrisome that the ACLU is backing, and apparently was even involved in, the decision to cut her speech short on the grounds that it promoted religion. Poppycock. She wasn't given a chance to speak because the school wanted to throw religion at the students. She got a chance to speak because she earned it, and the First Amendment is all on her side.

It bothers me nearly as much that the story seems to have gotten attention only on the right side of the blogosphere. The corollary, I suppose, would be that if she had made comments attacking religion the right side of the blogosphere would be silent and the left side would be all over it.

Free speech doesn't work that way. The ACLU's position, if reported accurately, is wildly off base. I've e-mailed Scott Crichton asking for clarification. If I learn anything, I will let you know.

Outpost update

My take on the political campaigns is in this week's Outpost. I also sat down for an hour with Jon Tester this week for a freelance story I'm doing. I've met Tester a couple of times before, but this was my first extended interview with him. My reaction: a heck of a nice guy. If he has an artifical bone anywhere in him, I couldn't find it. The guy just sort of exudes decency. Even a stalwart conservative I interviewed who served in the Legislature with Tester, and who blasted just about everything Tester has done and hopes to do, agreed that he's a great guy.

But is that enough to win? I don't think so. And I still haven't gotten a good feeling about what Tester actually would do if he won. I'm guessing that lots of people feel the same way. On the other hand, I'm not sure what Conrad Burns would do either. His ads this week were nearly all on flag burning. I wrote about that in the June 29 Outpost (the link doesn't seem to be working right now).

What Burns doesn't even attempt to do in his flag-burning ads is try to make a case for amending the constitution, other than that he thinks he owes it to veterans. Just out of cussedness, I fired off an e-mail to his staff asking whether the senator thought the 1989 Supreme Court ruling on flag burning was wrong (Antonin Scalia voted with the majority) or whether it was the founding fathers who screwed up. I don't expect an answer.

He blogs!

I still can't blog from my own computer, so posts will be rarer and probably in concentrated bursts. Here's a batch.

Paul Stephens' Montana Green Bulletin, always an interesting read, carries an excerpt from a piece H.L. Mencken wrote for the Baltimore Evening Sun during the Scopes trial. Here's a bit from his description of William Jennings Bryan:

The old boy grows more and more pathetic. He has aged greatly during the past few years and begins to look elderly and enfeebled. All that remains of his old fire is now in his black eyes. They glitter like dark gems, and in their glitter there is immense and yet futile malignancy. That is all that is left of the Peerless Leader of thirty years ago. Once he had one leg in the White House and the nation trembled under his roars. Now he is a tinpot pope in the Coca-Cola belt and a brother to the forlorn pastors who belabor half-wits in galvanized iron tabernacles behind the railroad yards. His own speech was a grotesque performance and downright touching in its imbecility. ... The effect of the whole harangue was extremely depressing. It quickly ceased to be an argument addressed to the court -- Bryan, in fact, constantly said "My friends" instead of "Your Honor" -- and became a sermon at the camp-meeting. All the familiar contentions of the Dayton divines appeared in it -- that learning is dangerous, that nothing is true that is not in the Bible, that a yokel who goes to church regularly knows more than any scientist ever heard of. The thing went to fantastic lengths. It became a farrago of puerilities without coherence or sense.

Oh, how I long for the days when reporters were objective and didn't let their biases infect their stories!

Stephens also had this gem from U.S. Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., about a failed amendment that would have prohibited the federal government from undermining state medical marijuana laws:

"If I am terminally ill, it is not anybody's business on this floor how I handle the pain or the illness or the sickness associated with that illness. With all due respect to all of you, butt out. I did not enter this world with the permission of the Justice Department, and I am certainly not going to depart it by seeking their permission or that of any other authority. The Congress has no business telling people that they cannot manage their illness or their pain any way they need to. I would trust any doctor in the country before I trust some of the daffy ducks in this institution to decide what I am supposed to do if I am terminally ill ... . When is this Congress going to recognize that individuals in their private lives have a right to manage their problems as they see fit without the permission of the big guy in the White House or the big guy in the Justice Department or any of the Lilliputians on this Congressional floor? Wake up!"

Between this vote and the flag amendment, it looks like Democrats are all we have to rely upon to uphold principles of limited government and freedom. What a bizarre world.

Comments up

Comments are back, sort of. I still can't get to them on my computer, but I am able to get them from another computer. So post away.

bias?

Deep in a comment thread on What's Right in Montana, someone cited this Gazette headline as an example of liberal media bias: “GOP-run Senate kills minimum wage increase.”

My question: How? It's accurate, and it gives Republicans credit for killing something they opposed. Where's the bias?

I think the answer lies in the bias of the commenter, not the headline writer. His train of thought must have run something like this: The media are liberal; therefore, the headline writer was liberal; therefore, the headline writer favors an increase in the minimum wage; therefore, the headline writer, being a liberal, assumes that most other people favor an increase in the minimum wage; therefore, the headline writer thought that writing a headline that accurately points out that Republicans killed the bill will help Democrats.

See, once you've persuaded yourself that bias is everywhere, you can find it everywhere. Except in your own biased heart.

Comments down

Several of you have posted comments, but I am having some sort of computer problem and am unable either to read or publish the comments. It seems to be my computer's problem, not Blogspot's, and I will fix it as soon as I can figure out how. Until then, I can be reached at editor@billingsnews.com.

The real terrorists

From today's letters to the editor in the Gazette:

"The United States of America is being taken over by terrorists. And it is not Iraq, Iran or foreigners. It is called extreme environmentalists. They have the state of Montana and Washington, D.C., on their knees. And we all better wake up and smell the coffee.

"The only thing that's in danger of extinction is common sense!

John O. Morris
Otter"

And in parts of Otter, common sense has disappeared altogether.

Burns and the flag

At a Flag Day news conference in Washington, D.C., U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns noted that "countless millions of American military personnel" have served under the U.S. flag.

"It is simply an insult to these brave Americans that the sacrifices they have made in the name of liberty under the American flag are diminished by people who would burn, trample, or otherwise willfully desecrate our flag," he said.

As a veteran myself, I have two questions:

1. Exactly how is my service diminished by lowlife jerks who burn the flag?

2. Where does a U.S. senator get off deciding on my behalf what insults me?

Sure, I'll support your flag-burning amendment. Just as soon as we pass an amendment prohibiting politicians from invoking veterans every time they want to enact some ill-conceived, bullet-headed attack on the Constitution.

If we're going to muck around with the First Amendment, then let's not waste time banning something that hardly anybody wants to do in the first place. Let's impose a ban that will enhance domestic tranquility and enrich the national civic debate. And punish violators with some sort of painful and lingering death.

Max redux

From the Onion archives: Max Baucus fesses up.

Instapulp

This is odd. Instapundit complains that a newspaper columnist is being dishonest. Instapundit notes correctly that the newspaper column did not quote the full post that it targeted, but the suggestion that Instapundit "lumped in" reporters' failure to cheer at the death of al-Zarqawi with other instances of press "misconduct" doesn't seem terribly far off. Instapundit certainly seems to find the anecdote consistent with his repeated insinuations that reporters are on the wrong side of the war.

In any case, the newspaper column is not as far off base as Instapundit's insistence that Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz "went out of his way" to use the cheering as evidence that the press was "properly patriotic." Kurtz did nothing of the sort. He simply noted in a paragraph that Zarqawi had been killed and accurately quoted an AP story about media reaction. Kurtz didn't cite the story as evidence of anything. Nor did Kurtz's piece need a "correction." Neither he nor the AP reporter wrote nothing about the nationality of the reporters.

Newspaper columnists are fair game, obviously, but bloggers who misuse what columnists write shouldn't complain when the same thing happens to them.

Adolph Coulter

Blog etiquette dictates that the first person to invoke Hitler automatically loses. Ann Coulter, cited below, has accused liberals of liking Hitler and Katie Couric of being Eva Braun. So since she's already conceded the argument, I might as well mention that reading the chapter from her newest book linked below reminded me a lot of "Mein Kampf."

In fairness, I haven't read all of her book, but then I haven't read all of "Mein Kampf" either. "Mein Kampf" was one of two books in my library that literally was recovered from a garbage bin (the other, "Sex Show Sweetie," was a much better read). Since I am determined that Coulter will get none of my cash, I won't read all of her book, either, unless I have a productive Dumpster diving day.

But I was struck by the similarities between Coulter's book and Hitler's in terms of tone and attitude. By way of editorial experimentation, below is an excerpt from her newest book, edited to its essentials and with a couple of key changes: Everywhere she wrote "liberal" or "Democrat," I substituted "Jewish" or "Jew." Where she wrote "liberalism," I substituted "Judaism." Here's what happened:

If a Martian landed in America and set out to determine the nation’s official state religion, he would have to conclude it is Judaism. Judaism is a comprehensive belief system denying the Christian belief in man’s immortal soul. Everything Jews believe is in elegant opposition to basic Biblical precepts.

Through movies, magazines, and TV, Jews promote a cult of idealized beauty that is so extreme as to be unimaginable. Jews will lie about anything. “Constitutional right” means “Whatever Jews Want.” Instead of seeking wisdom, Jews desire to be seen as clever by being counterintuitive, crazy, and outré. They have an irreducible fascination with barbarism and will defend anything hateful. If Hitler hadn’t turned against their beloved Stalin, Jews would have stuck by him, too. The truly pathetic Jews are the ones who aren’t rich but ape the belief structure of fabulously wealthy Hollywood leftists anyway.

Only their core rejection of God can explain the bewildering array of Jewish positions. Public schools are what columnist Joe Sobran calls “Judaism’s reproductive system.” No longer content to ruin their own children, Jews insist on being subsidized by the taxpayer to ruin everyone else’s children, too. Jewish judges feel free to disregard the Supreme Court to achieve the overriding objective of keeping real religion out of government schools. At least the crazy Muslims get funding from Saudi Arabia for their madrassas. Jews force normal Americans to pay for their religious schools.

It’s no wonder Bible Belt, right-wing Christians get the greatest enjoyment out of sex (another scientific study hated by Jews) — they never have to endure listening to Jews talk about sex.

These zealous pagans teach the official state religion of Judaism as axiomatic truth. The stupidest of their students become journalists, churning out illiterate attacks on dissidents from the Jewish religion. Jews are constantly accusing Christians of being intolerant and self-righteous, but the most earnest Christian has never approached the preachy intolerance of a Jew who has just discovered … two born again Christians in a Republican administration.

Jews are constantly accusing Christians of monumental self-righteousness for daring to engage in free speech or for voting in accordance with their religious beliefs. Because they passionately believed in Marxism, Jews thought they had a right to lie about being Soviet spies.

Jews consider it self-evident that they are being persecuted simply for wanting to do the right thing and always believe their critics’ motives are vile and corrupt. They are for adultery, lying about adultery, covetousness, killing the unborn, and stealing from the middle class. They have more shibboleths than the Old Testament tribe of Gileadites.

If Jews ever dared speak coherently about what they believe, the American people would lynch them. So they claim to believe in God, much as Paul Begala claims to go “duck hunting” (Jewish code for “antiquing”).

In addition to Christians, whom Jews hate, the Jews are not particularly welcoming of “folks” who do not believe it is a Constitutional right to stick a fork in a baby’s head. Jews revile religion but insist on faking a belief in God in front of the voters claiming to be “spiritual.” I don’t particularly care if Jews believe in God. In fact, I would be crestfallen to discover any Jews in heaven. Jews can believe what they want to believe, but let us not flinch from identifying Judaism as the opposition party to God.

What do you think? I think Adolph would have loved this book!

New blog

My buddy Bowen Greenwood (Mr. Greenwood to you) has started a new right-leaning blog, Election Daze. Bowen used to freelance for the Outpost and has worked on some Republican campaigns. Now he's a flak in Helena.

My only gripe about his blog: He puts my blog on his list of "libs." Dang it. If Ann Coulter is right, that means I am a traitorous, slandering, godless Stalinist. Fortunately, she never is.

Repulsive

Maybe I'm overreacting, but a May 31 Billings Gazette ad arguing for a gay marriage amendment struck me as particularly abhorrent. The inscrutable headline on the Focus on the Family ad was, "Why Doesn't Senator Baucus Believe Every Child Needs a Mother and a Father?" The nub was this: "The reality is that homosexual marriages intentionally create motherless families or fatherless families."

So the gay marriage amendment isn't about morality. It isn't about preserving marriage. It's about the kids. And Sen. Baucus must hate kids or he wouldn't vote against it.

I'm among those who think the Bible rejects homosexual relations. I'm also among those who think the Bible prohibits lying. If this ad doesn't break that rule, it cuts awfully close.

Buy Chinese

Thursday's paper delivery day bumper sticker highlight: "Buy USA." Nothing special, I suppose, except that the car with the bumper sticker was driving through the Wal-Mart parking lot.

That's the same Wal-Mart whose shelves are lined with products up to 70 percent of which come from China (for a discussion of the probability of this figure, go here). It's the same Wal-Mart that is, all by itself, China's eighth-largest trading partner. It's the same Wal-Mart whose purchases from China are growing 20 percent a year.

So that bumper sticker -- a subtle protest? Or just clueless?

Morrison who?

I may have been critical below of Jon Tester's performance on Yellowstone Public Radio, but he was a million miles ahead of John Morrison, who didn't even show for last night's call-in. According to hosts Jackie Yamanaka and Jim Gransbery, he bailed about six hours before it started because he was committed to attending a concert his daughter was in.

Not a bad excuse, except that the call-in show had been scheduled for a couple of months. Canceling at that late hour indicates either awfully poor planning or that something else was going on that he wasn't saying. Bad news for him either way.

Who for Senate?

My story on U.S. Senate candidate Bob Keenan will be in Thursday's Outpost. The paper's not up yet, so there's no link, but you can find it easily enough tomorrow if you care.

It's a fairly perfunctory effort -- give me a break; I started it at 5 a.m. today. But what most struck me about Keenan was how much I liked him. And how little I really wanted to vote for him.

Actually, I usually like politicians. The public perception is that they are all lying scum, but that's not been my experience (or I am embarassingly old to be so naive). Taking a public stand on a controversial issue requires more courage than most people have, and I appreciate people who are willing to do it. And good politicians have mastered the skill of being liked, something I have never managed. I just don't know why you lousy sons of bitches don't think I'm lovable.

Curiously, the short list of politicians I haven't liked includes both of Montana's U.S. senators. I've never bought Burns' good-ol-boy shtick, and Max Baucus seems incurably opportunistic. I would trade them both for Denny Rehberg, whom I like even when I think he's dead wrong.

But as much as I liked Keenan, and most of the rest of the candidates, I can't get excited about any of them. Keenan's too far to the right. Paul Richards is too far to the left. Bob Kelleher is amusing, but I couldn't listen to him for six years. Jon Tester strikes me as a decent guy, but he seemed way out of his depth on Yellowstone Public Radio's call-in show last week. John Morrison is a sharp cookie, but he sounds too scripted. I could see voting for him, but I can't see getting excited about voting for him. A couple of the candidates I don't know at all, and probably never will.

I would be disinclined to vote for Conrad Burns, even if I liked him better than I do. Guys like me who oppose term limits but who favor some churn in the congressional delegation have an obligation to vote against incumbents just because. And it's really time for Conrad to go.

So who gets my vote? Maybe Richards, just because he's the only candidate who seems to hate the Iraq War as much as I do. At least a vote for him might be read as a protest against the war, without much risk that he could actually get elected.

It's an unhappy impasse. I envy, to a degree, guys like Matt Singer and Eric Coobs, who seem to have no trouble picking their candidate and sticking with him. Spending all these years trying to write objective stories may not have made me objective, but it sure has made it hard to make a decision.

Don't fence me in

As often happens, I may be the last guy in town to notice this, but here's a blog devoted to the Yellowstone County obscenity ordinance.

Fraternity

I'm not quite sure whether to be proud or appalled. My brother, who has taught English at Delmar College in Corpus Christi, Texas, for a couple of decades, also has done some newspaper column writing on the side. Now his column has been picked up each week by Scripps Howard News Service. As he points out, if you enter "John M. Crisp" into Google, you'll find his columns showing up in the Raleigh News and Observer, Albuquerque Tribune, Sacramento Bee, Hilton Head Island Packet, Capitol Hill Blue and Boulder Daily Camera, among others.

I've been impinging on his territory in recent years, with the college classes I teach in journalism, German and English. So I guess it's only fair that he impinge on mine. Too bad he's so damn liberal.

English only

One thing about the U.S. Senate: If you can't count on it to do something helpful about immigration reform, you can at least count on it to do something stupid. The bill making English the national language of the United States is the dumbest thing since, well, the flag-burning amendment.

Listen up, you free-market conservatives: English didn't manage to survive as the nation's dominant language for 225 years because of federal protection. And federal protection won't make it last another 225 years. If anything in the world responds to the demands and needs of society, despite the will of government, it's language. If English can't compete, it deserves to die.

If the government wants to pass a law banning, say, Spanish language ballots, then do it straightforwardly and honestly. Don't put meaningless bromides into the law. Dang it, that's the sort of thing conservatives are supposed to protect us from.

Zoo story

The Outpost's leader this week on ZooMontana is, I believe, the most comprehensive and, unfortunately, the most pessimistic story on the topic has ever been published.

Out, Outpost

Under the euphonious headline "Outcry, outrage, outlaw, outpost: out, out, out," the Northern Light takes issue with the Outpost's decision to print an ad in the April 27 issue that opposes new county ordinances regulating obscenity and sexually oriented businesses (I couldn't find the editorial on the website, but it's in the hard-copy edition). The ad was placed by PRIDE with support from other groups opposing the ordinance.

The Northern Light's editor, Kathleen Plumb, doesn't believe in accepting advertising from groups that support ideas she disagrees with. The only reason the Outpost would accept such ads, she presumes, is "because the editor and publisher must to some extent support their agendas."

I addressed this topic in a general way here. But let me summarize: The reason we accept ads from such groups is that we sell advertising for a living. If the pro-obscenity ordinance people want equal treatment from our advertising department, all they have to is buy an ad of equal size.

Here's the kicker: At one of our West End distribution stops yesterday, someone had taken the trouble to carefully insert fliers into the Outpost in support of both ordinances. This was done without our permission and without paying us a cent. The flier says that it was "paid for by Montana Citizens for Decency through Law, Inc.," but nobody paid us.

Citizens for Decency may hold the moral high ground when it comes to pornography, but at least one of its supporters is a lowdown sneak.

On the rack again

Gannett, the nation's most predatory newspaper conglomerate, is still trying to take over the rack distribution business. I have written about it here, here and here.

Here's an interesting update from Jackson, Miss., on the nationwide effort, along with a call for action. More here and here.

Locally, the latest development is that Lee Enterprises has dropped all of its free publications from Albertsons stores rather than pay Gannett to keep them there. The Thrifty Nickel, Work for You, Western Business, the real estate publication -- all gone. I'm not sure what that adds up to in circulation, but I bet the Thrifty Nickel lost at least 1,000 circulation in the deal. Bet you won't see that showing up on the rate card anytime soon.

We're still paying to stay in Albertsons, but we've refused to sign a contract, so it's a month-to-month thing. Meanwhile, Gannett has expanded its operation to Helena. The noose tightens. (Hat tip to the Queen City News.)

UPDATE: More here, this time closer to home. And the government is involved.

Speeding ticket

Maybe I spent too many years in South Texas, but the hardest thing for me to understand in the immigration debate is why so many people get apopletic over the fact that illegal immigrants broke the law to get here.

Sure, they broke the law, but there are laws and there are laws. It's illegal to drive 70 mph in a 55 mph zone, and it's illegal to commit armed robbery. But that doesn't make the crimes morally indistinguishable.

Let's face it: For most of American history, crossing the border illegally has been treated much more like a traffic violation than an armed robbery. That may have been bad policy, but it was our policy, not the immigrants'. Offenders have gotten the equivalent of a speeding ticket, or less -- often people apprehended trying to cross the border were simply sent back to the other side, only to try again the next day.

So here's a hypothetical: You're unemployed, the bank account is empty, the kids are hungry, and you have no prospects. Suddenly, you hear about a job 100 miles away that will pay you a wage beyond anything you could hope to earn in your home town. But to take it, you have to drive there by noon, and the only way to make it is to break the speed limit.

Do you speed and risk a ticket? If your answer is no, then shame on you for lying. If it's yes, then welcome to America.

Press release of the year

I know I shouldn't be giving free publicity to Nazis, but I submit that no news release in the entire political season will top this lede:

Montanans have rallied to the Swastika banner as a
result of the attention and popularity of Shawn
Stuart, Republican candidate in the state's 76th House
District, leading to the formation of a third Montana
Unit, based in Billings.

Heil, Shawn!

Enviro whackos

Ed Kemmick writes about Steve Prosinski's Sunday column on reader comments appended to Gazette stories.

I may have more to say about that later but what struck me about Prosinski's column was the short item about cutting the Sunday comics from six pages to four. The reason, according to Prosinski: "to conserve newsprint."

Thank God, somebody's finally doing something about conservation. Now if the Gazette would just get rid of some of those Sunday circulars. Heck, we'd take them.

Brooks on target

David Brooks, the New York Times columnist, gave a terrific speech at MSU-Billings Thursday night. I'll write about in next week's Outpost but will post a few observations here:

1. Petro Theater was just about full, but very few people there seemed of student age. Most seemed my age or older. I'm not sure the Times means much to students.

2. Brooks pulled up an old quote from Tom Wolfe: "Every teenager knows who his natural enemy is." He used the quote to make the point that people choose their party not on ideology but on "tribalism" and group identification. The quote hit home with me. I've always thought of George Bush as a spoiled frat kid, and I've never liked spoiled frat kids. I never bought the faux-rancher act because I've known too many ranchers. I never bought the born-again Christian business because no authentic Texas Christian would call a man an asshole, and then refuse to apologize for it. So maybe all my dislike for him is really just working off teenage angst toward upperclass rich kids. Except for the Iraq part.

3. He said that the consensus among Republicans is that they will lose at least the House this fall. "I think they know they've strayed, and they're going to pay for it," he said. But the consensus among Democrats is that they can't believe they will win.

4. In 2004, Bush won 23 of the 24 states with the highest fertility rates. Kerry won all 17 states with the lowest fertility rates. Republicans are reproducing, he noted.

5. While American poltical positions have not become more polarized, their voting has. The number of counties with landslide majorities for one party or the other has doubled since the '60s. The number of split ticket voters has dropped dramatically. The number of people who never go to church has doubled in the last 10 years.

6. Reporters, once part of the working class, have become much more elite. He noted that when he had a drink recently with a group of reporters, he was the only one who ordered alcohol. The rest all got bottled water.

This is deeply troubling. Sobriety in American journalism is indeed reaching alarming levels. Lewis Grizzard once pointed out that all of the creativity went out of American newsrooms when the glue pots were taken away. A dwindling few of us carry on.

Anyway, none of this really even much touches on the important things he had to say. For that, you'll have to read the Outpost.

Where the money goes

My take this week in the Outpost on School District 2 funding may be a bit different than what you have seen before.

Bummer for Burns

More bad news for Conrad Burns. You have to follow the link at the bottom to get his response.

At the old ball game

When I couldn't stand looking at this computer any more on Saturday, I headed over to Cobb Field to watch MSU-Billings in a doubleheader against Oklahoma Panhandle State University. There I ran into Allen Rice, an old Gazette colleague (now retired) who is one of the most knowledgeable baseball people I know.

Otherwise, the crowd was thin. I doubt there were 100 paying customers in the stadium. But a wildly disproportionate number of them appeared to be female college students dressed in their summer shorts. I don't know how well this team gets baseball, but it sure gets the girls.

It was a fine day. The weather was gorgeous. The brats were tasty. The Jackets came from behind to win the first game, then lost a ragged second game. It was fun being able to hear the players talking and cheering each other on.

The quality of play was watchable. In my sports writing days, I covered a lot of college baseball and generally found the level of play comparable to the Mustangs -- the players may have had less talent top to bottom, but they were a little older and a tad more polished. Of course, that was Southwest Conference baseball, which was about as good as college baseball got. A lot of those players had their eyes on the big leagues, and quite a few made it. Saturday's twin bill was a few notches below that, but the Jackets are improving steadily.

The two biggest annoyances from the college game also were present: the seven-inning doubleheader games, which never feel quite finished, and the aluminum bats. Somebody ought to be able to come up with a composite bat of some sort that combines the durability of aluminum with the satisfying thwack of wood. Then we would have something.

Hockey for-never

Should county government subsidize sports? My take is in this week's Outpost.

Growing down

A big ad in Wednesday's Billings Gazette proclaimed, "Circulation is UP! Billings Gazette's circulation is GROWING!" An editor's note on the opinion page today made a similar claim. But neither the ad nor the note answered the two questions I always ask my writing students when they baldly state, as they often do, that some trend or another is increasing: How much? Since when?

Since I can't order the Gazette to produce its research, I did some of my own. The annual reports on the Lee Enterprises web site list circulation figures for each paper for the period ending in September. For the Gazette, I compared September 2004 to September 2005. Sunday circulation had, indeed, increased by 331 papers, a stunning increase of 0.6 percent. But daily circulation was down 740 papers. So in September 2005 the Gazette was selling 4,109 fewer papers a week than it had a year earlier.

As Chico Marx used to say, "'Atsa some joke, eh, Boss?" Using that kind of math, I expect to demonstrate in the Outpost next week that I am growing younger.

Alphabet soup

This senator thinks a senator is going to prison over the Abramoff scandal. Who could that be? Let's go through the alphabet: A ... B ... (hat tip to Kevin Drum).

Mill levy doom?

I have yet to encounter a single soul not actually serving on the Billings school board who thinks the mill levies have a chance to pass. Anybody here heard different?

School spending

I meant to link the other day to my Outpost story on the School District 2 budget, but have been too busy paying taxes and bitching about having to work on such a lovely Easter weekend. I'm not sure my story adds a whole lot to the debate, but I do add some perspective starting about the fifth graph on how much faster expenses have grown than revenues have. The upshot is that even after winning a big lawsuit over state funding, the district's budget just keeps getting tighter. Is this the answer?

Blogging on blogging

I liked Ed Kemmick's Weekend Update post, in part because I, too, broke out the hammock for the first time this weekend and in part because I, too, found the Garry Wills column (thanks to Jackie Corr) brave, thoughtful and all-around wonderful. Ed also comments on the phenomenon I mention here: The further away you get from blogging, the smaller it looks.

In Ed's comments, a couple of people point out that traditional media people have little use for bloggers. I think there is truth in that, although I don't mean to speak for others. But I think it's fair to say that even alternative weeklies are now part of "traditional media."

The usual reasons bloggers give for the antipathy of traditional media are:

1. Media have never been held accountable before and now they don't like it. This is hokum. In the quarter-century I have spent in the news business, my phone number always has been in the book. People have always been able to call me at 3 a.m. to tell me what a lousy job I'm doing, and sometimes they do. Papers I've edited have printed thousands of letters to the editor, hundreds of them disagreeing with something we've said or done.

2. Bloggers fact-check our asses, and we don't like it. Some do, some of the time. But most media criticism on blogs is of such low and redundant quality that reading it is a waste of time. One recurring theme: If you ever read a news story about yourself or about a topic with which you are intimately familiar, you always find inaccuracies and frequently find that that the whole take is wrong. That's the feeling I get when I read most blogging critics: They have no clue.

3. The old media are dying because bloggers are killing them, and they don't like it. Probably some truth in this; these are tough times to be in the news business. But I don't really see any bloggers doing what newspapers do. Perhaps someday they will.

I think the real reasons traditional media don't much care for bloggers are more like this:

1. Lack of accountability. I stand behind everything I write and always have. Most bloggers (or at least commenters) hide behind anonymity.

2. One criticism of journalists is that they are a step removed from real life. They observe, comment, ask questions and write. They don't DO. But most bloggers are even a further step removed. They don't go to meetings, don't go to car accidents, don't confront people they will make look bad in print. If the world holds journalists in contempt, they can now pass along that contempt to bloggers.

3. Blogger triumphalism. So tired.

4. Confronting blogging forces traditional media to refight old battles. There was a reason why, many years ago, most newspapers quit running anonymous letters to the editor. Those letters destroyed civil discourse. There was a reason why most newspapers didn't explain themselves very well to their readers. Self-absorption is an addiction best treated cold turkey.

5. Lack of civility. People who want to criticize my newspaper work have to look me in the eye, talk to me on the phone, or attach their name to a letter. Dealing directly with other humans makes people be nice. Those restraints vanish on the web. When morons like Bill Quick can label traditional media as traitors with no real fear of recrimination, then you don’t have a conversation. You have a brawl.

UPDATE: Just want to make it clear that the above are general comments about a general phenomenon. The list of bloggers for whom I have personal admiration and respect would be too long to include here.

All the news that pays

This news release, I'm guessing, describes what news gathering is becoming:

MISSOULA — During the next two years, Montana Public Radio’s News Department will present regular feature stories about issues of poverty in Montana.
The features project is supported by a $78,500 grant from the Northwest Area Foundation, whose mission is to help communities reduce poverty.
“Poverty in Montana takes many forms, from working families who can’t afford health care to food banks who can’t keep their shelves stocked to keep up with the increasing demand,” said Sally Mauk, news director at The University of Montana Broadcast Media Center, where MPR’s studios are located. “I’m excited about the project and the opportunity to get our news staff out to many Montana communities to report on such an important and timely topic.”
Kevin Maki, a longtime Montana journalist, will join the MPR staff for the two-year project. Maki currently produces feature stories about people and places in the Bitterroot for the radio station.
The Northwest Area Foundation works in an eight-state region that includes Montana. The foundation approached MPR after successful projects last year with Minnesota Public Radio and Seattle’s KUOW.
For more information about the Northwest Area Foundation, visit its Web site http://www.nwaf.org.
Montana Public Radio programming and station information can be found at http://www.mpr.org.

My prediction: Montana Public Radio will discover that poverty is a problem. But less of a problem when the grants are rolling in.

Oh Ohs

Chuck Denowh sent along this, which I guess is what sparked the news release quoted below:

Dear Editor:

I learned from reading this newspaper last weekend that a Nazi has filed as
a Republican for legislative office in Butte. I want to make it clear that
neither the state nor county Republican Party organizations had any part in
recruiting this man to run for office.

The Montana Republican Party in no way condones what the Nazis stand for.
Our state party platform is very clear that we believe in a "commitment to
equal rights and equality for every citizen regardless of gender, age, race,
national origin, religion, creed, or physical impairment."

This candidate who has filed as a Republican is misinformed on a number of
levels, including his assertion that his views in any way reflect the
Republican Party's emphasis on equality. I speak for all Republicans when I
say that we did not recruit this man to run, we do not support his
candidacy, and we will work to achieve his defeat.

Karl Ohs
Chairman
Montana Republican Party

For the record, I certainly would not suggest that Republicans are "pro-Nazi" compared to Democrats. If there is one issue that has so far remained beyond partisan debate, it is that nobody likes Nazis.

On the other hand, if Republicans are going to blame Democrats for how Hollywood actors vote, I guess it's fair for Democrats to blame Republicans for how Nazis vote.

Typical anti-white bias

News release of the day:

Bill White, spokesman for the National Socialist
Movement today responded to letters written by the
Montana Republican Party and the Montana Democratic
Party about the campaign of National Socialist
Movement candidate for Montana legislature Shawn
Stuart in House Distrit 76.

"The Montana Republican Party's Chairman Karl Ohs is
lying when he says the Republican Party did not
recruit or encourage Stuart to run, or that they were
not familiar with his views," White stated today, "At
the Pachyderm Club's Lincoln-Reagan Day Dinner, just
prior to the filing date, Shawn Stuart, at the
invitation and encouragement of Rachel Roberts,
Pachyderm Club President, and Charles Robinson,
President of the Young Republicans, of which Mr Stuart
is a member, announced his candidacy and informed the
Republican Party leadership of his views. His views
and his candidacy were embraced by the Republican
Party at that time.

"We find Mr Ohs response today hypocritical and false.
Mr Ohs is lying when he attempts to distance the
Republican Party from Mr Stuart.

"Further, the National Socialist Movement finds the
various threats made against Mr Stuart and his
campaign by the Republican and Democratic Parties
ridiculous. In particular, the Montana Democratic
Party has manipulated Montana's anti-working-class
unions in order to push the homosexual and
Jewish-multiculturalist agenda on the white working
people of Montana for too long.

"We look forward to the defeat of their candidates."

White, who, organized Pat Buchanan's 2000 Reform Party
presidential petition drive in Maryland, as well as
managed the campaigns of the first team of third party
candidates to qualify for ballot access for Congress
and legislature in Maryland in twenty years, stated
that the National Socialist Movement expects to
"easily defeat" any attempt by the Republican Party to
stop Stuart from running for office.

"The law does not permit them to try to remove him
from the ballot at this point and their only other
option -- which we will wait to see if they use before
telling them what it is -- has historically failed.
We expect Shawn Stuart to be the Republican nominee in
this district and we expect him to go on to an
outstanding performance at the polls.

"With only 3,000 or so registered voters in HD 76, I
think it will be easy for Mr Stuart and the NSM to
counteract any of the typical mass media and mass
political party actions white nationalist candidates
typically face."

Bad blog

This is discouraging. Yesterday I posted what I thought was a reasonably coherent post on a timely topic of broad concern. Matt Singer, at least, thought it was worthy and quoted it at length. At this writing, he has received seven responses to the post, some of them disagreeing with my point but all of them rational, civil and on topic. I have received ... garbage. You can judge for yourself, except that I already have deleted the most offensive (read: Mellonesque) comments.

This can't go on. Someone in comments suggested blocking Mellon's IP address, but I have no clue how to do that. Perhaps someone can fill me in. In the meantime, I am adopting another suggestion: I have enabled comment moderation. Since my various other jobs require me to be away from this desk for long periods, this may mean a considerable gap between the time comments are posted and when they show up here. I'm not happy about that, but the only other options I can see are closing off all comments or shutting the whole blog down. So I am taking the least drastic alternative.

Perhaps, someday soon, Mellon's final blinking brain cell will wink out, and he no longer will be able to type. Then, blogging may have a future.

Blog some more

Some readers inferred from the post below that I wouldn't blog again. Perhaps it was that pesky headline: "Blog no more." But everybody knows you can't rely on headlines in newspapers. Why trust blog headlines?

I really only meant to say that I had no regrets about taking three weeks off and that I would blog again only with good reason, such as when I have something to say that isn't likely to fit into the Outpost. Here is one such topic:

Some conservatives (but not all; George Will makes the sensible conservative argument here) make the case against illegal immigration that U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher made Friday night on “Real Time with Bill Maher”: It hurts American workers, and it hurts the American economy.

Many conservatives (I don’t know whether Rohrabacher is one of them) also make the case for Wal-Mart: It helps American workers by providing jobs and low prices, and it helps the American economy. But one reason Wal-Mart has low prices is that it buys heavily overseas, and pressures its suppliers to lower their costs by exporting manufacturing jobs overseas.

Here’s what I don’t get: If it’s good for America to buy cheap goods made by low-wage workers in other countries, why isn’t it good for America to buy cheap goods and services provided by low-wage workers who come here from other countries? What’s the difference?

One difference, Wal-Mart supporters will say, is that illegal immigrants don’t play by the rules. But neither does Wal-Mart. At last count, some 44 lawsuits had been filed against Wal-Mart for forcing employees to work illegally off the clock . And nearly 2 million women are involved in a sex discrimination suit against the company.

So illegal immigrants are just doing what smart entrepreneurs have been doing for centuries: Cutting costs, and a few corners. They are following the dictates of the market. So why is it wrong when they do it and right when Wal-Mart does it?

If we really want to help the American economy, maybe we ought to build a fence around Bentonville.

UPDATE: Don Mellon is permanently banned from this blog. Life is too short to waste any of it on losers like him. If you post a comment that even looks like it be from that scum, it will be deleted. If I have deleted your post in error, please contact me by e-mail. Hear that, Mellon? GO AWAY!

Blog no more

It's been three weeks since I started a long-needed break from this blog. I didn't really mean for it to last this long, but I kept stretching the break because of an early insight: The best thing about blogging is that it feels so good to quit.

I won't apologize for the break but will explain it a bit:

1. With two college classes to teach, and tutoring and the endless Outpost slog, something just had to give. So long, blog.

2. My foot has been hurting for a couple of months now. Presumably the gout, but still not officially diagnosed. I keep telling myself that it's my foot that hurts, not my brain, but it's remarkable how a little pain in the lower extremities goes straight to the head. No energy, no enthusiasm, just a ration of self-pity and suffering. Besides, I used to console myself during these attacks by thinking that at least I'm not one of those people you see limping around permanently (amazing how many there are, once you start to notice). Now after gimping around for two months, that consolation is pretty much gone.

3. We're getting serious about this newspaper business. We're just finishing the most profitable first quarter in Outpost history. It's about time. The future may be on the web, but the present is very much in print. We've got to stick to our knitting, dance with the one who brung us, and stop fouling our own nest (or a cliche to that effect).

4. Nothing to say. Zippo. I never was one for small talk, and blogging increasingly seems like the smallest talk of which humans are capable. One less voice makes the blogging world a better place.

5. Don Mellon.

I still think blogging makes sense as a long-term business strategy for a weekly newspaper like ours. But I'm sick of long-term thinking. I just want to make a couple of bucks and head for the house at a decent hour. Before long, it will be too late.

Burns the liberal

I thought Conrad Burns' last radio ad was pretty bad, but the new one seems worse. It starts by bragging about the health of Montana's economy, then gives the reason: the $2 billion in federal funds that Burns has brought to Montana. It concludes: "With his experience and seniority — no one is doing more to create a future of opportunities than Senator Conrad Burns."

Funny thing is, I could swear I heard him say almost exactly the opposite on "Home Ground" a few weeks ago: You can't rely on government to create wealth; private enterprise does that. That was the classic conservative mantra; now he seems to have gone all liberal.

Next thing you know, he'll be drinking with Ted Kennedy.

Government blues

I not much of one to complain about the burdens of government regulation on small businesses. It ain't that bad, at least not for this one. But this bugged me:

On Friday I got a notice from the Montana Department of Revenue assessing The Outpost a "penalty/fee" of $60 on withholding taxes for the Dec. 31, 2004, filing period. Why? No idea. The department offers no explanation, and my own records show that the payment was made on time, and the government cashed the check.

So now I have to fill out a "Request for Informal Review" stating "factual reasoning for your dissatisfaction." But since I don't know why the fee has been assessed, factual reasoning will be a challenge. The good news is that if the department finds against me, which is likely, I can file an "APLS102F with the Office of Dispute Resolution."

Or I could just pay the $60, which is likely to be cheaper. Damn it.

Yuks

Roger Clawson's column this week on sexually oriented businesses is drawing some pretty funny responses.

Superintendent revisited

Just got off the phone with Kathy Kelker, the chairman of the School District 2 board. Our failure to connect between last week's deadline and this week's deadline, by the way, was my fault, not hers. I was planning to get back to her in time to write a story yesterday, but I realized that the Outpost Home Improvement section would eat up all the newshole, so I put the story off for a week. Hope it's worth the wait.

Here's a quick overview of what she had to say. She cited most of the reasons we've heard for the decision not to renew Mr. Svee's contract: concern about the budget format, a tendency to overdelegate, failure to mesh with the board's strategic plan and vision. She said that he would claim that the failure to mesh was the board's fault, and she said he might be right, but that doesn't get the problem resolved.

She also agreed, generally, with his assessment that the district was running well and gave him credit for helping get the district past the strike. She said he was a steady, calming influence and didn't let things rattle him.

She said the board could not have adopted Mr. Svee's suggestion that he be given a one-year contract with the understanding that he could be let go without a further evaluation if philosophical differences could not be worked out in that time. State law requires an evaluation, she said.

As for whether there was any orchestration of the decision against renewing his contract, she said it could have appeared that way because the board seemed to reach consensus before the meeting that no one favored another three-year contract. But she said that she went into the meeting without knowing how the vote would turn out.

She also denied speculation that has surfaced on this blog and elsewhere that she had designs on the superintendent's job. "I'm a tenured college professor," she said. "Why would I want to do that?"

She predicted that Mr. Svee's departure would not have any long-term impact on the district's ability to pass bond issues and mill levies, primarily because those are difficult to pass in any case.

The board will meet next week to begin discussing the hiring of an interim superintendent, probably someone from outside the district, she said.

Disgruntled

Some of the newest Lee Enterprises employes, those at the St. Louis Post Dispatch, aren't happy.

Read far enough and you'll see that Lee's circulation fell in the last fiscal year.

Honesty in advertising

According to Jason Klindt, Sen. Conrad Burns' newest radio ad contains this line: "Today, through his experience and seniority, Sen. Burns has secured over $2 billion in federal funds for Montana – while voting to lower taxes."

Is that a campaign ad or a confession?

So maybe, sort of

The Gazette editorial board gives a weak endorsement today of the Billings school board's decision not to renew Superintendent Rod Svee's contract. The thrust of the opinion appeared to be this: If eight of nine board members agree, they must be right.

The editorial defends Svee from allegations that he spends too much time in Helena and that he delegates too much. It agrees that Svee communicated inadequately, but praises him for keeping his "rift" with the board from the public. Lack of communication seems to be OK, so long as it's the public that doesn't know what's going on.

Svee's "lack of commitment" to a more transparent budget process also is cited. Trustee Malcolm Goodrich also cited that in his interview with me, and I don't doubt the sincerity or legitimacy of his concern. But I have trouble seeing why that's not a fixable problem.

Considerations that seem more important to me aren't given their due. For example:

1. The district has an image problem that is not of the superintendent's creation nor within his power to repair. The problem arises from the board. Getting rid of the superintendent doesn't solve the problem; it exacerbates it.

2. Svee argues, persuasively to me, that the real work of the superintendent isn't to be, as the Gazette puts it, "communicator, leader, innovator, negotiator, cheerleader and healer." The ephemeral dream of finding all of those qualities in one package guarantees a history of superintendents with brief and troubled tenures. I've covered quite a few school boards over the years (though never this one, on any consistent basis) and I have never known a superintendent, no matter how capable, who could fill the Gazette's job description. The position needs to be cut to a manageable size, and Svee, I think, tried to do that.

3. Svee's departure will inevitably mean another long period of transition and training. Can we afford it? As the Gazette notes, crucial issues lie before the school district. If the district can navigate those issues with a lame duck superintendent, a novice superintendent, or no superintendent at all, then maybe it doesn't really matter so much who, if anybody, gets the job.

3. Odds are quite good that whoever replaces Svee will also fail, in important respects, to meet the board's expectations. Superintendents nearly always do. Measure Svee's flaws -- communication style, interaction with the board -- against his strengths -- unquestioned integrity, decency and competence -- and it's not hard to imagine that we could wind up a whole lot worse off.

Still wondering

My somewhat truncated take on the decision not to renew the contract of Billings Public Schools Superintendent Rod Svee can be found here. It's hard to squeeze in much reporting on production day.

I should add that two board members who did not immediately return my phone calls eventually did: Karen Moses and Katharin Kelker. Mary Jo Fox indicates on a comment on the story that she would have talked to me but did not get my message.

I still haven't talked to Moses or Kelker (I'm out of the office a lot these days), but I did talk to Svee on Wednesday. As in all of dealings with him, dating back to when he was superintendent in Hardin and I was covering the Indian beat for the Gazette, he was courteous, patient and candid.

He said the board's action took him by surprise.

"I had no clue that they were going to do it," he said. "It was obvious that something had been talked about, and something had been planned. I just wasn't privy to it." (I didn't see the meeting, but others who have said the board's action appeared to be orchestrated.)

He said that he feels good about his tenure as superintendent and believes that the district is running well. He defended his emphasis on delegating and building the district from within rather than publicly touting the district's achievements.

"You can't sell a product if the people don't believe it," he said.

He said that he would have been willing to accept a one-year contract without the nonrenewal provision. That would have been true even if the contract had noted philosophical differences with the board and called for an end to his tenure, with no further evaluation, if those differences could not be resolved. But he wouldn't accept a "lame duck" contract.

What about the notion that superintendent really isn't a viable job anymore?

"If they [the board] functioned, and let the administration do its job, like most school districts, rather than run it all through the board, it might work just fine."

He noted that one board goal when he was hired was to calm the waters following the teachers' strike. Now the board seems to want a superintendent who will be more activist and stir things up.

Now what do they do, he asked, when they need someone to calm the waters again?

Dancin'

A customer who paid his bill late sent in this note with his check: "Howdy, Sorry it took me so long. Been dancing in spagetti."

Best excuse for a slow pay I ever heard.

Gift to rioters?

Ed Kemmick aptly opines that the decision in Austria to send a historian to prison for denying the Halocaust is a gift to rioters angry about Danish caricatures of Mohammad.

This country will give rioters an even bigger gift if it ever passes a flag-burning amendment. I wouldn't want to have to explain to a devout Muslim why protecting a purely secular symbol from desecration is so important that we had to amend the Constitution to protect it, but religious figures are fair game.

Bad call

This strikes me as a very bad decision. With my various jobs, it's impossible for me to follow the board closely, and I haven't had time to do any reporting on this yet, but I am struck right out of the chute by a couple of things:

1. Svee's biggest job was to calm the waters after the strike. He did that well and deserved to be rewarded for it.

2. The staff gave him much better evaluations than the board did. When the staff and board disagree, the staff is usually right.

3. His highest marks were for ethical behavior, personnel matters and accepting responsibility. Those marks should carry disproportionate weight.

4. Fruit basket turnover every three years is a lousy way to run a school district. I've been saying this for a long time, and it seems truer now than ever: City administrator and school superintendent have become impossible jobs. It would be better to get rid of the positions altogether than to keep hacking away at the hopeless dream of finding the perfect candidate. The district could buy a punching bag for a lot less money.

Savage but untrue

Michael Savage just said on KBLG that Bill Clinton, speaking in Pakistan, called for the conviction of European publishers who printed caricatures of Muhammad.

Say what? I'm guessing that Savage got his information from the notoriously unreliable World Net Daily, which printed this story. That story, in turn, probably came from this account or a similar one. But the BBC version omitted the inflammatory quote.

Whom should we believe? Consider the stories that make the claim: They are all similar in quotes and structure, which may indicate they are not independent reports. Several contain this quote or a variation: "the media should be disallowed to play with the religious sentiments of other faiths," wording awkward enough to indicate that there may have been a language barrier. One quotes Clinton as saying, "Media should avoid to publish that things which create gap among different religions." Even Clinton's bitterest enemies would have trouble believing that sentence ever escaped his lips.

Perhaps most suspect is the utter lack of any followup. If Clinton made such a remark to newsmen, wouldn't someone have asked a question? When an ex-president calls for the repeal of the First Amendment, even in other countries, you'd think somebody would ask why.

All of which would be fairly inconsequential if Savage hadn't just told millions of listeners that the story is true, without the slightest doubt or qualification. New media, indeed.

Tony on the prowl

I was idly wondering what Tony Lewis has been up to, so I wandered over to Republican Asshats and found it no longer in operation. Then I went to Not Always There and found this.

Considering how easy it is to piss Tony off, he's going to be a very busy man.

He writes!

The editor has finally written an Editor's Notebook. With a cartoon!

UPDATE: When I wrote this column, I didn't realize that one of the newspapers that has reprinted an image of Muhammad is The Northern Light over in Molt. The Light apparently was responding to a Christian Newswire story that quoted Christian Newswire Director Gary McCullough as saying, "I ask you to publish the controversial cartoon of Muhammad to send the message; 'We will not be censored by treats [sic] of violence.'" (At this writing, the caricature still does not seem to be in the online edition.)

UPDATE 2: David Summerlin posts a thoughtful response to the Stranger.

Overblown Cheney

So I was driving around delivering papers Thursday, and Sean Hannity kept talking about how the liberal media were overplaying the Dick Cheney shooting story. He tossed out the topic off and on for a couple of hours, then promised a complete update on "Hannity and Colmes" Thursday night.

Then Glenn Beck came on, and he was absolutely livid about how the liberal media have overplayed the Dick Cheney shooting story. He talked about nothing else for 45 solid minutes, when I switched him off to listen to the news on NPR.

NPR! The hotbed of liberal media excess. Now I was going to get to hear the real thing, live on radio: The Dick Cheney shooting story overblown by the liberal media itself.

Except, it didn't happen. In the hour that I listened, the Dick Cheney shooting story drew maybe a minute of air time, most of that devoted to the brief remarks President Bush had made about the story earlier that day.

Hard to figure, except for the obvious hypocrisy of Hannity and Beck. Like every other media type on the planet, they knew that the Dick Cheney shooting is great talk radio material: pithy, with a clear-cut plotline, and with rich opportunities for humor and punditry. They couldn't pass up the story, but, as card-carrying conservatives, they couldn't let on that somebody at the White House might actually have screwed up. What to do? Blame the messenger, of course. They milked the story for ratings for at least three hours between time, all the time blasting the MSM for their coverage.

Such inconsistencies heighten my skepticism about commenters below who have such unshakable confidence that this story would have been played differently if Cheney had been a Democrat. Certain stories have a power of their own that pull the media along whether they really want to go or not. While it is easy to say, as commenters have pointed out, that this is not a world-altering story, it is, however, one of those stories that everyone will read or listen to, and nearly everyone will talk about. That sort of widespread appeal trumps media bias every time.

UPDATE: If this topic interests you at all, go read this.

Shooting critters

Several online readers looking for Dick Cheney hunting stories have stumbled across this 2004 column by Roger Clawson. Bottom line: "maybe the Veep just likes to shoot holes in critters."

Condolences

Stephen Joseph Tokarski, 89, the father of Steve and Mark Tokarski, a frequent commenter here and on other blogs, has died. Funeral Mass will be at 11 a.m. Friday at St. Pius X Catholic Church. Details will be in Thursday's Outpost.

UPDATE: The Outpost obituary is here.

Change drug law

Dave Budge has an important post urging readers to contact members of Congress to repeal the law denying federal financial aid for college to people with drug convictions. No law has ever better defined the word "stupid" when it comes to this nation's drug policy: Let's take people who have made a dumb mistake and deny them the education they need to avoid making dumb mistakes. Insane.

National disgrace

I was glad to see that Ed had an update on this immigration case in today's Gazette. I wrote about this case in 2001, as part of a series of pieces on abuses by immigration authorities in Montana. The fascinating part was the admission by what was then the Immigration and Naturalization Service that it had erred initially in allowing Mr. Zirotti a visa. Then, after allowing him up to uproot his family and move to America, devoting himself to building a risky and irreplaceable business, the INS decided to correct its error and send him back overseas.

Money quote, from INS attorney Ann Tanke: "If you're not very familiar with our administrative process that may seem horrible." No kidding.

Most of what I wrote proceeded from my pursuit of the Wolfgang von Eitzen case. There are too many stories about that to link them all, but this may serve as a summary. I still hear from von Eitzen now and again, and he is still fighting from Germany. He will never win.

I thought his case was about as clear-cut an instance of American injustice as I have ever encountered. Longtime resident, American family, straightforward in his INS dealings. Some people say, well, the law's the law, but that isn't true. At the time von Eitzen was deported, INS rules specifically allowed authorities to overlook technical violations in the interest of simple justice to people who had deep roots in the United States and who had tried to jump through all the hoops.

As in the case Ed described in the Gazette, the government's conduct was loathsome and inexcusable. Congress' bipartisan failure to fix the problem is a disgrace.

What a show

We went to the see the Outpost-sponsored concert last night by John Gorka and Susan Werner. I had never heard of either of them, and we had trouble even giving our comp tickets away. What a loss.

Gorka was good, a more or less conventional folksinger with some nice tunes and very funny patter. But Werner was sensational. The woman can do it all: a lovely voice, fine piano work, a nice touch on guitar and a terrific sense of humor and audience rapport. Best of all were her songs, which paid tribute to classic composers like Gershwin and Cole Porter without stealing from them. Each song was indubitably her own: clever, tuneful, wonderfully thoughtful and cogent.

Winning a standing ovation out of an Alberta Bair crowd isn't that tough, but Susan Werner earned hers. What a talent.

Preserving Montana

Good thoughts here about what makes Montana worth saving (by way of Headwaters News).

Squaw no more

Good letter in this week's Outpost by Robert S. Cooper calling for a change in the name of Squaw Creek Road. Also a lengthy but quite interesting response by Mike Price on the origins of the word.

Blogging time

KULR-8's new story on blogging says that two in five teenagers read blogs. Hmmm. Every fall, I ask my journalism students at Rocky about blogging, and I never get anywhere near that response. In fact, I don't think I've had a single student who read political blogs, and I can recall only one who had a blog of her own. I guess there are lots of ways to define what constitutes "reading" blogs. And I suppose it's possible that blogging is coming along so fast that even college students are behind their peers just a couple of years younger.

Wanzenried for Senate

Dave Wanzenried, the Democratic leader in the Montana House, has announced for Senate District 49 on the west side of Missoula. He gives the usual reason for switching houses: term limits.

Bond. Julian Bond

I briefly got involved in this discussion about a speech that NAACP Chairman Julian Bond gave in Fayetteville, N.C. The post goes on a bit, so I'll summarize: Brendan Loy essentially argues that local media overlooked Bond's inflammatory remarks out of liberal bias, conscious or otherwise.

Risking my blogging credentials, I took a radical step: I asked the reporter, Alice Thrasher. She sent me this link, which indicates that at least some of the remarks were less inflammatory than had been reported in World Net Daily, which relied on third-hand sources.

All of which interests me only because of the speed with which certain elements of the blogosphere jump to factual conclusions that match their prejudices, especially when an opportunity presents itself to trash mainstream media. If there is anything that reporters (and someday bloggers?) ought to know, it is that truth rarely breaks down in such simple terms.

Burns away

Occasionally people decide that what they have to say is more important than what the Outpost has to say, and they think the Outpost should pay for their speech. So they cover up our papers on our racks with papers or handouts of their own.

In such a way I came across a stack of pages copied from the American Free Press, a publication that among other interesting positions calls the Holocaust an "establishment hoax." Before throwing the pile in the trash, I noted one article that listed Montana Sen. Conrad Burns as a cosponsor of the Constitution Restoration Act. Could such a thing be true? Yes, it could.

The bill is stuck in committee, but if it were to pass, it would prohibit federal courts, including the Supreme Court, from reviewing any case involving a government officer or agent's "acknowledgment of God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government."

Exactly what that might mean isn't clear, at least not to me, but it seems to leave open the possibility that, say, a state judge might cite the sovereignty of God's law as grounds for overturning or ignoring manmade law. And that decision could not be appealed to federal court.

Conrad, Conrad. What are you thinking?

Burns down

I still haven't seen the Democratic TV ad attacking Conrad Burns, but I have finally seen his response. I thought it was incredibly lame, in at least three ways:

1. One way to gauge the severity of a scandal is by how strongly the affected candidate reacts. Burns' rather sweeping reaction suggests that people like me who have had trouble grasping the significance of the Abramoff scandal in Montana should be paying more attention. OK, I will.

2. In the ad, Burns suggests that the Democratic ads should be dismissed because they came from people who took money from Abramoff's clients. But if those ads should be dismissed, then so should his. He took more than anybody, and from Abramoff himself.

3. The ad provides no reason that I could detect for suggesting that Burns should be re-elected. His good looks? His grin? His hat? The message that he isn't as crooked as Democrats imply doesn't sound like an election winner to me.

Taken all together, the ad makes me wonder if there's something to the rumor that the GOP is ready to sacrifice Burns on the Abramoff altar. Party bosses may figure it's worth a few thousand bucks of advertising to help pave his way out.

Rumors at rest

City Lights notes the odd rumor that surfaced in The Outpost in a page of responses to "Brokeback Mountain." I did, in fact, ask Mr. Sutton about the source of this rumor in an e-mail. Although I didn't have room for his reply in The Outpost, here, in full (so to speak), is his response (none of which I'm making up):

Now it should be obvious that, as a self-respecting reporter (of rumors), I cannot reveal my sources. But I will try to give you some idea as to the gravity of this thing.

If I recall correctly, a friend of mine told me late last year that his sister-in-law had told his wife that her (the sister-in-law's) husband's youngest brother (who isn't from here) was talking to a barmaid in some little town in North Dakota, who had gotten part of the story from a fuel truck driver, and another part from a Billings beverage salesman. But no business names were actually mentioned in the story (to protect the guilty, no doubt). But she had been repeatedly assured by both sources that the report was from very, very reliable sources. Very reliable.

Anyway, this friend of mine (who sells hand soap) later asked some of his customers at a couple of auto parts stores if they had heard about it. The funny thing is that when he first asked them, they said no. But when he got around to talking with them again a week or so later, they did recall hearing someone saying something about that very thing. They seemed to remember some guy had come in asking about the story, for some kind of official investigation or something.

Getting more curious, my friend then starting asking everyone he saw about it. And in the next couple of weeks, as he made his rounds, it seems that every time he mentioned the rumors to anyone, more and more people had heard about it. Not all of the reports had the same details, of course. People often lose the details, it seems. But the story was out there, with a life of its own.

Based on what I've heard, then, I'm pretty sure that there is something very, very substantial to the rumors. Very substantial. Of course, I might just be full of it, if you know what I mean. I do get filled with some substantial stuff, now and then. But that's what laxatives are for, right?

So The Gazette's denial was, perhaps, a bit too glib.

An affair of honor

More astute bloggers than I have observed that today’s blogging world most nearly resembles the pamphleteering era of the 18th century. Thomas Paine set a standard for reach and influence that no blogger has come close to matching.

Less often observed is that 18th century political enthusiasts had a way of settling disputes that no longer exists: dueling. It’s a useful tradition that ought to be restored.

Readers with long memories and little else to do may recall my ongoing unpleasantness with Bill Quick at Daily Pundit. It started when he published a post that accused mainstream media of treason. MSM get accused of all sorts of things, and many of the accusations are stupid and irresponsible but essentially harmless. Treason is a different matter. Allegations of treason require a prompt and unsparing rebuttal because those allegations (1) devalue a concept that should not be devalued and (2) slur the honor of people who have served their country honorably and with distinction.

If dueling were socially acceptable, then when Quick posts such loathsome and scurrilous charges, I could insist that he produce either indictable evidence or a retraction. He would respond in his usual churlish way, I would demand satisfaction and, provided he could screw up enough courage, we would meet some clear morning on the field of honor, accompanied by our seconds, and I would shoot him dead.

Why would I win? I’m no gunman, but I did qualify as an expert marksman in the Army, and even at my age I think I have one good shot left in me. Doesn’t God guide the aim of those whose hearts are true?

But as matters stand, there would be an unpleasant police investigation, depositions and indictments, and I might have to do prison time (although, in Quick’s bizarro world, I could get off with a reprimand).

So I am reduced to merely publicly ridiculing his more outrageous lies and indiscretions from time to time, prompting him to reply with a string of imprecations that essentially all make exactly the same rhetorical point: His shit smells better than mine. And since nobody wins a shit-smelling contest, nobody comes away happy.

I’ve considered other options. There could be a blogger’s court, for instance, where aggrieved parties could state their claims before a neutral arbiter. But that probably would perpetuate more feuds than it would resolve.

Fights in the alley behind a bar tend to be tawdry affairs, and boxing matches, popular for settling some disputes, unfairly favor the better pugilist, an irrelevant consideration in matters of honor. Duels may favor the better marksman, to be sure, but the whole apparatus of dueling – the strict adherence to rules and procedure, the need to stand stock still and let the antagonist have his chance, the uniformity of weapons – rewards courage over mere technical competence.

Dueling is, in fact, the only way to extinguish flame wars in the blogosphere. If blogging is to endure, Americans will have to overcome our senseless prejudice against settling affairs of honor in an honorable way. We have nothing to lose but a few ignorant blowhards.

Ad out

More bad news for newspapers -- and Lee Enterprises takes a hit.

Tristram Shandy

I was delighted to hear this morning that "Tristram Shandy" has been made into a movie. One critic says that it's "a movie about 'Tristram Shandy' that's also a movie about a movie about 'Tristram Shandy.'"

Which may not be a bad way to approach "Tristram Shandy." Interviewed on NPR this morning, director Michael Winterbottom said one advantage to making this movie is that nobody has read the book.

Well, I read the book, and I consider it one of the comic masterpieces of English literature. But it is also, I have always thought, entirely unfilmable. It's a long digressive tale that begins with the birth of the title character -- and pretty much ends there. Lawrence Sterne wanders from digression to digression, leaves out entire chapters and invites readers to imagine others. He writes, "Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine ; ---- they are the life, the soul of reading ; -- take them out of this book for instance, -- you might as well take the book along with them."

For which reason, from the beginning of this, you see, I have constructed the main work and the adventitious parts of it with such intersections, and have so complicated and involved the digressive and progressive movements, one wheel within another, that the whole machine, in general, has been kept a-going ; -- and, what's more, it shall be kept a-going these forty years, if it pleases the fountain of health to bless me so long with life and good spirits.

Not exactly a blockbuster plot. Chapter XXIII of Volume I, for example begins: "I have a strong propensity in me to begin this chapter very nonsensically, and I will not balk my fancy. -- Accordingly I set off thus." And he ends Chapter XXV of the volume with this: "I set no small store by myself upon this very account, that my reader has never yet been able to guess at any thing. And in this, Sir, I am of so nice and singular a humour, that if I thought you was able to form the least judgment or probable conjecture to yourself, of what was to come in the next page, -- I would tear it out of my book."

My favorite part is the rhetorical treatise on the Argumentum Fistulatorium, which the author calls one of the most unanswerable arguments in the whole science of Ars Logica. The argument consists of whistling half a dozen bars of "Lillabullero"; it is Uncle Toby's response "when any thing shocked or surprised him ; ---- but especially when any thing, which he deem'd very absurd, was offer'd." No matter how bitter or instense the argument, when Uncle Toby invoked Argumentum Fistulatorium, the debate was over.

It's the argument every blogger needs in his arsenal.

Rehberg and Brown?

Here's one scenario that I hear is circulating in Democratic circles:

1. Burns takes the fall for the Abramoff scandal and pulls out of the race.

2. Rehberg runs for Burns' seat.

3. Roy Brown runs for Rehberg's seat.

On first blush, every part of this struck me as implausible. But it's beginning to sound more reasonable.

1. Burns doesn't sound like a guy who's thinking about giving up. Besides, even if he does, it's not clear that the baying dogs would quit howling.
But Todd made the counter case in a comment here to an earlier post.

2. After a few years on the endless fund-raising circus in the House, the Senate must hold at least some appeal to Rehberg. And I presume that he would be the instant favorite.

3. It's never been clear that Brown's assets would translate well to a statewide race. By most accounts, he got elected to the House by knocking on every door in the district. You can't knock on every door in the state, no matter how energetic you are. Treasure County alone would take several hours. On the other hand, he obviously knew how to get the party behind him in the House, and he's certainly ambitious.

Lindeen vs. Brown? I think Brown wins Yellowstone County, but Lindeen might win the race.

Essmann vs. Noennig

Maybe everybody else but me already knew this, but Jeff Essmann says that Mark Noennig has filed against him in the Republican primary for Senate District 28. Democrats, apparently, are still looking for a candidate.

Essmann, of course, is trying to get elected for the first time after he was appointed to office to replace John Bohlinger just before the last session. There was a lot of speculation at the time that Noennig would enter this race.

But I gotta go with Essmann: Noennig's too darn hard to spell. Actually, I do have a lot of respect for Essmann, a solid Republican with an open mind and a record of service. Nothing against Noennig; he's just more of a mystery to me.

McDermott for House

Billings City Councilman Shirley McDermott tells me that she has filed to run as a Republican in House District 49. Kendall Van Dyk already has announced as a Democrat in that district. His campaign treasurer, interestingly enough, is City Councilman Peggie Gaghen.

UPDATE: Just got a note from Roy Brown, the incumbent, in HD49, announcing his candidacy in Senate District 25, which encompasses HD49 and HD50. And, of course, I should have mentioned already that Gene Jarussi is running as a Democrat in HD49.

I don't know Van Dyk, but I think Jarussi vs. McDermott could be a heck of a race. Jarussi hung tough during the teachers' strike, and McDermott certainly made her share of enemies on the council. Both come into the race with a good deal of experience and a lot of name recognition, and Jarussi might be the more conservative of the two. Good matchup.

2ND UPDATE: In light of my past prognostication record, I should probably go ahead and pick this one. But I don't have a feel for it. McDermott will take some heat for the City Council's various fiascos, but she can say, at least, that she has been on the side of open government. Plus it always has seemed to me that she does a superb job of representing her constituents.

Jarussi will take some heat for the school board's various fiascos, but he really did take a strong stand in the strike, and that took piles of guts. The strike also was longer ago, but then, teachers may have longer memories. On the other hand, Democrats always seem to be the default choice of educators.

I don't think I know the district well enough to decide who would be the better fit. My pick: It won't be Van Dyk.

Burns the flag

Conrad Burns has his new campaign website up. No pictures of Jack Abramoff that I could see, but he did give his position on the American flag:

I believe it is wrong to desecrate the American flag. It is a symbol of freedom and of who we are, and it is an insult to all Americans, past and present, when it is burned or defamed. Too many dedicated men and women have fought and died to protect our flag and our freedoms for me to stand by and support its destruction in the name of so-called freedom of expression.

To which, two questions:

1. Would the senator make it a crime to "defame" the flag?

2. What's the difference between freedom of expression and "so-called" freedom of expression?

Burns on fire

Apparently I missed a story by Jennifer McKee that told part of this remarkable story about one vote by Conrad Burns. Hardly a neutral source, but certainly interesting.

Sunday blues

Tough week at the Outpost. Another ad rep gave notice, so we're back down to about 1.2 reps. Pretty tough to make a living that way. It's a tough, tough job.

And I just finished the least appealing of my many tasks: Sending out monthly statements and collection notices. I felt so down that I went over to Daily Pundit and took a shot at Bill Quick -- I know, I keep promising to stop, but it always cheers me to stir up his relentless and irrational bile. I'm sure there are worse bloggers out there, but I haven't found one who is more enraptured by his own self-importance. You can't go read my comments beause he has now seems to have deleted them -- although he left reponses up. Truly a class act.

Anyway, if I ever write my 13-volume treatise on "How to Screw Up a Business," I will certainly have a volume about the one thing that surprised me most about going into business: Discovering how many deadbeats there are out there. The number of people who think absolutely nothing of blowing off an overdue invoice never fails to amaze me.

Obviously, I don't want to paint with a broad brush. The huge majority of customers are dependable, and some, I am sure, would skip meals for a week to avoid leaving an unpaid bill on the table. But far more people than I ever expected will just flat walk away from a bill, never reply to a letter and never return a phone call. And the law protects them, so I have to be careful about naming names.

Ethically, I have a hard time distinguishing between those folks and somebody who walks into a store and steals something off the shelf. Of course, there are an awful lot of those people, too.

Story of the year

So what do you suppose was the most read article at NYTimes.com in 2005? Something about the war? Iraqi elections? Hurricane damage? Illegal wiretapping?

Nope. It was this.

Slow take

I'm still struggling to get outraged about the Burns-Abramoff connection. Let's see: Guy wants Congress to do something. Guy gives money to people in Congress. They vote the way he wants.

And exactly how is this different from what goes on there every day?

I always thought the outrage about Burns is that he preaches fiscal restraint, then runs every six years on his record as a pork roller. Giving people what they pay for may not be virtuous, but it isn't hypocritical.

Gay cowboyero

Christopher Abel's review of "Brokeback Mountain" got picked up on the Internet Movie Database, where it has generated a lot of comments well worth reading.

Bumper sticker of the day

This one bore the Marine Corps insignia and said: "When it absolutely, positively, has to be destroyed overnight."

Back in the saddle

Blogging's been fun here the last month, and I've enjoyed all of the comments, even if it ultimately turns out that 98 percent of them were from Don P. Mellon. Now it's time to slow down again.

Classes started today at MSU-Billings. I've got two German courses, and I'm working as a tutor as many hours at the Academic Support Center as I legally can without compromising my part-time status. Then there's the newspaper. The schedule won't be as grueling as it was in the fall, but it will be plenty busy, and I have to spend as much time as I can doing things that might actually put a nickel or two in my pocket. So I'll be blogging some, at a reduced pace.

'Real conservatives'

In response to a post below, Dave Budge asks what a "real conservative" is. It's a fair question, one I used to think I knew the answer to. Here's my traditional definition. A conservative is someone who:

1. Thinks government should be as large as necessary and as small as practicable.

2. Believes that government is a creation of the people, designed to serve their interests, not the other way around.

3. Has strong traditional beliefs but realizes that other people aren't obliged to agree with or respect those beliefs.

4. Favors the individual over the collective, right over wrong and ethics over profit.

5. Believes in balanced budgets.

6. Thinks the Constitution means what it says.

7. Embraces change slowly or not at all rather than calling for anything radical.

I may be forgetting a point or two, but that's roughly it. But as I say, I'm not so sure what it means anymore. If George Bush is a conservative, it seems to me, then my understanding of the word has lost all meaning.

Misamprehension

I've been meaning to blog about this since Thursday, but I've been too lazy. Jim Gransbery's Jan. 12 Gazette story on Conrad Burns ended with this quote: "Selling out my country, my state, that is beyond my amprehension (sic)," he said. "Ain't no way I'm going to do it."

Amprehension?

Let me lay a little groundwork here. Journalism is a trade with no agreed-upon professional standards, so this is a tad haphazard, but here a few broadly accepted principles when somebody says something that is obviously butchered:

1. You don't qualify it with "sic." Even the AP Stylebook says that.

2. Mangled quotes typically are repaired by paraphrasing instead of quoting directly:

Sen. Burns said that he would never sell out his country or state. "Ain't no way I'm gonna do it," he said.

3. Some reporters think it's OK to repair mangled utterances even in direct quotes. Others frown on that. Either way, your ear does an amazing job of editing speech even when you are trying to get it exactly. Just compare a written transcript with what you thought you heard sometime.

4. Mangled quotes may be preserved in certain instances:

A. When quoting exactly is particularly important, such as a response to a criminal allegation or formal charge, or when the quote may have been heard by large numbers of people.

B. When the mangled quote is unusally revealing or apt. No one would ever want to correct, "Say it ain't so, Joe." Which is why I left the ungrammatical "ain't" alone in Point 2 above. And "amprehension," as a combination, presumably, of "apprehension" and "comprehension," ain't that bad a word.

C. When the reporter wants to subtly convey the message that the speaker is ignorant and unlettered.

The theory behind those principles is that everybody misspeaks, so it isn't fair to single out a simple misstatement and showcase it in a newspaper story. So what was Gransbery thinking? I have a lot of respect for Jim, so I wouldn't accuse him of "C." Possibly, elements of A, B and C were involved in the decision to use the messed-up quote.

Was printing the error a good idea? I wouldn't have done it, but I'm feeling fairly obsolete these days.

Real I.D.

Hard to believe that real conservatives voted for this.