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May 10, 2013

Syria, Benghazi, and Impeachment

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 12:24 pm

Republicans, who hate President Obama with a white heat level of intensity, impeached President Bill Clinton for a lie under oath about getting a blow-job and have been searching for a reason to impeach Obama since he was “President elect,” have managed to get the mainstream media to misunderestimate the political potential of the deaths of Americans in Benghazi and may be in position for an ambush attack regarding impeaching Obama. 

America’s mainstream media’s tendency to practice wolf pack journalism (led by Fox?) was operating at warp speed this week as all hands became obsessed with a Cleveland crime story, while the Republicans performed the chess moves needed to put the pieces on the playing board in place for achieving the ultimate goal of the political maneuvering regarding the investigation of the Benghazi debacle.

Would the Republicans be so disloyal as to move towards impeachment while the President was distracted by American involvement in a new war in theMiddle East?  Doesn’t folk wisdom advise that everything is fair in love, war, and politics? 

Realization of the ultimate political advantage of discovering deliberate lies regarding the events inBenghazimight explain the level of enthusiasm at Fox regarding the need for a full investigation into the back story about the handling of the events inLibya.  When sharks smell blood, it’s a good idea not to get caught between them and the source because the concept of “feeding frenzy” is something you don’t want to experience first hand. 

If reporters and politicians still trade information in the “off the record” mode of communication, then all parties might realize the political potential to be found in revelations about Obama’s whereabouts the night of the Benghazi events and thereby know that a headline grabbing search for the truth might be worth the effort, then a long replay similar to the Monica Lewinski circus may soon push the national discussion about guns off the top of the political agenda list. 

Where were the drones when the attack inBenghaziwas happening?  Aren’t drone strikes as readily available inLibyaas the delivery of a certain brand of pizza is in theUSA? 

The fact that the President’s whereabouts for the night of September 11, 2012 isn’t being reported, may mean that the Benghazi investigation may be a stealth way to introduce some embarrassing information into the news cycle without looking like it is just another political smear campaign.  If President Obama has to lie under oath about the particulars of his schedule for that night, the Republicans would, once again, be able to loudly proclaim their brand identity with family values while evoking echoes of theClintonproceedings.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if Congressman Mark Sanford, who was a leading critic of President Clinton’s inability to manifest the family values embraced by the Republicans, regains his status as a leading guardian of public morality by speculating where President Obama was (and what he was possibly doing) on the night of September 11, 2012?

In an era of a kaleidoscopic aspect to news coverage, a return to the constant drum beat of a slow procession to impeachment proceedings might have some additional nostalgic appeal for the Republicans.  (We noticed a small item online this week informing readers that the North Korean missile units had quietly implemented a stand down order.) 

Mike Huckabee, according to a Google News search earlier in the week, was the only Republican breaking the informal “news embargo” on the word “impeachment.”  

If the lame duck President wants to drag out the process, that will only be to the advantage of the Republicans who would love to have impeachment proceedings coincide with the mid term elections in 2014. 

If, on the other hand, the Democrats don’t want a long and nasty series of news events, while they contend with the riggers of reelection, then they might have to explain to the President that expediency trumps loyalty quite often in Washington D. C.

The mainstream media, for the most part, are owned by wealthy conservatives who would (presumably) be very cooperative with any efforts to act as accessories (like the chorus in a Greek tragedy?) for the effort to bang the drums slowly and gradually build the volume to a the level of a howling (lynch?) mob demanding “justice.”

Meanwhile, the Republican pundits seem to be missing a chance to ask why the terrorist’s widow isn’t being questioned by the interrogation specialists atGuantanamo. 

The conservative pundits don’t want to exploit the impeachment implications of theBenghaziattack because they don’t want to tip their hand too soon.

The leftist pundits don’t want to bring the subject up because they don’t want to give the Republicans the idea of going that route. 

“Bert Stern Original Mad Man” a film about the career of photographer Bert Stern provided us with a one night opportunity to experience time travel back toNew York Cityin the Sixties.  We considered doing a review of the film as the only topic for this week’s column, but, even though we enjoyed the movie thoroughly, the historic nature of the first full week of May 2013 overwhelmed the value of focusing exclusively on the pop culture diversion.

We had also considered doing a column about gun songs, but our effort to solicit suggestions on Facebook, produced only one title:  the Beatles’ “Happiness is a warm gun.”  We did some fact checking and found that Lorne “Bonanza” Greene had recorded a song titled “Gunslinger’s Prayer” and Weird Al’s song “Trigger Happy,” was on Youtube.  Doing all the fact checking for an entire column about gun songs wasn’t feasible due to the time available and so perhaps, since guns seems to be the key issue for the 2014 mid term elections, we will ration out mentions of popular gun songs over the next year and a half. 

The California Supreme Court disappointed pot smokers, who had approved a 1996 measure to sanction medical marijuana, by saying that cities had a legal right to quash dispensaries within their municipal borders. 

On Tuesday of this week, the Armstrong & Getty featured a guy from the save the plastic bag dot com web site, who alleged that the idea that wildlife dies because of plastic bags is a myth and that since he has never seen pictures of the garbage island in the Pacific Ocean (apparently his Google image searches were unsuccessful) it doesn’t exist. 

Isn’t it remarkable that all the things that treehuggers say always turn out to be myths but that any attempts to question facts from conservatives are automatically classified as lunatic conspiracy theories?

How long will it take conservatives to note that the case of the missing women in Cleveland, the terrorist discovered last week, and the recent flawless inspection of millions of homes in the Boston area might, if taken together, be enough to prove a need for a police inspection of all homes in America? 

Speaking of the homeless, we heard a story on KCBS news radio that indicated that the (compassionate Conservative Christian?) citizens in the San Jose area wanted several million dollars to be appropriated to hire park rangers to keep encampments of homeless people out of some parks in the area.  What happened to the “austerity cuts” meme? 

Randi Rhodes, on Thursday, told her radio audience that if the police fumble on a call about a woman being held prisoner in a house, perhaps the Good Samaritan caller should just say they suspect that marijuana is being grown on the premises.  That should, she asserted, get the SWAT team to investigate the tip and search the home.

Norman Goldman, (who is a lawyer) also on Thursday, gave his listeners a heads-up about theClevelandcase.  The DA there has filed murder charges stemming from the alleged amateur abortion efforts of the suspect.  If the abortions provide the basis for a murder conviction, the case could become a landmark game changer for the pro life abortion foes.

Charles Ramsey became an Internet celebrity this week when he provided the quote of the week:  “I knew something was wrong when a little pretty white girl runs into a black man’s arms, I said, ‘Something is wrong here’.”

The disk jockey (for his suggestions for best gun songs) will play the Victory at Sea theme music, the 1812 Overture, and the theme song from the TV show “Have Gun Will Travel.”  We have to go see “Gatsby” and see if it is as bad as the reviews lead us to believe.  Have a “Kapooyah, kapooyah!” type week.

May 3, 2013

Fox cries: “Wolf!”

Filed under: Commentary — Bob Patterson @ 12:27 pm

 

Conservatives, who were unaware that Fox ignored the fact that Dubya completely disregarded the principles of invasions established at the Nuremburg War Crimes Trials, have been very enthusiastic about the Fox effort to find out the facts about events related to an incident in Benghazi, Libya, which is where the threat of nationalizing British Petroleum’s holdings are rumored to have caused an investor with large amounts of stock in that company (a fellow who owns newspapers in Great Britain, Australia, and the USA?) to urge the company’s largest stock holder (AKA Queen Elizabeth) to use military means to protect their cash cow.

The Fox team stonewalled criticism of George W. Bush but has suddenly had the journalistic St. Paul’s moment when they saw the chance to investigate a Democratic Party President for (possible) malfeasance regarding the attack in Benghazi.  Why do they have such different attitudes about Presidents from opposing parties?

Speaking of reviving the double standard, on Tuesday Uncle Rushbo took fiendish delight in repeatedly playing Larry Flynt’s endorsement of the Republican Congressional candidate in South Carolina, Mark Sanford, because of the family values conservative’s implicit endorsement of the double standard and exposure of hypocrisy in America regarding morals with a recent high profile love affair.  It wasn’t clear if Flynt was being sarcastic or ironic with his endorsement, nor was it clear if Uncle Rushbo was being ironic with his enthusiasm about Flynt’s endorsement.

If President Obama makes a military move into the Syrian Civil War without calling for a vote in Congress, would the masters of the double standard forget that George W. Bush pulled two similar stunts, and call for the immediate impeachment of Obama for using illegal means (executive order) for starting a new war?

Uncle Rushbo is encouraging his listeners with a high school level of education to look down on the Democrats (with a college education?) as “low information voters.”

Recently, while doing some fact checking on Ayn Rand, we noticed that she is not mentioned in any of the various “Beginners Guide for Dummkopfs” series of introductory books.  What’s up with that?  Could there be a conspiracy among scholastics to discredit her and keep her out of those comprehensive survey books?  Is that comparable to the fact that most compact histories of the United States fail to mention the reign of Emperor Norton?

Is there a secret double standard in the world of academic Philosophy?  You are automatically disqualified if too many people buy and read your books?  If that’s the criteria would that mean that the author of “Mein Kampf” was also a disqualified Philosopher?

Would it be an example of the double standard if compassionate Christian conservatives insisted that leftist pundits had to produce grammatically flawless work while they enthusiastically approve the eloquence level of the President who mangled his thoughts with examples of grammatical errors that were hilarious?  Is there a double standard for articulation?

If the Republicans cringe when they are compared to Nazis and the Democrats have conniptions when they are accused of using Gestapo tactics, why doesn’t some University professor, whose area of expertise is the Third Reich, speak out with the tie breaking vote and say which of America’s political parties are putting the principles elaborated in “Mein Kampf” into action in America’s political arena?  Do both American Political Parties each have a double standard for judging allegations of being like Germany’s dominant political party in the Thirties?

Does the mainstream media care (or know) that most voters in California are very unenthusiastic about building a bullet train for the Golden State.  Supposedly the husband of one of California’s Senators owns a company that (reportedly) will play an integral (and very profitable) role in the historic upgrade effort.  Our efforts to fact check that allegation have been unsuccessful.  Doing a Google News search was very futile.  It seems like the Democrats in California have a double standard regarding the appeal of an obvious boondoggle.

Is there a Double standard for news coverage of protests?  Would an anti-war rally that attracts a million people and had no violence, injuries, or arrests get more coverage than a small march with some smashed windows, broken bones, and arrests?

In a Democracy, can the citizens be forced to pay for a Bullet Train that the majority doesn’t want?  In a Democracy would the President start a war the voters don’t want?  It looks like the citizens of the USA are going to get the XL pipeline whether they want it or not.

Do Republicans have a double standard regarding the care of wounded veterans?  Benefits for vets are a commendable endeavor before a new war starts and then are subjected to sequester cuts when the wounded vets come home?

Is there an unspoken double standard in the world of journalism?  Does the kid who mumbled the f-bomb word in North Dakota have to embrace the “rugged individual” school of achievement and start at the bottom of the ladder while rookies like Luke Russert, one of the Bush twins, and Chelsea Clinton start at the network headquarters?

Speaking of Texas, we noticed that the New York Times quoted Barbra Bush’s response to a question about JEB’s turn in the White House by saying “ . . . we’ve had enough Bushes.”

Would disregarding his mother’s opinion help JEB establish an image of him as the political version of a rebellious youth?  Are the Republicans going to use the “cross the red line” as an excuse to promote an image of Jim Backus in an apron to goad Obama into stretching the boundaries of Dubya’s “Forever War” to include Syria?

Will the image of a reluctant JEB be used to set the stage for a carefully orchestrated campaign in the mainstream media to get him to accede to a public outcry to accept a draft nomination in 2016?  What are the latest British bookie odds on JEB?

Would the do nothing party goad Obama into a war with Syria that would destroy America just to see Obama’s legacy ruined?  Is that a double standard of patriotism?

Meanwhile over on the campus of the Amalgamated Conspiracy Theory Factory, the staff has been alerted to a move to switch to a higher level of activity and that all leaves and vacations are being canceled to start work on new explanations to prove that some nefarious plot was unfolding recently.  In the radical left wing (is that ironical or what?) of the main building, some extremists are pointing out that since some “fine tuning” of the chemicals in cannabis sativa are producing some very specific psychological reactions, a new possibility for accelerating the dumbing down of the USA exists.  Could it be, they ask, that in a manner similar to the fluoride conspiracy theory “they” are dumping chemicals into America’s water supply that cause people to become more bellicose, belligerent, and argumentative?  Are psychologists calling it the “McLaughlin” effect?

Are the members of the mainstream media analyzing the implications of the challenge of assembling a detonator or when it comes time for them to do that do they suddenly switch to some innocuous bit of information that is interesting, possibly humorous, and completely irrelevant?

Is it true that a restaurant in San Francisco is about to become involved in a scandal that alleges they have been substituting horsemeat as the main ingredient in their dog soup?

Saturday, May 4, will bee National Comic Book Day featuring some free comic books at locations around the USA.  It is (coincidentally?) also Kentucky Derby Day.

[Note from the Photo Editor:  The May Day Protest Parade in Oakland was very low key and lacking in news value, but the photos that the World’s Laziest Journalist took at that event are the only available images with some “news value,” so we figure using them is better than not using any at all.]

“I’m endorsing Mark Sanford for U.S. Congress because no one has done more to expose the sexual hypocrisy of traditional values in America today,” was Larry Flynt’s effort to win the “quote of the week” competition for the Kentucky Derby week.

Recently we suggested that Willie Nelson should sing a duet with Mick Jagger.  The disk jockey recently found on Youtube a version of the perfect Derby Day song, “Dead Flowers,” featuring Willie and Keith Richards so he’ll start us out with that and follow it with Peter Paul and Mary’s “Stewball,” and Spike Jones’ “Beetlebomb.”  We have to go make some bets.  Have a “Mad Men” type week.

April 17, 2013

Ernie Pyle or Herb Caen?

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 6:19 pm

San Francisco named a street for a famous local columnist

[Note: The annual task of writing something to be posted honoring National Columnists’ Day on April 18, which was the day that war correspondent/columnist Ernie Pyle was killed in action on the island of Ie Shima in the Pacific Theater of  WWII, is always a challenge because the intention is to keep the tone lighthearted and upbeat but this year, because it falls at a time when the national mood is very somber, we will, after a moment of silence, proceed with this year’s installment, for the same reasons that Boston will hold their marathon again next year.]

A hint of scandal for this year’s America’s Cup Races in the San Francisco Bay area will provide us with a chance to examine how two of our favorite columnists might take different approaches displaying their unique styles to the task of informing their readers of the looming potential for an economic blunder with dire implications for the taxpayers in the town Herb Caen dubbed “Baghdad by the Bay.”

While preparing to write this year’s installment of our annual National Columnists Day posting to mark the day which honors both war correspondent Ernie Pyle and the vocation of being a columnist, we decided to focus this year’s effort on legendary San Francisco scribe Herb Caen who served in the Army Air Force during WWII.

Pyle wrote from the point of view of the G. I. in the foxhole, while Caen, in his civilian phase, preferred to let his audience participate vicariously in his life as a flâneur, a boulevardier, and a bon vivant, who hung out with and traded gossip with “the swells.”  Caen’s first effort was published on July 5, 1938, and ended with his last column in 1997.

Obviously if both of them were still alive and churning out words, they would both take very different approaches to the growing grumbling about the Americas’ Cup races scheduled to be held later this year on San Francisco Bay.

The race’s lawyers seem to have outwitted the ones working for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and so the two parties signed a deal that, upon closer reading, will leave the citizens liable for a large financial shortfall.

We assume that Caen would look forward to rubbing elbows with the “swells” who will conduct the races and hold the accompanying “invitation only” parties and maybe he would also describe the spectacle as seen from a private airplane flying overhead.  Isn’t it logical to conclude that Pyle would side with the taxpayers who can only use binoculars to see some (three?) sailboats on the bay?

Caen’s pioneering approach to celebrity journalism made him a star in the ranks of columnists.  He coined the word “beatnik” and quite often his witty way with words won him a mention in the monthly “towards more picturesque speech” feature in the Readers’ Digest.

Caen was a staunch supporter of iconoclastic wit and provided a continuing source of publicity to Lenny Bruce for his pioneering efforts in the realm of “sick” humor.

In addition to honoring and remembering Ernie Pyle each year, the day is also intended to draw attention to the career of being a columnist, which in the Facebook era should make Pyle the Patron Saint of Facebook, since the mission statement for a columnist is essentially the same motivation for churning out the keystrokes for a Facebook page, i.e. tell the world what you are doing and thinking.  Ernie Pyle, Herb Caen, and Bill Mauldin all have a Facebook page.

Can a Facebook blurb make or break a restaurant?  Once, many moons ago, Caen wrote a blind item blurb about a restaurant that incurred his wrath.  After it was published, the owner of another restaurant that fit the vague description of the offending culprit, contacted Caen’s office and begged him to explain that their restaurant, which had suffered a consequent crippling of their usual business level, was not the one that folks should boycott.  He immediately cleared up the misperception.  Can a Facebook writer have that big of an impact on a community?

The fact that Caen’s style of quick verbal jabs was dubbed “thee dot journalism,” because he used the punctuation of three dots (called an ellipse) to separate items, preceded the Internet phenomenon of catering to an audience with an attention span that demanded items with the complexity level of a bumper sticker and that should endear him to the new generation that operates with a self imposed 130 word limit.  For example, isn’t just the fact that Anthony Grafton wrote a scholarly book, title “The Footnote a Curious History,” enough information for a great Herb Caen-ish column item?

A fellow who went AWAL from a military hospital, three weeks after the liberation, and went into Paris with a nurse who spoke French told us about going into a fine restaurant and ordering a “once in a lifetime” meal.  When the fellow asked for the bill, management considered it a matter of honor to refuse to let the sergeant pay for the meal.  We like to think that Ernie Pyle, if he heard about it, would have devoted a full column to that incident.  He would (we assume) have compared and contrasted the best that Paris had to offer with the famed K-ration that the GI’s often disparaged with very salty language.  (If the disk jockey is alert he will play “Moose Turd Pie” as part of the “outro” music at the end of this column.)  Herb Caen, who served in WWII, was a gourmet who savored fine meals and shared his enthusiasm with his readers.

Many Facebook entries include a snapshot of a meal.  Would young folks appreciate the subtlety if an Ernie Pyle wannabe posted a photo of a K-ration being served?

Once, according to an anecdote provided by one of Caen’s contemporary rivals in the realm of column writing, the two competitors for the right to the title of “Mr. San Francisco,” were out cavorting in some fog city bars after WWII.  They became a bit rowdy and a rookie policeman started to arrest them.  They simultaneously asked if the youngster knew who he was trying to arrest.  He didn’t know and didn’t care.  He led them down to the local station.  When the trio entered, the desk sergeant began to laugh boisterously and asked the newcomer:  “Do you know who you are trying to arrest?”  Case dismissed!

The San Francisco Chronicle would, when Caen was on vacation, run a box on the front page above the fold saying “Herb Caen is on vacation” to cut down on the number of complaints from people who would call and bitch about not being able to find that day’s installment of the column simply titled “Herb Caen.”

Once, back in the season when the Oakland Raiders won games when George Blanda would kick a last second field goal, a reporter for the Tahoe Daily Tribune rushing a “starter” copy of the day’s publication, noticed that at the beginning of the lead story, the words indicated that the story was about the will a local celebrity had written “after” he died.  The ME had a “Stop the presses!” moment and the word was quickly changed to “after” and one of the typesetters was given a stern lecture about the rule that only editors could change copy.  The incident was quickly forgotten until the next week when the secret goof-up was prominently mentioned in Herb Caen’s column.

According to Barnaby Conrad, in his book “The World of Herb Caen,” the Frisco phenomenon produced enough columns of approximately 1,000 words (about three takes) that Caen’s lifetime total would verify this boast: “If laid end to end, his columns would stretch 5.6 miles from the Ferry Building to the Golden Gate Bridge.”

At the height of his popularity Ernie Pyle was read by approximately 3 million readers nationwide.

Facebook posters might note with extreme envy that in his prime, Caen received 45,000 letters a year.  Isn’t a fan letter better than a quick “like” click?

Herb Caen wrote:  “If I do go to heaven, I’m going to do what every San Franciscan does who goes to heaven. He looks around and says, It ain’t bad, but it ain’t San Francisco.”

Now the disk jockey will play the “Vertigo” soundtrack album, the “Moby Grape” album, and the Jefferson Airplane’s “Surrealist Pillow” album.  We have to go reread Ernie Pyle’s very gruesome and lugubrious columns written on the Normandy Beach (as foud in the Random House book “Ernie’s War: the Best of Ernie Pyle’s World War II Dispatches” edited by David Nichols) immediately after the D-Day Invasion.  Have a “soldier on” type week.

April 5, 2013

“Free lunch, total wisdom, and full coverage . . .”

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 12:33 pm

The face on an Oakland threshold

After receiving a tip that some Phd’s are staying in a local shelter, and rejecting the possibility that it’s unlikely that a Republican majority United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) would issue a game changer liberal ruling, and wondering if some third party countries might be goading North Korea into a hostile action against the USA, why would a teetotaling columnist think that a new gin mill for journalists in the Oakland area would make the best topic for a new column?  The oil spill in Mayflower Arkansas isn’t getting any media mentions so scratch that off the possible topics list.  Updates on the nuclear plants in the Fukushima area of Japan won’t interest anybody but the treehuggers.  Kim Jong Un seems to have spoiled the news value of sequester cuts because there seems to be plenty of money available for Obama to do some “saber rattling” type diplomacy.

In a media market that has been inundated with analysis of the Gay Marriage issue, the fact that we have not encountered any commentary that points out that it is very unrealistic to expect a ruling from a conservative majority SCOTUS that would hand the liberals a “walk off grand slam” ruling and since there has been a surfeit of punditry that tries to keep a “think it through, Agent Utah,” outcome shrouded in a veneer of “anybody’s guess” mystery, writing a column with a tone of predestined inevitability seems like a waste of time and effort.

What good would it do to point out that some nefarious country with an Eddie Haskel type sense of humor might think it would be amusing to goad the leader of North Korea into renewing hostilities on the Korean peninsula because that would make it more difficult for the USA to resort to some of the “all options are on the table” solutions to the task of preventing Iran from manufacturing WMD’s?  Didn’t the USA show that they could successfully handle the challenge of a two ocean war back when FDR was President?

The possibility of doing an article about finding people with Phd’s in shelters located in close proximity to a world famous University might have some potential for landing a long and arduous assignment from the editor of the New Yorker magazine but doing all that work just to get a column for the Internets that would be just three e-takes long, seems a bit too Pollyanna-ish for the World’s Laziest Journalist.  Didn’t we already mention the New York Times writer who now lives in People’s Park?

The Don Quixote challenge of starting a new establishment that will gain a place on the list of the mythological watering holes for word slingers – now that’s worth writing about.

To write about that topic, wouldn’t the abstaining columnist have to have some first hand knowledge of places such as Hurley’s bar in the Rockefeller Center area of New York City where Frank McGee would huddle with his co-workers while members of the staff of the AP’s New York Bureau gathered at a separate table nearby?  Check.

Wasn’t The Keg near the Santa Monica Evening Outlook a legendary drinking place?

Wasn’t the hotel in liberated Paris, called the Scribe, the setting for some amazing feats of alcoholic consumption?

Didn’t the war correspondents in Saigon gather at the Hotel Continental each evening to watch the artillery shelling of the city’s outskirts?  Were journalists permitted entry into the Purple Porpoise bar in Vientiane Laos, if that city actually existed?

We noticed in the New York Times Arts & Leisure Section for Sunday March 31, 2013, an article about a new Broadway play titled “Lucky Guy,” which is based on the life of Mike McAlary who was a columnist with “high-octane swagger” who (reportedly) did cartwheels when “closing time” was announced at the bar where he happened to be imbibing.

Gonzo Journalism is starting the second half of its first century according to the way one of the founding fathers, Tom Wolfe, sees it, so the summer of 2013 might well be a time when America is awash in nostalgia for Gonzo journalism and that means that the idea of starting a new place in Oakland that will be gathering place for writers who grew up believing that they had to “go where the action is” has merit.  Do folks outside the Oakland area know that Lake Merit isn’t a lake?

The Tribune Tavern, which will be located on the ground floor of the Tribune building in downtown Oakland, has opening day scheduled for April 10th.  Wouldn’t the journalists who covered Saigon have preferred a bistro on the top floor?

There is one tavern in Oakland where police tend to gather and talk shop talk.  Journalists tend to “let their hair down” when they are among their own kind.  Motorcycle enthusiasts tend to go to biker bars.  So gin mills may be an example of the old folk wisdom “water seeks its own level.”

While traveling in Australia a few years back, we noticed that the smoking and drinking table found at most of the hostels where we stayed tended to attract the most loquacious of the travelers staying there and so we often found the best conversations at those gathering places even though we do not smoke or drink liquor.  Perhaps a non drinker can hold his own in this new watering hole where columnists should be welcome.

Speaking of the legendary San Francisco columnist Herb Caen and the fact that National Columnists’ Day is rapidly approaching, a recent Chronicle front page story detailing the attempt to assemble a list of San Francisco bars that are culturally significant makes all of Caen’s Bay Area fans a bit sad that he isn’t alive and fighting to augment that effort with a campaign to establish a “Gin Mill Hall of Fame” for the legendary bars that are gone but not forgotten.

What kind of chatter makes a journalists bar interesting?  About forty years ago, in a bar in a state known for gambling, a crusty old reporter told about the time he was a rookie who went with the old hands to a bar for a bit of liquid refreshment.  The journalist with a “white belt” level of experience got into a lively discussion with a veteran sports reporter about the legendary race horse “Man o’ War.”  The two had differing ways of speculating about the Triple Crown winner that couldn’t be settled until the bar tender jumped into the conversation and very emphatically said what the horse would have done under the hypothetical circumstances.  When the bar tender was asked “What makes you so certain?,” he replied “Because I was his trainer.”  That, in turn, led the young tenderfoot journalist to a high profile series of freelance articles about horse racing.

Realistically, when the Tribune Tavern opens, we don’t expect to find anything that we can use in a query letter to the assignment editor at Scanlon’s Magazine, but maybe we will stumble upon a source who can tell us if the “scientists” at the Amalgamated Conspiracy Theory Factory (ACTF) have made any progress on their investigation into the possibility that “they” can use a dormant wifi connection to hack into laptops that are turned off and look at your private photos and read your e-mails.

Speaking of the Amalgamated Conspiracy Theory Factory, we heard a recent radio news story that informed listeners that a recent Pew Research Center effort produced data that indicates that some classic conspiracy theories are gaining new adherents.

If journalists gather at the new Oakland location, maybe we can track down some facts to confirm or deny the rumor we have heard that preliminary work is being done in the Amalgamated Conspiracy Theory Factory’s Planning Department to build a wing to house a Conspiracy Theory Hall of Fame museum.

Sometimes when journalists talk among themselves they come up with new story ideas via the “catalyst” phenomenon.

Will the most cynical journalists look at the cheating teachers scandal in Georgia and start to wonder if doctors get commission checks (or free junkets to the Bahamas?) from pharmaceutical companies when they exceed a certain number for prescriptions of a particular medicine.

Most journalists who have spent any time observing humanity in a bar know that President Obama, in his war of words with Kim Jong Un, is rapidly approaching a tough decision that cause bar room brawlers to realize for both leaders it’s time to either throw a punch or shut up.

Hunter S. Thompson’s philosophy for journalists was “Free lunch, final wisdom, total coverage . . .” and that brings to mind the old question:  “How can you tell if someone is a journalist?”  The answer:  “He is the guy who goes up to the free food, starts shoveling it into his face and, with a mouth full of food, asks:  ‘Where is the Hand Out?’”   Hand Outs are prewritten news stories that save lazy journalists (moi?) a lot of time and work.

Journalists can only take so much of official BS.  How many toasts will be inspired by a society that continues to foreclose large numbers of homes while the local radio urges the listeners to save more money?   As an old coworker used to say:  “My car payments are driving me to drink.”

[Note from the Photo Editor:  We used a photo of a bit of artistic decoration from Oakland but not from the one that hasn’t opened yet, because we thought that the quaint example, of a nearby establishment’s threshold, of art for bars would help set the tone for this column and it gives us a chance to make a literary allusion to the “face on the barroom floor.”]

In issue 111 of Granta magazine, on page 210, Richard Russo wrote:  “After World War II, about the same time men stopped wearing hats, women stopped wearing gloves.”

Now the disk jockey will play Slayer’s “World Painted Blood,” the Celtic Cowboys “Kiss My Irish Ass,” and a ditty titled “The Alco-hall of Fame.”  We have to put on our Gonzo disguise and go incognito to cover this new place in Oakland.  Have a “there’s no ‘there’ there” type of week.

March 31, 2013

Ye Olde Scribe Presents: Let’s Dress the Jesus Doll!

Filed under: Commentary — Ye Olde Scribe @ 5:52 am

jesus-doll

DEDICATED TO ALL THE MENTAL CASES WHO HAVE TURNED JESUS INTO A WARMONGER AND A PURVEYOR OF HATE. THIS IS NOT UNLIKE A COMEDIC ROAST. BUT IF YOU’RE A REICH WINGER CLAIMING TO BE A “CHRISTIAN” WHILE YOU HAUL SOME CROSS THIS EASTER AND FLAGELLATE YOURSELF, WHILE WANTED TO BEAT ON LIBERALS, GAYS AND UPPITY WOMEN TOO, THIS EASTER DAY, YOU’LL NEED AN EXTRA BRIMSTONE AT THE END OF THIS. SO JUST SAY, “SCRIBE, CAN YOUR SUPER SIZE THAT?” YOU’LL NEED IT.

Boys and girls! Are you unsure how to dress out your Jesus doll? Scribe is willing to help. Here’s how you will make your not so “fun” fun-da-(their very) mental-ist Mommy and Daddy proud because you… NAILED it! Or considering how un-fun they are, is that just… wrist-ful thinking?

To pick our Jesus doll and dress him, let’s take some of our cues from history and adults shall we? Just send your Mommy or Daddy to the Toys Are Very Very Expensive store for, first, the…

HISTORICAL COLLECTION

Post Crucifixion

Some denied him, some believed there was a secret knowledge, some believed he who died on the cross was no longer Jesus, or he would return in THEIR lifetime. (And in 2,000 years how little THAT has changed? Waiting… waiting…. waiting…) But most of all: many believed what he SAID less important than starting another big Jesus club focusing in on what was done to him, creating rituals based on his actions, or not much at all, really: and OF COURSE keeping out the riffraff who think differently, or think at all.

Of course none of that REALLY had to do with Jesus, so this very expensive dress out the doll set comes with NOTHING because too many of these Jesus Clubs are for mindless followers, not thoughtful ones.

Here are your other options boys and girls… (Some of these might be ACTUAL dolls. Scribe just changed the names and the descriptions to embarrass the hell out of idiots who would consider selling such.)

The Jesus is Pro-Torture Doll

Boys and girls! What about dressing your Jesus out in Inquisition garb? KINKY. Or maybe in the we need to burn witches? YAY!!!! BURN WITCHES!!!! Especially all too convenient “witches?” For that we need a magistrate with robes, so this every expensive kit includes black robe with light up sign that says, “Burn her! Burn her!”

You know ALL women are lustful servants of Satan if they don’t bow to our manly wills and opinions, right? Our Lord Guy On High, from the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, hath said so. Take your time, what’s the RUSH… wink, wink.

Of course these judges, like Lord Limbaugh, wouldn’t turn down any “favors” from the accused that may get them a reprieve. But LORD help them if they take the pill, or need help from getting protected from getting pregnant from rapists, well, who probably LOVE listening to Lord Limbaugh.

This version of Jesus comes with napalm and a flame thrower for a more modern touch. There’s also the college edition for those students who go to parties and take advantage of almost dead, drunk, girls. They too, probably, LOVE Lord Limbaugh.

Courtesy arrowheadequipment.webs.com

Courtesy arrowheadequipment.webs.com

Courtesy 9gag.com

Courtesy 9gag.com

How about the…

Jesus wants us to kill, rape and plunder doll

Kind of like the last, only more war and sports oriented, so it also comes with Jesus wants my team to win fare’. And of course, what would this be without an app, or a screen saver, or one of those kinky cheerleader skirts to dress those obedient females with?

This is a VERY popular doll, and has had many accessories over the years. The Germans had their very suave Gott Mit Uns belt buckles, the Southerns and the Northerners prayed that they might best blow apart in the most hideous ways their brethren from the other side. Since God and Jesus swap out with violent intent with these type of “Christian:” like bumpers on similar war tanks, the accessories should please everyone. Can’t have a bazooka” How much much would be a flame throwing rock tossed by a catapult be? What, no cloth for water boarding? Scribe hears a rack and screw gives converting heretics a new TWIST.

And,of course there are plenty of sports accessories too.

BE AWARE SPORTS PEOPLE: don’t bother buying for your kid if you’re a fan of the Cleveland Browns. You DO know your Satanic team will NEVER go to the Superbowl, right?. HEY THEY’RE FROM CLEVELAND. Also: don’t buy if you want your tyke to be a fan of the Texas Rangers. George, Junior owned them: proof the state is DAMNED for an eternity. Everything he touches turns into Lucifer excrement.

Now this Jesus doll that helps with war and sports… (Is there all that much of a difference, despite the killing, the maiming and…) …IS quite expensive because it comes with blessed footballs and baseball bats, excuses for rape, holy water sprinkled tanks, Liberal-devil defeating drones… (Because NO ONE wanted us to kill, without even knowing who we were killing, like Jesus did. You do know he killed all the people who manned those tables after tipping them, right?) …and multiple doomsday devices. One doomsday device we’re fond of is a control for all those robots who go on FOX and push talking points: to say whatever will get us into a war… but only if it’s good for the corporations and the REICH Wing adores the idea.

BUT: you CAN’T afford it.

However your politicians can.

More up to date dolls

And, of course, then we have Jesus came to America kit, complete with an endless supply of magic underwear, in case your Jesus doll soils himself with HOLY CRAP! How about the God Hates f_gs doll, da REAL whacky Westboro Church edition? Complete with offensive signs to carry, airplane tickets and a bus to carry all to those all important funerals. Also a bedpan/dump bucket especially suited to decorate the graves of fallen soldiers.  Then there’s the Jesus is a Republican/Liberal/Teabagger/Socialist/Capitalist/Conservative/”free” market/Libertarian doll. Comes with American flag, inside clothes, on each shirt, is embedded a voice module: kind of like cards you buy that start playing music when you open. Only these modules only spout politically correct propaganda.

Courtesy hornedquad.deviantart.com

Courtesy hornedquad.deviantart.com

 

Yes, boys and girls, so many ways you can dress out YOUR Jesus doll!

Courtesy hornedquad.deviantart.com

Courtesy hornedquad.deviantart.com

Or maybe Jesus would be more concerned with how you dress out yourself?

Courtesy conservativejesus.com

Courtesy conservativejesus.com

March 22, 2013

Deja vu and new wars

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 12:30 pm

Is the ice cap melting?

Last week, on the Armstrong and Getty radio show, one of the voices pointed out that in 2012 when there were 20,000 Americans killed by guns only 400 of the victims were killed by assault rifles and so the fussing over an insignificant portion of the total seemed like a complete waste of time and energy; this week Senate Majority leader Harry Reed agreed.  Some treehugging hippies responded by stealing a page from the right to life playbook and lamented that every life is precious and that each and every one of the bullet riddled corpses was a tragedy that could have been saved with a renewed assault weapons ban.

The hippies’ favorite conservative villains (billionaires) hate the poor and middle class and when their views are challenged, they usually respond by destroying the critics’ reputation and character and so the treehuggers weren’t surprised when, immediately after the new Pope’s program of helping the poor was announced, a whisper campaign started about his activities during Argentina’s Dirty War.  Journalists responded in the Oklahoma land rush fashion and immediately inflated the rumors to news item level because they know that helping the billionaires is a shortcut to media fame and success.

After veterans who served in Vietnam started criticizing the level of support they were receiving, the biggest group that was sympathetic to their complaints was the peaceniks who had opposed the war itself.  Are the wounded and crippled veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions, who are alleging that they need more help and support services, getting any more than brief mentions in the “pro left” corporate media?

Did any conservative show any remorse or regret about the expensive search for the WMD’s in Iraq on the tenth anniversary of the Invasion or did they leave it up to the hippies to get surly and sound righteous in retrospect about that bit of American history?

At least the Faux Facts Folks who dedicate their lives to fair and balanced propaganda didn’t wallow in the usual tsunami of “never again” commentary.  As a matter of fact, the day after the 10th Anniversary, President Obama was sounding bellicose about the fate of the FSA (Freien Syrishen Armee) and the Iranian WMD development program. Is there some reason why they aren’t called the SLA (Syrian Liberation Army)?

Will the allegations of chemical attacks in Syria provide a convenient rational for sending American military to that country to fight and die for democracy?

In a country that (ostensibly) honors a free press as one of the cornerstones of democracy, it would be sad and pathetic if very few pundits and commentators remarked on the preceding items, but how ominous would it be for champions of truth, justice, and the American Way, if the World’s Laziest Journalist was the only columnist to gather those four items of concern together in one posting?  Yeah, we know folks just skim the Internets but if a columnist doesn’t mention several items how can do-it-yourselfer analysts do a comprehensive connect the dots summation type overview?

These items ripped from the headlines from early 2013 might just be symptoms of a malady that was predicted by St. Ronald Reagan and George Carlin.  WTF?  St. Ronald Reagan emphatically informed voters that Social Security and the deficit are separate and unrelated items.  The sound byte of him explaining that is frequently played by Norman Goldman on his radio show and is available on Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q

George Carlin, some years ago, explained, in  a bit titled “The American Dream,” that bankers don’t care about voters in an expletive laden diatribe which is also available on Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q

If both of those diverse sources are correct in their assessments, then it shouldn’t come as a surprise to well informed voters that a coherent, coordinated program is being conducted to deliver the money in the Social Security’s “locked box” into the hands of greedy bankers and that part of the program is a distorted view of reality that has been just as carefully crafted as the Propaganda produced by the Third Reich.

Our ability to read French has suffered from a lack of constant practice and so we may be wrong but a columnist in the most recent available issue of Paris Match magazine seemed to be saying that Europe is on the edge of a massive united upheaval of civil unrest.

This week the Amalgamated Conspiracy Theory Factory (ACTF) compound was buzzing with speculation wondering if (subjunctive mood alert) the Syrian rebels are using a false flag attack on their own ranks to precipitate American intervention.

Another topic on the ACTF agenda recently brought up the possibility that the World’s Laziest Journalist didn’t participate in the national discussion on gun control because he had been tipped by a high placed source in Washington that such an effort would be an exercise in futility.

The Internets seems to be bringing out a lot of amateur treehuggers who have aspirations of becoming a member of the Amalgamated Conspiracy Theory Factory’s Research and Development Department.  For example one amateur has suggested that there might be a basis for a new Conspiracy Theory in the fact that St. Ronald Reagan worked on getting Public Displays of Weapons declared illegal when the Black Panthers’ urged their members to be strapped (i.e. carry a weapon) as a way of defending themselves from racists, but when the Tea Party folks urged people to carry a weapon to rallies for a candidate for a  the Democratic Party’s Presidential nomination that was strongly endorsed by the folks who had previously opposed it back in the day.

Remember when a bandoleer for rifle cartridges was a de rigueur fashion accessory?

This week, Mike Malloy reported that most news organizations reporting on the tenth anniversary of the Iraq Invasion had missed the story (in the Financial Times) that Haliburton made 39 and a half billion dollars on the War in Iraq while Armstrong and Getty were ridiculing the fact that any reevaluation of the Bush/Cheney decisions would be a waste of time and brain cells.

The only relevant question for political pundits this week is:  “Will American Intervention in Syria help speed up the privatization of the Social Security program?”

[Note: Supporters of the Global Warming theory might see some art decorating a storage unit building in Berkeley at Adeline and Shattuck as a subtle endorsement of their opinion and so we snapped a photo and will run it with this column.  Were network news videos of cars traffic slipping and sliding in the latest blizzard meant to be a subtle way for providing traction for the Global Warming theory?]

If reevaluations of the invasion of Iraq had any social relevance wouldn’t the network news organizations have interviewed Honey Booboo to get a cogent quote about the historic event?  What would they do if she repeated Carlin’s “American Dream” rant?

Isolde Kurz wrote:  “The only people who have a completely untroubled conscience are the great criminals.”

Now the disk jockey will play Edith Piaf’s “No Regrets,” Ed Sanders’ “Beer cans on the Moon,” and CCR’s “Someday Never Comes.”  We have to toddle off to San Fancisco to see the new “On the Road” movie.  Have an “American Dream” type week.

March 8, 2013

Seeing the future in the rearview mirror

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 1:39 pm

 

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is featuring an exhibition of photographs by Garry Winogrand which will be on display until June 2 and will provide photographic critics with a basis for comparing and contrasting the featured artist with his contemporaries Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, and Robert Frank.  Ultimate it may even spawn arguments about Winogrand’s status compared to other practitioners of street photography such as Henri Cartier Bresson or the Los Angeles based Gary Leonard.

Old school reporters who got the opportunity to attend the show’s press preview were shocked and delighted to find that the Press Kit was delivered in the form of a computer memory stick.  Gadzooks!  In the old days, selling off the 8 X 10 glossies from a new movie’s press kit was a welcome source of additional money for unscrupulous hacks covering the Hollywood beat.  Will collectors of movie memorabilia be willing to pay top dollar for a memory stick?

The e-press kit contained a press release in adobe reader pdf file form that permitted columnists to copy and paste relevant sentences such as:  “The exhibition has been conceived and guest-curated by photographer and author Leo Rubinfien with Erin O’Toole, assistant curator of photography at SFMOMA, and Sarah Greenough, senior curator of photographs at the National Gallery of Art.”

We have invented the term e-tearsheet and will use it to designate sending people the URL where the exhibition is mentioned in a column.  Who says we are a Luddite?

Any political pundit who happens to stumble upon this display of approximately 100 photographs, which were produced from undeveloped film and therefore are previously unseen by the public and the artist himself, will be stung by the poignancy of the opportunity for seeing America in an earlier more innocent (?) time.

Beehive hairdos, cars with monstrous tail fins, and other subtle clues will evoke a sense of nostalgia but a closer look at that period of time will give commentators a chance to note that a look at America’s darker side is conspicuous by its absence.

In the 1960 Presidential election, one candidate evoked the phrases “animal magnetism” and “charisma,” while the other party’s candidate seemed to have mastered the challenging task of smiling and scowling simultaneously.  Are cynical pundits the only people concerned by the fact that elections in the land of the free are handled like a marketing challenge facing companies with competing products?

The show contains some feature shots from the Democratic Party’s 1960 Presidential Convention and one of Nixon campaigning in New York City.

Can an unbiased observer look at the photos of JFK and Nixon and not see the seeds for a very partisan culture in the future?  Fifty years later, some folks can castigate a President for exaggerating the impact of the sequester to make political points and denounce it as unacceptable lies while simultaneously giving lies (from a member of their party) that rationalized a new war, a dismissive shrug of the shoulders.

At the same time that John Kennedy was challenging Americans to ask themselves what they could do for their country, some of those same people were listening to items such as Lenny Bruce’s album that contained the cut “Non Skeddo Flies Again,” which is a comedy monologue about Jack G. Graham who blew up an airplane on November 1. 1955, to collect insurance on his mother’s life.

In it, Bruce says:  “He blew up a plane with forty people and his mother and for that the States sent him to the Gas Chamber proving, actually, that the American people are losing their sense of humor… You just think about it, anybody who blows up a plane with forty people and his mother can’t be all bad.”

Can you imagine what Bruce would have said about the Connecticut school shooting, if he had lived long enough to comment on that tragedy?  Could Jon Stewart or Bill Maher be that outrageous today?

While Winogrand was taking some of his best shots in the Sixties, a popular song was bragging “we don’t let our hair grow long and shaggy like the hippies out in San Francisco do.”

The symbolism of a photo of a young lady laying in the gutter of a street in Hollywood while a sports car drives past, taken in 1984, would not escape many observers.

The traveling exhibit will ultimately arrive in Paris in 2015.

Some things, of course, never change.  Some folks who have never heard a song with the lyrics “When you’re running down our coutry, hoss, you’re walking on the fightin’ side of me” agree with the sentiment 100%.

Some folks might wonder why a columnist would write about a photo exhibition during a week when the talk show radio was obsessing on drones.  For pragmatists, writing a column that might help publicize an exhibition at a museum and might help boost attendance seemed worth the effort but joining the discussion on drones at this point in history would be a total waste of time and effort with a fool’s errand level of appeal.  Don’t bother it won’t do a damn bit to change things.  A columnist who wants to produce an exorcise in futility might just as well make a video showing a fellow lighting his own farts and post it on Youtube.

The drone abides.  Dig it or don’t; just don’t expect the world’s laziest journalist to spend time and keystrokes thinking he can have an effect on a topic that is already a “done deal.”

Is it an example of irony to hear a Public Service Announcement urging parents to stop their kids from tolerating bullying on a conservative station that is endorsing the unfettered use of drone strikes?

President John F. Kennedy said (Bartlett’s page 892):  “Washington is a city of southern efficiency and northern charm.”

Now the disk jockey will play Merle Haggard’s “A working mman can’t get nowhere today,” Randy Newman’s “Please, Mr. President,” Hank Snow’s “Ninety miles an hour (down a dead end street)” and a memorial playing of “I’d love to change the world,” featuring the late Alvin Lee on guitar.  We have to go check on the medical condition of Just One Beaver (he must be a Native American, eh?).  Have a “silly un American filibuster” type week.

March 4, 2013

Life is short; eat dessert first

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 5:58 pm

“Dogging Steinbeck:  Discovering America and Exposing the truth about ‘Travels with Charlie,’” by Bill Steigerwald, was reviewed in the San Francisco Chronicle on Sunday and we stumbled on that review just after we had decided to write a column lamenting the fact that books about traveling on the road in the USA have become an extinct subgenre of literature.  It was accompanied by a review of Dan Baum’s new book “Gun Guys: A Road Trip.”

Last week, we had just glommed on to a bargain bin copy of “Home Country,” by Ernie Pyle, which describes his search all across the USA for good feature stories. It was in mint condition at the Friends of the Berkeley Public Library’s bookstore. We intend on writing several columns this year about the topic of roaming about in the USA for several reasons and so finding out about two brand new books that fall into a category that we find irresistible didn’t discourage us; it strengthened our resolve to write several columns on this rather esoteric topic. Maybe that sub genre isn’t dead, maybe we just had to change the lead.

Pyle, who wrote approximately a million words about traveling around in America, sort of like a pitcher warming up in the bullpen, later achieved international fame as a war correspondent during WWII.  In “Home Country,” he wrote a piece about Adolph and “Plinky” Topperwein, who were a husband and wife team of famous shooters who worked for the Winchester Arms Company. We wondered if they were mentioned in Baum’s new book.

“Travels with Charlie,” and Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” had whet our appetite for the open road while we were in school.  Not long after finishing college, we had stuck out our thumb in a rural area in Pennsylvania and hoped to catch a ride to San Francisco hoping that maybe literary lightning could strike twice.

Two of our high school classmates had made different, more rational, decisions about the course their lives would take.  One of them is a retired Army colonel now living in Germany and the other is a retired teacher living across the Hudson River from NYC.  Both of them have decided to drive across the USA this year and since the World’s Laziest Journalist has accumulated a vast supply of travel experience, we have offered both of them our opinion on how to maximize the enjoyment of their adventure.

There are so many books we would like to recommend that they read.  Here are some of the lesser known “on the road” books we wish they could read before shoving off:  “I see by your outfit,” by Peter S. Beagle, “America day by day,” by Simone de Beauvoir, Alistair Cooke’s “The American Home Front 1941 – 1942,” and “It isn’t a bus pioneering motorhomers cross the USA,” by Martha French Patterson and Sally Patterson Tubach (no relations).  This columnist has read the Beagle book and is halfway through all of the others.

The school teacher (AKA “Jersey Bill”) has strongly recommended that we read “Blue Moon Highway,” and some day we intend to do that.

Jersey Bill has driven from his adopted state to Oregon and another time he went the southern route and got as far as Joshua Tree National Park just inside of Cali, but he has studiously avoided exploring California.

The Colonel wants to drive the Southern route but notes that this trip of a lifetime will be a one time only, “get ’er done” operation.  He has budgeted only two weeks to achieve his goal.  He wants to follow a portion of Route 66.

Jack Kerouac concentrated on the personalities he met while on the road.  Our first night in Paris (France, not Texas) we went to Cactus Charlie’s and had a marvelous conversation about the specifics of the politics in California.  As we walked out, we regretted our decision.  “We could have had a great conversation about local politics at any bar in L. A. but we wouldn’t have had to buy an airplane ticket to get that payoff.”  So we resolved to “go native” and shun the ex-pat scene and see the things that are only available there.  We still follow that philosophy when traveling.

If the Colonel wants to talk to fellow Americans he can visit some wounded soldiers at the Landstuhl hospital.

My advice in both cases will be something they won’t want to hear, so maybe if they read it in a column posted for all the world to see, it might have a better chance of making a point and influencing their thinking (and if not, at least the Managing Editor [M. E.] will get a new batch of Google bate to lure others to the sites where this will be posted).

Jersey Bill and his wife like “the great outdoors,” nature and the like.  If a city slicker like the World’s Laziest Journalist can be profoundly impressed with Yosemite National Park, just think how much the teacher and his wife will like it.  Oh, yeah, California also has another park with big trees that are very old.  He might like that, too.  Some alarmists think that park will suffer if new bullet train routs are built.  Isn’t zipping past those trees at 100 mph better than never seeing them at all?

Jersey Bill likes automobiles and so we wonder why he has hung back from visiting a state that has two world class car museums in the L. A. area (across the street for each other) and two others that are still on our bucketlist.  Is he saving the best for last?

Jack London (reportedly) called the Monterey Peninsula the finest example of seashore scenery in the world.  We concur.

Our tourist exploration of Australia lasted ten fun filled weeks and we know that we barely scratched the surface of the subject but the colonel intends to make his jaunt across the USA a two weeks long venture.  Yikes!  We have to say that we strongly recommend that he forgets about an epicurean ten course meal approach to the task and cut directly to dissert and drive night and day until he gets to the state that offers Lake Tahoe, Yosemite, the redwood trees, the Golden Gate Bridge, and some last vestiges of beatnik history.  Or he could make the arrangements necessary to extend the time spent on making the trek.

Telling a colonel what to do is one thing but someone who can remember his mom telling a story about how a baseball hit by Babe Ruth fell into her lap might get away with offering him our very strongly felt opinion base on experience.  [We have hitchhiked from Pennsylvania to Tonkawa and traveled by Greyhound coast to coast at least three times.]

Getting him to read “Watergate The Hidden History: Nixon, the Mafia, and the CIA,” by Lamar Waldron (from Counterpoint in Berkeley CA!) before the next round in our continuing Nixon vs. Kennedy debate will be a bit more of a challenge.

Our hope is that the colonel will change his own ground rules and take longer to do the trip or perhaps make the trip in annual installments of two weeks each for the next several years.  If he wants to see as many American icons as possible, we can’t offer much of an opinion about what to see until he gets to Route 66in Oklahoma, but we can strongly recommend that if he wants spectacular scenery, he should get to the Grand Canyon ASAP, and then budget time to see Yosemite, the redwoods, Lake Tahoe, and the Monterey Peninsula.  California is a very big state and it will take a few days just to skim the highlights.  At that point he can run down PCH and see Big Sur, the Hearst Castle, and the Bixby Bridge.  He’ll wind up in Santa Monica, where he can visit Venice Beach before going to the airport, turning in his rental and jumping on a plane back to Germany.

Our hope for the teacher is that he will get to California, have a St. Paul’s moment and when he returns to his luxurious home within sight of the Manhattan skyline sell it, put the money in a safe investment, and then jump back in his motor home and become a motorhome vagabond inside the California borders for the next 12 months (or more).

The hippie will (we hope) get to some California towns we have never seen and finally get to live out his Fred C. Dobbs wishes to find some nuggets of gold in a miner’s pan.

Simone de Beauvoir wrote (Ibid page 136):  “We do not see much of San Francisco because we stay only four days and don’t know anyone.”

Now the disk jockey will play the Cantina Band’s song “Out in California,” Glenn Campbell’s “Wichita Lineman,” and “Living on Tulsa Time.”  We have to go and contact the National Parks people and ask two questions:  “What state has the most National Parks? And “How many National Parks are in California?”  Have a “life is short; eat dessert first” type week.

March 1, 2013

Jeers and Laughing at the RNC?

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 1:24 pm

Reading Mark Kurlansky’s book “1968 The Year that Rocked the World” during the last week of February 2013 might cause some folks to wonder if this New Year will challenge 1968 in the realm of nostalgia for the right to be remembered as the most history packed year since 1918.  Obviously 2013 will be at a distinct disadvantage because it will not be a Presidential election year in the USA and there are no anti-war rallies to protest an unpopular military adventure but as the year’s third month began 2013 had already put two very impressive (historically speaking) months on the score board.

In January the USA was temporarily distracted by a surge in the level of the gun control debate and Americans remained blissfully uninformed about mostly all of the foreign news because of a de facto embargo protecting them from any remote chance of questioning the wisdom of believing that “USA, we’re #1! ! !” is the title of a chapter in the Bible.

In the last week of February 2013, a news story that indicated Afghanistan may not be going as well as reported was heard briefly.  It wasn’t as ominous an omen as the Tet offensive but for the Americans that did catch it, it was a comedown.

Americans did get to learn that the Pope was gong to retire and perhaps take some time to go trout fishing.  Church spin doctors will no doubt plant some carefully orchestrated photos of the ex-Pope “relaxing” by clearing brush on his Castle Gandolfo ranch to reinforce his macho image in the world.

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) had a chance on Wednesday to expand their powers to include a judicial variation of veto power but the exact score of the decision for making that historic power grab won’t be known for some time but wags are admitting that the point spread will probably be a 5 to 4 blowout.  The Republicans have been wanting a repeal of the Voting Rights Act since the day it was signed into law by LBJ.  A late veto by SCOTUS will be a historic first.  Justice Scalia’s remark about ethnic entitlement might be an early contender for quote of the year.

In March, SCOTUS will get a chance to either approve or veto the gay marriage issue.  The political lapdogs in the land of punditry are being well paid to whip up a pretense of being in suspense about the inevitable decision.  Then they will consider a chance to cast a new example of their veto power in a case for the Defense of Marriage Act but Vegas odds makers are saying:  “Not bloody well likely, mate!”

On Wednesday the dynamic duo of Armstrong and Getty were suggesting that the Republicans might use a clever chess fork-ish maneuver to legislatively force President Obama to specify what exactly the Sequestration cuts would be and where specifically they would be made.

At that point the Obama apologists would portray the innovative legislative move as a victory for the President.  The Republicans have for years wanted to start down the slippery slope known as “the line item veto.” and so by “forcing” Obama to take possession of the painful cuts they may be gaining in return something they have been working years to achieve.

Did President Obama back the Republicans into a dead end street where they had no choice but to give in to the President and let him initiate a new display of executive power with a line item vetoes.   Did the Republicans back a lame duck President into taking the blame for painful austerity measures they (the Republicans) want?  Who is fooling whom and who is being left holding the bag?

This week Uncle Rushbo continued to denigrate Democrats as low information voters.  Isn’t that an example of what is meant by the folk wisdom axiom about a pot calling a kettle black?

Yahoo made headlines this week by telling the world that the telecommute revolution in the work world was a failure and that their employees who may have been goofing off too much will have to get their asses into the office on time just like any other wage slave must do or they can forget about getting a paycheck.  Isn’t the death knoll for the work at home fad a historic event?

Speaking of wage slaves, perhaps the Republicans will be successful in their attempt to make the concept of Over Time pay obsolete by claiming that it would be a way to create new jobs.  Can an illogical premise work?  Don’t teabaggers have a thorough knowledge of logic and analytical thinking?  Aren’t Democrats the low information boobs?

Will Seth MacFarlane ever host the Oscars and sing some off color songs again or was that a unique historic installment in the annals of entertainment history?

Will Iran get nuclear weapons this year?  Could a brand new war be used to prevent that from happening?

Will sending aid to rebels in Syria mean that the conflict there will someday be compared to the Prague Spring of 1968?  Stay tuned.

February presented some excellent opportunities for news photographers in the San Francisco Bay area to take some pictures of workers enjoying a warm lunch hour in the sun.  In 1968 a photo editor might have told a staff photographer to go out, wander around, and get some good feature shots showing the unseasonably warm weather.  Do the austerity budget constrictions used lately mean that such an assignment is an obsolete luxury?

[Note: The World’s Laziest Journalist took some shots but (Spring Fever already?) failed to do the preliminary “back shop” work necessary to post them with this column.  That will be a pleasant identifying anomaly for the area residents who, in the future, look back at that particular month.  Will 2013 be the year that skeptics start wondering if the concept of “Global Warming” is valid rather than a humorous display for use in the Mad Scientists Hall of Fame?  Stay tuned.]

Flipping through Kurlansky’s book and then asking if this year will be more historic than 1968 may (at this point) sound like a maudlin ploy by a desperate pundit, but for someone who can remember seeing Bobby Kennedy campaign in Los Angeles for votes in the 1968 California Primary and got the distinct impression (premonition?) that he was witnessing history in the making, getting a similar feeling watching the CBS Evening News on the last day of February of 2013 produced an identical reaction.  Subjective responses can not be fact checked.

Historians tend to separate and dissect different aspects of a particular time period and so the fact that Bobby Kennedy was shot on the same night that Don Drysdale threw his record setting sixth consecutive shutout might not be remembered, even by folks who were in that city at that time, unless they read Kurlansky’s book’s mentions of both those  events in the same sentence.

Would anyone who wasn’t there in that year understand what the hell it mean when a New York City local anchor said:  “Oakland beat the Jets and Heidi married the goat herder.”?   One local newscast featured video footage of the game accompanied by the reporter reading passages from the children’s classic novel “Heidi.”

Premonitions, hunches, and the “nose for news” might sound like a journalist’s version of mythology and a columnist may be very wrong to go on “high alert” for starting in February to make a conscious effort to savor every moment of this year but the possibility that it would be easy to have one’s attention diverted and then miss the spectacle as it unfolds is a much more scary thought.  That would be like scarfing down a gourmet meal.

Hunter S. Thompson, in “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” (page 65) explained the feeling a bit more eloquently:  “History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of ‘history’ it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time – and which never explain in retrospect, what actually happened.”

Now from the top 100 list of hits from 1968, the disk jockey will play:  Mary Hopkin’s “Those Were the Days,”  Jeannie C. Riley’s “Harper Valley PTA,” and Hugo Montenegro’s “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.”  Now we have to go find a copy of “Europe on $5 a Day” and “Coffee, Tea, or Me?”  Have a historic groovy flower power filled week.

February 20, 2013

USA hacked off at hackers?

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 1:26 pm

Posting a whimsical lighthearted column about the movie industry might not be a questionable move for a writer working in a country where approval, of the non-verifiable results from  electronic voting machines, is almost unanimous despite an overwhelming number of recent news reports saying that Google and Facebook have been hacked.

The Oscar™ Ceremony will arrive just as American politics and punditry are put on “pause” while waiting for the sequestration train wreck (Why didn’t Obama just leave well enough alone and not put the wars back on the books?) to take center stage.

While living in tinseltown, there was one question that we were never able to ask let along get an authoritative answer from a qualified expert.

We would like to ask a simple binary choice question for two hypothetical film projects.

The first one would be this imaginary dream project:  Shane Black is one of the very best script writers available.  We get a script from him and it’s going to be a downhill coast to the bank.  So, hypothetically speaking, he hands us a “top of his game” script and then we ask the dean of the USC Film School to pick student actors and a crew from the junior class to film it.

Or

The most promising script writing student we can find delivers something that got him an A+ grade from a hard marking professor and then (magically) we get Martin Scorsese to direct, an Oscar™ winning cinematographer to work the cameras, John Williams offers to toss a few tunes on the soundtrack and then Robert DeNiro and Merle Streep sign on to head an all star cast.  They have to adhere strictly to the kid’s script.

If, after those two projects are completed and you could only go to see one, which one would you choose?

Speaking of Robert DeNiro, we loved seeing him team up with Al Pacino in “Heat” and that did good business.  So now we gotta ask:  Will Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise ever be matched up in one flick?

For that matter, wouldn’t you love to see what would have happened if Clint Eastwood ever get to play opposite John Wayne?

Can you imagine a cop, played by Angelina Jolie, tracking down a master criminal played by Nicole Kidman?  What if they both think Lenardo de Caprio is telling the truth when he tells each one  “I want to spend the rest of my life with you”?

Speaking of Brad Pitt, when we were in Kalgoorlie (in the W. A. [Western Australia]) we met a guy whose uncle had written a kids book about two spies who were married to each other.  Sounds like a flick Brad Pitt did with Angela Jolie, doesn’t it?  The last we heard the uncle was asking the Writers’ Guild to consider the possibility that there might be grounds for a plagiarism suit.  It’s been awhile.  We wonder how that worked out.

Did you like “Pritizi’s Honor”?

Folks watching “Apocalypse Now” are supposed to know that it is loosely based on Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” but didja know that Orson Well had a film based on the Conrad novel in development before he started “Citizen Kane”?  The Wells project was never completed.

Which would be better for music fans:  a new band gets to be the first to record a song written by the Glimmer Twins (Mick Jager and Keith Richards) or the Rolling Stones record a song that won an amateur song writing contest?

Far fetched speculation is fun as long as it doesn’t get taken seriously, but these days the best minds at the Amalgamated Conspiracy Theory Factory (ACTF) are ready to signoff on American Politics because by clever mind games any attempt at telling the truth is automatically classified as an ungrounded conspiracy theory from a psycho case.

Movies cover a bell curve for truth.

Documentaries are supposed to be an accurate cinematic report on the real world.

Some films are accurate representations of real events.

Some films based on a true story sex up the script a bit to sell more tickets.

Some films distort things completely.

Other films such as Star Wars are complete fantasy.

American journalism has gone the “Star Wars” route.

How phony would photos of the World’s Laziest Journalist cutting brush on the WLJ ranch in the Berkeley Area be?  Why then did “journalists” sit silently by when President Tex, who was surrounded by Secret Service agents, posed for a few staged pictures and then the “newsmen” let the world think that a man who was surrounded by good guys with guns and had someone standing nearby with “the nuclear football,” would not hire some local trabajadors to do the work?  Hogwash!  It was a game of political spin and the Journalists were accessories to the deception.

The 2000 and 2004 Elections were both stolen, but suddenly and magically, after 2006 the unhackable electronic voting machines become completely beyond the capabilities of the foreign hackers who have been in the news lately and reverted to producing reliable results.  Stories reported by Brad Friedman indicate that the American people are being scammed by the assurances that the machines are unhackable but facts are now extinct and irrelevant for use in any debate with conservatives.

Some time back when election official in Washington D. C. challenged hackers to take their best shot at their new voting machines, a team from U of Michigan reported that while they were hacked into the machines they noticed that teams from Iran and China were also getting in there and taking a look around.

If the World’s Laziest Journalist can post the des key number for the electronic voting machines (F2654hD4) what makes the citizens, both liberal and conservative, so certain that hackers both foreign and domestic can’t crack the “unhackable” electronic voting machines?

Do you suppose that those hackers had anything to do with the light failure at the Supebowl?

The work crew at the Amalgamated Conspiracy Theory Factory (ACTF) will have to be furloughed because of austerity budget measures and so they would be better off concocting some “pitches” to take to Hollywood and maybe try to get an agent who appreciates a good imagination and a command of current events.

Or?

If the guys in white smocks at the ACTF just want to kick back and take life easy (as their boss already assumes they are doing) they should just try to become Republican Congressmen.  According to a highly classified ACTF report, here is a summary of a Republican Congressman’s weekly schedule:  Tuesday morning call in filibuster holds, ring out, and go off to their girlfriends’ apartment to start the weekend.

Hangfire!  That sounds good to the World’s Laziest Journalist, too.  Flo of Progressive Insurance has 5 million friends on Facebook.  How can we get her to “share” a link to one of our columns?  If we could become a Republican Congressional representative we’d only need a few dozen good friends on K Street to feel appreciated.

Meanwhile, we’ll pound out some columns just for (as the kids now say) sh*ts and giggles.  We know that we will never make more than a handful of readers (at best) stop and think about the theater of the absurd being played in D. C.  Why did just one kid point out that the emperor wasn’t wearing any clothes?

Orson Wells once said that making a movie is getting the biggest train set a boy could ever want.  Unfortunately we don’t have the exact quote for fact checking so we’ll just go with the most famous movie sound byte of all time:  “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn!”

Now the disk jockey will play Ringo Starr’s “They’re Gonna Put Me in the Movies,” Clint Eastwood singing “For All We Know,” and Paul Newman singing “Plastic Jesus.”  We have to go and take a break for a few days.  Have a “I want to thank the members of the Academy  . . .” type week.

February 19, 2013

Doublethink für Dummkopfs

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 1:21 pm

When the Berkeley Barb was busy railing against the Vietnam War, the editors would have to throw in some change-of-pace items to provide readers with a bit of serendipity outrage and so occasionally lefties would be asked to save a ration of their activist energies to become upset with the fact that some kindred spirits were being given life sentences for possession of a single marijuana cigarette.

The conservatives were adamant that the hippies in flyover country were getting what they deserved.  Now they wonder if they’d catch the liberals off guard by suggesting that any of those lifers who are still in prison should be given a pardon and their freedom.

Any kid who was given a life sentence in 1968, will if he or she were 20 years old at the time, be turning 65 this year.  What conservative wouldn’t be a walking example of schadenfreude in action if the folks who have been in prison all this time are given a full pardon (and thus save their state the cost of their incarceration) and face a life of retirement coping with a monthly Social Security check of Zero?

Isn’t it odd that in the states that had a liberal attitude towards pot smokers back when LBJ was the president, they are now experiencing a wave of change that indicates that rather than bring a liberal attitude to the states where some pot heads may still be serving out their life sentences, the states that were liberal are now being urged to fill their privatized prisons with culprits who wanted to toke up.  Would that be a retroactive “win” for the states that handed out life sentences for pot, all those years ago?

The CBS Evening News recently reported that many youths who are detained on possible violations of gun laws in Chicago must be released because of crowded prisons which make incarcerating the gun packing kids impossible.

No liberal or conservative will ever suggest sending the pistol packin’ punks from Chi to a privatized prison in Cali because the folks who run the privatize prisons aren’t going to want to deal with thugs.  Doesn’t it make sense that running a prison for space cadets who just want to chill is a much more appealing prospect than supervising a building full of toughs who know all about zip guns, shivs, and gang war brawling?

So it is that after all these years, the life sentences for pot are being retroactively ratified rather than revoked.

The kids who got a life sentence in the Sixties for a single reefer are now reaching that stage of life where constant medical attention will be subsidized by the states where they reside.  What conservative would not endorse the cost reduction option of cutting them loose at this late date and teaching them the value of self reliance via the old sink or swim tough love pardons?

If filling California privatized prisons with pot smokers while cutting shooters loose in Chicago doesn’t make sense to the readers of this column, perhaps they can start to change their thinking by rereading George Orwell’s novel “1984” and paying particular attention to the passages explaining the concept of “double think.”

At first the challenge of simultaneously holding two contradictory thoughts may seem like an impossible assignment, but if a white belt in a “double think” class watches the Republicans holding political offices it soon becomes evident that proficiency in “double think” can be achieved.

Students of double think, naturally, start their journey to enlightenment with the most difficult assignments.

For instance, a student will learn that George W. Bush didn’t have to have provide a coherent explanation for how the World Trade Center buildings fall down and go boom, other than “fool me twice . .  . won’t get fooled again!,” but President Obama must explain where he was and what he was doing (and with whom) when the attack on Bengazi was first being reported and then he must provide a full minute by minute account of how it was permitted to occur.  A double standard for explanations?  Are you really baffled by the question of “Why would one standard be applied to ‘Tex,’ and another to a Democratic President from . . . Hawaii?”

Students start shouting “Tell us!” and repeat the chant over and over again until they work themselves into a frenzy.  Try this at home and see if, after a couple a strong drinks and a few hours of chanting, you aren’t ready for a good old fashioned “necktie party.”

If a country is full of frustrated long term unemployed people, why not open up the employment market more by giving citizenships to resident illegal aliens?

Why would Americans believe that sending troops into harm’s way in a country where it is are just as likely for the locals to blow them up as it is for the enemy to set off an IUD, is a matter of necessity?  Isn’t it obvious that a country that has been reliant on the patriarch tradition that is centuries old, they’ll be ripe for change and anxious to try this Democracy fad?

If invading Iraq in a search for nonexistent WMD’s worked out so well, what’s the delay for doing a replay in Iran?

In a nation that fought WWII to preserve the Four Freedoms, isn’t it obvious that as the liberal media does the Cheshire cat disappearing act there will be growing need for liberals to buy a copy of “Conservative Thinking für Dumbkopfs” before they get tossed into Room 101 for a bit of attitude adjustment?

Speaking of that, it seems to us that the St. Patrick’s Day festivities at O’Kelly’s bar (and the nearby Tiki bar?) at Guantanimo will be the wildest blowout since the good old days at the Purple Porpoise.  (If you have to ask, you don’t have the security clearance to get an explanation.)

That brings to mind an old perplexing question:  Was Felix Rodriguez pulling our leg when he bragged that, oh so long ago, a member of the Berkeley City Council (whom only he called “Che”) was causing a sensation singing at amateur night at the local C&W bars?

Rather than spinning our wheels futilely on liberal causes that will be filibustered in the court of pop culture, the new thinking at the World’s Laziest Journalist headquarters is that we should point out that Mick Jagger has song numerous noteworthy duets and Willie Nelson has had an album using all famous singing partners (“Half Nelson”), so why haven’t they teamed up with each other?  Who wouldn’t like to hear them do a duet for a rerecording of “On the road again”?  Or “Crazy”?  Or “Satisfaction”?

What would it sound like if a clever recording engineer, spliced together the Mick Jagger (from “Ned Kelly”) and John Wayne (from “The Quiet Man”) versions of the song “Wild Colonial Boy”?

If it’s true, as we have read in James Michener’s novel “Texas,” that when Texas joined the Union, they included in the agreement, a clause that says at their option they could break up into five separate states (which would mean 10 men in the Senate), we wonder if the talk about secession might not take a surprising new turn someday soon.

We have been told (hearsay evidence isn’t admissible in court)  that at one time in the past, the airplanes at a Texas Air Force base were picking up the AM band broadcasts (on super station XERF) of Wolfman Jack.

Speaking of going in new directions and doublethink, we might start to do some market research fact finding to learn the potential for forming a group to promote and appreciate hypocrisy.

Liberals who have never even tried doublethink can not conceive how a gay, pot smoking, Republican could ever endorse his party’s agenda, but if the liberals ever embrace hypocrisy it will be “game over” for the Republicans at election time.

Meanwhile, until that day comes, we have an FDR utterance for our closing quote.

Bartlett’s quotes a speech given, by FDR, on October 30, 1940, as saying:  “Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.”

Now the disk jockey will play George Hamilton IV’s “Abilene,” Dean Martin’s “Houston,” and Marty Robin’s “El Paso.”  We have to go do a Google News search for Sgt. Sunshine, the SF policeman who toked up on the front steps of City Hall way back when.  Have a “I’m a rich boy now!” type of Giant week.

February 17, 2013

Leashes = animal cruelty?

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 6:36 pm

 

Note: Fox and Humor are exempt from Fact Checking, so this pathetic attempt at humor haint been fact checked.

Finding a new Liberal cause to preach in Berkeley CA may be a tougher assignment than “Find an Atheist in the College of Cardinals,” but if you work at it long enough, eventually you will find a tableau of conduct on the streets that looks like it has been ripped from the pages of a textbook for Fascism 101.

Baron Siegfried L. von (with a small “v”) Richthofen III was a larger than normal example of a Husky and German Shepherd mix and the first time, when he became full grown, that we attempted to pull on the leash to indicate that we wanted to walk in a different direction, he responded by giving the leash such a powerful yank in the opposite direction that we where knocked into a prone position. Siggy then ambled over and positioned his cold wet nose a few inches in front of our face and, through clinched teeth, growled: “If you ever do that again, I’ll chew your face off!”

Ordinarily Siggy was just a big old pussycat, but we were aware of the Jekyll and Hyde transformation that would occur when he got drunk. He could be a mean S. O. B. (no disrespect to his mother) when he got soused and so we adopted a walking style that always included some slack in the leash (jut to show that we were adhering to the local leash law) and never used a quick jerk for a silent command.

Walking around in Berkeley, we assumed that, in a city where protests against animal cruelty in laboratories is as old as the cry “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids didja kill today?,” the folks who were walking small breeds of dogs would not make a change of directions look similar to footage of a helicopter rescuing an injured skier in the wilderness. We were astounded to find plenty of visual evidence to indicate that the shift from dog collar to a shoulder harness was not getting full enthusiastic support in the famed “People’s Republic of Berkeley.”

The writer Céline (not to be confused with a singer with the same name) once said that a dog only knows what it can smell. He would not be surprised to notice that on a walk most dogs will teach the lesson that the world is a smorgasbord of interesting and intriguing odors and each and every one has to be thoroughly investigated. If you don’t want to stop and smell the flowers along the way (as the old hippie advise goes), then don’t bother to go for the walk.

Back in the day, my roommate and I would have to spell out the word “leash” because if you said the word, Siggy ran over to where the leash was hanging on a hook, and point to it with his nose. You didn’t use the word in a caviler “just in conversation” manner if you didn’t want to go for a walk. Then, one day, it became obvious that Siggy had learned what “l-e-a-s-h” spelled.

Berkeley CA has one store, Paco Collars, which specializes in dog collars. We have, to the best of our memory, never seen another dog collar store in all our travels, which have taken us from Paris and Casablanca in the East to Fremantle on the shore of the Indian Ocean as the Western boundary of our inventory of world geography.

The unique store in Berkeley offers, from what we could gather form a quick visual inspection of the interior, some of the harnesses which transfer the leash stress to the dog’s chest, but most of the items were dog collars. We asked if some customers bought any dog collars for their girlfriends, but the fellow avoided a yes/no answer.

A columnist’s mission is not to find an issue and then proselytize to make converts for one side or the other; rather a columnist must find new and unique items of interest and, after putting them in a column, continuing on with the quest for the next example of amusing unique information.

The yank the dog phenomenon might seem like an apropos metaphor for a critical look at the way John Boner is bringing the Democratic Party and White House occupant to heel.

Was it our imagination or did we see the Boner repeatedly hold up a doggy litter bag to signify “that’s a load of crap!,” while the Democrats were applauding wildly during the recent State of the Union diatribe? (We always thought at a diatribe designated a group of Apaches who wanted to loose weight. [Bah-dump bump.])

We noted with interest that during the recent cruise ship debacle, the passengers had to use liter bags to defecate and then had to contend with leakage and spills. Why didn’t they just throw the damn things over the railing into the middle of the ocean?

That, in turn, brings us to the problem of what to do with a retired pope. Will he be subjected to “de facto” house arrest conditions or will he be permitted to go on the late night talk show circuit to promote his new book?

Some canine experts make the assertion that dogs intuitively understand human through voice tone and body language. Others with a more whimsical philosophy will tell you what books their dog reads and what his latest quip was. We learned from Siggy, that all German Shepherd dogs are “law’n’order” style Nixon Republicans on the day that the shooting at Kent State took place.

[Note: We had digital photos of the Paco Collars store, a dog with a harness for attaching the leash, and a B&W print of a snapshot of Siggy, but after an attack of Spring Fever, we decided to give the Photo Editor the day off.]

For those who are skeptical about a dog’s ability to understand human language, we propose a pragmatic experiment. Go up to a docile large all black dog and utter this column’s closing quote: “Black dogs taste best!” If he suddenly becomes belligerent, please explain how the transformation occurred without indicating that he was trying to refute that extreme foodie opinion.

Now, the disk jockey will play Iggy Pop’s song “I want to be your dog,” Elvis’s extremely sad “Old Shep,” and (on the opposite end of the emotional bell curve) Peggy Lee’s “How much is that doggie in the window.” Now we have to go and buy a copy of Chihuahua of the Baskervilles, for a certain dog who lives in Concordia KS. Have a (attention Waylon Jennings fans) “Reno just howled at the moon” type week.

February 15, 2013

Testing the limits of Overgovernmentalizing in SF.

Filed under: Commentary — Bob Patterson @ 1:21 pm

“Reporting at Wit’s End (Tales from the New Yorker)” (Bloomsbury USA, New York, N. Y. ©2010), which was written by St. Clair McKelway, is chock full of true life feature stories, mostly from the true crime genre file, from the Thirties and Forties.  The one titled “Who is the King of Glory” (written with A. J. Liebling), which was an example of a profile of a personality in the news, caught the eye of this columnist because we heard the name Father Devine years ago but have had no other information to add to his dossier.

The story hints that the famous cleric from the past was a tantalizing mixture of an amazing philanthropist and, simultaneously, (perhaps) a charlatan who gave mesmerizing sermons which were a jazz like riff using words rather than notes produced by a musical instrument.

According to information found online Johnny Mercer heard one of those remarkable talks and was inspired to write a song when he heard the phrase “accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative.”

The story in the book collection did not make a decisive conclusion and inform the readers about a final verdict on the question of any possible fraud or deception about how all the money that flowed into the coffers was spent.  We may have to look for a biography of the famed cleric to learn more.  That, in turn, made us question the journalistic quality of a piece that leaves a reader in the lurch about a central question.

The passages about Father Devine’s unique vocal style don’t do justice to it because in a transcript (page 112) much of the mischievous tone of the word play loses its magic.  “It has been tangibleated, and it can be retangibleated, it can and will continue to materialize, and repersonify, rematerialize, and repersonify, for the great materializing process is going on.”

The fact that a devotee left Father Devine a mansion and a large tract of land in Pennsylvania, made the World’s Laziest Journalist, who can barely get friends on Facebook to share a link to his columns, question his own ability to enunciate enchanting words and phrases.

At this point some skeptics (who want to ask a question in the manner of a Peggy Lee song) might wonder: “If that’s all there is to a career in online column writing, why not chuck it all and say ‘fuck it!’?”  To which we would reply “No my friends, not me.  I’m going to stick around, make fun of both the Republican and Democratic politicians, lace the columns with arcane, esoteric, and obscure facts that will provide Google bait to lure in new eyeballs (which in turn will cause the management to be [just a bit] more tolerant of this columnist’s eccentric style caused by misguided admiration for the three dot journalism pioneered by Walter Winchell and Herb Caen], occasional unintentional malapropisms, typos and/or misspellings, (lapses into poor taste?), and invent some new words (such as promobabble) in the hopes that some day some reader somewhere (Kalgoorlie W. A.?) might notice that sometimes this frazzled and idiosyncratic columnist has occasionally racked up a noteworthy achievement, such as posting a column like last Friday’s (It proved to be an echoed in advance of a news analysis on the front page of the New York Times on the following Sunday.) and thus be inspired to donate a mansion with a lavish surrounding estate, where the World’s Laziest Journalist Headquarters can then be relocated.

[Note here is the URL for the New York Times news analysis online.  People who are registered online as subscribers can copy and paste this link into their browser.  Otherwise it won’t work.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/world/obamas-turn-in-bushs-bind-with-defense-policies.html?_r=0]

Until that happy day arrives, we will have to provide our self with our own rewards for churning out a stream of occasional original insights, underreported stories, and pathetic attempts to replicate the wit of George Carlin.

You want original insights?  Did the USA win the Invasion of Iraq or did a lot of Americans get killed and wounded and a number of defense industries experience a boost in business for conducting the most expensive criminal execution in the history of the world?  If it was an undisputed KO win, what exactly did the USA win?  Did the prognostications that oil revenue would pay for that military adventure turn out to be accurate?  If (subjunctive mood) the U. S. did not win will corporate owned media let any reporter say that, let alone just ask the question?

Need another example?  We have done volunteer clerk work for the Marina Tenants Association, which has been embroiled for years in a running dispute with the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.  Some members of the MTA have the opinion that the Supervisors grant real estate developers very lucrative deals to develop businesses in Marina del Rey, which is county owned land, and (hypothetically speaking) are given vast sums of money for their reelections funds in return.

In San Francisco, famed Candlestick Park, which is located on county owned land, will be demolished after the last Fortyniners’ Game of the 2013 season and the county owned land will be used for new private ventures.

The MTA is busy enough with Los Angeles County matters and they won’t have the time or resources to expand their citizen watchdog work into the San Francisco area.  The journalists in the Bay area will, mostly, be unaware of the fact that for more than fifty years some Nosey Parkers have been writing newspaper stories calling for investigations of the way Marina del Rey has been handled by the Board of Supervisors and thus the Bay Area reporters will not be alert to the potential for a monkey see, monkey do bit of (possible) chicanery in their circulation area.

The World’s Laziest Journalist does do repeated Google News searches to monitor the evolving story of the Los Angeles County assessor who has been incarcerated and has failed to post bail.  We keep wondering:  Is some law enforcement agency trying to negotiate some testimony in return for a sweetheart plea bargain deal?  If so, who are they trying to go after?

In the San Francisco area we noticed that as the 2012 Baseball Season drew to a conclusion, some baseball players had to sit out a few games because they had readings that showed a too high level of testosterone.  We have seen ads on TV that offer to increase the zest for life level of viewers by increasing their testosterone levels.  That made us wonder why Baseball players get punished for increasing their testosterone levels but viewers of the Evening News are urged to take measures to increase their testosterone levels.  Is that fair?

Would George Carling approve of the quip we made while watching the ads for the testosterone boosting products?  While watching the ad we blurted out the comment:  “If my doctor said I had low-T, I’d beat the shit out of him!”

On Thursday February 14, 2013, the Armstrong and Getty Show opened their phone lines and asked folks to make suggestions about how to protest the rising tide of overgovernmentalizing (we invented that word while waiting on hold for our turn to talk) in American Society, so we were full of testosterone and just wanted to suggest that folks call radio talk shows and say words that offend the FCC.  We didn’t want to actually say those words and incur a big fine.  We were immediately disconnected and the 10 second delay must have consigned our attempt to oblivion via the “memory hole.”  Guess they don’t have a sense of humor (at least we got a good item for the column from the effort).  Do conservative talk show hosts have an irony allergy?  Would Lenny Bruce approve our attempt to criticize big government?  Would Father Devine approve our attempt at wordification?

Speaking of increasing testosterone levels for feeling young, virile, and sexy, after we noted that this year will be the Chinese year of the Snake, we thought immediately of our quest to drive (or at least get a ride in) a Cobra and so we fired off an e-mail to the Los Angeles Shelby American Automobile Club (LASAAC), which includes a goodly number of examples of the famed car made by Carol Shelby, asking if they were planning any special Cobra events other than their annual car show, which is usually held in September on the Santa Monica Pier.

A club spokesman replied that there were no current plans for adding an extra Cobra event to their schedule to celebrate the year of the Snake.  Our expert authority concluded his reply with a quote that we will use for the column ending wisdom quote.  We were informed:  “Confucius say: Man who run in front of car get tired… man who run behind car get exhausted… and man who get hit by car get that run down feeling!”

Now the disk jockey will play the “Logical Song,” Joan Baez’s “Diamonds and Rust” (because of the line about “you were so good with words”) and Mama Cass’ “Words of Love.”  We have to go look up the meaning of omphaloskepsis.  Have a “senescence” type week.

February 13, 2013

How I learned to stop worrying and love Hypocrisy

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 1:51 pm

George Clayton Johnson, the fictioneer who wrote episodes for the Twilight Zone during its first season, urges writers to give their minds permission to contemplate impossible potential scenarios and so it is that the World’s Laziest Journalist decided that the Presidents Day weekend of 2013 would be a good time to post a column that posits the premise that the Republican Party is working towards the goal of destroying Democracy in the USA.

Is it too weird to ask if the Republicans started this campaign when some Wall Street executives approached American War hero Smedly Butler and proposed a coup d’etat as a way to save the USA from letting FDR take America down the road to Socialism?

Butler went public with the offer and that resulted in a Congressional Hearing that redacted some of the names of those involved when the transcript was published.  Publishing the names would have precipitated some wild irresponsible conspiracy theory talk and that was the last thing the country needed during the Great Depression.

After President Obama gave the State of the Union Speech on Tuesday February 12, 2013, it may seem to be a tad late to write a review of “The Peril of Fascism (The Crisis of American democracy)” by A. B. Magil and Henry Stevens International Publishers Co., Inc. New York, N. Y. ©1938, but in the Golden Age of Deception it might actually be too soon to plug it.

A column which contends that the Republicans might try to sabotage Democracy in America should be considered a “pitch” for a new Twilight Zone episode and not a serious attempt to write a political pundit’s version of a think piece.  However any attempt to disguise such a column as a subtle bid to get a writing assignment from Rod Serling, would immediately be greeted by fans with allegations that such a hypothetical task would be plagiarizing the “It’s a cook book!” ending for one of the most famous installments of that classic Sixties series.

To hear the pundits on the left tell it, you would think that culling a few voters from each precinct in the USA was some kind of massive effort to do what sports fans call “shave points.”

The use of electronic voting machines for manipulating the final voting results was questioned by “scientists” even before the technology had been refined and put into production.  Aren’t “scientists” the same bunch of weirdoes who (somehow) have managed to sell the Twilight Zone-ish concept of “Global Warming”?  (Isn’t it sooo easy to imagine just what Rod Serling would have said if he ever did a “Global Warming” episode during the first season?)

Fox, which wasn’t in existence when George H. W. Bush used a parolled felon to win his election, was the first network to call Florida for George W. Bush and some loons in the Conspiracy Theory world questioned the folks who concocted the fair and balanced concept for journalists saying that the fact that the man at Fox who made the call was related to George W. Bush.  So?  They never answer that question.

George Clayton Johnson urges rookie writers to imagine the impossible but wouldn’t he admit that the conspiracy theory crazies who suggest that “they knew” (and facilitated?) that some Arabs were going to crash planes into various buildings have abused the concept of imagining that he impossible might happen?

In the aforementioned “The Peril of Fascism,” the authors writing (page 174) about Huey Long say:  “So adept did Huey Long prove in playing on the hopes and prejudices of the poor and in covering up his secret deals with big business that he won widespread support, not only in Louisiana but in other Southern states and in sections of the North.”

Do the critics of the Republican game plan think that Ross Thomas’ novel “The Fools in Town Are on our Side” was some kind of prediction of the concept of a political booby-trap?

If politicians were really that shallow and cynical wouldn’t President Obama play the “treason” card and question the patriotism of the Republicans who (seemingly) stand read to withhold paychecks from the military as part of a partisan political strategy?

The Republicans have successfully questioned the patriotism of a Senator who lost three limbs while fighting in Vietnam (Max Cleland) and gotten a non veteran elected as his replacement.  Attacking a political opponent’s patriotism is a strategy that has proven very effective so why doesn’t Obama call them out for hypocrisy and suggest that any Republican complicity in the Sequester controversy is hypocritical and means committing a treasonous act which betrays the military?

Wouldn’t undercutting the military make the Republicans seem prone to hypocrisy?  So why not call them out on this?  Do the Republicans have some kind of intellectual property rights claim on hypocrisy?  Is there some kind of copyright infringement factor that means that the Democrats would have to pay royalty fees if they use hypocrisy to fight hypocrisy?

What would happen if, instead of ridiculing the Republican examples of (alleged) hypocrisy every day on his radio program, Norm (No Lables) Goldman suddenly had a

St. Paul’s moment and adopted the “your game, your rules; I’ll win” belligerent attitude and then started to use irony to lavish praise on the Republican forked tongue devil strategy?

If (hypothetically speaking) Norm Goldman were suddenly to start enumerating and analyzing the Republican strategy of saying one thing and doing the opposite from an adoring stance, which he didn’t actually hold, how would the Republican trolls respond to that?

Imagine for a moment that people tuned into his program today and heard him say that he endorsed the Republican strategy of promoting right to work laws as a stealth way to reduce wages and increase profits for the people known as corporations?

Yes, the conservative trolls would continue to call in and say “I agree with most of what you say, but what if there had been a guard with a gun at the Connecticut school?”

The lefties who listen to him would be baffled and have to stop and think about it.  If Lefties are in favor of unions and against wage reductions how could someone of that ilk say he endorsed the right to work movement?

In the Fifties IBM used the word “Think” to challenge Americans to do just that.  In the Sixties the phrase “Question Authority” was ubiquitous.  In the Ted Nugent era Americans find that the obstreperous attitude has been replaced by another corporate tsunami of promotional items that say “Obey!”

Norm Goldman often asserts that he will give the fascists a taste of their own medicine.  Well then, isn’t it time to form the Hypocrisy Appreciation & Promotion Society (HAPS)?

If Republicans are content to let computers count the voting results, why then are they so opposed to letting computers draw voter precinct boundaries?

If Republicans are in favor of letting teachers have guns, why not go for the fair and balanced approach and urge schools to let students be strapped (i.e. pack heat)?  Isn’t it hypocritical to say yes to teachers with guns and no to young men laden with raging hormones who are just aching to prove their potency?

Is it hypocritical for a pundit who advocates freedom of speech to avoid printing the transcript of an avalanche of unprintable expletives as this column’s closing words of wisdom and merely provide a NSFW warning and a link to one of Tommy Lasorda’s quotes about being happy and supporting his players, which can only be played on radio shows (such as the one by Los Angeles area sports reporter Jim Healy?) as a non-stop festival of bleeps?  http://www.hark.com/clips/vjntlwjfdx-happiest-son-of-a-bitch

Now the disk jockey will play the Rolling Stones song from the Seventies titled “Star Fucker,” the Rolling Stones contractual obligation album “********** (hint a ten letter word meaning felatio [Word spellcheck challenges that word too]) Blues” and “Let me squeeze your lemon.”  We have to go to the used book store and see if we can replace our MIA copy of Lenny Bruce’s autobiography.  Have an (what is the word for a word that has another word inserted into the middle of it?) Un*******believable week and a happy Presidents’ Day Weekend.

February 12, 2013

Austerity Budget vs. the Pope’s Retirement Package?

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 1:26 pm

Charlie Sheen’s appeal to a killer to surrender, the pope’s resignation, and the President’s efforts to prepare for his State of the Union speech were some of the top news stories in the media on Monday February 11, 2013 and so the pundits went on “Condition Red” status in anticipation of a week that would not soon be forgotten.  In response to such a week, a columnist can try to provide the best (most quotable) analysis of one facet of the complex week, find an overlooked story that was getting lost in the shuffle, or use the Walter Winchell School of Journalism method, called three dot journalism, of trying to make one snarky comment about each of all the various topics of the week.

Comparisons of the search for the rogue cop in L. A., Christopher J. Dorner with the O. J. low speed pursuit seemed too obvious.

A full column about the time that John Dillinger was apprehended in Truckee CA would mean a lot of fact checking work.  Dillinger was arrested.  The local authorities telegraphed their coup to Washington and got a stultifying reply.  The local sheriff was informed that Dillinger was in prison in Indiana and their prisoner should be released immediately with an abundance of sincere apologies.  Three hours later they got a high priority update message that said “disregard previous message.”   It was too late and that little footnote to gangster history was consigned to a life of obscurity.  The fact that Truckee and Big Bear Lake were similar terrains would help add to the appeal of such a sidebar story.

The most famous fugitive in Canadian history also fled to a snowy mountain area to elude the Mounties.  Readers from north of the USA might like seeing a column in the USA that indicated a passing knowledge of their history.

A snarky suggestion about the possibility that law enforcement officials might want to check and see if their fugitive was hiding in the Gelenrowan Inn might tickle the fancy of readers in Australia, but that would be too esoteric, arcane, and baffling for most Yanks.

Technically isn’t one escape from Alcatraz still an open case?

We know of one fan of the TV series “The Fugitive,” who finally got to see the last episode of that program while he was in Saigon.  Have they ever use DNA testing to provide an update on the real life murder that provided the basis for the TV series?

For a column about papal history we would have to locate a copy of “The Bad Popes,” and reread it before attempting a long and accurate column about that topic.  What’s not to love about someone historians call “Pope Joan”?  Didn’t one of the popes have the heartache of contending with the scandal of one of his kids killing a sibling?

The topic of the state of the union should be easy to predict.  What do folks think a President who has just been reelected is going to say at the beginning of his second term in office?  The World’s Laziest Journalist is considering doing all the fact checking about the “sit down strike” Republicans are conducting in the halls of Congress and lumping all the relevant material into one column that would carry the headline:  “Dead Democracy Walking!’

It would take a massive amount of arrogant pride for a columnist to think that he could come up with an interesting thought provoking angle to pop culture that all the other commentators missed during a hectic news week.

The Internets was fascinated last week with a story detailing private e-mail material from former President George W. Bush which had been discovered by hackers.

Initial news reports implied that some unpatriotic scallywags might have been the culprits.  With small staffs and tight budgets, most privatized news media can’t waste resources on analyzing that innocuous crime news but if they did, what could else could it possibly be?  Didn’t Watergate start out as a “second rate burglary” item from a police beat reporter?

The media ignored the possibility that the hackers were from Iran or China and immediately focused attention of the unpatriotic possibility that Americans in cahoots with Anonymous were the culprits.

Did anyone have the audacity to suggest that the story was actually a Republican leak which will form the foundation for rehabilitating the Bush family brand name?  Wouldn’t the leaked – stolen – e-mails help humanize the former President?  Isn’t that how they started the campaign in the late Seventies to reshape Nixon’s image for history?  First you humanize him, then you deify him.  By the time Nixon was buried hadn’t his image been recast as a misunderstood American hero?  Well, if JEB is going to get the Republican nomination in 2016, when, where, and how would you start the effort to reestablish the Bush Dynasty image?

If any nationally known pundit hypothesized such an explanation, that fellow would immediately have to content with explaining how a copy of his “Employee ID card” from the Amalgamated Conspiracy Theory Factory had made its way onto the top Yahoo searches of the day list.

What’s not to love about a country where a President’s State of the Union speech morphs into the status of “opening act” for a Ted Nugent press conference?

Marlene Dietrich has been quoted as saying:  “If there is a supreme being, he’s crazy.”

Now the disk jockey will play Merle Haggard’s song, “I’m a Lonesome Fugitive,” Gene Vincent’s “Pistol Packin’ Mama,” and a memorial tribute playing of Reg Presley’s version of “Wild Thing.”  We have to go look for a copy of Cliff Arquette’s autobiography.  Have a “which way did he go” type week.

February 8, 2013

War Crimes and Irony

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 1:28 pm

“Turnabout,” the 1931 novel by Thorne Smith was given a very strong recommendation that sparked a relentless search in used book stores from New York City to Los Angeles.  The story is about the struggles of a married couple who became the victims of an ancient Egyptian god’s practical joke when he magically (as ancient Egyptian gods are permitted to do) switched their minds into the other’s body.

Our quest to find that obscure literary treasure came to an end in Los Angels many moons ago.  The book delivered the expected level of entertainment and in an odd twist of fate that copy of that particular paperback was handed off to the fellow who had given the original recommendation because he wanted to re-read the hilarious antics again.

It turned out that the concept of two fictional characters trading minds had previously been used in an obscure short story, written by A. Conan Doyle, about a student and one of his professors.

The concept of two disparate personalities switching host bodies was used in the Tom Hanks film “Big” which told the tale of a father and young son who experienced that particular transformation.

In a week in which Republicans were castigating a Democratic President for not following the rules of warfare and the Dems were shrugging off the criticism with studied nonchalance in the “I can’t hear you” mode of saying “bugger off,” the entire staff at the World’s Laziest Journalist headquarters was coping with a strong attack of déjà vu . . .

President Obama let an opportunity to investigate the possibility that George W. Bush and his posse might have (subjunctive mood) exceeded the bounds of good taste slip away and then when Obama gave his acceptant speech at the Nobel Peace Awards, he sounded a tad bellicose.  Now, the Obama supporters approach the subject of impeachment and charges of war crimes with a very Karl Rove-ish sounding collective voice and the Repubs (does that word mean folks who visit a tavern for the second time in one night?) are snickering with fiendish delight.

Isn’t there an old legal adage that states “Silence Implies Consent!”?

So if Obama was silent about any possible Bush complicity in war crimes (and he was), then, at the very least, the possibility has to be considered that Obama was an accessory after the fact for any (hypothetically speaking) Bush War Crimes.

The German High Command in WWII went to great lengths to insure that the citizens of their country didn’t know what was happening and thus they had a legitimate claim to say to the members of the various allied armies that occupied Germany after the war was over that the average German in the streets didn’t know what was being done in their name by their leaders.

George W. Bush made goddamn sure that his policies were reported by America’s Free Press and thus insured that sooner or later Americans would be accessories before, during, and after the fact to his dirty deeds, if, indeed, there were any.

How many conservatives completely ignored the precepts contained in Robert Jackson’s opening statement at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial and cried;  “He (Bush) didn’t know that there was no WMD’s!”?  More than a few.

Any debate, at this point, over which Party’s guy did or did not commit war crimes is an exercise in futility.

The War Crimes Studies Center operates on the University of California Berkeley campus and since they haven’t made any headlines about launching an investigation into the possibility of any Bush war crimes, that aught to settle the question once and for all.

By a remarkable coincidence, John Yoo, who led the team of legal advisors that George W. Bush used to insure that he never, either deliberately or accidentally, did anything which might arouse suspicions of potential War Crimes, works on that same campus and perhaps the War Crimes Study Center could invite Yu to be a guest lecturer who would be able to suggest to other countries what effective measures could be used to insure that their leaders would never commit a War Crime.  Isn’t preventing War Crimes as the Yoo team did, just as important as studying other countries’ War Crimes?

On Thursday February 7, 2012, Senator Diane Feinstein explained to excitable, gullible political activists that their concern about civilian casualties from drone strikes are based on only seven or eight fatalities and that efforts to allay their fears and rectify their gross misperception, based on a regrettable clerical error, should be made.

The fact that the Dems now sound like Bush supporters and the Repubs sound like some old Berkeley peaceniks, might appeal to some people with a connoisseur’s appreciation for irony (Isn’t the dictionary definition of irony:  saying the exact opposite of what you mean?  Don’t many people often incorrectly use that word [irony] when they mean poignancy?).

The cavalcade of confusion this week on talk radio is what brought the old literary gem, Thorne Smith’s “Turnabout,” to mind this week.

Many of Smith’s comic novels were turned into classic movie comedies and later TV series.  His novel “Topper,” became a hit movie for MGM in 1937 (with Cary Grant as the ghost George Kirby) and later a popular TV series in the Fifties.  Smith’s “The Passionate Witch” ultimately became the 1942 hit movie “I Married a Witch” and subsequently that morphed into the TV series “Bewitched.”

Smith’s novel “The Bishop’s Jaegers,” which told a story about a rich geek accompanied by his adventurous secretary and recounts their reactions when they land in a nudist camp.  It was ahead of its time when it was published in 1932.  Apparently it is still a little too edgy to be adapted into a film script today.

The acquisitions librarian at the World’s Laziest Journalist headquarter’s tried for twenty years to acquire a copy of “The Bishop’s Jaegers.”  At one point he balked at the chance to purchase a collector’s hard back edition for a hundred bucks.  Ultimately, at a used bookstore on Wilshire Blvd., in Santa Monica, he stumbled across a used paper back in the bargain bin for a dime.

Isn’t it rather poignant to note that Germans are not afraid of nudity but they are ashamed of their country’s participation in war crimes while Americans are terrorized by the concept of a nudist camp but are completely unfazed by the remote possibility of any hypothetical involvement in War Crimes.

At this point, some of this columnist’s faithful readers might expect this column to segue into a column’s end quote using Australian outlaw Ned Kelly’s final words, but that, like a War Crimes trial for an American leader, aint’ gonna happen.

In an opinion piece titled “Fear and Loathing in the Bunker,” published in the New York Times on January 1, 1974, Hunter S. Thompson predicted:  “ . . . an American invasion, seizure and terminal occupation of all oil-producing countries in the Middle East.”

Now the disk jockey will play “The Age of Aquarius,” “Springtime for Hitler,” and Randy Newman’s “Let’s Drop the Big One Now!”  We have to go dig up a new wedge issue.  Have a “no foul, no harm” type week.

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