Failed Talkers

5.8

2011-08-25T06:44:00.000-07:00

When I left California for Chicago in 1981 I figured my earthquake days were behind me. I’d sweated through a number of minor and yet somehow deeply disturbing temblors in northern California and was looking forward to putting the fine points of the Richter scale behind me.

Earthquakes are a part of the culture of the state, of course, a continuing topic of conversation, speculation, theory and no little dread. Talk of the San Andreas Fault and “the Big One,” as promised by the boys and girls at Cal Tech, is as commonplace as discussions of traffic jams, beach getaways and those characters in Silicon Valley.

The matter of “the first one” is a fairly big deal for an interloper, as I was when I ventured west in 1979 to pursue a newspaper career. The weather was perfect, the setting sublime, and the work-play ratio less intense than I was used to as an East Coast guy.

As a friend of mine said when I complained about adapting to the easygoing lifestyle, “What’s not to like?”

Well, the first earthquake. It is invariably a startling and spooky affair.

Sorting it out, it comes to this: With the first one, you move from the theoretical to the practical in a big hurry. There is no one you can call to make it stop or make it go away. You can’t pour water on it or wait for Doppler radar and Andy the weatherman to tell you the cell is moving east. The waters will not recede.

Most earthquakes last only a few seconds. Indeed, most earthquakes go unnoticed. Until they don’t. Then, everything is wrong. Objects that don’t move start moving. You often get the sense that the building that you are in may fly apart, that the stresses are too great and, worst of all, that it won’t stop. Experts and normal people argue as to whether or not earthquakes make noise (They do, or so I believe. A lot of noise).

My wife Jane, who had her own earthquake experiences living in Los Angeles, talks about the ferocious instinct you feel to go outside, to get outside, even though the experts insist that is absolutely the wrong thing to do.

But that was my instinct last Tuesday, when several million rookies in the eastern United States came up against a stunning 5.8 earthquake that rattled walls, emptied government buildings, schools and offices, challenged assumptions (hey, no earthquakes in this part of the country) and amped up heartbeats from Toronto to South Carolina.

The quake was centered in someplace called Mineral, Va., about 80 miles south of our house. A shaking that felt like an explosion - hello, al Qaeda - rolled into what was unmistakably an earthquake.

Sitting right where I am now, at the computer, I found myself picking up my house keys and my wallet, grabbing the phone, worrying about the barking dog, standing under a wide doorway between the front room and the dining room. I really, really wanted to go outside.

In downtown Washington and all over the East Coast, frightened people trapped in what was for them a singular experience did just that, pouring into streets, clutching cell phones that had gone silent.

They were frightened in a whole new way. And if you have never shared the seismic experience, understand they were scared on merit.

Then it was over. Nobody died. Around here there was damage to the Washington Monument and the National Cathedral, and much more structural damage south, towards the epicenter. Foundations cracked. Some chimneys collapsed, in some cases doing damage to parked cars.

If it ends well, of course, there are always stories. In 1980 my parents came to visit me in Palo Alto, CA., where I was working as a sports columnist. My mother had never been to California and my father hadn’t seen the place since he sailed into Oakland at the end of World War II.

For some reason I was living in a small, one person cabin in Portola Valley, outside Stanford, so I had no room for the folks. I booked them into a two-story Holiday Inn not far from the Stanford University campus.

On the second or third morning of the visit I awoke to find my bedroom moving, books and pictures flying around my little hideaway. Earthquake. Parents.

I jumped into my dependable Datsun and roared across Highway 1 toward the Holiday Inn, expecting the worst. I bounded up the stairs to find the motel room door open. Betty and Joe were sipping coffee, watching the “Today” show. “Big earthquake,” my father intoned, a smile on his face.

Naturally, I had missed the best part. My father had been in the shower when the quake rolled in. The room shook, the cheap prints sailed off the walls and my mother yelled through the bathroom door: “Joe, what are you doing in there?”

Riggleman Walks Away, His Own Way

2011-06-26T09:17:00.000-07:00

Posted on Huffington Post, June 26, 2011

By Steve Daley

Jim Riggleman grew up in the Maryland suburbs outside Washington D.C. But it’s clear he doesn’t know much about the culture of the Federal City.

No one quits here. Absent personal disgrace (see Anthony Weiner) or historic ignominy (see Richard M. Nixon), no one in Washington walks away from the job title or the money or the dinner parties or the town car.

The angry and the disgruntled, those bothered by budget cuts or endless wars or the incompetence of others above their station, leak stories to reporters. They let feuds percolate. They whinge in private, or call the “Reliable Source” at the Washington Post. Nobody actually quits.

But last Thursday, Riggleman, a 58-year-old baseball lifer, resigned as manager of the Washington Nationals. He just quit. And he did so in mid-season, with his team in third place.

That’s rarefied air for a franchise that has been at the bottom its division in five of the six years of its existence. At this writing, your Washington Nationals have a record of 449-596 since the National League club stumbled into town from Montreal in 2005.

Timing is everything, of course, and Riggleman’s team had won 11 of its last 12 games and owned a modest winning record (38-37).

“I’m too old to be disrespected,” he told a gaggle of gobsmacked reporters after the Nats had defeated the Seattle Mariners,1-0.

The issue, as far as we know, was contractual and the fact that Riggleman was reportedly the lowest paid manager in the game is likely not irrelevant.

He says he “repeatedly” asked Nationals’ General Manager Mike Rizzo about extending his one-year contract. When Riggleman asked for a meeting, Rizzo told him once again the “time wasn’t right.” The manager said he would not be on the team bus for the flight to Chicago. And he wasn’t.

Inside the Beltway and the 202 area code, Jim Riggleman is as rare as a polar bear.

Counting the roll of those public figures who walked away from a pretty good job on a matter of what they considered principle doesn’t take but a minute or two.

A few good men fell by the wayside over principle during Watergate. Veteran diplomat George Ball, a fierce opponent of Vietnam policy in the Kennedy and Johnson years, became celebrated for almost resigning, but not quite.

Back in the 1990s, Peter Edelman, a senior advisor to Health and Services Secretary Donna Shalala, quit in protest of President Clinton’s approach to welfare reform.

Others who had a Howard Beale, “mad as hell” moment, who turned in the top security clearance in anger or outrage or even shame?

I’m waiting …

Washingtonians resign to spend more time with the family. They resign to move to K Street, or Santa Fe, or the Kennedy School at Harvard.

They so rarely resign on principle you have to conclude they really don’t understand the concept.

Think about Iraq and Afghanistan. Think about Katrina and FEMA, about the boys and girls at the Securities and Exchange Commission or the other regulatory agencies during the recent and ongoing economic meltdown or the oil explosion in the Gulf or a dozen other scandals and affronts.

Jim Riggleman gave them back the watch and likely ended his baseball career. At some level, it had to feel pretty good.

Joe D

2011-06-18T10:45:00.000-07:00

He was a hard worker and a worrier, the latter a trait he passed along to his son and daughter. He had a lively sense of humor and a low threshold of tolerance for those he thought were posturing.

When he sent you a note, often with a drawing attached, he signed it “Just, Joe.”

He distrusted rich folk. He disliked all forms of pretense as he saw it – in the church on Sunday, in the saloon on a lazy afternoon, at the dinner table.

One of the best things about Joe Daley - father, husband, friend - was that he wished people well. He was fiercely loyal and had a great heart, though he had his dark Irish moments and that heart was not always evident to those closest to him.

He delighted in the stories and successes of his children and their friends. He was that small-town father all your buddies and your first girl friend and your wife really liked. “Call me Joe,” he would tell them. “Mr. Daley is my father.”

He was a veteran of the Pacific war, a cartoonist and a Democrat, a fledgling local politician, a neighborhood guy with a million friends, a New York Yankee fan, a skeptical Catholic. Toward the end of life, as our mother and his wife Betty descended into Alzheimer’s disease, he was a hero.

Well before she turned 70, Betty Daley fell victim to early onset Alzheimer’s. The short term memory loss, the rambling conversations, the wandering away from the house – it all happened at a crushing pace.

My sister and I were gone, off in our lives, doing the best we could to help. But with Alzheimer’s there comes a point of no return, when the familial recognition fades from the eyes and the connection becomes entirely spiritual, for want of a better word. Betty was in a nursing home called Three Rivers, but she was gone.

From the first days of Betty’s dementia, I had no idea how my father would react to this awful reality. The bills and Medicaid forms and bureaucracy were tortuous and intimidating to him and conversations with the doctors and lawyers were worse.

Eventually he got some help on those troublesome matters from good friends but the larger question remained: What about Betty?

Joe’s answer was to show up, unobtrusively at first. Then he became a fixture.

Always polite to working people, he nonetheless inspected her room and eventually talked his way into the kitchen and pureed her food, sometimes twice a day, insisting he knew what Betty would like and eat.

At their best, nursing homes are sad, soul-wrenching places. Joe felt that, felt the despair and the anger. Once, over coffee, he shot me an unforgettable look, a look full of disappointment and betrayal.

“Who are these retired fuckers in the magazines I see playing golf in Florida?” he snapped. “How does that work?”

There are no answers. But he kept getting in the car and going to Three Rivers, for years, until his own health failed.

At his wake in 2000 in his lifelong home of Corning, N.Y., friends and family stood around the casket, contemplating a world without Joe Daley in it.

Through the door, off the job at Three Rivers, wearing their scrubs and sneakers, the women and men who had tended to Betty down the long years and would until she died in 2003 filed in.

They changed the beds and washed the floors and pushed the wheel chair, and they came to Haughey’s Funeral Home to pay their respects to Joe. My wife Jane, my sister Maribeth, Betty’s sister Aunt Moo and I choked back tears. For us it was a tribute beyond measure.

“He came every day for your mother, every day, for years,” one of the women said to me.

“Sometimes people come for a while and then it just gets too hard and we never see them again. The person in the bed doesn’t know, does she? Your father came every day, for years.”

Memo From the Political Editor

2011-04-27T04:38:00.000-07:00

Posted on Columbia Journalism Review (www.cjr.org), 4/25/11

To: All Hands
From: The Political Editor
Re: Decision 2012 – Our Election Coverage

It seems like only yesterday that we (thought Gov. Sarah Palin was a breath of fresh North Slope air; wondered whom John Edwards of North Carolina might pick as a running mate; believed that then Sen. Barack Obama was serious about closing down Guantanamo).

In 2008 we (tumbled for John McCain’s “maverick” shtick; asked our readers to take a serious look at the candidacy of former GOP Sen. Fred Dalton Thompson; believed everything told to us by any man in a U.S. military uniform).

Over the long campaign we (identified Democrat Bill Richardson of New Mexico as a “sleeper” candidate; offered readers a 4,500-word Sunday magazine piece on Arkansan Mike Huckabee’s campaign staff; found then-Sen. Hillary Clinton’s confrontational political style not to our liking).

Since President Obama took office, we have (slammed the TARP program until we noticed that it worked; trimmed our Washington bureau by 50 percent; hired several old George W. Bush speechwriters as columnists).

From our editorial perch atop a gasping industry, we believe that the president has not yet reached out to those who (paint Hitler mustaches on his picture; liken him to a chimp; question his ancestry, his patriotism, and his wife’s eating habits).

Truth to tell, we have been disappointed that the president has not (engaged in a public spat with Secretary of State Clinton; been more transformational and post-partisan; aggressively addressed the mounting national debt we ignored entirely in the 2008 campaign).

Nor has he satisfied our profound desire to see him extend a bipartisan hand to those new members of Congress who (use House offices as free dormitories while making $174,000 a year; defund NPR in “emergency” session; fail to understand that, yes, they do receive government health care).

We passionately believe in (having an ‘adult conversation’; a group of jowly white male senators we can comfortably call “the Gang of Six;” Standard & Poor’s).

Some of you in the newsroom have taken issue with our early 2012 campaign efforts. And, in retrospect, perhaps we should have taken a second look at (‘Dr. Jill Biden – Threat or Menace;” “The Wit and Wisdom of Eric Cantor;” “Rep. Paul Ryan – Bound for Mount Rushmore?”).

But as we approach the next presidential election cycle, we are excited about some innovative changes we’ve made in our coverage.

Our readers can expect to see (an array of splenetic blogs launched from every dreary, wrong-headed corner of the political universe; ongoing editorial page chin-pulling about “younger voters;” utter predictability from our talented roster of thought-provoking columnists).

We can be trusted to (ape whatever Politico thinks it’s doing; use what’s left of the wire services to cover those pesky primaries and straw polls; keep posting hauntingly familiar op-eds by Paul Begala, Michael Barone, Robert Reich, and Frank Luntz).

In the coming campaign, we pledge (to focus on the issues, not the personalities; to work diligently to stir up a primary challenge by Hillary Clinton; to keep writing and writing about Donald Trump while trashing him on the editorial page).

We can do no less. As a society we must (constantly change our view of the most pressing issue we are pretending to address; not leave a crushing burden of debt on our children and our children’s children; continue to write blank checks for three (3) wars).

See you on the (virtual) trail!

Suze Rotolo

2011-03-07T11:08:00.000-08:00

The photograph stared out at me over time for decades. A young woman on a wintry Greenwich Village street, wrapped in a green coat, looking cool and self-possessed on the arm of a youthful Bob Dylan.

It’s the album cover for “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan,” the great man’s second album and the one that for him would make all the difference.

Suze Rotolo, a teenage Village hipster before any of us knew what that term meant, was the smiling, attractive woman with Dylan, trundling down Jones Street in the snow, captured forever in a photograph by Don Hunstein. The photo was taken in Feb. 1963, which is the sort of thing you know if Bob Dylan is a big deal to you.

The album was a revelation, even for a high school kid. Among 13 tracks are 11 original songs including “Girl from the North Country,” “Hard Rain,” “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” “Masters of War,” and “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

"Freewheelin'" broke Dylan from the pack, changing the face of American music, and the politics, and the culture. And changing the perspective of millions of high school and college kids who felt the breeze of the 1960s. There was, as Van Morrison said, no "moon and June" in this stuff. Dylan had taken reality into the mainstream

To me, beyond the music, the album cover looked like freedom and adventure. It was 1964 and my aunt Moo gave me the album, me a high school kid from western New York State. Looking at the photo, so hip and urban and so removed from my small town life (ironically, for me, the life that Dylan himself had just left behind in Minnesota), I felt the way some must have felt about Paris in the 1920s.

That sounds pretentious, perhaps, though it isn't meant to be. And it should be noted that Suze Rotolo was very attractive, in a way that 14-year-old boys from western New York were unaccustomed to seeing.

Dylan and Rotolo were together, in the fashion of the time, from 1961 to 1964, sharing an apartment on West Fourth St. She was the child of immigrants, born in Queens, a “red-diaper” baby whose parents were communists and activists. She was marching and protesting by the time she was 15.

Dylan told his biographer, ”Suze was into the equality-freedom thing long before I was. I checked the songs with her.”

In 1962 she left New York for eight months to study art in Italy. A furious Dylan wrote her angry letters, lashed out at her family and, being Dylan at 23, wrote a series of tremendous broken heart songs, including “One Too Many Mornings,” “Love Is Just a Four Letter Word” and “Tomorrow Is a Long Time.”

None are better than “Boots of Spanish Leather,” perhaps the most remarkable of his love songs, a perfect short story and a conversation, an elegant, sad and resigned evocation of every serious romance ending or gone wrong, or both.

The irony is that the album photo shoot came after Rotolo returned from Italy. It was complicated. On his fourth album, “Another Side of Bob Dylan,” he attacked Rotolo, her mother and her “parasite” sister Carla in “Ballad in Plain D.” It is perhaps the most bitter and mean-spirited of his songs.

In an interview in the mid-1980s, Dylan, among the least apologetic of men, said, “It was a mistake to record it and I regret it.”

For her part, Rotolo for decades said virtually nothing in public about her time with Dylan, an experience she once described as “the elephant in the room of my life.”

She gave an interview to director Martin Scorsese for his fine 2005 film “No Direction Home: Bob Dylan.” And another to NPR in 2009, the year she published a highly praised memoir.

I confess I never read it. But in the book, “A Freewheelin’ Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties,” she described the photo shoot, with a sly dig at the old boy friend:

“The snow on the streets was slushy and filthy from the traffic. Don (Hunstein) kept clicking away … in some of the outtakes it’s obvious that by then we were freezing; certainly Bob was, in that thin jacket. But image was all.”

Suze Rotolo, who said she was more than “a string on his guitar” and lived her life that way, stayed in Greenwich Village. She was married for 40 years to film editor Enzo Bartoccioli. They had a son named Luca. According to the obits, she taught at the Parsons School of Design and maintained her interest in politics, her community and the arts.

She died Feb. 25, 2011 of lung cancer at 67 in her New York loft, with her son and husband at her side. By all accounts she had a full and accomplished life. I hope so. I have a picture.

Talked Out

2011-01-28T05:48:00.001-08:00

Posted on Columbia Journalism Review (cjr.org) - Jan. 26, 2011

By Steve Daley

Like a lot of folks I was surprised by the apparent sacking of Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, if for no other reason than it’s unusual for marginal enterprises such as cable networks to rid themselves of their most popular commodity.

But as I read the postmortems and the sendoffs, it occurred to me that it had been some time – a long time, actually – since I had watched Keith Olbermann. Or anyone else in that boisterous, opinionated and way-up the-remote-dial realm.

When Comcast sent Keith packing, it struck me that I had put myself on an ersatz boycott of what used to be my favorite “news” programming and managed not to notice.

The thing is, I am the target audience for this stuff. I’m an election junkie, a defrocked journalist, a person with ironclad political beliefs and an Irish temperament. But somewhere back in the days of George W. Bush I just stopped watching.

No, it’s not W’s fault, though he and his minions sure didn’t help back when they were getting that war in Iraq going.

It’s a kind of rhetorical combat fatigue, a sense that all these years later you aren’t going to hear anything that is in any way new and different. It’s a feeling that you’d be just as well off watching “Bones” on Fox rather than anything else on Fox.

The malaise built slowly, if I may borrow a concept from President Carter.

The Sunday morning talk shows went first. There was a time – it was May, 1992 – when I could spend the better part of an afternoon with friends chewing over the job that NBC’s Tim Russert had done on “Meet the Press” to a dithering presidential candidate named Ross Perot.

But nowadays, no matter who is in the big chair, watching a pair of over-coached Senators, one from each party, racing through the approved talking points on immigration or TARP seems a poor way to spend a Sunday.

When all the world was young I marveled at the interview prowess of Ted Koppel in his “Nightline” days and may have contributed to the legend by writing at least two adoring pieces about him when I was media critic at the Chicago Tribune.

As a consumer I confess I was hooked in the early 1980s when “The McLaughlin Group” made its bumptious debut, giggling as Jack Germond tussled with and outsmarted Robert Novak, Pat Buchanan and Morton Kondracke.

Now it seems that for me the lure of the advocacy format has gone the way of caring about the Super Bowl and drinking at lunch.

Just between us, I have never watched Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly. Or Ed Schultz. At least not for more than minute or two. And I’m pretty sure I don’t have to.

It’s mostly bipartisan on my end. Al Franken in the U.S. Senate? Fine. Al Franken on the radio? No, thanks. The allure of Sean Hannity is lost on me; he’s “Fox and Friends” Steve Doocy with an anger management problem.

Lawrence O’Donnell is every slick Capitol Hill VIP staffer who only talked to the New York Times and the Washington Post. While I enjoyed Stephen Colbert’s skewering of the Washington press at that 2006 White House Correspondent’s Dinner, he is, well, exhausting and not as clever as he thinks he is.

Rachel Maddow seems to be wicked smart and sassy, or so it says here. But even her considerable charms are lost on me. I turn it on, I listen for a bit, I go away. And I think I know why.

Opinion is now a team sport. Interview shows, talk shows, panel shows are set pieces and to some degree they always have been. I like this pundit, you like another. This one got the better of that one the other night.

What exists in cable-ville now is a set of armies storming across open ground, interrupting, smirking and eyeball rolling to the cheers of their partisans, left and right. Now it is a team game – my team versus your team, no quarter, army ants with all the racial and gender slots filled.

Make no mistake: I haven’t checked out. I read what’s left of the good newspapers and scour websites such as this one. And, to be honest, the social network makes sure I don’t have to miss a good rant by Maddow or, until the other day, Olbermann, if I don’t want to.

Finally, this is not an argument for civility, whatever that means. It’s part of my lifelong war on boredom. And my solution is a simple one: “Bones.”

Selling St. Vincent's

2010-10-22T11:15:00.000-07:00

The church is for sale. It’s been a long time since I’ve been what they call a “practicing Catholic” but a recent tour of the website of my hometown newspaper in Corning N.Y. produced a startling news item.

St. Vincent de Paul’s, the Roman Catholic church, school, rectory and convent that pretty much defined the first part of my life, is on the block, about to be sold to a developer.

Senior housing. Sale price, they say, is about $350,000. It will likely be some years in the making or unmaking, but there will be no going back.

Growing up, there were three Roman Catholic churches and the three Catholic schools in a town that probably never got larger than 20,000 people.

St. Vincent’s was within easy walking distance of our house. My maternal grandparents lived within sight of it, on Onondaga St. My grandfather, Paul Lovette, spent large chunks of his retirement pulling weeds from the lush lawn that surrounded the church. It was for him an act of faith.

My sister Maribeth and I would often walk the block to our grandparents’ house for lunch on a school day, a tableau worthy of a TV sitcom in the lower-middle-class America of the early 1960s. And a very sweet memory.

I was an altar boy from the 5th grade through my freshman year of high school, back in the days when the Latin Mass was in vogue.

I can recite some of those prayers in Latin, in the same way I can still smell the incense that pervaded the Lenten services and Midnight Mass on Christmas and the funerals, including the funerals of both my parents.

Joe and Betty Daley were married in St. Vincent’s after World War II. When the service was over, the wedding party and the congregation walked to the reception in the back yard on Onondaga St.

There’s a part of all this that mystifies me and I guess it’s my reaction – or overreaction – to the latest news.

The demographics of Corning have been changing for decades and the population has fallen. It was below 11,000 in the 2000 census.

Many of the kids who coped with Sister Domenica in the 5th grade and Sister Paul in the 6th grade, who sold candy bars and magazines and Easter seals to raise money for the parish, as I did, are grandparents now.

There are fewer people in the town, fewer people in the churches. In some ways it’s simply the sociological math.

The “parochial” school where I spent eight years has been shuttered for many years. The Sisters of Mercy are mostly gone, as are the priests.

It may sound odd in this era to say that we liked the priests. They came to the house; they showed up at the hospital with a kind word and some priestly reassurance.

They knew about you and your people, your grandfather who was a railroad engineer and your other grandfather, the one who pulled the dandelions.

They remembered names, asked how you were doing in school, were kind and respectful to the old women who showed up alone in the cold for the 6 a.m. Mass. They were useful. As far as I can tell, they are all but extinct.

Some years ago the three Corning churches (St. Mary’s and St. Patrick’s were the others) and the Immaculate Heart of Mary parish in nearby Painted Post merged into what became known as All Saints Parish.

From a distance it seemed a poor resolution. I saw it as a loss of cultural and community identity, papered over by a generic designation - “All Saints Parish” - that seemed drawn up by a committee.

But nobody asked me, which was fair enough as I was gone from both Corning and the church.

St. Patrick’s was sold outright. Sunday Mass was performed on a rotating basis. The weekday Mass - there were two every morning at 6 and 7 at St. Vincent’s when I was growing up - kept the altar boy crew busy. Nowadays Mass is a Sunday-only affair.

I read the melancholy news stories in the Corning paper, with angry parishioners and equivocating clergy. I see the property described as a “campus” and I think, well, that’s real estate talking. I think someone has a fundamental misunderstanding of what went on there on Dodge Ave. for the better part of a century.

I think that I am a hopeless romantic, getting older, nostalgic about a religion I abandoned at 17. And I think that I was lucky.

The Travel Section Blues

2010-09-09T10:36:00.000-07:00

Posted on Columbia Journalism Review (www.cjr.org) - Sept. 8, 2010

By Steve Daley

Paris is a puzzle. San Francisco is an affront. The west of Ireland is a slap in the face.

The travel sections of magazines and newspapers are at once a favorite getaway and an IQ test at which I am not doing so well.

Manhattan Island is a riddle. Santa Fe, New Mexico is a mystery. London is an enigma.

My traveling life has slowed a bit in recent years and the truth is I’ve never gotten around the planet like Arthur Frommer or John Glenn. But on my own and with my wife, Jane, we’ve hit some high spots. A honeymoon in Wales. How about that?

So when the travel sections of fine newspapers and periodicals offer to tell me where to go and where to stay and where to eat and where to rent that bike, I’m all in. And if you’re writing about Kiev or Karachi or Ketchikan – places I will never, ever go – I’m easy to please.

But when I survey the tick list of restaurants, hotels, saloons and museums in places I have actually visited, I begin to feel like a young George Orwell, down and out, drinking out of the bus pans of legendary pubs, boites and four-star restaurants.

Travel writers have given me a geographic inferiority complex. When the New York Times offers “36 Hours In…” Nantucket or Copenhagen or St. Louis or Edinburgh, well, you’ll generally find me in the wrong part of town.

From coastal Maine to La Jolla, from Key West to Toronto to Big Sur, it seems there is always a perfect family-owned restaurant I missed, or a lively up-and-coming neighborhood I took a taxi through without stopping, or a can’t-miss folk art museum I went just one subway stop beyond.

I was eating in Montmarte and le tout seasoned travelers were fine dining on the cheap at least an arrondissemont away.

I was at having a pint in McDaid’s pub on Harry Street in Dublin and the smart set was drinking Pinot Grigio and bunking down in swell, if tiny, Euro digs in that city’s Temple Bar neighborhood. I’m touring London’s Portobello Road and the New York Times is picking through antiques in Budapest.

Truth is, when marooned amongst the travel writers, even Washington, D.C., a place I call home, often seems as alien to me as Bratislava.

(Except for Ben’s Chili Bowl. Apparently it is not possible for an English language publication to write about visiting Washington, D.C. without mentioning Ben’s Chili Bowl).

The whole experience is enough to give a fellow a dose of travel section agoraphobia. I’m always a day late – metaphorically – and a guidebook short.

Consider London. Been there, and more than once. Never had a bad time. But every visit to a travel section convinces me that I am a lost soul, an incidental tourist, that guy in Bermuda shorts and a porkpie hat emblazoned with “USA,” stumbling around Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square with three maps and a pocket filled with strange coins.

My wife and I have a list of places in central London that we enjoy revisiting, but not long ago the Washington Post, told me I should be surveying neighborhoods on “the city’s edge… “where the pace is slower, and the prices lower…”

Sure, St. Paul’s Cathedral is a nice stop and you could go to a play in the West End one night, but it turns out I should be in Stoke Newington or Crouch End. These are places I thought you passed through on the Tube in from Heathrow Airport.

There are pressures on the traveling scribblers. I get that. From Milan to the Meatpacking District, it’s hard to keep up with the drinking and dancing whereabouts of the 26-year-olds.

Boutique hotels open with the frequency of new airline baggage fees. Sushi fusion restaurants with optional truffle fries must be celebrated.

On my last foray to New York City, I stayed in a perfectly acceptable hotel on the far West Side in a neighborhood where a decade ago you were more likely to find a methadone clinic than a taxi.

It’s a new world. And I’ve got the wrong map.

Ways and Means

2010-08-25T08:15:00.000-07:00

Posted on Huffington Post - Aug. 13, 2010

By Steve Daley

In the death of Rep. Dan Rostenkowski of Chicago, there is for some of us a kind of guilty pleasure.

The obits have struggled to give the former chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee his due as a legislator, as a master of reaching bipartisan consensus on the thorniest of tax and entitlement issues.

But the overlay, as he understood and predicted, was indictment, loss of power, felony conviction and time served. “Powerful, Corrupt” is the headline writer’s shorthand, and that is fair enough in its way.

Perhaps society benefited from Rostenkowski’s conviction on two counts of mail fraud and the 17 months he spent in a federal lockup, winding up in a Salvation Army halfway house before his release. But this society will have to get a good deal more saintly before some of us think so.

As a reporter and columnist, I didn’t know Rostenkowski very well. Many of my colleagues, particularly in Chicago, knew him far better.

But I had time to observe him in his role as a committee chairman and there is this:

Rostenkowski came to Washington with a purpose. He did not come here to tell us how much he loved Jesus or to sit on cable television and impugn the motives of others.

The only worthwhile members of Congress are those who come to the place with that sense of purpose, whether you agree with that purpose or not. And you can get a good argument their estimable numbers are shrinking.

Rosty wanted power and influence and he wanted to get things done. It took him a while to get to his chairmanship but by any standard, by any measure, he succeeded at getting things done.

He was imperious and greedy, arrogant and tribal and, if you spent time on Capitol Hill, you understood that he was also widely respected and much beloved.

“Everybody has a district,” he said to me once. “Everybody had to go home and explain what they did here. Understanding that is fundamental.”

Ways and Means was not run as a democracy, but Rostenkowski understood the fears and ambitions of his colleagues, especially those on his committee.

In a sense he was all clichés. He combined a love of the back-room deal with that hoariest of congressional bromides – be a workhorse, not a show horse. Denizens of the Capitol, including many reporters, delighted in his bumptious, brash behavior and in his effectiveness.

I recall watching him deliver a floor speech – a relative rarity – on a bill to raise the pay of House members. Most of his colleagues wanted the money, of course, but they cowered in fear of constituent phone calls and the wrath of the opinion makers.

Rosty marched to the lectern and roared at the gathering, insisting on his worth, insisting that he would defend his salary back in Chicago.

Watching from behind him in the press gallery, I saw the beaming faces of his peers – Republicans and Democrats – basking in the moment. Here was a man living their dream – unapologetic and proud of his work.

Even his legislative failures were compelling. In 1989 a crowd of irate seniors famously chased him through the streets of his district over a health-care measure known as “catastrophic care.”

I wrote a Sunday column suggesting that if the voters of his district wanted face time with the Chairman on the matter they should pony up a $2000 honorarium and get him to give a speech.

The next week, the phone rang and an aide asked me to hold for the Chairman.

Rostenkowski had seen the column and, as his voice rose, said that I needed to know – not that he cared - that he didn’t give speeches for a mere $2000.

Another morning in the House I watched an esteemed reporter for the New York Times follow Rosty toward a door to one of the many meeting rooms he commanded.

The Timesman had more questions. Rosty had no more answers. He opened the door, stepped inside and shut the door in the reporter’s face.

Another Times reporter, the late Robin Toner, turned to me with a smile on her face. “Well,” she said, “you don’t see that happen to my paper very often.”

Finally, there is the art of the performance. Understanding this concept is not possible if you possess a reflexive distaste for politicians. But there it is.

There is pleasure to be drawn and something to be learned from watching someone do their job with surpassing skill, and a little style. Think Michael Jordan going to the hoop, Meryl Streep at the movies, Derek Jeter playing baseball, Mike Royko at the height of his column writing powers, Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan working a crowd.

For all his imperfections, which will be well chronicled this week and next, Rostenkowski was exceedingly good at being Dan Rostenkowski, chairman of House Ways and Means Committee. There are worse legacies.

Mornings at Tammany Hall

2010-08-02T09:42:00.000-07:00

The art teacher generally turned up at Tammany Hall around 9 in the morning. The saloon was closed, but someone would let Cliff through the double doors of the converted Washington townhouse near 21st St. and Pennsylvania Ave. NW. He would amble to the far end of the bar, away from the doors and the windows and place his briefcase on the barstool next to him.

He was an art professor, actually, at George Washington University, just a block down the street, and a watercolorist of some renown. “Gin,” he would offer, though anyone behind the battered counter would already be reaching for the Beefeater bottle.

Some men who drink at 9 in the morning need a newspaper or a crossword puzzle or a detective novel as a prop. And of course, in the era of Dick Nixon, the cell phone had not yet become an all-purpose appendage and refuge.

Cliff needed nothing but the gin. He was meticulous, quiet and polite, making church steeples with his fingers and pushing back his lank brown hair. He did not require gossip or bartender bonhomie or witless chat about the weekly fate of the Washington Redskins. He needed gin.

Around 10, Mr. Sims, a native Washingtonian of indeterminate age, would make his way from the downstairs kitchen to Cliff’s end of the bar. He would fire up a Kool, nod at Cliff and shoot a look at the bartender.

Charles Sims was famously uninterested in the names of the customers or of his white-boy colleagues who tended bar or waited tables. Someone would place three fingers of room-temperature gin in front of him and he would knock it back, always offering the same assessment.

“Make you sick or make you well,” he’d gasp.

From time to time, as a kind of peace offering, Charles would emerge from the kitchen with bowls of what he called “Turkey Butt stew.” The translation was literal – Charles wasted nothing in the Tammany Hall kitchen. But as appalling as it was in concept, we came to believe the stew (it was soup, actually) possessed miraculous, recuperative powers over the hangover. To that end we consumed it with vigor, and we didn’t ask too many questions.

For his part, Cliff, the art professor, would ignore the stew and generally have a pair of large gins, maybe three on a morning when the prospect of facing his students and his peers got the better of him.

Their behavior was in no way viewed as unusual or problematic, and the gin in the bottle was almost never Beefeater.

Resplendent in a turtleneck and Frye boots, I was the guy behind the counter cutting the fruit. Being hired as a waiter at Tammany had saved me from a life of graduate school and working as a loan officer wannabe in a bank on 14th St. I had ascended to day bartender when a colleague had, in a festive manner, fallen down about a hundred rows of seats at RFK Stadium.

“No hard feelings,” Leigh told me. “I ‘d rather wait tables. You actually like talking to these people.” And I did.

I was a guy who had never had much fun, and was essentially unfamiliar with the concept. On my 25th birthday, my new friends Tom Costello and Chris Reidy appeared to tell me I would be working the bar that October night and they would be celebrating my birthday because, well, they felt I didn’t know how.

They were right. But I learned pretty fast. Unlike the bank or grad school, the bar was always open. Cash flowed into the tip jar. There were interesting women with drinks who stayed up late. At night a gaggle of journalistic regulars appeared, men and women who looked like they were having a lot of fun on and off the job. There was live music a couple nights a week, notably Emmylou Harris and Asleep at the Wheel.

My career path was just about where I wanted it to be.

On some mornings we would earn an early visit from Father Tim, a crowd favorite in local saloon circles. He was a defrocked priest and a kind of hero by our raffish standards, having been bounced from the clergy by the Roman Catholic archbishop of Washington for “disseminating” birth control information to poor women.

Not abortion counseling. Father Tim lost his stripes for suggesting to poor women that they needn’t get pregnant. A firing offense in those days.

So we liked Father Tim. But he was not without his odd habits and tendencies. He kept a number of checkbooks, including one that identified him – ex post facto – as a priest. Bars honored personal checks in those days and it was remarkable how often Father Tim would flash the priestly checkbook in Georgetown or on Capitol Hill and be told it was all on the house. And thanks for coming in, Father.

At Tammany Hall we were in on the game, of course, but the padre never got whacked for more than every other drink. This was despite the fact that Father Tim routinely indulged in a personal saloon ritual that can only be described as disturbing.

Customers who order the same drink the same way every time are generally held in high regard by bartenders. And Father Tim pushed the limits, as unpredictable as the College of Cardinals. Perhaps it was some relic of his boyhood days in the seminary but the good father insisted on many variations of beverage, all in the same vessel. He might start with a soda, then transfer his affections to a Bloody Mary, then perhaps move on to a cold draft beer. Same glass.

We viewed this conduct as closer to a mortal sin than a venial one, but he was our mascot priest. He was often in the company of Maryland real estate moguls who were masquerading as doctors, looking for some public entity to build them a hospital, the better to fleece the government and the needy.

Father Tim forgave them their sins, apparently, but we pounded their bar checks, making them pay for everything, and then some. It was a simple rule of thumb: if someone we liked was going to pay a little less, then someone else was going to have to pay a little more.

At about 11:30, the place was as ready as it was ever going to be for business. On an average morning I’d brew another pot of coffee, discreetly pour the better part of a quart of King George IV scotch into a Dewar’s bottle and tighten the apron.

Normal people – strays – would be coming for hamburgers and chef salads and fish & chips, with iced tea, and we would have to serve them. “The job must be done,” Tom Costello would say. In five or six hours we could start the party again.

Cliff, Mr. Sims and Father Tim are real people; they are not real names.

Thinking About Crustaceans

2010-07-11T11:39:00.000-07:00

We had the annual Fourth of July crabfest on the deck last weekend, a family tradition of relatively recent vintage hinged on a group consensus around Maryland hardshell crab.

It has become an exspensive habit - $72 a dozen for large crabs from Captain Pell's out on the edge of Fairfax County, Va. - but my wife, Jane, is a purist in these matters. And, as the man said of Christmas, it's only once a year.

Three dozen, with barbecued chicken and ribs, corn on the cob, potato salad, sliced tomatoes, collard greens (they come with the barbecue). We passed on the desserts this year, and nobody drinks as much as they used to, if at all. Still, plenty of cold beer at the ready.

My brother-in-law, Hugh, makes his own dipping sauce. My sister-in-law, Gwen, has acquired a taste for Woodchuck hard cider at these affairs, a reality that amazed and amused her daughter, Meredith. And my wife prides herself on eschewing the use of wooden hammers and shell crackers, using ony a paring knife to tame the beasts. The rest of us pound away as if we were clubbing the backsides of BP oil executives.

I used to insist on some shrimp at these affairs until I came to understand that I would learn to love blue crab or suffer the marital consequences. And I did. Learn to love blue crab.

It was hotter than the hubs of Hell, of course. And spreading three dozen crabs encrusted with Old Bay seasoning on a table laden with sides and covered in that morning's Sunday Washington Post produces a pile of refuse worthy of a small rural community. But it's sloppy and communal in the best sense of the words.

Blue crabs are strange, crawly predatory creatures and stranger dining fare. But they are hugely popular in Virginia, Maryland and Washington. The appeal spans race and gender; the local crab house is a haven for pickup trucks and BMWs, as popular with the Kenny Chesney crowd as it is with black and Hispanic families and, well, my family.

Hardshell crabs require an enormous amount of effort to generate a small amount of actual food - think artichokes but much, much better. And just about everyone who has eaten the critters three times in their adult lives becomes a self-proclaimed expert on the art and science of picking crabs.

Most of the meat is tucked away in little chambers beneath the outer shell and access requires scaling back the shell (easy enough) and peeling away the less-than-appetizing gills and "mustard," and, well, you get the general idea.

This year's bash was a little different. No one in my family really wants to talk about the horror in the Gulf of Mexico. Individually and collectively we are teeming with outrage and frustrated that this catastrophe does not appear to have generated nearly enough interest, anger and concern in the appropriate circles. The President is worried; the Coast Guard guy issues updates; the BP execs hide behind advertising while fronting employees in branded golf shirts to do their talking for them. The press keeps a respectful distance.

There is only that obscene video of the exploded well, fouling our own nest at the most fundamental level. And, by the way, who decided this was "a spill," like something a clumsy waiter would do?

The gusher, now reaching into its third month, is in fact a savage indictment of our inability - our unwillingness - to take care of our home.

So while we tried not to think the Gulf, we thought about Chesapeake Bay, where, according to some estimates, more than 400 million blue crabs abide. Still.

I thought about a quote from H.L. Mencken, an authority on matters of Maryland seafood and many other things. He called Chesapeake Bay "the great big outdoor protein factory." And we wondered what would become of that "protein factory," and all the others.

Too Many Cooks

2010-06-10T05:18:00.000-07:00

Published in the Columbia Journalism Review Online (www.cjr.org) - June 9, 2010

By Steve Daley

There they are again, this time on the front of the Washington Post "Style" section (6/4/10). It’s the celebrity chefs, and this time they’re in service to First Lady Michelle Obama and her campaign against childhood obesity.

The latest "Style" section snapshot of the culinary elites preceded a larger White House gathering of chefs who are every bit as serious about school nutrition as they are about a $28 chunk of pan roasted Arctic char with orange and rosemary beurre blanc.

We are in the age of the unavoidable cook. They won’t stay in the kitchen unless someone puts a camera in there.

Chef profiles crowd the pages of city magazines such as "Boston," "Los Angeles," and "Washingtonian." These publications track the career paths and great thoughts of chefs the way the old "Sporting News" used to follow All-Star shortstops.

Celebrity chefs overrun HBO’s clever "Treme," though it must be said the shiny, self-satisfied chaps playing themselves in a ruined post-Katrina New Orleans are well behaved, unlike the gaggle of posturing gangsta chefs who torment waiters and rail (generally in British and French accents) on cable television.

Gordon Ramsay, for example, presides over Fox’s "Hell’s Kitchen" like volcanic actor Joe Pesci in "Goodfellas", though in real-world terms he’s about a scary as crème brulee.

Ramsey’s normally affable British colleague Jamie Oliver, the tousle-haired “Naked Chef,” recently took his "Food Revolution" on ABC to Huntington, W. Va.

The locals, having been identified by the Centers for Disease Controls as particularly pitiful examples of lard-based American consumption, handed Oliver his colander when he toyed with the school lunch menu.

“They don’t understand me,” Oliver whinged to the press, and he wasn’t talking about his accent. For the moment, the “Food Revolution” will not be televised.

Anthony Bourdain, a prominent chef and frequent author perpetually angry about something, has a new book: "Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook".

Check, please.

The quality of the food in this new celebrity driven universe can be left for others to judge. But there is little doubt that the publicity machinery for the “top chefs” is four-star.

Consider the Cleveland-based Michael Symon, one of the Food Network’s “Iron Chefs.” He has mounted a heart-healthy campaign to keep resident basketball superstar LeBron James in the greater Cuyahoga County area.

Symon announced he would cook for James and his friends once a month if the big guy would re-sign with the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers.

It seems like a middling incentive for James, who reportedly makes $15 million a year to play hoops and owns a $29 million endorsement contract from Nike. He could fly to Paris every week for dinner. But that doesn’t mean every news outlet from NBC to Yahoo Sports didn’t cover Symon’s offer.

The man’s a chef. Send a crew.

On May 2, Washington chef Jose Andres—one of Michelle Obama’s high-profile backers in the obesity battle - was the subject of an adoring "60 Minutes" profile.

The fawning segment, which would have made Donald Trump uncomfortable, focused on Andres’s modest roots and his charitable work.

But when Andres began to feed CBS interrogator Anderson Cooper in the chef’s fashionable, six-seat “Minibar by Jose Andres” establishment, a viewer could have been forgiven for thinking the Dalai Lama had gone into the restaurant business.

“Minibar is a window into creativity, that’s all,” said Andres, earning a nod from Cooper.

Last month, Chicago Sun-Times Washington reporter Lynn Sweet felt obliged to apologize to Chicago chef Rick Bayless, who had been drafted by the Obama message machine to assist in a May 19 state dinner for the president of Mexico.

It seems Bayless, demonstrating the professional modesty that characterizes his line of work, had sent a Twitter message or three about his White House culinary experience to his legions of cilantro-happy fans.

Twittering from inside the White House is in violation of some twenty-first century edict, as Sweet reported. Bayless swore on his garlic press that he did not engage in online social networking while actually on site at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

The whole enchilada wound up in “Politico,” The Washington Post, all available Chicago media, and a raft of food blogs, and Sweet opted to apologize.

The brouhaha might have been fueled by the fact that Bayless had given interviews about his bond with the Obamas and his “guest White House chef” status to The New York Times and NPR.

It’s no secret that after the gate-crashing fiasco at the Obama’s first state dinner, Bayless’s dear friends were determined to keep the gala a low-key affair until the plates were being cleared.

But in Chef World, publicity is seated at the other end of the food chain from salt: Too much is never enough.

"The Pacific"

2010-05-17T06:36:00.000-07:00

We watched the final episode of "The Pacific" on HBO last night, watched Eugene Sledge and Robert Leckie come home to their families and futures, watched Merriell "Snafu" Shelton climb off a troop train in the New Orleans twilight and leave Sledge, his brother in arms through so much horror, sleeping, making no goodbyes.

Perhaps like others I have grown weary of the "greatest generation," even though my late father was part of it, fighting in the Pacific Theater.

I have watched "Saving Private Ryan" and "Band of Brothers" and Ken Burns' fine PBS series "The War," and I grew up watching John Wayne in the movies and "Combat" on TV. I have largely passed over the many books and weepy Tom Brokaw/Tom Hanks retrospectives on the men and women who fought and died in World War II.

"The Pacific" went a long way toward changing that. It was a remarkable piece, remarkable television, a relentless 10-week saga that conveyed the horror of infantry combat in a fashion I had never seen or even imagined.

The recreations of the battles at Guadacanal, Cape Gloucester, Peleliu and Iwo Jima come at the viewer at the speed of light and are nothing less than terrifying. A series of fine writers, directors and actors deliver the viewer into a world of bone-rattling tension played out in endless, teeming rain and jungle and on sun-baked atolls riddled with lethal caves and danger.

For the viewer, at least for this one, "The Pacific" peels back any lingering romance about wartime, pounding away at the point that in these moments the veneer of civilization is all but gone.

Snafu Shelton's character (played by a fascinating actor named Rami Malek) is equal parts golem and hero, a young man thrust into a reality so violent and uncertain that his amoral pose and boundless cynicism keeps him alive, or so he seems to believe.

There is a scene where Shelton talks idly about the fortunes of war with Sledge, his eyes as dead as a shark's, and you realize that as he chats he is tossing coral pebbles into the open skull of a dead Japanese soldier.

Sledge wrote a book, "With the Old Breed," as did Leckie, a newspaperman. These memoirs from the 1st Marine Division formed the core of the narrative for "The Pacific," as did the better-known and yet mostly forgotten story of Sgt. John Basilone, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his valor at Guadacanal and, after time spent stateside selling war bonds, made his way back to combat in time for the brutal landing at Iwo Jima.

Studs Terkel interviewed Sledge for his book 1984 book "The Good War." Sledge told him: "To me, there were two different wars. There was the war of the guy on the front lines. You don't come off until you are wounded or killed. Or, if lucky, relieved ... The man up front puts his life on the line day after day after day to the point of utter hopelessness."

That's the war "The Pacific," produced by Hanks and Steven Spielberg and myriad others, deliver.

Sledge became a college professor in his native Alabama. Leckie went back to the newspaper trade. They married, lived out their lives, died the same year, 2001. There is a statue of John Basilone in his New Jersey home town, and a Navy destroyer is named for him.

Snafu Shelton, a gambling man, fixed air conditioners in rural Louisiana and by all accounts had a hard life, though it could not have been harder than the horrors he endured on those tiny islands more than 60 years ago.

Sledge, his companion across the killing ground of the airfield at Peleliu, in the caves on Okinawa and on the slow train home, was a pallbearer at his funeral. Their war will stay with me for a long time.

I Gave At The Office

2010-05-12T09:30:00.000-07:00

Back in early 1976 I was running a bar in Washington D.C. The Class Reunion was a saloon for grown ups, a gathering place for reporters, lawyers, politicos, PR types and, after hours, other bar people and people I let stay after hours.

One night as I was conducting a 4 a.m. seminar on the state of American politics, a Democratic Party lawyer and friend of Oklahoma populist Sen. Fred Roy Harris shamed me into writing a $100 check to Harris' long forgotten presidential campaign. The next morning - well, afternoon - the lawyer called me at home and offered to give me the check back.

$100 was a fair amount of money in those days (and is again, as it turns out). But I had blathered on until sunrise so I told him to cash the check and good luck to Fred Harris and his lovely wife LaDonna.

It was the first time I had ever given money to a politician.

Fred and LaDonna didn't have much luck electorally. Jimmy Carter wound up in the White House and I went on a 24-year hiatus from giving money to the political class. It was called journalism.

Journalists don't offer up campaign contributions, as a general rule, and in my opinon it's a pretty good general rule. In the 20-plus years I spent in the newspaper business, I thought my colleagues were a trifle holier-than-thou about the whole thing, but to paraphrase songwriter Rickie Lee Jones, I kept my campaign business in my pocket.

In 1996 the Chicago Tribune and I had an ugly divorce. The market for Washington-based white male political writers and columnists of a certain age was a crowded demographic and after while it was clear my days in daily journalism were effectively at an end.

By 2000, I felt comfortable giving some dough to Al Gore for President, and no regrets except for the fact that Joe Lieberman may have benefited in some way.

We all know what happened in Florida that year and as for me an avalanche of mailings from every tree-loving, affirmative-acting, union-organizing liberal interest group rained down on our house. And the rain continues to this day.

I went in again in 2004 for Sen. John Kerry. My wife Jane and I also coughed up a modest amount for the Democratic National Committee. I was miffed at the presidential outcome but felt better about my largesse as the second Bush-Cheney term began to reveal itself.

2008 was no different. Made a modest contribution to the Barack Obama campaign. Gave $50 to something called "Act Blue" in support of the Democratic House member from my old Republican home town in western New York state. He turned out to be Eric Massa. Stop laughing.

So here we are. President Obama is doing pretty well on the job by my lights. But it's clear that a chap like me cannot pony up enough money to make it interesting. And I didn't write the checks to support the antics of recalcitrant Senate Democrats led by the preposterous Max Baucus of Montana who made a hash of health care or for the timid likes of Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson, Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln and Evan Bayh of Indiana.

Not looking for perfection here but I'm still waiting on closing Gitmo and I'm not for open carry of guns in our national parks, which is now the law of the land. I'm pretty sure that the Afghanistan adventure is going to wind up badly.

Mostly I'm waiting for those 68 million people who voted for Obama to make themselves heard, and for the President and his party to act as if they're proud of what they're trying to do. I believe those two phenomena are connected.

This approach may not involve pleasing Lindsey Graham or Olympia Snowe or various editorial writers or the folks braying for "bipartisanship" as the culture war heats up.

Until then, however, the little check is not on the mail.

Breaking News from the Luncheon Keynoter

2010-04-08T07:13:00.000-07:00

Posted on Columbia Journalism Review (cjr.org) April 6, 2010

By Steve Daley

First of all I’d like to thank (Tucker Carlson; Arianna Hufington; that tweedy-looking professor over there) for the opportunity to discuss the future of newspapers and print journalism.

We meet at a time when our beloved industry is (in a period of historic transition; completely hosed; in more trouble than the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome).

Like you, I love the newspaper business. I (read five or six papers a day; got a week-a-year severance deal back when the getting was good; was in my 40s before I realized I had a job but not a career).

Almost every day someone asks me (for advice on whether or not to go to journalism school; how to become the London bureau chief for the New York Times; do I have a phone number for Burson-Marsteller).

And I always say the same thing; (Go for it, my friend; Why don’t you go outside and lie down in traffic?; I could tell you the truth but it’s too painful for both of us).

It’s true that when I was coming up you could (write your way out of South Bend; have someone help you file your story if you got drunk; fool yourself into thinking you had a professional future).

Yes, those were great days. But you didn’t come here to listen to (an embittered geezer; a guy with a 4-and-a-half bathroom house on 29th St. in Georgetown; complete sophistry about the future of print).

No, you want to (hear 21st century jargon such as “crowdfunding” and “reader engagement”; think you can be a salaried columnist when if you’re lucky you’ll end up as a “digital community manager”; believe that really smart people in newsrooms are getting a handle on all this).

Some may scoff. But I would encourage you to pursue that dream, because (newspapers fold but journalism school is forever; there may come a time when people will decline to write for nothing; maybe the MacArthur Foundation will pick up the tab for everything).

If I could say just one thing to you that is (reason for optimism; the main takeaway from my upcoming book on the future of news; palpably untrue and yet said all the time in these sessions it would be:

(The old business model isn’t working but you may be the one to identify the new model; The future lies in “hyperlocal” news; The answers can be found in incorporating advertising into Kindle content and smart phone applications).

In fact, innovation is everywhere. It’s true that the early results for “citizen journalism” (have been mixed; tell us that with free content you generally get what you pay for; exposed fundamental misunderstandings of the difference between reporting and bloviating).

If you’re like me, when you hear of the need for newspapers to move beyond the “monopoly mindset” and function better as “a filter,” you think (it makes a heck of a lot of sense; Dick Nixon would’ve loved that; give readers less, tell them it’s more).

And when you hear of the imperative to “personalize the news” you think (I love white space; co-branded flea markets; hey, I can now personally read my hometown paper in about five minutes).

Cynics often compare the newspaper to the dinosaur. But remember that (dinosaurs roamed the earth for millions of years; many had brains the size of walnuts, much like Chief Innovation Officers; extinction theories abound but we know the end came abruptly).

New voices have come to the table. The passion we feel is shared by (former radio execs who love hanging banners in the newsroom; bright young folks who tell Romenesko that credentialing reporters is elitist; the folks down at the news co-op who are kind of fixated on their non-profit tax status right now).

We welcome them all. I’d love to stay and entertain some questions but (I’m on CNN with Rick Sanchez in 25 minutes; I don’t have any good answers; I have to get back to a mandatory newsroom seminar on search engine optimization).

Going forward I wish you all what I have enjoyed - a long and fulfilling career in the newspaper game.

That, of course, (is what we all wish for; went out the window sometime during the Clinton years; is not ever going to happen in this millennium).

Be sure to tip your content providers, er, servers on the way out. The chicken Kiev was real nice.

A Census Form for "Real" America

2010-03-24T09:23:00.000-07:00

The U.S. Bureau of Fun Facts estimates it will take the average person either 10 minutes or 10 days to fill out this survey. If your layabout stepson Randy has moved back into the house, yes, you have to count him. Use a pen. With ink in it.

1) How many nights a week does your family watch “American Idol,” “Survivor” or that Donald Trump show?

2) How many members of your family believe President Obama was born in another country? How many members of your family believe Hawaii is another country?

3) How many times a week do members of your family go to the Wal Mart? __

For household items? __
For clothes? __
For food? __
For a social life? __

4) How many members of your family actually work at Wal Mart?

5) Would you describe your family members as close knit?
Chronically obese? Heavily armed?

6) Is there someone in your household – not a blood relative - who is just really getting on your last nerve? Identify.

7) Who is cuter? Miley Cyrus or Taylor Swift? C’mon. No waiting.

8) Should Tiger’s wife like totally bail on him for running around with those floozies or should she just hang in there and take the money or what?

9) How many members of your family think Jimmie Johnson wins too many NASCAR races? Has Dale Earnhardt Jr. been pretty much of a disappointment to you and your entire family?

10) Coke Zero or Pepsi Free? Taco Bell or Sonic? Bud Light or Miller Light? Jack Daniels or 'Turkey? Ford pickup or Chevy pickup? Domino’s or Papa John’s?

Irish Pubs and Irish Bars

2010-03-12T06:40:00.000-08:00

There's a difference, of course.

Irish bars, replete with florid lawyers of Irish-American extraction, knuckleheads in turned-around baseball caps, generally bad food and endless midnight choruses of "The Wild Rover," can be outgrown. Irish pubs - increasingly hard to find in American cities or in Ireland, for that matter - provide a different sort of experience, and a more enduring one.

Except on St. Patrick's Day, of course, when they all are equally to be avoided.

The practical matter is that, inevitably, Irish bars and Irish pubs in this country exist in the same space. The quiet late-afternoon-to-early-evening comfort of a shadowy hideaway for a drink, some conversation and maybe a few laughs is often transformed by night into a raucous, bibulous, banjo-rattling gymnasium.

This is probably a minority opinion. Proof that the appeal of the Irish bar extends beyond matters of Celtic heritage is that it is the one species of saloon that keeps growing. Certainly that's the case around Washington D.C., where they are now as common as congressional earmarks.

(In Ireland, pubs are closing at the rate of about one a day, falling victim to recession, smoking bans, drunk driving laws and changes in the Irish lifesyle. Still, no trip to Ireland is complete without a pint in McDaid's, a proper pub off Grafton Street in Dublin, or in a real country pub in Cork or Donegal or the county of your choosing).

In my youth - a phase my wife Jane refers to as "young and stupid" - I worked for a time as bartender in a pair of popular Irish bars in Washington; the Dubliner and Kelly's Irish Times, respectively. That was more than 30 years ago and the fact that both haunts are still pouring whiskey and keeping folks up late at night is testimony enough to their charms.

I worked the very first St. Patrick's Day at the Dubliner on Capitol Hill in 1974 and lived to tell the tale. Danny Coleman, the Dubliner's owner then and now, used to refer to this annual event as the ultimate in "planned hilarity." An honest bartender will tell you that early in a career working March 17 is highly prized, largely for the chance to earn what is generally called "serious money."

A couple of years of puddled green beer, puking coeds and deranged conversation will cure the sensible bartender of that itch.

It's a net plus to see the Irish get some attention, I suppose, but I don't have much good to say about St. Patrick's Day. In my barroom days, after flirting with the St. Paddy's Day tip cup, my idea of a good time was dinner with some friends at a long-gone Indian restaurant in Georgetown called Apana. Then, straight home.

In a decade as a single man living in Chicago, my loyalty to Butch McGuire's saloon on Division St. earned me access to the VIP back door in the alley on March 17, though I don't believe I ever afforded myself the opportunity.

At its best, the lure of the Irish saloon 364 days a year is all about pursuit of what is known in Ireland as "the craic."

The concept is both simple and often debated. And the pronunciation is "crack." It is time spent away from the stressful and the unpleasant, from the rigors of real life and work and money and sometimes family and often responsibility.

"The craic" can be quiet or noisy, played out in a small group or a large one, fueled by grand doses of adult beverage, or not so much.

Fun, for want of a more literary term.

"The craic was mighty," you could hear a fellow say in Ireland. If you were there, you know exactly what he means.

Eric Massa and the old home town

2010-03-10T12:25:00.000-08:00

Posted on Huffington Post, March 10, 2010

By Steve Daley

My father was the town Democrat. At least it felt that way growing up in Corning, N.Y.

Before my father, my maternal grandfather pretty much held the title in the small, scenic company town (Corning Inc.) in the Republican stronghold of southwestern New York State.

Joe Daley and Paul V. Lovette Sr. were Democratic aldermen in a place where Democrats won elected office about as often the local temperature hit 100 degrees on Thanksgiving morning.

For decades, Congressional representation in that part of the state was the private reserve of dull Chamber of Commerce Republican businessmen.

When the Sisters of Mercy had control of me in grade school, the local congressman was W. Sterling Cole, a stolid GOP lawyer from Painted Post, N.Y. who held the seat for more than 20 years.

When popular Jamestown mayor Stan Lundine somehow won the seat after the retirement of the GOP member in 1976, he became the first Democrat in the 20th century to represent the district in the House of Representatives.

A few years later, then-Gov. Mario Cuomo, showing his legendary political savvy, sent Lundine into permanent public obscurity by picking him as his lieutenant governor.

Republican Amory Houghton Jr., former Chairman and CEO of Corning Inc., won the seat, which, it must be said, he ably held for nearly two decades.

My father was resigned to Houghton’s tenure in Washington, believing it only fair that a man who owned the district might as well represent it in Congress.

The truth is, Houghton was an independent sort who voted against the Iraq war and was possessed of a political spine as alien to Eric Massa and Democrats such as Ben Nelson, Max Baucus and Blanche Lincoln as webbed feet.

Houghton’s retirement and the election of garden-variety GOP Rep. Randy Kuhl in 2006 seemed to signal more of the same for the district.

So the 2008 election of Democratic Rep. Eric Massa to the House from the 29th district looked like a pretty big deal, at least to a Steuben County native son and political junkie who had been away a long time.

There was some evidence that the local politics was shifting. In 2008 President Barack Obama won nearly 49 percent of the vote in the district (John McCain drew 50.5%).

In 2006, then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton ran strong for re-election in the “Southern Tier,” in part because she wasn’t afraid to show up in places such as Corning, Hornell and Jamestown.

So having set aside my official journalist’s cap some time ago, I sent Massa a modest $50 campaign contribution, which earned me a handwritten thank you note (not sure who the hand belonged to).

It did not take Massa long to bring me to my senses.

Having once voiced support for a single-payer health care system, he quickly signed on with 38 other House Democrats to vote against his own party’s health care reform bill. Which is something Randy Kuhl could have done, and would have done.

Through modern electronic channels, never having met the man, I told Massa to take me off his money list. I was a trifle let down, but what’s the worst that can happen?

Well, it turns out there’s resignation and disgrace and whining and conflicting rationales and the overwhelming likelihood the district will again have a Republican serving in the House.

If it was a Democratic renaissance, it was a short one.

Last week, Eric Massa of Corning followed New York Gov. David Paterson and Rep. Charles Rangel into political ignominy in the Empire State.

On a Wednesday Massa announced he would not be seeking a second term in the House, citing a recurrence of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

On Friday, after published reports that he had been accused of sexual harassment by a male employee and was the subject of an inquiry by the House ethics committee, Massa resigned effective this week and booked a date on the Glenn Beck program.

Joe Daley and Paul Lovette are gone, and so it appears are the Democrats in my old hometown and its environs. Local savants say the mayor of Hornell would make the best Democratic candidate to replace Massa.

My guess is they’ll elect a Democrat to Congress sometime before the next Ice Age.

Tiger By the Tail

2010-02-19T07:49:00.000-08:00

Time spent away from asking questions changes a man, or so it would seem.

As a former sports columnist and journalista, there was a time when I would have gladly joined the chorus of irate reporters and columnists who decried the stylized nature of Tiger Woods' apologetic pronunciamento Friday, particularly the part where no questions from the press corps were allowed.

As a general rule, that's a bad thing. But as I watched Woods' staged, scripted and sullen performance, I kept wondering what the Q&A would have given us:

A litany of bimbo eruptions? Quotes from the mother and mother-in-law who were in Woods' Florida manse the night the marital bill came due? A five-part inquiry from some male ESPN yakker that has more to do with ESPN than the First Amendment and the public's right to know.

All the sporting press - and the sponsors and the TV networks - really want to know is when the man is going to start playing golf again. If they can get him to talk about the sneaky doing of the reprehensible, even better.

Just this weekend, two fine sportswriters at the Washington Post, Sally Jenkins and John Feinstein, joined the whinging chorus of scribes and pundits protesting the absence of a true press conference format in Ponte Vedra.

Feinstein, who has made a career writing fond profiles and mostly adoring books about mostly odious college coaches, offered this howler: "Woods ... is still above answering questions from those who are paid to represent a public that has helped make him a billionaire."

That's what those guys do? It's like social work?

Please. I've covered a few golf tournaments and I can tell you that representing the public is pretty far down the scale from getting a parking pass and making sure the leader after the third round gets into the interview room in a timely manner.

In the end, there's this: Tiger Woods didn't have to do this at all.

New York Yankee infielder Alex Rodriguez has lately been redeemed from the yoke of performance-enhancing drugs and a lifestyle that included Madonna while married. How? Not by answering press conference questions but by a bravura showing in the 2009 American League Championship Series and the World Series.

Woods is a golfer. He has all the money a small country will ever need. He may or may not be sincere about trying to put his family back together. He offered up riffs on Buddhism and his foundation work that were truly cringe-worthy.

But I've heard worse apologies - or none at all - from the likes of John Edwards and Newt Gingrich and Gov. Mark Sanford and Sen. John Ensign and, yes, President Bill Clinton and too many others, for cheating on the spouse.

It was a script, but it was a script that included a discussion of his belief that "normal rules did not apply to him" and that money and fame made him believe "I was entitled." When he noted that his wife, Elin, had told him that she would judge him on his actions rather than his words, I thought, well, I've never heard one of these philandering public figures say that before. And I've never heard the motivation question - what were you thinking? - asked at a press conference, either.

We need to get used to the idea that athletes are what they do. Tiger Woods knows that, and so does the professional golf tour and the network TV suits and the Senior Vice Presidents for Marketing from Gillette and Nike. And so does the press.

Obama's GOP Problem - The Myth of Rough & Tumble Chicago Politics

2010-01-26T11:12:00.000-08:00

Political fights in Chicago are for the most part intramural affairs. They are famously raucous, play out at high volume and are sometimes genuinely ugly. But it’s Democrat on Democrat, and it always has been.

Perhaps that is part of the reason President Obama and his Chicago-based inner circle have had so much difficulty dealing with intractable Republican opposition and ideological warfare on the national stage.

Political fights in Chicago are about money, jobs, turf, access, contracts and bragging rights.

Ideological battles are left to the reform types – the “goo-goos,” in the local parlance - along with the Washington crowd and the news media. And what the Republicans are up to has never been of much interest to the Democratic power elite in Chicago.

That elite is the political world that shaped Barack Obama and his closest advisors, including White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, Senior Advisor David Axelrod and Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett.

Axelrod and Emanuel have logged plenty of time on the national political stage but, like Jarrett, their roots are in the last campaign of the late Mayor Harold Washington and in service to current Mayor Richard M. Daley, who has held that job since 1989.

Richie Daley’s Chicago is an insular world, a tribal network of loyalties, delivery of constituent services, off- and on-the-book enterprises and mutual self-interests where Republicans are largely viewed as potential business partners.

Still, the “city of the big shoulders” bravado has its rhetorical uses.

Coming to Washington after a historic and impressive trouncing of the McCain-Palin ticket - and of Hillary Rodham Clinton – the Obama team made it known that their approach would be an artful mix of the President’s charm and intelligence and a healthy dose of the brawling Chicago style.

In April 2008, Emanuel burnished the tough-guy legend, telling U.S. News & World Report, “Politics in Chicago is an all-season sport, and it’s not for the faint-hearted.”

“Ours is a blunt, brawling way,” Axelrod said in the same story, noting the “people are up front about their self interests.”

Early on, Republicans and assorted editorial writers voiced dismay at the tough-talking presence of Emanuel in the Oval Office, presumably playing the enforcer with Democrats and Republicans alike.

But one year later, after the misadventures of health care reform and the Massachusetts Senate debacle, it’s clear that no one in Washington in either party is afraid of these people.

To many, the Obama team seemed paralyzed by the braying chorus of GOP opposition. His attempts to garner GOP support for his economic stimulus bill, for Judge Sonia Sotomayor, for health care reform and other initiatives were meet with implacable opposition and, often, mockery.

Silence mixed with quiet assurances of behind-the-scenes negotiations by the Administration played out as conservative “teabaggers” ruled the summer of ’09, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) discussed “breaking the presidency,” and a GOP House member felt comfortable yelling “you lie” at Obama on national television.

How could this have happened?

It is possible that for all his talents Obama has been unable to throw a political punch at his national GOP opponents because he has never had to, and doesn’t know how.

For generations Chicago has dined out on a tough, partisan Democratic image. But all of the fights were internecine and most of the wounds were self-inflicted.

The late Mayor Richard J. Daley was the embodiment the hard-nosed big-city mayor, taking care of his friends and allies, brooking no back talk from Republicans nor, more importantly, from those in his own party.

Over 21 years, the “real” Mayor Daley’s fights were usually with pesky reform Democrats – they’d be called “progressives” today – and with African-Americans Democrats, who correctly felt taken for granted by the Democratic establishment in every year that didn’t have an election.

The core of Mayor Daley’s image as a brawler, of course, starts with the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the civil war that helped elect Richard M. Nixon to the presidency.

One measure of the toxicity of that summer is found in the fact that national Democrats avoided Chicago for nearly 30 years, until 1996, when Daley’s son, Richard M., lured the party convention back to town.

The other relevant narrative involves the remarkable election of an African-American mayor in the city in 1983.

Democrat Harold Washington served only four years before his death but all his epic political battles were with fellow Democrats, some of whom did masquerade as Republicans when the spirit moved them.

Democrats on the City Council lined up against Washington and precipitated “Council Wars, an all-Democratic border war built along a racially-charged split in the Council.

In short order, Americans were looking at a “Newsweek” cover that labeled Chicago “Beirut on the Lake.” The fights were below the belt but again, it was strictly Democrat on Democrat.

Ald. Edward Vrdolyak, then the Cook County Democratic Party chairman, led the “Council Wars” with vocal assistance from Ald. Edward Burke and Parks Commissioner Edmund Kelly.

No Republicans in sight.

“Fast Eddie” Vrdolyak did become a Republican in 1987 and earned a Rose Garden ceremony from President George H.W. Bush. But he never won an election outside his 10th ward and in the absence of race cards to play, his political career dissolved into legal wrangles and obscurity.

And when Harold Washington successfully ran for re-election in 1987, besting former Democratic mayor Jane Byrne in a bitter primary, his GOP opponent got four percent of the vote.

Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett played important, reputation-building roles in that election and in the subsequent rise of Richie Daley.

Jarrett became Deputy Corporation Counsel under Washington and Deputy Chief of Staff to Daley after his 1989 victory. Emanuel was senior adviser and fundraiser in that same 1989 win, a three-way race in which the GOP candidate – Vrdolyak – got four percent of the vote.

Even in Obama’s 2004 U.S. Senate victory in Illinois, signaling his rise to national prominence, Republicans played a marginal role.

The enigmatic GOP incumbent, Peter Fitzgerald, did not seek re-election to a second term. The winner of the GOP primary stepped down in the wake of a sex scandal and Marylander Alan Keyes was handed the nomination, collecting just 27% of the vote.

Since the Massachusetts Senate defeat President Obama is said to be adopting a more combative, partisan attitude, prepared to start slugging out his agenda with Republican rivals.

History suggests that posture, while timely, may not prove a comfortable fit.

A "Merry Little Christmas" Song

2009-12-23T06:16:00.000-08:00

I remember sitting in the TV lounge in the dormitory in those pre-cable television days, watching "Meet Me In St. Louis" with a gaggle of college mates. The film is the 1944 romantic musical set in 1904 St. Louis, just before the World's Fair. The four Smith sisters learn their father must take a job in New York City and they will have to leave their home town.

On Christmas Eve, Judy Garland's character, Esther, comforts her distraught younger sister, Tootie, (played by Margaret O'Brien) by singing her a Christmas ballad.

I had never seen the movie or heard the song and what I heard then was a melancholy, glass-half-empty air, a Christmas song somehow grounded in reality, (OK, Hollywood reality), reflecting a nation at war and a family facing crisis, a song both hopeful and sad.

"Have yourself a merry little Christmas/
"Let your heart be light/
"Next year all our troubles/
"Will be out of sight."

It's been said that singers of ballads and sad songs should sing them as if they do not know how the song will end. The brilliant Garland, then just 22 years old, makes that happen.

"Someday soon we all will be together/
"If the fates allow/
"Until then we'll have to muddle through somehow
"So have yourself a merry little Christmas now."

The back story to the song is that from the beginnning the MGM folks and director Vincente Minnelli worried that "Merry Little Christmas" was, well, not merry enough. Upbeat changes were made, though "muddling though" somehow survived.

And in 1957, Frank Sinatra, who should have known better, lobbied for a lyric change as a condition of putting the song on a Christmas album. So "until then we'll have to muddle through somehow" was transformed into "hang a shining star upon the highest bough..." And there you have it.

By now, of course, I'm sick of the song. It's been covered by everyone from Jim Nabors to Celtic Women, from Tony Bennett to Gloria Estefan. It drones underneath holiday sitcoms and TV melodramas and crowds the radio. You cannot miss it if you try. But there was a moment.

So Merry Christmas, Judy, and thanks. And to Hugh Martin as well, who wrote the first "dark" version of the song and the one that made it into the movie.

NOTE: Hugh Martin died March 11, 2011

Sweet Home Chicago

2009-12-06T08:39:00.000-08:00

Published in CJR Online - 12/4/09

www.cjr.org

By Steve Daley

It’s December and real Chicagoans are making ready for the onset of a Lake Michigan winter and for the arctic wind – the storied Hawk – that will howl across town for the foreseeable future.

Right on time, those Chicagoans who have made their way to Washington with President Barack Obama should be feeling a chill.

The first one who needs to seek shelter and a warm coat is White House social secretary Desiree Rogers.

Born in New Orleans, Rogers became a fixture in Chicago’s business community, political culture and party-going circuit, in part as protege of Obama best friend and current White House senior advisor Valerie Jarrett. Until last week, the Washington press corps seemed to agree that not only was Ms. Rogers cuter than a speckled pup in a little red wagon, she was playing a serious game as well.

This from an adoring profile in the April 30, 2009 Wall Street Journal:

“With her direct access to the first couple and unparalled connections to White House staff, as well as DC and Chicago power brokers, Rogers is considered by many to be the key to Brand Obama. She stands at the center of the careful marketing of the first family and administration-wide effort to make the White House appear a hip and accessible abode.“

She may have taken that assignment a bit too seriously. On Wednesday, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote about the gate-crashing Virginia grifters who waltzed into a White House state dinner last month. But Dowd soon turned her attention to Ms. Rogers, who is clearly - and suddenly - viewed as having gotten too big for her designer britches. (According to Dowd, Rogers had been “cruising for a bruising” ever since the Journal article appeared.)

The same day, the Washington Post’s Style section had let its readers know that while the Secret Service may have been a trifle inattentive with Presidential security, Ms. Rogers was guilty of the high crime of preening and drawing attention to herself.

Until last Wednesday the Post had been giddy over the stylish Harvard-educated executive-socialite, the first African-American to assume the social secretary’s role.

Now, at least two sections of the paper keep wondering why Rogers wasn’t staking out the Southeast Gate in the rain on the night in question, wearing cargo pants and running shoes.

And begins the ceremonial shellacking of the interlopers, driven, as ever, by declining job-approval numbers for the president. Any president.

The history of Washington insiders making hash of interlopers stretches back – at least – to the Carter years and top Georgian aides Jody Powell and Hamilton Jordan. It’s a Washington ritual, like figuring out where the big-time lobbyists eat lunch and who is sitting in the owner’s box at Washington Redskin games.

One of the best ways to move forward with the regional shellacking is the blind quote (Washington Post, 12/2):

“’All this talk about Desiree being lifetime friends with the Obamas is bunk. She is there because of Valerie,’ says someone who has known Rogers for years but didn’t want to be identified so as not to upset her.”

The working principal is one best articulated by college football coaches who must deal with cranky alumni: We’re with you, win or tie.

In March there was this full gush, complete with requisite slideshow, from the Huffington Post: “She’s only been in Washington a little over two months but Chicago transplant Desiree Rogers has already been crowned the District’s best-dressed woman by Huffington Post readers.”

This week, the Huffingtons had moved on to sterner stuff, the Dec. 2 headline reading, “The Twilight Saga: Does Desiree Rogers Have a Future?”

Declining poll numbers are chum in the water for presidential aides and advisors, and it’s hard to see how even a well-articulated escalation of the war in Afghanistan is going to help Obama’s numbers.

Which means what? Time to assign a little blame, or maybe a lot. Who’s next?

For the moment Rahm Emanauel retains his tough-guy status despite compelling evidence that he hasn’t scared anyone but a few reporters since he became Obama’s Chief of Staff.

Congressional Democrats ignore him when it comes time to vote and Republicans make mewling noises about his crusty lack of bipartisanship even as they ceaselessly demonize and insult his boss.

Most everyone seems to like White House senior advisor David Axelrod, the longtime Chicago political consultant who so effectively ran the Obama campaign. But then everyone seemed to like Mack McLarty when he came to town from Little Rock to help Bill Clinton.

Being liked in Washington is a sometime thing.

And there is Valerie Jarrett, who brought Ms. Rogers to town. Who hired Michelle Robinson when she worked for Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. Who carries a wispy title and wonky job description but is reportedly in on every significant call the President makes. Who has not heard a discouraging word from the press-and-pundit class since she moved into the West Wing.

Bundle up, Valerie. There’s been a change in the weather.

Find the Feature

2009-11-12T12:53:00.000-08:00

Published in CJR Online - www.cjr.org - 11/11/09

By Steve Daley

To: All Hands

From: The Executive Editor

RE: The Redesign

The continuing controversy over the (size of the weather map; the shuttering of the Book section; the fight in the newsroom) should not diminish our excitement over the ongoing redesign of the newspaper.

We are moving ahead with a sweeping redesign that (comes at a critical juncture and decision point for the health and survival of our paper; finds new ways to highlight our differentiated content while creating new efficiencies; spells an end to Times New Roman as a font).

There is much to report on the progress of the redesign, but first a couple of housekeeping matters:

After protracted internal discussions, we have determined that those filling the “Comment” sections in our online edition (must be brought to justice; must limit their use of body-part references; must stop calling our reporters and columnists “douche bags”).

Unless the blogosphere gets really upset, those commenting on our online content will now be required to (identify themselves by something other than a screen name; seek psychological counseling; learn to spell).

A last word about the weather map. It’s true we have reversed our decision to (reduce the size of the map to something resembling a baseball card; tell our readers to get their damn pollen counts online; give readers less and tell them it’s more).

As you know, we originally trimmed the weather map (to make space for a house ad; to enhance the reader’s navigation experience; to expand our “Twitter Roundup” feature).

Out of respect for our readers, who are always (aging and cranky; our editorial true north; consistently unwilling to embrace our strategic vision), we (brought the old map back, better than ever; totally caved; responded in a way that provides our readers with new products that serve them well).

For the seventh time in 20 years, we have moved “Doonesbury” (from the comics page to the editorial page; from the editorial page to the comics page; from the editorial page to the feature section, right below the gossip column).

The comics page has been revamped and the comics in 2009 are now (microscopic; about as funny as Timothy Geithner; basically knockoffs from “The Far Side,” “Shoe” and “Calvin & Hobbes”).

Finally, the issue of copy editors.

It is true that as the right sizing has gone forward over the last two years or so, a number of veteran copy editors were (reassigned to work on the publisher’s lakeside estate; exiled to strip-mall bureaus out where the buses don’t run; given MapQuest information for finding the community college).

We miss them and we honor their years of service.

Yes, we were upset when (First Lady Michelle Obama was misidentified as talk show host Tyra Banks; we reported that the Administration is considering sending 40,00 combat troops to Albania; our Daylight Savings Time, spring forward, fall back clock thing was off by seven months).

But to make the sacrifices that are necessary as shift our focus to a digital platform, we must (lower our expectations; move forward toward a bright and economically healthy future; get with the program or get the hell out). Your job is your perk, people.

Sure, it’s a work in progress, but I think you’ll agree that the redesign has (enhanced the product in ways that will improve both usage and commerce; solved all the problems created by last year’s redesign; bought a lot more yellow boxes and exclamation points into the editorial mix).

Later this afternoon we hope everyone will join us for coffee and ice cream (by the elevators; near the former ombudsman’s office; in the area where the movie critic, the art critic and the TV critic used to sit).

We’ll be (discussing the end of the ESOP plan; chatting with Jayson Blair on newsroom ethics; reporting on progress being made with taking whole the thing nonprofit, just like NPR).

Hope to see you all there.

Cable Fables

2009-10-23T12:08:00.001-07:00

The promo rolled across the to the television screen like a million others. The whine of snowmobiles; a helicopter whirling over a frozen landscape; a thumping sound track meant to convey the sense that something exciting was actually going on. And a burly chap in a flannel shirt invoking the Wasilla mantra: “It’s the last frontier.”

“Alaska State Troopers.” OK. On National Geographic Channel.

Now that’s rebranding that’s going to leave a bruise.

National Geographic. Epic stories in pictures, taken by crazy guys hanging out of small planes: The ecological fate of the Serengheti Plain. Hard life across all 11 Russian time zones. The rhythms of the Marble Mountain Wilderness. Whither the wetlands?

National Geographic, “supporting exploration, education and conservation since 1888.” National Geographic, with a magazine seemingly older than Stonehenge and its own grandiose pile of real estate located near the White House.

National Geographic Channel, now chronicling the travails of law enforcement in a setting Homer Simpson described, perhaps too harshly, as “a place where you can’t be too fat or too drunk.”

Is this what we all signed up for? When did the balloon boy’s father take charge of serious cable content?

Back in the mid-1980s, television critics (including me, then with the Chicago Tribune) were pondering the emergence of shiny new cable networks such as Bravo, A&E (Arts & Entertainment), the Discovery Channel and the History Channel.

The Learning Channel, dedicated to using the medium of television for “real education,” according to the early network propaganda, had been in place since the early 1970s when it debuted as the Appalachian Community Service Network.

You can almost hear the fiddles and the 1960s, can’t you? It became TLC in 1980.

The fashionable argument at the time was that these fledgling networks, which tossed words like “arts” around with abandon, were seen to be in the process of supplanting the need for PBS. There would be plenty of places to go now for history and ballet and public affairs programming and environmental worry-warting, or so the argument was framed.

Maybe it was effective marketing. Maybe it was fatigue with those endless “pledge drives” on public television. Maybe it was the fact that these cable outlets were billed as “commercial-free.”

Clearly a new media day was upon us, a day when arts programming and “independent” films and award-winning documentaries would flourish on cable, leaving the lowbrow sitcoms and the quiz shows to the creaky broadcast networks.

The truth is, many of these cable networks got off to respectable starts. Each of them produced quality programming and each strived to live up to their own pretentious billing. For a time.

For Bravo, the shift came around 2003 with the launch of the popular “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” followed by "Project Runway," "Top Chef" and “Showbiz Moms & Dads.” The History Channel was mocked some time ago as devolving into “The Hitler Channel.” That seems gratuitous unless you go on the channel’s website this week and see, well, Hitler. And later, “Lock N’ Load with R. Lee Ermey.”

For A&E, the heady days of the weekly "A&E Stage," with its mix of plays, documentaries and concerts, has given way to "Gene Simmons Family Jewels," "Growing Up Gotti," "Flip This House" and "King of Cars." Visit the network’s home page and Hulk Hoganesque visage of “Dog the Bounty Hunter” stares back at you.

Parsing the life cycle of TLC might better be left to the cast of Monty Python. Once the Discovery Channel acquired it in 1991, the “learning” aspect began to unwind (unless interior design shows and “Junkyard Wars” are considered learning.) It now describes itself as “an affirmative and connective experience.”

And then came the family Gosselin, a kind of brain-damaged 21st century “Eight Is Enough” that is both wildly successful and increasingly moronic. It’s Jon and Kate and the sextuplets and twins. Well, it was. There’s “rebranding” going on, along with the lawsuits and affairs and court orders and bank withdrawals and bodyguards.

What’s interesting it that while PBS continues to be sniped at by some critics for costume dramas and a “NewsHour” that doesn’t move fast enough, not much is said about the cable networks that bowed to the marketplace and abandoned their initial missions faster than actor Steven Seagal can swing a pool cue.

These days, Bravo’s “Inside the Actor’s Studio” is considered cable highbrow. And the aforementioned Steven Seagal, that aging B-movie dispenser of mayhem, has a show that debuts on A&E in December.

PBS gave us the Swedish Chef and Ken Burns. The History Channel gave us “Ice Road Truckers.” A generation later, that’s how it all turned out.

Night's All That's Left Behind

2009-09-08T12:46:00.000-07:00

I've always been a little too comfortable in saloons. Just a little. Possibly an Irish deal. No one but my internist and a couple of women I dated years ago ever viewed it as a problem. The thing was, the first time I walked into one of the damn places I discovered I liked just about everything about them.

It must have been like Pete Sampras walking on to a tennis court when he was a little nipper or Bill Clinton standing up to talk to the class when he was 14.

Now I'm not saying I was as good at saloon life as Pete was with the running forehand or Bill was with the patter. But I was pretty good on both sides of the bar, and my standards were high.

I tended bar in Washington DC after college for about five years. Three decades later I have far more friends from the saloon life than from the fine university I attended. And if I could get a slick quarterly magazine that said "Bars" rather than "American University," I'd sit by the fire and peruse every word and photo.

I met my wife, Jane, when she worked day shifts at a pub around the corner from a place I worked at night. And OK, it's true we met in the mid 1970s and got married in 1992, but that's how saloon people are. Careful, except when they're not.

I gravitated from saloons to the newspaper dodge, which was a pretty quick trip in those days. The fact is, I got my first newspaper job and my first byline at the old Washington Star precisely because I tended bar and because I poured whiskey for reporters and editors.

Hey, I was not born rich or handsome, as the man said. But in the words of George Washington Plunkitt, I seen my opportunities and I took 'em.

By the way, I long ago stopped telling this writing bartender story to aspiring newspaper types. It was both inspirational and depressing (for them). Now it doesn't matter. These days, if someone tells me they want to be a newspaper reporter I tell them to lie down until the swelling subsides.

What is it (was it?) about the bars.

I loved that feeling of getting away with a little something. Regardless of your station in life, you could put on a clean sport coat and wander into PJ Clarke's in Manhattan or the Washington Square Bar & Grill in San Francisco or the Lodge or the Billy Goat in Chicago or McDaid's in Dublin or too many other good joints in too many places, throw down a $20 and act like you belonged there.

From the beginning, I knew better than to talk to the other customers. Usually a bad idea. I was there to talk to the folks I was with, or with the bartenders and servers. Much better audience, and usually a better story to tell. And the rules are largely pretty simple. Don't be a jerk; understand that the dishy bartendress/waitress is likely not interested; leave 20 percent or better if you plan on coming back.

Trust me on all this - some things don't change.

These days, my interest in saloons is largely anthropological. I'm a snob who thinks most urban gin mills are too expensive and filled with youthful bores. With notable exceptions, of course. A few years go, before the smoking ban in DC, I would espy a brace of young lawyers in suits from Joseph Banks firing up $20 cigars while sipping $22 single malt whiskeys and think, what a gaggle of chowderheads.

That said, I'm now just the sort of drinker I used to be amused by. A couple of drinks after work and home by 7:30 or so. That guy. Which is just fine.

As my friend and saloon companion Chris Reidy phrased it a while ago, we've stopped aerobicizing our livers. And just in time, too.

"The Regiment Will Bury Its Dead."

2009-08-26T09:35:00.000-07:00

It is perhaps nothing more than a kind of tribal madness, a mix of sentimentality and romanticiscm and dashed hopes. For those who grew up in a certain America at a certain time, the death of Edward M. Kennedy is about so much more than the falling of the last branch of a legendary political family.

If you understand the madness, you know that when Teddy Kennedy dies and it's important to you, you think of a speech his brother Bobby made long ago in South Africa, before apartheid ended, before Mandela was released from bondage.

In Cape Town, South Africa in 1966, speaking to college students, Robert Kennedy said this: "Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."

When Teddy Kennedy dies, you think of being in junior high school in 1963 and being sent home to your Irish-Catholic family to watch your father weep in front of the television at the assassination of John F. Kennedy. You remember the night Bobby Kennedy was murdered in Los Angeles and you remember thinking that, with Dr. King dead just a few weeks, the country you were living in was broken and forever different. You had no idea that in many ways it would only get worse that summer, and beyond.

When Teddy Kennedy dies you reflect on the words of the Boston Globe obituary today, which characterized him as "an American original:"

"He was the youngest child of a famous family, but his legacy derived from quiet subcommittee meetings, conference reports, and markup sessions. The result of his efforts meant hospital care for a grandmother, a federal loan for a working college student, or a better wage for a dishwasher."

You remember that, drunk or sober, frankly, Teddy Kennedy was the guy who was never too busy or too cynical to give up on the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. LIHEAP. That's heating oil subsidies for old people in cold places. Quaint, huh?

Or, more famously, he was tireless on health care reform that was not marginal or incremental or designed to make sure the insurance companies and the Chamber of Commerce didn't get too upset. Or taking on Judge Bork at a particularly low ebb for the Democratic Party and those whose interests and beliefs they purport to represent.

Immigration. The minimum wage. Childhood education. A just peace in Northern Ireland. The Americans with Disabilities Act. OSHA. Voting rights. A roaring opposition to Bush's Iraq war in 2002. Nothing here for the faint of heart or the "Blue Dogs."

The New York Times headline today called him "Gifted, Flawed." Fair play to the New York Times. Most Irishmen would take that one for a sendoff.

For millions of Americans, of course, this is nonsense.

The political class that for 40 years raised untold millions by demonizing the unabashed liberal from Massachusetts have already gotten plenty of room to talk about Kennedy's failings and weaknesses. He was an imperfect man, Lord knows, and the yammerers and the haters on cable TV will take a respite from scaring old people over health care to remind us of all that.

And his death comes at a moment when his chosen candidate for President, the triumphant Barack Obama, is in full retreat on matters great and small, many of them important to his most celebrated backer in 2008.

To better days, as the Irish would say. And when Teddy Kennedy dies and it's important to you, you recall the words he used in his heart-breaking eulogy for his brother, Robert, in June, 1968: "He was always on our side."

Obama, Gates & Crowley

2009-08-01T10:22:00.001-07:00

"It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and the prudence never to practice either of them." - Mark Twain

Friendly Confines

2009-07-16T09:11:00.000-07:00

Published in CJR Online

Behind the News — July 16, 2009
The Chicago Tribune, the Cubs, and Me
TribCo is selling the Chicago Cubs. Steve Daley was there when they bought in

By Steve Daley

The week I went to work as a sports columnist for the Chicago Tribune in 1981 was the week the Tribune Co. bought the Chicago Cubs baseball team. Hello.

That era is about to end, or so it appears, with reports that moguls from Ameritrade and their millionaire “Go, Cubs, Go” amigos will acquire the storied franchise and Wrigley Field from what’s left of the Tribune Co. for $900 million or so.

Consider this: Tribune Co. bought the Cubs, Wrigley Field, the ivy, the post-season curse, the bleachers, a national fan base, and the broadcast operations from the Wrigley family of chewing-gum renown for about $21 million.

$21 million. $900 million. Makes you wonder how over the same period of time the same company managed to commit suicide with its newspapers.

In 1981 the stunning news felt like a dicey proposition for opinionated pay-rollers such as myself. The fact that the folks who ran the sports department at the Tribune didn’t seem to have any more advance warning of the Cubs’ sale than the newest employee—me—wasn’t much comfort.

Certainly the prospect of savaging the Cubs was a columnist’s delight. But having the Tribune Co. money guys—synergy gurus and lawyers from Notre Dame—poring over my column for blasphemy and heresy was a daunting image.

So I had no sooner acquired a press credential and figured out how to get to Clark and Addison Sts. from my apartment than I began to wonder what all the suits on the upper floors of the Tribune Tower on N. Michigan Ave. were thinking of my deathless prose.

The expectation was that I would write columns about this enterprise in a manner that would engage readers and maintain the paper’s editorial independence. But how do you keep telling people that the boss’s most celebrated asset couldn’t be driven off the lot?

The thing is, the 1981 Cubs were awful, and they were part of a longstanding tradition of awful. The 1982 Cubs were no better. They finished nineteen games out of the first place in the National League East and they repeated that soul-destroying performance in 1983.

As the new guy, I suspect my batting average for paranoia was higher than most. I knew some readers—maybe a lot of readers—were skeptical of the arrangement. Rabid fans of the Chicago White Sox saw Tribune collusion in every Cubs story and the boys and girls at the Chicago Sun-Times seemed to relish our discomfort, as they should have.

You didn’t hear much from the team. In 1981, the affable Joey Amalfitano managed the team, to no real avail. He was replaced the following year by Lee Elia, a product of the Philadelphia baseball organization and a man best known for a legendary tape-recorded rave-out in 1983 about the lives and ambitions of the Cub fans who showed up in the bleachers for day baseball.

At spring training in Arizona in 1982, what would now be called senior management of the Tribune Co. sought to ease the minds of its paid typists.

In those days, Stanton R. Cook was Chairman of the Board of the Tribune Co., publisher of the Chicago Tribune, and president of the Chicago Cubs.

Stan—“Call me Stan”—was a tall, silver-haired, hand-shaking Midwesterner who could have played himself in the movie. He had more titles than the guy who runs North Korea but was much nicer.

That spring, in the friendly confines of HoHoKam Park, Cook assured the scribblers, one at the time, that he understood the concept of “church and state” and that there would be no interference when we suggested in his newspaper that maybe Wayne Nordhagen wasn’t the answer in left field.

From my end, Cook and his minions kept that promise. And by 1984, manager Jim Frey and general manager Dallas Green had performed baseball alchemy, putting the Cubs in the post-season for the first time since the Japanese surrendered on board the USS Missouri in 1945.

They lost in the playoffs, of course, but it was a great summer in Chicago. And it was left to Green, the bumptious “baseball guy from Philly,” to explain to me my sensitive relationship with the Tribune Co. suits.

“They don’t give a damn what you write,” Green snarled at me one afternoon. “Bet they don’t even read it.”

Years later, I suspect he was right.

Winners and Losers

2009-07-05T12:03:00.000-07:00

In February, in a story that did not get much attention, a talented Israeli tennis player named Shahar Peer was denied a visa to enter Dubai and play in the ATP Dubai Tennis Championships.

The government of Dubai, those well-moneyed moderates in the United Arab Emirates much loved by the U.S., never got around to a coherent explanation of their decision, save the fact they suggested that Peer night have a "security problem" if she played tennis in their cute little country.

The American tennis establishment and the sanctioning organizations collapsed into irate letter-writing and rhetorical chin-pulling over the insult. There was even a fine of $300,000 levied against Dubai tennis poohbahs. But Peer kept quiet, the press was disinterested and most everyone seemed to think it was a situation that required a good leaving alone.

A number of American players characterized the denial of the visa as "unfortunate," but Venus Williams apparently spoke for many of the players when she said she wasn't interested in "rocking the boat."

Andy Roddick stayed home.

The defending champion in the $2.2 million Dubai event, Roddick saw the situation with a moral and ethical clarity that seemed to escape, well, just about everyone else. He had just won a tournament in Memphis and he did not make the trip to Dubai.

"I think a big part if it is I didn't really agree with what went on over there," Roddick said at the time.

Roddick, an affable 26-year-old with no history of political activism, was alone in his protest. The two best male players in the world, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, had timely injuries and nothing to say. Tennis professionals from all over the world - not just the U.S. - did nothing in support of Peer.

There were some moments. The cable Tennis Channel chose not to cover the event and the Wall Street Journal dropped its partial sponsorship. But commerce prevailed. Venus Williams won the women's event. Novak Djokovic of Serbia won the men's title.

Roddick sought no credit or praise for his protest of the egregious harm done to Peer (a woman he had never met at the time). Nor did he earn much praise or attention for his clear-eyed and singular courage.

You can draw your own conclusions as to what would have happened if, say, the Dubai government had decided that Venus Williams had "a security problem" and could not enter the country. The "what ifs" run off into geopolitics, but the story is long gone.

On Sunday, Andy Roddick, the boat-rocker, lost an epic five-set Wimbledon men's final to Roger Federer. The fifth set was 16-14, if you're counting.

The Swiss wizard now has 15 Gtand Slam titles and Roddick has just one, the 2003 U.S. Open. But from where I sit, nobody in tennis had a better year than Andy Roddick.

Let Franken be Franken

2009-07-01T06:53:00.000-07:00

FROM JUNE 2009 WASHINGTONIAN MAGAZINE:

Let Franken Be Franken!

By Steve Daley

Washington doesn’t need any more hard-working pols. When Al finally gets to town, let’s please . . .

When Al Franken is finally installed as the junior senator from Minnesota, we need him to be Al Franken.

Waiting out the recounts and court fights that have kept Franken back home since November, the former Saturday Night Live star has done a good imitation of your typical 21st-century US senator.

He’s been dull.

Duller than a quorum call. Duller than a Harry Reid/Mitch McConnell photo op. Few interviews, no barbed commentary about Republicans, no declarations in that foghorn of a voice.

There are reasons why. The notion of Senator Al Franken (D-Funny) probably scares both the White House and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

They want his crucial Senate vote, and it’s fine with them if Franken is mistaken inside the Beltway for Mark Dayton, Rudy Boschwitz, Rod Grams, or any of his predecessors from the Land of Sky-Blue Waters.

Franken told the St. Paul newspaper that once he’s sworn in, he’ll be “putting [his] head down and getting to work.”

That’s not what we need. We need some laughs. We need some characters.

Let’s face it: The United States Senate is a place where Utah’s Orrin Hatch is considered witty. Where being colorful means starting a second family at 55. Where wild and crazy means not having a 6 am tennis game three mornings a week.

Let’s take a partial roll call.

Mike Enzi of Wyoming. Ben Cardin of Maryland. Daniel Akaka of Hawaii. Claire McCaskill of Missouri. Bob Corker of Tennessee. Susan Collins of Maine. Herb Kohl of Wisconsin. Roger Wicker of Mississippi.

These are distinguished public servants, but they could walk up to a door with an electric eye and chances are the door wouldn’t open.

We need a senator who might do some impersonations. In his SNL days, Franken nailed a pair of senatorial Pauls—Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts and Paul Simon of Illinois. He aped Pat Robertson, Lyndon LaRouche, and Henry Kissinger.

We need a politician who might plant a camera on his pith helmet and report live from the scene, as Franken did on SNL.

We could use a senator who’d say things like “What do Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole, Phil Gramm, Dick Armey, and George Will have in common? Answer: They’ve all been married one less time than Rush Limbaugh.”

We need a man who would publish a book called Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and preface it with a mock New York Times review allegedly written by former Reagan foreign-policy adviser Jeane Kirkpatrick.

Extending the joke, Franken offered his own fake letter to the editor bemoaning the fact that his “former lover” had been assigned to review the book.

“As anyone who was familiar with the Manhattan eighties’ club scene knows,” Franken wrote, “Ms. Kirkpatrick and I endured a somewhat stormy and all too public affair during her tenure as our country’s UN ambassador. . . . Come on! Be fair. Next time get someone who isn’t my former lover to review my book.”

At the 1994 White House Correspondents Dinner, Franken told the audience he had discussed the merits of an Al Gore joke with Tipper Gore. He shared the joke:

“Vice President Gore continued to show his commitment to the environment by announcing today that he is going to change the policy on the stick up his butt. Instead of replacing the stick every day with a new stick, the Vice President will keep the same stick up his butt for the rest of the administration. Evidently, this will save an entire rain forest.”

Here’s another possibility: For much of his comedic career, Franken had a sidekick. His name was Tom Davis, and he had grown up with Franken in Minneapolis, where they began writing comedy.

Davis was a pioneering writer on SNL, but as a performer he was about as funny as Dutch elm disease. Remember Franken and Davis as the lunkhead gorilla handlers in Eddie Murphy’s Trading Places?

Suppose Franken had a sidekick in the Senate. A Barney Rubble, a Sancho Panza, a Joe Biden, an Ed McMahon, a Vinny Cerrato. A walk-around guy to set up the one-liners, get the bottled water, clear the press away from the Senate elevators.

Match that, Arlen Specter.

The world of entertainment has not been a historic proving ground for the Senate.

Senator Fred Thompson, the truck-drivin’ man from Tennessee, did walk among us for a time. It was after his movie roles in The Hunt for Red October and Curly Sue, though he had started out as minority counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee in the 1970s.

Back when spittoons were still in fashion, a Hollywood hoofer named George Murphy (Broadway Melody of 1940) made his way to the Senate from California, serving a solo term between former JFK spokesman Pierre Salinger and John V. Tunney, described as the lightweight son of onetime heavyweight champ Gene Tunney.

Jesse Helms of North Carolina came to us from radio, and Wilbert Lee “Pappy” O’Daniel of Texas also got his start in radio, offering up old-timey music with the Light Crust Doughboys.

Pappy served eight years in the Senate after being governor, famously defeating Lyndon Johnson by 1,300 votes in 1941. A man before his time, Pappy argued that Texas needed its own army and navy to guard the Mexican border.

“Pass the Biscuits, Pappy” wasn’t much of a senator, but his platform—the Ten Commandments—was good enough to get him elected.

Yes, there was a time when Senator Huey Long raced around Washington under the watchful eye of the Louisiana troopers he brought with him, when committee chairmen were pickled by sundown, when being defined as a character had nothing to do with airport lavatories.

But we know how this ends. Senator Al Franken will go all fair and balanced.

He’ll learn to love those dusty markups on the agriculture committee. He’ll come to believe that every meeting in Washington is “productive” and that every Senate colleague is worthy of placement on Mount Rushmore.

But do we want another distinguished member who will yield the floor? What this town needs is some of that old SNL attitude—the kind that says: “Live from Capitol Hill—it’s Al Franken!”

This article first appeared in the June 2009 issue of The Washingtonian.

Cuba Libre

2009-06-20T12:28:00.000-07:00

The saga of Walter Kendall Myers and Gwendolyn Myers, spies, has amused me far more than it should.

I'm sure it is a tragedy for the Myers family and the unfolding tale of espionage and intrigue - sort of - has caused profound embarrassment to an American foreign policy establishment that has bungled Cuban policy since Ike was president.

Kendall, 72 and the great-grandson of Alexander Graham Bell, had a long career as a State Department analyst while Gwendolyn, now 71, parlayed some Capitol Hill experience and "political activism," in the arch parlance of the New York Times, into a covert career than has more in common with the comic fiction of Donald Westlake and Carl Hiaasen than with spymaster Aldrich Ames.

The Myers are pretty clearly guilty of something. And since their crimes are of no particular consequence, they are of course being held without bail. Better they should have looted Wall Street or figured out a way to get us involved in two bloody wars and steal millions of taxpayers dollars in the process. With few exceptions, those activities earn you a spot in the Obama kitchen Cabinet or a seat of power at the American Enterprise Institute.

Over time, the Myers allegedly sent documents to a Cuban government that cannot get out of its own way. They made copies of these mysterious documents and passed them to intermediaries in grocery stores. And they once had an audience with Fidel Castro.

As far as U.S. law enforcement can determine the Myers took no money for these activities, which is good because all evidence suggests the Cuban government doesn't have any money.

In short, nitwits.

To be more specific, '60s nitiwits. My people. McGovern supporters (It was 1972, kids). Guilt-ridden bleeding hearts. Ruling class liberals. World savers. Fans of the United Nations. To each according to his need; let's get some sushi.

In 1979, in their 40s, Kendall followed Gwendolyn Steingraber to Pierre S.D. where she had a job in the Public Utilities Commission, helping farmers use alternative energy sources. Perfect. Kendall worked on a biography of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, the most celebrated appeaser of the 20th century. He was apparently a man Kendall admired. Perfect.

They grew marijuana plants in their South Dakota basement until the cops showed up. Again, perfect. Gwendolyn lost her political appointee's job and the pair returned to Washington, got married and became Cuban agents 202 and 123. Nitwits.

I'm thinking a 13-episode sitcom here. Kendall and Gwendolyn's Excellent Adventure.

Of course it wasn't the spying that drew attention to Agents 202 and 123. Remember the 9/11 terrorists and the flying lessons? As they say down South, the foreign policy crowd couldn't make cornbread if you gave them a cornbread-making machine,

No, apparently Kendall Myers made an unauthorized speech at a university suggesting that President George W. Bush had duped British Prime Minister Tony Blair into supporting the Iraq war.

Not very diplomatic, but I doubt any of Blair's friends or family would dispute that assessment. But the British press picked up the speech, painted Myers as something more than a Foggy Bottom contractor and that's part of what got the government's attention.

I don't know what sorts of papers the hapless Myers' gang was passing along to the Fidelistas. They'd have done Cuba more good if they'd smuggled in new transmissions and tires for those 1956 Chevy Bel Airs that crowd Havana streets.

This is a country that imports 80% of its food. The average worker makes about $21 a month, U.S. It has a well-educated population, so it trades doctors and nurses for oil from Hugo Chavez.

Cuba and Castro have played no significant role in world affairs since the 1960s, save annoying two generations of U.S. presidents and generations of foreign policy geniuses of the sort who gave Kendall Myers a Top Security clearance.

By the book, Kendall and Gwendolyn are a bit old to qualify as Baby Boomers, but I know this crowd. My guess is that they spied for Cuba - if the charges are true - because they spent their own lives being disappointed by the policy failings and moral failings of their own government. You know, Vietnam. The Reagan adventures. Iran-contra. Decades of failure in the Middle East. A history of backing the wrong side of history in places such as Iran.

They fell for the socialist myth of Cuba and El Jefe, as many in my political crowd did, long ago. It's just that most bleeding hearts saw through the mythology 35 years ago or so.

They'll probably bring the hammer down on Kendall and Gwendolyn and Fox News will probably spend itself trying to link them to the Symbionese Liberation Army, or at least to William Ayers.

If they're going to do time, I hope it's a place they can sit around, have an herbal tea and talk about the Port Huron Statement.

Look it up.

Jeff MacNelly

2009-06-09T05:41:00.000-07:00

Nine years ago his week my friend Jeff MacNelly died of cancer. He was 52.

Jeff was a cartoonist, which is a little like saying Bob Dylan is a songwriter. MacNelly didn't much like Dylan, but no matter. Jeff won three Pulitzer Prizes for editorial cartooning, his first at 24, just two years after he "almost graduated" from college in Chapel Hill.

He wrote and drew the cartoon strip "Shoe" for more than 25 years, seven times a week, no complaints. A multiple winner of the Reuben award for cartooning, he was generally regarded as the best of his generation, both on the editorial page and in the funny papers.

MacNelly knew he was a big talent, but he was utterly lacking in pretense or vanity. I wrote once that he was nearly always not only the most talented person in the room, but the most decent, the most generous, and the funniest.

Ideas, laughs and perfect drawings poured out of him. In 1988, we worked together on a project for the Chicago Tribune. They let us do a series of full-page, full-color posters on the presidential campaign - the primaries, the conventions, the outcome. MacNelly and I would motor around Iowa or New Hampshire, happily drinking in the madness, usually in a rented Lincoln Town Car, Jeff being somewhere north of 6 foot 5.

After dinner we would talk about the events the day and I would generally have an idea. Jeff would have nine of them. Maybe a dozen. All good. Really good. All reflecting an astonishing eye for the moment, the characters, the detail and the nuance.

Some nights he would just start drawing on the placemats - Bob Dole in a fury; Michael Dukakis clenching his hands and babbling; a map of Illinois that included O'Hare International Airport and - just as big - O'Hare Baggage Claim.

On the editorial page MacNelly had great fun at the expense of Democrats, notably Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. He was a big fan of the Gipper. Our politics intersected at virtually no point, but it never mattered. You just looked at the page and shook your head in admiration.

"Shoe" was about whatever Jeff wanted it to be, which is why he loved it. Among comic strips, he admired Walt Kelly's "Pogo," he said, because "it wasn't about anything." Whenever a celebrated cartoonist would go on hiatus, citing creative burnout, MacNelly would offer the big, rueful smile that was a trademark. "We're drawing cartoons here," he'd say. "It's a cartoon strip."

Late in a too-short life, Jeff took up painting and sculpture, with a focus on Key West in the former and on the American West in the latter. His work was, of course, vivid and striking and unforgettable. But again, there was never a need to get all artsy-craftsy about it. For example, MacNelly delighted in the fact that the legendary Western artist Charles Marion Russell used to toss off drawings on scraps of paper to pay his saloon bills.

On a snowy night in 1989 in a Washington restaurant, my wife Jane and I introduced Jeff to Jane's longtime friend Sue Spekin. It seemed liked the snow had not even melted before she was Sue MacNelly, on the hilltop in Rappahannock County, with the barn and horses and dogs, representing the best interests of the guy she called "the 'toonist."

These days, Sue and a pair of his old cartoon amigos keep "Shoe" moving forward. If you can't find it in the paper - let's face it, you can't find anything in the paper anymore - it's all at www.macnelly.com. The paintings are there, too.

Jeff's work graces our house and our lives, as does a photograph of him taken by our friend David Burnett. MacNelly is on his hilltop, smiling that electric smile, posed in front of his beloved, becalmed 1959 DeSoto.

They tell you that in this life you're supposed to get over this stuff. But you never, ever do. We miss Jeff every day.

The President and the Vice President Walk Into a Bar ...

2009-06-02T18:16:00.000-07:00

Last week President Obama made yet another lunch-hour cheeseburger foray, this time to a Five Guys outlet near the Washington Nationals’ ballpark.

So far, the president has been sighted at Ben’s Chili Bowl, Ray’s Hell Burgers across the river in Arlington and now at a Five Guys. It’s fun to watch, although, as with all presidential maneuverings, it’s about as spontaneous as a production of “The Kennedy Center Honors.” On the Five Guys outing, the President just happened to have NBC anchor guy Brian Williams in tow.

And why the unblinking fascination with cheeseburgers? If the President is going to hit the streets, why should he limit himself and his traveling party to cheese pucks?

Suppose, instead of going out for burgers and fries, the President opted to slip out - in a spontaneous kind of way - to a downtown saloon for happy hour, maybe a bar on 19th St., not far the White House, maybe with the Vice President:

POTUS and VP approach the bar, Obama in a red tie, Biden in blue …

Biden: Hey, Ace. How about getting a couple drinks for me and my father down here? Hahahaha

Kevin the bartender: How did you know my name was Ace?

Biden: Just a lucky guess. Hahahaha. Anyway, the Boss and I are playing a little hooky.
If the First Lady calls, you know, mum’s the word. He’s not here. We told her we had to go see Hillary at the State Department, then stop by the hardware store on the way home. Hahahaha.

Bartender: Got it. Can I get anyone a drink?

Biden: Whattaya think, Mr. President? I’m going to have a Heineken.

POTUS (to bartender): There are those who would argue that this is inappropriate, that the Chief Executive should not be at a downtown happy hour at this point in our nation’s history. But I think most Americans would understand that situations such as this one afford me the opportunity to get outside the White House bubble, to walk among the people as Michelle and I did when we lived in Chicago.

Bartender: Would you like a drink, sir?

POTUS: I’ll have a Grey Goose martini, straight up, with extra olives.

Biden: Whoa, Mr. President. Grey Goose martini, straight up? Is that what you drank when you were a community organizer? Hahahaha.

Bartender: Who are all these other people, and what are they drinking?

Biden: Oh, these guys. Just the press pool, a few photographers, Secret Service. That’s Anderson Cooper, the CNN guy, and his crew. He’s doing a spontaneous day-in-the-life thing with the President. Hahahaha. What are you having, Anderson?

Cooper: I should like a Pimm’s Cup. I believe.

POTUS (looking at the entourage): And we’ll need six Miller Lights, five Budweisers, a vodka and tonic, a gin and tonic, a Jack and Coke, two glasses of Sauvignon Blanc, a red wine, an iced tea and a Bloody Mary. Did I get everybody?

Entourage: Yes, sir.

POTUS: Many Americans are feeling the strain of the economic downturn and it must be said that we have a long way to go. We’re working hard every day to make that happen. But judging from the atmosphere in this room, it seems the people have maintained a sense of conviviality and good cheer. Can you get ESPN2 on that TV? Love to get a White Sox score.

Bartender: I’ll get the manager.

Biden: Hey, beertender, do you have any bar snacks, pretzels, nuts?

Bartender: No.

Biden: No? In Scranton, where I grew up, even the fancy joints had bar snacks.

Bartender: In Scranton, the fancy joints make the bartenders cover up their tattoos.

Biden: Whoa, a comedian here. Funny guy. Hahahaha.

POTUS: Joe, a question.

Biden: Yes, sir.

POTUS: Were we right to leave Rahm at the White House? He seemed upset.

Biden: He’ll get over it, sir. I told him to do something useful. You know, call up Harry Reid and explain to him what a Democrat is. Hahahaha

POTUS: Joe, Senator Reid is to be commended for his accomplishments, growing up in the relative poverty of his Searchlight, Nevada home, ably representing the interests of the good people of his home state and, indeed, of all Americans

Biden: Just kidding, sir. A little humor. Good old Harry. Hahahaha. I know you’re still mad at me about that inauguration joke with the Chief Justice.

POTUS: Joe, it is so important that we raise the level of discourse here in Washington. As I said in my recent speech at Notre Dame, we must ask how each of us can remain firm to our principles and fight for what we consider right without demonizing those with just as strongly held convictions on the other side.

Anderson Cooper: Well said, Mr. President. I’ll have another Pimm’s Cup.

Biden: Well, strictly bar rules, sir, all due respect, but maybe you ought to take that stuff up with Cheney and Gingrich. Bartender, I need another Heineken down here. A bird can’t fly on one wing. Hahahaha.

Bartender: Another Grey Goose, Mr. President?

POTUS: Nothing for me. Well, maybe just a splash. And give Joe the check. It’s always best to keep him occupied….

For What It's Worth

2009-05-24T10:00:00.000-07:00

It's an odd ritual, antique almost, with roots linked to the Vietnam War and the political passions that roiled the country during that conflict, and after.

Now, it's thousands of men and women on motorcycles on Memorial Day weekend.

On Sunday of this holiday weekend, hundreds of thousands of bikers took part in what is called - and incorporated - as Rolling Thunder. It used to be Operation Rolling Thunder, named for the bombing campaign against North Vietnam in 1965.

Rolling Thunder was established in 1968 by a pair of Vietnam veterans who wanted to hold the government accountable for the fate of U.S. prisoners of war and those missing in action in southeast Asia. At the initial rally on Capitol Hill, they announced their arrival with the roar of Harley-Davidsons.

You could say it caught on. What evolved was an annual "Road to Freedom" rally and a Washington ritual that, in time, ended at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall.

That was then. Rambo was big. Chuck Norris, too. The political class embraced the bikers, inviting them to the White House. But by the early 1990s, many people bemoaned the fact that the POW-MIA issue had effectively disappeared from the American consciousness.

Now, well, you could say the same thing about the Vietnam War. We're not much on memory, despite our claims to the contrary. Vietnam was going to change everything, remember, like the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11.

We were going to be a more serious country, not a country where millions of people spent their evenings voting on the fate of talentless singers and hoofers on television. Maybe next time.

The disappearance of the POW-MIA issue should have ended Rollling Thunder, but it didn't. Maybe it was simply the roar of the bikes. The political environment has changed but the staging has not.

On Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, thousands of bikes roll through northern Virginia into Washington along Route 66, choking three lanes of the interstate heading east. As they do, people in neighborhoods like mine in Arlington gather on the overpasses and bridges to greet them, kids and parents waving, bikers waving back, horns tooting and - for the better part of two hours - that all-American Harley roar rending the suburban air.

Families make the effort, parking the SUVs and minvans on the bridges, carrying their coffee, minding the kids against the bridge traffic, smiling at the wall of noise. You see American flags on some of the bikes and even a few ghostly black POW-MIA flags fluttering.

By mid-day Sunday, the bikes are gone from Route 66, across Arlington Memorial Bridge hard by the cemetery. The folks in the neighborhoods are back home; the bikers are at the war memorials. Years ago they used to gather by the hundreds at a two-story beer bar on 19th Street in DC called the Crow's Nest, their bikes shoe-horned into the bar's small parking lot like some Quentin Tarantino fantasy. Pretty sure there's a Kinkos there now.

At this point it seems hard to determine what Rolling Thunder means. But the appeal of the bikes and the bridges and overpasses remains, a constant of Washington's Memorial Day.

Sports Center

2009-05-21T09:45:00.001-07:00

http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/sports_center.php

Mixed Vegetables with the President

2009-05-08T08:45:00.000-07:00

I do not mock the White House Correspondents Association dinner, though it is easy enough to do.

The prom is Saturday night at the Hinckley Hilton, as ever, and both the smarty-pants set and the "mainstream media" alternate between making fun of the event and speculating about who will be sitting next to Tyra Banks or the Secretary of State or David Axelrod.

I went to a few of these dinners when I was a Washington correspondent for a large Midwestern newspaper, and I generally had a pretty good time.

I would often go with my friend Iris Burnett. Her husband, David, would take photos of us in our party duds and upon arrival Iris would immediately start working 3000 or so people in the room. I would not see her again that evening.

Getting pretty liquored up seemed a prority. My newspaper would generally sponsor a "hospitality suite" before dinner, a good place to establish a beachhead, have several Scotches and figure out which news organization had outdone itself pointlessly rounding up celebrities.

My paper was pretty lame in that regard, but one year a colleague invited Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, and he showed up. I got to watch him drink and smoke cigarettes, which was fun, and his skills at small talk were just fine.

My experience was that the evening tended to work better if you didn't think much about it.

It wasn't surprising to me how many people who did not get to go to the dinner would argue that it was an exercise in elitist back-scratching, an inapporopriate mingling of reporters and sources that threatened the very fabric of the Republic.

No, what was surprising was how many people who did get to go to the dinner made these same arguments, at least in public.

I had bureau chief for a while who made something of a name for himself whinging about the worms-in-a-bottle nature of the WHCA dinner and DC generally. But every year he'd get to the dinner, then figure out a way to get invited to English commentator Christopher Hitchens' post-party to discuss the great issues of the day with Tom Selleck and that Huffington woman.

I never got invited to that party, but, for the record, Tom Selleck is a hell of a nice guy.

See, it's just a dinner. Too much is made of it. It's a certainty that the sweathogs on Fox News will spend a good chunk of the weekend railing about the press sucking up to President Obama and citing the dinner as evidence.

The New York Times will not attend the dinner. They don't, except when they do.

Me, I never understood why people refuse to grasp a simple fact: People who are interested in the same stuff tend to cluster. For example: The only people who really care about this senator's health care proposal of that congresswoman's political campaign are journalists. That drives the politicos and the pure of heart nuts, but it's true.

So they show up and circle one another, reporters holding a pithy policy assessment in abeyance in case they get a word with the head of OMB or Ray LaHood.

Never my approach. Not my dinner memories. More interesting to note that Dennis Hopper is really, really short. That Colin Powell looks terrified when talking to Barbra Streisand. That Dana Delany looks fetching in a Size One dress. (She's very nice as well). That nothing caps off the evening like being introduced to Richard Dreyfuss' "policy guy."

No regrets. Except for missing the year when Stephen Colbert pissed off the entire Washington press corps. Would have liked to have been half-drunk for that one.

The Dogged Victims of Inexorable Fate

2009-05-04T08:49:00.000-07:00

I stole the line from the great Dan Jenkins, who used it as the title of collection of newspaper and magazine pieces a long time ago. I kept thinking about the title because as far as I can tell, the New York Times, a great newspaper, is trying to kill the Boston Globe, a fine newspaper.

Meanwhile, the Chicago Tribune, an old newspaper, is trying to kill itself and at the same time kill the Baltimore Sun, which used to be a fine newspaper. The Times and the Tribune may fail at these ignoble endeavors, but this week it doesn't feel that way.

The Times has gone from bullying the paper it acquired some years ago for $1.1 billion to playing the unions against one another. The Tribune laid off 53 more reporters, editors and photographers on a single day last week, and has systematically reduced the Sun - the paper of H.L. Mencken and countless other worthies - to, well, a joke. It's now a paper you can read in five minutes, like the Miami Herald and too many other surviving metro dailies.

I know most of the cool kids think this doesn't matter much. The hard work, enterprise and commitment to the cities these papers serve will be replaced by ... something. Or so we are assured. The other day I heard a guy with a cable TV platform say that every city didn't need its own newspaper. That, among other things, is a monstrously arrogant point of view. But typical.

The unfolding rationales for the new world order sound innovative but they are as old as home delivery. For example: "New media" will focus on "local news," we're told.

I first heard the local news argument made when I was copy clerk on the old Washington Star in about 1975. In any town where you were the second paper, like the Star, you talked about local news because the bigger paper was killing you on national news, international news, the gamut. Somehow the blogosphere and the media critics make this concept sound as fresh as hand sanitizer.

The continuing debate is not for the squeamish. Folks who love newspapers and work for them are inclined to whine and hold their breath. Most of the online set seems to despise newspapers, in part I guess because they feel they've been disrespected by the newspaper culture. Maybe they have.

But there will be consequences to what is going on here. There is a great deal of sound thinking and good writing on the blogosphere these days. But there is a tidal wave of arrant nonsense as well, and the Boston Globe is not going to be replaced in the homes, schools and businesses of New England by ranting, scavaging, mostly anonymous Websites with ha-ha monikers.

If this ends badly, any number of things will happen. Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger, the publisher of the Times, will forever be known as the man who shuttered the Boston Globe. The toffs at Harvard and Tufts and all those other fine schools in Boston will adjust to life without a quality daily newspaper and I don't think they'll like it much.

The Chicago Tribune, where I used to work, is on track to destroy the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, the aforementioend Baltimore Sun and the Hartford Courant. And itself.

The men inherently responsible for this astonishing bidness fiasco - buying those papers as the market was collapsing - are less well known than Sulzberger. Mostly they are living out well-feathered retirements in the Midwest, their looting complete. Some of them comment thoughtfully from time to time on the fate of the newspaper business, often on the blogosphere.

The rest, it seems, is just an exercise in shooting the wounded. Those dogged victims of inexorable fate.

So How's He Doing?

2009-04-25T03:30:00.000-07:00

http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/first_100_days_mad_libs.php

The Closet Good Guy

2009-04-17T07:13:00.001-07:00

First of all, this reference has nothing at all to do with sexual preferences. That's significant, I guess, because the first public figure I ever heard discuss the concept of "the closet good guy" was the estimable Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.)

Frank was talking to reporters about a celebrated Washington economist who made his name in the 1980s helping Ronald Reagan wreck the economy and jury-rig the tax code in favor of the well-to-do.

All the time, Frank said, this chap was whispering to those who thought trickle-down economics was taking the middle class off a cliff that he was in fact laboring behind the scenes to make it better, to mitigate the damage. Wink, wink, nod, nod. I'm on your side. Really.

The closet good guy.

Which brings me to my former line of work - the newspaper business. These days the media landscape is littered with closet good guys (and good gals, of course). They're wringing their hands on CNN and MSNBC, furrowing their brows in think tanks and posh universities, typing on the oped pages and yakking on NPR about "What's Wrong" with newspapers.

Most of the answers are already in play. The Internet. Giving away the product. Missing a few fundamental changes in the society. The primacy of shareholder value. Turning the newsroom over the marketing folks. A culture with the attention span of a twitterer.

Most importantly (to me), a loss of faith in the mission and the role of the newspaper. And a pathological need to ignore the base, as they say in politics, and pursue folks who were never, ever going to buy and read a newspaper.

I spent 16 years as a columnist and reporter for the Chicago Tribune. I had a messy divorce from that paper in 1996, long before manufactured-housing mogul Sam Zell and his happy band of new media nitwits took control of the "World's Greatest Newspaper." And what I am suggesting is that the short-sightedeness, arrogance and institutional well-poisoning in the newspaper game didn't get its start in last three years or so.

My experience - and that of many former and current scribes in other papers - is that many editors and managers didn't need a Sam Zell or some equivalent villain to ease them down the road to perdition.

Lots of scrappy reporters who raged over shrinking budgets and shrinking newsholes, unreasonable deadlines, gutless editors and the dumbing down of the product got right in line when they moved into positions of newsroom authority.

Suddenly, the money guys were making a lot of sense when they questioned the need for this bureau or that beat. Sure, an extra copy editor or an editorial cartoonist or an in-house TV critic was nice, but, hey, we gotta start running this place like a business.

From there it was easy.

Now, many in this crowd are numbered among the media commentariat. To hear them tell it, they were all doing the right thing right up until the moment they took the buyout. And there was no back door at the Alamo, either. Everyone died a hero.

So the next time you see a former editor or an ex-publisher or columnist chin-stroking their way through a lofty discussion of the sad state of daily newspapers, consider that they might not have been born in a manger.

It's altogether possible that back in the day they were not strangers to downsizing and closing bureaus, advancing mini-stories and treating disagreeement as insubordination. They might have a newsroom history of their own, and one that will not hold up to much scrutinty.

The truth is, the first time I heard it said in a newsroom that "your job is your perk" was sometime in the late 1980s, about the time that economist was telling Barney Frank they were all on the same side.

"No" to Television

2009-04-14T07:46:00.000-07:00

Don't worry. No talk here of turning off the TV, even though the programming has never, ever been worse.

No, this is a high-minded discussion of ground rules and what two people (me and Jane) have determined we will not ever watch. Enter at your own risk.

The thing is, we live in a one-TV home. And we do so by choice. And we never, ever watch anything with:

Sharks. Charles Bronson. Ex-football players dancing, with or without stars. Charles Krauthammer. The fellas in "Entourage." Howie Mandel. Don Rumsfeld. Any of the cartoon shows around "The Simpsons." Extreme Sports (no exceptions). The ESPN show with the four addled sportswriters in the boxes. Pissed-off chefs. Chefs. Sean Hannity. Adam Sandler. Kelly Ripa. The "Money Honey." Jake Tapper. "American Idol." (Again, no exceptions - Gore Vidal once referred to someone as being "blissfully unburdened by the onus of talent". Who knew it would lead to a hit prime-time show)?

David Spade. "The Deadliest Catch." Jack Bauer. Larry King, except when he interviews Bill Maher or Jon Stewart. Mike Barnicle. Dick Morris. "The View." NASCAR (excepting the Daytona 500). Shows about airplane crashes (excepting Capt. Sulley). Lou Dobbs. All shows with brainless, horny 24-year-olds sharing group houses. All shows about legendary surfer dudes. All interviews with Bono. All interviews with Mike Myers. All interviews with Newt Gingrich. Good cable shows you can't ever find ("The Closer," "Rescue Me"). Ben Stein. "Lost." "According to Jim." Shows about enormously fat people trying to lose weight. Dennis Rodman. Donald Trump.

Cramer. Tila Tequila. The traveling Playboy bunnies who kept Hugh Hefner alive with paint thinner or something. Tucker Carlson. "Unsolved Mysteries." Tyra Banks. "Celtic Woman." Larry Kudlow. "Huckabee." All quiz shows except "Jeopardy." "Fox and Friends." Glenn Beck, of course. "Big Love." The National Basketball Association, until the finals of the playoffs. Karl Rove. Judge Judy. The young women trying to read the news in the morning on CNN and their hunky partners. "Extreme Makeover Home Edition." Any Osbourne, doing anything.

Life's too short, my friends ...

Have I left anything out?

My God, I forgot Nancy Grace...

More Salt

2009-04-09T11:03:00.000-07:00

Tonight we're waching - and not for the first time - "The Gefilte Fish Chronicles." It's an hour-long celebration of the work of three formidable sisters - Sophie, Peppy and Rosie - as they prepare for Passover. Much chicken, much horseradish, much backtalk and a big helping of family and American family history.

It's the work of friends - Iris and David Burnett. And it's Iris' New Jersey family in the kitchen. Airs on WETA 26/PBS in Washington tonght and in lots more places, we hope. There's a DVD, there's a cookbook, there's a Website. You get the idea. I wouldn't steer you wrong....

Nothing to Fear

2009-04-08T06:46:00.001-07:00

A weekend trip to the Tidal Basin to explore the cherry blossom experience provided a bonus.

The trees, a gift from the Japanese people in 1912, are a big 'ol Washington deal. The bloom, which is spectacular by any measure, is Washington's way of welcoming spring. (Remember, we had no baseball for nearly 40 years).

Tourists flock, as tourists do, and by the way are there any living Americans who do not own digital cameras? Other than Jane and myself?

I have lived here twice for many, many years and of course I had never ventured to Potomac Park to actually see the cherry blossoms. If I had lived near the Hanging Gardens of Babylon in 600 BC, I would have gone only if my sister had come for a visit. Urban life deal.

Which helps explain why I had never been to see the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, which graces West Potomac Park between the Tidal Basin and the river. It's a great spot to rendezvous to see the bloom, and it's much more.

I grew up in a family that revered FDR as a man who fought for working people and saved the country. All true.

Not a perfect man. You can get an argument that the Great Depression ended with the start of American engagement in World War II. But in 1933 FDR inherited a systemic economic collapse, a dispirted and frightened citizenry, a growing lack of faith in American institutions and a daunting array of foreign policy threats.

The measure of a political figure ought to be how they respond when faced with overwhelming problems. And this unlikely savior was up the task.

In his first 100 days in office he dealt aggressively with bank failures, factory closings and farm foreclosures. There were policy changes and there were new programs, but there was hope as well in FDR's unflagging spirit.

In the most practical of terms, there was under FDR's leadership the creation of the Social Security system, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the National Labor Relations Board. There were jobs programs, programs to assist business and labor, a regulation of the stock market, and subsidies for home and farm mortgage payments.

Does anything look better 75 years later than the FDIC, an institution that guarantees the bank deposits (up to $250,000) of millions of Americans with the full faith and credit of the U.S. government?

Would we in a different place if the SEC as Roosevelt saw it had done its job in the last decade? Did Social Security do anything less than pull an entire generation of Americans (your parents, Baby Boomers) out of poverty?

There are sculptures and inscriptions here, of course, this being a Washington memorial. A George Segal sculpture of men in a bread line stays with you, as does the portrayal of a single man, a desperate man in a straight-back chair hunched in front of a radio, listening to one of FDR's "fireside chats."

A looming sculpture of an aged FDR in a wheeled chair dominates the end of the route through the memorial.
Visitors have rubbed the patina off one of FDR's fingers, and off the ears of Fala, his beloved pooch.

At his second inaugural in 1937, FDR said: "I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad and ill-nourished. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."

The news reports tell us that President Obama has been reading "Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt," H.W Brand's new biography.

I hope that's true. And I hope Obama ventures out to West Potomac Park to see FDR, if he hasn't been there.

Opening Day

2009-04-06T05:46:00.000-07:00

I'm a baseball fan, though I was never the kind of fan who would get a little dewy-eyed around Christmas and say things like "Hey, pitchers and catchers report to spring training in only eight weeks."

Baseball fans do that, more than you know. And I'm a baseball fan. My Dad was a passionate Yankee fan, even though we lived 300 miles west of the Bronx. He brought the NY Daily News home every afternoon to read about Mantle and Maris and Yogi and Whitey Ford, and I was right there with him.

We had a hometown team for a while, the Corning Red Sox. It was "A" ball, the NY-Penn League, then the lowest rung of the minor-league hierarchy. But we watched the locals take on Batavia and Wellsville and Bradford, Pa., on warm summer nights. Joe Daley, my Yankee-hating maternal gtandfather, Paul Lovette, and me.

Many of my best friends of both genders are passionate about the game as well. They are fierce in their devotion to the Yankees or the Boston Red Sox or the Chicago Cubs or the White Sox, maybe the Baltimore Orioles and, lately, the Washington Nationals.

They have rules, or at least guidelines. They never leave the park before the game is over. They hate goofy mascots, $8 beer and the incessant wail of rock music and/or country music that seems to infest the modern ballyard.

They hate Barry Bonds and steroids, love Cal Ripken, Jr., and Ken Griffey, Jr. They loath the designated hitter and are conflicted about inter-league play. They're convinced today's ballplayers are better athletes but somehow lesser human beings than the players they grew up on.

I'm comfortable with most of that. But for reasons I can't quite determine, Opening Day leaves me cold, as cold as Chicago, where Opening Day this year was scrubbed because it was, well, too cold.

This disenchantment may spring from advancing years, though many of my Baby Boomer amigos have not lost anything off their rooting fastballs. It may stem from the six or so years I spent in a great job as a sports columnist for the Chicago Tribune and, before that, at a paper in Palo Alto, CA.

That experience of actually spending time around major league baseball players will change a man. No other way to say it.

When I was writing sports there were a host of bright, talented men wearing the uniform. Two managers, Jim Frey, then of the Cubs and Tony LaRussa, then of the White Sox, come to mind. They were savvy, interesting guys, fun to talk to, though equipped with the wariness that everyone ought to employ when talking to the press.

Not surprisingly, players at the margins tended to be better company than the All-Stars, though not always. But five or six years of hanging around sullen, spoiled, overpaid lads possessed of an arcane skill set will chill the romance.

I imagine most of them felt the same way about me, except for the overpaid part.

These days, many years after I stopped getting into the ballpark for free, I refer to myself as a recovering baseball fan. LaRussa, now in St. Louis, and a handful of graying coaches may be all that's left of the era I got to witness. i never met a single Washington National, and while they are a dismal baseball lot at this point, I find it possible to root for them without equivocation.

Still, I'm happier with the concept of Opening Day than with Opening Day itself.

It's a good thing, it brings some joy to millions, it cements families and friendships, it can galvanize communities in a positive way.

Most of the players don't care about that, believe me.

But if the box scores and the fearless prognostications and the possibility that the Cubs will end their World Series futility in Year 101 leave me stranded at third, I guess that's my problem.

Play ball.

The Second Time Ever I Published Online

2009-04-04T17:42:00.000-07:00

http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/obama_coverage_mad_libs.php

Don't Steal Anything Big

2009-04-03T06:18:00.001-07:00

In the precision of the cliche, former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was at Disney World when the 16-count federal indictment came down this week. (Why do federal indictments always "come down")?

In the old days he would perhaps have been seeking solace at the Washington Park race track. Lots of history there. It's where an intrepid Chicago reporter named Alfred "Jake" Lingle was gunned down (again, they're always "gunned down," aren't they?), presumably because of his hard-nosed (see!) reportage.

But it turns out Jake was pals with both the police commissioner and a local businessman named Al Capone. Bad idea.

For the most part, Chicagoans love these kinds of stories. I spent a decade there and you will never hear a bad word about the place from me. The locals love their myths and legends the way they love Wrigley Field and, lately, this Obama couple and their children.

And while Chicago is in many ways a big, normal municipality with people going on about their lives, locals of a certain age at least are charmed and in some way proud of the kind of low-brow, pinkie-ring, Mob mopery that seems never to have quite gone away.

One afternoon years ago when I was typing a sports column for the Chicago Tribune, the Managing Editor - a former AP guy who had sloshed through many a crime scene - strode by my cubicle as if he were going to a free meal. Some mobbed-up lawyer/accountant type had been found in the trunk of a car in the western suburbs. The tragedy appeared to be "execution-style" (see!).

The newsroom was abuzz. The natives could not have been happier if they had been handing out Pulitzer Prizes like untainted pistachios. Why worry about global warming or monetary policy when you've got a prominent dead guy in a trunk?

Moving past me, the ME asked if I had heard the good news. I had. "Damn," he said, "this is great. See, we can still do it once in a while."

See, you need to put things in perspective, especially when the last governor - George Ryan - is already in the federal sneezer, and is hardly the first of his gubernatorial breed to to go there.

As for the former governor, well, he was a nitwit before he was the governor. That's no state secret.

Actually, he was a jagoff. Now there's a real Chicago expletive. Jagoff. I believe I heard it the first day I got to Chicago and pretty much every day I lived there.

Jagoff. Rolls off the tongue. Tells you all you need to know.

The First Time Ever I Published Online

2009-04-01T09:59:00.000-07:00

http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/media_layoff_mad_libs.php

Schooner Wharf

2009-03-31T13:56:00.001-07:00

When the pub-crawl gang got off the bus at the Schooner Wharf bar in Key West Marina on a recent Saturday, the men and women standing behind the beer taps and the slushy-drink machines began the eyeball-rolling.

Schooner Wharf is not a coupon-drink sort of a place. It is a self-proclaimed throwback to a time when Key West was a kind of last outpost of dissipation. It was the French Quarter without beads or cream sauce, a place where collegiate spring-breakers were no more welcome than mosquitos, a place your cousin Davey might have disappeared into back in '78.

Things have changed, of course. Fish with odd sounding names are available for $28 a copy in damask-napkin restaurants. Spring breakers show up in waves from LSU and Alabama and the rest of the SEC. The beat-up rental bike is now $12 a day. But the bike is still the best way to enjoy the above-ground cemetery and Dog Beach, a narrow spot of waterfront where dogs and those who love them chase tennis balls and throw tennis balls into the surf, usually in that order.

It's like that old Jamie McMurtry line about this being a much better place before people like me came here.

That was the view of the professionals behind the stick at the Schooner Wharf on the previously mentioned Saturday. The posture here is anti-Key West 2009, and folks with and without coupons make their way by the fishing boats, T-shirt emporiums and some pretty bad art to get there.

A person who likes bars can feel a bit like a gunslinger walking into Schooner Wharf. That's part of what they're selling. On your right are two guys with those barbed wire tattoos on their arms. They are discussing the merits of a strip club in Marathon whle yanking dollar bills and quarters out of their jeans for another brace of Miller Lights.

On your left is a couple from Eau Claire, Wisc., perhaps. They look about as crazy as Brian Williams, but they're eating and drinking and they don't have coupons. One of women behind the bar - both seaside dishy and slightly ravaged in a Jagermeister T-shirt - likes them just fine.

Hemingway didn't drink here. Deal with it.

On this Saturday, a gentlemen of uncertain years is playing a guitar and singing - really - "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." He sings Jimmy Buffett songs by request as well, though you get the feeling he doesn't want to.

The NCAA basketball tournament spins out on TV but the game isn't drawing much attention. Most of the participants are drinking for the narcotic effect, it seems, and Schooner Wharf is comfortable with that. The beer is cold. The office is a long way away. Nobody cares much about the stimulus package.

Another one? Sure. Jagermeister is standing in front of me, so I tell her I heard The Wailers were in town the other night.

Don't know, hon, she tells me. I was right here.

Fair enough.

Over the last cold one, it struck me that I was in my third decade of seeking out whatever it is the Schooner Wharf was offering. Only a handful of visits in that time, but the place always rose to the occasion.

I bought a T-shirt for $22 - God forgive me - and stumbled off into the sunshine.

Origin of This Species

2009-03-31T10:56:00.000-07:00

The title line comes from the Irish writer Brendan Behan, who said many wonderful things including this one: If it were raining soup, the Irish would be outside holding forks.

Enough about the ancestral homeland for now.