Former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and 2012 Republican presidential also-ran Newt Gingrich has announced he will campaign to succeed Pope Benedict XVI, who today announced his February 28th resignation.

Former Southern Baptist Gingrich converted to Roman Catholicism in 2009. He said today that his conversion four years ago was in anticipation of a vacancy at the top of the Vatican hierarchy. “Granted, I’m a newcomer to the church. But I’ve learned more about Catholicism in recent years than all the Cardinals combined. After all, I’m a famous historian and former Assistant Professor at West Georgia College for four years.”

Gingrich challenged Catholic Cardinals seeking the Pope post to debate him—the only contingency being that the debates be televised on Fox “News” and conducted in the English language. “Although I’m fluent in Latin and most other languages of the world, I want the average Joe to understand the advances I propose for the Church.”

The former congressman does not feel his past transgressions should be held against him, particularly his serial adultery and habit of abandoning sickly spouses. Multiple divorces are actually an advantage. Technically, his third marriage may not be recognized in the eyes of the church and he can qualify as a single man without bothering to get an annulment.

“Let ye that is without sin cast the first Viagra pill. Keep in mind that I only shacked up with consenting adult women,” he said. “Nobody ever accused me of pedophilia or homosexual acts. And besides, I spent 88 straight hours in a confession booth. I was instructed by the priest to recite so many ‘Hail Mary’s” that I finally recorded them on a continuous audio loop.”

Gingrich said his use of digital equipment in praying for forgiveness is just one example of the modern technology he will bring to the Church. Indeed, his campaign for Pope is based on a “Contract with Catholics,” a policy statement similar to his 1994 “Contract with America” as the leader of Republican takeover of the House of Representatives.

If the release of white Vatican chimney smoke signals Gingrich’s election to lead the church, he said his first action will be to estaablish a Catholic colony on the moon—a project that drew considerable ridicule when he made the proposal as a presidential candidate. Gingrich says he is not quite certain why a Catholic moon colony is needed, but he will think up a reason before implementing the plan. His current thinking is it will move the faithful closer to God. No doubt, many folks would support sending Newt to the Moon.

At this early date, there are no other American politicians in the Pope race. Perpetual Presidential candidates Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann are Lutherans, and Texas Governor Ron Perry is Baptist. Former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum is Catholic, but may be too devout for even the most conservative leader of the church.

A dark horse might be Bobby Jindal who is Catholic. However, the fulltime frequent flyer, part-time Louisiana Governor and boy exorcist continues to live under the delusion that he will be elected President in 2016.

Campaigning for Pope may be a more realistic option for Jindal.

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger: A Saga of Exposing TV Preachers, Corrupt Politicians, Right-Wing Lunatics…and Me is available at amazon.com, soft-cover or Kindle and at independent bookstores. It offers $19.99 worth of laughs and  much more. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) investigative reporting career and the characters I encountered during 30 years of muckraking.

Join me for a moment on an ego trip. There is a purpose.

During my three decades as an investigative reporter in various venues around the country, I collected more than twenty major national broadcast journalism prizes. Not included in the count are state and regional awards, many of them long forgotten.

Beyond the sheer quantity of my accolades is the remarkable array of topics I covered. My four Peabody medallions were for exposés of  organized crime, political corruption, the ministgry of television evangelist Jimmy Swaggart and revelations about a state insurance commissioner, who with his five cohorts, went to prison in the aftermath of my disclosures. The insurance and televangelism documentaries earned two Dupont Columbia citations—the so-called Pulitzer Prizs of broadcasting journalism. Exposing payoffs by a bank to a state official won the Radio Television International Award for Investigative Reporting, now called the Edward R. Murrow award. I could go on and on. But you get the idea.

My reason for this flight of braggadocio is not so much to praise myself, but to eulogize the employers and the craft that gave me an opportunity to do the kind of the television stories that now rest in broadcast journalism’s graveyard. I’m not demeaning my own abilities. I must have had a talent for scandal-mongering. However, I could never have won all the prizes without the support of employers. In Baton Rouge, Miami, Boston and for awhile at CNN,  I was given free rein to uncover stories I deemed important.

My bosses major benefit besides the awards was a bit of journalistic pride—at a high cost. Investigative reporting is an expensive business for news organizations in terms of legal fees and other attendant costs. I’ve been reminded of the risk in recent months while teaching LSU continuing education classes for students 50 years old and up. When video of my long ago exposés—classes are kind of like a John Camp film festival—I realize my good fortune in being given the time and resources to do the the kind of investigations that produced results. Several resulted in lawsuits. The good news is I never lost.

The bad news is television muckraking is pretty much history. There are a few exceptions. Sixty Minutes and Frontline come to mind. For the most part, though, television tries to fake investigative reporting—especially twenty four hour cable news organizations. I’m particularly disappointed with CNN, where I spent ten years as Senior Correspondent in a forty member investigative unit, another piece of broadcasting journalism history. I don’t expect a return to its heyday with the hiring of new network president, Jeff Zucker.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/tv-column/post/jeff-zucker-officially-named-president-of-cnn-worldwide/2012/11/29/e032ddd6-3a38-11e2-8a97-363b0f9a0ab3_blog.html

Zucker’s career, mainly with NBC, has been in entertainment and “news lite” programming. He now faces the proposition of winning back viewers who fled from CNN and its endless supply of talking heads, many of whom are so repetitive I feel like a clairvoyant because of my ability to predict exactly what they will say. For the most part, pundits have replaced reporters on CNN.

Maybe I should watch Fox “News” more often now that Joe Muto, a former Fox producer, has revealed to Huffington Post that the bizarre stuff on the network is actually a gigantic farce and shouldn’t be taken seriously.

“The people at Fox are not stupid,” he said. “They know when they have Dick Morris or one of these other pundits on predicting a landslide victory for Romney, the people behind the scenes know that it’s all bluster. They know that this is sort of an entertainment. They know that a lot of these people are just hucksters … we producers know that this is all a farce. The reason we don’t step in and give a reality check to our audience is because that’s terrible for ratings.”

Muto also talked about Fox News hosts Megyn Kelly, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, and predicted that the network will sand down some of its hard-right edges in coming years.

Unfortunately, most viewers don’t understand Fox’s satire—me included. If, in fact, its all a big joke, the network is too subtle for me. I guess those of us taking the network’s Republican propaganda, distortions and outright lies seriously are like the Chinese folks who believed a recent article in the The Onion describing the leader of North Korea as the sexiest man alive.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/kim-jongun-named-the-onions-sexiest-man-alive-for,30379/

As a regular reader of The Onion, I knew the Kim Jong-un story was a joke. But Fox “News?” Sean Hannity? Bill O’Reilly? Regular guest Donald Trump and all the other clowns on the network? I don’t a sense of humor that is capable of grasping their ?satirical? rants. So Muto’s explanation may have merit, given the quanity of comic material the network provides Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. 

Maybe that’s the future of CNN. Jeff Zucker can rescue the network from the ratings toilet by hiring the cast of  Saturday Night Live to anchor and offer commentary.  

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger: A Saga of Exposing TV Preachers, Corrupt Politicians, Right-Wing Lunatics…and Me is available at amazon.com, soft-cover or Kindle and at independent bookstores like the Cottonwood in Baton Rouge. It offers $19.99 worth of laughs and much more. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) investigative reporting career.

After maintaining a low profile for nearly two decades while raising a son as a single parent in a small Alabama town, Forrest Gump has been hired by the Republican Party to help save it from irrelevancy. Relying on his momma’s advice, Mr. Gump is championing a GOP mantra, “Stupid is as stupid does.”

A key factor in Mr. Gump’s decision was a statement by alleged Louisiana Governor Bobby (Smarty Pants) Jindal—the part-time exorcist and full-time frequent flyer who urged Republicans to abandon the title of “Stupid Party.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/13/bobby-jindal-gop_n_2121511.html 

Mr. Gump’s initial advice is to have Jindal perform a mass exorcism aimed at disabusing tea partiers and other malcontents in thirty states of the notion of seceding from the union. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/13/petition-to-secede-states_n_2120410.html?utm_hp_ref=politics 

Gump believes the idea of secession far exceeds the threshold of “stupid does” since several of states involved receive considerably more money from the government than the taxes they send to Washington.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-the-confederacy-of-takers/2012/11/13/d8adc7ee-2dd4-11e2-beb2-4b4cf5087636_story.html?wpisrc=emailtoafriend

Instead of secession, Mr. Gump suggests the dissidents unite and form their own nation under the leadership of billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch. They seem to have huge sums of money to waste on political campaigns. Why not own a country and declare themselves co-Kings? A third billionaire Koch brother, William, is already building his own town in Colorado and owns enough property to locate a nation.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/billionaire-bill-koch-builds-private-old-west-town-184240977.html

Mr. Gump says the possibilities of a new country are unlimited—a nation with its own Fox “News” propaganda network and and radio stations for people like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and other talk show sages of the far-right to proselytize their messages of distortion and lies. A high fence around the Koch nation will keep liberals, Hispanics and other minorities out. More importantly, the fence will keep its nutty population in.

Mr. Gump believes residents can support themselves by digging for coal, refining Koch oil and polluting the air for fun and profit.  I think he  is on to something. However, I wonder if he is truly committed to the plan.

He tells neighbors, “Alabama is a shit hole, but I ain’t leaving. I’m rich enough from Bubba Gump Shrimp Company to hire security people to protect me from the “stupid-does” secessionists.”

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger: A Saga of Exposing TV Preachers, Corrupt Politicians, Right-Wing Lunatics…and Me is available at amazon.com, soft-cover or Kindle and at independent bookstores like the Cottonwood in Baton Rouge. It offers $19.99 worth of laughs and much more. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) investigative reporting career.

I promised not to gloat after the presidential election. But I can’t resist saying, “I told you so.” Actually, my prediction was conservative—290 Electoral votes compared with 303 presently and a likely total of 332 when Florida finishes its count.

In the past few weeks, I’ve been asked (not too often) about my absence from the derelictgunslinger blog. The short answer is I don’t like declaring rain is wet. Anyone viewing these posts knows my politics. So why aggravate my wing-nut family members and friends. Better to let the outcome speak for itself. And besides, this blog was mainly created to sell  my non-best selling memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger. Please buy the damn book and make me happy—though I can’t imagine being much happier than I was at 11:00 p.m. Tuesday night.

In the aftermath of the election, there is no need now to worry about  offending friends and far-right members of my family, several of whom make Ann Coulter and Michele Bachmann look like bed-wetting liberals. Most of them are already apoplectic about President Obama’s re-election. I only wish they would stop throwing out words like socialism, communism and marxism—terms they are too ignorant to define in terms of Obama’s policies. If these folks looked inward, they would discover another word that describes their attitudes toward the president. Racism.

Much of the winger post-election whining deals with minority influence on the outcome and the disproportionate number of votes they cast for the president. A coalition of African Americans, Hispanics and women (if, in fact, they are considered a minority) undoubtedly played a major role in Barack Obama’s re-election. But how about the minority class to which I belong? Angry white southern males.

Born, bred in the deep south and now living in red-state Louisiana, I’m a double minority—a liberal “yellow dog” democrat. Worse, I no longer shoot unarmed animals, cast for fish or drink whiskey straight out of the bottle—activities that are all part of my past. Nor am I angry at anyone. At least today. But as evidence of my southern heritage, I still stuff myself with gumbo, fried seafood and chicken, and in the privacy of my home, I’ve been known to loudly fart and belch—much to my wife’s chagrin.

Although my confession is slightly embarrassing, it is certainly not as disgraceful as the actions during the election of cycle of many prominent pundits, public figures and so-called journalists. Fox “News,” aka the Republican Propoganda Network, is of course in a class by itself. I don’t begrudge the First Amendment freedoms of its stable of lunatic commentators to express opinions—no matter how bizarre. However, the network reaches the level of disgrace when it tries to pass off political propoganda as news. And that happened frequently during the presidential campaign.

But no need to belabor criticism of Fox “News.” I’ve beat that issue to death ever since this blog was started. Nor will I devote many more words to ex-disc jockeys Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and others of the their ilk like “birther” Donald Trump, who is often given time on Fox to humiliate himself. All the aforementioned characters personify the failure of the nation’s mental health policies of deinstitutionalzation of the marginally nutty, a thin line these guys tend to cross on a daily basis.

In handing out disgrace plaques, Louisiana Governor Bobby (Smarty Pants) Jindal deserves special recognition. Hopeful of a high post in a Republican Administration, the part-time exorcist and fulltime frequent flyer abandoned the state he was supposed to lead to travel for days on end as a Mitt Romney surrogate. Jindal did accomplish one goal. He ensured his legacy as the worst governor in Louisiana’s history. And that is saying a lot.

I guess the one piece of bad news that comes out of the election for Louisianans is the fact that Jindal will be around for another two years to continue devastating the states education and health systems and reducing  the quality of life in taking the state to third world status. 

But despite all that happened during the election campaign, one disappointment stands out for me—the full page newspaper ads by the Billy Graham Crusade that were in effect an endorsement of Mitt Romney and the Republican Party. Long ago, Billy Graham stated in an authorized biography—A Prophet with Honor—that his support of President Richard Nixon taught him to avoid becoming publicly involved in partisan politics. The book was written by Rice University sociologist Dr. William Martin, a leading expert on evangelism and a friend of mine from the days when I was doing exposés about spiritually exploitative TV preachers. 

The recent ad was allegedly signed by Billy Graham—a spiritual leader I’ve always admired. And it probably expressed his views on gay marriage and abortion accurately. Still, I have a hunch the world famous 94 year old evangelist was victimized by son, Franklin, a 60 year old hemorrhoid on his daddy’s ass. Franklin has made a career of creating discomfort for the evangelist. So my disgrace plaque goes to Franklin instead of his father.

That said, I’m just glad the campaign is finally over. Though it will take time, I hope all the sore losers will finally shut the hell up. And if we are lucky, let us hope during the president’s second term for the departure of a couple of U.S. Supreme Justices responsible for the Citizen’s United decision that put unlimited secret money into political campaigns.

Don’t you know that all these big Romney donors are experiencing PESD—Post Election Stress Disorder. That makes me happy.

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger: A Saga of Exposing TV Preachers, Corrupt Politicians, Right-Wing Lunatics…and Me is available at amazon.com, soft-cover or Kindle and at independent bookstores like the Cottonwood in Baton Rouge. It offers $19.99 worth of laughs and much more. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) investigative reporting career.

Maybe Rush Limbaugh was under the influence of pills. Or perhaps he has fallen farther off his rocker, rendering him delirious. Whatever the case, Rush’s most recent act of stupendous stupidity was his potential career-ending advocacy of freedom of expression in the United States—the First Amendment protection that allows him, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and a whole host of far-right, profiteering propogandists on Fox “News” to exploit the fears, bigotry and anger of people by spreading political disinformation, distortions and outright lies.   

Earlier this week, one of Rush’s rants criticized President Obama for a speech before the United Nations defending our nation’s freedom of expression.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0912/81662.html?hp=r2_b1

According to Limbaugh’s twisted logic, the President’s mention of a controversial film that set-off Muslim riots in several countries was, in effect, a promotion of the amateurish, hate-filled video. AM radio’s most notorious hemorrhoid must have been under the influence in the days prior to Obama’s U.N. speech or he would have noticed that except for folks trapped in the wilderness without cell phones, everybody in America and even in darkest Africa already knew about the film trailer. 

I jest, of course, because Limbaugh was well-aware of his distortion. That’s his style. He believes his listeners are brain-dead. And in many instances, he is probably correct. But then again, consider his biggest fan—Louisiana Governor Bobby (Smarty Pants) Jindal, an Ivy League honors graduate and Rhodes scholar.

Limbaugh made the off-handed remark one day that Governor Smarty Pants was destined to become President. Jindal believed him and became so excited he forgot all about what state he is supposed to govern. Indeed, he was flitting about Iowa this week telling voters to vote against one of their state Supreme Court Justices who cast a ballot in favor of gay marriage. 

Not so coincidentally, Iowa is where presidential campaigns begin. And ever since Rush’s  comment, Jindal has kept busy feeding his delusions of grandeur. He has struck fear in the hearts network TV photographers by stalking every one of them within a ten mile radius.  Instead of governing Louisiana, he has devoted his efforts to accumulating frequent flyer miles while traveling around the nation on self-promotional tours. Left behind is a state facing gigantic size budget problems, serious quality of life crises and an educational voucher system that teaches Louisiana students  the earth is flat—or some sort of science nearly as ridiculous.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/08/crazy-facts-students-will_n_1758003.html?utm_hp_ref=politics&ir=Politics

What are the motives of the Rhodes Scholar’s policies? Could his voucher system be part of a right-wing conspiracy to indoctrinate Louisiana kids to grow up and become Limbaugh listeners. After all, Governor Smarty Pants owes the pill-head talk show host bigtime.  Thanks to Rush, Jindal is about to enter into the Guinness Book of Records for collecting the largest number of frequent flyer miles in the shortest period of time on record—enough to fly him to Mars and beyond. Hopefully, he will take Rush with him.  

And that’s my freedom of expression.

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger: A Saga of Exposing TV Preachers, Corrupt Politicians, Right-Wing Lunatics…and Me is available at amazon.com, soft-cover or Kindle and at independent bookstores like the Cottonwood in Baton Rouge. It offers $19.99 worth of laughs and much more. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) investigative reporting career.

A quickie (blog post you dirty old men) before I head to Florida to inspect the damage inflicted on the Republican Party by old white dudes attending the GOP convention in Tampa. At least Clint Eastwood wasn’t carrying a drool cup. Like many other folks—including a lot of non-partisan opinionators—I found his performance beyond weird.

Having reported on two national political conventions—the 1968 Democrats in Chicago and the 1972 Republicans in Miami Beach—I echo the comments of most witnesses to Dirty Harry’s strange meanderings. “What the hell was that about.” Maybe he really believed President Obama was sitting in the empty chair on the platform.

 But all sorts of odd behavior is occuring in this campaign like Democratic Senator Harry Reid’s psychic declaration that Mitt Romney paid no taxes for ten years, and the barrage of mainly GOP political ads that have overwhelmed the fact-checking industry. Shades of Sarah Palin, who was last seen outside the Fox “News” studios screaming, “Let me in, let me in.”

Sadly for wits and half-wits like me, the former GOP Vice Presidential nominee and half-term Alaskan Governor has been declared irrelevant. Shunted aside, she feeds her Attention Getting Deficit by criticizing the 2012 Republican ticket.   

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/31/sarah-palin-romney-ryan-tarp_n_1845315.html?utm_hp_ref=politics

I guess a “yellow dog” liberal Democrat such as me should be celebrating the GOP’s self-destruction. But the shame of politics nowadays is there is nothing worth celebrating. The divisiveness—especially the crap spewed by Rush, Sean and their ilk—has reduced the nation’s politics to the level of some third world country.

Anyway, its time for me to take a break and await the Democratic National Convention next week. I probably should not leak information my intrepid investigative reporting has uncovered. But I have learned the name of the Democrat’s mystery speaker. It will be Peewee Herman.

Off to Florida.

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger: A Saga of Exposing TV Preachers, Corrupt Politicians, Right-Wing Lunatics…and Me is available at amazon.com, soft-cover or Kindle and at independent bookstores like the Cottonwood in Baton Rouge. It offers $19.99 worth of laughs and much more. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) investigative reporting career.

Metaphor definition: A figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate another, thus making an implicit comparison, as in “Sea of troubles” or “All the world is a stage.”

Vice President Joe Biden needed a better metaphor than his comment to a predominately black audience that Mitt Romney’s Wall Street policies would  put folks back in chains. 

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/14/biden-romneys-wall-street-will-put-yall-back-in-chains/ 

The Biden remark followed his claim and the belief of fellow Democrats that the GOP would “unchain” Wall Street, meaning the repeal of tighter regulations on banking and other financial transactions by high rollers. But forget the context. In today’s political environment, every word and every phrase is parsed by reporters. Minor gaffes become big news. Both parties are victimized by the superficiality of contemporary political journalism.

Worse, many of the nation’s voters—especially cable news viewers and talk radio listeners—have been dumbed-down to the point that they can’t differentiate between real issues and bullshit. Forgive my language, but I’m unable think of a better word describing coverage of the 2012 presidential campaign. And for that matter, most political campaigns.

Moronic reporting is non-partisan, though Republicans seem to bare the brunt of gaffes escalating to the level of being scandalous. Having said that, I admit to rarely watching Fox “News,” aka the Republican Propaganda Network, or listening for extended periods of time to a bunch of ex-disc jockeys with names like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, et al. If Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are any indication, my guess is that Democrats are unloved in those venues,

No doubt, the right-wing media branch has conditioned a lot of people to believe the damndest politicians on God’s green earth. How else can you explain the alleged popularity of Sarah Palin, Chistine O’Donnell and, in particular, a sizeable number of members of Congress who seem to be in some bizarre  competition to win the title of the nuttiest person to ever hold a seat in those hallowed halls. I can’t decide whether to vote for latter day commie hunter Alan West or conspiracy lunatic Michele Bachmann and her Tea Party allies in the House of Representatives. Each has a shot at a Gold Medal for the seriously demented.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-modern-day-mccarthyism/2012/08/08/0c6090fc-e1a5-11e1-98e7-89d659f9c106_story.html?hpid=z3

Before conceding medals to Bachman or West, I have to concede there are other serious contenders like Texas Republican Louie Gohmert. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/20/louie-gohmert-aurora-shootings_n_1689099.html?utm_hp_ref=politics

But Gohmert may be disqualified because most politicians from his home state are slightly off kilter. Who can forget Texas Governor Rick Perry? What a tease Perry has become. He keeps hinting that Texas will secede from the union but never follows through on the threat. Please, Governor, do it.

Anyway, I’m home from vacation. And the Governor of my fair state has  awakened from his fantasy dream of becoming Mitt Romney’s running mate.  Delusional creationist and facilitator of exorcisms, Bobby (Smarty Pants) Jindal, now awaits the telephone call that will get him the hell out of Louisiana before citizens realize the mess he has created with his so-called school voucher program.

http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/07/photos-evangelical-curricula-louisiana-tax-dollars 

The reality of what Jindal has done to Louisiana will hurt for decades to come. But maybe there is a method to his madness—the education of a generation of students more ignorant than their forebearers.

Sadly, much of the media and a lot of voters will be too stupid to realize the damage that Jindal and his fellow travelers has caused.

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger: A Saga of Exposing TV Preachers, Corrupt Politicians, Right-Wing Lunatics…and Me is available at amazon.com, soft-cover or Kindle and at independent bookstores like the Cottonwood in Baton Rouge. It offers $19.99 worth of laughs and much more. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) investigative reporting career.

Reader’s who have peeked at this blog in the past are aware that it will be a steaming hot day in Antarctica before a born and bred southern “yellow dog” liberal Democrat like me casts a vote for a Republican—especially Mitt Romney, the animated department store manequin and probable 2012 GOP Presidential nominee. But in fairness, I will say in Romney’s is getting a raw deal from a lot of reporters, albeit a dilemma of his own making.

Because Romney has been less than forthcoming in providing documentation relating to some aspects of his reign as CEO of Bain Capital,   certain segments of the news media have become an echo chamber in raising suspicions. “What is he hiding?” The question is being repeated over and over again by reporters, left-leaning pundits and representatives of President Obama’s re-election team. Romney’s wife, Ann, jumped to his defense today.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/19/ann-romney_n_1685735.html 

There may be perfectly good reasons why Romney refuses to release income tax returns and/or minutes of Bain Board of Directors meetings, though I can’t think of any offhand that would excuse a man who wants to be leader of the free world from making full disclosure.  Recent history has proven that lack of transparency has been the basis of bogus scandals.

Why did President Obama wait so long to make public his long form birth certificate, which proved to all but nut-cases like billionaire Donald Trump and Arizona tough-guy Sheriff Joe Arpaio that he was born in Hawaii instead of being delivered by an African witch doctor in a Kenyan jungle.

Why did Bill and Hillary Clinton delay delivering documents that would have ended the so-called Whitewater scandal before it gained steam—a $70-million taxpayer-supported charade that ultimately degenerated in to an impeachment that focused to large extent on the knee calluses of White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Since the 1970’s Watergate scandal, journalists have been doing cheap imitations of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post reporters credited with giving momentum to an investigation that brought down a President. Admittedly, I had such thoughts when CNN dispatched me to Little Rock in the early stages of Whitewater. 

But there was no scandal to be found as was shown seven years later in the final report of the findings of three Independent Counsels, who combined to waste the aforementioned 70-million bucks. Leaving Bill and Monica’s amorous adventures aside, of course. All I got for beating the final report by seven years and $69.99-million was a reputation of being a Clinton apologist. Truth in reporting my Emmy-nominated story didn’t matter.

Anyway, I’m puzzled by Mitt Romney’s secretiveness. Maybe he doesn’t really want to be President. Surely, he knows concealment of information only breeds suspicions. And in the absence of a “smoking gun,” that is all that is needed to create a full-scale scandal—at least in the minds of contemporary journalists. Actually, I wouldn’t be shocked if he threw the election.

Romney only had to take a side glance at the GOP candidates standing beside him during the primary debates to understand the gene pool of his opponents. Think about it. Gaffe-prone Texas Governor Rick Perry? Mentally deranged Congresswoman Michele Bachmann? Serial adulterer Newt Gingrich? Weird Rick Santorum? Crazy Uncle Ron Paul? Pizza king Herman Cain? I can’t imagine that Romney wanted to be viewed as a member of the strange cartel.

Indeed, Former Utah Governor and fellow Mormon Jon Huntsman was the only candidate on stage besides Romney who seemed to have a grasp of reality. And Mitt’s reality changes  from day to day.

His most recent incarnation is being a whiner. “Poor me, the President is saying bad things about my business background.” Boo hoo. Romney must have forgotten his own barrage of attacks on Obama. Or the Golden Rule. Turnabout is fair play, meaning there is no place in politics for sissies.

Romney’s whining does provide a light touch in an endless campaign that sometimes seems like its been going on for a years, rather than months. But his hypocrisy is nothing compared to that of Fox “News,” aka the Republican Propaganda Network. A Fox executive says he is upset because the President has made good-humored, smart-ass remarks about Fox—the “fair and balanced” network specializing in manufacturing bogus scandals to discredit the Obama Administration.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/19/fox-news-obama-lowers-office_n_1685723.html?utm_hp_ref=media

Ironically, the so-called mainstream media is on the brink of sinking to the level of Fox “News” by creating a scandal involving Romney’s previous business dealings and failure to release income tax returns—a scandal that is solely based on Romney’s lack of transparency. Fortunately for the candidate, he can stop all the speculation by simply changing his mind and releasing information.

As we all know, changing his mind is Romney’s special talent.

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger: A Saga of Exposing TV Preachers, Corrupt Politicians, Right-Wing Lunatics…and Me is available at amazon.com, soft-cover or Kindle and at independent bookstores like the Cottonwood in Baton Rouge. It offers $19.99 worth of laughs and much more. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) investigative reporting career.