Since the mid-1960’s, I have interacted with six Louisiana Governors—John McKeithen, Edwin Edwards, David Treen, Buddy Roemer, Mike Foster and Kathleen Blanco. My relationships ranged from casual to friendly to downright hostile. Edwin Edwards falls into the hostile category. After a couple of exposés that failed to meet his approval, he anointed me with the label, “derelict gunslinger.” The title refers to my checkered past and occupation as a muckraker.

I’ve never met Governor Smarty Pants, aka Bobby Jindal. Not there haven’t been opportunities. When he isn’t travelling across the country to raise campaign funds, promote himself as a potential national GOP candidate for something (preferably the Presidency and/or Vice Presidency), he is either searching for television cameras, giving his Jesus testimony in churches or passing out medals to military veterans, which is the Governor’s latest publicity ploy. He needs to adopt a campaign slogan of “Anywhere but Baton Rouge.”

I’m a four-year military veteran—a partially disabled veteran, in fact, as a result of being to close to jet aircraft and loud explosions. But despite tales I told barroom buddies in my drinking days long ago, the hearing loss I suffered did not involve great heroics. I deserved no extra medals then. Or now. Nonetheless, thanks for the offer, Governor. But I pass. The money can be better utilized keeping you in the Capitol figuring out ways to stop Louisiana’s descent to the status of a third world country.

The “third world”  analogy is not original. It was recently used by my former television colleague Barry Erwin, now head of the Council for a Better Louisiana. His remarks related to the Governor’s unending demands for slashing education budgets. From pre-school to college and beyond, the future is bleak. The only ray of sunshine is the LSU Tigers, which for many people is more important anyway. But that could change after football season opens this coming Saturday, meaning that the burden is on Coach Les Miles to give Louisianans something to brag about.

To quote our President, “Let me be perfectly clear.” I have not a clue of how  to deal with Louisiana’s financial dilemma. But it seems that Governor Smarty Pants could offer a plan better than cut, slash and eliminate. After all, the guy is an Ivy League educated Rhodes Scholar. And that may be the problem. More than any Louisiana Governor I’ve known, there seems to be a disconnect between Jindal, the legislature and the people who elected him.

Instead of focusing on the state’s financial problems during the most recent legislative session, the Governor stalked television cameras on the gulf coast. Throughout the efforts to deal with the BP oil spill catastrophe, he stepped before cameras on a daily basis to show-off his speed-talking skills. Some of his updates were barely comprehensible, but 24-hour cable news networks gave him the face time on national TV that he coveted.

Perhaps Governor Smarty Pant’s constant presence at the scene was helpful, but I haven’t figured out in what way. Certainly, his absence from Baton Rouge deprived the legislature of any kind of leadership. The only measure that seemed to remotely interest the administration was maintaining as much secrecy as possible with respect to Governor’s office. Come to think of it, Jindal might be positioning himself for a CIA appointment.

Whether Kathleen Blanco could have done a better job in handling the state’s financial crisis is an unknown. Given her background as a teacher and her interest in the state’s education system, I’m guessing she would have been far more aggressive in protecting Louisiana’s academic programs. Unfortunately, though, Hurricane Katrina did her in—unfairly maybe.

Katrina’s impact on Blanco falls under my heading of reporting that I never completed. In 2006, I did preliminary research for a Dallas, Texas production company that was in the early stages of a proposed movie length Katrina documentary. As it turned out, the project was too little, too late. Spike Lee’s HBO documentary was already in production.

Before the the Dallas group abandoned its project, I reviewed a lot of material, and spent time with Governor Blanco and several Administration officials. I came away under the  impression that she was the victim of circumstances such as the storm altering its course overnight after many residents refused to evacuate, levees giving way, news reporters playing “gotcha” and politicians trying to divert blame for their dereliction of duties on others.

At my first meeting with Governor Blanco, she made the point that if the levees protecting New Orleans had held, the major story of 2005 would have been Rita—the devastating hurricane that struck southwestern Louisiana a few weeks after Katrina. Although the force of Katrina inflicted heavy damage on the area, it was the flood that caused most of the devastation.

Regardless, Blanco was blamed for Corps of Engineers miscalculations, FEMA’s failures, and the tepid response to the tragedy by the Bush Administration. Because of the public’s perception of her “weakness” in responding to the storm, Blanco’s re-election chances diminished. Her departure from politics made it easy sailing for Bobby Jindal.

So far, Governor Smarty Pants has done a fine job getting on TV, visiting churches and presenting medals to old soldiers. One day, maybe he will get around to leading the state out of its crisis. 

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, is available at amazon.com and independent bookstores. It offers much more than $19.99 worth of laughs. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.

The dumbing down of America continues. In 2008, I expected former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to go away and devote her time to shooting wolves from helicopters. But like a persistent virus, her simple-minded populist solutions to complex problems spreads among a discontented segment of society, as well as opportunistic politicians and wild-eyed pundits on radio and television.

The latest victim of populism fever is Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal. For nearly three months, Governor “Smarty-Pants” has spent nearly every waking hour in close range of television cameras that are covering the unfolding oil spill tragedy on the Gulf Coast. No doubt, he should be a leader in the battle to save the environmental and economic future of south Louisiana. But somewhere along the way, he seems to have been infected with Sarah Palin disease. Jindal has taken the attitude that he doesn’t need the advice of no stinking scientists, environmentalists and biologists.

For an Ivy League educated Rhodes Scholar, Governor Smarty Pants insistence that he knows more than all the experts seems curious. A mark of intelligence is a willingness to listen. But apparently, the only thing Jindal hears is his soaring fabvorability polls—most recently at 74 percent.

The man who would like to be President could probably add a few more points to his popularity rating by shooting BP executives from helicopters. Come to think about it, though, Palin has already cornered the market on shooting unarmed creatures from above. Maybe Jindal can lure BP officials into the churches where he trolls for votes when not jumping in front of TV cameras. His prey would then have a fighting chance since the Governor’s signature is now on a bill allowing concealed weapons in church sanctuaries. I know there are certain restrictions, but who reads the small print.

Anyway, I’m digressing into silliness. Back to the more serious business of political exploitation of the oil spill disaster. Baton Rouge’s Sunday Advocate has a front page story that does not speak well of LSU scientists, nor the Jindal Administration. An LSU professor and advisor to the state Office of Coastal Protection and Restoration told the newspaper that he and panel members had the same concerns as the federal government about the Governor’s insistence of constructing sand berms and rock jetties to block the flow of oil into marsh lands.

http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/98183534.html

In effect, Louisiana’s coastal “protection” panel of experts remained publicly silent because of the political ramifications. In other words, don’t rock the populist boat of Governor Smarty Pants, even though they believed his plan would have hurt more than help protect the fragile marsh land.

Unrelated to the Gulf oil spill was another weekend news article offering insight about the Sarah Palin syndrome. A study by a bunch of academic pointy-heads concluded that when people accept misinformation as reality, actual facts will not change minds under most circumstances.

http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2010/07/11/how_facts_backfire/?page=full

I know the study was probably conducted by liberal elitists. Even so, how about the birthers? Nothing changes their minds. I wish they were an extreme example. Sadly, the viral e-mail that often arrives suggests otherwise. And as a matter of personal corroboration, I have right-wing friends and family members who spit in the face of facts that dispute beliefs and/or opinions that are patently ridiculous. To be fair, the hardcore left is just as hard-headed. Worse, though, are journalists who never allow facts to get in the way of a good story.

As far as I know, the only antidote to protect against the Sarah Palin virus is reading. But too many people gave up that habit long ago in favor of simply listening. And what they listen to is a carrier of the disease of ignorance.

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, is available at amazon.com and independent bookstores. It offers much more than $19.99 worth of laughs. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.

The distance on a baseball diamond between the pitcher’s mound and homeplate is 60 feet, six inches. From that vantage point, the pitcher can determine the number of fingers displayed by the catcher for a fastball, curve ball, slider, etc. Ideally, the pitcher will then throw the ball within centimeters of his target. It is no big deal. Unless, of course, the pitcher misses the target and a batter sends the ball sailing over the fence.

Having cited this example of distance, I find it incredible that news reporters are whining about the U.S. Coast Guard and BP establishing restrictions that bar them from approaching within 60 feet of active cleanup operations and other activities related to the Gulf Coast oil spill.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/06/bp-media-clampdown-journa_n_636317.html

Maybe news organizations have assigned near-sighted news people to cover the catastrophe. Or legally blind reporters, who hope the damage can be traced in Braille. Or just maybe the people covering the oil spill need something to bitch about besides the unfolding disaster. Whining is, after all a characteristic of folks in the news business. Certainly, I did enough in 30 years as a reporter/muckraker.

In the past, much of my media bashing has focused on the timidity of the news media. I expressed dismay after learning that reporters obeyed unofficial orders issued by self-important underlings not to approach certain public areas. In my lifetime as journalist, I used an obscene two word phrase when jerks tried to block my access to areas that were clearly public. Not once was I arrested, although I would have welcomed the opportunity to be dragged away in handcuffs. Deep down, I had a yearning to be a journalism martyr. Indeed, in those rare instances when my name appeared in newspapers for taking up some cause, I played the duplicious role of outraged newsman while secretly smiling to myself as I clipped the articles from the papers to show colleagues. It made me feel important. 

Anyway, a restricted 60 foot perimeter seems reasonable, That is presuming that the rule is flexible. In our journalistic arrogance, those of us in the media have always believed that we are above rules and regulations established for lesser beings. As a result, unreasonable expectations on the part of journalists have often brought about tighter restrictions in covering news events.

My career overlapped court decisions that tightened laws dealing with trespassing. Admittedly, I was sometimes a violator of the privacy of people. Many of my early exposés involved gathering undercover video in restaurants, businesses and oher places.  Much of the invasive filming was in Miami where I was staked out in a snoop van painted the same colors as a Southern Bell telephone truck. But teh van camera only reached as far as the doorways of locations. As I write in Odyssey of a Dereilict Gunslinger (I have to plug the book), I bragged in a long ago TV Guide article about orchestrating an undercover filming expedition inside a Miami Beach restaurant to capture pictures of mobster Meyer Lansky meeting with associates.

Getting pictures inside was a problem since my face regularly appeared on Channel Seven. Worse, Lansky and I had several previous encounters. So we recruited a new member to the spy team. Mercifully, the young producer will remain nameless. No need to embarrass him at this late date. But he was terrified of being caught, tortured and killed.

After assuaging his fears, we convinced the producer to dress as a telephone repairman and undertake a mission to get snapshots with a miniature camera concealed in a cigarette pack. Technology had not yet developed tiny video cameras that can be hidden in lapels.

On the appointed day, our nervous spy got out of the van without being pushed. Although a non-smoker, he paused to light up outside the restaurant. In a greatly exaggerated motion, he inhaled deeply and began coughing to near collapse. My photographer and I laughed so hard in the spy van that I feared the movement of the vehicle would attract the attention of passers-by.

Catching his breath, our undercover snooper staggered inside and found a table as far away from other diners as possible. Naturally, Lansky and friends also wanted to sit far away from the crowd. As luck would have it, they chose a table adjacent to the producer. It’s a wonder he didn’t keel over with a coronary. But he sucked it up and snapped off a roll of black and white film. The photographs were important in establishing links between Lansky, a group of bookies and Miami public officials.

Although the pictures were a significant part of my story, video we shot outside the restuarant from our van was equally, if not more important. Prior to going inside, Lansky encountered and embraced a racetrack owner, who had publicly denied on many occasions knowing the so-called “wizard of organized crime.” In fact, he had provided the state racing commission with an affidavit denying he knew the mobster. Our video caught the two men engrossed in a long, animated conversation. It resulted in the racetrack owner having to relinquish his pari-mutuel wagering license.

The restaurant adventure—part of a Peabody-award winning series—was one of my last inside filming efforts. Not long afterwards, the courts made trespassing on private property scarier than defamation and libel lawsuits. So my unsolicited advice to reporters is to know what is public and what is private while covering the oil spill. And if somebody makes an unreasonable effort to block access to public areas, don’t whine about it. Use my two-word response.

We need a few journalism martyrs on the Gulf Coast.

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, is available at amazon.com and independent bookstores. It offers much more than $19.99 worth of laughs. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.

For eight years, pundits made exaggerated complaints that George W. Bush was too dumb to be President. Remember Ronald  Reagan? And for two years, the same pundits complain that President Obama is too smart. Remember Bill Clinton? I ain’t got no fine college education, but I’m smart enough to recognize stupidity when it comes from the mouths of no-it-all political commentators, reporters and talk show hosts. 

In the latest stupid episode of the dumbing-down of America, an alleged “expert” on speech patterns characterized the President’s recent Oval Office speech about the Gulf oil spill as too complicated for the average television viewer to comprehend.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/17/obama-oil-spill-speech-cr_n_615796.html

I watched the President’s speech and understood every word he said. Didn’t go to the dictionary even once. Granted, I went a little bit beyond the 9.9 grade level that the “expert” claimed was required to understand the address. In fact, I’m the proud owner of a diploma from Tuscaloosa, Alabama Senior High School. Graduated in the top 80% of my class. Sadly, I couldn’t maintain the momentum during one semester at the University of Alabama, where I failed every course except ROTC. The school has a dumb rule requiring students to attend classes. A few years later, I attended disc jockey school for four semesters. However, spinning records only makes people dumber. Have you heard of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and other ex-disc jockeys now make a living by drooling on microphones? 

Anyway, I rated Obama’s speech as okay—though unnecessary. I rate it much higher than saying, “Let’s bomb the hell out of Baghdad and give CNN some visual news to report.” The President did what President’s are supposed to do. He re-enforced his Administration’s commitment to assist people and businesses effected by the spill. Proof came the following day when he shook-down BP for $20-billion—”shake-down” being the decription given the escrow fund by a stupid GOP Congressman (told you I recognized stupid when I heard it). 

The fund will go a long way in diminishing some of the fears of Gulf coast folks whose lives have been put on hold.  It will also help keep the courts unclogged by thousands of lawsuits. Though painful to plaintiff lawyers deprived of their 40% contingency fees, providing an alternative to litigation will expedite the payment of claims.

Obama’s speech notwithstanding, he can say nothing, nor can he do anything at this point to satisfy his critics and/or the people suffering from the tragedy. I hope he regularly recites the Serenity Prayer. If you don’t know words, it’s time to move out of your cave.

Unfortunately, a sizeable segment of society avoids making independent judgments about solutions to ongoing catrastophes, controversial issues and political dilemmas. Too often they are willing to accept the judgments of idiots. I ask again, have you heard of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, et al?

For most of my career in broadcasting, I worked with people better educated than me. As Senior Investigative Correspendent in CNN’s Special Assignment investigative unit, I was surrounded by reporters and producers with Ivy League diplomas and degrees from several prestigious universities. Earlier in my career, I spent five years an under-educated, redneck ex-drunk in charge of an investigative unit at a highly acclaimed local station in “Blue Blood” Boston. In these and other environments throughout my career, academic shortcomings caused me hang-ups. I compensated for the insecurities by reading everything I could get my hands on, developing a polysyballic vocabulary and a smart-ass attitude.  

My wife, who has two advanced degrees, has jokingly threatened to slap me (I think its a joke) if I repeat one more time, “I ain’t got no fine college education like you,” a phrase I frequently use when pontificating on some obscure topic I read about in books and magazines that are published for readers above the 9.9 grade level. I’ve subscribed to New Yorker for years. I read most articles and even profess to understand many of its cartoons. I hope that makes me seem sophisticated?  

I realize there are other smart-asses, who say I never needed to go beyond the 9.9 grade level. After all, I was a television reporter. Indeed, TV news is responsible for dumbing down America. Investigative reporting has all but disappeared from television. Too complicated. Therefore, most muckraking that is left falls into the category of superficial. In the latter days of my career, reporters were advised by so-called “news doctors” to make stories “viewer friendly.” 

Maybe the President should hire a “news doctor” so he can begin his speeches by saying, “Oil rig went boom, boom.”

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, is available at amazon.com and independent bookstores. It offers much more than $19.99 worth of laughs. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.

I’ll get to Rick Sanchez later in this post. But first, a few words about the testimony of BP President Tony Hayward this morning before the the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. As this is written more than one hour into the Congressional hearing, Hayward has yet to utter a word about his company’s massive blunders. Instead, committee members are giving their usual speeches—posturing and politicizing.

Chairman Bart Stupak began the hearing by droning on about its purpose. We know the purpose, for God’s sake. As the Democrat’s Senate nominee in Pennsylvania, he going to need a speech therapist before heading out on the campaign trail. But Stupak is downright dynamic compared to California Democrat Henry Waxman, who continues his campaign to become the most boring person ever elected to Congress. Today, he gave an endless recitation of every news story and revelation since the spill occured 50-plus days ago.

So far, however, the leading contestant in the sweepstakes for the most stupid comments is GOP Representative Joe Barton of Texas—a state that is not far behind South Carolina, Illinois and Louisiana in electing politicians, who require zippers on their mouths. Barton today accused President Obama of shaking down BP by pressuring the mega-corporation to commit a minimum of $20-billion dollars into an escrow fund to compensate the “small people” for the loss of their livlihoods and to pay for the damage inflicted on Gulf Coast seafood industry, marshes, beaches and wildlife. The use of the term, “small people,” was a gaffe by the Swedish speaking Chairman of BP’s board. He has since apologized and promised to also compensate medium and large people.

Anyway, Congressman Barton’s remarks were so dumb he broke my stupidity measuring scale. In addition to describing  the escrow fund as a “shakedown,” he actually apologized to BP for President Obama’s insistence that a fund be established to insure that Gulf Coast residents get paid for their losses. 

The loss of my stupidity measuring device is a setback because the Louisiana legislature launched a comeback yesterday to regain its title as the nation’s stupid politics champion. Lawmakers revived a bill that will allow concealed weapons in church. WWJP. What would Jesus pack.

That brings me to Rich Sanchez time. My Sanchez obsession is not personal. He’s probably a nice guy. Then the cameras light up and he represents everything that is wrong with television news. Sanchez is not a journalist. He is a performer playing the role of a journalist. It goes back to his days in Miami at the same local station where my career as a television investigative reporter began, which was a few years before Rick’s arrival on the scene. I learned of Rick’s style in one of those “You are not going to believe this guy” phone calls from a former colleague. I didn’t believe, but now do after watching his role playing CNN antics.

Remarkably, though, Sanchez got out-done this week by a substitute anchor on his afternoon program, Rick’s List. Sitting in for the vacationing Sanchez was Drew Griffin, CNN’s Senior “Investigative” Correspondent—a position I held for ten years, ten years ago (I know I could have said a “decade ago” to avoid repetition, but I like it the way I wrote it).

It’s probably impolite to criticize my successor. So what? I will do it anyway, motivated by ”investigative” reporter Griffin’s effort yesterday to go for the President’s jugular by repeating  a story that has been around for several weeks—namely that the White House tried to discourage two candidates from opposing Obama-favored hopefuls in Democratic primary elections in Colorado and Pennsylvania. Discussions about possible Administration jobs if the guys dropped out of the races wre described by Griffin as “Chicago-style  politics.” To re-enforce the characterization, he did a live interview with the Executive Director of Chicago’s Better Government Association, a watchdog group with an impeccable reputation for holding public officials accountable. Unfortunately for Griffin, the BGA representative refused to take the bait. Like every other non-partisan commentators, he described the contacts as a routine effort to maintain the Democratic majority in the Senate. Obama is, after all, the titular head of the party. Griffin’s frustration was visible as he rephrased his questions to elicit the anwer he wanted. Bad reporting, I thought. 

My criticism of Griffin is more an indictment of CNN for the network’s failure to hold him to a higher standard of journalism. My successor has blown other stories. Drew drew (man, I’m on a roll) wrong conclusions when he joined forces with former Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti, who tried to win votes by politicizing Hurricane Katrina tragedies. Foti first accused  Dr. Anna Pou of killing elderly patients at Saint Rita’s hospital in New Orleans. While waiting or evacuation, she prescribed pain medicine to ease the suffering of terminally ill patients. A grand jury refused to indict her.

Griffin also jumped on Foti’s bandwagon in his investigative reports of the owners of a nursing home in which 35 residents died before rescuers got to them. The operators of the facility were eventually tried and exonnerated. And finally, Griffin was responsible for erroneous reports about voter registration fraud by ACORN, the African American political activist group that went into bankruptcy defending itself on a variety of allegations.

So the old codger strikes again. I know I sound like a world class whiner in criticizing CNN and its reporters. But the network has retreated to irrelevance. And that is unfortunate in an era when responsible television reporting is so badly needed. I guess I’m living in the past.  

Back to the congressional hearings. I need a good afternoon nap.

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, is available at amazon.com and independent bookstores. It offers much more than $19.99 worth of laughs. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.

One of the curses of reaching the age when I look forward every month to receiving my AARP Magazine is that everything reminds me of something—a condition that is evident by the over use of the phrase, “Did I ever tell you about the time that I……” or words to that effect. Some friends would describe my condition as being a first class bore.

My good fortune in 30 years of muckraking was the opportunity to dig into a variety of subjects. My four Peabody medallions represented four widely disparate topics—a prosecutor’s ties to gamblers, the mafia, televangelism and the corruption of a top insurance regulator. I also received major awards for exposés involving numerous other issues, prompting me to declare myself an expert on whatever subjects I was reporting. Indeed, a requirement of investigative reporters is to act like you know what the hell you are talking about.

Anyway, I had a couple of “Did I ever tell you about the time” moments in recent hours. Last night, I watched Smash His Camera, an excellent HBO documentary about the legendary stalking career of paparazzo Ron Gallela. The title stems from a remark by Jackie Kennedy, who eventually filed a successful lawsuit to keep him at a distance from her and the children.

Early in my investigative reporting career, I often stalked targets of my stories. Ambush video was sometimes a substitute for good journalism, and on occasion my judgment was skewed. As I write in Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, I had a moment of truth about my abuses.

Mugging the widow of a murder victim caused me to re-think the propriety of sneak attacks. Prominent Miami Beach criminal defense lawyer Harvey St. Jean was murdered in 1975 in a parking lot near his office. An imprisoned Colombian drug smuggler was suspected of hiring a hit-man to murder the attorney. St. Jean had collected $120,000 from the Colombian, ostensibly to  bribe a federal judge. It was an old trick. Lawyer promises to fix a case he believes is winnable. Lawyer loses. Lawyer tells his client the judge reneged. When St. Jean lost, the client demanded a refund. The attorney made the fatal mistake of ignoring him.

The murder didn’t end the disgruntled client’s demands. St.Jean’s law partner received a letter stating in effect, “It’s up to you to settle the account.” He was scared out of his wits and went into hiding.

Showing extraordinary persistence for a man suspected of ordering the murder, the Colombian filed a handwritten claim in Probate Court seeking restitution from the lawyer’s estate. The petition alluded to a bribery scheme and identified St. Jean as a conduit for a payment to an unnamed “third party,” presumably the Judge. The widow took the claim seriously. She agreed to meet the suspect at the Dade County jail where he was awaiting transfer to a federal penitentiary.

In a trade-off of information, I told a homicide cop about the crudely written probate claim. In turn, he tipped me to the date and time of the jail house meeting. When Mrs. St. Jean arrived in the parking lot accompanied by her attorney, the cameraman and I leaped from our undercover van.

“Why are you meeting the man who arranged your husband’s murder?” I yelled. The lawyer tried to shield her. But I continued my wretched questioning. “Are you planning to return the money your husband stole?”

Later that day, I was embarrassed watching the film. It softened my approach to ambushing unsuspecting targets. I had begun developing qualms about the tactic a few weeks earlier when I stormed the office of an unsuspecting target, lights ablaze and shouted questions as he cowered behind his desk. Viewing the film, I wondered about my reaction under similar circumstances.

This is not to suggest that I became a diffident, goody-two-shoes reporter. But private citizens have a right to refuse interviews. Public officials are different. I have no misgivings about waylaying stonewalling politicians and bureaucrats with a camera. Nor do I exempt miscreant private citizens at the vortex of important public policy issues.

Since I defined what public issues were important, it was easy to abide by the new code. And later in my career, I ambushed a few people, who fell into a gray area of “Did they deserve it?”

Despite my “born again” attitude about ambush interviews and the use of undercover video techniques, I had fun stalking targets of my reporting—especially the mafia characters I write about in the book.

Among the mobsters I stalked during my Miami undercover follies was Anthony (Tumac) Accetturo. His nickname was taken from One Million Years BC―a low budget movie featuring a club-wielding caveman of the same name. The moniker was appropriate, given Accetturo’s Neanderthal-like appearance, and his alleged penchant for wielding baseball bats to collect loan shark debts. An intelligence document described him as having “more power than any other organized crime figure residing in south Florida.”

Tumac’s reputation caused my camereman and me a bit of trepidation. According to a New Jersey report, cops once annoyed him by spying on his activities from an undercover van. To express displeasure, he set fire to the vehicle—with the cops still inside. They escaped unharmed. Still, the incident was unsettling, especially during our first stake-out of Accetturo’s home in an upscale Broward County neighborhood.

We parked the snoop van a couple of hundred feet from Tumac’s residence and climbed into the rear compartment. A neighbor apparently saw us and called the police. Minutes later, a patrol car arrived and I crawled into the driver’s seat to display news credentials. 

“We’re filming the Mafia,” I whispered. The cops were laughing as they drove away.

Seconds later, Tumac and three henchmen walked outside his residence and stood in the driveway. Either intentionally or unwittingly, they were posing for the camera. And in a very animated conversation, the three men kept pointing to our vehicle. I thought I detected a distinct odor of smoke.

Ah, for the good old days. The New York Times reports today that BP representatives are blocking the access of news people from several public areas damaged by the Gulf oil spill disaster. Don’t ask me how I would have reacted to such blockades.

Did I ever tell you about the time……….?”

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, is available at amazon.com and independent bookstores. It offers much more than $19.99 worth of laughs. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.

Trash disseminated in viral e-mails and publications seemingly printed in the lock-down wards of mental hospitals, as well as the distortions of people like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, is the price we endure to protect our First Amendment freedoms. A bargain price, actually. I’ve often heard the cliche that “I will fight to the death to protect the freedoms of of press and speech.” But if it ever comes to down to hand-to-hand combat, I will have to hold my nose and grit my teeth when defending some of the characters who exploit the First Amendment for financial and/or political gain.

Sadly, a scared and angry segment of victims accept much of the trash they read or hear as absolute fact, especially if it provides an some sort of explanation for the uncontrollable circumstances that impact their lives. People react rather than think when backed into corners by the loss of careers and financial security, fear of ethnic groups and religions they don’t understand, and the helplessness that overwhelms them in dealing with tragedies.

A close friend and good Republican whose knee doesn’t jerk when speaking with “liberals” like me— forwarded a viral e-mail of the worst kind today. He ask, “How is it possible to print trash like this?” The first two paragraphs of this post is the answer I sent him.

The missive in question is typical of wing-nut mentality. The writer stoops to exploiting homophobia by accusing the President, a few of his aides and several other public officials—liberal Democrats except for a retired Republican Senator—of being members of a notorious bathhouse for gays. The author and the website from which this fable emanates tries to paint a scenario built around a Chicago men’s club. But he offers not shred of evidence to support any allegation in the lengthy “column.”

Maybe the guy is plain ass crazy. However, my guess is he has problems dealing with his own sexuality. That is frequently the case among outspoken right-wing homophobes. I’ve lost count of the number of these guys who have been exposed as gays, or caught up in other sex scandals.

I’m reasonably certain the e-mail sent to me is being discarded by recipients possessing I.Q.’s that reach double digits. Yet, there will be a few people saying, “Have you read…blah, blah?” Toxic politics has created The Church of the Bizarre made up of a congregation of susceptible believers baptized by immersion in e-mails claiming the President was born in Africa.

The believe wild rumors and allegations must be true since they are part of the written word, instead of being passed along by whispers and rhetoric heard at Ku Klux Klan rallies and Tea Party events. But the “written word” does not transform fiction into reality.

Three decades ago, I was covering the life and travails of notorious mobster, Meyer Lansky when book was published about his mafia buddy, Lucky Luciano. As a I sat outside a grand jury room next to Lansky unsuccessfully trying to question him, a cop brought him a copy to autograph. The book gave a purported history of the association between the two organized crime figures. Lansky scribbled, “All that is written is not true,” a phrase he probably high-jacked from another author. Whatever the source, though, it has widespread application today, particularly  when reading Obama tales.   

And speaking of the President—a “straight” shooter aiming for a piece of B.P.’s butt, though not for gay sex—he visits Louisiana and the Gulf Coast for the fourth time, mainly because that is what Presidents are supposed to do. An important role of the nation’s Chief Executives is to press the flesh of victims of tragedies, often at the cost of ignoring other important issues requiring their presence in Washington. The trips are necessary to reassure disaster victims that they are not forgotten and ”will be made whole.”

There is, however, the inherent danger a politicizing the oil spill. Since the rig exploded, Democrats and Republicans alike have postured for the benefit of cameras. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is the biggest beneficiary. By acting like the man in charge, he has recovered from the “weeny-like” nationally television speech in 2009 that almost doomed his future prospects of becoming a Presidential candidate. He is doing a good job.

But Jindal has to walk a political tightrope or God forbid, homophobic characters of the far-left—I presume there are a few—will begin sending out toxic e-mails accusing him of being gay.

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, is available at amazon.com and independent bookstores. It offers much more than $19.99 worth of laughs. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.