There’s many people in the world just like our Henny-Penny,

They panic when they listen to the news,

They think the sky is falling and we’re all about to die,

I’d say they have the Henny-Penny-Blues.

The Lightnin’ Hopkins song should be adopted as the anthem of the Tea Party. “The sky is falling” iseems to be the mantra of the loudest folks at tea party demonstrations and other events. It is no wonder. Doomsday prophecies dominate the nation’s airwaves and cable news channels. And although the heaviest dose of negativism and uncivility penetrates the right ear, the left ear drum also takes a beating. Whine, bitch, complain. There seems to be no escape.

This certainly is not the best of times. Nor is it the worst of times. My IRA is proof. Unfortunately, though, our society lives on instant gratification. Patience? What the hell is that? President Obama promises a slow recovery of the economy. But he should have dealt with that problem yesterday. Worse, the President delivered on his campaign promises. Health care legislation and finance reform were passed by a Democrats in Congress, despite opposition from a party that votes no on bathroom breaks.

I recognize the contradiction in my vent. Whine, bitch, complain. But I duck when passing mirrors to avoid seeing myself as others might see me. Besides, I’m a journalist. That gives me a free pass to point fingers at other people, create conflict and act like I have good sense. These are God given journalistic privileges. If you don’t believe me, just watch television. Listen to the radio. Or—I know this is radical in the Internet age—read newspapers.

So where am I going with this rant? I’m not exactly sure where my fingers will take me. More than likely, it’s in the direction of politics, pollsters and journalists. One of the qualities I admire in Obama is his apparent tendency to ignore polls. At least, in the short-term. His knee seems to remain relatively still in the face of opposition to issues such as health reform, immigration, drilling moratoriums, etc. Unlike his predecessor who put on a flight suit to declare our victory in Iraq (some victory) Obama didn’t don a scuba outfit and dive into the Gulf of Mexico to plug the BP oil leak. Maybe he expected Louisiana Governor Smarty Pants to put his finger in the well head.  

I have no doubt that Obama reads the polls. Actually, he doesn’t need to. News reporters and pundits read them obsessively and pass along the results when questioning the President. Even if he doesn’t care that people believe he is the worst President since the one yesterday. Or the one tomorrow. Even though journalists comprising the Washington elite don’t cover a hurricanes, they still bend with the breeze—most of which is generated polls.

In a weird sort of way, Fox “News” is refreshing. Bet the readers of the blog never believed I would make such a statement. But like patients in mental asylums, Fox folks see the world differently than the norm. In my book, that is okay. It just gives me additional things to bitch about in the blog. Thirty seconds watching Glenn Beck provides enough material to last for days.

I relate to oddballs because my investigative reporting career was built on contrarianism. At times when all my colleagues were jumping on the bandwagon of conventional wisdom, I hung around to ask one more question about an issue and/or individual. One more question led to two, then three and so on. The results were often surprising. As evidence, check the journalism awards on the walls of my home office. But be sure to knock. Sometimes my hair is mussed.

In some respects, the only difference between the Fox folks and me is that I based my exposés on facts rather than politics. Sadly, facts are not much in vogue today. Especially on cable news networks. All three—I’m being generous in calling MSNBC a news network—are filled programming with talking heads. Fox provides forum for every known Republican politician. MSNBC’s format of all opinion, all the time caters to Democrats. CNN tries to play the middle ground by encouraging guests from the left and right to engae in fistfights. Instead, the conflicts are pissing matches. I fully expect CNN to raise the stakes by recruiting Jerry Springer. He could take the place of John King. 

By the way (notice that I didn’t use the shortcut btw to make me seem like I was a mod kind of guy), what’s with John King—no relation to the network’s mummy in residence, Larry King. John is CNN’s replacement for nutty Lou Dobbs. Although King the younger claims Massachussets as his birthplace, my suspicion is he was born in a taxicab on Pennsylvania Avenue outside the White House while his mother played video games. He is consumed with Presidential politics and digital devices that are designed to totally confuse viewers. I Tivo the show and use it as a cure for insomnia.

But enough of this rambling discourse. I warned you that I didn’t know where my fingers were going to take me. My dilemma now is coming up with a clever close to the post, something that relates to the title. I never attended journalsim school but I think there is supposed to be a bit of relevance between the opening and the finale.

How about this? I’ve rattled on today without any forethought given to what the hell I was going to say.

BTW (they years just peeled away), tomorrow is re-run day as I try to escape the dog days of summer by heading out of town.

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.

Did you hear the one about the guy who feeds 5000 people with two fish and five loaves of bread? Read all about it in Mark 6: 30-44. I know this opening line makes me sound like a religious zealot. So I will analogize by referring to a more secular character—the guy planning to provide health coverage to 32-million uninsured Americans without raising taxes on middle-class folks. Are Jesus and Obama socialists, liberals, progressives, miracle workers, or all of the above? Whatever the label, I would rather be like them than the Party of No Conscience and Compassion.

Before you criticizze, be assured that I’m certainly not comparing myself with Jesus or anyone of note. I leave those comparisons to Sarah Palin and her self-proclaimed links to William Shakespeare, who she cited as a justification for making up words like “refudiate.” My references to Jesus and Obama is a ?clever? way of arriving at the central point of this missive. I try to answer the question of how an under-educated redneck like me drifted from right to left. It has been a strange transformation and I sometimes wonder why my politics are so different from family and friends. 

In the beginning (don’t you love my use of phrases from the bible), my daddy was a “yellow dog Democrat.” The characterization stems from an old southern expression, “I’d vote for a yellow dog before I’d vote for a Republican.” However, voting for Democrats in daddy’s day was a far cry from being a “liberal.”

In Alabama where I grew up and in my family, racism was rampant. Black people were expected to stay in their place at the bottom of the economic and social ladder. My family was only a few rungs above, separated from the bottom by a class called “poor white trash.” Still, the “N” word was part of my vocabulary, as well as that of every kid in the low income projects and neighborhoods where I lived.

As I write in Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger and have mentioned in a previous blog post, my first memory of flinching at the word followed a brief encounter with Jackie Robinson.

I was thirteen years old and working as “roof boy” for the minor league Mobile Bears, retrieving foul balls that landed on top of the grandstand. A screen at the rear of the roof prevented them from going into the parking lot. Before and after games, I ran errands for players. I was paid fifty cents a night, plus tips, to watch baseball games and hang around professional athletes. It was great.

On trips north from Florida spring training in those days, major league teams played exhibition games in the cities of minor league farm clubs. The Bears were affiliated with the old Brooklyn Dodgers. And when the team bus arrived at Mobile’s Hartwell Field in 1949, I helped the Major League’s first black player carry his equipment bag to the clubhouse. When I excitedly told daddy, he was not impressed.

“Hey, Marie,” he called to mother. “Come and listen to Johnny brag about carrying a nigger’s suitcase.”  It was supposed to be a joke―a symptom of culturally ingrained Southern prejudices.

In dad’s defense, when I took up the civil rights banner years later, he bragged to friends about my support of the cause.

So what caused a radical change my in racial, societal and political attitudes? Actually, there was no sudden epiphany or single event that formed my views. Indeed, it was a gradual evolution that probably began in the military. For reasons I don’t recall, I became close friends while station in Okinawa with a young black airman from Washington D.C. In 1954, Jesse James White and I became the first mixed race roommates in our barracks. Although the military had been fully integrated for six years, we were considered oddballs—especially me, an 18 year old kid with southern redneck roots. J.J. and I didn’t hang around much outside the base, but we respected one another as equals and that was an important lesson for me.

I guess the next major step toward my enlightment occured in the early 1960’s during my tenure as a radio newsman in California at stations in the Sacramento Valley. Luckily, I have another opportunity to plug my book with an excerpt. 

I was influenced in large part by seeing societal ills first hand, such as migrant worker abuses and poverty. Nearby ghetto-like labor camps were the underbelly of agriculture. Already paid low wages, migrants were assessed outrageous rents for shacks with no running water or electricity.

I also saw first hand the gloom of farm workers in my daily stops at the Marysville Police Department. Because of the volume of arrests on skid row, a makeshift courtroom was set up inside the jail to avoid stinking up the courthouse. A judge conducted daily proceedings. He imposed sentences that were practical and compassionate. If a drunk showed symptoms of DT’s, he was sent to the county penal farm to get medical attention. If still able to navigate, he was usually cut loose after paying a small fine, which was determined by the amount of money in his pockets. Most were white male Americans, rather than blacks or Hispanics. Illegal immigration had not yet become a big issue in the country.

Simply seeing the plight of these people instilled in me a degree of compassion. I knew that they were victims of necessity and a lack of opportunity.

After leaving California in the mid-sixties to become News Director 0f a Baton Rouge radio station, my politics were already moving to the left of center. In Louisiana, I moved farther left during the civil rights era, especially after becoming a radio talk show host. For three years, race and poverty were regular topics on the show. My guests included civil rights leaders like John Lewis, then head of Voter Education Project and desciple of Martin Luther King. At the other extreme were the hate-mongers like David Duke and the late Judge Leander Perez. In addition to the talk show, I was covering civil rights, poverty and other societal ills on the street and becoming convinced of the need for radical changes in the country.

Adding an exclamation point to my political transformation was an “opportunity” to spend a year in a mostly black workplace—though it was not by choice. In 1971, my broadcast career almost ended as a result of booze. After landing on skid row in New Orleans, I was jobless and seemingly unemployable. My career was salvaged by a black programmed radio station in Baton Rouge that hired me to start its first news department.

Being a shameless self-promoter, I will add another excerpt to describe experiences that had a significant impact in shaping my politics.

It didn’t take me long at WXOK to realize that my “enlightened” understanding of discrimination was superficial at best. I had never been the victim of blatant bigotry. Nor had I experienced the humiliation of being turned away from a segregated school, public facility, or denied a job because of my skin color. I came close―an experience that was more comical than sinister.

In the course of building a news department, I had an ongoing dialogue with a black-owned syndicated news service that provided the station with national material for our newscasts. In turn, we fed Louisiana stories to the network. Since Louisiana was then a civil rights hotspot, there were plenty of stories to pass along. Indeed, my feeds became so frequent that the New York based company made a job overture.

“You realize I’m white,” I asked the recruiter. There was a long pause. I heard him take a deep breath. “Yes, of course,” he said unconvincingly. “We’ll be getting back to you real soon.” I’m still waiting.

Sadly, many young blacks faced the same wait from white-owned companies. Also disheartening was the ignorance and bigotry of friends. My barber once asked if the body odor of co-workers bothered me. Such misconceptions were deep-rooted in Baton Rouge and most parts of the South. Working at WXOK taught me lessons that I could only learn in predominately African-American surroundings.

It also helped me later on to empathize with a black high school girl I interviewed while producing a documentary on poverty in Baton Rouge. Breaking into tears, she told of missing the senior prom at her integrated school because her mother couldn’t afford a nice dress. In the same program, a teen-aged boy said his most memorable meals were leftovers momma brought home from her job as a maid at an LSU sorority house.

More tragic were the struggles of poor and elderly blacks in getting medical care. “I don’t know how I gonna breathe if the welfare don’t get me my medicine,” an asthmatic woman cried in the documentary. Six hours after the interview, she died of heart failure while waiting for a welfare worker to deliver the prescription. 

But despite my self-proclaimed empathy for those deprived of the American dream, I was a phony. My outsized ego had been severely damaged by the tumble from News Director, ace reporter and talk show host at Baton Rouge’s leading radio station to my job as WXOK’s token white boy. And instead of feeling gratitude for a career reprieve, I began fabricating an excuse for my presence at the station. I would tell former colleagues that the job was an assertion of my commitment to civil rights―foisting myself off as a self-sacrificing Peace Corps journalist.

The opportunity to promulgate the fiction presented itself at an NAACP news conference. For the first time since my failed attempt to succeed as a skid row bum I was about to come face-to-face with reporters that I had avoided since my day of reckoning. The prospect of seeing them at a Baton Rouge hotel was so unnerving that I sat in the parking lot for several minutes trying to summon the courage to go inside. Entering the lobby, I immediately ran into Louisiana’s Associated Press bureau chief, Charles Layton. He greeted me with a smile and a handshake.

“Where have you been, John?” he asked. “I haven’t seen you for awhile.” My answer was so stunning I thought it was the voice of another person.

“WJBO fired me for being a drunk,” I blurted out. “I’m working at WXOK, trying to get things back together.” Had I actually made this humbling admission to someone? I could not believe my own words. Charlie took the sting out of my confession.

“That’s great. I knew you were having problems. I hope things work out.” It was no big deal to him. Like most Baton Rouge reporters, he knew about my drinking. Acknowledging my alcoholism outside of AA meetings was an important step in maintaining sobriety. 

It was significant in seeing my deep-rooted hypocrisy and seeing myself as others saw me. For anyone who has read this far, my apologies for the length of the post. At least you will know the experiences that are the basis of my political views and opinions.

I wish I could say my rants fall within the realm of WWJD. But I’m certain that is not the case. By the same token, observing the actions of the Party of No Conscience and Compassion—aka Republicans and tea partiers—I have a strong sense they represent what Jesus would not do.   

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.

Since the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous 75 years ago and the beginning of Alanon for spouses and families of alcoholics shortly thereafter, the “anonymous” label has been attached to a multitude of 12-step recovery programs. Spin-offs are designed to deal with an array chemical, physical and emotional problems—gambling, sex, eating disorders, addictions to illegal and/or prescription drugs, and an array of struggles that part of the human condition.

Regardless of the ailments, the underlying principles of all the different 12-step programs are pretty much the same. The steps put into practice a value system that is unknown to many—the basics of which include universal tenets of faith, trust, honesty, courage and humility. In AA lingo, incorporating the principles in one’s life leads to a “spiritual awakening.” Not to be confused with a sudden epiphany that is often described as a ”spiritual experience.” Twelve step programs gradually bring about a level of self-honesty. That is why so-called tea partiers need to form a recovery program called, ”Deniers Anonymous.”

From inception, Tea Party members and its candidates have been in a state of denial in responding to any and all criticism. The most recent instance of self-deception is the refusal to acknowledge the NAACP’s claim that the loosely formed organization have been invaded by racists, bigots and hate groups. The denials must be coming from blind and deaf spokespersons. How could they miss an inflammatory road sign in Iowa comparing the President to Hitler and Lenin, or fail to see placards at rallies that are clearly racist, or not accept the word of credible sources that epithets were directed at black congressmen as they walked through a crowd of Tea Party demonstrators? That is the equivalent of my years of denial that alcoholism caused my drunken episodes, delirum tremens, nights in jail, an emotionally abused broken family and eventually led me a failed skid-row audition. 

Vice President Biden refused yesterday to label the Tea Party as racist. And I agree. However, that does not mean the absence of racism among many of its members—a subtle form of which is sometimes more sinister than outward bigotry. Indeed, it is often difficult for people—me included—to detect underlying prejudices. Our failure to see deep-rooted personal bias is troublesome for African Americans. At least they know where they stand with the Klan mentality.

Deniers Anonymous would be particularly helpful for Tea Party candidates, some of whom have denied saying or believing they made statements in radio, television and newspaper interviews. Sharron Angle is an exception. The Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Nevada simply avoids mainstream media interviews. She answers only to God, Fox “News” and right-wing reporters in her home state. God apparently is not satisfied with her answers. Senate Majority leader Harry Reid has been resurrected from the graveyard of politically dead incumbents.

Meantime, God has smiled down on Democrats in Kentucky by delivering a Tea Party-supported candidate whose mouth has gotten him in so much trouble that he is no longer a a sure-fire Republican successor to slightly deranged incumbent Jim Bunning. Dr. Rand Paul stumbled in the race coming out of the gate by making 1960’s era comments about civil rights. Like Sharron Angle, he now avoids interviews that could expose him as under-qualified to occupy Bunning’s Senate seat—a level of incompetence that is probably impossible to achieve. Nonetheless, Dr. Paul’s gaffes have made the Kentucky race competitive. Given his explanations that previous statements are not a real reflection of his position on civil rights, Deniers Anonymous would be helpful in allowing Paul to get in touch with his true views.

Former Presidential candidate Ross Perot is the best example of my own experience of encountering political candidates living in a state of denial. Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger provides all of the gritty details. If interested, buy the book and be entertained by my journey to a vast fantasy land. In short, my one hour in-depth confrontation with Perot during the 1992 Presidential campaign was his final sit-down interview with an investigative reporter .

I had flashbacks of the Perot debacle sixteen years later while watching Katie Couric interview Sarah Palin—another political figure who defines accountability as being a personal attack. She has become a role model for refusing to do interviews with anyone but the Fox “News” bunch and their ilk. She and all her cohorts at the Republican propaganda networks are excellent candidates for Deniers Anonymous. Especially Glenn Beck.

In AA, we sometimes classify a category of alcoholics as “low bottom drunks.” Having spent time with my feet planted in a gutter, I fit the label. Glenn Beck is a low bottom denier. In the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, he consistently denies his racially charged and anti-semitic rants. Washington Post poltical reporter Dana Milbank wrote a column last week that provided astonishing statistics about Beck’s hate-filled lunacy and his influence as a self-proclaimed leader of the Tea Party movement.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/16/AR2010071602855.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

If the day comes that someone decides to start a Deniers Anonymous program, Glenn Beck should be among the first recruits. He should have some vague knowledge of recovery based on his past disclosure that he joined AA many years ago. I presume he is still sober today. Outwardly, though, he does not fulfill AA’s promise of restoring its members to sanity. 

That is not surprising. Anyone listening to Beck can easily discern that he knows nothing about the principles that form the basis of 12-step recovery.

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.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is taking full advantage of the tragedy devastating the Gulf coast to revive his national political aspirations. But he may be over-playing the opportunity. Several Louisiana lawmakers are criticizing him for ignoring his Baton Rouge responsibilities while the recently adjourned legislature was in session. And the national media is questioning Jindal’s duplicity in lambasting the federal government out of one side of his mouth and begging for money out of the other side.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/26/us/politics/26jindal.html?th&emc=th

In some respects, Governor Jindal reminds me of smarty-pants kids, who always seemed to occupy the front row of my elementary school classrooms. While I looked dumbfounded when called on to answer questions that interrupted my daydreams of heroics on athletic fields, there were always teacher’s pets waving their hands saying, “I know, I know.”

Rhodes scholar and Ivy League graduate Bobby Jindal is so smart that I believe he outsmarts himself. The Governor’s presence on Louisiana’s Gulf coast is admirable and reassuring to residents. But he acts as if he alone has solutions to the catastrophe. Granted, BP’s public relations policies have been a corporate disaster. However, Jindal’s suggestion of foot-dragging by BP and/or the federal government is patently ridiculous. The company’s stock has plunged in value and President Obama is taking a beating in the polls because of his inability to dive into the Gulf and personally plug the leak. Remarkably, the President was criticized by many Republicans for strong-arming BP to put $20-billion into an escrow fund to compensate Gulf coast residents and businesses for their losses.

In recent days, much of the criticism of BP has focused on the bureaucratic snafus that have slowed the compensation process. One thing is for sure. When it comes to bureaucracy, Louisiana has very few, if any, short-term answers. A historical overload of too many layers of government has been the main contributor to the state’s current economic woes. Unfortunately, Jindal was absent from Baton Rouge while lawmakers wrestled with the problem during the recently concluded legislative session.

As Governor, his responsibilities “included” a frequent and visible presence at the site of the tragedy. But the job of Louisiana’s chief executive also requires his presence in the Capitol. The television cameras, however, were focused on the coastline. He could not resist a chance to redeem his image, which was badly damaged by a cartoonish speech delivered in response to President Obama’s 2009 State of the Union address. 

How much time Jindal has spent in Baton Rouge during the oil spill is a state secret. More than most past Louisiana Governors, he maintains a veil of secrecy around his official activities and travels. But for the time being at least, voters are getting to see his face on TV every night.

If all the national television exposure fails to revive Jindal’s national ambitions, his propensity for secrecy will make him a perfect candidate to head the CIA when the Republicans next take control of the White House.  

While on the subject of Gulf coast television face time, how about CNN’s Anderson Cooper? He has camped out at the scene of the disaster since it began. Not surprising. The same was true when he reported from Haiti following the devastating earthquake, and in New Orleans after Katrina.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/18/us/18cooper.html?th&emc=th

Among anchors, Cooper stands alone in his hands-on reporting from where news is breaking. The opportunity to be where the action is may be the reason that CNN is able to keep him on the payroll. He has received lucrative job offers from other networks. I doubt that money is an influencing factor. As the son of Gloria Vanderbilt, Cooper grew up with wealth.

In coming months, he may get a boost in ratings that are below what he deserves. Larry King announced yesterday that he will leave his nightly program in the fall. The ratings-poor King show is the lead-in to Anderson’s Cooper’s prime-time newscast.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/29/AR2010062904751.html?wpisrc=nl_headline

Larry King’s departure turns another page in CNN’s history. He probably should have followed me out the door ten years ago. Times were changing. Younger faces were appearing and the taste for fawning over celebrities was diminishing. Anyway, I hope the 76 year old veteran talk show host enjoys his sunset years. If his present wife fails her audition, Larry still has time to add a few more spouses to his alimony payroll.

In case anyone misses these missives for a few days, my blog posts will be absent until next Tuesday. I’m departing today for San Antonio to join thousands of anonymous folks in celebrating the 75th anniversary of an anonymous 12-step fellowship that save my life and salvaged the lives of millions of other people.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/opinion/29brooks.html?ref=opinion

Have a great holiday weekend!

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.

Many years ago when Geraldo Rivera was a correspondent for ABC’s 20/20, he chased a pimp down the street during a hilarious ambush interview attempt that began with a fast walk, followed by a jog and then became a full sprint. Had this been in the age of You Tube, the Internet would have been overloaded with viewers. Instead, the video was passed among television newsman as an example of “Geraldo” style jouralism. I’m a longtime critic of the technique, although it was a hallmark of my early career as an investigative reporter in Miami.

Nonetheless, ambush journalism is sometimes the only way to serve the public interest. Such is the case with Tea Party candidate Sharron Angle—the Republican candidate opposing Harry Reid for a U.S. Senate seat in Nevada. TV crews have begun stalking Angle because of her refusal to answer questions about previously stated radical views that seem to advocate taking up arms against our government.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/us/politics/29angle.html?th&emc=th

By limiting interviews to right-wing radio shows sympathetic to her views and to appearances on Fox “News,” Ms. Angle re-enforces the old axiom that “the truth hurts.” Her rhetoric is already part of the public record. Among other things, she has called for phasing out Medicare and Social Security, eliminating the EPA and the U.S. Department of Education and making alcohol illegal. While serving in Nevada’s 42-member state Assembly, she voted “no” so often that legislators described votes as “41 to Angle.” 

So given this public record, newsmen have a simple question for the candidate. “Do you really believe your rhetoric, Ms. Angle, or are you truly a right-wing lunatic.” Senate President Harry Reid—an incumbent whose re-election was in serious jeopardy—must fall to his knees daily and thank God for delivering Angle as his opponent in the November elections.

Also remaining close-mouthed in the presence of newsmen is Kentucky U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul—another Republican with strong support from the tea party movement. Early gaffes about civil rights and his defense of BP in the wake of the Gulf coast oil spill disaster led Paul to become extremely cautious in granting interviews to reporters representing the mainstream media. Early on, Paul cancelled an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press, apparently fearing he would make a fool of himself.

More recently, the Louisiville Courier-Journal disclosed that Paul was not certified by the medical clearing house that oversees his Bowling Green practice as a ophthamologist. Instead, he is certified by the National Board of Ophthamology, an organization he created and heads as President. He has refused to answer questions about his self-certification.

http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20100614/NEWS0106/6140307/Rand-Paul-s-ophthalmology-certification-not-recognized-by-national-clearinghouse

When tea partiers are asked about the secrecy of candidates they support, the responses are predictable. “You can’t trust the liberal media.” The “liberal media myth” is a fable fostered by Rush Limbaugh, his idiot clones on Fox “News” and all the Rush wannabes ranting daily on AM radio.

I make no bones about my own progressive political views, which in large part have been hardened by the aforementioned stable of loonies. I know name-calling is counter productive, but at my age it’s better than sex. Indeed, wing-nuts and politicians they endorse have given up on any pretense of civility. So why not join the crowd? More dangerous than the loss of civility is the reality that many journalists have given up on demanding accountability, which allows evasive candidates like Sharron Angle to conceal their true positions on issues.

Maybe it’s time for more reporters to put on Geraldo Rivera running shoes and begin chasing down politicians for answers to tough questions.

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.

In an era of 24-hour cable news, disasters breed instant celebrities. In the two months since BP’s oil rig explosion, Plaquemines Parish Police Jury President Billy Nungessor has gotten more face time on CNN than most correspondents get in a career. For awhile, it seemed that every time I glanced at the screen, he was being interviewed by Anderson Cooper or some other reporter. Nungessor, a successful businessman before being elected as the Parish’s top official, has been around politics most of his life. His father, Billy Sr., was former Chairman of the state Republican party and a top aide to the late Governor, David Treen.

But in terms of political power, the Nungessors and every other Plaquemines Parish official in the last 75 years are overshadowed by the infamous Judge Leander Perez, a corrupt segregationist whose disgraceful bigotry became such a national symbol of racial hatred that he was ex-communicated from the Catholic Church.

For forty years, Perez ruled his small domain like a monarch. Although he only served a short time on the bench prior to becoming District Attorney, he maintained the title of “judge” thoughout his life. Perez’s claim to infamy was racism and the shake down oil and mineral companies for millions of dollars—sometimes for the good of the community, but mostly for himself. 

The judge’s raw power was initially exhibited during the 1930’s when the Plaquemines parish town of Port Sulphur was established by Freeport Sulphur Company, now called Freeport McMoran. Three decades later, a company official told me a story about the Perez’s unbridled influence while I was visiting a Freeport drilling rig for a radio news story. When company operations were first proposed in the Gulf, the executive said Perez demanded that Freeport build a hospital and construct a new drainage system in the parish. When officials refused, the judge warned that not a shovel of dirt would be turned for a processing plant, nor an ounce of sulphur extracted from the Gulf until the demands were met. The stand-off lasted only a few weeks. The company was forced to relent because it was unable to recruit a single worker from the community, or even import outsiders for the project. Prospective employees were stopped by sheriff’s deputies on the only road providing access to the coastal parish.

On orders from Judge Perez, the same kind of blockade would be used years later to block civil rights organizers from entering the tight knit community. An outspoken bigot, his racial slurs were loud and public. He raged against blacks in small gatherings, before microphones in the Louisiana legislature and interviews with reporters. 

At a volatile time in the desegregation of Louisiana schools, Perez launched attacks on the Catholic Church in the wake of a call for calm by the Archbishop of New Orleans. Criticism of the church, personal attacks on the cleric and his rhetoric inciting white citizens to resist racial mixing led to his ex-communication.

I only met the judge once. He was a guest on my radio talk show in 1968. By then, age had toned him down slightly. Still, he displayed pride in his notoriety by wearing a badge that stated “Here come da Judge,” a phrase made popular by the Rowan and Martin television show, Laugh In.

Judge Perez died in March, 1969 at the age 78. However, his legacy of politics was passed to his sons. Leander Jr. was elected District Attorney and his brother, Chalin, became parish President. And five months after Perez’s death, I witnessed first hand the perception of power that had been passed on to his sons.

In August, 1969, Hurricane Camile devastated Plaquemines parish. A few days afterwards, I traveled to the parish with then Louisiana Superintendent of Eduction, Bill Dodd. He made the trip to assess the damage to schools and come up with a plan to begin repairs. Bill was a veteran politican—a Governor wannabe and one time candidate. Over the years, he held five statewide offices at one time or the other, including a short stint as Lieutenant Governor. He was not a political lightweight. Except in the presence of members of the Perez family as I found out.

We had driven a circuitous route around damage and debris that blocked the highway into the parish prior to finally arriving at a gymnasium where Chalin Perez had set up his office. A table and chairs were located at the far end from the entrance to the gym. Chalin sat at in the middlewith a couple of flunkies on either side. Surprisingly, Bill approach with the same deference one would expect in the presence of royalty. And Perez treated him in that manner. After promises were made to assist the parish in rebuilding, Bill was dismissed and in a matter of minutes with a wave of Chalin’s hand. It seemed like a scene from an old western movie in which the town boss issues orders.

Whatever power Chalin Perez then possessed, it began to disintergrate when he and Leander Jr. became embroiled in a family feud. Over money, of course. The judge had left behind a multi-million dollar fortune that was accumulated from his corrupt deals with companies wanting to do business in the parish. Following his death, lawsuits were filed to recover the ill-gotten gains. The litigation was eventually settled for $12-million. Though neither of the brothers were left impoverished, daddy’s legacy of power was soon lost.

In watching the ever-present parish official Billy Nungessor on television in recent days, I wonder how the Judge would have handled a tragedy of the magnitude of the oil spill—especially in having to deal face-to-face with an African American President.

On second thought, I don’t want to even speculate.

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.

Glenn Beck has reached a milestone by signing up the 400th radio station for his syndicated show. Being a fair guy and knowing that a few drooling right-wingers scan this blog, I refer readers to Glenn’s website listing all the stations that air his rants. 

http://media.glennbeck.com/content/radio/

Happy now?

The headline of today’s blog post refers to the dilemma faced of AM radio station ownrs. Over the past two decades, listeners have deserted AM radio with the speed of folks fleeing a theater following a shout of “fire.” That is, of course, until Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and other talk show hosts representing the lunatic fringe came along.

In a strange turnabout, listeners tune in to hear these characters shout “fire.” They have become the ”saviors” of AM radio. Otherwise, folks listen to FM stations, satellite or personal digital collections. Air America was once a liberal alternative. But nobody cared. Or listened. The network went into bankruptcy earlier this year.

There are also a few stations that depend on ESPN for programming. However, all sports, all the time can get boring for people who don’t go to sleep wearing baseball caps and/or football helmets.

That brings me to Savior with a capital “S.” Many AM stations around the country have been “saved” by religious programming. In fact, Jimmy Swaggart Ministries controls 28 radio stations—AM and FM—mainly in the south and midwest. And his programs are carried by many other stations. In fact, radio was the financial salvation of the disgraced preacher’s ministry following sex scandals that nearly destroyed Swaggart’s $150-million a year organization.

Moreover, religious and Gospel music programming has salvaged untold numbers of AM and FM radio stations—especially in rural areas. On long drives, it is interesting and sometimes entertaining to scan stations and listen to preachers of every persuasion. Radio time is relatively cheap on small stations. So just about any pastor can afford to spread his or her message on the airwaves. And they can recoup the investment with a pitch to listeners for contributions. Long before TV evangelists spiritually manipulated audiences for a few dollars, preachers found radio to be a lucrative venue.

The irony in contemporary radio is that the Becks and Limbaughs violate every principle of Christianity. Their messages of hate, distortion and misinformation contaminate the airwaves. Even more curious is that a large segment of their listening audiences profess to be “good Christians.” Yet, they have no qualms about proselytizing the gospel of the loonies.

By the way, is Rush Limbaugh gay? I don’t have any evidence to suggest that he is, but why shouldn’t I ask questions and spread unfounded rumors in the same manner as Limbaugh and his ilk. After all, he paid Elton John a million dollars to play at his recent wedding to bride number four. And right-wing homophobics like Limbaugh often get caught in gay scandals. Just asking. Sometimes, I can’t resist taking cheap shots.

Anyway, this whole issue of choosing between Glenn Beck, et al, and Jesus causes me to wonder about my own choices as the owner of a radio station on the brink of bankruptcy. I’ve been in that position.

After starting my broadcasting career almost a half century ago in a tiny radio station in Northern California, I began harboring a dream of ownership. In my minds eye, I could see me in the owners chair, making all the decisions about programming and format. Twenty years later, I fulfilled my wish. A partner and I bought KCLF, an AM station in New Roads, Louisiana. Its signal barely reached across the Mississippi River to Baton Rouge, where I was then a mini-Mike Wallace exposing crime and corruption in the Capitol City.

Absentee ownership of KCLF provided me an AM radio education. I learned it was a shortcut to bankruptcy. My big mistake was programming the station with what I liked—old time rock and roll from the fifties and sixties. In a small community with a large population of African Americans and an equal number of young people, all of whom preferred FM, I was doomed from the get-go. The station eventually put me in bankruptcy court.     

Glenn, Rush and the others were not around to offer me salvation. Although KCLF carried a few religious broadcasts, Jesus was not present enough to keep the creditors from the door. Its now easy for me to criticize station owners who opt to carry hate-filled programming to avoid financial ruin. But in retrospect, WWJD? What would John do? Or have done? 

I’m lucky. I never had to make the choice.

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.