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.

Only two people—an unidentified massuese and a famous politician—know what happened in a Portland, Oregon hotel room four years ago. She said. He said. And she offered to say a lot more about her encounter with Al Gore if the National Enquirer paid her a million bucks. The tabloid declined, but claimed she said enough in a freebie conversation. I can guess the extent of  information.

“Hi, I’m with the National Enquirer. Did you file a police report in 2006, accusing Al Gore of sexually assaulting you?”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

“Yes, but you have to pay me $1-million.

“I can’t do that.”

“Goodbye.”

“Stop the presses,” the reporter screams to his editor. “We’ve confirmed the story.”

There may have been more corroboration. But I doubt it. Through a spokesperson, Gore denies the woman’s allegation. But without trying to contact him, the scandal sheet went with a thinly sourced story of a woman, who waited two weeks to report the alleged attempted assault to police. Then, she withdrew the complaint. Now, nearly four years later, the story is revived. Do I smell a lawsuit? Is this the reincarnation of Paula Jones? Oh, Paula’s not dead. Just forgotten. At least by me.

Actually, massueses are part of my illustrious career. And a tale is forthcoming. First, though, a recapitualation of Gore’s rub down, which has the smell of a shakedown. For juicy details, I refer readers to a Seattle Internet news site.

http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/2010/06/al_gores_portland_massuese_pro.php

It doesn’t take a journalistic wizard to discern that the story is filled with holes. Yet, versions have begun appearing in the mainstream media. Editors must make decisions based on the fact that the National Enquirer was accurate in its revelations about the “love child” of former U.S. Senator and Presidential candidate John Edwards. Therefore, everything it prints must be true. It’s a sad commentary on the quality of contemporary newsgathering.

But here is a true story about an ambitious redneck reporter willing to risk his soul to get ahead (no pun intended) in television. I lift the anecdote from my “less selling” memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger. In 1973, the Miami Beach Vice Squad was among the early news sources I developed in my first TV job as the chief investigative reporter for south Florida’s then NBC affiliate.

Miami Beach morals protectors provided me material for the tawdriest story of my career. I launched a fearless probe of massage parlors. Salons with exotic names like Salome, Grecian Girls, and China House were actually “jerk-off” joints. Undercover detectives made the discovery while assigned to the dangerous task of getting massages.

 “When she began to manipulate my penis,” one arrest report stated, “I identified myself as a police officer and placed her under arrest. Did not ejaculate.” What a guy.

Based on the police reports, I proposed a single story to News Director Gene Strul. He wanted a series―plus corroboration. He sent me on a company-paid tour of every south Florida massage parlor that advertised in local newspapers. Traveling the grease circuit, I determined beyond a shadow of doubt what services were offered.

“Ironically, the movie Deep Throat has been banned from Miami Beach,” I intoned in my first report. “Yet, it’s possible in Miami Beach to purchase the real-life version of the sexual activity that is the movie’s theme. Oral sex.”

I disclosed the services offered by thirteen places. An on-screen graphic designated “M” for masturbation, “OC” for oral copulation, and “I” for intercourse. Below each was a price list. A massage parlor at the rear of an auto body shop in an industrial area charged five-dollars for a hand-job. The bargain probably caused a traffic jam in the neighborhood. How I developed conclusive evidence of these services remains confidential. To paraphrase a Las Vegas motto, what happens in massage parlors, stays in massage parlors.

However, if the National Enquirer will give me a million bucks, or any fraction thereof, I will gladly share my secrets. And speaking of journalism low-lifes, how about the Minnestoa “reporter,” who slipped into a 12-step recovery meeting to “out” the homosexuality of a gay Lutheran pastor. The group, a spin-off of Alcoholics Anonymous and similar confidential fellowships, was formed to help its members deal with their sexuality.

http://www.minnpost.com/braublog/2010/06/22/19134/lavender_outs_lutheran_pastor_–_by_crashing_confidential_support_group

The rationale for the so-called ”exposé” was the minister’s homophobic statements on a radio show he hosted. The “outing” appeared in a gay publication that, ironically, is headed my a man with 27-years of sobriety in AA. I wonder what kind of AA meetings he attends? There is no excuse for violating a tradition of confidentiality that other journalists have abided by for decades.

Readers of this blog and my memoir are aware of my 39-plus years as an AA member. But it was only after much soul-searching that I wrote about my  membership. That’s because my recovery from the depths of alcoholism defines me personally, spiritually and professionally. There is no way I could have otherwise given an account of my achievements—and failures. But with respect to identifying others in the fellowship, the Tradition of  anonymity is sacrosanct. I cannot imagine identifying folks who attend meetings without their permission to do so. And even then, only in a need-to-know context—usually in discussions involving AA friends.

For the most part, journalists have abided by the Tradition. Indeed, Alcoholics Anonymous celebrates its 75th anniversary next weekend. Thousands of members will gather in San Antonio, Texas to express gratitude for a program that offered a new way of life.

I will be among the grateful.

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.

Today, I put my smart-ass humor on hold to write about a tragedy. News accounts describe my neighborhood as upscale. It is a small golf community located off the beaten path 35 miles north of the urban violence that has made Baton Rouge among the murder capitals of the nation. Homes range in price from the 200’s to the low seven figures. My abode on the 16th fairway is at the low end. We live in a place where people say, “You don’t have to lock the doors.” 

Despite relative seclusion from the hustle-bustle of city life, my community is relatively diverse. The president of our homeowners association is African American. Our next door neighbors are Jewish, and the folks across the street are Peruvian—all considered upper middle-class. So it was stunning last week when a sixteen year old honor student murdered a child half his age on a walking and bicycle trail that threads though the woods adjacent to the residential area.

I can only guess at the overwhelming shock and heartbreak the victim’s family must feel. They had dropped by here from a nearby town to visit friends. The eight year old and his twin brother were adopted from Russia. The victim had lagged behind his brother and mother, a physician, on the bike ride when the gruesome attack occured.  She doubled back and discovered her son bleeding from a slit throat and other wounds. She administered CPR, but to no avail.  

Although the 16-year-old and his family live around the corner a few hundred yards from my home, we are not acquainted. Nor do I have a clue about the circumstances of their home life. However, I have a sense of what they are now going through. As the father of a son who committed a horrendous violent crime, I’ve been there and experienced the emotions that are probably similar to those faced by parents of the teenager. Readers of my book are aware of the guilt, recriminations and humilation I felt in the years following my son’s arrest and incarceration. The victim of the crime did not die. Still, she lives with the trauma of being assaulted. 

For years after turning from U.S. 61 onto the winding, blacktop road that dead-ends at the gates of the Louisiana State Penitentary at Angola, I replayed over and over again the mistakes I made as a father. And there were many, beginning with Michael’s birth when I was an immature seventeen-year-old father, and continuing through the worst years of my alcoholism. Did I grease the path that led my son to “Camp J’ in the worst section in a prison once considered the worst in the United States? It is moot question? I accept 100% of the blame, or any portion thereof. But no matter, that doesn’t change Mike’s circumstances.

His time in “Camp J” was the genesis of a transformation that has fostered our reconcilation and resulted in his transfer from Angola to a less intimidating prison. Sometime in 2011, Mike will be released after nearly three decades behind bars. It will be a difficult adjustment, but he has the advantage of a family support system that will help him in the transition.

In addition to Mike’s transformation, I have come to grips with my own failures as a father—a gradual process throughout my 39 years of sobriety and an ongoing challenge. At the time of his arrest, I was eleven years sober. As I write  in my memoir, the emotions that flooded me made me aware that I still had much more work to do in honestly facing my past and reconciling with Mike, as well as with the other children from my first marriage.

 A phrase in Alchoholics Anonymous—the so-called “big book” from which the fellowship gets it’s name—states, “We will not regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it.” I don’t believe I’m committing heresy in saying that I deeply “regret the past.” Otherwise, I would be devoid of conscience.

I interpret the word “regret” to mean not dwelling in the past. It is necessary for me to remember with “regret” that Mike and his three sisters were witnesses to appalling incidents like my arrest on Christmas Eve, 1969, when I went into a drunken rage in our our home and the family had to bail me out of jail on Christmas morning. I cannot afford to forget those times when alcohol controlled my life.

In my early months of sobriety after I stopped drowning my guilt with booze, I had gained a tiny bit of perspective listening to the late Chuck Chamberlain, one of the early “wise men” of AA. His talks have been combined into a well-known recovery book titled A New Pair of Glasses.  In 1971, he was a speaker at an event signifying an anniversary of the alcoholic treatment program at the East Louisiana State Hospital in Jackson. And in the course of his talk, Chuck focused on the guilt that most alcoholics deal with in recovery. I don’t recall the exact words, but he said in effect that in the modern era of discovery and inventions, nobody had come up with a device that could change what happened yesterday.

At a critical time in my sobriety, Chuck’s wisdom gave me a foundation to begin dealing with the heartache I caused and start repairing the wreckage of my past. An important part of my recovery has been the willingness to share my experiences. That is the reason I wrote a book and write this post today on my blog. I hope it will help others go “through the valley of the shadow” of shattering tragedies—especially those tragedies that cause parents to live with unanswerable questions. “Why did my child commit this crime? Am I to blame?”  

My heart goes out to the parents of the victim, as well as to the family of the teenager who committed the terrible crime. The experiences of my life have taught me to look beyond newspaper headlines and “judge not.”

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.           

On May 1st, I watched the annual White House Correspondents dinner and squirmed. It reminded me of the sense of self-importance that invades the pysches of most reporters—especially the Washington press corps. New York Times op-ed columnist Frank Rich wrote about the dinner this week. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/opinion/09rich.html

Rich doesn’t dwell on the why of such events. But I have to wonder about the tradition of reporters sucking up to politicians, movie stars and an array of celebrities that attend these dinners as guests—most notably the President. And remarkably, when he takes a couple of gentle digs at the media, as Obama did this year, journalists sit with forced smiles. For reasons that escape me, a majority of reporters believe their profession should be exempt from criticism by people they write about. As I wrote in Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, investigative reporting is an exception to this rule.

Investigative reporting is the only craft I know in which practitioners celebrate being called assholes. This aberrant appreciation of verbal assaults used to be quite evident at annual conventions sponsored by Investigative Reporters and Editors, known as IRE.

During four days of narcissistic displays of braggadocio, muckrakers shared secrets of winning big awards, pissing off people and acquiring rectal identities. Between workshops and seminars, reporters prowled hotel corridors, bars, and reception areas to beguile one another with accounts of their journalism heroics―gloating about reputations they tarnished, folks they sent to jail, lawsuits filed against them, and the number of people who honored them with nasty epithets. A perverse pride in quantifying success in terms of loathsome nicknames was a sign of an arrogant sense of infallibility that characterized many investigative reporters.

To reinforce egos, mud-slingers presented awards to one another each year. Prize-winners fondled the trophies when beset with doubts about the virtue of their vocation. As an early award-fondling IRE member, as well as a former member of the organization’s Board of Directors, my critique of the muckraker psyche is a confession of personal flaws, rather than a blanket condemnation of the imperfections of investigative reporters. Still, I observed my own shortcomings in a lot of journalists, who deemed themselves qualified to act as judges, juries and character assassins.

The IRE acronym supposedly  reflects a mindset of members. But it has become a misnomer. Most muckrakers only get mildly irritated nowadays. In the wake of media consolidation, old-fashioned scandal-mongering that sent people to jail has diminished to a point of invisibility―especially on television.

In my 30 year career as an investigative reporter, I attended dozens of journalism events and awards banquets. Indeed, I eventually became the first in my family to ever buy a tuxedo, instead of renting. Admittedly, I enjoyed strutting around as a prize-winning journalist. Awards pretty much defined my career. Still, I felt increasingly uneasy at these gatherings.

Among the most pretentious events early in my career was the New England Emmy presentations that began while I was Director of Investigative Reporting for Boston’s ABC affiliate. In fact, my awards category opened the ceremony, which was locally televised—no doubt causing a mad rush to the remote control by viewers when they learned their regular Saturday evening programming was pre-empted. After my name was announced as the winner for outstanding investigative reporting, I became the first person to receive a New England Emmy. So what did I say as I gazed out over a room of tuxedoed journalists and their guests? Rather than thank Mr. Tuxedo rental agency for my outfit, I mumbled the same bullshit that we hear at all these occasions. “Thanks to colleagues, wives, children, dogs, etc.

Twenty years or so later, my wife and I are in New York City for the national Emmy presentations for news. My CNN reporting on Whitewater had been nominated in the investigative reporting category. Afterwards, I told her that it was the last such event I would attend. The fact that I failed to win had no influence on the decision. It was a simple matter of looking around the room and seeing the national media for what it was—a bunch of of self-important characters, who spent an inordinate amount of time celebrating themselves. And yes, me too.

And that is why I squirmed while watching the White House Correspondents Dinner. The job of journalists is to gather news. Although sucking up to potential sources is an unpleasant part of the job description, there should be limits on the level of humiliation that reporters are willing to accept. Kissing peoples asses on national television goes too far.

As Frank Rich noted in his column, there was a much better way for reporters to spend that particular Saturday night. Manhattan was in near panic because of an attempted car bombing.

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. It is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.       

I have been questioned by both readers and reviewers about my decision to to begin Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger with a recap of the bogus scandal titled “Whitewater.” A simple answer is that Chapter One of my book accurately portrays what is happening today in America—diversionary politics filled with toxic rhetoric, rumors, suspicion and disinformation.

 The mainstream news media continues to display the same shortcomings that gave momentum to the Whitewater debacle, an inquiry that spanned seven years, cost taxpayers $70-million, caused congressional gridlock and accomplished nothing more than leaving the public wondering whether blow job is one word, two words or hypenated.

Worse, the premise of the Whitewater investigation was based on an err0r-filled story in the New York Times about Bill Clinton’s investment in a minor Arkansas real estate development. The story was mostly ignored until the suicide of White House lawyer Vincent Foster, a longtime pal of the Clintons. Thus began speculation that his death was tied to the real estate deal. As I write in the book, CNN dispatched me to Arkansas to uncover the real story and then expressed unhappiness about the results of my investigation.     

My assignment to join the ever-expanding horde of journalists traipsing around Little Rock in pursuit of Pulitzer Prizes and Peabody awards seemed a waste of time. Investigative reporters from the New York Times, Washington Post and other major news organizations had been digging away ever since Vince Foster left without saying goodbye. I would be gathering left-over crumbs. After all, Times and Post investigative journalists are supposed to be the best in the business.

Therefore, I was astonished to learn that a trove of official documents disputed Whitewater allegations reported in the nation’s leading newspapers. Equally remarkable, many reporters―network television correspondents in particular―were nothing more than recyclers of articles in the Times and Post. Desperate for the tiniest bit of new information to supplement their plagiarism, reporters were resorted to rumor-mongering.

It seemed to me that both television and print journalists displayed an appalling ignorance of the basics of real estate partnerships, law firm distributions of profits and functions of state government. Reporters often characterized Whitewater as too complicated for “Joe six pack”―”Joe the plumber” in 2008 parlance. Amazingly, most correspondents assigned to the story didn’t take time to understand the transactions. That required leaving Little Rock’s Capital Hotel bar―a gathering place where muckraker wannabes corroborated each other by repeating the latest rumors. Sure, I’m being judgmental. But facts support the judgment.

Anyone interested in knowing those facts need only to buy my book. Suffice to say I reached different conclusions that my reporter brethren. And I was eventually proven correct. Not that anyone cared. In fact, a high CNN honcho was so thoroughly pissed that I didn’t nail the President, he nearly blocked my Emmy-nominated story from airing. When it finally got its 30 minutes of exposure, the story had zero impact—except for me being labeled a Clinton apologist. 

When the Independent Counsel’s investigation of the real estate transactions and related issues ultimately failed to bear fruit as I predicted in my exposé, partisan prosecutors decided to engage in a few years of voyeurism. Major news organizations failed to question the relevance and expense of the investigation. Instead, they became cheerleaders for the voyeurs. For me, it was an early revelation about the direction of journalism. Don’t let facts get in the way of a good story. Reporter skepticism was replaced by cynicism. 

The stink of Whitewater abuses lingers. Nowadays, politicians are guilty. Even when proven innocent. In many ways, the election of Barack Obama is a replay of  Whitewater. Journalists sit on their duffs while rumors and wild allegations gain credibility. The huge difference between then and now is the use of the Internet as a rumor mill. Viral e-mail floods computers across the world, giving morons like the birthers credibility. Many recipients are simply too lazy to question allegations—an effort that only requires reading newspapers and magazines. Commentators like Limbaugh, Hannity and Beck exploit the same laziness of people who are willing to accept their propaganda as gospel.

Remarkably, many voices heard during Whitewater era are again having an influence on politics. Most notorious are the propagandists at Citizens United—the organization responsible for the notorious Willie Horton fear campaign more than two decades ago. It helped undermine the Presidential campaign of Michael Dukakis by suggesting he would set black rapists free from prison to prey on white women. Given such dispicable tactics, it is ironic that Citizens United was at the vortex of the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision on campaign funding that paves the way for big corporations to buy and own candidates elected to public office.

So far, Obama has been able to avoid the kind of investigations that haunted the Clinton years. But that is not because of a lack of effort by political opponents. Until the congressional elections in November, I doubt there will be little, if any, let up in the diversions and lock-step partisanship that has bogged down his agenda. I wouldn’t bet on changed attitudes, but he and the American people might get a break after November.

Meantime, I hope the President keeps the door to the Oval Office open when interns enter.

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. It is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.

I am neither anti-mobile home, nor anti-law enforcement. I need to make these points before writing this post, which deals with the arrests of a bunch of yahoo “militia” members in Michigan. ”Trailer trash” kind of characters can be found in places that I best defined in Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger while describing future prospects after my first marriage vows in front of a Mississippi Justice of the Peace.

As an under-educated seventeen-year-old newlywed with a child on the way, I seemed destined for one of those pockets of ugliness called “trailer parks.” Trailer parks have no resemblance to neat, tree-lined mobile home communities where silver-haired AARP members exchange memories and discount coupons. Nor do they look like Mother Nature’s tornado targeted, “it sounded like a freight train” working class neighborhoods, similar to the one where my daddy died in the only home he ever claimed pride of ownership.

In my mind’s eye, “trailer parks” are sinister-looking roadside ghettos with dilapidated mobile homes pockmarked by peeling aluminum siding, air conditioners tilting precariously from window sills, and battered old cars and trucks mounted on concrete blocks as monuments to the procrastination of no-accounts who drink whiskey, smoke dope, and force their families to live in such odious conditions. That seemed my destination. And if life were truly fair and I got my just desserts, I would have ended up there―borrowing jumper cables from our next door neighbor, Jimmy Swaggart.

Television news reports showing the homes of the little militia band under indictment in Detroit fit my mind’s eye image of places occupied by ”trailer trash.” Calling their group “The Hutaree”—nobody seems to know for certain what the hell that means—the eight men and one woman remain in jail without bail. But that may soon change.

A U.S. District Judge in Detroit has told prosecutors to show proof the defendants were anything more than a bunch of loudmouths, who posed no immediate danger of committing violence. They are accused of hatching a bizarre scheme that involved murdering a lawman, then bombing his funeral to kill other law enforcement folks. The purpose of the alleged plot was to kindle a nationwide revolution.

Strange but true, according to an indictment based on the testimony of an undercover agent and secretly taped conversations that so far fail to corroborate “a clear and present danger,” to use a cliche. Maybe these people are guilty as charged and the government is simply playing its cards close to the vest (two cliches in a row. I’m on a roll).

Anyway, I have an inherent distrust of “sting” operations involving undercover agents—mainly because I’ve seen, first hand, too many abuses in such cases. Once an informant gets inside an alleged criminal conspiracy, it becomes an absolute necessity to obtain indictments in order to justify the time and expense of an investigation.

Indeed, many undercover sting operations seem to follow trends that are designed to generate publicity. In the 1950’s, outing commies was the big deal. Then along came the mafia in the sixties, followed by a public and media fixation on Watergate in the 1970’s. Investigations of illegal drugs and arms dealing were big in the eighties (remember Iran-Contra?), Whitewater and political corruption a decade later, and since the turn of the century, the highest profile cases have involved terrorism. All important issues and each deserves its moment in the sun (trite phrase number three).

But in every instance, there were frequent law enforcement abuses, including a few that helped keep me in the investigative reporting business for thirty years. In a series of CNN reports during the mid-nineties, for example, I exposed a U.S. Custom Service sting operation know as Exodus. And  by darn, I will shamelessly plug my book with another short excerpt. 

Agents lured two German buyers to the United States by misrepresenting the legality of the merchandise being offered for sale. The men were secretly videotaped buying today’s equivalent of B.B. guns. The arrests were announced with great fanfare. Then Attorney General Richard Thornburg portrayed them as “merchants of death.”

In reality, it was the first arms venture for both buyers. Neither man had been in trouble with the law before. Because of the unsavory tactics of investigators in assuring the victims that the deal was lawful, the charges were thrown out of court. My CNN investigation of the case led me to other Exodus abuses.

One target was a retired Egyptian Air Force General hailed as a hero in his country. He was considered a close friend of the U.S. military. But after responding to an ad in a weapons magazine, he was entrapped by agents who repeatedly vouched for the legality of a sale.  By exploiting his lack of understanding of American slang, investigators elicited incriminating statements. “There was a lot of talking, mostly by the government,” an irate federal judge said in dismissing the charges.

Exodus was not limited to arms sales. A California electronics salesman was secretly videotaped finalizing the sale of an obsolete supercomputer to a Belgium informant―a snitch being paid a bounty by customs agents to ensnare suspects. During negotiations, the snitch told the computer salesmen that the computer was Paris-bound. But at a final secretly-videotaped meeting in an Orlando, Florida hotel room, the informant said the computer was actually being shipped to an embargoed Eastern European country. On camera, the target of the sting backed out of the deal. It was too late.

Agents stormed his hotel room as he explained the turn of events to his lawyer in a telephone call.  Again, the arrest was portrayed at a news conference as ensuring the safety of U.S. citizens. And again, the charges were ultimately dismissed.

During news conferences following Exodus arrests, Attorney General Thornburg, U.S. Attorneys and Customs officials regularly overstated the importance of spurious arrests. Journalists dutifully wrote down the names and allegations, but rarely questioned the propaganda. Bloated cases made front page headlines. After being tossed out of court, however, verdicts were relegated to the back sections of newspapers alongside obituaries. Television reporters completely ignored the outcomes.

There are a variety of purposes for overzealous sting investigations, but two stand out. First, there is the human need to be recognized for hard work. However, a more pragmatic reason is money. At all levels—local, state and federal—budgets are allocated on the perception that agencies are doing a good job. Favorable headlines never hurt. 

I won’t venture a guess about the outcome of the Michigan “trailer trash” indictments. By the same token, I will not be surprised if it is less there than meets the eyes (have I scored another cliche?).

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. It is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.

A Huffington Post blogger Bob Cesca has taken up the cause of exposing Glenn Beck as a lunatic. No heavy lifting is required for his exposé. It only requires the patience to listen to the ex-disc jockey for five minutes. Beck exposes himself by simply opening his mouth and allowing the lips to flap. 

Despite the ease of writing a Beck blog for on the liberal Internet news site, Cesca made a serious error in comparing the self-professed “rodeo clown” to televangelist Jimmy Swaggart. To paraphrase Lloyd Bentson’s famous line during the 1988 vice-presidential debate after then U.S. Senator Dan Quayle compared himself to John Kennedy, ”I knew Jimmy Swaggart. And Glenn Beck is no Jimmy Swaggart.”

I can understand the comparison, though. Indeed, I would not be surprised if Beck was a regular viewer when the horny evangelist was television’s most watched and controversial preacher. On second thought, I’m betting that as a drug-addled, alcoholic disc jockey in the heyday of televangelism, Beck spent a lot of hours watching Swaggart sermons about the evils of addiction. Jimmy promised a way out for boozers and druggies.

According to Beck, however, it was AA that got him sober in 1994. If true, and I have no reason to doubt him, he is still working on the Fellowship’s 2nd Step of being restored to sanity. And if his crazy persona is only a performance, as he claims, Beck  hasn’t yet reached the 12th Step, which involves practicing AA principles—honesty being at the top of the list in my opinion. Beck consistently lies and/or manipulates the truth. It is an art form among alcoholics. But when we get sober, most of us gradually abandon old habits.

Bob Cesca’s parallel between the talk show loony and  TV evangelists—Jimmy Swaggart and faith healer Benny Hinn in particular—was apparently inspired by a nine-minute Beck radio discourse in which he asked listeners to get on their knees to pray for the country. I agree with the plea, so long as the prayer is aimed at saving the country from Glenn Beck and his ilk—many of whom can be seen daily on Fox “News.”

I spent a lot of time with Jimmy Swaggart, before his zipper reduced a $150-million a year spiritual empire to the comparative equivalent of a rural store-front Pentecostal church. Though my Presbyterian background is a far cry from Brother Jimmy’s “hellfire and damnation” theology, I thought he was a great preacher. 

An excerpt from my book is a good example of what made Jimmy famous prior to his date with infamy.

The televangelist’s performances were daunting. Open floppy Bible in hand, he marched, darted and prowled across makeshift altars with the grace of a professional athlete. He raged against promiscuous sex, alcohol, illegal drugs, pornography and homosexuality. Whether in Bible Belt churches of the deep South and Midwest, or in New York City’s Madison Square Garden, he attracted overflow congregations with a mesmerizing message of sin and salvation, right and wrong, and Heaven and Hell. 

His sermons were pure art. Bending deeply at the waist and speaking in a near whisper that sounded like a deep growl, the impassioned evangelist pointed his weapon-like finger at flinching worshippers and television viewers, threatening sinners with eternal damnation in the burning coals of Hell if they didn’t repent. Jerking upright from a twisted crouch, he pointed heavenward shouting, “Glory, Glory, Glory,” as he sobbed for unsaved souls, who had not yet found Jesus. Pausing only to peek at his gold Rolex to ensure the sermon was on schedule, the evangelist attacked heathen politicians, Godless Supreme Court Justices, the satanic news media and religious denominations that deviated from his homegrown theology. 

Swaggart came down especially hard on the Roman Catholic Church, describing it as “a false cult.” Saving Catholics from the Pope and priests, he explained, was a “burden” God had placed on him. In an ironic criticism, Jimmy noted that priesthood celibacy resulted in “innumerable sordid, tragic, and sometimes vile scandals.” Also high on his list of sinners, were do-gooder “secular humanists”―a phrase he spit out like an obscenity in describing people, who offered worldly solutions to quandaries he deemed spiritual. By the time Brother Jimmy finished maligning secular humanists, Catholics and others failing to pass his entrance exams to Heaven, members of his congregations were worked into such an emotional lather that they appeared poised to dash from the arenas and kick the atheistic asses of the Lord’s hell-bound enemies. Better yet, they were willing to pay to get the job done. He was a master at shouting “Hellfire” in a crowded church, causing panic-stricken sinners to extinguish flames with buckets of money. 

Swaggart’s carefully choreographed crusades were actually made-for-television productions in which he took command of the minds, hearts and wallets of frenzied followers. They were his co-stars. Audiences laughed when he laughed and cried when he cried. Every inflection of his voice, catch in his throat or tremulous sob stirred a reaction. Throughout sermons, congregants passionately prayed aloud and spoke in unknown tongues, a gibberish that is peculiar to Pentecostals. 

I believe that Jimmy believed in the message he delivered to an electronic congregation so vast that he was caught up in an endless cycle of having to raise money to stay on television to raise more money. The pressure of fundraising led to compromises and spiritual manipulation that formed the basis of my first Swaggart investigative documentary, Give Me That Big Time Religion. 

But sadly for Swaggart, and tragically for the untold numbers of followers who put more faith in Jimmy rather than his message, it was the big lie—sex addiction—that made his name synonymous with hypocrisy.

Glenn Beck can blubber, prance before cameras and claim to have a hotline to God like Jimmy. But if he doesn’t believe his own bullshit, the similarities end. Beck is more than just a hypocrite. He is an out and out liar who has no conscience, nor does he have any respect for country. 

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. It is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.

Excerpt: Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger

The Mena Intermountain Regional Airport in the west Arkansas foothills of the Ouachita Mountains seems an unlikely locale for spy stories and conspiracy tales. Before the arrival of Barry Seal, Mena was best known for its proximity to the Jot ‘em Down Store in nearby Pine Ridge. The rural relic was made famous by Lum and Abner, popular 1940’s radio characters. The Jot ‘em Down Store was a fictional backdrop for dispensing homespun mountain observations about Washington politics and national affairs. It’s too bad that Lum and Abner were not around when Mena gained mythical notoriety. The zany stories would have provided them months of material for comical commentary. 

The yarn began in June, 1984, when a camouflage-painted C-123K transport plane piloted by Barry Seal landed at the airport with a full cargo of rumors and conjecture. Dubbed “The Fat Lady” in its Vietnam days, the retired military aircraft sat on a tarmac outside the hangar of an airport fabrication shop for six months. Before being sold, it left the ground twice—each time to circle the airport. But the simple presence of the mysterious plane triggered years of speculation that has never gone away. The dimwitted stories continue even today. What made the Mena fable so astonishing was the willingness of supposedly intelligent people to believe the myth. 

Twenty-four years ago today, notorious international drug smuggler/turned informant Barry Seal was assassinated in Baton Rouge by a Colombian hit team outside a Salvation Army halfway house. Then described by the Drug Enforcement Administration as the most important informant in the agency’s history, Seal had been stripped of armed bodyguards by an irate Louisiana federal judge, who was outraged that the smuggler avoided prison in a south Florida case because of his value as a witness against Colombia’s Medellin cocaine cartel. Seal had also plea bargained his way out of a prison sentence in an unrelated Baton Rouge case, prompting a revenge-tainted outburst by the angry judge. As part of Seal’s  probation, he was ordered to spend nights at the halfway house. Despite testimony by lawmen and prosecutors that Barry’s life was in danger, the judge put him on a predictable schedule  

I was well-acquainted with Barry—to close, according to many law enforcement officials. He contacted me in 1984, claiming to be caught in the midst of a turf battle between drug agents in Baton Rouge and and a DEA task force in Miami. Although skeptical at first, I soon established that he was, in fact, an informant whose undercover exploits in Central America were on the verge of disrupting the world’s biggest cocaine operation—the main source of 90% of the cocaine shipped into the United States. Traveling with Seal to Miami and Mena, Arkansas, I secretly videotaped his meetings with drug agents. I also put together a paper trail that re-enforced his bona fides. 

Barry’s motives for working with the DEA were not altruistic. He had been caught smuggling drugs into south Florida and faced the prospect of a long prison term. So he cut a deal. But rather than admit to me that he was a common drug smuggler, Seal tried to foist himself off as a spy working undercover for the CIA. However, the extent of his spy activity was limited to a one time mission in which he secretly snapped pictures of cocaine being loaded onto his C-123 in Nicaragua during a DEA sting operation. After learning of the sting from DEA officials, the CIA asked to install a camera on the plane to gather evidence that Nicaragua had become a trans-shipment point for cocaine processed in Colombia.

Seal’s photographs were later be used by President Reagan in a nationally broadcast speech seeking funds for Nicaragun Contra rebels. By then, Barry was buried in Green Oaks Cemetery in Baton Rouge. But metaphorically, he was not dead. Instead, he became the star of the Mena myth—a conspiracy tale of a CIA guns-for-drugs plot centered at the Mena airport.

In someways, I feel responsible for giving early momentum to conspiracy theories. A few months after meeting Barry, I reported a one-hour investigative documentary giving details of his Nicaraguan undercover mission. Titled, Uncle Sam Wants You, the report criticized lawmen and the U.S. Attorney’s office in Baton Rouge for jeopardizing the south Florida investigation. I was accused of “taking up the banner of a drug smuggler.”

However, the main thrust of the documentary was the ongoing turf battle between jurisdictions. Still, I have regrets about the documentary because I allowed Barry to hint that he was spy. For the benefit of cameras, he maximized his minor CIA role and minimized his activities as a drug smuggler. My skewed judgment in editing the interviews was geared toward dramatic narrative rather than stating explicitly that he was a spy wannabe. 

The previous paragraphs give the basic building blocks on which the Mena myth was built. A mysterious military transport plane  lands in Mena, Arkansas and remains there for several months. The pilot alludes to being a CIA operative on a television show, as well as in conversations with nearly everyone he comes in contact with. After he is mowed down in a contract killing, the President of the United States displays CIA photographs of his Nicaraguan sting operation. And lo and behold, months after Barry Seal’s murder, his C-123 is shot down in Nicaragua during an honest-to-goodness CIA operation to assist Contra Rebels.

Enter onto the scene the Christic Institute.  In the 1980’s, the  left-wing organization was obsessed with CIA operations in Central America. Christic propagated dozens of drugs-for-guns stories and other yarns linked to U.S. intelligence abuses. Some had a ring of truth, others were exaggerated or downright wrong. The institute was later discredited in lawsuits to the point that it was forced to declare bankruptcy. Beforehand, though, it grabbed hold of the Barry Seal saga and managed to convince an array of left-wing journalists to run the story. And as the Iran-Contra scandal unfolded in the Reagan Admininistration, Seal emerged as a player.

In ensuing years, the tale expanded to link him to President’s Reagan and George Herbert Bush. Following the election of Bill Clinton, the right-wing took possession of the Barry Seal saga, accusing Clinton of protecting the Mena drug operation as a favor for cocaine-snorting “Friends of Bill.” And so it went. No rumor was too ridiculous to be discounted.

And it hasn’t stopped yet. Two weeks ago, I received a telephone call from a reporter in Arkansas, who said he was pursuing brand new leads about Seal’s Arkansas activities. I cautioned him to read my book, which provides a huge body of documented evidence contradicting rumors about Barry’s activities.

I remained in contact with Seal from 1984 until a few days before his murder. The last encounter occured when he came to my office to meet a Miami private investigator, who happened to be a friend of mine. The detective—hired by an attorney representing drug kingpin Pablo Escobar—wanted Seal to identify photographs of Escobar taken during the Nicaraguan sting operation. DEA agents in Miami approved the meeting. Even so, U.S. prosecutors in Louisiana questioned me to determine if there was a connection between the meeting and Seal’s death. There wasn’t. By then, the assassins had been arrested. They were convicted and remain in prison.

For me, there was disturbing testimony in the trial.  I learned that my 1984 Barry Seal documentary ended up in the hands of Pablo Escobar, who only knew the pilot by an alias he used in dealing with the Colombian cartel. After watching my program, Escobar reportedly put out the contract on Seal’s life.

I don’t know if I could have dissauded Barry to conceal his identity, even if I tried. He was a self-promoter from the get-go and wanted his face shown. Therefore, he got the publicity he wanted—then and now. I have a hunch that if I walk close enough to Barry’s Baton Rouge gravesite, the ground may quake from his laughter at the conspiracy legacy he left behind. 

I know I laugh loudly when reading crazy stories about his adventures, as well as all the conspiracy tales by “birthers” and others willing to believe similar stories. Keep an eye out for the black helicopters, or flying saucers, or whatever. They are coming to take us away, Ha, Ha!