I don’t know why I was so bad at wrapping presents. It was a skill I had never mastered, and the harder I tried the worse I got. I carefully observed my co-workers take a rectangular box, a sheet of paper, some tape and ribbon, and transform those simple elements into a masterpiece fit for Santa’s tree. It looked so easy.

Of course, golf looks easy. But give me the same box, the same tape, and the same paper, and after an hour of honest labor I could produce something that looked like a space rock. It was sad. And at the end of each day, I’d come home with paper cuts and tape stuck to my hair, a few pins hanging from my sleeves, and gift tags, the horrible gift tags, were everywhere. I found two in my sock one night.

The store owner was a buddy of mine, so I didn’t worry about being fired. But he was also a businessman, so he called in Maude and Claude, professional gift wrappers from Franklin. Really. I don’t know what’s stranger, that there are professional gift wrappers out there, or that two people named Maude and Claude actually found each other.

Claude was kind of creepy, so I worked with Maude, a gigantic German lady who viewed my attempts at gift wrapping with complete contempt.

“You silly man,” she huffed. “You have not the gift of the papers. I learned the art of gift wrapping from my grandfather, who learned it from his uncle, the great Lars Von Hupsfeldt. Gift wrapper for kings he was. You think it is enough to throw some paper on a box. I will teach you. This fold I have created here, this is called the Dornheim fold. It is used for boxes less than 12 inches wide. Notice that the angle of the fold is precisely 45 degrees. It must be so. Here, you try. Nein! Nein! You do it all wrong! Get away!”

“Silly man,” mumbled Claude.

That Christmas season was a long one. Eventually, Maude and Claude took over the entire gift wrapping section, and brought in their own paper and tape and ribbon and bows. I was banished to a table in the smoking room near the store’s exit. Occasionally, Maude would look in my direction and mumble something in German, and as the ribbon floated in the air between them, they would laugh and laugh.

But the holidays are a magical time, and my luck was about to change. A wealthy gentleman named Robert Dalton came by and purchased a watch for his wife. Since Maude and Claude were busy with stacks of purchases, he brought the package to me. I did the best I could for him, and 90 minutes later, the watch was wrapped. The next day, he returned.

“I need a favor, young fellow, and I’m willing to pay you for it,” he said.”

“Yes, sir. What can I do for you?” I asked.

“See, the thing is, when my wife saw that watch you wrapped under our tree, it

was… well, let’s be honest here, it was the worst gift wrapping she’d ever seen. I mean, it was so ugly, it was almost art. So she assumed that I had wrapped it myself. And she was so happy that I had wrapped her gift myself, that she… well, a gentleman doesn’t discuss such things.”

“Women are funny,” I said.

“But the thing is, I’d like you to wrap all her other presents for me. The same way you did the watch. It meant a lot to her, but I just don’t have time to wrap them myself.”

“Why that’s very kind of you,” I said. “I think. But you’ve got seven packages here. It’ll take me about 9 hours to do all of them.”

“I’ll give you $200.”

“Deal!” and we shook on it. I threw the packages in my car and was up all night, but by sunrise, they were all wrapped, and each of them carried my distinctive style. Mr. Dalton didn’t stop grinning until May.

It wasn’t long before word of my talents got out, and I had a growing clientele, men who wanted their wives or girlfriends to think they had taken the time to personally wrap their gifts. I was busy right up to Christmas Eve. While I should have felt guilt over being such an integral part of this deception, I was only 25, so the part of my brain that is capable of feeling true guilt wouldn’t develop until, I don’t know, it’ll develop some day, I guess.

Still, Christmas miracles don’t have a long shelf life. By the time I finished the packages for my last client, I had, tragically, become fairly adept at wrapping packages. I even mastered, accidentally, the Dornheim Fold once, but I haven‘t been able to duplicate that feat without lots of beer. On December 26, I went by to see Maude and Claude, who were staring at their own personal holiday nightmare.

“Look, silly man, look!” demanded Maude. “Do you see this thing? It is an abomination.”

It wasn’t really. It was a gift bag. They were suddenly everywhere, and I made plans to use them whenever possible. For Maude and Claude, they were a sign of change, and nothing is more frightening than that. But when I told them of my new venture, the art of making packages look like a helpless male had wrapped them, they were intrigued. It was a good idea, and I guess I shouldn’t have given it away for free.

But it was Christmas, after all. Ladies, check your presents, especially the horribly wrapped ones. If there is an M or a C on the box, well, you know the truth now. But you didn’t hear it from me.

Friend of mine saw a link somewhere that wondered what it would be like if Team Obama applied its logic on health care to other progressive battles in history. He lost the exact link, which I don’t have either, so I hope my list below isn’t copycatting someone else too closely (email or comment if so, esp. if you have the link in question).

Anyway, here are a few headlines from history, if Obama logic was at work…

McKinley encourages gun presence at town hall meets
Popular president gleams, ‘Americans exercising rights is a beautiful thing’

HOOVER FILLS TREASURY WITH J.P. MORGAN EXECUTIVES
‘RICH PEOPLE GOT US INTO THIS MESS, THEY’LL GET US OUT’

FDR Drinks with Hitler at Berghof ‘Beer Summit’
Hails Chamberlain approach, says ‘no one even knows’ where Sudetenland located

TRUMAN ORDERS DRONES OVER JAPAN, KOREA, CHINA
‘Tojo could be anywhere, but we’ll get him’; warns wedding parties

KENNEDY: MOON MISSION, ‘SPACE RACE’ NOT WORTH EFFORT
‘Let Soviets do it’; JFK says NASA broke, funds better spent on eavesdropping tech

LBJ: ‘War on Poverty’ too costly
President focuses budget priorities on bank bailouts

NIXON BEGS CHINA: BUY OUR PRODUCTS!
Admits US markets weak but insists ‘dollar still groovy’; polls in freefall

Ford pardons Nixon, Haldeman, Mitchell, Liddy, entire Watergate crew
To horror of even GOP lawmakers, president says ‘time to put past behind us’

CARTER DECLARES ECONOMIC DOWNTURN ‘THROUGH’
Foresees easy reelection in post-Nixon political era

Reagan Kowtows to Dems on Welfare, Soc Security
President says bipartisanship, talks with liberal Yellow Dogs ‘keys to success’

EX-VP BUSH TAKES REINS, NAMES NANCY REAGAN SEC. OF STATE
Inauguration Promise: ‘Read My Lips, No New Taxes on the Middle Class in First 100 Days’

Clinton backtracks on ‘don’t ask don’t tell,’ prefers straight military
Disappointed gays left in lurch; author Morrison calls Clinton ‘first white black president’

BIN LADEN CAUGHT, AL-QAEDA DESTROYED
‘Proud’ President Bush brings US forces home, UN promises Afghanistan rebuild
WORLD HAILS SADDAM STEPDOWN IN IRAQ; ANNAN CREDITS US DIPLOMACY
VP Cheney says Patriot Act to be rescinded accordingly — Dow rises to 20,000

Crossposted from JAZZ from HELL

The path to true responsibility was by showing that I could be trusted to take children someplace and return with them alive and unharmed. The problem was that everybody knew me, and none of them would trust their precious offspring to my shiftless care. But eventually, my younger sister Jan had to go to Huntsville for some job training and asked, reluctantly, if I would care for her two daughters, Misty and Dee Dee.

“No problem,” I said. “We’ll have a great day.”

“Just don’t take them fishing,” said Jan.

“Oh. Well, that shoots down plan A. But I’m sure we can find something to do.”

“Or to the movies,” added Jan. “They’ll fill up with candy and popcorn and act like savages for the rest of the day. And don‘t take them to the Space Museum in Huntsville. They‘re going to that with me next month. Or shopping. Please don‘t take them shopping. I‘ve seen the kind of clothes you buy yourself and it scares me.”

Jan gave me a long list of places and activities to avoid, and that meant my options were severely limited. But I was the uncle, for crying out loud, and watching them play with dolls or watch TV seemed lame. I had a responsibility to take them somewhere, you know, so I could prove I was responsible. Someplace educational, and cheap since I was poor. The answer was obvious, and when Jan finally left the house, I waited for 10 minutes and said:

“Hey, girls. Let’s go to Lynchburg, and take a tour of the Jack Daniels Distillery.”

“I’m only five,” said Dee Dee. “What’s a dustillry?”

“It’s a… well, it’s a place where they distill stuff.”

“Is there pop corn?” asked Misty.

“Distilled pop corn,” I said. “The best in the land.”

Before you say it, yes, I see that mote in my eye, but this trip is a rite of passage for everybody who lives in Tennessee. Moore County is surely one of the five most beautiful places in America. Jack Daniels Distillery sits on the side of a hill in Lynchburg, population 361 or thereabouts. It was a pleasant 45 minute drive through the country for us. The center held… until I parked the car.

“Now, we all stay together, right? Right?” Too late. They were gone.

I was about to learn an important lesson. There is a big difference between babysitting a child and babysitting children. Unless you have squirrel eyes that move independently, you can’t watch two children at the same time. Misty and Dee Dee took off in different directions. Since Dee Dee was faster, I went after her first. Misty was screaming out “Where’s the pop corn?” so I hoped she would be easy to track.

One of the things that makes Jack Daniels product special is the water they use. It comes from a spring that’s right there on the distillery grounds and the spring water is iron-free. If I had been able to take the tour, I would know why that’s important, but when I found the spring, it may have been iron-free but it wasn’t Dee Dee free. She had wandered into the shallow pool at the mouth of the cave and was splashing people who tried to get her out. I waded out to her, was pummeled by a furious watery assault, and hooked her under my right arm, then went in search of her sister.

“You shouldn’t wander away like that,” I scolded. “What if I couldn’t find you?”

“I’m only five,” she replied.

As we were walking uphill toward the place where they burn the ricks to make the charcoal, which is no doubt an important step in making whiskey that I could have learned had I taken the tour, Misty passed us riding in a small trolley bus that was taking the tour. She waved at us as we stood there. From under my arm, Dee Dee waved back.

“I can’t find the pop corn,” shouted Misty.

I tried to catch up, but was burdened by Dee Dee. We made a bargain that she wouldn’t run away if I let her walk with me until we caught up with Misty.

“Promise?” I asked.

“Of course I promise,” she replied. But the moment I turned my back, she took off and disappeared into the barrel house. The barrel house isn’t part of the tour, and several of the workers, though very friendly and helpful, didn’t appreciate having to leave their jobs to run her out of that building.

“Dee Dee?” I screamed. “Where are you?”

“I’m hiding behind a barrel,” she echoed.

“Well, this won’t take long,” I said, turning to a worker. “How many barrels are in this building?”

“6,059,” was the weary reply. So the search began. I think we looked behind 1,000 before we found her. That was when the workers politely but firmly asked us to leave the grounds.

“I will as soon as I find the other one,” I said.

“The other one? Is she in here too?”

“No, I think she’s taking the tour. Come on, Dee Dee. Dee Dee?”

Dee Dee was gone again. I began to get frantic. These guys might call the police, and I might be arrested. You can complain until you’re out of breath about how responsible you are, but if a police record says otherwise, you’ve lost the argument. Just then the trolley that was carrying Misty came back around and there was Dee Dee sitting next to her sister.

“They’re taking us back to the main building,” yelled Misty. “They’re going to give us free samples! And pop corn!”

“You promised you wouldn’t run away,” I yelled.

“I’m only five,” was the reply.

“Free samples? Free samples of what?” I asked the worker.

“Well, what do we make in this place?” he replied.

So I began a sprint to the main building. If Dee Dee and Misty were all liquored up when we got home, I’d never hear the end of it. But the joke was on me. Lynchburg is in Moore County, Tennessee, and Moore County is dry. You can’t buy Jack Daniels delicious sipping whiskey in the town where it’s made. I found the two of them sitting side by side taking long swallows of lemonade.

“Do we get a present?” asked Misty.

I did buy them a present. It was a huge, half barrel that once held I don’t know how many gallons of whiskey. If I ever take the tour, I’ll know. When we got home, I set the barrel in the living room and they played inside it for the rest of the day. True, they smelled like whiskey for a month, but it was a fine, Tennessee-smooth, whiskey smell that made them very popular with their school bus driver.

That night, they slept like angels, although they both complained of headaches the next morning. It must have been the lemonade. Who knows what kind of water they used to make that?

Terry Hargrove lives in Old Saybrook with his wife and 4-year-old son. An anthology of his first 50 columns, Don’t Mind Me, a Tennessean Lost in Connecticut is now available from ladderpress.com, Amazon.com, and BarnesandNoble.com. And if you’re going to read it while you drink, be sure you’re drinking Jack Daniels, the finest sipping whiskey ever made. I was not paid to say that.

The good reverend has had a long and storied career, with a recent highlight being his poetic excoriation of the Bush administration with President George W. Bush himself sitting behind Lowery as he spoke at Coretta Scott King’s memorial service in 2006.

What will the loquacious Lowery say at his Freedom Medal acceptance speech?

I can imagine it’ll go something like this:

Thank you all for coming today / to hear what this old bird’s got to say…

What a thrill it is to receive this honor / along with Bishop Tutu, Ted Kennedy and Sandra Day O’Connor…

Harvey Milk, Sidney Poitier and many other notables / but first let me talk a little bit about potables…

It’s two thousand and nine but you coulda fooled me / ‘Cause discrimination remains, like in Cambridge, you see…

Where a black man, a professor, an honorable soul / gets profiled, another brother in a never-ending toll…

Cuffed in his house by a white cop he was / for raising his voice, no real probable cause…

Obama was mad but made nice, so I hear / and invited them both to the White House for beer…

The distinguished professor preferred a Red Stripe / while the chief exec wanted Bud Light (that’s allright!)…

When it came to the cop, whose power he flaunted / I took a step back when I heard what he wanted…

Bad enough Gates was nabbed by this goon / but making it worse, his choice was BLUE MOON!

For Coors, millions more / thanks to this boor PR whore…

With so many choices, tasty and fine / he coulda drank oatmeal stout, ale, barleywine…

He coulda had a Rogue or a Stone IPA / Dogfish Head, Red Hook or a Guinness, I say…

Colorado gems from Left Hand or Dry Dock / maybe something from Europe like a top Doppelbock…

Man, he coulda picked Pabst or, more aptly, Pig’s Eye / and how come he ain’t given Sam Adams a try?

Made right in his neighborhood, in Boston no less / but it sounds like he don’t get around, I guess…

Instead he drank something like lemony pee / that my aunties wouldn’t touch, it might just be me…

But it’s all good in the end, I don’t want to insult / especially in times that are so difficult…

Economy’s weak, jobs flushed down the can / still got our soldiers out in Afghanistan…

Education a shambles, environment’s trash / bankers keep taking what’s left of the cash…

Corruption gets deeper, health care a mess / and the poor have to live with somehow even less…

The birthers, the racists, the haters, Fox News / all giving Obama the Oval Office blues…

But one thing’s for sho’, they can’t take away / no matter how they lie, how they rant every day…

How much they deny, how hard they attack / the plain truth is the ole White House is Black.

Crossposted from JAZZ from HELL

Click here to view the embedded video.

And now, a look at some fun rules at a high school in Virginia. (Staggeringly, this did not happen in Southern Virginia, but up north where they haven’t yet outlawed education.)

Click here to view the embedded video.

How do I know? Let’s look at the facts. When I was a kid, I dressed up as a matador and went to school actually thinking I looked cool. I bought a book titled “How to Hypnotize Bees.“ And tried it. Twice. I believed my friends when they said emu tipping was possible. I still have that scar. Just last year, I was “It” in a game of tag with 22 middle school students. I still have that scar, too. I bought Lehman Brothers stock because Jim Cramer said it was a good idea.

But the thing that has me rattled is that the older I get, the worse my brain fag becomes. Just last week, as all of us were trying to get up and out the door for work and school, Nancy asked if I would dress Joey.

“I’ll try to get home early tonight,” she said. “We have a birthday party to go to.”

“Now, you told me there was something different about this party,” I said, “but I’ve forgotten now what that was.”

“There’s an animal guy coming,” she said. “He’s bringing rabbits and turtles and things. The kids will love it.”

“Animal guy, huh?” I said. “Yes, the kids will get a kick out of that.”

I shouldn’t have said anything else. I should have kept quiet and not mentioned which animals the animal guy might bring, but I had a Brain Fag moment. I couldn’t help it.

“Are you sure you’re OK with going?” I asked.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well, an animal guy probably brings all kinds of animals. Rabbits, guinea pigs, and maybe, you know, those reptiles I’m not supposed to mention by name?”

Nancy paused, mid-stroke, with her mascara dangling in the morning light, and contemplated all the disturbing possibilities.

“Oh, you don’t think he’d bring one of those things, do you?” Nancy asked. She has this thing about…those reptiles I’m not ever supposed to mention. “This is a party for small children. Surely he wouldn’t bring one of those.”

“Well, there’ll be a lot of boys at the party,” I said. “And I know it hurts you to hear this, but some boys like those…things I’m not supposed to mention. Joey might like them, too.”

“That is the worst thing you’ve ever said to me!” she snapped. “My sweet little boy would never have anything to do with those things, and you are a bad father if you ever encourage him to do so.”

“I’m not encouraging anything,” I begged. “All I’m saying is…”

“Maybe Joey would like a tarantula someday,” Nancy interrupted. “How would you like for me to buy him one? How could you sleep knowing there was a spider that big inside your own house. What would you do?”

“Well, dear, I’d have to divorce you and sell the house,” I replied. “And Joey would go straight to military school.”

Ours is a symbiotic relationship. I protect Nancy from all those reptiles I’m not supposed to mention and she stands up to all the arachnids I stumble upon or run from screaming. But Joey is the wild card. We have a great unspoken fear that he won’t share our very natural phobias, or that he might forget what rightfully terrifies his parents. Because Brain Fag runs deep in the Hargrove men. But then it was time to leave, so there was a brief round of apologies, some hugs and kisses, and off we went, each to our own separate schools.

That afternoon, as I waited for Nancy to come home, I heard Joey laughing in the bathroom.

“Daddy! Daddy! Come and look at what you did.”

Joey stood in the center of the bathroom, laughing.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“Look at what you did, daddy. You put all my clothes on, on top of my pajamas.”

And I had. I had dressed Joey that morning without bothering to undress him first. I had put shirt, underwear, pants and socks over underwear, pajama top, and pajama bottoms. He stood there laughing, in the center of a pile of clothes, as I gaped at him.

“You’re doing the face,” he chuckled. “Momma calls it your Brain Frog face.”

“It’s not Brain Frog,” I said. “It’s Brain Fag, and don’t laugh too much, because you’ll get it yourself one of these days. What was I thinking? Oh, Joey, please. Don’t tell your mom I did this.”

“I’m gonna tell her,” he sang.

“No, please!” I begged. “I’ll never hear the end of it.”

Then we heard the key in the door. Nancy was home. I looked at Joey. He looked at me. It was time for a rapid negotiation and I was in a weak position.

“Don’t tell her, and I’ll buy you a Lego’s Star Wars packet.”

“And a Plo Koon?” He asked.

“Deal!” I said and we shook on it, even though I had no idea what the hell a Plo Koon was. Joey pulled up his clothes over the pajamas. He looked a little lumpy, but if Nancy didn’t notice that morning, I felt confident she wouldn’t notice now.

“Is everybody ready?” asked Nancy. “We have to be at the birthday party in 15 minutes.”

The party was great. Everyone enjoyed the animal guy. I did, too, until he pulled out his tarantula and let it crawl about on his face. Joey turned white and stood shaking beside me. Nancy smiled, until the animal guy pulled out Pee Wee.

Pee Wee was some type of boa constrictor. It took about five minutes driving around before we found Nancy, near the First Congregational Church. She got in the car and was pleased when I told her that Joey had also wanted to leave as soon as the snake came into view.

“That sure was scary, wasn’t it mommy?” Joey asked.

“It sure was,” she agreed. “I’m glad you don’t like…those things I can’t mention.”

“And I’m glad you don’t like spiders,” I said.

“I don’t like snakes or spiders,” he said. “I sure am glad I had some extra underwear on. Because I… I…”

Things got very quiet in the back seat. Nancy looked ay Joey, then at me, then back at Joey.

“Why does Joey have on extra underwear?” she asked. “And why does he have your Brain Fag face?”

“Because he just lost a Plo Koon,” I said.

“What’s a Plo Koon?”

“We’ll never know,” I replied. From the back seat, Joey breathed a deep and mournful sigh. When he does that, he sounds just like me.

Our ears may hear bleep, but our eyes see lips moving that say shit, asshole, fuck, cocksucker, and motherfucker. Sometimes our ears will gather additional evidence. They will hear mother followed by bleep instead of fucker. Sometimes the ears will detect ass followed by bleep or bleep followed by hole but never the compete asshole. But the ears never hear cock followed by bleep or bleep followed by sucker because, it seems, Almighty Television Execs think cocksucker is so reviled a concept as to ever be partially bleeped.

I rarely view pricey premium channels such as HBO or Showtime. But my friends who can afford such luxuries assure me that there’s rarely if ever a bleep to be heard. It’s shit and fuck and motherfucker and cocksucker, etc., as far as the eye can see (or, rather, the ear can hear).

The broadcast networks, of course, don’t even offer any profanity to bleep. (Well, maybe the occasional nipple, but that’s not the issue here.) Apparently, the Federal Communications Commission fines them (in the public interest, of course) for transgressing against something called “public decency.” (We all know, of course, that offending the public with profanity isn’t the real reason — the networks just don’t want to piss off the advertisers.)

Basic cable is my only hope for a little guilty pleasure. Wouldn’t comedian and social critic Lewis Black’s unbleeped HBO “Red, White & Screwed” special be much more delicious if Comedy Central’s reprises of it didn’t bleep every instance of Mr. Black’s fuck and shit and the occasional dickhead? Comedy Central doesn’t demand that Jon Stewart clean up his language during live taping of The Daily Show — yet bleeps his utterances of asshole and fuck when the show airs.

And then there’s the lovely, demure Kathy Griffin on Bravo (winner of two Emmys, as she likes to point out). She’s a true potty mouth. We all know what she’s saying. She drops the offending profanities with aplomb. She’ll even use hand motions to emphasize the language. Yet Bravo bleeps them all.

That’s hardly brave of Bravo, the basic cable channel that says it “delivers the best in food, fashion, beauty, design and pop culture to the most engaged, upscale and educated audience in cable.” Surely such an audience can deal with the occasional shit, fuck, motherfucker, and cocksucker uttered by some of its performers. Surely such an audience does not need the “wink-wink, nudge-nudge” that bleeping represents.

Hell, even basic cable channel AMC bleeps the use of shit in “Blazing Saddles.” Why is AMC so wimpy about such a low-level profanity in that Mel Brooks classic movie ?

I like the occasional, well-timed profanity. I’ve even used it in my classroom. (Committing such rhetorical sins, however, as a professor at a Catholic university probably means I’ll be plenty warm during my afterlife.)

I should confess, though, that I prefer limits to my liking or use of profanity. Like any rhetorical device, if overused, profanity loses its capacity to convey shock, emphasis, and powerful emotion. We all know, of course, people who drop fuck, shit, asshole, and motherfucker into every possible utterance. From the lips of those people, profanity is merely noise shrouding a lack of signal. Lewis Black, Jon Stewart, Kathy Griffin, Mel Brooks and other comedic social commentators are not such people: They are desperately needed signal trying to break through overwhelming noise.

I wish basic cable would just let me hear what my eyes can see. It’s particularly egregious when Comedy Central, of all basic cable channels, bleeps profanity. After all, this is the network that put a counter on screen to record the 162 utterances of shit in a South Park episode. Comedy Central broke linguistic ground with that show — then promptly threw the dirt back into the hole it dug in social norms.

To those TV chieftains who serve as basic cable’s Highest Authorities on What May Be Heard, who deny my ears the profane audio of these social critics to accompany the video my eyes can see, I say fuck ‘em. If viewers of these comedians object to not bleeping shit, asshole, fuck, cocksucker, and motherfucker, I ask: Why the fuck are you watching those shows in the first place?

It’s  been suggested before that Jon Stewart is perhaps America’s most trustworthy journalist. Which is nice for him, but not so good for the rest of us, because he’s not a journalist. He’s a comedian. He’s David Letterman. He’s Larry the Cable Guy. He’s Phyllis Diller. He makes his living by making people laugh.

But here he is, once again stepping up and telling truth to power in ways that seem spectacular to us. (And make no mistake – money is power in America, and media conglomerates are among power’s most critical brokers. So stomping the balls off of Jim Cramer does, in fact, constitute speaking truth to power.)

The relevant part of that last paragraph occurs toward the end of the first sentence. What Stewart did has been the talk of the entire fucking world in the last 48 hours. He, a guy with a TV show, hauled a man out into the town square who has done, by omission or commission – your choice – grave damage to countless Americans. Whether Cramer contributed to the insanity that has led us to our current economic apocalypse directly or whether his worst sin is that he did not use his platform to call out the guilty in advance, he and his employers played a noteworthy role in facilitating our financial crash. And we, the citizenry of the information-logged society in the history of the solar system, stand agog: motherfucking WOW! Did you SEE that?!

This is the tragedy. We’re as staggered at the occurrence of actual journalism as we would be by the sight of Rosie O’Donnell clubbing Donald Trump to death with her boobs. The fact that the only journalism in recent memory has emanated from Comedy Central is … well, it’s like shooting novocaine into the leg of a quadriplegic, really.

Cap and Bells

It’s never been easy – or profitable, or even safe – to speak truth to power. America circa 2009 isn’t the first place when the ordained channels have failed to convey to the people an accurate accounting of the events shaping their lives. In fact, what we’re dealing with now is more reflective of the historical rule than it is the exception.

Throughout most of history you’ve had to search for the truth about power in indirect commentaries: literature, and especially speculative genre fiction, for instance. Comedy. Art. The forms allow a person with a point of view to express it while maintaining a sheen of plausible deniability. “Oh, no, your majesty, I wasn’t writing about your munificent presence! The malevolent criminal monarch in my story is something I imagined might exist in a less just society on a planet in another galaxy.” It’s good to remember that science fiction and fantasy are never about the future or other worlds – they’re always about here and now.

And there’s the very old tradition of the fool. The jester, in his classical incarnation, was the only one in the court who could get away with telling the truth. The fact that he was a certified nutball removed enough credibility from his words that he could say serious things without being taken seriously. He was fine so long as he didn’t slip into lucidity.

Put another way, the truth has always been there if you knew where to look and understood the code. 2009 isn’t a lot different from 1009 in that respect, I imagine. There can be a price to be paid if the wrong person says the wrong thing in the wrong way. Once upon a time the price might be that your loved ones would get to watch your head being paraded around on a pike. Now the price might be something as pedestrian as losing a job opportunity or having your reputation perma-slandered by a vicious partisan noise machine. But there’s always risk, so the citizen bent on telling the truth needs to understand the context.

Clowning America

Throughout the Bush years any journalist with the temerity to act like an actual reporter paid a price. The default was loss of “access,” and that was pretty terrifying to most on the best because your ability to survive was going to be hindered if you couldn’t get anywhere near the newsmakers. This wasn’t the worst that could happen, of course. Ask Joe Wilson or that mealy-mouthed cocksucker Scott McClellan (not a journalist by any means, but a good illustration of the point) what happened when you hit the Bush/Cheney mob a little too close to home. At best, it took courage and hopefully enough cash-on-hand to sustain you through some hard times.

Clearly that wasn’t the only place where the institutions of the Fourth Estate lacked, and continue to lack, courage. As Stewart makes brutally clear in his 20 minute-plus dismemberment of Jim Cramer – a man not heretofore known for being short on words or self-confidence – finding malpractice in the field of financial journalism (my new favorite oxymoron, by the way) is about as tough as finding loose morals in a whorehouse. Think about it. You have CNBC, FOX’s biz news, the Wall Street Journal, the financial sections of hundreds of newspapers, and how many more business “news” outlets. How many of them were warning you of the things that we’re now told were more or less inevitable? (Told by some, I should say – others are still trying to say there was no way we could have predicted this. Which is bullshit – I know some very sharp people who predicted it, but they don’t have TV shows, in large part because they’re the sorts willing to tell the truth about rigged games. Maybe they should have put together an irreverent ventriloquist act or written a fantasy novel.

Media as far as they eye can see, so much media, so much “analysis,” and not a drop of journalism in sight.

It’s true that Jon Stewart isn’t the first funny guy in history to be the best available source of reliable reporting on the social, political and economic condition. But most of those places didn’t have democracies. Most didn’t have a free press. And none of them had more access to information or channels of distribution than we do.

“Journalism is no worse off now than it was during the reign of Caligula” is a true statement, but it’s not the sort of thing an advanced society should have to settle for, either.

Let’s get Jon Stewart the Peabody. Then a Pulitzer for The Onion. And why not a Nobel for the karma-obsessed lead in My Name is Earl?

If that’s the world we’re willing to accept, it’s the best we deserve.

First, the theory:

Next, the test: [Warning - the following may be disturbing.]

Ah, what it must be like to have rainbows and unicorns and sunshine and puppies flying out of your ass….

Photo credit: Spur Australia

George Denis Patrick Carlin was a goddamned hypocrite, and I loved him for it.

In the latter part of his long and storied life and career, the late standup comedy legend came off as a crusty, irate, disappointed, extremely cynical bastard who freely admitted he’d given up on the hopeless human race and reveled in its plentiful fuckups and contradictions.

“It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in the big club. This country is finished.” – GC

Offstage though, Carlin was a kind-hearted, selfless, encouraging friend to myriad pluggers on the comedy circuit. His daughter and colleagues say he was nothing like the persona he developed in the face of advancing age and frustration with the agonizing lack of progress in the nation he loved as much as he lampooned.

“Some people see a glass that’s half full. Some see a glass that’s half empty. I see a glass that’s twice as big as it needs to be.” – GC

Though he insisted that he didn’t give a shit about America anymore, he sure kept up with it. In his last HBO show, It’s Bad for Ya, he opened with an astounding rapid-fire monologue loaded with all the latest buzzwords to show how tuned in and mentally shipshape he still was, despite having endured heart surgery and hitting the big 7-0.

Plus, he read more blogs than you do.

“The day after tomorrow is the third day of the rest of your life.” – GC

I saw Carlin perform three times, the last here in Denver a few years ago in which he scoffed at the obsessively precautionary society America had become. He bragged about having swum in New York City’s filthy rivers as a kid.

“I was tempered in shit!” – GC

But he could never shake that bad ticker…

“As it stands right now, I lead Richard Pryor in heart attacks, two to one. However, Richard still leads me, one to nothing, in burning yourself up.” – GC, 1982

George was honored in November with the Mark Twain Prize, apparently the only award he saw as “legitimate.” I wish he’d a made it to the ceremony, but he was undoubtedly there in spirit. Ah, who’m I kidding…

“What’s this favoritism toward the dead? FUCK the dead!” – GC