Why? Because I Love You

I've been discovering dozens of Memphis blogs over the past year, including a whole new crop I found during the most recent blog hiatus. I'll add the new ones to the blog list soon, highlighting a few of the interesting ones. I don't know why, but I thought it might be time to have some kind of Memphis bloggers' team logo or club icon or something. So, I made this:



Please feel free to download this graphic to your own server and use it all you want. If you are on a service that doesn't have image hosting, then (AND ONLY THEN) hot-link it. (URL: http://www.hollihan.net/MemBlog.gif) Don't abuse the generosity or I'll have to stop. Bear in mind that this will cost me some, so if you wanna hit the PayPal button up there to chip in a few bucks, that would be swell, too.

Don't say I never did anything nice, OK?

Welcome Our New Evil Overlords

Laura Bush throws the goat! Metalheads can't figure out whether to rejoice or vomit.

Thought for the Day

Build a man a fire and you keep him warm for a day. Teach a man to make fire and he'll burn down the forest.

Send Lawyers, Guns and Money

Sorry for the cheesy header, but it fits the story, as you'll see.

Daniel Finney is a writer/reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the local daily. Rather, he was; he's had a miserable Christmas season. He's now become the latest poster boy for Internet stupidity. Allow me to tell the tale.

The St. Louis alt-weekly, the Riverfront Times did a short squib a couple of weeks ago (last item; scroll down) about a blog they had found: Rage, Anguish and Bad Craziness in St. Louis. It's since pulled down. You can find a Google-cached page from September here. A search of the Wayback Machine archives turned up nothing. I've saved the page to my hard drive in the event it disappears from Google. You can also have a gander at Finney's Sitemeter info, which is still available. Note his account name: newsmanone.

Seems someone had tipped them to the blog, apparently run by a reporter at the Post-Dispatch who was anonymously spilling all kinds of dirt and bile about himself, his paper and his colleagues. Stuff like this:

News today out of San Francisco, the Chronicle reports that Jason Giambi testified that he, in fact did use steroids between 2001 and 2003.....

I also take steroids. Mine, however, are the new, really good kind. They work in reverse. The more I take, the flabbier my body gets. But my dick is huge. Huge, I tell you. Did I mention huge?

Speaking of dicks, I've been reading the Post-Dispatch's annual 100 Neediest Cases stories. The bottom line is that there are a lot of poor people who need stuff. It is a worthy cause. And, at some level, I feel sorry for these people. But at another level, one in which your friend Crazy Roland is much more in touch with, I must admit that I feel as if a good number of these needy cases could be avoided by a well-placed prophylactic...

Instead of giving these people free stuff, perhaps we ought to be striking the problem where it hurts. We should send the police out across the metro area breaking up bad couplings.

"YOU THERE IN THE RENT-CONTROLLED HOUSING," the officer would shout from his bullhorn. "STEP AWAY FROM THE DICK! THAT'S RIGHT! PUT ... THE ... DICK ... DOWN!

"WE KNOW IT IS FUN. WE KNOW IT IS FREE. BUT THIS WILL DO MORE HARM THAN GOOD.

"WE SEE YOU, THOMPSON. YOU'RE ON YOU'RE FOURTH STRIKE, ASSHOLE. STAY AWAY FROM THE PUSSY. DO NOT EJACULATE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. A NAVY SEAL IN FULL DIVING GEAR WILL PLACE TWO CONDOMS ON YOUR PENIS. DO NOT MAKE ANY SUDDEN MOVES OR HE WILL BE FORCED TO CUT YOUR HEAD OFF WITH A MACHETE. ... WE MEAN, OF COURSE, THE HEAD AT YOUR SHOULDERS YOU SICK S.WINE."

Oh yeah. Days later, a "100 Neediest Cases" story appeared with Daniel Finney's byline.

Of course, a lot of folks saw through the nom de blog -- Roland H. Thompson -- pretty quickly. It seemed a tribute to Warren Zevon's great classic "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner." Hence my bad pun header for this post. You can also note that this name contains references to Roland Hedley, Doonesbury's reporter, and to Hunter Thompson, the gonzo journalist of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

The following issue, the Riverfront Times ran a follow-up. The Post-Dispatch had identified the blogger as Finney and suspended him. The Times reported:

Several of Finney's colleagues at the Post-Dispatch provided an account of last week's events, on the condition that their names not appear in print.

They say Finney's hard drive was confiscated on Thursday, December 16, the day after the Unreal item was published, and that he was informed of his suspension shortly thereafter.

A 29-year-old native of Des Moines, Iowa, Finney came to the Post in May 2003 after stints at USA Today, the Des Moines Register and the Omaha World-Herald. For the Post's "Everyday" section, Finney specialized in youth and culture, reviewing books, comics and DVD releases, as well as the occasional feature profile. One colleague says Finney's work received mixed reviews in the newsroom. "The features staff -- the brass -- thought he was swell," the source says. "The young people thought he was an idiot."

Others noticed his eccentric habits, including a desk crowded with action figures.

Yeah, hit a guy when he's down -- the classic journalism sideswipe. I recently worked with a woman whose desk was a virtual shrine to her granddaughter: pictures everywhere, cards, Bible and Hallmark quotes that contained her name, things she'd drawn, etc. It was nothing but grandmotherly love, but it would be easy to make it look really creepy, if you chose. Cheap shot, Riverfront Times.

So, anyway, Finney's story got around. You can read press stories, beginning with this Editor & Publisher account, which is spawning most of the national coverage. Romenesko also has it. A site called PaidContent.org has two good, short bits with some insightful comments here and here. The second article notes that Finney has now resigned, on Christmas Eve no less! Another journalist who has his own blog, M. G. Tinker's Beyond Deadline, has some good thoughts. (The link is bloggered. Scroll down about halfway to "New Rules.")

Now, this is not a case of someone being fired over political principle or sexual preference or anything like that. No, this was a reporter who did a very bad job of hiding his contempt for his coworkers, employer, subjects and himself. He tried to post anonymously and failed miserably. From the little I’ve read of what he had written, I think the paper would have been on very solid legal and moral ground firing his butt.

So now we come to the subject of journalist bloggers who work for companies, particularly “old media” types like my employer. In fact, Mr. Finney is going to cause quite a lot of folks like me to give pause before writing their next blog entry.

In fact, he’s earned a flogging if for no other reason his case will discourage folks who should be trying out this fun new tool from jumping in....

I’m a front-line grunt for the biggest news organization in town. While I’m just a cog in the machine, what I say and do reflects on my employers and colleagues. And whether I like it or not, that extends to my own little slice of the blogsphere on this page as well. In exchange for doing something I like very much for a living, I give up a little personal freedom.

That doesn’t mean I won’t be goofy, contrary, cranky or irreverent. All those are part of my personality and if you’re not going to put some personality into your blog, then just hang it up. However, I won’t cross into certain subject areas, even though I’m dying to jump into the fray.

Perhaps there are some would-be journalist-bloggers out there who are wondering “How do I do this and not get canned?” Better yet, some of them might even be thinking “How do I blog off the clock ethically.”

He goes on to give some good advice. Read the whole thing.

The local daily, the Commercial Appeal, has a stable of in-house bloggers, but only one employee (that I'm aware of) who also blogs personally. Eric is very self-aware and scrupulous about what he says. The alt-weekly, the Memphis Flyer, only has one employee/blogger that I'm aware of: Chris Davis. His blog is explicitly and vehemently political, but he avoids worktalk, generally.

On the television side, it's more unusual. To my knowledge, only one station has any bloggers at all, and they have a veritable bumper crop! At WMC TV-5, the news director, a marquee reporter, and two videographers (Jason and Ted) all regularly blog about work. They are also all responsible and self-aware. For local news junkies, the WMC news crew are an excellent view into the workings of local news operations: critical, open and willing to talk about mistakes. It would be a shame to see this valuable window closed because of the Finney debacle.

In all these cases, the employers are aware of the blogs. And all the bloggers are aware, in turn, of the precariousness of their situation.

The lesson? Be very, very careful if you blog about your workplace, especially if you use your blog to vent. Same for blogging about your industry. Don't count on anonymity, as you can be outed all kinds of ways. There was a Memphis blogger who was reporting all kinds of behind-the-scenes Memphis media stuff, for a while, counting on blog anonymity. A simple error on the site led some folks to figure out who the blogger was. Panic set in and the blog was closed. Haven't heard a peep from that person since.

Even scrupulously maintained anonymity can be breached. Another blogger used to run SouthTV News, a website of information, updates and some gossip about Southern television markets, including Memphis. A couple of months ago, the anonymous blogger learned that a "media ownership group" was trolling around trying to learn his identity. He had no idea why, but supposed it was because he was reporting behind-the-scenes information. In fear for his career, he shut the site down. After consulting an attorney, he brought it back. Then, suddenly, he took it down for good, for another, unspecified, reason. He wasn't doing anything wrong or unethical or ill-advised, but his anonymity was threatened.

(BTW, I'm happy to fill his shoes, at least for the Memphis market. If you have information from behind the walls of Memphis' newspapers or television news operations, please feel free to send it in. I'll run what I can.)

I don't really have much more to add here, except to say that if you're counting on anonymity to protect you from the repercussions of what you write, don't blog. People talk, they share, you'll be found out sooner or later. The general rule of thumb I've always heard is: Never say anything on your blog you'd be afraid to say face-to-face.

One last interesting note: I did a search of Daniel Finney's name on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch site and found no stories on Finney's blog or his supension and subsequent resignation. It's always amusing to me that newspapers -- which demand transparency, accountability and unrestrained access from their subjects -- become closed forts when the spotlight turns on them. Happens nearly every time. The gentleman's agreement that has dominated newspaper self-reporting is finally crumbling in the Internet age, and that's only a good thing.

Once More, I Cannot Stop Myself

Yeah, yeah.... Not blogging yet, yaddayaddayadda.

As is his wont, James Lileks posted an old magazine ad on his blog recently. The smug little twerp just begging to be popped in the kisser resembled a certain Minnesota sourpuss who has been in the news lately. Wheels began turning, grist was milled, bilious mixtures began to bubble in the cauldron of my mind, flocks of birds took sudden flight, children began to cry for no apparent reason. Here's the result:

How Low Will They Go?

No, I'm not back to blogging. It'll be January 1 at the earliest before I even decide on that. But I saw this front page article in Monday's Commercial Appeal and was so stunned and outraged, I had to comment.

How much do you think any business would pay to have the top half of the front page of the daily newspaper? Invaluable, right? Unheard of, right? Apparently not if you're FedEx/Kinko's!

Under the headline Ship a bull's head? 'Yes, we can,' at FedEx Kinko's: United capabilities put new stores' staffs to the test is an article that reads like a feature rewrite of a press release. It is nothing but a long, pointless advertisement for FedEx/Kinko's. It has no news purpose, no news value, no point! It fits into their new "Business is good. Rah rah, sis-boom-bah!" Business section, but transplanted to the front page, the main news page, it's flabbergasting in extremis:

The corner Kinko's was always a can-do kind of place, abuzz with ink cartridges hitting on all cylinders.

Now, as part of FedEx, the FedEx Kinko's Office and Print Center is a multitasker's dream, a place where you can drop off your problems, get them solved and have the solution shipped.

"Our mantra is: 'Yes, we can,'" said Julie Clark, manager of the region's first new FedEx Kinko's at 6641 Poplar.

"There's no other option. We ship packages, and we solve problems."

When a local taxidermist brought a 65-pound bull's head for shipping, new hire Lauren Howell admits she blinked. Then she started looking for a box.

"With these difficult-to-ship items, people think we won't be able to do it or that it will be a big hassle," she said. "It isn't at all. Sure, we have a box to ship your golf clubs. Sure we can wrap a baseball bat."

Besides being loaded with user-friendly technology, including wi-fi and digital image processing, Kinko's gives FedEx a storefront on Main Street.

Is this what Chris Peck's Commercial Appeal is becoming? I'd expect this from a Shopper's News or the North Shelby Times, but the venerable daily newspaper? The paper of record for Memphis and the Greater MidSouth? (Or the Memphis Omnipolitan MegaGeopolis, or whatever they're calling it.)

It's worse than unconscionable. With everything going on in Memphis, Shelby County, the MidSouth, America and the world, this is top-of-the-front-page news? This is what's most important to know on Monday morning? I wonder if any of FedExKinko's competitors will get an equal-footing opportunity like this? Ya think?

A bad paper keeps getting worse. What's next for the front page? Pictures of kittens? Headlines like Not that many dead: It could be worse? "Your ad could be here?" COUPONS?

You think this paper is hitting bottom, then they bust open the secret tomb and new chambers are revealed.... And it'll be years before we get out from under this crap-pile of tapioca.

Never Mind

Whew! Crisis narrowly averted. I let my emotions and enthusiasm carry me away there, as I so often do. I started making promises and commitments I couldn't possibly keep. I was heading down the same old road of disaster once more.

At least it only took me 12 hours to realise my mistake this time.

Move Along

The blog is closed. No need to keep checking in. Y'all take care.

Sorry to Have Bothered You

[The original post has been restored. An East Tennessee news-blogger had linked to this the morning I posted it, sending throngs of gawkers wanting to stare at the blog burnout. It pissed me off, as the following was intended for regular readers, not the slack-jawed types who slow down to gape with dull, round-eyed wonder. It's been a while now since that happened, so I'm restoring it for those of you who wanted to know what happened to me. Thanks for all your emails.]

I had one of those long dark nights of the soul over the weekend. The upshot of it is that I'm suspending the blog for a while. I don't know for how long. I'm not even sure if I'm quitting, although the temptation is strong to say so. I feel I should tell people this time so you won't keep dropping in wondering what's going on and where I've disappeared to this time.

I was given one of those panoramic views of my self and my life that makes you realise just who you are. One of those clear-eyed, pitiless and unsparing overviews. The word I settled on to describe it all is "disappointing." I am a constant disappointment, great potential always unrealised. Have been my whole life; will be for the rest of it. It was humiliating.

Anyway, my self-appointed task with this blog was to counter the actions of dozens (hundreds!) of folks who daily labor in their jobs in the local media and government. It's a constant for me: my ego demands to make a point and, having barely made it, loses interest. I push up briefly from the grey plain of depression until I tire, then gravity pulls me back down.

I do this blog as a part-time thing, for no money and little recognition (No one has ever hit the tip jar in all the time it's been up there.), for slivers of respect and dollops of disdain. I'm just some guy with a website. I don't know much more than the average Joe or Jane here in Memphis. And yet I'm more than happy to tell paid, credentialed, experienced people how to do their jobs. Who the hell am I to think that? No one, that's who. A loser with too much ego and not enough discipline or ambition to back it up.

I'm tired, bitter. I'm a fraud, a dilettante. I don't have the discipline to do this. I'm once again in way over my depth and humiliating myself. I should've stopped before I started.

I'll leave you alone now.

Update on Tim Blair's Visit

Hi guys. I just got an email from Tim saying that he's running behind but still looking forward to meeting us tonight. I gave him my home phone; he said he'd use it if there's a problem.

So, the plan is to meet for dinner at the BBQ Shop (1700 block of Madison, just west of Cooper) after 6. (6:30-ish or 7? I'm going to shoot for 6:15-6:30.) We'll eat, hang out, wait for Tim. Then, drinks at their bar and much hilarity. If he's not too tired or we're in the mood for moving, we go elsewhere. Mark "Scene" R. suggests Blue Monkey or one of the Zinnie's, so if you arrive later and no one's at the BBQ Shop, try those two.

Tim thanked us all for putting this together. Keep your fingers crossed.

Tim Blair in Memphis

I haven't heard from Tim yet today, so all plans for his visit are still provisional. But as it stands, we'd meet tomorrow (Wednesday) at the BBQ Shop on Madison (1700 block, two blocks west of Cooper) around 6 or 7PM for dinner. Then we'd repair to the bar for a while. Then, decide on which bar or wherever to move on to for the bulk of the evening. Or maybe stay put.

I hope folks can come out. Tim's a very funny guy in print and reports are he's the same in person.

I'm halfway hoping I can talk him into going down to County Hall tomorrow for a gag picture of him being denied entry into the building. Two international incidents in one month!

Please leave a comment if you can come, or with suggestions for which bar would be good on a Wednesday night. Not loud or expensive, nor too young, preferably in the Midtown / Downtown area, as I think that's where he's staying.

More as I learn it.

Failed Pilot Theater

I saw a television show earlier this evening that consisted of failed television pilots. Pilots are the debut shows for potential news series. If networks like the pilots, they order more episodes and run the series. If not, no one, until now, saw them. There are a lot more pilots made in any year than what you see on the air.

Anyway, the failed pilots were fascinating. There was one where Scott Bakula (Captain Archer from Enterprise) is a scientist who does teleportation experiments in a lab room next to a woman scientist doing satellite weapon research. Yup! He accidentally beams into her lab and gets fused with her satellite prototype to become half-man / half-machine. But the fun part was, right before he presses the fateful button, he says, "Beam me up, Scotty." I don't think he's ever said that elsewhere, and I hope some Star Trek fan recorded that.

I once ran across a photo from the pilot for an American adaptation of the British sci-fi show Red Dwarf. Craig Bierko was Lister, Terry Farrell(!) was Cat, Janes Leeves was Holly and some actor I recognise but can't place was Rimmer. I've always wondered how bad it was and they showed a bit of it tonight. It was bad. Cheap effects, bad video. Holly looked like the actress was just standing underneath a box meant to resemble a monitor. Amazingly unfunny dialogue. What was weird, though, was that we didn't see even a mention of Cat or Rimmer. Problem getting clearances (rights to play) from some of the actors? I noticed that in some of the other clips, there were faces that were pixelated out. Oh well.... But now I know just how bad the American Red Dwarf was.

Gene Roddenberry got checked twice. Once with The Questor Tapes (Robert Foxworthy as an android sent to save Earth, with Mike Farrell). But the other was the episode of the original Star Trek, "Operation: Annihilate," that was meant to serve as the sidewise pilot for a show with Robert Lansing and Terri Garr. Gary Seven, anyone? It's a widely repeated rerun, so I don't know how it got on this show.

Speaking of William Shatner, he was in a pilot for a series based on Zenna Henderson's The People stories. Set in the modern day, but concerning a group of "people" who are actually aliens from another planet attempting to blend in on Earth, but in a low-tech, Western-Amish kind of way. Except they have all kinds of psychic powers.

There were a couple of Monty Python related shows. One was Nick Derringer P.I., which starred Kenny Baker (Time Bandits) as a dwarf private investigator. He's like a short James Bond. "Have you ever had a man stand behind you and kiss you in the back of your...knee?"

And Graham Chapman costarred in some show about a 20th century kid sent back to medieval England. Chapman looked pretty funny, but the show was bad.

And they had a few Marvel Comics pilots! One was something I'd heard of but never seen: Generation X, an X-Men spinoff from the Nineties. (Most of these pilots were from the Eighties.) I recognised Emma Frost, Havoc and Jubilee (I think. Dazzler, maybe?). It looked a bit cheaper than Mutant X but at least the characters used their powers! Didn't seem half-bad.

Another was a bizarre take on Daredevil. He was still Matt Murdock, blind attorney, but his uniform was solid black, slightly baggy, and made from some kind of foamy-looking artifical material. The actor was awful and he "played" the character as a blind man. It's hard to explain, but he exaggerated a lot of actions and threw in a lot of strange hesitations. They had one shot where DD is supposedly swinging on a whip across the skyline of Manhattan that was stupendously fake looking.

There were all kinds of terribly unfunny sitcoms and other failed shows. A Marilu Henner sitcom that was astonishingly cheap and shoddy and unfunny. A John Denver show where he's an FBI agent and guitar picker. Some show about a man's child who dies, then is reincarnated as a toy monster robot that sometimes morphs into a thirty foot high monster-truck robot dinosaur that breathes fire and moves in veeeeeeerrrrrrrrryyyyyyyyy ssssssslllllllooooooowwwwwww motion. And some show about a boy and his troll called Fuzzbucket, which is just as howlingly bad as you think.

There was something from the late Eighties / early Nineties (judging by the video, lighting and cinematography) about a female terminator thing. I recognise the actress and she was really, really hot here. Apparently all she does is kick ass and try to have sex. I would've watched that show!

I hope they make another special like this. Isn't there some program on cable somewhere that's similar?

The Petition is Up

The Concerned Citizens of Memphis website is finally working. You can download a PDF copy of the petition file (14K) there. I'm also hosting it on the hollihan.net site. You can get it here. and I'll be leaving a small notification banner across the top of the blog as well.

If you want to see some forward motion on bringing the City's pension scheme down to more manageable levels, get a copy of the petition, take it around your neighborhood and collect signatures, then mail it in. If the City Council won't fix things, then we will.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, scroll down for the post "The Pension Charter Commission." Citizen democracy in action!

Neologism of the Day

Via a typo at Thursday Night Fever (Don't change it, Roboto. You're a trendsetter now.) comes this word:

fushion

The trendy fusion of Asian "sensibility" with American "lifestyle."

What a Photo Op That Would Be

John Kerry, call Teresa and tell her to get out the checkbook. The last PT boat made is up for sale:

Businessman Bill Bohmfalk, 47, purchased the PT-728 in 1994. In July 2002, he started taking Florida Keys visitors on island harbor tours that included a simulated torpedo run. He said he hopes to get at least $750,000 for his boat. The starting price was $500,000, and no bids had been placed as of Saturday afternoon.

Ummmmmm...simulated torpedo run.... [/close Homer donut voice]

Tim Blair is coming! Tim Blair is Coming!

Tim Blair is an Australian reporter, media watchdog, political commentator, blogger, raconteur, and auto enthusiast. He's been in America recently covering the Democratic and Republican conventions. While he's waiting for the 'Pubs to gather, he's on a driving tour of the Southwest and South.

According to his website, he'll be in Memphis this Wednesday! No idea where he's staying, but I sent him an email inviting him to dinner at the BBQ Shop on Madison where, it is important to note, they have a bar. Libations are important to Tim. (Yours truly is a teetotaller, so I can be designated driver if anyone has too much fun.) He may have other plans, he may want to go somewhere noisy and gaudy. Who knows yet?

Anyway, I'm hoping to hear back from him, and that he'll hang with the Memphis blog community. Clear your schedules and let me know if you want to meet up with him, if we get the OK. I'll post developments as I learn them.

Give Him Some Love

The author of Memphis Media blog is feeling a bit down today. Head on over there and say hi. Leave some nice words in his comments.

If we're lucky, he'll post more pictures of Carrie McClure! Or maybe Holly Hancock or Bora Kim or....

The Pension Charter Commission

John Lunt, of Concerned Citizens of Memphis (I'm getting time-out errors when I try the link), was a caller today on the Andrew Clarke radio show (WREC AM600; Saturday and Sunday, noon to 3PM). He spoke of the petition signature drive his group is undertaking to get an up or down vote on convening a charter commission on the a ballot November 2nd.

The charter commission would be created to force a change in the City's generous pension scheme, where now anyone with 12 years of service gets a lifetime pension. Conceivably, a person could start work with the City at age 25, work their 12 years, retire at 37 and draw a pension for the rest of their life. That could be up to fifty years! At $1500 a month, that's $18,000 a year and over fifty years would total $900,000! And consider some of the many upper-level City employees whose pensions will be considerably larger than this example. Don't forget, too, that Mayor Herenton has created almost 200 appointed positions in his administration since the pension change in 2001 that qualify for this bounty.

Lunt's group wants to return the pension plan to its old structure. You had to work 15 years to get a pension, and then could only start getting it either at the regular retirement age (55 or 60) or when your age and years of service exceed, if I recall correctly, 70. That's the proper way to do it. The current scheme is nothing more than a second income at City taxpayer's expense.

In our interview earlier this week, City Councillor Carol Chumney talked about her experience bringing a bill that would change the pension plan up for a vote. When she offered up the bill for a second, there was dead silence from the Council chamber. It literally died for lack of a second. She thinks that the threat of a charter commission alone might be enough to get the Council to take action.

I was initially skeptical of the idea of a charter commission. The way it works is this: Citizens must collect and turn in by September 2nd, 10,000 valid signatures. Lunt wants to collect at least 15,000 for safety's sake. If the petition succeeds with the Election Commission, and survives the likely challenges in court, it goes on the ballot.

Voters (in this case, only registered voters who are citizens of the City of Memphis) will either say "yea or nay" on November 2 to the creation of the commission. If approved, then all citizens are free to run for one of the seven positions on the commission.

John Lunt has said that his group will offer up a full slate of non-politicians carefully vetted. But anyone can run and be elected. There will be a second election (I don't know the timeframe on that.) where we vote on the commission members.

Once commissioners are selected, the commission convenes. It is here that I get nervous. The commission has total and unencumbered freedom. They can propose and approve anything they want. Anything. That's a whole lot of power to put into a commission's hands. It's intoxicating, tempting and dangerous. They could do anything.

That's been my worry point. But on the Andrew Clark show today, a gentleman named Larry -- who said he was on the first and only charter commission ever created, in the Seventies -- called in to clear up the matter. (By the way, I was the other caller on the line with him and Andrew. Mike in Midtown.)

All the commission can do is convene themselves and then develop a list of proposed changes. They have no actual power of change themselves. All they do is meet until they vote on a resolution for voters to approve. The commission's final recommendation is put on the next ballot and sent before the voters. Voters would then vote "yea or nay" on the resolution.

In the case of Larry's commission, called to return the new Mayor/Council government to the previous form of City government, the commission met one time and adjourned. They never proposed anything. The commission was stacked 4/3 with people sent there to block them. So, it evaporated without action.

In the case of Lunt's proposed commission, action on anything other than the pension plan is likely to put off enough voters that the motion would fail to pass. Any perception that commission members were being unduly influenced one way or another (assuming the news even reports it) would have the same off-putting effect. If the commission went berserk and started proposing changes willy-nilly, again, the voters would likely be disgusted and fail to pass it. Even if the commission fell into rancor and dischord, it would fail to pass a resolution for the voters.

And then there are the voters. No matter what the result of the charter commission, it must pass muster with the voters.

In other words, there are simply too many checks and stops in the process to warrant undue worry about a rampaging commission playing havoc with the City. It's more likely they'll stop or fall apart or fail to impress voters than it is that they'll remake Memphis.

A professional commissioner campaign with professional, carefully vetted candidates, sworn to only consider the pension issue, could be the outcome. I only worry that the loudest yammerers or the ones with the most money behind them to boost name recognition, or the ones who promise free lunches, will get on the commission, diverting its purpose.

But that kind of commission is most likely to fail, so there you go.

I called Mr. Lunt and offered to host copies of the petition file online for him, and to advertise them on Half-Bakered. He said that John Malmo was working on a professional site (see link above) but it doesn't appear to be working. I told him I could have the petitions online within hours of him emailing a file to me. The idea is to get the petition file where anyone can download and print a copy off, then walk around their neighborhood collecting signatures.

Even if the Malmo site gets running, I'd still be happy to offer my services just to help. Why? I'm a firm believer that every once in a while, elected officials need a strong, shocking reminder of who is in charge. They need to be shaken up and made to fear the public. If we don't keep them a little worried, then you get the "culture of entitlement" (Tom Jones) and the "loyalty of friendship" (AC Wharton) that creates the mess we're now seeing in the Jones / Thorp / Lanier scandal at County Hall.

So, go and download a petition, once I get them from Lunt and get them online. (You can contact Lunt directly at 683-1011.) Get your signatures and turn your petition in. Do it now. Do it for democracy.

More Grammar

Down a few posts below I had some fun with language. I have more questions on a pair of phrases I see used a lot.

Toe the line or Tow the line? Which is correct? Is it the idea that a line was drawn on the ground and all the men must place their toes along it, to create an orderly rank, as in soldiers or in a challenge? To toe the line as in submitting? Or is it that all the men must grab a handful of a towline and pull? To tow the line in the sense of contributing, the expectation of fair share? Or even in the sense of a group action to create movement, or more broadly, change?

I've always understood it to be something like, "You will toe the line or there will be hell to pay!" In other words: do it right, discipline yourselves, I'm the boss.

I've always assumed the other version is just sloppy writing, or misspelling, because even then the sense of usage is almost always still submission.

Free rein or Free reign? I've always assumed it was free rein, like giving the horse his head by letting up on the reins. Free rein is something I do for the horse's benefit. I am the actor. "This is your project, Sally. You have free rein." In other words, I'm still in charge, but I'm giving you wide latitude to act.

Free reign implies that the king or queen is free to do what she wants. But that's always the case with a sovereign. They have absolute rule, even if custom has removed the exercise of many powers and the lesser aristocracy threatens not to support the imperial action. Free reign is like...free swimming. It's not quite a non sequitor, but it's a bafflement. "This is your project, Sally. You have free reign." That's almost contradictory, isn't it?

At least to me. Your thoughts?

While I'm at it, let me also mention that I have a real problem with excess emphasis in my writing. I do it all the time! It's awful!! Make me STOP!! All those bolds, italics and exclamation marks. They litter my writing like Burma Shave signs litter the highway. It's a reflection of my punchy speaking style but in print it just looks amateurish. I try to stomp it out, but constantly find myself wanting to hit certain words and phrases. I go back, reread those posts, and wince. I look like some worked-up high-schooler or an angsty, art-damaged collegian.

I've said it before: I need an editor.

Media Bias Frames

Thanks to Tim in the comment to "Journalism, Patriotism and Containers" down below. He pointed me to a couple other Jay Rosen columns, one of which I'd already read. (His "Joe Moderate" column.) The other column looks at how charges from the left and the right end up creating a middle-ground dynamic where the press takes up residence:

In the media id of the Left, temptation lives. Dumping everything to the right of The Nation magazine into the "conservative" bin is an intellectual temptation. When it happens, journalists at ABC can plausibly become "right wing" in the observer's eyes. And they actually are to the right... of The Nation. Progressives, people on the Left, call it the corporate media, which dispenses captured news, news that is essentially propaganda for the system and its rich friends, or a distraction from unjust things happening all around the world, which do not get reported.

In the media id of the Right, temptation also lives. It wants to call everything to the left of the Washington Times the "liberal" media. When that happens, journalists at ABC can become "left wing" in the observer's eyes And why not? They are in fact to the left... of the Washington Times. Conservatives, people on the Right, call it the liberal media. The liberals who run it are hostile to traditional values, intoxicated with their own social agenda, eager to expand the power of government, reflexively anti-Amercan, and we see it all over the news.

To Jennings, this is all quite odd. ABC News, he firmly belives, isn't left or right, pro or anti-war. It isn't "political" at all in that way-- it's a professional news operation, "designed to question the behavior of government officials on behalf of the public," but equally designed not to take sides. He and his colleagues do not let political temptation color the news; they work hard at curing their reports of any undue bias-- failing often but only because they're human. That kind of caution is basic to how we operate, he says, second nature to any journalist. The public's failure to grasp this struggle in the journalist's soul makes possible a common charge like, "you're the anti-war network."

In the ritual of this exchange, it's forgotten that all three parties can be for truth, if you understand what each is saying.

* Mainstream American journalism actually is to the right of The Nation and it pushes against the left's view of the world to engineer its own balance. This creates hostility, as shown in my cartoonish dialogue above.

* Mainstream American journalism actually is to the left of the Washington Times, and pushes against that worldview too-- for balance. This creates hostility from the "opposite" direction.

* Mainstream American journalism actually is neither left nor right for the people who make it. But it pushes against both sides, and against others who can help in the performance of news balance. This tends to create hostility, which will baffle the balancers. Pretty soon it's the critics who are unbalanced people.

But even in objectivity there is id. Temptation for Jennings and his colleagues does not involve taking sides. It does not mean "coming out" as anti-war or pro-Rumsfeld or skeptical about American power in the Middle East. Occupy the reasonable middle between two markers for "vocal critic," and critics look ridiculous charging you with bias. Their symmetrical existence feels like proof of an underlying hysteria. Their mutually incompatible charges seem to cancel each other out. The minute evidence they marshall even shows a touch of fanaticism. It can't be that simple, that beautiful, that symmetrical... can it? Temptation says yes.

He also helped me to "get" the idea of corporate media. If you look at the national news shows, you'll see only a smattering of news about the products and people that the media owners want to sell you. But, if you go down to the next level to the Today and Good Morning America shows, you see a big jump in the number and length of stories about media celebrities, products and services, and concepts they want you to adopt. (Travel, lifestyle purchasing, impulse buying, media consumption, health and mental health issues as treatable illnesses, etc. But go down another level, to the Entertainment Tonight and Celebrity Justice shows, and its all media self-referentiality. Everything is reduced to emotionalism and consumability.

Newspapers are a self-contained version of this multi-tiered world. Every Wednesday and Sunday (and now Friday) come the flood of ads. Fridays and Saturdays have the media blitz. Sunday is lifestyles.

It's that news collection and reporting is expensive to do right. The marriage of news to business is understandable. But business is an amoral thing. It's only concern is the creation of profit. It pushes and pushes at every available opening to find more. Every opportunity is probed for fresh profit. That's not a bad thing in the same way that a garden gone riot is not a bad thing. It's just growth, competition and opportunity.

Newspaper love to tell you that the business side has no influence on the reporting side. That, obviously, is not true. The bulk of the pressure goes to the publisher and top editors, and production designers, but its there. Simply step back and look at the design and layout of the paper itself.

So, yes, there is corporate media influence. But when it comes to what to write about, how to cover it, where to place it, what words to choose, which opinions to feature and which to deprecate, which narrative to use, that is almost completely in the judgment of the writers, reporters and editors. And there, time after time, studies show that the newsrooms of America are significantly to the left of the masses of America. Corporate pressures may lead to favorable business and civic planning coverage, but beyond that there is free rein for reporters.