Field of Steve

If there’s one reason I ever wanted to be a Seattle commuter, this is it.

Eight years ago when the Sept. 11 attacks happened it was news that consumed our work as reporters for that week and beyond. Even a couple of weeks later a fellow reporter wondered aloud when he would write the first story that wouldn’t include at least one sentence saying something akin to “since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.”

For obvious reasons the Haiti earthquake, while devastating and still generating news, didn’t dominate our hearts the way the attacks did. For me professionally it had the most minor of impacts. I happened to be on my regular cops duty the day after the quake, which meant being responsible for any late news coming in. Another reporter had written about Molly Hightower, a 22-year-old former resident of the area whose parents still lived in town. Molly was in Haiti for a year working with disabled orphans.

Molly’s parents were available to the media, following the sage advice that the best way to keep someone concerned about your family member is to keep talking about it. For me I just shared a few e-mails with Molly’s dad Mike. Because I was in the loop that one night, during which I did not have anything to add to the existing story, I continued to receive the media e-mails the Hightowers sent. I was touched by their gratitude. Often it is true, and perhaps with good reason, that families in this kind of situation resent our intrusion. I sent a note right before deadline Wednesday night. “Any news?” Mike Hightower responded that there wasn’t. It wasn’t surprising. They weren’t expecting to hear anything at least until the next day.

On Thursday there were a couple of e-mails saying who would be speaking for the family. Then there was a link to a news story that gave room for some hope that Molly would be found alive.

When I read the e-mails Friday morning, there was this:

“We received the call we did not want, Molly’s body has been recovered.
Thank you for the prayers you all offered and the respect you have shown my family.”

I never knew Molly and only knew her father through the e-mails. Still, the news hurt. Another co-worker, Chris Henry, had written about Molly on the South Kitsap blog and I think accurately described her.

“I did not find a saint. Just an upbeat 22-year-old with a taste for Starbuck’s and Taco Bell, a love of children and a deep well of compassion.”

Over the hours that I had anything to do with this story, I found a video Molly made showing off the kids she was working with. If I were to answer why the news hurt like it did, I’d say, “The video got my hopes up.”

Does this picture mean I shouldn’t embrace children anymore?

After Thanksgiving dinner in 1990 I boarded plane to Denver to work a weekend conference of a company whose employ I’ve long regretted. The incident I recall isn’t one of those that I would put in a list of reasons why the company failed, but maybe I should.

The company sent people tickets to a business seminar and promised a free gift of accounting software and some basic business and motivational books. I had been with the company a year and obviously had never read the books, because when a guest at one of the events pointed out a quote, I had to admit I’d never seen it. I don’t remember the quote, but I do remember the author — Adolf Hitler.

Most people would agree that an American motivational book should not include a quote by Hitler, no matter how true it might be. What I do recall about the comment was had it been said by someone else who wasn’t one of history’s greatest murderers, it would have fit just fine.

Now House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that anti-health-care reform protesters had swastikas on their signs. While she has been denounced as a liar by some, I thought I had seen pictures of it and in looking around the Web tonight, I verified that I had.

On one level, though, so what? Liberals did it to Bush, too. You can’t judge all health care opponents for what a few crazies do.

What if they’re not crazy? The yellers on the left likened Bush to Hitler in reference to totalinarianism, which you might argue is valid. With Obama the yellers on the right might be referring to Germany’s socialism under the Nazis, which many argue is valid.

In a National Review column Andrew McCarthy argues that likening health care reform to the Nazis is appropriate, because the Nazis were socialists and that extended to health care. “The wisdom vel non of policies adopted during over a decade of Nazi socialism cannot be off the table simply because, in the end, the Nazis were monsters,” he wrote.

Well, actually, I disagree with McCarthy. For me it goes back to Godwin’s Law specifically and more generally the “slippery slope” argument we often hear. We won’t legalize something we might approve of because it could lead to us legalizing something we don’t. I hate that argument. You draw a line and you leave it there. In the 1970s we decided 18-year-olds should be able to vote. Have we since decided it should be OK for kids old enough to drive? We let 21-year-olds drink alcohol. We draw lines all the time. Sometimes we move them, but it’s not usually just because we moved them closer years before.

Besides, and this is where it gets dicey for me, it would be foolish to assume that even the most vile, evil, ungodly person in the world was capable of doing nothing good or worth emulating. I’m not saying we should emulate Hitler’s hospitals. But even an article on an Anti-Defamation League site points out that Nazi scientists may have been the first to discover that tobacco is bad for the body.

Here are things Hitler reportedly said. I can’t verify that he really said these things, but I saw it on a Web site, so it must be true. Tell me which ones you disagree with.

“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it”

“How fortunate for leaders that men do not think.”

“The man who has no sense of history, is like a man who has no ears or eyes”

“The day of individual happiness has passed”

“I love you Mommy”

I have no proof he said the last one, but Hitler was close to his mother, so it’s not inconceivable that he did. And I think the first one was actually his propaganda guy, but Hitler surely embraced the idea even if he didn’t say the actual quote.

Regardless, my main point is that you don’t use Hitler to support your case or to dismiss someone else’s. Health writer Tinker Ready agrees.

Where McCarthy might have a point that sells is when he writes of “a trajectory of socialism,” but again I feel he’s relying on the slippery slope model:

“There is a trajectory of socialism, regardless of the good intentions of many socialists. As he framed it, you take things such as health care, things that are traditionally understood as within the ambit of individual liberty and free choice; you move such things into the ambit of state responsibility as the welfare state emerges and grows, on the theory that it is government’s responsibility to provide for everyone’s needs (by redistributing resources); as more things are moved from private to public control, the state by definition becomes totalitarian; and, inexorably, the totalitarian state gets bad leaders and the society comes to reflect the policy choices of those leaders.”

This suggests that elements of our government are not socialist already. When did government decide it was a good idea to take roads out of the ambit of individual liberty and into state responsibility? How about wars and parks? Dictators and capitalists have both employed slavery. Do we rid ourselves of both? Are all the countries that have adopted some form of socialized medical system on an inevitable path to having their own versions of Hitler?

In the same ADL article mentioned earlier, Penn State history of science professor Robert N. Proctor draws the line pointing where German science failed:

“There is nothing inherently evil about physicians working and cooperating with their government. The moral failure of the German medical profession was its willingness to collaborate with the Nazi state, its willingness to serve Nazi values. There is nothing wrong with physicians working to preserve the health of a larger community; that, after all, is the essence of responsible public health. What differentiated National Socialist public health from genuine public health in a reasonably civilized society was the exclusive nature of what the Nazis considered “the community.” Nazi values excluded Jews and others deemed racially or genetically unfit from the völkisch community. It bears repeating: Most German physicians in the Reich failed to challenge the rotten substance of Nazi values, the murderous directions of Nazi initiatives.”

Opponents and supporters of health care both have solid arguments to make for their cases. Maybe the public option will end up being a Trojan Horse for universal coverage. Maybe insurance companies are driving medical costs up. Maybe Medicare’s doing it. Those are all worth discussing. But as soon as you bring up “Nazi” or “Hitler,” you’ve lost me.

Years ago a friend had a sandwich shop and the idea sparked my thoughts about what I thought would be a great concept for one. The only problem was I had no interest in running that kind of business. So I offer the idea to anyone willing to give it a go. You have to have it in a politically conscious area. You’d name it something like “Capitol Sandwich,” or something far more clever. The real cleverness would be the names of the sandwiches. On the list would be the “pork barrell,” which would have all kinds of, you know, pork. Then you could have the “conservative,” which would be something simple like peanut butter and jelly. Filibuster style would be extra long. You get the idea. Run with it.

For my next business idea, though, this does have real relevance to me, since it involves the industry I work in. I received an e-mail at work today about former Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporters trying to start a publication using the donation route and they’re asking for contributions of $20 a month. They’re calling the new outfit the Seattle PostGlobe. By the time you read the site might actually be at the address http://seattlepostglobe.org.

Here’s why I don’t think the idea might not have long-term legs. Years ago I was used to the idea of getting one newspaper. I’d pay for it and hope that it had all the news I needed.

Now, though, I regularly read newspaper sites from all over the country, and I don’t want to give that up. I want the local content, such as the stuff seattlepostglobe might offer, but I also want the news written far away. So give me something that perhaps will make me pay, but will let me have both local and national content.

If this idea has been tried or there are obvious reasons why it would not work, I’m all ears. Let me have it, or them.

My idea is that since we’re getting much of our news from the Internet, we could pay for it from where we get our Internet service. U.S. newspapers would have to work cooperatively on a plan that would have customers pay for news content, but they would not pay for it like a subscription to the print product they do now. You wouldn’t go to www.kitsapsun.com to subscribe to the online version of the Kitsap Sun. Instead, you’d go to your Internet provider. When you subscribe to the Kitsap Sun, you also get access to the Baltimore Sun, the New York Times, the Washington Post and every Herald,Tribune and Gazette in the country.

Such an arrangement might only solve part of the problem, the money papers have lost from shrinking circulation. However, smarter business minds than mine might be able to start with this idea and find a price point that works, perhaps even enough to pick up some of the lost classified and display advertising revenue.

This idea presents a lot of obstacles, more than I can imagine in one sitting. But I can’t imagine that they couldn’t be overcome. The big one would be getting readers to pay for it, even if you’re making it as painless as possible. I think, however, people would, or enough would to make it worth it to cut off those who wouldn’t.

In some cases it might create markets we don’t have now. Colleges could make the subscription part of the regular fees it charges. Businesses, those that wouldn’t have a policy against employees looking up news sites from work, could have the news at every computer.

The biggest challenge is that it would take virtually every print news organization cooperating to make it work. It would take agreeing on how revenues would be distributed. Would subscribers in Multnomah County in Oregon automatically see their fees go to the Oregonian? What about areas with two or more publications? What if a new publication wanted to start up and buy in? Would that suck revenue away from the established dailies?

These are all questions I again leave to those with bigger business brains than mine.

Run with it.

In college I was taught the difference between Reagan’s success and Carter’s failure was more about strategy than philosophy.

While that might seem obvious on its face, it has relevance to the question I ask now, which is “What should Obama do?”

Carter came to the presidency in 1976 with a long list of things he wanted done and threw them all at Congress and, by all appearances, Americans became convinced he was incapable of getting anything done well. I don’t know what his list of accomplishments are, other than the Camp David Accord between Israel and Egypt. What I do know is he was seen as a failure.

Reagan had a long list, too, but he decided to focus on a few. He got tax cuts, the big one. He was seen as a success.

So, based on news reports, we see that Obama plans to start closing Gitmo, work on his 16-month timeline for removal of troops from Iraq and steps to boost the economy. That includes another tax cut in addition to funding for public infrastructure projects.

Should he limit it to that? Can he take on healthcare, Social Security, and other items?

I’m not so interested in what you think he should do based on your own political leanings. I want to know what you think he can realistically get through on his honeymoon. Any takers?

Some, I know, are tired of the mention of the history that will transpire at noon Eastern Time Tuesday. As the moment approaches I find myself struggling to say any more on it. Before the end of 2008 I got to meet a couple of people who will be there Tuesday, because they were also there in the thick of the civil rights movement.

Today Obama spoke to the Wall Street Journal of personal responsibility:

“Given the crisis that we’re in and the hardships that so many people are going through, we can’t allow any idle hands,” Mr. Obama said, taking a break from painting a dormitory at Sasha Bruce House, a shelter for homeless teens. “Everybody’s got to be involved. Everybody’s going to have to pitch in, and I think the American people are ready for that.”

While much of the criticism of Obama has come from those who believe what he will really issue in is an additional sense of entitlement among Americans, he has consistently said that Americans as a whole and individual Americans would need to do whatever work is needed to fix whatever needs fixing or improve whatever needs improving.

In a story I wrote in February that was one of the themes I pulled.

“Basically, Seattle, I was betting on you,” he said. “I believe change happens not from the top down, but from the bottom up.”

He said that Americans were decent and generous and would accept the challenge to be better.

“That was the bet I was making one year ago,” he said. “I am here to report the bet has been paid off and my faith in the American people has been vindicated.”

The lead that appears in that story was not what I wrote. It was edited, I suppose, to be clearer than what I put down. To me the starkest difference I saw in talking to Clinton supporters the night before and Obama supporters that morning was that Hillary Clinton supporters were saying how great she was, but the Obama supporters talked of how he inspired them to be great.

Here we are now, hours before the pudding’s proof begins to become evident. Americans took a leap of faith on a guy with as little history as any we’ve ever elected, because, I believe, he not only made them trust him, he inspired them to have faith in themselves. It’s one thing to do it as a candidate. So far, the signs I’ve seen are that Obama’s listening and that Republicans are not yet trying to yank the rug out from under him. As many have pointed out, there’s more resistance coming from his own party. But anything we’ve seen is based on speculative scenarios, because Obama has had sway without real power. Tomorrow we’ll begin to see if he can hang on to the sway when the power comes his way.

Go to 20:55 to hear my part.

I’m joining in the hypermiling craze. Well, is it really a craze? Had you heard of it? It’s not a craze like, say, flashmobbing, which is another craze I want to be part of at least once.

What’s involved is doing all I can to use less gas in the car. Having once worked in a marketing capacity, I was trained in the art of testing. Specifically, you change one element at a time to see how that affects results.

So the first thing I needed to do was see how, driving normally, the car I drive would perform. On the first tank I came in at 18 miles per gallon. When I refilled, gas was $4.20 a gallon, so I ended up figuring out that it was costing me about 24 cents a mile to drive. That opens up a whole new way of looking at things for me, because now I’ve resorted to figuring out how much trips to different places cost me.

For example, going to work and back costs about $2.65. Going to the gym is about $2.15. Now, if I was taking the bus to both of those places, the fare would be $1.50 each way, I think. So driving is cheaper, but not when you consider that the only cost I’m figuring in this calculation is the gasoline. There are oil changes, tune-ups, air fresheners (boy howdy) and other costs. But when I think about riding the bus, I think about that $1.50. When I drive to work, I seldom think about the cost. I only see gas prices in terms of how much it costs when I fill up.

This has been a helpful thing, because it has influenced me a couple time to work from home, which also means I’m less tempted to eat out, saving more money. Plus I get to wear shorts at home. Heck, I could wear . . . I won’t burden you with those images. Too late, you say? Sorry. Anyway, it’s pretty cool. It probably costs me about $3 to go to church, so from now on I’m only going if I can figure it will be worth more than two double cheeseburgers.

The real thing I did was change the way I drive. I go the speed limit. I turn off the engine in drive-throughs. I time signals way ahead. The people behind me are not always happy with me, but I try not to be too annoying. I also think about which routes will be more efficient. The end result, which is in no way a scientific one because I can’t completely re-create the drives I took on the first tank, was an increase in mileage of 1.2 miles per gallon. Frankly, I was hoping for better. But upon reflection, it’s still a noteworthy difference. It means I saved about $5 on that tank of gas. Each round trip to work is about a quarter cheaper. Over a month that’s about another $5 savings.

The next step is the first one in the Obama playbook. Tomorrow morning I’m making sure my tires are inflated correctly. I’ll return and report.

Illahee Road near our house. This means our son’s bus ride to school has gone from 10 minutes to a half-hour. Kitsap Sun photo by Larry Steagall.

On Wednesday we returned from a week’s vacation in sunny (mostly) Southern California to this.

While in San Diego at Legoland, my brother-in-law sent a picture to my cell phone of a car submerged in water. It was in Silverdale, and the water flow is the worst there when it rains heavily, so I thought perhaps we had a storm that was a little wetter than usual. Then I talked to him and it took me a while, but I eventually understood that the storm this region was getting was significantly bigger than normal. I made some calls to folks from church to make sure they were OK and to see if someone could come sweep some debris out of a couple of storm drains at our house, but one guy I talked to said he didn’t think he could make it. He lives about a 10-minute walk away, but it sounded to him like the road was out.

The picture here is what had happened.

Our house was fine. The water got a few inches deep in the driveway, but none went inside. We didn’t take the laptop with us on our trip, so I wasn’t checking my paper’s Web site for updates. We relied on phone calls and watched Nightline, surprised that rain in the Pacific Northwest merited a segment on the show.

It wasn’t until we got home that I really understood the strength of the storm. The road outage you see here means my son’s bus ride to school has gone from about 10 minutes to about 30 minutes. Not only was this road completely destroyed here, two others that beat a path to the school were partially damaged, enough to close them for a few months.

In short, this was a big deal.

On Friday before the storm we were at Disney’s California Adventure Park, the new amusement park next to the main park. It rained on us hard that day. We found out Disney stores could run out of ponchos. Across the way another store had them. My daughter and I went on the rides while my wife and sons went after less rapid amusements. It’s pouring rain on us and we decide to go on this river rapid ride. Because everything is so wet, there’s no waiting in what is the slow season anyway. We get around one time only partially soaked (thanks again to the ponchos) and we get asked if we want to go again. I say, “no,” but Sarah wants another round. It was a fun ride, so I agreed. We got a little wetter.

We then head to a couple more rides and get on the California Screamin’ roller coaster, which is probably the best roller coaster I’ve ever ridden. (I don’t get out much.) Again, the rain is so constant that there’s no waiting for any rides. We get off the first time and walk around to get on again. After that I tell Sarah, “I think I’ve got one more in me,” and we get in line again, holding out for the front seat. (That meant waiting behind one set of people.) The last ride was great again, but as the cars begin coasting into the end point, my stomach tells me the last ride may have been one too many. I manage to get off the ride but linger back a bit to let everyone else get ahead. When everyone’s out of sight I lean over a railing in case I need to deposit my breakfast. I’m grateful I didn’t, though I came close.

We went on one more ride before deciding we’d had enough after only three hours. My wife and sons were ready to go, too. (Heck, our youngest is nine months old and will basically do whatever we tell him.)

We were cold and wet, which at Disneyland counts as suffering.

Nothing like coming home, however, to bring on the dreaded disease — perspective.

The Los Angeles Times is fortunate to have a photographer who either writes very well, or writes well enough to be well edited.

In Iraq he took the photo of the man who has become known as the Marlboro Marine, aka James Blake Miller. When Miller made it home, however, his life was less than what we’d hope for a hero.

Luis Sinco, the photographer, took on an unusual role for a journalist, because in many ways he felt responsible for launching Miller into the world of being famous.

“I have to ask you something, Blake,” I said. “If I’d gone down in Fallouja, would you have carried me out?”

“Damn straight,” he said, without hesitation.

“OK then,” I said. “I think you’re wounded pretty badly. I want to help you.”

He looked at me for a moment. “All right,” he said.

Such a role is unusual, because most people whose stories we tell already have stong support, or at least some around them. A couple whose son died of a heroin overdose had each other. A boy whose injury left him mostly paralyzed had his family. A couple dealing with her cancer had each other, and when she died he had an entire community to buoy him.

Somehow in the case of Sinto and Walker, they bonded because the photographer survived the same nightmare as the soldier. For most of us, we can sympathize, but not empathize. In fact, we often avoid telling stories that are too close to our own.

In a war, that’s often impossible.

This morning I read this story in the New York Times. It tells how intelligence showed a top terrorist was at a site in Pakistan near the Afghanistan border, that our military was ready to take him out and then Rumsfeld called it off. His reason was to maintain our relationship with Pakistan.

I predicted this morning that I’d find a conservative site blasting the Times for the story. I wasn’t disappointed. Andrew McCarthy reads the reporter’s intent into the story as if he were a psychic, then I think suggests the Times is trying to say Bush is no tougher than Clinton on terrorism.

I also predicted I’d find a liberal site blasting the administration. Again, I wasn’t disappointed. The Daily Kos starts with a generalization about the only terrorists Bush cares about are the ones in Iraq, then makes the case we ought to be operating elsewhere.

How naive of me. I read a news story about a disagreement between Rumsfeld and the military over a mission. Period. You can argue over whether it was the right decision, but I expected some blasting about how the Administration wasn’t getting along with the military. On that point, I was wrong. That argument didn’t come up in the two sites I found, but if I’d cared I bet I could have found them. Too bad, because this weekend I watched the movie 13 Days, which retells what went on in the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. There again, the Aministration and the military brass differed. Turned they probably both played a role in ending the thing. I guess what I’m getting at is if the Bush Administration has carried out this war incorrectly, it’s not just because it has gone against the military leaders, it’s the substance of where they differed.

I guess today I’m Captain Obvious.

MSNBC reported earlier this week that 144 journalists, since dropped to 143, contributed to political campaigns. Furthermore, they didn’t disclose their contributions to their readers. Many of the reporters are on the periphery (i.e. copy editors, lifestyle critics and writers) and can’t really be held to the same standards hard news reporters are. Opinion writers get a bigger pass from me. Also, you look at a list of thousands of reporters and you find a few more than a hundred, I think that shows the numbers are few. I noticed those pieces of context were missing when Michelle Malkin and Bill O’Reilly gloated over the report.

Still, reporters and editors shouldn’t be contributing to political campaigns. I know some reporters disagree with me, and there is some truth to the argument that we involve ourselves in churches and other organizations in our communities with little thought to losing our objectivity. I still draw a line at politics, and so does the Society of Professional Journalists.

I won an award from the local region (Washington, Oregon, parts of Idaho and Montana) of the Society of Professional Journalists for my blog. Not this one. Heavens no. It’s for one of the two I do for my day job.

Best Web Log (General News and Commentary)
1. D.F. Oliveria, Spokesmanreview.com, “Huckleberries online”
2. Angelo Bruscas, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, “Seattle@Nite”
3. Kyle Hopkins, Anchorage Daily News, “The Trail”
HM. Steven Gardner, KitsapSun.com, “The Bremerton beat”
HM. Stacey Mulick, Adam Lynn, thenewstribune.com, “Lights and sirens”

One should never take these awards too seriously, win or lose. This year I entered in a few other categories and didn’t get a sniff. The other blog, “Tracking the Speedway,” didn’t earn a mention, but its best stuff has come this year. The other awards I entered were for print stories and in all honesty I would have been surprised to win for any of those. The standard rule of thumb for contests such as these or any other where judging is required is that sometimes good stories don’t win, but bad stories never do.

What was especially gratifying was my blog was the only one in the category to come from a small paper. The other winners were from papers in the “large” category.

One of the fears I have, even as I demand answers, is that my quest for understanding begets more of the same. Schoolyard killers in the past have spawned discussions of bullying and the like, yet I haven’t seen much to answer why one kid out of a million who get bullied decide to kill innocents.

An answer as good as any I’ve seen comes from Time Magazine’s David Von Drehle in his piece “It’s All About Him.”

“I’ve lost interest in the cracks, chips, holes and broken places in the lives of men like Cho Seung-Hui, the mass murderer of Virginia Tech. The pain, grievances and self-pity of mass killers are only symptoms of the real explanation. Those who do these things share one common trait. They are raging narcissists. . . .

A generation ago, the social critic Christopher Lasch diagnosed narcissism as the signal disorder of contemporary American culture. The cult of celebrity, the marketing of instant gratification, skepticism toward moral codes and the politics of victimhood were signs of a society regressing toward the infant stage.”

Let’s be honest, even this blog is an exercise in narcissism to some degree. I’d say many politicians are narcissists. Anyone who writes an autobiography should be suspect. But I’ve always known about my self-absorption. I suspect we all have it to some degree and that we keep it in check. As a little kid I always knew there were other people in the swimming pool with me. The day I stopped peeing in the pool was when I realized those other people mattered.

In my life I have had a few moments of feeling disconnected, most notably with fellow members of the LDS church. Even as I served an 18-month mission, deep in the throes of seeking more to join us, I sometimes felt disconnected with the larger Mormon culture. I still do. Yet it has never occurred to me to punish those who seem to feel fine in it. I’ve always assumed it is more about me, both the good and bad parts of me, then it is about them.

Someone with unchecked narcissistic traits just wouldn’t go there. If I’m a true narcissist, I blame people I reject for my disconnection.

I don’t understand it, and that’s probably a good thing.

On this blog I overlook a lot of the obvious issues, or if I deal with them I head for the sidebars. Nothing about Imus, though there were a couple of columns written I thought were good. On Anna Nicole I dealt with Billo and Prinz.

On Virginia Tech I stray from the main issue, but choose to address something that has caught a lot of attention the last few days. I think NBC did the right thing airing the video from the killer.

My opinion can be discounted right away, because I’m a member of the media. Our ability to function as normal people is hampered, somewhat, by the commitments we’ve made by getting into this line of work. We journalists operate on a default setting that has us publishing what we have if it adds value to the overall story. We do restrain ourselves, I would say we do it a lot. When someone says something that could get them in Imus-like trouble, we do consider carefully the ramifications and the value to the story. In our newsroom one of our reporters did hear “an official” say something that would very much of caused an uproar in our community had it been published as it was said. The reporter, however, considered the context surrounding the comment and recognized that it was not as bad as it would have looked in print. The other issue was it added little to the conversation taking place in the story.

I can’t speak for NBC and the deliberative processes the company undertook before deciding to air the VT killer’s video. Sure there are dollars and cents issues at stake. And parents, families and friends of the deceased have every right to be hurt that the video played. What I do know is had I been responsible for making the decision of whether to run the footage or not, I would have gathered up a room full of people to talk about it. We’d hash it out and come to an understanding, if not an agreement. After all that deliberation I’m pretty sure I would have made pretty much the same decison NBC’s news folks did. I might not have rushed quite so quickly to air it, but I don’t think I would have delayed it much.

As a parent and as a citizen of the world, if someone’s sick out there I want to know everything about him/her that would help me decide whether I needed to get help. As a father of three children, if there’s someone who could threaten to end my kids’ lives, or if heaven forbid one of my kids should end up anything like the VT killer, I’d want something that would help me recognize it before it came to what it did on Monday.

I want to know. As a news consumer and again as a citizen, I want to know. I want to learn something from the information. That alone should be reason enough to air it.

Zsa Zsa Gabor’s husband is suing Bill O’Reilly for calling Mr. Gabor, er, “Prince” Frederic von Anhalt, a “fraud” for claiming to have had a 10-year affair with Anna Nicole Smith and possibly being the father of her baby daughter.

From CNN:

“Look, this guy’s a fraud,” O’Reilly said, according to a transcript of the show posted on the network’s Web site. “We know he’s a fraud. But let’s — what I want to talk about is — he’s done. His credibility is — is finished.”

O’Reilly says the guy is “done?” Who was Frederic other than Gabor’s husband anyway?

His credibility is finished? Listen, O’Reilly, just because you may not have slept with Anna Nicole Smith doesn’t mean the “prince” didn’t. I’m thinking it probably wasn’t a difficult thing to do. It can’t be any tougher than marrying a Gabor sister.

Since the show aired, von Anhalt said people give him dirty looks when he goes to the grocery store.

“They say, ‘Look, here comes the fraud,”‘ he said. “I get lots of e-mails from people bad-mouthing me. It’s very embarrassing.”

What self-respecting prince and Gabor spouse does his own grocery shopping? I saw Zsa Zsa in an the Atlanta airport 25 years ago and had a hard time believing she had to walk the ramps like us commoners. I can’t imagine her squeezing melons in the produce aisle. Slapping a cop? Sure. Comparing prices on Hamburger Helper? No way.

I believe the “Here comes the fraud” part. O’Reilly is that powerful. After an hour of watching Billo I’m ready to label someone a “secular progressive” for ordering French fries.

How did so many skeptics find the prince’s e-mail address?

And finally, Zsa Zsa is still alive? I was always partial to Eva, who lives in Hooterville.

In 2000 I saw a documentary about Al Gore, not by him. It recounted pretty much the following story by John C. Warnecke, former Gore friend and co-worker at the Nashville Tennessean. The story was published in Salon.

Al was putting out a story, and I helped him. In 1988, when Douglas Ginsberg withdrew his nomination to the Supreme Court because he admitted he had smoked pot, that was in the middle of the 1988 campaign. So they asked all the candidates if they had smoked pot. And Al called me and asked me to stonewall. I argued with him, I said, “If you get everybody to stonewall, then you’re just raising the red flag, and the press will scrutinize you even further.” But he put pressure on me to stonewall.

What do you mean by “pressure”?

He called me three times in one morning, and he said, “Don’t talk to the press at all about this.” That’s a stonewall, and it’s another form of lying. But I couldn’t do that. But I was torn. I felt a debt to the Tennessean, a paper that taught me everything about the truth. And I had a friendship with Al. So I came up with this half-truth. And that was, that Al had tried it a couple of times with me and he didn’t like pot.

It never bothered me in the least that Al Gore had once or a hundred times smoked pot. What bothered me was that when it became clear the pot smoking was going to become public, he gathered his campaign around him to come up with a story, a lie. That story was that he had used it, but it was rare and way back in college.

During the 2000 campaign Republicans came up with all the ways Gore misspoke. They said he claimed to invent the Internet, which was a completely bogus invention by the GOP. The problem was, it seemed plausible that he might have said it, because there were so many other inventions by Gore that the Internet thing seemed to be in character.

Now his Oscar-winning film An Inconvenient Truth is having some of its details called into legitimate question. It’s worth noting that I’m saying some of the details are in question, not the general message. The point that global warming is happening and that humans are a major cause still seem to be backed up by most scientists. According to the New York Times story:

Typically, the concern is not over the existence of climate change, or the idea that the human production of heat-trapping gases is partly or largely to blame for the globe’s recent warming. The question is whether Mr. Gore has gone beyond the scientific evidence.

How so?

Some of Mr. Gore’s centrist detractors point to a report last month by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body that studies global warming. The panel went further than ever before in saying that humans were the main cause of the globe’s warming since 1950, part of Mr. Gore’s message that few scientists dispute. But it also portrayed climate change as a slow-motion process.

It estimated that the world’s seas in this century would rise a maximum of 23 inches — down from earlier estimates. Mr. Gore, citing no particular time frame, envisions rises of up to 20 feet and depicts parts of New York, Florida and other heavily populated areas as sinking beneath the waves, implying, at least visually, that inundation is imminent.

This is why when I wrote about seeing the film before, my comment was, “It’s a well made film.” I believe the basic message is probably correct, but given Gore’s performance in 2000, the fact that some of his details are being called into question even by global warming believers just is no surprise.

Six more employees were fired at the Santa Barbara News-Press, this time for hanging over a freeway a banner reading, “Cancel Your Newspaper Today.” They did it in response to the firing of another reporter.

So now there are two reporters left on the local news staff. This all stems from Wendy McCaw’s ownership of the paper.

I’ve lacked time and/or commitment to blog. To my adoring fans, please forgive me. Work has been pretty consuming and leaving me little time at home during the darker hours, when I like to do this.

So, upon my return, I report that I did see “An Inconvenient Truth” this weekend. It’s a well made film. There have been numerous media accounts of the scientists agreeing with Al Gore that the debate is over on whether humans are the cause of the current rise. Then you have a group of scientists saying the report isn’t dire enough. And then again you have someone offering $10,000 to anyone who can debunk those scientists.

I can’t really add anything to the debate, assuming there should be one.

On Racism
Malcolm Gladwell has thoughts on the recent racial rants.

No Shooting Blanks
Finally, in Washington there are some people launching an initiative requiring married couples to procreate. They’re making a point, and it only costs $5 to file an application to start an initiative. Then you have to get something like 300,000 signatures, which a’int gonna happen here and no one pretends it will.

Oh yes, I’ll return.

Bob Woodward was willing to keep William Mark Felt (Watergate’s Deep Throat) a secret for 30 years until Felt’s descendants decided it might be nice to cash in. On Wednesday Woodward revealed he had interviewed President Gerald Ford about four years ago, keeping his conversation secret until Ford died. As a result, I have decided to offer an interview to Woodward, the details of which are not to be revealed until my death. Among the questions Woodward is welcome to ask are:

Itchy or Scratchy?
Boxers, briefs, or something else?
Who ate my brother’s mint cookies?
Who did I vote for in 2000? Bush? Gore? Nader? Buchanan?
What was my connection to Jodie Foster?
Styx or Journey?
Who really shot JFK? (You never know, I might have some information no one else knows about.)
When I finally hiked to the Y in Provo, how did I “mark” the occasion?
Where have these hands been?
Who was Bob?
Do I want fries with that and do I want to Supersize?
In junior high school where did I often spend my lunch money instead of lunch? (Actually, that will probably get answered in the book I’m writing.)
Was Jane all that?
How many of my sweatshirts ended up in the closets of former girlfriends and how much did that cost me?
Speaking of former girlfriends, how many of mine ended up becoming lesbians?
When I went to my second Springsteen concert in North Carolina, during what song did I decide it was OK to leave to go to the bathroom?

You know how to reach me, Mr. Woodward.