When I hear Green, I See Red
Lately we’re hearing a lot more about organic farming. I used to think they just didn’t understand. Now it just makes me mad.
I grew up in the 1930s, when all farming was organic. The modern pesticides, herbicides and animal medications which saved the world from starvation, had not yet been invented, or simply were not available to poor dirt farmers.
I spent many, many fall afternoons walking alongside a horse-drawn wagon, picking corn. Little, scrubby nubbin ears of corn, four to six inches long, every one a host to at least one worm. We just didn’t have the pesticides to kill whatever laid the eggs that hatched the worms. The horses tails were a solid block of tangled hair and cockleburs, from the plants that grew between the rows of corn, because we had no herbicide to control them.
Then, there were the animal diseases. Once our entire winter-supply-of-pork-to-be was wiped out by a sudden infection of cholera.
Travel to Iowa today and see endless vistas of cornfields, beautifully clean of weeds. Visit in late fall and see thousands of perfectly shaped, 12 to 14 inch ears of corn, enough to feed half the world, fatten half the world’s livestock and still have some left to make fuel for cars and trucks.
Herds of beautifully healthy farm animals are everywhere, protected by modern vaccines and nutrients.
Some people just can’t stand that. They have to look in every corner, hoping desperately to find something terribly wrong with this magnificent picture. In 1962, one Rachel Carson wrote a book called "Silent Spring". Millions bought her Chicken Little predictions and the modern environmental movement was born.
This movement brought about the banning of DDT. The use of DDT had almost eradicated malaria. There is no scientific proof that DDT causes the harm to humans or birds, attributed to this fully safe pesticide. And since its ban, malaria now kills some two million people a year.
The Greens have successfully thwarted U.S. domestic drilling for oil and gas, causing America to send billions of dollars to countries who use much of that money to develop and support anti-American activities. House speaker Nancy Pelosi says she is trying to "Save the planet". I guess her planet does not include the Middle East, where drilling is apparently okay.
Now Greens are increasing their assault on American agriculture by popularizing the mythical benefits of "organic farming".
People think Adolph Hitler was the bloodiest killer of modern times, but the tragedy of his concentration camps pales in comparison to the harm inflicted by environmentalists.
How do the Greens respond to these accusations? Dr Charles Wurster, chief scientist for the Environmental Defence Fund, may have revealed how some environmentalists really feel about human beings when he was asked if people might die as a result of the DDT ban: 'Probably...so what? People are the causes of all the problems; we have too many of them. We need to get rid of some of them, and this is as good a way as any.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Sunday, April 05, 2009
A Special Offer
To the decendants of our European Ancestors
(The ones who remained in the old countries)
We are really happy that you liked the new American president. He was affectionately greeted throughout his tour.
So, just to prove we still love you, here is our offer: You may keep Mr. Obama!
You may make him a King or a Chancellor, or a Prime Minister, or whatever title you choose to bestow on worthless politicians in your cute little countries.
You may fawn over him, idolize him, bow to him and applaud him to your hearts' content. You may fill your newspapers with glowing stories of your first African-European Whatever. You may give him a crown or a castle, or whatever accords with your particular ancient customs.
Meanwhile, back in the colonies, we can elect a president who will reverse the obscene government spending that threatens to rob our children and grand children of the blessings we have enjoyed since we left our ancestral homelands "over there" to come to these shores. (In the case of my family, well over three centuries ago.)
We can elect the kind of man or woman who would have destroyed that North Korean Missile on the launch pad before their Dear Leader pushed the launch button. Someone who, likewise, will remove Iran's nuclear capabilities immediately... just so we don't have to come back again and save your asses in another World War.
We can elect someone who will call a terrorist a terrorist and proceed to destroy their movement.
And then, perhaps, we will all live happily ever after - or at least a few years longer!
To the decendants of our European Ancestors
(The ones who remained in the old countries)
We are really happy that you liked the new American president. He was affectionately greeted throughout his tour.
So, just to prove we still love you, here is our offer: You may keep Mr. Obama!
You may make him a King or a Chancellor, or a Prime Minister, or whatever title you choose to bestow on worthless politicians in your cute little countries.
You may fawn over him, idolize him, bow to him and applaud him to your hearts' content. You may fill your newspapers with glowing stories of your first African-European Whatever. You may give him a crown or a castle, or whatever accords with your particular ancient customs.
Meanwhile, back in the colonies, we can elect a president who will reverse the obscene government spending that threatens to rob our children and grand children of the blessings we have enjoyed since we left our ancestral homelands "over there" to come to these shores. (In the case of my family, well over three centuries ago.)
We can elect the kind of man or woman who would have destroyed that North Korean Missile on the launch pad before their Dear Leader pushed the launch button. Someone who, likewise, will remove Iran's nuclear capabilities immediately... just so we don't have to come back again and save your asses in another World War.
We can elect someone who will call a terrorist a terrorist and proceed to destroy their movement.
And then, perhaps, we will all live happily ever after - or at least a few years longer!
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Fargo - Go Far - They're synonymous
Right now, the entire nation should be watching Fargo, North Dakota. Fargo is a city of about 100,000 of the most-American of all American people. It is situated on the west side of The Red River (just one of several U.S. rivers by that name), a stream that marks the North Dakota/Minnesota State Line. On the east side of the river, another 75,000 people call their town Moorhead, MN.
The area is part of the American Great Plains, where the terrain is pretty flat. It is also among the coldest spots in the "lower 48". The average low temp in January is 2º below zero, F.
It snows in Fargo, and when the average high temp is only 16º F. (as it is in January) the snow and ice just sit there on the ground, patiently waiting for spring - which comes late.
When spring does start to melt the accumulated snow and ice, there are no canyons and valleys to rapidly carry away the water. It just lazily starts to meander away from the fields - and the yards. Which, depending on the speed of the melt, always poses the danger of flooding. This year has been a doozy!
Which brings me back to the point. The good people of Fargo are not whining about their plight. They are, in the most-American American spirit, just reacting. In the few TV shots we see, the people turned out by the thousands to contain the rising Red River. You expect to see the big and the strong tossing sand bags. But in Fargo, you see the young and the old, men and women - some pretty small of frame - struggling to keep passing the heavy sand bags along.
If you've ever passed a sand bag, you are aware of the fact that sand bags defy natural law. Bags of sand of the exact same dimensions, get progressively heavier with time. The first one is not too bad. The 100th one is a killer. At 19º F., it takes considerably less than 100 to make muscles scream.
Well, it now seems that the immediate danger is receding. It appears that the Red River has crested for the moment, and the good people of Fargo are in the "watch and react" mode as they allow their aching muscles a respite.
We all hope the weather cooperates and allows some of the excess water to drain away before serious melting resumes. Whether or not that is the case, you can be assured that the people of the Fargo-Moorhead area will be quick to respond and slow to complain.
Are you listening, New Orleans?
Right now, the entire nation should be watching Fargo, North Dakota. Fargo is a city of about 100,000 of the most-American of all American people. It is situated on the west side of The Red River (just one of several U.S. rivers by that name), a stream that marks the North Dakota/Minnesota State Line. On the east side of the river, another 75,000 people call their town Moorhead, MN.
The area is part of the American Great Plains, where the terrain is pretty flat. It is also among the coldest spots in the "lower 48". The average low temp in January is 2º below zero, F.
It snows in Fargo, and when the average high temp is only 16º F. (as it is in January) the snow and ice just sit there on the ground, patiently waiting for spring - which comes late.
When spring does start to melt the accumulated snow and ice, there are no canyons and valleys to rapidly carry away the water. It just lazily starts to meander away from the fields - and the yards. Which, depending on the speed of the melt, always poses the danger of flooding. This year has been a doozy!
Which brings me back to the point. The good people of Fargo are not whining about their plight. They are, in the most-American American spirit, just reacting. In the few TV shots we see, the people turned out by the thousands to contain the rising Red River. You expect to see the big and the strong tossing sand bags. But in Fargo, you see the young and the old, men and women - some pretty small of frame - struggling to keep passing the heavy sand bags along.
If you've ever passed a sand bag, you are aware of the fact that sand bags defy natural law. Bags of sand of the exact same dimensions, get progressively heavier with time. The first one is not too bad. The 100th one is a killer. At 19º F., it takes considerably less than 100 to make muscles scream.
Well, it now seems that the immediate danger is receding. It appears that the Red River has crested for the moment, and the good people of Fargo are in the "watch and react" mode as they allow their aching muscles a respite.
We all hope the weather cooperates and allows some of the excess water to drain away before serious melting resumes. Whether or not that is the case, you can be assured that the people of the Fargo-Moorhead area will be quick to respond and slow to complain.
Are you listening, New Orleans?
Monday, March 16, 2009
Put my Dad in charge of the money!
My father died forty one years ago. I wish he were still alive and could be put in charge of supervising the use of the bailout money.
For many years, Dad drove a tank truck for Sinclair Refining Company, in Kansas City, Kansas. For the most part, his job was delivering gasoline to Sinclair service stations. Dad was short on formal education, long on common sense and extraordinarily high on integrity. He was very conscientious about his job and always aware of the danger inherent in a truckload of highly flammable gasoline.
When he was off-loading gasoline into the underground tanks at a service station, he always stood with his hand on the valve, ready to cut off the flow of gasoline in the event of a spill. One day, as he stood by his truck dumping gasoline, a man approached him and asked for a dime. He said he had a day's work promised him, if he could get to the job. Street car fare was 25¢ and he had 15¢. If dad would give him a dime, he could get to the job.
Dad admired people who tried to make it on their own, and quickly reached into his pocket for a dime. "But," he told the man, "this is for street car fare. Promise me you are not going to spend it on booze." The man promised, took the dime, and walked away. Dad watched him walk away but immediately became suspicious.
As the man disappeared around the building and headed for the corner street car stop, dad closed the valves to stop the flow of gasoline and went to watch the man. Not surprisingly, the man walked right past the street car stop and entered a bar in the next block.
Dad followed the man into the bar and spotted him perched on a bar stool. The 25¢ lay on the bar in front of him as the bartender proceeded to draw the beer the man had ordered. Dad walked up beside the man and said, "Give me back my dime. You promised you would not spend it on booze." He picked up his dime from the bar, put it in his pocket, turned and left.
I have always wondered what had happened next, when the bartender served the beer - for which the man could not pay.
Why can't they find a man like my father to supervise the spending of the people's money?
My father died forty one years ago. I wish he were still alive and could be put in charge of supervising the use of the bailout money.
For many years, Dad drove a tank truck for Sinclair Refining Company, in Kansas City, Kansas. For the most part, his job was delivering gasoline to Sinclair service stations. Dad was short on formal education, long on common sense and extraordinarily high on integrity. He was very conscientious about his job and always aware of the danger inherent in a truckload of highly flammable gasoline.
When he was off-loading gasoline into the underground tanks at a service station, he always stood with his hand on the valve, ready to cut off the flow of gasoline in the event of a spill. One day, as he stood by his truck dumping gasoline, a man approached him and asked for a dime. He said he had a day's work promised him, if he could get to the job. Street car fare was 25¢ and he had 15¢. If dad would give him a dime, he could get to the job.
Dad admired people who tried to make it on their own, and quickly reached into his pocket for a dime. "But," he told the man, "this is for street car fare. Promise me you are not going to spend it on booze." The man promised, took the dime, and walked away. Dad watched him walk away but immediately became suspicious.
As the man disappeared around the building and headed for the corner street car stop, dad closed the valves to stop the flow of gasoline and went to watch the man. Not surprisingly, the man walked right past the street car stop and entered a bar in the next block.
Dad followed the man into the bar and spotted him perched on a bar stool. The 25¢ lay on the bar in front of him as the bartender proceeded to draw the beer the man had ordered. Dad walked up beside the man and said, "Give me back my dime. You promised you would not spend it on booze." He picked up his dime from the bar, put it in his pocket, turned and left.
I have always wondered what had happened next, when the bartender served the beer - for which the man could not pay.
Why can't they find a man like my father to supervise the spending of the people's money?
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
My Mom and Macy’s
My mother, and Macy’s Department stores were both born in New York. Mom left shortly after the end of World War One (in 1919, I think) when she married a soldier who carried her off to Kansas City. Some year’s later, when Macy’s decided to expand beyond New York, one of the first cities they chose to open a store was Kansas City.
My parents raised five children. When the youngest was seventeen or eighteen, Mom decided to take a job outside the home. I was living in a different city at that time, so I don’t remember the exact year, why she decided to go to work or why she chose Macy’s. Maybe she needed the money. Maybe Macy’s was advertising "Help Wanted" that week. Maybe it was the New York connection - mother always had a fond recollection of anything connected to New York.
In any event, she went to work as a sales clerk in the men’s furnishings department at Macy’s, Kansas City, in around 1950. She sold stuff like shaving needs, colognes, etc. Like almost everyone who had suffered through the depression, Mom considered a job a valuable asset to be treated as such. She didn’t think of her job as an obligation to show up, put in the hours and receive a pay check. To her the job meant becoming a part of the company, with an obligation to enhance the company’s interests.
Many times I heard my Dad say, "If you work for a man - if he is putting a roof over your head, a shirt on your back and food on your table - for God’s sake work for him!" Mom shared that opinion. In addition, she liked people and thought it perfectly acceptable to intrude on their personal lives if she felt she could benefit them.
If a male customer came to her counter and mentioned that a certain shaving device caused his skin to burn, she would touch his hand and say something like, "Oh, my goodness, you don’t have to suffer that! We have this lotion which will stop that burning and keep your skin soft and supple, too." As a result, her sales figures soared over those of younger sales clerks who worked different shifts in her department.
The manager of that Macy’s store was also from New York, and he frequently stopped my Mom’s counter to reminisce with her about the old days in Brooklyn or Flatbush, or "Green-pernt", as she called Greenpoint.
Eventually Macy’s decided to bring that executive back to New York. Before leaving Kansas City, he stopped by Mom’s department to say goodbye. He told her, if she ever came back to New York, to come see him at Macy’s.
Well, Mom did eventually go back to New York to visit family there. Naturally she insisted on a trip to Macy’s to see her friend. One can only imagine the surprise the secretary experienced when this 50-ish farm type lady from Missouri came into the executive offices and wanted to see "The Man"! She asked Mom the purpose of the visit. Mom said to just tell him that Dorothy Bradley from Kansas City is in town and stopped by to say hello.
Upon receiving this news, the Macy’s executive bolted from his office, gave Mom a big hug, and they sat down for a nice chat about the old days in Kansas City, before she went on her way.
Later, at home, when Mom told the story, she only told us how happy she had been to have seen her old friend. This is not an unusual story. It is the way things were before labor unions turned employer-employee dealings into an adversarial relationship.
My mother, and Macy’s Department stores were both born in New York. Mom left shortly after the end of World War One (in 1919, I think) when she married a soldier who carried her off to Kansas City. Some year’s later, when Macy’s decided to expand beyond New York, one of the first cities they chose to open a store was Kansas City.
My parents raised five children. When the youngest was seventeen or eighteen, Mom decided to take a job outside the home. I was living in a different city at that time, so I don’t remember the exact year, why she decided to go to work or why she chose Macy’s. Maybe she needed the money. Maybe Macy’s was advertising "Help Wanted" that week. Maybe it was the New York connection - mother always had a fond recollection of anything connected to New York.
In any event, she went to work as a sales clerk in the men’s furnishings department at Macy’s, Kansas City, in around 1950. She sold stuff like shaving needs, colognes, etc. Like almost everyone who had suffered through the depression, Mom considered a job a valuable asset to be treated as such. She didn’t think of her job as an obligation to show up, put in the hours and receive a pay check. To her the job meant becoming a part of the company, with an obligation to enhance the company’s interests.
Many times I heard my Dad say, "If you work for a man - if he is putting a roof over your head, a shirt on your back and food on your table - for God’s sake work for him!" Mom shared that opinion. In addition, she liked people and thought it perfectly acceptable to intrude on their personal lives if she felt she could benefit them.
If a male customer came to her counter and mentioned that a certain shaving device caused his skin to burn, she would touch his hand and say something like, "Oh, my goodness, you don’t have to suffer that! We have this lotion which will stop that burning and keep your skin soft and supple, too." As a result, her sales figures soared over those of younger sales clerks who worked different shifts in her department.
The manager of that Macy’s store was also from New York, and he frequently stopped my Mom’s counter to reminisce with her about the old days in Brooklyn or Flatbush, or "Green-pernt", as she called Greenpoint.
Eventually Macy’s decided to bring that executive back to New York. Before leaving Kansas City, he stopped by Mom’s department to say goodbye. He told her, if she ever came back to New York, to come see him at Macy’s.
Well, Mom did eventually go back to New York to visit family there. Naturally she insisted on a trip to Macy’s to see her friend. One can only imagine the surprise the secretary experienced when this 50-ish farm type lady from Missouri came into the executive offices and wanted to see "The Man"! She asked Mom the purpose of the visit. Mom said to just tell him that Dorothy Bradley from Kansas City is in town and stopped by to say hello.
Upon receiving this news, the Macy’s executive bolted from his office, gave Mom a big hug, and they sat down for a nice chat about the old days in Kansas City, before she went on her way.
Later, at home, when Mom told the story, she only told us how happy she had been to have seen her old friend. This is not an unusual story. It is the way things were before labor unions turned employer-employee dealings into an adversarial relationship.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Another pack rat caper.
Okay... let's get silly.
When most folks think "rat", they recoil in horror, disgust, or perhaps even fear. That came about because of city rats. City rats live in sewers, garbage dumps and other unsavory places.
Country rats are entirely different. I live on the Chihuahuan desert, a high desert in America's Southwest. Elevation in the valleys is around 4,300 feet. It soars a mile higher on mountain tops. Our average annual rainfall is about seven inches. You'd think no plants could live on that little water, but our desert supports a surprisingly large number of plants... and animals!
We have the usual lizards and snakes. And, larger mammals like elk and deer, plus coyotes, foxes, skunks, jack rabbits, cottontails, and little mammals like kangaroo mice, pack rats and many more.
Pack rats are clean little creatures who live on seeds, cactus fruit, roots, and other reasonable things. They love grain, grown and harvested by humans. Putting bird seed on the ground to attract quail is a dinner bell for pack rats.
If they invade your yard, you will rarely see them. What you will see is little piles of dirt where they have dug a tunnel entrance. Pack rats are tunnel experts. They dig a deep tunnel, then dig vertical shafts with pockets to provide a dry spot if it rains and water runs into the tunnel. If you see a burrow entrance on one side of the yard and another on the other side, it does not always mean two groups. It more than likely means two entrances to one extensive network of tunnels.
I have no particular animosity for pack rats, but I buy bird seed to attract quail, and I consider the rats thieves. So, I keep a live trap and when I catch a rat, I transport him to the edge of town, where he belongs, and set him free.
The other day I trapped a beautiful adult rat. I lured him into my live trap with pieces of apple. If he had been smart he would have realized there are no apple trees around and could have known something was amiss. But he was curious about the apple and got himself caught.
Okay... let's get silly.
When most folks think "rat", they recoil in horror, disgust, or perhaps even fear. That came about because of city rats. City rats live in sewers, garbage dumps and other unsavory places.
Country rats are entirely different. I live on the Chihuahuan desert, a high desert in America's Southwest. Elevation in the valleys is around 4,300 feet. It soars a mile higher on mountain tops. Our average annual rainfall is about seven inches. You'd think no plants could live on that little water, but our desert supports a surprisingly large number of plants... and animals!
We have the usual lizards and snakes. And, larger mammals like elk and deer, plus coyotes, foxes, skunks, jack rabbits, cottontails, and little mammals like kangaroo mice, pack rats and many more.
Pack rats are clean little creatures who live on seeds, cactus fruit, roots, and other reasonable things. They love grain, grown and harvested by humans. Putting bird seed on the ground to attract quail is a dinner bell for pack rats.
If they invade your yard, you will rarely see them. What you will see is little piles of dirt where they have dug a tunnel entrance. Pack rats are tunnel experts. They dig a deep tunnel, then dig vertical shafts with pockets to provide a dry spot if it rains and water runs into the tunnel. If you see a burrow entrance on one side of the yard and another on the other side, it does not always mean two groups. It more than likely means two entrances to one extensive network of tunnels.
I have no particular animosity for pack rats, but I buy bird seed to attract quail, and I consider the rats thieves. So, I keep a live trap and when I catch a rat, I transport him to the edge of town, where he belongs, and set him free.
The other day I trapped a beautiful adult rat. I lured him into my live trap with pieces of apple. If he had been smart he would have realized there are no apple trees around and could have known something was amiss. But he was curious about the apple and got himself caught.
I asked my wife if she would like to ride along when I took him on his freedom ride and she agreed. I placed the caged rat in the back of my Jeep Cherokee and called to my wife to go. Before letting her in the Jeep, I first took a long look at the trap and told her I wanted to make certain the rat was still secure in the trap before I let her enter. Thus, I set her up to be wary.
As I started the drive, she kept glancing back at the trap to be sure it was still occupied. After a few blocks she regained confidence in the steel cage and relaxed. Even at 80 years of age, I still have a little country boy somewhere inside me. So, when she turned her eyes to the side window, I grabbed her by the shoulder.
It was beautiful. She jumped nearly out of her seat and let out a scream, but instantly knew what was up. Her scream turned to unaccustomed profanity and she began to pound me on the arm. I haven't laughed so hard in years.
We continued to the edge of town where our prisoner was pardoned and released.
This evening as she was cooking dinner I wandered through the kitchen. She said, "I will get you for the rat. Don't know when or where, but I will get you."
On a day when you have seen so much bad news in the media, when you realize you have lost half of your retirement in the so-called financial crisis, when everything looks so dark, nature cheers you up with a furry little critter called a pack rat.
I love it!
Friday, February 06, 2009
If you watched Fox News Channel today (and were not completely numbed by stiumlus package talk) you heard a lot about Mexico. I am mad as hell about that news. I live about 45 miles from Ciudad Juarez - the Mexican city named for the nation's first "Indian" (not Spanish, not French) president, Benito Pablo Juarez.
We used to visit Ciudad Juarez at least once a month. Lots of poverty in Juarez, but I loved the people there. Friendly, talented. Always welcoming. I used to buy all of my medicine in Juarez (the same stuff I could buy at my local Walgreens for two or three times the price.) And my Tequila! We went to Juarez to dine - all kinds of great food, really low prices. I have bought a lot of merchandise in Juarez. Very nice leather goods.
Ciudad Jaurez, Chihuahua, Mexico and El Paso, Texas, U.S.A., are essentially one city. Geographically, of course, but socially as well. Many families have members living on both sides. Merchants on both sides depend on shoppers from the other side.
Suddenly Juarez is off limits to us. The problem is a murdering rampage by drug cartels - 207 people have been murdered in Jaurez so far in 2009! That's just five weeks, friends.
Also on Fox News today we heard a lot of people talking about Michael Phelps. Charles Krauthammer and Juan Williams, among others, talked about the published photos of Michael using marijuana. Those two opined that he was just a kid and should be punished no more.
Let me tell you something, people. A little dry cannabis wasn't the only thing fueled by that contraption Michael was sucking. All those deaths in Juarez - Mexicans and Americans - are the direct result of America's insatiable appetite for illegal drugs.
Using drugs is not funny! It is damned serious. It is the root cause of thousands of killings - brutal, bloody killings.
Today I learned that marijuana is not the only substance being trafficked by the Mexican drug cartels. Today, officials reported confiscating vials of a drug used in breeding horses. It is being sold on U.S. streets as a date-rape drug. How would you like your daughter to accept a coke from a date, only to end up completely helpless as some creep helps himself to her body. The drug cartels can afford to peddle this stuff because their operations are supported by the sale of marijuana.
Don't ever smile at me and say "You didn't inhale." If you spent 10¢ on marijuiana, you directly participated in the deaths of people - many of them innocent of any participation in the drug trade.
And you may well be to blame for the coming invasion of U.S. soil by thousands of frightened Mexicans, running for their lives.
Tell me you smoke a little marijuana and you may well think you have walked into an 80-year-old buzz saw with a serious chip on his shoulder.
We used to visit Ciudad Juarez at least once a month. Lots of poverty in Juarez, but I loved the people there. Friendly, talented. Always welcoming. I used to buy all of my medicine in Juarez (the same stuff I could buy at my local Walgreens for two or three times the price.) And my Tequila! We went to Juarez to dine - all kinds of great food, really low prices. I have bought a lot of merchandise in Juarez. Very nice leather goods.
Ciudad Jaurez, Chihuahua, Mexico and El Paso, Texas, U.S.A., are essentially one city. Geographically, of course, but socially as well. Many families have members living on both sides. Merchants on both sides depend on shoppers from the other side.
Suddenly Juarez is off limits to us. The problem is a murdering rampage by drug cartels - 207 people have been murdered in Jaurez so far in 2009! That's just five weeks, friends.
Also on Fox News today we heard a lot of people talking about Michael Phelps. Charles Krauthammer and Juan Williams, among others, talked about the published photos of Michael using marijuana. Those two opined that he was just a kid and should be punished no more.
Let me tell you something, people. A little dry cannabis wasn't the only thing fueled by that contraption Michael was sucking. All those deaths in Juarez - Mexicans and Americans - are the direct result of America's insatiable appetite for illegal drugs.
Using drugs is not funny! It is damned serious. It is the root cause of thousands of killings - brutal, bloody killings.
Today I learned that marijuana is not the only substance being trafficked by the Mexican drug cartels. Today, officials reported confiscating vials of a drug used in breeding horses. It is being sold on U.S. streets as a date-rape drug. How would you like your daughter to accept a coke from a date, only to end up completely helpless as some creep helps himself to her body. The drug cartels can afford to peddle this stuff because their operations are supported by the sale of marijuana.
Don't ever smile at me and say "You didn't inhale." If you spent 10¢ on marijuiana, you directly participated in the deaths of people - many of them innocent of any participation in the drug trade.
And you may well be to blame for the coming invasion of U.S. soil by thousands of frightened Mexicans, running for their lives.
Tell me you smoke a little marijuana and you may well think you have walked into an 80-year-old buzz saw with a serious chip on his shoulder.
Monday, February 02, 2009
Professional Help For Cheaters!
The couple in the commercial smiles at the camera as the woman croons, "We owed the IRS $150,000 and settled for $17,000."
The matronly woman in the expensive electric propelled chair folds her laundry as she brags "I got my power chair and it didn't cost me a penny out of pocket."
The on-camera spokesman advises, "If you owe $10,000, $20,000 or more in credit card debt, we'll show you how to settle for a fraction of what you owe."
Or words to that effect. Am I the only one who gets mad at these things?
We pay a very competent CPA to compute our taxes. Often he advises of some provision in the law that can save us money. But always we pay what he says we owe... in full and on time. A couple of times we have gotten ourselve in a bind. We asked the IRS for the opportunity to pay in installments. They granted that request and we paid the total amount due on the agreed timetable... plus interest.
We use credit cards. Sure beats carrying around a pocketful of cash and is a great way to account for your purchases. When our credit card bills come in the mail, we pay them. If we feel we can get a better deal from a different bank, we may negotiate. But when we get the bills, we pay them.
We drive old cars. We use old technology. But we pay our own way. It is what we have been taught is the right thing to do.
When we see someone bragging that they got out of paying taxes or that they screwed the credit card companies, or they got Medicare to buy goodies for them, it seems that maybe we carried some of their tax burden for them, or that we, along with the banks and Medicare, are the ones getting screwed.
When we see someone making their living helping those cheats, we just get mad.
How about you?
The couple in the commercial smiles at the camera as the woman croons, "We owed the IRS $150,000 and settled for $17,000."
The matronly woman in the expensive electric propelled chair folds her laundry as she brags "I got my power chair and it didn't cost me a penny out of pocket."
The on-camera spokesman advises, "If you owe $10,000, $20,000 or more in credit card debt, we'll show you how to settle for a fraction of what you owe."
Or words to that effect. Am I the only one who gets mad at these things?
We pay a very competent CPA to compute our taxes. Often he advises of some provision in the law that can save us money. But always we pay what he says we owe... in full and on time. A couple of times we have gotten ourselve in a bind. We asked the IRS for the opportunity to pay in installments. They granted that request and we paid the total amount due on the agreed timetable... plus interest.
We use credit cards. Sure beats carrying around a pocketful of cash and is a great way to account for your purchases. When our credit card bills come in the mail, we pay them. If we feel we can get a better deal from a different bank, we may negotiate. But when we get the bills, we pay them.
We drive old cars. We use old technology. But we pay our own way. It is what we have been taught is the right thing to do.
When we see someone bragging that they got out of paying taxes or that they screwed the credit card companies, or they got Medicare to buy goodies for them, it seems that maybe we carried some of their tax burden for them, or that we, along with the banks and Medicare, are the ones getting screwed.
When we see someone making their living helping those cheats, we just get mad.
How about you?
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
We Piddle Around.
If you recognize that term, you must be as old as I am. That was what the average man on the street called President Roosevelts "Works Projects Administration" - the W.P.A. - throughout the 1930s.
Part of the New Deal solution to the depression, the W.P.A. was supposed to put people to work, get money into the economy AND, improve the infastructure!
Even today you can occasionally find an old shelter house at a national park, or perhaps a foot bridge somewhere, that bears the logo of the W.P.A.! So, yes, the effort did do something toward rebuilding the infrastructure. You may also argue that it made welfare recipients work for their handout. But you will be hard pressed to find anyone who will say the W.P.A. stimulated the economy.
What everyone who remembers the 1930s can tell you is that everything the W.P.A. did was done in slow motion. They piddled around.
Now Congress is again talking about stimulating the economy by pouring billions into "shovel ready" projects to improve the infrastructure. I suspect the only thing those shovels are ready for is being leaned on.
Ho hum.
The politicians also learn slowly.
If you recognize that term, you must be as old as I am. That was what the average man on the street called President Roosevelts "Works Projects Administration" - the W.P.A. - throughout the 1930s.
Part of the New Deal solution to the depression, the W.P.A. was supposed to put people to work, get money into the economy AND, improve the infastructure!
Even today you can occasionally find an old shelter house at a national park, or perhaps a foot bridge somewhere, that bears the logo of the W.P.A.! So, yes, the effort did do something toward rebuilding the infrastructure. You may also argue that it made welfare recipients work for their handout. But you will be hard pressed to find anyone who will say the W.P.A. stimulated the economy.
What everyone who remembers the 1930s can tell you is that everything the W.P.A. did was done in slow motion. They piddled around.
Now Congress is again talking about stimulating the economy by pouring billions into "shovel ready" projects to improve the infrastructure. I suspect the only thing those shovels are ready for is being leaned on.
Ho hum.
The politicians also learn slowly.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Get Out of Jail FREE!
I have to vent. Thirty nine years ago, in 1970, I applied for a job. At the time I was 41 years old with an impressive record of success in public relations. I applied for a PR job. A then friend of mine, U.S. Senator Bob Dole, recommended me for the job. The folks doing the hiring, looked at my academic background and rejected me out-of-hand. Lacking the desired college degrees, I was not to be considered. Fair enough. Their decision. They decided. End of story.
Fast forward to the new century. Numerous academecians have written that today's college students have no interst in learning. They spend lecture periods text messaging or goofing around with Facebook or My Space or some other social networking service on their laptops, completely ignoring the lecturer. When they get their possibly failing grade, they meet with and plead to their professior for an exception.
Eventually they pass the course, and eventually they get their degree. They have learned little more than how to manipulate the system. Many then go into their father's business and spend a life of luxury screwing off as they did in their college classroom.
Still, as I have always advised young persons... the academic credentials are the key that will open the door. Once it opens, you have the opportunity to make it big.
Today the United States Senate gave America's youth another important reason to stay in school and stay in school and stay in school and stay in school. Keep building up those degrees.
When you have a long, long string of academic credentials, doors will pop open for you everywhere you go. You won't even have to knock... if they see you coming, the doors will pop open, like the automatic doors on retail stores. You do not have to do a good job at anything you do. The old adage "if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit" really kicks in.
Now, a new chapter has been written. With the Senate confirmation of Timothy Geithner as U.S. Secretary of The Treasury, we are shown that academic credentials are a "Get Out Of Jail FREE" card. He flat-out broke the law as regards paying personal taxes. Even after his employer (the I.M.F.) specifically advised him that the taxes were due and, as I understand, gave him a check with which to make the payments. Never mind. Republicans like Utah Senator Oren Hatch say his credentials are such that he must be approved.
Geithner is described by some as part of the problem that got us into the current financial crisis. Accomplishments??? Everyone admits he has broken the law. Never mind... his qualifications are too great to consider any of this.
So, kids, no need to study or learn or work hard. Just learn to manipulate the system. Learn the "baffle them" lesson. forget about breaking the law. You will be above it.
I have to vent. Thirty nine years ago, in 1970, I applied for a job. At the time I was 41 years old with an impressive record of success in public relations. I applied for a PR job. A then friend of mine, U.S. Senator Bob Dole, recommended me for the job. The folks doing the hiring, looked at my academic background and rejected me out-of-hand. Lacking the desired college degrees, I was not to be considered. Fair enough. Their decision. They decided. End of story.
Fast forward to the new century. Numerous academecians have written that today's college students have no interst in learning. They spend lecture periods text messaging or goofing around with Facebook or My Space or some other social networking service on their laptops, completely ignoring the lecturer. When they get their possibly failing grade, they meet with and plead to their professior for an exception.
Eventually they pass the course, and eventually they get their degree. They have learned little more than how to manipulate the system. Many then go into their father's business and spend a life of luxury screwing off as they did in their college classroom.
Still, as I have always advised young persons... the academic credentials are the key that will open the door. Once it opens, you have the opportunity to make it big.
Today the United States Senate gave America's youth another important reason to stay in school and stay in school and stay in school and stay in school. Keep building up those degrees.
When you have a long, long string of academic credentials, doors will pop open for you everywhere you go. You won't even have to knock... if they see you coming, the doors will pop open, like the automatic doors on retail stores. You do not have to do a good job at anything you do. The old adage "if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit" really kicks in.
Now, a new chapter has been written. With the Senate confirmation of Timothy Geithner as U.S. Secretary of The Treasury, we are shown that academic credentials are a "Get Out Of Jail FREE" card. He flat-out broke the law as regards paying personal taxes. Even after his employer (the I.M.F.) specifically advised him that the taxes were due and, as I understand, gave him a check with which to make the payments. Never mind. Republicans like Utah Senator Oren Hatch say his credentials are such that he must be approved.
Geithner is described by some as part of the problem that got us into the current financial crisis. Accomplishments??? Everyone admits he has broken the law. Never mind... his qualifications are too great to consider any of this.
So, kids, no need to study or learn or work hard. Just learn to manipulate the system. Learn the "baffle them" lesson. forget about breaking the law. You will be above it.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Inauguration Day, 2009
It's been a big day in America. "We inaugurated our first African-American president". And how I hope I never hear that stupid statement again.
In the first place, it is not what millions of Americans have celebrated today. What they have celebrated is the color of the new president's skin, and his age. My neighbor, Jeremy, a chemistry professor at New Mexico State University, is an African-American. Born and raised in South Africa, Jeremy has real African heritage, which Barack Obama does not. But, Jeremy's skin is as white as mine, naturally. No one sees Jeremy as a "African-American", which he truly is.
Africa has no monoply on people with dark skin and not all Africans have dark skin. All around the earth, in the tropical zone, people have dark skin. On the Asian sub-continent, in parts of South America, in New Guinea. It is a product of the relentless sun on human skin. Has nothing to do with anything else.
Back before broad-brimmed hats, long sleeved shirts and SPF-15 sun screen and before we learned about nutrition, dark-skinned people who moved to northern, or far southern latitudes, no longer needed built-in protection from the sun. Children born with dark skin in these colder climates, were deprived of the beneficial effects of the sun's rays. Those odd ball kids born with lighter colored skin lived longer and thus re-produced more. Gradually the skin of the population lightened. White races of African-Swedens, or African-Norwegians were created.
Scientists believe modern humans originated in Africa and spread throughout the world. We are all African-something-or-other.
The first African-American president? Give me a break.
Americans, thanks to advertising, movies, magazines, and a love of athleticism, worship youth. Old folks are just not popular with Americans - at least until you become one. So, every generation gets excited about persons of authority who are closer to their own age.
George W. Bush ascended to the presidency in a close contest, which many Americans believe was not legitimate. He was disliked by many from the day of his own first inauguration. He came to Washington as a "Uniter, not a Divider", and did everything he could to unite. He joined with the liberal Senator Ted Kennedy on some legislative matters, and was rewarded by Kennedy standing up in the U.S. Senate to declare that "Bush lied, lied, lied..."
But, clear-thinking Americans saw the real George Bush and re-elected him for a second term. His opponents were now enraged beyond all reason.
For the 2008 election cycle, there were a number of credible candidates of both parties. But Barack Obama seemed to represent the farthest possible thing from George Bush. He was young. He did not talk about his religious faith. He declared that we should get out of Bush's war in Iraq. And, "did I mention that he is black?" The liberal American press fell in love with him and saw to it that the public heard all the good stories about Obama but only the bad ones about George Bush.
So, what we did today was to inaugurate a well-educated young man who is totally unknown by the American public. Inexperienced, compared to others, yes. But I have come to think less of experience, as I see more and more "experienced" politicians caught up in some sort of scandal.
Obama may turn out to be a great president. I sincerely hope he does. What concrerns me most about him today is that he does not seem to understand that the policies of F.D.R. only deepened the recession of the 1930s. Perhaps he will prove that he does understand our history. Perhaps he will make the right decisions to help us end this current lull in our economic growth.
And perhaps, just perhaps, people will quit calling him our first African-American president.
It's been a big day in America. "We inaugurated our first African-American president". And how I hope I never hear that stupid statement again.
In the first place, it is not what millions of Americans have celebrated today. What they have celebrated is the color of the new president's skin, and his age. My neighbor, Jeremy, a chemistry professor at New Mexico State University, is an African-American. Born and raised in South Africa, Jeremy has real African heritage, which Barack Obama does not. But, Jeremy's skin is as white as mine, naturally. No one sees Jeremy as a "African-American", which he truly is.
Africa has no monoply on people with dark skin and not all Africans have dark skin. All around the earth, in the tropical zone, people have dark skin. On the Asian sub-continent, in parts of South America, in New Guinea. It is a product of the relentless sun on human skin. Has nothing to do with anything else.
Back before broad-brimmed hats, long sleeved shirts and SPF-15 sun screen and before we learned about nutrition, dark-skinned people who moved to northern, or far southern latitudes, no longer needed built-in protection from the sun. Children born with dark skin in these colder climates, were deprived of the beneficial effects of the sun's rays. Those odd ball kids born with lighter colored skin lived longer and thus re-produced more. Gradually the skin of the population lightened. White races of African-Swedens, or African-Norwegians were created.
Scientists believe modern humans originated in Africa and spread throughout the world. We are all African-something-or-other.
The first African-American president? Give me a break.
Americans, thanks to advertising, movies, magazines, and a love of athleticism, worship youth. Old folks are just not popular with Americans - at least until you become one. So, every generation gets excited about persons of authority who are closer to their own age.
George W. Bush ascended to the presidency in a close contest, which many Americans believe was not legitimate. He was disliked by many from the day of his own first inauguration. He came to Washington as a "Uniter, not a Divider", and did everything he could to unite. He joined with the liberal Senator Ted Kennedy on some legislative matters, and was rewarded by Kennedy standing up in the U.S. Senate to declare that "Bush lied, lied, lied..."
But, clear-thinking Americans saw the real George Bush and re-elected him for a second term. His opponents were now enraged beyond all reason.
For the 2008 election cycle, there were a number of credible candidates of both parties. But Barack Obama seemed to represent the farthest possible thing from George Bush. He was young. He did not talk about his religious faith. He declared that we should get out of Bush's war in Iraq. And, "did I mention that he is black?" The liberal American press fell in love with him and saw to it that the public heard all the good stories about Obama but only the bad ones about George Bush.
So, what we did today was to inaugurate a well-educated young man who is totally unknown by the American public. Inexperienced, compared to others, yes. But I have come to think less of experience, as I see more and more "experienced" politicians caught up in some sort of scandal.
Obama may turn out to be a great president. I sincerely hope he does. What concrerns me most about him today is that he does not seem to understand that the policies of F.D.R. only deepened the recession of the 1930s. Perhaps he will prove that he does understand our history. Perhaps he will make the right decisions to help us end this current lull in our economic growth.
And perhaps, just perhaps, people will quit calling him our first African-American president.
Monday, January 12, 2009
An Open Letter To My Friends In Europe
Last summer some friends of mine flew to Europe to visit friends there. One of those friends is a prominent person who is constantly observed by the press. This person asked my visiting friends to please not talk to the press, and above all, "do not mention that you voted for George Bush."
Wow. Do they really feel that way? What have they been told by their own press?
Let me say as emphatically as I can, that I did, indeed vote for George W. Bush, twice, and I think he has been an incredible president. Has he always done the correct thing? Hell, I don't know, and neither do you. What I do know is that he has an unshakeable love for America. He is an honest and a decent man. He did his job as best as he knew how to do it. What more could we ever ask?
Did he always act in the best interest of Europe? Don't know that, either... but that was not what we elected him to do.
I like to tell the story of Harry Truman who, after he left office, was once asked by a reporter if he had made any "wrong" decisions as president. He said absolutely not. At the time each decision was made, the evidence for making that decision was overwhelming. He did add words to the effect that future events may have changed things, but they did not apply at the time the decision was made.
Harry Truman, was a small time politician in Jackson County, Missouri, before he went to the Senate and later the presidency. I was born and raised in Jackson County, Missouri, a place that had seen considerable corruption in politics. I did not like Harry Truman when he became president. It took me about 60 years to come around to appreciating him.
Under Beorge Bush's presidency, America suffered one major attack from terrorists. Other nations have sustained repeated attacks, but there have been no more attacks in America.
Some 50 million Iraqis and Afghans have been liberated from murderous dictators and fledgling democracies are growing. Are they "there" yet? Of course not. But look at our democracy, the oldest on earth. It took us a long time to get it "right"... we even killed 364,512 of our own citizens in a bloody civil war (who thought up that name, anyway?), some 80 years after we started.
America has given more money to Africa during Mr. Bush's presidency than has any other nation, including our own, at any time or under any other president.
I could go on listing Mr. Bush's accomplishments, but the Bush haters would continue hating him. And, by the way, they are not all in Europe... we have plenty here at home. Maybe in 60 years, as with Harry Truman, people will come around to appreciating all that George W. Bush has done.
President Bush held his last news conference as president today. I am so proud of this president. So proud that I supported him. I wish every success for our new president, but I will miss George W. Bush!
Goodbye, Mr. President. Thank you.
Last summer some friends of mine flew to Europe to visit friends there. One of those friends is a prominent person who is constantly observed by the press. This person asked my visiting friends to please not talk to the press, and above all, "do not mention that you voted for George Bush."
Wow. Do they really feel that way? What have they been told by their own press?
Let me say as emphatically as I can, that I did, indeed vote for George W. Bush, twice, and I think he has been an incredible president. Has he always done the correct thing? Hell, I don't know, and neither do you. What I do know is that he has an unshakeable love for America. He is an honest and a decent man. He did his job as best as he knew how to do it. What more could we ever ask?
Did he always act in the best interest of Europe? Don't know that, either... but that was not what we elected him to do.
I like to tell the story of Harry Truman who, after he left office, was once asked by a reporter if he had made any "wrong" decisions as president. He said absolutely not. At the time each decision was made, the evidence for making that decision was overwhelming. He did add words to the effect that future events may have changed things, but they did not apply at the time the decision was made.
Harry Truman, was a small time politician in Jackson County, Missouri, before he went to the Senate and later the presidency. I was born and raised in Jackson County, Missouri, a place that had seen considerable corruption in politics. I did not like Harry Truman when he became president. It took me about 60 years to come around to appreciating him.
Under Beorge Bush's presidency, America suffered one major attack from terrorists. Other nations have sustained repeated attacks, but there have been no more attacks in America.
Some 50 million Iraqis and Afghans have been liberated from murderous dictators and fledgling democracies are growing. Are they "there" yet? Of course not. But look at our democracy, the oldest on earth. It took us a long time to get it "right"... we even killed 364,512 of our own citizens in a bloody civil war (who thought up that name, anyway?), some 80 years after we started.
America has given more money to Africa during Mr. Bush's presidency than has any other nation, including our own, at any time or under any other president.
I could go on listing Mr. Bush's accomplishments, but the Bush haters would continue hating him. And, by the way, they are not all in Europe... we have plenty here at home. Maybe in 60 years, as with Harry Truman, people will come around to appreciating all that George W. Bush has done.
President Bush held his last news conference as president today. I am so proud of this president. So proud that I supported him. I wish every success for our new president, but I will miss George W. Bush!
Goodbye, Mr. President. Thank you.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
January 10, 2009
Today is a little anniversary for me. One I am especially proud of.
On this day, 63 years ago, January 10, 1946, at cold and snowy Ft. Leavenworth, KS, I raised my right hand and took the oath to become a soldier in the United States Army.
I wasn't old enough to buy a beer. I wasn't old enought to vote! But now I was a real, genuine United States soldier! What more could a seventeen-year-old farm kid ever want?
Today is a little anniversary for me. One I am especially proud of.
On this day, 63 years ago, January 10, 1946, at cold and snowy Ft. Leavenworth, KS, I raised my right hand and took the oath to become a soldier in the United States Army.
I wasn't old enough to buy a beer. I wasn't old enought to vote! But now I was a real, genuine United States soldier! What more could a seventeen-year-old farm kid ever want?
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Radio's Payola Scandal - The Real Story
In the mid 1950s an event in radio broadcasting became known as the Payola Scandal. Deejays were alleged to have played records for pay, without informing their listeners they were being paid.
At the peak of the reporting, a teenage girl lamented that she had bought a record because her deejay said it was a hit, but she now hears that he only said that for pay. What a crock.
Here is what the scandal boiled down to. In the 1950s, everyone was trying to make a hit record. A teenage garage band would create a song, play it until they liked it a lot, then convince parents to bankroll a recording session and an initial pressing of the record. The disk then went on consignment to some record distributor who tried to promote it.
He would also be trying to promote records produced by more experienced artists and producers, some of which were really good. But when a promoter walked into the studio and handed a deejay 25 or 30 records, no one knew which was which.
I liked the promotion men who visited the station. They were good guys, doing a tough job. One day a promoter named Myron Levy gave me a real gift... an advance copy of a record by a guy called Little Willie John. Dated April 30, 1956, it was the first copy of the record to hit Kansas City. I was to have exclusive play until copies arrived for other deejays in the city. On one side was a song titled "Letter From My Darling". The flip side was called "Fever". The promoter thought "Letter" was the hit side.
At this point, you have to understand that we were called "Disk Jockeys" because we spent our entire show shuffling records around. There was the music, on little 45s. All commercials were recorded on 33 1/3 rpm, 12" acetate disks, as were station ID jingles, news, weather and sports intros, contest intros, promos for other things happening on the station, etc. We worked with four turntables and every disk had to be "cued" in preparation for air play. That is, each record was placed on a turntable and the stylus placed in the first groove. The output was switched to an off-the-air "cue" amplifier and the turntable rotated by hand until the sound started. The record was then turned backwards, one-quarter turn past the very start of the sound, the turntable output switched back to an on-the-air channel and the turntable set to the correct speed for that record. When it was time to play that record. you just hit the switch to start the turntable, brought the gain up and the audio started almost immediately. When any record finished playing on the air, the record was snatched off the turntable and replaced by the next recording to be played in the sequence.
And, of course, you had to be aware of what you were going to say on the air between all these events... comment on a song, read the weather, a traffic report, read news or sports headlines, do a live tag for a recorded commercial. At the end of a three hour shift, you were exhausted.
We did not really have a chance to listen to everything we played. To this day I occasionally hear a record I introduced on the air some 50 years ago. I hear a lyric I do not remember, and ask my wife if that lyric was on the original record. Usually she says it was.
Back to Little Willie John. I started including "Letter to My Darling" in a segment devoted to new records. Some days after my exclusive possession of that record had expired, I discovered I had been playing the wrong side and "Fever" became a big hit.
In December, 1955, I received a letter from Johnny Cash, thanking me for listing his first record and asking me to play his second record.
I have no idea why I initially saved that letter. It probably got shuffled in with other papers and was saved accidentally. Later, I found and read it, and have saved it since because Cash was promoting the wrong side of his own record. "Folsom" became a hit. I doubt you can find anyone today who remembers "So Doggone Lonesome".
In December, 1955, neither Johnny Cash, "So Doggone Lonesome" or "Folsom Prison Blues" meant squat to me. Cash had had one record at that time, and a decent one. That's all.
So, when the record promoter walked in and gave you 25 new records. On his heels, another promoter gave you 25 more new records, you were overwhelmed. How could you listen to all those records... both sides? Would a single listen tell you much about the recording?
One day a promoter stuck a $10 bill in my shirt pocket and said "Let me buy a couple of hours of your time at home tonight. After dinner, listen to my records and see if you like them." The average local radio guy made less than $100 a week at that time. It took you four hours on the job to earn that $10! So, you listened to records at home that night.
No deejay worth a damn (the only ones being solicited) ever actually played a record for pay. Who would blow off their audience and jeopardize their career for $10? You played what you earnestly believed would build your audience.
The "buy your time at home" arrangement worked until the record promoters started reporting these expenditures as expenses on their tax returns. The IRS stumbled across that fact and began checking to see if the deejays were reporting the income on their personal tax returns. Many were not. The IRS visited them at home with a bill for unpaid taxes.
But for my one-time boss Peter Tripp, then at WMGM Radio in New York, the local law stepped in and charged Pete with breaking some sort of law against commercial bribery. Pete was fined and ultimately lost his job over the non-scandal.
Except for the IRS, which lost a little tax revenue at first, the whole Payola scandal was bogus. But newspapers, always happy to give a little grief to their competitors at the local radio stations, piled on to the story.
In the mid 1950s an event in radio broadcasting became known as the Payola Scandal. Deejays were alleged to have played records for pay, without informing their listeners they were being paid.
At the peak of the reporting, a teenage girl lamented that she had bought a record because her deejay said it was a hit, but she now hears that he only said that for pay. What a crock.
Here is what the scandal boiled down to. In the 1950s, everyone was trying to make a hit record. A teenage garage band would create a song, play it until they liked it a lot, then convince parents to bankroll a recording session and an initial pressing of the record. The disk then went on consignment to some record distributor who tried to promote it.
He would also be trying to promote records produced by more experienced artists and producers, some of which were really good. But when a promoter walked into the studio and handed a deejay 25 or 30 records, no one knew which was which.
I liked the promotion men who visited the station. They were good guys, doing a tough job. One day a promoter named Myron Levy gave me a real gift... an advance copy of a record by a guy called Little Willie John. Dated April 30, 1956, it was the first copy of the record to hit Kansas City. I was to have exclusive play until copies arrived for other deejays in the city. On one side was a song titled "Letter From My Darling". The flip side was called "Fever". The promoter thought "Letter" was the hit side.
At this point, you have to understand that we were called "Disk Jockeys" because we spent our entire show shuffling records around. There was the music, on little 45s. All commercials were recorded on 33 1/3 rpm, 12" acetate disks, as were station ID jingles, news, weather and sports intros, contest intros, promos for other things happening on the station, etc. We worked with four turntables and every disk had to be "cued" in preparation for air play. That is, each record was placed on a turntable and the stylus placed in the first groove. The output was switched to an off-the-air "cue" amplifier and the turntable rotated by hand until the sound started. The record was then turned backwards, one-quarter turn past the very start of the sound, the turntable output switched back to an on-the-air channel and the turntable set to the correct speed for that record. When it was time to play that record. you just hit the switch to start the turntable, brought the gain up and the audio started almost immediately. When any record finished playing on the air, the record was snatched off the turntable and replaced by the next recording to be played in the sequence.
And, of course, you had to be aware of what you were going to say on the air between all these events... comment on a song, read the weather, a traffic report, read news or sports headlines, do a live tag for a recorded commercial. At the end of a three hour shift, you were exhausted.
We did not really have a chance to listen to everything we played. To this day I occasionally hear a record I introduced on the air some 50 years ago. I hear a lyric I do not remember, and ask my wife if that lyric was on the original record. Usually she says it was.
Back to Little Willie John. I started including "Letter to My Darling" in a segment devoted to new records. Some days after my exclusive possession of that record had expired, I discovered I had been playing the wrong side and "Fever" became a big hit.
In December, 1955, I received a letter from Johnny Cash, thanking me for listing his first record and asking me to play his second record.
I have no idea why I initially saved that letter. It probably got shuffled in with other papers and was saved accidentally. Later, I found and read it, and have saved it since because Cash was promoting the wrong side of his own record. "Folsom" became a hit. I doubt you can find anyone today who remembers "So Doggone Lonesome".In December, 1955, neither Johnny Cash, "So Doggone Lonesome" or "Folsom Prison Blues" meant squat to me. Cash had had one record at that time, and a decent one. That's all.
So, when the record promoter walked in and gave you 25 new records. On his heels, another promoter gave you 25 more new records, you were overwhelmed. How could you listen to all those records... both sides? Would a single listen tell you much about the recording?
One day a promoter stuck a $10 bill in my shirt pocket and said "Let me buy a couple of hours of your time at home tonight. After dinner, listen to my records and see if you like them." The average local radio guy made less than $100 a week at that time. It took you four hours on the job to earn that $10! So, you listened to records at home that night.
No deejay worth a damn (the only ones being solicited) ever actually played a record for pay. Who would blow off their audience and jeopardize their career for $10? You played what you earnestly believed would build your audience.
The "buy your time at home" arrangement worked until the record promoters started reporting these expenditures as expenses on their tax returns. The IRS stumbled across that fact and began checking to see if the deejays were reporting the income on their personal tax returns. Many were not. The IRS visited them at home with a bill for unpaid taxes.
But for my one-time boss Peter Tripp, then at WMGM Radio in New York, the local law stepped in and charged Pete with breaking some sort of law against commercial bribery. Pete was fined and ultimately lost his job over the non-scandal.
Except for the IRS, which lost a little tax revenue at first, the whole Payola scandal was bogus. But newspapers, always happy to give a little grief to their competitors at the local radio stations, piled on to the story.
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Songs Of War
They don't write songs of war any longer. Maybe it is because television and film have brought the reality of war into awareness and it is no longer considered a romantic conquest. I believe it is more than that.
But wars gave us some memorable songs in the past. Along our Southwest border, the term Gringo has a specific meaning... derived from an old song, once popular with American soldiers. When they sang "Green Grow The Lilacs" the Spanish speaking Mexicans did not understand what they were singing about. They only remembered the sound of the lyric: "Green grow". In Spanish, the vowel "i" is pronounced like a long "e" in English. The consonant "r" is always trilled. As the English speaking soldiers sang "Green grow", without a trill for the "r", the Spanish speaking Mexicans heard "Grin Go". The soldiers became Gringoes... prounced greengoes.
That song, incidentally, is an old Irish tune, but will forever be associated with our military in Mexico.
During the Civil War, marching men sang a ditty about the body of abolitionist John Brown, then said to be "mouldering in the grave". Yuk.
At one point, the Reverend James Clarke remarked to Julia Ward Howe that the "Republic"... those states remaining united, needed a Battle Hymn. Legend says the new lyric to the old song came to her in the middle of the night and she got out of her bed at Washington's Willard Hotel to pen them:
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
I have never quite understood how that lyric related to the Civil War, but that became the Battle Hymn.
World War One brought us several great songs, most notably George M. Cohan's "Over There". The closing lines of the chorus:
We'll be over, we're coming over
And we won't come back till it's over, over there
are still inspiring... a sort of affirmatin of the American can-do spirit. The reality of that war was not so inspiring. My Dad and his brother went "over there". Dad returned. His brother was killed.
There were many songs penned during and for World War Two:
Praise The Lord And Pass The Ammunition, Coming In On A Wing And A Prayer and I Had A Little Talk With The Lord among them.
I don't remember a song from the Korean War. Instead, that war spawned M-A-S-H, a comic movie, which later spawned a never-ending TV series. I hated that program because it taught (is still teaching) a generation of Americans that the U. S. Army is little more than a bunch of clowns.
I knew people who were in Korea both before and during that conflict. Unlike the M-A-S-H characters, they were serious, dedicated people, some of whom suffered greatly. Nearly 37,000 Americans died in Korea. Do you think Klinger's attempts at a Section Eight discharge a fitting tribute to them?
By the time of Viet Nam, America's entire entertainment industry, along with most of its major media organizations, were so deeply into the anti government, "America is wrong" tank that nothing patriotic survived.
Have you heard any songs about the heroism and patriotism displayed by Americans in Afghanistan or in Iraq? Not that there is any lack of inspiring truth there... some 50 million people freed from tyranny! What a subject for songs never written.
They don't write songs of war any longer. Maybe it is because television and film have brought the reality of war into awareness and it is no longer considered a romantic conquest. I believe it is more than that.
But wars gave us some memorable songs in the past. Along our Southwest border, the term Gringo has a specific meaning... derived from an old song, once popular with American soldiers. When they sang "Green Grow The Lilacs" the Spanish speaking Mexicans did not understand what they were singing about. They only remembered the sound of the lyric: "Green grow". In Spanish, the vowel "i" is pronounced like a long "e" in English. The consonant "r" is always trilled. As the English speaking soldiers sang "Green grow", without a trill for the "r", the Spanish speaking Mexicans heard "Grin Go". The soldiers became Gringoes... prounced greengoes.
That song, incidentally, is an old Irish tune, but will forever be associated with our military in Mexico.
During the Civil War, marching men sang a ditty about the body of abolitionist John Brown, then said to be "mouldering in the grave". Yuk.
At one point, the Reverend James Clarke remarked to Julia Ward Howe that the "Republic"... those states remaining united, needed a Battle Hymn. Legend says the new lyric to the old song came to her in the middle of the night and she got out of her bed at Washington's Willard Hotel to pen them:
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
I have never quite understood how that lyric related to the Civil War, but that became the Battle Hymn.
World War One brought us several great songs, most notably George M. Cohan's "Over There". The closing lines of the chorus:
We'll be over, we're coming over
And we won't come back till it's over, over there
are still inspiring... a sort of affirmatin of the American can-do spirit. The reality of that war was not so inspiring. My Dad and his brother went "over there". Dad returned. His brother was killed.
There were many songs penned during and for World War Two:
Praise The Lord And Pass The Ammunition, Coming In On A Wing And A Prayer and I Had A Little Talk With The Lord among them.
I don't remember a song from the Korean War. Instead, that war spawned M-A-S-H, a comic movie, which later spawned a never-ending TV series. I hated that program because it taught (is still teaching) a generation of Americans that the U. S. Army is little more than a bunch of clowns.
I knew people who were in Korea both before and during that conflict. Unlike the M-A-S-H characters, they were serious, dedicated people, some of whom suffered greatly. Nearly 37,000 Americans died in Korea. Do you think Klinger's attempts at a Section Eight discharge a fitting tribute to them?
By the time of Viet Nam, America's entire entertainment industry, along with most of its major media organizations, were so deeply into the anti government, "America is wrong" tank that nothing patriotic survived.
Have you heard any songs about the heroism and patriotism displayed by Americans in Afghanistan or in Iraq? Not that there is any lack of inspiring truth there... some 50 million people freed from tyranny! What a subject for songs never written.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
The sound of laughter....
oh, God... not now!
Laughter is contagious. Hear someone laugh and it is hard not to join in. That is sometimes the problem. There are times when you're not supposed to laugh.
In broadcasting, you become very relaxed at your job. But there is still an underlying tension that sometimes causes trouble. Sometimes that tension causes one to get the giggles.
Every broadcaster knows this, and in local stations around the country, it has often been considered good sport to "break up" your colleague when he/she is on the air. You might slip some bogus copy into their pile of script. So, when he is reading farm market reports, he suddenly finds himself saying "heifers steady, bulls mounting". Or, reading some copy from a local car dealer, his copy may read "bring in your title and your wife and we'll dicker."
The great air personality Peter Tripp once told me of auditioning for an announcing job. The job prospect was reading a script and someone reached out with a cigarette lighter and set the script afire. But this is an aside... it was not to cause a laugh, but to see how the guy could handle an emergency. Still, it sounds like a good way to break a guy up!
I have been in recording sessions involving several announcers when someone suddenly got tickled over something. When it was their turn to talk, they just burst into laughter. Stop the tape. rewind. Take two. More laughter. Take three. This goes on until the laughter runs its course, and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.
I remember two times when I was on the air and started laughing inapropriately. They are true stories and I hope friends or family of the people involved never read this, because I am embarrassed by it.
In local radio we often read news "cold"... that is, we saw the copy for the first time when we read it, live, on the air. The first story was about an elderly woman who lived alone, and very cold weather. Her neighbors did not see activity for some period of time and went to investigate. They found the woman dead in her home, with a small space heater operating full blast. The room had become very hot. The story went on to reveal that the woman's dog and her cat were also dead. Then the clincher... "even her goldfish, in a bowl, was dead." I lost it. Can't really explain why that was so funny, but I could not control the laughter.
The other story was about a guy who had a flat tire while driving on a busy hiway. He pulled onto the shoulder, got his spare, his jack and his lug wrench out of the trunk and changed the tire. (You can see this one coming.) When the guy finished changing the tire, he stood up, took a step backward, into the path of a speeding truck, was struck and killed. That is a sad and tragic story, but it hit me as hilarious. I could not stop laughing.
On the subject of broadcasting and laughter, there were also times when the broadcaster made his listeners laugh.. but he was unaware.
I once did a Sunday morning broadcast of gospel music, sponsored by a company that called itself "Tractor Parts and Farm Supply." After one broadcast, several listeners informed me that I had unknowingly called them "Tractor Farts and Parm Supply."
In the 1950s, a guy named Sheb Wooley made a record titled "Purple People Eater". The stations' deejays, naturally, referred to it off the air as "Purple Peter Eater." One day I played that record on the air. Soon after the record started, the statiion's receptionist came into the control room and asked what I had done. She said she answered the phone and a woman caller said only "Sam Bradley said...." then burst into uncontrollable laughter herself. I instantly knew what must have happened.
Another example did not involve me at all, thank goodness! In fact, I was driving in my car, listening to a network news broadcast... CBS, I think... and I believe the broadcaster was Lowell Thomas. It was during the Eisenhower era, and the story dealt with an Eisenhower visit to the city of Hershey, PA. I guess the story was brief and uninteresting, because Thomas embellished it with a brief ad lib, stating that "...thousands of Hersheyites turned out, with and without nuts." A live announcer was scheduled to read a commercial for Studebaker. He snorted and gasped through the copy, trying in vain to control his laughter.
Today's local radio has degenerated into little more than syndicated national talk shows, so live local radio is now more rare. Still, any time someone opens a microphone, there is always the danger that something, some insignificant, perhaps serious or even tragic something, will suddenly become very, very funny.
oh, God... not now!
Laughter is contagious. Hear someone laugh and it is hard not to join in. That is sometimes the problem. There are times when you're not supposed to laugh.
In broadcasting, you become very relaxed at your job. But there is still an underlying tension that sometimes causes trouble. Sometimes that tension causes one to get the giggles.
Every broadcaster knows this, and in local stations around the country, it has often been considered good sport to "break up" your colleague when he/she is on the air. You might slip some bogus copy into their pile of script. So, when he is reading farm market reports, he suddenly finds himself saying "heifers steady, bulls mounting". Or, reading some copy from a local car dealer, his copy may read "bring in your title and your wife and we'll dicker."
The great air personality Peter Tripp once told me of auditioning for an announcing job. The job prospect was reading a script and someone reached out with a cigarette lighter and set the script afire. But this is an aside... it was not to cause a laugh, but to see how the guy could handle an emergency. Still, it sounds like a good way to break a guy up!
I have been in recording sessions involving several announcers when someone suddenly got tickled over something. When it was their turn to talk, they just burst into laughter. Stop the tape. rewind. Take two. More laughter. Take three. This goes on until the laughter runs its course, and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.
I remember two times when I was on the air and started laughing inapropriately. They are true stories and I hope friends or family of the people involved never read this, because I am embarrassed by it.
In local radio we often read news "cold"... that is, we saw the copy for the first time when we read it, live, on the air. The first story was about an elderly woman who lived alone, and very cold weather. Her neighbors did not see activity for some period of time and went to investigate. They found the woman dead in her home, with a small space heater operating full blast. The room had become very hot. The story went on to reveal that the woman's dog and her cat were also dead. Then the clincher... "even her goldfish, in a bowl, was dead." I lost it. Can't really explain why that was so funny, but I could not control the laughter.
The other story was about a guy who had a flat tire while driving on a busy hiway. He pulled onto the shoulder, got his spare, his jack and his lug wrench out of the trunk and changed the tire. (You can see this one coming.) When the guy finished changing the tire, he stood up, took a step backward, into the path of a speeding truck, was struck and killed. That is a sad and tragic story, but it hit me as hilarious. I could not stop laughing.
On the subject of broadcasting and laughter, there were also times when the broadcaster made his listeners laugh.. but he was unaware.
I once did a Sunday morning broadcast of gospel music, sponsored by a company that called itself "Tractor Parts and Farm Supply." After one broadcast, several listeners informed me that I had unknowingly called them "Tractor Farts and Parm Supply."
In the 1950s, a guy named Sheb Wooley made a record titled "Purple People Eater". The stations' deejays, naturally, referred to it off the air as "Purple Peter Eater." One day I played that record on the air. Soon after the record started, the statiion's receptionist came into the control room and asked what I had done. She said she answered the phone and a woman caller said only "Sam Bradley said...." then burst into uncontrollable laughter herself. I instantly knew what must have happened.
Another example did not involve me at all, thank goodness! In fact, I was driving in my car, listening to a network news broadcast... CBS, I think... and I believe the broadcaster was Lowell Thomas. It was during the Eisenhower era, and the story dealt with an Eisenhower visit to the city of Hershey, PA. I guess the story was brief and uninteresting, because Thomas embellished it with a brief ad lib, stating that "...thousands of Hersheyites turned out, with and without nuts." A live announcer was scheduled to read a commercial for Studebaker. He snorted and gasped through the copy, trying in vain to control his laughter.
Today's local radio has degenerated into little more than syndicated national talk shows, so live local radio is now more rare. Still, any time someone opens a microphone, there is always the danger that something, some insignificant, perhaps serious or even tragic something, will suddenly become very, very funny.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Where Have All The Anchors Gone?
Tuning in to your favorite radio or TV program this week, you may have noticed that the regular host is absent and a substitute is filling in.
The regular host is taking a holiday break. A well deserved rest.
I guess.
Unless you're an old-time broadcast purist, like me.
Recently a family group was watching some old 8mm film at my house, shots of family scenes, taken some 40 odd years ago. In one sequence, there I was, on my knees beside the Christmas tree, passing out gifts to the children.
One younger family member, not yet born at the time the film was shot, wondered aloud why I was wearing a white shirt and tie when that film was made. A shirt and tie, around the tree early Christmas morning? It does seem a little odd today.
What he could not know was that I had worked my regular radio program that morning and the family had suspended Christmas activity until I returned from work.
I spent every Christmas on the air for many years. The rule then was simple. If you are normally on the air on Thursday morning, and Christmas happens to fall on Thursday, you were on the air on Christmas morning.
Our listeners were important to us in those days... no reason why we should change their program preferences just so we could have a day off!
We were not alone, of course. Lots of policemen, firemen, health care professionals and others worked on christmas Day. It just went with the job. And, for many people, it still does.
But not for those celebrity anchors.
But then, they deserve the time off.
I guess.
Tuning in to your favorite radio or TV program this week, you may have noticed that the regular host is absent and a substitute is filling in.
The regular host is taking a holiday break. A well deserved rest.
I guess.
Unless you're an old-time broadcast purist, like me.
Recently a family group was watching some old 8mm film at my house, shots of family scenes, taken some 40 odd years ago. In one sequence, there I was, on my knees beside the Christmas tree, passing out gifts to the children.
One younger family member, not yet born at the time the film was shot, wondered aloud why I was wearing a white shirt and tie when that film was made. A shirt and tie, around the tree early Christmas morning? It does seem a little odd today.
What he could not know was that I had worked my regular radio program that morning and the family had suspended Christmas activity until I returned from work.
I spent every Christmas on the air for many years. The rule then was simple. If you are normally on the air on Thursday morning, and Christmas happens to fall on Thursday, you were on the air on Christmas morning.
Our listeners were important to us in those days... no reason why we should change their program preferences just so we could have a day off!
We were not alone, of course. Lots of policemen, firemen, health care professionals and others worked on christmas Day. It just went with the job. And, for many people, it still does.
But not for those celebrity anchors.
But then, they deserve the time off.
I guess.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Broadcasting:
The Fairness Doctrine
The old Fairness doctrine was in place throughout my career in broadcasting. I hated it worse than anything I ever encountered as a broadcaster. It totally robbed us of the ability to speak out on matters we believed to be politically important.
Broadcast news people are often the best informed segment of our population. How often have you heard someone ask, "Did you hear the news report about..... ". I once could reply, "Hear it? I read it this morning at 6:00 and at 6:30 and at 7:00, ..."
Unlike a print reporter who may have spent most of their day honing a single story, the broadcast news man reads all the stories, from many sources, over and over.
So, doesn't it follow that they would be well equipped to comment on the news? Doesn't matter. If they did comment, they were then beholden to invite some dummy to come on their air and comment with an opposing view. I know many will lawyerly argue that that was not the exact requirement of the rule. But lawyerly opinions are a costly option out of reach of many small broadcasters. If time and money prevent you from getting a reliable legal opinion, you are restricted to a single course of action: Just forget the whole thing. You could not risk jeopardizing your license or even exposing your station to the need to hire the lawyers you could not afford in the first place.
The Unfairness Doctrine.
In the first place, who ever came up with the idea that the airwaves belong to the people? I was part of a group that sought to build a new radio station. We spent thousands of dollars over seven years, trying to get a license. Our application appeared to portend a profitable operation, so another group decided to ask the FCC for a licence in the same place, same frequency, same power. Being first didn't matter. The FCC scheduled a "Comparative Hearing", an opportunity for a handfull of dumb bureaucrats to decide which applicant would best serve the interest of the public residing within the coverage area of the proposed facility.
In such cases, an "Examiner" is appointed to conduct the hearing. In our case, the chosen idiot would ask a question like "How many other radio stations serve this area?" To answer that question required that each applicant employ a professional engineer to do a detailed study to plot the coverage area of every radio station which reached this particular swatch of geography. I no longer remember exactly how many thousands of dollars that cost. To my knowledge, the Examiner never looked at the results
In preparing our application, I was required to submit a personal biography. I wrote out a page, briefly outlining my broadcast experience. Our Washington law firm glanced at it and smiled. "They don't read these things", they told me, "they weigh them." Go back and write everything you can think of that may conceivably contribute to your experience as a broadcaster. Hm, I thought. I once stood on the sidewalk and watched General Dwight Eisenhower ride by in a victory parade held for him at the end of World War II. Does that qualify as a close association with the Supreme Allied Commander and president-to- be?
Well, the FCC granted the license to the other applicant. I read their reasons and said, "Wait a minute.... you overlooked... " The FCC agreed, withdrew the license from the other applicant and threw the entire matter back into hearing. Our attorneys, weary of seeing us squander our meager fortunes, told us to merge with the other applicant. We did, which meant everyone's interest was halved.
To finish the story, we put the station on the air and it was an instant success. But, four months after the station began broadcasting, Washington closed the Air Force Base in our city and the local economy tanked. We struggled for seven more years but never made another dime of profit. Broke and exhausted, we sold the station for about the cost of the land where the transmitter was built, and left town. Fourteen years, down the tubes.
But, I digress. While we were on the air, we built a fabulous news reporting machine. Our regular staff, largely eager, young, unmarried men and women, worked countless overtime hours without pay, for the sheer joy of accomplishing something excellent in broadcasting.
We used to say that if you hear sirens in this community, turn on your radio. Within minutes you would know why and to where the emergency vehicles were responding.
This was the Viet Nam era. At one point a group of Southeast Asian journalists were brought through our city while on a U.S. tour. I was privileged to spend several hours in serious discussion with an editor from a Saigon newspaper, learning his perspective of the war, why it was important for the U.S. to help the South Viet Namese. But if I wanted to talk about it, I would have to invite a local war protestor to present an opposing view.
I attended every political rally in our area for three major elections. I had interviewed every candidate for every state or local office, and every Congressional race. I had a wealth of information about the candidates and the issues. But if I wanted to broadcast commentary, I would have to contact each opposing campaign and offer a chance to rebut.
If, indeed, some modern politician speaks of reviving the Fairness Doctrine - in any form - please oppose it. Or you will forever end the ability of broadcasters to share their knowledge in the discussion of any serious issue.
The Fairness Doctrine
The old Fairness doctrine was in place throughout my career in broadcasting. I hated it worse than anything I ever encountered as a broadcaster. It totally robbed us of the ability to speak out on matters we believed to be politically important.
Broadcast news people are often the best informed segment of our population. How often have you heard someone ask, "Did you hear the news report about..... ". I once could reply, "Hear it? I read it this morning at 6:00 and at 6:30 and at 7:00, ..."
Unlike a print reporter who may have spent most of their day honing a single story, the broadcast news man reads all the stories, from many sources, over and over.
So, doesn't it follow that they would be well equipped to comment on the news? Doesn't matter. If they did comment, they were then beholden to invite some dummy to come on their air and comment with an opposing view. I know many will lawyerly argue that that was not the exact requirement of the rule. But lawyerly opinions are a costly option out of reach of many small broadcasters. If time and money prevent you from getting a reliable legal opinion, you are restricted to a single course of action: Just forget the whole thing. You could not risk jeopardizing your license or even exposing your station to the need to hire the lawyers you could not afford in the first place.
The Unfairness Doctrine.
In the first place, who ever came up with the idea that the airwaves belong to the people? I was part of a group that sought to build a new radio station. We spent thousands of dollars over seven years, trying to get a license. Our application appeared to portend a profitable operation, so another group decided to ask the FCC for a licence in the same place, same frequency, same power. Being first didn't matter. The FCC scheduled a "Comparative Hearing", an opportunity for a handfull of dumb bureaucrats to decide which applicant would best serve the interest of the public residing within the coverage area of the proposed facility.
In such cases, an "Examiner" is appointed to conduct the hearing. In our case, the chosen idiot would ask a question like "How many other radio stations serve this area?" To answer that question required that each applicant employ a professional engineer to do a detailed study to plot the coverage area of every radio station which reached this particular swatch of geography. I no longer remember exactly how many thousands of dollars that cost. To my knowledge, the Examiner never looked at the results
In preparing our application, I was required to submit a personal biography. I wrote out a page, briefly outlining my broadcast experience. Our Washington law firm glanced at it and smiled. "They don't read these things", they told me, "they weigh them." Go back and write everything you can think of that may conceivably contribute to your experience as a broadcaster. Hm, I thought. I once stood on the sidewalk and watched General Dwight Eisenhower ride by in a victory parade held for him at the end of World War II. Does that qualify as a close association with the Supreme Allied Commander and president-to- be?
Well, the FCC granted the license to the other applicant. I read their reasons and said, "Wait a minute.... you overlooked... " The FCC agreed, withdrew the license from the other applicant and threw the entire matter back into hearing. Our attorneys, weary of seeing us squander our meager fortunes, told us to merge with the other applicant. We did, which meant everyone's interest was halved.
To finish the story, we put the station on the air and it was an instant success. But, four months after the station began broadcasting, Washington closed the Air Force Base in our city and the local economy tanked. We struggled for seven more years but never made another dime of profit. Broke and exhausted, we sold the station for about the cost of the land where the transmitter was built, and left town. Fourteen years, down the tubes.
But, I digress. While we were on the air, we built a fabulous news reporting machine. Our regular staff, largely eager, young, unmarried men and women, worked countless overtime hours without pay, for the sheer joy of accomplishing something excellent in broadcasting.
We used to say that if you hear sirens in this community, turn on your radio. Within minutes you would know why and to where the emergency vehicles were responding.
This was the Viet Nam era. At one point a group of Southeast Asian journalists were brought through our city while on a U.S. tour. I was privileged to spend several hours in serious discussion with an editor from a Saigon newspaper, learning his perspective of the war, why it was important for the U.S. to help the South Viet Namese. But if I wanted to talk about it, I would have to invite a local war protestor to present an opposing view.
I attended every political rally in our area for three major elections. I had interviewed every candidate for every state or local office, and every Congressional race. I had a wealth of information about the candidates and the issues. But if I wanted to broadcast commentary, I would have to contact each opposing campaign and offer a chance to rebut.
If, indeed, some modern politician speaks of reviving the Fairness Doctrine - in any form - please oppose it. Or you will forever end the ability of broadcasters to share their knowledge in the discussion of any serious issue.
Friday, November 21, 2008
In May of 1945, I was employed by the Day & Night Manufacturing Company in Azusa, CA. I worked in the paint department where we were making rocket parts for the U.S. Navy. Midday on May 7, the factory whistle blew and we were instructed to assemble at the front of the plant.Once there, we were informed that our enemies in Europe had accepted surrender terms. The war in Europe was over. V-E Day! I was a 16-year-old, living far from family and friends, so I was not involved in any big celebration. It was celebration enough to know that the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler was no more.
By August of that same year, I was back in my home town of Kansas City. We had been informed that the unconditional surrender of the Japanese was imminent. When the announcement came on the afternoon of August 15, most businesses closed and massive numbers of people poured into the streets in joyous celebration. V-J Day! Swaying back and forth with the crowd, singing patriotic songs and kissing girls, the celebration contnued far into the evening. When it was over, I was smeared in lipstick from ear to ear. My white shirt was red from shoulder to shoulder.
Two and one half months later I celebrated my 17th birthday and enlisted in the Army.
After the Army I went back to school and then began my career in broadcasting. On June 25, 1950, I was on the air at WLDY Radio, in Ladysmith, WI, when I heard the AP teletype machine ring five bells - the signal for a news bulletin. I read the bulletin on the air: "North Korean forces have crossed the 38th parallel, invading South Korean territory."
Our forces were quickly pushed southward, almost into the sea, when the brilliance of General Douglas MacArthur saved the day. With his newly dispatched reinforcements, the North Koreans were quickly pushed north to the Chinese border. Then the Chinese joined the war. MacArthur wanted to carry the war back to them, but Truman blinked, fired MacArthur, and let the Chinese/North Korean forces push back south to the 38th parallel.
The presidential election of 1952 hinged on discontent with the Truman administration's inability to end the war. Dwight Eisenhower was elected and his first official act was to travel to Korea and consult the field commanders of the military over which he had been chosen Commander in Chief.
Eisenhower negotiated a cease fire and the establishment of a DMZ - a demilitarized zone along the 38th parallel, which the opposing armies agreed not to cross. They have, however, glared at each other across that zone for 55 years. The Korean War never really ended. But then, how can you end a war which was never declared? The Korean Conflict, as it was more accurately known, was a "police action". Never mind that 36,916 Americans died.
The Viet Nam War really began in 1954 when the French engaged in the battle of Dien Bien Phu. After years of advising, equipping and supporting the South Vietnamese, the United States finally became fully engaged in the war. America's military won that war on the battlefield. The U.S. government lost to the anti-war movement at home. In May of 1975, our military was ordered to cut and run, insuring that the 58,193 American dead had died in vain. There was no victory celebration at the end of the Viet Nam War.
The Gulf War to drive Iraqis out of Kuwait ended so quickly that most Americans never realized we were in a war, and since much of America was still anti-military, that victory was not widely celebrated.
Then came the Iraq War. A new kind of war in which the real enemy was not the Iraq army, which America defeated in a blink. The enemy turned out to be an almost unending string of murderous Islamic thugs who poured into Iraq for the sport of killing a few thousand Americans and tens of thousands - perhaps hundreds of thousands - of innocent Iraqi civilians.
Today, November 22, the Iraqi Parliament votes on a security pact with the United States which will pave the way for American Forces to leave their nation. A democratic Iraq will assume responsibility for its own defense.
The dangerous regime of Saddam Hussein is gone. 28 million Iraqi people now live in freedom. A fledgling democracy exists in the heart of the Middle East. It is time to recognize that the Iraq War is won.
Today, I am proud to join thousands of like minded Americans in declaring that today, November 22, 2008, is VI-Day: Victory In Iraq Day! Our thanks to America's incredible military which made this joyful day possible.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Prop 8 - another thought
In a democratic society there are an abundance of rules, regulations, laws that grant protection and privilege, prohibition and punishment. These rules derive from a majority of the people, either directly by referendum or by the elected representatives of the people, using powers granted by the majority.
Not all these rules are good. The majority is not always right. Ayn Rand once asked, "What if the majority wants you killed? Is that all right?"
In California, there arose a movement to require that the civil union called marriage, with its various rights and privileges, be bestowed only in the case of one man marrying one woman. The question was put to the ballot and the majority approved. Then, the courts examined the question and said it violated a more supreme law, the constitution.
The proponents managed to remake the question into one of amending that supreme law. They achieved a referendum on a constitutional amendment, which passed. The concern is for what happened next.
At this point, let me say that I have had no horse in this race. No one has convinced me that same sex marriage is a bad thing. The latest protest is that children raised without traditional man/woman parents somehow grow up with more and different problems. Again, I am not yet convinced.
When a rule is passed that you perceive to be a detriment to your well being, it is natural that you would like to see the rule changed or discarded. So what do you do?
You can attempt to persuade the proponents of the rule that it should change. Powers of persuasion can be dramatic if your appeal is made to people's sense of fairness and justice, and if you can convince them that they will not be harmed by overturning the rule.
Or you can attempt to bully and intimidate them into changing the rule. History has almost universally proven that the latter tactic does not work. Sadly, that is what many same sex marriage proponents have done in reaction to Prop 8.
No matter how sympathetic you may feel for persons who want to marry a person of the same sex, that sympathy quickly fades when you see people storming private property shouting their views to others engaged in peaceful, private activities (a church service). Or, when you see protestors on the street shoving an old lady with whom they disagree. Or when you see people threaten some who agree with them but who happen to be a member of a group which generally opposed their point of view. All these things have happened in connection with Prop 8.
Unfortunately, these protestors are now giving me second thoughts. Now I am being pushed to look beyond the merits of same sex marriage. Now I want to say, "Wait a minute! Are you really the loving, caring people we have believed you are? Or are you just another bunch of thugs bent on imposing your will on the rest of us?"
In a democratic society there are an abundance of rules, regulations, laws that grant protection and privilege, prohibition and punishment. These rules derive from a majority of the people, either directly by referendum or by the elected representatives of the people, using powers granted by the majority.
Not all these rules are good. The majority is not always right. Ayn Rand once asked, "What if the majority wants you killed? Is that all right?"
In California, there arose a movement to require that the civil union called marriage, with its various rights and privileges, be bestowed only in the case of one man marrying one woman. The question was put to the ballot and the majority approved. Then, the courts examined the question and said it violated a more supreme law, the constitution.
The proponents managed to remake the question into one of amending that supreme law. They achieved a referendum on a constitutional amendment, which passed. The concern is for what happened next.
At this point, let me say that I have had no horse in this race. No one has convinced me that same sex marriage is a bad thing. The latest protest is that children raised without traditional man/woman parents somehow grow up with more and different problems. Again, I am not yet convinced.
When a rule is passed that you perceive to be a detriment to your well being, it is natural that you would like to see the rule changed or discarded. So what do you do?
You can attempt to persuade the proponents of the rule that it should change. Powers of persuasion can be dramatic if your appeal is made to people's sense of fairness and justice, and if you can convince them that they will not be harmed by overturning the rule.
Or you can attempt to bully and intimidate them into changing the rule. History has almost universally proven that the latter tactic does not work. Sadly, that is what many same sex marriage proponents have done in reaction to Prop 8.
No matter how sympathetic you may feel for persons who want to marry a person of the same sex, that sympathy quickly fades when you see people storming private property shouting their views to others engaged in peaceful, private activities (a church service). Or, when you see protestors on the street shoving an old lady with whom they disagree. Or when you see people threaten some who agree with them but who happen to be a member of a group which generally opposed their point of view. All these things have happened in connection with Prop 8.
Unfortunately, these protestors are now giving me second thoughts. Now I am being pushed to look beyond the merits of same sex marriage. Now I want to say, "Wait a minute! Are you really the loving, caring people we have believed you are? Or are you just another bunch of thugs bent on imposing your will on the rest of us?"
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