CoryFarley.com

One more reason to fear for democracy

2008-05-01T16:13:00.000-07:00

I had an awful experience last night, and it's changed the way I think about my country.
I watched "The O'Reilly Factor," and its eponymous host, Bill O'Reilly.
I hadn’t watched Bill O for two or three years, for one simple reason: He’s an insufferable horse’s ass. Putting his politics aside, which is a good place for them, he violates every principle of fairness, to say nothing of the most basic precept of journalism: Ask the question, then shut up and listen to the answer.

A bible for reporters is The Elements of Style, by Strunk and White. One of the rules they lay down for writers is “Do not air your opinions gratuitously. To do so is to imply that the demand for them is brisk.”

Now, critics will point out that I built a moderately successful career by violating that principle every chance I got. But there’s a difference, and here it is: I never claimed to be objective. For 27 years, my column said OPINION at the top. I like to think I was fair, but the column often wasn’t balanced: It was a column of opinion, and the opinion was mine.

O’Reilly has the same right, of course. It’s society’s misfortune that he has such an encompassing venue in which to present his twisted and unAmerican views, but nobody can question his right to hold them.

When you claim to be fair and balanced, though, when you’re broadcasting from the no-spin zone, you accept certain responsibilities: A) you have to actually take a shot at being fair and balanced, and B), you have to turn down the spin bolt a little.

O’Reilly can believe whatever he wants. I don’t care for his politics, but I’m not sure I care for anyone’s, and it’s a free country. What’s depressing about him, and his show, is that he presents it as spin-free, and millions of people apparently don’t question that description.

Last night was a good example. I subjected myself to 45 minutes of Bill O because his guest was Hillary Clinton. I ‘m not particularly a Clinton fan, but she’s a historic figure in an important election. I wanted to see how she handled herself with a hostile interviewer, and a little bit of me wanted to see them beat up on each other. I didn’t much care who won—I was interested in the spectacle.

Three minutes into the show, I was doing the wave on my couch and holding a big foam finger in the air every time Hillary opened her mouth. About five minutes in I started recording, and I watched it again this morning, but it didn’t help: I can see how people might watch O’Reilly for the comic value of seeing a man imitate a pompous and oblivious ass, or actually BE a pompous and oblivious ass. But that millions of people take him seriously and believe this is how journalism should be practiced is profoundly depressing.

If I were reading a transcript of the interview and scoring it like a debate, I’d have to give it to O’Reilly. He challenged Clinton, and on some points she didn’t respond strongly.

If you SAW the interview, though, you heard the reason: O’Reilly is a boor. Clinton is nobody’s novice, and she was both knowledgeable and well prepared for the interview. She addressed every issue O’Reilly raised—but when she tried to explain her position, he simply shouted her down. It made no difference what she said, because he rode over her, making irrelevant claims or simply making more noise, so her responses couldn’t be heard.

When O’Reilly was wrong—as he was, for instance, in a comparison of tax rates today with those of the ‘40s, 50s and 60s—he ignored her corrections and plowed ahead with his erroneous point. His acolytes eat it up, and more’s their shame.

Two things make this especially unbearable for me. First, I care about journalism. For many reporters and editors, even in this profit-oriented era, it’s a calling. They put up with the low pay, low public opinion and lousy hours because they believe the job is important. O’Reilly dishonors those people and disgraces their profession, not by what he says, but by claiming that he’s objective when he says it.

Second, the success of our democracy and the welfare of our nation depend on a free and fair press providing the public with accurate reports on the issues of our time. Opinions, everybody’s opinions, have a place in those reports. But opinions disguised as fact, opinions that ignore reality and that play on people’s fears and prejudices, don’t belong in the no spin zone.

That's "gloat," with a capital G.

2008-04-27T17:18:00.000-07:00

Not much time today--I'll do more on this on the radio Monday, if I have time--but in case you missed it, I just want to point out that there's general agreement the Republican convention at the Peppermill this weekend ended in chaos.
Of course it's only the state convention, and nobody at the national level takes Nevada very seriously. Still, after all those years of watching the GOP's Stepford voters march in lockstep, it was really, really enjoyable to see them whacking at each other, and over such a lame disagreement: Ron Paul is a non-starter, his tax plan is laugh-out-loud unworkable, and most of the Paul supporters I've talked to have a faraway look, like they're waiting for instructions from the Mother Ship. In the long run, what happened this weekend won't matter: John "The Third Bush" McCain will be the Republican nominee, and I'm increasingly fearful he's going to be elected president. As John Stewart pointed out a couple of months ago, "Voters say they want change, but when it's time to vote, they may decide that a 71-year-ikd white guy is all the change they need."
But while I can enjoy the sight of Republicans in disarray, I'm going to do it.

Waiting for the chimney to come crashing down

2008-04-26T11:42:00.000-07:00

For the 28 years and 10 months we've lived in our house, I've meant to get earthquake insurance.
After a pretty good-sized quake eight or 10 years ago, I redoubled my resolve: I'm going to call and add earthquake insurance to our policy. I'll do it tomorrow. Well, maybe tomorrow. OK, tomorrow for sure.
When the current series of small quakes started in, what was it, February?, my wife and I began nagging each other: We really have to get quake insurance. We understand that this is a seismically active area. We have three friends in Reno who happen to be geologists, and they all have quake insurance. That ought to tell you something even if you're resistant to being told stuff.
A few days ago there was a quake rated at 3.6 on the Richter scale, centered about three miles from our house. No quake insurance. A day or two later there was another, a 4.1. Still no insurance. Then a 4.2, which finally inspired me to make the call.
"Are you kidding?" my insurance guy said, in effect. "I couldn't write you a quake policy now if you were the Queen of Outer Space."
OK, I thought. Maybe it's over. We've come through the worst of it. Our house survived the biggest known earthquake in Verdi history, a 6.0 in 1948, so let's not worry.
That night we had a 4.7 quake.
I'd just gotten into bed, and when the temblor started, I had a vision of our old brick chimney, right outside the bedroom in line with my head, crashing through the ceiling. It didn't, but when I went out and looked at it this morning, I couldn't swear that it's as vertical as it used to be. The movement of the earth in the largest quake was too general for me to feel a direction, but my impression is that it was generally northwest-southeast. I'm not too concerned about being injured by the collapse of the house--small frame buildings generally don't pancake, and we probably could crawl out of the rubble. If the chimney should fall to the northwest, though, it would wind up in bed with us.
We've been following the pattern of quakes as it's developed, and it's unusual in that there hasn't been a single strong one followed by a series of generally decreasing aftershocks. They keep getting bigger, which seismologists say indicates a "slight increase" in the chance of a severe earthquake still to come. Nothing to do but wait it out, wishing I'd bought the insurance any of the 5,000 times I've thought of it since 1979.
Meanwhile, both our cat and dog have forsaken their normal sleeping places in favor of our bedroom, where, just about the time I doze off, one or the other of them will ease up onto the bed, bringing me stark, staring awake with what I now realize is a remarkably accurate impression of about a 3.5 quake.
I grew up in the Bay Area, and I've been through dozens of earthquakes. I'm not a sissy about them. But this can stop anytime it wants to.

What Gov. Gibbons has in mind for the mustangs

2008-04-22T16:28:00.000-07:00

If you caught any part of the presumptuously titled Cory Farley Show on KBZZ Tuesday, you probably heard Lacy J. Dalton and Willis Lamm talking about Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons' plans for the state's wild horses.
Lacy was a pretty hot country singer in the '80s (CMA Newcomer of the Year in 1983, I think it was) and has performed with most of the big names in the business. She took a break for awhile to deal with some personal issues, but is back performing again and has a new CD, "What Don't Kill You Makes You Stronger," coming soon. My wife and I saw her at Piper's Opera House on the Comstock a few months ago, and she still has the stage presence and powerful voice that led one critic to call her a combination of Janis Joplin, Bonnie Raitt and Joan Baez.
Most journalists who've been around long enough to get over their jock-sniffer awe dislike doing celebrity interviews. You're generally talking to people who've been interviewed hundreds of times and who have a carefully cultivated image. They give canned answers to the usual questions, dodge or draw a blank on unusual ones and escape as soon as they can, their duty to the fans done for another day.
Sometimes you find an exception, especially if you can get them talking about something other than their careers. Lacy is passionate about Nevada's mustangs, and she and Lamm gave us an entertaining, informative hour and a half.
A little background, then I'll give two Web sites for more information on the mustangs, plus the one I promised on the air that features (warning! And I mean it!) extremely graphic video of wild horses being slaughtered.
Nevada's Director of Agriculture, a Gibbons appointee named Tony Lesperance, has promised to remove all 1200 or so mustangs from the Virginia Range, in and around Storey County. Gibbons, when he was in Congress, had a career rating of zero, as in zip, none, nada, from the League of Conservation Voters, and Lesperance is a nutjob anti-government rancher, a member of the "shovel brigade" that battled the feds near Elko a few years ago over a road in the Jarbidge wilderness. For the bulk of Nevadans, concerned about the future of the state and its wild lands, he's about the worst choice imaginable for the position he holds. Which of course made him a natural pick for Gibbons ....
Anyway: Lesperance, who's been called "one of the most radical members" of the anti-government movement, has vowed to get the mustangs off the range, claiming that they're not native to the area, that they're starving, and that each one contains a tiny little Al Qaeda terrorist armed with weapons of mass destruction. I made that last part up.
Dalton and Lamm represent a number of environmental and wildlife groups that have allied for the emergency, bent on protecting the horses initially, and with a dream of creating a sanctuary for them, where visitors could come from around the world to see them in their native environment.
Dalton has founded an organization called Let 'em Run. You can check that out at www.letemrun.com. Lamm has an intimidatingly detailed, documented and damning site of his own, www.kbrhorse.net, indispensable to the formation of an opinion on this issue.
And if you feel yourself beginning to be swayed by Lesperance's arguments--which, I will say as plainly as I can, are mostly crap--look here for undercover footage of horses sent to Mexico for slaughter: https://community.hsus.org/campaign/FED_2007_horseslaughter_notcosponsor.
A final warning: It is not for the faint of heart, stomach or will. Or for children.

Johnny Mink leaves radio, I'll struggle on awhile

2008-04-14T16:08:00.000-07:00

David Giovanni Mencarelli, perhaps spurred to greater achievement by my giving him the greatest nickname in radio history on Monday, has quit at KBZZ.
"Johnny Mink's" departure reduces the head count at The Cory Farley Show by half, the talent level by two-thirds and the experience level by four years. Which leaves, uh, me, a veteran of three weeks and one day on the air.
It would be pretentious to talk about Dave's "contribution" to a show that's not as old as the yogurt in your refrigerator. Still, I'll miss him, and I think listeners will, too. He was the Other Voice that stepped in when I stalled out, providing counterpoint and comment when I had none. Radio made me nervous at first--still does, a little--but I wasn't halfway through my first day before I realized Dave would step up if I bogged down. I could throw him any kind of line ("Dave, what's your position on ketchup?"), and he'd come back with something that moved things along. He was also a regular on The Panama Show from 6 to 10 a.m. , and I know they'll miss him there.
Regular readers and listeners (by which I mean, "the four people who both read this blog and listen to KBZZ") will be curious about what happened, but I'm not the guy to ask. Some of it goes back to before I went to work for the station, and Dave says it has nothing to do with me.
I hope not: I like him and enjoyed working with him. When the Johnny Mink Special comes on Comedy Central next year, I'll try to get him back on the radio.
Meanwhile, The Cory Farley Show will continue. I'm assured somebody will be there Tuesday to answer phones and push buttons, and The Boss says he's "got some interesting ideas" for the longer term. My personal long-term plan hasn't changed: I'll do it as long as it's fun. So far, it is. But less so, I suspect, without Dave.
Did I mention it's on The Buzz, 1270AM, from 10 a.m. to noon? Did I mention you can call 823-1920 and talk on the radio where millions can hear? I mean, not that millions will, but they could. Tomorrow's guest (Tuesday) will be Tom Jacobs from the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles, and Wednesday's will be Beryl Love, executive editor of the Reno Gazette-Journal. Both have agreed to take questions from callers.

Readers? I still have readers?

2008-04-11T22:51:00.000-07:00

As I assumed practically nobody had noticed, I haven't updated this thing since the middle of last month. The radio show (10 a.m. to noon on KBZZ, 1270AM) is kicking my butt, taking three or four hours of preparation every day, and by the time I get done with that and a couple of other things including the Reno News & Review column, I've said about all I have to say.
I started blogging for fun (there's certainly no money in it) and to stay in touch with readers. It really never occurred to me that anyone would read it regularly, but I'd been writing for a long time and wasn't sure how to stop: It just felt weird not to sit down and do 500 words or so every day. When I let it slide, I wasn't sure anyone would notice and was pretty sure no one would care.
A few people, at least, do. They've written or called or stopped me in the supermarket and said they miss the Gazette-Journal column, can't listen to the radio show and would like to see more frequent posts on the blog.
I'm no more immune to flattery than the next guy, and I'm getting the show prep under control. It's down to 1:1 now, one hour of prep for every hour on the air. If I can keep it there, and I have something to say that's not too tedious, I'll pick up the pace here over the next few days.
But you could listen to the radio, you know....

Off the deep end again, at 1270 on your AM dial

2008-03-21T10:26:00.000-07:00

One of the things that happens when you get old (I hear...) is that you get afraid to try new things.
It's nonsense, of course, Just the other day I ate my french fries without adding salt, a culinary adventure many people half my age haven't experienced. Later this afternoon, I may try napping in the Big Chair instead of on the couch. Life is to be lived.
Still, I'm a little apprehensive about what I apparently have to regard as What's Left Of My Career: Starting Monday, I'll be on the radio.
Regularly, I mean. I've done radio many times, but nearly always with someone to fall back on. When you're the guest, and all you can think of to say is, "Uh...," it's not your fault. When you're the person after whom the show is named, "Uh" won't carry you very far.
As of 10 a.m. Monday, that will be me, on KBZZ, 1270 AM.
Panama, aka "The Franchise," will move from his present 9-to-noon slot to 6 to 10 a.m. I'll take the 10-to-noon period, then Don and Mike will pick up at their normal time.
This is, in some ways, extremely cool. I love radio, and was a Radio-TV major my first two years in college. When I got home from Vietnam and went back to school, I switched to print, for reasons I've been trying for several years to recall. So when The Buzz asked if I was interested, I had to say yes.
Sounded like a good idea at the time. But I've been hanging out in the studio with Panama for a few days to learn how it's done, and it's like juggling cats.
When I was doing television commentary, I found that I could sound smart or look good, but not at the same time. When I focused on what I was saying, my tie curled up like Dilbert's and my glasses fell off. When I was perfectly groomed and turned out, I talked like Yosemite Sam.
I looked forward to radio for several reasons, but a big one was that you don't have to dress up. Half the people you hear on the air aren't even wearing pants (which is also true of TV news anchors, by the way. That's why the sets have solid fronts, so you can't see Brent Boynton's skivvies).
Turns out, though, that radio is another area in which you can't be proficient without, you know, actually being good at it. Like I needed another one of those.
To be honest, I'm not that eager for an audience until I begin to figure this thing out. My understanding, though, is that radio station owners prefer it when people actually listen to their employees. so check me out, 10 to noon starting Monday at 1270 AM. No passing judgment, though, until I learn how to work the phones.

In your heart, you know he's right

2008-03-19T20:47:00.000-07:00

If I could just weigh in with a voice of reason here, let’s try this:
What kind of oblivious jackass do you have to be not to understand the anger that drives the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the man who may have cost Barack Obama the presidency?
I’m not saying he was right, though in many ways he is. What I’m saying is: How can you not see where he’s coming from?
Wright, if you haven’t heard (and if that’s the case, just stop reading right now, why don’t you?), is the pastor who married Barack and Michele Obama and who christened their children. Lately he’s been seen on YouTube, Fox Noise and elsewhere sounding like . . . .
Well, an angry Black man. Which pretty much takes us back to my point: Who can be so oblivious as not to see the reasons a thinking person of African heritage and Wright’s generation would be angry?
Let me make this as basic as I can: You know how you feel when somebody cuts in front of you in line? You’re waiting in the rain for a movie, say, and somebody approaches, finds a friend and runs himself and five companions in front of you, with a little wave and shrug in your direction to show you he’s really a good guy, but, you know, he’s him and you’re you, so what can he do?
Pisses you off, doesn’t it?
But what do you do? You let it slide, but for the next two days you eat your liver because you weren’t man enough to force the issue.
Now, think about this: Many Black men of Wright’s generation have spent their whole lives being shoved back in that line. They haven’t been able to get decent jobs or proper educations. In my lifetime, they weren’t allowed to sit in the front of a bus, stay in good hotels or eat in restaurants where their ebony presence might offend The White Folks.
We shouldn’t be surprised when one of them stands up; we should be thankful they all don’t. Which may, in fact, be one of the reasons this incident has provoked the response it has: Deep down, we know Wright’s anger, however injudicious, is justified.
Sure, things are different now, though perhaps not as different as a lot of us confidently assume. But if you had those days in your memory, how long would it take you to get them out?

Hillary does what 16 years of GOP conniving couldn't

2008-03-07T19:19:00.000-08:00

I'll admit it: In about a week, Hillary Clinton has done something the entire Republican slime machine, our time's finest-honed instrument of character assassination if you don't count Rush Limbaugh, was not able to do in the best part of two decades.
She turned me against Hillary Clinton.
I wasn't what you could call a Hillary zealot. John Edwards would have been my first-choice Democrat, followed by Bill Richardson, Barack Obama and then Clinton.
Primary voters saw things differently (no problem; I'm used to it), and it came down to Obama vs. Clinton. I caucused for Barack on the theory that he was more likely to bring "change," whatever that means these days, than the ultimately-wired former first lady. Really, though, the thrill of seeing so many Hill-haters unhappy nearly won me over, and I would have been OK if she'd won.
Then she turned on the very people she needs for her victory. At a time when Democrats are justly furious and disgusted with George Bush and most of his party, Clinton ranked the presidential candidates in this order: Herself, Republican windsock John McCain, and then her Democratic opponent. You can find it on YouTube.
Me and her, as Grandpa used to say, are quits. I'll still vote for her in November if she gets the nomination, because a McCain presidency is just unthinkable. It would be like something out of a movie about a bleak future world, with hundreds of billions of dollars going for "defense" (read "aggression"), pennies for education and no concern at all for the environment.
Otherwise, though, zip. My campaign contributions don't amount to much in the overall context, but they're not going to Clinton.

6 things my English teacher says you do wrong

2008-03-07T11:30:00.000-08:00

Before we begin: Sorry for the formatting problems in the previous post. Got a new laptop; it has new features, but I have an old-school brain. I'm told the problems are easy to fix, but I've tried a couple of times and all I've succeeded in doing is moving them around. I'll pile a new post on top and everybody will forget soon enough.--CF

But now: One of the marvels of dwelling in the public eye in a tourist heaven like Reno is that people you haven't seen in years come through, spot your name and track you down. Happens to me once or twice a year: I grew up in the Bay Area, and a lot of Bay Area people come through here, so the phone will ring and it's somebody who wouldn't talk to me in high school, all grown up.

Usually the experience is fleeting: We were acquaintances 40 years ago, I moved away three years later, and we don't have all that much to say to each other now. They're mostly Republicans anyway.

The other day, though, I got an e-mail from a woman who struggled to teach me English in 1961. English in those days was mainly diagramming sentences (a skill I never mastered and have never needed), struggling to remember what a participle was and trying not to get caught looking down the front of Carol Barthel's blouse (a skill I did master pretty well).

Her note led to an exchange of reminiscences, during which I was shocked to learn that she's only nine nears older than I am. That would have made her 25 when I was 16, rather than the 50 or so I figured she was, and a look at my yellowed yearbook indicates that she may have been the hottest teacher, and certainly was the hottest English teacher, I ever had. Once again I'm reminded that my life consists mainly of a dismaying series of missed opportunities.

Anyway: She's enjoyed my writing, she said, because "you avoid most of the mistakes that have devastated the language."

"Like what?" I shot back, forgetting that she was the first to warn me about using like when you really meant as. But as what still sounds funny .

I asked her for 10 examples of things I don't do wrong, and I'm sure it's only her advanced age that caused her to send but six. Now that I'm aware of them, I hear and read them everywhere, and she's right: They're wrong. Check yourself out:

"Where's it at?" You don't need at. Just say "Where is it?"

"Anyways." The word is anyway. Probably comes from something like "any way you look at it," and you wouldn't say "any ways you look at it."

"To no end," as in, "He annoys me to no end." The to is unnecessary and changes the meaning of the phrase. If you're annoyed to no end, it means there's no purpose to your annoyance. If you're annoyed no end, it means the annoyance is endless.

The "is-is" syndrome. Barack Obama isn't alone in doing this constantly: "The thing is, is that..." or, as I heard John McCain say the other day, "The thing was is that . . .," as though "thing-was" were a noun. Correct: "The thing is, almost everybody does this wrong."

"Decimate" meaning something like "devastate" or "damage." This has caught on recently with news reporters, who are forever talking about something being "decimated." As you could tell from the root word, if you'd paid attention in English, decimate means to take one out of 10. Line up the enemy, count off and shoot one every time you get to 10? Then you've decimated his force.

"Have got." This is one I violate all the time: "I've got a new computer" is prolix, because without the contraction, it's "I have got." "I have a new computer" says the same thing in fewer words.

If you'd gone to San Carlos High School in the early '60s, you'd know these things....

New meaning to "Not a friend in the world."

2008-03-06T21:32:00.000-08:00

Been talking lately with a friend who just got back from two months in South America. He
was on a low-budget walkabout, not a Congressional fact-finding tour, which means he met,
ate and for all I know slept with real people. Here's his read on the attitude toward Americans there:
"I had to tell people five times a day that I wasn't a 'Bush American.' They hate us. If we
get into trouble, nobody's going to be willing to help us."
Well, here we go--another Bush-bashing.
Well, no. Not, at least, except where it's unavoidable. Which, come to think of it, is pretty
much everywhere these days.
More than five years ago, when the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive strikes, saber-stroking and encouraging mass hysteria among the voters became apparent, I wrote that "a world groveling at our feet is a world waiting to trip us up." Of course I was wrong about Iraq, where the citizens welcomed us with open arms, flowers and baklava. That or IEDs and AK-47s; I forget which, and I'd feel worse about that if George Bush and Dick Cheney hadn't forgotten which, too.
Elsewhere in the Middle East, though, we have nothing but enemies and retail partners,
stuck with us because we'll buy their oil (until China outbids us) or sell them our weapons. In
Europe, we're bashed at every opportunity. We're just lucky the dollar is worth so little
that hardly anybody can afford to go there anymore, or there would be more opportunity.
But South America? Who knew?
"Who cares?" said a Reno news professional with whom I happened to discuss this recently.
"I don't give a **** what they think of us in South America,"
Well...neither do I, in the abstract. The older I get, the more I focus on what I can see
from my house.
In the real world, though, such as it is these days, it's hard to see why a country would
go out of its way to antagonize, not just the people it chooses to invade, but just about the whole world. Even in England, pretty much our sole remaining significant ally in Iraq, our
popularity among the people doesn't come close to matching our "official" popularity. We've pissed off everybody.
As for South America, though: One of these days we'll need friends there, if only to invade
Venezuela for us and liberate our oil from under their dirt. Wait and see. And wait and see
if we find any.

Are the media bashing another conservative pol?

2008-03-02T15:31:00.000-08:00

Notwithstanding my poor performance as a blogger lately, I’ve had questions from readers about . . . .
No, let me rephrase in the interest of accuracy: Although I’ve slacked the blog for awhile, I’ve had comments, mostly accusations, from people pissed about media coverage of the maybe-divorce of Nevada’s first couple.
Why me? I’m no longer a full-time media professional, and I haven’t mentioned the situation in public or in private.
In fact, I don’t even have an opinion, beyond an abiding lack of surprise. Rumors about the Gibbons’ relationship have circulated for at least a decade. They’re common knowledge among reporters, but no one, as far as I know, has reported on them.
Which, just in passing, is another stick in the spokes of the “liberal media” theory, the notion that all the news outlets on the planet work together to undermine conservative politicians.
Gibbons is conservative to the point that the term “mindless ideologue” has been employed to describe him. Moreover, he’s been in public life a long time, and it’s fair to say his arrogance and messianic certainty have made him unpopular with some news people. As a columnist I loved him, because I could count on him to pop up every few months with a new dumber-than-dirt remark. It was Gibbons, remember, who said it was a shame Iraq war protesters couldn't be used as human shields, and who insisted that mercury in the environment wasn’t a health hazard. Most reporters, though, don’t get to comment on things like that. They just listen and fume.
Despite that, and despite persistent rumors, I haven’t read or heard speculation anywhere in the media about the Gibbons' alleged personal problems. Not until the bloggers got hold of it and the story went national did local news people touch it. Even then, most stories had an air of, “We have to mention this because everybody else did.”
In that case, then, what could the local folks, even those who’ve refrained from mentioning this situation for years, do? The Gov is entitled to a private life, but when his affairs (not meaning affairs, necessarily, though not necessarily not) . . . when his business becomes public, then his hometown newspaper and television station have an obligation to report it. Otherwise, when your cousin in Kansas calls and says, “Hey, how about your Governor now, GOP Boy?” all you could say is, “Huh?”
Gazette-Journal editor Beryl Love explains what went into the RGJ's decision to cover the story on the paper's Web site at www.rgj.com, and anybody with complaints about that should write to him, not me. I don't work there any more.

At last the dreadful suspense ends...

2008-02-18T19:40:00.000-08:00

At last, the suspense is over: John Ensign, Dean Heller and George H.W. “Who Would Have Thought Version 2.0 Could Be Worse?” Bush all came out today for . . . .
Go ahead, take a guess.

Did the former one-term, widely scorned president and Nevada Ideologues No. 2 and 3 (Gov. Jim Gibbons being, of course, No 1), after long and painstaking consideration, decide to throw their might behind:

Hillary Clinton?
Barack Obama?
Or John McCain?

Aw, you peeked.
The non-development here, though, does point up an interesting phenomenon, perhaps the only one left in this tedious and enervating presidential campaign:
Do endorsements really make a difference? A positive difference?
I’ve been trying to imagine a scenario under which the endorsement of a politician might change my mind, and I’m almost unable to do it. Every effect I can concoct is deleterious: I would be less likely to support a candidate endorsed by Ensign, Heller or Bush (or Gibbons, for that matter). No matter how much I thought I liked him or her, one of them coming out in favor would send me looking for what I’d missed.
But maybe that’s not fair: I’ve long thought Gibbons and Ensign dwelt on the bottom tier of desirability where elected officials were concerned, and Heller has demonstrated sufficient obliviousness to seem certain to join them. It’s natural that I’d reject almost any candidate they favored.
But the recommendation of a politician I liked wouldn’t sway me much, either.

It’s a hard thing to measure, actually, because I don’t like many politicians. There are some I can tolerate, but it’s a stretch to say I like even many of those I’ve voted for.
My favorite national pol of all time is probably Jimmy Carter, a decent man trying to fight his way upstream against the confluence of a horrible congress and a perfect storm of bad luck, plus he’s the greatest ex-president in American history (if you want to feel even worse than you already do, imagine what kind of former pres George W. Bush is going to be).
So far in 2008, now that John Edwards is out, I’m undecided between Clinton and Obama—I’d rather see Obama in office, but the thought of how unhappy a Clinton victory would make a lot of people who deserve to be unhappy sustains me in my despair. If Carter were to endorse one over the other, I might go along.

Other than that, though? A recommendation by Harry Reid, say, or Nancy Pelosi or Barbara Boxer (all of whom I admire; I’m not using those names to indicate disapproval)? Probably not. I’d still go with the candidate who best represents what I want America to be.

Let’s be generous and assume that some conservatives are about as smart, about as honest and about as patriotic as I am, and that they’d demonstrate those qualities by, first, paying attention, and second, voting in what they saw as the best interest of the nation. I don’t actually believe that , but let’s just say.
So why would a recommendation at this juncture change anybody’s mind?
Certainly there was no possibility of surprise. Ensign has been as predictable as the coming of night (which he in some ways resembles) since his first day in public life, Heller works off the same script and Bush hasn’t had an original thought since, “Read my lips—no new taxes.” You could have predicted five years ago whom they’d endorse. That they waited this long to announce, you'd think, would weaken their endorsement even further: Even though everybody knew which way they'd go, they didn't jump until the nomination was locked up, so they wouldn't offend The Base by getting a half-beat out of step. Way to take a chance, guys.

Why there's no hope for democracy

2008-02-16T08:09:00.000-08:00

We all would like to believe in a pure, sun-speckled democracy, with responsible leaders chosen by informed voters making wise decisions to guide our nation to peace, shared prosperity and as much happiness as reality allows.
By "we all," of course, I mean "Democrats." Republicans have trouble with some aspects of that dream, notably the parts about voters being informed, prosperity being shared and happiness being desireable for the lower orders.
But let that slide. The basis of democracy is faith in the common man's ability first to gather information, then to evaluate it and cast votes for those best able to lead the nation in the way it should go.
Ronald Reagan put a serious crimp in that faith for me, and George W. Bush's re-election nearly destroyed it. Nobody in modern times, though (by which I mean, "since Trent Lott fell out of power and Larry Craig was busted for nudging with intent to waggle"), has slammed my belief in the essential wisdom and goodness of man like Mitch McConnell.
McConnell is a senator from Kentucky, in appearance and utterance a classic ignorant southern politician. He probably isn't ignorant, except of life in the bottom 95 percent, but he cultivates the country-boy image, leaning on his thick Kaintuck accent the way New England native George Bush leans on Texas.
And in his syrupy drawl, McConnell says things that, in a reasoned world, would have his constituents marching on Washington with torches and signs demanding recall (in fact there's a Web site devoted to that, www.ditchmitchky.com, which is a hopeful sign and the main reason I haven't given up on democracy completely).
prospects for his party are not looking bright.
There's good reason for that; they've dicked things up to the point that the next president, whoever it turns out to be, is almost inevitably doomed (that's a double tragedy, by the way: If Clinton or Obama wins, and is ground up by the Bush legacy, it will be cited for a generation as evidence women, Blacks and Democrats aren't able to govern).
Mitch is up to the challenge, though: Nearly the first words out of his mouth after Democrats in Congress refused to grant retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies this week--companies that contributed massively to GOP campaigns--was that the Dems were more interested in seeing trial lawyers get rich than in seeing terrorism defeated.
Note, now--this hasn't been emphasized in the media--that the Dems did nothing to reduce enforcement of existing laws. Everything the government could do last week to apprehend terrorists, it can still do today (the president has said otherwise; he's either lying or uninformed). What they refused to do was hold telecom companies harmless for breaking the law in violating Americans' right to privacy.
If there is a God, why does he allow Mitch McConnell to exist.

I'm on TV, but probably not enough to hurt anything

2008-02-12T08:38:00.000-08:00

For the benefit of dozens who've asked (technically, 0.25 dozen), my schedule on KOLO TV has been set: I'll be doing taped commentary, a couple of minutes or so, on the 6:30 News on alternate Wednesdays, then make a fleeting appearance live on Daybreak, the morning show, the next day. This is final until it changes, and I'll try to give notice here.
I say "fleeting" because Television Time, it turns out, is different from other time. While I was waiting for my first morning gig a couple of weeks ago, host Anne Cutler glanced up and said, "You've got a lot of time. What are you going to talk about?"
This was a dual surprise. I didn't know I had any time--I thought she'd ask questions and I'd say things like, "That's an interesting point, Anne" and "I hadn't considered that angle, but you may be right." And because I'd figured she'd steer the ship, I didn't have anything in mind to say.
Not a novelty, actually. I often started columns with no idea where they'd end.
In writing a column, though, you have a keyboard, a BACKSPACE key and a couple of hours. In this case, the camera was rolling in 3, 2, 1 ....
Well, OK: I said something (I have almost no recollection of what), and nothing bad happened, and after awhile I began to develop a notion of what I was talking about and where I was headed. I figured I'd wrap it up in a couple of minutes, nod at Cutler and let her figure out what to do with the rest of my "lot of time."
About then, though--I think this may have been a minute or so into my warm-up--she scribbled something on a piece of paper and turned it so I could see it.
"30 seconds," it said.
Thirty seconds? Thirty seconds? When she said "a lot of time," I was thinking along the lines of 10 minutes. Not that I wanted that long, but that's what "a lot of time" means outside of television.
Half an hour; that's a lot of time. The only place I knew of where 30 seconds was a lot of time is in the dentist's chair.
Shutting up in 30 seconds required not just a change of plan, but a change of topic: I realized I wouldn't have time to make whatever my final point was on whatever I was talking about (I'm telling the truth when I say I can't remember it), so I pretty much just . . . stopped. Rush Limbaugh's gotten away with that for years: Ramble on until the second hand gets to the 12, put some stress on your last two words as though they were clinched your argument, then just stop talking.
Cutler blinked, and I may have detected a half-second pause while she registered the fact that I'd fallen silent. Then she picked up wherever she'd left off, the camera shifted away from me and I got up and went to breakfast.
It may be harder than it looks, this "television."

Is it bias if you distrust ALL religions?

2008-02-09T08:17:00.000-08:00

I've been heartened many times, usually fleetingly, by stories I've heard on National Public Radio.
None of your blathering about "liberal bias," now. In an era when almost no "news" source spends more than necessary or looks further than required to find out what's going on, NPR will take the time and invest the bucks to look at least around the edges of a story, if not to crawl behind it. Stories that begin "The White House said today" or "The Governor's office announced this afternoon" are pretty sure tipoffs that you're being spoon-fed what somebody wants you to believe. You don't hear a lot of those on NPR.
So I'm listening this morning, and there's a segment indicating, in apparent surprise, that about half of all Americans say they'd be reluctant to vote for a Mormon for president.
The surprise, I suspect, was feigned. I know Mormons who say they're reluctant to vote for Mormons.
"I grew up in the church," one of them told me a few weeks ago in a discussion of Mormon president manque Mitt Romney. "When he says his religion won't influence how he governs, he's absolutely lying."
I have no opinion on that and take no position; I'm just reporting what I was told.
Similar findings kept popping up when Joe Lieberman (Selfserver-Conn.) was running for President: Surveys, some pundit was always pointing out, showed that many Americans would be reluctant to vote for a Jew. You think?
The announcer and a reporter discussed the Mormon issue for a few seconds, arriving at no conclusion. Then, as they left the topic, the announcer dropped in the finding that cheered me up:
45 percent of American voters also say they think evangelical Christians have gone too far in promoting their views.
Hallelujah at last. Maybe Democracy has a future in this country after all.
In the matter of religion, I have no preference. I don't care what you believe or what you preach, though I'll be obliged if you don't preach creationism to my children. This nation is far enough behind in the sciences without digging that hole any deeper.
Where elected officials are concerned, though, I want decisions to be made on pragmatic grounds.
I have friends, for instance--OK, more like acquaintances--who see no reason for any kind of conservation, because they believe God will come back and carry us all somewhere before everything runs out. Use up the oil, cut the old-growth trees, foul the air and water--makes no difference, because soon there will be a flash of light, a burst of music and we'll all grow wings and flutter off to Heaven.
I may have some of the details wrong, but that's the gist of it.
Certainly they can believe that if they choose. But I don't believe it, and I don't want a politician who thinks as they do making decisions that affect what the world will be like after they're gone.
We tend to shy away from talking about religion in politics, unless we believe God has spoken directly to us and chosen us as his messengers (too much of that going around these days, by the way--personally, I believe God is a little choosier than that evidence seems to indicate). That's a mistake for a couple of reasons:
First, it drives the conversations underground. If we don't trust Mormons or Jews or evangelicals, wouldn't it be better to have those conversations in daylight? "Say, Mitt--I like some of what you say, but I'm really worried about your church's position on Blacks. How about a straight answer on that, at least?"
And second, now and then it lets the wackos sneak into office. I mean, really Mike Huckabee?

We now return to our regularly scheduled program...

2008-02-05T17:51:00.000-08:00

On the perhaps unwarranted assumptions that, A) anybody noticed, and B) anybody cared, I'd like to apologize for my long absence from this space. If I'd known I'd be gone so long, I would have mentioned it.
The good news, though, is that I'm not dead. On Saturday night we came over Donner Summit in a howling blizzard, doing fine with chains on the Mazda and criticizing, as is my wont, the abilities and perceptions of nearly every other driver on the road, particularly the buttwipe in the four-wheel-drove Moron Pickup who tailgated us for eight miles from the chain control.
If I'd had any place to pull over, I would have done it. At least if he hadn't been seven feet behind me with his high beams on.
Then things got really exciting.
Somewhere a few miles the other side of Donner Summit, in a single line of cars moving slowly in bad but not horrible conditions, we hit a gust of wind. I've heard the term "whiteout" all my life, and I thought I'd seen whiteouts a time or two, but I was fooling myself. When this one hit, I not only couldn't see the front of the car, I couldn't see the washer nozzles on the hood or the reflection of the headlights from the swirling snow. It was like being inside a cotton ball.
I just had time to think, "Brakes . . . no, that buttwipe in the truck will hit us," before we drove into the snowbank.
Full confession: I've been critical for years of people who crash their cars, particularly in snow and ice. Every crash, I've written several times, is the result of a mistake, and if you're the only driver involved, the mistake has to be yours.
I've been thinking about this one for three days, though, and I don't see what I could have done to avoid it short of staying home (which, in fact, I had argued for, but I was overruled). If Tony damn Stewart had been sitting where I was when that wind blew up, he would have been where I was seven seconds later: Stuck in a snowbank up to the windshield.
There was almost no impact. I felt a gentle slowing, snow rolled over the glass and we were done, in so deep my wife couldn't open her door. We both crawled out mine. Traffic moved sedately by 10 feet away from us, drivers pointedly not looking so they wouldn't feel bad about not stopping to help.
I generally carry a shovel, tow rope and basic gear for dealing with emergencies, but we were in Terri's car, which meant we didn't even have one of the dozen or so flashlights I've given her over the years, and which have mysteriously disappeared. The car was fine, not a scuff, but it wasn't going anywhere.
I was wearing a heavy jacket, and I had a hat, but just jeans and running shoes, the perfect garments for getting wet, then freezing to death while I waited for help. My gloves were on the kitchen table, barely 40 miles away. A call to AAA revealed that they were busy and we probably couldn't expect help until morning, 10 or 12 hours away.
This rather limited our options, but I figured I might as well keep busy. With no clear goal in mind, I started sweeping snow out from under and around the car with my arms, and made surprising headway. When it looked clear and the wheels had a straight path to pavement, I cranked it up, slipped into reverse and spun the tires for awhile. Even with chains, though, they couldn't get enough grip to go.
"Are you OK?" came a voice.
I bit back my first answer, which might have sounded snippy ("Yeah, fine. I just thought I'd lie here next to the car for awhile").
"We've got a tow strap," said the passenger in a big pickup, the kind I've reviled in print a hundred times. "Maybe we can yank you out."
I nearly broke my neck nodding, and they swept into action. One guy jogged back and stopped traffic while the other handed me one end of the strap. I flopped on the ground and hooked it under the back of the Mazda, and he got back into the truck while the first guy looped the other end of the strap around the hitch on the truck. I slipped the clutch just enough to keep the wheels from spinning, they pulled back slowly, and in 10 seconds we were out.
I started to get out to thank them and get their names, but I slipped on the ice and by the time I recovered, they were packed up and gone. I don't even know what kind of truck it was. But if you were in it, thanks.

The pieces fall into place, except where they don't

2008-01-31T16:15:00.000-08:00

In response to practically no reader inquiry, I'm obliged to offer a lame excuse for not updating this thing for however long it's been, four or five days:
I've been busy with money-making activities. Working, as it were, for The Man.
First came the Reno News & Review, about which several people actually did inquire. I'll be doing a weekly column and occasional other stories. Editor Brian Burghart and his staff have done a good job for a long time, and I'm happy to be there.
I don't know if this is still true, but when I was learning to write boring stories in journalism school, most students imagined themselves working for aggressive "underground" weeklies, blowing the lids off scandals and sending mayors to jail while the Big Papers could only placate their advertisers and envy our freedom. Some of the attraction wore off after we learned about the starvation wages that usually go with those jobs, but a working wife allows a man options. I'm pleased to be part of a noble effort.
Second, I'll be doing commentary now and then on KOLO TV, Channel 8. The details are still vague, at least to me, but for now it will be a couple of minutes of comment on the 6:30 News on some or perhaps all Wednesday evenings, then a short segment on Daybreak, the morning snow, the next day. I did the first two this week and thought I was fairly bad, though not humiliatingly so...less wooden than Howdy Doody, for those who remember him, but not as riveting as, say, the early Al Gore. Somewhere around Mitt Romney.
My brief acquaintance with television news has been instructive, though. As a career print journalist, I had the usual print bias: Only newspapers do real news. TV was all hair and capped teeth.
Uh, no. I've sat in the KOLO news room through a couple of production cycles (I'm not sure if "production cycle" is real TV talk or if I made it up), and I was impressed. The pretty faces, including mine, are a tiny part of the operation. Back where the cameras don't go, real news people are writing real stories and real editors are making making decisions under pressures I believe are greater than those at a newspaper. If a paper's press run starts 10 minutes late, somebody gets yelled at but the readers never know. If a news broadcast starts 10 minutes late, people change the channel and don't come back.
It's actually pretty intimidating, and I say that as a guy who wrote on deadline for three decades. Plus you have to wear a tie, sit up straight and there's no Backspace key, so your mistakes just hang there in God's own air.
KOLO has fixed me up with an e-mail address, cory.farley@kolotv.com, on which I'm happy to receive comments, advice and suggestions for future commentaries. I'm struggling a little with remote access at this point, but that will get well, and meanwhile I'll be going by the office to check it out. E-mails containing the word "pathetic" will be discarded.

If only they'd sum THEMSELVES up in 1 sentence

2008-01-26T20:14:00.000-08:00

Help me out here: Is everybody sick of the campaign, or am I just a bad citizen?
I try to care. I do care--every election I can remember has been billed as "a turning point" or "a critical time in our nation's history," but this one really does have that feel. Bush & Co. have so unraveled the painfully knit gains of the 20th century that another four years could put us into a hole it would take decades to get out of.
Still: Sick of it. Even the debates (the personal ones, not the television variety) aren't as spirited as in a normal election. Most of my Bush-supporting friends are either no longer Bush supporters or no longer friends, so there's no amusement there. Despite the high number of allegedly undecided voters, most people know at least which party they're going to back in November. Nobody inclining toward, say, Mike Huckabee today is going to switch to Hillary Clinton in November. Nobody's thinking, "Well, I'm just bummed Dennis Kucinich dropped out. Guess I'll back Romney."
So we're musing along those lines the other night at dinner, and some cynic who wasn't me said, "What's the difference? They're all the same."
Then, over the murmur of disapproval, he challenged, "OK, then give me a one-sentence description of each one. Say I'm voting for the first time, and I don't know what to do. Convince me."
Actually I think I can give a one-sentence description of every candidate, with the possible but not definite exception of John Edwards: Blind ambition. As has been said before, the mere fact that a candidate wants that job and is willing to do what it takes to get it should disqualify him. We could pick presidents the way you choose a bail bondsman, by running a finger down the listing in the Yellow Pages until something strikes your fancy (judging by the Republican primaries, a lot of people do pick that way).
I like the idea of the one-sentence descriptions, though. A friend of mine writes television scripts, and part of his process is to condense an idea into one sentence. It's easier to expand on a good thought, he says, than to cut a bloated concept down to size.
So, the major candidates:

Hillary Clinton: Smarter than anybody, probably including Bill.
Mitt Romney: Sort of creeps me out.
Barack Obama: Right place at the right time.
Mike Huckabee: Ought to be selling miracle cleaner on late-night TV.
John Edwards: Looks like he's working in his Politics merit badge.
John McCain: Had me until he sold out to the fundy Christians.
Rudy Giuliani: Really creeps me out, but his saving grace is that he's the most liberal serial adulterer in the campaign.

Feel free to make up your own; those are just off the top of my head.

Where is the FCC when we really need it?

2008-01-24T05:30:00.000-08:00

The Federal Communications Commission, protector of the public morals and bane of intelligent broadcasting, has been in the news the last couple of years more than any regulatory body ought to be unless fire trucks are rolling up in front of the building.
It began, if memory serves (the service has been spotty lately), when the nation except for me was horrified by not seeing Janet Jackson's boob during the Super Bowl halftime show.
There are boobs I'd rather see than Jackson's, but . . . well, you know, one in the hand. If I'd been watching, I would have looked. I wasn't, because it was halftime and I was in the bathroom or something. But I did check the tape 15 or 20 times, and here's what I saw: No boob.
Somebody must have seen one, though, because the FCC initiated a huge crackdown, supposedly responding to public outcry to clean up the airwaves (personally, I was crying out, "Could you either zoom in on that thing or stop titillating us with it?").
As is so often the case with the Bush administration, though, there was a catch: Nearly all the "public" complaints, way over 90 percent, came from one group, the Parents Television Council. These self-appointed deciders of taste flooded the agency and the Congress with mail. The FCC at that time was headed by Michael Powell, son of Colin (Nepotism alert! Nepotism alert!), who--along with Congress--folded like a cheap chaise longue. The FCC dealt out record fines, including one of nearly half a million dollars to Clear Channel Communications for a Howard Stern comment I won't repeat here (it was gross, but half a million bucks?).
As a result of all this moralizing, now we get to watch movies wherein two thugs beat on each other awhile, bullets fly, blood flows and one snarls into the face of the other as his hands close around his throat, "This is for what you did to Monica, you rascal!"
And yet (at last! The point!) Charter Communications roams the Truckee Meadows unchecked.
I've written about Charter, your local cable company, before. In a previous life, I got letters at least weekly from people complaining about crappy service, bad reception and the absolute worst customer relations team ever put together.
I didn't live in a Charter area, and I wasn't sympathetic.
"If you're unhappy with the service," I told dozens of readers, "cancel it. If enough people do that, they'll come around."
Then Charter moved into my neighborhood, and now I have to apologize to all those people.
No point in going over the details, which will be familiar to most people anyway, but let me hit the highlights:

Charter came to my neighborhood, replacing another cable company I previously believed to be the worst ever. Faced with the choice of Charter or no television at all, I signed up.
The reception was excellent and the channel selection was five times as large as we'd had before. I rejoiced.
The screen went blank. I phoned the only Charter number I had, to report the trouble. Before I could get service, though, I had to enter my account number. I hadn't received a bill yet, so I had no way of knowing my account number. After nearly 20 minutes in the automated answering system, I gave up.
I went online and got "live help" from a person who sent me a string of canned responses that didn't bear on my problem. When I asked if there were a supervisor or other sentient being available, he typed that his supervisor would tell me the same thing he had and disconnected.

Eventually that problem got fixed (I got the number of a local Charter person from a friend who's done this dance before). But then:

I didn't get a bill.
I didn't get a second bill.
I didn't get a third bill.

After not getting the second one, I called Charter to ask why I was getting served for free. Again, I was asked for my account number, which I still didn't have because: No bill. I eventually did get hooked up to a person through the 24-hour full service hotline. She told me to call back during business hours.
When I did, they asked for my account number.
A couple of days ago I got a letter promising immediate termination of my service if I didn't pay my past due bill, $140.10. That at least gave me the account number, so I called and--it's a miracle!--talked to an actual human.
After some linguistic accommodation, we figured out that they'd been sending the bills to my street address, which has no mail service, rather than the post office box, and the post office had been returning them. I gave the correct address, and the woman assured me she'd made a note on the account so the service wouldn't be shut off. I mailed a check that afternoon, returning the tear-off stub and tossing the rest of the paperwork, containing my account number, into the trash.
Next morning the service was shut off.
I called to report it, and the first thing they asked for was my account number. By this time I'd learned some tricks, and I managed to get to a person after no more than seven or eight minutes.
"Without your account number," she said, "there is nothing I can do."

A puzzle for our age

2008-01-21T16:59:00.000-08:00

Just a quick word here on something that's developed in my mail. Note that I don't necessarily endorse the sympathies expressed ; I'm just passing along comments:

People in general, especially Democrats, are fed up with the way things are going. That's why they turned out in such numbers for the Nevada caucuses on Saturday.
Most of them say they want "change," whatever that means (mostly it means "No more Bush," but that's going to happen anyway).
Of the leading Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton seems least likely to effect change. I wouldn't mind seeing her in the White House, but she's as firmly wired to the power structure as anybody in either party. Obama is somewhat better, but still associated with the problem as it's commonly perceived.
Only John Edwards, of the "serious" candidates, seems likely to bring the change Democrats say they want (I know, I know: Kucinich. And I'd vote for him. But he isn't going to be president, not in this lifetime or any other).

So: Why did these change-seeking Dems go to the caucuses and give Clinton and Obama, the candidates of more-or-less-the-same-old-stuff, better than 90 percent approval between them? If you WANT change, don't you have to VOTE for change?

What happened to Edwards, and what's it mean?

2008-01-20T07:24:00.001-08:00

"The biggest mystery in politics," I heard someone say in 2004, "is how George Bush gets people to vote for so many things that will hurt them."

I'm not going to slide off into a Bush bash here, but it's true: Time after time, the neo-GOP has convinced people to accept ideas and policies that clearly, on the basis of any analysis at all, will be bad for them. If you're wondering where the middle class has gone, check under that pile of misrepresentations and half-truths out behind the White House. I think it's buried there.

Challenging that mystery this morning, though, is how Nevada overlooked John Edwards so completely in the caucuses.

I'm fine with Barack Obama, and I can do all right with Hillary Clinton, though I predict the amount of actual change she'll bring will be measured in fractions of a millimeter. A small part of me would like to see her in office just because it would discomfit so many people I like to see discomfited, but it's possible that's not the best basis on which to pick a president. Obama might do more, at least at first, but he's nearly as wired into the system as the Clintons and eventually Reality is bound to set in.

Edwards seemed like an attractive alternative for those who can't tolerate the Republiclones and worry about John McCain (listen carefully when he speaks. The number of mispronunciations seems to be growing by the day). He's appealing in person, worries about the right things and has some non-standard ideas about solving the same old problems politicians have been promising to solve in the same old ways for decades.

And yet in the caucus, he pulled 4 percent of the vote.

What the hell is wrong with this state? I didn't expect anything from the Republicans (and got it, too. I mean, Mitt Romney? Do you people do any reading at all?). The notion that only four out of 100 non-Bush voters would swing to Edwards, though, is weird, scary and sad all at the same time. It means the packaging really is more important than the product (not that that's news, but I always hope), and that when it comes to seeking solutions for what they perceive, accurately or not, as our Big Problems, voters will still take the Easy Path. Don't tell us how we can fix things, just tell us how you'll fix them for us.

I could be reading too much into the results from a still-fairly-insignicant state, but here's what I think: 2008 is not a lock for the Democrats, and whatever changes, nothing much is going to change.

Why you should hate Republicans, if you don't

2008-01-19T12:53:00.000-08:00

As if the nation needed more evidence that Republicans, perhaps not top to bottom but certainly at some levels, are unprincipled, degenerate scum:
A neighbor of mine is a Democrat married to a Republican of the non-scum variety. This morning he went with her to a Republican caucus where she lined up for John McCain. She's not certain she'll vote with the party in November, but she retains hope that it will come to its senses and become the fiscally conservative, forward-thinking body she joined 30 years ago.

While the couple were there, they saw something they described to me at a Demo caucus around noon: A group of "about 100" gathered in the parking lot, got their instructions (part of which my friends overheard) and then went away...to various Democratic caucuses.

This came up because we saw four of them at our neighborhood caucus. They showed up late, claiming to have seen the light and the truth, re-registered as Democrats, and all four lined up with the Obama camp. Obama came out on top by a comfortable margin in our caucus, as he did in three others I checked with just before I started writing this (official results aren't in yet).

"That's what the guy (apparently leading the Repub group) told them to do," my neighbor said in disgust. "They think they can beat Obama because he's black."
Let me interject here that it's possible these were true conversions, brought about by understandable disgust with the incumbent and his party.

But I don't believe it was. I happen to know one of the switch-hitters, and while that's a small sample, the fact that he still says "nigras" and used to call Hillary Clinton "the first dyke" makes it a convincing one.
Is this legal? I'm assured that it is. I'm sure that would be the Rat Bastard Defense: "There's nothing illegal about it. We're working within the system."
Is it a crappy, Bush-era, dishonorable, slime-eating, underhanded, cynical and altogether typically neo-conservative perversion of Democracy?
You tell me. The Rat Bastards.

Just three words: Go caucus now

2008-01-19T09:40:00.000-08:00

I'm on my way in about three minutes to make another vain attempt to prove that Democracy works: I'm headed for my neighborhood caucus.
What's a caucus? I'm not entirely sure. I mean, I've read the description and I know what to do, but I'm pretty vague on why we're doing this instead of an honest primary election.
Dennis Myers, my new colleague at my new gig at the Reno News & Review (watch for it, pick it up free all over town, read it, write to the editor expressing appreciation) and the best political writer around, says it's at least partly because of money. Primary elections cost a lot to stage, while caucuses are fairly cheap.
If that seems to imply a reluctance to spend money to insure an accurate reflection of voters' preferences . . . well, there's hardly anybody in office in this state that I voted for, so look in the mirror.
Flawed as the system may be, though, it's the system we have. The alternative to going and being heard is to let the kind of morons who generally get zealous this early in the process be the only ones heard, and we've seen where that leads.
It's an hour out of one Saturday of your life. Go. Take the kids. Show them how it works. Or else just accept what happens to you and for the next four years, shut the hell up.

Are you sure Charlie Gibson started this way?

2008-01-17T21:50:00.000-08:00

I didn't have to call 911 to get rescued from my television debut, but it was close.
That was me on the 6:30 news on KOLO TV, looking wooden next to anchor Brent Boynton. I'll be doing commentary there occasionally, and Thursday I got to go on Real TV while Brent introduced me and I rambled on about something or other.
Next time will be better. For one thing, I'll try to have a plan. For another, I'll try not to lock myself in the lobby when I leave.
Getting into a TV station these days is about as hard as getting into the White House used to be. You check in, wait, and eventually somebody comes and gets you. They lead you back through a maze of hallways, offices and closed doors, treat you nicely, let you say a few words to God knows how many people, and then they send you home with dramatically lowered self-esteem.
In my case, most of the self-esteem problem was self-inflicted. After I got done saying whatever it was I said (something about the caucus, the pronunciation of Nev-ADD-a and polarization, I think), four people asked me if I could find my way out.
"Sure," I said, and I did: With only one wrong turn, I got to the next-to-last door, through which I could see the last door, through which I could see my car.
Piece of cake. I opened the next-to-last door, stepped to the last door and give it a shove just as I heard the next-to-last door click shut behind me.
The last door didn't move.
I turned back. The next to last door didn't move. I had locked myself in to the lobby, a tiny cubicle furnished with a couple of chairs and a copy of last month's Martha Stewart Living magazine.
In moments like this, I ask myself, "What would McGyver do?" Easy: He'd scrape the coating off the slick magazine pages, mix it with some kind of acid (as it happens, I was carrying a pretty good supply in my bladder), pack it around the door, let it dry, then blow the hinges off.
I actually thought of that, but I'm not sure magazines are still coated with the same stuff they were when the Army taught me to do it, and in this weather it wouldn't dry before I froze. Unfortunately that was both Plan A and Plan B, and I had no C. I tried the doors again. Still locked. I beat on the inner one, but everybody in the building at night is in the back, and busy during the news. The receptionist who watches for idiots goes home at 6.
After an embarrassingly long time, it finally occurred to me that I had a cell phone in my pocket. But the only KOLO number I could remember was Boynton's personal line, and he was on the air. Probably not a good idea to use that.
Call home? "Honey, I'm locked in the lobby at the station--could you bring that big crowbar from the garage?" Not just yet.
911? That would get me out, but I know some cops and firefighters, plus there's a scanner in every newsroom in the Truckee Meadows. Locking myself in at my new gig might even get me into the Gazette-Journal one more time, but not in a context I'd welcome.
Finally, from I don't know where, a number popped into my mind. I punched it up, not certain what it was, and Tad Dunbar's voice (recorded, I assume; I have no evidence they're holding him in the basement) welcomed me to KOLO. When he said to press 1 for the Newsroom Hotline I did, and when a woman answered.
My mind went blank. Finally I blurted, "This is Cory Farley. I've locked myself in the lobby and somebody needs to come let me out." i would have been a little suaver if I'd been able to think of a way, but I couldn't. I still can't.
In due course someone showed up and let me out, then led me down a hall I'd missed to a side door and freedom. My television debut was over, and I'm looking at the bright side: As long as I check my zipper, everything from now on is bound to be less embarrassing than this.

Almost an embarrassment of riches

2008-01-16T18:32:00.000-08:00

The old election-year line, "Just hold your nose and vote," isn't going to get much of a workout this fall if you're a Democrat.
I was going to say, "Sorry about you, Repubs," but I forgot that your senses of smell atrophied in 2003. How else to explain the election of '04 . . . well, yes, the Diebold machines, but other than that?
What brings this to mind is seeing two of the three main presidential candidates in person, and talking at some length with a representative of the third.
I've been of four minds over the coming election. In a perfect world, I'd like to send Dennis Kucinich in the White House just to see what would happen. He reminds me of Jerry Brown when he was governor of California in the '70s: He's right about a lot of stuff, but it's going to take another 30 years before most people realize it.
Since he's a no-hoper, I've been a reluctant Clinton man--reluctant because I really liked Bill at first, but he turned into such a Republican in his last term that he left a lot of things undone. But there doesn't seem to be much difference between Hillary and Barack Obama, and I think the election of a modestly liberal woman, especially a Clinton, would make a lot of people I don't like unhappier than the election of a moderately liberal Black.
I don't know what it says about the state of the nation that I'm choosing my presidential candidate based on which one will most piss off people I don't like, but there it is.
It's moot now, though, because I have a new favorite.
On Saturday, I spoke to a meeting of the Douglas County Democrats. It went fine; they bought me dinner and nobody threw anything.
On the podium after me was David Bonior, who's working for John Edwards. Bonior is often described as "the former renegade congressman," which generally means that when others are saying, "Right, sir! Good decision!" he's asking, "Are we sure this is a good idea?"
I talked with Bonior after the meeting, and he said, more or less, the following:

Washington is truly screwed up, even more than is obvious. "Broken" doesn't begin to describe it.
The country is run by Big Business, notably Big Oil, Big Drug and Big Insurance.
It probably isn't going to change under Barack Obama, and it sure as hell isn't going to change under Hillary Clinton.

OK, he's pimping for his boss. But then Wednesday I went to the Grand Sierra to a "town meeting" with John Edwards, and he's my new man.
Note, please, that I spent more than 30 years as a journalist listening to politicians, public relations people and other liars. My cynicism is deep and wide; I automatically dismiss about 90 percent of what they say, and examine the rest for weasel opportunities. I don't even like the elected officials I like.
But--I say this hesitantly--Edwards may be less phony than the rest. He has ideas, which can be dangerous but in his case isn't. Some of them aren't necessarily good ideas (I don't see how we can ban nuclear power and new coal-fired plants while simultaneously reducing greenhouse emissions and our dependence on foreign oil), but at least they indicate he understands that there are problems. That would be a new message from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.: Everything isn't perfect just because Big Oil is making billions. And wait until you hear him on education and health care.
Look, I'm not saying vote for him. I'm saying don't disregard him automatically. It isn't his fault he's a rich, good-looking white guy.

Walking among the smart people

2008-01-13T19:24:00.000-08:00

When I was asked, months ago, to speak to Douglas County Democrats, I put a condition on my acceptance. It's an hour from home, and it would be January, so you wouldn't be able to count on the weather.
"I can do it if they're both there," I said. "But I'm not going all the way to Gardnerville for one of them."
My concern was experience-based: One of the first stories I did as a Nevada journalist, back in Ought-70something, involved person-on-the-street interviews in Douglas County. I'd just moved from Santa Monica, aka The People's Republic, where I was considered a right-leaning, suspiciously pro-business reporter with a modest flair for colorful expression. As countless newcomers have said since, I didn't know I was a liberal until I came to Nevada.
In any case, my introduction to Douglas County came when I interrupted a couple having breakfast and got a 15-minute lesson on the problems with America. One of them was the communist media hounding Richard Nixon for a perfectly innocent burglary (he would resign, one step ahead of impeachment, a few months later), and another one was me, for being part of the conspiracy to tear down America.
That impression has stuck with me for three decades, and that's more or less what I expected when I headed for Gardnerville Saturday night: Six or eight ex-hippies, not that there's anything wrong with those, gathered around a table in the back of a restaurant plotting the overthrow of George W. Bush, not that there's anything wrong with that.
The six or eight turned out to be maybe 250, and the table in the back of the restaurant turned out to be the main meeting room at the Carson Valley Inn, home of what I believe to be the best prime rib in northern Nevada, at least in the banquet division.
The overthrow of George W. Bush remains the goal. Which was a refreshing change from the company I've been keeping lately.
There were no political candidates in attendance (Hillary Clinton was in town the day before, Bill Clinton the day after, and John Edwards is due in Reno this week), but the major ones sent representatives. Former Michigan Congressman David Bonior, speaking on behalf of John Edwards, convinced me that Edwards is the best person for the job, and Army Major General (Ret.) Paul Eaton, talking for Sen. Clinton, convinced me she is, too. I walked into the place undecided and left the same way; I'll caucus for Edwards but vote for whoever wins the Democratic nomination, not because of affiliation but because, just coincidentally I'm sure, the Republicans still don't have a sniff of what' s wrong.
But here's what struck me most strongly: Over the last 15 or 18 years, I've dealt mostly with people who are differently opinioned than I am. It's just the nature of commentary: People who disagree are more likely to complain than people who agree are to praise. And people who disagree are almost always dumber than I am.
Hold it. I know how that sounds, but consider: Whatever opinions you hold, you've presumably reached after careful consideration of the facts. If you didn't think those beliefs were right, you'd have different ones. So if people have looked at the same facts I have and reached wildly different conclusions, how smart can they be?
In this convocation of Douglas County Democrats, though, I was face to face with 250 deep thinkers who stand with me on the major problems of the day. I mean, maybe they like Bill Richardson and I like Edwards, or they want public transportation to be mandatory while I just want it to be convenient and cheap, but we can get together on that. When I have the same conversations with Republicans, I may want government to enforce health-based limits on industrial pollution and they trust industry to comply voluntarily with rules it writes for itself: Not much room for compromise there.
Also, compared to the normal run of my public discussions: better vocabularies, fewer knee-jerk opinions, lots more consideration of facts before reaching conclusions, and not a single misspelled word on the program or any of the literature. Damn, it's nice to be around smart people.

Didn't we learn ANYTHING in 2000?

2008-01-09T12:00:00.000-08:00

In a journalism career that spanned parts of four decades, I had plenty of opportunities for embarrassment, and took advantage of many of them.
Nearly every blush, to be honest, was self-inflicted. I cringe now when I read some of the stuff I wrote Back Then, though for the record I'm still pretty proud of my forecast in 1988 that George Bush The First would be a reviled one-termer.
The No. 1 grovel-inducer of my professional life, though, as well as the second-place finisher, both were committed by big-J Journalism as an entity, and I think it's about to step on its crank again.
Just to get them out of the way:
No. 1, hands down, was the way the national media kowtowed to Bush II after the World Trade Center attacks. For a couple of years, the administration got no criticism. Subvert the Constitution, invade the wrong country, lose track of its primary target and then declare that Osama bin Missing wasn't so important after all--the "liberal" national media bought it all, faithfully passed along the party line and covered up more holes than a barrel of Spackle. Things got so bad that when journalists finally started doing their jobs again, a lot of people cited it as evidence of a liberal media conspiracy. Even now, some portray dissent as a form of treason.
No. 2 was the coverage of the 2000 presidential election, the early prediction of victory for Al Gore (who did, lest we forget, actually win), then the cack-handed failure to explain the mechanism of the forecast. There was a national epidemic of self-flagellation, mass donning of hair shirts and a blizzard of solemn vowing: We've learned our lesson, the media swore. We'll never do that again.
Yet here we are in 2008, and those same media have it figured out: It's over for Hillary Clinton and John McCain; Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee will fight it out for the White House. . . .
Oh, no, wait: That was last week. This week it's over for Obama and Huckabee; clearly, the battle will be between Clinton (whose one-loss campaign supposedly was "resurrected" by its current one-straight win streak) and McCain. And next week . . . who knows? But it will change again, and the experts will realign.
To be honest, I'm trying not to pay much attention to this yet. I know I'm going to vote for the Democrat no matter who it is because they're all palatable and all the Republicans are nuts except Romney the Robot, who's likely to get a boost in Michigan but then figures to sink slowly, slowly in the West. I mean, Mike Huckabee?
The fluttering fancies of the media, though, ought to disturb us all. Judgment, patience and reason seem to have gone the way of grammar, vocabulary and syntax: When they crop up here and there, you're never sure if it happened on purpose or if there were just enough monkeys banging on enough keyboards to get it right.

If only there were another way...

2008-01-06T17:50:00.000-08:00

Four hours shoveling snow this weekend, three of them Saturday and one Sunday, thanks to a long driveway I share with two neighbors who have four-wheel-drive trucks. If they don't go somewhere right after a snowfall and pack things down, we can't get the Mazdas out to the street.
Sometimes if they do go somewhere, we can't get out. The ground clearance on a Protege5 is pretty minimal; if there's more than about five inches of snow, it piles up ahead of the spoiler and the car g-r-a-d-u-a-l-l-y s-l-o-w-s d-o-w-n. Then I can either wait for the neighbors or shovel the snow out of the way, back up, get a running start and hit it again, repeating as necessary.
Climber measure their ascents in "pitches," the number of times they have to move the rope to reach a summit. My record in the driveway, in the Great Snow of 2004, is 10 pitches--10 times barreling along until forward motion stops, then getting out and shoveling.
Saturday was a five- or six-pitch day. I would have been out in two hours, but while I was clearing the last five feet, a snowplow came by and put up a two-foot berm.
"I can blast through that," I thought, but I couldn't. I high-centered the Mazda, lifting the front wheels off the ground on a ramp of snow. That meant hiking back to the house for a real shovel, a digging implement, because my cheesy snow shovel wasn't long enough to reach under the car or stout enough to dislodge the icy wedge. There was a reason I left Santa Monica, but in January I can't always remember what it was.
When I finally got the car out, I drove down the street and passed a neighbor, a livid and pudgy middle-aged guy with whom I've disagreed on nearly every major issue that's come up in the 20-plus years we've lived near each other. His driveway is paved and about 50 feet long, compared to my 100 yards of dirt, but it's never felt the blade of a manually operated tool. He clears it (at the slightest provocation) with a snow blower that probably cost more than my kids' cars.
I stopped to talk with another neighbor, and she offered coffee, and soon we were sitting inside watching through a window as the first guy struggled with his blower.
If I'd been working with my shovel, I think I could have cleared his driveway in 15 minutes. The snow was powdery, and the surface is paved and smooth, so you would pretty much just walk along behind the shovel and give it an occasional toss to clear the way.
It took Pudge 15 minutes just to get the blower started. The battery apparently was dead, and after he pulled the cord 60 or 70 times, it occurred to him to check the gas. Whatever he found inspired him to go get a can from the garage and top it off, and 15 or 20 pulls after that, the thing popped and banged and sputtered to life.
He cleared a strip a couple of feet wide and as long as the driveway at about half the speed I could have managed manually. When I stood up to go, 10 minutes later, the air on his end of the block was blue with smoke. He'd wrestled the unwieldy blower through about a third of the job, covered his front porch with hoar and nearly hidden his back gate under a coat of half-melted snow that was already freezing into an icy armor over the latch.
"How's that thing working?" I asked as I headed for my car.
"Slow," he said.
"Well, keep after it," I exhorted.
"Aah, it's a pain in the ass," he snorted. "I'm supposed to be at the gym in 10 minutes."

What if Judge Green had never lived?

2008-01-05T12:49:00.000-08:00

Full disclosure: The telephone company paid for nearly everything I ever ate, wore or owned for the first 20 years of my life. My dad put in 40 years with Pacific Tel, and my first real job was with The Phone Company back when there was only one. Counting three years in the Army, for which I got credit, I did more than a decade as a Phone Man.
People loved to hate The Phone Company in those days, in much the way they hate Microsoft today. I'll tell you what, though: Stuff worked. Phones lasted a lifetime. If something went wrong, which it hardly ever did, they'd come fix it free. When you needed a booth (this was long before cell phones), the things were ubiquitous, clean and operational. Sort of like Starbucks, come to think of it, only cheaper.
That didn't happen by accident. Platoons of people were employed to check, clean, test and repair coin phones. My dad supervised them on a regional level for awhile, and he took a personal interest. More times than I can count, I saw him phone his office, give the location of a booth he'd spotted that didn't meet standards and direct that somebody get to it today. And somebody did.
Then came Judge Harold Green, the jurist who broke up AT&T. Judge Green's decision ended a perceived monopoly, opened the telephone industry to competition, broke down the last thing in America that worked and led, eventually, to my doing without a phone until Tuesday.
"Moisture in the wires," surmised the telephone person to whom I reported No Dial Tone on Saturday morning. That would have been my guess, too: The wires bake in the hot sun all summer, the wind blows, the insulation cracks, it rains. Like magic, you have a ground in the circuit. No calls can go in or out.
Might this be something a phone company could anticipate and perhaps prevent? Well, yes. As is so often the case now that government isn't watching out for consumers, though, I suspect profit takes precedence over service.
High-quality equipment costs money, and preventive maintenance costs more. Over the short haul, roughly the career span of the people making decisions, it's often cheaper for a business to go lowest bidder and hope than to do the job well. By the time things start to go wrong, you'll be safely retired, or at least bumped up the ladder of blame. You see it everywhere.
In the old days of which I speak, there probably would have been a repairman in my neighborhood right now, climbing poles to track down the problem while it's still a problem. Post-Judge Green, though (and post- a lot of other stuff; it isn't all his fault), I'm told I can expect a service call maybe Tuesday, by which time I figure there's a 50-50 chance the wires will have dried out, the phone will be working and the leak will be impossible to find until the next time we have a storm, when the phone company will be busy and won't be able to get a guy out until Tuesday.
There's nothing wrong with a nice, efficient monopoly, you know, as long as somebody's authorized to crack the whip.

Why do we care what happens in Iowa?

2008-01-03T18:11:00.000-08:00

That headline, which you headline-skippers should go back and read, is a dead serious question. I've been wrestling with it for years:
Here in the land of democracy, where the soul of our government is wise choices made by an informed electorate, why does anybody care what happens in the Iowa caucuses?
As I write this, the very early returns are beginning to come in. On the Republican side, the phony from Arkansas seems to be pulling out a surprise lead over the animatronic candidatoid creation from Massachusetts. That's good news on at least one level, and perhaps two:

Mitt Romney annoys me in much the same way Ronald Reagan did. He's just so obviously bogus it shakes my faith in human nature that people can't see through him.
Mike Huckabee is maybe too crazy to go very far. He'll probably do well in South Carolina, but so did George Wallace. Then it's bye-bye, Mike.

Maybe. I can believe it, sort of, if I don't think too hard about those polls showing that 25 percent of Americans expect Christ to return and carry them to heaven this year, or that about the same number think George W. Bush is doing a bang-up job.
On the Democratic side, where at least none of the candidates is openly loony, Barack Obama holds a slight lead over Hillary Clinton and John Edwards at this point (remember, it's very early). That choice is hard for me: I think I like Edwards, but the election of either a woman, especially a Clinton woman, or an American of African heritage would really piss off the kind of people I like to see pissed off as often as possible.
What still mystifies me, though, as I think I said up there before I got sidetracked, is why anybody outside of Iowa cares. A couple of hundred thousand people from a place normally dismissed as a "flyover state" or "one of those dreadful places that begins with a vowel" will shuffle around in somebody's den or the Grange Hall or somewhere this evening, and tomorrow morning the news will be full of portentous headlines about what their opinion means to the nation. The whim of a fraction of a percentage point of our eligible voters can shape, if not decide, the fate of the nation. How'd we get here?

It's not too late for Mrs. Farley's cow pea soup

2008-01-01T11:00:00.000-08:00

As everyone with roots south of Atlanta (not me, but my mother) realizes, the only way to be sure of a healthy and prosperous new year is to eat black-eyed peas on Jan. 1.
Black-eyes are a common legume in the south, but you don't see them much in Nevada. A few restaurants with country or southern pretensions serve them, but otherwise you're pretty much out of luck.
My mom was born in Florida, and while 20 years in California had buffed off her accent by the time I came along, she'd kept a few expressions and idioms from her homeland. Where in a moment of frustration I might blurt, "@#$%*!), for instance, she'd say, "Land sakes" or, "Well, I never!" I sort of get "I never," but I've been puzzling over the meaning of "Land sakes" for more than 40 years.
And she called black-eyed peas "cow peas," at least until my brother and I got old enough to laugh at "cow pea soup."
January 1 was also my father's birthday, and to the extent that Californians have traditions, his bowl game/birthday brunch was one of them. A pot of cow pea soup--dad's old bean pot, now that I think of it--is simmering on my stove right now, and the corn bread will go into the oven in a few minutes, thus guaranteeing us good luck all year.
I meant to mention this a couple of days ago to give people time to shop, but you only need a few ingredients, most of which you probably already have, and a pound of black-eyes is about a buck-fifty in any grocery store. There's still time.
Don't omit the cornbread; it's an important part of the meal. Use any recipe you like (I follow the one on the Alber's corn meal box), but there's one important rule: Preheat the oven with a cast iron skillet inside. When the batter is ready, drop a dollop of shortening or butter into the hot pan (handle it with a pot holder, or you'll get a new appreciation of the word "sizzle"), give it a quick swirl to coat the bottom, then pour the batter into the pan and quickly close the oven door. That's how real cooks get that crusty finish on their corn bread.
Black-eyes are traditionally eaten in a recipe called Hoppin' John, of which there are about a zillion versions online. They cook more quickly than most dried beans, so pre-soaking isn't really necessary no matter what the package says. Just plan to add a extra half-hour or so to the cooking time (that's true of all beans, by the way--I cook them a lot, and sometimes I soak overnight and sometimes I don't. I can't tell a difference in the finished product).
In addition to the black-eyed peas, you'll need some kind of porky meat (ham hock, ham, bacon, salt pork, kielbasa, whatever), an onion, half a red or green bell pepper if you like those, a clove or two of garlic and the usual seasonings. Don't get hung up on specifics or amounts; one of the good things about beans is that they provide a flexible palette for the imagination.
Finally, a pound of beans is a lot; for two people I often just cook up a cup or so, reducing other ingredients accordingly.

MRS. FARLEY'S COW PEA SOUP
Put the beans, a bay leaf if you have one and enough water to cover them by an inch into a pot, bring them to a boil, then turn down and let them simmer until they're almost tender. This can take from an hour or so to two hours or more, depending on several factors we don't have room to cover here.
NOTE: If you're using a ham hock, put that into the pot, too. If you're using one of the other meats, don't add it yet.
While the beans simmer, dice the onion, pepper, garlic and a stalk or two of celery (including leaves) if you want. Cut up the bacon or ham and fry it in another pan for a few minutes, drain off excess grease, then add the cut-up vegetables to the same pan and saute them until the onion is golden. Remove from heat and set aside.
When the beans are half an hour from done (just guess; it's not critical), add the other ingredients, some cumin and thyme and one cup of white rice (per pound of peas--reduce if you're cooking less). Return to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until the rice is done, 25 minutes or so.
If the pot looks too watery, keep the lid off during this phase so some can evaporate. If it's too dry, add just enough water to cover, but keep an eye on it--the rice will soak up liquid as it cooks, increasing the chance of burning.
Serve with corn bread, minced green onion and Tabasco sauce. And remember you owe whatever success you achieve in 2008 to cow peas.

Why you should still read Rolling Stone

2007-12-30T20:33:00.000-08:00

The all-time, all-media pinnacle of year-end journalism, outside of the New Year's Eve column I used to do before Authority decided it was insufficiently deferential, was Esquire Magazine's Dubious Achievement Awards.
That went away several years ago, and nothing has come close to it since. When I see "The year in review" features elsewhere, I barely glance up.
Fly with us now to last week, when another issue of Rolling Stone showed up in my mailbox.
I let my subscription lapse long ago, around the time Hunter Thompson left, but the magazine still shows up regularly, sits around the house for a week or so, then goes out with the trash.
This was the "Special Double Issue," though, with a cover blurb for "Hot Republican Gay Sex." Nothing cheers me up like Repubs in disgrace--the dance of the hypocrites never gets old--so I kept it around.
You need to find a copy. I didn't keep close track this year of the kind of dumb-assery that makes a good year-end list, but Rolling Stone did. With full credit to the magazine, let me just give a few highlights. There are pages upon pages of this stuff:

A photo of Arizona Sen. John McCain in Iraq, with excerpts from a speech he gave citing how safe it was and how his visit was proof the war was just and necessary and Being Won. McCain wore a bulletproof vest, didn't leave the "green zone" compound and was escorted by 100 soldiers, two Apache helicopters and three Blackhawk helicopters.
A reminder that when recent intelligence reports revealed that Iran shut down its nuclear weapons program more than four years ago, President Bush insisted the news validated his repeated (and continuing) claims that Iran had an active nuclear weapons program.
Further reminders of ways the Bush administration has honored veterans this year. Among other things:
Iit required that soldiers discharged before the end of their term of enlistment because of battlefield injuries repay their enlistment bonuses.
It sent the most experienced National Guard unit in Iraq home after 729 days when 730 days would have qualified the soldiers for education benefits.
It forgot, oops, to include 20,000 cases of brain trauma from the official list of troops injured in Iraq.
As the cover promised, the magazine listed five Republican officials who have been outspoken gay-bashers, but who have been charged with or found guilty of various types of homosexual behavior in public or involving minors. One, the national chairman of the Young Republicans, admitted he'd performed oral sex on another man, but claimed, "I wasn't in my right mind. I wasn't thinking." All records of his tenure at the top have disappeared from the Young Repubs' Web site.
Recalled that in an Associated Press survey taken in late 2006, 25 percent of respondents said they expected Jesus Christ to return in 2007. As of this writing, he has 27 hours to make his move.

Makes me wish I'd done a year-end piece of my own. I even tried to start one today, but all I could get down was, "Rudy Giuliani . . . ."

Why CAN'T we talk about religion?

2007-12-27T21:07:00.001-08:00

Discussions of religion in politics generally are conducted quietly in the United States because it's considered inappropriate to notice, except among bedrock fundy Christians. In that group, it's almost the only thing they do notice, but they're so wrapped in self-righteousness it never occurs to them it's not OK.
About the only time that rule gets broken is when the candidate himself brings up his faith. Kennedy did it in the '60s with Catholicism, and Mitt Romney did it this year, though he managed to give an entire speech about his beliefs almost without uttering the word "Mormon."
I wonder, though, why we aren't more open about this.
Full disclosure: I'm a devout doubter. I don't actively disbelieve--I have prayed in foxholes, imploring the Lord (or whoever was listening) to spare me at the same time I was trying to scratch down another couple of inches with my fingernails. I've prayed in hospitals, and likely will again.
In my heart and in my head, though, I don't believe my prayers helped. God (or whomever) presumably knew where I was and knew my circumstances. It seems vaguely insulting to remind him ("Father, you know there are 117 of us in this airplane . . ."), and in any case I can't think of a single reason a sensible deity should have spared me and turned his back on so many of stronger faith. Either I was the Chosen One, which no one has believed since my mother died, or it was pure chance.
We, ah, seem to have digressed.
My point (for all I can remember, way down here) is that religion is not only a legitimate thing to consider in casting a vote, it's a necessary one. Of course each of us should be free to worship as we choose and to follow the god we see--but if someone's beliefs run contrary to yours in any area, including religion, what's the point in pretending they don't?
Faith is a major factor, often the most important factor, in many people's lives, so why should we ignore that? I won't vote for a person who's shown a disregard for the environment, or one who wants to make abortion illegal, or one who doesn't see the importance of funding education even if it means raising my taxes. Others may disagree with my positions in those areas, but no one would question my right to consider them in casting my ballot.
Religion, for many people, is a far more powerful force than any of those. Why should it be off limits?

10 Signs Your News Source is Mailing It In

2007-12-23T19:36:00.000-08:00

In some places they’re called “evergreens,” those stories you see year after year: Last day of school, reminders to check your tire pressure, the annual pardon of the White House turkey (this year the turkey was the one on the right).
Reporters hate them. They do them only because editors tell them to. Since most editors were reporters until they got out of journalism to chase the money, I’ve often wondered when the change takes place. At what point in the slog up the ladder does a lively writer start believing readers need to be reminded that when temperatures dive, they should wear jackets?
Christmas is the high season for stuff like this, because there’s not much real news and half the staff is using up the vacation they couldn’t get approved in July. At some newspaper or TV station right now—hell, at hundreds of them—an editor is telling a reporter to see whether the stores are full of people doing last-minute shopping. On Wednesday morning, the same editors (or their holiday fill-ins; no difference) will want an analysis of whether shoppers are taking advantage of post-holiday sales.
Watching for these things, it turns out, is a quick way to tell if your news source is doing its job. When updates on Britney Spears or late-breaking flashes on the biggest-grossing movie of the weekend outnumber stories containing actual pertinent facts, it’s a clue: Look elsewhere for the information you need, say, to make an informed political choice.
With an eye toward helping you make these determinations, here are 10 Signs Your News Source is Mailing It In:

It contains more than one mention per week or one picture per month of Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears or anyone in their families in any context not involving a crime sufficiently heinous to be mentioned if it were committed by a manicurist from West LA.
Any headline or major story begins with the words “Gas prices . . .”If you have to be told what gas prices are doing, they aren’t affecting you. If whatever they’re doing is affecting you, you already know. Gas price stories are classic space-fillers, the kind of thing some editor is sure to bring up in every meeting because he can’t think of anything else.
It documents crowds in places that normally draw crowds. A throng at the mall on Dec. 26 is not news.
At the end of a holiday weekend, it tells you the roads were crowded. This is particularly lame in newspapers, where the best they can do is let you know on Monday morning that if you came home Sunday night, you probably got stuck in traffic.
It contains any reference to how you should dress or where you should set your thermostat for a given set of weather conditions. Television is reliably idiotic about this: “It’s going to be in the teens tonight, so you’ll want to crank up the furnace.” Whew, saved me from turning on the air conditioner five months early.
It warns you to slow down in bad weather. Sure, it’s good advice. But anyone dumb enough to need a reminder is too dumb to heed it.
It says, “Store valuable items out of sight and lock your car.” You know all those times you left the Macy’s bags on the hood just for a minute while you ran into Starbucks? Well, now you know not to do that.
It passes along as God’s revealed Truth the contents of any White House report released on a Friday afternoon.
The term “white Christmas” appears after Dec. 20.
It gives you one more goddamn story about parents “frantic” because they can’t find a Wii. Granting that you want to do what you can for your kids, teaching them that everything isn't instantly available is not a bad lesson. Buy them a book, then read it to them.

On being Mr. Terri Farley, husband of the author

2007-12-21T08:38:00.000-08:00

If you live long enough, you'll accumulate your share of humiliating experiences, and if some portion of your life is semi-public, you'll occasionally run across people eager to remind you of them. A few weeks ago I got an e-mail from a reader--a girl, or I suppose a woman now--who wanted to know if I was the same Cory Farley that Mike Dixon and Craig DuLac pantsed on the playground at Goodwin School in 1958.
No, that was some other Cory Farley. There were dozens of us in middle school in those days.
One you can't lie your way out of, though, is being the consort of the author at a Book Signing.
Some readers know my wife is a young adult novelist . . . that is, a writer of books for young adults; she herself is fully mature. She's done three dozen or so, and every 10- to 14-year-old on your Christmas list would love a couple of hundred copies.
We'll come back to that.
My part in that phase of Terri's life used to consist of taking the children to the zoo so she could work, then coming home to cook dinner. Now that the kids are grown and she's solidly in the Medium Time, though, I'm allowed to accompany her to signings. She introduces me to bookstore owners and managers as her husband, but what they hear is "roadie:" I'm the guy who carries the boxes, tracks down the extension cords, finds the circuit breaker when it trips and runs across the mall to buy new pens when the kids walk away with hers (tip to aspiring writers: Never sign with a pen you're not willing to lose).
Terri will be signing Saturday at the Barnes & Noble on South Virginia Street (11 a.m. to 1 p.m.; that's as close as we'll get to a sales pitch), and I'll be in the background, mostly out of habit. She gets decent treatment these days: plenty of books on hand, people to fetch coffee, somebody to manage the lines.
Best of all, there are lines to be managed. I rarely have to sit across from her in an empty corner of a bookstore any more and rave in my LOUDEST VOICE about how my grandchildren just LOVE her books and is she POSITIVE there are only 30-odd of them because I SURE WOULD LIKE TO GET MORE FOR ALL MY FRIENDS' KIDS!
It was not ever thus. We did two hours in Seattle one time and sold two books. When we left, the manager gave us a bill for the coffee he'd provided. In San Antonio the signing coincided with the opening of a high-end men's hair place. Between 10 a.m. and noon, I and about 30 other guys got haircuts, but only half a dozen kids came to see the author. When I told the woman doing my hair why I was in town, she walked away from the chair, went next door to gape at the writer (who, she confided, "looks just like a normal person"), then came back empty-handed.
Terri did draw a crowd in San Jose, not all of them her mother's friends--but the store hadn't ordered extra books. The kids went home mad, some with autographs on the palms of their hands. In Hawaii we got bad directions from the hotel desk and went the wrong way around the island; the kids went home mad without autographs anywhere. In New Orleans . . . never mind New Orleans. I understand it's mostly dried out now.
But she'll be on her home turf Saturday. The pens are packed, the books are in stock (allegedly; we've heard that before), the author is primed. You can strike a blow for juvenile literacy and finish your Christmas shopping at the same time, and incidentally take advantage of our One-Day Only Special Offer:
If you buy more books than you can lift, the roadie will carry them to your car.

White House fire a Christmas miracle for the GOP?

2007-12-19T10:06:00.000-08:00

Details are still sketchy, but the aware reader will have heard that a fire broke out this morning in a room "adjacent to Vice President Dick Cheney's ceremonial office" (http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/brief-fire-occurs-white-house/story.aspx?guid=521A9963-9DAD-4F92-988D-0721D2EC3C8A&dist=SecEditorsPicks). It was put out with "no loss of life," though a Marine reportedly was injured when he broke a window to escape the smoke.
Can I be the only person whose initial reaction to this--the first thought, before I'd even heard the full story on NPR--was, "Well, so much for the evidence"? A pre-noon scan of some relevant blogs shows that I'm not.
Evidence for what? I have no idea. The CIA torture tapes? Secret notes the Dickster sent Scooter, telling him to get rid of those troublesome U.S. attorneys? Memos from Turd Blossom explaining how they'd cover up whatever it is they were interested in covering up at the time? I don't know.
It doesn't matter that I don't know. It doesn't even really matter that the fire might have been a genuine accident (somebody happened to tape the lever down on a Bic lighter, then, oops, drop it into the wastebasket where they were storing the records of Big Broadcasting's contributions to ensure deregulation of media ownership? Happens all the time).
What matters is that this godawful lying, conniving, undercover administration has so destroyed the trust between Americans and their government that all but the blindest and dumbest (by which I mean the 30 percent who apparently will stick with Bush through deceit, war, wholesale slaughter and parting out the environment to the highest bidder, though not if he insists on letting immigrants' kids go to school) . . . all but those few, when they heard news this morning of a fire in one of the most beautiful and historic buildings in the nation's Capitol, must have thought, "The bastards will get away with it, too."

Will it take a loon to win the GOP primary?

2007-12-17T15:47:00.000-08:00

Conservative keening aside, most journalists I know aren't particularly liberal, and nearly all of them regardless of politics work hard to keep their opinions out of their stories.
Objectivity is a regular topic of newsroom meetings and a constant consideration in editing, to the extent that the finished stories sometimes misrepresent reality. Concepts like "mainstreaming" and "diversity" are worthwhile when they insure that every facet of society and every angle to an argument is presented, but even a good idea can be carried too far. Hang around reporters, and eventually you'll hear someone say sarcastically, "I've got the City Council bribe story wrapped up, but it can't run until I find a 300-pound Samoan lesbian to comment" (no complaints from offended 300-pounders, please: I'm just making the point that no segment of the fringe is considered irrelevant).
A classic example, one I witnessed personally: A team of reporters worked for days on a story about sexual abuse of children. They did a good job on it, found solid sources and were ready to go.
An editor congratulated them, then said, "But for balance, we need something from the point of view of a molester. Can you get that by Friday?"
A lame joke, to be sure--but they took him seriously. The doctrine of impartiality was so ingrained that they went muttering off to lunch wondering where they'd find a baby-raper who'd go on the record.
Hold that thought while you consider this:
Has the Bush administration so contorted the meaning of "Republican" that none but the loony has a chance to win the GOP primary?
What that has to do with objectivity is that I'm trying to be objective: I look at that line-up, and I see . . . weird people. I mean truly weird, far-from-the-mainstream-but-trying-to-pass hardcore ambition-crazed no-foundation cheeseballs. With nice suits, but still.
As Jon Carroll said last week in the San Francisco Chronicle, "the sanest one . . . is a former POW, and he thinks the Iraq war is a great idea. And you think Hillary Clinton is going to have trouble running against one of these guys? Please."
Carroll writes in San Francisco, of course, and he's a known lefty. He's exposed to California Thinking.
I'm a lefty, too, but I write in Reno and I'm exposed to Reno thinking. That's why I believe Hillary Clinton is going to have trouble running against those guys: There's a level of inchoate distrust and fear about her out there that Carroll probably doesn't see in his mail.
I've suspected this for years, but it didn't really come out until she began to run seriously for president. Since then, I've heard everyone from physicians and CEOs to busboys express their disdain and general fed-uppedness with George Bush, but follow it with something like, "but I could never vote for Hillary--she scares me?"
"What scares you about her?" I'll ask.
Well, they don't know. Remember how she argued for universal health care in 1993 (good thing the Repubs fought that off, or our health care system might be a real mess now)? There was that, and she's ambitious (while the rest of the candidates just sort of shambled into the race by accident?). She's too, you know, Hillaryesque.
I'm not, in fact, a big Hillary fan. I liked Bill a lot at first, but he turned into such a Republican in his last couple of years I lost faith in the whole family, at least until Chelsea's ready (not to digress here, but haven't the people who criticized the Clintons for the way their daughter was raised been quieter than church mice about the Bimbo Twins?).
Carroll nailed Mitt Romney, too. I hate to plagiarize (more accurately, I hate to be seen plagiarizing), but no one's described the Mittster better than this: "(He) looks like the typical high school suck-up, the kid whom everyone hated . . . He also had Daddy's money, and he looked as if he had Daddy's money."
Giuliani has nothing but 9/11, unless you think the GOP base is going to get behind a serial bridegroom. Ron Paul is a member of the most dangerous and delusional subculture in politics, those who believe government is inherently evil and taxes are inherently bad. Mike Huckabee is too religious; the only reason Romney's getting raked for that and he isn't is that many voters don't understand Romney's Mormon faith and are suspicious of it. Huckabee's at least from one of the normal religions (just so we're clear: I have no problem at all with any religion, but I do have problems with followers of all religions when their dogma shapes their decisions. Plus there's that annoying holier-than-thou thing, the leading characteristic of neo-conservo-Christianity, plus based on the debates, Huckabee's grasp of international affairs seems to equal Winnie the Pooh's).
I'm not saying, exactly, "Vote Democratic." What I'm saying is, "Maybe give your vote some thought this time."

By your gifts they shall know you

2007-12-14T14:29:00.000-08:00

If I had a personal trainer, his Christmas this year would be less merry than he might expect.
Forgive the masculine pronoun; normally I try to be gender neutral. The fact is, though, that a personal trainer would have to see me with my shirt off, and I’m not man enough these days (more accurately, I’m too much man) to go around like that in front of a strange woman even if I've paid her first.
But I’m man enough to look any trainer in the eye and say, “Your Christmas gift is going to be smaller than you anticipate, Body-Fat Boy.”
What brings this to mind is a story I read the other day on something that's apparently a puzzle in some circles: At Christmas, how much should we give the people who do all those little services we’re too lazy to perform for ourselves, or that we may forget are done at all?
It wasn’t exactly a six-paragraph demonstration of what’s wrong with journalism today, but it was out on that edge.
In addition to personal trainers (hang on—I’ll tell you in a minute if you “gifted” yours appropriately), it included manicurists, hairdressers, teachers, pool cleaners, a regular waiter or waitress and even cops.
The idea that we owe a Christmas gift to everyone we deal with may be novel to you (it was to me), but apparently we haven’t been paying attention. This story pretty much assumes that everybody gets something, and that it will be in the form of cash. The only question is how much.
If you’re looking for a one-size-fits-all rule, here it is: the cost of one regular session of whatever they do. If you normally pay your hairdresser 50 bucks (is that ballpark? I have no idea), then this week you should duke her 50 extra, for the cause.
What cause? ‘Cause it’s Christmas. You don’t want to be thought cheap, nor to have your hair come out orange, either. Thus we’re held hostage by those who serve us.
This rule, the story said, can safely be applied to most service employees with whom you have a regular relationship. It won’t work for mail carriers, who can’t accept cash (gift cards in small amounts are OK), or with trash collectors, who “should” get $10 to $30 apiece, which means you have to stay home on trash day to count how many guys are on the truck.
Notable among the other exceptions were personal trainers, who (at least according to personal trainers) customarily get more generous remembrances.
That kind of sourcing was one of the problems with his story: To find out the usual gifts for people in various jobs, the reporter asked people in those jobs, who strike me as not necessarily impartial.
That aside, though, if you have a trainer, you may be relieved to learn that he or she will not be insulted by a gift of $100, though “some” say they’ve gotten as much as $1,000 and $400 “isn’t unusual” (just for fun, I’d like to check those people’s tax returns and see how many declared that kind of giftage as income).
Who really gets screwed, though, is teachers. As usual.
Tipping them in cash, the story said, "isn't customary." It's all right to give your trainer a C note. Your kids' teachers, though, operate under different rules.
That section of the story started fine: Rule No. 1 of teacher-gift selection, it said, is to avoid mugs or anything with an apple on it.
Good advice. My wife taught for 30 years, and when she retired, we had to haul mugs and wooden/ceramic/plastic/macramé apples away in crates. She has fond memories of many students, but we don’t need no more damn apple stuff, except pies.
Then it went bad: “Instead,” the story counseled, “consider donating a book in the teacher’s name to the school library.”
So your housekeeper, at Christmas, should get “one to three weeks’ salary” directly in her hand, while a teacher gets a book off the Special Values table at Barnes & Noble, and it goes to the library? I ran this idea by a couple of teachers, including the one with whom I share a toothbrush rack.
“It’s because we’re ‘professionals,’” she said. “We’re supposed to be in it for the kids.”
Oh, right. Like professional athletes or lawyers, except you're not allowed to go on strike.
"That's pretty much it."
People in most other businesses, though, apparently are inclined to swallow their pride and take your filthy money. Some starting points:

Your gardener will not be offended by $50 to be split among the crew.
The guy who cleans the pool gets the cost of one cleaning.
Nursing homes generally prefer gifts for the whole floor, like candy or a food basket, rather than individual presents. Private nurses, who often are closer to both the patient and the family, are treated as family members and get gifts commensurate with that status.
Mail carriers, as noted, can't take cash but can take cards, candy, stuff like that, as long as the value is less than $20.
Retired newspaper people amusing themselves with blogs traditionally receive $200 or more in small, used bills

Eight ways to a merrier Christmas

2007-12-12T19:54:00.000-08:00

Off to start the shopping today with three vague goals and one firm one.
We'll leave the vague ones alone, else there'll be no surprises. The firm one, though, was that I would notice something cheerily Christmaslike and be uplifted by it.
This Space has long-standing problems with the yuletide season, not all of them because it's cold enough to freeze the brass off a bald monkey.
The whole Buying thing, for a start, grinds me down. Giving a gift, however heartfelt, isn't enough. It has to be the perfect gift, one the recipient has always wanted but never would have thought of.
I'm not a religious person--Christ didn't die for my sins; I hadn't committed any yet--but one more fool talking about "giving the kids a great Christmas" when he really means scoring a Wii when the neighbors couldn't could push me over the edge. Call me Scrooge, but I think it's possible to know the true meaning of Christmas without melting down your Visa card.
Back when I had hopes, I used to imagine a consumer rebellion: What if people just quit buying?
Not permanently, mind. I had in mind a temporary boycott, like those silly No-Gas Days that are supposed to bring the oil companies to heel, and might if we didn't all fill our tanks the day before. For just one Christmas, what if all the downtrodden consumers agreed to observe the holidays in some fashion that didn't lead to bankruptcy, societal bloat and environmental ruin?
My personal Christmas wouldn't be religious; that's just not important to me. It would include family, a few friends, maybe a football game at the park or on television. If you want to devote it to worship, though, we still have something in common: Neither of us needs to spend ourselves into sleeplessness.
But that, as I said, was back when I had dreams and thought the world could be perfect. These days I'll settle for just not being pissed off.
I felt bad about selling out like that, and reluctantly mentioned it to a friend.
"So?" he said. "Not being pissed off is the best anybody can hope for."
It follows, then, that not pissing people off is the best anyone can do. Which brings us, willy-nilly, to the Eight Rules You Must Not Break Between Now and Christmas. Remember these and see if your life goes more smoothly:
8. Take the first open parking spot.
You've seen it many times: In search of a slot that will save 15 seconds of walking, a driver will spend five minutes idling while somebody finds her keys, opens the SUV, unloads four shopping bags, straps two kids in, then makes a cell phone call before pulling out.
Take the open spot. You'll be ahead in the end.
7. Avoid boorishness.
Wednesday in front of Kohl's, I saw six cars back up behind a man who idled at the red curb while his wife (or whatever) went into the store. He sat there despite the Christmas crush and a couple of polite taps on a couple of horns. When somebody finally leaned on the button, he waved impatiently and whined, "I'm waiting for my wife."
The guy behind, in an old pickup with a push bumper, dropped into low range, edged up behind the offending vehicle and gently pushed it a few feet.
"Move it or I'll shove your *** into the street," he bellowed.
Any responsible adult, of course, has to deplore this kind of vigilantism. For my part, I gave the guy a thumbs up and envied him the rest of the day.
6. Remember you're shopping in the 21st century.
The clerk doesn't know if a garment runs large, small or true to size, whether it will shrink, fade or stretch or how it should be washed. The clerk can barely find the break room. Do the best you can from the label and keep the receipt.
5. Never count out more than five coins.
If the tab is $11.23 and you have a quarter, whip it out. If it's $11.88 and you have three dimes, five nickels and 33 pennies, keep it to yourself.

4. The clerk is not hitting on you. It's her job to be nice.

3. When the checker says, "How are you today?" she doesn't want a detailed answer.

"Fine" is fine. Keep the line moving.

2. Can't find something? By all means ask. The employees are there to help.

The time to ask, though, is when you're out on the floor, wandering among the merchandise. If you wait until the checker has rung up all your items, has a finger poised over the TOTAL key and asks, "Will there be anything else?" the only acceptable answer is a clear, "No, thank you."

1. Think ahead.
You're making a purchase, right? You'll have to pay, right? While the clerk is ringing things up, then, would be a convenient time to find your wallet/cash/debit card/checkbook, and perhaps a pen, and--dare those behind you hope?--even your ID. Just on the off chance that you might be asked to show it, I mean.

Cabela's a bust for Boomtown?

2007-12-11T09:54:00.000-08:00

The Reno City Council, or at least that portion of it that's still buying the All-Growth-Is-Good argument that was so relevant in the 18th century, may have found another way to undermine its own ideology with the giveaways that brought Cabela's to Verdi.
"It's been really slow," a Boomtown employee said this week. "Cabela's hasn't done nearly what we expected."
For those who think "a Cabela's" means to sing without accompaniment, here's a refresher: Cabela's is a large, Midwest-based supplier of mostly hunting and fishing gear. It's not a sporting goods store in the stick-and-ball sense, but if your outdoor interests run to blood sports, you can find the implements you'll need to take down everything from bluegill to Cape buffalo.
Don't read a value judgment into this; I'm not making one. I've already spent a couple of hundred dollars in the Verdi store. For my everyday outdoor needs, though, I'll stick with REI.
To entice Cabela's to Reno, the City Council cut a deal. I've forgotten the details, and they aren't important enough here to look them up; it was pretty much a standard business-government accommodation, involving tax breaks, annexation (against the wishes of most Verdi residents including--full disclosure--me) and favorable zoning, all based, if memory serves, on a projection of about 4 million customers a year.
That seemed, at first, a doable number (I know "doable" isn't a real word, but it fits here). Cabela's is a huge draw among people among whom it's a huge draw. I pulled into the parking lot of the store in Sidney, Neb., at 6:30 on a Tuesday morning a few years ago, and there were nearly 400 people waiting for the doors to open,
Then the projections began to slide. Last time I read about it, a year or so ago, I think it was down to 2.5 million (see previous comment about specifics). A highly-placed city official, unnamed here for the same reason the Boomtown employee is unnamed, told me he was thinking of asking the Council to reconsider its deal.
By then they were moving dirt, though, and the colony of yellow-bellied marmots that's entertained generations of Verdi kids had been paved over, and the city official kept his mouth shut. So now we have a store.
Government did what it could to pump the thing up. For a week before it opened, for instance, highway signs notified drivers that "EVENT PARKING" should use Exit 4. Nobody in my neighborhood, a mile from the Exit 4, knew what event they were talking about, but it certainly generated interest that wouldn't have been there otherwise.
I went up on opening weekend, and it was busy but not jammed. The following week I passed through again, and I saw lots of shoppers but, I thought, relatively few buyers.
Yesterday, Monday, I went in to buy some hiking socks and wandered through the place. There were people looking at the mounted animals (taxidermy, not demonstrations of breeding habits) and admiring the fish in the big aquarium, but in the checkout line I had only about a one-minute wait, and the two customers ahead of me covered their purchases with single $20 bills.
Done with that, I walked over to Boomtown to buy a San Francisco paper and pick up a cup of coffee. That's where I met the employee, who saw my Cabela's bag and revealed what I have no reason to doubt: At least for now, at least for Boomtown, Cabela's is a bust. The marmots died in vain.
"No help at all?" I asked. "Those stores draw a lot of people."
"Maybe a little in the restaurant," he said. "I guess they're not gamblers."

And a merry Christmas to all but three of you...

2007-12-09T14:50:00.000-08:00

Out to the Leviathan of retailers this morning, and I wasn't 20 feet inside the door before I recalled the long-ago words of a friend.
"I don't go to W**m**t," she said, "because every time I do I see children being abused."
To be fair, that was back before the W-store was accepted by soccer moms and latte dads. You might go there, but you didn't want anybody you knew to see you there.
I still feel a little like that, to tell the truth, mostly because of the Arkansas company's alleged abuses of employees. But it does seem to be making efforts, and as the public consciousness has begun to green up, Walmart has made motions in that direction, too. I've begun to look upon it as the Arnold Schwarzenegger of retail stores: I suspect they're both motivated more by polls than by ideology, but if they're doing what I want them to, do I have the luxury of caring that it's for the wrong reasons?
So I walk in the door, and as I pick up some coffee at the in-house McDonalds, I overhear a couple with two pre-school children.
"Finish your Coke," the woman said, "or I'll smack your ass."
This is the kind of thing that makes me think you ought to have to pass a test before you can become pregnant.
I'm not a McDonalds-hater. I can enjoy a Quarter Pounder any time of the day or night, and the only french fries I like better than the clown's came from my mother's kitchen.
What logic, though, what sort of thinking, lies behind a statement like this?
First, there's the Coke. McDonalds has orange juice and milk, which have their nutritional drawbacks but at least aren't sugar water. Why would you order Cokes for two toddlers, and if you did it as a treat, why would you do it at 7:30 in the morning? And if you did that, why would you insist that they finish the Cokes? And if you did insist for some reason (maybe it really does help the starving children in India), why would you threaten to beat them if they didn't comply?
So that was one. Here's two: In the grocery section, where a woman was filling her cart with crap like Lunchables, ranch-flavored chips and Pop Tarts, I saw one of her kids swat at the other one, presumably for some offense I missed.
"Don't hit!" she snapped, slapping at the miscreant. "Do you want another spanking?"
So that was two. Here's three: As I loaded my car, a woman in the next space left her cart on the incline and opened the back of her SUV. As she passed sacks into the back of it, her son, maybe 2 years old, rocked back and forth in his seat. The motion started the cart rolling toward me, and I reached out and stopped it.
"Runaway baby," I said when she approached. "He nearly escaped."
"Runaway baby" is a stock phrase at my house, from a game I played with my kids 20 years ago. I didn't expect her to know that, but I did sort of anticipate a smile or some other acknowledgment of my hero status.
"You take care of your kid, a**wipe, and I'll take care of mine."
I bit back my first response, which ended in "you," and my second, which began "Kiss my." I considered saying "Merry Christmas," but discarded it as too wimpy, and probably too subtle.
"I'm sure you will," I said finally. "And it's a shame."
I should have gone with the first one.

Bush: Willful ignorance or just a liar? Discuss...

2007-12-07T08:57:00.000-08:00

More on this later, unless not, but I've been listening to the fluffle over Bush/Iran/nukes/Cheney as Puppetmaster (like that's a new concept), and nobody seems to be addressing what looks to me like the main point:
Bush either knew and lied, or he didn't know. There are no other possibilities.
For the life of me, I can't decide which is more likely or which would be worse: A president who pays no attention, or one who just makes crap up to support his ideology.

Won't be long before the underwear are flying

2007-12-05T20:56:00.000-08:00

Well, now we know how long it takes to get bored with being a househusband.
Two and a half days.
That’s how long I’ve been retired, and how long I’ve been tending to the duties I always envisioned would be handled by a supermodel with a penchant for scrubbing and a nice touch with sauces.
Two and a half days, I confidently report, is enough.
I’m not a stranger to the job. I’ve done a third of our cooking forever. Terri hates laundry and I hate washing dishes, so we accommodate each other there. Most other tasks, we either alternate or work in what probably looks like companionable silence, though a better phrase might be “sullen acquiescence.”
Our problem is with . . . well, cleaning. We just don’t--what’s the phrase I want?—we don’t do it.
Our retirement plan, insofar as we had one, was that I’d work two or three more years, Terri would finish out her book contract (you’ll want to check that out, by the way, www.phantomstallion.com; someone you know would love a few hundred copies for Christmas), then we’d ease into our sunset years together.
As things turned out, my sunset years arrived by corporate fiat in the same week her contract for eight more books arrived via FedEx. That made my decision easier, but she had issues with staying home to work while I toured Europe, or for that matter went to McDonalds.
“You’re not going alone,” she said flatly.
“So I can take a date, then?”
We haven’t stayed married for 34 years by being rigid, though. We worked out a compromise: She’d bring home the bacon, and I’d do everything else.
It embarrasses me to admit how complacent I was about that. Like many males, I figured I’d bring the efficiency and organization of the workplace to bear on the problems of the household. Couple of hours a day, cut to 45 minutes after I got the hang of it, and I’d be rolling in gravy.
I forgot that the reason I became a columnist instead of getting a real job is that it requires neither organization nor efficiency. For 25 years, I’ve sat down three times a week, typed the first 500 words that popped into my head and knocked off. Terri, meanwhile, taught a generation of high school kids, raised two children to unindicted adulthood and, in her spare time, created worlds in her head that people are willing to pay to enter.
The first day, I walked the dog, went into town for coffee and cooked a great dinner, a recipe I’d been wanting to try. Not a bad two hours’ work. Somehow, though, it consumed 10 hours.
I learn from my mistakes, though: On Day 2, I tackled an upstairs room that’s accumulated a few stray items over the years . . . OK, a few feet of stray items. One kid moved out, one moved in, and when she left again, an avalanche of thong underwear, tank tops and shoes spread across the floor. I sorted, boxed, muttered, stacked, hauled a load to the Salvation Army and one to the dump. Then, as I drove home at what felt like about 1 p.m. but was actually 4:30, my cell phone rang.
“I’m on my way,” Terri said. “What’s for dinner?”
”It’s a surprise.” It’s a frozen pizza, but I didn’t know that at the time.

Today was Day 3. Spurred by patches of visible floor, I went outside for a lawn rake and used it to gather the remaining clothing into a pile (I’m not making this up. A rake works great for moving small items around on a carpet). I bundled them into two trash bags and stacked them by the door, freeing 120 square feet of floor space.
“All right,” I thought. “That’s a solid day’s work.” It was 10:30 a.m.
I knocked off anyway. Tomorrow, though, I’ll get organized. Then watch the thongs fly.

Whatever happened to checking the facts?

2007-12-04T10:45:00.000-08:00

You may have read, on a Reno-based Web site I won't name (its initials are rgj), of a program to cheer up wounded soldiers by sending them a note or letter.
"Some of these fine men and women have been severely wounded," the brief said in what sounds like a slightly rephrased news release. "(They) will live the remainder of their lives without arms, legs, feet and/or hands. Some have lost their hearing or have been blinded . . . ."
Absolutely true. As a medic in another war, I saw hundreds of soldiers and civilians like that. I remember many of them clearly four decades later; that's one reason I wonder sometimes if war is really a good idea.
"By sending them a gift and a note or letter," the story goes on, "we let them know that we have not forgotten them and that we are grateful for their tremendous sacrifices." It lists--accurately, I'm sure--several gift suggestions: Candy and treats, telephone cards and "current release DVDs." I'd add bottled salsa to that--military food is famously bland, and I used to love getting spicy stuff in my CARE packages from home. There's an address for "Any Recovering Soldier" that supposedly will get the packages in the vicinity of the intended recipients, where they'll be distributed.
What's not to like about this idea? Support the war or oppose it, those are somebody's babies lying among the scampering rodents in those neglected, Bush-strangled VA hospitals.
The chance of any wounded soldier actually receiving one of these gifts, though, apparently is zero. Snopes.com, among many other sources, notes:
"The U.S.Postal Service will not accept mail to 'Any Soldier' or 'Any Wounded Soldier' or the like because . . . it could be providing a conduit for those who might do harm to services members. Such offerings are either returned to the sender . . . or donated to charities. Similarly, military hospitals will not accept letters, cards or packages addressed in such manner."
Walter Reed Army Medical Centers confirmed the information in an official statement, citing a 2001 decision by the Department of Defense. If you want to help the troops, it said, "please consider making a donation to one of the more than 300 nonprofit organizations dedicated to helping our troops." You can find a list at www.americasupportsyou.mil.

Has the Bush turnaround begun?

2007-12-02T16:12:00.000-08:00

When the Final Accounting is done, one thing is certain: George W. Bush will be among the worst presidents of all time.
It's absolutely beyond debate now. Bottom three, for sure (I can't think of who might lift him out of dead last, but I took American History too long ago to say there wasn't somebody so blind, depraved and addled by his own ideology that he might boost Dubya out of the cellar). Compared to Bush, Richard Nixon is Albert Einstein in shining armor, rescuing babies and bringing a cure for cancer. The American people have caught on, as polls have shown for months.
And yet there is talk of a resurgence.
Most of it so far, to be sure, has come from the Pentagon and the deepest, unmovable bowels of the Republican party. But it's beginning to spread.
"The surge is working," says the military, which executed the surge.
"Our military says the surge is working," says the GOP, which conceived the surge and has made itself the sole source of news about its effectiveness. "Al Qaeda and its North American wing, the Democrat party, are giving ground."
"The administration says the surge is working," parrot the national media, still trying to ignore the way they cowered and cringed before the frenzy of symbolic patriotism after the World Trade Center attacks. Flags fluttering from the antennae of 50 million SUVs made editors and publishers all over the country forget that their duty was not to their advertisers or stockholders, but to their readers and viewers.
Two months after the 9/11 attacks, when the president's approval hit 85 percent, I wrote that "Osama bin Laden is George Bush's best friend. If it weren't for him, Bush's approval rating would be 32 percent and falling."
It took awhile, but 60 days ago the president's approval was 32 percent and falling. I gloated unbecomingly.
It isn't much above that now . . . but the slide seems to have stopped. After just the faintest, undocumented reports of unspecified "improvement" in Iraq, a Pew poll has found that "nearly half" the American people believe the war is going well, up from one-third in June. That's had its effect on those Democrats, still a majority, who've lacked the stones to take on the president or the wit to deal with charges that questioning his policies is treason. Some of them now are backing away from criticism of the war, fearful that if the U.S. salvages something the GOP can call a victory, they'll be counted among the defeated.
And the president's approval ratings are creeping up. The San Francisco Chronicle speculated Sunday that if there's a perception the troop surge has worked, "President Bush could be off the ropes and Republicans back on the offense. The Democratic Congress and presidential candidates could lose their footing on their biggest issue, and U.S. troop commitments and war funding could be set on a higher, more permanent trajectory."
Well, wouldn't that be good news?
Violence in Iraq has not ended. It is now about where it was in January 2006, when the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra set off what most agree was a civil war: Just your average 50-or-so-a-day dead folks.
According to the pollsters, though, if things continue as they are until spring, when Gen. David Petraeus says the surge must end, then all the lies, the years of administration bungling, the equivalent of the population of Sparks dead in the desert, two generations of Americans buried in debt and hatred for the U.S. spread throughout the Muslim World, all will count for nothing. The news will be good, and the president will be off the ropes.

How deep is that Slough of Despond, anyway?.

2007-12-01T12:32:00.000-08:00

Leaving a semi-public job after nearly 30 years turns out to be a very public process.
My Former Employer was scooped on my departure by other local media (which is not to say I regard the event as newsworthy except in a personal way). If the Reno News & Review and Channel 8 hadn't noted an exodus of experience from the F.E., I think it would have brushed it off with a brief on Page 9 and hoped it would pass unnoticed.
But that's not the story. The story is that as soon as word got out, people began talking to me about it. Nearly every one of them, once they got past the pro forma "Lucky bastard" or "I'm so sorry," wanted to speculate on how the trend of hacking back the workforce was affecting them. Based on what I've heard over the last couple of weeks, hardly anybody feels secure in his or her job anymore, and almost no one assumes impregnability from "market forces" or whatever euphemism is in fashion these days for laying off workers until the job can't quite be done the way it should.
I'm not generally a big Office Morale guy. You get paid for work because it's something you wouldn't do voluntarily. It's nice if you don't hate going in every day, but if there weren't somewhere you'd rather be, they'd call it "play" and charge you for it.
No good can come, though, of keeping your employees on the edge of either collapse or rebellion all the time.
In the last three weeks, I've seen that everywhere: supermarkets, television stations, a hospital and notably in state offices, where initial skepticism over Gov. Jim Gibbons has turned to outright loathing.
If I'd thought about it, I would have expected it among people 50 and older. I can't even criticize it much, from a business standpoint. My F.E. can hire two young reporters for what it was paying me, and they'll do three times the work with half the detectable bitching.
The work may not be of exactly the same quality. Increasingly, though, across society, that doesn't matter. A generation of Americans has become inured to crappy service and declining standards; most people won't even notice. And most of those who do won't bother to complain, because who wants 15 minutes of a recorded voice saying, "Your call is very important to us "?
Baby Boomers all over town, and presumably all over society, are becoming aware of that. Many of those lucky enough to be able to get out are doing it. Many of the rest are hunkering down and trying to ride it out, counting the days until the kids get out of college.
What surprised me was the number of younger people caught in the same noose. Up there a few lines I mentioned "detectable" bitching. You don't hear much of that from young workers because they know they're a supervisor's whim away from unemployment.
Many of their smiles are forced, though. They've seen how big-B Business works these days--they've never known anything else--and they've lost faith in the American Dream. They're hired cheaply, put on part-time so they don't qualify for benefits, get plugged into undersized staffs where they're expected to do too much work with minimal training.
It's all fun and games when they're fresh out of school, with a little apartment and a halfway cool car. As they pass through their 20s and begin to realize they aren't immortal, though, they look to the future, and what they see is bleak. There's little indication they'll have even the basics their parents take for granted: a home, security, affordable care when they're sick. Hard work no longer guarantees success, because the minute the shareholders start to whine, you'll be on the street anyway. Might as well do just enough to get by, spend three hours a day on YouTube and keep an eye out for the next crappy job. We're going to regret this someday.

Watch this space for Cory Farley

2007-11-15T19:08:00.000-08:00

You're in the right spot...but at the wrong time. To be fair to the Gazette-Journal, which is still my employer until Nov. 30, I won't be posting commentary here until December 1.
But I can answer a few questions readers have asked:

I wasn't fired. I was offered a buyout, fair if not generous, and accepted it. To be honest, I would have liked to stay, but editor Beryl Love wouldn't commit to letting me write a column if I did. I've been doing that too long and enjoyed my relationship with readers too much to go back to reporting on drunk drivers and church bingo games.
It wasn't political. Well, maybe it was, but nobody told me. I've enjoyed a lot of latitude at the paper (and it's paid off for them in lots of readers). If I was offed for my political views or because advertisers were sick of me, nobody mentioned it. Not that they would, but they didn't.
No, this isn't going to be a Slam-the-Gazette Urinal site. Readers will do plenty of that on their own. I'm disappointed and a little aggrieved, but not bitter. They could have kicked me loose with zip; as it is, I'm getting pay and bennies until 2009. Money for nothin', and I get to write for anybody else who asks me while I'm drawing the paycheck.
I don't know how they save money by paying me for doing no work. If they're happy with it, though, who am I to complain?

Mark this spot, and come back next month. Everything I've wanted to do over the last 29 years but couldn't is going to show up here eventually, and some of it will be fun. You can't get sued for reading....
--Cory