More than just familiarity breeds contempt

It occurs to me that the story of McChrystal's undoing contains another lesson, hardly flattering but certainly not limited to McChrystal's case:

The modern professional is defined by the possession of expert knowledge, and expert knowledge inexorably leads to contempt for those who don't possess it, even if -- perhaps especially if -- those unschooled souls are the ones in whose service you're supposed to place your expertise.

There's another example here.

CBS's Lara Logan outs herself as part of the problem

In this story about the mainstream media's attacks on Rolling Stone and freelance journalist Michael Hastings for, you know, doing the reporting that the MSM won't, Yahoo! News (there's a sourcing, exclamation point and all, that would have seemed unimaginable not that long ago!) has fun with this irony: ABC News and Washington Post have printed attacks on the ethics of RS and Hastings built largely upon anonymous quotes who make allegations of impropriety without offering evidence.

(Hint: The sources were given anonymity because . . . they asked for it.

"The sources would only allow us to use the material on condition of anonymity," Post National Security editor Cameron Barr told Yahoo! News.

I'm sure that clears things up for everyone. The sources, with or without anonymity, were necessary for ABC and WaPo to circulate accusations that would been even thinner still without them, so the deal was struck.)

Ironies abound:

The Post published the entire fact-checking email between Rolling Stone and McChrystal's now-former press aide online, coincidentally just hours after a Washington Post blogger resigned following a media controversy over the publication of supposedly private emails.

But here's what seems, to me, to go to the heart of the problem (emphasis added):

But even though the news organizations did their diligence in getting both sides, there's a rather glaring irony in other press outlets relying solely on anonymous sources for a story about sourcing. While Rolling Stone defended itself against the charges, the magazine doesn’t get the benefit of knowing who's actually making such charges.

In addition to anonymous officials making allegations against Hastings, criticism has come from another reporter who’s spent considerable time on the front lines: CBS chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan. Logan, Sunday on CNN’s "Reliable Sources," suggested — based on her assumptions, not with any actual evidence — that Hastings must have acted unethically in publishing some caustic quotes from McChrystal and his aides aimed at the civilian leadership, including President Obama.

"It's hard to know — Michael Hastings, if you believe him, says that there were no ground rules laid out," Logan said. "And, I mean, that just doesn't really make a lot of sense to me, because if you look at the people around Gen. McChrystal, if you look at his history, he was the Joint Special Operations commander. He has a history of not interacting with the media at all." (The Economist reported otherwise on Friday, noting that McChrystal regularly spoke to the press and did so with notable candor.)

Logan, who married a State Department contractor she met while covering the Iraq War, also made a comment suggesting that the Rolling Stone scribe should not have reported as aggressively on the military leadership in Afghanistan. "I mean, the question is, really, is what Gen. McChrystal and his aides are doing so egregious, that they deserved to end a career like McChrystal's?" Logan asked. "I mean, Michael Hastings has never served his country the way McChrystal has."

Nice touch, there at the end -- "Hastings has never served his country the way McChrystal has" -- isn't it?

Well, no, strictly speaking, he hasn't served his country quite the way McChrystal has. But he has served it in a very important way all the same -- in a way so important, in fact, that it's been enshrined in its very own Amendment. Surprising (and disappointing) that Logan needs to be reminded of that.

And yet -- although I could be wrong -- I'll bet that, when he reaches age 56, Hastings won't retire with the pension and benefits of a three-star general, either.

Logan's suggestion that it's Hastings whose ethics are somehow compromised would be laughable if the stakes weren't so high.

It's not what you know; it's who you don't know

Frank Rich says that Rolling Stone freelancer Michael Hastings' interview with Gen. Stanley McChrystal was "an impressive feat of journalism by a Washington outsider who seemed to know more about what was going on in Washington than most insiders did."

Rich is being too kind to his fraternity with that remark: It's not that Hastings knew more than the beltway insiders did; it's that, unlike the Washington insiders, he was actually willing to go into print with what he knew.  As Rich later concedes, access journalists (how many readers remember, for instance, that Bob Woodward originally wasn't one?) have their social calendars and book deals to consider.

Big difference there.

See if you can spot the pattern here

You'd think, under the circumstances, neither the Catholic Church nor BP would be eager to invite comparisons of its own behavior with the other's. And yet:

Item #1:

The chairman of a House panel investigating the Gulf oil spill said Friday that BP won't let members talk to several employees who may have critical information about what led to the catastrophe.

Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., told The Associated Press that BP PLC has cited its own investigation as its reason for denying access to the employees. […]

"They have been slow in bringing forth documents and witnesses we want to talk to," Stupak said of BP.

Item #2:

Pope Benedict XVI lashed out Sunday at what he called the "deplorable" raids carried out by Belgian police who detained bishops, confiscated computers, opened a crypt and took church documents as part of an investigation into priestly sex abuse.

Benedict made a rare personal entry into the escalating diplomatic dispute with Belgium, issuing a message of solidarity to the head of the Belgian bishops' conference and other bishops who were detained in the June 24 raid.

He said justice must take its course, but also asserted the right of the Catholic Church to investigate clerical abuse alongside civil law enforcement authorities.

The traditional "above-the-law" strategy has worked largely without a hitch for so long, but this is something different.

The parallel is with the creationists who, having largely lost the battle to drive mainstream evolutionary theory out of classrooms and textbooks, fell back on the strategy of pressing so-called creation science as evolutionary theory's co-equal (they're both "just theories," after all).  True, the teaching and study of biology and natural history will become complicated and confused as a result, but that's just an unlucky side effect for which the creationists will shed a bitter tear.

Same here.  Neither BP nor the the Pope is denying in principle the right of law enforcement authorities to investigate wrongdoing (however harsh and unfair such allegations may seem in the current case). They're just insisting that their own investigations have at least as much authority and right to proceed as civil law enforcement investigation.  Even if -- oh, heaven forfend -- their own "investigations" might have the effect (wholly unwanted, naturally) of undermining or compromising any investigation by law enforcement authorities.

Nice.

Sunday morning toons: Nothin' but good news!

The pull-out from Afghanistan is finally underway -- one general at a time.

If the Gulf disaster makes oil drilling too unpopular, there are other energy sources out there just as dirty that haven't made headlines lately.

Whales killed by Japanese whalers are just as dead, but now they're dead in the furtherance science.

These and other good-news stories, beginning with Daryl Cagle's toon round-up for the week.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Daryl Cagle, R. J. Matson, Mike Keefe, John Darkow, David Fitzsimmons,Steve Sack, Henry Payne, Adam Zyglis, John Cole, Jeff Darcy, Cal Grondahl, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Palme d' Oil: Joe Heller.

p3 Best in Show: Jeff Parker.

p3 Legion of Merit: Jimmy Margulies.

p3 World Toon Review: Patrick Chappatte (Switzerland), Cam Cardow (Canada), Stephane Peray (Thailand), and Ingrid Rice (Canada).


Ann Telnaes sees the McCrystal firing as one of those boat is half-empty/boat is half-full kind of things.


Mark Fiore chronicles the search by the multi-millionaire man-boy for his missing life. Heartbreaking.


It's not "Disneyland After Dark," but it is enough to make you say, Good god, Walt -- what were you thinking? (h/t @ebertchicago)


So much for all those old "Superman" comics I kept in a box in my bedroom: The high-ups at DC Comics are going to launch digital multi-platform comics, some old titles and some new, for iPhone, iPad, iTouch, Sony Playstation, and lord knows what else. (h/t @owillis)


When you say "I do," that still leaves 136 more characters! From Non-Sequitur comes this look at modern romance.


Back for two weeks running! When the Comics Curmudgeon is finished with them, "The Lockhorns" are sadder and more poignant than you ever imagined (if you imagined at all).


Is the supreme leader experiencing an appropriately agitated emotional response? Well you may ask. Fortunately, Tom Tomorrow has the answer.


"I curse all of you for mocking me as a child! The K Chronicles discovers you really can go home again,


Yipe! At Red Meat, Bug-Eyed Earl gets on board with public transportation.


If families worked like corporations: it would probably work out a lot like this Tom the Dancing Bug strip.


Barry Blitt gets big play with this week's illustration for Frank Rich's NYTimes opinion column.


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman sees a wee problem with the way financial reform is headed.


Ods bodkins! Hast the knights of the Round Table turned chicken? In the seventy years since he was created, Bugs Bunny has won exactly one Academy Award for an animated short. It's always amazed me that, of all the wonderful Bugs Bunny toons from the golden age of the 1940s (or the early 1950s "Hunting Trilogy" or the 1957 classic "What's Opera, Doc?"), it would be "Knighty Knight, Bugs," directed by Friz Freleng in 1958, that would finally bring home the gold statue for Bugs.

p3 Bonus Toon: Jesse Springer looks at the budget cuts Oregon is facing, and says it won't be an exercise in subtlety. (Wonder if it would go any differently next year with a doctor in the house?) (Click to enlarge)

Remember to bookmark the daily political toon features at Slate's Slate, Time, and About.com.

Test your toon-captioning chops at The New Yorker's weekly caption-the-cartoon contest. (Rules here.)

Saturday morning tunes: Bonus obituary tune

Jimmy Dean, spoken-word country music performer and breakfast meat entrepreneur, died last week at 81. He made his reputation with this 1961 novelty record:

Dean later hosted his own musical variety show on ABC, where I first saw performances by Simon and Garfunkel (I can't remember now what they played, only that they looked pretty dour and alienated) -- and Jimmy's ol' hound-dog buddy, Rowlf.

In a commercial for his breakfast sausage, Dean once shared this philosophy:

Sausage is a great deal like life. You get out of it about what you put into it.

A good epitaph for any of us, whether written on a marble stand or not.

Saturday morning tunes: "Work Song"

It's quite a revelation to hear Bobby Darin drop his "cool school" flourishes (well, at least until the very last possible moment) and really sell this song. The performance, like Darin himself, is slimmed down, lean and mean.

(Compare this performance with the self-consciously hip one here, and you'll see what I mean.)

Hat tip to Ryan, master librarian of the amazing jukebox at Ringo's, for suggesting this one.

The unforgiving minute: Unemployment and the GOP

I just figured out why the Republican party has recently shown  such hostility to the unemployed (they've never been pals, of course, but lately it's seemed above and beyond, even for the GOP):


Remember, the GOP tends to draw its main presidential contenders from the ranks of the (elite) unemployed: the Palins, the Romneys, the Santorums, etc.

It's really a supply-side issue: If the Republican party were to acknowledge the true extent of unemployment in America right now, the number of potential Republican contenders for 2012 would almost immediately become completely unmanageable.

And, on the flip side, if the economy were ever to recover to the point where even the structurally unemployed -- those people who've been out of work for so long their skill-sets are hopelessly outdated, the people who have become the most difficult to integrate back into the labor force in some meaningful, useful way -- had a chance of finding a job again, Newt Gingrich might find himself under pressure to actually work for a living.

Unthinkable.

Minute's up.

Did I mention that Oregon has really strong freedom of speech laws?

And those laws make bizarrely awesome things like this possible:

An estimated 13,000 take part in Portland's Naked Bike Ride

Congratulations Portland! Your penchant for pedaling pantless has set records once again. Estimates from last night's World Naked Bike Ride put the number of riders at 11,000-13,000 people*. Wow. I think that would be the largest ride of its kind the world has ever seen.

And those same laws, bless 'em, also protect scolds whose biggest fear is that someone, somewhere, is right this minute having harmless fun they wouldn't approve of:

Portland's Naked Bike Ride: Full Frontal Rude-ity

I see by pictures on the web here that some of the 2010 Portland Naked Bike Ride occurred in the nighttime. But some of it happened in the day time--in front of thousands of people gathered at Saturday Market, along 33rd Avenue by a busy Grant (High School) Park and undoubtedly many other places according to emailers and callers to the Victoria Taft Show.

The word there that gives it all away, of course, is "undoubtedly."

Have to say I'm not really interested in riding naked myself, but I figure that the day the law says I can't, that's the day the terrorists have finally won.

Ah, Oregon, my Oregon.

Quote of the day: We're not unemployed; we're keeping our options open

No More Mister Nice Blog notes that, for Republicans, long-term unemployment in America isn't merely a handy source of political scapegoats and a weapon to keep wages and benefits down; it's also their political bench:

[I]n modern politics, you have to start doing this [putting together a presidential campaign] ridiculously early, and you have to clear as many impediments out of your life as possible to do so. That's why the likely GOP field consists largely of the long-term unemployed (Gingrich, Romney, Santorum), the recently jobless (Palin), and the soon-to-be-jobless (Pawlenty). Those burdened by gainful employment (Mitch Daniels, Haley Barbour) are already working hard to be mentioned as contenders by the Great Mentioners in the press.

This could also go considerable distance in explaining the GOP's fondness for hardy perennials in its garden presidential hopefuls.

The unforgiving minute

(Speaking of apologies . . . ) Five years ago this month in p3:

Senator Gordon Smith (then Oregon's one remaining statewide-elected Republican, and now head of the National Association of Broadcasters, the folks who want to bring you the end of Net Neutrality, among other good things), just couldn't quite decide how he felt about saying that it was wrong for the Senate to have sat on its hands for generations rather than putting a stop to the practice of racial lynchings.

(Smith eventually signed on near the end of the month, by which point only such enlightened souls as Trent Lott, John Cornyn, Jon Kyl, and Richard Shelby were still holding out.)

Here's how morally vacuous Smith's performance was: Orrin Hatch came around on the subject of lynchings before Gordo did.

Minute's up.

Quote of the day: 6 Across, eight letters, "selfless and idealistic"

Michael Kinsley has a wonderful adjective to encapsulate a selflessness and idealism from the 1960s that he finds so sorely lacking among the Tea Party patriots of today:

Without getting all ask-notty about it, I think a movement labeling itself patriotic should have some obligation to demonstrate patriotism in a way other than demanding a tax cut.

The New Apology

Well, well. So Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the man in charge of the Afghanistan War (at 8 1/2 years and counting, it's like the "Cats" of American military adventures), has been called back to Washington following news that McChrystal bad-mouthed the White House, his commander in chief, and American diplomacy in the latest issue of Rolling Stone.

No doubt apologies will be demanded and apologies offered.

But apologia is tricky stuff. For a couple of millennia, the apology was understood to be an expression of regret for wrongdoing, although it could also be a defense of one's actions by way of explanation (on the latter, check your Socrates, or your Gen. George S. Patton).

In modern public discourse, though, a third sense of apology is sucking all the rhetorical oxygen away from the original two.

The New Apology doesn't mean "I regret my action and the harm it's caused others."

It doesn't mean "I undertake never to do that again."

And it absolutely doesn't mean "I was wrong."

To the extent that it actually means anything, the New Apology can mean:

"I'm sorry -- that you didn't like it when you found out I disrespected you, which I didn't think you would."

Or:

"I'm sorry -- that you're choosing to make a BFD out of this instead of giving me another free pass."

Or:

"I'm sorry -- that some reporter was so unprofessional as to quote my remarks accurately, completely, and in context."

Or:

"I'm sorry -- that now I'll have to spend time publicly humbling myself so that I'll be allowed to continue privately abasing those who deserve my loyalty and respect."

Or:

"I'm sorry -- that I'll have to start covering my tracks more carefully in the future when I engage in double-dealing or back-stabbing."

Calling what McChrystal is undoubtedly going to say next "an apology" as we normally use that word is like saying that "The Biggest Loser" is about "reality." Or that "Canadian bacon" is either "Canadian" or "bacon." It really says more about how careless we are with our language than it does about McChrystal's motives.

Let's face it: The Afghanistan War isn't getting anywhere, which means that McCrystal, for all his preening and posturing --

"I'd rather have my ass kicked by a roomful of people than go out to this dinner," McChrystal says.

He pauses a beat.

"Unfortunately," he adds, "no one in this room could do it."

With that, he's out the door.

-- is hardly the indispensable man. Why waste time on the New Apology kabuki?

Let's just skip that step entirely. Forget about any apology, Old or New. Sack him, let him collect his pension while he goes to work for a defense contractor, watch as his inevitable "Screw me? Screw you!" payback memoir gets remaindered within six months, and let's all move on.

The GOP: America's laboratory for recycling and welfare

(Updated below.)

This morning I fell into a pleasant discussion with friend and colleague from the Hoosier State about the thinly disguised (and scarcely justified) 2012 Presidential ambitions of Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels.

I have a feeling that the 2012 presidential race for the GOP is going to be a lot like 2008 was: The dominant voter impression will be of eight or nine unappealing white folks (mainly or exclusively men) milling around on stage trying to out tea-bag one another, advancing little in the way of new plans but eagerly jumping on the latest offhand remark by Obama or Biden like it signaled the end of the world. That will continue into the summer until, in the end, the GOP nomination won't go to the winner, but rather to the survivor, like McCain. (That might represent the best chance for someone like Daniels, in fact: a scenario in which all the somewhat better qualified candidates have destroyed one another other and he's somehow been left standing.)

So whoever gets the GOP nomination, he (or she) is apt not to command much enthusiasm or loyalty beyond their immediate base, although the amount of corporate money that will be sunk in that campaign could keep even a bale of new-mown hay from the banks of the Wabash polling at around 30% until well into October. And so, barring a catastrophic game-changer (or what we used to call an "October Surprise" before the Bush family got out of national politics), Obama could probably coast more or less handily to re-election in the most expensive and uninformative political campaign in the history of western civilization.

One important difference between the two parties is that presidential primaries are the only place where the GOP is enthusiastic about recycling. If you're a Democratic presidential candidate and you don't get elected, no one will go harder on you and your chances four years from now than your fellow Democrats (except maybe the mainstream political press). On the other hand, how many Republican presidential wannabes can you name from the last 35 years who ever went away just because it was obvious that almost no one would ever vote for him? Even Bob Dole, for whom Viagra became a political metaphor as well as a part of his pharmaceutical regimen, got two bites at the national-office apple.

Even Newt Gingrich, for heaven's sake -- a man whose meaningful political career ended in disgrace over a decade ago, a man with nothing to recommend himself as presidential material other than his apparent media omnipresence -- can get respectable people to treat his 2012 ambitions as a topic for serious conversation!

So if you're a Democratic presidential hopeful, you'd better make certain you win, because the odds are you'll only get one chance at it. If you're a Republican presidential hopeful, though, all you have to do is make it into the first round of playoffs to get on the presidential-hopeful gravy train for the rest of your working life.

If someone like Daniels can come in a surprising second or even third in a couple of early primaries/caucuses in 2012 before washing out because he can't raise enough money, he could still be on right-wing welfare until his dying day, as a think-tank member, FOX News contributor, strategic consultant, paid speaker, provider of "balance" on the Sunday morning talk shows, etc., and above all as an eternal hopeful, always waiting for the next primary season.

(Note to NPR: How can Gingrich be staging a "comeback" -- as you call it in your interview title -- if you've never given him a sporting chance to go away?)


(Update: Steve at No More Mister Nice Blog says Daniels' 2012 chances are "toast," and not in the nice breakfasty way.)

Quote of the day: The American can-do spirit

No More Mister Nice Blog:

Nonviolent abortion opponents tut-tut and theatrically distance themselves every time an anti-abortion terrorist kills a doctor, but the terrorism really does get the job done.

Sunday morning toons: Special this week on ultra-absorbent pelicans

Hidden among the many, many toons about BP and the never ending Gulf spill this week are a couple about Father's Day, North Korea, and those horn thingies at the World Cup, plus one or two about the longest war in American history. See if you can spot them, beginning with Daryl Cagle's toon round-up for the week.

Ready? Begin!

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Lester, Mike Keefe, Bob Englehart, John Darkow, Jimmy Margulies, John Cole, Steve Breen, Bill Day, Cal Grondahl, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best in Show: Brian Fairrington.

p3 Legion of Honor: Jerry Holbert.

p3 Gold Star: Jeff Parker.

p3 Order of the Painful Truth: Larry Wright.

p3 Marksmanship Award: Ed Stein.


p3 World Toon Review: Patrick Chappatte (Switzerland), Stephane Peray (Thailand), Christo Komarnitski (Bulgaria), and Cam Cardow (Canada).


Ann Telnaes salutes BP's newest plan for plugging the Gulf leak. (You knew that's where this one was headed, didn't you?)


Mark Fiore points to one Obama Administration success on the job front. (It's not one of his more subtle efforts.)


You can't spell "Beep!" without "BP!" At Comic Riffs, they're counting down the Top 10 BP-related toons.


Protecting the future of political toons, Part 1: Cast your vote now in the Washington Post's Next Great Political Cartoonist contest. (Is it just me, or are the days of pathetic-chic cartooning, where the visual style deliberately imitates a panda on acid with a crayon in his left foot, finally -- blessedly -- coming to an end?)


Protecting the future of political toons, Part 2: Five words: Current event-themed video games. Genius.


The Comics Curmudgeon finds visual flair where you least expect it. (Alternate title for this item: "Perspective -- use it or lose it.")


Here's Barry Blitt's illustration for today's Frank Rich column in the NYTimes on Obama, BP, and the Gulf.


If you believed in a giant invisible foot that ruled everything for the best, you'd be a crackpot. But if you believe in an invisible hand, well, Tom Tomorrow takes it from there.


A refreshing change from BP snuff porn: Courtesy of The K Chronicles, and not a moment too soon, comes jazz porn


Tom the Dancing Bug confirms what you always suspected about that guy at Starbucks.


You can't have the full experience without it! Are you ready to spring for your Doonesbury upgrade?


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman reminds you that not all British invasions get their start on The Ed Sullivan Show.


Before Oil Can Harry was a car maintenance franchise, a rock band, or a dance club in Austin, he was Mighty Mouse's nemesis (and his rival for the affections of the fair Nell). So if all that happens in seal hunting is you toss the seal a herring and it sings a song and happily steps out of its fur like a snowmobile suit, why are all the enviros so upset? This and other questions are raised by this 1949 short from TerryToons. Mighty Mouse cartoons are strange enough, with their inexplicable outbursts of light opera -- which could be why they drew Andy Kaufman's attention -- but this one is pretty far out there even by those standards.

p3 Bonus Toon: What's the only thing worse than Oregon's economy cycling through ups and downs? Jesse Springer knows. (Click to enlarge)

Remember to bookmark the daily political toon features at Slate's Slate, Time, and About.com.

Test your toon-captioning chops at The New Yorker's weekly caption-the-cartoon contest. (Rules here.)

Life's little victories*

(^*Acknowledgment to the works of Keith Knight.)

To put things on the table, let me first confess that I'm a bit of a bike nerd. And when I first started riding again, several years ago, I found that it was easier to get back into shape if I got an odometer/computer and logged my data on a spreadsheet. (Hence "bike nerd" rather than, say, "bike enthusiast.") The counting rituals and number games were motivators. The same was true when it came time to get ready for my first Cycle Oregon a few years later. It's just the way I'm wired. Deal with it. I have to.

My Cat Eye cordless FR7CL has gotten on in years; and the once-waterproof seal around its control button started letting a little moisture in during the rain (which has been pretty much all the time around here lately). So I've gotten into the habit of unclipping it from the handlebars and pocketing it when I lock up the bike outside.

At some point yesterday morning I realized that I hadn't replaced it on the holder, and it wasn't in my pocket. I rode back to the coffee shop (where DLers Carla and Roy and I had our traditional Friday morning sit-down). It wasn't under the table where I'd been sitting. It hadn't been turned in at the counter. So I began backtracking -- where else had I been that morning? No luck. Even went to the place I'd been the evening before, after convincing myself that perhaps I wasn't sure I'd put the computer back on the bike at the end of the night. Nada.

(I should mention that, since I log all my stats regularly anyway, I would only be out the replacement cost, the ten minutes it would take to install and set up the new model, and -- here was the painful part -- the inescapable knowledge that the logs would now be wrong because the time spent backtracking couldn't have been recorded. See above, re: "bike nerd.")

By the end of the day I had convinced myself that I was out of luck. I'd even gone around to the local bike shops to start pricing a replacement. But on the way home it began to nettle me: It was gone, yet it wasn't anyplace I had been. It would be of no use to anyone who didn't happen to have the mounting hardware, sending unit, and spoke magnet it needed to work. A magpie might have carried it away, but otherwise . . . ?

Sherlock Holmes famously said:

It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

But Dirk Gently, Douglas Adams' holistic detective character, raised a convincing objection to Holmes' maxim:

The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it that the merely improbable lacks.

Explaining the improbable often requires a concatenation of several statistically unlikely events to occur, while solving an impossible problem may simply require one missing piece of information.

I parked myself in a comfortable chair, closed my eyes, did some relaxation exercises -- and realized that I had not lost the computer at those earlier places; I'd had it with me then. Only self-doubt had talked me into considering those other false leads. I had to have lost it at the coffee shop, shortly after which I first noticed it had gone missing. Warm.

If I lost it at the coffee shop (perhaps I accidentally dragged it out of my vest's side-pocket when I reached in for something else), then either it hadn't landed where I looked, or I hadn't looked where it landed. Warmer.

Yesterday was one of the rare mornings when all the tables at the coffee shop were taken when I got there at about 8:30am. Carla had arrived even earlier, so she was sitting in one of the low, padded faux-leather chairs by the front window, laptop steadied on her knees . . . and I had sat back in the matching two-seater. I had forgotten that detail because it was a departure from the routine, and once a table had opened up we colonized it and the routine was restored. And the earlier in the morning it is, the more I am all about the routine.

The shop's padded furniture sits so low, in fact, that your knees would be higher than your pelvis, and your pockets would be tilted back at a spill-encouraging angle. Warmer still.

It was by then about nine o'clock, and the coffee shop would be closed. But I realized two things right away: First, the idea that I'd lost it had been irking me all day, even when I was busy with other things. Second, even though I couldn't test my hypothesis until this morning, I knew last night that it had to be right, and for the first time all day, the irked feeling that had been buzzing around my head like a mosquito disappeared.

This morning, I went directly to the coffee shop, politely asked the person minding his own business in the two-seater to stand up for a moment, and immediately plunged my hand down behind the cushions. It took two or three dives before I found it, down there amid the ancient dust bunnies and other things, older, fouler, and best left unnamed and unimagined, that lurk beneath coffee shop couch cushions. I pulled it up, dusted it off on my shirtsleeve, and held it before my eye like a pearl of great price. The uprooted customer just stared at me like I was a daft conjurer.

As Holmes once explained to Watson in connection with a different case, I knew it was there because it could not be anyplace else.

So I have the computer back, and I not only didn't have to replace it, I recovered it mainly through the exercise of the little gray cells (if I may switch literary-detective allusions). Shame on me for doubting the LGCs in the first place.

As Keith Knight would say, "Yes!" Ah, life's little victories.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to log yesterday morning's numbers, incomplete though they may be. Of course, the log will never be 100% accurate again. But that's a mere detail.

Really. Doesn't bother me in the slightest.

Saturday tunes: Whither the novelty song?

(Updated below.)

Last week, Dr. Demento hung up his studio headphones after about 40 years of putting the "alter" in "alternative radio." For those of us of a certain age, the Doctor's weekly radio program was the sonic counterpart to those well-thumbed copies of MAD Magazine.

As a tribute, my pal Keith, who hosts "Strictly the Sixties" every Thursday on WCCR LP FM counted down his top ten favorite novelty records of the Sixties.

This weighed in at Number 10:

In case you're wondering (and you know you were), at the Number 1 spot on his list was the record that Grandmaster Keith calls "The 'Citizen Kane' of Novelty Records."

Salon.com published a nice tribute to the Doctor last week, also tracing the history of the novelty record, from Spike Mulligan to (for better or worse) SNL Digital Video Shorts.

Update: Here's Keith's comments, together with the full top-10 playlist.

Quote of the day: On the oxymoron "corporate citizenship"

Robert Reich:

You see, BP is not a person. Like any other corporation, BP is a collection of contracts.

The unforgiving minute: A political-media pop quiz

Which of these famous lines, listed by the Washington Post among their gallery of "spectacularly ill-advised, tone-deaf, insulting or untrue remark[s]" that have "undone" American political figures in the last 35 years, is not like the other three?

(a) "Let's give a welcome to macaca, here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia."

(b) "And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over the years, either."

(c) "Don't worry, it's a slam-dunk."

(d) "Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won't tell you. I just did."

Answer here.

Minute's up.

Sunday morning toons: Vaudeville coming back!

(Updated below.)

BP is on its way to being a more toxic brand than Goldman Sachs; Afghanistan has become the war we just can't say goodbye to; Helen Thomas shows that (Pat Buchanan notwithstanding) coarse anti-Semitic remarks can actually cost you your job in the media -- and it appears that some sort of international sporting exhibition is going on this weekend.

Let's start with Daryl Cagle's toon round-up for this week.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Daryl Cagle, Pat Bagley, John Darkow, David Fitzsimmons, Jerry Holbert, Steve Sack, adam Zyglis, Steve Breen, Bill Day, Mark Streeter, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best in Show: Mike Keefe.

p3 Legion of Merit: Milt Priggee.

p3 George Bailey Medal of Honor: Ed Stein.

p3 World Toon Review: Cam Cardow (Canada), Patrick Chappatte (Switzerland), Stephane Peray (Thailand), Tjeerd Royaards (Netherlands), and Ingrid Rice (Canada).


Ann Telnaes two-fer: It turns out the longest war in American history doesn't leave enough time, and the essence of BP's strategy in the Gulf is . . . essence.


Mark Fiore brings you "News in a Nutshell:" Self-Regulation: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?.


Tom Tomorrow asks: What other possible interpretation is there?


At the K Chronicles, Keith likes his sports the way he likes his fruits and vegetables.


Update: Here's Barry Blitt's illustration for this week's Frank Rich NYTimes column on marriage in America.


The Times, they aren't a-changin': The NYTimes is all about the resisting the natural evolution of language. First of all, no "tweets!" Second, you may call them "graphic novels," but the Grey Lady still calls them "comics." Still, here's the latest round-up from their Books section. (See? They're "Books!")

Not just "a bear of little brain," but a deeply-disturbed one, too: Psychological diagnosis comes to bear, as it were, upon the inhabitants of the Hundred Acre Wood, and it isn't pretty:

While the world of Winnie the Pooh seems innocent on the surface, "it is clear to our group of modern neuro-developmentalists that these are in fact stories of seriously troubled individuals, many of whom meet DSM-IV criteria for significant disorders," wrote Sarah E. Shea and colleagues in the Canadian Medical Association Journal in 2000, referring to the handbook of diagnoses.

Portland homeboy Jack Ohman says, sometimes a problem reaches a point where throwing money at it actually starts to make sense.


Vaudeville is coming back: I've always loved "Puttin' On the Act," a vintage Popeye toon released in 1940 and directed by Dave Fleischer. Note. The premise is dated now, even by Popeye standards, but the gags are great, and visually it's a delight. There's a wide-angle shot during the hatstand routine that makes Popeye's apartment look like a loft in the warehouse district, but let it pass. (Also of note: What green leafy vegetable is conspicuously absent in this film?) No one will be seated during the hair-raising Adagio scene!

p3 Bonus Toon: Jesse Springer solves Oregon's budget crisis in three easy [sic] steps:




Remember to bookmark the daily political toon features at Slate's Slate, Time, and About.com.

Test your toon-captioning chops at The New Yorker's weekly caption-the-cartoon contest. (Rules here.)

Saturday tunes: Take me to the doctor, shot full of holes

Last Thursday would have been the 100th birthday of Chester Arthur Burnett, aka Howlin' Wolf.

Said one critic:

"No one could match Howlin' Wolf for the singular ability to rock the house down to the foundation while simultaneously scaring its patrons out of its wits."

New p3 banner

This one amuses me. If you need a hint, it's in the comments.

Quote of the day: In a world gone mad and sad . . .

From James Wolcott:

In a world gone mad and sad (yes, it was always so, but we're here now), we must salvage what we can of what we love, otherwise we're no better than ivory poachers.

And whatever you think he's leading into, he's not -- although what he is leading into is very cool.

And make absolutely certain you follow the Yosemite Falls link -- although even with that hint it's still not about what you think it's about. Enjoy.

50s writers with cats

Jim Thompson, author of ultranoir crime novels including The Getaway, The Grifters, and The Killer Inside Me:

Jack Kerouac, Beat Generation icon and author of Dharma Bums and On the Road:

(Sources: Thompson and Kerouac.)

The definitive liberal lifestyle handbook

(Update: Armed with Justin's book, Matt Labash at the Weekly Standard tried his hand at living liberally for about a week. Predictable results.)

Somewhere between here and New York City, my review copy of Justin Krebs' 538 Ways to Live, Work, and Play Like a Liberal is making its way westward.

From the publisher's website:

There are hundreds of ways to lead a more environmentally friendly, socially conscious, and liberally minded life -- ways that can even be enjoyable. What readers will find in this friendly inclusive book are simple steps, lifestyle adjustments, and ideas that entertain.

Many of you already know of Justin as the co-founder and executive director of Living Liberally, the just-turned-7 national network of over 300 chapters promoting social organizing for progressive politics. LL is the umbrella for Drinking Liberally -- and Laughing Liberally, Screening Liberally, Eating Liberally, and Reading Liberally. (In the Pacific Northwest, Oregon has 5 DL chapters, Washington has 15, Calgary, Alaska has 2, and Hawaii and Alberta each have 1.)

More about the book when my copy arrives (although you don't have to wait on me; you can always order your own).

(And for those of you who like a mystery to puzzle over while you wait for your own copy of 538 Ways to Live, Work, and Play Like a Liberal: There are 538 electors in the Electoral College, and 538 ways to live liberally in Justin's book.

Coincidence?)

All these worlds are yours -- except Titan.

(Upated below.)

Attempt no landing on Titan:

Something is consuming hydrogen and organic molecules on Saturn's moon Titan, and the recipe matches astrobiologists' theories about possible methane-based life.

Out of respect for the interesting possibilities, I've swapped a favorite p3 header back in.

(Update: The buzzkill exobiologists check in here and here to remind us that evidence consistent with methane-based lifeform theories is not itself proof, although it's nevertheless pretty interesting.

Meanwhile, take my advice: O-nay andings-lay.)

Sunday morning toons: "I'm wich! I'm wich!"

It's been a puzzling and disconcerting week:

The GOP opponent of South Carolina's Tea Party gubernatorial candidate exposed her as plant by the International Sikh Conspiracy. Turns out that Israel and BP get their PR advice from the same people. North Korea tried to start a war while you weren't looking. And don't even get people started on the fix that's in at first base.

Fine. Let's kick things off with Daryl Cagle's toon round-up for this week:

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Pat Bagley, R. J. Matson, Bob Englehart, David Fitzsimmons, Jimmy Margulies, Jerry Holbert, Gary McCoy, Joe Heller, Jeff Stahler, Bill Day, Jeff Darcy, Jeff Grondahl, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Legion of Honor, with clusters: Milt Priggee.

p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium: Jeff Parker.

p3 Gold Star at the Top of His Report Card: Larry Wright.

p3 Authentication Certificate for Harmonic Toon Convergence: Mike Keefe and Nate Beeler.

p3 World Toon Review: Manny Francisco (Philipines), Ingrid Rice (Canada), Stephane Peray (Thailand), Tjeerd Royaards (Netherlands), Patrick Chappatte (Switzerland), and Cam Cardow (Canada).


Ann Telnaes salutes of the policy insights of the GOP 2012 hopeful who communicates exclusively via Facebook.


Because sometimes you have to do exactly what you're trying not to do! This week, Mark Fiore brings us the trailer for this summer's disaster blockbuster.


Tom the Dancing Bug exposes anti-American elements in the U.S. Government!


And yet, strangely, the nation survives: Socialist plots: a retrospective.


Images of the undead? We looked back fondly at the week that Garfield died. And we brought an open mind to the question of what the strip would be like without him. Now comes this ghostly image suggesting Garfield may still be alive, but not because of any wildly creative process behind the strip. (Hat-tip to rhyzome.)


The funniest 140-character parody site out there says, You're Welcome: If you're on Twitter, BP -- with its delicate, hairlike tendrils of PR sensibility -- would prefer that you don't get to see BPGlobalPR, one of the most wickedly funny and on-target responses to the oil giant's destruction of the Gulf. (Update: The article, written last week, noted that @BPGlobalPR had 46,000 followers on Twitter; as of yesterday afternoon it had over 120,000.) One of their funniest tweets from last week caused this parody comic book cover to go viral in pretty short order.


Tickle me pink: A little over a year ago, p3 Sunday Toons featured one of my favorite post-Silver Age toons, the very first Pink Panther short. The whole series, most produced for Saturday morning TV, is now available on Hulu. (Shameless Merchandising Watch: How many of you remembered that they spun off a Pink Panther breakfast cereal?)


So you think you can make a featureless drawing funny? At their online site, the New Yorker hosts a weekly caption-the-cartoon contest. You can match wits with, among others, Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert, who plays it regularly. (Rules here.)


The generation so appalling, historians had to coin an entirely new adjective just to describe them: This week, Tom Tomorrow looks ahead at the future and sees them looking back at us.


The flip side of outsourcing? The K Chronicles has a look. Good to know there are some jobs going unfilled, I suppose.


Plugging the holes: Around here at p3 international headquarters, we like to call the NYTimes's Frank Rich "the guy who writes the padding around each week's Barry Blitt illustration."


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman chronicles a story of forbidden love, cast against the wreckage and desolation of the Gulf coast.


"Oh, boy! I'm wich! I'm wich!" This early Bugs Bunny toon, "The Wabbit Who Came to Dinner," directed by Fritz Freleng in 1942, has a different vibe than most Bugs/Elmer stories: Rather than the shrewd customer who can get out of any jam but who never starts trouble himself, this Bugs is more the victim who sees a chance to turn the tables. In fact, he's more like Jerry to Elmer Fudd's Tom. (Want proof? Check out "Million Dollar Cat," the Tom and Jerry version of the same story -- even down to the telegram! -- filmed two years later in 1944 by Hanna and Barbera at MGM, with Tom the cat in the Elmer role. The T&J version had a much better ending, too.)

p3 Bonus Toon: Jesse Springer looks at Oregon's budgetary options, and it ain't pretty.




Remember to bookmark Slate's political cartoon for the day, Time's cartoons of the week, and Political cartoons at About.com.

Saturday morning tunes: You think you're in the movies, and everything's so deep

From 1984, when videos with dreadful production values ruled MTV (Hello, Hall & Oates, Cindy Lauper, and Huey Lewis and the News), comes the song you won't be able to get out of your head for the rest of the morning.

And why would you want to?

(And, for what it's worth, the "You Might Think" video won the first MTV Music Video Award for Video of the Year. So there.)

Quote of the day: "What towering lies we tell ourselves"

Charles Pierce says teachable moments are scarcer than we like to think (and, sadly, he's right):

I was thinking just the other day what towering lies we tell ourselves everytime a major, genuine scandal comes to a conclusion about the lessons we all have learned from the events in question. Bullshit. We learn nothing. Ever. Watergate is almost 40 years ago now, and a guy named Andrew Breitbart hires a smarmy little arachnid and turns Donald Segretti's ratfucking into a career. He even draws an overly laudatory profile in Time magazine. Do we even have to count the number of ways Iran-Contra taught us next to nothing? Hell, the only people who learned anything were the criminals themselves, and all they learned was how not to get caught the next time, which can fairly be defined as The Bush Administration.

The unforgiving minute: You'll not see nothing like the dreadful Quinn

Here's the dreadful Sally Quinn, the dominatrix doyen of the Washington villagers, in 1998:

[T]his particular community happens to be in the nation's capital. And the people in it are the so-called Beltway Insiders -- the high-level members of Congress, policymakers, lawyers, military brass, diplomats and journalists who have a proprietary interest in Washington and identify with it.

They call the capital city their "town."

And their town has been turned upside down.

With some exceptions, the Washington Establishment is outraged by the president's behavior in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The polls show that a majority of Americans do not share that outrage. Around the nation, people are disgusted but want to move on; in Washington, despite Clinton's gains with the budget and the Mideast peace talks, people want some formal acknowledgment that the president's behavior has been unacceptable.

And here she is, twelve years later:

Sally Quinn, 68, third wife of legendary Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, 88, is profiled in July's Vanity Fair as an overbearing social climber who has alienated the children from his previous marriages.

Sally, a self-styled expert on entertaining, put herself in the magazine's cross hairs last Christmas when she scheduled their son, Quinn's, wedding on the same day in April when Bradlee's granddaughter, Greta, was set to get married, thus ensuring that Bradlee's older children couldn't attend Quinn's wedding. […]

To illustrate Sally's "protectiveness," the magazine describes a trip to St. Martin where, "Quinn lost his virginity to a prostitute in a brothel bar. When he told his parents, the next morning, his father essentially congratulated him. Sally, on the other hand, was hysterical. She dragged him back to the brothel, demanded to know who the girl was, and, with Quinn in tow, escorted her to a clinic to get tested for HIV."

Sally Quinn: Still dreadful after all these years.

(And, of course, don't get Digby started.)

GOP and property rights: The ongoing musical struggle

Republicans are so peculiar: They don't want the Internet to be free, but they never saw a pop song with a catchy refrain that they didn't think should be liberated for the people.

We've covered this quite a bit here at p3, (most recently here, but also here and here); one more post, and I'm going to go ahead and give it its own tag. With the campaign season heating up, it's a pretty sure bet.

The irony this time is especially piquant, since Rand Paul is all about the property rights. At least, some people's property rights.

Songs: "The Spirit of Radio" and Tom Sawyer, by Rush.

GOP campaign wanting it: Rand Paul's US Senate campaign.

Lyric making it an unlikely choice for a GOP campaign: "One likes to believe in the freedom of music / But glittering prizes and endless compromises / Shatter the illusion of integrity." (Note, however, that Paul likes to use the last two phrases in his speechifying, but not the first, perhaps preferring to avoid the whole touchy subject of "freeness.")

Other warning signs: Dude -- they're Canadian!

Quote: "This is not a political issue -- this is a copyright issue," [record label general counsel Robert] Farmer said in an interview. "We would do this no matter who it is."

Did the GOP have permission to use it? No.

Did they use it anyway? Yes.

I'm going to have to put together the "Stolen by the GOP" playlist.

Drinking Liberally meetings for June in Oregon and SW Washington

Here's the run-down for Drinking Liberally chapters in Oregon and SW Washington this month. (Click on the chapter's link to join their email list.)

Corvallis: Next meeting: Thursday, June 3rd.
Meetings: First Thursday of each Month, 5pm - 7pm at Squirrels, 100 SW 2nd St.

Vancouver: Next meeting: Tuesday, June 8th.
Meetings: Second and fourth Tuesdays, 7pm, at the Back Alley Bar and Grill, 6503 E. Mill Plain Blvd. (West of Andersen, in a strip mall 1/2 block west of Safeway on the south side of Mill Plain. It's deep in the lot.)

Portland Metro-West (aka: Portland Left Side): Next meeting: Wednesday, June 9th.
Meetings: Second Wednesday of every month, 7:00pm at Ringo's, 12300 SW Broadway St, (just east of Hall Blvd).

St. Helens Next meeting: Wednesday, June 9th.
Meetings: Second Wednesday of each month, 6:30 pm, at The Village Inn, 535 S. Columbia River Hwy (We have a room off the bar).

Portland: Next meeting: Thursday, June 10th.
Meetings: Second and fourth Thursdays of the month, at the Lucky Lab Brew Hall at 19th and NW Quimby, Thursday at 7pm.
Special Event: "Bring Your Dog Night," called onnacounta it was raining cats last month, is re-scheduled for the June 24th meeting.

Salem: Next meeting: Thursday, June 17th.
Meetings: Third Thursday of each month, 7:00 pm, at Browns Towne Lounge, 189 Liberty St NE # 112 (Old Sportstop next to Read Opera House)

There are over 300 DL chapters around the country; to find the one near you -- or to start one in your neighborhood--go here.)

And if you appreciate Living Liberally promoting progressive action through social interaction -- including keeping the whole Drinking Liberally network up and running -- consider sending them a little love via Tipping Liberally. Or check out becoming a regular pledge donor.

So wherever you are, join the Drinking Liberally gang for drinks and political conversation.

And remember: DL encourages everyone to drink, and vote, responsibly.

(Cross-posted at Loaded Orygun.)