Happy New Year!

Here's hoping 2009 is the best year yet!

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Peace on Earth

May all the blessings of the season, in whatever form you celebrate,
be upon you and yours.

Light. Hope. Love. Peace.

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Can I Panic Now?

Murphy knew what he was talking about: "If anything can go wrong, it will" and "If everything seems to be going well, obviously you've overlooked something."

My best friend agreed to host Thanksgiving dinner this year. Why not? She's got a huge, beautiful Victorian home, she's a holiday decorating fiend, and she honestly enjoys entertaining. (For the record: If entertaining requires effort, I'm not in favor of it. People are welcome to visit my cottage, comfortably appointed in what designers lovingly call "eclectic sty," as long as they're self-sufficient.)

Just a few minutes ago, Friend called. "Are you sittid dowd?" she wheezed into the phone.

I wasn't, but based on what passed for her voice I assumed the position.

"I've beed in dedial for a week [hack, cough], but I cad't hide adybore."

"Oh no! You sound really, really sick. Are you all right?"

"Ndo."

"Do I need to do Thanksgiving over here?"

GAH! What had I done? If I could have kicked myself, I would have.

"Gould you? I really dod't deed to be servig people food."

She was right, of course. Typhoid Mary didn't need to be rubbing shoulders with the masses, either.

"Sure. No problem. You just get better. We'll send you a plate of food."

What am I going to do? I have no yams! I haven't finished baking the desserts! Fortunately I have potatoes and stuffing ingredients on hand, and others among the six guests who will be showing up at 6 p.m. will bring the turkey, rolls, green beans and ... well, whatever else they were planning to take to Friend's.

We'll all gather on the floor among the dust bunnies and dog fur and eat with our hands off paper plates. It'll be fun.

I hope someone was assigned to bring copious amounts of alcohol.

Fortunately, Thanksgiving is about gathering with family and friends to share good food and good company. Our feast, while decidedly untraditional in its informality this year, still will embody the spirit of the season.

May all of your feasts be equally as heartwarming.

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Nationwide Prop 8 Protest Scheduled for Nov. 15

Spurred to action by California voters’ passage of Proposition 8, a gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender civil rights group has called for a peaceful nationwide protest on Saturday.

Beginning at 12:30 p.m. central time, members of the GLBT community, their families and supporters will take to the streets in all 50 states in what could be the largest simultaneous protest rally since the civil rights movement of the 1960s demanded — and won — social and legal equality for African-Americans. Hundreds of thousands of individuals have pledged to descend upon city halls, courthouses, state capitols and Washington D.C. in order to make their voices heard.

A listing of local gatherings may be found at a website established by organizing group Join the Impact. The site has welcomed more than one million visitors in the week it has been online, a Join the Impact member said.

Proposition 8 was a ballot measure calling for the amendment of California’s state constitution to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. It was proposed by social conservatives in response to the state Supreme Court’s declaration in the spring that marriage discrimination violated the California constitution. California voters approved the controversial ballot measure Nov. 4, and outcry in the GLBT community was swift and strident. The amendment already faces court challenges.

The concept behind Proposition 8 and similar measures in other states including Arizona, Florida and Arkansas spawned growing nationwide civil unrest among gays, lesbians, transgendered people and their families and supporters. In the less than two weeks since the election, peaceful rallies in support of same-sex marriage have erupted in several states as the media has analyzed the results, voter patterns and the political, religious and financial underpinnings of Proposition 8 and its brethren.

The message is clear, according to Join the Impact: Discrimination based on sexual orientation is no less heinous than discrimination based on race, gender, age or religious affiliation.

“Let’s move as one full unit, on the same day, at the same hour, and let’s show the United States of America that we too are united citizens equal in mind, body and spirit and deserving of full equality under the law,” rally organizers urge on Join the Impact’s website.

Organizers stress the rallies will be peaceful demonstrations.

“We stand for reaching out across all communities,” Join the Impact notes in its mission statement. “We do not stand for bigotry, for scapegoating or using anger as our driving force. Our mission is to encourage our community to engage our opposition in a conversation about full equality and to do this with respect, dignity and an attitude of outreach and education. Join the Impact, as an entity, will not encourage divisiveness, violence or disrespect of others, and we do not approve of this…. [W]e will continue to encourage debate from all sides of the conversation provided it is civil and respectful.”

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The Illinois Connection

Two tall, thin men of extraordinary intelligence and uncommon perspective emerged from Illinois to lead the United States at critical moments in its history.

The first was Abraham Lincoln.

Barack Obama became the second Tuesday night.

The two men share some similarities. Lincoln was an attorney; so is Obama. Lincoln married a strong, steadfast, intelligent woman; so did Obama. Both men overcame a number of obstacles in order to rise above mediocrity. Both were remarkably dedicated to easing the plight of the common man. Both faced public excoriation by their political enemies. Both persevered.

My heartiest congratulations go to President-elect Obama, along with my most heartfelt wishes for his continued success. He will prove himself the man we the people intended to elect if he remains true to the goals, hopes and dreams he shares with us.

And, as history indicates Lincoln did, he must remain dedicated to easing the plight of the common man and to making America a better place for all of us.

Godspeed.

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Nader Raiding

I, and many other journalists, I'm sure, received an interesting email from Ralph Nader's presidential campaign today. After essentially calling the lot of us ignorant, insensitive, biased louts, he asked for a response.

Here is mine, embedded within his original note. (For the most part I didn't critique grammar and punctuation. That could have taken all day.)

Open Letter to Members of the National Media:
[Dear Ralph, if I may be so bold as to address you in the familiar: Perhaps one of the things that contributes to a perceived inattention to your campaign is the media perception that you care about us as little as you seem to think we care about you. What's with the "open letter," dude?]

Having spoken to numerous reporters and some editors with the national media (as distinguished from the local media) [It's always a mistake to alienate local media. They resent the dismissal, and one never knows when a local reporter will become a national or global reporter. Tsk.] about the blackout or near blackout of the Nader/Gonzalez presidential campaign, striving to challenge the two party, exclusionary duopoly, (debates, ballot obstacles, etc.) I must ask a general question:

What journalistic criteria have you been employing in this presidential year that guides your pronounced non-coverage of the number three campaign that advances majoritarian agendas based on long experience, involvement, and accomplishment. [What? No question mark? Good thing you told me up-front you were about to ask a question. And get over your vocabulary. Using big words makes you seem elitist. Haven't you been paying attention to the Obama critiques?] These agendas are either opposed or ignored by McCain and Obama (see www.votenader.org) and are often rooted in the very investigative reports by your reporters? [Now there's a question mark. Have you no proofreaders?]

It is puzzling how editors and publishers who oversee these prize winning stories seem to lose interest in covering Americans who are trying to do something with that information for a better country. We asked one top editor of a major daily why his paper was not covering us at all and he said, "Because you can't win." Besides being a catch-22 that he quickly acknowledged, that is not a supportable newsworthy judgment. [In your most humble news judgment, I trust.] News Media have covered many stories outside the electoral arena of people "who can't win" and such coverage extends to both the import of the struggles and the reasons why "winning is not possible" given the stacked deck against them. [Ah yes: The interminable struggle of the underdog. Here's a tip: In order to catch a reporter's or editor's attention, the underdog must have something interesting to say. Just the fact that he or she considers himself or herself an underdog is not sufficient justification for an expenditure of ink. In addition, I seem to recall a similar complaint from you in 2004. If we in the media neglected to clarify then that we often have difficulty deciphering your esoteric, if strident, talking points, I apologize for all of us intellectually challenged hacks.]

There has been a witting or unwitting political bigotry against third parties and independent candidates, as there was years ago against minority voters. [In general, or are you accusing us of being bigots? If it's the latter, I think I should warn you that name-calling seldom breeds sympathy.] Against the status of such candidates obstructed through ballot access laws by the two parties that dislike competition they present other rigged ways to secure their domination over the electoral landscape, including gerrymandering each other in the majority of Congressional Districts, for example. [And speaking of esoteric, if strident, talking points, what the heck are you trying to say here, anyway?]

This is meant to be a short letter. [Thank goodness, considering the tone so far. No one likes a lengthy diatribe, especially when they're the subject of it.] Journalism scholars, reporters, and other post-election writers of books and articles will be chronicle, no doubt, the quantity and quality of media coverage (see the previous analysis by such scholars as Stephen Farnsworth and S. Robert Lichter). [What previous analysis? Another tip: Reporters are as lazy as the next guy. If you're going to throw out an obscure reference (and any reference to J school, J-school professors and media analysts is obscure to everyone who graduated more than a year ago), at least give us a clue where we may find more information. Google is a marvelous resource, but everyone who keeps me from having to resort to googling gets extra points.]

For now, please verify for yourselves your own non-coverage or coverage and inform us what your journalistic criteria standards or policies led you to this definition of your readers, listeners, and viewers rights to know. [Like that's gonna happen. If we haven't taken the time to cover your campaign, what makes you think we have time to engage in lengthy debates about our motives? Honestly, upon respectful, non-threatening request most media organizations are happy to provide statistics and explanations. What they don't like to do is defend themselves from the thoroughly perplexing wrath of people who feel they've been slighted.]

Thank you for responding, even though there is obviously no obligation to do so. [But I thought you just asked us to inform you about our decision-making process! See what I mean about puzzling? In any case, you're welcome. I think.]

Sincerely,
Ralph Nader

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Fear and Loathing

I'm in a quandary about which way to vote. My mind is made up about the presidential candidates, so at least that's one race about which I can quit obsessing. Every other race, however, has me flummoxed.

Like a good many other Americans, I imagine, I'm one of those voters who doesn't like to be labeled. I'm not a Democrat. I'm not a Republican. I would call myself an independent, but that term has become associated with party politics, as well. I guess I fall somewhere within the "little-el libertarian" spectrum, because some of my views are socially liberal and others are fiscally conservative. I am neither far right nor far left, at least the majority of the time, and I believe the Constitution of the United States is a living, breathing document and about the best government guideline going (or it would be, if people would stop trying to subvert it).

Here's my problem, though: I am sick to death of "politics as usual." I'm fed up with the people's representatives in Washington and Austin. Exactly which people are they representing, other than themselves? That question stood out in stark relief against the background noise generated by the recent debate over the Wall Street bailout. When all was said and done, Congress had approved $850 billion dollars in so-called relief for the troubled American economic system — despite what appeared to be overwhelming opposition to the plan from rank-and-file Americans. If that's what congresscritters call representing their constituents, someone's definition of "representing" needs modification.

Adding insult to injury, $150 billion of the bailout funds was devoted to "earmarks" (read "pork"). Can't anything be done in Washington without someone's pet project sneaking onto the bill?

I'm also beyond annoyed that big Wall Street players who were bailed out before the bailout — "for the good of the American economy" (*snort*) — have continued the Good Time Charlie ways that got them in trouble in the first place. AIG is a glaring example: Congress appropriated $80 billion in funds to prop up the insurance giant, AIG continued engaging in ridiculous excesses, Congress publicly lambasted the company and its executives ... and then handed it another $39 billion because the $80 billion wasn't enough to allow AIG to maintain itself in the overblown, conspicuously consumptive style to which it had become accustomed.

Am I the only one who was incensed by that?

Now the U.S. Treasury is planning to use at least part of the $850 billion bailout money to ... well, bail out homeowners who got themselves in over their heads with mortgages they probably couldn't afford when they applied for them. Yes, some people are in danger of losing their homes, and some of those people probably weren't entirely capable of understanding the terms of their loans. In those cases, the issuing banks should be drawn and quartered, because their actions were at best irresponsible and greedy and at worst criminally fraudulent and abusive. Borrowers who had the wool pulled over their eyes by salivating moneylenders may deserve some kind of relief. The stupid ones, however — the ones who accepted mortgages they strongly suspected they couldn't afford — deserve neither relief nor sympathy. They certainly don't deserve the largesse of other taxpayers who were neither greedy enough, shortsighted enough nor idiotic enough to place themselves in the same financial sinkhole. Yet that's exactly the position in which Congress has placed the people it purports to represent, despite our not wanting to be there.

So here's my thought: If the current crop of congresscritters is determined to ignore the will of their constituents, shouldn't the constituents tell them their (dis)service no longer is needed? Shouldn't we all band together and vote the bums out? If every voter would vote for the political challenger over the incumbent in races that offer a choice, we could do exactly that.

That's a nice thought, but it's probably not going to happen. Even if there were some way to herd cats, undoubtedly some of the cats would decide at the last minute that the evil they don't know is much scarier than the evil with which they're already familiar. In addition, some cats, like lemmings, will follow the leader over a cliff rather than vote for someone in "that other" political party.

And there's my problem in a nutshell. I'm willing to vote against every incumbent on the ballot in November, despite considering myself an informed voter who makes her choices based on what I like to think is an educated reading of each candidate's platform, not his or her party affiliation. The move would be risky, though, because I'd have to hope neither ultra-right religious nuts nor ultra-left spendthrifts gained control of my country — and one or the other could, depending upon how everyone else votes. The cautious side of me and the very, very angry side of me are at war over the issue right now.

Both sides, however, are intrigued by the possibility that if every voter vowed to throw the bums out, the result would send a very clear message to Congress that We the People are tired of being ignored, talked down to and told we have no clue what's best for us individually or en masse.

Thomas Jefferson probably would approve. It was he who said, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."

And manure is one thing of which there is no shortage in Washington.

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Veterans' Champion My Hind Leg

I hope other disabled veterans will join me in saying "What?" to John McCain's assertion that he cares about us and we know he cares about us. Huh? What, exactly, has Sen. McCain done on our behalf lately? He likes to make excrutiatingly patriotic sound bites out of his service and his status as a prisoner of war during Vietnam, and I'm sure every other U.S. vet -- and most other Americans -- join me in applauding his service and his sacrifice. However, the man cannot excuse the rest of his political and personal careers on that basis. Has he actually fought for veterans' rights? No. Has he been a dominant voice for veterans' services? No. Has he made even significant personal donations to veterans' causes? Uh, no.

Yes, the man was horribly abused on behalf of his country during Vietnam. That does not make him a hero today. What would make him a hero today is personal sacrifice on the part of others who are enduring privation for their country now. He would be a hero if he could take a demonstrable stand -- and action -- on behalf of the veterans and current service members who cannot get the treatment and supplies they need because the U.S. government is so focused on its mission that anyone who no longer directly serves that mission is discarded as useless. Service members may have lost limbs, eyes, ears or other body parts in an unjust and illegal war, but once they're out of the battle they're out of the public consciousness. Period. No argument; no reprieve. In many cases, no help.

It's disgraceful that Sen. McCain calls himself a champion of veterans. He's a champion of the Republican Party, the wealthy and himself. As a disabled veteran, I'm ashamed of him.

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Living and Dying in Three-Quarter Time

There are going to be some good, hardworking people who'll never recover from Ike. You can recognize them on the street: They're the ones with the hollow eyes of war survivors.

I just spoke to one while I was walking my dog outside the Holiday Inn in Seguin, Texas. She's a single woman, middle-aged, and an evacuee from Gilchrist, a small town on the Bolivar Penninsula between Galveston Island and Port Arthur. Gilchrist wasn't one of the Texas Riviera's trendy beach communities. It was a country town populated by salt-of-the-earth, blue-collar working folks and farmers. The sum total of Gilchrist's commercial development comprised a True Value hardware store, a couple of country-and-western bars and a handful of mom-and-pop diners, feed stores and groceries. Ike took almost everything, leaving only a few building shells standing.

Angie, my new friend, lost everything except her dog to Ike. Her house. Her car. Her clothes and furniture. Her job. It's not like she had a lot to begin with, but she worked hard for what she did have, even after an auto accident last year severed the lower portion of her right leg. Surgeons reattached the leg, but it will never be normal. Through it all, Sophia Loren, Angie's sweet Rottweiler-Blue Heeler mix, has been her steadfast companion.

Angie and Sophie were separated briefly after they were bussed to a San Antonio shelter when their aging van was washed away by Ike's rising water. After Katrina and Rita, Texas law was changed to allow people to take their pets with them during mandatory evacuations. Sadly, legislators didn't deal with what would become of the pets once evacuees reached shelters. A San Antonio animal welfare organization collected all the sheltered evacuees' pets so they could be cared for properly, but the form the evacuees were required to sign gave the organization the right to place the animals in new homes if the evacuees didn't reclaim them within 10 days.

When Angie's head quit spinning, she read the fine print. She left the shelter, got a rental car through her auto insurance company, and headed for a motel that accepted pets. The expense, she said, is about to kill her, but she'll manage as long as she has Sophie.

FEMA still has not approved Angie for temporary housing assistance. They need her to fax them proof she actually rented the now-destroyed "cabin" (her term) she occupied before Ike vented his fury all over the upper Texas Gulf Coast. She didn't think to take utility bills with her when she left, and now she's sure they're scattered all over a narrow strip of land that's still soggy nearly two weeks after a 15-foot wall of water wiped most life from its surface.

Someone from Texas Governor Rick Perry's office called Angie's room this morning, she said. They wanted to know what they could do to help. "I didn't even know what to tell them," she told me, her eyes bright with unshed tears. "Where was I supposed to start? I told them about my dog. I'm not giving up my dog."

Sophie jumped up and licked my face. I wouldn't give her up, either.

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The Marines have landed!

The Marines have landed in Galveston, and all I can think to say is "hallelujah!" Finally someone who knows what needs to be done and will do it has arrived.

The USS Nassau, an amphibious assault ship, anchored seven miles off the Texas coast today and sent onto the beach four landing vehicles laden with SeaBees and heavy equipment. Having watched construction battalions at work, I can say with certainty that Galveston is in excellent hands as she attempts to recover from Ike's devastation. Now everyone please just get out of their way and let them do what they do with unparalleled expertise.

Thank you, officers and men and women of the Nassau. You have my undying gratitude -- and I'm sure you have the same from most other Galvestonians living in exile until this mess is over.

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Quote of the day

Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.

—Confucius

It occurred to me that with slight modification, Confucius' words could apply to politics: "Before you embark on a negative campaign, dig two graves."

Politics and religion sometimes bring out the worst in people. Both topics inspire great passion, and man — being the imperfect creature he is — can sink to the depths of his nature while in the throes of great passion. I find that contradiction intriguing, if often disheartening. Great passion should inspire men to do great things, to become a superhuman force in the service of a higher ideal — not to become a single-minded lunatic playing to the lowest common denominator in the hearts of his fellows.

In my lifetime, I have seen some horrible things in society. Even so, I do not recall witnessing the level of intolerance that seems to inform so many people's actions these days. What has happened to us?

When I was younger, I took great delight in reading so-called "speculative fiction": the works of authors like George Orwell, Aldus Huxley and Kurt Vonnegut who projected one or more aspects of society forward to a logical, if extreme, conclusion. The "what ifs" those writers presented in books like Nineteen Eight-Four, Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451 were at once intriguing and chilling. I found it exciting to spend time in alternate realities in which people willingly had allowed themselves to be led like lambs to the slaughter on the altar of peace and harmony.

At the risk of sounding trite, I have to say that now those literary classics seem less like works of art than prophecy.

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Charitable Champions of ‘the Common Man’ or Mean-Spirited Gluttons?

Republican John McCain’s promotional troops might want to reconsider complaining about how often their candidate is ignored by “the liberal media.” Sometimes it’s nice to focus the spotlight’s harsh glare somewhere — anywhere — else. Those times are becoming more frequent for the presumptive presidential nominee who staunchly refers to himself as a champion of the downtrodden, ignored “regular guys” in an America sick to death of the arrogance and socioeconomic disconnect that pervade Washington.

For example, divorcing the physically scarred wife who stood by her man through his long stint as a prisoner of war in order to marry a much younger, much wealthier mistress isn’t the sort of action most presidential hopefuls like to see receive copious media play. Thankfully for McCain, most of the media has ignored that unfortunate little blotch on the Arizona senator’s heroic reputation, and almost no one has called on the former naval aviator to explain how such behavior indicates anything resembling the internal fortitude and stellar character McCain would like to cement in the public consciousness.

Likewise, McCain’s current wife and first-lady hopeful Cindy (she of the youth and wealth) hasn’t been the focus of the kinds of malicious gossip and finger-pointing that have dogged Michele Obama, wife of John McCain’s Democratic opponent, Barack Obama. To date, no one has called Cindy McCain her husband’s “baby momma” — pejorative slang often used to denote an unwed mother — questioned her patriotism or intelligence, referred to her as someone who supports fetus murder, or hinted she is a dangerous elitist Muslim feminist activist.

There is no evidence any of the allegations leveled at Michele Obama are valid, but that hasn’t stopped pundits, gossip mongers and other talking heads in the conservative media from slinging them around with reckless abandon. One can only imagine how gleeful and single-minded conservatives might become if they had the opportunity to flog some as-yet-undiscovered misdeed in Michele Obama’s past that actually deserved scrutiny.

Liberals have just such an opportunity in Cindy McCain. However, for reasons known only to participants in the complicated dance that is media coverage in an election year, Cindy McCain most often is portrayed as an altruistic benefactor of worthy causes. Dig just below the surface, though, and a different picture begins to emerge, and it includes less-than-charitable past actions that have been swept under the rug — right alongside the self-proclaimed only child’s inconvenient half-sisters.

Kathleen Hensley Portalski and her son Nicholas took exception to Cindy Hensley McCain’s portrayal as an only child during a recent National Public Radio broadcast profiling the first-lady wannabe’s benevolent activities. Kathleen Portalski is the eldest child of the late Jim Hensley, a wealthy Arizona businessman who left his younger daughter, Cindy McCain, in the position to be called “the sole heiress to a multimillion-dollar beer distributorship empire.”

In a report published Aug. 18 on NPR’s website, NPR commentator Ted Robbins, who along with The New Yorker, The New York Times, Newsweek, ABC and CNN took Cindy McCain at her word when she claimed to be an only child, revealed the truth behind the myth: McCain has not one but two half-sisters. The second is her mother’s child by her first husband.

In a nutshell, here’s the scoop: Hensley and his first wife, Mary Jeanne Hensley, welcomed Kathleen Anne Hensley into the world February 23rd, 1943, after six years of marriage. In much the same way John and Cindy McCain met, Jim Hensley encountered his second wife as he was recuperating from wounds received while serving as a bombardier during World War II. Hensley subsequently divorced Mary Jeanne and in 1945 married Marguerite Smith, who had a daughter by a previous marriage.

Cindy Lou Hensley was born nine years later. She was raised by both parents, along with Marguerite’s elder daughter, while Kathleen Hensley saw her father and half-sister “a few times a year” as she grew up the daughter of a single parent.

Portalski told Robbins her father “called occasionally” and “provided money for school clothes.” Later on, he gave credit cards and college tuition to Portalski’s children and bestowed upon Portalski and her husband — to whom she is still married — $10,000 gifts. When Hensley died in 2000, he named as heirs not only Cindy McCain, but also Portalski and his stepdaughter. The difference in their status was made all too painfully clear to Portalski shortly after her father’s funeral: The beer baron who abandoned her and her mother to find fortune and happiness with a second family left Portalski only $10,000. He left his stepdaughter a similar amount. The bulk of his estate went to Cindy McCain, for reasons no one has admitted knowing.

Neither the McCain campaign nor Cindy McCain responded to Robbins’ request for comment about why Cindy continues to call herself an only child and whether she would be willing to acquiesce to Portalski’s request for acknowledgement and an apology.

Of course, the half-sister debacle isn’t the only embarrassing example of the McCains attempting to mislead the media and the public. Recently, John McCain was asked how many homes he and his wife own. One might imagine a self-proclaimed “straight-talker” and champion of the common man — in marked contrast to McCain’s well-publicized characterization of the Obamas as social and intellectual elitists — would have a ready answer for such a simple question.

One would be wrong. McCain stammered his way through a non-answer, finally telling the reporter “I’ll have my staff get [back] to you.”

In fact, according to the watchdog group Progressive Accountability, property and tax records indicate the McCains own 10 ranches, condos and lofts located in Arizona, California and Virginia. Combined, the properties’ estimated value is $13.9 million.

Of course, the homes represent only a small portion of Cindy McCain’s personal fortune, which has been estimated to be more than $100 million.

In explaining the gaffe, McCain said, “I define rich in other ways besides income. Some people are wealthy and rich in their lives and their children and their ability to educate them. Others are poor if they’re billionaires.”

So where, exactly, does that put John and Cindy McCain on the “regular guy” scale?

More importantly, where does the McCains’ behavior put them on the straight-talk scale to which John McCain is so proud of adhering? The elitist scale? The human-decency scale?

It’s difficult to imagine Kathleen Portalski would find herself stammering over an answer to those questions.


(This column originally appeared Aug. 22, 2008, at YNOT.com.)

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"We're all fucked. It helps to remember that."

The world lost an icon Sunday when comedian George Carlin died in a Santa Monica, Calif., hospital, apparently of a heart attack. He was 71.

A high-school dropout, Carlin began his stand-up comedy career in 1960. In 1973, he helped make history -- and launched himself into the firmament as a bonafide legend -- when his notorious "Filthy Words" monologue was broadcast on the Pacifica radio network. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission labeled the broadcast obscene and sanctioned the network. A resulting U.S. Supreme Court decision (Federal Communications Commission v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726, 98 S.Ct. 3026 [1978]) established boundaries for language usage during prime-time listening and viewing hours.

The routine became a classic often referred to as "The Seven Dirty Words You Can Never Say on Television," and in the 35 years since it aired on Pacifica, Carlin and his fans compiled a much longer list of "offensive" words that appears on his website.

Like many comedy greats, Carlin was a maverick and a sharp observer of human nature, politics and religion. Much of his irreverent wit sprang from his experiences growing up in a devoutly Catholic family.

Although Carlin frequently used his humor to poke holes in conventional wisdom about drug use, American culture, war, interpersonal relationships and conventional wisdom, he may be remembered best for his wry attacks on language and the way it ironically can be used both to imprison and liberate communication.

Despite his increasing irrascibility as he aged -- or perhaps because of it -- Carlin was one of my heroes. I'll miss him.

Rest in peace, George, and please keep up the assault on the thought police, wherever you find them.

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Bush whacked?

Former President George H. W. Bush has announced he will endorse the presidential candidacy of Arizona Sen. John McCain. That's interesting, considering what his son did to McCain when McCain opposed the younger Bush's presidential bid. Apparently the political rivals have decided to bury the hatchet somewhere other than in each other.

Still, something tells me McCain is not eagerly anticipating an endorsement from the current prez (known among late columnist Molly Ivins' fans as "Shrub"). When I heard about Bush 41's McCain endorsement, the first thing that popped into my head was a rather humorous image of McCain on the phone with Bush 43, insisting "Don't you dare! Don't you dare!"

I also find it amusing that the Bush political machine -- which during Shrub's candidacies couldn't do enough to court the farthest-right faction of the far right -- suddenly finds former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee too far right to suit it. McCain may be for "family values," but he's no raving religious lunatic. Of course, Huckabee doesn't seem like such a bad guy, either, but anyone who publicly says the U.S. Constitution should cleave more closely to Biblical law deserves to be watched.

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Super Bowl XLII: There’s a Flag on the Field Already

GLENDALE, Ariz. – Adrian Ross thought he had put together the perfect team for Super Bowl XLII, but on Jan. 23 the Glendale City Council ejected the quarterback.

Ross, a former linebacker for the Cincinnati Bengals, planned to raise funds for his Maddbackers Foundation by hosting a series of parties leading up to the big game at Glendale’s Cardinals Stadium. The foundation mentors children at football and literacy camps.

In order to attract celebrities and NFL players — people who clearly have spare change and often help the underprivileged — Ross accepted Pink Cabaret’s offer to host the events and donate 25 percent of its profits to the foundation. The girls at the usually “textile-free” establishment even agreed to cover up so Ross could get a special-event liquor license for the parties.

Perfect! Scantily clad women, booze and charitable giving. End zone, here we come!

That’s when the city council threw a flag on the play.

State regulations ban alcohol at nude dance clubs, but they allow it to be served at topless clubs. Even with Pink Cabaret's promise there would be no “wardrobe malfunctions,” the council unanimously rejected the liquor-license application.

The decision was based on what was best for the event, according to Mayor Elaine Scruggs, who called Ross’ application “a twist of logic.” Covering the dancers would have hampered the rushing game, since the skins team was what lured fans to the club in the first place, she said.

One of the council members termed the liquor-license request a personal foul.

“It’s distasteful to us, or at least to me personally,” Councilwoman Joyce Clark said.

The mayor said “The charitable good works … can be done without a liquor license,” according to AZCentral.com.

Attorney John Weston, who represented Pink Cabaret before the council, said the refs made a bad call.

“Who could be opposed to something for kids?” he asked.

The council didn’t penalize other teams with similar playbooks, granting special-event liquor licenses to a number of squads including a Catholic church.

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