On The Question Of Virginity, Or, “Starter? I Can’t Make Her Stop!”

I got a weird little story about my friend Blitz Krieger to bring to you today.

He’s had a crazy car problem, he has, and over the past few months he thought he had found a solution – in fact, he thought he had found the solution of his dreams – but in the end, he’s discovered that the things you dream about often don’t go according to plan.

The way it’s worked out for him so far, it’s been a lot of anticipation followed by a sudden wave of frustration, but I feel like he’s a lot better off having his particular problem with his car…because if he’d had cancer instead, he’d surely be dead by now.

The community is always embarrassed by the drag queens because straight society says, “A faggot always dresses in drag, or he’s effeminate.” But you got to be who you are. Passing for straight is like a light-skinned woman or man passing for white. I refuse to pass. I couldn’t have passed, not in this lifetime.

--Sylvia Rivera, describing the founding of Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), quoted in the book “Becoming Visible: An Illustrated History of Lesbian and Gay Life in Twentieth-Century America”

So here’s what happened to Blitz: he waited forever to buy his first car because he wanted, more than anything else in life, to drive his “perfect” car: a 1982 American Motors Eagle SX/4.

It’s a wild car: it was designed as a small hatchback…with a V-8 engine…and “switchable” 4WD…which allowed it to travel easily in snow in a way that virtually no other passenger car at the time could manage.

So he waited all this time, and two years ago, in California, he literally found a little old lady from Pasadena who sold him his “Dream Car”, which, ironically, was the same brown color as Al Bundy’s Dodge.

It drove great for about six months, but it’s been suffering from a strange malady that presents as a horrible grinding noise when he tries to start the car. He has no idea what to do – and standing in the way of a solution is an obsession that I find a bit strange:

He is absolutely determined that he is not going to go to just any mechanic.

Instead, Blitz told me that since it’s the first time the Dream Car needs to be repaired, he intends to go to a mechanic who has never worked on any car before his – and he says he wants to do this because he feels the experience of having the work done this way will make it more “special” for the both of them.

It took him almost a year to find someone, but when he did, it was truly perfect: he met a woman named Jenna Talia who wanted more than anything to be a mechanic.

She’d been studying through one of those “learn at home” programs, and, amazingly, she had an attitude similar to my friend Blitz’s: she knew about how to fix a car from what she’d read in a book, but she refused to actually repair one until she got the chance to work on her Dream Car – and even more amazingly, her Dream Car…was a 1982 American Motors Eagle SX/4.

They actually met on the bus (Blitz, naturally, refused to drive any other car except the Dream Car), and after a few months of knowing each other, Blitz proposed that Jenna might work on his car in his garage, and she agreed.

Fun Fact I Just Made Up: In a recent poll, 32% of voters thought the Iowa Caucuses were a country located near the former Soviet Georgia.

So we’re going out last Saturday night, and I get a call from Blitz asking if I could come by and pick ‘em both up there at his house, and I’m OK with that, because with two drinks in a night being a big evening for me I’m more or less a permanent designated driver.

I was wondering how it was going with the car, and what I saw was stunning: the upper half of the engine was sitting in the living room, entirely disassembled. There were rockers and rods and all kinds of stuff there, neatly arranged for easy reassembly, and it looked like they had really put a lot of effort into the thing, but it was clear that they just couldn’t get it quite figured out…which isn’t surprising, considering it was the first time for both of them.

And you could see, in just that first second, that the two of them were some kind of frustrated. But it gets worse: Blitz told me that this was her third “diagnosis”, and that, now that she was actually face-to-face with a real car, she seemed to be entirely confused about exactly what to do.

Apparently things had gone so bad that Jenna wouldn’t even leave his house at night to go home until she could get things figured out…and, from what he’s telling me, he’s ready to throw her out, buy a different car, and get that car fixed by a mechanic who’s been there and done that – a lot.

To put it another way, he’s ready to dump his virgin mechanic…for a slut.

Now here’s the really crazy part of the story: I’ve had a bit of experience with cars breaking down over time, and I knew what was wrong from the beginning, as many of you probably did, too: the starter was bad – and that’s located on the very bottom of the engine, not the top, which means everything they’d been doing was pretty much pointless.

But I couldn’t tell them that in the beginning…because, again, it would’ve just spoiled the experience…and I sure wasn’t gonna say “I told you so” now…so even though I could have offered them both useful advice about how ignorance ain’t bliss, they surely didn’t want to hear it.

So look, folks, we could have a lot more fun following out this comic premise, but there’s a bigger point: I don’t want a virgin mechanic, and surely not a virgin doctor – and they don’t even allow virgin pilots to carry passengers.

What is it about sex (and politics, for that matter) that makes people think they’ll be able to simply “get it” with no experience at all? What is it that makes them think that celebrating their own ignorance is the best way to show they’re ready to take on something that, frankly, requires a bit of trial…and error…before you really get it right?

I don’t know the answer, but the next time someone tells you how their ignorance makes them a lot smarter about something, do me a favor and think about Blitz and Jenna and the Dream Car – and the living room full of engine parts – and if that person’s running for office, run the other way. Quickly.

I’d appreciate it; so will you – and if I know Blitz, he will, too.

On Fixing The World, Or, Help George Carlin Stick It To God

Once again The Fates have come our way to provide a story, and once again, we have a contender for the “Ironic Story Of The Year”.

It’s got everything you need for serious irony: an irascible comedian who mocked religion at every opportunity, a city that loved him, and the rich coincidence of his having been born at the crossroads of New York City’s communities of religious education.

And that’s why, today, we’ll be talking about the effort to name the street right next to Manhattan’s Seminary Row…Carlin Street.

(And before we go further, a language warning: we’ll be quoting George Carlin liberally, and that means there may be present today certain of the seven words with which he created one of his best known routines. You are now officially warned.)

I’ve begun worshipping the Sun for a number of reasons. First of all, unlike some other gods I could mention, I can see the Sun. It’s there for me every day. And the things it brings me are quite apparent all the time: heat, light, food, a lovely day. There’s no mystery, no one asks for money, I don’t have to dress up, and there’s no boring pageantry. And interestingly enough, I have found that the prayers I offer to the Sun and the prayers I formerly offered to God are all answered at about the same 50-percent rate.

--George Carlin, from the book “Brain Droppings”

There is a peculiarity to life in Manhattan that exists nowhere else on Earth: for more than 120 years, two of the world’s most important seminary institutions, the Union Theological Seminary and The Jewish Theological Seminary, have been literally kitty-corner from each other, right there at Broadway and W 122nd St.

It is such a significant part of the culture of the community that W 122nd St is now officially known as Seminary Row, as it has been for over 40 years.

And just one block away is the place where George Carlin grew up, on W 121st. During his childhood the Catholic Carlin was an altar boy, and it has been suggested that all this religious exposure may have impacted his comedy:

Now, speaking of consistency, Catholics, which I was until I reached the age of reason, Catholics and other Christians are against abortions, and they're against homosexuals. Well who has less abortions than homosexuals?! Leave these fucking people alone, for Christ sakes! Here is an entire class of people guaranteed never to have an abortion! And the Catholics and Christians are just tossing them aside! You'd think they'd make natural allies. Go look for consistency in religion. And speaking of my friends the Catholics, when John Cardinal O'Connor of New York and some of these other Cardinals and Bishops have experienced their first pregnancies and their first labor pains and they've raised a couple of children on minimum wage, then I'll be glad to hear what they have to say about abortion. I'm sure it'll be interesting. Enlightening, too. But, in the meantime what they ought to be doing is telling these priests who took a vow of chastity to keep their hands off the altar boys! Keep your hands to yourself, Father! You know? When Jesus said 'Suffer the little children come unto me', that's not what he was talking about!

It’s not just the two seminaries, either, that would have influenced Carlin: Columbia University is immediately next door, as are The Manhattan School of Music/Julliard (The Julliard School later moved to Lincoln Center, but when Carlin lived on the block they had 1800 students enrolled), and The Riverside Church, which is presumably the exact place that set Carlin on his future path.

Fun Fact: Italian game design studio Molleindustria, the same folks who partnered with YesLab to produce Phone Story (the App that was yanked after one day at the App Store because it says a bit too much about how phones are made; it’s still available on the Android market), also created the game Operation: Pedopreist, which is one of several “Radical Games” that you can play online at their website.

So now comes before us Kevin Bartini (he’s the warm-up comic for “The Daily Show”), with an organizing effort to change W 121st to Carlin Street.

Bartini, who told the Village Voice that this is a “no-brainer”, says his interest is motivated not just by the fact that Carlin grew up in the neighborhood; he also wants to acknowledge the influence the neighborhood had on Carlin’s comedy:

“…and the Invisible Man has a special list of ten things that he does not want you to do, and if you do any of these ten things he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry, forever and ever, ‘til the end of time – but he loves you.”

A petition is now circulating, and after 6 days 3000 signatures had been collected…but this is George Carlin, and this is New York City, and, dammit, this is America, and I think we can do a lot better than that if we try, so do me a favor, sign the petition, and go show some love to someone who truly deserves the recognition.

You won’t have to wear a suit or a big hat, no one will be bowing or kneeling, and there won’t be a collection plate. Sacramental wine is encouraged; if you’d prefer sacramental pizza I’m sure no one’s going to complain – but if you have ‘em both together, make sure it’s not at a Sbarro or something.

I think we’ve enough for today, and there’s no need to drag this out when you have your mission, so let’s go get those signatures, and let’s get Carlin Street officially on the map.

And just think: if we succeed – it could well have been God’s will.
And what could be more ironic than that?

On Being Bumped, Or, Let’s Have Another Roundup

So I thought I was going to have another Jay Inslee story for y’all today, but it turns out that I’m going to have to do more research before we can “come to press” with that one.

But that’s OK, because the world’s been busy doing a lot of other things – and while many of them get media coverage, some don’t get a lot of notice at all.

And of course, there are also those stories that look one way at first glance…but look a lot different when you dig a bit deeper.

We’ll hit a few of those today, have a bit of fun doing it, and get ready for what promises to be another busy week of strategically not doing things in Washington.

To make things even better, some of the stories will be real, and some won’t.

We’ll see if you can tell the difference.

Wat baten kaars en bril, als den uil niet zienen wil?
(“What use are candle and glasses, if the owl does not want to see?”)

--Traditional Dutch saying quoted in Peter Tate’s book “Flights of Fancy: Birds in Myth, Legend, and Superstition”

Let’s begin by closing out some business from our last story: I mentioned that I received a parking ticket from Seattle Parking Enforcement Office J. Hell, on Republican Street, while attending an event hosted by a Democratic candidate for Governor, and I suspect that some of you think I made all that up.

For proof, I was going to copy the ticket and post it for folks to see…but, instead, check this out: Officer Hell actually made the “Seattle Times” back in June, and you can see her hard at work in that story booting a car, which Seattle does after four unpaid parking tickets.

And now, on to the new business:

Have you seen the Viagra commercial where the guy is driving his horse trailer, and it gets stuck in the mud, and he uses the horses to pull himself out?

Well, think about it just a minute: he’s a guy, and he already has a great big pickup truck, a cowboy hat, and horses…which he’s actually using to pull his great big pickup truck…and you’re telling me he doesn’t already have a boner?

If he can’t achieve an erection at that point, what the hell good is Viagra gonna do?

And speaking of erecting new things…

In what I consider to be one of the best things to happen to politics (and the financing of television productions) in years, Stephen Colbert has been given permission to form his own SuperPAC.

Colbert indicates that he intends to use any money donated to the PAC to produce certain campaign commercials, among other things – but according to the FEC advisory opinion, he is not allowed to expend any of his unlimited corporate contributions to run another effort like 2008’s “Hail to the Cheese” Campaign, which was intended to merge corporate money and politics in an obvious and highly visible way.

By the way, that FEC advisory opinion is available for viewing, if you’re so inclined – and in a most fascinating footnote, it unintentionally explains the existence of Fox News as a legitimate press entity:

A news story, commentary, or editorial that lacks objectivity or is satirical can still be considered part of a press entity’s legitimate press function, even if that news story, commentary, or editorial expressly advocates the election or defeat of a clearly identified candidate for Federal office.

And speaking of unlimited corporate money…

Monaco was the location of a Royal Wedding this weekend, with Monaco’s Prince Albert, resplendent in his military uniform, taking up the role of groom.

Military uniform?
Monaco?
Really?

As it turns out, tiny little Monaco actually does have a military, and the Prince represents 1/113th of the entire force – which means if they ever try to invade the Vatican, the Swiss Guard will outnumber ‘em by about 19 guys.

(By the way: the Prince is reported to have some DNA testing in his near future to determine the paternity of what could be his third and fourth illegitimate children…which is presumably going to make for a bit of a frosty honeymoon.)

What else is going on?

Well…I was watching CNN and they suggested that people bearing retirement age should try making a budget that would reflect how they’ll be living after retirement and try living on that now.

And I though to myself: “I should try that”.

So I did…and now I’m wanted for bank robbery in four states.

Thanks, CNN.

And finally…

In a story that is exclusive to Your Erstwhile Reporter, I am now able to report that Ohio Governor John Kasich, in an effort to simultaneously reduce unemployment and “send the proper message” to his workforce, will announce on Tuesday that he intends to hire 6,000 new state employees who will have only one duty: to travel around and visit all male State employees, at random, once a month…and kick them in the balls.

In order to help female employees really “get a feel” for the new work environment, former Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann has been brought back to reform and “restock” the Dannettes; he’ll then be employed as the “Charlie” overseeing Ohio State Government’s newest “Angels”.

So there we are, with this weekend’s Roundup, and we should be back shortly after Tuesday with either the Jay Inslee story that was supposed to be here today - or a substitute, depending on how our research goes.

On Sunday Drinking, Or, Has Satan Been Rendered Irrelevant?

I know better than to go drinking on Sundays, but it’s just been one of those weeks, and I figured I’d grab a few beers, no big deal, and then head hone and get some real work done.

Of course, the reason I don’t drink on Sundays is because that’s when Satan likes to go hang out at my favorite bar – and to be real honest with you, lately Satan’s getting to be a real drag to hang out with once he gets drinking.

I mean, it’s depressing: he’s always talking about how he gets blamed for the economy, even though he claims he has no control over Wall Street, and atheism is a bit of a sore subject – and he’s forever complaining about how all his best customers have been outsourcing more and more work to Varsavarti.

But if you think all that’s a drag to have to deal with…you should hear him complain about Republican Presidential Politics.

They say that heaven is,
10 zillion light years away;
But if there is a God,
we need him now;
Where is your God?

That’s what my friends ask me;
and I say it’s takin’ Him so long,
‘cause we’ve got so far to come.

--From the song “Heaven is 10 Zillion Light Years Away”, by Stevie Wonder

I had no idea what a Tardis was until recently, except that it’s one of the things you have to hit a bunch of times to get to the really good multiballs in the “Doctor Who” pinball game, and it was Satan who told me all about this “Doctor Who” stuff over a few games in the back of the bar (and he would know: he tells me almost every BBC producer, one time or another, has availed themselves of the intercession of the Devil just to get another 12 episodes out of that network); in fact, the way I really got to know Satan was over a whole bunch of games of pinball.

He plays fair, by the way: he gives himself free replays by making the machine “match” his score at the end, but he doesn’t manipulate the gameplay just to rack up results; because of that we have some pretty competitive games, especially after he has a beer or two and really loosens up.

But once he found out I’m a blogger…oh, man, it’s Republicans this and Republicans that – and the thing that really has him upset with this crowd lately is that it’s all sort of gone out of his control.

“There was a time,” (it’s always “there was a time” with Satan) “when a guy who was in favor of private businesses being allowed to be ‘Whites Only’ who also wanted to run for Senate, much less President…well, they wouldn’t have a chance in Hell unless they made a deal with me – and now you got two of ‘em in the same family who went and ran for Congress, and won, without me getting’ a single soul out of the deal, and now Ron Paul’s running for President, and it’s just killin’ me.

And look who else you got over there: you can’t do a deal with Trump, because he’ll try to bankrupt his way out of any agreement you make, and Santorum actually believes he can win without a deal. Me and Dan Savage, though, we fixed him good: Google ‘Santorum’ sometime, and see what you get.

I made a deal with Bachmann…but I did it when I thought she’d only make it to Congress…so I’m gonna get short-changed on that one. I don’t know if Pawlenti wants it bad enough to make a deal, and if he doesn’t run I’ll lose that soul. Romney hasn’t done a deal yet, and I’ve told him three times already that he can’t win without me.

Gingrich was the one I was sure I would get eventually, but he has no shame, so he’s running without my help even though I showed him how bad he looks to the rest of the world…and he’s been trying for years to undercut me by going to the Catholics to get his marriages annulled – and for cash, instead of a soul. The guy’s just pathetic, he really is.

I am negotiating with Daniels, though, so it’s not all bad – and on that deal, I might even get a ‘two-fer’: him and the wife.”

By now I’d been just nailing Daleks and I was in the middle of the three-ball multiball, and collecting Davros jackpots big-time, but even in the middle of all that I had the presence of mind to ask if Satan had any campaign tricks up his sleeve for this bunch?

“Tell me what you think about this: I’m working something up where Christine O’Donnell gets caught up in an affair with one of the candidates – but I can’t figure out who makes a better scandal: linking her romantically to Newt Gingrich…or to Michelle Bachmann?”

And I told him the truth: I was happy indeed that I hadn’t been drinking a beer when he asked, because I would have done a “spit take” for sure.

But, honestly, I’m not sure who would make the better scandal, so I’m going to do what I promised Satan I would: I’m going to throw it open to you, the readers, and we’ll see who y’all think would be the best person for Christine O’Donnell to be, shall we say, “seeing”.

Anyway, by that time I figured I better go, especially before he got all caught up in another big speech about how “Citizens United” screwed him over, or how that guy from the IMF is gonna be calling any time now, so I finished up my pint, and I headed on home to bring you this story of how the Republicans have screwed things up so badly that, for perhaps the first time in history, discord, anarchy, insanity, and ugliness aren’t business opportunities for The Horned One…and, of course, I wanted to get you the “heads up” on the Christine O’Donnell scandal that hasn’t even happened yet – which, if my friend Satan has anything to do with it, soon will.

On Reincarnation, Or, Was Glenn Beck Just Promoted?

So, the thing is, I’m not the one who tends to follow the herd.

If everyone’s backed up on the freeway, I’m the one who will look for the longer but less crowded country road. When everyone’s talking about whoever out-sang or out-danced or out-cake-bossed someone else, I’m the one with the blank face—and if there’s a room full of people line dancing, I’ll be the one over in the corner having a smoke and wondering what went wrong with y’all.

And that’s why, while everyone else is all excited about Glenn Beck’s imminent “disappearance” from the television firmament…I’m not so sure.

In fact, I can easily see a scenario that leads to a lot more Beck, and that’s what we’ll be talking about today.

“I’ve still got a lot to learn about Washington. Why, yesterday, I accidentally spent some of my own money.”

--Former Senator Fred Thompson, as retold by former Senator Bob Dole

OK, so you’re News Corp, and you’ve got a really popular character on your Fox News network—but the guy is a disaster from a profit-making point of view, because he’s driving away all those advertisers that you need to make the money thing work.

And that’s not all: some suggest he’s no friend of Roger Ailes, who runs Fox News…and in television (to paraphrase Tom Arnold), you can be hostile with your boss, or you can be unprofitable—but you can’t be both.

If that wasn’t bad enough, all his crazy talk is making it hard for Fox News to be a “real” news network, and that’s keeping them from getting the access they used to have when the last Administration was in town.

To make things even worse, there’s that Fox Business Channel, which draws an average audience that’s about 1 or 2 or 3% of what Beck draws to his Imaginarium every night.

And now the time has come To Do Something.

What is coming from here on out is entirely speculative, and I do not have the input of An Actual, No-Kidding, Source I Can’t Name, as I have had in some other stories recently—but if you had hired me, in my fake consulting capacity, To Do Something about this particular turd sandwich…I might just be able to make it work.

First things first: you separate Beck from the Fox News network (and, of course, Ailes), and that did take place Wednesday when Fox and Mercury Radio Arts (Beck’s production company) announced:

…that they will work together to develop and produce a variety of television projects for air on the FOX News Channel (FNC) as well as content for other platforms including FOX News’ digital properties. Glenn intends to transition off of his daily program, the third highest rated in all of cable news, later this year.

So that leaves you with a chance to begin “rehabilitating” Fox News—but it also leaves you with Beck producing the occasional “special” and producing lots of “premium” content for his website, which would make me want to try to “monetize” him a bit more; that brings me to my next move:

Why not turn the Fox Business Channel…into the Fox Opinion Channel?

That’s right: put Imus, Beck, O’Reilly, Hannity, Cavuto, Fox and Friends, Huckabee, Lou Dobbs, Sarah Palin, Stossel…the whole wacky crew…maybe even Donald Trump, after his “Presidential Campaign” peters out…all on the same channel, all day and all night, and take some of that “premium” website content and turn it into “filler” for the new venture (and while you’re at it, make similar deals for filler with the rest of the gang).

So what about the current Fox Business business?

If you take everything off of that channel and distill it out to its “essence”, there might be two or three hours a day of potentially interesting programming; alternatively you take Stuart Varney and Liz Claman and make them the Fox News “business team” who come on every hour during the trading day with a three-minute “market wrap”. You could fill out the coverage with one longer recap daily, either before opening or after closing.

Now you’re taking a big chance here, and that’s because the advertiser boycott that has been crippling Beck on Fox will almost certainly continue—but if Beck were to change his message slightly (more subtly racist, less apocalyptic), he could gain some of those advertisers back.

For Fox, there isn’t much to lose, since Beck’s departure should help Fox News Channel regain advertisers who avoided the whole Beck mess (Poli-Grip still wants to reach Conservatives, yes?), and the current level of profit at the current Fox Business Channel probably wouldn’t even buy a week’s worth of Starbuck’s for the Fox and Friends trio—and since all the assets required to make the change are already “owned” by News Corp, costs don’t really go up with the change as much as they just shift around; the exception being the big splashy ad campaign to make it all happen.

Now here’s the crazy part: Fox and Beck appear to have begun the “parting of the ways” today—but at the same time, Fox News also dispatched Senior Vice President of Production/Development Joel Cheatwood to the new venture, which could suggest that Beck really does have something up his sleeve…or that Cheatwood’s welcome was also worn out at Fox.

So is Beck gone, or is Beck about to reappear in a whole new form?

I’m not sure, but there is a place he could go, and even though it’s a risk, it’s not a huge one—and if you took All The Crazy and put it “over there” it would allow you to clean up your mess “over here”, just in time for the potentially hugely profitable 2012 “Citizens United” Presidential campaign—and since many of your “Fox Opinion Channel” 2012 advertisers will love Beck and the rest of the gang (Crossroads GPS and the Tea Party Nation, for example), the risk of an advertiser boycott “over there” will be minimized until November 2012 at least.

As I say, it’s all completely speculative, so you have to take this with a bag of road salt—but it’s also the kind of thing that makes perfect sense, and if you ask me, nothing is more logical than the self-anointed King of Conspiracy dramatically reappearing after creating one of his own.

Campaign Manifesto #1: In A World Of Phonies, It’s Time For A Fake Candidate

We have spent the past two years watching as insanity has gripped Congress, and even more so with Republicans now running the House.

We have a wavering President, far too many feckless Democrats, and Republicans that have decided to dive headfirst into total “insane mode” in a full-blown effort to destroy this country just as fast as possible.

To give but one example, in my own District, WA-08, we are represented by the absolutely useless Republican Dave Reichert, whose best-known legislative achievement is that he has virtually no record of any legislative achievement whatever.

Now we’ve had a very interesting relationship, you and I, over these past few years; in my efforts to “bring you the story” I’ve been a fake political consultant, a fake lobbyist, even a fake historian…and now, I think it’s time to try to bring our relationship to a new level.

And that’s why, America, I’m announcing my fake candidacy for Congress.

It was almost too good to be true. Richard Milhous Nixon, the main villain of my political consciousness for as long as I can remember, was finally biting that bullet that he’s been talking about all these years. The man that not even Goldwater or Eisenhower could tolerate had finally gone too far—and now he was walking the plank, on national TV, six hours a day—with The Whole World Watching, as it were.

That phrase is permanently etched on some grey rim on the back of my brain. Nobody who was at the corner of Michigan and Balboa on that Wednesday night in August of 1968 will ever forget it.

Richard Nixon is living in the White House today because of what happened that night in Chicago. Hubert Humphrey lost that election by a handful of votes—mine among them—and I had it to do again I would still vote for Dick Gregory.

--From “ Fear and Loathing in the Bunker ”, by Hunter S. Thompson

So let’s start with the obvious question: why a fake candidacy?

Well…why not?

Obviously, I can be just as fake as any real politician, and, as we discussed before, we have years of history together to prove it.

Can I be more useful to the District than Reichert?
Hey…even a fake me can do that.

After all, it’s not like there’s a high bar to jump over or anything.

It was four years in office before he actually got anything passed…and according to Congress.org, by 2008 he was ranked number 401 out of 435 in terms of how much power he exerts in the House…and that’s 9th out of 9 for the Washington State delegation. (Reichert’s own Congressional website reports he was ranked 166th out of 435 in 2006—and that means he fell more than 250 spots in a single term.)

So basically, all I have to do is take the Oath of Office…and we’re pretty much tied.

Now Dave tries to some extent to “ straddle the middle ”, as a result he supports environmental legislation but he’s against “card check”; he also voted to extend children’s health care coverage. He supported the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”.

His stance on Social Security?

Do a search for Social Security on his Congressional website, and you get “No documents matched your query”. Look for Social Security as an issue on his site and you can find this:

Congressman Reichert has fought to protect seniors’ Medicare and Social Security benefits, preserve their access to needed health care services, and make prescription drugs more affordable

(You have to look under “ Seniors ” to find it…but at least it’s there.)

According to FreedomWorks, Reichert had no position worth reporting on Social Security when they attended his April ’05 Social Security workshop…although another attendee reports he had this to say about removing that “tax cap” that represents a giant tax dodge for the richest among us:

Raising the cap was portrayed by all three as a tax hike, which they oppose because “the government shouldn’t be taking any more out of families’ hard earned budgets.”

OnTheIssues has this to say about his Social Security record:

No issue stance yet recorded by OnTheIssues.org.

By the way…did I mention that Reichert is currently serving on the House Subcommittee on Social Security ?

That’s a pretty high level of useless, and it’s exactly this kind of “get up and go” that explains how Reichert managed to fight his way right on up to number 401 in effectiveness among those 435 Members of Congress.

Me, I support the “Rich People Pay, Too” approach: no matter what your wage income might be, you gotta pay Social Security tax. No more “once you get rich, it’s a free ride”.

And guess what? If we just made all wage income taxable for Social Security purposes…the problem is actually solved —and it might not even require that much reform.

Law and order?

Reichert is a former Sheriff, and a man who cultivates the image that he personally caught the Green River Killer . When a bill came up to get the Justice Department off the backs of medical marijuana users, Reichert voted “ no ”.

I am most assuredly not a former Sheriff…and as a fake candidate, I would propose a different approach:

If you elect me, and we can get the bill passed, once a week I will personally dose up Members like Louie Gohmert and Michelle Bachmann and Joe Barton with large amounts of LSD…and I will then transport them right back to the House floor…and then one hour a day we’ll set up something like the obstacle course on “ MXC ” and then have them run it…and I will introduce a bill to set up a special “Premium Content” partnership with C-SPAN that charges $14.95 a month so that you can see the uncensored “GoDaddy” version of the video, with the money to be used to lower the Federal deficit.

I support medical marijuana—but I would limit the co-pay, by law, to $10.

Civil rights?

Reichert opposes same-sex marriage, and only gets a 50% rating from the NAACP…and I’m one of the only people you’ll ever meet who was officially notified he was gay by email —and if one of my family members had a “homosexual relationship”, unlike some Members, I wouldn’t keep it on the “ down low ”.

I’m more or less broke, just like you—and they tell me that, if you win, there’s pretty good health insurance —but I’m not looking for donations, from any source…with one exception:

At the moment this is a fake candidacy, but I’m thinking about asking a group to consider underwriting this as a comedic art project—and if they do, that would be the only money the “fake campaign” would accept.

So there you go: from here on out, there will be more “Manifestos” from the fake campaign—and in the next one, we’ll be talking, once again, about how you can support a candidate like Reichert, who’s basically a joke…or you can support a candidate like me, who really is one.

On Making It Work, Or, An Open Letter To Network TV

After a decade-long slide into semi-irrelevance, it’s now being announced that the major television broadcast networks are considering leaving behind the “free TV/advertiser supported” business model in order to turn themselves into something more closely resembling a cable operation; the idea being that they could create a second revenue stream from the same “subscriber fees” that are paid by cable and satellite operators to all the other channels those operators carry.

This has become necessary, according to the networks, partly because the market has become so fragmented...which, naturally, is cable’s fault—and presumably the fault of the disloyal viewer, as well.

Another reason driving the change is related to the desire of the networks to have a source of revenue that’s more reliable in times of economic downturn, when advertisers often try to husband scarce resources by cutting back on all their expenses, particularly advertising dollars.

Will this new change in the business model reverse the fortunes of the networks?
Is it possible that the networks are simply poor business managers?

And what about...Krystal Carey?

Tune in for the rest of the story—and we’ll find out.

“Customer in a restaurant: How do you prepare your chickens?
Cook: Oh, nothing special really. We just tell them they’re gonna die.”

--From "Plato and a Platypus Walk Into A Bar”, Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein

Dear ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox,

We’ve come a long way together, and I know times have been tough lately—well, for a decade or so, anyway—what with the MTV and the Jon Stewart and the ESPN and all...but let me ask you a question:

Aren’t the majority of the problems your “mainline” networks face today actually problems of your own making?

Now before you get all defensive on me, let’s have a look at the record:

There was a time, not so very long ago, when NBC and Fox, particularly, were flying high in the ratings wars.

In the 1980s NBC had a great run of shows, from “Hill Street Blues” to “The Cosby Show” to a little thing called “Late Night With David Letterman”.

They also had “Taxi”, “The Golden Girls”, “Cheers”, “Miami Vice”, “Matlock”, “Family Ties”, “Alf”, and “The A-Team”.

And that was before “Friends”, “Seinfeld”, “ER” and “Mad About You” all became the 1990s version of “Must See TV”. (“LA Law” had a long enough run that it existed in both eras.)

In other words, a huge proportion of the shows that you see in syndication today were all part of the NBC family in roughly a 20-year period.

Over at CBS, the lineup during the same time period included “Cagney and Lacey”, “Dallas”, “Knots Landing”, “The Dukes of Hazzard”, “Magnum P.I.”, “Murphy Brown”, “Newhart”, “Walker, Texas Ranger”, and the last couple of years of “M*A*S*H*”...and, thanks to some trouble at NBC...”The Late Show With David Letterman”, which, along with “60 Minutes”, is still there to this day.

For NBC, the money was good: in 1985 the network’s profit doubled, and by 1997 it had doubled again to over $500 million.

CBS had hit shows that were popular among a less-desirable (read: older) demographic (but fewer of ‘em than NBC’s giant stable of hits), and as a result, despite the $6.8 billion in 1998 revenues it was another of a long series of “loss years”...but at least they could say the losses were decreasing, from over $130 million in ’97 to a mere $12 million in ’98.

For ABC, this was a period of downward spiral culminating in takeover. Among the shows that were filling space in between their few hits (most notably “The Love Boat” and “Home Improvement” and “Matlock”, which was snatched away from NBC for the last three years of its run) were such tragically bad classics as “Battle of the Network Stars”, “Doogie Howser, M.D.”, “Full House”, “Growing Pains”, and the singularly awful “Cop Rock”.

The resulting financial troubles led to ABC itself being snatched away from its former independence in a 1995 takeover by The Walt Disney Company.

And then there’s Fox. The same network that always seems to find the lowest common denominator (they once matched up Tonya Harding and Paula Jones in 2002’s “Celebrity Boxing”) also managed to bring to the air in its first 15 years “21 Jump Street”, “Party of Five”, “Melrose Place”, “Martin”, “Beverly Hills 90210”, “Ally McBeal”, “In Living Color” (yes, Virginia, the Wayans Brothers came from somewhere...), “Mad TV”, “Futurama”, “The Tracey Ullman Show” and its slightly more successful spin-off, “The Simpsons”—and the show that might sum up the entire enterprise, for good and for ill: “Married...With Children”.

By 1990, the then five-year-old network was on the air three nights a week—and they were booking $500 million in advertising revenue.

So, TV...do you see a pattern here? The networks with the best (or at least the most popular) shows were the ones making money—and CBS and ABC...not so much.

Of course, you can have very popular programming and still lose money doing it...which brings us to sports.

From the mid-80’s until not very long ago, the television networks were more than happy to pony up pretty much any amount of money for sports programming—to the point that buying your kid one of Glambo’s “My Little Pony” Edition M4A1 carbines for her 8th birthday (the same weapon used by our troops today, and a bargain at only $1147.95...) seems to be downright logical by comparison.

Who follows “March Madness”? CBS has been following it, avidly, as one of the broadcasters of the tournament. In 1985 CBS paid $20 million for the TV broadcast rights, and by 2005 that number had grown to $420 million.

But here’s the thing: the ratings CBS achieved in the 1985 broadcast were roughly 90% of the highest ratings the NCAA Tournament ever achieved, and despite the fact that CBS valued the Tournament enough to pay 20 times as much for the rights in 2005, the actual 2005 audience was only 2/3 of the 1985 audience.

Football has been a black hole for broadcasters as well—for decades.

ABC, NBC, and CBS admitted in 1992 that they had lost $200 million, collectively, in the first two years of their 1990 agreement, with CBS being hit particularly hard (baseball and football, together, knocked $320 million off of the CBS bottom line that year).

Fox, seeking to create a “buzz” for their new network, paid more than $1.5 billion in 1993 for a four-year deal to broadcast NFL games (ending the League’s 38-year relationship with CBS in the process)—and the value of the current round of contracts between the NFL and four networks (NBC, CBS, Fox, and ESPN) has, in the intervening years, ballooned to over $20 billion.

Remember that comment about losing money even with popular programming? The Super Bowl fills 37 slots in the list of the top 100 highest rated shows of all time...but that said, NBC apparently had problems selling all its available ad space for the broadcast of the XLIIIrd iteration of the event...which appears to be a problem for the upcoming XLIVth game as well...and if you follow the numbers, the ratings have not gone up in a way that could be seen as commensurate to the cost of the broadcast rights.

(With the exception of the 2000 contest, no Super Bowl in the 21st Century has cracked the Top 40 highest rated shows of all time. 17 games from the prior Century are in that Top 40. If you don’t consider the year 2000 to be part of this Century, lower that number by one.)

The Olympics? At this point, the rights fees paid by NBC represent 40% of the total budget of the International Olympic Committee, including $600 million for the 2006 Games alone and $2.2 billion for the 2010 and 2012 Winter and Summer Games—and before the first event is even broadcast, GE CEO Jeff Immelt (GE is NBC’s current owner) has already reported that he expects the network to lose $200 million on the 2010 Vancouver broadcast.

(How many times has an Olympics broadcast cracked the Top 100? Twice—and both of those broadcasts were in 1994.)

Let’s sum up where we are so far: for roughly 20 years, the “big” networks have been either losing money with bad programming or losing money by spending too much money on big events...or to keep a popular show just one more year, as happened with “ER” and almost happened with “Seinfeld”.

How much would a network spend for that final year? The cost of producing a single episode of “ER” rose from $2 million an episode to $13 million from 1997 to 1998.

To make up for wasting so much money on those big events, the networks have been cutting back as much as possible—which is why we now see lots of “reality TV” and “talent shows” à la “American Idol”, which can cost less than $500,000 an hour to produce.

The theory is that the “big” productions will drive the viewer to the “smaller” shows—which presumably means that the calculus around CBS is that the glorious television spectacle that is the “New Adventures of Old Christine” is keeping viewers tuned in for “Gary Unmarried”—and if not, maybe the spectacle that is “Two and a Half Men” will.

The funny thing is, TV, that you actually have an incentive to invest in better shows: the revocation of the Fin-Syn Rules. In the early 1990s TV networks were, for the first time, permitted to have a financial interest in the shows they run on their networks (the “Fin” part of Fin-Syn) and the restrictions on networks syndicating shows were removed (which, obviously, was the “Syn” part).

This means if networks create shows that can be resold over the years the networks get to have an equity interest in the money that’s generated. One source of future income: selling a show like “The Bernie Mac Show” or “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” or a “CSI” derivative to a cable network or a local TV station...another, “direct distribution to consumer” technologies like DVD or implanted neural TV memory chips or home holodecks.

Fun Fact: Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball are credited with creating the syndicated television industry; this based on the decision, radical for the time, to record episodes of “I Love Lucy” on film, and the even more inspired decision to take a $1000 a week pay cut in return for ownership of those syndication rights...or to put it another way: TV, you often suck at recognizing innovation when you see it.

The problem: if your library is full of “Hee Haw Honeys”, “The Simple Life” or “The Jay Leno Show”...well, those are the kind of shows that end up in the $5 DVD bin, not as $ 120 box sets shaped like robot heads...and that’s the direction that networks are taking far too often.

Ironically, a lot of the most innovative TV out there is not coming from the networks at all, but instead from their “insurrectionist” cable competition: shows like “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia” and the mighty “SpongeBob Squarepants” (which, last week, had more viewers at 11:30 on a Thursday morning than every broadcast television show for that entire week, with three exceptions—and all three of those were football games).

Lucky for the networks, they own a lot of those cable properties—or, in the case of ABC, their parent owns lots of ‘em, including the aforementioned ESPN, The Disney Channel and the ABC Family Network. (In the case of Disney, cable operations in 2009 provided twice the revenue and eight times the income of the broadcast operations.)

Oddly enough, the formerly united Viacom and CBS are now separate companies with the same CEO, Sumner Redstone. Among the Viacom properties: MTV Networks, the home of both the mighty sponge and the Colbert Nation, Logo (home of “RuPauls’ Drag Race” and the now extra-controversial “Sordid Lives”), and soon, the DreamWorks production operations.

Sometimes it works in reverse: the cable operator Comcast is buying 51% of NBC in their own effort to vertically integrate; combining production and distribution opportunities under one corporate roof.

And all of that is a long way to go to get to finally answering the questions at the “top of today’s show”, but here we are:

TV, I hate to be mean about it, but you have demonstrated over and over again that you are not so great at making smart business decisions—especially when it comes to managing your cost structure in a thoughtful way—which makes me think that if you change the business model, you’ll find a way to screw it up...and you’ll probably do it by giving too much money to the last season of shows like “CSI: Jablib, Wisconsin” and baseball and football and the Olympics while at the same time prematurely cancelling the next “Arrested Development” that comes along.

And since you seem to be bad at delivering shows, the odds are that over time advertising income will be hard to keep on an upward path...but of course, you could fix that problem—theoretically—and being less dependent on “Survivor” might be one way to start.

And what about Krystal Carey?

Well, the soap business sucks, too—after all, it’s expensive to make soaps, and there’s little chance of selling them as DVD sets—and that’s why everybody on “All My Children” recently got substantial pay cuts, and why “Days of Our Lives” may not survive past 2011.

So there you go, TV: you can continue to play the “today’s results are the only thing that matters” game, or you can scale back all the money associated with the network TV process to make it more economically viable...and if Leno won’t take $2 million a year, I’m pretty sure my friend Cliff Barnes would, and he’s even funnier (“I’m so short, I have to go up on girls...”), or you could just abandon broadcast TV entirely—which, of course, should mean that you’ll be giving back that valuable radio spectrum you’re borrowing from us at the moment so that we can auction it off to someone who wants to give it a good home.

Anyway, TV, this has been a long letter, and it’s time to go, so you think about all this, and we’ll talk again soon,

Your friend,

fake

On A May-December Romance, Part Two, Or, Las Vegas, Integrated

Moulin Rouge.

The mention of that name, in the right circles, brings back a flood of associations.

Among them: a famous cabaret in Gay Paree, a Nicole Kidman movie rich in costume and set design and…well, a movie, anyway; or, if you really know your films, perhaps the association is with the 1952 John Huston “biography” film of the same name.

The one association that might not quickly come to mind, even though it should: ground zero in a battle that led to the desegregation of Las Vegas.

Today’s story will fill in the blanks that you might have regarding that association—and by the time we’re done, we’ll have covered, just as we promised last time, the 55-year history of a place that began in 1955, lasted for not quite six months, and ended just last week…maybe.

It’s another one of those American history stories you never heard before, and it’s well worth the telling…so let’s get right to it.

“Last year people won more than one billion dollars playing poker. And casinos made twenty-seven billion just by being around those people.”

--Samantha Bee, “The Daily Show”, March 10, 2005

For those of you who missed Part One, we better take a moment to catch up:

Las Vegas, as World War II came to an end, was very much a segregated city, with blacks, who by that time were roughly 3000 of the city’s total population of 20,000, literally forced to live on the Wrong Side of The Tracks (a problem that continues to create headlines even as recently as 2008).

(Irony number one: “The Tracks”, or at least 60 acres of the land upon which they used to sit, are now the site of an upscale redevelopment effort (“Union Park”) that Westside residents note has the potential to leave them even more geographically isolated than they were when The Tracks occupied the site. To further the irony, far more redevelopment money is being spent on the Union Park project then is being spent in the severely economically disadvantaged Westside.)

As the casinos began to become the major driver of the local economy, blacks were allowed to work on the properties, but they could not patronize the segregated casinos in which they worked.

This extended to the highest levels of worker, as even the entertainers who were brought in to work the showrooms were forced to seek accommodations in the Westside neighborhood…which is why the neighborhood’s rented cottages and hotels, such as the famous Harrison Boarding House, could count among their many famous guests Nat King Cole, Lena Horne, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Jack Benny’s “valet” and sidekick Eddie “Rochester” Anderson.

By the middle of the 1950s there had been unsuccessful efforts in Nevada to pass laws mandating an end to segregation in the casinos and elsewhere (oddly enough, there had never been a law requiring segregation); and it has been suggested that casinos were resistant because their customer base at the time was mainly Californians who had settled there from the Southern states, and who presumably brought their racial animus with them.

And it wasn’t as if blacks were not allowed in bars or casinos: there were several on the Westside that catered to a black clientele.

(Irony number two: it’s reported that among those were Jewish-owned properties, including the Brown Derby, the Cotton Club, and the Ebony Club.)

Want to see a product of Strip segregation history with your very own eyes? The New Town Tavern, who once hosted Redd Foxx and B.B. King on its now-closed showroom stage, has remained open on the Westside from 1955 to the present day at the corner of F Street and Jackson Avenue.

Which brings us to Frank Sinatra.

By 1953 Sammy Davis, Jr., and the other members of the Will Maston Trio, of which he was the featured player, were splitting $5,000 a week for their services…but they could not stay at the place they played. By 1954, Sinatra convinced Sammy to open for him at The Sands; and in November of that year The Will Maston Trio was not only making $7500 a week at the Frontier, the hotel “comped” their room, board, and drinks, and allowed them the run of the casino, making them the first black act to receive that sort of treatment from a Strip casino (although others report that Nat King Cole was actually the first, in 1955).

Later that same month, Sammy lost an eye in an automobile accident, and was offered $25,000 a week to play The Sands, along with what are described as “Sinatra-like accommodations”.

In May of 1955, in an effort to “change the rules of the game”, Alexander Bisno and Lou Rubin opened the Moulin Rouge Hotel and Casino on a site in between the Strip and the Westside.

Bisno and Rubin opened the property as a completely integrated facility, bringing blacks and whites in as guests and staff…and even as management and owners. Boxing great Joe Louis was both the official greeter and a partner in the venture. The great Benny Carter was brought in as musical director.

(Fun Fact: the distinctive neon signage for the Moulin Rouge was designed by one of the few women in the business at the time, Betty Willis, who also designed one of the most recognizable signs in advertising history, the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign.)

The hotel was an immediate and massive hit with visitors, who were treated to the best entertainment available anywhere: Sammy, naturally, played the room, along with The Platters, Harry Belafonte, Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole, and Eartha Kitt, to name but a few.

But here’s the thing: a major reason the place was so popular was because Sinatra, Dean Martin, and the rest of the Rat Pack would head over to the Moulin Rouge, either to put on impromptu performances or to just hang out in this newly swinging atmosphere—and suddenly, the Moulin Rouge, after the other shows on the Strip had ended for the evening, became possibly the hottest joint in the world; with everybody, and I mean everybody, heading over to see and be seen with Sammy, Sinatra, Dino, and the rest of the Pack…and of course, the “Tropi-Can Can” girls.

Things got so crazy that the Moulin Rouge added a 2:30 AM “Third Show”—but within six months, the Moulin Rouge had closed its doors; possibly the victim of mismanagement, possibly the victim of an oversaturated market, possibly the victim of policies designed to make blue-collar black patrons feel less welcome…and possibly the victim of “The Mob”, who had a hand in several of the Strip hotels that were suddenly losing significant amounts of gambling business to the new hotel.

"We don't think that we, or any other hotel, should give away a $30,000 show for a Coke and two straws."

--Former Riviera Hotel Chairman Morrie Mason, in “Time” Magazine, September 19, 1955

And with that, you’d think the history of the Moulin Rouge had come to an end.

In fact, there was quite a bit more history yet to come.

Throughout the ‘50s, Sinatra had been busy working to eliminate what he called the “national disease” of bigotry. He wrote this in a July 1958 “Jet” Magazine article, “The Way I Look At Race”:

“A friend to me has no race, no class, and belongs to no minority. My friendships were formed out of affection, mutual respect, and a feeling of having something strong in common. These are eternal values that cannot be racially classified. This is the way I look at race.”

By 1959, the Rat Pack was in town filming “Ocean’s Eleven” and going after segregation in their own unique way. They would show up at a casino, and if the casino would not admit Sammy Davis, Jr. to the gaming floor, then they would move on to the next one. Since no one wanted the bad publicity…Sammy usually got in. (That same year, blacks and whites in Nevada were legally allowed to marry.)

Because so many people were pushing for integration, segregation was beginning to be bad for business, and something had to be done.

Even Nevada’s Governor, Grant Sawyer, was trying to change the culture of segregation…and as 1960 rolled around, the NAACP was applying its own pressure.

Dr. James McMillan, leader of the local NAACP chapter, announced that he would organize a series of “sit-down strikes” in the restaurants of the Strip casinos. The day before the strikes were to begin, Oscar Crozier, representing the hotel interests, met and negotiated with NAACP representatives, Hank Greenspun, the publisher of the “Las Vegas Sun”, and some assorted politicians at…wait for it…the abandoned Moulin Rouge, where the Moulin Rouge Agreement was struck, which immediately desegregated the patronage of casinos on the Strip.

“When these fellows realized that they weren't going to lose any money, that they might even make more, they were suddenly colorblind.”

--Dr. James McMillan

(The new colorblindness, oddly enough, did not extend to the Downtown casinos, and Binion’s Horseshoe was among of the last of those casinos to desegregate.)

Over the next few years, employment on the gaming floors was also desegregated, and in 1971 the State Legislature passed a law barring racial discrimination in the housing market.

Even after all that, the Moulin Rouge wasn’t through making history. The property and buildings and…casino license…passed from one owner to another, and eventually one of those owners, Sarann Knight-Preddy, became the first black woman to hold a Nevada gaming license.

The property did operate as a sort of “apartment-motel” for a number of years, and even reopened as a casino during the 1990s, but a 2003 arson fire destroyed the casino/showroom building and removed it from Preserve Nevada’s list of 11 most endangered historical sites in the State.

Even then the remaining “hotel” buildings became low-income housing…until they became too dilapidated for that purpose.

And even then plans continued to float around, including an effort that seemed to be gaining momentum in 2008 to build an entirely new project on the old site…until a bad economy and bankruptcy brought that momentum to a crashing halt.

In an ending reminiscent of something that might have happened in the movie “Casino”, on May 5th of this year, Olympic Coast Investments of Seattle took ownership of the Moulin Rouge through foreclosure…and on May 6th, another fire took out the remaining buildings on the site. Olympic Coast reports they intend to sell. (Luckily, the neon sign had been removed in the weeks before the fire to the Neon Boneyard.)

We have come a long way with this story, but here we are at last.

Las Vegas, we’ve learned, has had to deal with a history of racial segregation, and was able to break the back of that segregation through the efforts of people as diverse as local neighborhood organizers, Jewish financiers…and the Rat Pack.

That history was forever changed because one casino, for not quite six months, showed what Las Vegas could be—but as we said at the beginning of Part One, even though the casino was only open for those few months, the history it represents continues to unfold, more than 50 years later.

What happens next, no one knows…but in Las Vegas, with a piece of land and an available gambling license to work with…I wouldn’t be too quick to bet that the history of the Moulin Rouge is over just yet.

Warning—commercial message ahead: I’m competing for a Netroots Nation scholarship, and I could use your support. Just head on over to the Democracy for America website, click on the “Add your support” link under “Grassroots Supporters”, and offer a word or two...and with that, thanks very much, and we return you to your regular programming.

On Assessing Risk, Or, Swine Flu: Is It Time To Panic?

We are going to be talking a lot about swine flu over the next few weeks.

The conversation about the politics of the thing is already well underway, engulfing those who sought to remove funding for infectious disease control out of the “stimulus” bill.

We are lacking, however, an examination of the science of the thing, and that’s the point of today’s conversation.

How dangerous is this infection?
Why is it killing people in Mexico but not here?
Exactly what is a pandemic?
Do those facemasks really serve any purpose?
And what about closing the border?

They’re all good questions; and they are all questions we’ll try to answer today.

"I've always been a hypochondriac.
As a little boy, I'd eat my M & M's one by one with a glass of water."

--Richard Lewis

Why don’t we define a pandemic first, then move on to the “what we knows”?

A pandemic is a global event characterized by the emergence of a new virus that readily spreads from human to human. When humans are exposed to new viruses, the lack of previously developed antibodies means we lack biological defenses, making new viruses the most dangerous to human health.

(Vaccines are designed to safely expose humans to diseases. The body makes antibodies based on that exposure, making it better prepared for the next exposure.)

So here’s what we know: a swine flu outbreak that seems to have begun in Mexico has claimed more than 150 lives and sent more than 2000 to the hospital in that country as of Tuesday morning.

As of Wednesday, there are 91 laboratory-confirmed cases of swine flu in the United States, with 81 of them occurring in New York, California, and Texas. There has been one confirmed death in the US as of Wednesday, a child who had come to the US from Mexico to be treated for this infection.

In an ordinary year, the CDC reports, about 36,000 people die from influenza in the United States (during the 1990s, the number varied from 17,000 to 52,000).

There are a smaller number of infected individuals in numerous other countries.

The World Health Organization had, early this week, declared a Phase 4 alert, meaning that we have:

“…verified human-to-human transmission of an animal or human-animal influenza…virus able to cause “community-level outbreaks.” The ability to cause sustained disease outbreaks in a community marks a significant upwards shift in the risk for a pandemic…Phase 4 indicates a significant increase in risk of a pandemic but does not necessarily mean that a pandemic is a forgone conclusion.”

As of Wednesday that has been raised to a Phase 5 alert, which:

“…is characterized by human-to-human spread of the virus into at least two countries in one WHO region. While most countries will not be affected at this stage, the declaration of Phase 5 is a strong signal that a pandemic is imminent and that the time to finalize the organization, communication, and implementation of the planned mitigation measures is short.”

We also have suspicions about a number of things.

We suspect that a pig farm near La Gloria, Mexico was the source of the outbreak.

We suspect (with very high confidence) that the number of confirmed infections will grow substantially as labs are able to complete the testing that changes probable and suspected cases to confirmed ones.

We suspect there will be additional deaths in the United States from this infection beyond the one that has already been confirmed.

Because at least 45 of the confirmed cases in the US are associated with a group of spring breakers just back from Cancún, we are suspicious that they might be the group responsible for introducing the virus into the country….however…the CDC reports that cases were first seen in San Antonio, Texas, and in Southern California in late March and early April.

Because the health authorities in Mexico might not have been tracking minor infections, it is suspected that the very high death rate currently associated with this infection in that country is overstated.

There is, as you might imagine, an entire list of things we cannot as yet explain.

The question of why young and presumably healthy Mexicans are dying at an alarming rate while citizens of other countries are not is first on that list. There are several possible explanations besides the potential statistical problems we note above, and one of those is the question of air quality in Mexico City.

The amazing level of air pollution in Mexico’s capitol city has created a childhood asthma problem of such long standing that it has now also become an adult asthma problem. It is known that people with compromised respiratory systems are predisposed to become victims of opportunistic respiratory infections, lending credence to this supposition.

It is possible that nutritionally compromised individuals in Mexico are becoming targets for more severe infections than individuals in the US who are getting sick but have more robust overall health due to better nutrition.

There is confusion due to an inability to accurately track the infection in Mexico. It is possible that new infections are still occurring, that the virus is in regression, that it is has mutated in new ways, or that another, as yet unidentified virus is now circulating; but due to a lack of reliable information it is impossible to tell which, if any, of these events are actually taking place.

The US public health authorities seem to be better able to respond to this health event than Mexican authorities have been. For example, there are reports, confirmed by Mexican Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordoba, that people who had close contact with individuals who have died from swine flu have not had access to medical or epidemiological follow-up…or access to antiviral drugs.

There have been questions as to whether border screening should be intensified to prevent infected persons entering from Mexico. In testimony before Congress Tuesday it was pointed out to Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison that infected persons might not show any symptoms while crossing the border, rendering such screening techniques as temperature monitoring ineffective.

Now let’s talk about this virus.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, in the same hearing room, gave us a lot to worry about. He points out that this is an almost unique virus, in that it has, within its structure, genes from bird, pig, and human influenza viruses (the process of these genes combining themselves in new ways is called “reassortment”); and seeing a “triple reassortment” is highly unusual.

The H1N1 virus that is the basis of this new virus is inherently capable of human-to-human transmission, he tells us, which is particularly problematic.

We will talk about what drugs might be effective in a moment…but first, a word or two on uncertainty.

There is no way to know if the virus we are dealing with today will mutate into new forms, nor can we predict if the virus will become relatively more dangerous if and when new populations are exposed. (It is also possible that the virus might mutate into a less harmful form).

We have no way to predict whether this virus will return, even stronger, in the fall, which would not be uncommon.

We cannot predict what other influenza viruses might appear, or if the two other currently circulating “seasonal” viruses might mutate in ways that cause greater concern.

We cannot predict the potential for further reassortment caused by the current seasonal flu viruses that had been circulating before the emergence of swine flu interacting with this new virus.

We cannot predict where the virus (and its antecedents) will crop up.

We cannot say for certain that the virus will not develop resistance to currently effective antiviral drugs.

These are problems associated with influenza management every flu season, and they are not particular to this virus.

“Excessive calm…may be a symptom of swine flu.”

--Stephen Colbert

Because things can change on literally a day-by-day basis, some of our comments on drugs will be correct as of today, but not necessarily correct in the future.

There are four antiviral drugs available, and two of them are rather ineffective in dealing with certain strains of influenza due to the fact that those strains have developed resistance to those drugs.

That leaves two useful drugs, Tamiflu and Relenza.

When deciding what drug to prescribe for someone who shows up at the doctor’s office, the doctor needs to have an idea what kind of flu you have. If you show up with swine flu, today, a doctor might be inclined to offer you Tamiflu…but if you showed up with an infection caused by the “seasonal” Type A H1N1 virus from 2007-2008, Tamiflu would be the wrong choice, as that virus is resistant to Tamiflu.

Why not just dose the entire US population with Tamiflu or Relenza right now, you might ask?

It’s partly a question of side effects and the damage they can cause, multiplied by 300,000,000 patients.

In the case of Relenza, there are significant side effects for those with respiratory diseases, and the drug is not normally recommended for those patients. The FDA recommends that patients who do use this drug have ready access to a fast-acting inhaled bronchodilator at the time it is administered. Some patients have experienced “transient neuropsychiatric events” (specifically self-injury or delirium) after using the drug.

Roughly 10% of Tamiflu users experience vomiting, and there are also patient reports of transient neuropsychiatric events with this drug (“confusion, paranoia, anxiety attack, nightmares” were among the listed symptoms). The use of this drug by children under one year of age is not normally advised, but on Wednesday an Emergency Use Authorization was issued for such use.

It’s also, to some extent, a question of uncertainty about this flu: will this virus turn out to be less harmful than the impact of those side effects? Will it, in other words, “just fade away”?

Beyond that, to try to prevent these viruses from developing resistance, we need to use these drugs as sparingly as possible; with that in mind, if we can avoid mass administration of these drugs it would be to our advantage.

The preferred approach would be to vaccinate…and it is hoped that by this fall a vaccine will be available…and it is hoped that the virus that is in circulation this fall will be roughly the same virus that was “designed into” the vaccine between now and summer.

Now a quick word on facemasks and respirators:

The CDC recommends facemasks for those in crowded settings…but they strongly suggest limiting the time in which you are in those settings more than they do the use of facemasks. They also strongly emphasize handwashing, covering your mouth when you cough, and washing hands after shaking hands.

It is also noted that airborne droplets can get around the edges of facemasks, rendering them fairly ineffective.

Respirators, on the other hand, can be effective, and are currently recommended for people who cannot avoid contact with infected persons. The “all-day” use of these respirators, however, is a challenge simply because of the increased effort involved in breathing while wearing such a device.

An artist asked the gallery owner if there had been any interest in his paintings on display at that time.

"I have good news and bad news” the owner replied. “The good news is that a gentleman inquired about your work and wondered if it would appreciate in value after your death. When I told him it would, he bought all 15 of your paintings.”

"That's wonderful!" the artist exclaimed. "What's the bad news?"

"The man was your doctor."

--From Doctor Jokes at “Resources for Attorneys”

So what good news, if any, is there to tell?

As of right now we have no reason to believe that this flu is more likely to cause fatalities than the seasonal influenzas that we would normally see. (Keep in mind, however, that this could quickly change.)

If the pattern we have seen so far were to continue (and there is no particular reason to say it will or it won’t) we could end up with a virus that is widely transmitted but no more dangerous than what we are used to seeing in normal years.

Ironically, the virus’ wide dissemination would itself be good news; as it would expose more of us to this new virus, enabling us to develop antibodies to the infection even before a vaccine is developed for the fall.

We have covered a lot of ground today, so let’s wrap it up:

An influenza caused by a nearly unique virus is moving through the population of Mexico, that infection has spread to several other countries, and so far the number of fatalities worldwide has not exceeded 200. (We expect more than 35,000 deaths annually from influenza in the United States, by way of comparison.)

Because it is a virus to which humans have not been previously exposed, there is heightened concern among The Experts.

There is no reason, at this moment, to believe this influenza will be more lethal than the seasonal influenzas currently circulating among the US population.

This flu can currently be controlled by administration of either of two readily available antivirals. (By the way, don’t forget all that handwashing, covering your mouth when you cough…and handwashing….is pretty helpful as well.)

This type of virus (H1N1) is generically known for its ability to transmit readily from person to person, and not for its inherent lethality. (It is not yet certain, however, if this specific virus will follow that pattern.)

It is possible that a useful vaccine will be available for fall—and it is also possible that this virus will have morphed into a form that will be resistant to the newly developed vaccine.

Closing the borders isn’t logical, facemasks don’t really work, respirators do, but they’re not the sort of “all-day” accessory that a lot of us will enjoy…and avoiding crowded places is what the CDC today feels will work best.

There are a host of unknowns that could change all of this, and there are no predictive tools that can reliably give us reasons to be either sanguine…or scared to death.

All of this can and will change rapidly—sometimes on a day-to-day basis. In the time I spent putting all this together, the WHO raised the alert to Phase 4, then Phase 5, the number of US cases doubled, and the CDC has changed their recommendations for antiviral drug administration twice.

Put it all together, and at the moment things are nowhere near as bad as they could be, with a whole lot of uncertainty ahead.

Warning—commercial message ahead: I’m competing for a Netroots Nation scholarship, and I could use your support. Just head on over to the Democracy for America website, click on the “Add your support” link under “Grassroots Supporters”, and offer a word or two…and with that, thanks very much, and we return you to your regular programming.

On A May-December Romance, Part One, Or, Las Vegas, Segregated

There may be no more recognizable icon of “Retro-Cool” than that photograph of the Rat Pack standing in front of the marquee at The Sands Hotel in Las Vegas.

They’re right there, lined up in front of their own giant names on the marquee: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop.

Night after night they would gather with friends such as Shirley MacLaine, Angie Dickinson, and Johnny Carson, to deliver some of the greatest nightclub performances in entertainment history.

Today’s story, however, focuses on what happened after the show: when four of those five could leave the showroom, drink at the bar, gamble at the casino, and go upstairs to their rooms.

In a town sometimes known as the “Mississippi of the West”, however, one of those five performers could not do any of those things.

Our Journey In Two Parts literally crosses over to the “wrong side of the tracks”, tells a story of segregation overcome, and recounts the six-month history of a Las Vegas hotel that has a 55-year history: the Moulin Rouge.

“…We boast of the freedom enjoyed by our people above all other peoples. But it is difficult to reconcile that boast with a state of the law which, practically, puts the brand of servitude and degradation upon a large class of our fellow-citizens, our equals before the law. The thin disguise of "equal" accommodations...will not mislead anyone, nor atone for the wrong this day done.”

--Justice John Marshall Harlan, from the dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896)

So let’s start with the “literally” part: Las Vegas’ “Westside”, which was the original Vegas townsite, was located across the “Cement Curtain” of railroad tracks from "new" Las Vegas, and it was the only place the black population was allowed to live.

This was not a new situation in Nevada, or unique to Las Vegas: when the Six Companies built what became Hoover Dam in the ‘30s, some say only 30 blacks are estimated to have been employed on the entire project. (Others put the number nearly 50% higher, suggesting 44 out of the workforce of 5000 were black.)

World War II had swollen Las Vegas’ population, and the “new” Vegas—the white Vegas—included the land that would eventually become The Strip. While blacks were allowed to work out of the Westside, beyond that area they could not own property…and they most assuredly could not be guests of the hotels and casinos in which they worked.

In fact, blacks who owned businesses beyond the borders of the Westside were “motivated” to move them there during the ‘40s.

By the early 1950s the Thunderbird, the El Rancho Vegas, and “Bugsy” Siegel’s Flamingo, among others, were drawing big crowds from Los Angeles and points beyond for the floor shows, lounge entertainment, and casino gambling.

With the exception of Josephine Baker’s performance at the El Rancho, blacks were generally not allowed among those crowds; and performers such as Louis Armstrong and Sammy Davis, Jr. were forced to stay in rooming houses or other accommodations on the Westside.

"In Vegas for 20 minutes, our skin had no color. Then the second we stepped off the stage, we were colored again...the other acts could gamble or sit in the lounge and have a drink, but we had to leave through the kitchen with the garbage."

--Sammy Davis, Jr.

At this point, a few words on Rat Pack history (and if you only click on one link in this story, this might be the one…).

Humphrey Bogart was the founder of the first Rat Pack; then called the “Holmby Hills Rat Pack”, after the Los Angeles neighborhood in which he and Lauren Bacall lived following their 1945 marriage. These Rat Packers included Judy Garland, “Swifty” Lazar (still considered one of the most notable agents in Hollywood history), and, eventually, Frank Sinatra.

This members of this group were not “Hollywood Society” types; as a result the Rat Pack spent a lot of its time up in the Holmby Hills…laughing at Hollywood Society over cocktails…making the odd trip to Vegas to spend a night out…and occasionally adjourning to fellow Rat Packers Mike and Gloria Romanoff’s restaurant…where the Hollywood Society types vied to be seen with them.

Upon Bogart’s death in 1957 Sinatra, partly because of his friendship with Bacall, was able to continue the Pack (at one point called “The Clan”; a name that was quickly dropped) with new members (and old friends) Dino, Sammy, Joey Bishop, and Peter Lawford (Not-Yet-President John F. Kennedy’s brother-in-law), while still keeping continuity with Bogart’s Rat Pack. (Some might also describe Sinatra and Bacall’s romantic relationship following Bogart’s death as another part of that continuity.)

We’ve come a long way to get to this point, and we have a long way to go—which makes this a perfect “rest stop” between Parts One and Two.

A Barstow, if you will.

Way back at the beginning, we learned that blacks in Las Vegas really were living on the wrong side of the tracks, that separate was in no way equal; and that even if you were Louis Armstrong, or Lena Horne, or Sammy Davis, Jr., you might be allowed to work in white Las Vegas, but you weren’t going to be allowed to eat there, drink there, or sleep there…and you weren’t going to be allowed to gamble your paycheck away there, either.

In the meantime, Las Vegas was attracting entertainers—black and white—who would chafe at these rules. The group that would become the new Rat Pack was going to be at the heart of that change…and in our next installment, we’ll talk about six months of Las Vegas history that ultimately, despite great resistance, forced that change to happen.