Fervor

It is fun to trash people like Katie Couric, and there’s so much material to work with that not taking advantage of it seems almost irresponsible. Her appearance on her pal Charlie Rose’s show, for example, provided a month’s worth of easy pot shots. It was a half hour of two narcissistic buffoons, stroking each other when it couldn’t be avoided, but mostly stroking themselves. On that show, referring to her vaudevillian performance in Haiti after the earthquake, she proclaimed herself “an excellent journalist.”

Holy mother of God, I thought when I heard that.

But to be fair, of the three entertainers currently earning millions to host the evening news on the major networks, I think she’s the least troubling. In fact, every now and then I find myself thinking she might be pretty good.

One of those times was a few weeks ago, when she said something so eloquent it stopped me in my tracks. She was introducing one of her sappy, overwrought pieces about those ordinary people who do astoundingly extraordinary things because they’re just so darn selfless. I got up off the couch as it came on because even if I’m watching alone, which I usually am, I find those stories embarrassing. So I was standing in the kitchen, spooning the leftover rice into plastic containers, when good old Katie got to talking prior to the story. The term ‘hero’ is so overused, she said, that it has almost lost its meaning. I couldn’t believe my ears. I still can’t.

A new word

The love of my life, really and truly, is the word. Whether spoken or written, but especially written, words are wonderful things. And last week I was introduced to a new one that I really like.

Last week, I decided to clean out my e-mail inbox. One of the mails I came across was from a guy I’d exchanged messages with last summer. He knows a woman I used to work with and was trying to learn about the agency where I worked for seven years because he was applying for a job there (he eventually withdrew from the process because he didn’t like the vibe). So I wrote him last week and asked how he was doing, and he wrote back and asked the same thing, and we had a little chat that suddenly had nothing to do with our jobs but with our families. He despises his brothers as much as I do mine. I like meeting people like this, even if only over e-mail, because I enjoy feeling like I’m right, and the more people I find who agree with me, the more right I feel.

Anyhow, here’s the word he used, woven skillfully into an e-mail about how his family disintegrated after his mother died (if that’s not familiar territory, I’m not sure what is): Primogeniture. I wrote him back and asked him what it meant, but rather than wait for his response I looked it up in the dictionary. It means “The state of being the first-born or eldest child of the same parents,” or, even better, or worse, “The right of the eldest child, esp. the eldest son, to inherit the estate of one or both parents.” As if the word weren’t glorious enough on its own, there was this little gem at the end of his message: “Sent from my iPhone.” That’s some impressive typing, I think.

Seated

Clearly, I am not a designer. Nearly eight years ago I moved into this house and I have yet to really figure it out. There are three main problems. The first is that this house is more windows and doors than walls. I was told by one of my brothers, the architect, who had never seen the house, that I was wrong about that. I’ve never put it to a measuring tape, mainly because I don’t own one, but I am convinced that inch for inch, there are more windows and doors in this house than there are walls, which, as far as problems go, isn’t so bad. The second and third problems are related. The first is that my living room is rectangular rather than square. It took me a few years to realize this, but I grew up in a house of square rooms, and it made an impression. And that leads to the third and biggest problem: for years I could not figure out where to put a table and chairs, so I ate on the couch and made do with the coffee table. That’s not the end of the world, but I’m 44, and I love to eat, and it was all getting to feel a bit like dorm living. Plus I was starting to think of the couch – which is where I eat, read, write, talk on the phone, pay the bills and watch television – as a gigantic, upholstered wheelchair. I was beginning to picture myself disintegrating into a gigantic blob, sitting there through entire seasons, taking care of business. What if I died, sprawled on that damn thing?

My quest to find a table, like most things, went on far longer than necessary. First, I found a perfect spot for it: beside one of the south-facing windows in the living room. It’s close to the kitchen, it’s in a corner, it’s near a window (most of the space in the house is) and it would offer a clear view out the front, where my uninformed, haphazard approach to gardening has created the horticultural rendition of those beaded tapestries hippies hang in doorways.

So I started looking for a table. I had the dimensions in mind, sort of. I looked at Target and Fred Meyer and trolled the IKEA Web site. I talked about it endlessly: I’m looking for a table. I need a table. I know where I want to put the table, but now I need to find a table. I looked at yard sales and I looked at the Goodwill. For the last year and a half everything I’ve seen has been too tall, or too wide, or too narrow.

Until this weekend, when I finally found one. My attic is impressively uncluttered, mostly because I almost never go up there; I simply forgot the table until yesterday afternoon, when I was walking down Glisan Street on my way to meet a friend for lunch and it suddenly and for no apparent reason popped into my mind. As soon as I got home I unscrewed the legs so I could bring it downstairs. I washed and wiped and polished and then put it back together and discovered that it’s nearly perfectly sized. It’s a bit deeper than what I’d been looking for, but I think that’s a good thing because I can sit at it without bumping. It’s has a bit of a 1950s look to it, with curvy, chrome-finished legs and a faintly patterned top with rounded edges. With the table in place I rearranged the rest of the furniture in the living room, which was surprisingly easy. I ate dinner at the table last night as I listened to the rain. And this morning, I got up before the alarm, discovered that the surface of the table is something of a mirror, reflecting the light and the patterns from the window before which it sits. I started the coffee, opened the curtains, made the bed and then sat down at my table for my morning fix and felt, in a very pleasant way, more settled than I have in a long while.

Incident report

Wednesday was stormy around here. It poured for a while, then the winds kicked in. Around 3:00 in the afternoon, after scarfing down a turkey sandwich and a couple of fried eggs with lots of Tabasco, I went out to the back for a smoke. The sky was dark, an orchestra of somber clouds shape shifting close to the horizon to the south. The rain drops sounded like tiny bullets as they hit the corrugated metal sheeting that covers the little area just beyond the back door. The air was warm. The wind went back and forth, roaring itself up to a frenzy, then suddenly dying down to a whisper. Tornado weather, I thought. I took a pleasantly toxic drag from my cigarette and blew smoke rings as I wondered if the next day, Thursday, would be a good day to make soup. I heard a soft shriek, or a muted scream, or a moan perhaps, or something. I turned around and looked through the kitchen and living room and saw that I’d left the front door open. Maybe there was some commotion out front, but for some reason I was convinced that the noise I’d heard came from behind the house. The acoustics are weird in this neighborhood, but I was pretty sure. So I opened the back door, leaned out, and had a look.

There was a body in the area where I’d park my car if I owned one.

There are many reasons I don’t work at the emergency room. The sight of blood, for one thing, but worse, I have a hard time with the non-negotiable aspect of death, its finality. As I walked down the back steps the rain, which had tapered off, resumed in full force. The body was covered for the most part by a filthy and frayed black trench coat. A torn, floppy cowboy hat the color of chewing tobacco spit covered the top of the head and most of the face. I wondered about the life that had wound up in my driveway. And I wondered how much really separates people like me from people whose lives come crashing to an end on a slab of cold concrete. Chance, I thought, perhaps grace. A good dose of good luck. “Holy shit,” I muttered.

“Where the fuck am I?” I was startled, of course. I asked the person I’d believed just moments ago was dead if he was okay, and he groaned. Beyond his initial question he was completely incoherent. He moved his hands, which looked like the scabby, frozen ham hocks at Safeway, but only a little, and that was all he seemed able to manage. Then – and I am not proud of this, not even remotely – I almost instantly switched into another mode. What if this guy had tripped and fallen into my driveway? Was I responsible for his medical bills if he’d injured himself? Could he sue me? Instantly, I’d gone from wondering about someone’s life to wondering whether he was a liability. How on earth does that happen?

As a person whose drinking was completely out of control not that long ago, encounters with people who are blasted are awkward. I’m repulsed by people who are drunk. But the revulsion is almost always immediately superseded by a measure of sympathy. They need help, I think, or, there but for the grace … Then I think I’m being patronizing. Alcohol is poison for me, but that doesn’t mean it is for everyone. At some point during the mental acrobatics, the fear sets in: I could be the person lying on the pavement. It could happen. It’s not out of the realm of possibility.

One of the two cops who showed up after I called the non-emergency line spoke to me in an impatient tone when I said I wasn’t sure if I wanted them to remove the guy from my property. “First of all, it’s a chick, not a man,” he said. “And second, we need a yes or a no from you.” I shifted my weight from one leg to another and said, “Well …” It wasn’t long before I settled on no: I did not want him to remove the woman. To where? I wondered. To the next covered parking spot? To the underside of the nearest bridge? To the covered entryway at one of the churches down the road? The other part of that question, though, was just as hopeless. Did I think this woman was going to take up residence in my driveway? Would I bring her coffee and meals and clean clothing? Would she become my project, my purpose? Would I become hers? I thanked both the cops for coming. They got in the car, turned the flashers on the roof on (to impress me? to intimidate me?) and drove away. And not long after that, I went to the back of the house and peered out the window. In a way that was both a relief and not, the woman was gone.

Let's do some parsing

Every time someone like Sarah Palin or Newt Gingrich starts railing on ”the mainstream, liberal media,” I cringe just a little bit. But today I am here to say – and it pains me greatly – that I am starting to see their point.

While I think Arlen Specter should have been tossed out on his shifty ass after his misogynistic performance during the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas fiasco, which happened in the early 1990s I believe, the voters of Pennsylvania took their time and waited until this week to do it. Good for them. And in Kentucky, one of the tea party guys beat the favored horse in a race more hyped than their drunken derby. And in Arkansas, Blanche Lincoln, who switches positions more quickly than I do, has to do a runoff.

And on the national news – radio and television – the commentators, the analyzers, the experts, the pundits, they are shocked. Parsing is apparently the word of the week in the studios, and they are parsing the living hell out of everything and doing so, in my opinion, in a way that’s completely off the mark.

They keep mentioning the tea party movement, and whenever possible, when someone from the tea party is included in these pieces, it’s someone as inarticulate and drawly as you can imagine. They keep mentioning that this week’s elections are a referendum on President Obama. They keep saying that what the American people really want is for the parties to work together on their behalf.

I think what the American people want is some money. Not that long ago $700 billion was handed out to save the country, if not the world. We were at death’s door, after all. Many of the liberal people I know tell me that this was absolutely necessary, that without it we’d be in seriously sorry shape. I do not speak or think in numbers, so I take it on faith that they’re right. While there’s a lot I don’t know, there are some things I do know, and here are a few of them. Unemployment in this country is still at 10 percent, more or less. Even though we’ve lost millions of gallons of oil, gas prices don’t seem to be going up. My health insurance premium, which I pay myself, is going to go up 13 percent under healthcare reform; it went up 22 percent at the beginning of this year. I know a lot of people who lost their jobs, and most of those people who have managed to find new ones took a hefty pay cut in the process. Plenty of people are still losing their homes. Plenty of people are still burning through their life savings to care for loved ones with dire health issues. Plenty of people in the financial industry enjoyed record profits last year, and along with record profits, record bonuses. As it turns out, the people responsible for seeing that business was conducted properly in the offshore drilling biz were also being paid by the companies they were supposed to be regulating. Are there any major stories that don’t include, sooner or later, some greedy thief dressed up as an elected official busted with his or her hand in the till?

And why exactly is it that the television people continue to dismiss these very basic observations as uniformed, overly emotional, part of the tea party fever? I think it’s because it shatters their narrative, undermines the authority of people like Amy Walter, the editor of the Hotline, who sits in Washington and calls the shots on races – past, present and future – in cities and towns she’s probably never been to. Last night they propped her up on the Newshour, along with some guy from the Washington Post. Amy Walter, through lips stuck somewhere between a grin and a smirk, dismissed the tea party because, according to her, it doesn’t have a clear message articulating what it stands for, and it has no leader.

As much as she bugs me, I have to hand it to Amy Walter for describing perfectly my problem with the Democrats. They had no shortage of messages in 2008. End the war, reform healthcare, empower all of us. Those are great messages, and I do not regret voting for them. And thus far, they have indeed reformed healthcare for the stockholders and executives at health insurance companies (the single payer option was never seriously considered). They’re ending the war by sending 30,000 more people into battle. And they’re making it clear that even people from humble origins can serve on the supreme court as long as they have a degree from an Ivy League school. As for the party’s presumed leader – which is important to people like Amy Walter – well, he and his wise advisors have wised up and are no longer sending him out to stump for candidates who adhere to the same messages. That’s because he has an almost perfect track record on that one: when he shows up in campaign mode, the candidate he’s supporting usually loses.

You're welcome

People who insist on oversimplifying everything horrify me. Just boil everything down, they seem to say, just remove any and all context, just skate through on the blade of what must be the most nonsensical phrase of all time: it is what it is. They have that dreadful magazine, Real Simple, which one of my brothers, prior to his lobotomy, used to call Real Stupid every time it landed on the coffee table compliments of his real silly mother in law. And for the simpletons who cannot read, there’s Judge Judy and the grand dame of simplicity with a twist of sinister, Oprah.

But every now and then I start to think they’re onto something.

Last week was nearly perfect in Portland. The days were warm enough to leave the doors open and the nights cooled down enough for blankets and thick hoodies. In the mornings, I stood before the front window in the living room, holding my first cup of coffee in one hand and the remote in the other, and looked out on a nicely framed view of why I live here: wet, pillowy clouds, veined with vague streaks of gold that would become, in two or three hours, a blue, sunny sky.

Even though I wasn’t meeting my friend until noon, I got off the bus downtown shortly after 10:30 on Friday, which was probably the most glorious of days last week. I was walking south on Sixth Avenue, just a few blocks in from Burnside – I got off way ahead of my stop – when I came to the intersection. As I stood waiting for the light to turn, a guy in the intersection, on a bike, lost control somehow and skidded to an awkward stop, which left him face to face with another biker headed the opposite direction, toward me. The back of the first biker’s calves, I noticed, were webbed with ink. He wore black pants cut off and frayed around the knees and a black shirt with long sleeves. Coming toward me, and toward the biker, was a very attractive man with black hair and one of those impossibly open faces, the kind that can go from charming to heartbreaking in a matter of seconds. He wore a brown tee shirt, faded jeans and dark work boots.

I heard the plastic hit the pavement: the biker’s water bottle flew out of either his hand or out of some sort of holder and landed in the street with the plastic version of a thud. By this time he was leaning forward on his handle bars and talking to the second biker. The very attractive man, who was crossing the street against the light, bent over, picked up the bottle and handed it to biker number one, who held his hand out, accepted the bottle without looking at the guy who had picked it up for him, and kept chatting with biker number two.

“You’re welcome,” said the guy who had picked up the bottle, a move my mother elevated to an art form and that used to embarrass the hell out of me when I was a child. Still, the biker who had been handed the bottle kept talking for a couple of seconds before saying, “Oh yeah, yeah. Thanks, man.” I stood at the corner as the attractive guy walked toward me. We made eye contact. I said, “Wow,” not as a comment on his eyes, which I thought were beautiful, but as an expression of amazement at what I’d just witnessed. So the good Samaritan with nice eyes said to me, not, I believe, in response to what I’d imagined, for a moment, was our connection but in response to the fact that he’d just had to remind an adult to say “thank you” after a perfect stranger bothered to stop and pick up something he’d dropped, “Wow is right.”

Even though I resist simplicity like it’s an infection with long-term ramifications, the whole exchange, which didn’t last for more than a minute, explained so much about the world.

Movies: christian campers, hot visitors

This week I watched two really interesting movies. As I’ve said before, I am not a film critic, and I think my taste in movies, and many other things, is pretty mundane. That said, here’s how I decide if I like a movie, or not, or how much: the clock in my living room sits right beside the television, and the fewer times I glance at it, the better the movie.

The first movie, Jesus Camp, was recommended by a friend. I watched it Saturday night, and I found it so disturbing that I watched it again on Sunday morning. This movie portrays modern Christianity in the worst possible way. It goes something like this: a very tightly wound woman organizes and emcees a summer camp that’s all about Jesus. She assembles these impressionable youngsters near a town called, of all things, Devil’s Lake, and proceeds to scare the living shit out of them. It’s battlefield language, full tilt. Somehow, this movie got more and more appalling with every passing minute. Many of the scenes stood out in my mind. One was when the organizer of the camp yelled at the children about how it’s not okay for them to be lazy and get obese while they just sit around watching – they must do something! She’s not exactly a slender reed in the grass herself. The other was when a group of the young converted travel to Colorado Springs to hear one of the Christian right’s biggest stars do his thing. They even get to go up on stage afterward and visit with the guy. The same guy who was eventually outed by the hustler he’d been getting together with weekly to share sex (the gay kind) and drugs. Ted what’s-his-name’s fall from grace happened after the footage was shot, of course, but it was still entertaining to watch him advise the children and boast about how “fabulous” it is to witness fundamentalist Christians influence supreme court nominations. Watching the adults in this movie inflict their sickness on the youngsters made me wonder why they haven’t been hauled into court and tried for child abuse.

The second movie, called The Visitor, was more subtle, a bit quieter, and, I think, the better of the two. The story goes something like this: a widowed professor goes to New York and discovers a couple of people living in the apartment he and his wife have rented for years. The professor, portrayed in a spectacularly non-verbal way, and the two homesteaders weave themselves into one another’s lives in all sorts of ways, none of which lean on clichés, which I thought was amazing. I was really impressed with the ending of the movie. It was not neat and tidy, it was not resolved and it was not happy. I was also impressed by the title (I’m intrigued by titles for some reason): watching this movie, I realized everyone was a visitor, if only to their own lives. It was interesting to watch this in light of the Arizona situation, but the movie was made a few years ago, and given its subject matter I’m surprised our patriots didn’t raise holy hell about it. Maybe they did, and I wasn’t paying attention. Anyhow, finally, in the spirit of full disclosure. I add movies to my Netflix queue and by the time I watch one I’ve often forgotten why I picked it in the first place, which is fun. But that’s not the case with The Visitor: I added it to my queue because I saw the preview and one of the actors takes hotness to a whole new level. I was not disappointed.

Blazing a trail to all the right places

The concept is simple: if you write the script, it’s not that difficult to declare yourself the only one qualified to perform in the play. And it’s not just for actors. The people who earn lots of money helping people navigate a tax code so complex it’s almost funny while, at the same time, doing their best to make it more complex by the day. Or the marketing people, who invent such mind-numbing dribble that only they can ‘translate’ it for the rest of us. They make lots of money, too, more than the CPAs.

But today I want to talk about lawyers. I know a few lawyers, and there are a few lawyers I like, but I loathe the profession. We have this system, according to the history books I’ve read, built on the concept that the government is by the people and for the people. It doesn’t say anything about lawyers as I recall, although I haven’t read the constitution lately. So where did all the snotty, stuck up and outrageously expensive law schools come into the picture? Speaking of outrageously expensive, what’s up with legal fees? If our society is based on participatory governance why is it considered so ill-advised to represent yourself in court? And why does it routinely cost people and their families their life savings to avoid doing so? Well, probably because the lawyers said so, that’s why. Lawyers, in my experience, look out for other lawyers. They write their opinions to one another. They play fancy games with one another while lives hang in the balance. They’ve managed to degrade and pervert the constitution into something that only they can understand. It’s a strategy to be applauded, really, if self-preservation is your thing.

On that note, it’s interesting to hear the braying about Obama’s latest court nominee, Elena Kagan, having no judicial experience. That’s her most redeeming feature, in my opinion. I applaud the president for nominating someone who has never worn a costume to work that’s designed to intimidate people and slammed a gavel around. Otherwise, I think Elena Kagan is another tired byproduct of the same sad state of affairs. I’m waiting for the day when someone who has never been to law school has a seat on the court. I think majoring in philosophy would provide good background. What about an investigative reporter or two? What about a teacher? Why must they all be lawyers?

But back to Elena Kagan: After his truly painful attempt at baseball uniform humor, the president proclaimed her a trailblazer. Really? Of what? She was the first woman dean of the Harvard Law School, certainly one of the most snob-trodden institutions in the country, a position she held before even turning 50, which says to me that connections are far more important to her than convictions. Her entire background, to me anyhow, seems like a barely disguised organizational chart of favors granted and called in. She hired a bunch of conservatives at Harvard, because apparently compromising is what liberal people do best these days. She did get into a bit of controversy by not allowing the military to recruit on campus, but as best I can tell it had nothing to do with her initiative and everything with her carrying out orders from some higher point of authority. Like most conformists, she’s been appointed to one thing and another. If she is a lesbian, the fact that she hasn’t said so is yet another letdown in my book. The conservative talkies this week have said many times that she was somehow involved with Goldman Sachs. I haven’t looked that up but if it’s true, well, I guess that’s a good snapshot of Obama’s notion of reform, which seems to be his favorite word.

She was a member of the Clinton crew.

She did, in her defense, as solicitor general argue against the court’s recent ruling to give its corporate sponsors the same first amendment rights as the rest of us. She lost, unfortunately, but, as all the pro-Kagan people have been saying, over and over and over again, she really did hit it off with the justices, engaging them in an energetic back-and-forth about the case. I guess if she’s good enough to converse with the gods, she should probably become one, blazing her trail and all.

Friday night pollution

In a way it was a ridiculous exercise. On Friday night I attempted to watch the inaugural episode of Need to Know on PBS with an open mind. That’s impossible for me for two reasons. First, any show that happens along on the same night that used to be occupied by Bill Moyers is doomed before the opening credits. And second, I find Jon Meacham, one of the hosts, appalling.

That said, I tuned in on Friday night, and I think the show is pure crap. Fancy sets, lots of graphics, sort of slicked up delivery. In introducing the show, the hosts boasted about their intention to “turn up the lights rather than turning up the heat.” Well, they hit the mark on that one. The first piece was on the oil spill, and they revealed – are you ready for this? – that Senator Mary from Louisiana once accepted $75,000 from BP. I almost fell off the couch. And during an interview, one of the hosts, a network flunky from ABC I believe, held her hand up like a traffic cop and said, “Wait a minute … you rolled your eyes when I asked you that.”

Riveting.

What bothered me the most about the show, though, is this: it forced me to rethink the value of ‘social media,’ and for that I suppose I owe thanks to Jon Meacham. In addition to bringing Newsweek down to the level of a romance novel, Jon Meacham wrote a book about Andrew Jackson, arguably one of the more interesting presidents we’ve had, and for that he was awarded a Pulitzer. That’s great. Seriously, it’s impressive. But at the same time, given his penchant for insider-ness, my guess is that his buddies had something to do with that. And besides, it’s best not to succumb to prize blindness: Janet Cooke won a big one once upon a time.

Why is the editor of Newsweek hosting a public affairs show on PBS? Why is the guy whose magazine put W. on its cover numerous times before he was even nominated by his party now the face of what some of us still believe – naively – to be an alternative to the network nonsense? Am I seriously supposed to trust a guy who thinks Obama, who is the president of the United States, “really needs to be more emotional” to say anything that goes beyond platitudes? A guy who turns to Robert Rubin, of all people, to pen the column in his magazine about how we can get out of the financial crisis? Who goes on talk shows to break it down for all us little folk, discussing the pros and cons of politicians, including the president, as if they’re contestants on American Idol?

My guess that the answer to these questions is simple: the marketing team, the strategists, the new media people have finally gotten their greedy, pompous little hands on PBS’ Friday night lineup. And that’s what makes me think that maybe my dismissal of social media is foolish. Maybe the social media stuff exists because people can no longer gag on the garbage spewed forth by Jon Meacham. If people don’t know any better, it’s understandable that we’d read Robert Rubin’s wisdom about how to repair a financial system he helped ruin and leave it at that. Maybe the social media frenzy is a manifestation of the fact that people are tired of being winked at by people like Jon Meacham and his ilk. Maybe people actually want to know things. God, that’s hopeful, I thought. I turned the show off after about 20 minutes and went to bed, but next Friday night, after Gwen Ifill signs off, I’m going to turn the television off again and then I’m going to do something to honor Bill Moyers, the staff of NOW and, in a twisted way, Jon Meacham: I’m going to set up a Twitter account.

Perks

If you ever find yourself doubting the sheer power of PR, come on out to Oregon and get a load of our biggest, most expensive problem: the state worker. We hate them. We hate them so much we don’t even need to stop and think about why we hate them, and that’s because the script is so clear, so simple, so repeated and recited and reiterated that we live and breathe it as automatically as we turn on the lights when the sun goes down.

It goes something like this. State workers are lazy. They do not start working a minute before their shift begins, and they cease any and all work-related activities the instant that shift ends. That’s because of the union, of course. They don’t help anyone. If you have a problem and your quest to resolve it leads to a telephone call to a state office, well, sorry about that. They earn outrageous salaries that continue to rise while the rest of us suffer through the recession. It’s their retirement funding, in fact, that tethers the entire state of Oregon to fiscal failure. Those state workers are getting such an amazing deal that it cripples the rest of the state.

The private sector, on the other hand, now that’s where our heroes live. The private sector innovates. The private sector creates jobs. The private sector pays taxes endlessly and heroically, its love for all things Oregon so deep and true, its devotion to the beautifully independent people of the state so touching I almost cry just thinking about it. The private sector sacrifices, while the state workers pad their piggy banks and punch the clock.

Here’s the message: it’s so unfair.

And here’s my take on it: it’s so untrue, so prone to messaging and talking points it’s almost laughable. One of Ronald Reagan’s most notable accomplishments was the degradation of government employees. Oregon, smugly ‘progressive’ Oregon would do him proud. I worked for the state for five years in the last century; I was a recent transplant at the time and the experience blew my mind. In numerous ways, those of us who worked for Portland State University were taught to apologize for being public employees. The result of this crippled mindset, I thought, was that the aura of embarrassment permeated the entire university, which prompted me to come up with this tag line for the school: PSU – Nobody’s First Choice. Unfortunately, the institution’s identification with the narrative extended to the classrooms, where I thought the caliber of teaching was mediocre almost without exception. My point of comparison, of course, is unfair: I was fortunate enough to grow up in a community where people understood that education isn’t free, so they paid for it. Lucky me.

For the last decade I’ve worked in what we like to call the private sector. That’s where we get tax breaks for shipping jobs not only out of the state but out of the country as well. That’s where we pay our friends half a million to lead seminars on “leadership development,” and then quietly fire many of the attendees. That’s where we get tax breaks for building hideous office developments in areas that cannot be reached without a car. And that’s where, finally, we pay government relations pros some pretty fancy salaries to perform their whispery brand of magic behind the scenes. Government contracts, anyone? Or, in the private sector’s preferred parlance, government partnerships?

Which brings me, unfortunately, to Ted Wheeler. When the state treasurer died earlier this year, he was appointed to fill the position, and he has decided that he wants the job permanently. Ted Wheeler, who I assume identifies himself as a Democrat, was the former chair of the Multnomah County Commission. He loves Twitter and Facebook. As if the horses were just unhitched from the covered wagons last week, in a way that’s simultaneously endearing and infuriating, people in Oregon like to talk about how long their family has lived here. On his Web site, Ted Wheeler brags about being a 5th generation Oregonian. In a way he undercuts himself by then bragging about his degrees, which were earned way, way beyond the Oregon state line. But in another, probably more impactful way he really plays to the home crowd: he’s attacking state workers, running commercials trumpeting the fact that even though he’s only been on the job for a few months, he’s already taking a tough stance on state employees and their “perks.” I can think of a number of ways to describe that cheap tactic. Sleazy is one. Exploiting the beat-up psyche of thousands of people is another. My most accurate description of it, though, is this: even though he’ll probably win, I plan to vote for whomever is running against Ted Wheeler.

Let's reinvent journalism

There was another television casualty on Friday night: it was the last episode of NOW. I’m lukewarm on that program, mainly because of one of the hosts, whose sureness of voice and vision grates on my last nerve. But, the show does tackle some topics that the rest of the news industry ignores, confronting officials with cameras and microphones, officials who, on more than one occasion, have run for cover. The program is, or was, a half hour of what I consider investigative journalism, and to me that’s a very worthwhile thing.

Unfortunately, the CEO of PBS does not agree with me. Here’s what she had to say when she announced, sort of, the demise of NOW in a press release titled “Digital Media Platform to Support Innovation”:

Journalism doesn’t need simply a rescue: it needs a reinvention … Forty percent of Americans are participating in the creation of news by posting stories to Facebook, highlighting stories on Twitter and debating the issues of the day through dueling YouTube videos. News has become a social experience and journalism must consider those implications … The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) today announced funding for a major journalism initiative that will increase original local reporting capacity in seven regions around the country, and a planning project to develop an open information architecture to harness the collective power of the public media network.

That’s the primest cut of bullshit I’ve seen dumped on the platter in quite a while. Personally, I am so looking forward to the day when I simply surrender and no longer want to hurl heavy objects through large windows – my own, by the way – when I hear vacuous people regurgitating social media hype words to propel their agenda of mediocrity. Don’t the terms ‘reinvent’ and ‘innovative’ cancel one another? What exactly is ‘information architecture’? And YouTube and Twitter are part of reinventing journalism? Who raised these people? And when are they going to go away? Soon, I hope. Speaking of architecture, the shoddy construction of the release is only the second most offensive thing about it to me: the most offensive part is its familiarity. Clearly, it’s the handiwork of the marketing team. It’s the oldest trick in the PR playbook: ‘announce’ something, usually a discontinuation or cancellation (of warranties, for example) by burying it beneath a bunch of nonsense about something new, which is inevitably in response to some sort of new market demand, some sort of new reality, something so riveting that it inspires them straight into their laboratories for some good old-fashioned reinvention. Bless them.

Which brings us, of course, to the empty air time left behind by NOW and Bill Moyers. PBS is rolling out a new show called Need to Know. The host of NOW, in a wonderfully pissy way, I thought, wrote on the show’s Web site simply “I’ll be watching.” I will as well, and I’ll wait to use the show as my personal piñata until I’ve seen it. In Portland, however, this show won’t come on until 10. At 9 – Bill Moyers’ slot – we will all get to watch Lark Rise to Candleford, a series based on novels set in 19th century Oxfordshire. I am not a member of the local PBS affiliate, OPB, but if I were, I’d cancel the membership for that reason alone.

Finely honed outrage

At first I believed my imagination was playing with me. Back at the end of 2008, as I realized, much to my surprise, that I was indeed powerless over my addiction to television, I was astounded at the vocal and often facial sneer that went along with the word “populism.” The hot shots went on program after program after program, and I listened, addled. There are people refusing to vacate their foreclosed homes. What a bunch a populists. People are pissed off because their 401k accounts are worth 67 percent less than they were six months ago. Populists! And look, there is a palpable degree of outrage over the bonuses handed out on Wall Street after those companies were bailed out by the taxpayers. Well, that’s just populist sentiment. I was shocked at the ease with which the word flew out of the mouths of those in the know, and I was appalled at the condescension. This, I thought then and think now, is how right wingers like Sarah Palin amass a following that numbers in the millions.

So it was in that spirit that I tuned in to the final episode of Bill Moyers Journal on Friday night. He is not being forced out, he said: he is in his mid 70s and he’s got things to do. Good for him, I think, but really, what a terrible thing for the rest of us. I was trying to think of why exactly I am so fond of Bill Moyers, and I came up with a few reasons. I think he’s intelligent. I think he doesn’t have to shout at people on the air to make a point. I think he doesn’t resort to the cheap sort of sentimentality of churches and uniforms that have become standard because he’s better than that. I think he has people on who are happy to call people criminals regardless of how much financial power they have. I think he has good taste in people. And I think, finally, that he reminds me an awful lot of my father, who died, strangely enough, right about the same time I reconfigured my Friday night routine. I guess I do have daddy issues after all.

And on Friday evening, daddy delivered: the subject of Bill Moyers’ final show was populism. Not in the snide, patronizing way, but like this: the populist movement is one of the finer monuments to this country’s ability to think and act independently of the brainwashing that seems to go hand in hand with financial power. It’s the populists, let’s not forget, who we can thank for granting women the right to vote and the direct election of senators, among many other accomplishments. Started in the 1870s in Texas, the people who came to be known as populists began to talk to one another about how they could work together, pool resources for the benefit of the many rather than the few. What a bunch of simple-minded dumbshits. They were disempowered by the marketing team, ultimately, and they continue to be shut down today – Bill Moyers showed a montage of the comments made about populists on national news shows, and it was even more snide than I recalled. But there are little pockets of it that persevere, and they were the guests for Bill Moyers’ final show: There is a group in Iowa, there’s John Hightower, and there’s Barry Lopez, an author who lives in Oregon, who believes people have an incredible amount of personal power, which he’s discovered by concentrating on the spiritual interior of the language. Before bidding us farewell, Bill Moyers confessed that he has a bias: he thinks the populists, not the banks and their PR people, have the right idea. He thinks their courage and conviction will move us forward more reliably than the people whose power and motivation is linked directly to their net worth. He confessed that he admires many of them for their “finely honed outrage.” Which is the perfect way to describe what I admire about Bill Moyers, and what I’ll miss most about sharing Friday nights with him.