Tom DeLay Meets Jesus

Shortly after Tom DeLay was struck and killed by a runaway golf cart as he played the 18th hole at The Congressional, and as his immortal soul floated toward the light, it stopped at a crossroads where he was met by Jesus.

“Hello, Tom,” Jesus said.

“Who the hell are you?” muttered the Hammer.

“I am Jesus, the Son of God, Tom,” was the reply.

“No shit,” he said, extending the glad hand with the same smile he had in his mug shot. “Gladta meetya.”

“It is time to take stock of your actions in life, Tom,” Jesus said.

“I did pretty damn good, didn’t I? Except for those wimp-assed bastards who messed with me at the end,” Delay said proudly.

“Did you lie, Tom?” asked Jesus.

“Well, it takes a lot of guts to be a man in my position,” came the reply.

“So that’s a yes,” Jesus said, marking it down.

“And did you tell people that you were working on behalf of God, and in His name?”

“Yes, of course. I always spoke highly of you and told the people that you’d do the same as me, if you were me,” said DeLay

“Do you think I would make children work in sweatshops in Saipan like you did when you blocked reform there?” asked Jesus.

“Uh, well I had to take care of my friends, you know.”

“I will ask you again, do you think I would make children work in sweatshops in Saipan like you did when you blocked reform there, and force them to have abortions as you did?”

“Where’d you hear that, from Huffington or some other Godless Communist place?” said the Hammer getting angry.

“Tom, are you getting angry with me? Do you know me?” said Jesus. “Do you know what this crossroads is that you’ve come to?”

“No, I don’t,” the Hammer said, bristling.

“Well, Tom you’ve done a bad job representing me on Earth. I think the only thing left to do is to teach you a lesson.”

“Whad’ya mean?”

“Here’s a surprise for you, Tom. I have been talking this over with several friends of mine, including Buddha, Moses and Mohammed and we’ve come up with this. We’re going to send you back to earth, to Texas.”

“Well, thankya, Jesus!”

“Not so fast, Tom,” Jesus replied. “We’re sending you back as a roach, to Sugarland, and we’ve arranged for your extermination company to be scheduled to visit the kitchen you’re going to infest.”

“Just a damn minute,” said the Hammer.

“You will escape a couple of times, running in sheer terror as your company tries to spray you out of existence, but finally your time will come. When that happens, I’ll be here waiting and we can have another conversation, Tom,” said Jesus.

“Wait, wait, holdonhere,” cried Delay.

And with that he was gone, back to earth and his next destiny.


This also appears on huffingtonpost.com

D For Danger

Sometimes being “out here” in Oregon adds a certain perspective. East Coasters, especially in, on and around the Beltway, or in New York City, because they’re a part of the machine (or think they are), don’t get quite as alarmed as others. Or as alarmed they should be.

The incremental takeover of the powers of government by the executive branch has gotten totally out of hand.

Look at this: The President of the United States has decided he is above the law. Is there any disagreement with that?

He thinks he can ignore any existing law he chooses, violate the Constitution he has sworn to uphold, and by adding a paragraph at the end of any particular law he’s signing, he can nullify that law.

Just a minute, here. We’re allowing this to happen before our very eyes.

This isn’t funny. This isn’t censurable. This is impeachable. This is criminal. This is profoundly anti-American. It is what dictators do.

We’re in deep shit. Deeper than we’ve ever been in before.

We’ve let them steal an election (two really). We’ve let them start a war. We’ve let them bankrupt our country. We’ve let them ship our jobs to other countries. We’ve allowed religious fanatics to infect every aspect of our lives.

We’ve stood by and let this happen. Why did we do that? Because of a few terrorists? Does this make sense to you? Does anything make sense?

And if we try to vote them out of office, we’ve allowed them to place voting machines that give bogus results in our polling places.

What's wrong with us?

Why are the Democrats complicit? Ok, not Conyers and Feingold and Dean. Where are the so-called liberals from so-called progressive Oregon?

It’s easy to see why V For Vendetta is so popular. But as articulately as it laid out the logical conclusion of what’s transpiring in Washington right now, the Masque-ex-machina was a convenient savior. It didn’t require much action by the public, except putting on some masks and walking downtown.

Wasn’t the first American Revolution fought against a King George? Is that what’s required of us?

2006 is the tipping point. Which side are you on?

The Night I Went To Bush's Resignation With Lewis Lapham

I fell asleep with C-Span on my TV (works better than Ambien), and a copy of Harper’s Magazine on the table next to me, opened to Editor-In-Chief Lewis Lapham’s piece on the case for impeaching George W. Bush.

I began to dream.

I was at a cocktail party on the upper West Side of Manhattan with other journalists. They had all read my book. That’s how I know it was a dream.

I was drinking some wine and talking with Ellen Barkin (always in my dreams) who had been invited to the party by Cal Ripken (for some reason) when Lapham walked up to us and slapped me on the back saying, “Tom, I’ve never laughed as hard as when I read your book last night. I bought fifty of them to give to my staff.” (Did I mention that this is NOT a wet dream?)

I told him I loved his impeachment piece. He moved closer to me and said, “We have before us in the White House a thief who steals the country's good name and reputation for his private interest and personal use; a liar who seeks to instill in the American people a state of fear; a televangelist who engages the United States in a never-ending crusade against all the world's evil, a wastrel who squanders a vast sum of the nation's wealth on what turns out to be a recruiting drive certain to multiply the host of our enemies. In a word, a criminal—known to be armed and shown to be dangerous.”

I nodded.

But then he said, “Tom, I want you to come with me to the White House, Bush is resigning in twenty mintues.”

You don’t question time or travel in dreams so I said, “Love to, Lew.” (Do people call hm “Lew?”)

All at once we were standing in the same room where Nixon gave the farewell address to his staff on August 9, 1974, the day before my birthday. Lapham whispered, “Nice birthday present, huh?”

I chuckled and looked around the room.

It wasn’t only Bush’s resignation but a combination of Nixon’s and Bush’s. Cheney was still old. Rumsfeld was young but still pasty. Pat Buchannan was there and gave me a sharp punch to the kidney. Lapham had my back and told Buchanan he’d never be published in Harper’s again.

What a guy, that Lew.

There was one First Lady. I couldn’t tell which one she was but she had hair like Condi, lips like Pat, and the Xanax/Valium eyes of well, both Laura and Pat.

Henry Kissinger sidled up to me and said, “You know Tom, the President is a man awake in his own nightmare.” I said, “I know how he feels.”

As Jeff Gannon was giving Bob Woodward a lap dance, all the heads turned when a combination of Scott McLellan and Ron Ziegler walked in wearing a full nun’s habit and saying, “Ladies and gentlemen the Presidents of the United States.”

The Justices of the Supreme Court ushered him/them in singing “She's Lump, she's Lump. She's in my head. She’s Lump, she’s Lump. She might be dead”

I turned to Lapham and asked, “Were you ever into grunge?” He gave me a stern look and said, “Nah. I’m strictly old school rap. I used to wear a big watch around my neck at home.”

Bush/Nixon stood at a podium before a wall decorated, as with all his appearances, with a backdrop. This one read, “FTW” over a Harley-Davidson sheild. He had a five o’clock shadow. He stepped up to the mic, hunched his shoulders forward, looked around and said, “Who the hell are you people?”

From behind the curtain, a small voice said, “They work here, Mr. Presidents, they work for you.”

“Well, how the hell was I supposed to know, Turd Blossom,” he said, turning slightly to the left and behind him. “I never did too much work around here.” And then he laughed the Bush laugh, “Neh-neh-neh-neh.” There was never a Nixon laugh.

He turned to the crowd and said, “I think the record should show that this is one of those spontaneous things that we always arrange whenever the President comes in to speak, and it will be so reported in the press.” Then turning to me, he said, “Thanks for coming, Tom. You have to call it as you see it. But on our part, believe me, it is spontaneous. You believe me, don’cha?”

He turned away before I could answer and spread his arms out in that patented Bushian flex, started moving his neck and gave a “V” with both hands.

He continued, “You are here to say goodbye to us, and we don't have a good word for it in English -- the best is ah ravar, uh revere, oh reservoir, oh shit, whatever. Don’t have to worry about that stuff anymore, do I?” Harriet Miers, Condi and the two Bush daughters…or were they the Nixon daughters? They must have been the Bush daughters because I saw them chug the rest of their Jagers. All four of them held signs over their heads, one letter per sign, which collectively read, “L-O-L-Z.”

They squealed like they were in the audience at TRL.

Bush changed from wearing a gray business suit to wearing a white jumpsuit with a wide red belt and said, “Thankyaverrmush.”

Women screamed. Several fainted.

Instantly Bush was wearing a red-striped running outfit. He looked wistfully out to the crowd and said, “I look around here, and I see so many on this staff that, you know, I should have been by your offices and shaken hands, and I would love to have talked to you and found out how to run things around here but I just haven't given a shit. I mean you’ve gotten your share of the loot, haven’t you?”

John Stewart sat in the corner crying, bleeding from a bite in his neck administered by Michael Chertoff, who was standing nearby smiling and slowly licking his bloody lips.

At the podium, Bush was wearing a little boy’s private school uniform and beginning to cry. “Nobody will ever write a book, probably, about my mother. Jeb has the rights all tied up. My mother was a saint when she sobered up for about fifteen minutes in 1963 and apologized for locking me in up the basement for a month. And I think of her, two boys and how she taught us how to turn everything we touched to shit. Yes, she will have no books written about her, especially by you Lapham. Don’cha be going all new-cue-lar on me Lew,” he said with that patented Bush snicker.

At that moment, the real Nixon burst through the doors and said “Wait just a goddamned minute here. I may have been a lot of things but one thing I wasn’t was stupid. And I could pronounce the word nuclear for chrissake. New-clee-ar, you hear that you moron? Buchannan, are you responsible for this crap?”

Pat Buchannan spoke up, “No way, Mr President. In our day we were crooks but we knew how to run things. Let’s go kill a bottle of single malt and leave these amatures be.” They walked out hand in hand.

Bush continued, “Remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. I guess they’re all winners then, cuz I hate their goddamned guts. But then I win too, don’t I?” Turning back to the curtain he whispered, “Don’t I Turd Blossom.”

“Get this over with, asshole,” came the reply

“And so, we leave with high hopes, in good spirit, and with deep pockets, and with very much gratefulness in our hearts for the amount of money we were able to spread around among our friends.

“I’d like to announce with great sadness that I’ve accepted the resignation of Vice President Dick Cheney”

Cheney wheeled around and shot Lapham in the neck, face and chest with his shotgun. “It’s all your fault, you commie bastard,” the now-former Vice President said with a belch.
“Nice shot, daddy,” Bush cried out, laughing.

He continued, “And so before I leave, as my last act as your President, I’d like to introduce your new President and Vice President. Please welcome The President of the United States Tom DeLay, and the Vice President of the United States, Katherine Harris.”

I woke up. When I regained my senses I thought, “whenever I think something can’t happen with these Republicans, something worse always does.”

I’m staying tuned.

And, thanks for buying my book, Lew. At least in my dream.

This also appears on huffingtonpost.com

 

Oregon's Death With Dignity Numbers Don't Tell the Whole Story

Numbers tell some of the story. Thirty-eight people took their own lives, legally in 2005 under Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act, according to figures just released from the Oregon State Department of Human Services, which keeps tabs on who gets the lethal doses and why they take them or not take them.

That’s thirty-eight deaths out of the sixty-four prescriptions written. Of those who got the prescriptions and didn’t take the medication, fifteen died from their illnesses and seventeen were still alive. Six people who had gotten their prescriptions during 2004 died in 2005 from the medication. Those numbers have been stable since 2002, one way or the other.

They mostly had cancer. They averaged seventy years of age.

There are more numbers, but that’s all they are, just numbers.

Unless you’ve been at the bedside of one of those numbers, as I have, you can only imagine what a blessing the Oregon Death With Dignity Act has been to the handful of suffering souls (one out of every 800 deaths in Oregon) who have had their final life decision in their own hands.

The opponents of the Oregon law warned against all kinds of horrors. They said thousands would be rushing to Oregon to take advantage of the law. That the law would be used to euthanize the disabled, against their will. That the law would be used by family members wishing to rid themselves of the expense of caring for their dying relations. That people would use the law indiscriminately and there would be lines around the block for prescriptions.

None of what the fear-mongers warned came true. The biggest opponent, the Catholic Church was also the biggest donor to the failed effort to knock down the Oregon law in the two ballot initiatives. The fundamentalist-right and the Republicans were right behind them. Does it seem familiar, the use of fear to persuade? It’s the most pervasive tool among those who wish to control other people’s behavior.

We are all afraid of death. Even if you believe that there’s a benevolent father waiting for you in the clouds, or if you believe that there’s a party of virgins-gone-wild as your reward, nobody wants to die. Nobody except those near death, who wish to end their suffering while they still have a little dignity left. That’s why it’s called Death With Dignity.

That’s how Robert Schwartz died, with dignity, surrounded by his friends and family. An AIDS patient, he was the subject of a two year project by me and co-director Greg Bond to document how one person used the law. He died wearing our microphone.

Every year, when the numbers come out I feel it is my duty in, one form or another, to find a public forum to remind people that each of these numbers is a person who wanted to live, but who also wanted to control the end of life. Each has a separate story. Each took the decision excruciatingly seriously when it came to the time to take the medication.

I watched Robert Schwartz chose two dates for his own death, and then change his mind. I watched him chose to have his enlarged spleen removed so that he might rid himself of some of the pain so that he might live a few more months.

So when you read these numbers, take a moment to consider what each of these people experienced. And then think about your own death for a moment. It isn’t easy, but it’s something you’re going to experience, no matter how indestructible you may feel at this moment.

Several other states are considering Death With Dignity laws, using the Oregon law as a model. The opponents will trot out the same old arguments, but mostly what they’re really saying, underlying their statements, is that their opposition is based on their religion. That’s fine for them. It’s not fine for the rest of us.

Fighting for personal rights and against religious tyranny is a fact of life. It has always been and will always be. The use of religious coercion is a fundamental human flaw, but it has nothing to do with how I wish to choose the manner of my own death.

I’m lucky to live in Oregon.

This also appears on huffingtonpost.com

Am I Headed For the Gulag?

I’m wondering, given the talent and efficiency of the Bush Administration, if I’ll be prevented from flying the next time I travel. Whether I’ll be cuffed and shoved into the back of a black van, flown to a foreign country where I’ll be tortured, raped and possibly murdered because an international terrorist data base found out that I wrote this headline:
"WOMAN USES TAXIS FOR TOILETS: ONE-WOMAN WAVE OF DEFECATION TERRORISM."

That headline appears in my book, “Rabid Nun Infects Entire Convent and Other Sensational Stories From a Tabloid Writer” (Villard/Random House), a collection of totally fabricated stories I wrote for the supermarket tabloid, The Sun.
Wrapping around those stories are quasi tell-all boo-hoos from me about how I made up all the stories and how it drove me nuts thinking of all these horrible things.

I’ve had pretty good media run since the book came out around Thanksgiving; a piece in USA Today, a lot of radio (Public Radio’s “Whad’Ya Know” sold a huge amount of books). I got up at 2:30 am PT to be funny at 3:30 am PT for East Coast radio several times. I did lots of morning zoos, a few with hosts who would rather fart than talk. Most recently, Joe Frazier of the Associated Press did a piece on me and the book.

Have you ever Googled yourself? Of course you have. I have tried to keep tabs on various places the book has landed over the past couple of months. I also have never tired of seeing my own name in print. But last night, when I was rooting around, trying to find out how many papers had picked up the AP story, I found that the story was up on a website called MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base http://www.tkb.org/NewsStory.jsp?storyID=104906 .

MIPT stands for Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, an Oklahoma City based outfit which describes itself as “a non-profit organization dedicated to preventing terrorism on U.S. soil or mitigating its effects.”
They go on to say that “MIPT was established after the April 1995 bombing of the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, and it is funded through the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Grants and Training (G&T).

Remember now, I had clearly stated in my book that I had made up all the stories. The cover even says, “All Made Up by Tom D’Antoni.”
MIPT continues, “The United States Congress directed MIPT to conduct ‘research into the social and political causes and effects of terrorism’ through our automated information systems and to ‘serve as a national point of contact for antiterrorism information sharing among Federal, State and local preparedness agencies, as well as private and public organizations dealing with these issues.’ MIPT firmly believes that the accurate dissemination of knowledge on terrorism is a critical ingredient for combating terrorism.”

Their “accurate dissemination of knowledge on terrorism” in my case was catching Joe Frazier’s story which contained that headline about a woman who was crapping in London taxicabs for fun or for some other reason I didn’t specify. I also didn’t specify exactly which terror outfit she was working for, if any. I first wrote the story in the mid 1980’s when terrorism had a different meaning to Americans, and had not yet been used as a political tool to frighten us into voting for idiots who would wind up turning the world upside down and the nation’s population into thralls of the corporations.

Matter of fact, the only place terrorism is mentioned is in the headline. The story lead was a quote from the cabbie, “’It was a hell of a tip, brother.’” She had run out on the fare. Later, the driver told the cops “I jump right out of the cab and open the back door and there it is, right in the middle of the back seat, a whole pile of it. The police came over and he looks in the back and sees it and says, ‘How the hell did this get here?’

“I tell him about the bird who ran out on her fare. He says, ‘Did she have a dog with her?

“I say no, it must have been her.

“He says, ‘Are you serious?’

“I say there ain’t no other explanation, sir. I saw her moving around a lot and fixing her clothes, but when you’ve been a cabbie as long as I’ve been, unless they’re trying to rob you, I don’t pay that much attention to what goes on back there. I just try to give them a good ride and collect my money. Anyways, you don’t figure somebody’s gonna take a…well, do what she did in the back seat of your cab.”

This, THIS stupid story has put me on MIPT’s “Terrorism In the News” section. We can only assume that the story has been forwarded to the proper authorities in Washington, at NSA, to Langley, Homeland Security and other similar points of interest.

MIPT defines terrorism thus, “The term ‘terrorism’ means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.”

I’m finding it difficult to reconcile this definition with a tabloid story about woman taking repeated dumps in London taxicabs.

Accompanying that story in the same chapter is “Bag Lady’s B.O. Kills Five People On Bus,” also mentioned in the AP story. Even though people die, there is no mention of terrorism, although who’s to say she wasn’t in the employ of Osama? I say. I invented her.

The MIPT “knowledge base” (laughing here) describes itself as, “is the one-stop resource for comprehensive research and analysis on global terrorist incidents, terrorism-related court cases, and terrorist groups and leaders.”

Like the woman who was crapping in taxicabs, from a story I admitted in my book as having made up, that the AP said I made up, that has now probably put me on watch lists.

If I disappear, you’ll know why.

This also appears on huffingtonpost.com

Yes, Rabid Nun Merchandise

No, I'm not kidding. Be the first in your neighborhood. Be the only in your neighborhood, or in the universe.
Do what it says. Read the book. Buy some stuff. Act stupid.
http://www.cafepress.com/rabidnun

Why Do We Fight? Whom Do We Fight Is a Better Question

If I were an American soldier in Iraq I don’t think I’d know exactly who to shoot. Which side am I on? I guess I would shoot at whoever is shooting at me, but who isn’t shooting?
Is everybody who isn’t a Kurd my enemy?
We’ve got the Shia armies (conveniently called “militias” in our media—making them sound somewhat less like a military force and more like a police department). We’ve got the Sunnis and the remains of Saddam’s army. We’ve got Al Qaeda. They’re all fighting and the American soldiers are somewhere in the middle of it.
Do we protect the Shias from the Sunnis? The Sunnis from the Shia? Everybody from Al Qaeda? The Kurds from everybody including the Turks? Or do we just guard the American bureaucrats and the cash they brought with them and try not to get blown up while driving around?
The Bush administration been unsuccessful at everything it has tried in Iraq with the exception putting their hands in our pockets, taking out our money and handing it over to their friends with a smile. Oh, and bankrupting America. Why is it a surprise that thousands of FEMA-bought house trailers sit empty in a field in Arkansas. I could go on and on.
The tide is rising against the Republicans. Even the weaknesses of the Democrats may not be able to stem it.
The problem is that when faced with defeat, despots often destroy everything they are able. What we can look for in the remaining years of this administration is too awful to imagine. And every time one tries to imagine, the next day’s headlines prove our nightmares to be real.
There’s no place for the American military in Iraq’s civil war. There’s no place for them in Iraq, period. They are there to protect what?
I wonder if Bush found out about the escalation in the Iraq civil war by seeing it on TV, like he found out about the UAE port deal?
These are the dark ages and there’s no escape. Fifty Daily Shows won’t make this funny.

This also appears on huffingonpost.com

White House Plans More Such Deals After the Port Protection Plan Contract is Signed

The White House announced today that several transactions are in the works that are similar to the signing of the deal to make the Emir of the United Arab Emirates protector of some important American ports.

In the first, a government-owned North Korean firm has been hired to supply guards for several American sites where nuclear weapons are both stored and manufactured. A White House spokesperson said he was happy to have them aboard because they have done such a good job protecting their own nuclear facilities.

In fact, he added, the United States is getting a bargain because the workers will receive minimum wages, tripling what they make in Korea. As an added payment the Atomic Energy Commission will be supplying an unlimited number of new movie releases to Kim Jong-il. This will replace his subscription to Netflix.

The White House also said it has hired security arm of The North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) to patrol the nationwide centers run by the Child Protective Services Unit of the U.S. Department of Education. A spokesperson said that although the organization is not known for security, it does keep the kids in their sights at all times and would be more attentive than other such security groups.

In addition, a company owned by AUM Shinrikyō, last heard from when they used sarin gas during a terrorist act in a Tokyo subway has been hired to provide security for Metro, the Washington D.C. subway. White House sources say that they were assured by several Japanese businessmen that the group has reformed and is especially qualified for this job due to the fact that they know everything about the subject.

I can’t go on. I just can’t. I can’t make this up. My friend Art Levine sent me a piece he wrote which parodied the Texas sherrif’s report on the Cheney shooting. In his piece, Cheney is drunk and snarling. Art called me and asked what I thought. I told him that it didn’t go far enough. It was TOO BELIEVABLE!

I told him he would have to have Cheney having SEX with the quail.

How many times in the past 4 years have you heard the words, “you can’t make this stuff up,” when the Republicans do something outrageous.

I can’t either. And I just tried.

This also appears on huffingtonpost.com

Since It's a Day To Thank Those Who Hurt Us

After hearing Mr. Birdshot's statement, I think it's only fitting that I personally thank the man who beat me about the legs and arms with a golf club and sent me to the hospital a few years ago. I guess I deserved it, although I had never met the gentleman before.

I realize his family and friends were heartbroken for him.

That he didn't kill me, I mean, and that I didn't have more money on me.

I feel bad that he didn't accoplish his task, too. So I'd just like to tell him, if he wants to try again, I'm always at his disposal. Perhaps he should try a hammer next time. Or a shotgun.

I mean, I'm really very grateful to him. I had never ridden in an ambulance before.

This also appears on huffingtonpost.com

A comment on my last post from huffingtonpost

Mr. D'Antoni:Having admired your writing for years in baltimore, I am glad to find you contributing to one of the best news/opinion sources on the Internet. I read your wife's letter in today's CityPaper. She is absolutely right, and you should not take offense at the opinions of a couple of ill-informed and d**k-headed morons. In addition, Gadi Dichter can't even wipe your a** when it comes to journalism. Best of luck in your future. Oh, and I would be surprised to find out that "Dick" Chaney actually has one...has you seen the size of his shotgun?
Posted by: fferret on February 15, 2006 at 03:43pm

Thanks for the support, ff.

Sex Scandals Are Always There For the Taking

Republicans have had the majority of sex scandals (usually homosexual and usually involving public homophobes). It’s refreshing to discover there may be a new sex scandal involving a heterosexual. If our ever-Prilocetic Veep really had a goomah with him when he went hunting and drinking, why should we, why WOULD we be surprised?

Is he not a man? Is he not dishonest to begin with? Is he not the Godfather and entitled?

What amazes me is that journalists have been unable to uncover the rampant decadence that always follows men of power, especially conservative religious fanatics. Is it any surprise to anyone that the most virulent homophobes are nearly always the most enthusiastic and least discrete (read: found in public)?

How come nobody, not even those who do not have editors breathing down their necks and bothering them about sources and attribution…bloggers, I mean. How come even bloggers never found out who was schtupping Jeff Gannon at the White House? (Does it have two “p’s?”)

Is there any doubt that somebody was? Come out, come out wherever you are.

So it took a shotgun blast at close range for MSM to wake up to the fact that Cheney is a lying sack of buckshot? Those of us whose job it is to size you up in the first 20 seconds after meeting you had sized him up in the 1970s.

Perhaps we shouldn’t have another Presidential election Instead, let’s have an “American Presidential Idol” show for the month of October 2008. Paula Abdul couldn’t be a worse judge of character than the millions of fools who voted for a chimp.

Shaking my head here at the fact that the Veep’s companion will get more play than the real blood that’s on his hands from the decisions he made in his official capacity.

This also appears on huffingtonpost.com

I am defended

From The Baltimore City Paper 2/15/05

The Wife’s Tale

I am Tom D’Antoni’s wife. I just received copies of your paper (“Fuck Us,” Arts and Entertainment, Jan. 25). I worked as a political journalist, have read three papers a day for more than 30 years, and never, in that time, have I seen an article so vile as the one on my husband.

I sat there during the interview, so was surprised at the article that was written. It was nothing like the interview. Tom loves Baltimore. We have Baltimore stuff all over our apartment and a Baltimore Orioles bumper sticker on our car.

Tom hit bottom in Baltimore, and it almost killed him, but he is proud to be from Baltimore. When he runs into folks here from Baltimore, they sit around and joke about their hometown, just as he did with Gadi Dechter. When friends come over he loves to show stories he produced for Evening Magazine about ordinary people who define Baltimore. Those who most would make fun of, Tom found something heartwarming about.

Tom has always talked about moving back there, but obviously, that is no longer an option.
Mr. Dechter, instead of doing some work and talking about some significant accomplishments of a complex and talented man, chose to base a story on tongue-in-cheek comments he and Tom both were making about Baltimore.

Tom just finished a documentary on assisted suicide. He filmed a man who ended up taking his own life, with cameras rolling and wearing Tom’s mic. Tom has said this was the most important work he’s done. I heard him talk to Dechter about this and was sure it would be included in the article. Of course, Tom talked mostly about his book, because that was the pretense Dechter used to call Tom.

Have you seen this man destroy other people? Did the article seem familiar?

Tom’s mother lives in Baltimore, as does the rest of his family, and a lifetime of friends. They have been hurt by this article, as have I.

Many of the things in the article are infactual and libelous, but that is what attorneys are for.
This is what wives are for.

Tom has done thousands of stories in his career. They have been well investigated and reflect good journalism. I am sure I cannot say that about Mr. Dechter.

Karen FoxPortland, Ore.

Other Appointments in the Wake of the Delay Committee Assignment

Headline: Rep. Tom DeLay has been given a House of Representatives seat on the committee overseeing the Justice Department which is investigating HIM.

In other news:

Michael Jackson has been appointed head of Bahrain’s Child Protective Services Bureau.

James Frey has been hired to run Fox News’ Standards and Practices Department.

Michael Brown has been named new chairman of The American Red Cross.

Jack Abramoff has been appointed chairman of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Scooter Libby has been appointed designated “Target” at Dick Cheney’s next hunting trip.

Harriet Miers has left the White House and will marry a Bigfoot impersonator.

Judith Miller has been given the Journalism Department head job at Bunny Ranch University.

OJ Simpson has been appointed lead investigator for CNN’s newly formed Missing Murdered Attractive White Girl Team.

Ken Lay has been given Max Bialistock Business Ethics Chair at Yale University.

Scott McClellan has quit to join The Daily Show as a replacement for Stephen Colbert.

You know, you CAN make this up, but look how far you have to go.

Any additions?

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For Baltimore City Paper Readers

It's too bad that those dishonest, slimy bastards at the Baltimore City Paper would let me have only 500 words to reply to their lying attack on me.

First and foremost, I NEVER said to anyone connected to the City Paper that I hated Baltimore. I never said "Fuck You" to anyone connected to the City Paper about Baltimore. These are lies. I will give a big "Fuck You," however, to everyone connected with the City Paper after their smear of me and their misrepresentations of what I said in a two-hour phone interview.

Here's the full letter I had written to them about that dishonest schmuck Dechter and his poorly-written hatchet job:

"I knew I was going to get nailed, but what Gadi Dechter doesn't tell you is that he seriously slanted and cherry-picked the things I told him. He left out the fact that I walk the streets of Portland wearing my Orioles sweatshirt, how I nearly cried when I heard a real Baltimore accent last summer....and there are a lot of other things.Dechter chooses to leave out a lot of positive things in order to set me up as a straw villain.

What else can we expect from an L.A. guy who's aim is to gather as many scalps as he can before he moves on to a larger market. Same as it ever was...Baltimoreans being exploited and victimized by journalists on the way up and who can't wait to get out of town.By the way, my impression, after talking to him for a couple of hours, is that he hates Baltimore much more than I. He agreed with me on many points.Here's an example of how he dishonestly skews things.

He writes, "He remembers one scene in particular. 'I pick up this black woman and her daughter,' he says. “And for some reason the little girl looks through the sliding glass shield and she says, ‘I love you.’ And I busted out crying right there in the cab. It was such a contrast to what I had to face every day.'His conclusion: 'People in Baltimore are angry and mean.'"That story did not make me conclude that people in Baltimore are angry and mean. I think many are, but that was one tender moment in a nightmare of a job.

I told him a lot of things. I told him about the documentary I've just completed on the Oregon Death With Dignity law. I followed a man for two years beginning the day he got the legal lethal dose, through all the twists and turns of the decision-making process as to when to end his life. He died wearing our mic.Dechter could have included that, but it wouldn't have fit his idea of caricaturing me and his scalp-gathering agenda.

Lucky for me, he can't hurt me, he can only piss me off...unlike poor Mike Olesker, who deserved better.

How does he know I am "hustling for even more publicity?" And is there something wrong with promoting your own book? If he writes a book and it's bought by Random House, is he planning to turn down the promotional opportunities his publicist gives him? I doubt it.

While I'm complaining, the photographer who took that picture was here for an hour on Saturday and most of the pictures he took were of me smiling. You chose to run one where I was frowning.

So when the headline says, "Fuck Us," Dechter isn't including himself in the "us." Believe me. I'm more "us" than he'll ever be.

Baltimore....Gadi Dechter is not on your side.

Before he hung up, he said that he'd like to hang out with me and see how I reacted the next time I came back to Baltimore. Uh, no thanks, dude. I'll stick to Jimmy's and people who know who Jerry Turner was.

By the way, I still yell "O" during the national anthem when I drive up to Seattle to see the Orioles.

Here are some of Dechter's blatant mistakes:

1. I was never a news producer at WJZ-TV. I was a news producer at WMAR-TV and a story producer at WJZ-TV's Evening Magazine. Also, I never told him that Evening was new and hiring producers. It had been on the air for a year and was already a hit when I came to work for them.
I also never told him that I regretted coming back to Baltimore to work for Evening, as he claims. I don't regret a moment of my work at Evening.

2. I said "Baltimore's greatest cultural contribution in the past 50 years is Divine eating dog shit off a sidewalk on Read St." Not “Baltimore’s greatest claim to fame is that Divine ate shit on Read Street,”

3. P.J. O'Rourke was editor of HARRY for a brief period of time (a matter of months). In reality, Michael Carliner, HARRY's original publisher was the editor, followed by O'Rourke for a few months when I was publisher, and then I was editor/publisher.

4. I did not tell him I was a "children's party DJ." I was a wedding reception/party DJ. If he had bothered to check the piece I wrote for the City Paper in 1996 on my brief DJ career, he would have discovered that. Notice how sloppy Dechter is? I sent him my resume with the jobs I've had and the dates I had them. Apparently he did not avail himself of that document.

5. He implies that I took "odd jobs to pay the rent on his Mount Vernon apartment. He penned tabloid articles, created screaming car dealership TV ads, produced features stories for a failed “Trucker TV” network, and worked as a children’s party DJ." Actually, other than the tabloid work, I did all those other things from 1986-1996."


That's what you didn't get to read.

When the City Paper's "fact checker" called me, I had to correct her many times. The "facts" that Dechter had in his original piece were obviously very wrong. I corrected at least 6 inaccuracies she presented.

It would have been nice if she had been more thorough. It would have been nice if Dechter had been an honest journalist, instead of a lying sack of shit, but that's his problem.

It also brings up a problem in basic credibility. The Baltimore City paper has none. Andy Markowitz, when he took over that paper, buried the hatchet with me and published three pieces of mine. He's gone and the people in charge now do him a great injustice.

Russ Smith started a bad paper, and his spirit lives on.

Is it any wonder I brought HARRY back to life to compete with this crummy paper? So now they've had their shot at me. If I were a young person in Baltimore right now, I would start up a new paper. Baltimore deserves better than this dishonest piece of shit.

p.s. During an email exchange with Dechter, he actually replied "Word" to an email from me. How quaintly 90s. You should see him dance like Hammer sometime.

Pretty good for a failed screenwriter from L.A. trying to rescue his career, pathetically atempting to rise in his profession by hurting others.

Dude, this isn't over by a long shot. We Baltimoreans have long memories. We're still pissed at the Mets and Jets in 68, and at Irsay when he stole the Colts.

We won't forget what you did to Olesker, and what you failed to do to me.

Addition since the issue with my letter came out:

That schmuck Dechter was also too chickenshit to reply to my letter. Know why? Because he was caught with is journalistic pants down.

I hope this controversy follows him. I hope I find out where his next job is, because his boss will be the first to know what a dishonest cheap-shot media whore he is.

Also, to the writers whose letters got in; you wrote those before you knew the real story. But to Matt Selander who accused me of racism, allow me to tell you Matt...I went to Morgan State College when it was a college. I was one of 3 or 4 whites who were enrolled. I had a column in the school newspaper. I worked in a poverty program. I sat on the front porch of the Black Panther Party one night during the time when Panthers were being killed all over America. I could go on. What have you ever done, Matt, my little white thuggie?

I have to tell you guys who wrote in that I loved the tone of your letters. Pure Baltimore. It didn't make me feel homesick, I only feel that way during the baseball season, but your letters had that kiss my ass Baltimore spirit. Thanks, even though you hate me.

A few words to Blaine Taylor, who wrote a strangely nasty letter about me in last week's edition. I say strange because he seemed ambivalent. I guess all I can say is that I had a lot to be negative about. Of course, he neglects all the happy hippie words and deeds during that period. He also ignores all of the celebratory stories I did about Baltimore for Evening Magazine, and all of the musicians I covered for all those years. He also didn't get a chance to see my reply to Dechter.

I must say, I've always thought Blaine's writing to be stodgy and boring and not in the least creative. But I agree with him on one point, and I thank him for making it, even though he is not a fan....Baltimore's loss truly is Portland's gain. I have been accepted here, both personally and professionally.

Even though the O's will always be in my heart, Baltimore is my past.

Baltimore, you're Fredo. You're dead to me now.

Portland is my home.

Angering Somebody Elses God

Newspapers across Europe have enraged those so very highly enrageable Muslims by cartooning Allah and causing those feeling blasphemed upon to think themselves sent by their lampooned Deity on a mission to take a variety of revenges including the always popular embassy burning.

Can the other Gods be far behind?

And there are so many to have to watch out for: Jesus and Moses along with Zoroaster, whoever Wiccans worship, Satan, Celtic Gods, Polynesian Gods, Aztec, Hindu Gods, Goddesses of the Near-East Realm, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Pilipino Deities, Lusitani Gods, Scandinavian, Tibetan, Norse Gods, Apotheothenai (humans made Gods by other Gods), African, Native American, Inca, Egyptian, Mayan, Phoenician, Persian, Slavic, Greek, Roman-Etruscan Gods and Demi-Gods are all standing by and waiting to be pissed at you for making fun of them.

They’re more than happy to send their followers around to kick your ass. Or perhaps those followers have made up their minds on their own. Or even worse, thought that their particular God was speaking to them, Mr. President.

Noted religious entrepreneur Jerry Falwell blamed Katrina’s destruction on HIS God’s anger over rampant fun and too much sex with too many people in New Orleans. He should have blamed Clermeil, the Voodoo God who, when angered makes rivers overflow. Everybody knows it was Clermeil who did it.

With so many thousands of Gods watching our every move, no wonder the world is in such a pickle. The Gods must work overtime at smiting. You may have been smitten yourself and not even have known it. Remember the last time you said, “Goddamnit!?” Ended up with a handful of worthless Powerball tickets, didn’t you?

The real problem arises when the people who worship whatever particular God you’ve offended get wind of it. You had better watch your ass then, buster. Ask Salmon Rushdie. Ask the poor schmuck who is out of a job because he ran Mohammed cartoons in the French paper he no longer edits.

Or ask Danish film maker Theo van Gogh. Oh wait, you can’t ask him. An Allah fan killed him for making a film about how Muslims treat their women like so many pieces of furniture.

Best to make fun of Agunua the Serpent God of the Solomon Islands (and all this time I thought Solomon BURKE was the God of the Solomon Islands). All the other Salomon Island Gods are just one aspect of Agunua, so if you make a cartoon about Agunua, you’re taking on all the other SIG’s.

Taking on a God like Australia’s Daramulun is another thing, entirely. That boy is not only heroic, but is usually pictured with his mouth full of quartz (for some reason) and brandishing both a stone axe and a massive phallus. There’s a God you shouldn’t want to mess with.

One thing is certain; believers do not have a sense of humor.
So Denmark, already on Allah’s “terrorist watch list,” Norway, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and since you can find them online, the whole damned (literally) world has seen caricatures of Allah. Religious fanatics are taking to the streets in violent protest over what again? Some cartoons?

Here is the face of your enemy, America. And they wonder why we laugh?

In 2002 there was another religious cartoon dust-up. An Austrian comic portrayed Jesus as a life-long doper who got hooked by the Wise Men’s frankincense. The Archbishop of Vienna, in a Mullah-like stroke of insight described it as an attack on democracy.

At times like this, I find comfort in the words of Christopher Hitchens. When asked what would be the one thing that could bring world peace, he allowed that outlawing all religion would be a good way to start.

I’m sure if the Archbishop of the Aboriginal Church of Daramulun read what I had to say, he would be at my front door with a mouth full of quartz and massive phallus in hand. I’m planning to prevent my wife from answering the door for the next few weeks, just in case.

What am I doing about all of this? I’m praying to the Great and Holy, Most High and Exalted God who sees all, hears all, and sits on the throne of heaven directing the quick and the dead…..Louis Armstrong.

C’mon Pops, you gotta know somebody who will cut him if he stands and shoot him if he runs.

Amen.

This is also on huffingtonpost.com

What if he gave a State of the Union and nobody listened?

Not everybody watched the State of the Union address. Most people didn’t. Lots of people had dinner to make. I know it may come as a shock to you that most people don’t live in the Eastern Time zone, and an even greater shock to those in the political writing business.
I have around three hundred channels to choose from on my cable system, more or less. Nine of them carried the State of the Union. There were a lot of other places to go.
The numbers say viewership of the speech was overwhelmingly Republican.
We’ve seen the outpouring of opinion last night and this morning. What’s missing is the towering irrelevancy of it all. Bush spoke like he was on an Ambien hangover. He said nothing, badly. Period.
Most of the rest of us went about our lives. Feeding the family on the west coast (and probably in the Mountain Time zone), spending time with our spousal unit and/or family in the Central Time zone, or spending our evening hooking up on MySpace in the East.
Those whose lives are spent and whose money is made on politics have a vested interest in commenting on every wrinkle and pucker of news makers. I used to be like that.
I’m the guy who used to watch BOTH C-SPAN channels simultaneously, read all the pundits religiously and wouldn’t miss all the Sunday morning talk shows for anything.
What happened to the guy who voted for all those people who wanted the Feds to fix things?
I had spent most of my life in Baltimore, minutes away from the Capitol. Maybe the proximity to where the action is made me feel a part of it. Perhaps the heat radiating from the geopolitical center of the universe produced empathy in me, or at least fandom.
Then I moved to Portland, Oregon.
There was no buzz here.
People paid more attention to the salmon count in the STATE of Washington, than they did to Washington, D.C.
My first hint of this difference struck me shortly after I moved here in 1997. At the time, the cable provider carried only one C-SPAN channel, and The Oregonian wasn’t carrying thousands of words per day of Washington news. And you had to be a P.I. to find the Washington Post. (I found it.)
During an interview on a radio talk show I was doing, I asked Bill Thomas, at the time the editor of Capitol Style magazine in Washington, D.C., to rate the Oregon congressional delegation for style points. He couldn’t, really; there just wasn’t much to say about them since Bob Packwood. Oregon was one of those, you know, “good government states.”
Relatively few listeners called. Nobody was interested.
Then the Lewinsky scandal broke. Like all good political scandal junkies, I leapt upon it. To my surprise, I was berated by several friends, accusing me, as a member of the media, of spending too much time on it, TWO DAYS after the story broke. They didn’t blame Bill, Monica, Ken or Linda. They blamed me for dwelling on a story they just didn’t care about. Oh, I had lots of calls the first week, but by the third week of the scandal, I couldn’t buy a call.
Monica and Bill and Hillary and Ken just didn’t amount to much of a ripple in the Great Northwest. Why? These are things that happen there. To them. They don’t really have much to do with my life. And I began to think, well, no….they don’t, do they?
But get in our way, and look out.
Oregon voters twice passed death-with-dignity legislation. Most of the people here were satisfied with it. And then those…those FEDS in Washington were tried to negate the will of the people. Us. Me!
For the first time since they wanted to put me in uniform and send me to Vietnam, I felt the need for the federal government to keep out of my business. Odd too, it seemed, that it was the Republicans who were extending this particular arm of the governmental octopus and trying to squeeze the life out of the death-with-dignity law. But they don’t seem to mind using the power when it suits their purposes, while paying lip-service to the concept of a less intrusive central government.
But that’s all over now that the Supreme Court has bitch-slapped the Bush administration. Even the conservative frozen pea-packer, Oregon Sen. Gordon Smith has said it’s a done deal.
Who’d a thunk it? Here I am, a lifelong lefty, siding with my Oregon buds, and standing up against the power of the federal government. Did I pass through some kind of looking glass when I crossed the Continental Divide?
I wasn’t going to watch the speech last night, but I couldn’t find a good movie and it was raining. I had it on, but I didn’t really listen much. It was shrugworthy.

This also appears on huffingtonpost.com

another thought about getting trashed

I feel sorry for that schmuck who did the hatchet job on me in the Baltimore City Paper. I'm sure he's going to write something mean in reply to my answer to the piece in their next edition. I know he will probably get the last word, but what a pathetic way to get your paycheck.
I stopped writing bad reviews a long long time ago. I learned that being mean is the easiest way to get noticed. I hurt a lot of people's feelings and I feel bad about that,although I didn't at the time. But, you know, I didn't go after them personally. If I didn't like their music, I didn't attack their character.
And I didn't make up things, or make mistakes about them.
So, I'm sorry I wrote those bad reivews (well, not about Carly Simon), but about the local musicians in Baltimore who's music I didn't like. I still don't like their music, but I learned to say, "If you like (whatever) you'll like this person." I may not have liked (whatever), but people are entitled to like crap.
I haven't written a bad review in decades. It's too easy.
Perhaps that schmuck at the City Paper will learn that, too one day.
You know, except for the period of time when Andy Markowitz ran that paper, it has been a piece of shit from day one. Russ Smith, who founded it (and it was laughingly called "City Squeeze"--one of the dumbest names EVER for a newpaper), and got rich when he sold it, has always run shitty newspapers. He is a no talent snob who poisoned the already foul air of Baltimore.
Oh wait, was that a bad review? Sorry.

Oprah Frey & Me---Hopefully the last word on the subject

Oh Lord, please let this be the last entry in the James Frey/fictitious memoir/Oprah affair.

How could I have been so dumb? I have a book out. I was a guest on Oprah and I told the truth about having lied. Yet the highest it has gotten on Amazon is #1,736.

Frey’s “A Million Little Pieces” is still in the top five. Maybe my mistake was that I was on Oprah and confessed to lying before I wrote the book.

My book is called “Rabid Nun Infects Entire Convent and Other Sensational Stories from a Tabloid Writer” (Villard/Random House). It is not a self-help book. Well, it helps me, my wife, my agent and the publisher. And it makes you laugh, so that’s a help, but it is not going to save your soul, make you stop drinking or using drugs or beating your wife or having sex with the dog.

I never said it would.

All I did was write stories for the supermarket tabloid “The Sun” and then go on Oprah, outing myself for having made them up. Suppose I had never done that, and had instead published a book in which I swore that stories like “Woman Goes On High Fiber Diet, Eats Her Clothes” were true?

And suppose millions of people believed these stories and tens of thousands of women had lost a lot of weight eating cheesecloth and making sheet cakes? And Oprah had me on as a guest because of it, thanking me for helping all those women lose so much weight? And I had gone on her show saying that it was all true and hyping my next tabloid story, “The Dustball Diet?”

And then the Smoking Gun had found out that I had made it all up and outed me? Christ, I could be rich and on Larry King.

Is that so far-fetched?

But, no I had to go on Oprah first, blab to her and the world that I made up all the stories and then years later write a book about it. What an idiot! I did it all backwards.

I had a notion that Oprah would have me back on when my book came out, since I based the entire book around my appearance on her show. The first blow to that good idea came from the Random House publicist who told me they shut down production around the time of the launch of my book (November 22). Then this Frey thing happened.

So much for my return to Oprah-land. There isn’t much chance she wants another liar on her show.

I sit and fantasize about Oprah coming to my defense like she did to Frey’s on Larry King, “I rely on the publishers to define the category that a book falls within and also the authenticity of the work.” And having her say not “Whether or not the cars' wheels rolled up on the sidewalk or whether he hit the police officer or didn't hit the police officer is irrelevant to me,” as she did on Larry King, but rather “Whether or not the Elvis baby was born singing ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ or ‘Jailhouse Rock’ is irrelevant to me.”

Oh what a couple of weeks I would have had! My book zooming back up the charts! Vindication from Oprah!

But then would she have suckered me back on to kick my ass like she did with Frey? Of course not! I would have already on her show. I would already have confessed! Ain’t I a hero?

God, maybe my agent would answer my emails then!!

And…and it’s me on Larry King being interviewed about my book : D’ANTONI: Larry, I got more laughs on Oprah than Frey ever dreamed of.



LARRY: Yes, Tom your book is one of the funniest things I’ve ever read. You’re almost as funny as Rickles, but what about those poor women who ate their clothes?

D’ANTONI: Well, Larry how dumb do you have to be to believe these stories?


I’ll tell you how dumb. I did an afternoon TV talk show to promote my book. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m very grateful for that appearance because it sold a lot of books, but they picked two of my fake stories and one real story and asked the studio audience to choose which one was real.

The audience picked “The Human Termite: He’s Eating the Neighborhood.” That’s a story about a man who was found eating several of his neighbors’ front porches.

They thought that was real.

I was thrilled.

So you see, it’s ok to lie. Frey was exposed and still got away with it. Even though she eviscerated him (and flip-flopped) when she lured him back to her show, I’ll betcha Oprah still wants you to read his book.

But she never mentioned mine even though I was so honest about my dishonesty.

I won’t make that mistake again, I can tell you that.

This also appears on huffingtonpost.com

Further thoughts on a bad piece

I'd like to thank that schmuck Dechter for my book jumping 60,000 spots on Amazon...so far. Imagine how many more books I could have sold with an honest piece on me. I mean, his piece was in the "Books" section, yet he devoted maybe 10% of the piece to my book...and 90% to trashing me.
If I cared enough (which I don't), I would go back and check all of Dechter's previous articles for the same kinds of innacuracies and outright MISTAKES with which he riddled his poison pen letter to me.
Now there's a project for one of you!
As Allen Toussaint once wrote, "The same people you walk on on the way up/You might meet up/On your way down."
He thinks he knows how to write mean? I haven't even started.

The Dishonest City Paper Story on me

A schmuck named Gadi Dechter has a poorly-written, wildly innacurate and very hateful piece on me in the current issue of the Baltimore City Paper. Before I go into more detail, here's what I wrote to him, the Editor-In-Chief, and the Arts Editor. In case they edit the letter, here's the full text:

I knew I was going to get nailed, but what Gadi Dechter doesn't tell you is that he seriously slanted and cherry-picked the things I told him. He left out the fact that I walk the streets of Portland wearing my Orioles sweatshirt, how I nearly cried when I heard a real Baltimore accent last summer....and there are a lot of other things.
Dechter chooses to leave out a lot of positive things in order to set me up as a straw villain. What else can we expect from an L.A. guy who's aim is to gather as many scalps as he can before he moves on to a larger market. Same as it ever was...Baltimoreans being exploited and victimized by journalists on the way up and who can't wait to get out of town.
By the way, my impression, after talking to him for a couple of hours, is that he hates Baltimore much more than I. He agreed with me on many points.
Here's an example of how he dishonestly skews things. He writes, "He remembers one scene in particular. 'I pick up this black woman and her daughter,' he says. “And for some reason the little girl looks through the sliding glass shield and she says, ‘I love you.’ And I busted out crying right there in the cab. It was such a contrast to what I had to face every day.'
His conclusion: 'People in Baltimore are angry and mean.'"
That story did not make me conclude that people in Baltimore are angry and mean. I think many are, but that was one tender moment in a nightmare of a job.
I told him a lot of things. I told him about the documentary I've just completed on the Oregon Death With Dignity law. I followed a man for two years beginning the day he got the legal lethal dose, through all the twists and turns of the decision-making process as to when to end his life. He died wearing our mic.
Dechter could have included that, but it wouldn't have fit his idea of caricaturing me and his scalp-gathering agenda.
Lucky for me, he can't hurt me, he can only piss me off...unlike poor Mike Olesker, who deserved better.
How does he know I am "hustling for even more publicity?" And is there something wrong with promoting your own book? If he writes a book and it's bought by Random House, is he planning to turn down the promotional opportunities his publicist gives him? I doubt it.
While I'm complaining, the photographer who took that picture was here for an hour on Saturday and most of the pictures he took were of me smiling. You chose to run one where I was frowning.
So when the headline says, "Fuck Us," Dechter isn't including himself in the "us." Believe me. I'm more "us" than he'll ever be.
Baltimore....Gadi Dechter is not on your side.
Before he hung up, he said that he'd like to hang out with me and see how I reacted the next time I came back to Baltimore. Uh, no thanks, dude. I'll stick to Jimmy's and people who know who Jerry Turner was.
By the way, I still yell "O" during the national anthem when I drive up to Seattle to see the Orioles.
Here are some of Dechter's blatant mistakes:

1. I was never a news producer at WJZ-TV. I was a news producer at WMAR-TV and a story producer at WJZ-TV's Evening Magazine. Also, I never told him that Evening was new and hiring producers. It had been on the air for a year and was already a hit when I came to work for them.
I also never told him that I regretted coming back to Baltimore to work for Evening, as he claims. I don't regret a moment of my work at Evening.
2. I said "Baltimore's greatest cultural contribution in the past 50 years is Divine eating dog shit off a sidewalk on Read St." Not “Baltimore’s greatest claim to fame is that Divine ate shit on Read Street,”
3. P.J. O'Rourke was editor of HARRY for a brief period of time (a matter of months). In reality, Michael Carliner, HARRY's original publisher was the editor, followed by O'Rourke for a few months when I was publisher, and then I was editor/publisher.
4. I did not tell him I was a "children's party DJ." I was a wedding reception/party DJ. If he had bothered to check the piece I wrote for the City Paper in 1996 on my brief DJ career, he would have discovered that. Notice how sloppy Dechter is? I sent him my resume with the jobs I've had and the dates I had them. Apparently he did not avail himself of that document.
5. He implies that I took "odd jobs to pay the rent on his Mount Vernon apartment. He penned tabloid articles, created screaming car dealership TV ads, produced features stories for a failed “Trucker TV” network, and worked as a children’s party DJ." Actually, other than the tabloid work, I did all those other things from 1986-1996.

So that was what I wrote to him and his editors yesterday.
I'm just as pisssed off today, but my skin is very thick and guys like Dechter are a dime a dozen.
He calls me a hack for writing jokes for a humor publication. His prose is clunky, not clever, not funny, and just plain mean...but bad mean. Not even clever mean. Just ugly.
Who's the hack here? I think it's that schmuck.
An ugly piece by an ugly writer who is living off his famous name. Isn't that how he got all his gigs, anyway?
More later.

Breathing Easier In Oregon Today

In an astounding show of common sense, the U.S. Supreme Court today upheld the Oregon Death With Dignity law 6-3. Not many people have had the chance to observe the Oregon law at work, mainly because not many people in Oregon have used the law, only 198 since the law went into effect in 1998, after the voters approved it for the second time in a ballot initiative.
The Christian lobby opposed the law at time, the Catholic
Church being the largest contributor of money to attempt to defeat the law. The pseudo-Christian lobby (a.k.a. Bush administration), pandering to its base of radical right-wing fundamentalists tried several methods of thwarting the will of the Oregon voters.
One of the first was the ridiculously named Pain Relief Promotion Act, pushed by the Christian radicals. It was deftly defeated by Sen. Ron Wyden (D. Oregon) and others by threatening a filibuster and killing the measure after the Republicans could not muster the sixty votes for cloture.
Then came the misnamed “Ashcroft challenge” to the Oregon law, misnamed because it was really a Bush (or Rove) initiative. The challenge was ridiculed in Federal Court in Oregon, where a Justice Department attorney sent to argue the case mispronounced the name “Oregon” several times in his appearance, drawing laughter in the courtroom and a scolding from the judge. The challenge was strongly rebuked and Ashcroft had his butt kicked by the judge’s subsequent opinion.
The Ninth Circuit Court similarly dismissed the Bush-Rove challenge to the law, and now the Supreme Court has finished the job.
Co-Director Greg Bond and I spent two years shooting a documentary on Robert Schwartz, an AIDS patient, beginning the day before he got the lethal dose of drugs, prescribed legally under the Oregon law and ending the afternoon he took them, surrounded by his family and friends. Robert died wearing our microphone.
That documentary, “Robert’s Story: Dying With Dignity” is currently in the marketing phase.
So, this morning, after just having read the news that the people of Oregon have won a great victory in the battle for self-determination, all I can see is Robert’s smiling face. Not the pain and suffering he underwent fighting to keep enough quality of life to stay alive and not have to use the drugs. Not the anger he expressed at the Bush administration who wanted to take the ultimate choice away from other like him. Not even the acceptance and peace of his final decision to end his life.
I see a big smile on Robert’s face.
I remember what he told us on the morning of his death:
“I’m absolutely grateful for the fact that I have this choice and that I can have my family surrounding me today as I get ready to do this, and nobody is risking criminal sanctions because of it.
“You know, Oregon has always been known as a rebel state, an innovative state when it comes to personal issues, particularly. My belief is that given the opportunity, I think this will pass in most other states, if it ever gets allowed to be voted on.
“I think that as people become more aware over time, and become even more sensitized to the fact that we’re losing our rights to zealots. I think that’ll fuel the eventual passage in the other states.”
Later, Robert took communion with those gathered at his house, said his goodbyes, had an anointing service at his bedside, drank a glass of liquid Nembutal, rubbed the head of his partner one last time, closed his eyes and left us…unaware that this morning would come and the right of self-determination would be upheld.
We’re all a little more comfortable with our destiny in Oregon today.

This also appears on huffingtonpost.com

Intercepted Emails Reveal Source of Scalia Humor

Exclusive!!! Progressive surveillance program discovers the trail leads to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

The Bush administration is not the only bunch intercepting emails. My 14 year-old nephew is getting pretty good at it too. Here’s something he intercepted after the New York Times ran the story on how funny Justice Antonin Scalia is.

From: ilovethiscrowd@supremes.gov
To: fingernailpuller@undisclosed.com
Subject: funny funny me

hey duck-huntin dickie! J dija see the times on saturday? they named me the funniest dude on the court. pretty fckn good huh? i cuddn’ta done it without the jokes you send me.
the thing that pisses me off is that they only used one of my lines in the times piece:

“…a light bulb in the courtroom’s ceiling exploded during an argument. …’it’s a trick they play on new chief justices all the time,’ chief justice john g. roberts jr. …said.
[laughter]
‘happy halloween,’ justice scalia retorted.
[laughter]”

the really good ones that u sent me didn’t get in, like remember when we were deciding the kansas dept. of revenue v. the potawatomi indians… that thing we settled on dec 5?
i mean the name of those guys is funny enough. fkcn clarence couldn’t hardly keep from busting out loud whenever the clerk called that case. i didn’t even know potawatomi was a real name. i thought it was from a bugs bunny cartoon.
i can’t fckn believe that nimrod from the times didn’t put my joke in. i was gettin bored with the whole thing that day, ya know. And I had a lot of christmas shopping to do and a half a bottle of anisette in my office to finish off. so i just interrupted the potawatomi’s lawyer and said “hey, ya know how get a one-armed indian out of a tree? ya wave to him!!”
lololololol
i thought Clarence was gonna shit his pants.
I’ll never forget when you told me that joke. I think we were duck hunting or something.

REPLY FROM CHENEY:

hey tone!!! hell, u almost dropped the gun and shot my ass off when you heard that one.
lmao
i got another one for ya when the assisted suicide case comes up this term. One of those wimp-assed girlie-man lawyers from oregon is gonna start tellin you about the process for getting those drugs to kill yourself. When he tells you that you have to have a second doctors’ opinion, you stop him and say, “clarence here had to get a second opinion one time. The doctor told him, ‘hey, yer ugly, too!!’
lolololololol

REPLY FROM SCALIA:

roflamao
where do ya come up with these things?
dickie, i dunno wut i’d do without ya.

REPLY FROM CHENEY:

who luvs ya tone? hey btw….i wanna run this by ya. I have a new squad ima send out to iraq, afghanistan and some of the other resorts i’ve set up. we need to toughen up our persuasion techniques. don’t matter what congress says, we know who’s in charge…you and me.
so this squad is gonna lock the bastards up in the dark, i paid fitty a lot of money to write and record his hardest rhymes and we’re gonna play them at ear-bleeding volume for a couple of days and then take the sob’s out, waterboard them, rip their fingernails off, break some bones, burn their hair off, tattoo my picture on their chest, rape their women, cut their fingers off, then their toes. And if they don’t talk by then we’re gonna kill em, chop em up, cook em up and feed em to the other prisoners and THEN tell them what they ate.
so i’m gonna need your help when the time comes. k, dude?

REPLY FROM SCALIA:

awesome. n/p dickie. what are you gonna call that squad?

REPLY FROM CHENEY:

THE ARISTOCRATS!!!!
ROFLMFAO
L8

This also appears on huffingtonpost.com

The End of Political Humor As We Know It

Hear ye, hear ye. I proclaim the end of political humor. Sorry Al, sorry Harry. Wait, are there any others? Please, don’t even mention O’Rourke, he hasn’t been funny since 1971.
Forget my post here from a couple weeks ago, funny though it was.
It’s not even funny to compare Bush to a monkey anymore. Or to Alfred E. Newman. It’s just not funny.
I’m sitting in a coffee shop in Portland, Oregon wondering if the wi-fi is sending my emails to the NSA, or to James Dobson or Pat Robertson or any other member of the Republican al-Qaeda (remember, that’s Osama for “the base”). Because you know, where there may be dedicated professionals at NSA who have no agenda other than to protect the American republic, you have to remember that they work for crooks who would invade their mother’s grave if it had oil under it.
Gallows humor, that’s what it is. “What’s the worst that could happen?” we asked after the Deibold referendums in 2004. You’re looking at it. And it’s not funny.
We who are about to die, write jokes.
Think about how many times in the past year or so you have said the words, “You can’t write something like that, nobody would believe it.” Believe it.
We Americans torture, kill, hate, steal, lie and ignore the Constitution. How long will it be before someone else who has a lot of weapons decides to retaliate? And when they do, if the current bunch is still holding power, how much worse will it be for you and me?
Say they attack us again. Say thousands of people die again. Not only will the Republicans (and Joe Lieberman) not take responsibility for not protecting us, but may give us a sequel to the “Patriot” Act that will allow them to suspend an election or two.
Bush will point to a Congressional authorization found in some small phrase stuck in some piece of legislation in the dead of night and passed by an unsuspecting Congress. His arrogant defense of NSA spying is merely a preview.
See? I’ve stopped being funny.
Ok, how’s this? Bush, Cheney and Rove walk into a bar.
There’s no punch line.
They’re not funny.
Korea is funny. “T’ings wit a K sound are funny.” Sorry, I was channeling The Sunshine Boys.

This also appears on Huffingtonpost.com

Dear NSA

Hope you like my blog. Sorry you have to work on Christmas Eve. I so love an audience. Have a jolly holiday. You guys at NSA are so much better than having a fat old man coming down my chimney.
It's so much easier for you to see if I've been bad or good without any old court orders.
Here's looking at YOU, friends. Thanks for the gift of travel to, oh where? Someplace in Europe? I know, it's like Priceline, you'll tell me later.

Tom Paine on George W. Bush

"But where says some is the King of America? I'll tell you Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain. Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honors, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter; let it be brought forth placed on the divine law, the word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve as monarchy, that in America THE LAW IS KING. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other. But lest any ill use should afterwards arise, let the crown at the conclusion of the ceremony be demolished, and scattered among the people whose right it is."

Current Events

The revelations over the past few days, of George W. Bush's illegal spying on Americans, should be ample proof that he should be impeached.
Now.

something that came to mind after the book was done

There’s No Sex Allowed in THIS Newspaper!

When I was making up stories for The Sun, a supermarket tabloid which, at the time was the equivalent of The Weekly World News (but since has backed off a little and added some other forms of lies), I wanted to write about sex. I wrote “Sex In Space. They’ve Already Tried It!”
I made up a fictitious company in England that was a combination airline and Love Boat and was planning a sex resort on the moon. The spacecraft that got you there was the Sex Shuttle. I made up a spokesperson. I made up his quote, “After all, when was the last time anybody invented a new way to make love?”
The early tests, using single astronauts went well, the only problem being how to deal with the results of male auto-erotic performances in a weightless spacecraft, a floating disposal problem, you might say.
The first “coupled flight” was a great success. The spokesperson said, “Just imagine what it must be like to make love floating in the air?” I made that up too. He went on to explain his marketing plans for gays (disposable income) and old folks (no worries about arthritis).
Unfortunately, the boss shot it down. He told me he didn’t want sex stories. Although he didn’t go into great detail, being the brusque guy he was, it was obvious he didn’t want to offend his readers. It was ok for me to write “Grandma Turns Pet Dog Inside Out Looking for Lost Lottery Ticket.” Just no sex. Normal logic in these cases doesn’t really apply.
I surmised that many of his readers were fundamentalists and therefore opposed to sex but welcoming to violence. It’s one thing to write about celebrities sleeping around as long as it doesn’t include exactly what the sex is. The fact that it’s a celebrity having the sex is enough. Anyway, that paper didn’t have celebrity stories, just goofy made up stuff.
The editor’s decision to cut me off from writing about sex prevented an avalanche of potential. That’s why you won’t find ANY sex in my new book “Rabid Nun Infects Entire Convent and Other Sensational Stories From a Tabloid Writer.” It’s a tell-all about that bizarre world of faux journalism.
I’m sorry to have to tell you that I was never privy to the sexual secrets of the stars because I made up all the people in every story, with the exception of Gay-Darlene Bidart, my own personal love witch and the Dear Abby of Latin America at the time. She was in dozens of newspapers, offering not advice but spells. She wouldn’t tell you what to do about your problem, she would tell you to burn x number of candles, or take a lock of his hair and put it in a box under your pillow, or some shit like that.
She was a wonderful mixture of witchcraft and performance, having a masters in theater from Yale. Originally from Honduras, she had deep roots in “good” witchcraft. She was also married to a millionaire warlock named Sol who made his money in construction.
La Bruja had a book out at the time, on body reading, telling your fortune by reading, kneading, sniffing and otherwise poking around your nearly naked body. You never knew when she was serious and when she was making a fool out of you. Yes, I had a body reading in her 34th floor apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. She got everything right about me. Could be she was just a good judge of character, but……
Anyway, I was writing a story for the tab on a tribe in South America who had never seen the outside world and were found dancing around a nude statue of Elvis Presley and chanting something that sounded like “Viva Las Vegas.
I wrote, ““We asked them where they had gotten the statue,” said Rex Vosa, one of the men who found them, “and they told us their ancestors had made it. We asked them how long it had been in their village and they told us it had been there for centuries.” I made up Rex Vosa. I usually made up “experts” in my stories, but I hadn’t talked to The Love Witch since she had given me a potion to put on my big toe, a spell which, she assured me would find me love and get me laid. So after telling her that it only got me a blow job, I asked her about her theories on Elvis and the tribe. After she stopped laughing she paused and told me, “I have a theory about that. Elvis possessed tremendous sexual energy. It could be that, unknown to us, he was able to project his sexual energy anyplace in the world and reproduce himself. Do you know what I mean?
“He could have had the ability to lie in bed and project a map of the world on the ceiling and just point to anyplace in the world and reproduce himself. Remember, it was his sexual nature, his sexy wiggles and the way he carried off that macho sensuality that made him famous. It was a rare thing.”
She nearly said it without laughing.
But other than La Bruja del Amor, everybody else in my stories was made up. This means I can’t be Joe Esterhaz for you and tell you what Sharon Stone did to get parts, or reveal if Tom Cruise was ever Twink-of-the-Month for some Bob Crane type. Or tell you a single thing about the current state of Lindsey Lohan’s tits.
If I were writing for the tabloid today would anything I made up be more unbelievable than anything Michael Jackson has done?
I did anticipate the reality TV trend. I was working as a producer/reporter for the old Evening/PM Magazine in Baltimore. I had done “reality” stories like the series on a bunch of goobers who tried to break the world’s record for eating raw eggs (drinking them from beer mugs, actually).
I had sent another sex-related story to the tabloid editor at the same time I sent the “Sex In Space” story. It was a game show with real sex. It was kind of like The Dating Game except the woman choosing between three men asked them sex questions and then after picking the winner, the show would tape them having sex and would show it the following week when they would be judged, like in the Olympics.
This seemed far-fetched when I wrote it 15 years ago, but not to me. When I saw the movie “Network,” I was not surprised, nor did I think it was exaggerated. I worked in TV. I knew what those people (we people) were (are) like. As soon as the Repuglicans are thrown out of office and the FCC loosens up again, it would not surprise me one bit, if we see my pervy vision come to life.
Hey, I might produce that one myself. Oh, wait I think they already did it. They just stopped short of the good parts.
The point is, the more you try to keep ahead of reality the closer reality gets to your sickest imagination. One story in the book is “Cult Uses Human Heads For Bowling Balls.” That was me at my worst or best, depending on your point of view. When I was rewriting my original stories for the book, I had to stop in the middle of re-writing that one because it creeped me out just like it did when I first wrote it.
Well, a few weeks ago I ran across a story on the web. It read, “A man who allegedly decapitated a 17-year-old boy with a tomahawk in a suburban back yard later was said to have played with the teenager's head, rolling it in a paddock as if it were a bowling ball…Mr. Jones said Mr. Roughan laughed as he ‘bowled the head up the hill, like it was a bowling ball’…A chilling videotape showing police interviewing one of two men charged with the murder of transient teen Morgan Jay Shepherd was played in Brisbane Magistrates Court yesterday." That was from The Advertiser, an Australian Newspaper.
See? Truth catches up with the worst things you can ever think of.
Back when I was writing these things, I would get up, drink coffee, sit at the keyboard in my underwear and smoke a bowl, and then allow either the funniest or the most horrifying (or both) stories come out of my head, through my fingers and onto the page.
Well, I’m in Portland, Oregon instead of Baltimore, Maryland. And I’m not broke. And I’m not lonely. I’m not roommates with a guy (I’m married now), and I burned myself out on these stories. But I am in my underwear, and I do have that same writing aid. Should I?
Nah.

What Congress should really be asking Alito about

As usual, when discussing the merits of Judge Samuel A. Alito, Jr., both liberals and conservatives are spending most of their time re-re-re debating the abortion issue and how he will or will not deal with it. They’re each missing several other issues, but one thing they’re both ignoring has folks of a certain age in Oregon holding their breaths, and it’s something that should concern everyone. It’s the Bush challenge to the Oregon Death With Dignity Law.
That law allows the terminally ill, after a rigorous process, to be prescribed a lethal dose of drugs (usually Nembutal) by a physician. The patient may then end his life when, where and in the company of whom he chooses.
The Oregon experience with that law has disproved all of the dire predictions that the (mostly religious-based) opponents made before the law was first enacted. I have interviewed many of the major opponents to the law and the only person to freely admit that his opposition was based on his faith was U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Oregon).
The law was passed by the Oregon Legislature and then by the voters in two ballot initiatives. The results of last vote in 1997 found Oregonians voting 666,275 to 445,830 to keep the law on the books.
It’s easy to talk academically, medically, theologically or philosophically about the issue, but when I think about it I see, in my mind’s eye, a bedroom in North Portland on May 3, 2003.
For my collaborator, Greg Bond and I, it was the end of shooting on a documentary we had been producing for twenty-three months, “Robert’s Story: Dying With Dignity.” It tells the story of the struggle of Robert Schwartz, fifty-two years old and terminally ill who had the medication, prescribed legally under the law. The struggle was with the decision when to end his life.
His family and friends gathered that day, and after a back porch communion service, Robert and his partner, his pastor, a representative from Compassion In Dying of Oregon, his mom and dad, brother and cousins participated his death in the most loving way possible.
I said my goodbyes, sat at his bedside and promised I would tell his story, and do right by him. After an anointing service, he drank the liquid Nembutal and went into a coma shortly thereafter, but not before his final act, which was to comfort his crying partner.
I think of the struggle he had trying to choose the right time. Of the two previous dates he had chosen, only to change his mind, because he wasn’t ready. He had more living to do, even in his weakened state. Robert had AIDS and many complications from it.
It was not a snap decision, as the opponents would like you to think. It was the most difficult decision he ever had to make.
Robert loved life, and he allowed us to video a hundred hours of it, in his weakest and strongest times. He gave up the ultimate privacy, his own death, so that others might learn how the Oregon law works.
The documentary is now complete and is in the marketing process.
This issue is not going away. Although it affects hundreds of millions more folks than the abortion issue ever will, it is much the same. The issue is simple, “I want people to have the right to self determination.” Robert told us. “I don’t mean just from their government but in every personal aspect of their life. As long as they are not hurting anybody physically or otherwise it shouldn’t make any difference to the guy next door.”
Isn’t that basic old-school conservative thinking?
When Judge Alito comes before the Senate Judciary Committee, will anyone ask him about his views on this issue, which is before the current court, and upon which his vote could be the difference? There are many terminally ill Oregonians and also those in other states (where the issue has yet to be decided) who are hoping for the peaceful option that we saw in Robert’s eyes.
This is also on huffingtonpost.com

USA Today

There's a lovely piece on the book in Thursday (12/8)'s USA Today, by Deirdre Donahue
USA Today
And a special thanks to Random House publicist Karen Fink for landing it.
This will no doubt make or break this book. The response will most likely determine the next year of my creative life.
Or not.
Who the fuck knows?
While I'm doling out thank you's (or thank youse), I'd like to thank everybody who came to my reading at Powell's City of Books on Monday. I knew many of you. I loved signing for you. It warmed my heart.

This is also on www.huffingtonpost .com

When I was making up stories for one of the supermarket tabloids in the mid-1980s, little did I know that I was making up a template for others to follow, to use and prosper and with which take over America, however temporarily. This template has been used by many Republicans, by Rush Limbaugh, by Bill O’Reilly and his colleagues at Fox News, by foreign religious zealots and similar American Christian fanatics, by The Lincoln Group and of course many American newspapers who fail to check the accuracy of their reporters closely, if at all.
This template served me well as I wrote classics like “Rabid Nun Infects Entire Convent,” which happens to also be the title of a book I wrote on the subject of tabloid journalism. Ok, not capital “J” Journalism, but apparent journalism, let’s say.
Stories like “Grandma Turns Pet Dog Inside Out Looking for Lost Lottery Ticket,” “Woman Gets Pregnant, Has Baby Same Day,” and “Cult Uses Human Heads for Bowling Balls” all followed this simple template.
Here are the Rules:
First: Make up something false. It doesn’t matter how whacked-out it is, or how patently false to anyone with half-a-brain.
Second: Put it in a context that people are comfortable with. If it’s for a newspaper, write it so that it really really sounds like a newspaper story, with quotes, even. Make it sound like you have multiple sources, even though you’re pulling out of your butt.
The same goes for TV. It’s always best to have a distinguished-looking person read it, or a forceful one. Or one who shouts a lot and of whom people will be afraid not to believe upon penalty of being bitten. He (or a bleach-blonde she) doesn’t have to actually be an actual journalist at all. A good way to go is to find someone who has recently been a journalist, come from another network, and can provide sufficient credibility when he or she delivers the lies that you have pulled from your butt.
Third: Tell the story a lot. Play the story over and over if it’s for TV. The more you play it, the more people will believe it. Find a way to re-write that lie repeatedly if it’s for print. The average attention span of those inclined to swallow your lie is approximately seven seconds, and his frame of reference is tends to be in the last-fifteen-minutes range.
The big lie, told often, becomes truth after a while. I think Machiavelli said that, or Stalin. Rove, maybe? It might have been Nick Tosches.
Fourth: Pander to the worst in people. Work their fears, their ignorance and perverse pleasures. A worst-case scenario always worked for me. Predicting a worst-case scenario has worked for politicians since antiquity, be it Mongol hordes or mushroom clouds on the horizon.
Fifth: Quote somebody whom others do not know, or will never check. Hardly anybody checks anything. It’s better to jump on board the bus and run with an outrageous story. Some editors will just let things slide. Other editors or news directors have instructions from on high.
Sixth: Make them feel a very big emotion. Get their blood boiling. Make them cry. My stories “Clown Ghosts Save Dying Boy,” and “Dead Daughter Leaves Message of Love on Daddy’s VCR,” are examples that can never fail to bring tears to those easily fooled.
Gross them out. My stories “Man Sells Bodies from Chemical Disaster to Starving Ethiopians as Meat for Prepared Meals,” and “Bandit Steals False Teeth from the Mouths of Elderly Victims,” are prime examples of this technique. The ability to tell a story in a way that makes the audience react emotionally will keep you employed.
Seventh: Whenever possible, get somebody not connected with your organization to deliver your lie. Pay them well to plant stories, or to give opinions supporting your lies. Pay newspapers cash to run stories you’ve made up.
Eighth: Under no circumstances admit you were wrong or that your butt comprises your two independent sources. When someone comes at you with the real facts, call them names. Impugn their patriotism. Imply that they’re mentally ill. Divert all attention from your story. Make them the story. Make yourself the story. Do anything to avoid the truth.
Not all of these rules applied to the tabloid stories I wrote, but they are good rules and true. If you follow them closely, you too can become the next Stephen Glass and get serious backend money on the movie. You could get Random House to pay to make a book out of your lies, as I did.
Or you could get some fool elected president and start a war.
It’s easy.

When this book thing is over

I'm going to be using this blog to write some of the same fine essays you may be used to seeing on the op-ed pages of the Oregonian, among other places. I got a head full of ideas that are driving me insane. That is, unless somebody is paying me for them.

My first bad review

On some badly named site called "Bookgasm." It says, "From the very first article, “Grandma Turns Pet Dog Inside Out for Lost Lottery Ticket,” it’s evident the stories are complete fabrications. It’s also evident that they’re completely not funny."
That he doesn't think that story is funny is the best indication of his sense of humor. He has none. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people laugh out loud at that one and all of the rest of them. Loud laughter. Universally.
I take everything personally.....except this guy.

Ever try to be funny at 3:40 a.m.?

Unless you're still messed up and haven't gone to bed, and still have the same audience you've had all night.....don't try it. It's a surreal experience to say the least. Take my word for it. When do I go to sleep now?

On the radio next week

The book comes out on Tuesday. I will be on the following shows. All times PST:
3:40 am to 3:50am -Tampa - WFLA-AM “Tampa Bay AM”
4:10am to 4:25am - Baltimore- WIYY-FM- “Kirk, Mark & Spiegel in the Morning”...Should be a lot of fun since I savage Baltimore in the book.
5:10 am to 5:25 am - National Radio from Chicago - WKQX-FM - “Mancow’s Morning Madhouse”...also heard all over Southern California and Detroit among other places.
7:10 am to 7:25 am - Cincinnati- WLW-AM - “Jim Scott Morning Show”
Wednesday, November 23, 2005 - 6:00 am to 6:10 am
Latham/Albany, NY- WPYX-FM - “The Wolf in the Morning Show”
Yes, I will have to be awake and funny in the middle of the night. I can handle it.

Coming up for air

This rotten bug that's going around put what's left of my brain underwater for over a week. This is the first day I've been able to put more than 3 coherent words together.
I've been given the opportunity to write something for Nerve.com, the sex-is-intellectually-cool website...in exchange for being able to flack my book. They want something that's sex and tabloid related. I can do that. I haven't written anything about sex since 1998 when I wrote a few things for "The T&A Times" (really) in Portland. It was a stripper magazine. I remember, vividly, interviewing a prostie in a "jack shack" in suburban Portland.
No, I didn't get any.
I had met the (incredibly sleazy) publisher when he was a guest on my radio show. He brought a couple of contestants in the Miss Nude Oregon contest, which later on that evening I had the surreal pleasure of helping judge.
Again, I didn't get any.
Not too long after that I wrote a whole lot of porn reviews (at $25 per) for a kind of proto-Netflix website that rented porn tapes and dvds. My all time favorites were the lesbian tickling videos...how could you NOT laugh along with them? Also Bridget the Midget set new standards for me, standards that were pretty low to begin with.
So I'm looking forward to writing this thing. Maybe it'll sell a few books. In the meantime, I am prepared for the attack of the morning zoo shock jocks next week. A full schedule is on the book website. www.rabidnun.com

Anti-climax

The premiere last night was drab. The doc wasn't drab but the night was rainy, only 40 people showed up, somebody had smudged the dvd so we had to stop at a crucial time and put a new one in. But everyone cried and there were some good questions afterward. Oh well, it wasn't planned to be retail. The NW Film Center asked us to show it.
I think I'm having post-partum depression over this doc. The book too. This being the sixth day of having the bug doesn't help. And it's raining again.
The promotion is going slowly for the book. They've lined up 6 morning zoo type shows and no TV or newspapers yet. Emphasis yet. I'm still holding out hope they can pull out something big.

Premiere night

The NW Film and Video Festival is showing the doc tonight. Greg and I were on local radio here (Thom Hartman's Show on KPOJ) for about 10 minutes promoting it this morning. If you visted the doc's website www.robertsstory.com, landed here, and are going tonight, please let me know what you think of it.
I am wondering what my reaction will be tonight, myself. Secretly, I hope the audience is as shocked and stunned and in tears as the first two audiences that saw it. Unlike the first (private) screening, this one is a paying crowd.
I'll report tomorrow.

pulling one way/pulling the other

First, the Randm House publicist sent me an advance copy of Mad Magazine with an item about the book in the "Go Fetch" section. They have two parts to each item, "The Hype," which describes the book or dvd or game, etc, and "The Snipe," which is the joke about it.
"The Snipe" in the book item says, "Bolongna! We know for a fact that all of these stories are true! That spineless D'Antoni is back-pedaling because of the Patriot Act!"
Ha! Not a bad idea. I think that when I begin doing interviews, I'm going to say that the stories are indeed all true, and that I lied in the book.
Anyway, it took me only 47 years, from the time I began reading Mad, to this minute to get inside the covers.
What Me Worry?
Second, I found out that the doc didn't get any awards the the NW Film and Video Festival, and then later that docs aren't part of the judgning process.
And then, I got my first round of interviews from the Random House publicist. Chicago, Detroit, L.A., Cincinnati and Tampa..in one morning.
So you see how I'm being pulled one way and then the other? As if trying to get my head around the book and the doc at the same time isn't tough enough!!!
Wool hat boys are almost as bad as Republicans.