Category Archives: Media

Blood Right

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Ten years ago, I threatened to break a new law within thirty seconds of when it went into effect.   I think of that circumstance from time to time and it has come to my mind more than once of late as the number of mass shootings piles up.  And as one shooting in particular has touched me.

I was still a reporter in the Senate in 2013 when Governor Nixon vetoed a bill that would have exempted Missouri from recognizing any federal gun laws  that “infringe on the people’s right to keep and bear arms.”  Any federal official who tried to enforce such a law could be arrested and charged with a misdemeanor.  AND if made it illegal to make public the names of gun owners.

That meant that I could not publish the names of the legislators who carried guns into the House and Senate Chambers and voted for the bill.  Yes, some did carry guns in the chambers. And to be truthful, there were times when debate got overheated that I did not feel entirely secure.

I don’t know if we have lawmakers packing today. I’m not down amongst them anymore. But a sign on the entrance door to the building indicates they’re allowed to have guns inside.

The Missouri legislature from time to time has tried to say it has the power to declare particular federal laws are not effective here, the United States Constitution notwithstanding. The legislature has at times protected the Second Amendment the way a Doberman would protect his raw steak.

That might be justifiable if all federal constitutional rights are absolute. The Second Amendment is to its most ardent defenders a Doberman Amendment. Touch it and I’ll bite off your arm.

As we’ve noted before, declared rights do not erase personal responsibility.  Free speech still allows lawsuits for libel and slander.  Freedom of Religion does not allow the state to insist that any of us must follow a particular faith to live and prosper.  The right to assemble does not grant a right to smash windows and doors at the United States Capitol and interfere with a mandated role of Congress.

So it is with the Second Amendment. It assumes those with guns will use them to protect the nation’s security (in some interpretations), and that those with guns will be responsible citizens.

As with any right, or any privilege, irresponsibility has its penalties.  The responsible citizen suffers because the irresponsible citizen is allowed free reign (as others might interpret the situation).  In today’s culture, the issue is whether responsible citizens are defending the irresponsible ones to the detriment of the citizenry as a whole.

The mass shooting last weekend in Allen, Texas again raises the question that passionate Second Amendment defenders brush off.  But once again we are told that the answer to mass shootings is the same solution Archie Bunker had in the days when airline hijackings were regular things—issue every passenger  a gun. So it is in these incidents that one answer is to have more people with guns.

Or—instead of limiting access to guns originally designed with one purpose—to kill an enemy on the battlefield using a large magazine of bullets—we are told the answer is better mental health treatment.

The problem seems to be that this corner of our political universe also is one that seems to vehemently oppose providing funding that will pay for those services—-or any of the services the “advocates” say need to be improved.

One of the cable networks covering the shooting in Allen took special note that the shooter might have worn body armor and asked program commentators if there should be limits placed on the sale of body armor, making it available only to law enforcement officers and other first responders.

As this is written, there has been no howl that such a proposal infringes on somebody’s right to shoot and not be shot back.  But it is a serious issue.  The idea that our children should go off to school every morning in their cleaned and pressed body armor, or that the dress code of teachers and administrator requires coat, tie, and bulletproof vest—and a Dirty Harry pistol in the holster that’s in plain view—is absurd.

It is said that money is the life-blood of politics. It has been said that a society is measured by how well it protects its most vulnerable.  One question asked during coverage of the Allen incident is, “Is there anyplace any more where we aren’t vulnerable?”

Political life-blood.  Innocents’ life-blood.  A decision about which is more valuable seems beyond expectation. Death awaits us all but in today’s America, we face uncertainty about whether we shall die in bed surrounded by our loved ones or die on the floor of a mall or a church or a school surrounded by a growing pool of blood.

Getting back to the veto override.   After Governor Nixon vetoed that particular Missouri Secession effort, the legislature had a chance to override it.   And the House did. 109-49, exactly the number needed. It was a stunning event to many, including the person sitting in my chair at the Senate press table.

The bill came over to the Senate and it was 22-10, needing one of the two remaining Senators to vote for the override for that bill to become law.  President Pro Tem Tom Dempsey and Majority Floor Leader Ron Richard had not voted. If one of them voted “yes,” the override would be complete.

I am not taking credit for what happened next. I don’t know if they were aware of what I had told some of my colleagues at the press table. I already had written a piece for the Missourinet blog about that bill.  I had three photographs I was going to use. One was of me, standing in front of an American Flag proudly holding my Daisy BB gun.  Another showed Governor Nixon with Wayne LaPierre, the President of the NRA, and the owner of the Midway Exchange west of Columbia. They were cutting the ribbon on a new gun shop at that complex.

The third picture showed the daughter of Missourinet reporter Jessica Machetta posing with her grandfather. They were with the deer that Macy had shot with her grandfather’s gun. It was her first deer.

Dempsey and Richard both voted “no.”  The override failed by one vote.  I never got to publish that entry on that blog. I really wanted to publish it.  And then tell the legislature, “Come and get me.”

Jessica lives in the Denver area now.  A few days ago, Macy was murdered by her boyfriend, who then shot himself to death.

One dead. Two dead.  Twenty dead.

Say what you want. Make sure you sound sincere.  But don’t do anything to really look for a solution to gun violence.  Don’t mess with the Doberman.

The journalist

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The White House Correspondents’ Dinner was last weekend.  They’re filled with jokes and jabs between those who cover and those who are covered.  And along the way, the people who are covered get to say some good things about journalists. Sometimes, the covered make some pointed comments about journalists.

We pause today to pay our tribute to the fellow ink-stained wretches who daily do their best to tell us about our city, our state, our nation, and our world. There are those who will dismiss this contribution as silly because they already know that reporters are biased against their viewpoint, whatever it might be.  Some of those who dismiss these remarks might, in fact, claim that they know the “media” is biased because their favorite radio or television talk show host or political leader says it is, missing the irony in that position. We hope they will excuse us as we plunge ahead, using words of another written a long time ago when the press was newspapers and reporters really could be called ink-stained wretches—a title many were proud to wear.  The phrase, incidentally, is of uncertain origin but has been used for decades.

In 1922, New York American writer Gene Fowler, one of the great journalists of the first third of the Twentieth Century, asked Arthur Brisbane to write about the one-thousand members of the Newspaper Club of New York. Brisbane was the editor of William Randolph Hearst’s tabloid New York Mirror. When he died in 1936, Brisbane was called “the greatest journalist in his day” by Hearst.  And Damon Runyon, certainly no slouch as a 1920s writer, said, “Journalism has lost its all-time No. 1 genius.” What he wrote then about newspaper reporters rings true today among those who toil not only in newspapers but in the changing world of electronic journalism, often without pay increases for years, to responsibly report about the factors that shape our lives. We found a reprint of Brisbane’s editorial on page nineteen in the October 14, 1922 edition of The Fourth Estate, which billed itself as “a newspaper for the makers of newspapers.”

A thousand newspaper men represent, among other things, disappointment in life. Newspaper work is hard, and it does not get better as you grow older, unless you are among the few very fortunate.

Men in other professions, as they work through the years, build up a firm name professionally or in business they build up a business name. And at the end of years they have created something that goes on earning for them when they are old.

Not so with the newspaper man.

He must do every day the work by which he lives, and do it all over again.

Each day he must create his reputation anew.

His greatest asset is enthusiasm, real interest in what he sees and what he tells.

And the years are the enemies of enthusiasm.

A thousand newspapermen, however, represent something more important than several hundred kinds of disappointment. They are to our civilization what the bulb in the electric lamp is to the big factory grinding out electricity down by the waterfront. The light in the bulb tells what the factory is doing. The reporter in the newspaper tells what civilization is doing, as it works, builds, tears down, cheats, lies, deceives and slowly goes ahead.

“The electric bulb burns out, so does the newspaperman. He at least has made it possible for humanity to see more clearly and to advance with knowledge. That means satisfaction.

Newspaper work brings disillusion. After a few years a man starting out full of enthusiasm knows too much about human beings. He must begin with a great supply of hope and optimism, and a good deal of knowledge of the past and of progress in the past to avoid pessimism and gloom.

Young reporters learn that the words of great men is often unreliable. One of the best known statesmen and heroes of this country always had two reporters sent to see him by the Associated Press, that one might corroborate the other and discourage denial of what the hero had actually said.

Reporters in the very beginning learn the pitiful craving for notoriety, eagerness for publicity that obsesses their fellow citizens and that diminishes their opinion of them.

Reporters learn quite young that politics and the government of this nation are managed to a great extent by the intellectual dregs of the population. They discover that the first step toward public approval is a step down, and that discourages them,

However, newspaper work is an education. It enlightens reporter as the reporter enlightens his fellow citizens. If he can stay out of the rut, which is extremely difficult and unusual, or if he can stay in long enough to get the information he wants, then get out and try something else, the reporter usually can thank his newspaper experience.

If he stays too long and is not exceptionally fortunate, time and the current of news running through him burn him out, as the electric current burns out the bulb, and like that bulb he goes into the scrap heap.

This is written after thirty-nine years of reporting and other newspaper work, and therefore with some slight authority.

Without the work of good reporters our government, our grafters, our hypocrites, big and little, our crooks in politics, and our politics in crime would be a thousand times worse than they are. Let that repay the 1,000 newspaper men.

We often have said that being a reporter is the most exciting thing to do because reporters do something that scientists say is impossible and they do it every day.  Each day reporters walk into their newsrooms not knowing what events will challenge their skills and their principles during the day.  At the end of that day—and passionate reporters know a “day” for them is not measured in a fixed number of hours—they have created something out of nothing, a product known as “news.”  It happens every day in newspaper, radio, and television newsrooms throughout America.  Critics blast television for the “if it bleeds, it leads” attitude, or bemoan the shrinking commitment to solid local news reporting on radio, and mourn the passing of competition in local newspaper markets.  But in hundreds of newsrooms of those organizations are those who consciously work to tell the story straight.  But even if you believe the “media” are biased, believe Brisbane’s last paragraph:

Without the work of good reporters our government, our grafters, our hypocrites, big and little, our crooks in politics, and our politics in crime would be a thousand times worse than they are

Brisbane also wrote something else—advice that is good for reporters and non-reporters alike—that we’ll pass along in another entry.

SPORTS:  Look for a Long, Hot, Depressing Summer, Baseball Fans; Maybe You Should Go to a Race

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(BASEBALL)—We are left to recall a man who lived and died baseball, who passed up a potential Heisman Trophy college career to play the game of baseball, and who gave us some memorable thoughts and calls during fifty years in the broadcast booth as Jack Buck’s sidekick and later as the number one play-by-play guy with the Missourinet’s first sports director, John Rooney.

Mike Shannon is gone. He was 83. He was a multi-star athlete in high school who went to the University of Missouri on a football scholarship. In the days when freshmen could not play varsity football, Shannon so impressed Missouri coach Frank Broyles that Broyles thought he could have won the Heisman Trophy if he had stayed with football.

Instead, Shannon got a $50,000 signing bonus from the Cardinals and played baseball.

He gave us a lot of things on the field and in the booth. His Shannon-isms might be rivalled in all of baseball history (at least in our experience) only by the colorful phrasing of another native Missourian, Casey Stengel:

“It’s Mothers Day, so a big happy birthday to all you mothers out there.”

“Back in the day when I played, a pitcher had three pitches: a fastball, a curveball, a slider, a changeup and a good sinker pitch.”

(During a game in New York): “I wish you folks back in St. Louis could see this moon.”

“Ol’ Abner has done it again.”  (a late-game observation when the game is tight going into the last innings.)

“He’s faster than a chicken being chased by Ronald McDonald.”

“Our next home stand follows this road trip.”

“The wind has switched 360 degrees.”

“The crowd (is) on their feet for the Canadian Star Spangled Banner.”

And there were many more. Mike Shannon was Mike Shannon. Nice guy.  Good ball player. One of those guys who made a baseball broadcast booth much more than calling balls and strikes.  They don’t come along often and their enthusiasm for the game can’t be faked or scripted.

And we really need him these days.   His beloved Cardinals are in the pits. There’s no sugar-coating it.

They haven’t won a series since April 10-12 and were 10-19 after their weekend series against the Dodgers, wrapping up a road trip in which they went 2-8. They haven’t been this far under .500 in at least 16 years, 2007, the last time the cardinals finished below .500.  They have to go 80-53 if they’re going to win 90 games and compete for a wild card slot.

The Cardinals had never finished the first month of the season in last place in the National League Central—-and it was formed in 1994.

This weeks’ USA TODAY power rankings put the Cardinals 23rd out of the 30 teams.  The team started the year with fairly low expectations from the newspaper. They were ranked 11th.

And they’re expecting a 41-year old pitcher who has had a mediocre rehab assignments in Springfield and Memphis to lead a turnaround?   Wainwright had an ERA of 6.14 in Springfield and 6.35 at Memphis, 13 strikeouts in 12.2 innings in which he gave up 18 hits and nine runs.

Doesn’t me he can come up to the big club and do better—-rehab assignments aren’t necessarily about winning and losing.

But still…..

The Cardinals could be worse.  They could be the Kansas City Royals and ranked 29th by USA TODAY.  Only Oakland (soon to be Las Vegas, perhaps) is below them.

Where’s Mike Matheny when the Cardinals need him?

He’s in Kansas City where he is 172-242 in his three-plus seasons after going 591-474 in seven seasons in St. Louis and never having a losing record. The Royals went 7-22 in the first month of the season.

(MIZ-WHO?)—We confess that we’ve lost track of what the Missouri basketball team has won or lost since the season ended.  I think we’re suffering from portal fatigue.  They still lack a horse in the middle, a big one.

We’ll root for whatever Dennis Gates puts on the floor next year. But the era of carpet bagger-players the NCAA has ushered in with the portal and the NIL business has been a huge mess we prefer not to try to follow.

Pretty much the same for the football team.  We hope coach Drinkwitz is able to put together an outstanding team.  But by and large it’s going to be a bunch of strangers on Faurot field next fall.

It’s tempting to say that the NCAA has really screwed up collegiate sports.

(RACING)—All three major series were on track during the weekend—although the weekend stretched to an extra day for one of them.

(INDYCAR)—Close, but no cigar—again—for Romain Grosjean who led 57 of the first 66 laps before Scott McLaughlin fought his way past on lap 71 and held on to beat Grosjean to the line by about 1.8 seconds at Barber Motorsports Park at Birmingham, Alabama.

Grosjean, who started the race on the pole,  admits that he’s headed to Indianapolis for the two races in May—on the road course on May 14 and the Indianapolis 500 on the 28th.

McLaughlin’s win, his fourth in the INDYCAR series, was the product of race strategy.  His team planned on three pit stops. Grosjean’s team hoped to win the race on two stops.  But the three-stop strategy eliminated any fuel concerns for McLaughlin, who called it a “happy driver strategy.”

McLaughlin is the fourth driver to win in the four races run this year in INDYCAR.

Two-time series champion Will Power challenged Grosjean in the final laps but couldn’t get close enough to make a pass attempt.  Pato O’Ward and Alex Palou made up the rest of the top five.

(NASCAR)—The long dry spell for Martin Truex Jr., has come to an end after 54 races and 597 days.  Truex, opting for two tires on his last pit stop, held off Ross Chastain, who went with four, for the final fourteen laps.  Truex crossed the stripe a half-second ahead of Chastain.

The race was run yesterday (Monday) because it was rained out on Sunday. The win made the long weekend a family affair. His younger brother, Ryan, won the Xfinity race on Saturday.

Ryan Blaney, William Byron, and Denny Hamlin completed the top five. Byron led almost half of the 400 laps (193 of them) but couldn’t keep up with the top three in the closing laps.

Chastain’s run has put him on top of the points standings.

Chase Elliott, in his third race after returning from a broken leg was 11th and is now within the top thirty in points.  NASCAR rules say a driver must be in the top thirty in points and must have at least one victory if they’re not 16th or better in points at the start of playoffs.  Elliott is still looking for his first win of the year.

Josh Berry, who filled in for Elliott while he was recovering, was driving Alex Bowman’s car at Dover because Bowman suffered some compression back fractures in a sprint car wreck last week. He’s out indefinitely.  Berry finished 11th.

(FORMULA 1)—Sergio Perez is the first driver to win twice at the Grand Prix of Azerbain.

He beat teammate Max Verstappen, the defending f1 champion, by 2.1 seconds. Ferrari’s Charles LeClerc claimed the other podium spot.

Perez’s victory moves him to within six points of Verstappen in the standings. Both drivers have won twice this year. Two-time F1 champion Fernando Alonso, who seems to have found a new life in his career driving for Aston Martin, is third.

(Photo Credits; MLB Tonight (Rooney and Shannon) and Bob Priddy)

 

 

George and Bob, Part I

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The far right’s obsession with George Soros as some kind of leftist boogeyman funding every supposedly un-American conspiracy it can think of shows a lack of creativity, reality, and intellect we should expect in discussions of our political system.

To some of these folks, the mention of the words “George” and “Soros” provokes the same reaction that Pavlov got from a dog when he rang a bell.

Soros bashing emerged again last week with the indictment of Donald Trump.  Trump’s former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, attacking Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg as “a Soros-funded prosecutor who refuses to prosecute violent crimes…” A New York Times fact-checker has found no direct Soros funding link to Bragg’s campaign although he did give a million dollars to a political action committee that put a half-million dollars into the Bragg campaign.

Our former Attorney General and Trump acolyte, Eric Schmitt, accuses Bragg of ignoring “violent crime (that) rages on & violent criminals walk free.”  Too bad he never criticized prosecutors here at home where our two biggest cities have had high murder rates for years, including time when Schmitt was AG or was in the legislature making state policy.

Current AG Andrew Bailey accused Bragg of being “another Soros-funded prosecutor with misplaced priorities.

Governor Parson says it’s a matter of “another Soros-backed prosecutor [who] uses the rule of law to serve his own political agenda, not justice.

My defense of Soros should not be unexpected because I have been a beneficiary of Mr. Soros.

Or maybe I was a Soros enabler and others benefitted—-although his critics will say nobody has benefitted from the distribution of his wealth as he sees fit to distribute it—-a reverse reflection of how the people on the Left feel about the Koch brothers and their support of right-wing activities.

In such discussions we should acknowledge some things:

The Golden Rule in politics has been expressed as, “He who has the gold, rules.”

That’s not exactly correct. There are a lot of instances in which wealthy patrons have invested in this or that candidate only to see that candidate lose.  But the super-wealthy can afford to just shrug and see who else or what else they can buy, confident they will prevail eventually—although most of us wonder why the super-rich feel a need to keep prevailing.

Why can’t they just be like Scrooge McDuck and go down in their basement and take a bath in their money?

Why should they?

Soros faced his wealth and the freedom it gives him to be involved not only in politics but in other causes this way in a 2016 essay in The New York Review of Books: “My success in the financial markets has given me a greater degree of independence than most other people. This obliges me to take stands on controversial issues when others cannot, and taking such positions has itself been a source of satisfaction. In short, my philanthropy has made me happy.”

One of the things that makes him happy is the project that involved me.

Before I tell the story, let me tell you some things about George Soros that his critics never talk about but they’re things that help understand some of the man.

George, if I may speak of him with a familiarity I have not earned, is about 92, the son of a man who escaped from a Soviet prison camp and made his way back to Nazi-occupied Budapest where his family—Jewish family—was living. He says his father printed fake identity documents for other Jewish families.  Those years living as a Jew in Nazi Hungary shaped his life.

He went to England after escaping from Hungary, studied economics and developed his philosophy of investing. He came to America, became a naturalized citizen in 1961and began a career as a financial analyst before he later moved into hedge fund management and a career that led him to be what he calls a “political philanthropist.”

This article from The Street  includes Soros’s Wall Street Journal article in 2016 explaining, “Why I Support Reform Prosecutors.”

Billionaire George Soros Hits Back at Donald Trump – TheStreet

It might be educational for some of his critics whose knees jerk and whose saliva glands gush at the mere mention of his name to read—-although I doubt that few will.  He seems to be right on the money, however, when he wrote, “Many of the same people who call for more punitive civil justice policies also support looser gun laws.”

As for supporting Bragg, Soros says he has never met him and has never directly contributed to his campaign although his political action committee has constributed money to a group that has given some funds to Bragg’s campaigns.  To assert that Soros owns Bragg is a big leap.

In the early 80s, Soros created the Open Society Foundations to promote democracy and financial prosperity in nations that were falling away from the Soviet Union as the USSR crumbled.

And that is when George Soros and Bob Priddy came together.

Now, to be clear—I have never met George.  But the opportunity he gave me to be part of his program to bring freedom to the newly-independent countries that had been Soviet territories for decades turned out to be one of the most rewarding experiences of my career as a journalist.

George Soros is not always correct in backing the causes he backs. The history of his involvements makes that clear. Some of his assessments of this country’s present and this country’s future anger those on the right who see this country as the world’s dominant nation during a time when there are challenges to that idea and that reality every day.

His wealth and his world life-experience allow him the freedom to challenge those who have trouble thinking outside the box that constitutes the boundaries of the United States. But he does not have a corner on international geopolitical wisdom.  His ideas are open to challenge.  But such challenges are not beneficial if all they do is call him a name or vaguely blame him for everything that is wrong for this country and this world by merely beeathing the word “Soros.”

It is his right, as it is the right of wealthy others on the other side, to use his wealth to disseminate his opinions and to shape societies as he thinks they should be shaped.

The great broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow once said something that brings up a problem with the ability of the super-rich to influence our political system. Murrow told fellow broadcasters, “Just because the microphone in front of you amplifies  your voice around the world is no reason to think we have any more wisdom than we had when our voices could reach only from one of the bar to the other.”

So the super-rich on both sides of the aisle can afford a much bigger microphone than you or I can afford.  Finding a way to equalize the voices of the average American and the billionaire American is an important quest, but one unlikely to succeed in the foreseeable future.

My experience with George Soros leads me to defend him as something other than a leftist boogeyman. And I am naturally inclined against finding validity in those who only parrot cheap-shot party line character assassinations in place of intelligent discussion.

I’ll tell you about George and me in the next entry.

 

Just About When You Think You’ve Heard It All—

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You know for sure you never will.

The St. Louis County Council got into a recent snit because some members wanted to go behind closed doors to discuss, brace yourself:

Missouri’s open meetings law.

The agenda also included rules for public comment at council meetings and learning more about the Sunshine Law itself.

Things bogged down when Council Chairwoman Shalonda Webb began to read from a handbook on the Sunshine Law published by the Attorney General’s office.  One council member accused her of filibustering.  Eventually enough council members walked out that there was no longer a quorum and the meeting could not continue.

The meeting represents the eternal conflict between a government of the people and a government in spite of the people.

Government, even in this great land of so many kinds of freedom, thinks it can operate best away from public view or later public scrutiny.  That’s speaking generally, of course.  But since Missouri’s Sunshine law was engaged fifty years ago, various individuals and groups have tried to carve out secrecy gaps for themselves.

Our campaign finance laws, for example, let us learn far less than an informed citizenry would find helpful in understanding who is buying what, or trying to buy what in our statutes and our bureaucracy.

Five years ago, voters changed the Missouri Constitution to require greater obedience of our sunshine law by the legislature.  But now the people you and I elected to represent our interest are pushing a bill that closes more records that reveal how our laws are shaped.

Bureau Chief Jason Hancock of Missouri Independent, a respected colleague in our active reporting days, whose agency is an important addition to a capitol press corps that has been greatly diminished in recent years, summed up Senator Andrew Koenig’s bill a few days ago: “Any record of a state lawmaker or their staff pertaining to ‘legislation or the legislative process’ would be closed off to public scrutiny, except for those offered during a public meeting or involving a lobbyist…The bill also closes records held by the government pertaining to a constituent, though lobbyists wouldn’t be covered under this provision. Koenig deended the proposal at a legislative hearing…arguing that sometimes lawmakers “need to be able to think out loud with your staff and before you get a finished product.” But to government transparency advocates, the push represents lawmakers trying to carve themselves out of a constitutional mandate imposed on them by the voters of Missouri.”

The concept of having secret time so candid policy discussions can be held is a constant excuse for closing doors. The idea is understandable on matters of national security.  But it is garbage most of the time.

Jason also quoted Litigation Director David Roland of the Freedom Center of Missouri, who said, ““The legislature really doesn’t like the fact that the people amended the Constitution to say that they had to provide a greater level of transparency than a lot of these legislators are comfortable with. But that’s what the people decided. And now legislators are trying to insulate themselves from oversight by the public.”

Some in government argue that extensive demands for records or copies of records that are supposed to be public constitute “abuse.”

Does anybody else think it is absurd that a citizen has a right to get supposedly public records without being hassled or without having to get a second mortgage to pay for cophing or—as has been proposed—the time spent REDACTING INFORMATION THE CITIZEN CAN’T KNOW?

Who’s the abuser here?

It is a mistake to think that the only people who care about this issue are members of the press. Yes, open meetings and open records laws are important for those who believe they work as trusees for the public. But “the public” needs to understand that there are all kinds of records about it and the public has a right to see those records.

That right is enshrined in one of the sacred documents of our nation—“Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

“The governed” should be wary of lawmakers who decide the people do not need to know or are incapable of understanding how their government is run or who really runs some of it.

Too many of those we entrust to govern us do not trust us to know what they do.

By, for, and of the people?

Let’s not kid ourselves to often.

 

 

Enheduanna’s descendants

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About twenty descendants of Enheduanna met at the Missouri River Regional Library yesterday afternoon.  I might have been the only one, certainly one of the few, who knows about this relationship.

It was a gathering of mis-Missouri authors, all of whom had their books for sale.  I sold five in two and half hours but I had some lively conversations with with some of the other descendants.

Enhe—who?

I am a member of the Archaeological Institute of America and a former member of the National Geographic Society.  Do not be impressed.  That only means that I subscribe or subscribed to a magazine.

In my latest edition of the AIA’s Archaeology magazine is the story of Enheduanna, a poet and a composer of hymns to the temples of the Akkadian Empire.  She was a priestess and a princess, the daughter of Sargon the Great who founded the world’s first great empire by uniting northern and southern Mesopotamia,  and his spouse, Nanna.

Enheduanna, whose name translated means “Ornament of Heaven,” was the high priestess at the temple to Nana-Suen, the moon god, in the ancient city of Ur, once a coastal city near the mouth of the Euphrates River on the Persian Gulf in what is now southern Iraq.  Time has caused the coastline to shift and the site of Ur is on the south bank of the river, about ten miles from Nasiriya, a city not far from the Gulf.

There is a portrait of her—sort of a portrait—found on a 4,000 year old disk excavated in 1927.

She is shown in the long dress, two male servants behind her and another in front of her, prayerfully working on one of her poems or hymns.  The disk dates from about 2250 BCE.*

She is important in today’s observation because she is the world’s first author.

Or at least the earliest person whose writings have survived with an author’s name attached.

Kate Ravilious, in her magazine article, quotes Assyriologist Anette Zgoll: “The rituals that Enheduanna performed were instrumental in creating the new power structure by reconciling the city states and the wider realm.”

One of her hymns is Temple Hymn 26: To the Zabalam Temple of Inanna:

O house wrapped in beams of light
wearing shining stone jewels wakening great awe
sanctuary of pure Inanna
(where) divine powers the true me spread wide
Zabalam
shrine of the shining mountain
shrine that welcomes the morning light
she makes resound with desire
the Holy Woman grounds your hallowed chamber
with desire
your queen Inanna of the sheepfold
that singular woman
the unique one
who speaks hateful words to the wicked
who moves among the bright shining things
who goes against rebel lands
and at twilight makes the firmament beautiful
all on her own
great daughter of Suen
pure Inanna
O house of Zabalam
has built this house on your radiant site
and placed her seat upon your dais

She wrote in cuneiform and her works are preserved in 4,000-year old clay tablets.

Perhaps you have been moved to write a poem (beyond your elementary school English classes where a teacher might have had you write one as an assignment), or a published or unpublished book.

Or maybe you blog.  Or perhaps your literary tastes are confined to Facebook or some other social media platform.

Those who write are literary descendants of a woman who lived for that four millennia ago and whose words are preserved on clay tablets.  Some of us also write on tablets but our works probably won’t be found by archaeologists thousands of years from now.

Enheduanna would be considered the patron saint of authors, probably, except she probably is considered a heathen by those who confer official sainthood.

A lot of people, perhaps most people, have an urge to write. Something.  Some make a living doing it. But only a minuscule percentage of writers are in that category.

I don’t think any of the people at the tables in that library room make a living from writing, but mot would agree that writing makes living better.

You can be the Enheduanna of your household.  Publication is secondary to the reward of just writing, whether is poetry, a memoir, a family history, or an attempt at the great American novel.

Don’t worry about where to begin. Just start.  The beginning point and the ending point will come later.  But write.

Enheduanna has had a lot of descendants.  Be one more.

*BCE is an archaeological term for “Before the Common Era,” which provides a process of dating that does not favor a particular religion.

(photo credit: wikicommons)

Ya Got Trouble Right Here in River City

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“Gotta figure out a way to keep the young ones moral after school,” the professor told the citizens of River City, Iowa.

Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft thinks he has a way to do that.  He proposes taking away state funding for local libraries that don’t adopt written policies that allow any parent or guardian of a minor “to determine what materials and access will be available to a minor,” particularly any materials that might appeal to that minor’s prurient interests.

The ultimate moral policeman would be the Secretary of State, whoever it is now and whoever it might be in the future.

Librarians throughout the state are not reacting kindly to his idea.  And local library boards, who are better cross-sections of community standards than one person at the state capital, by and large resent his meddling.

If you want to read the proposed rule, go to: https://www.sos.mo.gov/CMSImages/AdRules/main/images/15_CSR_30_200_015.pdf

We are now within a thirty-day public comment period before the legislature’s Joint Committee on Administrative Rules decides whether this overreach should become state policy.

One local library trustee who is known for wordiness minces no words in his response:

I am a trustee of a local library board, a position I have held off and on for more than twenty years. I was a delegate to the most recent White House Conference on Libraries and Information.  I am a published author of five books with a sixth book under consideration by publishers.

I am a reader.

I believe in the First Amendment.

I do not believe in censorship.

I do not believe in government overreach.

I am not a card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union, but I do carry a valid library card.

The proposed rule on “Library Certification Requirements for the Protection of Minors” is a terrible rule and should be rejected by the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules.

This rule potentially gives the Secretary of State, whoever it might be or whoever it might become, the power to determine whether a library shall receive state funds based on his interpretation of what, as the rule states, “appeals to the prurient interest of any minor.”

The Secretary has issued a statement saying, “When state dollars are involved, we want to bring back local control and parental involvement in determining what children are exposed to. Foremost, we want to protect our children.”

The intimation in this statement that local control of libraries has been lost is irresponsible. Public libraries are governed by boards made up of local citizens. There has been no loss of local control.  “Parental involvement in determining what children are exposed to” likewise seems to suggest parents have been restricted in considering whether a book that might be proper for someone else’s child to read is improper for their own child to have.

He also has said, “We want to make sure libraries have the resources and materials they need for their constituents, but we also want our children to be ‘children’ a little longer than a pervasive culture may often dictate.”

I am afraid that the statement only invites chaos. If libraries are to serve “their constituents,” they must have a wide range of materials available to a broad range of individuals at various levels of maturity. To expect librarians to determine the level of maturity of every nine-year old who walks into their buildings is unrealistic.

When I first heard about this rule, my first question was, “Who makes the ultimate decision?”  It appears the answer is the Secretary of State.  To place one person in a position of second-guessing professional community librarians is dangerous.

The proposed rule does not define this critical phrase which puts the Secretary of State, as the supervisor of the patronage position of State Librarian, in the position of making subjective judgments about the prurience of any single publication that is objectionable to “any material in any form not approved by the minor’s parent or guardian.”

“Prurience” is not defined nor is “age appropriate,” three words that open the door to onerous penalties based on an interpretation of one parent and/or one state official. And stoking fear of some kind of vague “pervasive culture” that the statement suggests has invaded our public libraries and motivates the professionals who manage them is completely uncalled for.

The rule creates the potential for the kind of decision referred to by Justice Potter Stewart who discussed the threshold test for defining obscenity in Jacobellis v. Ohio in 1964:

“I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [“hard-core pornography”], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it…”

By working backward from the parent to the Secretary of State, this rule indicates that a library could lose state funding if one parent of one child disagrees with a library’s policy on collection acquisitions by finding one book that the parent feels appeals to the child’s “prurient interest” and files the objection with the State Librarian and the librarian’s supervisor, the Secretary of State.

I do not believe our libraries and our librarians are  the “dance at the arm’ry” referred to by Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man:

“Libertine men and scarlet women, and ragtime, shameless musicThat’ll grab your son, your daughter with the arms of a jungle, animal instinctMass-stariaFriends, the idle brain is the devil’s playground.”

Libraries are not devil’s playgrounds. Librarians are not “libertine” or “scarlet” but are instead highly professional defenders of the right to read, the right to know, the right to think.  I believe they carefully evaluate additions to the collections, but they recognize that children as well as adults mature differently and determining “age appropriateness” is one of their most difficult tasks.

But if my children were still young readers, I should be the one to decide what they bring home. It is not my place to decide what should be available to another child of the same age but a higher maturity.

We refer to these institutions as free public libraries. I believe the word “free” means more than an institution that does not charge a membership fee that limits access to intellectual exploration and growth.

This is a bad rule that places one person in a position of denying funding to one of the most important institutions in any community because he or she agrees with one parent who finds one book objectionable.

Moral judgments are personal. The power to force others to bend to the moral judgment of any single political officer by cutting off funding to a library should never be allowed.

This rule is anti-freedom at several levels and has no business being part of state government. While I am concerned with our children remaining children, I am more concerned with what happens with a politician being a politician and what it can mean to the liberties of us all.

I urge the committee to reject this proposal.

Bob Priddy

Jefferson City

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The silent letter

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We have a big stack of table games that we like to play with friends. One that we like is Bananagram.  I often complain because, unlike Scrabble, there are no points for the letters. And without points, how do we determine a winner?

Nancy just unzips the cloth banana and spills out dozens of tiles with different letters. We turn them upside down and pick the proper starting number of them (usually trying to pick tiles from various parts of the pile—as if that makes any difference) and then each person starts his own little word-building.  The end result is a crossword-looking series without any lines and with no clues.  If you have leftover tiles after you spell your first series of words, you say the proper word and everybody draws another tile. The person who runs out of tiles first is the winner.

But there are no points!!!   How do we identify a winner after a night of full-contact Bannanagram if the losers of each game don’t get points?

We also play other word games such as Quiddler and Wordspiel.  And other non-word card games including one with five suits called Five Crowns.  And games that aren’t word games such as Labyrinth,  Dominoes, and Rummikub.

Whether it’s because we play word games at the table or because we make a living out of stringing words into columns or articles or books or speeches, we find the English language pretty fascinating.  Maybe it goes back to one of our first jobs being the proofreader of the National Broom and Broom Corn News, which had an unpleasantly picky and prickly editor, in Arcola, Illinois or because we had some pretty good English teachers along the way.  (The NB&BCN was a contract print job that the Arcola Record-Herald published for the broom corn industry that was big in central Illinois then).

That’s probably why we had to do some hard thinking when we saw an article in Mental Floss by Michele Debczak about the only letter in our alphabet that cannot be silent.

(Let’s pause here for a bit so you can ruminate on this. Come back whenever you’re ready.)

The English language is a really hard language and a lot of us never learn it or never quit learning it.  The other day I admonished a friend for saying something such as, “George and myself are going to the game next Friday.” That sentence construction is fingernails on a blackboard.  Suppose George wasn’t going with you.  Would you say, “Myself is going to the game Friday?”  Think of a sentence that way and you’ll probably say or write it correctly.

Psychosis.   Gnu.  (In Africa a couple of years ago, I took a picture of several Wildebeests standing around.  I called it “Gnus Conference.”)  Mnemonic.  Silent letters.

Some letters have multiple personalities. Hard and soft “c,” or “g.” A great example is “Ghoti,” which is pronounced “fish.”  You know, “gh” as in “enough.”  “O” as in “women,” and “ti” as in “action.”

Ms. Debczak points to some foreign words we have appropriated for our own use that have silent letters.  French gives us the silent “z” as in “Chez.” Spanish gives us a silent “j,” as in “marijuana.”  Come to think of it, the “z” in Debczak probably is silent.

She apparently has read the Merriam-Webster Dictionary because she says the only letter in that entire dictionary that is never, ever silent is (drum roll):

V

If the “v” were silent, we would be saying “I loe you.”  Politicians would proclaim “ictory” after citizens had cast their “otes.”  Poetry would be “erse.”  Olive oil would be extra “irgin olie oil”  We’d have to find another word to describe these political times. “Diisie” would not work.

Get out your dictionary. Look at all the “V” words.

Let us know if you find one with a silent “V.”   And once you’ve done that, find the rhyme for “orange.”

 

Banned Book Week

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I have a pin that I wear on rare occasions that says, “I Read Banned Books.”

And I do.

I’ve read Huckleberry Finn.  The Bible (well, parts of it), Grapes of Wrath, Lady Chatterley’s Lover (not just the good parts), In Cold Blood, The Naked and the Dead—–

Probably more.

And as consumers of these columns know, I am clearly corrupted, probably an abuser of something or other, and have read a forbidden word or two that most second-graders already know.

This is the fortieth anniversary of Banned Books Week, It was started at a time when there was a sharp rise in actions to take books out of schools, libraries and even out of bookstores. It was created by Pittsburgh librarian Judith F. Krug who became the director of the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom. Later she joined the Freedom to Read Foundation and after Time magazine did an article in 1981, “The Growing Battle of the Books,” founded Banned Books Week.

One of the biggest promoter is a century-old (founded in 1922) organization called PEN America, which says it “stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect free expression in the United States and worldwide.” Originally the acronym stood for “Poets, Essayists, Novelists.”  But the group has broadened its tent to include playwrights and editors and even more people. So “PEN” is no longer an acronym for anything but the organization is for free exposure to ideas.

Not long ago the organization calculated about 140 school districts spread throughout 32 states had issued more than 2,500 book bans, efforts that it says affect almost four=million students in more than five-thousand individual school buildings. It has identified at least fifty groups with at least 300 local chapters advocating for book bans.  It says most of those groups have formed in the last year.

PEN America keeps an annual index of schoolbook bans.  That list for the school year ending June 30, 2022 lists 2,535 instances of banning 1,648 titles.  The organization says 674 of the banned titles address LGBTQ+ themes or have characters who are in that category. Another 659 titles featured characters of color and another 338 addressed issues of race and racism.

Political pressure or legislation designed to “restrict teaching and learning” (PEN”s phrase) were involved in at least forty percent of the bans.  Texas had 801 bans in 22 districts. Florida had 566 in 21 districts. Pennsylvania had 457 in 11 districts.

The organization says the movement is speeding up resulting in “more and more students losing access to literature that equips them to meet the challenges and complexities of democratic citizenship.” It says, “Ready access to ideas and information is a necessary predicate to the right to exercise freedom of meaningful speech, press, or political freedom.”  It cites this except from a 1978 decision in a Federal Court case in Massachusetts:

“The library is ‘a mighty resource in the marketplace of ideas’ … There a student can literally explore the unknown and discover areas of interest and thought not covered by the prescribed curriculum. The student who discovers the magic of the library is on the way to a life-long experience of self-education and enrichment. That student learns that a library is a place to test or expand upon ideas presented to him, in or out of the classroom… The most effective antidote to the poison of mindless orthodoxy is ready access to a broad sweep of ideas and philosophies. There is no danger in such exposure. The danger is in mind control.”

Sixteen instances of book banning are on the new PEN index.  Six are from Nixa. Four are from Wentzville.

(3 actions)  Alison Bechdel, Fun House, A Family Tragicomic, banned in classrooms, Nixa May 2022; Banned pending investigation, North Kansas City and Wentzville (October, 2021)

Echo Bryan, Black Girl Unlimited, the Remarkable Story, banned in library, Nixa,  February 2022

Jano Dawson, This Book is Gay, banned in libraries, Lindbergh School District, October 2021

Jonathan Evison, Lawn Boy, banned pending investigation, Wentzville School District, October, 2021

Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing, banned in libraries, Nixa, May, 2022

Lisa Jewell, Invisible Girl, a Novel, banned pending investigation, Wentzville School District October 2021

(Two actions) George M. Johnson, All Boys Aren’t Blue, banned in libraries and classrooms, Nixa School District, May, 2022; banned pending investigation, North Kansas City School District,  October, 2021

Kiese Laymon, Heavy, an American Memoir, banned pending investigation, Wentzville School District, October, 2021.

Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye, banned in libraries of the Nixa School District  February, 2022.

Logan Myracle, l8r g8tr, banned in libraries and classrooms, St. Francis Howell School District,  October, 2021

Elizabeth Scott, Living Dead Girl, banned pending investigation, Rockwood School District, March, 2022

Nic Stone, Dear Martin, banned in classes, Monett R-1 School District, December 2021

Jeanette Walls, The Glass Castle, banned pending investigation, Nixa February, 2022

I am a writer, a journalist, an author, a longtime supporter of my local and regional libraries. I do not have much patience with those who want to dictate to me what I might read, how I might speak, or what I might think.

Perhaps I am the kind of person those who want to dictate those things fear.  Fear is a lousy reason for running a society or a nation.  People who are different will not go away and keeping someone from reading about them won’t drive them away.

So for the rest of this week, be a good American.

Read a banned book.  There’s a list of them above.

 

 

 

 

RACE

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In various forms we are tied up, politically, socially, economically and about every other kind of “ically” with the subject of race.

It provokes anger, fear, and uncertainty.

Am I racist?  Is someone else a racist, too, although they don’t look the same way I do?

Am I a victim? Am I a perpetrator?

What should I do?  Admit it?  Feel guilty about it?  Demand something from somebody? Be afraid of somebody?  Organize and try to stamp it out or stamp out discussions of it?

And where did it come from?

There are those who prefer not to discuss this issue. They have turned the word “woke” into a pejorative describing disparagingly those who are, as the Oxford Old English Dictionary tells us “originally (were) well-informed, up-to-date” but now “chiefly” means someone “alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice.”

A few weeks ago (July 25), we wrote about “Two Popes and Christian Nationalism.”  Recently we listened to a talk by John Biewen, the director of Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies, a podcaster, and an author. He called his remarks, “The lie that invented racism,” and offered suggestions for solving racial injustice that began about 170 years before 1619, the date cited by a much-attacked New York Times article that (erroneously, we think) sets the date for racism in America.

Biewen’s talk supplements that July 25th exploration. We do not fear being called “woke” by recommending you watch Biewen’s presentation. Frankly, we are more likely to take it as a compliment, which might only make an accuser more angry. Too bad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIZDtqWX6Fk

I jotted down three quotes while listening to his talk—-not a speech, mind you, a talk.  Racism “is a tool to divide us and to prop up systems.”

“It’s about pocketbooks and power.”

“White guilt doesn’t get a lot of anything done”

His presentation is one of many TED Talks posted on the web.  Talks such as these began with a 1984 conference on Technology, Entertainment, and Design (thus, TED).  The program focuses on “ideas worth spreading.”  The talks, limited to no more than eighteen minutes, cover a huge range of topics within the broad fields of science and culture.

Some famous people have made them. There are many whose names are meaningless to most of us—but whose words are worth hearing.  This is a forum for people unafraid to think outside their personal box, not for those who prefer to box out thoughts different from theirs.

There is afoot in our land an effort to ban discussion of race. Some say discussing race is an effort to make white people feel guilty about being white. The greater danger is from those who find no guilt in continuing to consider people of another color as lesser people.

We cannot escape history and we do not serve our country if we try to hide from it, obscure it, or ignore it.

The mere fact that we are discussing this issue as much as we are is proof enough that race remains one of the greatest overarching problems in our society and in our country.  It remains a problem and a problem is never fixed by denying that it exists or denying there never was a problem.

I hope Mr. Biewen’s remarks make you think.

(Photo credit: TED talks/youtube.com)