Cities of Refuge, Cities of Hope

Our daughter reported Friday that another kid from Louisiana showed up to enroll at her middle school in southwest Houston, another small drop in a steady trickle that began a couple of days earlier and which we understand has turned into a steady, building flow at other local schools. The girl was shy and looked a little scared. She clasped her sides and stood stiffly when an assistant principal brought her around and introduced her to our daughter’s class. She related that her house had been “totally ruined” by the hurricane.

We can’t begin to understand how our daughter’s new classmate feels, but we know how we’d feel: Last Thursday or Friday she was in her home, in her school, in her city, living her life, and a week later her family had fled that home, most likely with little or nothing to go back to, and suddenly she was standing before strange kids in a strange classroom in a strange city. Her new home, for now.

Multiply that little girl’s story by 100,000---the number of evacuees that Mayor Bill White estimates are in Houston (is that really possible?)---and it’s clear that New Orleans won’t be the only large American city transformed by Hurricane Katrina. In the coming weeks we want to keep this little girl in mind, her and all the other children housed at the Astrodome and the Brown Center and in hotels and homes and other locations across our city, as the inevitable but justifiable concerns about the costs of our hospitality---both to the public purse, and in the stresses to the social fabric---are raised and argued. We know that County Commissioner Steve Radack is trying to score a few quick political baskets at the expense of White and County Judge Robert Eckels, but what he’s saying about extending our hearts but thinking with our heads is worth heeding. Unlike all the instant armchair experts we’re reading and hearing everywhere we turn---the bloggers, the columnists, the editorialists, the TV and radio talkers, all high and dry and safe at home or work---we at Slampo’s Place don’t always put our faith in the benevolence and competence of government, nor do we believe in the ultimate perfectibility of man (or evacuation plans for a million-plus people).

In other words, we hope that much finer minds than ours are thinking ahead, looking down the road, running through the potential scenarios, such as what kind of psychological toll living in domed stadium for 2 or 3 weeks (months?) will take. We hope, then we remember Hurricane Alicia and the aftermath of Alicia, when the city of Houston, in one of the great misguided affirmative actions in the history of affirmative action, hired the reverend with the one pick-up to dispose of the debris. You remember that, don’t you? (In retrospect, we wonder how Kathy Whitmire survived that upcoming election.)

For instance: The initiatives by the state of Texas and the Houston school district to open our schools to evacuee kids are great. Getting them in school should be a priority. But at the campus level in HISD there’s a palpable apprehension about an impending deluge of the school system. This probably isn’t news to anyone, but schools in some parts of the city are already overcrowded. We understand HISD has been considering reopening some recently shuttered schools, or locating a temporary facility at or near the Astrodome. The latter would seem to make the best sense, especially when it comes to transportation and delivery of the services many of these kids wll need. And somebody, at the federal level, needs to sit up and slash some of the bullshit red tape. It's’s been pointed out to us that many students from New Orleans and elsewhere were taking advantage of the special education services they’re entitled to by federal law, yet it’s very unlikely that their school records will be quickly forthcoming to Houston, most likely because those school records don’t exist anymore, thus necessitating a new, costly and time-consuming round of assessments and evaluations here. And what about the teachers for these kids? Hopefully, displaced educators from Louisiana will be allowed to step into Houston classrooms without having to meet the silly certification requirements. Just get 'er done, as that blue-collar comedian guy says.

We detect a lot of wariness out in Houston, accompanied by almost overwhelming urge to help (that’s one of the advertised virtues of our city that happens to be true---its residents do indeed have big hearts). We were a mute party to a conversation last week between two African-American women---both with Louisiana roots, and one of whom has blood relatives in six families in Slidell who have been displaced---about the differences in “culture” between their high-schoolers and kids who might be coming from New Orleans’ 9th Ward, and they weren’t making this observation in a derogatory way, either. One of the women lives hard by the Medical Center, and she noted, without annoyance, that the traffic in the Astrodome area was horrendous Friday morning and caused her to be late to work. Of course, the conversation ended with one woman saying she was going to volunteer at the Dome on Saturday, and the other reporting that she was pushing her church to open to refugees the community center it recently built with the city’s help. Not saints, just average people, extending their hearts, thinking with their heads.

East of Houston, our mother reports that her town of about 110,000 is inundated with evacuees. The coliseum is at capacity, traffic is gridlocked. Her beauty parlor was overrun with women from New Orleans at week’s end, as was her branch of the public library, where many people had gone just to sit some place quiet and read the news they had lived. Reassuringly, some kids were seated at tables, finishing homework from textbooks. Many of the refugees were white, like the kids who’ve enrolled at my daughter’s school, and some were black, but they all looked middle-class. We mention this to point out that it’s not just poor African-Americans whose lives have been devastated, that there’s plenty of refugees out of the media eye who have the wherewithal to hold out in hotels or with friends, at least for a while … but for how long? Just dealing with your insurance company after something like this---it boggles the mind.

My mother also reported that there are lots of rumors and stories, unconfirmed, going around the town, as well as a free-floating and fairly widespread anger building against Bush---even in my mother’s small circles, where she usually counts herself as the only Democrat. We’re already sick of the finger-pointing, but who among wasn’t sitting in front of the TV Wednesday or Thursday and wondering why, in 2005 in the richest nation in the history of humankind, we couldn’t get some water and food and toilet paper to those people in front of the convention center or on the freeway overpass? And what was with that odd off-script crack Bush made in Mississippi about hoping to one day enjoy the view from Trent Lott’s rebuilt porch---while people were stewing and dying nearby in a pot of death and shit! And where’s Dick Cheney? I’m writing this late Saturday, and I can recall seeing neither hide nor hair of him since before the hurricane, and him a guy who likes to duck hunt down in south Louisiana. We’ve seen and heard plenty of and from Harry Connick Jr. and the LSU quarterback … but nothing from Cheney (!?).

And that reminds us that we saw Joel Osteen being interviewed on one of the Houston TV channels on Friday, and while we’ve previously confessed to liking the preacher and think he’s a decent sort, he’s obviously not someone equipped to grapple with questions that might be more than an inch deep. Osteen was asked the perennial--what would you say to the desolate and homeless who’ve been relocated to Houston and might be wondering why a supposedly benevolent God who wants you to drive a nice car and have a good dental care plan (we added the last part there) would allow such a disaster to happen----and he came off as downright callow. It appeared as if he hadn’t given it too much thought. Kind of not his thing, we suppose. The gist of his reply was that as Christians they just need to keep on believing, and hey, they should view all this as an opportunity for a new beginning. We guess he meant they should look at it as if Shell were transferring them from New Orleans to a better-paying job in Houston. Of course, these folks might have a lot more “junk” in their heads than the average Osteen congregant. Not a good answer, reverend.

Finally, as we mentioned above, we don’t always put our faith in the benevolence and competence of government, nor do we believe in the ultimate perfectibility of man (or evacuation plans for a million-plus people). Which is why, after the past week, we hope all law-abiding citizens take care to make a clean, well-functioning firearm, or two or three, part of their hurricane preparation kits. If you don’t, then you ain’t livin', as they say in Louisiana.

Used to say, we mean.

Do You Know What It Means, to Miss New Orleans?

Opening our bleeding heart, while trying to remember the day-trippin' good times (with apologies to Larry King):

Walking alone in the northeast corner of the French Quarter, near Rampart, at 6 o'clock on a clear, crisp fall morning ...

A big nasty fried oyster po-boy at Mother's on Poydras ... the red beans and rice at Buster Holmes', the original ... Ye Olde College Inn on Carrrollton ... Tujague's, the original, almost empty and quiet at mid-afertnoon ... waiting in line, Saturday mornings, Camellia Grill ... Commander's Palace ... Compagno's ... so much more, eaten, digested, forgotten ...

Riding the "Freret Jet" bus in the fall of 1972, watching a 7 or 8-year-old black kid on the back bench, alone, singing one line from Curtis Mayfield, over and over: "Fred is dead. Fred is dead. Fred is dead. Fred is ..."

Accompanying Edwin Edwards to a rally at Jefferson Downs, watching him drive his supporters into a howling frenzy, then being lifted off our feet by the hungry, grabbing, pressed-in crowd that followed him as he left the racetrack, 1983(?) ...

Sitting with my wife at Cafe Du Monde at 1 a.m. and watching the guy who played Cliff Barnes on Dallas emerge stumble-drunk from a limousine and throw his arms up in the air in a "C'est moi!" gesture. Then burst out laughing ...

Professor Longhair at Tipitina's ... Sidney's Newstand on Decatur ... Fooseball at Eddie Price's ... Springsteen on his first tour south, at the Lakeshore Auditorium, 1974 ... The Meters everywhere ... Jax in a can ... The Maple Street Bookstore ... James Booker on piano at the Maple Leaf---gay, crippled and a junkie to boot, with an eye patch ... Watching the Pope roll down Canal Street in the Popemobile, 1988 ... and attending an anti-Pope news conference staged by a renegade nun, then walking back with her to the French Quarter townhouse she'd been "loaned," being invited in for iced tea and stunned near-speechless by the beauty of the interior ...

Coming to at 7 a.m. in the Gateway Bar in the Quarter, with P--- McD-----'s hulking frame sprawled halfway across the counter ...

David Bowie and the Spiders from Mars, The Warehouse, on Tchoupitoulas ...

Robert Stone's Hall of Mirrors and the movie version with Paul Newman ...

Seeing, but just barely, Ali retake his crown from Leon Spinks, from a perch on the second row from the top of the Superdome, which we later read was like looking down at the street from nine floors up; then walking with our glassy-eyed friend through the Hyatt and seeing the sweaty, ass-whipped Spinks being carried off an elevator by his handlers ... 1978(?)

The old white guys' bar at the edge of the Irish Channel where we twice went with M--- C----- to eat soft-boiled eggs and shoot pool ...

Ex-governor Jimmie Davis singing You Are My Sunshine at the Jazz Fest, 1979(?)

Jazz Fest, 1987, with E---- R----- (1952-2004), "Authorized Distributor, Chaos and Confusion" ...

Riding the streetcar back from the Quarter late one night with a girl whose name we've long forgotten, in a fierce thunderstorm and driving rain that gave us the impression the car was slipping and sliding all the way up St. Charles Ave. ...

Taking our family to meet our parents for a weekend at the Monteleone, the crazy weekend of the 2000 "Bayou Classic," and trying to show our kids some of the sights, give them a taste of the city ... they say now they don't remember much of that weekend ...

"We've lost our city. I fear it's potentially like Pompeii."
---former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial

Writers on the Storm

Adding to the floating debris in the aftermath of Katrina, in lieu of doing something useful, other than making our meager donation to the Red Cross:

We first read in the Brazosport News early Wednesday morning of the suggestion that the Astrodome be opened to house New Orleans evacuees, an idea that we’ve since learned has been put into motion by Harris County officials. We don’t know enough to actually credit Banjo Jones with the initiative---according to the AP, Harris County first began considering the possibility early Wednesday---but it’s certainly the kind of helpful, constructive suggestion that a blogger can amplify and spread …

… Unlike this very unhelpful screed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who, without waiting for the bodies to be counted, is blaming the hurricane damage on Bush and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, for scuttling proposed mandatory caps on CO2 emissions, thus contributing to what Kennedy claims is the scientifically verifiable increase in “destructive hurricanes” due to global warning (which doesn’t account for the Great Storm of 1900. or …). We still consider ourself a Democrat, nominally---well, slightly more than 50 percent of the time----but this is the kind of thing that makes it hard for us to admit to being one. There are a lot of things we could blame Bush for---the hemorrhaging deficit, the war in Iraq not going to according to plan, or non-plan---but we draw the line at Hurricane Katrina. Damn you, Bush, for making the wind blow so hard! This kind of thinking isn’t limited to Kennedy, as evidenced here. Kennedy does remind us, however, that Pat Robertson once warned that hurricanes were likely to hit communities that “offended God,” and New Orleans is (or was) a very Catholic city, and there's all those casinos on the coast …

And Peter Applebome of the New York Times wonders in well-written deadline piece if a wrecked New Orleans, when (or if) it recovers, will retain its singular “immutable” spirit or just throw in the towel and become like every place else. What we’ve found worrisome, long before Katrina’s rampage, is the prospect of other cities becoming more like New Orleans. We love the place---we lived there briefly years ago, have visited often and had many good times there, and a few bad ones, too---but outside of the tourist tracks it's a falling-apart, depressing mess. No one with even a cursory knowledge of the city was surprised by the looting. The middle-class, white and black, long ago abandoned New Orleans---the city proper, inside what is as of this writing the rapidly filling bowl---leaving a large black underclass (and in New Orleans, that sterile sociological description fits to a T) and a thin stratum of residents, white and black, who, while probably not all “wealthy” in the conventional sense of the term, are certainly well-off enough to insulate themselves from the everyday hazards of street life, as well as reliance on the public schools, the public transportation, or the public health structure. New Orleans’ economy is mostly tied to its service industries and the peddling of a sentimentalized version of itself that barely exists any more (sort of like those little East Texas towns that have become nothing more than one big antique shop). A longtime friend of ours who gave up on New Orleans a few years ago to move back to southwest Louisiana, a guy who is much sturdier than the average middle-class white person, tried to explain what it was like living deep in the city: “It’s like anything can happen, at any time.”

What see what he meant.

Armageddon in Evangeline, or Some Place Close By

We spent much of the past weekend and Monday afternoon keeping our TV eye on Hurricane Katrina, hoping it wouldn’t wreak too much havoc on New Orleans and, closer to home, that it wouldn’t suddenly swerve and make a beeline for our mama’s house 120 miles to the west. The latter was spared, but the former, sadly, was not.

Despite the storm’s path well to the east of the Texas coast, Houston television viewers were still able to experience the familiar frisson afforded by the sight of Channel 13’s Wayne Dolcefino blowin’ in the wind, this time from the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain (Dolcefino always does a good job, but it appears that nothing less than a Category 5 hurricane can generate the windpower sufficient to reposition his ever-expanding bulk). There were other small pleasures to be found: the slightly bug-eyed woman on CNN who persisted in saying kat-a-REENA during her interview with Louisiana’s U.S. Sen. David Vitter (demoted to a lowly “Rep.” on the network’s crawl), or the MSNBC weatherman who pronounced “Plaquemine” three different ways during a 30-second span. Beyond those understandable miscues were more serious breaches: the lady on the Weather Channel (we think, although we were clicking around with abandon, so it may have been CNN or MSNBC or TNT or BET) who declared that the “hurricane” looked “beautiful” at that moment---not the real hurricane charging through the Gulf on its way to dealing death and devastation, but the inflamed red pustule churning on the radar screen (calling Roland Barthes!). Then there was the correspondant on some network or another who on Sunday afternoon almost hollered at the top of her lungs that the entire city of New Orleans “very well could be under 20 or 30 feet of water at this time tomorrow!” OK, lady, but like we tell our kids---yelling doesn’t help.

After being unplugged from the coverage all day Monday, we hopped in our car and heard a reporter on NPR declare somewhat tentatively and very prematurely that New Orleans appeared to have fared well in the storm. Alas, the poor guy had his hand on only a very small, localized part of the elephant’s appendage: “I’m standing at the foot of Canal Street.” he reported, “and it’s not one,” meaning a canal (ho heh). He could’ve stopped there, but he went on to say the scene was NOT evoking that line from the classic Randy Newman song: “Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline.” He said it Evange-leen, mispronouncing Newman’s own (probably intentional) mispronunciation Evange-line (it’s Evange-lun, at least in Evangeline, a parish a good two-and-a-half hour drive from New Orleans and well out of the way of the storm’s fury; but what the hell, to the parochial national media types it’s just another colorfully named locale where all these exotic, slowing-talking white and black folks insist on living).

So we figured New Orleans did indeed do OK and went on home, trying to shake from our mind Newman’s lyrics to what ought to be Louisiana’s state anthem (“They’re trying to wash us away …”), until we turned to CNN and heard a reporter named Jeanne Meserve excitedly declare that the scene looked like “Armageddon” in New Orleans’ flooded 9th Ward. “Well Jeanne,” said Wolf Blitzer, back in the studio, “you’re an experienced reporter so you should know what Armageddon looks like, if anyone does” (calling Pat Roberston!). We decided to split the difference between Armageddon and NOT a Randy Newman song, although as it turned out Meserve was much closer to the truth.

Of course, the media plays an important role in informing the public (as they are sure to remind you, at half-hour intervals), something that was acknowledged by Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin (who both impressed us as being level-headed and real as the hurricane approached and they grappled with extremely difficult judgment calls). But the media coverage---the quantity and the tone---sure has changed since we were a lad in the pre-cable era. Back then, when we lived about 40 or so miles from the Louisiana coast, a hurricane seemed to hit or brush close by almost every year. The storm-tracking technology was relatively primitive---we remember being cut loose from school only a few hours before a hurricane hit, maybe it was Betsy or Hilda, and joining our schoolmates in pedaling furiously home on our Schwinns in the thickest downpour we’ve ever been caught in. The local announcers usually stood in front of a map, on which a magnetic marker representing the hurricane was moved by hand (not “beautiful”). They’d take phone calls from the outlying areas---from their few reporters, or a local Civil Defense worker, or yam cultivation expert Thibodeaux---and relay the information about damage, evacuation centers, etc. They were controlled and wooden, at least compared to today’s hyperventilating self-dramatizers, but they seemed to be more aware of the public-service aspect of their jobs. Eventually, as the hurricane came ashore, the TV stations would be knocked off the air. The electricity would follow, then the local radio stations would go dead. We remember sitting in the dark and listening to a St. Louis Cardinals baseball game on a clear-channel station far away while hurricane winds roared outside.

Hurricanes remind us that there are things we can’t control---thus the fear and apprehension they stoke, as well as the buzz (yeah, let’s admit it) they trigger as they approach. And even with all the modern technology and hot-cha graphics, it’s impossible for the broadcast media to get a full and true picture of what’s going on, while it’s going on. Three years ago a supposedly piddlin’ little storm named Lily bore down on the Louisiana coast, headed in the direction of our parents’ home. But it was mere Category 2, and after it hit NPR and the cable networks declared it a big nothing, a mere pffftttttt of a storm, no big deal, and we went to bed. Later that morning we were awakened by a call from our mama, who reported that Lily had raked the town unmercifully and blown a half-ton of water oak on and through the roof of our parents’ home. Much of the town was without electricity for at least four days (yeah, it was so bad that you couldn’t find a cold beer anywhere), and the damage eventually ran into the millions and millions of dollars.

So you never know.

AND WHAT WOULD MAHATMA DO? Amy Barnett, of NBC affiliate Channel 2 in Houston, had an excellent story Monday night on a Comfort Inn in Baytown that was charging hurricane refugees $200 for an $80-a-night room. Barnett confronted the scuzzy malefactor, the manager of the hotel, whose name was Ms. So-and-So Gandhi. (Yeah, you couldn’t make this stuff up.) Barnett eventually got Ms. Gandhi to lower her eyes and ’fess up that, yes, what she was doing was wrong, kinda sorta. The public humiliation at Barnett’s hands was certainly a much kinder punishment than Ms. Gandhi deserved. (Harrumph…)

Six Questions, No Answers

1. Why did someone with a flair for penmanship spray-paint POOP! in black letters---with the exclamation point---on the front of the spanking-new John P. McGovern-Stella Link Branch Library on Stella Link Boulevard in southwest Houston?

2. Why did the Y we’ve belonged to for 17 years suddenly install mirrors on the walls of the area housing the weight machines? Is there no escape from Self (or even Not-Self) anymore?

3. Why did the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd recently write (in a column we read in the Houston Chronicle) that Iraq could turn into a haven for terrorists “that will make the old Afghanistan look like Cipriani’s”? And what or who is Cipriani’s? And why should we have to go to Google to decipher a column in a general-interest newspaper? Is this Cipriani’s the chain of swank restaurants with outposts in New York and London (most likely), or the pizza parlor by the same name in Chicago (highly unlikely), or maybe it’s the home of the kid (now old person, if still extant) who lived up the street from us on North Arlington Drive in the early 1960s (probably not; come to think of it, his name was Cypriano). And doesn’t equating a “terrorist haven” with something called “Cipriani’s” reveal the columnist to be strangely tone-deaf (to be polite)?

4. How come the Houston Chronicle sells the cover of its weekly TV guide to advertisers, but doesn’t provide a disclaimer noting that those covers are indeed advertisements, although it does provide such a disclaimer over the inside “stories” that these covers promote, technically making these “stories” advertisements and not stories in the traditionally accepted journalistic sense of the word “story,” although they are indeed referred to as “stories” in the indexes on the covers? And why are the shows that are so promoted usually not really “shows” in the traditionally accepted television sense of the word “shows,” but rather infomercials for local health care providers that employ present and past local TV news personalities to give them a veneer of journalistic credibility?

5. Tryin’ to make it real: Compared to what?

6. RE: Question 5, When will Dave Chappelle return to TV? We were a little late to the Comedy Central phenomenon that had 12-year-old boys across the country growling “I’m Rick James, bitch” a couple of years ago, but we became quick converts to The Way of Chappelle. Yes, some of it was dumb, unfunny and in atrociously bad taste (even to us), but the man was definitely willing to take a risk, unlike most everybody else on TV (outside of those responsible for The Sopranos, Deadwood, Curb Your Enthusiasm, South Park and The Simpsons, still, on occasion …. That’s it). Much of it, though, was just too damn funny, and some of it bordered on brilliant: Where else could you see anything smarter, including on the above five parenthetically mentioned shows, as Chappelle’s “When Keepin' It Real Goes Wrong” routine (“Keepin' It Real” no longer being an exclusively African-American priority, if it ever was---in fact, we’ve read that Thomas Sowell has detected a pronounced hereditary strain of keeping-it-real-ism in the early Scots-Irish settlers to this country) or those bits with Eddie Murphy’s brother, especially the one about playing basketball at Prince’s house? Being introduced to Chappelle while monitoring our teenager’s viewing habits was like randomly stumbling across SNL back in ’75: Where did that come from? Of course, it made perfect sense when we learned that Chappelle is a professor’s son who has a farm in Ohio or someplace like that and is a convert to Islam. So Dave, come back---we know you’ve got a lot to live up to, but even second-rate Chappelle is better than no Chappelle.

Correction Corner: In the August 10, 2005 posting on Slampo’s Place, or maybe it was August 11, we misstated the model year of a vehicle in which a group of teenagers we referred to as “Slampo & Co.” traveled in the summer of 1972 in an unsuccessful effort to see the Rolling Stones at Hofheinz Pavillion in Houston. The vehicle that made this trip was a 1960 Ford Falcon, not a 1964 Ford Falcon. Slampo’s Place regrets the error.

Cavalcade of Blowhards

David Brooks of the New York Times recently visited San Antonio and employed the town as the setting for a column on illegal immigration (our nation apparently is having one of its periodic public head-scratchings over the issue; it’s very hot public policy). It appears, though, that Brooks was only making a stopover at the airport, since he doesn’t actually quote one living San Antonio resident in his piece (at least in the version we read this morning in the Houston Chronicle). In fact, the only live person he quotes is Tamar Jacoby of the Manhattan Institute, who predictably harrumphs with regard to current immigration policy that it’s “very hard to enforce enforceable rules.”

So, in lieu of an actual human being, Brooks condescendingly conjures a “working class guy from the south side of San Antonio” who, although the columnist doesn’t say so, has to be white, because Brooks feels compelled to add that this fictional salt-of-the-earth gent is “not a racist” and many of his “favorite” neighbors are hard-working Latinos. (We’d suggest that if Brooks wanted to hear some real breathing Americans vent their spleens on illegal immigration, he dig up a Garcia or Hernandez or Rodriguez whose family has been in this country for generations; they shouldn’t be too hard to find in San Antonio, and it would save Brooks the trouble of attaching the “not a racist” disclaimer to his make-believe everyman.) But then he goes on to blithely dismiss Minutemen types, many of whom in fact do not possess Ivy League degrees, as “beer swilling good old boys” (so much for the noble working-class), although he talks to exactly none of them.

In the wake of this arduous fact-finding mission, Brooks endorses the pending jury-rigged and highly unrealistic federal legislation as a suitable compromise remedy to what he calls “immigration chaos” that is “spreading a subculture of criminality” in the U.S. In other words, he basically favors keeping the immigration pipeline open, with some slight adjustments to the valve. Why? Because the economy demands “hundreds of thousands of new workers to clean hotel rooms and process food.” And, as he forgets to add, take jobs from citizens and depress wages. And place enormous burdens on the public health and education systems. Not to mention raise troubling questions about language and common culture and national identity—all that icky stuff that leaves most of us too discomfited to even discuss in a rational manner.

Next time Brooks does a “drop in” to snare a dateline for an Olympian pronouncement on immigration, we’d suggest he walk the streets of Nuevo Laredo for a first-hand reading of what truly makes lots of Americans uneasy about the blurring of borders. Of course, that would require some knowledge of another language and possible exposure to gunfire, not to mention reporting skills … ahhh, that’s way too much work.

Another media type who’s been crawling up our ass lately is Christopher Hitchens. We like the man’s writings, and we admire him for his heresy and excommunication from the High Church of the Left after 9/11. And we’ll acknowledge that his support of the war in Iraq always seemed predicated on the lifting of Saddam’s killer hands off that country’s throat, based on Hitchens’ knowledge of and friendships with Iraqi dissidents, and not necessarily on the various 101 rationales that the Bush administration was throwing against the wall before it decided to essentially stand down from the arguments while waiting for the Iraqis to stand up.

But Hitchens, like other highly visible war supporters, seems to have been driven around the bend by Cindy Sheehan. We caught him briefly on C-SPAN early today---not exactly looking bright-eyed and bushy-tailed---and heard him imperiously dismiss “Sheehan’s antics” and then accuse her of promoting the belief that that “a secret cabal of Jews in the [Bush] administration” is responsible for the war in Iraq. In other words, he’s joined in the pile-on smearing of the woman by suggesting she’s an anti-Semite (is there any other way to interpret his jaunty off-hand deployment of “secret cabal of Jews,” a phrase which, as far we can tell, has never crossed Sheehan’s lips?). Then we learned that Hitchens’ blowsy early-morning banter was a less-studied extension of a column he wrote for Slate in which he attacks Sheehan for her somewhat off-key pronouncement that her soldier son died in Iraq for “lies and for a PNAC Neo-Con agenda to benefit Israel.”

That’s fair game for criticism, although we don’t see “secret Jewish cabal” in there. But Hitchens keeps piling on: He writes that ex-Nazi and “Euro-American Heritage” blogger David Duke “went flying” to Sheehan’s side after her “Jewish cabal” statement (again, Hitchens' words). We took that literally until we hit the link in Hitchens’ story and wound up looking at a pro-Sheehan, anti-Israel screed on Duke’s Web site. Flying to her side, my ass.

We are not possessed of the conspiratorial turn of mind that attributes the U.S. folly in Iraq to the crafty designs of ex-Trotskyites and closet Zionists who’ve brainwashed a helpless Bush (we blame it on mere standard-brand if deadly bumble-fuckery, for which the architects are now all scrambling to change the subject or otherwise avoid responsibility), and we generally view the world in somewhat less high-contrast hues than Mrs. Sheehan apparently does.

Yet the woman should have a right to speak about the war without having David Duke rubbed all over her. While she may not be entitled to the “ultimate” moral authority the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd would grant her, she’s probably deserving of a tad more than, say, Hitchens, the British ex-pat whose great sacrifices for the war he’s backed from the beginning include … well, let’s just say his profile as a well-compensated public intellectual has risen tremendously since the war began, and in the meantime, judging by what we saw on C-SPAN, he doesn’t appear to have missed too many meals.

Another Reason We Might Like to Vote for Kinky

It’s this long-playing vinyl record album right here, cleverly titled Kinky Friedman, which dates to 1974. We once owned a copy and spun it all the time but lost it somewhere along the way as we rambled 'round from town to town. As fate would have it, we happened upon it again one Saturday afternoon four or five months ago when we dropped in at an estate sale near our home. The former owner, judging by the stacks of books and 33 rpm records he left behind, counted among his enthusiasms real estate law, the state of Israel, Harry Belafonte and bland, Mighty Wind-style folk music from the late 1950s and early '60s. For 50 cents we walked away with two of what were surely his prized earthly possessions: a Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band LP featuring the succulent young Maria Muldaur and future short-time Messiah Mel Lyman on harmonica, as well as a near-mint copy of this Kinky album. We took it home, fired up the old turntable, and were struck once again by how smart, knowing and even moving this record (the Kinky, not the Kweskin) was. And is.

Has Carole Keeton Whatever-Her-Last-Name-Is-This-Year ever written and performed such crushingly beautiful songs as Wild Man from Borneo or When the Lord Closes the Door, He Opens a Little Window? Or Rick Perry---he ­­can’t even handle the likes of Tom Craddick, much less get it together long enough to assemble such a fine, foot-stomping, laughing-at-the-apocalypse anthem as Before All Hell Breaks Loose. Or what about ... wait, it'll come to us ... ah ... would [insert name of potential gubernatorial candidate here] ever have it in him(or her)self to offer such an ecumenical, everybody-sing-along profession of loyalty to his religion as They Ain't Making Jews Like Jesus Anymore? And have it produced by Willie Nelson? And appear on the front cover of his album lighting a cigar and on the back cover smoking a non-filter cigarette?

Is all this a legitimate reason to vote for someone for governor? Yes, it is---the album’s that good!

“Now I know what the gypsy meant
When she told me I’d never be president.
She said, “Adopt a Korean and kill you a moose
Before all hell breaks loose.”