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Bad news: Parker leaving Parker-Spitzer. Worse news: Spitzer not leaving

We here at EFD, me and you, explore all avenues of the universe. Today we take a trip to Cable News Alley where the grand-daddy of cablenewsdom, CNN, seems as if it has turned into a dead-end street.

What brings this to mind is the news that conservative columnist Kathleen Parker is taking the Parker out of the cable news prime-time “Parker-Spitzer” show. Parker says she is leaving the program after five months in order to put more focus on her syndicated column career. I have to say that I won’t particularly miss her, but then again, I wouldn’t miss co-host,  former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer either.

CNN seems like it has entered a rebuilding phase of its life. I suppose that happens to most successful ventures that have nowhere to go except down once they hit the top.

It just seems the network has foundered slowly over the past decade. Take CNN’s “American Morning” for instance. I haven’t really cared much for the show since the not-related team of  Soledad O’Brien and Miles O’Brien were yanked as anchors. Their replacements, former CBS News correspondent John Roberts and ex Fox News anchor and now wholesome mother fox Kiran Chetry, never really floated my boat. Roberts recently left the program and CNN for Fox, knocking up fiancee and mid-morning CNN anchor, Kyra Phillips, in the process.

T.J. Holmes has replaced Roberts and while an African-American male and Nepalese female anchor team is a boost for ethnic diversity in cable newscasts, American Morning, just seems to continue in a downward spiral. The show seems too upbeat and sugary for my taste, especially when I am on my first and lone cup of morning joe. Speaking of which, I like the MSNBC “Morning Joe” show with semi-conservative, former U.S. Rep. Joe Scarborough, better than any of the morning line-up but I just can’t watch the back-and-forth political talk first thing in the morning either. So where does that leave me for my morning news? The three network shows like in the old days, perhaps? Heavens no! I’d rather be dipped in oil and fried like a morning doughnut.

CNN hasn’t fared much better in the afternoon or evenings as well. Wolf Blitzer’s “The Situation Room” (Ah boys, it looks like we got us a sit-e-a-tion here) wears thin. Anderson Cooper 360 wears even thinner whether he is at 180 or O. Maybe Piers Morgan is an improvement over Larry King. One would think a chimpanzee in a Speedo would be better than the perpetual hackdom that was King’s program. But what I have seen has not at all wowed me.

I keep looking for CNN business correspondent Ali Velshi and morning weather guy and back-up anchor Rob Marciano to do something major at the network. Both could pull it off although Velshi’s Yul Brenner meets Steve Urkel appearance (I should talk) might be a little much for a star spot. Marciano seems, on the other hand, like bonafide star material — looks, talent, personable and smart. We shall see.

All the nuttiness that is with the present ultra-conservative wave will hopefully pass once people begin to wake up see that they had to be drunker than a barrel full of monkeys (what’s with all the damn primates?) when they elected all those Republicans last November. When that happens, it may just be a matter of time that Fox News falls like a peanut from the Golden Gate Bridge. Wow, what imagery! Then with a hard fall, viewers might want to watch real news again and just maybe CNN will get the message. The network still beats the competition by leaps and bounds with breaking news, especially with their international reporting now on the tube in the Middle East.

Hopefully, CNN will get its spitz together and rebound like the giant it once was. They have only one way to go and that is up.

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110 years ago today in our town — 110 years later in our world

” … and up from the ground came a bubbling crude, oil that is, Black Gold, Texas Tea.”  From “The Ballad of Jed Clampett” written by Paul Henning

That description of good fortune found by Jed, of “The Beverly Hillbillies” fame, fits to a “tea” what happened in real life about three miles from where I live. The crude began bubbling — exactly 110 years ago today (January 10, 1901) — at place known as “Spindletop.” A very informative article about the history of Spindletop that was written by Robert Wooster and Christine Moor Sanders, and published in Handbook of Texas Online describes the pivotal moment of the World’s most important oil gusher ever:

“The startled roughnecks fled as six tons of four-inch drilling pipe came shooting up out of the ground. After several minutes of quiet, mud, then gas, then oil spurted out. The Lucas geyser, found at a depth of 1,139 feet, blew a stream of oil over 100 feet high until it was capped nine days later and flowed an estimated 100,000 barrels a day.”

It is pretty safe to say nothing of such far-reaching magnitude ever occurred since in Jefferson County, Texas, located on the easternmost Gulf Coast of the Lone Star State. Although I wasn’t around for Spindletop, I bet that not even Janis Joplin’s triumphant return in 1970 to her 10th graduation anniversary at Thomas Jefferson High School in Port Arthur could have matched Spindletop as a colorful and raucous event. And, from what I saw on local TV, Janis coming home freaked out a lot of folks.

The geyser, simply stated, started the modern petroleum industry as we know it. Some of the world’s most important oil companies had their start within a 25-mile radius of Spindletop: The Texas Company, later Texaco; Magnolia, later Mobil and even later ExxonMobil; Humble Oil, later Exxon and ExxonMobil, Gulf Oil, Sun. The companies read like a who’s who list of the petroleum industry.

Some who share my occasional liberal thoughts seem to believe “oil” is a four-letter-word. But the truth is not even those people can with any type of ease live without the fruits of hydrocarbons. While the oil industry made some people filthy rich and others just filthy, many modest livings — read: above average middle class — came from refineries, drilling and other facets of the petrochemical world. Why yours truly has made even a very modest amount of dough off oil and gas wells that I inherited. Certainly not much, albeit the low five-figure range over 25 years.

Most of the folks in the area I grew up in certainly knew the worth of oil as the industry paid for a lot of those people’s pickup trucks, bass boats, nice houses and for the most part a comfortable life. But other than immediate jobs, those who lived in the area I am from and now live in had no clue 110 years ago how Spindletop would transform the worldwide economy.

Those were certainly heady times, back in 1901.

But all was not quiet.

In September at a state fair that year, Vice President Theodore Roosevelt first mouthed his foreign policy mantra: “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” Four days later, President William McKinley was shot at the Pan American Exhibition in Buffalo, N.Y. He died eight days later.

McKinley’s assassin, 28-year-old Leon Czolgosz, was an avowed anarchist although none of the known anarchist groups would claim him as a member and some reportedly thought him to be a spy for the government. Before the month of September was out, a jury convicted Czolgosz. In really swift justice he was executed in the electric chair at New York’s Auburn Prison about a month later, his last words being: “I killed the President because he was the enemy of the good people – the good working people. I am not sorry for my crime.”

The new Republican president, Roosevelt, showed that year that he would not be  easily buttonholed as a politician when it came to his actions. There was  his bully pulpit rhetoric about carrying a big stick, but after becoming president he also told Congress he wanted trusts curbed reasonably and he also invited noted African American Booker T. Washington to the White House. The latter sat off riots and other unrest in the South.

On Saturday, January 8, 2011, almost 110 years to the day Spindletop blew in, Jared Lee Loughner, 22, allegedly shot almost two dozen people at a congressional meet and greet outside a Safeway store in Tucson, Ariz. Six people were killed including a 9-year-old girl and a federal judge. The target of the shooting appeared to be U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, a Democrat. Giffords was shot in the head and remains in critical conditions although doctors say she shows encouraging signs that could signal improvement.

Loughner has left a lot of crazy writings behind as he sits in jail. The alleged assassin appears to be anti-government but like Czolgosz  also appears to be a lone nut job.

Perhaps in the days ahead we will learn just what were the motivating factors behind these shootings. Was the act because Giffords is a Democrat, or that she is Jewish, or that she supported President Obama’s health care plan even though she supported tough immigration measures and is pro-gun? Did the relentless cacaphony of political argument that passes for entertainment on cable news and talk radio play a part in driving Loughner over the edge?

We may never know. But just as the world turned 110 years ago today in the town in which I reside, giving rise to the world’s most important — although sometimes exasperating — industry so does our planet keep revolving where it seems no amount of good can ever completely snuff out the anger that lives in mankind.

I am painting broad brush here. But sometimes it does a body good to look at the world through the macro lens inward. Perhaps one must speak softly and carry a big magnifying glass.

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Rainy weather conjures childhood TV and the “Legend of Leroy”

Excuse me for slacking but it’s raining and thundering outside. All of that in itself is pretty great as we have been kind of short on rain, says someone who lives where the rain averages 55 inches of precip annually.

Of course, I like to keep up with what the weather is doing. Not so much because I worry about it. I just find weather interesting. It is sort of the last bastion, the final frontier in areas in which man has found itself unable to totally mess things up.  That isn’t for a lack of trying though.

When I wanted to be like Cowboy John the Weatherman all these great tools like radars that one can pull up from a computer weren’t around for the common folk. As for Cowboy John, he was the weatherman for what was then KPAC TV, then later KJAC TV in Port Arthur. Garner was also the host of “The Circle Four Club” where he was and is best remembered for being “Cowboy John”

Cowboy John would interview groups of kids who came from far and wide, groups such as Cub Scouts and Brownies, etc. In between talking to kids and asking them questions like what they wanted to be when they grew up, various short comedies such as “The Little Rascals” and  “The Three Stooges” would be played. For me as a kid, there really wasn’t any better time of the day.

I must tell the all-time, most-repeated story of any kid who grew up somewhere near my age watching television in the Beaumont-Port Arthur area of Southeast Texas. Whether it’s true? Who knows. Some people swear they saw it all unfold.

Cowboy John was interviewing a group of little black children. I mention the race only because this was still during time of segregation. As John moved down the line one child would start giggling and pretty soon the whole mass of the kids were, of course, all giggling. Cowboy John asked one of the children what was so funny.

“Leroy farted,” the kid said, bringing down the house.

Now this was in the mid-1960s down in Southeast Texas and you have to try to put time into context. The story goes, and I never have found out if it’s true, that later that night or perhaps the night after, the incident went somewhat “viral” as they say in today’s terms. Perhaps this publicity wasn’t much considering today’s media reach. But the tale did reportedly find its way to Walter Cronkite’s news broadcast where the acclaimed newsman supposedly ended his show saying: “This is Walter Cronkite, CBS News reporting, saying good night, and a good night to you Leroy, wherever you are.”

Everyone remembers a big storm they’ve experienced. Some of us also remember the weather forecasters. And who could ever forget Leroy? Whether he existed or not. If you are still alive down here among us in Southeast Texas, or even elsewhere, I too say, goodnight Leroy wherever you are.

Note: Here is a story I found about Cowboy John and his TV nemesis Black Bart and the “Leroy” affair. The source of the incident is left out — why can’t newspapers use a quote with “farted” in it? — but it was supposedly David Brinkley who told Leroy goodnight on national TV. That seems right. Brinkley always had a mischievous sense of humor.

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Any comments? I think not.

The Christmas-New Year’s holiday season is great especially when it falls on 3-day weekends. However, it seems you still always must accomplish a week’s worth of work in each four-day week. That being said, if for some reason you read my blog daily you will notice I didn’t publish yesterday. That was because I worked a rare evening until 8 p.m.

Until I “semi-retired” five years ago it was not at all unusual for me to work nights. At the beginning of my last full-time job I worked 1-10 p.m. five days a week as a police beat reporter. Believe me, the hours, how will I say this, sucked.  Not so much the beat but the hours were disagreeable.

I am getting off the subject of what I intended to write about today but not completely, for I was talking about blogging and my career as a journalist.

No second thoughts have crossed my mind in five years of blogging as to my decision to let EFD stand as a blog that was not “interactive.” The word interactive has many meanings even in the world of the Internet and technology. In the sense to which I refer it simply means that I don’t don’t allow comments directly to the blog.  I do leave an e-mail address where people can leave a comment or whatever. Some people do take time to leave a comment but interestingly enough not many people at all leave negative comments when sending an e-mail from my blog’s link. Why waste the extra several seconds?

Thus leaves the “madness to my method.” Say what?

It was only shortly before I left my last newspaper that the publication began allowing “live” comments to stories. It was bad enough when I had my e-mail address published under my byline when I wrote “Cops,” or the police blotter. I had some good comments and interesting ideas and news tips in those early days of news story commentary. But also was there a heapin’ helpin’ of “blowhard-o-phonia.” I can only imagine how reporters feel now who work for papers which have let the comments for stories run amok.

I see the idiocy and the racism and thoughtlessness and just pure stupidity in those story comments today. A piece I saw this afternoon, sent through the e-mail that is compiled by journalist Jim Romensko on media industry news, brought all this to mind.

The article concerns a protest by a number of journalism organizations over a Texas A & M University System policy prohibiting professors from instructing students to file open records requests with any of the system’s components. The policy states doing so will open the faculty members to disciplinary actions which include firing. Journalism groups believe the policy was an (over)reaction to A & M journalism professor Dan Malone’s having students submit open records requests to Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas. The result was the students writing stories about the institution inadequately reporting campus crime statistics to the federal government.

It is an interesting story and I suggest you read it if you happen to have an interest in government hiding things from you, yes You, I am talking to You, the taxpaying public.

But I also suggest one take a look at the comments following the story by longtime Austin American-Statesman ace reporter Ralph Haurwitz. The majority of the commentary is exactly why I don’t allow comments to my blog. The statements are generally spur-of-the-moment blather of the worst kind.

For instance, one commenter disparages a comment from University of Texas Austin journalism professor Wanda Garner Cash, who describes the A & M policy as something one might find on the satire Web site the Onion. The know-it-all commentator dismisses Cash as just another “academic.” But Cash, known by her moniker “Fluffy,”  was well-known and respected in Texas community journalism for 25 years or so as a editor, publisher and owner before heading off to the “Ivory Towers.” She also happens to be one of the state’s leading experts on freedom of information matters.

I would suspect that those of us who have strong opinions bottled up inside might every once in awhile see a story and be immediately driven to commentary. Hey, the comment section is right there. It’s like seeing fresh fruit in a store and trying one out because it’s there. I sometimes don’t practice what I preach, I will be the first to admit.

Still, I feel that eventually something has got to give with news story comments online. They increasingly show the worst of our society and seldom constructively contribute anything to the understanding of a topic. Some publications have taken to moderating the comments, others have taken them away completely. Perhaps some middle ground might be found. Maybe the publication might insist that those who comment lose their anonymity, or else impose a “waiting” or “cooling-off” period.

Whatever happens will happen. So, in the meantime, don’t forget you still can send me an e-mail, you jerk-faced $#%^&+* moron!

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Who’s your Daddy? Certainly not the XO.

The U.S. government and its military are always quick to point out without any reservation that its service members are brave “men and women.” This is despite the fact that nearly 20  percent of those serving in the Army and about the same percentage in the Navy, and nearly 40 percent of those in the Marine Corps, are all between ages 18-to-21.

In civilian parlance, some serving would be called “teens.”  That same below-21 group are also the ones who can’t legally buy alcoholic beverages in the United States. But likewise, the same group can have their legs blown off by roadside bombs in Afghanistan or Iraq or those who come home, might end up changing that blue star on their parents’ door to a gold one.

Like it or not, the military has had the tendency to treat their “warriors” as if they were Wally Cleaver and Eddie Haskell about to go out to a local dance. I say this with both respectful memories from the military I love and the recent news of how some military services are blocking Web sites — including those of  The New York Times — which have published classified material from the rogue open government “Wikileaks.” Earlier in the month the Air Force’s “cyberspace command” blocked 25 Web sites carrying reprinted classified material. The military service isn’t alone in what would seem to be trampling on one’s First Amendment rights. The federal government has also put out word in different agencies for their employees  to not read these sites, some of which are the nation’s largest media outlets, either on government or employees’ private computers.

With the government having little else they can do other than stomp their collective feet they resort to what has been described as closing the barn door after the horse has bolted. But it  is just another act of nanny-ism engaged in by the military and not  just for the under 21 members but, while directed at all, especially is it meant for those who are in lower non-commissioned ranks or below.

I particularly remember an incident of such nannyism that to this day irritates me. It happened when my ship, a Navy destroyer, pulled into a Pacific port near Sydney, Australia. Since we may or may not have been carrying nuclear weapons on board it was not unusual back in those days, 30 or so years ago, to be met with protests. While the Australians were perhaps the most friendly people I have ever experienced, and it saddens me to say but even friendlier than my home state of Texas, some folks there didn’t like the thought of ships carrying nukes in their ports. Though I didn’t particularly agree with their point of view, I understood their concern and as was the case in my own country, I could appreciate their right to protest something not to their liking.

My destroyer and a U.S. frigate were making a “friendship tour” of New Zealand and Australia during the Thanksgiving and Christmas-New Year’s holidays that year. As was the case, we didn’t stay out at sea for too long a period — perhaps a week at most — during those two months sailing in and out of those two wonderful countries. Nevertheless, even after a short period of time at sea one would have the yearning for someone not wearing Navy utilities or chief and officer khakis. Even more so was that the case if those non-Navy types were non-male types, if you get my drift.

So we had arrived in port. I was not doing anything in particular at the moment, so I went up on the so-called “helo deck” — at one time it could accommodate a helicopter but at the time it was mainly a point over which a helo could hover for unloading Dr. Peppers, ammunition or the squadron chaplain (the Holy Helo) — to watch the small anti-nuke protest off our starboard side. I remember one particularly clever sign held by a protester which read: “FRIENDships–Not WARships.” Being a half Peacenik, hippie sailor, I thought that was a pretty cool expression. And, of course, I really enjoyed the attractive look of the coastal Australians “birds” or women with their healthy tans and the shorts and halter tops which exposed those tans so well.

While admiring the protest, mainly the protesters, the XO came walking by. The XO means, for those not into military parlance, the Executive Officer. He was second in command of the ship, usually a lieutenant commander on a destroyer, while the captain was a full, silver oak-leaf-wearing commander. Even though he was called captain, a rank which wears a silver eagle on his collar like an Army or Marine colonel, most destroyer or frigate captains held the rank of commander.

I probably saw  the XO as much or more as any enlisted man on the ship. That was because I was legal yeoman. I took care of  all the ship’s legal paperwork and even acted as the ship’s legal officer when the ensign who served as that legal officer was gone. The military justice system in a nutshell went like this: A sailor commits an offense –> He is written up or charged –> An Article 32 Investigation (like a grand jury for more serious offenses) is held –> A sailor is sent to XO’s mast where his or her charge is either dismissed (plea bargained) or sent to —>  Captain’s Mast. The Captain can either send the case to court martial, dismiss or mete out “non-judicial punishment.”  NJP, called Article 15 or Office Hours in other services, is a misdemeanor court outcomes where punishments can range from fines and restriction to base or ship to loss of rank. This explanation is all kind of simplified but it’s the best I can do. Nonetheless, I would see XO quite frequently even though  I never  visited him for XO’s Mast.

Getting back to the Helo Deck that day when I was checking out the protest signs and the nice Aussie birds, XO said, benevolently, “Don’t stand there and watch them. That is what they want you do do.”

Well, I thought, “You think?” Of course, I would never say such a thing because XO as well as the Old Man (Captain) both had grandiose things planned for me post-enlistment — like I would go to an officer’s program, go to college, become a Navy officer. The few, the proud, the brave, the little gold ensign’s bar on my collar. I do feel, I don’t know if I can say honored but  someone encouraged, that the Old Man and the XO saw potential in me. I did end up going to college but never returned to “Uncle Sugar’s Navy.”

But there was that little bit of feeling I felt in later years through the eyes of a younger person which was so akin to those days of the XO and his fatherly tips. The time of which I speak was when I was lived with a girlfriend for a couple of months and living with us were  her two early elementary school-age kids. While we all got along pretty well, it inevitably happened eventually that some thing blew up one way or the other and one of the kids uttered that phrase no boyfriend with short-term step-kids wants to hear: “You’re not my Daddy.”

It took awhile later to feel so strongly the same way. Of course, if I had told either the XO or the Old Man back then that “You’re not my Daddy,” it probabaly would have led to a very uncomfortable reaction. So, the end of the story, I just said “aye, aye, sir” to the XO, and went to my office, where the porthole was opened and I could stare out to the protesters without being bothered by anyone. It all worked out because, of course, XO, you aren’t my Daddy.