From 2009: "Hot Hofstadter, cold Cappuccino," or a treatise on Nawbanian anti-intellectualism.

This was one of my guest columns for the pre-merger Tribune, appearing there on December 12, 2009. 

Many of the columns didn't appear at the blog in their entirety until later, if at all, seeing as the Tribune's understandable directive at the time was that I could link to them and drive traffic to the newspaper's web site (which NAC did consistently for 16 years, and I'm still awaiting a thank you card, ingrates), but not publish the columns myself. 

When the merger rendered me redundant, I assumed all previous agreements went out the window. If not, I'm sure current management is as oblivious as ever.

Consequently, as an introduction to this column's blog link in 2009, I wrote this.

Code enforcement alert: Today's column knowingly and indiscriminately violates the city of New Albany's ban on words of four syllables or more. I'm at home this morning and available to be cited and/or arrested.

No one ever knocked. If there is any consistent pattern to governance in Nawbany, it's that our betters don't read. Especially since 2012.

---

BEER MONEY: Hot Hofstadter, cold Cappuccino.

On Monday evening, I overheard a New Albany city councilman explaining to a bystander how much more he knows about drainage issues than any number of trained experts in the field, and that our problems with stormwater primarily result from virulent conspiracies between city planners and a veritable mafia of builders.

I reached for my steaming wand, and thought immediately of Bayard R. Hall.

"(We) always preferred an ignorant bad man to a talented one, and hence attempts were usually made to ruin the moral character of a smart candidate; since unhappily, smartness and wickedness were supposed to be generally coupled, and incompetence and goodness."

Even though Hall might have written it yesterday, speaking perhaps as a resident of New Albany’s 3rd council district, or as a bemused observer of contemporary America’s penchant for creationist museums, masturbatory tea-party circles and Palin for Dogcatcher campaigns, all competing for the attention of a benumbed populace forever mistaking spasm for thought, his words actually date all the way back to 1843.

Hall penned them in reference to the political scene in frontier Indiana, thereby illustrating that anti-intellectualism was a cankerous sore on the American body politic long before George W. Bush took office.

“Anti-intellectualism is a term that in one sense describes a hostility towards, or mistrust of, those who call themselves intellectuals, and intellectual pursuits. This may be expressed in various ways, such as an attack on the merits of science, education or literature.”
--Wikipedia

From Hall, my thoughts raced to Richard Hofstadter. Those voters who have somehow managed to progress beyond the literary realm of “Left Behind” and the attractions of “Dancing with the Stars” might eventually come into contact with the work of the historian Hofstadter, whose 1964 book, “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life,” charted the American cultural habit of loudly detesting the quality that separates humans from other mammals.

“The common strain that binds together the attitudes and ideas which I call anti-intellectual is a resentment and suspicion of the life of the mind and of those who are considered to represent it; and a disposition constantly to farm-near-me/">minimize the value of that life.”

Hofstadter devoted his all too brief career to advancing the primacy of ideas, and exploring the ways that behavior (primarily in the political sense, but also in related pursuits) is related to the way people use, or refuse, their minds.

Ariel Dorfman, a writer, paraphrases Hofstadter’s findings:

“Anti-intellectualism had its origins … in American traits that anteceded the nation's founding: the mistrust of secular modernization, the preference for practical and commercial solutions to problems and, above all, to the devastating influence of Protestant evangelism in everyday lives.”

Like the councilman spouting in the corridor, New Albany’s most renowned practitioners of the anti-intellectual craft tend somewhat bizarrely to be registered as Democrats, although it is difficult to imagine any of them voting for their party’s standard bearer, Barack Obama, in 2008. As such, they’re little more than political poseurs, and with each passing day, we find better ways to sidestep their obstructionist defaults.

Does their destructive anti-intellectualism really matter?

It does, because it emits a catastrophic message to the community, mimicking Pink Floyd: “We don’t need no education – only ward heeling.”

It cynically condemns our children to the very same poisoned atmosphere of unaccountability and low common denominators that shaped New Albany’s malignant past and brought us to a state of apathetic degradation.

It furthers an atmosphere of congenital political underachievement. How many elected community “leaders” can you identify with support for the proposition that life’s difficulties are best confronted “with an intelligence of which no human should ever be ashamed,” as Dorfman phrases it.

Not many.

Rather, they persistently demand that we be ashamed, frightened and uncooperative. They denounce a pantheon of imaginary enemies, of shifty, phantom withholders of vital information, of smarty-pants book-learning engineers, of those who read, of those who write … of anyone who can “do” as they haven’t ever done, and cannot ever do.

Hence the purely imaginary cabal of zoning officials and contractors, plotting by candlelight to pump sewage into area basements.

In the same year as Hofstadter’s treatise on anti-intellectualism, his essay entitled “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” was published in Harper’s Magazine. It is a compendium of American political paranoia, as directed against a cornucopia of enemies – free masonry, the international gold ring, the Illuminati, Catholics and Communists, among others.

Hofstadter offers that “American politics has often been an arena for angry minds,” behind which is a “paranoid style” of thought.

“I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind.”

Hofstadter died many years ago, and yet his words chillingly describe the prevailing New Albanian political “culture.”

Consider the incessant talk of malicious City Hall plots directed against selfless public servants on the council. Survey the chronic knee-jerking when these same public servants are asked for corroborating evidence to support their nonsensical conspiratorial claims. Chuckle at the recurring expressions of anti-intellectual rage when they’re presented with alternative, contemporary visions of the world and asked if they’ve heard of life outside the Open Air Museum.

Looking for the best place to begin rejecting the politics of anti-intellectualism and paranoia on the council, and for isolating their practitioners? It’s the council president’s chair – and the time for change is mercifully close at hand.

Roger believes that there are no big or little words, just the right ones. For daily commentary, visit the NA Confidential blog: www.cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com

From BEER MONEY at the Tribune to ON THE AVENUES at NAC -- how my weekly column came to be.

In response to an inquiry, here's a repeat (26 December 2016) of the story about how ON THE AVENUES came to be. NA Confidential is winding down and will soon cease operations in the current format, although there'll be an archive at my new web site, currently under construction.

ON THE AVENUES will reappear at the next joint, so stay tuned.

---
 

NA Confidential was born in October, 2004. Almost 11,000 posts later, the experience sometimes verges on the coherent, but at the start I had little idea how to proceed, beyond writing for posterity about what was happening right here in New Albany.

Consequently, after five years of beating the bushes, my big break beckoned as 2008 drew to a close.

New Tribune guest columnist in January. (December 8, 2008)

Last Friday afternoon I met with Steve Kozarovich, publisher of the New Albany Tribune, and agreed to write a 900-word column on a weekly basis, beginning Thursday, January 8, and running on Thursdays thereafter. It is a (modest) for-pay gig, joining paid columns I write biweekly for LEO and quarterly for Food and Dining magazine.

This announcement is provided as a courtesy to the publisher, who now has the opportunity to begin fielding complaints before the column actually appears.

From January 2009 until February 2011, I met 111 consecutive "Beer Money" column deadlines at $40 a pop, then decided to run for city council, necessitating a suspension of my weekly Tribune contribution.

Today's last Tribune column for a while: "Let’s all say ‘yes’ for change." (February 17, 2011)

 ... And so, here's the finale ... for now. I expect to be back (a) after a primary loss, or (b) after a general election loss, or (c) after a general election victory. After all, there is a precedent for public officials (Ed Clere) writing a weekly column, is there not?

BAYLOR: Let’s all say ‘yes’ for change

This will be my last column in The Tribune for a while, and there’s a reason for the hiatus.

I've decided to take a dram of my own medicine and file to run for city council in the coming primary — yes, as a Democrat, and for an at-large seat.

Because this very newspaper has a policy against permitting its columnists to conduct campaigns in print, and actually enforces it more often than the city’s own long neglected codes, I must return temporarily to the realm of the blogosphere.

And in the blogosphere I was destined to remain, because concurrent with my hiatus, Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. cashiered Kozarovich and combined our local newspapers into a new entity, the News and Tribune. It was to be headquartered in Jeffersonville, instituting a Clark County-centric focus that has become steadily more annoying to New Albanians during the years since, and it caused my column to walk the plank.

This just in: Merger kills a newspaper column. (May 23, 2011)

Damn, I knew I should have actually won that election ... then I could still have a newspaper column, just like Ed Clere, although I'm told that the beer column idea is still on the table for the Spectrum section.

The now departed Coach K used the word "hiatus" prior to my council bid. I had to fetch a thesaurus to know what he meant. Now, somewhere, he and Lucy Van Pelt are holding the football aloft and laughing.

Just my luck. Who'd have known that Linus's older sister worked for the Retirement Systems of Alabama?

Is it time to go underground, yet?

To Matt Nash: It's all yours now. Torture the troglodytes often, will you ... and try to give us some New Albany news, okay? The Clark County stuff's already getting old.

Right now, the regular columnist spots are full. I can't pick up anyone else and still get in letters, cheers and jeers and any editorials in a timely manner.

I still had to drop another columnist (McDonald) on top of when you and Kelley Curran decided to run for office because space became less available after the merger. I'm also trying to keep a balance between Clark County folks like Dodd and Harbeson and Floyd County writers like Amy and Nash. And, of course, I have a freelancer/stringer budget to worry about.

It's possible a spot would open up in the future and I'll let you know if that happens.

Shea Van Hoy

I spent a few months licking wounds and plotting revenge against the perpetrators, then realized there was much yet to say and write. The answer was to DIY, in this blog forum.

The newspaper's dead and buried, so welcome to electronica. (May 26, 2011)

Beginning last week, my Thursday column was reinstituted in this space. The column ran in the News and Tribune from January 2009 until February 2011, when it went on "hiatus" during my run for council. Earlier this week, I learned that the hiatus had been transformed into permanent absence owing to changes in the newspaper's structure.

This just in: Merger kills a newspaper column.

As a writer, deadlines have a wonderful way of concentrating thought, and so it is my desire to get back into the weekly column habit. This blog's the place for it until something else comes along.

Furthermore, conceding that the newspaper's current staff will disagree with me, the consolidation of two editions into one of the same size inevitably will have the effect of reducing coverage of New Albany (and to an extent, Floyd County) affairs. Stated simply, New Albany has lost its newspaper.

"Our newspaper is dead -- long live the Internet", or something like that.

For the time being, and perhaps for a long time to come, this blog is more important than ever before. While I don't have the time to transform NAC into a comprehensive news and commentary entity, repositioning my weekly column and moving it from Thursday newsprint to Thursday bandwidth is attainable, so that's how we'll start the ball rolling. In conjunction with social media, it's enough for now. I am aware of like-minded ideas for on-line publishing in the community, and will continue monitoring these in the hope that something comes to fruition.

But what to call this new column?

Later this morning, my Thursday column will reappear here. The old "Beer Money" tag, which referred to the limited usefulness of the bare farthings grudgingly paid by the Retirement Systems of Alabama to guest columnists in publications like One Southern Indiana Newspaper, no longer makes sense, seeing as remuneration has completely disappeared.

Instead, my new Thursday column will openly hearken back to the long-departed days of independent, truly local journalism in New Albany: "On the Avenues." Some of you will know what I mean by this. Look for the Green Mouse to make appearances, too.

In the days of my youth, back when the Tribune actually mattered, a lifer named Jack Powers was the staff do-it-all. He covered the social and political waterfronts in his column, "On the Avenues," with the help of an all-purpose editorial source and assistant, the so-called Green Mouse.

My column honors these quaint and mostly forgotten aspects of local journalism in New Albany.

Ten years ago today, my guest columnist slot at the New Albany Tribune was just beginning.

Sept. 30, 2010. Dalby needed a thesaurus.

No sooner than I'd finished a tweet about the newspaper's unvarying roster of older white male guest columnists than I started laughing from the belly up, because once upon a time I was one of them.

In fact, today is the 10th anniversary of my announcement in this space, which is reprinted below. My first column in the now defunct New Albany Tribune appeared in January, 2009.

From the very beginning, I referred to it as "Beer Money," followed by the title of the specific piece. Regrettably, the newspaper never found the humor in these words. "Beer Money" was Bluegill's suggestion, one made after I griped about the pay scale, and he observed that it still was enough pocket change to buy beer.

My gig as a columnist lasted until early 2011. When I filed to run for city council at-large, the column was put on hiatus; Kozarovich made it clear that if I lost, the column would return, and I did, but it didn't.

In the interim, the Tribune's merger with the Evening News had occurred. Kozarovich departed, and the new management wasn't entirely honest with me in terms of future writing prospects, but that's an instance of water under the proverbial bridge. Still, while few in number, my grudges are carefully crafted to last decades.

What the declining newspaper needs at present is a more diverse roster of columnists. It doesn't need any more old white guys like me. We need black, Hispanic, LGBTQIA+ and youthful voices. I don't expect innovation to happen, because upper management at the newspaper is milquetoast, direly committed to the flavorless pablum of low common denominators.

They play a prevent defense when what's needed is a full-court press. Me thinks I'll stay right where I am, giving the pot an occasional stir and doing what the merged newspaper can't ... or won't.

---

New Tribune guest columnist in January. (December 8, 2008)

Last Friday afternoon I met with Steve Kozarovich, publisher of the New Albany Tribune, and agreed to write a 900-word column on a weekly basis, beginning Thursday, January 8, and running on Thursdays thereafter. It is a (modest) for-pay gig, joining paid columns I write biweekly for LEO and quarterly for Food and Dining magazine.

This announcement is provided as a courtesy to the publisher, who now has the opportunity to begin fielding complaints before the column actually appears.

The column will be of general interest, including beer, travel, local events, and plenty of atheistic, progressive, left-wing rabble rousing. It seems the advent of Barack Obama is the perfect time to torment the local yokels in such a fashion. If there aren't periodic letters of outrage emanating from Greenville and Dewey Heights, then I'll not have been doing my job.

I've been writing as much as possible lately, both here and at my other blogs. Part of the reason is the possibility of the column assignment. It's like going into training and building up seldom-used muscles for the task ahead, and similar to spending a year learning to communicate with bankers and others whose dialects are unfamiliar.

After all, there's still a brewery to build. More on that later in the week.

To know me well is to know that the art of communicating through the written word is dear to my heart, and throughout my life, the ability to write has constituted perhaps my most fundamental link to the world outside my consciousness.

There have been written successes and disappointments along the way, but the compulsion has become far clearer to me this past year, as I've actively engaged my upbringing and can see now that my commitment to education and knowledge was a reaction to a blue-collar father whose ability to express emotion was limited primarily to anger and annoyance. My way of rebelling was to become good at the things he wasn't (writing is one) while remaining true to the indignation.

I laughed while writing that, by the way. Like my father before me, expressing irritation has never been a problem for me.

During what has amounted to a professional career in beer, I may have become infamous in other fields, yet writing remains the prime defense mechanisms of choice, and a means of articulating and explaining myself when the spoken word fails.

And, while there has been a love-hate relationship with myself and the newspaper these many years, I can state without hesitation that had the Tribune not improved recently, I wouldn't even consider doing this.

Wish me luck. More importantly, wish me improved work habits. I'm going to need them. When the columns begin flowing, I'll come up with a way to link or reprint them here or elsewhere. Also note that your ideas are appreciated. Ideas hatched here are fair game for exploration and improvisation at newspaper column length.

It's going to be fun.

Gahan and Coffey Together Forever, Part 7: Hot toadstools and cold cappuccino (29 January 2009).

LAST: Gahan and Coffey Together Forever, Part 6: Let's hear it from the council: Can taxpayers speak openly during their time, or does the Wizard decide who is heard? (24 January 2009).

In my fifth Tribune column, I introduced the general public to the spasmodic violence of Dan Coffey's violent Copperhead Shake. It did not create an uproar, primarily because most people already knew that Cappuccino is the reaaw deal.

Elsewhere upon publication, I noted in passing ...

As for the Coffey Agonistes piece today, all I ask is that anyone planning on attending Monday’s city council meeting ... please bring a video camera.

As stated previously, I plan on using the full five minutes of my non-agenda speaking time to offer a heartfelt homily on something or the other as yet undetermined. It will tug the heart, tease the brain, induce laughter in the gallery and offer the council president the irresistable opportunity to gavel me away from the podium and exact his revenge. It would be nice to have such a moment captured on film and displayed prominently on this page.

In fact, for so long as Coffey’s latest outrage goes publicly unaddressed by his trembling political peers, I suggest that as many of us as possible attend and be prepared to speak. After all, there’s no such thing as too much information, is there?

Eight years have passed.

Has anything changed, Pat?

---

Hot toadstools and cold cappuccino.

29 January 2009

Truth is stranger than fact.
-- Grandpa Jones, “Hee Haw”

During the first city council conclave of 2009, Dan Coffey was elected as president against token opposition, which is to say none, these vital matters commonly being determined in back rooms that formerly were smoky, before the health fascist jihads of the present era, and with words like “democratic” and “contested” seldom required as modifiers.

Coffey represents the 1st council district, which he congenitally insists is ignored by the city’s power elite. Unsurprisingly, he has never explained why nine dynamic years in office have not brought about certifiable gains to his neighborhood. This strange absence of progress may have something to do with Coffey’s own council-side manner … but I digress.

As president, Coffey succeeds 6th district councilman Jeff Gahan, himself a three-time wielder of the magic gavel, and to whom Coffey was joined at the political hip for much of the latter half of 2008, presumably owing to an alliance of expedience on the part of otherwise disparate political entities, both transparently desirous of a larger stage upon which to perform, sharing a stubborn impatience with those who display the impudence to object, and harboring the potentially catastrophic belief that one can manipulate the other.

In essence, Coffey is council president because Gahan finds it useful, and while Gahan perhaps believes that Coffey genuinely has something to offer the city, he may also have acquiesced with Machiavellian intent to position Coffey for a damaging fall. Either way, the events of Thursday, January 15 are sufficient for us to question both Coffey’s suitability for office and Gahan’s political judgment.

Considering Coffey’s boorish and unstable behavior at the conclusion of the meeting, first inside the council chamber and then later at a local licensed establishment, the admonition recently scrawled above the decaying urinals at the Luddite Bar & Grill is sufficiently prescient to apply to Gahan:

“Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.”

---

Full disclosure compels me to proudly acknowledge that both Mark Cassidy and Jeff Gillenwater are longtime friends, the latter joining me and others as plaintiffs in the redistricting case mentioned here. Furthermore, it should be noted that I did not personally witness the events described, although I’ve spoken to individuals (other than the preceding) who were there.

That said, it is hardly in keeping with established council protocol for Coffey to imperiously jeer and then abruptly terminate the well-intentioned efforts of a fellow citizen – a fellow taxpayer, no less – to address the council during the public speaking period allotted for comments on non-agenda items, a periodically entertaining feature added to the biweekly agenda for the express purpose of giving people the opportunity to, yes, address the council.

Hectored citizen Cassidy came before the council and waited patiently for the opportunity to read a prepared statement and ask a simple question: Does the current legislative aggregation have any intention of doing its Constitutional duty to draw fair electoral districts by lawfully redistricting for the first time since 1992?

Cassidy, a non-partisan volunteer on the redistricting committee formed by the council last year at the behest of a federal court judge annoyed by the council’s sloth, politely endeavored to ask this question, but Coffey – whose job description presumably includes an obligation to uphold procedure and decorum – argued with Cassidy and gaveled him down, reverting to the serial distemper that Coffey oddly believes his fellow New Albanians should view as statesmanlike.

----

But flagrant abuses of authority are seldom confused with statesmanship, and now we must contemplate the latest in a series of red flags warning New Albanians that the voices emanating from Coffey’s interior political world plainly render him unfit for office.

Coffey inhabits an eerie Hieronymus Bosch landscape filled with mysterious conspiracies, withheld information and unfathomable daily slights emanating from people and ideas he cannot begin to grasp, and he comprehends only two poles of reference: Himself, and the enemy – or “them people.”

Accordingly, the story resumes after meeting’s end with Coffey's verbal and physical harassment of another, entirely different citizen in Studio's, the fine downtown eatery and bar on Main Street.

There, surrounded by witnesses numbering at least one fellow council member and various other public officials as well as ordinary pub patrons, Coffey initiated a heated discussion with Gillenwater that ended with Coffey aggressively grabbing Gillenwater by the shoulders and vowing to be “like a copperhead” and to “strike when you least expect it.”

In case you’re wondering, here is the definition of assault:

A crime that occurs when one person tries to physically harm another in a way that makes the person under attack feel immediately threatened. Actual physical contact is not necessary; threatening gestures that would alarm any reasonable person can constitute an assault.

It is incredible, shameful and indefensible. New Albany’s council president refused to permit a citizen to speak during the time allotted for it, and then both verbally and physically accosted another citizen in a public place. Is there any better example of the New Albany Syndrome than Dan Coffey’s skewed perspective of “leadership,” as manifested by these lamentable outbursts?

Aren’t they primal screams, not the sagacious deliberations of a paid public servant?

Can any member of the council excuse Coffey’s bad acting?

Can any of them deny that he continues to make New Albany the laughing stock of the region, thwarting the efforts of so many people to invest in the city’s future and revitalize the municipality?

Can any council member refute that Coffey’s most recent meltdown tars each and every one of them with the same degrading brush?

How can Coffey’s fellow council persons sleep at night knowing that they have empowered him with an office that he is unable to exercise responsibly?

I’m thinking of one of them in particular.

--

NEXT: Gahan and Coffey Together Forever, Part 8: Open thread: City council meeting of Monday, February 2 (3 February 2009).

From BEER MONEY at the Tribune to ON THE AVENUES at NAC -- how my weekly column came to be.

NA Confidential was born in October, 2004. Almost 11,000 posts later, the experience sometimes verges on the coherent, but at the start I had little idea how to proceed, beyond writing for posterity about what was happening right here in New Albany.

Consequently, after five years of beating the bushes, my big break beckoned as 2008 drew to a close.

New Tribune guest columnist in January. (December 8, 2008)

Last Friday afternoon I met with Steve Kozarovich, publisher of the New Albany Tribune, and agreed to write a 900-word column on a weekly basis, beginning Thursday, January 8, and running on Thursdays thereafter. It is a (modest) for-pay gig, joining paid columns I write biweekly for LEO and quarterly for Food and Dining magazine.

This announcement is provided as a courtesy to the publisher, who now has the opportunity to begin fielding complaints before the column actually appears.

From January 2009 until February 2011, I met 111 consecutive "Beer Money" column deadlines at $40 a pop, then decided to run for city council, necessitating a suspension of my weeklyTribunecontribution.

Today's last Tribune column for a while: "Let’s all say ‘yes’ for change." (February 17, 2011)

 ... And so, here's the finale ... for now. I expect to be back (a) after a primary loss, or (b) after a general election loss, or (c) after a general election victory. After all, there is a Clere Channel precedent for public officials writing a weekly column, is there not?

BAYLOR: Let’s all say ‘yes’ for change

This will be my last column in The Tribune for a while, and there’s a reason for the hiatus.

I've decided to take a dram of my own medicine and file to run for city council in the coming primary — yes, as a Democrat, and for an at-large seat.

Because this very newspaper has a policy against permitting its columnists to conduct campaigns in print, and actually enforces it more often than the city’s own long neglected codes, I must return temporarily to the realm of the blogosphere.

And in the blogosphere I was destined to remain, because concurrent with my hiatus, Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. cashiered Kozarovich and combined our local newspapers into a new entity, the News and Tribune. It was to be headquartered in Jeffersonville, instituting a Clark County-centric focus that has become steadily more annoying to New Albanians during the years since, and it caused my column to walk the plank.

This just in: Merger kills a newspaper column. (May 23, 2011)

Damn, I knew I should have actually won that election ... then I could still have a newspaper column, just like Parson Clere, although I'm told that the beer column idea is still on the table for the Spectrum section.

The now departed Coach K used the word "hiatus" prior to my council bid. I had to fetch a thesaurus to know what he meant. Now, somewhere, he and Lucy Van Pelt are holding the football aloft and laughing.

Just my luck. Who'd have known that Linus's older sister worked for the Retirement Systems of Alabama?

Is it time to go underground, yet?

To Matt Nash: It's all yours now. Torture the troglodytes often, will you ... and try to give us some New Albany news, okay? The Clark County stuff's already getting old.

Right now, the regular columnist spots are full. I can't pick up anyone else and still get in letters, cheers and jeers and any editorials in a timely manner.

I still had to drop another columnist (McDonald) on top of when you and Kelley Curran decided to run for office because space became less available after the merger. I'm also trying to keep a balance between Clark County folks like Dodd and Harbeson and Floyd County writers like Amy and Nash. And, of course, I have a freelancer/stringer budget to worry about.

It's possible a spot would open up in the future and I'll let you know if that happens.

Shea Van Hoy

I spent a few months licking wounds and plotting revenge against the perpetrators, then realized there was much yet to say and write. The answer was to DIY, in this blog forum.

The newspaper's dead and buried, so welcome to electronica. (May 26, 2011)

Beginning last week, my Thursday column was reinstituted in this space. The column ran in the News and Tribune from January 2009 until February 2011, when it went on "hiatus" during my run for council. Earlier this week, I learned that the hiatus had been transformed into permanent absence owing to changes in the newspaper's structure.

This just in: Merger kills a newspaper column.

As a writer, deadlines have a wonderful way of concentrating thought, and so it is my desire to get back into the weekly column habit. This blog's the place for it until something else comes along.

Furthermore, conceding that the newspaper's current staff will disagree with me, the consolidation of two editions into one of the same size inevitably will have the effect of reducing coverage of New Albany (and to an extent, Floyd County) affairs. Stated simply, New Albany has lost its newspaper.

"Our newspaper is dead -- long live the Internet", or something like that.

For the time being, and perhaps for a long time to come, this blog is more important than ever before. While I don't have the time to transform NAC into a comprehensive news and commentary entity, repositioning my weekly column and moving it from Thursday newsprint to Thursday bandwidth is attainable, so that's how we'll start the ball rolling. In conjunction with social media, it's enough for now. I am aware of like-minded ideas for on-line publishing in the community, and will continue monitoring these in the hope that something comes to fruition.

But what to call this new column?

Later this morning, my Thursday column will reappear here. The old "Beer Money" tag, which referred to the limited usefulness of the bare farthings grudgingly paid by the Retirement Systems of Alabama to guest columnists in publications like One Southern Indiana Newspaper, no longer makes sense, seeing as remuneration has completely disappeared.

Instead, my new Thursday column will openly hearken back to the long-departed days of independent, truly local journalism in New Albany: "On the Avenues." Some of you will know what I mean by this. Look for the Green Mouse to make appearances, too.

In the days of my youth, back when the Tribune actually mattered, a lifer named Jack Powers was the staff do-it-all. He covered the social and political waterfronts in his column, On the Avenues, with the help of an all-purpose editorial source and assistant, the so-called Green Mouse.

My column honors these quaint and mostly forgotten aspects of local journalism in New Albany.

Next: The Top Ten ON THE AVENUES columns of 2016.

"Beware, yuletide oupistidophobes. I’m watching": The 2010 column and subsequent reaction.

It is my aim to keep rewinds and reruns to a minimum, but I can't resist revisiting this topic on an annual basis. 

Once upon a time, I used my newspaper column's bully pulpit, now defunct thanks to humorless Alabama pensioners and their registered local agents, to mischievously bait prevailing intolerance in the community. The column reprinted in its entirety below (how many re- words can I use in one posting?) appeared on December 23, 2010, and predictably, those intimately resembling the subjects of my column immediately descended upon me, not unlike piranhas on a stray Boston butt, resulting in this wrap-up on December 29, 2010:

"Beer Money" fan mail pours in ... that's nice ... is it time for a beer yet? 

... Takes a lot of nerve to put it in print that you don't believe in God. I'm not surprised. Goes along with all your anger ... To the Tribune: I agree with the commenter who asked that you stop publishing Baylor's columns. He doesn't write anything to help the people. This article doesn't make any more sense than anything else he writes. I don't read this and only checked this one out because someone sent me a link. It's just filling space. Make it your New Year's resolution to get rid of it.

On the same day, I was overjoyed to learn that Vicki Ann Denschack was savaging me at Freedom to Screech.

I stopped reading at "We was told," but she don't like me very much, do she?

First, we forget that you actually pay Roger Baylor to write this tripe. "BAYLOR: Beware, yuletide oupistophober. I'm watching." Noneless, it is when good men sit back and do nothing that people like him get this kind of opportunity ...

... So what we want our readers to do is this. Here's a link to the story. If you're tired of reading crap like this, write to the Tribune to let them know that you want Roger Baylor's columns to stop running. They are giving him free space to write destructive nonsense that is unhelpful.

In nine years writing a blog, I've never laughed harder at the oft-observed phenomenon wherein the rebuttals to your position from enraged opponents merely serve as further proof of your position's basic veracity. So, here it is again.

I can only hope that Erika and Amy are reading.

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Beware, yuletide oupistidophobes. I’m watching.

Phobias are among the most fundamental of psychological phenomena, and I feel for anyone who suffers from them.

I have a few phobias, including a mild fear of heights (acrophobia), and a bit of taphephobia, the fear of being buried alive, as in a grave. These lurk in the murky background of my subconscious, bubbling to the surface every so often to wreak discomfort.

As an atheist, I’m sometimes accused of hagiophobia, a fear of holy things, but the naysayers are the ones with the problem: They’re suffering from phronemophobia, a fear of thinking. Granted, unbelievers aren’t preferred dinner guests this time of year, so how is a fear of atheists and atheism described? One source suggests atheophobia as truest to the Greek origins of the idea, while another offers oupistidophobia, literally “no-faith-phobia.”

I mention oupistidophobia because Christmas truly never fails to inspire intemperate attacks on atheists and atheism. The closer we get to the biggest day on the Christian festival calendar, the more phobic frothing about an insidious, irreligious conspiracy of militant atheists, who although insignificant in numbers, remains intent on attacking the faith of vulnerable, pious Christians – themselves comprising more than three-quarters of America’s population.

My favorite recurring seasonal set piece is when Christians, easily the beneficiaries of the most pervasive and relentless propaganda machine in the history of mankind, express outrage whenever miniscule dollops of free thinking manage to elude the leaden grip of the mandated American theocracy, and suddenly pose an Ebola-like threat to the hegemony of Christianity’s indigenous edifice.

A couple years ago, the Freedom From Religion Foundation erected a sign on the capitol grounds in Washington state:

“At this season of THE WINTER SOLSTICE, may reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but a myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.”

(As an aside, the wording is largely superfluous past “prevail.” A theist believes in something, and bears the burden of proof, while those absent such belief cannot logically be expected to explain why something does NOT exist.)

Assuming one accepts the desirability of an open, pluralistic society beyond the bare fundamentals required to freely make piles of money for buying Chinese plastic trinkets, what’s so bad about equal time for opposing viewpoints?

The lawn in question abuts a building constructed by adherents of a non-religious political system that purports to represent all the residents of a secular state, not just the believers.

Alas, simplicity seldom is a part of this discussion. Just this past weekend, a local contributor to the Tribune bemoaned the current state of “Christless Christmas,” closing with a typical dose of seasonal alarmism:

“I feel strongly that we have lost much in our move to a Christless Christmas. It shows in our disregard for the value of human life. It shows in our fractured family relationships. It shows in our reluctance to form close ties with our neighbors as our grandparents did. Back then it was accepted, and rightly so, that this was a nation founded on Judeo-Christian values. Our laws are based on the Ten Commandments after all. No one was (and still are not) forced to attend church or worship anywhere. People were, and are, free to be of any or no religion. Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists were as free to practice their religions as Christians were theirs."

Really?

To me, this implies that if only Americans of differing creeds would grow up and cede the inevitability of Christian “truth”, choosing to play-act in public by embracing a beige uniformity that never once existed in reality … and if these non-Christians, including atheists, would meekly worship (or mock religion, or use peyote) without publicly challenging the purely Christian nature of the Republic … then this apologetic acknowledgement of Christianity’s pre-eminence would enabled the constantly threatened Christian majority to grudgingly tolerate, as opposed to respect, otherwise errant theological convictions … and voila!

All our societal ills would magically disappear, just like that.

I repeat: Really?

It’s always the same historically inaccurate ruse: In spite of those inconvenient Constitutional quirks, the United States must be touted with flexed muscles as an overtly “Christian nation,” with requisite displays of piety for outward show, especially at Christmas, and yet, even as they stare malevolently at a winter solstice sign in Olympia, Washington, Christians also quickly remind us that Christmas “exists in our hearts,” a place utterly impervious to the alleged wickedness of the outside world, where faith cannot ever be dislodged.

If that’s true, what’s the point of appearances, anyway?

The mere presence of other viewpoints hardly stands to bring Christianity to its knees. I've never understood why those of religious orientation (another one of those “chosen” lifestyles, eh?) are so insecure when it comes to considerations of alternative worldviews.

Maybe it’s Satan, the same imaginary force for “evil” once held responsible for heretical notions of cell structure, gravity and interplanetary exploration, as well as other scientific findings that caused the heads of so many learned fellow Christians to roll down bloody cobblestoned streets, their death warrants signed by you know who.

Oupistidophobia or not, it seldom matters to me until religion crosses the line, and given the global history of persecution and mayhem administered from a religious perspective, I'll say just this: There's a much greater chance of an atheist being harmed by religion than the other way around.

Just remember the Inquisition as you fill your stockings this holiday season.

REWIND HOLIDAZE EDITION 1: Slovaks and troglodytes.

I've always enjoyed keeping 'em guessing, and so a Beer Money column entitled "Long ago in Slovakia" was published in the pre-merger 'Bune on December 3, 2009. The full text hasn't appeared here until now.

There was an entertaining aftermath, in the form of comments amid a maze of Bledsottian irrelevancies at the blog still called The Voice of the People, which Shirley Baird seems no longer to actively steward (last posting in May, 2012). Back in 2009, I answered the troglodyte's critique here: My visit to PassiveAggressiveLand.

---

Long ago in Slovakia.

My family traces its ethnic roots to Germany, but to this day, I’m unclear as to whether the Christian preferences of my ancestors ran toward Catholic or Protestant. Perhaps there were even unbelievers like me slipping their genes into the mix. If so, they were probably quiet about it.

It used to be that German Catholic immigrants to America celebrated December 6, St. Nicholas Day, as the day for giving gifts. Without a religious upbringing to speak of, St. Nicholas Day made no impression on me until December, 1991. I was living in the city of Kosice, Slovakia, and working as an English teacher. It was my first holiday season spent abroad, and a compelling experience.

Here’s something I wrote at the time.

---

A Christmas Dispatch from Slovakia December, 1991.

There's a good chance of a White Christmas in Slovakia.

The winter's first snow has come and gone, and although we didn't get very much, it was enough to add a cheerful hazard for pedestrians in the forms of sleds, multitudes of them, some of old fashioned wood construction, others of molded plastic. More sleds than I've ever seen have appeared as if by magic from closets and storage rooms, to be pulled by their brightly outfitted young owners and steered at breakneck speed down any and all available slopes, inhabited or otherwise.

They had been charging down the wide sidewalk that leads from Festival Square and ascends the low ridge to the hospital complex where I teach, and the snow on the walkway had been firmly packed into an icy surface that defied sure footing, and the reason I know this is because I was trying to walk up the hill – and failing miserably.

You can't blame the children for failing to understand (or to care about) the consequences of their fun. After all, children don't have as far to fall.

It was a good day for a walk. The snow was fresh and powdery, and it crunched loudly beneath my boots. The white dusting on the cupolas and steeples of the old city brightened the sooty, aging facades. Even the look-alike gray rows of block housing were softened by the white.

The sunshine was bright and surface temperatures no lower than freezing, but a sharp, gusting wind from the north kicked up miniature/a> snow squalls and blew the clothes on the ubiquitous clotheslines into frozen, horizontal positions.

The chill made me think of Russia. The Soviet Union used to be close to Kosice, but now the line on the obsolete map is the border of the infant Ukrainian republic, and who knows the procedure for crossing that border?

Probably a bottle of Scotch and a smile.

The cold flowing into Kosice from Siberia will be as close as I get to Russia this trip, yet I can still see our fur clad, vodka wielding, erstwhile enemies waiting in line for brown bread. It makes me think of the cruel toll of forty years of Cold War: Hunger, homelessness, environmental degradation, social upheaval, rampant violence, the decay of the family, impending economic catastrophe and these are America's spoils of "victory."

In the former U.S.S.R., the situation is even worse.

But Christmas is coming, and somewhere in a valley near Kosice, in the backyard of a quaint farm, a goose is getting fat. Barrels are being inspected to gauge the progress of the cured cabbage that will form the base of the traditional holiday soup. A trip to a nearby town is being planned. There will be shopping for gifts and a visit to the fish market for carp, another holiday staple or perhaps the fish will be vended from oversized plastic tubs, to be weighed and wrapped right on the street.

For an American, there's an eerie quality to the Christmas season in Slovakia. For starters, decorations didn't begin to appear until the first week of December; then again, what can you expect of such an unenlightened country where there's no contrived holiday like Halloween to mark the beginning of the shopping season?

Only a few tasteful, understated window displays are to be seen in the stores, and high ¬pressure, guilt laced sales tactics aren't in evidence at all. Slovakia obviously has much to learn about economics before its people can begin to see the wisdom of centering all hopes on wild overspending at Christmas to keep the economy afloat.

In Slovakia, Santa Claus makes his rounds on the eve of St. Nicholas Day (December 6). Children scrub and polish their shoes and place them on the windowsill to be filled with candy and chocolate, but only if they've been good. If not, they're supposed to receive a bundle of twigs bound together and intended for use to swat their you know what. On Christmas Eve, rumor has it that gifts are not delivered by Santa, but by Jesus himself.

In Communist times the regime attempted to persuade the populace that a chap named Grandfather Frost brought the goodies, presumably on behalf of the benevolent leadership.

There are Christmas trees and caroling in the streets by children, one of whom might carry a representation of the manger, and maybe the singers will be rewarded for their efforts with fruit and cookies.

In short, despite tight economic times and a full list of daunting problems to be solved, the holiday season in Slovakia is proceeding according to schedule and tradition. I've been given a bottle of homemade peach brandy for St. Nicholas Day; the doctor who gave it to me instructed me to make a Christmas Eve toast to peace, health and a good harvest. On a cold day, with steaming sauerkraut soup just around the comer, the toast strikes me as a true and noble thought.

Clere on same sex marriage ban: It's about human rights, or not. Quit posturing.

Vote expected on same sex marriage ban;Clere among opposition (One Southern Indiana Newspaper)

If you wish to "thank" Rep. Ed Clere for voting against a same sex marriage ban, at least understand that his "oposition" publicly stems from procedural grounds, not because he's been willing to make an open, unequivocal statement in support of human rights.

Moreover, it's a miscarriage of journalism for the writer to imply anything contrarian or heroic in Clere's action, and before the Clere Channel Fluffers descend en masse to protect their chosen saint's relics, permit me to note that this issue goes back a long, long way, prior to last summer's bridges imbroglio.

If he truly wants to stand up for rights and freedoms, as in this case I believe he actually might, then he needs to state it as clearly as possible, come what may. Anything else is political gameplaying.

File under: You can't make this stuff up.

So, the Tribune tried to make an issue of City Attorney Shane Gibson saying he doesn't subscribe to or read the Tribune...

with Tribune Publisher Steve Kozarovich even taking a shot at Gibson on Twitter...



but had Gibson relied on the Tribune to inform him of yesterday's parks bill hearing...

Today's last Tribune column for a while: "Let’s all say ‘yes’ for change."

Now the truth can be told.

After being forced to watch, naked and powerless, as I was publicly dashed to rumpled smithereens by the razor-sharp, turgid wit of the masked Chipped Formica Brigade at Kitchen Fable, I fell into a deep, dark, enduring depression, and I am unable to write cogently any longer.

Kindly note that I'm laughing my ass off, aloud.

And so, here's the finale ... for now. I expect to be back (a) after a primary loss, or (b) after a general election loss, or (c) after after a general election victory. After all, there is a Clere Channel precedent for public officials writing a weekly column, is there not?

BAYLOR: Let’s all say ‘yes’ for change

This will be my last column in The Tribune for a while, and there’s a reason for the hiatus.

I've decided to take a dram of my own medicine and file to run for city council in the coming primary — yes, as a Democrat, and for an at-large seat.

Because this very newspaper has a policy against permitting its columnists to conduct campaigns in print, and actually enforces it more often than the city’s own long neglected codes, I must return temporarily to the realm of the blogosphere.

Is this really what David Halberstam meant?

I have no argument with the Tribune's lead platitude today. Yes, of course it would be nice to have genuine choices, and to increase the dim wattage of elected officials hereabouts, but there's just one small problem.

Running in the May primary requires declaring a party affiliation, right? And America provides a grand total of two non-choices: Republican (Dick Cheney's fascist peers) and Democratic (can any party Steve Price belongs to be a real political party?), both sans coherent local-issue platforms.

Independent candidacies in November? Possible, but with the odds stacked against them because they must solve the tendency of unprincipled and partisan straight-ticket ballots cast by uneducated robots for non-parties without coherent platforms.

Look, either "best and brightest" implies intelligence, or it is a purely nonsensical concept.

As such, if they haven't already moved away, perhaps the "best and brightest" avoid participation in politics precisely because the current system is decidedly unintelligent, and they can see this fact with disheartening clarity.

In fact, perhaps they see the local bottom-feeding political system as a failure, and determine that their time is better spent at their jobs and careers, and building community in other, myriad ways.

TRIBUNE EDITORIAL: A call to New Albany’s best, brightest

What we need are choices. So many times in recent years, including this past election where county seats were up for grabs, several races have been uncontested. That is not what a democracy is all about ... that is not what we need in these crucial times. Running a government in these tough economic times, will continue to take the best, and brightest, we have to offer.

I stopped reading at "We was told," but she don't like me very much, do she?

How sadly familiar the refrain: We're all for free speech and a free press, until we're against it. Then it HAS GOT TO GO, and he has got to go -- right now.

I'm reprinting this screed without permission, but seeing as freedom of speech hasn't yet been extended to Professor Erika's own comments section ... well, you know the drill. I added the actual link to the column in question, seeing as it was omitted in the original.

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AN OPEN LETTER TO OUR READERS AND STEVE KOZAROVICH...

Tue Dec 28, 2010 21:01 from FREEDOM OF SPEECH by One voice (VoiceOfNA@aol.com)

Dear Executive Editor,

First, we support Freedom of the Press and Freedom Of Speech.

But...

First, we forget that you actually pay Roger Baylor to write this tripe. "BAYLOR: Beware, yuletide oupistophober. I'm watching." Noneless, it is when good men sit back and do nothing that people like him get this kind of opportunity.

Secondly, we was told by Kozarovich a long time ago that if enough people wrote in to say they don't like his column, they'd get rid of it!

So what we want our readers to do is this. Here's a link to the story. If you're tired of reading crap like this, write to the Tribune to let them know that you want Roger Baylor's columns to stop running. They are giving him free space to write destructive nonsense that is unhelpful.

Here's the link: http://newsandtribune.com/opinion/x258587521/BAYLOR-Beware-yuletide-oupistidophobes-I-m-watching. Then decide if this is the garbage and crap you want to read in our local Tribune newspaper.

Third, He can have his blog, but it is truly a problem that the Tribune is PAYING Baylor to put crap in there like that.

We, believe in freedom of the press, and freedom of speech, but the paper chooses NOT to put in a lot of things that need to be in there. It's high time they choose not to include this.

It's really offensive and is NOT the kind of thing that ought to be included in a decent newspaper.

But to attack Christianity and Christmas is just too much.

At the very least, the Tribune needs to know they're paying for this crap.

If you agree with us, Contact: Tribune Publisher & Executive Editor Steve.Kozarovich@newsandtribune.com or contact him by phone: 812-206-2148 or drop him a note: 303 Scribner Drive, New Albany, IN 47150.

Tell him Roger Baylor has got to go...

Evening News joins Tribune in condemning tolling proposals.

To quote Mr. Nash: "The Evening News gets it right."

EVENING NEWS EDITORIAL: Leave tolls off existing bridges, roads

... It’s wrong to ask Hoosiers and Kentuckians to essentially again pay for roads and bridges that have been constructed. It’s wrong for locals to be asked to pay more than half of the estimated price tag in tolls.

More than anything, it’s wrong to ask them to pay tolls when so many questions remain ...

Previously, all the way back in April, the Tribune reached the same conclusion.

TRIBUNE EDITORIAL: Bridges plan not worth any cost

However, the current consideration of adding tolls to all existing bridges is an idea we can’t support even if it means a smaller or delayed construction project.

We're so over that whole Wal-Mart thing.

Fangs will be bared at the kitchen table as the Tribune sensibly editorializes.

TRIBUNE EDITORIAL - A prosperous circle with local spending

... As New Albany approaches its bicentennial celebration in 2013, our local region is primed for a legitimate renaissance period.

One thing we believe can help maintain momentum is a campaign to “Buy Local.”

Recently, a group of local merchants has started meeting to form a group called New Albany First. It’s an excellent cause for The Tribune and our readers to support. When you have a choice, put local businesses first.

Nash touches all four: "What a bizarre city council meeting."

Bases loaded with contradictions, and here's the delivery from Dalby.

Nash swings ... CRACK ... it's a looooong fly to left, going, going -- gone! That one landed in the upper deck. My, oh my, did Nash get all of that one ...

NASH: What a bizarre city council meeting

One Southern Indiana left the meeting with $30,000 of New Albany taxpayers money that they can use to support the unpopular Ohio River Bridge Project or any politician that they see fit. Next year these city council members will have to answer for this vote, and I am sure that the result will be anything but bizarre.

Nash: "A city on the move."

Matt Nash stays positive about downtown New Albany, the Tribune welcomes the Harvest Homecoming kickoff parade, Commandante Dalby undergoes a lashing over 1Si's endorsements, and Steve Price provides voluminous grist for next week's column: "Cappuccino and Li'l Stevie go camping!"

Don't forget NAC's annual parade party on Saturday. Take it away, Matt.

NASH: A city on the move

Over the last few years the city of New Albany has experienced a renaissance. For years our downtown had been like a ghost town, especially after the sun went down, but that doesn’t seem to be the case any more. On any given night you can now visit our once empty downtown, but be warned, you may have a hard time finding a parking spot.

Tribune supports annexation, yawns at renegade realtor conspiracy theories.

The Tribune editorial board disagrees with Pat Harrison and Steve Price, and sees no harmful Nazi-inspired shenanigans behind the city's annexation plan:

TRIBUNE EDITORIAL: Annexation plan makes sense

It seems like a win-win move for the city. The area, which many consider part of New Albany now, will generate around $700,000 a year in property tax revenue for the city. How can you say no to $700,000 a year, especially when you currently have a $1.8 million shortfall in public safety expenses. Without a LOIT tax or another financial stream, the City Council can’t afford not to annex the property.

In the same piece, the board supports the county's purchase of Pine View Elementary as future home of the Youth Shelter, and cannot resist a backhanded swipe at the city:

Government does not always have to be confrontational and stagnant. It can work. Unfortunately, for those of us who live in the city, that is not always the case. Maybe the city council and city administration can learn something from their county brothers. When government works together, the citizens are rewarded.

Huzzah! Has Dan Coffey and Steve Price yet offered to slash their own paychecks?

Matt Nash bids for the big time with My Friday Column blog.

Today, Matt Nash's weekly Friday column is folded into a new interactive venture. I can hear smell the spitrogwads coming now ... but seriously, if Coach K really has a sense of humor, he'll announce an immediate shift of Matt's column to Tuesdays, opposite Ed "No Questions, Socialist Cur" Clere.

NASH: My Friday column is heading to cyberspace

... I believe that New Albany is a great town with a lot of potential. It takes all kinds of opinions to understand many points of view. I think this interactive experiment can help me understand what the community is thinking and make me a better writer. I hope you continue to enjoy my weekly column and I look forward to hearing from you at www.myfridaycolumn.blogspot.com.

Nash's voice says: "Your voice needs to be heard."

Forward to your Jeffersonville city council member of choice, and see if he or she deletes it.

NASH: Your voice needs to be heard

The Bridges Authority has constantly said those who oppose the “two bridges one project” plan are a small but noisy minority. Even with a recent poll that has public support for the plan that they are proposing at around 15 percent.

That means 85 percent of those polled have a problem with their plan. Where are those people and how do they let their feelings be known? Many of the people that oppose the plan have made their opinions known on the social networking sight, Facebook. More than 1,440 people have joined the group “Say NO to bridge tolls.” This is a good start but it’s time that people do something more than just joining a group.

Clere to Tribune: Do as I say, not as I do.

I suppose we'll be told that one standard of free speech applies to Facebook, and another to print journalism.

Today in the Tribune, State Representative Ed Clere expresses unhappiness at being denied free speech.

Communication will continue, by Ed Clere, Local Columnist.

He writes, "As an advocate of free speech, I always prefer more speech, not less," and "I always appreciate constructive feedback."

I wonder what he thinks about tolling for the bridges project? Shall we ask him? But wait ... we did ask him, and such is his commitment to free speech that the questions were deleted, and the member list was purged. I didn't do it. This blog didn't do it. Progressives didn't do it.

All of this is so very senseless.

I am not the enemy, never was, and never intended to be. Then, why am I being treated like the enemy? If there is some need to put me in my place, can there be an explanation of why I'm a threat to established order? I'm not running for office, and have not endorsed a candidate; in fact, this blog probably expresses more reservations about local Democrats than Republicans, but although the Democrats usually don't pay very close attention to our recommendations, they don't censor us, either.

Is this a set piece? The Twilight Zone? What gives?

By the way, there'll be a column of mine appearing on Thursday. Care to guess the topic?