Puh-leeze.

The following audio commentary was written and produced by Mr. Jordan Peter Hickey, MU-Jour ’09 — a young man poised to make his splashing debut this fall in the New York magazine literature scene.

wired take five wired take five

(A more visually compelling presentation is forthcoming ~ thank you for your patience.)

Very sincerely,

C. M.

At 22, I’ve never had a boyfriend, or, for that matter, a relationship that lasted longer than the time it takes to throw away the condom and usher you out the door.

There have been boys I crushed on and ones I might have considered dating. But when I think back, only a select few have ever really had me “going through it.” (For anyone unfamiliar with that term, I’d suggest heavy doses of Keyshia Cole, Alicia Keys and of course, Ms. Faith Evans.)

Brandon was one of those boys. He was my friend from grade school, and we inhabited the same high school social circle. We weren’t close friends, but you could say his friendship will probably end up being the strongest I’ll ever have with a straight guy.

Bunker, Missouri was our home and it looks just like it sounds. No traffic lights. One police officer. The closest Big Mac or Wal-Mart was a good 20 minutes away. You were more likely to see cans of chew outlined in back pockets than cellphones or iPods. Everyone knew my parents and grandparents.

The town where everyone knows your name looks great on TVLand, but growing up queer in Mayberry ain’t so picturesque. I mean, I’m grateful I was raised in a tightly knit community, but as a gay kid coming to terms with his own sexuality and desires in rural America, I found it fucking rough.

I had just come out of the closet at the beginning of my freshman year and I got the predicted clichéd reactions. Disgust from older guys. Understanding from the best friend. Sympathy from the high school guidance counselor. Parental shock and awe.

Brandon simply gave me comfort. For some reason, he wasn’t that surprised. He wasn’t exactly rolling out the rainbow flags for me, either, but it didn’t bother him enough to partake in the communal male fag-bashing. I appreciated that, and I think that’s where the attraction was born.

I know, I know, so Lifetime Movie-lovin’-faggot of me, right? The young, confused gay boy falls in love with the compassionate heterosexual friend: it makes me gag to think of it now, but at the time it’s honestly how I felt.

Our interactions in and outside of school led me to wonder if he had the same feelings for me. In between classes he would make a point to grab my ass in the hall, and I would hear him call me “baby” when I entered a room. At the time I didn’t know if his actions were motivated by real attraction or if he was just living up to his reputation as class clown and flirt.

I remember the hugs, too. The hugs were my favorite. He would find me in the crowd after a basketball game or alone at my locker and hug me. It wasn’t overtly sexual, or even physical in that sense either. He would just hug me as a real friend.

My lovesickness lasted all through high school. My frustration grew along with my feelings for him because I could never figure out if the sly smiles and wandering hands were all a joke or not. I debated back and forth with myself about coming clean with Brandon and letting him know I had feelings for him. Every time I’d get closer to telling the truth, I’d end up hiding deeper behind my insecurities.

That conversation never officially took place, but we did encounter a spontaneous moment of honesty during our senior year camping trip. Drunk on cheap wine and beer, we talked alone by a tree several feet from the campfire. After telling me that he was going to miss me after graduation, Brandon came at me, engulfing me in his arms. In that moment, I wanted to tell him everything I had felt in the last four years, how every time I thought of him I’d get a smile and that I lived for the hugs he gave me after a long weekend’s absence.

But I moved back in fear. Afraid of how he would react, I staggered back to the campfire and sat down in a lawn chair. Drunk, he stumbled back towards me and landed at the foot of my chair, laying his head in my lap. I held his head for a moment before he grabbed me and pulled me down on top of him, on the cold stones and dry leaves. We locked eyes for a second, then kissed. Not just once, but for a while. Our classmates just stood there frozen, surrounding us.

After the shock wore off and they realized they were witnessing real, live homosexuality, Brandon’s cousin Tyler pulled him up while someone else pulled me off him. We were promptly separated and told to sleep off the alcohol.

The next morning, no one wanted to talk about what had happened; we packed up and headed home. We graduated the next weekend. I never initiated a conversation with Brandon about the kiss. Everyone else had blamed me and the alcohol for the situation, so I decided to let it rest.

Sometimes I wish I had told Brandon how I felt, and other times that burning doubt inside me tells me I’m stupid for imagining a real connection. I still see him sometimes when I go home and I’m always hesitant to give him a hug, or even say hi.

He’s not as fit as he used to be, or as attractive as he was in high school. But when I see Brandon, I still see that same boy. That same smile and those eyes looking at me with no judgment.

Joshua Barton is a student at the University of Missouri, where he will complete his bachelor’s degree in magazine journalism later this year. Writing became a passion of his at an early age, and he hopes to get into screenwriting one day. Contact him at josh.barton49 (at) gmail (dot) com.

AARHUS, DENMARK, 2006
It is afternoon. I’m meeting Julie for coffee. She has met someone. A guy from her university. We share girl talk. We have done this many times before. Who is he? Is he good-looking? Is he good in bed? Is she that into him? She seems happy. I feel happy for her.

Not much time goes by before it gets serious. It is a good thing. She has had some really crappy boyfriends earlier. This could be a positive for her.

AARHUS, DENMARK, 2006
I’m moving to another city for an internship. I haven’t met her new boyfriend. I have been wondering why. I guess we have all been very busy. I decide not to put too much into it. She tells me a lot about him. I know about his studies. His family. His band. I almost know him without ever having seen him live. We agree that I should meet him when I get back.

I start work in Copenhagen.

COPENHAGEN, DENMARK, 2007
She comes by to visit me.
It’s no success.
She spends two days at my place. But I hardly see her. She is on the phone all the time. The boyfriend is upset, because they have not seen each other in two days. Julie and I haven’t seen each other in several months. Why does he have to disturb us? What is this? Why is she not speaking up? He is being unreasonable.
I’m disappointed. Should I tell her? I decide not to. She likes him. It is probably just a misunderstanding. I should not interfere. It is none of my business.

She decides to go home hours before we planned so she can have dinner with him.

AARHUS, DENMARK, 2007
Christmas is over.
I have some days off before New Year’s Eve. I decide to visit Julie. She has moved in with him. I can stay at their place.

I arrive. I’m excited to finally meet the guy. I run up the stairs. Knock on the door. Give Julie a hug. Enter the living room. Say something exalted to the boyfriend about how excited I am to finally meet him. He gets up from the sofa. He walks past me. And he doesn’t say hello.
Julie explains that they had a fight. I make some remark about this being really awkward. We don’t talk anymore about it. I can sense that she thinks it is weird too.

We leave for a party with some friends. We get too drunk. We fall asleep at their place.
In the morning I learn that this was not a good idea.

It is 7 am. The boyfriend is on the phone. He is picking her up. He is furious. They leave me there. I am beginning to think that these are not coincidences. He is really possessive.

AARHUS, DENMARK, 2008
My internship is over. I move back to my old city.

I need to borrow some clothes from her for a party. I tell her that I’ll be right over. She says she will bring them over to me instead.

So I realize—every time we meet it is never in their apartment. She is going out of her way to keep the boyfriend and me from meeting.

This has gone too far. I should have said something earlier.

AARHUS, DENMARK, 2008
I invite Julie to my place. After coffee and a little small talk, I get to vent my views. It is not offered in a nice way. I have waited too long. This becomes more of an outburst. I say some things that maybe I shouldn’t have. That she should leave him. But this is what I think.

This guy is no good for her. And it isn’t just about me. He is jealous, too. And he is using it to control her.

She knows that something is wrong. She insinuates that he doesn’t like me. He thinks I am a bad influence. She will talk to him. That is a promise.

Afterwards I wonder if I have gone too far. It is not my decision to make. But a good friend speaks her mind. On the other hand, she did not ask for my opinion. But why is she not speaking up for me? Why is she not defending our friendship? I have not asked her these questions. They seem so obvious.

Weeks after, they decide to take a week apart to see how things go. I tell her my opinion again: Leave him! He is consuming her.

It ends with a happy reunion. Of him and her. I feel defeated. We don’t speak much after that.

COLUMBIA, MISSOURI, USA, 2008
I am an exchange student in the US. It is my birthday. I check Facebook, Messenger, my cell phone, three email accounts. There is no word from her.

I almost don’t care.

Karen Dorthea Scheel Jensen is a 25-year-old journalism student from the Danish School of Journalism. She has spent the last 5 months studying at University of Missouri as an exchange student.

Ayub with the Kalashnikov. (Photo: Sebastian Meyer)

The following text and photos are excerpted from an email from my old Milton buddy Sebastian Meyer, a photojournalist currently on assignment in Iraq. We’ll be posting his dispatches as we receive them. —EWS

(…and for gawshsakes, Seb, be careful!)

There have been quite a few requests over the past two weeks for stories and pictures from Kurdistan, so now that I’m back in Erbil—clean and with access to the Internet—here are a few select stories and impressions, along with a few photos. (NB: All the photos that I’m on commission for I can’t send, so unfortunately we’ll have to make do with these.)

As some of you know, my first week in Erbil was, well, a little disappointing. Ayub, our field producer, calls it the “Most Boring City in Iraq,” which I’m sure some of you are glad to hear. I wasn’t.

However, last week we got underway and all the worries of Erbil fell away as we drove out of the city. See attached image of the Kurdish mountains to get an idea of what things can look like around here.

(Photo: Sebastian Meyer)

All of last week we concentrated on documenting a village called Kolajo in the Germian region. Unfortunately, those are the photos I can’t send due to the image embargo, but I’ll send others as soon as I can. In the meantime, I’ve attached some pics of me on a donkey to keep you all happy.

Donkey love.

After finishing up a pretty tiring week, I went back to Halabja with Ayub, who is probably one of the most extraordinary people I’ve ever met. He was born and raised in Halabja, the town which gave Chemical Ali his name. By the age of 18, he’d taught himself to speak English by listening to the BBC World Service. At 19, he smuggled himself to Greece, where he was caught, imprisoned and sent back to Iraq, where he was thrown in jail again. He then taught himself Turkish and smuggled himself into Turkey, where he lived for a while as a refugee.

Ayub returned to Iraq when the Americans invaded and became a fixer for the New York Times and the BBC, which led to him getting a scholarship to Columbia Journalism School, where he graduated at the top of his class. After graduation, he went to work for Human Rights Watch and Public Radio International, then got a professorship at Swarthmore. You can get a good idea of his extraordinary life from this article, which appeared in the New York Times Magazine.

(By the way, he’s only a year older than me: 29.)

Now, when I first met Ayub, I thought he was kind of quiet and boring. How wrong I was! Never, ever be misled by how gentle and polite the Kurds are. Within half an hour of arriving in his hometown, Ayub had found us a Kalashnikov to go play with. (Seeing as my parents are on this list, I”ll pretend I didn’t touch the thing… but we all know that’s not true.)

Now onto the subject of food. Oh, Kurdish food! It’s like being constantly drunk on the streets of London. I had to get up at 6 am this morning to get back from Halabja to Erbil, and at 8 am the car stopped for breakfast. We all filed out and there I was, expecting the yogurt and bread I’d been having all week. Big mistake.

In Kurdistan, meat is king—it makes your most red-blooded American look like a Socialist vegetarian. Breakfast menu: One cup of over-sugared Ceylon tea, followed by 6 pieces of freshly grilled lamb on a kebab rod with raw pepper and onions. To wash it down? Another cup of hot tea-flavored sugar water.

I should also mention that in Sulaimaniya it is considered more cultured and fashionable to eat processed food than it is to eat local food. So for dinner a few nights ago, I had “pizza,” which consisted of Naan bread with melted cheese, canned mushrooms and chicken shawarma. I took this option over Kantaqi [Fried Chicken]. Breakfast the next morning was a can of—and I’m not making this up—Australian Processed Cheddar Cheese: a can the size of a large tuna can full of hard processed cheese. You have to open both sides of the can to get the stuff out. Spread it on a bread roll and wash it down with… you guessed it, sweet tea-flavored water.

There have been a few other classic moments, including stumbling across an English book called Street Talk 2: Slang Used in American TV Shows (Plus Lingo Used by Teens, Rappers & Surfers!) Ten points to anyone who can find Street Talk 1.

I’ll have more stories and photos soon.

Love,

Sebastian

P.S.: Keep an eye out for the next email installment, when I’ll be sporting my brand-new Kurdish moustache! The beard here has been getting me in trouble at checkpoints; the military thinks I’m a Chechen fighter who’s come to join Al-Qaeda.

Gina, I discovered upon logging on to Facebook the other day, did not ask for your life story in status updates.

I'll see your Tweet and raise you a Status Update! (Photo source: cacklinglibraryhens.blogspot.com)

OUCH! I felt a sharp stinging sensation, as if my superego had just been sucker-punched.

Okay, so maybe Gina wasn’t addressing me specifically when she issued that statement for all 624 of her Facebook friends to see. Most likely, her venom was precipitated by some sort of psychosexual love triangle that had been manifesting itself in the form of its participants’ provocative little updates.

All the same, I couldn’t help wondering if my own prolific status-updating (now known in popular parlance as micro-blogging) could be prompting a backlash against the genre. Perhaps there was a whole segment of Facebookers out there who were less than thrilled about the feature taking on a new prominence in the site’s recent design overhaul. (Previously, you had to click on a friend’s individual page to see his or her updates; on the new Facebook, they appear right in your news feed.)

Honestly, I can’t say I’d blame them. Being confronted with inane tidbits like Joe Friend is eating a tuna fish sandwich is enough to give even the most dedicated online procrastinator the nagging feeling that he’s wasting time. Cue the collective So what? groan from Joe’s friends, followed by Hey, pal, you don’t see me shouting about my roast beef!

Which is why I could just wring Joe’s neck—he’s about to ruin a beautiful thing with his unmediated oversharing. See, I have something at stake: unlike Joe, I craft my updates with the care of a true artisan, and my friends actually enjoy them. I can prove it, too: just the other day, I wrote a real beaut that inspired no fewer than a half-dozen “comments”—a new Facebook-enabled feature that I can only describe as a micro-blog-within-a-micro-blog.

Here goes: Emily Sussman is listening to a Steve Winwood CD that she checked out of the public library.

To which David replied, Roll with it. Michelle: The finer things keep shining through, the way my soul gets lost in you… Phil: Arc of a public library diver. Aarik: I love Steve Winwood! We will, indeed, be back in the high life again. Kara: I met Steve Winwood once on an elevator. And finally, Aimee, who issued a kind of micro-blog response to Kara’s micro-micro-blog: I met Weird Al Yankovic at Disney World.

Lester Bangs, who proved that writing about rock can be just as exhilarating as playing it. (Photo: Stephanie Chernikowski)

CLEVELAND, April 4, 2009—“Le Freak” is blasting from the speakers as disco legends Chic step to the stage and are inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

While Chic has no business being rock hall-of-famers, that’s a discussion for another day; the Cleveland institution has a long tradition of inducting non-rockers such as Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five (rap), Miles Davis (jazz), Parliament-Funkadelic (funk), Bob Marley (reggae) and the Bee Gees (bad pop).

And while the RRHF has honored David Crosby, Eric Clapton and three-fourths of the Beatles multiple times, it has only opened its doors for music journalists twice: for former Billboard editor Paul Ackerman and Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner.

According to its website, the RRHF aims to “… recognize the contributions of those who have had a significant impact on the evolution, development and perpetuation of rock and roll.” To that end, nominees can come from four categories: Performers, Side Men, Early Influencers and Non-Performers. The last category is defined by the RRHF as “songwriters, producers, disc jockeys, record executives, journalists and other industry professionals who have had a major influence on the development of rock and roll.”

Non-performer inductees have included Holland-Dozier-Holland, the songwriters behind the Motown sound; San Francisco booking agent Bill Graham; producers George Martin and Phil Spector, who helped created the Beatles’ early and later sound, respectively; record heads such as Sun’s Sam Phillips, Atlantic’s Ahmet Ertegun and Sire’s Seymour Stein; and disc jockey Alan Freed, the Cleveland record-slinger who first coined the term “rock ‘n’ roll.”

All of these people are worthy of recognition, but have they contributed more to the “evolution, development and perpetuation” of rock and roll than Robert Christgau or Jon Landau? For that matter, is Jeff Beck or Metallica (both 2009 nominees) more RRHF-worthy than Richard Meltzer or Lester Bangs?

It’s time for the RRHF to set aside space for rock critics, and it should start with this inaugural class:

• Jane Scott: The longtime reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer who’s largely credited with inventing rock criticism.

•Lester Bangs. A wildly influential writer for Creem and Rolling Stone, his book Psychotic Reactions and the Carburetor Dung sits on the bookshelves of most rock critics today.

•Robert Christgau. The self-proclaimed “Dean of American Rock Critics,” Christgau spent 37 years writing about music for the Village Voice. During that time, he created the annual Pazz and Jop Poll, a synthesized best-of albums list complied from the top-tens of hundreds of critics nationwide.

•Richard Meltzer. His Aesthetics of Rock is a must-read for anoyone wanting to call himself a rock critic. In additon to writing, he spent time as a musician, booking agent and professor.

•Jon Landau. The Rolling Stone writer helped popularize the idea of critics hating everything. He gave bad reviews to the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers and Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks, and called Eric Clapton “the master of blues clichés.” He’s also credited with discovering a legend, writing in a 1974 piece, “I saw rock and roll’s future, and its name is Bruce Springsteen.”

This list is by no means exhaustive. How could it be without including Paul Williams, Nik Cohn, Arnold Shaw, Richard Goldstein or Sandy Pearlman? But it is a much-needed start.

The RRHF’s induction committee has been nominating folks since 1986, and, if Chic is any indication, they’re starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel. It’s time to start recognizing some of the true visionaries in the field: the critics.

The Doodler Who Would Be Mayor (Source: The New Republic)

The storms pushing in off the Pacific have gained strength in recent days, wind and rain whipping us for hours at a time. Alaska Day has come and gone. The bald eagles have taken up their posts in the black poplar tree outside my apartment.

When the weather clears, usually for an hour or so, we glance up at the snow line, noting where it landed that day and its quick descent down the mountains toward town. It’s late October in southeast Alaska, and thoughts have turned to what we’re going to do when Sarah Palin becomes our governor again.

Two weeks is a lifetime in politics. Maybe Osama bin Laden is making the final edits on his latest terror tape; maybe he’ll declare that he and his Muslim brother Barack Hussein are ready to spread Islam throughout the land. Maybe Fox News is preparing to run video of Obama competing in a Stokey Carmichael look-a-like contest from Halloween 1985, or maybe a photo of him snorting cocaine off a worn copy of the Communist Manifesto will start circulating on Facebook. 

One way or another, Alaska stands on the precipice of a potentially landscape-changing election. In a state with a three-man Congressional delegation, we could have a new governor, senator, and U.S. representative on Nov. 5.

Both Ted Stevens and Don Young, who have served in Congress for a combined 78 years, have careers in serious jeopardy as the election approaches. 

The defense in the Stevens trial rested this week, and the case is now with the jury. How long it will take the jurors to parse the what-he-knew and when-he-knew-about-it evidence involving massage chairs, high-priced huskies, antique cars and home renovations is anybody’s guess, but increasingly, it looks like the verdict will come in just under the wire.

Sometime next week, Stevens will board a plane for Anchorage and return to the state he has served in the U.S. Senate since 1968. The belief up here is that if he’s acquitted, he’ll return home vindicated, having faced down the Feds in a nasty street fight. Stevens might be a vilified character in the Lower 48, but support for the iconic lawmaker remains strong up here. 

The only hope for Stevens challenger Mark Begich, currently the Democratic mayor of Anchorage, is a guilty verdict. Even then, it could be close. The tide of pro-Democratic fervor sweeping the nation might actually play against Begich and Ethan Berkowitz, the former speaker of the Alaska House who is trying to topple Young.

(Ironically, Young replaced Nick Begich, Mark’s father, who disappeared along with Congressman Hale Boggs on a flight en route from Anchorage to Juneau in October 1972. The plane, which was taking Begich and Boggs to a fundraiser, was never found. Young, who had been defeated by Begich and snagged the missing congressman’s seat after a special election, has served in the House ever since.)

Both Begich and Berkowitz have both been well-financed by money from “outside”—the candidates appear on lists of prominent seats that could turn blue—but all the talk about Sen. Charles Schumer and Rep. Nancy Pelosi makes Alaskans a bit uneasy. (Schumer and Pelosi have both been making cameos in Republican attack ads up here, appearing as all-purpose, anti-ANWR drilling liberals from Down South.)

“I’m Don Young and I approve this message, and Nancy Pelosi can go get her gun,” is how one radio ad for the incumbent Republican ends.

The idea is that Begich and Berkowitz will be beholden to the Democratic machine. When Alaskans survey the potential political scene, they see a Democratic president with a Democratic Congress and worry that their state will be forgotten.

Young and Stevens, the two angry pit bulls in the delegation, have a proven record of bringing home the bacon, and the natives here don’t really mind that they’re ornery—the average Alaskan would be pretty damn sour too, if forced to spend months on end in Washington, D.C. negotiating with Schumer and Pelosi.

Berkowitz holds a nice lead in the polls heading into the home stretch, and Begich has essentially been campaigning uncontested for more than a month now. But the question remains: will voters send an anti-corruption message and reshape the Alaska delegation in one fell swoop?

According to the Anchorage Daily News, there are 490,656 registered voters in the state—25 percent Republicans and 15 percent Democrats. Another 53 percent of voters are either “unaffilliated” or “undeclared”—categories that would translate to “independent” in most other places.

My sense is that the preponderance of independents are conservative-minded voters who, in most cases, pull the Republican lever. (At the very least, they live in rural, as opposed to urban, areas, which more and more seems like the salient dichotomy in American politics.)

In this disparate state, accurate polls are difficult to conduct, and while Stevens’ fate seems to lie with the jury in his corruption trial, the die will be cast on Young by the 53 percent of Alaskans who disavowed partisan politics on their voter registration forms. There’s also the potential Palin bump—and backlash—to consider as Alaskans mark their ballots.

By the time the polls close in Alaska, around midnight on the East Coast, there’s a decent chance that we’ll know the winner of the Presidential race. If not, something has gone horribly wrong for Obama. A long night of network political coverage means the race is uncomfortably close, and that the polls were wrong and perhaps the Bradley Effect took hold.

If I’m to believe my credulous friends, Sarah Palin will once again be Alaska’s governor on Nov. 5. It could be time to batten down the hatches here and ride out the storm. Palin has shown a vindictive streak in her short political career and her already contentious relationship with Sitka, and southeast Alaska generally has not been mended by this election season.

Similar to the way the state of Alaska interacts with the federal government—Dear Mom, please send money—cities and boroughs look to the state goverment to fund expensive infrastructure projects. The Legislature writes the budget and Palin has veto power. With the price of oil in sharp decline (Alaska makes almost 90 percent of its state revenue from the tax on its oil income), belt-tightening could be in order, making the competition for a share of the shrinking state pot that much more intense.

A major problem for Sitka could be John Stein, the former Sitka city administrator. At this point, Stein has been quoted in just about every major media outlet criticizing Palin, who we now know is a voracious consumer of news. I can only assume that few, if any, of Stein’s barbs have slipped past Sarah Barracuda. The fear now is that she’ll return to Alaska with her teeth sharpened, hungry to slice capital dollars headed for southeast Alaska.

Stein was a great source for reporters in the days immediately after Palin was announced as McCain’s running mate. An affable, down-to-earth Alaskan, Stein had intimate knowledge of Palin’s early political career and the scars to prove it. He was the two-term incumbent mayor of Wasilla when Palin, then a city councilor, decided to begin her political career in earnest. Backed by the state Republican Party and national anti-abortion groups, Palin won. The rest is history.

Before the whole VP candidacy, the Stein-Palin relationship was commonly bandied about in Sitka’s restaurants and bars as a possible, if long-shot, explanation for the governor’s frosty relationship with our fair city. Fresh off a defeat at the hands of Obama-Biden, Palin would be in no mood for reconciliation.

Then there’s the question of what Palin is planning for her second act. The press here (primarily the Anchorage Daily News) has already begun speculating about how Palin will emerge from the Presidential election. Of course, if McCain wins, it’s moot: Goodbye Sarah, hello Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell. (Parnell challenged Young in the Republican primary and lost by about 300 votes; the results were released amidst the Palin hysteria immediately after the VP announcement and he opted not to seek a recount.)

But the more fascinating question is how Palin will be treated upon her homecoming. Will she still be our Sarah? Saturday Night Live, posh New York hotels, rock-star rallies, private campaign planes—all that could end Nov. 4, leaving Palin to return to the Wasilla Elks Club and meetings of the Juneau Republican Organization.

Alaskans seem to agree that Palin plans to parlay her newfound popularity into a run for another political office. But it’s still a strange notion up here; the natives aren’t used to any of their political offices serving as a launching pad. One story line has Palin returning to the state with newfound credibility and political power. With a McCain loss, the pundits will look to assign blame, and Palin, the Right may well argue, was right on with her attacks. McCain should have listened to her. Maybe she was the stronger candidate.

But will she be able to govern? Palin antagonized the Legislature with her stonewalling on the Troopergate investigation, and if her higher aspirations are perceived to cloud her judgment, she’ll lose the state’s moderates.

She may have already lost them. Palin has her fans here, but some have watched with reservation as she gleefully picked up Republican orthodoxy, launching daily and not-quite-substantive attacks on Obama like a star student eager to please her teacher.

Maybe this whole VP episode has offended the large swath of Alaska’s independent voters. Then again, maybe Palin will return from her magical mystery tour of America with a newfound dedication to carrying out the state’s business. For now, the storm continues to gather, due to make landing—in some form—on November 5.

No, not those 'attractions'... but I made you look, didn't I? (Photo: EWS)

Bear with us, dear reader; Carpe Media is going through a transition phase. In addition to working on a site redesign that will launch before the end of the month, I’ve been busy learning some of the techie skills needed to publish the kind of audio/visual storytelling mediums that prompted this site’s creation in the first place. 

And while we’re on the subject of improvements, CM is actively recruiting new student contributors, a process that was given a tremendous boost by the faculty and staff who attended our presentation at the Reynolds Journalism Institute last week. (Thanks again to RJI Fellow Bill Densmore, who hosted and webcasted the event.)

Journalism that holds itself to the highest standards of accountability isn’t easy to find in the current online media maelstrom. Fortunately, today’s J-students are upping the ante by learning how to incorporate the core values of our profession with the rich new mediums made possible by the web. To that end, it’s the aim of this site to support them in their endeavors. 

ews8tb@gmail.com

Chickens in newspaper... ahem. (Source: hot-screensaver.com)

Katie Couric isn’t known for her hard questions, and it seemed like she was throwing a softball to Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin when she asked at one point in the now-infamous CBS Evening News interview “…what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this to stay informed and to understand the world?”

 Couric’s seemingly simple question, though, was tougher than it sounded: Palin could have given one of five possible answers.

Option 1: “I’m not going to answer that question, and here’s why…”
As a friend pointed out to me, Palin couldn’t have named any one publication in particular. The New York Times? Too liberal. The Wall Street Journal? Too conservative. Because transparency is the big buzzword in journalism circles these days, Palin could have dodged the question by explaining why she couldn’t answer it.

Option 2: “I read my local papers.”
A politician can never go wrong by going local, and listing the Frontiersman or the Juneau Empire could have answered the question—and might have even enhanced her folksy charm.

Option 3: “Like a growing number of Americans, I don’t read newspapers.”
Sure, it would have been a sucker punch, but it would have knocked the smug smile off the press’s collective face. 

Option 4: “I read a bit of everything, from the New York Times to the Atlantic Monthly, from watching Bill O’Reilly to Stephen Colbert.”
Palin would have demonstrated the worldliness that Couric was prodding for, and she would have been safe from attacks from both the far left and far right.

Option 5: “I’ve read most of them.” 
This was Palin’s actual answer. Apparently, she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—get any more specific.

The major problem with Palin’s non-answer is that it reinforces the media’s image of her. We’ve already decided that she’s an idiot who is wholly unprepared and unable to be vice-president, and we’re more than ready to jump on any of her numerous gaffes.

The press loves convenient story lines. That’s why politicians have been reduced to caricatures throughout history, from Al Gore (a stiff) and Bill Clinton (a womanizer) to Richard Nixon (a crook) and William Howard Taft (a fatty). Once the media decides your story line, it’s hard to create a new one. 

Palin hasn’t been helped by the oddball strategy of her handlers, who insist on keeping her out of the press. As David Rosman wrote in the Sept. 12 issue of the Columbia Missourian, a politician doesn’t want to make the press angry. Rosman’s point was that an angry press will dig up skeletons, and his advice to Palin was to start making the easy rounds, from O’Reilly to Letterman and Leno, then on to the likes of Couric. It was solid advice, and it has benefits besides keeping the press out of Palin’s closet. The more interviews she gives, the better she’ll get at answering questions; and the more questions she answers, the more she’ll be in control of her own public image.

Back to the original question: Does Sarah Palin read newspapers? I don’t know, and, frankly, I don’t care. But I would like a potential vice-president to be able to give a straightforward and effective answer to a simple question.