We're up and running simulcasting with Live365.com and Newstalk 1030 KFAY-AM right now. Actually, we have a replay of our April 23rd program. The show covers some of the hubbub about Wal-Mart, and we have a fantastic musical guest the final half hour (about 7:30 p.m. CDT) called "The Years" who are performing live tonight on Dickson Street in Fayetteville. For my money, these may be the best performers we've had in the studio yet. We're up until 8 p.m. CDT. Visit Live365.com and type in "Arkansas Tonight Live" and you'll get to the program.

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The world's largest retailer is owned by some of the world's richest people. Is that what gives it so much power in American's poorest state? Could be, but this slightly simplistic piece in Benton County Daily Record really sums up why everyone reveres the empire that Sam built...as they say, always follow the money...here's an outtake...

A problem is many local investors have "put all their eggs in one basket," he said. Hayes has been an investment representative with Edward Jones for 28 years in northwest Arkansas. "We've had Wal-Mart stock as a buy opinion since January," Hayes said. "We believe that Wal-Mart's market dominance, solid growth prospects and consistent financial performance combined with its reasonable valuation will make it an attractive longterm investment."

Again -- "in one basket" -- the true sign of loyalty to any company, and the very big mistake made' by many, many employees of another Southern company you've heard referred to as "Enron." Not saying Wal-Mart will turn into Enron, but driving really close to the edge of any cliff ought to make you pay closer attention to what's happening.

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It was probably the insipid "Inside the Blogs" segment that drove her away...this comes courtesy of TV Newser.

"This gives me the opportunity to sit back, take a deep breath and think about what I want to do," Judy Woodruff tells the Associated Press. "I do want to stay in journalism. I'm not leaving journalism. I'm just leaving daily journalism." David Bauder says that "CNN offered Woodruff a new contract, but she had decided to leave before those discussions began."

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Watch out! The "Tanning Police" have come to Fayetteville! From a tip off The Arkansas Blog we ran across this little piece on boing-boing. And remember, Big Brother just wants you to look your very best!

Arkansas salon requires thumbprint to get a tan

Boing Boing pal Wayne Correia (wayne at club dot net) says: Today Breanna went to a tanning place in her hometown of Fayetteville, Arkansas to get a spray tan. The person asked to take an electronic scan of her thumbprint in order for her to be allowed to get her spray tan. Breanna, sensitive about her privacy being violated (rightly so) refused to allow them to make and permanently store an electronic scan of her thumbprint -- she isn't "joining a program" she simply wanted to purchase a single tan and have it applied at that time. When she refused, the woman was offended, saying "it's for our computer system" and when neither would budge, Breanna had no other choice but to leave. Now I heard this story and thought, no way, maybe she was mistaken, but no. I called myself just now to confirm:

WAYNE: "Hi, do you require a thumbrpint scan to get a tan there?"
TANNING BIMBO: "Yes, sir, we do."
WAYNE: "OK, let me see if I understand this correctly. Is there a state or local law that requires you do this?"
TANNING BIMBO: "No, sir, it's for our computer systems"
WAYNE: "So you want to breach people's right to privacy not because there is a state law that demands you take a thumbprint, but because it's a company policy?"
TANNING BIMBO: "Yes, that's right."
WAYNE: "So you don't see anything wrong in insisting that people give you a thumbprint -- a totally invasive request -- and possibly even an illegal one, just because your company says so."
TANNING BIMBO: "No, sir, our systems require it. We have fourteen locations and this is how we ensure that some one isn't using another person's tanning plan."
WAYNE: "Why would you need to take a thumbprint scan of a person coming in once, for one tan, and paying for that tan right then?
TANNING BIMBO: "Our systems require it."
WAYNE: "Thanks, I just wanted to get this all straight before contacting the media."

And then I hung up and wrote you this email. I think the Arkansas chapter of the ACLU and the Arkansas state attorney general's office need to be contacted... this stuff really gets me steamed.

Premiere Tans 3049 North College Avenue Fayetteville, AR 72703 (479) 571-8267

Well, that does it. If you value your biometric autonomy, brothers and sisters, shout it out with me: "Stick it to The Man! Don't Go to Arkansas to Tan!" Then again -- maybe a "Trusted Tanner" program would solve this.

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THAT WAS THEN, THIS IS NOW -- 2005

--Don Elkins
Northwest Arkansas Times Friday In Focus Column

Should you care to take the time and do some research, you will find a highly unusual quote from the man who now runs the Department of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld.

March 13, 1966, on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, Mr. Rumsfeld said, “Mr. Speaker, a recent speech by Presidential Aide Bill D. Moyers admonished the nation’s newsmen to appreciate that only the ‘purest motives’ govern the actions and statements of the executive branch of the federal government. Such advice, if heeded, would be heeded by the naïve and nondiscriminating. Citizens and the press will continue to question, to investigate, to doubt, and to seek the truth.”

That speech came more than 40 years in the past.

Those wise words still apply today, and ought to guide any reporter, any newspaper reader, and any television viewer with both self-respect and concern over the future of our participatory democracy.

Rest assured you will not hear those words spoken today.

Members of the Washington Press Corps won’t hear those words spoken today. Members of the Northwest Arkansas media won’t hear those words booming forth from a podium, uttered by any elected official, any business leader, and any church leader.

Those words should be written in stone, and placed above the entrance to the Journalism school at the University of Arkansas or any institution of higher learning.

So why now, four decades after the fact, does the military, and Mr. Rumsfeld in particular choose to forget that statement?

At Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Army Sgt. Hasan Akbar faces sentencing after a conviction by court-martial on two counts of premeditated murder and three counts of attempted murder.

You may have forgotten about Akbar, because he popped in and out of the news at the beginning of combat in Iraq. He lobbed a live grenade into a tent at a military encampment outside Iraq in the opening days of the war.

He didn’t have much to say for himself.

Still though, perhaps a story about which readers and viewers would like to know more.

So why did the Secretary of Defense make reporters covering the trial sign papers that limit their ability to perform their jobs under the First Amendment?

An organization of military reporters says journalists had to sign pledges not to interview soldiers at Fort Bragg about the case, or ask legal advisors in the media room to speculate on the outcome of the trial.

Those who rightly refused to sign didn’t get a chance to cover the case. Those who did reported that military escorts bird-dogged them at every turn, even following one reporter into a lavatory.

How answering the call of nature could violate the aforementioned pledge remains a mystery perhaps understandable only to those in military intelligence. Media experts who have looked at the case, and the military journalists organization call the security “unprecedented” and say the military, and particularly Mr. Rumsfeld don’t actually have the right to behave in such a manner.

Even during combat in Iraq journalists didn’t have that kind of tight leash keeping them from reporting the news of the day.

Journalists say the court only had the right to close proceedings if the judge could show a “compelling and narrow” interest served in doing so. And that should have happened only after an opening hearing, which never took place.

Reporters have drafted a letter and mailed it to Mr. Rumsfeld, but say they don’t expect this particular wrong to end up corrected.

Justice may have been served in the case of Mr. Akbar, but it didn’t get served in other ways.

Last week in this space, I wrote at length about the wisdom of presidential advisor Karl Rove on issues pertaining to media bias and balance. Mr. Rove presented a very realistic summation of the public perception problem faced by reporters covering politicians.

He said he didn’t consider the media generally biased, but more oppositional. He also went so far as to say balanced reporting suffers when journalists start to become slaves to a “gotcha” mindset where they intentionally fail to report anything positive about elected officials because that would essentially equal awarding points to an opposing team in some sort of game.

But watching the hypocrisy of some of Mr. Rove’s counterparts in the Administration may start to give you some idea about why journalists may find it easy to develop that oppositional state of mind.

This case illustrates that point in a clear fashion.

And Mr. Rumsfeld’s words of 40 years ago should also serve as his answer when he starts to wonder, if he starts to wonder – why all those journalists so distrust him, and why he gets so much “bad ink” in the national press.

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President Bush will hold an unusual prime-time news conference tonight. That usually means he wants to talk past the media and directly to "the people." It's set for tonight at 8:30 p.m. EDT...we'll blog this sucker tonight, so join us online for our coverage of it here. Mr. Bush has some serious problems with both his Social Security overhaul proposal, and he faces some big-time deficits in his job approval ratings. Join us tonight for Bush-a-palooza!

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Ah, caught again! Tom DeLay gets snagged breaking the law! This time, he flaunts the Cuban embargo -- you'll have to see the picture with the article at Time Magazine.

DeLay has long been one of Congress' most vocal critics of what he calls Castro's "thugocracy," which is why some sharp-eyed TIME readers were surprised last week to see a photo of the Majority Leader smoking one of Cuba's best'a Hoyo de Monterrey double corona, which generally costs about $25 when purchased overseas and is not available in this country. The cigar's label clearly states that it was made in "Habana." The photo was taken in Jerusalem on July 28, 2003, during a meeting between DeLay and the Republican Jewish Coalition at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.

This piece, in The Nation highlights some unsavory connections making things hard for a leader of one of America's top activist groups, the organization which staged the "Justice Sunday" event this past weekend.

Four years ago, Perkins addressed the Louisiana chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), America's premier white supremacist organization, the successor to the White Citizens Councils, which battled integration in the South. In 1996 Perkins paid former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke $82,000 for his mailing list. At the time, Perkins was the campaign manager for a right-wing Republican candidate for the US Senate in Louisiana. The Federal Election Commission fined the campaign Perkins ran $3,000 for attempting to hide the money paid to Duke.

Perhaps this "guerilla artist" group should come to Northwest Arkansas where we have an on-going fight over gated communities. Some love 'em, city governments hate 'em. These folks decided to "make a statement."

Heavy Trash, a coalition of anonymous architects, designers and urban planners, erected the bright orange, 12-foot (3.6- meter) viewing platforms outside the gates of three upscale Los Angeles neighborhoods.

"Walling off one section of the city from another section is not the right solution," said a Heavy Trash member who identified himself as Jake, an inner-city developer.

Seems A&E's "City Confidential" series has managed to seriously tick off those in a southern town -- the Kentucky town of Pikeville. Seems city leaders got ticked off and complained about it -- you can read about it here. Here's a taste...

"You start the piece by showing a rebel flag on Julius Avenue, an overweight man without a shirt smoking a cigarette and an old pickup with a few women in the back," Blackburn said. "As I am sure you would agree, you can go to almost any city in America and find the same."

A description of the show on A&E’s Web site describes the Appalachian town of 6,300 as "a place where most kids will do anything to escape. Like in April of 1997, when one Pikeville girl and her five fellow teenagers took a road trip to hell."

Those damn Yankee media people! Do they ever change their parochial view of the South? Tsk, tsk...

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Two of my favorite people who inhabit both sides of the aisle took the local paper today to hash out the judicial nomination story -- an unusual move in Lucas Roebuck's "Hatchet" column in the Northwest Arkansas Times. What can I say? I love them both. Both were some of the earliest guests we've had on the Arkansas Tonight show -- in fact, Hadley Glover was on our very first show which aired on some other station in the county, not on Newstalk 1030 KFAY-AM. "Hatchet" here is Mr. Roebuck, the main man at the Siloam Springs paper, and a stalwart ultra-conservative. Glover is with the Democratic Party of Benton County. I enjoyed the conversation, and hope to have both reprise their conversation live on the program. Here's a taste...

HATCHET: I don't blame Democrats for trying to block conservative or Catholic judges using Senate rules. Dems want to keep judicially mandated abortion rights, and they can't trust the legislature (the directly elected representatives of the people). However, this Senate "filibuster" rule is not a law or mandated in any way by the Constitution. Senate rules are just a method of facilitating Senate business. Choosing to change a rule because a handful of Democrat obstructionists abuse a rule is the prerogative of any senator (who can get a majority of her or his colleagues to agree.)

GLOVER: But, one of the Senate's primary roles is to protect the minority. That's why each state has two Senators, regardless of its population. Without the filibuster, President Bush could appoint anyone, no matter how unqualified, to the Supreme Court - even if no majority exists (because Cheney casts the tie-breaking vote). Ninety-five percent of Bush's nominees have been confirmed. Changing this 200-year-old rule just to confirm the most extreme five percent indicates that Republicans, like Sen. Majority Leader Bill Frist, want to tip the scales of justice in favor of the Ken Lays of the world and control all three branches of government.

Again, worth reading the entire conversation between both here.

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Hey, if you read this site regularly and live in West Australia, just wanted to say hello, and ask you what's happening in your neck of the proverbial woods. Just curious -- ARE you from Australia, or are you an Arkansas refugee? Hope life in the "outback" (I'm not familiar with the area that much -- I'm guessing you probably don't live in the actual "outback") is treating you well. As a friend of mine likes to say, "fair dinkum?"

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The Chicago Sun-Times ran this piece today about a Carnegie-Mellon student who ran afoul of the world's largest retailer (forever after herein known as 'WLR') after said WLR got a bit peevish about the satire site. Hey, here's the perfect place for a comment -- I've got a friend who's identity will remain secret, who works for WLR in a division that would definitely have something to say about this -- care to chip in my friend? Do you think this was a little heavy handed on the part of your WLR bosses? I've got no "dog in this hunt" but it seems a little "ruff stuff" to me.

Daniel Papasian said he shut down his site -- http://www.wal mart-foundation.org/ -- and replaced the offending graphics with the word ''censored'' after lawyers for Wal-Mart Stores sent his Web host a cease-and-desist order last week.

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Anita French in this piece in the Morning News has more on the developing storm over the Wal-Mart VP fired for turning in Tom Coughlin for misuse of company funds. Jared Bowen of Rogers wants federal prosecutors to grant him help under a federal whistleblower statute. Here's a taste of the piece...

Bowen spent 13 years at Wal-Mart, rising from store cashier to vice president in operations before he was fired March 30, Kardell said. Bowen was "apparently the first person at Wal-Mart ever to report the Coughlin expenses even though they went on for several years," he said.

Safeguarding corporate whistleblowers is one of the requirements of a U.S. Department of Justice document known as the Thompson Memorandum, Kardell said. It outlines the steps a company must take to avoid prosecution in an investigation involving corporate corruption.

As Drudge says, "developing..."

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Control the language, and you can control the debate. In this case, we mean the debate over killing debate over judicial nominees in the Senate. Seems Republicans have decided to change the terminology. "Nuclear Option" is out, and woe be unto any media outlet who uses it...OK, that just won't happen, but it'll be interesting to see email or listen to phone calls complaining about it. More interesting to smack a couple of politicians around when we find them doing a little lingual gerrymandering. The full piece can be found at Mediamatters.org.

As several weblogs have noted, the term "nuclear option" -- referring to the Republican-proposed Senate rule change that would prohibit filibusters of judicial nominations -- was coined by one of its leading advocates, Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS). But since Republican strategists judged the term "nuclear option" to be a liability, they have urged Senate Republicans to adopt the term "constitutional option." Many in the media have complied with the Senate Republicans' shift in terminology and repeated their attribution of the term "nuclear option" to the Democrats.

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His radio show may never come close the perfection of Arkansas Tonight but Matt Drudge's website is always a good read (well, almost always, it does carry some slant -- like every website out there doesn't! -- niche marketing, my friends) -- headline right now has something to do with Air America allegedly under investigation by the Secret Service for a skit on the network Monday night that had something to do with gunshots and a possible (albeit dramatic) threat to President Bush...my, oh my...it's radio, OK? Remember that whole "free speech" thing?

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From the Right, our friend David Sanders has this entry in the race to find out what will happen to Rep. Tom Delay. The situation isn't good when even Republicans start wondering who'll take over after Delay gets ousted for ethics violations. Also today, this article in the Washington Post explains the beginning of the end for Rep. Delay in the ethics committee.

Lobbyists and Capitol Hill staffers are starting to talk about who will follow Delay. The name that comes up most often as a possible replacement is House Minority Whip Roy Blunt, who just happens to be a close friend of Arkansas U.S. Rep. John Boozman. Boozman is part of Blunt's whip organization, which is responsible for counting votes and corralling Republican members on key legislation.

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OK, sorry, I know this is contradictory, but I can't resist. Something about it appeals to me. It's the webpage where you can buy the TV-B-GONE. If nothing else, it might serve as a practical joke. I get no kickbacks from this. Here's what the website says...

TV-B-Gone-- universal remote control turns off virtually any television! It's the ultimate jammer tool for reclaiming public space. It works at airports, bars, offices... any place that needs a break from the idiot box. Clarity of mind, one click at a time.

For TV Turnoff Week 2005, April 25 to May 1, we're selling it at cost.

Diabolical! You could go to Circuit City and have lots of very pointless fun with this! I'm not suggesting you do that, and I'm not suggesting you turn off the television this week, because I gotta make a living, but the subversion is very attractive!

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Have you heard about the big "anti-television" day? Gimme a freakin' break! My kids come home from school with this stuff, and I work in television! How am I supposed to react? I told them last year we should hold an "anti-pay-teachers" day and see how they like that! I'm only half kidding, teachers do a fantastic job, but I try not to mess with their livelihoods...leave mine alone! It's only television, it can't really hurt you, just like books can't hurt you! Of course, selection of programming is a very big part of this...actually This piece in the Guardian is funny. We have a monitor at the television station which faces the town square -- from time to time, we've had people come by with remote controls and change the channel to spanish language stations. For awhile, it was quite a daily fight with the remote terrorists...

From today, a group of anti-TV guerrillas, as scathing as the poet about the influence of the small screen on society, plans to liberate people from its irresistible grip. They will be using a recently launched gizmo called TV-B-Gone to take direct action against television sets in public places.

The glorified remote control, about the size of a key ring, will switch off most television sets within a 45ft radius within 60 seconds.

The device will form the focus of TV-Turnoff Week, an annual protest against television's all-pervasive influence, which began in the US 11 years ago. Organised by the TV-Turnoff Network, White Dot and anti-consumerism group AdBusters, the protest has steadily spread to other countries including Canada and the UK.

The protesters plan to identify restaurants, pubs, bars and other public places they believe are ruined by the presence of a television.

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Another reason this one has become unpopular. Even Senator Rick Santorum of PA wants to delay this, a sharp contrast to Majority Leader Frist's drive to exercise the "nuclear option." This one comes from the Washington Post.

As the Senate moves toward a major confrontation over judicial appointments, a strong majority of Americans oppose changing the rules to make it easier for Republican leaders to win confirmation of President Bush's court nominees, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll.

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Wow, what intemperate remarks! Here's another reason not to confirm this person as a member of the federal bench. Some people think we have a culture war, the rest of us wonder what the heck all that's actually about. I suppose it's a matter of view -- either there's nothing new under the sun, or you think the apocalypse is just days away. One simply can't argue faith vs. reality. This article in the LA Times has at least one interesting quote that scares me silly...

WASHINGTON -- Just days after a bitterly divided Senate committee voted along party lines to approve her nomination as a federal appellate court judge, California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown told an audience Sunday that people of faith were embroiled in a "war" against secular humanists who threatened to divorce America from its religious roots, according to a newspaper account of the speech.

Long live the filibuster.

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A thought question for you...read the following passage, or read the entire column and feel free to agree or disagree. Do you think the party in power really finds itself without an agenda? I find it interesting and believe the author here may have an accurate point...

The fact is that the GOP doesn't have an agenda. It has impulses: to cut taxes, to increase Pentagon spending, and to mollify the Christian right wherever possible. Does it act on these impulses? Of course. But what mostly gives the party appeal to the electorate is its ability to scream and yell while seldom being granted the opportunity to ban abortion or eliminate the Securities and Exchange Commission or declare war on France. It stirs things up satisfyingly, while never requiring anybody to pay the price. If the Senate eliminated the filibuster, Republicans would have to choose between putting their money where their mouth was or just shutting up. Either choice would put Democrats in a better political position than they're in right now.

It seems like a similar argument made in the book What's the Matter With Kansas?
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Yet another sign we have way too much conservative and right-wing "shock-jock" type programming on radio and television comes courtesy of the NY Post. Truly funny stuff...

April 25, 2005 -- RABID radio host Michael Savage is whining that he has been banned from the Fox News Channel after he dissed Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity. The controversial conservative -- who was fired by MSNBC in 2003 after referring to a caller to his show as "a sodomite" who should "get AIDS and die" -- recently burned more bridges by calling O'Reilly a "Leper-Con who poses as a conservative" and Hannity "another Republican bootlicker who began as a Rush [Limbaugh] understudy" on his "Savage Nation" radio show.

What next? Bob Novak attacking Dr. Dobson as "lilly-livered?"

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Time for Republicans to start worrying about the White House? This piece in the Guardian would seem to suggest that.

The president boldly made reform of the social security - the federal pensions system - his top priority. Arguing that social security was in crisis, the president proposed privatising a portion of social security investments, and he is travelling around the country to court public opinion on his pet project. So far the public is resisting, and Bush is making little headway on Capitol Hill in face of a surprisingly cohesive Democratic party. Rick Santorum, the one Republican senator who has enthusiastically taken up social security reform in his re-election campaign, has seen his poll ratings crumble in Pennsylvania.

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More today about the "Jeff Gannon" scandal at the White House courtesy of top-flight reporter John Byrne at Rawstory.com which essentially goes the Drudge Report one better -- John has his own sources, and much of what he does is original journalism. Reporters tradtionally hang on to stories even when you stop hearing about them on TV or reading about them in the headlines...there are a lot of people who won't let the story of a male-prostitute with amazing access to the White House go...here's the question...

Gannon's ready access to President Bush and his work for a news agency that frequently plagiarized content from other reporters and tailored it to serve a conservative message may raise new questions about the White House's attempts to seed favorable news coverage. Democrats have sought to paint Guckert in the context of other efforts by the Administration to "plant" positive spin by paying for video news releases and columnists to espouse their views.

Here's the clincher, the real important question that people need to consider, people need to ask...we'd all love to hear the answer to this...

"I'd be worried if I was the White House and I knew that a reporter with a day pass never left," one White House reporter told RAW STORY. "I'd wonder, where is he hiding? It seems like a security risk."

If you'd like to read the Secret Service logs and documents on Mr. Gannon, simply visit this link.

This might, as we say, "have legs."

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Very poignant piece about yesterday's "Justice Sunday" event staged by the Family Research Council -- an event beamed to conservative churches nationwide. The point of this? The article points out that the battle in this country over religion isn't between Christians and Secular Humanists, it's between Conservative Christians (traditionally a minority) and "liberal" Christians over definitions of their shared faith. Here's an excerpt...

The assault on the judiciary is especially revealing. The vicious attacks on Judge George Greer, the Florida jurist who presided over the Schiavo case, reveal the bizarre nature of right-wing Christian fantasies. A regular recipient of hate mail and threats against his life that required him to walk to court with an armed marshal, Judge Greer is a lifelong Southern Baptist, a regular in church and a conservative Republican. None of those credentials protected him from the assaults of fellow Christians, including messages saying he would go straight to Hell. What he found "exasperating," he told a journalist, "is that my faith is based on forgiveness because that's what God did. . . . When I see people in my faith being extremely judgmental, it's very disconcerting."

Crazy people are simply that -- crazy people. They aren't confined to any single group, and just because they call themselves "Christian" or any other thing doesn't mean they aren't way, way off the proverbial train tracks.

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Wow, this had to really, really annoy Andy Shaw. You may have read the earlier post on this page about his interview with Henry Hyde. The blogosphere and even other media outlets ran with his story following an interview with the retiring Rep. Henry Hyde. Then, ABC7 in Chicago pulled the piece from its website. Our friend John Byrne over at Rawstory.com had this to add to the story on Friday...

The piece was removed from the ABC Chicago affiliate's (WLS) website Friday because the network felt it had too much commentary by the author, a staffer says. The affiliate also took down a video which included comments from Hyde.

Andy had to have been madder than hell about this...I can just about hear the profanity now.

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She'd done it again. Arianna Huffington has assembled a super-blog, called the "Huffington Post". She's enlisted 250 "bigfoot" journalist types...who? Here's just one member of her new blog-lective...

"This gives me a chance to sound off with a few words or a long editorial," said Mr. Cronkite, 88, the longtime "CBS Evening News" anchorman. "It's a medium that is new and interesting, and I thought I'd have some fun."

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The man who essentially taught me how to compete in a large crowd of reporters, ABC7's Andy Shaw in Chicago, has an amazing interview with retiring Chicago area Representative Henry Hyde. Here's some of what Andy reports.

Republican Congressman Henry Hyde made some surprising comments Thursday on the impeachment hearings of President Bill Clinton. He now says Republicans may have gone after Clinton to retaliate for the impeachment of Richard Nixon. Hyde is stepping down after this term.

Hyde also talks about his extramarital affair that became the talk of the Windy City during the Clinton impreachment.

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-- Don Elkins
Northwest Arkansas Times In Focus column.

I'm a journalist.

As such, I often find myself at odds with the public pronouncements and perceived motives of the man some have called "Bush's Brain," Karl Rove.

And, although I haven't spent any time with the Washington Press Corps, my exposure to the spin work of Ari Fleischer left me less than impressed.

But, this time, I have to give both men credit. They've managed to characterize one of the thorniest issues of the day in perhaps the clearest fashion I've encountered to date.

Neither find the media in America "liberal."

Mr. Rove said as much this week while taking part in a media panel at a Maryland College.

A student asked the White House power broker if he considered the American press just left of Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky.

The amazing answer?

In an article penned by Washington Post scribe Dana Milbank, Rove said, "I'm not sure I've talked about the liberal media -- I think it's less liberal than it is oppositional."

Bingo! Correct answer with bonus points awarded for both honesty and a very high level of accuracy, something sorely lacking in present day American political discourse. Putting a finer point on it, Mr. Rove reportedly said he knows many members of the media hold liberal ideals, and may even call themselves by that nametag, but he believes something else motivates them.

Ari Fleischer has made the same point in his own way. It bears repeating, because many reporters find that assessment eerily accurate.

Many of us cherish the old marching orders, "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."

It's a fightin' credo that drives us on in what most of us consider an almost holy search for truth, consequences be damned.

Here, the quote of the week, from Mr. Rove -- "Reporters now see their role less as discovering facts and fair-mindedly reporting the truth and more as being put on the earth to afflict the comfortable, to be a constant thorn of those in power, whether they are Republican or Democrat."

Mr. Rove almost has it right, and closer than anyone else traditionally critical of the media.

However, rather then give the man a seat on the Society of Profesional Journalist's ethics committee, let's also note he did get one thing terrifically wrong, something often heard as a criticism of reporters coming from those in the journalistic crosshairs, those traditionally referred to as "in power,"

While getting the "affliction" part right, he failed to perceive that reporters often manage to accomplish the goal Rove ascribes them by actually doing the work of discovering facts and fair mindedly reporting the truth - something a spin meister like Rove may have a tough time grasping. By nature, the man behind a White House public relations policy which claims to value moral absolutism over moral relativity practices a highly relativistic job - spin.

He recognizes truth seeking when he encounters it, and deftly manages to either redirect it or confound the practitioners. Try out another quote from the grand master of political strategy; "The challenge for the press is to keep a proper degree of skepticism from turning into unremitting hostility and cynicism, and from ignoring good news and progress simply because it might reflect well on those in public office."

Karl Rove obviously knows his opponents in the media. He properly describes the true challenge, and the true point when a journalist, should he or she indulge in "unremitting hostility" becomes less than unbiased, less than balanced, and far less than fair. Perhaps those who cover politics would consider it tantamount to sacrelige to say so, but the man so responsible for manipulating and "playing" reporters also appears to know quite a bit about what makes honest journalism.

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OK, so this isn't strictly news, but I found it interesting nonetheless. I get a lot of PR stuff in my television mailbox, but this one will make you chuckle. Seems Pat Buchanan and James Carville are riding to work together in D.C. as part of some sort of promotion for Gevalia. Here's the "news release" as it arrived in my mailbox...

To: Assignment Desk, AM/Noon/PM Producers, Satellite Engineers

Head's up! You'll never believe this...

James Carville and Pat Buchanan. Carpooling.

Yes, you read that right. In an effort to promote ride sharing like carpooling, vanpooling or transit, these two political rivals are riding with each other from the suburbs into one of America's worst traffic congested areas: Washington, DC.

Commuting and coffee go hand-in-hand. Gevalia Kaffe has partnered with Commuter Connections to encourage people to make coffee at home, meet up with friends and commute together to work via alternative forms of transportation. Carville and Buchanan might disagree on politics, but they would rather carpool together than face traffic alone.

There are many ways commuters can make their daily trips easier on themselves -- take transit, find a vanpool or simply get involved with a carpool. If James Carville and Pat Buchanan can do it, don't you think your viewers can too?

WHAT: Video footage of James Carville and Pat Buchanan carpooling.

WHEN: 2:45 - 3:00 PM EST, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20, 2005

WHERE: KU-Band Analog

AMC9/K8

Orbital Location: 83 degrees West

Downlink Frequency: 11860 Vertical

Satellite freaks out there? Anyone? Worth watching or revolting? How much money do you think they got for this?

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This interesting piece of news identifies the new pope, Benedict XVI, formerly Cardinal Ratzinger, as the representative from the Holy See who put his hand into the American electoral process. Interesting bit of history, though not anything unexpected. Perhaps the writer wanted a bit of a "gotcha!" here...still worth a read.

In a June 2004 letter to US bishops enunciating principles of worthiness for communion recipients, Ratzinger specified that strong and open supporters of abortion should be denied the Catholic sacrament, for being guilty of a "grave sin."

He specifically mentioned "the case of a Catholic politician consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws," a reference widely understood to mean Democratic candidate Kerry, a Catholic who has defended abortion rights.

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As you can see, this is about the barest bones layout we can come up with for now. We're still under reconstruction (no southern jokes, please!) and will be for a few days. Accept our apologies for the minimalist appearance, but we've decided to take advantage of some of the new blogger features to make our work easier...jeez, welcome to 2005, right?

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I included this one because, darn it -- it's just plain funny. And, it's another example of Clear Channel using political clout to mess with advertising...ooops, forgot they've started to program stations with "Air America" -- oh well, that still makes them the competition! Again, from our friends at the NY Times.

The image planned for the anti-Wal-Mart billboard was unusual - a fire-breathing Godzilla standing next to the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge - and the language was strong: "The Wal-Monster will destroy Staten Island businesses and devastate our quality of life."

But New Yorkers may never see the billboard, which was supposed to go up on the island, because Clear Channel, the giant radio network that also runs an outdoor advertising company, has rejected it, saying its image and language are too inflammatory.

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WAL-MART THE "WELFARE QUEEN"

Like them or not, these numbers are true. Critics have started using this as a main objection to Wal-Mart. The company itself tends to say the numbers don't tell the story because it employs so many people (1.3 million?) and you can't honestly tell the truth without seeing the numbers as a percentage, which the company claims is low. Still, a good column here that sums up the argument from one side.

Of Wal-Mart's 1.2 million employees, only about 500,000 of them receive Wal-Mart health care. That's because the employee share of premiums is so high - in some cases, up to $250 per month, about 25 percent of the average monthly salary of a Wal-Mart hourly employee - that many full-time workers simply can't afford it.

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NATIONAL PSYCHOSIS WORSENS

You've gotta give 'em credit, they'll fight sanity in every corner of America, and nothing is sacred to 'em. Watch out! Activist pharmacists at work! Now, it's started to become a legal battle, lead by Battlin' Rod Blagojevich in the Land O' Lincoln. What next -- none of that cold medicine because of moral objections it can be made into meth? This comes from the NY Times...

In some states, legislators are pushing laws that would explicitly grant pharmacists the right to refuse to dispense drugs related to contraception or abortion on moral grounds. Others want to require pharmacies to fill any legal prescription for birth control, much like Governor Blagojevich's emergency rule in Illinois, which requires pharmacies that stock the morning-after pill to dispense it without delay.

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PRISON BEEN VERY, VERY GOOD TO ME...

Not too shabby...Martha gets out of the pokey and does even better than before...now she'll take to the radio airwaves...

Martha Stewart, just six weeks out of federal prison and still under house arrest, signed another major deal today, this time with Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. to broadcast a 24-hour channel featuring lifestyle reports aimed at women.

Not exactly "Arkansas Tonight," but hey -- who is?

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RATING RECENT CELEBRITIES AND POLITICIANS

This, from our amigo David Sanders at the Arkansas News Bureau, his take on newsmakers. David, you may be going soft on us...

Some of the big-haired evangelists on cable television these days link well being and prosperity to Christianity. As the pope faded from earth, he demonstrated that the Christian life as told in the Scriptures is not immune to pain and suffering. In death, he proved that bitter enemies could sit together peacefully.

Keep 'em coming.

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REED HITS THE SKIDS...

Ralph Reed, former Chrisitan Coalition chief and now lobbyist and politico, having some trouble because of the source of some of his pay -- Abramoff funds from casinos. The New York Timeswrites:

Some of Mr. Reed's past patrons - including the Rev. Pat Robertson, the Christian broadcaster who set Mr. Reed on the national stage by hiring him to run the Christian Coalition - say his work with Mr. Abramoff's Indian casino clients raises questions about how he has balanced his personal ambitions with his Christian principles.

"You know that song about the Rhinestone Cowboy, 'There's been a load of compromising on the road to my horizon,' " Mr. Robertson said. "The Bible says you can't serve God and Mammon."

Wonder what happens next.

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PARDON OUR DUST!

After more than a year online, we felt it was time to remodel a little bit, so we appreciate your tolerance while we make it easier to access the page and easier to listen to the program on-line.

Sorry for the pain, but one swift punch of a button, and our old template disappeared, so we kind of rushed out with this.

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WAL-MART LAYS ASIDE POLITICAL NEUTRALITY?

Have Wal-Mart executives and family members decided to lay aside traditional political neutrality in order to give large sums of money to Republican causes and officeholders? That's the word from Mark Allbright at the St. Petersburg Times in this article Sunday.

WAL-MART “BY-THE-BOOK” IN INVESTIGATION

The LA Times reports that Wal-Mart handled the investigation into alleged improprieties by former Vice Chairman Tom Coughlin. Interesting note in the article, in which Mona Williams, Wal-Mart PR discredits reporting by the Wall Street Journal last Friday. Williams says her company found no evidence Mr. Coughlin improperly used money for union-busting activities, but only for personal use and the use of others. Of course, who knows, because the case remains under investigation…developing.

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STATE OF THE NATION – JAIME KING AND TOM DELAY?

Thought I’d throw these in for fun. I’m always fascinated by what Yahoo! Buzz and Google Zeitgeist cite as the world’s most interesting stories for each day. As a journalist and as a television person, one of the toughest things I still run up against has to do with editorial decisions. What do the people really care about? This week, seems thousands of us think actress Jaime King of ”Sin City” ranks pretty highly. However, if you visit the world of political coverage, you ‘ll find that Representative Christopher Shays, Republican of Connecticut wants Tom Delay to step down as Majority leader because of bad press. And that was all just late Sunday night!

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TESTING PESTICIDES ON KIDS?

Did the EPA really have a program to test dangerous pesticides on children from low income families, in exchange for money? Apparently so, but it never got off the ground. And these guys wanted to solve the Arkansas-Oklahoma water dispute? John Bryne from Rawstory.com broke the story on how the program just got shot down in Congress, and how it might have almost cost a nominee to head EPA his job.

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DECISIONS, DECISIONS!

Our friend, and close observer of the state’s Republicans has a great piece this week that you could pretty much say kicks off the Republican gubernatorial primary campaign. David Sanders says this about Asa Hutchinson and WinRock…

”A neutral observer would have to admit that the Republican faithful owe both men an enormous debt of gratitude for their service to the party.”

You can read the entire column – and sort things out for youself - at Arkansasnews.com.

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BEHIND CLOSED DOORS AT THE WAL-MART MEDIA CONFERENCE

April 6, 2005

BENTONVILLE, AR. -- They wouldn’t let broadcasters in the door at the Embassy Suites in Rogers yesterday. However, through a combination of complaints and my fortunate role as a writer for three local publications, I got signed up at the last possible minute to attend Wal-Mart’s first annual media conference. The best word I can use to describe the event? "Curious." A captive audience of print reporters listened to a retinue of Wal-Mart executives, including CEO H. Lee Scott. In attendance; Steve Greenhouse of the New York Times, Ron White of the LA Times, representatives from the Chicago Tribune, Arkansas Democrat Gazette, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, on and on and on.

So, what about it was questionable? Not Wal-Mart’s attempt to go right to the "decision makers" and "gatekeepers" in the international media. Reading the headlines and copy from yesterday’s session, Mr. Scott did manage to get his message across, which simply was that Wal-Mart critics have their story wrong, as he said, "dead wrong." Scott explained his view that critics have an agenda to maintain an unrealistic status quo intended to deny customers better prices.