I’ve been biting my tongue and slapping my hands ever since the flap with Don Imus and his comment about the Rutgers women’s basketball team hit the news. Well, okay, I haven’t been biting my tongue, as my wife will surely attest. But, the time has come when I’ve got to speak my mind through my fingers–so here it is.

I don’t agree with or approve of Don Imus’ put-downs, either of the Rutgers team, or fat people, or any of his other targets. His radio show isn’t (make that wasn’t) on in my market, and if it were, I wouldn’t listen to it unless it was on one of my stations and I was working out a problem that required me to listen.  After thirty-five years in the radio business, I know that’s the most effective way to deal with offensive radio hosts–don’t listen.  When people don’t listen, radio programming changes. It’s one of the laws of the broadcasting universe.

Should Imus be fired? I don’t think so, at least not for this particular infraction. It was fairly mild compared to some of his shtick.

But, now that Imus has been fired for racially insensitive remarks, does this mean that other radio hosts who make racially insensitive remarks are on the chopping block? For example, the well-known, nationally syndicated black guys whose programs routinely contain insensitive racial slurs toward white folks? Probably not. It seems that we live in a land that openly supports racial double standards. It’s okay for a black radio host to make fun of white folks. If white hosts make fun of black folks, that’s different. If a white person complains about the racial slurs made against them, we’re told that our complaint is racially insensitive, and we are called racists. I speak from experience.

The other day I heard Harry Smith of the CBS Early Show interviewing a representative of the National Association of Black Journalists. He asked a fair question–the term “ho” is common in Hip-Hop culture, so how do we define who is permitted to say that and who is not? The NABJ representative non-answered the question–twice. Why? It was a legitimate question, and as a journalist the interviewee should have been prepared with an answer.  My question is even deeper:

Why do we even have a “National Association of Black Journalists” in the first place?

It is by definition a racially discriminatory organization. If someone formed a “National Association of White Journalists,” it would be branded as a racist organization before the ink was dry on their charter. Why is it that the “National Association of Black Journalists” isn’t considered a racist organization? It’s simple, really: it’s a racial double standard. Apparently, some people are allowed to be racists in America.

Jesus had simple, straightforward attitude about racial discrimination: He would not tolerate it in his disciples–period. Racism in any form is wrong. What Don Imus said was wrong. Treating any person in a different manner than someone else because of their race is wrong.

Racism in any form is wrong.

Period.

In any direction.

D.

I actually discovered that Cingular’s 3G HSDPA data service was up and running a while back, and verified that it was there (testing if nothing else) when I got the new Dell Latitude D820 with its built-in HSDPA card. It worked pretty well back then, and it’s still working well today. The difference is that I have reasonable evidence that Cingular is about to admitthat it’s up and running. My first indicator was a chat I had the other day with a Cingular tech at one of their cell sites where I have a radio transmitter on the same tower. The second indicator is that I installed a Cingular-branded Sierra Wireless Aircard 860 3G PC card modem for one of our on-air talking heads who will soon be yakking about the new service on the radio. He’s about as technically astute as a pan of macaroni and cheese, but he’s a “Personality,” so it’s assumed that his endorsement will move consumers to flock to their favorite Cingular store and snap up those $49 cards ($149 with $100 rebate) and $79.99 Laptop Connect plans. They may be right, although I’ve observed that there are a lot of tech-savvy types who will quickly see through the “personality with talking points” endorsement. That could work against marketing to that segment. I once proposed doing some endorsements from a more techie person with on-air experience — such as myself — but it never got past the station sales types, who generally think “personalities” are better than “people who know what they’re talking about.” Go figure.

I’m waiting patiently (well, alright… notso patiently) for Cingular to release their Cingular 8525, a WM5 PDA phone with HSDPA. It will be the first actual hand-held data device (I don’t count phones with WAP browsers as data devices) to use the new 3G service. I want one. I can’t stomach Blackberry’s devices, because they have lousy web browsers and no third-party software. WM5 isn’t the best thing on the planet, but it’s manageable and there are lots of excellent applications, many that I already have on my Dell Axim X50v PDA.

Hey, Cingular… want a real-world beta tester? Maybe a technically-qualified endorser? An engineer with a big mouth?

So far, HSDPA has been encouraging. I’m looking forward to experimenting with using it for remote broadcast audio — it could be just what we’ve been waiting for in Little Rock.

D.

This good-looking young guy is named Marconi. He’s the youngest of the four kitties who allow us to inhabit their house. One day, he showed up at the back door of the Citadel Little Rock Radio Center, home of Arkansas’ largest radio group and the place where I work to support my writing habit. Since he was hanging around at a bunch of radio stations, it seemed only right that he be named after Guglielmo Marconi, the man who is known as “the Father of Radio” (he was the first man to transmit information wirelessly over long distances — more or less the inventor of wireless communication).

There’s something about having a cat show up on your doorstep that makes the “cat people” rise to the surface of any organization, the way cream rises in raw milk. Soon, folks were leaving him food and water, which of course made him a regular fixture around the back porch. One of our salespeople had a standing arrangement for discount spaying and neutering with a vet she used to work for, and several staffers chipped in to have Marconi “broken” and get him his first round of shots. A couple of our night and weekend guys were secretly taking him inside on cold nights and keeping him in one of the bathrooms. He really became part of the family.
     
At first, I thought Marconi he was feral because he wasn’t particularly sociable and seemed to be somewhat of a “traveling man.” Over the course of a few weeks, he became more trusting and even let a few of us pet him as he sunned himself behind the building. I saw something in Marconi. I was starting to think that he wasn’t really a feral cat. I noticed that he tried to come inside the building a few times, and he was much more sociable than most truly feral cats. The real clincher was the day that I saw Marconi playing with a live mouse in the grass. Feral cats do not play with their food. I decided that Marconi must have been someone’s lost, run away, or abandoned house cat. He could manage outside on his own, but it wasn’t his natural habitat.
     
Everyone could see that Marconi and I had developed a special bond, and I was frequently asked not if but when I was going to take him home. Our cats were strictly indoor kitties, I was leery of trying to bring this maybe-semi-feral cat into our home. We had three females at the time, but we also had an empty space that had been occupied by another yellow boy named Buddy, who had been with me for over 15 years and had died just a few months before. I’ve always believed that people don’t adopt cats. Cats adopt people, and Marconi had adopted me. He worked his way into a special place in my heart, and one day I finally knew that He wanted to come home with me. I gave him what he wanted, and today he is firmly and fully in command of the Case household.
     
Marconi never had any complaints until the day he heard about Larry the Garden Cat. Marco was sitting on the back of my chair as I was browsing the website of KTHV-TV, Channel 11 (“Today’s THV”), the CBS affiliate in Little Rock. THV has an outdoor weather set that they call “The Weather Garden.” One of the residents of the Weather Garden is a yellow cat named Larry, whose story is not unlike Marconi’s, but with a video twist. Larry’s become somewhat of a celebrity, with frequent appearances on THV’s morning show and weekend weather. I haven’t seen him as much on the evening news; the night crew must be dog people. Larry’s got his own corner of the THV web site, a blog, and even an on-air contest – the “11 Larry Look-Alikes Contest.”
     
I was browsing the THV website one day, with Marconi sitting on the back of my chair (not unlike the first picture above), and when I came to Larry’s web page, Marconi perked up and growled just enough to get my attention. I asked him what his problem was, and he responded with indignation and just a hint of jealousy. Ths discussion went like this:

“That Larry guy starts hangs around a TV station and now he’s a TV star with his own web page, and a blog, and a cool T-shirt with his picture. I was hanging around at a radio station, and what did I get? A radio show? Noooo.  A web page or a blog? Noooo. Not even a stinkin’ t-shirt. All I got was neutered.”

“Well, Marco, “ I replied, “It’s going to be 100 degrees outside today, and Larry has to live outside while you live in this nice, air-conditioned house. And, when it thunders, Larry can’t run downstairs and hide under the rug like you can. Are you sure you’d rather be Larry?”

Marconi thought for a moment and purred, “No, I’m good.”

Marconi does look a lot like Larry, so he wanted to enter the 11 Larry Look-Alikes contest. And, he won. As one of the eleven winners, he gets one year of heartworm and flea preventative treatment, sixteen pounds of high-class cat food, one full checkup from Dr. Bob, the THV Morning show’s resident veterinarian, and a Larry the Garden Cat tee-shirt. Marco decided to donate most of his winnings to Helping Hands for Little Paws, an all-volunteer animal rescue organization that rescued two of his three feline housemates.

But, Marconi wants that tee-shirt!

D.
   

We went to a movie last weekend. I know that’s not exactly front-page news, but it’s a little unusual for Sharon and me to go to a theater to watch a movie. Between the crowds, and the parking, and the water bottle police (Sharon has one with her wherever she goes because of a medical issue), movie theaters are a lot of hassle and it’s easier to wait for the DVD. It takes a very special movie to make us endure the hassle and go to a movie theater, and a very special film it was: A Prairie Home Companion.

Those who don’t lean far enough to the left to tolerate Public Radio may not know that there really is a live weekly  radio show called A Prairie Home Companion. I was less than a year into my broadcasting career when Garrison Keillor did his first live broadcast of PHC in 1974. I remember listening to the program when I was a board operator/engineer at WQLN-FM in Erie, PA. The music wasn’t one of my favorite flavors, but I was a captive audience - I was literally being paid to listen, so listen I did. Before long, I was enjoying the flavor of the music, the dry humor, and Garrison Keillor’s masterful storytelling skills. I used to look forward to those Saturday night shifts when I was paid to visit Lake Wobegon. Keillor was able to stimulate my non-linear imagination in ways that nothing else - including the substances I was fond of at the time - could even approach.

So, when I heard about the movie, most of which was filmed in the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minnesota that PHC calls home, I knew we would have to see it even if it meant the dreaded theater. Actually, the theater wasn’t that bad. We had a choice between the big, new, “place to be” theater and a smaller, older theater not far from the house, so we chose the latter. Parking was easy, and the crowds were manageable. The only downside was that, since it was opening night, the local Public Radio station was there giving away door prizes - various PHC “stuff” that no doubt had been collecting around the station. With all those Public Radio fans in one room, no matter where we sat the room still seemed to slant a little to the left.

The movie was phenomenal. It won’t be up for any Academy Awards, and its profits will look like pocket change to the “big guys” in movieland, but it will probably become a classic with a cult following. It reminded me a lot of those early days at WQLN. When it comes out on DVD, it will be on my shopping list for sure.

In keeping with our usual practice, at the end of the film we sat and watched the credits. It’s not that we expect to see the names of any close friends or family members, it just seems like a reasonable tribute to the hundreds of people that made the movie possible but that, other than the closing credits and a paycheck, are unknown, unrecognized and often unappreciated. I would have thought that in a theater full of NPR junkies there would have been more folks watching the credits. By the time they finished, there were just a handful of stragglers in little conversation clusters, the kid with a broom impatiently waiting to sweep the popcorn and other moviegoer droppings from beneath our seats (he had already finished the rest of the theater), and of course Sharon and me, sitting in the back row watching the credits and debriefing.

If I ever make a film - it’s unlikely, but not impossible - I’m going to put something really cool at the very end of the credits as a special reward for those people who watch them all the way through. Not just outtakes and the like, some really special treat that can only be seen by watching the credits all the way through, as a special tribute to those who cared enough to ride that bus all the way to the end of the line.

I’m sure both of them will enjoy it.

 D.