“I am God!”

Posted on October 29, 2011 by hro50ta1

By Luke Warm

Professor of Mendacity

University of Munchausen

What is it you don’t get about “public relations”?

I’ve lectured on this topic till my ears are blue, but I’ll spell it out for you once more.

“Public relations” is not about education.

PR is NOT a teaching tool.

If you want education, enroll in kindergarten.

Let’s examine the term closely.

We’ll break it down to its constituent elements.

“Public” — what does “public” mean? Class?

No, no, no!

It is NOT “the people”!

Come on, students, don’t behave like the public!

You are not a herd — are you?

We’re talking sheep here.

S-H-E-E-P!

Know what I mean? Mutton!

As in mutton-head!

Wool over the eyes.

But I jump ahead of myself.

Pulling wool over sheeps’ eyes is what “public relations” is all about.

They didn’t endow me as the Professor of Mendacity because I tell it like it is.

Any boobie can tell you the truth.

Telling it like it ain’t, and making it stick — stick in the minds of the public, i.e., the sheep, the mutton-heads, the suckers, saps, marks and just plain ignoramuses who constitute the people at large — THAT is PR.

Just so we understand each other, I’ll draw an example from my vast personal experience as highly-paid consultant to businesses and governments in need of professional obfuscation.

I was visited recently by a very wealthy and powerful man who was desperate, absolutely beside himself with fear.

The truth was getting out about him. He didn’t know what to do. So he came to me, the foremost generator of false images. Why, I hold a patent on the Memory Hole.

Billionaires come to me when the cat slides out of the bag.

So it came about that I received a visit from the owner of a bridge.

My high ethical standards forbid me mentioning his real name.

I will refer to him as ‘Mr. Moon.’ ”

“How can I help you, Mr. Moon?” I said as he took a seat opposite my endowed Chair in Mendacity here at U of M.

“Well, Mr. Warm,” he said, “I’m in a terrible bind. People are starting to find out the truth about me. I need to stop that fast.”

“What is the truth that worries you, Mr. Moon?”

“I own a bridge,” said Mr. Moon. “It is an old bridge, but that doesn’t matter. It makes a lot of money for me, and that is all that counts. It is a big money-maker, because we don’t have to spend money on it to suck money out of it. Oh boy! Is it a dollar machine! Wowee! People who own other pieces of architecture that make money have to answer to government inspectors who tell them to do things to make them safe, but that costs money and bring the profits down. We tell the government to go to hell! You would not believe how much fun it is to roll in the money we make and tell judges to stick it in their ear when they tell me to tear down gas pumps and my duty-free store that generate heaps of greenbacks and the judge says I did it all wrong ’cause I violated my contract with the state, but who cares about contracts if you can get away with tearing them up? And the judge says tear the pumps and store down and I say screw you, judge-my-boy! I’ve been doing that kind of thing for years and getting away with it. But people are catching on. The public is starting to become aware. A lot of people want a new government bridge, and if that happens, my rickety old piece-of-shit bridge will not be a monopoly any more. What it will be is dead in the water, a money-loser.”

I interrupted Mr. Moon here and asked the key PR question: “If I’m going to be your spin doctor, I’ll need to tell people some nice, positive things about you and your bridge.”

“Oh, yes, there are lots of positive things to tell. It is an amazing thing, this bridge. It is all dilapidated and run-down and a real piece of shit, and yet it churns out MONEY MONEY MONEY!!! That is very positive, don’t you think? Oh, yes, and because I have all that money and am a billionaire, I can hire all sorts of lawyers. So anybody who gets in my way, I just tie them up in endless lawsuits for years and laugh in their faces. That is positive! Another positive thing is that I have a family who are very loyal to me and love what the bridge brings in, which is MONEY MONEY MONEY!!! That is a lot of positive things, don’t you think?

“Oh, and this is really positive, too. You will love this. After 9/11 when the whole country was frightened of terrorists, I had my henchmen take over part of a public park that I needed for the new bridge I don’t want to build. I had my goons fence off the section of park that is absolutely essential for the bridge I don’t want to build. I had my goons put padlocks on the public boat launch at this park. I had my thugs hang up signs on the park that said “Homeland Security” so people would think I owned the park where I want to put the bridge I don’t want to build. Wasn’t that cool? Know what? My goons would even kick park officials out of the park! We acted like we owned the park, and therefore we did! We still do. A judge evicted us a couple years ago, but guess what — we’re still there! It was no problem, because I bought the mayor and he went along. Isn’t that positive?”

“Well,” I told the bridge baron, “It is all very positive so long as you keep it under wraps. But that mayor went to jail.”

“That’s why I came to you,” said Mr. Moron. “I need your help. The truth has kind of gotten out.”

“Mr. Moon,” I told him, “It is a bad thing when the truth gets out. It costs much less money to hold the truth back than to stuff it down a Memory Hole once it’s got loose. You know what it takes to do that?”

“A Professor of Mendacity?”

“Well, yes, that. But what else does it take?”

“Shotgun totin’ goons?”

“Cold. It will cost you the sun and the moon — MONEY MONEY MONEY!!”

“My name is Moon. I have tons of MONEY MONEY MONEY!!!”

“Good. I will need it. You have a serious Public Relations Problem, Mr. Moon. Three years ago, all of these positive things you told me — your hijacking a park, strong-arming people, bullshitting judges, all that was a mere blip on the popular radar. Now, you have a governor and practically every business interest in the state of Michigan along with the federal government, the province of Ontario and the Canadian government who want to build a new bridge over the corpse of your piece-of-shit bridge. You have just spent umpteen millions of dollars purchasing votes in the state Legislature in a most obvious and heavy-handed manner. You and your family members behaved in such a bullying, swaggering, “I’m-rich-so-therefore-I’m-right” way that you nauseated most of the news media and they in turn made clear to the reading and viewing and blog-reading public that you are in fact a greedy, unsavory, self-serving goon with a billion plus bucks who thinks money can buy everything he holds dear, and what you hold dearest is MONEY MONEY MONEY!!! You have just won a major battle by snuffing out a Senate bill that, had the whole Legislature approved it, would have built a new bridge and sent you into a financial tailspin. You bought six of the seven Senate committee members, and five of them either voted with you or abstained, which amounts to voting for you. It would be a wonderful accomplishment but for one thing: You did it in plain view. You behaved like a greedy, money-grubbing plutocrat in broad daylight. You got your way, for the moment. Now you come whining to me, begging that I, by means of my brilliant Skills in Mendacity, erase the entire history of your repugnant, antisocial behavior. What miracle do you think I can perform to make you appear like a hero and tribune of the people instead of the lying, sneaking, bullying sociopath that you are? Now, I have a question: You referred to your much-vaunted “twin” to replace your crappy span as ‘the bridge I don’t want to build.’ What did you mean by that?”

Mr. Moon let loose a loud guffaw and slapped his leg. “I have to tell you, Mr. Warm, that being a billionaire and as you say, a money-grubbing plutocrat and a lying, sneaking, bullying sociopath who is repugnant to anyone with a common sense of decency can be great fun. I know I can never build that “twin” bridge. The Canadians blocked it on their side, and I don’t even own the land for it over here. A city park sits where I would put my new bridge. The “twin” is a smokescreen and has been all along. It’s a poker chip, something to talk about, bully people over, toss it out to the media and watch the slobbering reporter rabble run with it. Why would I spend a nickel on a new bridge when my shitty old money mill of a bridge is still churning out cash? The “twin” is a big fake, a bluff in the PR game I’m playing with all those governments and the public, who as you know are nothing but a mass of mutton-heads whose good opinion toward me I’ll pay you big bucks to warp, distort and manage as long as that new bridge is never built.

“I don’t really care what the so-called public thinks of me, Mr. Warm. You see, I am a billionaire and then some. I don’t even care what you think of me, Mr. Warm. I’m going to make you into a millionaire with all the fees I pay you to lie about me. But do you think I respect you? A mere millionaire? Do you know what the difference is between a million and a billion, Mr. Warm? If you had a million bucks, and spent a buck a second, you’d be broke in 13 days. Me with my billion, it would take me 31 years to go bust. Think of that, Mr. Warm — you’d be a pauper in less than two weeks. Me — I will not live another 31 years, so I will never go broke, even if they take my bridge from me. That is the difference between me and you, Mr. Warm. You are nothing but an ant, a mere tool. You may be a useful tool, but that is all you are. I make and break inconsequential beings like you. That includes legislators and governors of the state of Michigan. In the scale of human life, you people have the stature of amoebas whose microscopic lives I can control as I desire. Compared to an insignificant speck of life like you, I am God.”

“I am God, Mr. Warm. So now, why don’t you go out into the world and work that miracle of yours. Make the mutton-heads love me, whether they want to or not.”

Posted in Joel's J School, Me & Matty | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Thank you, Matty

Posted on October 26, 2011 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

Rather than heaping insults on billionaire Matty Moroun, we should be grateful to him.

We should name Matty “Educator of the Year.”

Who else but Matty has demonstrated so clearly how corrupt and venal our political system has become?

It took a man with deep, deep pockets and no moral scruples — this is Matty — to teach us how public policy can be perverted to serve the interest of one greedy family, the Morouns of Grosse Pointe.

By now, most sentient beings are aware that a committee of the Michigan Senate voted 3-2 with two abstentions to deep-six a proposal for a long-needed new bridge linking the United States and Canada at Detroit.

We all know that the Moroun family owns the only bridge that allows truck traffic between the US and Canada. To protect their lucrative monopoly from competition, the Morouns deployed public relations specialists and millions of dollars in “donations” to members of both houses of Michigan’s Legislature.

Six of the seven members of the Senate Economic Development Committee took “contributions” from Matty.

Far be it from me to call these gifts “bribes.”

Why, under Michigan law, the packets of money were perfectly legal.

The people who took money from Matty were the people who had the power to promote or block the New International Trade Crossing.

Legislators who swore oaths to uphold state laws.

There was a time when Matty could pull strings in the dark.

After 9/11, using the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in Manhattan as a pretext, Matty stole a section of a city of Detroit park that he needed as part of the U.S. site for his planned “twin” bridge to replace the old and decrepit Ambassador. For years, that theft remained unreported, and in fact to this day it remains unreported by Detroit’s mainline newspapers.

Early this year, the new Republican governor, Rick Snyder, announced that building the new bridge was a top priority for his administration.

That got everybody’s attention.

Matty heard the governor loud and clear.

But now, with the governor pushing the bridge and the Legislature reacting, Matty’s shenanigans — hiring super-flack Dick Morris, showering large amounts of money on legislators and inundating media with tsunamis full of lies — the bridge became a hot story. It was hard to ignore the crassness and megalomaniac egotism of Matty’s behavior.

His mantra was simple: “Billionaires have it  their way.”

It worked.

Sort of.

By proving that money talks louder than truth, Matty also taught a powerful lesson: Money corrupts, and absolute money corrupts absolutely.

When you are a billionaire whose resources dwarf those of the state and its elected governor, and when you buy off a large portion of the people elected to look after the public welfare, and when you do your corrupting in full view, you have suddenly bcome, unwittingly, a Professor of Venality.

You have taught us a powerful lesson, Matty.

You, Matty Moroun, are bigger than the state.

You, the Titan of the Bridge, have bested the governor.

Your problem now, Matty, is that it would have been better if you had not made it so obvious how fully you were corrupting our government.

The good old days when you could padlock a public boat launch and seize part of a city park without anyone knowing it are over.

Professor Matty, you have taught us a powerful lesson.

You have shown how completely you and your bully-boy big bucks can subvert the common good.

Now, those of us who have been your rapt though unwilling students must ask ourselves a question:

What are we going to do with the knowledge you have given to us?

Posted in Me & Matty | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Telling the truth about Matty’s twin

Posted on October 25, 2011 by hro50ta1

Matthew Moroun, vice chairman of the company that owns the Ambassador Bridge and opposes the public bridge across the Detroit River, said Thursday he expects the Canadian government will now look more favorably on his company’s proposal to use private money to build a bridge beside the Ambassador.

— The Detroit News, October 22, 2011

By Joel Thurtell

What gives with Detroit journalists?

Matty Moroun’s plan for building a new bridge beside his antique Ambassador Bridge linking Canada and the U.S. is hot air.

The twin cannot be built for two reasons:

1) He lacks permits on the Canadian side.

2) On the U.S. side, he doesn’t even own the land he needs to site his so-called “twin” bridge.

If you don’t believe me, go over to Windsor and note how the bridge approach stops abruptly. Then, stop by the Detroit side and notice how the city’s Riverside Park abuts the Ambassador.

Matty needs park land to build the U.S. side of his twin, and Detroit officials have refused to sell.

If they were so foolish as to sell the land to Matty, there would be a firestorm of public outrage and most likely a barrage of lawsuits, given that state and federal money have been spent on Riverside Park.

Matty simply cannot build that second bridge.

So why do he and his son Matthew keep talking about it?

Because Detroit’s onetime daily newspapers lend his empty threat credibility by refusing to print that the twin is a fraud.

They give Matty’s propaganda machine a free ride.

Metro Times has written about the scam of Matty’s twin.

But I wonder: Why do the Detroit “dailies” keep giving this piece of crap a free ride?

The truth about Matty’s twin?

It’s a lie.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

Posted in Joel's J School, Me & Matty | 1 Comment

They eat horses, don’t they?

Posted on October 24, 2011 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

Couple weeks ago, my friend Donna invited me to dinner.

I was delighted. Donna has a summer place near our cottage in McGregor Bay, Ontario, and I’ve eaten her food before. She is a brilliant cook.

We are more or less neighbors in the States, too.

Dinner at her place would most certainly be a culinary treat, and the company, four retired profs along with her intellectual pal Bob, also promised to be a delight.

The main course turned out to be flat noodles topped with a dark meat with accompanying dark sauce. It was delicious, and after the main course, but before dessert, I went to the kitchen to tell Donna how much I liked her meal.

“Best beef stroganoff I’ve ever had,” I said.

Donna was doing something or other near the sink, and I figured her silence was due to concentrating on the task of entertaining half a dozen people while getting food to the table. I went back to the dining room and took my seat.

A few minutes later, Donna returned from the kitchen and sat down. “Joel said this was the best beef stroganoff  he’d ever had,” Donna said. “Does anybody know what you’ve just eaten?”

In return, she got five blank stares. I think Bob was in on the trick.

“What you just ate,” said Donna, “Was wild goose.”

Wow! Wild goose! I’d never before tasted wild goose. I’m not sure I’ve ever had tame goose, either.

Duck, presumably tame, I eat often when I go to Thai Bistro in Canton Township.

Pintade, or guinea fowl, I used to eat plenty of when I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Togo, West Africa. Guinea fowl eggs are great, too.

Somehow, I missed out on goose.

I’m glad to have tried wild goose, which Donna said was sent to her by cousins in Iowa who hunt.

A friend I told about Donna’s little dinner party trick was outraged. “She waited till you finished to tell you what it was?”

Well, actually, I do wish I’d known beforehand, because I would have paid more attention to flavor and texture.

But why be pissed off at having a chance to try a new meat?

I LIKE to eat meat.

So why not try new species of flesh?

A few days after Donna’s wild goose dinner, I was visiting my friends Zoe and Burnley in McGregor Bay. A lot of cottages were broken into by bears this past summer. Finally, some people hired a hunter, who shot two mature bears, one a sow with two cubs. Four bear in all were killed, and according to Ontario wildlife law, the bears had to be dumped.  They could not be butchered and eaten. They rotted while vultures cleaned up the mess. Too bad. Waste of good bear meat. Not that I’ve ever had bear, but I’d like to try.

Zoe and Burnley told me they had a hunk of bear meat in their freezer, given them by a hunter friend. I offered to swap some beef or chicken for it. No way. They don’t like bear. Canadians in general, so I’m told, look upon bear as trash animals. Not desirable either as targets for hunting or as subjects for the palate. So they gave me their chunk of bear. It’s in my freezer, and I’m weighing how and when to serve it.

I thought of inviting Donna over and announcing after we’ve eaten that it was bear stroganoff.

Today, which is October 24, 2011, I read an article in The New York Times: “Slaughter of Horses Goes On, Just Not in U.S.”

Now I understand why the friend who was bent out of shape on hearing of Donna’s joke was so mad.

There is no parity in the way people perceive meat.

What if Donna had announced we’d just eaten horse?

Goose is easy to swallow, compared to our trusty beast of burden, the horse.

But why is this so? Why are people so protective of horses? Why not put the same energy into saving cows or sheep or pigs?

My wife, Karen Fonde, told me of an experience she had while in training with the Peace Corps in Togo. Jean, a  Peace Corps chauffeur from the Ewe ethnic group in southern Togo, was driving Karen and some other health education volunteers to their work sites in various villages in Togo. As they approached the town of Lama-Kara, Karen remarked that she’d heard that the Cabrai people of that area eat dogs. Yes, confirmed Jean, they do eat dogs in this place. All agreed that eating dogs was disgusting. Then Karen noted that some people in Togo eat cats. “Nothing wrong with eating cat,” said Jean. “I eat cat.”

Karen told this story to Seydou Bukari, a Muslim boy from the Mossi group who helped us around our house in Dapango in northern Togo. Seydou told us that his people are not supposed to eat monkey. But they eat beef, goat, sheep, fish and other kinds of flesh.

“Why not eat monkey?” I asked. He went home to ask his dad. Later, he told me: “Monkeys look too much like humans.”

In Togo, I was served rat — bush rat, that is. It’s called agouti and is considered a delicacy. I have a photo of two guys roasting a big rat — not agouti, but a well-fed rat caught in a grain building — in front of our house in Dapango. They didn’t offer me a bite, or I’d have tried it.

I never was served dog or cat, but would have tried it, given the chance.

Karen and I traveled through West Africa and in Ouagadougou, we found a French-style restaurant with a chalk board menu advertising cheval. I wanted to try it, but the waiter told me they’d run out of horse.

Back in the States a few years later, I was editor of The Journal Era newspaper in Berrien Springs. One of our staff was a horse lover and got all pissed off when a slaughterhouse out in the Niles-Buchanan boondocks started slaughtering horses. Horse-lovers made the alaughterhouse into a political hot potato and somehow got it shut down.

Or maybe they stopped it from opening. All I know is that once again, I missed out on eating horse.

But more than once I had lunch with the horse woman from the paper. She had no problem wolfing down a cheeseburger or French dip or other beef-based lunches.

How can people who shovel down their throats the flesh of cows, pigs, lambs, turkeys and chickens possibly be morally outraged when other people chomp on Champ?

If you eat any kind of animal flesh, you have no moral authority to tell others they can’t eat some other kind of animal.

I’d draw the line at human beings.

Except in emergencies.

There’s a ban on slaughtering horses in the U.S., but it’s done in Mexico and Canada.

Mexico’s a bit far, but Canada I can do.

Okay, I’m on this — gonna order some steak du cheval from Montreal.

Hey, Donna — wanta come over for dinner?

Posted in Bay, People, Places, Togo & Peace Corps, Wildlife | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Witch hunt on air

Posted on October 23, 2011 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

Hear about NPR’s name change?

It’s MPR.

McCarthy Public Radio.

Instead of covering the news, they’re making it.

With a witch hunt.

Used to be, people with unpopular political persuasions got beat up by government agencies.

Ever hear of the Red Squads?

J. Edgar Hoover?

And, of course, the pacesetter for persecutors, Joseph McCarthy, the drunken Wisconsin senator who treated people whose politics he disliked as if they were dangerous criminals.

But McCarthy was an elected official, who eventually was un-elected.

Now, the ratting is done by fellow journalists.

In the case of Lisa Simeone, a freelance reporter who was fired by NPR for doing public relations work for the Occupy Wall Street movement, the stool pigeon was Roll Call.

How do you un-elect officials at NPR?

How to you teach reporters at Roll Call to stop being skunks and quit spraying on fellow journalists?

Simeone was even fired from her radio show about opera.

Opera!

Have they no shame?

How do you educate journalists to understand that in a free society, every citizen has a right to his or her views on politics, religion, sex, whatever?

How do you explain to them that opera has nothing to do with Occupy Wall Street?

Journalists, whether freelance or staffers, are citizens. They have a right to act on their views without interference from their employer.

Yet many media companies have so-called “ethics” rules that forbid their employees from exercising their rights as U.S. citizens.

Remember last year, when MSNBC cracked down on Keith Olbermann for being political?

Or there was the case in Detroit where a reporter was sanctioned for wearing a political t-shirt on the job.

In 2007, when I was still a reporter at the Detroit Free Press, managers belatedly found that in 2004, I had contributed $500 to the Michigan Democratic Party.

Horrors! You would think I had accepted a bribe. You would think the Dems had hired me to sabotage freedom of the press.

In fact, I was trying to have some small influence on the outcome of a national election, which I had a perfect right to to.

Free Press editors — who themselves had contributed to a political action committee and illegally charged the expense to the newspaper — tried to set me up to be fired and forbade to contribute to politics again.

The Newspaper Guild fought the Free Press, and eventually, an arbitrator ordered Free Press bosses to rescind their obnoxious rule forbidding employees to take part in politics.

It is no longer politically correct to out people for having an unorthodox sexual persuasion.

But it  is okay in the mind of many media people to dump on people who have political views, especially when they express or act on them.

What is it about democracy, what is it about free speech, that journalists don’t get?

I’ve got news for NPR: If they were punishing an employee in Michigan, their behavior would be illegal.

Michigan’s Bullard-Plawecki Employee Right-to-Know Act forbids employers to snoop into workers’ political lives.

According to this law, it is illegal for employers to track employees’ political activities, and it is illegal to punish employees for having a political opinion.

Same goes for political activity: If an employee takes part in the political process as Simeone did, it is none of the boss’s business.

To punish an employee for taking part in politics would invite investigation and prosecution — of the employer.

J. Edgar Hoover, I’d like you to meet McCarthy Public Radio.

The two of you have lots in common.

Posted in Arbitration, Joel's J School | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Democracy in Michigan

Posted on October 22, 2011 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

Three of Matty Moroun’s Republican hirelings in the state Senate vote against a new bridge to Canada.

Two Republicans vote in favor.

Two Democrats refuse to vote.

Thus, on the votes or non-votes of seven people, an important piece of state infrastructure will not be built?

One family — the Morouns — spending millions on advertisements and bribes — excuse me, legal contributions to elected legislators — gets its way, in spite of polls that show a majority of voters in favor of a new bridge.

This is Democracy in Michigan.

Now, people are calling on Gov. Rick Snyder not to “go around the Legislature” and build the bridge anyway.

Wait a minute!

The Legislature in toto never voted on this issue.

The people, through their elected representatives, never got to see a real vote.

There could have been a vote, but through weakness, laziness, stupidity and avarice, the legislators chose to sit out their chance to vote the bridge up or down.

One committee of seven people is not a vote on the bridge.

The Legislature voted itself out of the equation.

The governor is entitled, therefore, to seek ways of building the bridge without the Legislature’s approval.

They had their chance.

They blew it.

If the governor by executive order can start digging the foundation, do it.

If it’s not possible for Michigan to take part without the Legislature on board, then let’s ask the federal government to partner with Canada and get the job done.

If the new bridge at the Rouge River can’t be built, here’s another proposal.

You’ve heard this from me before: The feds and the state have the power to seize Matty’s bridge.

Now, Matty has blustered and the mainstream media have bought his lie that he will build a “twin” to his decrepit Ambassador Bridge.

Well, as I have said so many times before, Matty can’t build that bridge because he doesn’t own the land he needs for it. That land belongs to the city of Detroit. It is called Riverside Park.

I’m not saying the federal government or the state of Michigan should by gubernatorial fiat build Matty’s twin. No, forget the twin. It’s nothing but hot air, a bluff.

And leave Riverside Park alone.

No, here’s what I say: Seize the Ambasador Bridge through the government’s power of eminent domain.

Tear the piece of crap down and build a new bridge in its place.

Oh, sure, I would fairly compensate Matty.

With a kick in the ass.

But the best shot would be to forget the Ambassador. Build the New International Trade Crossing bridge despite legislative obstinacy.

The advantage to going ahead without the Legislature is that never again would the bridge be held up by Matty’s hired politicos in Lansing.

The Legislature now is out of the picture, through their own nearsighted behavior.

On with the bridge.

And screw Matty Moroun.

Posted in Me & Matty | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Faking it in Delray

Posted on October 21, 2011 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

So what’s with Michigan Democrats?

The two Democrats on the Michigan Senate’s Economic Development Committee abstained on October 20, 2001 from voting a bill to build a new Detroit River bridge onto the floor of the Senate. They claim they wanted to attach a measure to improve the environment in the Delray community surrounding the proposed new bridge.

By holding back their votes, the Democrats ensured that the procedural vote would fail. The bridge bill remains stuck in a committee whose chairman is controlled by Ambassador Bridge owner Matty Moroun.

For those tuning in late, good ol’ Matty owns the only truck link between Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario. He has a monopoly and wants to keep it.

The proposed new government-sponsored bridge, being pushed hard by Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, is a direct threat to Matty’s business empire, and he’s spending millions on advertising and bribes to legislators in hopes he can quash a public bridge.

Democrats just gave Matty a big lift.

According to the Wall Street Journal, State Sen. Virgil Smith justified his abstention with this line of (pardon the expression) reasoning: “With the community protection agreement not being added to the bill,
I could not support it.”

I am really glad that Sen. Smith is sensitive to protecting the community surrounding the proposed bridge site at the confluence of the Detroit and Rouge rivers.

But I wonder why he is all of a sudden so sensitive to the concerns of people in this community?

Delray is an utter mess and has been for generations.

Is Sen. Smith blind?

Has he no olfactory nerves to detect the stench of iron being made and sewage being “treated”?

Private companies and public officials not only have known this, but they have aided and abetted the demise of this once thriving community.

There is a reason why Delray is a dumping ground.

It is called location, location, location.

It is a great place to put the kind of operations that cause massive pollution of air and water.

Ships have been plying the Lower Rouge River since colonial times. Fort Dearborn could be situated several miles inland in a city of that name because the Rouge River provided access to the Great Lakes for shipping.

Iron has been produced on Zug Island at the Rouge and Detroit rivers for more than a century.

Henry Ford liked the proximity of southeastern Dearborn, both for shipping and with the Rouge as an outlet for wastewater from his giant auto plant, which also sucks water from the Lower Rouge River.

A second mill is still turning out rolls of steel at the Rouge plant, where booms floating on the river are supposed to impede the flow of pollutants into the stream.

In 1940, Detroit built what would become the largest single-unit wastewater treatment plant in the world on the Lower Rouge River. Whenever there is a hard rain, the city’s wastewater system spews industrial and toilet waste into the Rouge.

As the sewage plant expanded, its stink, combined with the stench from the two steel mills, the Rouge plant and other manufacturing plants in Delray, came to dominate the area.

Mayor Coleman Young saw fit to expand the sewage plant by placing lagoons across the streets — notice the plural — from St. John Cantius church. Sewage lagoons and church services didn’t mix. St. John Cantius is now shuttered.

I challenge the Democrats to take a drive through Delray. Of the buildings that remain, many are boarded up. Many more are charred.

The Hungarian Club, once the cultural heartbeat of Delray, is boarded up.

Coleman Young knew what he was doing to that community. So did Henry Ford and every industrialist who built the bridges, factories and infrastructure that have permanently degraded this place.

For politicians to suddenly waken to the plight of Delray is thoroughly dishonest and complete hypocrisy.

Where were the Democrats when Delray was being polluted physically and dismantled culturally?

Oh, that’s right — Coleman Young was a Democrat.

Why not vote “yes” on moving the bill out of committee and then, if you’re so moved to fix it, fight hard to protect Delray on the floor of the Senate?

Killing the bill in committee smacks of ignorance, stupidity or — I know it is not nice of me to suggest this:

Could the Dems be serving Matty, too?

The abstention gambit smacks of trickery. The Democrats what us to believe they are for the new bridge because, I mean, geez, the governor, the Big Three carmakers, teh Chamber of Commerce and practically everyone with his or head screwed on right who’s not bought out by Matty is for the bridge.

If you’re against the bridge, have the guts to vote “no,” as Matty’s Republican gofers did.

By abstaining, you send the message that you favor the bridge, but you want this or that i dotted or t crossed.

That is bullshit. In fact, whether you abstain or vote “no,” you have helped to kill the bridge.

And by killing the bridge, you have done Matty’s work.

If you’re not Matty’s goon, don’t behave like one.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com

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Historians into journalists

Posted on October 11, 2011 by hro50ta1

Journalism schools are not the only places where people can learn to be journalists.

The University of Michigan History Department’s 2011 Newsletter adapted a JOTR post about the utility of a historian’s education.

But we later had second thoughts. That is, we got worried about the future of historians who convert to journalism. Journalism is not all about serving the public, and future practitioners need to know there’s a rough-and-tumble side to the profession that sometimes ain’t so nice.

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Nurse faketitioners

Posted on October 2, 2011 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

I was going to assign JOTR columnist and Professor of Mendacity Luke Warm to write one of his satirical essays dismantling an October 2, 2011 New York Times article about the desire of some nurses to assume the unearned title of doctor. The nurses hope their patients and insurance companies will think they are real doctors and not simply nurses with PhDs in subjects that have little or nothing to do with diagnosing and relieving medical disorders.

Luke was rarin’ to go.

The good prof loves to pillory news people.

He planned to rip the Times writer a new porthole for seeming to swallow the nurses’ line of guff. Typically, Luke lambasts his subjects by pretending to praise them for being models of the duplicitous art — which is what the cynical prof perceives journalism to be.

Luke had in mind a spoof whose protagonist would be a bona fide nurse with a bachelor’s degree in nursing from a mainline university nursing school. This nurse would then go on to earn a PhD in the discipline of history, after which the nurse would demand a raise.

What does the study of history have to do with the delivery of medical services, and why should the American consumer be made to pay more for it?

But then, the PhDs that nurses are earning in the newly-created field of “nursing practice” have as much to do with direct care of patients as a degree in history.

The Times used a real-life example of a nurse with a PhD in “nursing practice” who insists on having her patients call her “doctor.”

What did she get from her PhD studies in statistics, epidemiology and health care economics that would translate to improved care for her patients?

Nothing.

The study of health care economics tips her — and her mentors’ — hands, though.

This is all about money.

We already have a class of super-nurses known as nurse practitioners. They have a masters in applied nursing techniques, which makes sense, since it helps them deliver care to patients.

Studying health care economics, on the other hand, only helps nurses help themselves.

Nurse practitioners make about half the pay that family medicine docs earn. Still, that computes to earnings in the $86,000-$90,000 range.

But that apparently is not enough. So now we have nurses with PhDs, which they think means patients have to call them “doctor.”

As long as these phony nurse-doctors are going to gussy themselves up with irrelevant degrees, why not, as Luke Warm suggests, have them get PhDs in history? Or English literature. Or something more practical, like French horn performance?

I kind of like the idea of nurses inflating their credentials with doctorates in music. For a patient suffering from stress, why not have the nurse end the exam by playing a sonata to soothe the passionate brain?

I decided not to have Luke write his smart-ass column, though, because the more I thought about it, the more I realized that my beef was not with the Times’s journalism, but with the nursing profession’s  devious grab for an across-the-board wage hike.

Still, I’m annoyed that the Times reproduced the self-serving claptrap that spewed from the University of Michigan’s nursing dean, herself a doctor of some unspecified (by the Times) kind. According to Dean Kathleen Potempa, nurses need PhDs because “knowledge is exploding, and the doctor of nursing practice degree evolved out of a grass-roots recognition that we need to continuously improve our curriculum.”

“Grass roots”?

What does that mean?

Were patients banging on the doors of the Ann Arbor nursing school demanding that their nurses call themselves “doctor”?

“Recognition that we need to continuously improve our curriculum”?

Well, that sounds like an admission that there is something wrong with the course of study at UM.

But can’t you fix it once and have it stay fixed?

Why do you have to continuously fix it?

And how does repairing curriculum help the argument that nurses should call themselves “doctor”?

Doctors and nurses already take part in courses known as “continuing education.” MDs and DOs are re-examined periodically in order to renew their medical licenses. Are nurses not re-examined to keep their licenses?

And how does a PhD in a curriculum unrelated to patient care ensure continuity of competence?

Presumably, the PhD study will follow directly the bachelor’s and master’s study. How then does the PhD — received early in a career — guarantee that its recipient will still be competent 10, 20, 30 or 40 years in future?

It doesn’t. The continuity argument is a red herring.

Luke really wanted to beat on the Times for letting Nurse Potempa have the last words.

By giving a partisan to the debate the last word, the newspaper appears to be championing the nurses’ side of the dispute.

“It’s not like a group of us woke up one day to create a degree as a way to compete with another profession,” Potempa told the Times.

There is an element of truth to her statement, in that this movement towards nurses with doctorates surely has been afoot for some time. The University of Michigan’s PhD in nursing practice is described by the Times as “new,” but it didn’t invent itself overnight. There must have been countless and endless meetings to cook up a strategy of mendacity to promote this unnecessary new entitlement.

Once we reject the “continuing education” argument as baloney, there is only one reason remaining for nurses to confuse patients into thinking they are MDs or DOs. They want a piece of the salary action.

Well, actually, I can think of another reason. Graduate schools of nursing such as the one at the University of Michigan will do a brisk trade in minting new PhDs, billing tuition to the new doctoral candidates and hiring some of the new PhDs to be faculty.

All of which raises the cost of medical services, but ensures job security for nursing profs and deans.

The Times concludes its story by quoting Nurse Potempa: “Nurses are very proud of the fact that they’re nurses, and if nurses had wanted to be doctors, they would have gone to medical school.”

That is excellent advice for nurses who want patients to believe they are physicians, and would like to boost their salaries.

Why don’t they just go to med school and become REAL doctors?

The answer is plain: Because earning a REAL medical degree is a hell of  lot harder, more expensive and takes twice as long as sitting through poppycock classes, collecting a sham doctorate, then floating half-baked news stories in quest of an undeserved raise.

Note to readers: I watched my wife earn her M.D. degree, and I know how hard and expensive it is to become a REAL doctor.

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Warning to historians

Posted on October 1, 2011 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

If journalism is to be saved, who will resurrect it from the ashcan of history?

Why, none other than historians.

If they’re up to the task.

Having made the pitch that grad school-trained historians — of whom there is an over-abundance — could improve the quality of thinking that goes on in the nation’s newsrooms, I have to admit that I’m concerned about something else — the fact that academically-trained historians are relative innocents, compared to your run-of-the-mill journalist.

Back-stabbery as practiced by American journalists is a finely-honed skill. One of the merits of historians is that they are not indoctrinated by latter-day Machiavelis to be cynical career-grabbers.

But still, any historian contemplating a career in journalism needs to be warned.

There are very distinct and shall we say cultural differences between the mindset of your mainline journalist and your university-educated historian.

There is, for instance, the issue of plagiarism.

Historians are by nature dead-set against stealing other people’s work.

Not so journalists.

In the world of ideas, they are cat burglars, petty thieves and grand larcenists.

Now, you may have noticed that any set of ethical guidelines promulgated by your average newspaper  will proscribe the p-crime.

Don’t let the window dressing fool you.

Plagiarism is rampant among journalists, albeit in forms that are deemed acceptable, at least by the fraternity and sorority members of journalism.

I know this will shock you historians, because you have been trained to seek unique topics for research — topics that have not been delved into by other human beings.

That is the whole idea of history — to discover, learn and analyze new territories of history.

Shedding light on facts that are sometimes old, sometimes newly found.

You the historian are, in short, wired to quest after originality.

Sorry to say, but originality is not a desideratum for journalists.

Rather, their goal too often is just the opposite: Subjects that have been churned up by other journalists and thus proven safe are the ones that journalists most cherish.

You see, newspaper people are career-protecting people who don’t like to rock the boat, let alone a fleet of ships.

And since most of our papers today are members of chains, the fleet of ships metaphor is apt. Orders come from corporate headquarters, and careers are made not by good work in the local newsroom, but on the company’s national stage.

Courage is not in great supply among those who put out our daily news feeds.

It follows that untested ideas, or subjects that have not been plowed up hundreds of times by other journalists, appear as minefields to journalists.

Careers are at risk, and fresh thinking can be dangerous.

There are two implications of this reality for historians who wish to practice journalism.

First, watch your back. If your idea is really good, it could be poached by another journalist with no credit given to you, the originator.

If you don’t believe me, just listen to any radio station news program and see if the DJ doesn’t steal unabashedly from local newspapers without giving credit where it is due.

Having your intellectual pocket picked is a risk you run by turning to journalism.

The second and bigger danger, though, is the trap of originality.

Danger lurks in new ideas.

Peril hovers over a new discovery.

Is your topic unthought of and fundamentally original?

If so, it may not be recognized as a legitimate story by fellow journalists, including editors who are empowered to either accept your idea or slit its throat.

Or, if it is recognized as a great idea, it may still be ditched for fear of pissing off advertisers or other power brokers with check books that could buy a thousand historian-reporters.

I don’t want to discourage you.

Just beware. Don’t talk up good story ideas until you’ve got them nailed down, and then be careful how you pitch them to editors.

What if your idea is rejected?

Well, remember where you came from.

You are a historian.

History in its raw form — time — is on your side.

Editors, focused more on careers than on the endeavor called seeking after truth, will come and go.

File your rejected idea today and wait.

You may wait for years, but your time  — or rather, your idea’s time — will come.

If you wish to learn more about how historians and other independent thinkers can break into journalism, I highly recommend my book, SHOESTRING REPORTER: HOW I GOT TO BE A BIG CITY REPORTER WITHOUT GOING TO J SCHOOL AND HOW YOU CAN DO IT TOO.

If you are frustrated by lame-brained editors, you may enjoy my chapter, “Why are editors dumb?”

There is also a chapter that tests the reader’s ability to separate truth from garbage: “Building a bullshit meter” is all about discerning truth and rejecting falsehood.

In a forthcoming book, TOMATOES AND EGGS, I will focus on how historians can infiltrate the ranks of journalists and plant well-researched articles about the past.

Certainly, as a historian-turned-journlaist, you are up against profound prejudices.

Newspaper editors are fixated on the present and deplore stories with a historic twist.

But as I point out in SHOESTRING REPORTER, editors are also pummeled by the historian’s friend — time — and often in their panic to meet deadline will accept a previously rejected story with a subject that stinks of history.

History, in sum, is subversive, and practicing history as a journalist is a subversive activity.

Are you the historian up to some entertaining and intellectually rewarding fifth-column work?

If you are, come with me to journalism and we’ll have some fun.

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