peggy agar don't get no respect (but she's right)

Poor Peggy Agar -- Usually she's out by some godforsaken highway in the middle of the night, reporting on the bad driving conditions.  Today, for once, she gets a good, daylight assignment:  try and get close enough to Barack Obama to ask a question.

So off she goes to Sterling Heights, where Obama was walking around one of the last Chrysler plants standing.  And when he comes within 3 feet, she quick shouts out her question:  "What are you gonna do to help American auto workers?"  

Apparently not expecting a Detroit reporter to be around when anything important is happening, Obama brushes past her with a "Hold on one second, sweetie," but doesn't address the question.  Unfortunately, Agar says, he didn't address it later, either -- or, more importantly, in his comments to the auto workers.

When she got home, there was a message from Obama on her machine, apologizing for not getting to her question, and for calling her sweetie.  I'm sure Peggy Agar's been called worse, just being a reporter in Kwame Kilpatrick's kingdom.  Apology accepted, she said -- but he still didn't answer the question.  Which is actually a very good question.

I'm an Obama supporter, but Peggy Agar makes a good point:  he needs to get a stronger message for those working class men & women, white & otherwise, who Hillary Clinton has been so effectively connecting with lately.  I want to see that, but I haven't yet.  "He never spoke about the workers' biggest concern:  their future," Agar reported.   That is a BIG omission.  There's no way anybody, let alone a presidential candidate in this election year, should be talking to, of all people, auto workers in Detroit -- and not talk about how he knows they're under fire and what he's gonna do for them!  

I realize we still have time, and that Obama's a very smart guy and fast on the uptake and all that.  But I swear to God:  if he doesn't nail down and drive home a strong message the people will respond to, in this year when people are so ready to hear it --  If he turns out to be another understated, patrician, no-rough-stuff type like Kerry was, even as they were flattening him -- If we lose this election, which should be winnable by a freakin stuffed animal with a tag that says "democrat" -- I am NEVER, NEVER going to vote again, in whatever country I end up living in.

I'm behind you, Barack Obama ... Don't make me wish I'd gone with Hillary!

the tag game

From my friend Bruce Hodges, music writer extraordinaire and genius behind the blog Monotonous Forest, comes this instruction:

1.  Pick up the nearest book.

2.  Open to page 123

3.  Find the fifth sentence

4.  Post the next three sentences.

5.  Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

OK: 

"The lumbermen were not good at cleaning up after themselves.  When a crew had felled all the trees within reach and cut off the tops and branches so that the trunks could be sawed into logs and carries away, the debris was usually left lying where it fell.  It lay there after the lumbermen moved on -- mile after mile of it, sometimes -- and the dead wood lost all of its moisture, the needles turned brown and grew brittle, and after a year or two or three the area became one vast unignited menace, as dangerous as an exposed powder magazine, waiting for one little accident."

[That's from Bruce Catton's autobiography, Waiting for the Morning Train, published in 1970.  Catton was one of the greatest Civil War historians.   This is a fantastic book about growing up in northern Michigan at the turn of the 20th century, but it's much more than a boyhood memoir; it's a meditation on how economic progress and environmental destruction go hand in hand, and how, once it's begun, technological change outstrips peoples' ability to control it or even choose whether to go on -- we're just sort of hangin on for the ride.]

I don't know very many bloggers, so I'm tagging Jackie Sheeler (Get Mad WITH Me!), Robert (Blue Heron Blast), Nicole Blackman (poet/performance artist), Steven Solomon (painter/solostudio.blogspot.com), and David Stavenger/Ghostboy (Australian poet/perfomance artist).

a city spinning its wheels

I wonder about this WXYZ news, I really do.  The mayor of Detroit has instituted a level of corruption here that makes Chicago look like a Swiss village.  Now at last the city council is finally, FINALLY censuring mayor Kwame Kilpatrick (ooh!) and is trying to figure out what comes next.

They can try to force him out, but it will get hung up in the courts and cost a lot of $$ which the city doesn't have (b/c Kwame's spent it all on Hawaiian vacations and giving his relatives jobs). Or they can ask the governor to fire him, which seems like the most expedient thing, but what would that involve?

Well we don't know, because the goddam local news cannot be bothered to give this story more than 2 minutes, even when it's their top story.  God forbid they should interview anybody who might give some context or interpretation of what it would mean for the city to try and force him out, or for the governor to get involved.  No, we can't get into that whole liberal-arts thing of actually thinking about this or trying to break it down for you, because we've got other fish to fry in the city of Deetroit -- 

Pointless shooting outside a laundromat this evening -- some guys in a burgundy sedan shot at a guy waiting for his girlfriend to come out with the laundry.   No one knows why.  Grazed his face, otherwise no one hurt (for once).

Vandals covered every inch of Phoenix Academy in SW Detroit in graffiti.

Progress in the American Axle strike -- this is another major story of national importance, but we get no details on what the progress consists of.  Ten seconds of footage of strikers on the picket line.

Gas is $3.82 a gallon, record high; traffic tie-ups; and the weather is going to get warm and sunny tomorrow -- it's been cold and rainy the last 2 days.  

Obama's coming to MI Wed., for a town hall meeting in McComb County (where, please) and some event in Grand Rapids (what? where? when?? jesus christ!) -- fifteen seconds total, the least informative news "story" in history.

Onward!  Thieves caught on tape stealing from a church.  Airport employee caught stealing passengers' luggage at Metro airport.