By The River

In case one or two of you have forgotten why we elected Barack Obama president, check out this report from journalist Murray Waas on how the FBI believes Vice President Cheney was far more involved in making sure CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity was disclosed to the press--a federal crime--than has come out before now. Cheney was furious with Plame's husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, for publicly expressing doubt that Saddam Hussein had been trying to create weapons of mass destruction. Which we now know never existed. Lewis "Scooter" Libby took the fall for the vice president on this.

It will be interesting to see who receives President Bush's final pardons as he heads out the door to historical ignominy. Libby? Cheney? As we know from President Gerald Ford's 1974 pardon of former President Richard Nixon for Watergate, people can be pardoned in advance to forestall indictments.

Posted by David at 07:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's time for Rev. Rick Warren to find some face-saving excuse to step aside from delivering the invocation at President-elect Barack Obama's inaugural.

Obama got bad advice on this one. Either that or he was over-compensating for his own former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. But in any case, Warren has no place on the program. Not with his far right views on gay marriage, the place of women, and other topics important to Obama's base, as outlined so well in this piece by Katha Pollitt.

Warren is not the new Rev. Billy Graham. Graham was piece of work at times, and is most associated with President Richard Nixon, but at least he knew when to avoid divisive social issues and stick to the Gospel. In the age of the Internet, a pastor's every utterance, whether to 'friendly' audiences or not, is often available at the click of a mouse. Will Warren pray "in the name of Jesus," as many evangelicals insist on doing in all instances, and thereby offend Jews and Muslims?

There are many good and decent pastors out there who support both Obama and the issues important to a majority of Americans. Pick one of them, Mr. President.

Posted by David at 09:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I had some business in downtown Harrisburg yesterday, so I parked in the garage on Second Street across from Restaurant Row.

When I came back, I inserted my ticket. The machine told me to pay $3.00, so I put in a $5 bill. Instead of giving me change, it spit out a little piece of paper that said "Total overpaid: $2.00." No money, just scrip.

I'm thinking, huh? I looked at the machine and there was a permanent notice that if I received an "Overpaid" notice I was to call 255-3099. I did, and the Harrisburg Parking Authority answered. The employee told me I could bring the "Overpaid" notice to their offices to receive a refund, or I could mail or fax it to them. The machine was out of money, I was informed (this was at 2:45 p.m.), and "someone is on the way" to restock it.

I asked where they were located and was informed 123 Walnut Street. I said I didn't have anything to write down the address. The employee said someone would be sent to my location with a business card, but that I WOULD STILL HAVE TO MAIL OR FAX IN MY REFUND REQUEST.

I had no time to wait for someone to maybe show up. At that point, I told the employee that in my opinion this was a scam to get more revenue by making it such a nuisance to get overpayments refunded.

The employee hung up on me.

I was just glad I didn't put a $10 bill into the machine. So now my choice is to waste a 42-cent stamp to mail in my request for a $2 refund. I'd love to see the statistics on how many of these "overpayments" are ever refunded.

Posted by David at 09:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Thanks to some good reporting by Forbes Magazine, we now know that Sam Zell--not the economy--is the main reason for the Chapter 11 filing of the Tribune Company, owner of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Cubs, and a bunch of TV stations.

Zell put barely $300 million of his own money into the 2007 deal in which he acquired the Tribune Co., according to Forbes. That money came from his personal $900 million share in the $36 billion sale of an office REIT he owned to a group of hedge funds. The rest he--or rather the Tribune Co.--borrowed to pay off the various owners of the media company.

According to Forbes, Zell didn't really want, or at least didn't care that much about the media properties of the Tribune. He had his eyes on the Chicago Cubs, believing he could sell the franchise for a tidy sum and recoup his personal investment. It was all a game to him, and it resulted in the destruction, or impending destruction, of two of America's greatest newspapers. In his dealings with newsroom employees, Zell was coarse and rude if they asked "impertinent" questions.

Was it all necessary, despite the bad results? Nah. Forbes says apart from the debt that Zell loaded on the Tribune Co., operating cash flow was fine. Again, it was all a game that wealthy Wall Street types like Zell have gotten away with playing for the past 25 years in the name of "free market capitalism." They are free to play their high stakes game, and if the little people get crushed, that's all for the glory of free market capitalism.

Oh, and one detail I forgot to mention: as part of the bankruptcy, Tribune Co. will cut off severance payments to many reporters and editors who took buy-outs but elected, probably for tax reasons--lump sum payments under IRS rules are taxed at 37 percent, although you get some of it back when you file your next tax return--to take their severance pay over time.

I'd love to see the Tribune Co. employees, past and present, stage a sit-in at their newspapers, just like the employees of Republic Window and Door in Chicago are doing. This nonsense has to stop, and Zell should be investigated by Barack Obama's Justice Department come January.

Posted by David at 09:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the criticisms of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland was that the exhibits were too dry, that they didn't offer up the visceral rock and roll experienced. In other words, if you somehow didn't know anything about rock you might come out wondering what the fuss was all about.

But now comes the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ANNEX in New York's SoHo section, at 76 Mercer Street, and all I can say is hold on to your hats.

This is one amazing multi-media experience. The tour gets under way in a room filled with movie screens and soon to be filled with loud music. The experience is such that you feel like you're in one of the first few rows at a really good concert. When footage of the Beatles concert at Shea Stadium in 1964 came on, including screaming fans, you just want to weep for joy it's so good. Most of the footage appeared to be from New York City appearances by major acts, but the employee I asked couldn't give me a definite answer.

When you leave the screening room, they hand you a headset for the rest of the tour. This enables you to hear appropriate music when you reach different parts of the exhibit. So when you stand in front of a glass case containing one of AC-DC guitarist Angus Young's schoolboy uniforms that he wears during performances, cue "Highway to Hell." When you enter the over-the-top Bruce Springsteen room, cue "Thunder Road." And so on. You have to experience this for yourself to understand exactly how great this all is.

The tour takes about an hour, typically. There isn't as much stuff here as in Cleveland, but I think the presentation is much better. The Annex is located at 76 Mercer Street in the SoHo District of Lower Manhattan. It's about two blocks south of the Apple Store if you know where that is. Tickets cost $26.55 for adults and $17.88 for children, but additional fees add another $3 or more to each ticket. Senior citizens get just $2 off the adult ticket price, perhaps a wry acknowledgment that a lot of patrons of this museum are soon going to be old folks so better keep that revenue coming in.

Posted by David at 05:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I actually saw two plays in New York City yesterday, a good one on Broadway and a great one at the hole-in-the-wall Kraine Theater on E. 4th Street in the East Village.

The Broadway play was Equus, a revival of the Peter Shaffer play first staged in 1977 (which I also saw). The original Broadway production starred Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Martin Dysart, a psychiatrist, and Peter Firth as Alan Strang, a teenaged boy who blinded six horses in an act of madness. Now the roles are played by Richard Griffiths and Daniel Radcliffe. Griffiths is better known as the odious Uncle Vernon in the Harry Potter movies, and Radcliffe, of course, is Harry Potter himself.

This is a bleak, but moving drama of madness and obsession, which may be one reason it might not be appropriate for your Potter-obsessed pre-teen daughters. The other, as is fairly well-known by now, is that Radcliffe gets totally buck naked in the climactic scene in the play, as does the female character Jill Mason. I say fairly well-known because a teenaged girl sitting two seats down from me was shocked to discover this in the moments before the play opened and worried about whether her little sister should see it. The shock wore off, however.

After the curtain call--Radcliffe came out bare-chested--the cast auctioned off an Equus teeshirt to raise money for the Broadway Cares: Equity Fights AIDS campaign. It went for $1,000, mainly because Radcliffe put it on and sweated it up. When he exited the stage door onto West 44th Street, it was like Elvis leaving the building. Police were there to control the throngs of autograph seekers--I just remember someone shoving a guitar toward him. Radcliffe is quite small in person and seemed tiny in contrast to the looming mass of fans.

Actor and playwright Joe Capozzi got a warm reception from the audience, too, but his was for courage in turning his own tragedy into great art.

"For Pete's Sake," directed by Robert Charles Gompers, is Capozzi's story of dealing with being sexually molested by a Catholic priest in northern New Jersey in the 1980s. Saturday's staged reading was the first performance of any kind for the play, but I suspect it will eventually ascend the mountain at least as far as Off Broadway. It was a powerful experience.

I was invited to "For Pete's Sake" by Tony Perry, who worked with me at the Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa., long ago and who was in an acting class with Capozzi. Most of the actors in the production were from that same class. As a reporter, I had become kind of jaded by priest abuse stories. I wondered what Capozzi could bring to the story to make it come alive.

But I needn't have worried. He uses a sort of "This Is Your Life" approach that includes liberal amounts of both humor and pathos. His abuse at the hands of Father Pete, a trusted family friend, and how he blamed himself initially for what had happened is brought to life largely through the words of people around him. Even better are the inner voices he hears berating and comforting him.

The performance was a benefit for Road to Recovery, an organization that aids victims of clergy abuse. Several other victims were in the audience and rose to be recognized after the play concluded.

Posted by David at 08:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm in New York City this weekend unwinding from the end of both my newspaper career (through a voluntary buy-out) and the final throes of my last big project for The Patriot-News, a two-part series on the unsolved murder in the Penn State Library of Betsy Aardsma, a girl from my hometown of Holland, Michigan. Those stories will run Dec. 7 & 8, tomorrow and Monday, and can be read online at www.pennlive.com. I also posted a short film I made about the case.

So here I am on the 27th floor of Skyhouse, looking down on two beautiful old churches, one of them Marble Collegiate Church, where Norman Vincent Peale used to preach, and a lot of office and apartment buildings. My cousin owns an apartment here and lets us use it from time to time when we come to New York from Harrisburg.

My big question when I headed out Christmas shopping this morning was how soon a stranger would stop me to ask for directions. This has happened to me all my life, both in cities where I live and cities, including outside the United States, where I don't. I don't exactly come off as a Ninja killer, so maybe that's why. I don't know.

One of the problems all visitors to New York face is what direction to walk when they come out of the subway onto the street. Because all street corners tend to look alike here, this can be a confusing exercise even after several stops at the same subway station. New Yorkers say there's a trick to knowing, but it's complicated and I honestly can't remember what it is. Suffice it say that when I left the station at Rockefeller Center, I walked in the wrong direction. My destination was the Nintendo store on Rockefeller Plaza, which is just down from the ice rink and Christmas tree, but I eventually (too late) figured out I was heading instead toward Broadway.

A guy stopped me and asked if I knew the way to Rockefeller Plaza. Still in a state of confusion, I told him, "It's right around here somewhere." He thanked me for my bad advice and, unfortunately, took it. I walked in the same direction as him for about 30 more feet and then could see the overhead sign for Broadway and reversed course.

They say the shopping crowds are down in New York City because of the economy, and so far, I would have to agree. I've been to the area around Rockefeller Center in previous Christmas shopping seasons when it was nearly impossible to move. Today it was actually pleasant.

So I'm heading back to Skyhouse with my purchases and get on the D train to Herald Square at the Rockefeller Center station. I'm so absorbed watching parents with four kids under the age of 7 try to keep the kids from running around on the station platform ("stay off that yellow strip!") and in the car, "David, you have to sit down!") that I unconsciously got off the train at 42nd Street instead of 34th. I'm cursing my idiocy, but eventually another D train came along and I got to Herald Square, the stop for the fabled Macy's Department Store and the Miracle on 34th Street.

I had to change here for the N train. I'm standing there and a tall blonde woman approaches, smiles, and asks if this is the stop for Macy's. I assure her it is. She then asks me how to get to Macy's when she and her group left the station (see above). I couldn't help here there, telling her something on the order of "it's a big store and you can't miss it." They happily climbed the stairs and I got on the F Train.

Posted by David at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)