Headline writer comes through again

Davenport, Iowa's Quad-City Times, never accused of either subtlety or wit, may have finally ignorantly topped itself.

The bombing of Libya in 1986 inspired the previous QC Times shameful headline champion. That raid — which killed 15 civilians, including a 15-month-old baby girl — moved the Times to festoon its front page with a single towering word from gutter to gutter: Gotcha!

Now that's the kind of boorish behavior that earns all of us flyover victims our rube stripes. Thanks for representin', Quad-City Times!

So what's the deal with today's headline? Why would a simple announcement of a candidate declining to run for office demand a reaction?

The candidate in question, Democrat Lane Evans, has represented western Illinois' 17th district for 20 years, and the fact that he Won't Run shouldn't be a big deal except that the dude has Parkinson's disease and is giving up his seat because his health has deteriorated dramatically. Evans not only won't Run, the poor guy probably will never walk again.

Yes, there is a good degree of black humor in the situation, and I can appreciate that, but (full blog disclosure) as a former employee of the venerable Times, I know firsthand the journalistic and intellectual integrity that is lacking by the armload in that newsroom. Ignorance is kind of a badge of courage at the Davenport rag, and once again, it's been fully earned.

Beyond the dopey headline, there is a real news story here. Evans has been one of those model Union democrats in this part of the country where many union retirees of farm implement plants have made his reelection campaigns coronations. Add to that his ability to meet individual needs of constituents and remain strong on military issues, and Evans has been a strong presence for the Democratic party in the House.

But now, for the first time in 20 years, that big seat is up for grabs and Illinois Dems (perhaps in microcosm to the situation that faces the party nationally) are caught with no real backup plan. Not a good situation for a party that is basically counting on making big seat gains this November.

So watch for Republican money to start flowing into western Illinois as their leaders target this district for takeover. Luckily for the Democrats the Red candidate is one with many personal negatives and no governing experience. As long as the old Union guys and Vietnam vets come out to pull the blue lever in Lane Evan's memory, the Democrats should still squeak out one more term on the legacy vote.

Distant Rumbling Becoming a Roar

Big business begins push to shut down the Internet as you know it.

Keeping up with the world that moves at a faster pace than the one we enjoy out here in flyover land would be impossible without the Internet. The wide-open variety of content and lack of structure matches our own proclivities for disorder and liberty. But the wild west days of the Internet might be coming to an end if the world's largest phone and cable companies get their way.

As early as 1992, cable companies were petitioning the FCC for more control over who uses their "pipes" and what data is streamed through them. Now things are heating up. Recent articles in The Nation and PC World hint at just how far these companies would like to go in their control of Internet content and fees.

It boils down to this: the companies who own the hard lines that Internet data streams through don't feel they are getting enough compensation for their services. In fact, they are ticked that other companies are making money providing Internet content and not giving the pipeline owners any of it. As a result, the communications companies seem to want to turn the Internet into a pay to play, proprietary entertainment and commerce network. That means an end to the open forums, special interest sites, and certainly, insurgent and open political discussions.

What they'd love to do is not only charge us for basic connection, but also make us pay for the amount and kinds of data we download and stream, as well as charge licensing fees to businesses who do online commerce.

But there is another, more sinister layer here: how do they accurately charge us for our data use? They use something called "deep packet inspection" to keep track of all online activities.

Now we're not reknowned for our sophistication out here in the heartland, but we do realize this is already happening to many of us. Illegal government surveillance is still something that can't be openly admitted, but the communications companies are asking to take these privacy invasion practices and make them a part of ordinary business. Hmmm, that ought to make things a little easier for the folks at Homeland Security.

Certainly companies ought to receive fair compensation for the services they provide, but silencing a vital means of a nation's transactional communication is not the answer.

There are a few entities beginning to organize for the fight. The ACLU has been on this issue since the beginning. Also, Common Cause has a serious push on, as well as commercial arms such as Amazon and Google.

The communication companies want to end network neutrality and pull the plug on the open roadway the Internet has provided for information, entertainment, commerce, and debate. We know a few things about open roadways out here, and there's nothing quite like them. It would be a shame to lose any of them, paved or electronic.

Sunshine Week! (It's not related to Spring Break)

Open Government is good government.

This is the second annual Sunshine Week — a bipartisan effort to encourage open government, protect the alarmingly eroding Freedom of Information Act, and to generally raise awareness that a population that is not vigilant about keeping its government from behind closed doors is asking to be kept in the dark.

Information is power, and it's important that we all let our government know that the ever-increasing levels of secrecy at the highest levels is not acceptable. "Being at war" is neither a good excuse for subterfuge nor a pleasant opportunity to take steps toward dictatorship. Check out the excellent Sunshine Week Web site to find ways we can all take action.

And remember — someone's always watching you, but who's watching them?

Boys and Reading

Are certain types of books really gender specific? Slate.com's Emily Bazelon seems to think so.

Despite her liberally-tuned bravado, she's labeling with the same intensity as those she attempts to criticize. Her thrust here is, I think, that as emerging readers, boys are curious for information and girls are interested in narrative.

Now there's no flyover angle in this topic, but it's worth pursuing because any time a liberal or conservative puts forth a gender-based, developmentally-linked hypothesis, skepticisim is immediately called from the wings and invited to hold center stage.

But skepticism isn't even required here, because like many feature-oriented items in Slate these days, the central conceit is completely flawed and aimed at an information consumer who expects to devour unexamined discourse along with her ham on rye during the lunch hour.

So why the gender identification in this story? If you love literature and identify with it as a youth, you love it all, whether you admit it or not . . . Little House, Harriet the Spy, A Little Princess, All Creatures, etc. Those were the books late Boomers and Gen Xers had on the shelves, and that's what we all read read. Big deal. We also read tons of nonfiction about nations of the world, inventors, Ripley's Believe it or Not, Guinness Book of World Records, and Mad Magazine.

The gender-specific nature of book publishing came along as a result of marketing departments, not reader preferences. Who's reading Harry Potter these days? Everyone, of course, so why not a column about why girls are reading "boy" books like Potter, Snickett, and (going back to the beginning of this genre phenomenon) R.L. Stine's Goosebumps?

I will agree that the outstanding work of Richard Scarry, Stephen Biesty (Cross Sections), and David Macaulay (The Way Things Work) are particular to the male interest in that they tap into the inherently ordered, logical, curious nature of the emerging young boy's mind, but that shouldn't discount the need for that same mind to pursue narrative, and yes, even emotional, storylines. What's the Bill Murray line from Stripes — "All right, who cried at the end of Old Yellar?" That's just what boys do — gleefully give in to emotionally charged material when our young brains are ripe for any sort of attention or connection. Most of us loved that stuff, even if we'll never tell you about it.

But back to the misguided Slate piece. It's classic, expected liberal drivel . . . the same kind of sanctimonious goop you see on the Today show every morning. It's an expectation of what the core reader base will identify with, even if that expectation is based only on innuendo. I do agree with Rush Limbaugh on a few points in life, and one of his core nuggets has always been that liberals at the top of the cultural or media ladder have little respect or regard for anyone else who isn't in that position, so they inevitably talk down to those perceptually below them. As a result, their discourse does not reflect what the rest of the nation thinks, but what they believe everyone else thinks . . . or should think. Usually that presumption results in pedantic, unrealistic, goopy presumption.

Now, as contrast, take a look at a similar piece from the International Reading Association, which is a far more serious, fair-minded look at the issue of boys and literacy. Oh, and after you've read that, ask yourself, "Why didn't Slate's Emily Brazelon credit this piece as completely being the basis for her own (which it clearly was)?" But what's a little sourcing among friends? I'm sure she's enjoying her $250 check for her adaptation of the IRA article. Enjoy your dinner, Emily.

Public Embarrassment & Privacy, Part 2

Rock Island, Illinois, isn't much of a city these days. There's little industry or retail, and the geography prevents residential expansion. But there are bars . . . quite a few of them. And they create problems.

There was a time when Rock Island was a transportation and manufacturing hub. Farm equipment was the major industrial player, as well as trade in lumber and other building materials. Those were endeavors that created tax revenue, but throughout the 70s and 80s, those industries finished their exodus. Today the city relies upon its downtown "arts and entertainment district" to generate the majority of its commercial tax revenues.

They can label the area whatever they want, but here's what it boils down to: Rock Island — one of several small cities in the "Quad City" area that straddles the Mississippi River — keeps its bars open until 3 a.m., which is 1-2 hours later than any other local community. It's a goldmine for bar owners who welcome Davenport and Bettendorf, Iowa, bar-hoppers on the weekend and the city opens its arms with a 1% liquor and food upcharge on the sales tax just to make the welcome complete.

As you might expect, there is a price to be paid when drunk people from around the area converge on a few city blocks to finish off their weekend reveries. Yes, fights break out, low-lifes abound, and people do lewd things on the streets. To this point, city leaders have asked bar owners to participate in a voluntary — and then mandatory — annual fee for extra police presence on the weekends. Now they've taken the extra step that many other communities have pursued: blanketing the area with security cameras.

It's an interesting dichotomy for a City Council that has been controlled by a strong mayor (who regularly spouts "moral" ideals) for nearly 20 years. Late night liquor hours invite trouble, the kind of trouble that is expensive to regulate. So the city welcomes the tax revenue the after hours drinking provides while passing most of the security costs along to the bar owners who are the very ones who make the municipal fiscal windfall possible.

So, predictably, security cameras have suddenly become the easy answer to downtown problems. The city is spending $17,000 to have an unspecified number of cameras installed by June 1, just in advance of the busy festival season — a cost that will ultimately be passed along to local bar owners, no doubt.

The decision to proceed with this plan was made just a few nights ago amid (what seems) very little opposition. Although video surveillance in public places has yet to attract federal regulation, it's a practice that will undoubtedly eventually come under legal scrutiny.

The Supreme Court has steadfastly held (most notably in Katz v. United States 389 U.S. 347, 88 S.CT.507 [1967]) that there is no expectation of privacy in a public place, and it's difficult to disagree with the point that when you are in public, you forfeit your rights to privacy. But now that question has become more difficult. We are near (or are already on top of) technology that can basically perform an electronic strip search at a hundred feet. The devices in use are surpassing simple video surveillance, and the courts will eventually need to become involved in these issues.

The ACLU, on its Web site, provides 4 well-argued reasons for opposing public video surveillance. The most persuasive might be the first: that video surveillance has not been proven effective in deterring crime. The most compelling reason, though, is the last: that video surveillance will have a chilling effect on public life. This outcome, which is the least quantifiable, may prove be the most important and the one that most deeply affects quality of life in a democratic society.

Out here in flyover land we value our liberties to a degree that people in major cities may have surrendered long ago. We're not up to no good, we have nothing to hide, but we just feel a comfort in knowing that the freedoms this country was founded upon are alive in their purest form out here. We're not ready to give up our daily movements to constant surveillance.

When communities in our own backyard begin to experiment with public video surveillance, it makes many of us more than nervous . . . it makes us wonder what's next. And that's the question this whole issue of public, traffic, and corporate surveillance begs: what is next? The ACLU, in all of its liberal glory, is telling us to imagine the next step, and even though they haven't spelled out the future explicitly, we've all read the books, and we know.

Maybe a few cameras outside bars in the middle of the night will help us find out who started a couple of fights a year, but is that information valuable enough to put mechanisms in place that create a society under the microscope in all public places, at all times?

Or is it just this simple: you keep your bars open until 3 a.m., you're going to have a few drunken fights a year. Want to change that behavior? Think about altering your drinking hours instead of threatening more of your citizens' civil liberties.

Public Embarrassment & Privacy, Part 1

The Peoria Journal Star presents this story that will inspire mixed reactions. A naive farmer hits the big city, gets lost, asks for directions from a young lady, and gets swept up in a prostitution sting operation.

The man is charged with soliciting, and the officer posing as a heartland hooker claims he was asking for a massage while pointing at his crotch. The out-of-town farmer has a different story, but "he said/she said" isn't really the point of this.

The guilt or innocence of this guy isn't all that important either. On his behalf, though, I'll say that I've had to travel in Peoria a few times over the last six months, and the construction there has made the city less than navigable. I can understand how someone might lose his way — even someone who thinks he knows where he's going. But on the other side of the coin, Peoria has the reputation of being a bit of a sin city within a vast agricultural flyover desert. Big Al's downtown strip club is a rainy day institution for out-of-town sodbusters and there are rumours of more than one happy ending massage parlour doing fine business.

Yes, there are some things about this anecdote that don't ring necessarily true. The story presents this guy as a callow geezer, but he's only 48. And he also protests a bit too much and with plenty of earnestness, which often creates a credibility problem.

So why is this story even worth considering? It seems the Peoria Police Department has a policy of placing photographs and detailed personal information of arrested violators on its website before guilt has been established. Although the subject of this story was nabbed just a week before the Peoria PD had begun this practice, and he was spared such public embarrassment, his reaction to the policy is worth noting. He says, "It might be all right (to post johns' mug shots) after they are proven guilty . . . but to put it on there before a person is proven guilty . . . a person has certain rights, and that encroaches on them."

If this dude is, in fact, innocent, his presence on the website as a suspect would have devastated his everyday life in the small town where he lives. It's already been a trial for him as the news has spread only through word of mouth, and the ribbing he receives breaks down his dignity with every chuckle. These are the guys who end up with shotgun in mouth and no cinematically poetic note left behind to soothe the loved ones.

Every cliche you've ever read or heard about small towns is true. Your friends and the people who have known you your entire life never forget — anything. And the minor missteps stand out strongest. When you live daily with a painfully finite group of people, every action you take out of the ordinary sticks with you forever. It becomes a nickname, a shortcut, and simply who you are . . . for as long as you are alive. The anonymity that makes you both comfortable and lonely as hell in a big city doesn't exist in a small flyover town. You are exactly what people know about you, and it won't change.

Policies such as the one the Peoria PD employs amount to nothing less than a modern-day pillory — an unenlightened witch hunt that relies on accusation rather than facts as proven by the rule of law. Arrests, of course, are a matter of public record, but just because it is easy to post a mug shot on a website, should it be done? And what purpose is served?

My suspicion is that the Peoria PD, like any police department, gets extremely frustrated when cases against their collars are pleaded out or lost on judicial technicalities. Posting photos of suspected offenders provides public humiliation and punishment that might have been avoided if photos were posted only of those found guilty in the courtroom. So the police have taken it upon themselves to not only make arrests, but also to mete out judgments and punishments all in the service — I'm sure they would attempt to argue — of deterrence.

I don't know if this guy's story has any validity. Don't really care. Allowing the Peoria Journal Star to get into print the questioning of the PD's probably unconstitutional practice will be this suspect's biggest triumph.

In the meantime, if you're lost in Peoria and need to ask for directions, make sure you keep your hands in your back pockets.

Late winter makeover

So why even live out here, you ask. Why remain in the nowheresville of the flyover zone, hours away from a city of even a few hundred thousand, and light years away from quality entertainment and any semblance of widespread curious, intellectual interaction?

There's so much to complain about when you live in these parts (as evidenced by previous entries), but despite all of that smugness born primarily of frustration (and genuine amusement), there are just as many good reasons for staying here, and Sunday morning presented a concrete reminder.

Following a day that we all spent outside in shirtsleeves digging into pre-spring chores, we awoke to find our late winter brown and gray landscape redecorated with a gentle snowfall that continued throughout the morning as dense, huge, fluffy flakes. Of course variable weather doesn't only exist in FO territory, but the wide open spaces and featureless land take on a singular beauty when frosted with a layer of white. There are places to stand out here where a whitened landscape stretches from horizon to horizon, intermittently broken only by fences, trees, scattered farms, and utility poles.

One of the allures of living in flyover land is the contrasts that can occur between everyday experiences and voyeuristic Internet traveling. This morning, I jump-cut from watching a silent, gentle snowfall from my back porch at 6 a.m. to a fascinating, plugged-in report on current urban branding strategies and "being" and pop-up brand spaces from trendwatching.com.

Some great stuff in the briefing about how traditional storefront retail operations and service-oriented businesses are transforming not only their brand images by becoming a part of their consumers' lifestyle but are changing the way their products and services are delivered.


As examples, check out the individual minipreneur for-rent cubicles at The Village Quill in NY and Nokia's cell phone "Silence Booth" that is installed at summer festivals. When I read and see stuff like this, my back porch seems even farther away from civilization.

But the snow is really nice out here . . . and I haven't even talked about the stars yet.

Flyover Digest: Reminders of why you live where you do...and not out here

Family manifesto debuts in heartland . . . where the godless heathens need it most

ROCKFORD, IL — The Rockford Register Star reports that the City Council has received a resolution proposal in support of the "natural family."

The Concerned Citizens for America asserts in its proposal that "most social ills are caused by the widespread breakdown of the so-called natural family and calls for a world 'restored in line with the intent of its creator.'"

The resolution also "asks the council to state that the primary goal of children should be marriage to a person of the opposite sex." And there's more: "We envision young women growing into wives, homemakers, and mothers, and see young men growing into husbands, home builders, and fathers."

Most of the City Council is less than amused, but maybe not quite as affronted as one would expect. This is a city ripe with old-time Scandinavian Lutherans, and they do a lot of the voting. Check out the full text of the article by Bob Schaper and the letters to the editor that follow the story. Here's the full text of the proposed resolution.

The "natural family" resolution movement isn't just isolated here. It began in (hold your surprise) Utah and is being spread around the nation via the ultraconservative viral grapevine. Watch your local papers closely.



It's almost like seeing Elton John in person — without the Elton John

DAVENPORT, IA — A local music store will be (one assumes) proudly displaying a "bright red Yamaha Disklavier [digital piano] identical to the one famed (sic) musician Elton John plays during his Red Piano Show performances at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas."

One of the sales people at the store says (again, one assumes) without irony, "We are constantly trying to find ways to keep piano players playing, especially young kids . . . There's something about Elton John that says 'cool.'"

— Excerpted from Quad-City Times, 3-01-06

One of the best things about living in these parts is the wealth of punchline-less, pure comedy that can only come from that special place where ignorance, insular living, and delusion reside happily together.

Des Moines teen has finger squarely on the pulse of . . . something

DES MOINES, IA — Fifteen-year-old Richie Lee, despite the current media's calculated and relentless pressure to conform, has decided to go his own way . . . by becoming Buddy Holly? And let's give it to Richie, he's not doing it half-assed; this dude is serious about being dysfunctionally misguided. As the article in The Des Moines Register online version states, "Richie is not your typical teenager." No shit.

Nothing against Buddy Holly — beloved, inspiring, innovative . . . all that in spades — but (and I wish I could credit this theft of phrase, but you know who you are) this has to be the largest dose of poon repellant I've seen on a teenager since my Junior year yearbook photo. Someone, please, toss this poor kid a life preserver — or at least a CD by someone current and a Maxim magazine. Retro is cool — like when you're using it to cover up the fact that your twenties are rapidly dissipating — not when puberty should be calling the shots. Use that guitar playing to its adolescent advantage, dude. That's bait strapped over your shoulder — dangle your line in the water. Learn some whiny Staind or Jack Johnson songs and get yourself into the high school talent show. Use those hormones; that's what they're there for, Richie!

Let's hope no one gives this kid a deck of Magic: The Gathering cards. At least the Buddy Holly getup is still cooler than a spell-caster's robe.

Jon who? The "Daily" what? Comedy where?

As the culturally plugged-in set of both coasts pants expectedly for Jon Stewart's turn at the Oscar podium, it's the perfect time to examine the phenomenon of his fame from the Flyover point of view.

And here's the opinion of the much-lauded host of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" from most of my fellow FOVs (flyover victims): Jon who?

The truth is that only about a million people a night tune in to "The Daily Show," and outside of myself, my brother, and a few co-workers, I don't know of anyone out my way who follows the show regularly or even watches occasionally. And with just a million sets of eyeballs tuning in across the nation each night*, there are a lot of other Americans with TVs outside the middle of the country who will be getting their first mainstream jolt of Stewart on Sunday night. Wonder how his act will play with the wider swathe of viewers?

It's not the number of people who watch Stewart each weeknight, of course, but the influence of those who do. The first few minutes of each show feature a (usually) hilarious and satirical re-imagining of the day's news headlines. But, frankly, the show begins to sputter at the ten-minute point. The fake reporter packages and on-the-spot interviews that follow are sometimes amusing (but more often, pretty mean-spirited and aim more for a repetitive joke than the satire that begins the show). Stewart then conducts a nearly unwatchable interview in the last third of the show with a newsmaker or celebrity that is marred by either over-earnest mawkishness or unrestrained silliness. It's not the kind of entertainment that has broad appeal out here in heavy American Idol voter territory.

And Stewart's schtick — somewhere between smart-ass frat boy and Borscht belt comedian — can often devolve into eye rolling, repeated shouting (or whining) of punchlines, and eventually teeters on the tip of a genuine spit take. We'll see if he goes down that road at the Oscars.

Where Stewart has gained recognition and buzz from his fellows in the media is his (and his writing staff's) relentless observations on the idiocy of not only the current administration and its long list of bumbling decisions, but on the ineptness of lawmakers and officials of all stripes. The Daily Show is the only consistent forum for ongoing criticism of the current administration's missteps. It's a bit of a shame that more people don't watch — not necessarily because they might learn something about the news of the day, but simply to view pure freedom of speech as our Constitution intended it. It's also just damn consistently funny. (Special mention in the "funny as hell" category goes to the "reporting" on Veep Cheney's recent hunting mishap. The opening ten minutes of that show should be sealed in a comedy time capsule and protected for future, and possibly medicinal, use.)

But out here in the middle, and across these red states of ours, I'm not sure how Stewart, as host of a grandiose self-congratulatory fest like the Oscars, will come off. I'm certain he'll attempt to take a couple mild shots at the Hollywood elite (with accompanied "aw-shucks" softening) and slip in an easy Brokeback Mountain dick joke or two, along with the usual nerf-tipped barbs. But I'm guessing there will be one (and only one — see "David Letterman's fate") attempt at a cutting comment about either the curbing of certain freedoms in this nation or the underrepresentation of minorities in Hollywood. The remark will be reported as "genuine" and "courageous" by those in the media who have helped pump up the credibility of his career to this point. To most of the rest of us, though, it will probably seem just as sanctimonious as every other platitude and lapel ribbon we've come to expect from these events.

* By comparison, Bill O'Reilly regularly draws about 2 million viewers per show and the CBS Evening News — the lowest rated of the network newscasts — welcomes 10 million viewers each night.