Dallas Morning News lays off a bunch of reporters, editors, and other news types. And a bunch of other non-news types, about 150 in all. Very sad day.
I mention it only because a few people have already asked, but I am luckily not among that number. My gainful employment continues. But at least one crabwalk.com reader was not so lucky. As I said, a very sad day.
John Peel, R.I.P. Truly one of the great figures of rock music.
And he got his start in Dallas, on WRR (back before it was classical). “WRR had a late night program that all the kids used to listen to called ‘Kat’s Karavan’ which was a rhythm ‘n’ blues program and played almost entirely black music. But the audience was almost entirely white in one of those kinda strange things that goes on in American culture, and the kids who listened loved the music but if any of the musicians had turned up on their front door they would have called the police, because it was quite a racist society at the time. But I had some records which were only available in Europe — some in this country, some in the Netherlands — and I took them to the radio station and they asked me to go on the program and talk about these records, which I thought they’d done because of my extraordinary knowledge of the music, but I think they probably did because they thought I had such an amusing accent — which by Texas standards I certainly did.”
Read the link for his own brief brush with Lee Harvey Oswald.
Speaking of faraway places I’ve been: the sex trial on Pitcairn Island has ended in convictions.
Some background: Pitcairn Island is, depending on your definitions, perhaps the most remote inhabited place on earth. It’s a tiny inaccessible speck in the South Pacific, home to 47 people. Those people have a history: They’re the descendants of Fletcher Christian and the other sailors who led the famous mutiny on the Bounty. (If you watch late-night cable, you’ve no doubt stumbled upon one of the five movie versions of the mutiny, in which Fletcher has been played by such actors as Marlon Brando, Mel Gibson, Errol Flynn, and Clark Gable.)
In 1999, through a series of happy accidents I won’t bother you with, I became the first American reporter in more than a decade to visit Pitcairn. (I think the first since 1986, if memory serves.) I wrote a series of articles about the island and its impending demise for my old newspaper. (Here they are: the main story; a sidebar on the mutiny; a sidebar on getting to Pitcairn; and a sidebar on their language. Some of my photos are here and here.)
Anyway, shortly after I left the island, a child sex scandal erupted. It seems that, for decades, the men of Pitcairn have been having sex with the island’s girls, some as young as 10. After an investigation dragged on for years, 12 men were charged with a variety of sex crimes — six island men and six ex-Pitcairners who now lived elsewhere.
Now the trials of the first six have concluded, and they’re guilty. It’s strange to look down a list of men convicted for child rape and see quite a few I know. The alleged “kingpin,” Steve Christian? I stayed at his house for a week. Dennis Christian? I have a wooden model Bounty he carved in my closet. Dave Brown? I have some honey he gathered in a jar in my kitchen.
This process has been screwed up from the very start. First of all, it’s taken five long years for the charges to be tried. Second, some of the charges are based on incidents 40 years old. I’m not sure what’s gained by trying a four-decades-old sex crime case.
At first, the Pitcairn men argued that they’re Polynesian islanders, and that you can’t judge them with traditional British sexual mores. (Pitcairn is still a British colony, and they were tried under British law.) But we’re not just talking about underage consensual sex here — we’re talking about rape.
On the other hand, the sexual lives of Pitcairn men appear to have been established for centuries — it’s not as if these guys were doing anything their fathers and grandfathers hadn’t done before them. It’s what they were taught from a young age. Dozens of Pitcairn women (past and present residents) stood up to defend their men, saying the island’s sexual habits were just the way things were — they’d had sex at an early age and survived just fine, thank you very much. When something is so clearly ingrained in a culture, the question of individual blame becomes dicey.
But the worst thing the trials have brought, from an island-wide perspective, is division. This is an island with 47 people. They’re all related. And a lot of them hate each other already. (Lots of petty, decades-old disputes.) Now you’ve got many of the women accusing the men of rape, apparently rightly so. The island was near death when I visited five years ago — I can’t imagine how it can proceed with that sort of divide hanging over it. Not to mention the fact that if the men actually end up going to jail, the island simply may not be able to operate. (There are very few able-bodied adults left to do the island’s work.)
I feel worst of all for the girls I met on Pitcairn. There were a handful of young teenagers on the island when I visited. All sweet girls. One younger girl, maybe 8 years old, was so cute and darling and sweet I wanted to cram her into my bag, take her back to the States and adopt her. Her dad was an ass, and it was clear there wasn’t much of a future for her on Pitcairn. I hate to think what she’s been put through in the name of island tradition.
The men will no doubt appeal; they’re currently planning an argument in a U.K. court that claims Pitcairn is not a British colony after all but an independent nation. (Best of luck with that.) But the damage has been done.
All in all, it’s a sad day for everyone. I could have told you five years ago that some of the men on Pitcairn are Very Bad People. But these verdicts likely mean the death of Pitcairn, which has stood as a strange outpost of civilization for two centuries. And that’s sad. To me, at least.
Here are some links to some of the better recent Pitcairn coverage: Claire Harvey in The New York Times, The Herald Sun, and The Australian (she’s been busy!) and Kathy Marks in The Independent. (Kathy interviewed me for a Pitcairn story she wrote two years ago.)
Happy Zambian Independence Day! Forty years ago yesterday, the British government transferred power to a group of freedom fighters led by Kenneth Kaunda. It’s not too late to send a greeting card to the Zambians you love!
For those unfamiliar with my interest in Zambia, I spent six weeks there last year as a Pew Fellow. Here’s the blog I kept while there.
I had a chance to meet with Kaunda while I was there. He’s a great (if imperfect) man. I’m glad the current administration in Zambia finally admitted a few days ago that Kaunda was not involved in the 1997 coup attempt, for which he’d been arrested. (Kaunda lost reelection in 1991 and was replaced with the deeply unimpressive Chiluba regime. Chiluba, growing increasingly unpopular and fearing a Kaunda return to power, trumped up the coup charges.)
Speaking of Zambia, Sunday Times readers may have seen this travel piece by Jill Abramson, the Times’ managing editor. It’s all about her stay at the Royal Livingstone, next to Victoria Falls on the Zam/Zimbabwe border. If it sounds like an appealing place to stay, don’t get too excited until you get to the end and see the price tag: rooms starting at $539 a night.
When I was in Livingstone, I saw the Royal Livingstone on a couple occasions. Seemed like a nice place. I stayed, however, at Gecko’s Guesthouse, a perfectly acceptable place that cost $12 a night. While I (unlike Jill) didn’t have a personal butler, I’m still convinced I made the right choice.
The branding of the president. Consumer research uncovers which brand names supporters of Bush and Kerry associate with the two candidates. For instance, Bush supporters think of Kerry as a snooty Starbucks guy. Kerry supporters think of Bush as a tasteless Bud Light.
The key finding, however, is in the fast-food category. Bush supporters think of their man as a Subway guy and Kerry as McDonald’s. (Perhaps a Clinton image hangover there.)
But Kerry supporters also think of their man as a Subway guy and view Bush as McDonald’s. In other words, both sides view Subway as a symbol of their guy and McDonald’s as the boo-hiss symbol of their enemy.
Clearly, Jared’s endorsement will prove pivotal.
Nothing better than browsing around Amazon and being asked: “So you’d like to…Break out of Oppressive Enlightenment Thought Structures.” Particularly when it’s written up by a freshman English major at Wisconsin-Madison.
Quote of the day: “Burger King wants to maintain neutrality during this election.”
This is photographic proof that my illness subsided sufficiently for me to see the Pixies last night. Damn it, if I pay $50 for tickets, I can will sickness away! Maybe that’s the solution for Third World illnesses. Force every cholera victim in Bolivia to buy $50 Pixies tickets, then tell them they’ll go to waste unless they feel better. Bingo: No more cholera.
Dude, doesn’t Frank Black look great in that photo? And I love the look on Kim Deal’s face.
Today is a very good day to buy a laptop.
Apple just announced new faster iBooks starting at $999.
Meanwhile, Dell has a crazy one-day coupon sale: $750 off a laptop order of $1,500 or more. TechBargains outlines some of the choices you can make to maximize the discount.
Random, disjointed, Nyquil-addled thoughts:
- I am sick. Sick as a dog. A dog who hasn’t gotten its shots. And hasn’t been eating his Science Diet at proper intervals. Fever got up to 103.5 last night, and I last slept on Friday night. Bone-shaking chills alternating with sixth-circle-of-hell sweats. Body aches, sandpaper throat, a throbbing head. All around fun times.
Sure sounds flu-ish, but I suspect the assortment of fried objects at the State Fair on Saturday played a role.
On the plus side, I’m feeling significantly better now, thanks. Fever’s down to about 100, and the headache is mostly gone.
- The act of seeking medical attention today was made more difficult by the fact my poodle-loving doctor has shut down his practice. Declared bankruptcy. I hope his poodle will be okay.
- For the record: fried S’mores > fried Snickers > fried marshmallows.
- Got a new cell phone, so you can ignore that note from a couple days ago. Number is the same as before.
- Wonkette has got plenty of links to the Jon Stewart/Tucker Carlson smackdown.
- My fantasy football team, the Bum Phillippi, continues to excel. This week’s matchup was a clash of the nerd-sports-fan titans, as the B.P. took on the only other undefeated team in the league, Orlando Cabrera.
Only one man’s misguided projection of his masculinity would be left standing! Only one man would still be able to vicariously live his high school fantasies of athletic success through the large, well-paid gentlemen of the NFL!
That one man is, natch, me, as the B.P. made mincemeat out of that mouse. The Phillippi now stand alone atop the league at 6-0. I suspect the ‘72 Dolphins are getting nervous.
Two important events that occurred to me at the State Fair last night:
- After ordering a Fletcher’s corny dog, the young man behind the counter, apropos of nothing, said: “Anybody ever tell you you look just like that guy in Ghost?”
Yes, the allegations that I look like Patrick Swayze have returned. And my hair’s not even particularly long at the moment! I continue to be unflattered.
- While riding those big fast-moving rotating swings (sorry, forgot the ride’s name), my cell phone somehow worked its way loose from my left pants pocket. At a high rate of speed, and with remarkable accuracy, it flung itself many yards away, straight into concrete. (It also nearly clubbed a toothless old man in the face.)
The phone worked, amazingly enough, for one phone call after that. But then death came. So, if you’re trying to reach me in the next few days, chances are slim I’ll be answering my cell. Try me instead at my work number (10-7, M-F, roughly) or at home.
Here’s my story from today’s paper: “Wilmer-Hutchins Superintendent Charles Matthews received more than $16,000 in illegal pay last year, according to investigators.”
Also, I forgot to link my story from Tuesday’s paper: “Nearly 20 percent of Wilmer-Hutchins employees will have to be laid off in the coming months, many of them as soon as next week, school district officials said. That total could include more than 30 teachers.”
I won’t retract my opinion that Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai is a total badass. But it’s a shame she’s so wrongheaded about AIDS.
Graham Greene had 47 favorite prostitutes, with names like Russian Boots and Bond Street French. The full list is apparently an appendix of the new third volume of The Life of Graham Greene.
(More Greenery here. While Greene had a thousand flaws, his life has long been one of the more romantic models for a writer. Particularly for wannabe globetrotters like me. Minus the prostitutes, that is.)
I’ve written several times about Gregory Haidl, the Orange County *cough* alleged *cough* rapist who videotaped himself anally penetrating an unconscious girl with a pool cue — but managed to get a mistrial through an astonishing web of lies and character assassination against the “slut” (his lawyer’s words) he raped. (More links to my past posts at that last link; some of the more astonishing stuff here.) He’s a bad, bad man.
Well, you’ll never guess what’s happened to dear ol’ Greg! Turns out he met a new underaged girl at a party thrown for him the night of the hung jury in the first rape case! Two weeks later, he was caught having sex with this 16-year-old girl, and how he’s facing statutory-rape charges on top of his rape-rape charges.
It gets weirder: The girl apparently doesn’t want to cooperate with police (the sex was apparently consensual this time). So she (and/or Haidl’s dad) hired an attorney to put up road blocks to the investigation. The attorney? A fellow named Adam Stull. Stull himself has a criminal record for…wait for it…having sex with an underaged girl!
Stull was convicted of six counts (including “penetration with a foreign object” — seems to be all the rage in California) in 1992, while he was a deputy district attorney helping teach a mock-trial class at a local high school. He ended up getting his law license suspended for 16 months. When asked by a reporter why he had sex with one of his high school students, he came up with this brilliant response: “You have to understand she looked 30. She was about 5’11”, about 130 pounds. Beautiful girl.”
Obviously a guy with a lot of credence in a statutory rape case.
Have I mentioned that Greg Haidl’s dad is the assistant sheriff of Orange County who made millions selling used government vehicles? (Or more accurately was until a couple weeks ago, when he finally resigned in disgrace.) Or that his ex-wife (the rapist’s mom) is suing the police for $15 million for daring to arrest their rapist son?
To hell with the bunch of them.
Random Monday links:
“There were neat rows — as if in painted yellow lines — hundreds of Ronald McDonald dolls. ‘It was eerie, frightening,’ says Dau, who is corrections officer for the Clinton County sheriff’s office. Why all those 14-inch stuffed dolls, with ceramic faces, had been so carefully placed in the middle of a half-dozen roads in Cedar Heights, is a mystery from ‘Twilight Zone.’”
Conservative state rep becomes porn king. “‘I feel no shame, as I have learned that what we do in our office is no different than any other business,’ Larry Schwarz says. ‘It is the adult-entertainment industry, and it’s not violent like what you see in real-life daily news or in mainstream movies.’”
The shame of kamikaze survivors. “‘I still don’t think it was a mistake to send kamikazes,’ Hamazono says, though he wonders why, if they thought suicide attacks were such a good idea, none of the officers volunteered.”
Menace to society or misunderstood entrepreneur? The $5 rocks look like a good deal.
Anyone else think Donnie Darko?
Great piece in WaPo about Bigfoot snobbery — specifically, how West Coast sasquatch spotters think of their East Coast counterparts as just a bunch of, you know, crazy people. “‘They basically said I was drinking,’ Dranginis recalled [after reporting a Virginia Bigfoot sighting to West Coasters]. ‘“Stay out of the woods, you idiot.”’ It was his initiation into the East Coast Bigfoot hunters, a group whose members say they are a put-upon subculture in the already marginalized world of sasquatch researchers.” I love it when one group of crazy people starts talking smack about another group of crazy people. (Great werewolf story on the second page.)
That last entry was both a statement of fact and a little Internet experiment.
Sarah Degenhart, you see, was the second-to-last questioner at the town-hall presidential debate. She’s the one who asked the question about federal funding of abortions. She was also pretty cute, in a sad, wounded puppy kind of way.
Anyway, I was curious to see how many Googlehounds would be searching for information on her — so I threw her name up on crabwalk.
The answer: Lots of Googlehounds. Nearly 200 so far. Not bad, considering that her name was mentioned once on television and never spelled out. (I’m sure there are several dozen other folks out there searching for Sara Degenhart and Sarah Degenheart.) Anyway, this site tells us Sarah is a Catholic school teacher in St. Louis (and second-cousin-in-law to a blogger).
Wlady Pleszczynski of The American Spectator certainly seemed smitten: “But has there been a lovelier and sweeter young American at such an event than Sarah Degenhart, who asked the second pro-life question? You have to wonder what tax bracket she’ll end up in when she gets to heaven.” (Dude, there are taxes in heaven?)
The Most Freaky Degenhart Response award, however, goes to one Alfredo Jacobo Perez Gomez, who within a few hours of the debate’s conclusion had posted a fan page dedicated to her. “Thoughtful! Cute! Adorable! She has soul! Okay, politically she seems anti-choice but she’s still highly kissable!”
It’s kinda creepy — particularly the note up top that warns: “Don’t worry! It’s Just for fun.” That and the “if you are Sarah Degenhart” note at the bottom, in which Alfredo seems to think his site will convince Sarah to leave her husband and run away to San Francisco with him.
In case you didn’t see today, Kenya’s Wangari Maathai won the Nobel Peace Prize. She’s also a total badass.
Fun with math! And two music recommendations heading into the weekend:
- The Shins + (pastoral feel * 2) + (Brian Wilson’s slow moments) - Albuquerque = Rogue Wave, the Shins’ Sub Pop labelmates and one of my favorite bands of the moment. Their specialty appears to be the slow-building acoustic track, with sunny ’60s harmonies and instrumentation. Really gorgeous, hummable melodies. Try “Every Moment” (not one of my favorite tracks, but it gives the general impression) and “Endless Shovel” (the one really upbeat song on the album).
- The White Stripes - (gimmicky hype x 2) + (3 * Mississippi Delta) = The Black Keys, a great Akron duo that produces a less childlike (and less childish) version of the Stripes’ blues stomp.
Their last album Thickfreakness was solid, but the new Rubber Factory (an ode to the main industry of their hometown) is damned terrific — a little more diverse but no less, er, stomp-y. Plus, the singer sounds a bit like a young Bob Seger.
Listen to this RealAudio stream of a recent in-studio at KEXP. (At 6:05 in, you can hear the band laugh as the host getting the album title wrong.) Also, here’s the David Cross-directed video for their new single.
Carl Lewis sings! And looks like Grace Jones! And seduces an elderly woman! Frightening!
Mister Pants has covered the ground far better than I could, but check out his post on Jay J. Armes, Texas’ premier private investigator with hooks for hands. And, as this photo proves, he could shoot you whenever he feels like it.
One thing Mister Pants didn’t notice was that Mr. Armes is also a former El Paso city councilman. Here’s the start of a 1993 story we wrote on him:
EL PASO — In his four years on the El Paso City Council, Jay J. Armes has been the target of epithets that would make many politicians cringe.
The El Paso council member is a “blight on government and the community’ and “an embarrassment,’ local newspapers say.
The usually eloquent Mayor Bill Tilney has called Mr. Armes a “pea-brain.’ The police chief has accused Mr. Armes of grandstanding for headlines; the sheriff has said that Mr. Armes is “only interested in making himself look like a big hero, which he is not.’ Former Mayor Suzie Azar called him “a liar.’
…As for his penchant to anger the local news media and politicians, the quick explanation is that Mr. Armes usually fires the first salvo. He told one local newspaper reporter, a Mexican citizen on a workers’ visa, that he would look into having her deported. He called a former city council member a “cockroach.’ He said the local sheriff “couldn’t find someone in a phone booth.’ Of a lawyer on the council, Mr. Armes said he “got his law degree out of a Cracker Jack box.’
But other than that, he’s a nice guy!
Not to brag — okay, to brag — but my fantasy football team has the makings of a Soviet-style empire, complete with its own sphere of influence.
Okay, that metaphor makes no sense. Must not really be awake yet.
In any event, at the end of week 4, The Bum Phillippi stand in first place in its league of 10, an undefeated 4-0. Among the keys to victory: expected strong performances from Donovan McNabb and LaDainian Tomlinson; surprising strength from the veteran Isaac Bruce and the rookie Roy Williams; Thomas Jones coming out of nowhere to dominate (er, until week 4, that is); and strong defensive showings by Charles Grant and Patrick Kearney.
Back to your regularly scheduled crabwalk.com.
Just for the hell of it (and because I post photos here roughly once per sunspot cycle), here’s the 10th-grade version of me. (On the left, silly.)
Careful readers remember Renya, the old high school friend I lost touch with for 14 years before a brief reunion in NYC in July. Well, Renya and I met at this French-language film festival in Quebec in 1990. Today, she mailed me photographic proof.
That’s me on the left, looking stylish as ever. Not sure what’s up with the pants. Or the sour look. Or what appears to be my problem with normal human contact. I was a problematic child.
On the right is Guillaume, a Rimouski native. He was significantly cooler than I was. Good guy, if memory serves. I kept calling him Guillaume le Conquerant. I thought that was very funny at the time.
In the middle are two fellow Louisianans. One of them is named Tatman; one is named Paige. For the life of me, I can’t remember which is which. I have vague memories of one of them being fun and the other being a pain. Again, can’t remember which is which.
As it happens, when I was in Louisiana weekend before last, I pulled out a few of the post-festival letters we all exchanged before losing touch for a decade (or forever). I hope I’m not breaking any seal of confidentiality by posting brief excerpts here:
From Tatman: “Well, now I’ll tell you what I did over Thanksgiving…I went to the M.C. Hammer concert with all my friends, I shopped and shopped and shopped in Houston, and I relaxed. Fun, huh?”
From Guillaume: “Thank you for your lessons of pool and English!!!” (Guillaume’s English was much better than my French, which remains an embarrassment to my culture.)
From Tatman: “I would ask you how you were or what you did over Thanksgiving — but you would just criticize me in your next letter.” (Apparently, I was an asshole even then. That said, she did spell criticize “critize.”)
From Guillaume: “One of my great dreams would be to visit all U.S.A. by hitchhiking. And there’s many cities I would like to see: New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles (Hollywood), and also New Orleans. I like very much jazz, and New Orleans is the city of jazz.”
Finally, this one from a French girl I’ll call L. (in case she ever goes self-Googling):
“Hi, honey! I really miss you. Do you ever think about me? Do you love me? Kiss kiss kiss kiss love love love kiss. Can I have a photograph of you? Have you got a girlfriend?”
Along with lots of little hearts and stickers marked “Kiss!” And — to add a layer of strangeness — a Rimbaud poem and an Amnesty International postcard.
The thing is: I have no memory of this girl at all. And as love-starved as the 14-year-old version of me was — my first kiss was still some time away — I can’t imagine I’d have forgotten about a fling with L. I have very distinct memories of flirting (awkwardly, unproductively) with a girl from Manitoba, for instance. But not a single neuron dedicated to L.
Things cleared up, though, when I reread one of Guillaume’s letters. He writes about the possibility he may get to go to France soon, for another film festival. “I hope to see, if I have the chance to go, Sylvie and Linda, but not L.! (I think this girl is a bit crazy, she wants to go out with everyone she sees…)” I guess I wasn’t the only one receiving her letters.
Here’s my story from today’s front page, on the gloom descending on Texas’ suburbs as new (lower) school ratings are released.
Joshua Benton is the director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University, among other things. Before that, he was a staff writer and columnist for The Dallas Morning News. (More.)
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