Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

"A Zappadan Miracle" edition.

What would qualify as a Zappadan miracle?

How about a reporter telling some unhappy truths about the industry for which he works, and then resigning his job -- in the teeth of the Great Recession -- as a matter of principle?

Because everybody knows that is unpossible, right?

Everybody knows that everybody is on the make. Everybody has a price. Everybody has been slammed to the economic curb so fucking hard that they'll eat shit with a smile and ask for seconds to keep from ending up dancing for nickles in front of their Frigidaire box on Lower Wacker Drive.

This, after all, is the subtext of every Smart Money sermonette that smirks out at us from under glossy suits anf bulletproof hair every Sunday at the Mouse Circus: the deck is stacked so cold and tight that we can never win and are fools for even trying.

That the only way up is to sell out.

And every time the American people are sold a little deeper into bondage to corporate interests -- every time another bankster or Pharma lobbyist or health insurance mogul uses a gummint-issued backhoe to pick our pockets from behind after they have shot us in the face from the front -- we are counseled by all the clever dogs to take fucking the deal. To spend the rest of the waning days of the America we knew finding new and maximally-profitable ways of surrendering our futures to the implacable engines of oligarchy.

But I, for one, do not consent.

Will never consent to meekly dig my own grave.

Will never consent to obediently climbing into the lime pit just because the Villagers tell me it's the only open road left to me, which is why I try to spend some time every week opining intelligently bitching about the gassy trolls and skeezy puppeteers who have all but destroyed the honorable profession of journalism in America.

But this time around, rather that banging my sore old head against the same granite wall, I want to instead celebrate a small, local journalistic miracle.

Regular readers know that I am an admirer of the work Steve Rhodes does over at "The Beachwood Reporter". (Almost) every day, Steve emerges from his bunker to talk a little treason about various local sports cartels, link to interesting fellow travelers, and tell us in high style something wormy and compelling about what's happening in the ongoing, malfeasant comic-opera that is Chicago politics.

He is one of the canaries in our municipal mineshaft...if the canary was a mean, old dog...with a lockjaw grip...and a...big bag of adjectives?

OK, admittedly that metaphor toed itself into the wall pretty quick, so let's just let Steve speak for himself.

I am no longer contributing to NBCChicago.com and I feel obliged to tell readers why. It's also a tale that needs to be told in any case.
...

Around 11:30 a.m. the next morning - more than 24 hours after my piece was posted - I received a note from media maven Jim Romenesko notifying me that the link for the post I had provided in my Beachwood column was broken; he had been looking forward to reading the piece. The broken link was new to me. But it turned out it wasn't a broken link at all; the story had been "taken down."

No one had notified me. Perhaps no one would have had I not been alerted to it.

I sent an e-mail to my NBCChicago.com minders asking about it. At the same time, I noticed that a story I had submitted earlier that morning - and which had been approved in the usual morning pitch process - had never been posted. That was about the suicide of Michael Scott, a Daley insider who had most recently been the chairman of the school board.

...

There was not a "comfort level" in Chicago with what happened, I was told, but it happened at "the highest levels" of the company. And that "the highest levels of the company" made the decision "to remove" the [Tribune Company CEO Sam Zell's chief lieutenant Randy] Michaels post.

I was then told that the Michael Scott story had been scotched because he was a friend of a high-ranking station official here in Chicago who had been "ruffled" by the coverage of Scott's death to that point. On the heels of the Tribune controversy, I was told, the folks (or perhaps just one folk) here in Chicago didn't want another battle on their hands.

...

...With 20 years in the business, I know how things work. And yet, with everything I've seen myself and reported on in others, I cannot recall ever being involved in an incident like this. It was truly depressing.

I never set out to be a media critic. All I've ever wanted - well, after it became clear I would never play centerfield for the Twins, shortstop for the Cubs, or lead a rock and roll band - was to be a journalist. Call me corny, but I believe in the calling deeply.

But how can journalists keep quiet about what goes on in their own shops while cajoling - and even moralizing to - others to speak out about what goes on in theirs? We as an industry hail the whistleblower in print while not only keeping secrets ourselves, but expounding on how much the citizenry needs forthright people like us for democracy to survive.

It makes me sick to my stomach.

...

And so he resigned.



Of course, after you read the whole thing here. (also too, the audio here from his interview on WBEZ) you may ask yourself, "Sure, it's an awesome, inspirational story, but what in the world does it have to do with Zappadan?"

Well, first, I felt really bad about not getting a post up this year in support of the fine cats and kittens who sponsor the celebration, so let's just say that somewhichway whatever I wrote today was probably going to end up being a little, ah, Procrustean-ed into that bed.

But second, during his lifetime, Frank Zappa fought relentlessly against government censorship of words, and the faked-up outrage of "What about the Children?!" campaigns by right-wing groups who tried to use that manufactured fear to drive this country into the suffocating bosom of

fascist theocracy.

But of course, "fascism", is just another word for "corporatism":

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."

-- Benito Mussolini.

And when, instead of reporting the news, corporations take it upon themselves to pollute one of the public's few remaining sources of honest information in order to protect the personal interests of the powerful, then the convergence of corrupt government interests and corrupt corporate interests has indeed begun to approach the point where government really has become

"...the Entertainment division of the military-industrial complex."

-- Frank Zappa

So thank you, Steve, for having the integrity to take up arms against that particular sea of troubles.

Happy Zappadan, good people.

And may you all find clever ways to put every hour of darkness of this longest night of the year to naughty good use!