Guess exactly whose pain?

Our long national media nightmare is over

Now back to our regularly scheduled media nightmares: Terri Schiavo dies, market for pictures of praying children plummets

Terri Schiavo expired this morning; now commences the last great convulsion in the drama: the "last days" stories about her family and legal team, the fatuous ethics essays rehearsing the vital life-and-death issues involved, the sundry experts talking about how to grieve properly for people you have never met but have gotten to know through media feeding tubes (joke--I hope), and, just maybe, a timorous suggestion or two that perhaps the media overdid the Schiavo story.

Yeah, maybe. The media's Schiavo blitz has been nothing short of obscene. As "news," it had nothing new to tell us about end-of-life ethical quandaries; it was a sad, tabloid-ish spectacle from start to finish, a story manufactured through a religious right PR blitz and subsequently boosted onto front pages by the efforts and political needs of the Bush family, in Jeb's Florida where the story originated and in Washington where Brother W is laboring to divert public attention from his unpopular Social Security overhaul, the deepening mess in Iraq, and other assorted public relations problems. (Another factor in the very political calculus surrounding this "story": Unpopular as the Bush GOP's stand on the Schiavo case has proven, Karl Rove et al. are banking on the probably correct assumption that the Christian right will remember their gesture and everyone else will forget.)

All brought to you, sized to order, by your free press. Glorious.

Freedom-of-speech case might move forward even though famous respondent died Tuesday

The case, which was argued before the justices last week, concerns a former Cochran client named Ulysses Tory, who sued the LAPD, claiming he was injured in a shootout. Tory later maintained that Cochran conspired against him with the city of Los Angeles.

By the late '90s, Tory and a group of hired hands were picketing outside of Cochran's office, holding up signs that said things like "Hey Johnnie, How Much Did They Pay $ $ You to F--- Me?" In 2000, Cochran filed suit against Tory for defamation and won. (Tory chose to represent himself.) As a result, the California court ordered Tory to stop harassing Cochran, to stay 300 yards away from him or his office, and never to speak about him or his law firm again in a public forum.

It's the very last condition that's at issue. Read more about it here.

Pawlenty, Hatch, and the casino question

There's more at stake here than $200 million for cash-starved state coffers

Yesterday Minnesota AG Mike Hatch issued an opinion calling unconstitutional the Pawlenty plan for partnering with northern Minnesota tribal governments to build a metro-area casino (Strib, Pi-Press).

Quite apart from the legal questions, the main drama here is political. The national GOP deems Pawlenty a rising star and possible presidential fodder in '08. (Proof, if you need it: Karl Rove will be here on April 8 to headline a T-Paw re-election fundraiser.) 

Pawlenty, in turn, needs the casino proceeds to patch the state's budget while appearing to remain true to his "no new taxes" pledge (since taxes on Indians, like those assessed through state fees, are apparently not real taxes), which is the sine qua non of his national popularity. If he can't pull off the deal, his chances for avoiding budgetary implosion long enough to get himself re-elected next year may be seriously diminished. And if he fails in that, no presidential bid in '08, obviously.

Enter Mike Hatch, who represents the DFL's best--only?--shot at defeating Pawlenty in '06. This is the most interesting, and consequential, political fight to shape up in Minnesota in some time.

(Distant runner-up: Michele Bachmann and company versus the evolution- and abortion-friendly round world.)

Don't tell it, sell it

In the Strib: UM Prez Bob Bruininks likes the U's plan to become "a bit more Ivy League and a little less blue-collar" (way to sell it, Mary Jane--these days, when there's detectable bias in the Strib's news reportage and packaging, it's almost always conservative bias); bonding bill passes at the lege; and--actually, you can pretty much skip the rest (see separate item on Hatch v. Pawlenty, above).

In the Pi-Press: Driven by oil and raw materials prices, inflation rears its head.

Other dailies: Presidential commission concludes the US's pre-Iraq War intelligence findings were "dead wrong" in almost every respect (NYT); duck, everybody--Tina Brown is thinking big thoughts about media again (WashPost); the right-wing, Moonie-owned Washington Times frets over the meaning of GWB's declining poll standing (35 percent approval on Social Security).  

This week's Skyway News has a couple good bits, first and foremost this well-reported piece on the closing of downtown's only affordable market. Salient passage:

The store's closing may hit people in poverty the hardest. About a third of City Market's customers receive welfare assistance to buy food, Brad Hansen said; without City Market, they'll have no place close to shop, he said.

And this April Fools spoof is the most accurate reporting to date of the Minneapolis mayoral race. To wit:

In a room packed with well-meaning Caucasian liberals, incumbent Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak and his challenger, Hennepin County Commissioner Peter McLaughlin, had a heated exchange over just how much the two agree with each other.

How true! Their one major debate thus far pretty much went like this. In fact, one might view the difference between these two as the difference between old-fashioned vanilla (the status quo DFLer McLaughlin) and soy vanilla (the somewhat new agey Rybak).

In defense of the baddest bird on the planet

I've spent some of the week working a story about the government's plan to manage--read: kill--up to 2,000 double-crested cormorants at Leech Lake this summer. It is an interesting and complicated issue. No species of bird is so utterly despised as the cormorant. If teradactyls were to return to the planet and begin plucking toddlers from swingsets, they would still rank second to cormorant in a list of reviled winged creatures. The reason for this intense enmity? Cormorants form large colonies, they shit copiously and, most significantly, they eat lots of fish. 

In the past, cormorants were routinely referred to as "nigger birds" (an appelation that, obviously, says more about the speaker than the subject) and were widely and indiscriminately slaughtered. Both practices persist today, although to a much lesser degree.

In researching the piece, I have been struck by something that is only tangentially relevant to the current news: the elegance and vigor of the scientific literature of yesteryear. Take, for instance, Harrison Lewis's Natural History of the Double Crested Cormorant, which was first published by the Cornell University Press in 1929. Though Harrison writes as a scientist, he also writes as, well, a writer. Several passages impressed me with the clarity of thought and prose quality. In light of the current debate, his conclusion seems especially artful. 

The cormorant, Harrison wrote, "is by no means as unpleasant as it has been painted but is actually a reputable avian citizen, not without intelligence, amiability and interest." 

In the Strib: Alleged Red Lake co-conspirator Louis Jourdain nabbed through email, IM correspondence; the hypocrisy and essential idiocy of Michele Bachmann, continued; and leaders of the three northern tribes dragooned into a casino alliance by Tim Pawlenty are now threatening to go all democratic on his ass and submit the matter for tribal vote. (Pawlenty needs them more than they need him--the $200 million the state would receive is a vital part of his plan to hold the budget together until he runs for prez in '08, assuming he is re-elected next year.)

In the Pi-Press: At the lege, a Republican bill to require Minnesotans to buy health care coverage by 2007.

Other dailies: Bill and Hill's Mr. Triangulation, Dick Morris, tells Bush how to win on Social Security: give the people fake choices (NYPost); using kids to market products (CSM); report: spy agencies too subservient to White House in Iraq War run-up (WashPost); Johnny Cochran obit (LAT).