Uh-Oh, The Feds Are After Me

A rare advantage of posting my blogs on Blogspot is that I have it linked to “Sitemeter” which lets me see the number of visits, what post was seen, the ISP of the visitor and often the city of the visitor. OK, don’t get bored and move on…hopefully this will get just a little bit better.

Unfortunately, far too many of the “hits” to this site are for people looking for pictures of Giada DeLaurentiis’ cleavage, Joy Hickey, banana hammocks, the V-22 Osprey, used car salesman cartoons and Sarah Palin as a Zombie (actually I’m kind of proud of the Sarah Palin/zombie connection). Oh yeah, and Buckwheat.

Yep, Buckwheat. You know, the cute little African-American kid from “The Little Rascals". The one who Eddie Murphy parodied on “SNL” and in his shows. That Buckwheat. The one who’s brought me to the attention of the Feds.

The Feds. As in Federal Government. As in Department of Justice. As in Drug Enforcement Administration.

You see, I wrote a blog post in September of 2010 featuring Buckwheat and how my wife and I like to talk in his unique language that we call “Buhweet”. Like, “Otay Buhweet”.

This particular blog post was inspired by a newspaper article I read which said that the Atlanta DEA office was looking to hire translators—in Spanish, Vietnamese, Korean, Farsi and…are you ready?...Ebonics. So that got my imagination going and I made the connection to Buckwheat. And I wrote a tongue-in-cheek blog post. Here’s a link:

http://open.salon.com/blog/just-walt/2010/09/14/the_dea_ebonics_and_buckwheat--whassup

So how does that bring me to the attention of the DOJ and DEA? Well, in the interest of interesting illustration, I did a Google Image search and included a DEA logo in the blog post. And, the other day (see this is where Sitemeter comes in handy) I noticed that someone had spent the better part of 6 minutes in my Blogspot blog. Hmmmmm, I wonder who? The ISP was “US Dept of Justice” and the ISP is “usdoj.gov”. The search was for "DEA Logo". To quote Ralphie from “A Christmas Story”: “Oh fuuuuuddddggggge.”

And I asked myself, “Self, do these guys have a sense of humor?” And, of course, the answer is, “Hell no.”

Anytime now I expect to hear the sound of doors slamming on several Crown Vics, the sound of multiple feet thumping up the flight of stairs right outside our door and then the crash of a sledgehammer on the door as they come after this serious miscreant. Half a dozen guys in jumpsuits and bullet proof vests and helmets wearing windbreakers that say “DEA” on the back.

Will they Mace me? Will they tackle me and kneel on my back (hey guys I’ve got some pretty bad arthritis in my right shoulder so take it easy when you cuff me, OK?).

The music from “Dragnet” is going through my brain. “Dum, dee dum dum. Dum, dee dum dum, dum!” “Just the facts, ma’am,” they’ll tell my wife.

And it’s all DEA’s fault for stepping on my funny bone about hiring Ebonics translators. If they hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have had my brain-fart about Buckwheat. I wouldn’t have started writing. I wouldn’t have uploaded their damn logo into a blog post.

But that’s OK. I know they have to do their job of protecting the American public. From no-good-niks like me. At least there’s no one at DOJ.gov checking out Giada DiLaurentiis’ cleavage.

And if I have to go to the slammer all I have to say to my wife is, “I wubbu”.

Why is Newsweek for Sale? Because it Sucks

Well, today is a good day to write this post. It’s been sitting in my idea file for a month or more. Yesterday, the Washington Post announced that it wants to sell Newsweek because the magazine just isn’t profitable.

This in spite of Newsweek’s having gone through a total reformatting and overhaul last year.

As a subscriber, I think the reason is pretty simple. Newsweek sucks.

I’ve been a Newsweek reader for over 40 years. In that time it was a companion. It was a constant source of information. When I first taught American Government (Political Science 101) way back in the mid-70s I used it as a “textbook” rather than a more traditional tome. It was a great source for weaving a curriculum about the workings of the American government and stimulating a functional understanding in the minds of students on topics from VietNam to Watergate to Presidential Pardons.

And Newsweek really, really blew it last year when the magazine was totally re-formatted. When the new format first came out, it was literally impossible to differentiate between editorial and advertising content. In fact, it seemed as though pages and sections were intentionally designed to complement advertising both in terms of topic and graphics.

“In the old days”, Newsweek was a source of summaries of the events and happenings of the past week. It covered the gamut. Most articles were synopses of major news stories and every week there would be at least one full blown feature. Plus, the columnists and editors did a wonderful job “connecting the dots” between various stories. The magazine not only contributed greatly as an information source but it contributed just as much as a source of understanding.

But today it’s as though the magazine wants to be a print version of Huffington Post. Articles are written by people you’ve never heard of writing on subjects where you wonder about their source of expertise. Each is a full page of compressed grey type that gets intimidating as you turn through page after page after page of smarmy commentary notable more for the writer’s sense of smug certainty than for the use of topical expertise to illuminate issues.

So, to me anyway, the magazine has turned boring and has been made superfluous. It’s been made superfluous simply because it’s trying to be something it isn’t and because it’s not even doing that very well. For years, Newsweek did what it did very, very well. It quit doing that at all and now the best that can be said for it is that it sucks. I don't want a blog on paper. I want a newsmagazine and Newsweek forgot how to do that.

I’ve already told them that I would not be renewing my subscription. Too bad, because Newsweek has always been an old friend welcome in my home sitting on either the coffee table or the back of the commode. Now, the only way it’ll be on the back of the commode is if they start printing it on Charmin.