• A sad USA Today piece about a Denver-area subdivision increasingly abandoned to foreclosures.
• A black college professor’s fascinating tale of why he founded a university-funded “museum of racist memorabilia.”
• Sara Robinson’s similarly-themed essay in which she bemoans stereotyping and us-vs.-them dehumanization in America, then blames all of it on people who are different from her. No, she doesn’t get the irony.
• A much more optimistic Rolling Stone profile of Sen. Obama’s campaign organization, showing the practical value of including everybody into the “us” group.
• Naomi Klein’s weighty tome Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.Klein painstakingly traces the entirety of the global tragedy that is right-wing power-grabbing (coups, dictatorships, Iraq, even the response to Hurricane Katrina) back to Milton Friedman. You see, before Friedman ran the Federal Reserve Board (where he was credited/blamed for holding puppet strings on the entire U.S. economy), he ran the U. of Chicago’s school of economics, where “Chicago School” pundits and scholars produced long and ponderous statements offering complex reasoned arguments for letting big business do any damned thing it wanted to.

  Klein’s own reasoning is lucid, and her documentation is voluminous. But it’s incomplete.

  Economic theory is only one head of the Hydra-like monster that comprises power and privilege in this world. A more worthwhile look at the evils done in the name of America over the decades would look at the topic with more breadth, even if it meant less depth.

…claims you, the avid Internet consumer and blog reader, just might be a “virtual crackhead.”

I’m a little skeptical of these scares. Remember how horror comic books were supposed to turn cleancut suburban boys into juvenile delinquents? When the mere act of viewing an operating TV screen was supposed to turn everybody into brainless zombies? (Oh wait, that accusation’s still being made.)

So go ahead and keep browsin’. Learn a few things. Have some laughs. Just make sure to fulfill those pesky work and home duties.

…Robert Boyd has a blog of his own these days, principally concerned with unearthing the many unsung, everyday wonders of Houston.

• Attended the monthly Seattle Webloggers’ Meetup at Ralph’s Grocery and Deli. Yes, I’ve gone faithfully to these schmooze-and-tip-sharing confabs, and my site still looks this ugly. (Now that my big Web startup co-venture is, for the time, off again, I can resume my long and vague plans to revamp relaunch this site.)
• Watched part of the DVD first-season box set of NBC’s Saturday Night, soon to be retitled Saturday Night Live. I was 18 and newly on my own when the show debuted—the perfect target audience for sophomoric humor.Other reviewers have noted that the show took a few episodes to jell into its now-famous sketch format, with the still-famous original cast of Second City/National Lampoon alums. But I have a different impression, that Lorne Michaels’s basic concept and aesthetic were fully formed at the debut.

  From episode one, he was juxtaposing New York export culture (TV shows and commercials) with New York local culture (particularly off-Broadway revues). For one of the world’s biggest media companies, Michaels simulated a small, funky, fringe-theater experience. Broadway theater set designer Eugene Lee divided the huge Studio 8H into a series of intimate, textured living rooms and offices; they looked like places where Gleason and Carney could have cavorted. Bob Pook’s cute sketch title cards and Edie Baskin’s hand-colored cast photos furthere the notion that this was no Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour. This would be a different type of TV, a show viewers could trust to speak their language, even when that language became a stream of catch phrases.

  This affect spread to the musical guests. In the show’s launch, they were almost always mellow singer-songwriters and aging R&B legends. Michaels clearly didn’t know what to do with ABBA (who were cast over his dead body by network bosses) and Elvis Costello. He preferred nice music by people with genuine Sixties-generation cred.

  Even the Muppets’ ongoing “Dregs and Vestiges” skits were really about the decline of the previous decade’s dreams. Ugly monster characters exchanged shticks about sex, drugs, and decay, on a planet whose good years were long past.

  This was the setting, the picture frame for SNL’s comedy, a brand of comedy that was simultaneously brutal and gentle, experimental and commercial.

  In time, of course, the commercial side would become ascendant. When Michaels returned to the show in 1986 after six seasons away, he re-created it as an “Industry” show, one where celebrities would be worshipped even as they were mocked.

Some British gent claims “Shakespeare’s Plays Were Written by a Jewish Woman.” I’ll leave it to you to imagine Hamlet’s soliloquy recited by Fran Drescher, or Juliet’s balcony speech emoted by Sarah Silverman.

Ex-New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s sudden downfall has engendered infinite rants, jokes, comedy sketches, editorial cartoons, and, oh yeah, blog posts.

A few of the commentators actually talked about the Spitzer case. Some of them, particularly the Wall St. Journal editorial page, postively gloated in the comeuppance of a former prosecutor, who’d risen to fame by aggressively targeting sleazy tactics among stock traders.

Some wingnut bloggers smirked that a Democrat had been “got” in a sting after several Republican sex scandals. (Historically, male politicians of all parties, races, and nationalities have loved them hookers, through pretty much all of recorded history.)

Some progressive bloggers questioned why Spitzer, a fighting Democrat on the rise, was targeted by the highly politicized Bush “Justice” Department.

Some of the Spitzer commentators veer far from the original, simple scandal, digressing into what the writers/artists/comedians would really rather talk about. Among these digressions: wives who stand by their men too much; men with reputations on the line who do compulsive, dumb things.

I also want to digress to a side issue.

With every famous sex-work client who gets caught and pleas for public understanding, an opportunity is lost.

I want one of these guys to stand up forthrightly and announce:

“I’ve been a John. I AM a John. I admit it. No, I proclaim it.I liked it. I may do it again, maybe soon, maybe even today.

These women are fabulous. They deserve our utmost respect and admiration.

If my own darling daughter or beloved son chose this as a temporary or even a permanent career, I’d offer my sincerest support. And so would my dear wife. And so would my dear wife’s gardener/lover, and her driver/lover.

And so should all of you.

That’s why, as one of this state’s top public figures, I introduce a bill today to legalize, tax, and regulate this vital sector of our economy.

Furthermore, this bill will provide full health benefits for these workers, plus a great retirement plan.

And finally, I’m authorizing the state tourism board to launch a new campaign aimed at the clean, upscale sex tourist—especially if he’s paying in stable Euros. ‘Come for the brothels; stay for the restaurants.'”

I’m not in a position to create such legislation, only to advocate it.

And I might never get the opportunity to create such legislation.

Because I may never get elected to public office.

Because I’m admitting to have been a customer of escort services.

I’ve also had close friends who worked for escort services; some as service providers, some as office administrators.

I’d like them to have some more respect from our governments and our society, for the fine work they do and for the fine people they are.

And I’d like the profession’s private customers to become its public supporters.

…has compiled pix of regular people who look sort of like squarer versions of famous people, and placed them under the group title “If Celebs Moved to Oklahoma.” Not included: Kevin Durant or Kevin Calabro.

…some more smokin’-gun evidence of John McCain, erstwhile reformist, taking big bux from Airbus after helping the company get that tanker deal instead of Boeing.

…another 7 daze since I last posted. Excuses: Got none. (Except that a startup entrepreneurial venture I’d been involved with this past year seems to have gone “on hold.”)

In the nooze recently:

• That novelty Hillary Clinton nutcracker I told you about late last year? Somebody used one as the focus of a bomb scare at the Olympia state capitol. Unfunny.
• As you may have heard, the Clinton campaign’s “3 a.m.” TV commercial was assembled from purchased stock footage. The little girl in the footage is now grown up, she lives here in WashState, and, yep, she’s an Obama supporter.
• That most recent, well-funded save-the-Sonics drive heads toward a not-really-that-drastic deadline. While the plan for minimal KeyArena improvements (mostly a food court and new concourses; not that many new seats) would rely on private funding for half its cost, the would-be new owners want the state to chip in $75 million. It’d take some pushing n’ cajoling to get that request thru the Legislature’s current regular session, scheduled to wrap up darn soon. Some Legislative leaders, such as House Speaker Frank Chopp, have built their public images around the idea that they don’t cave in to such big-money demands, at least not right away. But Gov. Gregoire can still call a one-day special session to pass the funding (in my opinion, a reasonable investment for a reasonable reward). The hard part’s still persuading Clay Bennett to sell and persuading league boss David Stern to stop being Bennett’s toady.
• It’s a big night for all lovers of classic Tacoma power pop, as the Ventures get into the R n’ R Hall o’ Fame.
• The Sunday Times/P-I cut its total opinion pages (which, by contract, are alloted 50/50 to each paper) from six pages to four. When the joint Sunday edition launched, 24 and a half years ago, each paper got six pages to express its “editorial voice.”
• Boeing boosters blame McCain for that big Air Force tanker contract going to Airbus. So much for a GOP revival in this state this year.

…is peripherally involved in the latest fabricated memoir scandal.

…a few days since we last met. But here are some recent events in the nooze:

• A plan’s been announced to keep the Sonics, or move in some other NBA team to replace ’em. Yeah, it involves public arena subsidies. But the arena in question would still be our good ol’ KeyArena/Coliseum. And private interests would pick up a huger share of the tab than in any previous scheme. Of course, there’s the li’l matter of convincing current owner Clay Bennett and NBA commissioner David Stern (who hates Seattle even more than the Seattle Times editorial board does).
• No matter how much money the UW raises in its many assorted fundraising/begging programs, it just keeps on making tuition ever-less affordable. Congress doesn’t like it.
• Some self-styled radical environmentalists want to preserve exurban forest lands from sprawl. Their solution: Set fire to an unoccupied cul-de-sac, a fire which, if set at some other time of the year, could conceivably spread and burn said forest land.
• The first televised Mariners game of the pre-season is on local cable at noon today (Monday). I know it’s a game that doesn’t “count,” but hey, neither did the Ms’ last 20 or so games last season.
• Once you start looking into Port o’ Seattle corruption, it can truly become a bottomless pit.
• How to get high school kids interestedin reading newspapers: Run sensational surveys of students’ oral-sex experiences. (Hey, it’s the taste sensation that’s sweeping the nation!)
• Airbus, with a domestic company fronting for it, got the Air Force tanker plane contract Boeing really really wanted. Next stop: litigation.
• Here’s what to do the next time you see a bus with an unconscious driver heading your way.
• Since certain right-wing radio guys have no qualms about using or misusing people’s names in order to make character-assassination implications, let’s compare Vladmir Putin’s handpicked successor/flunky Dimitry Medvedev with the locally based GOP-talk spewer Michael Medved: One is a sniveling, butt-kissing toady to a ruthless, anti-democratic despot with delusions of godhood. And one is the new President of Russia.

The National Review founder and Firing Line TV host wrote in 1986, “I asked myself the other day, `Who else, on so many issues, has been so right so much of the time?’ I couldn’t think of anyone.” Some of the issues he was “so right” on included the civil rights movement (emphatically against), Joseph McCarthy (for), the Vietnam war (for), US support for “friendly” homicidal dictators (for), and rock music (against).

His early opposition to the John Birch Society was mostly tactical and cultural; he wanted a more respectable right wing, with a clear, one-way flow of power from Wall Street to Main Street. Similarly, his latter-day opposition to the Iraq war can be interpreted as a plea to put some brakes on a conservative movement heading inexorably toward a train wreck.

…your Starbuckless evening. Now on to a new day!:

• Did you know Seattle’s got a waterfront maritime museum? Well, you better see it now, while you still can.
• Seattle U to students: We wanna become the undisputed top private college in the region. To do that, your tuition’s going up.
• A local politician is heeding the siren call for capital-C Change. It’s Republican Dino Rossi.
• Real headline: “Seattle home prices up a tad in Q4, says report.” I’ve been around the Seattle music scene too long to think of “a Tad” as something small.
• Jus’ for fun, let’s take a look at who’d like to buy the Seattle City Council.
• Urban townhomes: Could they possibly look any less dorky?
• Did a honeymooning hubby really invite two strippers to his and his bride’s hotel room, or was it all, as hubby now claims, an unsolicited break-in?
• The European Union’s fined Microsoft $1.3 billion. To put it into perspective, that’s enough to pay Bill Gates’s household expenses for almost a day.

…your UW taxes don’t pay off. Why, a research at the grand old You-Dub’s working toward hi-tech superhuman vision!

The locally based, globally minded music mag No Depression is calling it quits, effective with the May-June issue.

Cause of death: A dying music industry, whose endemic issues are finally reaching indie labels, who can’t afford to buy as many magazine ads as they used to.

For 13 years, ND has been the greatest chronicler of “alternative country,” “Americana,” and assorted other essential US/Canadian homegrown musics.

The big irony here: An institution dedicated to honoring longstanding or lost art forms, and to celebrating contemporary artists who keep those forms alive, is itself becoming history.