Crime of the Century (Spokes Person Division)

HONOLULU, Hawaii--"A 20-year-old man who tried to rob a man at a Kalihi bus stop Saturday night was arrested riding a stolen bicycle, police said." 
   This mystifying lede appeared in the first item of the "Police Blotter" in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser yesterday. The story went on: 
   "A 21-year-old man refused to give up his property at the bus stop at 9:45pm, police said.
   "He was then assaulted by the 20-year-old man, said police.
   "The suspect fled but was stopped a short distance away, riding a bicycle that had been reported stolen from a 57-year-old woman at a nearby store, police said.
   "The man resisted arrest but was subdued by officers, police said."
   The "Police Blotter" is endemic to newspapers in small communities. It calls to mind the sort of place in which everyone knows everyone and, when not on the job, the police chief sells used cars and trucks. 
   "Police Blotter" items often are written by the most junior member of a paper's staff. This person is learning, on the job, how to write in journalese, a language which resembles English not hardly a'tall. 
   For this bicycle-related item, the green reporter evidently wasn't aware that after noting in the first graf that police were the source of information ("... riding a stolen bicycle, police said"), he or she no longer needed do so. It is understood that all following facts derive from the same source unless otherwise indicated. 
   Still, our earnest correspondent showed a bit of flair in the third sentence. After twice writing "police said," he/she stepped out on a limb to write "said police." But reason swiftly reasserted itself. The nascent Hunter S. Thompson-esque rule-smashing newcomer once more prudently used the more conventional "police said." 
   That being said, we have nothing but good wishes for our intrepid if inexperienced reporter, even if he/she only exists in the fevered First of All imagination. To enter upon a career in journalism at this juncture in the Fourth Estate's enduring fadeout is brave beyond compare. Soon all journalists will be writing short pieces using sticks on leaves which they'll float down the river to the next village. But it will be called "Tweeting." 
   Oh, wait. Never mind.
   If it turns out our "inexperienced" reporter is in truth a broken-down alcoholic writing "Police Blotter" items in the final days of a long and storied career, well, so much the better. Good on ya, old-timer. You were there when dinosaurs roamed the land. First of All, a proud dinosaur, salutes you. 
   One last thing: robbing a man while riding a stolen bicycle? Seriously? 
   The burglars of yore would be aghast. 

Crime of the Century (Questionable Reporting Division)

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – A man who was discovered to have stood in for his twin brother in a May 4 court appearance was sentenced to six months in jail for “direct criminal attempt” – an offense a judge witnesses in a court.

  Marcus Mauceri, who is thirty, claimed under oath to be his brother, Matthew, and agreed to be fingerprinted to establish his identity.

  When the procedure revealed the truth, Marcus said he’d appeared to aid his brother, whom he knew would be late.

   This is all you need to know about this story, but it is nothing you’d know if you read the first seven paragraphs of May 5 story posted on tampabay.com, the Web site of the St. Petersburg Times:

  Something just didn’t seem right to attorney Jimmy Thomas when he talked to his client before his fraud trial Tuesday.

  The 30-year-old man did not seem to remember basic aspects of the case they had discussed.

  Thomas knew that his client, Matthew Mauceri, had a twin brother named Marcus.

  Thomas had represented both men in court, and the two often changed their appearances – sometimes [wearing] beards or goatees, sometimes clean-shaven.

  Could the man in court Tuesday be the twin?

  Thomas faced an ethical pinch few lawyers have encountered: Should he reveal his suspicion that his client was an imposter?

  Ultimately he did, and his suspicion was correct.

  Only in the eighth paragraph do we encounter what in journalism is known as the “nut” graph – the paragraph with the story's true news nugget:

  Marcus Mauceri had taken the place of his brother, Matthew, at the trial. The reason: He claimed his brother was flying in from out of state and couldn’t make it to the courthouse on time.

  In news reporting, the “lead” – a story’s first paragraph – is meant to include that nugget. More than one press critic has lamented the inroads made by flash storytelling into simple who-what-where-when-why-how reporting. One wrote:

  Among the major menaces to American journalism today (and there are so many that it hardly seems worth while even beginning this little article) is the O.Henry-Irvin Cobb tradition. According to this pretty belief, every reporter is potentially master of the short-story, and because of it we find Human Interest raising its ugly head in seven out of every eight news columns and a Human Document being turned out every time Henry H. Mackle of 1356 Grand Boulevard finds a robin or Mrs. Rasher Feiman of 425 West Forty-Ninth Street attacks the scissors grinder.

  Copy readers in the old days used to insist that all the facts in the story be bunched together in the opening paragraph. This never made for a very moving chronicle, but at least you got the idea of what was going on. Under the new system, where every reporter has his eye on George Horace Lorimer, you first establish your atmosphere, then shake a pair of doves out of the handkerchief, round off your lead with a couple of bars from a Chopin etude, and finally, in the next to last paragraph, divulge the names and addresses and what it was that happened. …

  Most of the trouble began about ten years ago when the Columbia School of Journalism began unloading its graduates on what was then the N.Y. Tribune (retaining the best features of neither). …

  Fine writing in news stories was actually encouraged by the management and daily prizes were offered for the best concealed facts. The writer of this article was a reporter at the time – “the worst reporter in New York City” the editors affectionately called him – and one day he won the prize with a couple of sticks on the funeral of Ada Rehan. This story consisted of two paragraphs of sentimental contemplation of old-time English comedy with a bitterly satirical comparison with modern movie comedy, and a short paragraph at the end saying that Ada Rehan was buried yesterday. Unfortunately the exigencies of make-up necessitated the cutting of the last paragraph; so the readers of the Tribune never did find out what inspired this really beautiful tribute to somebody. …

  A picture of the City Room of [one New York paper], by one who has never been there, would disclose a dozen or so nervous word artists, each sitting in a cubicle furnished to represent an attic, sipping at black coffee, with now and then a dab of cocaine, writing and tearing up, writing and tearing up, pacing back and forth in what the French call (in French) le travail du style. One feels that back copies of [that paper] should be bound and saved for perusal on rainy days when the volumes of “Harpers Round Table” have begun to pall.

  The writer quips that soon such a style will creep even into the reporting of overseas news, and concludes:

  When this has happened, we can have newstickers installed in our homes and let the newspapers give themselves over entirely to the belles lettres.

  This was written by Robert Benchley for The New Yorker.

  In 1925.
-------------------------------
ADDENDUM (9 May 2010): As incisive as is Mr. Benchley's dissection, things changed at the magazine in the next decade, according to Genius in Disguise, Thomas Kunkel's 1995 biography of The New Yorker founder and editor Harold Wallace Ross. 
  Kunkel writes that there was a "happy development that distinguished The New Yorker of the late Thirties. This was the explosion of reporting talent at the magazine, and the growing prominence of their journalism. These new voices belonged to young writers, most with newspaper experience but all with freer, more interpretive writing styles that was typical of the dailies. They drew on the fiction techniques of narrative, character development, shading and irony to tell their stories - stories that just happened to be true. Their so-called literary journalism was a hybrid of a very high order." 
  These writers, Kunkel adds, "probably did the most to advance the innovative, literate reportage that became a New Yorker trademark. They set the standard for all the great New Yorker reporters who followed, as well as the so-called New Journalists of the Sixties." Kunkel is referring to writers such as Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe, and Hunter S. Thompson, among many others. 
  So, you see, one man's disdain is another decade's Big Bang. 

Crime of the Century (A Tale of One Nutty Chair Divison)

PROCTOR, Minn. - One day about a year and a half ago, a man named Dennis LeRoy Anderson, of Proctor, demonstrated that he is wildly creative, exceptionally mechanically gifted, and possessed of a perhaps overenthusiastic and potentially detrimental passion for beer. 

  Mr. Anderson, who runs a professional auto shop at his home, designed and outfitted a recliner - the type of comfy chair you see in front of televisions in better homes and trailers - with a converted lawnmower motor, headlights, a steering wheel, a stereo, cup holders and a National Hot Road Association sticker on its headrest. The chair could travel as fast as twenty miles per hour. 

  That accounts for Mr. Anderson's creative and mechanical gifts. His love of beer manifested, or perhaps over-manifested, on the day and evening of August. 31, 2008. 

  After enjoying a number of beers at home - the exact tally is left unstated in an October 30, 2009 Minneapolis Star-Tribune report - Mr. Anderson drove his chair to a bar called the Keyboard Lounge, located at 224 North 3rd Avenue, in Proctor. (View the bar's exterior here.)  

  There he consumed more beer. His total, he later told police, was "eight or nine" that day. His blood alcohol content, police would learn, after administering a field sobriety test, was .29. That's more than three times the legal limit for driving in Minnesota. 
  Mr. Anderson was blissfully unaware of this fact - or, evidently, of any others - when, presently, he left the Keyboard Lounge and settled into his motorized chair. Presumably, the goal of puttering home somewhere floated in his be-fogged noggin. 
  Alas, things don't always turn out as we might hope. Mr. Anderson promptly crashed the chair into a Dodge Intrepid parked nearby. 

   When police arrived, Mr. Anderson was treated for minor injuries and given the sobriety test, during which, Deputy Police Chief Troy Foucault told the Star-Trib, he "failed everything." To add insult to intoxication, it turned out that Mr. Anderson's driver's license had already been revoked for a prior drunk-driving conviction. 

  Police took Mr. Anderson, who is sixty-one, to the station and threw him in the pokey. At trial he was sentenced to one hundred and eighty days in jail and fined $2,000. The jail time and half the fine were stayed contingent on his serving a two-year probation with various conditions.

  Here now we leave the tale of Mr. Anderson in order to follow the captivatingly byzantine one of the chair. Proctor police impounded it when they arrested Mr. Anderson. It was then to be sold at a police auction, the proceeds from which would benefit the department.

  Foucault, the deputy police chief, characterized the chair to the Star-Tribune as being "quite decked out," and said "quite a few people" had called about it. He joked that he even might bid on it, except for the fact that "I have kids who would take it out and drive it on the street." 
  This seems just the kind of things kids should be encouraged to do, providing that the cups in the chair's holders contain, say, Coca-Cola or, at the extreme, Red Bull rather than beer, because beer can so fully harsh a magic mushroom high. 

  It is not tangential to point out that, in its lede, the Star-Trib called the chair a La-Z-Boy. This is important because, as the paper reported in a November 3, 2009 followup, a five-day eBay auction, undertaken by the Proctor police force, pushed the asking price of the chair, listed as a La-Z-Boy, to roughly $40,000, and drew national media attention.

  A mere eleven hours before the auction's deadline, the La-Z-Boy company faxed a complaint to the Proctor police chief, a man charmingly named Walter Wobig. The company, citing copyright concerns, protested the use of the its name in the eBay listing, inasmuch as the chair that Mr. Anderson had modified was not, in fact, a La-Z-Boy recliner. 

  Chief Wobig is to be forgiven for having listed the motorized chair as a La-Z-Boy. The brand is so well known that it has come to stand for all recliners, much as "Xerox" has for copiers and "Kleenex" for tissues. 
  In addition, the chief had been unduly influenced by the incorrect use of that brand name in the rash of media reports on the auction. This shows that the only people less adept at fact checking than police chiefs are reporters, an observation that does nothing to inspire a great deal of confidence in the condition of the ailing Fourth Estate. 
  In time, Chief Wobig had a cordial telephone conversation with a La-Z-Boy representative. That person asked the chief to ensure that the eventual buyer refrain from referring to the chair as a La-Z-Boy, and then wished him luck with the sale. 

  By that time, however, the listing had mysteriously disappeared from eBay. Did La-Z-Boy contact the online auction house and threaten it with legal action, such as, for example, sentencing eBay CEO John Donahoe to a forty-day La-Z-Boy recliner confinement and a force-feeding on Pabst Blue Ribbon, Cheetos and "Dog the Bounty Hunter?" Alas, we shall never know.

  Chief Wobig, unsuccessful in contacting eBay about the missing listing, re-listed the chair, once again setting the low bid at $500. The second auction also fell through. (Press reports are sketchy as to why.)

  All of which brings us to this month. An April 21 Associated Press story reported that a Duluth, Minn. resident - one of fifteen people competing for the chair in a Do-Bid.com auction ending April 18 - placed a winning bid of $3,700, an amount markedly lower than the $40,000 being batted about during the first eBay sale. 
  It is conceivable that the price suffered such a monumental drop because the chair is not a La-Z-Boy. It is more likely, however, that the feverish national attention of a year or so ago had so almost wholly waned that no one wanted to buy the goddamned thing. The public is a fickle mistress.

  There are lessons to be learned from this twisted tale, and they are as follows: 
  1. Corporations are psychotically protective of their brands, and woe betide he or she who uses one without permission. 
  2. Kids would not even entertain the idea of driving motorized chairs on the streets if there were a video game - one they could play in the comfort of their rumpus room - that featured such a chair, a totally awesome idea that First of All is, right this minute, in the process of copyrighting.
  3. If you are going get trashed and crash a motorized recliner, at least consider shaving so that you look nice in your mug shot. 

  

  

  

  

News That Makes Life Worth Living (Loving to Death Division)

 MOSCOW, March 20 -- A Southern Moscow couple evidently decided it would be fun to have sex in their car, and to ward off the chill of the Russian winter they turned on the engine. Alas, sometime during the act, they died of carbon monoxide poisoning, Reuters reported Wednesday. 
   The wire service quoted the Russian Interfax news agency as quoting an unnamed police source as saying that "a man and a woman retreated to their Volkswagen to have sex." The car was parked in a tiny garage. Sometime "during the act of closeness," according to the police source, the pair inhaled the gas and died. 
   One is boggled by all aspects of this story, not least this: sex in a Volkswagen? Really? 
   With their fact-light reporting, Interfax and Reuters have completely dropped the ball. The news services neglected to inform readers about the mechanics of sex in a VW, the color of the car, the age of the couple, the position the pair was in and whether or not one or both had achieved, well, lift-off before the blessed end arrived. These are the kinds of details that make or break a story. 
   It seems sad that we will never know. 

Queer Notes from All Over (AZ. Politician Says Same-Gender Marriage = Horse Love)

SOMEWHERE IN ARIZONA, Arizona, March 18 -- A former six-term Arizona congressman (1994-2006) said recently that the November 2003 Massachusetts Judicial Supreme Court decision allowing same-gender marriage could lead to a man being legally allowed to marry his horse, Huffington Post blogger Sam Stein noted Monday. 

   The apparently very strange man, who is named J.D. Hayworth, has unfairly overlooked all kinds of animals, and this is sad. One would, if one could, marry one's cat, Comma, but only, one admits, for the tax breaks and the veterinary hospital visitation rights. 

  Perhaps, to be fair, Hayworth agrees. Stein quoted the Orlando radio station WORL as quoting Hayworth. Do you see? It's like a game of telephone. It is possible that Hayworth originally said "man-cat marriage," and a WORL reporter, one who favors horses, changed the quote. It's hard to say.

   Either way, Hayworth said, according to Stein---->WORL, that in its decision, the Mass. Supreme Court defined marriage as "now get this - it defined marriage as simply, quote, 'the establishment of intimacy.'"


          "The Voluntary Union Of"


   The HuffPo's Stein points out in a followup piece there is no such provision in the decision, which defines marriage as "the voluntary union of spouses, to the exclusion of all others." 
   When MSNBC talk show host Rachel Maddow asked Hayworth about the discrepancy the next day, he said, "You and I can have a disagreement about that," and closed down the interview - not a response to inspire confidence in the man's confidence in his comments. 
    Intimacy, voluntary union of spouses - feh. These are mere details, and Hayworth, like all politicians and crazy people (redundancy), wasn't about to let them stand in the way of a good barnyard yarn the day he spoke to WORL. 

   "I mean," he went on, "I don't mean to be absurd about it, but I guess I can make the point of absurdity with an absurd point - I guess that would mean if you really had affection for your horse, I guess you could marry your horse."

   This is a syllogism long favored by far-rightist lawmakers and religionists eager to demonize homosexuals. They link homosexuality with pedophilia, incest and bestiality ("I guess you could marry your horse"). Of course, homosexuality - and its open-hearted manifestation, gay and lesbianism - has naught to do with any of those categories. 
   Hayworth concluded: "It's the wrong way to go, and the only way to protect the institution of marriage is with that federal amendment that I support." 
   It should be noted that Hayworth, a Republican, is challenging John McCain for his Senate seat. The comments, then, were uttered in the context of an Arizona political campaign, and are therefore calculated to harm Hayworth's opponent. By saying he "supports" marriage legislation, Hayworth corners McCain: if the sitting Senator does not say he "supports" marriage legislation - in this case in the form of a constitutional amendment legislatively defining marriage, a loathsome concept to some who revere the Constitution in its present, quite workable form - he stands to lose votes on the right-wing fringe. 


    Statement Clarified Comments? No


   Hayworth released a statement the following day clarifying his man-horse-nuptials comments. Oh, wait: no he didn't. He issued a statement standing by the comments, and he did it using every cliched talking point from the Republican playbook. The statement is a case study in the calculated uses of repetition and coded language. Orwell would be proud. Let's have a look. (Cliches are in bold, translation in italics.)
   "[S]adly, the liberal media [Rachel Maddow is a dyke] intent on defending the ultra-leftist, progressive [caring] politicians in Massachusetts [gay], are attacking me [I am running for the Senate] for standing up [I am running for the Senate] once again for family values [vote for me] and for rejecting this absurd court ruling. 
   "But they don't intimidate me at all. [My campaign chest runneth over.] I know right from wrong [I plan to win] and as a staunch defender of marriage [politician who needs votes] I know I can count of millions of supporters [voters] across America [Arizona] to stand with me [vote for me] when our values are under attack [I am down in the polls] and when I am under attack [I am down in the polls] for standing up [I am running for the Senate] to defend those values [hustle for votes]."
   The tally: 
   *Liberal media - 1
   *Ultra-leftist, progressive - 1
   *Attacking me/under attack - 3
   *Values - 3
   *Standing (up, with me, etc.) - 3
   So you see, repetition gets a message across. And Hayworth, a craven nacissist, knows that. Hayworth, a craven narcissist, knows that. Hayworth, a craven narcissist, knows that.


           Knowledge is Power

   Back, for a moment, to the man-horse business. One idly wonders why far-rightist heterosexual lawmakers and religionists show such a wide-ranging and intimate knowledge of pedophilia, incest and bestiality. Is it because these are the hallmarks of the "family unit," which these lawmakers and God-talkers so deeply revere? Alas, we shall never know. 

   One is less surprised at talk of a Constitutional "marriage" amendment. Heterosexuals evidently have so little faith in the institution of marriage that some feel the need to legislate "protection" of it. This does not inspire a deep sense of trust either in them or in their hallowed tradition. 

   Gays and lesbians enthused about getting hitched should take note. 

Queer Notes From all Over (Equal Rights for All Excepting Bisexuals, But They Don't Count Division)

RICHMOND, Virginia, March 11 - The governor of the great state of Virginia has shown that, when it comes to equal rights for gays, lesbians and transgendered people, he is, well, all for equal rights for gays, lesbians and transgendered people. 
   There was no mention made of bisexuals, who, as usual, got the short end of the stick, but who, being attracted to persons of both genders, have twice the chance of getting a date on Saturday night, according to filmmaker and former comic Woody Allen, who made that joke, like, seven hundred years ago.
   Gov. Bob McDonnell yesterday directed state agencies of all sizes, stripes and orientations not to discriminate against gays and lesbians, the Associated Press reported today. 
   State Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli, who, not that this matters, is a Republican, sent a letter last week to state colleges saying they lack authority to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, and ordered them to rescind any anti-discrimination that include protections for gays and lesbians. 
   It is admirable that Atty. Gen. Cuccinelli sent a letter. Letter-writing is, alas, a lost art, what with emails, texting, Twitter and the general decline of literacy in America, not to mention the fact that the U.S. postal service is considering stopping Saturday service as a cost-cutting measure. 
   That said, it is the content of the letter with which we must concern ourselves, and that content is, in a word, stupid. 
   Apparently, Gov. McDonnell agreed, in essence if not in word, and that is why he issued his directive. His directive trumped that of the Atty. Gen., because he - the Gov. - has much more power. 
   Before the Gov.'s directive reached far and wide into the psyches of Virginians everywhere, the Atty. Gen.'s letter had occasioned no little amount of agitation among, predictably, gay rights groups and, predictably, Democrats. 
   College students - who, by dint of their youth, vitality and idealism, are the Hope for the Future - rallied, but in a very modern, by which one means troublingly virtual, way. 
   The Washington Post, quoted in the Associated Press report, which was run on the Huffington Post news site - one apologizes, but one is simply too tired, at the moment, to track down original sources - reported that 3,000 people joined a Facebook page titled, "WE DON'T WANT DISCRIMINATION IN OUR STATE UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES!" 
   While that sentiment is to be applauded, the use of all capital letters and an exclamation point is not. 
   The Post further reported, according to the AP by way of the Huffington Post, that one protest was organized by a group at William and Mary College, in Williamsburg, Va., the second oldest college in America, the motto of which is: "We're different, and we like it that way."
   The group, called Queer & Allied Activism, launched a social media campaign, the Post wrote, "urging students to protest on Cuccinelli's Facebook and Twitter pages, and to sign a petition organized by the group Equality Virginia." 
   The group's acronym - QAA - has no meaning, and therefore cannot be called, even by a stretch, clever, but its use of an ampersand is alluring. 
   One certainly applauds the students' efforts, but one is alarmed to hear that students are now protesting from the safety of their laptops while, perhaps, sitting around their dorms or frat houses in their pajamas. One is all for lounging in sleepwear, but one also remembers the days when students actually ventured out of doors to protest injustices. 
   Alas, it is a new day. The thought occurs that maybe the weather was bad. Protesting in the snow, while offering the opportunities, during dull moments, to create snowmen, or even snow penises, can be trying.           
   But recent weather reports, you see, say temperatures have been in the high fifties and low sixties. 
   That's practically balmy for Virginia winters, or seems like it should be. One doesn't know; one has never been to Virginia in the winter or even in the spring, summer or fall, if memory serves, which it generally does not. 
                       --30--

News That Makes Life Worth Living (No News is Bad News Division)

KNOXVILLE, Tenn., March 11 - The pressures of television journalism sometimes can be overwhelming. 

   Between collecting facts, preparing an on-air report and ensuring that one's hair is just perfect, the demands of the job can spark anxiety and also nervousness, another word for "anxiety." 

   Occasionally, reporters simply lose it, and understandably. Here is a case. Reporter Gordon Boyd, of WVLT-TV, in Knoxville, simply lost it during a March 4 report.
   We post this in the interests of bettering American journalism and not in any way to guffaw, chuckle or snort at or about Mr. Boyd. 

   

Crime of the Century (The Meter is Running Division)

FAIRBANKS, Alaska, March 11 - For one woman who hails from the North Pole, if once is nice, twice, or even thrice, is nicer. 
   Lana L. Schneidewind, twenty-seven, has been charged with second-degree felony robbery and misdemeanor theft for allegedly waltzing into a Fairbanks, Alaska, Fred Meyer store last Friday and waltzing out with a television set for which she'd declined to pay, then attempting to employ a taxicab as her getaway vehicle, according to a March 6 story in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner ("The Voice of Interior Alaska Since 1903").
   Ms. Schneidewind, a consistent soul, is alleged to have done more or less the same thing in December. Twice. 

   The December incidences occurred at a Sam's Club. That she tried it this time at a Fred Meyer store suggests that the latter has a better selection of TVs than the former. Sam's Club might want to get on the stick. 
   Daily-Miner reporter Chris Frieberg writes that Ms. Schneidewind (hereinafter referred to as Ms. S.; how many times, really, is one expected to type out "Shneidewind"?) allegedly refused to pay for the $450 set. (Plainly, it was not a plasma TV, as even the inexpensive models run nearly ten times more than the set Ms. S. favored). A clerk who followed her out of the store told her the television did not belong to her. 
   This shows the excellence of Fred Meyer customer care. Aware that, even at Ms. S.'s youthful age, memory loss does occur, the clerk was  kind enough to alert her to the fact that the television set she was carrying was not, technically or legally, hers. With all the distractions these days - the World Wide Web, Twitter, the state of Brad and Angelina's relationship - it is difficult, sometimes, to track even the simplest things. A store clerk bringing reality into focus for customers is an excellent example of corporate civic duty at its finest. One wonders, not altogether idly, whether Sam's Club clerks show the same level of thoughtfulness.
   After leaving the store, television in hand (hands?), Ms. S. got into a cab. The Daily-Miner's Freiberg, obviously an accomplished reporter with a strong style, nonetheless appears to have been unable to unearth exactly why a cab was handily waiting nearby. Perhaps Ms. S. called for it at her home, rode in it to the Fred Meyer store, and then told the driver, "Wait here, please. I'm just going to steal a television, and then we'll be on our way." 
   As it turns out, when Ms. S. entered the cab, she reached over the driver's shoulder and tried to steal money out of his shirt pocket. The driver, as Frieberg writes, "was able to protect his cash by clenching the money in his fist." 
   Freiberg, a superb storyteller, further writes that "the suspect" - that would be Ms. S. - "gave up the fight and walked away from the scene when passersby approached the cab."    
   Whatever her societal transgressions, Ms. S. should be applauded for her ingenuity. That she required a cab to help tote the filched televisions suggests that she does not own a car. These days, that makes her a "green" hero. The radically-inclined and deeply self-righteous bicyclists on, for example, San Francisco's streets would no doubt hoist the woman on their shoulders and parade her through town, if only they could do so whilst simultaneously balancing on their bicycles and complaining about the cars around them. 
   On the other hand, is it possible that Ms. S. was stashing televisions in preparation for bestowing them upon the town's less privileged, and TV-less, citizens, Oprah-giveaway-style? Alas, we will never know.
   Alternately, it is possible, given that Ms. S. lives at the North Pole, that she is operating under a pseudonym, and is, in fact, Mrs. Santa Claus. Perhaps the elves were lagging in the TV-production area, and Santa thought it best simply to send the wife out to pinch a few from the local Fred Meyer. It's not like the children of the world - those who have been nice, that is, not naughty - would know the difference. 
   Sadly, these scenarios are unlikely. Ms. S. has been brought up on theft charges before now, suggesting that there's really not much to do in Fairbanks save to engage in petty crime and, if the opportunity presents itself, to watch television.


   [A journalistic side note. Here is Freiberg's lede graf (that's newspeak for lead, or first, paragraph, which in a news story is meant to convey the key information included in the report): "A North Pole woman who was arrested last year on suspicion of stealing televisions from Sam's Club and hiring a cabbie as a getaway driver has been accused of doing the same thing at another store one week after posting bail in her first case." The Associated Press picked up the story and ran it on their wire. Here's the AP lede: "Police said a North Pole woman accused in December of stealing televisions and hiring a cabbie as her getaway driver is now accused of trying it again." You see? AP reporters can be just as lazy - and prone to near-plagiarism - as the rest of us. Granted, in its next sentence the AP cited the Daily-Miner as a source. But still.]
   
   

The Joys of Holy Matrimony (Sharpest Blade in the Drawer Division)

LAS CRUCEZ, New Mexico, March 11 - A woman from Las Crucez, N.M. (pop. roughly 95,000) has been charged with three counts of aggravated battery against a household member, and a separate battery count, for allegedly stabbing her ex-husband after she looked through the call history of his cellular telephone.
   A March 7 Associated Press story declined to say what she discovered in in the phone. A cursory Google search - one never clicks past the first page, because one has better things to do, such as napping - shows that other news outlets, including Las Crucez television stations, are as lazy as this reporter: all ran the AP story, so details about the telephone's contents remain sketchy all across the World Wide Web (www.).
   The story is full of suggestive details, however, each of which seems a perfect springboard for a novel (or, these days, a Twitter posting).
   "According to police," the AP writes,"[the woman] and her 29-year-old ex-husband were at her home late Thursday when she became upset after looking through his cell phone's history."
   (This information appeared in the second graf - that's newspeak for paragraph - of the AP story. The AP did not write "[the woman]." They wrote "Shaw," indicating that this was the woman's Christian name. But the first graf does not give her full name. This is an oversight of monumental proportions, and points to the appalling state of American journalism. If you can't trust the AP, whom can you trust?)
   Why, one wonders, were they at her home? They are, for goodness sake, ex-husband and -wife. One would think it prudent, not to say preferable, to maintain a good deal of distance between oneself and a second party under those circumstances. Alas, those enjoying, or who have enjoyed, "a union between a man and a woman" have their own ways, some of which are mysterious in the extreme. 
   The AP quotes detectives as saying that the mysteriously one-named Shaw, who was mysteriously enjoying (enduring?) the company of her ex-husband, became enraged at the mysteriously un-reported, and deeply mysterious, contents of her husband's portable telephone. Not altogether mysteriously, she drew a knife "and started swinging at her husband, striking him at least three times."
   His injuries were, according to the AP, "not life-threatening." Perhaps if the couple had still been married, the woman would have tried harder to do serious damage to the man she had taken for better or worse, in sickness and health, till death did them part. After all, if death did them part, the contents of his carry-around telephone would be moot, now wouldn't they?
   Plainly, heterosexuals take seriously the institution of marriage. Even after disrespecting the sacred institution by bailing on it, they are so drawn to the one to whom they pledged their troth that, when the loved one disobeys, they feel compelled to stab the shit out of them. 
   Gays and lesbians waiting for the blessed day when same-gender marriage rights become available should take note.

Crime of the Century (Friends with Johnny Law Division)

   Mark E. Blaylock, forty-nine, of Manheim Township, PA (pop. roughly 35,000) had a very busy day Wednesday, and most of it involved interacting with police. 
   At 11 a.m., according to a March 3 Associated Press story, Blaylock was charged with theft of services after bailing on a sixty-nine dollar cab fare. The surprisingly uninformative AP story does not say why Blaylock owed such a large amount of money to a cabbie. Either he was driven many, many, many miles across hill and dale; was driven around in circles for an hour or two; or was provided sexual favors by the driver. A clue might be found in the amount owed.
   A clue also might be found in the fact that, a mere hour later, Mr. Blaylock was found lying drunk on a road near his house. Again, the AP shirks its duty to carry the facts, the facts and nothing but the facts - all of them. 
   Yes, Blaylock was drunk. But is it possible that, as far as the lying-in-the-road business goes,  Blaylock was simply sunbathing? Or, if the weather was inclement, might he have been creating snow angels? We will never know; given the generally devolving fiscal state of journalism these days, it appears the AP has not only cut staff from its masthead but also facts from its stories. 

   (The photo above shows a snow angel enthusiast who is, alas, not Mark E. Blaylock.)
   Police charged Blaylock with public drunkenness. The message was: snow angels or no, you simply do not laze around on a public road, soused to the gills, in Manheim Township. It's just not that kind of place.
   It appears that Mr. Blaylock roused himself, for it was but a scant hour later that, showing a resourcefulness of which taxpayers of all ages should take note, he dialed 911 to request police assistance - to fill a prescription. 
   Police, however, failed to see either the humor in or ingenuity of Blaylock's call. They charged him with reporting a medical emergency without good cause. ("Good cause" would include having, say, a ruptured spleen, a twisted ankle, or a broken heart.) 
   Blaylock faces a misdemeanor charge and a pair of summary offenses. 
   Cementing the dismal reality that, in the case of this report at least, the AP simply seems to have given up the ghost, the story concludes, "A phone number for Blaylock could not immediately be located Wednesday." 
   Even taking into account the kinds of monstrous deadlines AP writers face, not being able to find a number for a man who, plainly, has a phone - he dialed 911 to request police assistance - suggests a sort of institutionalized psychological depression troubling to contemplate for those who, in addition to Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, still believe in the Fourth Estate in all its (fading) glory.