Five Years Ago Today, this Web Press was Born to Counter the Fourth Estate

Brooks Boliek

The Boliek house in Takoma Park, Maryland, where this site was started five years ago today…

The Big Picture
by Glynn Wilson

THE BUNKER – Five years ago today, I huddled in front of a little apple red iMac computer in a friend’s kitchen in Tacoma Park, Maryland, near Silver Spring. It was there I wrote the very first Sunday column for this alternative, independent news Web site, there in the pouring rain with the jazz down low on the radio.

By that time, George W. Bush had been sworn in for a second term, so we knew he would be with us for another three and a half years. There was not much hope for stopping all the damage he would surely cause in that time, but somebody had to try to warn the public.

There was always the hope of impeachment.

That story never did grow legs, or at least not long enough to ever be considered a real threat to the corporate state pulling Bush’s strings.

As the rain poured with the jazz in the background, I read about the suicide of Hunter S. Thompson, and thought of my good friend Spider Martin, who had given up the ghost two years before, also by self-inflicted gunshot wound.

You’ve just about got to be a big picture kind of writer to make sense of moments like that — in an hour or two of reading, thinking and writing. That’s about how long it takes to produce an average newspaper-style column of about a thousand words.

The problem was, everywhere you looked over the Internets on the World Wide Web at that time, there were these things called “blogs” popping up all over the place like mushrooms in a cow pasture after a summer rain.

In the face of that kind of fast-paced change, what was an experienced, real journalist to do in these times, five years after the heralded advent of the new millennium?

There was all this anonymous defamation on some sites; on others, it was mostly self-congratulatory navel-gazing, like reality TV. Ugh!

Could the Free Press and American Democracy survive both Bush — and blogs?

Gawd only knew.

Read the rest of this entry »

Under the Microscope
by Glynn Wilson

A conservative professor of politics at the University of Virginia has written a column in Sunday’s Washington Post asking the question: Why are liberals so condescending?

In the setup, he writes, “Every political community includes some members who insist that their side has all the answers and that their adversaries are idiots. But American liberals, to a degree far surpassing conservatives, appear committed to the proposition that their views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while conservative positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration. Indeed, all the appeals to bipartisanship notwithstanding, President Obama and other leading liberal voices have joined in a chorus of intellectual condescension.”

Later on, he adds, “This condescension is part of a liberal tradition that for generations has impoverished American debates over the economy, society and the functions of government — and threatens to do so again today, when dialogue would be more valuable than ever.”

Rather than posting a comment on the Post’s Website to point out how the professor has it so wrong, let’s take his argument apart here.

First of all, he starts out with an obvious bit of false spin, just like the conservative commentators on TV he seems to try to defend.

“…even with Democratic fortunes on the wane, leading liberals insist that they have almost nothing to learn from conservatives.”

On the wane? President Barack Obama’s personal popularity is the same as Ronald Reagan’s after one year in office, and the Democrats still have a majority in both houses of Congress. Just because TV pundits are saying the Democrats may lose a few seats in the mid-term election in 2010 doesn’t mean their fortunes are totally “on the wane.”

In fact, it has been pointed out over and over again that the Republican Party is all but dead, except among white males mostly in the South. Just because one Republican won a Congressional race in Massachusetts doesn’t mean the Republicans are about to take back the country tomorrow. The election is still 10 months away. Anything can happen and probably will.

Read the rest of this entry »

What about the press and politicians?

The Big Picture
by Glynn Wilson

As the 2010 election season gears up around the country and in the state, as a trained and credentialed public opinion researcher as well as a journalist who has covered public opinion research for about 30 years, I am always looking to see what the data shows versus what political candidates and the media are spending time talking about.

Economic development is always the number one issue to the press in Alabama and politicians running for office here, a fact that is left over from the post-Civil War industrialization as our society moved away from an agricultural society to a manufacturing society. Of course in the years following the Civil War, we called the businessmen who came South “Yankee carpet-baggers,” but over the years, their reputations became less sullied as they provided jobs for an increasing number of citizens, many of whom moved off the farms to the cities.

And in these economic times, when the nation and the state are still suffering from the results of the Bush recession that started in 2007 even though we didn’t find out about it from the media until January 2008, the economy is still the number one concern of voters, according to the Gallup Poll and other research.

Twenty-nine percent of the American public name the economy in general as the number one problem facing the country. Second to that is health care, however. Twenty-six percent of the people say health care is the number one concern, while 15 percent name unemployment.

Other studies show a high correlation between issues being covered prominently by the media and issues identified by the public to be important.

While the environment only polls from one to three percent on the number one problem question, when asked about their personal worries on environmental problems facing the country at this time, the public overwhelming names polluted water as number one.

According to Gallup, a majority of Americans say they worry “a great deal” about four different environment problems involving water: 58 percent are concerned about pollution of drinking water, 53 percent worry about pollution of rivers, lakes, and reservoirs, 52 percent express concern about contamination of soil and water by toxic waste, and 51 percent worry “a great deal” about the maintenance of the nation’s supply of fresh water.

Read the rest of this entry »

From the economy to the environment, success depends on commitment…

The Big Picture
by Glynn Wilson

Now that Alabama’s achieved the ultimate success by winning the national football championship, and everybody by now should be aware of coach Nick Saban’s famous mission statement about “excellence” that made it possible, don’t you wonder what it would take to translate that lesson into other aspects of life in this state and country?

How about our stumbling economy? Our bumbling political system? Our ineffective energy and environmental policies?

Tom Campbell

A Saban Hoodoo Wink?

Since there’s no good place available on the Web through Google to find a full text version of Saban’s mission statement for the Crimson Tide, and in case any of our readers who are not football fans missed it, I’ve grabbed it from here and retyped it to post below so anybody in the world can find it.

“Our mission statement here is to create an atmosphere and environment for everyone to be able to succeed, first of all as a person. We want players to be more successful in life because they were involved in our program, by the principles and values that we’re able to develop with them so that they can be successful relative to the character and attitude they have as a football player here at this institution.

“The second thing is we want to be successful as students. I always tell players in recruiting, there’s two things that we want you to do here, you’ve got two careers: one on the field, one off the field. The one off the field means you got to graduate from college. That’s the one that’s going to have the greatest impact on the quality of your life forever. We want to have a great academic support program. We want our players to succeed as students.

“The third is this. We want them to be the best football player they can be. We want every guy to reach their full potential as a football player, play together as a team, know how important it is to be a part of a team and fulfilling your role to that team.

“The last thing is to use all the resources this institution has to help everyone launch their career when they have represented this institution, when they leave this institution, so they can be the most successful in their life because of their association with this university and the people that have made this university great.”

Saban didn’t come up with this philosophy over night. In 2004, he wrote a book called How Good Do You Want to Be?

In the how-to memoir, Saban shares his winning philosophy for creating and inspiring success, revealing things that would help anybody succeed at work and in life. He says “excellence” doesn’t happen overnight. It comes from hard work, consistency, the drive to be the best and a passion for what you do.

Some of the insights include:

Read the rest of this entry »

Under the Microscope
by Glynn Wilson

CRESTWOOD TAVERN — Someone asked me last night after about the third Southern Pecan Brown Ale if I had made any New Year’s resolutions for 2010, and if so, did I plan to write about them? Since I hadn’t given it even a whiff of a thought, I said no, “but maybe I’ll get around to it.”

I don’t get paid $1.2 million a year to write two newspaper columns a week like Maureen Dowd, so there’s nothing in my contract that forces me to write such a column promising New Year’s resolutions but instead reporting on hanging out with and defending the woman in charge of Homeland Security.

But when I woke up this morning and saw the thermometer stuck on 20 degrees, I cranked up the new Mr. Coffee and started surfing the Web to see if there were any good columns in news Webland reporting good ideas for the new year and the new decade. Somehow it came as no shock to find that the best ideas came not from a highly-paid career newspaper columnist, but from a rock star: Bono: Ten Ideas for the Next Ten Years.

Here’s the thing. I’ve been trying to tell people for the past 10 years that the era of the mass circulation daily newspaper is over. But you would be surprised at the places you can still go and get an argument about such things.

Read the rest of this entry »

Under the Microscope
by Glynn Wilson

Historically, Christmas is one of my least-favorite holidays. This year, however, I am trying to gin up some hope with a little Christmas cheer.

Why? Because I think we need the break, for one thing. There are a lot of poor people suffering immeasurably this year due to the Bush recession. Anything that would give them a break and a boost would be a good thing.

Then, if the so-called “Christmas spirit” could do anything to end the partisan hostilities left over from the trauma of the Bush years, I wish everybody a very merry Christmas indeed.

Lest this curmudgeonly, Scrooge-like attitude about Christmas come as a shock to the hordes of new readers here, let me do a little word riff to explain.

Let me just say that if I was like Elvis, that is to say richer and more popular than god, I would blast the TV set every time I hear some talking head go on and on about “the true meaning of Christmas,” or go after ratings by trying to start up another fight over the “attack on Christmas” by “liberals.”

I quit even checking in on Bill O’Reilly’s show on Fox News a long time ago, in part because of his fake, cynical strategy of attracting conservative viewers by blatantly distorting the Supreme Court’s rulings upholding the separation of church and state about nativity scenes on public property.

One of my favorite film depictions of this divide in America comes in Charlie Wilson’s War. Remember when Tom Hanks suggests to his constituent from Texas that moving the nativity scene from the firehouse to the church down the street would be the best solution where everybody wins?

Read the rest of this entry »

Tom Campbell

Saban flashes a knowing smile and wink after Ingram won the Heisman Saturday night…

Under the Microscope
by Glynn Wilson

Somewhere in the great divide between religion and science there exists the uniquely American game called football — and the practice of voodoo.

Nick Saban knows a thing or two about football, and if there’s any truth to certain urban legends spreading around the “Internets,” he may have learned a thing or two about voodoo during his five-year stint coaching LSU down on the bayou.

You can’t live in that damn swamp without finding out a little about Hoodoo, gris, gris and the rest, as I learned in my four years of living in New Orleans, as did my good friend Rick Bragg, who was there at the same time.

They say college football is a religion in the Deep South, especially in places like Louisiana and Alabama, but according to Bragg, “it’s not. Only religion is religion.”

“Anyone who has seen an old man rise from his baptism, his soul all on fire, knows as much, though it is easy to see how people might get confused,” Bragg wrote in Sports Illustrated when Nick Saban announced he would take the head coaching job at Alabama — after telling the people of Louisiana and Florida he never would.

“If football were a faith anywhere, it would be here on the Black Warrior River in Tuscaloosa, Ala.,” Bragg wrote. “And now has come a great revival.”

When the announcement went out Saturday night that running back Mark Ingram had won the University of Alabama’s first Heisman Trophy, the news traveled over the Internets faster than the old church bells could ring across the Old South.

The Alabama faithful sent e-mail messages and text messages to their groups of friends. Bloggers posted news links, photos and comments. And the social Networking sites of Facebook and Twitter lit up like Christmas tree lights with tweets supporting Ingram with the now infamous acronym RTR, short for Roll Tide Roll!

Read the rest of this entry »

Let Tebow Cry…

Glynn Wilson

Paul “Bear” Bryant’s image casts a shadow over Tuscaloosa and all of Alabama. One spot stands open on the walk of fame, for the next coach to win a national championship. Will it be Saban? This year?

Under the Microscope
by Glynn Wilson

Class. It’s been awhile since we’ve heard that term used in the way Florida quarterback Tim Tebow did, through his tears Saturday night after losing the Southeastern Conference championship game, to describe the University of Alabama and its football team.

He was not using the term as a noun to talk about a group of students or an economic or social class of people. He was using it as an adjective to describe a world-class program characterized not only by its drive for “success” through “excellence,” but also by the way Alabama got the job done this year, with determination, practice and perseverance yes, but also with style, integrity, dignity and yes character, humility and grace.

That is a lesson we all should learn, if possible. It’s not easy. But life never is, is it?

While sports and American culture have both been diminished by “trash talk” over the past couple of decades, and our politics has been diminished by partisan rancor, the Georgia Dome Saturday night was the site of a remarkable departure from that nastiness. Tebow deserves credit for that, although some Alabama fans have not shown the same class toward him, which just goes to show you that class does not always trickle down to the masses.

Due to the way the Alabama defense shut down Tebow, and due to Mark Ingram’s dominance on the field, he will now most likely win the coveted Heisman Trophy for NCAA player of the year. He fully deserves it not only because of how many yards he gained or the number of touchdowns he ran. He deserves it because of his personal character and class in the way he handled it.

He never once said on camera he deserved the award. The same was true for Nick Saban, until that brief TV interview Saturday night, when he once again downplayed it by placing an emphasis on “the team.”

In case this is a burning question on the minds of people all the over the country and the world today, as I suspect it is judging by the remarks on my Facebook home page, here’s an essay on class I’ve been thinking about writing for some time. This is not just about football or sports in general. It is about life, which includes journalism and politics.

It is a story of why Nick Saban is the quintessential college football coach and was never suited to the pros. The short answer? Saban is at heart a teacher. By the time the players get to the pros, they can’t be taught anymore. By then, they either have it or they don’t.

It is a story also of why the United States became the greatest country the world has ever known, and the story of why the New York Times became the greatest newspaper ever published.

Read the rest of this entry »

Glynn Wilson

A scene from the Wind Creek State Park campground on Lake Martin…

Under the Microscope
by Glynn Wilson

WIND CREEK, Ala. — In the early morning hours before even the ducks awake, while the noisy campers are still asleep in their gas guzzling RVs and the lake is so calm it looks like a blue-green sheet of glass, that is the best time to contemplate the past, the present and the future. There is nothing like a hiatus into nature to put the mind on the right track.

It’s just too bad that our ancestors who fought with each other not far from here on the Horseshoe Bend of the Tallapoosa River in the early nineteenth century didn’t have the communications skills to negotiate a better future for themselves and this place.

Although I suspect it would not have mattered to General Andrew Jackson what anybody said. He was a hard-headed son-of-a-bitch who was determined to defeat the Creek Nation, represented by 1,000 Red Stick braves, and to run the Native American population out of the American South. It’s just too bad about 600 Cherokee didn’t know better than to fight on his side.

In case you’ve forgotten your state history, Alabama became a state in 1819, carved out of 23 million acres ceded to the United States government in the Treaty of Fort Jackson in August, 1814 after the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. The land was initially ceded to the Cherokee Nation as an ally of the U.S., but after Jackson became president in 1829, he pushed through Congress and signed the so-called Removal Bill, sending all the Native Americans he could round up on the “Trail of Tears” to live on reservations in the Oklahoma territory.

Chief Junaluska, the Cherokee Chief who led 500 braves in support of Jackson and who saved the general’s life in the battle, would say later, “If I had known that Jackson would drive us from our homes, I would have let him die at Horseshoe.”

If only…

Read the rest of this entry »