That's AWARD WINNING Liberal Blowhard To You, Pal

 Your Humble Columnist thanks the North Carolina Press Association for the First Place Award for "Serious Columns" in Division C (Community Papers with over 10,000 circulation). 

They also had this to say: "Mr. Rhoades makes his columns seem effortless. Besides strong writing, narrative power, and clarity, he strikes a good balance between humor and biting criticism. So many good things to say about these entries; among them: they’re well paced, descriptive, effective. And so pleasurable to read as a journalist and as a reader."

This is the second win for me, since I also won in the same category in 2005. It's ironic--the column's intended to be humorous and I keep winning in "serious columns." The editors tell me it's the subject matter, not the tone that makes the determination. But I notice that, even though my fiction isn't intended to be humorous, I keep getting put on humor panels at conferences. Curious, that. 

The column that won me the prize is here and here.

  

Congratulations to my fellow winners from The Pilot: Hannah Sharpe (First Place in General News Photography, Best Video, and Best Multimedia Project, Third Place education reporting); Fearless sports photographer Donna Ford (First Place, Sports Feature Photo); Deborah Salomon (Third Place Headline Writing); The staff of The Pilot (First Place Headline writing, Second Place Appearance and Design,  Third Place Photo page, Third Place Use of photographs); Andie Rose and Steve Dodson, (Third Place,  Niche Publication for Pinestraw Magazine); and my long-suffering editor, Steve Bouser ( First Place editorial page). 

Thanks to Editor John Nagy for his support, for continuing to publish me every week despite the slings and arrows of the right wing goon squads,  and for dinner.

Woodward Wimps Out

Latest newspaper column (which, for some reason, doesn't appear on the website. No one else's Sunday column did, either....another glitch by The Pilot.
 
Geez, when did Bob Woodward turn into such a wimp?

You may remember Bob Woodward as the fellow who became a journalistic folk-hero when he, along with partner Carl Bernstein, broke a series of stories about skullduggery, dirty tricks, and outright criminality in the Nixon White House that become collectively known as the “Watergate Scandal,” and which eventually led to the resignation of a President.

Since then, Woodward has released several books, some of them quite interesting, like “The Brethren”, his inside look at the Supreme Court, and “The Commanders,” an account of the prelude to the first Gulf War. He’s also written some that, to put it as politely as possible, strain the credulity of the reader. Books like “Veil,” in which he claimed that CIA director William Casey dramatically confessed his knowledge of the Iran-Contra scandal to Woodward himself on his deathbed. Or “The Agenda,” which opens with a description of a conversation between Bill and Hillary Clinton. In bed. Just the two of them. Perhaps Woodward was hiding underneath the bed. Reading Woodward in the past few years has usually led to a lot of eye-rolling and “yeah, rights” on my part, and the occasional book chucked across the room in disgust. 

Recently, however, Woodward’s attention-seeking made him a bit of a laughingstock. At issue was an op-ed Woodward had written in which he claimed that the Obama administration was “moving the goal posts” in sequester negotiations by asking for additional tax revenue as part of the deal. Woodward went on Wolf Blitzer’s TV show and intimated that he’d been threatened by White House aide Gene Sperling. “They were not happy at all,” Woodward said. “It was said very clearly, 'You will regret doing this.'"

Later, in an interview with Politico, “Woodward repeated the last sentence, making clear he saw it as a veiled threat… ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I think if Obama himself saw the way they're dealing with some of this, he would say, 'Whoa, we don't tell any reporter that you're going to regret challenging us.’"

This made Woodward a hero to the right, since they’re always ready for anything that will support one of their favorite bogus claims: that Obama and his people are “thugs.”

Woodward was even invited on Sean Hannity’s show for a round of “show us how the bad man threatened you.”

Unfortunately for Woodward, the White House released the full text of the exchange, starting with Sperling’s e-mail:

“Bob: I apologize for raising my voice in our conversation today. My bad. I do understand your problems with a couple of our statements in the fall — but feel on the other hand that you focus on a few specific trees that gives a very wrong perception of the forest. But perhaps we will just not see eye to eye here. But I do truly believe you should rethink your comment about saying that Potus asking for revenues is moving the goal post. I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim.”

Wow. “I apologize for raising my voice”? “My bad?” “Perhaps we won’t see eye to eye?” Terrifying. This Sperling guy’s a regular Tony Soprano.

(Gene Sperling, in Bob Woodward's Imagination)

Woodward’s response indicated that he knew there was no threat: “Gene, You do not ever have to apologize to me…I for one welcome a little heat; there should more given the importance.”

Merriment ensued among the DC press corps. “Hezbollah is intimidating,” Jeffery Goldberg of The Atlantic wrote on Twitter. “‘I think you will regret staking out that claim’ is not intimidating.” Even conservatives had to admit that, in the words of the Daily Caller’s Matt Lewis, “we were played.” Eric Ericson of RedState ruefully admitted that he’d “moved into the ‘not a threat’ camp.”

I remember back in the day when journalists had some cojones. In the summer of 1972, a pair of reporters discovered that the Nixon White House had a secret slush fund controlled by Attorney General John Mitchell. Katharine Graham, who was at the time the publisher of the Washington Post, discusses in her autobiography what happened when they called Mitchell for comment:

“After [one of the reporters] read him the first two paragraphs, Mitchell interrupted, still screaming, "All that crap, you're putting it in the paper? It's all been denied. Katie Graham is gonna get her [vulgar expletive for a female body part] caught in a big fat wringer if that's published."

That, by golly, is a threat. “As a friend, I think you may come to regret that,” doesn’t even come close. You’d think that, since one of the aforementioned journalists was Bob Woodward himself, he’d know the difference. But since those glory days, Woodward’s become one of the Beltway Insiders, a fading fabulist looking for attention, desperately trying to reclaim former cachet, and not above a little right-wing style drama-queenery and fake victimhood to get it. Or maybe time really has rendered him that gutless. Either way, it’s sad.

Good Catholics, I Need Your Help

The newspaper for which I write  has apparently decided that my response to the two Monsignors who wrote about my column on the Pope's retirement can't be printed because it would "rile people up." So they spiked it.

 A sad and sorry day for a paper that once proudly printed on the masthead of its editorial page that the purpose of a newspaper was 'print the news and raise hell'.

Read and decide for yourself. 

      It seems that my recent column about the retirement of Pope Benedict has caused a bit of a stir. While some people wrote letters and posts on the website saying that they liked it (one called it “hilarious,” others acted as if I’d spat in the baptismal font.
     One reader said it was a “disgrace.” Not just one, but two local Monsignors wrote that I was “causing pain to Catholics” and that the paper was “ridiculing and misrepresenting the Catholic Church and in particular the Holy Father.”

    Oddly enough, no one seems to want to get specific as to what it was that offended them. The bit about the Pope Emeritus not wanting to give up the red shoes because they were the only ones that didn't hurt his corns? The part about him looking forward to spending a Christmas Eve watching "Peanuts" instead of having to work?

    See, I could have taken aim at some of the very real problems the Church is having. Scandals not only about sex abuse, but about coverups and sheltering of pedophile priests by the Church hierarchy. Or an alleged 300-page report about a secret cabal of gay priests within the Vatican. Or the Chairman of the Vatican Bank being ousted after a money laundering scandal that led to Italian prosecutors seizing 23 million euros from one of their accounts last year. And so on.

    But I figured there were plenty of people who would be more than happy to bring that up, and I was right. What seemed funnier to me was the prospect of the Pope, one of the most powerful men in the world, being the first one who had to go back to being a regular Joe who had to go through the same silly bureaucracy, like exit interviews, that you and I do. I thought it amusing to think of him as a normal, but tired old fellow with sore feet who was looking forward to getting his holidays off for a change. That just seemed more goofy and absurdist to me than anything. I certainly wasn’t trying to be mean to the man, and I don’t think I was.

    But, c’est la vie. I’m aspiring to be one of those folks who, when life gives them lemons, tries to make lemonade. (Previously, I’d followed the philosophy of Calvin. No, not John Calvin. Calvin of “Calvin and Hobbes,” who said that when life gives you a lemon, you should “wing it right back and throw some lemons of your own.”) I figure, if Church leaders found the column offensive, there’s nothing I can do about it, so I might as well try and pull off a Dan Brown.

    You remember Dan Brown, author of “The DaVinci Code,” who outraged the Church with his potboiler novel about a secret society protecting the descendants of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Unlike many of my colleagues in the writing game who found the prose wretched, I found the book rather entertaining, largely due to its sheer absurdity. I mean, really, how can you not love a book that has a killer albino monk as one of its chief villains? That’s some grade–A level pulp fiction right there.

    The Church, however, was as unamused as the good Monsignors. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called it “morally offensive.” The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith slammed the book as being “full of calumnies, offenses, and historical and theological errors." And, as I wrote about back in 2006, an entire sub-genre sprung up of "books and videos refuting the Da Vinci Code."

    None of this, however, stopped Mr. Brown from becoming one of the bestselling authors of all time, making millions, and having his book turned into a major motion picture starring Tom Hanks. In fact, some folks credit the controversy with actually helping the book become such a raging success, with people lining up to buy the thing to find out what all the fuss was about. So, if I’m going to offend despite my benign intentions, I want to at least make a few shekels off it.

    With all due respect to the Very Reverend Monsignors, however, I’m going to need a little more firepower directed against me if I’m going to reap the Dan Brown level of filthy lucre. I’m going to need a Bishop mad at me at least. A Cardinal would be ideal, now that the whole Conclave thing is done with.

    And so, good readers, I need your help. If you know anybody up the clerical food chain, send them a copy of the column. Let them know how upset you are.

Let’s get this controversy rolling. I’m not getting any younger. 
   

Maybe Tom Hanks Will Star In the Movie

Monsignor Frank J. Hendrick of Pinehurst writes: 

The March 3 column by Dusty Rhoades concerning Pope Benedict Emeritus causes pain to me and your Catholic subscribers.
Mr. Rhoades has a right to write such and present it for publication. However, I feel that your position as guardians of the press would protect your readership from the harm that ensues.
I am not suggesting that you engage in censorship when facts are presented for publication, yet I suggest that you engage in civility and gentility when such is demanded.

So, he's not suggesting that they engage in censorship, but they should have spiked my column for "civility and gentility's" sake. Got it.


Monsignor Jeffrey A. Ingham of St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church writes:


I am not surprised that someone would write such a piece, but I am surprised that you would publish it.

You know what this means, right? If this kind of condemnation by the Church picks up speed, I'm on a one-way express elevator to Dan Brown level controversy, followed by Dan Brown level money. Yippeee!

Rise of the Robots 2: The Cinderblocking

Latest Newspaper Column:

As I may have pointed out before, I fear robots. Oh, sure, they're helpful now, or so they and their creators would have us believe, but I know better. They have plans, I tell you. Big plans. Plans for world domination.

Take, for example, the various attempts to create a robot bartender. The first one, developed at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute, used sophisticated programming to navigate behind a simulated "bar" in the lab, fetching a limited menu of drinks and snacks selected from a tablet on the bar and placing them before the "customer."

The mechanized publican moved with a ponderous slowness and finally delivered its libations with a flat and emotionless affect, but it was still a heck of a lot faster and friendlier than the bartenders at the Grand Hyatt in New York.

Meanwhile, a group of geeks working under the highly appropriate name of Party Robotics have given us Bartendro, which is decidedly less mobile and completely nonverbal, but which can make "dozens of drinks, including black Russians, Kahlua mudslides, or almost any other classy beverage of your choosing," according to an article on wired.com. 

Sounds cool, you say? Sure it does. That's all part of the plot. Read on. Once you're confuzzled by robotically mixed White Russians, maybe you'd like some music. Here, again, the 'bots are taking over.

Compressorhead is an all-robot band from Australia made up of a four-armed drummer named Stickboy; a guitarist with 78 fingers named, of course, Fingers; and the self-described "highest precision bass player in known existence," an automaton named Bones. They play tunes like Motorhead's "Ace of Spades" and the Ramones' "Blitkrieg Bop." Since they haven't yet developed a robot singer, the lyrics are projected on a screen behind the band, at least until someone tracks down and finds some way to upload that guy who sang "Cars" back in the '80s.




So what, you think? A few drinks, some hard rock 'n' roll, what could be better? Well, friends, that's just to lull you into a false sense of security until they bring out Big Dog II.
You may remember a few months ago I told you about Big Dog, Boston Dynamics' project for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. It's an eerie-looking headless robot "mule" with four insect-like legs, designed to carry loads to and from the battlefield.

Well, those fiends have been putting in long hours in their mad-scientist laboratory, making "improvements." Now, called the Legged Squad Support System, the Son of Big Dog has the capability to follow you. Yes, you heard right. According to Geekologie.com, "This thing doesn't need to be remote controlled. It's smart enough to go along its human masters. Apparently, it's also intelligent enough to follow paths and work in tandem with his robotic brothers."



Supposedly, this allows the hauler to follow its team, carrying ammo, food, and other supplies on its back like a horse, for miles and miles without refueling. Relentless. Remorseless. No matter how far or how fast you run, it will be right there behind you. Scared yet?

Oh, and remember how I said that the original Big Dog didn't have a head? Well, the new model does. Or maybe it's a tail. Whatever it is, it has a big claw at the end of a long "neck" where a head (or tail) would be. And what does it do with that claw? It picks up and throws large and heavy objects, such as cinderblocks, up to 17 feet.



Boston Dynamics refers to the technique as "dynamic manipulation," which uses the "strength of the legs and torso to help power motions of the arm." I call it the beginning of the end. I've seen the video of this bruiser in action, and, like a digital Paul Revere, I'm here to warn you.

Mark my words. It's just a matter of time before that fateful night when the friendly robot bartender gets us all nice and mellow to the background accompaniment of a real metal band - but their robot buddies will be waiting for us out there in the parking lot, ready to follow us home, run us down and do us in with "dynamically manipulated" cinderblocks upside our heads.

They are coming. ...

One Last Papal Duty....

Latest Newspaper Column:

The scene: A tiny, cramped office in the Human Resources Department at Vatican City.
The time: Last week.

HR GUY: Come in, come in, take a seat. I promise this won't take long, sir.

SOON TO BE EX-POPE BENEDICT: I don't know why I have to do this. I didn't even know the Vatican HAD an HR department. And it's "Your Holiness," not sir.

HR GUY: Oh, right, right. Sorry, Your Holiness. It's been 600 years since a pope has left the position while still alive. We're kind of feeling our way here. "Former Holiness" just doesn't work. 'Holiness Emeritus" just sounds weird.

BENEDICT: (Frostily) I agree.

HR GUY: Oh, dear, I feel like we've gotten off on the wrong foot here. Look, Your Holiness, I know this is awkward, and I'll try to make it quick. But, you know, rules are rules. And the rules say, everyone leaving employment has to do an exit interview.

BENEDICT: A what?

HR GUY: Just a few questions to help improve our workplace environment.

BENEDICT: Our workplace environment? This is the priesthood, young man! It's a life of service, sacrifice, suffering and devotion!

HR GUY: Well ... we're trying to sort of soft-pedal that part, if you don't mind. It's really murder on the employee retention rates.

BENEDICT: Oh, for the love of...
 
HR GUY: What was that, Your Holiness?

BENEDICT: Never mind. Ask your questions, and let's get this over with.

HR GUY: OK, great. So why would you say you're leaving your job?

BENEDICT: I think I've made it pretty clear. I'm old. I'm not feeling well. And there are all sorts of challenges facing the Church right now. The fuss over the cover-up of sex abuse by priests, the whole Vatican Bank money-laundering thing, the giant death asteroid, the new book coming out by that Dan Brown guy ...

HR GUY: Wait, back up. Did you say something about a giant death asteroid?

BENEDICT: Did I? Dang. This is why I need to quit. I keep blurting stuff out.

HR GUY: No, really. What about the giant death asteroid?

BENEDICT: Calm down, my child. It's nothing. I totally did not have a vision in which God told me that a giant asteroid was going to wipe out 75 percent of all life on Earth at 9:17 p.m. on New Year's Eve this year and bring about a new Dark Age.

HR GUY: Oh. Whew. That's a relief.

BENEDICT: You're not very bright, are you?

HR GUY: What?

BENEDICT: Nothing. Next question.

HR GUY: What would you say was your favorite part of being pope?

BENEDICT: I'd have to say the hat. I think I really look great in hats. And the shoes, of course.

HR GUY: Oh. Yeah. About the shoes. We're going to need those back.

BENEDICT: What? Not my red shoes!

HR GUY: I'm afraid so, Your Holiness. Only the pope himself can wear the red slippers
.
BENEDICT: But these are my favorite shoes ever! They're the only ones I have that don't hurt my corns! Look! Look at these feet!

HR GUY: Ahhhh! Gross!

BENEDICT: What?

HR GUY: Horrible old-man feet! Please, Your Holiness! I beg you! Put the shoes back on!

BENEDICT: So I can keep them?

HR GUY: We'll make new ones. Just ... wear the shoes around the house, OK? It'll be our little secret. But please, put them back on.

BENEDICT: OK, good.

HR GUY (shuddering): So, moving on. What was your least favorite part of the job?

BENEDICT: Hmmm. I'd say having to work on Christmas.

HR GUY: Really? You had a problem with that?

BENEDICT: Not a problem, exactly. I mean, celebrating the Midnight Mass and doing the homily for all those people is nice, but I'm looking forward to kicking back and spending a nice quiet Christmas Eve with a cup of eggnog and the "Charlie Brown Christmas" DVD.

HR GUY: Oh, that is a good one.

BENEDICT: And afterward, maybe "Die Hard."

HR GUY: I love that movie!

BENEDICT: Well, come on over to the residence this December. I'm only moving around the block a ways. We'll open a bottle of wine, watch some good TV.

HR GUY: Me, Your Holiness? I'd be so honored.

BENEDICT: Might as well. It's the last one any of us will have for a long while.

HR GUY: What?

BENEDICT: Nothing, my child. Nothing.