Season 7, Episode 3 December 3, 2023

On this episode, Not the Headlines will look at another dispute between small-town media and law enforcement, and Christmas trees.  Let's go Back explores an explorer, and a border comparison.  The Epilogue discusses the origin of fashion.

Transcript

Hello!  Thank you for putting your ear to the Listening Tube!  I’m your host, Bob Woodley.  On this episode, we’ll hear about a preacher who really got around, the difference between the eastern border of Finland and the southern border of the United States, and a killer fog….but first, (Not the Headlines!)

It looks like small-town law enforcement and local politics are butting heads again.  As you may recall, I told you sordid story about the arrests and searches of a small town newspaper reporter and publisher who were arrested in Kansas.  Season 6, Episode 4.  Well, now it’s happened again, but this time in Escambia County, Al-a-bamaaa!  A reporter named Don Fletcher wrote a story about an investigation into the use of Covid-19 money by the local Board of Education.  The story seemed to have had some inside information about grand jury testimony which, under Alabama law, must be kept secret.  To reveal grand jury secrets is a felony.  Don was arrested for revealing the testimony in his story.  So, where did he get the inside scoop?  A reporter doesn’t have to reveal his sources, at least for now.  But some good police work and a little bit of logic pointed to a likely suspect:  The publisher of Atmore News, Sherry Digmon.  Why is Sherry a likely suspect?  After all, she just prints what the journalists write, right?  Sure, a publisher is ultimately responsible for what gets published, but does it rise to criminal activity?  Why wasn’t the editor charged, too?  Might as well get everybody in the whole chain of command!  How about the composing department and the pressmen who print the paper?  What about the people who deliver the paper?  They should also arrest the people who delivered the paper to the reader.  And everyone who shared it with someone else.  Although, by doing so, you’re missing one key ingredient of the whole recipe:  the person who revealed the information in the first place.  So, who would know what was said in the grand jury testimony?  Who would have access to that information?  The police see to think it was a member of the Board of Education.  And guess what?  The publisher, Sherry, is also a member of the Board of Education, the very entity which was being investigated.  Seems like a slam-dunk case, right?  Both the reporter and the publisher are free on 10-thousand dollars bail each.   
There are two stories at play here now.  The story about the reporter and publisher being arrested, and the ongoing grand jury investigation into the county school board.  But these stories are more intertwined than a first glance.  That’s because the District Attorney of the county revealed in a school board meeting that there was a grand jury investigation involving covid funds and the school board, but that the investigation didn’t involve the school superintendent.  It seems like the D.A. should have himself arrested for revealing what the grand jury is doing.  And it’s certainly something a reporter would be interested in investigating.  So, if I were a Cambria County reporter, knowing I can’t get any information from the grand jury itself, my next best bet would be somebody on the school board.  Maybe one of them knows a thing or two.  Maybe they’ve been questioned by the grand jury.  Well, as luck would have it, the reporter knows somebody on the school board, and it’s his boss.  Yes, the publisher who was arrested along with him is on the school board.  Well, I don’t think you need Sherlock Holmes to figure out who gave the information to the reporter.  At least, that’s what it looks like.  Now that they’ve been charged, they’ll have to prove they broke the law in court.
The reporter and publisher/school board member’s phones were confiscated.  It won’t be hard to figure out if they were communicating about the whole affair.  But the question remains; exactly who broke the law here, and do journalists have special status when it comes to reporting what’s in the public interest?  If money was handed out to a privileged few instead of benefiting the citizens, then the citizens deserve to know.  I’m sure the reporter was digging for information, but what if somebody just walks up to a reporter and reveals secret grand jury testimony?  Is the reporter required to keep it a secret?  After all, the felony is for revealing grand jury secrets, not reporting them.  The reporter didn’t reveal the secrets, he merely passed along what was already revealed.  As for the woman who is both publisher and school board member, she, too, got her information from another source, unless she only knew of her own involvement, such as testimony she may have given.  If she did discuss her testimony, then she may be guilty of a felony, but not the reporter.  He’s just a guy doing his job as a small town muckraker.  I think he got arrested as well because he stole the District Attorney’s thunder before he could make a big announcement about where the covid funds went.  
What’s likely to happen is the reporter will refuse to reveal his source, and the evidence from their phones will not be permissible as evidence, and without any evidence, both the publisher and reporter will find the charges against them dropped.  But in the meantime, the police and the District Attorney will have already seen the evidence and will know exactly what happened even though they can’t use said evidence in court.  Intimidation tactic complete.  The media couple might have the charges dropped, or be found not guilty, but the signal has already been sent.  There are people who think that they’re above the law, or at least able to control the law.  When it comes to a battle between the media and the law, it seems the law wins out in the final tally even if the media wins in the legal system.
Another case still waiting on a ruling is the case of a television news reporter, Catherine Herridge.  She may be found in contempt of court for not being willing to reveal her source for a story she did while with Fox News.  Although she’s now a reporter for CBS, she won’t reveal how she got documents from the FBI for a story about an investigation into a Chinese American scientist.  The scientist is suing for a violation of the Privacy Act.  In the small town case, the police just took the information they were looking for, while in the big city case, a judge ordered the reporter to reveal the source.  
It sucks when secrets get revealed.  Some secrets are better left unsaid.  But it is the job of the journalist to reveal secrets.  Not all secrets, such as sources, but the kind of secrets that are being kept from us by our government or other entities that should be transparent, such as charities when it comes to where our donations are utilized.
Good journalists used to be called muckrakers.  They were willing to dig deep to find the truth, to find the reasons for the actions and the results that may not have been obvious to the general public.  Their subjects, such as politicians, have since the dawn of journalism, played a cat and mouse game.  The media lobbying for more access while the subjects devise new ways to hide what they want hidden.  Sometimes, simply hiding doesn’t work, and that’s when those in power begin to abuse it.  That’s not to say the media doesn’t have power, too.  They just have different stuff to hide.

With Thanksgiving behind us in America, all interest shifts to Christmas and Hanukkah.  The autumn decorations get put away and up go the Christmas trees.  And thus begins the decades-old argument about which is better, the real or the artificial Christmas tree.  They each have their assets and liabilities.  There’s nothing like the fragrance of an evergreen tree in your home, long after most other trees are bare.  On the other hand, they’re bound to dry our and become a fire hazard, and your vacuum cleaner will be finding pine needles until spring.  An artificial tree, while cumbersome to move and store, is cleaner and more uniform.  When I grew up, artificial trees were a relatively new idea, and I was against it.  I’m a big fan of trees.  Especially evergreen trees.  I had two of them in my front yard, one of which I could climb.  The other one had too many branches that were too close together to squeeze through.  The one I could climb was very climber-friendly.  There was a place I could even build a primitive tree-house.  More like a tree-platform.  I spent a lot of time in that tree.  I even fell out of it once, but the tree itself kept me from hitting the ground.  Somehow, on the way down, a branch went down the back of my pants and there I was, suspended about six feet from the ground, still swaying up and down while calling for help.  My mom and my Aunt Kathleen had to bring a chair out of the kitchen to reach me and pull me off of the branch that saved me from certain injury.  Many of my memories as a boy are of time spent climbing trees.  I could see an entire mountainside of evergreens from our kitchen window.  Is it any wonder I was in favor of natural instead of artificial trees?  
I didn’t realize at the time that by favoring a natural tree for Christmas, I was advocating the cutting down of the very thing I loved.  My family converted to an artificial tree very early, and I was resistant.  In fact, long after I moved out of my parent’s house, while I was living three-thousand miles away in southern California, I heard a commercial on the radio that said I could send a real Christmas tree to anybody anywhere in the country.  So I sent my mom and dad a live Christmas tree.  It came in a cardboard tube.  It’s not the worst gift I ever gave, but it might be close.  Turns out if you’re not ready for it, it’s more of a nuisance than anything.  It might be right up there with giving someone NASCAR tickets when the nearest track is a two-hour drive away.  
I’ve since been using artificial trees.  My wife and I have several of them.  A big one we only drag down from the attic for Christmas, as well as a small one suitable for a counter top, or a bar, that I decorate with my special ornaments.  My wife has so many ornaments for the big tree that I need an extra tree to hang the extra ones.  Plus, we have a tree that’s a small counter top tree that she decorates for every season.
You might be thinking, “Bob, what does any of this have to do with Not the Headlines?”  Well, thanks for getting me back on track.  It just shows that you’re really paying attention. I appreciate that.  I began thinking about Christmas trees when I read a story in the Washington Post about the Christmas decorations in the White House this year, which were recently revealed by First Lady Jill Biden.  Among the nearly 15,000 feet of ribbon, 350 candles, nearly 34,000 ornaments and more than 22,000 bells are 98 Christmas trees.  Yes, 98 Christmas trees in one house.  I though the three in my house was excessive.  All three of which are artificial, although probably made in China.  Therein lies the dilemma.  Is it better to cut down a live tree that’s breathing our carbon dioxide and contributing oxygen to the planet, or using an artificial tree made in a communist country to celebrate the birth of the man on which Christianity is based?  There’s only one answer:  Make artificial Christmas trees in the United States.  I don’t know where the 98 Christmas trees in the White House came from or if they’re real or artificial.  A story about the 98 trees in the White House only confirms that the tree in the Blue Room of the White House is an 18 and a half foot Fraser Fir from Fleetwood, North Carolina.  But we may be able to assume that all of the 98 trees in the White House are real trees.  Otherwise, we would have artificial trees made in China adorning the home of the first family.
Now I have to wonder why the party that proclaims to be a champion for the environment feels alright with cutting down almost a hundred trees simply for display at the nation’s residence.  Is that really the signal you want to send to your constituents?  

Let’s Go Back liner

1674
Father Jacques Marquette founds a mission on the shore of Lake Michigan to minister to the native Illiniwek people.  Father Jacques was not only a holy man, he was an adventurer and explorer.  He had already spent eight years as a missionary to the native Americans, beginning in Quebec.  He had become fluent in six Native American dialects.  He was also a mapmaker.
He ended up on the shore of Lake Michigan after spending a year and a half exploring the Mississippi River, and according to biography dot com, came within 435 miles of the Gulf of Mexico.  Upon returning north, Father Jacques and two companions set up camp for the winter on the lake shore.  Establishing a mission there, and becoming the first Europeans to live there, preaching to the locals.  Today, the place is called Chicago, Illinois.

1766
In London, James Christie holds his first sale.  It’s the official date of the founding of Christie’s Auction House.  Along with Sotheby’s, perhaps the best known seller of valuable items in the world.  As far back as 1848, Christie ran the sale after the bankruptcy of the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, which included a portrait of William Shakespeare.  In 1987, the company fetched a record price for a Bugatti Royale car.  Christie’s sold the Codex Leicester, scientific records of Leanardo di Vinci, to Bill Gates.  Just this past May, Christie’s sold part of a jewelry collection once owned by an Austrian billionaire.  Her husband Helmut made his money with the help of the Nazi’s, according to reports.  Wikipedia says a second action that was planned for last month was canceled after Jewish charities and other organizations refused to accept any proceeds from the first auction because of the source of the Horten family wealth.

1917
Finland declares independence from Russia.  Finland and Russia share an 830-mile border, with 8 border crossings between them.  All but one of them was closed by the Finnish government in the last month.  The last one was closed this week.  Only a train may cross the border now, according to a story from ABC news, and it’s only allowed to carry cargo.  No people are allowed to cross the border.  Why?  Finland says Russia is sending migrants into Finland to destabilize the country.  The Finnish Prime Minister calls it an act of “hybrid warfare.”  Sound familiar?  Are there thousands of people crossing the border every day?  From places other than the country next door?  Well, no and yes.  The migrants coming into Finland from Russia are from counties like Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Iraq, Pakistan and Yemen, which is from where ballistic missiles were recently fired at an American warship what rescued a cargo ship from pirates.  How many of them have come?  So far, about a thousand, but 900 came in November.  They’ve all applied for asylum.  Finland accuses Russia of bringing them to the border, as it’s tightly controlled on the Russian side.  Finland says it may open a crossing again in a couple weeks.  Political divisions between Finland and Russia escalated when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine inspired Finland to join NATO.
Meanwhile, 7-thousand migrants illegally cross the southern border of the United States with Mexico.  The Mexican government is now accused of having its immigration officials ushering migrants to the U.S. border and charging them money for the coordinates of the proper crossing site.  All while the Biden administration sues the state of Texas to remove barriers buoys in the Rio Grand, and cargo containers from the Arizona border.  The Biden administration says the immigration system is broken, but won’t even enforce the laws currently on the books.  As a result, illegal immigrants are living in the streets of America’s cities, pitching tents on sidewalks in today’s chilly Chicago, New York City, and cities all over the country.  The Mayors of Chicago and New York have pleaded with the Biden administration for help in the form of more money to pay for the costs of the illegal immigrants.  They’re forbidden by the Democrat party from asking the Biden administration to close the border.

1941
The Imperial Japanese Navy attacks the United States Pacific Fleet and its defending Army Air Forces and Marine air forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.  Japan also invades Malaya, Thailand, Hong Kong and the Philippines at the same time.  The United States would declare war on Japan, but not before Canada did.

Use Roosevelt soundbite


1945
By a vote of 65 to 7, the United States Senate approves United States participation in the United Nations, which had been established about a month earlier.  A PBS website says there are currently 191 countries in the U.N., which employ six official languages.  Its headquarters in New York City is its own entity with its own flag, post office and stamps.  In addition to negotiating peace settlements and international treaties in the hundreds, the U.N. has also authorized wars in Korea and the Persian Gulf.  The U.N. has been instrumental in mediating the Arab-Israeli conflicts.  Oddly, though, the U.N. has so far refused to condemn the Hamas attack on Israel.

1952
A cold fog descends upon London, combining with air pollution from the burning of coal and wood.  London is already well known for its fog at the time.  But this time was different.  What Encyclopedia Britannica calls an anticyclone, or a high-pressure system that caused an inversion that trapped cold air beneath warmer air above it.  The inversion prevented the smoke and other pollutants from being released into the atmosphere, trapping it close to the ground.  It lasted for 5 days.  Surface traffic came to a halt.  Pedestrians couldn’t see their own feet.  Events were canceled and crime increased.  Pneumonia and bronchitis cases skyrocketed.  Animals and livestock died.  So did people.  In the coming weeks and months, it’s estimated that 12-thousand people were killed by what became known as “smog.”   Climate change!  Said the British government, four years later when it passed the Clean Air Act, a major accomplishment in the history of environmentalism. 

1971
The Montreux Casino in Switzerland goes up in smoke when someone fires a flare gun during a concert by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention.  The incident would inspire the Deep Purple song “Smoke on the Water”.  
Play clip

1980
John Lennon of The Beatles, peace activist, and celebrated socialist is murdered by a mentally unstable fan, in front of The Dakota apartment building in New York City where Lennon lived.  
Play clip


1984
Hezbollah militants hijack a Kuwait Airlines plane, killing four passengers.  That’s the same group that’s currently lobbing rockets into northern Israel.

1988
Palestinian Liberation Organization President Yasser Arafat recognizes the right of Israel to exist.

1991
The leaders of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine sign an agreement dissolving the Soviet Union and establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States.  Nine years later, Vladimir Putin would take control of Russia.  Belarus has voluntarily become a puppet regime, leading the tyrant Putin to attempt to pull Ukraine back into the fold.  The war in Ukraine is still ongoing, and it is in the best interest of the United States that Ukraine not lose the war.

Phone and e-mail liner

My cousin Glenn once asked me a question that seemed quirky at the time, but in hindsight, opens the door to a lot of possibilities.  We were just kids, teenagers at best.  We were both interested in music as far back as when you could cut out a Jackons record off the back of a cereal box.  
In case you don’t know what I just said, allow me to regress.  
There was a time when people listened to music in one of two ways:  You could listen to music on the radio, or you could listen to music on a record.  For the former you would need a radio receiver, which people could carry around in their shirt pocket.  For the latter, you would need a record player.  An apparatus to which you could connect a spinning disc and has a tiny metal sensor that reads microscopic bumps in a groove on the surface.  It’s really quite an amazing process.  But 1960’s technology allowed marketers to stamp a record on the back of a cereal box.  All you had to do was use a pair of scissors to carefully follow the dotted line around the record to separate it from the box.  Here’s another amazing part:  It didn’t even tell you to get your mom or dad to cut it out for you!  You know where mom keeps the scissors!  You wanna hear Michael Jackson sing or don’t ya?  Your only real dilemma is whether or not to eat all the cereal before you cut up the box!  
There are a lot of ways to listen to music today.  We’ve gone from records to magnetic tape to digital recordings and the means for easy distribution.  We can now share songs digitally with a few touches on the screen of our phones.  It’s certainly much easier than cutting a record off the back of a cereal box with a pair of safety scissors.  Blue for right-handed and red for left-handed.  Glen and I went through all of those scientific advances together.  But it was still the music that was the most thought-inspiring.  Not because of the meaning of the song, not because of how much it made you cry, or how much it made you feel sorry for yourself, or how inspiring it might have been.  
While all of those things may apply, the question my cousin Glenn asked is, “How long does the band keep playing after the song fades out?”  At what point does the engineer in the studio turn on the intercom and say, “Okay, we have enough?”  
I never really thought about it before.  There might be a lot of music that ended up on the cutting room floor simply because a song ran out of words.  Meanwhile, the musicians kept playing and we never got to hear it.  
You can apply the same question, “How long does the band keep playing after the song fades out?” to the way current events are covered by our news media.  And in addition, our own attention spans sometimes cut out the guitar solo at the end because the news of war doesn’t change much day by day.  More people fought, more people died.  Someone somewhere is keeping score and maybe at some point a winner will be declared.  So even though the song is over, the musicians play on.  Conflict on the world stage has become like a top 40 radio station in the sense that when one has played long enough, another comes along to take it’s place.  Most recently, the war in Ukraine has lost its luster in the same way the last Taylor Swift song got over played and people grew tired of it.  That’s when Ariana Grande says, “Hey, don’t forget about me!” and Hamas attacks Israel.  While Taylor Swift and Ukraine are still ringing in our ears.  So, whenever you hear a song fade out, remember that the musicians are still playing.

As you may know if you’re a regular listener to the program, or even if you’re irregular, I’m not here to judge, I don’t have a lot of hair on my head.  The last time I had long hair was 1981, and until then, you might have considered me one of those damn hippies.  And I was as hippie as my mom would allow.  Plus a little more.  There was a time when I actually had to brush my hair because there was so much of it.  That all ended when I joined the Air Force.  I never had long hair again after that.  I didn’t need a brush anymore, only a comb.  I haven’t used a comb in decades, and neither has my barber.  
At some point in human history, there must have been a time when using a comb became a thing.  Ancient Egyptians had combs, so we know they’ve been around for a while.  
Has anyone you know ever picked up a fish bone and pretended it’s a comb?  No?  So….just me?  Well, anyway, I think that’s where vanity started.  Our entire fashion industry can trace it roots back to a prehistoric fish bone.  Now, you might be thinking, “But Bob, how can the likes of Cartiet and Georgio and crocs have evolved from something as useless and disgusting as a fish bone?”  Well, I’m no fashion guru.  To be honest, if I could, I’d probably dress like Steven Tyler of Aerosmith.  I’d probably look like somebody’s weird aunt.  Nor am I an anthropologist, so any opinions expressed about the subject are mine alone, and have no basis in fact as far as I know.  Feel free to fact check me.  Maybe I nailed it.  But my guess is that somewhere in the early history of mankind, someone got fed up with having messy hair.  They didn’t have tool with which to cut it.  Early attempt at grooming may have involved fire, as it was the first tool we had.  Chances are some very valuable lessons were learned when it came to mixing fire and grooming……...This just in, I’m told by my producers that we have a rare recording of one of the very first attempts at using fire as a tool for grooming…

Funny sfx

So, obviously, we had to wait until a suitable tool came along with which we could begin to manage the excessive growth of hair that for some inexplicable reason sprouted from our heads.  I’m sure there came a time when we learned to use fire in a more controlled manner, but a better way was still needed.  A cutting tool finally came along, and that bought us some time until a better way to manage what we grew was developed.  That would come thousands of years later, about 5500 BC, when the man-made comb came along.  Somewhere between cutting our hair with flint and the Egyptian comb, we had the fish bone.  Some pre-historic leanardo devinci recognized that the shape of the fishbone could be put to good use.  He, or She, began using a fishbone to groom their hair.  It was slow-going at first, and not a regular habit.  Perhaps only an exercise of opportunity, such as after a rare meal of fish, depending upon your habitat.  Perhaps our theoretical divinci found an advantage to keeping a particularly well-formed fishbone.  Using it as many times as possible until it was no longer sound.  Always keeping an eye out for the next useful one.  If it was a man, perhaps maintaining his hair had a survival benefit.  Keeping his hair out of his eyes may have made his aim better, or made him more attractive.  When we see someone’s eyes, we see them in a more complete way.  When we look into someone’s eyes, we see them in an emotional way.  Perhaps the fish bone was the first tool we had that allowed us to fall in love.  I’ll bet our pre-historic leanardo was quite the ladies man.  Pretty soon, others began to notice.  I don’t know what kind of grunts and gestures we were making at the time, but you can bet that one of us figured out how to say, “Gimme that fish bone!”  And that someone probably went on to produce more offspring than the ones who didn’t. I haven’t produced any offspring since I stopped using a fishbone.
The fish bone didn’t just bring fashion and love and a population explosion.  It also brought us vanity and prejudice.  You can almost hear, through the echos of millennia, a woman thinking to herself, “I look way better than her.  She probably hasn’t seen a fish bone in months.”  And when some guy who has never used a fish bone sees another guy who regularly uses a fish bone thinking, “I don’t like that guy for some reason I just can’t put my finger on.” 

The Listening Tube is written and produced by yours truly.  Copyright 2023.  Thank you for putting your ear to the Listening Tube.  Subscribe today.  I’m your host, Bob Woodley for thou ad infinitum.