Journalism 101: Sometimes what doesn't happen is news...

By Jim Heffernan

With both major political parties’ national conventions out of the way, and Labor Day consigned to history, the 2012 presidential campaign pitting President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney is in the “home stretch,” ending on election day, Nov. 6.

So for a couple of months we will see almost nothing but politics on newscasts, in the papers and online. I enjoy it, although it’s a little nerve-wracking because -- at least at this writing -- the polls all say it’s close. I’m a strong supporter of one of them; you can guess which.

Barry Goldwater

In my lengthy newspaper career, I only got close to a national campaign once, and it was a long, long time ago. I was still a fledgling reporter in 1964 when Barry Goldwater, the Republican, faced off against incumbent Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson. 

The only national attention Duluth got in that presidential campaign came from the Republican side. Goldwater’s running mate, William E. Miller, a congressman from New York, made a fleeting trip to Duluth, spoke briefly to the media and hardly anyone else at UMD (on the lawn outside Kirby Student Center) and high-tailed it out of here, all on a sunny October day.

In those days, as with today, the designated candidate for vice president had a large retinue following him around the country, including representatives of major media organizations, although none of the big names. I was assigned to be part of the Duluth press corps covering this major political event.

So, I got to ride on the press bus with all of the national correspondents, who, it seemed to me, were a particularly unfriendly bunch. They could spot a hick reporter (like me) from the sticks (Duluth) from a block away and simply ignored us. Didn’t even look at us.

The national press people seemed perpetually bored with their assignment, and didn’t smile at all. I suppose they wanted to be assigned to cover one of the presidential candidates, and felt that it was beneath their talents and dignity to be chasing a vice presidential hopeful around. Maybe they were hung over. Maybe all of the foregoing.

That was the year, of course, when Minnesota’s own Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey was Lyndon Johnson’s running mate, but I don’t recall him coming to Duluth during the campaign. He might have. I did cover him several other times during his lengthy career.

William E. Miller

But back to William E. Miller, a man of average build, pleasant features and ultra-conservative political credentials, just like Barry “Extremism in Defense of Liberty is No Vice” Goldwater. (I need hardly point out that they lost the election.) 

It so happened that the very week of Miller’s Duluth visit, a huge scandal had erupted in Washington. A top aide to President Johnson, Walter Jenkins, was arrested at a YMCA in Washington, D.C., after being discovered engaged in a homosexual act. Believe me, in 1964 such charges were less common than they are today, and considered more grievous.

When Miller spoke in Duluth, he didn’t mention the Jenkins scandal. I don’t recall what he said. I took my notes and rushed back to the newspaper and wrote my story, turning it over to a city editor.

The city editor scanned it quickly and asked me if Miller had mentioned the Walter Jenkins scandal. I said he hadn’t, and, therefore, there was no mention of it in my story.

He responded by cranking a fresh sheet of copy paper into his own typewriter – always a dreaded sight to a reporter – and wrote a new top to my story. It went something like this:

“Republican vice presidential candidate William E. Miller avoided the Walter Jenkins sex scandal today in a whirlwind campaign visit to Duluth.” And after a couple more sentences, it picked up on my story with a “meanwhile” -- one of the handiest words in all journalism.

I learned a lot from that city editor, but that lesson stands out: Tell what didn’t happen. Sometimes that’s news too.

Where have all the pseudo-intellectuals gone?

By Jim Heffernan

The Republicans running for president have been fueling suspicion of intellectuals, especially elite intellectuals like the Harvard faculty (as opposed to the first 500 names in the New York City phone book), and, of course, President Barack Obama, a former professor of constitutional law.

Newt “Big Ideas” Gingrich has been particularly hard on the intellectual elite, and also the mainstream media, especially those who bring up his matrimonial record.

Gingrich is almost of my generation, so I believe I understand him better than the other Republicans, although fairly youthful-seeming Mitt Romney is no spring chicken. Ron Paul, of course, is an old rooster.

I do not understand, however, why these conservatives are so resentful of intellectuals, knowing that they are old enough to recall when the real problem – at least it was when I was in college – was with pseudo-intellectuals. That leaves only Rick Sanatorium.

When I trod the halls of academe in the 1960s, such as they were at the Duluth “branch” of the University of Minnesota, pseudo-intellectuals – all male -- were hiding behind every pillar of higher learning. Everybody knew who they were due to certain universal pseudo-intellectual traits obvious to the naked eye as well as those who wore spectacles. This was the immediate post-lorgnette era.

The most obvious trait of a pseudo-intellectual, aside from thinking they were smarter than everybody else, was pipe smoking. No cool guy (i.e. a cigarette smoker) would be caught dead smoking a pipe. Pipe-smoking pseudo-intellectuals also wore horn-rim glasses, made a public display of playing chess and bridge, and – forgive me for this – had unkempt seemingly not recently shampooed hair. You know the hair.

They were also careless about their dress, eschewing the “cool” clothes worn by, say, fraternity men or athletes. Plastic shirt pocket protectors? You bet your ballpoint pen with the piggy back refill built right in. Slide rules were worn in holsters on belt, for quick drawing in discussions on the limits of pi. I hasten to add, though, that their mothers loved them.

I felt at the time it would be horrible to be branded a pseudo-intellectual and went out of my way not to seem like one. In hindsight, there were two ways to avoid being labeled a pseudo-intellectual (other than pipe smoking and the rest): Be an actual intellectual, so you could condescendingly look down on the pseudo-intellectual in the academic pecking order. This was not an avenue open to me because I hailed from Duluth’s western precincts, had never been crowned a Junior Rotarian and the academic achievement reflected in the grades I got were, um, not reflecting sufficient intellectual rigor, let us put it.

So those of us who could not claim to be actual, bona fide intellectuals but didn’t want to be branded a pseudo-intellectual put on a “regular guy” act or whatever passed for “cool” in the early 1960s. The late 1960s were entirely different, but I was well out of the academic environment by then.

Now that so many years have passed, I have been able to track the lifetime records of a few of those we regarded 50 years ago as pseudo-intellectuals. Most have given up the pipe and chess, but bridge might be a pastime that endures with a few. Some of them actually made intellectual status and enjoyed continued academic life on faculties while retaining many of their own (faculties). And a few made big bucks and have become philanthropists and pseudo-philanthropists with their names on college buildings.

As for me, I am writing a book I will call “The Old Man and the C”. You just read the introduction.

Here's news for Bachmann: America not missing...

By Jim Heffernan

Before Michele Bachmann got to the point in her withdrawal speech in which she said she would “step aside” from her presidential campaign after finishing dead last in the Iowa Republican caucus, she repeated many of the themes she and other GOP hopefuls have been sounding throughout their campaigns:

They keep saying they want to “take back the country.”

I didn’t know the country had gone anywhere.

The United States (“of America,” as the politicians all add in case there was any confusion about which United States they might mean) seems pretty much the same to me as it has for most of my lifetime, a not inconsiderable period of time, it turns out.

Nevertheless, every time I hear Bachmann and Willard “Mitt” Romney and Republican also-rans say they want to take back the country, I wonder what they could possibly mean. I look out the window, and there it still is – the United States (of America) looking pretty much the way it has looked for the last half century-plus that I have been paying attention.

Still, when I hear them say these things about our country, I worry that I have somehow missed the theft of an entire nation and didn’t even notice. I wonder if I had Rip Van Winkled for a few decades and suddenly awakened to find that my country had been taken away.

So I jump in my car and drive around, looking for signs that my country had disappeared, and find that at least one small portion of the country, Duluth, Minnesota, is still there pretty much as I have always known it. There are cosmetic changes, of course, but there it is, a shining city on a hill, as President Reagan might have described it. And atop flagpoles, there they still are, the stars and stripes, forever waving in the wind.

I have a hunch the rest of the country is still out there, too.

So, I wonder what these Republican presidential aspirants and, one assumes, their supporters, mean when they say they want to take back the country. I hate to sound too cynical, but could it be that they mean they merely want to take back the presidency? Could that be it?

If that’s what they mean, they should say so. I sense that many tea-drinking Americans simply don’t accept President Barack Obama as a bona fide president like all of the white, male presidents of the past. Somehow, they can’t see him as as strong a commander in chief of the armed forces as past presidents, especially some of the great White House warriors like Reagan, who spent World War II in uniform on the 20^th Century Fox lot in Hollywood making training films, or George W. Bush, our immediate past president, who flew for the Texas National Guard…over Texas, but not Vietnam.

It’s getting hard to find presidential candidates of either political party who have actually served in the armed forces, but Bush fils has probably taken care of that when vets of the wars he started begin to seek political office.

Finally, Michele Bachmann accuses Obama of being a “socialist” because he wants everyone in America (that’d be the United States that has gone somewhere and needs to be taken back) to have access to affordable health care.

That will be quite a change for America – health coverage for everyone, like in Canada and most of “old” Europe. I’d say bring it on, but somebody already said that. In a different context, of course.

Devil missing from hell; said lurking in details...

By Jim Heffernan

Here’s some good news you won’t find in the mainstream media – just in time for the holidays.

DATELINE HELL -- Officials here announced today that the devil has gone missing. “Our ruler disappeared from his golden throne the day after Thanksgiving and hasn’t been heard from since,” a Hades spokesman stated in a terse message. He denied the disappearance had anything to do with Black Friday, a perennial favorite of the prince of darkness.

Christians and others around the planet, together with multitudes already in heaven, were jubilant, although U.S. church authorities urged caution before jumping to the conclusion that the devil is dead. “Without the devil, of course, there would be no need for the churches,” said a retired Episcopal bishop who asked not to be identified by name for fear of being struck down.

Nevertheless, Pope Benedict XVI said Catholics should celebrate the news in Christmas masses, and veteran protestant evangelist Billy Graham issued a statement from his hospital bed expressing hope that reports of the devil’s demise are true. “If they are, I’ve finally won,” Graham exuded.

President Obama spoke briefly from the Rose Garden, saying, “First we got Osama bin Ladin and now I am pleased to learn that Satan might also be eliminated.” Obama faces a tough election next year.

The surprising news had the effect of shaking leading Republican candidates for president, catching them off guard. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, said he wouldn’t be surprised to learn the devil had taken up residence in the White House, “where he has often been a guest.”

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who has been rising in the polls, said on Fox News, “Beelzebub is a wily character who throughout history has been known to show up at various times and various places outside of his home base. I know him well, and he’ll be back.”

In a statement from the Netherworld, where he has resided since his death in 1972, former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover said his agents know exactly where he is. “The devil is in the details,” said the disgraced ex-top cop.

Film at 10.

Obama's humor perseveres...

I got a real kick out of the NY Times picture of Obama on today's front page. He's visiting a local bookstore on off time from a rally on health care reform in Iowa City and impishly poses with the newly released books by Republicans Mitt Romney and Carl Rowe.  His obvious sense of humor is a welcome sight during this time of unrelenting partisan battles. Click HERE to see the picture.