Catching Up

Since I haven't blogged in a week, several things have piled up on my desk.

First and foremost, thanks for the huge response to my being laid off by KMOX. The hundreds of comments that you've added to this site are a mere fraction of the reaction I've received from listeners, guests, and people in the industry. I truly appreciate it. For one thing, you've kept me busy replying to each and every one of you. Be assured that when I figure out where and what I'll do next, I'll post the information here.

A few e-mailers have asked if CBS cutting me had anything to do with the negative comments I made on the air about Katie Couric's performance on Super Tuesday. The answer is no -- or, at least, no one in the company ever said a single word about it to me, so I strongly doubt it.

And here's something I couldn't say on KMOX, since I followed the guy on the air every day. There's a bumper on Rush Limbaugh's show in which Johnny Donovan refers to Rush as "the man who runs America." Now that McCain is going to become the Republican nominee over Limbaugh's vigorous objections, how's that "running America" thing working out?

Speaking of the election, Elaine e-mails to remind me that, while other blacks have run for the presidency, Barack Obama might become the first truly African-American to sit in the oval office, since his father was African and his mother was American.

Howard Mortman has a funny series of profiles of fictional characters who could be super-delegates, those professional politicians and elected leaders whose influence on the presidential election is this year's big unknown. Among Mortman's choices: Boss Hogg, Mayor Carmine DePasto, Mayor “Diamond Joe” Quimby, and Governor William J. Le Petomane.

Matt Szcesny did the Channel 4 story of two St. Louis middle schoolers who were suspended for protesting the school's abstinence-only curriculum by wearing shirts that said "Safe Sex or No Sex." Some bloggers have pointed out that while the shirts may have been "a distraction" in school (the stated reason for the suspensions), they're a lot less harmful than keeping vital contraceptive information from teenagers.

Here's a story that sounds straight out of the 19th century, but it happened last week in Kansas (which, considering the state went for Huckabee, seems to be stuck in that era's thinking). A parochial high school refused to let a woman referee a boys basketball game because having a female in a position of authority over males violated the school's religious beliefs. To his credit, the male referee assigned to the game refused to work if the woman couldn't.

The Insurance Information Institute has compiled a list of the best movies in which insurance played a role, including "Double Indemnity," "Memento," "The Fortune Cookie," and "The Thomas Crown Affair."

And finally, another entry in the book of Things I'll Never Learn. We had another power outage this morning after some severe weather last night, one of many we've lived through with no electricity for who-knows-how-many hours. Still, each time I walked into a different room, I instinctively reached for the light switch. Doh!