American Chimpanzee

During my last conversation with President Barack Obama, the man who once saved my life in 'Nam, he asked me how things were going at the El Paso Times.      "If the newspaper business were a totem pole," I told him, "I'd be the section dogs like to mark their territory on."       He laughed.  It was good to hear him relax for a moment.  We did four tours in 'Nam together, and he always looked to me to perk him up when he was feeling low.      "When we get out of this jungle," he promised, "I'm going to the top and I'm taking you with me."      "You keep on talking, B.O.  That's what you do best."      "That's my problem.  I've got vision, and the rest of the world wears bi-focals."      But I digress.      The reason he called me to Washington was he was stymied by the economy, and he thought that I could perhaps add...

Do you know what they call Second Place?      The first loser.      So it was with great pride that the El Paso Times received its award for second place from the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association for excellence in newspaper printing.  Unfortunately, I couldn't be there for the presentation.  I was busy drinking a diet soda.  Instead, Bob Braswell, production director of Texas-New Mexico Parnership, went.  (He's never been able to get out of jury duty, either.)  The Greenville News took first place.  The man representing the newspaper received the award graciously.      "In your face!" he yelled at the rest of us, and then handed the presenter an envelope stuffed with something green, if you get my drift.  To be honest, I didn't even know they gave out awards for printing, but it doesn't surprise me.  If we in the newspaper business don't pat each other on the back, then who wi...

Charlie and Buster were digging in the backyard when they found an old metal box.      "Maybe there's money inside."      "Yeah, it could be worth its weight in Puppy Chow."      They both laughed at Buster's bad joke.  When they forced the box open they were disappointed.  It was only a book  Somebody's diary.  They began to read it out loud.        January 1, 2011--Mayor John Cook's law goes into effect today.  The one prohibiting the sale of dogs less than a year old.  It's a shame that, until now, dogs could be bought and sold like, well, animals.        Charlie looked at his friend.  "Can you believe this?" he asked.        December 27, 2012--The last of the pet stores went out of business today.  Those poor employees.  Losing their jobs.  But it's a small price to pay for animal rig...

"Censorship is telling a man he can't have steak just because a baby can't chew." Mark Twain   I don't believe in censorship...      ...BUT!...      ...when I heard that NewSouth Books was changing the N-word in Mark Twain's masterpiece The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to the word "slave," I thought:      "What a wonderful idea!"      You see, when I read the book to my youngest daughter as a bedtime story, that's exactly what I did.  My little girl loved the story--changes and all--and to this day she still talks about how ol' Huck vanquished the evil Lord Voldemort,      I understand NewSouth probably made its decision for financial reasons.  I'm sure few are interested in buying, much less reading, classic novels that do not feature teenage vampires in love.  More importantly, what teacher would be willing to lose their job by reading or recommending...

I've always felt that the problem with El Paso was El Paso.  Our city has so many different personalities we've never been able to find a way to define ourselves properly.  The artists, the mad men, the image consultants...  no one ever seemed to get a handle on who we were, what we were, or how to sell ourselves to the rest of the world.  If El Paso were to find itself in front of the Wizard of Oz along with Dorothy and her three amigos --Manny, Moe, and Jack--El Paso might hear this from the man behind the curtain:  "And to you, El Paso (the Rodney Dangerfield of cities), to you I give...  respect!  Fortunately, you live in a time when respect no longer has to be earned.  It can be appropriated."  So, it's with these words in mind that I offer the city my own gift.  The gift of salesmanship.  Lies, as Gordon Gekko might put it, are good, and for a lie to be believed all that is required is to speak it out loud, or, to paraphrase e...

In the past two months my duties as NPR's Anchor and Managing Editor of Spanish-Speaking Latinos (which is quite an accomplishment considering I am neither Latino or Spanish-speaking) has taken me to a handful of countries, a fistful of states, and a fingerpick of cities.      The travel was not joyful, although the food was excellent in the 5-star hotels I insisted on staying at.  It never ceases to amaze me how good the food can be in countries where people are starving.      I was working on a documentary about America's sordid underbelly.  I briefly considered doing a documentary on ruthless Mexican Drug Lords or fanatical Muslim Terrorists, but decided that I enjoyed living too much.  When you criticize America, white America, or Christian America you don't end up dismembered, decapitated, or riddled with bullets.      Viciously murdered is not a good look for me.      So when I ended...

There are the best of times, there are the worst of times, and there are the times when we think we know it all, but, deep down, are just hoping we get away with cribbing a few lines from a classic novel that no one has read for the last hundred years or so.      Since I was a young child I wondered:  if you sit a million monkeys in front of a million typewritters for a million years, would one of them write the complete works of Shakespeare, or would you just end up with a room full of decomposing monkeys?      I've always had a thirst for knowledge.  Forget curling irons, as a young child I wondered if you were to use a smaller and smaller chute each time you went skydiving would you eventually reach the point where you would need no chute at all?      I think I know what makes El Paso tick, but I believe my thirst for knowledge has been translated into a language I don't speak.  No matter, as I am currently...