Terry, it was great knowing you

THE PASSING 0f Terry Oblander, a colleague and friend, has opened another hole in the ranks of enthusiastic newspapermen who considered it a privilege to show up at the office every day. His disheveled presence at his desk, whether he was trying to fill in a few more blanks for a feature story or grinding out hard news, was usually a sight for the journalistically correct reporters and editors in his midst. One moment he would be bellowing, the next he would erupt in violent laughter. His gestures were broad; his personality, for better or worse, never suppressed. The world, for "The Dutchman" was never a neat place where the spoons and forks were properly placed at the sides of the plate.

He wasn't crazy, folks, Just a very good - and honorable - reporter who was happily dedicated in his work. It was serious fun, richly expressed.

He was doubtless the last demonstrative vestige of the shrinking hometown business in which newsrooms have been quieted by vanishing staffs, energized voices and clicking typewriters. Today a lot of people communicate with lowered voices, hopeful, among other things, of keeping their jobs before retirement in a few years, months or weeks.

For many years, Terry, stricken by heart failure at 64, gallantly hung on to the end despite the loss of his wife and the need for care for his kids as an everyday workingman. But his bad luck seemed to follow him in his post-Beacon Journal days at the Plain Dealer. He worked in the PD's once-flashy bureau in Montrose, joined the subsequent move to the paper's windowless office in a basement on the Medina Square that could have passed for submarine quarters and continued his odyssey to various other points that wound up in Cleveland - all with a family home in Medina. He was one of the victims of the paper's confusion over what it wanted to be if it ever sank some roots south of Cuyahoga County.

I had worked part-time(!) for the PD and witnessed the upheaval before deciding there could be a decent life as a writer free of newspapers. During the later years, Terry called from time to time, beginning with "How's it going?" (He was the sort of person who really wanted to know, instead of the usual conversation gambit.)

I began to sense that the vitality in his voice was absent. Cynicism had crept in to his gung-ho love of a reporter's life. I wish I could have told him that things were bound to improve, but that would have been a lie to one of most conscientiously honest human beings that I had ever met in the business - or anywhere else, for that matter.

So I listened. We talked. After the newspaper talk, he would tell me about his kids' love of sports, and the memorabilia of the passion. Finally, he would say, "Well, I gotta go. Let's have lunch sometime". Just like that.

I' m sorry I took so long to share another beer and shelled peanuts with him. Too soon, his heart, as well as his business, let him down.

For O'Reilly, an oval office isn't an oval office

To all of you conservative literati who accuse liberals of being unkind to Bill O'Reilly's unique form of, eh,... sloppy work habits, I am passing along the latest word on the topic from Ford's Theatre in D.C. (The place where Abe Lincoln was fatally shot). The Theatre bookstore has removed Billo's new book,"Killing Lincoln, " from its shelves. Seems there were an inexcusable number of factual errors in his work that stands at the top of the New York Times best-seller list. Not that this makes any difference to O'Reilly , who already has cashed in on his pseudo historical authority. One reported example - one of many - his many references to Lincoln in the Oval Office, which legitimate historians will tell you wasn't built until long after his death. I know. It's the thought that counts with these guys. But those who ignore historical truths are destined to repeatedly skew them for their audiences.

Is that Millard knocking on the door?

WEEKEND ORTS:

Just as the pundits were trying to convince America that the Republican presidential campaign was a two-man race, the latest alert from Planet Gingrich is that it is now a three-man race with Mitt Romney and a third from Texas whose name will come to me any moment now. (It should be noted that not long ago it was a 9- or 10-candidate race. There are so many moving parts these days!). It is worrisome to think of a time in history when the Republic had to put up with three guys like Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan. So is there any joy wondering whether one of the current serial debaters will eventually be nominated?

********

Pat Boone keeps coming back like a Lucky Strike Extra, right seniors? We've gotten a couple of his robocalls about the new health care reform law that he claims will strip seniors of the "coverage they deserve". That's a new one on me. He urged us to call Sen. Sherrod Brown to register our complaints about the law that Brown strongly supports. Boone is a conservative political activist for an outfit called 60 Plus, which claims to be non-partisan. Actually, it is supported by the pharmaceutical industry, which will target Brown - who just happens to be running for reelection next year. So Boone, who also does walk-in bathtub commercials, will be busier than usual next year trying to convince seniors that President Obama wants them to die in their tracks.

*******

I found it odd that State Sen. Frank LaRose's high-sounding Veteran's Day op-ed paean in the Beacon Journal to Iraqi veterans didn't contain a word about their shabby treatment when they returned to find they were without jobs, houses and other basic amenities due the troops. LaRose continues to place himself above the political fray, but in the end you have to remind yourself that he is a garden variety Republican and that's how he votes down in the legislature.

********

It never ends: Michele Bachmann insisted the U.S. would be a lot better off if we emulated Communist China's economic system. One of her talking points: China doesn't give food stamps. Right. And China doesn't permit a lot of stupid talk by anybody who wants to dislodge its leader.

Here we go again, from abortion to RTW

AS THE SULLEN SUPPORTERS of the anti-union Senate Bill 5 continue to reach for noble platitudes to launder their loss in the spin cycle, we learn that 2012 will bring us further mischief from the political and religious Right. Oh, my.

Shall we begin with a fellow named Patrick Johnston, a Tea Partying Ohio doctor with strong pulpiteering tendencies? He's leading a movement to put his version of the anti-abortion Personhood amendment on the Ohio ballot next year. He says he's not concerned in the least that Mississippi voters convincingly rejected it in Tuesday's election. Undismayed - zealots always are - Johnston says: "We have science and divine law on our side. With God's help we will win through."

(Historical note: the early Romans also believed that "no enterprise could be undertaken without divine sanction", and look what's happening to Italy today. )

Let's move on. There's the right-to-work thing. It is called the "Workplace Freedom Amendment" that would be added to the Ohio Constitution if approved by the voters next year. You wouldn't be shocked to learn that it is operating as the Liberty Council (!), a Tea Party Affiliate. One of the movement's organizers is Bryan Williams, one of Summit County Republican Chairman Alex Arshinkoff's favorites from the party's practice squad who was vanquished by Mayor Plusquellic several elections ago. Williams, a lobbyist for builders and contractors, was quoted in the Beacon Journal as saying the RTW amendment would "unleash an economic engine".

Or, on the other hand, the same union juggernaut that crushed Senate Bill 5 as it did RTW in 1958. Not only RTW but, as the late Ray Bliss had warned his party at the time, the statewide Republican ticket. I wonder if Arshinkoff, Bliss's alleged apostle, has reminded Williams of the scary odds against the GOP in 2012 with the avatar of RTW hanging around. No one , however, would appreciate another arousal of the Democratic/Labor folks more than President Obama.

I was working for the old Columbus Citizen when the right-to-workers went to the ballot in 1958 and were thrashed. The Scripps-Howard newspapers had strongly endorsed it. You should have seen the editors' faces the morning after. The first order of damage control from the editor: Start looking for positive feature stories about the city's labor leaders.

Jeez. The more I see of the GOP's political tactics, the less I understand, and it looks like we're going to have another awful year to figure them out.

The GOP road show gets funnier by the minute

THE NEXT TIME those alleged Republican presidential candidates meet to debate, I would have one question for Rick Perry. Are you a real person or a knockoff of Jon Stewart?

So far we've seen him twisting and fluttering like the last autumn leaf on the tree, or appearing as a sputtering grade schooler caught chewing gum in class. You may have seen the Texas governor laboring to remember the third Federal agency that he had hitherto promised to eliminate. It could be a first in political self-entrapment.

I know this is 2011 when people's minds are distracted by a thousand things at once. But couldn't Perry have at least brought a crib to get him through the Double Jeopardy trick question? Or taken a hint from Sarah Palin's way of writing the answers on the palm of her hand?

After 30 or 40 debates, communication remains a severe problem. And it has some of us desperately searching for the meaning of newly minted terms. Look, folks, Michele Bachmann now wants us to believe that Mitt is a "prudent socialist". I can save you some research time by reporting that the term isn't in my dictionary. Mitt, meantime, came up with "corporations are people". But he has yet to tell us that people are corporations. Not in my house! There are only two of us living in it and I can't remember the third title we would need to incorporate.

Herman Cain referred to Anita Hill as a "princess", which has certain male chauvinist connotations, if you know what I mean., particularly for a guy now being accused of sexual harassment.

It must be something in the air. The former South Carolina Republican Party executive director, Todd Kincannon, has been exposed for tweets referring to Pelosi as a "crooked whore" and "botox bitch." I will only take you so far to repeat his third raunchy insult, that she was a crabby "c--t". (Clue: Cat has only three letters; this one has four.)

If you're among those who insist that you have better things to do than watch this stuff, I would accuse you of lacking a sense of humor. Better yet, the next time you take a Republican pol to lunch, ask him or her to explain it. I'd like to know.

Plusquellic returns when he's needed the most

THE POST-ELECTION SCENE in the Guy's Party Centre for Mayor Don Plusquellic's victory party had an anticlimactic tone about it. The scattered crowd in the big banquet room milled about in muted reaction to his overwhelming victory for a 7th - and maybe toughest - term. Even some of the party notables were absent, including Democratic immortal Ray Kapper, who was recovering in Florida from a broken ankle. So far as I could tell as I wandered about the hall, that was the only news of the evening.

Plusquellic's overwhelming (70-30) victory over Republican Jennifer Hensal, who appeared to have been drawn from the Summit County GOP's practice squad, was fully expected. She was a nice enough woman who was terribly overmatched. (She would have much preferred to be appointed to a judgeship for her ad hoc usefulness in filling in a ballot blank.) So GOP Chairman Alex Arshinkoff will have to wait another four years to find somebody to accomplish what he hasn't been able to do during Plusquellic's 24 years as mayor.

I'm sure there was no one in the room who expected the outcome to be different. That was settled in the Democratic primary when the mayor defeated councilman Mike Williams. If they had cancelled this week's election, it would have been a meaningless gesture, and doubtless many Republicans would have sighed in relief.

Plusquellic's brief speech thanking his campaign staff gave him one more opportunity to warn the lingering gang of critics led by Akron Atty. Warner Mendenhall who have been finding various, if often mindless, ways to take down the mayor. The mayor, his well-known temper rising, called out Mendenhall with a warning that the latter had "no place to hide."

The past four years have been particularly troubling for the mayor , with his enemies forcing a recall election (which he won, 3-1) and more than surviving two party primaries and two general elections in the space of a single term.

I'd say that Akron is quite fortunate to have a guy with his competence and hometown dedication around for another four years.

Kasich & Co.: overreach, and then some

THE MORNING AFTER...

The unconditional surrender of Kasich & Co. to the voters on Tuesday was a textbook example of crushed political arrogance. The mismanaged Republican-led assault on public worker unions was DOA at the polls, but its demise has been widely anticipated from the day the opponents of Senate Bill 5 filed more than a million signatures calling for a referendum to repeal it. Even with the support of the state's two biggest newspapers - the Plain Dealer and Columbus Dispatch, which lamely tried to provide cover for the law - the ill-conceived legislation was destined to land in a pauper's grave with the clearly shaken governor offering a brief TV benediction.

Good! Since his arrival in the governor's office in January , Kasich has shown little patience for rational conversation with his critics as well as the public at large. Stripping public workers of their bargaining rights has been one of his planned fail-safe initiatives in attempting to convince the corporate world that status quo is not a term you would ever find in his dictionary. Yet there he was, no more than your average chastened pol, in the gloom of painful defeat telling us that the voters have spoken and he will now need time to reflect on its meaning. It's not likely his funeral oration will remotely approach Pericles' in content and vision.

Taking a longer-lasting hit was his triumphant exhuberance in gruff political engineering in the coming months. That also will be true of the Republican lawmakers, consumed by their own self-importance, who have left sound logic at the backstage door. Many will be on the ballot in 2112. At the same time, some current øbservers have noted that Kasich had operated on the weird notion that his anti-union handiwork would be so widely applauded that he could end up on the national ticket. Fat chance of that.

Meantime, the demolished Kasich power play has energized a once-musty Democratic labor base that is expected to have long memories. Sometimes it helps if you can depend on your opponents to lend you a hand. The unionists should be among the first to send the governor a thank-you card.

The ex-astronaut vs. the ex-Wall Streeter

HAVE YOU SEEN the TV repeal-SB 5 (No, Issue 2) by John Glenn? Quite effective, for a former senator to appear in soft voice at the age of 90 to appeal to Ohioans for reason. So the only question left in this instance for Tuesday's election:

Are you going to believe a former astronaut war hero with a Boy Scout's honor, or are you going to believe our governor, Jøhn Kasich, who spent his recent years promoting Wall Street for a company that went bankrupt?

A new name for Cleveland Touchdown Club?

NOW THAT THE CLEVELAND BROWNs have dismissed six-pointers from their playbooks, I'm hearing rumors that the Cleveland Touchdown Club is changing its name to the Cleveland Field Goal Club. Is that true?

When a history lecture is a political event

AN OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY alum sends along a notice of a lecture sponsored by OSU's Harvey Goldberg Center in the Department of History. The Nov. 10 event will be in the school's Faculty Club and the guest speaker this year is ....Ohio House Speaker Bill Batchelder, who will be introduced by OSU President E. Gordon Gee.

The alum included the following note:

"This is bizarre. Harvey Goldberg was my history teacher. He was brilliant, the best teacher I ever had. When I took the course on the French Revolution from him, I felt I was fighting alongside the French. Why would they pick Batchelder? Gordon Gee is the most political president of OSU that can ever remember."

Why, indeed! One could believe that the Goldberg lecture deserved a distinguished historian at the lectern, not a political retread. But there might be some state (taxpayer) dollars to be had.

From this distance, I wonder whether the only other option was Jim Tressel.

But to be fair, the official notice does promise an "engaging lecture".