Kicking Ass and Taking Names for Attribution

As foreign as my last journey was (covering the bases from Amsterdam to Zion last summer), the next month in the history of this blog promises to be ripe with the domestic fruits of the good ol' You-Ess-of-Aye. Though my residency here in our Nation's Capital has educational intent, taking daily lessons on how to join that not-so-exclusive club called The Press (The Media, The Fourth Estate, The Quite Persistent Fellows Wearing those Flat-Brimmed Hats with a Little Piece of Paper Sticking Out of the Ribbon That Says "Press"), I promise there will be just as much aimless wondering and purposeless observations to fill this space...

Red-eyeing across our beautiful nation last night, I was reading a special section of the San Francisco Chronicle devoted to the newspaper's 144-year history. It told a 19th century tale of a feud between the paper's publisher and a crooked politician running for mayor of the city. The publisher shot the guy on the streets of SF. But he recovered and went on to win the election. Later on, the mayor's son got revenge by shooting the newspaper man in the face. It goes on and on like that for awhile with more sons, more revenge and more discharged weapons. The moral of the story here is that journalism used to be the epitome of cool. (I'm picturing Maureen Dowd cornering a criminal with a Smith and Wesson: "You gotta ask yourself one question, punk...")

Even as recently as the 1970's, guys that looked like this were catching the country's baddest bad guys with the swift strokes of the keys on their typewriters.

Unfortunately, and mostly due to the introduction of the internet (and it's overwhelming power to make everything so painfully, painfully free), journalists are now permitted to look like this. Where's the style!? Where's the sense of duty to hold the world accountable for all its contemptible actions AND have amazing hair while you're at it!?

Well, that's what I'm here to find out. In Washington D.C.: the one place where God knows we need someone to be the Gadfly on America's great big, smelly, donkey butt (that's a reference to the Capitol. Side note: I went there today and it really is magnificent despite what is said about what goes on inside its walls.)