OK. OK. I’ve been swamped. Been ignoring this blog again. And some of the most loyal posters on this blog have spoken. They want to discuss the mess surrounding Larry Craig, the U.S. Republican senator from our neighbor to the north and the growing sex scandal enveloping him.

I can’t say I’m surprised. The Idaho Statesman has been chasing down a story about Craig and his long-rumored latent homosexuality for nearly a year. The story has been referred to often in the past couple of days, but in case you missed it, go here. I think the Statesman story nails the issue (so to speak), and it’s a good example of how news outlets frequently have the germ of a story for a long time before an event like Craig’s attempt at a public restroom tryst with a Minneapolis undercover cop breaks and allows them to publish. The Statesman got the goods; good on them. Sometimes the gods of breaking news just smile down on your newspaper and grant you an opportunity to finally tell the full story. So it was with Craig, and news that pretty much proves the gay orientation he has been denying for so long — even as late as yesterday.

So. The man is 62, an ultra-conservative in an ultra-conservative state who has built a Senate career largely on morals crusading. Never seen this plot line before, have we? I’m not sure what I could add. That the Craig scandal is deeply creepy? That, as Mitt Romney, whom Craig was working for in Idaho, says, it’s “disappointing?”

Hmm. I’d say it’s more than disappointing. “Disappointing” is when you’re 12-year-old breaks the neighbor’s window with an errant baseball and lies to you about it. “Disappointing” is when your husband forgets your wedding anniversary.

What is it then? Honestly, it’s crushingly sad. I could get all high and mighty the way so many Repubs did (including our own Utah congressional delegation) when Bill Clinton got caught “not having sex with that woman.” Most mortals who slip up now and again would admit to a bit of glee when a man like Craig gets snared in his own trap of humiliating hypocrisy.

The deeply sad part is the shame Craig must have lived with for god knows how many years. It’s almost a full-time job, I’d imagine, running on a “family values” platform every six years, and headlining conferences with speeches against the “gay agenda.” I can only imagine the self-hatred it must require to try to bring home the bacon from D.C. for your home state while simultaneously making quick side trips to public bathrooms, looking for a blow job from some anonymous male.

One gay activist quoted in a news story earlier this week talked about the way closeted people like Craig live in steady denial about their homosexuality by claiming they only have occasional “urges” for gay sex. Ergo, they aren’t gay, couldn’t possibly be gay, and why would anyone think for a minute they might be gay? An “urge” is just something that happens. You can’t control them.

So I have to think of the old saw: If it acts like a duck, quacks like a duck, it must be … a GAY man by the name of Sen. Larry Craig.

Man, if we could simply be true to ourselves, knowing that society would accept us for who and what we are. Sorry if I sound like a Care Bear or Mr. Rogers. But really. Think of the pain and suffering living his truth might have saved Craig’s wife, his family and everyone else caught in his fallout. But mostly himself.

What do you all think?

Ted and I hopped on the motorcycle last Sunday and rode the nearly three hours to Price, Utah, for a fundraiser for the six miners still trapped in the Crandall Canyon Mine and for the families of the three men killed trying to rescue them.

We have always felt welcome and completely at home in Carbon and Emery counties–largely because we share the same politics with most of the people living there. I’ve given many speeches there to community and church groups, and people still swarm Ted when we visit, sharing all these cool memories of when he ran for U.S. Senate and Utah governor. Invariably, someone asks him when he plans to run again!

So I came home from that bittersweet event and wrote my weekly column for City Weekly about it.

Then, two days later, I saw an interesting letter on the Aug. 23 Salt Lake Tribune editorial page. Letter writer Mary O’Brien, who lives in Coal Country, pretty much sees the topic of miners’ hardscrabble personalities through the same prism as I do.

I am taking some heart, however, in recent news stories that have begun to show the families’ anger and resentment toward mine owner Bob Murray and his toadie for big mining business, MSHA’s Richard Stickler. It’s a powerful thing to hear them speak up against Murray’s one-sided version of the past 18 days. I hope they keep the heat on.

I am 50 today.

It’s a huge birthday, I know.

What I keep wondering is just how am I supposed to feel?

Older? Wiser? Grateful? Relieved?

Mostly, I feel a little blurry. (And not simply because my terrific staff at City Weekly treated me with a rich chocolate birthday cake and a magnum of champagne at 2:15 p.m. today at our weekly meeting. Don’t worry. We split it among 10 people.)

The blurry is about not remembering scores of important … things. I can’t, for instance, remember my two children back when they were helpless little things. I have to look at photos for that. Luckily, while digging through an old blanket chest a few days ago, I turned up a stack of old 4X5 photos taken hours after each of them was born. There is Kit, with the crooked fourth toe on her left foot. And Sam, with a dimple in his chin, just like my dad’s — the grandpa who died long before he was born and who is also becoming more of a blur for me, sadly.

If living in the moment is a gift, I guess I am gifted. Because I can’t remember the moments of the past I never thought I’d forget.

And I just don’t feel 50, whatever that is.

Thought-provoking view today on the latest tragic chapter of the Crandall Canyon Mine catastrophe.

While we in Utah keep waiting for the latest updates to last night’s “bump” inside the mine that killed three rescue miners and injured six others, outside experts are all over the story with their analysis.

I’m actually in this guy’s camp for the most part, how about the rest of you? At the very lest, Congress needs to hold hearings for oversight of mining safety at the first reasonable opportunity.

Mine owner Robert Murray’s insistence on dangerous practices like retreat mining has likely turned that place into a permanent death trap. Wretched.

My regular column this week for City Weekly explains the back story of The Salt Lake Tribune’s endorsement on August 12 of Keith Christensen for Salt Lake City mayor.

Some may see my opinion as classic sour grapes because the editorial board did not endorse my stepdaughter/mayoral candidate Jenny Wilson. I hope not. As I pointed out in the column, I firmly believe the Tribune can endorse anyone it chooses. I simply expect the board to come by the decision honestly, and not by some sham interview process. I’d bet the voters would see it this way, too. This editorial came down almost exactly as the Tribune’s puzzling endorsement of George W. Bush for president in 2004 — amounting to an “order up” from publisher Dean “Dinky” Singleton, who spends most of his time in Denver and never even takes part in the candidate interviews.

Newspaper owners and editors are always wringing their hands over why they are losing readers and failing to gain enough new ones. Could it be in part because of the cynical way they make editorial decisions?

I have to do a little bragging on someone near and dear to me.

Nineteen-year-old daughter Kit and her blogging partner, Holly (that’s another one, and much younger), will be front and center at this event later in the month. This is a back-to-school marketing event for which they are mucho
excited.

Kit and Holly have been nurturing this blog since last winter. Devoted to the niche (and some might say it’s non-existent) of Salt Lake City street fashion, Kit and Holly are finally seeing their effort pay off. If you go to the Black Chandelier site, you will see Kit on the right, Holly on the left. Kit bought that amazing faux-fur hat with pom-pom strings on eBay last year.

Watch out for these women. They have a future and are powerful indeed.

Did you all see this guy this morning during his rant outside the Crandall Canyon coal mine disaster?

The screaming bald guy would be Robert Murray, president and CEO of Murray Energy Corp. I didn’t get to see him on live TV today, but did listen on the car radio to 90 percent of his news conference in Huntington, Utah. My first thoughts were to cut the guy some slack because he is in shock, is sleep-deprived and deeply worried about the fates of the six coal miners trapped some 1,700 feet below the surface of the caved-in mine. But then…

… He spent the majority of his time berating the news media for trying to report whatever tidbits they could grab on tight deadlines, and highly limited by Murray’s own staff and security goons who my reporter friends tell me have been very stingy in sharing information. He blasted geologic experts for discussing the cave-in as the reason seismic equipment may have registered the event as if it were an earthquake. “IT WAS NOT AN EARTHQUAKE,” Murray bellowed, a couple of times.

At least the seismic experts are holding back a bit, telling reporters they need more information before they make a complete statement on the cause of the catastrophe.

After 27 years in the news business, and having been on site at a few natural and human-made disasters myself, I know the information can be spotty and the scene chaotic. But reporters do their best in these situations, and have no interest in making the case worse for anyone — victims, families, mine bosses, cops and emergency workers. As adrenaline-inducing as these assignments can be, it’s always a horrible spot to be in. Because you can’t win. If you report everything that comes at you, and it isn’t enough to satisfy a rightfully curious and confused public, you’re being lazy or soft. If you get even slightly aggressive, and seek out family members or officials to interview on your own, you are being insensitive and sensational.

In these cases, the press can only work with the information that’s coming to them as a herd, at least until a little time passes and more people are talking.

But Murray had no trouble talking. And talking. The fact that this clown would be jumping all over the liability question (don’t you sense a battle of the experts already brewing to determine damages or insurance payouts in a courtroom?!) while those men are stuck underground, suffering, maybe dead, is the most disgusting and callous form of corporate spin control I can imagine. In fact, I really can’t imagine it — it’s just that bad.

What a dick.

I just finished a telephone interview with Missy Larsen, executive director of Planned Parenthood Action Council for Utah. PPAC is the political action committee for Planned Parenthood, and has the legal authority to lobby state legislatures and Congress on family planning and abortion rights measures.

Here in Utah, when the Legislature tries to roll back the clock on women’s reproductive rights to the Mesozoic Era, it’s typically PPAC workers who show up and try to gently talk them out of it. They’re already gearing up for another fight come January, when state legislators are expected to take another spin at overturning Roe vs. Wade.

Missy tipped me off to one of the latest Utah myths concerning sex she’s heard through her line of work (and in this state she hears plenty of them). It’s called “floating.” Apparently, more than a few teenagers and even some college students believe it — the idea being that if you put a penis inside a vagina and then hold very, very still — it doesn’t really count as sex.

“Floating” is such a popular notion in Utah culture it even got a mention in this year’s version of Saturday’s Voyeur, the annual spoof on Utah culture by the Salt Lake Acting Company. Now that’s some street cred for a stupid urban myth, eh?

Sometimes I just want to go plum insane.

I must have driven both directions across the I-35 bridge 3,000 times during my six years in Minneapolis-St. Paul. Only a few times did I ever entertain a “what if” thought of the thing collapsing. You never do your life that way, right?

Both of my children were born in St. Paul. We lived in both cities during our time there. The cities are peppered with massive bridges spanning the mighty Mississippi.

It’s deeply tragic, this collapse of the I-35 bridge. Of course it is. I’m simply thinking right now of all the victims and their loved ones, and praying silently for the rescue and recovery efforts.

Minnesota is an amazing place, populated with some of the most caring and engaged people I’ve ever known. That is true of people everywhere, I believe, when catastrophes occur. We all pitch in and do whatever we can to help. But whatever it is — that hardy Scandinavian-Lutheran-Democrat-Farm-Labor personality that Garrison Keillor has always captured so perfectly in his writing and radio monologues, perhaps — these people will band together and soldier on.

I wish them all the best.

I just got back at 3 a.m. today from a long weekend in Denver with my son Sam, the best 16-year-old in the world. Flew over, watched two Colorado Rockies vs. L.A. Dodgers games and came home on Amtrak’s California Zephyr. I took no laptop, answered no voice or e-mails. I’ll write more tomorrow. Just wanted y’all to know we are alive and had our fill of major league baseball. And I really relished those railroad geeks we met on board who swear they will never travel by any other means than trains. And newly converted to train travel as I am, I’m starting to understand the romance of it all!