The Man Behind The Moronity

I try not to pile on blog swarms unless I have something to add. So I've been content this morning to see McClatchy Reporter Bobby Caina Calvan get his comeuppance for bragging about being a jackass to guards in Iraq.

At first, when the story broke last night, I was a little bit sympathetic to the guy, thinking he had just shot his mouth off and blogged about it before the smart part of the brain kicked in (something I will probably do myself before too long). I thought that ah, this guy just overstepped the bounds and felt proud of it and now he realizes that maybe when he said "When you've got nothing to lose...you do what it takes," he just didn't realize how much he had to lose after all.

But then I started reading a little more this morning. No, it now seems much more likely that he's just an ***hole. It's a well-established pattern.

Here's an article he wrote for the Boston Globe on the attempt to give a secular canonization to a geriatric Berkeley moonbat in the form of a post office in Berkeley, all of which had to be of riveting interest to Globe readers in Boston:

Throughout her long life, the 94-year-old granddaughter of slaves has been a crusader for civil rights, the poor, senior nutrition, affordable housing, and various antiwar movements, and social causes. Over the years, she has been a fixture at Bay Area demonstrations, her silver Afro standing out among youthful throngs.

She celebrated her 90th birthday at a union rally outside a Berkeley resort, where police reportedly joined to serenade her before hauling her off in handcuffs along with other protesters.

Shirek added to Berkeley's reputation as a runaway republic, a city with a foreign policy all its own, by taking her causes abroad -- to Central America to support the rights of indigenous people, and to the Middle East, where she protested Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.

Blah blah blah, oh, but some Republican congressman is kicking about the post office because she sponsored a Marxist library in Oakland. Communism, shmommunism, eggs, omlette, meanie denies saintly grandma her due honors from the nation she spent her life opposing.

How about another example of Calvan "decid[ing] how far we will take our quest for the truth”? Sure. He probably didn't write the Globe's headline--copy editors usually do that--but I think it sums up his article quite well:

An outpost of Islam sees a federal intrusion
FBI inquiry puts California mosque in unwanted glare

LODI, Calif. -- When white supremacists vandalized the local mosque a decade ago, this largely white farming community just north of Stockton, famous for its Zinfandel grapes, rallied behind its Muslim residents.

Now, with unease rising because of an FBI terrorist inquiry that thrust the town into the national spotlight last week, civic leaders are again trying to reassure a community that considers itself under siege.

I'm really enjoying reading this aloud in a Don "In a world ..." LaFontaine movie-trailer voice, especially the ending, which begs you drop your voice an octave and pause dramatically: considers itself...under siege.

Actually, a lot of his writing lends itself to Fontaineity. The line about deciding how far we'll take our quest for the truth, the one about when you've got nothing to lose...you do what it takes: it's all so (since I'm coining words here today)...so self-importentous.

Here's an exemplary snip from his bio (which he obviously wrote himself) at California's Association of Asian-American Journalists page, where he's a board member:

He was born with a parachute on his back, and the winds have taken his career to newsrooms across the country, including the Virginian-Pilot, the Seattle Times, the Detroit Free Press, Contra Costa Newspapers and the Redding Record Searchlight.

And he speaks Pig Latin! He's quirky! Yet profound.

In a world..where a badass reporter just doesn't know when to quit...