Marking a milestone and the ventriloquist is leaving

This is my 100th post for Len'sLens. I guess I should mark the occasion and hoist a cool one.

Thank you to all of you who have, steadily or from time to time, come to read the rantings. Especially, I want to thank Paul Bass of the Independent for his support and especially for keying to one post or another.

As a person whose journalism career was pledged to objectivity, it's good to be able to express an opinion on the events of the day, either locally or in a broader spectrum. I know the impact and perceived importance of what one writes has to do with the perspective of the reader and also the perspective of the source. In other words, when I would call the White House from the New Haven Register or the Journal News, I would be lucky to hear back the same week. When I called from USA Today, the handset would hardly stop quivering in the cradle before the phone would ring.

So, again thank you to all of you, in about 25 states and close to a dozen foreign countries who have stopped to read this space. Please keep it up.

Page 2

The ventriloquist is leaving the White House, but now we're still stuck with only the dummy.

Yes, I know it's a cheap shot and way too easy, but one cannot help onesself sometimes.

Of course, I'm talking about the departure of Karl Rove, the supposed brains behind the throne in the inner sanctum of the Bush Administration. He's the guy who spearheaded the Bush run to the presidency and then was the chief architect of the mess into which the nation has been tossed.

He started out plotting out the campaign, the way James Carville and Paul Balaga did for Bill Clinton. But instead of going their separate ways after the election, Rove still had his hand up the dummy's back (again, this blog is rated PG) for the whole first time and the first 2 1/2 years of the second.

Look for him to jump to some other super-conservative, empty headed candidate for either the presidency or other national office (Rudy won't take it, Thompson dropped out). There is sure to be a book, ghost-written by the Brothers Grimm.

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I'm starting to get sick and tired of the mean-spirted communications being sent from the city of New Haven. In the past year, I've gotten letters from various city departments that were threatening or just mean=spirited. I understand when mistakes are made, but the city doesn't. I overlooked a car tax bill on a car that I haven't owned for months. So, a letter comes in, not addressed to Dear Deadbeat but it might as well have been.

There was no "you might have forgotten' or 'if you have paid please disregard this letter.' It was a list of possible penalties and enforcement actions that the city would commence against me if I didn't pay within the next 10 days, and at the end it said to keep this from happening to you PAY YOUR TAXES. The bold capital letters were on the letter.

OK, after paying thousands of dollars in house and car taxes, I forgot the smallest bill of all, barely a couple of hundred dollars. But the nastiness wasn't necessary. It wasn't the first time, either.

My advice to city hall is, especially with an election coming and taxes going up, is to KNOCK IT OFF. NOW.

Page 4

I have to pause and mark the passing of Phil Rizzuto, the great New York Yankees (one of the few times one should use those four words in concert) shortstop and broadcaster. My first thought was, "Holy Cow, I thought he'd last forever."

Rizzuto was a character, something we don't have much in the media anymore and certainly one of the greatest in baseball. Scooter was one of a kind, a double hall of famer who will surely be missed.

In another arena, J. Donald Imus has reached an agreement with CBS over his firing last spring and is talking with WABC in New York about Imus working for that station. He won't be going back to his roots at WFAN, which had been WNBC radio, because that station signed a deal with football great Boomer Esiason, along with Craig Carton, a guy who has insulted minorities and women from time to time, according to the Associated Press.

As you know, Imus was booted off the air for calling the Rutgers University women's basketball team a racial and ethnic slur a day after the team was knocked off in the NCAA finals. This blog prides itself in perhaps being the only publication in existance that has not repeated Imus' slur.

Until the 101st time...