Many of the reasons I will miss Sheila McClear, distilled into one Gawker comment. To Sheila…

Loyal Fans, Angry Audience

And suddenly I thought of a chat from nine months ago:

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By midnight, Wayne had logged almost a hundred calls, most of them quite brief and most cut off by Harlan. The longest exchange was with a woman who wanted to know where Bud was. Wayne said that Bud had retired.

SHE: Then I'd like his number. 
HE: I'm sorry?
SHE: I want Bud's phone number. 
HE: I--ma'am, I wish I could give you that but I can't, it's against company policy. We don't give out announcers' home numbers to the general public. 
SHE: Well I'm not the general public. I'm Grace Ritter and he knows me even if you don't.
HE: I'm sorry but--
SHE: And this is his show, and I think he has a right to know what you're doing to it! (CLICK)

During the midnight newscast, Roy Jr. called and told Wayne he was doing great. "I knew it'd be tough sledding the first night," he said, "but you stick in there. They're sore about Bud, but in three weeks they'll get tired and give up and all you'll get is flowers."

It didn't work that way. For one thing, Wayne had little interest in the old Tip-Top topics. He was divorced and lived in an efficiency apartment (no lawn to keep up, no maintenance responsibilities) and had no pets or children. His major interest was psychology. "People fascinate me," he said. ("You don't fascinate me," someone said.)...

Occasionally, he got a friendly caller who also liked Szechwan cuisine or Carl Rogers or Woody Allen movies, and he reached out and hung onto that call for dear life. Those calls would last for fifteen, twenty minutes, as if the caller were an old college chum he hadn't heard from in ages, but when he hung up, the Tip-Toppers were waiting, more determined than ever...

Word came back that the Tip-Toppers had elected officers and were putting together a mailing list for a monthly newsletter. It was said the Club was assigning members to "listening squads," with each squad assigned to two hours of "Wayne duty" a week.

--Garrison Keillor,"The Tip-Top Club," The Atlantic Monthly.

A defeat in Washington followed by a bankruptcy filing might undermine [GM CEO Rick Wagoner’s] position, a person familiar with the matter said.

Wall Street Journal today, granting a source anonymity so he feels safe providing some PIERCING inside analysis.

Our Rachel Maddow-inspired cocktail night has carried over into mornings for me, at the close of my shift. This is my second Edith Day this AM, before I effectively chugged it.

(I felt a lot better about myself when I realized I had forgotten the gin.)

Tonight my job involved finding a picture of a “sexy carpenter.” I really had no idea what I was getting myself into.

It’s going to be a rough stretch for Edwards, but how about the Opinionator and the rest of those in the mainstream media, who odd bedfellows like Kaus and Ann Coulter and Gawker’s Ryan Tate and Daily Kos’s Lee Stranahan have been pillorying for ignoring the issue.

The New York Times, opinion editor Tobin Harshaw, prying into my party sex orgy with various bloggers, even though that’s my PERSONAL LIFE OMFG.