Last decade, we told about the plight of the plucky media watchdog, Editor & Publisher. Now they have a new home -- in exile. If you care about journalism, make it one of your new "Favorites" -- at least until The Restoration.

I have to confess I should have been paying closer attention to this story -- it is truly awful:

The theme of the event, according to Stephen Langa, its Ugandan organizer, was “the gay agenda — that whole hidden and dark agenda” — and the threat homosexuals posed to Bible-based values and the traditional African family.

For three days, according to participants and audio recordings, thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians, listened raptly to the Americans, who were presented as experts on homosexuality. The visitors discussed how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” whose goal is “to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.”

Now the three Americans are finding themselves on the defensive, saying they had no intention of helping stoke the kind of anger that could lead to what came next: a bill to impose a death sentence for homosexual behavior.

Scott Lively was one of the three Americans who whipped this up; he's also the author of "7 Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child," coming to a bookstore near you. What he and his two pals did in Uganda is a holy mess -- and needs to be undone, somehow. The AP photo at top shows David Cato, a gay rights activist in Uganda who has been beaten, arrested and fired from his job.

You'll notice that this is an open thread -- there's something of a new schedule for Attytood between now and the end of March, which is an open thread in the day, something closer to actual content at night, but that's only until late January when I'll begin exhausting my time off for the year -- then you'll be getting open threads or nothing. Hopefully we can keep the plates spinning until things pick up in April, around the time the Phillies begin marching back to the World Series. This is actually good news -- at the end of 2010 we'll be looking back on this year as the most exciting one around here, ever. But you'll find out why at a later date.

I believe trains are still considered on time if they're less than 5 minutes late, so by that standard it's not too late for my annual review of the most impactful posts of 2009. It would have been hard to top 2008 in that department and frankly Attytood didn't, but then we didn't have would-be leaders of the free world traipsing through the building and through our city like the year before. Indeed, some of my favorite posts from the year were from the non-politics desk of Attytood. It was a year for reflection on things like my city and my sometimes lost generation (as the first Generation Jones president took the oath of office) -- and at times that was reflected  here on the cyberpages of  Attytood.

So without further ado (or Freddy Adu, for that matter), here are five for fighting from 2009:

5. "Why Reagan Still Matters," Jan. 28, 2009:

OK – but you may ask whether the Reagan myth matters as much now that George W. Bush is back at the ranch and President Obama in the White House. I would argue that it does. Increasingly, the GOP minority in Washington, including 41 senators with just enough votes to derail the administration’s proposals, is going to invoke the Reagan myth to continue to justify a tax system that harms the middle class and policies that ignore the scientific consensus on climate change. Look at the first major policy debate of the Obama presidency, over the proposed $825 billion economic stimulus. Democrats are under enormous political pressure to weight the plan toward tax cuts, and away from spending programs, which Republicans quickly branded as much pork – despite evidence that jobs programs stimulate the economy at twice the rate of tax reductions. "I remain concerned about wasteful spending that might be attached to the tax relief," House GOP leader John Boehner said – and right-wing talk radio was a lot less restrained. Ironically, the spending sought by the Democrats seek to undo the crumbling of America’s infrastructure and the failure to create “green-collar” jobs that dates back to the Reagan era.

"Tear Down This Myth" was my first political book, and as the calendar flipped into 2009 and Barack Obama became the new president, I worried whether a book on the Gipper's mythological hold over conservatives in thr 21st Century would be that relevant. Silly me. The Reagan myth is bigger than even as the new decade begins, fueling obstructionist policies that -- thanks to the power of the filibuster -- may prevent progress on global warming and a host of other issues.

4. "Inquirer defends the indefensible: A monthly column by torture architect John Yoo," May 11, 2009:

This is exactly the kind of "on one hand, on the other hand" cowardly practice that has become a cancer destroying the moral DNA of America's newsrooms. "On one hand, torture is not only immoral but a violation of international and even U.S. law, but on the other hand, check out our 'provocative' new columnist, John Yoo, who can't travel to Europe because he might be arrested for war crimes!" This is wrong -- horribly so. For more than five years, American newsrooms have helped to normalize the inhumane practice of torture, giving into the government's Orwellian terms like "enhanced interrogation" and failing to call for accountability of those responsible for these crimes, including -- but not stopping at -- John Yoo. For a much-honored newspaper like the Inquirer to pay someone like Yoo to write a regular column is surely the exclamation point on a dark period in which most of my profession flunked its greatest moral test.

My blog posts about Yoo were picked up by the New York Times and elsewhere and led to protests outside 400 N. Broad, but the last we checked Yoo was still writing for the Inquirer and still using the media as a platform to keep him from where he belongs, which is behind bars, as an enabler of war crimes.

3. "What battered newsrooms can learn from Stewart's CNBC takedown," March 5, 2009:

The Stewart piece also got the kind of eyeballs that most newsrooms would kill for in this digital age -- planted atop many, many major political, media and business Web sites -- and the kind of water-cooler chatter that journalists would crave in any age. In a time when newspapers are flat-out dying if not dealing with bankruptcy or massive job losses, while other types of news orgs aren't faring much better, the journalistic success of a comedy show rant shouldn't be viewed as a stick in the eye -- but a teachable moment. Why be a curmudgeon about kids today getting all their news from a comedy show, when it's not really that hard to join Stewart in his own idol-smashing game.

This was most probably the most widely read post of the year -- and it speaks to a recurring theme and a recurring source of frustration, which is the ongoing difficulties of traditional media in becoming more competitive or innovative in the Internet age (and the year that the parent company of the Daily News filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, no less). As we say around these parts...no blood in ants!

2. "The Love You Save: Michael Jackson and the rear-guard Baby Boomers," June 26, 2009:

And then the 1980s came, the fulfillment of that promise -- for him, for us. When Michael released "Thriller," it seemed to speak yet again to my sub-generation, 20-somethings still grasping for a common identity in the bitter aftertaste of the Pepsi generation, sandwiched in between the grumpy elders and cleancut teens who were both trying to herd us into the Age of Reagan. Michael Jackson truly was, for that brief moment, our "man in the mirror" for a confusing new decade: Someone whose weird clothes spoke of rebellion yet made no coherent statement, not a radical but a careerist and a perfectionist who was moonwalking his way to the bank, totally apolitical and racially ambiguous, an artist who understood "new media" (remember when that meant MTV?) and thus was going to reign forever as the King of Pop.

Like I said up top, 2009 was a year for reflecting a lot of where we've been, and where we were going. In addition to Jackson, it seemed like we lost a lot of notable people during these 12 months. One of my heroes who died and who deserves a special mention: Walter Cronkite.

1. "The day Philly stopped being a joke," Oct. 31, 2009.

This year, the Yankees moved into the House that Madoff Built, a $1.5 billion sterile replica of the legendary old ballpark across the street, lined with luxury boxes for the inside traders and associated con artists who can afford them, with huge blocks of overpriced seats sitting empty behind home plate -- even during Games 1 and 2 of the World Series. In Philadelphia, raucous Citizens Bank Park is our civic temple, a place where the defining image of the 2009 season didn't involve boos or batteries, but a dad hugging his two-year-old daughter after she threw away a foul ball. No wonder New York is so jealous of a city that is so confident and -- dare we say it -- so happy, that is coming into its own in opening moments of a new millennium. Confident enough as a city that even losing this World Series -- which to paraphrase Clint Eastwood, is not going to happen -- wouldn't change that.

Well, um, OK, actually the Phillies did lose, but I was right -- it didn't change the era of good feeling about the Phillies, or the upbeat way that Philadelphians felt about their city, even in the face of continued mediocre leadership at City Hall. There's also quite a bit to worry about as we start a new decade -- an economy that created zero jobs in 10 years, and a national political system that seems broken beyond repair. But the reality is that humans are survivors. There is no reason not to demand the very best from our leaders and much more importantly, from ourselves in 2010, and no reason not to hope this will be the year we finally get it.

The Peter G. Peterson Foundation has chosen Philadelphia of all places as staging ground for a documentary to advance their cause, which is reducing the federal debt first, and worrying about humankind at some future date. I hope the people of this fair city given 'em a piece of our mind, and tell them we want J-O-B-S. If that happens, they can come back some day...and we'll be happy to talk to them about deficit reduction. Maybe.

Could you please bring back "The Decade From Hell" -- I liked that one much better.

Also, could you bring back global warming -- it's freezing out there!

Who is this old dude who looks like he's going to drop dead from hypothermia any second? The shocking answer to come shortly!

UPDATE: I've got "Two Tickets to Paradise" for whoever answered that this homeless chap they dragged off the streets of Memphis turned out to be Eddie Money. I have to confess that I was actually watching the Liberty Bowl with one eye yesterday while I was working on my ne...oops, not going to say anything yet...with the other eye, and it wasn't really so bad for the 10-degree weather. I swear -- and I may hallucinating this because I couldn't find it anywhere on Google -- that one of the ESPN announcers called him "Eddie Rabbitt"!

Here's the video:

In 2008, I said the phrase ”war on terror” was the “dumbest term…you could use.” Who am I?

Answer to come. 

UPDATE: Yes, indeedy, it was GOP Rep. Pete "Let's Use a Terror Attack to Raise Campaign Dough" Hoekstra. Wonder what made him change his tune? Ironically, it was President Obama who said in his inaugural speech: "Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred." Heh.

Seriously:

HONOLULU (AP) - A Honolulu television station is reporting that conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh has been taken to a hospital with chest pains.

KITV reported Wednesday that paramedics responded to a call at 2:41 p.m. from the Kahala Hotel and Resort where Limbaugh is vacationing.

The station, citing unnamed sources, said paramedics treated Limbaugh and took him to The Queen's Medical Center in serious condition.

I don't play that game of wishing ill health or worse on political adversaries, no matter how detestable their views may be, and you shouldn't either, because....

a) We're all human, at least last time I checked.

b) There's nothing more satisfying than defeating your rival in the field of ideas -- and they need to live long, healthy lives to be able to do that.

So, get well, Rush Limbaugh. And get well quickly, because I want to make fun of you for vacationing in that "exotic" Barack Obama-producing state of Hawaii.

As noted here before, there's actually an issue that the Left and the Right in this country agree on, which is dislike of the way that the government bailed out Wall Street at the expense of Main Street. Obviously, there's some differences -- the Left directs its anger more at fat-cat CEOs while right-wing rage, as always, flows toward the government -- but the bottom line is that no one is happy with the big bonuses or the big paydays that big bankers continue to dole out to one another -- with our tax dollars.

The thing is, unlike most issues in the public arena, there's something you can do about this one. If you don't like the way that a bank like Citibank is behaving, you can always take your money out of there. Now here's the award-winning filmmaker Eugene Jarecki (yet another liberal from the Hackley School -- hooray!) to tell us how. And it's entertaining! Especially if you like "It's a Wonderful Life."