In New Age what IS IT that keeps some people from getting bribes?

By Dan Bodine
Center on Social Minimalism




“Everybody has their price,” the old saying goes. “Never say you’ll never do it.” Now the pharmaceutical industry is putting journalists in its cross-hairs of people to “buy.” Along with the prescribing doctors, the story goes. Dr. Mercola has the news in a recent article entitled “Are journalists the drug industry’s newest lackeys?” Link to it is here.

Hee, hee. “Favor fees” they call them in Mexico. Aka, el mordido. How does someone wanting a “favor” of some sort instinctively know who will and who absolutely won’t take a bribe? Huh?

All the world’s relative, right? Well, I wanna protest. Nobody’s ever offered me a bribe. That I was aware of or can remember. Honest Injun! To get one, I sure would’ve changed my body language, dour expression, whatever, I‘d sworn at times. Dire, I was.

Nobody needs extra income as much as journalists and poor border j.p’s, were my thoughts often. Where’s the people with the mulah? The dinero? The mordidas? Maybe we can work sumpthin’ out. I‘m hurting here, damn it!

Remember in Cleburne, TX, once a prominent realtor having a hard time with the City of Cleburne’s public works department on some project. I was city editor at the Times-Review then.

One day he took me to one of his houses to photograph a wall urinal he claimed the city had made him install in a bathroom (at his added expense, natch!), instead of a normal commode.

Good photo I made. Ol’ Theo a sitting on the bathtub with his left arm extended to the wall urinal, hugging it like you’d embrace an unruly stepchild--ugly repulsion all over his face at how he was being mistreated, is how I remember it. Good story, it would’ve been.

Only problem was that I managed to find Andy Anderson, the city’s public works director, by phone in Denver, CO, shortly before deadline; and thus rewrote the story and pulled the photo. Andy was there interviewing for a job I think. I knew Andy and trusted him; he was part of our darts night boys.

“Andy, what’s this about you making Theo put a pisser on the wall?”

“Ain’t so! He’s just mad over something.”

Can’t remember the why or what it was part; it’d made a good follow-up story though all by itself. But as badly as I needed money then, I think the only nudge I’d needed to’ve gone with the story as I had it written (a hatchet job, it was) was if I’d been given a “favor fee” of only a few hundred dollars or so.

As an alcoholic--in those days, too, I’d later explain to AA groups, when I’d find myself driving from one bank to another to kite a check just to buy more whiskey--the only excuse I’d need was someone crossing my palm with some free currency.

Were they crazy for not doing it? It’s supposed to be common practice, right? To grease Life’s wheels in your direction? Well, all my life it’s been like that! Left out! Where do I go to protest being excluded? Some of these folks clearly have violated my civil rights! Hee, hee.

Same thing later in Presidio. As the only judge in town--in a border town, no less--with wrecks, civil suits, evictions, etc., to all divvy up, you’d think a person should really have ample opportunities for making some serious money. Not me! Why? Because I was a gringo? Smelled bad? No habla Espanol? (Pay a translator, damn it! Double your benefits!) Or just too stupid to put out the signals?

Signing up new babies, for instance. Role as a state registrar. Granting immediate citizenship, this job was. No doctor in town. Not on this side, anyway! And with the only hospital in the whole Big Bend area 90 miles away, surely you’re going to have someone acting as a midwife in town to help out those few unable or unwilling to make that long trip. Surely. Was there a chance for me to make some money in it? Never came!

But the babies did. Bunches of them! Every few days sometimes it seemed! No local or county official in any way wanted to get involved advising me on it. Only the county judge, a friend, once advised, Personally, Dan, I wouldn’t do it.

But the alternative? I asked back. What do you do? A baby’s a baby!

Finally, What do I do with all these? I remember asking a bewildered attorney by phone once in the justice court training center in Austin. A Far West Texas border community deep in the Chihuahuan Desert is a little difficult to explain to someone wet behind the ears.

Well, if they were born there in Presidio you’ve got to register them, I was told simply. Don’t you violate anyone’s rights!

Jeesh! I swore at times that staff at that center was in cahoots with the state’s trial lawyers. Or way, way too cautious! What about my rights? And what about common sense? These calls I got, to come to a house to observe a new baby, almost always were on weekends, or at nights.

Didn’t take long, of course, even for someone as slow as I am to smell a fish. A look back thru previous registration files showed something like 60-70 births a year sometimes in this one small community. Most of the moms were from Ojinaga I suspected, across the river, over here visiting relatives or friends.

Once I remember the court clerk and I following a trail of blood from a home’s driveway on the outskirts of town, into the house and down a long hallway, and finally to the mother, still on the floor. From upriver somewhere. Probably from across. Smiling nervously. But her baby had been born in the United States, and here was the ol’ judge, ready to make the infant legal.

But where’s my fair share? I often thought. Aren’t you suppose to pay for these kind of favors? The county sure isn’t paying me extra for it. I want my mordita! I probably felt.

So this had to stop, yes. Started making them sign Declarations or Affidavits of Facts, under oath, describing the background some. And I made photos. Parents, baby, and midwife all. If I was going to be investigated, I wanted something to take into court with me.

Then I started making the mothers get an examination slip from the local office of the state department of public health. Make sure something had happened first, I wanted to. Hee, hee. Most were honest births, of course; some the clinic would call and say no way no how.

And eventually it stopped. Stricter inspection procedures and longer lines at the port of entry from Mexico kicked in, too. Generally I started to see area newspapers carrying more birth announcements from the hospitals from families in Presidio. And my annual registrations dropped down to 2-3, or sometimes zero.

A big worry--of granting an illegal a citizenship (with all the hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer benefits associated with it)--was lifted from me.

But I was being watched, too. I always sensed that. A regional federal enforcement officer from Alpine made the comment once in the office, Judge, you’re the only Presidio JP our office hasn’t had to investigate in the past 20 years or so for bribery.

Well, that’s only because I’m a gringo, I laughed. Or too stupid. Maybe both! Or sumpthin’!

He smiled. The common practice was for pre-arrangements to be made with the midwife for say $1,000. She’d take $500. And give $500 to the judge. Zip, zip, and zap. A nice secondary income.

Mexico and other Third World countries are awash with such practices, of course. Use to be. The main reason is the abysmal low wages paid to government employees. That and the people are not stupid! They know how to survive.

Journalists weren’t exactly born falling off turnip wagons either. Most of 'em. Many though have fallen from other wagons. Many times. And the fact their salaries have dropped even lower now vis a vis a continued decline in traditional newspaper circulation and revenue doesn’t bode well for them either, of course. They're ripe for pluckin'.

The fact that Big Pharma is now going after them speaks loudly also how desperate drug companies are, too, to keep their high profits. We have a classic morality play in the making, folks. Again, here’s the link to the well respected Dr. Mercola’s story.

So it’s going to be interesting to watch how this one plays out, yes. Uh...Maybe…

“Yo, Jethro! ‘Ya still got a reporter’s notepad or two laying around. Huh? Got this here little idea. Want to earn a little extra SPENDING money?

"...JETHRO! Where 'ya goin'??!"

Hee, hee. Must of heard my wife coming after me.

"Yo!"




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‘Waiting on Sam’ at Cleburne Times-Review a Kodak moment in an American diaspora

San and Kodak not only thing jettisoned: Many of the once-proud family newspapers gobbled up by corporate chains in the Sunbelt's rush-to-riches frenzy, newspapers which solidly reflected the American Way of Life for generations, no longer have their printing presses either. Rising costs along with electronic media cutting into advertising revenues have led them to contract their printing to other sources. (SuperStock image)

By Dan Bodine
Center on Social Minimalism





CLEBURNE, TX--How many friends from Cleburne, TX, remember the laconic photographer Sam Gatewood at the old Times-Review newspaper? Wife the longtime typing teacher at the high school.

Not tall, but above medium built he was, wide head and brow, thinning, receding brown hair; wore glasses. Big eyes would stare at you from way off yonder 10 seconds or so before replying to a question.

Hee, hee. Kodak filing Chapter 11 earlier this month (CNN story here) sure brought back memories from that explosive Sunbelt period. Struggling to fit a new with an old has been difficult for a lot of us.

Sam’s peculiar old ways drew social minimalism scorn. He stood in the way of a product. If he’d been a rusty nail, composing room employees alone waiting for a photo and the info on it would‘ve bit him in two 2-3 times each week. The contempt was that strong.

Not to even mention the printing or circulation department folks all waiting in line, too. Or further, readers and advertisers waiting on deliveries. Slow, Sam was. The Sunbelt’s increasing the stakes in newspapers minimalized him. Cut him out of the deck.

Even slower at times I was, a year or so later, in taking my turn as managing editor there, in providing a smooth and orderly content flow for those composition employees to work with. Often I wanted to write more as a reporter, and tended to forget the more important m.e. duties. That and just being a slow writer, too, I was.

But the two back-to-back slams made some memorable times at the old newspaper. Years of the late 70s and early to mid-80s, it was, in the first half of the Sunbelt’s glitzy reign. Blame some of it on that, you can. Kodak certainly will.

Explosive growth transformed almost overnight larger cities of the South, Southwest and West, headquarters already for many major industries. It brought in newer or expanded industries, and many thousands of new jobs with them.

Not expecting ground-swell waves of change in people’s lifestyles in the surrounding areas was akin to placing a bucket beneath a water faucet and forgetting to turn it off later. Where else was all that going? Or what else was it to do?

Blame the New Right and a rush to make tons of money for the Sunbelt’s excessiveness. Truly an American diaspora, the fallout has been. When history sets it all right, I think you’ll see it was the end of the old Industrial Age for us too.

Seemingly overnight, the landscape was transformed. Newer branded industries, houses and stores cropped up. And new people. Thousands upon thousands of them. The emotional stress from two eras colliding was gut-wrenching, yes.

And it seemed to be felt more in these rural, surrounding counties, like Johnson County. What…from 60k-65k…to 110k or so population? In just a couple of decades or less? Whoo! They were like the outer ridges of some rapidly moving, low-pressure storm system--the winds are always higher over there, aren‘t they?

And always news aplenty, too, it was! Much, much more than what advertising could carry. Meaning, the number of pages the paper could afford to print daily, weighing both material and employee costs. A supporting commerce always trails needed people numbers in media, it seems.

But chains were lured by the Sunbelt’s advertising potential early on, and began picking up newspapers like Confederate confetti at county fairs, it appeared at times. Indebting themselves seemingly forever with note payoff obligations. Radical capitalism had added a new wrinkle on its face. Betting on inflation against middle-class wage earners. Both shrunk.

But Gold in them thar hills! in newspapers had an innate drag time few discussed. Not only did new owners in the Sunbelt realize it’d be a spell longer before they could cash in their chips but they learned also that all family newspapers were not created equal. The Times-Review was one. Donrey Media bought it in the early to mid-70s.

Was Sam even drawing a salary then? He got use of the dark room and the supplies and that’s it, I think. Under an arrangement from the paper’s former owner, the photographer’s earnings were from subsequent private sales of photos he’d shot for the newsroom.

Naturally most of those pictures were lifestyle or society department in nature. Or kids at school. Lot of those. Others, Sam wasn’t too keen on.

Nor did he appreciate outsiders hired by some new-fangled newspaper company coming in and telling him he needed to do so-and-so by such-and-such time either. Hee, hee.

How long was it, that that awkward relationship continued? Two-three years at least? Dan Smith, new general manager, finally brought in the talented Jim West in the early 80s to bail us out. And allowed us to kick it up a notch.

We were spending our days on news and our nights in the darkroom developing film and printing photos for features running the next day. Today--part , too, of Kodak’s e-age laments--reporters and photographers click or press on a mobile somewhere and the news desk editor miles away gets it. Or the video clip is brought in from last night’s meeting or game. Wow! What a milestone. No film to develop and worry over.

A newspaper’s final pages in the composition room is the front page and a “hop” page, for the latest “spot” news and photos for that edition. Before the computers and e-stuff, in the days of Kodak film and paper, this was a stage of production that routinely snagged Sam, it seemed. Didn’t have time; always busy on something else; whatever!

Too, he seldom communicated. Just being Sam. You never knew if he was working in his darkroom at home, or the one at the T-R. Or espousing the Fourth Estate at Chaf-In over a brew of coffee. Whatever happened to times when good folks had more time to enjoy life?

But I’ve got these dear images in my mind of John Moody, at first the city and then the managing editor for a few years, coming into the newsroom from the backshop with this despicableness on his face, staring at the floor after not seeing Sam. Mumbling to himself.

John often talked to himself. Interesting conversations. But he’d stalk first over to the window to see if Sam was coming from outside, then he’d trek out into the lobby area to look down the long hallway, to see if the rascal was coming in from the back.

Coming up empty, he‘d stumble back into the newsroom frantically like someone had dropped him from a 40-floor building (long before a safety net had been put in place at the bottom); and then would dive back into the backshop, mumbling to himself still, before relaying the unsurprising news.

Have no idea where Sam is! was all you could make out from the words.

Oh, what memorable times! Had Sam been minimalized lower, he’d been a flea crawling on the carpet. Twenty, sometimes 40 or more minutes past deadline, he’d then saunter into the newsroom from somewhere--bewilderment on his face, photo in hand, his prize for us.

Seen John?

And then it’d be fingers typing, shoulders and elbows moving, legs running, all to get the identifying photo information thru the backshop production process. Sheesh!

I remember also, during this wild couple of years or so, an angry publicity person for CISD coming up to my desk in one of these tense moments, wanting even more coverage for the school district. Befuddled she was, and a bit resentful, too, with all that was happening at her newspaper.

We set ya’ll up with all these wonderful stories, something you can use to stick in your paper for the readers to see; doing you a favor, we are; and then you don’t seem to be too excited about it! Why?

She didn’t know Sam. Nor any of the other myriads of minimalism complications the Sunbelt brought. Totally a failed exposure moment, she was.

Kodak struggled with these new stepped up developments, too, especially in the latter half of the Sunbelt when the rapid, almost total change to electronic photos stripped it of its one principle product, film.

The Chap. 11 filing will buy it some time, yes. But don’t look for a miracle. In ‘The Last Kodak Moment’ The Economists looks at how swift technological change and dragging its heels in adapting to it now threaten to shutter the company.

It’s sad, too, yes. Once a reining king, now like so many other companies and people minimalized in the Sunbelt’s aftermath, it now faces being a has-been--worthless to the new finance kings on Wall Street.

But hold onto your old photo books and the memories though. Radical capitalism will never be able to wipe them off the shelf. Those Kodak moments will last.

Too, with this new ePublishing awash now you might even turn them into gold someday. One change deserves another apparently. New opportunities of a different sort are showing up, they are. Hee, hee.

Life goes on.



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