A Ron Paul rally is an experience every cynical, bedraggled, politics-reporting cur should take in at least once in a career. Plus, in the GOP 2012 field, Ron Paul supporters easily hold the title of most bangable.

The event was set to begin at 7:00 p.m. The first "End the Fed!" chant started at 7:03 p.m.

When Gingrich, Santorum and Romney voters are all dead of old age, and when the current Tea Party's core has moved to a senility where the only bailout that concerns them is the one in their pants, Ron Paul supporters will still be, like, 43. The Tea Party desperately needs to recruit younger, fresher members. This realization was certainly why the first pre-Paul speaker is Walter Hudson, chair of Minnesota's North Star Tea Party Patriots.

The current mainstream of self-identifying Tea Partiers loathes Ron Paul because he's the guy who shows up with Jack Daniels to a party of 12-year-olds who are pretending to be drunk on O'Doul's. Paul's very presence makes a mockery of every Sarah Palin Tea Party "liberty" t-shirt, every Eric Cantor "freedom" bumper sticker and every bedazzled bald eagle. Paul's events expose the mainstream Tea Party for the fundamentally Christian conservative organization it really is—the kind of "party of the Constitution" that nonetheless wants to legislate bedrooms and can pretzel its reasoning into supporting the likes of Gingrich and Santorum, who are exactly those career political tumors of the D.C. system that the movement claims to despise.

Not that the religious right was absent at Paul's event. One man discreetly passed out business cards advertising "Live Christian Talk Radio" from the Liberty Broadcasting Network: "Can you handle the truth?"

But Paul didn't evoke the Lord at any time during the address. He didn't once mention "faith." Paul's rally speeches are unique not in what they mention, but in what they skip.

A Ron Paul for President rally is unlike rallies for other GOP presidential hopefuls in that, surprisingly, it is about the candidate himself. Bachmann. Gingrich. Those attending their rallies are often anti-Obama, not pro-candidate. Mitt Romney's very existence is a testament to this. There is almost no such thing as a truly pro-Romney conservative. Romney's the Rumsfeld candidate: you go to the election with the candidate you have, not the candidate you might want or wish to have at a later time.

Paul's full address only mentioned Obama's name once. Once! And that was a passing slam of "Obamacare" as a big government program. One breath later and Paul was back to landing blows on "both parties" and how "we need to clean house."

"It all comes down to the next 24 hours!" said Ron Paul's Minnesota chair, just before Paul came on. The campaign knows Minnesota's February 7th caucus could be its biggest day ever. Paul is out-fundraising the other candidates in Minnesota, and the Texas congressman must be giddy that polling during Nevada's Saturday primary demonstrated that those looking for the "conservative alternative" to Romney had passed over Santorum and Gingrich for Paul. What's more, Minnesota's wear-your-neighbors-down caucus system is the perfect composter for the vocal vim and vigor of Paul's supporters.

This is certainly why Paul's state chair passed up idealist talk of liberty or the Constitution in favor for a simple point a first-grader could understand. She even rammed it home by talking about "my favorite Youtube," which, it turns out, is Pacino's "inch by inch" speech from Any Given Sunday. (A damn good speech.) The crowd was charged.

Her only message was to make all present promise to, immediately after leaving, call one other person and convince that person to caucus tomorrow. Just one. Call one person, make him or her go with you. Got that, stupid? One person. One person to the caucus. All cheered. I bet every one of the thousand or so were determined to make that call.

I would have expected to see more doctor puns at a Ron Paul event.

There are 19 medical doctors in Congress (three senators); that's an increase from 15 in 2009. (Trivia: Five doctors were among the 56 people who signed the Declaration of Independence.)

Five of the 19 are Obstetrician-Gynecologists, and two of them are from Texas. They are Tom Coburn (R-OK), Phil Gingrey (R-GA) Michael Burgess (R-TX), Phil Roe (R-TN), and, of course, Dr. Paul (R-Atlas Shrugged). For some reason, Republican obstetricians abound. (My daughter was delivered by Grand Forks, North Dakota mayor and Ob-Gyn, Mike Brown—a Republican.) In fact, all but one of the 19 doctors in Congress are Republicans. The lone Democrat is Jim McDermott (D-WA)—and of all of the Congressional medical professionals, McDermott is the only psychiatrist.

One Ob-Gyn offered me a theory on this breakdown, in two parts. First, doctors are really just small businesspeople in a heavily regulated industry. As such, they are especially vulnerable to government meddling and the kind of mandates born of drop-ceilinged conference rooms, campaign donations and ideology, not blood-on-the-Danskos experience. This small-business ideology also ties into a hate for taxes. While most doctors make a good living and some make a wildly good living, often doctors make that income sweet-spot that's high enough to attract the worst rates, but not so high as to allow for fuck-you money. Guess who often makes just over that $250,000-a-year mark Democrats like to use in talk of raising taxes on the wealthy? Your doctor.

Second, the Ob-Gyn suspects that the specialty—unlike, say, orthopedic surgery—is most exposed to the vile parts of the nation's entrenched social welfare system, where many Randians see the proverbial bootstraps sold for cash to buy drugs. It's hard, the doctor argues, to not get just a little bit Ayn-Randy when facing a spirit-crushing daily grind of the tragedy that happens when pregnancy meets deep poverty. The doctor added that these are the Ob-Gyns that see abortion used repeatedly as a birth control measure—and then become activists about it.

Paul is very anti-abortion. But as an Ob-Gyn he's also characteristically "in limbo" about it. Grilled about performing abortions even in the case of rape, Paul's answer to Piers Morgan was one many Ob-Gyns who work without the luxury of it being a theoretical argument would agree with: "It is absolutely in limbo. Because an hour after intercourse or a day afterwards… there is no legal or medical problem. If you talk about somebody coming in and they say, I was raped and I'm seven months pregnant and I don't want to have anything to do with it.... It's a little bit different story."

But Paul's pro-life bona fides were not on display at the rally. Unlike the t-shirts and bumpers at many other conservative candidate events, there were no "If You're Pregnant, It's a Baby," "Abortion: Be Glad Your Parents Chose Differently," "Choose life. Your Mother Did," or "Kill the Rapist, Not the Baby."

Then there is tort reform. Outside abortion, nothing makes a physician want to go into politics more than having been needlessly sued two, three or ten times.

Here are the things, in order from least to most, that got the loudest boos during a Ron Paul rally:

4) Rick Perry
3) The National Defense Authorization Act
2) The "War on Drugs"
1) The Patriot Act

In a way, the worst enemy of a Ron Paul rally is Ron Paul. Paul had been speaking for somewhere around a half hour and the crowd was whipped into a Liberty lather, all ready to rush out into the unbelievably warm Minneapolis winter night and do exactly what Paul needs more than anything: GOTV (Get Out The Vote).

Instead, Grampa Ron continued talking for another 25 minutes or so. It's like a TED talk about the Constitution, after which a person just kind of wants to go watch some goddamn "Jersey Shore," because, Jesus, can you stop lecturing for, like, ten minutes? That Paul isn't the GOP field's multiple-divorcée is maybe the most surprising story of the 2012 primary. Maybe Mrs. Paul is deaf. [Editor's Note: Carol Wells Paul, Ron Paul's wife since 1957, is not deaf.]

So all of the momentum the event had going for the first half hour was then sponged up by Paul droning on about 9/11, the conspiracy of the Iraq War, SOPA and every other recent affront to Constitutional freedom and personal liberty.

Maybe Ron Paul just isn't used to being in a position to actually win a state. Maybe the Congressman's message has sat under the heat-lamp for so long even he doesn't really believe it's going anywhere in his lifetime.

Still, at the end, the crowd went bonkers again. Paul waved a bit but scurried offstage immediately. For an indie rock act determined to maintain an aura of anti-fame cool, this might be a good approach. But this is politics, where painfully begging adoration and support is pretty much the name of the game.

On his way off stage, Paul was glitter-bombed by a man desperate to prove that even the politically progressive can be miserably uninformed assholes.

Leaving the convention center was a little like leaving a mall movie theatre after the stores were all closed.

Young men and women signed clipboards, took photos together and grabbed complimentary copies of the Ron Paul Family Cookbook. It's a merry group that, despite Paul's final desperate attempts to rob them of their crazed energy, just might caucus the Congressman into the national conversation today. From down the hall, one of a foursome yelled, "Come on, let's go spread some liberty."

Abe Sauer is the author of the book How to be: North Dakota. He is on Twitter. Email him at abesauer @ gmail.com.

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The protest, loosely organized by Adbusters and the internet activist group Anonymous—although as groups of non-hierarchical activists tend to do, many protesters claimed no group affiliation or leadership—began on Saturday. Give or take, 5000 protesters marched down into the financial district banging drums and carrying signs, chanting “Wall Street, Our Street!” The group then set up camp in Zuccotti Park—a compromise, according to one protester, between the NYPD, protesters, and private owners of the park, so that the group did not just set up camp in the middle of the actual Wall Street. They spent Saturday and Sunday night in the small square, feasting on donated peanut butter, salads and cheese. On Sunday night, supporters of the protesters ordered the group pizza—so much pizza that the nearby pizza shop announced it would have to stay open until 1 a.m. just to fulfill orders. On Monday morning the group marched down Wall Street proper, beating drums and blowing whistles, and broadcasting a live stream of the whole thing on their website.

And on Sunday afternoon, protesters gathered in small groups to scrawl slogans on spare pieces of cardboard. They lounged on benches and congregated around the mountain of cans of Skippy that dominated the free food table. A line of protesters stood silently holding signs at the front of the park, somewhat peacefully facing off a gathering of cops. There were a few police vans surrounding the park, as well as officers milling around, but they seemed, for the most part, content to watch—making sure no one was smashing the windows of Starbucks or setting anything on fire, but otherwise staying out of the way.

The group then held its “General Assembly,” the aggressively equitable open forum they use to make decisions. Five people with megaphones sat on a wall in front of the group, and encouraged the entire seated crowd to share ideas and contribute items to the agenda. The process was lengthy. It began with a review of the agenda, then suggestions for additional possible agenda items, with a chance for those who did not agree with the agenda items to dissent. Then it moved to discussion of the actual agenda items, and a conversation on whether items were to be decided by the entire group or moved to a smaller, subject-based work group that would bring their decision to the entire group, to then be further discussed. The process ensured that every single person had the chance to have their voice heard. It also meant that it took a very long time to get anything done.

“My neighbors are being pushed out of their homes through predatory lending and foreclosures, they’re having their heating and hot water being turned off, and my friends in college are so deep in student debt that they won’t pay it off for 20 years,” Justin told me. He is a fairly clean cut 25-year-old who had kicked off the megaphone portion of the day. He was monitoring the group’s food donation page on his iPad. “What we’re trying to do is trying to establish even more than we did yesterday, our encampment here, so we can achieve our ultimate goal, which is to occupy Wall Street and make our demands heard.”

Halfway through the General Assembly, a rowdy group of protesters, led by a man in tie-died spandex pants, approached the park. They were pounding drums, blowing whistles, and chanting “Wall Street, Our Street!” Their energy dissipated as they approached the more somber General Assembly, then in the process of discussing whether they should discuss a common name, if they should have a police liaison and how they could best formally recognize the disproportionate privilege of many of the protesters. Then a cry of “Welcome them!” came from the General Assembly, and the cheering, colorful band of marchers was added to the mix.

“Me personally—I don’t want to speak for everyone—but for me, it’s about getting money out of politics,” Benjamin Hitchock told me. He's an 18 year-year-old college student who had driven down from Maine for the weekend. “It’s about getting the influence of money out of democracy. Because democracy was not made to represent the distribution of dollars, it was made to represent the distribution of beliefs.”

They had all been spending the night in the park, without tents or shelter, some more comfortably than others. Flip, a 23-year-old Queens resident with an acoustic guitar, told me that he’d forgotten a blanket the night before, so had been cold, but that everyone else had helped him get through.

“I just feel like I need to be here, you know?” Flip said. “I feel like the world is becoming a different place. That’s how it works, I guess.”

Some came from far away—Robert, a 20-something self-described professional activist who was lounging on cardboard with his girlfriend Caitlin, had hitchhiked across the country from California just to be there.

“What we’d like to change is to at least draw more attention to and hopefully phase out the financial system’s involvement in the political system,” Robert told me. “It kind of diminishes the voting power of individual people, it limits your choice to two candidates that have already been vetted by large contributors.”

Robert Segal, who said he was a 47-year-old former Wall Street employee and definitely was the lone protester there in a suit and tie, concurred. “No corporation should take home a senator for their mantelpiece, and have a congressperson on either side. When you throw money at a candidate you’re essentially casting a vote. And people should vote. Corporations shouldn’t vote. That’s a starting point.”

“After 2008, I expected wow, people are actually going to gather and go 'what did you just do to us?'" he said. "'Why did you think you’re so vital, why don’t you take a hike? We don’t need you!' But instead there was a resounding amount of non-noise.”

The most eventful part of the day was when a Big Apple Tour Bus pulled up, and tourists began to excitedly snap photos of the protesters in the park. At one point, a protester donned a Guy Fawkes mask—the signature of many members of Anonymous. A police officer walked up to him and, quietly, asked him to remove the mask. Wearing masks in New York City was illegal, he explained, and if the protester continued to wear it the officer would end up having to arrest him.

“I’m honestly shocked that there aren’t more people from the right,” Robert the hitchhiker said. “I’m surprised there aren’t more people from other sides. This is being spun as a very left-leaning cause, but ending the financial system’s stranglehold on our democracy is something everyone can agree on. All over the country in the Midwest, in red states, good old boys alike.”

“I know I’m making a difference,” Benjamin said. “The people who come and see this and walk by and think about it, whether it be good or bad thoughts. Plus,” he said, “If I wasn’t here, I’d just be sitting in my dorm room doing homework.”

Erica Sackin is a reporterer.

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This outpouring of disgust is coming at the expense of the excellent local bloggers in Minnesota who have long tracked and fact-checked Bachmann. Their work will be the uncredited foundation of probably every Bachmann hit piece you'll read between now and 2012. It's begun with the self-destructive chewing-out that Matt Taibbi gave Bachmann in Rolling Stone.

"He did prove my point about clueless journalists making Stillwater out to be another Wasilla full of wingnuts," said Karl Bremer, editor of the Ripple in Stillwater blog—a reporter who's been covering Michele Bachmann so extensively that he instantly catches when publications use two Ls in her first name.

Bremer has a vested interest in protecting Stillwater, Minnesota's reputation. He's a town native. He calls it a "great place to live" and three days before the Rolling Stone piece described it as a "a Midwestern version of a Currier & Ives set piece" with "no black people," the "perfect launching pad" for a "retro-Stepford" candidate, Bremer published an essay wondering "Is Stillwater the next Wasilla?" In it, Bremer predicted the future by addressing Rolling Stone's lazy contentions about Bachmann and Stillwater. Bremer wrote:

In defense of my own hometown of Stillwater, I have to inform them that if they are looking for the typical Bachmann Teabagger voter, they are more likely to find them elsewhere in the 6th District, since Bachmann has failed to carry Stillwater in any of her three congressional races. In fact, it wasn’t until she moved to ultraconservative West Lakeland Township, which went for Tom Emmer over Mark Dayton by a margin of more than 2:1 in 2010, that Bachmann ever managed to even carry her own precinct.

After pointing out that nearby Wright County, the home of right-wing nutballs Tom Emmer and Bradlee Dean is the source of her power, Bremer said, "Nonetheless, the parade of media to the Birthplace of Minnesota on the St. Croix is likely to continue."

The parade of uncredited use of material from Ripple in Stillwater, and several other Minnesota blogs that have dogged Bachmann for years now, is likely to continue as well. Publications such as the Minneapolis City Pages and the Dump Bachmann blog have been the original sources of numerous stories about Bachmann's career foibles.

For example, in the Rolling Stone piece, Taibbi writes:

"For the most part, though, Bachmann's upbringing seems like pure Americana, a typical Midwestern girl who was 'in a couple of beauty pageants' and 'not overtly political,' according to her stepbrother Michael LaFave."

Compare that to the 2006 City Pages profile of Bachmann, "The Chosen One," which interviewed LaFave:

"By his own admission, LaFave, 51 years old and a union representative who lives in Forest Lake, did not get to know his new stepsister all that well. 'I remember that she was book-smart, and did pretty well in school,' he recalls. 'And she was in a couple of beauty pageants.... She was not overtly political.'"

Another passage from that same 2006 City Pages profile:

Stephens and other parents soon had confrontational meetings with Bachmann and the rest of the charter school group. 'One member of Michele's entourage talked about how he had visions, and that God spoke to him directly,' Stephens says. 'He told us that as Christians we had to lay our lives down for it. I remember getting in the car with my husband afterward and telling him, 'This is a cult.'

Rolling Stone:

'One member of Michele's entourage talked about how he had visions, and that God spoke to him directly,' recalled Denise Stephens, a parent who was opposed to the religious curriculum at New Heights. 'He told us that as Christians we had to lay our lives down for it. I remember getting in the car with my husband afterward and telling him, 'This is a cult.''

City Pages, 2006:

'I came in wearing jeans, a sweatshirt and moccasins, and I had no makeup on at all,' the story quotes Bachmann as saying. 'I had not one piece of literature, I had made not one phone call, and spent not five cents and I did not solicit a vote.'

Rolling Stone:

'I came in wearing jeans, a sweatshirt and moccasins, and I had no makeup on at all,' she said. 'I had made not one phone call, and spent not five cents, and I did not solicit a vote.'

Rolling Stone executive editor Eric Bates told me that this was his doing—that due to space concerns, two of Taibbi's original notes attributing work to the City Pages piece had been removed, to save space.

Bates added that he would "get some links included in the story online."

That particular City Pages profile is sure to be one of the most-borrowed texts of the upcoming election cycle. (The Daily Beast June 15th profile of Marcus Bachmann was noble enough to cite it.) Written before Bachmann was known outside even her own district, it captures quotes by those in Bachmann's orbit before the rising star was able to clamp them down. G.R. Anderson Jr., the author of that City Pages profile, did an earlier profile of Bachmann "Somebody Say Oh Lord!" in 2005.

Long before Bachmann landed in the national consciousness, let alone on a presidential ballot, Bachmann bloggers were already fighting for credit.

In 2007, Bremer broke the story about how even when Bachmann was voting her public anti-government handout values, she was collecting more than $47,000 in federal farm subsidies on "a 949-acre Wisconsin farming operation in which Bachmann owns up to a quarter-million-dollars interest." Bremer also revealed that "the Bachmann Farm Family Limited Partnership has collected as much as $127,868 in federal farm subsidies since the partnership was established in 2001." When Bremer asked blog TruthDig for credit when it republished his story, uncredited, Bremer says its editor, Robert Scheer, told him "You don't have a copyright on the facts."

The Rolling Stone story briefly mentions the subsidy.

Bremer has continued to chase this subsidies story, noting that in 2011, Bachmann’s father-in-law Paul is still registered as agent and general partner for the family farm. Paul Bachmann died in 2009.

(Bremer also contends that Rolling Stone's comment on his research about Bachmann's farm subsidies is wrong and that Bachmann, not just her father-in-law, financially benefitted as well.)

The Dump Bachmann blog was started in 2004 by a lesbian Minnesotan who had become outraged by Bachmann's anti-gay agenda. A year later, Ken Avidor and Karl Bremer begin contributing. Avidor says that he never really signed on for this, that he wishes for a day where Bachmann is no longer worth covering. "I'm sympathetic to the national media," he told me. "Here comes this person and suddenly they all need all this information and, well, there's just so much shit. So much." Avidor, who also drew and inked the "Dump Bachmann Trading Cards," slams the local media for dropping the ball, saying that the self-censoring "Minnesota nice" practiced by papers like the Star Tribune seems much like the old gag rule is still in effect.

Last year, Bremer spun off to begin Ripple in Stillwater. "I started Ripple last fall because I got tired of getting submissions rejected by other media. Figured if I was going to give my work away at least I should get the credit for it," he said. Stories are still often cross-posted at the two blogs.

Credit he got. In June 2011, Bremer won an award for “Best Use of Public Records” from the Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists for his story on Bachmann donor Bobby Thompson. The story resulted in an investigation and conviction of Thompson by the state's financial disclosure board. (And Dump Bachmann/Ripple in Stillwater are not exclusively about Michele. During the 2010 election, Bremer also broke the story about GOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer's malpractice lawsuit.)

The laundry list of stories broken by this Dump Bachmann-Stillwater crew represents a trove of original reporting on the congresswoman. For campaign trail reporters looking for the crib notes, Avidor suggests Dump Bachmann's "skeleton closet" page, a list of all the best bits from seven years of coverage.

While Rolling Stone and many others focus on the sensational anti-gay storylines that play well to the coastal elite choir, Bremer and Avidor have been the leading muckrakers in Bachmann's connection to the Petters ponzi scheme, which might end up being far more damaging to her campaign.

Bremer broke the story on Bachmann's "pardongate," a 2007 request from the congresswoman to pardon a donor of hers, Frank Vennes Jr. Vennes, a Petters Ponzi scheme accomplice, was later indicted for fraud and money-laundering. Avidor has been covering the trail in a separate blog, Vennes Info. Vennes represents the near-entirely uncovered corruption angle of Bachmann's career. Avidor suggests that if Vennes pleads not guilty, Bachmann could be compelled to testify at his trial—not the best of looks for a candidate mid-campaign.

It's forgivable that Rolling Stone's take-down is at best re-reported and at worst poorly sourced. It's less forgivable that it's self-detonating. It's a screed that warns America that Michele Bachmann is to be taken seriously—right before doing exactly the opposite.

The profile is the kind of battle-axing of Bachmann that is going to do great pageviews for the magazine but ultimately play right into her hand. It gives Bachmann legitimate evidence that the fabled leftist mainstream media is attacking her. Consequently, it will make her more popular with a base that looks for which conservative leader is being most reviled in the media, and then assumes that person is their best bet. (It's not a coincidence that Tim Pawlenty has completely avoided harsh criticism from the MSM while at the same time being unable to gain traction with Tea Party-influenced primary voters.)

Not only is the profile unnecessarily mean, it's sloppy.

One of the original sources Taibbi does quote at length as a huge Stillwater critic of Bachmann is Mary Cecconi. Cecconi ran against Bachmann for a school board position. [Editor's Note, added June 24th: Cecconi emailed with a request that it be made clear that it was Bachmann who ran against her; Cecconi was the incumbent. While we are happy to amplify, we are also happy to note that Cecconi ran for office and Michele Bachmann was her opponent.] She has been a registered lobbyist since 2006 for Parents United for Public Schools, an advocacy group that has fought Republican budget-cutting in the state—a position that necessarily entails constantly opposing Bachmann.

"My current position did not come up as a topic," Cecconi told me. "We spoke of my impressions of Michele a decade ago."

Taibbi's other Stillwater source, Bill Prendergast, is credited by Rolling Stone as a former local newspaper writer. It goes unmentioned that he's currently a blogger at left-leaning Daily Kos.

On the same day Taibbi's story hit the web, The Blaze called it a "seemingly slanderous" piece that "attacks Bachmann's faith." Elsewhere it was called an "anti-Christian hit piece." By tomorrow, it wouldn't be surprising to see Bachmann's own campaign distributing photocopies of it in Iowa.

But Bremer's greatest complaint is Rolling Stone "smearing the town of Stillwater as some whites-only, wealthy gated community that propelled Bachmann to the national scene." And Avidor said that "the smear of Stillwater is what sticks out for me."

"I can't believe he ever came here," Bremer said. Actually, he didn't: Taibbi confirmed to me that he never set foot in Minnesota for the piece.

Abe Sauer can be reached at abesauer at gmail dot com.

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"Is this the closest you've ever been to a Jackson?" someone asked.

"Well, my brother was in a hot tub with Michael in 1983, so that's got to count for something," someone else said.

La Toya entered her book party—she is the author, as of today, of Starting Over, a memoir about her life with Michael—in a one-shouldered super-ruffled white dress. She wore a quite heavy looking diamond necklace and an even more blinged-out cuff bracelet. While Latoya stood on her mini red carpet, onlookers baited her to look back at them like Roberto Benigni did in that opera scene in Life Is Beautiful.

After posing with the cover of her book for pictures, La Toya was ushered into a small VIP section. "Can someone please acknowledge like they heard me about the Cristal magnum?" an organizer screamed into a walkie-talkie. "If this is how long bottle service takes at 235 Fifth—it's pathetic!"

Bottles were popped; Latoya barely touched her glass, having no more than two sips. She did make sure to ask every empty-handed person around her if they wanted a glass for themselves. All of the press watched La Toya have fun with her friends from beyond. As Smash Mouth's "Allstar" blasted, I was ushered in to discuss the book.

"I started writing it because so many women were coming up to me and wanting to know the story of being abused," La Toya near-whispered to me. "They wanted me to tell my story and they were telling me their story. And I felt like, why not reach out?"

All of her inspiration got me very excited. "Are you the next Oprah?" I asked. She smiled politely. "Oh that's very interesting," she said, "but I just want to be able to reach out and help people. That's very, very, important. If I can inspire by speaking up, by all means I'll continue to do it."

Nikki M. James, the very-recent "best featured actress" Tony winner from “The Book of Mormon," arrived. Janet Jackson's "What Have You Done For Me Lately" came on the sound system, and La Toya made a quick exit out the back.

I congratulated Nikki on her Tony win and asked why she was here. At first she just looked at me. Then she yelled: "She's fucking incredible! She's a woman in a man's world. I'm a black girl and she's a Jackson! I love her!"

Myles Tanzer would love to come to your party.

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● "My prediction for biggest scandal of the summer is that the new section of the High Line is actually a Transformer which will destroy the entire city on July 4th, unless Soho welcome's back Will Smith's movie trailer, which coincidentally is actually Optimus Prime."
—Anthony DeRosa, Reuters API Product Manager and "Undisputed King Of Tumblr"

● "I think the Weiner scandal is going to continue into the summer. There's going to be a special election and the constituency is going to demand some answers as to why he was doing all of this."
—Craig, 36, Campus tour manager at The New School

● "I'm thinking it's one of these three things: problems with our water supply, rent stabilization, or the trains—not the subway. There will be problems with Metro-North. You want to take my picture for this? No way, get out of here!"
—Helen, "You think I'm that young, I have two grandkids!", Preschool teacher

● "I've been up for 50 hours. I can't think of anything. I don't even have a TV."
—Alyssa, 30, Student





● "There's a looming alien invasion for sure. Also they just found out about the guy who shot Tupac. So maybe there will be more Tupac related news this summer."
—Will, 22, Freelance designer and illustrator






● "Harold Camping's scrotum will explode on July 27."
—Michael Musto, 56, Village Voice columnist

● "I don't ever read the news. Ever."
— Vanessa, 28, Nurse practitioner



● "I do think aliens might make an appearance soon. Not like one singular abduction—more like a spaceship. Something will happen this summer that will shake people up. There's a lot of environmental things going on right now. All of those earthquakes and tornados are going on. Something will happen that is going to force the common man to pay attention. What that is? I just don't know."
—Erica, 38, student





Myles Tanzer is rooting for the aliens.

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Two young ladies, one clutching her canvas shopping bag, the other with a smart pageboy haircut, were instead reading the ultimate fuck you to the e-reader, the original ambiguous literary doodad: a jacketless hardcover book.

“Feel it,” said Pratt student Chelsea Dowell, about her bare-skinned copy of The Enchantment of Lily Dahl. “It’s sturdy and formidable. Jackets on hardbacks don’t look nice. And I like my book to look good.”

Dowell said she even has no intention to own an e-reader. She instead has bookshelves upon bookshelves of hardcovers, most of which aren’t wrapped in colorful semi-gloss that could easily tackify a hip twentysomething’s apartment. Rows of worn monotone books, as the Times has pointed out, can add vintage charm and intellectual cred to any brownstone walk-up. This lends a complication of aesthetics to a simple choice.

“It’s not my intent to look smart,” she said, “but I can see how it seems snobby to read hardcover books.”

Dowell is not alone in her fondness for naked library castaways. On nearly any train that leaves or enters the crux of thrifty trend-concocting (i.e. Brooklyn), plain-face hardbacks can be found in just as many, if not more, hands than a LCD tablet. (Ride the PATH train to Jersey, or any line to Penn Station, however, and this ratio is reversed.) Unlike the e-reader and iPad, the accessories of choice of the straight-legged business casual fella, the jacket-free book can be regarded as a practical choice or, if you like, a placard of retro chic. And yet it remains as equally anonymous as its electronic counterpart. Its shell is unmarked and free from judgment from train passengers; anything (even a secret Kindle!) could lay between those hard covers and no one would suspect it’s not Pulitzer Prize-worthy literature.

“Yes, I’m reading Candace Bushnell,” said Jennifer Fell, 22, taking her book from her lap to display its spine. “The jacket had pink writing all over it. It was pretty ugly.”

Fell said she’s reading The Carrie Diaries for research for her job as an assistant at HarperCollins, but she also said that she was terribly enjoying it.

Dowell agreed that there is a certain protocol to reading commercial best sellers. “I have to wait at least two years before I can be seen on the subway with a book that was made into a major motion picture,” she said. There is the shame of the mini-billboard cover art that accompanies a book-to-film release. “I don’t want everyone to think that’s why I bought it.”

The same could be said for a book that’s too new or too trendy. In the course of a single afternoon on the L train, three copies of lit Messiah Jonathan Franzen’s second coming, Freedom, were spotted—each without paper wrapping. “It’s just cause it’s a pain to keep on,” explained one young woman in an oversized deer-bedazzled sweater. She raised her brow at the very question of her book's nakedness. (It should be noted however, this reporter has yet to see someone, anyone, anywhere, reading either Freedom or the new Keith Richards biography with its proper blatant advertisement.)

While some of these hardbacks spotted around Brooklyn are new releases and work perks, the real old school deals are often purchased from book-swapping websites and, presumably, Park Slope rummage sales. The paper trail, so to speak, also leads to Court Street in Cobble Hill, to the aptly named Community Bookstore.

Owner and possible godfather of sardonic hipster disdain John Scioli is a bit of a relic in city’s used bookstore business. The mustached straight shooter does not discriminate against the buying and selling a book without its jacket.

“I’ve never thrown away a book. Who can throw away a book?” he said, and ashed his cigarette on the floor.

Despite the sprouting of fair-trade patisseries and organic baby boutiques around him, Mr. Scioli’s literary hoarder’s nest has been open, successfully, for 25 years. The kicked-in boxes of uncataloged books at the feet of slumped-over bookshelves will not deter the hardbound-hungry who come in with their requests for Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose or Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree. Scioli’s nimble mind is his own personal Amazon, keeping track of where every single cookbook, young romance novel and European history text can be rescued from his haphazardry.

To draw attention to his anti-e store, Mr. Scioli also leaves a trail of random books along the sidewalk, leading unsuspecting hipnerds astray from their High Life happy hours and tandori tapas for a peek into his den. Most in the neighborhood are already well aware of his “no-book-left-behind” policy and his amassing of thousands of titles, most of which are sold for under $5—half the price of an electro copy.

Scioli, who has never touched an e-reader, and doesn’t presently own a computer, could be the unsung hero of retrograde cool, the beacon of curmudgeony that will lead resilient hardcover lovers to his treasure trove in the paper apocalypse.

Or, you know, totally not. “When I’m not here, I stay away from books,” he said. “I watch television.”

Jessica Machado has been fabricating trends under the guise of journalism for far too long.

Photo by moriza.

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Uh oh! New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is taking the day off today from his blog “The Conscience of a Liberal”! But worry not—he's just preparing for the new semester of teaching. And he's going nowhere. Krugman wrote in an email to us that he plans to continue blogging “as long as I think I’m having an impact and/or having fun.” Krugman, who called himself a “proto-blogger,” who formerly used his MIT web page to publish shorter pieces on late-1990s things like the Asian financial crisis, said that he’ll stop blogging “when the amount of stuff I have to say falls below some critical mass." He's fine. But not everyone is!

Greg Mankiw, author of a popular blog that includes info for gung-ho college econ kids and fellow Lady Gaga admirers alike, reports that he has no plans to stop, even though he keeps “an open mind.” He's had his blog for about five years now, and he confesses he’s “slowed down of late.” Uh oh.

Boing Boinger Xeni Jardin reports that she’s “feeling awesome.” Her secret? “I drink Mark Frauenfelder’s homemade kombucha, I do yoga every day, and hug puppies CONSTANTLY. Life is good!” Maybe Glenn Greenwald should be hugging more puppies?

Joshua Green, of The Atlantic and also of the Boston Globe, sounds like he's on a dangerous downslide. "It is nice of you to check in," he wrote. "The dungeon masters here at the Atlantic rarely do, and I *have* been feeling a bit run down lately. Sort of 'gout-y.' I have been blogging for almost a year. Since starting I have slept worse, become sedentary, stopped doing triathalons, lost muscle tone, developed migraines, and become very jumpy. I would happily stop blogging at the drop of the hat."

Make him a blog-free offer, someone!

Finally, some breaking news. Politico’s Ben Smith reported to us a minor injury, but nothing that will prevent him from winning the morning. “I think I have a torn rotator cuff,” he wrote, “thanks for asking.”

James McAuley is a student in Cambridge, Mass.

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The November 29 school shooting incident in northern Wisconsin, at time of publication America's latest, is being spun as a success of the post-Columbine system. A trained school staff and law enforcement levelheadedly defused a heavily armed student prepared to do the worst. But when police finally responded to the 911 call, more than two hours had passed since gunshots were fired. These gunshots were heard by many—although, apparently, not the on-duty police officer stationed at the school.

The Awl interviewed friends of Hengel, numerous students that were present and law enforcement officers that responded and facilitated the school's "active shooter program." We found that Hengel likely knew, in advance, that he would not survive the day. We also identified an eminently fixable and substantial oversight that may exist in many other schools' "active shooter training" programs.

At 1:40 p.m., Samuel Hengel said he was sick. He asked to be dismissed from Valerie Burd's sixth period social studies class to use the restroom. Minutes later, Hengel returned to the classroom with his guns and ammunition. Hengel stood before his class and fired three shots, one of which abruptly ended a showing of a film on Hercules.

Then nothing happened, and that's a problem.

A junior who was upstairs in a math class told me, "Yeah, I heard a really loud bang. Didn't think anything of it. Well, I heard three, but one was really loud."

These three shots were heard by both students and teachers in adjacent classrooms, but dismissed as random noise.

Amy Hansen, the Marinette Police School Liaison Officer, who had been a one-minute walk away the whole time, and whose office is directly wired to the several cameras stationed in the hallways around Burd's room, got into her car, drove back to the police station, and began to file her daily report. When I asked Marinette's police chief if Hansen heard anything, he told me, "Of course not."

At 2 p.m., Samuel Hengel, Valerie Burd and all 26 students in the classroom were shocked and confused. The room still smelled a bit of discharged gunpowder. The gunshots had been so loud. How could nobody have heard that? Burd's classroom is in an area of the school called "the barn," a major thoroughfare. Burd's classroom is adjacent to four others where classes are being held. That puts dozens of students and faculty within maybe 50 feet of repeated gunfire.

But nobody came to Valerie Burd's room. At 2:15, the bell rang, ending sixth period. At 2:20, Burd's seventh period students knocked on the door. Valerie Burd cracked the door open and sends them to go to the library. Burd put a note on the door, similarly instructing other seventh period students. If Burd had a reason for making no mention of a gun, or why she declined to appeal for help, she has not yet revealed it publicly.

The Associated Press report begins this way: "Sam Hengel was by all accounts the least likely of 15-year-olds to bring two pistols, knives and more than 200 rounds of ammunition into his social studies class." What's more, he had loving parents. He had good grades. He had friends. But according to the definitive "Safe School Initiative" report (PDF) by the Secret Service and Dept. of Education, that compares 37 school shootings, Hengel was pretty much exactly a likely candidate.

Like most attackers, Hengel had "no history of violence and came from solid, two-parent homes." He was a boy, was doing well in school at the time of the attack, appeared to socialize with mainstream students or was considered a mainstream student himself, was involved in organized social activities in or outside school and had never been in trouble or rarely been in trouble at school—all typical characteristics of school shooters.

Hengel, like nearly two-thirds of all attackers, had a known history of weapons use. That Hengel's parents would have no idea of their son's plan sadly fits the paradigm; an adult or parent had information about their boy's plan in only two cases. So where do the parents fit in? The report states, "Over two-thirds of the attackers acquired the gun (or guns) used in their attacks from their own home or that of a relative."

Finally, the report states, "Most attackers showed no marked change in academic performance friendship patterns, interest in school, or school disciplinary problems prior to their attack," a characteristic that is perfectly in evidence with Hengel's dumbfounded friends, family and teachers, who all note that the 4.0 student never seemed depressed or troubled at all.

In the days after the attack, all manner of rumors circulated, all of them vague, almost all of them secondhand. A few told me that Sam broke up with a girlfriend or that Sam was having trouble with a teacher. As many as mentioned bullying mentioned "he was not bullied." Keith Schroeder, Hengel's former Scout leader was cryptic, saying to the press, “I know there was some problems at school." But he did not elaborate. Nobody will elaborate, and Sam Hengel cannot.

The "Safe School Initiative" study also found that over 80 percent of shooters both plan and reveal the intentions of their attacks in advance. So far, Hengel has seemed an anomaly in this respect. School administrators, the district attorney and the police have all made it a point in statements to repeatedly warn that we "may never know why."

However, it appears he alluded to his plans with one friend. The Awl was shown text messages Samuel Hengel exchanged shortly before the shooting that indicate it was likely he had planned his attack and did not expect to live.

It didn't seem that odd to Frank—who asked that his real name not be used—when Sam asked him about the book Columbine. Sam knew Frank was reading the book a year ago, and they had discussed it then a little. The book, by Dave Cullen, debunks many of the myths about the infamous shooting. A few years older than Sam, Frank now lives in another state, which is probably why the police have not yet spoken with him. He told me it wasn't unusual for him to hear from Sam at random times, a text here or a Skype or IM session there. The subject was often the Packers. Frank said, "Pretty much every time the Packers won he was happy for the week." This time though, Sam was interested in how the Columbine shooting had changed police tactics.

Sam asked Frank about the two shooters and which had been the leader; which had left all the letters; which didn't really want to do it. "He also talked about how both Harris and Klebold's autopsy were on the internet and he thought it was weird that info was readily available to people," says Frank. Frank just figured Sam was asking "because he was interested in the law enforcement field." Frank said that conversation took place just before Thanksgiving.

Asked about how his book featured in this event, author Dave Cullen told me, "Unfortunately, Columbine took on iconic status, and when most people think of school shootings, it comes to mind—for all of us, including the next perps. If Sam Hengel read that part of the story, I wonder what he made of the Columbine killers' real end," says Cullen. "I don't know how much truth or mythology about the past affects a kid desperate enough to pick up a gun. They are all emotion at that point, no reason."

Cullen added, "The trouble is that we in the media jumped to conclusions on Columbine and got most of it wrong. So kids considering an attack don't understand what that tragedy was about, and the myths sound much more appealing than the truth. The reality is that Eric and Dylan wanted to blow up the school, kill hundreds and go out in a blaze of glory. They were miserable failures, and died in quiet squalor."

* * *

The bell at 3:12 p.m. ended seventh period and the school day. Students poured into the halls, zigzagging to lockers. Some went to practice. Some went home. Hengel had to expect somebody to come by the room, to force his hand.

But nobody came to Valerie Burd's room. Nobody. One junior told me that he walked by Burd's room "every time I go to my locker." On this day, he didn't see a thing. Nobody did. School was over for the day, except for 26 students and a teacher in room A111.

We know Sam Hengel likely did not intend to leave the school alive. Days after asking Frank about Columbine, Sam texted Frank about Green Bay's heartbreaking last-minute loss to Atlanta. It was a day before the shooting. Frank asked Sam about who the Pack played the next week. Sam texted: "49ers at Lambo but dude I cant watch it. u will have to watch it for me."

Frank told me, "When he said that, I thought he meant that he couldn't watch it in person. But looking back on it, I believe he meant that he couldn't watch it on TV either and that's why I was supposed to watch it for him."

* * *

The 911 call transcript reads, "Yes, this is Corry Lambie from Marinette High School. We have a student holding an entire class hostage right now… I'm leaving to go up to the commons right now… tell them to hurry." It is 3:48 p.m., two hours since shots were fired.

Within minutes of the principal's call, the school is evacuated. Minutes after that the first texts and Facebook updates go out. Val Burd is rumored to have been shot.

The police and emergency vehicles that flooded the school grounds may have put students in mind of the "Every 15 Minutes" program held just three weeks earlier. The drunk driving safety event included a mock car wreck, police cruisers, rescue personnel. Chilling only in retrospect, the exercise included a costumed Grim Reaper who entered classrooms every quarter hour to "kill" a student. The "dead" students spent the night at a local hotel to create a feeling of loss. The next day, assembled students listened to parents speak of their "dead" child.

During the standoff, Sam Hengel was exhausted. Ms. Burd spoke with the police on his behalf but he had no demands. They couldn't give him what he wanted because nobody knew what he wanted. He looked at the class: Tyler, Brad, Zach, Paige, Kayla, Marisa, another Paige, Hayley, Alex, Alysha, Nathan, Austin and the others. He decided to let five students use the bathroom, surely knowing they wouldn't come back. This was 7:40 p.m. He knew the SWAT team from Green Bay is crouching outside the door.

A few students talked about what happened. Nathan Miller told the local Fox affiliate, "They were yelling at him to get on the ground, and they were yelling at us to get out and everything was kind of a blur at the moment." Others choose to remain silent. One 16-year-old student who was in the room turned down an interview request with a simple "Fuck. You."

At 8:03 p.m., Sam Hangel fired three more bullets into a computer. Fearing the worst, SWAT breached the room, and Sam put the gun to his head.

"That's not the first thing that you think of in a school. School's the place where you're supposed to feel safe," said a junior, who was in an nearby English classroom when Hengel discharged the gun. She said the shots sounded like "a door upstairs being slammed or a table being dropped."

A freshman who was in the sixth period World Geography class immediately next to Burd's room tells me that several students jumped at the gunshots during sixth period. One boy even joked that everyone should "get down."

"We only thought that there was people slamming doors up stairs. If you would have made us make a list of what we thought it was, that wouldn't be anywhere near the top of my list," he said. The freshman says his teacher dismissed the shots as a door slamming.

Another student emailed to say, "there were two bangs durin 6th hour but we just thought it was somethin normal." On Facebook, several Marinette students posted on others' walls about "those sounds we heard."

A junior who hunts and also heard the shots explained, "In the woods it's open where you hear the echo more than the actual thing. I don't know. I think just at first it didn't seem real to be a gunshot in school."

In the days after the shooting, the school's top administrator bragged to the press that recently the school's "educators were all involved in a mock shooter situation." That claim is a little misleading as the teachers really did not play any part in the "shooter" part of the exercise.

Through an open records request, The Awl obtained a copy of the "Marinette Co. School Shooting Exercise Plan" carried out on Aug. 27, 2009. The "Scenario Summary" of the report on the training exercise states:

Time: 0830 hrs Marinette High School is preparing for the new school year and all High School staff and school administrative personnel are on campus for in-service meetings and classroom preparation. At approx 0830 hrs masked gunmen storm the campus firing rifles and small arms. Several people are shot in the area of the main entrance to the High School. The gunmen start firing at anyone they encounter and begin searching the building for victims.

The report describes an impressive and extensive plan to handle and coordinate the school and emergency services after an active school shooter had been identified.

Marinette County Emergency Management Director Eric Burmeister told me that the place Hengel chose, room A111, was noteworthy as this "A-area" was the same place police and emergency services had staged its mock shooter exercise. Burmeister explained that the training used "simulation"—gunfire simulating technology. "It's probably not as loud as live rounds but it's close," he said.

So just 15 months before Sam Hengel fired three real gunshots in this corridor of classrooms, a team of police had used ammunition that produced sounds comparable to real gunshots.

But given safety concerns, only a few school administrators were present for this segment of the training. The teachers who participated did so in a separate part of the exercise and were not present to hear what gunfire might sound like in their everyday environment.

It's an absence that raises a simple question: Would adding a program that familiarized staff (and maybe students) with the sound of gunfire within their everyday environments add a valuable, and cost-effective, dynamic to the security preparedness of schools?

Sam Hengel's funeral was held on Sunday, Dec. 5, at 1:00 p.m., and at the same time, the Packers were beating the 49ers, a game they would go on to win.

Note: As residents of a small community, nearly all students and parents interviewed asked to do so anonymously. Only Frank's name has been changed to protect his identity.

Abe Sauer is working on a book about North Dakota. You can reach him at abesauer [AT] gmail.com.

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