The Hawaiian pidgin language is full of descriptive words, such as “huhu,” which describes a state of agitated anger.

The North Coast blogs have been all huhu since before the supervisor elections over the campaign’s hot-button issue: Johanna Rodoni’s shadow candidacy for 2nd District county supervisor.

The name of her husband, Roger, remained on the June 3 ballot after he died in a car crash just before the election. Johanna was appointed by the governor to fill out his term, and rather than asking voters to write in her name, she and her supporters encouraged a vote for Roger in hopes she would be reappointed.

The conventional wisdom was that if Roger didn’t attract 50 percent of the voters plus one, Johanna was out of luck. Everybody knew that even if Roger was in the top two of three candidates, because of his death he could not be the Nov. 4 runoff, nor could Johanna be a write-in in the fall.

One bit of tongue-in-cheek advice given to young journalists is, “If your mother says she loves you, check it out,” meaning that a healthy skepticism about what “everybody knows” is a reporter’s best friend.

So our reporters started with the county’s top elections official, Carolyn Crnich, who said she would have to do some research, but was too swamped with election preparation for a quick answer, which was understandable.

Our Editorial Board had an opportunity before the election to ask Johanna Rodoni whether she could be a write-in candidate Nov. 4, and she said: “Not as far as I understand it. There is some question about that still. We haven’t even pursued that. We’re just going to get through June 3, and then we’ll look at the options for November.”

So when our editorial endorsement of Clif Clendenen was published on June 1, it hedged a sentence that it was “possible” Johanna could be a November write-in. While there were hints that the door wasn’t closed, we didn’t know for sure. Plus, we didn’t think it was fair to put pressure on Crnich publicly to make a ruling at such a stressful time at her office.

That sentence, however, was enough to throw gas on the flaming huhu. How could the “Substandard” be so stupid? Don’t they know the law? A write-in by Johanna Rodoni? What outrageous incompetence to suggest anything of the kind. Sub-sub-sub!”

That’s why online political opinion gives you the most for your entertainment dollar — especially since it's free.

Of course, the Times-Standard wanted to have the question answered by election night, especially if Roger Rodoni did not win outright. Which is what happened. He got 36.7 percent of the vote, only 16 more votes than Clendenen. Estelle Fennell was another 644 votes back, but she’ll be on the runoff ballot in November.

So it was with some satisfaction that we published a story that night quoting a spokeswoman at the California secretary of state’s office — which oversees elections — saying one of their attorneys found no legal obstacles to a Johanna write-in on Nov. 4.

Of course, the huhu continued unabated, as I’m sure it will after today’s front-page story about Crnich saying a county legal opinion confirms that.

We look forward to more huhu ha-ha’s for months to come, especially if someone has pockets deep enough for a legal challenge.

Apparently Hillary Clinton's most loyal supporters in Congress did an intervention Wednesday, and now there are plans for her to concede and endorse Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination on Saturday. Maybe...

That's, of course, what all the Clinton "insiders" were saying she was going to do Tuesday night, and instead she gave another victory speech after Obama had clinched the delegate count. The Clinton people have been playing the media like Lucy setting up the football for Charlie Brown. Oops! Hah-hah! Better luck next time, sucker!

The New York Democratic delegation still couldn't wait to throw their support to Obama ,so they gathered on the steps of the Capitol today to "endorse" Hillary for "endorsing" Obama — or for at least saying she would do so.

So what will happen Saturday? Who knows, when you have advocates like the spokeswoman on MSNBC Thursday morning who was saying that Hillary had the power of 18 million voters behind her, and she could call the tune on the vice president choice: "If she wants it, he can't refuse her." Since Obama so far does not appear to have plans to attend the big endorsement Saturday, he may be wary of getting into one of these Lucy moments, too.

When I see grizzled old warhorses like Charlie Rangel, her New York colleague and chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, shaking his head and wondering publicly what the heck the Clinton campaign could be thinking, it really makes me wonder how politically savvy Hillary Clinton really is.

We assume that because she was married to Mr. Political Animal, had been First Lady and was elected to the Senate, she MUST be politically savvy herself. But much of her life has been spent as a lawyer in the private sector, and her White House years were mostly spent in ceremonial duties — except for spearheading the health care reform project, which she made political hash out of.

Her election to the Senate in New York? With her name recognition and her bumbling opponent (filling in when Rudy Giuliani got cancer), that required little political acumen. As for Bill — his "help" for her in this campaign has made it clear that he has lost his political touch.

Her end game couldn't have been more politically wrong-headed. In retrospect, it seems either that her team headed by campaign manager Terry McAuliffe was spectacularly incompetent, or that she stubbornly ignored good advice right until the end. (And beyond the end, as we're seeing.) Say what you will about George W. Bush as a president, as a campaigner he listened to people who appeared to know what they were doing.

The football will be teed up again Saturday. Field goal or fumble? Stay tuned.

Instead of the warm, inclusive moment many Democrats were hoping for with Hillary Clinton's speech Tuesday night, she instead asked the question "What does Hillary want?", then proceeded to ignore an answer. While Barack Obama, who went over the top in delegates Tuesday, was using a large chunk of his speech to effusively praise her, Clinton not only couldn't bring herself to acknowledge her defeat, but she could barely bring herself to mention his name.

What's going on here? Whatever it is, we know it's probably too sly by half, and excessively Machiavellian. While watching her speech, I had thought perhaps she was insisting on having one last ego jolt for winning South Dakota before bowing out of the race, freeing her delegates and embracing Obama the next day. But in watching the maneuverings this morning, with even many of her supporters and allies scratching their heads, it's clear there is some ill-conceived strategy playing out.

Hillary's end game has been to blame the shortcomings of her campaign on sexism, even as her campaign has made subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle references to race. In the last couple of weeks, she has stopped saying publicly that Obama can't win the general election, but her team was still making that argument in private with superdelegates. Even after Obama became the presumptive nominee, her campaign manager introduced her Tuesday night as "the next president of the United States."

Meanwhile, she makes clear that would be open to — no, is owed — being on the ticket as vice president, and surrogates are carrying out some kind of petition strategy. So what is she saying — that if she is not the VP choice her supporters will bring chaos to the convention, boycott the election or even vote for John McCain? Is she threatening the Democratic Party — or the country?

If so, it's certainly hypocritical. She has been saying that she shouldn't be forced by party leaders or the media to exit the race, and now she is using the same tactics to try to force her way onto the ticket. If she had been the presumptive nominee, does anyone think she would let Obama declare himself her veep? Of course not. She would tell him, "I won — deal with it."

And if someone in his own party could bully Obama, how does he answer critics who say he wouldn't be able to stand up to I'm-a-Dinner-Jacket, as Maureen Dowd calls the Iranian leader.

So what does Hillary want? I'm afraid to find out.

Whew! The evening before a big election is a time to take a deep breath — not only for candidates who have been frantically campaigning, but those of us in the media helping voters make an informed decision.

I was particularly focused on efforts on the opinion page — the question-and-answer sessions with all the supervisor candidates on the ballot (as well as Johanna Rodoni, who was not), the candidates’ My Word guest columns, and election letters from readers.

All of those, along with editorials, news stories and useful links can be found online at our special “Decision 2008” election page at www.Times-Standard.com/election/. (We printed and posted online more than 100 letters from readers on candidate and election issues.)

A caller today said he appreciated all the information — that it definitely helped him make his decisions. If you’re waking up this morning still unsure about how to vote, you’ll find what you need on our Web election page.

The Times-Standard Editorial Board was impressed with the quality of the candidates, and the tone of the campaign was on a generally high level — focusing on issues rather than personalities or “dirty tricks.”

An anonymous caller tried to bait the Times-Standard into digging into the personal life of one of the candidates. I said it wasn’t any of our business, being unrelated to the job of supervisor, and that I didn’t think it was the caller’s business either.

I went around and around with her for 15 minutes, asking her why she had to know. She would only say that she had a right to know about the person who would be representing her. Only at the end of the conversation did I get her to admit that she wasn’t a resident of the district in question.

Other issues that seemed to be more petty than substantive — whether somebody could be a full-time supervisor if they spent a few hours a week on another task, or whether it was right to accept a donation from an Indian tribe.

But in general, considering the sometimes polarized politics of Humboldt County, decorum reigned.

It was a different story in Nevada County, where I did a stint as an editor a few years back. Once, a last-minute whispering campaign said a candidate had rats in his restaurant. (An inspector had found mouse droppings some years before.) Not only did the candidate lose, but his restaurant soon went out of business.

In a particularly nasty supervisor race, one candidate had nails strewn on his driveway, while another was the subject of postcards titled “Supervisor for Sale?,” accusing her of dispensing governmental favors for campaign donations. Included was an invoice with county letterhead, later proven to be faked.

Once, at a meeting of the county Republican Central Committee, anger bubbled up over an old slight about the lack of an endorsement, leading to a fistfight in the street in front of the meeting hall.

Humboldt County seems polite by comparison — knock on wood!

The uproar last weekend over Hillary Clinton’s glancing reference to
Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination is an example of how the dynamic of
journalism is being changed by the digital medium.

For those who don’t watch much TV, and might have missed it, Clinton
was campaigning in South Dakota last Friday and stopped in to talk
with the editorial board at the Argus Leader newspaper in Sioux
Falls.

About 20 minutes into the interview, which the Clinton campaign made
available via streaming video, she was asked why she was continuing
her campaign in the face of Barack Obama’s insurmountable dominance
in elected delegates. In an analytical tone, noting that long primary
seasons have not been unusual, she said, “My husband did not wrap up
the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere
in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was
assassinated in June in California.”

The remark drew little attention from the reporters following her
campaign, who were watching at the New York senator’s next stop, a
supermarket in Brandon, S.D. But back east, a New York Post writer
picked up on it and slapped it on the Web. It was quickly linked to
by the Drudge Report, then Politico and other political Web sites
grabbed it.

Back in Brandon, while reporters were sitting through Clinton’s
standard stump speech, their Blackberrys started buzzing with calls
from editors asking them, “The Web says Hillary admitted waiting
around in case somebody shoots Obama — get reaction!”

Clinton issued a brief regret that her remarks may have been misconstrued,
followed up later by a more detailed mea culpa, but by then it was
the lead story on television and front pages, continuing to be a
white-hot topic through the weekend.

The story at first was little-noted by reporters on the scene (the
initial story by the Associated Press, which is where the
Times-Standard gets most of its national political news, didn’t even
mention it), and the editor at the Argus Leader said it was clear her
remarks to them referred to the time line of Kennedy’s primary
candidacy, and not to his assassination.

But that didn’t stop pundits from saying that while Clinton may not
be wishing for something bad to befall Obama, it indicated some
psychological obsession that would effectively end even outside
chances of her nomination, not to mention hopes of a
vice-presidential spot on the ticket.

Some observations:

• With online news, the highest value is in getting other Web sites
to link to yours, driving traffic and thus enhancing advertising
value. Thus, the emphasis is on speed, not context, and on what’s
hot, not what’s necessarily important.

• Thus, it’s the Web that is increasingly driving the American news
agenda, not print or broadcast media. Where once the campaign
narrative was framed by in-depth stories that may have taken months
to gather, it is now dominated by the trivial. (The examples this year
are too many to list.)

• John Harris of Politico, a political Web site — in noting that
elite media such as the New York Times and ABC News that once set the
agenda “now take their cues from the newer, more daring ones” —
doesn’t think the story was worth the hype. “If this really was a big
story,” he wrote, “then the media has blown it for months. Clinton
made similar remarks to Time magazine back in March.”

The truth is, as Harris notes, Clinton’s mistake was not in saying
something beyond the pale, but in saying something that if pulled
from context would sound as if it were beyond the pale.

Meanwhile, serious and relevant stories, such as Obama’s foreign
policy views, or McCain’s health report, or Clinton’s financial
crisis sink with barely a notice.

The Times-Standard ran a modest story about Clinton’s apology on our
inside campaign page, which is where it should have been.

But on our Web site, we also recognize driving traffic is important.
That’s why we upload breaking stories throughout the day, and know
that stories attracting outside links — a mountain lion attack on a
hiker, a killer whale’s seal raid on a Trinidad beach, giant oysters,
or any story related to marijuana — result in thousands of hits.

It’s uncertain where this trend toward hyperactive media consumption
may lead us. But when it comes to important issues such as choosing a
president, it does not seem conducive to wise decisions.

Let me note that I root for the Giants any time they are not playing the White Sox. That's easy to do because the White Sox NEVER play the Giants - except in interleague play this weekend. So forgive me if I am feeling pretty good having watched the Pale House eke out wins at AT&T Park on Friday and Saturday.

It's a pretty good combination - the Sox and the park by the bay. (I always try to catch the Sox when they play at Oakland, too, but the A's really need a better ballpark. )

On Friday, it was an 0-0 pitcher's duel until a rookie second-baseman getting a rare start slugged his first major league homer into the bleachers near where I was sitting with friends. Those two runs held up for the win.

Then on Saturday, in a game pitting two slumping aces, Barry Zito for the Giants and Mark Buerhle for the Chicagos, it was Buerhle who prevailed 3-1. The team got him runs early with two sac flies, then added one later when a single by Paul Konerko pushed home Jermaine Dye. Dye was on second due to a pickoff error by reliever Keiichi Yabu.

It's wasn't that Zito (who was getting a lot of heat from Giants fans) was bad. Although he let a lot of Sox get on base, he usually came up with a pitch at the right time to leave them there (I think the Sox stranded 14, so it could have been a much bigger blowout).

But the Chicagos also helped Buerhle with a lot of fantastic defensive plays, notably a layout catch of a line drive by Dye that saved a couple of runs, and an incredible leaping spear on the third base line by Pablo Ozuna who then doubled Randy Winn off first.

I must say the Giants fans were much less hostile to us Sox fans than I would have expected. They reserved their boos for Zito, Sox catcher A. J. Pierzynski (whom them hate his SF stint in 2004), and anyone wearing Dodger regalia.

All-in-all, a great weekend, including a $10 bet won off my friend Ted Weicker. I wish I could stick for the Sunday afternoon game as the Sox go for a sweep, but I must get home. I'll be listening on the radio, though!

The Times-Standard has a couple of fun projects in the works for this summer, and we’re inviting our readers to be a part of them.

The first is a special edition of “North Coast 101: An Insider’s Guide.” The concept is to gather together many of the most enjoyable things to do here behind the Redwood Curtain. The goal: Let visitors and newcomers know about the special things that are often only known to long-time residents.

The guide will include things both outdoors (most beautiful shore or mountain vistas, or where to find the best wildlife viewing, wildflowers or day hikes) and indoors (art galleries, historical sites, memorable architecture, unique window-shopping).

And how about the festivals, the ocean recreation, how to go fishing for salmon and where to find fresh Dungeness crab? Not to mention the unusual local traditions, such as Bigfoot.

We’ll be asking prominent local citizens, Times-Standard staff, and especially you, the readers, for their favorite things to do or see.

Start by e-mailing me YOUR “insider’s tip” to editor@times-standard.com, or via snail mail to Rich Somerville, Insider’s Guide, Times-Standard, PO Box 3580, Eureka, CA 95502. Tell me where it is, when it’s happening or how to find it, so we can add a photo to your tip. Better yet, send us your own photo!
The other project in which we’re inviting reader’s to participate is a special publication to help Arcata celebrate its 150th anniversary as an official city.

Founded by the Union Company in the mid-1800s to provision miners during the gold rush, Arcata has a long and colorful history, and readers can help by sharing their stories and photos of Arcata from years past.

We’ve already started to gather contributions for this special section, which will complement all the activities taking place in Arcata this sesquicentennial year.

e-mail your stories and photos to arcatas150@times-standard.com, or write to Times-Standard, Boxholder 150, PO Box 3580, Eureka, CA 95502-3580. We’ll be glad to send the photos back; just tell us where.

About 15 years ago, when I worked in Hawaii, the newspaper did a special project on the past and present of the islands’ environmental. Participants included not only experts such as historians and scientists, but schoolchildren who shared their drawings of Hawaii, and artists who contributed their works. The Insider’s Guide and Arcata’s 150th will be just as much fun and informative.

We’ll be spreading the word more widely about these projects in the weeks to come, in hopes that as many people as possible will join us in sharing the reasons why we love living here. Contributors will get full credit, of course.

The death of Humboldt County Supervisor Roger Rodoni, and its impact across the county among people of all political stripes, got me to thinking about the nature of citizen-politicians at the local level.

First of all, it’s a lot of hard work. The actual time in weekly board or council meetings may not seem like much, but there are committee meetings and sessions with other government representatives. Then there are all the chicken dinners and charity functions, not to mention the constant calls from constituents wanting you to grease the cogs of government for them.

I don’t think you could pay me enough, even though Humboldt takes pretty good care of its supervisors. They get about $70,000 worth of salary and benefits for what is considered a full-time job. Eureka, which has a part-time city council, spends about $47,000 for the whole council. (The mayor, who does a lot of ribbon-cutting stuff, gets about $24,000.)

Elected officials have to be nice to everybody, even the jerks, if they expect to have a reasonable chance of staying elected. But at some point you have to make a decision and vote, at which time being nice doesn’t protect you from the dreck that rains down. Only Teflon skin can help there.

Rodoni seemed to have that protective armor around him, or maybe a Kevlar Stetson, since he seemed to chuckle as the bullets bounced off. It’s that same quality that seems to sustain Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain as they’re accused of being anti-American elitists, manipulative liars or candidates for an early-onset Alzheimer’s diagnosis.

At the local level, people sought elected office for a number of reasons, most of which have nothing to do with being professional politicians.

Some are on a mission, and think it will be easier to carry on the crusade from the inside rather than the outside. In Nevada County, where I used to live, Drew Bedwell was one of those. He owned some rental property, and was an weekend gold-panner, but what galvanized him into politics was a struggle over property rights.

His style of politics was Rove-style confrontational. He formed a citizens group, which pushed him to challenge a liberal supervisor. To his surprise, he won, tipping the balance of the board into a conservative majority. Before he could exert his influence at the county building, however, he suddenly died of cancer.

Others enter the arena after retiring from successful careers, thinking their skills would be of use to the community. Nevada County Supervisor Nate Beeson is one of those. He was a career Navy man who served on eight ships and was captain of three of them. After a 30-year career, he was successful in the tech field before retiring to the Sierra foothills.

But I couldn’t imagine anyone running for office if they didn’t like people and power — and by that I mean (optimistically) the power to do good.

At one point, after I had left the editorship of The Union in Grass Valley and was doing consulting for a while, I was approached to run for the city council. I said no, because I was traveling too much to be able to do a good job. But I admit it was tempting after years as a journalist, studiously avoiding any individual political advocacy.

But just as there have been actors and sports stars entering the political arena, there is the occasional ex-journalist as well — like former KMUD news director Estelle Fennell, a supervisor candidate in the Second District. Others take a reverse route, such as Bill Clinton’s former communications director, George Stephanopoulos, now ABC-TV’s chief Washington correspondent.

I’m back in the newsroom now, so no political fantasies. But maybe I can make inroads on some of my other daydreams, such as learning to play the mandolin or creating Echizen pottery.

A number of readers were upset at the editorial page cartoon we published after the death of Charlton Heston. Cartoonist John Darkow of the Columbia Daily Tribune in Missouri depicted a coffin with the late actor’s arm extended, holding a rifle. An undertaker is saying to a colleague, “Do you want to pry it from his cold, dead hands, or should I?”

Some folks thought the cartoon was disrespectful or even cruel. Perhaps they didn’t know — or chose to ignore — that when Heston was the president of the National Rifle Association, at every convention (and in his farewell speech), he repeated the NRA slogan, “I’ll give you my gun when you take it from my cold, dead hands.” I’m sure he knew that he was writing his own epitaph — or drawing his own memorial editorial cartoon.

A reader told me yesterday: "You took a risk in running that cartoon." My belief is that an editorial page that worries too much about not offending anyone won't be read by anyone, because it would be stultifyingly boring. Besides, getting tarred and feathered occasionally keeps an editor's life interesting.

Incidentally, my favorite Charlton Heston movie line is a tossup between "Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape" and "Soylent Green is people!"

However, the line from "Touch of Evil" — directed by Orson Welles, in which Heston played a Mexican cop, for goodness sake — seems more prescient, considering his later leadership of the NRA: “A policeman's job is only easy in a police state.”

Publisher Greg Stevens and I regularly select a spot to have coffee and ask readers to join us for conversation. This morning we were at Old Town Coffee and Chocolates in Eureka, where about 10 people turned out.

The discussion North Coast earthquakes and floods, the old days of volunteer firefighting in Eureka, the days when the railroad ran, the Humboldt Amateur Radio Club's upcoming Field Day in June, and the crisis facing our schools.

We started at 7 a.m., and I’ll confess that early in the morning is not my best time. Over a lifetime in the news business, when the paper “goes to bed” at 11:40 p.m. and the press starts at midnight, I have developed a night-owl body clock.

I get into work about 11 a.m., and work to 8 or 9 p.m., or until the Times-Standard’s night editors have things well in hand. In addition, when I am at home about 10:30 or 11 p.m., I’m e-mailed a final look at page one before I hit the sack sometime after midnight.

Nevertheless, I can rouse myself early when it’s called for, and the first cup of coffee usually perks me up. Besides, Greg Stevens is one of those chipper, up-at-the-crack-of-dawn people who carries the conversation until I can mentally jump in.

We have these coffees every month or so, and try to move the venue around. So please join in the conversation at the next coffee with the editor and publisher.

As it happened, after two hours sitting at the gate, our plane from Denver to D.C. finally got under way after the electrical problem was fixed. Nevertheless, the friend I was meeting for dinner waited for me, and we had a great meal at an Italian place called Luigino's at 1100 New York Ave. NW. I had mezzaluna pasta with artichokes and pine nuts in a cream sauce. Linda was in the mood for linguine putanesca, but it wasn't on the menu. The chef made her day by making it for her anyway.

As noted in my last entry, Linda Hosek is a multi-talented journalist, having worked in print, television and now online. She also is an accomplished photographer, and is setting up a business called Blueye Productions. Check out some of her work http://blueyeproductions.com

Meanwhile, the NEXPO trade show got underway Saturday and continues Sunday. I'll try to cruise through and see what may look innovative and interesting. Also, some early topics for editors on Sunday include Web strategies, how to get and keep young readers, and trying to attract readers in a fragmenting media world.

These topics may not be interesting to most people, but they're of concern as mainstream media strive to survive. Those with an interest in journalism will want to follow my rolling posts over the next few days. Those without, tune back in next week.

For baseball fans, the welcome reception this year will be held at the new Nationals Park baseball stadium tonight. I wonder if they'll be serving hot dogs...