Let’s see now, p.m. means….

Leonard Boswell last week endorsed Desmund Adams, a state senate candidate from the western suburbs. “I see, in Desmund Adams, a bright, fresh, engaged and articulate public servant who will bring substance and reasoned dialogue to the Iowa State Senate,” the Congressman said.

Whoa.

He should have stopped at “engaged.” Adams is black, and “articulate black” is, to many black people, a kind of backward way of saying, “This guy is black, but he can talk.” Think about it. How often do you hear someone referred to as an “articulate white?”

“Black people get a little testy when white people call them ‘articulate,’ ” Lynette Clemetson, a black woman, wrote in The New York Times five years ago. That was after both Joe Biden and George Bush referred to Barack Obama as articulate.

“When whites use the word in reference to blacks, it often carries a subtext of amazement, even bewilderment. It is similar to praising a female executive or politician by calling her ‘tough’ or ‘a rational decision-maker,’ ” Clemetson wrote. And she quoted Anna Perez, the former communications counselor for Condoleeza Rice as saying, “When people say it, what they are really saying is that someone is articulate...for a black person.”

Skinny, often inarticulate, is always trying to be helpful. ...

Des Moines officials are breathing easier now that the Legislature has gone home. By doing nothing on property-tax “reform” — one man’s reform is another’s regression — legislators did Des Moines and other cities a big favor, for the “reform” would have cost the cities millions. And by slipping in a last-minute paragraph or two to let Des Moines temporarily raise its utility franchise fee to 7 percent, the legislators gave the city a way to fund the $40 million refund to utility customers that the Iowa Supreme Court ordered earlier this year. The bill lets the city tax people to pay them a refund for over-collections from 2004 to 2009, in effect taking money out of one pocket of a property owner and then giving it back for another pocket. The fee must first be approved in an election, which is always a hazard, of course. ...

Let’s see if we have this straight: You’re now paying anywhere from $16.31 (that’s what a friend pays) to $17.39 (that’s what the website is listing) to $18.69 (that what Skinny is billed) a month for home delivery of the daily Des Moines Register and Sunday Register. And the stuff on the website is free. Starting June 1, you’ll be paying $23 a month for the same thing. That’s an “extremely great value,” according to a letter to subscribers from Register Publisher Laura Hollingsworth. It’s also an increase of 23 percent (for Skinny) to 41 percent (for our friend).

The letter also said the paper would be bringing “enhanced coverage of the topics most important to you,” though it didn’t say how that squares with the wave of furloughs, early retirements and resignations at the newspaper. If you’re interested in the courts, for instance, there is virtually no coverage except for criminal trials, and coverage of the city, the suburbs and the county is minimal. The newspaper now is being beaten on important or interesting stories by the TV stations. Last week’s amazing story about the missing 750,000 pills at Bauder’s Pharmacy was on KCCI’s website, and picked up by the Business Record’s morning blast, well before the Register website had it, for instance. As of mid-day Friday, there was no report on Thursday night’s Iowa Cubs baseball game. Still, Hollingsworth says under the new deal you will have the “privilege” of looking at the website. But, of course, you’ll be paying for that privilege.

The subscription model is “broken,” Hollingsworth said the other day in a long, editorial-like piece in the news pages of the Register. “Like anything that is broken, it needs to be fixed.” She went on about how readers “want to have access to their local news and information in any form, at any time, with any frequency.” One problem, though, is that some subscribers — especially older ones — just want their news on the doorstep (or driveway or neighbor’s yard) and nowhere else.

“Sue and I don’t need all the electronic ‘enhancements’ the Des Moines Register has in store for us effective June 1, 2012,” Jim Cornick emailed a bunch of his friends. Cornick, who retired in 2001 after 20 years as publisher of Successful Farming Magazine, added: “We don’t want our paper 24/7, nor do we want it on our phone, nor do we want it on a smartphone, or computer or tablet, etc. We just want the paper version we’ve enjoyed for decades. We called them up to bitch, and they offered us another full year at the same price if we paid for it $208.68 in advance, but then promised we would have to pay the $23 fee/month after the year is up. So, we decided to go ‘cold turkey’ and cancel the whole subscription.

“We were on ‘hold’ over thirty minutes because of ‘an unusual number of calls.’ So it took us over a half hour to cancel our sub! This seems like a pretty desperate move from a paper which is shrinking in size, coverage and significance in our lives. It will be interesting to see how we adapt to not having the paper every morning. Maybe we can get on the treadmill 30 minutes sooner in the day.

“It will be interesting to see if we miss the paper. We may be going to Hy-Vee more often for breakfast to read their paper.”

One guy who got the note responded that he, too, had canceled. “I will miss the 15 minutes (5 minutes on Monday) that it takes me to read the paper, but I will join you and become a former very-long-time subscriber.”

There is no option for those who just want the print edition. Even though as of Monday morning, the website was still offering the old options for print edition only and did not mention the electronic edition. And you still couldn’t get through to the 800 number.

“I hope your paper crucifies the Register in the next edition. I cannot believe they are raising subscription rates for all subscribers, even if they do want online access. Don’t they understand there are many people who do not own a computer (my mother, for instance), who don’t need to pay more for a service they’ll never use?” reader John Moore emailed Cityview. “That’s like the cable company charging everyone extra for 3D content even if they don’t own a 3D-capable TV set. I’ve always liked the way you call this publication out in print. Please do not disappoint.”

Meantime, Skinny hears the newsstand price of the daily Register soon will go to $1, the Sunday paper to $3. ...

Word is that Matt Hinch, the trusted Administrative Assistant to Iowa Speaker of the House Kraig Paulsen, may be leaving his position now that the Legislature has adjourned. The rumor around town is he will take a position with the Downtown Des Moines Chamber. Further word is that he’ll be succeeded by Doug Struyk, the former legislator from Council Bluffs who lately has been working for Secretary of State Matt Schultz. ...

Nancy Sebring leaves town with a check and a handshake and, apparently, no guilty feelings about walking away from the school superintendency in the middle of her contract. She leaves with a check for $31,719, compensation for 37.5 unused vacation days, according to school officials. She forfeits any accumulated sick leave. One modest suggestion: In the “contract” for the next superintendent, why not at least make the person pay for the search for a successor if he or she, too, walks away mid-contract? Just a passing thought. ...

So far this year, there have been 25 or so sales of homes for more than $500,000 in Polk County. Only one of those homes is in Des Moines. In January, Mark Poole paid $560,000 for a 5,000-square-foot, five-bedroom, four-bathroom home at 339 45th St.

The seller was Chris S. Karas. ...

Back to the Register: One reason long-time print subscribers like the paper is because it runs columns by Don Kaul. But those columns are available — free — at otherwords.org. …

Line of the week, from The New York Times obituary on Maurice Sendak:

“Roundly praised, intermittently censored and occasionally eaten, Mr. Sendak’s books were essential ingredients of childhood for the generation born after 1960 or thereabouts, and in turn for their children.”

Now we know why the delicious ice cream at Bauder’s is so addictive. CV