Marie Brenner has traveled the world, with a recent stop in India, where she was reporting on the human stories — and acts of courage — in last November’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai. Next stop, Charlotte?

The award-winning journalist — writer-at-large for Vanity Fair — spoke at the Charlotte Museum of History today, about Great Dames, sibling reconciliation and Bernie Madoff. She asked the audience for examples of unsung volunteerism, and had nice things to say about yours truly, though neither of us had the solution to troubles in the news business.

Quick takes:

• Brenner shared choice anecdotes about Great Dames: What I Learned from Older Women, her 2000 book. After a day trailing then-New York City arts czarina Kitty Carlisle Hart from Brooklyn to the Bronx — in a snow storm — a breathless Brenner asked the lady her secret. “Discipline,” said Hart, 88, who dropped to the floor and executed 40 perfect leg lifts. Brenner’s greatest of dames was her own mother, whose wisdom she has come to appreciate: “After 45, you put your hand into your sleeve and your mother’s arm comes out.” Future great dames? Michelle Obama would have to be at the top of the list, said Brenner.

• In her newest book, Apples and Oranges, My Brother and Me, Lost and Found, Brenner tells of growing up in San Antonio and in constant conflict with an older brother who was her opposite in every way. A crisis brought them together several years ago, which led her to the book and her advice that particularly in times of uncertainty, it’s “so crucial that families pull together.”

• For Vanity Fair, Brenner explored the touchy issues of class and religion in the Bernard Madoff scandal. When asked about how he got away with it for so long, Brenner said, he “moved like a shark, under the radar.” In court, when he was taken away, a “strange smirk played on and off his lips,” Brenner said. It’s “like you were seeing a true sociopath.”

Bookmark It

Award-winning writer Mary C. Curtis (formerly of The Charlotte Observer) served as a guest blogger on The CLog all this week. In case you missed any of the stellar work she churned out for us, here are links to all the pieces we posted:

1. What does it mean to be a Southerner?

2. Can I have some Prozac with that bailout?

3. It’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it

4. There’s no such thing as bad publicity

5. In the new news business, is there still reason to give thanks?

Bookmark It

It’s almost Thanksgiving, when columnists take the easy way out and list what they have to be thankful for. I’ll spare you. But it’s been fun hearing from readers, surprised to find me in Creative Loafing and wondering where I’ll turn up next. I’m thankful for that.

The news about newspapers is just about the same as the rest of the economy. Any meeting of journalists resembles a wake nowadays — but not always.

Recently, I traveled to Cambridge, Mass., for the 70th anniversary of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. I got a chance to catch up with my former Observer colleague, Tommy Tomlinson, who is enjoying his academic year and his vacation from newsroom angst. My fellow Fellows from my 2005-2006 year there showed up in force for a mini-reunion of our own. (The guy from Albania won the prize for farthest distance traveled.)

They’re still practicing journalism, but in different ways. One of them, Charles Sennott was a foreign correspondent at the Boston Globe. In a complicated world where people need more not less information, newspapers are shutting down overseas bureaus to save money. Sennott is now executive editor of Global Post, a Web-based news organization that will provide daily coverage by its own correspondents around the world when it launches early next year.

It’s just one example of ventures trying to fill the news gap.

Thanks to an election season with North Carolina in the spotlight, I got to explore the online landscape. My work appeared on Essence.com, The Root, EbonyJet.com, Black America Web, the Nieman Foundation and NPR.org. It’s a start. My friend and colleague Carlton Hargro, Creative Loafing’s editor, is encouraging me in my multi-platform adventures. He’s also providing the forum of CL as I make my way.

So Carlton, in keeping with the season, thank you.

Bookmark It

It’s good to know that while the some of us were preoccupied with things like the economy and the country’s political future, others were concentrating on what’s really important.

Ashley Dupre, the prostitute in the sex scandal that forced Eliot Spitzer to resign as governor of New York, is getting ready for her close-up. Her interview with Diane Sawyer is scheduled for Friday night’s 20/20 on ABC. It’s part of Sawyer’s investigation into the world of prostitution — really.

And I thought the Spitzer scandal was so eight months ago.

Promotional photos for the TV event are priceless, with Dupre dressed in a high-necked number that makes her look as though she’s auditioning for a role on Little House on the Prairie or a biography of Eleanor Roosevelt.

The 15-minutes-of-fame rule was shattered long ago. Reality show stars move on to reality show spin-offs. And characters in real-life scandals become a different type of star.

Dupre — aka “Kristen” — is on a publicity blitz, trying to rehabilitate her reputation and perhaps jumpstart a music career. I’m not sure that’s possible when you have an alias. What can she possibly tell Sawyer that we don’t know and will pass through network censors? Reportedly, she reveals how an “upper middle-class, girl next door got into the profession and the psychological journey she continues to experience.” What, no naughty bits?

Dupre tells People magazine that she sympathizes with North Carolina native Silda Wall Spitzer, who has stood by her heel of a husband. She would say to her: “I’m sorry for your pain.” If she feels so sorry, why doesn’t she just disappear?

That never happens. Jerry Springer is respectable and Ms. Dupre is prime-time material. It’s reported she has been asked to be a part of a new Donald Trump reality show that turns party girls into proper ladies.

And here your mother told you hard work gets you noticed.

Bookmark It

Sean Conner admitted that he felt pretty lonely. The young man said being a black Republican is “the hardest thing in the world to be.”

Conner, the outreach press secretary for the Republican National Committee met twice with members of the Trotter Group of black columnists in Washington, D.C., last week. It’s not that the crowd was unfriendly. I’d say we were curious about the GOP’s plan –- if it has one –- to become more inclusive, to regain the progress the party made under President Bush but lost in this year’s presidential campaign. In a year that saw monochromatic crowds at John McCain and Sarah Palin rallies yell “terrorist” at the mention of Barack Obama’s name, minorities weren’t buying what the GOP was selling.

Conner blamed the economy for his party’s defeat. Fair enough. But it was more than that.

At the Democrats’ Denver convention this summer, I was struck by the diversity of the delegates –- whether the measure was race, age or physical ability. Watching the Republicans in Minneapolis, I hardly saw any brunettes. The TV cameras tried to search for some color, but always seemed to come back to the same black guy.

That doesn’t stop Conner on his lonely quest. He is confident that Joe the Plumber will soon be joined by “Jamal and Joaquin.” The way to minorities’ hearts and minds, according to Conner, is an appeal based on conservative social issues –- gay marriage and abortion. Conner’s new plan was simply returning to the same wedge issues that didn’t work this year.

The GOP once had a moderate wing; my parents were proud members. Now Republicans find themselves searching for that big tent it used to advertise. The “party of ideas” seems to have run out of them.

Bookmark It

I saw the movie Happy-Go-Lucky over the weekend, hoping to catch some of the good cheer of British director Mike Leigh’s heroine. Poppy keeps smiling through a hectic job as a teacher, an encounter with an incoherent homeless guy and life in a shabby flat. She spreads happiness — or tries to — even when her bike is stolen and she is stalked by a crazed driving instructor. “If she can hold it together,” I thought.

My plan worked, but only until I returned home and caught a glimpse of my 401K statement. To say it’s trending down would be an understatement.

Let the experts argue how close the world economy is creeping toward a financial depression. I can say for sure that citizens are settling into a clinical depression.

Can I have some Prozac with that bailout?

Most years, people complain about holiday trappings breaking out the day after Halloween. Now I’m actually looking forward to Santa, trees and mistletoe. Christmas can’t come too soon.

Television, the usual escapist fare, is one dire prediction after another, as talking heads debate just how much lower the stock market can go.

On Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman repeated his message of the day. This expert on foreign policy and the new economy turned to Jaws — to be precise, the moment when Roy Scheider first spies the shark — to describe the world’s troubles: “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” Three Pulitzer Prizes and this is what we get?

Occasionally, the bad financial news is interrupted by another vision of California burning.

The holidays may not bring relief, as scared consumers — out of jobs and low on funds — aren’t buying anything. Twenty percent off! Fifty percent off! Let me know when stores are giving stuff away.

There’s always eggnog — spiked.

Bookmark It

Award-winning former Charlotte Observer columnist Mary C. Curtis will be serving as a guest blogger this week on The CLog. Be sure to come back every day to check out her unique take on local, national and international current events and more

What does it mean to be a Southerner?

It’s a question that has been asked and answered endlessly. Since the 1960s, the political meaning — especially when the politics is presidential — has been specific, spawning its own name, the “Southern strategy.”

After the Democratic Party’s association with civil rights legislation, the GOP was a welcome haven for the disgruntled. With a few exceptions — in North Carolina, for example, when Southerner Jimmy Carter headed the Democratic ticket — the region fell in line. Even the presence of John Edwards as the 2004 vice presidential candidate didn’t help.

The South was usually on the winning side in this uncivil war, as the country tilted its way. But in 2008, N.C. and its neighbor Virginia voted for President-elect Barack Obama.

According to David Bositis, both states “have seceded,” become Middle Atlantic States. Fighting words, perhaps, from the senior research associate of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, based in Washington, D.C. He spoke with the Trotter Group of black columnists in Washington last week. The reasons, Bositis said, include “in-migration and education.”

It’s true that nationally and in N.C., if it were up to whites alone, John McCain and Sarah Palin would be celebrating right now. White voters chose the Republican ticket by a 55- to 43-percent margin nationally. But time and demographics are working against the party.

In just four Southern states — Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and Tennessee — Obama got fewer white votes than wind-surfing Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry. Bositis said these Deep South states keep resisting.

North Carolina and Virginia?

They are “no longer officially part of the South,” said Bositis. They are “going to have their Stars and Bars ripped down,” he said. But 2008 is just one election, held in an economic meltdown presided over by an unpopular president. Even N.C. newcomers would be reluctant to obliterate the Mason-Dixon Line and all it represents.

Will the South rise again, this time as a region with a new face and a new identity? And how will North Carolina fit in?

Bookmark It