Robert Carter: From LaLa to curling, by way of Twitter

Published 1:57 pm Monday, March 8, 2010

Through some verbal gymnastics, this week’s column will start out with Larry Langford, veer off into social networking on the Internet, and end up with curling.

Hang on. It could be a bumpy ride.

Yesterday in a federal courtroom in Tuscaloosa, Larry “LaLa” Langford — former mayor of Fairfield and Birmingham, as well as a former Jefferson County Commission president — was sentenced to 15 years in prison for his conviction on 60 felony counts relating to bribery and a host of corrupt practices while in office.

Langford, whose primary ties to sports are his longtime push for a domed stadium to replace Legion Field and an indoor track and equestrian facility on the old Fair Park site in Five Points West, will appeal the conviction. He is free for now, but must wear an electronic ankle bracelet for monitoring and can’t leave Jefferson County. That means he can’t make a run down to Greenetrack or Victoryland (assuming the latter reopens) for a few more games of electronic bingo, which have proved to be somewhat lucrative for him in the past.

As for me, I’ll wish him only good riddance.

As a resident of Fairfield (don’t laugh, the house is paid for), I’ve had to deal with LaLa on occasion, and quickly learned one thing: Don’t engage the man in conversation unless you have about an hour to kill.

Aside from that, Langford made a name for himself by bringing about needed repairs and improvement’s to Fairfield’s infrastructure, and for his pet project that became Visionland, now Alabama Adventure in Bessemer. He also left the city heavily in debt, a hole that was largely filled in only recently by, ironically, fees from electronic bingo operators.

Langford is a hard man to figure out. On one hand, he invliked the name of Christ in much of his early work: the Fairfield Civic Center built under his watch still bears a sign with foot-high metal letters reading, “To God Be The Glory.”

On the other hand, he gambled and smoked heavily, and could cuss out with aplomb those who dared cross him.

I’d like to say that I’m surprised Langford was convicted of these charges, but in my heart of hearts, I’m not. He was simply too much of a political huckster, always with some new scheme up his sleeve, always playing some angle.

So it was with great interest that I watched the gaggle of news media outside the courthouse in Tuscaloosa Friday morning, waiting to see how long Langford would be put away.

The scene was almost comical. Since federal courts still do not allow cameras inside, reporters were forced to relay messages from colleagues inside, who were using iPhones and Twitter to send messages.

There was NBC-13’s Mike Royer looking at a laptop in the bright sunlight, trying to read what a co-worker was sending him. By the time he finally reported the sentence, I had already read it on my own Twitter feed from no less than five different sources. Not to pick on Royer, because all the other stations were in the same boat and acting the same way.

I had the sentence posted on our own Facebook and Twitter accounts within seconds. I even beat at least one TV station to it.

It goes to show how the Internet’s social networking phenomenon has blossomed, especially in the past year and a half.

Which brings us once again to Olympic curling.

You’ve hopefully read my diatribe on the hapless United States men’s team, which lost its first four out of nine matches in preliminary play at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Three of those matches were lost on the last stone, as USA skip John Shuster missed shots that gave the match away.

During those matches, the Internet  — particularly Twitter — was buzzing with comments about the fate of the Americans, particularly Shuster. One Tweeter even coined the word “Shustered” as a catch-all for the act of blowing a contest at the last minute, a realm formerly occupied by baseball’s Bill Buckner.

After the fourth loss, Shuster was benched for a match by USA coaches, a nearly-unheard-of act in curling.

Fast forward a few days to the gold-medal match between Canada and Norway. During the equivalent of halftime, the break between the fifth and sixth ends, Shuster was interviews by NBC’s Joe Roggin, and asked about the Twitter traffic about his mishaps. Specifically, Roggin asked him which of the tweets was the most creative.

“Oh, the ‘bumper sticker’ one,” Shuster replied. “‘Honk if you’ve ever,’ whatever. That was a good one.”

That caught my ear. It sounded familar. Very familiar.

I quickly scanned through my own Twitter history (@RobertLCarter), and there it was.

At 9:15 p.m. on February 17, I posted this: “Bumper sticker: ‘Honk if John Shuster has missed a draw to let you win at #curling.’”

I’ll never underestimate the power of social networking again.

By the way, do I get a medal or something?