The latest example of that peculiar brand of public spectacle that often ensues when Congress calls in some hapless capitalist to defend his company left us feeling rather soiled.

As if we’d been slathered with crude oil, come to that.

Surely it’s time to finally dispense with the charades that these committee hearings almost inevitably become.

Last week’s symbolic flogging of BP chief executive Tony Hayward by the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on investigations did absolutely nothing to help solve the environmental and economic disaster that’s ongoing in the Gulf of Mexico.

But did anybody who has ever watched one of these legislative branch farces truly expect otherwise?

What the public wants and deserves — besides, of course, to cap the gusher — is to know whether BP’s documented corner-cutting on some of its drilling operations can be blamed, beyond any doubt, for the explosion that precipitated the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

The Baker City Council didn’t do the wrong thing, exactly, in deciding to appoint Gail Duman to replace Andrew Bryan, who resigned May 28.

But the Council has another, better option.

Councilors, who have not formally named Duman, a former councilor, to take Bryan’s seat, should postpone the matter for a couple weeks.

In the meantime, the Council should encourage other interested residents to apply.

So far only two names have been mentioned: Duman and Gary Marlette, the latter endorsed by Councilor Milo Pope.

There is no real hurry.

I have for the greater part of two decades lamented the inexplicable sports radio wasteland that is Baker County.

But just lately I have detected, like the ghostly whisper of a distant AM station at night, the slight sound of optimism.

It’s called the Johnny Ballgame Show.

And it is, in the estimation of the Baker City and La Grande stations that broadcast it, “Eastern Oregon’s only live and local sports talk radio program.”

I have heard nothing that refutes this claim.

The program, hosted by John Mallory, airs weekdays from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. on 1490 AM in Baker City and 1450 AM in La Grande.

Mallory graduated from La Grande High School in 1998. He earned a degree in radio/TV digital media production from the University of Idaho, where he did radio play-by-play for the Vandals and started his talk show in 2007.

I’ve tuned in a handful of times, and listened to maybe 90 minutes of Mallory’s program.

It is what it purports to be.

And it’s rather better than I expected.

Letter added nothing to debate

To the editor:

Your decision to print Mr. Todd’s letter leads me to wonder if you labor under some kind of directive that you print every letter submitted regardless of whether it has merit. His churlish insult lent nothing to the discussion at hand, nor did it address Mr. Novak’s well-considered, well-spoken comments.

I think the Baker City Herald’s ink would be better used conducting a survey (random and scientific) to accurately gauge the community’s support or lack thereof for the motorcycle rally.

Fawn Robertson

Baker City

Baker County has no business getting into the ski resort business.

Not permanently, anyway.

But the idea that the county could step in to prevent Ski Anthony Lakes, Baker County’s only downhill ski area, from closing, perhaps for good, is a different matter.

Fred Warner Jr., chairman of the County Board of Commissioners, got it right when he said last week that the county “has agreed to look really hard” at a proposal from the ski area’s current owners to transfer their Forest Service lease, along with the ski lift and other facilities they own, to the county.

Another of Warner’s statements was equally on target: “We haven’t agreed to anything yet.”

Hollywood can plunder TV until the end of days for all I care, but when filmmakers taint the legacy of Mr. T. . . . well, every man has his breaking point.

And with the arrival on the big screen of “The A-Team,” my tolerance for the movie industry’s machinations has at last been exploded into jagged fragments.

Which, now that I think about it, was the inevitable fate that awaited the lair of every bunch of haplessly stumbling bullies whom the A-Team thwarted.

And there was at least one of those per episode.

You know the type of villains I mean.

They fired more ammunition in 40 minutes of broadcast time than a band of South American mercenaries goes through in a coup attempt, yet nobody ever suffered a bullet wound.

The U.S. Forest Service decided more than a year ago to spend as much as $5 million to repave 13 miles of the Wallowa Mountain Loop Road in northeastern Baker County.

Today, about 500 feet of that road no longer exists.

That section of the two-lane highway went downstream earlier this month, swept along by North Pine Creek.

The raging creek, one of several waterways that wreaked havoc on the county during one of the rainiest weeks in the past quarter century, also gashed away at least half the road’s width in four other places.

The road, which is a popular sightseeing route and a link between Baker and Wallowa counties, is closed indefinitely.

The question is whether the Forest Service should be able to use the $5 million to repair what floodwaters wrought.

That’s one of the easiest questions we’ve heard since the ‘Jeopardy!” kids tournament.

We haven’t had occasion to write this often, but we’re pleased today to do so:

Thank goodness for Ted Kulongoski.

Last week Oregon’s governor dismissed a proposal to close three state prisons — including the Powder River Correctional Facility in Baker City — with all the haste the idea richly deserved.

Just a handful of hours, in fact, elapsed between the governor’s office announcing a list of proposed cost-cutting measures, and Kulongoski’s spokeswoman Anna Richter Taylor saying this:

“The governor will not allow three prisons to close and release 1,000 prisoners.”

With that said, and we hope settled, we remain perplexed about why the Department of Corrections suggested such drastic measures.

Yes, we understand that Oregon officials need to plug a $577 million breach in the budget for the current two-year cycle.

And we’re aware that Kulongoski ordered all state agencies to send him strategies for trimming 9 percent from their budgets.