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Dr. Tony Zavaleta, educator, writer, politician and a man for all seasons, steamed into The Murphy's Report's office. A Texas Southmost College trustee, he was livid. Managing Editor Scott Steinback was perusing copy alone at his desk as the rest of the staff are forwarding articles from their homes. Zavaleta, infamous for his quick temper, cut to the chase.

Dr. Z: What in tarnation is this tripe that your boss is printing on Facebook? I read The Murphy Report and it scintillates with stories and commentaries, but I read Facebook and it's little more than a collection of photos with the impact of a feather settling on your head. Did Doc lose his balls? Is he allowing Facebook to intimidate him? I thought he was our modern Emiliano Zapata, opting to die standing rather than live kneeling. He's a commanding presence on the blog, but he's a cringing coward on Facebook.

Ssteinbeck: He served two torturous months in anonymity for violating Facebook policy regarding posting. Facebook has broken him. He has served so many Facebook sentences that he's no longer going to snub its strict standards. We sat down once he could publish on Facebook and went through the last two weeks of content on the blog. Besides innocuous photos, there was nothing we could republish on Facebook that might not expose him to further punishment.

Dr. Z: The Murphy Report shit is so good, but the Facebook crap is so bad. Are you telling me he is afraid to post his brilliant poem on Jack Tweed? Facebook isn't going to permit Doc to legitimately criticize a politician? Trump is pummeled every day and nobody stops the press. The bloggers are a must read for the entire community. Our dying daily is more concerned about exploiting Coronavirus for a government subsidy or the Herald will have to request a priest to deliver the newspaper extreme unction. I could go on and on about the muckraking mayhem on The Murphy Report, but I turn to Facebook and it's a blank screen.

Steinbeck: What do you want me to tell you, Dr. Zavaleta? Doc has decided to wave the white flag. He cannot convince Facebook through his example that it would prosper more with adult content, but the company doesn't want to go in that direction. The executives prefer to limit the postings to birthdays, quinceañeras, teacher complaints, the latest recipes for barbecuing, babies taking first steps and a host of other humdrum activities. How many times do you see grandparents posing with their grandchildren as the formers' lives have become so vacuous in retirement that babysitting is their only calling. When are you going to post photos of your grandkids, Dr. Zavaleta? I've heard that you have a bevy of them. With your height and your sons' heights, you might have the makings of an all-star basketball team. I can envision the Zavaleta Zephers blowing their opposition off the courts.

Dr. Z: It will be a cold day in Hades before I'm turned out to pasture as a babysitter. I have my hands full with a ten-year-old. Since I am one of the few honest politicians standing, I would be remiss if I didn't say that my wife has her hands full with our son. To her credit, there is nothing else she would rather be doing with the exception of putting the finishing touches on her doctorate dissertation so Doc can edit it. Besides watching narco movies, I have to devote my free time to finishing my tenth book on the role of curanderos and medicinal herbs that will be a must addition to any prestigious institution that specializes in folk figures and sanative plants. I hate sounding like that troglodyte Trump, but this could be my greatest work. I wish I could be so prodigious in my praise for your founder, but I would be another hypocrite and we have enough of them in Brownsville and Cameron County. Facebook is reducing him to a fish flopping on dry land.

Steinbeck: When you were at the university as a professor or later as a vice president and Julieta Garza was your boss, were you going to defy her dictates? Nein! You needed the job and the lucrative salary. You adapted to your restrictions and forged forward, accomplishing your goals in a subtle fashion. You weren't going to brave the president. You know as well as I do that she would have banished you. That is the challenge that Doc must meet by adapting to the hindrances in a positive manner. By exercising free speech to its fullest extent, he would be exiled from Facebook. He doesn't want to suffer that fate; he believes Facebook remains a legitimate platform. In order to survive, he is promoting a new message and implementing a new approach. He sees Facebook's demand that he conform to its dictates as a message. He is setting out on a spiritual pilgrimage in pursuit of the nothingness of nothing.

Dr. Z: Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit! I have stepped gingerly to the other side for a brief moment or two with shamans at my side and mushrooms working their magic at incantatory places like Real de Catorce, but Doc is no more spiritual than a rock. He's playing word games. The nothingness of nothing! What the hell is that supposed to mean? He takes his amateurish appreciation for Zen and reduces it to a ying and yang ruse of opposites. When he starts putting the nothingness of nothing into ontological terms, he will be no better than Trump entering the world of hoaxes. This nothingness of nothing is nothing but quackery. I would rather that he quack like a duck than cluck claptrap about a pseudo philosophy. I can't accept that El Macho Gabacho has been emasculated by Facebook.

Steinbeck: What can I tell you, Dr. Zavaleta? I have lost count of the number of individuals who have advised him on how and how not to write. I suppose that with The Murphy Report providing its satisfying excesses, he feels comfortable experimenting within the perimeters of Facebook without compromising his integrity and dignity. He says that The Murphy Report allows him to negotiate the rapids in a raft while Facebook permits him to float down a river in an inner tube. I never know his intentions. If you expect Facebook to be a reflection of The Murphy Report, you will be disappointed.

Dr. Z: I know he won't listen. He harbors a rancor toward me after I married his first wife. I know he won't admit it, but there is a simmering animosity that he is adept at concealing. When he was running for mayor and I was contending for city commissioner, I told a Knights of Columbus crowd that as good Catholics they shouldn't vote for him because he was a communist.

Steinbeck: He has never mentioned that anecdote about his mayoral campaign and little about his first marriage except describing it as puppy love. He did say it didn't cost him anything to end the relationship while you weren't so financially fortunate. He recalls that she departed after he said "adios, honey," but she didn't set you free until she had pocketed a chunk of your money.

Dr. Z: If there is a nothingness of nothing, then both my savings and retirement accounts experienced that emptiness I hope to never endure again. Doc has never been a materialistic person. Perhaps the nothingness of nothing is his calling. He doesn't have a damn thing of significance except cash in the bank. No house. No car. No furniture. I couldn't live without my historical home, my ranch and my pickup as well as a number of other possessions. If there is a path that leads to the nothingness of nothing, he is much further along on that journey than I am.