16 MAR 05: "THE COMEDY CONTINUES"

"I wanted to see when the rats came out at WRBL." So said U.S. Judge Clay Land Tuesday, as the discrimination lawsuit against the station's owners continued. The plaintiffs allege the rats arrived years ago, wearing suits....

BLOG EXCLUSIVE: Judge Clay Land made his statement to clarify a comment by plaintiff Melissa Schultz Miller. The former "producer-reporter" testified WRBL had a rat infestation problem several years ago, and she has "a phobia about rats." So much for Miller ever working at ABC News - since it's owned by Disney.

Our title, by the way, is not (well, not entirely) an editorial comment on our part. "The Comedy Continues" was the title of an e-mail Miller sent to a friend in North Carolina in 2002, after a WRBL reporter called meteorologist Heath Morton "Heath MARTIN" - in a taped report! And you wondered why Anne-Marie Gregory's contract wasn't renewed?!

But that e-mail was presented as evidence for a very different reason. Miller mentioned applying for a producing job in Birmingham in August 2002 -- while still under contract to WRBL. We think potential Presidential candidates already are taking this approach for 2008.

Miller explained in court Tuesday she applied to be a sports producer in Birmingham because she was "looking for backup, in case I was fired." She suspected WRBL managers wanted her out, and she feared being both pregnant and unemployed. Add that to the phobia of rats, and we can safely conclude Miller never will appear on "Fear Factor."

Miller tried to tell the federal jury her fear of firing was based on how other Media General TV stations have treated women - but a defense objection stopped her in mid-sentence. No women from other stations are on the list of potential witnesses. And there weren't even that many women in the courthouse post office Tuesday buying stamps.

Miller again accused former WRBL News Director Mark Wildman of demeaning her, by calling her fat during pregnancy. She claimed some Wildman remarks made some co-workers "afraid to have any association with me." Well, of course not - they didn't want their schedules blown up, to appear as witnesses in court.

Miller explained she opposed becoming the 5:00 p.m. producer at WRBL in October 2002, because she wanted to be a reporter. In her words, that job was "putting me on a producer track...." Some TV producers will tell you it's sometimes not even a track - it's more like a treadmill.

Miller testified she often wound up producing "News 3 at 5:00" because then-Executive Producer Cyle Mims "didn't like doing the 5:00 show. He had paperwork to do." Yet Miller claimed many times, she'd spot Mims later "walking around the newsroom gossiping." Maybe he's practicing for a job at "Access Hollywood."

(Miller also complained about Cyle Mims getting two weeks off for his wedding in 2002, while she could only get two days. Media General attorneys suggested Mims put in for his vacation much sooner. They didn't bother saying managers have their privileges.)

Miller said she had no time to report during the day when producing "News 3 at 5:00." That hurt her potential reporting career because, in her words: "Most news organizations go live now. There are very few that don't." If she's watching TV in her motel room this week, she'll discover WRBL is among the very few.

In a December 2002 e-mail to WRBL sent just before Melissa Schultz Miller had her baby, she wrote: "What should be a happy and exciting time in my life has been filled with stress and frustration...." Many high school juniors can relate to this. They took that new S.A.T. exam last weekend....

The last straw for Melissa Schultz Miller came in February 2003, when she was told to work an overnight shift two months after giving birth. She told the jury morning newscasts are prestigious "maybe in some locations, but not here in Columbus, Georgia." I never expected "Rise N' Shine" to come up in this trial....

An e-mail from WRBL managers told Miller she'd be "training" for two days on the morning news, after returning from maternity leave. She says that word "training" implied to her the position would be permanent. Miller might want to check her attorneys on that - since they're always "practicing law."

Miller finally notified WRBL that the move to the overnight shift violated her contract, since she wasn't returned to her old hours after maternity leave. So is this pregnancy discrimination, as Miller claims? Was it a matter of staff shortages, as WRBL claims? And with so many staff members pregnant at once, why didn't the station open its own day care center?

So Melissa Schultz Miller says she felt forced to quit WRBL - but that only left one other Columbus TV station available for news work. She testified then-WTVM News Director Dale Cox helped her for awhile, then "quit talking to me, right out of the blue." Tell me about it - I haven't heard from him since he moved out of town.

Miller told jurors the point of her federal lawsuit against Media General is to "make a difference in the way pregnant women are treated." She called herself "the only one to take on a big media company." Remember, Bill O'Reilly - this could have happened to you last year.

The cross-examination of Miller revealed Media General stations have a ten-point checklist for evaluating employees after 45 and 90 days on the job. Miller scored highest from WRBL's News Director for punctuality and attendance - but was average for "appearance." What gained a top score there, Vera Wang dresses?

The next witness in Tuesday's session led to the bombshell announcement of the day. The "new hire" paperwork which could show whether Melissa Schultz Miller was hired as a "producer-reporter" or simply a "producer" has disappeared! It wasn't in her WRBL personnel file! This calls for the CSI - "Civil Suit Investigators."

The second witness in the lawsuit was WRBL's Human Resources Coordinator. Miller said Kay Stringfellow was the only managers to show "positivity" about her pregnancy. If Miller considers positivity a conversational word, it's no wonder some of her scripts were rewritten.

Stringfellow told the court Miller came to her several times, complaining about how she was treated. But Stringfellow added Miller never blamed the bad treatment on her pregnancy. For all we know, News Director Mark Wildman simply could have been living up to his name....

I counted three different times in two days that Miller choked up in tears on the witness stand. Stringfellow addressed that, by saying Miller "cried a lot in my office.... she cried a lot at work." Imagine if she hadn't worked in news, but put the soap operas on the air.

Kay Stringfellow has sat with the defense attorneys from Monday morning's start of the trial. Yet on the witness stand, she could NOT name the two companies listed as defendants! So she was a helpful ear at WRBL - just not always a carefully-listening one.

Former WRBL News Director Mark Wildman took the witness stand late Tuesday, and returns today. He surprised me by walking into court with an open red dress shirt - wearing no coat, or even a tie. Was this man a television manager, or a mill worker who lost his way?

Wildman confirmed the earlier claim that Melissa Schultz Miller "cried quite often" while at WRBL - and cross-examination hasn't even started yet. The defense seems prepared to paint Miller as the biggest "basket case" since the arrest of Kobe Bryant.

Wildman says when he hired Miller in July 2001, he promised her "the opportunity to report" - and never guaranteed her a reporter position at WRBL. A year later, he concluded Miller "lacked the skills to be a reporter." So in this case, you could call it opportunity knocked - or maybe knocked down.

Wildman's first 45 minutes of testimony brought some confusing comments. He claimed Miller "left the building" five minutes into an error-plagued 5:00 p.m. newscast in 2002 - only to be shown an e-mail Miller sent him about it at 5:58 p.m. It turned out Wildman was the one who left the building! Did WRBL call itself "first, fast and accurate" back then?

Wildman also declared Miller "never proved she could do the producing job adequately." Not reporting, at issue in the lawsuit - but simply producing a newscast. Yet Wildman admitted sending Miller out to do some reporting. I suppose it was either that, or start rumors by hiring her as a secretary.

(BLOGGER'S NOTE: We'll have more continuing coverage Thursday, of a case you won't read about anywhere else on the web!)

THE BIG BLOG QUESTION concluded Tuesday, with bad news for Columbus City Manager Isaiah Hugley. Only one out of 14 voters supports him receiving a pay raise, to $110,000. So if you saw him at a store Tuesday night buying Mega Millions lottery tickets, that was why....

The comments on this question were quite lively. "He didn't earn the job in the first place," one wrote; "why should he earn the raise?" What was Isaiah Hugley supposed to do -- face fellow Deputy City Manager Richard Bishop in a game of Jeopardy?

Someone naming himself "Isaiah" left a comment defending City Manager Hugley: "If you were promoted into a new position, would you expect a raise? I think so." C'mon, Mr. Hugley -- if you left the comment, at least grant me an interview with you.

Other voters said Isaiah Hugley earned the City Manager's position, but not a 3.4 percent raise. One suggested Hugley "go find the corporate position to go with it." Quick, somebody check - does Columbus State University have any job openings?

We posted a new Big Blog Question Tuesday night, about whether Columbus State's sports teams should move up from NCAA Division II to top-level Division I. If Kennesaw State can do it in basketball, why not the Cougars? C.S.U.'s men beat Kennesaw twice in a row at playoff time - and we don't have nearly as many guns to threaten anybody.

OVERHEARD OVER HERE: A man wearing a coat, tie and hat stood downtown during Tuesday's lunch hour, spreading a loud message to no one in particular.

"For shooting a dog, they can put a man in jail. But here in 19 -- in 2005, we have an African-American man getting shot, and a law officer isn't prosecuted! Kenneth Walker...."

The man said all this while standing on Second Avenue - on a traffic island in the middle of Second Avenue, at Ninth Street. No one was standing on either sidewalk, to give him an audience. But who cares? Freedom of speech makes the U.S. great -- even if no one bothers listening.

I drove by this man on Second Avenue, and was struck by the scene. Who needs a soapbox in London's Hyde Park to express yourself, when you can claim your own personal island in the middle of a street?

This man may have been inspired by a Tuesday news conference involving Columbus civil rights leaders. Now they're demanding U.S. Attorney General Al Gonzalez intervene in the Kenneth Walker case. It's too bad Georgia's Attorney General apparently has stopped returning their phone calls.

That's not the only fascinating thing we've noticed downtown over the last couple of days, while covering the discrimination suit....

+ A smoke cloud covered downtown Tuesday afternoon, because of a controlled burn at Fort Benning and a temperature inversion. The smell of the smoke was so strong that for a minute, I thought restaurant owners were staging a big protest.

+ I stopped inside First Baptist Church for a minute, as it hosted a district choral festival. How this brought back memories of my old high school A Cappella Choir! The director sometimes was like a second father to me. But if the festival grade was LESS than top-level, the chewing-out had some of us longing for Vince Lombardi.

(Part of the First Baptist Church complex was used to test how well choirs could perform songs they'd never seen before. It's known as "sight singing" - something I doubt Ray Charles ever did very well.)

+ A man walked up to me on 12^th Street and for some reason asked, "Are you a Mason?" Sorry, but I don't belong to a Masonic Lodge. I don't know a thing about stone-masonry. And the court case I'm watching doesn't really imitate "Perry Mason."

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-- revised 12:54pm ET