Monthly Archives: April 2012

Jon Huntsman marvels at inadequacy of 2012 presidential field, compares GOP to Chicoms

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In this file photo from last summer, Henry McMaster points to the one GOP presidential candidate who might have impressed Jon Huntsman.

Just ran across this over at HuffPost:

Jon Huntsman leveled harsh criticism at his party on Sunday evening, BuzzFeed’s Zeke Miller reported, comparing the Republican Party to communist China and questioning the strength of this year’s presidential field.

During an event at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, Huntsman spoke candidly about his party’s flaws, lamenting the Republican National Committee’s decision to rescind an invitation to a major fundraising event after Huntsman called for a third-party candidate to enter the race.

“This is what they do in China on party matters if you talk off script,” Huntsman said.

Huntsman, a former Utah governor who dropped out of the GOP primary in January, served as U.S. ambassador to China under President Barack Obama.

He also criticized the Republican candidates’ foreign policy stances, particularly in regard to China.

“I don’t know what world these people are living in,” Huntsman said…

Huntsman also spoke on Sunday about his presidential candidacy, revealing that he was less than impressed by his fellow candidates when he attended his first debate in August.

“Is this the best we could do?” Huntsman said he asked himself.

Turns out that Huntsman, whose SC followers largely did not follow his lead in endorsing Mitt Romney when he dropped out, is also rather lukewarm on his fellow Mormon.

Hopefully, they’ll let us use the word this way

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Stan Dubinsky brings to my attention this attempt by a grammarian to defend ordinary folks’ most common use of “hopefully” as something less than a mortal sin. It’s a dense piece, for something so short, but here are some relevant bits:

Many adverbs are used as manner adjuncts: He saw her clearly uses clearly as a modifier specifying the manner of the seeing. Some are used as what The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language calls modal adjuncts, necessarily and possiblybeing the most basic and familiar ones. Clearly happens to have both a manner use and a modal use: Clearly he saw her is an example of the latter (modal adjuncts are often placed at the beginning of the clause; notice that this sentence doesn’t comment on the clarity of the glimpse, it says that given the evidence it’s indubitable that he saw her)…

With truly extreme caution, the AP Style Guide nonetheless waited a decent further interval: Its editors let more than a quarter of a century go by before they finally risked accepting what had now been normal Standard English usage for a lifetime. On April 17, 2012, they announced correctly that the modal-adjunct use of hopefully is not a grammatical error.

And people acted as if the sky was falling. “The barbarians have done it, finally infiltrated a remaining bastion of order in a linguistic wasteland,” wrote an overheated (and since then, overquoted) Monica Hesse in The Washington Post on April 18. (Perhaps she wrote ironically, but it doesn’t look like it.)

Barbarians? A single additional use of a single adverb undergoes a tiny expansion in its uses, fully in line with normal developments in the history of English syntax. No threat of ambiguity arises (I have never seen a case in which it was in doubt whether hopefullywas intended as a manner adjunct or a modal adjunct). And when AP makes a small move, decades late, toward acceptance of an easily accessible fact about how English speakers employ a word, it means our language is being reduced to a “wasteland”?

The author, Geoffrey Pullum, blames the late usage specialist Wilson Follett for inspiring “Five Decades of Foolishness” over the common usage.

I’ve always been able to see that the use of “hopefully” was structurally problematic, but I’ve also known that it communicates clearly and concisely. Which is generally seen as a virtue.

Of three political rules broken, two involved SC

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National media may get South Carolina wrong, but on the whole, I find the British press more readable. So it was that I enjoyed this piece in The Guardian, which took a hard-eyed look at political precedent.

You know how analysts over here like to say things like “If Obama wins/loses re-election, it will be the first time that a Democrat ever did so in a year ending in the numeral 2,” or some other such meaningless nonsense — as if every election weren’t distinct, and decided on the basis of millions of reasons scattered across the electorate.

It’s political analysis on the level of sports color commentary — Well, Tim, if he swings at this and misses, it will be the first time that an American League right-hander, facing a left-handed reliever in the bottom of the seventh with men on first and third, has ever, yadda yadda.

In this piece, Harry Enten demonstrates that this election, however it comes out, is destined to break all sorts of records — as does every election.

You should go read it.

But the part that jumped out at me, and that I want to share with you today, is this passage:

At least one of these rules, and likely more, are going to be broken in 2012. The conventional wisdom will be turned on its head: 2012 will indeed be a “unique year”. Believers of this idea can also point to the primary season for the uniqueness that is 2012.

Here are three of them that have since gone the way of the Linotype.

1. No Republican candidate had ever won the South Carolina Republican primary without winning either Iowa or New Hampshire – until Newt Gingrich.

2. No Republican had ever won the nomination without winning South Carolina – until Mitt Romney.

3. No non-Protestant candidate had ever won the Republican nomination – until Mitt Romney.

Yep, of the three unprecedented things that happened in the GOP primary season in 2012 involved South Carolina.

Sometimes, we even shock ourselves.

Going Vogue

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The piece about Nikki Haley in Vogue, like most national media coverage we’ve seen of her, reliably hits all the wrong notes — and hits them hard. One wonders how the piece was typed, since the writer seems to be constantly hugging himself with delight to be in her presence. (A woman! An Indian-American Woman! A young, Indian American Woman, governor of backward South Carolina! Oh, the rapture!) The cognitive vacuum created by the utter lack of perspective and skepticism is deeply disturbing. But we’ve grown accustomed to that.

Some of the more gag-inducing bits:

  • “On a warm morning in early March, governor Nikki Haley calls three members of the South Carolina state legislature into her office. They look like truants sent in to see the principal: Haley is earnest and stern, smartly turned out in a black-and-white ruffled jacket, black pencil skirt, and platform stilettos, while the legislators, in baggy suits and cowboy boots, fidget and make excuses.”
  • “Since then, she’s routinely been called a rising star in the party, which, when you’re talking about a governor, is code for White House–bound.”
  • “But still, she continues, leaning forward confidingly, ‘it’s different for the guys upstairs. This is the first time they’ve had a female governor; it’s the first time they’ve had a minority governor.'”

In other words, she plays Mr. Christopher Cox like a tin whistle.

But bits of clarity do slip in. My favorite:

  • “Haley in person looks even younger than her age: fit and attractive, with a face free of worry lines.”

Indeed. That has long been one of Nikki’s most notable traits. She believes that everything she believes is true, and doesn’t doubt. And as I remember from years past when I would grumpily try to disabuse her of one of those bumper-sticker principles — say, “I want to see government run like a business” — she is impervious to reason, perspective or argument.

If I were like that, my face would be pretty free of lines, too.

As the NYT Magazine noted, “Nikki Haley, the governor of South Carolina, doesn’t care what you think.”

Sometimes, the national media get it just right, in spite of themselves.

Protesters take aim at leadership

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The other night at the 100th episode of “Pub Politics,” Corey Hutchins was brandishing a wad of bills like the one you see above. He gave me one, which I stuck in my pocket. (I didn’t need cash right then, on account of the beer being free at this shindig.)

I thought at the time that he said he’d gotten it at an Occupy Columbia event (the room was noisy, so it’s hard to tell exactly what he said). But it’s more complicated than that. Here’s an excerpt from what he later wrote about it:

John Crangle stood on a Sumter Street sidewalk in the rain and pointed at some of the most powerful people in state government as they got out of nice cars and hurried toward the entrance of a tall building where a large political action committee was holding a fundraiser on the 20th floor.

He was part of a small protest group – about six people – holding signs and questioning the politicos as they arrived for the party. At issue was the nature of the fundraising group, the Palmetto Leadership Council, a non-candidate committee tied to S.C. House Speaker Bobby Harrell.

Crangle is the director of Common Cause of South Carolina, and his government watchdog group was partnering with members of Occupy Columbia and the South Carolina Progressive Network in picketing the affair.

They accused the PAC of shaking down corporations with interests before the Legislature at the tacit behest of the House Speaker, one of South Carolina’s most powerful politicians.

The PAC has raised nearly $1 million since it was created in 2004. That money has gone to fund candidates – mostly incumbents – and it also gave the state Republican Party $100,000.

The demonstrators argued that politicians like Harrell are using PACs such as the Palmetto Leadership Council as a way to skirt campaign finance limits. A corporation or individual or entity is only allowed to donate $1,000 to a candidate running for the S.C. House or Senate because of finance rules. If they want to donate more, though, they can donate to the PAC and the PAC can turn around and donate to the candidate…

Corey told me today that we should expect to hear more about this issue in the coming days. He said it looked like the MSM was getting interested.

In pop music, was 1965-1975 unique?

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On a previous thread, young Kathryn scoffed at people my age, suggesting that we think the music that was popular when we were in high school (and I would add, college) was great just because it came along when we were young.

I think people of any age are going to have a special feeling for music that was played when their hormones were raging at their peak. But while I hesitate to invoke an “objective” standard, I think you can demonstrate with some degree of detachment that the period in question for, say, Burl and me (roughly 1965-1975) was one of extraordinary creativity on many popular fronts.

There were so many genres just exploding:

  • British pop groups and their American imitators (what everyone thinks of first). And I’m not going to bother splitting this into its many sub-genres.
  • Folk, evolving from acoustic to electric, in numerous directions (Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel are very different)
  • Varieties of soul, from Motown to Memphis
  • Burt Bacharach — He gets his own category. If you want to create a 60s feel in a movie, you’re as likely to turn to Bacharach as the Beatles — if not more so
  • Latin (Spanish variety), spanning a broad spectrum from Herb Alpert to Trini Lopez to Jose Feliciano (Alpert is as essential as Bacharach to a 60s soundtrack)
  • Latin (Brazilian variety), from Girl from Ipanema through Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66
  • Old folks/Rat Pack-style — Dean Martin and others reached broadest audiences ever on TV
  • Crossover country — spanning a wide spectrum from Glen Campbell to Johnny Cash, enjoying wide popularity not seen before or since
  • West coast beach music (surf music) — Yes, it came along earlier, but there was still a lot going on in the early part of this period (“Wipeout,” the later Beach Boys stuff
  • East coast beach music — This movement started in the 40s, but some of the big hits came along in the early part of this period (“Can’t Help Myself”)
  • Even Broadway show tunes — Almost every show tune I’m familiar with was sung repeatedly on the 60s TV variety shows
  • White blues — big overlap with British groups here (The Animals, Cream, early Led Zeppelin), but Paul Butterfield and others sort of stand alone

Then there are all those bands and individuals that can’t be easily categorized — Warren Zevon, Randy Newman (late in the process), David Bowie, The Band, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Janis Joplin, Linda Ronstadt, Elton John, Blood, Sweat and Tears…

I just can’t think of a time when so many kinds of music were so huge, and reaching such a diverse audience (in the pre-cable age, everyone was exposed to pretty much the same cultural influences — if it got on TV, the audience was immense), with so much energy and creativity exploding out of every one of them.

Can you?

It wasn't just about guitar groups -- not by a long shot.

At the 100th show of Pub Politics

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In case you can't tell them apart, that's Republican (hence the white collar) Tom Davis on the left, and Democrat (hence the blue collar) Boyd Summers on the right. I hope the left-right part doesn't confuse you.

Just a quick word about this.

Phil and Wesley shot the 100th show of “Pub Politics” last night, and it was a gala affair. Sponsor Franklin Jones bought free beer and boiled peanuts. All sorts showed up. And despite the small-town clannishness of SC politics, not all of them knew each other.

At one point I was chatting with Sen. Tom Davis, and he remarked, “That guy in the blue shirt over there looks just like me.” It was Boyd Summers, lately chairman of the Richland County Democrats. This matchup of political opposites was too much for me to resist, so I called Boyd over and got the above shot of the “twins.”

Rep. James Smith was there with a new band (as you’ll recall, James was once one of the legendary Root Doctors). And… just all sorts of people, Democratic and Republican.

I was not a scheduled guest on the show, but I didn’t let that stop me. I walked over in the middle of the show, leaned in and held up eight fingers and yelled, “Eight times! I’m the one and only eight-timer!” They were fairly nice about it.

Well, it happened: Levon’s gone now

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We only heard how bad off he was yesterday, and now comes this:

Levon Helm came to fame in a rootsy rock group that featured three extraordinary voices. But you could always tell which was his: It was the sound of the lusty wildcat, the stern Southern preacher, the depleted Confederate soldier, the dirt farmer at the end of his day.

Helm, 71, who as a drummer backed a pair of legendary musicians and then became a star himself with The Band and as a solo artist, died today from throat cancer at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

“Thank you, fans and music lovers, who have made his life so filled with joy and celebration,” said his daughter, Amy, and wife, Sandy, in a statement released Tuesday before he died. “He has loved nothing more than to play, to fill the room up with music, lay down the back beat and make the people dance! He did it every time he took the stage.”…

You know, that first graf is some fine writing, even if it does appear in USA Today. That’s a very solid description of his voice.

Reading that statement from his daughter reminds me of something that has stuck in my memory from a piece about The Band in TIME magazine in 1970 — the cover piece that first interested me in them, and caused me to go out and buy one of their albums. I forget which of the guys was quoted, but he said that while it was all the rage in those days to be alienated from one’s parents, the Band members were not — they all stayed close to their families and were comfortable with them.

That impressed me. Of course now with this generation, “family” has gone from being just about parents and siblings to being about spouses, children and grandchildren. But the importance of the relationships, the power of the continuity of life, continues with the timelessness of The Band’s songs, which seemed so deeply rooted in a time other than the ’60s and ’70s.

Newspaperman leaves trade VOLUNTARILY!

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And gets what sounds like a great gig, perfectly suited to his skills and interests…

Our friend Burl Burlingame posted this on Facebook last night, after days of buildup that something big was coming:

OK, everybody. I’ve been recruited by the Pacific Aviation Museum Pearl Harbor as their Curator. Last day as a full-time newspaperman is May 6. I’ve been in the newspaper business since 1975, full-time since 1977. Yikes!

Wow. I’m deeply impressed. But then, Burl is one of those rare journalists who built a parallel career — in his case, developing a well-deserved reputation as an expert on Pacific military history. (You may recall when he appeared on “NOVA” as a leading expert on Japanese midget submarines.)

Some of us — no names will be mentioned, to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest — spent all those years working 60 and often more hours a week at the paper (not writing books, not having hobbies or social lives, and worst of all, largely missing our children’s childhoods), climbing the ladder, becoming senior editors and vice presidents, only to have everything we had worked for all those decades disappear in an instant. Not that said people are bitter about it or anything.

But this isn’t about those people. You know, the ones who had their horses shot out from under them, and ended up wandering the desert for months at a time with their saddles on their backs, thinking about eating their boots. No, this is about Burl, who managed the feat of leaping to another fast horse while at full gallop.

Oh, and get this: His novel (which he finally got me to read, and critique, before telling me he was the author) is being published today, too.

Just makes you want to hit him, doesn’t it?

No, seriously — this is great. And this is Burl all over. He was a Renaissance man in high school — musician, photographer, cartoonist, actor and publisher of an underground newspaper — so this is just what you’d expect from him.

Way to go, Burl.

A few pointers for living on the outside… watch your oxygen supply, and see to the integrity of your stillsuit. And if you lose pressure in your suit or helmet, your blood will immediately boil…

OK, I’m out of metaphors now, for the moment.

Dick Clark’s dead, and Levon Helm’s dying

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And to channel Lewis Grizzard, I suppose I should say I don’t feel so good myself.

I was sad this morning to read that Levon Helm is in the last stages of cancer. Virgil Caine himself! Not only am I a huge fan of The Band (I saw them live with Bob Dylan in ’74!), but he’s the most awesome, naturalistic actor I’ve ever seen. Remember him as the coal miner himself in “Coal Miner’s Daughter”? You’d have thought they had dragged him right out of the mine, he was so real.

My favorite role was the flight engineer Jack Ridley, Chuck Yeager’s best buddy in “The Right Stuff.” Sample down-home dialogue:

Chuck Yeager: Hey, Ridley… you got any Beeman’s?
Jack Ridley: I might have me a stick.
Yeager: Well loan me some, would ya? I’ll pay ya back later.
Ridley: Fair enough.
Yeager: I think I see a plane over here with my name on it.
Ridley: Now you’re talkin’…

He was also the narrator, because he came closest to having that aw-shucks Yeager quality that the job required:

There was a demon that lived in the air. They said whoever challenged him would die. Their controls would freeze up, their planes would buffet wildly, and they would disintegrate. The demon lived at Mach 1 on the meter, seven hundred and fifty miles an hour, where the air could no longer move out of the way. He lived behind a barrier through which they said no man could ever pass. They called it the sound barrier.

And now, this afternoon, I hear this:

Dick Clark, the music industry maverick, longtime TV host and powerhouse producer who changed the way we listened to pop music with “American Bandstand,” and whose trademark “Rockin’ Eve” became a fixture of New Year’s celebrations, died today at the age of 82.

Clark’s agent Paul Shefrin said in statement that the veteran host died this morning following a “massive heart attack.”…

Clark landed a gig as a DJ at WFIL in Philadelphia in 1952, spinning records for a show he called “Dick Clark’s Caravan of Music.” There he broke into the big time, hosting Bandstand, an afternoon dance show for teenagers…

I first saw “Bandstand” on local TV in Philadelphia. I lived across the river in Woodbury, N.J., in 1960-61, and used to watch all those “big kids” talking about which songs had a good beat and were easy to dance to.

All these years, and he never got old… but time eventually took its toll.

District 3 voters: What motivated you to vote as you did?

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I’m asking because I was somewhat surprised at how easily Moe Baddourah won the runoff yesterday. Nothing against Moe — I wish him all the best, and hope he’s a very successful council member — but that’s not the way I thought it would end up. I thought Daniel Coble would win, although not run away with it. I saw a Baddourah win as possible, but again, I figured it would be close.

My reasoning was as follows. I thought:

  • Moe had pretty much received all of his potential support in the first go-round. I had seen him as the pro-business, suspicious-of-government candidate in the race, and that he got all of those voters on April 3.
  • All voters who were attracted to Jenny Isgett’s theme that since the district had been represented by a woman for 30 years, it should go for her, seemed more likely to go for Coble in the runoff.
  • Coble’s support was more visible, and seemed more enthusiastic. I really felt for Moe at that neighborhood association meeting where Brett shot the video. At one point he mentioned that the small crowd seemed to be 90 percent for Coble, and I think he was right.
  • Everybody who I knew had declared for a candidate had declared for Coble. I can’t think of anybody who publicly endorsed Moe in the last couple of weeks. That doesn’t mean no one did, but the news didn’t get to me. (Yes, someone will inevitably say that personal endorsements are meaningless, as someone always does but they’ll be wrong. In fact, in an election with no reported polling, they’re about all you have to go by. And even if they didn’t mean much individually, they ALL seemed to go to Coble, which had to be indicative of something.)

But all that reasoning added up to nothing, which leaves me speculating as to the reason it went the other way:

  • Moe and Jenny were actually the anti-establishment vote, or the anti-Coble (as in Bob) vote, if you will.  Jenny voters only had one non-Coble candidate left, and so they went for him.
  • Voters reacted against Coble’s youth.
  • Every one of those public endorsements — Belinda Gergel, James Smith, Steve Morrison, Kit Smith and to a lesser extent Mike Miller — counted against Coble with an electorate that was in an anti-establishment mood. Coble was definitely the Shandonista candidate, and maybe voters in other areas (and perhaps in Shandon itself) reacted against that.
  • One of the few issues on which there was a noticeable difference between the candidates — the water/sewer money, funding the bus system — meant more to voters in those neighborhoods than I could tell as an outsider. (But this explanation seems unlikely, because the differences between them were mere matters of degree, not fundamental values.)
  • There’s more dissatisfaction with the current city council than I had thought (and voting for Baddourah was more of a vote for “change”). I had heard a lot less general grumbling since Benjamin, Plaugh, Gergel and Newman had been elected, but maybe the honeymoon is truly over.
  • Moe had told me he had learned a lot from losing to Seth Rose two years ago. And remember, Seth was an anti-establishment candidate, because he also beat Kit Smith’s chosen successor (a fellow Bennettsville boy). Part of that was a lot of knocking on doors. Of course, Coble did that, too. But maybe there were some organizational things I couldn’t see that really helped Moe turn out his identified supporters — which is everything in such a tiny-turnout election. (But I knew Moe didn’t do everything that Seth did, because Seth advertised on this blog. Ahem.)

As far as tactics are concerned, I could just ask Moe. And I will when I see him. But I’m more interested in why the tactics worked — that is to say, I’m more curious about what the voters themselves were thinking. And since there was no exit polling, I’m asking now.

So how about it, District 3 voters? Whether you backed Baddourah or Coble, why did you do so? Your answers may bear significantly on the future course of Columbia.

I’m a lumberjack, and I’m OK (or not)…

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A friend points out to me that “newspaper reporter” is now listed as one of the five worst jobs to have. Right down there with lumberjack. Here’s the CNN Headline News report:

On the heels of a report indicating good job prospects for the college class of 2012, career guidance website CareerCast released its list of the best and worst jobs of the year, and after reviewing 200 professions across a wide range of industries.

The five “best” jobs are software engineer, actuary, human resources manager, dental hygienist and financial planner. The top five “worst” jobs are lumberjack, dairy farmer, enlisted military soldier, oil rig worker and newspaper reporter.

So what makes a job among the best or the worst? CareerCast based the rankings on a methodology that rated each profession’s work environment by assessing both the physical and emotional demands, including: necessary energy, physical demands (crawling, stooping), work conditions (toxic fumes, noise), degree of competitiveness, degree of hazards personally faced and degree of contact with the public. Each category was broken into elements and then each element was given points. In the end, a higher point total made a job less desirable, while a lower total indicated a job was more desirable….

I’m not sure whether that was supposed to make me feel good or bad. Actually, it’s sort of irrelevant, since I haven’t been a reporter since the early months of 1980. But I can tell you that being a newspaper editor is not what it once was, if you can even find such a job.

Which of course is the problem. The main thing wrong with being a newspaper anything is that if that’s what you do, it probably won’t be long before you join the ranks of those who used to do it.

Beyond that, I’m suspicious of the criteria used in compiling this list. Lumberjack? Obviously they’re not taking into account such factors as leaping from tree to tree as they float down the mighty rivers of British Columbia… the giant redwood, the larch, the fir, the mighty Scotch pine… the smell of fresh-cut timber… the crash of mighty trees… with my best girly by my side…

“Conservatives Fooled Again!” Aw, lighten up, Francis…

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Before my friends on the left get too wound up telling us what a dangerous right-winger Mitt Romney is, I thought it might be helpful to share with you the sort of thing that actual right-wingers are saying about him. This, and the picture above, are from a release I got promoting a book by a couple of self-styled conservatives:

Des Moines, IA —Just like his lukewarm predecessors Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, and John McCain, Mitt Romney will lose the election this fall, which means the time is now for patriots to begin planning for 2016 lest they risk getting fooled again by the Republican establishment.
So says best-selling conservative author Gregg Jackson and nationally-syndicated radio host Steve Deace, the co-authors of the explosive new book We Won’t Get Fooled Again: Where the Christian Right Went Wrong and How to Make America Right Again. Endorsed by former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and former Congressman J.C. Watts, We Won’t Get Fooled Again documents 30 years of failed political activism by conservatives, including interviews with several of the movement’s leading figures like Ann Coulter, Dr. Richard Land, and Tom Minnery of Focus on the Family.
“Moderates never win presidential elections and Romney won’t either,” said Jackson, former talk show host at WRKO in Boston. “Every time we have allowed the Republican establishment to have its way the country has lost. And as someone who was on the radio during Romney’s time as governor of Massachusetts, I saw up close that he’s a flip-flopper at best, and a total RINO (Republican in Name Only) at worst. You can’t trust anything Romney says in one news cycle, let alone over the long haul. Whenever the American people are faced with the choice of liberal or liberal-light, they always go with the outright liberal. That’s how we got Obama in the first place, and thanks to the GOP and the failure of many conservative leaders, 2008 is repeating itself all over again.”
Deace, who also writes for Townhall.com, concurs. “Romney has all the lame of Bob Dole plus the flip-flopping integrity of John Kerry,” Deace said. “Right now in the White House we have a committed leftist the American people seem poised to reject, but leave it to the Republican establishment to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory yet again by nominating someone who has a record of healthcare mandates, taxpayer-funded abortions, and support for the homosexual agenda that rivals Obama. Coming off of the successful 2010 mid-term election, you would’ve hoped the GOP would’ve gotten the message America wanted something dramatically different than Obama, but sadly that message fell on deaf ears. This is why the time is now for grassroots conservatives and patriots to take it upon themselves to get it right in 2016 and not leave it up to the failed Republican establishment again.”
The headline on the release was “Conservatives Fooled Again!” Which just makes me want to say, Aw, lighten up, Francis…

A song from the deepest early memories

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I had an unexpected bit of pleasure this morning. In a desperate bid to get away from the ETV Radio pledge drive, I accidentally pressed button 3 on my radio, forgetting that the format had changed a while back to country.

And I heard “Singin’ the Blues,” which struck deep chords of early-childhood memory for me. I couldn’t have told you the words, and I mistakenly assumed it was a Hank Williams song — it seemed to have that sort of universal appeal. But the tune was as familiar, as wired into every cell in my brain, as if it had been sung to me as a lullaby.

All I knew about the song was that I really, really liked it. As though I was MADE to like it; it was part of my early formation.

Unfortunately, the radio didn’t tell me who was singing it (which should be a violation of FCC regulations). Fortunately, there’s Google and Wikipedia.

I quickly learned that the song was written by one Melvin Endsley, and first recorded successfully by Guy Mitchell. But I’m pretty sure that what I heard this morning was the Marty Robbins version.

Whichever, I loved hearing it. Next thing you know, I’ll hear “Volare” on the radio one morning (to cite another song that made a deep impression on me before I was old enough to worry about what was cool and what wasn’t, and able to just respond to music on its own terms)…

District 3 folks, be sure to vote in runoff today

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Well, today’s the day for folks in Rosewood, Shandon, Melrose and other nearby parts of Columbia. Get out there and exercise your franchise.

I liked Alex Postic‘s (that is to say, Mr. Shop Tart‘s) take on the election on Facebook this morning:

Don’t forget to vote today Columbia. Either way, I think Columbia wins – and we get a neighbor on City Council.

Which is no exaggeration. Moe told me he’s like next door from the Tart — which puts him across the street from the house I lived in when I was 4 years old — and Daniel’s very close by as well.

This is the kind of politics you get when you stretch subsidiarity to the max (not the max that Paul Ryan would take it to, which would be the individual, but the max the way I’ve always understood the concept — buy I digress).

Here’s hoping that when it’s over, Columbia does indeed win.

Why does Nikki Haley want to unionize SC school bus drivers?

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Here’s one of the things that puzzles me about Nikki Haley. To hear her talk sometimes, you’d get the idea that unions are a bad thing.

And yet she keeps pushing and pushing and pushing to unionize the drivers who operate public school buses in South Carolina.

Oh, you didn’t know that? Well, she calls it something different. She calls it “privatizing” school buses.

But what’s the first thing that happens whenever a private entity takes over the school buses in a South Carolina district? The Teamsters (and folks, if unions are bad, you’d think Jimmy Hoffa‘s old outfit would be superbad) come in right behind it.

How do we know this? Experience. There are three districts in South Carolina where the buses are no longer operated by the state. Let’s run down the list, shall we?

  1. Charleston — the drivers are represented by the Teamsters.
  2. Beaufort — the drivers are also Teamsters.
  3. Dorchester 2 — As of Friday the 13th, Teamsters Local 509 is celebrating having won the right to represent bus drivers.

So thanks to Nikki Haley and her ilk, the Teamsters are batting 1.000 in South Carolina.

I don’t know why she keeps pushing this privatization thing, given this apparently inevitable result. Maybe the answer is in her book. If anyone out there actually reads it, let us know.

All irony aside, this is yet another example of what you get when you are governed by people who do not have a clue how the world actually works.

What Nikki’s privatization scheme does is provide a back-door way to unionize public employees — just make them private employees. Neat, huh?

Were any of these “members” female?

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Note how self-restrained I am. I held myself back from using as my headline, “I got your ‘member’ right here!” Even though that would have better expressed my exasperation.

Clint Eastwood and Rene Russo as Secret Service 'members' in 'In the Line of Fire.'

We used to have “servicemen” in our armed forces. Or, more broadly, military personnel. Now, we have this horrendous construction that drives me nuts every time I hear it: “military members.” That’s the best we seem to be able to come up with as a way of referring generically to soldiers, sailors, marines, and that least ideologically correct of all designations, airmen.

What are we saying? That the military is a club? Like belonging to Rotary, or the Elks? To me, it sounds vaguely insulting to those who serve us in uniform, to refer to them as “members.” Like fingers or toes, or perhaps some even less presentable member.

With the scandal over the weekend involving both Secret Service and military personnel, this linguistic absurdity has been taken to new depths.

To begin with, one assumes that all the agents sent home for consorting with prostitutes were male. And if you read non-American news sources such as Agence France-Presse or the Daily Mail, they go ahead and refer to them as male. That’s because in those countries, the fact that men tend to do certain things that women tend not to do (such as, bring hookers to their rooms) is confronted somewhat more directly, and not treated like a secret of which we must not speak. (Someone is inevitably going  to contradict me by pointing to U.S. sources that do mention gender. But the fact remains that, after having read U.S. sources that did not mention gender, the first ones I found that did were foreign. It’s a tendency thing, not an absolute rule.)

I haven’t yet found any stories that tell the gender of the five “military personnel” who were also implicated, but not sent home, supposedly because their skills were too much in demand in protecting the president (rooftop snipers, perhaps?). If anyone has seen such a reference, please share it, if only to satisfy my morbid curiosity.

But whether they are male or (against the odds) female, there are better ways to refer to them than as “military service members,” as the NYT does here in its own stilted fashion:

Five United States military service members who were working with the Secret Service and staying in the same hotel are also facing an investigation because they violated a curfew and may have participated in the misconduct.

The use of such a slightly off-sounding construction has a bad effect on journalists. They become jaded to awkwardness, and therefore their radar doesn’t go off when they inadvertently type something that is not just awkward, but downright nonsensical:

Mr. Obama’s comments came several hours after Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California and chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, suggested that more Secret Service personnel members may have been involved in the incident.

Did you catch that? “Secret Service personnel members”? Really? Not “Secret Service members,” which would sound awkward enough, or “Secret Service personnel,” which would have been fine, but the entirely redundant “Secret Service personnel members”!

Why not take it to another level, or two? Why not “Secret Service personnel members people employees,” while you’re at it?

Or… and excuse me for getting radical here… how about if the reporter covering this for you just went ahead and asked the question, “Are any of these people female?” Because if not, you don’t have to perform any of these acrobatics, and can just go ahead and refer to the “men.” And if they are, even an awkward construction like “servicemen and -women” would be less jarring than referring to them as “personnel members.”

Or how about just scraping your fingernails on a blackboard? That would probably get on my nerves less…

(Sort of) thrilled to see ‘subsidiarity’ mentioned

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You sort of have to be a member, or former member, of The State‘s editorial board to get what this means to me, but I was excited to see that, in a column in yesterday’s WSJ, Daniel Henninger made repeated references to the concept of subsidiarity.

Subsidiarity is a concept I first ran across, and was intrigued by, in the communitarian classic The Good Society by Robert Bellah, et al.

In the years after I first read about it, I was enough of a bore about the concept in the editorial suite of The State that one April 1st, at the instigation of then-Publisher Ann Caulkins, my colleagues played a truly elaborate April Fool’s prank on me that was entirely based on some supposed new research debunking subsidiarity. It was probably the most esoteric, nerdy prank ever played on anyone in South Carolina history. The sort of thing the geeks on “The Big Bang” might play on each other, only with them it would be about physics instead of political philosophy — some knee-slapper having to do with the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, perhaps.

The Bellah book, and other references I have seen since, defined the concept this way:

As you can see, the idea is sorta, kinda related to what conservatives in the early 90s used to call “devolution” — the concept of moving governmental functions down to lower, more local levels. And yes, subsidiarity generally demands that. But it can also work the other way when you consider the duty “of the larger unit being to support and assist the local body in carrying out its tasks.” Also, the smallest unit isn’t necessarily the best; you look for the smallest unit “at which decisions might reasonably be made.”

While I haven’t used the word much over the years, if you peruse my work, you’ll see the influence of the concept in, for instance, my constant battles with the Legislative State to let local governments make the decisions that are properly left to the governments closest to the people. (I know of no state in the union more reluctant to allow that than South Carolina.) You also see it in my occasional mentions that the federal government has no business trying to run public schools. But then you see it work the other way, too — I’ve realized that many of the poor, small districts in South Carolina are unable to govern themselves effectively, and have a need for the state to “support and assist” them (by, for starters, consolidating many of them).

Anyway, so I was at first pleased to see Henninger mention “subsidiarity” — not once, but three times! But as I read the way he and Paul Ryan defined it, I grew confused:

Subsidiarity—an awful but important word—attempts to discover where the limits lie in the demands a state can make on its people. Identifying that limit was at the center of the Supreme Court’s mandate arguments.

Huh? I hadn’t run across that before. It’s a concept I’ve certainly encountered thousands of times in the WSJ, but I’d never heard it called “subsidiarity.”

But he’s not completely out of line. Sure enough, the Wikipedia entry on the Catholic social teaching (forgive me for citing such a plebeian source, but I’m too tired on a Friday evening to go poring through papal encyclicals) does mention this:

The principle of subsidiarity was developed by German theologian Oswald von Nell-Breuning.[2] His work influenced the social teaching of Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno and holds that government should undertake only those initiatives which exceed the capacity of individuals or private groups acting independently.

Of course, it does so after citing the more general definition that I have always understood:

Subsidiarity is an organizing principle that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority. Political decisions should be taken at a local level if possible, rather than by a central authority. [1] The Oxford English Dictionary defines subsidiarity as the idea that a central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed effectively at a more immediate or local level.

The word subsidiarity is derived from the Latin word subsidiarius and has its origins in Catholic social teaching.

So forgive me if I continue to believe that the concept is about the proper relationships between the biggest entity for making societal decisions (the federal government, the United Nations) and the smaller units (municipal government, neighborhood associations, the family — and taken to an extreme, the individual, although it seems to me that any concept of social structures sort of needs two or more to be present), and not yet another way of speaking of the monotonous, never-ending political battle between public and private, which is a different sort of dynamic altogether.

When, I wondered, did emphasis on the word’s meaning shift from the idea that things should be handled on the most local competent level, and become a servant of the libertarian concept of freeing the individual from the supposed “tyranny” of government, a mere matter of asserting the superiority of private over public?

Again, Wikipedia helps me out:

Subsidiarity is also a tenet of some forms of conservative or libertarian thought. For example, conservative author Reid Buckley writes:

Will the American people never learn that, as a principle, to expect swift response and efficiency from government is fatuous? Will we never heed the principle of subsidiarity (in which our fathers were bred), namely that no public agency should do what a private agency can do better, and that no higher-level public agency should attempt to do what a lower-level agency can do better – that to the degree the principle of subsidiarity is violated, first local government, the state government, and then federal government wax in inefficiency? Moreover, the more powers that are invested in government, and the more powers that are wielded by government, the less well does government discharge its primary responsibilities, which are (1) defense of the commonwealth, (2) protection of the rights of citizens, and (3) support of just order.[2]

Aha! Suddenly, I realize that the editorial board of The State was not the only entity in South Carolina given to pulling pranks regarding the concept of subsidiarity. Reid Buckley runs The Buckley School of Public Speaking right up the road in Camden.

So…  I see the libertarian ideologues have gone to messing with my pet concept, emphasizing one small consideration at the expense of the larger, more constructive idea, in their never-ending battle against the notion that we might ever dare to work together as a society to address concerns that are legitimately public.

Oh, well. At least I got to read the word in a general-circulation newspaper.

Men can always be more obtuse than women can be clever, so don’t mess with us

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One of my Facebook friends of the female persuasion posted the above notice today.

Ha-ha.

I responded:

OK. What’s a recipe book? And where do we keep it? Since my dinner’s in it, will I be able to find it by smell?

Ladies, never, ever think that you can manipulate us by being clever. Our sheer, unforced obtuseness, combined with the fact that evolution has developed helplessness in us to a stage you can’t even begin to fathom, will always defeat you.

Memo to Harvey Peeler and Senate Republicans: ‘Conservative’ means you SUPPORT status quo

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This artwork came with the release.

This release from Wesley and the Senate Republicans is intriguing on a couple of levels:

From today’s Associated Press:
State treasurer, House speaker oppose restructuring bill

There have been some unfortunate developments with the Senate’s bill eliminating the Budget and Control Board, with “The state treasurer and House speaker opposing the Senate’s version of a bill restructuring state government.”

“Senate Majority Leader Harvey Peeler shot back that the Senate’s version is more conservative than what the House passed last year. He accused the two of supporting the status quo.”

If you support conservative governance, and real restructuring, NOW is the time to stand up to the failed status quo.

Contact the Speaker’s Office and the Treasurer’s Office TODAY, and tell them to support the Senate version of the Department of Administration bill, and to support elimination of the Budget and Control Board.

First, you have the Senate Republicans attacking the Republican House and Republican Treasurer. In a nostalgic sense that’s not weird, because historically the biggest, nastiest split in SC was not between Democrats and Republicans, but between Senate and House. But that was when senators identified themselves primarily as senators, and not as R and D. Now that they think of themselves as Republican senators first and foremost (and this is being sent by the “South Carolina Senate GOP”), it comes across as odd.

Then, there are the really strange words that Harvey chooses to express his disagreement with the House and Loftis: “Senate Majority Leader Harvey Peeler shot back that the Senate’s version is more conservative than what the House passed last year. He accused the two of supporting the status quo.”

Senator, to the extent that language has meaning, if you are “more conservative” than someone else, that means that you support the status quo more than the other person does. By definition. Go look it up. OK, I’ll save you the trouble. When I Google the word “conservative,” the first dictionary definition that comes up is the one at Dictionary.com, and the first sense of the word is: “disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change.”

(I would quibble a bit with that definition. If you want “to restore traditional ones,” you are “reactionary.” But the rest is fine.)