A little ditty that started the radio game show "Michael Feldman’s Whad’Ya Know?" Saturday on public radio sort of captured the weirdness of the juxtaposition of three prominent deaths that occurred over the first week of Christmas.
If you’d like to hear it, click on this address, scroll down to "Whad’Ya Know? For January 6, 2007," and click on Part 1.
An advance warning: It’s set to the tune of "Abraham, Martin and John." You might find it disturbingly disrespectful –but then, so is death.
Living with low expectations
in the Palmetto State
By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
SHORTLY AFTER midnight, at the weary outset of Friday morning, a heavy-set woman stood outside the elaborate revolving doors of the Palmetto Health Richland emergency department, smoking a cigarette.
She tilted her head at the sound of a distant siren, the volume and Doppler effect indicating its rapid approach.
“Here they come again,” she said with resignation. “They bring in another one, we go to the back of the line.”
I was standing nearby, preferring the mists of the night to the unwholesome miasma of the packed waiting room. A few moments earlier, I had used the last few drops of energy in my PDA to post this brief comment on my blog (hey, as a distraction it beats ragged old copies of People):
I’m standing outside a hospital ER at 11:52 p.m., waiting for MY turn to go in and see my daughter, hoping they’ve started the IV that I’m pretty sure she needs (you know how it is in a state that refuses to adequately fund mental health or other essential services — if you have an emergency, you’ll be treated in a hallway if you’re lucky enough to get treated at all)….
In the hallway, she could only have one visitor at a time. She eventually got into a room, receiving about four liters of fluid, and got stronger. I’ve got no complaints at this point about her treatment — certainly not against Palmetto Richland. The crowding at Lexington Medical had been worse. It was the worst I’d ever seen it, and with five mostly grown kids, I’ve seen it a few times. So we were at Richland.
It’s not the fault of either hospital. It’s just a fact of life in South Carolina. Like the woman with the cigarette, we’ve come to accept it. Go to an emergency room on a typical evening, and if you’re not bleeding out your eyeballs, you’ll generally have a long wait. My experience tells me that if, for instance, you need some stitches and a tetanus shot but don’t have anything life-threatening, you should not be surprised to wait as long as four hours. It’s not always that long, but you’re no longer surprised if it is.
(My daughter was “lucky” in that she obviously needed quick treatment for dehydration caused by a two-day stomach bug.)
I don’t know, specifically, what caused the backlogs of Friday’s wee hours. I suppose if I had about a month and could get around the HIPAA privacy rules and track down every patient and interview them, I could give you a reliable answer.
But I do know that there is a constant, underlying condition in this state that causes ER waiting rooms to overflow whenever other human variables — a rash of wrecks on a slippery night, a stomach virus going around — collide with it: Hospital beds are occupied by the mentally ill, who are often found on the streets, off their meds, and police have no other place to put them, their jail cells being full of actual criminals.
The variables may be hard to pin down in a specific instance, but that one constant is not.
“It’ll happen the same way tomorrow night and the night after that,” says Thornton Kirby, president and CEO of the S.C. Hospital Association. But there are two constants, not one, he reminded me. The second is the fact that so many uninsured people go to the emergency room for their basic medical care, not just when they’re in crisis. As the sign behind the desk at the Richland ER proclaims, in both English and Spanish, the hospital is forbidden by law to turn you away if you need medical care. Regardless of your ability to pay, the medicos have to do what they can for you.
That second constant is a national problem, although the responsibility for it is shared by the states, via Medicaid funding and administration. The first one seems to be particularly acute in South Carolina. It’s related to the underfunding of the state Department of Mental Health over the last few years. People with brain problems who formerly would have received greater attention and care from the state now wander our cities, seriously strung out, a danger to themselves and others.
So eventually they end up in an ER — quite likely at a comprehensive indigent care facility such as Richland — where they wait for someone to figure out something else to do with them. That can take a while.
So the rest of us, when we have a situation that won’t wait until regular doctors open shop in the morning, find ourselves waiting much of the night, and accepting it, because that’s the way things are in South Carolina.
We accept it the way we accept people whizzing past us at 90 miles an hour on the interstate (or faster, in the case of the lieutenant governor), secure in the knowledge that they will not be ticketed. There simply aren’t nearly enough troopers on the road to enforce the speed limits, and everybody who didn’t just fall out of the stupid tree knows it. This is because the folks who make up our state budget haven’t stepped up to pay for such enforcement.
But hey, rest assured that when a loud minority of homeowners whose McMansions are appreciating too rapidly squeal about it, our state lawmakers take quick action to slash their taxes radically — by raising the sales tax on all of us, but refusing as usual to reform the overall tax system comprehensively, to make it fair and effective for a change.
They can’t assess the state’s actual needs, set priorities and address them, but they can surely lubricate a squeaky wheel in one quick hurry — just in time for elections, in fact.
With our elected followers set to come back and do their thing for another half-year starting Tuesday, I stand out in the misty night, thinking about stuff like that.
I first heard of Peggy Noonan as a speechwriter, credited with Bush the First’s "thousand points of light." Since that phrase didn’t seem particularly remarkable to me, I wasn’t particularly impressed, and didn’t think any more of her.
Then, sometime around 15 years
ago, give or take a couple, I was channel surfing and paused on a documentary, my eye caught by a fine-featured, red-headed woman who spoke with great dignity and intelligence. I don’t remember what she was saying; I was just struck by the overall gestalten impression. Cate Blanchett — whom we knew not at that time — sometimes tries to portray this combination of ageless beauty, intelligence and grace, and does pretty well. But this was someone who lives that way. Who is that? I thought. They showed her name. Oh. This time, I was impressed. She presented herself and her ideas better than the man for whom she had written.
Finally, I came to know her better through her columns on the OpinionJournal of the WSJ. Her latest is a good example of her work. It’s about the importance of ceremony to the life we live in common, about how we live together when we are at our best, our enmities set aside, when we actually become each other’s points of light, as it were.
Of course, I can’t help being struck by the amount of time she always seems to have on her hands. Imagine being able to sit and watch Gerald Ford’s funeral on the tube — the Times Square thing, or Nancy Pelosi’s swearing-in. Who’s got that kind of time? Obviously, she does. So do a lot of people she knows, since they’re writing to share their observations.
Actually, come to think of it, so do a lot of commenters on this blog (judging by appearances), since they seem to sit around reading blogs and watching the tube and getting whipped up over this or that partisan non-issue of the moment.
Peggy Noonan make far better use of that same time — and better than I would, too. If my life ever slowed down a bit. (To use something from the popular culture, picture me as one of those characters — Cary Grant, if you’re inclined to be generous, someone else if you’re not — in a fast-talking screwball comedy about newspaper life in Ben Hecht‘s day. I may rip the latest bulletin off the teletype machine as I pass by, long-ashed cigarette flipping up and down out of one side of my mouth as I yell at a copy boy out of the other, and see that Gerald Ford has indeed died — but sit still for his funeral? When?) If I had that time, I’d probably cram a DVD into the machine, anything to take my mind from work for a moment.
Because she watches, she’s able to see the truth and beauty, say, in the way Mrs. Pelosi assumed power — something of which the actual opinion page of the Journal itself is incapable. They were busy castigating her for taking a page from Tom Delay. It’s what you might call political opinion as usual. Ms. Noonan’s writing, at its best, has a graciousness that takes us beyond that.
It calms me down a bit, when I find time to look at it, and I am vicariously thoughtful, dignified and full of proper thoughts toward humanity. (I don’t necessarily mean I hold the same thoughts, but she transmits the same calm attitude.) It doesn’t last long, but while it lasts, it’s good.
With the Legislature coming back Tuesday, you may want to take a look at our lawmakers as we last saw them.
Basically, they were furious. Gov. Mark Sanford had just vetoed the entire state budget. This was his way of complaining that the Legislature had not stuck to the entirely arbitrary numerical cap that he proposes to place, permanently, on state spending. Rather than make line-item vetoes to get down to the number he likes — that would have made him very unpopular in an election year — he vetoed the whole thing, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Legislature would override him.
Here’s footage from the House debate on the subject on June 14, 2006. The man doing most of the talking is Rep. Doug Jennings, the Democrat from my home town of Bennettsville (his daddy used to be my doctor). No one of either party was arguing with his characterization of the governor’s action. In fact, the members of both parties laughed when he challenged Ways and Means Chairman Dan Cooper to say whether he thought the governor was showing "leadership" by vetoing the budget.
The longer clip that follows is from the Senate. It starts with my own senator Sen. Nikki Setzler, D-Lexington, essentially saying the same sorts of things Rep. Jennings had said in the other chamber. Senate Finance Chairman Hugh Leatherman, R-Florence (at the podium), is not at all shy about showing his agreement with the Democrat’s complaint. Then Lexington Republican Jake Knotts gets in a few licks on the governor as well. Finally, we see Sen. Greg Ryberg rise and take the podium to defend the governor. He’s wrong, but he is showing the courage of his convictions, which is one reason we endorsed him in his failed bid for S.C. Treasurer. By the way, at the VERY end we see Sen. Bill Mescher playing freecell during the debate.
The governor’s veto was a moment of revelation. We knew that the governor was into empty ideological gestures that had nothing to do with governing South Carolina, but he at least had been a conscientious, detail-oriented grind when it came to the budget. This trashed his reputation for that particular virtue.
This is relevant now because the governor has already indicated that he wants to play the same game again this year — putting together a DOA budget that meets his capricious limit, so that he can say, "See, it can be done." Never mind the fact that it can only be done by cutting the good (the state’s endowed chair fund, higher ed in general) along with the bad (pork projects).
He’s already ticked off legislative leaders with this behavior, despite his re-election promises to try to work with them to actually get things done rather than devoting his energy to gestures that please his out-of-state libertarian admirers.
While The State is chronicling the rather comprehensive S.C. support that John McCain has garnered (something mentioned on this blog in the past), Vanity Fair offers the following:
In the 2000 campaign, (McCain) waded straight into the hottest controversy in South Carolina, not long before his crucial primary showdown with George W. Bush, by offering his unvarnished opinion on whether the Confederate battle flag — the Stars and Bars — should continue to fly over the state capitol. "As we all know, it’s a symbol of racism and slavery," McCain said. After John Weaver and others did more than whisper in his ear, McCain took to reading aloud from a piece of paper with a statement that began, "As to how I view the flag, I understand both sides," and went downhill from there.
For better or worse, McCain’s campaign was never the same again. And no one is more aware of this than John McCain himself. In Worth the Fighting For, his second memoir, written with his longtime aide Mark Salter in 2002, McCain reflected on what he had done:By the time I was asked the question for the fourth or fifth time, I could have delivered the response from memory. But I persisted with the theatrics of unfolding the paper and reading it as if I were making a hostage statement. I wanted to telegraph to reporters that I really didn’t mean to suggest I supported flying the flag, but political imperatives required a little evasiveness on my part. I wanted them to think me still an honest man, who simply had to cut a corner a little here and there so that I could go on to be an honest president.
I think that made the offense worse. Acknowledging my dishonesty with a wink didn’t make it less a lie. It compounded the offense by revealing how willful it had been. You either have the guts to tell the truth or you don’t. You don’t get any dispensation for lying in a way that suggests your dishonesty.
Everyone has sinned; everyone has fallen short of the mark. McCain gets my admiration by setting forth his faults in an unvarnished manner, and telling us — in a way that we can hold him accountable — that he considers them to be totally unacceptable.
OK, the bartender just did the bouncer part of his job.
I’ve been slack on a number of things lately, and one of them is tossing out unruly patrons. We just had yet another barroom brawl, and this time I didn’t just shake my head and keep cleaning the glasses. I went into this post and reduced the comments from 26 to 9. I cut out ALL the subsequent comments from offenders, not just their worst infractions.
Here are some excerpts from the rantings of the people I tossed out through the swinging doors and into the dusty street:
- "Really, are you the stupidest person in the world?" (Guess who?)
- "Your comments demonstrate complete and utter intellectual impotence."
- "If they make ethical Viagra, consider speaking to your doctor."
- "Mary, go change your feminine hygiene pad and leave the war strategy to men."
- "The mad dog wingnuts were dangerous enough before they were cornered by their blind ideology and incompetency."
Admittedly, that last one is on the cusp of acceptability, but I had already let him get away with a bunch of stuff that was teetering right on the edge. When you’re breaking up a brawl, you have to throw out some of those who are merely egging the fighters on, and he had just said "mad dog wingnuts" once too often.
Y’all come back now, y’hear — after you’ve sobered up enough to engage in a rational, civil conversation. Argue all you like — but exhibit a modicum of respect for those who disagree.
We’re not the only ones wrestling with how to host a civil, useful blog in these rhetorically savage times.
Today, I happened upon this item headlined, "Think Like a Saloon Keeper." Here’s a salient excerpt:
Gradually I though of the spaces we were providing for these conversations similar to a saloon, with a collection of tables where people gathered to talk about whatever. We were the proprietor of the space — a private proprietor of commercial space — and welcomed the public, and pointed to the sign on the wall that read: "No spitting, fighting, or flamewars." We reserved the right to toss out anyone who was ruining the experience for everyone else…
I like the metaphor. Yeah, I know I haven’t been serving up much booze lately, but I figured y’all were getting enough of that over the holidays.
But with the new year upon us, and the Legislature coming back next week, it’s time to tap some fresh kegs and get ready for a run on the bar. I’ll be the one standing behind it, cleaning the glasses.
Well, I’m back and I just wrote an editorial for tomorrow’s paper about Saddam’s execution.
Which leaves me wondering — did you find that as shocking as I did? I mean, I knew they had said 30 days and all, but I’m used to what that means over here, which is, "You’ve got 30 days to file your motions" before an automatic stay. He was in the middle of another trial, after all, with more to come.
But to state the obvious, things are different over there. Over there, "30 days" means, "You see how the moon looks tonight? He ain’t gonna see it like that again."
Still, since everything about Iraq has been so complicated and so hard to pull off, it was sort of disorienting so see how easy it was to hang a guy.
Beyond my first question, I suppose I should also ask what you think of it — as if you wouldn’t tell me anyway. For me, it’s like this: I don’t believe in capital punishment. At the same time, I won’t mourn the loss of this particular subject. Note the ambivalent, bureaucratic word "subject." I want to make myself feel better by calling him a "monster," but I know he was a man. I also believe he was a man the world is better off without, but I’m not God, which is why I’m against capital punishment.
Of course, one makes allowances, and by Iraqi standards this is progress. For a man to be hanged by the numbers after due process with the world looking on — that’s Iraqi justice, and that’s a new thing. Now all we need is for there to be justice for the millions of folks outside the Green Zone, who deserve far better than their former leader.
This was a pretty small step in that direction. But it was a step. Ironically, after all the years of conflict over Saddam, it seemed like a footnote as we struggle with the issue of whether to keep trying to bring about a just and peaceful Iraq. Here we are moving into this enormous national conversation about what to do about Iraq, and out of nowhere comes this development.
We look briefly over our shoulders and say, "They hanged who? Saddam? Well, that was quick," and turn back to the larger debate. That’s fitting. In a more just world, Saddam would have amounted to no more than that.
