Back on this post, I mentioned one tidbit of evidence that was encouraging in Energy Party terms, in that at least one guy had decided to go with mass transit.
Since then, there have been a couple of news items that are, shall we say, a tad more substantial in statistical terms.
First, there was the story about Americans driving 30 billion fewer miles in a six-month period.
But any way you look at it, it does make us look smarter, doesn’t it? Up to a point, anyway.
Wouldn’t it be great if we started doing such things on purpose, because we wanted to reduce our dependence on petrodictators? Is that too much to hope for?
On today’s page, you saw our endorsement of Jake Knotts in the runoff in the Republican nomination in Senate District 23. You also saw Cindi Scoppe’s column that was her way of thinking through, and explaining to readers, what was for the whole board a difficult decision. (And despite the little bit of fun I had about DeMint "clarifying" things, it was and is a difficult one.)
It’s worth reading, if you only get one thing out of it: This isn’t as simple as being about whether this person is for vouchers (or, worse, tax credits) or that one is against them. This is about what video poker was about — whether a group that does not have the state’s best interests at heart is allowed to intimidate the Legislature into doing its will.
It’s easy to say that, but very hard to communicate to readers. It’s hard to understand if you don’t spend as much time as I have, and as Cindi has (and she has a lot more direct experience with this than I do) observing lawmakers up close, and watching the ways they interact, and the way issues play out among them. I know it’s hard for readers to understand, because all these years later, folks still seem to have trouble understanding what the video poker issue was about for the editorial board, and why we took the position we ultimately did (to ban the industry).
I know we’ll be explaining this one for the next 10 years, and possibly longer. It’s just tough to communicate, and made tougher in this case because video poker was at least unsavory on its face. The face of this campaign funded by out-of-state extremists appears to be perfectly nice, ordinary people like Katrina Shealy and Sheri Few.
But it’s not about them. And it’s not about Jake Knotts, either. It’s certainly not about whether one or two candidates who favor (or might favor) vouchers get elected to the Legislature. By themselves, those one or two candidates can’t change the fact that spending public funds on private schools is (quite rightly) an unpopular cause. What this is about is the fact that if Jake Knotts loses, Howard Rich and company win, and that will play in the Legislature this way: Our money took Jake down. We can do the same to you. And at that point, lawmakers who don’t believe in vouchers and know their constituents don’t either can be induced to vote along with those interests anyway.
We saw it happen with video poker — until the industry was put out of business, cutting off the flow of cash that was corrupting the legislative process. We’re seeing a similar dynamic here. And that’s what this is about.
Anyway, as I mentioned, Cindi had a column about that. On Sunday, I’ll have a very different column about this endorsement. At one point in the column, I refer to one of the big differences between our editorial board and Jake Knotts — his populism. So it is that I post the video below, which features Sen. Knotts talking about that.
This has happened twice now, and it was helpful both times.
As is my usual pattern with these either-way-I’m-unhappy endorsements, I came in on the morning of June 4, the day the original Jake Knotts endorsement ran, with my usual now-it’s-too-late sense of buyer’s remorse. Not that I wished we’d endorsed Katrina Shealy (or Mike Sturkie), it was just one of those that I wasn’t going to be happy any way you looked at it.
Fortunately, Gov. Mark Sanford came to the rescue, making me feel so much better, so much more confident that we did the right thing — or as confident as I could be. We had said the governor was too fixated on getting rid of this guy — meaning that if he succeeded, it would intimidate the whole Legislature — that it was best to re-elect him. And right on cue, the governor stops everything, on the day before the end of the legislative session, to write an op-ed about why Jake’s got to go. It was highly vindicating.
Then this morning, after we’ve gone through Round Two of the Jake wars here on the editorial board, and endorsed him again in the runoff (not doing so was actually on the table, yes), and I pick up my paper today wondering whether that really was necessary, and along comes Jim DeMint to the rescue.
This makes everything so much clearer. Oh yeah, in case you didn’t know: We endorsed McCain in the GOP primary. That’s one we were utterly sure of. And unlike the governor, we actually did so when the outcome was in doubt.
Did you ever sort of suspect that the Hillary Clinton campaign would never give up — that never-say-die
supporters would still be found 40 years from now holed up in a bunker somewhere, like those Japanese soldiers who still wandered out of the jungle on islands in the Pacific for decades after WWII? (Sgt. Shoichi Yokoi, right, was found in 1972 in a Guam jungle,
where he had been living on shrimp, fish and nuts — with the emphasis
on "nuts" — since 1943.)
Yeah, so did I.
Well, we were right. I got a release today from a group called JustSayNoDeal.com, to this effect:
June 18, 2008
MEDIA ALERT
Just Say No Deal Asks Obama Supporters To: “Show Some Class”
Tasteless Behavior Like the Booing of Public Officials Has NO Place in Our Election Process
– Online and Nationwide— JustSayNoDeal.com, a coalition of voters, individual activists, blogs, PACs and grassroots organizations, reacts to the scene on Monday night in Detroit’s Joe Louis Arena when Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm received a deafening chorus of boos at her mention of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Moments later former Vice President Al Gore experienced similar jeering when he referred to Senator John McCain.
Just Say No Deal Coalition members will not tolerate such offensive and disrespectful conduct from supporters of Senator Obama aimed at any individual— whether they be an elected official or a member of the community at large, and the Just Say No Deal organization will not align itself with any candidate that permits this shameful behavior to be exhibited in any forum.
During this lengthy primary process Senator Clinton and many of her 18 million supporters have endured pointedly hurtful behavior and vulgar attacks by unruly and inappropriate backers of Senator Obama in public arenas and in new media outlets. The most prevalent arena of these assaults has been on the most recognized sites within the blogosphere.
Concerned citizens continue to break their silence to express their dissatisfaction with party leaders and the short-circuiting of the nominating process. The Just Say No Deal portal offers those voters a plethora of voting strategies, calls-to-action and blogpostings to guide their general election decision-making. In doing so, they reclaim their voices and vow to Just Say No Deal!
You can, if you wish, take this group at its word that it’s just about being fair and polite toward "any individual— whether they be an elected official or a member of the community at large," and believe it’s not about Hillary. But you can’t do that with some of the sites to which JustSayNoDeal.com provides links, such as:
hillaryclintonnews.blogspot.com — "Want To See Hillary Run As An Independent? Sign the Petition for Hillary to run as an Independent."
hireheels.com — "we adore shoes, but we love Hillary"
clintondems.com — "a place where Democrats that feel the DNC and media have acted in bad faith towards the American people can gather to organize, share insights and have their voices be heard"
womenforfairpolitics.com — "a grassroots organization that is reacting to the terrible
treatment that Hillary Clinton has received during her historic run for
the Democratic nomination for President of the United States"
writehillaryin.com — "a
website created by Americans, for Americans who refuse to vote for
Barack Obama in the General Election. We’ve had inadequate candidates
shoved down our throats before, and we’ve often fallen in line. NOT
THIS TIME. Our feelings may be hurt, but that’s not the point. Our
principles have been offended. Feelings pass. Principles do not."
hillaryorbust.blogspot.com — "The left has totally become pornogrified and anti-woman. Do I really care that guys on the left want to save the spotted owl, when on the other side of their mouth they are telling me that I, as a woman, only have value to them when I’m wearing a negligee?"
typicalpawhitewoman.blogspot.com — "This is the diary of a typical white woman in PA. I didn’t know there was such a thing as a typical white woman or a typical woman, but apparently there is and I am it."
This rich vein just goes on and on — dozens of such sites. Some of y’all who have more time on your hands than I do should browse through them and share some of the nuggets with the rest of us.
Nobody could make this up. And the thing is, you get the sense the authors of these sites are not really trying to be funny, although many succeed at being Hillaryous.
But don’t tell them I said that. Some of these folks seem the type who don’t appreciate a little good-natured ribbing.
Back on this post, Susanna K. reminded me of this letter in Monday’s paper:
Gas is still relatively cheap in U.S. Wake up, folks. Once again our media friends have created the myth that gas is expensive, fueling an already weakened economy. In 1963, I spent 4 percent of my income on gas. For me, personally, gas is very cheap. My wife and I drive two large SUVs, and we spend 1 percent of our income on fuel. Stop this ridiculous pump patrol. We are fortunate to have gas at about $4 a gallon. Our retired friends in the Netherlands pay $9.52 a gallon.
R.J. MONROE West Columbia
Susanna made the point that if Mr. Monroe is really only spending 1 percent of his income on fuel, he’s "definitely in the minority, especially in South Carolina." She also tried to direct us (TypePad messed up the link) to this graphic in the NYT. It shows where in the country gas prices hit the hardest, as a percentage of income. As the caption says, poor, rural areas are hit the hardest. Californians pay more, but they can afford it better.
Anyway, it reminded me that I tried to do the calculation in my head when I was reading that letter on the proof, and I’m pretty sure I spend a lot more than 1 percent (of gross, never mind net), considering gas for my wife’s vehicle and mine as percentage of total income. And I make more money than the average, and don’t drive all that much, beyond going to work and back.
So that made me wonder — are any of y’all as fortunate as Mr. Monroe?
I should say that his point is well taken — we’d be much worse off in many other countries. But if his figures are right, I don’t think he’s very representative.
…No, what made Tim Russert different, and better, I think was his willingness to listen to — and take seriously — criticism about his own profession. He was willing, for example, to keep an open mind about a hot-button issue like media bias — an issue that so many of his colleagues dismiss as the delusions of right-wing media haters. (Trust me on this one, I worked at CBS News for 28 years and know Dan Rather personally.)…
Personally, I have to take other people’s word for whether Russert was a good guy or not. When I was introduced to him at the 2004 Republican Convention in New York (by Lindsey Graham, as it happened), I did my best to act like I knew who he was (I looked him up later), just to be polite. Yes, my ignorance of TV news is that complete. I’d heard the name, but that was it. I go to church on Sunday mornings. I will say this about him, though — now that I think about it, he struck me as the kind of guy who wouldn’t have been insulted if he’d known I didn’t know who he was. He didn’t seem like the big-headed type. So that’s something.
But while I don’t have an informed opinion about Mr. Russert’s character, I do have a lot of informed opinions about what is oversimplified as "media bias." Here’s the short version — i’s definitely real, and here’s the form it takes:
Journalists spend their lives in a bubble, largely because of the work they do and the hours they keep. They tend to work with people just like the people they went to journalism school with, and because work doesn’t allow them to go to PTA meetings and otherwise live normal lives around normal people. Take that and combine it with the fact that journalists try to studiously avoid having opinions, and even fool themselves into thinking they are perfectly objective, which causes them to have the most entrenched sort of opinions there are — unexamined ones.
Other people get out of college and hang with all sorts of different people, and form impressions of the world that they are not ashamed to think about in opinionated terms. Journalists pretend to themselves that they are not forming opinions, and therefore their ability to form grownup, evolving opinions about the world gets stunted. So they, and the people around them, go through life with the sort of vaguely liberal inclinations that they bought into as college sophomores.
Tim understood that without that kind of diversity, journalism would be in trouble. He knew it wasn’t good for journalism or America if almost all the people reporting the news lived and worked in the same bubble. "There’s a potential cultural bias. And I think it’s very real and very important to recognize and to deal with," he told me. "Because of backgrounds and training you come to issues with a preconceived notion or a preordained view on subjects like abortion, gun control, campaign finance. I think many journalists growing up in the ’60s and the ’70s have to be very careful about attitudes toward government, attitudes toward the military, attitudes toward authority. It doesn’t mean there’s a rightness or a wrongness. It means you have to constantly check yourself."
About once a week I get these releases from an organization called "Project for Excellence in Journalism" that does statistical analysis of political coverage in national media over the preceding week. Generally, it’s a matter of "Hillary Clinton dominated coverage with X percent of headlines" or something like that.
The point, I suppose, is to quantify something that every consumer of news thinks he knows without counting.
Anyway, I pass this week’s release on to y’all, and if you show any interest, I’ll try to pass them on more often.
And yeah, this is a dull week in presidential politics — the most telling stat is that media interest in the campaign was only half as much as the week before — but that’s also why I had time to look at it; it’s a slower week here in S.C. as well. Maybe you would be more interested in browsing through past reports. Anyway, here’s the release:
The media marked the kickoff of the general election with a focus on how Barack Obama and John McCain differ on major issues such as the economy and the war in Iraq, according to a Project for Excellence in Journalism study of election coverage. A variety of issues led the media narrative last week. Attention to the candidates’ positions on the economy (18% of the total newshole for campaign stories), gas prices (6%), the Iraq war (5%), health care and immigration (both less than 1%) accounted for nearly one-third of the campaign coverage newshole as measured by PEJ’s Campaign Coverage Index for June 9-15. Obama generated the most candidate coverage last week, appearing as a significant or dominant factor in 77% of campaign stories. McCain trailed at 55%, but jumped 34 points, up from 21% the previous week. In the first week after officially suspending her campaign, Hillary Clinton was a leading newsmaker in 10% of election stories—a 50-point drop from the week before. Aside from coverage of the policy arguments, the press last week devoted a good chunk of the campaign narrative (18% of the newshole) to controversies, particularly the resignation of Obama’s vice-presidential search-team leader James Johnson. The Johnson flap alone accounted for 11% of last week’s campaign coverage. In addition, the theme of the two candidates trying to unify their parties accounted for 13% of the coverage—with most of that devoted to the fallout from the bruising Democratic nomination battle. The findings in PEJ’s Campaign Coverage Index—which will appear weekly during the campaign season—include:
Michelle Obama appeared as a significant or leading newsmaker in 6% of election stories the week of June 9-15—a major increase from the week before when she registered in only 1%.
The controversial pastors just don’t seem to go away. Together, coverage of Obama’s relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright and McCain’s relationship with Rev. John Hagee accounted for 3% of the week’s campaign coverage.
The campaign, which filled 24% of the overall newshole, registered its second lowest level of coverage in 2008 during the week of June 9-15, a significant plunge from the previous week’s 50% mark.
Go ahead and accuse me of racial profiling (or class profiling, or whatever), but I noticed something promising on Assembly Street this morning.
It was a young white guy, in a crisp shirt and tie, conservatively groomed (at a distance, you might have mistaken him for Brian Boyer), sitting on one of the benches at the big bus stop between Gervais and Lady streets. He was sitting like an athlete on the bench waiting to go into the game — elbows on knees, hands clasped, head up and looking around expectantly.
In other words, he appeared to be waiting for a bus. An encouraging sign, in Energy Party terms. Like people ditching SUVs, or John McCain changing his mind and advocating drilling off the coast. Another sign that maybe we’re starting to make choices that don’t prop up petrodictators.
That was the good sign. The bad sign was that this young white-collar guy was still sitting there, still waiting, when I came back 40 minutes later. That indicates that if he was trying the bus as an alternative today, he might not try it tomorrow.
This underlines the need to improve our transit system to the point that it is a rational and attractive choice to people who do have choices, and not just a last resort for those who have no options.
Of course, maybe the guy wasn’t waiting for a bus at all. In which case, never mind.
After spending an inordinate amount of time trying to provide a little extra perspective on the Richland County Council runoff (stuff you couldn’t possibly get elsewhere, for whatever it’s worth), I decided I’d better check and see if there was anything urgent in my e-mail the last couple of days before dragging myself home late as usual. At that point I ran across this:
We can solve the financial problems of the city,
the transit problem, the big dig on Main St., etc. Just hire relatives of Rep.
Clyburn. Where is the indignation from the paper on the editorial pages?
Between naming things for his legacy and money for "relatives of Jim" – seems
rather hypocritical. Oh wait – he’s a democrat and black – must be
untouchable! Larry
What do you say to someone that clueless? Basically, I say nothing. I just thought I’d share it with y’all as part of my usual campaign to let y’all know what goes on behind the scenes around here — and "fan mail" such as this is part of the gig.
Of course, if I did answer, it would be along the lines of:
You’re kidding, right? You’re writing this ONE DAY after the news report (less than a day after I read it, since this was sent at 7:39 a.m.), and already all worked up about not seeing an editorial yet?
What newspaper did you read it in? The paper reports it, and YOU think this is evidence that the paper is looking out for Jim Clyburn? It was, in fact, the lead story in Monday’s paper. Bet ol’ Jim appreciated that, huh?
You want to see criticism of black Democrats (and obviously, this is what matters to you)? I don’t suppose the thing I just frickin’ finished typing (with video) counts, huh?
But just so you know, that missive from ol’ Larry wasn’t one of our more hostile or least-well-reasoned bits of fan mail. Here’s one of the bad ones. NOTE: Don’t read this if you’re easily offended — or even moderately sensitive, for that matter:
Sir: Generic news reader/bureau chief/flesh-colored dildo Tim Russert is dead at 58. Of all you awful people, he was possibly the most oleaginous — as unctuous to the likes of Bush, Cheney and Madeline Albright as any human dildo could possibly be . . . a real Uriah Heep, brought to life and plopped down like a steaming pile of shit onto our television screens each Sunday to "interview" the powerful. Good riddance, fathead. You mediocrities at The State can lower your ass-licking tongues to half-mast.
Ray Bickley
That was sent to me, by the way, at 6:44 p.m. on Friday, the very day Tim Russert died.
Trying to get Gwendolyn Davis Kennedy to provide a rationale for her Richland County Council candidacy was like pulling teeth. She basically could not provide any good reason why voters should elect her back to the body she left under a cloud a decade ago.
Ms. Kennedy is best remembered for a taxpayer-funded junket she and another council member took to Hawaii. And that’s about it, really. To get further details, I had to search the database, and came up with this editorial from our editions of Dec. 8, 1997:
We should have known Richland County Councilwoman Gwendolyn Davis Kennedy wouldn’t leave quietly after her failed re-election bid. At her last regular meeting, Mrs. Kennedy and three of her children were up for appointments to county boards or commissions. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. This is the same councilwoman who took a $3,000 jaunt to Hawaii on county money to a conference for Western counties only to return with nothing constructive to share. Then, faced with a runoff bid she wouldn’t win, she had a change of heart and admitted the trip wasn’t a good idea. Mrs. Kennedy obviously is intent on having a lasting impact on Richland County by getting family members appointed to boards. Sadly, other council members didn’t see the folly in it all and appointed two of Mrs. Kennedy’s daughters to positions. Kim Kennedy and Fay Kennedy were appointed to the Music Festival Commission and the Building Board of Adjustment, respectively. The lame duck council, four of whom are on their way out, might have selected Mrs. Kennedy and her son, a Richland County sheriff’s deputy, to a position had the two not withdrawn their nominations after they were challenged. Mrs. Kennedy had applied for a spot on the county Planning Commission and her son, Theodore Kennedy Jr., had applied for a position on the Building Board of Adjustment. This was an obvious attempt by Mrs. Kennedy to try to stack county boards with herself and her family members as she leaves the council. Council members should have known better and left all of these appointments to the next council. Shame on them all. It’s these sort of shenanigans that have residents angry over the way the county is operated. The new Richland County Council, the membership of which will be completed in tomorrow’s election, can’t be seated soon enough.
The good news is that the new council was somewhat better. No trips to Hawaii, anyway.
But the truth is that bad candidacies are frequently marked by the lack of good qualities as much as bad ones. And the things that strikes me as I review video of our interview back in April with Ms. Kennedy is her utter inability to articulate why anyone should support her.
Please excuse the length of the above interview. I just included a lot of unedited footage (except for transitions between my camera’s three-minute-maximum clips) so you could see — if you were patient enough — just how far you can go in giving a person every possible opportunity, without that person rising to it. It’s tedious, but telling. In fact, some of you who are accustomed to the contrived theater of TV interviews will wonder, "Why were you so patient and easygoing with this woman?" The answer is that, contrary to what many of you believe, we really do try to go the extra mile to allow candidates a chance to make their case in their own way — particularly the candidates who come in with apparently little chance of gaining our endorsement. Some candidates make the most of the opportunity, and are impressive — an example of that would be Sheri Few, who didn’t think we would endorse her but to her credit wasn’t about to make that decision easy on us. Ms. Kennedy made the decision very, very easy.
Unfortunately, Ms. Kennedy managed to squeeze past a couple of more attractive candidates to make it into a runoff next week. One nice thing about runoffs — it gives me time to present you with more info about the candidates that I was able to do during the crowded initial vote.
If you don’t have the patience to make it through the long video above, here’s a shorter and more interesting one. After having given her every opportunity to deal with her checkered past — a simple, "I did wrong when I was in office before, and have learned my lesson" would have been good — we finally had to confront her (politely, of course, that being Warren’s style) about the incident that lost her the position on council.
Basically, once she was specifically asked about "The Trip," she tried lamely to deflect. She tried to allege that the controversy was over her husband going, and that wasn’t at taxpayer expense. She noted that she’s been to Hawaii a number of times, and only once at taxpayer expense — as though that established anything other than the fact that she likes Hawaii. She tries to make us believe that she believes that if elected, we would falsely report that the European trip she’s saving up for was on the taxpaper’s dime.
But what am I doing describing it? Just watch the video.
Remember a few months back, when I was visited by Zoe Rachel Usherwood, Foreign Affairs Producer for Sky News in the U.K.? Well, whether you remember or not, it was right after the primaries, when there had been a lot of international attention focused on South Carolina. Well, today the same international program brought Desirée Jaimovich by the office.
Desirée is a writer and editor for the Buenos Aires Herald, an English-language publication. Argentina is, as you probably know, one of the more cosmopolitan of South American countries, a lot of people having ethnic roots from across Europe.
We talked about a number of things. She asked in particular about a recent story that recently led our front page, "S.C. first in on-job deaths of Hispanics." I told her that illegal immigration was an extremely hot issue in this country, but that unfortunately, while our lawmakers will demagogue no end about illegality, there is little talk among our politicians about the dangerous conditions that illegals often work in — and there should be.
She of course asked WHY illegal immigration was such a hot issue, and I somewhat glibly told her that it was a matter of xenophobia. A little later, though, I told her not to go by me, that I don’t understand and never have understood the roots of passion over illegal immigration. (And don’t explain to me for the millionth time that it’s because it’s illegal; as I indicated back here, maybe I’ll believe that’s core of it when folks get as stirred up about speeding on the highway.)
Anyway, we had a nice visit. I never did practice my Spanish on her though, because it embarrasses me. When I was a kid living in Ecuador, I was more or less as fluent in Spanish as English. But I’ve been back in this country since 1965, which is a long time. Whenever I try to speak it now, it’s such a struggle that I find it distressing.
This release struck me as unusual when I got it, but I set it aside because I didn’t have time to blog about it. But when I receive a phone message from a someone making sure I had received the message and knew about the coming news conference, I decided to give y’all a heads-up on this:
SOUTH CAROLINA HOUSE DEMOCRATIC CAUCUS Media advisory for June 16, 2008
REPRESENTATIVE TODD RUTHERFORD TO HOLD PRESS CONFERENCE IN RESPONSE TO THE CLUB LEVEL SHOOTING INCIDENT Rep. Todd Rutherford [D-Richland] will hold a press conference in room 305 of the Blatt building. His remarks will highlight the Club Level shooting incident, and pinpoint precautionary measures that could have been taken by Columbia Police Chief Tandy P. Carter.
WHO: Representative Todd Rutherford WHEN: Tomorrow (Tuesday, June 17, 2007) at 10:00 a.m. WHERE: 1105 Pendleton Street, Blatt Building Room 305, Columbia, SC 29201
Kelly S. Adams Director SC House Democratic Caucus P.O. Box 12049 Columbia, SC 29211
Maybe it’s not all that unusual for a state lawmaker to poke his nose into a municipal police matter. But to do so under the aegis of his party’s caucus is weird. To go to such lengths to call attention to it makes it sort of weird squared.
Wow. This police chief just got here, and he’s got this much heat coming down already?
Candidates who lose elections seldom do this sort of thing, so when they do I am favorably impressed. After a fairly bitter campaign that featured mutual character attacks, it struck me that D.J. Carson was moved to send this out:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE MEDIA ADVISORY
June 15, 2008 D.J. Carson congratulates Joe McEachern and challenges South Carolina to continue to make public education a priority.… Richland Co. – I want to take this opportunity to congratulate Joe McEachern and offer my support to him and all Democrats running for office in November. Though the media has reported our differences on the issues the past three months, we now must come together as a party, a community, and continue to find solutions to the many challenges facing District 77 and South Carolina overall. When I started this journey nearly three months ago, I did so on the foundation that our public schools are the single most important factor to making South Carolina a more successful and more productive state. I truly believe there is a direct link between public education, low crime, and economic development. I am pleased to see that through this campaign private school vouchers, tuition tax credits, and home-school tax credits and their negative impact on public education came to the forefront. These types of misguided solutions would take valuable resources away from our public schools and put our children at a disadvantage. I along with all residents in District 77 challenge Mr. McEachern and the South Carolina General Assembly to champion public schools and public education over the next two years. Finally, I offer my sincere appreciation to the educators, parents, volunteers, campaign staff, and most importantly the voters who believe in my message and vision. Though we came short in our ultimate goal, we were able to push the message of supporting public education to the center of the debate. Working together we will bring needed change to District 77 and South Carolina as a whole.
Thank you all and God Bless!
D.J. Carson
Yeah, I know — you can call it just crass "party loyalty" or some such (he doesn’t wish any Republicans or independents well, you’ll notice), or a CYA move to keep his political options open in the future, or both. And yeah, it’s kind of preachy for a congratulatory message.
But when a guy does something more generous than I expected, I tend to want to make note of it. If we don’t encourage good sportsmanship, we can expect it to die out completely.
Nowadays, there are so few classy gestures that I care less about why they are extended; I’m just glad to see them.
You know things are bad when really nice, well-mannered people — such as Moms — start using strong language. I enjoyed this portion of a letter in today’s paper:
I am a full-time, working, middle-class mother of two. Times are getting very bad for me and my husband, as well as for all American middle-class working families. The main item that needs to be on all Americans’ minds is why the gas prices ever rose more $2 in the first place. This is shocking. If other countries wanted to hurt the United States, this is how they do it, and we are letting them. It is time to start drilling in the United States, and the heck (sorry) with those other countries.
I can see the kids bouncing up and down in the back seat now: "Mom said a bad word! Mom said a bad word!" After the last couple of decades of linguistic deviance being defined ever-downward, with the situation exacerbated (sorry) personally by my current "Sopranos"-watching binge, coarsening my ears to a level I find distressing, it warms my heart to run across a nice lady who gets red-faced over a public "heck," even when provoked.
And she is indeed provoked. She goes on to say:
Americans need jobs, and we need to start relying on ourselves again. If the only reason we are sitting on the oil is to protect some kind of animal or bird, I am sorry, but put them in a zoo, and drill for oil. I understand that statement will make some people mad.
Sorry, Mr. Chipmunk and Mr. Bluejay, but Mom’s had enough, so you march straight to your zoo, and none of your guff, now. Don’t you make Mom come down there, or she will tan your bottom (sorry)…
By BRAD WARTHEN EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR LIKE A ROCK STAR who prefers to do his new stuff, Barack Obama had not played his greatest hit in several weeks. At least, Kevin Griffis hadn’t heard it for awhile, not until Sen. Obama “pulled it out” at the Corn Palace in Mitchell, S.D., the week that he sewed up the Democratic nomination. He rocked the house. Like besotted boomers doing the “na, na, na, na-na-na-na” part of “Hey Jude” with Paul McCartney, the fans sang right along. Mr. Griffis, 34, who spent much of 2007 here in South Carolina handling the press for the Obama campaign, was there when the hit was born. You’ve heard the story; Mr. Obama has told it often enough. He went to Greenwood on June 15, 2007 — one year ago today — as a favor to S.C. Rep. Anne Parks. He wasn’t having a great day. As he told the crowd at the Corn Palace:
I feel terrible…. It is a miserable day. Pouring down rain, looks awful. I stagger over to the door and I pull open the door and pick up the newspaper and start drinking some coffee and there’s a bad story about me in The New York Times. I pack up my belongings and go down stairs and as I’m about to get in the car my umbrella blows open and I get soaked. So by the time I’m in the car I am mad, I am sleepy and I’m wet….
“He really was grumpy there that morning,” said Mr. Griffis. But he did the drill, quietly, doggedly, doing what you do when you’ve promised to show up — working the room, one dutiful handshake at a time. “I wasn’t paying attention,” said Mr. Griffis. Just the usual, numb routine. Suddenly, this little lady — Greenwood County councilwoman Edith Childs, whom Obama describes as just over five feet tall, 65 years old, with “a big church hat” — starts her patented chant: “Fired up!” The Greenwood folks, for whom this is habit, echo the call, which she follows with “Ready to go!” The senator would later recall being startled: “I jumped.” Mr. Griffis, a quiet, sober-faced young white guy from Atlanta, reacted this way: “It really kind of scared me — I didn’t know what was going on.” And he had no idea how the thing would become a rallying cry. For a long time, neither did the rest of the country. For the next few months, Mr. Griffis recalled last week, the media narrative was all about how Obama wasn’t catching fire, how he was trailing in the polls among black voters in South Carolina — a self-fulfilling perception. Then, in the last weeks of the year, the narrative changed. In a Dec. 23 column, David Broder of The Washington Post wrote that “The stump speech he has developed in the closing stages of the pre-Christmas campaign is a thing of beauty… Hillary Clinton has nothing to match it.” It was the speech that climaxed each time with “Fired up… Ready to go!” Reality matching perception, Sen. Obama rose quickly in the polls, and won the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3. As the campaign suffered a setback in New Hampshire and moved on to South Carolina, William Safire — former speechwriter for Richard Nixon, and ardent student of words and their power — wrote in The New York Times Magazine on Jan. 20 about the speech and its origins: “That local origin of the inspiring chant, and its familiarity to many voters in South Carolina’s Democratic presidential primary this week, means a lot to the Obama campaign.” Jim Davenport of The Associated Press (and formerly of The State) reported that Ms. Childs — who insisted to reporters as her fame grew that she was 59, not 65 — got the “Fired up” routine from Nelson Rivers, NAACP field operations chief, and he got it from the late civil rights activist and Charleston native Jondelle Harris Johnson. But however it started, Obama has taken the chant to undreamt-of places: Des Moines, Iowa. The Corn Palace in Mitchell, S.D. The Democratic nomination for president of the United States. Long before he got “fired up,” of course, Barack Obama was a gifted and charismatic speaker, one who could get any Democratic crowd “ready to go.” And he’s going up against a Republican who is not a master of the set-piece speech, as he demonstrated when he tried upstaging Sen. Obama on the night he clinched the nomination, and bombed on national television. So it was that John McCain challenged Mr. Obama to meet him on his turf — the “town hall”-style meeting. On Friday, the campaigns were squabbling over whether the events would even take place. I hope they do. I had the chance to see how Sen. McCain connected with voters in small venues in South Carolina last year, during the months that his campaign was down and out, according to conventional “wisdom” at the time. And as Mr. Griffis said last week in Columbia (where he was getting reacquainted with his 4-year-old daughter, after having been away in Virginia, Ohio, Mississippi, Indiana and South Dakota almost every minute since January), such a format plays to his candidate’s strength as well. “He’s a remarkably empathetic person,” he said, “and so fiercely intelligent,” he shines when given “the opportunity to put that on display.” I agree. For the first time in many an election cycle, my first choice in both major parties will be on the ballot in the fall. Each of them got to where he is by pulling away from the polarizing force of his respective party. The nation deserves to see them interact — repeatedly, if possible — in a setting as free of artifice as possible. That would be something for all of us to get fired up about.
Busy as we are on Friday (I’ll probably be here past 10 p.m. again), Mike just gave me a heads-up on this, and being a lover of tradition, I had to pass it on:
An RAF pilot has been ordered to trim his handlebar
moustache by an American General who took offence at its length, but
the British serviceman was not prepared to lose his whiskers without a
fight.
The British airman, who sports a
handlebar moustache in the proud tradition of the RAF, refused to
comply when his superior officer in Afghanistan took offence at his
facial hair.
Showing a bravado akin to that of
Biggles, he fought back, eventually convincing the general that his
generous whiskers were in line with regulations laid down by the Queen
herself…
I guess he told that cheeky Yank, all right… Let’s here it for Flight Leftenant Ball — hip-hip… Huzzah! Hip-hip…
We all know how frustrated Energy partisan Samuel Tenenbaum gets about his perfectly sensible suggestion that we save the country and the planet, and save ourselves some bucks, by driving 55 mph. He keeps hoping his moment will arrive — will we get sensible at $5 a gallon? Or will it be $6?
Anyway, I was reminded of all that by this letter this a.m.:
Keeping to speed limit will save on gas
Apparently the high cost of gasoline is not yet a problem for the people of South Carolina.
Every
driver knows that higher speeds reduce fuel efficiency. Yet traffic on
our interstate highways continues to roll about 10 mph over the speed
limit.
STEPHEN D. KIRKLAND
This raises the question: Do you think we can summon the political will in this state to enforce the speed limits we have now? The reason traffic "continues to roll about 10 mph over the speed
limit" is that we all know that the de facto speed limit is 10 mph over — and maybe more like 15.
Maybe we can start the movement here. How about it? Can some of y’all who get SO worked up about illegal immigration "because they’re breaking the law" get worked up by speeding? After all, this isn’t just about not having the right paperwork; speed kills.
If we can tap into an emotional well like that, we can save lives, save money, flip the bird to Chavez and the House of Saud and save the planet. Sounds like a good deal.
From time to time, a comment by one of y’all causes me to comment at some length, and I decide to make it a separate post. This is one of those times.
A modest Everyman who calls himself "john" had this to say back on this post:
Well bud, I think the votes are in. Like I keep telling you, your views do not fit in our community…
First, let me clarify that I think he meant me, not bud. I’m less clear on what he meant by "our community." I think it’s an interesting question to pose to all: What, in the context of these discussions, does "our community" mean?
It’s like with editorials: WE can mean a number of things when we say
WE — it can be the editorial board, or rather the consensus thereof.
It can mean WE South Carolinians, or WE Americans, or WE who hold a
certain truth to be self-evident. When the meaning seems vague, I work with the writer to try to sharpen up what WE mean by the word.
So what does "our community" mean? South Carolinians? Americans? People
living in Zip Code 29201? Is it "our thing" in the Sicilian sense? Are you presuming to speak for the readers of
MY blog? If so, you have to deal with the fact that the READERS of the
blog and the people who regularly comment — perhaps I should have
emphasized REGULARLY there — are almost certainly different groups, in
terms of prevailing views on this and other issues. Of course, there’s no way to
establish whether that’s the case or not (beyond the anecdotal evidence
of all the nice people who say they read my blog but don’t want to
comment because they don’t want to mix it up with you ruffians — the
wimps); it’s just that my experience causes me to doubt that those who push themselves to the fore are representative.
To give you a stark example… back in the fall of 2001, when the
consensus in this country was strongly in favor of toppling the
Taliban, a majority (or a very large percentage, anyway; we didn’t keep
count) of the letters we received for awhile there were AGAINST
military action in Afghanistan. People who were FOR the action — the
overwhelming majority — saw no need to write letters, because there
was no argument to be made. That is, until they saw some of the
anti-war letters we were running. Then they weighed in in response.
Never for one moment was I fooled into thinking the antiwar letters represented a majority of Americans, or South Carolinians, or readers of The State.
A blog, which its more or less instantaneous interactivity and
reinforcement (positive and negative), has a tendency to run off in one
direction or another very quickly, with moderate views quickly
intimidated into silence (people of moderate temperament generally have
better things to do with their time, or so they quickly decide — again, the wimps). There are a few brave moderates who hang in there with us, until they
can’t stand it, and go away for awhile. Certain other types are with us
always.
Anyway, I’m getting far afield: Within the context of these discussions, what does "our community" mean?
We knew Buddy Witherspoon had his problems with people who are different coming into the country. Yeah, yeah, he said the usual stuff latter-day nativists say, about how it’s just because they broke the law, but he was pretty frank that he was worried these folks would "weaken our common culture and national identity." And we know about his past associations.
But hey, at least ol’ Buddy did limit himself to the illegals. Here’s what Bob Conley, whose thin vote margin over Michael Cone for the Democratic nomination to this very same Senate seat will likely trigger a recount, has to say on his Web site:
The legal
importation of foreign workers is also driving down wages, and placing
Americans in unemployment lines. This is wrong, and must end.
He elaborated on this in our interview. He complained in particular about foreign engineers coming into the country, making it hard for American engineers to get jobs. Mr. Conley describes himself as "a Commercial Pilot and a Flight Instructor as well as a licensed Professional Engineer," so apparently he knows about these things.
