Yearly Archives: 2009

Like Jane Austen writing about television

Today, I’m listening to Jethro Tull on Pandora, the virtual radio station site. I’m often disappointed by Pandora because it seems their collections don’t go very deep. And sometimes they don’t even touch the surface in the spot where I want them to. For instance, I created a 10cc channel that keeps throwing Queen songs at me on the grounds that they are “like” 10cc. On my Donovan and Elvis Costello stations, they keep playing Beatles. Hey, I love the Beatles, but when I want to listen to them I’ll tell you.

Then there was the time that I had a hankering to hear Roger Miller’s “Dang Me,” so I created a station by that name. And it played me a couple of Roger Miller songs that I didn’t want to hear, and then other songs “like” Roger Miller. But so far, no “Dang Me.”

I strongly suspect Pandora to be a subsidiary of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, famous for its drinks machine that produces a substance that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.

But I’m enjoying the Tull station a bit more. Not that I’m getting pure Tull, of course, but the stuff that Pandora judges to be “like” Tull is mostly enjoyable. Led Zeppelin’s “Rain Song.” Some live Who. And, I’m happy to say, quite a bit of Tull.

Including recent Tull, which is a bit of a shock, because I didn’t know such an animal existed.

For instance, did you know there was a Jethro Tull song titled “Dot Com?” Seriously; I’m not making it up. This is a surprise coming from a band that I associate with “Aqualung.” And no, not the one that the kids listen to. To me, Tull is quintessential 70s. I hadn’t even thought about them in years. It was only when a real radio station (94.3) played “Thick as a Brick” this past week that I was reminded of their existence, and created the station just to, shall we say, do a little living in the past.

The Jethro Tull of my memory lived in a universe that had not thought of, and could not even have imagined, anything called a “dot-com.” It was, I don’t know, like finding a previously unknown Jane Austen novel that’s about television. You know, like:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a sitcom in possession of a laugh track must be in want of a joke.

I’m picturing Mr. Darcy earning his “ten thousand a year” hosting “So You Think You Can Dance,” on which he repeatedly refuses to dance with attractive young women on the grounds that they are “tolerable,” but not “handsome enough to tempt me.”

Anyway, what I’m saying is, it was weird.

Some truncated messages from Joe “You Lie!” Wils..

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Joe Wilson’s hip, y’all. He does Twitter and everything.

Trouble is, he’s having a little trouble spitting out his message on that medium. Here are his last four:

Wilson gets warm welcome at Hilton Head GOP picnic: U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson told members of the Hilton Head Island.. http://bit.ly/Wzwqx

Okra struts its stuff in rain: Midway through Irmo’s 36th annual Okra Strut parade, a misty rain began to.. http://bit.ly/tNLWw

Wilson rallies in Aiken: U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., got an enthusiastic welcome from about 250 supporters in.. http://bit.ly/19tDr6

U.S. Rep Joe Wilson said he wanted to make it clear Saturday that Republic.. http://bit.ly/2dgmb9

Odd, isn’t it, that Joe would have a problem with brevity, given that the one thing for which is is nationally known consisted of only eight characters, if you count the exclamation point.

Actually, I’m not sure why he’s getting cut off like that, since those messages (especially the last one) seem to be under the character limit. Maybe it’s intentional. Maybe it’s to get us begging for more so we’ll follow the link. Maybe Joe’s on the edge of the new wave…

Come see “The Producers” tonight (if you can get a ticket)

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TheProducersWeb-1

I’ll be reprising my (very tiny) role in “The Producers” tonight at 8 at Workshop Theatre. I urge you to come see it — if you can get a ticket. I’ve heard that they’re pretty scarce.

But if you can’t get in tonight (which is my last performance), the good news is that the show’s been held over. And I promise, it’s almost just as good without me.

The Anglosphere considered, minus imperialism

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Stanley Dubinsky can always be relied upon to point out things that provoke thought. I was particularly struck by this review from The Times of a book called REPLENISHING THE EARTH: The settler revolution and the rise of the Anglo-world. An excerpt:

Writing history is largely a matter of what filters you use. Different-coloured filters bring out different patterns. For most recent chroniclers and analysts of the Anglo-Americanization of the world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the filters used have been those that show up the “imperialism” of the process. The most startling novelty of James Belich’s Replenishing the Earth: The settler revolution and the rise of the Anglo-world is that it scarcely mentions imperialism at all, except to marginalize it (“with all due respect to the rich scholarship on European imperialism, in the very long view most European empires in Asia and Africa were a flash in the pan”); yet it still makes a pretty convincing job of explaining the huge and important process that is its subject. Even where it does not totally convince, it is immensely illuminating, as new filters invariably are. This is one of the most important works on the broad processes of modern world history to have appeared for years… – arguably since Sir Charles Dilke’s pioneering Greater Britain introduced a concept very like Belich’s “Anglo-world” to his Victorian contemporaries in 1868.

Dilke’s book was written before the word “imperialism” came into vogue, at least in connection with British overseas expansion. Empire carries essential connotations of power, or domination, whose major manifestation in Britain’s case was India – which again finds no place in Belich’s book, and hardly featured in Dilke’s either. Dilke was interested in something else: the migration of the British people over the globe, including North America; with the aid of some state power, certainly – the general protection afforded by the Royal Navy, occasional military expeditions to pull the migrants out of trouble, charters and treaties – but not in order to dominate anyone. Rather, the aim was to reproduce British-type “free” societies, usually freer than Britain’s own, in what were conveniently regarded as the “waste” places of the earth. Belich calls this “cloning”. It was an entirely different process from the more dominating sort of “imperialism”, representing a different philosophy, involving different social classes, and mainly affecting different regions of the world. Belich believes that it was a far more important influence than what is generally understood as imperialism on the whole course of modern history.

Consider this post a transparent effort to lure the “Anglospheric” Mike Cakora back to the blog. Haven’t heard from Mike in awhile…

No “tea parties” for me, thanks; I’ll take coffee

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Something that occurs to me when I see notices like this one:

Larry invited you to “Tea Party Event ” on Sunday, September 27 at 1:30pm.

Larry says, “Please join me.”.

Event: Tea Party Event
“Come hear Senator Larry Grooms”
What: Informational Meeting
Start Time: Sunday, September 27 at 1:30pm End Time: Sunday, September 27 at 4:30pm
Where: Wannamaker County Park

… is this: Who wants tea? Certainly not me. I’m a coffee guy. All these people having “tea parties” seem kinda, you know, effete to me. Not very American.

I mean, when the British slapped that tax on tea, a few unsteady types went spare and committed an act of vandalism in Boston harbor. But the rest of us moved on and drank coffee instead. Preferably Starbucks coffee (he said, still hoping against hope for a major endorsement deal).

When the UnParty wants to whip up its base, it’s going to have Kaffeklatsches instead. We’ll sit around, talk, drink coffee — no big whoop.

Friedman plugs the Energy Party agenda

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We haven’t spoken much about the Energy Party lately, what with being obsessed with the economy and all (see, I told y’all this wouldn’t be fun before we started). Thank goodness, Tom Friedman took the time earlier this week to get us back on track by touting a key plank of the Party platform, in a piece headlined “Real men tax gas.” An excerpt:

But are we really that tough? If the metric is a willingness to send troops to Iraq and Afghanistan and consider the use of force against Iran, the answer is yes. And we should be eternally grateful to the Americans willing to go off and fight those fights. But in another way – when it comes to doing things that would actually weaken the people we are sending our boys and girls to fight – we are total wimps. We are, in fact, the wimps of the world. We are, in fact, so wimpy our politicians are afraid to even talk about how wimpy we are.

How so? France today generates nearly 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power plants, and it has managed to deal with all the radioactive waste issues without any problems or panics. And us? We get about 20 percent and have not been able or willing to build one new nuclear plant since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, even though that accident led to no deaths or injuries to plant workers or neighbors. We’re too afraid to store nuclear waste deep in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain – totally safe – at a time when French mayors clamor to have reactors in their towns to create jobs. In short, the French stayed the course on clean nuclear power, despite Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and we ran for cover.

How about Denmark? Little Denmark, sweet, never-hurt-a-fly Denmark, was hit hard by the 1973 Arab oil embargo. In 1973, Denmark got all its oil from the Middle East. Today? Zero. Why? Because Denmark got tough. It imposed on itself a carbon tax, a roughly $5-a-gallon gasoline tax, made massive investments in energy efficiency and in systems to generate energy from waste, along with a discovery of North Sea oil (about 40 percent of its needs).

And us? When it comes to raising gasoline taxes or carbon taxes – at a perfect time like this when prices are already low – our politicians tell us it is simply “off the table.” So I repeat, who is the real tough guy here?

As Friedman correctly asserts, raising the gas tax would be a “win, win, win, win, win” that would make us “physically healthier, economically healthier and strategically healthier.” But none of our politicians, of either party, have the guts even to bring up the subject, because they can hear the voters screaming at them with all the mature outrage evinced in this unrelated, but hilarious, commercial (only instead of screaming, “I want those sweeties,” we’d be hollering, “We want our cheap gas!”)

Anyway, I posted something on Twitter about the Friedman column earlier this week, and Doug Ross responded on Facebook. I’ll share our exchange here just to get the blog discussion going:

Doug Ross

Real men must like double digit inflation, high food prices, and punishing low income Americans who need to drive to work

Brad Warthen

We love all that stuff. We just don’t like quiche.
Did you read the piece?

Doug Ross

I did read the article. He says he wants to take 10 cents of each dollar and give it to “the poor” to cushion the $1 per gallon cost. What about the people who aren’t “poor” who will see their fuel costs go up by several thousand dollars a year? and the increase in cost of every single item that is manufactured and transported. it’s a recipe … Read Morefor economic disaster. Some of Friedman’s ideas go beyond “ivory tower” to the point where the people in the ivory towers have to crane their necks to see him.
We have all the money we need to do what Friedman wants currently in the federal coffers. Our political “leaders” choose to do other things.

Brad Warthen

But raising the revenue isn’t the point; it’s just a side benefit.
The point is making ourselves more energy-independent so we stop underwriting the thugs of the world.
If France and Denmark can do it, so can we.

Doug Ross

Oh, if we could just be like Denmark and France!!! Apparently that’s the new American Dream

And yeah, for those who are confused — I was using that “irony” thing again when I said “we love all that stuff.” But I was serious about not liking quiche.

Ammo!

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It was either late 2008 or the start of 2009 when a co-worker at The State mentioned that he’d had trouble laying his hands on buckshot, and that the shopkeepers he’d talked to said this started to happen at about the time of the election. It’s been so long that I forget whether he said that it was just before the election or just after that the run on ammunition started. But I do remember he said you could get birdshot; the problem was with the deadlier stuff that you’d need to take down a deer — or a man.

It was sometime after that that I noticed at a local Wal-Mart that the case where ammunition of all kinds was locked behind glass was mostly empty. Looking more closely, I saw none of the usual pistol stuff (.38-cal., 9 mm). In fact, all I saw was shotgun shells with the smaller sort of shot.

I filed this away as interesting, even ominous. And I figured I would write something about it once it became better documented and the fact was established. I assumed I’d see news stories about it soon. (As you know, in my former position I had nothing to do with news or decisions on what to cover; I was kept as separate from that as I was from advertising. Like you, I saw things in the paper when I saw them.) Then I forgot about it. I was pretty busy in those days.

So when I saw it on the front page of The State today, I sort of went “Wow,” on a couple of levels. First, that it took this long to make news, and second, that there was still a shortage.

Back when I first heard about it, I didn’t know what I wanted to say about it. Some things popped into my head, of course. One of the first was my memory of being in South Carolina when Martin Luther King Jr. was killed. I remember knowing at least one very nice white person who had never owned a gun before going out and buying one, because of fear of what might happen next. And I heard of others. I didn’t want to think this was related to that, but it did pop into my head.

Another was that Barack Obama had inspired some fairly weird Internet conspiracy theories. You know, like the one that he’s not really a citizen. I hadn’t attached importance to that — after all, the man was elected — but it popped into my head that there was something going on in the dank underbelly of the American psyche. Everything might be fine on the conscious level, but maybe some things were brewing down in the more reptilian parts of our collective brain.

But I set it aside. We had lots of other stuff to think about, what with the economy collapsing around us, and all the debates over what to do about it. The stimulus, for instance, was about as unemotional and bloodless, colorless subject as you were likely to find; it was not something to inspire dark dreams of violence.

Now that the ammunition story is documented and verified and duly reported, it comes at a time when we have additional information, and this colors our perception. We’ve seen that a lot of people are really, REALLY emotional about this president and his policies. I mean, we’ve had a lot of heated debates about health care in this country in the past, but even when it involved the polarizing figure of Hillary Clinton, people didn’t get THIS stirred up. Harry and Louise and the rest of the insurance industry’s allies simply deep-sixed reform, and it went away for 15 years.

But the last couple of months have been … weird. You might expect a guy like me, who has griped for years about our health care situation and finds himself paying $600 a month for COBRA, with the prospect of it going up to $1,200 or even $1,500 very soon) would be emotional about it, but I’m Lake Placid compared to the people who DON’T WANT reform. “Death panels.” Old folks absurdly Obama Joker Poster Popping Up In Los Angeles demanding that the gummint stay out of their Medicare. People showing up in crowds with automatic weapons. An otherwise mild-mannered congressman yelling “You lie!” at the president during what I thought was a fairly ho-hum speech. Then there’s the truly disturbing “Joker” posters. (I thought Democrats really went overboard with hating Bush, but this plumbed new depths.)

Against that background, a run on ammunition sounds really ominous.

The sunniest interpretation you can put on this phenomenon is that when the economy is collapsing, people naturally fear our devolving into a state of nature, and naturally want to arm themselves. Under that interpretation, we’d have run out of ammo whether Obama or McCain had been elected.

But there’s this other thing going on, and it has to do with some fairly unpleasant things rattling around in our collective subconscious. Some people have tried to give it a simple name, saying it’s about race. But it’s more complicated than that. Just as scary and ugly perhaps, and entangled somehow with race, but more complicated.

And frankly, I’m still not sure what to think of it.

I’m about to go freeload at Steve Benjamin’s thing

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Folks, I’m about to go over to this Steve Benjamin thing at 701 Whaley. But as usual, my attendance will not be an expression of personal political preference. I’m just going to check it out.

And of course, in keeping with my principles, I’m not planning to pay. I plan to go, walk around with a beer or something and try to blend, and learn what I can. As Capt. Mal said to River Tam in “Serenity,” “It’s what I do, darlin’. It’s what I do. I am an inveterate free-loader. It’s my M.O., and if I ever were to pay for anything, it would ruin my reputation in more ways than one. (Some would say I shouldn’t accept free beer. I believe my high school buddy Burl has said he wouldn’t, and maybe I should listen, because he is a journalist who still has a jobby-job. But Burl doesn’t understand the whole Southern thing. It’s not polite to refuse a drink from one’s host. And I’m very polite.)

Or at least, I plan to do those things until they throw me out. Anyway, maybe I’ll see you there. It starts at 5:30. Here’s the info. The most interesting thing on that link, by the way, is the list of the host committee, which is as follows:

Governor Jim Hodges
Emile DeFelice
Jenni & Cameron Runyan
Tiffany and Anton Gunn
DJ Carson
Bubba Cromer
Robbie Butt
Beth Binkley
Trav Robertson
Courtney Gibbes
Rhodes Bailey
Laurin Manning
Brad Weeks and Chris Terlinden
Hal Peters
Dana Bruce
Shani and Aaron Gilchrist
Debbie McDaniel
Mark Sweatman
Ashley Newton
Bosie Martin
Will Bryant
Amy and Rick Quinn
Jen and John Adams
Brian Murrell
Ashley Medbery and Adam Floyd
John Nichols
Kevin S. Baltimore
Marti Bluestein
Jocelyn & Derwin Brannon
Brandon Anderson
Tony Mizzell
Shennice and LeBrian Cleckley

Now — does anybody know of any Kirkman Finley III events I can crash? I want to be perfectly fair and balanced about this.

And when a third viable candidate emerges (it is my considered opinion that there will have to be third major vote-getter for Finlay to have a chance against Benjamin, so I’m sort of waiting for another shoe to drop here), I will be thrilled to crash any party they have as well.

Dead-blogging the GOP debate

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Just some scattered thoughts as I listen to the GOP debate last night via the Web. Can’t call it “live-blogging,” but it’s kind of like that, so I’ll call it “dead-blogging,” which sort of reflects my level of enthusiasm about the candidates so far, a few minutes into it. Some random observations:

These people aren’t running for governor of South Carolina. They’re running for the GOP nomination for governor, which is entirely different. Every word they’ve uttered so far has dripped with Republican jargon and catch phrases, and none of them has communicated the slightest desire for MY vote. Anyone else feel that way? I mean, it’s like listening to old-line Marxists talk about “running-dog imperialists.” These phrases don’t communicate or inspire, they just help us pigeon-hole the speakers…
Did Larry Grooms just say that DHEC regulates too aggressively? In what state, in which universe?
Seems the panel should have some folks on it with more of a statewide perspective, such as, say, the editorial page editor of The State. Oh, wait; there isn’t one any more…
Nikki’s sweet (oh, the women are going to come down on me for that one, but she is), but she really shows she’s out of her depth whenever she starts comparing government to a business. Inevitably, she betrays a lack of understanding of one, or both. For instance, she just decried the fact that the state lottery spends $7 million on advertising. She says that should go to education. Well, fine, so far. I don’t like the lottery spending to sucker more people into playing; I don’t think the lottery should exist. I would not, of course, try to make people think that the lottery is in ANY way an answer to our school funding needs. But that’s not the problem with what she said. The problem is, she says a business would not spend the money on advertising to keep the customers coming. Ummm… yes it would, Nikki. It would have to. I mean, duh, come on. It’s hard to imagine a type of business that would be MORE dependent on ad spending to keep its product front-of-mind for prospective players, to constantly whip up interest in its “product.” It has no substance, so it’s ALL about generating buzz…
Interesting how it is an accepted truth among these GOP candidates that the current administration has totally dropped the ball on economic development. There’s nothing new about it — Republicans have been griping about it for years — but it’s interesting because it sounds for all the world like these folks are running for the nomination of a party that has NOT held the governor’s office since 2002.
Which is dumber or more off-point — a TV watcher asking when we’ll eliminate property taxes, or Larry Grooms saying we shouldn’t tax either property or income? Which of course only leaves taxing economic activity as the last major category. And given our current economic situation, how stupid is that? And is he unaware that we’ve already tilted our tax system far too far in that direction already? Where’s he been the last few years?
Gresham Barrett tries to deflect a question about the Confederate flag by saying we need to concentrate on sending the signal that we are serious about moving forward on economic development in this state. Well, getting the flag off our state’s front lawn is the easiest, simplest, most obvious step we can take in that direction.
Here’s another odd question from the public — Would you oppose more stimulus funding for SC if South Carolinians didn’t have to repay it? What relationship does that have to reality? None. There has never been, and never will be, such a major expenditure that we as taxpayers won’t be on the hook for. Of course, Nikki’s reply acts as though that’s the very situation we had with the stimulus that she agreed with Sanford on, which is the opposite of the truth.
Henry at least gets a plug in for comprehensive tax reform…
Grooms is right to say across-the-board is not the right way to cut the state budget, but then he retreats into quasi-religious ideological gobbledegook about how the problem is too much spending to start with. (More specifically, he says we shouldn’t institute programs — as if we’ve instituted new programs lately — that we don’t know how we’ll pay for. And yet he’s the guy who wants to make sure we don’t have the revenues we need, by taxing nothing but economic activity.)
Just watched Bill Connor’s Gov Lite campaign ad, which reminds me: If I ever do run for office, and I start blathering about how you should vote for me because I’m not a “professional politician,” will one of y’all slap me? Not hard, mind you, just to sort of reboot my brain so I can come up with something other than cliches…
Nikki says she supports “all education reforms.” So basically, if you call it a “reform,” she’s for it. Talk about failing to be discriminating…
Henry doesn’t seem to be aware that we are a national leader in demanding accountability of public educators. Lack of accountability isn’t the problem. We’re et up with it. In fact, we just had an insurrection over the PACT test, because so many parent agreed with the teachers that they’d had enough of it. I’m with him on merit pay, though.
Andre just came out for consolidating school districts. Good for him. Of course, Mark Sanford has always said he was for it, but hasn’t lifted a finger to make it happen. He also said he doesn’t want to spend money on football stadia, which I certainly applaud.

OK, I’ve got to stop watching now… lunch appointment. More later, if I get time…

Dealignment is the coming thing — which is good for the UnParty

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Kathryn brings this to our attention, over on Salon:

Last week, Brent Budowsky pondered the prospects for realignment in The Hill. With more than 40% of Americans identifying themselves as independents, Budowsky writes, “Realignment is dead. President Barack Obama and Democrats blew it. Dealignment has arrived. Republicans blew it, and are now so repellent that Americans increasingly reject both political parties.”

That supports something I have heard frequently — that neither party is really interested in the problems of ordinary Americans, that what politicians on both ends of the spectrum really care about is being re–elected, and a new party is needed.

So when “dealignment” occurs, who’s standing there to pick up the pieces? The UnParty, baby — the UnParty.

No, Joe, that’s not what’s got them ticked off

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Oh, man, look at this lame stuff from Joe Wilson:

Joe heads home to continue his focus on the families of South Carolina’s 2nd Congressional district and over 100 supporters turn out to walk with him in the Lexington DooDah parade. In this short video, Joe thanks his supporters for standing with him in his fight against government run health care.

Joe’s fight has really angered the big government liberals who are working to push their health care plan through Congress. They are storming the district and targeting Joe in next year’s election.

But Joe won’t back down.

No, Joe, it’s not your “fight” that’s got them ticked off. It’s your childish outburst, and your subsequent decision to cash in on it. At least, that’s what has the rest of us disgusted; I can’t speak for these “big government liberals” that are your straw men.

Oh, by the way, Joe doesn’t thank people for supporting him on health care in the short video — at least, not specifically. What he does is celebrate the common decency and patriotism of the folks in the heart of his district. And maybe it’s a good thing for Joe to get in touch with those qualities instead of having his head turned, the way he has for the past week or so, by the kinds of spiteful extremists who want to lionize him for doing something that he was initially, and appropriately, ashamed of.

Waiting for my UnParty Peter Boyle

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Wow, I am really humbled by the nice things some of y’all said about me running for office back on this post (am I sounding like a candidate yet? they’re supposed to say stuff like that, about being humbled, etc.).

But again, what office? The context was that we were talking about Congress. But as Karen suggested, maybe I’m better suited for state office. State issues are the ones I’m most knowledgeable about and passionate about.

Not that I don’t know as much as (or more than) the other declared candidates for Congress about national and international issues. I’m pretty confident that I do — or at least that I can hold my own, and I can certainly approach those issues in a fresh way that would break the partisan, shouting-back-and-forth pattern that I, for one, am sick of.

But what if I were elected to Congress? I would just feel pretty weird going off to Washington and watching another lame governor take office back here. And you know what? My own mother called me up the other day and said I should run for governor. So that’s one vote I could count on, I guess. (Right, Mom?)

You know what I need at this point? I need Peter Boyle to come see me and make a pitch. You ever see “The Candidate?” Excellent movie. Peter Boyle plays a political consultant type who talks Robert Redford — son of a prominent politician — into running for the U.S. Senate. Redford is a nonprofit activist who is uninterested in the compromises one must make to run for office. Boyle promises him he can stand up for everything he believes in, and points out that this is a great opportunity to give those things he believes in greater exposure. Redford asks something like How does that work? or What’s the catch? and Boyle hands him a matchbook on which he has written two words: “You lose.” On that basis, Redford agrees to run.

But as the campaign proceeds, the itch to win — or at least not lose by an embarrassing margin — starts to get to him….

Anyway, to run for office what I need is a Peter Boyle moment — somebody to say, we’ll take care of the mechanics of the campaign, you just be the candidate. Because I’m an issues guy, not a mechanics guy. Renting an office and getting phone lines set up would be the overwhelming part for me. Seriously.

This, of course, is why most people run under the auspices of parties. Each of the parties has loads of people like Peter Boyle who can say, here’s your infrastructure, you just concentrate on running for office (and raising money).

What I need is an UnParty Peter Boyle. I guess that would be a party stalwart who has become disillusioned. Or who sees greater opportunity in breaking away from the two-party dichotomy.

It’s interesting to contemplate where such a person would come from. On an earlier post, I speculated that if I were to give in and run under the banner of one of the parties next year for pragmatic reasons (see the above discourse on Peter Boyle), especially for Congress, it would probably have to be the Democratic Party. Why? Well, not because I’m a Democrat, but because I don’t see a Republican having a good-enough shot against an incumbent of that party. Too much of an uphill climb.

But it occurs to me that if I run as an independent, my theoretical Peter Boyle would be more likely to come from the Republican Party. It’s the party in trouble. It’s the party that’s falling apart, rather pathetically clinging to tired slogans and petty resentments that have not served it well of late (whereas the Democrats have been doing OK, for the moment, with their tired slogans and petty resentments). It seems more likely that a smart Republican would calculate that an UnParty bid would be advisable than that a smart Democrat would do the same. Democrats are smelling opportunity now, and are unlikely to jump ship.

Then again, there could be a smart Democrat who would rather see me elected than Joe Wilson, and who also sees as I do that Rob Miller is not the best candidate to take advantage of this moment, and yet he’s the Democrat with the money, and has a leg up toward the nomination. Going with me might be the way to step around that problem. I don’t know. That’s the kind of hard-eyed political calculation that I’m depending on this Peter Boyle person to make — I’m the candidate, not the backroom strategist.

Anyway, now would be a good time for my Peter Boyle to step forward. I’ve got a job interview later this week, and possibly another soon after. This window won’t be open for long (I certainly hope.)

The kindness of friends is one thing, and I truly appreciate the supportive things y’all have said here. But at this point I need a nudge from a hard-eyed professional who truly believes this can be done. You might say I should go out and find that person. But I’m thinking that if I truly have a chance, that pragmatic person will see it and come to me. If I don’t — if it’s just me indulging myself and some friends egging me on — then there’s no point in continuing the discussion. Does that make sense? It does to me… Call it the first test of my viability…

Let’s see if we can help the Souper Bowl go viral

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Y’all hear enough from me. Now, for a message from the “Good Brad” — Brad Smith, the founder of the Souper Bowl of Caring.

That Brad spoke to Rotary today. Although he’s now the senior pastor at Eastminster Presbyterian in Columbia, he still believes strongly in the organization he founded, and headed up full-time for seven years. (To remind you of the story, it all started with a line from a prayer that Brad said on Super Bowl Sunday in 1990: “Lord, even as we enjoy the Super Bowl football game, help us be mindful of those who are without a bowl of soup to eat.” Some kids at his church — Spring Valley Pres at the time — stood outside after services with a cookpot asking folks to give a buck. Then kids at lots of other churches started doing it…)

And he’s got this dream about it. Even though it has grown far beyond anything he could have imagined at the beginning — the Souper Bowl has raised $60 million for charity, and on the most recent Super Bowl Sunday involved 200,000 kids in its good work, and now has the backing of two former presidents (and their First Ladies) and seven NFL team owners — he has a vision of it being even bigger.

His vision is a two-parter: That the president of the United States would decide to highlight the Souper Bowl (as one of the inspiring stories of volunteerism that presidents are always citing in such speeches) in his State of the Union address. And that would inspire enough people to give that during the Super Bowl itself, the Souper Bowl would be mentioned, and the announcer would say that X hundred thousand kids participated, and an amount equal to a dollar for each person (the standard “ask” for Souper Bowl is a dollar) watching the game had been raised.

That would be over a hundred million dollars, which would eclipse what the program has raised in total thus far.

Yes, it’s a reach, but it’s possible, given the right conditions. As Brad (the other one) said today, “Somebody here knows someone who can make that vision come to pass…”

Well, maybe. And if not, then maybe somebody reading this knows somebody who knows somebody who can make it happen.

It’s worth a try, anyway.

They keep pushing me to run…

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Today after Rotary, Kathryn F. buttonholed me and started egging me to run for office. Hey, it’s easy for her to say — I’m the one who would be making a fool of himself, not to mention having to go to all those chicken dinners.

Run for what, you’re thinking? Yeah, I know — it’s hard to remember what Brad isn’t running for today: Is it the S.C. House? Or governor? Or Congress?

In this case, it’s specifically Congress that I’m being coy about.

Kathryn’s not the only one, by the way. Nathan Ballentine asked me about it when I ran into him this morning. Of course, he said it with a smile.

Anyway, I gave Kathryn all the reasons why I can’t run, and she tried to knock them all down:

Neither of the parties can stomach me, and I can’t stomach the parties. And so far, no member of the UnParty has been elected to Congress. There’s a reason for this: Anything as stretched out and gerrymandered as a congressional district in the former Confederacy is really tough to win by shoe leather and personal perseverance. A state House seat, maybe. But a district that stretches to Beaufort sort of needs the simple answers and mass media approach and organization that only a party can provide. And on some of the hot-button issues that separate the parties, I agree with one side, and on some of them with the other. And on some of those issues, I have no easily explained opinion, but explaining WHY I don’t have a position is the work of at least a newspaper column, and how do you get a majority of voters in a congressional district to pay attention to something with that kind of nuance?
I don’t have a job, and I need to get one and get some money coming in soon. Kathryn says running for Congress would BE my job. But far as I know, you’re not allowed to pay your mortgage and personal phone and light bills with campaign contributions — assuming I can get campaign contributions (and who’s going to contribute to someone who’s neither a Democrat nor a Republican?). And when I get a job, the odds are that it will be one that wouldn’t allow me to run for Congress. Most jobs wouldn’t allow you to run for Congress. If I were independently wealthy, yeah, this would be a great time to run. But as things are…
Who would vote for me? Based on the kinds of comments I get here, not even a majority of my putative base here on the blog would vote for me. I mean, if the overall electorate receives my ideas the way some of y’all do, I’ll be lucky not to be ridden out of the district on a rail. I’m way too candid with y’all about too many things to be a successful candidate for high office.
Of the three offices I’m not running for, Congress would be my least favorite. Running for governor or state legislator, I would feel pretty confident that I would know the issues better than just about anyone who ran against me, and the issues aren’t nearly as bifurcated according to party. There’s more room for a Third Way kind of guy like me. With Congress, every conversation is a big political battle. Say I tell folks what I think about health care — well, that would automatically label me as being to the left of Barack Obama (that’s the area assigned to us single-payer types), which would endear me to the Democrats (some of them) and make me persona non grata to the Republicans. And there’d be no avoiding that issue. But suppose abortion comes up (no reason it should since we’re not talking about the Senate, but suppose it did)? On that one I’d be solid with the Republicans, and the Democrats would despise me. And people would accuse me of waffling, when it is my personal belief that I’m the coherent one, and “left” and “right” as they are currently defined don’t make sense. But could I sell that, with all the other messages out there being against me?

And lots and lots of other reasons. Y’all can probably think of more reasons than I can — after all, I would vote for myself.

At least, I think I would. The idea of sending myself up to Ground Zero of all the partisan madness I constantly decry… well, it’s not something I’d wish on a yaller dog. Or an elephant.

But at least Kathryn has given me a small taste of that phenomenon that causes candidates to piously claim that they’re only running because of the people urging them to do so…

Anyway, now that I’ve totally turned you off with my self-absorption — and made some of you laugh because it may sound like I’m actually considering this… Think about this: Almost any normal person who thinks about running for office goes through these same sorts of thoughts. And for almost any normal person, the answers to all these questions would add up to a big, resounding NO. In fact, you have to ask, given that there are all these natural objections to running for office, what it is that’s wrong with the people who actually DO? And you begin to understand why politics is as messed up as it is…

Why is she so much more popular than I am?

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Just in case I didn’t have enough reasons to feel inadequate… I found out today about this site that lists everybody in South Carolina on Twitter. And when I called it up, it had the list ordered according to most “followers.” And I discovered, for instance, that Gerri L. Elder of the “Absolutely True” Web site (of which I had never heard before) has 31,359 followers on Twitter.

As I type this, I have … let me go check… 310 followers on Twitter.

Now, I can comfort myself in various ways. I can say I haven’t been on Twitter long. I can note that I still have almost twice as many “followers” as people I myself follow, whereas Gerri Elder is following more than 31,000.

But given the chasm between her numbers and mine, that comfort is cold, indeed. I mean, I’m in the initial stages of looking into making this a paying proposition, with ads and all, but how can I compete in a world where somebody I never heard of before today has more than 100 times the number of followers I do?

And why does she have so many? I mean, I looked at her latest post (which is unfair; God help us all if we are judged at a given moment by our latest post), which consisted mainly of a bunch of really sickly looking pictures of bacon. Not nice, crisp bacon, but massive amounts of undercooked, floppy bacon, in phone photos that exaggerate their queasy color. It made me think about the bacon I ate this morning in a way that was NOT appetizing…

I mean, I got pictures of THIS, and she’s got pictures of THAT, but she has way more followers than I do? Where is the justice in this? The marketplace is a cruel mistress indeed.

Before you ask: No, I have not been hiking the Appalachian Trail

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Further evidence that no one can resist reminding the world at every opportunity of South Carolina’s recent embarrassments. This is from a piece on the front of The Wall Street Journal today about unemployed people (not me; other unemployed people) hiking the Appalachian Trail:

In any case, there has been a surplus of hikers this year on the Appalachian Trail, which was unexpectedly in the news in June when South Carolina’s Gov. Mark Sanford used the excuse of hiking the trail while pursuing an extramarital affair in Argentina. Typically, about 1,000 hikers leave Georgia each spring in hopes of completing the trail in one all-out trek. This year, trail monitors say, close to 1,400 hikers were in the first wave, with hundreds more following behind through early summer.

That was the sixth paragraph. They could hardly wait to get to it.

I stopped reading at the point, so I can’t tell you whether they also worked in about Joe Wilson shouting “You lie!”

What’s a Florida Atlantic anyway?

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Something I’ve been wondering about since I read my paper yesterday morning. There was something on the front page, superimposed over one of those huge football pictures, like “USC 38, Florida Atlantic 16.”

I forget exactly what it said — I don’t have the paper in front of me. But the thought I had when I saw it was, “What’s a Florida Atlantic?”

Presumably it’s an institution of higher education (most likely located on the eastern side of the state) that has a football team. But I once lived in Florida — I went to high school there for two years — and I think this was the first time I ever heard of something called “Florida Atlantic.”

Probably everybody knew about it but me. Probably a real powerhouse, both academically and athletically. But until yesterday, I had missed it.

Was I the only one? Probably.

Why would anyone have lied about that?

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As y’all know, I pretty well dismissed John Edwards early on, to avoid the rush. Therefore I had nothing to say when he crashed and burned later.

But I do find myself wondering something when I read this:

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — A man who once claimed to have fathered the child of John Edwards’ mistress says in a book proposal the former presidential candidate is the real father and that he and Edwards worked with his campaign finance chairman to hide that secret, according to a newspaper report published online Saturday….

What I wonder is, Why would anybody have bothered to lie about that? I mean, if you admit (finally) that the affair happened, why on Earth bother to deny being the father if you were the father? What would be the point? Are we to believe that Edwards was calculating that if we just thought he was fooling around with a woman sufficiently loose as to be carrying on a separate affair with one of his aides while his wife was campaigning her heart out for him during a recurrence of cancer, then just maybe he could salvage his political prospects — but if he was technically (as opposed to morally) responsible for impregnating her, we just couldn’t forgive him?

I don’t know. And I don’t care. But I can assure you that, with or without the sensational teasers, I will not read this book. So don’t bother.

How about a “Let Joe Go” party?

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Yesterday, my wife got the envelope above in the mail.

It contains the usual “paint-yourself-as-a-victim-of-the-inhuman-opposition” language that we are accustomed to seeing in fund-raising appeals:

I’ve been under attack by the liberal left for months because of my opposition to their policies, especially government-run healthcare. They’ve run commercials in the Second District and flooded my office with phone calls and protestors. They’ve done everything they can to quiet my very vocal opposition to more government interference in our lives. Now, it’s gotten even worse.

Hmmm. Could the fact that it’s “gotten even worse” have anything to do with the form that Joe’s “very vocal opposition” has taken?

Of course, Joe goes on to express regret — but not really — for his outburst, in a classic political non-apology apology:

I am also frustrated by this and, unfortunately, I let that emotion get the best of me. Last week, I reacted by speaking out during the President’s speech. I should not have disrespected the President by responding in that manner.

But I am not sorry for fighting back against the dangerous policies of liberal Democrats. America’s working families deserve to have their views represented in Washington. I will do so with civility, but I will not be muzzled.

Of course, he needs your money to buy himself a bigger megaphone…

Call the tone “defiant regret.”

You see, in the world of hyperpartisan politics, you NEVER really give ground to the other side, because it is ALWAYS wrong. Raking in the big bucks means never having to say you’re sorry and mean it.

You can’t mean it, and you can’t be seen as meaning it, because you’re counting on getting contributions from the very people who are GLAD you yelled “You lie!” at the president.

This is why I don’t mind Joe’s outburst nearly as much as I mind his continued, deliberate efforts to cash in on it. Anybody can lose control for a moment. Remind me to tell you about the time I yelled out in church when I was four years old, an incident that some old folks in Bennettsville still talk about. I didn’t mean any harm.

But this cold-blooded campaign to benefit from that outburst is what I find unforgivable. I find it contemptible on all sides: Democrats demonizing Joe, and Joe demonizing them back. But Joe is my congressman, and he’s the one I hold accountable. I’ve always liked Joe personally. We get along fine. But that’s because I always thought he was the sort of guy who’d REALLY be sorry about such an outburst.

Anyway, this mailing was an invitation to a “Welcome Home Reception” for Joe in West Columbia on Sept. 28 at Kenny Bingham’s house. One is asked to RSVP to fellow blogger Sunny Philips… and to contribute between $25 and $500, or more.

The “LET’S GO JOE!” seems an unfortunate choice of a battle cry. It sort of begs the opposition to come back with “Let Joe Go,” which has more of a ring to it. Maybe someone — someone other than Rob Miller — should have a party with that on the invitations, and welcome Joe home for good.

George Clooney has either never had a prostate exam, or a Facebook page, or both

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We don’t normally do celebrity news at bradwarthen.com (with rare exceptions), but I happened to run across this item via Twitter:

Although more and more brands, movie stars, sports figures, and other celebrities are moving to Twitter (Twitter) and Facebook as a way of interacting and sharing with fans, many of Hollywood’s A-List stars are still avoiding social networks.

George Clooney is one of Hollywood’s biggest stars — he’s handsome, congenial, and talented — and also Facebook-page free.

People.com reports that when asked about Facebook at the Toronto International Film Festival last Saturday, Clooney responded:

“I would rather have a prostate exam on live television by a guy with very cold hands than have a Facebook page.”

… and it inspired the above headline.

Of course, the message we are to take away is that George Clooney is such a big star that he doesn’t have to promote himself. Which is true. But he doesn’t have to be so snobby about it. I mean, it’s one thing for me to turn my nose up at celebrities, but they’re not supposed to do it right back at me…