Yearly Archives: 2009

Well, now, THAT’S pretty tacky

After my previous post all about the traditional sense of what “news” means, I thought I’d share this item that just came to my attention:

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Vampires have taken over the Los Angeles Times.

Beneath the masthead of Friday print editions is a full front-page ad for HBO’s “True Blood.”

A black-and-white close-up of star Stephen Moyer with blood dripping from his mouth dominates the page, which is all that’s visible in newsboxes around town.

No other stories or photos appear on the cover, which is actually a separate four-page broadsheet touting Sunday’s season premiere. Readers remove the wrap to find the regular front page, anchored by the Lakers’s Thursday win over Orlando.

Times spokeswoman Nancy Sullivan says it’s the first time newspaper has put its masthead above an advertisement wrapping the paper. She declined to discuss how much the paper charged for the ad.

You can see the paper in a rack at this link.

By the way — on that second link, someone observes, “They’ve gotten flack for running advertisements on the front page before.”

Of course, that’s wrong. A “flack” is a publicist or someone who works in public relations. What he or she meant to say was “flak.” It comes from the German word, Fliegerabwehrkanone. Get it? FLiegerAbwehrKanone. It referred originally to anti-aircraft artillery. “Catching flak” meant to be on the receiving end of such fire. It later came to refer to receiving criticism to an extent that felt like getting hit by triple-A.

I love knowing stuff like that.

Today’s news that matters

Lately I’ve been missing my Wall Street Journal (the subscription that the paper paid for ran out, and they wanted $299 to renew), particularly the “What’s News” feature on the front page, which provided a nice briefing each day of the news that mattered. If all I had time to do was read that, I at least was aware of everything important that had happened nationally and internationally.

It took me a while to get used to that. For years, I had thought in standard newspaper-front-page language to get my cues on what was big. There is nothing, of course, standard about the WSJ; they do things their own way. The New York Times is typical of the traditional, conventional approach, which as a newspaperman (who was once a front-page editor, many years ago) I appreciate. It’s probably meaningful to you as well, only subconsciously rather than overtly.

It works like this, in part: The most important thing that happens in the world appears in a vertical element on the far right-hand side of the page, usually, but not always, touching the top of the page. In a newspaper with a truly conservative approach such as the NYT (I’m using “conservative” in the true meaning of the word, not in the popular political sense, folks), most days that lede story (that’s the newspaper spelling for “lead,” by the way) will only have a one-column headline. That’s because most days, there is no earth-shattering news. History moves gradually, for the most part.

When the lede hed (newspaperese for headline) gets bigger than two columns, watch out. It could be good news, but it could be really bad. In any case, it’s really something.

A lede-worthy story is several things:

  1. It’s important.
  2. It’s probably interesting, but it doesn’t have to be. Quite often, the most important developments are dull, and your attention naturally drifts to other things on the page. Those highly interesting other things may be more prominently displayed on the page — toward the center top, or left-hand side — and they may have art with them (newspaperese for photos, graphics or anything that’s not plain text).
  3. It happened. It doesn’t advance something that’s going to happen (although there could be rare exceptions, such as a story that builds up to something like a presidential inauguration — but even then, something has to have happened leading toward that). It’s not a trend story — it doesn’t take a step back from the news; it is the news. It’s not analysis.

This may seem all terribly pedantic, especially as it has to do with a dying industry. It may seem like I’m providing a connossieur’s view of horses and buggies. But a lot of you out there are confirmed newspaper readers, and you probably understand these things I’m explaining instinctively. I’m talking here about you true aficionados; the people who not only take The State 7 days, but the NYT or WSJ as well. You are the people who are the most avid editorial page readers, because you are the most committed readers of the paper overall.)

Editors informed by that tradition certainly assumed you did. Buzz Merritt did. Buzz was the executive editor at The Wichita Eagle-Beacon (now known once again merely as The Wichita Eagle) when I was its front-page editor in the mid-80s. Buzz had come up in the business at The Charlotte Observer, which was always of the traditionalist school (I don’t know if it is now or not, because I never see it). He’s the one who drilled those three qualities of a lede, and the permissible ways to present it on the page, into my head.

And Buzz explained that a lede should communicate one thing very clearly to the reader, even the casual reader, whether consciously or not: Is my world safe? Usually, the answer will be yes, at least relatively so, and your eyes will merely brush over that reassuring fact as you move on to dig into news that interests you more. For that reason the lede should often be unobtrusive, occupying the minimal space on that right-hand edge. But when you really need to sit up and take notice (the collapse of credit markets, the USSR moving missiles into Cuba) it needs to be big enough to reach out and grab you.

Most of these subtleties, of course, are lost on you if you read your newspaper online. As useful as the Web versions can be (and the NYT and WSJ are very good at adding value via the Web) that medium just hasn’t developed the same visual and organizational language to convey the same messages about what’s important today. And that’s one reason why, consciously or unconsciously, many of you still cling to your print editions.

Anyway, as an Old School newspaperman, with a traditionalist’s sense of what matters — and one who thinks some of you might be of a similar orientation — let me offer a briefing glimpse at the news that actually mattered this morning. No Britney Spears. No “Idol.” No sports (except, of course, during the World Series or the Final Four, and then just as leavening in what we call “the mix”). Just news that matters.

Here goes:

National/International

U.S. to Regulate Tobacco — A good lede candidate. It happened. It’s historically important, with extremely wide-ranging implications across the country. And it’s also interesting. (From an SC perspective, it’s another step forward on the national front while we can’t even raise our lowest-in-the-nation tax.)

Iran Votes Today — This couldn’t be the lede, because it hadn’t happened yet. But there’s nothing bigger on the horizon today, and demands prominent front-page play. Barring something huge and unexpected overshadowing it, a likely lede candidate for tomorrow (if we know anything about results).

Al Qaeda shifting Out of Pakistan — Not a lede either, but a very important trend story. Seems to have been exclusive to the NYT, although I could be wrong. (Of course, if you’re a paper that subscribes to the NYT news service, you would have had access to this in-cycle.)

TV Finally Goes Digital — This story, after the years of build-up, is pretty ho-hum. But it is happening today. And even though most folks won’t notice the difference, this is a significant milestone that affects, even if unobtrusively in most cases, technology that all of us have in our homes, and that too many of us spend too much time staring at. A small, take-note-of headline on the page.

State/Local

BEA Issues Gloomier Forecast — A good lede candidate for a South Carolina paper (and indeed, that’s how it was played in The State). You might want to run, as a sidebar, this more upbeat indicator: Lowcountry Home Sales Up. There are promising signs, and you need to keep readers apprised of them, while not sugarcoating the situation.

USC Tuition Holds to Inflation — Important consumer news, to be sure. But this also contains currents of several things of strategic importance to the state, addressing as it does economic development, the federal stimulus, the state budget cuts, and accessibility to a college education in a state in which too few adults have one.

I’ll stop there, because that’s enough for a respectable front page with most newspapers.

Anyway, if y’all like this, maybe I’ll do it more often. Like daily.

Well, at least I did the ‘About’ page

No, I didn’t do any actual blogging today. But I did finally put something on my “About” page. Next thing you know, I’ll jazz up the look of the blog, and put a few links in my blogroll.

Meanwhile, check out the “About” page. And if you’re too lazy to click on it, here’s what’s on it:

Brad Warthen is an unemployed newspaperman, until he finds something else to be. Since being laid off by The State, South Carolina’s largest newspaper (those little slogans still fall trippingly from the fingers), he has blog-photobeen “consulting,” which means he has not yet found permanent, full-time employment.

He was the Vice President/Editorial page editor at The State, where he had worked for 22 years, the last 12 as EPE. Before that he spent a decade at The Jackson (TN) Sun, and a couple of years at the Wichita paper. He started as a copy boy at The Commercial Appeal in 1974, and would probably still run fetch you some coffee if, in an unguarded moment, he heard you yell “Copy!” in just the right way.

He started blogging in 2005. You can still see the original Brad Warthen’s Blog, but he had to leave that behind when he left the paper March 20.

If he could figure a way to make a living from this blog, he would. But so far, no one has offered any bucks for it.

He despises all political parties that actually exist, although he has proposed the creation of several parties of his own — the UnParty and the Energy Party most prominent among them. He is neither a liberal nor a conservative in the ways they are popularly defined these days. He is definitely not a libertarian; he leans toward communitarianism, but does not consent to being pinned down.

That not specific enough for you? Well, it’s complicated. Tell you what — folks often use an opinion writer’s views on a presidential election as a guidepost to his views. So go back and read his sort-of profiles about Barack Obama and John McCain from last fall. Maybe those will help. If you want more in that vein, look at the reams of copy he wrote back in January 2008, when the S.C. primaries occurred. But make sure you have some free time on your hands first, because he does go on and on.

He encourages all points of view on the blog, as long as they are presented in a civil manner. He is the judge of what will be civil, and will throw you out in a skinny minute if you violate his standard. Regulars know where the line is; if you don’t, go read this. Or this.

He is a member of St. Peter’s Catholic Church in Columbia. He and his wife of nearly 35 years have five children and three grandchildren.

One Sotomayor piece worth reading

Just to relieve the negativity of my last post, let me say that it IS possible to find commentary on Judge Sotomayor worth reading. I thought that of the David Brooks piece that The State ran today eminently so.

Now, before you avowed liberals say “of course you think that; he’s a conservative” (just as conservatives like to say the opposite about me), allow me to direct you to his conclusion:

I hope she’s confirmed.

OK, have I got your attention now?

Mr. Brooks, unlike Mr. Toobin, has to overcome the problem that the judge is steeped in the Identity Politics that were all the rage when she and I were in college:

There was no way she was going to get out of that unscarred. And, in fact, in the years since she has given a series of speeches that have made her a poster child for identity politics. In these speeches, race and gender take center stage. It’s not only the one comment about a wise Latina making better decisions than a white male; it’s the whole litany. If you just read these speeches you might come away with the impression that she was a racial activist who is just using the judicial system as a vehicle for her social crusade.

What makes the piece worth reading is Brooks’ explanation of how his own examination of the judge (which is much more extensive than my own, but which he handsomely admits is not his area of expertise) leads him to get past those objections.

I recommend it.

The shallowness of commentary on Sotomayor

The problem with the overwhelming majority of comments you will see on the subject of the Sotomayor nomination, or any other nomination to the court, is that it is shallow, and informed almost entirely by the commenters’ partisan leanings. All you will learn from it is which side the writer chooses in our never-ending party madness, or the parallel culture wars.

That is unfortunately true of this piece in The New Yorker by Jeffrey Toobin. It drips with this attitude: I’m a liberal, so I think this, and if you disagree with me you’re a conservative, and you think this. Never mind what you actually think.

The thrust of the piece is to stick up for the idea that Judge Sotomayor may have been selected in part because of her ethnicity and gender, as a good thing that should be neither side-stepped nor apologized for:

Still, even Obama, in announcing his choice, shied away from stating the obvious: that Sotomayor was picked in part because she is a Hispanic woman. (The President called his choice an “important step” but didn’t say why.) There was no need for such reticence. Earlier Presidents didn’t apologize for preserving the geographic balance, and this one need not be reluctant to acknowledge that Hispanics, the nation’s fastest-growing ethnic group, who by 2050 will represent a third of the American people, deserve a place at this most exclusive table for nine. (Nor, of course, did he note that the nomination was in part to satisfy Hispanic voters—the electoral benefit being another constant among Presidents.) As Barack Obama knows better than most, it is a sign of a mature and healthy society when the best of formerly excluded groups have the opportunity to earn their way to the top.

Actually, there IS good reason for such reticence and the president is to be praised for recognizing that. Mr. Toobin raises as an argument the tradition, dating to the earliest days of the Republic, of providing geographical balance on the court, followed by such notions as the “Catholic seat” or the “Jewish seat.” (Interesting thing about that is that if Sotomayor is confirmed, we’ll be down to one Protestant seat. Which is wonderful for me as a Catholic — or would be, if I didn’t consider it anathema to think in such terms.)

In fact, I think the “geographic balance” is a bad practice to institutionalize as well. If a legislature wants to have representatives of various congressional districts on a board or commission, OK. But in the absence of such requirements, it is a disservice for a president or governor to consider whether a person is from Charleston, or is Latina, or what have you. Those biographical details are points you MIGHT bring up in introducing a speaker, depending on the audience. But they are NOT qualifications for the Court, and only legitimate qualifications should enter into the discussion.

So no, comparing the idea of considering a nominee’s ethnicity to considering his or her hometown doesn’t strengthen your argument.

But that part is just hapless. This part, the part in which prejudices about what other people think are aired, is actually offensive:

As with earlier breakthrough nominations, Obama’s selection of Sotomayor has stirred some old-fashioned ugliness, and in that alone it serves as a reminder of the value of a diverse bench and society. Some anonymous portrayals of the Judge offered the kind of patronizing critiques (“not that smart”) that often greet outsiders at white-male preserves. Women who have integrated such bastions will be familiar, too, with the descriptions of her temperament (“domineering”), which are of a variety that tend to reveal more about the insecurity of male holdovers than about the comportment of female pioneers. The pernicious implication of such views is that white males, who constitute a hundred and six of the hundred and ten individuals who have served on the Court, made it on merit, and that Sotomayor is somehow less deserving.

People who share Mr. Toobin’s mindset are nodding their heads right now: Yep, that’s exactly what those pigs say about women. Yep, that’s the kind of code we hear about minorities. Which, to borrow Mr. Toobin’s condescending tone, tells you more about the nodders than it does about the people they’re nodding about.

Let me propose a couple of thoughts: What if she isn’t “all that smart?” I have no idea whether she is or not, but that can be true even of Latinas, you know, just as it can be of white Anglo men (and are you going to say you don’t know some white guys who aren’t as smart as they should be?). And what if she is domineering? That, too, is possible. It is not automatically impossible for a woman to be overbearing. She doesn’t get a free pass on that by virtue of gender — except among the people who are nodding at Mr. Toobin’s stereotypes.

The interesting thing that apparently escapes Mr. Toobin is that in fact, a white male would have to be very secure indeed in his judgment to offer such a criticism of a Latina nominee — if he dared to do it on the record and for attribution, which evidently none are doing, which is the only point here that argues for the insecurity Mr. Toobin suggests.

As for the last point in that paragraph: Exactly who said the other hundred and six individuals were immune to the objections of not being smart enough, or too domineering? I missed that part. Oh, yeah, I forgot: Surely all the powerful white guys out there ARE saying that, because, you know, that’s how they are. Everybody nod now.

Anyway, I had hoped for something more subtle and thoughtful and nuanced from The New Yorker. The cartoons are certainly more sophisticated than this. So is this wonderful little piece in the same edition, in which a Chinese woman describes what Hemingway meant to her in the summer she was watching her mother go mad. A sample:

I was reading “A Farewell to Arms” one night when my father came into my bedroom. The family was counting on me, he said. Neither he nor my sister could keep my mother from going mad. “She loves you more than your sister or me.” I promised to try my best. When he left, I turned off the light. There was not a trace of a breeze. Through the open window, I could hear a chess party, a group of old bachelors under a street lamp, laughingly cursing one another’s moves on the chessboard. I listened to a man slapping mosquitoes, and wished that I were the hero of Hemingway’s novel. I would have given up the use of both my legs to be in Italy, drinking vermouth, watching horse races, and exchanging off-color jokes with my fellow-officers as the old bachelors were doing outside.

Sound interesting? It was. I got something fresh and original and worth reading from each paragraph. But I can’t say the same for Mr. Toobin’s bit of partisan cheerleading. Or perhaps I should say, nodleading.

To conclude: One reason you don’t see me taking sides on Sotomayor — I might express concerns, or seize upon encouraging signs, but I have no idea whether she should be confirmed or not — is because I don’t subscribe to either side in this game.  I have to think for myself. And I have not had time — nor am I likely to have time — to study her record closely enough to pass judgment one way or the other.

Nor should I be expected to. That’s why we have a system of representative democracy. We elect people to take the time to study these things, and vote in good faith based upon their best judgment. Unfortunately, that breaks down when the elected representatives themselves surrender their thought processes to the parties and interest groups that depend upon pointless conflict for their very existence. And even more unfortunately, elected representatives are all too eager to do that.

Don’t EVER hire city manager

Adam Beam, Twittering on Columbia budget, reports, “Mayor Bob Coble: We will not hire a city manager in next year’s budget.”

Here’s an idea: Don’t ever hire one. Let Charles Austin be the last. Use this opportunity to switch NOW to a strong-mayor form of government. Go from things being run by an unelected official with seven bosses to having one, ELECTED official running the city, and accountable to all of its voters.

There’ll never be a better time than now.

Adam also reports, “No picnic for Columbia employees next year to save taxpayers $10k.”

I say, let ’em have their picnic. But give ’em a boss who answers directly to the voters.

Out here in the Fifth Estate

My latest follower on Twitter (I’m up to 67) is ICFJ, the International Center for Journalists, which is dedicated to “advancing quality journalism worldwide.”

The trick these days, of course, is to figure out how to do that and make money at it. The woods are full of unemployed journalists such as myself, and we’re all for producing quality work (preferably “good-quality,” as opposed to those other kinds), long as somebody will in return provide us with the means to put groceries on the table.

While I’ve slowed down a bit on the blogging lately, I’m just Twittering and Facebooking to beat the band out here and it’s interesting and ground-breaking and all that, but where’s the paycheck. I see that the NYT can afford to pay someone to do this stuff, but beyond the Gray Lady I’m not seeing all that many opportunities.

Yet.

It’s challenging out here in the Fifth Estate (that’s what comes after a career in the Fourth Estate, right?).

Happy, peaceful D-Day, Maj. Winters


Someone mentioned recently all the personal heroes he’d had the chance to interview in his career in journalism. I’ve had some of those — such as my friend Jack Van Loan. But on this day I think of one I DIDN’T interview, because I wouldn’t let myself bother him. I didn’t feel I had the right to.

Over the last few years I had occasion to visit central Pennsylvania multiple times, while my daughter was attending a ballet school up there. Almost every time I went there, I thought about going over to Hershey to try to talk to Dick Winters, the legendary commander of Easy Company of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment in the 101st Airborne Division during World War II. He was the leader — one of several leaders, but the one everyone remembers as the best — of the company immortalized in Stephen Ambrose’s book Band of Brothers, and the HBO series of the same name (the best series ever made for television).

But I never did. As much as I wanted just to meet him, to shake his hand once, I never did. And there’s a reason for that. A little while ago, I was reminded of that reason. The History Channel showed a special about D-Day, and one of the narrators was Winters, speaking on camera about 60 years after the events. He spoke in that calm, understated way he’s always had about his heroics that day — he should have received the Medal of Honor for taking out those 105mm pieces aimed at Utah Beach, but an arbitrary cap of one per division had been place on them, so he “only” received the Distinguished Service Cross.

Then, he got a little choked up about what he did that night, having been up for two days, and fighting since midnight. He got down on his knees and thanked God for getting him through that day. Then he promised that, if only he could get home again, he would find a quiet place to live, and live out the rest of his life in peace.

I figure a guy who’s done what he did — that day and during the months after, through the fighting around Bastogne and beyond into Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest itself — deserved to get his wish. He should be left in peace, and not bothered by me or anyone else.

So I’ve never tried to interview him.

(The video above and below is the televised dramatization of the action at Brecourt Manor for which Winters received the DSC. I was struck by how well the actor Damien Lewis captured a quality that Ambrose had described in his book. Winters had the rare ability to stay cool under fire, and more importantly to analyze the situation instantaneously and know exactly what to do in the given situation, and convey it to his men. Nobody who hasn’t been in those circumstances knows how he would react — neither did Winters, before this day — but everyone hopes he would perform exactly the way then-Lt. Winters did.)

Camouflage skills, evasion skills … you know, SKILLS! GAH!

Just now, having recently stumbled across Burl Burlingame from my high school class, I wondered to him what happened to the rest of us. There were 600 of us, after all — a whole battalion (being military brats, many of us, we think in those terms). A whole battalion doesn’t just disappear like that. Not normally.

Burl stoically, philosophically, just said, “Military kids — they scatter to the winds.”

But I wasn’t satisfied, so I said:

It’s like we all went through some sort of Special Forces training so we know how to go to ground, blend, and disappear.
We could make a fortune marketing this skill to terrorists. Not that we would, of course. That would be wrong. I’m almost certain of that. Of course, if you got laid off a couple of months back, could people really blame you if… No, it would be wrong.
Anyway, it’s a rare skill, and one that Napoleon Dynamite would probably envy.

I’ve often wondered at this. Once or twice, I’ve run across people. Back in the mid-70s, Jeff Boyle popped up in Middle Tennessee, and we saw each other a few times. Then Steve Clark emerged running for one of those new gerrymandered GOP congressional seats in Texas that caused such a stir awhile back — then, after dropping out, disappeared like magic.

The thing is, if I found these people, we wouldn’t have much to talk about. Our lives have taken very different paths (Burl’s comes closer than most, his being a newspaperman). And we didn’t know each other that long. If we were suddenly brought face-to-face, the conversation would probably get pretty awkward after about five minutes, and we’d be looking for excuses to get away — and fade into the landscape again. I’m sure I would; I’m not the most sociable creature anyway.

But I do wonder about it sometimes. Although it’s been this way my whole life, I recognize that, compared to most people, it’s weird.

What kind of flowers are these in my yard?

flowers1

As you may or may not know, I’m not a work-in-the-yard kind of guy. I’m not one of those guys who gets pleasure, or even relaxation, from mowing the yard, trimming the azaleas, raking the blasted pinestraw, sodding the bald spots, washing the car, rearranging the garage, repairing the steps to the back porch, and on and on and on and…

Hold on, and let me breathe through a paper bag for a moment…

I’m kidding here, but only a little. The truth is, I feel guilty about the fact that I go months and months without doing anything in the yard. Which is not good when you have almost an acre of land in a well-kept neighborhood, and a house built in the mid-70s. We started paying someone to do the yard a couple of years back — in fact, I sold my riding John Deere to the yard man for $400 and a couple of months free yard care — after I had to go on prednisone for six weeks after my last time stirring up great clouds of dust in the yard, I mean, cutting the grass.

But mostly with me, it’s not a health thing. It’s an aversion, and I know it’s a disappointment to my poor wife.

Anyway, though, I actually DID some things in the yard today. I actually nailed down some steps that were loose on the aforesaid back porch — which led to a great excuse to run to Lowe’s when I ran out of 16d nails. And then, a crew of men came to the door saying that they’d sprig the bald spots on our lawn with some centipede leftover from a job down the street, charging just for the labor, because otherwise the grass would die anyway. So we agreed to that.

This led to another trip to Lowe’s (the best part of working in the yard, especially if I can linger a bit in the tool section; I may hate actually working with tools, but I love looking at new ones) to get a Y-valve for my garden hoses so I could water two areas of the yard at once when the guys were done sprigging it.

Anyway, bottom line — when I was done moving the hoses a few minutes ago, on my way in, I noticed this plant in bloom. I had flowers2never seen it before. Now with me, it could have been there forever. My wife might have been slaving over it for years, because she actually enjoys working in the yard (she’s a sunshine person; I sometimes wonder where she got those genes, since she’s Irish).

But not even she knew what it was. All she knew was that it was beautiful.

Apparently, it’s a volunteer. Anyway, I felt smart for asking what it was, since she didn’t even know. For once, not knowing about something in our yard was not a faux pas on my part.

Do y’all know what it is? Looks kind of like a climatis (is that how you spell it?) — I’ve bought some of those for her before, and these flowers look kind of like that. Vaguely. But that’s a climbing plant, and this is bush-like. So what’s the verdict?

Sanford’s endorsement of Nikki

Somehow I had missed this.

I got a tweet from Nikki Haley today, and it linked to her Web site, which I was finally able to call up (I could never get if before, for some reason). Anyway, I saw that she had posted something on May 15 quoting Mark Sanford as follows:

Nikki Haley is a true conservative and one of our state’s leading voices for fiscal responsibility and government reform. It’s too early to endorse anyone, but I would say Nikki Haley would make a terrific and inspiring choice as governor, and she’s a great addition to the field of candidates.

In other words, It’s too early to endorse anyone… but he just did.

Or did I miss it, and he’s made similar statements gushing about Gresham Barrett or Henry McMaster or whomever?

And there’s no mistaking the fact that Mark Sanford did indeed say that. It’s got his odd, signature “I would say…” verbal tick and everything. (About the fifth time he says that in a speech, I always want to say, Well then why don’t you go ahead and SAY it!?!?)

Anyway, as y’all know, I like Nikki. And as you also know, I think the last thing the state of South Carolina needs in 2010 is an official Mark Sanford wannabe candidate (what this election needs to be about, more than anything else, is moving beyond the dead loss of the Sanford years).

But it looks like we’ve got us one.

Leave your comments on the ruling HERE

Sorry I’ve been out of pocket today — very busy, lots of meetings.

Ironically, late this afternoon I was in one with Chris Myers, and remarked to her that I was eager to see what her sister (Jean Toal) and company came up with. Neither of us knew that the ruling had been out for more than an hour at that point.

Anyway, all I had time for when I heard was a little bit of “I told ya” boasting on Twitter:

Unanimous, of course: 5-0, as I predicted. Since the outcome was so inevitable, the only thing to prognosticate about was the point spread.

And I don’t have time for much more now, even. But don’t let that stop YOU. Leave your comments about the stimulus drama right here…

So should I do the “Hitler” gig, or what?

My agent is out of town at the moment, so I thought I’d ask y’all what I should do with this offer that came in the mail:

This September, Workshop Theatre will present its opening show of the season, the hilarious musical by Mel Brooks, “The Producers”…

… At the end of the first act, there are auditions for the individual who will play Hitler. We thought it would be fun to invite well-known members of the community to make cameo appearances during the run of the show as individuals auditioning for that part. It is not necessary that you be able to sing or even carry a tune.

We invite you to have your fifteen minutes [maybe five?] of fame on Workshop Theatre’s stage by making an appearance in “The Producers.”

It’s tempting, especially since I saw that video that Burl shared, which I feel gave me new insight into the character of der Führer. But I can sort of hear my agent’s voice saying, “Mark my words: Do it, and you’ll be typecast.”

But I’m leaning toward taking it. Directors aren’t exactly beating down my door, and so far, my calendar’s pretty open in September and October.

Further live blogging on hearing

I feel bad that I keep posting real-time stuff on the Supreme Court hearing on Twitter (and therefore automatically on Facebook), and I’m therefore neglecting the blog. So here are some of my recent observations, for your perusal:

Who’s addressing the court now? I was distracted, my video image is dim, and I don’t recognize the voice…18 minutes ago from web

I’m sure the gentleman is quite distinguished, but it would seem the celeb mouthpieces are all on the other side…14 minutes ago from web

Clever young fellow speaking now refers to gov’s “supreme executive authority,” to which I say, “Well, how’d you become king, then?”…9 minutes ago from web

“Really, doesn’t it boil down to a … policy disagreement?” asks Jean. Indeed. So question is, can Legislature make laws?5 minutes ago from web

Jean: “He lost a legitimately engaged-in debate under the constitution, and the rest is purely ministerial.” Amen. Cue the curtain.3 minutes ago from web

Maybe it’s not deep, but I thought I’d give y’all this chance to participate…

Today’s live, breaking haiku

From the live streaming of the Supreme Court arguments:

Hearing Jean and Dick,
I have to wonder: Why can’t
smart folk run our state?

Of course, you could argue that the über-smart Jean Toal does at least participate in running our state, as Chief Justice. But you know what I mean — why can’t such obviously smart people be involved in the day-to-day governance, both making our laws and executing them?

The ever-clever Dick Harpootlian, for his part, DID run for high state office — and lost to Charlie Condon — then consoled himself by making huge amounts of money in the private sector. Which, ironically, should make HIM the darling of the anti-government GOP right, instead of the perpetual public employee Mark Sanford.

Jean was a marvel in the Legislature as well, as I recall. But once one is on the court, we groundlings seldom get exposed in a direct way to her erudition. So this is enjoyable.

I’m going to try to keep this point in mind as we search for a new governor.

Henry’s ‘profile in courage’

This may sound odd, but I have to force myself to get into the habit of reading the editorial page of The State each morning.

See, I never did it when I was the editor, since I had read it closely the day before. So it’s just not part of my morning newspaper-reading ritual. I go front page (only reading the stories that jump out as important in terms of being an informed citizen, which is often just one or two items on the page), the jumps from that page, metro front and the jumps of the stories I read there, the business front and (during the legislative session), page B3. And, if I’m not also reading the Wall Street Journal or some other paper, I’ll look at A4 for a national-international overview.

I’ll “read the paper” in accord with my habits, and never even glance at the opinion pages. Which is not good. I don’t mean to avoid it; it simply does not occur to me that I hadn’t read it unless something comes up to make me consciously realize it. And that’s awful, because I know how hard Warren and Cindi (and Randle and Claudia, but you don’t know them as well) are working in my absence.

For instance, I “read the paper” this morning, but did not see Cindi’s nice piece about what a principled guy Henry McMaster is. Finally, after it was brought to my attention a couple of times today, I went and read it. Sorry I missed it earlier. You should go read it now, if you’ve been similarly remiss.

Henry’s one of those gubernatorial candidates I had not written a profile of before I left the paper, since he had not declared. Still hasn’t. But when he does, I’ll write more about him on the blog. In the meantime, Cindi’s piece is a nice conversation-starter.

Henry’s been the sort of attorney general who makes you say you’re sorry — for not endorsing him when he ran. He has been SO much better than his predecessor (and so much more reasoned and professional than you might have expected the ex-party chairman — who used to trade silly partisan shots with Dick Harpootlian when they were opposite numbers — to be), that he is one of my two favorite people about whom I like to say “we were wrong” for not endorsing. The other is Lindsey Graham.

Henry and Lindsey, along with Bobby Harrell, were the South Carolinians who stuck with John McCain in the darkest hours of his campaign for the GOP nomination. That has something to do with why I respect them as I do. It’s not that I respect them for backing the right guy per se; it’s just that the qualities that caused them to choose McCain among the Republicans and stick with him are related to the traits that cause me to respect them as public servants.

But I digress. Of course, digressing is a large part of what a blog’s for, isn’t it?

With one shot, the split gets wider

Sunday, while I was traveling out of state without a laptop for the first time in years (leading me to Twitter more, via Blackberry, and blog not at all), I saw a note from a friend I used to work with in Wichita, saying she was “saddened but not shocked by the news out of wichita.”

This made me respond, “What happened? I’ve been traveling all weekend.” Someone else responded, “George Tiller, the doctor from Wichita, Kan., who performed late-term abortions, was shot to death at his church this morning.”

To which I didn’t respond at all. I just thought, “As if Roe hasn’t done enough damage in the way it’s torn America’s politics apart, now this.” I knew this incident was going to make it even harder for the pro-life (like me) and the pro-choice even to communicate. And if you doubt that, see what someone else responded to Cheryl’s Facebook update: “Why do ‘pro-lifers’ like to kill people?”

Sheesh. It was tough enough already.

The reflexive habits of thought are so polarized, that even if one tries to be fair and stick up for the other side, it tends to come out in a way that reflects the prejudices of your own side. For instance, Gary Karr writes that the L.A. Times, with which “I often disagree” he hastens to add, said something that made sense to him in a piece headlined “Dr. George Tiller’s assassination is no reason to suppress speech.” What the LAT is addressing here is the inevitable attempts by the “pro-choice” side to use this case as an excuse to suppress the other side, through such absurd measures as sending federal martials to guard abortion clinics from all those wicked pro-lifers (not an example LAT used, but it just happened to pop into my head, since that actually is happening).

Yet the very language the Times piece uses illustrates the cognitive divide:

The assassination of Dr. George Tiller, long targeted by extremists because he performed late-term abortions, is a reminder that fringe adherents of the “pro-life” movement are willing to desecrate the very value they claim to champion.

Even though the very next sentence reads…

But it distorts reality to insinuate that millions of Americans who oppose abortion condone such tactics.

… the mindset has already been communicated. By the mere use of a plural subject, “fringe adherents of the ‘pro-life’ movement,” the idea has been conveyed that there are a bunch of bloodthirsty killers over on that other side, waving guns about wildly, looking for their next victim — which could be you, dear reader! Never mind that the next sentence says they’re not ALL like that (there are some good ones, you know, as confirmed racists have always said), doubt has been cast upon the entire class.

Whereas this incident demonstrates nothing of the kind. It illustrates that one guy hated enough to kill one other guy. Period. This says nothing about classes of people. The individual is responsible for his actions.

This relates to the subject of “hate crimes,” one of those rare issues where I agree with libertarians. Punish the crime, say I, not the political beliefs of the criminal. We don’t do thoughtcrime in this country. And yet, of course, the pro-choice folks want very much to condemn, not only the shooter, but many who agree with him, of thoughtcrime. That’s why President Obama called this shooting “heinous.” If the killer had shot Tiller because he didn’t like his tie, would the president have called it “heinous?” I don’t think so, and neither do you. He was addressing the political implications of the act.

We all have our own ideas of what is “heinous.” I consider making a living from third-trimester abortions to be pretty heinous. Lots of people who are genuinely pro-“choice” — and I mean those who genuinely see how morally problematic abortion on demand is, but don’t want to impose those values on others, as opposed to those who are simply pro-abortion, seeing its availability as a positive social good — would at least on some level agree with me. Although they might use some milder word, such as “distasteful.”

But you see, I’m not allowed to say that now. If I say that now, I get howls of protest from the Other Side about how I’m “blaming the victim” or excusing the killer. Of course, I’d be doing nothing of the kind. The fact that Tiller made a living doing something heinous doesn’t mean he should be killed, much less shot down like a dog in a place of worship. And the person who did shoot him should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law (although not executed, since I AM pro-life).

My point is simply that “heinous” is, in the context of anything touching upon abortion, a word packed with political meaning that sets off all sorts of alarm bells.

Even under normal circumstances, I don’t like discussing abortion because such discussions inevitably produce more heat than light. I do it sometimes, but usually to discuss that very phenomenon of polarization, and I leave the subject behind as quickly as possible, preferring to get back to subjects where I might have a chance of changing someone’s mind.

With this shooting, I’ll be even more reluctant (see how it’s taken me two days to post this?). And I won’t even get into reminiscing about my days in Wichita, when this guy’s clinic was a few blocks from where I lived, and a constant source of controversy (this was in the mid-80s). What’s the point? Might as well leave it. Which is just the effect that folks who disagree with me hope this will have, of course, but what are you gonna do? A senseless act of violence has been perpetrated, and it will have its terrible effect on such lesser considerations as political discourse, at least for a time.

First news haiku: “Judge Joe sent it back”

Here at bradwarthen.com — always first with the burst in verse — we’re (note use of royal “we;” I got it from the governor) unveiling a new communication format today: the news haiku.

Twittering got me to thinking haiku, and therefore this was inevitable. I see it as a way to one-up the competition. Although I beat WIS with the news that Judge Joe Anderson had sent the stimulus lawsuits back to state court, I lost out slightly to thestate at Twitter. I thought, But I’ll bet they don’t have it in verse. And I was right.

So here’s my first breaking news haiku:

Mark sued to get feds
to override our state’s rights.
Judge Joe sent it back.

Yes, I know there are weaknesses in it from a literary standpoint — for instance, the “it” in the last line lacks a clear antecedent. For instance, it doesn’t work as a reference to “rights,” but rather to the issue itself. But I liked it better than “them.” And hey, cut me a break. I wrote this on Twitter while driving my truck through Shandon (I pulled over to type it, but didn’t turn off the truck). Therefore this opus should be judged by a different standard from the timeless masterpieces of haiku. It’s a whole new form.

In the future, someone will write an English thesis about this new form, which experts will variously call “Twitter haiku,” or “Twitter-ku,” or simply “news haiku,” which I prefer. That moment in my truck will be examined with the same care as that moment when the rude guy from Porlock interrupted Coleridge. Just watch…

If this is well received, I might start doing it daily. And if it’s not, I might do it anyway. Art will not be repressed!

Der Führer pans the new “Star Trek”

Saw this video spoof earlier in the week and meant to share it. Since I hadn’t posted anything all day, I might as well post it now.

Think of the creative energy it takes to produce something like that on YouTube, and the site is just full of stuff like that.

This was brought to my attention by my high school classmate Burl Burlingame, who blogs out of Honolulu. He works for the Star-Bulletin. Aside from the fact that he still has his job, he and I have been on parallel tracks lately. He also just fell into the twin traps of Facebook and Twitter, so we have commiserated this week.

Burl and I graduated from Radford High School in 1971. You may recall I wrote something about those days in my column last fall, “Barack Like Me.” Burl got into journalism earlier than I did; he published an underground newspaper at Radford. The one thing I remember clearly about that was that he used to refer to our principal, who was virtually never seen by the students (I never saw him that whole senior year, although I knew people who said they’d met him), as “the Ghost Who Walks.” The principal’s name was Yamamoto. Not the admiral who planned the Pearl Harbor attack; another Yamamoto. (Actually, come to think of it, he could have been the admiral for all we knew, since we never saw him.)

It’s particularly meaningful to me that Burl posted something making fun of Nazis. You may have noted that the lede story in The State today was about a high school prank. A particularly nasty, destructive high school prank, but still a senior prank. Our senior prank at Radford back in 71 was less destructive, but more creative.

About a dozen of us staged a revolution to take over the school. Or rather, in guerrilla fashion, we took over a classroom at a time and quickly moved on. We wielded water guns, and wore rather elaborate paramilitary costumes. Most of us had recently seen Woody Allen’s “Bananas,” and were largely inspired by that, only we were far more international. Our leader was Steve Clark, who was dressed in full military regalia as “El Presidente.” He spoke only Spanish in keeping with his character, which no one but I understood, so I translated all of his commands, being second in command. My character’s back story was that I had been a top officer in the Israeli Defense Force but had been drummed out for something or other and had turned mercenary. Overly elaborate, perhaps, and the nuances were probably not obvious to our audience, but we didn’t care.

Burl’s character was an unrepentant old Nazi whom we had found hiding in Argentina, loudly fulminating at everyone in a vaudeville German accent. He would particularly abuse me, since my character was supposed to be Jewish, and of course I would take offense, and our comrades would have to separate us to prevent violence. Yes, it was that politically incorrect. We wanted to be edgy, and thought ethnic humor, even ethnic humor that dark, to be funny, a la Mel Brooks with “Springtime for Hitler.” We were kids, and stupid. Or rather, a little too “clever” for our own good.

We were most successful in taking over Mrs. Burchard’s English class. Mrs. Burchard was my favorite teacher ever. You can see a picture of her on that same page that I linked to about Mr. Yamamoto, on the virtual yearbook that (I think) Burl put together a few years back. (Cute, isn’t she?) She was a real sport, and played along. When some of her underclassmen students failed to give El Presidente proper respect (as we defined it), we lined them up against the blackboard and hosed them down with the water guns — but only after Mrs. Burchard had fallen on her knees before us to beg us to spare them. She was awesome.

The revolution ended badly, as most do. Some juniors mounted a counterattack on our position, and I caught a water balloon in the groin. C’est la guerre.