Monthly Archives: July 2010

Just ran into Nikki Haley. She looked well…

I ran into Nikki Haley at lunch today, at M Vista on Lady Street. She was there with Rob Godfrey and Tim Pearson of her campaign.

I think it was the first time I’d conversed with her since that time at Starbucks on Gervais shortly after the 2008 election. That day, she had a young woman in tow whom she introduced as being “with my campaign,” and I thought that was odd. The ’08 campaign was over, and it was early for a House candidate to be having meetings about the next campaign. I was probably the most shocked guy in South Carolina when it came out a month or two later than she was running for governor — it just seemed so totally unlikely that she would see herself as ready for that. It was the beginning of me seriously wondering about Nikki…

Anyway, Nikki was pleasant and charming as always when I went up to chat with her today. I don’t think Rob or Tim were all that thrilled to see me, though. They certainly didn’t smile, but then we guys don’t, do we, under such circumstances? Nikki did, but then ladies do.

We didn’t talk shop. She did the standard thing polite people do when other topics are awkward — she asked after my family. Then she asked how I was doing, and I told her that I was with ADCO and having lunch with my colleagues over there, and gave her one of my ADCO cards. She said I was probably glad not to be at the paper any more, and I thought that was perceptive of her. Or a good guess. Maybe it was just an understated slap at the paper; I don’t know. So I asked how she was holding up, and she said great, and I said something about how things had probably gotten a lot less crazy in the last few weeks, and she agreed. And then she asked me again about my family. So I began to dismiss myself, thinking I should wish her all the best but wanting to be honest, and ended up saying something totally inane like, “Well, as long as you’re enjoying yourself; that’s the thing…”

My ADCO friends thought it odd that I had gone to speak with her. Maybe they thought I was showing off, as in That Brad! He’ll just do any crazy thing! But that’s because they only know about Nikki and me through what I’ve written on the blog lately. They don’t realize that I’ve known her for years, and we’ve always had a very cordial relationship. I’ve happily endorsed her twice — in 2004 and 2008 (those were the only elections in which she had opposition), and always enjoyed chatting with her. I always had good hopes for her — before she embarked on her quest to become the new Mark Sanford and darling of the Tea Party, South Carolina’s answer to Sarah Palin. Which is deeply unfortunate.

So it was nice to see her, even though there was that slight awkwardness.

Virtual Front Page, Thursday, July 29, 2010

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Yeah, I’ve been kinda slack on posting today, because I’m busy with ADCO stuff. But here’s your news roundup, so quit yer whinin’…

Gates calls in FBI on Wikileaks (BBC) — Quoth the SecDef, “The battlefield consequences of the release of these documents are potentially severe and dangerous for our troops, our allies and Afghan partners, and may well damage our relationships and reputation in that key part of the world.”
Evidence Ties Manning to Afghan Leaks (WSJ) — Kind of hard to believe that a Pfc. was in a position to do this. Especially one who looks like a 12-year-old Howdy Doody.
Citi to Pay $75 Million in SEC Pact (WSJ) — This is “to settle regulatory charges that it failed to disclose $40 billion in subprime exposure to investors in the second and third quarters of 2007.”
Shaw/McEntire do not make first cut for new jet (thestate.com) — Dang. F-35s in the Midlands was going to be awesome. But we still might get them eventually. We just won’t be the first kids on the block to have ’em.
Graham: No citizenship for illegal immigrants’ offspring (thestate.com) — Boy, would I like to hear some elaboration on this one, particularly his use of the language, “They come here to drop a child,” which sounds to me to be just a step above the kind of dehumanizing remark we’d expect from Andre Bauer talking about free-lunch kids. Knowing Lindsey, he can probably explain it, but I’d like to hear that explanation.
Rangel faces 13 charges of ethical violations (WashPost) — This sets the stage for an historic trial.

There is nothing wrong with this cartoon

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In fact, it’s quite awesome.

I missed it when Robert put it out week before last, and I’m glad it’s been called to my attention now. It’s hard to imagine a more pointed evocation of exactly what’s wrong with Nikki Haley. Or one of the things wrong with her, anyway.

What might be harder to imagine, to a sensible person who understands the concepts of satire and the idioms of topical visual communication, is the controversy it engendered.

It wasn’t all that much, of course. Just intimations that he was essentially calling her a “raghead.” Or check this one out, helpfully headlined, “Reminder: Nikki Haley is a Secret Muslim Whore.” An excerpt:

Now, just a month after Haley’s victory, one Republican cartoonist has emerged from his gutterto dredge up the same vile race-baiting and sexism that failed to derail her primary campaign. In a cartoon published Tuesday (pictured above), Robert Ariail portrays the Indian-American gubernatorial candidate as a bikini-clad pageant queen in the first panel and a niqab-clad Muslim in the second. The cartoon explicitly echos previous race-, religion-, and gender-based attacks against Haley, a practicing Methodist raised in the Sikh tradition by her immigrant parents.

Ariail depicts Haley as a radical Muslim posing as an all American pageant contestant so she can put one over on voters. He claims that’s totally different than when State Senator Jake Knotts described Haley as “a raghead that’s ashamed of her religion trying to hide it behind being Methodist for political reasons.”

All utter … let me think of a nice word… nonsense. An ironic side note: Robert’s used to getting this kind of … nonsense… from the left, so at least this is a change of pace, reflecting the extreme right’s recent and sudden discovery of the power of Identity Politics.

Silly as it all was, Robert was nevertheless asked by a local TV station to account for himself, which he dutifully did:

The cartoon on Ms. Haley is, I think, pretty straight forward: It contrasts her campaign’s message of open government and transparency ( which I support ) with her recent closed-door meetings, her refusal to release House e-mail accounts and her explanations on consulting fees and what she did to earn them. The cartoon is neither salacious nor an ethnic or religious slur. I came up with the idea of her as “Miss Transparency” wearing the title sash and bikini and chose the burqa as the best clothing metaphor representing the opposite of transparency. The burqa is a visual metaphore I’ve used before to make similar points. It is not about Ms. Haley’s religion- after all, she was a Sikh, not a Muslim, before she became a Christian. Anyone who claims this cartoon is an ethnic or religious slur is deliberately misconstruing its simple, issue-oriented meaning.

Robert Ariail
robertariail.com

I appreciate Robert’s extreme patience in providing this “hold-you-by-the-hand-and-explain-the-obvious” explication, but it almost ruins the cartoon for me that he had to. Explanation is death to comedy. And if there must be an explanation, I prefer the one that Robert suggested to me when I told him this morning I might post something about the foolishness that some chose to read into the cartoon. He suggested that I tell y’all, “Robert’s not thinking about s__t like that” when he does his thing. Please excuse his technical newspaperman jargon.

My message is, this is everything a cartoon should be: It makes an excellent political point that needs to be made, and it provides a laugh along the way. Good job, Robert.

Oh, one other thing. Today Wes Wolfe raised a new question about the cartoon (which is what got me to thinking about it): After saying that “After discussing the piece with friends, we decided that was perhaps not the best way to go” (which suggests to me he might need some new friends), Wes suggested that the cartoon may have had something to do with Robert parting company with The Nerve, the S.C. Policy Council Web pub Robert had done some cartoons for recently — since, you know, Nikki’s their kind of gal.

Well, that seemed unlikely to me, and Robert confirms: When you go back to work for the MSM, you can’t still be associated with what is essentially a propaganda entity. It’s just not a good fit. So he chose, wisely, the Spartanburg paper over The Nerve — and those folks understood, and they parted on good terms — as Wes notes. And now Robert’s back doing what he ought to do.

Finally, a bonus: Robert’s gotten into hot water over burqas before, ALSO over a hilarious, pointed cartoon that had absolutely nothing wrong with it. It was the one making fun over the controversy in the Legislature over young female pages being dressed too provocatively. The hoo-hah over that one at least led to something good — a conversation between me and Robert about how everybody seemed to be after him with the torches and pitchforks, which in turn led to the cover of his last book.

Anyway, for your enjoyment, a look at that earlier “offensive” cartoon:

Virtual Front Page, Wednesday, July 28, 2010

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Sorry I didn’t have you one of these yesterday. I’m way busy on some ADCO deadlines. But here you go:

Federal judge blocks key parts of Arizona immigration law (WashPost) — What? You haven’t heard about this? Then you’re obviously not a Republican politician, because they have been in apoplexy over this all day. (Of course, they blame it on Nancy Pelosi — the way Dems used to blame everything on Bush).
Gap In Federal Cocaine Sentences To Narrow (NPR) — I’ve seen releases from both Jim Clyburn and Lindsey Graham praising this, so it’s gotta be good, right?
No Survivors in Pakistan Plane Crash (NYT) — There were 152 people aboard.
Dems try to tie all GOP to Tea Party fringe (WashPost) — Typical partisan ploy, but then, the Republicans pandering to this element are begging for it.
In Many CPRs, Skip the Mouth-to-Mouth (WSJ) — This is going to make the procedure SO much more palatable to many bystanders — although less so if the victim is Christina Hendricks or Daisy Fuentes. Or Laura Linney. Or… let’s move on…
Study: We’re too lazy here in SC (The State) — Just to give you a talker. The most disturbing thing about this report? It’s from Businessweek.com. SC really doesn’t need any more raps on our rep from business people nationwide. And let me ask y’all: How do you watch that much TV. But hey: “We’re No. 1! We’re No. 1!”

From Honest Abe to Opulence: awesome adverts

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First, unlike more typical folks here in the eighth-laziest state in the nation, I don’t watch all that much TV. When I turn the box on, it’s usually to watch a DVD (0ften of TV shows, but is that the same as “watching TV”? I don’t know). And when I actually do surf the broadcast and cable offerings, I have a very itchy finger on the channel-changer, and commercials are occasions for launching another circuit of my options.

So when I actually see an ad that makes me stop and watch it, and want to watch it again, and call family members in to see it — that’s a rare occasion.

There are currently two such ads on the tube these days. One is above, and the other below. Hats off to the ad geniuses who made these; every detail is perfect. I particularly love the conceit of making the Abe Lincoln clip old and scratchy, sort of stretching the facts of history to pretend moving pictures were available in the days of Matthew Brady.

But the Russian mafioso and his miniature giraffe — that’s also to bust a gut over. Who dreamed that up? Who thought of the giraffe, or his goofy paroxyms of joy as he smooches it? It’s so riveting you almost don’t notice the babes next to him, which is amazing.

So hats off to the agencies that I THINK are responsible for these gems: the Martin Agency for the Honest Abe (those guys are awesome — whoever heard of so many totally separate, memorable, highly creative campaigns going on for one client at the same time? And they keep it up year after year), and Grey Advertising for the “Opulence — I has it” advert.

Good stuff, folks. As an aspiring ad man, I will try to emulate your brilliance.

Benjamin joins Ogletree, Deakins law firm

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Just got this release…

OK, never mind! I was going to copy a couple of grafs out of the release here for your perusal, but it’s a blasted PDF file, and you know how sometimes you can copy text out of a PDF and sometimes you can’t? This is one of those where you can’t, which is another occasion for me to say, as a blogger who values convenience and accessibility in information online…

I FRICKIN’ HATE PDFS, AND DON’T KNOW WHY PEOPLE INSIST UPON USING THEM!!!

OK, that’s out of my system.

Anyway, the release, which you can find here, says that Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, one of the nation’s largest labor and employment law firms, has hired Steve Benjamin effective Aug. 1.

I guess it’s kind of hard keeping a small law firm (Benjamin Law Firm, LLC) going when you’re distracted by the all-consuming “part-time” job of being mayor. Maybe someday we’ll get all grown up and have a full-time mayor in this town, and then the mayor won’t have to make arrangements on the side to feed his family. In the meantime, this kind of move makes sense: Going with a large firm that can afford to give you lots of leeway on your time…

Mike Fitts’ piece on Sheheen and the Chamber

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The lead story in the latest print version of Columbia Regional Business Report was about the S.C. Chamber of Commerce’s historic decision to endorse a candidate in the governor’s race — specifically, Vincent Sheheen. I can’t link you to the full piece because for some reason it’s not online. But Mike Fitts shot me a copy of his piece to save me all that nasty typing as I give you this excerpt:

Chamber weighs in on governor’s race

Executive summary: Frustration with Gov. Mark Sanford has helped prod the S.C. Chamber of Commerce to give its first gubernatorial endorsement, to Vincent Sheheen.

By Mike Fitts
[email protected]

There was one overriding factor that prompted the S.C. Chamber of Commerce to make an endorsement for the governor’s race for the first time: the gridlock around the current occupant.

A large majority of the members of the chamber’s board, which is made up of more than 50 business executives from across the state, thought that it was time for the chamber to do its first endorsement in a statewide race. The view that Gov. Mark Sanford had failed to get things done for eight years was a major driver in that decision, said chamber CEO Otis Rawl. The business community “didn’t make much headway” with the governor’s office during his term, he said.

“Our board didn’t want that to happen again,” Rawl said…

Here are some things that interested me about the piece:

The fact that it was for the first time. That hadn’t fully registered on me. It seems to me a reflection of business leaders’ realization that sitting on the sidelines has led to stagnation in South Carolina’s political leadership. Rather than let another do-nothing governor get elected on the base of ideological slogans, they wanted to act to get some real leadership.
Although I’d read it before, I was struck again by the vapid immaturity of the Haley campaign’s response: Haley spokesman Rob Godfrey had said to the AP: “The state chamber is a big fan of bailouts and corporate welfare, so it’s no surprise that they would prefer a liberal like Vincent Sheheen over a conservative like Nikki Haley.” I wonder if Nikki opened her secret meetings with business people with those words. If she truly believed in transparency, if she really wanted to let those people know what her campaign stood for, she would have. A response like this confirms that the Chamber chose wisely.
A factor in the Chamber’s decision was that Sheheen, rather than resorting to ideological slogans, had more specifics about what he’d do to build our state’s economy: “Sheheen offered better answers on keeping the state’s ports successful, building up the state’s infrastructure and improving the state’s workforce, which is vital to keeping such employers and Boeing and BMW happy, Rawl said.”
Sheheen also made the case — and this should truly be the measure of this campaign — that unlike Haley, who has built her brief career on fighting against the Legislature, he could actually get his plans acted upon: “It’s OK to rail against the good ol’ boy system, Rawl said, but a governor has to be able to get legislation thru the General Assembly.”
Then there’s the execrable Act 388, which distorted our whole tax system — putting an excessive burden on businesses and renters, and shifting the load for supporting public schools onto the volatile, exemption-ridden sales tax — for the sake of the subset of homeowners who lived in high-growth areas. Vincent did what he could to stop it; Nikki voted for it.
The vote of confidence by the Chamber’s board was huge and dramatic. They didn’t even wait for the GOP runoff to be over before 75 percent of them voted to support Sheheen in the fall. As for the broader membership, there has been “scattered pushback” from some individual members, but nothing to make the Chamber leadership (which has not been given to taking such risks) sweat. Which is truly remarkable with such a broad, conservative membership as the Chamber’s.

Finally, the thing that got the Chamber to take this unprecedented step was the fact that this election is so pivotal, a fact that I started writing about before I left the paper (which is normally LONG before I would focus on something like this). South Carolina simply cannot continue to drift while our elected leaders play ideological footsie (when you go to that link, scroll down to “Sanford on Fox 46 times”) with national media. We have to get serious. That’s a conclusion that the Chamber has reached as well.

Robert Ariail’s new gig!

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I know y’all will all join me in congratulating the Spartanburg Herald-Journal for having the good sense to hire my great friend Robert Ariail.

As Robert says, “I think the Herald-Journal is showing a lot of faith in the future of newspapers and of editorial cartooning.” Indeed. At a time when papers are jettisoning cartoonists left and right — in fact, ALL of my cartoonist friends have been laid off over the last couple of years — this is a tremendous expression of right-thinking. It shows Spartanburg understands what newspapers are about.

Unlike me, who after 35 years of newspapering have moved on to do new things, Robert never lost faith in his desire to keep doing what he does best — what he indeed does better than practically anyone else in the world.

This is very good news.

Richland Dems can’t count either!

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Ya gotta love it.

Just now, I received a fund-raising message from Richland County Democrats that boldly asserts in the headline:

Get Active! 99 Days to the Election!

OK, so that means Richland Democrats agree with Nikki Haley, but disagree with Rob Miller, as to how many days there are until the election. Right?

Yo! Boyd! Get a calendar!

So which was it — 99 days or 100?

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Meant to raise this question yesterday, which would have been less confusing, but when it occurred to me last night I didn’t feel like breaking the laptop back out, so here goes.

On Monday, I received a release from the Rob Miller campaign headlined “99 Reasons,” and beginning this way: “It seems far away now, but we are just 99 days from ending Joe Wilson’s congressional career.”

OK. Aside from that sounding excessively optimistic, it wasn’t particularly interesting. So I set it aside.

Then I got a release from the Nikki Haley campaign headlined “100 days,” and saying essentially that that was how many days were left. How she arrived at the number is further confused by this boldfaced passage:

Yesterday marked a significant milestone in our campaign — there are only 100 days left until Election Day.

So does that mean they were counting from “yesterday,” which would have been Sunday? If so, why does the sentence go on to use the present tense, saying “there ARE only 100 days left”? One is left to conclude that the Haley campaign was saying there were still 100 days left.

Was she counting Monday itself, as a way of asserting her wish not to waste a day? Perhaps. But I’m left with the impression, once again, that these Democrats and Republicans can’t agree on anything. But I set that aside, too.

Then last night, just before 10 p.m., I got a release from Karen Floyd headlined “99 Days of Bad Ideas” and just chock full of the sort of ranting nonsense you expect from parties:

We’re going to hear from liberals like Joe Biden, who just stopped in to raise money for John Spratt, saying that we should have spent even more “stimulus” money. We’re going to hear fromCongressman Spratt himself that the budget he wrote is actually fiscally responsible, although we all know it increases our debts and puts our nation at risk. We’re going to hear from Rob Millerthat it’s okay for candidates to accept millions of dollars from liberal Washington special interest groups. We’re going to hear from Vincent Sheheen that English doesn’t have to be our state’s official language and that tax cuts won’t create jobs and grow our economy. We’ll hear from Matt Richardson (he’s the liberal running for Attorney General, in case you’ve never heard of him) that we don’t need to stand up to the federal government when they step on our rights every other day. We’ll even hear from their US Senate candidate who believes action figures of himself will fix our high unemployment rate.

Why don’t they just save themselves trouble by typing “liberal” once and then just pasting it into the text over and over? “Liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal…” It would make as much sense, and be just as relevant. They could italicize some of them and boldface others, for variety. “Liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal…” If they don’t think variety is ideological heresy, of course.

And where on Earth did they get the thing about English as an official language? What does that have to do with anything? And is that really the best they can come up with as an indictment of Vincent?

Anyway, the thing that interested me was that Karen Floyd was siding with Rob Miller on the number of days left. Just goes to show that there is room for finding common ground across the partisan divide. And it demonstrates how out of touch Nikki is, even with her own party.

Yes, that last sentence would have had a smiley face after it if I did smiley faces.

Smart money bets — but not much — on Sanford

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The odds may be long, but those who set them give Mark Sanford a chance at a political future — and not only that, but a shot at the unthinkable:

Oddsmakers: Mark Sanford more likely to become president than McCain, Paul

Posted at 12:10 PM by Jeff Shaw

Beano Cook has mused that if you want to predict the future, go by what the oddsmakers in Vegas are saying. “Those guys live in nicer houses than we do,” I’d hear Beano say often on my local sports radio shows.

Strictly for research purposes, I took a gander at what the online wagering site BetUs is saying about the 2012 presidential election. The site is offering futures bets on the outcome of Nov. 2012’s balloting, and while we’re a long way from that day, what the bookies think the most likely outcomes are is intriguing. Here’s a screen shot of the chart in case you don’t want to visit a gambling website.

For those of you unfamiliar with oddsmaking, a minus sign indicates a bet that will pay off at less than even money. Currently, Barack Obama is at -130, meaning he’s the favorite. And a pretty major favorite, too: betting $100 on Obama would only return $77.

The fact that a sitting president would be a big favorite at this stage of the game isn’t surprising. Some of the other results, though, merit an eyebrow raise or two….

* Mark Sanford is in the mix! Yes, he’s a longshot at +4000, but that puts him ahead of previous nominee John McCain and Internet favorite Ron Paul (both at +5000). Oddsmakers must feel like Americans love a good soulmate story — or haven’t tired of Appalachian Trail jokes.

Combine that with the disgusting talk of him opposing Lindsey Graham, and you have a dark vision of our future that might have caused Orwell to shudder.

To think of cold-bloodedly forecasting such a thing. If I ever doubted that gamblers were amoral, this should settle it.

Virtual Front Page, Monday, July 26, 2010

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Here’s what we have at this hour:

Leaks Add to Pressure on White House Over Strategy (NYT) — Pentagon Papers Redux.
Pentagon Eyes Accused Analyst Over WikiLeaks Data (WSJ) — Well, he’s certainly an unlikely-looking spy. He looks like Howdy Doody at age 12.
EU tightens sanctions over Iran nuclear programme (BBC) — Meanwhile, outside of the inward-looking US of A…
Chief executive of BP expected to step down (WashPost) — At which point, finally, he’ll get his life back.
A Futurist 40 Years Later: Possibilities, Not Predictions (NPR) — Remember Alvin Toffler? He should have mentioned, “And in the future, I will get really old-looking…”
Early bar closing inching closer to approval (The State) — Just to get something local on the page. What do y’all think of this? I’m for it. But you know I would be, right? My critics would call it a function of the Nanny State. I call it the Daddy State. It reflects my viewpoint as a longtime Dad. These kids don’t need to be out so frickin’ late.

Problems with “Mad Men” season opener

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Well, I don’t really know how to put my finger on it; I just found it lacking. As my wife said, if this is an indication of what the new season is going to be like, we’ve waited a long time for nothing good.

A writer for Advertising Age is much more specific in his objections:

I felt George’s pain in the opening scene of Sunday’s episode, however. Don Draper is at lunch with an Ad Age reporter, and our guy’s first line is: “Who is Don Draper?” Don doesn’t know what to say, so he asks how other people responded to such a question. “They say something cute,” our reporter says. “One creative director said he was a lion tamer.”

The Ad Age reporter is taking notes for his story in shorthand. He asks about a Glo-Coat ad that caused “a bit of a squeal,” then says he has enough for his story. “It’s only going to be a few hundred words. The picture may be bigger than the article.” At that point other members of the agency show up, including Roger Sterling, and when the reporter gets up to leave he turns his leg entirely around and explains he lost his real limb in Korea. When he departs, Sterling quips, “They’re so cheap they can’t afford a whole reporter.”

What’s wrong with this picture? No. 1, we never did interviews over lunch; No. 2, we didn’t take notes in shorthand; No. 3 we didn’t ask cute-ass questions; and No. 4, our pictures were never bigger than our stories.

OK, dude; lighten up. It’s a TV show. But yeah, it was lacking.

There was one part I liked. It was when Don Draper makes a pitch to unappreciative clients (or potential clients; I doubt that anything had been signed), and then gets so ticked off at them he storms out of the meeting. Then, when one of his associates follows him out to say something about trying to salvage the situation, Don essentially says Hell, no and marches back in to summarily throw the philistines out of the office.

My wife sort of went, “Whoa!” at such extreme behavior. Which was my cue to say, “That’s essentially what I do at ADCO. That’s my role.”

I can get away with stuff like that now. When I was at the paper, she could see what I did every morning. Now, I can be more mysterious.

Soldier? You mean “sailor,” right?

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Don’t suppose we should expect Slate to know anything this basic, but when it said:

Manhunt Is Underway for Captured U.S. Soldier in Afghanistan

Western forces have launched a massive search for two U.S. Navy personnel who went missing Friday….

… it really meant, “U.S. sailor.”

Yeah, OK, technically, the SEALs are kinda like soldiers — supersoldiers, but soldiers. And nowadays even sailors and airmen are being trained in basic infantry tactics so they can do convoy guard duty because of the lack of regular dogfaces in our all-volunteer Army. And obviously, these guys were not on the water at the time of the incident.

But still, there is a difference. It’s pretty bad when a marine is called a soldier, but a sailor? Come on. That’s a distinction that’s existed forever.

Next thing you know, Slate will call its rifle a gun…

Entire network (CBS) jumps the shark

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First things first: OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE ALERT!

To move on… OK, so I’m the last guy to hear this, but I was startled to read this morning that CBS has a show coming up that is based on the inimitable Twitter feed, “Shit My Dad Says.”

My first thought was that the Smothers Brothers have got to be rolling over in their … well, whatever they’re in, since theoretically they’re still alive. This is the network that found them too controversial while NBC was doing “Laugh-In.”

And “Shit My Dad Says”… well, here are some samples (another OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE ALERT!):

“Don’t focus on the one guy who hates you. You don’t go to the park and set your picnic down next to the only pile of dog shit.”

12:41 PM Jun 28th

“Look, we’re basically on earth to shit and fuck. So unless your job’s to help people shit or fuck, it’s not that important, so relax.”

9:08 PM Jun 4th

“They’re offended? Fuck, shit, asshole, shitfuck; they’re just words…Fine. Shitfuck isn’t a word, but you get my point.”

7:58 PM May 21st

“Waking up when you got a baby, you feel like you drank a bottle of whiskey the night before, except the shit’s in someone else’s pants.”

2:30 PM Apr 12th

“I found some shit in your room…No, I found actual shit. Feces…Well I should hope it’s from your shoes, otherwise what the fuck?”

3:34 PM Apr 8th

Get the idea? Yes, the title is highly and literally descriptive of the content, because this Dad does indeed say it — and one other word — a lot. I mean, these posts occasionally make me laugh, but the vocabulary is really limited. Occasionally there’s one that doesn’t depend on those two operative words, such as:

“Engagement rings are pointless. Indians gave cows…Oh sorry, congrats on proposing. We good now? Can I finish my indian story?”

11:35 AM Jun 17th

“No. Humans will die out. We’re weak. Dinosaurs survived on rotten flesh. You got diarrhea last week from a Wendy’s.”

3:10 PM May 26th

“War hero? No. I was a doc in Vietnam. My job was to say “This is what happens when you screw a hooker, kid. Put this cream on your pecker.”

2:00 PM Mar 16th via web

But on the whole, there’s a theme here. And it’s not ready for prime time.

But fear not. Turns out that this CBS offering is sufficiently tame that it would not even bother the Smothers Brothers censors. Start with the fact that they wimped out on the name, then view the unbelievably insipid preview above. Generic, unremarkable TV sitcom. No originality. No crackle. No pop.

Not that I’m saying they should use the real name or content on a TV show. They shouldn’t. But I’m not the programming genius who pitched this idea. And the fact that someone did, and sold it to this point, says something about the utter desperation of Old Media when it tries to engage New Media.

Basically nothing about the original Twitter version that gives me an occasional laugh survives to the small screen. William Shatner’s supposed zingers sound as though they were written by one of those writers who pen dialogue for smart-alecky kids on generic sitcoms that I would only watch if they tied me down and pinned my eyelids open like they did Alex in “A Clockwork Orange.”

The essence is totally lost. As lost as… well, it reminds me of that early SNL skit in which a singing group called “The Young Caucasians” emasculates Ray Charles’ “Wha’d I Say.”

This, folks, is an old medium dying, and reaching out to something new for salvation in a way that is pathetic.

Of course, one may argue that it happened long ago, but at this point we can definitely say that CBS has jumped the shark.

Virtual Front Page, Friday, July 23, 2010

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Just a quick rundown:

Seven EU banks fail stress tests (BBC) — So I don’t know if this means they need a bypass or what, but it sounds bad. Here’s the WSJ version.
Oil Rig Alarm Was Not Fully Turned On, Worker Says (NYT) — Oh. Well, I guess this means that next time, we’ll want them to have it, you know… turned on. Sheesh.
Forecast: Federal budget gap will exceed $1.4 trillion in 2010, 2011 (WashPost) — Which is more than I make in a year. Even more than I made when I was at the paper.
Journalism Legend Daniel Schorr Dies At 93 (NPR) — OK, so he used to get on my nerves. But he was, indeed, a legend.
Biden credits Hollings with his success as VP (thestate.com) — Just to give y’all a taste of that event I missed.
U.S. Losing Ground In College Graduation Race (NPR) — Why back in MY day, we used to graduate — but we didn’t see it as a race.

A quarter of a million page views in one month

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Just an update on how things are going with the blog…

They’re kinda slow on the advertising front because I haven’t tried to sell any in the last few weeks. I really pushed on it during the primary, then slacked off. As y’all know, I do have a job, and while the folks at ADCO love the blog (I keep having to tell one of the partners that if she keeps sending me cool blog fodder she finds on the Web, I’ll never get to my ADCO work), I do need to set priorities. And ad sales have been low on the list. Also, I really want to find somebody to help me sell it for commissions — especially to non-political customers, with whom I am less confident. And I haven’t found anybody yet.

But while the revenue side has been slow, the circulation department is booming.

Last month was my best month ever for readership. I had 254,545 page views. (By the way, page views are the measure I use because that’s the only stat I had available to me on my old blog at the paper, so it’s a meaningful number to me. Other stats for June include 92,713 “Visits” and 1,347,519 “Hits” — but those don’t mean as much to me.) That pretty much stomps the record set the previous June — the month that the Mark Sanford scandal broke and people across the country were looking for SC blogs — of 168,995.

On the old blog — the one that I did as editorial page editor of the state’s largest newspaper, which meant I was able to promote it from that large print platform — it took me three years to reach a million page views. At June’s pace, it would take me four months.

The biggest month I ever had on my old blog when I was at the paper was 84,472 in January 2008 — the month that the eyes of the nation were on SC because of the presidential primaries. As you can see, I was blogging like mad that month, but back then I just couldn’t get the traffic I do now.

Of course, I don’t expect to get a quarter of a million every month — so far this month (since we don’t have the primaries — and Alvin Greene and alleged scandals about Nikki Haley — driving interest in political news) I’ve had 101,585 so far. That’s more like May, with 148,391. But the trend is ratcheting upward.

Just in case you wanted to know.

“Graham’s courageous stand for the republic”

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After I got done stewing about having screwed up on the Biden thing, I remembered that I owed Cindi Scoppe a phone call. Speaking to her reminded me that I meant to call your attention to The State‘s editorial yesterday, “Graham’s courageous stand for the republic.”

It was really, really good. So good that after I read it at breakfast yesterday, I e-mailed Cindi to say:

Excellent lede today. Did you write that, or did I?

It needs to be said loudly and often.

OK, so maybe that wouldn’t be a compliment to you, but I think Cindi saw it as such. You know, knowing my ego as she does.

But it really did say pretty much everything I would have said — of course, one of the great things about working with Cindi over the years was that she could do that. There was a time when I felt like I had to write any important edit about state government or politics to get the message just right, and the right tone and feel into it (to please me, anyway). But I realized shortly after I brought Cindi up from the newsroom that if I just spent a few minutes explaining to her what I wanted, in a few minutes she’d turn it around into an edit that was everything I had wanted, and just as good as if I’d written it — and several hours faster.

The great thing about this was that I didn’t have occasion to tell her what I wanted (you may have heard, I don’t word there any more), and yet I got it anyway. But more important than it being what I wanted, it’s what South Carolina needed to hear about Graham’s decision to vote for Elena Kagan’s nomination, and his cogent explanation of his reasoning.

An excerpt:

THROUGHOUT the first two centuries or so of our nation’s history, what Sen. Lindsay Graham did on Wednesday when he voted to confirm President Obama’s appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court would have been thoroughly unremarkable. What would have been remarkable would have been for a senator to do otherwise — to vote against confirming a nominee who did not have serious ethical, legal, mental or intellectual problems.

But as Sen. Graham told the Judiciary Committee, things are changing…. What matters today are individual agendas, and punishing anyone who doesn’t agree with their every opinion.

That’s a threat not just to the independence of the judiciary but to the republic itself…

As when he voted to confirm Mr. Obama’s first Supreme Court appointment a year ago, Sen. Graham said Wednesday that Ms. Kagan was not someone he would have appointed, but Mr. Obama won the election; the job of the Senate is merely to stop a president from appointing people who are objectively unfit to be judges.

Will Ms. Kagan join the liberal wing of the court? Probably. Just as President Bush’s appointments joined the conservative wing. We wish there weren’t such clearly defined wings…. But that’s a political preference we have; not a constitutional standard appropriate for senators to consider. As far as confirmation goes, there’s nothing wrong with Ms. Kagan. Just as there was nothing wrong with Sonia Sotomayor. Or with John Roberts. Or with Samuel Alito. And any senator who votes or voted against any of them was simply wrong.

But go read the whole thing. And share it with every South Carolinian you know.

Everything conspires against me, including myself (See you next time, Joe)

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Well, I was sort of looking forward to seeing ol’ Joe Biden again for the first time since fall 2007. He can be quite entertaining, especially when he’s talking about his old buddy Fritz Hollings. Also, I hadn’t seen Fritz in a while, and was interested to know how he was doing.

So I was glad to RSVP that I would indeed attend the dedication ceremony for Fritz’ new library, and grateful to Harris Pastides et al. for remembering to invite me. (Still am, so thanks again for including me in your plans.) Then, after I RSVPed, I put it on my calendar and put it out of my mind.

Then this morning, I had a new thought: It was Friday. I knew from memory that I had no meetings with ADCO clients. So I decided to go casual like everybody else at the office. Or casual for me, anyway. I put on some worn-out, rumple gray chinos and a sport shirt I bought several years ago for $3 at a Wal-Mart up in Pennsylvania. And a jacket from an old khaki suit. I have to wear a jacket, so I have someplace to put my stuff (wallet, keys, notebook, other junk).

And no tie. Which to me is like walking down the street naked. This is only like the second time I’ve done this since starting at ADCO.

Then at breakfast, I read that the Hollings library thing was today. OK, so I do have something to do today. Forgot that. Fine. It will give me something for the blog, maybe something good.

Then on the way out after breakfast, I saw myself in a mirror. Oh, no. I was going to have to go all the way back home and change. I looked like a seedy character from a Graham Greene novel, on acid (the strangely colored shirt being the acid part).

(At this point, you highly organized people are wondering, “Why don’t you consult your calendar every morning when you’re getting dressed, so you know how to dress ahead of time?” And you’re wondering it with that really irritating tone that highly organized people have. Well, I’ll tell you … years ago, I decided to dress in a suit and tie every day so that it didn’t matter what I had to do that day, since often things came up during the day that I couldn’t anticipate, things that weren’t on my calendar yet anyway. So I started waiting to consult my calendar when I got in. It just had not struck me, standing half asleep in the closet this morning, that deciding to do something as radical as not wearing a tie required entirely different assumptions about daily procedures. In the future, I’ll think of that.)

But I needed to get to the office and do SOME work. So I went, and feeling like I neglected the blog yesterday, I posted something quick and easy and then plunged into my e-mail and getting organized on a couple of ADCO projects. Next thing I knew, it was 11:13, with the Hollings thing starting at 12.

For a second, I thought about going as I was. That way there’d be no rush. I could walk over to the event. But then I thought, no, your invitation is at home. And this isn’t a typical university event; you’re going to be dealing with the Secret Service, and you know what obsessives they are. They aren’t just going to say, “Oh, it’s Brad; come on in.”

So I ran home, knowing I could still be on time if unless I ran into really bad traffic.

When I’m a block from the office, I realize I don’t have my camera. Damn, damn, damn. Turn around? Try to swing back by the office to get it on my way after changing and getting the invitation? Neither. I decided I’d make do with the Blackberry. I wanted to be on time. Any other event like this, the speaking wouldn’t start until half an hour into it, but the Secret Service was involved. I had to be on time.

And at this point, I would have been. At least, I would have made it by noon — fairly easily.

So I get home, a little impatient with the traffic, but it’s OK. I’m good. I change into a good suit, white shirt, tie. No problem. And then I start looking for the invitation. It’s not on the dresser. Damn, damn, damn. It’s not on the desk in my home office. Damn, damn… I suddenly remembered: Even though I had received the invitation at home, when I had called to RSVP, I had done it from the office.

Oh, damndamndamndamndamndamn.

At this point, having turned up the thermostat in the house when I’d left that morning, I’m starting to sweat in the suit. So I jump back in the car, and rave at the traffic all the way back from the office. I’ve got the AC on me full blast, but the sweat is taking hold. I go to park in front of ADCO, and for the first time since I’ve started here, there’s a guy standing right there checking meters. So I get out my SmartCard and put 20 minutes on the thing, when I just need 20 seconds. Then I rush up the stairs, tripping on one, causing a co-worker to call out, “Are you OK?” Yeahyeahyeah, I’m fine.

The invitation is not readily at hand. I start picking up piles of paper and other junk and rifling through it, dropping every pile on the floor as I finish going through it. Of course, the invitation is at the bottom of the very last pile. I jam it into my pocket and grab my camera, long as I’m here…

Damndamndamn…

I get back in the car, head over toward campus, and as I start looking for a parking space, it’s noon. Well, I failed. By now I’m sweating like a pig in the new suit, and I’ve gone to so much trouble that I figure I’ll try to go anyway. Luckily (my first bit of luck all day), I find a space only a block away, since it’s summer. I get out, put an hour and a half on the meter, take off my coat and head for the library. Sweating like mad.

As I’m heading there, it occurs to me that I don’t know exactly where I’m supposed to go, beyond the fact that it’s the Thomas Cooper library. The new thing is on the other side of the building, so where should I approach from?

I’ll bet the invitation will tell me…

Mind you, this is the first time that I had had any reason to look at the invitation beyond the time, date and place (“Noon on Friday, July 23, 2010,” it had said). I mean, what else do you look at an invitation for, aside from dress code and how to RSVP? And sure enough, there was a card inserted into the invitation with a map on one side saying to enter through the library main entrance. Good. That I can find.

Then, on the other side of the card from the map, there was a bulleted list of information, which if I had noticed before I suppose I had thought it was information about the new collection. You know how there’s usually an insert about that sort of thing. But it wasn’t. It was a list of instructions beginning with “Please bring this ticket with you to the dedication ceremony.”

Well, I had done that, but my heart sank. I had a premonition that there were going to be other requirements, perhaps requirements that had something to do with the fact that even though I was only five minutes late to an event that I knew would involve everybody being carefully checked at the front door, meaning people would still be filing in at this point… and the front of the library was deserted…

Yep. There it was. Third bullet: “Doors open at 10:00 a.m. All attendees must be in the Thomas Cooper Library by 11:45 a.m. Please allow ample time to find parking, walk to the Thomas Cooper Library, and be processed through event screening. There will be no exceptions made to this time frame.”

So that was that. After all that, I had failed to make it. I was too hot and harried at this point even to go, “Damndamndamn” any more.

But being the world’s most persistent optimist, rather than turning back to the car, since I had already walked halfway, and since I had spent a rushed hour trying to get this far, I kept going to the door.

And was turned away by a USC security guy who explained that the doors to the event were closed and the Secret Service, as is their wont, weren’t allowing anyone else in. “No exceptions.” I saw the Secret Service guys standing there, looking around with no more crowd to deal with, and reflected from long experience that no exceptions meant no exceptions. I’ve been pushed out of the way and yelled at for standing in the wrong place by these guys often enough in my career to know that they are no respecters of persons, and there is no arguing with their procedures (which is why I was never fond of covering events that involved them, since as a reporter I always sort of assumed that boundaries were for those other, less enterprising, reporters). I lamely, foolishly, gave the guy my excuse about having to run home looking for my invitation, because at a moment like that you want people to know that you weren’t being cavalier about the time, and he was sympathetic, but…

Sheesh.

Anyway, that’s why I don’t have a report for you on Joe Biden’s visit, or on how Fritz is doing. And why I’ll have to get the sweat cleaned out of my good suit even though I didn’t even make it to the event I put it on for. And why I’m feeling the frustration of knowing that the punctual people among you, the people who have judged and harangued and lectured me all my life because I’ve always tried to do to much and put myself in these situations, will smugly judge me again for this failure. Y’all are like that.

But I tried. I tried hard. It just didn’t work out.

Sorry, Fritz — I had wanted to see you again. Sorry, Joe. Sorry, Harris, for not making it to your event. I really wanted to.

Dang.

bradwarthen.com

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