Here’s the news going into our mid-week holiday:
- Pakistan to open supply routes after U.S. apology (WashPost) — Hillary Clinton says we’re sorry for killing a couple dozen of their soldiers awhile back.
- Assad ‘regrets’ downing of plane (BBC) — I guess he figures if it works for us…
- Human Rights Watch: ‘Torture Centers’ Stretch Across Syria (NPR) — The ugly picture is fleshed out a bit more…
- U.S. Adds Forces in Persian Gulf, a Signal to Iran (NYT) — Just FYI. This helps protect the strait, but also puts more strike aircraft in position, if needed.
- Quick At-Home H.I.V. Test Wins Federal Approval (NYT) — Here’s hoping it saves some lives.
- Andy Griffith: A TV Icon From Mayberry To Matlock (NPR) — Well, y’all knew about this. There’s going to be some fine guitar-picking up on heaven’s front porch.
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When can we expect Pakistan’s apology for housing Bin Laden for the past 10 years?
@SDII – I wondered the same thing. I remember GWB giving a speech that said something to the effect of if you harbor terrorists, we are coming to get you. I guess Pakistan gets a pass, although it’s a lot more complicated than that.
#4 should read “protect” not “project”. If only there was some kind of person to check this stuff.
I used to have people to check stuff. Now, you’re my people.
I think I was thinking of the dual role of this force. It’s there to protect, but also to project power as needed.
@Silence – Obama and his cabinet of clowns will bow down (literally) to every 3rd word country leader if their feelings get hurt. I guess we might as well get used to it, since that’s where Obama is taking this country. If he gets elected to a 2nd term, look out his agenda will go full steam ahead.
“I used to have people to check stuff.”
Back when you thought you were important. Were you ever someone’s “people” or were you always the guy who did nothing but dictate employees? Just curious if you ever had to do any dirty work. From what I’m reading you graduated from college, went to work following local politicians around and then handed an editor’s job.
That’s roughly accurate, because I spent most of my career — from 1980 — as an editor supervising others.
But I wasn’t “handed” anything. I earned the position by working longer and harder than anybody and being better at the work than most.
And I started at the bottom of the heap, as a copy boy (or, as we called them in those early days of hypersensitivity, “copy clerk”). That meant I was a gofer for everybody in the newsroom of The Commercial Appeal in Memphis. Anybody — including reporters, not just editors — who yelled “Copy!” could bring me running, and it was my job to fetch whatever they wanted, from a relevant file from the morgue to a cup of coffee.
It was a very stratified environment. The funny thing was, we copy clerks were the only ones who knew where anything was and how the place operated (it was great training for being in charge of it all later). One time the news editor, feeling in an egalitarian mood, told me he wanted a cup of coffee — but as I went to fetch it, he said no, he’d get it himself. I started to walk away, but he stopped me to ask me where the coffee came from. I proceeded to tell him how you took the stairs to the next floor, to the composing room, and went weaving through the turtles, and through the clanking linotype machines (an environment so noisy in those days of hot type that many of the workers were deafmutes, communicating by sign language), over against the wall next to the proofreading room…
And he looked so blank and confused, not following me at all, that I went and fetched the coffee for him.
Later, after I graduated from college, my first job was as a copy editor. That meant that one of my duties was to “check stuff.” And of course, for the rest of my career, I was an editor, which meant that I always “checked stuff.”
For the record, Brad is still sufficiently important that we read and some of us comment on the blog he so graciously provides for us.
My brother had a long, successful career in newspapers based on his exceptional editing skillz. Lots of people can report, but he jumped the queue because he had the rarer skill of editing.
So you never worked as a reporter, went from copy boy to editor. Did you have a relative who owned the newspaper?
@brad
You were just lucky, right? That’s all you can say when you are successful.
It was sad to hear about Andy. I’ve been a big fan of his series from The Andy Griffith Show, Salvage 1, and Matlock.
NC Governor, Bev Perdue, in her statement had nice words to say about Andy and his North Carolina roots.
Filmaker, Ron Howard, who was Opie in the series also had words of praise.
Andy will be missed.
Yeah, I looked it up, and the strikes were in 1978. Things were slow in the bureau at the time — it was the Dog Days — and I talked my editor into sending me and a photog down there, where the police and fire departments were both on strike, and the city was supposedly in chaos. But you know, it was interesting how calm most of the city was. The city was under curfew, and I quoted people who were ticked off about that, because they didn’t see the city burning down or anything.
But it was a fun change of pace; I liked excuses to get down to Memphis. My only worry was that it was the month my elder son was to be born, and I was a little nervous leaving my wife up in tiny Trenton, where the bureau was. But I was there when needed, to take her to the hospital in Jackson. He’s our second child, and now has a girl and a boy of his own.
SDII: “So you never worked as a reporter, went from copy boy to editor. Did you have a relative who owned the newspaper?”
It’s kind of hard to answer that without sounding immodest. To clarify, I was a copy boy, then I quit to finish college. Then I freelanced about Memphis (the two Memphis papers weren’t hiring white boys at the time) for a couple of months, then ran up the road to Jackson and got a job as a copy editor.
I didn’t want to be a copy editor; I wanted to write. But I was good at it. Within a couple of months I was pulling shifts in the slot — which means I supervised everyone doing the editing and layout, handled the wires, laid out the A section and oversaw production in the composing room, and was responsible for seeing that the whole paper made it out on time.
We were supposed to rotate in slot, but as time went by, I started doing it more than anybody. It felt natural to be in charge.
The paper was in a period of transition, and the lines of authority in terms of decision-making were mushy. So I started deciding where everything went in the paper — what went on the front page, what led the paper, and so on. Nobody really challenged that, so basically at the age of 22 I was pretty much making every high-level decision there was to make in the daily work of putting out a newspaper, by my lonesome.
But I wanted to write. I reviewed books for our book editor (who was also our managing editor). Then I became the paper’s movie reviewer, in my free time.
But I wanted to write full time. Eventually, I got the job of Gibson County Bureau chief — which meant I supervised myself and a secretary that I shared with advertising and circulation in that area. I was solely responsible for covering five counties that were important to the paper.
After a little over a year, the Nashville Bureau came open when John Parish went to work for Lamar Alexander. I wanted it, but didn’t get it. Jeff Wilson got it. Reid Ashe, our executive editor, was worried he’d lose me, so he made me a special-assignments writer operating out of the main office. I essentially made my own assignments. I did things like cover Howard Baker campaigning in the Iowa caucuses, and a news feature on Death Row in Nashville, which involved one lengthy interview and some shorter ones with the condemned killers (this was right when the death penalty was coming back, after Gary Gilmore). I went to Memphis to cover the fire and police strikes. I went where there was a good story, wherever that might be. I had done some of this kind of thing when I was in the Gibson County bureau — such as detaching for weeks at a time to cover the 1978 governor’s race, traveling 24/7 with the candidates (something no one does any more). And come to think of it those Memphis strikes may have been that year, too. That’s right. But I did go to Memphis in ’79 to cover the weird phenomenon that was establishing itself — far more people making pilgrimages to Graceland after Elvis died than ever did when he was alive.
I started also filling in as editor on Saturdays. I did such a good job at that — again, it felt natural to call the shots and people could see I was good at it — that when our news editor (essentially a city editor at that paper, supervising all the news reporters) was demoted, I was promoted to take her place. She became one of my two assistants, with Michael Mercer.
It was a question of judgment under pressure. There are a lot of things I’m not good at. I’m a slow note-taker. I read very slowly, although I have good recall. I’m a terrible, terrible basketball player.
But I’m a better writer than most people I’ve edited, and a better editor than most. But the thing that people who promoted me over the years trusted most was my judgment. That was my main strength.
So you see, I can’t answer the question and be modest. But you know, most people are good at something. I was good at something that used to earn me a good living, and I worked very hard at it. Then the market shifted, and those qualities were no longer valued so much.
re Andy Griffith:
this recital program of AG’s from his days as a music major at UNC has been making the rounds on Facebook. A reminder that his musical roots run deep, too.
Concerning the first story – An appology was necessary to get the supply route opened. Sometimes it’s better to be pragmatic than dogmatic.
One thing I find stangely absent from Andy Griffiths life story is miltiary service. He was born in 1926 and would have just turned 18 when we stormed the beaches at Normandy. I thought pretty much everyone of that age was drafted. Was there a medical condition or something? Just seems strange that none of the accounts mention anything about that.
@ bud – He graduated from Chapel Hill in ’49, so maybe he had a college deferment or something? I don’t know if they existed in WWII. That’s a good question, though.
Back to item #3: Kind of interesting that you find that some reports from Human Rights Watch are worth our getting alarmed over, and some not.
I don’t know what you’re referring to, Phillip. But I suppose some Human Rights Watch reports come on slow news days, and some do not.
In any case, why do you say “worth our getting alarmed over”? I didn’t present it that way. I merely said, “The ugly picture is fleshed out a bit more…” It’s yet another piece of the overall picture on one of the top ongoing stories in the world right now.
Phillip’s point is clear to me. If a Human Rights Watch report indicates US drone attacks are killing children Brad gives that a pass. They are really just “colateral damage” afterall. If some third world country does something that kills children that’s an unspeakable tragedy that absolutely must not be tolerated.
“One thing I find stangely absent from Andy Griffiths life story is miltiary service.”
Did bud serve in the military? If not what was his excuse? For someone who’s anti-military, he sure has a problem with people who don’t serve in the military.
Oh, that’s right. I forgot. The United States is the moral equivalent of the Assad regime. I’m always forgetting how awful we are.
Seriously, though, I wish I had a dime for every time somebody thought a news judgment was motivated by some political prejudice that would never cross my mind.
The news is what the news is. And it means what it means. And you know what — a Human Rights Watch report on Syria at a moment in which international attention is turned on that regime actually, objectively IS more newsworthy than a similar report, on any country, at any other time.
Sorry, but that’s the way it is, folks.
@SDII – I think bud’s point was that it would have been uncommon for someone of Griffith’s age not to have served in WWII. I didn’t take it as a pro or anti military comment.
@Silence – I know several older people who didn’t serve in WWII. Several men got out because they were farmers and needed over here as badly as overseas. Back then if you were an only son you could not be selected to serve.
Actually I was referring to the HRW report urging a more thorough investigation of Cheney and others regarding the torture question, with possible criminal investigation.
It’s not that one must “accept” every opinion or finding of HRW or similar groups like Amnesty International, and certainly reasonable people can disagree about whether, for example, Cheney should be brought into custody. But where I felt you were mistaken was in considering that question to be such an “outlier” opinion, almost a fringe view held only by fevered partisans. One need not agree with Human Rights Watch’s opinion on that issue to accept that the question of Cheney’s possible legal culpability in terms of international law is a legitimate reality, however one feels it should be addressed–or not– at this stage.