Monthly Archives: October 2012

That’s just where I would expect to find it

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Recently I asserted that in a world so dominated by libertarian impulses on both the left and right, there aren’t all that many widely known communitarian sayings. I mentioned “It takes a village to raise a child,” and “We’re all in this together.”

But that wasn’t a fully inclusive list. In fact, our society has other ways of giving at least lip service to notions that would raise us above purely selfish considerations. Here’s another sort-of communitarian saying with which we’re all familiar:

“There’s no ‘I’ in ‘TEAM.'”

But as much as I appreciate the sentiment, I did enjoy this sendup of the saying, which was shared on Facebook today by Diane Lore, a former reporter at The State.

And, yes — if there is an “I” in “TEAM,” that is exactly where I would expect to find it…

Thoughts on the veep debate?

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Celeste Headlee of “The Takeaway” reTweeted the above photo from tonight’s debate with the comment, “Sums it all up.” Here are my Tweets from the debate. All are by me, except where you see another Twitter handle:

  • Ryan’s fighting his corner, but I can’t shake the impression that he looks and sounds like such a kid next to Biden. Like student gov’t…
  • Warren Bolton ‏@BoltonWarren Ryan speaks of Romney’s personal experiences: Biden counters with his own. The difference in having lived longer.
  • Paul Begala ‏@PaulBegala Biden is killing Ryan on Medicare and Social Security. Ryan is arguing ideology, Biden arguing facts.
  • Gosh, I’d like to see these guys debate like grownups. For a change…
  • If this were kindergarten, they’d both be doing timeout in separate corners by now…
  • Levi Henry ‏@levihenry I never would have thought that Joe Biden’s debating ability would be what gave @BarackObama another term. That could be the case tonight.
  • Biden channeled Billy Ray Valentine re Afghanistan: I been all over that place, baby…

As you see, I didn’t have nearly as much to say as I usually do during these things. Guess I wasn’t very inspired. I was interested at first, and impressed at how well Biden was doing in his mission to make up for Obama’s lackluster performance. But eventually I got fed up with the behavior, on the parts of both men, that no elementary school teacher would allow in her classroom. Your  thoughts?

Cold turkey times three

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If at any time this week I seem a bit out of it, it’s because I’m in withdrawal.

I woke up Monday morning with a feeling like my right ear was full of water. But it wasn’t. I felt pressure, and sound was distorted — loud and distorted. Through it all was a loud ringing/rushing sound. I had trouble making out what people were saying to me.

So Tuesday, I managed to get in to see an ear, nose and throat doc when he had a cancellation. I figured he’d put a tube in my ear, and that would relieve the pressure. I figured it was an infection. But my ear drum looked normal.

After a hearing test, it turns out I’ve lost some ability to detect high pitches in one ear, and low pitches in the other. The doctor ordered some tests to figure out why I would have such asymmetrical hearing loss, along with the other symptoms. This is what I may have.

I haven’t arranged for the tests yet. I need to get on that. But I’m having some trouble getting it together the last couple of days, because I’m following the doctor’s orders:

  1. No salt.
  2. No alcohol.
  3. No caffeine.

It has something to do with all of those things causing fluid retention. There may actually be a problem with fluid, but deep in the inner ear, where a tube would do nothing to drain it.

The first two, I can do standing on my head. The last one is tough. Really tough. One day, the usual three or four BIG cups. The next day, nothing. Makes a guy feel pretty weird. Although today has been a little easier than yesterday.

But I’m very spacey. The symptoms are not going away. In fact, when I slipped up and finished a bag of chips I’d left open on my desk from earlier in the week, the ringing got louder. So maybe there’s something to the salt connection, although perhaps it was just the chewing action.

I talked to someone this morning who also recently gave up caffeine. As confused as I was, I forgot to ask the burning question: How long does it take before you feel normal again?

What does a ‘like’ mean, as we slouch toward post-verbalism (if that’s what we’re doing)?

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The top of my main Pinterest page.

Some years ago — it could have been 20 — I read an article by Umberto Eco that seems appropriate to this topic. I don’t remember all the particulars of the piece, or even in which magazine it appeared. But I seem to recall that the semiotician and novelist set forth the notion that we might be moving, beyond a post-literate society, to becoming post-verbal, returning to means of communication common in medieval days when, say, a pub called the Rose and Crown would be identified by a hanging sign showing pictures of those things, rather than words.

The premise would seem excessively alarmist, or at least premature, since the decades since I read that have seen an explosion of the written word on the Web. More people are writing, and reading, a greater profusion of words than at any time in the history of this planet.

But sometimes, we are faced with images alone, and words fail us. On friends’ Facebook pages, I’m occasionally confronted with images that just beg for accompanying text to explain them, but nary a word is offered.

And recently, I found myself in a world that brought the Eco piece back powerfully.

I was going to (and eventually did) write a light item for the ADCO blog about the addictiveness of Pinterest, which has hooked a couple of my co-workers. The spark was a study indicating that 20 percent of women who are online were into the site.

At first, I supposed that only women could possibly get into it, for as I perused the boards created by my female co-workers, I was overwhelmed by all the images of food and housewares and decorating ideas. As I said in that ADCO blog post, those screens looked like “the result of Edward Scissorhands going to town on a 10-foot-high stack of old copies of Better Homes and Gardens and Southern Living.”

But as I went through the little signup ritual for creating my own account, I saw how quickly the screen would morph into something that more interested me.

Here’s what happens: You sign in to the site. You are offered a screen full of slightly-bigger-than-thumbnail images. You are asked to “like” the ones that appeal to you. What you “like” affects what you see as you continue to scroll down. It’s rather fascinating to watch as the algorithm does its work. For a time, for a long time, the wave of images coming at you seems never-ending. The scroll bar on the right will seem to be approaching the bottom, then suddenly it will glide back up toward the middle as a new load of images arrives.

I saw a lot of images that interested me a great deal, but I couldn’t decide whether to “like” them or not. I mean, what does it say if you click “like” on a picture of a B-26 going down in flames? I don’t like that it’s going down, with American airmen dying in it. But I do want the program to know that I find images of WWII warplanes interesting.

Or what about a picture of Michael Caine as spy Harry Palmer? Will it think I like the raincoat, or “The Ipcress File?” This is a place where words would help.

And what does it mean when I “like” a picture of Marilyn Monroe? I mean, have you ever seen a picture of her you didn’t like, on some level or other? I haven’t. And yet, after I liked one or two of them, they kept coming in a profusion that suggested that Pinterest thought I had some kind of Elton-John-like celebrity fetish centered on her. I continued to “like” them, because that was my honest and uncomplicated answer. But I didn’t want it to offer me nothing but movie-star pictures going forward.

Just because I like Sean Connery doesn’t mean I want to see pictures of Rock Hudson (not that there’s anything wrong with that). And my liking a picture of Natalie Wood doesn’t mean I want to see Robert Wagner. And what’s with these Jody Foster pictures you keep throwing at me? I haven’t liked a single one, and they keep coming. Who do you think I am, John Hinckley? And just because I click on an interesting diagram of old military headgear doesn’t mean I want to look at one Confederate kepi after another!

So here’s where you end up, or where I ended up anyway: Pinterest now “knows” me well enough that one out of 10 or 12 things it throws at me will be mildly interesting. Which I guess is an achievement for a computer program.

But the language of social media — “like” and “friend” and other terms that so often don’t exactly describe the relationship in a given case — still needs work. Let’s not give up on words just yet.

Below are some of the pictures I “liked” as they were thrown at me. But really: What does it mean to “like” a picture of Bonnie and Clyde?

Court panel OKs SC voter ID law for 2013

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This happened about the time I was going to lunch today:

A federal court in Washington, D.C., has upheld the constitutionality of South Carolina’s new voter ID law.

However, the law — which requires voters to present a state-approved ID with their picture at the polls before casting a ballot — will not take effect until 2013, meaning it will not affect S.C. voters during the November presidential election.

The U.S. Justice Department had blocked implementation of the new law, passed in 2011. Civil rights groups also had challenged the law, saying it unfairly discriminated against minority voters, who were less likely to have access to the records or state facilities necessary to get a photo ID.

However, a three-member federal panel ruled Wednesday that the law’s “expansive ‘reasonable impediment’ provision” made it unlikely that any voters lacking a photo ID would be turned away at the polls. Those voters still can vote “so long as they state the reason for not having obtained” a photo ID, the ruling noted.

That was followed in the report by some silly comments from Nikki Haley about the mean ol’ federal gummint trying to do awful things to South Carolina. (“Every time the federal government has thrown us a punch, we have fought back.”) Because you know that’s what this is about, right? The feds just picking on us for no reason.

The same mean ol’ federal government that wouldn’t let us keep our slaves anymore…

Excuse my disgust. Mind you, as I’ve said many times before, I think this is generally an issue blown out of proportion by both sides. But when I see the way the governor couches it, it’s pretty off-putting.

Romney has no abortion ‘agenda,’ either way

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Everybody’s running in circles over Mitt Romney telling The Des Moines Register that “There’s no legislation with regards to abortion that I’m familiar with that would become part of my agenda,” and his campaign then issuing statements that supposedly pull him back into the pro-life camp.

I had to smile at this Slate piece about “Romney’s Abortion ‘Agenda’,” which bore the subhed, “Don’t fall for his insinuation that he won’t restrict abortion. It’s full of weasel words.”

Yeah, well, don’t fall for any insinuation he makes that he will restrict abortion, either.

I don’t believe the guy cares one way or the other, which is why the noises he makes on the subject to differing audiences seem so… malleable.

I would have liked Ike, JFK, maybe even Nixon

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I was at first drawn in by this book review in The Wall Street Journal this morning, because at the outset it addressed a big concern I’ve had since the start of this election year:

Even as we tremble at the edge of a fiscal cliff, the culture war insists on our attention. Abortion, contraception, gay and women’s rights, and welfare have all returned to shake up an election season that was supposed to be a simple economy slugfest. Robert O. Self’s “All in the Family” could help explain why. Mr. Self, a professor of history at Brown University, has heroically researched the history of the culture wars from the early 1960s to the present. He offers a provocative analysis that accounts for today’s alliance between small-government and social conservatives, on the one hand, and welfare-state and social liberals, on the other….

However, I was less enchanted by what followed:

Mr. Self begins his history by describing “breadwinner liberalism” as the status quo of the early and mid-1960s. The architects of the Great Society assumed the primacy of male-earner and female-homemaker families. Labor unions fought for a family wage for their predominantly male membership, the Moynihan Report (1965) raised alarms about black male unemployment, and the first efforts at affirmative action took the form of quotas in municipal contracts for male construction workers. In all these cases “women were largely an afterthought,” Mr. Self writes. Breadwinner liberalism, he argues, was based on a model of “masculine individualism”: hardworking, striving, self-reliant….

The review goes on to recount the book’s take on the Kulturkampf that has plagued our politics since the 1960s. Apparently, the author of the book thinks the changes that have come are all to the good; the reviewer demurs.

All I know is this: In 1960, I could have been comfortable as a liberal. For that matter, in 1960, I could have been comfortable as a conservative. I can see myself having voted for Ike. I think I would have been torn between Nixon and Kennedy. (At the time, I favored Nixon, but I was only 7 years old. I don’t know what I would have done as an adult.)

Whatever happened, and however you define it, I can’t be at home in either camp today. And the Kulturkampf stuff is a big part of the reason why.

Follow the bouncing polls

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Slatest reports contradictory poll results following Mitt Romney’s big debate win last week:

A TALE OF TWO POLLS: In the wake of Mitt Romney’s historic debate performance last week, the GOP challenger has leapfrogged President Obama and now leads the incumbent among likely voters with less than a month to go until the election. Unless, of course, he hasn’t, and his post-debate bounce has since evaporated. Those were the two very different narratives suggested by a pair of polls out Monday.

GOOD NEWS, MITT: The Pew Research Poll released the results of its latest polling this afternoon—the first major survey taken entirely after last Wednesday’s debate—that showed Romney and Obama knotted at 46 apiece among registered voters, and the Republican out in front 49 percent to 45 among likely voters. That’s quite a change from last month’s survey, when Obama led 51-42 among registered voters and 51-43 among likely voters.

GOOD NEWS, BARACK: Gallup, meanwhile, offered a different snapshot of the state of the race for the White House. The polling outfit’s latest seven-day rolling average—which included polling conducted through Sunday—shows the president out in front by 5 points, 50-45, among registered voters. That figure was particularly noteworthy because Obama had seen a pre-debate lead of 4 points shrink to 3 points by Saturday, before jumping back up to 5 points once Sunday’s results were factored in…

Columbus, the Solyndra of the late 15th century

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First, I want to say that Mike Brenan gave a great speech at Rotary today, and I pretty much agreed with everything he said, from observations about education reform to the upcoming Richland County sales tax referendum.

But I had to kid him a little afterwards about one thing he said. In the middle of a passage praising Adam Smith, free markets, individual initiative, personal responsibility and enterprise, he paused, this being the official Columbus Day, to extol Columbus as the original entrepreneur, a guy who had a great idea and went out and raised the funds to courageously pursue it.

Yeah, I said… but he did it entirely on a government grant. And he failed to do what he told his investors he would do — find a short sea route to China and the East Indies.

Christopher Columbus transformed the entire planet in ways that boggle the mind. To explore some of them, I recommend you read 1493, by Charles C. Mann. But as an entrepreneur, you might say he was sort of the Solyndra of his day.

The State-Record Newsroom Reunion of 2012

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With Jim Foster and Jeff Miller.

Note the similarity between the photo at top, from Saturday night, and the extraordinary black-and-white photo at bottom. And no, it’s not that both contain anachronisms. It’s that Jim Foster — former city editor, former features editor at The State — is at the center of both. And is, compared to most of us, relatively unchanged.

The one on the bottom was contributed by Maxie Roberts, former denizen of the photo desk at the paper, to the effort to gather people from across the country for The State-Record Newsroom Reunion of 2012. Near as I can tell, this was taken probably within the year before I joined the paper in April 1987. I say that because I recognize most of the people, they look about the way they did when I arrived, but there’s one person who I know left just months before I got here. Actually, the clothing isn’t all that anachronistic, but check out those old Atex terminals, connected to a mainframe array that in total, contained about 1/50th of the storage space I have in my iPhone. Which is why we had to constantly kill stuff out of the system in order to keep publishing.

At top, you see me with Jim, who now does communications for the Beaufort County School District, and with Jeff Miller, now the vice president for communications of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights in Washington.

At right, you see me with former Managing Editor Bobby Hitt, who now does something or other in state government.

You may notice a trend here. Yes, pretty much everyone I saw during my brief stop at the party was a former employee of the newspaper. Scrolling through my memory, I only saw one person currently employed there — reporter Dawn Hinshaw. Of course, I suppose that’s to be expected at a reunion, but still.

Aside from Bobby, there was even more senior brass at the party, two former executive editors — Tom McLean, of Columbia and Blythewood; and Gil Thelen, now of Tampa. Tom’s the guy who hired me at The State; he was also my predecessor as editorial page editor. I also saw Mike Fitts, Fran Zupan, Kristine Hartvigsen, Michael Latham, Tim Goheen, Tom Priddy, “Coach” Bill Mitchell, Bunnie Richardson, Jim McLaurin, Bob Gillespie, Fred Monk, Claudia Brinson, Grant Jackson, Tim Flach (OK, that’s two who still work there), and others whom I would no doubt be embarrassed to have forgotten to mention.

Most were wearing clothing appropriate to this century. The reason I was not was that I was playing hooky from Pride and Prejudice. I had been thinking I wouldn’t be able to drop by the party until 11 or so, and I knew it would have thinned out by then. But then, after my last appearance in the play in Scene 9, my daughter said, “Why don’t you go now (it was about 9 p.m.)?” I wouldn’t have time to change, because I’d have to be back by 10:30 for curtain call. But the party was nearby, at the S.C. Press Association HQ, and I could just run over there and spend about 45 minutes and say hi to everybody.

So I did. And used the awkwardness caused by my attire to plug the show, and urge everyone (all those who still live here, anyway) to come out and see it when we open at Finlay Park next Wednesday night at 7:30 (our Saluda Shoals run ended last night).

But this rare reunion of old friends and comrades would only happen once, so I’m glad I ran out and caught what little of it I was able to catch.

The newsroom, circa 1986 -- or the portion of it available for the photo that day. And yes, it's been a long time since this many people were in the newsroom at once.

Moving so fast we’re a blur

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Saturday was a very busy day for the Warthen clan. After the opening of “Pride and Prejudice” Friday night, 12 of us got up early for the Walk for Life. Then we had a double family birthday party (my own and my younger son’s), I took a brief nap, and it was back to Saluda Shoals, where three members of my family were onstage and four of us in the audience. After my last scene, I left the play to attend a party that was going on at the same time, then ran back for curtain call (a separate post on that is to come). The day ended really late, with a cast gathering at a local pub, and then to bed.

The four youngest members of the clan prepare to participate in the Walk for Life.

Next morning, my mother called to say we were on the Metro front in The State. I had to think for a moment as to which of all those activities might have constituted “news” in any form. Ah, yes — it was the Walk for Life.

Above is the photo, which ran six columns across the top of the page. We’re easy to miss at a glance, because we’re in the very blurry front rank — there’s me, my daughter who organized the family team, my wife the 11-year cancer survivor, and my son whose 32nd birthday this was.

I suppose it’s appropriate that any snapshot from that day should be a blur.

There I am on opening night with my granddaughter and daughter. We are portraying, respectively, Sir William Lucas, Kitty Bennet and Lady Lucas.

Words from another time, another universe

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Back in the days of typewriters, dictionaries were a great obstacle to my developing what my detractors call “time-management skills.” I couldn’t look up one word without running across another that fascinated me, which in turn caused me to look up another, then three more, and one and on, each word opening the floodgates of dopamine in my brain as I utterly forgot what I had set out to do.

The Web is a dictionary taken to the nth power.

Today, I stuck up for our Founders’ vision of a republic rather than a democracy, which caused Bud to say fine, if that’s what you want, then let’s return to precisely their vision. That caused me to say that I was for repealing the 17th Amendment. Then, when I went for a link to explain to readers which amendment that was, I started reading about the debate at the time over this “reform.” I saw that William Jennings Bryan (you know, the guy Clarence Darrow took apart at the Monkey Trial) was for the change, and Elihu Root opposed it. Thinking Mr. Root was perhaps a man after my own mind, I went and looked him up.

And I read on Wikipedia this excerpt from a letter he wrote to The New York Times in 1910, while serving as a U.S. senator from New York:

It is said that a very large part of any income tax under the amendment would be paid by citizens of New York….

Elihu Root

The reason why the citizens of New York will pay so large a part of the tax is New York City is the chief financial and commercial centre of a great country with vast resources and industrial activity. For many years Americans engaged in developing the wealth of all parts of the country have been going to New York to secure capital and market their securities and to buy their supplies. Thousands of men who have amassed fortunes in all sorts of enterprises in other states have gone to New York to live because they like the life of the city or because their distant enterprises require representation at the financial centre. The incomes of New York are in a great measure derived from the country at large. A continual stream of wealth sets toward the great city from the mines and manufactories and railroads outside of New York.

Wow. Wow. Wow. Imagine that. A serving politician who actually wrote not only in favor of an income tax when there wasn’t one, but told his own constituents why they should shoulder a particularly large portion of that burden. Now there’s a man of principle for you.

You will ask now whether he was re-elected. Well, he didn’t run again.

But it’s not like he retired. He went on to serve in several prominent capacities. In 1912, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, for “his work to bring nations together through arbitration and cooperation.” Nevertheless, he would later oppose Woodrow Wilson’s initial position of neutrality as WWI broke out. He believed German militarism must be opposed.

He was a reluctant candidate for the Republican nomination for president in 1916. Charles Evans Hughes won the nomination, and went on to lose to Wilson.

I think I might have voted for Root, given the chance.

More Democrats reject Harpootlian’s party line on John Courson’s Senate re-election

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Today I had an advisory saying the following would be at a press conference today at 2:

Leon Lott, Richland County Sheriff
Joel Lourie, S.C. Senator
Darrell Jackson, S.C. Senator
John Courson, S.C. Senator

… and that they would “make an unusual announcement concerning the campaign for S.C. Senate District 20.”

Joel Lourie

I wasn’t able to make it, so I called Joel Lourie a few minutes ago to see what I had missed, and it was as I thought: More Democrats coming out for John Courson in his re-election race against Democrat Robert Rikard, who increasingly seems to have little backing beyond Dick Harpootlian. I’m starting to feel a little bad for Rikard, whom Lourie says “seems like a nice guy… nothing against Robert.”

“We need John Courson in the Senate,” Lourie said. “He’s one of the very few guys who knows how to build bridges and work across party lines. We need more people like John Courson.”

He added that he and Sen. Jackson were among the first to urge Courson to run for Senate president pro tem, so how could they not back him now?

Furthermore, “As a state senator, I think we’re better off having John Courson as president pro tem, following a moderate course, than picking up one more seat.”

And there’s a personal element, as there so often is in the Senate: “My Dad was a mentor to him, and now he is a mentor to me. One of those who can give me advice.”

What about the increasingly isolated Democratic Party Chair Dick Harpootlian? He called Lourie after the press conference. “We had a pretty harsh conversation afterwards,” he said, and decided to go no further. “We had some very harsh words with each other.”

“I’m not sure what Dick’s infatuation with this race is,” he said. But it’s obvious he didn’t check with the Democrats in the Senate before making such a big deal about trying to turn Courson out of office. “The Senate Democratic caucus’ focus is on helping our incumbents, and providing as much assistance as possible for Thomas McElveen in Sumter.”

Hey, tell me about it…

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This parlous news comes over the transom from The Washington Post:

Google and a handful of other tech firms are acting as advertising middlemen for the presidential campaigns, taking a huge cut of the revenue from online ads.

These firms have given the campaigns greater precision in targeting voters, but the process is starving politically oriented media sites in what once was their most lucrative season.

If this were a just world, that revenue would be going to, you know, political blogs and other worthy venues.

He sees you when you’re sleeping…

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Ooh, scary stuff today in my INbox from Michele Bachmann:

Barney Frank’s coming to town

Friend,

Be afraid!

Tonight my opponent is bringing Barney Frank, one of the most extreme liberal members of Congress, to Minnesota. Barney is the guest of honor at a fundraiser where the only goal is to raise millions of dollars- all to be spent to defeat our campaign and our conservative values.

Will you help me fight back?

Friend, Barney Frank is just one of the examples of the unbelievable stops the Democrats are pulling out in order to defeat our campaign. They have poured millions already into Minnesota and have millions more just waiting to be pumped into the Minnesota airwaves to slander my name, defeat our campaign and re-install Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House.

To send a strong message to Barney Frank, our campaign has set a goal of raising $100,000 today…

She should get Count Floyd to read that, to make it extra scary: “Barney Frank iss comink to town — und he’s in 3D! AaaOOOOOO!”

Because, you know, boys and girls, that Barney Frank is a scary guy! He’s one of the most, you know, how shall I put this… liberal members of Congress! And you all know what I mean when I say “liberal,” right? Oooohhh…

Instant polls give the debate to Romney

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Poll results compiled by Nate Silver show the viewing public pretty much agreeing with the commentators who gave last night’s debate decision to Romney:

Instant-reaction polls conducted by CNN and CBS News suggest that Mitt Romney was the winner of the first presidential debate.

A CNN poll of debate-watchers found Mr. Romney very clearly ahead, with 67 percent of registered voters saying he won the debate, against just 25 percent for President Obama.

A CBS News poll of undecided voters who watched the debate found 46 percent siding with Mr. Romney, 22 percent for Mr. Obama and 32 percent saying it was a tie.

Google, which is experimenting with online surveys, found 38.9 percent of respondents saying they thought Mr. Obama performed better in a poll it conducted during the debate, against 35.5 percent for Mr. Romney and 25.6 percent who said it was a draw. But a second poll they conducted after the debate found 47.8 percent of respondents giving Mr. Romney the advantage, against 25.4 percent for Mr. Obama…

I still haven’t seen enough of the debate itself to know what I think. But from what I’m hearing, I’d have to actually watch it, which would be unusual for me. A lot of the advantage given to Romney sounds like it was based on visual impressions. Usually, I listening while Tweeting and blogging. Last night, rehearsal prevented me from doing anything with it at all…

The Ron Morris/Steve Spurrier brouhaha

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Things have come to this: The other night, Mr. Darcy asked me whether Ron Morris had been fired by The State.

OK, so it wasn’t actually Mr. Darcy, who after all is a fictional character (don’t tell Bridget Jones that!), who in any case would be long dead had he ever lived. No, it was local actor Gene Aimone, who will portray Mr. Darcy in the SC Shakespeare Company’s production of “Pride and Prejudice,” which opens at Saluda Shoals Friday night. See, I can get a plug into anything.

I told him I had no idea. I wondered why he asked. He said hostilities had resumed between Coach Steve Spurrier and Ron, and that the coach had said something mysterious on the radio, or on TV, or on one of those newfangled gadgets that Mr. Darcy has no business listening to, suggesting that there would be developments forthcoming that would pleasing, at least to him.

I said I ran into Ron at Barnes and Noble several months ago and we chatted pleasantly for a time, and he appeared alive and well, and that’s the last I knew of him.

And I thought no more of it, until Neil McLean mentioned it over breakfast at Cap City this morning. Neil is the new executive director of New Carolina (replacing the retiring George Fletcher), and the son of Tom, my old boss at The State. Neil and I were talking economic development and world travel and all sorts of things, when suddenly he, too, got on the subject of Morris and Spurrier.

And I realized that I was probably the only person in South Carolina not fully briefed on this burning issue. So I went and read up on it. The State itself did not have anything on the controversy, beyond this self-effacing column by Ron (the message, in a nutshell: It was business, not personal).

Then I found this column by Dan Cook at the Free Times:

For a man who seemingly has everything — a multimillion-dollar salary and one of the most successful teams in college football, for starters, not to mention a Heisman trophy — Steve Spurrier is no doubt lacking at least one thing: a thick skin.

How else to explain Spurrier’s repeated tantrums about the writings and comments of a sports columnist, Ron Morris at The State?

At first glance — and second, third and fourth — the situation seems utterly absurd. How can the mighty Spurrier, a legendary coach revered by literally millions of college football fans, even care what a lowly local sports columnist says?

And yet, he does — apparently a lot.

Last week, it was a comparison Morris made between Penn State and the University of South Carolina that set Spurrier off.

Speaking off the cuff on Bill King’s XM radio show in response to a question about whether Spurrier would take questions at an upcoming press conference (Spurrier had recently instituted a policy of refusing questions), Morris said, “I think it’s a real test of the [USC] administration. This is how things like Penn State happen — when the administration won’t step up and confront the football coach, and he becomes all-powerful. When the football coach begins to dictate company policy, I think you’re asking for trouble.”

Spurrier responded in a later radio appearance by implying that if he had to put up with Morris any longer, he might as well retire and “head to the beach” instead. “That’s not part of the job, so we’re going to get it straightened out,” Spurrier said…

So now I see what it was about. And as I see the actual words Ron spoke, I see the matter quite differently from the Gamecock fans who have gotten so upset over it. I understand how a fan (to the extent that I can understand a sports fan, a breed not unlike political partisans, who often mystify me) would get upset if he heard, “Hey, that Ron Morris compared the Gamecock football program to the Penn State mess.” But of course, that would be a grossly unfair characterization of what he said.

To a dispassionate observer, it’s obvious that he was saying this situation was like that other in that you had a popular, successful coach, and if that popular coach becomes beyond reproach in your community, and becomes the tail that wags the dog that is your state’s flagship university, that’s a problem.

While the statement can be defended on rational grounds, there’s no question that Ron stepped in it, and that all this emotion could have been avoided if he’d just found a better way to express himself.

Of course, if he’d simply said, “Steve Spurrier’s getting too big for his breeches,” and not mentioned Penn State, he’d still be in trouble, because, well, Mr. Spurrier actually does happen to be a coach who has become beyond reproach in his community. A lot of people are fine with that state of affairs. As a skeptical journalist, Ron seems to have a problem with it. And therein lies the conflict.

How they opened windows in olden times

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OK, so this is a re-enactment -- I asked her to point to the mysterious lever again.

Ever since they were babies, the Twins have loved my beat-up 2000 Ford Ranger. When they were smaller, they’d get excited every time they saw a pickup truck, of any color, thinking it was mine.

But neither ever had a chance to ride in it, until today. And that only happened because of an unforeseen circumstances.

I was running out of the office thinking to go to Starbucks and get something to fortify me through rehearsal tonight. But as I got into the truck, I had another thought: I called my wife to find out where she and the kids — the Twins, both 4 and a half, my son’s daughter who is two years younger, and her baby brother — were. They were at the park. So I went there instead.

When I got there, they were getting ready to leave, but had a problem. My wife asked which vehicle I had brought, and was disappointed to learn it was the truck — which has no back seat, and no child seat in any case, which is why the little ones have never ridden in it.

But one of the Twins had developed a bad blister and couldn’t put on  her shoes to walk back to the house. So I strapped her into the seat and drove her back the four residential blocks or so very, very slowly, making sure not to get anywhere near any other vehicle. At one point, she cried, “Your truck goes really fast!” I looked at the speedometer. I was doing 15 mph. I slowed down anyway.

Safely back in the driveway, I reached across my passenger to roll down her window, to keep the cab cool while we waited for those who were walking back. Then, as I was rolling down mine to get some cross-ventilation, she said, “That’s a funny thing.”

“What?” I asked.

“That thing,” she said, pointing to the manual window crank.

She had never seen one before.