Category Archives: Social media

Glad to be on Bluesky, although it’s not yet all it needs to be

So I read this morning in The Washington Post that Bluesky is now open to us plebeians who didn’t get invited to join the new Twitter replacement (that’s the way I’m viewing it, anyway) previously.

About time.

You know about Bluesky. It’s the latest brainstorm of Jack Dorsey, the guy who created Twitter long before the barbarians knocked down the gates and started destroying it.

So of course, I immediately signed up and started looking about.

And it looks great. The interface is SO much like Twitter of old that I immediately hope that the new platform doesn’t get sued by Attila et al. Very comfortable. And I’ve tweeted (or whatever we’re supposed to call the action) a couple of times, and gotten a few likes, and it feels like old times.

Of course, a lot of stuff will have to happen before it can be what Twitter was. For instance, more people I’m used to following need to sign up and get busy. And that includes a lot of the media sites I follow, not just individual people.

There were some old friends already there, which prompted that petulant first post from me, which went like this:

Now that I’m finally in here, I see that SOME of my friends were invited long ago. Harrumph, harrumph, harrumph…

I’m sure there will be a lot more people on board tomorrow, and the day after, and so on. I’m very hopeful. But aside from way more accounts, the site will need a few other things to live up to my hopes:

Embed codes. Note that I simply quoted my post, rather than embedding. Maybe there’s a way to do that, but it’s not yet readily apparent. I just get a “copy link.”
Speaking of embedding… When I’m reading something on one of my newspaper apps on my iPad, and want to say something about it on Bluesky, and click on the “share” thingy, I see all sorts of icons, but not one for Bluesky. I’m not sure whose responsibility it will be to fix this — will each newspaper have to make changes in the app, or is it up to Apple? Anyway, I hope they soon get on the stick.
A few publications I’m used to following don’t even have accounts on Bluesky. Are they aware it exists? When will they jump in?
Even those who DO have accounts — such as The Washington Post — are only putting a small amount of their content on the platform. Weirdly, they’re posting links to some stories — such as the one about Bluesky itself, and one about Taylor Swift — multiple times. But I couldn’t find one to this story, and together with the lack of a direct link from the newspaper app, I had to do a sort of double workaround to post about it. It worked fine, but it should be way easier. And I’m hoping it will be, soon.

Enough griping. Let me say that even though I had to do some manual stuff to post about that story, when I entered the link, I was immediately asked if I wanted the headline and artwork to automatically appear in the post — the way it used to be on Twitter. There wasn’t a “hell, yeah” option, so I just said yes.

And I’m sure, now that I’ve put this post on the platform, some of those long-time members will respond that I’m an idiot, and all these things are already there, but I haven’t found them yet. Fine. Maybe they’ll help me.

Anyway, I hope to see some of y’all there…

A conversation I had with a friend this morning

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It’s the kind of exchange I think is valuable, so here it is…

The #ProLife movement and the #GOP started something 50yrs ago that they don’t know how to stop.

It is not abt stopping #abortion. It is abt who is a good person and who is a bad person. It is abt division.

And it is madness. https://t.co/mUYvwXRUG8

— (@stevenpmillies) November 13, 2023

If you doubt me, focus on the way folks on the pro-choice side regard those who dare to disagree with them. Disdain is too weak a word. And there’s nothing “liberal” about it. It’s about separating sheep from goats…

— Brad Warthen (@BradWarthen) November 14, 2023

You know what? The embed codes are messing up and overlapping each other. I’ll just give you plain text for the rest…

Steve: You’re right that a binary needs 2 to tango but also I’m not willing to bothsides this because there’s a peculiar madness on one side that is more responsible for our polarization than any other factor. I’m so devoted to that point of view that I wrote a book abt it.

Me: The right has gone stark, raving mad. But tragically, the left is weakened by its own embrace of some of the symptoms. Neither side is an appetizing “team” to join. And media have trained everyone to think in binary terms, by covering politics like sports. So we’re lost…

Me again: That probably seemed incoherent. Too many related thoughts, not enough room for the transitions…

Steve: It makes sense. But my conclusion is that madness supersedes weakenedness. The Right no longer is doing politics recognizably at all, they’ve gone so far there aren’t 2 sides anymore for anyone serious abt politics and that’s why we have to overcome the binary framing.

Me: You know that book I keep telling you I want to write, but (unlike you) never do? If I ever write it, I have an idea for another. It’s about politics, and my tentative title is “Consensus.” It’s what we desperately need to work toward, at all times….

Steve: A longtime struggler toward consensus, though, I have to say that you can’t achieve consensus or engage in dialogue with people who don’t accept that consensus and dialogue are legitimate. Our more fundamental problem is that too many people don’t believe in politics at all.

Me: Absolutely. That’s what I meant by “we’re lost.” And one of many reasons is that people don’t understand basic things about our system, which is intended to be deliberative. They think it’s about winning 50%+1, and cramming their will down the throats of the “bad people”…

Both of us could have gone on, but had things to do — especially Steve, who as I mentioned in passing, actually writes books instead of just talking about it, and has busy day jobs as well. He’s a professor of public theology and director of The Bernardin Center at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.

You see what I did there? Under the guise of finally posting something on the blog (without having to write it from scratch) I snuck in another “ones and zeroes” post. Fair warning: I’m likely to do it again at any time.

The part of the exchange that deals with consensus is another step down the same train of thought that led to this post awhile back…

The system they came up with would work if we would accept that it’s designed to be deliberative, and not just about shouting at each other.

Anybody get any valuable messages via LinkedIn?

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I tried asking this on LinkedIn, and I was just about to post it when I decided to check one point, and in trying to get to that information, I lost what I’d written.

So I’ll ask it here, to the best of my memory…

Have you ever gotten a direct message — or pretty much, any message — via LinkedIn that was relevant to you? I mean, one from someone you know, or need to know, about something that you have any sort of interest in?

Pretty much all I get is “cold-call” attempts to sell me some unsought service or other, sent to me by strangers. Usually the strangers are attractive young women, but they’re not like the random, unknown attractive young women who reach out to me via Twitter. These have their clothes on and everything — businesslike clothes — which commands a bit more respect.

And I’d like to help them. I have enormous sympathy for people forced to engage in such painful, thankless labor. Also, they’re often from troubled places in the word. I got a couple recently from a lovely young lady in Ukraine, and y’all know I’m all about helping Ukraine. But I just wasn’t in the market for whatever she was trying to sell. I forget what it was. That was the bit of information I was seeking when I lost my message earlier, so I’m not going to go hunting for it now. It was some kind of business thingamabob, I’m assuming.

And since she was a stranger, I had no way of knowing whether she was legit. She said she was in Kyiv, but how was I to know? She could have been with the Russians, too. (Her first name, or the one she was using, was “Svetlana.”)

Anyway, that’s essentially what I was trying to ask, and I particularly wanted to hear from actual LinkedIn users. Maybe some of y’all are among those.

I’ll ask an additional question beyond that one, and I think I’ve asked this one before: Do you ever find LinkedIn useful? I doubt you have, unless it’s helped you get a job, or helped you hire someone else for a job.

To me, its one useful function is to be a sort of online complement to your C.V. And it’s only useful for that if the user keeps the page updated, which too few do…

A new ‘ray of hope’ on the House speaker front…

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Y’all may have been bitterly disappointed that the “ray of hope” I offered you on the House speaker mess has still not led to a speaker of any kind, much less the kind we need — the kind who still possesses all his (or her) marbles. Or at least, one who had some marbles at some point in the past.

Why is this failing to happen? Because the yahoos who completely unnecessarily created this crisis are still bat-excrement crazy.

But now, one of our own is riding to the rescue:

Fine. I’ll be the next speaker of the house.

— Bryan Caskey (@BryanCaskey) October 25, 2023

Sure you might read that and say, Aw, Bryan’s just being a wise guy again!

But consider: He posted that at 10:22 this morning, and hasn’t retracted it yet! Give him a few more minutes, and his combined availability and viability will have lasted longer than that of any previous candidate.

And yes, he’s viable. Y’all know he’s a legit, Old School kind of conservative, only one with a sense of humor. And he’s also legit in the sense that you don’t have to be a member of the House to be speaker.

Also, he’s got this rare-but-wonderful qualification: You can tell he doesn’t really want the job. That makes him ideal in my book. I don’t think we’ve seen an opportunity like that since James Garfield in 1880.

Garfield went to the 1880 Republican convention to nominate someone else. And when the ballots dragged on, and people started nominating him as an alternative, he fought it for all he was worth. That, of course, made him such an appealing candidate that the delegates ended up nominating him unanimously.

OK, so Bryan’s not that perfect, since he’s willing. But let’s forgive him that, and see if we can get some momentum going for him. (It might take a bit of effort. After several hours, he’s only received three “likes” on his offer. Ahem…)

Because, you know, we’re long past holding our breaths for “perfect.” Sanity would be a tremendous blessing at this point.

And I think Bryan can settle down and deliver on that, if we give him a chance.

I mean really — what are our alternatives right now?

Blog posts gotta have pictures, so here’s one of the 1880 Republican Convention. Photographic proof that it the old party actually WAS once grand. Or at least functional. Wikipedia says that’s Garfield standing on the podium, about to speak…

A Lyric Just in Time

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I had a fun little exchange on Twitter with a friend a couple of weeks back, when he posted this quote:

He stands to be insulted and he pays for the privilege

— (@stevenpmillies) September 21, 2023

Hey, it’s always fun when people start quoting Elvis Costello. For me, anyway.

So I listened to the song several times, and got to thinking about how that one line is more than just fun:

He stands to be insulted and he pays for the privilege

You know how I frequently make the point that it’s harder and harder to get the kind of people who ought to run for elective office to run anymore? Reading those books from the late 19th century lately has driven home the point so much more painfully. Why do we almost never see the likes of Teddy Roosevelt or James Garfield — or, to reach higher, Abraham Lincoln — step forward any more? Or for that matter, the extraordinary men who served under them, in key positions — John Hay, Elihu Root, Henry Cabot Lodge?

Well, I know why — because of 24/7 TV “news,” and more recently and intensely, social media. Things that climb all over you and mobs that can’t wait to cancel you for the most trivial things. Consequently, instead of people who set brilliant careers aside to give back to the country by sitting down with other serious people and working out the country’s real problems, you get people who don’t give a damn about any of that. They don’t want to work out problems with anybody. They just want to posture for their respective bases.

And to gain the “privilege” of doing this, they spend every moment between elections raising the money to pay for it.

I even felt a moment of gratitude today when I heard the House GOP had gone behind closed doors to nominate a new speaker. No strutting or posturing for the mob. And they came out with Scalise, which I think is better, or at least not as horrible, as the alternative. Which isn’t much to celebrate, of course.

Anyway, Elvis said it better than I have:

He stands to be insulted and he pays for the privilege…

I’ll close with the video:

It’s Twitter, so let’s just call it that

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OK, I’ve had it with the stupid phrase. Some examples:

Thank you for that last one. I appreciate the explanation. I understand. The AP says write it this way, so all journalists do. If you search for the exact phrase “formerly known as Twitter” on Google, you get 123,000 hits. (Actually, that’s what you get under the subheading “News,” which is the way I usually search. If you switch to “All,” you get 6,190,000.)

What is this, the 1980s, when we had to endure “the artist formerly known as Prince” over and over and over on MTV? Until finally decided to be sensible and went back to “Prince,” which I actually did not expect him to do, but appreciated.

I don’t expect Elon Musk to come to his senses, either. Maybe he will, even though he seems to be even less grounded than Prince. I just listened to an audio version of Ronan Farrow’s piece about him in The New Yorker. Yikes.

So let’s just call it what it is — Twitter. Or, since it’s officially been stripped of its name, maybe just twitter. That way, we can use it in Scrabble. No more proper name. Just people calling a thing what it is.

“X” does have one slight advantage over the Prince symbol. At least you can say it. That was the challenge facing those veejays back in the ”80s — they had to say it, and the new “name” couldn’t be said. But although you can say it, “X” is not a name. It’s the negation of a name. Brand X. The thing illiterates scrawl when they can’t write their, you know, names.

Why do people have to write “formerly known as Twitter” after “X?” Because “X” is meaningless, and does not communicate what you are attempting to identify to a reader. You have to explain it. It would be nice to do it more honestly. Just call it “Twitter,” or “twitter,” or if you feel somehow obligated to obey Musk, write “X (Twitter).”

Or how about “Twitter, which one guy on the planet calls X?”

People who use it every day have to call it something. We are a verbalizing species.

So let’s call it what we know it to be: Twitter.

Them danged bureaucrats, and the folks who hate them

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Dang them bureaucrats!

I had a good, brief discussion with our friend Lynn Teague the other day on what was — way back then (or at least, earlier this week) — called “Twitter.”

I asked her if she minded my sharing it here, and she didn’t, so here goes…

It started with her reaction to someone who was commenting on a truly off-the-wall proposal by a guy who styles himself as a “U.S. presidential candidate” (God forbid!):

As an anthropologist I am aware that a permanent bureaucracy is an essential feature of modern states. It permits functioning without extreme change with every shift in political leadership. Without it, there is little left but unconstrained oligarchs and uncertainty.

— Lynn S. Teague (@LynnSTeague) July 7, 2023

Rather than embed all the back and forth that followed, I’ll just quote it.

I responded, “And anyone who can’t understand that is distressingly deficient… Why on Earth would anyone want someone in a position of responsibility who knows nothing about the job?”

Of course, being me, I went on: “I think these people think of a job as some sort of goody that is handed to people like candy. And they don’t want anyone hogging the goodies. They don’t see it as SOMETHING IMPORTANT WE NEED A QUALIFIED PERSON TO DO.”

Lynn came back with: “I’m afraid you are right, Brad. They aren’t aware of the actual jobs that are done and the skills needed to perform them. When they are aware, they don’t value things like knowing how to get water supplies to hurricane victims or help someone with federal pension issues.”

ME: “Actually, it’s worse than that. They see public service as something contemptible, and think only contemptible people would want to do it. So they don’t want those people to have that cushy goody…”

LYNN: “Yes, I’m afraid these folks read Atlas Shrugged at an impressionable age and believe the unconstrained business superhero sits astride a world of those who SC Gov Hammond called ‘mudsills.’Most voters don’t know that they are regarded as mudsills.”

ME: Well… I think these people DO suspect, on some level, that they are regarded as belonging to a lower order, whatever term is applied. And they think elites, and those danged bureaucrats, are the ones who regard them as such…”

And dang it! I can’t find my conclusion! Did it disappear from the site formerly known as Twitter?

That’s what made me thing of this — when Ken said something about Southern history, it reminded me of what I had said….

I’ll try to reconstruct it. It went something like this, elaborating on my last point…

These folks think, “at least I’m better than those bureaucrats!” And when these folks are Southern voters, there’s a sort of hereditary background for this kind of thinking. Their “betters” (folks like Mr. Hammond) somehow persuaded them to think that however low they might be in the social order, they were better than somebody, because they were white…

I think that was it…

Top Five Worst Social Media Platforms

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I’ve posted about this before, haven’t I? I would have sworn I had, but in the last few days I’ve hunted for it a couple of times, without success. Maybe I did in in a comment, and the search function isn’t picking it up.

Oh, well. It needs doing, so I’ll do it again.

But first, the reason why this is on my mind again at the moment….

Are you on LinkedIn? I am, although I just noticed my profile is in serious need of updating (hey, I just now changed so it no longer shows my most recent job as “Communications Director, James Smith for South Carolina”). Actually, I’m using the word “need” loosely there, because after more than a decade dealing with LinkedIn, I have yet to identify its vital function in my life.

Anyway, a couple of days ago, I got an email from LinkedIn urging me to “Congratulate Bunny Richardson for 28 years at BMW Manufacturing Co.”

Well, that’s not a thing I do. Do you send people “work anniversary” congratulations? I don’t. I can’t imagine anyone expecting me to. I don’t recall any time in my life when I expected anyone to send me such congratulations. While I’ve had jobs I loved, I didn’t set up candles on a cake or anything when my anniversary date rolled around.

But if I did do stuff like that, I’d have had no objection to sending Bunny such a message — under normal circumstances. I worked with her for years at The State when I was in the newsroom (so, pre-1994), and she was an assistant managing editor. She was a pretty nice lady for a newspaper editor, and I generally got along with her pretty well.

But these aren’t “normal circumstances,” so I still wouldn’t send her one. That’s because Bunny died of cancer back in 2015. Yep, eight years ago, God rest her.

This of course is another reminder that I need to stick something in my will, or somewhere, that provides the login info to all social media, this blog, email and accounts with various businesses so that someone can deal with them when I’m gone — post some sort of announcement, at least.

But that’s not what I’m writing about today. That incident reminds me that I do not like LinkedIn — a rather dry and unenjoyable medium that people in the business world all think they have to be on, rather in the way journalists and political professionals actually do need to be on Twitter.

It brings me to this Top Five list of Worst Social Media Platforms. Although that’s a tad misleading. They’re not necessarily the worst in the world. More like “Worst Major Social Media Platforms That I’ve Actually Used.” And this is not a ranked list. I dislike each for different reasons, which make them hard to compare to each other. The numbers are there just to make it more obvious that there are five. Anyway, here’s the list…

FACEBOOK — Actually, were this a ranked list, this would probably still be at the top. That’s because it’s the biggest, and the one I have to deal with the most — it’s inescapable. And therefore my feelings about it are stronger. But this is, I’ll admit, mitigated by the fact that there are some things I like about it — it’s great for easily sharing pictures with family and friends, and it’s quite valuable for finding living people when you’re building a family tree. Otherwise, I don’t like it, and here are the Top Five reasons why: 1. The posts don’t appear in temporal order — what I should see first is the most recent posts from my “friends,” and that does not happen. One consequence of this is that I see something on the platform, and want to go back to it later (to blog about it; to show it to someone, whatever), and can’t find the blasted thing. 2. They keep messing with it; every time I think I’ve got the platform figured out, they move things around — most inconvenient. 3. It’s a lousy place to put links to my blog (which was why I initially got really involved with it — to promote blog posts), because unlike Twitter it’s a terrible place for political discussions — it’s a different, broader kind of audience (I finally stopped putting blog links there; non-political friends and family weren’t there for that, and weren’t sure how to react). 4. It’s destroying the country, because everybody’s on it, and unthoughtful people accept what other unthoughtful people post as “facts,” and so Donald Trump was elected president in 2016. 5. On my phone and iPad apps, you can’t grab a URL to link to something on FB — they want you to “share” it only within their ‘verse (you can link to it from a browser, but I’m not always on my laptop).
LINKEDIN — OK, I’ll be briefer from now on. I first got on LinkedIn when I started working with ADCO, on the basis of being told this was essential in the business world. It isn’t. I think I’m still waiting for it to be useful, even once.
INSTAGRAM — I hate to include this one, because my grandchildren love it. But that leads to one of two things I don’t like about it: I find it hard to find the things my grandchildren post, partly because of the design of the platform, and partly because they have this one way of posting things that apparently makes them disappear, like the posts on Snapchat. The other reason is bigger: You can’t right-click (when on the laptop, of course) and “save image.” To a blogger like me that makes this platform next to useless.
SNAPCHAT — For the reason stated above. If I take the time to write something, good or bad, the last thing I want is for it to go away. The most wonderful thing about the Web, and especially about blogs, is that you never have to include in a post the most horrible, stupid, wasteful part of news stories in the dead-tree era — background. Back in the day, many news stories, those regarding developments in ongoing, complicated stories, were often 80 percent background — just robot copy you’d already published dozens of times. Why? Because otherwise, the reader had no context for the new part. With the Web, what you wrote before is still available to the reader, and all you have to do is link to it (and oh, how I love hypertext links).
TIKTOK — No, I’m not talking national security issues. It’s not because it’s the social media version of a Chinese spy balloon. It’s because of the way it has promoted and standardized the most execrable esthetic and journalistic trend of our day — vertical (portrait-mode) videos. They’ve made it so popular that recently YouTube has started aping this disgusting nonsense, in a feature called “Shorts” (a misnomer if ever I’ve seen one, since they should be called “Talls”). If I were to tell you all the reasons this is awful, my TikTok paragraph would be longer than the rest of this long post. But I’ll mention the worst — a vertical image, usually concentrating on a single human being like a full-length mirror — completely shuts out all context, making it impossible to see what its happening a foot to the left or right of that image, or even where the action is occurring. At the same time, it gives you more of that person than is necessary for conveying any useful information — and more often than not, shows empty space from the top of the person’s head to the ceiling. That’s all I’ll say about this particular foolishness. I’m forcing myself to stop now…

And just so you don’t think I’m nothing but negative, there are social media I love. I love Twitter — and sincerely hope that Elon Musk, who doesn’t get it, fails in his intense efforts to destroy it. I also enjoy Pinterest, up to a point. I like looking at the pictures. I just wish they’d dial back the recommendation algorithm a bit. Just because I like one Marilyn Monroe picture doesn’t mean I want to see nothing but Marilyn Monroe pictures.

Also, I love YouTube. But I also hate its destructive power, which in some ways comes back to the Facebook problem. And again, that’s because of the recommendation algorithm. Hear about it from a guy who helped develop it, Guillaume Chaslot…

What did ‘rich’ mean to you as a kid?

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I don’t think I’d ever dive into a vault full of coins. Paper, maybe…

Yeah, I think it’s a silly question, too, but I saw it on Twitter, and saw an interesting response or two from folks I know, and decided to respond myself… and thought y’all might want to get in on it.

It came from this feed I had never seen before. I only saw it because people I follow responded:

I used to think that having a washer/dryer inside your home meant you were rich. What did you think “rich” meant growing up?

— DelyanneTheMoneyCoach (@DelyanneMoney) October 10, 2022

Here’s what Sen. Katrina Shealy said to that:

I never thought about it. We were not rich but we were comfortable and we had friends and family that had more and those who had less. I never noticed, until I I read all these responses.

A few minutes before that, our friend Lynn Teague had written:

I think one of the things that has been lessened in recent decades is a sense of community across economic and social differences. There are many academic studies supporting the idea that “sorting” by wealth and social characteristics is now stronger than it was in the past.

— Lynn S. Teague (@LynnSTeague) October 11, 2022

As y’all know, I’m generally not that interested in money. (A sure way to lose me is to steer a thread toward a discussion of the economy.) Unlike someone whose Twitter handle is DelyanneTheMoneyCoach, when the subject comes up I usually run the other way. But I responded this way:

I didn’t think about it, either, but if I had, it might have been like this: Scrooge had a vault with a diving board so he could dive into his money, while Richie Rich had a pool filled with ginger ale. You know, dumb stuff…

— Brad Warthen (@BradWarthen) October 11, 2022

Elaborating on that diving-boards-and-pools theme, I suppose I should throw in the Clampett’s cee-ment pond.

Another model for me was the Howells on Gilligan’s Island. Which reminds me of something else, so I might come back to them in a later post.

In other words, the models were silly, and the things that distinguished them as “rich” were even sillier. Nothing basic, like a washer and dryer. (Maybe that’s what drove her to be “the Money Coach.”)

When I was a kid, I saw us as living sort of outside that whole money universe, since my Dad was in the Navy and therefore outside the private-sector rat race thing. We usually had a washer and dryer in our homes, but I owned my own house before my parents bought one. We were just always moving around too much. My folks bought their house after he retired.

Not that I never think about money, as an adult. I think about it way more than I want to. That’s why my fantasy about being rich is simple: I’d like to have enough money that I would never again have to think about money. I’d hire what in Regency Period terms (all those historical novels I read, you know) would be called a “man of business” to deal with all that. All bills would go to him, and he’d take care of them. I’d also engage the services of someone clever to watch him, and then maybe a third person to watch her. And I’d instruct them all not to bother me with it.

I think that would be way better than a pool full of ginger ale…

I couldn’t find an image with ginger ale. But I’m sure I read a comic that mentioned it…

We lost the queen at a bad time. Some brief thoughts…

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Of course, it was a bad time for Britain, as you’ve probably read or heard a thousand times in recent days. But even before this sad occasion, there were pieces being written in reputable journals, such as this one in The Atlantic, foretelling woe for Albion. That was published in January, and it began:

The grim reality for Britain as it faces up to 2022 is that no other major power on Earth stands quite as close to its own dissolution…

So bad timing for Britain, and bad for me, too, as a blogger. My own 91-year-old mum was in the hospital having surgery — the placement of a pacemaker — that very day. She had just gotten out of the ER, and my brother and I had just seen her in post-op, when we got the news about the queen. (My mother is at home now and fine, thank God.)

Needless to say, I didn’t have time that day for blogging, or paying work, or much else. And things have been busy since.

But I had thoughts, and ripped them out over Twitter that day, when I had a sec, and thereafter. Which in a way was fine, because I really didn’t have any sort of coherent, strung-together essay popping up at that moment. Just a few quick thoughts. Here are some of them. I won’t embed the tweets, since y’all don’t seem to like that, but here are the thoughts:

Yes, I know we cast off the monarchy and all that, but I very much feel the loss. She has stood as a reassuring beacon of stability and dignity for my entire life. Now, the entire Western world is the lesse, as Donne would have said… (In response to early reporting from the NYT).
I really wish she could have lasted a couple more years, and not just because that would have meant topping the Sun King’s record. Things were already bad enough in Britain. The country didn’t need this sad loss as well… (Also while reading the NYT).
Oh, I don’t know! Can’t we talk about this later? Can’t we first take a bit of time to mourn and honor this lady who’s been a constant, stable, reassuringly dutiful presence for our entire lives? (In response to a piece in The New Yorker headlined, “Where Does the British Monarchy Go Under King Charles III?”)

I’ll add a couple more…

My headline is quite intentional. I say “we” and not “Britain,” because we’ve all lost someone of great importance to our world, someone who helped keep civilization anchored, someone who lived an unimpeachable life in view of the whole planet, and never did anything to embarrass or shame the human race, much less the British portion of it. (No matter how much I may like some of them, I have a hard time thinking of any American leader of whom I can say that.) She was a beacon of civilized restraint in a world increasingly condemning itself to drown in stupidity and snark. And she did it for 70 years! I really wish she could have beaten the Sun King’s record. And after that, I’d have cheered for her to beat Methuselah’s.

Y’all know, of course, that I’m an Anglophile. But I can still think of plenty of things to criticize the country for, from the dim times before Alfred the Great to the present time. But I don’t lay any of it at Elizabeth’s feet. At least, not this Elizabeth. And that is really, truly extraordinary. I doubt I’ll ever see anything like it again (and of course, I expect some of you will quickly share your Ten Worst Things About QEII lists. But those will say more about you than about her).

To sum it up, I will embed one of the tweets, so y’all can see the headline to which I was responding:

“A life of duty, service.” Could anyone have a finer epitaph? pic.twitter.com/Qpx0CXYewR

— Brad Warthen (@BradWarthen) September 9, 2022

Stick with the same headline, people!

1 Reply

Twitter is preparing to add an edit feature, and I think that’s great. Sure, there’s potential for abuse, but I think the precautions they’re taking are good ones, and I think it should be tried.

No more posting a Tweet, seeing the error the instant it appears, and then having to delete it and start over. Good.

Oh, and here are the precautions:

Twitter said it will add a label to edited tweets that will allow users to click in and see the history of the tweet and its changes.

The feature has other limitations. Tweets can only be edited during the first 30 minutes after they are posted, and they will be labeled with an icon to let others know the tweet has been changed….

Sounds good.

Now, I want another innovation — except Twitter can’t do this for me. It’s something I need the editors putting out the content to do. If they will. Which they probably won’t, from what I’ve seen.

Usually, I catch this before it happens. But yesterday, I failed, and didn’t notice until I saw this morning that someone had liked the tweet.

Remember the Tolkien post? It was inspired by a couple of stories I’d read earlier in the day, primarily by this one from The Washington Post, headlined, “‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ is beautiful, banal boredom.”

The headline of my post, “Maybe it would help to have a POINT to the story,” was in reaction to that headline. So much so that when I posted the link to my post to Twitter, I decided to do so in a retweet of the WashPost‘s tweet — so people could see what it was in reaction to.

And here’s how the frickin’ thing appeared:

Maybe it would help to have a POINT to the story… https://t.co/EYVVKxylTK https://t.co/egllJEAEfO

— Brad Warthen (@BradWarthen) September 1, 2022

Which really ticks me off. Sure, if the reader clicks on the link of the Post‘s original tweet, they get to see the original headline. But is that clear communication? It is not.

But that doesn’t bother me as much as this, which happens more often…

I’m reading one of my newspaper apps — the Post, the NYT, whatever. And I see a headline on the main, or “Top Stories,” page, and immediately think of a good response to that, and then call up the story — and it has an entirely different headline! Something boring, that doesn’t inspire a good tweet. And if you try to tweet it, that blah headline is the one that goes the Twitter.

Sometimes, I don’t notice this until I’ve read the stupid story, and clicked to tweet it, and am actually writing my reaction. At which point I see the problem, and ditch the whole enterprise.

I hate this. And it’s not in the interest of the original publisher of the content — since I’m trying to bring further attention to that content!

So please, don’t write multiple heds. Just come up with one good one, and stick with it.

Thanks…

DeMarco: “Dos” and “Don’ts” for next year’s Christmas greetings

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The Op-Ed Page

By Paul V. DeMarco
Guest Columnist

Actually, it will be all “don’ts.”

It seems that 99.9% of Americans understand what Christmas best wishes, be they traditional hold-in-your hand cards or digital missives, should involve. Unfortunately, two of our nation’s highest elected officials, who represent us to the nation and the world, have not a clue.

It started with Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky) posting a virtual Yuletide greeting on Twitter. The photo showed him, his wife, and their four children posing in front of a Christmas tree all armed with assault rifles. The caption read “Merry Christmas! ps. Santa, please bring ammo.” An analysis published in Forbes estimated the arsenal on display to be worth at least $20,000. It should surprise no one that his fellow representative, Lauren Boebert (R-Co), responded with an image of her and her four children, the youngest of whom appears to be 9 or 10 years old, bearing similar weapons captioned “The Boeberts have your six, @RepThomasMassie! (No spare ammo for you, though).”

It will be difficult with the words I have left to count all the ways these images violate sanity, logic, dignity, propriety and Christian ethics.

First, as a gun owner, I am embarrassed for Massie and Boebert. I came relatively late to gun ownership, being introduced to hunting in my early thirties, soon after moving to Marion. What I quickly learned about hunters is that they are very careful with and respectful of their weapons. The only time I have my shotgun in my living room is when I am transporting it from my gun safe to my vehicle to hunt or shoot clays. Only a reckless pretender would pose with a firearm indoors. Massie and Boebert’s photos should anger all responsible gun owners.

Second, the use of children in this way is abominable. When I gave my son a shotgun at age twelve, I taught him the cardinal safety rules: Always assume a gun is loaded and never point it at anything you don’t want to kill. As I handed him the gun, I praised him for maturing into a young man who could be trusted with it. Then I reminded him that he could kill me if he were careless. He started to cry, which reassured me even further. It was clear that he understood the seriousness that owning guns should invoke. Think of what lessons Boebert’s youngest child is learning from her stunt: that guns can be treated like toys; that they are props, to be brought out for show; that they are political swag, to be used to drum up support.

Third, their desecration of Christmas is disgraceful. Massie is a United Methodist, as am I. Wikipedia describes Boebert as a born-again Christian. While on earth, Jesus said a few things about violence including “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God” (Matthew 5:9) and “Do not resist the evildoer… if anyone strikes you on the right cheek turn the other also.” (Matthew 5:39). When Jesus was betrayed by Judas and arrested, Peter defended him by cutting off a servant’s ear. Jesus says, “No more of this!” and touched the ear to heal him. Because of Jesus’ teachings some Christians, such as Quakers and Seventh-day Adventists, feel that violence in any form is incompatible with the faith. The vast majority of others recognize Jesus as a gentle healer who accepted crucifixion without resistance. It would be hard to find a Christian who could make a connection between the Jesus of the Bible and Massie’s and Boebert’s version of him.

Fourth, Christmas is traditionally a time when we call a truce on our disagreements and focus on what unites us. According to the Gun Violence Archive, more than 44,000 people died in 2021 from gun violence, more than 23,000 of those by suicide. No one, no matter his or her view of the Second Amendment, can be satisfied with those figures. Both sides recognize the need for change, and could be induced to work together on measures to save lives.

America needs rational gun owners to come together with reasonable gun-control advocates. But this can only happen if we have political leaders on each side of the debate who exemplify a fair-minded approach. I have a foot in each camp and know people on both sides of the divide. The extreme positions – that gun owners will not accept any kind of new restrictions, and that gun control advocates want to repeal the Second Amendment – are too often used by politicians to stoke fear and anger. But most Americans are open to commonsense approaches such as universal background checks. Massie’s and Boebert’s Christmas display of guns is counterproductive, widening the divide between the opposing sides.

Similarly, at a time when Christianity is losing its appeal, especially among young adults, these images will only accelerate that trend. One of the major reasons nonChristians cite for rejecting Christianity is hypocrisy. When congressmen and women who identify as Christian post guns in their Christmas cards, it gives more young people an excuse the turn away from the faith. It’s impossible to reconcile Isaiah’s foretelling of the coming Messiah – “The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them” – and Massie’s and Boebert’s Christmas photos.

For Christmas 2019, Rep. Massie posted a more traditional picture of his family (outdoors and unarmed) with the caption “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” (Luke 2:14), proving that it’s easier to promote good will toward your fellow American when you’re not brandishing a rifle.

Paul DeMarco is a physician who resides in Marion, SC. Reach him at [email protected]. This post first ran as a column in the Florence Morning News.

Is this real, or Photoshopped? I think it’s real…

36 Replies

Here’s another fun pop-culture thing, one that I found way more engaging than I would have thought if someone merely described it to me.

My friend Steve Millies in Chicago retweeted this the other day:

If you don’t zoom in on this and look at it for at least a full minute I don’t even know you anymore. pic.twitter.com/ZKPKLku9qS

— Super 70s Sports (@Super70sSports) September 27, 2021

I assure you I looked at it more than a minute.

It didn’t look like anything particularly engaging at first. OK, so we have some people who were big in TV in the ’70s all dressed up and having their picture taken together.

Yeah, there’s Mary Tyler Moore right at the front, looking as she did when she was probably the hottest star on CBS with her show that ran from 1970-77. OK.

But wait. Alfred Hitchcock is standing next to her. And on the other side of him, Walter Cronkite. Whoa…

So you start looking around. And you have to hunt, but eventually you find:

All four stars of “All in the Family,” scattered separately here and there.
Chester, from “Gunsmoke.” Yeah, I know that at this time, he was McCloud, but to me, he’ll always be Chester. Anyway, everybody else in this picture was affiliated with CBS, as was “Gunsmoke,” and “McCloud” was on NBC. So I think he’s there for being Chester.
Lou Grant! Which makes sense, since Mary is there.
Andy, Barney, Opie and Gomer, scattered about the picture.
Carol Burnette.
Lucille Ball.
Art Linkletter and Art Carney. And Arthur Godfrey, I think.
Steve Allen? Yeah, I think so.
Adrienne Barbeau! Yeah, I see at least one other person from “Maude” there, but who cares? There’s Adrienne Barbeau, whom we all know from certain other classics as well…
Danny Thomas.
Telly Savalas.
Betty White, with red hair!
One of the Gabor sisters, but I can’t tell which. Probably Eva. When you zoom in, the quality is poor.
Hang on! There are Roy Rogers and Dale Evans!!! And Roy’s duded up in black tie…
Is that Danny Kaye near George Burns?
I’m not sure about this, but do I see Captain Kangaroo, only out of uniform?

There are so many others I could name — big stars. But I’m going to let you find them yourselves.

I guess this was like the Emmys or something, and CBS must have really gone to a lot of trouble to make this happen.

Of course, maybe it was Photoshopped. But I don’t think so. As remarkable as it is, I think it’s real.

The only reason I have to doubt it (aside from the logistical difficulty of getting them together at the same moment) is the fact that these people weren’t all on the network at the same time. Overall, it seems like a shot from the ’70s. Steve speculates it was at a certain point in that period: “Good Times/Barnaby Jones overlap suggests 1973-74.”

But when someone was on a show isn’t a limiting factor. Hitchcock hadn’t been on CBS since 1964. And Dennis Weaver, although a former star of “Gunsmoke,” was at this time on a competing network. But they’re in it, too. And this has to be a CBS effort, based on who’s in the picture.

It doesn’t sound like it would be fun, but I thought it sort of was…