Category Archives: Coming Attractions

Is the ‘b-word’ EVER defensible?

As I share this, I’m working on a Sunday column about incivility in politics, and I use this incident involving John McCain as an anecdotal lede, and I’m now at the point of whittling down that part so that the column gets to the point a bit more quickly. Anyway, before throwing out this digression completely, I thought I’d share it to provoke a separate discussion on the blog:

Authorities differ about whether anyone should ever use
the female-dog word. I certainly never do, unless I’m using it as a substitute
for the verb “to gripe,” and then only in impolite company. I do, however,
understand the word (when used by others) to refer, in extreme circumstances,
to a woman who is acting like a man whom I might, under similar circumstances,
refer to by a seven-letter word for the lower end of the human digestive
system. I’ve always sort of thought that (female-dog word) was the feminine
form of (word for the thing that dim-witted people can’t distinguish from a
hole in the ground). But certain linguists of the female persuasion insist that
it is never an acceptable word, and I am sensitive to that, without
being as big a prig as the guy on CNN, because I really don’t want those women
on my case.

Basically, I decided that my heavy-handed attempt to have a little fun at the expense of political correctness wasn’t worth the space it was taking up. So I put it here, where space is unlimited.

To conclude: It’s a bad word, no question. And I don’t use it, even when I’m being foul-mouthed, because so many women have told me it’s not like other words. I think they’re wrong, of course. I still think that it’s on a par with the words we use to describe men when they are being big jerks. But women I know seem to get hurt and upset when the word is used, even when not aimed at them, and even though I’ll never, ever understand why women identify like that with all other women, because I have never felt that way about other men (guys who are jerks are just jerks; end of story), I defer to the thing I don’t understand.

How about you?

Pictures of the poor are always with us

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Poor5

What’s the opposite of an embarrassment of riches? Well, that’s what I’ve got.

Today, I’m filling in for the absent Mike Fitts, and one of the things he normally does is pick columns and art for the op-ed page — in addition to composing, outputting and releasing that page to the platemakers downstairs.

Anyway, I’ve chosen a syndicated column for tomorrow — it’s a Robert J. Samuelson column, for Wednesday release, on the persistent economic forces that keep, and will quite likely continue to keep, the poorest part of the world lagging behind the affluent parts.

Needing art (journalese for photos, cartoons, graphics — pretty much anything beyond text) for the page, I wondered whether I might find something on the wire that would go with the Samuelson piece.

Boy, could I.

This is partly because photojournalists the world over are drawn to images of poverty — under such circumstances, a picture is worth far more than its usual allotment of 1,000 words. But it’s also because, once you get outside this country and Western Europe, there’s so much of it out there.

Here are just five of the many I had to choose from today. So you be the editor: Which do you think best complements the Samuelson piece, based on my sketchy description above?
Poor1_2

Poor2_2

Poor3_2
Poor4_2

Hessians: This Year’s Model

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Reading an editorial for tomorrow about Blackwater, I wonder that we haven’t heard an appropriate lyrical allusion from bill on the subject. Well, I guess I’ll just have to do it myself:

Don’t you know I got the bully boys out/
changing someone’s facial design…

Come to think of it, why not just use the whole song?

Hand In Hand
No, don’t ask me to apologise.
I won’t ask you to forgive me.
If I’m gonna go down,
you’re gonna come with me

You say ‘Why don’t you be a man about it,
like they do in the grown-up movies?’
But when it comes to the other way around,
you say you just wanna use me. Oh,
you sit and you wonder whether
it’s gonna be syndicated.
You sit with your knees together.
All the time your breath is baited.

Hand in Hand.
No, don’t ask me to apologise.
I won’t ask you to forgive me.
If I’m gonna go down,
you’re gonna come with me

Don’t you know I got the bully boys out
changing someone’s facial design,
sitting with my toy room lout,
polishing my precious china
Don’t you know I’m an animal?
But don’t you know I can’t stand up steady?
But you can’t show me any kind of hell
that I don’t know already.

Hand in Hand.
No, don’t ask me to apologise.
I won’t ask you to forgive me.
If I’m gonna go down,
you’re gonna come with me
Hand in hand, hand in hand, hand in hand…

Now, for serious commentary on the subject, you’ll have to read tomorrow’s editorial page. In the meantime, I’ll say the performance of these rent-a-commandos are about as perfect an example of the problem with privatizing the natural functions of government as you’re ever likely to find.

Having shrunk the segment of government with this responsibility (the military), although thankfully not quite enough to drown it in a bathtub, we have generated a private-sector demand that is sufficiently lucrative so as to make it unbelievably tempting to some of our best warriors to go private. That weakens the U.S. military at a time we can ill afford it, and turns these exemplary soldiers into "weapons-free" mercenaries who are unconstrained by the military’s rules of engagement.

So we find ourselves, at a time when we’re painstakingly working to win hearts and minds to the counterinsurgency cause (the Petraeus strategy), with these hyperagressive private Rambos running around giving our country (and our allies’ countries, for that matter) an increasing worse name with the local indigenous population.

Privatization might work in some areas (although far, far fewer that the libertarians fantasize), but there’s one area where we must have political accountability: War-making.

Tomorrow’s column: Sam Brownback

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My column tomorrow is from our first editorial board meeting with Sam Brownback of Kansas. The headline: "Sam Brownback of Kansas: The Beatific Conservative."

It should be available on the blog shortly after midnight.

For those who can’t wait, here’s a clip from the interview upon which the column is based:

Listen for me on the radio

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Over the next two days, I’ll be on three radio shows, starting with this one:

Hello, Brad. My name is Christian Bladt and I am the producer
for The Dennis Miller Show, which airs on 119 stations for Westwood One radio. I
wanted to extend an invitation to
appear on our show for a phone interview that
would last between 10 and 15 minutes. We do the show from 7am-10am Pacific /
10am-1pm Eastern, and as you would probably have imagined we would have you on
to discuss John Edwards, whom Dennis has spoken about on numerous occassions.
Ideally, we would love to have you on Thursday morning. Let me know if you would
be available.

I said yes, and I’ll be on at 11:15 a.m. Eastern Time Thursday. That one should be fun.

Then, at 5:30 on the same day, I’ll be on this one:

Brad-

My name is Shawn Stinson and I’m the executive producer with the Danny
Fontana Show in Charlotte, North Carolina. I’m writing to schedule an interview
with you to discuss your blog talking about why you see John Edwards as a big
phony.

We broadcast from 3 – 6 p.m., Monday through Friday and the interview will
last around 6 to 8 minutes.

I confess I’m not familiar with that one, but I seldom turn town public appearances, especially when I can phone them in.

Then, on Friday sometime after 9, I’ll be back with sidekick Andy Gobeil on S.C. ETV Radio, as compensation for having ruined his regimen, as he griped in this message:

Brad,

I’m very upset with you. You’re column -and the voluminous responses-
are keeping me from my run this afternoon (actually, that’s not a bad
idea…it’s too darn hot today).
Great piece…I think you touched on a concern many people have with Edwards.
I’d like to try to make some time for you Friday morning.
Hope you’re doing well.
-A

Hey, I fully intend to work out every day, and don’t, and you don’t see me going around blaming it on other people… But maybe I should blame Bush. It seems to work on everything else.

Anyway, all these shows want to talk about the Edwards column, which, if you’d asked me when I was writing it Sunday night, I would have told you in no uncertain terms would have been forgotten by now. It just wasn’t all that deep — just me explaining how I formed the perfectly subjective impression that this one guy is a phony. Well, as Dennis Miller once said, "There’s nothing wrong with being shallow as long as you’re insightful about it."

Talking about Ravenel on the radio Friday

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I almost hesitate to promise this because the technology may fail us, but I’m supposed to be on Andy Gobeil’s radio show Friday morning at about 9:40.

I’ll be driving up Interstate 81 somewhere, and will be calling in via cell phone, and you just never know out in the country.

But please check it out. Even if we miss connections, I’m sure Andy will have some other good stuff.

After that, a few exits up the road, I’ll be doing a phone interview with Barack Obama. He wants to talk about some proposals he has for reforming the federal government.

What with traveling and all it may be a day or so before I’m able to post anything on Obama. But consider this a "coming attractions" sort of heads-up.

On the radio again, Friday morning

Poor Betty

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One of the great benefits of reading this blog is that you sometimes get little glimpses into really choice stuff coming up on the editorial page, such as this letter on tomorrow’s page, which I hereby quote in its entirety:

Get off Elizabeth Mabry’s back! She deserves a retirement party as much as anyone. The money collected is for the cost of the party. I had one when I retired, and a fee was charged.
What’s the big deal?

Anybody want to tell this gentleman what the big deal is?

What gentleman, you ask? Well, for that, you’ll have to read the paper. One thing I won’t use this blog for is to hold people up to ridicule for writing letters to the editor. At least, not personal, specific, individual ridicule.

Although that one really is a corker.

Let’s see — she took full advantage of the unaccountable commission system to run her own little queendom over at what we euphemistically call the "state" Department of Transportation, and resigned last year in disgrace over such trifles as having deceived the Legislature to the tune of millions of dollars.

Then the Budget and Control Board "spent $40,074.57 to buy the remaining service time Mabry needed to be eligible for full retirement benefits," which I think means that we taxpayers spent over 40 grand for the privilege of pretending that she’s worked more time than she has, so that we might have the further privilege of sending her pension checks for the rest of her life. I’m not smart about money matters, but I think that’s right.

Then lawmakers who had defended her strenuously and said any reports of less-than-admirable conduct at DOT was purely a matter of that scoundrel the governor trumping up nonsense changed their tune to: She’s gone now, so that solves the problem, we don’t have to reform the agency.

Then … oh, I don’t even want to go again into all the machinations that have occurred in the House and Senate to try to protect the status quo, except to point out this quote from Sen. John Land in today’s paper:

"This Senate would rue the day that you turn that billion-dollar agency
over to one person, and that’s what this bill does. It would be
terrible for South Carolina."

Mind you, he was reacting to a lame compromise that would keep the commission — which, with its multiple members provides multiples of multiple ways for powerful people to reach in and influence the agency’s running without leaving fingerprints — but give the governor the ability to get rid of members who really get out of hand a way that it can’t be missed. It most assuredly does not do what any sane state would do, which is put the elected chief executive in charge of this huge, expensive executive agency, so that voters can hold somebody responsible to some extent.

We wouldn’t want to put anybody in charge, oh no. Things are much better without that — better for Sen. Land and his peers, that is.

That’s all I can stand on this subject for today. By the way, here’s a copy of the invitation to Ms. Mabry’s party, in case you didn’t get one. I didn’t get one either. I guess that‘ll teach me to stay off that poor woman’s back. (And remember, folks, that RSVP address is celebratemabry@gmail.com.)

Here’s the bottom line: I don’t care about that. Throw her a party. Build her a palace, as long as you do it with your own money. May she live 1,000 years of pure ecstasy, day after day, while the rest of us and our descendants work for our livings.

What I care about is that we fix the problem with the way we run this agency — and plenty of other state agencies, this is just the mess we’re focused on at the moment. And that — fixing it — continues to seem highly unlikely.

So what’s happening next on the flag?

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Expect to hear something in the next few days about a public effort to try to get the flag down. It’s either get started in the next few days, or forget about it until next year, with the Legislature set to shut down the first week of June. It might not be until next week, though, since the first elected official to express an interest was Mayor Bob, and he’s out of the country until Friday.

(Watch for lawmakers to say, "Why are you bringing this up at the last minute?" As if it hadn’t been there since 1962, and as if we hadn’t been writing about it over and over since at least 1994 — which is the earliest I can vouch for.)

Tomorrow, we’ll have our first editorial since the Spurrier remarks, and a column by me, on the editorial page. We’ll also have an op-ed piece related to the subject by Charleston Mayor Joe Riley, which I just received a few minutes ago.

Mayor Joe has an idea very similar to the one I posted from city forester Carroll Williamson. Here’s an excerpt:

By my count, if there was a flag representing the government for each war that South Carolinians have fought in, there would be 11 in addition to the Confederate Flag. What a beautiful sight this new monument would be in front of our State Capitol. Even more important, what a wonderful unifying and hallowed place this would become, a place where every South Carolinian who fought and died for our state and our country would be remembered forever. These 12 flags could easily fit inside this grassy rectangle with space on either side of the walkway for future wars. While we hope and pray that these wars will not occur, history tells us that they will.

It’s also similar to an idea John Courson was floating back in 2000, which I referred to in my column on the day the flag came off the dome.

Radio, Radio — again

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You’ve waited so long I can no longer disappoint you. I’ll be back on the radio — public radio, that is — this morning at 9:05 a.m.

With me will be my faithful sidekick, Andy — you know, like Andy Devine. Jingles. Wait for me, Wild Bill? I guess you’re too young.

Anyway, I think we’ll be talking about a TV show from the night before. Whatever. Just as long as it’s not a pledge drive.

Talking schools, talking ‘choice’

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Had I not received an e-mail from a teacher saying she’d see me tonight, I would have forgotten that I’m appearing at this event tonight. OK, if you don’t want to follow the link:

School choice forum tonight

A
public forum on school choice will be held from 7 to 9 tonight at the
Richland 2 auditorium at Richland Northeast High School, 7500
Brookfield Road.

Panelists will include:

Cynthia Jackson, a teacher at Hood Street Elementary at Fort Jackson

Richland 2 superintendent Steve Hefner, chairman of state
Superintendent of Education Jim Rex’s transition team committee on
school choice

Larry Watts of the S.C. Independent Schools Association

Terrye Seckinger of South Carolinians for Responsible Government, an activist group

Brad Warthen, The State newspaper’s editorial page editor

The forum will be moderated by Bruce Field from the University of South Carolina.
USC is sponsoring the forum along with the S.C. School Improvement Council and the Richland 2 Teacher Forum.

Audience members can submit written questions at the forum or e-mail them ahead of time to barber2@gwm.sc.edu.

School choice has been a hot topic in the General Assembly for
several years. This year, there are competing proposals to offer
private school tuition tax credits or expand public school options for
parents.

I hope I still have something left to say on the subject. I had a three-hour-and-20-minute lunch yesterday (no martinis) with SCRG President Randy Page and SCRG attorneys Kevin Hall and Butch Bowers. It was affable, but it would have been a lot shorter had my good friend Kevin and Butch not come along (no offense, guys). I had just wanted to get to know Randy, since we had talked past each other so many, many times at a distance. Part of my politics-is-people schtick.

Do I routinely have such lunches? No, at least, not that long. In fact, this was a record. I’m still recuperating. Not until it was over did I realize it was longer than the previous record, the three-hour repast I had with the late Gov. John West several years ago when he was trying to do shuttle diplomacy between me and then Gov. Jim Hodges. Needless to say, we pretty much exhausted that subject as well, to little avail.

God bless Gov. West. He said that would go down in his list of personal failures with the fact that he couldn’t further Mideast peace as ambassador to Saudi Arabia. I thought that was a bit of an overstatement, but I saw what he meant.

He’d be gratified to know that whenever Gov. Hodges and I run into each other today, we are quite cordial. In fact, I met Mrs. Hodges for the first time at the Galivants Ferry Stump last year, and she was quite charming. Sometimes peace takes time.

Questions for DeMint and Graham

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Demintformal Congress is taking a break, so both Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham will meet with the editorial board
next week — DeMint on Monday, Graham on Tuesday.

Their offices asked for the meetings, so I haven’t thought much yet about what we’ll be talking about — not that there’s ever a shortage of topics on such occasions. I suspect that with DeMint, we’ll be talking (among other things) about his recent work with the new Democratic majority to curtail earmarks, something of which he has reason to be proud. With Graham, Grahamformal it’s likely to be Iraq, Iran, North Korea and such. For that matter, DeMint is likely to have something to say on Iraq as well.

Presidential politics will probably be mentioned, with DeMint backing Mitt Romney while Graham, as ever, will be helping his friend and ally John McCain.

It occurs to me y’all might have suggestions for other topics, or particular questions.

As Dr. Frasier Crane might say, I’m listening…

A too-late “teaser”

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OK, so I had this neat idea as to how to do a "teaser" this afternoon on the governor’s pre-State of the State briefing — which was embargoed until 7.

But with one of my colleagues out today, I had to turn to putting out tomorrow’s pages myself when I got back from the governor’s mansion.

So now the governor is well into his speech — may even be done by the time this posts — and the embargo is off.

But I went ahead and finished it anyway, to see if my idea for how to produce the item would work. Here it is. More will follow.

The Gentleman Warrior

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I was editing an editorial for Thursday’s paper which contained this passage, to which I could only react, "Wow — talk about living life to the fullest:"

Lt. Taylor
was assigned to Wheeler Army Airfield near Honolulu. He spent his Saturday night — on Dec. 6, 1941 — in a tuxedo, enjoying poker and dancing at the club. The next morning, he awoke to the sounds of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He and fellow pilot George Welch grabbed their tuxedo pants and raced to an auxiliary airfield to jump into their P-40 Warhawk fighters. They roared off the airstrip and into combat with the Japanese…

Sunday Preview

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Coming up Sunday: The New Blog Policy

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Still polishing the new policy to govern comment decorum. Since it’s taken me this long, I thought I’d go ahead and share it with the world as my Sunday column. So you’ll be able to read all about it Sunday, either in the paper or right here.

But here’s a sneak preview, a teaser if you will, just to stir up advance interest:

I’m implementing a Double Standard:
The bad news is that one group of people will be free to post pretty
much whatever they want. I will maintain the same hands-off policy with
them that I’ve maintained with everyone up to now. With those in the other group,
I will delete at will any comments that I deem harmful to good-faith
dialogue.
The good news is that you get to choose which group you’re in.
To be in the first group, you just have to give up your anonymity.
This won’t require filling out special forms or supplying me with your
birth certificate or blood type or anything. Just fill out the existing
fields that precede comments with your real, full name; your regular,
main e-mail address (the one you use for friends or family or
co-workers, not something you set up on Yahoo for the specific purpose
of hiding your identity); and if you have a Web site, your URL. If it
seems necessary (either to you or me) to provide more info to establish
your legitimacy, you can do so either in the text of the comment, or
more discretely, by e-mailing
the data to me. When would it be helpful to provide more info? Use your
judgment — if your name is John Smith and your e-mail is
jsmith@aol.com, you might want to tell a little more, such as that
you’re the West Columbia attorney or a student at USC or whatever. And
I’ll use my
judgment — if you call yourself Mike Cakora, but write something totally uncharacteristic of him, I’ll start asking questions.
To be in the other group, keep hiding behind anonymity. I’ll still
let you through most of the time, but I’m going to start deleting
comments that fit into one of two categories…

How will I define those categories? Tune in on Sunday.

You will also be able to read some hints on how to communicate constructively while still making strong points. Here’s an excerpt from that:

As you write, always try to express your ideas in a way that will actually change the minds of people with whom you disagree.
As a corollary to that, don’t write in a way calculated to win
cheers and attaboys from those who already agree with you, or to give
yourself a jolt of vindictive satisfaction.
Bottom line is, if you internalize and act in accordance with those … two principles, you will never have your comments deleted.
Unfortunately, given the present polarization of political attitudes, some of you will refuse to believe that those other people
can ever be persuaded. You think there are people like you, and people
like those others, and any attempt to reach across the divide with
reason is futile.

Anyway, you won’t have to wait all that long for further explanation. Here’s hoping that this policy — the product of a conversation that involved more than 470 reader comments — will produce a place that all of us find more useful for discussions that move toward real solutions on issues.

If not, we’ll try something else.

Warthen refuses to debate Ravenel, Willis!

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Tonight we have the live debate between the undeserving survivors in
the GOP state treasurer’s race. Unfortunately — and I thought I’d best
break this to my fans now — I’ve had to pull out at the last minute as
moderator.

My
excuse? The fact that I’ll be working probably through the night
getting ahead so I can take off a few days, starting tomorrow. It’s not
only a short week for me, but as I mentioned before, I’m also doing
work for a certain slacker who took off all this week.

Standing in for me will be my lovely associate Cindi Ross Scoppe (seen above in her very best excuse for a Vanna White pose), and I assure
you that’s just as good (she’s done this before), so don’t ask for your money back.

Coming up on Sunday’s editorial page…

bradwarthen.com

All The News That Gives You Fits

Category Archives: Coming Attractions

Is the ‘b-word’ EVER defensible?

Pictures of the poor are always with us

Hessians: This Year’s Model

Tomorrow’s column: Sam Brownback

Listen for me on the radio

Talking about Ravenel on the radio Friday

On the radio again, Friday morning

Poor Betty

So what’s happening next on the flag?

Radio, Radio — again

Talking schools, talking ‘choice’

School choice forum tonight

Questions for DeMint and Graham

A too-late “teaser”

The Gentleman Warrior

Sunday Preview

Coming up Sunday: The New Blog Policy

Warthen refuses to debate Ravenel, Willis!

Coming up on Sunday’s editorial page…