Category Archives: Confessional

Moby Dick is a squitchy good read (Surprise!)

47 Replies

Doug Ross mentioning The Canterbury Tales back on this post — which I never read (somehow, I escaped its being required of me in school) — reminds me of something I'm reading at the moment and sort of enjoying, much to my surprise:

Moby Dick.

For years — for decades in fact; almost four of them — I refused to read Moby Dick on principle. You see, we spent like six weeks on it in my honors English class in the 11th grade at Robinson High School in Tampa, and I never did read it, at least not past "Call me Ishmael." And yet I got an A-plus on the six weeks test on the book. How? First, because it was an essay test — which always gave me a leg up in school. Multiple choice can be such a brutally effective means of telling whether you actually know the material. With an essay, you can be careful to stick to what you know you know, and steer clear of your blank spots. And some, but not all, teachers are dazzled by a nicely worded essay. Although not all teachers — I had one prof in college who wrote on one of my better B.S. efforts something like, "Nicely written; I enjoyed it. But obviously you are not familiar with the material." Enough teachers were snowed for me to get by, though. And I confess this played a not inconsiderable part in my decision to write for a living.

Also — and this is the bigger point — how on Earth could I possibly not be familiar with all the themes, characters and plot after six weeks of listening to people talk and talk and talk about it in class, even if I was only half-listening, which was probably the case?

Anyway, I took such perverse pride in that grade — one of my most dramatic coups of skating without having done the work in my educational career — that I avoided reading the book subsequently because I didn't want to spoil the perfection of my slacker record. I had read — and enjoyed — other books years after I was supposed to have read them in school. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, for instance. But I kept myself pure on Melville.

But I picked up a copy recently, tempted by the fact that I'm such a huge fan of Patrick O'Brian's seafaring tales and thinking I might actually enjoy this one, although not having high expectations.

And you know what? While I doubt it will ever be my favorite novel, I've been really surprised by how accessible it is. I mean, I always had the impression (based on the way the people who actually read it in school groaned about the experience) that it was just something that no one in our era could possibly relate to, that it was way too 19th century for that (and not in a fun way, like Mark Twain). But on the contrary, I'm struck by how modern its tone and style is in parts. Also, it's very bite-sized — the chapters are no longer than a typical newspaper column, and each one a well-crafted nugget all by its lonesome. So you can read a chapter, think "That wasn't so bad," then read another, and really feel like you're making progress without a lot of time invested all at once. (Try that with Dostoevsky, someone I actually did read and enjoy when I was supposed to in college, but not a guy you'd describe as "accessible" in the sense that I mean here.)

Far from being some boring old guy telling us stuff in boring old language, Ishmael as a narrator is actually sort of hiply ironic. He has a detachment and amusement toward his heavy subject material that is very late-20th century. And sometimes, the language itself goes along with the tone. For instance, in this passage very early in the book, describing a painting he puzzled over at The Spouter Inn:

But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber, portentous, black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast. A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting meant. Ever and anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would dart you through.–It's the Black Sea in a midnight gale.–It's the unnatural combat of the four primal elements.–It's a blasted heath.–It's a Hyperborean winter scene.–It's the breaking-up of the icebound stream of Time. But at last all these fancies yielded to that one portentous something in the picture's midst. THAT once found out, and all the rest were plain. But stop; does it not bear a faint resemblance to a gigantic fish? even the great leviathan himself?

Who'd have thought Melville could have written such a line as "A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted?" That is a very New Journalism use of language; one could imagine Tom Wolfe or Hunter S. Thompson being responsible for it. Or, to speak in fiction terms, it can be almost as modern-feeling as Nick Hornby or Roddy Doyle. It strikes me that way, anyway. Way more modern-seeming than much-later writers such as James Joyce or Fitzgerald or even Hemingway (who sounded WAY modern in the 20s, I suppose, but not so much later on).

As I read on, Ishmael is not what I'd call a likable character — he's too much of a wise guy for that, tossing out ironic comments about everyone and everything. But he's certainly accessible.

And that surprised me.

That’s why I don’t answer the phone

20 Replies

Someone in our newsroom sent out this e-mail globally a few minutes ago:

Has anyone else  gotten a call from the woman who wants to talk about movie reivews, The State and the SC Supreme Court not displaying the American flag, Daniel Craig in "Defiance,"
China and the Germans? Among other things.

No, thank goodness — although that sounds just like a lot of calls I get.

When I became editorial page editor, I had to stop answering my publicized land line — which I felt really bad about, since my whole career I had valued accessibility. But I found that editorial page editors get a kind of call that other journalists don't get — the very nice people who, when they find out they're talking to the EPE, want to talk about every issue under the sun. And since they are nice people, I have a very hard time getting off the phone. When I DO make the mistake of answering it, it's not unusual for me to be trapped for half and hour, and sometimes more. Which I cannot do, and do all the other stuff I have to do in a day — especially if I'm going to read my e-mail, and communicate with y'all here on the blog.

Once, I had someone to answer the phone for me — and get me on the line if necessary. No more. Now I have to let the machine get it, and get back to people as I am able — something I apologize for, but I don't know how else to manage the time.

If someone really NEEDS to talk to me (not just chat) and they're not available when I call them back, I leave my cell number — which I always answer.

It's really, really imperfect, but I haven't figured a better way to get through the day. And yes, I've consulted people about time management, and you know what they always say? I try to do too much. Answering the phone is one of the few things I've given up.

What IS that heavenly body?

20 Replies

Any astronomers out there, amateur or otherwise? I feel really stupid asking this question — in earlier centuries, any educated person would have known the answer to this, but in our light-polluted modern era, we take too little note of the heavens — but I'm going to ask it anyway. After all, the valedictorian of my high school class used to ask the stupidest questions I ever heard — our physics teacher's jaw would actually drop with incredulity — but those of us who were too cool to ask dumb questions didn't get to be valedictorian. (My wife says her class valedictorian, her friend Mary, was the same way. And look at her today; she has a giant flat-screen HDTV and I don't.)

Where was I? Oh yes — what in the 'verse is that superbig, superbright, object in the sky at about 30 degrees elevation, a little south of west as of 8 p.m. Eastern? Is it Mars? Venus? Some other planet, that has just wandered closer than usual? (I'm thinking Mars, because it seems to have a bit more of an orangish cast than the other, far less bright, stars and planets.)

It's the biggest, brightest thing I can ever remember seeing in the sky aside from the sun and moon.

Who can tell me what it is?

We’re nowhere near Barstow, but the drugs have begun to take hold

2 Replies

Just glanced out my window while cross my office to my desk, as the sun was setting, and could have sworn the 101st Airborne Division, circa 1944, was drifting down from the sky over the Congaree River.

Turns out, upon a double-take, it was just some small scraps of dark cloud that happened to be roughly WWII-era parachute-shaped, in the same sense that the beacon at Castle Anthrax was grail-shaped ("Oh, wicked, bad, naughty Zoot!")

More about the drugs later. And yes, the headline is a Fear and Loathing reference.

My kryptonite

25 Replies

Just so you know that despite all the critical things I say, I believe the governor and his people are good and decent folk, gently reared, I share the following exchange.

Next week, I'm to be the governor's guest at the annual pre-State of the State briefing luncheon. Cindi and Warren will be there too, along with editorial types from elsewhere in SC. It's a standing ritual. So Joel Sawyer writes to ask me:

Hey, Brad…saw you'd RSVP'd for the lunch next week. Can you remind me again on your food allergies? Thanks.

Joel Sawyer
Communications Director
Office of Gov. Mark Sanford

So I wrote back as follows:

First, please don't bother. It's more trouble than it's worth. I have a lifelong habit of just grabbing a bite later.

But in answer to your question, my main allergies are to:
milk — anything with even a trace of dairy products, from butter to cheese to ice cream
eggs — which means no mayo, and other things that may not be immediately obvious
wheat — which bars anything from a bakery, and less obvious things such as gravy thickened with flour (or cream, of course)
chicken — and no, I don't know which came first, this or the egg allergy
nuts — especially pecans.

See what I mean? I'm more trouble than I'm worth. Always have been, unfortunately.

Why, you may wonder, did I not just stick with the "Don't bother," and not go on? Because it's so blasted awkward. At a public occasion like that, I don't care it there's nothing I can eat (really; I'm used to it, and I'd rather not take risks on ingesting a hidden fatal allergen inserted by a well-meaning cook who thinks cream means quality). But I find it often bothers my host more than it bothers me that I don't eat. Also, others who don't know the score will see me pushing my food around or ignoring it entirely and think I'm being petulant or intentionally rude or something. Really. It happens. If I can avoid that by having at least something I can eat while pushing everything else around on the plate, that's all to the good. I don't mean to overdramatize, but my systemic weirdness does make dining in public more awkward for me than for most folks. (It has had larger consequences, such as keeping me from serving in the military — I could never have survived on K rations or MREs. It sounds stupid to people who don't live like this, but it's my reality.) I grew up not wanting to draw any attention at table, but knowing that the only way to avoid such attention is to let my host put himself out in my behalf, which is another kind of awkwardness. Then there's always the possibility that the host WILL put himself out for me, but fail in the effort (I can generally tell at a glance if I can't eat it), which is twice as awkward. But what am I supposed to do?

Of course, I could stay away from the luncheon, but it is a useful occasion. And if I don't go, what does that say? Anyway, I look forward to seeing the gov. I don't think we've spoken since this event last year. (Or maybe the one before; I forget.)

This post is just to let you know that I have no problem with putting my life into the governor's hands — or the hands of his staff. And that's something I wouldn't do if I had as low an opinion of the governor as some of y'all think I do.

Now Blagojevich — I'd never eat anything he put on the table.

Accidents WILL happen

11 Replies

Don't take that headline as me brushing off the seriousness of the problem. Just take it as an opportunity to quote Elvis Costello.

We'll have a correction on tomorrow's editorial page for the second day in a row. I can't remember the last time that happened.

When I first came to editorial in 1994, I thought it a bit much that ALL editors in the department read proofs every day. It didn't seem efficient. By the time I became editor in '97, I had come to value the process for two reasons: It kept everyone plugged in and gave them ownership of what was on the pages (the great danger in newspaper work, since so many things happen at once, is to be so caught up in what you're doing that you miss the overall picture). And it made the editorial pages the cleanest in the paper.

The value of it is underlined in circumstances such as this, when one person is both doing the initial pre-production edit of the copy, and is then the only one reading proofs. The error in Sunday's editorial (corrected on today's page) is sufficiently complicated and esoteric that I can't say I would have caught it myself even if fully staffed, although the initial writing error — the conflation of two projects in the town of Lexington; one public, the other private — is almost certainly the product of the writer working at quadruple pace to crank out editorials to leave behind.

But today's error simply would not have happened if — as was the case not too long ago — there were five senior editors reading proofs. Instead of just me, and I'm the same one who read it on the front end.

Yes, thank you — I know Harvey Peeler introduced the roll-call-voting proposal, not his brother Bob. I know Bob's not in the Senate. I know both guys, and know the difference between them. Got it. Nobody else needs to call to inform me. (Someone just came into my office to tell me while I was typing this.) Thanks. The correction will be in the paper tomorrow.

Now can I get back to doing my best to put out the rest of these pages without errors?

(And oh, yeah — I still feel like total crud, Ferris. I've got a call in to my doctor to see if he'll call in an antibiotic. My chest hurts from the congestion. Oh, didn't I mention that? Yeah, the stomach crud became respiratory crud over the weekend. Still running low fever each night, coughing all day. Taking all sorts of drugs for the symptoms — Oh, look, it's time to take them again — yippee!)

Getting into the proper spirit

16 Replies

Cuties_026

By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
EVERY YEAR AT this time, I have to admit that I have failed yet again to get into the proper spirit of Advent — that is, I admit that when I find time to think about it at all.
    This is not my fault. Advent — which the church tells us Catholics should be a time of quiet, contemplative reflection and anticipation — couldn’t possibly come at a worse time. I mean, it’s just before Christmas! I don’t know about you, but the month for me consists of longer hours than usual at work — backing up co-workers taking those vacation days they have to take or lose (and which they richly deserve, let me piously add) — with every minute of nights and weekends taken up with social obligations, pageants and other things you’re too harried to enjoy the way you should, and the patriotic imperative of shopping more than you do in all the other 11 months combined.
    When our kids were little, my wife would gather the family each evening — when I got away from work early enough, even I took part — for a little Advent wreath-lighting ceremony at our kitchen table. Just thinking about that, and how long ago it was, makes my heart hurt — which is not very descriptive, but I can think of no better way to put it. Sort of the way Scrooge felt witnessing Christmases Past. Lately, I have only been mindful of Advent during one hour on Sunday, with the church’s much-bigger wreath up there next to the altar. I think, one, two, three candles… must be the third Sunday of Advent… I wonder if I could swing by Harbison on my way home….
    That’s the extent of my mindfulness of the season.
    On Monday — as the U.S. economy continued spiraling downward, the University of South Carolina announced its plans for $39 million in budget cuts, a state panel called for K-12 teachers’ salaries to be frozen, Congress and the White House furiously negotiated a doomed bailout of Detroit automakers, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (in his last hours of freedom) dared the feds to listen in on his conversations, and the odiferous mess at the Columbia sewer plant continued to reek — it suddenly came to my attention that I had three weeks of vacation coming to me that I was going to lose, which happened to be more time than there was left in our fiscal year. Which was neither here nor there; I knew we were far too busy for me to take any of it off, so nothing to be done about it…
    … when suddenly, a voice somewhere deep inside me said, Dammit, I’m gonna have me some down time during Advent if it kills me — which is not exactly the attitude that the church prescribes, but it was as close as I was going to get. I saw that nobody else in my department was off on Wednesday and Thursday, so on Tuesday I whipped out an editorial against the Detroit bailout deal, told everybody I’d see them Friday, and took off before anyone had recovered enough from the shock to stop me.
    What did I do with the time? This is the good part: I spent the days taking care of my 11-month-old twin granddaughters. One of them had scared us with a bout of the croup earlier in the week (one visit to the doctor, another to the ER) and still had a raspy cough, their mother (my oldest) had to get back to work after taking off those days, my wife was jammed up with commitments and suffering from a bad cold herself, and my son-in-law was in a neck brace from falling off of scaffolding remodeling their house. I won’t tell you what was happening with the rest of our four kids, except to say everyone had a lot to deal with — some of it very painful and difficult, and too personal to go into. But for once, I was able to be there for my family for at least one of the many things they needed that week — which I think was a bigger shock to them than to the people at work.
    Here’s what I did on Wednesday: I got up earlier than I do on workdays. I took my older granddaughter, who had spent the night with us, to her house to change clothes, then to school. I picked up the twins and took them to my house. I fed them breakfast, one in my lap and the other sitting in the busy saucer play station thingy — one spoonful for you, and one for you…. I changed their diapers. We played with blocks on the living room rug. I changed their diapers again. I carried them upstairs for their naps. When they woke up, I changed their diapers again and took them on a quick walk around the block (the most exercise I’d had in weeks) before mixing up their lunch. My mom dropped by (normally, I never see my parents during the work week) and fed one while I fed the other. We played peek-a-boo, which convinces them I’m the world’s greatest wit for having thought it up. I fixed them some bottles, and my mom and I held them while they drank them dry (these are the world’s most cooperative babies; they eat what you feed them, and go to sleep at nap time). I changed their diapers again, and carried them up for their second naps, and then their mother came to get them.
    On Thursday, we did the same, with slight variations. Each time at the end of the day, my daughter thanked me for keeping them, which means that she had it exactly backward.
    No, it wasn’t a time of quiet prayer and contemplation. And yet, it was. Those two days grounded me in a kind of physical, emotional and spiritual sanity that was, for me in December, an altered state. I can’t really explain it. Let’s just say that when I got back to work and found that the world was still talking about Rod Blagojevich and the Detroit bailout, and our state budget was being cut another $383 million, with the brunt hitting education and health care, I longed to be doing something that made as much sense as changing a poopy diaper. Or better yet, two of them. Changing dirty diapers makes sense, to the changer and the changee, and the process is far less objectionable than looking at, or thinking about, Gov. Blagojevich.
    You know what? Nobody else is off this coming Tuesday and Wednesday. Don’t look for me here on those days.

Get into the spirit at thestate.com/bradsblog/.

Cuties_007

So do I LOOK like a sap, or what?

32 Replies

That was a rhetorical question. (Imagine Billy Bob Thornton saying that, as Mr. Woodcock.)

Jeffrey Sewell from over at S.C. Hotline sent me this suggestion:

Brad,

Would you consider a blog piece encouraging folks not to give
to panhandlers but directly to shelters and churches during the holiday season?

Would that work? Even for a notorious soft touch like me? Long ago, back when I was in college, I sort of developed this attitude that if someone had degraded himself in his own eyes to the point that he’ll beg me as a stranger for money, why not just give him some? I mean, he might as well have the money, because what else has he got?

Admittedly, that’s a poorly defined philosophy, and an odd mixture of sympathy and judgmentalism on my part, but in all the years since, I haven’t really improved on it. I’ve experimented with giving the money, refusing to give the money, and ignoring the supplicant. All three make me feel bad — the first because I’m generally all but certain that I’m being conned (although there’s always the chance that the NEXT guy who needs just a little more money so he can catch the bus to Greenville to see his sick child will be telling the truth), and the others because, even if it’s a con, they make me feel like a rat.

So generally speaking, I’m a soft touch for beggars. But what gets me is that they can spot me at a distance. Either there’s a panhandler database on the Internet with my name and photo on it (so that’s what they’re all doing when they hang out at the library), or they can just TELL. The way I can just tell they’re going to hit me up from the first clearing of the throat, or the first move in my direction.

Sometimes, I can tell before that. Over the weekend, I was parallel-parked in 5 Points. I was in my vehicle already and just about to start the truck and pull away when I saw, about 10 feet off my starboard bow, a panhandler approaching a young woman. I said to myself, "Go, go, GO!" and cranked the ignition, but even though there was every reason to think I’d escape, somehow I knew that the young woman wasn’t going to buy me enough time; he was going to bypass everyone else and somehow get to me before I could get away. And he did. I started the truck, looked over my shoulder for a break in the traffic, and there he was, tapping on my closed window and holding up — this is the best part — an actual, official, U.S. military ID card.

I rolled the window down (what am I gonna do; run over a veteran to get away?), and he was already into his spiel, of which I only caught bits … "Green Beret… nineteen sixty-four…" Yes, it was the classic Billy Ray Valentine approach:

Uh… I was with the Green Berets – special unit battalion commando airborne tactic specialist tactics unit battalion. Yeah!

Apparently, this was Agent Orange himself. I hastily dug a couple of bucks out of my wallet and handed them over, which provoked a gap-toothed grin. He asked, "Bet you didn’t mumble-mumble-mumble THIS year!" So I said "What?" and he said "Bet you didn’t mumble-mumble-mumble THIS year!" and I said either "Yeah," or "No, I didn’t" noncommitally (how could I have committed? I didn’t know what he was saying). And he grinned and nodded, and I drove off.

Where were we? Oh, yeah, Jeffrey’s suggestion. Good idea. But would that work?

I forgot my hat, which shows I have an efficient brain

6 Replies

Over the weekend I finally got a long, long-overdue haircut, consequently causing me to think several times on Monday, "My head is cold."

So this morning I put on my fedora that I usually only wear with an overcoat (not cold enough for that yet, of course), and that made me more comfortable — until I went downtown for breakfast, and put it in the cloakroom at the Cap City Room. Where it remains. So now I’m going around with hat head, and no protection from the chill breezes that will be blowing when I leave work tonight.

But that’s just a tribute to my wonderfully efficient brain, according to this piece in the WSJ, which I ran across while fetching a link for an earlier post:

Neuroscientists say forgetting is crucial to the efficient
functioning of the mind, to learning, adapting and recalling more
significant things.

"We focus so much on memory that forgetting has been maligned," says
Gayatri Devi, a neuro-psychiatrist and memory expert in New York City.
"But if you didn’t forget, you’d recall all kinds of extraneous
information from your life that would drown you in a sea of
inefficiency."

So I have an efficient brain — inside my cold hat head.

McCain’s Bob Dole problem

11 Replies

No, I’m not saying Bob Dole personally is causing a problem for John McCain. I’m saying his problem is that in this election, he’s playing the Bob Dole part — and Barack Obama is Bill Clinton (but don’t tell him that — the way he and Bill have been getting along, he’s likely to take it as an insult).

You remember Bob Dole — the other disabled war hero who couldn’t win the White House, the one who always referred to himself in the Third Person, by his full name ("Bob Dole doesn’t do that! Why would you say Bob Dole does that? Leave Bob Dole alone…") .

Dole ran a lousy campaign, lousy primarily in that it utterly failed to present convincingly why he should have been president. McCain is doing the same thing now.

The big difference between the two, for me, is that I started out liking McCain a whole lot more than I liked the guy that the NYT once called the Dark Prince of Gridlock. Bob Dole was a much more wholehearted partisan warrior than McCain. He was no maverick, not by a long shot. You don’t get to lead your party in the Senate by rebelling against it.

So with me, he started off in a hole. And in the end, I still think McCain should be president — while I no longer thought that of Bob Dole by the end of the 1996 campaign. I had thought it for awhile, though, comparing him and Bill Clinton. I had liked Clinton in 92, but he had disappointed me in a lot of ways by 96. The bottom line was that I just didn’t trust the guy anymore, based on a number of things. (I have no dramatic personal story about that, but I know someone who does: Hodding Carter III told me of going to see Bill Clinton with a delegation concerned about Bosnia. I forget what the delegation wanted — that the U.S. get involved, that the U.S. stay out, whatever — but whatever it wanted, Clinton promised bald-faced he would do. They left feeling confident. About a week later, Clinton did the exact opposite, and it came out that he had known that was what he was going to do when he met with the delegation. Carter felt personally betrayed by that. It seemed consistent with the impression I had formed by then.)

Early in the campaign, I wrote some columns — and editorials, too, I think — that pretty clearly expressed a preference for Dole over Clinton. But when the time approached to do our actual endorsement, I went to then-editor Tom McLean and told him I could not in good conscience write it, because I had become convinced that Dole couldn’t govern his way out of a wet paper bag. I knew by then that I couldn’t convince the board not to endorse Dole, but I declined the honor of writing it. (Of course, you didn’t hear all of this at the time because it was long before I became editor and adopted the policies of extreme transparency that you see today. The board was Old School in those days; you didn’t see the man behind the curtain.)

I never got to that point with McCain, but in the last weeks I thought about it. Those of you who insist that this endorsement was fully decided long ago don’t understand how much I thought about it. But in the end, for me, John McCain may not be good at communicating via a political campaign that he would be the better president, but I still believe he’d be the better president — based on Iraq, based on the Gang of 14 and judicial selection, on free trade, on immigration, etc., all that stuff I’ve already told you.

Now here’s a postscript to the story that will cause you to do a double-take: Despite what I’d said to Tom, I voted for Dole in 96. Why? For the exact same reason I voted for McGovern in 72. You probably don’t know many people who can say that, but I can. (Never doubt my deep devotion to UnParty unorthodoxy.) And I don’t regret either vote.

Essentially, both were protest votes. I thought McGovern would have been a disaster as president. But I wanted to register a protest against Nixon, mainly because of Watergate (even based on what little was known by then). If McGovern had had a chance to win, I’d have held my nose and voted for Nixon, because on the whole I thought the gummint would be in more capable hands that way. And I’d have regretted it forever. But McGovern’s hapless candidacy gave me the opportunity to make the gesture.

Same deal in 96. If I’d thought Dole had a prayer, I’d have held my nose and voted for Clinton — much as I distrusted him by that point, I thought him more competent. (Note that Nixon and Clinton had an advantage with me that Obama lacks — they had shown their competence in office, as president.) But Dole had no prayer, so I voted for him as a protest. And it felt exactly like voting for McGovern.

By the way, torn as I was, I made both of those decisions in the voting booth. So I can, indeed, identify with Cindi’s indecision.

Lord help me, but I do hate crowds

10 Replies

Don’t go anywhere NEAR the part of town where the State Fair is, unless you’re going to the State Fair. And if you are going to the State Fair, don’t. Pick another day and another time. Save yourself and others the aggravation.

What would you do instead with the time? Oh, I don’t know…. Let’s see, it’s the middle of the day on Monday; maybe you could GO TO WORK!!!!

No, I’m not in a good mood. I made the mistake of going to my Rotary meeting, which as always was at Seawell’s, which as you know is directly across from the main northern entrance to the Fair. That’s always difficult at this time of year, but this time was BY FAR the worst I’ve ever experienced.

I tried to be philosophical about it. I tried to make the most of the situation, get with the holiday mood for a bit before going back to the office, which I could tell was going to take awhile. I decided to walk over and get myself a bag of cotton candy to take to work with me.

So I crossed Rosewood and went up to the ticket booth, and the guy said sure, go around there and get in line and get yourself a "lunch token" for $5, and if you get it back to HIS booth by 2 o’clock, you get your money back.

It was 1:54. I couldn’t even have purchased the token, much less have gotten my cotton candy, by then. And I had only $8 in my wallet. If I had given up the fiver, I couldn’t have bought the cotton candy. (That didn’t even strike me until later, so I’m glad I didn’t try to beat the clock.) What, I’d like to know, is magical about 2 p.m.? If I hadn’t had to go to Rotary, I wouldn’t have even thought about trying to get lunch before 2 o’clock. On the days I eat at my desk (the overwhelming majority of the time, that’s what I do), I never think about it before then.

So I was already feeling pretty alienated, before I walked back to my truck, and before I fought my way out of the parking lot, and had to go a mile or two in the direction away from my office before I could turn and fight my way back past the fair again.

You know when I got back to my office? 2:21 p.m. I could have walked it a couple of times in that amount of time, and would have if I’d had any idea how long it would take. Almost half an hour of sitting still idling, with gas at its current price, with my windows open, breathing the exhaust of thousands of other vehicles.

Even if my purpose had been to go to the fair, and I’d had plenty of cash in my pocket, it would not have been worth it. As it is, I’m in a foul mood.

And the only constructive thing I can derive from the experience is to warn you that, if you’re about to try to go to the Fair, please think twice.

The column’s up now. Sorry

Leave a reply

You find me in a foul mood this morning. After all that work last week, and a couple of hours spent Saturday night dressing it up with links and so forth, someone thought to tell me at 10:30 Monday morning that my ginormous column didn’t post on Sunday.

So I’m pretty ticked about that. Normally, of course, I would not have made it through Sunday without checking, but I was busy living my life yesterday, and I was really too tired of the piece by that time to look at it again. It never, ever occurred to me that I still had it saved on "draft."

Well, it’s there now. And now that that’s behind me, I have another book to read this week, which I haven’t started yet. I’ll try to get that book report done this week for Sunday, but I’m not in a position to promise it.

The opus is done; you’ll see it Sunday

67 Replies

Well, I just finished writing what I consider to be my most provocative column of this long presidential election. At least, it’s the most provocative to me. You have to consider that I didn’t expect the John Edwards column to cause such a fuss. So maybe this one will be a dud; I don’t know.

But I do know it’s longer than any other column that I can ever remember publishing in the paper — twice as long as usual. It will jump from the Sunday editorial page to the op-ed page. But then, I’ve thought about it a lot longer than I do most columns — months, in fact. That’s something it does have in common with the Edwards piece, although this one is much more complicated. Even at this length, it requires the reader to understand more than I have space to say. And maybe, because of that, it will be unintelligible. But a lot of my columns attempt to say more than I can denote in a limited space. This one just has more than usual to say.

Anyway, I look forward to your reactions to it. I think.

Curses: An election about the economy

70 Replies

Well, my worst nightmare for this election year has been realized. I had thought that this was a no-lose year for me. I liked McCain and I liked Obama, so what could happen to mess things up?

But if you’ll recall, back in January I said that this was shaping up as a very good year, except for one thing — the possibility that we’d be talking about the economy.

I freaking HATE talking about the economy. My entire career, a newspaper front page that leads with an economic story has always been, to me, a signal that nothing interesting is happening in the world.

It’s not the economy per se. It’s money. It bores me to moaning, retching tears. Talking about it, or being forced to hear other people talking about it, is torture, torture of a sort I’d hope even W. would disapprove of. (I suspect some of y’all feel the same way — the post I reluctantly put up about it has drawn only seven comments so far — even though I tried to dress it up in Looney Tunes language.)

And now, this mess on Wall Street, whatever it’s all about, has BOTH candidates for president — guys I used to like — talking about it. So it looks like McCain HAS flip-flopped on torture…

How did this happen?

Wall Street reaches its Wile E. Coyote moment

11 Replies

Responding to a recent post, Grandmaster Bud said:

I keep waiting for Brad to post something about the financial market meltdown….

Of course, bud wanted to the subject to come up so he could make some broad statement about the election, which he went ahead and made:

… Apparently the Phil Gramm approach to regulation isn’t so great after all. And to think, if Bush/McCain had their way our Social Security funds would be in grave jeopardy now.

My response was to say that I already tried to give y’all a place to talk about that — you know, the George Bailey thing — but as I’ve made abundantly clear in the past, I generally don’t comment on things having to do with Wall Street, because I don’t understand it. That is, I sort of understand it, and what I do understand makes such little sense that I prefer not to go out on a limb offering opinions on such things.

But here goes anyway: I think markets are all a bunch of smoke and mirrors. Value is totally relative, so to me Phil Gramm and John Maynard Keynes make equal amounts of sense in this context. The value of something like Lehman is to me based on B.S. So the assets were overvalued — big, freaking surprise. Samuel T. tried to explain it to me this morning this way: If your assets are valued at $40 million, but they’re only worth $20 million, you’re overvalued. I get it. And I also think it’s a bunch of hooey. To me, the only value of a place like Lehman, shuffling its ones and zeroes around, is the buildings and office furniture and carpets and such that it owns, plus B.S. If people will pay you $40 million for your stock, it’s "worth" $40 million. If they’ll only pay you $20 million, it’s "worth" $20 million. If they suddenly realize it’s based on nothing — like Wile E. Coyote suddenly looking down and realizing nothing’s holding him up — it’s over.

One can say this about anything — the monetary worth of anything is what people are willing to pay for it. It’s true of comic books. And although I believe (as I have said) that comic books have an absolute value, I realize value is relative.

But when you’ve paid too much for your comic book and you’re off the cliff and you look down, at least you’ve still got your comic book. With Lehman and Merrill and the rest, I’m not sure that you have anything at all.

By the way — you know that Krugman column I wanted to run on the subject, but it got outdated? Well, I’m happy to say that I have a very solid Robert Samuelson piece on the subject for Wednesday’s paper. In it, he explains why "Wall Street as we know it is kaput." My favorite part is when he says that after a crash like this, some good thing may happen in reaction. For instance, "Talented and ambitious people may move from finance, where they were attracted by exorbitant pay, into more productive industries."

That could only be good for the country.

Apparently, some people watched a football game last night instead (I’ll bet they’re sorry)

18 Replies

Actually, I said pretty much everything I had to say about this in my headline, which came to me when someone dropped by my breakfast table this morning and said, "Did you watch that game?" I muttered something about having had work to do, then when he went away, I quickly scanned through the sections of the paper scattered on my table looking for information on said game, so I would not be caught out by the next person to assume I knew all about it.

To save you the trouble of looking it up, the Chickens played Vanderbilt, and lost. (You may wonder how in the world I could have read any of the paper without knowing any of that, and all I can say is that for me, it’s easy. Items about football, no matter how prominently displayed, seem in my case to be protected by a Somebody Else’s Problem field, and are therefore invisible, unless I go looking for them.)

Only one more thing to say: Who were the scheduling wizards who decided to have USC’s first two games, not only on Thursday nights, but on the Thursday nights that the men who would be president gave their respective convention acceptance speeches? Are we truly living in parallel universes, and does the Leadership of the Free World matter as little to people over in that other world as the outcome of a football game does to me?

Let’s hope not, because I have a creepy feeling that a lot of folks who were glued to the games instead of the speeches are going to end up voting in November, and that’s just scary.

Who’s this Tommy when he’s at home?

5 Replies

One of the things expected of someone in my job is that I know things — lots and lots of things, enough to reach critical mass so that I can deal with complex issues against a fairly massive context. (More than that, of course, I need to know how the things I know fit together and interact, but that’s another subject.) That means knowing history, but being very up to the moment as to what’s happening now.

And generally, I meet that test — sometimes quite literally. I have a very good working knowledge of history and of political systems, but also popular culture. I’m good at tests of broad knowledge, and also at Trivial Pursuit. But every person’s knowledge is finite. I only know the things I know by NOT knowing a lot of things that other people take for granted. Sometimes, the things I don’t know are things people would assume I do know, such as who’s who on TV news. Other times, it’s something that other folks just keep up with without thinking, such as sports.

A couple of days ago, there was this big headline in our paper, "Bringing up Beecher," and I got this strong impression that I was supposed to know, without being told, who this Beecher was. There was a large photograph that made me think he was a football player, judging by attire, and assuming that was him. (Of course, I could have read the story, but that would be like cheating, wouldn’t it?) My eyes moved on, and I thought no more about it. Coincidentally, the next day, I was a captive audience in a meeting in which someone happened to mention that someone named "Tommy Beecher" was a relatively untested USC quarterback. Ah. Good to know. This will save me from embarrassing myself if I am surrounded by people who dwell in this alternative universe called Gamecock football (this has been known to happen). It will save me from asking my reflexive question:

"And who’s this Beecher when he’s at home?"

I am, of course, channeling George Harrison’s wonderful scene in "A Hard Day’s Night," when he’s surrounded by people for whom "Susan" is the center of the universe, and they assume she’s the center of HIS universe, and comedy ensues from that disconnect.

I often feel like George when in the company of sports fanatics. They can’t believe I don’t know who they’re talking about (although I try harder than George to hide the fact, because I don’t like shocking people; nor am I trying to be "too cool" for their enthusiasms a la George). For my part, I’m amazed they don’t get the movie allusion if I do say, "Who’s this (blank) when he’s/she’s at home?" For that reason, I seldom say it any more. I just stay quiet and try to infer what in the world they’re on about, and hope my ignorance isn’t plain to see. Because I’m supposed to know stuff.

The vanity of John Adams

1 Reply

Adamsjohn

As I’ve mentioned before, my favorite Founder was John Adams. This attachment on my part dates from my college days in the early 70s, when I more or less inadvertently earned a second major in history (I had not planned it thus; I suddenly realized, with one semester to go, that I was within six credit hours of such a major, so I took two more courses. Up until then, I had merely taken as many history courses as I could as electives.)

The last week or two, I’ve been watching — gradually — the HBO series based on the Pulitzer-winning McCullough book. I was reminded by the book, and am reminded again by the excellent series, that one of the things that endeared Mr. Adams to me was his all-too-human frailty. It brings him down to a level where I am able to identify with him. The airy aloofness of Jefferson is not my way; nor is the lofty unattainability of Washington, with his natural leadership ability.

But almost every time I read of, or see portrayed so well by Paul Giamatti, the crabby vanity of Adams, I have to laugh, because I see myself. Tonight, my wife and eldest daughter joined me in recognizing his touchiness as he complained mightily of having come in second to Washington in the first presidential election.

Adams was of course right to feel that he had done much — perhaps more than any man — to earn the affection and electoral support of his countrymen. After all, HE had put Washington’s name forward to become commander of the Continental Army so that he could rise to greatness, and HE was the one who insisted that Jefferson write the Declaration, after HE, Adams, had nagged and argued and fought independence into being adopted by Congress. And then there was the matter of being the first ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, etc….

But even the lamest modern political consultant could have explained how much more attractive as a candidate Washington was. And Adams’ protests that he should have done better in the election, when you see them portrayed by the brilliant Mr. Giamatti, are comically unbecoming. He was SO vain, so quick to be affronted. And when I noted I would have been the same, my wife and daughter nodded. (You know, they COULD have argued with me just a little, but they didn’t.)

As explained in the series (by way of Abigail reading a letter aloud), Washington got 69 electoral votes, and Mr. Adams only 34, which wounded him deeply. But the guy who came in third (John Jay, no slouch himself) received only nine. Adams received as many as all the rest put together (a field of 8 or 10), and yet he is so put out at getting fewer than half as many as Washington that he pouts to Abigail, "I consider such a showing a stain upon my character!"

This is why I could never offer for public office — I’d be just as petulant, were I to lose, which I probably would, being the way I am.

Far better to suffer such mortification vicariously, through studying (and seeing portrayals of) the life of Adams — and joining Laura Linney’s Abigail in being affectionately amused at his humanity. Far less painful than living it.

Of course, Abigail gets him over his tantrum by calling him "Mr. Vice President," thereby puffing him up a bit. The office had not yet been compared unfavorably to "A warm bucket of spit."

And yes, I realize that seeing myself in John Adams, a great man, is also very vain. See what I mean?

So you think numbers can’t dance?

3 Replies

Here’s another digression from my Sunday column that got left on the cutting room floor:

    But things like this always perplex me. I am not an economist, you see, nor a financial expert, which I’m told is something different. Nor am I any kind of a businessman. Put it this way: At my house, I am not allowed to try to balance the checkbook.
    It’s not that I’m stupid, or can’t do math. I took calculus in school, and, for a guy who can’t handle a checkbook, got a ridiculously high score on the math part of my SAT. But something happens to numbers when they appear on a checkbook, or on a spreadsheet, or on anything where the numbers are meant to represent units of money. It’s like the fictional form of mathematics, found only in restaurants, that humorist Douglas Adams called “Bistromath.” One of his characters explained it this way: “On a waiter’s bill pad… numbers dance. Reality and unreality collide on such a fundamental level that each becomes the other and anything is possible.”
    Checkbooks are like that….

I wasn’t just trying to be silly there. The numbers really do dance. Probably my biggest problem with keeping a checkbook is that I am determined to keep it to the penny, or not at all. Since I seldom actually write a check, but use my debit card, keeping the account up to date involves frequently logging the receipts that I keep in my wallet.

Of course, the actual account is never, ever up to date with what I have in my wallet, so I can almost never make a direct, one-to-one comparison between debits and credits as I know them and as the bank currently recognizes them — there’s never a moment when I can look and say, "Yep, that’s the total I have, too."

If you want to see the numbers really dance, of course, try letting your account get close to zero — which mine does at some point during every pay period. Note how lackadaisical your bank is about recording your debits most of the time, but how it will all of a sudden pounce with what looks like a year’s worth when it senses that you are within range of an overdraft. Financial institutions actually have this down to a science, although it looks more like an art to me.

And once you have an overdraft, then try getting it straight what’s actually in your account, what with trying to figure out when the overdraft fee is debited, whether you’ve actually paid the overdraft back, etc. At that point, I get dizzy.

Which is why my wife handles the accounts.

Oh, and on the SAT thing: I did better than Al Gore, but not nearly as well as Bill Gates. I’m not giving you the links (because my wife thinks telling people your SAT scores is really, really uncool); you do the "math."

My point is — at least, I think my point is — that the ability to handle money involves something other than pure mathematical ability. It involves being in touch, somehow, with the whole mystique of money. I suspect that it’s like Zen; I need to relax or something. Or maybe it’s the opposite — maybe keeping accounts requires a whole lot more effort than I’m willing to put into them.

I expect accounts to be really simple — far less simple than calculus — and to easily be computed. After all, it’s just adding and subtracting, right? Well, apparently not.