Category Archives: Feedback

Are transvestites so bad?

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This first struck me in reading Wednesday’s letters to the editor (if you follow the link, it’s the first letter), but when I saw the very same argument being made in a letter in today’s paper (in this case, the last one), I had to say something.

Both letters complain about our having run a Pat Oliphant cartoon making fun of all the hoo-hah overOliph_2 "Brokeback Mountain." For those too lazy to follow the links, here’s an excerpt from the first letter:

The comment from the “cowboy”: “Of course, they’re pearls, silly — what
else would I wear with basic black?” is what puzzles me. I know a
thousand gay men, including many in Darlington County, and not one of
them speaks this way, owns a set of pearls or has any interest in
women’s jewelry. That’s quite a slur.

It is?, I thought. Anyway, I set that aside until the Thursday letter, which in part said:

The cartoon appearing on the Saturday Opinion page regarding the harm
done to the cowboy image by the film “Brokeback Mountain” was a cheap
shot aimed at perpetuating insulting stereotypes of gay people.

Do you see the common thread (aside from the fact that neither writer is overly blessed with a sense of humor)? In both cases, the cartoon supposedly insults gay people by associating them with transvestites. This suggests that there’s something wrong with a man who wants to wear women’s clothing (or in this case, accessories).

This seems kind of judgmental to me. Did it seem that way to you?

This forced association of homosexuality and transvestism, which Mr. Oliphant is obviously using to ironic effect to mock the controversy (stereotypes are a fundamental part of the language of cartoons; the more absurd, the better), reminds me of a previous work of humor. I’m thinking of a particular sketch in Woody Allen’s "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But were Afraid to Ask)," the one titled, "Are Transvestites Homosexual?"

It certainly wasn’t the best bit in the movie. I vaguely recall Lou Jacobi being mildly amusing when, having snuck upstairs to the master bedroom, he pranced about in great delight wearing a dress belonging to his hostess. I don’t recall the putative question ever being answered, except that it seemed obvious that he was not supposed to be gay, but was a "regular guy" who got off on cross-dressing.

But that title, which I suppose came directly from the original book, seems in retrospect to contain a judgmental suggestion aimed not at transvestites (comical as they may presumably be), but at homosexuals. In "Are Transvestites Homosexual?," there’s a certain hint of, "Is there anything really wrong with transvestites?"

That was 1972 — well before it became unacceptable in Hollywood to suggest that there’s anything wrong about being homosexual. Much has changed since then. Today, we’ve got folks sticking up for homosexuals (defenders of tolerance, in other words) who call any suggestion of transvestism — even an ironic one — a "slur."

Is this progress?

How stupid is the press?

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A link that blog regular Herb provides in a recent comment asks the not-so-musical question, "Are reporters too stupid to get religion?"

The simple answer is, "Yes."

But that’s a little too simple. I should elaborate. Journalists pride themselves (many of them do, anyway; I certainly did during my news days) on being jacks of all trades and masters of none. At a dinner party, they can usually dazzle an uncritical listener with how much they know about many things — and it works as long as no one probes too deep. But there are several things that most reporters at most newspapers don’t know much at all about (and I hope you’re not including TV people as "reporters," as very few of them get anything):

  • Religion — I have the impression (but no stats to back it up) that the press is slightly more secular than the public at large. I mean that in two ways: First, on a personal level — lots of journalists have never been to church or have quit going (for some reason, the profession seems to draw a lot of "fallen-away" Catholics) — but also professionally. There are still plenty of people of faith in newsrooms, but relatively few who take a sufficient interest in religions other than their own, to the extent that they could write authoritatively about them. You’ll find that’s also true of the general population, but in most fields, journalists make it their business to pick up a little something about everything around them, whether it touches them personally or not. Here’s where the professional tendency comes in. The secular notion that seeps through all of society — that religion is a private matter, with no place in the public sphere — is as prevalent in newsrooms as in the corridors of government. This dampens — in the area of religion — the natural tendency journalists usually have to pry into things that are "none of their business." Most every paper has one or two people who are an exception to this rule — who take a keen interest in religion as religion, beyond their own personal beliefs. Those are the people who are specifically assigned to cover the subject. The problem, and the blundering, tends to come in when you have folks from other beats jumping in to help out on a religion story. While you can take, say, a political reporter and have him go cover a crime story and rely on him to know what to do, that’s just not as true with the religion beat. And given the unpredictable ebb and flow of news, there are always going to be people covering things outside their usual areas.
  • The Military — There are about as few veterans in newsrooms as you find in most white-collar workplaces where most of the people are under the age of 50. Most journalists, unless they have had personal experience or have worked hard to learn about the military sphere of life, know less about it than they do about other lines of work they have never done personally. For instance, almost no journalists have ever been lawyers, cops or politicians. But they interact with those people a LOT more than they do with people in military service. There just aren’t as many opportunities to hang with the military as there are with, say, cops. Therefore, less learning occurs.
  • Weapons of any kind — It might seem like this might fall under "military," but the problem extends far beyond that sphere. All reporters at some time end up doing a basic crime story. And that’s where they are likely to embarrass themselves seriously. How bad is it? I have during my career as an editor run across many a malaprop such as, "Police say the suspect fired at the clerk with a shotgun, but the bullet missed him." And I’ve seen things just as bad as that get into the paper — meaning that several people failed to realize that shotguns don’t fire "bullets."
  • Money — Math tends not to be journalists’ strong suit. They were good at writing in school, not numbers, and to many people who think nothing of whipping together from scratch a 1,000-word news story requiring multiple sources in a couple of hours, figuring out a percentage change is seen as heavy lifting. This gets worse when the number involve money. Journalists tend to be less interested in money than the average person; its mystique doesn’t grab them, and they don’t grasp it. Most reporters are bright enough to have made a lot more money doing something else. But that didn’t interest them enough.
  • Science/Medicine — You see a lot of "health news" in newspapers these days. What you don’t see is a lot of reporting that represents a sense of perspective or in-depth knowledge on these issues. This is improving somewhat, but most journalists are a long way from having the kind of easy familiarity with the sciences, including medical science, that they do with crime, punishment and politics. One reason, among many, would be that they generally don’t interact with physicians or physicists any more than they do with the military.

Anyone who IS conversant with in any of those areas can pretty well write his or her own ticket. Business writers — if they’re any good — are in high demand. Religion writers are in demand, but a little less so, as few papers have more than one or two religion writers, and they have entire staffs devoted to business. Supply and demand.

Few mid-sized papers have anyone devoted to military affairs. But when they do, if that person gets any good at it, once again you have a high-demand commodity. For instance, I was Dave Moniz‘s editor when we started the military beat back in the early ’90s. It was terra incognita for Dave, but he worked hard to develop expertise, and to break down the natural suspicion and even hostility with which most military people regard representatives of the press (I grew up in the military, so I know all about this alienation, and fully understand why it’s there). Anyway, Dave had only done that a handful of years before he went to USAToday to cover the same beat. You’ll see his byline on their front page from time to time.

New category! Top five lists

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So I was reading our special section last week on this year’s "20 Under 40," and thinking what a fine, upstanding groups of youngsters this was, when I got sidetracked — I started checking out what they listed as their "favorite movie," and suddenly the popular-culture snob in me came out for a romp, and I started looking only at that criterion, and began to judge them much more harshly.

Note that I realize full well that what this illustrates is shallowness and misplaced priorities on my part, rather than reflecting negatively upon our 20 honorees. Obviously, these folks spend their time and energy on more serious matters. This is why they are on a "20 Under 40" list, and I never was.

But indulge me here (which, come to think of it, is something you do every time you waste valuable time reading this blog). I mean, don’t get me wrong; I enjoyed "Red Dawn." I’m not one of those left-wingers who dismiss it as mere right-wing Cold War paranoid propaganda. (Of course, it was right-wing Cold War paranoid propaganda, but that was part of its charm; it wasn’t afraid to be what it was.) But favorite movie of all time? I don’t think so. Still, this young gentleman should get points for taking a risk with his pick (something I utterly fail to do with my own list below, I’ll admit), and that’s worth something. But risky choices need to be defensible.

Far more impressive was Mary Pat Baldauf‘s esoteric selection of "A Face in the Crowd." Now there’s a film buff. I mean, even though I’ve heard great things about it, I haven’t even seen it myself (although I just got it from Netflix and hope to watch it this weekend), but it’s got great snob appeal. Think about it — Andy Griffith, before he was famous, shining in a serious, dark role. And don’t forget it’s got Patricia Neal in it. So way to go there, Ms. Baldauf. And please note, she dared to list "old movies (especially from the 1950s and 1960s)" as a personal passion, which raised the bar on the discriminating reader’s expectations. So this was quite a high-wire act, and she pulled it off beautifully.

I would applaud Cynthia Blair‘s choice of "The Usual Suspects" (although, being more obvious, it’s not as cool as Ms. Baldauf’s), but it’s listed as "last movie," rather than "favorite," which just doesn’t count for as much.

So where am I headed with this? Well, as an ardent admirer of Nick Hornby‘s masterful High Fidelity — and as one who also thoroughly enjoyed the film adaptation (in spite of their having moved the setting from London to Chicago, it was rescued by a stellar cast, with Jack Black turning in a mind-blowing performance as Barry) — I have been tempted for some time to start a "top five" category on this blog.

What’s stopped me? Well, fear, I suppose — fear of being savaged by the real pop culture snobs, because I know my own tastes are fairly pedestrian, truth be told. There are an awful lot of Barrys out there ready to tear into my picks the way the original Barry dissed Rob’s and Dick’s. But ultimately, as a reader-participation exercise, this could be fun. So let’s do it.

I had wanted to start this with something less obvious, such as "top five movie endings," or "top five cover songs that feature the original artist singing backup," or some such. But since I just got on the under-40 crowd about favorite movies, let’s start with that very vanilla sort of list:

1. "It’s a Wonderful Life."
2. "The Godfather."
3. "Casablanca."
4. "The Graduate."
5. "High Noon."

Or maybe number four or five should have been "Saving Private Ryan" or …

Yes, I know. I’m stretching the concept of "vanilla" until it screams. Barry would call that list "very …". Well, never mind what Barry would call it, since this is a family blog. But hey — the best movies of all time are obvious, if they’re really the best. I could have thrown in "Life is Beautiful" or "36 Hours" or "Office Space" or something that had a little individuality to it. But I had to be honest.

I promise to do something a little more intriguing the next time I visit this category.

Meanwhile, I’m anxious to know what y’all think — not only your own "top five movies," which I’m sure will put mine to shame. I’d also like your suggestions for future lists.

Assuming, of course, that you dare…

Relative family values

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Paul DeMarco, a potential charter member of the Unparty from Marion County, had the following to say in response to this post:

I do agree that more fairly allocating funds to poor districts like ours will help…

But there is no amount of money that can repair the disintegration
of the family. Many students in our district enter K-4 or K-5 already
so far behind they will never catch up and the most important single
factor holding them back is lack of a stable two parent family. If a
child spends his pre-school years in a single parent home he has been
handicapped in a way that is very difficult to overcome. My hat goes
off to the single parents who are doing their best to make it work but
we all know that two parents paddling in the same direction will take a
child farther than one.

This issue (the disintegration of the family, particularly in the black community) seems to be the elephant in the living room….

Why are we not focused on this issue? Is is something that people feel
is inevitable or simply too overwhelming to address comprehensively?

Later, Dave wrote:

Paul, You hit the nail right on the head but you will never see the
State publish (in print) what you just wrote. We all know that one of
the reasons, if not the main reason, that this problem cannot be solved
is that if someone acknowledges the true problem, then you will be
attacked by the race-baiters. As a result, we as a society peck away at
symptoms of the problem, while politely ignoring the cultural
dysfunction inherent in many black families. Keep in mind there is a
major political party, called Democrats, who give lip service to fixing
the problem, but in reality it is in the Democrats interest to have a
huge voting block living on the welfare plantation….

Paul, demonstrating the sort of lively debate we’d be likely to have at Unparty meetings, came back with:

Brad,

How do you respond to Dave’s complaint that the State is too timid
about identifying single-parent families as a major source of society’s
woes.
Also, it seems to me that on this and other issues our focus should be
on trying to come up with viable solutions/interventions rather than
simply debating.

After all that — and partly because that thread is scattered through a 36-comment conversation among multiple parties, meaning that lots of folks might miss it — I thought I’d respond in a separate post, as follows:

Paul,

The issue isn’t whether The State is "too timid;" it’s whether there’s a public policy issue to be addressed. In the conventional sense, there’s not. But once you start talking about the state getting into pre-K development, you are into unconventional territory. So let’s explore it.

Up to now, our concern has been what to do with the reality that faces our public schools: There are children out there with only one or no parents — or parents who don’t give a damn about them or their education — and what are we going to do about those kids? We can rant all we want about how that shouldn’t happen, but it does, and it’s not the kids’ fault. So we end up about where Judge Cooper did — we need to do something to help those kids whose parents have failed them. It’s the well-established principle of the state acting in loco parentis under extreme circumstances.

But if you’re talking about acting to prevent such situations from arising, you’re getting into areas that give the civil libertarians fits (which, come to think of it, might be enough reason to go there in and of itself). Are we going to license reproduction … outlaw bastardy … make the term "illegitimate" true to its Latin root, as in "not lawful?" What would be the penalties for the inevitable breaches? And what would you do with the children who are the products of such illegal activity? Actually, that brings us back to where we already are…

Personally, I’m for going the non-governmental route and simply resurrecting shame as a salutary force in our society. I’ve been for that for a long time. My being for it, though, hasn’t done much to stem the tidal wave of shamelessness I see washing all around me.

Maybe we should make shame a plank in the Unparty platform. What do you think?

Column about Mondays

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Less room for us,
and more room for you
By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
LAST MONDAY, for the first time ever to my knowledge, we published this page without a single editorial.
    An editorial, I should explain, is what we call that vertical item to the upper left. The thing you are reading right now is called a “column.” A column expresses an individual writer’s perspective, while an editorial reflects the consensus of the newspaper’s editorial board. That’s why editorials, unlike columns, are not signed.
    Anyway, we didn’t have any of those on last Monday’s page. And we’re not going to have any tomorrow, or on any subsequent Mondays, as long as this is well received by readers and keeps working for us.
    Letters to the Editor are one of the most popular items in the newspaper. We always have more letters than we can fit into the paper, so why not give you more of what you like? And of course, that’s fewer editorials we have to write, which is where the “working for us” part comes in.
    Anyway, we gave it a try last week, and then I asked readers of my blog to let me know what they thought of it. Here’s a sampling of the responses:
    “Dave” wrote:

I would weigh in with a thumbs up on the Monday Forum. Another idea would be to pose one key question and solicit “person on the street” answers, preferably with pictures….

    Then “Herb,” whom I promise I did not put up to this, responded:

Personally, I like the editorials better, because I have a great degree of trust in you guys and your perspective. You have access to a lot more facts and I presume, more time to process it, at least on local and national issues. I’m not trying to (“)smear honey on your beard” (German proverb) — I am honest when I say that your position carries a lot more weight than the average Joe Blow, who may be just venting.

    Mark Whittington countered that:

Why don’t you get out of the office and come and actually talk to the people (the workers)?… Nobody reads the paper because it doesn’t apply to their own lives. Over and over again, I hear people talk about being worked into the ground, not having any rights, being paid crummy wages, missing their families, not having enough time to take care of their business, etc…. Why don’t you make Monday, “Worker’s Day”?

    Michael Bloom pleaded:

DON’T do a “person on the street” segment. Unless you do it the right way, and show your readers how dumb a vast majority of people are. Like ask them first… if they are voters, and if they are, to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and/or the Preamble to the Constitution. Now that would be sad but enlightening. I would definitely read that….

    “Dave” came back with:

The “Man on the Street” interviews are invaluable for exactly the reasons you note. You may find one college student who may be historically illiterate and you may find a cab driver who reads Shakespeare. That is what makes that form of data collection interesting to read. So, yes, it has to be done the right way and you don’t want to intentionally humiliate anyone either.

    “Lee,” who seldom agrees with Mark, did for once:

I agree that the editors should use their day off to meet some real people, and avoid their usual chums, like politicians and each other. Better yet, the editors should start their own sideline businesses so they can get some real experience as taxpayers.

    “james potter” made several points in e.e. cummings style:

i do not think it will end up working. extremists will simply take over the editorial page every week on their pet topic. i think monday editorials are also useful to help focus the general assembly during the legislative session. i will normally glance or read the editorials, i rarely pay attention to the letters to the editor since many appear to be “organized”.

    I thought Mr. “potter” raised some points worth addressing, which I did along these lines:
    1. No one, “extremists” or otherwise, will “take over” the page. The fact is that we still have to sift through the vast number of letters we get, pick a good, representative sample of them to run, edit them, put them on the page, then proof the page before publishing it. Our role in all that is in no way diminished. (In other words, “Lee,” this doesn’t give us a “day off.”) There’s just room for more letters than before.
    2. The first morning legislators are in town each week of the session is Tuesday, not Monday. So the most relevant days to run statewide-issue editorials, if you want lawmakers to be part of your audience, are Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and our biggest-circulation day, Sunday.
    3. We do our best to spot and frustrate any attempt to stuff our letters space via an “organized” campaign. I’m sure there are some that are sophisticated enough to mask it, but from what I’ve seen, most letter-writing campaigns are pretty ham-handed and obvious. On the other hand, will you see people making similar points and seeming to walk in lockstep with other letter writers? Yep. But that is mostly attributable to the fact that partisan politics — with the media acting as facilitators — has oversimplified all too many complex issues to the point that too many people see things in the same black-and-white terms, and even express themselves using the same “talking points” that one side or the other of our polarized politics has generally agreed upon. That can make a lot of letters look like a part of a campaign when they are not.
    Check out tomorrow’s page and see what you think.

The groundswell continues

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The massive groundswell of grass-roots support for my idea for an anti-party party continues to grow at an unstoppable pace, as indisputably evidenced by this single, one-line comment placed on a recent post by GS Gantt:

What happened to the "UNparty"?

The Unparty has given its vast staff and assorted, irregular hangers-on time off for the holidays — specifically, for Advent and, starting Dec. 25, Christmas. (No, Virginia, the Christmas season has not yet begun. If you doubt me, check a liturgical calendar.)

We will leave it to other parties to disturb the atmosphere of contemplative anticipation that should characterize this season with their charges, countercharges, offensive comments and abject apologies. We will resume our frantic schedule of not issuing statements, not holding conventions and not raising money sometime after Jan. 6.

A little feedback, please

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I’m happy to observe that readers of this blog are in no way shy about giving feedback. In fact, we just set a new record with a total of 60 comments and counting on this post from last week.

So let me ask for your thoughts on something that, surprisingly, I’ve only heard from a couple of people about today so far:

What did you think of today’s editorial page, which contained no editorials? We’re planning on doing this every Monday — turning over the whole page to the community, while refraining from pontificating ourselves — and comments and suggestions are more than welcome. So please sound off.

A U.S. commitment can work

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A back-and-forth discussion on the subject of Bosnia among readers responding (initially, anyway) to a recent post reminded me of this piece from The New York Times, which I meant to draw attention to it at the time, but got busy with other things. Unfortunately, you can’t read it online now without paying for it.

The thrust of it was that no, the situation in Bosnia isn’t perfect — far from it — but we accomplished our goal there. Our goal was modest by the standard of what we’re trying to do in Iraq: We just wanted to stop the killing (at least, that was the goal once we finally decided to do something). We accomplished that.

The author, Roger Cohen, called the Dayton accords signed in 1995 “a messy, and unedifying, end to a conflict” but went on to say that “the Dayton agreement had one conspicuous merit: it stopped the killing that had taken about 200,000 lives. The quieted guns were a tribute to what American power and diplomacy can achieve.”

Note the word, “diplomacy.” The piece stresses the importance of working in concert with powerful allies, and draws some obvious contrasts with what has happened in Iraq. That’s the first of “two lessons” he says the Bosnia experience holds for Iraq.

“The second,” he wrote, “is that a 10-year American military commitment can bear fruit.”

Now note “10-year.” Also note “commitment.” The result is that eventually, one can draw down the troop deployment — we only have 200 in Bosnia now. But note again, all you impatient sorts: “10-year.”

Anyway, the part I liked best about the piece was the headline: “Lessons From Bosnia, 10 Years On: A U.S. Commitment Can Work.” I saw that as a fitting rebuke to the isolationists and do-nothings on both the left and the right.

Dale, don’t give up on us!

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I just posted a reply to a comment on my Sunday column, and what I had to say was important enough that I thought I’d also publish it as a separate post. Hmm. That sounded pompous. What I mean is, it’s important in terms of explaining what this blog is all about (or what I would like for it to be about) that I thought I should make the statement a little more prominently.

The comment was from a blog newcomer called "Dale" who chimed in after a series of, shall we say, overheated remarks from some of my regulars. Here is his comment, in its entirety:

Mr. Warthen:

Good column today, much livelier than usual. In our house we agree
with your conclusion that we have to stay and finish in Iraq. Thanks
for cluing us in on Joe Lieberman’s remarks.

A few other thoughts:
This is my first blog visit. Based on the posts before me I’d say
you’re going above and beyond putting up with the stuff people say. If
blogs are limited to ranters, I doubt I’ll pick up the habit.

How come Congressman Murtha’s Iraq remarks got intense coverage and Senator Lieberman’s did not?

I’m a subscriber to the Economist too and agree that they do a good
job providing news. They’re pretty liberal but even so I think they do
a better job than the American media by presenting more facts and
also by providing both sides of partisan issues. Why do I learn more
about current US news by reading the Economist than I do by reading The
State or watching CNN?

Thanks again.

And here is what I had to say to him in reply:

Dale, please don’t be put off by the other comments — at least, not to the point of giving up on blogs. We need more comments from people who are put off by extreme partisanship and personal attacks. If that description fits, that means we need YOU.

I’m trying to create a space here where people with various opinions can interact in a civil manner. But I also let anybody have their say (I haven’t used my ability to delete comments once since starting the blog in May — except for cases when the same comment is published twice, because of a glitch in the software). But it is my hope that people who are open-minded, reasonable and respectful of others will ultimately flock to this space in sufficient numbers that they will help distinguish this blog from the all-too-many partisan screamfests out there.

In fact, in case you haven’t read them, here are a couple of my recent attempts to tilt at the madly spinning windmills of partisanship. If you agree with what I’m saying there, and you agree with Joe Lieberman, you might want to give this blog a chance for a while before giving up.

As for your question, "How come Congressman Murtha’s Iraq remarks got intense coverage and Senator Lieberman’s did not?"… well, that was one of the oversights by the media that my column was meant to address, to the extremely limited ability I have to address it. The only defensible answer to the question was that Mr. Murtha was rather dramatically changing his point of view, and Mr. Lieberman was not — thereby making the Murtha comments more newsworthy, according to the basic standards of news judgment. But his comments weren’t nearly as important as the play they got, or the reactions from other politicians, or the reactions to the reactions, or any of that other destructive nonsense that happens in the echo chamber inside the Beltway.

One more thing: Your assessment that The Economist is "pretty liberal" is spot-on, although possibly not in the way that you meant it. The Economist refers to itself as "a liberal newspaper." That is to say, it is "liberal" in the classic sense of the term. It is very libertarian, particularly in the economic sense — very free-market-oriented, opposed to the welfare states of Europe, etc. Of course, over here, people tend to call that "conservative," even though it’s technically wrong to do so. (And even in explaining itself, the publication occasionally uses the modern, popular sense of the term, as illustrated in the above-referenced link.) Therefore, Steve Aiken has a point when he disagrees with your characterization — although I have to differ with him when he seems (at least by implication, although I may be misreading him) to equate calling that publication "liberal" with calling people with whom one disagrees "retarded."

Of course, I now welcome responses to my response.

Thanks, ‘Clint’

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One cool thing about the Blogosphere is that you can actually go back and change what you have published, rather than just running a correction later, when rectification is called for. In my last post, I had originally written the following:

But if Mr. Dawson is deluding himself as to whether he is one of the "bosses" referred to, that’s nothing compared to Sen. John Land. When he says "The voters, next year, will be demanding change, and the days of Mark Sanford’s embarrassing legacy are numbered," he’s ignoring the rather large fact that there is no alternative within electoral striking distance of Mark Sanford. In electoral terms, it really doesn’t matter whether the governor is strong politically or not, until there is a viable alternative.

Correspondent "Clint" correctly pointed out that the story didn’t back up the idea that Katon Dawson thought he was a "boss." So I went  back and changed that paragraph to read:

But Democrats (and disaffected Republicans, for that matter) are deluding themselves if they think that means Mr. Sanford is finished. When Sen. John Land says "The voters, next year, will be demanding change, and the days of Mark Sanford’s embarrassing legacy are numbered," he’s ignoring the rather large fact that there is no alternative within electoral striking distance of Mark Sanford. In electoral terms, it really doesn’t matter whether the governor is strong politically or not, until there is a viable alternative.

Why am I bothering to tell you this? Well, for one thing, I want my commenters to know I’m serious when I make the following plea to readers at the top of my blog:

So if you see mistakes, say something so I can fix them.

Also, while it is really cool to be able to go back and change what I’ve published after I’ve published it, it still seems a little like cheating to an old dead-tree guy such as myself.

Radio Radio

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Some of my friends sit around every evening
And they worry about the times ahead,
But everybody else is overwhelmed by indifference
And the promise of an early bed…
                        — "Radio Radio," by Elvis Costello

I’ll be joining some of my friends this evening to talk about the times ahead and how to get there — on the radio.

Specifically, we’ll be on Cynthia Hardy’s "On Point" show on WWDM (101.3) from 6 to 7 p.m. Last I heard, J.T. McLawhorn and Howard Duvall will be the other guests.

We’ll be talking about the subject of my column today. Listen in, and then leave your comments on this posting. Don’t be overwhelmed with indifference; join in.

A newspaper primer

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When I saw this headline this morning, I thought, "What an opportunity! I can write a blog item extending and reinforcing the point about editorial independence that I made yesterday."

Basically, yesterday I had an exchange with a reader that gave me the opportunity to explain the separation between editorial and advertising. I would have mentioned that editorial is just as separate from news, but that wasn’t the subject at hand. Then, lo and behold, the newsroom provides a supreme example of that this morning.

But before I could sit down and write the item, I received this comment (see the second one) from someone else accusing us of "hypocrisy" because the newsroom doesn’t follow our editorial line.

Sheesh. You just can’t win. All right, here’s a primer on how this newspaper works:

News and editorial are as separate as advertising and editorial. When I see a headline I don’t like, I’ve got less ability to do anything about it than you, the reader. You can hoot and holler and write an angry letter. I turn away and tend to my own business, because I’m not supposed to influence, or even try to influence, news decisions.

Am I complaining about that? No. Because just as I don’t try to run their business, they don’t try to run mine.

I really don’t see why some readers have trouble understanding this. Most readers seem to think it would be awful for the news to be reported to fit our editorial position, and our most vehement critics are often those who believe that line is being crossed.

Yet now I have readers criticizing us because we DON’T cross that line, or the other line between us and advertising. Oh, well. I learned long ago that different people want different things from a newspaper.

Any other questions?

Fact gets in way of perfectly good post

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A colleague points out a flaw of omission in my last posting, as follows:

She said that when the lottery was created — over our strenuous objections — we advocated that the authorizing legislation contain language that would prevent the state from doing what other states had done, which was to promote the lottery as a get-rich-quick scheme to an excessive degree. For instance, advertising in other states had portrayed people who studied and worked hard to make a living as saps, and lottery players as the smart ones who knew the way to fortune.

Well, I remembered that part. What I didn’t remember that in connection with the legislative restrictions that we advocated, the lottery operators also would be required to urge people to play "responsibly."

But here it is, clear as can be, in state law:

The commission must promote fair and responsible play, including
disclosure of the odds of winning, and must ensure that any advertising
used does not exhort the public to bet by misrepresenting, directly or
indirectly, a person’s chance of winning a prize.

Fact noted. So now I will make these two points:

  • First, if the only reason the lottery director is urging us to play "responsibly" is that the law requires him to, that means the situation is even more ironic, not less. Doesn’t it?
  • Second, I must apologize to Ernie Passailaigue if my previous words implied hypocrisy on his part. If he’s forced by law to say words that sound hypocritical, then he’s not the hypocrite, the state is.

But then, that was always the case. Ernie’s just a guy doing a job. The guilty party here has always been the state.

Setting a few things straight

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Wow. I was going to remonstrate gently with Bob McAlister about one or two points in his op-ed column today, but now that I see this comment from Bud Williams on Bob’s blog, I know there’s someone out there in much more need of a few actual facts.

Let’s take his flights of fancy one at a time. Here’s the first:

I think the liberal tone of the paper comes from higher up.

First — and this is a question I posed just yesterday to Bob — what liberal tone? Secondly, however you define our "tone," it is ours, and no one else’s. A publisher will have an influence on editorial policy, as a member of the editorial board. (And that influence is gentler and more benign that most people realize; for instance, I can’t think of a single editorial position in the 11 years I’ve been on this board that was dictated by a publisher against the wishes of the consensus of the board.) As for "higher up" than the publisher? That’s unimaginable. There might be some newspaper companies out there that "dictate" editorial policy to their papers, but I can’t think of how they would manage it. People in San Jose don’t have the slightest idea about the issues and people we’re writing about here (and about 90 percent of what we write is purely South Carolina). How could they even form an opinion on these matters, much less communicate their wishes to us? And when I say the tone is "ours," to whom does that refer? Well, first, it refers to me. As vice president and editorial page editor, what appears on our pages is my responsibility. It also refers to a team of people whom I, a South Carolina native, have chosen to hire. Those are the associate editors. It also refers to whoever is publisher at a given time. All of the above are the members of the editorial board. And while publishers may come and go, the rest of the editorial board tends to be here for the long haul. The member of the board with the least seniority at this newspaper has been here for 15 years.

If you notice, many article are reprinted from other Knight Ridder papers and
they generally follow the same line of thought.

I don’t know what that means. The only columnists we regularly run on our pages who happen to work at KR papers are Trudy Rubin and Leonard Pitts. Perhaps the gentleman refers to the news pages, which run stories from KRT, a joint news service between Knight Ridder and the Chicago Tribune company, right alongside stories from the Associated Press, the New York Times News Service, and the Washington Post/L.A. Times service. But why are we talking about this anyway? That’s on the news pages. And Bob was talking about my bailiwick — editorial.

Writers like George Will give us thoughtful, well considered writing but veer
only slightly right of center…

Excuse me? George Will isn’t conservative enough? He’s the dean of conservative columnists (now that William Safire has retired). And maybe that’s the problem. He’s a REAL conservative, as in traditional conservative, as opposed to one of these newfangled nutballs who want to shrink government down to a size where they can drown it in a bathtub.

An occasional Michelle Malkin piece is thrown not so much, I think…

Well, I’m not familiar with Ms. Malkin (or is it Miss, or Mrs.?). If we’ve run her, she doesn’t show up in a search of our archives database. In any case, I’m betting that she doesn’t give her opinions away for free. And for the past few years, my budget has been shrinking to the point that all I’ve done is cut columnists and cartoonists (and the last columnist I cut, by the way, was avowed liberal E.J. Dionne), not add them. If you want to gripe about corporate influence, gripe about their influence on the newspaper’s budget. That’s something they care about, not our politics. (Of course, the real culprit is the stock market, which continues to demand unreasonable profit margins from newspaper companies.)

I suspect the publishers know they must toe the line or those promotions you
refer to won’t be made available to them.

Well, I can’t speak for publishers and their motivation, but I can reiterate that the only line they are expected to toe is the bottom line. They are expected to meet profit goals. And I can assure you that I’m not looking for a promotion. This is it for me. This was my career goal, and wish only for the opportunity to keep using this position to serve the people of South Carolina until I retire or until (and this is far more likely, given my pecuniary situation) I drop dead at my desk.

Is the mission of a newspaper to reflect the opinions of its readers or to
convert those opinions to the editorial board’s?

That’s an odd and puzzling question. If you’re talking about the editorial page, its mission is to do both (although I wouldn’t word the latter part that way). We run the opinions of our readers verbatim. And when we write our opinions, we certainly aren’t doing it for fun. We’re doing it because these are the things we believe, and certainly we want to persuade people to our point of view, if we can. If not, we hope they will at least have considered the points we raise. As for "converting" them, I don’t know what that means. Our basic values are pretty well aligned with the broad center in South Carolina. We would like to get the extremists on the right and the left to calm down and see reason, but we have no motive to "convert" most South Carolinians, because they’re right where we are.

I think people would be surprsied to see the liberal leaning of a paper called
The State in a state so solidly conservative.

Well, so would I, since I am not familiar with any newspaper called The State that fits that description.

This last one is my favorite:

I knew we were in for a major shift in philosophy shortly after Knight Ridder
bought The State when a senior editor wrote in her introductory column that she
was sitting in a coffe house in San Francisco when President Nixon resighned and
she celebrated by getting a tatoo.

There could be no better illustration of the fallacy that this is a more "liberal" editorial board than before Knight Ridder. That column was written by one of the pre-KR associate editors, who after having been here since (I think) the 1960s, retired seven or eight years ago. When I joined this editorial board in 1994, I was the only person in this department who had arrived after KR (and in my case, I got here only about six months after). And this is going to come as a shock, I know, but the only writer in the department who was as conservative as I was was my boss and predecessor, Tom McLean. Since then, all of those folks have retired, and I have been careful to hire people whose views — while they vary across the spectrum (intentionally, because I wouldn’t stand for having a group that thinks just alike on everything) — average out to being closer to the South Carolina mainstream than the old group’s were.

August 31 column, w/ links

1 Reply

Snippets from a conversation:
Bill Gates, innovation and leadership
By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
    JOHN WARNER responded to my Sunday column about Inez Tenenbaum’s decision not to seek a third term as education superintendent by quoting Bill Gates.
    Specifically, he quoted from a speech the Microsoft honcho delivered to the National Education Summit on High Schools a while back. Everybody’s talking about it. In fact, Mrs. Tenenbaum was talking about it during our interview last week, holding up Mr. Gates’ efforts as an example of someone doing what she hopes to do once she’s left office — pushing for reform from the private sector. Here’s part of what Mr. Warner cited in comments on my blog:
    “America’s high schools are obsolete. By obsolete, I don’t just mean that our high schools are broken, flawed, and under-funded — though a case could be made for every one of those points. By obsolete, I mean that our high schools — even when they’re working exactly as designed — cannot teach our kids what they need to know today…. This isn’t an accident or a flaw in the system; it is the system.”
    I’m afraid my gut response was rather dismissive, along these lines: Yes, everyone’s heard or read what Bill Gates said about our secondary schools system. What I haven’t heard is an understandable explanation of what he would replace it with.
    To be fair to Mr. Gates, I went back to read the full speech. (Which you can also do by following the link from my blog.)
    I found that while much of what he said was interesting and wise, little of it struck me as new. I was pleased to see that he is as interested in equality of opportunity as we are on this editorial board:
    “In district after district, wealthy white kids are taught Algebra II while low-income minority kids are taught to balance a check book!” he said. “The first group goes on to college and careers; the second group will struggle to make a living wage…. (E)ither we think they can’t learn, or we think they’re not worth teaching. The first argument is factually wrong; the second is morally wrong.”
    I could also write that — along with what he sees as standing in the way of a solution: “The key problem is political will” (as in, the lack thereof).
    His prescription for what should be done sounds much like the central idea behind No Child Left Behind on the federal level, and a number of initiatives — such as more rigorous requirements for graduation — that have been in place in South Carolina since the turn of the century.
    “The idea behind the new design is that all students can do rigorous work, and — for their sake and ours — they have to,” he said, adding that the aim should be “to prepare every student for college.”
    Then, he spelled out the active ingredients of his prescription: “If we can focus on these three steps — high standards for all; public data on our progress; turning around failing schools — we will go a long way toward ensuring that all students have a chance to make the most of their lives.”
    Those are the same principles we’ve already put into action through the Education Accountability Act. It is laudable that Mr. Gates is putting considerable amounts of his own money where his mouth is, transforming hundreds of high schools across the country.
    But there’s only so much he can do, even with his resources. Turning around the dropout rate (which Mr. Gates correctly sees as a national epidemic, not just a South Carolina problem) and taking the next steps in making sure all kids are prepared for productive lives will take leadership in the political sphere.
    Mr. Warner bemoaned that “Today we’re making incremental improvements, and that is good but not sufficient to make the progress we need. There is no way an educational Bill Gates could emerge because there is no vehicle for them to pursue truly innovative ideas.”
    John, I wrote back, the entrepreneurial culture you envision is politically impossible. You know why? Because politicians and their constituents, being extremely jealous of every tax dollar, absolutely refuse to trust educators. Therefore we get rigid standards, tests, measurements and controls that force everyone to follow certain patterns. (I once wrote a whole column on the lack of trust as being the root of all evil in our society. I’ll put that on my blog, too.)
    Everything I’ve seen in my career about the politics of public education indicates that the state will never hire teachers, give them resources and say, “Go to town; be creative!”
    Mr. Warner agreed:
    “Brad, I have been talking to people about this for a long time too. I absolutely agree with you (about the lack of trust).
    “There is the trust factor you mentioned, not trusting educators. There is a lack of trust of parents to make the right decisions. There is also a serious lack of trust among minorities, especially older minorities, who have historical experience that honed their instincts to be wary. There (is) a large segment of people who are cynical in general and don’t trust anyone else, especially those in government. Some of our leading politicians in the state have made an art form out of tapping into this latent cynicism.
    “In a flat world, only innovation can keep us globally competitive. Public education needs to be a part of that culture. Somehow, we need to find a leader in this state who can empower people to begin to create a culture of innovation.
    “Dick Riley brought enlightened leadership to public education 25 years ago. And Carroll Campbell brought it to economic development 15 years ago. Without the next strong leader, it will be difficult for us to make significant progress.”
    What can I say to that, except that he’s absolutely right. This is why I hate to see a leader such as Mrs. Tenenbaum leave the public sphere, and why I worry about who will lead us to the next steps in the reform that is so essential to our state’s future.

Sanford vs. Shealy

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Gov. Sanford called me Wednesday to complain about a certain op-ed piece that ran on our pages that day, and to level certain accusations at the author.

His substantial problem with the column was that he regarded it as unfair. His vote against the Violence Against Women Act was one of many, and all part of his attempt to draw attention to the fact that these programs were being financed out of Social Security — something those who voted for the bills were happy to ignore. He also noted that, contrary to his critic’s assertion that he would  “Cut taxes above all else,” he actually voted against a tax cut in 1998, and was one of only a handful of Republicans to do so (the other GOP members from South Carolina voted for it).

Beyond that, he challenged the provenance of the essay itself. He maintained that not only was contributor Ross Shealy the son of Lexington County Republican political operative Rod Shealy Sr., but that he didn’t actually write the piece himself: "That’s his Dad writing," said the governor. "I think it’s important that you know that."

Well, I appreciated the heads-up, but I suspected that the governor was mistaken on this one. For one thing, I thought the piece (while it may or may not have been entirely fair to the governor) was well-written. (And it did present a defensible view of the governor — that he has a strong aversion to spending taxes, and a stong affinity for cutting them.) And while nothing that Shealy pere has written in the past has particularly engraved itself upon my memory, I don’t recall having the thought "That’s well-written!" when reading anything purported to be by him.

For his part, when I reached him a couple of days later in an effort to reassure myself that we had not committed a fraud upon the readers, Mr. Shealy — Ross, that is — said, "Yeah, I wrote it."

This made sense to me, because although Rod Shealy and the governor may not see eye to eye, it seemed unlikely that a Republican — even a maverick Republican — would want to take that kind of chance against a popular governor of his own party. Stranger things have happened, of course, but I just really think the governor’s barking up the wrong tree.

Of course, maybe I’m just being gullible here, but Mr. Ross Shealy was pretty convincing. I believe his beef is his own. As he put it, "This governor really leaves a bad taste in my mouth." Which would help to explain why the only other time I can remember running an op-ed by this author, it also targeted Mr. Sanford for heavy criticism.

"On the political spectrum, I’m nowhere close to my brother or my Dad," he said. "I’m just not politically affiliated in any way. I don’t agree with them."

Physicianow, heal thyself

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I was completely stunned when a regular correspondent shared this with me via e-mail. I could only respond thus:

What a presumptuous pile of pontification! How dare he presume to know the soul of another this way, and to pass judgment on it based upon such guesses? Does he think his literary license gives him the right to write omnisciently about real people the way he does fictional characters? Well, it doesn’t.

I’ve got major problems with this president, including many decisions he’s made (or not made) with regard to this crucial war. I often wonder whether I want us to succeed in Iraq more than George W. Bush does, and some days I’m quite sure I do.

But as healthy as my editorialist’s ego is, I would NEVER have the gargantuan gall to write something like this about another human being. I suppose one has to be a lionized author, sitting in the Hamptons contemplating in awe one’s own greatness, to produce rhetorical excess this extreme. Alas, we lesser lights must content ourselves with more humble assertions.

You know, he just plain looks a lot more intellectual than I do. Maybe if I grew back the beard, I could be more pompous, too. Not that I’d try to compete in HIS league.

The debate continues…

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Wow. I was so overwhelmed and lulled into a placid state by the kind comments in response to my Sunday column that I didn’t notice until just now that this debate was still going on (and this one, too, in a related vein).

Rather than continue to jump in with my answers and asides in the comments stream, I’m going to respond to a couple of my correspondents with this new posting — largely because I still haven’t mastered a way to insert links, much less files, conveniently into the comments format. I continue to admire those savvy folk who have figured it out.

Anyway, Portia said I had explained my lack of military service — one of the great regrets, or perhaps I should say gripes (since it wasn’t my choice), of my life — in a recent column, but she couldn’t get to it to provide a link. I’ve mentioned it more than once, but I have a feeling that this is the one to which she refers. If not, I’ll go back and look for another one.

Also, the link that Mike C provided was interesting, and I recommend it (although I got lost in exactly what the late William Jennings Bryan Dorn‘s namesake was urging Woodrow Wilson to do; I really need to bone up on that period). But I bring it up here because its title, and this passage …

The profound interpretation recognizes that if there is an invasion the decision for it and for its sweeping historical consequences will be in the hands of one man, The President of the United States, and that he – and he alone – must take complete moral responsibility for this massive intervention in the fate of our species. And this fact is conveyed in the title of Mr. Hammerschlag’s article: it will forever be Bush’s War, no matter what the outcome.

… reminded me of an older column of mine (and here’s where I really had to go to a posting rather than a comment, since I had to attach a Word file, that piece no longer being online).

Oh, and in answer to "Amos Nunoy‘s" last question, namely, "Did you know it wasn’t about mass weapons the whole time? You didn’t say," I most certainly did NOT write "Hey, there’s no WMD." Why? Because I thought, like everyone else, that Saddam had at least one variety of WMD (he had used it in the past, after all), and was working feverishly to develop others. In fact, we mentioned it editorially among the reasons to invade at the time — partly because that cause was more important to others on our editorial board than it was to me, but also because it WAS part of the argument. It just wasn’t what was important to me, and would not have been reason enough alone to justify invasion in MY mind. You can tell this by what I did stress at the time, such as (at least in passing) in the column linked in the paragraph above. Or, more to the point, this one. In fact, the latter is worth quoting here, in case you have trouble calling up that old file:

The answer to all of the above is: Sept. 11.

Before that, U.S. policy-makers didn’t want to destabilize the status quo in the Mideast. What we learned on Sept. 11 is that the status quo in the region is unacceptable. It must change.

Change has to start somewhere, and Iraq is the best place to insert the lever, for several reasons – geography, culture, demographics, but most of all because Saddam Hussein has given us all the justification we need to go in and take him out: We stopped shooting in 1991 because he agreed to certain terms, and he has repeatedly thumbed his nose at those agreements.

Iraq may not be the best place in the world to try to nurture a liberal democracy, but it’s the best shot we have in the Mideast.

That was written, by the way, the month before the 2003 invasion. You’ll notice, "Amos," that while I didn’t specifically mention WMD (because, once again, I thought that threat, while insufficient, was real) I DID say that the president, for Realpolitik reasons, wasn’t frankly stating exactly WHY we had to go into Iraq — or at least, wasn’t stressing it enough to suit me. That’s why that column was headlined, "The uncomfortable truth about why we may have to invade Iraq." I thought it was important to state those reasons more prominently beforehand, so I did.

August 7 column, with links

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Folks op-ed sparks lively
discussion in blogosphere
By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
     LAST WEEK we ran an op-ed piece from former gubernatorial press secretary Will Folks headlined, “My side of the domestic violence story.”
    As you most likely know, Gov. Mark Sanford’s ex-spokesman was charged with criminal domestic violence after he allegedly kicked open the door of the home he shared with his now-former fiancee and pushed her into furniture, bruising her back.
    When, to my surprise, he called Tuesday to offer a column on the subject, I was quite interested.Folks_mug_2  Of course, I could not decide whether to run it until I had seen it. And I had to make the decision quickly, because he had indicated his intention to share it with other papers. That meant running it, if at all, the next day. We don’t knowingly run local op-eds that have run elsewhere.
    We ended up running it pretty much as it was, with one exception: I removed a passage in which he quoted what he claimed was an e-mail from his ex to his mother. Before making that decision, I asked to see the e-mail, and he forwarded it. Important context was missing from his citation of it. Besides, this was supposed to be his account of what he did, not his version of her account.
    I wrote an item for my blog about the piece. I included the part I had cut, followed by a fuller quotation from the e-mail he had forwarded. The way he had selectively quoted the e-mail to his advantage was striking.
    There was high reader interest. That day, the story about the new “four-strikes” rule at USC got the third-highest number of page views on thestate.com. My blog item and Mr. Folks’ op-ed came in first and second.
    Most interesting to me were the comments readers left on my blog. In keeping with my ongoing quest to make clear to readers why we do what we do, I thought I’d quote some of those comments, and answer them. I only know these correspondents by the names or nicknames they gave on the blog. But their identities are less important to me than the substance of their comments.
    I begin with “Lisa Turner’s” comment for an obvious reason: “You’re becoming a pretty good blogger. While I am intrigued by all the behind-the-scenes iterations of this story, I do not think it should have been run. You say that it was an opportunity The State shouldn’t pass up, but do you really think that Will Folks was going to do anything but try to help himself out?”
    Mr. Folks probably was trying to help himself out. But that’s not what he did. He defied legal (and his father’s) counsel in doing so. I knew I wasn’t helping him a bit by running it. But I wasn’t trying to hurt him, either. It wasn’t about how it affected him. My reasoning was the same as with anything we choose to publish: I ran it for my readers, who had a legitimate interest in knowing more about the man whom the governor had kept for years as his spokesman, despite his obvious liabilities.
    “Bob Steel” wrote: “I think it is irresponsible to allow Mr. Folks the opportunity to give his side of the story without hearing from the victim. It is very apparent Mr. Folks has friends at The State and was able to call in some favors.”
    If Mr. Folks has friends at The State, they certainly weren’t involved in this decision. And again, no favor was done here, as I suspect any attorney would tell you. As to the “other side” angle: I won’t solicit a point/counterpoint on a domestic dispute. The op-ed page is not “The Jerry Springer Show.” If the former fiancee, or anyone else, offers me a relevant, publishable piece rebutting Mr. Folks, I’ll run it. But I am not going to harass someone who (unlike Mr. Folks) is not a public figure during a horrible time in her life by calling and saying: “Your ex-boyfriend has written something trying to defend his actions. You want to respond? By the way, you’ve got about an hour.”
    “Elsa Green” wrote that “The State Newspaper has made a poor decision in allowing Will Folks to write an op-ed about his own personal problems.” But she went on to make my argument for me as to why to run it: “What is particularly frightening about this case is that Will has been an adviser to the top executive of our state.” Exactly. If the column had been simply about a man’s “personal problems,” I would have had no interest. It had value because of what it revealed about that man’s character and judgment, and therefore about the judgment of the governor.
    “Randy O’Toole” understood: “I think that Mr. Folks has a serious problem and it reflects poorly not only on him but the Governor and the State of South Carolina.”
    Not everyone saw it that way. “John Smith” wrote: “The real winner in all of this is, of course, Mark Sanford. After running headlong into a brick wall in terms of ‘taking on’ the governmental status quo, the Governor has now gotten rid of the ‘pit bull’: the very voice and symbol of his renegade attitude towards dealing with the legislature. Perhaps we will see a more cooperative effort from the executive branch as re-election time nears. After all, the voters like to see results.”
    “Deaver Traywick” thought I was unfair to the author: “My only suggestion is that you might have given Mr. Folks the option of running the piece as edited or not at all. As a writer and editor, I am concerned about the editorial policy of publishing changes or truncations without the writer’s consent.” As I regularly do when I make such a substantive change, I called Mr. Folks and told him of it. I half expected him to withdraw the piece, but he didn’t.
    “Thomas McElveen” came to my defense on that point: “Based on my personal experience, Mr. Warthen is extremely fair in his editing, and very graciously allows op-ed contributors input and even critique of his editing.” I wouldn’t dare try to
say it better.
    Finally, “Robert Trout” wrote, “I don’t get Mr. Warthen’s decision to not run an unedited op-ed piece in the newspaper, and yet run it in his blog. I don’t see the differenceæ.æ.æ..” Personally, I see a big difference.
    One of the reasons I took on the demanding additional work of a blog is that it gave me a chance to say things I couldn’t say in the newspaper for lack of space, or because it was unsuitable. The blogosphere, as you may have noticed, is a very different place from a family newspaper. One way I make use of that different forum is to give behind-the-scenes looks at the paper itself. For instance, I recently posted a Robert Ariail cartoon that we had judged too salacious for the paper, and asked readers whether they would have made the same decision. Most said we made the wrong call. Such is life.

E-mail may have been lost

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For those of you who still send me e-mail (which is so 20th century) instead of just coming to the blog to share your thoughts, I pass on the following advisory:

I was out of town the last two days of last week and part of the weekend, and when I came back on Monday (after the big flood, or as I’ve decided to start calling it in South Carolina fashion, the "recent unpleasantness"), my e-mail from that time had disappeared. I had to wait until today to get missing messages restored, and even then, all I got back was last Thursday and Friday (July 28th and 29th). No Saturday or Sunday.

That means if anyone had written to me about my Sunday column on that day, which many are wont to do, I didn’t see it.

So if you still want to tell me something, you might try again, although I would MUCH prefer that you go to the column on my blog and comment there, so everyone can be included in the dialogue.

Thanks, and sorry for the inconvenience.