I hope readers will forgive me for once again answering a comment with a separate posting. This has offended some of my correspondents in the past, so I have resolved in general to avoid the practice. However, in this case, I believe the one who posted the comment legitimately points to a flaw in the way I expressed myself in my Sunday column, so I thought I would post this attempt to set the record straight a bit more prominently. (I will, of course, appreciate being corrected if I have once again overstepped the bounds of blog etiquette.)

My most recent correspondent refers to the "narrow set of circumstances" that causes Southerners to be amazed that Northerners can be polite. Well, first, my suggestion that this was amazing was stated in a tongue-in-cheek manner:

It’s almost enough to make you think there are ways in which folks up north are more polite than we are. Almost. One wouldn’t want to get carried away on such thin, subtle evidence.

If that was not clear, chalk it up to my own limitations as a writer. I thought the irony was suggested in a way that was practically heavy-handed, but I could be wrong about that.

But what I really want to comment on is the suggestion that my frame of reference is too narrow. Perhaps it is, but I doubt it. The evidence in favor of this assumption would be:

• My lack of experience traveling in the small towns and countryside of the north, resulting from the fact that business is more likely to take one to the large cities.
• I have never been to Europe. I, personally am amazed that I’ve gotten to the age of 51 with that remaining true. But I’m a bit like Jimmy Stewart’s character George Bailey in that regard — family responsibilities and such have always prevented it. For instance, my wife and I had planned to bop over at least to Britain last summer for our 30th anniversary. It didn’t happen. We planned again to do it this year. It didn’t happen again. I won’t go into the personal reasons, but they were compelling in each case.
• I haven’t been to Asia or Africa, either. Or Australia, just to round out the continents missing from my life’s itinerary. I’ve never been out of the Western Hemisphere, unless Hawaii (where I graduated from high school) counts.

Compared to my father, who spent a career in the Navy and saw the world, that’s pretty narrow. It results largely from the fact that I find myself in my present position at a time of financial retrenchment in the newspaper industry. Early in my career, it was common for editorial writers to go on junkets all over the world. By the time I was on an editorial board, that was a thing of the past — much to my regret. My trip to New York last year for the Republican Convention, and my colleague Mike Fitts’ trip to Boston for the Democratic, stand out as unusual expenditures in this day and age (I had to catch my publisher in a weak moment even to travel that far).

Now, let’s review the evidence to the contrary. Between kindergarten and the 12th grade, I was educated in:

• Bennettsville, S.C.
• Norfolk, Va.
• Woodbury, N.J.
• Kensington, Md.
• Guayaquil, Ecuador
• New Orleans, La.
• Tampa, Fla.
• Honolulu, Hawaii

I found myself in some of those places more than once (in Norfolk three times, for instance). The longest I spent in any one of them was in Ecuador — two years, four-and-a-half months. I have been in public schools, private schools, and basically skipped most of the fourth grade, making up what I missed with a private tutor.

I have spent time (ranging from an hour to 18 years) in Mexico, Haiti, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Hawaii, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Ohio, Illinois, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York.

Some of those, I’ll confess, were mere stopovers to change planes (Colorado, Illinois, Ohio). Others were intensive, extended experiences (Ecuador, Louisiana, Hawaii, Florida, Tennessee, Kansas in particular). Others were in-between. But even the airport stops expanded my experience, however slightly — the view of the Rockies from the Boulder airport, for instance, is pretty spectacular (even to one who has seen the Andes). As for living in Ecuador and Hawaii… Well, in Ecuador I came to speak Spanish so fluently that it was the same as English for me. I thought and dreamt in Spanish (one of the great tragedies of my life is that I didn’t keep it up, and can only speak it very haltingly now, and often am completely lost trying to keep up with native speakers). That gave me a different perspective from those who feel that they are in an alien culture in a place like, say, Miami. The couple of times I have visited there, the place felt warmly homelike.

In Hawaii, I learned what it was like to be in a minority (not an oppressed minority, to be sure, but a minority). I learned the ways not only of native Hawaiians, but of the many other ethnicities that dwell there. I had to. I didn’t like being scolded by my friend Roy Asao’s mom when I failed to take off my shoes before entering their traditional Japanese home. So in that and a host of other small ways, I adapted.

In my adult life I have worked for extended periods in Tennessee, Kansas and South Carolina. Not exactly the capitals of Europe or the bazaars of the Mideast, but I learned a lot in each.

So where does this leave me in terms of the broadness of my travels (setting aside my reading habits and other interests and where they take me in ways other than physical), and how they have affected my perspective? It leaves me in kind of a in-between place. I have enough of an "outside" perspective that it puts me constantly at odds with South Carolinians who DO have a narrow, limited way of defining the legitimate boundaries of their world. But it leaves me far from being a world traveler. In fact, as I said before, it’s amazing I’ve reached this age without having left this hemisphere. My perspective is hardly "narrow" compared to the population at large, but it falls far short of "cosmopolitan."

The fact is that, having traveled more than enough in my vagabond youth, I have deliberately set down roots in one place — the place of my birth, even though I did not grow up here. I wanted to develop the sort of depth of character that results from having a sense of place (whether I have succeeded or not remains to be seen). I have done this while forgetting nothing of what I learned from living elsewhere.

Make of that what you will.

This is how dialogue can take veering lurches off-subject. I asked folks to help me understand the appeal Michael Jackson holds for his most fervent fans, and several people responded. "The Kid" responded at some length, but rather than focusing on his observations about Elvis et al., I find myself seizing upon one minor aside in his comment:

And what’s with the Che T-shirts? Don’t the wearers understand that he was a murderer? Does Fidel get the royalties?

What’s with the Che T-shirts? Good question. As to whether the wearers understand that he was a murderer, I would say either they don’t, or they don’t care. In a world in which it is fashionable almost everywhere but in the U.S. and Israel to romanticize Palestinian terrorists as freedom fighters, this should not be very surprising. And Ernesto "Che" Guevara was a much more charismatic figure than, say, Yasser Arafat. He photographed better, anyway. That one most famous image — the one on the shirts — shows him with a messianic gleam in his eye. You don’t have to admire someone to recognize the aura they emanate. Osama bin Laden, for instance, has a disturbing "holy man" look in his eyes that completely belies who and what he is.

Personally, I think Che manages simultaneously to look malevolent in that famous image, but my tastes are not those of the angry and disaffected. To many such people, a revolutionary who looks ticked off enough to do anything to overthrow the Man is appealing. I would also imagine that some women think he’s sexy. He certainly knew how to make a fashion statement.

Then there’s the recent movie, which depicted the later killer as a sensitive and impressionable young man who is just starting down his journey toward radicalization, driven by righteous indignation at the truly appalling poverty and oppressive class structures of his native South America. That continent has indeed always been in need of a revolution. Unfortunately, Simón Bolívar and company couldn’t deliver the kind that John Adams, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington blessed us with. Nor could Che, nor Chavez nor Lula.

But maybe I’m digging too deep. Bottom line is, people wear the shirts because they look cool. They are the ultimate cliche in radical chic, as essential to a dissident’s wardrobe as LaCoste shirts are to a yuppie’s.

Oh, and in answer to The Kid’s other question: No, Castro doesn’t get royalties. Nor did the photographer who actually captured the image, who for a long time was the only person who realized how appealing it was.

Now if you really want to do something about the Che shirts, you can resist the trend by donning an anti-Che shirt. Of course, those would be a lot more attractive if they weren’t being sold next to Reagan Revolution shirts. Why is it that nobody is out there marketing shirts for us sensible folks in the middle who don’t like political extremes of any kind? Well, I suppose some are, but they tend to lack the cachet of the partisans and the lunatic fringes.

Not that it really matters to me. I’d rather make my statements in the newspaper, or on the blog, and let my wardrobe fade into the background. But different strokes and all that.

Please excuse the three-day hiatus. It’s simply been impossible to take time to sit at a keyboard. In fact, I only have a moment now, but I have a number of items backed up that I’ve been saving, so I hope to be able to post them soon. I’ve been out of town for a week visiting Memphis, where both of my wife’s parents are hospitalized. I was still able to post items through Thursday — blogging provided some brief respites from the stress — but by the end of the week the family crisis had deepened to the point that blogging was just unthinkable.

At this moment, I’d just like to take a quick moment to thank Sunny Philips for correcting a post from June 2. On that date, I mentioned being perplexed because after the ceremony swearing in Bobby Harrell as the new House speaker, "For some reason, David Wilkins — who was no longer speaker — presided while his successor milled about on the floor accepting congratulations."

Sunny pointed out the obvious, which is that Mr. Wilkins is speaker until June 21. I would not have been perplexed that day if I had taken a moment to read the two press releases that had been pressed into my hand just as the oath was being administered to Mr. Harrell. (Here’s one of them.)

I’m leaving that item in, because it honestly expresses the confusion that was in my mind, and that of some House members, at the time. I also leave it up as a reminder of what I say in the intro to my blog: "So if you see mistakes, say something so I can fix them."

Fact is, this particular error — which I had compounded by repeating on a later date — had already been pointed out to me by a colleague on the editorial board. I fixed the problem in that case, but had forgotten about that reference on June 2.

So thanks, Sunny.

I’m still trying to figure out how to maximize interactivity in this medium. I started out e-mailing responses to comments, then remembered that the reason I started a blog was so I could share dialogues with readers at large. The next most obvious thing to do was to offer my own comments in response to others — but then people would have to revisit an item and scroll to the bottom to discover that I had responded to them.

So I’m going to try this: I’ll single out some points made in comments, linking to the full comments as I do so, and respond in a separate posting. I would appreciate feedback as to whether you think this works.

Anyway, right now, I’d like to respond to a couple of points made by Jim Cothran and Jake, regarding my last posting:

Jim Cothran writes:

For instance, I would assume you would have had to trust John Graham Altman’s actions a few weeks ago, since he was in meetings that you were not in. Or does your line of reasoning only apply to decisions with which you agree?

Jim, I don’t think you followed my line of reasoning, if you think it would be logically consistent to follow it in the case of someone I did not vote for, and would not have voted for even if I’d had the chance. (Remember that my comments were in the context of the attitude of one who not only voted for Lindsey Graham, but worked hard to get others to vote for him.) To elaborate on what I was trying to say in response to Shell Suber’s excellent letter to the editor, when you support someone for election, you do so because you trust that person, and you are delegating him to do what you don’t have time to do — go to Washington for extended periods, study issues in detail, listen to different and opposing arguments in debate (and that’s the part that seems hardest for those angry at Sen. Graham to accept — the notion of a deliberative process) and then vote and act as his reason and conscience dictate.

I would not trust John Graham Altman to do those things, which is why I would never vote for him.

Now, to respond to Jake, who wrote in part that:

I think Shell’s letter is brave, yet misguided. There should never have been a compromise on judges, every one of them deserves and up-or-down vote…period.

I agree that that is what should happen, all the time. The Democrats’ argument that they have a right under the rules of our republic to block nominees permanently when the majority wishes to confirm them — to exercise what amounts to a minority veto — is utter nonsense. Every nominee should get an up-or-down vote. The purpose of the filibuster is merely to ensure that the minority gets a chance to be heard (and, if the world is working the way it should instead of the way it works in these hyperpartisan days, a chance to win over some who disagree).

So why support the compromise? Because under the rules of the game, the stubborn minority was in a sufficiently strong position to prevent an up-or-down vote on any of the nominees. Under the compromise, most of them will get confirmed. Yes, the Republican leadership was in a position to change the rules in the middle of the game. But that’s hardly cricket, is it? It’s something that is offensive to the sense of fairness of anyone who is not blinded by his own political position (a position that, in this case, I agree with — but I try not to let that overwhelm my sense of fairness).

The "nuclear option" was well named, because if Republicans had employed it, it would have been enormously destructive on a couple of levels. First, it would have destroyed whatever vestiges remain of the ability of senators to get along, across party lines — in a collegial and mutual respectful manner. The importance of collegiality in a deliberative body such as the U.S. Senate is something that partisans tend to sneer at — particularly partisans who happen to be in the majority at the moment.

Secondly, it could have been destructive to Republicans’ ability to lead the nation. Changing rules in the middle of the game, just because you can, tends to be offensive to objective observers. Since the beginning of this recent debate over the filibuster, I had a sense that the GOP was overreaching this time. They were going to lose the broad middle of political America. Partisans — once again, particularly when they have the upper hand — tend to forget that there is no such thing as a majority for either party without the votes of us in the middle. Polls consistently show that both parties represent minorities. If a party gets so wrapped up in its power that it forgets the need to keep the good opinion of independents, it will lose its grip on that power, because it will lose the support of the nonaligned. Think it can’t happen? Remember how Republicans came to power more than a decade ago. There were a number of factors involved, but one of them was that it was offensive to people in the middle that Democratic committee chairmen would not allow numerous bills with broad support to be debated or voted upon. Their arrogance, based in their confidence in their majority, helped lead to their downfall. To change rules in the middle of a process — rather than at some later, more neutral, time when everyone could deliberate more coolly — would have seemed to most people in this country like arrogance of power, and it would have cost the GOP.