Category Archives: Feedback

The Palin Effect

36 Replies

As you know, I’ve written here a number of times about The Obama Effect, which has inspired lots of folks to get involved in politics for the first time.

Now I’ve come to the conclusion that there is a Sarah Palin Effect, which is to cause many people to pay WAY more attention to politics. Or at least to blogs.

And on the MSM as well. Note this report from The Pew Center about last week:

For the first time in three months, John McCain generated more coverage than Democratic hopeful Barack Obama last week. But McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin, earned even more attention during Republican National Convention week, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Here on the blog, page views surged up to the point that last week I had my heaviest traffic since the S.C. primaries in January. At first, I thought it was about the GOP convention, but that didn’t explain why my traffic didn’t surge during the Democratic confab the week before.

That week had been just slightly above typical. For instance, the week before the DNC went like this:

Sunday, Aug. 17 — 872
Monday — 1,610
Tuesday — 2,024
Wed — 2,091
Thurs — 1,785
Friday — 2,002
Saturday — 1,220
TOTAL: 11,604

Since January, my traffic had been almost monotonously regular — 11,000 and something, week after week. Then, the week of the DNC:

Sunday, Aug. 24 — 1,143
Mon — 1,878
Tues — 1,839
Wed — 2,154
Thurs — 1,840
Fri — 2,068
Sat — 1,336
TOTAL: 12,258

But building off of that Friday’s news about Sarah Palin (I’ve noticed that a topic that interests my readers doesn’t usually generate its biggest numbers that day, but has an effect for several days), here’s what y’all generated the next week:

Sunday, Aug. 31 — 2,159
Mon — 1,497
Tues — 2,516
Wed — 2,733
Thurs — 3,162
Fri — 2,565
Sat — 1,349
TOTAL: 15,981

I really don’t think that reflects a higher interest in the Republicans (minus Sarah Palin) than in the Democrats. Especially since, if you go back and see which posts tend to have the most comments, it’s easier to see why the numbers did what they did:

I’m noticing a pattern, to say the least. Her name drives Web traffic the way Ron Paul’s did a few months back. Which is saying something.

Community organizers strike back

18 Replies

I‘m beginning to suspect that community organizers are organized on a level somewhat larger than the "community."

The first letter on tomorrow’s editorial page sticking up for community organizers as a breed. Last week, within a day after Sarah Palin’s remark about their ilk vis-a-vis being a mayor, I got TWO e-mails sticking up for community organizers. Then, when I got home Friday, there was a panel discussion on PBS, and the person speaking when I walked into the room was defending community organizers.

The two e-mail releases came in within two hours of each other on Thursday. Here’s the first one:

Leading National Organization Responds To Attacks On Community Organizing Statement from the Center for Community Change
Washington, dc- Recently, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and several commentators and surrogates surrounding the presidential contest have attacked and misrepresented community organizing.  The following is a statement from Deepak Bhargava, Executive Director of the Center for Community Change, a 40-year-old national organization that builds the field of community organizing with hundreds of local organizations nationwide:

“When Sarah Palin demeaned community organizing, she didn’t attack another candidate.  She attacked an American tradition — one that has helped everyday Americans engage with the political process and make a difference in their lives and the lives of their neighbors. 

"All across the country, in every state and every community, there are community organizers helping people find shared solutions to the shared problems they face.  The candidates for President and Vice President should be working to solve our shared problems, too, rather than attack others who are trying to do the same.

"From winning living wages to expanding affordable housing to improving the quality of public schools to getting health coverage for the poor and elderly, community organizers have made and will continue to make our communities and our country better for all of us.

"The values that community organizers and grassroots leaders represent are not Washington values or Wall Street values but American values–that we care for each other and look out for each other and know we’re all interconnected and have a valuable role to play in making our country work for all of us.  Candidates should be courting these Community Values, not condemning them.”

Since 1968, the Center for Community Change has strengthened the leadership, voice and power of low-income communities nationwide to confront the vital issues of today and build the social movements of tomorrow.  The Center leads the Campaign for Community Values, a national movement of more than 300 grassroots, community-led organizations mobilizing voters in this election and beyond to demand policy changes that reflect our nation’s founding principles of shared responsibility, inclusion and interconnectedness. 
                  ###

Here’s the second one:

America is Built on the Contributions of Community Organizers
Statement of Wade Henderson, President and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights

“The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights is a coalition of nearly 200 organizations, much of whose work is done through community organizers. These advocates have provided the leverage for Americans to organize themselves into unions, get the five-day work week, voting rights for every citizen, paid maternity leave and the curb cuts used by people with disabilities and young mothers with strollers.

We’re a nonpartisan coalition but we do take exception when anyone disparages the vast contributions of community organizers to American society.

The United States has had a long and proud history of contributions made by community organizers, from Benjamin Franklin who organized the first volunteer fire department in this country to Clara Barton, who organized assistance for soldiers during the Civil War, to Martin Luther King, Jr., who helped our great nation correct a historic wrong. Over the years, many more community organizers have brought changes to American society that benefit all of us.

Nothing is done in a vacuum.  Someone has to organize it to get it done.  That is the simple and great role of a community organizer.”

               # # #

The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR) is the nation’s oldest, largest, and most diverse civil and human rights coalition. For more information on LCCR and its nearly 200 member organizations, visit www.civilrights.org.

So, however you define "community," one can’t say that these folks aren’t organized.

Did that mob look familiar?

9 Replies

Ariail_book

Students of Robert Ariail’s work may note that there’s something really familiar looking about that cartoon criticized on a local feminist blog.

Take a look at the cover of his last book, Ariail! There’s at least one particular character who appears in both. Of course, she appears in a lot of Robert’s cartoons, such as this one and this one and this one. He even has a name for her: He calls her "Auntie Bellum." She was to be a character in a comic strip that Robert and I kicked around a lot back in the 1990s, but never got around to developing (I haven’t given up hope of getting back to it, though).

Here’s how that cover developed: One day in 2001, Robert had another group of women angry at him — Muslim women who maintained that a gag he did about dress codes for pages at the State House (he’d drawn them in burqas) was anti-Islam. I said something like, "You’ve just got everybody on your case lately, don’t you — flag supporters, the governor, Democrats, Republicans, traditional Muslim women…." The drawing arose from that, and then Robert got to thinking that would be a good cover for a book….

You will note that women are not the only people who get really, really mad at Robert.

Robert’s ‘sexist’ cartoon

20 Replies

Hillarys_delegates

Robert’s in trouble now! He mentioned to me a few minutes ago the negative attention his cartoon from yesterday about Hillary and Barack has garnered, particularly on a blog called "Feminist Law Professors."

That blog took time out from considering "Which Wine Should I Bring To A Party At My Dean’s House?," a post that demonstrates at least a sense of humor of a sort, to bristle over "Political ‘Humor’ in the South Carolina MSM," which features Robert’s cartoon. It was filed under the category, "Sexism in the Media."

Key commentary from that blog:

That’s the same cartoonist that produced this and this and this and this.

Now I invite your commentary…

Name that test (nice words only, now…)

12 Replies

Ohboyohboyohboy, but that Jim Rex is a glutton for punishment. The day after he and Jim Foster came to see us, I got this release from Jim (Foster, that is):

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, August 19, 2008

South Carolinians to select name of state’s new  testing system; deadline to vote is Labor Day

EDITOR’S NOTE – The direct link to the online ballot is
http://ed.sc.gov/tools/NameThatTest/

COLUMBIA – State Superintendent of Education Jim Rex announced today that South Carolinians will name the state’s new standardized testing system, which will replace PACT  tests that have been administered statewide since 1999.

Voters can visit the South Carolina Department of Education’s web site and cast their ballots on line.  The deadline to vote is Labor Day, Sept. 1, at 5 p.m., and Rex will announce the winning name on Wednesday, Sept. 3.

I replied to Jim (Foster, that is) with three words: Don’t tempt me!

Given the wild unpopularity of this test, offering the public the chance to name it seemed to me like what Huck Finn said about telling the truth:

… it does seem most like setting down on a kag of powder and touching it off just to see where you’ll go to.

But then I followed the link, and saw that Jim (Rex) wasn’t taking near the chance that I thought. It’s multiple choice, not essay. The public won’t get to express itself fully with this "choice," to say the least.

Top Five courtroom dramas

9 Replies

Got this e-mail yesterday from a local trial lawyer:

Mr. Warthen

Read with interest your brief comments about Ms. Brockovich’s appearance at our convention. Why not come listen to her before you judge? You might actually learn something.

By the way, Jonathan Harr, who wrote "A Civil Action," (the book is much, much better than the movie) spoke by invitation to a group of trial lawyers, hosted by former AAJ president Ken Suggs, a few years ago. Signed my copy of the book! And the lawyer who was portrayed (Jan Schlictmann) has been invited numerous times to speak to our group. Ask your daughter, Elizabeth — we trial lawyers have open minds!

First, I have a daughter who is a lawyer, but her name is not Elizabeth. I’m leaving this lawyer’s name off to protect him from my daughter.

I replied by saying I didn’t know I was "judging," I thought I was just riffing on the blog as usual. And sorry, but I really didn’t like the movie. I did mention another I liked — "Runaway Jury."

This brings us to the fact that we haven’t had a Top Five list in days. How about a Top Five Coutroom Dramas list? Here’s one to start the conversation with:

  1. "12 Angry Men" — Nothing else can touch this, of course. It’s to courtroom dramas what "High Noon" is to Westerns.
  2. "To Kill A Mockingbird" — Very close second, and even maybe a better movie — but only part of it happens in the courthouse.
  3. "A Few Good Men" — Does military justice count? I think so.
  4. "Witness for the Prosecution" — Just to get all snooty and throw in some foreign accents.
  5. "Primal Fear" —  Edward Norton’s breakout, and certainly scariest, performance. Richard Gere almost disqualifies this one, but Norton saves it.

Other candidates?

Slight error in Sunday column

10 Replies

My pastor, Msgr. Leigh Lehocky, gently corrected me this morning. My column said St. Peter’s "Parishioners live in something like 35 ZIP codes." He told me the number is now 46.

I probably remember the 35 figure from back when I was president of the parish council, back in the early 90s. I’ve heard different numbers since then, and consider it one of those wobbly numbers that can never be perfectly correct — even if you give the precise count for right now, based on parish registration, registration itself is a fuzzy thing — not everyone who attends our masses is registered, and some who are registered could have left us.

My point was that it was a bunch of ZIP codes, and I knew I would not be exaggerating if I said 35, so I covered myself by saying "something like." Bottom line, I’m right — it’s a bunch.

Msgr. Lehocky reminded me of something else I’d forgotten. Speaking of The Big Sort, the book that inspired the Robert Samuelson column that inspired my column, he said, "That’s the book I was telling you about a couple of weeks ago." Monsignor had been reading it, and recommended it to me. All I knew was that when I read the title in the Samuelson piece, I knew that I recognized it from a recent conversation; I had forgotten with whom.

Msgr. Lehocky said the book beats up on churches for the usual MLK thing (about 11 a.m. Sunday being the most segregated hour in America), but agreed that St. Peter’s was something of an exception to that "rule."

"And thank God for that," he added.

And perhaps our parish — and particularly the sub-community of those of us who habitually attend the only Mass that is bi-lingual — is an exception. But it’s the only church community I have, so my point that I don’t have the kinds of associations Mr. Bishop writes of — at least, not in any form that comes to mind — holds true.

Alert: Actual relevant discussion happening on the blog as we speak!

3 Replies

Just thought I’d clue y’all into the discussion going on as I type this between DHEC’s Thom Berry and the S.C. blogosphere’s "not very bright" over the sewage spill into the Saluda River.

Those of you who prefer serious issues to Top Five Lists should probably tune in, and weigh in…

NOW you tell me…

5 Replies

Several people have now pointed out to me the fact that the NRDC backed down on its previous assertion about S.C. beaches being so dirty.

Yeah, I know. I saw the news story. It ran the day I was packing up to leave the beach. So thanks a lot for the heads-up there, you environmental hammerheads. Not that I’m bitter or anything.

And to add insult, in that very day’s paper, as I’m heading back home to the Midlands, I’m greeted by this news:

With temperatures approaching 100 degrees today and Sunday, hundreds of
people would normally flock to the Saluda rapids at Riverbanks Zoo to
cool off.

Bad idea this weekend.

A
combination of high runoff pollution and a sewage leak from an upstream
treatment plant have caused state health officials to continue urging
people against swimming, wading or tubing at “the rocks,” as the area
is known.

“Stay out of the water at that area,” said Adam Myrick,
spokesman for the state Department of Health and Environmental Control.
“And keep your pets out of the water and keep them from drinking the
water.”

Great. All of this goes to back up that the best thing to do on vacation is sit in the house and read a good book. I spent a great deal of my time last week finishing this book and starting this one. It seems appropriate at this point to consider the opening passage of the latter:

Standing at the frigate’s taffrail, and indeed leaning upon it, Jack
Aubrey considered her wake, stretching away neither very far nor
emphatically over the smooth pure green-blue sea: a creditable furrow,
however, in these light airs. She had just come about, with her
larboard tacks aboard, and as he expected her wake showed that curious
nick where, when the sheets were hauled aft, tallied and belayed, she
made a little wanton gripe whatever the helmsman might do….

Fortunately for Capt. Aubrey, he didn’t have to worry about the ocean being to polluted to sail through — at least, not unless she were becalmed, and floating in her own waste…

Whatever happened to weldon?

11 Replies

Yesterday, I was putting a link on a post — I think it was this one — and I ran across a comment that made me think, "Whatever happened to weldon VII?"

Not that there’s any connection, but he seems to have disappeared shortly before the appearance of penultimo macfarland. And both of them have a penchant for alleging — despite all the evidence to the contrary — that I only criticize Republicans.

Must be a coincidence…

Build a better blog, and they’ll beat a path to your door

34 Replies

One of the cool things about blogging is that so much of the time, you don’t even have to go look stuff up or ask questions in order to provide relevant content for your readers — your subjects will do it for you.

Increasingly, I find that about all I have to do is wonder aloud about something on the blog, or poke a little fun at something I know little about, and suddenly those involved with the issue will be reaching out to shower info on me from across the nation — info from their point of view of course, but that can be helpful. I don’t even have to contact them; they find me.

For instance, today alone, I:

  • Heard from the campaign of the Senate candidate in Texas who I said might be Energy Party material. Responding to my crack that his position lacked details, his campaign sent me a PDF file with more info. But then, inexplicably, they asked me NOT to post the PDF, urging me just to write about it or excerpt it. I wrote back asking why CAN’T I post it, and I’m waiting hear back on that.
  • Got a mea culpa from the author of the release from musicFIRST about the omission I had joked about.
  • Got a phone message from the OPPOSITE side of that issue — the radio people who don’t WANT to pay those performers what they want. Here’s the audio clip of that.

If anything else interesting comes in with little or no effort on my part, I’ll be sure to share it.

Butch says he and Kevin working pro bono for DMV

1 Reply

Just got this e-mail from Butch Bowers, one of the attorneys who stuck up for the "I Believe" license plate on our Monday op-ed page:

Brad – enjoyed
reading you blog post about our piece and the DMV’s release of yet another
license plate.  In one of the comments to this post, a reader
asks you if Kevin
and I billed DMVBowersb08_4
for writing the piece and if we are getting paid by the state
to defend this suit or if we are working pro bono.  If you are interested in
responding, I thought I would let you know that we are in fact providing pro
bono representation to DMV.  We didn’t bill anybody nor did we otherwise get
paid for writing the op ed piece, and our representation won’t cost the
taxpayers any money at all.
 
Thanks very much,
and I hope you are doing well.  Take care,
 
Butch
OK, Butch, "I believe" you. But if my ol’ friend Kevin hasn’t found a way to bill somebody on this, he must be slipping…

Hey, I could relate better to the $16

3 Replies

Just got this e-mail from Amanda Belcher with musicFIRST:

Although $16 would be bad enough, it’s actually $16 billion a year that
the radio industry makes on advertising revenue while paying performers zero.
Apologies for the typo in my previous email.

Actually, I could relate better to losing the $16. That’s an amount I might actually have in my wallet sometimes, so I can imagine having it taken from me. Billions are an abstraction, as Uncle Joe might have said…

Michael on the Confederate flag

185 Replies

Michael Rodgers, longtime correspondent here and founder of the Take Down The Flag blog, wrote this to me today, and I share it with you:

Dear Brad,
I am writing for two reasons: to point out some common things people often say that are wrong and to describe the stunning lack of leadership from our state government on this issue.

First, the things that are wrong:

1) Our issue in SC is just like the issue in Mississippi or Georgia.  Wrong, because our issue in South Carolina is about the third flag we fly, not about our state flag.
2) The 2/3 vote requirement for this issue is insurmountable.  Wrong for two reasons:

  a. The 2/3 requirement is a legislative hurdle can be taken out of the way with a simple majority (1/2).  Then a simple majority would be able to change rest of the law.
  b. Our state government votes 2/3 all the time when they override Gov. Sanford’s veto, so in fact 2/3 routinely occurs.

3) No one in our state legislature is interested in resolving this issue.  Wrong, because H-3588, a bill to resolve this issue, has seven sponsors. (And as a personal opinion, I think H-3588 completes the compromise).
4) This issue is between flag supporters, who are happy, and flag opponents, who are unhappy.  Wrong for four reasons:

  a. The issue is the FLYING of a third flag from Statehouse grounds, so the camps are flag flying supporters and flag flying opponents.
  b. Flag supporters are unhappy – why else would they get so worked up all the time about this issue?
  c. This issue is between the leaders of our state government, who are happy, and South Carolinians, who are unhappy.
  d. The issue is actually the story (the why!) we tell when we fly or when we don’t fly the flag.  (And as a personal opinion, H-3588 provides a completely consistent clarification of the story of the compromise of 2000).

5) This issue is not worth our time to resolve.  Wrong because this issue is

  a. a defining issue for our state,
  b. tearing our state apart, and
  c. diminishing our state’s stature.

Second, the stunning lack of leadership.

http://www.greenvilleonline.com/

Gov. Mark Sanford said, "Everybody has a different perspective. It is a deeply dividing and complex issue that we’re not going to try and open and re-examine. Somebody is going to have to place a tremendous amount of political capital to pry open a compromise. This administration is not going to be doing that."

Our state government is flying the Confederate flag, and this action causes people to react viscerally.  And when I say people, I am concurring with Gov. Sanford’s grouping:  It’s a deeply dividing issue that affects everybody.

Our state government is flying the Confederate flag, and this action causes people to have enormous confusion as to the reason for this action.  And when I say people, I am concurring with Gov. Sanford’s grouping: Everybody has a different perspective.

Our state government is causing deep division that confuses everybody, and what does Gov. Sanford propose to do about it?  Nothing.

Gov. Sanford says that this simple issue is too complex for him to re-examine.  He says what he always says, which is if we’re going to do anything, we’ve got to throw out everything we’ve been given and start fresh — new constitution, new government structure, new approach to property taxes, new approach to education, etc.  No wonder he doesn’t have the political capital to spare for this issue!

I say that we can solve this issue by respecting the compromise and by clarifying the confusion.  Our state government made a compromise in 2000, where they decided a lot of things under a lot of pressure.  By and large, they did a fantastic job, under the circumstances.

One part of this compromise, the flying of the Confederate flag from Statehouse grounds, is deeply dividing everybody because everybody has a different perspective on this action. We can focus on solving this last remaining issue because the complex parts of this issue have already been solved.

We can solve this last remaining issue, the simple one, with H-3588.  This bill says that confusions about racism and sovereignty can be resolved by flying our state flag in place of the Confederate flag.  This bill says that confusions about respect for heritage can be resolved by commemorating Confederate Memorial Day every year by flying the Confederate flag at the flagpole where it is now.

H-3588 respects the compromise of 2000 by honoring the Confederate Soldier Monument, Confederate Memorial Day, and the Confederate flag.  H-3588 clarifies the message about why our state honors the Confederate flag: because we respect the service and sacrifice of the Confederate soldiers and not for any other reason.

Because H-3588 respects the compromise and clarifies the confusion, H-3588 completes the compromise.  A leader can easily solve this problem.  Who’s going to step up to the plate?  The governor’s mansion awaits.

Regards,
Michael Rodgers
Columbia, SC

The ‘Draft Brad’ movement suffers a setback

8 Replies

Doug Ross brought to my attention the "fact," documented in this "TV news" clip , that there’s a growing movement out there to draft Yours Truly as an alternative to McBama. Watch it; you’ll get a laugh out of it. (I tried to imbed the video, but couldn’t find the code.)

But as pleasing as that was to my ego, imagine my shock and horror when I learned that an almost identical movement has arisen to back my good friend and fellow Energy Party idea man Samuel Tenenbaum! No wonder Samuel keeps bugging me to read that book he gave me! He wants me too busy to notice that he’s trying to steal away my delegates!

SOMEBODY doesn’t like being in the sunshine

2 Replies

Ooh, somebody is a little upset now that the world knows who is behind his blog. Mayor Bob — you know, the one who was hassled by these folks for months as they adamantly and childishly refused to identify themselves (while all along it was run by folks allied with actual members of City Council who could have openly asked the mayor all of these questions at any time) — called this to my attention this morning.

But the mayor got something wrong. He thought, when he saw the ripped-off graphic, that this blog had gone active again. Wrong. It’s still a slacker blog, without a post since June 2007. Or — and here’s another way to look at it — was the graphic not ripped off at all? Is there a connection between the individuals involved in both? I probably should know that. Someone told me once who was behind this site, but I guess it wasn’t important enough to me to remember. Maybe y’all can refresh me.

So for now, I’ll keep that moribund blog at the bottom of the blogroll, where I tend to put the inactives. I suppose I should bump up "Barbecue and Politics," since that former slacker has sprung to new life. And for now, the Pulse will remain where it is. It will be interesting to see how it acts going forward, stripped of its cheesy anonymity.

Mayor Bob on Town, Gown, Sorensen, Pastides

2 Replies

Making my way back through my public e-mail account, I just got to this one that Mayor Bob sent me Sunday:

    Brad, your editorial today about Dr. Harris Pastides was excellent.  The City of Columbia and the University of South Carolina have one of the best, if not the best, town-gown relationships in the nation.  Dr. Pastides has been an integral part of that success and will continue to strengthen our partnership.  Under Dr. Sorensen’s leadership the University and the local community have achieved more than we could have dreamed.  The research campus in Downtown Columbia was announced in 2003. In April of 2006, USC, the Guignard family and the City unveiled a master plan for the 500 acres in Downtown from Innovista to the waterfront.  The first phase of Innovista with two buildings at the Horizon Center and the Discovery Center are nearly complete, as are the two parking garages financed by the City of Columbia and Richland County, representing an investment of over $140 million.  Innovista will be the driving force in building a strong new economy with more jobs and an increase in our per capita income.
            Another important strategy for transforming our economy is our Fuel Cell Collaborative.  In 2008, we will build on our Fuel Cell District with the construction of one of the first hydrogen fueling stations in the Southeast. Next year, Columbia will host the National Hydrogen Association’s annual convention.  Neither would be possible without the fuel cell expertise at USC.  The University has been critical in developing a decade long regional strategy of increasing the number of our conventions and visitors. The Convention Center and the Colonial Center have both exceeded expectations, and could only have been done with all governments working together.  Mike McGee deserves great credit for the Colonial Center of course.  USC Sports play a tremendous role in our economy.  Carolina football games under Coach Spurrier are regularly broadcast nationally and our new USC Baseball Stadium is coming out of the ground on the Congaree River.
            The University and the community have collaborated on a host of other issues including hosting our friends from New Orleans after the flooding of Hurricane Katrina; together with Benedict College doing our gang assessment; working together on our homelessness effort, Housing First; and collaborating on improving Richland District One schools with Together We Can.  We look forward to continuing that great work with Dr. Pastides.

I told him thanks. As it happened, that was one of the few editorials I actually wrote myself.

Big Brother is ‘helping’ me (Did I mention that I love Big Brother?)

5 Replies

After I posted this item on my blog, I received the following message:

Recently you requested personal assistance from Six Apart Support. Below is a summary of your request and our response.

Thank you for allowing us to be of service to you.

To respond to this message, please reply to this email and type your reply between the lines in the space below. Text entered into any other part of this message will be discarded.

[===> Please enter your reply below this line <===]

[===> Please enter your reply above this line <===]

Subject
TypePad Account – About Page

Six Apart (Brianna) said: 07/09/2008 04:44 PM
Hi there,

Your recent blog post about not being able to update your About page has been brought to our attention. We wanted to reach out to you to provide you additional assistance in fixing this issue.

It seems that you have your Sidebar 1 template linking to the wrong URL for the About page. You can reach your Advanced Templates by going to Weblogs > Design.

This is your code in Sidebar 1:

<h2>about.html"><$MTTrans phrase="About Brad Warthen’s Blog"$></h2>

Then save and publish your changes. Before you see the changes on your blog, you may need to perform a hard refresh. While on your blog, hold down the Ctrl + F5 keys which will clear the cache in most browsers. Did that help?

If you want to change the look of your About page, you can go to Control Panel > Profile > About Page and choose a design from the drop down beneath "Choose a style for your About Page".

If you have any additional questions, please log in at typepad.com and click to your Control Panel > Help tab. There, open the New Ticket link to submit your support request. Your account information and history is available then to help with resolution, and support questions are handled in the TypePad help system.

Thank you,
Brianna

Interpreting the sentence, "This is your code in Sidebar 1" to mean, "This is what your code should be in Sidebar 1," I changed this line of code:

<h2><a href="<$MTUserSiteURL$>bradwarthensblog/about.html"><$MTTrans phrase="About Brad Warthen’s Blog"$></a></h2>

… to this:

<h2>about.html"><$MTTrans phrase="About Brad Warthen’s Blog"$></h2>

I then saved it, and published it, and did the recommended "hard refresh" (a phrase that I’m going to add to my list of potential names for my band, once I start a band).

You can see the results at left, under the black-and-white picture of that handsome young fellow.

Anyone have any further suggestions?

In any event, it’s nice to see that Big Brother is watching over me, and ready to leap to my aid whenever I happen to mention his name. Like Winston Smith, I love Big Brother, really. It’s a bit of a shock, though, to learn that his name is "Brianna."

Last of the Cosmic Ha-Has

2 Replies

Just got a note from Bill Robinson about the post featuring his farewell message:

Your post about me was truly "Cosmic." …. Ha-Ha!

Get it?

Indeed I do. At the going-away gathering for Bill and the other 10 on Thursday, it suddenly occurred to me that he was (by my reckoning, and I stand ready to be corrected) the last of the Cosmic Ha-Has in the newsroom.*

Bill thought for a moment, and realized I was probably right. He was impressed: "That’s sort of like being the last of the ’27 Yankees."

Sort of — if you really stretch the point.

The Ha-Has were a slow-pitch softball team that consisted mostly of guys who worked in The State‘s newsroom in the 1980s. It was a team that, had you seen it play, would have convinced you that here was a team totally focused on the pitcher of beer after the game.

Not that we didn’t have some serious players. I remember this one kid who worked in sports (guys who work in sports, being frustrated spectators, can be some of your most intense players of slow-pitch softball) who hit hard and was a super-fast base runner, something he was not modest about: "I’ll teach ’em to throw behind me," he fumed after the opposing team had tried, late, to throw him out on second, and he zoomed around for an inside-the-park homer.

But most players — while having a love of the game, and preferring winning to losing, so long as it did not involve violating the laws of physics — had a certain ironic detachment about the team and its chances. Hence the name.

I joined in the late 80s, which — if the original Ha-Has were the ’27 Yankees, and I ask you to indulge me for the sake of making a point — would have been more like the late Mickey Mantle era. My best hitting days (when I played for the Knights of Columbus team in Jackson, Tenn., in the 70s, it was a bad night that I didn’t go at least 2 for 4) were behind me. Even in slow-pitch, which is a small step up from T-Ball, I no longer had confidence in my ability to hit line drives wherever I wanted. I was an undistinguished member of the pitching line-up, who was happier playing catcher. The qualifications for pitcher in slow-pitch are to be willing to a) have guys hit the ball back at you really hard from alarmingly close range, and b) suffer the humiliation of streaks in which you cannot get the ball to fall through the strike zone from the approved trajectory, thereby walking several batters in a row.

(I will add that there is nothing more infuriating than pitching in slow pitch and being up against a strategic-thinking team that would just as soon walk in runs as get hits. The entire point of slow pitch is that anybody can hit. You’re supposed to put the ball in play. If you want to walk, you can, because the truth is that it’s a lot harder to loft a ball up in the air and have it drop through a strike zone than it is to throw it overhand. In fact, it’s easier to throw strikes underhand in fast pitch than it is to throw slow-pitch strikes. Having guys stand there and take balls was enough to make me want to bean the batter, but in slow-pitch, who’d notice?)

The greatest humiliation that the Ha-Has suffered during my tenure had nothing to do with my pitching ability, though. One year, we were in a commercial-industrial sort of league. You have not seen lopsided until you’ve seen a bunch of scribes, some of whom were possibly passable athletes in high school (and that’s the best you can say), up against a bunch of hairy mesomorphs who spend their days tossing anvils to each other or something. If you play, say, church-league, you might see one guy in a season hit the ball over the fence, and that guy will be legendary — at least, in the church leagues I’ve played in. Different story in commercial-industrial.

You may think I’m making this up, but it’s true. In one game that year, every single member of the opposing team hit at least one home run, and some more than one, before the game was over. I think the "mercy rule" — if you’re more than a certain number of runs ahead after a certain number of innings, the game is called — was eventually invoked. Either that, or the "mercy rule" was invented because of this game; I forget. Something had to stop it, because we couldn’t, and if things had kept going at that rate, one of those huge specimens would have keeled over from the sheer exhaustion caused by running around the bases.

Some Ha-Has who played with Bill back in the Golden Age:

  • Charlie Pope — Who now works in the Washington bureau of a paper from the Pacific Northwest. Charlie was The State‘s environment reporter back when I was his editor. In those days, Charlie’s favorite movie was "A Flash of Green," in which Ed Harris plays a reporter who writes about environmental issues, and at a climactic moment in the movie stuffs his editor into the trunk of a car. I don’t have a current picture of Charlie, even though he dropped by recently because his son was thinking of going to USC. But to me, Charlie always looked vaguely like Tommy Smothers. You know, the funny Smothers Brother, not the straight man. I don’t think I ever told him that, come to think of it…
  • Dave Moniz — A player with his own personal language. Once, as I ran out to start warming up in the outfield before a game, Dave greeted me with a chipper, "Key lid!" It took me a couple ofMoniz_2 minutes to realize he meant that he liked my hat. Dave is now a civilian PR guy for the United States Air Force, with a civilian rate that is the equivalent of a brigadier general. The picture here shows him from a recent visit to our editorial board, at which he was joined by two guys wearing Air Force "yoonies" which was the way Dave used to say "uniforms." (Teams that had nice uniforms had "key yoonies," and so forth.) Dave was our military reporter before leaving to do the same for USA Today.
  • Jeff Miller — Also went to Washington to work in another paper’s bureau, but now does something else, also out of Washington. Miller Which reminds me — I owe him a call back. Anyway, Jeff’s first job for me was covering the 1988 Republican presidential primary, for which we brought him up from the Newberry County bureau (the journalistic equivalent of AAA ball at the time). He was still covering politics last time I saw him. One of his colleagues took the picture at right, of Jeff and me on a New York street on the last night of the 2004 GOP convention. This picture reminds me, for some reason, of the opening credits of "Saturday Night Live."

And now Bill moves on. But the legend continues.

* Note that I said "in the newsroom." For those of you who are still confused about the difference between news and editorial, I haven’t worked in the newsroom since 1993, so I don’t count.