Be sure to click on this link to get to The Guardian's cool graphic.
“… and she’s been the queen for six-ty years” bahm bum-bum, boom…
Couldn’t have let the day go by without a nod to QEII. Happy Jubilee, Ma’am. Sorry I couldn’t have been there for the big day. Consider a pint of best bitter duly hoisted in your royal direction…
This newsreel, brought to my attention by Burl Burlingame, has a lot of funny lines in it, but none is a bigger hoot than, “there are a lot of writing jobs on newspapers.”
I also like the part when it says that women find it hard to compete with men for hard-news reporting jobs. And it’s so true! You know why? Because there’s aren’t any freaking reporting jobs, that’s why!
An outfit called Bankrupting America sent out this video last night before the State of the Union address. I didn’t get around to seeing it until today. As the release promises, “The video highlights 3 decades of State of the Union presidential promises on fiscal discipline.”
There’s also a fact sheet that goes with it.
I find being part of a long, ongoing tradition to be very reassuring, don’t you? See, it doesn’t matter whether they’re Democrats or Republicans — presidents are all pretty much alike. People don’t change. Makes us feel… solid, grounded.
I would say, though, that one of those presidents actually did something about it: Bill Clinton. The video doesn’t mention that. But the fact sheet dismisses it this way: “Despite two years of on-budget surpluses, deficit spending in other years added to the debt.”
Oh, the video also assumes that the only way to reduce the deficit, and the debt, is by reducing spending. Raising taxes, and simply growing the economy to increase revenues, are not considered. In case you didn’t notice that.
This morning I was on Tom Finneran’s Boston radio show for the second time this week (Tom is the former speaker of the Massachusetts House; I met him in Key West last week), and was asked what the nation should make of the roar of approval that Newt Gingrich got last night when he blamed the media for bringing to light his second ex-wife’s allegations.
I explained that historically, the media got off light on that one. Playing to resentment to those “nattering nabobs of negativism” in the media is of course an old Republican pasttime across the country. But in South Carolina, it can get you everywhere.
Getting away with asking for an open marriage is nothing. This is a ploy that will enable you to get away with murder.
Literally.
So I regaled the Boston audience with the tale of N.G. Gonzales and James H. Tillman. Most of you know the story, but for those who don’t…
N.G. and his brother founded The State in 1891 for a specific purpose: to oppose the Ben Tillman machine. N.G. wrote the editorials, which lambasted the Tillmanites with a vehemence that would shock most newspaper readers in my lifetime, but which was par for the course in those days.
One of the targets of editorial vitriol was James H. Tillman, Ben’s nephew. James was the lieutenant governor, and aspired to be governor. N.G. wasn’t having it, and criticized him heavily during the 1902 campaign. Tillman lost. Not long after that, on January 15, 1903, N.G. was walking home for lunch. The newspaper office then was on Main St., and Gonzales had to turn the corner of Main and Gervais to get home. As he approached the corner, Tillman headed his way, coming from the Senate side of the State House with a couple of senators.
Tillman went straight up to Gonzales, drew a gun, and shot him in cold blood. He did this in the presence of many witnesses, including a policeman.
As N.G. fell, he cried, “Shoot again, you coward!” As one who inherited his mission of writing editorials for The State, I’ve always been proud of him for that.
He died four days later.
Tillman was arrested and charged with the murder, of course, but the defense obtained a change of venue to the friendlier Lexington County. A strategy of self-defense was attempted, but didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. Then, the defense entered N.G.’s editorials into evidence.
The jury acquitted Tillman. The ostensible reason was self-defense, but since there was nothing to support that — Gonzales was unarmed and not threatening Tillman in any way — it has always been assumed that the jury let him off because the son-of-a-bitch editor had it comin’.
A postscript:
Early in 2003, a number of events were held to mark the centennial of Gonzales’ murder. At one point, Solicitor Donnie Myers, an avid student of the case, was asked to present his popular lecture on the subject to employees of The State. I introduced him, and stood to the side as he enthusiastically launched into it.
At the critical point in the narrative, channeling Tillman, Donnie reached dramatically into his briefcase and, pulling out a .45 automatic pistol, brandished it menacingly in my direction. Me being the editor.
I grinned at him, enjoying his act (I had seen it before). But our then-publisher, Ann Caulkins, who admitted to a greater-than-usual fear of firearms of all sorts, practically gasped aloud. She later admitted that for a split second there, she actually feared the solicitor was going to shoot me.
If that had happened, it wouldn’t have been the first time.
Ron Paul in the State House lobby today with Sens. Verdin, Bryant, Bright and Davis.
Which is not usually the kind of event I turn out for, but it was my first chance to see Ron Paul in person. This time around, anyway (and maybe ever; I’m not sure).
To end the suspense — he looks just the way he does on TV, like the cranky crazy uncle who sits in the corner and only occasionally says cryptic things.
Not to insult him. You can look like that and be a great guy; that’s just the way he looks. Lord knows how I’d get described if I were running for president. I’m often shocked at photos of myself.
Anyway, the news was that three SC state senators were joining their colleague Tom Davis in endorsing Dr. Paul. They were:
Danny Verdin from Greenville and Laurens counties, chairman of the Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee. He said he’d “never heard a message that… resonated in my heart more.”
Lee Bright of Spartanburg. I seem to recall him supporting Michele Bachmann earlier. “Dr. Ron Paul is conservative in all areas,” he said, unlike all those other candidates who are only “conservative” here and there, in spots. “… and he says what he believes.”
Kevin Bryant of Anderson, whom you may know as one of the first lawmakers to take up blogging. He quoted Goldwater: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice,” and went on to say “We’re going to have to do some extreme things to turn around America.”
For his part, Dr. Paul expressed his gratitude. In response to a question, standing in the presence of a likeness of John C. Calhoun, he said that nullification is still a viable idea, at least academically. And he almost wistfully longed for it to be a fact. While he doubted it would be often used (he don’t know us very well, do he?), he thought it would be great for South Carolina to be able to exercise that power. This helps explain why Sen. Bright is backing him.
I want to go back and listen to my recording and get that verbatim for you, but I’ll have to do it later. Gotta go see Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee (yes, Huck!), and possibly others, at another event. The subject is foreign policy.
Michael Rodgers shares the above photo, and this report:
At the S. C. NAACP’s King Day at the Dome, Attorney General Eric Holder reminded everyone that the Voting Rights Act was reauthorized in 2006 and that that reauthorization was signed into law by President George W. Bush. Here’s a picture I took of Mr. Holder (attached).
Here’s a link to Mr. Bush’s statements when signing the bill.
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2006/07/20060727.html
I’m glad to have this contribution, as I didn’t make it to the dome today — unlike four years ago, when I and thousands of others froze listening to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards. Good thing for Obama that he had borrowed our bathroom at The State to don some longjohns. He had been there for his endorsement interview with us.
It’s good to hear that Gen. Holder gave that credit to the previous administration. It’s always good when we emphasize the values that unite us, and take a break from dwelling on our divisions.
Which reminds me…
The only MLK event I made it to today was the annual Columbia Urban League breakfast at Brookland Baptist in West Columbia. All sorts of folks were there. I was writing down names…
Mac Bennett, Samuel Tenenbaum (both at my table), Paul Fant, Kevin Marsh, Jasper Salmond, John Lumpkin, Heyward Bannister, Ike and Sue McLeese, Seth Rose, Hemphill Pride, Bob Coble, Bill Nettles (main speaker), Ronnie Brailsford, Pam Lackey, Bill Clyburn, Tony Keck, Donita Todd, Harris Pastides, Vincent Sheheen, Sonny White, Dave Aiken, Milton Kimpson Jr., I.S. Leevy Johnson, Henry Heitz, Mark Keel…
… but then I got tired and quit. There were just too many people I knew.
The most remarkable thing that happened, to my mind, at the breakfast was this: Ever since the historic King Day at the Dome in 2000, which drew 60,000 people demanding that the Confederate Flag come off the dome, there had been a certain tension between civil rights organizers in the community.
Some Urban League supporters (I was on the CUL board at the time, which is why I was privy to all this) at the time had felt like that was their event, that they had pulled it together, but that the NAACP had sort of hijacked it, and claimed undue credit. So over the years, there has been a slight sense of rivalry, with the Urban League having the breakfast (which is always attended by a lot of business and p0litical leaders) and the NAACP having the limelight at the State House rally — although many people attended both.
The tension was behind the scenes, but painfully palpable.
I think that’s behind us now. Today, I was touched by something Urban League President J. T. McLawhorn went out of his way to do at the breakfast: Twice, he urged those assembled to attend the NAACP event — and essentially calling it that, giving his clear support to the other organization and its observance. Maybe he has done this in previous years and I missed it, but this really grabbed my attention this morning.
I thought that was a fine thing to do. I appreciated it. I think Dr. King would have, too.
The Dick Harpootlian we thought we knew.
This probably won’t strike anyone else as ironic, but it’s just weird for me to read something from Dick when he’s in a reverential mode:
Fellow Democrats,
Yesterday was the birthday of a renowned American visionary. He changed the way people look at humanity, and we will never forget his courageous fight for civil rights.
Today we thank Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for teaching us that everyone is equal, and nonviolent methods develop the most admirable outcomes.
He was one of the greatest orators in American history and we will never forget what he did for our country.
Please take this day to offer service to your community; giving back to your neighbor just as Dr. King intended. By doing this, we are allowing his legacy to continue to flourish today and for many years to come.
– Dick Harpootlian, SCDP Chairman
Just doesn’t sound like Dick. He’s widely believed to have only two gears: wiseacre and ticked off. Yet here’s a third…
Note the two sides, above and below, of a mailer I received at home.
One of the good things about being a Patrick O’Brian fanatic is that it provides one with so many good metaphors.
For instance… one of the most difficult things for a man of war’s crew in the age of sail was to fight both sides of the ship at once. One way this might occur would be if a ship sailed between two enemy ships and fired with its larboard and starboard guns at the same time. This took not only a very well-trained crew, but a numerous one — remember, it took a lot of men just to keep changing sail and maneuvering the ship, plus twice the usual number of gun crews. Each gun required a crew of several men, and they weren’t much good if they hadn’t had plenty of experience firing live ammunition at targets under all sorts of conditions.
This required a wealthy commander, because the Royal Navy provided a minuscule amount of powder and shot, and the captain had to shell out his own money if he wanted his men to be able to perform well, even to survive, in a fight.
And only a captain with a numerous, well trained crew would attempt anything so taxing as dashing between two enemy ships to fight both sides at once.
Either that, or a very desperate captain.
I suppose you could interpret this mailer I got at home either way. It was sent out by Restore Our Future, Inc., which exists to promote Mitt Romney.
We know he’s a wealthy captain, with a numerous crew. But is he also desperate?
His foes are the ones who should be desperate. They know that if they don’t stop him in South Carolina, they are done for. But he also knows that, and probably just as soon have done with them all.
So he fires both broadsides at once; never mind the cost.
When I was traveling with Howard Baker in Iowa in 1980, before the caucuses, it looked like we were going to be iced in at Dubuque. We had flown in earlier in the day. I had been in the second plane, with a couple of guys from an NBC crew. It was a four-seater, and flying in from Des Moines, the pilot only had a tiny patch of windshield, about the size of my hand, that he could see through by constantly squirting alcohol on it. When I got out of the plane, I was trying to button my trenchcoat when the wind caught it like a sail and I started gliding across the frozen tarmac.
Later, I was scheduled to fly back to Des Moines in the “big” plane, which wasn’t all that much bigger, with Baker. We waited in the tiny general aviation terminal for more than an our while the wings of our plane were deiced, then deiced again, and again. Finally, we got in and took off. Someone told me that they only let us go because it was Sen. Baker.
Two years later, I realized that the aviation officials had done us no favors letting us go. I had no idea how very dangerous ice on the wings could be. Until the Air Florida crash.
Bud continues to think that I’m just making it up about Democrats being capable of the same kind of pointless, bad-faith partisanship as Republicans.
As I said in a previous thread, Republicans introduced partisanship to South Carolina, by definition. Republicans like to say that before they came along, we had a “one-party state.” But really, it was a no-party state. When there is only one party, it isn’t a party, in the sense that we have in these partisan times. You have factions (the “Young Turks,” the Barnwell Ring, contention between House and Senate, between Lowcountry and Upstate), but you don’t have the foolishness of an idea being rejected or embraced purely according to whether it has a D or an R after it.
Republicans therefore introduced partisanship, and they relished the role. They really, really got into it.
For awhile, Democrats didn’t. They seemed confused. They were so fecklessly live-and-let-live while the GOP was eviscerating them, it was sort of endearing.
But then, Democrats started to learn partisanship from the Republicans, and some of them have gotten pretty good at it.
Want an example? See this release I got a few minutes ago:
Assistant Democratic Leader Jim Clyburn, Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin and State Elected Officials to hold Press Conference to Welcome Mitt Romney to South Carolina
State Senate Democratic Leader John C. Land, III and State Representatives Todd Rutherford and Bakari Sellers to join Clyburn and Benjamin at the State House
Columbia, SC –On Wednesday, Assistant Democratic Leader Jim Clyburn, Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin and State Elected Officials will hold a press conference to welcome Mitt Romney to South Carolina ahead of the state’s primary on January 21st. It’s time South Carolinians get to know the Mitt Romney who has proven he’ll say anything to get elected, admitting this week that he likes “being able to fire people who provide services to me,” pretends to know the fear of pink slips, and misleads voters on his record of job creation.
The central question of this election is who will restore economic security for the middle class. Mitt Romney believes America should join a race to the bottom based on loopholes for corporations, millionaires and billionaires and outsourcing of American jobs. Romney believes that Wall Street should be able to write its own rules again and pursue whatever means necessary to create profits regardless of the consequences for middle-class families.
WHO:
Assistant Democratic Leader Jim Clyburn
Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin
State Senate Democratic Leader John C. Land, III
State Representative Todd Rutherford
State Representative Bakari Sellers
WHAT:
Press Conference Welcoming Mitt Romney to South Carolina
WHEN:
Wednesday, January 11th at 9:45 AM
WHERE:
South Carolina State House
First Floor
Columbia, SC
Note that they are not “welcoming” Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich or Jon Huntsman. There’s a reason for that. The reason is that they believe (as do I) that Mitt Romney will be the eventual nominee. And then just can’t wait for the general election to launch into the partisan back-and-forth.
Give it a rest, guys. There will be plenty of time for this stuff later. We know you’re Democrats. We know you want to attack this guy. But let’s go ahead and have our primary first, OK?
You know what this reminds me of? It reminds me of when I was covering the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta, and Carroll Campbell came to town to crash the Democrats’ party and hold a “truth squad” press conference. I was like, come on, governor, save it for your own convention. But Campbell was an intensely partisan man, who didn’t care to give Democrats a chance to have their say without interrupting. I thought that was completely unnecessary.
Well, this is like that.
On the morning after the photo-finish in Iowa, The New Yorker is waxing deeply philosophical:
What will be more telling, perhaps, is how the Republican candidates, in the primaries and caucuses to come, address the ideals and most personal beliefs of others. A party whose base has increasingly been oriented around the interests of politicized evangelism finds itself with a tie between a Mormon and a Catholic. (The “entrance polls” in Iowa, like many others so far, showed one set of numbers for those identifying themselves as “evangelical or born again,” and one set for those who do not.) One has been left to wonder how much of a factor Romney’s religion has been in his troubles with Republican voters. (They have so many non-sectarian reasons to suspect him that it’s hard to tease out.) In the 2008 election, as Hendrik Hertzberg noted at the time, Romney attempted to ingratiate himself by drawing a circle around the followers of organized religions generally, while casting aspersions on those who led a secular life. Santorum, meanwhile, has made religious beliefs about matters such as family planning and romantic relationships cornerstones of his political program.
We are more than a half century removed from John F. Kennedy’s campaign to be the first Catholic President. In a speech that he felt he needed to give, at the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, he said,
For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew—or a Quaker or a Unitarian or a Baptist.
Watching his speech on the subject now, one is struck not only by his words but by the expressions on the faces of the people who are listening—really listening, it appears, to words thoughtfully spoken…
This has not been the spirit of the speakers or the audience in the dozen or so debates so far. What will we see in the six scheduled for January alone, not to mention the ads that will air in the weeks and months ahead? What will the candidates, and their surrogates, have to say about each others’ religions? Or about people who have no religion at all, and—one hopes this won’t need to be said—are no less faithful citizens for it? (Kennedy, in a crucial phrase, spoke of the right to attend “or not attend” the church of one’s choice.)…
Back on a previous post, Burl asked me whether I’ve ever read a book he sent me a year or two ago — which has weighed on my conscience ever since, sitting there among all the others I keep meaning to read.
Well, as it happens, that was one of the “two or three” books I was reading and rereading over the past week. Now, I’ve set the others aside, and have just started to get serious with Black Ocean.
I’m only on page 88, but I have some observations already (just to prove to Burl that I’m reading it).
One is that I’m enjoying watching familiar people pop up in the book. I felt foolish for not realizing who “Ed Burroughs” was until he mentioned his “ape-man.” But then, how would I have known before that? I then checked Wikipedia, and found that the real-life Burroughs was, indeed, in Hawaii at the end of 1941.
Then Sammy Amalu’s name cropped up, which was really weird, because something — I forget what now — a page or two earlier had caused me to think of Sammy, then Google him on my iPhone. I think the thing that made me think of him was a mention of pidgin. And I thought I remembered that Sammy used to hold pidgin in great disdain and refuse to speak it to anyone. (By the way, Burl, did you and Sammy work together?)
Then there was a passing reference to “the Kanahamoku brothers.” Well, I know who one of them was.
I’m sure there are loads of other references that I’m just not getting, because I only lived in Hawaii for a little over a year — things that Burl will get because he has spent most of his life there, as both a journalist and historian.
This weaving of real and fictional characters is reminiscent of the style of Harry Turtledove, who dares to make historical figures main characters in his works of alternative fiction. Burroughs, for instance, is already playing a role as significant as that of Col. Leslie Groves in Turtledove’s Worldwar series.
Oh, did I mention, to those of you who don’t know? Black Ocean is a novel with the premise that the Americans attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, at which time the islands were controlled by the Japanese.
The second thing I’m noticing is that, at least at the outset, Black Ocean is both very much like, and very much unlike, Len Deighton’s SS-GB.
Both are set in 1941. Both take place on islands that, contrary to history, are in Axis hands at that time. Another way that they are alike is that Tad Morimura — a Honolulu policeman who now works for the Japanese — is investigating a death (actually, several) that will run him afoul of the Japanese military, the deeper he goes. In SS-GB, Douglas Archer is a renowned Scotland Yard detective who is now working for the German SS (the Germans having invaded England and won the war). He, too, is looking into matters that will get him into serious trouble with the Nazis (or the English resistance, which seems to pose just as much of a threat to him).
But the differences, so far, are more noteworthy than the similarities.
To begin with, I don’t know what’s happened that changed the direction of history. I thought, for a moment, that when Morimura was explaining to a Japanese Army officer the history of the Hawaiian royal family’s relationship with Japan, that there would be a clue — but I don’t know enough about Hawaiian and Pacific history to know where things diverged, other than that the princess Kaiulani (whom I had to look up, even to know who she was) survived her youth to become an aging queen.
By contrast, I knew from the very beginning what had happened in SS-GB. It was what everyone had feared — Hitler had not squandered his opportunity to invade, and had prevailed, well before the Americans could get into the war.
This makes me much more comfortable with the Deighton book than I am so far with this. And I find myself wondering, is this my own Anglocentrism? Am I more comfortable with it simply because I feel so much more comfortable with British history and culture? There’s no doubt that I’m better able to identify with the characters and understand where they are coming from — how they feel about the German occupation, and how conflicted they might be carrying on with their jobs under such domination.
Whereas, with Black Ocean… I don’t really understand where anyone stands. But I reject the idea that this is because of my own Western frame of reference, or (more disturbingly) that I simply understand and care more about the concerns of Anglo-Saxons than about the Japanese and Filipina and other ethnic characters in the book Burl sent. I really think it’s because the author, Rick Blaine, is being so coy with me as a reader. Yes, a man of Japanese ancestry (although he grew up in Hawaii) like Morimura is going to have an even more nuanced relationship with the Japanese authorities than the thoroughly English Archer did with the Nazis, if only because the Japanese, apparently because of their own racist assumptions, trust him more.
But there’s more than that. Blaine has really muddied the waters. In Deighton’s book, ordinary Englishmen chafe as you would expect them to at the Jerry yoke, griping openly when only their countrymen are around. But in Black Ocean, the locals take Japanese control of the islands more in stride, even alluding to “patriotism” in terms of being loyal to the current order.
A lot of things make sense, such as the Japanese military’s attempt to pin a murder on American provocateurs, or preparing the islands’ defenses. Other things don’t, such as… the journalists at the Star-Bulletin (Burl’s paper) in many ways have to deal with the hassles of occupation — tapped phones, and pressure to cover things a certain way. But beyond that, they seem to (thus far) assume more freedom than you would think they would have under this regime. For instance (SPOILER ALERT!), why would the Japanese assassinate the newspaper’s publisher, apparently not for playing ball, and no one at the paper, initially at least, suspect their hands in the killing? So far, the folks at the paper seem to assume a cocoon of invulnerability like you would typically find at an American paper, not at a paper in a place under the control of Japanese imperialists (but then again, I do know so little about how the Empire of Japan would have related to local media, and I still don’t understand the nature of the Japanese presence).
So what happened, and when did it happen, and how did it happen? I suppose I’ll have to keep reading to find out.
The Guardian celebrated it this way: “Woody Allen gets his groove back with ‘Midnight in Paris‘ after years of decline.”
If only it were true. I mean, the part about getting it back. We have a consensus on the years of decline.
I spent the first moments of 2012 watching the latter part of the film, in which Owen Wilson speaks the Woody Allen lines. Which works pretty well. It brings a smile when this younger man speaks words that you know Allen himself would have spoken 40 years ago. There’s an echo there, and you do smile, because he really used to make you laugh. As Wilson has also done, more recently.
And then there’s the central conceit of the movie, which is that… wait… SPOILER ALERT!
… which is that after midnight, Wilson’s character — the Woody Allen character (let’s go ahead and call him “Gil” to avoid this confusion) — finds himself transported to the very best time to be in Paris.
And when was that? Well, for him it is the same time that it would be for me, the 1920s. The Lost Generation, when you couldn’t swing a bat on the Left Bank without maiming a genius in the art form of your choice. So he finds himself staggering across Montparnasse from party to party with Hemingway, the Fitzgeralds, Dali, Picasso, and the rest of the gang.
Gil is, by his own estimation, a hack writer for Hollywood who hopes to save himself with a novel he’s struggling with. Hemingway tells him to let Gertrude Stein read it. Ms. Stein, who in real life looked like this — by which I mean to say, looked like somebody no insecure writer would hand his heart to that way — is in the film a sort of amiable den mother who would LOVE to read his book and tell him encouraging things. Which she may have done for Hemingway, but for this nebbish? I don’t know.
Anyway, this premise is loaded with possibilities, and you want to see them explored. But they are not. Allen walks up to this great idea, and then shrugs, backs away and gives us a “so what?’ ending.
And it makes me sad. I mean, this is the guy who made “Manhattan.” It may or may not have been a masterpiece, but it was funny and poignant. And how about that ending: Mariel Hemingway says, “You have to have a little faith in people,” and your heart gets sucked into such depths in a whirlpool formed by the currents of innocence, cynicism and desire. In that moment, you forgive Allen, if only momentarily, for being such a perv and corrupting young girls. In that moment, you recognize the complexity of being human.
And with this thing, what has happened? Nothing. Gil has blown off an engagement that every viewer has wanted to see him walk away from since the first 30 seconds of the film. No conflict there. Every moment spent with the grotesquely drawn caricatures of his “present” life is tedious, and obviously pointless.
There is no depth to anyone in this film, including the protagonist. Here I am thinking “this is really cool; we’re going to meet Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Picasso,” and they are played for not very good laughs, especially Hemingway. And none of the promises are realized. None of them.
So no, he doesn’t have his thing back. But I kept hoping he would; kept hoping it would be as good as it tried to be. But it wasn’t.
Whaddya gonna do with this Romney guy, huh? Dig the latest:
Reporting from West Des Moines, Iowa –—Speaking to supporters at a chilly outdoor rally, Mitt Romney on Friday sought to cast President Obama as out of touch with the economic pain being felt by average Americans.
“He’s in Hawaii right now. We’re in the cold, in the rain, in the wind because we care about America,” Romney said, speaking in the parking lot of a grocery store. “He just finished his 90th round of golf. We have 25 million Americans who are out of work, stopped looking for work or are underemployed. Home values have come down. The median income in America in the last four years has dropped by 10%.”
He dismissed the Obama administration’s contention that they stopped the recession from getting worse.
“The other day President Obama said, you know, it could be worse,” Romney said. “Sounds like Marie Antoinette, ‘Let them eat cake.’ ”…
This from the guy who, when challenged, immediately offers to bet $10,000.
One thing Mitt’s got is nerve.
But I want to thank him for reminding me of the old Allan Sherman song above. Enjoy.
Unless you’re a kid, you remember Allan Sherman. He’s the “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah” guy.
Samuel Tenenbaum brings this piece to my attention:
No way to pick a president
By Matt Miller, Wednesday, December 28, 11:50 AM
As the breathless, panting political class turns its eager eyes to Iowa, every sane American needs to step back and ask the obvious question: Is this any way to pick a president?
Our country is essentially coming to a halt to watch what 120,000 idiosyncratic voters in an idiosyncratic state do….
Absolutely, Matt Miller. I’ve said the same myself, four years ago:
By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain,” said the great and powerful Oz. But I say it’s the guy voting in the privacy of a booth that we should heed. It’s the Iowa caucuses we should ignore.
As I write this [we’re talking Thursday afternoon, folks], I don’t know who won last night, and don’t care. I’ve got my eye on New Hampshire — and, of course, South Carolina.
The Washington Post’s David Broder had it right in his Thursday column when he called the caucuses a “double-distortion mirror” on the campaign. The turnout is tiny, consisting only of people who are willing to attend a two-hour night meeting during the week and declare their preference in front of the world.
Forget what happened last night if you were watching to see which candidate has the strongest support among voters of either party. All the caucuses measure is who can most effectively corral the most highly committed, vocal partisans at a given moment. It tests organization — and a very specialized form of it at that. Organizational skill is important — but it’s hardly everything. [Note this amendment today to this opinion.]…
Today, I heard them on NPR talking about the money being spent on TV ads in Iowa. You’re kidding me, right? The whole marketing world has turned away from mass media (preferring more targeted approaches) to the extent that the industry could no longer afford to pay guys like David Stanton and Robert Ariail and me, and yet these idiots are spending good money on TV ads to reach the handful of people who will attend caucuses? Really? Why not just go to their houses and talk to them?
When I was a very young political reporter, I went to Iowa to write about the 1980 caucuses. I thought they were important. They weren’t then (Ronald Reagan lost), and they aren’t now. But here we all are, with bated breath, again…
My first reaction when I saw this was to flash on 1979:
Protesters Storm British Embassy in Tehran
But then, I had to smile when I read this blurb leading the NYT site:
In an assault Britain called “utterly unacceptable,” Iranian protesters entered the British Embassy on Tuesday, chanting “death to England,” pulling down a flag and ransacking offices.
Utterly unacceptable, indeed. And insupportable, I might add, if I may do so without being charged with rash hyperbole.
Oh, and by the way… the sun may have set on the Empire, but when all is said and done, I’m going to bet on the culture that says “utterly unacceptable” over the one that gets so whipped up by an ayatollah that it runs amok screaming “death to England” and destroying Her Majesty’s property.
And now, let’s drink to the King. Or to the Queen, if that’s all you’ve got.
Once upon a time there was a thing called newspapers, and Richard Crowson is my oldest newspaper friend. One of his first published editorial cartoons illustrated a column I wrote for the editorial page of the journalism department lab paper at Memphis State University in 1975. I already knew Richard from working with him at the MSU library.
A couple of years later, Richard joined me at The Jackson Sun, where we worked together for close to a decade, Richard as the editorial cartoonist.
Then, in 1985, I persuaded him to come out to Kansas, where he eventually became editorial cartoonist of The Wichita Eagle. A couple of years after that, I left to come here. Richard stayed.
Richard, being a talented editorial cartoonist, was laid off from his job about six months before Robert Ariail and I were.
Anyway, I only possess a copy of one of his cartoons, the one above from 1982. It’s my favorite. Sorry that the perspective is a bit askew. It’s too big for my scanner, and I had to shoot it with my camera at an angle to get the reflection off the glass of the frame.
Enjoy.
Oh, another thing about Richard. He’s not only a great cartoonist; he’s probably the most talented picker I know — of any stringed instrument you care to name, as long as it’s used in the production of Bluegrass. The first thing Richard did when he arrived in Wichita was go out and buy several second-hand kitchen chairs for his apartment, for his fellow pickers to sit on once he found some. Which he promptly did.
Below, you see him at left with the rest of The Home Rangers, “Kansas’ Premier Cowboy Band.”
Your Thanksgiving wouldn’t be complete without listening to Arlo’s masterpiece at least once.
This is an updated version from 30 years after the actual events of the Alice’s Restaurant Thanksgiving Massacree.
Enjoy.
There was a startling op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal today by Pat Caddell and Douglas E. Schoen. I had to look at the bottom to see who Schoen was, but Pat Caddell was Jimmy Carter’s pollster, a member of the team that brought him from obscurity to the White House in 1976. (Schoen was Bill Clinton’s pollster.)
They were urging President Obama to step aside and let Hillary Clinton replace him on the Democratic ticket next year.
It was bizarre. And perhaps no passage in the piece was more bizarre than when they compared the current situation with LBJ’s in 1968, to which I can only say, “Say what?”
I was in the ninth grade at the time, so my political perception was nowhere near what it would be later, but these guys write as though they didn’t live through that time at all.
The convulsions the Democratic Party was going through in ’68, the highs and lows both, were titanic by comparison to what’s happening intraparty now. Everything was bigger. LBJ had had much, much greater success early in his tenure — historic success – but then his re-election ran into the greatest internal conflict that party has suffered in the past century: Vietnam.
Yeah, today Barack Obama presides over an economic situation that is upside-down from the 60s, the worst economy since what FDR faced. But how many Democrats — as opposed to Republicans — actually blame him for that the way the McCarthy faction blamed Lyndon “How Many Kids Did You Kill Today” Johnson? LBJ was blamed specifically for what he had done (escalate the war), not for what he had failed to do (rescue us from the crash that started during the previous administration).
LBJ pulled out after suffering actual primary setbacks (a strong showing by McCarthy in New Hampshire, the decision by Bobby Kennedy to jump in) at the hands of insurgents in his own party. If Obama stepped aside, he’d be doing it because Caddell and Schoen and whoever else they speak for were dissatisfied with him. Which is pretty thin stuff, by comparison.
Finally, let’s look at how that turned out for the Democrats — with the election of Richard “He’s Back!” Nixon.
Caddell should think harder about another example from history: The challenge mounted by Teddy Kennedy to his man Carter in 1980. That insurrection was put down, but it weakened Carter further, and we know how that turned out.
Finally, it gets weirdest of all when the authors twice offer the argument that Barack Obama is… too partisan… and that the cure to that ailment is… and here the mind reels… Hillary Clinton. See this excerpt:
One year ago in these pages, we warned that if President Obama continued down his overly partisan road, the nation would be “guaranteed two years of political gridlock at a time when we can ill afford it.” The result has been exactly as we predicted: stalemate in Washington, fights over the debt ceiling, an inability to tackle the debt and deficit, and paralysis exacerbating market turmoil and economic decline….
What? A year ago was way before Obama turned partisan. Less than a year ago was when he, at least temporarily, gave Republicans what they wanted on continuing tax cuts. I’m really missing something here.
And then there’s this part:
By going down the re-election road and into partisan mode, the president has effectively guaranteed that the remainder of his term will be marred by the resentment and division that have eroded our national identity, common purpose, and most of all, our economic strength. If he continues on this course it is certain that the 2012 campaign will exacerbate the divisions in our country and weaken our national identity to such a degree that the scorched-earth campaign that President George W. Bush ran in the 2002 midterms and the 2004 presidential election will pale in comparison…
Just to review how we got to where we are today… In 2008, Barack Obama was the cure to the hyper, bitter, partisanship of the Clintonistas. The most partisan Democrats didn’t like his conciliatory tone, which is one reason the Clinton campaign was as long-lived as it was: The partisans didn’t want to settle for the nice, reasonable guy.
Those same people have griped about, and undermined, the Obama presidency since Day One. Finally (and I can remember Jimmy Carter doing something similar to please the red-meat crowd in his party), he’s gone on the attack, after extremists in the Republican Party have led us to a downgrade in the U.S. credit rating. So the partisans in his own party are cheering, and these guys pick this moment to turn against their president, and moan about him being too partisan?
These guys can fret over their numbers all day, but the one individual who is actually running for president who has the best chance of being elected right now is Barack Obama. As much dissension as there has been among Democrats, it’s nothing compared to the lurching fragmentation going on in the GOP, which looks good in a poll against the president except when you substitute any of the actual people running for a hypothetical Republican.
Does that mean America is itching to jump on his bandwagon? No. America isn’t itching to jump on anybody’s bandwagon these days. America is bummed out. And the answer to that is to substitute him with one of the most polarizing Democrats of the last 20 years? Really?
Yes, she polls well. People approve of the job she’s doing as secretary of state. And they’re right to. I’ll go further: Hillary Clinton, in my opinion, has never deserved either the hatred of the right, nor the adulation of the most partisan elements of the left. I’ve always seen her as more of a pragmatist, someone who will work hard to get the job done. And people like those qualities in her current job, just as her constituents liked them when she was their senator.
But let her run for president, and you’ll give the hapless opposition something to rally against, something that awakens some of their more atavistic passions. Of course, Obama does that, too. But if you made me bet, I’d bet on the incumbent being better able to push past all that. This is the guy who got Osama bin Laden, and in a subtle piece of maneuvering brought down Qaddafi in Libya. Today, as we speak, he is taking the smart road on the failure of the “supercommittee” to do its job, taking the hard line, refusing to allow any backsliding on the sequester process. All things that only the incumbent can point to.
Obama’s failures are not failures of partisanship, but failures arising from passivity — the partisan Democrats are right about that, and so are the Republicans who accuse him of failing to lead. He let the stimulus package happen without doing enough to shape it, and then he did the same with his chance to make history on healthcare. Both of those grand schemes required a guiding intelligence to render them coherent, and he left the job to… Congress, of all unlikely suspects.
But no one running against him can point to any greater achievements (and poor Mitt Romney has to run from his). The GOP is lost and wandering right now; you can feel the lack of energy and enthusiasm about their field. And they have no one that independents like me can get excited about — well, they do, but they refuse to pay attention to him.
The one great advantage that Democrats have is they don’t have to go through this upheaval; they’ve got their candidate. It’s bizarre that veterans such as these would want to throw away that advantage.
This sort of thing has become routine, but I never cease to be disgusted by it.
To begin with, there is one thing that makes America special — “exceptional,” if you will — and that is our system of governing ourselves. It’s not our amber waves of grain or purple mountain majesties, as fine as those are. And it’s not that we are some master race — if anything, our glory is that we are a mongrel people. “We’re mutts” as Bill Murray said in “Stripes.”
What we are, what makes us special is that we are the country that made freedom work, on a grand scale. Over the course of two centuries, we steadily worked to perfect that, and we’re still working on it, to our great credit.
Therefore I cannot abide this constant, incessant, dripping, vituperative hatred hurled at American government by alleged “conservatives” — or for that matter by “progressives” who want us to believe that the system is stacked against the little man. But the attitude that government itself, the very notion of government, is an evil to be fought, overwhelmingly belongs to what we describe as the right these days.
Is there plenty wrong with the way our government functions? You bet. But a huge amount of the blame for that belongs to the extremists who want to possess Washington, and have no use for what anyone who disagrees with them wants. Each side jockeys constantly for absolute control of a system that was designed to accommodate the views of all. And no faction has been as vehement as those who hate government qua government.
That’s our fault, you know. We, the people. We keep voting for that garbage. Which is our right.
And the garbage will continue if we don’t stand against it. Which is not only our right, but our duty.
Today, I stand against something I saw in The Wall Street Journal.
The piece that it went with was unremarkable, the usual stuff you read on the opinion pages of the WSJ, containing such passages as this:
So why is our economy barely growing and unemployment stuck at over 9%? I believe the answer is very simple: Economic freedom is declining in the U.S. In 2000, the U.S. was ranked third in the world behind only Hong Kong and Singapore in the Index of Economic Freedom, published annually by this newspaper and the Heritage Foundation. In 2011, we fell to ninth behind such countries as Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Ireland.
That didn’t bother me. Such assertions have become background noise. And while I object to the piece blaming government for everything (yawn!), I agree with the belief it is rooted in: That what America urgently needs right now is strong growth in the private sector. All for it.
No, what got me was the illustration that went with the piece. You can see it above: The shadow of Uncle Sam looming menacingly over ordinary citizens.
My Uncle Sam. Our Uncle Sam. The figure that inspired millions of us to take up arms, literally, against tyranny the world over. The greatest symbolic representation of the blessings of liberal democracy the world has known, with the possible exception of Lady Liberty. Being used to symbolize the “evils” of government. Being used the way cartoonists in this country used to use the shadow of the swastika, the Russian bear, or the hammer and sickle.
Once, Uncle Sam personified the very thing this writer advocates — America rolling up its sleeves, getting to work, exhibiting determined economic vitality in the service of us all.
Utterly disgusting. And yet, something that has become so routine that most won’t even take note of it. Which is why I just did.
