Category Archives: History

What really happened in Ecuador (one version, anyway)

I really hate that my only regular source of information about what happens in Latin America — now that I no longer have my subscription to The Economist that the paper paid for — is the opinion columns of Mary Anastasia O’Grady in The Wall Street Journal. They’re all written from the standard WSJ point of view — free markets good, government bad — and while I certainly prefer that to, say, the twisted neo-Maoism of Hugo Chavez, or the native populism of Evo Morales, or the demagoguery of Rafael Correa, I would still prefer my reporting without the Adam Smith sermonizing.

But whaddaya gonna do? In this country, the MSM panders so to the extreme apathy of Americans toward anything beyond their borders that the only way I’ve ever kept up with our own backyard is by reading British publications (such as The Economist).

All of that said, having Ms. O’Grady’s observations delivered to my door each week is better than nothing.

And I read with particular interest her piece this morning about what happened in Ecuador last week. An excerpt of her debunking of Mr. Correa’s claims of a “coup” attempt:

Mr. Correa says that, once inside the hospital, the police “kidnapped” him for 10 hours, in what he is calling an attempted coup d’état.

Not so, says Ms. Zaldumbide, at least one other patient, and two doctors and a nurse who were on duty at the time. They say Mr. Correa retained all his presidential privileges and was never without the protection of his security team.

They also say he was offered an armed escort to leave but refused it. Ecuador’s minister of internal and external security has also said that the president was never detained.

Nevertheless, at 9 p.m. Mr. Correa, who was doing telephone interviews with the state-controlled media during the time he was supposedly “kidnapped,” ordered 500 army troops to the hospital. The soldiers arrived with tanks and submachine guns and opened fire on the police. A fierce gun battle lasted 40 minutes, took the lives of two men, and terrified hospital staff and patients.

Wow. Although there apparently was no coup at all, what did happen certainly sounds more exciting than the real coup I lived through in Ecuador when I was a kid.

Back then, we knew how to have a revolution without our hair getting mussed. I say this because I was, like Forrest Gump and just as clueless, present as history was made.

We lived in the upstairs of a large house owned by a captain in the Ecuadorean Navy. One day in 1963 when my parents were out, they told us to go hang out with the kids downstairs, in the landlord’s part quarters. While I was there, the capitan had a visitor. A few days later, that visitor (an admiral) was the head of the junta running the country, and our landlord held some high post in the government. I want to say minister of agriculture.

When my parents told me there had been a coup, I asked what a coup was (I was only 9 years old). They told me it was like a revolution. So with some apprehension, I went over to the window and peeked out at the intersection of Maracaibo y Seis de Mayo, expecting to see violence in the streets. I saw nothing. Things looked pretty normal over across the street at the home of the chief of police, which always had a guard walking up and down the sidewalk outside. Perhaps, I thought, the fighting was elsewhere.

But there was no fighting. The story I remember hearing at the time — and it may be totally apocryphal — was that the junta waited until el presidente had a bit too much to drink, then put him on a plane and let him wake up in Panama. Presto — instant revolution.

What I saw subsequently certainly jibed with such a peaceful transfer. The only time I ever saw violence in that country when I was there was when some friends and I went downtown to see a Western movie with a title that I suppose caused a lot of people to think it was in Spanish (I want to say “Comancheros”). The crowd was queued up on one side of the theater, then a rumor spread that the tickets would be sold on the other side, and I got knocked down in the stampede. Then there was that other time when I was at some event in a park, and was pushing my way through a crowd to the front to see what was happening, and popped through the front ranks just as a line of cops pushed us back at bayonet point — but I don’t remember what that was about; I just remember my surprise at the bayonets, which seemed excessive. (Or was it just rifles without bayonets? I was so young, and it was so long ago — and a boy’s memory tends to romanticize, especially when living the sort of TV-free, Tom Sawyer existence I experienced down there. Everything was an adventure.)

Now, looking back, I read that the junta canceled elections. I don’t remember that. I do remember that they canceled Water Carnival. Water Carnival was a deeply cherished (by 9-year-old boys) tradition that involved having permission for several days to assault strangers with water balloons. To me, the canceling of Water Carnival has always stood out as the very epitome of oppression.

Of course, it may just be that my parents told me it was canceled…

Come to think of it, Ms. O’Grady’s accounts are probably more reliable than my memories. What do kids know? I later learned that several of the adults with whom I regularly interacted — including my guitar teacher — were working for the CIA, or U.S. military intelligence. Who knew?

RFK son leads board to settle score with Ayers; good for him

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Normally I’m not one to applaud people using positions of trust to settle personal scores, but even if that’s what you call this, in this case I’m all cheers for the Kennedys:

When retiring University of Illinois at Chicago Professor Bill Ayers co-wrote a book in 1973, it was dedicated in part to Sirhan Sirhan, Robert F. Kennedy’s assassin.

That came back to haunt Ayers on Thursday when the U. of I. board, now chaired by Kennedy’s son, considered his request for emeritus status. It was denied in a unanimous vote.

Before the vote, an emotional Chris Kennedy spoke out against granting the status to Ayers.

“I intend to vote against conferring the honorific title of our university to a man whose body of work includes a book dedicated in part to the man who murdered my father,” he said.

“There can be no place in a democracy to celebrate political assassinations or to honor those who do so.”

Later, Kennedy told the Chicago Sun-Times he and the board have not seen any signs of remorse from Ayers in the nearly 40 years since the dedication.

“There’s no evidence in any of his interviews or conversations that he regrets any of those actions — that’s a better question for him,” he told the Sun-Times…

There was a lot of back-and-forth about Ayers back during the 2008 election, you will recall. The thing I like about this personal action by Chris Kennedy is that it serves a public purpose, and of course the public good was what RFK’s memory should be about.

The public good served is that we are made to face clearly what a blackguard Ayers was, and still is (since he’s never expressed regret about what he did back in the day).

So in that sense, this isn’t personal, it’s strictly business. By the way, the “Godfather” reference here is not strictly gratuitous. Mario Puzo wrote another book called The Fourth K, which was about a latter-day member of the Kennedy family who wages unrestricted war on terrorism after his daughter is murdered by terrorists. (The whole “business-vs.-personal” theme was a big one for Puzo. He was fascinated by the idea of powerful men using their power for very personal purposes.)

In this case, Chris Kennedy found a much more gentle way to settle a family account. And good for him. And good for the board, which redeemed this act beyond the realm of personal vengeance by acting unanimously, on principle. This is the way retribution should be conducted, by the full community.

The real Don Draper (Draper Daniels, who called himself “Dan”)

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Draper "Dan" Daniels and Myra Janco in 1965.

As the fourth season of “Mad Men” unfolds, fans wonder:

Will Don Draper get it together, or continue to unravel?
Will Peggy or Joan just get fed up to the point that she slaps every man on the show upside the head in a vain attempt to inject some sense into them?
Will Betty and her new husband just be written out of the show? Please?
Now that it’s 1964, will the show work with a post-Beatles sound track, or will the whole martinis-and-skinny ties mystique evaporate? (Hearing “Satisfaction” in the background the other night really made ol’ Don seem more anachronistic than usual, which I suppose was the point. Although I suppose the “can’t be a man cause he doesn’t smoke/the same cigarettes as me” part was apropos.)
Is Don Draper actually modeled on real-life Mad Man Brad Warthen?

On that last one, to end your suspense, the answer is no: The uncanny physical resemblance is merely coincidental.

In fact, we have learned who the real-life model was: Draper Daniels, who called himself Dan (… were in the next room at the hoedown… Sorry; I can’t resist a good song cue). His widow wrote a fascinating piece about him, and about their relationship, in Chicago magazine. You should read the whole thing, headlined “I Married a Mad Man” — as my wife said, it’s an “awesome” story — but here’s an excerpt:

In the 1960s, Draper Daniels was something of a legendary character in American advertising. As the creative head of Leo Burnett in Chicago in the 1950s, he had fathered the Marlboro Man campaign, among others, and become known as one of the top idea men in the business. He was also a bit of a maverick.

Matthew Weiner, the producer of the television show Mad Men (and previously producer and writer for The Sopranos), acknowledged that he based his protagonist Don Draper in part on Draper Daniels, whom he called “one of the great copy guys.” Weiner’s show, which takes place at the fictional Sterling Cooper ad agency on Madison Avenue, draws from the golden age of American advertising. Some of its depictions are quite accurate—yes, there was a lot of drinking and smoking back then, and a lot of chauvinism; some aren’t so accurate. I know this, because I worked with Draper Daniels in the ad biz for many years. We did several mergers together, the longest of which lasted from 1967 until his death in 1983. That merger is my favorite Draper Daniels story.

Reading that article, I wondered: If Don is Dan, who on the show is Myra?

As I read, I got a sense that it could be… Peggy. A woman who was a professional colleague of the main characters, a woman who had risen to an unprecedented role for her gender at the agency? Sounds kinda like Peggy to me — aside from the age difference. After all, Peggy and Don got awfully cozy that night of the Clay-Liston fight…

We’ll see…

Peggy and Don on the night of the Clay-Liston fight (Feb. 24, 1964).

It’s “a great statement” all right, Senator

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I found this photo on thestate.com, courtesy of Thomas C. Hanson. If either The State or Mr. Hanson has a problem with my running it, they should contact me at [email protected]. I just felt it was important to give y'all a chance to discuss it.

Glenn McConnell says the above photo is “a great statement as to how far this state has come.” It certainly is, Senator. It shows that in the past 147 years, South Carolina has advanced at least several days, perhaps even a week, past 1862. I look at this photo, and I know in my bones that in South Carolina, 1863 has finally arrived!

I’ll say one more thing. The issue to me isn’t whether re-enacting or “interpreting” history is a good or bad thing. The issue for me is how into this stuff the senator, who is arguably the most powerful politician in our state, is. He was really pumped, wasn’t he? He really does love dressing the part.

You may have other things to say.

And people say such awful things about him…

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Bet you didn’t know that when he was passing through here (or perhaps sometime thereafter), W. Tecumseh bought a brick for Riverbanks Zoo.

Neither did I. I learned this quite inadvertently over the weekend during an outing with the twins. We happened to be closer to the bridge than to the tram station when we decided to head back to the car on the garden side of the river, so we walked, and discovered the above.

And to think, people say such awful things about ol’ War Is Hell. So he burned Columbia? A lot of those blocks were already messed up, as Chris Tucker, who apparently did NOT set the city on fire when he was here, might say…

Here’s hoping Vincent has better luck than Alex did with HIS gun ad

“Use to was:” Small town South Carolina

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Dang it, I searched on Google Books for the quote I wanted, but you know how they leave out pages here and there? Apparently the page I wanted was one of those.

Anyway, there’s a page somewhere in John le Carre’s The Little Drummer Girl in which our heroine Charlie is being escorted through a bombed-out 1980s Beirut by a couple of young Palestinian-affiliated gunmen whom she, and the reader, find utterly charming. One of them speaks English with an odd tick: He throws “use to” in front of all verbs, giving his speech a strange poignancy at all times. At one point, he’s indicating where a certain landmark — I want to say a Holiday Inn, but my memory could be failing me (and maybe it wasn’t even in the book but in the movie, but good luck finding that; Netflix doesn’t even have it) — back before the city’s devastation, back when it was the Paris of the Mideast. Let’s say it was a Holiday Inn, in which case he would have said, “Holiday Inn — use to was…”

That line kept running through my head when I went home to Bennettsville Saturday for the funeral of “Teenie” Parks — my grandmother’s best friend, who lived next door to my grandparents and then my young uncle (only six years older than I) as he raised his family there, with Teenie taking the place for his kids of my grandmother, who died in 1969. There are people in B’ville who would ask Teenie how I was related to her, even though I wasn’t. We were all that close. Her husband Frank, who died in 1984, had grown up in the house that my grandparents lived in during my childhood and my uncle still lives in today. Then they sold the house to my grandfather and moved next door. From then on it was like one household; we walked in and out of each others’ houses as though the doors weren’t there. We were, as I said, that close.

The funeral was at Thomas Memorial Baptist Church, where I was baptized long before I became Catholic. It’s the scene of an incident for which I’m still remembered by some of the older folks in town — far more than for anything else, really. While at the visitation various folks made a point of saying what I hear so often, that “We miss you so much from the newspaper,” a couple of my relatives made a point of mentioning The Incident, and admonishing me not to repeat it.

(Here’s what happened: It was 1957, and I was four years old. Our preacher then, Mr. Thomas, was not the most accomplished homilist. He tended to drone and lose his train of thought. He was reciting a list of some sort in which towns in the Pee Dee were ranked. It went something like this: “Cheraw was first, Dillon second. Um, Marion was third. And Bennettsville was… it was… um… Bennettsville was, um…” I couldn’t take it. I shouted out, as loud as I could, “FOURTH!!!” The congregation, which had been as tense as I was, erupted into laughter, drowning out Mr. Thomas as he murmured “fourth.” I had not known I was going to do it; it was involuntary. Four, after all, was my favorite number because I was four years old. How could he not think of it? But now that I’d shouted it, the laughter of all those grownups overwhelmed me with embarrassment. I lay my head on my mother’s lap and pretended to be asleep for the rest of the service. Bottom line, to this day, I am known by some as the little boy who yelled “Fourth!”)

After the funeral, driving back through town on Main Street, I pointed out to my wife landmarks that once had been. That’s what put me in mind of the le Carre character. B.B. Sanders’ Esso station, where the proprietor would always lean into the driver’s window, while his employees swarmed over the car to check the oil and the tires and the water and wash the windshield, and ask us, “Y’all want a Co-Cola?” Use to was. Belk’s — use to was. The Bennettsville Department Store — use to was. Penney’s, Miller Thompson pharmacy, the dime stores, Bill Stanton’s daddy’s store, the movie theater, the A&P, the Harris Teeter. All “use to was.” The buildings are all still there, and most look fine from the outside. But they aren’t what they were. And there is almost no one walking on the once-busy sidewalks.

This morning, I almost got a parking ticket because lobbyist Jay Hicks sat across from me as I was about to get up from breakfast, and I stayed, and we started talking about a number of things. Eventually, we got onto the state of South Carolina’s small towns, especially the ones well off the Interstates. He spoke of Bamberg, and I mentioned to him how impressed I was the one time I visited Allendale — all those abandoned motels along 301, which died when the Interstates opened.

We talked about whether there was any hope for turning around South Carolina’s small towns, whether Nikki Haley (who hales from Bamberg) or Camden’s Vincent Sheheen is elected. We reached no conclusions.

And I spoke of visiting Bennettsville over the weekend. I didn’t mention the “use to was” part, because it would have taken too long to explain.

The South won’t rise again, but it will keep on making head fakes in that direction

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Imagine the irony! I was listening, via Pandora, to an excellent live version of Levon Helm singing his masterpiece, “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” It opened with a little horn riff on “Dixie” itself. The song is simply magnificent, capturing everything that was noble and tragic and horrible and epic and personal in our ancestors’ fall into defeat.

So imagine how it was ruined for me by, even as I was listening to it and appreciating it, reading this low farce from Karen Floyd:

Dear Subscriber

An unprecedented event recently occurred, where the president of the United States issued a report to the U.N. Human Rights Council that bashed a state law. In a desperate attempt to gain the awe and admiration of global elitists, President Obama sounded off about the many “sins” in America’s history, including Arizona’s new illegal immigration bill.Obama writes, “A recent Arizona law, S.B. 1070, has generated significant attention and debate at home and around the world. The issue is being addressed in a court action that argues that the federal government has the authority to set and enforce immigration law. That action is ongoing; parts of the law are currently enjoined.” He also went on about how he is seeking to offer free health care to illegal immigrants.

The context of this U.N. forum is to discuss human rights in the United States. Apparently, Obama thinks that Arizona’s law is in violation of human rights, which is why he is not only suing the state, but also reporting it to the U.N. council.

Lesson learned everyone: a liberal will always seek the praise and respect of foreign powers over the rights of the American people or the Constitution.

As a direct result of Obama’s ridiculous report to the U.N., the Arizona law will come under formal review on November 5 by the three member countries of the UN Human Rights Commission: France, Japan, and Cameroon. The U.N. Commission will then issue directives on what they recommend the United States do in response to the Arizona law.

This is simply outrageous! How can an American president sell out his own countrymen to a foreign entity over a state law that simply enforces existing federal laws? Our president should be bowing to the people’s demands, and NOT the whims of an international organization.

Folks, it is time to fight back. We desperately need trusted conservatives like Mike Mulvaney, Nikki Haley and Jim DeMint to fight for our liberties and state sovereignty. The elitists in Washington are trying to allow a foreign power to dictate your life and safety. Will you allow this to happen?

Click here to help fund conservative change and individual rights! Let’s help elect individuals who will enforce the Constitution and stand up for our rights and sovereignty.

Sincerely,

Karen Floyd

SCGOP Chairman

P.S. Let’s take the battle to them and send Obama a message! Please click here to donate now.

Just as elites conned the poor white population into being their cannon fodder in a lost and bankrupt cause in 1860, this new strain of Radical Republicanism keeps playing on the same resentments and sensitivities and inferiority complexes to manipulate the great mass of white voters in the South today.

They just keep on driving Dixie down.

The Fatties vs. the Fantasists: A hypothetical rematch with the Japanese

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Last night, by way of explaining to my daughter more fully why Roger Sterling was so abominably rude to the guys from Honda in last week’s “Mad Men” I popped in the first episode of “The Pacific.” (As I’ve mentioned, since I’m currently reading the books that series was based on — I’m on Eugene Sledge’s With the Old Breed now — that theater is much on my mind.)

For most of us, buying Hondas and Toyotas, and even, most improbably, Mitsubishis (as in, the Zero) comes fairly naturally. There is probably less conflict in the national psyche over those than over, say, Volkswagen. But for those who fought in the less-understood Pacific war, the stress of fighting a suicidally aggressive enemy with seemingly superhuman commitment to his cause, would be something that would mark you forever.

But if we had a rematch with the Japanese, it might go differently.

Did you see the NYT story on the front page of The State today, about how Army training has been “walked back” a bit to make it less stressful on recruits who grew up playing video games instead of baseball? An excerpt:

FORT JACKSON, S.C. — Dawn breaks at this, the Army’s largest training post, with the reliable sound of fresh recruits marching to their morning exercise. But these days, something looks different.

That familiar standby, the situp, is gone, or almost gone. Exercises that look like pilates or yoga routines are in. And the traditional bane of the new private, the long run, has been downgraded.

This is the Army’s new physical-training program, which has been rolled out this year at its five basic training posts that handle 145,000 recruits a year. Nearly a decade in the making, its official goal is to reduce injuries and better prepare soldiers for the rigors of combat in rough terrain like Afghanistan.

But as much as anything, the program was created to help address one of the most pressing issues facing the military today: overweight and unfit recruits…

Now, I’m not about to call today’s war fighters wimps. Especially not the tip-of-the-spear types like the Marines, or the Airborne divisions, or the Rangers or other elites. They are, if anything, tougher than ever, and certainly more lethal.

But that story gives us a hint of what it would be like if the Army ceased being so selective because it was handling a mass mobilization such as that of 1941-45. Imagine soldiers who had never done a pushup in basic trying to make their way through a fetid jungle in 100-degree-plus temps.

But fear not, because in today’s WSJ, we have evidence that they would not be met with shrieking madmen eager to die for their emperor. Get a load of this:

Since the marriage rate among Japan’s shrinking population is falling and with many of the country’s remaining lovebirds heading for Hawaii or Australia’s Gold Coast, Atami had to do something. It is trying to attract single men—and their handheld devices.

In the first month of the city’s promotional campaign launched July 10, more than 1,500 male fans of the Japanese dating-simulation game LovePlus+ have flocked to Atami for a romantic date with their videogame character girlfriends.

The men are real. The girls are cartoon characters on a screen…

Love Plus+ re-creates the experience of an adolescent romance. The goal isn’t just to get the girl but to maintain a relationship with her.

After choosing one of three female characters—goodie-goodie Manaka, sassy Rinko or big-sister type Nene—to be a steady girlfriend, the player taps a stylus on the DS touch-screen in order to walk hand-in-hand to school, exchange flirtatious text messages and even meet in the school courtyard for a little afternoon kiss. Using the device’s built-in microphone, the player can carry on sweet, albeit mundane, conversations.

Wow. Get those guys charged up on saki, and they’re not going to be screaming “banzai,” but drooling over decidedly unwomanly avatars, hoping for a pretend peck on the cheek.

So maybe a nation of fatties could take them. But probably only in a virtual war, fought on a virtual playing field. At least our video games are tougher than theirs, if this is an example.

Maybe Harry Turtledove will take on this topic.

But who gets to be Lincoln?

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This came in today from the Sheheen campaign:

SHEHEEN CHALLENGES HALEY TO LINCOLN DOUGLAS DEBATES

“ …issue oriented debate like Lincoln Douglas would explain the differences.”

CAMDEN, SC—Today, Vincent Sheheen challenged Representative Nikki Haley to five Lincoln Douglas debates on five different topics in five different regions of South Carolina.

In a letter mailed to Representative Haley last week, Vincent Sheheen wrote, “I challenge you to debates on jobs and the economy in Greenville, education in Columbia, governmental reform and transparency in Charleston, comprehensive tax reform in Rock Hill and infrastructure and tourism in Myrtle Beach. I propose the debates follow the Lincoln Douglas format as prescribed by the National Forensic League, the oldest and largest interscholastic forensic organization in the United States.”

The guidelines for Lincoln Douglas Debate are:

(Speaker A) Constructive 6 Minutes

(Speaker B) Cross Examination 3 Minutes

(Speaker B) Constructive 7 Minutes

(Speaker A) Cross Examination 3 Minutes

(Speaker A) Rebuttal 4 Minutes

(Speaker B) Rebuttal 6 Minutes

(Speaker A) Rebuttal 3 Minutes

Prep Time 4 Minutes per debater

“These debates will provide South Carolinians with a comprehensive and thorough evaluation of both of us so that they won’t have to make such an important decision based on a thirty-second sound bite. I believe voters need a series of robust examinations of our positions to not only understand our governing philosophies but also begin to rebuild the trust that elected officials will act in ways consistent with their stated beliefs,” Sheheen concluded.

“ Voters, with such an important choice at such a crucial time, want the chance to fully know the candidates for governor. They deserve to know who will chart a new course for this state starkly different from the last eight years and who will attempt to carry on the failed legacy of Mark Sanford.”

###

The question is, who gets to be Lincoln? Nikki, who in spite of her contempt for many of her fellow Republicans managed to capture the nomination of what was once the Party of Lincoln, or Vincent, who if nothing else is taller?

Then again, you might not want to be Lincoln — who actually lost that election, if I recall.

Remembering the suffering at the Bulge, and elsewhere

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This morning, Henry McMaster dropped by my table at breakfast, opening our conversation by saying, “Are you blogging somebody over here?” Which I took to mean that he was somewhat wary of talking with me after this incident. Or maybe he was referring to this piece involving his protege Trey Walker.

In any case, we didn’t dwell on the subject, but moved to something more important. Henry, apparently seeing I was reading the paper, mentioned The State‘s series this week about the survivors of the Battle of the Bulge. He immediately fixed on the very thing that always fascinates me about that battle — the day-to-day, routine human suffering apart from the combat. He said something like, “And we think WE have it tough sometimes…”

Indeed. As one who has never been tested by combat, but have certainly thought a lot about it, the thing that I’ve always found most intimidating about it is not the actual shooting part. Yeah, if you survived something like the landing at Omaha Beach, you’d be marked by the trauma for life. But in my own imagination at least, that part would be easy compared to the day-to-day misery of living in the field in harsh conditions.

And what the men trapped by the German blitz in the Ardennes went through is an extreme example.

This Bulge reunion is a particularly poignant event for my family, because when I first heard about it, I had thought of how we might be able to bring my father-in-law here for it. But he didn’t make it. He died in January. And when I told y’all about it on the blog, I wrote the following:

My father-in-law, Walter Joseph Phelan Jr., lived a full and worthwhile life. I was thinking yesterday as we mucked through the ice and snow about some of the far-harsher hardships he endured along the way. He was there in the Ardennes in late 1944, the coldest winter in Europe in a century, when the massive, unexpected German attack came. He was a member of the ill-fated 106th Infantry Division (like Kurt Vonnegut). That means he was right at the point of the German spear, right where it smashed through the Allied lines. A friend fell right beside him in the snow, victim of a bullet he felt was meant for him. If he had been the one it found, I’d never have met my wife, and our children and grandchildren wouldn’t exist.

Like Vonnegut and thousands of others, he was captured and held in a German stalag in the last months of the war, when the Germans didn’t even have enough food for themselves, much less for prisoners. After that experience, he never wanted to go to Europe again, and didn’t.

The coldest winter in Europe in a century… That detail from Stephen Ambrose’s Citizen Soldiers has stuck with me ever since I read it. Some of our troops, such as members of the 101st Airborne, were out in that, living in foxholes, for over a month. Every morning, as they stirred, their clothing would crackle as the ice that had formed in it overnight would break. In many instances, they couldn’t build fires for fear of revealing their positions.

I find the idea of soldiering on under such conditions inconceivable. Even if you weren’t killed, or captured (like Mr. Phelan), or wounded (like Bill Guarnere, who lost a leg in an artillery barrage), how on Earth did they not break? Many did, of course. But who could blame them.

Right now, I’m reading With the Old Breed by Eugene Sledge. Many have noted that for the Marines in the Pacific, the entire war was just as miserable as what the Army endured at the Bulge — only it was mud and blood and jungle rot rather than sub-freezing temperatures — and such books as this one and the one I just finished, Bob Leckie’s Helmet for My Pillow, present compelling evidence to that effect. As Sledge wrote of Okinawa, the Marines lived day after day in “an environment so degrading I believed we had been flung into hell’s own cesspool.”

There was a passage Sledge’s book that sticks with me, about how after that experience, the veterans had trouble relating to the rest of us back home; they had to struggle “to comprehend people who griped because America wasn’t perfect, or their coffee wasn’t hot enough, or they had to stand in line and wait for a train or bus.”

People like me. I just notice my coffee has grown cold as I was typing this. As I go to replace it with hot, I am mindful of the privilege, and those who suffered and died to make my life so easy.

711, for your convenience

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Just to remind you that all the cool kids are following me on Twitter, just in case you still are not.

I mentioned last week that I thought I’d reach the goal of 700 followers by the end of the week, and I did. I’m now at 711, which of course puts me in mind of 7-Eleven, which seems meaningful because my dear wife’s late father was in the convenience store business, and her brother still is, in Memphis. 7-Eleven was a competitor of theirs, although I don’t think it’s been in that market for quite some time.

Remember when “7-Eleven” actually meant that the store was open hours and hours (from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.) before and after a regular supermarket, for your convenience? It sort of shows how radically our retail culture has changed since the ’60s. Now, a convenience store has to rely on location, more than longer hours, to get business. Except for those that are open 24 hours — but then, there are supermarkets that do that, too. And Wal-Mart.

Yes, boys and girls, there was a time when we had down time, when we weren’t running around buying stuff every minute for the simple fact we couldn’t. We just waited and bought stuff when the stores were open.

Hard to imagine, I know…

We also weren’t in touch with everyone we knew, every second, 24/7, via such media as Twitter… which brings me back to my new goal, which is to exceed 1,000 followers by the end of the year. Not a very ambitious goal, I’ll admit, because the number can be manipulated. I try to keep the number of people I follow close to half the number following me. When I fall short of that, I follow more until I get up to that halfway mark, and presto, there’s a sudden rush of new followers. Just the way social media works. But it’s good to have goals, or so I’m told.

Hope to see you there…

An “alternative” Nikki Haley? Nope. Her sister…

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Twisted Sister — whose music both Nikki Haley and Sarah Palin employ as a theme, in spite of their Family Values messages — represents one kind of irony. Here’s another kind, and it also involves a sister — specifically, Nikki’s. (At least, it’s her sister unless there’s another person with the same name who looks this much like Nikki.)

When I first saw the picture above, I thought it WAS Nikki — maybe Nikki in an alternative universe — but then I saw it was her sibling, Simran Singh. Her Web site describes her this way, in part:

Simran Singh, Visionary, Life Coach, Talk Show Host, Publisher of 11:11 Magazine, Founder of C.H.O.I.C.E. (Collaborating Holistic Organizations Inspiring Conscious Empowerment) and Creator of BELIEVE…Choices for Conscious Living, utilizes the mind, body, and heart to support individuals in realizing authentic personal expression by tapping inherent power and potential via self-inquiry and conscious choice. Through honoring and illustrating value for each step in the journey, her products and services bring to awareness one’s inherent value.

So many choices! N.O.W. has “reproductive choice.” Nikki has private school “choice.” And her sister has “Collaborating Holistic Organizations Inspiring Conscious Empowerment.” What a country we live in! Something for everybody.

Be sure to check out the video on the site. Way, WAY New Age:

Tune in and turn on… feed the mind… embrace positively… release the tension… step out of fear. Host Simran Singh will help you broaden your mind and open your heart toward a greater understanding… on Seventh Wave radio… because shift happens.

You might want to check out the recordings of some of her shows. Like this one about Jesus’ “30 Lost Years” and his connections to Eastern religions. The coming Age of Aquarius and the quest for the philosophers’ stone are mentioned in connection with her guest, “a renowned American clairvoyant.”

Yup. It’s a very interesting world we live in.

“Graham’s courageous stand for the republic”

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After I got done stewing about having screwed up on the Biden thing, I remembered that I owed Cindi Scoppe a phone call. Speaking to her reminded me that I meant to call your attention to The State‘s editorial yesterday, “Graham’s courageous stand for the republic.”

It was really, really good. So good that after I read it at breakfast yesterday, I e-mailed Cindi to say:

Excellent lede today. Did you write that, or did I?

It needs to be said loudly and often.

OK, so maybe that wouldn’t be a compliment to you, but I think Cindi saw it as such. You know, knowing my ego as she does.

But it really did say pretty much everything I would have said — of course, one of the great things about working with Cindi over the years was that she could do that. There was a time when I felt like I had to write any important edit about state government or politics to get the message just right, and the right tone and feel into it (to please me, anyway). But I realized shortly after I brought Cindi up from the newsroom that if I just spent a few minutes explaining to her what I wanted, in a few minutes she’d turn it around into an edit that was everything I had wanted, and just as good as if I’d written it — and several hours faster.

The great thing about this was that I didn’t have occasion to tell her what I wanted (you may have heard, I don’t word there any more), and yet I got it anyway. But more important than it being what I wanted, it’s what South Carolina needed to hear about Graham’s decision to vote for Elena Kagan’s nomination, and his cogent explanation of his reasoning.

An excerpt:

THROUGHOUT the first two centuries or so of our nation’s history, what Sen. Lindsay Graham did on Wednesday when he voted to confirm President Obama’s appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court would have been thoroughly unremarkable. What would have been remarkable would have been for a senator to do otherwise — to vote against confirming a nominee who did not have serious ethical, legal, mental or intellectual problems.

But as Sen. Graham told the Judiciary Committee, things are changing…. What matters today are individual agendas, and punishing anyone who doesn’t agree with their every opinion.

That’s a threat not just to the independence of the judiciary but to the republic itself…

As when he voted to confirm Mr. Obama’s first Supreme Court appointment a year ago, Sen. Graham said Wednesday that Ms. Kagan was not someone he would have appointed, but Mr. Obama won the election; the job of the Senate is merely to stop a president from appointing people who are objectively unfit to be judges.

Will Ms. Kagan join the liberal wing of the court? Probably. Just as President Bush’s appointments joined the conservative wing. We wish there weren’t such clearly defined wings…. But that’s a political preference we have; not a constitutional standard appropriate for senators to consider. As far as confirmation goes, there’s nothing wrong with Ms. Kagan. Just as there was nothing wrong with Sonia Sotomayor. Or with John Roberts. Or with Samuel Alito. And any senator who votes or voted against any of them was simply wrong.

But go read the whole thing. And share it with every South Carolinian you know.

Graham’s vote for Kagan, in his own words

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To follow up on the previous, here’s how Lindsey Graham explained his vote for Elena Kagan for the court.

I have defended, and will defend, our senior senator for his thoughtfulness, while at the same time being mortified that it is necessary to defend someone for acting with intellectual honesty and not acting like a partisan automaton. What has our country come to that this sort of thought-based action has to be defended? What happened to us that such principle has become so rare?

In any case, he defends himself better than I could.

I like in particular that he gave a Federalist explanation for his decision. It harks back to a time when intelligence and principle were not rare at all in this country:

Graham Supports Kagan Nomination

WASHINGTON – Citing the Constitutional and historical role the Senate has played in Supreme Court nominations, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) today said he would support the nomination of Elena Kagan.

“No one, outside of maybe John McCain, spent more time trying to beat President Obama than I did,” said Graham. “But we lost and President Obama won.”

Graham cited Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist Number 76 in listing the reasons he would vote for Kagan. Graham noted Hamilton wrote, “To what purpose then require the cooperation of the Senate? I answer that the necessity of their concurrence would have a powerful, though in general a silent operation. It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the president, would tend generally to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from family connection, from personal attachment, and from a view to popularity.”

“The Constitution puts a requirement on me, as a senator, to not replace my judgment for the President’s,” said Graham. “I’m not supposed to think of the 100 reasons I would pick somebody different. It puts upon me a standard that stood the test of time: Is the person qualified? Is it a person of good character? Are they someone that understands the difference between being a judge and a politician? And, quite frankly, I think she’s passed all those tests.”

“Are we taking the language of the Constitution that stood the test of time and putting a political standard in the place of a constitutional standard?” asked Graham. “Objectively speaking, things are changing, and they’re unnerving to me. The court is the most fragile of the three branches. So while it is our responsibility to challenge and scrutinize the court, it is also our obligation to honor elections, respect elections, and protect the court.”

“I view my role as a United States Senator in part by protecting the independence of the judiciary, and by making sure that hard-fought elections have meaning in terms of their results within our Constitution,” said Graham. “At the end of the day, Ms. Kagan is not someone I would have chosen, but I think she will serve honorably.”

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Cindi’s column on Lost Trust, 20 years on

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I missed Cindi Scoppe’s column over the weekend reminiscing about Lost Trust (which broke 20 years ago Sunday) until a reader mentioned Cindi’s “shout-out” to me:

If anything happened in the next year that wasn’t related to the sting, I can’t remember it. While I dissected the ethics proposals, my editor Brad Warthen led the newsroom on a yearlong examination of how the Legislative State produced not only corruption but a hapless government that answered to no one — laying the groundwork for one of the primary focuses of our later work on this editorial board.

Pushed along by Lost Trust, Gov. Carroll Campbell and Brad’s “Power Failure” series, the Legislature voted two years later to hand a third of the government over to the governor. Lawmakers unleashed the powerful State Grand Jury to investigate political corruption cases. They passed a reporter shield law after a judge ordered me and three other reporters held in federal custody for two days for refusing to testify in a corruption trial.

It was interesting to read Cindi’s memory of that from her perspective. I had forgotten a lot of the intrigue that my reporters — particularly Cindi — had to go through to find out what was going on. But then, I was mostly experiencing it second-hand, being the desk man that I was. Cindi and the others would come in with this stuff they had garnered in encounters reminiscent of Bob Woodward’s meetings with Deep Throat in the parking garage, and we’d figure out which outrageous items were worth pursuing to try to confirm immediately and which ones to set aside. And then, how in the world to nail down the relevant ones.

For me, at the epicenter of The State‘s coverage, it was a time for keeping a couple of dozen plates spinning, and was a daily challenge to an editor managing finite resources in the midst of stories that seemed to have an infinite number of branches, each one of which was a hot story in itself.

Mind you, Lost Trust wasn’t the only government scandal breaking that summer. We had the final act of the Jim Holderman collapse, a purchasing scandal involving a major agency (I don’t even remember which one now), the head of the Highway Patrol directly personally interfering with the DUI of the head of the local FBI office, and those are just the things that I remember sitting here. There was more. Fortunately, the governmental affairs staff in those days amounted to something (I may have been slightly down from my 1988 high of 10 reporters, but not by much), but there’s only so much that even that many people can do when so much is popping at the same time — and during the time of year when things are usually quiet.

And Lost Trust itself, alone, without those other scandals, would have totally consumed us days, nights and weekends. A full 10 percent of the Legislature indicted? Heady stuff.

We were well out ahead of the competition most days, and I felt proud of my team — Cindi and the others. Then the executive editor, who was new in the job (Gil Thelen), one busy day stopped by my desk to say it was all very well and good that we were staying ahead of the story and beating everybody on it, but what about the future? What, out of all this mess, might we be able to offer readers to give them the sense that something could be done about the dysfunction of SC government? I probably stared at him like he was a lunatic for wanting me to think about anything ELSE on top of the mad juggling I was doing at the moment, but I did think about it. And the result was the Power Failure series. I spent a year on it, supervising reporters from across the newsroom in producing a 17-installment opus that explained just how SC government was designed to fail.

And as Cindi notes, the themes developed at that time resonated through my work, and hers, for my entire 15 years on the editorial board.

By the way, Kevin Geddings is out of prison

Yeah, good luck with that, professor

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Enjoyed the book review in the WSJ this morning of the book “Getting it Wrong,” debunking some epic media myths:

William Randolph Hearst never said, “You furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war.” Orson Welles’s “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast didn’t panic America. Ed Murrow’s “See It Now” TV show didn’t destroy Sen. Joseph McCarthy. JFK didn’t talk the New York Times into spiking its scoop on the Bay of Pigs invasion. Far from being the first hero of the Iraq War, captured Army Pvt. Jessica Lynch was caught sobbing “Oh, God help us” and never fired a shot.

But the best part was at the very end:

For all Mr. Campbell’s earnest scholarship, these media myths are certain to survive his efforts to slay them. Journalism can’t help itself — it loves and perpetuates its sacred legends of evil power-mongers, courageous underdogs, dread plagues and human folly. At the end of the book, Mr. Campbell offers some remedies for media mythologizing, urging journalists, among other things, “to deepen their appreciation of complexity and ambiguity.” Good luck with that, professor.

Yeah, good luck indeed. For instance, good luck expecting any depth or perspective in the PC tsunami that will wash over us from the national media as they thrill over the idea of “an Indian-American woman” becoming governor in the South. Never mind what she would do as governor, the simplistic identity politics narrative overrides all…

We haven’t had a good spy swap in AGES…

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I’m watching with some fascination as the Russian spies we recently pulled in admit their guilt, and we get ready for a swap for some people the Russians are holding:

The US is to deport 10 people who spied for Moscow in exchange for four people convicted of espionage in Russia.

A judge in New York ordered the immediate deportation of the 10, and it is thought they may leave in hours.

The 10 had pleaded guilty to spying for a foreign country but a charge of laundering money was dropped.

Details of the four being freed by Russia were not given other than that all had had “alleged contact with Western intelligence agencies”.

Fascination, and a certain amount of nostalgia. Not only did I grow up in the Cold War (when world affairs were simpler — you were either on our side or theirs), but I’m a huge fan of such spy novelists as John le Carre and Len Deighton. This story’s got it all, including the James Bond/Austin Powers element of The Alluring Spy — a stock character that serious spy fiction didn’t stoop to, but there she is in the flesh, Anna Chapman of the bedroom eyes.

But wait? How are we going to have a proper swap without Checkpoint Charlie. Doh! I knew they shouldn’t have torn down that wall. The proper forms can’t be followed now!

That sort of ruins it for me. That, and the fact that these Russian spooks were so inept. Definitely not up to KGB standards. Putin should hang his head.

Another question — we’re swapping 10 for four? How come it always works out this way for us? And for Israel. You ever notice how Israel will do these swaps for like, 10,000 Palestinians for one IDF soldier? I suppose that says something about the value we place on our people, but still — seems to me like a rip-off.

Blast from the newspaper past

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Bob Ford shared this old newspaper page with me over the weekend. How old? So old that it’s from before I even worked at any newspaper, much less The State. My career starting in 1974 as a copy boy at The Commercial Appeal. But this is from Nov. 3 1972 — the Friday before I voted for the first time.

And yet — there are several people pictured here whom I would later work with, or at least come to know in the community after I arrived at The State in 1987 — Levona Page, Kent Krell, Margaret O’Shea and others. In fact, when I became governmental affairs editor in ’87, one of them was still on the beat and working for me: that hepcat Lee Bandy (dig the hair!).

This ad boasts of the resources devoted to covering politics, and indeed, back then newspapers had reporters spilling out the windows, and newshole to burn. It was still that way when I started covering politics myself in ’78. But then the long decline began, and finally newspaper finances went over the cliff this past decade.

One might also reflect on how different the SC political scene was in those days. First of all, there were no Republicans, except Strom Thurmond and Floyd Spence. So the Democratic primary was usually the election. Then there was the fact that the color barrier had just been broken in the Legislature, with a handful of black House members (but none in the Senate yet). This was two whole years before the legendary Pug Ravenel campaign, which idealistic then-young Democrats speak of today as though it occurred in the misty time of Camelot, or of King Elendil who wielded the sword Narsil before it was broken.

Anyway, I thought some of y’all would enjoy looking at it, too.

bradwarthen.com

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