Category Archives: In Our Time

Why is she so much more popular than I am?

Just in case I didn’t have enough reasons to feel inadequate… I found out today about this site that lists everybody in South Carolina on Twitter. And when I called it up, it had the list ordered according to most “followers.” And I discovered, for instance, that Gerri L. Elder of the “Absolutely True” Web site (of which I had never heard before) has 31,359 followers on Twitter.

As I type this, I have … let me go check… 310 followers on Twitter.

Now, I can comfort myself in various ways. I can say I haven’t been on Twitter long. I can note that I still have almost twice as many “followers” as people I myself follow, whereas Gerri Elder is following more than 31,000.

But given the chasm between her numbers and mine, that comfort is cold, indeed. I mean, I’m in the initial stages of looking into making this a paying proposition, with ads and all, but how can I compete in a world where somebody I never heard of before today has more than 100 times the number of followers I do?

And why does she have so many? I mean, I looked at her latest post (which is unfair; God help us all if we are judged at a given moment by our latest post), which consisted mainly of a bunch of really sickly looking pictures of bacon. Not nice, crisp bacon, but massive amounts of undercooked, floppy bacon, in phone photos that exaggerate their queasy color. It made me think about the bacon I ate this morning in a way that was NOT appetizing…

I mean, I got pictures of THIS, and she’s got pictures of THAT, but she has way more followers than I do? Where is the justice in this? The marketplace is a cruel mistress indeed.

George Clooney has either never had a prostate exam, or a Facebook page, or both

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We don’t normally do celebrity news at bradwarthen.com (with rare exceptions), but I happened to run across this item via Twitter:

Although more and more brands, movie stars, sports figures, and other celebrities are moving to Twitter (Twitter) and Facebook as a way of interacting and sharing with fans, many of Hollywood’s A-List stars are still avoiding social networks.

George Clooney is one of Hollywood’s biggest stars — he’s handsome, congenial, and talented — and also Facebook-page free.

People.com reports that when asked about Facebook at the Toronto International Film Festival last Saturday, Clooney responded:

“I would rather have a prostate exam on live television by a guy with very cold hands than have a Facebook page.”

… and it inspired the above headline.

Of course, the message we are to take away is that George Clooney is such a big star that he doesn’t have to promote himself. Which is true. But he doesn’t have to be so snobby about it. I mean, it’s one thing for me to turn my nose up at celebrities, but they’re not supposed to do it right back at me…

I’m sure U R 1, 2, dude!

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Only once did I ever work in an office with another “Brad.” At the time, I joked that he would have to go, because it was too confusing, and eventually, he did. That was over 20 years ago.

I’ve never met a person named Warthen to whom I was not related. Oh, I’ll occasionally run into the name attached to a stranger in a phone book. And there was that ballplayer Dan Warthen, who used to get his name in the paper a lot when he played for the Memphis minor league team. And that town, Warthen, Ga. — apparently derived from a branch of the family, which originally came into this country through Maryland in the 1630s.

I was as sure as you could be of anything like that that among the 6 billion or so people on the planet, I was the only “Brad Warthen.”

But Facebook changes things. There are so many people there that your sense of uniqueness may have to undergo an adjustment. Some time recently I discovered that there was another Brad Warthen. I couldn’t find out anything about him; I just saw that he was a young guy with red hair. I left it at that.

Then tonight, I got an e-mail:

Brad Warthen sent you a message on Facebook…

Subject: dude

“dude we have the same name so i know ur a bad ass”

I wrote back to him, “Obviously.” I mean, what else could I say? I didn’t want to let him down.

Compromising photographs

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You know how back in the day, people would say they didn’t smoke dope, but if a joint was going around they’d take a toke “to be polite?” Doonesbury once made fun of it, with Zonker speaking the punch line, “I’m VERY polite.”

Well, I’m sort of that way about getting my picture taken with the guest of honor at rubber chicken dinners, receptions, etc. When somebody (usually some enthusiastic lady who has worked hard to put on the event) tugs my elbow and says, “Come have your picture taken with …” whomever, I may grumble a bit, but then shrug and make the best of it.

That explains why there are photographs of me with a wide variety of people, from our latest political persona non grata Joe Wilson (see the new header on my home page) to people I actually feel a little intimidated and unworthy standing next to, such as Elie Wiesel (below). You can see the awkwardness in my face on that one.

But in the Wilson pic, I’m perfectly at ease. You can probably even see a bit of amusement. This was taken at a reception for Joe at the Republican National Convention in New York. This was the last time the newspaper ever paid for me to travel out of state to do journalism, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. At this point, I’m grinning both to be a good sport, and because all week, I had been watching Joe really, REALLY enjoying being at the convention. Joe just has to pinch himself all the time, he SO enjoys being in Congress, and being a Republican, and being around other Republicans, to the point that he just wants to be friends with everybody. He was definitely not saying “You lie!” to anyone that week.

I don’t get enthusiastic like that, and people who do make me smile. Different strokes.

The Obama picture is slightly more complicated. In this case, I was amused not by the candidate, but by the excitement among some of the other people in the room. This was immediately following our editorial endorsement meeting. And while there were no member of the editorial board asking to have their pictures taken with the candidate (Warren, Mike and Cindi are too cool and professional for that) this was one of those meetings that people from around the building who had nothing to do with our editorial decisions asked if they could sit in, and I always said yes to such requests, as long as there was room and no one was disruptive.

And some of them were lining up eagerly to have their pictures taken with Obama. If you’ll recall, this is the kind of excitement his candidacy engendered. The candidate was anxious to get downstairs and put on some longjohns in the men’s room before going to sit in the freezing cold at the MLK Day rally at the State House, but he was a good sport about it.

And after several of these pictures were taken, I said — with an ironic tone, making a joke of it — well, why don’t I get MY picture with the senator, too!? Of course, it wasn’t entirely a joke. On some level, I was thinking that someday my grandchildren will want proof that I met all these famous people, and for the most part I don’t have any photographic proof. Here was my chance to get some, as long as everybody was camera-happy. I was also thinking, it’s all very well to be cool and professional but isn’t it a fool who plays it cool by making the world a little colder? Or something. Anyway, I like to do things that other more staid professionals turn their noses up at. It’s why I started a blog, while my colleagues didn’t. It’s why I do http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/2007/10/the-colbert-end.html”>silly stuff like this. You enjoy life more this way…

My regret that I have looking back is that I didn’t get my picture taken with John McCain, Joe Biden, George W. Bush, John Kerry, Al Gore, Ralph Nader, Ted Sorensen, Benazhir Bhutto, Jesse Jackson, or hosts of others. Mainly because I was too cool at the time when I was around them (especially back in the days when I spent a lot of time with Al Gore — in my early career I would have been WAY too self-righteous to pose for any such thing). I never even got my picture taken with Strom Thurmond. You know what? Next time I see Fritz Hollings, I’m going to ask somebody to take our picture…

Eight years ago today

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What is there to say on the 8th anniversary of the attacks on America? I suppose I could say the same things I said on the 7th, and add what I said a couple of days before that.

Or I can quote what President Obama said today:

“Let us renew our resolve against those who perpetrated this barbaric act and who plot against us still,” Mr. Obama said. “In defense of our nation, we will never waver.”

And add what he said back in August, to a VFW gathering in Phoenix:

The insurgency in Afghanistan didn’t just happen overnight and we won’t defeat it overnight, but we must never forget: This is not a war of choice; it is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda could plot to kill more Americans.

With more than a few out there faltering, I thought it would be good to bring those words to the fore.

Stuff this guy’s dad says

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If you don’t mind salty language, you might want to follow this Twitter site by a 28-year-old named Justin who simply records stuff that his 73-year-old father says. At least, that’s the alleged premise. There was quite a gem yesterday:

The worst thing you can be is a liar….Okay fine, yes, the worst thing you can be is a Nazi, but THEN, number two is liar. Nazi 1, Liar 2

Anyway, I enjoy it. It’s pithy. It has great pith. Just don’t get pithed off at me if you check it out and don’t like it…

Not that there’s anything wrong with that (or so they say)

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The last couple of days, whispers about a certain public figure being homosexual have gradually been seeping into the MSM. My question is, should they?

Actually, I have several questions, including:

What does it matter if he is? Aren’t we supposed to not care? I’m constantly told by my children and others of their generation that we’re not supposed to care, that it’s the same as being hetero — even as some of that generation use “that’s so gay” as an apparent pejorative, which confuses me because it’s so, well, my generation.
At what point does the usual MSM dodge for reporting unsubstantiated rumor — that blogs and other low-threshold media have reported it to the point that the resulting buzz (not, of course, the underlying rumors themselves, perish the thought) has made news to the point that it must be reported — rise above being a lame excuse?
Should I even be writing about it here, even in the rather priggish manner in which I am doing so?

I almost did so yesterday, when WIS actually did a report on the subject, which caused a bit of triumphalist chortling in the blogosphere. But I didn’t. Such is my reluctance to address such a subject. (The WIS report raises a subquestion: Should one say “crap” on broadcast TV?)

But now that Peter Hamby of CNN — yes, a national news organization — is reporting that Jake Knotts is actually accusing our governor of coordinating this whispering campaign against Jake’s ally — an accusation for which I’ve seen no justification, in the governor’s defense (merely having an apparent motive does not make one the prime suspect) — I’m faced with the fact that just about everyone but me is talking about this. (Such as Politico, and both national and state blogs.) No newspapers so far, though, unless I’ve missed something. I can well imagine the conversations going on in newsrooms as they decide what to do, or whether to do anything. And I remain surprised that WIS did it first.

But should anybody be reporting any of this? Whose business is this?

It’s perversely interesting (if I may use that modifier) to see how things like this play out in this allegedly “enlightened” age. Consider for instance the subset of this phenomenon, whereby the apostles of tolerance are the first to “out” political conservatives who are said to lean that way. Their excuse, of course, is that they are exposing the ultimate political sin in this postmodern world, hypocrisy. One can do all sorts of hypocritical things in the name of exposing hypocrisy, including acting like there’s something wrong with someone being “gay” even when one adamantly insists the rest of the time that there is not.

Me, I’m Old School. Personally, I appreciate people not talking about their sexual predilections. For instance, I do NOT appreciate people talking ad nauseam about their “soulmates,” of whichever gender. When they do, I tend to harrumph.

And when third parties talk about someone else’s rumored predilections, I get really uncomfortable. It doesn’t seem right.

The whole thing is just so cringe-making that I might take this post down when I look back at it later.

What do y’all think?

Take me, Starbucks — I’m yours

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First, a confession: I really like Starbucks’ new ad campaign. When you Google it, you find a lot of people sneering at it. They find it pompous, overbearing, supercilious, and so forth. Everything that people who don’t like Starbucks don’t like about Starbucks comes into play.

But me, I love Starbucks. So when those ads — which I first saw in The New Yorker recently — say things like “If your coffee isn’t perfect, we’ll make it over. If it’s still not perfect, you must not be in a Starbucks,” I just think, that’s absolutely true. Other people think it’s obnoxious.

But as I said, I love Starbucks. There was a time when I was prepared not to. Back when I was not a coffee drinker, back when I avoided caffeine (and fell asleep a lot in meetings), I bought into the anti-Starbucks propaganda. When Starbucks replaced the Joyful Alternative in Five Points, I sneered along with all the others at the supreme irony of that venerable head shop (which, let’s face it, had since its early-70s heyday morphed into more of a boutique) with the perfectly symbolic name being displaced by this ultimate, soul-less cookie-cutter corporation that was trying to take over the world, yadda-yadda.

Of course, at the time, I had never been in a Starbucks, much less tried the coffee.

My conversion began in New York City in 2004. I was there to write about the Republican National Convention. National political conventions will wear you out if you’re a delegate, with delegation meetings, the plenary sessions, the parties, the sightseeing, the shopping, and more parties. No one ever gets a full night’s sleep at a convention. For journalists, it’s worse. You’re imbedded with a delegation, and you try to be there for everything they experience. Then, when they’re grabbing a nap, you write. You also branch out and check out newsworthy things that the delegates don’t do. Two-four hours sleep at night is about par.

There was a Starbucks near my hotel (of course; there’s one on practically every block in Manhattan), so I fell into the habit of grabbing a tall House Blend before I’d sit down to the laptop in my room. A House Blend with several Sugars in the Raw, because my palate had not yet adjusted to enjoying coffee in its own right.

As time wore on, I got more and more into it. Starbucks coffee is inextricably tied up with the early days of my first blog. One of my favorite early blog posts, headlined “The Caffeine Also Rises,” was — while not technically written in a Starbucks, but in a Barnes & Noble, was nevertheless written on Starbucks coffee, which B&N proudly serves — written on a coffee high. An excerpt:

This is blogging. This is the true blogging, el blogando verdadero, con afición, the kind a man wants if he is a man. The kind that Jake and Lady Brett might have done, if they’d had wi-fi hotspots in the Montparnasse.

What brings this on is that I am writing standing up, Hemingway-style, at the counter in a cafe. But there is nothing romantic about this, which the old man would appreciate. Sort of. This isn’t his kind of cafe. It’s not a cafe he could ever have dreamed of. It’s a Starbucks in the middle of a Barnes and Noble (sorry, Rhett, but I’m out of town today, and there’s no Happy Bookseller here). About the one good and true thing that can be said in favor of being in this place at this time is that there is basically no chance of running into Gertrude Stein here. Or Alice, either.

I’m standing because there are no electrical outlets near the tables, just here at the counter. And trying to sit on one of these high stools and type kills my shoulders. No, it’s not my wound from the Great War, just middle age….

In those early days, blogging and Starbucks coffee sort of went together like Kerouac’s continuous rolls of butcher paper and benzedrine. But in a good way…

Over time, I quit taking the sugar, because it got in the way of the wonderful taste of the coffee. House Blend. Komodo Dragon. Sidami. Gold Coast. Verona (my favorite). Even the ubiquitous Pike Place. They’re all wonderful.

But beyond that, there’s the Starbucks experience. Yeah, it’s all based in a conscious marketing strategy, but it’s a strategy based on good stuff that works. For me, anyway. First, there’s the smell, which immediately makes you glad you’re there, and makes everything else about the place more pleasant. Each Starbucks is both warm and cool, in all the positive senses of those words. The music is pleasant, and chosen with enough thought and originality to rise miles above the stuff you hear in most stores. Everything is nicer in a Starbucks. Women are more beautiful, for instance. No, I don’t think they are objectively more beautiful; they just seem that way. It probably all arises from the smell, but the rush after you get started on that first cup probably plays a role, too.

The whole thing just works. It works to an extent that if I were ever to endorse a product for money, the one I could endorse more wholeheartedly than almost any other would be Starbucks.

Hint, hint.

For a couple of years, I’ve had this idea, which I would pitch to someone at Starbucks if I knew how to get in touch with the right person. Basically, it would be to have Starbucks sponsor my blog. And in return for lots of free, gratuitous mentions of how wonderful Starbucks is, I would get a nice chunk of change and all the coffee I want.

I would spend a couple of hours a couple of times a week blogging live from different Starbucks stores, with my Webcam on. I could do impromptu interviews with the people who come and go (and at the Gervais St. store, there’s almost always someone newsworthy to chat with), and otherwise share the experience while blending blog and product. This I could do with no ethical qualms at all, because my love of the product would be completely unfeigned.

There are a couple of problems with this idea, I’ll admit. First, I’ve seen no sign that anything like this fits into the Starbucks marketing plan. Second, I have no idea how to find the right person to pitch it to.

So I’ll just post it here, and refer to it from Twitter. Starbucks is one of my followers on Twitter, so there is an extremely thin chance that it will get to the right person, and an even thinner one that said person will like it. But nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Why am I passively pitching this now? Because I’m about to try to start selling advertising on my blog. I don’t know how or whether that will work, or whether it will be worth the bother, but I thought I might as well give it a try. And Starbucks would sort of be my dream client.

Dude, you’re not getting a Dell, are you?

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As I’ve mentioned, I’ve been hanging out at an ad agency recently, which means I’ve been dwelling in the world of Mac. That’s all they’ve got around here. I’m writing this on one.

So as I got ready to get a laptop — I had decided it was a necessity, with the freelance work I’m doing and all — I had a number of people around me telling me I must convert to Apple, for all the usual reasons and more. You’ve heard them: More solid, more reliable, better designed, better software, far better for graphics, cooler, etc. In particular, they said, a Mac would be better for video production, something I’ve wanted to do more of for the blog.

So, of course, I went out and got a Dell. First, it’s about a fourth of the price (my daughter the graphic designer is buying a Mac laptop, and it retails at $2,600 with the software she needs). Second… to paraphrase Billy Jack, I’ve tried; I’ve really tried. When Jean and the kids at the school tell me to practice nonviolence and use a Mac, I really try. But when I’m doing something that would normally call for a right-button mouse click, and my fingers fumble with that one massive button on a Mac… I just go berserk!

Bottom line, I’ve been using PCs too long. The ways of navigating through Windows are built into my body’s muscle memory, and it’s too much work to change.

So I got a Dell. Specifically, this model Dell Studio. Last week, when they were on sale for $80 less than the price on that link. An Intel Core 2 Duo processor T6500, 4GB RAM, 320 Gig hard drive, plus the usual bells and whistles that have become standard — DVD burner, multi-format card reader, Webcam and so forth.

It not only had what I needed on it, but I liked the look and feel of it. It looked and felt solid and well-built. Compared to the Inspiron, it was like a Volvo versus a Trabi. The Inspiron seemed chintzy by comparison. It had little features that don’t mean much, I guess, but which I liked — for instance, it had a slot for CDs and DVDs instead of that flimsy tray that pops out, and which always makes me afraid I’m going to break it pressing the disc in. That seemed clean and smart, better design.

And the first few days went great. I was particularly pleased with my first effort with the Webcam.

Then yesterday, it crashed. Yeah, I know, you Mac folk are sneering now that that’s what PCs do; they crash. And yes, they do. It’s something PC users deal with. Rebooting makes for a nice bathroom break, gets us away from work for a moment. Part of life.

But this crash was atypical. I was running Firefox in two or three windows, with maybe two other low-intensity applications up, when everything froze up. I went to Task Manager, and saw that my CPU usage was at 100 percent, which was impossible. I bailed out using the power button, booted back up, and tried running Firefox alone — and it was showing more than 50 percent CPU usage. One of the cores of the duo core was running at capacity, the other hardly running at all.

So I took the Dell back to Best Buy, where an interesting thing happened. The Geek Squad guy, after pronouncing that I had an incurable hardware problem, leveled with me, saying that he wouldn’t buy a Dell. Yes, once they were reliable, but he had seen too many Studios come back. I should get an Asus or an HP instead.

Funny thing was, the sales guy last week had tried, gently to steer me toward an Asus. But I had never heard of Asus. I had used Dells for years, so that’s what I got. Now, I went back to that same sales guy, and he nodded and said yeah, he liked the Asus better but I had been obviously set on a Dell…

So we went to look at the comparable Asus — same processor, same memory, same hard drive size. The battery was longer-lasting. The screen was smaller (although perhaps slightly sharper). It had the flimsy pop-out tray instead of the slot I liked. It cost $30 more than I had paid for the Dell.

And it looked cheap and flimsy compared to the Dell. Sorry, but aesthetically it was not pleasing, and even though these tech guys were all but beating me over the head with the inside knowledge that it was very solid and reliable, it didn’t LOOK solid. Finally, I was unable to call up the Webcam to try it out, because of some quirk of how they had the machine set up in the store.

So, sheepishly, I said I wanted to try another Dell Studio, hoping that this one wouldn’t be a lemon. The sales guy said he understood, that it was like buying a car; you either liked the look and feel or you didn’t. But I could hardly look him in the eye, because I knew he thought I was an idiot, a guy who just doesn’t learn.

And when we got up to the customer service desk — where I was to leave it to get it “optimized” (cleaning off all the marketing junk such as trial software, and installing service packs), which is why I don’t have it yet — and I realized the Geek Squad guy who had warned me was standing right there and had to have noticed what I was doing… I almost went over and apologized to him.

But I figure I’ve got two weeks to try this one out (and longer, if it has a hardware failure), and if it isn’t everything it should be, I can go back and get the Asus, no questions asked. So I can’t lose, right?

By the way, I really hope I’m not getting these guys in trouble telling about how open and honest they were. Frankly, I think they should both get a raise, because they were going out of their way to help a customer. And they were both obviously good at their jobs, very knowledgeable about the product. Bright young men, a credit to their organization. I felt much better about Best Buy for having dealt with them.

It’s just that in this case, the customer was too stupid and stubborn to listen to them. Proof yet again that in the marketplace, consumers do not make rational choices, notwithstanding all the propaganda. At least, this one doesn’t. Neither do most people; I’m just logical enough to understand how fallible I am.

Why did The Beatles break up? I can’t tell…

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Well, Rolling Stone certainly got my attention when I saw this cover headline in the checkout line at Earth Fare yesterday:

Why

The

Beatles

Broke Up

THE INSIDE STORY

So I immediately resolved to look up the piece and read it when I got to my laptop.

But I couldn’t, because they didn’t post the actual article. Oh, they posted all sorts of teasers and promotional material, such as the 29722154-29722159-slarge1 “story behind the story,” and gallery after gallery of fab pics of the lads back in the day.

But not the actual story.

We can debate from now until the last newspaper closes the relative wisdom of posting one’s precious content online for free. Maybe Rolling Stone’s got it going on teasing us to distraction this way. But I wonder: Which approach sells more magazines — this, or the Vogue approach? No, I didn’t go out and buy a copy of the Vogue with the Jenny Sanford piece; I was satisfied with what I found online. But I’ll bet the fact that bloggers were able to read, and then tout, the contents did lead to at least some people who are more in Vogue‘s demographic to go out and buy the slick dead-tree version.

I don’t know. But I know I’m not shelling out $4.99 to read the piece about the fall of The Beatles. Hey, I lived through the time, and I know why The Beatles broke up — because the ’60s ended. Duh.

Now there was a time when I would have shelled out the money. But not anymore. I guess that shows how old I am. And that the ’60s really are over…

Maybe I’m putting too much into Twitter…

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It occurs to me that maybe too much of my energy that could go into making my blog better is going into Twitter.

Traditionally, I get a lot of my blog ideas when I’m reading the papers over breakfast in the morning. That first cup of coffee coinciding with the reading generally leads to far more ideas than I have time for. I used to stew through the morning meeting, which came right after breakfast, when I was at the paper because I was anxious to get to the computer and start putting some of the ideas on the blog before my enthusiasm (or the coffee, whichever you want to think of it as) wore off.

Now, since I started Twittering, I just go ahead and post a lot of the ideas as they occur to me, on my Blackberry, while eating. Which is great, I guess. Except that this gets each of those ideas out of my system, and by the time I’m at my laptop (It’s possible to blog on the Blackberry, but it’s a LOT harder), my mind has moved on.

So they don’t go totally to waste, bleeding off into the Twitter void, I decided to reproduce this morning’s tweets here, improved with links to the original sources of these brief comments.

You’ll see that only one was developed into a full-fledged blog post. The others I share for whatever minimal value they have:

Gov says calls to quit are “pure politics.” Let’s hope so. The alternative is the divine right of kings. (This, of course, is the one that became a blog post.)
Paper says “South Carolinians aged 18-20 cannot drink alcohol.” Actually, they CAN, but aren’t allowed to…
Twitter followers come and go so quickly. The number constantly fluctuates; the pattern eludes me…
Ad in paper touts “powerful joint pill,” which makes me think “THC,” but that’s not it, apparently…
Sanford sez other govs flew 1st Class. Yeah, but they weren’t hypocrites about it. Big difference…
Just inadvertently did a subversive thing: went to the WSJ Web site and searched for “trotsky”…
Just saw meter maid downtown, and the bag across her shoulder made her look a little like a military man…

And as a bonus, here’s one I just posted:

Gov says he won’t be “railroaded” out of office. How about “trolleycarred?” Or “pickup-trucked?” Or “little-red-wagoned?” Any mode will do.

‘Sarah Palin is now in Argentina with a woman…’

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Not really.

That’s just the punch line that my old buddy Michael Feldman is using on current promo spots for his show on public radio.

I pass it on because it provides a measurement of just how much of an automatic laughingstock we have become in South Carolina, thanks to the tireless exertions of our governor. You don’t even have to say “Mark Sanford.” You can just refer to him indirectly, at a step or two remove (in this case, the only connection is that he was until recently a fellow member of the same group to which ex-Gov. Palin still belongs, which I suppose we could describe as “marginal people whom the national media have inexplicably decided to regard as serious contenders for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination”), and still get a laugh.

So this is what we’ve come to.

Where the growth is

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Just got a release today from the state Chamber announcing that “The deadline is extended until August 31, 2009 for companies to nominate their business for the Top 25 South Carolina Fastest-Growing Companies program.”

I don’t know who’s going to make that list, but SCBiz reports that 31 South Carolina companies made Inc. magazine’s list of the 5,000 Fastest Growing Companies in America for 2009.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that not one of them made the top 500. The highest on the list was Customer Effective, a Greenville IT services company, at No. 541 on the list.

Anyway, it’s nice to know some part of the economy in South Carolina is actually growing, so congrats to Customer Effective and the other 30 growers. It will be even nicer when some of us find jobs as a result of said growth…

The Sanford scandal gets the glamour treatment

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Just when you thought there weren’t any ways left to look at the Sanford scandal, along comes the Vogue treatment of Jenny Sanford as the wronged woman America loves and admires most.

The glamour shot above is just the beginning. An excerpt:

Early this past summer, just as the world was savoring the news that yet another conservative Republican politician had tumbled from grace in a manner worthy of the best French farce—“hiking the Appalachian Trail” will never have the same meaning—there emerged an unlikely hero in the mess down in South Carolina. Petite, clear-eyed, strong-willed, pious without being smug, smart without being caustic, Jenny Sanford became an unlikely heroine by telling the simple truth. Her children were the most important thing in the world to her. She had kicked the lying bum out of the house when he refused to give up his mistress, but marriage is complex, life is hard, and if he wanted to try and make the marriage work, the door was open.

Her one-page statement saying as much was written without the help of spin doctors or media consultants. It came from her heart and her head. It mentioned God without making you squirm. The world took note. Newsweek dubbed her a “media genius”; The Washington Post hailed her as “a new role model for wronged spouses.” On television, Diane Sawyer called her classy, praising her “grace in the glare.” While her husband was giving overly emotional press conferences about soul mates and impossible love, Sanford kept her mouth shut and her head down. Just as the scandal was finally dying down, she agreed to sit with Vogue and set the record straight about what really happened in the low country of South Carolina….

… to which I can only say, which is it, Vogue — “hero” or “heroine?” (I would recommend the latter, but then I’m such an unreconstructed language chauvinist.) I knew that newspapers were short on editors, but Vogue?…

Anyway, more power to Jenny, say I. I’m still waiting for someone to start cranking out those special “WWJD” bracelets…

If I’d invented this, I wouldn’t be looking for job

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Prof. Stanley Dubinsky, a purveyor of cool links (more than I have time to read, but keep ’em coming, Stan), passes on this gee-whiz development:

A system that can deliver power to devices without the need for wires has been shown off at a hi-tech conference.

The technique exploits simple physics and can be used to charge a range of electronic devices over many metres.

Eric Giler, chief executive of US firm Witricity, showed mobile phones and televisions charging wirelessly at the TED Global conference in Oxford.

He said the system could replace the miles of expensive power cables and billions of disposable batteries.

“There is something like 40 billion disposable batteries built every year for power that, generally speaking, is used within a few inches or feet of where there is very inexpensive power,” he said.

Trillions of dollars, he said, had also been invested building an infrastructure of wires “to get power from where it is created to where it is used.”

How does “Witricity” work? It “exploits the resonance of low frequency electromagnetic waves.” Duh.

Contemplate the implications. Your electronic stuff just recharging itself where it is. Imagine the eventual implications for electric cars. I don’t know what the range is for this transfer (it seems to suggest about 100 feet), but I expect it will get longer with development. Or maybe not. Still, a car that recharged itself in your driveway without having to be plugged in would really be something.

Wow.

Imagine you’re Janet Napolitano, and you’re meeting Mark Sanford…

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This morning, like many of you, I read the highly important, yet fairly routine, story about security at the port of Charleston:

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — Project Seahawk, a port security effort developed in South Carolina, is vital to waging the war on terrorism and a model for ports around the nation, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Monday.

Graham, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Gov. Mark Sanford and other leaders had a private briefing on the project during a visit to the Project Seahawk headquarters at the old Charleston Navy Base.

Seahawk, created in 2003 in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, brings together representatives of state, federal and local law enforcement agencies who meet each day in a command center to share and compare information on harbor activity.

But as I read it, all I could think was: Say you’re Janet Napolitano. You’re the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security. You’re a serious person, with a serious job, and you’re here for a serious purpose. As you enter the room, visiting dignitary that you are, serious people turn to greet you… and Lindsey Graham introduces you to Mark Sanford.

So… do you have to suppress the urge to crack up? Do you say to yourself, Don’t smile, because then you’ll crack up! But then think, I have to smile, or it will seem unnatural… must make it the right kind of smile… And just when you think you’ve got the situation mastered, suddenly some line from a late-night comic, or something about crying in Argentina, or something else wildly incongruous to the sober subject of Homeland Security pops into your skull, just for a second, and you’re in trouble again…

Is there any way to carry on a normal conversation? And what about that first moment or so of small talk, when the natural thing is to mention something you’ve heard or read about the person you’re meeting, and naturally you think that just last week, this guy was going on and on with the press about his soulmate, going out of his way to cement his reputation as a total flake…

If you’re not a South Carolinian, and have no other context for perceiving this guy, how can you think of anything else upon meeting him? After all, while in South Carolina the headline on this story is, “Graham: Charleston port security project vital,” on CNN’s political ticker, it’s “Graham: Sanford says there’s hope’ for reconciliation with his wife.” Which was actually an element in the S.C. story; but to CNN, that’s all they care about.

Seriously. Follow the links. Previously, he was known nationally at the anti-stimulus guy. Now, he’s far better known (partly because of the same lurid popular culture that gives us obsession over Michael Jackson) as the runaway-to-Argentina guy.

Mind you, my imagining of the scene probably has flaws in it. Since they were both elected governor in the same year, Ms. Napolitano and Mr. Sanford may have already known each other. But still. A solemn, serious moment with this underlying sense of total absurdity.

That’s the way I imagine it, anyway. And if it didn’t happen that way this time, there are going to be plenty of times in which an important visitor keeps thinking, Here I am with the famous runaway governor! He actually runs this state (People from out of state wouldn’t know how insignificant the office of governor actually is here)! How weird the people of South Carolina must be!

Karen Floyd thinks it’s over. The party censures him and it’s over. Fat chance. As several people no doubt pointed out during that four-hour conference call, every minute that this guy is still governor, still going through the motions representing our state to the world, is a gold-plated gift to the Democrats in next year’s election.

No wonder the GOP executive committee was so divided:

Twenty-two committee members voted for a reprimand, 10 called for his resignation, while nine voted to support the governor.

Before we move on, could you (briefly) explain the Jacko thing to me?

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My first thought glancing over the news today is, OK, after today can we move on? No more Michael Jackson this, Michael Jackson that, wherever I turn?

But then my second thought was, While I don’t want to delay the moving-on thing, could someone explain to me what everybody is worked up about?

I don’t get it, and I never will. It’s related, I think, to the phenomenon on reality shows in which the audience screams constantly — not when something remarkable happens on the stage, or someone shouts “fire!” — but at everything that happens, everything that is said. It drives me nuts, and my wife and daughters get tired of me complaining about it when they’re watching their dancing shows, but it still bugs me because I don’t get it. Why is it that exciting?

As for Michael Jackson — well, I don’t want to speak ill of the dead; I just look forward to when we’re not speaking about him at all. What I think about him now is what I thought four years back:

Tuesday, 14 June 2005

What’s WITH these people?

Celebrity worship is a mystery to me. This puzzlement is deepened by the case of Michael Jackson.

OK, I can sort of understand how someone might have become a fan of his at one point. In the early ’80s, he was a remarkably talented young black man. But now that he is no longer young, or black, or manly in any way you’d notice, and hasn’t put forth any striking evidence of talent lately, about all he’s got left is being remarkable. And not in a good way.

I’m not saying this to be mean or anything like that. I just don’t see how, beyond memories of some catchy tunes and dancing that seemed to defy physical laws, anybody would feel any sort of emotional involvement in anything that Mr. Jackson does, or anything that happens to him or doesn’t happen to him.

And yet there are people who really, really cared what happened in his trial. They were willing to put their whole lives in suspense over whether he was found “guilty” or “not guilty.” They made it their business to be there at the courthouse, as close to his side as possible. They were ecstatic at the verdict.

What I want to know is, Why? It seems to me that even a cursory examination of the stipulated facts regarding Mr. Jackson would give any sensible person considerable pause. I mean, I can seeing pitying a man who lives in a fantasy world and sleeps with young boys to whom he is not related (even innocently), and has obsessively done bizarre things to his own body. But I can’t see how anyone would admire him, or hitch one’s own happiness to his fate.

I’d appreciate any insight that anyone out there has into this phenomenon. If I could understand this, maybe I could understand the whole celebrity culture.

Anyway, before we move on, does anyone have an explanation for me? Preferably, a brief one?

That settles it: Miss SC says Sanford should stay

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I posted this on Twitter this morning, but I didn’t want y’all to be left out of the loop. The Spartanburg paper reports that the newly-crowned Miss South Carolina says our governor should stay, even though she was “a little shocked” by his recent confessions:

Newly crowned Miss South Carolina Kelly Sloan said in an interview Sunday that the embattled governor of the state she’s now the public face of should be allowed to finish his second and final term…

“People make mistakes,” Sloan said. “I was a little shocked, to tell you the truth. But as a governor, he’s done his job. I do not think he should resign. He’s asked for forgiveness, and I think forgiveness is something we should all have for one another.”

One wonders what she means by “He’s done his job,” but hey, who’s quibbling? Could I win a beauty contest? I don’t think so. Then I should ne’er presume to second-guess her. As Theodoric of York would say, “Who’s the barber here?”

No word yet on what Her Majesty thinks about the abdication of former beauty queen Sarah Palin, or the all-important, burning issue of Michael Jackson still being dead.

Speaking of which, did you see that TV networks plan to anchor the news from his memorial service? In a world in which priorities are that far out of whack, I suppose it’s not out of line at all to ask a beauty queen about who should govern us…

WWJD (What Would Jenny Do?): The new standard for wives of wayward politicians

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This morning at breakfast at my usual location, a wag suggested that soon someone would be selling bracelets saying WWJD, for “What Would Jenny Do?”

I sort of hate to pass on something like that said in a jocular manner, because the state of mind of the state’s chief executive — and the inevitable impact it has on his family — is no laughing matter, and it’s getting less funny day by day.

But you know what? I seriously think that after what we’ve seen the past week, someone ought to have a bunch of those bracelets printed up and distributed to political wives. I say that because Jenny Sanford has been a class act from the beginning. I don’t think she’s trying to be a class act; I don’t think she gives a rip what the chattering class think about her. I think she’s just trying to do the right thing, with some self-respect and most of all with the welfare of her children in mind, and that’s what makes her a class act.

I dropped by the offices of the Palmetto Family Council today. I had seen the story about their support-Jenny movement, and since I was stopping by Starbuck’s on Gervais anyway, I thought I’d walk up and say hi to Oran Smith and the gang. I had never seen their digs before. (That’s a great, cool building they’re in, which is owned by my friend Hal Stevenson.) I mentioned the bracelet idea to them, just sort of half-seriously at the time, and when they showed a little interest I said if they followed up on it, they needed to give my friend who thought of it credit.

Something that not everybody realizes about Jenny Sanford that makes her “let-him-take-his-own-medicine” stance more remarkable: She was in her own way sort of the Republican version of Hillary Clinton. Electing the Sanfords, the state got a two-fer. I’ll never forget the time, at the start of the 2002 campaign, when Sanford asked to come present his economic plan to our editorial board. We said fine, and when I went downstairs to bring him up to the board room, there was Jenny. She was holding out a basket of cookies to me, which I took as a very conscious effort to say, “I’m not Hillary Clinton, even though it may look like I am once we get upstairs.” In the board room, Mark Sanford kept deferring to Jenny on the economics theory, letting her explain the pie charts and other stuff on the Powerpoint presentation.

She managed his campaign, and was a tough manager. I remember Tom Davis — who lived in the Sanford’s basement during that campaign — talking about “going to the hats” when he’d done something wrong. If he’d screwed up, Jenny would ask him to step with her into a part of the house where there were a bunch of ballcaps and such belonging to the boys hanging on the wall. “Going to the hats” was an experience to be avoided.

In other words, one would be forgiven for assuming that Jenny was every bit as politically ambitious as Mark. Yet she didn’t do a Hillary (or a whatever-Spitzer’s-wife’s-name-is). She didn’t do a Tammy Wynette.

And women everywhere should bless her for it, as many are doing.

Origins of the Moonwalk (video)

Just to take a break on a different subject, I thought I’d share something that my friend Cheryl Levenbrown in New York posted on Facebook. It’s a link to a blog post with a couple of interesting videos tracing the history of Michael Jackson’s Moonwalk. Its lineage goes back to Cab Calloway in the 30s.

I’m not what you’d call a Michael Jackson fan, and I’m certainly not the dance connossieur that my wife and daughters are, but I always did find the Moonwalk pretty impressive. It seemed to defy gravity and time simultaneously, as though we were looking at film of someone in near-zero gravity, and the film was being run backward. Or something. Basically, it didn’t look possible.

And while Jackson added his own refinements and earned the distinction of uniqueness in this area, everything has roots. And these videos show the roots.